"For the first time in US presidential history -- it has not happened before -- a president has taken the entire defense department bureaucracy, and the Secretary of State for Defense, from a previous discredited administration. We have basically Robert Gates and the same generals running American foreign policy with a lot of help from people of like mind."
Oh Bush! Obama! Oh, my.
Wed, 2010-08-11 18:09
#1
Frustrated Mess
Oh Bush! Obama! Oh, my.
Wed, 2010-08-11 19:09
#2
And my Globe of Aug. 10 says"Pentagon to cut thousands of jobs". According to the story from AP, Gates if starting with shutting down "a major command that employs about 5,000 people around Norfolk, Virginia, and beginning to eliminate other jobs throughout the military,' including 50 general and flag officer positions.
But of course, the politicos with seats to lose got nervous: "At the end of the day, Secretary Gates and his team will have to convince members of this committee that these efforts will not weaken our nation's defence," said Representative Buck McKeon of California, the top Republican on the Hourse armed services committee."
But it wasn't just Republicans warning about a weakened America. "Senator Mark WArner, a Virginia Democrat, said he could see 'no rational basis' for eliminating Norfolk's Joint Forces Command" and Senator Jim Webb, another Virginia Democrat on the committee "called the move a 'step backward' that 'could be harmful to the capabilities of the finest military in the world."
But Mr. Gates "described his initiative as just the beginning in his hunt for inefficiencies across the Defence Department, which commands a nearly $700 billion annual budget, including war spending."
Depends whose ox is being gored, obviously.
Wed, 2010-08-11 19:27
#3
Frustrated Mess
Of course, we advocated for single-payer healthcare and only a war-crazed maniacal empire needs a War Department the size of many small countries with budgets to match. But the “president” didn’t even get in the same universe as “Canadian style healthcare” and has vastly increased funding to the Pentagon and Bush’s wars of terror.
Also, the acceptance of this Imperial Faux Pas (IFP) illustrates how far this country is divided along faux political lines. The only change Obama has brought with him to the Whore House is negative, bad, bad, bad, change. We cannot, should not, must not, and better not criticize the Imperial First Family (IFF). However, we are supposed to take up pitchforks and torches when the barely functioning Sarah Palin says something stooopid and forget and forgive the Obamas for Imperial Excess (trips to Spain on our many dimes, $6000 handbags, etc) and their stooopidity.
Wed, 2010-08-11 20:39
#4
And my Globe of Aug. 10 says"Pentagon to cut thousands of jobs".
[url=http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/08/10/whats_really_behind_t...'s really behind the Gates cuts[/url]
Defense Secretary Robert Gates's bombshell announcement that he will close Joint Forces Command as part of sweeping reforms of the defense bureaucracy is being seen around the defense community as a preemptive move against congressional efforts to cut the defense budget.The moves, which also include shutting down DOD's Business Transformation Agency, closing the office of networks and information integration, cutting contractors, general officers, and the size of the Pentagon's administrative staff, all come only weeks after Congress proposed $8 billion of cuts in the defense budget for next year, manifested in the Senate Appropriations Committee's markup of the fiscal 2011 spending allocations.
Gates was clear that his goal is protect at least 1 percent growth in the defense budget in perpetuity, by showing Congress and the greater defense community that his department is managing its money well and therefore deserves to receive increasing budgets even though defense funding has more than doubled since 2001.
Gates did the same thing last year -- made a lot of noise about cutting some ambitious but unnecessary weapons systems and actually got [url=http://www.newshoggers.com/blog/2009/04/the-obamagates-war-budget.html]a four percent [i]increase[/i] in his budget[/url]. It's a shell game.
Thu, 2010-08-12 04:00
#5
Good stuff, pogge. I followed up the "raging debate" within the Republican camp and found Palin's speech at the Teaparty "Freedom Fest" back in June:
"Secretary Gates recently spoke about the future of the U.S. Navy. He said we have to 'ask whether the nation can really afford a Navy that relies on $3 to $6 billion destroyers, $7 billion submarines, and $11 billion carriers.' He went on to ask, 'Do we really need ... more strike groups for another 30 years when no other country has more than one?'" Palin said. "Well, my answer is pretty simple: Yes, we can and, yes, we do, because we must."
It's clear that defense spending will be central to the outcome of the Nov. 2 elections. Don't expect to hear anything definitive about the drive to cut defence spending before then. But it certainly looks like the Republicans will carry the day.
And quite frankly, the prospect of Palin anywhere near the levers of power, cutting social spending while, as Krugman put it, Aug. 8, "America Goes Dark" is just too much: "We must place priority on reducing the deficit, say Republicans and 'centrist' Democrats. And then, virtually in the next breath, they declare that we must preserve tax cuts fot eh very affluent, at a budget cost of $700 billion over the next decade...It's crucial to keep state and local government in mind when you hear people ranting about runaway government spending under President Obama. Yes, the federal government is spending more, although not as much as you might think. "
Krugman asks, "How did we get to this point? It's the logical consequence of three decades of antigovernment rhetoric, rhetoric that has convinced many vogters that a dollar collected in taxes is always a dollar wasted, the the public sector can't do anything right."
