I won't go so far as to say I feel a sense of betrayal but giving into Bush on domestic spying seems completely contradictory to that which drew me to support Obama back in February of 2007.
I'm still on the team... let's face it what other choice do we have, but this vote hurt. The fact that this vote was so damaging to my faith about what kind of leader Obama would be can not be written off as a single issue blip. This issue speaks to the core message of the reformation and change that I so depeneded upon Obama to bring. I guess it just comes back to the old adage...If it looks too good to be true, it probably is.
The Clinton Campaign is seeking $5 donations from all of their supporters hoping to hail the number of donors in the morning signifying her campaign is still alive. Wouldn't it be great if Obama could come on TV and report that it was great people are motivated and participating and that Hillary received X number of donations? And then he could say, "But Obama supporters contributed 2X number of donations and 3X the dollars!!!!
Donate $15 tonight or as soon as you read this and then send this message on to all of the friends on your list! Let's show the Hillary people who is the real front runner!
Yes we can! No "she" can't!
On my blog RedHogDiary.com I have a commenter who has normally been a frustration when I advocate my progressive patriotic positions but we seem to be in agreement on one thing. Hillary Clinton. There is a side to Hillary that has been ignored in this campaign that needs some serious light. I thought it appropriate to share this conservative’s comment:
“Consider this from Dee Dee Myers in an ABC interview: Anybody that stood up and tried to say this was a bad idea was, you know, smashed down and belittled, very personally,” Myers revealed. “And I mean where I said the president didn’t really attack people personally, Mrs. Clinton sometimes did.” The one-time Clinton spokeswoman said that White House staffers lived in fear of the first lady because her attacks sometimes wouldn’t end when her temper tantrums subsided. White House counsel Abner Mikva was so incensed over Mrs. Clinton’s conduct that he resigned after one profanity-laced upbraiding by the first lady. Another Clinton biographer, Gail Sheehy — who has spent hours with the first lady since the 1992 campaign — wrote that Clinton seemed to be “in a perpetual state of suspended anger.” Once Hillary even tried to kick an Arkansas state trooper bodyguard who got in her way, according to Clinton biographer Christopher Andersen. And one-time White House FBI agent Gary Aldrich reported in 1996 that junior White House staffers were ordered not to make eye contact with the first lady lest they anger her."
And the disconnect in that documented behavior is that if Hillary has historically shown contempt for White House staff and subordinates how much compassion can she really have for what she describes as “voiceless Americans.” You don’t treat the people around you like crap and suddenly find compassion for faceless strangers. That just doesn’t make sense.
If I have to explain it, you wouldn't understand is an old Harley adage you see on T-shirts and bumper stikers all the time. With that in mind the level of comitmment demonstrated by actually putting a sticker on a Harley... Well that just means, I BELIEVE!
I recently accepted a postion as precinct captain for Clinton Township in Linn County, IA. I will be riding my Harley door to door, okay maybe driveway to driveway, to spread the Good News about Obama! The Iowa Caucus will be here before you know it. Let's "Get 'er done!"
Blue Sky's and Green Lights!
In 1963 the population of the American bald eagle fell to an all time low of 417 mating pairs. Confronted with the very real possibility of seeing our national bird becoming extinct the Federal Government put the magnificent raptors on the endangered species list. Since that time, changing hunting laws and restrictions on pesticides have resulted in a rebound in the population of the mighty symbol of American freedom to nearly 10,000 mating pairs that can be found in 48 states. As a result of the bald eagle resurgence the government took the bald eagle off of the endangered species list on Thursday. While the bird may be flourishing the very freedom it has come to represent has a more ambiguous status. As long as the “haves” continue to wage their war on the “have not’s” in this country and as long as politicians are available to be purchased to wage that war the significance of the bald eagle as a mighty American icon is in jeopardy.
