POLITICALPYRO CONTRIBUTORS

We here at the Politicalpyro Contributors Blog love to have fun with the news and on occasion our tongue and cheek pokes make sense.

Our most recent installment was when Hillary Clinton was commenting on our relationship with rouge nations, especially our relationship with N.Korea.

Below is our post from July 20, 2009 on Hillary Clinton’s comments…

N.Korea… As Easy As Dealing With My Husband

Its funny too watch Hillary at times cause I always have in the back of my mind… I wonder if she treats Bill this way.

Take a Look At This > Clinton Likens North Korea To “Unruly Teenagers”

Notables Quotes:

1:39 ~ Well what we’ve seen is this zaa constant daa demand for attention… and daa (thinking about Bill) Well maybe it the mother in me or ahh the experience I’ve had with small children (thinking about Bill, again) and unruly teenagers or people who are demanding attention (Bill standing in his underwear, asking what IS ~ IS) Ahhm, don’t give it to them. They don’t deserve it. They arerrr… acting out in a way to send a message (Thinking about Bill and his use of Cigars) that is not a message that we are interested in receiving.

And now we have this from todays news…

August 4, 2009, 9:03 am
Bill Clinton Leaves North Korea With Two Freed American Journalists

A photograph released by North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency shows
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il posing with former President Bill Clinton and his
delegation in Pyongyang on Tuesday.

If attention and star power are indeed what North Korea is after, these images ought to do the trick. This report from The Associated Press shows photographs and video provided by North Korean state television of former President Bill Clinton stepping off a plane in Pyongyang on Tuesday and later meeting the country’s leader, Kim Jong-il:

According to this video report by the BBC, the video of Mr. Clinton’s arrival in Pyongyang was featured in a news bulletin on North Korean state television on Tuesday evening, just after a report on the improving quality of biscuits at a local factory. The report on Mr. Clinton’s arrival on the North Korean television news program is posted on The Guardian’s Web site. For a better look at the greeting, readers can also study more raw video of the arrival, captured by North Korean cameras and posted on the BBC’s Web site.

They also quoted a statement from Mr. Gibbs, President Obama’s spokesman, who said: “While this solely private mission to secure the release of two Americans is on the ground, we will have no comment.” Mr. Gibbs added: “We do not want to jeopardize the success of former President Clinton’s mission.”

Wrap Up>>>

Now… One of two things happened here. Hillary read my post and a light bulb went off in her head or Bill really went to N.Korea to beg them to give back the nuclear technologies he gave them back on his watch. Which ever the case may be it still begs the question… What in the hell is Bill Clinton really doing in N.Korea?

Take the Poll:

Death of a Doctrine
Obama Discovers Engagement’s Limits

By Michael Gerson
Wednesday, July 29, 2009

The Obama administration lacks a foreign policy ideology as a matter of ideology. Speaking recently at the Council on Foreign Relations, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asserted, “Rigid ideologies and old formulas don’t apply.” The torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans — tempered by pragmatism, proud of its ad hockery and willing to consider everything on a case-by-case basis.

But even lacking an ideology, the administration does have a doctrine. The defining principle of President Obama’s foreign policy is engagement with America’s adversaries. Much of the president’s public diplomacy has been designed to clear a path for such talks — expressing respect for legitimate grievances, apologizing for past wrongs and offering dialogue without preconditions.

Six months on, how fares the Obama doctrine? Concerning North Korea and Iran, the doctrine is on its deathbed.

North Korea responded to administration outreach by testing a nuclear weapon, firing missiles toward U.S. allies, resuming plutonium reprocessing and threatening the United States with a “fire shower of nuclear retaliation.” During congressional testimony, Clinton admitted, “At this point [it] seems implausible, if not impossible, the North Koreans will return to the six-party talks and begin to disable their nuclear capacity again.”

The Iranian regime’s reaction to engagement was to cut the ribbon on a nuclear enrichment facility, add centrifuges, conduct a fraudulent election, and kill and imprison a variety of political opponents. Regarding administration overtures, Clinton recently told the BBC, “We haven’t had any response. We’ve certainly reached out and made it clear that’s what we’d be willing to do . . . but I don’t think they have any capacity to make that kind of decision right now.”

The problem is not engagement itself — which was, after all, attempted in various forms by the previous administration. The difficulty is that the Obama foreign policy team has often argued that the reason for tension and conflict with nations such as North Korea and Iran is a lack of adequate American engagement — which is absurd, and which has raised absurdly high expectations.

During the 2008 campaign, for example, Obama adviser P.J. Crowley (now State Department spokesman) argued, “Hard-liners on both sides have dominated that relationship and made it very difficult for the United States and Iran to come together and have a serious conversation.” But can the lack of a serious conversation with Iran — or with North Korea — now credibly be blamed on the previous administration? Obama’s diplomatic hand has been extended for a while now. Fists remain clenched. This is not because some magical diplomatic words remain unspoken. It is because of the nature of oppressive regimes themselves.

Such regimes are often internally preoccupied. Precisely because they lack genuine legitimacy, they spend large amounts of time and effort maintaining their fragile authority, consolidating power and managing undemocratic transitions. North Korea confronts a succession crisis. Iran deals with growing dissent and clerical division. Both tend to make calculations based on internal power struggles, not some rational calculation of their external image and interests. They are so inwardly focused that they do not have, as Clinton said, “any capacity” to respond to engagement. It is questionable in these cases whether we currently have any serious negotiating partners at all.

And the inherent instability of oppressive regimes also leads them to tighten control by invoking threats from abroad — particularly from the United States. Because anti-Americanism is a central commitment of North Korean and Iranian ideologies, any softening of this resentment requires a kind of voluntary regime change. Pyongyang and Tehran would need to find a new source of legitimacy — a new prop for their power — other than hatred for America. Not easy or likely.

The Obama administration’s public campaign of engaging enemies is headed toward an entirely unintended consequence. Eventually it will raise expectations for action. As the extended hand is slapped again and again, the goals of North Korea and Iran will be fully revealed and the cost to American credibility will rise. Already the administration has given Iran a September deadline to respond to the offer of talks and has threatened “crippling action” if Iran achieves nuclear capabilities. Congress is preparing sanctions on Iranian refined petroleum, which would escalate tensions significantly.

This is the paradox of the Obama doctrine. By attempting to engage North Korea and Iran so visibly, Obama is dramatically exposing the limits of engagement — and building the case for confrontation.

Pyro Says:

It is all warm an fuzzy to be a narcissist’s… But when dealing with megalomaniacs, tyrants and just plain dictator thugs… Warm and fuzzy just don’t work.

Should Health Officials Have to Be Healthy and Trim?

Are there jobs where your weight should matter? Obviously if you can’t squeeze down the aisles, you might not make a great flight attendant, but what if you’re in reasonably good health and capable of doing the job?

President Obama has nominated Regina Benjamin for Surgeon General, but instead of people being totally psyched about her MacArthur genius award, her impressive charitable works, or her down-to-earth working-class background, everybody is trying to guess her BMI. Some people think a country plagued with obesity should not have an obese person representing our nation’s health care.

Still, we don’t remember anyone throwing this argument at all those husky surgeon generals who happened to be male. If C. Everett Koop ~ could be in charge of the nation’s health-care system while doing an amazing impression of a Civil War surgeon, should we really care about Benjamin’s few extra pounds?

Pyro Say’s

Back in the day, doctors were judged for their skills too find what will heal you. Now, in America we only care about what is on the outside. What is that saying about beauty and it being skin deep…

On a More Positive Note:

Poll Shows Obama Slipping on Key Issues
Approval Rating on Health Care Falls Below 50 Percent

By Dan Balz and Jon Cohen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, July 20, 2009

Heading into a critical period in the debate over health-care reform, public approval of President Obama’s stewardship on the issue has dropped below the 50 percent threshold for the first time, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Obama’s approval ratings on other front-burner issues, such as the economy and the federal budget deficit, have also slipped over the summer, as rising concern about spending and continuing worries about the economy combine to challenge his administration. Barely more than half approve of the way he is handling unemployment, which now tops 10 percent in 15 states and the District.

The president’s overall approval rating remains higher than his marks on particular domestic issues, with 59 percent giving him positive reviews and 37 percent disapproving. But this is the first time in his presidency that Obama has fallen under 60 percent in Post-ABC polling, and the rating is six percentage points lower than it was a month ago.

Obama has taken on a series of major problems during his young presidency, but he faces a particularly difficult fight over his effort to encourage Congress to pass an overhaul of the nation’s health-care system.

The legislation has run into problems in the House and Senate, as lawmakers struggle to contain spiraling costs and avoid ballooning the deficit.

Since April, approval of Obama’s handling of health care has dropped from 57 percent to 49 percent, with disapproval rising from 29 percent to 44 percent. Obama still maintains a large advantage over congressional Republicans in terms of public trust on the issue, even as the GOP has closed the gap.

The erosion in Obama’s overall rating on health care is particularly notable among political independents: While positive in their assessments of his handling of health-care reform at the 100-day mark of his presidency (53 percent approved and 30 percent disapproved), independents now are divided at 44 percent positive and 49 percent negative.

At the same time, there is no slackening in public desire for Obama to keep pressing for action on the major issues of the economy, health care and the deficit. Majorities think he is either doing the right amount or should put greater emphasis on each of these issues.

On health care, the poll, conducted by telephone Wednesday through Saturday, found that a majority of Americans (54 percent) approve of the outlines of the legislation now heading toward floor action. The measure would institute new individual and employer insurance mandates and create a government-run plan to compete with private insurers. Its costs would be paid in part through new taxes on high-income earners.

There are sharp differences in support for this basic package based on income, as well as a deep divide along party lines. Three-quarters of Democrats back the plan, as do nearly six in 10 independents. More than three-quarters of Republicans are opposed. About two-thirds of those with household incomes below $50,000 favor the plan, and a slim majority (52 percent) of those with higher incomes are against it. The income divide is even starker among independents.

Republicans have hammered the president and congressional Democrats over the cost of an health-care overhaul and its potential impact on the federal deficit, twin issues that have emerged as a possible brake on any new package.

Obama’s approval rating on his handling of the deficit is down to 43 percent, as independents now tilt toward disapproval (42 percent approve; 48 percent disapprove).

Pyro’s Thoughts

Looks like the spoon feeding has somewhat awaken those apathetic for Obama and his color… Oops, did I say that. It seems that color is only skin deep…huh.

When I first read this I kinda sat back and pondered what would I do with ‘Joe’ if I were the Obama Administration… Yep, Under the Obama Speeding Bus of Disaster! Awesome economic piece… makes you wonder who Obama is listening too, or what his real plans are for the US.

The Most Misunderstood Man in America

Joseph Stiglitz predicted the global financial meltdown. So why can’t he get any respect here at home?

By Michael Hirsh | NEWSWEEK
Published Jul 18, 2009
From the magazine issue dated Jul 27, 2009

Anya Stiglitz was in the middle of a Pilates class in Central Park on an April morning when her cell phone rang. Glancing down, she saw “202″ pop up—no number attached—and knew it was the White House. An aide to Larry Summers ~ was on the line, looking for her husband, the Nobel Prize–winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. Anya said she’d pass on the message to Joe—then went back to work on her abs. No big deal, she thought. People often call her when they want to talk to Joe, because even though he’s spent four decades figuring out how the global economy works, he hasn’t quite gotten the hang of voice mail. “He doesn’t listen to his messages, so if you want to talk to him, keep calling,” Anya says on his cell-phone recording.

Anya figured Summers, Obama’s chief economic adviser, was probably just calling to gripe about Joe’s latest op-ed in The New York Times. Joe Stiglitz and Larry Summers, two towering intellects with egos to match, are not each other’s favorite economist. “They respect each other, but they hate each other like poison,” says Bruce Greenwald, Stiglitz’s friend and academic collaborator at Columbia. (”I’ve got huge admiration for Joe as an economic thinker,” Summers told NEWSWEEK.) Stiglitz had been hammering at Obama’s economic team for its handling of the financial crisis. He wrote that the stimulus program was too small to be effective—a criticism that has since swelled into a chorus, though Obama says he’s not adding more money. Stiglitz also had called the administration’s bailout plan a giveaway to Wall Street, an “ersatz capitalism” that would save the banks’ investors and creditors and screw the taxpayers. “I thought, Larry—he’s just going to yell at Joe,” Anya recalls.

But Summers’s aide soon called back, and this time he said it was urgent: could Professor Stiglitz come to Washington for a dinner hosted by the president—that same night? Anya patched him through to Joe’s office at Columbia University~; Stiglitz accepted, and jumped on an early train. He was a little miffed: the other eminent economists attending the dinner, like Princeton’s Alan Blinder and Harvard’s Kenneth Rogoff, had been invited the week before. Stiglitz, a former chairman of Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers, had supported Barack Obama as a candidate as early as 2007. But until that day, four months into the administration, he had heard barely a word from the White House. Even now, when the president was making an effort to hear a range of economic voices, Stiglitz seemed to be an afterthought. (A White House spokesman said only that the president wished to include Stiglitz.)

Such is the lot of Joe Stiglitz. Even in the contentious world of economics, he is considered somewhat prickly. And while he may be a Nobel laureate, in Washington he’s seen as just another economic critic—and not always a welcome one. Few Americans recognize his name, and fewer still would recognize the man, who is short and stocky and bears a faint resemblance to Mel Brooks. Yet Stiglitz’s work is cited by more economists than anyone else’s in the world, according to data compiled by the University of Connecticut. And when he goes abroad—to Europe, Asia, and Latin America—he is received like a superstar, a modern-day oracle. “In Asia they treat him like a god,” says Robert Johnson, a former chief economist for the Senate banking committee who has traveled with him. “People walk up to him on the streets.”

Stiglitz has won fans in China and other emerging G20 nations by arguing that the global economic system is stacked against poor nations, and by standing up to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. He is also the most prominent American economist to propose a long-term solution to the imbalances in capital flows that have wreaked havoc, from the Asian contagion of the late ’90s to the subprime-investment craze. Beijing has more or less endorsed Stiglitz’s idea for a new global reserve system to replace the U.S. dollar as the world currency. Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has been influenced by Stiglitz’s work, especially when “he talks about the economics of poor people,” says Fang Xinghai, the head of Shanghai’s financial-services office. But his stature is huge in Europe as well: French President Nicolas Sarkozy recently featured him at a conference on rethinking globalization. And earlier this month, while traveling to Europe and South Africa, Stiglitz received a call from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s office: could he return through London and help the P.M. get ready for the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh?

Stiglitz is perhaps best known for his unrelenting assault on an idea that has dominated the global landscape since Ronald Reagan: that markets work well on their own and governments should stay out of the way. Since the days of Adam Smith, classical economic theory has held that free markets are always efficient, with rare exceptions. Stiglitz is the leader of a school of economics that, for the past 30 years, has developed complex mathematical models to disprove that idea. The subprime-mortgage disaster was almost tailor-made evidence that financial markets often fail without rigorous government supervision, Stiglitz and his allies say. The work that won Stiglitz the Nobel in 2001 showed how “imperfect” information that is unequally shared by participants in a transaction can make markets go haywire, giving unfair advantage to one party. The subprime scandal was all about people who knew a lot—like mortgage lenders and Wall Street derivatives traders—exploiting people who had less information, like global investors who bought up subprime- mortgage-backed securities. As Stiglitz puts it: “Globalization opened up opportunities to find new people to exploit their ignorance. And we found them.”

Stiglitz’s empathy for the little guy—and economically backward nations—comes to him naturally. The son of a schoolteacher and an insurance salesman, he grew up in one of America’s grittiest industrial cities—Gary, Ind.—and was shaped by the social inequalities and labor strife he observed there. Stiglitz remembers realizing as a small boy that something was wrong with our system. The Stiglitzes, like many middle-class families, had an African-American maid. She was from the South and had little education. “I remember thinking, why do we still have people in America who have a sixth-grade education?” he says.

Those early experiences in Gary gave Stiglitz a social conscience—as a college student, he attended Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech—and led him to probe the reasons why markets failed. While studying at MIT, he says he realized that if Smith’s “invisible hand” always guided behavior correctly, the kind of unemployment and poverty he had witnessed in Gary shouldn’t exist. “I was struck by the incongruity between the models that I was taught and the world that I had seen growing up,” Stiglitz said in his Nobel Prize lecture in 2001. In the same speech he declared that the invisible hand “might not exist at all.” The solution, Stiglitz says, is to move beyond ideology and to develop a balance between market-driven economies—which he favors—and government oversight.

Stiglitz has warned for years that pro-market zeal would cause a global financial meltdown very much like the one that gripped the world last year. In the early ’90s, as a member of Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers, Stiglitz argued (unsuccessfully) against opening up capital flows too rapidly to developing countries, saying those markets weren’t ready to handle “hot money” from Wall Street. Later in the decade, he spoke out (without results) against repealing the Glass-Steagall Act, which regulated financial institutions and separated commercial from investment banking. Since at least 1990, Stiglitz has talked about the risks of securitizing mortgages, questioning whether markets and authorities would grow careless “about the importance of screening loan applicants.” Malaysian economist Andrew Sheng says, “I think Stiglitz is the nearest thing there is to Keynes in this crisis.”

That would be John Maynard Keynes, the great 20th-century economist who rocketed to international renown in late 1919 when he published The Economic Consequences of the Peace. In his book, Keynes warned that the draconian penalties imposed on Germany after World War I would lead to political disaster. No one listened. The disaster he predicted turned out to be World War II. Like Stiglitz, Keynes was not a favorite at the White House. Keynes also believed that markets were imperfect: he invented modern macroeconomics—which calls for major government intervention to help ailing economies—in response to the Great Depression. But after meeting Keynes for the first time in 1934, FDR dismissed him as too abstract and intellectual, according to Robert Skidelsky, Keynes’s biographer. Keynes himself fretted that Roosevelt was not spending enough.

To his critics—and there are many—Stiglitz is a self-aggrandizing rock-thrower. Even some of his intellectual allies note that while Stiglitz is often right on the substance of issues, he tends to leap to the conclusion that government can make things better. Harvard economist Rogoff has called him intolerably arrogant—though he added that Stiglitz is a “towering genius.” In a letter to -Stiglitz published in 2002, Rogoff recalled a moment when the two of them were teaching at Princeton and former Fed chairman Paul Volcker’s name came up for tenure. “You turned to me and said, ‘Ken, you used to work for Volcker at the Fed. Tell me, is he really smart?’ I responded something to the effect of ‘Well, he was arguably the greatest Federal Reserve chairman of the 20th century.’ To which you replied, ‘But is he smart like us?’” (Stiglitz says he can’t remember the comment, but adds that he might have been referring to whether Volcker was an abstract thinker.)

Stiglitz’s defenders say one possible explanation for his outsider status in Washington is his ongoing rivalry with Summers. While they are both devotees of Keynes, Summers often has supported deregulation of financial markets—or at least he did before last year—while Stiglitz has made a career of mistrusting markets. Since the early ’90s, when Summers was a senior Treasury official and Stiglitz was on the Council of Economic Advisers, the two have engaged in fierce policy debates. The first fight was over the Clinton admin-is-tration’s efforts to pry open emerging financial markets, such as South Korea’s. Stiglitz argued there wasn’t good evidence that liberalizing poorly regulated Third World markets would make any one more prosperous; Summers wanted them open to U.S. firms.

The differences between them grew bitter in the late 1990s, when Stiglitz was chief economist for the World Bank and took issue with the way Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, and Summers, who was then deputy secretary, were handling the Asian “contagion” financial collapse. After World Bank president James Wolfensohn declined to reappoint him in 1999, Stiglitz became convinced that Summers was behind the slight. Summers denies this, and maintains that no rivalry exists between them. Summers’s deputy Jason Furman says that Summers now “talks to [Stiglitz] a lot.” “A lot” is an exaggeration, Stiglitz responds. “We’ve talked one or two times,” he says.

Despite the Obama team’s occasional efforts to reach out to him, Stiglitz remains deeply unhappy about the administration’s approach to the financial crisis. Rather than breaking up or restructuring the big banks that failed, “the Obama administration has actually expanded the notion of ‘too big to fail,’ ” he says. In a veiled poke at his dubious standing in Washington, Stiglitz adds: “In Britain there is a more open discussion of these issues.” A senior White House official, responding to this critique, says that the Obama administration is most often criticized these days for intervening too much in the economy, not too little.

