another stupid question posed by the morons at rnn.

The correct question should read:

"Does Obama suck or what?"

One got us into our present situation and one is trying to get us out.Fact check that,before you start parroting"talking points".

I think Obama has done a outstanding job-of destroying this Country

First and foremost, what would you people say about the fact that an idiot like Bush got us into the current economic situation in the first place? Although Obama is a genius, he is not super human, and he is doing his best to alleviate some of the pain and pressure of the previous administration. Having passed healthcare reform is a positive step in the right direction. A feat no other president has ever accomplished. If this man had been republican and white, he would be herald up as the second coming. It's really sad that some people can't look beyond race, to see that this brilliant man has accomplished a lot for the people of the US in his short time in offer. One thing he can not do is create jobs out of thin air. Only within the minds of Americans can jobs be created. Something has to fuel that and it's not going to come from government, it's going to come from the intelligence of Americans. That being said, Obama has fought to alleviate some of the pressure of joblessness by fighting republicans to extend unemployment benefits. What else do you want this man to do besides bleach his skin, straighten his hair,and put less swag in his voice!

I agree with Fred and Doug. Obama is a complete loser with no expierence and makes idiot Bush look like Einstein. I never thought in my life that there would be someone dumber than idiot Bush and worse than Jimmy Carter, but Obama is that man. I can't wait for this loser President to be voted out of office.

There we go,it's turned into the race card=how RNN LOL
And Mags I agree with you,Bush was a total idiot-I voted for Obama for change,not these kinda changes.He's gotta go!!!
Obama's lack of leadership has NOTHING to do with his race,I was one of the BIGGEST Bush bashers out there and BTW I happen to be white

Her's a guy that has a total handle on the race situation:
http://weblogs.wpix.com/news/larrymendte/

Why are we even comparing an idiot (Bush) to someone who has brains.

The economy was bad when Obama took over from Bush. However, Obama tripled down on the deficit, unemployment has gotten worse, he lied about the healthcare bill, foreign policy isn't the sunshine a roses we were promised and none of Obama's policies are making ANYTHING better. Things have gotten worse and all Obama can do is blame Bush.

Obama is doing a horrible job. What has he done to better the economy.

I prefer and always did wanted Bush to stay in power,
He was Smarter, calm,knew what he was doing and did not affraid to do anything to protect our country.

I do not se Obama as President, he doe's not even have the appearance of a reall president for me. We miss bust and felt secure with him better then Obama, I did not vote for Obama and I was right,

R,

where's the change people?where's the hope?did he pull out the soldiers in iraq? Everyone who voted for obama got suckered into lies sry people. He's a liar!

Bush Was the best, people do not really feel it until they lost it.

From the comments that I see,i am reposting my comment:
:One got us into our present situation and one is trying to get us out.Fact check that,before you start parroting"talking points".

Bring some "Facts" not gripes.

The most positive accomplishment by the Bush Administration was saving lives from overseas AIDS epidemic, especially in Africa. His administration created the worst deficit since the Reagan Administration through his tax cuts to the wealthy and wasteful and expensive wars.

I would much prefer President Obama who has the courage to acknowledge our economic, educational, and environmental looming disasters. His vision to tackle these issues by giving us more freedom via freedom from being ripped off by big business, freedom from lack of health care, and freedom from dying as a nation from lack of clean economy jobs by funding cutting edge technology. A continued focus on funding big business via tax rip-offs will lead us to disintegrate and not remain competitive.

Let us speak facts here. Unfortunately the recent 2010 Presidential Rankings was not important enough to appear on TV news - this is compiled by the top 200+ Presidential historians in the nation. Ooooppps! President Obama came in 15th right behind President Clinton who came in 13th; Bush the second came in 37th. Which ranking elevated Pres. Obama the most? - Intelligence. President Bush's score in that category was abysmal. RNN, would you be interested in discussing these facts?
Secondly, who can compare the HUMAN faces of Katrina with the BP oil spill which the federal government had limited expertise in fixing? How did that become Obama's fault?
Lastly, where were the conservatist Fox News type people when we were spending the money we were spending on the fake, false pretense Iraq war? Where was the outrage? Was Iraq transparent? Perhaps one should look in the mirror as they ponder these questions.

Cakky O bama sucks plain and simple

"First and foremost, what would you people say about the fact that an idiot like Bush got us into the current economic situation in the first place?"


The American and worldwide economies have natural cycles of highs and lows. President Clinton handed Bush a recession at the beginning of his presidency which Bush was able to control by a series of tax cuts that naturally stimulated the economy into recovery.Obama and the Democratic left Congress seized upon an opportunity to fulfill a lifelong socialistic wish list which greatly exacerbated a recession, started at the end of the Bush presidency into a near depression implementing a leftist formula that will unfairly saddle many generations into the future of paying for worthless and destructive programs, that the great majority of Americans wanted no part of, in the first place. America will never be the same because of the leftist greed generated by this administration.

I agree with Mags, Fred and Doug. In my opinion, Obama is the worst president ever, even worse then Bush. I also agree with Robert in that we really should be examining the facts and not just parroting what we hear.

Question:
Who got us into this PRESENT situation and who is trying to get us out?

Factual Answer:

We had a financial meltdown during the Bush administration. Bush used TARP monies to try to get the banks to loan money again, PERIOD.

Opinion:
Obama is trying to get us out of this situation. Really? How is that a fact? I know he and his Administration SAY they should be thanked for getting us out of trouble but have they made things better with all their spending. Did they bring down unemployment? Did bailing out the car company's and financial institutions save the economy. Is this a fact?

Obama passed Obamacare. Is it a fact this is a great thing or a victory for the American people? Who SAYS it is?

Is it a fact he is giving us freedom? Freedom from big business? Who SAYS he is?

Is it a fact Obama has no responsibility with the BP spill? Could he have responded quicker and used more resources? Who SAYS he did all he could?

The 2010 Presidential survey who says he is ranked 15th. Is it a fact he is that good? Did the people rank him? Who said he deserved a B+ rating?

Obama refused to cut part of our multi- trillion dollar budget in exchange for extended unemployment benefits but instead just adds to the deficits AS HE SAYS, "we must cut the deficit for our children’s sake."

DON'T YOU SEE THE PATTERN? IT IS OBAMA HIMSELF, HIS ADMINISTRATION AND THE MEDIA ON THE LEFT TELLING YOU WHAT THEY WANT YOU TO HEAR BUT IF YOU EXAMINE ALL THE FACTS, YOU WILL SEE IT DOES NOT MATCH THE TRUE PICTURE.

Top Banks Paid $1.6 Billion in Excessive Bonuses, U.S. Finds

With the financial system on the verge of collapse in late 2008, a group of troubled banks doled out more than $2 billion in bonuses and other payments to their highest earners. Now, the federal authority on banker pay says that nearly 80 percent of that sum was unmerited.

In a report to be released on Friday, Kenneth R. Feinberg, the Obama administration’s special master for executive compensation, is expected to name 17 financial companies that made questionable payouts totaling $1.58 billion immediately after accepting billions of dollars of taxpayer aid, according to two government officials with knowledge of his findings who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the report.

The group includes Wall Street giants like Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and the American International Group as well as small lenders like Boston Private Bank. Mr. Feinberg’s report points to companies that he says paid eye-popping amounts or used haphazard criteria for awarding bonuses, the people with knowledge of his findings said, and he has singled out Citigroup as the biggest offender.

Even so, Mr. Feinberg has very limited power to reclaim any money. He can use his status as President Obama’s point man on pay to jawbone the companies into reimbursing the government, but he has no legal authority to claw back excessive payouts.

Mr. Feinberg’s political leverage has been weakened by the banks’ speedy repayment of their bailout funds. Eleven of the 17 companies that received criticism in the report have repaid the government with interest, so they have no outstanding obligations to reimburse.

As a result, Mr. Feinberg will merely propose that the banks voluntarily adopt a “brake provision” that would allow their boards to nullify or alter any bonus payouts or employment contracts in the event of a future financial crisis. All 17 companies have told Mr. Feinberg that they will consider adopting the provision, though none has committed to do so.

Mr. Feinberg is expected to call the payouts ill advised but not unlawful or contrary to the public interest, the people with knowledge of his report said.

On Wall Street, meanwhile, profits and pay have already rebounded. Goldman Sachs is on pace to hand out an average of $544,000 per worker in salary and bonuses, though many could earn several times that amount. JPMorgan Chase’s investment bank is on track to pay its workers, on average, about $400,000, while the average Morgan Stanley employee could collect about $262,000.

If the second half of 2010 plays out like the first half, Wall Street bonuses will be paid out at about the same level as last year and similar to 2007 levels, when the crisis had just started to unfold.

“It’s healthier than I would have ever expected a year ago,” said Alan Johnson, a longtime compensation consultant who specializes in financial services.

Mr. Feinberg was named last month as the independent administrator for claims tied to the BP oil spill, making it likely that the release of his findings on the financial companies will be his final act as the overseer of banker pay.

The review, mandated by the 2009 economic stimulus bill, broadened the scope of Mr. Feinberg’s duties to include examining the pay packages of top earners at 419 companies that accepted bailout funds. However, it did not give him the power to demand changes to the compensation arrangements, as he did in each of the last two years at seven companies that received multiple bailouts.

Mr. Feinberg spent five months reviewing compensation paid to each company’s 25 highest earners between October 2008, when the first bailouts were dispensed, and February 2009, when the stimulus bill took effect. He narrowed his scrutiny to about 600 executives at 17 banks, with payouts totaling $2.03 billion.

Mr. Feinberg’s criteria for identifying the worst offenders were large payouts, in aggregate or to specific individuals; overly generous exit packages; or a failure to provide clear performance criteria or other rationale for extra pay.

Mr. Feinberg then approached each of the 17 companies with his proposed remedy during conference calls over the last two weeks. The 11 companies that have fully repaid their bailout money are American Express, Bank of America, Bank of New York Mellon, Boston Private, Capital One Financial, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, PNC Financial, US Bancorp and Wells Fargo.

The six companies that have not fully repaid their bailout funds are A.I.G, Citigroup, the CIT Group, M&T Bank, Regions Financial and SunTrust Banks.

Among the banks that have not fully repaid the government, Citigroup was identified by Mr. Feinberg as having the most egregious compensation packages during the bailout period, according to officials with knowledge of his report. The bank handed out several hundred million dollars in pay in 2008 as it struggled to stay afloat.

Roughly two-thirds of the outsize payouts were from bonuses awarded to Andrew Hall and another trader who were part of the bank’s Phibro energy trading unit. Citigroup sold that business to Occidental Petroleum last fall, under pressure from Mr. Feinberg, after the disclosure that Mr. Hall had received a $100 million payout.

