I used to be a Democrat, until they caved in last year on FISA. Now it's even worse.
Now Obama is joining the ranks of the Vichy Dems.
The presidential oath is "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
Obama has shown he will NOT "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
That is a dealbreaker for me. I will not vote for Obama (he will carry Maryland anyway). He will not become president with my consent.
Voting straight Democratic and hoping for the best? How very sad that you have chosen the supposedly "lesser of two evils". I am voting Nader. I would vote for George Bush I and II before I'd vote for that fraud Obama. I have been a Democrat for more years than I care to remember, but no more. Obama was "selected", not elected, and I am totally disgusted by the fraudulent way his "nomination" was handled by Howard, Donna, Nancy,and Harry. Lets stop the pretense that those bitter White voters who are clinging to their guns and religion are going to "see the light", and now want a one-term Senator, who is an inexperienced, racist, sexist, black man, with extremely questionable business associates as President of the USA. Personally, I would prefer a candidate who did not have as his mentor and "spiritual advisor" the minister who preached "God Damn America". Guess I'm just funny that way.
Posted by BARB at July 9, 2008 08:14 AMI'll be a Democrat again when the party condescends to reform its anti-democratic primary system. Until then they will receive no more donations and no more automatic support for every candidate. After upteen years of slavish party devotion, I'm giving myself a time out.
The manner in which the Rules and Bylaws Committee shifted votes around like so many chess pieces was the final straw.
I can assure you that Ralph Nader will give us nothing. Worse than nothing--look around you, what has he given us so far?
Judge me if you wish. I can only do what I can do.
Posted by paradox at July 9, 2008 08:26 AMI'll still vote Dem, half heartedly, and donate locally. Charlie Brown came out strongly against the FISA sellout and will have out support.
It would have been so easy for the powers that be to fight this and the only reason I can figure that they didn't was because they see some benefit to themselves.
The eyes and ears in the sky aren't watching and listening to terrorists. They are watching and listening to the Democratic candidates.
What fools they are. I suppose they want the opportunity to have a little fun down the road themselves if they can manage to get elected.
Hey no problem guys. You can join P.U.M.A. (Darragh Murphy's Group) individuals who are Republicans posing as DEMS. LOL. This is rich. I have never fully agreed with every Dem stance on so many issues they are too numberious to count, yet I am a DEM and have voted for the past 30 years. My main issue now is that fucking WAR.
Now for you Republican POSERS = EAT SHIT AND DIE!
Posted by angryman at July 9, 2008 09:21 AMThe eyes and ears in the sky aren't watching and listening to terrorists.
Why didn't the republi-con senaturds vote to protect our safety with a 30-day extension of PAA? Bastards!
I can feel the hordes of 'turrists' getting ready to call us on the phone and taunt us mightily with claims that our mothers were donkeys. God! They might even send us emails extolling the virtues of buying Viagra from Mexican pharmacies! Oh, the humanity!!
I need to find some local republi-con and cower in a corner with him. I know, I'll look for a V-10 Dodge Ram with a gun in the back window that's being pushed to a gas station. Unlimited gasoline consumption and a gun in the window are the only guaranteed constitutional "By gawd, in the Bill-of-Rights" freedoms those asswipes could get their little minds around.
Posted by phidipides at July 9, 2008 09:56 AMGood advice not to surrender. We'll keep pushing. If people could do it when only white men could vote, we can do it now.
Posted by eRobin at July 9, 2008 10:29 AMWell Paradox, the last of the three amendments to FISA failed. After the break to attend a Senator Helms remembrance, they'll vote this afternoon for final passage. Your parties new leader voting for the reformed FISA with immunity for the telecoms. Obama, with Constitutional law experience, will vote for FISA. One has to wonder if his experience is all that? Gun control, death penalty for child rapist, his ideas of servitude to get student loans. One just has to wonder...
And you'll just continue to enable the likes of him, encourage others to enable, blindly follow the Democratic crowd, lockstep and all.
Hurray, Senator Durbin is now coming out for more offshore drilling...
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A top U.S. Democratic senator said in a newspaper interview published Wednesday that he would consider supporting opening up new areas for offshore oil and gas drilling.
Drill here, Drill now, Pay less!
PUMA
Posted by peter at July 9, 2008 10:45 AMpants pissing peter should go back to licking his master's boots
Posted by Gay Veteran at July 9, 2008 11:01 AMThe other day, I was reading over at Raw Story the account of the $100 million that Congress has allocated to the two political parties for security at their conventions, and about stories being circulated of new "science fiction weapons" that Denver and Minneapolis might be tempted to use against hapless protesters, foreshadowing an American police state. It is becoming a deplorable American tradition to humiliate, cage, severely injure and sometimes kill political protesters on our streets.
Just who is the enemy now in the hurly-burly of American politics? As one commenter observed, "The candidates are the science fiction."
Can Americans be fearmongered to the point where they welcome the totalitarian hand? Shall our children receive institutions which are worse than those we inherited? Is the America we are willing to settle for, a nation that will turn to paramilitary death squads and mercenary cadres?--or accept the shell game for oil that covers up genocide? Wouldn't we feel contempt for a society where the walls have ears?--where we can imagine the whole planet shrunk until it seems that the cries of the tortured are coming from the next room?
"It's called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it," said George Carlin.
For close to 8 years we haven't really been mezmerized with the oratory of a Pericles, who has used artistic phrases to convince us that we shouldn't give up our Empire, "which some say we ought not to have sought, or desire at all."
No, in our case, the country was fed the most stupid, vapid, degenerate rhetoric ever heard on these shores. And the object was war and mind control; and these are indeed the dark days of this struggle.
