The Village idiots need to recall how their preferences brought us W. With a track record that dreadful, you’d think they would try to become a little more fact oriented and a little less given to pretensions of omnipotence.

Not to mention that it would have been the height of stupidity if Obama had actually limited himself to public financing when he has the ability to raise greater funds.

It’s one of those nights. It’s 5am here and I can’t sleep. I’m sure FISA and war-funding have nothing to do with it.

Good morning, Attaturk and thanks for the post.

solai,
I don’t sleep well these days either. Perhaps its the dread I feel waiting for the “manufactured outrage” (h/t KO) and distortions to start in earnest. As we have seen on the campaign finance issue beginning yesterday. Or the law and order approach to terra. And isn’t it an outrage that a candidate for POTUS would actually admit he would abide by the Constitution?

I’m praying that somehow, some way, Obama will come to the rescue today. But, I don’t think my prayers will be answered. Did you see KO last night? Jonathan Turley said that Pelosi, Jay and others want this immunity for themselves. They fear that they, too, are at risk for what they’ve approved and now are trying to cover their own behinds.

Yes, Olbermann and Turley were terrific. Only legacy media coverage of this whole debacle.

Completely agree with you solai, the Dems want to cover up their complicity with George Boosh. Venality is the operative work.

Thanks for the post Attaturk.

For anyone who cares to, this is the Speaker Pelosi’s email as Speaker of the House, not as the rep from one Congressional district.

AmericanVoices@mail.house.gov

Morning all.

Except for the hunger and the cold, I think this was what the Continental Army felt like at Valley Forge 1777 – 1778.

I thought Obama said he would reach a deal with the eventual GOP Presidential Candidate about going on Public Financing.
Wasn’t this said back when we thought the GOP candidate would as they normally do op out of the publicly financed campaign system because they normally have more money?
Also any deal with McCain on public financing is a joke there is still Jane’s complaint and on top of that the use of his wife’s jet for campaign purposes, McCain is laughing at us I hope he does time.
If the MSM wants to be like this a law allowing only one media company to own one form of media TV, Radio, NewsPaper etc in one Market Chicago, Detroit etc would encourage a less Corporate MSM, tank the talking heads stock options and help the banks when they need help.
After all with all those sales someone has to buy and that means financing the banks can be our ally on this one, we must put our enemies against each other.

If voters think Nancy and through her all the Democrats want FISA immunity to protect themselves this could hurt Obama. This could hurt us more than the Rev Wright or anything else McCain has tried so far, its a game changer.
Especially if Obama doesn’t speak out publicly against it, why because it shows that Obama is all talk and no change. Our hope in Obama would fade a little then.
Sure McCain would still lose the election but it would be more about beating McCain and a little less hoping for Obama.

I haven’t contributed to a pres candidate since John Edwards backed out. And I’ve been very choosy about who gets my money. Mostly it goes to organizations (ACLU,SaveTheInternet etc.) I’m sure there are many like me. Well, if this goes through, Obama will lose some donations. I, for one, am already disgusted at the war-funding bill w/no end date. This will only increase my outrage.

80% of Voters don’t ‘get’ FISA.
The threat is too abstract.
They ‘get’ IRAQ and gas.
And after 8 years of being beat over the head, 70 % ‘get’ that BushCo has been the most cynical propaganda machine since WW2.
To be fair, probably 20-35% of us ‘got’ that all along.
My point is, you know, and I know that this is a missed opportunity for Obama to step up to the plate.
But, it is not a clear political win, in fact very costly within his party, and hw will be a lot mor vocal on the war and energy.
Not perfect, not stellar, but as always, the better alternative when compared with McSame.
As Howie pointed out yesterday in his post about Obama’s support of a Blue Dog when there is clearly a better alternative, a lot of Obama true believers are in for some dissapointments.
Obama is my Senator, and I can tell you that his staff has never been particularly responsive on this issue.
I fully support his candidacy, but would not use his 4th Amendment advocacy as an argument.
We are on our own on this one.

Good morning, pups. It’s Bobo and Krugman this morning. Bobo typed something about “The Two Obamas” and says Barack Obama is no liberal goo-goo. Republicans keep calling him naïve. But naïve is the last word he’d use to describe him. Mr. Krugman writes about the “Driller Instinct,” and says to have a chance in November, John McCain has to convince voters that he isn’t just George W. Bush, continued.

http://mgpaquin.wordpress.com/

The coffee and tea are ready, and I’ve got some lovely croissants from the bakery I pass on the way home from work. Mercifully they still had power. We had a ferocious thunderstorm in Savannah that took out trees and a church steeple, and my area was without power for 8 hours. So now I’m off to run around and reset all those clocks… in the microwave, in the stove, on the VCR, for the African violet plant stand… Have a great day.

No matter what the Talking Cannonball Heads say about Barack Obama…John McCain has already broken campaign finance laws. He’s a felon at the moment. Bah hahahahahahaha! And isn’t it fitting that the felon in this year’s presidential race is a republican? Bah hahahahahaha!

