Break

To the superdelegates either supporting Sen. Hillary Clinton or who are undecided:

I have looked at the two candidates as equals for most of this race. They are of the same party and, as such, have policies that align with my political viewpoint. Recent comments by Sen. Clinton have changed my opinion.

Politics is a bloody game, and I realize that if you wish to play you might get bruised. In that spirit, I realize that much of Sen. Clinton’s behavior in recent weeks can be dismissed as typical campaigning. Her recent endorsement of Sen. McCain was a serious breach of protocol that crossed the line from politics to outright betrayal of her party’s beliefs.

Her comments remind me of what has been so wrong about our country over the last eight-plus years. It is time to say “no” to any politician who puts self-interest over the needs of the country or their party.

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were bitter political rivals. When Adams lost the election to Jefferson, some wondered if he would leave office. This was the first time that a president had lost an election. His decision to leave or stay was an early test of our new republic. On the eve of Jefferson’s inauguration, Adams got in a carriage and rode away. In that single act he showed just what kind of man he was. He had faith in the system, and despite his differences with Jefferson, he did what was right.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Is Sen. Clinton really putting the country’s needs above her own?

Please reconsider your endorsement of Sen. Clinton. Do not disenfranchise the majority of people who support Sen. Obama.

Joseph Cotellese
New Britain Township

Last week Hillary Clinton release a fear mongering ad that I would typically associate with Karl Rove and some in the Republican party. Here it is:

Here is Bill Clinton’s response:

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.” - Edward R. Murrow

Earlier this week a student in Flordia was Tasered(r) at a meeting with Senator John Kerry. The student asked the senator some tough questions. When he didn’t yield the floor, police officers subdued the student and while holding him down, Tasered(r) him.

Yesterday, the Senate passed an amendment which uses the straw man argument that anyone who disagrees with Gen. Petraeus is unpatriotic and doesn’t support the troops.

These two events while seemingly unconnected represent the culmination of a troubling cancer eating at our nation, quelling any dissenting view and labeling the dissenters as unpatriotic. Our nation is founded on the principles of free speech and could not survive without dissenting view points. When writing an opinion, Justices in the Supreme Court also write a dissenting view.

“You’re with us or your against us”, “You agree with us or your unpatriotic” thinking is dangerous to the future of our republic. It prevents a real constructive dialog on how we will get ourselves out of the mess created over the last four years. Rather than pat themselves on the back for their “patriotism” the Senate should of passed the resolution voted on the day before which would give the troops adequate time to see their families between multiple tours in Iraq.

Now that would of been truly patriotic.

I’m really starting to like this guy.

This week - as we will forever - we remember those lost on September 11th. And this week, Washington refocuses on Iraq. But the question of Iraq is separate from September 11th - as it has always been, whatever George Bush would have us believe.

Likewise, supporting our troops and pursuing a failed war are not the same things - whatever George Bush would have us believe.

All Americans honor the incredible sacrifice of our troops. They have done everything asked of them with courage and resolve. Now we should bring them home.

They are policing a civil war, and the only way to end that civil war is for both sides, Sunni and Shia, to take responsibility to end it by agreeing to a political solution. And the only way to force them to take responsibility is to withdraw our troops - starting now.

Unfortunately, the president is pressing on with the only strategy he has ever had - more time, more troops and more war.

In January, after years of evidence that military actions cannot force a political solution, the president announced a military surge to force a political solution. In May, he vetoed a plan to end the war, demanded more time to show the surge could work, and Congress gave it to him. Now, after General Petraeus reports the surge has produced no progress toward a political solution, what does the president want? More time for the surge to work, when we know it won’t.

Our troops are stuck between a president without a plan to succeed and a Congress without the courage to bring them home.

But Congress must answer to the American people. Tell Congress you know the truth - they have the power to end this war and you expect them to use it. When the president asks for more money and more time, Congress needs to tell him he only gets one choice: a firm timeline for withdrawal.

No timeline, no funding. No excuses.

It is time to end this war.

Technorati Tags: Iraq, John Edwards, timeline

In 2006, the American people elected a Democratic Congress to change
course and end this war. It’s the whole reason the American people
voted for change. Yet, 10 months after the election, we still have the
status quo and Congress has still failed to do the people’s will. That
might be the way they do it inside the Beltway, but it’s not the
American way. It’s time to stand up for the American people and against
President Bush’s failed, stubborn policy. Without a firm deadline, a
small withdrawal of only some of the surge troops won’t cut it—that’s
not a solution, it’s an excuse. Congress must not send President Bush
any funding bill without a timeline to end this war. No timeline, no
funding. No excuses.

I haven’t backed any specific candidate yet for 2008 but he really does raise some good points.

Technorati Tags: Iraq, Politics, John Edwards

Report Finds Little Progress On Iraq Goals - washingtonpost.com

Iraq has failed to meet all but three of 18 congressionally mandated benchmarks for political and military progress, according to a draft of a Government Accountability Office report. The document questions whether some aspects of a more positive assessment by the White House last month adequately reflected the range of views the GAO found within the administration.

To me, the most intersesting bit in the report is this little gem:

While it makes no policy recommendations, the draft suggests that future administration assessments “would be more useful” if they backed up their judgments with more details and “provided data on broader measures of violence from all relevant U.S. agencies.”

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“Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it compromises and develops the germ of every other.”

“Alberto Gonzales is saying, basically, there are problems of which he cannot speak, for which he is responsible yet not to blame, and that he is the only one who can clean up the mess that he can neither confirm or deny exists. Let me try to put this in schoolyard terms, if I may: He has smelt it, and while he cannot confirm that he in fact also dealt it, he refuses to deny it on the grounds that it might incriminate him for supplying it.”

From Media Matters:

“On the July 24 edition of Fox News’ Special Report with Brit Hume, on-screen text identified Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) as a Democrat during a report from chief Washington correspondent Jim Angle about Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ July 24 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The text appeared during footage of Specter telling Gonzales that the committee would be reviewing his testimony about a May 10, 2004, confrontation over the Bush administration’s warrantless domestic wiretapping program to “see if your credibility has been breached to the point of being actionable.” Angle introduced the footage of Specter as an example of “other[]” senators who “urged the attorney general to correct his testimony, vaguely warning of legal action.” At no time during Angle’s report did anyone say that Specter was, in fact, a Republican.”

Apparently this is not the first time they’ve done this. Is it deliberate or are they just incompetent?

Here is another story along the same theme as yesterdays. In King George W.: James Madison’s Nightmare author Robert Scheer frames George W. Bush as the president that our founders warned us about.

George W. Bush is the imperial president that James Madison and other founders of this great republic warned us about. He lied the nation into precisely the “foreign entanglements” that George Washington feared would destroy the experiment in representative government, and he has championed a spurious notion of security over individual liberty, thus eschewing the alarms of Thomas Jefferson as to the deprivation of the inalienable rights of free citizens. But most important, he has used the sledgehammer of war to obliterate the separation of powers that James Madison enshrined in the US Constitution.

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