almost afraid to hope
Jan. 6th, 2009 09:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nenya_kanadkaIt looks like we may have a new CIA director WHO'S ANTI-TORTURE.
OH MY GOD.
If this is really true I will be so, so happy. This was one of my big things in supporting Obama (in supporting ANY Democrat really). Partly because it was![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bellatrys's coverage of Abu Ghraib back four and a half years ago that made me wake up and start paying attention to politics, but also because of simple humanity, I've been very sad and angry over what the US has been doing with its prisoners during the war on terror.
There are other issues, even other very important issues, but if Obama is listening on civil rights--OH MY GOD. I will *dance*.
OH MY GOD.
If this is really true I will be so, so happy. This was one of my big things in supporting Obama (in supporting ANY Democrat really). Partly because it was
bellatrys's coverage of Abu Ghraib back four and a half years ago that made me wake up and start paying attention to politics, but also because of simple humanity, I've been very sad and angry over what the US has been doing with its prisoners during the war on terror. There are other issues, even other very important issues, but if Obama is listening on civil rights--OH MY GOD. I will *dance*.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2009-01-07 03:46 am (UTC)The more I learn about Obama and see him in action, the greater my support and admiration for him increases. The nightmare is, for all intents and purposes, over. We're free, the sky is clearing, and the light at the end of the tunnel isn't a train that'll run us over this time. I literally feel like a weight's been taken off when I hear Obama speak or hear about his policies or what he wants to do. I'm finally hearing sanity instead of war-mongering rhetoric that leaves me terrified because I know it'll only inflame the anti-US sentiments in the Middle East (read: increase terrorist recruits and the risk of our being hit with another terrorist attack). We're not in a car heading for the cliff edge, tied up and unable to do anything to save ourselves, any more. THANK GOD! The last eight years have been a living hell in numerous ways. I just want Bush to go away and stay gone. Screw tradition and pomp and circumstance. Swear Obama in now and have the parties in a few weeks. The sooner we can get started on cleaning up our messes and changing policies/focus, the better.
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Date: 2009-01-07 04:11 am (UTC)What a glorious feeling.
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Date: 2009-01-07 11:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-07 11:37 am (UTC)Now, I still want to go back home--but it's not with quite the sense of panic I would have felt otherwise.
BTW, I really like that Obama is admitting up front that 2009 is going to be tough in a lot of ways. I was so sick of the bullshit about how everything was FREEDOM and BLAH BLAH coming out of Bush's mouth, I was choking on it.
I remember when you went to the UK an really liked it. I hope you get to go back.
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Date: 2009-01-08 12:58 am (UTC)A most emphatic 'AMEN!'. FINALLY, a politician who's being straight about the situation and the prognosis. He. Makes. Sense. His ideas make sense, his positions make sense, and what he's saying, period, makes sense because he speaks English, not Politico. Bush speaks Politico (much more fluently than English). Hillary speaks Politico. Name a politician and they very likely speak Politico anytime they're addressing the public.
I have absolutely no doubt Obama has, at one time, engaged in some of the same backscratching, quid pro quo kind of things every other politician has. You don't get as far as he has without some dirt on your hands. I'd really like to believe he hasn't but...yeah. As politicians go, though, his hands are a lot cleaner and his closet much emptier of skeletons. Someone I heard on the radio last year noted that no one had been able to dig up dirt on Obama, which put a huge grin/smirk on my face. Suck that, McCain! HA!
