Original article by Shane Jones via Socialist Appeal.

After years of Bush’s open-ended war on working people at home and abroad, many on the “left” are desperate for an alternative. For many, that alternative is Barack Obama, a Democratic Senator from Illinois. Obama, who is very careful with his words and actions, has done a good job so far of portraying himself as a “sensible progressive”.  However, far from being a “progressive” alternative, Obama is at his core a typical representative of the bosses’ political parties. Despite presenting himself as a candidate of “change”, Obama is a defender of capitalism and imperialism, and hence of exploitation and oppression. On all fundamentals, he is far closer to Bush than he is to being a genuine alternative for working people.

Original article, sub-headed A “flexible timeline” is not a timetable, and continuing the occupation is not ending it by Anthony Arnove via socialistworker.org.

THE WALL Street Journal reports that the “The Bush administration’s embrace of a flexible timeline for pulling U.S. troops from Iraq has accelerated negotiations between Washington and Baghdad over a long-term security pact.”

This has to do with the bloodletting that’s going on right now.  I think that it’s important that we remember that Docudharma is not a “more and better Democrats” community.  Some of us used to post at a place like that.  Some of us have chosen not to post there any longer.  I’m sure each of us who’ve chosen that route have different reasons, and I’m sure that some of the reasons are the same.  For the moment, those reasons don’t matter (at least in the context of this posting).