Mr. Feinberg is not expected to name individual executives who received the highest awards.

His review is among several compensation initiatives scrutinizing banker pay. In June, the Federal Reserve ordered about two dozen of the biggest banks to address several pay practices that, even after the crisis, it said encouraged excessive risk-taking.

European banking regulators introduced tough new standards for bonus payments earlier this month. And the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is developing a plan that would partly tie bank insurance premiums to the perceived risk of their executive pay packages. That proposal could be reviewed by the agency’s board as early as next month.

ANOTHER $1.6 BILLION IN POCKET MONEY TO THOSE WHOSE PRACTICES BROKE THE SYSTEM

"With the financial system on the verge of collapse in late 2008, a group of troubled banks doled out more than $2 billion in bonuses and other payments to their highest earners."

"Mr. Feinberg’s political leverage has been weakened by the banks’ speedy repayment of their bailout funds. Eleven of the 17 companies that received criticism in the report have repaid the government with interest, so they have no outstanding obligations to reimburse."

“It’s healthier than I would have ever expected a year ago,” said Alan Johnson, a longtime compensation consultant who specializes in financial services."


Makes you wonder what really would have happened if we did not bailout these institutions. What if we did nothing? Would they have bounced back on their own or would they have allowed their ship to sink, paying bonuses out all the way to the bottom of the ocean? Did they really NEED all our taxpayer money? It certainly does not seem that way.

"DON'T YOU SEE THE PATTERN?"

Yes I do,but its not the one that you are trying to present.

Go ahead Robert, elaborate.

Just the facts Robert. No opinion needed.

In political science, historical rankings of Presidents of the United States are surveys conducted in order to construct rankings of the success of individuals who have served as President of the United States. Ranking systems are usually based on surveys of academic historians and political scientists or popular opinion. The rankings focus on the presidential achievements, leadership qualities, failures and faults (such as corruption).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_Presidents_of_the_United_States

Fred:
No elabaration/opinion just facts.

I have no reason not to think that the '08 downturn would have been a full-blown depression by now without the bailouts and stimulus bills started by Bush and carried through by Obama. The difference between a recession, in which some 10% of people don't find work, and a depression, in which 25%of people go without work for years, is not something you can with intellectual honesty pretend is neither here nor there. Holding off a depression is by itself enough to rank Obama as one of the more important presidents.

He passed healthcare, which no one else had managed to do for 60 years. You can whine that he didn't represent YOUR wishes (he's not a representative, but a leader), but you can't slight the accomplishment. Social Security and Medicare were seriously compromised bills when first passed, and were fixed later, as healthcare will be, too. This will put him right up there with the giants, FDR and LBJ.

The criminal lack of financial regulation that enabled the financial near-disaster was addressed by Obama's financial regulation bill, another accomplishment that you can pick apart but which provides the framework for one of the most needed of reforms.

Lily Ledbetter and other acts.

Obama is too modest and you are too whiney.

RNN: "WE EARNED IT." CSEA PRESIDENT, MR. DANIEL DONOHUE TELEVISION COMMERCIAL ON YOUR PROGRAM--BUT WE CAN NOT GET IT!

It will take the UNION REPRESNTATIVE, CSEA 3-4 MONTHS ("MONTHS") TO HANDLE WHAT SHOULD BE A SIMPLE ADMINISTRATIVE QUESTION:

WHILE GRABBING THE EMPLOYEES' MONEY(UNION DUES WHETHER YOU WANT TO PAY THEM OR NOT), ALBANY AND CSEA CANNOT SEE THE FOREST FOR THE TREES!

TO; Capital Tonight State of Politics: I am a CSEA , Temporary and Seasonal employee, working at Clermont State Historic Site.

Note: ALBANY— The Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA) and the New York State Public Employees Federation (PEF) have come to an agreement with Gov. David Paterson to achieve long term savings, avoid massive state layoffs and maintain essential services without reopening union contracts.

The site manager of less than two years of on-the-job training at Clermont State Historic Site, who took a week’s vacation after 6 months on the job, is DENYING permanent employees from using their personal and vacation time to work other employment--which they have used for what they wanted for several prior years--because of "operational reasons."
This permanent employee is planning to retire in a year. Is this site manager giving him a hard time, encouraging him to retire with the $20,000 offer?

As a result, my hours are cut to 20 hours because as the "slave" on call, I am NOT called to fill in when the permanent employee takes time off. Everyone has fewer hours and less money. I have a $12 an hour job from which union dues are deducted automatically, whether I want to be a union member or not, and everything else.

QUESTION: Can the new site manager who others belive is being coached, prevent permanent employees from using their benefits, for whatever reason that they want to use their time, to make her site budget look smaller? and a bigger BONUS FOR HER THIS SEPTEMBER AT Saratoga?

New York State literally has thousands of permanent jobs that are purposedly unfilled. The legislatures have a base salary of $179,000, PLUS FEES OR INCOME FOR CHAIRING COMMITTEES, TRAVEL, FOOD AND LODGING AND DAILY STIPENDS.

I want the same expenses covered in addition to my hourly rate.


TO; Capital Tonight State of Politics: I am a CSEA , Temporary and Seasonal employee, working at Clermont State Historic Site.

Note: ALBANY— The Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA) and the New York State Public Employees Federation (PEF) have come to an agreement with Gov. David Paterson to achieve long term savings, avoid massive state layoffs and maintain essential services without reopening union contracts.

The site manager of less than two years of on the job training, who took a week’s vacation after 6 months on the job, is denying permanent employees from using their personal and vacation time to work other employment--which they have used for what they wanted for several prior years--because of "operational reasons."
This permanent employee is planning to retire in a year. Is this site manager giving him a hard time, encouraging him to retire with the $20,000?

As a result, my hours are cut to 20 hours because as the "slave" on call, I am NOT called to fill in when the permanent employee takes time off. Everyone has fewer hours and less money. I have a $12 an hour job from which union dues are deducted automatically, whether I want to be a union member or not.

Can the new site manager who others belive is being coached, prevent permanent employees from using their benefits, for whatever reason that they want to use their time, to make her site budget look smaller?

New York State literally has thousands of permanent jobs that are purposedly unfilled.

LOL!

"Ranking systems are usually based on surveys of academic historians and political scientists or popular opinion"

So let me re elaborate Robert, in your "opinion", what are the facts. LMAO

p.S.

RNN: "WE EARNED IT." CSEA PRESIDENT, MR. DANIEL DONOHUE'S TELEVISION COMMERCIAL ON YOUR PROGRAM--BUT WE CAN NOT GET IT!

OR, RATHER, "i can not get it!

TELL DONOHUE TO GET OFF HIS FAT ASS!


(1/2 hour--30 minutes--on the computer in the public library)

Netroots Nation 2010 Live!
Vote out all corporate Democrats and their friends the corporate Republicans in Congress. / http://tinyurl.com/6s2dd4 /
http://www.netrootsnation.org/

Good presidents do what's right and good, despite the complaints. Consider Truman integrating the military. Rights are rights. They are not negotiable, they do not get voted on. That means that though 88% of officers and enlisted men in 1948 wanted segregation in the military, Truman could integrate it without being a dictator "out of touch" with the people. The US constitution says that blacks have the rights of whites, like it or not. You may not want blacks next door, or in the next bunk, but that's just too bad. Rights are rights. Deal with it. Truman's military could not brag that it defended America's constitution and laws and values while at the same time violating all these by insisting on segration. Truman used what could seem like dictatorial fiat to "make" us walk the walk, but which has to be within the purview of the government.

It is here that government shows one of its reasons for being. It uses its authority at times -even its national guard, if necessary- to insist that we behave like grownups even if we don't feel like it. When we are wise and good the government enables our impulses. When we are brats it sends us to our rooms. We can't have the power of government to accomplish great things without that same power telling us to shape up when we need to be told. If you don't ever want to be told that racism and the like is unacceptable, go found your own sovereign fiefdom somewhere, and learn how to make tools from sticks and rocks, and where the best roots and grubs can be found.

Fred:You said you wanted facts and that is what you were presented with.

"Comment from: fred [Visitor]
Just the facts Robert. No opinion needed. "

Another of your brotheren,who can't handle "facts".

Kirsten Powers pushes back on Hannity's "bogus" claims about New Black Panthers case.

http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201007220074

Fred:FYI.

"The rankings focus on the presidential achievements, leadership qualities, failures and faults (such as corruption)."

To: Mike G

You say facts versus opinion. Then you state ONE what you call a fact (leaving out so many details about the financial meltdown) about Bush. You then go on to state what you call opinions about President Obama. Could someone as intelligent as you only come up with one fact and no opinions about Bush or are you just as most on this blog is "biased to your own opinion and not to facts?"

As found on U.S. NEWS AND WORLD REPORTS, you can google for the actual report as well which gives much more detail. I think that Presidential Historians may be smarter than all of us in this category, no? Also, this whole question began because of the poll about Obama, Bush, and Clinton - no one seemed to have a problem with that poll - true?
Ability to compromise is seen as a positive - some see that as a negative because it does not favor the arrogance of say...hmmmm can you think of a recent arrogant president?


Survey Ranks Obama 15th Best President, Bush Among Worst
Former President George W. Bush is in the bottom 5
By Mallie Jane Kim

Posted: July 2, 2010
Print
Share ThisPresident Obama ranks 15th out of 44 in a poll of the best and worst presidents while former President George W. Bush earns a place in the bottom five, according to the Siena College Research Institute's recent survey of 238 presidential scholars released Thursday. [See a slide show of the 10 Worst Presidents.]


Obama secured a top ten place in two skill set categories, communication ability (7th) and ability to compromise (10th), and in two personality trait categories, imagination (6th) and intelligence (8th). Background, described as family, education, and experience, proved his lowest score at 32nd.

This is the 5th time the institute has conducted the survey of U.S. presidents, which is done a year after a new president takes office. The inaugural survey in 1982 ranked then-President Ronald Reagan at 16th. "Obviously, there's not great validity to it since they've only been in office for one year," says the survey's co-director and statistician Douglas Lonnstrom. "But it's a benchmark for us to see how they move." [Take our poll: Who is the worst president?]

President tend to rank around 20th while they are in office, and Obama is no exception. His actions over the next few years will decide if he stays roughly the same like Reagan—who moved from 16th to 20th, 22nd, 16th again, and finally to 18th this year—or like Bush, who fell a dramatic 16 slots in the first poll after he left office, from 23rd to 39th.

Bush made the top twenty in only two categories, luck (18th) and willingness to take risks (19th), and he sits in the bottom five in 12 of the 20 categories, notably 42nd in intelligence, foreign policy accomplishments, and communication ability. Lonnstrom points out the unpopular former president has time on his side, explaining it takes four or five decades to know a president's true worth. "Right now there's a lot of emotion about Bush," he says. "Time passes and people become more objective, and so we'll see."

