BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 11:10 AM

September 30, 2009

Gore Vidal: 'We'll have a dictatorship soon in the US'
The grand old man of letters Gore Vidal claims America is 'rotting away' — and don't expect Barack Obama to save it

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/the_way_we_live/article6854221.ece

"Last year he famously switched allegiance from Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama during the Democratic nomination process for president. Now, he reveals, he regrets his change of heart. How's Obama doing? "Dreadfully. I was hopeful. He was the most intelligent person we've had in that position for a long time. But he's inexperienced. He has a total inability to understand military matters. He's acting as if Afghanistan is the magic talisman: solve that and you solve terrorism." America should leave Afghanistan, he says. "We've failed in every other aspect of our effort of conquering the Middle East or whatever you want to call it." The "War on Terror" was "made up", Vidal says. "The whole thing was PR, just like 'weapons of mass destruction'. It has wrecked the airline business, which my father founded in the 1930s. He'd be cutting his wrists. Now when you fly you're both scared to death and bored to death, a most disagreeable combination.""

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 10:56 AM

"a war that will be fought to secure control over Iranian oil reserves"

I have to disagree with this. A major concern ( that I have ) is that China will become involved in any Iranian war ( since Iran is a major source of the oil they use.).

IF there is a nuclear war, there WILL BE NO IRANIAN OIL.

It would take about 75 to 150 years to put out the fires ( much less resume production) if a single 50 KT weapon is set off in an oil field.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 09:55 AM

What country does not periodically test its various new weaponry, such as its long range missiles?

You only hear about it on the news, though, if an official "bad guy" country like Iran or North Korea does it. In other words, you only hear about it if it is useful for a western propaganda purpose.

The USA must, I'm sure, frequently test its own advanced weaponry. So must the Israelis. Why do we not regard it as an international crisis when they do? ;-D

As I have said before, the only possible insurance Iran can have against being bombed or invaded by American/Israel forces is to have nuclear weapons in its arsenal and to have an effectivde delivery system for those weapons. If the Iranians are indeed building nuclear weapons, they have every reason to do so. If they are not, then the whole brouhaha in our media is nothing more than an American/Israeli attempt to justify a future war against Iran...a war that will be fought to secure control over Iranian oil reserves, NOT to protect Israel or anyone else from Iranian attacks.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 06:44 AM

A Human Rights Lever for Iran

TOOLBOX
By Andrew Albertson and Ali G. Scotten
Wednesday, September 30, 2009

The situation has changed significantly since the Obama administration's initial offer to talk with Tehran. The post-election protests this summer and the regime's subsequent crackdown have undermined whatever merit the administration may have once seen in a realpolitik negotiations strategy. With the talks looming, the United States cannot pretend that the violence in the streets never happened, but neither can Washington be seen to fold. In fact, it should raise the stakes by broadening the agenda to include human rights.

The critics of diplomacy have a point: Tehran has nothing to lose, and much to gain, by drawing out talks and committing to little. However, beyond diplomacy, the administration's policy options are limited and in all likelihood counterproductive. Broad sanctions of the kind Congress is considering won't work; going after Iran's ability to import gas is likely to simply frustrate ordinary Iranians. Nor would the U.S. negotiating position be bolstered by encouraging Israel to bomb Iran, as John Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has suggested. Far from weakening the regime, these steps would strengthen it politically as Iranians rallied to support the hard-liners around President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad against the perceived bullying of the United States.

So a better approach would be to broaden the agenda to include a focus on human rights. First, President Obama should reiterate in an address (offered on YouTube, so Iranians can view it unfiltered) the benefits for average Iranians if Tehran lives up to its obligations with regard to its nuclear program: the opportunity to emerge from isolation, to have full diplomatic relations with the United States (which would include student and other civic exchange programs), and to benefit from international trade and investment. Second, the administration should make clear its desire for the agenda to include "full compliance with international human rights regimes" -- by Iran, the United States and any other parties to the talks. To further engage the Iranian people, the administration should call for Iranian and international civil society organizations to take part in the dialogue.


This approach would strengthen reformers in Iran and increase pressure on the Ahmadinejad government. Pro-democracy dissidents such as Akbar Ganji have asked the international community to play a more active role by holding the Iranian government to a higher standard on human rights, one that would be more commensurate with the regional role and modern image to which Iran aspires.

Years of sanctions and threats have not weakened the regime. Attacking Iran only unifies its citizens behind its hard-liners. But what did strengthen our position was Obama's clear message to the Iranian people this spring that the United States is not a threat to Iran and that it wishes to see the country emerge from diplomatic isolation. That message shifted Iranians' focus to domestic issues, which include corruption, inflation and economic mismanagement. Rather than rallying people against the United States, this tactic got America out of the way and allowed the Iranian people to confront their unresponsive government on their own terms. Taking a public stance that is respectful of Iranian nationalism while strongly supportive of human rights would further empower and embolden the Iranian people.

Americans, too, will be more approving of any deal that advances rather than dismisses human rights. And diplomatic strategies based on human rights have worked before: The Helsinki Process began as a dialogue that offered respect and recognition to the Soviet government while calling it into open dialogue about human rights that it purported to support.

There is reason to believe Tehran could be goaded into accepting this broader agenda. In his own impish way, Ahmadinejad has all but invited this conversation: In August, his government proposed a $20 million fund to examine the U.S. human rights record and expose its shortcomings. In addition, a letter from the Iranian government sent just before the opening of the U.N. General Assembly last week made countless references to Iran's commitments to principles such as "human values and compassion." Whatever Iran's actual intent, the Obama administration should seize on these openings.

Obama has shown an admirable willingness to speak frankly about U.S. failings in the pursuit and interrogation of terrorist suspects as well as a determination to improve that conduct. That openness is a powerful weapon to wield against an Orwellian leader such as Ahmadinejad. The United States has a strong record on human rights. We should welcome an opportunity to discuss that record and, in doing so, to involve Iranians in a conversation about the rights all individuals deserve.

Washington has been unable to force concessions from the Iranian regime on its own. By broadening our support for the aspirations of ordinary Iranians, the Obama administration can continue to tilt the balance of power in its favor. Such an approach would add pressure on the Iranian regime, enhance domestic political support for talks and maximize the opportunity for successful negotiations.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 06:43 AM

Economists for an Imaginary World

By Harold Meyerson
Wednesday, September 30, 2009

"The worldly philosophers" was economist Robert Heilbroner's term for such great economic thinkers as Adam Smith, Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes and Joseph Schumpeter. Today's free-market economists, by contrast, aren't merely not philosophers. They're not even worldly.

Has any group of professionals ever been so spectacularly wrong? Pre-Copernican astronomers and cosmologists, I suppose, and for the same reason, really: They had an entire, internally consistent, theoretically rich system that described the universe. They were wrong -- the sun and other celestial bodies save the moon didn't actually revolve around the Earth, as they insisted -- but no matter. It was a thing of beauty, their cosmic order. A vast faith was sustained in part by their pseudo-science, a faith from which such free thinkers as Galileo deviated at their own risk.

As it was with the pre- (or anti-) Copernicans, so it is with today's mainstream economists. Theirs is an elegant system, a thing of beauty in itself, as the New York Times' Paul Krugman has argued. It just fails to jell with reality. And unlike the pre-Copernicans, whose dogma posed a threat to those who challenged it but not, at least directly, to anyone else, their latter-day equivalents in the economic profession pose a clear and present danger to the well-being of damned near everyone.

The problem with contemporary economics, at least with the purer strain of free-market economics associated with the University of Chicago, is not simply that it failed to predict the near-collapse of the world financial system last year. The problem is that it believed such a collapse could not happen, that all risk could be quantified by mathematical models and that these quantifications could help us correctly price just about everything. Out of this belief arose the banks' practice of securitization, which put a value on all manner of mortgages and enabled buyers to purchase and swap them with the certainty that such transactions reflected an accurate judgment of the value of the properties and the risks associated with them.


Except, they didn't. So long as economists insisted that they did, however, there really was no need to study such things as bubbles, which only a handful of skeptics and hopelessly retro Keynesians even considered possible. Under mainstream economic theory, which held that everything was correctly priced, bubbles simply couldn't exist.

The one economist who has emerged from the current troubles with his reputation not only intact but enhanced is, of course, Keynes. Every major nation, no matter its economic or political system, has followed Keynes's prescription for combating a major downturn: increasing public spending to fill the gap created by the decline of private spending. That is why the world economy seems to be inching back from collapse and why the nations that have spent the most, China in particular, seem to be recovering fastest.

But Keynes's vision has yet to reestablish itself among economists, who, like the Catholic Church in Galileo's time, aren't about to change their cosmology just because the facts demonstrate that they happen to be wrong. The quants at the banking houses say that they simply failed to sufficiently factor some risks into their mathematical models. Once they do, their system will be corrected, and banks can resume their campaign to securitize everything (as some banks are already doing by establishing a secondary market in life insurance policies).

The problem with that, Robert Skidelsky argues in a new book on economics after the fall, "Keynes: The Return of the Master," is that it neglects one of Keynes's central insights -- that an uncertainty attends human affairs that transcends quantifiable risk. (Skidelsky is also the author of a magisterial three-volume biography of Keynes.) Psychology affects value as much as rational calculation does. Thus the state must ensure against periodic madness in the markets with regulations and social insurance, because madness is a potential threat in markets just as it is in other human endeavors -- because the market is a human endeavor, not reducible to a mathematical construct.

Will contemporary economists ever accept this last precept? In the 1970s, a wry economist named Robert Lekachman observed that economics students had to master so much mathematics that they became emotionally invested in the idea that the math they had learned explained -- had to explain -- the universe. Skidelsky calls for combining the postgraduate course in macroeconomics with another discipline -- history or psychology, say -- to expose young quants to the complexities of human institutions.

If mainstream economics doesn't change, however, it may eventually face the worst of all possible fates: market failure. How many students want to spend their lives quantifying a world that doesn't exist?

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 06:41 AM

The World Is a Fire Hydrant


By Kathleen Parker
Wednesday, September 30, 2009

In keeping with his campaign promise to talk to America's enemies without precondition, Barack Obama plans to turn his charms on Burma's military junta. Slowly, we're beginning to understand what hope and change were all about. Translation: Sure hope this change works.

