BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 06 Dec 09 - 01:34 PM

I see it much the same way you do, Sawzaw. Yes, they are all a crutch. I first encountered dope smokers at about age 20 when I moved to Toronto. Every young person I knew at that time smoked dope on a casual basis...except for me...and a few smoked it on a really heavy basis (several times every day). The whole thing struck me as idiotic. Mind you, I think smoking cigarettes is idiotic too, and almost everyone I knew was a tobacco smoker as well back then.

I was always a real nonconformist to (most) common and popular youth trends. There was something in me that allowed me to look at it from outside the social expectations of my peers, and I could plainly see that it was stupid, self-defeating, and bad for your health to smoke anything, as well as to drink very much alcohol. Yet everyone around me went for that stuff. It was strange to be part of that scene and yet not part of it at the same time. Here I was, a long-haired musician, had "the look", but didn't do the substance abuse. ;-) I can't tell you how many cops have stopped me on suspicion and found nothing.

I agree that it fucks up your thinking. I have smoked it a handful of times over the last 40 years...about 5 or 6 times. When I did so, I did it in order to educate myself as to what the heck it was that the other people were doing it for? My conclusion was that they were doing it for quite a variety of reasons, but that none of those reasons gave me any further impulse to join them. It seems to have different effects on different people, depending on their personality and their nervous system. Some people become much more relaxed under the influence, and that's why they like it. Others get paranoid and stressed out, and they don't enjoy the experience. In my case, it just complicates and to some extent confuses my mind...and I don't like that at all. So there is no reason whatever that I would want to smoke dope.

Looking back to all those friends I had, I'd say that the ones who smoked casually suffered little negative effect from it, while the ones who smoked heavily usually became more lazy, disorganized, and irresponsible than they would have without it...plus they wasted a lot of attention and money on it which might have been better spent elsewhere. Hell, some of them even turned it into a sort of religion! ;-)

I have one friend, a very nice and kindly person, who swears by it. He has medical conditions that it seems to alleviate. What can I say? Maybe for him it's an okay thing. That's something he has to decide, not me. I do think it's unfortunate that the stuff is illegal, because this very nice and totally harmless guy could have his whole life messed up if the cops happen to catch him...and that would be a shame, and would be of no benefit to society. He's a benefit to society right now just as he is, because he does a lot of things to help other people.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: GUEST,bankley
Date: 06 Dec 09 - 01:29 PM

pass the crutches, reality is lame.... now back to Marley and Willie

to each their own

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 06 Dec 09 - 11:43 AM

LH: I agree on the left right logic completely. It is used to divide and create bogeymen that one side or the other will protect you from. Therefore you need to support one and fight the other. The pro pot and anti pot groups are extolling or condemning pot for their own political purposes

However it does not explain the need to smoke pot, drink, smoke tobacco or do drugs, All are unnecessary and not beneficial in any way. All are a crutch whether illegal or not.

I have smoked it and eventually I decided out it fucks up your thinking.

I think the expression "why do you think they call it dope?" sums it up.

nighttime, shooting star, the sun started to rain
trees lost branches, gurus' trances, black-brassiered dancers
little dears
showdown's coming, it's no joke, mouth is runnings, it's a stroke
that's what I think when I'm so fucked up I can't even find the door

why do you think they call it dope?
why do you think they call it dope?

when your heart beats fast, you're so broke, in your car with the red
lights flashing
look sincere, smell like beer, roach in the ashtray
going to the pokey
thirty days later, ten bucks left, hands are shaking
looking for a dime bag

why do you think they call it dope?
why do you think they call it dope?

dirty little dopers on dope so bad
dirty little dopers on dope so bad

when two and two turn into five you'll probably see it my way
when bad is good, like it should, things turn upside down
some people say it's hip to say no, my town it's green light go
for party rockin' angels now it's trigger happy
slang-bang-pow

why do you think they call it dope?
why do you think they call it dope?
why do you think they call it dope?
why do you think they call it dope?

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Riginslinger
Date: 04 Dec 09 - 10:39 PM

You're so right, Little Hawk. It's a shame more people don't look into things a little more closely. It's a shell game to be sure. Sad, ain't it.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 04 Dec 09 - 01:50 AM

Yeah, I think they probably do need a crutch, Sawzaw. Or maybe they want to be "cool" or something.

I do not smoke weed or anything else. I don't drink to any extent worth mentioning (meaning I barely drink at all). I don't smoke cigarettes, and I don't take drugs...legal or illegal.

What is the purpose of weed, alcohol, and tobacco? Well, I guess you could ask someone who partakes, but I would guess that the purposes are many, starting during the teen years, and they are:

to begin with...

1. to be "cool" and seem "grown up"
2. to fit in with one's peer group and impress one's peers
3. to defy parental and state authority
4. to be "brave" (supposedly)
5. to have "a good time" (party, as they call it)
6. to relax and unwind
7. to get laid? (some people use alcohol for that, certainly)

later...

1.it becomes an addictive habit
2. you need heavier and heavier doses to get "a buzz"
3. your health starts to suffer, and your addiction grows
4. and it steadily gets worse from that point on.

Now, what was it you were concerned about?

The reason you don't get my logic is that I don't believe in the old phony Left/Right dichotomy that most people subscribe to in politics. It's not really about that anymore, and both the Right and the Left are riddled with hypocrisy these days, so I snipe at both of them. I'll tell you what it's really about, Sawzaw, it's about money. Big money. More money than you or I will ever see. I'm talking about trillions of dollars. That's what it's all about. The old phony Left/Right divide is just a red herring they use to keep the public distracted and divided against each other. Divide and conquer. That goes for your two phony political parties two. Just a shell game, that's all. "The hand is quicker than the eye." As long as they can bounce you back and forth between the Democrats and the Republicans, you will continue, like Don Quixote, to swat frantically at illusions.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: GUEST,Sawzaw
Date: 03 Dec 09 - 11:30 PM

Could it be that LH follows the orders of druglords that profit from the import and distribution illegal drugs and whacky weed into North America?

I can see no other explanation for his irrational logic.

Yeah. Whnever some "enlightened" individual breaks the law by lighting up, he supports murder and mayhem.

And just what is the purpose of smoking weed? What is the purpose of booze and tobacco for that matter? Are there some people so weak they need a crutch?

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 03 Dec 09 - 02:04 PM

Perhaps he is unaware of their opinions on this matter... ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: GUEST,beardedbruce
Date: 03 Dec 09 - 01:59 PM

"WASHINGTON – The head of the Secret Service asserted Thursday that the security breach at last week's White House state dinner was an aberration and President Barack Obama was never at risk. Mark Sullivan said three uniformed officers have been put on administrative leave.

.......

Said Sullivan: "In our judgment, a mistake was made. In our line of work, we cannot afford even one mistake."

"I fully acknowledge that the proper procedures were not followed," he said. " ... This flaw has not changed our agency's standard, which is to be right 100 percent of the time."

