DOES ANYONE STILL BELIEVE THAT SUPPORTING THE DEMOCRATS AS THE LESSER EVIL IS A VIABLE STRATEGY
Date : Tue, Feb 05, 2008 06:49 PM
DOES ANYONE STILL BELIEVE THAT SUPPORTING THE DEMOCRATS AS THE LESSER EVIL IS A VIABLE
STRATEGY?
BY ROBERT HALFHILL
I can't understand why the majority of progressives continue to believe that supporting the democratic Party will do much good. For example, impeachment is the most important issue facing us, given that Bush was never elected, having been APPOINTED by the Supreme Court in 2000 and STEALING the election of 2004. Bush and Cheney are behind the loss of our civil liberties de jure, although not yet de facto, taking the power to declare anyone an enemy combattant and secretly imprisoning them without the right of habaeus corpus or a
fair trial, or even any trial at all. He has introduced torture. He has pushed through legislation allowing him to spy on our emails and phone calls, been malfesant with respect to his duties as Commander In Chief by fabricating the intelligence, i.e. lying, to get us into the disaster of the Iraq invasion, and, when Joseph Wilson objected, committed treason by outing Wilson's wife as a CIA agent. The list goes on.
The issue on that list which renders all other issues minuscule by comparison is 9/11. If you look at pictures of the World Trade Center after 9/11, the majority of the buildings mass is piled up on the surface area that the buildings stood on instead of being scattered all over the surounding area. Only controlled demolition with thermate explosives to melt and cut through the supporting steel girders can bring a building down like this. Yet not only did the twin towers collapse on their footprints but World Trade Center 7, which was not even struck by an airplane, collapsed on its footprint. Numerous experts on fire behavior have testified that never before or since 9/11 has a protected steel framed building collapsed solely because of fire. The steel girders were cut at the precise angle that girders are cut in controlled demolitions. The buildings fell at almost free fall speed, which could not have happened if the upper floors had had to crash through the lower floors on their way to the ground. The buildings falling would have only broken the concrets composing them into chunks and the fall would not have released enough energy to reduce the concret and other material in the buildings to powder; only the energy released by thermate explosives could do that. And Peofessor Steven Jones, a physics professor at Brigham Young University, analysed samples of the dust from the World Trade Centers and found traces of thermate!
The hijackers flew the hijacked the four planes all over the northeastern United States, in the world's most well defended airspace, before three of them crashed into their targets. Only the U.S. government could have managed to sneak explosives into the buildings, especially since several government intelligence agencies had their offices in the same buildings. But still, many have argued that even the U.S. government could not have planted the explosives without being detected. Even if we could not explain HOW they did this, we are still left with the overwhelming evidence that they DID. But when we learn that Jeb Bush's company was in charge of security for both the World Trade Center and both American Airlines and United Airlines, the two companies whose planes were hijacked on 9/11, that some floors of the World Trade Center were vacant in the period before 9/11, that WTC tenants heard banging sounds and objects being moved around on the vacant floors, that a fine dusts entered their offices from the vacant floors, and that the janitor at the World Trade Center, William Rodriquez, heard loud noises from the vacant floors one night when he was alone in the building, and even heard these sounds when he entered one of the vacant floors to investigate before he was frightened away, then it is much easier to understand how the 9/11 conspitators were able to wire WTC 1, 2, and 7 with explosives without being detected.
The conspirators motive is also obvious when we realize that 9/11 catapulted Bush from very low in the polls to their upper reaches and that it provoked a right wing reaction in the United States that enabled Bush-Cheney and the neo cons to embark on course of suppressing civil liberties and wars of conquest.
Yet Nancy Pelosi took impeachment off the table even before she assumed her post as Speaker of the House. John Conyers, in spite of the massive tome he produced on the theft of the 2004 elections, refuses to hold hearings or do anything else about it, and has even
had Cindy Shehan and others who protested by sitting in at his office arrested. His telling you that impeachment is not off the table is meaningless if he refuses to do anything about it. Impeachment is the most crucial issue we are facing since it is necessary to stop our country's slide into dictatorship. The electorate, many of whom
were hoping for impeachment, put the Democrats back in control of Congress in 2006. On this one crucial issue alone, if the Democrats won't call impeachment hearings, WAS THERE ANY BENEFIT FROM ALL THE TIME, MONEY AND EFFORT SPENT ON ELECTING THEM?