"The antigovernment campaign has always been phrased in terms of opposition to waste and fraud - to checks sent to welfare queens driving Cadillacs, to vast armies of bureaucrats uselessly pushing paper around. But those were myths, of course; there was never remotely as much waste and fraud as the right claimed. And now that the campaign has reached fruition, we're seeing what was actually in the firing line: services that everyone except the very rich need, services that government must provide or nobody will, like lighted streets, drivable roads and decent schooling for the public as a whole.
"So the end result of the long campaign against government is that we've taken a disastrously wrong turn. America is now on the unlit, unpaved road to nowhere."
Well, actually, the private sector can come to the rescue, for a price, eh? THAT will be the end result, it is what's been planned...and what Krugman is not saying to his NYTimes readership. Dangerous "left" thinking. But what the hell, better Palin than Obama...and extending that thinking, why not Steve to reform Canuckistan? :)
Thu, 2010-08-12 07:06
#6
Good stuff, pogge.
Not sure how what follows my name has anything to do with what I posted. But I would point out that this November's elections are midterms and Palin isn't running for anything so she'll be no closer to the levers of power in December than she is now. In fact, her popularity outside of a small circle of rabid idiots isn't that great. She has enough of a following to sell books and earn speaking fees but she won't be winning any presidential nominations any time soon because the Republicans know she can't win a general election.
Thu, 2010-08-12 09:32
#7
I followed Josh Login's advice and had a look at his take on madness in the Republican camp:
"With the rising deficits, the growing debt, and the increased pressures on all parts of the federal budget, members of both parties are looking at the defense budget for savings. Even inside the Republican Party, the debate over whether to cut defense budgets is raging now."
Thu, 2010-08-12 14:44
#8
Thu, 2010-08-12 19:03
#9
Sure, Krugman is also making it too complex. Perhaps it results from an inability to read the above postings:
"But it wasn't just Republicans warning about a weakened America. "Senator Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, said he could see 'no rational basis' for eliminating Norfolk's Joint Forces Command" and Senator Jim Webb, another Virginia Democrat on the committee "called the move a 'step backward' that 'could be harmful to the capabilities of the finest military in the world."
But that's just "bullshit" isn't it, or some other scatalogical category? The president rules all he surveys.
Fri, 2010-08-13 17:39
#10
Frustrated Mess
U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday signed into law a bill to improve security at his country's border with Mexico.
The $600-million US measure will pay for the hiring of 1,000 new Border Patrol agents and the purchase of new communications gear — including surveillance drones.
"Keep your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. And keep the oil, minerals and national wealth flowing freely. Thanks, amigos."
Fri, 2010-08-13 17:53
#11
[url=http://www.ianwelsh.net/politico-notices-hispanics-leaving-democrats/]Po... notices Hispanics Leaving Democrats[/url]
This is something I've been on about for a while, because the Hispanic activists I know are almost all absolutely livid about Democrats in general and Obama in specific. The reason isn't just that comprehensive immigration reform appears dead in the water, it's that Obama not only continued Bush's brutal "enforcement only" policy, which breaks up families but has actually ramped it up.To put it simply, Hispanics are the future of America. Their population numbers are growing, fast, and Democrats need to sew them up. And their identification with Democrats is dropping, because Democrats are attacking them. It is quite common for citizen Hispanics to know undocumented immigrants; for those immigrants to be their friends or even family. And the outright prejudice that simmers behind anti-immigrant fervor is something they experience in their daily lives. Seeing Obama and Congressional Democrats pandering to that prejudice-spending more money and sending more men to the border and for raids, is not endearing Democrats to them.
They feel, in a word, betrayed. [url=http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=5E904F5F-18FE-70B2-A89BFDC1B... as Politico notes, the Hispanic media has turned on Democrats as a result[/url].
Fri, 2010-08-13 22:42
#12
Frustrated Mess
But it isn't the professional left's fault that Obama's numbers are in the toilet or that the Democratic Party is going to get trounced in the upcoming midterms. Oh, no. Our strutting, celluloid hologram president managed that feat himself. All Obama had to do was "fight the good fight"; take on the corporations, the banksters, the Pentagon, the special interests. No one expected him to win...The winning-part wasn't even important. What was important was sticking up for the little guy who can't afford a high-paid lobbyist to help him keep his house or his job or avoid destitution because his kid broke his fu**ing arm on the school playground and he doesn't have the $150,000 to pay the fu**ing hospital bills. That's all we expected; someone who'd represent ordinary working slobs. Not superman; just somebody who gave a sh*t.
