War is Good, Isn't It?

We have three wardogs in the race for the White House. Obama -- while supporting continued threats to the Middle East and military action in Sudan -- seems the most peaceful in intent and current actions. Hillary is both shrill and angry, and McCain is all that and more.

Active-duty military and many veterans tend to find Ron Paul's brand of conservatism -- including its native non-intervention -- wiser and more welcome. Ron Paul is still polling as high as 11% nationally -- this despite a very real mainstream media shutout all year. Ralph Nader is antiwar -- and he is probably pulling 3-5% as we speak. But 15% of the people will not be served -- instead we will get a more urbane version of George W. Bush for another four to eight years.

I know many of you are saying, "...but Obama is about change!" But Hillary is right -- change sounds good, but it takes a bit more than talk to implement concrete redirection and reduction in Washington. Obama, bless his heart, is probably not going to be -- forgive me -- shrill and angry enough to make it happen!

Given that we face a future GWB-lite regime, allow me to put a happy face on it. Here's three bits of good news for us under a continued regime of war, abroad and at home:

First, one in 99 Americans in behind bars, and our spending on prisons, prison construction and prison related employment is skyrocketing. And think of it -- all those young adults aren't out there trying to steal your job!

Secondly, our president recently said that war helps the economy here at home -- you know, the economy that isn't having a recession now and isn't going to have one? Check this out -- Bush says the war in Iraq is good for our economy, violating all known understanding of economics.

Thirdly and along those same lines, what we are doing in Iraq is destroying their agricultural production -- which must mean future good news for farmers in America, what with the increased market and and the need for years of tax-funded food aid in kind to the fertile crescent!

Bush-lite is coming to an America even more financially and emotionally stretched than it has been in the past few years. Don't worry, little sheeple. Voting is your civic duty, and you'll feel so much better after the next election.

Comments

[racom]

You are so, so right and that is so, so sad. As much as this country really needs dramatic change, I just do not see it happening. Not even with Obama, the monied powers that control this country cannot be ignored, worked with, or controlled. War is profit and population control rolled into one.

[Stirner]

Thank you, a fine run of irony... much needed these days! Ah, and not to forget your kind remarks about Ron Paul... I happen to be one of his supporters. It is not only that he has been ignored and shunned by the media, but when he is ever mentioned it is usually mixed with a bit of crude sarcasm. I resent it. I'm not supporting a "Loony" nor am I a "Paultard". I am a Koren vet (you know, our first bloody "Police Action"), a grandfather trying to help my children send their children to school, and, with a small pension, actually being taxed! I read that the latest Pentagon toy being an unneeded "air-tanker" (the usual war fought on the obsolete ideas of the last war -- in this case WW2). Cost for this silly thing: 40-50 Billion dollars!! Our local schools are running on empty. Well, I'm also a registered Republican and I really will not, under any circumstances, vote for what the neoconned Republican Party is offering me -- McCain and Lieberman (the "Bombsy Twins"). You know who I will vote for --

[ShawnMichel]

Barack is easily the best choice, and it is a mistake to judge him in the context of this primary season. Most are doing just that. But as far as the 'sheeple' comment is concerned, you are spot-on. Americans can barely be bothered to devote an hour every four years to their 'civic duty' as you put it; to expect them to do more to save their country is delusional. They are, in every respect, little more than sheep. Fat, bloated, lazy sheep. And we wonder why things are so shitty.

[itmaybetoolate]

"a mistake to judge him in the context of this primary season."

I agree! Let's judge him on what he has done in response to bush's unConstitutional behavior. Let's judge him on those many impassioned speeches he has made in the Senate decrying bush's attempt to gut the Constitution and his loud and insistent call for bush's impeachment. Let's allow his obvious love for the Constitution and the fact that he has stood up to bush and stood up for the Constitution, knowing that it could damage him politically, to be the standard we use to measure who he is, just as we can measure Hillary and any other congressperson by this standard.

What? He didn't make speeches? He hasn't called for bush's impeachment? He hasn't stood up for the Constitution? Oops, my bad.

