Author: COB6

An article by an ultra liberal in today’s Guardian makes an interesting point about the Messiah’s position in the recent SCOTUS Kennedy-vs-Louisianna decision.

Tough for others to swallow is what Patrick Kennedy did. He repeatedly raped his eight-year-old stepdaughter, causing massive internal injuries. He left her to die, but her life was saved by multiple surgeries.

Substantively, Obama’s position is in keeping with past statements. He’s never been a blanket opponent of the death penalty, supporting it in cases where “the community is justified in expressing the full measure of its outrage.” One can disagree with that position, and I do. But it’s kind of hard to argue that a crime like Kennedy’s isn’t deserving of the full measure of outrage.

In saying that Obama has “never been a blanket opponent”, the Guardian cites Wikipedia. Not the best source and he clearly was at one point but again that whole “change” thing has become very clear of late.

The US population overwhelmingly supports the death penalty and Obama knows it. To me, this seemed to be an obvious shift to pander to those bitter folks (whose votes he still needs) and more evidence that MoveOn is clearly under the bus.

But the Guardian sees it differently and by differently I mean racially.

But here’s the thing. Kennedy is African-American. It’s pretty easy to envision the attack ad that could be made against Obama if he’d taken the position here some liberals wanted him to take. An image of Kennedy appears on the screen, photo-shopped to make him look terrifying. Sinister music swells. The voiceover intones: “Barack Obama wants criminals like Patrick Kennedy to have a chance to go free so they can rape children again.” And so on.

This is the old “Avoid Willie Horton” strategy and although it makes sense politically, it is certainly not a very principled position to take.

Amazingly, the Guardian agrees with me but doesn’t care. Win at all cost baby.

I’ve always objected to setting up principle as a value that’s oppositional to winning. To me, winning is a principle. It’s the highest principle there is. If you win the election, you can do at least some of the good things that will improve people’s lives in the country and around the world. If you lose it, you can’t do any of them.

(Photo from PowerLine)

Ian Welsh, who writes at Firedoglake, is someone that I seldom agree with but he is usually level headed if ideologically wrong. His take on the recent FISA surrender by the Messiah is pretty accurate:

The FISA Cloture vote just passed. The Senate will now consider the motion to proceed with the bill, then they’ll head to the bill itself (corrected procedural details, h/t and thanks to CBolt). Various motions will be put forward to strip immunity, odds are they will fail. Then a number of the 80 who voted to restrict debate will vote against FISA so they can say they were against the bill. However this was the real vote, and the rest is almost certainly nothing but kabuki for the rubes.

Obama and McCain were both absent, as was Clinton. Unimpressive, but unsurprising, though I suppose I’m disappointed by Clinton (Obama has made it clear he didn’t intend to try and stop the bill.) Clinton and Obama will claim there was no point since it wasn’t close. But, with their leadership, it might well have gone the other way.

The folks who actually voted for the Bill of Rights are listed below. Remember, after the debate there’ll be a larger number of people who vote against this bill, but this was the real vote, and those Senators are just playing the rubes.

Welsh is absolutely correct; this issue is over. Harry will allow some grand standing and flailing of arms to try to offer some cover but it is done.

Check out his post and wade through the sewage of commentary. You’ll get everything from 9-11 Truthers to FEMA concentration camps, but sprinkled in there you’ll also find the truly broken hearted:

Mr Obama: I have been a strong supporter of you campaign and really thought you could be the one to initiate change and to turn back all the disastrous and illegal initiatives initiated by Bush and our compliant congress. This [is] particularly the case because of your constitutional law background.

Needless to say, your position on the pending FISA bill was a extreme disappointment for me and many Americans. For me it was also your test, and you failed.

It in my mind, your decision represents the triangulation, capitulation and business as usual that has typified the behavior of the democratic majority in both chambers as our country descends slowly into fascism. Chris Dodd’s speech in the Senate today is the speech I wish you had made. I hope you have a chance to listen to it.

I really thought you were our best hope. I think that no more, and I am terribly disappointed in you. Your failure to step up sends a strong signal on this issue shows that you are not the leader our country needs.

Man, I don’t have the heart to tell her about the Easter Bunny.

SCOTUSblog has the details.

Answering a 127-year old constitutional question, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to have a gun, at least in one’s home. The Court, splitting 5-4, struck down a District of Columbia ban on handgun possession. Although times have changed since 1791, Justice Antonin Scalia said for the majority, “it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.”

Jonn, if you’ve became a little rusty, come on down to the ranch.

This is not how to initiate an ambush that was remotely thought out.