Thompson asked Sullivan what went wrong.

"Pure and simple, this was human error" in which normal security protocols were not followed, Sullivan said. The breach was not caused by poor screening technology, he added.

The Secret Service chief said the investigation so far has found three people from the agency's uniformed officer division responsible for the security breach and all three have been put on administrative leave. He added that the agency is still reviewing what security protocols weren't followed.

"What we find is if the protocols are followed, we would not run into this situation," Sullivan said.

......

Sullivan said there was no threat to Obama, noting that "last week we took him to a basketball game, and there was 5,000 people sitting around the president."

In response to a question from Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., he said Obama had not had an extraordinary number of threats against his life, contrary to her assertion, and said that Obama had received no more such threats at this point in his term than his two predecessors.
"




How DARE the head of the Secret Service contradict the experts here at Mudcat!

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 02 Dec 09 - 01:03 PM

I think what he's doing, Sawzaw, is exactly what all American presidents do. He's obeying orders straight from corporate central USA...if you know what I mean. There are people who profit off these wars and these bank bailouts we've been seeing.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 02 Dec 09 - 12:40 PM

30,000 more troops being sent in.....WHY?

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 02 Dec 09 - 12:35 PM

5. Resolved, That it is the duty of every branch of the government, to enforce and practice the most rigid economy, in conducting our public affairs, and that no more revenue ought to be raised, than is required to defray the necessary expenses of the government.

Democratic Party Platform of 1840

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 02 Dec 09 - 12:13 PM

I thought this thread was about Obama's failed admistration.

Or as Amos would characterize it, the stunning success of the Obama administration.

What the hell has he done besides piss away money that we have to borrow from China? That card will be maxed out pretty soon.

The only concrete thing he has done is give the order to assassinate three pirates.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: GUEST,bankley
Date: 02 Dec 09 - 08:04 AM

welcome Ovavaememnper... I'd like to buy a vowel

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: GUEST,Bobert, still in Charlotte
Date: 27 Nov 09 - 09:30 PM

Awwwww, screw 'um... Let's just nuke the entire region and be done with it...

Right, Sawz???

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 Nov 09 - 05:21 PM

Aha! Sawzaw, here is an article about that Iranian fuel enrichment program which will no doubt interest you. It's by Eric Margolis, a Canadian journalist who knows his stuff:

THOSE TRICKY IRANIANS ARE NOW THREATENING TO COOPERATE
NEW YORK October 05, 2009

The confusion over Iran's nuclear program mounts as accusations and denials intensify.

In an effort to browbeat Iran into nuclear submission, the US, Britain and France staged a bravura performance of political theatre last week by claiming to have just `discovered' a secret Iran uranium enrichment plant near Qum. On cue, a carefully orchestrated media blitz trumpeted warnings of the alleged Iranian nuclear threat and `long-ranged missiles.'

In reality, the Qum plant was detected by US spy satellites over two years ago, and was known to the intelligence community.   Iran claimed the plant will not begin enriching uranium for peaceful power for another 540 days.   UN nuclear rules, to which Iran adheres, calls for 180 days notice.   

But Iran cast suspicion on itself by hastily alerting the UN's nuclear agency, IAEA, right after the `revelation' of the Qum plant and inviting inspection. Iran may not have been actually guilty of anything, but it looked guilty – in western eyes.   

Iran can hardly be eager to reveal the locations of its nuclear sites or military secrets given the steady stream of threats by Israel to attack Iran's nuclear plants and the beating of war drums in the United States. Iran also recalls Iraq, where half the UN `nuclear inspectors' were actually spies for CIA or Israel's Mossad. This may explain some of Iran's secretive behavior.

The US, Britain, France and Israel have been even less forthcoming about their nuclear secrets. Israel and India reject all outside requests for information.   

Iran's test of some useless short ranged   missiles, and an inaccurate 2,000-km medium ranged Shahab-3, provoked more hysteria. In a choice example of media scaremongering, one leading North American newspaper printed a picture of a 1960's vintage SAM-2 antiaircraft missile being launched, with a caption warning of the `grave threat' Iran posed to `international peace and security.'

Welcome to Iraq déjà vu, and another manufactured crisis. US intelligence and UN inspectors say Iran has no nuclear weapons and certainly no nuclear warheads and is only enriching uranium to 5%. Nuclear weapons require 95%.   Iran's nuclear facilities are under constant UN inspection and US surveillance.

The US, its allies, and Israel insist Iran is secretly developing nuclear warheads. They demand Tehran prove a negative: that is has no nuclear weapons.   Iraq was also put to the same impossible test, then attacked when it naturally could not comply.   

Now, the US government is again leaking claims that Iran is working on a nuclear warhead for its Shahah-3 medium-ranged missile. Iran says the data supposedly backing up this claim is a fake concocted by Israel's Mossad. Forged data was also used to accuse Iraq.

Israel is deeply alarmed by Iran's challenge to its Mideast nuclear monopoly. Chances of an Israeli attack on Iran are growing weekly, though the US is still restraining Israel.

The contrived uproar about the Qum plant was a ploy to intensify pressure on Iran to cease nuclear enrichment – though it has every right to do so under international agreements.   The problem is that Iran has many good reasons for developing nuclear weapons for self-defense even though Tehran insists it is not.

More pressure was applied at last week's meeting near Geneva between the Western powers and Iran. The Iranians then fooled everyone by actually agreeing to ship a good part of their enriched uranium to Russia for safekeeping, thus taking the wind out of the sails of the war party in Washington, London and Paris – at least for a while.   

You could almost hear the outraged neocons in Washington yelling, `hey you sneaky Iranians, fight fair!'

Why does Ahmadinejad antagonize the West and act belligerent when he should be taking a very low profile?    Why would Iran face devastating Israeli or US attack to keep enriching uranium when it can import such fuel from Russia?

Civilian nuclear power has become the keystone of Iranian national pride. As noted in my new book, `American Raj,' Iran's leadership insists the West has denied the Muslim world modern technology and tries to keep it backwards and subservient.   Tehran believes it can withstand all western sanctions.

In my view, Iran appears to be very slowly developing a `breakout' capability to produce a small number of nuclear weapons on short notice - for defensive purposes.   Iraq's invasion of Iran cost Iran one million casualties. Iran demands the same right of nuclear self defense enjoyed by neighbors Israel, India and Pakistan.

But Iran's multi-level leadership is also split over the question of whether or not to actually build nuclear weapons. Iran is just as fearful of an Israeli nuclear attack as Israel is of an Iranian nuclear attack. For the record, President Ahmadinejad did not call for Israel to be `wiped off the face of the map,' but quoted an old Imam Khomeini speech calling for Zionism to be wiped away and replaced by a state for Jews, Muslims and Christians.   

