Is Obama done?

[Pure]

the competence of the free market

to solve problems is shown in this subprime mortgage episode.

banks and investment houses, without regulation in this area, were able to peddle the bundles of subprimes to whomever, and the ratings systems did not work.

subprime mortgages were hawked to people who'd be in trouble as soon as the real rates kicked in, or the markets fell.

NOW, the free market, very nicely is "solving" the problem. the wealthy CEOs at Bear Stearns are unaffected. lots of ordinary people, who weren't speculating, are losing homes.

soon, everything will be in order. the gov't, the evil gov't will be called upon to help some of the banks. hating the gov, they'll of course turn down the billions of taxpayers' money. right!

rox, your market is a wonder to behold! and note that no evil bureaucracies were involved.

and of course the next step might be to try to regulate such offerings, but the lobbyists will ensure the legislation has loopholes. or silly penalties, like $10,000 fine.

or, more likely, some "creative" person will invent a new instrument, not hitherto described, and flog it to the unsuspecting, till the market again 'solves' the problem. much as you claim to be against fraud, and to want it controlled, it's integral to your system, rox.

your 'traders,' the epitome of virtue, are often hucksters, roxanne. no they are not Atilla; no one is clubbed on the head; but millions lose houses and bank accounts. to ensure a lack of moral hazard, i but you support: the homeowner loses the home; the Bear exec keeps his bonuses, right!

so all the right incentives are in place, and virtue is cultivated!

 

[amicus]

You are so full of it, Pure, I wonder you even bother to take the dump in public.

98 percent of all mortgages in in good shape, unemployment is considered at full employment at 5 percent.

Basic economy is perking right along, thank you industrial capacity is high, retail sales are steady, all is well on the home front except when you listen to the limpid left who want to convince every henny penny that the sky is falling....

It Ain't

Iraq liberation is going well, democracy is on the rise world wide and the forces of islamic terror are being pursued in all corners of the globe.

Your dreams of a left wing revolution in the US this election cycle died with the exposure of the racism of Obama and the petty feminist whining and lying of Clinton....can you last another eight years under rational rule?

I doubt it...perhaps someone will see you off on Luftansa bound for Stockholm?

Bye bye....


Amicus...

 

[Pure]

to amicus, it looks like a republican sweep in the white house and congress.

noted.

 

[Pure]

Alice Walker's endorsement

Lest We Forget: An open letter to my sisters who are brave.
By Alice Walker | TheRoot.com

The author argues that we must build alliances not on ethnicity or gender, but on truth.



March 27, 2008
I HAVE COME home from a long stay in Mexico to find – because of the presidential campaign, and especially because of the Obama/Clinton race for the Democratic nomination - a new country existing alongside the old. On any given day we, collectively, become the Goddess of the Three Directions and can look back into the past, look at ourselves just where we are, and take a glance, as well, into the future. It is a space with which I am familiar.

When I was born in 1944 my parents lived on a middle Georgia plantation that was owned by a white distant relative, Miss May Montgomery. (During my childhood it was necessary to address all white girls as "Miss" when they reached the age of twelve.) She would never admit to this relationship, of course, except to mock it. Told by my parents that several of their children would not eat chicken skin she responded that of course they would not. No Montgomerys would.

My parents and older siblings did everything imaginable for Miss May. They planted and raised her cotton and corn, fed and killed and processed her cattle and hogs, painted her house, patched her roof, ran her dairy, and, among countless other duties and responsibilities my father was her chauffeur, taking her anywhere she wanted to go at any hour of the day or night. She lived in a large white house with green shutters and a green, luxuriant lawn: not quite as large as Tara of Gone With the Wind fame, but in the same style.

