Ah, the first betrayal. How many more defeats will the activists who got him elected feel now? Under Bush, as Obama put it, we were given a "false choice" between our ideals and our security. Now, will we simply be given another imaginary dichotomy under which we are always asked to sacrifice our true ideals in the names of "bipartisan compromise" and "post-partisan politics"? The political center doesn't exist any more, if it ever did. It's time to stop feeding those at the top just a little more while we try to see if there's more food in the back for the ones at the bottom. They've had enough.

Obama campaigned on powerful words: "Hope", "Change". He knew the power of those words, or he wouldn't have used them. He did use them, so he is fully culpable, accountable to them as he spends his "political capital". HOPE is an every-day feeling. It is the light that guides the least fortunate and most frightened of us forward, and the warmth that sustains us on very cold days. Hope is for change tomorrow. Not a prison closed a year from now. Not that we'll be sorta less dependent on oil and kinda sustainable a half-century from now. Hope stretched too far is despair; hope stretched too thin is just a dream.

The campaign is over. The posturing is finished. This administration can no longer define itself with words alone. It must supplment these words with actions. It's time to go boldly forward, to keep HOPE alive. It's time for the status quo to CHANGE, not evolve. It's time to question everything.

online petition to save the polar bear being firlded w/ cover letter from Robert Kennedy
http://www.nrdconline.org/campaign/Rescue_the_Polar_Bear

Funny, not many comments here. I guess them people are too busy getting distracted about Gaza as usual ! And then they won't know what hit them when the severe environmental damage strikes !

See Obama really is a lackey to big money!

Mike Morin
www.peoplesequityunion.blogspot.com

Palintropos you are an idiot ! ! !

Obama reversed himself on this during the campaign so its not surprising to see this news. Expect to see more of a continuation of Bush's policies (e.g. NCLB) in the future from Mr. Obama. Wednesday's "action" on Gitmo and Lobbying were effective photo ops during the young President's first full day in office but both were very light in substance and full of loopholes exist.

I'm a Californian and this is bullshit.Wrote this about the trees and yet it is all about the environment which covers the whole earth.Was not going to blame Obama,but if he does not change this he is to blame.
A FEELING

Been bothered for a while now about the state of the world, the people, my country and the people in it and what has transpired since the colonials dumped tea in Boston harbor and told King George to stuff it. Admirable stuff and then write a Declaration of Independence and a Constitution for the ages and right from the start started dragging the words through the dirt and mud since paving was not in yet. What they did to the native populations belied what was in those words, the alien and sedition act, slavery. So, let me see, it is ok to push a people different than themselves (color, mostly) out of their way and if they did not go peaceably they would go by force; even folks of the same color but different culture were “discouraged” from coming over but it was fine by everybody to import slaves to do all the work nobody else wanted and then get paid slave wages. This was all fine, right? After all slavery is mentioned in the Bible is it not? The first prez was cool a couple of other ones too and then we get to Lincoln; who did considerable but who, I think, would have done more but already the American malaise was in; greed and meism.

What is different today? Nothing except that we grew up to be the big bully on the on the world stage and treated and are treating our own people like shit which is not much better than what England was doing when the colonists left; some advancement eh? People talk and make everything complicated by “political realities” which is bullshit for I got mine , when you get as political as me you may get yours. What a way to live. Don’t even know why it is called life when all it is existence. We can sit here forever and blame whoever but the dems and repubs have screwed this peoples here and ,in my opinion, a third party would be doing the same as this first 2. Why? Politics.

Fear; for most of my adult life that has been hammered into the American conscience and it has worked most excellently just look at some of the assholes we’ve let run our government; legally or not.

This has just been a rambling because if I didn’t I would just cry, not only for my country and the people but for the world and all the people out there and here is the reason and the kicker. Read in Common Dreams today where Scientists say that in North America the trees are dying and is past the point of reversal http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/01/22-8.
Can Obama do any good? It may be to late and the feeling I get is that it just might be too late and history will blame him for a peoples mistakes that started well over 200 years ago. Imagine a leader who had slaves as ancestors getting the blame for a national disaster; how ironic is that? Still do my little bit, may not be enough, but that’s me. Fear to promote greed is a potent combination. At 72 death is another adventure and my license plate holder says it for me
FREEDOM IS A CREATORS GIFT
FREEDOM THRIVES IN A WE SOCIETY
Tony 1/23/09