US and Afghan forces fought a major battle with the Taliban and “inflicted heavy casualties” on the force just miles from the Pakistani border on June 20, Combined Joint Task Force – 101 reported.

More than 55 Taliban fighters, including three senior leaders, were reported killed, 25 were wounded and three were captured by a combined air and ground counterattack after a Taliban force ambushed a patrol in Paktika province. “Patrols in the ambush area continue to report additional enemy casualties,” the US military reported.

A hushed memory becomes a soul-searing shout:

“Come here Ranger! Take a knee. This is not how to execute a frigging ambush! In fact, allowing you to graduate would impair this nation’s defense posture by 30%.”

“How in the hell do you trigger an ambush and lose half of a company and not kill one single OPFOR? Are you playing with me or just trying to get into the RTB record book as the stupidest PL ever?”

“Now go find a tree and get yourself “kuwala”-fied. You’re fired PL! Where’s the APL?”

Humor aside, there is a lesson in this.

This is what happens when you kill the enemy’s effective leadership. They send out the amateurs.

Combat is serious business and better left to the professionals; amateurs tend to get themselves and a whole bunch of comrades killed.

This is also a sign of an armed force on its heels. You can not sustain a fighting force in the field led by such amazing incompetence.

A note to the lads. In a situation like this, don’t worry about capturing the leaders and trying to fight their new habeus corpus rights; just kill them. Anybody this stupid probably knows nothing; just rid them from the gene pool.

Two days ago, I wrote about the position Obama had managed to pander himself into. The MoveOn crowd demanded that he vow to filibuster the latest version of the FISA Bill. This is what I wrote then:

Last fall he vowed to not only not support FISA reform that includes any kind of immunity; he made the MoveOn crowd swoon by promising to go after the telecoms and administration legally.

So to answer the question of whether or not he’s planning to filibuster the bill; no frigging way.

He may be the Messiah to the far left base but he is JV in the Senate.

According to the Washington Post today, I was 100% correct:

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) today announced his support for a sweeping intelligence surveillance law that has been heavily denounced by the liberal activists who have fueled the financial engines of his presidential campaign.

In his most substantive break with the Democratic Party’s base since becoming the presumptive nominee, Obama declared he will support the bill when it comes to a Senate vote, likely next week, despite misgivings about legal provisions for telecommunications corporations that cooperated with the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance program of suspected terrorists.

In so doing, Obama sought to walk the fine political line between GOP accusations that he is weak on foreign policy — Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) called passing the legislation a “vital national security matter” — and alienating his base.

Back in January his position was loudly applauded by the far lefties. Here is a sample comment from Firedog Lake:

He also wants Guantanamo closed yesterday, the signing statements to end and the “Unitary Executive” mindset dumped. He will advocate to end these illegal wiretaps, and make it clear to the American public that we don’t need to sacrifice our freedoms to be safe.

Our Constitution is in good hands with a President Obama. His knowledge and commitment to the Constitution was my primary reason for supporting him. If you have a President who not only “gets it” but is a expert on the Constitution—so many of the BushCo wrongs will be righted the day that person takes office.

Very, very pleased to hear this and I look forward to more stellar, patriotic decisions like this from Obama.

Of course that was when there was still a primary to be won and he had to stay left of Hillary Clinton. And the childish clowns on the far left swooned over every socialist position the Messiah announced.

That sentiment changed dramatically today. Again at Firedog Lake, Jane Hamsher writes:

That’s what now passes for oversight in our Government — the Executive branch investigates its own allegations of criminality. Whatever else is true, there’s just no getting around the fact that Obama — when seeking the nomination — vowed to support a filibuster of any bill that contains telecom immunity, and his failure to do that here will be a patent breach of that commitment. There’s still time for him to adhere to that promise.

Hamsher’s post is piling up comments like crazy; including”

Very disappointed in Obama. I guess he is primarily a gifted rhetoritician, his actual politics are closer to the DLC, I bet if he was in the senate in 02? he would have voted for AUMF.
No, I won’t vote for Nader, but my enthusiasim is diminished.

Hiding out until this deal, which he had to have approved, is done.
Coward.
If you’re going to kill something at least have the courage to own up to the deed.

This is a real moment of truth for Obama.
He thinks he’s seen bitterness… well, if he blows us off, he will see bitter in spades!
What’s it going to be, Barack!

Just read mcjoan @ http://dailykos.com/ “…Pelosi is saying that maybe the Senate should take a little more time than she allowed in the House….”
Fucking idiot!!!!!!!!!!

My, my, my, I think the kids are quite upset.

The Iraqis are taking over Anbar Province within 10 days!