We lived in a shack without electricity or running water, under a rusty tin roof that let in wind and rain. Miss May went to school as a girl. The school my parents and their neighbors built for us was burned to the ground by local racists who wanted to keep ignorant their competitors in tenant farming. During the Depression, desperate to feed his hardworking family, my father asked for a raise from ten dollars a month to twelve. Miss May responded that she would not pay that amount to a white man and she certainly wouldn't pay it to a nigger. That before she'd pay a nigger that much money she'd milk the dairy cows herself.

When I look back, this is part of what I see. I see the school bus carrying white children, boys and girls, right past me, and my brothers, as we trudge on foot five miles to school. Later, I see my parents struggling to build a school out of discarded army barracks while white students, girls and boys, enjoy a building made of brick. We had no books; we inherited the cast off books that "Jane" and "Dick" had previously used in the all-white school that we were not, as black children, permitted to enter.

The year I turned fifty, one of my relatives told me she had started reading my books for children in the library in my home town. I had had no idea – so kept from black people it had been – that such a place existed. To this day knowing my presence was not wanted in the public library when I was a child I am highly uncomfortable in libraries and will rarely, unless I am there to help build, repair, refurbish or raise money to keep them open, enter their doors.

When I joined the freedom movement in Mississippi in my early twenties it was to come to the aid of sharecroppers, like my parents, who had been thrown off the land they'd always known, the plantations, because they attempted to exercise their "democratic" right to vote. I wish I could say white women treated me and other black people a lot better than the men did, but I cannot.

It seemed to me then and it seems to me now that white women have copied, all too often, the behavior of their fathers and their brothers, and in the South, especially in Mississippi, and before that, when I worked to register voters in Georgia, the broken bottles thrown at my head were gender free.

I made my first white women friends in college; they were women who loved me and were loyal to our friendship, but I understood, as they did, that they were white women and that whiteness mattered. That, for instance, at Sarah Lawrence, where I was speedily inducted into the Board of Trustees practically as soon as I graduated, I made my way to the campus for meetings by train, subway and foot, while the other trustees, women and men, all white, made their way by limo.

Because, in our country, with its painful history of unspeakable inequality, this is part of what whiteness means. I loved my school for trying to make me feel I mattered to it, but because of my relative poverty I knew I could not.

I am a supporter of Obama because I believe he is the right person to lead the country at this time. He offers a rare opportunity for the country and the world to start over, and to do better. It is a deep sadness to me that many of my feminist white women friends cannot see him. Cannot see what he carries in his being. Cannot hear the fresh choices toward Movement he offers. That they can believe that millions of Americans –black, white, yellow, red and brown - choose Obama over Clinton only because he is a man, and black, feels tragic to me.

When I have supported white people, men and women, it was because I thought them the best possible people to do whatever the job required. Nothing else would have occurred to me. If Obama were in any sense mediocre, he would be forgotten by now. He is, in fact, a remarkable human being, not perfect but humanly stunning, like King was and like Mandela is. We look at him, as we looked at them, and are glad to be of our species.

He is the change America has been trying desperately and for centuries to hide, ignore, kill. The change America must have if we are to convince the rest of the world that we care about people other than our (white) selves.

True to my inner Goddess of the Three Directions however, this does not mean I agree with everything Obama stands for. We differ on important points probably because I am older than he is, I am a woman and person of three colors, (African, Native American, European), I was born and raised in the American South, and when I look at the earth's people, after sixty-four years of life, there is not one person I wish to see suffer, no matter what they have done to me or to anyone else; though I understand quite well the place of suffering, often, in human growth.

I want a grown-up attitude toward Cuba, for instance, a country and a people I love; I want an end to the embargo that has harmed my friends and their children, children who, when I visit Cuba, trustingly turn their faces up for me to kiss. I agree with a teacher of mine, Howard Zinn, that war is as objectionable as cannibalism and slavery; it is beyond obsolete as a means of improving life. I want an end to the on-going war immediately and I want the soldiers to be encouraged to destroy their weapons and to drive themselves out of Iraq.