One good thing about Obama’s move is that he will outspend the right wingers and it could force them (because of the “unfairness of it all” Oh boo hoo hooooo!) to rethink campaign finance laws. It’s very possible this is Obama’s intention.

She attempts to rip Barack Obama a new one over his decision to opt out of public financing:

i’d like to rip obama a new one – over his lack of concern for the 4th amendment.

if obama doesn’t stand up today, can we all dispense with “he’s a constitutional lawyer” crap?

Barack Obama (202) 228-4260
Steny Hoyer (202) 225-4300
Nancy Pelosi (202) 225-8259

Let’s make some phone calls this morning! By the way….good morning everyone! ;-)

[Mod note: whoops! the correct numbers are here, comment #25]

Good morning all. I was a little late to the lake as I was having a “whiz for Liz”.

That the Dem “leadersip” was in this illegal wiretapping deep up to their aholes is no surprise to anyone with a brain, or even half a brain, which leaves out most of MSM. The chances of obama stepping in to do something are slim to bugger all. obama, we should recall, is a willing participant in the corporate funding scam, has taken monies from all the “bad” guys and was, to me anyway, the least worst choice of the two remaining corporate candidates once the anti coporation candidates had been dealt the death blow by MSM.

obama will do nothing, will no doubt find some convenient campaign event to keep him out of the fray, and the telecoms and cheenee will get away with murder, literally in cheenee’s case. So now that the primary is over the corporations will be happy that DC politics has gone back to “normal” and we are all fucked.

george kenney’s electric politics weekly podcast: It’s not “Defense” Spending

One fact should be tacked on to all discussions of policy priorities: the U.S. spends over half a trillion dollars on its military, more than the rest of the world’s military spending combined. To be blunt, that’s insane. And it explains why the U.S. lags so far behind other advanced countries when it comes to social programs, public infrastructure, and generally every progressive metric that can be measured. There’s no money left. To get at the cultural history behind our prohibitively expensive military fantasies — fantasies that go all too easily unchallenged — I turned to Dr. H. Bruce Franklin, the eminent cultural historian and author of War Stars (recently republished in a revised and expanded second edition after twenty years). It was great to talk again with Bruce, who has clearly found critical pieces of the puzzle regarding where and how American ideas about war went wrong. Total runtime an hour and twenty three minutes. Remember, it’s not “Defense,” it’s military racketeering.

Good Morning Attaturk and pupulists

altho I don’t know what’s so good about it. *sob*

Sprinkles McCain.

Don’t forget Scotty this morning at 9:30 CSPAN 3

Good morning, Elliott. I’m up even earlier than usual this a.m. Must be all that frustration & anger.

(((((((Elliott)))))))

Here’s hoping Scottie’s testimony manages to rain on their parade just a little bit today. Wish it was SJC questioners instead of HJC, though.

I thought that we weren’t linking to any AP stories.

Did I miss something?

and lets hope the servers don’t crash!!!!! I can’t deal with another day like yesterday with all the important stuff that’s happening.

pure agro!!

For some reason the numbers I posted above aren’t the right ones. Sorry! *pouring coffee down my throat* ;-)

I noticed Juan Cole linked to AP yesterday, too. Didn’t read the memo?

Amen to the servers holding up. Going to be a heavy comment day.
It was good to see you over @ windcatpond, Deb.

Try these phone numbers:

Barack Obama: (202) 224-2854
Steny Hoyer: (202) 225-4131
Nancy Pelosi: (202) 225-0100

;-)

Just in case, we all ought to know about windcatpond. blogspot. com

It might be a good day to employ use of the gabbly alongside the thread too—it would take some of the pressure off the server and let us make stupid comments that don’t have to be indelibly marked on the thread for posterity.

thanks for the reminder RevDeb, didn’t even think about cbl’s place yesterday.

I wonder if Hoyer replaced that snotty guy I spoke to yesterday. Faxed a complaint to Steny’s office about him, he was so rude. Same guy probably got the fax & filed it in the circular file over behind the fax machine..

Steny Hoyer’s line is busy and his box is full. Woohoo!

I just left a long message to Nancy Pelosi basically accusing her of covering up for George Bush and the telecoms who have been spying on Americans since February 2001. I told her she’s as guilty as they are and all of ya should be in prison for not upholding the laws of this nation and for protecting yourselves rather than the people of our great nation. I talked until my time ran out. I did manage to get in a, “You guys are traitors!”, before the tape ended. LOL

Will be calling Barack’s office now. ;-)

i don’t have the heart to do the war funding links… but here are the fisa links:

the bill is:
H.R. 6304 – The “FISA Amendments Act of 2008”

the rule is:
H.RES. 1285

LOL I got a young guy when I called Nancy’s office. I said to him, “I’m calling about FISA and how Nancy and others are coveri….”. He said, “Hold on” in a tone that is usually reserved to the customer service department at Wal-Mart. LMAO!

Hey, these assholes represent us and if they don’t want to hear from us then it’s time to move to Uzbekistan!

Barack’s phone box is full. Woohoo! I couldn’t leave a message.

