while glancing over the latest raving from TD’s resident ranter purplegirl, my mind wandered off to the eighties.  after being introduced, charo is walking on set during a late nite letterman show.  just before reaching her guest seat, she begins shaking it and screaming ‘guchi, guchi.’  dave gives a slight shake of head and sez “get the tranquilizer gun.”  aahhh…daydreamin’...helps to restore balance

Will You rally your ‘base’ Michael, or just continue the useless bitching (reason it doesn’t cost a cent).
I challenge my Fellow ‘Lefties’ to actually stand up and do something instead of Whine (Brie you flavor?)
The Left should be taking that Civilian Program Idea and running with it.
where are all my bleeding heart compadres, who love to expound on the downtroddened 3rd world countries?
shouldn’t you be packing your duffles and enlisting in the civilian effort?
Nope just some more tantrums to go along with their dashed fantasies of magic. Come on pot doesn’t make you this out of touch with reality- what are ingesting now?
Even if there are some real Humanists in the Left anymore- I’m betting they would prefer to help in a country which is relatively safe. It maybe the 29,999 soldier covering your ass while you dig a well for that village.
and even if you dont’ have the balls (or convictions) to volley up your service to others, or our country directly, The Left certainly can be spearheading NG efforts to increase cross cultural Exchanges- builds empathy, mutal interests and friendship- Good will!
Bitching is Free because it has no use and No Value! And Never solves a damn thing!

http://www.openleft.com/diary/16231/naomi-klein-nails-brand-obama

—still on line as of 11:37 pm EST….

“You of all people know that it doesn’t have to be this way. You still have a few hours to listen to your heart, and your own clear thinking. You know that nothing good can come from sending more troops halfway around the world to a place neither you nor they understand, to achieve an objective that neither you nor they understand, in a country that does not want us there. You can feel it in your bones.”

Where the HELL does he get this? Moore has become such a histrionic media whore.

I just do not understand those who did not hear him say he was going to do this on the campaign trail. Naomi Klein explains it pretty well in her new introduction, to the ten year anniversayry of “No Logo”, which discusses Brand Obama and how everyone bought into it—I would post a link, to her new introduction, but it seems to has disappeared from every site it was on..anybody have one? How long wil it take you guys to admit that he winked and nodded to you on this stuff?

I admit, I am a little surprised with how neo-macho he sounds with this “get the job done” and “root them out” crap, but his actions were promised.

hello. i do not feel the evil within destroying me. i feel the evil, do not allow it within, and pray it will destroy no more. the war machine in Congress is about hometown money for jobs. the entire apparatus must be retooled and reassigned, and that is where everyone comes in dumbfounded. we can build great support for killing machines and warring industries; but what else? what would you rather see government contracts going to build? tell your congressman.

Is this the price Obama had to pay for some kind of health care reform, bowing to Liebermann and the Zionist War machine.
For lousy health care we get World War 3, to make Israel safe and continue its oppressive arrogant behavior.
China, Russia stand up and speak for the rest of mankind.. and save us from the evil within that is destroying us

“when in fact u most likely know….”    this is getting embarassing

all props to michael moore for making the larger public aware of ‘progressive’ issues during his lifetime.  but, hell, writing an open letter to obama, when in fact u most likely what he is gonna do, is pretty pathetic.  many progressives have seemed to fall for a guy—obama—of obvious intelligence, who sometimes is capable of articulating their point of view.  but like glider says “...judge this president on what he does and not what he speaks.”  TD commenters have seemed to divide into 2 camps….those of the ‘he’s a bright guy and just give him more time’ camp and those of the ‘we’ve seen enuf of the guy and it’s time to draw the line’ camp. while it may be some fun to continue our back and forth arguments, we as american people may be in some really deep shit and we may have less time to turn this all around than we think.  no easy answers here…just felt the need to throw in my 2 cents

I too wonder if Obama is hell bent on being a one
term president. Then I hear people who claim to be
Republicans champion a Cheny/Palin ticket - Mr. Moral Depravity and Ms. Intellectually Bankrupt - and I think, not that Obama is saved, since I wouldn’t vote for Cheny/Palin from the depths of hell, but that we’re screwed either way an election might go.

I don’t envy him his job, I have little knowledge of what it takes to navigate his political realities, but I remember Vietnam too well to have much hope. Ah, “hope”. That was what it was about once, I seem to recall.

Blackspeare, December 1 at 2:13 pm #

“Mr. Moore does not understand the finer points of foreign intrigue.”

no, its you who do not understand michael moore. he knows exactly what’s going on. he’s an “outsider” who criticizes DC insiders, until its election time; then he supports and campaigns for them.

michael rhetoric seems like a perfect match for O’s “change we can believe in”

No one seriously believes that this will lead to a solution to the Jihad that’s facing the west.

