FISA: Why I Can No Longer Vote for Barack Obama
Barack Obama lost my vote today. I was never a rah-rah supporter, yet prior to the FISA bill vote today, I believed that I could suck it up and vote for whoever ended up being the eventual Democratic Party nominee. For the first time in my adult life, I’m faced with the unhappy prospect of staying home on November 4th.
As a true, progressive Democrat, this is incredibly hard for me to write.
Since the start of the presidential election season, I’ve been quite clear that Barack Obama was not my first - or even second - choice as the presidential nominee for the Democratic Party. But I’ve been consistent in saying that I’d support the eventual nominee, whoever he or she might be.
That all changed today. Actually, I’ve become more and more uncomfortable with the now-presumptive nominee since the time that the primary season officially ended. Barack Obama has been tacking toward the center since the time that Hillary Clinton quit her challenge in the race. From Iraq, to the abortion issue, to the Telecom Immunity Act of 2008, I’ve watched closely as Obama has tried to grab some middle ground, and attempt to diffuse future criticism of him by the GOP as being “soft on terrorists” and not a heartland values type of guy.
Earlier today, ASZ’s good friend Brendan commented on a prior post that as an Obama supporter, he’s experiencing extreme “buyers regret”. I can understand that feeling on the part of many starry eyed Obama supporters who felt that he was (in essence) the second coming of John F. Kennedy.
Let me pose a hypothetical: would John F. Kennedy have voted for the FISA bill today had it come up during his time as Senator? …
Not a chance in hell. Kennedy was not averse to saber rattling against perceived enemies (see: Missile Crisis, Cuban), but he was also a staunch defender of the founding principles of this country. While JFK called a generation to a higher purpose (”Ask not what your country can do for you…”), he (and his brother, Robert, and his successor, LBJ) was a bulwark against the destruction of civil liberties that the likes of cross-dressing J. Edgar Hoover espoused.
Today, Barack Obama shed his skin; the skin that enticed so many people into believing that he did, in fact, support the United States Constitution, and in particular, the fourth amendment to same.
Why has he lost my vote? Quite simply: trust. If I can’t trust a self-described constitutional scholar to defend basic constitutional principles, even with a vote on the losing side of a constitutional issue, how can I trust him with (for example) future Supreme Court nominations? After today, I can’t.
I know that Obama’s FISA vote won’t mean a thing to his hard core supporters. They’ll make excuses the same way that George W. Bush’s sycophants make excuses for him. “Oh, he had to vote this way, or the GOP would paint him as soft on national security.”
NEWSFLASH: THE GOP IS GOING TO USE THAT PAINTBRUSH ANYWAY.
The FISA vote today made absolutely no difference in the GOP’s “weak on terror” mantra. That’s why it’s so hard to fathom Obama’s yea vote on the FISA bill. In fact, the GOP is already casting him as a flip-flopper on the issue: He was against warrentless wiretapping before he was for it. He was against telecom immunity before he was for it. So where does Barack Obama really stand?
I can see the TV commercials already, soto voice-over.
If you haven’t figured it out by now, I hate this crap. I really, really, do. I’m bone weary of Democratic Party politicians pandering to a mythical “independent voter”, when in actuality they’re doing no more than trying to siphon a scant few votes from the GOP rank and file.
The bottom line is that there is political reality, and then there is principle. Barack Obama has billed himself as a new breed of politician who will stand up on principle. It should be clear today that he’s reneged on that promise. He’s been revealed as an old school politico, who sticks his finger in the wind to see which way it’s blowing.
I don’t know which political forecaster he was listening to on the FISA bill issue, but I think he seriously misjudged the direction of the shitstorm that’s rising tonight.
Update: Good to know I’m not the only one out here feeling this way.
Update II: Greenwald, wordsmith that he is, puts an exclamation point on my frustration:
Obama’s vote in favor of cloture, in particular, cemented the complete betrayal of the commitment he made back in October when seeking the Democratic nomination. Back then, Obama’s spokesman — in response to demands for a clear statement of Obama’s views on the spying controversy after he had previously given a vague and noncommittal statement — issued this emphatic vow:
To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies.
But the bill today does include retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies. Nonetheless, Obama voted for cloture on the bill — the exact opposition of supporting a filibuster — and then voted for the bill itself. A more complete abandonment of an unambiguous campaign promise is difficult of imagine…
The character assassination of John Kerry as a “flip flopper” in 2004 was largely a product of the GOP noise machine. The abandonment of principle in 2008 by Barack Obama, in the middle of an election fight, is the true embodiment of the charge.
Update 3, 7/10/08: Today, ASZ runs a four-part series on yesterday’s FISA debacle. Here are the links:
FISA: The Mourning After, Part 1
FISA: The Mourning After, Part 2
FISA: The Mourning After, Part 3
FISA: The Mourning After, Part 4
Hear, hear! I will probably still pull the “D” lever in November, if only because of Supreme Court Seats (can you say “another Alito or Roberts for 30 years”), but I have asked the Obama campaign for my donations to be refunded. You have to hit them where it hurts — not just threaten the votes, but the $$$$
Don’t stay home. Vote for a third party. Even Mickey Mouse if you have to. Your vote will at least be counted.