It may be too soon to pass judgment on Obama's new foreign policy strategy, but early returns on his gamble that talking is the best cure are less than reassuring. Each time Obama extends a hand to one of the world's anti-American despots, he is rewarded with an insult (Venezuela's Hugo Chavez) or, perhaps, a missile display (North Korea and Iran).

One may view these episodes as diminishing America's status or as a tolerable annoyance -- sort of the way Dobermans view toy poodles. At some point, the big dog reminds the little yapper of his place. Unfortunately, the American commander in chief is a cat in a dog-eat-dog world.

Obama inarguably was elected in part as a reaction to George W. Bush's big-dawgness. A new American archetype, Obama is the anti-macho man, a new-age intellectual who defeated the old-guard warrior. Whether he can win with his wits in the larger theater remains to be seen, but watching could be painful.

The shift in policy toward Burma, for instance, was announced Monday following the annual theater of the absurd, a.k.a. the U.N. General Assembly. Obama spoke eloquently there about the need for cooperation as the world tackles global problems, hitting his familiar theme of responsibility. All countries -- not just the U.S. -- have a role to play in combating crises around the world, he told the happy gathering of superpowers, banana republics, dictatorships and terrorist states.

Perfectly timed for comedians with writer's block, Obama was followed by Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi, with whom Obama shook hands at a dinner in July. It isn't helpful that Gaddafi looks like a renegade from Ringling Bros. Or that just weeks ago, he hosted a welcome-home celebration for the 1988 Lockerbie bomber-terrorist, who killed 270 people. But Gaddafi's 96-minute diatribe -- which included questioning the assassination of John F. Kennedy and expressing sympathy for the Taliban -- was a prolonged assault on sane people everywhere.

In the midst of such charades, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's emerging Dirty Harry persona is oddly reassuring. Often speaking through nearly clenched teeth, she has become Obama's bad cop. On Burma, she has promised to remain tough and continue sanctions pending credible democratic reforms. But, she has added dutifully, sanctions alone haven't gotten us very far.

Surely, talking is worth a shot. Or is it?

In the previous administration, the conventional wisdom was that talking to bad actors lent legitimacy where none was deserved. Bush, for instance, ignored Chavez, believing that acknowledgment was empowerment.

Chavez responded by referring to Bush as the devil no fewer than eight times during his 2006 U.N. address. This year, Chavez complimented but also chided Obama for saying one thing and doing another. There may be two Obamas, he said. And more than a few Americans thought he might have a point.

One Obama is loquacious and inspiring. The other seems somewhat removed from threatening realities and people who don't share our appreciation for visionary rhetoric. Some folks simply aren't talk-able. Some nations -- no matter how well-intentioned, sincere and earnest we are -- just aren't that into us.

Chavez and Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, brothers in their own declared "axis of unity," are cases in point. United in their animus toward the U.S., they've become so close they're practically exchanging jewelry. Better than that, they're building financial partnerships that may make sanctions irrelevant and, in a "Memorandum of Understanding," have promised each other military support and cooperation.

While in New York last week, Chavez did a little PR work, appearing on "Larry King Live." The former altar boy said he loves Jesus, Walt Whitman and Charles Bronson, and that he loves to sing. He isn't power hungry, as some claim, nor is he mining uranium for Ahmadinejad, as suggested in a report last December by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

He, alas, has been misunderstood.

And Iran? Just days before Obama and five other leaders are scheduled to meet in Geneva Oct. 1 to discuss Iran's nuclear ambitions, the Islamic Republic test-fired long-range missiles.

In the new era of talk diplomacy, we might call that a pre-emptive strike -- a nonverbal gesture worth a million moot words. Then again, there's always hope.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 06:38 AM

Advice From NATO
The alliance's chief doesn't believe in an Afghan 'exit strategy.'

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

PRESIDENT OBAMA'S very public wavering over whether to stick with the strategy for Afghanistan that he adopted six months ago is producing some unusual spectacles. One is the awkward gap that has opened between the president and the military commander he appointed in June, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who drew up a plan to implement the strategy -- only to learn he had been left out on a limb that might be sawn off. Another is the lobbying of the president by NATO allies who find themselves trying to keep the United States from abandoning the mission they joined. Their spokesman in Washington this week has been the NATO secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who in a diplomatic but direct way has been telling Mr. Obama that "we don't need a new strategy."

Mr. Rasmussen, a former prime minister of Denmark who took over the NATO post in August, made that remark in a meeting with us Tuesday. The day before he delivered a speech at the Atlantic Council in which he said that the 41-member international alliance in Afghanistan must "do more now, if we want to be able to do less later." While not specifically addressing Gen. McChrystal's request for the deployment of tens of thousands more U.S. troops, Mr. Rasmussen called for a greatly stepped-up effort to train the Afghan army and jump-start development programs through the Afghan government. "None of this will be easy," he said. "We will need to have patience. We will need more resources. And we will lose more young soldiers."

In our conversation, Mr. Rasmussen made clear that he sees no alternative to the principles that Mr. Obama endorsed in March and that Gen. McChrystal made the basis of his plan: protection of the Afghan population and support for the creation of an effective and accountable Afghan government. "Basically I share [Gen. McChrystal's] view," Mr. Rasmussen said. "The essence of his view is to pursue a more population-centered approach." The right policy, Mr. Rasmussen said, "is definitely not an exit strategy. It's of crucial importance to stress that we will stay as long as it takes to stabilize the country."

Mr. Obama recently questioned whether support for the Afghan government was an essential U.S. interest. But Mr. Rasmussen stressed that "we need a stable government in Afghanistan, a government that we can deal with. Otherwise we would be faced with constant instability in Afghanistan and in the region." Some in and outside the administration are advocating a more limited strategy centered on strikes against terrorist targets with drones and Special Forces troops. But Mr. Rasmussen said, "we need more than just hitting individual targets in the mountains. We need to stabilize the Afghan society. We need to create . . . a society with a government that reflects the will of the people."

"I think it would be appropriate if I indicated that a [strategy] aimed at hitting some targets in the mountains and in Pakistan would not find broad support among the allies," said the NATO chief.

Mr. Rasmussen pointed out that NATO is still deeply invested in the Afghan mission: There are 38,000 troops there from countries other than the United States, and soldiers from 13 armies are fighting alongside the Americans on the main southern battlefronts. If Mr. Obama decides to abandon or scale back the fight against the Taliban, not only U.S. and Afghan interests will be affected; the Atlantic alliance will suffer its own strategic setback.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 10:13 PM

"Where, in fact, was the crisis?

In fact, there was none. The supposedly secret installation had been known to Western intelligence agencies -- Britain, France, the United States and undoubtedly Israel -- for several years. Its existence had been deduced by intelligence analysts from Iranian purchases abroad, and it was pinpointed sometime afterward. What had changed was that news of it had gone public. This happened not because Obama announced it but because the Iranians beat him to it after discovering that their cover was blown. They then turned themselves in to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna and, as usual, said the site was intended for the peaceful use of nuclear energy."

Bingo! There is, in fact, no crisis at all, but there is another excercise in media-created hype and propaganda underway which can always be potentially used to stoke war fever against Iran.

The Iranians have the best reasons in the world to want to develop nuclear weapons....those reasons being to deter a long-threatened attack on Iran by either the USA or Israel or both. Once the Iranians have their own nuclear weapons in place, they will finally have a genuine deterrent to such an attack, so whey would they not be trying to build a nuclear weapon?

On the other hand, they also have a legal right to enrich nuclear fuel for peaceful purposes (generating electricity) if they wish to, so their fuel enrichment program is not an illegal program in itself...but the West can always use the old WMD scare tactic as an excuse to justify a pre-emptive attack on Iran.

This is the old "My neighbour was planning to shoot me, you see. So that's why I went over to his place last night, broke in, and shot him instead. I was only defending myself."

That is the rationale that Israel and the USA repeatedly use for pre-emptively attacking other nations. No one else IN THE WORLD seems to have the gall to even trot out such a rationale, but the USA and Israel think they have a special dispensation from God or something, so they do it without shame.

Try using this same bizarre rationale in the real world as a private individual. See how the cops deal with it, and see where it gets you. It gets you arrested as a murderer.

Unfortunately, there is no international cop large enough to arrest either Israel or the USA for naked aggression, so the farce goes on and on.

The only possible thing Iran CAN do to secure their own borders against such an attack is to HAVE nuclear weapons in place, with effective delivery systems, and to let everyone know just as soon as those weapons are operational.

Or they could just surrender....open their borders to a permanent American-Israeli occupation force...dismantle their own government...disarm their military...give the West control over all their oil...and give up their existence as an independent nation.

Which would you do if you were an Iranian? I know it would not be the second.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 12:47 PM

PRUDEN: Reality bites Obama's 'West Wing'

By Wesley Pruden

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

The White House is a risky place for on-the-job training, as Barack Obama and the rest of us are learning. But the president doesn't deserve all the blame for the installation of a handsome but unprepared matinee idol in the toughest job in the world. The adoring cult, the 53 percent of the giddily oblivious electorate that took a flyer on Election Day, deserves most of it.

Matinee idols only do what matinee idols do, look pretty and inveigle softly with practiced seductiveness. Trouble arrives when the matinee idol and his public confuse role with reality. Reality arrives with the surprise and impact of a lemon-cream pie in the face.

Nasty surprises abound across the real world. Iran completes a third round of testing of Shahab-3 and Sajjil medium-range missiles capable of hitting not only Israel, Eastern Europe and several Middle Eastern countries but, if all that were not sobering enough, several U.S military bases as well. Venezuela boasts that it's working with Russia and Iran in finding sources of uranium, the key ingredient of nuclear weapons technology. China says it will display new "upgraded missiles" in celebration of the 60th anniversary of the founding of Red China. India announces that it can now make nuclear weapons up to a strength of 200 kilotons, four times over the line that the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty pledges signing nations not to cross.