Franklin D. Roosevelt has held his title as top president since 1982 with the same four following to round out the consistent top five: Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson.

Joining Bush in the bottom five this year are Franklin Pierce, Warren G. Harding, James Buchanan, and Andrew Johnson, who is at the very bottom for the second year in a row.

The survey, which ranks presidents using 20 different factors, shows Jefferson was the most intelligent president, Richard Nixon was the worst at integrity and avoiding crucial mistakes, Lincoln had the best overall ability, and Washington was the best leader.

Here's the full list*:

1. Franklin D. Roosevelt

2. Theodore Roosevelt

3. Abraham Lincoln

4. George Washington

5. Thomas Jefferson

6. James Madison

7. James Monroe

8. Woodrow Wilson

9. Harry Truman

10. Dwight D. Eisenhower

11. John F. Kennedy

12. James K. Polk

13. William Clinton

14. Andrew Jackson

15. Barack Obama

16. Lyndon B. Johnson

17. John Adams

18. Ronald Reagan

19. John Quincy Adams

20. Grover Cleveland

21. William McKinley

22. George H. W. Bush

23. Martin Van Buren

24. William Howard Taft

25. Chester Arthur

26. Ulysses S. Grant

27. James Garfield

28. Gerald Ford

29. Calvin Coolidge

30. Richard Nixon

31. Rutherford B. Hayes

32. James Carter

33. Zachary Taylor

34. Benjamin Harrison

35. William Henry Harrison

36. Herbert Hoover

37. John Tyler

38. Millard Fillmore

39. George W. Bush

40. Franklin Pierce

41. Warren G. Harding

42. James Buchanan

43. Andrew Johnson

*There are only 43 ranking slots since Grover Cleveland was both the 22nd and 24th president; he left the White House only to return four years later for his second term

Robert:
I never watch faux news. As a matter of fact, I dont think there is much difference between the criminal/immoral Republican and Democratic parties.

As a matter of FACT, the democratic controlled congress (as of 2007) have done nothing but soft sell republican policies.

When Nancy and Harry took over congress-which writes laws and passes budgets, un-employment was 4.6% and the deficit was a mere 163 billion. They are also responsible for all the repug anti- regulation agenda passed since '07. In 3.5 years what have they got us?

TARP? As some of the posters here know, some of the banks were crying chicken, as can be seen by the huge bonus's paid out in the ensuing months. What happened to the rest of the TARP money slush fund?

The STIMULUS BILL? Or should I say PORKULUS! It was so 'urgent' that 25% of it went directly to pork and favorite senators and congressmen. What good has it done so far? It's funded a few road projects. LESS THAN 4% OF THE TOTAL HAS BEEN SPENT SO FAR! Some stimulus.

FINANCIAL REGULATION BILL? Go ask Sen. Chris Dodd.

HEALTHCARE BILL? Who knows? Nancy and Harry needed to pass it so they could find out what was in it. The only gaurantee is, now you have govt and a private health insurer between you and your doctor. Funny though, that the bill was written on the main provisions of the Bob Dole bill and the Mitt Romney bill, only to be watered down as a give away to corporate insurance conglomerates like AIG.

Obama speaks volumes when he reverses himself on:
-Guantamano
-rendition
-electronic eavesdropping
-assinations of American citizens abroad
-Afganistan-turned it into a major war
-Iraq withdrawl
-you can keep your own doctor/lol
-the list goes on.......

Jeez, you lefties outta know- if you can't trust Cbama, on EVEN BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS, then who can you trust?

How soon before renditions start occuring where you live?

And to the guy who thinks all these bills will be straightened out later on.....good luck on that.

"Comment from: Janine "

Touche!

Fred:

"Jeez, you lefties outta know"
You say you don't watch fox news,but what makes you think that your assertion of the word "leftie"applys to me?

I like "facts", some people call it "truth".

Robert:FYI

The latest Quinnipiac University poll surveyed more than 2,000 random voters, not "academic historians' or political scientists'.

THE FACTS ARE, President Obama gets hugely unfavorable ratings from a random sampling of American voters.

Just the facts.

Robert:
I appologize for disparaging you as a lefty.

Accepted,And,thats a wrap.

As per the "Survey Ranks Obama 15th Best President, Bush Among Worst"

"Obviously, there's not great validity to it since they've only been in office for one year," says the survey's co-director and statistician Douglas Lonnstrom. "But it's a benchmark for us to see how they move."

and

"Lonnstrom points out the unpopular former president (Bush) has time on his side, explaining it takes four or five decades to know a president's true worth. "Right now there's a lot of emotion about Bush," he says. "Time passes and people become more objective, and so we'll see."

Is Lonnstrom implying that the Siena College Research Institute's recent survey of 238 presidential scholars is not objective and there may be emtional factors contribiting to the survey results?

In conclusion: The Obama survey is not 'overly valid', and only acts as a benchmark for future performance and to get a true historical worth of a president, one must wait 40 to 50 years.

"I think that Presidential Historians may be smarter than all of us in this category, no?"


Presidential historians didn't elect Obama so who cares what they have to say, especially being a biased product of the left who thought it would be great to have the first black president in history and can't admit they made a mistake with Obama. Presidential historians won't be the ones who vote him our either....it will be many of the same people who were completely misdirected the first go around. Obama is the worst president this country ever had because of the lasting destruction he is launching for generations to come. End of story!

Comment from: Bill F. [Visitor]
"I think that Presidential Historians may be smarter than all of us in this category, no?"


Presidential historians didn't elect Obama so who cares what they have to say, especially being a biased product of the left who thought it would be great to have the first black president in history and can't admit they made a mistake with Obama. Presidential historians won't be the ones who vote him out either....it will be the American electorate, many of the same people who were completely misdirected the first go around. Obama is the worst president this country ever had because of the lasting destruction he is launching for generations to come. End of story!

It looks like I missed some good spirited debate but Fred did an excellent job in rebuttal.

Janine, I agree I did not say much about Bush I certainly could have said more. I guess I am more concerned about our current situation and future direction then griping about the past. Plus, nobody was defending Bush.

In response to some of Mike Q's statements:
MQ-"I have no reason not to think that the '08 downturn would have been a full-blown depression by now without the bailouts and stimulus bills started by Bush and carried through by Obama."

Here are two reasons that we went to far in trying to avoid a depression:

"Fred- TARP? As some of the posters here know, some of the banks were crying chicken, as can be seen by the huge bonus's paid out in the ensuing months. What happened to the rest of the TARP money slush fund?"

"Fred- The STIMULUS BILL? Or should I say PORKULUS! It was so 'urgent' that 25% of it went directly to pork and favorite senators and congressmen. What good has it done so far? It's funded a few road projects. LESS THAN 4% OF THE TOTAL HAS BEEN SPENT SO FAR! Some stimulus."

MQ- "Good presidents do what's right and good, despite the complaints."

Who determines what is right and good? The government or the people?
In a Democracy it is the people and the majority that determine this. If something is right or good it will be reflected by a fair amount of unity and not the great division we are seeing. I suppose with that philosophy, nobody should complain about the IRAQ war, simply because Bush thought it was right and good but weren't we divided on that?

MQ- "It is here that government shows one of its reasons for being. It uses its authority at times -even its national guard, if necessary- to insist that we behave like grownups even if we don't feel like it."

They don't have the right Mike Q. They are not our parents, they serve us. They have an obligation to defend the rights of all Americans even with force if necessary but that is not the same as making us behave a certain way, according to their dictates.

Mike G:

Question:
Who got us into this PRESENT situation and who is trying to get us out?

Factual Answer:

We had a financial meltdown during the Bush administration "THAT WAS CAUSED SOLELY BY THE ECONOMICS POLICIES, PRACTICES, AND ENERGY EXTORTIONS OF THE BUSH/CHENEY & GRAMM CARTELS. Bush used TARP monies to try to get the banks to loan money again, PERIOD. LOAN MONEY? THEY DIDN'T HAVE ANY MONEY LEFT TO LEND. IT WAS ALL USED TO BUY FOREIGN FUTURES, OR SQUANDERED AWAY IN THE PONZI SCHEMES THAT GRAMM/PAULSON ENABLED AND EXORBATED FROM 2004-2007.

Opinion:
Obama is trying to get us out of this situation. Really? How is that a fact? I know he and his Administration SAY they should be thanked for getting us out of trouble but have they made things better with all their spending. Did they bring down unemployment? ALL TRUE. YET AT LEAST SOME OR MUCH OF THE FAULT HAS TO BE SET AT THE DOORS OF THE CORPORATE DEMOCRATS WHO HELD TRUE TO THEIR TIES WITH THE BILDERBERGS AND TRI-LATERALS AT THE EXPENSE OF THE AMERICAN PUBLIC. Did bailing out the car company's and financial institutions save the economy.
TOTALLY NECESSARY- YOU BETCHA', JUST IMAGINE THE AUTO INDUSTRY TURNED SOLELY INTO THE WAR MACHINE THE WAY THAT THE RIGHT WING REPUBLICANS WERE STEERING US TOWARDS. THEY ALL HAD US CONDEMNING THE US AUTO INDUSTRY- AND WERE SELLING IT DOWN THE TUBES TO THE JAPANESE, MEXICANS AND KOREANS. IF NOT FOR THE "TEMPORARY" BAILOUT UNEMPLOYMENT WOULD HAVE SWEPT UPWARDS OF 15% WITH THE MASSIVE NUMBERS OF ALL OF THE OTHER INDUSTRYS AND THEIR SUBSIDIARYS THAT WOULD HAVE FALLEN INTO RECEIVERSHIP UNABLE TO RECALL INVENTORY OR MEET PAYROLL.
THE WORST THING POSSIBLE WOULD HAVE BEEN TO ALLOW EITHER THE GOLDMANS OR THE CARLYLES TO BROKER THESE HOSTILE TAKEOVERS TOTALLY BACKED BY THEIR FOREIGN SWFS. THAT TYPE OF "SELLOUT" IF ALLOWED WOULD HAVE CRIPPLED THIS NATION PERMANENTLY. YOU DO REMEMBER THE PERSISTENT ATTEMPTS BY BUSH TO SELLOFF OUR PORTS, SSI, AND UNOCAL DON'T YOU? WHAT DO YOU THINK OUR NATIONAL SECURITY WOULD BE WORTH IF THOSE "BUSHISMS" WERE ALLOWED TO TRANSPIRE?

Is this a fact?