My dad is convinced our taxes are about to go through the roof to pay for an increase in government programs and things are generally going to get worse domestically than they were under Bush. I bit my tongue on the second part but on the first, I said something like, "Use the programs. Get your money's worth." I went on to remind him that I've been getting food stamps and, for a time, medical assistance (need to hook up with that again) so I'm benefiting from what my taxes have, in part, been used to fund. I also told him that when you take into account what programs the Canadian government offers, the US and Canada both pay about 29% in taxes to the government. He has a well-developed case of selective deafness, so who knows if I was wasting my breath or not. *shrugs* Anyway, we shall see what happens. Now it's the conservatives' turn for grinding and gnashing of teeth and thinking Obama is the Antichrist who'll drive our nation straight to Hel in the express lane. If that's the case, it would be more correct to say Obama will finish a trip Shrub so enthusiastically started us on. And I now have an image of Shrub in a red-orange convertible with a Confederate flag sticker on the bumper and horn that plays 'Dixie', shouting 'YEE HAW!' at the top of his lungs and waiving his large cowboy hat in the air as he speeds along in the Express Lane. Oddly, the stretch of road I see him on looks like part of the roadway I saw in London on my way from the airport to where I was staying. I've tried morphing it to resemble expressway near Detroit, MI but no success. My memories of England are now polluted. *weeps*
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Date: 2009-01-08 02:30 am (UTC)He is a politician, and a damned good one too, and in the sense that that means knowing his moment and how to influence people (whether the public or interest groups or fellow politicians) it's something I admire. Watching someone be good at their calling is a beautiful thing. In the sense that it means pulling ethically-skeevy stuff, he may have done that, too, but if there had been anything big, Clinton would have found it, not to mention McCain. We had two years to hear about ANYTHING he might have done, and all they could come up with was a nodding acquaintance with Bill Ayers and some batshit idea that his birth certificate was faked. (Oh, the LOLz.)
"Use the programs"--yes! Government money doesn't just go to food stamps (though thank heaven it does do that--they kept me fed for the better part of last year), it also goes to roads and libraries and fire departments and public education, not to mention all kinds of other programs the public can benefit from. And you know what? We'll never not be taxed. So yes! Take my tax money and use it for my & other's benefit. I'm begging you, use it for heathcare! Repair bridges so they don't collapse and kill people! Better that than no-bid contracts to Blackwater, eh.
I try very hard not to rub the election results in the face of the conservatives I know in person, because most of them are very nice people most of the time. (Not to say I won't say something if they start being asses.) I remember how I felt in 2004. But asshole bloggers on the Internets who are predicting doom, gloom, and mandatory Islamic atheist communist servitude by Feb. 1, 2009? I feel very little pity. Bush, Gonzales, et al? Even less.
And George Bush can drive down any damn road he likes, so long as it's OUT of my life. :D (Okay, and not on the pretty road in your UK memories. :'( )
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Date: 2009-01-08 06:29 am (UTC)Yay Leon! Local boy makes good... again!
Date: 2009-01-07 04:43 am (UTC)A tidbit, there's a local cable show in my neck of the woods by one of the areas chef/businessmen. The guy cooks with Californian celebrities and a few years back he had Leon Panetta on the show. I HOPE THEY SHOW IT AGAIN, because OMG so adorable! The host and Leon were cooking and drinking wine and goofing off and getting red in the face... super cute!
So in addition to being on the right side of important issues like torture, he's also a sweetie!
P.S. Your journal is BEAUTIFUL!!!!
Re: Yay Leon! Local boy makes good... again!
Date: 2009-01-07 04:48 am (UTC)Awwwh, that is so cute! :D People do seem to unearth little clips like that after someone becomes famous, so you never know....
PS. Thanks! I've been playing around with the layout.
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Date: 2009-01-07 06:45 am (UTC)(Though, of course, not torturing people should, in a sane universe, not even be on the table as something to be applauded; it should be something to be assumed. But this is a step in that direction.)
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Date: 2009-01-07 09:29 pm (UTC)First steps on the road to recovery \o/!
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Date: 2009-01-08 04:06 am (UTC)It sounded fine to me until you said that. Now...I dunno. ;) (But the source of all knowledge that is Google says it is.)
Also, icon love! :D Did Mark Twain really say that? *Googles* He did! Cool.
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Date: 2009-01-08 05:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-08 06:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-07 07:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-07 09:27 pm (UTC)This one...makes me actively happy. :)))
*hug*
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Date: 2009-01-08 05:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-08 11:45 pm (UTC)On Panetta, Russ Feingold (the only senator who voted against the PATRIOT Act) thinks he's awesome! Is that an endorsement I can believe in or what. :D
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Date: 2009-01-09 05:01 pm (UTC)