Citizen's United II - the other foot

[eppie]

I am only following the discussion half so I don't know what this basic human rights have to do with the right wing extremists, but in this last post you made a good point.

I always get confused my the linearity of the left wing, right wing classifications. Many of these issues are multi-dimensional. In the US civil war, I think it was actually the right wing (abolitionist Republicans) who won, and the right wing Southern Democrats who lost. I always think of Left being more the socialists/communists.

In the current day, wars, "homeland security", and privacy are issues where the leaders of our major political parties have found common ground. So perhaps in the US, it is still all right wing, and only a matter of extremes on various positions.

Both parties in the wake of 911 made the Patriot Act, GWB signed it, and then when Obama gained the office, both sides increased its levels of intrusion and eroded its oversight. GWB began our anti-terrorist crusades in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Obama has taken no drastic change from the original US plans, and involved us in Libya, and possibly yet Syria, and Egypt. We still have Gitmo, rendition and other partner black sites where US laws, and the Army Field Manual Rules may not apply. We still have black ops, with black bags whisking away people to black sites with torture and indefinite detention without law. We have a massive increase in the use of drones for surveillance and air strikes that don't seem to bother either democrats or republicans. Our southern border is becoming more and more a military zone reminiscent of East Berlin.

True, but I still have the feeling that (and it doesn't make a real difference probably) that GWB and his cronies were fully supporting and pushing through wars, gitmo's patriot acts etc., because that is what they were all about, that was their thing, while Obama just 'doesn't change things back because he is scared the democrats will lose the center vote.

Basically a very large part of Americans wants to go to war in Muslim countries. And they complain only when it turns our that the US is bankrupt. So Obama can't really win here.

Again, that doesn't make him any of a better person compared to GWB. Maybe even a worse person. Bush was openly making decisions solely based on the fact if his friends could get better business deals out of it, and he easily got voted a second time because of that.
Obama is just scares, even in his second term he doesn't want to take any risk with the voters.