Petey Lapides
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In case your computer has been on the fritz for a few days, you may not know that Anna prompted a rollicking exchange of views, reviews, hopes, dreams, and qualms about the new Batman movie. Fairportfan and Mike The Knife schooled us on all things canonical. For those beardscratchers among you in the mood for a big, long thread addressing the political baggage the film may or may not be carrying (and about three dozen other issues that may stimulate film junkies), head HERE, to Dave Kehr's "Reports From The Lost Continent of Cinephilia."
Barack Obama is starting to show his true colors. And he's taking time to scold those who are dismayed.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/03/AR2008070302451.html
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It wasn't until I started reading to my small children that I began to hate Dr. Seuss. I hate him as much as I hate musicals. Thus, "Seussical" is waiting for me in hell. Repeating endlessly.
The Dr. is also there now. Getting ready.
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My Trusted MOGs (9 of 35)
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"I predicted that by Election Day Obama will have erased all meaningful differences with McCain on withdrawal from Iraq.." -- I don't think Obama will be reversing his decision. He would loose the campaign.
I am not happy about Obama's recent moves, either. I liked his platform during the primary.
That said, he's hardly "showing his true colors." He is doing what every party nominee has done for the general election -- he is moving his rhetoric towards the center. This is normal. This is what happens in our two-party system.
Obama is the best presidential candidate either party has produced in decades, so I for one am happy to have him even as he scootches to the right.
I said some months ago that the base he used for launch would turn on him as he makes the inevitable move to the center. I for one am happy to know that Sen Obama understands that a preciptous withdrawal of our troops in Iraq could cement his place in history as The one Who Lost Iraq. His support for the war is still tepid, I do believe that he believes, along with the hard left, that the war is/was not worth it. But with the general consensus that the war now is going spectacularly well and the victory, real victory, is attainable, Sen Obama is politically savvy enough to know that he cannot override Gen Patreaus on this.
The good Senator's track record on Iraq is questionable at best, and dismal at worst. He flatly predicted that the "surge" would fail miserably, leading to increased violence and instability throughout Iraq.
But that is just one problem Sen Obama has.
Back in November Obama declared that.... "the same old Washington textbook campaigns just won't do." Deploring "triangulating and poll-driven positions," he said that "telling the American people what we think they want to hear instead of telling the American people what they need to hear just won't do." The Democratic Party had been at its best, he told the crowd, when "we led, not by polls, but by principles; not by calculation, but by conviction." "I run for the presidency of the United States of America because that's the party America needs us to be right now," he vowed, staking his candidacy on the achingly idealistic premises of a new, more forthright and uncalculating politics.
Hmmmmmmmmm. Rich Lowery, a political analyst and columnist noted that......."In the last few weeks, Obama has broken two pledges (to take public financing in the general election and to filibuster legal immunity for telecoms that cooperated with the government in terrorist surveillance); has belittled his own rhetoric during the primaries (saying it could get "overheated and amplified" on the issue of trade); redefined his promise to meet without preconditions with the leaders of hostile states until it's basically meaningless; endorsed a Supreme Court decision striking down a Washington, DC, gun ban his campaign had said he supported; and made muddy, centrist-sounding statements about his positions on Iraq and abortion that he had to go back and try to clarify"