Obama passed Obamacare. OBAMA- SOLD OUT! Is it a fact this is a great thing or a victory for the American people? NO! Who SAYS it is? IT DOES ACCOMPLISH ONE THING FOR "SOME" PEOPLE. IT PREVENTS THE FURTHERENCE OF DISCRIMINATION OF PEOPLE WHO HAVE PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS FROM BEING TREATED LIKE LEPERS IN THIS COUNTRY. IT ATTEMPTS TO CONTROL COSTS.
*IT DOES NOT REIGN IN EXTORTIONS BY PHARMECEUTICALS
*IT DOES NOT INCLUDE A PUBLIC OPTION.


Is it a fact he is giving us freedom? Freedom from big business? Who SAYS he is? ABSOLUTELY 100% CORRECT! BUT, THERE IS NOTHING WRITTEN IN STONE THAT SAYS THAT THIS PROBLEM CANNOT BE REVISITED BY THE NEXT CONGRESS THAT "WE THE PEOPLE" VOTE IN THE COMING ELECTION, *THE PEOPLE NEED TO STAY FOCUSED ON THIS ONE SINGLE ISSUE IN ORDER TO GET OUR COUNTRY BACK FROM THE CROOKS WHO ARE JAMMING NORTH AMERICAN UNION, AND NEW WORLD ORDER INSIDER CONTRACTS, POLICIES, AND ALLIES- LIKE BUSH'S GOOD FRIENDS KHADAFY, PUTIN AND THE REST OF THOSE DICTATORSHIPS DOWN OUR THROATS.

Is it a fact Obama has no responsibility with the BP spill? Could he have responded quicker and used more resources? Who SAYS he did all he could? THAT WAS ANSWERED QUITE ELOQUENTLY BY

The 2010 Presidential survey who says he is ranked 15th. Is it a fact he is that good? Did the people rank him? Who said he deserved a B+ rating? TELL ME WHEN DID RATINGS EVER PUT FOOD ON THE TABLE? ANY SUPPORTING OR DEROGGATORY ANSWER TO THIS- IS A WASTE OF TIME.

Obama refused to cut part of our multi- trillion dollar budget in exchange for extended unemployment benefits but instead just adds to the deficits AS HE SAYS, "we must cut the deficit for our children’s sake." LET'S SEE... REPUBLICANS WANT TO KEEP THEIR TAXBREAK AND MAKE THEM "PERMANENT". THAT COST ADDS $3.4TRILLION TO YOUR DEFICIT OVER 10YRS.
THEY WANT A PERMANENT UNENDING $800B PER YEAR DOD DRAIN ON THIS ECONOMY FOR COSMETIC MAKEOVERS THAT MASK THE UTTER FUTILITY OF PUTTING LIPSTICK ON THE PIG WARS AND ABYSSMAL WAR STRATEGYS THEY "UNILATERALLY" SUPPORTED WITHOUT QUESTION DURING THEIR REIGN OF TERRORS. THEY ALSO WANT TO TOSS MILLIONS OF AMERICANS INTO THE ABYSS IN ORDER TO INCREASE THEIR FINANCIAL ADVANTAGES FURTHER, WHILE EMPLOYING ILLEGALS AND SUB LIVING STANDARD JOBS IN THEIR STEAD.
"WE THE PEOPLE" WHO ARE FRIENDS, NEIGHBORS, AND COUNTRYMEN MUST WEIGH THE IMBALANCES OF THIS TYPE OF DELIBERATE HYPOCRISY.
NOW COMPARE A PALTRY $34B TO HOLD OFF IMPENDING DOOM FOR A "FEW MILLION AAMERICANS" AND THESE SAME REPUBLICANS GET ALL BENT OUT OF SHAPE. GO FIGURE?
*Do they know what it is to insure "national security" for "our people", ... or is it all about stylizing a soundbyte?

MIKE G: DON'T YOU SEE THE PATTERN? IT IS OBAMA HIMSELF, HIS ADMINISTRATION AND THE MEDIA ON THE LEFT TELLING YOU WHAT THEY WANT YOU TO HEAR BUT IF YOU EXAMINE ALL THE FACTS, YOU WILL SEE IT DOES NOT MATCH THE TRUE PICTURE.
John: Of course and nobody is buying the rhetoric that flies in the face of today's realitys.
Banks aren't lending to Americans, and they won't- until they are forced to do so.
A jobless recovery is not only impossible it is detrimental to our total overall security.
America without a manufacturing revival will keep tens of millions of workers "permanently" on the dole of what is our shrinking work force. *Holds us hostage to China, India, and Mexican scab labor forces. And eats away at our own wages and bargaining power with the "too big to fails".
Especially when you consider that Not everyone is cut out to do office work.

****Still, I haven't seen any money coming from either sector be it private or government going into "independent" research. Once you begin to answer the question "why" this is so, in these troubling times- then you will begin to acknowledge just how rigged the system has become.
THE CORPORATION IS THE GOVERNMENT- MANNED BY BOUGHT AND SOLD PUPPETS BEHOLDING TO . THE BANKERS CONTROL THE GOVERNMENT- WHAT CAN AND CANNOT BE SPENT. BOTH DEFINE THEMSELVES AS PRIVATE IN PAYING THEMSELVES PROFITS. BOTH CLAIM NATIONAL SECURITY AS JUSTIFICATIONS FOR WARS WITH OTHER PEOPLES, TO EXTRACT ALL OF THEIR RESOURCES, SOME HAVE EVEN DICTATED FAVORABLE FOREIGN POLICY WITH TERROR STATES[See: BP, Halliburton, Enron] ... BUT WHOSE PURPOSES DO "THEY SERVE"?
When are they and their shadow benefactors to be held accountable for their benind the scene manipulations that engineered all of these present conditions?
All one needs to do is back track the agendas laid out at past G8-G20 Summits to know where it is all headed.
More and more private business consolidations, more and more foreign representatives insinuating their warped opinion as to what America can and cannot do inside our own borders. American businesses hamstrung by foreign investors because our own bankers don't give a damn about us and have already sold us and our rights and freedoms out for a New World Order completely owned and regulated by "select" INSIDER ELITES.

No. The only ones left for us to blame is ourselves- for not banding together and holding strong against any and all invasionery forces that attempt to ravage our familys, our security, our right to contribute positively to society, and finally to pursue happiness in friendship and partnership with all of Gods creations.
Our failure to perform due diligence, is the cause of our demise.

Why does anyone have to be aligned with a particular name branded party?
What's wrong with INDEPENDENCE.

fred: "As a matter of FACT, the democratic controlled congress (as of 2007) have done nothing but soft sell republican policies."

-----------------
You are absolutely correct. This government is almost totally comprised by multinational or "too big to fail" gold diggers doing the bidding of the top ranking Bilderberg/trilat upper echelons.
WELCOME TO NWO!!!
-How did you like our weasel Congress being dressed down by YOUR UNOFFICIAL MEXICAN AMBASSADOR.
-What do you think about your ex-Predident Bush and his failures to place UNOCAL, OUR PORTS & SSI in the hands of sleazeballs. [Foreign and domestic]
-WHY ARE "TOO BIG TO FAIL BANKS" ABLE TO CONFISCATE AND RESELL THE HOMES OF FAMILIES WHEN THEY HAD TO BE BAILED OUT THEMSELVES.
-WHY IS AMERICA PAYING INTEREST ON "OUR PRIVATE INDUSTRY DEBT" TO THE FEDERAL RESERVE[a private banking consortium] WHEN WE HAVE A US TREASURY[non profit] THAT WOULD ELIMINATE AND CUT BY MORE THAN HALF THE TOTALS THAT THE FEDS SHADOW BANKERS PROFIT FROM BY TWICE.
ONCE BY INCREASING THE DEBT. SECOND BY PROTRACTING THE DEBT OVER TIME IN ORDER TO DOUBLE UP ON THE INTEREST PERCENTAGES WHICH AS WE ALL KNOW THAT OVER THE COURSE OF A DECADE DOUBLES AND TRIPLES THE DEBT THAT IS CURRENT.
*Don't let bankers dictate to you what the terms of your loans to them will be if left in their hands. Take charge of the situation. ELIMINATE- THE FED AND ITS STRANGLEHOLD ON OUR ECONOMY.

Here's the double edged sword that faces the MULTI-NATIONAL TOO BIG TO FAILS AND THE FEDERAL RESERVE.
The sooner the American economy is revived, the lower the chances of these parasites become to accrue these assets from we the US CITIZEN for their "private" coffers.
An independent and secure USA is totally detrimental to NWO and its structured dependencys.

No there is no trusting this government either party or many of its minions. For now, the best we can do is minimize the takeovers, wage controls via illegals, etc. and "binding legislations" by government for the sole benefit of the "too big to fails", because both entities are the controls that are eating us alive.

Mike G: In response to your post on another board that I had been biased in my assessment of the Bush "residency" I took a long hard look and went through his entire administration to try to find one shining example of what he had done "to make our country better" or more secure since he entered office- and proceeded to turn this nation, its people, our economy, and our government into a frothing, dysfunctional, 3rd world prototype. Hmmmmmmmmmm! .... .... ... .. .. . . . . .. ..... ..... . . . . . .. .

OK! THAT'S IT. FINISHED.

YOUR TURN...

Mike G: In response to your post on another board that I had been biased in my assessment of the Bush "residency" I took a long hard look and went through his entire administration to try to find one shining example of what he had done "to make our country better" or more secure since he entered office- and proceeded to turn this nation, its people, our economy, and our government into a frothing, dysfunctional, 3rd world prototype. Hmmmmmmmmmm! .... ....NCLB ...??? ..(dud) .. . . . . .. ..... OFFSHORE TAX HAVENS ~~~(HIDEAWAYS for traitors and snakes) ..... . . . ... ... ~~~~~~~ . .. ... #@!* ... #@#! ......................

OK! THAT'S IT. FINISHED.

YOUR TURN...

THIS GEORGE BUSH resume
* Ran for congress and lost.
* Bought an oil company, but couldn't find any oil in Texas, company went bankrupt shortly after I sold all my stock.
* Changed pollution laws for power and oil companies and made Texas the most polluted state in the Union. For two years in a row, Houston had the most days of high ground-level ozone
* Became president after losing the popular vote by over 500,000 votes, with the help of my fathers appointments to the Supreme Court and voter fraud committed by brother Jeb and Katherine Harris in Florida.
* Attacked and took over two countries.
* Spent the surplus and bankrupted the treasury.
* Shattered record for biggest annual deficit in history.
* Set all-time record for biggest drop in the history of the stock market.
* First year in office set the all-time record for most days on vacation by any president in US history.
* After taking the entire month of August off for vacation, presided over the worst security failure in US history.
* Set the record for most campaign fund-raising trips than any other president in US history.
* In my first two years in office over 2.7 million Americans lost their job.
* Cut unemployment benefits for more out of work Americans than any president in US history.
* Set the record for the least amount of press conferences than any president since the advent of television.
* Presided over the highest gasoline prices in US history and refused to use the national reserves as past presidents have.
* Cut healthcare benefits for war veterans.
* Set the all-time record for most people worldwide to simultaneously take to the streets to protest me (15 million people), shattering the record for protest against any person in the history of mankind.
* Most secretive and un-accountable presidency of any in US history.
* Members of cabinet are the richest of any administration in US history. (the 'poorest' multi-millionaire, Condoleeza Rice has an Chevron oil tanker named after her).
* First president in US history to have all 50 states of the Union simultaneously go bankrupt.
* First president in US history to have the United Nations remove the US from the Human Rights Commission.
* First president in US history to have the United Nations remove the US from the elections monitoring board.
* First president in US history to refuse United Nations election inspectors (during the 2002 US elections).

