Everybody has wondered when Obama was going to push back against the flip-flop meme that the media was tarring and feathering him with. Paul Krugman today went so far as to suggest that it had Rove's fingerprints written all over them. But Obama has begun pushing back against the flip-flop meme by releasing a fact sheet on Iraq. The fact sheet points out that Obama has the same positions on Iraq now that he did several months ago. You can read the fact sheet here.

The arrogance of John McCain when asked about how his military service prepared him for the Presidency is appalling. Not that he cares for his fellow veterans in arms, let alone the wounded warriors in Iraq, who can't even get basic pensions and care.

Who the fuck does John McCain think he is, claiming that the Presidency is somehow his divine right while his fellow veterans are bleeding and suffering? He can brag all he wants to about purpose, as he does in his latest ads, yet the McCain Doctrine is drifting along without purpose while more and more people are dying and suffering in Iraq.

Today, Senator Obama spoke about his plan to bring money to faith-based programs. And while there is no doubt that many of these programs work and Obama would do a much more even-handed job of getting them money than Bush ever did, he also talked about faith and our obligations to help others. In that regard, Obama has set standards for himself to follow.

David Korten of YES Magazine poses the question of what must be done to save the planet.

Cheap oil provided an energy subsidy that defined the wars, economies, settlements, values, and lifestyles of the 20th century. The result was a century of wasteful extravagance and inefficiency that encouraged us to squander virtually all Earth's resources -- including water, land, forests, fisheries, soils, minerals, and natural waste recycling capacity. We are now waking up to the morning-after consequences of a brief but raucous party. These include depleted natural systems, unsustainable economies, an obsolete physical infrastructure, and a six-fold increase in the human population dependent on the diminished resources of a finite planet.

Today, Barack Obama showed us the future. He toured a solar plant that powers 75 homes and declared that this is the future of this country.

As part of a larger plan for a diversified, clean energy future, Barack has proposed doubling research funding for clean energy projects such as solar power while requiring that 25% of electricity consumed in the U.S. be derived from clean, sustainable energy sources by 2025.

What we should do is simple -- put a wind or solar farm in every town, and we'll see how much clean energy we can generate in this country. And we'll watch the tax base grow right along with it, along with new jobs.

My response:

In the deadliest attack in three months, a bomb blast in Baghdad has killed 51 people, the New York Times reports. Once again, the turmoil and the chaos in Iraq belies the Bush administration claims that the McCain Doctrine is working and that they were making progress.

The choice in this election is clear -- a vote for Barack Obama is a vote for the people. A vote for John McCain is a vote for special rights for corporations. In John McCain's twisted worldview, he would support government by the corporation for the corporation. Meanwhile, back in the real world, our country was set up to be a government by the people and for the people. And here are the graphic consequences of antitax extremism:

John McCain did it again. This time, he claimed to support every call for an investigation into the Katrina tragedy. But it turns out that he lied because he conveniently forgot that he opposed a Democratic proposal to set up a 9/11-style commission to investigate the causes of the tragedy.

The media is doing it again. This time, ABC has published inaccurate information about Obama's stances on the issue of Iran, making it look like he had changed stands on the issue when he had not. This, from the same media that lied to us about the evidence during the leadup to war. This, from the same media that brought us Judith Miller. This, from the same network that gave us right-wing propaganda under the guise of a debate. This, from the same network that has obvious conflicts of interest.

This is the John McCain Loser's Gallery. As the news states, George Bush has hit all-time lows in popularity at 25%. Yet, John McCain is campaigning for a third term for Bush so that he can continue the McCain Doctrine of Perpetual Warfare. But in reality, John McCain and the Republicans are setting themselves up to be some of the biggest all-time losers in US history. With that in mind, here is the John McCain Loser's Gallery, with various losers who were only in it for themselves and never for others.

The Election of 2008 will provide a clear contrast between the two candidates. On the one hand, John McCain has promoted a lunatic policy that would involve starting a war with Iran. That would require him to call a draft, since we currently do not have the men to launch an attack with. Militarily, it could not be done without tipping our hand to the Iranians, making John McCain's contemplated war with Iran that much more difficult to achieve. Militarily, it could not be done without putting our troops in Iraq at an even greater risk than they are now. Economically, it would be suicidal, since Iran could block the Straights of Hormuz and skyrocket the oil prices to astronomical levels.

The dam has cracked. More and more, even within the right-wing Southern Baptist Convention, people are more and more reluctant to identify themselves as members of the Religious Right. Even though they are still fervent about preaching their gospel of fundamentalism to the masses, they are more and more reluctant to identify themselves as members of the Republican Party. In fact, there are plenty of young evangelicals who have declared that they are voting for Barack Obama this fall.

I propose that we have an Obama/Edwards ticket for the 2008 race. First of all, John Edwards can appeal to some of the same working class voters that Hillary Clinton did without engaging in the same kind of divisive tactics that Hillary did throughout her campaign.

John Edwards ran a positive, uplifting campaign that sought to address the problems of rural poverty. In a lot of states, lieutenant governors serve as advocates for the elderly. John Edwards can play the same sort of role as Obama's vice president -- advocate for unions and working class people and make sure that their voices are heard at the table.  

Robert Hirsch argues that we could see $15 gas as early as several months from now. He argues that we have hit peak oil and that we can expect gas prices to continue to go up as the world's supply will continue to decrease even as demand continues to skyrocket.

"The problem is that there’s not that much oil left in the ground," Hirsch says. "What we’ve done is been very fortunate to have oil production increase as our economies have developed over the past decades. And now we’re reaching a point where we’re about to get, or we may be, at the maximum world oil production. After that, oil production will then decline and prices, of course, will continue to do what they’ve been doing recently. So what we’ve got today may be the ‘good old days.’"

With the continuing rapid rise in gas prices, more and more people are joining the Voluntary Simplicity Movement, where they sell all they have and live a simple life. This suggests that people are getting more and more disillusioned with the current wave of materialism that has permeated the Republican Party and that the chickens have come home to roost. In the same way that the 1960's was a reaction to the mindless conformism of the era, this could be a reaction to the rampant materialism of the Reagan, Gingrich, and Bush years, where the notion was that greed is good.

In a new piece of hubris from John McCain, he said today that he would win in Iraq and capture Osama Bin Laden. Instead of the kind of national healing that we need after one of the most partisan administrations in US history, what we have from John McCain is more of the same.

Tonight, we seek to turn back the clock, so to speak, and run away from the fundamentalism that we have been taught for the last 2000 years. We seek to rehabilitate Julian, a Roman Emperor who was like a light against the darkness, and who for three years, 360-363 AD, stood against the radical exclusivity that was beginning to permeate Christianity even then. But first, to put us in the right frame of mind, here is a song for the occasion as we embark on our journey running away from Fundamentalism.