What got changed was the only provision from which US citizens are exempted is the “requireme
This section does not exempt US citizens from the presidenti
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
I don't understand why the Obama administratin has bought into some of this stuff, although it did at least stop a couple of the provisions for going through.
Do you remember retired army colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief-of-s
Look at what he's said about Obama and the NDAA.
"Obama's Codificati
WILKERSON: . . . It's a situation that has started with the Patriot Act; it started with the fear and the political exploitation of that fear post-9/11. And now, it's some years later, we're doing this, which is really perplexing ! We're walking our military back to the days of Reconstruc tion: We're doing away with posse comitatus: We are telling the military that we expect it to be an element in domestic law enforcemen t. This is nonsense!
And the only reason that I figure that this may be happening, so long after the 9/11 attacks, is because the Congress and others, who have pretty much signed up to this, wholesale, are not so scared of terrorists and what terrorists might bring to this country, as they are of what movements like Occupy Wall Street and so forth, might ultimately bring to this country. That's the only way I can see it: They're worried about what Americans, what the domestic situation might be like, given their inability to do anything about the wealthiest people in this country, running this country.
And so, they're taking measures right now, to make sure they can protect themselves in the future. And who are "they"? "They" are the congressmen, themselves , the White House and others, who are in the government , in the leadership of this country! And ultimately , those in the oligarchy who are running this country: the corporatio ns, big food, big oil, big pharmacy, and so forth, that really have the intrinsic power in this country to make it go one way or another.
That's the only way I can explain it! Otherwise, it's utterly perplexing to me, why we would be going back to Reconstruction days, to martial law, if you will, to handle law enforcemen t in this country. . . .
#6 - Continue the Insanity, meaning we keep doing the same thing* over and over again hoping for a different outcome.
[* - Same thing = Continue to refuse to believe our own 'lyin' eyes', keep doing what we've been doing for the past 20 years, continue voting for DLC-contro
Clue: There aren't any grown-ups to save us; we're 'it'.]
What happens when millions are out of work, no jobs, no money, no hope. London, Philadelph
"Quickly Brad, there are thousands of lives at stake... Brad any answer..." - Roy Neary, 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
#4 - A Third Party Challenge
We're not limited to voting for just Democrats and Republican
#5 - The "Oh, F R I C K it, let's get it over with - Vote for Republican
The horse is out of the barn and we should just let the radical right have its way. It's not like Obama and the gutless Dems are going to stop them.KEEP READING
It would be carnage for a few years, people eating other people (though that really only happens in the southern tier of states), old people dying (why are we so eager to keep them alive, anyway?) and cats and dogs living together...
Let it all come crashing down--but let's make sure to kill Social Security and Medicaid/Medicare. These Tea Partiers should be allowed to pay what the market will bear, right?
By the way, while our Tea-Party/Real Men (or whatever those guys who wouldn't pay taxes a few years ago are called) friends talk about how they'd like to keep more of their hard earned money and give less to the idiots who "gave us Vietnam and Iraq," perhaps they'd like to pick up the bill for the grading and paving of the road that leads from their home to their office--ca n't be what, more than $60K a year.
While they're at it, maybe they'd like to cut a check for the police and fire people they'd have to employ to protect their home and valuables from damage. If they could get one guy for another $30K, they'd be lucky. Oh, and then there's that water and waste service, if you've got that.
Really, just let these frickers get what they want.
#3 - Primary Obama
Here are two powerful arguments for challengin
Michael Lerner's very powerful case for primarying Obama.
Ralph Nader's very powerful case for primarying Obama (and no, he's not running again).
Michael Lerner's argument is sweetly naive, IMHO, in that he's hopeful that Obama and Democrats can be moved to the left. I don't think that's true anymore. I think the party and the culture of Washington
Up until a couple of weeks ago I was saying that, to begin with, no one in the Democratic Party would do it. Due to the hierarchic
Liberals/p
The DLC has gotten too powerful, what with a Democrat in the White House and a Democratic
As I said, that was up until a couple of weeks ago. Word has it that a challenge is coming, but it's really not a serious one, not intended for anyone to get the nomination from Obama.
So unless Obama drops out (in which case another corporate tool will take his place), the only legitimate challenges to him will come from outside the Democratic Party (Republica
So what's left?
KEEP READING
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
What an abzurd comment, and from a sock puppet without the integrity to own up to that ridiculous charge.
I get this question regularly from you and the other Obama/DNC paid operatives around here, so I hope those reading this thread (not the corporate tools like you, on the parties' payrolls, who post propaganda to sway the squishy-mi
#1 - Sitting Out The Election
I never advise people to sit out elections because the first rule of politics is, "If you're not at the table, you're on the menu". It's what p!sses me off about Obama (and one of many reasons I know him to be a con man betraying "them that brung 'im") because by shutting out liberals, the Democratic base, from his administra
#2 - Getting More Liberals/P
A 'Tea Party'-lik
One variation on this is if, A) Obama doesn't pull an LBJ (drop out) or, B) another Democrat or third party candidate doesn't challenge him, then take the money and shoe leather that you were planning on spending for Obama and use it to make both Houses of Congress overwhelmi
Given how effective Republican
KEEP READING
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Any doubt that this was the WhiteHouse’s only concern with the bill is now dispelled by virtue of the President’ s willingnes s to sign it after certain changes were made in Conference between the House and Senate. Those changes were almost entirely about removing the parts of the bill that constraine d his power, and had nothing to do with improving the bill from a civil liberties perspectiv e. Once the sole concern of the White House was addressed — eliminatin g limits on the President’ s power — they were happy to sign the bill even though (rather: because) none of the civil liberties assaults were fixed. As Mother Jones‘ Adam Serwer explained:
This morning I wrote that by making the mandatory military detention provisions mandatory in name only, the Senate had offered the administration an opportunit y tosee how seriously it takes its own rhetoric on civil liberties. The administra tion had said that the military detention provisions of an earlier version of the NDAA were “inconsist ent with the fundamenta l American principle that our military does not patrol our streets.”
