Will the Occupy Iowa Caucus be successful?
By skepticalscott
It’s Iowa Caucus day!
Despite endless debating, campaign ads, and TV punditry over the last few months – the Republican race to the White House officially begins this evening as Iowans gather to choose which Republican they’d like to see run against President Obama this year.
Polls show a dead heat at the top between Mitt Romney and Ron Paul – with a surging Rick Santorum in third and a collapsing Newt Gingrich in fourth. And considering Iowans have a history of choosing oddball candidates – like Mike Huckabee in 2008 and Michele Bachmann in last year’s straw poll – it’s anyone’s guess who might come out on top in the Hawkeye state at the end of the night.
One thing that is certain is that Republicans are temporarily putting a hold on their war against voters. Iowa is just one of nine states in the nation that allows for same-day voter registration, meaning people can go to the polls, register to vote, and then immediately vote all at the same time.
Studies show that same-day voter registration boosts voter participation by as much as 7%. Also – Iowa will not be checking any voter photo IDs as so many other right-wing states are now demanding. So whoever does come out on top – will be there thanks to the voice of the people. That is unless the Republican Party – using the excuse of a threat of an Anonymous hack attack – sabotages the caucus to prevent Ron Paul from winning.
Or – if the Occupy Iowa Caucus movement is successful in catapulting “uncommitted” to the top of the Republican field for the win. Either way – it should be an interesting night – stay tuned.
Comments
#2
You beat me to it, DR, I was just going to post about this NDAA-National Defense Authorization Act. You can also read about it at aclu.org.
"We are extremely disappointed that President Obama signed this bill even though his administration is already claiming overly-broad detention authority in court. Any hope that the Obama administration would roll back those claims dimmed today. Thankfully we have three branches of government, and the final word on the scope of detention authority belongs to the Supreme Court, which has yet to rule on the scope of detention authority. But Congress and the president also have a role to play in cleaning up the mess they have created because no American citizen or anyone else should live in fear of this or any future president misusing the NDAA’s detention authority.
The ACLU will fight worldwide detention authority wherever we can, be it in court, in Congress, or internationally."
http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/president-obama-signs-indefin...
Anyone who votes for Obama in 2012 has got to be bonkers. What is it going to take to convince people that Obama is not "an alternative" or "we've got no other choice" to the Republicans. He is one!
And it looks like we are very close to getting into it with Iran, doesn't it? The ultimatums have been spoken...Iran to US: don't you dare bring your war ships into the Arabian/Iranian gulf. US to Iran: We'll do anything we please and you will just have to take it. I wonder if Iran has already planted dirty bombs in American cities waiting to be triggered in the event they see fit to retaliate against US aggressions? Get out the duct tape and gas masks...here we go again. Oops, I had better start watching what I say on the internet....wait!! I hear loud pounding on my door! Oh, Persepolis! What are all those armed soldiers doing breaking down my door! If you don't hear from me again....
#3
Never mind...it was just the mail man!
Sen. Carl Levin, Democrat...states before Congress that it was the Obama administration "that asked us (Congress) to remove the part of the NDAA bill that said that it would NOT apply to US citizens and lawful residents".
Obama is not our friend..he tells lies...and he works for those who have bought him...Corporations, Wall Street, and the banks. The ruling elite owns him and he is used as their "trojan horse". Wait a minute, I hear banging on my door again....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQgXZxzgRp0&feature=endscreen&NR=1
#4
Thom, Re: Shocked at Ron Paul
Why are democrats not shocked at Obama and the Democratic Party's Pro war and anti civil liberties? Where is the outrage?
As David Sirota has said, these two issues are issues that the president DOES have control over.
#5
Some of you might have missed Glenn Greenwald's essay on Progressives and Ron Paul over the holiday weekend. If so, you should go read it now.
http://www.salon.com/2011/12/31/progressives_and_the_ron_paul_fallacies/singleton/
#6
I just enjoy the crazy show, but it doesn't mean anything. The GOP is done.
Herman Cain is back -- that's even more entertaining.
