I call you a McTroll. Does that make it so in your mind?

The fact is, Obama did not change his position. He is now calling for swapping light crude in the reserve for heavy crude -- just as Bill Clinton did in 2000.

The liberal press fell into the trap of repeating "the surge is working," along with the neocons until it became an urban legend. I'm afraid the Nation is falling into that trap again in some pointless effort to pass itself off as non-partisan...which in today's political reality means mindlessly mouthing GOP talking points.

The Nation mentioned specific issues that were important to them. If I read the letter correctly, SOR isn't one of them, and so he should have their blessing.

Given that, there is no conflict on this issue between TN and the views of this site.

I call you a McTroll. Does that make it so in your mind?

Great comparison: Believing an award winning website which lays out the facts behinds its conclusion, is comparable in your mind to believing an anonymous nobody called Glaurung who posts comments on a blog.

Due to the charged language you use, my guess is that you are not truly "torn."

The Nation is a publication, and has an editorial board that presents a unified front of opinion.  I don't think that you can say that about any blog, except a private one.  Certainly not everyone here feels good about Obama's flip, which, honestly, is trivial.  Replace the sweet crude with sour, big deal -- It won't have any impact.

After reading the diary, I was left with the impression that while MyDD wants the Democratic candidate to win the election, The Nation has taken a different point of view.

Then my head popped out of my ass.

The Palin press release that Singer talked about is about Alaska's natural gas reserves, not the strategic petroleum reserve.

Tapping the strategic petroleum reserve is, of course, nothing but pandering by Obama, but it's only about a 2 on the pander outrage scale.

I really despise The Nation and everything in it, so I tend to be very satisfied when someone upsets them. On oil, it's pretty clear that Obama had to kill the issue. America wants aggressive short term relief. Obama's previous positions offered none of that. So, he shifted.

I was one of the only people to praise Hillary for endorsing the gas tax holiday because I knew she knew where the majority of people were on this issue. Voters care about the long term, but the also care about right now. It isn't sufficient to proclaim how clever you are by denouncing efforts to address "right now." Obama's camp made a reasonable calculation. An extremely unreasonable calculation was his caving on FISA.

When it comes to primaries, you don't get a lot of moderates and independents. You get the people who feel most passionate about their issues and who are strongly motivated to participate. And like it or not, they're the ones who decide which candidates tepid moderates and shifting independents get to vote for in the GE.

And it's been like that for a long time.

That said, and I've posted this comment elsewhere, the general rule of thumb in blue-state Illinois is that you cannot get elected UNLESS you're a moderate, and both parties know it. That's a major reason why Alan Keyes lost to Obama in a landslide.

So why all the "progessives""liberals" "left-wing"/whatever are so surprised to see him tacking center I don't know. I knew when I helped vote him into the Senate that I was getting a moderate who would pretty much stay near to the center, so I'm not surprised at all.

What I like - and what made him somewhat unique - was that he was willing to compromise to overcome the kind of blind obstructionist tactics the GOP is enthusiastically practicing now.

JJE has it right. You're missing the point of Jonathan's post, kings, which is that the Palin felt the need to go out of her way to compliment an element of Barack Obama's energy plan. Again, with feeling, that's the Republican Alaska governor praising the Democratic presidential nominee's energy plan. Now, as JJE notes, she was specifically referencing Alaska's natural gas reserves, not the petroleum reserve, that's your own editorial flourish. Analyzing two opposing strategies and opening MyDD up for possible criticism is, of course, fair game, it's just you're comparing apples and oranges here.

Hmmm
kingsguy..

Your problem..
On one hand you are stuck with this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phjDm05E9 Qw

on the other hand..
oh your other hand is busy..

No contest: The Nation wins hands down. Afterall, look who their writers are; ours, by contrast, are lay people with opinions, although we sometimes feature articles by good analysts, including Nation writers. This opinion is not to diminish MyDD, but merely to make plain that MyDD is a blog and not a venerable liberal news magazine like The Nation.

In fact, I hardly ever see issues displayed on MyDD that are found regularly on The Nation: values, poverty, economics, foreign policy including African poverty, Darfur, and even the broad Middle East which is a hot issue in this campaign but seldom diaried on.