I want the Israeli government to be made accountable for its behavior towards the Palestinians, and I want the people of the United States to cease acting like they don't understand what is going on. All colonization, all occupation, all repression basically looks the same, whoever is doing it. Here our heads cannot remain stuck in the sand; our future depends of our ability to study, to learn, to understand what is in the records and what is before our eyes.

But most of all I want someone with the self-confidence to talk to anyone, "enemy" or "friend," and this Obama has shown he can do. It is difficult to understand how one could vote for a person who is afraid to sit and talk to another human being. When you vote you are making someone a proxy for yourself; they are to speak when, and in places, you cannot. But if they find talking to someone else, who looks just like them, human, impossible, then what good is your vote?

It is hard to relate what it feels like to see Mrs. Clinton (I wish she felt self-assured enough to use her own name) referred to as "a woman" while Barack Obama is always referred to as "a black man." One would think she is just any woman, colorless, race-less, past-less, but she is not. She carries all the history of white womanhood in America in her person; it would be a miracle if we, and the world, did not react to this fact. How dishonest it is, to attempt to make her innocent of her racial inheritance.

I can easily imagine Obama sitting down and talking, person to person, with any leader, woman, man, child or common person, in the world, with no baggage of past servitude or race supremacy to mar their talks. I cannot see the same scenario with Mrs. Clinton who would drag into Twenty-First Century American leadership the same image of white privilege and distance from the reality of others' lives that has so marred our country's contacts with the rest of the world.

And yes, I would adore having a woman president of the United States. My choice would be Representative Barbara Lee, who alone voted in Congress five years ago not to make war on Iraq. That to me is leadership, morality, and courage; if she had been white I would have cheered just as hard. But she is not running for the highest office in the land, Mrs. Clinton is. And because Mrs. Clinton is a woman and because she may be very good at what she does, many people, including some younger women in my own family, originally favored her over Obama.

I understand this, almost. It is because, in my own nieces' case, there is little memory, apparently, of the foundational inequities that still plague people of color and poor whites in this country. Why, even though our family has been here longer than most North American families – and only partly due to the fact that we have Native American genes – we very recently, in my lifetime, secured the right to vote, and only after numbers of people suffered and died for it.

When I offered the word "Womanism" many years ago, it was to give us a tool to use, as feminist women of color, in times like these. These are the moments we can see clearly, and must honor devotedly, our singular path as women of color in the United States.

We are not white women and this truth has been ground into us for centuries, often in brutal ways. But neither are we inclined to follow a black person, man or woman, unless they demonstrate considerable courage, intelligence, compassion and substance. I am delighted that so many women of color support Barack Obama -and genuinely proud of the many young and old white women and men who do.
Imagine, if he wins the presidency we will have not one but three black women in the White House; one tall, two somewhat shorter; none of them carrying the washing in and out of the back door.

The bottom line for most of us is: With whom do we have a better chance of surviving the madness and fear we are presently enduring, and with whom do we wish to set off on a journey of new possibility? In other words, as the Hopi elders would say: Who do we want in the boat with us as we head for the rapids? Who is likely to know how best to share the meager garden produce and water? We are advised by the Hopi elders to celebrate this time, whatever its adversities.

We have come a long way, Sisters, and we are up to the challenges of our time. One of which is to build alliances based not on race, ethnicity, color, nationality, sexual preference or gender, but on Truth. Celebrate our journey. Enjoy the miracle we are witnessing. Do not stress over its outcome.

Even if Obama becomes president, our country is in such ruin it may well be beyond his power to lead us toward rehabilitation. If he is elected however, we must, individually and collectively, as citizens of the planet, insist on helping him do the best job that can be done; more, we must insist that he demand this of us. It is a blessing that our mothers taught us not to fear hard work. Know, as the Hopi elders declare: The river has its destination. And remember, as poet June Jordan and Sweet Honey in the Rock never tired of telling us: We are the ones we have been waiting for.