This is the fine mess Barack Obama told us would never happen if Americans would elect him to soothe the fears of the frightened and bank the ambitions of evildoers of the world. Suddenly, the president has to deal with headaches, a thousand town halls, with hundreds of thousands of angry bigots, racists and Nazis of hysterical liberal imagination jeering his scheme to take over the health care of the nation, never prepared him for. He's got headaches no speechwriter can cure.

Headache No. 1 is Iran, where Mahmoud Ahmadinejad taunts Mr. Obama and the dazed leaders of the West. Mr. Obama may be the most puzzled of all. He went many thousands of miles out of his way to apologize for the sins of the evil country he's the president of, promising with servile humility to hector us to do better. For his efforts, he learns that the Iranians have not only not disbanded their nuclear-bomb factory, but have added another to enrich uranium, and dared Mr. Obama and the West to do anything about it. "We are going to respond to any military action in a crushing manner," boasts the chief of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Air Force, "and it doesn't make any difference which country or regime has launched the aggression." A teleprompter won't be much protection against an incoming nuclear missile.

Who can blame the Iranians for thinking they have Mr. Obama's number? The more that soft diplomacy doesn't work, the softer diplomacy becomes. Robert M. Gates, the president's defense secretary, says he's sure Mr. Ahmadinejad intends to build nuclear weapons, but he doesn't know what anyone can do about it except talk some more. "The reality is, there is no military option that does anything more than buy time." (But when that time runs out, couldn't the military just buy some more?)

There are signs that the Europeans, so eager only a year ago to march to the music of the piper from Hyde Park, are sobering up like the millions of independent voters who have stepped out of the parade in America. The buzz about Barack Obama at international conferences is no longer about how strong and artful he is in the presidential role, but how naive and artless reality has revealed him to be. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France is said to have told confidants that he thinks the American president is "weak."

Clark Judge, a recent delegate to the annual Global Security Review conference in Geneva, sponsored by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, was surprised by the emerging "wide skepticism" of the president. "The impression emerged for me," he says, "that Mr. Obama's riveting rhetoric is in danger of turning from a plus to a minus." One former foreign minister scorns the president's "pointless rhetoric, no matter how elegantly expressed."

Reality is an unforgiving teacher, and inevitably grades on a steep curve. Mr. Obama imagined last year that he was auditioning to replace Martin Sheen on the television serial "West Wing." He's learning better now.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 12:43 PM

Without Bush, media lose interest in war caskets

By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
September 29, 2009   

Remember the controversy over the Pentagon policy of not allowing the press to take pictures of the flag-draped caskets of American war dead as they arrived in the United States? Critics accused President Bush of trying to hide the terrible human cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"These young men and women are heroes," Vice President Biden said in 2004, when he was senator from Delaware. "The idea that they are essentially snuck back into the country under the cover of night so no one can see that their casket has arrived, I just think is wrong."

In April of this year, the Obama administration lifted the press ban, which had been in place since the Persian Gulf War in 1991. Media outlets rushed to cover the first arrival of a fallen U.S. serviceman, and many photographers came back for the second arrival, and then the third.

But after that, the impassioned advocates of showing the true human cost of war grew tired of the story. Fewer and fewer photographers showed up. "It's really fallen off," says Lt. Joe Winter, spokesman for the Air Force Mortuary Affairs Operations Center at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where all war dead are received. "The flurry of interest has subsided."

That's an understatement. When the casket bearing Air Force Tech. Sgt. Phillip Myers, of Hopewell, Va., arrived at Dover the night of April 5 -- the first arrival in which press coverage was allowed -- there were representatives of 35 media outlets on hand to cover the story. Two days later, when the body of Army Spc. Israel Candelaria Mejias, of San Lorenzo, Puerto Rico, arrived, 17 media outlets were there. (All the figures here were provided by the Mortuary Affairs Operations Center.) On subsequent days in April, there were nearly a dozen press organizations on hand to cover arrivals.

Fast forward to today. On Sept. 2, when the casket bearing the body of Marine Lance Cpl. David Hall, of Elyria, Ohio, arrived at Dover, there was just one news outlet -- the Associated Press -- there to record it. The situation was pretty much the same when caskets arrived on Sept. 5, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 16, 22, 23 and 26. There has been no television coverage at all in September.

The media can cover arrivals only when the family gives its permission. In all the examples above, the families approved, which is more often than not the case; since the policy was changed, according to the Mortuary Affairs Office, 60 percent of families have said yes to full media coverage.

But these days, the press hordes that once descended on Dover are gone, and there's usually just one organization on hand. The Associated Press, which supplies photos to 1,500 U.S. newspapers and 4,000 Web sites, has had a photographer at every arrival for which permission was granted. "It's our belief that this is important, that surely somewhere there is a paper, an audience, a readership, a family and a community for whom this homecoming is indeed news," says Paul Colford, director of media relations for AP. "It's been agreed internally that this is a responsibility for the AP to be there each and every time it is welcome."

Colford says the AP has a photographer who lives within driving distance of Dover and is able to make it to the arrivals, no matter what time of day or night. As for the network news, it's not so simple; a night arrival means overtime pay for a union camera crew. And then there's the question of convenience. "It seems that if the weather is nice, and it's during the day, we get a higher level of media to come down," says Lt. Winter. "But a majority of our transfers occur in the early evening and overnight."

So far this month, 38 American troops have been killed in Afghanistan. For all of 2009, the number is 220 -- more than any other single year and more than died in 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004 combined.

With casualties mounting, the debate over U.S. policy in Afghanistan is sharp and heated. The number of arrivals at Dover is increasing. But the journalists who once clamored to show the true human cost of war are nowhere to be found.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 06:52 AM

Time to Act Like a President

By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Sooner or later it is going to occur to Barack Obama that he is the president of the United States. As of yet, though, he does not act that way, appearing promiscuously on television and granting interviews like the presidential candidate he no longer is. The election has been held, but the campaign goes on and on. The candidate has yet to become commander in chief.

Take last week's Group of 20 meeting in Pittsburgh. There, the candidate-in-full commandeered the television networks and the leaders of Britain and France to give the Iranians a dramatic warning. Yet another of their secret nuclear facilities had been revealed and Obama, as anyone could see, was determined to do something about it -- just don't ask what.

The entire episode had a faux Cuban missile crisis quality to it. Something menacing had been discovered -- not Soviet missiles a mere 100 miles or so off Florida but an Iranian nuclear installation about 100 miles from Tehran. As befitting the occasion, various publications supplied us with nearly minute-by-minute descriptions of the crisis atmosphere earlier in the week at the U.N. session -- the rushing from room to room, presidential aides conferring, undoubtedly aware that they were in the middle of a book they had yet to write. I scanned the accounts looking for familiar names. Where was McNamara? Where was Bundy? Where, in fact, was the crisis?

In fact, there was none. The supposedly secret installation had been known to Western intelligence agencies -- Britain, France, the United States and undoubtedly Israel -- for several years. Its existence had been deduced by intelligence analysts from Iranian purchases abroad, and it was pinpointed sometime afterward. What had changed was that news of it had gone public. This happened not because Obama announced it but because the Iranians beat him to it after discovering that their cover was blown. They then turned themselves in to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna and, as usual, said the site was intended for the peaceful use of nuclear energy. These Persians lie like a rug.

No one should believe Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Iran seems intent on developing a nuclear weapons program and the missiles capable of delivering them. This -- not the public revelations of a known installation -- is the real crisis, possibly one that can only end in war. It is entirely possible that Israel, faced with that chilling cliche -- an existential threat -- will bomb Iran's nuclear facilities. What would happen next is anyone's guess -- retaliation by Hamas and Hezbollah, an unprecedented spike in oil prices and then, after a few years or less, a resumption of Iran's nuclear program. Only the United States has the capability to obliterate Tehran's underground facilities. Washington may have to act.

For a crisis such as this, the immense prestige of the American presidency ought to be held in reserve. Let the secretary of state issue grave warnings. When Obama said in Pittsburgh that Iran is "going to have to come clean and they are going to have to make a choice," it had the sound of an ultimatum. But what if the Iranians don't? What then? A president has to be careful with such language. He better mean what he says.

The trouble with Obama is that he gets into the moment and means what he says for that moment only. He meant what he said when he called Afghanistan a "war of necessity" -- and now is not necessarily so sure. He meant what he said about the public option in his health-care plan -- and then again maybe not. He would not prosecute CIA agents for getting rough with detainees -- and then again maybe he would.

Most tellingly, he gave Congress an August deadline for passage of health-care legislation -- "Now, if there are no deadlines, nothing gets done in this town . . . " -- and then let it pass. It seemed not to occur to Obama that a deadline comes with a consequence -- meet it or else.

Obama lost credibility with his deadline-that-never-was, and now he threatens to lose some more with his posturing toward Iran. He has gotten into a demeaning dialogue with Ahmadinejad, an accomplished liar. (The next day, the Iranian used a news conference to counter Obama and, days later, Iran tested some intermediate-range missiles.) Obama is our version of a Supreme Leader, not given to making idle threats, setting idle deadlines, reversing course on momentous issues, creating a TV crisis where none existed or, unbelievably, pitching Chicago for the 2016 Olympics. Obama's the president. Time he understood that.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 29 Sep 09 - 06:50 AM

Obama's Dick Cheney Moment

By Benjamin Wittes
Tuesday, September 29, 2009

President Obama's decision not to go to Congress for help in establishing reasonable standards for the continued detention of Guantanamo detainees is a failure of leadership in the project of putting American law on a sound basis for a long-term confrontation with terrorism. It is bad for the country, for national security and for civil liberties. It represents a virtually wholesale adoption of the failed policies of his predecessor -- who, with equal obtuseness, refused to root American detention practices in clear law approved by the legislature and similarly failed to learn from repeated Supreme Court rebukes to this unilateral approach. It violates Obama's much-noted statement this spring that he would "work with Congress to develop an appropriate legal regime so that our efforts are consistent with our values and our Constitution." And it delegates a profound and difficult policymaking exercise to the judiciary and, ultimately, to a single man on the Supreme Court.

The only point in Obama's defense is that few political actors have given him reason to think he would have responsible partners if he did the right thing. Human rights and civil liberties activists are so keen to avoid legitimizing detention in legislation that they have treated as a victory the president's decision to adopt the very policy they have spent the past eight years denouncing.

