NEON GODS

"...legitimate reasons for anger at Obama..."

As Glenn Greenwald reported yesterday, Obama supporters who are angry that he has abandoned his opposition to the FISA bill (and it's amnesty for the telecoms), have set up a special group on Obama's website asking him to change his mind. and oppose the bill.  This group has signed up over 15,000 Obama supporters in just a few short days, with about 3,000 more joining each day.

Andy Borowitz, responded by writing a scathingly satirical post about this on Huffington Post, where he accuses the left of trying to sabatoge Barack's election chances: Liberal Bloggers Accuse Obama of Trying to Win Elections.

"Increasingly, Barack Obama's message is becoming more accessible, appealing, and yes, potentially successful," [wrote Tracy Klugian on LoseOn.org]. "Any Democrat who voted for Dukakis, Mondale or Kerry should regard this as a betrayal."

Glenn didn't see any humor in this and linked to an excellent response from a right-leaning blogger, Daniel Larison, who wrote:

[Borowitz's post] is pretty good satire as far as it goes, but it gives the impression that the backlash against Obama on the left is irrational and evidence of an insistence on ideological or some other sort of purity over political pragmatism.  Besides making a joke out of the legitimate reasons for anger at Obama from his own supporters over the FISA legislation, it makes it seem as if principled protests from the left are somehow the cause of Democratic defeat, ...

Think about it from their perspective: they see a tremendous opportunity in an overwhelmingly pro-Democratic year to win an election that also could provide something like a mandate for a progressive agenda, and in the interests of winning they have swallowed their objections to Obama’s relatively less progressive platform (as compared to Edwards...) only to be betrayed on an issue as fundamental and central as constitutional liberties and derided in the process as part of the problem with our political system.  “Be practical,” someone says, “we’re trying to win an election.”  To which they might reasonably reply, ”To what end, if our candidate caves in on major issues?”

Many conservatives like to argue that when they give the Republican nominee grief about his pandering, changed positions or (as they see them) bad positions they are standing up for important principles.  When people on the left engage in the same behaviour, it’s supposed to be crazy, loserish fratricide.

It seems to me that there have to be some things that are not negotiable and things that should not be compromised for electoral expediency.  You might think constitutional protections would be among those things, and that this would not be the concern of left-liberals alone.  Apparently, you would be wrong.

This is exactly what is happening, and it's nice to find a conservative who understands it.

Unfortunately, not all conservatives get it. In the post's first comment we read:

...I have always had problems with the notion of hanging these FISA violations of law on the Telecoms. I work in private industry, in construction, and if the government came to me and insisted that I build something that was vital for national security but violated a few laws, and was assured that this wouldn’t be a problem, and that if I did this I would be rewarded, and if I didn’t that I wouldn’t get many government contracts again, what exactly should I be expected to do?

First of all, the FISA courts were set up precisely to handle these kind of requests.  If legitimate, all they had to do was run the request by the FISA court.  Given the fact that the FISA court approves 99.99% of those requests, it doesn't seem that the bar is set very high for getting approvel.  The fact that the Bush administration didn't think they could get FISA approval for what they wanted to do should frighten every American. Who the fuck were they wiretapping?  I assume the targets were highly illegal, like anti-war Democratic politicians or leaders of the anti-war movement in the U.S.  But even putting that aside for a moment, does anyone else find the above comment disgusting?  Evidently breaking the law to insure getting future governmnet contracts is something the writer believes is a no-brainer.

No doubt the writer would describe himself as a patriot, too...

--Trakker

Glenn Nails it Again

Drat!

Every time I sit down to write a post full of deep thoughts and insights I check Glenn Greenwald's blog and find a) he beat me to it, and b) he wrote it better than I ever could. So let me direct you to Greenwald's post "that contains what I was about to write and does it better!"  He even quotes Shakespeare...

--Trakker the Humbled

House Democrats: Asses Kicked Again by Worst President Ever.

Today, Barack Obama came out in support of the "compromise" FISA Bill that also grants the major telecoms amnesty from lawsuits, and will insure the American people will never know whose phones were tapped and why.

