Why Aren’t the ‘Change’ Candidates…Changing Things Now?

I’m the Change Candidate!

No…I am the Change Candidate!

Uh-unh…I am Changier than you!

Now way, duuuuude….I am the Changiest!

Interlocutor: Why aren’t either of you changing things …RIGHT NOW?

Umm

Ummm

My opponent is not changing things!

Neither are you!

I will if you will!

You first!

No…YOU first….

Meanwhile, back at the rapidly crumbling under war debt and incompetence ranch….

http://www.publicintegrity.org…

President George W. Bush and seven of his administration’s top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.

On at least 532 separate occasions (in speeches, briefings, interviews, testimony, and the like), Bush and these three key officials, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan, stated unequivocally that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (or was trying to produce or obtain them), links to Al Qaeda, or both. This concerted effort was the underpinning of the Bush administration’s case for war.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/g…

The three leading recipients of telecom money for this election cycle are, unsurprisingly, the three sitting Senators running for President (with two Democratic members who are key to amnesty — Jay Rockefeller and Rahm Emanuel — close behind). That’s how “Washington works” — the process they are all pledging to battle and change. Needless to say, all of the viable GOP presidential candidates will be blindly supportive of whatever surveillance powers and lawbreaking immunity the President demands, but thus far, Obama and (less emphatically) Clinton have both claimed that they oppose such measures and thus pledged to support a Dodd-led filibuster.

http://thinkprogress.org/

A new Congressional Budget Office estimate released today concluded that the “budget deficit for the current budget year will jump to about $250 billion,” which includes the cost of the Iraq war. This figure, however, does not factor in the “at least $100 billion in additional red ink from an upcoming deficit-financed economic stimulus measure.”

UPDATE: Senate Budget Commitee Chairman Kent Conrad’s (D-ND) statement:

   CBO’s new projections show that the deficit will worsen in 2008. This short-term deterioration is due, at least in part, to our slowing economy. And it is important to note that CBO’s baseline projections actually understate the likely short-term deficit levels, because they exclude expected costs such as a stimulus package and additional war funding requested by President Bush. Once these costs are added in, the deficit in 2008 is likely to exceed $350 billion, and the debt is likely to increase by over $600 billion.

And the list goes on and on and on….

Of course the answer is obvious.

Changing things is risky, it requires courage, especially in the middle of an election. An election about having the courage to change things.

If you lead….you can be attacked! Attacked by your opponent, attacked by Republicans, attacked by the media…..and that could hurt your chances to be elected to change things….which will be …. attacked by Republicans, attacked by the media.

After all, we elected a Democratic Congress in large part because they promised change in Iraq! Of course it turned out that they were too afraid of the political consequences of change…

But that won’t happen with our candidates….right?

You want my vote? My money? My support?

Do something to bring about your ballyhooed change NOW.