Congress is not looking statesmanlike either. Republicans have been too busy making political hay out of Obama's sputtering closure of Guantanamo to act as constructive participants in this important legislative project. Democrats, always afraid of their shadows on national security issues, have hidden behind civil liberties platitudes that most do not really believe. Members across the spectrum have acted boldly only when it comes to making sure that no Guantanamo detainees end up in their districts.

But it is Obama who is president, and presidents go to war with the Congress and civil society they have, not the Congress and civil society they wish they had.

Obama's decision will have several major consequences, all of them bad.

First, while it will not stop detentions, it will ensure that the ground rules for those detentions remain murky, ever-shifting and unclear to agencies that have to conduct operations in the field. This uncertainty will encumber operations and create perverse incentives for both targeted killings and for detentions by allied proxy forces that don't have to go through eight years of litigation to neutralize a suspected enemy fighter.

Second, it leaves in place a system of judicial review of Guantanamo detentions that ill-serves detainees and government alike. The current system of making policy and reviewing detentions through habeas corpus litigation serves the government badly because the standards are unstable and evidence collected one day for intelligence purposes proves useless in justifying detentions years later when the rules shift, judges grow less comfortable and that material suddenly has to serve as evidence in court. It serves detainees badly because review has been painfully slow and detainees in habeas get only one bite at the apple. If a detainee loses his habeas case, that's it. By contrast, most proposals for long-term detention laws involve regular review and ongoing oversight, giving many more opportunities for error correction and for detainees to convince authorities that they no longer pose a danger that requires their incarceration.

Third, the failure to go to Congress to write the rules means that the rules for detention will be written by judges. So far, the judges who have heard habeas cases have disagreed about a great many central issues -- many of which the Supreme Court will ultimately have to resolve. The high court, which has not a single national security expert, may end up making good policy or bad. But because the Supreme Court is ideologically split on these issues, it seems likely that its swing justice, Anthony Kennedy, will play a disproportionate role in writing the rules of the road. Is it really better to hand this complex policy problem over to the whim of a single unelected detention czar in robes than to ask the legislature to decide when America is going to detain alleged terrorists, under what rules and with what rights?

There exists perhaps no area of national policy in which President Obama entered office with greater opportunity to create a new politics than the law of counterterrorism. Many conservatives understood that President Bush's executive-power approach had not succeeded in sustaining robust presidential power to confront the enemy. Many liberals, conversely, understood that the left's dream of a pure law enforcement model for defeating al-Qaeda was a fantasy. Obama ran on a platform of "change," and this was an area where constructive change required, first and foremost, presidential leadership.

We may never know what would have happened had Obama been willing to divert some portion of his prestige from health care to the creation of a political coalition for strong counterterrorism measures rooted in statutory powers debated and passed by the people's representatives.

How very curious, though, that so much of American political culture finds it more comfortable for him to get in touch with his inner Dick Cheney than to try.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 25 Sep 09 - 07:17 PM

It was only a matter of time. The Hour of Destiny looms near.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Riginslinger
Date: 25 Sep 09 - 05:11 PM

So, Little Hawk, did you see this headline:   "Biden swears in Kirk as successor to Sen. Kennedy"

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 25 Sep 09 - 02:33 PM

Reagan's Missile Defense Triumph

By Andrew Nagorski
Friday, September 25, 2009

If Ronald Reagan was watching the news from afar last week, he had to be smiling. Not because of President Obama's decision to abandon the planned deployment of a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic. Reagan certainly wouldn't like the political symbolism of that gesture -- walking away from an agreement with two allies in Central Europe and appearing to bend to pressure from the Kremlin. As a partisan fighter, he would be in line with the Republican chorus of disapproval.

But on a more fundamental level, Reagan would recognize that the announcement represents a watershed moment in American politics. It signals that, for the first time since Reagan made his "Star Wars" speech in 1983 spelling out his vision of a missile shield that would protect the United States against nuclear attack, both political parties have accepted his notion that the country needs an effective missile defense system. The debate is no longer focused on whether to build such a system but on what kind of system will do the job better against what sorts of threats.

In the Reagan era, almost all Democrats and even some Republicans felt the president was dangerously delusional in believing such a system could work, and even more dangerous for promoting it. After all, the Cold War premise was MAD: Mutually assured destruction relied on the knowledge of each superpower's vulnerability to nuclear attack to prevent the rockets from flying. Any attempt to suggest that mutual destruction wouldn't be inevitable once nuclear weapons were used, the thinking went, increased the chances of a huge miscalculation with devastating consequences.

Many Democrats conveniently forgot that Jimmy Carter, during the final year of his administration, modified MAD by accepting Defense Secretary Harold Brown's concept of a "countervailing strategy." In essence, this meant trying to bomb select targets in the Soviet Union first, seeking to force that country's surrender before its total destruction or a retaliatory strike. When Reagan took the notion of a winnable war further by proclaiming his Strategic Defense Initiative, he wasn't about to get significant support from the other side of the aisle.

Fast-forward to the presidency of George W. Bush. Once again, many Democrats instinctively opposed his plan to deploy a missile defense system in Central Europe. While Republicans like to say the Democrats' motivation was softness toward the Kremlin, there were still liberal stalwarts who hated the idea of any missile defense system, believing that it would undermine disarmament efforts. That's why Obama's cautious, noncommittal pronouncements on missile defense during the 2008 campaign worried some of his most fervent supporters as well as his opponents.

But now the president has argued that his plan will produce "stronger, smarter, swifter" missile defense than the Bush alternative. In other words, the Obama administration's line, as spelled out by the president, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and others, is unambiguous when it comes to embracing missile defense as a necessary component of the U.S. arsenal. By focusing on the more immediate threat of Iranian short- and medium-range missiles, it will also be concentrated on projecting American power to defend Europe and the Middle East in the first instance -- while effectively putting off the question of how best to defend the homeland against intercontinental ballistic missiles (from Iran or any other country) further down the line.

All of this has generated headlines that Obama has turned the Reagan concept of missile defense on its head, since he has reversed the order of priorities. There's some truth in those statements, but they all relate to tactics, not principle. The larger point is that, in political terms, Obama has done for missile defense what Bill Clinton did for welfare reform. Once Clinton embraced welfare reform, an initiative launched by Republicans and instinctively hated by many Democrats, the debate turned to the questions of what kind of reform and on what terms, rather than treating the old welfare system as untouchable.

So, too, with missile defense and the overall national security strategy. Republicans argue that Obama has allowed too many cuts in missile defense programs, even before last week's decision, to argue credibly that he will strengthen our deterrent capability. But now his administration's priority is to prove those critics wrong by building a system that will be effective not just against short- and medium-range missiles but, when needed in the future, also against intercontinental ballistic missiles.

You can bet that Obama does not want to run in 2012 on a platform proclaiming that the country has no need for a strong missile defense system. Quite the contrary. Which means Ronald Reagan's vision is now a bipartisan one -- and fully vindicated.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 25 Sep 09 - 01:37 PM

Yeah, I guess. ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Riginslinger
Date: 25 Sep 09 - 12:22 PM

Better than Klingons, I suppose...

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 25 Sep 09 - 09:36 AM

And Republicans as Ferengi...

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Riginslinger
Date: 25 Sep 09 - 07:42 AM

Yeah, but they always feature Democrats as Troglodytes.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 25 Sep 09 - 12:32 AM

God, the tedium...!

I like Star Trek, Rig, mainly because of its progressive social philosophy. That show was way ahead of its time. Then too, there's that sly twinkle that Kirk gets in his eye now and then...

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: GUEST,beardedbruce
Date: 24 Sep 09 - 10:10 PM

NEA communications director resigns

The National Endowment for the Arts said Thursday that its communications director, Yosi Sergant, has resigned.

"This afternoon Yosi Sergant submitted his resignation from the National Endowment for the Arts. His resignation has been accepted and is effective immediately," said a spokeswoman, Sally Gifford, in a statement.

Sergant, who helped make artist Shepard Fairey's "Hope" image ubiquitous as an organizer of Obama campaign support from artists, had seemed to mix the NEA's work -- essentially non-partisan politics -- with the administration's legislative agenda on a conference call reported on by Andrew Breitbart's new conservative site, Big Government.

"I would encourage you to pick something, whether it's health care, education, the environment, you know, there's four key areas that the corporation has identified as the areas of service," Sergant told artists on the call, which he reportedly invited some of them to attend. "My ask would be to apply artistic, you know, your artistic creative communities utilities and bring them to the table," he said.

Texas Senator John Cornyn, among critics, complained that the call politicized subjected the agency to "political manipulation, though the NEA initially defended the call. NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman later said the call "inappropriate" and that Sergant had acted "unilaterally" in helping to organize it.

"This call was completely unrelated to NEA's grantmaking, which is highly regarded for its independence and integrity," Landesman said.

The White House has sought to downplay the story, which has gotten little mainstream media attention, despite heavy coverage on the right. But it did issue new guidelines aimed at preventing politics from mixing with agency business.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: GUEST,beardedbruce
Date: 24 Sep 09 - 03:59 PM

TARP inspector to say transparency 'attitude' on bailout frustrating

By Silla Brush - 09/24/09 12:00 AM ET

The government is failing to disclose the full details of how the $700 billion bailout of the financial sector has been implemented, the program's top government watchdog will say on Thursday.

Neil Barofsky, the Special Inspector General over the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), will testify to Congress that the government's "basic attitude" on the transparency and accountability of the program "remains a significant frustration."

"TARP largely remains a program in which taxpayers are not being told what most of the TARP recipients are doing with their money and will not be told the full details of how their money is being invested," Barofsky will say.

The Obama administration has worked to increase the transparency of the TARP program, which began in October 2008 at the height of the financial crisis, and Barofsky will say the TARP program has become less opaque since his office got under way in December.

"Treasury remains committed to working closely with all of our overseers to ensure taxpayer funds are used prudently and effectively," a Treasury Department spokesman said. "Treasury has already implemented the vast majority of their recommendations and has worked actively to incorporate SIGTARP early in the development of processes regarding TARP programs."

