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16 Comments so far
Show AllThis should have been the logo before the election. We could have had Nader or Mckinney instead of this weasel continuing Dubya's hell !
Because we see the economic draft is well on its way! And a big war will get rid of those extra eaters!
Silence is Consent.
Alas, we 'elected' AIPAS's other sock puppet.
He might be doing this to get re-elected with necessary conservative support by giving them red meat. Maybe if he gets re-elected, he can afford to get more progressive in his second term.
His choices are, sell out, get filthy rich while preventing his own assassination by the right, or go along with demanding, insulting, ungrateful progressives who won't make him rich, will make him lose the election, blame him for everything but won't assassinate him.
If he decides to go with progressives in the end, it will be because he is concerned about his family's future, has realized that it's the right thing to do and has enough strength of character to challenge Mammon and do what's right despite the consequences.
We could support Obama by contacting conservative Dems and pushing back, but instead we relish attacking Obama with our circular firing squad.
-Maybe if he gets re-elected, he can afford to get more progressive in his second term.
And here, my friends, is is a classic case of why America is going downhill fast. Good luck ezeflyer, I salute your...well I was going to say optimism.
Yeah Obama needs more support to... what is he doing? rejecting single payer? expanding the occupations? lowering workers wages? protecting Bush and co-conspirators? Go get-em tiger! Obama is secretly a progressive is he? he is just not showing it because of assasins?
Hey, maybe you should run for president? Spend years raising money from corporations, shaking hands and giving speeches about how you are going to bring hope and change, and then when you get elected do the opposite of what you promised as part or your master plan to not get assasinated! Brilliant.
You are implying that Obama is doing the opposite of what he campaigned on but the things you mention are consistent with his campaign statements. He never said he was for single payer, and he claimed he was going to escalate troop levels in Afghanistan. I am not sure what you are referring to with worker wages.
In the military I saw that most conservatives are fearful, cowardly and reactionary while most liberals were unafraid, brave and progressive.
This has been corroborated by recent studies, one of the most important being POLITICAL CONSERVATISM AS MOTIVATED SOCIAL COGNITION (Jost, J.T., Glaser, J., Kruglanski, A.W., & Sulloway, F.J. (2003). Political conservatism as motivated social cognition.Psychological Bulletin, 129(3), 339-375.)
access here:
http://terpconnect.umd.edu/~hannahk/conservatism.html
Here is an excerpt from a short descriptive article below:
R.A. Altemeyer, a psychologist who has extensively studied people with right-wing beliefs, has observed:
[Right-wing authoritarians] see the world as a dangerous place, as society teeters on the brink of self-destruction from evil and violence. This fear appears to instigate aggression in them. Second, right-wing authoritarians tend to be highly self righteous. They think themselves much more moral and upstanding than others - a self perception considerably aided by self-deception.... This self-righteousness disinhibits their aggressive impulses and releases them to act out their fear-induced hostilities.
George Will seems steeped in that fear. To illustrate that point the authors quote this passage from an essay by Will: "Conservatives know the world is a dark and forbidding place where most new knowledge is false, most improvements are for the worse." Psychological studies back Will up. People with right-wing personalities hold more pessimistic views and left-wing personalities hold more optimistic ones. And that pessimism and optimism appears to inform how conservatives and liberals view their fellow humans. A 1984 survey of "emotional reactions to welfare recipients" found that conservatives "expressed greater disgust and less sympathy" than liberals.
While this propensity of conservatives to be threatened and fearful does not appear to induce neurotic behavior, one study of dream lives discovered that Republicans had three times as many nightmares as Democrats, indicating that fear, anger and aggression might be a factor in the subconscious motivations of conservatives.
The authors speculate that this susceptibility to fear "may help explain why military defense spending and support for national security receive much stronger backing from conservative than liberal political leaders."
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Society/Conservatives_Deconstruct.html
And more:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKvjMCWpsoM&feature=related
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/03/05-7#comment-1153094
As far as contacting Congressional reps goes, they admit it is the most effective way to get their attention, other than sending them a check.
Now how many young black men will rush to join the crusade under president Obama's new war? We're talking jobs folks!
Actually before he was elected, Obama made several statements calling for 'Sacrifice' while loosely alluding to the War for Terra. I see where Patrick Corrigan is coming from.