In other respects, Obama is embracing some of Stiglitz’s views, suggests Peter Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget—and a former Stiglitz protégé (he worked for Stiglitz during the Clinton administration). One example: Obama’s new idea for reforming health care by creating a government-run program to compete with private-sector insurers. “There is an intellectual paradigm in health care that says you should move to purely private markets,” says Orszag. “Joe’s perspective would suggest major difficulties [with that]. That led to the thought that we need a mix: there is an important government role.”

Today, settled as a professor at Columbia, Stiglitz occasionally finds himself welcomed in the nation’s capital, though usually at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, to testify before Congress. While he had no great desire to go back into government, friends say he was deeply disappointed when an offer didn’t come from Obama last fall. Not surprisingly, Stiglitz believes his old rival was behind it, though Summers denies this. As for the invitation to dinner at the White House, there were a few theories kicked around the spacious Stiglitz household on Manhattan’s Upper West Side as to why it came at the last minute: one was that Obama, in an interview posted online that week by The New York Times, had cited Stiglitz as one of the critics he listens to, so it would have seemed strange if he hadn’t been invited to the dinner. While Stiglitz was flattered by the discussion over a dinner of roast beef and Michelle Obama’s homegrown lettuce, he can’t stop himself from complaining that an occasional meal with dissidents is not the best way for the president to formulate policy. “Some of the most difficult debates and judgments can’t really be hammered out in an hour-and-a-half meeting covering lots of topics,” he says. Stiglitz may a prophet without much honor in Washington, but he seems to be determined to keep the prophecies coming.

‘The Cause of My Life’> This is what Ted Kennedy deems his calling.
Inside the fight for universal health care.

>Click Here for the Link<

You know what Americas problem is? Its people like Ted Kennedy. Here is a murderous, rapist, drunken, drug using, scandalous, and lets not forget… privileged family with no end insight of ever spending its ill gotten family fortune and they want to give us something that he wouldn’t even use. Hey Ted, watch this video and tell me… Why should I trust you?

ABC TURNS PROGRAMMING OVER TO OBAMA; NEWS TO BE ANCHORED FROM INSIDE WHITE HOUSE

Collision or Political Hype…

From the Drudge Report
Tue Jun 16 2009 08:45:10 ET

On the night of June 24, the media and government become one, when ABC turns its programming over to President Obama and White House officials to push government run health care — a move that has ignited an ethical firestorm!

Highlights on the agenda:

ABCNEWS anchor Charlie Gibson will deliver WORLD NEWS from the Blue Room of the White House.

The network plans a primetime special — ‘Prescription for America’ — originating from the East Room, exclude opposing voices on the debate.

MORE

Late Monday night, Republican National Committee Chief of Staff Ken McKay fired off a complaint to the head of ABCNEWS:

Dear Mr. Westin:

As the national debate on health care reform intensifies, I am deeply concerned and disappointed with ABC’s astonishing decision to exclude opposing voices on this critical issue on June 24, 2009. Next Wednesday, ABC News will air a primetime health care reform “town hall” at the White House with President Barack Obama. In addition, according to an ABC News report, GOOD MORNING AMERICA, WORLD NEWS, NIGHTLINE and ABC’s web news “will all feature special programming on the president’s health care agenda.” This does not include the promotion, over the next 9 days, the president’s health care agenda will receive on ABC News programming.

Today, the Republican National Committee requested an opportunity to add our Party’s views to those of the President’s to ensure that all sides of the health care reform debate are presented. Our request was rejected. I believe that the President should have the ability to speak directly to the America people. However, I find it outrageous that ABC would prohibit our Party’s opposing thoughts and ideas from this national debate, which affects millions of ABC viewers.

In the absence of opposition, I am concerned this event will become a glorified infomercial to promote the Democrat agenda. If that is the case, this primetime infomercial should be paid for out of the DNC coffers. President Obama does not hold a monopoly on health care reform ideas or on free airtime. The President has stated time and time again that he wants a bipartisan debate. Therefore, the Republican Party should be included in this primetime event, or the DNC should pay for your airtime.

Respectfully,
Ken McKay
Republican National Committee
Chief of Staff

MORE

ABCNEWS Senior Vice President Kerry Smith on Tuesday responded to the RNC complaint, saying it contained ‘false premises’:

“ABCNEWS prides itself on covering all sides of important issues and asking direct questions of all newsmakers — of all political persuasions — even when others have taken a more partisan approach and even in the face of criticism from extremes on both ends of the political spectrum. ABCNEWS is looking for the most thoughtful and diverse voices on this issue.

“ABCNEWS alone will select those who will be in the audience asking questions of the president. Like any programs we broadcast, ABC News will have complete editorial control. To suggest otherwise is quite unfair to both our journalists and our audience.”

Developing…

In a totally unrelated story…

Solar system could go haywire before the Sun dies

They say… Whats good for the goose, is good for its gander… or if you like, If you can’t beat them join them.

As they blame Bush, ‘W’, GW… Which ever you prefer, for everything that is wrong with the world, I thought a bit of turn about, tongue and cheek was way over due. Hence the reason for the title of this post. Now, lets get to the meat.

Congress Needs to Beware of Growing Populist Anger

By Norman J. Ornstein | Roll Call
Wednesday, June 10, 2009

One of the main reasons why the Democratic Party lost control of the House in 1994 was that House Democrats responded too late to growing public dissatisfaction with their actions. The 111th Congress, though very active in its passage of legislation, needs to pay attention to the current rise in populist sentiment in the electorate. In order to effectively curb these feelings, Congress should implement reforms to increase transparency in government.

Why did the Democrats lose the House in 1994 after 40 years of rule?

One can make a case that the early stumbles of the Clinton White House, including the excruciating delay in enacting an economic plan along with the failure to get health care through, created a backlash against ineffective one-party government. One can make a case that former Speaker Newt Gingrich’s (R-Ga.) long-term plan to nationalize the Congressional elections, culminating in the “Contract with America,” finally provided a coherent and attractive alternative. But a critical element in the public backlash against the status quo in Congress was the populist anger at the elitism and corruption that the public saw engulfing Washington, D.C.

The first eruption of that populist anger came in 1989, with a pay raise for federal officials that had been endorsed by outgoing President Ronald Reagan, incoming President George H. W. Bush and all Democratic and Republican Congressional leaders from Speaker Jim Wright (D-Texas) to the aforementioned Gingrich. But that broad bipartisan support meant nothing to average voters struggling with a sluggish economy and stagnant wages.

remember vividly going to board the train at Union Station to attend the House Democrats’ retreat at the Greenbrier resort–the location itself was a public relations nightmare akin to auto executives flying private jets to D.C. to beg for public money. We had to run a gauntlet of angry protesters holding signs and hurling epithets.

The leadership needs to avoid any sense that it is protecting Members because of their personal ties to them.

That was followed in 1992 by the House Bank brouhaha, revealed by Roll Call, which showed that a slew of House Members had overdrawn their accounts at the House Bank. It did not matter that the “bank” was not a bank in the traditional sense, but a repository for Members’ paychecks until they could be deposited in other accounts, and that the only money in the bank was from the lawmakers themselves; the story created a firestorm emphasizing that Members of Congress played by a different set of rules than the rest of us, exempt from the constraints or fines that we face. Many superb lawmakers lost their next elections (or retired prematurely) as a direct consequence.

