:: Ever Get The Feeling You've Been Cheated?

Witch-burning accomplished, Obama can finally get real

I can barely keep up. Seriously.

ONE: Obama Not So Keen on the Constitution After All

This is the big one – Barack will go along with the evisceration the 4th amendment (aka the FISA Amendments Act of 2008) including instant retroactive immunity for the telecoms. This is VERY important stuff. Read about it here (the ACLU) and here (Salon's Glenn Greenwald). Yes, this is really happening, and yes, it is that bad.

Side Note: Obama loves implying that if he had been in Congress when the vote to authorize the war in/on Iraq came up, he would have opposed it. I never bought that particular cup of soup.

Some of us noted that his "present" votes on abortion were a sign that we couldn't count on Obama to stand up for us ("us") if it meant taking a hit, even on a matter of Constitutional importance. Others said those "present" votes were his way of showing leadership - a kind of "topping from the bottom" - and that he would never compromise on civil liberties. Well, score one for our side, unfortunately.

TWO: Obama's "Generation Joshua"

Read it and freak, I guess.

With the Democratic presidential nomination in his grasp, Sen. Barack Obama is making a full-throttle push for centrist evangelicals and Catholics. [...]

This month, the Illinois senator held a closed-door meeting in Chicago with almost 40 Christian leaders, including evangelical heavyweights such as the Rev. Franklin Graham, publishing magnate Steve Strang and megachurch pastor Bishop T.D. Jakes.

Obama's campaign is also launching a grass-roots effort, tentatively called Joshua Generation, with plans to hold concerts and house meetings targeted at young evangelicals and Catholics.

Read approving coverage from the Christian Broadcast Network (700 Club) here. However, Its seems "Joshua Generation" and "Generation Joshua" were already trademarked by the Home School Legal Defense Fund... amuse yourself here.

Side Note: Don't worry, ladies. I'm sure he won't be looking for "middle ground" between the two "extremes."

THREE: Obama Tells Koreans to Eat our Beef

It seems like every week our nation’s factory farmers mow down a new cluster of unhappy customers with a deadly tomato scourge or a plague on cheeseburgers. No inspectors, watered-down rules and general moral depravity make this country’s meat industry, well, words fail me here. Its horrible. But don’t tell Barack. If the cause is free trade, no product is too infectious for our exports….

“You can’t get beef into Japan and Korea, even though, obviously, we have the highest safety standards of anybody, but they don’t want to have that competition from U.S. producers,” Mr. Obama said last month in a speech to farmers in South Dakota.

Many scientists, public health experts and consumer advocates in the United States and abroad, though, have suggested that American beef exports are lagging at least in part because United States safety standards are lax compared with those in Europe and East Asia.

Side Note: Australia has grabbed most of our market share in those countries because their producers adjusted to the new, tighter safety standards. Its so unfair! Hey, what was that about being willing to say anything to get elected?

FOUR: Obama's Vetters Not So Good with the Vetting

From ABC News:

As a top official in the Clinton Justice Department, Eric Holder, one of the people chosen by Sen. Barack Obama to help screen possible vice presidential candidates, failed, by his own admission, "to focus" on the controversial pardon issued by President Bill Clinton to fugitive financier Marc Rich.

In testimony before Congress in 2001, reviewed by ABC News, Holder conceded 'some bells should have gone off, some lights should have gone on" in his vetting process then. Holder, now a lawyer in private practice, is one of three people selected by Obama to screen and vet possible running mates, looking for possible problems that could arise.

One of the three, Jim Johnson, resigned the post after questions were raised about favorable mortgages he received from a sub-prime lender, Countrywide Financial.

Side Note: Do I even need to say it? "Change." The end of the Evil Clinton Era. No more "Politics as Usual." This one is just too easy.

FIVE: Yes Possums Can!

Surely you've heard about the Obama Presidential Seal. Talk about a picture being worth a thousand words. Best part: the myriad possible translations of the slogan, "Vero Possumus." This is my favorite: "Truly, We Are All Possums."

Side Note: I got your side note right here.

SIX: "Get Over It"

I wish this were on tape. But hearsay is all we've got.

Obama agreed that a lot of work needs to be done to heal the Democratic Party, and that he hoped the Clinton supporters in the room would help as much as possible.

According to Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., Obama then said, "However, I need to make a decision in the next few months as to how I manage that since I'm running against John McCain, which takes a lot of time. If women take a moment to realize that on every issue important to women, John McCain is not in their corner, that would help them get over it."

Rep. Diane Watson, D-Calif., a longtime Clinton supporter, did not like those last three words -- "Get over it." She found them dismissive, off-putting.

"Don't use that terminology," Watson told Obama.

Side Note: There is no side note. It is what it is. Get over it.