Redford writes: "This is one of the most important campaigns in our lifetime. The choice is clear, and it's up to all of us to join with President Obama to fight for continuing the significant progress he's made."
Actor and environmental activist Robert Redford. (photo: Contour/Getty Images)
Why I'm Supporting President Obama
19 October 12
was in the early days of my acting career in 1962, when Rachel Carson's Silent Spring made its way onto best-seller lists and college campuses and into living rooms across America and sowed the seeds of today's environmental movement. The story of that movement still represents for me who we are as a country: a people dedicated to something greater than ourselves, and a nation that recognizes our responsibility to each other.
In this election, only President Obama shares those values and the belief that our kids and grandkids should grow up with living, natural places to explore. Yosemite, the Great Lakes and the Everglades should always be places we can visit and wonders that inspire - not just photos of what used to be.
Shortly after taking office, President Obama signed one of the largest expansions of wilderness protection in a generation, setting aside more than 2 million acres as protected wilderness, conserving more than 1,000 miles of rivers, authorizing a 26-million-acre conservation system of historically significant landscapes and adding thousands of miles of trails. He's helping restore treasured landscapes from coast to coast that support local economies and communities through tourism and outdoor recreation.
The President has set historic standards that by 2025 will double the distance our cars and trucks will be able to go on a tank of gas, reducing our reliance on foreign oil by 2.2 million barrels per day and saving each of us thousands of dollars at the pump.
He made the single largest investment in clean energy of any other president, helping to double the amount of electricity we generate from wind and solar, strengthening our global economic competitiveness and supporting nearly a quarter of a million American jobs.
And that's one of the biggest differences in an election brimming with them. While President Obama is moving us forward, Mitt Romney would take us back. He'd roll back every step of progress we've made - not just in the last four years, but the last 40 years.
We've seen in the last stretch of this campaign that Romney will say anything to win, even if it's flat-out false. But we know what the real Mitt Romney would do. He'd gut investments in renewable energy - including the wind production tax credit that 37,000 American jobs depend on - while giving $4 billion a year in wasteful taxpayer subsidies to Big Oil, even as they reap near-record profits. It's no coincidence that those same special interests have donated nearly $11 million to Romney's campaign and the super PACs behind it.
Even more revealing, Romney would undermine President Obama's commitment to our national parks and undo the crucial steps the President has taken to reduce toxic pollutants like mercury and address carbon pollution - change that protects the health and prosperity of our children now and for generations to come.
We simply can't let Mitt Romney buy the keys to the White House and let the special interests write our nation's energy plan behind closed doors, like it did in the previous administration. That old saw didn't work then, and it won't work now.
I hope you'll join me in supporting President Obama and stopping others from reversing our progress. If you care about Great Lakes restoration in Ohio, or the Everglades in Florida, wind energy in Iowa or Colorado, vote. All of those states, and many others, have early voting - don't wait until Election Day. Check out vote.barackobama.com and head over to the polls now.
This is one of the most important campaigns in our lifetime. The choice is clear, and it's up to all of us to join with President Obama to fight for continuing the significant progress he's made.
But don't take my word for it, watch this video about President Obama's environmental accomplishments and see for yourself our progress that's at stake:
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Comments
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OBAMA/BIDEN 2012
The alternative is devastating.
Of course, many will argue that he hasn't exactly trumpeted any mention of global warming or led via rhetoric for regular citizens to take a principled stand. Not that he wouldn't be castigated by a transigent and ignorant RW crybaby base that decries all regulation as anti-business. Actually all of the initiates above are pro business.
Maybe he could have done more? I dunno. But I know the alternative is unthinkable. I know, I sound just like Barbara K. ;-) But 'tis true! I thought about tossing in with Jill Stein since I live in Texas and my vote essentially doesn't count as far as the president or senate is concerned (for now until we turn purple, hopefully). But I think I'm gonna vote for Obama anyway because I want to show him some love from the people of Texas, even as we're having earth quakes from those fracking sites. Yowsa. Or the waste water disposal problems it creates.
In other news, Paul Sadler has been endorsed by the conservative Dallas Morning news over his tea party opponent! Good news there. Early voting will give the president some momentum so check your local prescints, folks!
OBAMA/BIDEN 2012
The alternative is disastrous.
and what about the
tar sand pipeline?
indefinite detention?
kill list?
game over for the planet
game over for justice
game over for democracy
Romney is a no go, but so is Obama.
Vote Green/Jill Stein and look your
grandchildren in their eyes
I"m not sure what they think the point of their downrates is. Maybe they think they can make your comments invisible?
Don't stop though...
1. How unpopular your ideas are.
2. How much harder it is to give a thought-out response than one someone (like you) has repeated ad nauseum without thought.