What Iran really wants is an end to 30-years of US efforts to overthrow its Islamic regime. The US is still waging economic warfare against Iran and trying to overthrow the Tehran government. Like North Korea, Iran wants explicit guarantees from Washington that this siege warfare will stop and relations with the US will be normalized.

As Flynt and Hillary Leverett conclude in their excellent, must-read 29 September NY Times article about Iran's nuclear program, détente with Iran will be bitterly opposed by `those who attach value to failed policies that have damaged America's interests in the Middle East…'



Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2009

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 27 Nov 09 - 05:11 PM

CBS: John Bolton Was Right After All

.....Today, while the Iranians reprocess more fuel, the Obama team continues to compromise and offer even more incentives to them. No wonder Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is waiting - the deal keeps getting sweeter. President Obama has offered the Iranians more time, more sites to place their illegal fuel, more personal correspondence with the Ayatollah, more excuses as to what happened to the original deal they announced and no Chinese and Russian arm-twisting. The Obama team also keeps claiming that if Iran ships 2600 pounds of fuel out to Russia for re-processing then Iran will be unable to pose a nuclear threat for at least a year.

This often told claim is a dangerous calculation based on an assumption that Iran doesn't have more hidden fuel (we just found out about another reprocessing plant in September) and can't quickly convert what would remain if the plan had been accepted. Additionally, the low enriched uranium in question was produced in violation of UN Security Council resolutions so any deal to help Iran convert illegal fuel undermines Security Council credibility. The naivety of President Obama could be chalked up to hope and inexperience in foreign policy matters if it wasn't routinely and consistently happening......

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/11/24/opinion/main5761543.shtml

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 20 Nov 09 - 10:39 AM

An interesing essay from the resident arch-conservative at the NY Times, the DougR of Gray Lady Street, in which he strongly vindicates the Obama treasury policies and their success so far.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 12 Nov 09 - 04:48 PM

One thing I know nothing about is Glass-Steagel, and the repeal thereof. Anyone care to enlighten me?

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Bobert
Date: 12 Nov 09 - 04:43 PM

Me thinks that poor ol' LH mighta missed a few school days, Amos, so be kind to him... The stuff he knows he knows lots about but sometimes he don't know nuthin' about a subject so he just pulls a smoke and mirrors his ownself on folks here thinkin' he might get by???

We kinda expect that of Doug but when LH does it it's really funny so lighten up on him...

Kinda reminds me of this professor I had in college for "History of thr South"... Every Friday was test day and he's give 20 identification questions and 1 essay question... As long has you filled up the back of the page with essay question AND it was 3, not 4, not 2, paragraphs he would juct put a big check mark over it... But if it wasn't a f7ull page or didn't have 3 paragraphs he'd rip it to shreads... LH kinda has some forula he has discovered for times like that here...lol...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 12 Nov 09 - 04:14 PM

I am delighted to see that we agree on the essential points, Amos. ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 12 Nov 09 - 01:29 PM

Jayze, LH, you sound like a baggy-ass pedant talking to an eight-grader, for crissakes. Come on. Youo are reciting truisms and established facts that have been well and widely communicated since the 1980's!

I agree completely that a governing control of some kind on the ratio of lending to holding for a bank is needed and the present arrangement is insane. But even so, although it flippflopped madly, it was much less dangerous before the additional liberty --caused in part by the repeal of Glass-Steagel--of securitizing mortgages came about by making banks into investment traders. Prior to that, a bank held its mortgages and had a strong interest in seeing them paid off. That system worked a lot better.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 12 Nov 09 - 01:08 PM

Anyone can create "useless and valueless securities which inflate the cost of all real things by soaking up a significant portion of the money supply for no exchange or production"...if he can create vast amounts of money out of thin air, Amos, and that is what the banks do every time they make a large loan to someone.

It isn't that the loan "soaks up" the money supply. It's that it expands the apparent money suppy in a very unrealistic fashion, and that is the engine driving inflation.

Most of the money in the system wasn't made by the government, Amos. The government mints and prints just enough coins and paper money to allow normal daily transactions in actual people's hands to continue functioning, but the banks themeselves have created about 99% of all the supposed money that's out there, and they've done it by making loans on which they draw interest, and the interest charges create even more fictional money which comes from nowhere, and it's not paper money...it's not coins...it's a digital or paper record that shows up on a balance sheet at a bank or some other institution.

The bank into which you deposit your money could not possibly give you and all the other depositors back your deposits in real cash if you all went and demanded it on the same day. They don't have it. They have a tiny fraction of it, because they have lent it out 10 or 20 times over by now to generate interest payments to themselves.

They are running a pyramid scheme, and that is why the dollar keeps declining in real value against real goods. The main reason they can run a pyramid scheme is:

1. the government allows them to.
2. the dollar is not backed up by anything real. It was backed up by something real when we had silver certificates instead of federal reserve notes.

Why does the government allow the banks to create fiat money? Well, because he who creates the most money controls the system, that's why. The politicians have been bought by the bankers, and it happened a long time ago.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 12 Nov 09 - 12:36 PM

If I were running a high school I would probabvly do something similar to keep it manageable. There have been multiple instances throughout our history of third party runs, notably Roosevelt's Bull Party. I don't know a lot about the history of them but they don't usually have the funding to raise a serious campaign.

There is nothing inherent in our methods of election that constrains it to two parties; that is just the inertia of the organizations involved. For many people the way to do something is the way you did it, period.

I fail to see how the silver certificate would change the problem, which is the invention of useless and valueless securities which inflate the cost of all real things by soaking up a significant portion of the money supply for no exchange or production.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 12 Nov 09 - 12:12 PM

Amos, I often harken back to the student council elections we had in my high school in upstate New York. They were a rather silly affair...though not completely without merit...but I think their primary purpose (although it may not have been a conscious purpose in the eyes of the school administration)...at any rate, I think their primary purpose was to indoctrinate students in the habits of conforming to a 2 party system.

There were 2 slates of candidates nominated and chosen to run in each student council election.

2 candidates for each of the following positions:

President
Vice President
Secretary
Treasurer

Okay....but why 2 sets? Why not have 3 or 4 or even 6 people run for any given position if they wanted to? Why not? Well, because the unstated agenda (or assumption) built into the whole exercise was this: "When you grow up and become worker bee adults in our great democracy, you are going to be voting for one of two alternatives, the Democrats or the Republicans. You are going to participate in a 2 party system, because that's the ONLY real way to have a democracy (ha! ha!).

It was indoctrination in a pre-destined system, Amos...the same as our factory schools are indoctrination for going out to your 9-5 job five days a week and being a good little worker bee who gets up when he's supposed to, does what the boss tells him, works during the prescribed hours (mostly spent in a room somewhere), and conforms to the requirements of the system.

That cartoon you posted the link to is itself naive, because it fails to recognize that student council elections in the USA are themselves rehearsals for preparing young minds to accept a 2 party system and take it for granted. It is utterly naive in ignoring the essential problem with the Democrats and Republicans which is that they represent the same entrenched interests and do not represent the public interest at all.