* My biggest life-time campaign contributor presided over one of the largest corporate bankruptcy frauds in world history (Kenneth Lay, former CEO of Enron Corporation).
* First president to run and hide when the US came under attack (and then lied saying the enemy had the code to Air Force 1)
* First US president to establish a secret shadow government.
* Took the biggest world sympathy for the US after 911, and in less than a year made the US the most resented country in the world (possibly the biggest diplomatic failure in US and world history).
* In the 18 months following the 911 attacks, successfully prevented any public investigation into the biggest security failure in the history of the United States.
* Removed more freedoms and civil liberties for Americans than any other president in US history.
* Entered office with the strongest economy in US history and in less than two years turned every single economic category heading straight down.
Records and References:
* AWOL from National Guard and Deserted the military during a time of war. I joined the Texas Air National Guard and went AWOL.
* All minutes of meetings for any public corporation I served on the board are sealed in secrecy and un-available for public view.
There's a lot more information than this. However, this comment box only permits 4000 characters. The rest of this information can be found on the website: Topplebush.com

US debt clock runs out of digits
9 October 2008 / http://tinyurl.com/49bkur
The US government's debts have ballooned so badly the National Debt Clock in New York has run out of digits to record the spiralling figure.
The digital counter marks the national debt level, but when that passed the $10 trillion point last month, the sign could not display the full amount.
The board was erected to highlight the $2.7 trillion level of debt in 1989.
The clock's owners say two more zeros will be added, allowing the clock to record a quadrillion dollars of debt.
Douglas Durst, son of the late Seymour Durst - the clock's inventor - hopes to replace the Manhattan clock with its lengthier replacement early next year.
For the time being, the Times Square counter's electronic dollar sign has been replaced with the extra digit required.
For its part, the digital dollar symbol has been supplanted by a cheaper version - perhaps a sign of the times for the American economy.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7660409.stm

"They don't have the right Mike Q. They are not our parents, they serve us. They have an obligation to defend the rights of all Americans even with force if necessary but that is not the same as making us behave a certain way, according to their dictates."

No, the majority does not determine what is right. In the Truman military example, it was the constitution that determined what was right. Why did, let's say, Marshall Dillon hold off the town majority lynch mob from his prisoner, if only what the mob wants matters? This is how it has always been, and needs to be, because a country run by mob rule would be a backward mess, pretty much anarchy, as one mob would fight with another mob, and another, until finally everyone would hold only his own wishes to be of any importance. You may bridle at any kind of governmental authority, but with none who would bow to the wishes of anyone else? Of course, we would want the government to be exerting its power in pursuit of justice and rightness. And we should only give it a hard time if it goes against these things.

Mike Q:

""It is here that government shows one of its reasons for being. It uses its authority at times -even its national guard, if necessary- to insist that we behave like grownups even if we don't feel like it. When we are wise and good the government enables our impulses. When we are brats it sends us to our rooms. We can't have the power of government to accomplish great things without that same power telling us to shape up when we need to be told.""

-And vice-a-versa. 'fred'

- This story from the “World Socialist Web Site”-

Army deploys combat unit in US for possible civil unrest

By Bill Van Auken
25 September 2008

For the first time ever, the US military is deploying an active duty regular Army combat unit for full-time use inside the United States to deal with emergencies, including potential civil unrest.

Beginning on October 1, the First Brigade Combat Team of the Third Division will be placed under the command of US Army North, the Army’s component of the Pentagon’s Northern Command (NorthCom), which was created in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks with the stated mission of defending the US “homeland” and aiding federal, state and local authorities.

The unit—known as the “Raiders”—is among the Army’s most “blooded.” It has spent nearly three out of the last five years deployed in Iraq, leading the assault on Baghdad in 2003 and carrying out house-to-house combat in the suppression of resistance in the city of Ramadi. It was the first brigade combat team to be sent to Iraq three times.

While active-duty units previously have been used in temporary assignments, such as the combat-equipped troops deployed in New Orleans, which was effectively placed under martial law in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, this marks the first time that an Army combat unit has been given a dedicated assignment in which US soil constitutes its “battle zone.”

The Pentagon’s official pronouncements have stressed the role of specialized units in a potential response to terrorist attack within the US. Gen. George Casey, the Army chief of staff, attended a training exercise last week for about 250 members of the unit at Fort Stewart, Georgia. The focus of the exercise, according to the Army’s public affairs office, was how troops “might fly search and rescue missions, extract casualties and decontaminate people following a catastrophic nuclear attack in the nation’s heartland.”

“We are at war with a global extremist network that is not going away,” Casey told the soldiers. “I hope we don’t have to use it, but we need the capability.”

However, the mission assigned to the nearly 4,000 troops of the First Brigade Combat Team does not consist merely of rescuing victims of terrorist attacks. An article that appeared earlier this month in the Army Times (“Brigade homeland tours start Oct. 1”), a publication that is widely read within the military, paints a different and far more ominous picture.

“They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control,” the paper reports. It quotes the unit’s commander, Col. Robert Cloutier, as saying that the 1st BCT’s soldiers are being trained in the use of “the first ever nonlethal package the Army has fielded.” The weapons, the paper reported, are “designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.” The equipment includes beanbag bullets, shields and batons and equipment for erecting roadblocks.
It appears that as part of the training for deployment within the US, the soldiers have been ordered to test some of this non-lethal equipment on each other.

“I was the first guy in the brigade to get Tasered,” Cloutier told the Army Times. He described the effects of the electroshock weapon as “your worst muscle cramp ever—times 10 throughout your whole body.”

The colonel’s remark suggests that, in preparation for their “homefront” duties, rank-and-file troops are also being routinely Tasered. The brutalizing effect and intent of such a macabre training exercise is to inure troops against sympathy for the pain and suffering they may be called upon to inflict on the civilian population using these same “non-lethal” weapons.
According to military officials quoted by the Army Times, the deployment of regular Army troops in the US begun with the First Brigade Combat Team is to become permanent, with different units rotated into the assignment on an annual basis.

Story continues:

In an online interview with reporters earlier this month, NorthCom officers were asked about the implications of the new deployment for the Posse Comitatus Act, the 230-year-old legal statute that bars the use of US military forces for law enforcement purposes within the US itself.

Col. Lou Volger, NorthCom’s chief of future operations, tried to downplay any enforcement role, but added, “We will integrate with law enforcement to understand the situation and make sure we’re aware of any threats.”

Volger acknowledged the obvious, that the Brigade Combat Team is a military force, while attempting to dismiss the likelihood that it would play any military role. It “has forces for security,” he said, “but that’s really—they call them security forces, but that’s really just to establish our own footprint and make sure that we can operate and run our own bases.”

Lt. Col. James Shores, another NorthCom officer, chimed in, “Let’s say even if there was a scenario that developed into a branch of a civil disturbance—even at that point it would take a presidential directive to even get it close to anything that you’re suggesting.”

Whatever is required to trigger such an intervention, clearly Col. Cloutier and his troops are preparing for it with their hands-on training in the use of “non-lethal” means of repression.
The extreme sensitivity of the military brass on this issue notwithstanding, the reality is that the intervention of the military in domestic affairs has grown sharply over the last period under conditions in which its involvement in two colonial-style wars abroad has given it a far more prominent role in American political life.

The Bush administration has worked to tear down any barriers to the use of the military in domestic repression. Thus, in the 2007 Pentagon spending bill it inserted a measure to amend the Posse Comitatus Act to clear the way for the domestic deployment of the military in the event of natural disaster, terrorist attack or “other conditions in which the president determines that domestic violence has occurred to the extent that state officials cannot maintain public order.”
The provision granted the president sweeping new powers to impose martial law by declaring a “public emergency” for virtually any reason, allowing him to deploy troops anywhere in the US and to take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of state governors in order to “suppress public disorder.”

VERY IMPORTANT>>>The provision was subsequently repealed by Congress as part of the 2008 military appropriations legislation, but the intent remains. Given the sweeping powers claimed by the White House in the name of the “commander in chief” in a global war on terror—powers to suspend habeas corpus, carry out wholesale domestic spying and conduct torture—there is no reason to believe it would respect legal restrictions against the use of military force at home.

It is noteworthy that the deployment of US combat troops “as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters”—in the words of the Army Times—coincides with the eruption of the greatest economic emergency and financial disaster since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Justified as a response to terrorist threats, the real source of the growing preparations for the use of US military force within America’s borders lies not in the events of September 11, 2001 or the danger that they will be repeated. Rather, the domestic mobilization of the armed forces is a response by the US ruling establishment to the growing threat to political stability.

Under conditions of deepening economic crisis, the unprecedented social chasm separating the country’s working people from the obscenely wealthy financial elite becomes unsustainable within the existing political framework.

Reports: US Still 'Dangerously Vulnerable'
Study: Bush Administration Missed Numerous Opportunities
September 9, 2008 / http://tinyurl.com/5ttvmd
WASHINGTON -- As the somber, seven-year anniversary approaches, a new study suggests that the United States remains "dangerously vulnerable" to chemical, biological and nuclear attacks, despite new initiatives prompted by 9/11. And a House Democrats' report says the George W. Bush administration has missed one opportunity after another to improve the nation's security.
The recent political rupture between Russia and the U.S. only makes matters worse, said Lee Hamilton, the former Indiana Democratic congressman who helped lead the 9/11 Commission and now chairs the independent group's latest study
Efforts to reduce access to nuclear technology and bomb-making materials have slowed, thousands of U.S. chemical plants remain unprotected, and the U.S. government continues to oppose strengthening an international treaty to prevent bioterrorism, according to the report produced by the bipartisan Partnership for a Secure America.
The group includes leaders of the disbanded 9/11 Commission, the bipartisan panel that investigated government missteps before the 2001 terror attacks on the United States.
"The threat of a new, major terrorist attack on the United States is still very real," concludes the report to be released Wednesday, the same day a congressional commission will hold a hearing in New York on nuclear and biological terrorism threats.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26618858/

“John: Of course and nobody is buying the rhetoric that flies in the face of today's realitys.”