Namaste;

And with all my love,
Alice Walker

Cazul
Northern California
First Day of Spring

 

[cantdog]

That deserves its own thread. Wow.

 

[cantdog]

As to the Republican sweep? That's what wars are sometimes started for. Didn't follow in 2004, though, even though Bush explicitly called himself a 'wartime President,' in those very words, within a week.

 

[DesertPirate]

Since that one poll this week that showed 19% of Obama's supporters voting for McCain if he lost and 28% of Hillary's doing the same if she lost. I would say a Republican win is assured if that holds true.

 

[cantdog]

Hope springs eternal, Pirate. You keep hopin'.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

The free market is helpless to deal with environmental degradation, which is why Roxanne can't deal with it either and insists it's a hoax when it's so clearly not.

Correction: I suggest - not "insist" - that global warming is a hoax, not that "environmental degradation" is.

It is a matter of fact that in prosperous societies where the rule of law prevails the environment is much cleaner than it was a generation ago, and is getting cleaner all the time. But if you're an enviromental organization or activist whose livelihood and self-identity depends on convincing people that "we're all gonna die" from enviro catastrophe, that is not a story that you want told. You need to constantly raise the ante and keep the public feeling anxious about the future and guilty about their comforts, conveniences and broadened horizons that the hated industrial civilization provides. Thus we have "global warming," etc.

Don't bother to argue back that the reason the prosperous nations have cleaner environments today is because of government regulations: Yes, that's one way to bring it about, and the path we've chosen. It's not the only way, and suggesting that we investigate other paths does not mean that one "hates the environement."

 

[amicus]