The next train wreck was predictable. For some good reasons related to separation of powers issues, Congress exempted itself from regulation by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency and other executive agencies. But to the public (and to the minority party), this was another clear case of an imperial, insulated, pampered and arrogant Congress applying onerous laws to others while exempting itself.

Throughout 1993 and 1994, I went regularly to the leaders in the House importuning them to act to solve this problem. The answer was easy: create an independent office within the legislative branch to enforce the laws where applicable to Congress, avoiding separation of powers issues. Tom Mann and I worked with Reps. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) and Dick Swett (D-N.H.) to come up with a bill creating an Office of Compliance. Early passage would signal a Congress ahead of the curve, moving to reform itself.

But the leaders did not think it was that big a deal and waited until the last days of the 103rd Congress to pass the bill–too late to avoid the surge in anger or to defend the indefensible, and they went into the 1994 election looking like they acted only after getting caught red-handed.

I raise all this history because it is déjà vu all over again. The populist anger is back, and not just in the United States–the reaction in Britain to parliamentary expense abuses is directly reminiscent of the reaction to the House Bank. So far, it has not been directed at Congress, in part because the 111th Congress has been so remarkably productive, in part because of the popularity of President Barack Obama, in part because of the ineptitude of the minority party leadership. But one can see the train wreck coming.

Some of the seeds go back to former Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.), preceded by Jack Abramoff and former Reps. Duke Cunningham (R-Calif.), Tom DeLay (R-Texas), Bob Ney (R-Ohio), Jim Traficant (D-Ohio), et al. Of course, some of the cases contributed mightily to the Republican loss of Congress after 12 years of rule, but all underscored a continuing public sense that Congress was more concerned with feathering its own nest than with the problems facing average Americans in their everyday lives.

Throw in Illinois’ former Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) and Sen. Roland Burris (D), a case getting more and more putrid. Add the Congressional bailouts of banks and their executives and the auto industry, amplified especially by the American International Group bonuses. The scapegoats now are AIG and auto and bank executives, but that can switch in an instant to politicians.

Now throw in the PMA Group and Reps. John Murtha (D-Pa.) and Peter Visclosky (D-Ind.). The Murtha case, of course, goes well beyond PMA, to include throwing sensitive national security-related earmarks with abandon to companies in his district that were inept or corrupt and to rewarding or punishing companies that used the right lobbying firm or did the right business with Murtha’s relatives. Include also executive officials in the Defense Department and elsewhere giving no-bid contracts to companies with ties to Murtha and his family members to curry favor with the powerful lawmaker. I can’t sort out from this vantage point what is illegal or not, but it all stinks to high heaven.

Simply asking whether the ethics committee is investigating the issue is not enough. I hope the committee is acting, and I believe that the leadership of the panel, under Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) and ranking member Jo Bonner (R-Ala.), is finally functional. I also am truly encouraged by the start of the new Office of Congressional Ethics, also with top-flight leadership.

But if Congress wants to avoid the kind of public anger that engulfed the political process in 1994 and 2006, it needs to go much further. The leadership needs to avoid any sense that it is protecting Members because of their personal ties to them. And Congress needs to enact further reforms to make the earmarking and contracting process work better.

The House might start with Rep. Jeff Flake’s (R-Ariz.) idea to delink earmarks from campaign contributions. My own idea to create independent commissions to rank needs and projects in Congressional districts akin to Senators’ judicial selection panels would help. And addressing the issue of contracting–which is what Cunningham did, getting bribes in return for steering sensitive defense and intelligence contracts to the corrupt companies offering the bribes–is critical for reform.

Every contract issued by the federal government needs to be put online before the contract takes effect, with a special scrutiny for every no-bid contract. There must be guidelines for making sure the process is above-board and sanctions for those who award contracts that do not meet the guidelines.

The current Democratic Congress is comparatively well-regarded by the public for its performance. Democrats are certainly in no immediate danger of losing their majority or even losing many seats in 2010. But public opinion is fragile here, and it would not take much to ignite that populist outrage. Acting now is smart politics–and very good policy.

Norman J. Ornstein is a resident scholar at AEI.

This offering was written and posted by the ‘Political Pyro‘ ~Jay Jaxxon~ a year ago… I wonder where he is today?

Who Will Police the Media?

Posted by Political Pyro in Media Firestorm May 25, 2008

In the consumer age of federally mandated regulation and transparency, no product can be released to the public without a series of intense evaluations, tests, labels, and warnings.

Make that: Almost no product.

Look on the back of a soda can, or a box of Twinkies, and you will find a federally mandated list of ingredients. In music, check out the latest releases by Lupe Fiasco or Ghostface Killah and you will see a parental advisory warning on the cover. In movies and television, look for a rating flashed before the credits. Video games are rated. Bags come with a suffocation warning. Small items are choking hazards. Coffee is hot. Don’t eat the lead paint. Not intended to be a cure…

So where is the list of ingredients for the television news media? Conservative talk radio is filled with hosts who proudly admit they are entertainers or commentators. They never pretend to be journalists. In fact, they are usually the ones screaming about the likes of CNN and MSNBC hiding behind a journalistic banner.

Almost no unbiased journalism is left in television news today. Political opinions and commentaries literally overwhelm the “news” airwaves 24 hours a day. What little journalism actually gets reported is highly filtered by network CEOs with a political agenda.

What is not reported is even more disturbing. “News networks” chose to ignore the Reverend Wright story until their hand was forced sometime after the Texas and Ohio primaries and the Barack Obama-William Ayers connection was completely ignored until George Stephanopoulos brought Ayers’ name up during a debate — and the media silence is perfectly legal.

Why has the news media been given a regulatory pass?

Another question: What is the standard journalism-to-opinion ratio that a network must live up to in order to call themselves a “news network”? Arguably, the History and Discovery Channels present far more unbiased information than CNN or MSNBC, and yet they do not purport to be “news”.

Maureen Dowd writes for the New York Times underneath the banner ‘Opinion’. There is nothing wrong or deceptive about that. I am not in favor of censorship. However, there is no ‘Opinion’ banner that flashes across the screen before Keith Olbermann launches into his pro-Obama tirade — or before Chris Matthews informs the world of some chills running up his leg. Why not? Are viewers expected to assume these men are merely offering an opinion, yet NOT expected to assume their cup of coffee is hot?

Americans hold the “fourth branch of government” up to a high standard. For decades, the words of Walter Cronkite or Peter Jennings were as sacred as the gospel. However, today’s news media is clearly different. Manipulation of public opinion — under the false banner of journalism — should be monitored by strict FCC guidelines with hefty penalties. Networks should never be allowed to have this amount of power again. Those who refuse to comply with these proposed new FCC standards should be forced to call themselves ‘Opinion’ networks…

In other words, CNN should be forced to call themselves what they really are… CON.

