Oooh, nuance!

One of the things I often hear when I say I won't vote for Barack Obama is:

"But-but-but he and Hillary are identical on the issues!"

This mistaken belief, I feel, is one of the reasons people who ARE voting for Obama feel comfortable doing so. Maybe they didn't get their first choice - or maybe they did - but either way, Clinton and Obama are both Democrats, right? And they both say the same things on most issues, right?

Right?

Well, here's the rub. Hillary Clinton is credible when she says things like, "I believe in health care for every American." Barack Obama, sadly, is not.

Several factors inform my faith in the promises of Hillary Clinton, but the main one is that she has a record of doing what she claims she would do as President.

For example, on health care, Senator Clinton is unassailable. She tried to push Universal Health Care through the Congress in 1993, but being "only" a First Lady, did not have the clout to hack through the jungle of Blue Dog Democrats and hundreds of millions of dollars of "Harry and Louise" swiftboating from the insurance industry. Even when HillaryCare failed, she still made lemonade from lemons, and was instrumental in getting SCHIP through Congress. Millions of children owe a debt of gratitude to Senator Clinton for that program.

As for Barack Obama, well...his plan is fundamentally weaker than Hillary's. However, it's still better than what we have now. Sure, he doesn't have a record of accomplishment like Hillary, but it's POSSIBLE he could get it done, right?

Right?

Here is the epicenter of the problem. Throughout the primary season, Barack Obama has lied so often that a veritable fog of cynicism surrounds his every pronouncement. And for Jeebus' sake, don't bring up Tuzla to me. Just listen to the IMPORTANT things Obama has lied about.

How about Iraq?

Obama has promised to get us completely out of Iraq in 16 months. Hillary's hawkishness on Iraq was one of the main reasons that many lefties supported Obama. In fact, he hammered her constantly on her poor judgment in voting for the AUMF, which he successfully equated with "authorizing the war in Iraq." (It did, but only if Bush met certain conditions, which he didn't meet at all. Didn't even come close.)

Unfortunately, Samantha Power, Obama's top national security advisor, made it clear that Obama had no intentions of sticking to his promises:

And now, McCain and Obama are basically indistinguishable on Iraq, or so says the Iraqi Foreign Minister in the Washington Post.

It would be "the height of ideology" to stick to a campaign promise that you used to win the anti-war left to your side? Seems to me that it is the height of cynicism to pretend you are something you're not.

If Senator Obama will pull back from his campaign position on Iraq, what else will he "change" his mind about?

Public financing, perhaps? Jerusalem? Iran? NAFTA?

How about FISA?

Back when the issue of telecom immunity came up in 2007, Chris Dodd stated he would filibuster it in the Senate. Barack Obama offered his support, along with other Presidential contenders Biden and Clinton. Now, the issue of telecom immunity is on the table again, for reasons no one outside of Nancy Pelosi's living room can adequately understand (although I have my thoughts - tune in tomorrow...). Barack Obama has coronated himself king of the Democratic, er, Obama for America Party. Where is his commitment to stopping telecom immunity now?

His latest statement shows that he supports the so-called "compromise":

Translation: He will do nothing to back up his rhetoric. How utterly...unsurprising. Is this the change we can believe in - we can believe he will change his mind, any time he feels it is politically expedient?

Obama cannot even tell the truth about his own record. Oh, and remember that email that was going around saying that Obama had MORE legislative accomplishments than Senator Clinton? A complete and total fabrication.

Have I demonstrated sufficiently that Barack Obama has a massive credibility problem on the issues?

So no, please don't tell me that he and Hillary Clinton believe in the same things and would fight the same fights as President. The fact is, I don't have any idea what Barack Obama believes in. I have no sense of what his goals are. He would have to actually do something - pass a law, take a stand, make something happen in the Senate - in order to push aside that fog of cynicism even the eensiest little bit.

Otherwise, all I hear is "Promises, Promises" whenever he speaks. And that's not good enough to earn my vote.

P.U.M.A.!

I don't know about the Deciderer, but THIS is the "general on the ground" that I'm listening to.

WASHINGTON, Sep 12 (IPS) - In sharp contrast to the lionisation of Gen. David Petraeus by members of the U.S. Congress during his testimony this week, Petraeus's superior, Admiral William Fallon, chief of the Central Command (CENTCOM), derided Petraeus as a sycophant during their first meeting in Baghdad last March, according to Pentagon sources familiar with reports of the meeting.

Fallon told Petraeus that he considered him to be "an ass-kissing little chickenshit" and added, "I hate people like that", the sources say. That remark reportedly came after Petraeus began the meeting by making remarks that Fallon interpreted as trying to ingratiate himself with a superior.

Can I just say, BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

But wait - there's more. Lest you think that Fallon's objections are simply based on Petraeus' nose being firmly up the Chimp-in-chief's butt:

Fallon's derision toward Petraeus reflected both the CENTCOM commander's personal distaste for Petraeus's style of operating and their fundamental policy differences over Iraq, according to the sources.