Richard, maybe start thinking local races.
National Main Page: http://www.gp.org/index.php
Pennsylvania Main Page: http://www.gpofpa.org/
Or check out http://www.lp.org/
The congress appoints the supreme court justices - NOT the President. Demorats have been using that scare line SO often that most people don’t remember who is really supposed to select them. The last handful of hooded monsters were put on the court under demorat leadership. Remember all of those procedural delay tactics that… just… never… materialized?
Remember the justification for voting Dem in the mid-terms? Procedural control of SCOTUS appointments, committees, and the ability to investigate and exercise oversight over Bush. Did ANY of that happen? Remember? Vote for oversight and accountability?
Remember when demorat supporters and talk radio sycophants telling us that Pelosi was just *saying* she took impeachment off the table? But that she was “tough” and would get to business just as soon as she was elected? Did ANY of that happen?
The day Pelosi and Reed were elected they started making excuses to not do their jobs. NOW we are being told the exact same thing. Vote for Dems so that they can control congress and undo the damage bush did while preventing conservative SCOTUS judges from destroying our rights.
The Demorats NEVER deliver. They will happily appoint conservative judges in order to appeal to the “middle” voters for the next election cycle. We’ll be in Iraq forever. And the dems won’t bother to protect our rights in the future since they don’t value them enough to defend today.
Start a new party. Storm the streets. Or move. But voting dem is throwing your vote away. At the very least, don’t let the hand wringing little two-faced wusses get away with telling you that they stand for freedom or the rule of law. They don’t “stand” for anything.
You know, folks, Ralph Nader’s supporters made very similar arguments back in the 2000 race. Al Gore has betrayed Liberal Ideals, they cried. Even if Bush gets elected, how bad would it really be, they cried.
Well, we all found out - didn’t we. If McCain wins, the Republican Party will come roaring back, worse than ever, because they’ll have somebody who isn’t a total idiot pushing the buttons. Bush-Dog Democrats will say “SEE, the country LIKES us and those silly dirty hippies are too divided to pose a serious threat. Just keep voting with the Telecoms, their money trumps these idealistic pantywaists little hissy fits.”
No, folks, you have a choice: stick with Obama, or you’ll have voted for McCain.
I hope you do stay home, and I hope that every time Barack does something a few more Democrats who disagree with it stay home too. Sooner or later he will do something that just about every Democrat dislikes whether its FISA or supporting faith-based initiatives or beating Hillary or something else. Eventually everyone will stay home and John McCain will slide into the white house.
Very few intelligent people agree with everything anybody says, let alone a politician, but the point of having a party is saying that even if I don’t agree with everything, at least you can agree on some things, and no matter what they are, they’re better than the other side. This is what Republicans figured out and Democrats have not.
Obama is a politician and politicians make political decisions. No purely idealistic crusader will EVER make it to the white house in this country. So put your big girl panties on and support your team or start packing for Iran duty, where you and Greenwald can sit around and be offended and self-righteous for at least a little while before you choke on pollution. but can’t afford to pay the doctor bills because you have no insurance and spent all your money on gas, but that won’t matter because your senile old president will mistake you for an enemy combatant and ship you off to Gitmo where you’ll have an excellent view of the oil rig they’ll be building off Florida.
Happy Election Day!
I’m just going to post one comment in this thread - basically, the same comment I posted elsewhere tonight:
My disillusionment is not based solely on the FISA vote today. It’s also based on Obama’s “right tack” on issues such as a woman’s right to choose, regardless of the circumstances, his mellowing on Iraq withdrawal (which he was never particularly strong on in the first place), other social issues, and finally, FISA.
FISA was certainly the deal breaker for me, though. It was a raging, flaming indication of principle. There was absolutely no downside to his voting nay on the issue, because, as I said in my post above, he’ll be portrayed as weak on national security issues by the GOP anyway.
Barack Obama abandoned principle today. Voting in agreement to gut the fourth amendment should be a red flag to progressives everywhere in the universe. This isn’t a single-issue thing.
Okay Richard, so what do you do now?
Seriously - do you have any ideas? The only one I’ve seen so far anywhere on the internets that has any merit at all so far is Greenwald’s - vote for Obama anyway as the “lesser evil”, but work our asses off to push the idiot Dems in Congress who did this out and replace them with better Dems.
So far, that’s the only idea I’ve seen that has any merit. I’d like to make sure that President Obama (or, gods help us, President McCain) has some serious oversight during his tenure in office. At least President Obama will have FOX News and the Republican Party breathing down his neck ready to pounce on his first misuse of power. No one’s going to be watching President McCain - at least no one who’s going to be able to do anything about a misuse of power is going to be calling McCain on it. So what are the choices? I’m not willing to roll over and play dead - I have a son that I want to be able to look in the eye someday and tell him that I did more than roll over and give up.