Apparently there are many on this post alone, that are buying the rhetoric.

John- "REPUBLICANS WANT TO KEEP THEIR TAXBREAK AND MAKE THEM "PERMANENT". THAT COST ADDS $3.4TRILLION TO YOUR DEFICIT OVER 10YRS."

If no tax break includes raising the capital gains and a 55% inheritance tax then in many ways raising that hurts all of us with a retirement plan or those wanting to leave something to their families. A 55% inheritance tax is extortion on money that was already taxed. The great myth is that by spending the government is giving us something. Actually they are just giving us a loan that us or our children will need to pay back with interest.

John- "Did bailing out the car company's and financial institutions save the economy.TOTALLY NECESSARY- YOU BETCHA', JUST IMAGINE THE AUTO INDUSTRY TURNED SOLELY INTO THE WAR MACHINE THE WAY THAT THE RIGHT WING REPUBLICANS WERE STEERING US TOWARDS. THEY ALL HAD US CONDEMNING THE US AUTO INDUSTRY-"

I think two points still need to be made. I think most of us were not condemning the US auto industry but condemning those that mismanaged their company’s to the point we decided to bail them out. Part of the reason Ford is doing so good is people support the fact they did not take government money and they were responsible. Even still, the question remains was it necessary to bailout GM and Chrysler in order to save the US auto industry? When a bird is mature enough and it is time to push it out of the nest it will either choose to fly or otherwise die. If it fly’s then it will do so on it’s own and live a healthy life but if it chooses to remain protected in it’s nest then it will be a burden on it’s mother dragging her down as well. A company needs to be responsible. If they go out of business then other more responsible company’s will fill the void. Who’s to say that would not be a responsible New American auto company?

John- "I took a long hard look and went through his entire administration to try to find one shining example of what he had done "to make our country better"

John, I thought Bush's initial response to the 9/11 attacks were his best moments and what this country needed at the time.
After that the negatives strongly out weighed the positives, in my opinion.

The two biggest car companies in America, meaning they employ the most workers and sells the most cars, are Toyota and Honda.

GM and Chysler have made no significant investment in the United States in over 40 years. They are famous for completely un bolting their American manufacturing plants, shipping them to Mexico and Canada. Hundreds of thousands of American jobs gone forever.

Private investors fled from the mismanaged companies. So tell me again why they deserve a bailout? Why would Obama buy 70% of their debt?

John:
-WHY ARE "TOO BIG TO FAIL BANKS" ABLE TO CONFISCATE AND RESELL THE HOMES OF FAMILIES WHEN THEY HAD TO BE BAILED OUT THEMSELVES?-

fred-EXACTLY!!!

What happened to the vast majority of small, medium, and large, mom and pop farms? The farms didnt disapear. The owners were forced into bancruptcy.

What happened to small chain and independant gas stations?

What about he mall stores that have taken over our downtowns.

Its said, one can go to any super market, walk down any aisle, and find that approx (on average) seven mega corporations produced all the items in that aisle.

Why did the American car companies REFUSE to adapt to market trends?

Why do the American car companies produce and sell cars -outside of the United States- that avg 48-55 mpg? Why not in this country?

Why have versions of the 'Chevy Volt' been sold outside of the US for years now?

Why does the most basic Tesla car cost $109,000? (If you can get one.) No competition is why. Why is that?

Mike Q- “You may bridle at any kind of governmental authority, but with none who would bow to the wishes of anyone else? Of course, we would want the government to be exerting its power in pursuit of justice and rightness. And we should only give it a hard time if it goes against these things“

The emblem on the police car reads ‘Protect and Serve.” As servants they have the authority to enforce the law against the people whom they serve. It is because “we” the majority tell them to, in order to protect all of us. They don’t have the right to run our lives, or to use unnecessary force, or to demand we donate to them, or to discriminate for what they think is our best interest, or to not obey the law themselves.

We are all under the rule of law. The government is not above the law. They don’t rule over us or dictate to us the policies they think are in our best interest even though we firmly disagree. They work for us and use their power so we could live safely and pursue happiness. Anything else is an abuse of power or an Authoritarian Regime, even if seemingly in our best interest they don’t have the right to dictate to us against the will of the majority. That is not BY the people and FOR the people and it is not American.

Here is what Jefferson and Franklin had to say

"Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." --Thomas Jefferson: Declaration of Independence, 1776. ME 1:29, Papers 1:429

"Independence can be trusted nowhere but with the people in mass. They are inherently independent of all but moral law." --Thomas Jefferson to Spencer Roane, 1819.

"Whenever our affairs go obviously wrong, the good sense of the people will interpose and set them to rights." --Thomas Jefferson to David Humphreys, 1789. ME 7:322

"Reflection,... with information, is all which our countrymen need, to bring themselves and their affairs to rights." --Thomas Jefferson to James Lewis, Jr., 1798. ME 10:37

“The purpose of government is to enable the people of a nation to live in safety and happiness. Government exists for the interests of the governed, not for the governors. As Benjamin Franklin wrote, "In free governments the rulers are the servants and the people their superiors and sovereigns." The ultimate powers in a society, therefore, rest in the people themselves, and they should exercise those powers, either directly or through representatives, in every way they are competent and that is practicable.”

president obama nice guy but a spineless
liberal spending money borrowed from china on his socialistic agenda that spells doom for all of us and would love to give all the illegals a free pass to citizenship to get their votes. where are the real honest leaders. lol.

"It is because “we” the majority tell them to, in order to protect all of us. They don’t have the right to run our lives"-MG

Here is, I believe, much of what superficially appears to be a regular disagreement in our views, but which usually, after lots of re-explaining, turns out to be not so much: police or other publicly sponsored government either protect, serve, facilitate, or whatever, or they are oppressors,-and this depends not so much on the actual actions of the public servants but on how a person views their actions. One person sees a public servant quietly and unobtrusively doing his job, and the next person sees a storm trooper. Most of it seems to depend on one's views of what political party is in power; up until Jan 2009 I was constantly worried about what the Bush administration was going to do next. It was eight years of shock and awe criminality, in my eyes. Now I'm more sanguine about government, while you are more distrustful of it.

Mike Q- "up until Jan 2009 I was constantly worried about what the Bush administration was going to do next. It was eight years of shock and awe criminality, in my eyes. Now I'm more sanguine about government, while you are more distrustful of it."

Once again excellent observation and perspective on our views which causes me to pause and reflect openly and honestly about what I am feeling.

I too did not like Bush or trust Bush. I did not agree with him with many of his policies. It seemed to me he went too far with some things and not enough with others. Yet, I was not worried because congress and even his own Republicans did not go along with everything he tried to do.

On the other hand, I did not vote for Obama but I actually hoped he would be better for us then Bush and better for this country. When he made his acceptance speech and said something to the effect "not everyone would be happy with me." I thought he was warning his own base that he would govern somewhere in the middle and represent the majority.

Instead I see attempts for one radical change after another. Instead of correcting the Bush mistakes he pushes his own agressive agenda with no checks and balances. The mainstream media, foreign governments and the Dems are all looking toward this new world leader to correct the last 8 years, so they refuse to disagree with him or provide the needed checks and balances. The people at town hall meetings and according to the polls are screaming "we don't agree with these policies you are pushing down our throats." but there are not enough people in power to represent our will.

So for me and for many people, these are even more dangerous and worrisome times then the Bush years because of this unbridled power. Those who agree with his policies are not worried but those that disagree are.

Mike G:

I guess you missed the post where Mike Q exalted the leadership of Castro and Hugo Chavez.

Mike G & fred: I am quite sure that both of you will be devastated and appalled that several states have already made plans to remove both the knowledge and information defining "free market capitalism" and the unique insights of founding father
Thomas Jefferson from their curriculum by adopting the newly revised Texas textbook guidelines.
Replaced in their stead are "free enterprise" which encourages outsourcing and "Thomas Aquinas" whom despite years of my Christian upbringing, I still can't relate to his relevance to being included as a founding father of America.

fred: Your article reporting on the new reclassification of that "elite" SS phalanx specifically designed for usage against citizen uprisings just has to make you wonder.
DOESN'T THIS BEGIN TO MIRROR "THOUGHT CONTROL" THE ABOMINATIONS OF ANOTHER SOCIETY FROM THE NOT TOO DISTANT PAST.
Can there be a form of terrorism that is worse than that? Think about it?
*Our "shadow" bankers were more than ready to lower the boom declaring this martial law just before they wrangled that $834b stimulus into their pockets. Now corporations have stooped to new lows in order to fire American workers

---------

PS: If the "too big to fails" are the essence of this governmental tentacles strangehold over this society as we all can clearly see, then why not look to see further down the road to where competition is eliminated completely by these entities all encompassing greed and manipulation. Can corporate greed be extended so far- that it comes full circle to morph itiself into a parallel form of Stalinist communism. Or if that isn't greedy enough for the terminally greedy, how about the return of the worker or laborers to slave labor in order to glean that very last shiny penny?

Now corporations have stooped to new lows in order to fire American workers combing the internet, FACEBOOK, twitters and checking work computers for just one single sentence or website that doesn't meet their quotients for PC acceptablity. WHAT'S NEXT?
-----------
What are they preparing for America's next generation? Hmmmmmmmmmm?

Lyrics-
you didn't see it,
never heard it,
not a word of it.
You won't say nothing to no one,
never tell a single soul...
WHAT YOU KNOW IS THE TRUTH- The Texas School Board

THOSE DEAF, DUMB, AND BLIND KIDS, WILL SURE "BE" SOME MEAN PINBALLS.

"Mike G: I guess you missed the post where Mike Q exalted the leadership of Castro and Hugo Chavez."-fred

Gee, I mised that one too.

Hey guys, lets change the focus of discussion to what do you think about todays headline news that finally EXPOSES THE ISI and all of those unreported collusions, the DOD has made with known terrorists now shown to have included US made weapons and missiles just as we have been discussing for years?

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_AFGHANISTAN_WIKILEAKS?SITE=PASCR&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Hey guys, lets change the focus of discussion to what do you think about todays headline news that finally EXPOSES THE ISI and all of those unreported collusions, the DOD has made with known terrorists now shown to have included US made weapons and missiles just as we have been discussing for years?
Is the Pentagon more concerned about the "damage control" what would implicate and place the DOD, the past administration, and other banking orchestrators who seemed to know, well in advance, that a 9/11 event was a certainty and on the not too distant horizon 11 months before it happened. What about "their" knowing the progression of events? The countries that would be targeted? And why we wouldn't be successful? Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm! Watch todays news.