"Problems cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them," said Einstein. And it's clear that we need some kind of renewal and revelation in our thinking process. We don't need hero worship or the idolatry of the Leader; we don't need that infantilism that is the product of corporate media; and we don't need self-indulgent self-pity.
I suspect that we need to find a central, still point, in our national character, the self respect that will make it possible to stand before the world on our own merits, without the resort to violence to steal from weaker countries and exploit the poor.
Posted by Copeland at July 9, 2008 11:06 AMDear Paradox,
Voting "D", just because....enables the Party to continue its long slide into irrelevancy. What has masked itself as Democratic leadership post-Reagan, has been execrable. Its inchoate principals, lack of Congressional leadership, (along with that of the DNC), has raised spinelessness to an art form, and whining into a symphonic cacophony. Democrats have become the punching-bag of the Republican Party, having forgotten, or worse yet, eschewing first principals for the sake of self-perpetuation.
In voting "D", just because....makes you an enabler to the husk of what used to be the Democratic Party. However repugnant - I urge you, to sit this one out, with the hope that in losing the Presidency, the Party will be forced to realize who we once were, and might be again. This election is not about McCain vs. Obama - it is about whether the Democratic Party deserves to survive.
Posted by Bruce Dean at July 9, 2008 11:32 AMOBAMA VOTES YES FOR FISA.
Obama is simply not willing to stand up for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Forget working for him of contributing to his campaign. Look up the vote and help those who voted against FISA. They are the kernal of force by which the pendulum must swing to limite the surveillence state.
OBAMA is one of THEM (Those who are against US)
"This election is not about McCain vs. Obama - it is about whether the Democratic Party deserves to survive.
The Democratic party has guaranteed its survival by merging with the Republican Party. It's all one party now, the Authoritarian Surveillence Supporters party.
Posted by Nobody at July 9, 2008 12:07 PMAll this has happened before, and all of it will happen again.
At the end of the day I will most likely vote Democrat because the two parties make it that way.
Posted by idiosynchronic at July 9, 2008 12:21 PMWell its done...69 to 28 the FISA reform bill passes.. Kos has the votes and who voted for it.
Posted by peter at July 9, 2008 12:25 PMWell its done...69 to 28 the FISA reform bill passes.. Kos has the votes and who voted for it.
McLame missing again!
Posted by Seven of Six at July 9, 2008 12:53 PMThe senators are scared of Bush and Cheney, or they are revoltingly complicit. Regardless of political affiliation, we are clearly disgraced as a nation by this vote.
Posted by Copeland at July 9, 2008 01:02 PMWell lets see...YOUR candidate for president voted for the FISA reform. The candidate who stands her ground...voted against it. You chose wisely, you too Seven. Now thanks in part to Senator Obama's voice being added to those Republicans, he gave permission to Democratic senators to vote their conscience and vote for FISA reform. Imagine that...a Constitutional scholar voted for FISA reform with immunities for Telecoms! Wouldn't it have been better for him to miss the vote?
Thank you Senator OBama for your leadersheep here. And we all see how your "judgement" is even when involving your children...so you now regret letting your children do that TV rag show yesterday. Where's CPS when you need them?
Posted by peter at July 9, 2008 01:10 PMMy State Senator... Senator McCain, didn't even vote.
The most absent of all Senators in the Senate! Hellu'va candidate!!
McCain is an authoritarian cipher, himself. What's your fucking point, peter? You chirpy sychophant!
Posted by Copeland at July 9, 2008 01:15 PMWith Senator Obama's leadership, why show up to vote. Obama sealed it, John needs to keep campaigning.
Posted by peter at July 9, 2008 01:18 PM...John needs to keep campaigning.
You're fucking right he does!
It still won't help him.
Start off on the Reich Foot with McCain.
"The eagle suffers little birds to sing."
--Titus Andronicus
Gallup had John Kerry up by 7 in 2004. Gallup has Barry Obama up by 2 on the same date. Kerry's lead helped him to a 3 million vote loss. And only 3 of the last 9 candidates leading in July have won. Yeah, John needs as much help as possible, but thanks to Barry Obama wanting to continue the Bush admins. FISA surveillance as well as faith based initiatives and Iraq war initiatives. He just might get the help.
Posted by peter at July 9, 2008 01:34 PMGuys don't get so emotional about Obama and McCain; you're wasting your time. Bush ain't going anywhere in November. Our dictator plans to spend a while in DC, okay?
Posted by Turnley at July 9, 2008 05:34 PMIt is just five (5) days between the Declaration of Independence and the loss of our civil liberties. God, what a short period of time. (7/4 to 7/9)
May the universal powers that be strike down the weak mortals that desecrated our Constitution and their oath to defend it. We cry. We weep.
Damn you all!
It's a good thing all the 20 year old dumbasses came out and voted for Barack instead of Hillary.
The Clintons would have cleaned McCain's clock in November. They probably will in 2012.
Posted by m12 at July 9, 2008 08:50 PM¨I am a Democratic Party member, I will vote the straight D in 2008 just as I’ve done all my life, not once have I voted for any Republican.¨
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How, exactly, does that make you any different for the retards who voted for Bush... TWICE?
Do not think... vote the party line!
If that represents the view of the majority of democrats then God help us.
Posted by bobbski at July 10, 2008 06:28 AMNESFLASH....
Obama is still the *presumptive* nominee.
There is still time for a course correction, the convention hasn't happened yet. We can still nominate Hillary.
Posted by Iris at July 10, 2008 09:55 AM