Obama goes race-specific-negative on Black people whenever it is useful in attracting white electoral support. Otherwise, he is studiously "race neutral" - a cynical device he deploys to avoid recognizing the pervasiveness of racial wrongs against African Americans. The candidate periodically offers loud and specific criticisms of Blacks, but prescribes no programs - not one - to address specific Black grievances. He feels quite secure with this cruel and crooked campaign posture, confident that no significant complaint will emanate from African American quarters - they are loyal, no matter what. And for that reason, they need not be respected.

The Black burden is even heavier than that. African Americans are expected to circle the wagons at the merest hint of racist threats to the candidate. Any slight to Obama, real or imagined, must be met with massive Black response, while Obama's disregard of Black priorities and sensibilities is endlessly forgivable. At the commonsensical level, the entire Obama-Black folks relationship is so bizarre as to seem insane. The candidate has been imposed on the African American polity by corporate forces in the Democratic Party, of which he is a loyal, Harvard-vetted operative. He constantly swears fealty to the white American civic religions of American Exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny, both rooted in race supremacy. He has proven his devotion to this ghastly Euro-American mythology and worldview, through public denunciation of liberation theology and ritual separation from one of its major institutions. He bows to imperial power and its endless expansion, fully aware that, as Dr. Martin Luther King phrased it 40 years ago, the military will "draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube," draining all hope for creation of a just society.

People of confidence and true strength don't window-dress historic candidacies with easy-to-parody, pathetically ridiculous Seals.

I find it odd, though, that it would be brought up in a PUMA, HRC vs BO debate. I don't expect Obama to fillibuster, but nor do I expect Clinton to. She has not been any more opposed to the FISA bill, and while nobody can say for sure, I am nearly certain her course of action would have been the same as Obama's. So, where's the beef?

Part II, by contrast, is the part that everyone has gotten up in arms about. It creates effective immunity for telecom companies. It makes perfect sense for Obama to criticize this part of the bill. That's because he doesn't need it as much as he needs the first part, and his base really really dislikes it.