Now… Comments the post received.

11 Comments »

1.

FOX = FAUX

Comment by CHANGE — May 25, 2008 @ 6:20 pm

2.

Well stated! In essence we have no FREE media left - and this is a very dangerous place for our Country.

Comment by Typewriter — May 25, 2008 @ 9:20 pm

3.

Thank you for this articulate discussion of this very real problem with the media’s calculated and biased manipulation of the news. I fully support your suggestion of new FCC standards. Until that happens, I will continue to boycott CNN, NBC and MSNBC. I have switched to FOX news for more fair and balanced coverage. I would have never believed that the network I avoided for the last 8 years has been the most unbiased in their reporting.

Comment by dwilson — May 25, 2008 @ 11:52 pm

4.

I, too, have switched to Fox for the same reason. I avoided it for many years also…but am finding out that it is the only network where one can get real news and not just biased drama!

Comment by maggie — May 26, 2008 @ 12:47 am

5.

Wow, I too switched to Fox News, they should run a poll to track this phenonmenon.
Just finished watching Recount on HBO, eerily similar to our current situation with Florida and Michigan, I hope Clinton doesn’t back down.

Comment by Joe — May 26, 2008 @ 2:09 am

6.

“Manipulation of public opinion — under the false banner of journalism — should be monitored by strict FCC guidelines with hefty penalties. Networks should never be allowed to have this amount of power again. Those who refuse to comply with these proposed new FCC standards should be forced to call themselves ‘Opinion’ networks…”

If this would apply equally to Fox and CNN and MSNBC and all the rest, that would be fine. I don’t think you really want that - you have singled out only the so-called “liberal” media for criticism, but the same can be said about Fox et al.?

***[Yes, equality for all. Not censorship, just accurate labelling. I omitted Fox because they have the best track record so far this year, but things change, so everyone should be included. — Political Pyro]

Comment by Mark In Irvine — May 26, 2008 @ 2:30 am

7.

Excellent perspective. The media’s spite this weekend over the 1968 analogy was illogical and ludicrous. They clearly got ‘played’ by Senator Obama who needed a headline this weekend. The media now looks baited and foolish.
I too have stopped most mainstream TV and their associated internet activity with the exception of foxnews.com. I’m bored by NBC /Newsweek / MSNBC / CNN, I already know what is going to be said. My main source for substantive information now is smaller journals and investigative blogs.

Comment by EyesOpen — May 26, 2008 @ 5:22 am

8.

If you’re interested in policing the public airwaves through making accountable the federal agency responsible for regulating such things, you will support Senator Clinton’s run for the White House. Because she will win in the general election. And that will be her job.

Comment by jbjd — May 26, 2008 @ 7:41 am

9.

What we have is a bunch of socialists media sucm bags who are ruining this country.

Comment by Waldo Smith — May 26, 2008 @ 10:58 am

10.

The elites in the media, DNC and elsewhere DECIDED who they wanted WITHOUT (public) vetting of THEIR nomineee by the press. The media has thus reduced itself to functioning as propaganda zealots of their owm making for their own agendas of radical leftism and diguised it in a person who is a perfect example of the meaning of the word charalatan; Barack Obama.

CHARLATAN: A flamboyant deceiver; one who attracks sutomers with TRICKS (deception) or (jokes.

Obama=CHARLATAN

Comment by Denny — May 26, 2008 @ 1:37 pm

11.

the sickening way the media has promoted obama 24/7 is proof that political campaign reforms need to include the media too. even if clinton raised $2 billion if the media still endorsed obama 24/7 and ignored clinton that money would not help her much.

even when the media said it was all over for clinton she still had stunning wins in kentucky and west virginia proving how disconnected and manipulative the media is.

they have too much power and they have abused this power and used it against hillary. there needs to be more federal regulation of the media.

the dnc wants to roll the dice and run a black man at the expense of a more electable woman since everyone is disgusted with the bush years but i will vote for mccain if clinton isn’t running and if mccain wins i will call the dnc and laugh at them for running obama.

mccain’s hands will be tied with a democratic congress and he won’t be able to do anything unless the democrats let him. don’t be fooled into thinking you have ot vote for obama. that is more manipulation by obama and the dnc. punish the DNC by voting for mccain and ridiculing them when obama loses.

Comment by d-guy — May 29, 2008 @ 7:22 am

RNC Likens Nancy Pelosi To Pussy Galore
By Nicole Belle Saturday May 23, 2009

Boy, you stay classy, RNC. We already noticed the assassination fantasy at play in the RNC’s new ad attacking Nancy Pelosi, but Taylor Marsh highlights the ad’s crude sexism too:

At the end it says “Democrats Galore.” Imposed with a naked woman behind the tag line. Get it? Subtle it is not. But check out the video at around :40 seconds; a split screen that says it all. “Pussy Galore” is shown with “Starring Nancy Pelosi the Speaker” over “Pussy’s” image.

But hey, it’s good to have a sense of humor about these things right? And who doesn’t love the Bond films, especially those Sean Connery classics?

The RNC, however, is not celebrating the women in these classic movies, even by 1960’s standards. Nor are they empowering women through utilizing one of the the cunning female villains who parade around in them by equating her with Speaker Pelosi. I shouldn’t have to spell it out any further, though if the RNC doesn’t have women in their leadership ranks or men who get this stuff and know bad taste when they see it, the Rush, Newt and Cheney Party (as they were aptly called on “Hardball” yesterday) is truly nothing more than a frat boy institution. No offense to fraternities meant.

That a woman, let alone Speaker of the House, should never be hinted to in any public way through the use of “Pussy” insinuations should be obvious. That this is being used by a once major political party in the 21st century is stunning.

Sadly, I don’t find this as stunning as Taylor does. This is just par for course from a party stuck in some mythical time frame where “Father Knew Best” and minorities and women knew their place. That this went through Lord knows how many layers of bureaucracy at the RNC with nary a hitch just shows you how tone deaf these guys will forever be.

Concerning Nancy Pelosi

Facts:

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s home House District includes San Francisco.
Star-Kist Tuna’s headquarters are in San Francisco, Pelosi’s home district.
Star-Kist is owned by Del Monte Foods and is a major contributor to Pelosi.
Star-Kist is the major employer in American Samoa employing 75% of the Samoan workforce.

Paul Pelosi, Nancy’s husband, owns $17 million dollars of Star-Kist stock.

In January, 2007 when the minimum wage was increased from $5.15 to $7.25, Pelosi had American Samoa exempted from the increase so Del Monte would not have to pay the higher wage. This would make Del Monte products less expensive than their competition’s.

When the huge bailout bill was passed, Pelosi added an earmark to the final bill adding $33 million dollars for an “economic development credit in American Samoa”.

Pelosi has called the Bush Administration “corrupt”.