Come on. Put yourself in President Obamas shoes, Bush and Cheney are not running the military any more, our General are in charge. I say Obama has to let them do what they know best. He will give them time and resources, he will bring Europe back in the fold as active participants. We should not be left in this mess on our own. America was duped into the Iraq war, and if there is a God in heaven Bush/Cheney and company will be made to pay.
In the mean, thanks to those buffoons, the reality is you can not tell the difference between the terrorists or the Taliban. We could be fighting both, they want there country back. I say give it back to the Taliban with the condition the wipe out the terrorists.
Men while, Russia and China and part of the 10 billion Bush gave Pakistan are providing weapons and food for our enemy's. Why, pay back.And greed.
So , any way you look at this mess, we are in the middle , and there are three choices, nuke half Pakistan, leave, or stay and fight till there is stability in the region.
None of these options right now are going to work out well for all party's concerned. We are going to be at war as long as we our in these country's.Thats for sure.
I don't have any answers, God bless our brave troops and their family's.
My personal opinion is we need to get out.Now.
BornFreeMen
Who cares what he said on his campain speech, hes the president now and the blood is on his hands if he doesnt get people out of there.
I think i liked Bush better, because at least you know where you stand with him and his policies are clear. Obama seems now just like a smooth talker like Clinton and just another side of the same coin.
Like Clinton after the Columbine tragedy saying something like "We must teach our children words, not weapons, to resolve conflicts" then turning around and bombing Serbia for ludicrous reasons.
Was "Hope" a cynical way to say "Hope to keep doing business as usual"?
Americans need to stop settling for less. If Obama keeps doing the same old thing, in 2012 do the big plunge and vote someone like Kucinich in or vote for the greens.
Before and just after the election, the staff of Common Dreams couldn't stop pimping Obama as a "real progressive leader." Nothing's about him has changed since then. He's been talking about stepping up the war in Afghanistan for as long as he was running for president. In terms of his Senate voting record, he wasn't much better than McCain on the war or civil liberties.
Why does the emperor suddenly have no clothes?
More like 'Dope'
If war escalates, we have nobody but ourselves to blame. We are very quick to yell amongst ourselves & talk about conspiracy theories. How about a little letter-writing folks? It would not be too hard to convince the administration to focus more on PEACEKEEPING, at the very least (I believe that this president is sympathetic to this concept). We have a military. Perhaps something good could be done with it, under the right leadership. Perhaps we could be peacekeepers.
There is a tendency (enhanced by a subconscious dualistic tendency to being "against" something for the sheer sake of being against it), to believe that the problem is so awful that nothing can be done. Yes, it is abhorrent & disappointing that Obama is pandering to the fear-based mentality of so many people, however I believe that his concern over human rights is genuine, and I do not believe that he is a war-minded person in general (especially considering his recent inspiring comments about nuclear disarmament).
We need to write Obama. He has said that he is open to suggestions, & I believe he is capable of looking at things from different angles, so let's at least try.
We CAN communicate at least to the point that we can enhance a focus on human rights, as this is the presumed concern of those who will feel that this is a "just" war.
The talking points in http://www.madre.org/index.php?s=4&news=164 are a good place to start.
As a further enhancement on these important points, I personally do not believe that "sending troops" is what we should be speaking out against.
What we should be speaking out about is the use of violence as a means of solving problems.
Violence does not solve problems.
This is the point we must communicate.
We must explain the potential of violence escalating violence, we must stress the potential of innocent people getting hurt, and we must caution against a worsening of the human rights situation.
We should offer alternative methods of addressing the human rights problems in the area. There will be many people who will feel that this is a "just" war, considering the grave human rights abuses of the Taliban against the women of Afghanistan, which are well documented & should be studied by anybody who is planning on writing. These feelings of justification are understandable, however let us direct this concern into this as a "just cause" (as opposed to "just war"). I believe wholeheartedly that violence is not the means to resolving ANY problems, including the human rights situation in Afghanistan. Human rights abuse should be investigated, highlighted to the world & spoken out against (much like the approach Amnesty International & other human rights groups). Perhaps sending troops in as peacekeepers &/or sending in human rights monitors would be an alternative solution we could present to the administration.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
Do you really think the elites in Washington care what us peons think? Letter-writing won't hurt, but if you really want to see some change, then give up on the government. Be the change you wish to see. Get organized.
http://sandiego.indymedia.org/en/2002/09/2403.shtml