Read this and you link to a reader's blog on the tpm readers cafe? Too funny. Then you have the sense of humor to tell me I need to research. Satire right?

So sorry I don't have a link to any readers blog. While there's a well written, interesting post now and then, and the occasional insightful comment nothing written here has ever moved me to link. I don't even think my posts are worth that.

But hey, did you read the New Yorker article? Or did you just look at the pretty picture on the cover? Here's a little bit about Obama's "new politics." Strange though, sounds like the same old politics to me.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/21/080721fa_fact_lizza?currentPage=10

One day in the spring of 2001, about a year after the loss to Rush, Obama walked into the Stratton Office Building, in Springfield, a shabby nineteen-fifties government workspace for state officials next to the regal state capitol. He went upstairs to a room that Democrats in Springfield called “the inner sanctum.” Only about ten Democratic staffers had access; entry required an elaborate ritual—fingerprint scanners and codes punched into a keypad.

Like every other Democratic legislator who entered the inner sanctum, Obama began working on his “ideal map.” Corrigan remembers two things about the district that he and Obama drew. First, it retained Obama’s Hyde Park base—he had managed to beat Rush in Hyde Park—then swooped upward along the lakefront and toward downtown. By the end of the final redistricting process, his new district bore little resemblance to his old one. Rather than jutting far to the west, like a long thin dagger, into a swath of poor black neighborhoods of bungalow homes, Obama’s map now shot north, encompassing about half of the Loop, whose southern portion was beginning to be transformed by developers like Tony Rezko, and stretched far up Michigan Avenue and into the Gold Coast, covering much of the city’s economic heart, its main retail thoroughfares, and its finest museums, parks, skyscrapers, and lakefront apartment buildings. African-Americans still were a majority, and the map contained some of the poorest sections of Chicago, but Obama’s new district was wealthier, whiter, more Jewish, less blue-collar, and better educated.

Now, lets talk about how politicians get money to run their campaigns. You say his average donation is 100 dollars. I can believe that. Lets say a bundler gets 21 people to donate the max, $4600 for the ge and the primary, and takes his 100 thousand dollar check and places it in Obama's hand. To get that 100 average it would take 2000 little donors giving $50 each. I'm sure you think obama is going to pay more attention to those 2000 little donors instead of the one who handed him a check for 100 thousand but I'm a bit more skeptical.

But, but, but, Obama has asked for his little supporters to be involved in contributing to making policy. Citizens committees. Sounds good. How did that work out in the past when he was in the Illinois senate?

===he announced that he was “organizing citizens’ committees” to help him shape legislation. He asked his constituents to call his office if they wanted to participate. That kind of airy talk about changing politics gave way almost immediately to the realities of the job. I asked a longtime Obama friend what ever became of the committees. “They never really got off the ground,”===

Funny how often people will buy the same story over and over again. But then, you don't seem too bright, this may be the first time you've heard the "new politics" line.

No surprise at all. Politics as usual. Let the uniting continue. Obama begs hillary's bundlers for cash and Hillary asks him to get his bundlers to help her pay down her debt. Its how the game is played.

I'm not a bit surprised at how good he is at it. Shifting positions has been a hallmark throughout Obama's career. From his changing position of gun control, he even lied about whether he filled out a position paper until a note in his hand writing was found on it. To his blatant flip flop to the right on FISA. He's even sucking up to the evangelicals on abortion. Hey did you read that he's "removed criticism of President Bush's increase of troops to Iraq from the campaign Web site?" Guess that surge was a good thing after all.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/15/obama-takes-surge-critici_n_112945.html

Who knows what he really believes the way his positions keep changing. What was that campaign slogan again? Oh yeah,

change we can believe in.

You are mistaken. This post is gatering few recomends.

Oregon Activist: I have such respect for you; yet, in my opinion, you have a blind spot about Hillary. I don't hate Hillary. In fact, I admire and, in the past, empathized with her. The problem I have with her now is that she is screwing her small vendors when she, and her loyalists, have the means to pay them, now. For that action, of ignoring Mom and Pop receivables, I find fault with her. Yes, without any apology.
Imagine, for the sake of discussion, that you, or your mother, had a party store. And the Clinton campaign gave you what you thought was the promotional opportunity of a lifetime. And so you anted up $9-10 thousand dollars to buy balloons and streamers, confident that you would be paid promptly, and not be out of pocket.
Imagine your dismay, or that of your mother/whomever, when your bills are due to the wholesaler, but Hillary's campaign fails to pay.... in May, and in June, and so far in July. And your small business credit depends on prompt payment of your bills to your suppliers.
Why is this hard to understand as an subject of legitimate criticism? Hillary has the money to pay these people, today, tomorrow, yesterday. And yet she does not. And there are small businesses that can lose their supplier relationships over this, as their credit can be affected.
Please. Tell me how this can be construed as this amorphous, imaginary Hillary Hate, instead of concern for people who are struggling, and do not deserve this.
Please answer that question. I do respect you, and think you have valuable insight, on all things but Hillary.
By the way, there was a really interesting post yesterday titled something like: Elizabeth2 On the Way to Enlightenment, or something like that. Did you read it? I thought it really helpful in trying to consider the ways in which people with diametrically opposed attitudes might begin to have a respectful discussion.
Understand my point: I am respectful of you. I am not respectful of a multi-millionaire who says she is all about "the hardworking American people" and then screws them, herself.

This is not defending our nominee. It's harming him.