Concerning Barry Soetoro

- missing items for background check

• Your Occidental College records
• Your Columbia College records
• Your Columbia Thesis paper
• Your Harvard College records
• Your Selective Service Registration
• Your medical records
• Your Illinois State Senate records
• Your Illinois State Senate schedule
• Your Law practice client list
• A Certified Copy of your original Birth certificate
• Your embossed, signed paper Certification of Live Birth
• Your Harvard Law Review articles that were published
• Your University of Chicago scholarly articles
• Your Record of baptism

aka - Barack Obama Denied National Security Clearance

Barack Obama cannot be Trusted with Classified Information

How can the President of the United States be denied a basic security clearance? How can the Commander and Chief of the most powerful military be denied access to classified information? Barack Obama would be denied the necessary security clearance for President if he was held to the same standard as everyone else. If you can’t pass a Secret level background investigation, which is required for many soldiers, you should not be eligible for the Presidency.

What is a Security Clearance?

Having served in the U.S. military, law enforcement, and as a civilian government contractor, I’ve had my fair share of background investigations. The United States government employs a multitier security clearance paradigm.

Confidential – Unauthorized disclosure could cause “damage to national security.”
Secret – Unauthorized disclosure could cause “serious damage to national security.”
Top Secret – Unauthorized disclosure could cause “exceptionally grave damage to national security.”

Each level of access requires a progressively more in-depth background investigation before the clearance is obtained. The President of the United States should be able to flawlessly pass the most extensive investigation and a polygraph test. Both are required for workers in some Special Access Programs classified Top Secret.

The purpose of the clearance is to determine an individual’s honesty, trustworthiness, reliability, financial responsibility, criminal activity, emotional stability, foreign influences, family associations, drug use, mental health, judicial proceedings, employment history, traits of character, and loyalty to the United States. This collective data is used to evaluate your ability and willingness to safeguard national secrets. Based on the facts about Barack Obama, he fails to satisfy the minimum requirements for even a basic secret clearance. His background investigation would have “Red Flags” shooting up in so many places; the issuing panel would deny him a clearance outright.

Obama’s Answers on the Security Clearance Application

Instead of going through all the Security Clearance Application questions, I’ll examine the questions that would deny Barack Obama a Secret Clearance.

List foreign national relatives whom you or your spouse are bound by affection, obligation, or close and continuing contact.

Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. of Kenya, and Lolo Soetoro, the Indonesian oil manager his mother married. These two foreign relatives would probably initiate a Defensive Security Services or Department of Defense investigation that would take roughly a year to explore. I’m not sure how many degrees of separation are involved, but Obama Sr. and Soetoro’s associations are not friendly to the United States. However, they are not the primary concern.

Barack Obama’s brother, his kin Abongo Obama, is a militant Muslim who has been quoted saying, “A black man must liberate himself from the poisons of European cultures and western values.” Obama’s paternal cousin, Raila Odinga is also a Muslim extremist who recently lost the Kenyan Presidential election to a Christian. How can such relations exist between the President of the United States and radical Muslims?

Have you ever been an officer or a member or made a contribution to an organization dedicated to the violent overthrow of the United States Government and which engages in illegal activities to that end, knowing that the organization engages in such activities with the specific intent to further such activities?

Have you ever knowingly engaged in any acts or activities designed to overthrow the United States Government by force?

These two questions go hand and hand. Having gone through the interview phase of the clearance process a number of times, I can’t image the look on the face of the investigator nor the sheer amount of time it would take to explain Barack Obama’s anti American ties.

Sen. Barack Obama served as a paid director alongside a confessed domestic terrorist and granted funding to a controversial Arab group that dubbed the creation of Israel as a “catastrophe.” The founder of the Arab group in question, Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi, also has held a fundraiser for Obama. Khalidi is a harsh critic of Israel, has made statements supportive of Palestinian terror and reportedly has worked on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization while it was involved in anti western terrorism.

Barack Obama also served on the Wood’s Fund board with William Ayers, a member of the Weathermen terrorist group which sought to overthrow of the U.S. government and took responsibility for the bombings of New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, of the Capitol building in 1971, and the Pentagon in 1972. Bill Ayers has killed hundreds of civilians, police officers, and was recently quoted saying, “I don’t regret setting bombs, I feel we didn’t do enough.”

I would deny a security clearance for anybody that even shook these men’s hands, never mind launching a campaign from Ayer’s living room.

Have you illegally used any controlled substance, for example, marijuana, cocaine, crack cocaine, hashish, narcotics (opium, morphine, codeine, heroin, etc.), amphetamines, depressants (barbiturates, methaqualone, tranquilizers, etc.), hallucinogenics (LSD, PCP, etc.), or prescription drugs?

Barack Obama has specifically admitted to using marijuana and cocaine in his book “Dreams From My Father.” He even confesses pursuing heroin, but was scared of the drug dealer. A clearance question such as this is used to test someone’s ethical fortitude to stand up for what is right, legally forbidden, and ultimately make correct decisions. Obama fails this test with his weakness to deny temptation.

Would anyone question your honesty?

Obama’s lies regarding his recollection of policies supported and the reality of what he actually did endorse are too numerous to count. However, these lies are unfortunately common in today’s politics. An article written in a conservative blog has outlined 26 more personal deceptions Obama has made to the American people. How can anyone trust this guy with confidence?

Barack Obama’s Patriotism and National Security

Obama during National Anthem

Although not a question on the Security Clearance application, “Are you a Patriotic American” should be.

The National Anthem is playing and Barack Obama is the only person on the stage not inclined to put their hand over their heart. The hand over the heart is symbolic of your respect and love for your country. Of all people, the President of the United States must be the most devote patriot in the nation. If you are not a patriot, how are you to provide unconditional national security? Three other instances come to mind that have me question how loyal he is to the U.S. and if he even loves this country.

Reverend Jeremiah Wright
I bet most of us have heard about Reverend Jeremaiah Wright’s radical anti American preaching and Barack Obama’s consistent attendance of this man’s sermons, but did you know Reverend Wright officiated Barack and Michelle’s wedding and even baptized their kids? It appears to me that Wright is a significantly influential person in the Obama family’s life. Do we want a President who has been barraged and apparently supports their religious leader’s lectures containing anti American propaganda, such as…

“We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye.”

“We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”

“The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.”

“In the 21st century, white America got a wake-up call after 911. White America and the western world came to realize that people of color had not gone away, faded into the woodwork or just ‘disappeared’ as the Great White West kept on its merry way of ignoring black concerns.”

“Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run!…We [in the U.S.] believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God.”

“Barack knows what it means living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people. Hillary would never know that. Hillary ain’t never been called a nigger. Hillary has never had a people defined as a non-person.”

“Hillary is married to Bill, and Bill has been good to us. No he ain’t! Bill did us, just like he did Monica Lewinsky. He was riding dirty.”

“The Israelis have illegally occupied Palestinian territories for over 40 years now. Divestment has now hit the table again as a strategy to wake the business community and wake up Americans concerning the injustice and the racism under which the Palestinians have lived because of Zionism.”

“God Damn America”

- Reverend Jeremiah Wright

I don’t care that Obama now condemns Wright’s remarks. He never denounced the man before, and continued to attend Wright’s church for over 20 years.