[PTTY]

OBAMA’S REAL EXPERIENCE: HIS CANDIDACY

The best evidence of Obama’s readiness to lead the nation is the ability with which he has run for president. After all, what is more difficult, complicated, or challenging than getting elected president? What other life experience better illustrates one’s qualification to hold the office than a manifest skill in seeking it. For anyone who has ever been elected president, the race that sent them to the White House was the single most important event in their lives and dwarfs any other experience they might have had before running.

As we have watched Obama surmount the hurdles that lay in his path, we cannot help but be impressed with his judgment. Adam Wallinsky, who served on Bobby Kennedy’s staff, once singled out good judgment as JFK’s most salient characteristic. Obama has faced so many delicate questions and issues and seems always to have the right feel for how to handle them.

At the start of the contest, he chose to avoid running as a black candidate for president and ran, instead, as a candidate who happened to have black skin. He crafted a middle course between the determined rejection of his race and its grievances of a Clarence Thomas and its emphatic embrace by a Jesse Jackson or an Al Sharpton. While Hillary invoked her gender at every turn, Obama decided to transcend his race rather than invoke it.

He began his candidacy eschewing donations from PACs and lobbyists, preserving his purity and giving him ground on which to stand in his claim to represent a new kind of politics, rejecting the special interests. When Hillary, whose campaign decisions have been as faulty as Obama’s have been flawless, wallowed in such donations, the Illinois Senator used the difference to paint her into the corner of the status quo candidate.
Beyond simply avoiding special interest money, Obama learned the lesson of Joe Trippi and the Howard Dean campaign of 2004 (even though Trippi was working for Edwards) and used his star power to develop a massive cyber-roots fund raising base which he mobilized again and again by the click of a mouse. He realized the potential of the Internet to democratize campaign funding in a way the other candidates in general, and Hillary in particular, did not. (Mrs. Clinton invested tens of millions in direct mail instead with all of its costs and limited returns).

When Hillary criticized him for lacking experience, he brilliantly seized the opening she provided by becoming the candidate of change. He realized, as Hillary and Bill did not, that America wanted a change beyond the Bush/Clinton oscillation and grasped the fact that Hillary’s emphasis on experience would play into his hands.

And when the Clintons tried to use race to derail Obama, he countered skillfully by making Super Tuesday a referendum on tolerance and inclusivity, overtly rejecting the racial polarization which seemed to have set in after South Carolina. Underscoring his message with victories in white states like Utah, Idaho, Colorado and North Dakota, he buried the race issue.

While the Clintons went for the knockout blows of winning New York and California, Obama created a fifty state organization to win each caucus state. As Hillary’s campaign wasted half a million dollars on flowers, Obama’s husbanded his resources to put teams on the ground in the small states where his organizing paid off and brought him sufficient victories to survive the loss of the two big Super Tuesday states.

And when the Clintons went to full time negatives, Obama carefully parsed the attacks he would answer from those he wouldn’t and disdained to engage in the tit-for-tat negative campaigning, realizing that the process turned voters off more than the negatives themselves ever did.
Will he be a good president? If he is half as skillful in serving as he has been in running, he can’t miss.



Obama has real leadership quality?"

The World has witnessed him building a national political machinery from the ground up, out fund raising all other candidates Republican and Democrats most of whom came into the race with better name recognition.

Obama winning The Over Seas Democratic Elections that makes it 11 straight primaries shows Fantastic Commander In Chief Qualities and Leadership.

Hillary and John McCain cannot mange their campaigns and they are in shambles. We can measure their failures at Campaign managing to that of their Failure to manager the United States Government.




Can you imagine Hillary screaming at Obama after she sent mailers that were complete lies.

Trying to Heal a Rift in New Hampshire

By Alec MacGillis

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/01/18/trying_to_heal_a_rift_in_new_h_1.html

Three New Hampshire Democratic leaders who signed a letter two days before the state's primary at the request of
Hillary Clinton's campaign, attacking Barack Obama as soft in his support for abortion rights,
are asking Obama supporters in the state to put the rifts of the primary campaign behind them and
praising Obama for being "strongly pro-choice­."

