tagged w/ Campaign Promises
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Today President Barack Obama will return to Iowa for an official “grassroots event” at the Iowa State Fair in an effort to fire up his base in the state where he unexpectedly won the first in the nation caucus in 2008, launching him on the road to the White House. Right now, Iowa is considered a crucial battleground state and one of the 12 that six months from the election is too close to call. The doors at the event open in the next few hours, but President Obama isn’t scheduled to appear until 7 pm.
Even though Obama’s campaign stop in Iowa may seem routine, for many Iowans, especially family farmers, environmentalists, animal welfare advocates and rural residents, the location of the visit, at the Paul R. Knapp Animal Learning Center is certain to cause real alarm.
While the name of the building on the Iowa state fairgrounds sounds fairly innocuous, during the famous state fair, the building is transformed into a major propaganda set piece for industrial agriculture, complete with life-size gestation crates, full of sows with newborn baby pigs, dioramas of factory farms and posters full of factory farm PR platitudes. See the slideshow below for the real story of where Obama will speak to voters today in Iowa.
Ironically, President Obama’s visit to the factory farm propaganda site comes at a time when major food companies such as Burger King, McDonalds, Wendy’s, Denny’s and Safeway are responding to consumer pressure to dump gestation crates. Now it seems that the practices of locking sows in cages for much of their adult life as advocated by Iowa’s factory farm pork producers and the Big Ag money behind this nasty effort to whitewash the factory farm industry, will get what they paid for - the Presidential seal of approval. The Paul R. Knapp building is also sponsored by Christensen Farms, a Minnesota-based factory farm operation that boasts on its website as being “one of the top three producers in the United States”. Last year, Christensen Farms featured banners with the soft porn feel-good-themed motto: “Farming Feels Good”.Guess they’ve never asked a sow in a gestation crate for her opinion.
For many family farmers and rural Iowans, who helped pushed Obama to a first place finish during the 2008 caucus, Obama’s appearance in this building is an outrage and a major misstep by the campaign. Four years ago, such a mistake would have likely cost Obama the Iowa caucus and thus the election. And many, including myself, have written that a similar gaff by Hillary Clinton, cost her more than first place in 2008. While factory farms may seem to be an odd issue to outsiders, the ungodly stench of pig shit from factory hog confinements and the political collusion in Iowa’s state capital have been leading hot button issues during state and presidential campaigns since the mid 1990s.
The issue was so important for progressive farmers, environmentalists and rural residents that John Edwards paraded a cart with hogs in it through Des Moines and onto the state fairgrounds that said, Edwards for Local Control and Hogs for Edwards. Not to be outdone, then Senator Barack Obama challenged Edward’s commitment on factory farms in front of an audience of Iowa farmers and rural advocates who knew the issue best. On November 10, 2007, speaking at the Food and Family Farm Presidential Summit, an event that I organized where 5 of the 6 Democratic presidential candidates spoke, Obama boasted about his record on factory farms or CAFOs (confined animal feeding operations).
Said Obama: “So when I hear other candidates say they’ll stand up to the special interests on the issues that matter to you – like CAFO’s – I’m reminded that the test of leadership isn’t what you say, it’s what you do. Voting records matter. And unlike other candidates who have changed their position on CAFO’s, I look at this issue as a matter of principle, not politics. That’s why I have always stood for tougher environmental regulations and local control over whether a CAFO can be built in your neighborhood, and that’s why we need to limit EQIP funding to giant CAFO’s so they are forced to pay for their own pollution. And that’s what I’ll do as President.” Clearly President Obama’s advance staff this time around is either so clueless about the state’s farm, environmental and rural issues or so arrogant that they just don’t care to get it right.
To the more than 22,000 family hog farmers that have been forced out of business in Iowa in the past 15 years and the tens of thousands of rural Iowans who have seen their property value drop precipitously and their quality of life ruined by the stench of nearby factory hog confinements, the appearance by the Obama campaign is just another sign of how far his administration has moved away from the progressive, family farm agenda that helped him win the 2008 Iowa caucus.