I don't take the 2 party system in the USA for granted, I think it's an aberration.

As for the money thing (grin)....I'll get to that in awhile. Too busy now. But remember this: if you cannot redeem your money at the bank for something of real value, then it's not real money. It's just a promise, and it's a promise from people who routinely break their promises.

All I was suggesting is that we return to the Silver Certificate. The Silver Certificate was a normal American dollar bill when I was a kid. You could take it to the bank, and get a silver dollar in exchange. See what those silver dollars are worth now, and you will know exactly what has happened to American money in the interim.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 12 Nov 09 - 10:01 AM

Learning Economics from the Internet...

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Bobert
Date: 12 Nov 09 - 08:32 AM

What you been smokin', LH???

Ain't you up on the theory of "paradox of value"???

Amos is right... You are hanging onto a Lyndon LaRouche isde that in oder for money to have value it has to have some backing... That went out with Columbus... No offense, mind you...

Okay, think about it this way... You and Don Juan been out in the desert contimplatin'/meditatin' rocks and stuff and you come outta a deep session and Don Juan is no where to be found and you are lost in the desert... All you have is the clothes yer wearing and two dollars...

After two days wanderin' in the desert you come upon a vendor who has a little sdtand set up out there in the desert and all he is selling is water and gold... 2 bucks for a gallon of water... 2 bucks for an ounce of gold...

What to buy???

This is what the gold standard was all about... It was even more smoke and mirrors than the current sytem because it implied that gold has value??? Well, yeah, I guess it has some value but compared to water, not much... But the reason that gold became the standard is because of scarcity...

Now back to the desert...

What to buy???

See, it ain't all that different if money is backed by a standard if that standard has no real practical use in man's basic needs... Not wants, but needs...

So, bottom line, it's all smoke and mirrors...

Gotta go to work now...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 11 Nov 09 - 11:21 PM

LH,

With all due apologies and all respect for your usually scinitllating intellect, your analysis of monetary systems is horse pucky.

Anchoring money to scarce minerals is good in one respect--it makes it a limited system. But it is not the final answer because as an economy grows it hits the glass ceiling imposed by the arbitrary definition of money as limited by a mineral supply.

A unit of money is essentially an idea back by confidence.

The problem is not coming off the gold standard. The problem was not analyzing how to preserve the essential confidence in transactions while allowing the sphere of transactions to grow as far as actual productivity and expanding technology and new resources could grow it, while not allowing anyone to inflate it artificially on some imaginary basis.

It is the departure from reliability that corrupts a currency, not the departure from one or another mineral. Money is real when it represents a confident idea of production. When it represents paper dreams, then it becomes dangerously compromised as it moves away from real value.

Real value comes from manufacturing, from natural resources, and from actual service to others. Money is strong when it reflects only those things. That includes new ideas as a service to others. It includes competent organization, health care, good counsel, education and so on in the service sector.

It does not include paper derivatives with imaginary values added in. But there is no reason to curtail a money supply at less than the value of the economy by anchoring it to a metal. Any more than there is to anchor it to big round stone circles.


A


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 11 Nov 09 - 08:42 PM

Yep, Bobert. All smoke and mirrors. When dollars were taken off the gold and silver standard they became virtually worthless, and it's been all smoke and mirrors ever since. When I was a child you could redeem an American dollar in silver coin at any bank. Those were silver certificates, and that was real money.

The Fed creates fiat money...not real money...and they create massive amounts of it, mostly through huge loans to Third World countries who can never pay it back and through other scams like the real estate bubble. The Third World countries and other debtors end up staggering under an unpayable mass of debt, but the banks don't care as long as they get their interest payments.

Finally the whole thing starts to implode, because it's just a pyramid scheme. The government then rushes in (at the behest of the banks) to "save" the situation. The way they save it is by bailing out the banks with MORE borrowed money. That increases the national debt, which is already so huge that it staggers the imagination...and the banks get more interest...and the public pays ALL of it, through taxes and inflation.

And the boom and bust cycle rolls on once again.

Obama and Bush both rolled over and capitulated to the banks, and that tells me right there who really runs the government.

Imagine what you or I could do, Bobert, if we could create money out of thin air the way the banks do. Why, we could make a 12 billion dollar loan next week to Rumania, say, at a nice competitive interest rate. And where did that $12 billion come from? Well, it just magically appeared from thin air as an "asset" on our bank's balance sheet the moment the loan was signed and confirmed. Suddenly there were 12 billion more digital dollars floating around in the world's computers...and the government did not mint or print those dollars...but there they are on the balance sheet. Wow. And think of the interest payments! Yippee! We're rich. Meanwhile the Rumanians use much of the magic $12 billion dollars to pay off some of their old outstanding interest charges on previous such loans, they siphon off more for corruption and personal favors in Rumania, and maybe a bit of it is actually used for something worthwhile. Who knows? But we don't care, because we just acquired $12 billion more dollars in our assets and we're getting interest too. Let's make 20 more such loans to 20 other countries right away.

Holy shit. Talk about a money tree. Why doesn't everyone become a banker with a system like this in place?

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 11 Nov 09 - 08:39 PM

The recitation of party mantra does not add up to a workable policy. As far as I know the office of the budget has said the reform program will reduce our medical costs over all . Why ignore thzat? Just for example.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Bobert
Date: 11 Nov 09 - 08:09 PM

The entire motivation in cutting taxes is to starve the beast... Repubs have been trying to starve the beast going back several decades... Problem is that when they are in power they spend like drunken sailors??? I just don't understand how they can be so hypocritical about governemnt spending and debt... The love both...

Cutting taxes is what Bush II said was the answer to the recession of the 2001... Problem is that we now learn that that tax cut didn't correct anything but made things much worse... The growth we saw wasn't from tax cuts... It was from a housing industry that was fueled by borrowing from the Chinese... That isn't a recovery anymore than taking out a loan increases one's net worth... It was all smoke and mirrors and now we are seeing the deficits from the Repub spend and borrow years...

But Dougie, being the died-in-the-wooler, says cut taxes, damn the torpedos and full steam ahead???

Well, that's about what I would expect from him...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 11 Nov 09 - 06:52 PM

The little piglets have interests in common, Amos. In the hallowed halls of high finance that is all that is needed to bring the little piglets together to arrange things in a way that is most beneficial for them.

If the largest banks and corporate entities wanted to increase their profits by fixing prices, forming monopolies, and shaping public legislation, don't you think they would? Of course they would. And they have done so. And it's been happening for a very long time.

You speak of the piglets "being herded"? My good man, THEY are the shepherds and farmers in charge of the flock. The pigs are the bosses. Just like in "Animal Farm. The general public is who is being herded. On voting day the sheep troupe out dutifully to the polls and rubber stamp the foreordained result that the pigs have crafted, and it's strictly cosmetic.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 11 Nov 09 - 06:45 PM

I agree on some of your points, Doug.

