Labels: change, small house movement
Submit To Propeller
posted by profmarcus at
2/12/2011
Labels: Argentina, Buenos Aires, change
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
11/29/2010
sigh...
- [I]n Collapsing Empire News, the Democratic House -- not deterred or even slowed in the least by what the WikiLeak-ed documents revealed -- voted overwhelmingly to appropriate unconditionally another $37 billion for the war in Afghanistan while the political class prepares massive teacher lay-offs and (coming soon) slashing cuts to Social Security; this action -- with 102 Democrats and 12 Republicans opposed -- was taken in violation of the emphatic pledge of virtually every Democratic politician not to fund wars through supplemental appropriations.
- [A]s was painfully predictable and predicted, the bulk of political discussion in the wake of the WikiLeaks disclosures focuses not on our failing, sagging, pointless, civilian-massacring, soon-to-be-decade-old war, but rather on the Treasonous Evil of WikiLeaks for informing the American people about what their war entails. While it's true that WikiLeaks should have been much more careful in redacting the names of Afghan sources, watching Endless War Supporters prance around with righteous concern for Afghan lives being endangered by the leak is really too absurd to bear. You know what endangers innocent Afghan lives? Ten years of bombings, checkpoint shootings, due-process-free hit squads, air attacks, drones, night raids on homes, etc. etc.
- [T]he Obama administration is now advocating changes to the law that would empower federal law enforcement agents to compel companies to turn over citizens' Internet records without a warrant or any other form of judicial oversight. I wrote previously about the Obama DOJ's extremely dubious (and dangerous) arguments in court that the law already allows them to access such Internet and email records with no warrant, but now they are attempting to have Congress re-write the law to vest them with that power.
Labels: Afghanistan, change, Civil liberties, civilian casualties, Congress, endless war, Glenn Greenwald, hope, hopey changey, Obama administration, Salon, whistleblowers, Wikileaks
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
7/29/2010
We keep expecting the politicians and the mainstream press to do the right thing. That is profoundly naive. Why is a television anchor making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year going to look to change the system? He loves the system. The system pays the bills.
That's even truer of our politicians. The status quo got them elected. The status quo will get them - and their staffers - great salaries when they retire and become lobbyists. They'd have to be crazy to change the system that put them up on top.
That's why change must come from outside the system. We keep waiting for the Obama administration to bring us the change they promised. What are we, children? The current system got Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel, Tim Geithner, etc. where they are. They have gotten to the pinnacle of power by playing within that system. They've made millions in that system. That's why they have no intention of actually upending it. They just want to tweak it and do exactly what Obama said he wouldn't do if he got elected - play the Washington game just a little better.
This doesn't mean you give up all hope. There are some good guys in DC. I recently talked to a House staffer who said that Senator Franken's staff is excellent. The staff is so important because they are the ones who actually write the bills. I asked him why Franken's staff was better than the others. And he had a simple answer - they don't plan to work as lobbyists in DC when they're done serving in his office.
It's not just the honest senators that should give you hope. What should give you the most hope is that the motivations of people are actually quite simple. So, we can change the results by changing the incentives.
For example, if we pay the campaign expenses of politicians instead of letting the lobbyists pay them, then the politicians might actually work for us. If we ban the politicians and their staff from working as lobbyists, they might not have as much incentive to sell us out.
I know the people inside DC think that last proposal is absolute heresy. How would they get rich if they can't work as lobbyists? And that's precisely what the problem is. They're getting rich at our expense. We're crazy to allow this system to continue.
The nobles will never change it. This is how they got to where they are. This is how they maintain their power and salaries. We have to make them change it.
Labels: Al Franken, Cenk Uygur, change, Daily Kos, Democrats, lobbying, Obama administration
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
6/21/2010
Court rules Obama’s detention powers not limited by laws of war
The Washington, D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling Tuesday that upholds the Bush administration's broad claims of executive power to detain non-citizens.The case, Al-Bihani v. Obama, "was the first by the Circuit Court to directly apply the Supreme Court’s 2008 decision in Boumediene v. Bush creating a constitutional right for Guantanamo Bay detainees to challenge their captivity," according to the SCOTUS blog. "Unless reviewed and overturned either by the en banc Circuit Court or the Supreme Court, the new decision will control how scores of detainee cases are resolved in District Court in Washington."
The defendant in the case, whose habeas petition was denied by the court, is Ghaleb Nassar Al Bihani, a citizen of Yemen who served Taliban fighters as a cook and claims he never even fired a shot.
Labels: Bush Administration, change, endless war, Guantánamo, Obama administration, secret detention
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
1/06/2010
US Refuses to Allow UN Inspectors to Investigate its WMDs
We Have a Nobel Peace President Who Won't Ban Land Mines
President Obama 'creating torture impunity'
Labels: Barack Obama, change, hope, hypocrisy, walking the talk
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
12/12/2009
Like many people who desperately want to see the country take a more progressive course, I quibble and quarrel with some of President Obama's actions. I wish he'd been tougher on Wall Street, quicker to close Guantanamo, more willing to investigate Bush-era excesses, bolder in seeking truly universal health care. I wish he could summon more of the rhetorical magic that spoke so compellingly to the better angels of our nature.
But he's a president, not a Hollywood action hero.
Labels: Barack Obama, change, constitutional crisis, Eugene Robinson
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
11/03/2009
So what goes into the making of a contemporary American revolutionary? What turns an ordinary law abiding, relatively sedate and insular, American Idol watching couch potato into an informed and committed citizen prepared to incur risk and make meaningful prolonged personal sacrifice aimed at reclaiming our country? Two things: truth and suffering.
[...]
Well then, if we have these essential elements of truth and suffering, why is there still no large, forceful, coherent, and well organized body of popular grassroots resistance in the US? The main reason is simply that the requisite deep suffering and penetrating hard truths are not yet sufficiently widespread. Another reason is the extensive dumbing down of our society, along with the non-stop lies and propaganda spoon fed us daily by mainstream corporate media. Also there’s the ever present fear created by our government, using both rhetoric and legislation designed to consistently reinforce the clear threat so plainly put to us in the wake of 9-11 by George W. Bush: “You’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists.”
In any case, with our Bush initiated upward spiraling national debt, exploding unemployment, and massive war related economic hemorrhaging, all continuing unabated under Obama and our wholly owned Congress, the furtherance of expanded suffering is a foregone conclusion. It will be left to the small but growing numbers of would-be resisters and truth-tellers (citizens Big Brother will vilify as home-grown terrorists) to advance the spread of truth.
Labels: Barack Obama, Bush Administration, change, hope, revolution, truth
Submit To Propellerposted by profmarcus at
8/07/2009
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