Okay, after 2012 we have to help the Republicans to drive the teabaggers out of the Gallant Old Party. This isn't gallant anymore, I feel nothing but sorry for them. Well, we need a strong progressive majority in the house, to drive the money out of Congress, do away with filibustering and make clear: the Constitution was written for human rights, and corporations aren't humans. Ergo they shouldn't be called people. As the netbook I'm writing on doesn't need a constitution..... Now don't ya tell me, my stupid computer is a person too, ya crazy teabags!
A teabag obviously is a person, but belongs to the nuthouse. That's where they all belong.
#7
It's not being bonkers to vote for Obama if the only other choice is someone like Santorum or even Romney.
Join the ACLU! Give them money! We need to support and enable the organizations fighting for us, and the ACLU is one of the most effective.
#8
And write to Obama (White House) and tell him this is an impeachable offense. Also your congresspeople, either with your support or with your condemnation. (I wrote 3 today, not including the president.)
#9
I hear ya trembling over the www. What're ya afraid of? We shouldn't be too scared -- life has always been dangerous. As your "All Or Nothing At All" attitude is VERY dangerous! You can't have all in life. Obama is not an angel, but I don't wanna wake up in teabagger fashism one day. FDR was criticized pretty much the same way like Obama. Though the world didn't go under. Without FDR America would be poorer and without Obama too.
#10
I think FDR is given too much credit...he would not have done what he did if it wasn't for the strikes and sit downs and growing violence. FDR was also the President that bought into McCollum's 9 point plan to get Japan ticked off enough to invade us. He followed every single point in that memorandum. We showed antagonism and belligerence and belittled a proud people then took away their source of oil (what would the US do if some country tried to block us from oil....looks like we are about to find out in Iran) and the ploy worked.
FDR, and others in the close knit circle (like neocons today), planned it all and sacrifice thousands of innocent lives at Pearl Harbor just to get anti-war America riled up to go along with our entering the war. What the Japanese did to the Manchurians, Chinese, and Indochinese, does not give me room to pity the Japanese, though. They had been beheading civilians for sport and had their own experimental death labs in Manchuria..or was it China?
Makes me wonder about our own country when MacArthur and the rulers at the time decided not to hang people like Ishii who was in charge of the biological warfare death camp and he was instead brought to America to help out at our own biological warfare center in Ft. Deitrick, Md. They ended up hanging very few scape goats...and kept the gangland drug-pushing mobsters intact to run the country of Japan after the war, becoming wealthy and powerful and living cushy lives.
But the fact is that FDR manipulated the people into war by sacrificing thousands of fellow Americans. They did the same thing during 911.
Obama is not a valid choice to be President for the next 4 years. He blew it. The Democrats blew it. I hate it that we might get a Republican for President but I would hate it even more if that lying, Wall Street owned, Trojan Horse gets away with scaring people into voting for him again.
The Democrats have to learn that the people will not put up with their two-timing, lying, politics while stabbing the voters in their backs. I am hoping that we vote out both the Republicans and the Democrats this time around. Nothing will change if something like this doesn't happen. It will be the same old, same old. Don't you people get it? It doesn't matter who is President...Republican or Democrat when the Democrats act just like Republicans. It's actions, not lying words, that matters. Don't let Obama fool you again!
#11
Glenn Greenwald sure hit the nail on the head!
"The candidate supported by progressives — President Obama — himself holds heinous views on a slew of critical issues and himself has done heinous things with the power he has been vested. He has slaughtered civilians — Muslim children by the dozens — not once or twice, but continuously in numerous nations with drones, cluster bombs and other forms of attack. He has sought to overturn a global ban on cluster bombs. He has institutionalized the power of Presidents — in secret and with no checks — to target American citizens for assassination-by-CIA, far from any battlefield. He has waged an unprecedented war against whistleblowers, the protection of which was once a liberal shibboleth. He rendered permanently irrelevant the War Powers Resolution, a crown jewel in the list of post-Vietnam liberal accomplishments, and thus enshrined the power of Presidents to wage war even in the face of a Congressional vote against it. His obsession with secrecy is so extreme that it has become darkly laughable in its manifestations, and he even worked to amend the Freedom of Information Act (another crown jewel of liberal legislative successes) when compliance became inconvenient.
