Food Fascist - On Obama being forced into this, see Ray McGovern's piece:

Obama's Profile in Courage Moment
By Ray McGovern
November 24, 2009
http://consortiumnews.com/2009/112409b.html

and see Robert Parry's:
How the War Hawks Caged Obama
By Robert Parry
November 30, 2009
http://consortiumnews.com/2009/113009.html

mstaggerlee - Remind me again – who else did more to further the cause of peace in 2008 – 2009, (PRIOR to the current escalation) than Barack Obama?

Umm, Wavy Gravy? (lol)

@ZeroG - Thx for posting your story. You know, Barack Obama has a Facebook page for which a thread under the Discussion Tab that is running beneath the Michael Moore letter to him to stop the escalation.

I fear our Obama has been forced into this. My underlying optimism is that the escalation will be the final surge for which as is also being stated, an exit strategy will be outlined.

Richard,

I did also mention the fact that the level of discourse coming from the political/media class is often an echo chamber of no-nothingness.

Certain exceptions apply, of course.

This prefaces the second hour, but anyway.

This morning I spent some time on the phone with Senator Kerry's office and speaking with someone on the Foreign Relations desk.

I was able to explain at some length and detail that I spent the month of Jan. 2002 in Northern Afghanistan with an NGO, in Northern Alliance held territory (portraits of Shah Massoud everywhere.) I mentioned that in the entire month I was there every Afghan woman I saw was dressed in a full burkha, even new mothers holding newborns. The local warlord that we were supporting had four wives.

I was able to reference Malalia Joia's article in yesterday's UK Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/nov/30/obama-afg...

A troop surge can only magnify the crime against Afghanistan
If Barack Obama heralds an escalation of the war, he will betray his own message of hope and deepen my people's pain - Malalai Joya guardian.co.uk, Monday 30 November 2009 19.00 GM

All to marshall the argument that to escalate the war in the name of women's/human rights is a complete sham.

I then had the time to bring in the recognition of the elections in Honduras under the auspices of the coup regime and the ten new bases in Columbia as further evidence that the change we voted for is nowhere in sight, or at best minimalist in nature.

As always, I thanked the gentleman for his time.

@THOM: Caste is only one issue. This is about ‘control of the masses’ . . . Propaganda is more effective against a population devoid of rhetorical skills.

Is he talking about people describing their foul-smelling posterior emanations? Sometimes I'm embarrassed to post here. Anyways, in a city “famous” for its supposed continuous rainfall for most of the year, working outside all day in these conditions can make life rather miserable. Last Thanksgiving (yes, some people have to work on Thanksgiving), it rained eight hours straight, took a break for a half-hour, and then rained some more. Needless to say, it was quite miserable. Having labored in these conditions, you are not really in the mood to put up with people who treat you like a criminal or a terrorist—like those blue-shirted bozos with the rent-a-cop badges and Department of Homeland Security patches. These guys with their red IDs (denoting people with limited capacity for work), generally justify themselves by confiscating their daily quota of bobbie-pins and toe nail clippers; a training film I saw showed a table upon which was laid out a bucket full of explosive material from a bag that had been tagged “inspected” by these fellows. It’s particularly frustrating to have these guys try to intimidate you by putting their hands on your food during one of their “surprise” 4 AM inspections of your backpacks.

Speaking of troublesome issues, where I work there is a new rule: No cursing, touching or “nick-names.” Sometimes it is difficult to comply with at least two of these items when you hear something odious to one’s sensibilities. On the Saturday of the Senate procedural vote on the health care bill (that merely allowed debate on the bill to begin), I discussed the health care issue with a person who I would say gets most of his “facts” from Fox News and such. I explained to him that yes, it was possible for there to be a net budget surplus (according to the CBO) in the Senate health care bill, because it would be paid for by tax increases and other means, and not just money coming out of thin air; apparently he had been told that the cost of reform was all deficit spending.

I also had to explain why we needed a public option, because we couldn’t trust insurance companies to be honest—just like how the drug companies are raising prices seven times the rate of the CPI after promising to reduce prices by $80 billion. He was concerned that reform would have an adverse effect on his family, which I thought odd, since he didn’t have any insurance. He was of course concerned that people might go to jail if they didn’t buy insurance, but I thought a $750 fee for not getting insurance was a small price to pay, particularly if you needed emergency care, and it would probably end-up being paid for by the hospital’s “charity” fund. He was also concerned about taxing “Cadillac” plans; I told him he shouldn’t worry about that; the plan our company was offering (which I talked about a couple weeks ago) would not qualify.

But then he told me that he had heard that the government could force you off your private insurance plan and into the government plan. My first reaction normally would be something to the effect “Where did you get that bullshit from?” But then I remembered the new decree against cursing, so I cried out “Where did you get that horseshit from?” This caused some people to crane their hands toward the supervisors’ cubicle, but I think I was well enough excused for expressing myself in this fashion.

