The following is an op-ed by David Swanson that came to my email and provided me information I had not heard before:
“There appear to be two teams in Washington playing under the banners of elephants and donkeys. They have different platforms, use different rhetoric, call each other bad names, and (in the case of the elephants) filibuster bills and impeach and prosecute abuses and crimes by the other side. One team wants to provide us with more healthcare, maybe, sort of, and the other does not. One side is hesitant about or even resistant to demonizing or discriminating against foreigners and immigrants and gays and racial minorities, and the other is not. One side wants to protect the right to unionize, maybe, sort of, and the other does not.
But both teams favor Wall Street bailouts, corporate trade agreements, an ever larger military, corporate contributions, bi-partisan gerrymandering, an ever greater presence of military bases abroad, restrictions on ballot access, the continuation and escalation of illegal wars, and extension of the powers to spy without warrants, detain without charges, rendition, torture (yes, torture), make laws by signing-statement or executive order or secret memo, and — of course — the assurance of immunity for high officials’ war crimes.
[Edited by Moderator: Due to copyright issues involving fair use, we cannot just reprint an entire column by another author and include it as a diary. Here is a link to the original author's work: http://www.opednews.com/articles/2/Which-Side-Are-You-On-by-David-Swanson-091028-402.html]
David Swanson is the author of the new book “Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union” by Seven Stories Press.
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No matter if Obama starts eating babies, He’s still better than McCain Palin, with leiberweasel and gramcracker in powerful positions.
The American
Obama’s clearly worse than McCain would have been because of the whole “Only Nixon can go to china” thing. Obama is going to be much better than a Republican would be at selling escalating wars and undermining social security. Obama has already effectively closed the book on civil rights and torture and so on, giving these things a bipartisan stamp of approval that NcCain (who was less of a war-monger anyway) could ever do. The progressive movement has effectively been shut down under Obama in a way it would not have been under McCain.
So Obama sells the shit far better and the shit itself is virtually identical under either of them.
On foreign policy? Identical. Obama was the more aggressive but that might have been just because he felt he had to swing his dick about in the election since Democrats are bizarrely seen as weak on “defence’ (ie less savage — a false impression of course; they’re more savage). Nice touch keeping on Bush’s defence secretary.
On the economy they are identical.
On domestic issues Obama could get away with more and seems to hate the gays more than McCain does, perhaps because of McCain’s daughter? McCain was a very anti-religious candidate for the right and would have been fine for stuff like stem cell research too. Obama might be worse on religion, but again it might be the whole thing about the Democrat having to swing his dick about more.
They’d both be Bush 2.0 but Obama sells the shit better (ie is more dangerous).
Palin of course was another thing in favour of McCain as president. She was the least Washington DC of all four of them and the most populist by far. Even as nutty and corrupt as she is, she was more of a socialist than the rest of them thrown together. If anyone had represented change it was surely her. If you wanted change, and who didn’t, she was the only one that had any chance at all of bringing it. I can’t imagine any of the other candidates giving the elites the slightest pause. She probably would have been crap too of course but with the others it was a 100% chance.
But the odds of McCain dying in office were pretty small.
Obama is the ‘closer’ for a thoroughly corrupt government of Goldman Sachs.