Obama has every potential to make Lyndon Johnson look like a slacker. All we need to do is get him elected, together with a Dem Congress.

How about President Nader or President McKinney instead? So long as we continue to buy into the catch-22 of viability we can never change it. I have no interest in realism.

And Obama is a total and complete fraud. Only deluded people could ever vote for him. The Dem congress has broken all its promises the past 2 years. It's time to vote for other than Repub or Dem.

Amen Rich Griffin. The Democrats had plenty of golden opportunities to stop Reagan and both Bushes from passing environmentally destructive policies but they allowed themselves to be sold out. Even when Clinton was in office and in his first two years had a Democratic Congress, nothing was done. Oh sure, Clinton waited until the last few days of his office to pull an "environmental" stunt but it was nothing anyway. As long as both parties show no regards for hemp or even give renewable technologies the kinds of rewards they keep giving oil, coal, gas, and nuclear, it doesn't really matter who's president.

And Daniel David does not want you to know that America already tried an all-Democratic government and look what happened when Bill Clinton in his first two years worked with a "Democratic" controlled Congress and Senate. For the most part it was all failure and lots of caving in and backdoor deals to the GOP. For the past 16 years, the Democrats have allowed the GOP to RAPE them and look how LOSER-like the Democrats are today. The good news is that both parties are making no bones about the losers that they are. The bad news is that they are taking down the country with it and we the people may not even have a country to rebuild at this rate.

as flawed as obama is, he likely will be the next president. it would behoove us to develop strategies for working with him to craft an administration responsive to progressive values, instead of merely dismissing him as a fraud. who's to say that he won't be the start of the turning of the tide - not accomplishing everything we could hope for, but on whose "shoulders" the next president can build. all leaders considered "great" have been beneficieries of the the labors of those before them who may have still fallen far short of their goals. the glass may be filled only half full with obama, but it'll be better than no glass at all.

League of Conservation Voters Scorecard for 2007:

H. Clinton 73%;
B. Obama, 67%; (hasn't been in the Senate for long)
McCain, alarmingly low!

Al Gore lifetime rating: 64% (Ha! Some environmentalist, eh?)
John Kerry: lifetime rating, 92%

H. Clinton and Obama missed four key environmental votes in 2007. This tactic helps their overall score.

"Starkraving" is a term sometimes associated with "mad".
But not this one here at CD. "Starkraving" gets it, when most here don't.

But for those who don't know the answer to "How about President Nader or President McKinney?,....uh, neither one of them is going to score 5%.

Daniel David Said: "neither one of them is going to score 5%"

Yes, that is because of people like YOU Daniel... People who insist on the "lesser of two evils" philosophy. If EVERY progressive voted their true conscience, McKinney would win by a landslide. Instead, the fear mongering of the 'lesser evil' folks, prevents that from happening. Also Daniel, WHY are you such an Obama "true believer"... what is it that you expect him to do to save your ass?

We destroy the things we need to get the things we want.

And nothing will be allowed in the way of the corporate dollar. There is something called sustainable living, which we are not doing. We are taking water out of the well faster than it is refilling, and then are surprised when the well runs dry. Some of us anyway.

Vote third party, don't support corporate sponsored oppression and their candidates.

Impeach.

"Obama has every potential to make Lyndon Johnson look like a slacker." - Daniel David

Students of history, take a moment and ponder that statement. Then wonder how bad things could get regardless of who's elected.

"Obama...make Lyndon Johnson look like a slacker." If you're talking about Lyndon Johnson, another world-class criminal, then that's what a lot of us are seeing as a distinct possibility with Obama. Look, our government is pretty much gone. Sheep, after so many decades, and the wool having grown so thick over the eyes! Obama, just like Pelosi, Reid, Hoyer, Emanuel, et. al, is a liar and slick manipulator. None of them have even dared talk about the real issues. They talk about what a failure Bush has been, but basically treat the whole disaster with an air of normalcy, considering the real terrors which the elites have planned for the rest of us. What is it--is the fear too overwhelming to see through this charade--why the choice toward such bullish ignorance. FASCISM IS ALREADY HERE!! Not a peep from Obama! Yes, Obama has been very adept at flying "under the radar". He doesn't have to pander for swing votes. He's already been annointed by the folks who "really matter". The dear Barack and dear Michelle are already heavily invested in the Council on Foreign Relations, the organization that was originally set up to control media and public discourse. Obama was already known back in Chicago as a liar. Does anyone really think that Obama's lies throughout the campaign have been meant to fool undecided conservatives?

