Powell Endorses Obama

Powell lost respect with this Country after his speech to the UN about Iraq having WMD's and the truth that came out later. Today, Powell regained that lost of respect with me by speaking the real truth about this Country and McCain's campaign and his Party's actions.

GaryG

 

If you belong to a political party and you endorse the other party's candidate, then you are a traitor to your political party. Just see what happens to Joe Lieberman after the election. His chairmanship will be history.

Traitors are always suspect even by their new masters.

The correct way to do this is to switch party's, and then sometime later endorse your candidate.

It would appear to me, it is an endorsement for personal gain. We will know if this is correct, whden Powell gets a position in the government.

 

I don't think of Joe Lieberman is a traitor, but more of a prostitute for his own gains. Powell didn't change parties and is in no way a traitor or a prostitute. Powell followed orders IMO of the Commander and Chief like a good soldier was trained. Powell is no longer that soldier and can act on his own now like most good Americans.

GaryG

 

This side that the traitor comes to obviously doesn't think he is a traitor to his party. They think he has seen the light.

The side that he is betraying thinks he is a traitor to his party.

This is just common sense.

We think Benedict Arnold was a traitor, but the British didn't think he was a traitor.

Bottom line, he is a traitor to one side and a saint to the other.

This country has gotten so polarized it is really a shame.

 

I can guarantee you one thing, Powell is no longer a Republican.

At that level Powell was at (commissioned officer), you don't just follow orders. If you know they are false or illegal, it is your duty to tell the truth. You may not break the law and claim you are just following orders. If you believe that he knew the truth and was just following orders, then I don't understand your position of support for him. He would be a crimminal then.

 

Lieberman was abandoned by the Democrats for supporting the war in Iraq. His own party ran another candidate against him for his Senate seat in the Connecticut primary, and that candidate won the primary. Lieberman then ran as an Independent and won, retaining his job in the Senate. He is a man without a party.

I think you enormously underestimate Colin Powell and his personal sense of what is right. He stayed with Bush long after he would have preferred, IMO out of his personal sense of duty. This is not a guy who does anything lightly, and certainly not something like this for personal gain.

Plus, given his stature, experience, and the respect given to him by just about everyone, either candidate might have approached him for some position or another; if personal gain were his goal, wouldn't it be a wiser bet not to take sides before the election is over?

 

Lieberman has said he is still a democrat. He votes with the dems and is a chairman of a committee. He has endorsed McCain. He will lose his chairmanship after the election, because the other dems consider him a traitor. Just watch this is what I predict.

If as others have suggested, he lied about Iraq. If that is so, then he should be disqualified from public office and may have broken several laws. As far as a sense of duty, In the military, your swear to support and defend the constitution, not the president. Standing up for truth is what is honorable. Sticking by someone who falsely got us in Iraq is not honorable. If this is true, it is criminal.

 

The word "traitor" becomes diminished currency when applied broadly. It will pack much less punch in the future.

John Walker Lindh disgusts me. But now that he's in the same group as Colin Powell, maybe I should take a second look.

 

Traitor is a harsh word. That is why I put it in context of political party. With my limited education, I couldn't think of a better word. Maybe you could help me out here.

 

I may misunderstand you here. Are you saying that you think Powell is in the same group as Lindh?

 

No. That sentence is a too-clever-by-half way of saying that the word used to describe Lindh should not be used to describe an American hero.

Just calling Powell a RINO, or closet Democrat seems more than sufficient.

 

Fair enough.

It is hard for me to consider Powell to be an american hero, when he was one of the big three Bush lieutenants who, by most peoples standards, stood up with Cheney and Rumsfels and pushed the Iraq invasion.

It is kind of hard for me to put him up on that hero pedastle with the Iraq thing he did.

 

I think in a couple of weeks it will be obvious that millions of registered Republicans will do what Powell did. I won't be going that far, but see this coming. The White House has changed parties with milder economic downturns than this one, then there is the hubris going into Iraq would be as easy as when we went into Panama in 1989. To remain in power, you have to maintain a decent economy and foreign policy.

Then there is the math: there are fewer registered Republicans than registered Democrats, yet the rightmost wing is disowning the half that supports John McCain - a man that would be considered arch-conservative in 1980...in other words, today Ronald Reagan might be considered RINO This black-and-white mentality will not only elect Barak Obama, but likely give the Democrats both houses. For the neo-cons wanting all or nothing, don't whine on Nov 5 about the mandate you helped deliver.