Originally Posted by dr_mabeuse View Post
The free market is helpless to deal with environmental degradation, which is why Roxanne can't deal with it either and insists it's a hoax when it's so clearly not.

~~~

Actually, D. Mab, et al, the free market mechanism is the only means by which to prevent environmental degradation by the the use of a device called individual property rights.

Free market economics, capitalism and property rights are all fairly recent discoveries in mankind's quest to forge a more just society.

The definition of 'property rights' has undergone and is undergoing revision and redefinition as the judicial systems deals with the private ownership of real property and the inherent mineral rights included.

It is a young science, but very promising, as the guarantee to property protection through law and the courts, becomes more attuned in individual ownership and not government management.

To simply: if every square inch of land within a national boundary, let us say the United States, was owned by an individual or a group of individuals (a corporation of individuals) and all property rights, including air and water quality, we protected by law and enforced by the courts...pollution of all sorts extending beyond the property line of any owner, would come to an immediate halt.

When government 'holds' property (which is in conflict with our Constitution), then all bets are off and any activity sanctioned by government, permit, permission, et cetera, becomes quasi legal and unchallengeable in the courts.

Thus...government is at the root and is the cause of all environmental degradation that has taken place and is taking place.

Simple, eh?

Amicus...

 

[Pure]

for every question,

there is a simple answer: convenient, convincing, simple.... and false.

 

[Plainly_Jane]

And what are the miraculous public policies that will bring us back from this supposed brink? Where are the demonstrated skills to steer complex policy agendas through the obstacle course represented by Congress and executive branch bureacracies - scores of fiefdoms all with their own agendas?

My comment was discussing the three potential candidates for President: McCain, Clinton and Obama.

Of those three, McCain represents more of the same policies that we've been living under for the past seven years. No thanks.

Clinton offers some progressive ideas on healthcare reform, but I'm frustrated by her attitude toward the Iraq War, by her coziness with big business and lobbyists; and I simply don't have confidence that she wants any real change in existing government policies.

Obama doesn't yet seem in the pockets of big business. He seems the only candidate that offers me a sense of hopefulness for our future. The other two do not. That's all.

I never said that if Obama was elected, he would implement some miraculous public policies and "make it all better." In fact, no matter who is elected, they are going to be faced with a Huculean task of cleaning the stables, maybe an impossible task considering how far in the crapper we are right now. The title of the thread is "Is Obama Done?" I don't think he is.

 

[Lovelynice]

THANK YOU!!!

Everybody's so quick to pile on Obama for his pastor's remarks, and McCain hasn't even tried to distance himself from Hagee. Instead, he said, "all I can tell you is that I am very proud to have Pastor John Hagee's support."

Among Hagee's very loudly pronounced beliefs:

"All Muslims are programmed to kill and we can thus never negotiate with any of them"

"God caused Hurricane Katrina to wipe out New Orleans because it had a gay pride parade the week before and was filled with sexual sin. I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they were recipients of the judgment of God for that. I believe that the Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans"

"The End Times -- Rapture -- is imminent and the U.S. Government must do what it can to hasten it, which at minimum requires: a war with Iran and undying, absolute support for a unified Israel, including all Occupied Territories." um...hello? You won't find "the rapture" described in any bible. It's a made up concept.

About the Harry Potter series: "As millions of people anticipate the release of the latest Harry Potter book and film, we're reminded once again of Satan's ongoing attempt to deceive and destroy. The whole purpose of the Potter books is to desensitize readers and introduce them to the occult."

Hagee calls the Roman Catholic Church 'The Great Whore,' an 'apostate church,' the 'anti-Christ,' and a 'false cult system,' yet McCain defends him, saying that Hagee isn't a bigot or anit-Catholic.

But...I suppose that kind of hate is just fine with you, Box. After all, it's not a Black Preacher spewing it.

Very good post, and strong points






.

 

[S-Des]

Very good post, and strong points.

Actually I can't think of a much worse one. On the one hand we have.....

20 years at a Church that has as a requirement swearing an oath to uphold "black values" (because as opposed to everything I've ever believed, evidently being black means you have different morals than White, Asian, Hispanic, Indian, or any other ethnic group).

Giving tens of thousands of dollars in support to said church (which along with the pastor's lovely comments, preaches strident anti-semitism, including the belief that Jews built an "Ethnic bomb", which would only target Arabs).

Having a relationship with a man who is repeatedly called his "Spiritual leader"

Having the man marry him and his wife

Having the man preach to his entire family (including his small children)