It looks like the second term is gone at this point. It’s quite likely that there will be a strong third party candidate, that will sink the Democratic parties chances of re electing Mr. Obama, or anyone else even if they decide to dump him.

So get ready for a new Republican adminstration, probably run by Sarah Palin, who will be our first women president.

It’s unlikely that this country can sustain another lost decade, without real political change and leadership and still remain in one piece.

You know how sometimes when you are out with a best friend, they say something totally stupid, and you get well embarrased. Well being connected at the hip with America, I sometimes feel, like for eight years during Bush, that I was with my best friend and they could not keep there mouth shut. Now we come to Obama, and his escalation of the war in Afghanistan. “We can fight them over there, or over here”, all 100 of them. Look I know that terrorism is no joke, but this American suicide is really getting me down. If one half of the body dies, doesn’t it drag down the other half. Makes sense to me. Obama isn’t going to listen to Michael Moore, or any of the other celebrities that can get their letter published in the local paper, he is going to do with the left overs from the Bush Administration does, he is going to escalate. He will not use those words, he will make it seem like our contribution to the plate will only serve the highest minded ideals, but he is going to escalate, because he doesn’t have the strength of character to just quit, come home, and goes knows deal with the problems here. I loved Obama, I liked Obama, and now I start to pity Obama. How sad it is when there was so much hope.

Lary Waldman

Mr. Moore does not understand the finer points of foreign intrigue.  Major military powers need bases of operation around the world and in that context they need bona fide enemies.  The Korean and Vietnam Wars were fought for that purpose.  The Korean War was successful, Vietnam was not.  But the US learned from Vietnam that you don’t let the press or the public determine a war’s direction——that’s what the military is for.  The ME is a valuable piece of territory and it appears that Iran will make a superb enemy.  Surrounding Iran with bases in Iraq and Afghanistan is a no-brainer from a military perspective.  And for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons is also a no-brainer for them!  The question is when will the attack begin?

I admire Moore for posting this open letter to Obama.  I also feel the pain of betrayal and of the hope lost.  But I am simply sickened by the media’s interpretation of this action, as Obama “searching for a way out of Afghanistan”.  When will people finally start to judge this president on what he does and not what he speaks?  Such Obama cheerleading is becoming so laughable as to be pathetic.  It is time to wake up!

I repeat:

Establish a War Sur-Credit not a war surtax.

That is, continually take money from the Pentagon, Congress, and the Pres and send it to taxpayers each month until they get us out of both wars and all the kids are home.

Initiate ‘pre-emptive war’ by starting a war, ‘lose’ bin Laden in order to begin a
second war, send more troops in order to stop the war…. Are we Americans fools
to believe these things? The nation’s political leadership obviously believes us to
be. And, for good reason, it’s worked time and time again.  If states are going to
be allowed to ‘opt out’ of health reform, then allow them to ‘opt out’ of
Afghanistan reform !  Surely, the President has lost both his political and moral
compass.

I remember listening to Moore’s interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now last year around this time. It was, of course before Obama was elected president but he was already migrating his platform toward the illusion of what we US citizens call “Centrist Politics”. Moore was very optimistic, and in what I think was his willing suspension of disbelief to steal a film term, decided to see his shifts as an appeal to voters on the other side of the isle and not a general trend of his political career. Moore was hoping the move was a feint to the right, to be followed up by a series of leaps to the left. I think he’d already pick up the Romster for his cabinet at the time of the interview, not sure if he’d picked Gates or not at the time, I’m going to guess not as I’m sure Moore might have been a bit more cynical after that. Sure there were Clintonistas on board, but Gates was a real revolving door character with hands as bloody as Bob McNamara, just Indonesian blood, not Japanese or Vietnamese. His resume filled with the same sorts of career moves between private sector executive positions and board positions to civil service positions. Well it’s a good thing Teddy Shackley wasn’t around still I guess or his base might have had to try and swallow that. What I believed then and know now was that he and McCain were simply interchangeable commodities to the various special interests that control our government. If presidential candidates were ice cream, the difference between the two was Obama was Neapolitan with strawberry on the left, and McCain was Strawberry on the right.