He has entrenched for a generation the once-reviled, once-radical Bush/Cheney Terrorism powers of indefinite detention, military commissions, and the state secret privilege as a weapon to immunize political leaders from the rule of law. He has shielded Bush era criminals from every last form of accountability. He has vigorously prosecuted the cruel and supremely racist War on Drugs, including those parts he vowed during the campaign to relinquish — a war which devastates minority communities and encages and converts into felons huge numbers of minority youth for no good reason. He has empowered thieving bankers through the Wall Street bailout, Fed secrecy, efforts to shield mortgage defrauders from prosecution, and the appointment of an endless roster of former Goldman, Sachs executives and lobbyists. He’s brought the nation to a full-on Cold War and a covert hot war with Iran, on the brink of far greater hostilities. He has made the U.S. as subservient as ever to the destructive agenda of the right-wing Israeli government. His support for some of the Arab world’s most repressive regimes is as strong as ever.
Most of all, America’s National Security State, its Surveillance State, and its posture of endless war is more robust than ever before. The nation suffers from what National Journal‘s Michael Hirsh just christened “Obama’s Romance with the CIA.” He has created what The Washington Post just dubbed “a vast drone/killing operation,” all behind an impenetrable wall of secrecy and without a shred of oversight. Obama’s steadfast devotion to what Dana Priest and William Arkin called “Top Secret America” has severe domestic repercussions as well, building up vast debt and deficits in the name of militarism that create the pretext for the “austerity” measures which the Washington class (including Obama) is plotting to impose on America’s middle and lower classes.
The simple fact is that progressives are supporting a candidate for President who has done all of that — things liberalism has long held to be pernicious. I know it’s annoying and miserable to hear. Progressives like to think of themselves as the faction that stands for peace, opposes wars, believes in due process and civil liberties, distrusts the military-industrial complex, supports candidates who are devoted to individual rights, transparency and economic equality. All of these facts — like the history laid out by Stoller in that essay — negate that desired self-perception. These facts demonstrate that the leader progressives have empowered and will empower again has worked in direct opposition to those values and engaged in conduct that is nothing short of horrific. So there is an eagerness to avoid hearing about them, to pretend they don’t exist. And there’s a corresponding hostility toward those who point them out, who insist that they not be ignored.
The parallel reality — the undeniable fact — is that all of these listed heinous views and actions from Barack Obama have been vehemently opposed and condemned by Ron Paul: and among the major GOP candidates, only by Ron Paul. For that reason, Paul’s candidacy forces progressives to face the hideous positions and actions of their candidate, of the person they want to empower for another four years. If Paul were not in the race or were not receiving attention, none of these issues would receive any attention because all the other major GOP candidates either agree with Obama on these matters or hold even worse views." --Glenn Greenwald
http://www.salon.com/2011/12/31/progressives_and_the_ron_paul_fallacies/...
#12
If your excitement is really as extreme as it seems to me, you're nothing but risking your own health. What you don't see is, the average American is pretty conservative. Even if you blame President Bush for what happened during his presidency: responsible for this are all Americans!
And Obama: you can't really hope, there might be a progressive majority possible at the left of this president. Not in America! The average American is so darn conservative and stubborn, if you honestly consider this, you might give up on all of them. Politically you have to deal with those facts, otherwise you're not living in reality. Well, I think Obama is doing this. But he has to raise money for his campaign to go ahead. I want him to go ahead. He's the best man we have -- seriously.
It's mainly men who are so terribly selfish. Many of those who now protest in the occupy movement will stop protesting, as soon as they get a chance to become part of the rich and mighty. And those women they will marry will be as dumb and selfish as all spouses and say AMEN to whatever their husbands do. It has always been like this. Whom can you actually trust? Nobody..... but -- wait a minute.....
Maybe I trust you a bit, because you're so desperately writing. You won't ever get anything out of this. This won't make you rich. And it won't change anything.
#13
Now this is gonna be incredibly interesting (to me at least LOL)......
These are hungry herring gulls. Now imagine these are human politicians:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2N_51W2-XU
Then look at the 'political' comments under that video: These commentators all don't get it – moralizing these starving gulls! (Fast facts: seagulls aren't more 'evil' or greedy/desperate than ducks and swans -- they're just extremely fast.)