What’s with these people whose response to Obama’s perfidy is to vow to “stay home”. Have we become so disempowered by this accursed two-party system that we can see no alternatives except “Vote Democrat”…”Vote Republican”….or “Stay Home”?
Why do we so easily disenfranchise ourselves? There are a wide range of candidates we could vote for–candidates whose character and policy positions might be much more compatible with our own.
We are assured (by the pundits and major party hacks) that none of these 3rd-party candidates is “electable”. Why should these declarations (from partisan apparatchiks and their media mouthpieces) dissuade us from exercising our civic duty?
Voting isn’t about picking a winner from between one ‘Greater’ and one ‘Lesser’ Evil. It’s about honestly recording which candidate (from a multitude of alternatives) comes closest to representing our own interests and those of We The People at large. It is certainly, as we have seen so often in the recent past, NOT a game of “Lesser Evilism”.
Have we become so cynical and so sheep-like that we dare not vote for a candidate who, we are told, is “unelectable”? I hope not….even though we have been conditioned by the powers-that-be who own and operate OUR government to accept the two-party system as something sacred and to scorn and mock candidates who don’t fit into the mold that has been decreed as “Mainstream” even when these other candidates make perfect sense and reflect our own perspectives on governing.
PLEASE….don’t give up so easily! Don’t throw in the towel if neither major party candidate meets your needs. Don’t feel compelled to cast your precious vote for someone whom the party hacks have imposed on you.
…..And, Please, don’t encourage the major parties to continue business-as-usual in winning (or neutralizing) your vote. The only “wasted” vote is the vote that isn’t cast!
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“I’d rather vote for what I want and not get it than vote for what I don’t want, and get it.”
– Eugene Debs
I too have been a democrat all my life (35-plus yrs) but, around 6 months ago, when I reviewed their record over the last two yrs, with regard to civil rights, constitutional matters, judgeship appointments, etc etc I became so furious that I changed to an independent, and recently have decided to vote Libertarian, the only party, it seems, which has made the acute constitutional crisis this country now faces, thanks to Democratic party accomplishments over the last two yrs, a central theme in their platform.
Tragically, the Dems, in the majority (with the House Speaker first in line) have morphed into an organization which has far out performed the French Vichy government during WW II, and they have regrettably become far more fascist (given their avid support of concentrated federal power and oligarchical rule) than they are democratic.
Say it together: Your best choice for candidate will NEVER ALWAYS vote the way you want. Not voting for him might as well be a vote for McCain. Cut off your nose to spite your face. If you don’t vote for him, you are a McCain presidency enabler and NO PROGRESSIVE!
the biggest fucking joke here is the idea that well if you don’t like obama then focus on the downticket races. most of the dems in congress sold us out too. and with obama leading the charge.
it’s not about the candidate not voting the way you want all the time, or the most of the time. it’s that if he sold us out on this HE WILL SELL US OUT ON ANYTHING. fucking stand for something, or be like obama and stand for nothing.
I will not be voting Democratic in ‘08. Time to give the third parties a look. This is over the top.
The congress appoints the supreme court justices - NOT the President.
Remember all of those procedural delay tactics that… just… never… materialized?
Comment by Phoinix — July 9, 2008 @ 9:47 pm
What precisely are you smoking? The President nominates SCOTUS justices. The Congress confirms or denies them. Congress doesn’t appoint anybody.
#
I hope you do stay home, and I hope that every time Barack does something a few more Democrats who disagree with it stay home too. Eventually everyone will stay home and John McCain will slide into the white house.
Comment by Tombeau — July 9, 2008 @ 10:07 pm
And I hope Bush plans a false flag terrorist hit on your house. If the only way the Republican can win sowing dissent, rigging elections and brainwashing the populace they don’t deserve to run this country. Whether or not we’re pissed off about Barack’s bullshit choices doesn’t matter because he’s still got ten times the support of John McSame. So unless the Republicans steal yet another election, there isn’t going to be a President McSame.
Obama is a politician and politicians make political decisions. No purely idealistic crusader will EVER make it to the white house in this country. So put your big girl panties on and support your team or start packing for Iran duty, where you and Greenwald can sit around and be offended and self-righteous for at least a little while before you choke on pollution
How about you go fuck yourself with a freedom fry, asshole. Are you an American? If not, shut up. If you are an American, then you need to recognize that this is YOUR COUNTRY that’s going down the fucking tubes. If all you have to offer is juvenile insults then why don’t wander your troll ass over to one of the righty blogs and set up shop. I’m sure they’ll love you there.
Very few intelligent people agree with everything anybody says, let alone a politician, but the point of having a party is saying that even if I don’t agree with everything, at least you can agree on some things, and no matter what they are, they’re better than the other side. This is what Republicans figured out and Democrats have not.
As a commenter above noted, this is Nader 2000 redux.