I’m not really surprised by this move, I’m surprised by his policy banning no-bid contracts, and other methods of war profiteering but I fully expect those things to occur anyway. After all don’t we already have many of those deals in place already? And why are his puppet masters moving us towards this pointless war if not for profit? To me it rings of lip service, the same sort of lip service he gave to a public option in his imagined health care bill. It sounds nice in a policy speech but will never be realized. I understand we have nearly 100,000 contractors already there, a popular euphemism for mercenary. Maybe it’s just some language BA, HON and GD had him throw in to protect their existing contracts from more erosion by firms like Blackwater. Finally I know vast amounts of our contracts go directly into Taliban pockets via payoffs from warlords to allow supply convoys to bypass their territories without incident. We fund the Taliban to fight us already, how can one one not be cynical about the real motivations of this war, it is a profit vehicle for the US defense industry, not a political imperative.

He’s really on the verge of losing it, isn’t he?

To EJH:

  Although I agree with the spirit of your note and with LostHills, I must disagree in part.  Americans are also victims in these wars - especially the young warriors who have once again been placed in the wrong place and the wrong time.  The Pentagon forms its own self-fulfilling prophesies.
  I have prayed incessantly since word leaked of McCrystal’s request that the Pres would resist the warmongers and pull the US out - thus saving the Afghan victims, the Iraqi victims, AND the American victims.  To say that today’s announcement is saddening is a vast understatement.  For my own tastes, as a veteran of the mid-60’s military, we cannot get out fast enough. 
  Back to prayers for the improbable ..... maybe nobody will get hurt.  (I can hope for that, can’t I?)

“Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence. Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle.”

- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2008/10/30/the-ones-who-attacked-us/

Hey LostHills,

I like your attitude.  I agree something must be done
and the American people need to stand up and resist
these wars.  But you and others like you need to
realize that “this” isn’t happening to “our country”. 
America is not the victim.  Iraq, Afghanistan,
Pakistan, etc., etc. are the victims.  America is the
aggressor and bully.  Please do organize protest and
resistance.  Please do everything you can to make
your government stop.  But don’t talk as if you
people are the victims.  It just makes you look
foolish.  http://theunpeople.blogspot.com/

Increasingly, folk understand that for several years, US „presidents“ have not been >genuinely< elected by the qualified citizenry.  Rather, imposters have been instituted via political machines, such as that of the family Bush.  However, many folk do not care to believe that the family Bush rendered financial support to the NAZI party. Nor do they care to believe that SS NAZI General Gehlin reorganized the OSS into the CIA, and staffed the leadership with NAZI personnel, 1945-6. Nor do they care to believe that NAZIs in the US at the end of WWII organized and pulled off the furtive import of over one thousand NAZIs between 1945 and 1948, via Operation PaperClip.  Nor do they care to believe that passports for
all the illegal alien NAZIs, with supportive family histories and documents were fraudulent. Nor do they care to believe that historical documents in many dorfs and cities in Germany, as well as in the US, were „doctored“ by CIA and NAZI sympathizers on the scene, to support the fraudulent passports, family histories, etc.  However, most folk have insight into the fact that for years, imposters have been placed into the US presidency by political machines, by manipulating the popular vote. 

That the current occupant of the US presidency is any different, escapes the insight of many folk, who consider him to be the „rescuer“ of the downtrodden. That he stems from a „downtrodden history“ is latched onto by millions of folk, who expect him to fulfill their dreams of equality with the ruling class.  Such is impossible.  He was instilled into office by a „machine“ that exercised more power than the „machine“ that empowered the McCain entourage. This machine installed him, with the vision and expectation of a „payback,“ as their goals are accomplished.  Their goals were initiated by the family Bush machine, and their treasonous activities in the US and abroad.  Their misuse of the bin Laden family of the Saudi tribe, and the falsification of the events that they contrived in order to initiate
the synthetic „War on Terror“ are evoking retribution from Moslemdom that will shake the world.  The fraudulent „Dubai episode“ is only a beginning, into which greater Moslemdom has clear insight, and which will uncover their ties to the Bilderberger group. 

The promises of the current USpresidential puppet were lollipops intended to do exactly what they have done.  Deceive.  The continuation of the genocide and re-population of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, also planned for Iran, is simply goal-approach activity of the machine that placed him in office. 

Soldiers from the USA and other nations are simply „canon fodder“ for the generals who are conducting the genocide and re-population directed from the US pentagon. Regardless of what he might care to do personally, if Mr. Obama deviates from the plan of his string-pullers, he will shortly join JFK and similar folk.

montanawildhack, December 1 at 9:19 am

One note Samba much?

Yeah, Moore wrote a good letter——so what!!  So, Uncle Barack sending tens of thousands more troops comes as a surprise???  It wasn’t a surprise to me as anyone who reads my posts knows….  I simply ask myself one simple question on matters like this….
“WWID?”  That’s right… What Would Israel Do?  Moore is not stupid.. He knows what the score is and he sure as hell knows who’s running the show… He can’t even elude to it or he’d never make another movie in his life and he’d be destroyed…. 