Under the tutelage of Zbignew Brzienzki and the incoming gang of war criminals (and most are not new to the scene), Obama is crafting his own map as WAR PRESIDENT--Afganistan into Pakistan and then who knows from there. And what about the war on the people of this country. The plans for instituting Martial Law proceed at an unfettered pace. Not one peep from Obama. But then I keep forgetting that he's just waiting to get elected--then things will change.

There's a video clip (I think on World Net Daily) of a speech Obama gave in Chicago and Colorado Springs in the first of the month. He talks of a vast expansion of Americorp and the Peace Corp, in the context of providing for the Youth. In the middle of all this he states that we cannot rely solely upon our military for security. We must create a CIVILIAN NATIONAL SECURITY FORCE, "as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded" as our military". What might be the mission of this new civilian national security force? And will it fall under the Department of Homeland Security, which has usurped the authority of our previous security and policing agencies, including city, county, and state law enforcement agencies? Obama then goes on to talk about revitalizing instruction in civics so that our youth can find out what "this country is all about". This I found to be a real headspinner in light of his little two-step with the FISA and telecom legislation. But Wait!! This is just part of Obama's clever little plan. Things are going to be just fine!

the point is we are in deep do-do regardless of the election. a positive future for the planet will depend as much on individuals going in new life-affirming directions, coordinating with each other to the degree that it is possible and those changes "trickling up," as much as the decisions made from on high.

i understand that the culture of immediate gratification in the progressive community is based on the very real notion that we may not have much time left with this little experiment in survival. that out of a sense of urgency and fairness to all, dramatic change is an absolute requirement. but there is nothing anyone who has been vigorously supporting nader, mckinney or kicinich can say that tells me that their time is now! what part of this game don't you get? political culture in this country is so mired in unwieldy, slug-paced and obsolete (not to mention corrupt) practices, it's a wonder we haven't became a nation of anarchists. to create meaningful change is by definition to take a longer view. call it expedient to support a step in the right direction. i call it refusing to self-righteously go down with the ship.

Rich Griffin & hemp4victory: If Nader and McKinney were to siphon enough votes away from Obama for McSame to win, I'll blame the likes of you. Consider a compromise: Support Obama and push for key positions places Nader and McKinney in the Obama administration. They'd likely be vocal and hard to control but that's what we'll need to get real change in several directions.

god how I wince every time I hear "homeland security". it has such a Third Reich sound to it.
To the article: my friends the only thing that is going to save our asses is if the statistics presented to us by the global warming scientist are incorrect and we actually have a lot more time to deal with pollution and energy policy. There is no way in hell regardless of who becomes President that there will be the will in Congress to get our CO2 emissions down to the level that mankind doesn't pass the point of no return. Even if there is the will to do so within ten years, China and India would have to do the same. As I read the financial journals I see that there is a mass effort in China, and indeed around the world, to build coal fired generation of electricity. Coal, while not cheap, is cheaper than oil or NG. China has huge coal deposits but in now having to import coal and there is talk of China using their glut of U.S. dollars to buy U.S. and Canadian coal companies.
The only hope I see is if the U.S. undertakes the Gore's proposals of a manhattan project-like investment in renewable energy and the infrastructure to support it-think it will happen?

America and the world face tremendous challenges on several fronts: climate change, Peak Oil, ecosystem collapse, nuclear proliferation, and overpopulation, to name a few. I've seen no evidence that Obama offers the kind of comprehensive solutions coming out of the Green Party (and the Nader campaign). In fact, he voted to give the government the authority to wiretap at will, and he's chosen to be his advisors the same old pack of "free trade" economists that gave us NAFTA, a $9.5 trillion dollar nation debt, and the mortgage crisis. As for ending the occupation of Iraq, his position isn't that different from McCain's. Both would keep a military presence in that country for years to come. Talk is cheap.

Wake up, people. Obama is a sell-out. He pandered to the Democrats' progressive base and won the nomination. Now, he's pandering to the right wing. Where does it stop? What will he not say to get elected?

A vote for Cynthia McKinney is a vote for real change, integrity, and no compromise on the Constitution. Check out the Power to the People campaign at www.runcynthiarun.org and the Green Party platform at www.gp.org.

John M. Wages, Jr.
US House Candidate, MS-01
www.VoteJohnWages.com

lobo72 says:

"Rich Griffin & hemp4victory: If Nader and McKinney were to siphon enough votes away from Obama for McSame to win, *I'll blame the likes of you."*

Nader and Barr are taking votes from McCain almost exclusively, friend. Check the most recent Reuters poll.

