June 4, 2008 archive

Now Obama Will Move to the Right

Now that you been had…..

Obama will now move to the right. And the naive “progressives” and “liberals” will be amazed and dissapointed as he signals a tough stance on Iran and a tough stance on Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Pakistan. Lebanon, Palestine and any other nation where Muslims happen to occupy.

He will make it clear that he is no friend of the Muslims. He will distance himself from them as his opponents continue to “accidentally” call him Osama. He will make it clear that he is a Christian. He will make it clear that he is willing to go to war with Iran and anyone else if they do not comply to U.S. demands.

Obama is now saying the Army of Iran….the Republican Guard are terrorists. That means it’s ok to bomb then. To destroy them. It’s interesting isn’t it?

I wrote a diary in September 2006 that predicted the newly elected democrats would not vote to end the war, but to promote it, to increase the troop levels and funding. That’s exactly what happened.

Obama will continue the war indefinetly in the unlikely even that he is not completely destroyed by McCain on issues related to his past drug use among other things. Did he inject herion? Did he sell cocaine? Those will be the talking points of the election….much more so than the war and it’s utter destruction of the American economy as we now know it.  

HONORING THE FALLEN: US Military KIA, Iraq/Afganistan – May 2008

Arlington South Memorial -Memorial Day Weekend ’08

Four at Four

  1. In “Slogging to Victory“, the Washington Post looks at Obama’s campaign strategy that allowed him to win the necessary delegates for the Democratic nomination. It’s an interesting read and will likely tick off a few people and not just Clinton supporters.

    Much of Obama’s strategy is already apparent. For example, Obama focused on the caucus states, avoided head-to-head match-ups with Clinton in battleground states while trying to limit her delegate counts, and concentrated on states where Democrats rarely visited.

    But, there is more than what’s already common knowledge. For instance, I think this move by his campaign was brilliant:

    The campaign leadership had wanted no distractions before the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses, so the planning in Chicago was done in secret. But on the night of Jan. 4, as Obama’s Iowa staff staggered into his Des Moines campaign headquarters, still ragged from celebrating the senator’s improbable victory there, field director Paul Tewes took it public.

    Everyone on the payroll in Iowa would be assigned to another state, he announced. Hotels had already been booked and rooms in the homes of volunteers arranged. Marygrace Galston, who had helped oversee the ground-game deployments, gave staff members until 6 p.m. to say whether they were accepting their new assignments.

    While necessary for Obama’s campaign to win, the way they maneuvered on Florida and Michigan is likely to raise ire.

    To avoid the danger zone, two things had to happen: Obama would have to win Indiana to augment an expected victory that day in North Carolina, and Michigan and Florida could not be allowed to vote in June. He did not win Indiana, but he got the next-best thing…

    Obama caught a break in Florida. When the Florida Democratic Party drafted a detailed plan for a revote, largely by mail, the entire Florida Democratic House delegation — Clinton and Obama supporters alike — recoiled, their memories of the 2000 election debacle still too fresh to risk it. Obama’s Florida backers did not have to lift a finger…

    Michigan was different… Obama campaign lawyer Robert F. Bauer drafted a lengthy memo on March 19, raising a series of questions about the revote but stopping short of opposing it…

    In short, Obama ran out the clock.

Four at Four continues with stories about Homeland Security declaring all foreigners as terrorists, Yucca Mountain, and the discovery that bees translate the dances of foreign species.

Greenpeace Ship Attacked with Lead Fishing Weights (Edited Title)!

Greenpeace’s request is to “Repost Widely.” This link is the only link that works, don’t try the others. Get code here, or take it from this diary since it’s easier.

Hey Friends!

The Greenpeace ship, the Arctic Sunrise navigated into perilous waters yesterday in the Cypriot Channel. Greenpeace was in the area calling for an end to unsustainable fishing practices and requesting the establishment of a marine reserve between Cyprus and Turkey.  

Detainee sanity and government conspiracy

The Washington Post reports Lawyers fear for detainee’s sanity. The Bush administration says five years of solitary confinement without trial is A-OK.

Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri is obsessed with the noise variations in an industrial fan, the buzzing of fluorescent lights overhead and the preparation of his dinners. He has stuffed his air vents with food to prevent what he believes are noxious fumes from streaming into his cell, and he worries at times that his lawyers are part of a government conspiracy against him.

Hrmmm. Let’s see. The man has been held without a trial for 6½ years by a government that has lied about Iraq’s WMDs, has secret prisions, has used noise and loud music as torture… What part of “government conspiracy” is in question? The noxious fumes part?