I’d like to be a fly on the wall in Netenyahoo’s living room while this evil hustler listens to Obama’s speech tonight.  I think you’d hear over and over again between sips of his vodka martini, “Now, that’s a good Boy.”

I thank ChaoticGood for attempting to bring some light into the darkness of this seemingly insane fervor to impose our military will upon the world.

The instability of Pakistan, a nuclear power, the fact that the Pashtun Tribe, from which a great majority of the Taliban stem, reside within Pakistan as well as within Afghanistan make CG’s words rather insightful.

But the real question we should be asking, and apparently do not, is whether imposing our military upon Afghanistan serves to increase or lessen the sway of radical fundamentalists upon that nation and the region as well. I think it obvious that it serves the cause of terrorism rather than abates it. While the Taliban ruled there was great opposition to that rule, yet our methods there push the people of Afghanistan into the arms of the Taliban.

If we were successful in propping up a detested govt in Kabul, and in ousting the Taliban, or the remnants of AlQaeda for that matter, from the rest of that nation we would only see them move to another equally inaccessible locale. The words of Che Guevarra come to mind when he noted that guerrillas ( terrorists in his day) move through the population like a fish through the water. Winning the hearts and minds of the people is the only way to combat those who hate and murder. Instead we join them in their hatred and we murder more than do they.

Doubtless Obama was cherry-picked and
groomed years ago
by the powerful shadow cabal of corporate
industrialists, wealthy bankers, the CIA, the
Federal Reserve, and the military cream to be
their White House stooge. Whichever party
holds the office doesn’t matter. Obama
promised “change we can believe in”, and has
delivered only chump change so far. The
shadow government
created the 9/11 catastrophe to further their
long-nurtured scheme to control the Middle
East for it’s resources, terrify the American
populace, protect Israeli interests, and launch
bogus “wars”. This nonsense is driving the U.S.
closer to bankruptcy every day. We will soon
have Weimar-like hyper inflation because they
keep issuing worthless paper
and “credit” to bail out whimpering bankers and
shiftless car makers. If you have any assets, buy
commodities like gold, silver, corn, copper, etc.
because when the dollar tanks you’ll need
something to pay for necessities.

Wait…
We are not in Afganistan because we think we can “win”.  That is silly.  What does winning mean?

We are there because of India and Pakistan.  It’s always been all about them.  They matter greatly and Afganistan matters not at all.

We are being misled into believing that we are at war with terror, what a joke that is.  We are in Afganistan to placate the fears of India that we are taking sides with Pakistan. We are there because Pakistan needs help controlling its unruly northern territories.

This is another “demonstration” war, just like Vietnam and the “communist domino game”. If Obama actually told the truth, we would leave Afganistan and the very real possibilty of a war between Pakistan and India, using “nukes” would be one step closer.

Thats why Obama seems to sound more like Bush when it comes to Afganistan.  Obama now has seen the very sobering results of the War Games and has come to the conclusion that America must be in Afganistan for a long time.  Why do you think the first official “dinner” at the White House was for India?

It’s time to mobilize. Only the people can stop this war. Don’t stand by and
watch this happen to our country. Demonstrations are being planned all across
the country on Wednesday, December 2nd, by ANSWER, Code Pink, United For
Peace And Justice, American Friends Service Committee and others.  Join in or
start your own. Simply standing on a street corner holding up a sign that says
Stop The War or Bring the Troops Home Now, can be very effective and
empowering. To find an action near you, go to:

http://www.answercoalition.org

If you are not near one of these cities, call your friends and make something
happen in your own community. The war can be stopped through grass roots
action, and that’s the ONLY way it will be stopped.

Wednesday!

So we are to understand that our government must pay bribes to the
insurgents to keep them from attacking american troops.  Those bribes buy
these insurgents weapons to continue attacks against us an all those involved
on “our side” of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq.  If we brought our troops
home, refused to be involved in Iraq and Afghanistan then our men and women
would not be killed and maimed in an illicit war activity, americans would save
billions and trillions not fighting in illicit war theaters..what is the matter with
our political leadership?  Are they insane? Americans- rise up !  Demand that
Obama, our other elected leadership in both houses of Congress stop the
insane, wrongful fighting abroad.  Bring our men and women home.  The
greedy war mongers and defense contractors can continue to create the fear
and war that exists if they care too, and importantly, they can fund it and
provide their own warriors.  But not in America’s name.  They can fight and
create their wars In their own names.  Just like the pirates of old.

I agree totally with Michael Moore’s letter to President Obama and I, too, am praying and crossing all my fingers and toes.  I will listen with deep anxiety and fear for the immediate future of this wonderful, but sadly misguided country.