Okay, going to work. I’ll be watching Scotty today with the rest of ya. ;-)

Have a great day everyone!

Let’s call Hillary too. If she wanted to she could earn some good cred over this.

My manners. I meant to thank everyone who worked so hard yesterday to get FDL back up & running & who, no doubt, are working hard to maintain same right now.

BIg thanks, FDL techies!

Well, that’s what 3 in the morning will get you.

Besides it’s not really “news” it’s an opinion column.

and she could take some pressure off BO by being his “surrogate.” All the important beltway chatterers are really into surrogates.

ditto!

Don’t know what Verizon and Comcast were doing to try to trip us up, but huzza to the techies who prevailed.

There’s also a difference between saying “here’s a story about what happened today” quoting the AP and saying “here’s what kind of drivel the AP is passing off as news today, and let me tell you why — sprinkle by sprinkle.”

We can pass on the former, but the latter needs to be held up for public derision.

Woke up this morning alive, didn’t ya? Everything on top of that is gravy.

Now get crackin’. We got a country to turn around.

Like some guys I used to operate with say, “The only easy day was yesterday.” *g*

revdeb – i think there is something (or even lots of things) that any of our political “leaders” could do - if they cared about the 4th amendment and/or the concept of equal justice. that they choose not to take the kind of actions all of us can think of with only a few minutes of thought ought to show conclusively that they don’t care.

Scarecrow’s up
and the answer to his question is NO! not at all.

*heaving a big sigh*
I guess you’re right, I did wake up this morning, that counts for somethin’.

Good Morning all. Just finished castigating my local political reporter for his puff piece on Rep Lamar Smith When McClellan testifies, Texan will fire back.

No way I was letting that slide. The guy is in a super gerrymandered district, courtesy of Tom Delay and TRMPAC, we couldn’t even get a candidate to oppose him this time. We had a well financed guy, John Courage, with a great grassroots operation, who was going to beat him until they “fixed” things for Lamar. A lot of liberal voices are silenced here, just as the Republicans planned.

I always much better after taking somebody to task for writing a piece of congratulatory crap like that. What is on the guy’s PR staff?

They are covering up their own asses. My theory

1. The wiretapping caught all sorts of nasties of them doing bad things and those are being held over their heads

and/or

2. Since some of them knew about the program and didn’t do anything to stop it at the time, their asses are in a sling and they don’t want that coming out.

Neither of these paints a pretty picture of our “patriotic” elected officials.

Nancy Pelosi = common criminal.

Every one who votes to fund the war or didn’t use every trick in the book to stop the war is both a traitor and war criminal. I don’t support any troops in Iraq they also are war criminals according to the Nuremburg Protocols which we used to adhere to and at one time the UNITED STATES participated in trials of war criminals to enforce the ideals set forth in these principles.

B..b..but how can they be considered unpatriotic if the wear flag pins?

3. or maybe this is what they want?

from glenn yesterday:

I’d like to underscore the fact that in 2006, when the Congress was controlled by Bill Frist and Denny Hastert, the administration tried to get a bill passed legalizing warrantless eavesdropping and telecom amnesty, but was unable. They had to wait until the Congress was controlled by Steny Hoyer, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to accomplish that

revolting.

Liz Sidoti is all you say and possibly more. Still, Obama is, in fact and objectively, doing exactly the opposite of what he said he would do and, is the first candidate since the public finance system was put in place in 1976 to refuse the people’s money. Regardless of what Sidoti writes (who cares?), it ain’t good.

I hope Obama is able to raise 700 million for the general. Force McSame to battle in every state for every vote. In America money talks and bs walks. Time for the Republican bs to hit the road.

They are as “patriotic” as corrupt commissars were in the old Soviet Union.

that would be about right.

Nice one, Attaturk. And the press complains that Obama shuts them out?

Attaturk:

It get’s worse

Gets shouldn’t have an apostrophe.

We now return to regularly scheduled programming…

Facts indicate Obama did promise to use Public Funding.

At issue is a statement Obama made in November on a questionnaire for the Midwest Democracy Network, which asked: “If you are nominated for president in 2008 and your major opponents agree to forgo private funding in the general election campaign, will you participate in [the] presidential public financing system?”

Obama’s questionnaire answer, as posted online by the League of Women Voters: “Yes. I have been a longtime advocate for public financing of campaigns combined with free television and radio time as a way to reduce the influence of moneyed special interests. … If I am the Democratic nominee, I will aggressively pursue an agreement.”

March 2007
http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..01505.html"> Excerpt Washington Post
McCain was the only candidate who responded by agreeing to take public funding if his general election opponent did the same. And their public statements on the matter, which at the time were celebrated by editorial boards and good government groups as efforts to save an embattled good government program, were alternately presented by the press as matching “promises” or “pledges.”

Russ Feingold:

“This is not a good decision,” Feingold said in a statement today. “While the current public financing system for the presidential primaries is broken, the system for the general election is not. The entire system must be updated. … [T]his decision was a mistake.”

Where’s Sen. Dodd?