If Obama doesn't win, I'll blame folks like you who spent time hectoring those of us who will not vote for Obama for the very things he has told us he stands for:

a bigger military
protecting Bush - no to impeach
less freedom, more surveillance
nix to single payer healthcare
Israel as the 51st state
a softer Bush doctrine
the coal and nuke industry

Why don't you get your Mr. Obama to appeal to the Naderites and Greens now? Our allegiance to Nader/McKinney is our way of sending Obama a message. He can't take our vote for granted, as he can with your vote.

Harvard and University of Chicago hatched Obama. And his schooling continued under the Chicago mafia. I think he's got a lot to prove. And his bullshit rhetoric makes him look like "an empty suit."

This website was founded by people who believe in third party politics. Apparently, you don't.

starkraving why not?
"as flawed as McCain is, he likely will be the next president. it would behoove us to develop strategies for working with him to craft an administration responsive to progressive values, instead of merely dismissing him as a fraud. who's to say that he won't be the start of the turning of the tide - not accomplishing everything we could hope for, but on whose "shoulders" the next president can build. all leaders considered "great" have been beneficieries of the the labors of those before them who may have still fallen far short of their goals. the glass may be filled only half full with McCain, but it'll be better than no glass at all."

"people who believe in third party politics"
there's nothing inconsistant in supporting third party politics while envisioning that obama will be the next president. it is practically axiomatic that third parties are more successful at winning local elections than national ones. why not invest some good old fashioned grass roots effort at electing greens in smaller regions of the country with the aim of working up the ladder. success breeds itself. to consider anyone besides nader or mckinney as being a failure seems hopelessly negative and defeatist.

progressives have the unique distinction of having at least philosophical support among the majority of americans while simultaneously being reviled by them. why is that? could it be that there are too many who get stuck in ideological purity, who refuse to support anything or anyone other than presidential contests as the be-all, end-all of political activism?

zzz
we obviously differ on the impact of a mccain administration as opposed to one headed by obama.
no difference at all to hard-line purists. a small step perhaps, but a step to those for whom a changing of the guard at the executive branch represents only one of a multitude of tracks we need to be engaged in to bring about a much-desired transformation of this country.

Don't worry fellow peasants!

The King and his Knights will save us from the Storm!

So. Friggen'. Pathetic.

The President -our Servant- should follow the will of his Sovreign -the People- and work with our Representatives -the Congress- who should also follow our will.

But noooo...

that just doesn't work well on TV does it?

435 people trying to do the bidding of 300 million people would just be impossible to "capture", huh?

No, better focus on that one guy, the one behind the podium and in front of that big flag, that "reads" SO much better on the screen doesn't it?

Sustainable Civilization will have to go hand and hand with Democratic Reform to Government and Economics AND the dismantling of Empire and the Democratization of International relations, AND advancement in scientific understanding and technological acheivement, both "high" and "low".

Sound like a lot of work?

S'cause it will be.

Too much for one "administration" to get done.

A whole helluva lot of us are going to have to join in and lend a real hand.

If we do it right it could be so much fun.

-matti.

On July 22nd, 2008 3:56 pm lobo72 wrote:

"Rich Griffin & hemp4victory: If Nader and McKinney were to siphon enough votes away from Obama for McSame to win, I'll blame the likes of you. [SNIP]"

lobo72 it is a fact that if Al Gore had won his own state of Tennessee we would not even be debating this point now. For the record I cannot recall 1 presidential candidate who lost his own state in a presidential election. It also bears noting that 57,700 voters were scrubbed from the voter roles in Florida before the 2000 election. From investigative report Greg Palast, "Between May 1999 and Election Day 2000, two Florida secretaries of state - Sandra Mortham and Katherine Harris, both protegees of Governor Jeb Bush- ordered 57,700 "ex-felons," who are prohibited from voting by state law, to be removed from voter rolls." You can read it at Greg Palast's website under the archive under year 2002 article title THE GREAT FLORIDA EX-CON GAME.

So how is it, that Nader cost Gore the election when over 90% of those scrubbed from the rolls were democrats in an election where the difference in votes between the two candidates was in the mid hundreds? And why didn't Gore demand a full state vote recount and not selected districts?

The next president should read these articles.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24036736-7583,00.html

"I [David Evans] DEVOTED six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian Greenhouse Office. I am the rocket scientist who wrote the carbon accounting model (FullCAM) that measures Australia's compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, in the land use change and forestry sector.