Despite his concerns about transparency and accountability, Barofsky will testify the TARP program has been essential to shoring up the economy and restoring a measure of stability to the economy.

However, the government will likely never be repaid all the money it invested, according to Barofsky. Forty-one banks have already repaid more than a combined $70 billion, but hundreds of banks, General Motors, Chrysler, AIG and the broader housing market continue to rely on the program.

"It is extremely unlikely that the taxpayer will see a full return on its TARP investment," Barofsky will say.

Democrats increasingly praise the TARP program as a necessary step that helped the economy avert a meltdown, and they have lauded the repaid money as evidence that the rescue package is working. Meanwhile, Republicans are critical of the program for extending taxpayer money to failing private companies and creating a culture where troubled businesses look to the federal government for a bailout.

Barofsky also will warn that it is unclear that the government rescue package has done much to increase the amount of bank lending or yet to remove toxic assets from bank balance sheets. Those were two of the program's initial aims. Moreover, the commercial real estate market "might be the next proverbial shoe to drop," Barofsky will caution.

The Treasury Department soon will start to report more details about how TARP recipients are using the money, including their total investments and their repayments of debt obligations. The department will not report on how specific firms allocate funds. "We remain puzzled as to why Treasury refuses to adopt our recommendation to report on each TARP recipient's use of TARP funds," Barofsky will say.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Riginslinger
Date: 24 Sep 09 - 02:38 PM

I think Little Hawk is right on all counts, but I what's his attraction to Star Trek?

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: GUEST,beardedbruce
Date: 24 Sep 09 - 02:05 PM

Talking Transparency Isn't the Same as Seeing It Through

By Dana Milbank
Thursday, September 24, 2009

Somewhere, in a secure, undisclosed location, John Ashcroft is chuckling.

President Obama campaigned on a promise to restore transparency to government. But now the time has come to renew the USA Patriot Act, the bete noire of civil libertarians. When the Obama administration's point man on the legislation came to Capitol Hill on Wednesday, he sounded very much like his predecessors in the Bush administration.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, asked Assistant Attorney General David Kris whether the administration would support congressional oversight as part of the Patriot Act. "We don't have a position on anything particularly yet," Kris answered.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairman of the Intelligence Committee, asked whether the Democrats' proposed changes to the Patriot Act would impede current investigations. "We're not going to discuss classified matters here, and also there is this Justice Department policy about commenting on ongoing investigations," the official commented.

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) pointed out that of the several hundred "sneak and peek" search warrants issued under the Patriot Act, only three were for terrorism cases and most were for drugs. "I guess it's not surprising to me that it applies in drug cases," Kris replied.

Feingold was surprised by the witness's lack of surprise. "As I recall, it was in something called the USA Patriot Act," he said scornfully, "which was passed in a rush after an attack on 9/11 that had to do with terrorism."

The performance must have been disheartening for Democrats, because Kris was supposed to be one of the good guys. Once a Clinton and Bush Justice Department official, he scolded his former Bush colleagues in 2006 for their "weak justification" of the warrantless wiretapping program.

But if disappointing, Kris's guardedness was to be expected. Obama may

have promised new openness, but "so far, the continuities between the Obama and Bush administration overwhelm the differences," says Steven Aftergood, who runs the Project on Government Secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists.

Obama gets credit for making public a 2004 report on CIA interrogations and Justice Department torture memos, and for releasing more records of White House visitors. He restored news coverage of returning caskets of fallen soldiers. On Wednesday, he earned mixed reviews from civil libertarians when he signaled an intention to keep fewer things hidden under the "state secrets" policy.


But transparency advocates such as Aftergood and Elizabeth Goitein of the Brennan Center point to many more shortfalls: refusing to release information about detainees held at the Bagram detention facility in Afghanistan, reneging on a decision to release photos of detainee abuse, using signing statements to undermine legislation, defending the granting of immunity to telecom companies that participated in the wiretap program, and opposing a request that all intelligence committee members be briefed on covert operations.

Of course, these moves could be evidence that Obama is being cautious and responsible as campaigning yields to governing. But whatever the reason, civil libertarians have reason to feel that Obama sold them a bill of goods -- and Wednesday's hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee was unlikely to change this feeling.

Kris began by requesting renewal of the three expiring provisions of the Patriot Act. Leahy has introduced a bill that would extend the provisions while also adding a few new protections, but Kris wasn't at liberty to discuss these.

Leahy asked whether Kris would agree to an effort to stop the abuse of "national security letters," which have been used to obtain bank and medical records without warrants. "We don't have an official administration position on that element of your bill or the others," the witness informed the chairman.

Feinstein fared no better when she asked whether the Justice Department would have a problem with requiring that there be "reasonable grounds to believe that the information sought is at least relevant to an authorized investigation."

"That's a position we'd like to work through in an orderly fashion," Kris demurred. Feinstein asked another question, and Kris repeated his wish not to "get into anything classified or operational."

The other committee members got similar answers: "I would be reluctant to discuss that in an open hearing. . . . I think I should defer getting into the possibly classified details of anything here. . . . I wouldn't put it the way you've just put it, Senator." When Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) pointed out a problem with one of the Patriot Act procedures, Kris labeled the senator "a very precise and careful technical lawyer to pick up on this."

"It's not something I just invented," Whitehouse shot back.

Feingold, who has proposed legislation that would sharply curtail the Patriot Act, lectured Kris that "its quite extraordinary" to allow the government "to secretly break into Americans' homes in criminal cases, and I think some Americans might be concerned that it's been used hundreds of times in just a single year on non-terrorism cases."

"Well," the witness replied, "I don't mean to quibble with you." But he did anyway.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 23 Sep 09 - 07:12 PM

""What's your take on President Obama thus far?"

I'm not sure. It could be one or another of the following:

1. Willing and compliant servant of the real corporate powers behind the throne, faithfully obeying the agenda they have set out for him while pretending to be a progressive force in American politics.

2. Genuinely progressive idealist who has found himself trapped in a totally corrupt power structure utterly beyond his ability to control...and if so, he's in great personal danger unless he decides to do what they tell him to.

3. Cool pragmatist and brilliant speechmaker who will steer his way conservatively through the shoals of the ruling power elite, do what they require of him because he really has no choice, and make progressive-sounding noises to keep people hoping something different is going to happen.

4. Closet admirer of authoritarianism who is planning to sell out the nation to fascist zombies and install William Shatner as Emperor for Life after imprisoning all those who refuse to watch old Star Trek reruns and archival footage of Hitler's Nuremberg rallies....

Now guess which one of the above is a joke, and take it from there...

;-)

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: GUEST,beardedbruce
Date: 23 Sep 09 - 06:52 PM

The Cost of a Presidential Cave-In

By George F. Will
Wednesday, September 23, 2009

While in Pittsburgh, a sense of seemliness should prevent President Obama from again exhorting the Group of 20, as he did April 2 in London, to be strong in resisting domestic pressures for protectionism. This month, invertebrate as he invariably is when organized labor barks, he imposed a 35 percent tariff on imports of tires that China makes for the low-price end of the market. This antic nonsense matters not only because of trade disruptions it may cause but also because it is evidence of his willowy weakness under pressure from his political patrons.

In 2000, as a price of China's admission to the World Trade Organization, Congress enacted a provision for "relief from market disruption" to American industries from surges of Chinese imports. Actually, American consumers cause "disruption" in American markets when their preferences change in response to progress -- better products and bargains. Never mind. Congress said disruption exists whenever imports of a product "like or directly competitive with" a U.S. product increase "rapidly" and threaten "significant" injury to a U.S. industry. Examples of disruption include the volume of imports of a particular product, the effect of imports on the prices of competing U.S. goods and the effect on the U.S. industry.

Notice that China need not be guilty of wrongdoing: It can be punished even if it is not "dumping" -- not selling goods below the cost of manufacturing and distributing them. (That we consider it wrongdoing for a nation to sell us things we want at very low prices is a superstition to be marveled at another day.) And China need not be punished: Presidential action is entirely discretionary. So Barack Obama was using the sort of slippery language that increasingly defines his loquacity when he said he was simply "enforcing" a trade agreement.

None of the 10 manufacturers that comprise the domestic tire industry sought this protectionism. Seven of the 10 also make tires in other countries. Most U.S. manufacturers have stopped making low-end tires, preferring the higher profit from more expensive models. (Four U.S. companies make low-end tires in China.)

The president smote China because a single union, the United Steelworkers, asked him to. It represents rubber workers, but only those responsible for 47 percent of U.S. tiremaking. The president's action will not create more than a negligible number of jobs, if any. It will not restore a significant number, if any, of the almost 5,200 jobs that were lost in the tire industry from 2004 to 2008. Rather, the president will create jobs in other nations (e.g., Mexico, Indonesia) that make low-end tires. They make them partly because some U.S. firms have outsourced the manufacturing of such tires to low-wage countries so the U.S. firms can make a small profit, while making high-end and higher-profit tires here in high-wage America.

The 215 percent increase in tire imports from China is largely the fault, so to speak, of lower-income Americans, many of whom will respond to the presidential increase in the cost of low-end tires by driving longer on their worn tires. How many injuries and deaths will this cause? How many jobs will it cost in tire replacement businesses or among longshoremen who handle imports? We will find out. The costs of the president's sacrifice of the national interest to the economic illiteracy of a single labor union may also include injuries China might inflict by imposing retaliatory protectionism or reducing its purchases of U.S. government debt, purchases that enable Americans to consume more government services than they are willing to pay for.

Obama was silent when Congress, pleasing the Teamsters union, violated the North American Free Trade Agreement by stopping Mexican trucks from delivering goods north of the border. And although he is almost never silent about anything, he did not significantly resist "Buy American" provisions in the stimulus legislation. And he has not denounced the idea many Democratic climate tinkerers have of imposing "border adjustment mechanisms" -- tariffs -- on imports from countries that choose not to burden their manufacturers, as the Obama administration proposes burdening American manufacturers, with restrictions on carbon emissions. And he allows unratified trade agreements with Colombia, South Korea and Panama to languish. Nevertheless, he says he favors free trade.

