Political Calculus


I'm trying to quickly post this before Blogger's "scheduled outage" in just a couple of minutes...maybe I'll post an update later.

Yeah, I'm disappointed by Obama's position/cave-in on the warrantless wiretapping...on the other hand, I can see the thought processes, both sincere and cynical, that went into it.

And I'll leave it at that until Blogger resumes.

Update: to expand just a bit on "thought processes, both sincere and cynical..."--I doubt anyone thinks or otherwise expects worthless wingnuts to change their tune (I really like that term, which I found at Alicublog)--anyway, wingnuts will continue to push the idea that "Obama is [name your favorite flavor of 'anti-American']" which is of course code for "he's black." On the other hand, maybe they think a few fence-sitters can be convinced with this sort of vote...and, whether we like it or not, very, VERY few people seem to be all that worried about civil liberties these days. Sigh. To be honest, I don't know how to convince American citizens to be concerned about this egregious violation of our rights...short of Baghdad-style house-to-house searches with Chris Hansen providing play-by-play. So maybe the Obama brain-trust figured it wouldn't hurt too much to play to the 'nuts on this one issue...and, c'mon, it's not like I'll be running into Johnny Mac's arms as a result.