Your post tips me into thinking about the real terror I have of McCain-Palin actually winning. As you imply, that would be a world in which it would be impossible to get one's bearings and feel some sense of sanity.

Yet there's always sanity even in the most insane experiences. I try to understand how we are engaged in a hostile war of words with the Right and how we've made them crazier and emboldened them to try to take over completely.

Posted at September 4, 2008 3:13 PM in response to About Face!

Lovely, endearing...the stuff of admirable kinds of sentimentality.

Once wrote a piece about cheap sentimentality, how, while our means for triggering our longing for affectionate connection may be "cheap," the longing itself is profound. Billy, you've elevated us all.

Posted at August 8, 2008 6:49 PM in response to Sometimes You Just Have To Pick Sides

Des,
You responded only to caricatures of the dailykos post, caricatures you created. You seem so convinced of your negative view of Obama that you feel entitled to satirizing other people's view. You don't take seriously the dailykos quotes on their own terms. Surely, being the editor of the law review of the most prestigious school in the country ought to count for just a little respect, something beyond your peanut butter and jelly sandwich satirization. Moreover, the opinions of other law school professors regarding his temperament, his objectivity, and his judgment as an editor as a convener and discussion leader of academics, much less the prodigious amount of articles he edited and encouraged ought to count for more than you're giving him. What about the opinions of numerous politicians and politically interested folks, like Richardson, Gore, etc.? Are all of us with professional careers and high academic achievement idiots? Your blanket dismissals seems terribly cynical and nihilist, especially in light of the alternative.

Posted at July 31, 2008 10:18 AM in response to Not an Empty Suit: The Opinions On Obama of His Harvard Colleagues

David S.,
I appreciated your response to Genghis. He criticized your post without disrespecting you as a person. Hard to do.

I wish there was a better context or just more time to hash out stark differences of the sort you have with Genghis and many other folks. I deeply admire the approach of James Blight, the Brown U. prof. He gathers all of the relevant documents regarding any dispute and then methodically works through them in a large group setting that includes representative folks from various sides of a dispute. I often despair that neither I nor anyone else in any of the disputes here has a solid grasp of the relevant documents, much less a deep understanding of the issues.

But Genghis's post and your thoughtful response remind me that there's hope for working through out differences.

Posted at July 29, 2008 6:55 PM in response to Barack Edsel?

Racist for identifying Obama with Wright after Obama disavowed Wrights vitriol and then offed Wright after Wright called Obama a liar in public. George Carlin has it right. Most Most Americans are stupid, uneducated creeps who couldn't evaluate a candidate from the point of view of their own self-interest if their lives depended on it. I know. My family in Indiana voted for Goldwater, Nixon, Reagen, Bushies, and its a huge family that's representative. They're deadly people, licensing their heroes to kill people in the Middle East. They're similar to like the lady from Georgia who pronounced that she hopes Obama is shot on the day he's elected. The raucous hate roiling just below the surface in this country will be exposed if he does get shot. Given our history of executing the Kennedys and King, that scenario is on the minds of many Obama supporters. To whit, things are much worse than you seem to think.

I can also say empathic things about the middle and right folks and propose how to reach them, but the reality is that so many of them are grossly insensitive, deeply prejudiced, rigid, hateful people, as were the middleclass Nazis who terrorized the world.

Posted at July 25, 2008 12:33 PM in response to UGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

Brain trust chock full of neocons for McSame. Terrific control.

Posted at July 25, 2008 12:16 PM in response to UGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

Des, Billy, Cypher, Seaton...not worth responding to except to encourage people to ignore these guys. You're wasting your time.

Posted at July 25, 2008 10:48 AM in response to Obama in Berlin: How Bad Was It?

OBAMA WANTS TO LOSE THE WAR IN IRAQ
I'm puzzled that Obama didn't mention this issue in Berlin. It's so central to his Mid East policy. Although he hasn't elaborated the method to this his madness, we can imagine what he has in mind.

He wants to lose the election, in the hope that, at some point during the next eight years of neo-con greed and destructiveness, the country will revolt and resurrect Zapada(sp?) who will put Billy Glad, Desidero, and a few other like minded folks in his cabinet. Then, a conflagration to end all holocausts will decimate the earth so that Hillary, the only survivor, can begin rewinding her biological clock and initiate the world's second immaculate conception. Perhaps then, Obama reasons, the world will finally become a harmonious, Left Wing entity.

Posted at July 24, 2008 6:12 PM in response to McCain Ups the Ante

difamo,

You wrote,
blockquote>please note that Obama in speaking with Cuban-American voters since the campaign ended has said he will not meet with Cuban leaders unless they meet certain metrics towards democracy. Metrics = preconditions. There is no disputing that anymore.
I made an effort to track down the Obama speech you're alluding to, and read his speech in Miami that was reported on 3/23/3008. I see nothing of what you're referring to. Here's the relevant passage from his speech.

John McCain’s been going around the country talking about how much I want to meet with Raul Castro, as if I’m looking for a social gathering. That’s never what I’ve said, and John McCain knows it. After eight years of the disastrous policies of George Bush, it is time to pursue direct diplomacy, with friend and foe alike, without preconditions. There will be careful preparation. We will set a clear agenda. And as President, I would be willing to lead that diplomacy at a time and place of my choosing, but only when we have an opportunity to advance the interests of the United States, and to advance the cause of freedom for the Cuban people.

Hillary was out to bomb Iran, not talk to them. There's no similarity here except in the quote you brought in to this thread. That quote is grossly at odds with--not subtle different than--other things she has threatened to do and not do in the realm of international affairs. The differences in Obama's prior and current statements on meeting with leaders are insignificant nuances.

Posted at July 24, 2008 12:20 PM in response to The AP Calls Obama Out On Summits

Your attempts to start a conversation seem to most often devolve into name calling and blanket, disrespectful dismissals of sincere and reasoned attempts to disagree with you. In my poem, I was trying to capture the torment that swirls in and through most of your posts. It looks like dark fun but feels tragic, a waste of a beautiful mind.

Posted at July 24, 2008 10:23 AM in response to The AP Calls Obama Out On Summits