I got a copy of this back in June from the husband of my wife's best friend. This is what I wrote in reply...

...about Lou Pritchett's gobbledegook:

"You scare me because after months of exposure, I know nothing about you." Lou might want to read one of BHO's books, like the one about his life. Or read one of the many things online about how he grew up with his grandparents in Kansas. This is willful ignorance. Lou should have written "I don't want to know about you and that way I can be scared because I don't know about you." I hope that sounds as lame to you as it does to me.

"...I do not know how you paid for your expensive Ivy League education and your upscale lifestyle and housing with no visible signs of support."  More willful ignorance. Look, I'm no Obama expert at all, but even I know that he taught law, his wife had a good job, and they worked hard for what they got. And I got an Ivy League education with loans and grants. Loans and scholarships. It happens every day.

"...you did not spend the formative years of youth growing up in America and culturally you are not an American." This is a lie. LIE. Unless Kansas is not part of America any more. And Hawaii, too.

"...you have never had military experience, thus don't understand it at its core." Lou should be sure to tell FDR that. And John Adams. And the other ten presidents who never served. Thomas Jefferson, for instance. This is just silly.

"...you lack humility and 'class', always blaming others." Sounds like projection. In any case, Obama has a lot more class than most. I wonder what example Lou had in mind. Maybe it's puking at a state dinner (oops, wrong guy).

"...for over half your life you have aligned yourself with radical extremists who hate America and you refuse to publicly denounce these radicals who wish to see America fail." Another lie. Knowing someone doesn't mean you align with them.

"...you are a cheerleader for the 'blame America' crowd and deliver this message abroad." Um, no. Lou is hearing voices in his head. Obama's foreign policy doesn't blame America. There is nothing to support this at all. Totally untrue.

"...you want to change America to a European style country where the government sector dominates instead of the private sector." No. Not supported by any facts. Not supported by any proposals of Obama's. Just silly. No facts to support this at all. None.

"...you want to replace our health care system with a government controlled one." Wrong. Just wrong. Be sure not to read Obama's proposals because then you'd have facts. It's much easier to be scared with no facts.

"...you prefer 'wind mills' to responsibly capitalizing on our own vast oil, coal and shale reserves." You should prefer windmills too, Lou. Our reserves are a strategic advantage to America. The more reserves we have, the better. Using them reduces our advantage. That's bad. We want more advantages in energy. Using up our reserves reduces them. More is better. Read famous conservative T. Boone Pickens. All energy sources are good. Renewables are the best.

"...you want to kill the American capitalist goose that lays the golden egg which provides the highest standard of living in the world." No. First, we don't have the highest standard of living and haven't for a while. Lou may need to time travel back a few decades. Second, there is nothing about Obama's stated goals, vision, or proposals which even remotely suggest killing capitalism.

I gotta stop. Lou is just blithering stuff that has no basis in reality. Here on planet earth, reality has to trump distortion and unfounded screeching.

Have a nice day,

Rights:

• I knew PA wouldn't be close despite the effort put in by McCain-Palin here.
  
• Nevada would go blue
  
• Shays would lose in CT

Wrongs:

• I had visions of a huge House wave (28+) that didn't happen, despite some nice pickups.
  
• Montana possibly not going for McCain
  
• Hopes for Debbie Cook in CA and Tom Allen in ME

If Barack does win, hitting back against this inevitable narrative from the right will be one of our more immediate goals moving forward post-November 4th.

Actually, I think I'd prefer that the conservatives and R's just continue to delude themselves. The longer they believe it was a failure of McCain or something external, the longer they will take to actually fix the problems inside their party. I'm OK with that.

If nothing else, I'm sure there are staffers at other Dem campaign HQ's that are high-fiving and fist pumping.

This is sure to be viewed as a sign of weakness by the other Dem campaigns.

Yes, the criticism started before he announced his candidacy. The sharp criticism of Biden on this bill continues only because he's running for President. Asking why other non-candidates for President aren't criticized is moot. They're not running.

I agree that it's pretty narrow to focus on the one issue since Biden's got a good record on so many other votes. Maybe that's what makes the bankruptcy issue so striking.

He's a good guy. We could do worse. :-)

The number one blogosphere criticism of Joe Biden is that he voted for the 2005 bankruptcy bill. For some reason, the bill's co-sponsors, Johnson and Nelson, attract far less criticism for the bill, as do the bill's other aye votes, including Reid and Landrieu.

Um, excuse me, but are any of them running for President? No? Oh, maybe that's why Joe is criticized for his vote.

Biden voted for that bill because it strengthened alimony laws, something he spent years working for, and because it helped his home state, which it was his duty to represent.

As I noted here,
http://www.mydd.com/comments/2007/8/30/1 8534/5777/26#26
 Joe had the opportunity to vote to amend this incredibly harsh law in some sensible and compassionate ways. He did not.

Glad to hear you think ol' Joe made a mistake.