Mike Whitney accurately warned of and forteold the financial markets collapse and he is warning again we are in for worse.
Fri, 2010-08-13 23:01
#13
Frustrated Mess
There is much more, and I haven’t even touched on Rubin’s shameful role in Enron’s shenanigans. Enough said, though, to question not only Zakaria’s journalism but, far more important, Barack Obama’s leadership in first turning to Rubin as a key campaign adviser and then putting his disciples in charge of the U.S. economy.
Thu, 2010-08-26 16:32
#14
Barack Obama's transformation from progressive hope-monger to status quo water-carrier should not come as a shock. It would be nearly impossible for the US populace, chief executives included, not to have internalized the tenets of the corporate capitalist/consumer empire. This corporate structure is as pervasive internally as it is extant. It exists as both outer architecture and inner psychological imprinting. Therefore, corporatism is as real to us as the deep forests and its woodland gods were to European pagans and The Church and its dogma was to the peasants of the Dark and Middle Ages.
...Obama, as was the case with Bill Clinton, will not challenge the corporate oligarchs. Both he and Clinton are gifted, intelligent men, but are products of their time. They are men of, what was once termed, "modest birth" who -- out necessity to rise past the circumstances of their origins -- studied, internalized, and made allegiance to the corporate structure. Why? Because, in the age of corporate oligarchy, they knew the only way to rise to power would be to serve its interests. In contrast, FDR came from the ruling class; he knew their ways ... wasn't tempted by the rewards and adulation that come with privilege. He was born into it, could never lose its advantages, and it held no novelty for him.
Part Tinkerbell, Part Predator Drone
The Deus ex Machina Presidency: a Fantasy
Thu, 2010-08-26 17:24
#15
Since you bring up FDR:
Liberal Criticism of Franklin Roosevelt and The New Deal
The president's defenders often wonder whether Roosevelt faced such withering criticism from those presumably on his side, and the president's critics often criticize President Obama for not being more like FDR, who in their eyes is, understandably, the archetype and the standard to which Democratic presidents and politicians are held.
In my examination of the historical record, it is clear that Roosevelt endured vicious, unrelenting attacks from his left that often exceeded the level of vitriol directed at President Obama, and correspondingly, Roosevelt was not viewed by liberals of his day with the adulation and reverence liberals view him today.
In fact, it's pretty remarkable how closely the attacks Roosevelt experienced from his left echo the attacks that liberals make against Obama today. There was criticism of Roosevelt for being too close to Wall Street, criticism of the New Deal's pragmatism and non-ideological approach, criticism of the New Deal for not going nearly far enough, criticism of the New Deal and Roosevelt as preferring conservatism to liberalism, and so on.
First, let me provide some context. As I've mentioned, the relationship between Roosevelt and the liberals of his day was not as smooth or happy as many of you might have believed. The sort of adulation with which some liberals today treat Roosevelt has created the impression of him as a liberal superman. This could not be further from the truth, and this was especially the case beginning in late 1934.
Historian David Kennedy:
Disillusionment with Roosevelt ran deepest and most dangerously on the left, especially among jobless workers and busted farmers, among reformers and visionaries who had been led to giddy heights of expectation by Roosevelt's aggressive presidential beginning, and among radicals who saw in the Depression the clinching proof that American capitalism was defunct, beyond all hope of salvation or melioration. (Kennedy, 219)
Therefore it is fitting that we lead off in this examination of the barrage of liberal criticism faced by President Roosevelt with quotes from the most famous (or infamous) detractor to his left, and perhaps the biggest threat to his presidency, Senator and Governor Huey Pierce Long of Louisiana:
"Long retained deep suspicions of some of Roosevelt’s associates. A day or two before the inauguration, he came to (FDR advisor and braintruster Raymond) Moley’s room at the Mayflower, kicked the door open, chewed on an apple, and said pugnaciously, "I don’t like you and your goddamned banker friends!"...and in May denounced the administration on the ground that it was dominated by the same old clique of bankers who had controlled Hoover. "Parker Gilbert from Morgan & Company, Leffingwell, Ballantine, Eugene Meyer, every one of them are here – what’s the use of hemming and hawing? (Schlesinger, The Politics of Upheaval 54-55)
Looks like FDR may have been quite the corporatist stooge himself.
Thu, 2010-08-26 17:37
#16
Well, yeah, FDR and the New Deal saved US capitalism. according to one school of socialist thought.
Mebbe Obama is slyly allowing capitalism to become so bloated that it will encourage the Revolution®.