Of the two dozen prominent women who signed the critical letter, e-mailed by the Clinton campaign to a list of supporters and undecided voters, three have now signed their names to another missive asking abortion rights supporters in the state to come together and take comfort in the fact that all of the Democratic presidential candidates are firmly pro-choice.

One of the three Clinton supporters went even further, saying in an interview
Thursday that signing the letter attacking Obama was a "mistake."

Katie Wheeler, a former state senator, said the Clinton campaign had not given her background information about Obama's record on abortion rights when it asked her to sign the letter calling him weak on the issue, and said that, as a result, she did not understand the context of the votes that the letter was attacking him over.

"It should never have gotten to the point where anyone thought Obama was not pro-choice," said Wheeler, a founder of the New Hampshire chapter of NARAL Pro-Choice America. "I don't think the Clinton campaign should have done that. It was divisive and unnecessar­y...I think it was a mistake and I've spoken to the national [Clinton campaign] and told them it caused problems in New Hampshire, and am hoping they won't do it again."

The new letter and comments by Wheeler are the latest twist in a back-and-forth that Obama supporters believe
did real damage to his campaign in the final days in New Hampshire, though Wheeler said she doubted that the e-mail had that much impact in the final day of the race. "I don't think this one thing would sway people," she said.

Nonetheless, the conflict over Obama's "present" -- rather than "yes" or "no" -- votes on abortion bills in the Illinois legislature has left behind such deep divisions among the state's Democrats that some Obama supporters vowed, in the wake of her come-from-behind N.H. win, not to vote for Clinton, should she become the party's nominee.

The e-mail arrived in selected New Hampshire in-boxes shortly after a postcard from the Clinton campaign that attacked Obama for being "unwilling to take a stand for choice" was mailed to homes.

"The difference between Hillary's repeatedly standing up strong on choice and Obama's unwillingness to vote 'yes' or 'no' is a clear contrast, and we believe the voters in New Hampshire deserve to know this difference," the e-mail stated. "We support Hillary Clinton because she never ducked when choice was at stake."

The Clinton campaign has made the same charge repeatedly over the past year, including a couple weeks before the Iowa caucus.
The Obama campaign had rebuffed it by invoking statements by an Illinois Planned Parenthood official, who said the "present" votes were part of a deliberate strategy to protect other pro-choice legislators, other than Obama, in vulnerable districts.

But the fresh New Hampshire attack arrived much closer to election day, leaving the Obama forces scrambling to respond by rushing out an automated phone call on the evening of Jan. 6, two days before the vote.

On primary day, Clinton won by two percentage points after trailing in the final polls by as much as 10 percent, thanks in large part to a last-minute surge in support from women.

The new e-mail seeking conciliation was signed by five prominent Clinton supporters in the state -- including Wheeler, House Speaker Terie Norelli, and state senator Maggie Hassan, the three who signed the initial attack. The letter, which was also signed by several Obama supporters, states that "many of us...engag­ed in good faith in the rough and tumble of competitive politics. In doing so, feelings have been bruised and some deep anger has emerged."


It goes on to downplay the dispute created by the initial e-mail as "nuanced differences" which should not be allowed to "drain our energy." And it concludes, in seeming contrast to the initial attack on Obama's abortion rights credentials, that "The good news is that all of the candidates within the Democratic Party are strongly pro-choice and we should be proud that our efforts have led to such a solid field. "

In the interview Thursday, Wheeler said she was not aware of the explanation of Obama's present votes by Illinois Planned Parenthood when she agreed to sign the critical letter at the request of Clinton officials in New Hampshire.

"What we didn't know was the circumstances of those Illinois pro-choice votes. Since then we've learned that it was the plan of the pro-choice community in Illinois. These were subtleties that those of us in the Clinton campaign here didn't understand," she said. "I for one did not understand the present votes....I did not know the full context."

Wheeler said she regretted the ill will it had caused. "I'm sorry there was a misunderstanding, and we're hoping to heal divisions that still may exist," she said. "It's a real pity it got so intense, but that's what happens in that close an election.

People get impassioned and lose their judgment..­It was the heat of emotions in a tight election where everybody cared deeply about the issue, and many of us over-react­ed."

The other two Clinton supporters who signed both the critical e-mail and the conciliatory one stood more strongly by the initial one. Sen. Hassan said she, too, was unaware of the Illinois Planned Parenthood defense of Obama at the time she signed the critical letter, that she had only been told by the Clinton campaign that the Illinois chapter of NOW had cited concerns about Obama's present votes. She said it was wrong for anyone to suggest that Obama was not pro-choice,
and that she was sorry about the upset that the letter had caused.

But Hassan stood by what she said was the main point of the initial e-mail, that Clinton was the most staunchly pro-choice Democrat. "All of the leading Democratic candidates are strongly pro-choice but I think Hillary's record is unparalleled.

I stand by what I signed before the election and don't think it's inconsistent with" the new e-mail stating that Obama is strongly pro-choice, Hassan said. "Everybody's going to interpret these letters and e-mails as they want to."

Norelli, the House Speaker, said she had been aware of the Planned Parenthood defense of Obama's Illinois record at the time she signed the critical e-mail but was comfortable with the letter's attack against Obama nonetheless, noting the concerns of the Illinois NOW chapter had raised about the votes. "I would say that the record is clear that he voted 'present' seven times. Planned Parenthood, some of the time at least, says it was part of a deal.

Well, NOW says that in 2004, they chose not to endorse Sen. Obama" because of the votes, Norelli said. "I would say every voter needs to have all the factual information and each individual needs to make their own decision."

As for the new conciliatory note, Norelli said there was no inconsistency in calling Obama "strongly pro-choice" after attacking him on the present votes. "I would take any of the Democratic candidates on issues of choice over any of the Republican candidates.

But I would take Hillary Clinton and her leadership on choice over Senator Obama," she said.
Norelli said the purpose of the latest e-mail was to help calm the ruffled feathers of the Obama supporters. We are working to heal any problems that there are among the Democrats and looking forward to working together closely," she said. "They have time to get over it."

One of the Obama supporters who signed the reconciliation e-mail, Mary Rauh, said she did so because she was very worried that the rift created by the primary could seriously harm abortion rights efforts in the state if it was left unadressed.

But she said that she remained aggrieved by the Clinton attack and by the willingness of so many Democratic leaders in the state to go along with it, and worried by reports that similar e-mails attacking Obama on abortion rights have gone out in other states preparing to vote.

"We still have battles to fight in New Hampshire and we can't let dirty politics destroy the choice voice here. It's too important," Rauh said.

"But for Clinton to do this to the choice community is so appalling.
I can't tell you how it distresses me ... how devastating this and how horrified I am that the Clinton campaign would do this. I fear it will happen elsewhere and it's just appalling.­"
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Posted at 4:06 PM ET on Jan 18, 2008
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Comments Please email us to report offensive comments.

SearingTruth:

Is this thread convenient enough for us to discuss abortion finally? I think my pending question went something like "Do you ever think of the millions of children killed by the evil that was Harry Blackmun?" : )

Posted by: JakeD | January 18, 2008 04:33 PM
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More outrageousness that demoralizes anyone who thinks politics can matter. A founder of a NARAL chapter didn't bother looking into the Obama smears before signing her name to them?

Others saying, now that they helped the Clinton's shamefully and dishonestly bury Obama in NH, that they'd like to kiss and make up?

There will be no "coming together" with the Clintons again for this die-hard Dem. I'm through with them.
Posted by: cmss1 | January 18, 2008 04:45 PM

cmss1:
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[kingfishstew]

You can make some of the people happy all the time. And all the people happy some of the time. But you can't make all the people happy all the time? No problem, we got that.

[technomist]

Why not, its in your constitution. Who should I sue?

[Pyrum]

The constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, silly. All it guarantees is your right to pursue happiness.