He must -- or so he thinks -- say so much about so many things; perhaps he cannot keep track of the multiplying contradictions in his endless utterances. But they -- and the tire tariffs -- are related to the sagging support for his health-care program.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: GUEST,beardedbruce
Date: 23 Sep 09 - 02:58 PM

"What's your take on President Obama thus far?

Weak. Waffling, wavering, ambiguous and overwhelmingly concessionary. "

Ralph Nader

from this interview

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 22 Sep 09 - 02:31 PM

General Motors Co. will add a third shift to three of its plants, restoring 2,400 jobs in its second move since August to put employees in the U.S. back to work.

GM, along with rivals Chrysler Group LLC and Ford Motor Co. (F), have been attempting to respond to new demand without relapsing into its traditional habit of producing too much product and then relying on incentives to reduce the inventory.

The nation's largest auto maker by sales said last month it would increase North American production by 20% in the fourth quarter and put 1,350 employees back to work. It was GM's first production increase since global auto sales began their sharp decline last year.

On Tuesday, the company said it will add the shifts to its Fairfax, Kan.; Ft. Wayne, Ind.; and Lansing Delta Township, Mich. plants.

The Fairfax plant will become the only builder of the Chevrolet Malibu when the Orion, Mich. plant ends production in November. In 2010, the Orion plant will being retooling to produce small cars to be sold in the U.S. market in 2011. The new shift is expected to begin in January.

In Ft. Wayne, GM said it will add production of heavy-duty pickups from the Pontiac, Mich., plant that closes this month. The Lansing Delta Township facility will add the Chevy Traverse to its production. The new shifts in Ft. Wayne and Lansing are set to begin in April.

The industry's recent optimism has been attributed to the success of the government's "Cash for Clunkers" program. Auto makers posted the best sales month of the year in August, with Ford, Toyota Motor Corp. (TM) and Honda Motor Corp. (HMC) all posting sales growth. GM reported the largest decline of 20%.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 22 Sep 09 - 11:19 AM

"Obama also weighed in with a brief, but sharp, point about race, another subject he typically avoids.

Is all the vitriol about his domestic agenda really about race? Letterman asked the first black president.

"It's important to realize that I was actually black before the election," Obama pointed out. "That tells you a lot, I think, about where the country is at.""

It is so refreshing to have a President who has a sense of humour.



A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 17 Sep 09 - 11:20 PM

Flashback:
From: michaelr
Date: 27 Jan 09

We just got lucky with Obama (we hope). But there are powerful forces arrayed against him. The same forces that thwarted Carter's presidency.

These forces will support scumsuckers like Bush and Cheney, because they're theirs, wholly bought and owned. And they will destroy good and decent men because good and decent is the opposite of what they stand for.

America was lucky to have Carter when he was President. Never in recent history has there been a more decent and humane one.

Of course, Washington would not have it. The scumbags prevailed. It could happen again. We must be vigilant.

Mainstream center-left voters always tend to let down their guard after a victory. This is foolish, because the enemy never relaxes. You can be sure they're plotting right now how to bring Obama down just like they did Carter, King, and the Kennedys.

People right now are all sunshine, singing "Obama will save us". Wake up. There is no honeymoon.

The reality:

Thursday, September 17, 2009

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Thursday shows that 32% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty percent (40%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -8 (see trends). Thirty-five percent (35%) believe the U.S. is generally heading in the right direction and investor confidence today reached the highest level of 2009.

Forty-four percent (44%) now favor the President's health care plan. That's unchanged from before the speech…and from July. Public opinion on the issue appears to be hardening. A Rasmussen video report notes that 53% of those with insurance believe they would be forced to change coverage if the proposed health care reform is approved.

The Presidential Approval Index is calculated by subtracting the number who Strongly Disapprove from the number who Strongly Approve. It is updated daily at 9:30 a.m. Eastern (sign up for free daily e-mail update). Updates also available on Twitter and Facebook.

Overall, 47% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President's performance. Fifty-two percent (52%) now disapprove. Over the past week, the President's ratings bounced to their highest level in two months but have now retreated to earlier levels.

Rasmussen Reports has recently released polling on the upcoming Senate races in North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Colorado, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. The Republican advantage on the Generic Congressional Ballot is down to a single point. We are also polling regularly on the 2009 Governor's races in New Jersey and Virginia.

Just 12% of voters nationwide believe most opponents of the President's plan are racists. Republicans and unaffiliated voters overwhelmingly reject that notion but Democrats are more evenly divided.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 15 Sep 09 - 04:49 PM

That's an Obama sentiment I can agree with whoilly. See you at West River! Glad you're going to make it.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Donuel
Date: 15 Sep 09 - 04:01 PM

The rancor of the right only seems over the top since none of it makes sense until you consider that most of it is a thinly veiled racist outcry by those who do the bidding of Limbaugh, Levine and Beck, who in turn do the bidding for corporate America.


Instead of automaticly saying that you are paying for someone else's health care, realize that you are paying for the insurance compamy's 33% cut.
You are paying for the fire dept to put out someone else's fire.
You are paying for corporate welfare and bail outs.
You are paying for bonus's for people who destroyed sahre holder's buisness'

I understand why Europeans feel America's shame for us. From their perspective it is disgracefull to be a powerful nation and not even tend to the health care of its citizens.



Just because a battered woman is used to the abuse does not make abuse right.

ditto for the American health care consumer.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 15 Sep 09 - 03:15 PM

A couple of bits jumped out at me from Barack Obama's prepared speech today. First is his explanation of why the Consumer Financial Protection Agency is so necessary:

       Consumers shouldn't have to worry about loan contracts designed to be unintelligible, hidden fees attached to their mortgages, and financial penalties – whether through a credit card or debit card – that appear without warning on their statements. And responsible lenders, including community banks, doing the right thing shouldn't have to worry about ruinous competition from unregulated competitors.

       Now there are those who are suggesting that somehow this will restrict the choices available to consumers. Nothing could be further from the truth. The lack of clear rules in the past meant we had innovation of the wrong kind: the firm that could make its products look best by doing the best job of hiding the real costs won. For example, we had "teaser" rates on credit cards and mortgages that lured people in and then surprised them with big rate increases. By setting ground rules, we'll increase the kind of competition that actually provides people better and greater choices, as companies compete to offer the best product, not the one that's most complex or confusing.

This is very well put. All too often, what the financial-services industry likes to think of as "innovation" is in fact just deliberate predatory obfuscation. (For example: Ben Stein's "free" credit score which ends up costing $30 a month.) If banks put half as much effort into competing on actual product quality as they put into trying constructing thousands of pages of agate type for a single credit card, consumers will undoubtedly benefit.

And then there's Obama's promise that any future bailouts will have to be repaid — if not by the company being bailed out, then by its competitors:

       If taxpayers ever have to step in again to prevent a second Great Depression, the financial industry will have to pay the taxpayer back – every cent.

The financial industry. This is big, and important. Because what it does is it turns the whole industry — every bank, every banker, every hedge fund manager — into a mini-regulator, the eyes and ears of the systemic-risk regulator. All too often, those with eyes to see try to monetize their insights, rather than sounding a more general alarm. But if they ultimately end up paying for the cost of any bailout, they might stop just quietly putting on short positions, and start taking their analysis to the Fed instead. Which, under Obama's plan, will have the ability and authority to put an end to activities which pose major systemic risk.

I'm still pessimistic that any of this is going to actually happen, and I stand by my original criticisms of the plan. But at the margin, at least, Barack Obama is (mostly) fighting on the side of the angels, even if he does feel the need to pay occasional lip service to the benefits of financial innovation." (Seeking Alpha)

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 15 Sep 09 - 03:14 PM

""I do think that, as I said last night, we have to get to the point where we can have a conversation about big, important issues that matter to the American people without vitriol, without name-calling, without the assumption of the worst of other people's motives," Obama said."

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: GUEST,beardedbruce
Date: 15 Sep 09 - 02:41 PM

Given the payback that the Unions got for their support of Obama, no wonder.

If he gave ME 20% of GM ( instead of trading my GM shares for just the debts of GM) ++ I ++ would greet him with applause!




See you at the Getaway!

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 15 Sep 09 - 02:27 PM

Bruce:

Your correspondent's concern with Constitutional iussues ignores the fact that insurance is intrastate commerce. Furthermore it obscures the precedents (and invalidates them) of Medicare, Social Security, a good deal of the Homeland Security machinery, and a lot of the NAtional Park service. In other words, it is disingenuous in the extreme.

In other news:

"Walking into a raucous ovation, President Obama actually appeared to be touched by the reception he was given at the AFL-CIO convention in Pittsburgh.

"You're making me blush," he said, uttering a series of "thank yous" for the prolonged applause that greeted Mr. Obama at this campaign rally-like event.

"You know, the White House is pretty nice, but there's nothing like being back in a house of labor," he added, to even more applause.

Introducing the president was outgoing AFL-CIO head John Sweeney, who declared that labor is the wind behind the president's back in his fight for health care. He also took a swipe at some of the opponents to health care, calling some their language "Outrageous disrespect for Barack Obama, the presidency itself and the millions of Americans who elected him."

Hmmmm. Seems like some folks know when they are being respected...

Oh--did you notice Bernanke announced he thinks the recession is probably over?


Affectionately,
A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: GUEST,beardedbruce
Date: 15 Sep 09 - 01:20 PM

Sorry, Amos.

Note the sources- far more reputable than the NYT editorials YOU seem to think were evidence against Bush.

Your attacks on the people who present this is more evidence that you have no factual basis in denying their veracity. If you have any reason to think them less than accurate, I await your factual comments.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 15 Sep 09 - 12:04 PM

Mindless rancour, BB, is highly uninteresting, not to say distasteful. The fact that the right wing is capable of stirring up mob-reactions in loud, large, red-faced numbers is not news. I am not referring to the individuals, but to their mass produced push-button recitations, a substitute for plain, clear thinking.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: beardedbruce
Date: 15 Sep 09 - 09:59 AM

from http://www.slate.com/id/2217679/?obref=obinsite


"The WP fronts word that Murtech, a company owned by the nephew of Democratic Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, has received millions of dollars in no-bid contracts for Pentagon work. Murtha is the chairman of the House appropriations defense subcommittee and thus has lots of influence over Pentagon spending, but everyone denies he had anything to do with the money that his nephew's company has received over the years. Still, Murtech received the bulk of its contracts for the Army Space and Missile Defense Command in Huntsville, Ala., "which has been generous to companies in John Murtha's district and enjoys a close relationship with the congressman," reports the paper. Murtha's nephew insists his company is uniquely qualified to take up some of the Pentagon work, but government watchdog groups say that, regardless of his personal connections, the fact that the company managed to receive so many no-bid contracts is troubling."




