Category Archives: Politics

An Obama Presidency

Politics,

As it looks like a near certainty that Barack Obama will be our next President–knock on wood–I think Roger Ebert does an excellent job of summing up why this election means so much to so many people.

As the mighty tide swept the land on Tuesday night, I was transfixed. As the pundits pondered red states and blue states, projections and exit polls, I was swept with emotion. Not because America was “electing its first Black president.” That comes a little late in the day. It was because America was electing the right President.

Our long national nightmare is ending. America will not soon again start a war based on lies and propaganda. We will not torture. We will restore the rights of freedom of speech, freedom of privacy, and habeas corpus. We will enter at last in the struggle against environmental disaster. Our ideas will once again be more powerful than our weapons. During the last eight years, the beacon on the hill flickered out. Now the torch will shine again.

“We Do Not Torture”

Politics

From the Miami Herald:

In a first, a military judge ruled on Tuesday that a Guantánamo detainee’s confession was extracted through torture, and excluded it from the trial of a young Afghan detainee at the war court.

Afghan police threatened the family of teenager Mohammed Jawad while he was undergoing interrogation at a Kabul police station, said Army Col. Stephen Henley, the judge, in a three-page ruling.

Jawad, now facing trial by military commission, is accused of throwing a grenade inside an Afghan bazaar in December 2002, which wounded two U.S. soldiers and their Afghan interpreter. None were killed.

Henley found in the ruling that there was reason to believe Jawad was under the influence of drugs at the time of his capture and forced confession.

He also accepted the accused’s account of how he was threatened, while armed senior Afghan officials allied with U.S. forces watched his interrogation.

”You will be killed if you do not confess to the grenade attack,” the detainee quoted an interrogator as saying. “We will arrest your family and kill them if you do not confess.'”

Counterproductive and damned.

One Week Until Election Day – An Open Appeal

Politics, ,

With one week left before Election Day, the Presidential campaign continues to be contentious. Senator Obama is ahead in the polls—fingers crossed!—but John McCain and his supporters are ramping up their attacks, tossing out accusations of un-Americanism, Marxism, and similar outdated nonsense.

While these attacks target Senator Obama, they also demean everyone who supports him, implying that a Democratic vote is equivalent to treason or terrorism.

That obviously isn’t the case. And the best response to these tired attacks is an overwhelming Obama victory on November 4.

How can you bring this about?

1. Vote. Encourage your friends and family to do likewise.

2. If you can, make a contribution to the Obama campaign. Each donation, now matter how small, helps to promote a message of competence and change.

The next Presidency will be a momentous one. It’s essential that the right person—Barack Obama—is in place to lead our country on a better, more hopeful, path to prosperity. You can help to make this happen.

I Heard Obama Was Born in Kenya…

Politics,

Want to know the craziest stories that far-right true believers are spreading about Obama? Jon Swift breaks it down in his recap of “Great Moments in Election-Year Blogging,” covering the gamut from “There is a tape of Michelle Obama with Louis Farrakhan talking about ‘whitey’” to “Obama had cocaine-fueled gay sex in the back of a limousine with a not-very-attractive disabled man with a criminal background.”

It’s pretty funny.