Quickly review the evidences and see all the direct parallels, then add up all the data compiled previously about the ISI, w/ the Sauds and Dubai pipelines while playing this historic Aaron Russo interview.
It seems that the dots can soon be connected- but, that is only possible, if the Pentagon isn't itself a merck operation, in this pay to play monkey shines business of protecting the terminally guilty at all cost.


http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_AFGHANISTAN_WIKILEAKS?SITE=PASCR&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

the link that ties in prior knowledge, with events as they were orchestrated to transpire. It was all done "from soup to nutz" rather seamlessly. From the abandonment of the mission of chasing 1,000 tattered AlQaeda, to the safe haven and funding of the Taliban with DOD complicity.
Some would try rather foolishly that all of this expenditure, waste and collusion was necessary when the facts will tell you that those 1,000 men running away on foot- "could have never escaped" unless, there was some unwritten guaranteed sanctuary and that came from an old partner in crime known as the ISI.
Neither the Taliban nor AlQaeda could have flourished anywhere, without the expansion of the carte blanche poppy crop green light given by the last administration.
Al Qaeda we now know has added or re-added US made "heat seeking missiles" in order to fend off and hold back our troops. Hmmmmmmmmmmmm! So much for the Bush military strategy that continued allowing private gun dealers, and mercks run freely stocked with taxpayer cash in Afghanistan, and Iraq- or was that too- by design?
HOW ELSE COULD NR PREDICT THAT THE DESIGN OF THE WAR ON TERROR- WAS PERFECT?

Remember to re-run the tape- Aaron Russo

"Study: Bush Administration Missed Numerous Opportunities
September 9, 2008"


What about "current events" and the numerous missed opportunities Obama has missed in the last 18 months, and the ones he is missing now, as you type about your fantasies long long ago?
I'll gladly put my guy up blindfolded against your progressive guy and give you a 25 mile head start to boot. SORE LOSERS CAN"T ADMIT MASSIVE MISTAKES! Even when demonstrated for a full 18 months as conclusive.

Obama should thank George Bush:

The mission is still accomplished in Iraq

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

President Obama praised the Iraqi people on Sunday on the occasion of their parliamentary elections. "The future of Iraq belongs to the people of Iraq," Mr. Obama said. That progress is no thanks to him.

Sunday's election was the third since Iraq's liberation in 2003 from Saddam Hussein's dictatorial rule. The event lacked much of the drama of the January 2005 National Assembly election, when the war was hotter and risks were higher. Five years ago, insurgents vowed that they would see to it that the election would fail. "We have declared a fierce war on this evil principle of democracy and those who follow this wrong ideology," Al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi stated. But the people defied the terrorists, and Iraq's first free election proceeded with little disruption. Eleven months later, the country held another successful election under its new constitution. Six months after that, al-Zarqawi was dead.

The images from Sunday's polling evoked 2005, with long lines of resolute voters, scattered low-level violence and the ubiquitous purple fingers inked to show an individual had voted. But the sense of threat was reduced, and the press coverage was less intense. The most noteworthy factor about the election was the feeling that the process was becoming routine. Iraq is well on the way to being a functioning democracy. The big news was the relative lack of news. Nothing says "mission accomplished" more than a low-key election in a country recently beset by nationwide conflict.

Mr. Obama took the opportunity to reiterate that U.S. troops were meeting their timetable for withdrawal, yet failed to mention that he was executing a policy put in place by the George W. Bush administration. The president is quick to blame his predecessor for various supposed problems he inherited, but the O Force is noticeably stingy when it comes to expressing appreciation for the things the previous administration demonstrably got right. The policies President Bush pursued that then-Sen. Obama opposed, denounced and fought against have made it possible for Mr. Obama effortlessly to preside over the successful conclusion of a hard-fought struggle for freedom.

Last month, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who shepherded the Iraq war authorization through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2002, said that ending the conflict in Iraq would be one of the Obama administration's great achievements. But Mr. Obama's principal contribution to the Iraq effort has been to resist his impulses to pursue the policies he advocated when he was a senator. Had the United States followed the course Mr. Obama was counseling in 2007, there likely would have been no election last weekend, terror would reign in Baghdad, and the Iraqi people's future would be grim. A little gratitude would be appropriate.

Can He Be Stopped?

July 23, 2010

The single most important question for Americans today is as simple as it is inescapable: Is it possible to block and reverse Barack Obama’s fundamental transformation of American society to resemble a soft-power, European socialist state (or worse) before the damage he does to his country is irreparable? Waiting until 2012 when his first term is completed may bring, in a different domain and with certain obvious adjustments, something like the catastrophic results which the film 2012 [1], based on the prognostications of the Mayan Long Count Calendar [2], lividly portrays. For the smug and incompetent leadership of an enigmatic president is starting “progressively” to look like a bad movie with real-world effects. And 2012, at least according to the dread Calendar, is the year when everything goes to pieces.

Of course, it must be acknowledged that Obama began his political career more as an effect, or the symptom of a malaise, than as a cause or the malaise itself. After all, the American people put him where he is, intuiting in Obama an embodiment of their own regrettably facile and unexamined aspirations and an untutored drive to renovate the past. But the effect has now been transformed into a cause in its own right and the symptom has become the infirmity. Consequently, many of those who ensured Obama’s accession to power are presently experiencing a severe case of elector’s remorse.

For there can be little doubt any longer that the United States is now governed by a rogue administration, founded not on the Constitution but on lies, one broken campaign promise after another and attempts to ignore or scamper around the principles of the Fathers. We are observing an establishment that is unwilling to defend the nation’s borders from drug cartel violence and illegal immigration, forcing unread bills through Congress in the dark of night, embarking on a socialized medicine program it cannot afford and which has not worked wherever else it has been tried, plunging the nation into bankruptcy with misnamed “stimulus spending,” unsustainable entitlements and exponential debt, refusing to drill safely on land to reduce its dependence on foreign oil supplies, utterly incapable of dealing with cataclysms like the Gulf oil spill, touting an impractical, premature and ruinously exorbitant Green Energy policy, considering cap-and-trade legislation when it has become undeniably clear that Global Warming research is a profoundly unsettled and perhaps even a false science, scrubbing all reference to Islamic terror from its official documents and pursuing a foreign policy that might accurately be described as geopolitically suicidal. Quite a list, but unfortunately an accurate one.

This is an administration that could just as well have been put in place by America’s most relentless enemies. It is headed by a president with deep roots in a neo-Marxist social movement and associational ties with a host of disreputable characters. This is a president who has embarked on a diplomatic approach of appeasing the country’s despotic competitors and adversaries, with whom he appears to have more in common than with the majority of his own countrymen. Accompanied by his friends, officials, cabinet choices and hand-picked adjutants (aka “czars”), he appears intent on circumventing the rule of law on the one hand—whether considering amnesty for illegal aliens or refusing to prosecute electoral violators like the Black Panthers, guilty of voter intimidation—and on the other hand activating civil law where it does not apply, as in moving to grant civil trials to confessed jihadists or according Miranda rights to captured terrorists.

The most significant issue for Americans today, then, or at any rate for those who profess to love their country and who fear for its future, is how to stymie the current president prior to 2012. Obama is plainly a hyperactive president, busy dismantling his country with systematic rigor. Since it is evident that he will persist in implementing his congenial plan of action, it is moot whether a strong, confident and potentially solvent America can survive another two and a half years of his dispensation without serious modification. The Tea Party movement is an impressive beginning, and the likelihood of evacuating many Democratic incumbents in the November 2010 Congressional and Senate elections—essentially to clean up what may be called the House of Misrepresentatives and restore it to a semblance of sanity and rectitude—is a consummation devoutly to be wished.

It is all well and good to complain and lament about what is going on in this administration, the misuse of power, the immorality and intellectual vandalism of its wielders, the momentum of waste and ruin—but at some point concrete measures need to be taken to forestall breakdown and collapse. Nor does one want to contemplate the disaster of an Obama re-election in 2012, which might well realize the mythic predictions of the Mayan Calendar and a sensationalist film, in any event for the U.S. But the calamity need not wait for that red-letter date; it is evolving in increments as we speak. This is why the coming November is so important: it may not only reclaim lost ground but notably weaken Obama’s chances of success in seeking a second term.

Barring Obama and his party’s electoral chastening in 2010, by the time 2012 arrives, what we will very likely see is the following: more socialized, i.e., nationalized industries and bloated entitlement programs; a grinding recession, if not a depression, and traumatic levels of unemployment for which Obama can no longer blame the previous administration and expect to get away with it; twelve to fifteen million enfranchised illegals swelling the welfare and voting rolls; a growing and increasingly bitter racial divide; more terrorist attacks; deep Islamic inroads into the body politic; public resentment reaching critical proportions and more states acting on their own initiative; and former allies moving into the orbit of America’s enemies. We may also see a devastating war in the Middle East which might have been prevented had Obama not skewed the Israeli-Palestinian negotiating process and extended overtures to Syria and Hamas, had he shown himself genuinely sympathetic to Israel and its legitimate concerns, and had he decisively confronted the Iranian regime. Again, quite a list, which may sound like an overly melodramatic prognosis, but it is a grimly plausible one nonetheless and no particular epiphany. Indeed, it would seem a given under the prevailing circumstances. And the United States will suffer in every instance.

Let us not delude ourselves and pretend that the scenario plotted here is merely a species of exotic hyperbole, a doomsayer’s extravaganza. America is disintegrating fragment by fragment across the entire map of its existence, and the decline is accelerating under the worst possible president at the worst possible time. Its enemies are rejoicing and growing ever bolder in their calculations, convinced that they can challenge residual American power with relative impunity. Meanwhile, the American leadership, following the example of the president, has persuaded itself that political ineptness and blind arrogance are nothing of the sort, but farsighted acuity and strategic intelligence. On the contrary, there is not an iota of analytical sobriety to be detected anywhere on the presidential docket.

It should be mentioned, however, that some observers believe the president’s actions are by no means as clueless as they appear but are quite deliberate, that he is actually intent on subverting the nation to render it more amenable to a statist power grab and increased government control. This is the Overton Window [3] syndrome that Glenn Beck has based his new novel [4] upon, a tactic that promotes national crises and invokes maximal states of emergency to prepare the public to accept extreme procedures and enactments, and so to concede subsequent changes in customary cultural paradigms, in the interests of centralized authority. The Overton Window is a manifestation and restatement of the famous, or infamous, Alinsky-inspired Cloward-Piven doctrine [5] that recommends orchestrating crises to further the ulterior purpose of the state, or in the words of James Simpson [6], it is a “malevolent overarching strategy” envisaging the collapse of the staple political and economic order and its replacement by a socialist regime.