Barack Obama has proposed the most sweeping ethics reform in history and understands we need to change the way our government works. Obama said this week, “These cynical partisan maneuverings on ethics reform are exactly what allows the lobbyists and special interests to stand in the way of progress on the issues that matter to the American people. This is why the oil industry continues to hold sway over energy policy and the drug industry has blocked reform that would lower prices for Americans. It is time for Congress to finally pass the strongest possible ethics reforms as soon as possible so that the voices of average Americans are heard in Washington once more.” In a recent year big industry lobbied YOUR CONGRESS in the amount of $4.3 million for every member of Congress. I ask you, how are you going to get your Representatives attention with regard to legislation that is important to you when you are competing with those kinds of numbers? How are you going to tell your Congressman that gas prices or perscriptions or medical procedures are oppressive when oil and health lobbyists are putting millions into the reelection coiffers of YOUR REPRESENTATIVE? Barack Obama will end that way of government. I’m tellin’ ya’’ll…this guy looks like a keeper! Watch the video below and tell me what you think!
The Democratic National Committee wasted little time jumping on John McCain after he said, in reference to casualties in Iraq, "We wasted a lot of our most precious treasure, which is American lives over there" on David Letterman’s “Late Show” Wednesday night. Karen Finney, a DNC spokeswoman quickly released an official DNC rebuke and said "Senator McCain should apologize immediately for his callous comments. How is it that John McCain now believes American lives are being wasted, yet he so stubbornly supports the president's plan to escalate the war in Iraq and put more American lives in harms way?"
The DNC response upset me for a lot of reasons; the least of which is not the practice of shallow partisan hackery that I normally like to attribute to the Dark Side, the RNC. If the Democrats are looking to take lessons from the Republican political machine I would hope that we could skip the lessons in the Swift Boat chapter. I understand that all of us have a responsibility to choose our words carefully so as to not offend the families who have made the ultimate sacrifice in service to our country. It is also apparent that Senator McCain’s words were taken out of context. If we are so offended by this unfortunate choice of language why has it been repeated ad-nauseam in an attempt to gain political advantage? Repetition of the faux-pau undermines the credibility of the original objection.
In February, Barack Obama had a similar problem when he described the lives of troops in Iraq as having been wasted. "We ended up launching a war that should have never been authorized, and should have never been waged, and on which we've now spent $400 billion, and have seen over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans wasted," Later, in an interview with a newspaper reporter, Obama said: "I was actually upset with myself when I said that, because I never use that term." "Their sacrifices are never wasted," he said. John McCain also regretted using the word “wasted” to describe the now more than 3,100 U.S. lives lost in the Iraq war. “I should have used the word ‘sacrificed,’ as I have in the past,” We know what you meant guys. You weren’t any too smart in the way you said it but we know what you meant.
What upset me the most about the reaction by the Democratic National Committee is that I perceived a hidden agenda in their criticism of McCain. Obama has seen a surge of support in the few short weeks after his official announcement as a candidate for 08. Hillary Clinton has seen her lead in polls among likely primary and caucus voters fall from 41 percent to 36 percent while Obama has seen his numbers climb from 17 to 24 percent in the early stages of the campaign. There is no disputing that the Clintons are well entrenched with the old money and power of the established Democratic leadership. Unless the established power core of the party was hoping to stifle the democratic process of letting the people choose their candidate they should have never attacked McCain for something that the rising star of the Democratic party had done only weeks before.
This was not the first example of the Clinton campaign flexing their political muscle in a bullying fashion against Obama. On February 22nd the Clinton campaign attacked Obama for comments made by David Geffen, a supporter not in any way officially connected with the campaign, when he said that Sen. Clinton was ambitious and polarizing. Until this recent attack on McCain by the DNC I was leaning towards Obama but remained very open minded about the Clinton campaign. My willingness to adopt a wait and see attitude is becoming more difficult to maintain as stories such as these continue to emerge. It might be an interesting primary season if the old guard Democrats believe they can disregard the voice of progressive Democrats.
We can do better. We have to do better. As the war continues and casualties continue to climb many of the more moderate Iraqi’s, those people who are more like you and I, who went to school or work everyday, who used to go shopping and visit their friends are beginning to tire of occupation. It is time that we begin to consider that our presence is only exacerbating the divisions among Sunni, Shiite and Kurd.
The proponents of the military industrial complex are quick to suggest that redeployment deadlines will only lead to more violence or that it will lead to false security that will result in unforeseen bloodshed after our departure. Nobody would suggest that those results would be anything we could stand by and watch. Until we attempt that strategy, until we set deadlines and are willing to vacate to a point just over the horizon where we could return swiftly if needed; we will never know. If our leaders would show the courage to put such a policy in place I would suggest that you divest your Halliburton stock. We may be in for a lasting peace.