Let me see... KBR, who got the contracts under Clinton, is guilty, but THIS is ok???

I think I need to reread "Animal Farm", and see who is more equal than the rest of us.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: GUEST,beardedbruce
Date: 15 Sep 09 - 09:07 AM

More from the WSJ...


Health-Care Reform and the Constitution

Why hasn't the Commerce Clause been read to allow interstate insurance sales?

By ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO
Last week, I asked South Carolina Congressman James Clyburn, the third-ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives, where in the Constitution it authorizes the federal government to regulate the delivery of health care. He replied: "There's nothing in the Constitution that says that the federal government has anything to do with most of the stuff we do." Then he shot back: "How about [you] show me where in the Constitution it prohibits the federal government from doing this?"

Rep. Clyburn, like many of his colleagues, seems to have conveniently forgotten that the federal government has only specific enumerated powers. He also seems to have overlooked the Ninth and 10th Amendments, which limit Congress's powers only to those granted in the Constitution.

One of those powers—the power "to regulate" interstate commerce—is the favorite hook on which Congress hangs its hat in order to justify the regulation of anything it wants to control.

Unfortunately, a notoriously tendentious New Deal-era Supreme Court decision has given Congress a green light to use the Commerce Clause to regulate noncommercial, and even purely local, private behavior. In Wickard v. Filburn (1942), the Supreme Court held that a farmer who grew wheat just for the consumption of his own family violated federal agricultural guidelines enacted pursuant to the Commerce Clause. Though the wheat did not move across state lines—indeed, it never left his farm—the Court held that if other similarly situated farmers were permitted to do the same it, might have an aggregate effect on interstate commerce.

James Madison, who argued that to regulate meant to keep regular, would have shuddered at such circular reasoning. Madison's understanding was the commonly held one in 1789, since the principle reason for the Constitutional Convention was to establish a central government that would prevent ruinous state-imposed tariffs that favored in-state businesses. It would do so by assuring that commerce between the states was kept "regular."

The Supreme Court finally came to its senses when it invalidated a congressional ban on illegal guns within 1,000 feet of public schools. In United States v. Lopez (1995), the Court ruled that the Commerce Clause may only be used by Congress to regulate human activity that is truly commercial at its core and that has not traditionally been regulated by the states. The movement of illegal guns from one state to another, the Court ruled, was criminal and not commercial at its core, and school safety has historically been a state function.

Applying these principles to President Barack Obama's health-care proposal, it's clear that his plan is unconstitutional at its core. The practice of medicine consists of the delivery of intimate services to the human body. In almost all instances, the delivery of medical services occurs in one place and does not move across interstate lines. One goes to a physician not to engage in commercial activity, as the Framers of the Constitution understood, but to improve one's health. And the practice of medicine, much like public school safety, has been regulated by states for the past century.

The same Congress that wants to tell family farmers what to grow in their backyards has declined "to keep regular" the commercial sale of insurance policies. It has permitted all 50 states to erect the type of barriers that the Commerce Clause was written precisely to tear down. Insurers are barred from selling policies to people in another state.

That's right: Congress refuses to keep commerce regular when the commercial activity is the sale of insurance, but claims it can regulate the removal of a person's appendix because that constitutes interstate commerce.

What we have here is raw abuse of power by the federal government for political purposes. The president and his colleagues want to reward their supporters with "free" health care that the rest of us will end up paying for. Their only restraint on their exercise of Commerce Clause power is whatever they can get away with. They aren't upholding the Constitution—they are evading it.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: GUEST,beardedbruce
Date: 15 Sep 09 - 08:48 AM

From the WSJ.


Obama Is Pushing Israel Toward War

President Obama can't outsource matters of war and peace to another state.By BRET STEPHENS

Events are fast pushing Israel toward a pre-emptive military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, probably by next spring. That strike could well fail. Or it could succeed at the price of oil at $300 a barrel, a Middle East war, and American servicemen caught in between. So why is the Obama administration doing everything it can to speed the war process along?

At July's G-8 summit in Italy, Iran was given a September deadline to start negotiations over its nuclear programs. Last week, Iran gave its answer: No.

Instead, what Tehran offered was a five-page document that was the diplomatic equivalent of a giant kiss-off. It begins by lamenting the "ungodly ways of thinking prevailing in global relations" and proceeds to offer comprehensive talks on a variety of subjects: democracy, human rights, disarmament, terrorism, "respect for the rights of nations," and other areas where Iran is a paragon. Conspicuously absent from the document is any mention of Iran's nuclear program, now at the so-called breakout point, which both Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his boss Ali Khamenei insist is not up for discussion.

What's an American president to do in the face of this nonstarter of a document? What else, but pretend it isn't a nonstarter. Talks begin Oct. 1.

All this only helps persuade Israel's skittish leadership that when President Obama calls a nuclear-armed Iran "unacceptable," he means it approximately in the same way a parent does when fecklessly reprimanding his misbehaving teenager. That impression is strengthened by Mr. Obama's decision to drop Iran from the agenda when he chairs a meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Sept. 24; by Defense Secretary Robert Gates publicly opposing military strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities; and by Russia's announcement that it will not support any further sanctions on Iran.

In sum, the conclusion among Israelis is that the Obama administration won't lift a finger to stop Iran, much less will the "international community." So Israel has pursued a different strategy, in effect seeking to goad the U.S. into stopping, or at least delaying, an Israeli attack by imposing stiff sanctions and perhaps even launching military strikes of its own.

Thus, unlike Israel's air strike against Iraq's reactor in 1981 or Syria's in 2007, both of which were planned in the utmost secrecy, the Israelis have gone out of their way to advertise their fears, purposes and capabilities. They have sent warships through the Suez Canal in broad daylight and conducted widely publicized air-combat exercises at long range. They have also been unusually forthcoming in their briefings with reporters, expressing confidence at every turn that Israel can get the job done.

The problem, however, is that the administration isn't taking the bait, and one has to wonder why. Perhaps it thinks its diplomacy will work, or that it has the luxury of time, or that it can talk the Israelis out of attacking. Alternatively, it might actually want Israel to attack without inviting the perception that it has colluded with it. Or maybe it isn't really paying attention.

But Israel is paying attention. And the longer the U.S. delays playing hardball with Iran, the sooner Israel is likely to strike. A report published today by the Bipartisan Policy Center, and signed by Democrat Chuck Robb, Republican Dan Coats, and retired Gen. Charles Ward, notes that by next year Iran will "be able to produce a weapon's worth of highly enriched uranium . . . in less than two months." No less critical in determining Israel's timetable is the anticipated delivery to Iran of Russian S-300 anti-aircraft batteries: Israel will almost certainly strike before those deliveries are made, no matter whether an Iranian bomb is two months or two years away.

Such a strike may well be in Israel's best interests, though that depends entirely on whether the strike succeeds. It is certainly in America's supreme interest that Iran not acquire a genuine nuclear capability, whether of the actual or break-out variety. That goes also for the Middle East generally, which doesn't need the nuclear arms race an Iranian capability would inevitably provoke.

Then again, it is not in the U.S. interest that Israel be the instrument of Iran's disarmament. For starters, its ability to do so is iffy: Israeli strategists are quietly putting it about that even a successful attack may have to be repeated a few years down the road as Iran reconstitutes its capacity. For another thing, Iran could respond to such a strike not only against Israel itself, but also U.S targets in Iraq and the Persian Gulf.

But most importantly, it is an abdication of a superpower's responsibility to outsource matters of war and peace to another state, however closely allied. President Obama has now ceded the driver's seat on Iran policy to Prime Minister Netanyahu. He would do better to take the wheel again, keeping in mind that Iran is beyond the reach of his eloquence, and keeping in mind, too, that very useful Roman adage, Si vis pacem, para bellum.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: GUEST,beardedbruce
Date: 15 Sep 09 - 08:34 AM

Opinion: So far, Obama's failing miserably
By JEREMY LOTT | 9/15/09 6:49 AM EDT

When he ran for president, George W. Bush promised to be a modest reformer at home and a humble representative of the United States on the world stage. The Al Qaeda-organized-and-funded terrorist attacks of eight years ago changed all that. During his presidency, Bush created massive new government bureaucracies, sent troops into two wars and threatened more as part of America's war on terror.

Barack Obama's initial approach to the office of the presidency has been as grandiose as Bush's was restrained. It's not hard to recall that he ran as a transformative candidate, promising sweeping, though somewhat fuzzy, "change" during the campaign.

For the first several months of his presidency, Obama has labored to deliver on that pledge. He pushed a controversial stimulus bill through Congress to help rev up the economy, turned Bush's reluctant bailout of Chrysler and General Motors into a giant government auto buyout and appointed a record number of "czars" to help regulate bureaucracies in both public and formerly private sectors.

Then, Step 2. Obama is trying to fundamentally alter the American economy by backing sweeping environmental, labor and health care legislation. He wants to change the way Americans consume energy, unionize and see their doctors.

So far, he's failing miserably. Consider the following:

• Cap-and-trade legislation had to limp over the finish line in the House of Representatives with the help of a few moderate Republicans, who then caught holy unshirted hell from their constituents. Environmental legislation generally has taken a drubbing in public opinion polls when people consider how costly it is.

• The Employee Free Choice Act may be stripped of its "card check" provision in the Senate, which would effectively do away with secret ballots for unionization elections. Even in its watered-down form — which still includes highly objectionable, mandatory, binding so-called gunpoint arbitration and makes no concessions to employers who don't want to have to prop up teetering union pensions — it might not pass the Senate. And the leadership of the House has refused to touch it until the other chamber has made up its mind.

