"The Lesser Of Two Evils"...Why, Obama Isn't That Bad!

[IanEye]

ps, ianeye if you're reading this, pass the hopium pipe ; )

elihu, right back at 'cha !



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eye swear by the blood below my feat
you can't raise a cane
when he's in de feet

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[justdrew]

and a chaser...

[justdrew]

There Are Many Life And Death Issues
September 27, 2012 | Scott Lemieux

Since I’m guessing that Glenn’stweet is directed at me, I should clarify what I mean in myprevious post. When I said that the issues Friedersdorf focuses on are “pet issues,” I am certainly not suggesting that they are not important. I certainlydon’tbelieve that. What I am saying is that the issues that he completely ignores are also extremely important issues. Let’s be clear, shall we? We’re not “just” talking about issues of justice and equity here. The repeal of the ACA would mean that some people die and many others suffer unnecessarily. Having a Republican-appointed head of the EPA means that people will die and suffer illness unnecessarily. Having a median Supreme Court vote who has to turn to (most likely) his left to see Antonin Scalia will cause some people to die and many others to have their fundamental rights violated. Just as a start, overruling Roe v. Wade will mean some women will die or be maimed and many others will have their lives shattered. These are all life or death issues, and hand-waving about “dealbreakers” that ignores these lives entirely is not any kind of serious argument. (This analysis obviously doesn’t apply to Jim Henley,who does appropriately consider them.)


And, of course, it’s worse than that. We could argue about how to weight the relative evils if their was a choice between Obama and an opponent who would be better on some issues and worse on others. But that’s not the actual choice. Romney will almost certainly be far worse even with respect to the issues Friedersdorf emphasizes as well as the life-and-death issues he arbitrarily ignores. Obama has been bad on any number of civil liberties issues. But he ended the Iraq War,* stopped arbitrarily detaining and torturing people caught under the reach of American authorities, and didn’t invade Iran. Is that enough? Not even close. Is that far better than someone who is likely to bomb Iran and get the torture regime re-started? Obviously. Does the fact that Romney makes no pretense of caring about civil liberties somehow make these future victims less dead?


Again, I understand why people who want to make a big show about how they can’t possibly sully themselves a vote for Obama want to muddy the waters. But nobody’s saying you shouldn’t criticize Obama for his bad military and civil liberties policies, and nobody involved in this discussion would be criticizing him if that’s what he was doing. People are being criticized for suggesting that progressives should be fundamentally indifferent about the outcome of the 2012 election. I can understand why one would prefer to defend the former rather than the latter argument, but it’s the latter one that’s actually being criticized. And it’s being criticized because it’s both irrational and immoral, and incidentally is unlikely to actually start a productive discussion about the underlying issues.


*And as for the argument that he didn’t really want to end the Iraq War but the United States has no choice but to adhere to treaties with its client states, pull the other one. If you think John McCain would have pulled out of Iraq, I have several nice parcels at Glengarry Highlands to sell you.

[Wombaticus Rex]

[sunny]

I will no longer vote for anyone who doesn't represent me. Mitler nor Obama represent me or anyone other than the 1 %.

Jill Stein is on the ballot here in Alabama so I'll vote for her. Not that it'll make a drop of piss in the ocean worth of difference but at least I'll no longer feel responsible for the murders done in my name by the man I was guilted into voting for last time.

[Hammer of Los]

...

I will no longer vote for anyone who doesn't represent me. Mitler nor Obama represent me or anyone other than the 1 %.

Jill Stein is on the ballot here in Alabama so I'll vote for her. Not that it'll make a drop of piss in the ocean worth of difference but at least I'll no longer feel responsible for the murders done in my name by the man I was guilted into voting for last time.

That's good sunny.

I voted Green and several other er yeah radical type parties several times in my life.

I wanted to vote Natural Law party, but they never had a candidate in my constituency.

Felt a bit cheated, actually, in that there was no realistic chance of them being elected.

I am still glad I voted for Nick Clegg's Liberal Democrats though, even if a lib dem candidate didn't get in locally. He spoke out against escalation in the Iran "standoff," and more recently has spoken out against more routine arming of the police. So I still like Nick Clegg. Now that Vince Cable, I don't really trust him.