In the past nearly four years, Obama’s family farm and rural supporters have watched as his administration has caved on nearly every major campaign promise he made in his now famous shrinking rural agenda. While President Obama planted a garden on the White House lawn and his wife launched a major healthy food initiative called Let’s Move, the Obama USDA, FDA and EPA have gone out of their way to favor agribusiness in their rule making and review processes, including the failure to ban subtherapeutic antibiotics for livestock used for treatment of human diseases, the White House’s caving to agribusiness on GIPSA (or fair market livestock reforms for family farmers) to their rampant approval of genetically engineered crops and Obama’s failure to follow through on his campaign promise to label GMOs.
At the same time, President Obama and his administration is failing on even his most basic campaign promises, the factory farm fight in Iowa is heating once up once again, with more new factory farms being proposed as the spring planting finishes. Last week, the application for a 5,000 hog confinement facility was withdrawn by the farmer after public outcry.
More at the link
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How is this different from what Mitt Romney would do? Politics is bs.Today President Barack Obama will return to Iowa for an official “grassroots... more
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I have become very disenchanted with President Barack Obama even though I voted for him in 2008.
1. He did not even propose the public option healthcare system: he had campaigned on that system, promising to propose it. (Wikipedia: "President Barack Obama promoted the idea of the public option while running for election.[3] After becoming President, Obama downplayed the need for a public health insurance option including calling it a "sliver" of health care reform,[4] but had not given up pursuing the idea before the health care reform was passed.[5] The preceding statement is disputed by evidence that the Obama administration had agreed to drop the public option from the final plan in the summer of 2009[6] in a back room deal with representatives of the for-profit hospital lobby[7]")
2. He has appointed countless Wall Streeters to his top economic team, failing to appoint labor voices like Robert Reich.
3. He has bailed out Wall Street instead of Main Street: remember TARP? And then the banks dispensed $6 billion in bonuses in that year to its executives.
4. He failed to attack the mortgage crisis, leaving an elephant still in our “room”, with one-third of home mortgages now underwater.
5. He failed to veto the National Defense Authorization Act, doing away with habeous corpus, allowing the government to arrest and detain indefinitely without a trial or hearing.
6. He agreed to an extension of the Bush tax cuts for the rich, and on top of that, he agreed to an egregious reduction of the estate taxes on the rich, exempting as much as $10 million from any estate taxes and lowering the estate tax rate down to a ridiculous rate of 35%, when our country has a $15 trillion debt. That alone saved the Walton heirs $17 billion in taxes.
7. He has failed to indict and imprison any of those banksters involved in all of that fraud on Wall Street from the subprime mortgage, including robo-signing, and selling shit-backed mortgage securities known to be worthless.
8. He appointed Jeffrey Immelt to head his Jobs Council when GE has been saying “China, China, China,” and shipping all jobs overseas while closing plants here in the US.
9. President Obama is now considering and proposing to lower the corporate tax rate to 26%, when corporations are not only at a low-time rate of paying taxes but getting billions in tax subsidies from our government and opening up offices on the 19th floor of one building on the Cayman Islands to avoid taxes altogether.
10. President Obama spoke in favor of PIPA and SOPA, when the internet is the last vestige of free speech and the availability of free information to the general public.
11. There were no indictments by President Obama of all the contractor fraud reported on by Bernie Sanders and Ron Paul in a Congressional Report released over a year ago. Whenever the rich and big corporations are caught in fraud, Eric Holder adopts a policy of “looking forward”, instead of holding them accountable.
12. President Obama agreed to the “grand bargain” (thank, God, Boehner did not accept it) to cut over $2 trillion in spending, including social security, medicare, medicaid, and other social safety-net programs merely in return for hypothetical “revenue increases” of $800 billion relying on “dynamic scoring”.
13. President Obama has done nothing to level the trade treaties, where corporations are shipping labor to Cambodia (22.5 cents per hour), China, Philippines, etc., where labor is paid 25 cents per hour. This is exporting slavery to other countries. Where is the level playing field for Americans?