Fri, 2010-08-27 19:07
#17
Frustrated Mess
Early in the morning of July 21, police stormed the offices of the Iraqi Electrical Utility Workers Union in Basra, the poverty-stricken capital of Iraq's oil-rich south. A shamefaced officer told Hashmeya Muhsin, the first woman to head a national union in Iraq, that they'd come to carry out the orders of Electricity Minister Hussain al-Shahristani to shut the union down ...
Is destroying Iraq's labor movement a way to ensure an environment in which giant oil corporations can operate freely, and the Iraqi government can institute further market-based reforms? That was a logical question during the Bush administration, when its neoconservative advisors openly predicted Iraq would become a beachhead for privatizing the public sector of countries throughout the Middle East. Their policy, however, has not ended with the change in administration. And today, Iraqi labor is paying for its devastating consequences.
Fri, 2010-08-27 22:17
#18
AFL-CIO President Richard L. Trumka, Obama Apologist
Remember John F. Kennedy's line about the rising tide that lifts all boats? He wasn't talking about a bubble economy or a Reagan economy. It's working people—working people—who are the tide. Good jobs are the tide. When working people rise, so does our economy.
That's our goal. And we've made real progress in Washington in the last 20 months.
I want to talk for a minute about the Obama administration: Without the Obama recovery plan, we'd be in a full-blown depression.
The Obama administration has already created more jobs — even in this weak recovery — than were created during the entire 8 years of George W. Bush.
Many of our members across the country are working today on bridges, highways and other projects funded by recovery dollars. Let's not forget the jobs in clean energy and school construction, and Obama's executive action to reverse the Bush ban on PLAs, and to prohibit federal contractors from using funds to block union organizing.
Let's not forget the great work by our new Secretary of Labor to stop the misclassification of employees by cut-rate contractors.
That's a record, a real foundation. It's something to build on. But it's not enough. It's nowhere near enough.
To be frank with you, a lot of us anticipated that Congress would have moved faster. That maybe, by now, we would have seen some serious job growth, major investments to rebuild our crumbling education system, our transportation infrastructure, our rail systems. These are the essential investments we've called for to rebuild America.
But let's be clear about why we haven't seen more. Most of what we see is Republicans fighting Democrats, and sometimes they're joined by a few Democrats, and we're living the fall-out.
Here's the problem. Every time the Democrats and President Obama have proposed jobs legislation, they've been blocked by crass maneuvers from the most politically motivated Republican minority we have ever seen – and I really do mean ever.
What an Obamabot!
Fri, 2010-08-27 22:25
#19
N.Beltov
ha. I read that as Obamalot and thought, hmm, didn't Kennedy have some Arthurian metaphor to describe his "enlightened" regime?
Sat, 2010-08-28 01:12
#20
The Nazification of the United States - by Paul Craig Roberts
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts08272010.html
"...This is already happening in Canada, an American puppet state."
Sat, 2010-08-28 08:31
#21
Seems to me that the critics of Obama are blind to what the Republicans are up to in the U.S., never referring to it perhaps because it complicates a very simple theory of "what is wrong," (variations on Obamba) and are at the same time blind to the racism at work. But, then, they are also mute on the failings of Steve, the anointed neo-con so favoured by U.S.interests in the West.
"Capitulate a lot" is the only way of describing this, NB. Somehow you go from firm nationalist on the question of Steve to selective wordsmith when it comes to the U.S.pres. Does not make for analyitcal cohesiveness somehow. Just more rant. :)
Sat, 2010-08-28 12:44
#22
Today's "Restoring Honour" rally by Tea Partiers at the Lincoln Memorial,( where radical downsizing of government will be called for) may cross paths with Rev. Al Sharpton's event celebrating the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s March on Washington and his "I have a Dream" speech.
"Mr. Beck calls the timing 'divine providence', says Konrad Yakabuski, Globe Washington columnist. "Black leaders call it a provocation...Mr. Beck has asked participants to refrain from displaying signs at the event. As long as they co-operate, there should be no footage of angry Tea Partiers wielding placards with racist slogans for Democrats to use in fall campaign ads."
An Associated Press story out of New York says that "Mr. Beck suggests Mr. Obama is a socialist moving the country away from its ideals of limited goveernment. ..Mr. Beck's own statement last year that Mr. Obama had a 'deep-seated hatred for white people' led to an advertiser boycott and protests from civil rights groupls."
Shades of the 60s for sure.
Sun, 2010-08-29 03:56
#23
on this issue Left and Right are united: Obama will suffer 1994-like losses this fall;
but elections are held to confirm the popular vote; surprises are abundant
we will see:
http://hotlineoncall.nationaljournal.com/archives/2010/08/why_democrats_w.php
I agree:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/29/andrew-rawnsley-obama-second-term
Wed, 2010-09-01 15:43
#24
Speech Defect: Emissions of Evil From the Oval Office
http://chris-floyd.com/articles/1-latest-news/2016-speech-defect-emissio...
