"It takes a lotta brass..."

That was President Clinton's off the cuff remark about Ryan's criticism of Obama's 715 billion dollar reduction of Medicare - when his own budget was doing the same thing.

But I've got a different take on it.

The only problem is that I see a lack of brass, and this time about Obama's caving into the right wing criticism of the Democratic platform's lack of god-talk and leaving off the Jerusalem capital thingie the right wing loves so much and somehow has never gotten around to fulfilling.

By taking the action he did - and almost forcing the mayor running the podium at the time to declare victory when almost anybody watching could see there was nowhere near the two-thirds margin required - he both showed a lack of balls at all, much less big brass ones, and handed the Republicans even more video clips of Democrats "hating god" than their pipe dreams could ever wish for.

On the other hand, had he just simply ignored them, they'd have had no new video clips, no "hating god" moments to clutch their pearls over, and he would have shown the kind of moxie and leadership the Democrats surely hope he could display more of.  Win/win!

Instead, we've got kind of a "declare victory and hurriedly move on" moment, guaranteed to give the Republicans more to crow about.

Come on, Obama, they've got all the moments to crow over they need just lying their asses off, without you handing them something with meat on it.

The thing is, the Democrats have every reason to have left it just the way it was.  The platform already contained plenty of talk about "faith", something the godbots on the right just love to go on about, it just didn't use the specific word "god".  Skirting the edges of putting religion into the realm of government policy, for sure, but at least not over the top.

Additionally, this country has traditionally tried to take a position of mediator between the Palestinians and the Israelis - we've no place blatantly taking one side or the other, as doing so just kills any credibility we may have left over after the last debacle of peace talks.  If the right wing has any real desire to see peace to insure the survival of their beloved Israel, you'd think they'd just fall all over themselves trying to  to make it work.

But no, the right wing narrative is all about the Second Coming, and peace in the Middle East has no place in that scenario!

So, to mollify people who wouldn't vote for Obama if Satan himself were the Republican nominee, he had to screw around with things and hand the Republicans something to try to distract the country from his nomination speech tonight.

Smooth move, Exlax....