14. President Obama in 2009 only proposed $140 billion in infrastructure spending when Paul Krugman and other economists said that $1.5 trillion was needed to recover our economy. And last year only proposed a paltry $108 billion in infrastructure spending.
15. President Obama praised the recent JOBS Act, which allows corporations to go public and raise capital without audited financial information in their public presentations for the first five years, allowing them to present fictitious numbers and defraud investors?
16. President Obama has failed to propose the return of Glass-Steagall, separating commercial and investment banking, which will soon plunge us back into another mega-bailout of Wall Street.
17. President Obama has failed to propose the break up of the big banks and corporations. What ever happened to the Sherman Anti-Trust Act?
18. President Obama touted a $25 billion robo-signing settlement when a trillion dollars of our pension and retirement funds were stolen.
19. While campaigning, President Obama promised to put on his walking shoes for labor, but failed to even show up in Wisconsin and walk the picket line against Governor Walker.
20. President Obama has not declared war on the Supreme Court, as President Roosevelt did, to oppose the corporate/rich posture of Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Alito, and Roberts. Why not take them on?
21. President Obama has arrested and raided more marijuana users in less than four years than George Bush did in eight years. Why is President Obama proposing cuts to social security, medicare, and medicaid while spending more on marijuana arrests and raids, especially when a majority of Americans are for legalization of pot and for the open sale of marijuana for medical use?
Time and time again President Obama did not fight the good fight for working Americans, who are losing their jobs, health insurance, homes, dignity, etc.
I am tired of the lame excuse of how we must vote for Obama because of the Supreme Court. How can anyone believe that Obama would not disappoint progressives on that issue after he failed to undertake a recess appointment of Elizabeth Warren to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a position to which she was more entitled to direct than any other American?
These are my 21 reasons for my disappointment with President Obama. I feel that after 2012--unless somehow Democrats, liberals, and Progressives can lead President Obama more to the left, which I fear will not occur given these first three years--that he will continue to propose policies that are not in the best interests of the 99%.
If I had been given the opportunity of a majority in Congress, I would have acted differently. Perhaps I would not have succeeded at all; but I would have at least fought the good fight. I fault President Obama for not fighting vigorously John Boehner, Eric Kantor, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, et al. These individuals were not people of compromise. They are corporate employees. And President Obama knew that.
Barefoot AccountantI have become very disenchanted with President Barack Obama even though I voted for... more
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“The crops that we grow are the basis of our civilization,” Todd Leake said. “If anything belongs in the public domain it is the crops we grow for food.”
President Barack Obama's administration has been investigating monopoly concentration in the seed business for over two years. But when the President spoke on the steps of the Seed Savers Exchange, an independent seed company, he didn't mention tht inquiry once. Nor did he talk about business concentration in other areas of agriculture, despite hearings held by his Department of Justice all over rural America.
Last week President Obama held a town hall meeting on the grounds of Iowa’s Seed Savers Exchange, an organization dedicated to saving and sharing heirloom seeds.
The stop was part of a larger strategy to appeal to rural voters as the campaign season begins. The president spoke about job creation and the gridlock on Capitol Hill, both issues of concern, to be sure.
But what would have really resonated with rural America is a re-commitment to working toward fairness in our farm fields.
The President should know that growing economic opportunities in rural America will take confronting the concentrated market power (and thus political and legislative power) in several agricultural industries. It will take fulfilling a campaign promise to fight for family farmers and ranchers by ensuring fair and transparent markets.
The President couldn’t have picked a better spot to make this point. His venue, Seed Savers, is home to a trove of genetically diverse seed. It is the perfect counterpoint to the alarming extent to which ownership of this vital resource is privatized and concentrated. The top three firms, for example, account for more than 75 percent of U.S. corn seed sales.
Monsanto is the largest seed company in the world, receiving royalties from nearly every acre of corn, soybeans, and cotton planted in the U.S.; it also has a hand in much of the vegetable and sugar beet seed supply. Indeed, this level of control over our plant genetic resources and the narrowing of diversity makes the mission of groups like Seed Savers Exchange so much more important.
Out of Hand
Monsanto has a lock on the soy and corn seed market.
