Preventing terrorism is not and has never been the objective of the US government or the US military.
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Watch this, Rachel Maddow and Richard Engel walking the dusty streets of Afghanistan's 'middle class', and see where US taxpayers' dollars have gone. The parallel between "nation-building" in Afghanistan (not) and what the 1% is doing to America's middle class should chill you to the bone.
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Talk of Democratic politicians having no spines are greatly exaggerated, just like Obama's timidity is myth: He's plenty tough when it comes to standing up to the Democratic base.
Democratic voters have mistakenly believed that Obama and Democrats want what they want. The DLC-controlled DemocraticParty gives lip service to all populist issues (like jobs, civil rights protections, restoring habeas corpus, ending the wars, public healthcare, WallStreet reform, environmental and energy issues, etc.).
If the Bush years taught us anything, it's that anyone can sell anything to Americans, if you're stolid and relentless in your sales pitch and tactics. It's not that Bush and Rove were geniuses and knew something that nobody else knew; Bush and Rove were just more ruthless in doing what politicians and the parties had gone to great lengths to hide from Americans -- If you keep at it, escalate your attacks, don't take 'no' for an answer, never back away, you'll wear the opposition down.
Obama didn't get to be the first black president, vanquish Clinton's machine (to get the nomination) and the oldest, most experienced politicians in US history (including the RoveMachine) by not having mastered these skills. Nor do Democratic politicians (more incumbents than ever, in office longer) not know how to do it. How do you think Democrats managed to keep impeaching BushCheney off the table, have us still reelecting them, not marching on Washington with torches and pitchforks?
Obama and Democrats know how to do it -- They don't want to do it.
The trick for them has been to keep the many different populist groups believing that they really do support our issues, but they're merely inept. And to get us to keep voting for them despite their failure to achieve our alleged shared objectives.
Getting Democratic voters (and Obama's 'most ardent supporters') to understand that Democratic politicians have been taking us all for suckers and patsies is the most immediate problem and the challenge.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Obama has no interest in slowing the corporate steamroller. His only interest is in making you think so.
Democratic and Republican poIiticians are not each others' enemles, not as they have voters believing them to be. Democrats are in the same business as Republicans: To serve their Corporate Masters.
Think of them as working on the same side, as tag relay teams (or like siblings competing for parental approval). 'Good cop/bad cop'. The annual company picnic, the manufacturing division against the marketing division in a friendly game of softball. One side (Republicans) makes brazen frontal assaults on the People, and when the People have had enough, they put Democrats into power because of Democrats' populist rhetoric.
Once in power, Democrats consolidate Republicans' gains from previous years, continue on with Republican policies but renamed, with new advertising campaigns. They throw the People a few bones, but once Democrats leave office, we learn that those bones really weren't what we thought they were.
Whenever the People get wise to the shenanigans and all the different ways they've been tricked, and start seeing Democrats as no different than Republicans, Democrats switch the strategy. They invent new reasons for failing to achieve the People's business.
Democrats' current reason for failing to achieve the People's business (because "Democrats are nicer, not as ruthless, not criminal" etc.) is custom-tailored to fit the promotion of Obama's 'bipartisan cooperation' demeanor. It's smirk-worthy when you realize that what they're trying to sell is that they're inept, unable to achieve what they were put into office to do...And their ineptitude, like that's somehow "a good thing".
When it comes to achieving corporations' business, Democrats are remarkably competent. Obama is even more competent in that he's been able to give himself some distance from policies that displease Democratic voters ('plausible deniability') in a variety of ways that keep his favorable ratings high. Whether it's renaming Republican legislation ("Romney healthcare " to "Affordable Health Insurance Act") to getting other legislators like Joe Lieberman to actually do the heavy lifting legislatively, Obama's 'most ardent admirers' lay themselves on the line for him out of their ignorance of what he's actually doing.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
I'm an old OLD liberal Democrat and the old "lesser of two eviIs" argument just doesn't work anymore.
As the head of the Democratic Party, the spotlight falls on Obama.
Obama's continuing just about all of the Bush-Cheney policies, even going BushCo one better: How do any of Obama's 'most ardent supporters' explain Obama's doctrine that presidents have the right to kiII American citizens with no due process, no oversight, and his push for 'indefinite preventive detentlon' and no transparency of anything a president asserts should be his secret? Pure Kafka. As a Democrat, I don't know how any Democrat can get behind this, or Obama's stepping up every offense that we on the left accuse conservatives of (for example, caving to the dirty energy interests, shelving regulations on clean air, issuing more offshore drilling permits than Bush-Cheney, etc.). The pandering that you accuse Romney of is also what Obama does.
At this point, I would argue that Obama and Democrats are worse than Republicans. Bush-Cheney-Republicans make no bones or excuses for what they've done and who they are, whereas Obama and Democrats ran on knowing better. "Lesser of two evils"? No, Obama's the more effective of the two evils. More effective on behalf of the corporate elites.
Obama has done nothing to engender my or the People's trust. In secret budget talks, Obama left EVERYTHING on the table, including Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Just as Obama ran on SinglePayer, then backed down, then said he wouldn't sign any legislation that didn't include a public option, and then reneged, in the weeks after the election he's going to be cutting another secret budget deal with Republicans (he'll push SimpsonBowles, the 'CatfoodCommission's' report), just like the one he cut on the lousy health insurance legislation and Bush's (now Obama's) tax cuts for the rich, that ends Great Society programs. And then there's the KeystonePipeline - Obama already put the land-grab for the southern route on the fast track.
'In bed with corporations'-secret deals is Obama's mode. It's how he operates. HE'S A REPUBLICAN-IN-DEMOCRATS'-CLOTHING. Obama is not a man of the People; he's a tool of the Corporations.
Why should Obama and Democrats do anything for Obama's 'most ardent supporters' if they know they've got you over a barrel, that you're going to vote for them no matter what, because you're terrified of Republicans?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
We're not in Afghanistan for anything having to do with terrorism, although our foreign policy, using our military for corporate acquisition of the world's resources, is creating terrorists and putting American citizens in peril.
The official objective in Afghanistan has been kept from the American people:
"The war in Iraq was very very clearly about oil, as was the war in Afghanistan. The oil pipeline that was planned (in Afghanistan), the best security for that was an occupation."
"If you map the proposed pipeline route across Afghanistan and you look at our bases? Matches perfectly. Our bases are there to solve a problem that the Taliban couldn't solve. Taliban couldn't provide security in that part of Afghanistan -- Well now that's where our bases are. So, does that have to do with Osama Bin Laden? It has nothing to do with Osama Bin Laden. It has everything to do with the longer plan, in this case a strategy which I wouldn't necessarily call neoconservative, however it fits perfectly in with the neoconservative ideology which says, 'If you have military force and you need something from a weaker country, then you need to deploy that force and take what you need because your country's needs are paramount'. It's the whole idea of unilateralism, of using force to achieve your aims."
-Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel whose assignments included a variety of roles for the National Security Agency and who spent her last 4 1/2 years working at the Pentagon with Donald Rumsfeld
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUxI3rSLDO8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SltOy_F6ZII
we only have two choices and one of them (Romney/Ryan) is totally unacceptable.=============================
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