1. Drop current the trillion dollar plan to designed to convert our current excellent health care system into one that mirrors single payer plans in other countries. It is just too expensive and he and his Democrat cohorts risk bankrupting the country.

Both disagree...and agree. Drop the trillion dollar plan? Yes. It's a giveaway to the wrong people. However, your current health system is not excellent at all, it's one of the very worst in the entire developed world. A single payer plan such as is in place in most other democracies would be far better.

2. Focus on ways to improve the economy, and that includes cutting costs, not increasing them.

Yeah....sort of. The best way to cut costs, Doug, is to turn your money back into REAL money again, money that is backed up by REAL gold and silver reserves. End the giant monopoly money game pyramid scheme that is being played by the big banks and the Federal Reserve. They create billions of dollars out of thin air by making loans, dollars that aren't backed by up anything but an unreal pyramid of debt, debt that can never realistically be paid off and never will be paid off. Abolish the Federal Reserve after a one or two year period of converting the Federal Reserve Notes back into the REAL money (gold and silver certificates and gold and silver coin). Abolish the practice of allowing the banks to lend out at least 10 times the amount of money that their depositors (the general public) have lent them.

3. Focus on ways and means to create jobs in the private sector, not in government.

I'm all in favor of that, Doug. Where does one end and the other begin, though? The reason I ask that is...the Federal Reserve pretends to be a federal entity, but it's not. It's a private cartel of big bankers. However, it's become so entwined with the government in various ways that it can be said to be a sort of hybrid...halfway between a private entity and a government entity. The real question is...does the government run the Fed...or is it the other way around? ;-)

4. Do not allow the Bush tax cuts to expire.

I'm not knowledgable enough about that to comment.

5. Cut corporate taxes and capital gains taxes.

Perhaps. Experience has shown that when big business is taxed, they simply pass their new expenses on to the public in the form of higher prices for goods....and the public pays the tax increase! Further to that, when the banks create a giant speculation bubble through totally irresponsible lending practices, the government bails them out and the public pays for the bailout!!! They pay for it through their taxes (which are used to service the national debt) and through inflation.

Both Bush AND Obama favored that bailout. Remember?

What you don't get, Doug, is that the Republican and Democratic parties both serve the richest corporate entities and largest banks in your land, and the public pays the price. Not sometimes. Always. Obama is carrying on much the same way. His rhetoric sounds different from Bush. His actual performance is quite similar...because he is serving the same entrenched interests Bush did.

The party game is there to keep you mesmerized and divided against one another so that you never see the little man behind the screen (Wizard of Oz reference). All you see is the latest "Magnificent Oz" who occupies the Oval Office...and his party. That's an illusion.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 11 Nov 09 - 06:21 PM

I'm sorry Little Hawk, but I don't buy your Grand Sceme of the Dominators of the Universe. I don't think there' a "they" there. Just a lot of greedy piglets needing to be herded.



A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: DougR
Date: 11 Nov 09 - 06:21 PM

On November 3, 2008, Amos wrote a post wondering what DougR, Sawz, and BB would suggest Obama do to improve the lot of US citizens, or words to that effect.

Today is November 11, 2009, and I list my suggestions:

1. Drop current the trillion dollar plan to designed to convert our current excellent health care system into one that mirrors single payer plans in other countries. It is just too expensive and he and his Democrat cohorts risk bankrupting the country.

2. Focus on ways to improve the economy, and that includes cutting costs, not increasing them.

3. Focus on ways and means to create jobs in the private sector, not in government.

4. Do not allow the Bush tax cuts to expire.

5. Cut corporate taxes and capital gains taxes.

Were he to do those things, he might find his approval rating increasing not tanking.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 11 Nov 09 - 05:07 PM

Oh, and what would the Republicans do if they were in office?

The same! ;-) Maybe even worse.

That's because they and the Democrats both serve the same masters, and you don't get to vote the masters out of office...nor even know who most of them are. Or where they live. Or where they move their money to.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 11 Nov 09 - 03:23 PM

Obama's making things happen with the economy all right. He's bailing out the huge monied organizations that f*cked the economy in the first place, so they can recover from the effect of their sins and do it all again in short order.

The public will end up paying for all of it. How? By paying off the ever larger national debt through their taxes and through inflation (which is a hidden but very devastating tax).

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 11 Nov 09 - 12:45 PM

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama still has the approval of a majority of Americans, but it's an increasingly pessimistic nation.

The public grew slightly more dispirited on a range of matters over the past month, including war and the economy, continuing the slippage that has occurred since Obama took office, the latest Associated Press-GfK poll shows.

This comes at a time when he is trying to revive the struggling economy, considering sending more troops to the 8-year-old Afghanistan war, muscling a health care reform overhaul through Congress and hoping to push through other ambitious measures like legislation focused on climate change.

People were gloomier about the direction of the country than in October. They disapproved of Obama's handling of the economy a bit more than before. And, perhaps most striking for the commander in chief, more people have lost confidence in Obama on Iraq and Afghanistan over the last month. Overall, there's a malaise about the state of the nation.

"It's in pretty bad shape," said truck driver Floyd Hacker of Granby, Mo., a Democrat who voted for Obama. "He sounded like somebody who could make things happen. I still think he can."

Still, Hacker said, he questions the president's approach to the economy, what the U.S. is trying to accomplish in Afghanistan and Obama's focus on health care, adding, "He can't handle everything at one time."

Public attitudes like that are troubling for a president trying to accomplish an ambitious agenda at home while fighting wars abroad, as well as for a Democratic Party heading into a critical election year. It will have to stave off losses that a new president typically experiences in his first midterm elections. A third of the Senate, all of the House and most governors' offices will be on the ballot.

The findings underscore just how quickly the political environment can change, a lesson for out-of-power Republicans who are buzzing with energy after booting Democrats from rule in Virginia and New Jersey governors' races last week.

It was just over a year ago that Obama won the White House in an electoral landslide and Democrats padded their congressional majorities. The country was riding high with optimism by just about all measures when Obama took office in January.

Hope and change were in vogue back then. But change didn't happen overnight, as the rhetoric of campaigning crashed headlong into the realities of governing. And hope slipped in a country that always has clung to it.

Now, Obama's approval rating stands at 54 percent, roughly the same as in October but very different from the enthusiastic 74 percent in January just before he took office. And some 56 percent of people say the country is heading in the wrong direction, an uptick from 51 percent last month and 49 percent in Obama's first month as president.

The economy is by far the most important issue on Americans' minds. Unemployment hit 10.2 percent last month even though the administration has promoted glimmers of improvement and many economists say the recession is over.(AP)

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 06 Nov 09 - 04:36 PM

"Every once in a while I like to fact check the Wall Street Journal editorial page just to see how unbelievably low the intellectual standards on that page are."

