One thing should be obviously apparent to everyone; the Republicans don't stand a chance of defeating Obama, no matter who the eventual nominee is. If the GOP ends up with a brokered convention and becomes deadlocked, I wouldn't be surprised to see Jeb Bush drafted. That is probably the Democrats worst nightmare. I know it's mine.
Still, it really doesn't matter to most of us which corporate-run party wins the election, not in the long run. I understand that Obama played the hand he was dealt impressively. If you believe that we are really coming out of this economic recession. Otherwise he folded on health care, widened the war in Afghanistan the same day he received the Nobel Peace Prize (and what was that about?), signed more legislation that further eroded the Bill of Rights, failed to close Guantanamo, and refused to order Attorney General Holder to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate war crimes and torture under the Bush-Cheney regime. Altogether, it was not quite a sterling performance by a so-called constitutional scholar.
Once Obama wins re-election, I can see war with Iran, construction of the Keystone pipeline and more legislation to take more rights away from the American people. Of course he will be better than a Republican, but only barely. It seems that Americans seem to be satisfied with someone who is barely the lessor of two evils.
There is a bright spot on the horizon however, and that is the Occupy movement. I can see protests in New York, Washington DC and out west in Oakland and other cities that will only become larger. If we can keep our wits about us, we could have an "American Awakening" this spring or summer. The movement is alive and well despite the death notices in the major media.
The primary reason for the Occupy movement in my humble opinion, is to address the disparity between the haves and have not's. One other reason for the movement is to address the way in which we as a nation have become a "security state" that is giving up our freedom for temporary security in the words of Benjamin Franklin. I'm not trying to be sanctimonious here, but in my case I didn't spend almost 21 years in this nation's military to see our government's encroachment upon our liberties that were specifically written into the constitution under the Bill of Rights.
Recently, two Democratic Senators (Senators Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) and Mark Udall (D-Colorado) have written a letter to Attorney General Holder. In this letter they claim "Americans know that the government will sometimes conduct secret operations, but they don't think that government officials should be writing secret laws." As an American citizen I don't believe that they should be doing this either.
I have seen our government break the nation's laws time and time again. I could write a laundry list of the government's we have overthrown, the Iran-Contra scandal, COINTEL, and most importantly 9/11. I say most importantly because if the government wasn't actually behind 9/11, it was criminally negligent in stopping it. Having worked in the Army Air Defense Command for over 12 years as a radar operator, I know for a fact that any airplane with their transponder turned off could be identified in seconds. This warrants another investigation into the events of 9/11, as this was the watershed moment when we as a people began to surrender our rights as Americans.
Unless we as a people remain vigilant and fight to keep our fundamental liberties of which there are very few left, we can only look forward to an eventual police state if we don't have one already. We are completely clueless of what or where information of a personal nature ends up. I don't believe that this situation we find ourselves in would have been acceptable to any of our founding fathers. The recent passage and signing of the NDAA authorizing the military to consider the U.S. a "battle zone" and allowing them to put American citizens in military custody without any civilian representation and allowing them to be held until a crisis is over, in this case "The war on terror", which like "The war on drugs" will never be over is an abomination.
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