Yesterday a snarky Vice President Dick praised Obama here for supporting Dick's agenda on these issues:
* endorse and continue our Global War On Terror
* vow to expand the US military and our Middle East presence
* firmly oppose doctors' and patients' calls for single payer health care
* point out that anti-war liberals like to spit on veterans
* praise and quote Ronald Reagan, not Jimmy Carter
* oppose Freedom to Marry and cast it as a state's rights issue
* reject impeachment and war crimes prosecution
* endorse warrantless domestic surveillance
* keep all the executive power I've amassed for the US President
In a blizzard of over 5 dozen comments, only one (praise Elise) aimed to make an Obama policy sound reasonable. The rest resembled panicky responses to a taboo violation - and wound up making Obama's policies sound indefensible. Why isn't that beneath us?
The Dick diary was peppered with quips like "tips are for servants - I own Halliburton stock" - so all the cries of "troll" and recipes seemed overblown - a bit like accusing Stephen Colbert of right wing bias.
I think readers were actually defensive about the issues themselves, Obama's positions, and bothered that while the Dick was being sarcastic, no one felt like laughing. So let me start a straight conversation about the same issues - and why they rarely get discussed here - in the form of a poll.
Feel free to actually discuss the issues, saying which Obama positions will or won't advance the Cheney agenda, and what we might do to influence and improve our candidate.