Barack Obama supported and voted in favor of the recent wiretapping bill that grants immunity to telephone companies that cooperated with the Administration’s illegal requests for wiretaps on Americans receiving or making foreign telephone calls.
The so-called liberal media has completely dropped the ball on this one. Why is this not a scandal? George Bush refuses to admit that his Administration acted illegally when they requested the wiretaps. He continues to assert that the requests were legal. If they were legal, there is no need for immunity. The courts, as is their role in a constitutional democracy, have the authority and right to decide the lawsuits filed by plaintiffs against those Telcos. This law circumvents the constitution by providing retroactive immunity for crimes the government refuses to admit were crimes. This is insane. This is impeachable. This is obscene.
This is an out and out betrayal of all the bullshit platitudes about constitutions and freedoms and due process that America constantly foists on the world as justification for all the lives lost in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Barack Obama also supports the ethanol industry in its Disney-esque fantasy of replacing foreign oil with domestic plants. Everyone can already see what the results of this policy will be: oil will continue to cost more, and ethanol will have an absolutely negligible impact on domestic consumption while driving up food prices in the poorest parts of the globe. Even worse, Obama does not support dropping tariffs on imported Brazilian sugarcane ethanol which at least provides a far better return on the energy conversion (8-1, vs. ethanol’s 2-1). Why?
Because Iowa.
Because he wants the support of the Midwestern farmers who stand to benefit enormously from the ridiculous government subsidy of ethanol prices.
Put it this way: the oil industry is not worried about ethanol.
Think about that a lot. Think carefully about it: the oil industry LOVES ethanol. The oil industry’s stooges in the White House are pushing ethanol enthusiastically. The oil industry’s stooges in the White House have, so far, successfully torpedoed a bill that continues giving tax incentives to other alternative forms of energy like wind and solar power.
For those who think Obama will bring a sprig of fresh ideas to the White House, these two issues are bad omens. The first is a classic political compromise, an opportunistic sell-out to the enduring Democrat fear that they won’t appear to be tough enough to take on all those zillions of terrorists out there blowing up buildings in Des Moines, Iowa, or Cedar Rapids, or Flint, or Greensboro, and so on. Oh my God– we can’t let them think that John McCain will be more willing to undermine the constitution than we are!
The second is the classic trade-off of special interests against the genuine interests of the American people. There are numerous lobbyists or other agents associated with the ethanol industry working with Obama’s campaign. That’s disappointing.
The optimist hopes that Obama is making these compromises to get into office, so that once he gets into office he can resume his principled leadership and persuade Americans to support the right course of action. I tend to think it is more likely that once he gets into office, he will make the same compromises that most politicians usually make and things will not be so different after all.
It’s all relative. So we have here the shocking realization that Obama is human after all, and capable of making the same kind of moral and ethical compromises that most politicians make… it is still probable that the election of Obama will improve the U.S. government by a huge margin for the simple reason that we are more likely to have competent people in charge of government policy for the first time in 8 years.
Just how perverted is this generation of voters? McCain feels no need to hide the fact that he would allow the CIA to continue to use torture. TORTURE. On human beings. As if we were not morally superior to terrorists and murderers and torturers.
No candidate in this coming election– wait, is Ralph Nader running?– has proposed to return the U.S. to democratic constitutional greatness and honor and decency. There are no Christian candidates in this election. There is no god in this election.
Torturing the New York Times: Why, in this article, does the New York Times– supposed bastion of liberal dissent– refer to torture as “enhanced interrogation techniques”. Who the hell told them to use this phrase instead of the word “torture”? Is this because they are giving McCain and Bush the benefit of the doubt? Well, it might not be torture, after all? It might be the euphemism? Geez, where are the real liberals when you want one!