After months of negotiation, the House today passed a compromise that, while far from perfect, is a marked improvement over last year's Protect America Act.

[...]

Under this compromise legislation, an important tool in the fight against terrorism will continue, but the President's illegal program of warrantless surveillance will be over. It restores FISA and existing criminal wiretap statutes as the exclusive means to conduct surveillance – making it clear that the President cannot circumvent the law and disregard the civil liberties of the American people. It also firmly re-establishes basic judicial oversight over all domestic surveillance in the future.  It does, however, grant retroactive immunity, and I will work in the Senate to remove this provision so that we can seek full accountability for past offenses.

I will take him at his word, that he will work in the Senate to remove this provision.  But I'm skeptical.  I will wait to see how hard he works to get this removed.  If he is not successful, and if the bill passes and the telecoms walk away with their secrets intact, then I will re-evaluate my support for Barack.

As far as the Democratic party goes, this is probably the final straw for me, unless I am mistaken about what this bill is all about.  I am an American first and foremost.  I am a liberal.  I am registered as a Democrat because in the past they pretended to embrace many of the same values I do, but over the past few years it has become increasingly obvious that the Democrats really just want to be left alone to enjoy their prestige, their power, and the money their new corporate friends are pouring into their campaign coffers.

How bad are the Democrats? According to Eric Lichtblau in the NY Times:

The proposal — particularly the immunity provision — represents a major victory for the White House after months of dispute. “I think the White House got a better deal than they even they had hoped to get,” said Senator Christopher Bond, the Missouri Republican who led the negotiations.

The Democrats gave Bush more than he expected to get.  More!  No wonder the corporations are salivating over the thought of the Dems winning big this fall!

--Trakker

And be sure to click your heels and salute before you do it...

Sen. Kit Bonds (R-MO), describing why amnesty for the telecoms was so damn important:

"I'm not here to say that the government is always right, but when the government tells you to do something, I'm sure you would all agree that I think you all recognize that is something you need to do..."

This is about the most pathetic, yet telling, quote I've heard from an elected official in a long, long time.

--Trakker

Obama Reveals Whose Side He's Really On (and it's not our side)

Glenn Greenwald has some interesting news today: Barack Obama has just cut an ad supporting blue dog Democrat, John Barrow.  Barrow is one of the Democrats in the House who is pushing for expanding the FISA bill and granting amnesty for the telecoms. He is being challenged in next month's primary by Democrat Regina Thomas, who opposes amnesty.  Yet Obama is explicitly supporting Barrow, one of the biggest Bush backers among the Democrats in the House!

Glenn writes:

This [secret, behind the scenes maneuvering] is everything Obama claims so vehemently to oppose, claims he wants to end. And yet the Congress under the control of his party is about to enact a radical bill to legalize vast new warrantless eavesdropping powers and immunize telecoms who broke our country's laws for years. And not only is Obama doing nothing about any of that, but far more, he's actively intervening in a Democratic primary to help one of the worst enablers of all of this stay in power, while helping to defeat an insurgent, community-based challenger.

Let's face, the Democratic leadership would not be pushing this amnesty bill without Obama's explicit permission, so there's no way to gloss this over: Obama is not on our side.

More importantly, its becoming more and more obvious that the telecom lawsuits must have the potential to reveal some very damaging information, damaging to the Democrats and the Republicans. This amnesty bill is a bill that won't die.  They've tried to hide it in a FISA revision bill that everyone insists MUST be passed or we'll be attacked again and this time it might be your city!  I suspect it's the politicians who are pushing this as much as the telecoms.  As Digby wrote Tuesday,

As I have written many times, I don't understand exactly why these people are so adamant about this issue and so unwilling to explain why. It makes it all the more suspicious. It isn't just about money. The Telecoms can afford litigation and the congress could have come up with some sort of limited liability scheme if that's what they were worried about. There's something more to this...

If it isn't the money, what is it?  It must be terribly damaging or embarrassing and that makes it all the more important that the American people know what's in those wiretaps and who were tapped, and why.  That's why I support Strange Bedfellows, a fund that will be used to fight amnesty and punish those politicians who are trying to cover this up.  If you want to contribute to this, you can do so here.

--Trakker