Cross-posted at Motley Moose.

A Chicago Gay and Lesbian newpaper, the Windy City Times, has unearthed a candidate issue survey written by then Illinois State Senate Candidate Barack Obama in 1996.  What is notable about this document is what has changed.  Take a look at number 6:

"6)  I favor legalizing same-sex marriages,and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages."

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Cross-posted at Motley Moose.

Advice on party unity at The Huffington Post? Huh. That's rich.

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On the heels of McCain's admission yesterday that his support of President Bush's proposal to open up the US coastline to offshore drilling would have ZERO short term effect on gas prices and would only give Americans a "psychological benefit" (read: voters think it sounds nice), here's another doozy.

Today, McCain pledged that America would have "strategic independence" from foreign oil by 2025.

Doesn't that sound nice?  Do you have any idea what that means?  Neither do I.

[Cross-posted on my blog.]

McCain's mysterious new phrase sounds an awful lot like McCain a couple months ago:

My friends, I will have an energy policy that we will be talking about, which will eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East that will -- that will then prevent us -- that will prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East.

If "strategic independence by 2025" is the same as "eliminat[ing] our dependence on foreign oil", here's the big problem with that (via the Carpetbagger Report):

[T]here isn't an energy expert in the world -- not one -- who thinks we can "eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East." It's a child's fantasy, but McCain spouts this stuff as if solving our problems really were just that easy. It reminds me of his solution to the fighting in Iraq: "One of the things I would do if I were President would be to sit the Shiites and the Sunnis down and say, `Stop the bullshit.'"

McCain, you are tiring me out this week.  Can you come up with any energy proposal isn't a lie, distortion or an ineffectual pander?

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I am proud of Obama for standing up against McCain's latest ineffectual pander.

Just like McCain's absurd "gas tax holiday" proposal (which all economists agree would save Americans either nothing or $28 on average), McCain's recent proposal to open up America's coastal waters to offshore oil drilling operations (which is, to boot, a 180-degree flip-flop from his earlier position) is a shameless, useless sop to voters that assumes that Americans are too stupid or ill-informed to realize what crap it is (according to recent polls, Americans may indeed be just that stupid ill-informed).

Here is Obama on the latest McCain silliness:

Believe me -- if I thought that there was any evidence at all that drilling could save people money who are struggling to fill up their tanks by this summer or this year or even the next few years, I would consider it. But it won't. And John McCain knows that.

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Cross posted at Clintonistas for Obama.

TalkLeft had an interesting post about a story in the The New Yorker, discussing requests by MSNBC executives to moderator Keith Olbermann to back off his sharp criticism of Senator Hillary Clinton:

At MSNBC, Phil Griffin was worried, and with good reason. The average "Countdown" viewer is fifty-nine years old, and forty-five per cent of the viewers are women, presumably Democratic--a fair description of a Hillary Clinton supporter. Griffin believed that Olbermann was beginning to alienate his core audience, and asked him to ease up a bit on Clinton, and possibly even make some conciliatory gesture to the Clinton camp.

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