Thursday, July 03, 2008

Oh, there's always time for email on this blog, Yes there's always time for email on this blog...

(Yes there's always time for email
From a guy or girl or she male...)

D (aka TRO) sends a query through a comment. He asks:

I am curious what you think of your candidate's changing positions. He was against FISA and now is on record as supporting it and now, of all things, is retracting his pledge to withdraw troops from Iraq immediately.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0708/11517.html

I could list several more "flip-flops" he has made in the past few weeks but I am sure you are aware of his positions since you are a supporter

Anyway, this isn't baiting. I am seriously interested in how you feel about him changing his mind - especially on Iraq. I have tried to discuss this with my oldest son - a Obama guy - but he just won't even talk about it. He says I am making it up - or really that Fox News is making it up. Which concerns me because he is such a bright young man and I simply cannot see how he can ignore these indicators that Obama is just another politician.



Well, as a proud liberal I'm wary and I think I'm right to be. But I think "just another politician" is going too far. Obama's candidacy is genuinely historic, and a watershed moment for Americans of any National origin (and really, citizens of the world).

I wrote about FISA last month.

He's walking a line, to be sure. He's running a risk, and I think he knows that.

But I also think that sticking to a plan no matter what conditions on the ground are is sort of what the Republicans have been doing in Iraq for the past five years. So the idea of Obama's "refining" his own doesn't give me that sinking feeling of dread.

Especially if it's a choice between believing what he says, or what the GOP says he says.

I also have the feeling--and I don't claim to be a political fanatic, but I'm not a casual observer either-- that Obama is really serious when he talks about “a significant realignment politically in this election."

He is positioned, partly due to his own political skills, partly to the detonation of Bush's presidency, for a massive blowout victory. And I think that's what he's going for.

I may be wrong, but at this moment I think we're gonna see a lot of states going for Obama that the Republicans have never thought they needed to worry about. That's what I think Obama is trying to do.

I'm not sure it's gonna work, and I'm even less sure I think he's right to do it this way, but that's what I think he's trying to do.

As for Fox News, I decided a long time ago to respect almost nothing they report. It's one of my rules. Truth is to Fox News as bread to the makers of pretzels--and what they produce doesn't taste as good.

I consider them unfair, unbalanced (that last in more than one sense of the word), and given their most recent occurence of "acting out," really, really quite childish.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I am always wary when someone says, "Hey, I'm not being a troll, just curious.", so I do hope that wasn't so from your emailer.

Too often, it's not what a candidate says, it's what he is reported to have said. A candidate can say he likes green, and Rush or Faux Noise scream he hates red. The story then becomes the candidates repeated hatred of all things red and how can he be so hateful of red as a candidate for office in this, our country of red, white, and blue.

Sigh. My doctor's gonna be pissed with my next blood pressure reading.

Alan Coil