Giving the man a position on his staff as an advisor

Ignoring the fact that the man who decries "Middle class white values" and calls blacks who aspire to it "sell-outs" has bought himself a 10,000 square foot house (valued at about 1.4 million dollars) in a white neighborhood....on the Church's dime.


On the other hand....

We have a guy McCain has never met, but who has a bunch of followers so he's asking for his pat on the back


Yup...those two seem completely equivalent.


On the other hand, this doesn't (nor should it) derail Obama's campaign. It does bring up some troubling questions about what the man really believes and his judgment (along with the fiasco with Tony Rezko), but all politicians make questionable relationships with bad people, so in the end it will come down to the issues. I prefer McCain for a number of reasons, but there are a lot of people who are supporting Obama. The belief that any of this makes him "done" is just silly.

 

[cloudy]

Actually I can't think of a much worse one. On the one hand we have.....

20 years at a Church that has as a requirement swearing an oath to uphold "black values" (because as opposed to everything I've ever believed, evidently being black means you have different morals than White, Asian, Hispanic, Indian, or any other ethnic group).

Giving tens of thousands of dollars in support to said church (which along with the pastor's lovely comments, preaches strident anti-semitism, including the belief that Jews built an "Ethnic bomb", which would only target Arabs).

Having a relationship with a man who is repeatedly called his "Spiritual leader"

Having the man marry him and his wife

Having the man preach to his entire family (including his small children)

Giving the man a position on his staff as an advisor

Ignoring the fact that the man who decries "Middle class white values" and calls blacks who aspire to it "sell-outs" has bought himself a 10,000 square foot house (valued at about 1.4 million dollars) in a white neighborhood....on the Church's dime.


On the other hand....

We have a guy McCain has never met, but who has a bunch of followers so he's asking for his pat on the back


Yup...those two seem completely equivalent.

no surprises here. Way to toe the party line.

 

[sr71plt]

Obama certainly is as tenacious as this thread is.

 

[Pure]

i think obama has excellent chances to win the nomination. and i suspect that if the dems settle things by June, the hillary supporters will 90% stay with obama.

i think the Pastor Wright issue is under control [S-Des, notwithstanding], though of course the far right, having not much else except "he doesn't put his hand over his heart during the pledge of allegiance" is going to play mr. wright till the cows come home. hopefully this will turn off a number of non racists, and convince independents to give Barack a chance.

hence he has a chance of winning.

the only monkey wrench is that if Bush/McCain beat the war drums, and talk "national security" and "terrorists will strike again" and "Obama-- isn't he the same as Osama?" and "An Obama win will cause Osama to celebrate," the Repugs just might hold the presidency. no tactic is too low, including allowing or staging an attack on a US assset, say a US ship docked in Spain or Mombassa.

 

[S-Des]

i think the Pastor Wright issue is under control [S-Des, notwithstanding], though of course the far right, having not much else except "he doesn't put his hand over his heart during the pledge of allegiance" is going to play mr. wright till the cows come home.

Actually, you need to get out more. This doesn't remotely hurt him with racists or the far Right, it hurts him most with Moderates who view him as a person who will truly bring good judgment and racial healing to this country (since his actual policy positions are further Left than any other Senator and Hillary is actually much more effective at going across the aisle and forging alliances with Republicans).

the only monkey wrench is that if Bush/McCain beat the war drums, and talk "national security" and "terrorists will strike again" and "Obama-- isn't he the same as Osama?" and "An Obama win will cause Osama to celebrate," the Repugs just might hold the presidency. no tactic is too low, including allowing or staging an attack on a US assset, say a US ship docked in Spain or Mombassa.

Again I'm confused where you get this. Obama has proposed a trillion dollars in new spending, to be paid for by massive tax hikes (which despite his "only on the rich" rhetoric, will hit everyone substantially). This is not a Right-Left issue, there are a lot of people out there that think the government being massively expanded at this point is a bad idea. Republicans "beating the war drums" will only play to the people who are already going to vote for them. As for Republicans being "low" with their tactics....I guess you don't consider Obama supporters calling the Clintons tactics "McCarthism" or the 3AM phone ad (or Bill comparing Barrack to Jesse Jackson) to be low. If you want to know what Moderates (you know, the 65% of the population that isn't Liberal or Conservative) think, you should hang out where they do.

 

[sr71plt]

I really have to shake my head concerning this "big spending" rhetoric. Three-quarters of the existing national debt was accrued under just three presidents: Ronald Reagan and the two Bushes. I have no idea how conservative Republicans can even keep a straight face during discussions of government spending. (Not even getting around to broaching the subject of spending it on such things as health care and infrastructure rather than throwing it down the war hole.)

 

[S-Des]