I swear, you’re all suffering from a variation of the Kyle Syndrome (http://tinyurl.com/6mo6zm)
Matt,
Correct. And look how great that worked out for us. Again, it’s the Kyle Syndrome: http://tinyurl.com/6mo6zm
hey apologists - why don’t you demand better of our candidate? sure if obama loses you can blame it on democrats who asked him to have some democratic principles, but why would you take on that much responsibility? don’t worry, the powers that be count on us running scared and thinking the capitulation isn’t really that bad leaves us right where they want us.
“My disillusionment is not based solely on the FISA vote today.” — Richard Blair
Let me add to your list, just off the top of my head:
Voted for Kindasleezy Rice as Secretary of State.
Voted for the Patriot Act.
Opposed using the filibuster to protect the Supreme Court.
Opposed impeachment from Day One.
The only thing this guy has actively fought for during his term as Senator is to be the Democratic nominee for President.
He voted that way because a majority of voters would WANT him to vote that way (remember, a majority APPROVE of Bush’s authorized torture). Obama knows (as I do) that a majority of Americans have become stupid, and yes indeed, can be swayed by simple Republican sound bites. I will give Obama the benefit of the doubt until I find out more about his reasons…I just don’t understand the rush to pass anything until after he takes office though…
Here’s a comment from FDL that sums it up for me. I didn’t write it, but I agree 100%:
You do not build the infrastructure for change by voting the status quo. If Barry becomes POTUS that will be the end of the progressive movement for a generation. His failed Presidency, and it will be a failure, will be used by the ReThugs for decades.
The idea that McSame is that much worse than Barry is a fallacy.
McSame it the enemy. Better the enemy I know in front of me than the ‘friend’ I thought I had behind me.
Stabbing me in the back.
This should be obvious to anyone by now but I note it is now the last of the many, many arguments and reasons we’ve been given to vote for Barry.
Funny….
You don’t hear all that much about ‘change’ anymore do ya.
I’m with Richard on this…
After that comment by Coultergeist, now I know you guys are totally off your fucking rockers. You fuckers aren’t real progressives or liberals. You’re all a bunch of drama loons looking perfection in a candidate — something that doesn’t exist. And, until you get it, you’ll sabotage the best thing in front of you.
Ring, ring… reality calling. You risk a president McCain. If that doesn’t happen, I hope you fuckers will be eating your words when Obama rights this severely listing ship as POTUS.
Nader 2000 redux? Except this time it’s really, really important that Nader wins. So stop whining and get on board.
Hard to believe that you would vote for a guy that has already publicly lied, voted to thwart the rule of law and violate the constitution. If Obama were to strangle a child on live TV your next post would be “a vote for a third party is a vote for McCain strangling two children”.
How can anyone have been so naive as to believe that Obama was any different than the rest of the DNC? There is no Democratic Party anymore. There is no room left for idealists. For the first time in my long ife I will not be voting for president. I have no time for these charades. All I am hoping for is to be able to financially survive the next few years. This country will get the president it deserves. And after we citizens have sat back and allowed the murder of over one million Iraqis, the shredding of our Constitution, the outsourcing of our jobs and the trashing of our economy, we don’t deserve much.
Has anyone in the MSM asked Obama or McCain why this country is building hundreds of secret detention facilities in this country?
I’m leaning towards a third party candidate myself. Well-written post.
I don’t think anyone’s looking for or expecting “perfection” in a candidate. But when core constitutional principles are being eviscerated, that’s crossing the Rubicon for me, so to speak. We’ve crossed a line that is going to be extremely difficult to return to.
I don’t think it really matters whether McCain or Obama is elected. Neither one seems to want to be the leader the country needs at a very crucial point in its history. Rather depressing, really.
I’ve got agree with Mr. Sandman, it really doesn’t matter anymore who’s elected. Obama today simply showed us that even as a “contitutional expert”, he’s willing to eviserate that which we hold most dear (in this case the 4th amendment). I’ve lived too long and seen too many politicians to whine and bemoan the current fiasco. Add to that last year’s law that makes no political candidate accountable for any promises he/she makes during an election process and it is no surprise that Nixon hit the nail on the head with his book, “My Seven Crises”. This country is only moved by crises, one after another.
My crisis is financial survival, one created by the political trash that current controls and will
continue to run this country. So folks, try not to be too disillusioned by Obama..yeah, he lost my vote today too, but McBush didn’t get it either. Go figure. Use your wonderful brains and figure out a way for you to survive-no matter who is elected. I’d love to be more optimistic, but the whole political landscape is merely a shadowplay and we lose, no matter who is elected.
It’s time to think local, think compactly and figure out how best to use the personal and natural resources we actually can connect with and plan a survival strategy accordingly.