Anyway.

There is a power even in the most seemingly pointless of acts.

The power of ritual.

Of directing your conscious will into the world.

It would be nice if no-one ever voted Republican again, wouldn't it?

You know, after 911.

Not to mention JFK et al.

I ain't gonna invoke God Win's Law. Not yet anyway.





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[ninakat]

I will no longer vote for anyone who doesn't represent me. Mitler nor Obama represent me or anyone other than the 1 %.

Jill Stein is on the ballot here in Alabama so I'll vote for her. Not that it'll make a drop of piss in the ocean worth of difference but at least I'll no longer feel responsible for the murders done in my name by the man I was guilted into voting for last time.

Thanks for saying it, sunny -- I know you've said it before, but it does bear repeating. Futile as it might seem.

Here's Chris Floyd recently, also saying it again and again, but necessarily:

Again -- and we've said here over and over, for months, even years: when you vote for one of the factions in the imperial power bloc -- Democrat or Republican -- this is what you are supporting. You are empowering, enabling and associating yourself with an extremist regime that visits bin Laden-like terror on innocent people, day after day, night after night: killing them, traumatizing them, deranging their lives, destroying their families, their hopes and dreams. This is what you are voting for, you stalwart Tea Party patriots. This is what you are voting for, you earnest humanitarian progressives. This and nothing else but this: terror, murder, fear and ruin, in a never-ending, self-perpetuating, all-devouring cycle.

link

[ninakat]

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"Mitt Romney is a wolf in a wolf’s clothing, Barack Obama is a wolf in a sheep’s clothing, but they both essentially have the same agenda." -- Jill Stein

[Project Willow]

I will no longer vote for anyone who doesn't represent me. Mitler nor Obama represent me or anyone other than the 1 %.

Jill Stein is on the ballot here in Alabama so I'll vote for her. Not that it'll make a drop of piss in the ocean worth of difference but at least I'll no longer feel responsible for the murders done in my name by the man I was guilted into voting for last time.

I'm voting for Stein too. I've been voting this way since Clinton's second run when I believe I voted for Nader. I do think it makes a difference. That's how you build movements and keep (at least a little) pressure on those in power. Where did this expectation come from that you have to vote for a win every time?

[Luther Blissett]

Just for the record, I thought that the discussion that Hedges was a spook was sourced to an anonymous comment on a blog.

[Nordic]

http://truth-out.org/news/item/11756-wh ... der-drones

"Whatever Is Left Is Just Pieces of Bodies and Cloth": New Report Details the Horror of Living Under Drones

By John Knefel, Truthout | Report



A new Stanford-NYU report, "Living Under Drones," details the devastation to civilians - and possible war crimes - resulting from US drone strikes in Pakistan.
On the morning of March 17, 2011, Ahmed Jan joined over 40 other people at a bus station in Datta Khel, North Waziristan in Pakistan to settle a community issue in a large meeting, or jirga. The group split up into two circles, about 12 feet apart from each other, and despite the drones buzzing overhead, those present later described feeling "secure and isolated" from the drones. It was a sanctioned meeting and Pakistani authorities had been made aware of it.
Jan was sitting in one of those circles when he heard a "hissing sound." An instant later a drone-fired missile struck the middle of his group, sending his body flying and killing everyone around him.

At least one more missile was fired, hitting the second group. Another witness, Idris Farid, said, "Everything was devastated. There were pieces - body pieces - lying around. There was lots of flesh and blood."

At least 42 people were killed that day, many of them civilians. The Obama administration claims, to this day, that all those killed were insurgents.

This information comes from a new report jointly released by human rights attorneys from Stanford and New York University (NYU) that details with disturbing clarity the horror that it is to live in a drone-patrolled region.

The report, which draws on over 130 interviews of Waziris the researchers conducted, is in many ways the clearest evidence yet that the US drone program is not the precise, limited, restrained program US citizens are meant to believe it is. Rather, those interviewed describe a panopticon in which simple acts like going to school, going to the market, even simply gathering in a group in someone's house, become life-threatening.