3. How much more time you have on your hands than most of them do - since most of them work their asses off FOR A LIVING and don't have time to idly chit-chat against your arrogance. I have time to respond to you somewhat, but since when have you actually engaged me in a "discussion" about this?
The fact that you have so much more time on your hands than most of the people who disagree with you fits the fact that YOU won't be affected by this election no matter who wins.
What do YOU care about the millions of other Americans WHO WILL, right?!
Maybe you think ignoring my question will make it invisible?
A vanity vote for a 3rd party isn't going to protect my Mom's Social Security and Medicaid from Romney and Ryan's plans to take those things away from her.
A vanity vote for a 3rd party isn't going to prevent my kids from paying the ongoing costs in money and their lives for the upcoming WAR WITH IRAN - the war that the President has, so far, been able to keep repuglicans from starting. McCain wanted it back in 2008. Romney wants it now.
-When YOUR elderly parents or grandparents go hungry or without medical care you can talk trash about how dirty you feel voting for their very survival.
-When YOUR children are drafted to fight for the corporate profit of the oil industry against a country bigger and more powerful than Iraq and Afghanistan combined, you can talk trash about how dirty you feel voting for their future.
o yeah, murdering americans too.
vote for murderers? ....?....???
Eventually doing the very thing that causes the problem is going to become the solution?
................................................................
This is where we are. The great question now is whether we as a nation can awaken from this long historic nightmare and face the terrifying and exhilarating prospect of living in the full light of reality without the false props and dishonest constructs of a hoodwinked, herded and dishonored people or, whether we have internalized the falsity and disease to such an extent that it has become an organic, overmastering form of insanity.
................................................................
http://antemedius.com/content/this-is-where-we-are
As for getting traffic for your blog, why not just humor us and link to the original article. That'd be more honest. Thanks.
1. What do you say to the millions of people who's Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, college grants, and college loans will be threatened by romney's Presidency?
2. What do you say to the millions who will be killed and have their lives destroyed when Twit starts the WAR he wants with IRAN?
If you are too proud to vote for Obama, thereby enabling Twit to seize the White House, in affect you're saying:
"FUCK 'EM".
It's time to get over yourself.
One more (of many) reasons to vote Democrat November 6, and get everyone you can convince to do so too.
In joining others I greatly admire, like Tom Hayden and Daniel Ellsberg, he is supporting what Daniel Ellsberg accurately describes,
“…a tool of Wall Street, a man who's decriminalized torture and is still complicit in it, a drone assassin, someone who's launched an unconstitutiona l war, supports kidnapping and indefinite detention without trial, and has prosecuted more whistleblowers like myself than all previous presidents put together.” For someone who “…has often acted outrageously, not merely timidly or "disappointingl y." If impeachment were politically imaginable on constitutional grounds, he's earned it…”
How can any person of good conscience support such a man, especially for one of the most powerful positions in the world?
Rocky Anderson, a fellow Utahan and a Redford acquaintance is running a serious campaign for the Presidency under the Justice Party. I believe Rocky shares almost every inch of the environmental and political philosophy of Mr. Redford, while opposing everything Ellsberg describes above.
Mr. Redford, your support for Rocky would be such a huge boost for a deserving candidate.
http://truth-out.org/news/item/10766-a-road-less-traveled-presidential-candidate-rocky-anderson-speaks-candidly-on-the-crumbling-state-of-the-union
..................................
With just 2 1/2 weeks left before election day, there’s an urgency on all fronts in the presidential race. For activists, it’s not just about whether President Obama or Mitt Romney will win, but whether either man will pay attention to their issue.
Perhaps no interest community has been as disappointed as those who worry about global climate change. They have repeatedly called for more attention to the issue and, for the most part, failed to get it.
This week’s presidential debate prompted a new round of regret and demands for Romney and Obama to address the topic, as both candidates spent their most notable time arguing about how much coal they would extract from federal lands.
“Both President Obama and Gov. Romney maintained the silence on climate, again ignoring the growing roster of extreme climate-change induced weather events,” said Maura Cowley, executive director of a consortium of youth-oriented groups called the Energy Action Coalition. “As young voters, and the generation with the most to lose if we don’t address the climate crisis now, we demand both candidates break the silence on climate change by standing up to big oil and gas with ambitious plans for clean energy.”
..................................
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-climate-change-romney-obama-20121018,0,5707469.story
Your true intentions are getting more and more transparent.
Thanks, Mr. Redford, for giving us this reminder of sanity.
Hardly a supporter of our or our children's future. He refuses to examine and act to at least label all GMO products. Has been unwilling to really confront the lack of adequate college funding , continues to endorse one size fits all testing in the schools against all
Of the finest stances by front line top educators bowing to the
Racist inhuman perpetuation of data driven elite schools and the rich supporters whose children continue to promote the same horrors for the future. He surrounds himself with the worst criminals of the Wall Street boys who got us into trouble with no real labor leaders or esteemed representatives of the working man in his cabinet. He murdered Osama Ben Laden who was unarmed let alone having Obamas dogs brutalize Osamas wife. So lets get real. If Obsmas feet are not held to the fire with big public demonstrations, he will continue to follow the orders of his keepers " confessions of an Economic Hit Man" yes the Bilderberg group spoke with him before his election in 2008 and are no less active now.
