I'd gladly beat your ass to a syrupy pulp to keep my kids from going to the gulag. Just for example.

Sorry, though, to those of us who know people who spent time in actual gulags, your hyperbole just mocks your position. It's kinda of a catchy retort, slippery slopes and all that. Ignore the death and destruction there is a slippery slope over here!. Look!

Posted at July 3, 2008 1:37 PM in response to A Time-line Of Obama's Statements On FISA

If memory serves me correctly, "time-lines" on this site have almost exclusively been used to describe major corruption scandals, almost always based on the bad behavior of this administration or it's cronies. I'm thinking about Abramoff time-lines, atty gen scandal time-lines.

Does anyone have a different recollection?

Posted at July 3, 2008 1:29 PM in response to A Time-line Of Obama's Statements On FISA

How many people died in Iraq?

How many people died because of being unable to sue ATT?

Posted at July 3, 2008 1:11 PM in response to A Time-line Of Obama's Statements On FISA

I guess someone has to explain to the Post what the word "average" means.

Some people do better than average, some do worse.

I suppose it most also come as a surprise to the Post but a big part of financial institutions jobs are to assess what risks are bigger or smaller and adjust their policies accordingly. Maybe some do a lousy job, but basically that is what they do. Maybe everyone at the Post rents.

Maybe next they can run a story about how his professors at Harvard Law School gave him better than the average grades. Why would they do this? What kind of special treatment was he getting... wink wink nod nod. Apparently, McCain never had this problem, either.

Posted at July 2, 2008 2:56 PM in response to Post Getting Pummeled On Obama Home Loan Story

Does John McCain own any of those properties at all or are they all in Cindy's name? On paper he has very few assets. In real life he is either fabulously wealthy or the just the lucky recipient of his young wife's continued generosity.

Are there some states where the legal fiction of that arrangement is overridden. Is that what community property is about (or do they have a pre-nuptual agreement that obviates that)

Posted at July 2, 2008 2:45 PM in response to Post Getting Pummeled On Obama Home Loan Story

There are many programs that are currently under the purview of the Bush administration that Obama intends to continue--like the Federal Government for one- but that does not mean he intends to pursue the same idiotic, ineffective and destructive priorities as Bush has. How hard is that to figure out? We could just as easily be talking about the EPA or NASA, or the Department of Education or whatever.

Almost the entire point here is to re-program the types of services supported leveraging the vast social service delivery system that already exists. That he will use it to make a positive difference in people's lives in ways that are wholly consistent with a liberal view of social justice is written into to his entire life story. Question: Mr Obama, why did you stay in that church for 20 years? Answer: Because this is community that teaches first and foremost that our faith commands us to help those who are in need and has backed up that belief with action to the great benefit of our community. (one imagines the same question never asked of McCain, why do admire Joel Osteen so much?).

The other point that is neglected here is that in changing the priorities of federal support for social services through faith based organizations, Obama intends to change the view that to be religious means to be socially conservative--a message that has apparently been internalized by way too many democrats. Instead he intends to change the frame entirely: faith requires you devote yourself to helping your fellow man and women, no one more so than those most in need. What he is trying to do here is exactly the opposite of pandering to the right. He is trying to turn the faith community into an instrument of social justice. To resurrect, if you will, the idea that liberal and progressive values flow naturally and directly from every and all faiths. Notice how that also feeds the frame of focusing on those things that unite us not divide us. (bush, prompted by Rove had the opposite intent)

Many on the right will resist because to them religion is primarily about fetuses, gays and contraception. I predict they will lose.

Posted at July 2, 2008 2:36 PM in response to Whoa! Hidden Message in Obama's Faith Based Initiatives Message.

Where does it say he is pushing aside anyone?

Posted at July 1, 2008 7:16 PM in response to Fake Left, Cut Right

Wikipedia can be your friend too, if you let it.

McCain was commanding officer of the the Replacement Air Group in Jacksonville, Fla., 1976-1977 a training squadron which by various accounts was the Navy's largest for whatever that is worth. (not sure of the exact dates, in 1977 he became the Navy's liaison to the US Senate)

Posted at July 1, 2008 7:12 PM in response to Fake Left, Cut Right

I think you've nailed it. And Republicans have this method down to a science.

Whether he succeeds or not, I think Obama is at least trying to change the level of discourse.

Posted at July 1, 2008 2:36 PM in response to Clark Ridiculed McCain and the Left Doesn't Get It: What's Up With That?

Well McCain says it is about honor, which is a kind of faith. I am not sure the religiously faithful make that equivalence, though.

Posted at July 1, 2008 2:30 PM in response to Clark Ridiculed McCain and the Left Doesn't Get It: What's Up With That?