Site Presented By
Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
This probably has most to do
With the unsettled status of Kashmir
Obama voted for the bail-out, he's retaining the key players in our economic "crisis" to continue the plunder of America, he's keeping the same Secretary of Defense--who supported the Iraq "surge"--and bringing back a cavalcade of players from the Clinton administration; the same people who've walking in and out of the revolving door of private wealth and obscenely corrupt federal power since I was fourteen years old.
I was a young, naive volunteer for Obama's campaign, once upon an ignorant time. Happy thanksgiving my ass.
I most certainly do not want your ass for Thanksgiving
Stuffed
Or otherwise...
It's unsettling!
Klytus, I'm very glad you're out there. I often come to the letters section of Joan's blogs just to see what you're up to. Your posts have made me laugh or smile often over the last year. I appreciate your wit and poetry, especially since you almost always find a way to express a sensitive insight. And, I have to add, I'm always glad when Joan notices when your comments are missing.
Just a few minutes ago I copied the paragraph below, by Tim Wise, from a Recommended Diary on DailyKos. I think Wise expresses what I sometimes fear about liberal bloggers and posters: we take life politics so seriously we can forget to laugh and enjoy ourselves. I appreciate how you, Klytus, and you, Joan, keep things in balance!
The humorlessness of the far left -- to which I remain connected ideologically if not organizationally -- has always struck me as one of its greatest weaknesses. People like to laugh, they like to smile, they like to be joyful, and an awful lot of hardened leftists seem almost utterly incapable of doing any of these things. It's as if they have all taken a pledge that there should be no laughter until the revolution, or some such shit. No positivity, no hope, no happiness so long as people are still poor and exploited and being murdered by cops, and victimized by United States militarism, or performing as wage slaves for global capital, or eating meat, or driving cars. And they wonder why the left is so weak? --Tim Wise
Yup, Diablo, you are young. And naive...
Strict liberals
Are worse than holy rollin' nuns
Glad you like the acid wit
Of my asinine word puns
I think that whole thing about the humorlessness of (insert feminist, leftist, liberals or whatever) is mostly made up. I see a lot of humorlessness on all sides, but some of the funniest and happiest people I ever knew are waaaaaaaaaay left. Humor doesn't seem to show up much in political blogs in general.
Has a pretty solid point
Many pious liberal
Like to sanctimoniously
Self annoint
I agree with you Joan. The new administration offers more hope than the old one, by at least 10,000%. Perfect, no. Better, yes. Lots and lots better.
"liberals"
Scuse my eff-up.
I meant in the "plural"
Can I get a constable?
To come out of a riveting election, wide awake, and watch Obama steadily assemble a strong team - competent, serious, and (in Hillary's case, and perhaps Powell-for-Education) inspired. We elected a transforming adult, and we're suddenly humans again.
It's sooo nice to be able to look ahead, even past bad dreams sure to come. There's a will AND a way. Who knew?
Gobble gobble.
Very well said and happy Thanksgiving.
Joan Walsh somehow merged the tragedy in India with a political encomium for Barack Obama.
Joan, your column was malapropos; your readers deserve an apology.
to those who think Obama's judgment on foreign policy is so wonderful. This incident is evidence of how unstable the Indian subcontinent. Sec. Gates and Obama are invested in the notion that putting more troops in Afghanistan and invading Pakistan will calm the terrorist situation. The fact is that the attacks were caused by Indian security services cracking down on Muslims in their country. They beat them in the streets of the slums, invade their homes, and jail them indiscriminately. Also, this is also directly related to the Indo-Pakistani war in Kashmir. Not everything is about al-Qaeda and the US "war on terror."
Should Obama make the error of invading Pakistan (launching air strikes counts as an invasions and does any insertion of military personnel however small or brief) just for the purpose of catching Bin Laden, it will destabilize their already fragile government. Even if Bin Laden is still alive, his message has become viral to the point that he is largely irrelevant. Terrorists of all stripes have adopted his business model. Crossing the Pakistani border to capture him in order for Obama to appear tough on terror would be insane. The Pakistani government has already expressed its objection to Obama's promise of invasion. Pakistani citizens are outraged by the idea. If the government does not retaliate it would be severely compromised and undermined to the point that Islamic extremists could easily seize power, perhaps by democratic means. Then they would have legitimate and lawful access to 150 nuclear warheads. Their first order of business would have nothing to do with the US, it would be India. They would do anything to settle the conflict in Kashmir by blowing it into oblivion, if need be. It would most likely act on the mutually assured destruction these two warring states have invested in. Anyone who thinks India would just wait around for the radical Islamists, who are nihilists, to attack them first, is crazy. India would likely strike first. If Obama wants to plunge the subcontinent into nuclear war by further destabilizing the fragile Pakistani government, he is well on his way. Bellicosity and trying to look like Johnny Badass will not do in this case. Obama seems to think that a troop surge in Afghanistan like the one in Iraq will help. The problem is that Baghdad proper, the place where the surge took place, has roads leading in and out of it. Afghanistan has little or no infrastructure to speak of. The violence takes place in small pockets of the country. It is not centralized like the violence in Iraq. There is no way to transport thousands more troops throughout Afghanistan and no place to put them. Obama, Gates, Clinton, and the rest of them who have this one troop model fits all notion of foreign policy are mistaken. I hope Obama rethinks this good judgment call of his, but based on a call he made to Pres. Karzai, I doubt it.
There is the strong possibility that Islamic extremists who could take over Pakistan would provide terrorist cells with nuclear material to make a dirty bomb to detonate here. Obama and his brain trust seem well on their way to helping that process along.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