But supporting the candidate as hey jude points out involves working for the campaign as well. I do not support killing wolves and we have a new wolf season. Wolves are not food and they don't make good furs. They are purely sport kills and a shame to those who kill them. Our MN Senator Klobuchar voted to open a wolf season. Therefore I will not vote for her.
But I will continue to advocate for wolves, sea mammals, a clean environment, creation of more park land, and saving the buffalo. We are a better people when we care for those that can so easily be killed in cruel ways.
I am supporting president Obama again in 2012. The cynical throwing of hundreds of millions into the pockets of the Republican campaigns by a few billionaires is a sad part of our history - something we will look back on in horror and sadness.
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/14059-mormon-women-and-mitt-romneys-pregnancy-problem
The persistence of the pattern is no exaggeration. Here’s something from a 1967 essay by Hal Draper on the imminent 1968 election: “Every time the liberal labor left has made noises about its dissatisfaction with what Washington was trickling through, all the Democrats had to do was bring out the bogy of the Republican right. The lib-labs would then swoon, crying ‘The fascists are coming!’ and vote for the Lesser Evil.”
And what is the consequence of that swoon? Draper’s answer: “the Democrats have learned well that they have the lib-lab vote in their back pocket, and that therefore the forces to be appeased are those forces to the right.” Almost every editorial urging a vote for this year’s Dem will lament the rightward move of our politics without ever considering the contribution of such calls to the process.
[..snip..]
...the invertebrate status is a symptom of the party’s fundamental contradiction: it’s a party of business that has to pretend for electoral reasons that it’s not. Related to that, it’s getting harder to say what the party’s core beliefs are. Republicans have a coherent philosophy—loop y and often terrifying, yes, but coherent—which they use to fire up an impassioned base. The Democrats can’t risk getting their base too excited, lest it scare their funders.
.........
Why Should the Left Support Obama?, The Nation October 17,2012
http://www.thenation.com/article/170650/why-should-left-support-obama
Are you STILL going to tell me there was no fundamental difference between NIXON and HUMPHREY? I think you were pretty pleased with the results of that election. Afterall, Nixon had a plan to end the war in Vietnam, didn't he? How well did that go?
Luckily Nixon was no fascist, right?
Your arguments would be hillarious if they weren't so incidious.
I mean, he was just crying crocodile tears over China and vowing to "get tough" with 'em in the debates, right in the middle of a Freeport (a.k.a. "Bainport") Illinois holding of Bain Capital closing shop and moving to C-H-I-N-A, putting a successful, decent-paying American car parts company into liquidity for a slight increase in profits.
-And he'd have let the car industry it serves go bankrupt into the bargain by his own words.
That's Twit's world; fuck all of you! -For thirty pieces of silver I'll screw you as fast and hard as I can get it done and stomp on the remains if you complain.
And he'll be assuming the role of a patriot any time, just to rub it in like the bully he is more and more coming out to be.
The Military/Indust rial/Banking/Fi nance aristocracy is consolidating its hold over government and rolling back not just the New Deal but democracy itself. They shall be our counts and dukes above the law, we shall be the peasants who may be worked to exhaustion and then left to die by the roadside.
SO YES, VOTE FOR THE LESSER EVIL because this is not a period of normal partisan politics but a radical power grab. The Republicans must be prevented from transforming our nation into a tyrannical police state.
Did you know that the President isn't Irish?
Did you know that the past isn't the only thing this election is about?
Do you want war with Iran? The President DOES NOT or it would already be happening. He's been pushed hard for it for the past 4 years. Did you know Twit DOES want it?
Did you know that Twit and Ryan want to profitize Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and further profitize college loans? Did you know they want to further unregulate the financial industry?
If PRESIDENT Obama (NOT Irish) is re-elected HE will have to watch his backside, because the right-wing (of which YOU are a card carrying member) pledges WAR at all costs and by any means necessary.
Redford makes a good case for a healthy environment - which will be great since millions of Americans, if not now - sometime in the future, are forced to pitch a tent.
Ever since the ruling making Indefinite Detention illegal and unconstitutiona l the White House legal counsel has fought tooth and nails to bring it back. They have succeeded in keeping it around.
So Obama had much to do with this as anyone. Maybe even more so.
Why Robert Redford supports Obama
and NOT the Sin Dunce Cad
What a joke! They're pathetic.
ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN, same cast, same crew, same issues... When will we ever learn?
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