How can anyone have been so naive as to believe that Obama was any different than the rest of the DNC? There is no Democratic Party anymore. There is no room left for idealists. For the first time in my long ife I will not be voting for president. I have no time for these charades. All I am hoping for is to be able to financially survive the next few years. This country will get the president it deserves. And after we citizens have sat back and allowed the murder of over one million Iraqis, the shredding of our Constitution, the outsourcing of our jobs and the trashing of our economy, we don’t deserve much.
Has anyone in the MSM asked Obama or McCain why this country is building hundreds of secret detention facilities in this country?
post script-the last two paragraphs of my comment appeared to have fallen off my laptop’s screen….I did not know they were still in hiding….still even though the words belong to someone else, I agree with them.
OBAMA=EPIC FAIL
write a name in… do not throw your vote away! Make it count and stop supporting the two party system!!!!! Use your vote for something good!
I am unsurprised at the namecalling on this thread. If nothing else progressives are heartfelt in their beliefs. The insults, though, are flying like a thread on the Freeper web site, and I regret that some of the commenters here could not debate a bit more calmly.
We are not happy with this vote. As to immunity, it bothers me little. Sure, Greenwald has a good point that the Congress should not be usurping judiciary power, but in any lawsuit the defense will be first that the President asked them to do the spying, and second, that monetary damages cannot be enumerated. While those cases against the Telecoms might be engaging, they are not going anywhere but to six to ten years of unproductive courtroom fights. The enemy does not consist of the Telecoms here, but the Bush Admin abuse of power. The regret concerning the immunity part of the Bill is that it will keep George’s name out of the courts, at least a little. Still, the challenges to his actions and the judges slapping down the Bush Administration for its violations of habeas and wiretapping are going to continue. Those are really far more effective tools, not Telecom trials.
Yeah, the weakening of FISA is the problem with this bill. Surely it needed some kind of reformation. Heck, the original bill was not the kind of thing that covered the internet, we needed more wireless provisions, etc. I think they went too far, and I am disappointed that Obama and many others supported this bill. I am not withholding my vote from Obama.
When we compare Obama and Barr and McCain and Nader and any of a number of third parties, it is clear that, for most progressives, Obama is the “good,” while the others are “average” or “fair,” or outright “bad.” I will not throw out the good because he does not measure up to “perfect.”
oh christ steve, it’s got nothing to do with him not being perfect. he downright sucks for voting for this bill. the bill doesn’t just give the telecoms immunity, it essentially retroactively legalizes what they did, and gives the president the right to spy domestically from now on with absolutely no court supervision. is this ok? is this progressive? no, it is selling out every single american, and our constitution.
so i ask, how many votes like this will obama apologists continue to defend? how dino does he have to be before his supporters start asking how really different he is from the rest?
and with the congress having a 9% approval rating, which i think is an all time low, why would this candidate think that it was necessary to further sell out america? the reason that they are so loathed is precisely because they refused to rein in bushco - so tell me why would he think the majority of voters would want him to vote that way as a previous commenter suggests?
Obama has now proved himself to be a failure as any kind of progressive. He is the same sad package that the Democratic Party has been selling for over a decade. The Democrats have miserably failed on every single issue. Don’t forget it wasn’t Nadar who gave Bush the election in 2000. Both the 2000 and 2004 elections cannot be explained other than by fraud. To date the spineless Democrats have done nothing to help insure fair elections, nothing to stop the war, nothing to stop Bush’s horrible Supreme court and Federal Court judicial appointments, nothing to stop Blackwater as it becomes a menace to our American rights and liberties. After 30 years of voting and helping with campaigns (mostly Democrat) I took my name off the voter rolls last Fall. The system is horribly broken and like Vegas you don’t fix the house’s advantage over you by gambling more. My answer StopVoting.org
Sorry, both parties are COMPLETELY corrupt and compromised. Armed revolt is the only solution, and the powers-that-be know it….
I did not apologize for Obama in this thread, somegirl. I certainly did not. I am not happy with the vote. I said that. I am just not so unhappy as to castigate every supporter of Obama, as some in this thread are doing. I see little use-value in such a stance.
I, too, feel passionately about this issue. However, when I step back a bit I recognize that my motives are more about getting back at Bush than anything. I considered for a fleeting second withholding my vote for Obama this November but then I thought of the alternatives. A McCain presidency would be more ruinous to our country than an Obama no vote on FISA. Ultimately, I realized that my anger was about feeling betrayed and not getting exactly what I wanted from Obama. I felt petty and selfish. I think with a little reflection that many of you will see them same in yourselves.
Obama is a sellout and a typical Demopublican.He’s just as much of a crook as Bush. I’ll now vote for Nader or Barr.
Lets not forget Obama’s intended expansion of Bush’s Faith Based Programs. Just when I thought we could get religion out of our government, here comes another poke in the eye.
A lot of complaints registered in this thread about Obama indicate that there are trolls in here who would have never voted for Obama in the first place. Some complaints also indicate that the disgruntled did not hear Obama’s defense of his actions. Do me a favor … look them up instead of going off half cocked.
How about enlightening us, C. Lindy? Give us a link, post-FISA vote.