 

Cheer up Chuck. Your party will figure out that they need to build a more moderate platform and if there's one thing that the Democratic party can't stand, it's success. The Democrats will start squabbling amongst themselves before New Year's.

 

I'm just going to put out one question, and this sort of backs up what you've said:

The Democrats swept into Congress at the end of '06. Why are the troops still in Iraq? Where's the great change they were bringing?

McBama are no different on policy and as a result there won't be any drastic change for the better or worse regardless of who wins.

I'll have to ask this question again in 2009

 

Saturday, my 17 year old son wanted to go see the movie "W", so my wife and I thought we would go also. There was a good crowd of mostly very elderly GOP talking folks (next to us anyway) and it made us seem a little out of place.

The movie was about W's college drinking days, W's problems with his father and W's first term as President. The movie portrayed Powell as the only one who had serious questions about going to war with Iraq over WMDs. Finally Powell gave in and came on board with Bush when he seen there was no stopping "W" and his cronies. Now that the movie is out, Powell releases some of his true feelings the next day.

I feel the movie was way to kind to "W", but the faces on those elderly folks there sure seems disappointed as they left the theater. I think the disappointment portrayed by the actor for H. W. Bush hit home to these folks as Parents. It does not help the GOP seeing Powell now supporting Obama and expressing his concerns about McCain, Palin and his Party. History may say Powell is the Hero that got the GOP back on track with his message on the GOP going to far to the Right.

GaryG

 

I wonder if the proposed fairness doctrine will apply to movies. It is amazing to me that this movie hits the streets 2 weeks prior to a presidential election. It is a attempt to have an impact on the election. Anybody who thinks it doesn't is kidding themselves.

I am thinking the fairness doctrine might be a good idea after all. It will apply to all forms of media, movies too.

 

Here is my problem with Powell's position,

I man of honor doesn't go along. A man of honor resigns rather then go along. To go along with a bad plan, sell the plan, and let thousand of soldiers die is not an honorable thing to do. You stand up and be counted, get fired or resign as applicable, not go along.

Then after the fact say, but I didn't agree then. He stood up infront of the UN and us the American People and said he did.

Answer this, what does that make him.

 

The fairness doctrine when it was in force (roughly 1950-80), was a simple acknowledgement that the number of network frequencies (ABC/NBC/CBS) was far outnumbered by the number of political viewpoints and opinions. Unlike the print media (there's plenty of paper!), there existed the possibility that important opinions would be excluded simply because of frequency availability.

Interestingly enough, it was conservatives who in the 1960s were the biggest promoters of the fairness doctrine, because it allowed folks like Bill Buckley access to the networks................access which he (probably correctly) assumed he would not get in that era of bipartisan Post WWII Keynesian consensus.

Since then, the media has exploded. While network audience share continues to die, cable news and the internet are a huge and increasingly large source of information. Neither are regulated by the fairness doctrine, and no one has proposed that they should be regulated........as they are pay-for-service sites whose expansion is literally limitless (you can always add cable channels or register a new domain). In the same vein, nobody is suggesting that the motion picture industry be subjected to the doctrine either, as that too is a pay-for-service industry whose expansion is limitless.

Conservatives over time have turned against the fairness doctrine over time for a host of reasons. Trends in corporate ownership of networks (GE & NBC, Disney & ABC) make it more likely that conservatives will at the very least get a respectful hearing on television in the future (Indeed, all my Sunday talk show panels seem to prominently feature conservatives). But the more important reason is talk radio. Right wing dominance of talk radio would be immediately ended if the fairness doctrine were reimposed. Rush Limbaugh and his fellow broadcasters are the biggest drivers of conservative opinion on the doctrine today.

Interestingly enough, Obama does not support a return of the fairness doctrine. What he does support is media ownership caps and network neutrality. Both of these things are very important, as the first prevents monopolistic media consolidation.............which reduces the number of independently owned network, cable, & print media companies............and the second prevents politically discriminatory actions of internet service providers (i.e. time warner internet cable deciding to give high speed priority to dailykos.com over freerepublic.com).

So the fairness doctrine is a bit of an anachronism. The better solution is less and less corporate monopolistic control, and more and more independent voices with the freedom of access to make their case. I like Obama's position myself.