Confronting the business concentration in the seed business is paramount for the success of farmers, especially new farmers and businesses seeking to cultivate a niche in agriculture. But just as seeds as an organism are complex, so is untangling the roots of seed concentration.
And this gets us back to President Obama’s missed opportunity at Seed Savers Exchange.
President Obama’s administration initially signaled a willingness to tackle the problem of monopoly in the seed business. His Justice and Agriculture departments held workshops last year on all aspects of agricultural competition.
These hearings were unprecedented. Farmers, ranchers, farm advocacy organizations, small businesses, and consumers were encouraged that the agencies were investigating consolidation in the seed, livestock, dairy, poultry, and food retail industries.
“We’ve waited a long time for justice in the heartland,” said Missouri state senator and farmer Wes Shoemyer at the first Justice/Agriculture workshop in Ankeney, Iowa, which focused in part on problems in the seed industry.
But the hope was short-lived. There is no indication that either agency is furthering these investigations or taking meaningful action on outcomes of the investigations. The agencies don’t even seem inclined to publish a report in response to the thousands of public comments personally delivered at the 2010 workshops.
And then the President appears at Seed Savers Exchange to talk about the rural economy and doesn’t mention seeds or any of the other issues brought up in his own administration’s workshops.
It would behoove the President to look at the comments received at these workshops before he talks about the rural economy. Tucked within the thousands of comments the agencies received are both evidence of the problems with too much concentration in the seed business and reasonable solutions.
snip
“So how do we fix the industry?” Nelson asked. “I say we disallow any monopolies and the anticompetitive activities that come with them...I think we have to re-examine the safety and wisdom of granting long-term patents on living things.”
Indeed, even the assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s Antitrust Division, Christine Varney, who has since left Justice, highlighted the problem of patents in her opening remarks: “You know, patents have in the past been used to maintain or extend monopolies, and that's illegal, and you can be sure, Secretary, that we are going to be looking very closely at any attempt to maintain or extend a monopoly through an abuse of patent laws.”
Such abuse of patent law has come in a variety of forms. Nelson said he’s witnessed the misuse of confidential GMO seed contracts, aggressively enforced through patent rights.
Indiana farmer David Runyon took to the microphone to recount his experience of being wrongfully pursued by Monsanto for alleged patent infringement. It turned out his conventional varieties of soybeans were contaminated by GMO material. He laid out the need to transfer liability to the patent holder in such events so that farmers aren’t pitted against each other.
“In my case whom do I sue but my neighboring farmers?” Runyon asked. “Because they are taking the liability when they sign that contract. And that's wrong. That's why it should go back to [the] patent holder.”
Woven within many comments was a plea for USDA to protect genetic diversity in seeds and breeds, and to keep germplasm public and accessible to our public land grant universities.
“The crops that we grow are the basis of our civilization,” Todd Leake said. “If anything belongs in the public domain it is the crops we grow for food.”
Fred Kirschenmann operates an organic farm in North Dakota and also serves as a distinguished fellow at the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture. He told the Obama administration officials, “We have lost about three-fourths of our crop seed stock -- that is the varieties of seeds that farmers have had available -- and about 30 percent of our livestock breeds, and as we move into a more uncertain future with more uncertain climates…we're going to need more diversity, not less, that are going to be locally adapted to these local conditions.”
Kirschenmann and others also pointed out that the future of our food supply relies on bringing young people into agriculture, which means ensuring they have a fair fighting chance at a profit.
“I believe our government has an obligation written in law not to pick winners and losers but to act as a referee and ensure the laws and regulations dealing with anticompetitive practices are enforced,” Nelson said.
These farmers’ messages were loud and clear, but they appear to have fallen on deaf ears. There has been no action (or even a peep) out of the Department of Justice. And President Obama didn’t mention his administration’s two-year investigation into the seed business when he spoke at the front door of an independent seed company.
More at the link“The crops that we grow are the basis of our civilization,” Todd Leake... more
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It's time to take action and end the wars.