"On Tuesday night, Barack Obama gave a speech from the Oval Office on Iraq that was almost as full of hideous, murderous lies as the speech on Iraq his predecessor gave in the same location more than 7 years ago.
After mendaciously declaring an 'end to the combat mission in Iraq' - where almost 50,000 regular troops and a similar number of mercenaries still remain, carrying out the same missions they have been doing for years -- Obama delivered what was perhaps the most egregious, bitterly painful lie of the night.
'Through this remarkable chapter in the history of the United States and Iraq, we have met our responsibilities..'
I will say again what I have said here many, many times before: What quadrant of hell is hot enough for such men?"
Wed, 2010-09-01 16:39
#25
Gwynne Dyer, today: "The 'Ground Zero mosque' campaign was begun by players like Fox News and Mark Williams, organizer of the Tea Party Express, who warned that, 'The mosque would be for the worship of the terrorists' monkey god.' (It's really hard to tell Muslims and Hindus apart, especially if you're really stupid.) "
Wed, 2010-09-01 23:41
#26
N.Beltov
Obama SALUTES George Bush in Iraq War Speech
"It's well known that he and I disagreed about the war from its outset," he said. "Yet no one could doubt President Bush's support for our troops, or his love of country and commitment to our security." (He made no mention of the troop surge ordered by Bush.)
Fri, 2010-09-03 09:56
#27
Vomiting Perfidy - By Layla Anwar
http://arabwomanblues.blogspot.com/2010/09/vomiting-perfidy.html
"Since yesterday I have been vomiting my insides out...My first bout of vomit came after I read a transcript of your President's speech...nothing but Perfidy."
Fri, 2010-09-03 21:49
#28
No Yards
Obama SALUTES George Bush in Iraq War Speech
"It's well known that he and I disagreed about the war from its outset," he said. "Yet no one could doubt President Bush's support for our troops, or his love of country and commitment to our security." (He made no mention of the troop surge ordered by Bush.)
Shit, now I need to go look up the words "support" "love", and "commitment" 'cause I obviously have no clue as to their proper meaning!!
Sat, 2010-09-04 00:35
#29
Gee, I hope your research doesn't change the way you view the Leader of the Free World®.
Sat, 2010-09-04 20:30
#30
Fortunately, the reader can go beyond the cult of personality analysts hereabouts and disover that "the problem" is bigger than they imagine, The NYTimes book reviews Sept. 3 includes Andrew J.Bacevich's Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War:
Bacevich has two main targets in his sights. The first are the commissars of the national security establishment, who perpetuate these "Washington rules" of global dominance. By Washington, he means not just the federal government, but also a host of satraps who gain power, cash or prestige from this perpetual state of emergency: defense contractors, corporations, big banks, interest groups, think tanks, universities, television networks and The New York Times. He complains that an unthinking Washington consensus on global belligerence is just as strong among mainstream Democrats as among mainstream Republicans. Those who step outside this monolithic view, like Dennis Kucinich or Ron Paul, are quickly dismissed as crackpots, Bacevich says. This leaves no serious checks or balances against the overweening national security state.
Bacevich's second target is the sleepwalking American public. He says that they notice foreign policy only in the depths of a disaster that, like Vietnam or Iraq, is too colossal to ignore. As he puts it, "The citizens of the United States have essentially forfeited any capacity to ask first-order questions about the fundamentals of national security policy."
Bacevich is singularly withering on American public willingness to ignore those who do their fighting for them. He warns of "the evisceration of civic culture that results when a small praetorian guard shoulders the burden of waging perpetual war, while the great majority of citizens purport to revere its members, even as they ignore or profit from their service." Here he has a particular right to be heard: on May 13, 2007, his son Andrew J. Bacevich Jr., an Army first lieutenant, was killed on combat patrol in Iraq. Bacevich does not discuss his tragic loss here, but wrote devastatingly about it at the time in The Washington Post: "Memorial Day orators will say that a G.I.'s life is priceless. Don't believe it. I know what value the U.S. government assigns to a soldier's life: I've been handed the check."
Bacevich is less interested in foreign policy here (he offers only cursory remarks about the objectives and capabilities of countries like China, Russia, North Korea and Iran) than in the way he thinks militarism has corrupted America. In his acid account of the inexorable growth of the national security state, he emphasizes not presidents, who come and go, but the architects of the system that envelops them: Allen W. Dulles, who built up the C.I.A., and Curtis E. LeMay, who did the same for the Strategic Air Command. Both of them, Bacevich says, would get memorials on the Mall in Washington if we were honest about how the capital really works.
The mandarins thrived under John F. Kennedy, whose administration "was fixating on Fidel Castro with the same feverish intensity as the Bush administration exactly 40 years later was to fixate on Saddam Hussein - and with as little strategic logic." The Washington consensualists were thrown badly off balance by defeat in Vietnam but, Bacevich says, soon regained their stride under Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton - setting the stage for George W. Bush. Barack Obama campaigned on change and getting out of Iraq, but when it comes to the war in Afghanistan or military budgets, he is, Bacevich insists, just another cat's-paw for the Washington establishment: "Obama would not challenge the tradition that Curtis LeMay and Allen Dulles had done so much to erect."
Sat, 2010-09-04 21:51
#31
No Yards
Gee, I hope your research doesn't change the way you view the Leader of the Free World®.
Nope, .. I still "support" and "love" him with all my heart and am totally "committed" to his well being.
Sun, 2010-09-05 07:33
#32
As I said : "Fortunately, the reader can go beyond the cult of personality analysts hereabouts and disover that "the problem" is bigger than they imagine, "
Some will remain satisfied with exchanging political ideas at the Teaparty level, of course.
Sun, 2010-09-05 08:38
#33
NDPP"For the first time in US presidential history -- it has not happened before -- a president has taken the entire defense department bureaucracy, and the Secretary of State for Defense, from a previous discredited administration. We have basically Robert Gates and the same generals running American foreign policy with a lot of help from people of like mind."
...and included in that defense department bureaucracy...why aren't I surprised?
Pentagon Declined to Investigate Hundreds of Purchases of Child Pornography
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20100903/us_yblog_upshot/pentagon-d...
"A 2006 Immigration and Customes Enforcement investigation into the purchase of child pornography online turned up more than 250 civilian and military employees of the Defense Department including some with the highest available security clearance--who used credit cards of PayPal to purchase images of children in sexual situations..."
Sun, 2010-09-05 10:43
#34
Sodom and Gomorrah re-visited, thanks to presidential perfidy.
Mon, 2010-09-06 13:05
#35
This sounds about right:
Obama and the rest of the cowardly and corrupt members of his party have guaranteed their own destruction, that's for sure, but that is likely the least unkind thing that history will say about them. If we think about where this all goes next, it becomes clear what these shallow punks are trading away for their pathetic self-interest and unwillingness to fight against treasonous criminals. Democrats will be smashed in the next two elections, and the right will gain full control of the government and full responsibility for the state of the country. At that point, Republicans will have to put up or shut up. Since they will have no remotely viable way to solve the problems people face - since, indeed, their real mission is to make those problems worse, because that is necessary to further enrich their sponsors - they will reach for ever greater means of distraction to keep the public's attention elsewhere. All I can say is, "Watch out, third world countries everywhere".
Mon, 2010-09-06 19:41
#36
Obama, America's (well, about half the population believes it) Muslim president fails again...from the NYTimes today:
"People are discussing what is the alternative if we don't belong here. There are jokes: When are we moving to Canada, when are we moving to Sydney? Nobody will go anywhere, but there is hopelessness, there is helplessness, there is real grief."
IMAM ABDULLAH T. ANTEPLI, the Muslim chaplain at Duke University, on anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States.
Mon, 2010-09-06 19:52
#37
"Cowardly and corrupt" Obama and Democrats generally. " Sounds about right". And if you aren't comparing them to the frightening, racist wingnuts on the right - which a huge segment of 'Merica and liberals hereabouts seem incapable of doing - I suppose the theatrical speculation on what happens next... "Watch out third world countries everywhere"... passes for analysis in some quarters. But of course, the major destruction would be the internal structural changes in the privatization of everything.
As Paul Krugman says in his NYTimes column today: "And it's slightly sickening to realize that the big winners in the midterm elections are likely to be the very people who first got us into this mess, then did everything in their power to block action to get us out."
Oh well, the charge isn't child pornography this time. Whew.
Mon, 2010-09-06 20:05
#38
Teaparty humour today (anon.):
Gubmint and How Gubmint Werks ...
Once upon a time the government had a vast scrap yard in the middle of a desert. Congress said, "Someone may steal from it at night."
So they created a night watchman position and hired a person for the job.
Then Congress said, "How does the watchman do his job without instruction?" So they created a planning department and hired two people, one person to write the instructions, and one person to do time studies.
Then Congress said, "How will we know the night watchman is doing the tasks correctly?" So they created a Quality Control department and hired two people. One to do the studies and one to write the reports.
Then Congress said, "How are these people going to get paid?" So They created two positions: a time keeper and a payroll officer, then hired two people.
Then Congress said, "Who will be accountable for all of these people?" So they
created an administrative section and hired three people, an
Administrative Officer, Assistant Administrative Officer, and a Legal Secretary.
Then Congress said, "We have had this command in operation for one Year and we are $918,000 over budget, we must cutback." So they laid off the night watchman.
NOW slowly, let it sink in.
Quietly, we go like sheep to slaughter.