I take a very brief look in at the Orillia bar scene now and then for about the same reason... ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 06 Nov 09 - 01:36 PM

"Every once in a while I like to fact check the Wall Street Journal editorial page just to see how unbelievably low the intellectual standards on that page are. On today's page, John Steele Gordon argues that "the liberal paradigm [does] not even come close to agreeing with the social and economic reality on the ground today." What is that reality? Gordon offers up a handful of facts:

[T]he rich are still looked upon by liberals as enemies of the poor and disadvantaged, even though Mr. Obama not only carried a majority of voters earning less than $50,000 but also a majority of those earning over $200,000. He did, in other words, as well among the wolves as he did among the sheep. …

But in a world where a majority of Americans work at white-collar jobs, have high-school and college degrees, own their own homes, and hold financial securities in their own right, the so-called wolves are now a majority.

This is it, the sum total of factual assertions mustered by Gordon in support of his thesis. The rest in nonfalsifiable rhetoric (i.e., "the nastiness in American politics is largely on the left," "liberals refuse to engage [conservative] ideas, simply because they are not liberal ideas and must, therefore, be wrong," and so on.) Let us go through these five factual assertions.

There are a couple true things here. A majority of American workers do work in white-collar fields, though this is not exactly synonymous with affluence. A majority also own their own homes, though the same caveat applies.

Did Obama perform as well with voters earning more than $200,000 a year as those earning under $50,000? Not even close. He won voters earning over $200,000 by 6 points, and those earning under $50,000 by 22 points.

Do a majority of Americans have college degrees? Even assuming he means Americans in the workforce, the answer, again, is not even close. 70% lack a college degree.

Do a majority own stock? No. And it's only even close if you count things like a pension fund. If you mean direct ownership of stock, only one in five Americans owns any. (Economist Anna Turner at the Economic Policy Institute helped me round up some of these links.)

So, out of 1,279 words of mostly ideological blather, there are five actual facts that bear any relation to the thesis. And three of them are false. This from an author who is accusing his ideological opponents of failing to "come close to agreeing with the social and economic reality on the ground today"!" (New Republic)

---

Scurrilous rhetoric of the kind analyzed here is obviously not the monopoly of the right wing, but as a general observation their seems more dedicated and more ruthless, withless respect for their readers' intelligence and more regard for their readers' capacity for blind reaction in anger, hatred, or fear.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 05 Nov 09 - 01:07 PM

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Political activist Noam Chomsky says that although President Obama views the Iraq invasion merely as "a mistake" or "strategic blunder," it is, in fact, a "major crime" designed to enable America to control the Middle East oil reserves.

"It's ("strategic blunder") probably what the German general staff was telling Hitler after Stalingrad," Chomsky quipped, referring to the big Nazi defeat by the Soviet army in 1943.

"There is basically no significant change in the fundamental traditional conception that if we can control Middle East energy resources, then we can control the world," he said.

In a lecture at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London Oct. 27th, Chomsky warned against expecting significant foreign policy changes from Obama, according to a report by Mamoon Alabbasi published on MWC News.net. Alabbasi is an editor at Middle East Online.

"As Obama came into office, (former Secretary of State) Condoleezza Rice predicted he would follow the policies of Bush's second term, and that is pretty much what happened, apart from a different rhetorical style," Chomsky said.

Chomsky said the U.S. operates under the "Mafia principle," explaining "the Godfather does not tolerate 'successful defiance'" and must be stamped out "so that others understand that disobedience is not an option."

Despite pressure on the U.S. to withdraw from Iraq, Alabbasi reported, Chomsky said the U.S. continues to seek a long-term presence in the country and the huge U.S embassy in Baghdad is to be expanded under Obama.

"As late as November, 2007, the U.S. was still insisting that the 'Status of Forces Agreement' allow for an indefinite U.S. military presence and privileged access to Iraq's resources by U.S. investors," Chomsky added. "Well, they didn't get that on paper at least. They had to back down," Alabbasi quotes him as saying.

Chomsky said Middle East oil reserves are understood to be "a stupendous source of strategic power" and "one of the greatest material prizes in world history."

Concerning Iran, Chomsky said the U.S. acted to overthrow its parliamentary democracy in 1953 "to retain control of Iranian resources" and when the Iranians reasserted themselves in 1979, the U.S. acted "to support Saddam Hussein's merciless invasion" of that country.

"The torture of Iran continued without a break and still does, with sanctions and other means," Chomsky said. According to Alabbasi, Chomsky "mocked the idea" presented by mainstream media that a nuclear-armed Iran might attack nuclear-armed Israel. Iranian leaders would have to have a "fanatic death wish" to attack Israel, which reportedly has 200 nuclear weapons or more.

"The chance of Iran launching a missile attack, nuclear or not, is about at the level of an asteroid hitting the earth," Chomsky said. He said the presence of U.S. anti-missile weapons in Israel are really meant for preparing a possible attack on Iran, not for self-defense, as they are often presented.

Chomsky is professor emeritus of linguistics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 04 Nov 09 - 06:22 PM

From the Dallas News:

It's been a year since a healthy majority of American voters elected Barack Obama to change the world. Which is precisely what he's doing.

Like many people who desperately want to see the country take a more progressive course, I quibble and quarrel with some of President Obama's actions. I wish he'd been tougher on Wall Street, quicker to close Guantánamo, more willing to investigate Bush-era excesses, bolder in seeking truly universal health care. I wish he could summon more of the rhetorical magic that spoke so compellingly to the better angels of our nature.


But he's a president, not a Hollywood action hero. Most of my frustration is really with the process of getting anything done in Washington, which is not something Obama can unilaterally change, nimbly circumvent or blithely ignore. One thing the new administration clearly did not anticipate was that Republicans in Congress would be so consistently and unanimously obstructionist – or that Democrats would have to be introduced to the alien concept of party discipline. It took the White House too long to realize that bipartisanship is a tango and that there's no point in dancing alone.

Step back for a moment, though, and look at Obama's record so far. His biggest accomplishment has been keeping the worst financial and economic crisis in decades from turning into another Great Depression.

Yes, the $787 billion stimulus package was messy, but most economists believe it was absolutely necessary – and some believe it should have been even bigger. Yes, Obama continued the Bush-era policy of showering irresponsible financial institutions with billions in public funds. Yes, the administration bailed out the auto industry – and we actually heard the president of the United States reassure Americans that General Motors warranties would be honored.

But these and other actions convinced the financial markets that the White House would do anything to avoid a complete meltdown. The economy grew at a rate of 3.5 percent in the third quarter and, while unemployment may not yet have peaked, the odds of a strong and fairly swift recovery have greatly improved.

Responding to the crisis required creating an enormous fiscal deficit that Obama will spend years trying to cut down to size. But not even the most conservative economists recommend attacking the deficit before the economy is stabilized on a path of growth.

