Category / 2008 Election

by Edward Champion

Obama Begins the Sellout Phase of His Campaign

It started earlier this week when Barack Obama became the first presidential candidate to forgo public money. It continued yesterday when Barack Obama pledged support for the FISA “compromise” bill, which grants telecom companies immunity for past offenses of illegal wiretapping, and issued this appalling statement. With Senator Harry Reid flip-flopping over his “total opposition to immunity” to save Obama’s ass, it is becoming quite apparent that the Democrats are once again content to take on the instincts of frightened little animals. And it’s a pity that all this comes immediately after Dennis Kucinich’s efforts to move impeachment articles through the House Judiciary Committee. Obama’s Clintonian spin on the telecom bill represents the acts of a pusillanimous opportunist. The rest of us, pining for the integrity that led us to Obama in the first place, feel sick to our stomachs.

Meanwhile, Senator Russ Feingold, one of the few Democrats demonstrating some capacity for outrage, has called FISA “not a compromise. It is a capitulation.” One might say the same of Obama’s recent decisions.

[UPDATE: Some additional context from BLCKDGRD.]

by Edward Champion

Character Assassination

I thought Hillary Clinton’s comparison about Obama and the Bobby Kennedy assassination was very foolish and disrespectful, but this Keith Olbermann response is ridiculously histrionic. Even by Olbermann standards. If one is to impugn Hillary, and there are many good reasons to, it should be for more substantive reasons than three sentences. Or is Western culture now in the habit of taking down a public figure based on a mere snippet? An individual is more complex than a few sentences. To judge a person entirely on a sentence is just as superficial as judging a person solely by gender, race, sexual orientation, etc. Perhaps a new word should be coined to reflect this bias. Speechism or something.