Meanwhile, Barack Obama is complaining that his “friends on the left” just don’t understand him — he’s not moving to the center, he is “no doubt” a progressive, just one who now supports the scandalous FISA “compromise” and Antonin Scalia’s views on gun rights and the death penalty, no longer plans to accept public campaign funding, and wants to make sure women aren’t feigning mental distress to get a “partial-birth” abortion (the right’s despicable term of choice; the correct phrase is either late-term or third-trimester abortion).
I actually have some sympathy for Obama. He was never the great progressive savior that his fans either thought he was, or peddled to their readers. While Arianna Huffington and Markos Moulitsas and Tom Hayden were hyping him as the progressive alternative to Hillary Clinton, Obama was getting away with backing a healthcare bill less progressive than Clinton’s, adopting GOP talking points on the Social Security “crisis” and double-talking on NAFTA. So why shouldn’t he think his “friends on the left” will put up with his abandoning other progressive causes?
So how exactly is she wrong? And how could these morons not see this tsunami of political unreliability from such an inexperienced and shallow character looming over them the whole primary season? And even if that assessment is not dead on, how could it be otherwise electorally?
The Stiftung would be reassured if the Crowned One is simply prosecuting the old Left in the Primaries, Center for the General. So far his wobbling execution is not encouraging. Yet we will grant the Crowned One a temporary pass; he’s a n00b as the Kool Kidz say on Xbox Live after another tea_______. Joan Walsh et al.? PWNED !
Regarding the FISA bill itself, our position and background with FISA is put forth at length over at STSOZ 1.0. We do think that calling Greenwald a hero for discovering FISA in 2005 is yet another example of the so profoundly pathetic, ignorant, intellectually vacant and . . . well, so emblematic of the chattering class in ‘America’ today. Same with Matthew Yglesias’s petulant woulda coulda shoulda — although his promising — astounding, actually — acuity needs to be and will be honed over more time.
People should feel sympathetic one supposes for dupes. But not today.
Have some peanuts.
Anon says
Cibil rights and liberties have never been home run hitters in campaigns. Unfortunate.
Just turned on Charlie Rose from last night – he has that tool Peter Baker and Mark Halperin on, If McCain wins it will be because of people like that.
Dr Leo Strauss says
McCain trembles on FISA stance. Not.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080827-get-fisa-right-turns-crowdsourced-guns-on-mccain.html
DrLeoStrauss says
Bowman’s exercise seems overly reductive. He is so determined to make his narrow point that a modern hero doesn’t exist he defines away almost any potential exemplar unless it embodies Leave It To Beaver naivete from the 1950s (or Green Berets as perhaps the last).
I guess he missed Flight 93, for example. And so on.
Yes, Bowman is surely disappointed that Iraq and Iran didn’t arrest “The End of Victory Culture in America” by Tom Engelhard.
Anon says
Are we wrong to think the real (in part) reason Bowman types reveled for war with Iraq (and Iran) was to change this?:
http://www.american.com/archive/2008/july-august-magazine-contents/hollywood2019s-hero-deficit
A Random Quote says
“Lest we forget, the French are magnificent in their way. To appreciate them, it helps to like cats, as they have many feline tendencies: They are elegant, intelligent, stylish, self-absorbed, able to rationalize almost anything and unless directly threatened, unflappable …
Their foibles, as well as their style, savoir faire, culture and sense of luxury, make the French one of the world’s few distinctive, eminent and seriously interesting nationalities.”
~Conrad Black
7-04-08
(Projecting himself onto France, from Coleman
Florida)
Comment says
re Pat & New Camelot – We think Pat will take a resigned approach — He will take on a Tennyson tone and wax nostalgic about what once so recently- He will forget that the much of what he rails against in Pop Culture was born under the Reagan epocj – He will itemize lists of things that have become normal (like some dubious characters Obama will invite to the WH) and stress how this would never happened under Ike and Mammie. Yeah – Michelle will suddenly have to compete with Mammie (rather than Nancy or Betty). There will be references to HRC’s populist incarnation
Obviously some new unforseen event will occur – Can you imagine if 9-11 happened under Clinton? Just imagine how different the reaction would have been?
Hopefully, we will not have to worry about that. Afterall, Condi is proud we took out Saddam. WTF?
Comment says
re: Uncle Pat – His absurdly over simplistic and tendentious summation of ww2:
” .. On March 31, 1939, Britain gave a blank check to Poland in its dispute with Germany over Danzig, a town of 350,000 Germans. Should war come, Britain would fight on Poland’s side.
Poland refused to negotiate, Adolf Hitler attacked, and Britain declared war….”
Germany comes out pretty well (Hey, why didn’t Poland negotiate?) in his re-telling. But does Pat really think this is so? Or his he just being provocative? Maybe a little of both?
Comment says
Well we agreed to disagree about Barack – but we do agree that he is cut slack in some areas, but there is compensation via false attacks in other areas – We very much doubt that Obama could get away with making up a fake story about walking around a fale path in Kennebunkport like Bush did about a pretend planted-seed from a Rev Graham. Instead, he gets attacked for indulging an old Reverand, who he obviously differs from in so many ways. No one expected Bush to answer for Rev Graham’s nasty rants on the Nixon tapes – No one gives a **** that McCain left the Episcopal Church (the faith of his fathers). No one care because they discount all serious thought from McCain – They also edit his transcripst and they ostracise reporters who tell the truth about St. John’s impolitic rants.
So we agree that Barack is cut slack on experience, but if he drooled and bumbled like Dubya did all thru 2000, he’d be regarded as non entity.
Anon says
Speaking of Ygs – He is sympathetic on bloggingheads when up against a war blogger with a chip on his shoulder:
http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/12579?in=00:09:37&out=00:15:31.7
DrLeoStrauss says
We agree the Crowned One easily escapes from issues that would be devastating to any other politician. A major difference, I think, is that you attribute it to his own skill.
He still likely will win by all accounts. The country will endure, somehow, in some shape or another. It always has.
Pat’s publisher doubtlessly is also sending him encouraging emails asking for more Spenglarian jeremiads in time for the first two years of the New Camelot. By then, presumably, the publisher will have groomed a successor for the avuncular uncle.
Comment says
If McCain wants a chance – he may have to clean house all at once – He has to lose the lobbyists – At least make them invisible. He should run as a big spending, socially tolerant, foreign policy hawk. If he keeps giving people the impression that he has ‘issues’ with war and that his war plans re Iraq have a personal psychological aspect, then he will lose big. Same with his jokes about killing Iranians.
But if he can convey his inner McCain – Someone who really is different than Gee Dubs and is more like TR domestically (without the period racism and chauvinism) and less like TR on Foreign P.
Comment says
” … wobbling execution …” Respectfully, we disagree – Everything is relative – For all of Obama’s mistakes, he’s a virtuoso compared to most all other politicians. It’s just amazing how he far he has gotten and how he just brushed aways dozens of trivia and mini scandals that would have sunk nearly all. Not only did he defeat a Clinton (even with less votes) – but he has a pretty good chance of defeating a true war hero – the experienced McCain.
McCain (IMO) blew an opportunity for some nuanced push-back by saying Graham was taken out of context – He could have spun Grahams’s comments by highlighting the some of the latter parts and suggesting Graham REALLY meant that liberals were whining. It probably would have failed (because that’s not what Graham said), but McCain can’t keep shedding his top aides.
Hannity tried to spin Jesse-gate against Obama last night and he failed. We were surprised to hear the actual story this morning and it was totally the opposite of what we expected from hearing Hannity on TV in the backround.