On national security, Obama moved at once to categorically renounce torture. It looks as if Obama will miss his self-imposed one-year deadline for closing the Guantánamo prison, but a delay of a few weeks or months will be worth it if the administration succeeds in developing a comprehensive legal framework – consistent with our ideals and traditions – for bringing terrorism suspects to justice.

Additionally, the administration is on schedule in withdrawing combat troops from Iraq. I don't think Obama knows the right answer on Afghanistan; I'm not sure anybody does.

Obama's months in office have been so action-packed that it's easy to forget some of the historic steps he has taken: Nominating Justice Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. Going to Egypt and speaking directly to the Muslim world about cooperation rather than conflict. Accepting the scientific consensus on climate change.

And then there's health care reform. I've been impatient with Obama's strategy of letting Congress take the lead on writing legislation, but he's brought us to the brink of truly meaningful reform much faster than anyone could have imagined a year ago. We still have some fighting to do over two words – "public" and "option" – but it looks clear that the principle that everyone is entitled to health insurance, a Democratic Party goal for at least six decades, is about to become law.

Quite a record for 287 days: All that, and a Nobel Peace Prize, too.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 04 Nov 09 - 03:46 PM

One year ago, Barack Obama was elected president of the United States. Is his presidency delivering on the promise of his candidacy? Yes. I think he's off to a very good start. But I'm not doing handstands.

I keep Obama's book containing his campaign program, Change We Can Believe In, on my desk. Is Obama doing what he said he would do? Yes, mostly.

It's important to be clear about something. Obama is not a left-wing politician; he's a center/left politician. That's clear when you examine what he ran on last year. He ran on a center/left platform, not a left-wing platform.


Many on the left and the right, either through misunderstanding or pursuit of their own agendas, get this wrong. Each wing imagines (or pretends to imagine) that Obama is a lefty, and alternately prods and assails him on that false basis.

But let's not clear space on Mount Rushmore just yet. Just as I didn't think he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize -- which looks even more premature now than it did when it was announced last month -- yet, as I wrote here on the Huffington Post. I don't think that Obama's very good start equates to a great presidency.

Though Obama may well turn out to be a great president. Let's keep in mind that little of what he's trying to do is easy. He inherited an enormous, complex mess when he took office. And he's only been in office for nine and a half months.

Let's look at what he's done. Actually, for starters, let's look at what he's doing. It's a very expansive and complex agenda. I run his schedule on my site, NewWestNotes.com, with explanations, every day to frame the day. It's hard enough to keep up with all the things Obama is doing. Imagine how hard it would be to try to do all those things.

Here's a look at the biggest things Obama has been up to.


Obama has established an excellent, and elevated, new tone for America, here and abroad. That counts for a lot, even though his foes on the far right insist on trying to bring him down with the most toxic, demonizing sort of politics.

The economy has definitely improved greatly. When Obama took office, there were widespread fears that the system was on the verge of collapse, that we were headed into a New Great Depression. That hasn't happened, and it won't happen. And the economy has finally started growing again. Employment lags, but it is always a lagging indicator.

The economic stimulus program has helped, as has the massive reinflation of the financial system.

Could both those things have been done better? Sure. I wish the stimulus had more infrastructure spending in it and less pork. But that's what you get when Congress plays a heavy hand in writing the plan and you need 60 votes in the Senate.

The other good thing about the stimulus is that most of the money still hasn't been spent. This backloading, which looked bad early this year, looks better now, as this nascent recovery is going to have to be nursed into a full-fledged recovery with a lot more jobs.


In a speech entitled "A New Beginning," President Barack Obama addressed the Muslim world five months ago at Cairo University in Egypt.

The reinflation of a deflating financial system could go better, too. Frankly, it looks like Obama cut a deal with Wall Street -- which still labors under the misapprehension of its unique brilliance even after nearly tanking the global economy -- to exhibit a lighter hand in re-regulation along with all that money that has been poured into the system.

Of course, it's not at all clear that Obama could get really tough financial re-regulations through Congress.

On national health care, it looks like Obama will get a major bill through Congress. It hasn't been pretty and it hasn't been easy.

If it were easy, national health care reform would have already passed sometime in the more than 100 years since it was raised by Teddy Roosevelt. Obama's efforts have been hindered by the loss of his great ally, Ted Kennedy, who would have made an enormous difference in the Senate. Nancy Pelosi has things covered for Obama in the House.

On the environment and energy, Obama has taken major steps. Among other things, he's allowing California to move forward with its landmark climate change program, which had been blocked by the Bush/Cheney Administration, and which other states will follow. He's sharply increased fuel efficiency standards. He's promoting a big green tech industry with a focus on renewable energy and a smart transmission grid.

Because Congress is again a potential roadblock, and because national health care was deemed the priority this year, we won't play a big role in Copenhagen next month when the United Nations will try again to develop a global program on climate change. But Copenhagen is in trouble for other reasons, including the seeming inability of the European Union to come up with a subsidy plan for developing nations.


Obama says that he is surprised that he won the Nobel Peace Prize.

On human rights, Obama has ended the policy of torture that has given America such a black eye around the world. And he is moving to shut down the infamous prison at Guantanamo Bay. But torture is more popular than some would like to think, so closing Gitmo isn't as easy as imagined. The Senate has been unhelpful in that.

On LGBT issues, he's made some moves. But he hasn't been able to end the don't ask/don't tell policy in the military yet. And gay marriage is no closer to reality now than it was a year ago, when it was defeated in California. Even liberal Maine repealed its gay marriage law in yesterday's public vote.

On geopolitics, Obama has moved dramatically to fix relations with the rest of the world. He is really very popular around the world and that helps America. His Cairo address to the Islamic world five months ago was brilliant. He's balancing better relations with mainstream Islam with going after jihadists who threaten America.

Iraq is a troubled country, but we are on schedule to withdraw combat troops as promised. Obama is diplomatically engaging Iran and Syria, and we'll see how that turns out. Israel and Palestine remain, not surprisingly, seemingly intractable. Pakistan, with more aid from America, largely civilian, has rolled back big Taliban gains there. Which brings us to Afghanistan.

Obama has a fateful decision to make on Afghanistan. Actually, he has several, as the sequence of events plays out.

Obama inherited a president, installed by Bush and Cheney after the successful takedown of the Taliban and disruption of Al Qaeda following the 9/11 attacks, who has certainly not worked out. The recent elections there took place -- which they could not have last year -- but have been a disaster.


Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-bradley/obamas-off-to-a-very-good_b_345297.html

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 01 Nov 09 - 01:49 PM

..."The more rightists who win G.O.P. primaries, the greater the Democrats' prospects next year. But the electoral math is less interesting than the pathology of this movement. Its antecedent can be found in the early 1960s, when radical-right hysteria carried some of the same traits we're seeing now: seething rage, fear of minorities, maniacal contempt for government, and a Freudian tendency to mimic the excesses of political foes. Writing in 1964 of that era's equivalent to today's tea party cells, the historian Richard Hofstadter observed that the John Birch Society's "ruthless prosecution" of its own ideological war often mimicked the tactics of its Communist enemies.