Democrats tried mightily to modify the Bankruptcy bill to make it less draconian. Your pal Biden voted against these amendments - the only Dem presidential candidate cold-hearted enough to do so.

- Durbin Amdt. No. 16, As Modified.; To protect service members and veterans from means testing in bankruptcy, to disallow certain claims by lenders charging usurious interest rates to servicemembers, and to allow servicemembers to exempt property based on the law of the State of their premilitary residence.

- Feingold Amdt. No. 17.; To provide a homestead floor for the elderly. Essentially, it's a provision that would ensure that no elderly people in enough financial trouble to seek bankruptcy protection would lose their homes.

- Akaka Amdt. No. 15; To require enhanced disclosure to consumers regarding the
consequences of making only minimum required payments in the repayment of credit card debt, and for other purposes.

- Kennedy Amdt. No. 28.; To exempt debtors whose financial problems were caused by serious medical problems from means testing.

Here's one Sen. Joe managed to avoid voting against, because he didn't vote:
- Corzine Amdt. No. 32; To preserve existing bankruptcy protections for individuals
experiencing economic distress as caregivers to ill or disabled family members.

Joe Biden looks good on this issue compared to his fellow Delaware Senator, Democrat Tom Carper. But that's faint praise, and Carper is smart enough not to run for President. Joe's competition didn't screw this up, Joe did. He's being dinged for it and he should be.

The bankruptcy law is a real giveaway to the megabanks. And since it had huge support from the Republicans, the rich were nicely protected. This law is massively unfriendly to 90% of Americans to the benefit of a small number of credit card issuers and their shareholders. To minimize its impact is disingenuous.

I am not a single issue voter, but Biden's voting on this bill is likely to push me as close to that as I'll get. He needs to be letter perfect on whole lot of other topics for me to consider him over the many Dems who were sensible enough to say "No" to that unfortunate, repressive bill. If he wants to represent all Americans, he maybe should vote like it.

I'll take "Ignorant comment for $1000, Alex"

Invited? Invited?

Anyone can go. Really. Everyone's invited.

Your statement is truly absurd.

Wow - what a sense of history and perspective.

YKos has existed for all of two years. Two instances. Nice.

I'm sure you have no interest in my advice, but here it is: Be the change.

Deconstruction of independent leaners in this Pew poll is virtually meaningless from what I can see.

They polled registered voters.

Registered independents are not likely Democratic primary voters. In fact, it would be an interesting conversation to discuss whether a poll of "likely primary voters" who lean Democratic would be meaningful.

Ma & Pa Independent voter are not registered Dems and are not likely to vote in the Dem primary. Poll results of independents simply mean nothing in the primary unless they are at least "likely primary voters."

So including leaners from this poll is an exercise in self-indulgence, imo.

Franken's not assuming that the nomination is going to be a coronation. Everything I've read indicates that he's pounding the pavement pretty hard.

Coleman is in trouble. Franken may not win the nomination, but if he does, that doesn't mean something good happens for Coleman. He's vulnerable and Franken is running very specifically against Coleman.

By the time of the general election, I suspect the public will be taking comedian Al Franken very seriously. He'll have been talking about issues and engaging the population for quite a while by then.

If we want a true realignment to occur, one of the major parties is going to have to die.

OK, as long as it's the Republican party.

Where you see a snide remark, I see information. Where you see a clown, I see an elected representative who's willing to explain something.

Where you see warfare, I see the politics of inclusion.

Have a nice day.

I think there is always going to be work to do. Consider:

1. We (progressives) have successfully gotten the Democratic Party back into relevance.

2. Next we'll push to get the party into power so that our agenda can become law. I.e., win the presidency while maintaining or increasing our working majorities.

3. There are still lots of state legislatures that aren't as Democratic or as progressive as they could be. The work at the state and local level is really just getting going.

4. While we're doing that, and afterwards, we'll push to make the national party more progressive. We have lots of short term goals. We have lots of long term goals. There will always be candidates that need to be pushed or defeated for our agenda to be adopted.

5. It's likely we'll always have a need to keep the pressure on our elected officials to represent their constituents.

6. There will always be a place for vigilance and shining light on government behavior, regardless of who's in power. The (R)'s have demonstrated rather convincingly that they can't/won't do it. If we want corruption exposed, we'll have to do it. This one doesn't go away.

I can understand wanting to take a breath and step out of political activism now and again. Life is certainly more than politics. But I expect to stay involved at least a little for a long time to come. There's always going to be more to do. The last thing I want is for us to get back in power and find ourselves with a new collection of Rostenkowski-like grubs to chase after. Let's get it right this time. And then keep it right.

Let me shorten the whole Iraq/Edwards thing for you:

2002 - Go into Iraq
2006 - Oops, I was wrong. Big mistake.

So you might want to get over it.

Of course, you may be a single-issue voter and the Iraq vote is your litmus test. Some of us are not single-issue voters. If you do have an Iraq litmus test, perhaps this thread isn't really an interesting place for you to hang out.