That's not a comforting thought when our privacy rights are at stake.

Greenwald re-responds to Olbermann here: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/06/...

I give my take here:
http://www.whyweworry.com/blog/2008/06/27/olber...

There is no one I distrust more than Hillary. She has never come clean about the Iraq war vote, for example. I would respect her, if she simply admitted she changed her mind, instead of conjuring up her convoluted explanation.

She is also as hawkish as McCain is, when it comes to votes, not campaign speeches. Before it became politically embarrasing, Hillary was Bush-lite on many foreign policy. decisions. I'd be interested to know what she really knew about torture, for example.

I think he's planning to run his campaign as he did against Hillary, I'll bet. Track McCain on the issues and make it a war of personalities. If he says whatever McCain says, they can't really attack him on the issues.

No, strike that. No one would be that cynical, right?

I don't trust Obama to shepherd anything, but I hope that he will pick good enough advisers and actually take their advice.

I don't know about that, but I do know that this argument is being conducted while completely in the dark. I'm sure it's satisfying to fight ONLY for civil liberteies, while it's equally satisfying for others to fight ONLY for national security.
The rest of us recognize that both are important and some sort of ocmpromise is necessary.
It boils down to whom you trust to shepherd the future, not whom you blame for
yesterday or today. There is nothing to prevent the debate from continuing after the elections, as well. Be careful whom you vote for, if you do want the debate to continue, not just for president, but for Congress as well. It's a bad mistake, IMO, to rage against those most likely to be swayed in the future, without ocnsidering the opposition they face.
Why there is no rage left for that opposition, including some Blue Dog Democrats is the most troubling part of this whole business. It's troubling to the point of being short sighted and self destructive.

I've seen little evidence that Obama supporters are any more blind than supporters of any other candidate.

Thank you.

It's certainly a danger to have blind loyalty toward anyone, but it says nothing about the candidate himself. And it most certainly should not change who you vote for.

I myself agree with Obama most of the time, but not this time.

I could care less about all the “personal” issues of a candidate, whether they say something politically incorrect, have a racist pastor, whatever… but if you start screwing up the issues I get very agitated.

Because I have been such a big Obama fan for better or worse, I am willing to believe he has a good reason for making what seems to be making a tragic flip-flop for political expediency. But people trusting that Bush knew what he was doing sending us to Iraq was a tragedy. I don't want to be witness to something like that again. Well, it's a wake up call for me!

This is a message to let the anti-obama people know that many of us fanboys are not blind. Though I'm sure many are.

I don't hear much from anyone, exceot in terms of what's wrong.
So, what's right, short of pretending that we don't need to worry about terrorism?

On the other hand, Alter is definitely a tool.

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The real danger is that those who defend Obama the Candidate no matter what he does are likely to defend Obama the President no matter what he does, too. If we learn in 2009 that Obama has invoked his claimed Article II powers to spy on Americans outside of even the new FISA law, are we going to hear from certain factions that he was justified in doing so to protect us; how it’s a good, shrewd move to show he’s a centrist and keep his approval ratings high so he can do all the Good things he wants to do for us; how it’s different when Obama does it because we can trust him? It certainly looks that way. Those who spent the last five years mauling Bush for “shredding the Constitution” and approving of lawbreaking — only to then praise Obama for supporting a bill that endorses and protects all of that — are displaying exactly the type of blind reverence that is more dangerous than any one political leader could ever be. (Salon; emphasis added)

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Rabid Obama supporters and the climate of blind-worship they have created around their teflon-unknown demigod is reminiscent of the political atmosphere in Germany just before the rise of the nazi party. An unquestioning throng who reflexively turn a blind eye to any revelations of wrongdoing on the behalf of their chosen guru..

All that mattered then as now was the smoothness and delivery of the speech and buzzwords like “change” and “hope”. The reverend Jim Jones had a similar style. One poster at another forum describes rabid Obamaites as “The Koolaide Crowd”, and I must admit their ardent support that borders on cult worship does smack of that level of danger and irresponsibility.

I'm sure there are Obama supporters who are reasonable. And therefore naturally they are beginning to get a bad taste in their mouth after having voted for him, like me. I think the only difference is that I woke up most of all when BigMedia shamelessly spewed sexists comments to the four winds to beat back Hillary while those racial equivalents would've landed them their careers in the dumpster. Reading up on his bio as being raised caucasian with hidden resentments for his black father, coupled with his nefarious treatment of “fellow” minorities in Chicago, his flip-flopping and most starkly alarming of all…the GOP/BigMedia's palpable glee that he is THE [whisper: "presumptive"] DEMOCRACTIC NOMINEE…

Well, everyone has to wake up from their pipe dream eventually…