Does anybody remember the reason given for the establishment of the DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY..... during the Carter Administration?
Anybody?
Anything?
No?
Didn't think so!
Bottom line. We've spent several hundred billion dollars in support of an agency....the reason for which not one person who reads this can remember!
Ready??
It was very simple..and at the time, everybody thought it very appropriate.
The Department of Energy was instituted on
8/04/1977, TO LESSEN OUR DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL.
Hey, pretty efficient, huh???
AND NOW IT'S 2010 -- 33 YEARS LATER -- AND THE BUDGET FOR THIS "NECESSARY" DEPARTMENT IS AT $24.2 BILLION A YEAR. IT HAS 16,000 FEDERAL EMPLOYEES AND APPROXIMATELY 100,000 CONTRACT EMPLOYEES; AND LOOK AT THE JOB IT HAS DONE! THIS IS WHERE YOU SLAP YOUR FOREHEAD AND SAY, "WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?"
33 years ago 30% of our oil consumption was foreign imports. Today 70% of our oil consumption is foreign imports.
Ah, yes -- good old Federal bureaucracy.
NOW, WE HAVE TURNED THE BANKING SYSTEM, HEALTH CARE, AND THE AUTO INDUSTRY OVER TO THE SAME GOVERNMENT?
Hello!! Anybody Home?
Wed, 2010-09-15 06:35
#39
The ignorance and gullibility of the U.S.voter grows like Topsy, as seen in the NYTimes columns:
September 14, 2010
Who's the Con Man?
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
Harry Reid tweets Lady Gaga while Newt Gingrich is truly gaga.
The 67-year-old former speaker, who has a talent for overreaching, is more unbridled than ever. He's decided he'll do or say anything to stay in the game - even Palin-izing himself by making outrageous, unsubstantiated comments to appeal to the wing nuts among us.
The conservative who fancies himself a historian and visionary did not use his critical faculties to resist his party's lunacy but instead has embraced it, shamelessly. He has given a full-throated endorsement to a dangerously irresponsible and un-Christian theory by Ann Coulter-in-pants Dinesh D'Souza.
Gingrich praised D'Souza's article in Forbes, previewing an upcoming book called "The Roots of Obama's Rage."
Newt told The National Review Online that it was the "most profound insight I have read in the last six years about Barack Obama" and said D'Souza shows that the president "is so outside our comprehension" that you can only understand him "if you understand Kenyan, anticolonial behavior."
Newt added: "This a person who is fundamentally out of touch with how the world works, who happened to have played a wonderful con, as a result of which he is now president."
So the smear artists are claiming not only that the president is a socialist but that he suffers from a socialism gene.
"Our president is trapped in his father's time machine," D'Souza writes in Forbes, offering a genetic theory of ideology. "Incredibly, the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s. This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anticolonial ambitions, is now setting the nation's agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son."
Mon, 2010-09-27 22:08
#40
FBI Raids On Antiwar Activists: A Frontal Assault On Democratic Rights
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/sep2010/pers-s27.shtml
"As the WSWS wrote at the time of the Holder decision; 'This week's ruling marks a new stage in the ongoing attack on democratic rights in the United States. At the behest of the Obama administration, the Supreme Court - for the first time ever - has given its imprimatur to the prosecution and imprisonment of US citizens for advocating support of organizations opposing the policies of the US government or its allies anywhere in the world.."
FBI Raids Activists Homes in Sinister COINTELPRO Replay
http://antifascist-calling.blogspot.com/
"With Friday's raids, the federal government under 'change' huckster Barack Obama, has taken their repressive program to a whole new level.."
drift: the local Canadian version of the growing police state is of course well underway: one small example will suffice - it's related we're a US puppet state and it's an empire we're dealing with after all..
Alex Hundert Behind Bars
http://mostlywater.org/node/96328
"The most recent attempt to silence Alex is a strong indication of the police's attempt to criminalize ideas, dissent and effective community organizing.."
Past time to get busy and move on this if you haven't already people...
Tue, 2010-09-28 15:59
#41
Big Brother Obama: US to Spy on Internet Messaging
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/sep2010/wire-s28.shtml
"The Obama White House is backing new regulations that would compel popular Internet messaging services like Facebook, Skype and Blackberry to open up their systems to FBI surveillance...
The threat to democratic rights goes far beyond anything envisioned by the Bush administration. The goal is to make all forms of electronic communication that use the Internet subject to wiretapping and interception.."
Wed, 2010-10-06 19:48
#42
From the NYTimes:
October 5, 2010
Latino Vote Turnout Likely to Lag, Poll Says
By MARC LACEY
PHOENIX - Arizona's immigration law has prompted denunciations, demonstrations, boycotts and a federal lawsuit. But it may not bring the protest vote that many Democrats had hoped would stem a Republican onslaught in races across the country.