• On health care, forget the rage set off by private citizen Sarah Palin tweeting about "death panels." Forget the misleading talk about whether there will be a "public option." (The ever-evolving plan is one giant public option, folks.) Forget the angry voters who crowded into the town halls during the August recess. Forget that a number of Democratic senators and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) are still not willing to sign on to a bill. Right now, even after Obama's address to the joint session of Congress last week, it's possible Democrats don't even have the votes in the House — where they currently enjoy a 77-seat majority.

It's entirely possible — nay, likely — that Obama will lose on all three big issues. He'll probably take that personally. As he has pushed for the passage of his reforms, his public approval ratings have taken a beating, and voters have started to trust the Republicans more than his party on a host of issues.

The question that most political handicappers are considering right now is not "Will Republicans make gains at the midterm elections?" but "How large will those gains be?"

What all this means is, barring some unforeseeable world event, Obama's will probably not be a historic presidency. He will have some successes and a lot of failures. His opposition won't roll over, and his party will refuse to go along with his more costly, and thus risky, schemes. He won't coast to reelection.

So Obama now has the chance to be the sort of president Bush would have been if the World Trade Center towers had not come down. Here's hoping he makes the best of it.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: GUEST,beardedbruce
Date: 14 Sep 09 - 02:27 PM

A million march to US Capitol to protest against 'Obama the socialist'
By David Gardner

Last updated at 6:59 AM on 14th September 2009

As many as one million people flooded into Washington for a massive rally organised by conservatives claiming that President Obama is driving America towards socialism.

The size of the crowd - by far the biggest protest since the president took office in January - shocked the White House.

Demonstrators massed outside Capitol Hill after marching down Pennsylvania Avenue waving placards and chanting 'Enough, enough'.

Tens of thousands of people converged on Capitol Hill on Saturday to protest against government spending
The focus of much of the anger was the president's so-called 'Obamacare' plan to overhaul the U.S. health system.
Demonstrators waved U.S. flags and held signs reading 'Go Green Recycle Congress' and 'I'm Not Your ATM'.'

The protest on Saturday came as Mr Obama took his campaign for health reforms on the road, making his argument to a rally of 15,000 supporters in Minneapolis.

Saying he was determined to push through a bill making health insurance more affordable, Mr Obama said: 'I intend to be president for a while and once this bill passes, I own it.

'I will not waste time with those who think that it's just good politics to kill healthcare.'
But in Washington, protester Richard Brigle, 57, a Vietnam veteran, said: 'It's going to cost too much money we don't have.' Another marcher shouted: 'You want socialism? Go to Russia!'
Terri Hall, 45, of Florida, said she felt compelled to become political for the first time this year because she was upset by government spending.

'Our government has lost sight of the powers they were granted,' she said. She added that the deficit spending was out of control, and said she thought it was putting the country at risk.
Anna Hayes, 58, a nurse from Fairfax County, stood on the Mall in 1981 for Reagan's inauguration. 'The same people were celebrating freedom,' she said. 'The president was fighting for the people then. I remember those years very well and fondly.'
Saying she was worried about 'Obamacare,'Hayes explained: 'This is the first rally I've been to that demonstrates against something, the first in my life. I just couldn't stay home anymore.'
Andrew Moylan, of the National Taxpayers Union, received a roar of approval after he told protesters: 'Hell hath no fury like a taxpayer ignored.'

Republican lawmakers also supported the rally.
'Republicans, Democrats and independents are stepping up and demanding we put our fiscal house in order,' Rep. Mike Pence, chairman of the House Republican Conference, said.

'I think the overriding message after years of borrowing, spending and bailouts is enough is enough.'
FreedomWorks Foundation, a conservative organization led by former House of Representatives Majority Leader Dick Armey, organized several groups from across the country for what they billed as a 'March on Washington.'
Organisers said they had built on momentum from the April 'tea party' demonstrations held nationwide to protest at Mr Obama's taxation policies, along with growing resentment over his economic stimulus packages and bank bailouts.

The heated demonstrations were organized by a Conservative group called the Tea Party Patriots
Other sponsors of the rally include the Heartland Institute, Americans for Tax Reform and the Ayn Rand Center for Individuals Rights.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 14 Sep 09 - 02:05 PM

That's the point, Sawz; the meltdown he has been wrestling with was not his malfeasance, but that of his predecessors.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Sawzaw
Date: 14 Sep 09 - 01:55 PM

"Obama was handed the worst financial crisis in our recent history"

That happened before he took office.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 10 Sep 09 - 04:37 PM

President Obama today accepted the apology of Rep. Joe Wilson who interrupted the president's speech to accuse him of lying about whether illegal immigrants would be covered under proposed changes in healthcare policies.

Wilson, a Republican from South Carolina, jumped into the limelight by shouting "You lie!" at Obama during the president's appearance before a joint session of Congress on Wednesday night. He immediately called the White House to apologize for the breakdown in decorum that angered leaders of his own party and made Obama supporters furious.

In televised comments this morning, Obama said after a Cabinet meeting that he accepted the apology.

"I'm a big believer that we all make mistakes," Obama said. Wilson "apologized quickly and without equivocation. I am appreciative of that.

"I do think that, as I said last night, we have to get to the point where we can have a conversation about big, important issues that matter to the American people without vitriol, without name-calling, without the assumption of the worst of other people's motives," Obama said.

Wilson on Wednesday night called the White House and said he was sorry in a conversation with Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. This morning, Wilson again apologized to Obama and tried to explain why he broke so sharply with protocol that calls for being polite to the president despite political differences.

Republican leaders "wanted me to contact the White House and state that my statements were inappropriate," Wilson told reporters this morning. "I did.

"I'm very grateful that the White House . . . indicated they appreciated the call and we needed to have a civil discussion about the healthcare issues. I certainly agree with that, so I'm happy to discuss the healthcare issues," he said a televised appearance with reporters.

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 10 Sep 09 - 12:13 PM

The NY Times editorializes: "...Mr. Obama fell short when he failed to say how generous the subsidies should be and who should be eligible to receive them. His $900 billion may not be enough to cover nearly all of the uninsured. Congress should increase it.

Equally important, Mr. Obama pledged that his plan would not add to the nation's enormous deficit now or in the future. He said any legislation must include a provision that requires additional spending cuts if reforms don't provide the expected savings.

Mr. Obama was absolutely right when he said that the relentless rise in the cost of Medicare and Medicaid will cripple the nation's economy. But Americans need to hear a lot more from him and from Congress about how they will address that problem. Anyone opposed to reform has to answer that same question.

Mr. Obama made a strong case for creating a new public plan to compete with private plans on the exchanges.

He is right that all Americans will benefit if the insurance companies have more competition, but he stopped short of declaring a public plan a necessity. It may not be, but it is too soon to abandon the idea. He should trade it away only in return for significant political support — and should demand a trigger to resurrect it should private plans fail to provide affordable policies.

The president was right to stress that reform is essential not just for the uninsured but for all Americans — far too many of us are just a layoff or a job switch or a divorce or an illness away from losing coverage. He said his plan would make it unlawful for insurance companies to deny coverage or refuse to renew it based on health status, and would limit how much people can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses such as co-payments.

We believe that Mr. Obama has been far too passive — for the sake of an unrequited bipartisanship — as his opponents have twisted and distorted the health care debate. It was encouraging to hear him reject those distortions — specifically the absurd charge that he was opening the door to "death panels" — as lies.

And he finally laid down a warning: "I will not waste time with those who have made the calculation that it's better politics to kill this plan than improve it." He should stick to that commitment.

Having let his opponents frame the debate for far too long, Mr. Obama will need to do more than orate. He needs to twist arms among timid Democrats in Congress to get a strong bill passed, most likely with little support from Republicans..."

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 04 Sep 09 - 03:53 PM

That was 1100, by the way!!

Here's an example of what I am taLKING ABOUT:

"

Districts throughout the suburbs have been hit with complaints from parents who are worried about their children hearing a message from Obama that they won't have a chance to preview.

Farmington Public Schools is encouraging parents to pull them from class if they are uncomfortable with the speech.

Districts that have addressed the speech on their Web sites include Oxford Community Schools, Rochester Public Schools and Van Dyke Public Schools in Warren.

• DISCUSS: Do you think schools should show this speech?

The districts acknowledge that the message is intended to stress the importance of education and taking responsibility for learning. Some parents say the uproar is much ado about nothing.

"I think it's great that somebody as high up and respected in our country is addressing our kids," said Tom Bejma, father of two South River Elementary School students in Harrison Township.

U.S. Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, a Livonia Republican, and U.S. Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., are asking Obama to release the text of the speech in advance."

ALL WE KNOW ABOUT THIS PROPOSED SPEECH IS THAT IT WILL BE BY OBAMA, and that it will stress the importance of education and taking responsibility for learning. THere is NOP evidence there is anything in the speech, or anything about Obama, which would be counter-productive, demoralizing, confusing, or harmful in any way for kids to hear. So where's the beef?

The answer is, a flurry of artificially induced emotional abreaction is all the substance there is to this stupid flap. It's a granfalloon made of nothing, built of toxic shadows by toxic shadow-mongers,a big whiff of horsepucky. These brainless anthropoids are jumping in to stand in the way of learning and inspiration based on their own mindless inability to think clearly.

Sometimes, Sawz, I get the feeling you are similarly inclined.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Amos
Date: 04 Sep 09 - 03:43 PM

Sawz:

I have occasionaly gotten vitriolic about what I think have been outrageous violations of human decency, mostly on thepart of the BUsh administration. Failing to cut back a notional 30% waste factor in Medicare is scarcely in that category, given that Mr. Obama was handed the worst financial crisis in our recent history as his starting portion, again thanks to the malfeasance of his Reaganite predecessors.

But I do not generally hate facts. When I find them credible, I respect them. I do insist, though, that you and others like you do not blow up opinions and disguise them as assertions of fact. Most of what you post, even from the WSJ, is not fact but heated points of view.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Popular Views: the Obama Administration
From: Little Hawk
Date: 04 Sep 09 - 01:26 PM

Letterman is in that category??? I didn't know. ;-)

Some people have said scurrilous stuff like that about Chongo too. Don't believe any of it.