I read his defense. I found it insulting.
FISA was a big deal. Obama misled us during the primary with his stance on it then, and then did an aboutface once he sealed the nomination.
I don’t expect perfect, but I expect my candidate to be a person of character. Right now, i feel lied to and sold a false bill of goods.
My thoughts exactly Lindy!!!
You people are being fooled by Limbaugh’s “Operation Chaos”. You are fools to believe.
This is NOT the first time Obama voted for a FISA bill that gave Telecoms immunity.
Where was all the outrage the LAST TIME he voted for FISA???
Anyone who claims they will not vote for Obama over his FISA vote, NEVER intended to vote for him in the first place.
The Republican trolls are sowing the seeds of discontent in our party by posting lies on EVERY Democratic leaning Blog and News Website.
AND a lot of you are falling for their drivel!!
Arliss, I think you are pushing it a bit. These are not trolls in here. They are people who believe deeply in this issue.
If Obama has energized a movement, regardless of his sincerity in asking that movement to help him to govern, that movement needs to holds him accountable to deliver.
All the machinations ahead of an election are distortions. I’m betting on the fact that this time, we’re all pissed off enough to do what it takes to get his attention if he tries to shaft us.
It was, after all, his call for people to become engaged — he will be forced to acknowledge them as the source of his power.
Unless of course all this movement nonsense is just an illusion, and we as Americans turn out to really be too damn lazy to give a shit. In that case, we’ll get what we deserve — just like we’ve got now.
We made this mess — only we can get ourselves out of it now — and we better get busy because it’s getting late.
Obama is a miserable candidate to begin with. This should have been clear from the start when the man didn’t offer actual, substantive policy positions in those oft-lauded speeches. This renege on a campaign promise should be unexpected to anyone who hasn’t sipped the kool-aid and actually been critical of his words.
But, in the midst of this discussion, we’re forgetting that Cynthia McKinney is running as the Green candidate this year. Her record is strong, and would be stronger if she hadn’t been slandered by the mainstream media so many times in the past. I’m not going to defend the Capitol incident, but everything else is pretty straight. I am going to vote for her, but this is not the point of my comment.
With these two shit-for-brains running (no disrespect to McCain’s military career; god forbid, it should seem like I’m slandering him), this is the year of the third party. Don’t vote Nader (he’s unaffiliated this year), but vote Barr or vote McKinney. They need to get 5% to receive full federal funding. Maybe that way, the political system will stop being dominated by corporations and will be responsible to the citizenry. But, that’s just some progressive dream, isn’t it?
Is it too late to vote for Dennis?
Ace is right - Barr has slammed both McCain AND Obama over FISA.
Support Barr. If he can get 10% in the polls (he’s at 6-8% now) he’ll be in the debates. Let’s roll.
I too , as a lifelong progressive liberal , am starting to have some very ’serious issues’ with this guy. We need to step outside the box , come together and find a contender that represents the “populists” preferences —— I’m thinking; Nader.
“Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death! ”
Patrick Henry - March 23, 1775
A CFR Lapdog,regaurdless of one’s racial decree, is still someone’s freakin’ Lapdog.What we need now is a Constitutional Gaurd dog…..May God save our beloved Republic,for shurely no one of Earthly flesh & blood will.I hang my head in Heavenly shame & sorrow,with every gaze into a mirror,or passing glance in a Wal-Mart store front,reflected window..I shure could use a cheese-burger.When does American Idol start up again?!?I’m just as gutless as the next wanker……Sic Semper Tryrannis
Have all of you who won’t support Obama learned anything from the last 8 years? Stay home or support a third party candidate, and we get McCain. People said Bush and Gore were just the same in 2000, and they made the difference in Florida by voting for Nader. Vote for Obama now and keep up the pressure on him once he is elected, Stay home or vote for someone else, and we will see a lot more FISA bills like this one.
Nader has yet to be nominated of course.
The GP convention started today in Chicago and runs thru Sunday.
McKinney expected to get Green Party nomination this week
Her expected running mate: Rosa Clemente
[Slight moderation by editor for WATT f'bombin...]
The fact is if Obama loses in November, it’s not because of any fault of mine: it’s because he went out of his way to lose my vote.
I am voting for Bob Barr in November, and my money is going to Accountability Now. Revenge.
That’s all I want right now, is sheer fucking revenge.
Oh, and both of our Senators voted for this. I can’t support casey either anymore.
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After that comment by Coultergeist, now I know you guys are totally off your fucking rockers. You fuckers aren’t real progressives or liberals.
And you’re a jackass. I for one never claimed to be a progressive or a liberal. But even if I was there are more important things going on here than whether or not the POTUS will protect us against whatever boogie men the neo-cons have dreamed up for us to preemptively nuke this week.
You’re all a bunch of drama loons looking perfection in a candidate — something that doesn’t exist.