According to a newspaper story the Sunday following the first vote, at least one Democratic senator is stating his belief that the Senate bill should not be furthered watered down just to appease the four senators, when the majority of the country wants real reform, including a public option. These four senators need to put aside re-election concerns and show a little “profile in courage,” and do what they know in their heart of hearts is the right thing. They may find that there is a “silent majority” that wants reform, as opposed to the fanatical right-wing fringe element shouting annoyingly in their ears.

Regarding Lee's post "I see that I should take more time to look over my posts as this site doesn’t allow editing". I agree!!!!

I wanted to say that "the 'Taliban' DO NOT understand global politics are not interested in domination of muslim minds worldwide, unlike Al-Qaeda".

My apologies! And to 'ReganTool' ..err...'ReaganRules': Liberals / Progressives are also humans (probably unlike most neo-cons) and they are entitled to a few errors from time to time.

Lee,

As Thom says, the damage in which we currently live would start to come undone if "natural" could be added to "person" (thus disconnecting the "rights" of corporations as "persons") in the Supreme Court decision in the late 1800s that Thom investigated.

An example of outing the machinations of the media and corporate ownership is to consider the ongoing development of a electricity generating power plant in Dabhol, India. In a cooperative arrangement, Enron, Bechtel and General Electric built the power plant that was dependent on natural gas from the Caspian Sea that had to be piped through Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Cut to the 2008 Democratic primary, Progressive candidate Dennis Kucinich is barred from debating in Las Vegas near the Yucca Flats Nuclear facility by the host of the debate: NBC. NBC is owned by nuclear power developer, rotary cannon maker etc and an advocate of the Yucca Flats expansion while Kucinich wanted it shut down. There is now massive aquifier contamination in the Yucca Flats area and water is at a premium in the Southwest. So we had a media outlet, NBC owned by General Electric, effectively screening our presidential candidates for us, thereby reducing our choices to Obama, Clinton, and pretty boy Edwards.
The right did the same thing with the popular Ron Paul. Paul flatly stated at a previous republican primary that he would pull out of Iraq and Afganistan, would dissolve the CIA and Federal Reserve. Poof! He's gone from the debates tool.

There's something wrong with a people who allow their candidates to be screened for them by private interest groups with obvious agendas.

We call people in Afghanistan and Iraq who are fighing foreign occupation "insurgents" (in other words, OUTLAWS) what would we be called in the USA if a foreign country invaded our country and began stealing our natural resources? . . . Heroes?

We invade Irag and Afganistan and coincdently both countries are undergoing civil wars. Divide and conquer and steal the resources. In Afganistan's case, it's a matter of placing military bases and operations to faciltate the gas and oil pipelines from the Caspian Sea.

I think Thom is finally beginning to get to the matter of who is controling our politics. It's not Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Carter, Obama, it's the people with billions of dollars in wealth and interests in controlling global resources that co-opt our democratic process with money who are the problem and need to be identified and chased from the shadows of annonymity. We need to follow these people around and hound them just as the paparizi hounds celebrities. They must know that we know who they are and how they sew discord through the Hegelian Dialectic to play working people off each other.

These people own the media and depend on the media for cover and to manufacture distractions. Focusing on politics is exactly what they want, focusing on the cross ownership of media and corporate global interests is exactly what they don't want.

Thank you Thom for talking about Exxon in Iraq, then there's Hunt and the Kurdish deal and on it goes. It was about oil after all. The Bush adminsitration was the oil administration.

@Reagan Rules -

In answer to you quesrtion regarding the shelf life of criticicm of Reagan's policies - I've heard Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck and the like spend considerable time on their programs criticising the New Deal policies of FDR. Maybe, sometime after FDR's shelf life expires for the Right, Reagan's will expire for the Left - certainly not before.

If you bothered to pay any attention to what goes on in here, you'd realize that we are decidedly NOT a cheering section for Barack Obama - He's WAAAAY to the right of most of us ... Obama's opinions are likely closer to yours than to mine, so maybe you should leave him alone.

If you truly beleive the Fox-feuled ninsense about Obama representing the EXTREME left, then there's very little to be gained by having any kind of arguement with you. I also generally avoid arguements with people who believe in Santa Claus.

@RONDOG.RULZ: Perhaps the issue was more that to properly respond to your one drive-by post it requires a number of posts to restore some resemblance of logic. Dumping garbage does not make ones garbage any more palatable or valuable.

I know that it remains important to lump me into a non-specific group by continuously attempting to label me as a liberal name-caller. It always you to fail addressing my points by dismissing them without considering them.