"I protested Bush's actions as strongly as I protest Obama's."

Me too. And so should any person of genuine conscience. Dennis Kucinich, for example, has protested strongly against illegal and unconstitutional wars waged by both George Bush AND Barack Obama. But he's not in office anymore. They gerrymandered his riding out of existence.

"Pre-emptive warfare is wrong."

Correct. It is absolutely wrong, it is illegal, it is the equivalent of you pre-emptively murdering your neighbor because "Well, he might be planning to hurt me someday, and anyway, he's just not nice, he's evil, and I don't like him." Yeah, right! Tell that to the cops when they come to arrest you!!!

Pre-emptive war is utterly and terribly wrong and no country should ever be permitted to take such an action. Any country that does has put itself beyond the pale of acceptable behaviour in a community of nations. The USA and Israel have done so repeatedly, and ought to be regarded as Hitler was regarded when he invaded Poland in 1939. A whole series of American presidents have been complicit in such illegal behaviour...not just Bush...not just Obama...but almost every American president since I can remember.

It's standard behaviour for American presidents to act unconstitutionally, to bypass Congress, and to violate international law. The reason nothing has been done about it is that the USA is far better armed than any other nation, so no one dares to do anything about it. The same is basically true of Israel...only in a smaller geographical area.

"Obama just signed an Executive Order saying that he can lock us all up and take everything we have, in peace time, if there's a "threat" to national security."

Yes, that's right. He did. That makes him a good deal more dangerous domestically than even George Bush was...because he has set the stage to go even farther in domestic oppression than George Bush was enabled to go. And what guarantee is there that he won't act on it? Or that his successors (Democratic or Republican) won't act on it?

None.

Those who discount what he's doing are hiding their heads in the sand, and out of nothing but partisan blindness.

The 2-party system, Songwronger, is achieving exactly what it is set up to achieve by the moneyed elite who firmly control the policies of both of those parties. It plays off one half of your public against the other. It can always rely on the unthinking support of approximately one half of the American public...the half that is blinded by the fact that "their guy" is the guy presently in office...and they will support oppressive actions taken by "their guy" which they wouldn't even DREAM of supporting if the "other party's guy" had taken the same actions.

Thus are 2 completely phony parties used to divide and control a mentally enslaved public.   It's clever. It works. It's the illusion of a democracy, managed from the top down by a financial Oligarchy. Nothing will free you from it except to free yourself from BOTH of those parties AND bring down the Oligarchy that runs them....and that appears to be virtually impossible, as far as I can see.

It would require a complete new mindset on the part of 250 million Americans. I don't think I'm going to see that.

And that's why I don't much bother talking about it anymore. (shrug) I know damn well there's nothing I can do about it. I can only bring down all kinds of toxic reactions and personal attacks on my own head from various partisan people here...and that won't help my life any nor will it change the political scene.

In fact, I've just wasted a couple of minutes of my life even bothering to comment on it here on this thread. And I know that.   So....see y'all later. Maybe. But hopefully...not too soon. And not too often.