I’m not looking for perfection, douchebag. I’m looking for a candidate who will uphold the rule of law and protect the constitution. McCain isn’t going to do it, because he just wants more power. Obama isn’t going to do it, because he sees stripping our right to redress grievances with our government as a ‘compromise’. Ultimately if he wins he will inherit the unprecedented powers that Bush has claimed for himself. So why should he change anything? You think 3 years from now Obama won’t be using national security letters to force the FBI into investigating Republicans just for shits and giggles? He’s a politician and you’re delusional.
There’s a reason why our founding fathers fought the revolutionary war. It was because a non-elected leader decided that they had no rights in his regime. By giving this little parting gift to Bush, Obama is in effect endorsing giving a burgeoning totalitarian regime more power and he’s doing it because he believes he’s going to inherit it in the next election cycle. For all the good Congress has done us Bush might as well freaking just disband them. But he won’t, so that Republican sycophants and short sighted Democrats like you can point at someone else as the problem.
If Obama is incapable of seeing the Constitution’s 4th Amendment protections as something that shouldn’t be bartered away to protect some rich white collar criminals then he doesn’t deserve to be President in the first place.
Ring, ring… reality calling. You risk a president McCain. If that doesn’t happen, I hope you fuckers will be eating your words when Obama rights this severely listing ship as POTUS.
Comment by Cotasm — July 10, 2008 @ 12:44 am
Take your condescension and shove it straight up your ass.
Obama’s asking us to trust him at his word that he’s not going to abuse us like Bush has. Yet he’s maneuvering MORE POWER into the executive branch and selling us down the river.
Sorry Cotasm, I’m fresh out of trust. I was fresh out of trust when the Patriot act was passed. I was fresh out of trust when Congress authorized Bush to invade a country on lies and assumptions. I was fresh out of trust when the Military Commissions Act was passed. I was fresh out of trust when my government let the Gulf Coast drown. I was fresh out of trust when Bush’s executive order gave the SecTreas the authority to seize anyone’s assets based on the rumor that they might have helped terrorists. I was fresh out of trust when my government decided that torture was ok. I was fresh out of trust when my government decided that habeas corpus no longer applied.
and now I’m expected to trust Slick Barry O when he votes against the rights of the citizens of this nation?
If we’re throwing out the Constitution because it’s no longer convenient, then this is not America, neither Bush nor McCain nor Obama is President, you are not a citizen and I don’t owe any of you a damned thing.
Grow the hell up and wake the hell up before you take all of us down with you.
When we compare Obama…Obama is the “good,”… I will not throw out the good because he does not measure up to “perfect.”
Comment by Steven Reynolds — July 10, 2008 @ 7:50 am
As I said previously Steven. It’s not about being perfect. I could tolerate the faith based bullshit ( especially since he said it was going to be faith based & community initiatives ). I could tolerate his suddenly flipping off the public financing system. But this vote is not something I can tolerate.
I’m sure you yourself and all the rest of the people commenting that we should just vote for Obama anyway has a point where Obama could do something that was a deal breaker. For some it might be the abortion issue. For others it might be some of his votes or his flip-flop on public financing. For some of the people out there that seem to think Obama is the second coming he will probably have to murder someone live and on camera before they stop seeing him as the coming messiah. So the question is, what’s it gonna to take?
For me and a lot of other people, who realize that the Constitution is not just a guideline but the foundation of this nation, the FISA bill vote was a deal breaker. Whether or not half of the nation realized it or not, this nation needed leadership from Barack Obama on that FISA bill. His one vote wouldn’t have changed anything anyway since there were still 69 ayes. If he can’t support the constitution and the rule of law when there is no gun pointed to his head and he really has nothing to lose by doing it, do you honestly think he’s going to support it when the Republicans are threatening him with impeachment for something stupid like not invading Iran?
The point is that he voted against your civil liberties. Against your right to be secure in your house and personal effects and so on. He voted for the spurious conclusion that telecoms would refuse to cooperate with legal warrants in the future. He voted for a continuation of the lies and perfidy that has been rampant through this entire administration even KNOWING that the Bush program is inherently illegal. Being a damned lawyer he damn well knew that the FISA law was fine the way it was without protecting telecom companies for every misdeed in the past and every misdeed they will do in the future.
George W. Bush does not have the legal or constitutional authority to override an existing law without first going to the legislature. Unless there has been a constitutional amendment I am unaware of granting him this power then he acted illegally. Therefore anyone obeying his order was also acting illegally whether they believed it legal or not
He also should know that unlike what Kit Bond said, we can’t just take the government to criminal court over this. Because in order to show any government wrong doing you have to have solid proof that YOU personally have been effected by said wrong doing. Which is something you can’t do as a regular US Citizen, if all of the information about the program is in fact classified data. In a recent case of a Muslim charity, the FBI screwed up and showed the plaintiff the classified documents that showed they were being illegally monitored while the FBI went through the process of labeling them as a terrorist organization. Judge Vaughn Walker, a strong liberterian appointed by Bush Senior, ruled that unless the charity could somehow prove they were being illegally monitored without the classified documents they would have no case at all. That very same Judge in that very same case ruled that the President was acting outside the bounds of his authority. Yet Congress, including Obama, threw us under the bus rather than stand up to Bush.
