You know how we're exhorted here to vote for Obama, even if we have reservations?

[woo me with science]

7. I have no problem with people exhorting others to vote for Obama.

Just look at the alternative.

What I have a problem with is people namecalling and telling others to shut up and not criticize right-wing, corporate, neocon, and police state POLICIES coming out of this administration.

We have a problem of corporate money in our party, too, and terrible policies will not change without pressure from all of us. Especially during an election year, when we have the most leverage, it is our responsibility to exert pressure on our party to treat what is happening to the poor and the middle class as the emergency it is.

When two planes crashed into the WTC on 9/11, it was considered a national emergency. Three thousand people died, the nation was outraged, wars were started, and our entire nation was thrust into a new way of living, because of this national tragedy.

Compare the loss of 3000 to what is happening now. Over a million American students are homeless now. We have the second-highest child poverty rate of all the developed nations; only ROMANIA is worse. Forty percent of our wealth has been looted. People who were comfortably middle class 15 years ago are living in cars on the street. Meanwhile, the corporations are sucking in record profits.

Where is the commensurate alarm about THIS emergency? Where is the outrage? Where is the President standing up and pounding his fist on the podium and saying that it is absolutely unacceptable, in a country with the wealth that America has, for ANY person to have to worry about food or shelter? Where are the vigils and the speeches and the national days of alarm and attention to this, and the exhortations for a SERIOUS, immediate response? Why do we not get a response AT LEAST as URGENT and VEHEMENT as the response to 9/11?

Why?

No, we get corporate platitudes about the need for "shared sacrifice," austerity, and budget cutting, and admonitions to be patient and not be such a "purist." We get more drone wars. We get our Secretary of Defense admonishing us about how we can't cut military spending. We get a President *starting out* debt ceiling negotiations by offering up social spending and giving speeches advocating austerity. We get billions of dollars in new police state infrastructure and surveillance centers. We don't get any sense of alarm about *what is happening to Americans.*

This is a bigger emergency than 9/11. Where is the outrage?

EVERY Democrat should be speaking out and pushing our politicians to change the national narrative, not telling others to shut up. Every American should be speaking out and DEMANDING better.