I AM APPALLED
- I just finished taping my latest public access TV show and my guest was Lisa Savage who is the Maine Coordinator for Code Pink. Lisa and I share the coordination role of the Maine Campaign to Bring Our War $$ Home. Lisa is a school teacher and brought along one of her students so we gave her the job of running one of the two cameras in the studio. Lisa is always articulate and comes across real well on air. Working as a high school teacher she is on the front lines of where cutbacks are happening and thus her motivation to end war spending is even more real.
- Obama's new man at the Pentagon, Leon Panetta had this to say the other day about the military budget: "We're already taking our share of the discretionary cuts as part of this debt-ceiling agreement, and those are going to be tough enough. I think anything beyond that would damage our national defense." He's calling for more cuts in Medicare and Social Security rather than the massive budget for endless war. He is a "liberal" Democrat.
Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) says that he is "appalled" that Obama wants to keep our troops in Iraq - even after the president has told the nation that we have brought our troops home. Rep. Frank should be appalled. It's past time for the left side of the Democratic Party to start standing up to Obama's corporate agenda. But the problem is that Rep. Frank goes on to say that he supports, and will continue to support, Obama. So the problem is that Obama feels no real pressure from inside his party. The left-leaning Democrats grumble a bit but they always fold their tents and go home when it comes down to the wire. The American people, by margins of 70%, want us out of Afghanistan and Iraq. But are few in Congress that are willing to fight Obama on this point (Kucinich one of the few exceptions). Until this changes people will continue to see the Democratic Party as enablers of the military industrial complex.
Frankly, I don't give a damn who Barney Frank supports. He can support Rick Perry or even Ronald Reagan, either of whom has about as much chance of winning the presidency in 2012, for all I care. But if he is willing to speak out forcefully and publicly on a popular medium like the Rachel Maddow Show to bring the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to an end and redirect those funds to domestic spending, he has my support.
ReplyDeleteTrue, we're often told that our sign-holding sessions outside the Offense Department corporate welfare recipients won't change anything. Told that we are "whiners" and offer naught but complaints.
ReplyDeleteHowever, keeping silent has a much more spectacular history of failure than even the most trivial of Dissent.
One of the most visible mass movements in history was started by an unemployed homeless carpenter in the Middle East who got killed in Occupied Palestine.
Keep working for the goal.
I wish I could recall who said this first, but if they kill us outright they can only do it once (apiece) but if we surrender they kill each of us every day for the rest of our lives.