I think that Obama isn't done in the Democratic race, but he is in the Presidential race. The same goes for Hillary Clinton, because Clinton's policy of using smear tactics whenever possible has screwed over Obama AND herself so that no matter who gets the Democratic ticket will get destroyed by McCain. Somehow, the Democrats have managed to take a Presidency they couldn't lose and lose it.

As an unabashed McCain supporter, I'd love to believe that, but I just can't. Obama is a masterful politician, a superb speaker, and someone who appeals to an enormous segment of the country (including some disaffected Conservatives). He'll win the Democratic nomination, then it will be a dogfight to November. Both he and McCain will keep the debate civil and on issue, but the partisans on both sides will be utterly brutal. If there is no major development in the war or the economy between now and then, it will come down to mistakes that each of them makes in the campaign (or some bit of dirt dug up by the 527 groups). Obama has vastly superior funds, and the groups supporting him do as well. I haven't seen anything yet that would keep him from winning (or even leading me to believe it's likely he'd lose).

 

[Darkniciad]

There's more "our side's doomed" on both sides this time out than I seem to remember in the past *laugh*

I've plainly said that I support McCain from the beginning here ( and several years ago in other places. Always liked the guy ) but I don't hold any illusions he won't have a hard fight if ( likely ) Obama takes the nod.

I think he'd mop the floor with Hillary, though.

I'd say the whole Rev. Wright thing is pretty much done. It's too far out from the election for anyone to remember when the time comes, and 527s bringing it back up is just going to cause a lot of eye rolling and groaning.

Anybody who changed their mind based on that did it weeks ago.

 

[Belegon]

I'm actually beginning to believe that most of the country is so sick of the whole "swift-boating" tactic that anyone who starts thrashing it around in the general election is going to lose as many votes for their candidate as they win...

At least I hope so...

Unfortunately, I can't remember who said this but I feel they were right... No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the average consumer...

 

[Pure]

weak

pure old: //the only monkey wrench is that if Bush/McCain beat the war drums, and talk "national security" and "terrorists will strike again" and "Obama-- isn't he the same as Osama?" and "An Obama win will cause Osama to celebrate," the Repugs just might hold the presidency. no tactic is too low, including allowing or staging an attack on a US assset, say a US ship docked in Spain or Mombassa. //

SD Again I'm confused where you get this. Obama has proposed a trillion dollars in new spending, to be paid for by massive tax hikes (which despite his "only on the rich" rhetoric, will hit everyone substantially). This is not a Right-Left issue, there are a lot of people out there that think the government being massively expanded at this point is a bad idea. Republicans "beating the war drums" will only play to the people who are already going to vote for them.


P: this is encouraging. the best you've got is "tax and spend liberal". i think obama can handle that. clearly you support the 'borrow and spend' right.... the Chinese will call in their chits one day, my free trade friend.

beating the drums of war almost always works. presidents tend NOT to be dumped in the midst of war. i believe that the reason the Dem congress is so weak is that the can't appear 'anti war' without be called unpatriotic and unsupportive of 'our men and women in uniform.'

NATIONAL SECURITY is the buzzword. Whether it's obama or clinton, the idea that they are lax about this and 'encourage our enemies' will be floated by the Repugs. Oddly, it's harder to stick this to Hillary, in view of her right wing votes, on occasion.

 

[Belegon]

One wonders, if we are going to come down on Obama about a "trillion dollars in new spending", just how much is it going to cost us to stay in Iraq for "a hundred years"?????

 

[S-Des]

One wonders, if we are going to come down on Obama about a "trillion dollars in new spending", just how much is it going to cost us to stay in Iraq for "a hundred years"?????

The problem is, Obama isn't being honest about his position on Iraq, so how can you differentiate? A couple of months ago on Politically Incorrect (hardly the equivalent of Fox News), Maher and Taibbi laughed at Obama's equivocating on the issue. He is on record (as are his highest advisor's) that he would also be keeping tens of thousands of troops in Iraq (as has Hillary). No matter what these people say, they will not pull a Vietnam and have images of American troops running from the country, while riots are breaking out around them. His position may differ from McCain's, but by how many troops, how many dollars? Whether it's McCain or Obama, they will have nothing to do with our troops staying "a hundred years" (a quote that Obama has been busted on for lying about by non-partisan watchdogs). They can only control their 4 or 8 years, then it's the next President's decision to deal with.

I never was in favor of the war, thought it was horribly run, and still wonder if the progress we are making is actually going to yield long-term results, or if it's just putting off the inevitable. Unfortunately we're there, and whoever the next president is, hopefully they'll be listening to their advisors (as opposed to the last president) and not trying to fulfill campaign promises by playing with people's lives.