Why so (relatively) quiet about the Van Jones resignation? I would think it would have us all pretty fired up. But maybe we're not so good at coming to the defense of our fellow liberals. I still read the continued villification and denouncing of people like Cindy Sheehan, Ralph Nadar, Dennis Kucinich. Now Van Jones? A lot of folks around here would probably even had sold Gandhi down the Ganges to try to prove that they are the "reasonable" ones and don't support radicals or egotists. Access to power circles is, after all, limited for radicals.
I find it hard to believe that the Van Jones resignation occured simply because he wasn't vetted properly by the Obama team. Yet that's the accepted storyline. Commentary is very sparse but seems to fall into the category of denial about the entire problem. Presenting it as if Jones should have known better about such foolishness; can't blame team Obama- would have done the same thing; Move on, nothing to see here. Just a lefty caught asking questions- keep moving, folks.
I think we need to watch who we are being asked to fear. Again. And now, even by our own elected Democratic President. Liberals. Again. The right wing nuts will continue to be allowed/encouraged to carry guns to rallies. Rev. Warren will still have a seat at Obama's side while single payer advocates are not even allowed at his table. Tim Geithner will still serve the bankers (too stupid to get his own taxes right or a simple lawbreaker?) while Van Jones will have to go. (Sacrificed, ironically for being involved in what was basically, at least constitutionally, a call to the investigation of truth.) How frighteningly Orwellian. Our Constitutional Scholar in Chief. Punish those who simply practice free thought but defend those who actually break the law.
Van Jones, other assorted liberals, you may NOT ponder the comprehensiveness of the official version of even such a critical moment in history as a deadly attack on our nation.
I also want to watch who Obama continues to defend. Gay bashing Rev. Warren, Geithner, bankers, insurers, big coal with their mountaintop removal devastation, Monsanto, Blue Dogs, pharmaceutical companies, Republicans (you think Rahm or any other member of this or any other administration has not called political enemies a-holes and worse?) Obama defends right wing radicals who are calling, ironically and coincidentally, for the purging of left wing radicals. He even defends torturers, government law breakers and insanely out of control mercenaries paid by our tax dollars to slaughter and degrade our neighbors and our prisoners, both here and around the world. Zero accountability, zero prosecutions, outright refusal to execute and uphold the laws of this land- Pres Obama abdicating his main constitutional responsibility. I had pretty much already lost any hope that I had in Pres Obama. But now he's even lost my trust.
Barack Hussein Obama. The world's hope that America had finally woken up and changed. Darker, like many of them, young and hip and hey look, his middle name is Hussein. (Even as he continues the slaughter of his brothers in name with an escalation of the wars and the needless bloodshed that he had promised to end. I am so afraid for Americans, if this is what we still are. And I'm afraid for all of the world's hopeful, hurting families who have been praying that America can change - who desperately need America to change. I sincerely hope that I am proven wrong but after today I am starting to fear that the new, kinder face of America has as frigidly cold a heart as ever.