Sep 03 2008
Upfront: I’m not attached to nor have anything to do with the group below, except as an Old Voting Adult.
Yesterday I received a little booklet in the mail, I’m sure many others have as well. In case you hadn’t I thought I’d pass on who sent it and how you can get one.
Sep 01 2008
Last night Barack and Joe spoke, and even though a short interview they covered alot of ground.
In their first interview together as running mates, Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Joseph Biden discuss their roles and strategies for the upcoming presidential election. Steve Kroft reports.
Aug 31 2008
What exactly was the point of last week’s announcements for vice presidential picks? On one hand we have a shell of a candidate promoting “change” but doing everything in his power to establish himself as an establishment candidate, picking a Washington, D.C. insider with a record of corporate whoring and unquestioning support for U.S. imperial policy. Small wonder Barack Obama is either neck-and-neck with or trailing John McCain in the polls; he insists on turning off the very people he needs to put him over the top, including the Clinton supporters. On the other hand we have the Republican candidate picking a “hockey mom,” with even less political experience than his Democratic counterpart (the very thing he chides his rival for), just so he can pander to the bloc of Clinton supporters inclined to vote for McCain out of spite.
In all the hype and bluster, though, one important question remains: what does either VP pick actually add to the ticket? Joe Biden, a typical DLC insider with a hawkish foreign policy record and a habit of voting for bills that hurt working Americans, is just the sort of candidate likely to further alienate progressives – the very people Obama needs to put him over the top against McCain. Assuming progressives will get behind the Democratic nominee simply because he and his followers choose to deny any other alternative exists has always been a recipe for disaster. Just ask Al Gore and John Kerry. Obama has done everything he can to blow this election by turning off all those who put their faith and hopes in him thinking he represented a departure from the DLC. Picking Biden, though it allows for a tough yet compliant attack dog in the general election who makes up for a perceived lack of experience, really does nothing for the Democratic nominee’s chances.
Then there’s Sarah Palin. I get that she was tapped to be McCain’s veep because of her youth and sex, but those are really the only two things she has going for her as a candidate. As Michael Moore explained to Keith Olbermann the other night, McCain’s cynical pander is based on the assumption that American women are stupid – that they’ll vote for a woman because of her gender and not her politics. Her record and positions are typically extreme right-wing: opposed to abortion rights, opposed to gay marriage, supports tax cuts for the wealthy and police state thuggery, among other horrendous policies. None of those qualities, however, have won a presidential election – not for the past sixteen years, anyway (the last two were rigged, so they cannot be counted on as legitimate examples of right-wing extremism winning anything). Women who actually care about their reproductive rights and are offended by Stepford wife-type politicians may be galvanized to vote against McCain and his so-called “hockey mom.” There’s also her firing of Alaska’s public safety director, Walter Monegan, for refusing to fire her former brother-in-law. This scandal is so outrageous there that the Alaskan legislature is investigating what the Washington Post is dubbing Palin’s own “trooper-gate.”
This may be the first time since George H.W. Bush lost to Bill Clinton that a Republican candidate blew an election by dubious virtue of being dumber than his Democratic counterpart, but don’t count McCain out yet; there are plenty of caging lists, hackable electronic voting machines, and bought state secretaries with which to steal this election, along with a Democratic rival who insists on replaying the Kerry campaign.
Aug 31 2008
Defenders of Wildlife Asks Judge to Shut Down Palin’s Wolf Bounty Program“The Governor is overstepping her legal authority by offering cash payments for each wolf killed by aerial gunners,” stated Tom Banks, Defenders of Wildlife’s Alaska Associate. “That’s a bounty by anyone’s standards regardless of what they call it.”
Aug 30 2008
I thought we should have a round up of ctrenta’s excellent reporting from last week’s DNC convention in Denver-
I want to personally thank ctrenta for all the work and I hope all of you had a chance to enjoy it.
Aug 30 2008
Original article via wsws.org:
After going through the formality of a roll call vote ending in the preordained nomination of Barack Obama as its presidential candidate, the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday turned to the question of “national security,” portraying itself as more competent than the Bush administration in defending the interests of US imperialism abroad, while making it clear that it is prepared to launch new and even bloodier wars than those carried out over the past eight years.
Aug 29 2008
Today we saw who John Airbus McCain picked for as his Vice Presidential candidate. The selection of Alaska Governor, Sarah Palin effectively negates further discussion about Barack’s so-called lack of experience. The talking heads are say that at the end of the day it’s who is at the top of the ticket that folks will be voting for. That is true, but I think that misses something very important.
Aug 26 2008
Original article by Phillip Faruggio, via dissidentvoice.org:
Yes, the campaign season is upon us. Once again, this One Party Duopoly has forged another beaut. It seems they always give the suckers choices: column A) from the extreme Right and column B) from the Center Right. Yup, sorry all you 9 to 5 Americans who watch shrinking paychecks and shrinking home values as you pump what truly has become “Black Gold.” Let’s look carefully at these two major candidates from the self perpetuating “lesser of two evils” school of thought.
Aug 23 2008
Original article, by Bill Van Auken, via wsws.org (World Socialist Website):
With the Democratic National Convention set to convene in Denver, Colorado next week for the formal nomination of Senator Barack Obama, the party and its presidential candidate have made it clear that they will present no genuine alternative to the politics of aggressive war and social reaction that have prevailed in America over the whole past period.
Aug 21 2008
John McCain wants to stay in Iraq. John McCain wants to increase troop levels in Afghanistan. The unstable and temperamental John McCain wants to “Bomb, bomb. bomb” Iran. The Russians are furiously signalling that if Iran is attacked they will react. John McCain showed the world during the recent crisis in Georgia that he wants to take a hard, aggressive line with Russia, even at the risk of restarting the Cold War. John McCain wants war. His rhetoric and stated policies reek of it.
And Quickdraw McCain is willing to FORCE your son or daughter….. or YOU ….to fight and kill in his wars. John McCain can’t come right out and say it…..as with so many things that the hot headed McCain can’t come out and say to a nation tired of and bankrupted from war….but if John McCain wants to pursue his aggressive, war centered foreign policy “to the gates of hell,” John McCain NEEDS a draft.
Let’s not pussyfoot around here, a draft means one thing and one thing only: Forcing America’s youth to kill. FORCING Americans to die or be wounded, for his policy of using force, force, and more force. The same policies that have failed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The purpose of a draft is to select unwilling young men (and presumably women) take them away from their lives and families and make them into soldiers…..by force of law. Young men and women who have chosen NOT to volunteer to fight will be MADE to join the military and be trained to kill…and die…for the sake of the “Global War On Terror. ” A war that cannot be won, a perpetual war. A war that does NOT rise to the level of an existential threat to America, which should be the ONLY reason forced conscription is ever instituted.
Aug 21 2008
As if there weren’t already enough examples of John McCain’s dishonesty and hypocrisy, he has delivered another strikingly brazen illustration of just how far he will go to promote himself and to demean his opponent, Barack Obama. And it’s all captured on video:
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