The Iraq war is the next most crucial issue. And I am not impressed by the Democrats plea that they must have 60 votes before they can override Bush's veto in order to end the Iraq War. Each time a bill to appropriate further money for the war is introduced, it requires 50% plus one of the votes to pass. The Democrats could end the invasion of Iraq by simply voting against further money for the war, leaving Bush and Cheney with no alternative but to pull the troops out.
Single payer is the ONLY way of containing our rising and exhorbitant health care costs but Hiliary Clinton tells us the majority won't accept it. If single payer is the only way of containing health care costs, then the only rational alternative is to keep campaigning for it until the majority is convinced to support it.
So I ask all those who campaigned for the Democratic Party. Was it worth all your time, effort and money if the Democrats won't do anything about impeachment, the Iraq war, and single payer health care? Rob Kall, owner and moderator of OpEdNews, has argued that a third party can never win enough seats to pass their legislation under our present electoral system. But even under our present electoral system, there have been cases where a third party has displaced one of the two major parties. The Whig Party went into the dustbin of history when a new third party, the Republican Party, was founded in 1856 and went on to displace the Whig Party.
I know you will argue that building a third party will take so much time as to be useless as a near term solution. But the evidence is in that your chances of success are zero by supporting the Democratic Party. So though it may take several electoral cycles, a strategy that has a chance of working in the long term is preferable to a strategy that has zero chances of success. You may argue that our present problems are so accute that we don't have time to build a third party. But you won't accomplish anything on these accute issues anyway with a strategy that has zero chances of working. I am sure you can find some legslation, out of all the legislation Congress has passed since the 2006 elections, where the Democrats have been preferable to the Republicans. But if, even after electing them, the Democrats refuse to do anything about impeachment, ending the Iraq war, and single payer, your efforts have been wasted and the results don't justify the time, effort and money you have put into them. So your only alternative to a strategy whose chances of succeeding are zero, it to buckle down to the effort of building a third party.
Robert Halfhill rhalfhill@juno.com
http://halfhillviews.greatnow.com (SITE NOW BANNED ON AOL)
*Write AOL to complain, here: aolaccessibility@aol.com, or call 1-888-212-5537.
http://RedLavenderInsurgent.blogspot.com
DOES ANYONE STILL BELIEVE THAT SUPPORTING THE DEMOCRATS AS THE LESSER EVIL IS A VIABLE
STRATEGY?
BY ROBERT HALFHILL
I can't understand why the majority of progressives continue to believe that supporting the democratic Party will do much good. For example, impeachment is the most important issue facing us, given that Bush was never elected, having been APPOINTED by the Supreme Court in 2000 and STEALING the election of 2004. Bush and Cheney are behind the loss of our civil liberties de jure, although not yet de facto, taking the power to declare anyone an enemy combattant and secretly imprisoning them without the right of habaeus corpus or a
fair trial, or even any trial at all. He has introduced torture. He has pushed through legislation allowing him to spy on our emails and phone calls, been malfesant with respect to his duties as Commander In Chief by fabricating the intelligence, i.e. lying, to get us into the disaster of the Iraq invasion, and, when Joseph Wilson objected, committed treason by outing Wilson's wife as a CIA agent. The list goes on.
The issue on that list which renders all other issues minuscule by comparison is 9/11. If you look at pictures of the World Trade Center after 9/11, the majority of the buildings mass is piled up on the surface area that the buildings stood on instead of being scattered all over the surounding area. Only controlled demolition with thermate explosives to melt and cut through the supporting steel girders can bring a building down like this. Yet not only did the twin towers collapse on their footprints but World Trade Center 7, which was not even struck by an airplane, collapsed on its footprint. Numerous experts on fire behavior have testified that never before or since 9/11 has a protected steel framed building collapsed solely because of fire. The steel girders were cut at the precise angle that girders are cut in controlled demolitions. The buildings fell at almost free fall speed, which could not have happened if the upper floors had had to crash through the lower floors on their way to the ground. The buildings falling would have only broken the concrets composing them into chunks and the fall would not have released enough energy to reduce the concret and other material in the buildings to powder; only the energy released by thermate explosives could do that. And Peofessor Steven Jones, a physics professor at Brigham Young University, analysed samples of the dust from the World Trade Centers and found traces of thermate!