Source: Wired - We’re Wiretapping you
Effectively what Barack Obama said with his aye vote, is that all of our worries about our rights and objections about overruling the Contsitution should be cast aside solely because we should trust him to fix this later.
And his motivation for this is easily readable. He was playing politics because he thinks he’s going to win. Well now that the vote has been made, and the Criminal in Chief has signed the bill it’s a Law. So what if he doesn’t win? Then we have a President McCain with yet more executive power and Obama’s partially responsible. Obama’s playing dice with my daughter’s civil rights and that’s not something I can forgive. That is, as I mentioned, a deal breaker. I’m sorry if you and these other guys don’t agree with that but that’s not my problem. My problem is that you can’t see what a disaster that vote represents.
I would sooner put McCain behind the desk in the oval office and settle for the evil I know than put Obama behind the desk and settle for the illusion that he’s actually working for me rather than his own interests.
You guys can vote for who you want. If you trust a man who stabs you in the back then that is your own problem. Me, I only need to get bit by a dog once before I learn not to trust it.
All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing… and that is exactly what occured in this case. Obama may well be a good man, but in failing to vote against this bill he has effectively signed off his approval for everything that has happened to our civil rights relative to this program.
Hey, he lost mine too. I was gung ho and got so shocked by his FISA vote, I decided to write in Ron Paul, unless somebody else jumps in to the vote. I heard a Constitution preacher Charles Baldwin may be running. Anybody heard anything? We need a 3rd party who wins !
I don’t know why everyone is getting so bent out of shape about McCain. For so long, the media talked about him as the great compromiser, “reaching across the aisle”. He is a veritable democrat on many issues. You may not agree with everything he stands for, but at least he is an honest man who is what he says he is. He has shown himself to be someone that puts what he believes to be right in front of his own personal gain. Just look at his time in the pow camp during Vietnam. Whether or not one agreed with the war, one can admire his strength and sacrifice for his fellow soldiers.
“E in MD”,
Thank you so much for your perspicacity and your eloquence in making the argument against voting for Obama! I’m a proud member of the Green Party, because I agree with its platform and program. Why should I be voting for an OPPOSITION party’s candidate–a candidate who doesn’t support the things that I (and the Green Party) stand for? Why should I be voting AGAINST my own “enlightened self-interests”–self-interests that I have come to believe in after more than a little casual thought?
So many of the KOOL-ADE drinkers posting here have succumbed to the terror tactics of a party that claims to represent their interests–a party that sweet-talks them and then kicks them to the curb whenever it suits them. The ‘love’ and ‘batter’ cycle goes on and on….and it WORKS, because these party loyalists are TERRIFIED of leaving home! Living with domestic violence seems preferable to facing the bullies and beasties that (they are told) lurk just beyond their doorstep. Anyway, the ‘batterer’ assures them of its ‘love’, and promises to ‘change’ if given just ONE MORE chance.
It is THAT pathetic mindset (settling for being battered) that the current Democratic Party banks on as it inches further and further to the right. The DNC/DLC trusts its members to accept the situation, because these voters have “nowhere else to go” (according to the DNC geniuses who must thank the gods every day that there is such a thing as a ‘Republican’ Party). If there were no Republican Party, the Democrats would have to invent one.
Why accept this cozy two-party political arrangement when there is a chance for something much better? Why expect mediocrities like John Kerry to save them from the Big Bad Republicans? Why accept that there are only two parties to choose from? Is this what passes for democracy in America? Why settle for this, year after year after year?
This government is BROKEN. It’s time that We The People faced that fact. It’s time that we do something about it! This country is being run like a ‘cosa nostra’ controlled by two families. Those families are pretty pleased with this arrangement, in spite of their perpetual turf wars that make for good entertainment during campaigns. The corporate media are quite happy to go along….more newspapers sold…more grist for talking heads to comment on when there’s a lull in the kidnappings of little blonde girls….more money in everybody’s pockets. Everybody’s HAPPY! Well, maybe not everybody…but everybody who ‘matters’…everybody who’s a ‘player’ in the game.
The Obamas and McCains are products of this make-believe democracy…and they play the game VERY well. The winner is whoever gathers the most money–whoever can afford the better marketing team.
Doesn’t this need to be fixed? Obama ain’t gonna fix it…it works fine for him and the gang of cynics who make up his ‘team’. It’s up to We The People to fix it, if we can tear ourselves away from the bread, circuses and sordid reports about this or that celebrity that lure us into watching. Genuine ‘CHANGE’ can be painful; and another Republican administration would certainly be no picnic….but if we don’t start NOW to fix OUR government, the pain we suffer today will only get worse and worse for future generations of our People.
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“There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part, you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop! And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!”
– Mario Savio