We were so disappointed that nine members of our group decided to dramatize through a "die in" what lies ahead if Obama is given the go-ahead by Congress for his military escalation. It undoubtedly means more civilians and American troops will be killed, more funerals, more anti-American sentiment inflamed and more precious tax money wasted. At the time of the "die-in", Klobuchar's staff (who had been very patient up till then) warned the "dead" they were trespassing and called the police. (Ironically both Minnesota Senators just attended the real thing, the funeral for one of the three Minnesotans killed these last few days in Afghanistan and Iraq, bringing the total of Minnesotans who have died to 80).
Our independent media wrote a more thorough story, but our major newspaper, the Minneapolis Star Tribune carried only a couple paragraphs the following morning as part of their much larger article on the "buzz" about Senator Klobuchar possibly being named on a list of Supreme Court nominees.
So maybe it's time to suggest the newspaper and public radio media conduct a poll to educate the politicians in Washington DC that it's about more than (what the paper downplayed as) "50 protesters." It's about the growing public opinion against Congress giving open-ended, no strings attached funding for the president to continue the wars. No polls in Minnesota have been conducted, for some time, as to citizens' feelings about the wars and/or their escalation. Obama has picked up where Bush left off, with political partisanship now obfuscating the issues, but the wars are costing trillions of dollars and more and more people, including fiscal conservatives, are becoming concerned about the non-stop bleeding. Without a hard poll, it's very easy for our Senators and supposed Representatives to ignore the growing sentiment against the endless war and believe they can later sell their war votes as "helping bring democracy or supporting women's rights" as we heard over the speaker phone. We obviously also need more of the truth about what's going on to make it easier for Congress to provide the checks and balances it's supposed to provide and just say NO.