"The presence of drones and knowledge that drones can strike anywhere, at any moment, leads civilians to feel routinely anxious about potential strikes," said Professor Sarah Knuckey, a human rights lawyer at NYU, and former advisor to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, as well as one of the report's authors, in an interview with Truthout. "They feel helpless to protect themselves."

Weddings and especially funerals have become nearly impossible to attend. The US often targets funerals for drone strikes, one of many practices associated with the drone program that are very possibly in violation of international law, according to the report's authors. Those who do attend funerals for those killed by drones, report a nightmarish scene of anonymous body parts buried together because the bodies have been so completely blown apart.

The report states, quoting Idris Farid again:

"The community had to collect [the victims'] body pieces and bones and then bury them like that," doing their best to "identify the pieces and the body parts" so that the relatives at the funeral would be satisfied they had "the right parts of the body and the right person."

Khalil Khan, who was at the bazaar when the strike occurred, said when he got to the scene he couldn't identify body parts. Unsure of what else to do, Khan said he "collect[ed] pieces of flesh and put them in a coffin."

The report also details the practice referred to as a "double tap," in which the same target is struck multiple times in quick succession. The result is that locals trying to provide help, and sometimes official humanitarian aid workers, are hit in the follow-up attacks. The authors conclude:

Evidence uncovered by our research team that humanitarian actors may not attend to strikes immediately because of second-strike fears is especially troubling. As UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Christof Heyns observed, "[I]f civilian 'rescuers' are indeed being intentionally targeted, there is no doubt about the law: Those strikes are a war crime...."

This is pure terrorism. I know I'm just barking mad, but I simply won't vote for a terrorist. I'm strange that way. SO unrealistic, I know, all politicians are terrorists! America has always been a terrorist nation! You must support the less evil of the two terrorist candidates! If you don't, you hate everything and you're a hysterical shrieker who just likes attention!

Pakistan has been the main country where drones have been used, though hardly the only one. Haykal Bafana, a lawyer in Yemen, described his two young daughters' reaction to seeing a drone. "My daughters were jumping up and down shouting, 'Aeroplane! Aeroplane!'" he said to me in an email. "I found that extremely disturbing, as I could picture the same scene in other parts of Yemen or Somalia, even as the drone fires a Hellfire missile. Terrifying thought."

For many in North Waziristan and Yemen, that terrifying thought is an inescapable part of life. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has reported that between 474 and 884 civilians have been killed as a result of drone strikes in Pakistan since 2004. Of those, 176 are children. The report quotes Feroz Ali Khan, whose father-in-law's home was hit, who described the aftermath of a missile strike: "Whatever is left is just little pieces of bodies and cloth."

Drones are a bipartisan issue. You can't cast a vote for a viable candidate in 2012 who won't continue to - in the words of the report - "terrorize" the people of Pakistan, of Yemen, of Somalia, with flying robots. The ACLU has called the drone program the "centerpiece of the Obama administration's counterterrorism policies." Mitt Romney has promised to continue the program on the off-chance he's elected, and has even gone so far as to say Pakistanis are "comfortable" with drones.

Beyond that, critics like Glenn Greenwald have argued that the establishment media has served primarily as a tool the Obama administration has used to display its so-called strength in going against accused terrorists. Greenwald and others have argued that nearly all that the public knows about the program comes from leaks that serve to show Obama's warrior power, while the CIA still refuses to acknowledge the program based on what they call national security grounds.

As a result, people in the US have a hugely favorable view of drones. One survey conducted in June of this year showed a 62 percent approval for drones, while another from February showed an approval rating of 83 percent.

To the extent that we talk about drones at all in this country, we talk about the accused terrorists they ostensibly target. At least one of the reasons those poll numbers are so high is the complete absence of the stories of the people in North Waziristan. This report, which Sarah Knuckey described to Truthout as "intended to insert the stories of those who bear the brunt of US drone strike policies - civilians in North Waziristan - into US public and policy-maker debates," takes an important step toward achieving that goal.

Fuck Obama.

[Nordic]

Enjoy!

When Obama "wins", toast a glass of champagne to this kid:

[Nordic]

Gooooooooo ..... BAMA!!!

[Nordic]

[Nordic]

SCORE!!!