That is because although many voters are disillusioned with the political process, Latino voters are particularly dejected, and many may sit these elections out, according to voters, Latino organizations, political consultants and candidates.
A poll released Tuesday found that even though Latinos strongly back Democrats over Republicans, 65 percent to 22 percent, in the Congressional elections just four weeks away, only 51 percent of Latino registered voters said they would absolutely go to the polls, compared with 70 percent of all registered voters.
The other side in the immigration debate is suffering no such lack of enthusiasm. One measure of its high spirits is the dance card of Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix. Mr. Arpaio conducts raids in Latino neighborhoods that have led critics to label him a racist and the Justice Department to start a racial-profiling investigation. Despised by some, he is also in demand.
Thu, 2010-10-07 10:00
#43
Israel in America: Obama's Dance of Death
http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_61289.shtml
"What are we to make of the latest changes in Obama's entourage, ponders Eric Walberg."
'The writing is on the wall. Obama is a one-term president. that is if he is even allowed to finish his last term..'
Thu, 2010-10-07 10:57
#44
Heard anything from his Jewish supporters in America, lately?
(Didn't think so).
And elsewhere in America: "Obama, son of a Kenyan Muslim and American expat radical, is facing equally vicious bigotry by non-Jews. He is attacked at home by Americans of more traditional backgrounds who call him a communist and are incensed by his unusual origins and his unrepresentative entourage."
His mom was an "American expat radical." Hell, even this writer has to get on the side of the "winners." Bet we don't see an uppity African American running again soon.
Thu, 2010-10-07 11:39
#45
I have observed that it was one thing to be anti-Bush, but to be anti-war in the age of Obama is not to be tolerated by many people. If you will also notice, the only people who seem to know about the raids are those of us already in the movement. There has been no huge outcry over this fresh outrage, either by the so-called movement or the corporate media.
I submit that if George Bush were still president, or if this happened under a McCain/Palin regime, there would be tens of thousands of people in the streets to protest. This is one of the reasons an escalation in police state oppression is so much more dangerous under Obama - even now, he gets a free pass from the very same people who should be adamantly opposed to such policies.
Secondly, I believe because the raids happened to basically ‘unsung’ and unknown, but very active workers in the movement, that the coordinated, early morning home invasions were designed to intimidate and frighten those of us who are still doing the work. The Obama regime would like nothing better than for us to shut up or go underground and to quit embarrassing it by pointing out its abject failures and highlighting its obvious crimes.
Thu, 2010-10-07 12:13
#46
quote: " I submit that if George Bush were still president, or if this happened under a McCain/Palin regime, there would be tens of thousands of people in the streets to protest. This is one of the reasons an escalation in police state oppression is so much more dangerous under Obama - even now, he gets a free pass from the very same people who should be adamantly opposed to such policies."
Yes, everything would be better under Dubya. 
Fri, 2010-10-08 02:17
#47
George you missed the point.
Obama was always just a circus side show , put on by the ruling elite.
Ooh you lost your job and your house,,,oh wait look over there, it's gonna be a historical moment, A black presedent, or a rich white old dude with a woman as vice presedent, get out and vote for democracy, change is coming.
ow easy they are fooled.
Sun, 2010-10-10 16:56
#48
Just a little bit of fun from this year's election campaigns. More campaign literature ought to have recipes.
Mon, 2010-10-11 01:07
#49
If I were Obama, my first act would be to shut down the banking system and securities markets for a week or two. Why? To prevent the capital flight that might follow what comes next. I'd announce that any attempt to transfer money or securities overseas during this period would be prosecuted as an act of treason.
Next I'd order an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops, contractors and sub-contractors from Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, and all foreign military bases around the world. We're an overextended empire inviting blowback all over the place. No more.
It would be moral. The world would be happy. It would make us safer. However, my primary motivation would be to stop chucking hundreds of billions down the military rathole while Americans are losing their jobs and their homes. $4 to $6 billion a week on Afghanistan and Iraq alone. Can anyone explain why we still have thousands of soldiers in the DMZ between the two Koreas? Or in Okinawa? Bring the 600,000-plus men and women in uniform, and the millions of support personnel who aren't, home.
Mon, 2010-10-11 11:18
#50
Military Resistance 8J8 - LICE
http://www.scribd.com/doc/39105086/Military-Resistance-8J8-Lice-1
'While US Troops Die: Karzai Family Plunders, The US Army Officially Confirms Obma is Lying Sack of Shit. Liar, Traitor, Troop-Killer, Domestic Enemy, Unfit for Command, Unworthy of Obedience.."
Wed, 2010-10-13 18:43
#51
Global Grandiosity: America's 21st Century World Architecture
http://www.voltairenet.org/article166995.html
"Hubris, currently incarnated by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, is a malady that has run through the US ruling class for decades.."