[Peace-discuss] blogs worth reading, I think

Tue Oct 16 05:14:58 UTC 2012

Although Illinoisans of left-of-center persuasions will not have much of a
say in who's  going to occupy the White House come January 2013, we still
have to decide to vote our fears or our conscience.  The following three
blog postings, written by a young ex-Urbanite,  may be  of some interest to
those of us who have not yet resolved this internal conflict.

http://commiedeathsquad.wordpress.com/2012/09/05/the-case-for-obama-or-are-democrats-moving-to-the-right/
<http://commiedeathsquad.wordpress.com/2012/09/05/the-case-for-obama-or-are-democrats-moving-to-the-right/>

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?shva=1#search/commie+death/13a1ce5968a764d3

http://commiedeathsquad.wordpress.com/2012/10/07/other-side-of-bullshit-mountain/

Niloofar Shambayati

Commie Death Squad <http://commiedeathsquad.wordpress.com/>Because it's fun
to do bad things.
[image: Inline image 1]

The Other Side of Bullshit Mountain or: What it means to vote for
Obama (again)
Posted on October 7,
2012<http://commiedeathsquad.wordpress.com/2012/10/07/other-side-of-bullshit-mountain/>

Jon Stewart recently chewed out the Fox
News<http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-september-19-2012/chaos-on-bulls--t-mountain>
set
for their (typically) cynical defense of Romney’s leaked “47%”
comments<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2gvY2wqI7M>:
“The biggest problem with the denizens of Bullshit Mountain…is that if they
had success, they built it. If they failed, the government ruined it for
them. If they get a break, they *deserve* it. If you get a break, it’s a
handout and an entitlement. It’s a baffling, willfully blind, cognitive
dissonance.” If you read this blog, you know that for me, cognitive
dissonance (a polite way of saying hypocrisy) is something of a pet peeve.
So you hopefully won’t be too shocked if I add to Jon’s rant a bold thesis:
There are more than just Republicans on Bullshit Mountain.

I recently addressed, point by
point<https://commiedeathsquad.wordpress.com/2012/09/05/the-case-for-obama-or-are-democrats-moving-to-the-right/>,
some of the common arguments for supporting Obama and the Democrats, which
mostly hinge on the premise that the choice between the two major
candidates/parties this fall is one between gradual progress and a time
machine to the Dark Ages. Then I explained why I’m supporting Jill
Stein<https://commiedeathsquad.wordpress.com/2012/10/01/whos-afraid-of-jill-stein/>
and
the Green Party, and summarized some key points from their 2012
platform<http://www.gp.org/committees/platform/2012/>.
Today I’m going to focus on stuff I didn’t cover in the Sept. 5 post,
mostly because it (for whatever reason) hasn’t been trumpeted as a selling
point by the Democratic cheerleading-industrial complex.

Amid the deafening chorus of liberals attacking
those<http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/09/rebecca-solnit-liberals-leftists-explaining-things?page=1>
 to their left<http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2012/09/a-short-history-of-the-democracy-and-the-state>,
a few progressive voices—most notably
at<http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/10/why-i-refuse-to-refuse-to-vote-for-obama/263116/>
 The Atlantic<http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/09/why-i-refuse-to-vote-for-barack-obama/262861/>,
but also, for one, John
Cusack<http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/11264-john-cusack-and-jonathan-turley-on-obamas-constitution>—have
drawn what I call “ethical red lines” at the President’s savage,
unconstitutional policies of indefinite
detention<http://www.democracynow.org/2012/9/21/as_italy_sentences_23_cia_agents>
 and targeted killing<http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/09/every-person-is-afraid-of-the-drones-the-strikes-effect-on-life-in-pakistan/262814/>
(let’s
not act like “drones” are the problem). This dissent is admirable. I think
we have the same values. My concern is that by focusing only on the red
lines crossed in terms of civil liberties and “foreign” policy, some
progressives seem to imply that Obama’s “domestic” policy doesn’t trample
the many ethical red lines that they seem so afraid a Romney Administration
would cross. It hurts our case to leave them out.

One supposed liberal value that most actual liberals have been noticeably
quiet about is tackling climate change. And who can blame them? It’s hard
to see how the President lovingly dubbed “George W. Obama” by grateful
climate change deniers<http://www.democracynow.org/2011/12/8/his_nickname_is_george_w_obama>
could
have a more regressive environmental policy. President Obama, not a
Republican, restarted the nuclear energy
program<http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gRIJr2njr98FZuLpxqG0Fy28Xj6A>,
touting the promise of “safe” nuclear energy even after the Fukushima
disaster<http://www.beyondnuclear.org/home/2011/3/30/despite-fukushima-and-nuclear-pushbacks-abroad-obama-touts-m.html>.
The first two plants he greenlighted are being built in mostly black and
poor communities in Georgia and South Carolina, where nuclear leaks have
already been linked to cancer
epidemics<http://blackagendareport.com/content/closer-you-think-top-15-things-romney-and-obama-agree>.
He personally propagates the myth of “clean
coal”<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GehK7Q_QxPc>,
and has okayed dozens of mountaintop removal coal mining
projects<http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/06/02-4>,
which destroy landscapes and dump toxic waste into streams and valleys.

President Obama, not a Republican, lifted the moratorium on offshore
drilling after the BP oil
spill<http://articles.cnn.com/2010-10-12/us/drilling.moratorium_1_deep-water-drilling-drilling-rig-oil-drilling?_s=PM:US>,
including several projects right in the Gulf of
Mexico<http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/03/22-6>
,...
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