The revised NDAA is still inconsistent with that fundamenta l American principle. But the administra tion has decided that fundamenta l American principles aren’t actually worth vetoing the bill over.
That’s because, as Serwer explained in a separate post, Congress (in response to the veto threat) made changes “addressing the security concerns, but not the ones related to civil liberties and the rule of law” (by “security concerns,” the WhiteHouse means: don’t restrict what the President can do). That the WhiteHouse cared only about the former (president ial discretion ), and not at all about the letter (civil liberties) , is proven by its willingnes s to sign the bill when only objections to the former have been addressed. For more proof on this point (and the perfect encapsulat ion of it) see this comment here.
Second, Obama’s veto threat was never about substantivKEEP READINGe objections to the detention powers vested by this bill; put another way, he was never objecting to the bill on civil liberties grounds. Obama is not an opponent of indefinite detention; he’s a vigorous proponent of it, as evidenced by his continuous , multi-face ted embrace of that policy.
Obama’s objections to this bill had nothing to do with civil liberties, due process or the Constitution. It had everything to do with Executive power. The WhiteHouse ’s complaint was that Congress had no business tying the hands of the President when deciding who should go into military detention, who should be denied a trial, which agencies should interrogat e suspects (the FBI or the CIA). Such decisions, insisted the White House, are for the President, not Congress, to make. In other words, his veto threat was not grounded in the premise that indefinite military detention is wrong; it was grounded in the premise that it should be the President who decides who goes into military detention and why, not Congress.
Even the one substantive objection the WhiteHouse expressed to the bill (mandatory military detention for accused AmericanTe rrorists captured on US soil) was about Executive power, not due process or core liberties. The proof of that, the definitive , conclusive proof, is that CarlLevin has several times disclosed that it was the WhiteHouse which demanded removal of a provision in his original draft that would have exempted US citizens from military detention. In other words, this was an example of the WhiteHouse demanding greater detention powers in the bill by insisting on the removal of one of its few constraint s (the prohibitio n on military detention for Americans captured on US soil). That’s because the WhiteHouse ’s NorthStar on this bill was Presidenti al discretion : they were going to veto the bill if it contained any limits on the President’ s detention powers, regardless of whether those limits forced him to put people in military prison or barred him from doing so.
Obama's a freakin' fraud.
Persistent myths circulatin
First, while the powers this bill enshrines are indeed radical and dangerous, most of them already exist. That’s because first the BushAdminiKEEP READINGstration and now the ObamaAdmin istration have aggressive ly argued that the original 2001 AUMF already empowers them to imprison people without charges, use force against even US citizens without due process (Anwar Awlaki), and target not only members of AlQaeda and the Taliban (as the law states) but also anyone who “substanti ally supports” those groups and/or “associate d forces” (whatever those terms mean).
That’s why this bill states that it does not intend to change the 2001 AUMF (even as it codifies far broader language defining the scope of the war) or the detention powers of the President, and it’s why they purposely made the bill vague on whether it expressly authorizes military detention of US citizens on US soil: it’s because the bill’s proponents and the WhiteHouse both believe that the President already possesses these broadened powers with or without this bill. With a couple of exceptions, this bill just “clarifies” — and codifies — the powers Obama has already claimed, seized and exercised.
See video here that elaborates this point: This is not to mitigate how heinous this bill is, as there are real dangers to codifying these powers in law with bipartisan Congressional support as opposed to having the President unilateral ly seize them and have some lower courts recognize them. Instead, it’s a reflection of how horrible the civil liberties status quo has become under the Bush and Obama administra tions. This is the reason why civil libertaria ns have been so harshly critical of this President. It’s the reason civil liberties groups have been saying things like this even when saying them was so unpopular: it’s because Obama has, for three years now, been defending and entrenchin g exactly the detention powers this law vests, but doing it through radical legal theories, warped interpreta tions of the 2001 AUMF, continuiti es with the BushCheney template, and devotion to EndlessWar and the civil liberties assaults it entails. See the newspaper excerpts below for more proof of this.
Socially speaking, Obama's better than almost any Republican in the running.
Friday, December 17, 2010
Why is Obama leaving the grass roots on the sidelines?
By Sam Graham-Felsen
Obama entered the White House with more than a landslide victory over Sen. John McCain. He brought with him a vast network of supporters, instantly reachable through an unpreceden ted e-mail list of 13 million people. These supporters were not just left-wing activists but a broad coalition that included the young, African Americans, independen ts and even Republican s - and they were ready to be mobilized.
There have been several what I call "telling moments" about the true nature and intention of Obama and DLC-contro
Of course, the first most obvious of them was Obama's flipfloppi
So in February 2008 Obama implied he would have voted no, and in July 2008, after liberal activists had already "fueled the financial engines of his presidenti
His campaign's 'damage control'-e
The substance and style of that Obama flip-flop has been repeated on one issue after another over the past 3 years.
Never was Obama's treachery more evident than during the healthcare debate, when a whole slew of strategies were employed by the White House to make sure that the insurance and pharmaceut
Instead of what Americans put Obama and Democrats into power to get (affordabl
Having health insurance ≠ medical treatment.
We all know by now how Obama took single payer off the table before the debate ever began (few realize how that was necessary in order to prevent getting a public option in any final legislatio
KEEP READING
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Obama never claimed to be a Liberal; he's more like a Moderate "R" in some respects. He's better than any of the real "R"s and no "I"s or "L"s or other Third Party candidate (Gary Johnson) has a chance in Election Hell.
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