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Obama has not kept one campaign promise, since taking office! The wars are continuing, the renditions are continuing, there is more spying on the people! There is no balancing of the budget, in fact for the first time in history, the Congress did not even bother doing a budget for 2011, which started October 1st. The spending is out of control! Obama's base is now fully realizing he has not done anything for the people, he continues to out Bush, Bush! Even his solid media base is starting to come out in the open, including Olbermann, who has always been behind Obama. But he even blasted him last night for all his campaign promises broken, he took Obama to task on the tax breaks for the rich! In fact Olbermann, said Obama is a failure in so many words and says, he doubts he would even be nominated for the 2012 Presidential election by the Democrats!
We have been going down a socialist road in a police state. If people don't realize that... then they are totally asleep. Even those who have stood behind Obama, need to wake up and see where this country is headed. I will say, I voted for Obama. I bought all that "Hope and Change and Yes We Can"! I believed we would get back to the free country we once were. I was sadly wrong, and somehow I knew that instinctively at his inauguration. I have never watched an Obama speech etc. since.
We have gone down a road of losing most of our freedoms. If people still think we are free, they need to take a closer look at the policies enacted the last couple of years and all the bills the Congress and Senate have passed. Also look at the things they have not done, including any federal budget for 2011. Has one MSM outlet taken the government to task on us carrying on without a Federal budget? NO! It has not been discussed. Why? It is our constitution that keeps being trampled on. In fact is there much left of the constitution lived by, from this government?
http://sherriequestioningall.blogspot.com/Obama has not kept one campaign promise, since taking office! The wars are... more
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A review of Resident Evil: Afterlife, which is the first live-action movie based on a video game to be presented in 3-D.A review of Resident Evil: Afterlife, which is the first live-action movie based on a... more
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"We are the best" -- this satirical video is made by Iceland's Best party, endorsing comedian Jón Gnarr Kristinsson for Mayor of Reykjavik in 2010. Among his campaign promises? Iceland's very own polar bear, wow!"We are the best" -- this satirical video is made by Iceland's Best... more
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This former campaigner for Obama points out how he has reversed nearly all of his campaign promises. Her friends are die-hards who literally worship Obama as they ask her to 'keep the faith'.
She makes a lot of great points and even claims Obama's mother would ask him what he thinks he's doing if she were alive.This former campaigner for Obama points out how he has reversed nearly all of his... more
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In a Daily Beast exclusive, Larry Flynt, the notorious publisher of Hustler magazine, tells the president to toughen up, keep his campaign promises, and start whacking the Republicans.In a Daily Beast exclusive, Larry Flynt, the notorious publisher of Hustler magazine,... more
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The new sheriff in town may have to face down the the Big Guns to get his badge.
If confirmed as the head of the agency, Cass Sunstein will supervise the implementation of much of President Obama's consumer safety, health, and environmental agenda. Because regulations in these fields are often opposed by big business, Sunstein will play a huge role in managing the Obama administration's relationship with industry.The new sheriff in town may have to face down the the Big Guns to get his badge.
If... more
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Barack Obama, in his first weekly address as President, has mentioned plans to set up a website for tracking "how and where we spend taxpayer dollars."
Details about the website, Recovery.gov, are available within the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (PDF). The website "shall provide data on relevant economic, financial, grant, and contract information in user-friendly visual presentations to enhance public awareness of the use funds made available in this Act," and will also "provide a means for the public to give feedback on the performance of contracts awarded for purposes of carrying out this Act."
The site itself currently contains a placeholder until the passage of the Act.Barack Obama, in his first weekly address as President, has mentioned plans to set up... more
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Do elected members of the House and Senate keep their campaign promises?
I would've never guessed the correct answer (according to this study), but I suppose when the logic plays out, it makes sense.Do elected members of the House and Senate keep their campaign promises?
I... more
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Barack Obama will classify carbon dioxide as a dangerous pollutant that can be regulated should he win the presidential election on Nov. 4, opening the way for new rules on greenhouse gas emissions.
The Democratic senator from Illinois will tell the Environmental Protection Agency that it may use the 1990 Clean Air Act to set emissions limits on power plants and manufacturers, his energy adviser, Jason Grumet, said in an interview. President George W. Bush declined to curb CO2 emissions under the law even after the Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that the government may do so.