The same could be said of Beck, Palin and their acolytes. Though they constantly liken the president to various totalitarian dictators, it is they who are re-enacting Stalinism in full purge mode. They drove out Arlen Specter, and now want to "melt Snowe" (as the blog Red State put it). The same Republicans who once deplored Democrats for refusing to let an anti-abortion dissident, Gov. Robert Casey of Pennsylvania, speak at the 1992 Clinton convention now routinely banish any dissenters in their own camp.

These conservatives' whiny cries of victimization also parrot a tic they once condemned in liberals. After Rush Limbaugh was booted from an ownership group bidding on the St. Louis Rams, he moaned about being done in by the "race card." What actually did him in, of course, was the free-market American capitalism he claims to champion. Limbaugh didn't understand that in an increasingly diverse nation, profit-seeking N.F.L. franchises actually want to court black ticket buyers, not drive them away.

This same note of self-martyrdom was sounded in a much-noticed recent column by the former Nixon hand Pat Buchanan. Ol' Pat sounded like the dispossessed antebellum grandees in "Gone With the Wind" when lamenting the plight of white working-class voters. "America was once their country," he wrote. "They sense they are losing it. And they are right."

They are right. That America was lost years ago, and no national political party can thrive if it lives in denial of that truth. The right still may want to believe, as Palin said during the campaign, that Alaska, with its small black and Hispanic populations, is a "microcosm of America." (New York's 23rd also has few blacks or Hispanics.) But most Americans like their country's 21st-century profile.

That changing complexion is part of why the McCain-Palin ticket lost every demographic group by large margins in 2008 except white senior citizens and the dwindling fifth of America that's still rural. It's also why the G.O.P. has been in a nosedive since the inauguration, whatever Obama's ups and downs. In the latest Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll, only 17 percent of Americans identify themselves as Republicans (as opposed to 30 percent for the Democrats, and 44 for independents).

No wonder even the very conservative Republican contenders in the two big gubernatorial contests this week have frantically tried to disguise their own convictions. The candidate in Virginia, Bob McDonnell, is a graduate of Pat Robertson's university whose career has been devoted to curbing abortion rights, gay civil rights and even birth control. But in this campaign he ditched those issues, disinvited Palin for a campaign appearance, praised Obama's Nobel Prize, and ran a closing campaign ad trumpeting "Hope." Chris Christie, McDonnell's counterpart in New Jersey, posted a campaign video celebrating "Change" in which Obama's face and most stirring campaign sound bites so dominate you'd think the president had endorsed the Republican over his Democratic opponent, Jon Corzine.

Only in the alternative universe of the far right is Obama a pariah and Palin the great white hope. It's become a Beltway truism that the White House's (mild) spat with Fox News is counterproductive because it drives up the network's numbers. But if curious moderate and independent voters are now tempted to surf there and encounter Beck's histrionics for the first time, the president's numbers will benefit as well. To the uninitiated, the tea party crowd comes across like the barflies in "Star Wars."

There is only one political opponent whom Obama really has to worry about at this moment: Hamid Karzai. It's Afghanistan and joblessness, not the Stalinists of the right, that have the power to bring this president down. ...(Frank Rich of the NYT)

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 01 Nov 09 - 11:20 AM

Sawz:

How do you find the sheer hutzpah, or the abysmal stupidity, to try to make the decay of the Bay Bridge a reflection on Obama's infrastructure program? That is really, really, a dumb conflation, implying there is a connection where there is none. Take a darn break.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 01 Nov 09 - 10:08 AM

On the tarmac in the darkness, he stood at attention, saluting, as 18 flag-draped cases were taken off an Air Force C-17 and carried to Port Mortuary by military teams in camouflage fatigues and black berets.

The Halloween-eve parade of death included casualties from America's most horrific day in Afghanistan in four years, and its bloodiest month of the war.

It may have been a photo op, another way Obama could show he was not W., the president who started the Iraq war in a haze of fakery and then declined to ever confront the reality of its dead.

Certainly, as Obama tries to figure out how to avoid being a war president when he's saddled with two wars, he wants as much military cred in the bank as he can get.

But it was also a genuinely poignant moment. It is how we want our presidents to behave, doing the humane thing especially when it's hard. And Obama, who called it "a sobering reminder" of sacrifices made, signaled to Americans that he will resist blinders as he grapples with the byzantine, seemingly bottomless conflicts he inherited.

Leave it to Liz Cheney, in her continuing bid to out-Cheney her scary dad, to suggest that Obama is a crass publicity-seeker.

"I think that what President Bush used to do is do it without the cameras," she told a Fox News radio host.

She's right: There were no press cameras at Dover in the previous administration. There was also no W.

While Bush occasionally visited the wounded and the families of those killed, he never went to Dover to salute the fallen. And he barred any media coverage of it, trying to airbrush the evidence that the wars he started were not the cakewalks he had promised. He did not attend a single funeral. It reflected an emotional and spiritual smallness typical of his administration, like Donald Rumsfeld signing letters to families of dead troops with an autopen and Paul Wolfowitz understating the number of war dead.

Dona Griffin of Terre Haute, Ind., the mother of Army Sgt. Dale Griffin, who was among those Obama saluted, appreciated the president's presence.

"Unless we can see the images and look into the eyes and the faces of those that are sacrificing, we forget," she said on "Good Morning America."

As Obama conducts his White House seminar on war, Dick Cheney accuses him of dithering. He and W. not only didn't dither before Iraq, they never bothered to ask "Whither?" Debate and due diligence were for sissies. Far more fun playing Jove, heedlessly throwing thunderbolts..." (Dowd, NYT)

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: GUEST,beardedbruce
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 09:44 PM

"Most people most of the time will damn one politician (the one they don't like) and praise another politician (the one they do like) for committing exactly the same actions."


This bears repeating- a lot. Yet I will refrain from demanding Obama be impeached for his lies, at least for now...

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 08:00 PM

It's always like that...a matter of perception, depending on one's preset prejudices for and against people. Most people most of the time will damn one politician (the one they don't like) and praise another politician (the one they do like) for committing exactly the same actions.

By the way, I think I snagged the 1200th post a couple posts back, and I wasn't even trying to.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: GUEST,beardedbruce
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 07:29 PM

Amos

"And let me add that Mr Bush certainly created the impression he wanted to hide (and hide from) the consequences of his militaristic adventuring."

Not to those of us who had not already decided that he was hiding. If one read the news, one often saw that he was meeting with those families.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 06:42 PM

I intend to soak my entire body, not just my head. A nice hot bath does wonders for the nerves. ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 06:39 PM

Bruce:

A NYT editorial, sorry I left the tag out. And let me add that Mr Bush certainly created the impression he wanted to hide (and hide from) the consequences of his militaristic adventuring.

Little Hawk, go soak your head.



A