Whatever, if you watch gulls, you might become a gull hater: „Oh my gosh, are they terribly mean!“ You find these idiotic conclusions all over YouTube – people saying they hate gulls and some even want to kill them. And this is very much the same way they talk about congress LOL.
But are humans (I don't say „politicians“ now, I mean ALL humans) really nicer than herring gulls? Because if you look over here....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lbe2Xb_XbWc
.... you might say: „Oh my gosh, are humans awfully nasty – they're actually like those gulls I hate!“ And these humans are not even STARVING! This is even worse than gulls!! Remember last Black Friday? Gulls!
Well, I love gulls – am mother of a disabled herring gull. And maybe this helps me to understand humans. And maybe this helps me to understand politics....
#14
As I stood near the light house, throwing out little bits of bread to the birds, I noticed that the poor gulls never stood a chance against the hordes of little starlings and sparrows. The gulls just stood there on the ground, or lumbered aloft, unable to outmaneuver the smaller birds. The only thing the larger birds, at times, have going for them...when it works...is to scare all the little birds away. But in this instance...the little birds were shafting the bigger birds and getting their due. Even when I would throw a bit right at the gulls, the little birds rushed in to gobble up the goodies. Maybe we need to take a lesson from the little birds.
I agree that people are very fickle...one moment sounding holier-than-thou and preaching equality...the next moment, after they have managed to gain money and/or power, they become the greedy and selfish bastards that they once preached against. I see it also in immigrants who manage to get across the border and become Americans and then use disparaging slurs against those who have managed to sneak across the borders in search of the same things that they once sought. Wetbacks calling Wetbacks Wetbacks...or any other disparaging terms are often levied against their own trying to make it in America. And it is not just America. This happens everywhere.
President Obama, once he gained money and power (and the Presidency), has made it on the backs of people who believed in him, the voters, because of his actions and words in Chicago and his campaign messages and promises. But once he got to the level of the highest office of the US and gained access to immense money and power, he turns his back on that manufactured persona, however well meaning (or not) in the beginning.
I am sure there are a lot of burgeoning and gifted, ambitious, would-be leaders amongst the crowds that rail out against the injustices of those who have "made it". And I have no doubt that even they would not hold true to their convictions once they attain influential power and wealth after having used the masses as fodder for their rise. But once these icons turn on us we are foolish to continue to count on them for our well being.
We have to realize when gods become devils or we will continue to be blindly led to their firey pits. We have to detect and recognize the sneaky games they play or we will all continue to be their slaves. The two-party system, the Republicans and Democrats, and the false idea that "we have no other choice" mentality will only get us to those firey pits much faster. We have to break out of their mental chains and not play their games anymore. The game is rigged! And our participation only serves to make it look like we have a valid and workable system. It is really no better than any third world dictatorship pretending to be a democracy.
#15
LOL, you're pretty smart.
Only this: If you throw bread at herring gulls, they catch it like dogs. Anyway, those little birds are a much better and healthier nutrition for seagulls than pastries.
I don't know.... But go on, I like your zeal.
Though I still think you overdo your Obama and FDR critic. It has something hysteric.
___________________________
P.S.: Seagulls in Chicago? I'd rather say, those little black-headed gulls (not black in winter).
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Liar, Liar, pants on fire!
Specifically, it was Obama - not Congress – who originally requested that an exception for American citizens be removed from the bill. As such, his professed reluctance is wholly disingenuous.
Obama Rings in the New Year By Signing Bill Allowing Indefinite Detention of AmericansPosted on January 1, 2012 by WashingtonsBlog
Obama signed the NDAA – including a provision allowing the indefinite detention of Americans - on New Year’s eve.
Obama issued a “signing statement” with the bill, which – at first blush – appears to say he won’t indefinitely detain Americans. Specifically, Obama wrote:
My administration will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens … Indeed, I believe that doing so would break with our most important traditions and values as a nation.
But a closer reading shows that the signing statement is just smoke and mirrors.
Specifically, it was Obama - not Congress – who originally requested that an exception for American citizens be removed from the bill. As such, his professed reluctance is wholly disingenuous.
Moreover, Obama signed a bill which would allow future presidents to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens, and his signing statement in no way limits their power to run roughshod over our rights.