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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (200670)	9/9/2012 12:36:30 PM
From: bentway	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542124

I think Willard will personally torture. I suspect Cheney already has.

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (200670)	9/9/2012 2:24:04 PM
From: No Mo Mo	Respond to of 542124

"Ford forgot to say that Obama has legitimized torture by not prosecuting it." Normalizing, legitimizing, shifting the wrong direction. That's been my protest all along. How in the world is it that NO ONE primaried him to keep him honest? ----------------------------------------- A year ago....(I wouldn't reiterate "worst" or "most. It can always be worse, but the specific complaints stand.) Message 27578073 I personally think Obama almost could not have done a worse job. By compromising to supposedly get things done, he has re-cast the definition of 'liberal'. By trying to make nice he has, at one and the same time moved the needle of the what is supposedly 'progressive' to the right while at the same time allowed the corporate media to paint him as an extreme lefty, even socialist. He's effectively de-fanged the progressive wing of the Democrats yet drawn almost no blood from the right. If the right and their media are going to excoriate him as a commie no matter what he does, he might as well fight for some actual progressive causes. Instead, between now and election day, we're going to hear a growing chorus of how the 'liberals' had their chance and things are no better or even worse. If he fought for things like single payer health care and lost or sun-setting the Bush tax cuts and lost or prosecuting any of the self-dealing on Wall St. and lost or ending torture and closing Guantanamo and lost or ratcheting down the hideous wars (let alone starting new ones) and lost, he could have lost fighting the good fight. Now, if he loses, he'll not only lose the election, but he'll have allowed the entire spectrum of debate to be shifted rightward and progressive goals with be that much more discredited and that much further out of reach. From a progressive perspective, he is possibly the most damaging president we've ever had. ---------------------------- And...http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=28112782 II. The ratchet effect The ratchet is a simple, ubiquitous, ancient bit of machinery. There's one in your bicycle wheel (it allows you to coast without pedaling), there's one in your watch (if you're the old-fashioned type and have a mechanical watch) and there's one in the jib sheet winches of your boat (if you're a yachtsman; but then in that case you probably aren't reading this book). What the ratchet does is permit rotation in one direction but not in the other. Here's a diagram: