Author Archives: John Wallenfeldt

Bob Cesca: Obama’s Unavoidable Cure for the Afghanistan Cancer

Whether you like it or not, if you voted for President Obama last year, you are partly responsible for this strategy. That’s not entirely a bad thing depending on your position on the war, but it’s worth repeating that the president never spoke of drawing down our forces in the Af-Pak region during the campaign, nor did he mention such a thing during his first 10 months in office.

From this article from Bob Cesca.

Maybe this ruins some of my liberal credentials, but I figure that if you start a war, you’d better finish the damn thing or create conditions to make it look like you did what you could before bailing out. I mean, hell, it took a Democrat to get us through World War II. Not to mention World War I as well.

Hell, the simple act of electing a Republican started the Civil War. Yeah, that’s unfair to Lincoln but it is an absolute fact. And barring Vietnam, I can’t think of another war out there the Republicans didn’t fan the flames of. And Vietnam is just another in a long series of lessons of “don’t try to clean up French screwups” with all apologies to the French.

In any event, if you voted for Obama and didn’t know he was going to escalate the war in Afghanistan, you, frankly, are a fucking idiot. You should have wrote in for Kucinich and then bitched and whined about it, because Barack flat out told you we were going to go back and finish that war. And I truly hope he does and without much more deaths to our forces.

I don’t get all these folks who are crying that Obama isn’t the peacemaker he apparently told them personally he was going to be. HE TOLD YOU WE WOULD CONTINUE THE FIGHT MORONS!

I swear, the people I align myself with. Thankfully the Rethugs are repressed gays and unrepressed bigots otherwise they’d almost be attractive. Ha! I kid.

But seriously, to take back this nation from racist religious zealots, you need a hard-headed, big-hearted, patient but fearless guy. That’s what we’ve got. No ego-windbag Clinton, no well-meaning but pacifist Kucinich. We’ve got Obama. He, to date, hasn’t done anything he hadn’t already advertised he was going to try to do. He’s got a list, you know what it is, and he’s going down it. Not as fast as everyone would like, but you already KNOW how this is going to work.

So stop crying and pretending like this is shocking or something.

Little Green Footballs – Welcome to the Reality the Rest of Us Have Been Living In

Charles Johnson, over at Little Green Footballs, has decided to call out and step away from the right wing racist hate mob currently running the GOP.

This doesn’t mean he’s gone liberal or that I’d agree with the guy on much of anything. But he and Andrew Sullivan, who left the conservatives when they went into ultra gay bashing mode but just realized it himself are onto something.

I don’t mind a cautious voice in our politics. I don’t mind a trend towards fiscal discipline. I don’t even mind an overly protective voice. It moderates those who want to run full force into the future.

That said, those elements describe Bill Clinton more than any Republican candidate or actual president in recent decades. Republicans, unfairly or not, are those tied to restricting rights to, well, you name it: women, minorities, gays, Muslims. And so on.

Republicans sold all our jobs overseas and let corporations off the hook for paying ANY taxes, putting the burden on the rest of us.

Republicans make boogeymen for us to hate and fear; from Murphy Brown to gays to Muslims to “Socialist Kenyans”. Never taking the blame for any failure (9/11, Katrina, Afghanistan (both times), Enron/WorldCom, the Bush Recession, and you name it really).

My father-in-law is a Republican and I can’t fathom how much shit he has to ignore about his party just to get through the day. He’s not into torturing people. He’s not a racist, well, not anymore than one can be living on a golf course north of Houston. You know, not consciously. He can’t possibly allow the hypocrisy of arguing against a trillion dollars in health care while being cool with a three trillion dollar war in Iraq.

At least I’d like to think so.

So, it is with him in mind that I read Johnson’s manifesto and check out his attacks on the GOP’s malfeasance in bowing at the feet and crotch of Rush Limbaugh for inspiration.

Or about how he asks how evangelicals can possibly be fine with executing gays in Uganda because it was a Religious Right plan that put this in motion.

Or even how the Right can be fine with vile, racist attacks on the President such as this:

Once again, I’m glad he and others are waking up to the freakish pack of bastards they have made common cause with. I sincerely hope they can either kick the cretins out of their party or make something new and, if not something I can agree with, at least be something the rest of the country can tolerate and hopefully respect the opinions of.

If not, he’s just singled himself out as a “traitor” to the mob rule that currently festers and controls his party. Best of luck to him.