The policy context of Fallon's extraordinarily abrasive treatment of his subordinate was Petraeus's agreement in February to serve as front man for the George W. Bush administration's effort to sell its policy of increasing U.S. troop strength in Iraq to Congress.

In a highly unusual political role for an officer who had not yet taken command of a war, Petraeus was installed in the office of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, in early February just before the Senate debated Bush's troop increase. According to a report in The Washington Post Feb. 7, senators were then approached on the floor and invited to go McConnell's office to hear Petraeus make the case for the surge policy.

Fallon was strongly opposed to Petraeus's role as pitch man for the surge policy in Iraq adopted by Bush in December as putting his own interests ahead of a sound military posture in the Middle East and Southwest Asia -- the area for which Fallon's CENTCOM is responsible.

The CENTCOM commander believed the United States should be withdrawing troops from Iraq urgently, largely because he saw greater dangers elsewhere in the region. "He is very focused on Pakistan," said a source familiar with Fallon's thinking, "and trying to maintain a difficult status quo with Iran."

By the time Fallon took command of CENTCOM in March, Pakistan had become the main safe haven for Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda to plan and carry out its worldwide operations, as well as being an extremely unstable state with both nuclear weapons and the world's largest population of Islamic extremists.

Is it even necessary to point out that Fallon is completely right, and Petraeus can't even state the mission in Iraq, much less state that the occupation is making Americans safer?

Apparently, in Bushbotonia, no reality-based generals need apply.

Security. It's a word that has permeated the consciousness of Americans to oversaturation since (say it with me now) Nine Eleven Changed Everything. But what does the word "security" really mean, especially when you combine it with the word "national"?

Security used to mean many things, all of them positive. You got a college degree, you got a good job, you bought a house and had 2.5 kids, and you retired with a nice pension. While all this was happening, you were able to afford gas and food for your family, and could even save money for vacations without re-mortgaging your house. You were never without electricity, and when you drove over a bridge, you didn't worry that it might collapse underneath you.

When you died, you felt secure that your kids would have the same, or an even better, standard of living, because you had faith that your government was doing its job - the job of improving security for its constituents.

Such was the American Dream, until Ronald Reagan and his conservative followers came to destroy the New Deal policies that had strengthened the middle class and allowed the dream to exist.

Poof! Before you could say "The government IS the problem," the economy tanked, we got mired in Afghanistan and created Al Qaeda, the multinationals began conglomerating and our media started to consolidate. News began degenerating into infotainment and propaganda. Think tanks blossomed that told us that the government was bad and corporations were good, and that loving the so-called free market was a substitute for political awareness. Pundits from these thinktanks began appearing on every channel to wage their particular form of class warfare and to demonize liberal ideology. Our manufacturing and service jobs began vanishing overseas, and our pensions suddenly became unsecured, easily lost when unscrupulous, greedy mega-corporations like Enron, WorldCom and many others used the funds to cover their illegal accounting practices.

Given the obvious effect conservative policies have had on national security, it would seem obvious that if you want to feel secure about your life in America, you would make sure to elect liberals like FDR, not conservative Presidents like Reagan and the Bushes, and Congresscritters like Newt Gingrich's class of 1994. But until quite recently, Americans seemed to feel that Republics were "stronger on national security" than Democrats - and even now, the margin of favorability between the two parties is very slim. How in the world did this happen?

One of the worst things the conservatives (especially gifted framers like KKKarl Rove) have done to this country has been their Orwellian destruction of the English language. The word "security" is no exception. When an elected official, pundit or journalist says the words "national security" now, they usually refer to "fighting terrorism by means of endless war". As if the only way our nation can be secure is to go to war against non-state actors who, in reality, are responsible for far fewer deaths than the automobile industry!

The real tragedy for America was not 9/11, but the reaction to it by our benighted Deciderer-in-Chief. Had Al Gore been inaugurated president in 2001, I firmly believe 9/11 would not have happened (the 9/11 Commission agreed that the attack was preventable.) However, had we been attacked by Al Qaeda during a Gore presidency, there is no way that Mr. Gore would have used such an attack as an excuse to terrify the country into accepting more and more egregious erosions of our national security. Among the outrages we have suffered are:

• tax cuts for the wealthy and the corporations, which steal money out of the pockets of the working class;


• destabilization of our infrastructure by refusing to invest in it or regulate its upkeep;


• ignoring real threats to our country and focusing on billion-dollar boondoggles like missile defense (which Condi Rice was set to speak about on 9/11) and the illegal invasion of Iraq;


• deliberate invasions of our privacy and a huge increase in identity theft which oddly seem to go hand in hand;


• allowing the rule of law, which protects Americans against their government, to become almost completely non-existent; and


• allowing predatory lending practices and prohibitive health care costs to bankrupt Americans.

For the sake of national security, it's time to stop accepting the meaningless slogans of Fear and Loathing, Inc., and remember that national security can only be provided by liberals. Conservatives do nothing but lead us down the path to endless war, and there is nothing less secure than that.