Obama: “building an economy that rewards not just wealth but work.” (w/ Video of SEIU Speech)

I like what I’m hearing.  Barack Obama spoke before the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Convention today.  Yesterday, he said this about SEIU’s help for him in the primaries:

“SEIU’s endorsement has made a tremendous impact over the course of this campaign. Their trademark purple has been a presence everywhere-at rallies, at worksites, and most importantly, on the doors and phones, talking to voters about the kind of change we can bring about if we change our politics.”

I have video of the speech below. It’s great. Please watch it if you can. This is how Obama will win the votes of working folks. I hear in Barack Obama a key theme that attracted me to John Edwards:

Change is building an economy that rewards not just wealth but work and the workers who work hard every day

We need a nation that rewards work, not just wealth.  Barack Obama will help make that change, if we all work for it.  

(also on Dkos and MyDD)

The Maddow Movement: Final Petition Push

In the perhaps quixotic quest to Free The Press of some of the worst features of  corporate hegemony over the very information we live and breathe, The Maddow Movement was born. With no illusions of anything but a starting point in fighting the influence of those who would narrow our perceptions through the presentation of Military Analyst Propaganda…or allow themselves to be cowed and complicit stenographers (alternately: “deferential, complicit enablers” ) of and for the lies that led us to Iraq and the death of perhaps a million people…or did NOT choose to investigate torture…or treason….a campaign was launched to throw out the old guard and hail and herald the new.

1229 good souls have signed The Maddow Movement Petition. Untold numbers of E-mails have been sent. Today…you too can help!

Now! (please?)

Photobucket

Not only will you be helping to get a fresh honest perspective inserted into the stale and stilted puditry that has helped to lead our country to ad over the brink of …really bad stuff…you will be flexing your muscle as a news and information consumer! You will be showing the corporate heads and the programmers that there is a demand for better reporting, analysis and just plain  intelligence (Ms Maddow = Rhodes Scholar) in their “industry.”

“People get the government they deserve,” de Tocqueville said…the same goes for information! In our world today, we consumers (formerly know as ‘citizens) will only get what we demand from those who would be our corporate masters…Yell Louder!

And get thee hither to signeth yon petition and send ye your e-mails!

[email protected]

Progress

“What I want to know is what in the world so many Democrats are doing supporting the President’s unilateral intervention in Iraq?”

– Democratic Presidential Candidate Howard Dean

(March 15, 2003)

“I won’t stand here and pretend that there are many good options left in Iraq, but what’s not an option is leaving our troops in that country for the next hundred years, especially at a time when our military is overstretched, our nation is isolated, and nearly every other threat to America is being ignored.

“We must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in, but start leaving we must. It’s time for Iraqis to take responsibility for their future. It’s time to rebuild our military and give our veterans the care and the benefits they deserve when they come home.”

– Presumptive Democratic Presidential Nominee Barack Obama

(June 3, 2008)

SPLC investigates Vermont secessionist group

Crossposted at iBrattleboro, Green Mountain Daily and Five Before Chaos.

The Southern Poverty Law Center is a well-known organization known for tracking hate groups and/or hate crimes around America. Many of you may remember the recent controversy regarding the Second Vermont Republic (SVR), Vermont’s secessionist movement. John Odum of Green Mountain Daily pointed out SVR’s ties to groups and individuals being tracked by the Southern Poverty Law Center and as a result, SVR came under greater scrutiny. Now the SPLC released their much anticipated report on the Second Vermont Republic and the report includes a revealing anecdote on former SVR board member and Vermont impeachment hero, Dan DeWalt.

Pony Party, Giving Sense to the Senseless

You may remember the pony party of January 3, 2008, titled Senseless, wherein we discussed the vandalism to Robert Frost’s  summer home, Homer Noble Farm, by local college students who used it for a party.

Radical Teaching and NCLB: Hursh’s “High-Stakes Testing”

This is a short review of David Hursh’s High-Stakes Testing and the Decline of Teaching and Learning.  Hursh’s book is important because it achieves three important aims: 1) to detail how the personal and the political intertwine at the level of schools and schooling, 2) to show how standards-based reform is based on an economic agenda, namely neoliberalism, and 3) to show that alternatives to neoliberal schooling are possible in all respects and that such alternatives can be created by politically-organized parents and teachers.

(crossposted at Big Orange)

The Morning News

The Morning News is an Open Thread

Business and Science to come.

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 CDC: Tomatoes eyed in salmonella cases in 9 states

By MIKE STOBBE, AP Medical Writer

38 minutes ago

ATLANTA – An outbreak of salmonella food poisoning first linked to uncooked tomatoes has now been reported in nine states, U.S. health officials said Tuesday.

Lab tests have confirmed 40 illnesses in Texas and New Mexico as the same type of salmonella, right down to the genetic fingerprint. An investigation by Texas and New Mexico health authorities and the Indian Health Service tied those cases to uncooked, raw, large tomatoes.

At least 17 people in Texas and New Mexico have been hospitalized. None have died, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Load more