The hijackers flew the hijacked the four planes all over the northeastern United States, in the world's most well defended airspace, before three of them crashed into their targets. Only the U.S. government could have managed to sneak explosives into the buildings, especially since several government intelligence agencies had their offices in the same buildings. But still, many have argued that even the U.S. government could not have planted the explosives without being detected. Even if we could not explain HOW they did this, we are still left with the overwhelming evidence that they DID. But when we learn that Jeb Bush's company was in charge of security for both the World Trade Center and both American Airlines and United Airlines, the two companies whose planes were hijacked on 9/11, that some floors of the World Trade Center were vacant in the period before 9/11, that WTC tenants heard banging sounds and objects being moved around on the vacant floors, that a fine dusts entered their offices from the vacant floors, and that the janitor at the World Trade Center, William Rodriquez, heard loud noises from the vacant floors one night when he was alone in the building, and even heard these sounds when he entered one of the vacant floors to investigate before he was frightened away, then it is much easier to understand how the 9/11 conspitators were able to wire WTC 1, 2, and 7 with explosives without being detected.
The conspirators motive is also obvious when we realize that 9/11 catapulted Bush from very low in the polls to their upper reaches and that it provoked a right wing reaction in the United States that enabled Bush-Cheney and the neo cons to embark on course of suppressing civil liberties and wars of conquest.
Yet Nancy Pelosi took impeachment off the table even before she assumed her post as Speaker of the House. John Conyers, in spite of the massive tome he produced on the theft of the 2004 elections, refuses to hold hearings or do anything else about it, and has even
had Cindy Shehan and others who protested by sitting in at his office arrested. His telling you that impeachment is not off the table is meaningless if he refuses to do anything about it. Impeachment is the most crucial issue we are facing since it is necessary to stop our country's slide into dictatorship. The electorate, many of whom
were hoping for impeachment, put the Democrats back in control of Congress in 2006. On this one crucial issue alone, if the Democrats won't call impeachment hearings, WAS THERE ANY BENEFIT FROM ALL THE TIME, MONEY AND EFFORT SPENT ON ELECTING THEM?
The Iraq war is the next most crucial issue. And I am not impressed by the Democrats plea that they must have 60 votes before they can override Bush's veto in order to end the Iraq War. Each time a bill to appropriate further money for the war is introduced, it requires 50% plus one of the votes to pass. The Democrats could end the invasion of Iraq by simply voting against further money for the war, leaving Bush and Cheney with no alternative but to pull the troops out.
Single payer is the ONLY way of containing our rising and exhorbitant health care costs but Hiliary Clinton tells us the majority won't accept it. If single payer is the only way of containing health care costs, then the only rational alternative is to keep campaigning for it until the majority is convinced to support it.
So I ask all those who campaigned for the Democratic Party. Was it worth all your time, effort and money if the Democrats won't do anything about impeachment, the Iraq war, and single payer health care? Rob Kall, owner and moderator of OpEdNews, has argued that a third party can never win enough seats to pass their legislation under our present electoral system. But even under our present electoral system, there have been cases where a third party has displaced one of the two major parties. The Whig Party went into the dustbin of history when a new third party, the Republican Party, was founded in 1856 and went on to displace the Whig Party.
I know you will argue that building a third party will take so much time as to be useless as a near term solution. But the evidence is in that your chances of success are zero by supporting the Democratic Party. So though it may take several electoral cycles, a strategy that has a chance of working in the long term is preferable to a strategy that has zero chances of success. You may argue that our present problems are so accute that we don't have time to build a third party. But you won't accomplish anything on these accute issues anyway with a strategy that has zero chances of working. I am sure you can find some legslation, out of all the legislation Congress has passed since the 2006 elections, where the Democrats have been preferable to the Republicans. But if, even after electing them, the Democrats refuse to do anything about impeachment, ending the Iraq war, and single payer, your efforts have been wasted and the results don't justify the time, effort and money you have put into them. So your only alternative to a strategy whose chances of succeeding are zero, it to buckle down to the effort of building a third party.
Robert Halfhill rhalfhill@juno.com
http://halfhillviews.greatnow.com (SITE NOW BANNED ON AOL)
*Write AOL to complain, here: aolaccessibility@aol.com, or call 1-888-212-5537.
http://RedLavenderInsurgent.blogspot.com
1 Comments:
"Thermate" is not an explosive. It is an incindiary, a higher-energy version of thermite.
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