Why is this a big deal? It means that Obama can jumpstart serious U.S. action on greenhouse gas emissions without having to wait for complex legislation to wind its way through the House and Senate — and then without waiting even longer for that legislation to actually create a CO2 price high enough to change utility decision-making. It allows him to act quickly to address the single most important first step that developed countries must act upon — new coal plants:
Placing heat-trapping pollutants in the same category as ozone may lead to caps on power-plant emissions and force utilities to use the most expensive systems to curb pollution. The move may halt construction plans on as many as half of the 130 proposed new U.S. coal plants.
Actually it could stop even more than half the plants, once people realize that the president is serious about immediate climate action.
Here are some of the comments Grumet made:
Obama “would initiate those rulemakings,” Grumet said in an Oct. 6 interview in Boston. “He’s not going to insert political judgments to interrupt the recommendations of the scientific efforts….”
“The U.S. has to move quickly domestically so we can get back in the game internationally,” Grumet said. “We cannot have a meaningful impact in the international discussion until we develop a meaningful domestic consensus. So he’ll move quickly….”
Obama adviser Grumet, executive director of the National Commission on Energy Policy, said if Congress hasn’t acted in 18 months, about the time it would take to draft rules, the president should.
“The EPA is obligated to move forward in the absence of Congressional action,” Grumet said. “If there’s no action by Congress in those 18 months, I think any responsible president would want to have the regulatory approach.”
I would make an even stronger statement. Even if Congress is able to pass a bill within 18 months, it seems very unlikely that it would start to restrict the emissions for another five years — and like Boxer-Lieberman-Warner it might well contain rip-offsets and other cost control provisions that restrict the price of carbon dioxide from rising too rapidly (see “Boxer-Lieberman-Warner update: Probably no U.S. CO2 emissions cut until after 2025” and “Dingell and Boucher draft climate bill: Likely no CO2 cut until near 2030“). Barack Obama will classify carbon dioxide as a dangerous pollutant that can be... more
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WASHINGTON — A key adviser to Senator Obama’s campaign is recommending in a confidential paper that America keep between 60,000 and 80,000 troops in Iraq as of late 2010, a plan at odds with the public pledge of the Illinois senator to withdraw combat forces from Iraq within 16 months of taking office.
The paper, obtained by The New York Sun, was written by Colin Kahl for the center-left Center for a New American Security. In “Stay on Success: A Policy of Conditional Engagement,” Mr. Kahl writes that through negotiations with the Iraqi government “the U.S. should aim to transition to a sustainable over-watch posture (of perhaps 60,000–80,000 forces) by the end of 2010 (although the specific timelines should be the byproduct of negotiations and conditions on the ground).”
Mr. Kahl is the day-to-day coordinator of the Obama campaign’s working group on Iraq. A shorter and less detailed version of this paper appeared on the center’s Web site as a policy brief.
Both Mr. Kahl and a senior Obama campaign adviser reached yesterday said the paper does not represent the campaign’s Iraq position. Nonetheless, the paper could provide clues as to the ultimate size of the residual American force the candidate has said would remain in Iraq after the withdrawal of combat brigades. The campaign has not publicly discussed the size of such a force in the past.
This is not the first time the opinion of an adviser to the Obama campaign has differed with the candidate’s stated Iraq policy. In February, Mr. Obama’s first foreign policy tutor, Samantha Power, told BBC that the senator’s current Iraq plan would likely change based on the advice of military commanders in 2009. She has since resigned her position as a formal adviser.
WASHINGTON — A key adviser to Senator Obama’s campaign is recommending in... more
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This is why it is so unbelievable when I hear anyone promise that this war will end in 2009. It simply isn't going to happen under present conditions, and it is disingenuous to me to promise something that is simply not feasible. As a thinking person and not someone who simply supports a candidate based on "hope", if it is feasible I would like to know specifically how that is going to happen now. This is why it is so unbelievable when I hear anyone promise that this war will end in... more
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