Whether or not this is the case—and who can really say?—the fact remains that the United States, to quote [7] Pajamas Media Chicago editor Rick Moran, is becoming “unmoored…from the basic principles found in the Constitution that defines our nationhood.” And when the definition of nationhood grows problematic and the sense of historical continuity is disrupted or attenuated, the scourge of communal erosion invariably sets in. This condition is materially advanced by honoring what is deceitfully called the “Living Constitution [8]” rather than the original document hospitable to amendments. For the Living Constitution is a dead letter.

Perhaps what we are ultimately witnessing is a historical narrative whose denouement is inevitable in the natural course of events. Perhaps America’s time has come, now that it has installed a president and a party with a destructive agenda and the desire to push it through at all costs, even as the world is in its most volatile state since the 1930s and America’s enemies gather strength by the day. It doesn’t help either that this president, whatever his intentions are, happens to be intellectually frivolous and self-enamored, relying on an ingratiating smile and a supplicant media to work his will upon a partisan or credulous public. The air of supercilious folly is pervasive. Perhaps this is the way an empire ends, not with a bang but a simper.

And yet, the desolate verdict of history may still be delayed and a not-unhappy ending to the current drama come to pass, should the American people rouse itself from its torpor, find a way to purge itself of its parasitical and treasonable elements before it is too late, and unite around the inherent virtues of the country: a noble Constitution, legitimate pride in accomplishment, a potent military which functions as it is supposed to, entrepreneurial and innovative vigor, sensible economic policies, melting-pot immigration as opposed to multicultural infiltration, Emersonian self-reliance [9] and, most crucially, limited government. Once again, quite a list, but a beneficial one, expressing the real meaning of “hope and change.”

2010 is the place to start. Only then may the inevitable be deferred, a movie remain a movie and the mythic timetable prevented from entering the realm of national history. Only then may 2012 avoid the upheavals of 2012.

Bill F: Keep on regurgitating that same old tired right wing stupidity long enough, and you'll find there's no space at all in your head, for your own ability to make a "logical" conscience decision.
THERE HAS BEEN ABSOLUTELY NOTHING OTHER THAN THE REMOVAL OF LAME DUCK SADDAM[No Fly Zone] ACCOMPLISHED IN IRAQ UNLESS YOU WANT TO ACCURATELY TALLY ALL THE WASTED AMERICAN TREASURE THAT HAS BEEN LOST, WOUNDED AND PISSED AWAY THROUGH THE SAME RETARDED BRIBERYSTHAT WE NOW HAVE SEEN FULLY EXPOSED TO PLAIN SIGHT IN AFGHANISTAN.
THE BOMBINGS CONTINUE, THE BUSH/ CHENEY "TRAINED" IRAQIS JUST LOST OR RELEASED ALL OF THE TOP AL QAEDA FIGURES THAT WERE IMPRISONED AND LEFT UNDER THEIR WATCH...
... AND OH, JUST FOR THE RECORD- THAT MINDLESS OCCUPATION AND FAILED REORIENTATION COST AMERICAN FAMILIES THE "LIVES" OF 5,000 SONS AND DAUGHTERS, ANOTHER 100,000 WOUNDED, AND LET US NOT FORGET *THE MONUMENTAL DEBT WE MUST ALL PAY FOR DECADES FOR "FAILURE". THIS BUSH ACCOMPLISHED ALL BY HIMSELF BY IGNORING THE EXPERTISE OF GENERALS COLIN POWELL, THE BRILLIANT WESLEY CLARK, AND EVERY OTHER HISTORICAL EXPERT ON THE REGION.

... but, then again lesser minds always prefer the easy way out, blaming others for the things under their command that turned into utter fiascos.

Ironically, your pro Bush article has already proved out to be dated and incorrect in its assessments as is the norm.

*Now how about trying any one of the insights and quotes posted in this one article all made in 2003 and see the reality of todays Iraqi situation as it has just begun to unfold. In other words, NICE JOB, BUSHIE! See: Article
below.
----------------
- "The United States is going to leave Iraq with its tail between its legs, defeated.... Every time we confront Iraqi troops we may win some tactical battles, as we did for 10 years in Vietnam, but we will not be able to win this war, which in my opinion is already lost." -- Scott Ritter on March 27, 2003.
--------------
- "...(W)e’re embroiled in a conflict that looks like a bad remake of Vietnam with an enemy that fights in civilian dress. The bravado of a week ago is gone. “It’s out of our hands,” sighs a White House aide. In an echo of Vietnam, military leaders say they are hamstrung by the rules of engagement. It’s a tough sell to a 21-year-old and even his commander that the political cost of shooting people who may or may not turn out to be civilians is too high. “It’s the price you pay when you’re a superpower going up against a fourth-rate military power,” says a Senate Democrat. “You have a higher standard to uphold.” -- Eleanor Clift in an editorial called, "A Bad Remake Of Vietnam" on March 28, 2003
-----------
THE REST OF THIS ENTIRE ARTICLE IS "PRICELESS" ... and a sad record of of an impudent Bush Administration that didn't know the difference between shit and a hot dog.
http://www.rightwingnews.com/quotes/muddy.php
http://www.rightwingnews.com/quotes/muddy.php

At this point George Bush would be a very welcomed breath of fresh air. The present stink in the White House and Democratic Congress is putrid and stinking up our country like no other stink before

With Power Comes Responsibility:

Why is Obama embracing the very Bush administration policies that he campaigned against?

July 30, 2010

“Breaking a Promise on Surveillance,” is the headline of a New York Times editorial this morning. At issue is an Obama administration proposal to allow the FBI to obtain lists of anyone’s email correspondents and web browsing history by issuing a National Security Letter without going to court. The proposal now being put forward, explains a senior administration official quoted by the Washington Post, would enable the FBI “to intercede in plots earlier than we would if our hands were tied and we were unable to get this data in a way that was quick and efficient.”

The proposal has been greeted with a chorus of denunciations from civil liberties groups. The Electronic Frontier Foundation calls it “a stunning and brazen request. They're asking Congress to reward bad behavior by allowing even more bad behavior.” The Times has now joined in, denouncing the administration for taking an “unnecessary and disappointing step backward toward more intrusive surveillance from a president who promised something very different during the 2008 campaign.”

All of which raises an interesting question. President Obama is perhaps the most liberal president in our history. As a candidate for office eighteen months ago, he was emphatically promising to rein in surveillance “abuses.” Why is he now switching into reverse and embracing the very Bush administration policies that he campaigned against?

The obvious place to look for an answer is the intelligence that is now flowing daily across the president’s desk. It includes an alarming picture of threats to the homeland. In just the past half-year alone, we have seen some of them--in Fort Hood, in the skies over Detroit, and in Times Square--come to fruition. Others, like a Madrid-style bombing attack on the New York City subway system, were averted by law enforcement, with the use of, among other techniques, electronic surveillance.

The dangers we face are real, and with power comes responsibility. President Obama, no longer a candidate but a man accountable under the Constitution for providing “for the common defense,” is willing to bend on civil liberties to come to grips with the menace. This is not a happy outcome for our privacy or our freedoms, but it is one forced upon us by a campaign of terror that we ignore at our peril.

Obama Repeating Mistakes From the Great Depression:

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich warned Thursday that President Obama and congressional Democrats appear to be on the verge of repeating the same mistakes that aggravated the Great Depression, adding that letting the Bush tax cuts expire would prove "very dangerous" for the nation's economy.

Speaking in an exclusive Newsmax interview, Gingrich sounded the alarm that raising taxes could cause serious damage to the economic recovery.

"If we have large tax increases in January," Gingrich told Newsmax.TV, "this economy will sink deeper into recession. There will be higher unemployment. The recovery will be longer.

This was exactly the mistake made in 1937 and 1938, and it created a second mini-depression. I think it's very dangerous, and I think the simple battle cry ought to be no tax increase in 2011, period. Keep current tax law exactly as it is through 2011," Gingrich said.

Gingrich charged that the high unemployment that continues to plague the economy stems from "an administration which consistently has been destroying American jobs."

He cited the financial reform legislation that the president recently signed into law as an example of "one more job-killing bill" Democrats have passed.

"The financial reform law increased the power of Washington, D.C., increased the power of bureaucracies, increased the amount of uncertainty, killed American jobs, and made it easier for Frankfurt, London, Tokyo, and Shanghai to become the financial centers of the world," Gingrich said.

When asked to give his recommendations for curing the nation's ongoing economic woes, the former speaker pointed to the five-point agenda on his AmericanSolutions.com Web site, which is included in the Economic Freedom Act recently submitted to Congress by Reps. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah.

That legislation calls for:

* A 50 percent cut in the Social Security and Medicare tax, both for the employer and the employee
* Zero capital gains tax, which is the rate in China
* A 12.5 percent corporate tax rate, which is the rate in Ireland
* A 100 percent write-off annually for small businesses to buy new equipment, so workers have the best, most modern equipment
* Permanent elimination of the estate or "death" tax "so people have an incentive to work and save their entire lifetime.

"We think those five tax changes would dramatically accelerate economic growth and help the economy," Gingrich tells Newsmax.

For most of the interview Gingrich focused on national security, Islamic fundamentalism, and the recent publication of sensitive intelligence about the war in Afghanistan.

Among the other key points the former speaker made:

* Radical Islamists hope to impose Islamic law, called Shariah, in the United States, which Gingrich says "would end America as we know it."
* He called for a "serious inquiry" into the U.S. national security apparatus that has been unable to anticipate and thwart attacks such as the Christmas Day bomber and the attempted bombing in Time Square.
* If the United States could defeat radical Islam and compete economically with India and China, it "probably would have no major national security problem in the next 50 years."
* The United States would be much more secure today if authorities initially had identified the war on terrorism as being actually a struggle against radical Islam and the effort to impose Shariah.
* The leaks of the Wikileaks documents on Afghanistan should be considered an "unconscionable" act of treason. It isn't only that the documents were leaked, he said. "I think we should also be very, very strong in our condemnation of the newspapers that published them."
* Regarding the mosque controversy at ground zero, Gingrich urged the president and Congress to declare the area around the World Trade Center site a national military battlefield "because that was a battle and it's part of a real war." More Americans were killed at the World Trade Center than at any battle site in the United States since the Civil War. That justifies designating the area as a national battlefield, he said, where only "appropriate" buildings and uses would be allowed near the battlefield.

Gingrich also told Newsmax he will decide whether to run for president by March 2011, adding he is focused on trying to help as many Republicans as possible win in November.

Asked to evaluate President Barack Obama's performance in office, Gingrich said, "Well, I think he's very good at being a celebrity, and not very good at being president. He's perfect on The View but not too good in the Oval Office."