BAGHDAD (AFP) — The US military is to hand over security control of the former Sunni insurgent bastion of Anbar province to Iraqi forces in the next 10 days, a US military spokesman announced on Monday.

“The handover of Anbar is expected to take place in the next 10 days,” Lieutenant David Russell told AFP, declining to provide an exact date.

Anbar would be the tenth of Iraq’s 18 provinces to be handed back to Iraqi forces by the US-led coalition amid a push to transfer security control of the entire country back to Baghdad.

This could be the biggest news from Iraq since the attack on the terror attack on the al-Askari Mosque but I doubt you will see it on the news tonight.

Now, contrast that with this story from one year ago this week:

by Martin Sieff
UPI Senior News Analyst
Washington (UPI) June 20, 2007

These grim developments unfortunately confirm a series of predictions we made when in these columns after the “surge” strategy was unveiled with much optimism and fanfare five months ago. On Jan. 19, we predicted of the “surge” strategy, “Its success seems unlikely.”

Even then, as we noted, there were solid reasons to fear that the “surge” strategy was too little, too late and that it ignored core realities of the strategic dilemmas in Iraq. We noted that the surge had been much hyped, but that it remained exceptionally underpowered.

In Mr. Sieff’s defense, his opinion at the time was being parroted by every network and major newspaper. Harry Reid’s dream of a “lost war” seemed possible. But while Reid, Pelosi, Murtha and the other surrender monkeys were gleefully commenting on another “grim milestone”, something was happening on the ground and it was working. Facts are stubborn things.

I am 100% sure that Mr. Sieff will pen an article as fast as humanly possible hailing the success and thanking God that his “fears” were unfounded.

Chirp, chirp (crickets).

He is not alone. The media trend line about stories in Iraq directly correlate to the numbers of dead US servicemen and women. This is sad but even the New York Times admits it:

According to data compiled by Andrew Tyndall, a television consultant who monitors the three network evening newscasts, coverage of Iraq has been “massively scaled back this year.” Almost halfway into 2008, the three newscasts have shown 181 weekday minutes of Iraq coverage, compared with 1,157 minutes for all of 2007. The “CBS Evening News” has devoted the fewest minutes to Iraq, 51, versus 55 minutes on ABC’s “World News” and 74 minutes on “NBC Nightly News.” (The average evening newscast is 22 minutes long.)

CBS News no longer stations a single full-time correspondent in Iraq, where some 150,000 United States troops are deployed.

This is not because nothing is happening in Iraq; believe me, plenty is happening. This is because their prediction (if not their hope) is not materializing. It’s almost as if they have a collective “if we ignore it, it will go away” mentality.

To use a sports analogy, here’s a headline from today:
Teixeira’s 3 HRs power Braves past Mariners

Notice that it didn’t but could have easily read:
Seattle Pitching Sucks, Again

Now if the second headline were used in a Seattle paper by a local reporter lamenting the effectiveness of the hometown teams pitching, it would be perfectly understandable.

The mainstream media has chosen to ignore any progress in Iraq but how far are we away from this headline:

Sunni Collaborators Undermine Gallant Insurgent Struggle

Hot Air has a good recap of how an amateur paints himself into a corner. At the end of the line of constant pandering is always a train wreck. It is actually kind of comical.

So let’s recap Obama’s positions on this issue:

He opposed the FISA reform bill when it included non-supervised immunity for the telecoms.

He pledged to filibuster any bill that contained retroactive immunity.

When the bill passed the Senate in February with non-supervised immunity, he was glad to stand with Russ Feingold, Chris Dodd, and the “grassroots movement of Americans” opposed to it.

After spending the next three months avoiding the subject, he declares support for the House compromise bill that contains court-supervised retroactive immunity.

But then he says he wants to strip out the immunity in the bill he supports, which would force everyone to start over again from scratch.

And he also stops far short of the filibuster pledge he made when he needed to keep Dodd from stealing his support last fall.

So which is it? Does Obama support this FISA reform bill or not? Will he try filibustering a bill that won a large majority in the House and which is even more of a compromise than the bill that won 68 votes in the Senate in February? Will Obama try to do yet another flip-flop and still convince people that he has any principles at all?

Last fall he vowed to not only not support FISA reform that includes any kind of immunity; he made the MoveOn crowd swoon by promising to go after the telecoms and administration legally.

So to answer the question of whether or not he’s planning to filibuster the bill; no frigging way.

He may be the Messiah to the far left base but he is JV in the Senate.

Harry may throw him a bone and let him make a non-sense speech but he will quickly be shooed away for the adults to vote.

What will the lefties at MoveOn have to say? Will they suddenly realize what an empty suit they have pushed on the electorate? Or will they just get in line like mindless lemmings?