FullCAM models carbon flows in plants, mulch, debris, soils and agricultural products, using inputs such as climate data, plant physiology and satellite data. I've been following the global warming debate closely for years.

When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty good: CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the old ice core data, no other suspects.

The evidence was not conclusive, but why wait until we were certain when it appeared we needed to act quickly? Soon government and the scientific community were working together and lots of science research jobs were created. We scientists had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet.

But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"

There has not been a public debate about the causes of global warming and most of the public and our decision makers are not aware of the most basic salient facts: [you may open above link to get the facts]"

http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200807/monckton.cfm

"LOBALLY-AVERAGED land and sea surface absolute temperature TS has not risen since 1998 (Hadley Center; US National Climatic Data Center; University of Alabama at Huntsville; etc.). For almost seven years, TS may even have fallen (Figure 1). There may be no new peak until 2015 (Keenlysideet al., 2008).

The models heavily relied upon by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had not projected this multidecadal stasis in "global warming"; nor (until trained ex post facto) the fall in TS from 1940-1975; nor 50 years' cooling in Antarctica (Doran et al., 2002) and the Arctic (Soon, 2005); nor the absence of ocean warming since 2003 (Lyman et al., 2006; Gouretski&Koltermann, 2007); nor the onset, duration, or intensity of the Madden-Julian intraseasonal oscillation, the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation in the tropical stratosphere, El Nino/La Nina oscillations, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, or the Pacific Decadal Oscillation that has recently transited from its warming to its cooling phase (oceanic oscillations which, on their own, may account for all of the observed warmings and coolings over the past half-century: Tsoniset al., 2007); nor the magnitude nor duration of multi-century events such as the Mediaeval Warm Period or the Little Ice Age; nor the cessation since 2000 of the previously-observed growth in atmospheric methane concentration (IPCC, 2007); nor the active 2004 hurricane season; nor the inactive subsequent seasons; nor the UK flooding of 2007 (the Met Office had forecast a summer of prolonged droughts only six weeks previously); nor the solar Grand Maximum of the past 70 years, during which the Sun was more active, for longer, than at almost any similar period in the past 11,400 years (Hathaway, 2004; Solankiet al., 2005); nor the consequent surface "global warming" on Mars, Jupiter, Neptune's largest moon, and even distant Pluto; nor the eerily- continuing 2006 solar minimum; nor the consequent, precipitate decline of ~0.8 °C in TS from January 2007 to May 2008 that has canceled out almost all of the observed warming of the 20th century."

So the models seem to have some problem. How come?

continued w/answer to above question

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/21/monckton_aps/print.html

"It is of no little significance that the IPCC's value for the coefficient in the CO2 forcing equation depends on only one paper in the literature; that its values for the feedbacks that it believes account for two-thirds of humankind's effect on global temperatures are likewise taken from only one paper; and that its implicit value of the crucial parameter κ depends upon only two papers, one of which had been written by a lead author of the chapter in question, and neither of which provides any theoretical or empirical justification for a value as high as that which the IPCC adopted."

Garbage in, garbage out. Thats why.

Nader and McKinney are the best, no doubt. Even though they will only get votes in the low digits, I'm glad they are running if only to have a bully pulpit to air their good progressive views.

I would like to see them make this deal with progressive Dems: To appoint Ralph and Cynthia to high office (Atty. Gen., Sec'y of State, Supreme, etc.?) in an Obama administration in return for their withdrawing and throwing their support behind Obama later on before the election. This would put progressive Dems, Greens and Indys in the Administration and guarantee an election win.

I don't know why this will probably not happen.

http://www.whitneyforgov.org/articles/EnergyPolicy.htm

I keep posting this. I don't know if anyone actually reads it. I think it's a good plan. Too bad Rich Whitney didn't win in Illinois.

I guess the lesser of two evils is good enough for the likes of us.

It is interesting to note the complete news blackout on Common Dreams about the Green Party's nomination of Cynthia McKinney on June 13 in Chicago. Even an article about "The Next Green President" makes no mention of the Green Party or Cynthia's Power to the People campaign for the presidency, yet we're treated to an avalanche of news about McCain and Obama.

Has CommonDreams gone "mainstream"? Is the complete absence of news about the McKinney campaign (that has been reported in both MSM and Indy Media) a sign of political censorship on CD?

Check out http://gp.org for news about the Chicago convention and the nomination of Cynthia McKinney. Also, watch/read Amy Goodman's interview with Cynthia and her running mate on Democracy Now! on July 21.