Michelle Obama
Michelle ObamaThe person you marry is your closest confidant and Barack Obama has recently said that Michelle is one of the people he listens to and respects the most. Michelle has been quoted saying, “Our souls are broken in this nation”; “For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country”; and “…as a member of the black community, I am obligated to this community and will utilize all of my present and future resources to benefit the black community first and foremost” to name a few. As a President’s closest adviser and the country’s first lady, take pride in how far this nation has come, and work toward the benefit of all not just your ethnicity. Can this woman, with such animosity toward ancestral shortcomings, come into the present and forget about skin color? Isn’t that what Martin Luther King Jr. meant by, “…all men are created equal” and “…not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character?” Michelle’s narrow vision, obvious unwillingness to conform to unity and equality, and her desire to benefit the black community instead of the community at large is not first lady material.

Not visiting the troops
As a former enlisted soldier having been deployed twice and a current government contractor, Obama’s recent neglect to visit our country’s courageous troops is insulting. He had time to woo German citizens and play basketball, but opt out on supporting wounded soldiers. Retired Lt. Col. Joe Reypya had me nodding in approval when commenting on Obama’s decision, “”The most solemn duty of a commander in chief is to fulfill his responsibility to the men and women who serve this country in uniform. Barack Obama … broke that commitment, instead flitting from one European capital to the next…For a young man so apt at playing President, Barack Obama badly misjudged the important demands of the office he seeks. Visits with world leaders and speeches to cheering Europeans shouldn’t be a substitute for comforting injured American heroes.”

I could go on and on about how this man is not fit for office, but my point in this post is to express my opinion that the potential Commander and Chief of the United States could not receive a Nation Security Clearance to even hold a low level intelligence position within the government. How can he be President? Better yet, how is he even a Senator?

Could Barack Obama Get a Security Clearance?

Obama has been in the middle of two international communist networks – one in Hawaii and one in Chicago.

The Hawaii network included communists Frank Marshall Davis, who was Obama’s personal mentor; actor/singer Paul Robeson; and labor leader Harry Bridges. The network was judged a security threat to the United States and the subject of a congressional hearing on the “Scope of Soviet Activity in the United States.”

Obama covered up the true identity of Frank Marshall Davis in his book, Dreams From My Father.

The Hawaii communist network was organized directly by and from Moscow.

The Chicago network included identified communists and socialists, was committed to a communist victory in the Vietnam War, and took instructions from the communist Castro regime in Cuba.

In addition to communist terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, who were members of the communist terrorist Weather Underground, the Chicago network includes many veterans of the communist Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) who now proclaim themselves “Progressives for Obama.”

Bill Ayers, who helped launch Obama’s political career, has traveled to Venezuela on several occasions and is an enthusiastic backer of the brand of communism being practiced and promoted by Hugo Chavez.

It appears that Obama actually worked for Ayers in a Chicago educational reform program that dispensed millions of dollars of grants.

One of the leaders of “Progressives for Obama” is former SDS leader Tom Hayden, who wrote a letter to a communist Vietnamese official during the Vietnam War hoping for a “victory” over the U.S.

The SDS openly promoted communism, the regimes in Hanoi and Havana, and condemned alleged U.S. “imperialism.”

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), a group that included a convicted espionage agent for communist East Germany, backed and promoted Obama’s political career.
Illinois State Senator Alice Palmer, who picked Obama as her successor, has a record of involvement in communist front activities.

Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod, as well as Obama himself, have not explained why Ayers, Dohrn, then-State Senator Alice Palmer, and Dr. Quentin Young came together at the Ayers/Dohrn home to launch Obama’s political career.
Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, a client of Axelrod, issued a controversial and misleading statement defending Obama’s relationship with communist terrorist Bill Ayers.

43% Say CIA May Have Misled Pelosi, 41% Disagree

Monday, May 18, 2009

Forty-three percent (43%) of voters nationwide say that it’s at least somewhat likely that the Central Intelligence Agency misled Nancy Pelosi about the use of waterboarding when interrogating prisoners.

But the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey also found that 41% say it’s not likely the CIA did so.

In typical partisan fashion, 62% of Democrats give Pelosi the benefit of the doubt while 62% of Republicans hold the opposite view. As for those not affiliated with either major political party, 38% say the CIA may have misled the current House speaker, but 48% say it’s not likely.

The ideological divide is similar: 70% of liberals take Pelosi’s side, but just 24% of conservatives agree.

Overall, just 20% of voters say it’s Very Likely Pelosi was misled while 22% say it’s Not at All Likely. Most voters are somewhere in between and may be waiting for additional information.

(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it’s in the news, it’s in our polls.) Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter.

The CIA is viewed favorably by 63% and unfavorably by 24%. For Pelosi, the comparable numbers are 35% favorable and 55% unfavorable.

The agency earns positive reviews from 78% of Republicans, 62% of unaffiliateds and 51% of Democrats.

Fifty-nine percent (59%) of all voters believe it’s at least somewhat likely that harsh interrogation techniques such as waterboarding helped secure valuable intelligence information. Eighty percent (80%) of Republicans hold that view along with 60% of unaffiliateds. Democrats are evenly divided.

Sixty-five percent (65%) of voters say they’re following news about Pelosi and the CIA at least somewhat closely. Democrats are less interested in the story than Republicans and unaffiliateds.

Fifty-eight percent (58%) of U.S. voters said in late April that the Obama administration’s release of CIA memos about the harsh interrogation methods used on terrorism suspects endangered America’s national security.

While Pelosi and other senior congressional Democrats want to investigate further how the Bush administration treated terrorism suspects, 58% of voters oppose any such probes.

CIA director says Pelosi received the truth

By Sam Youngman
Posted: 05/15/09

CIA Director Leon Panetta challenged House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s accusations that the agency lied to her, writing a memo to his agents saying she received nothing but the truth.

Panetta said that “ultimately, it is up to Congress to evaluate all the evidence and reach its own conclusions about what happened.”

Pelosi (D-Calif.) infuriated Republicans this week when she said in a news conference that she was “misled” by CIA officials during a briefing in 2002 about whether the U.S. was waterboarding alleged terrorist detainees.

Panetta, President Obama’s pick to run the clandestine agency and President Clinton’s former chief of staff, wrote in a memo to CIA employees Friday that “CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, describing ‘the enhanced techniques that had been employed,’” according to CIA records.

“We are an agency of high integrity, professionalism and dedication,” Panetta said in the memo. “Our task is to tell it like it is — even if that’s not what people always want to hear. Keep it up. Our national security depends on it.”

In the pep talk-style memo titled “Turning Down the Volume,” Panetta encourages CIA employees to return to their normal business and not to be distracted by the shout-fest Pelosi’s remarks created.

“My advice — indeed, my direction — to you is straightforward: Ignore the noise and stay focused on your mission,” Panetta wrote. “We have too much work to do to be distracted from our job of protecting this country.”

In what may be the most critical moment of her speakership, Pelosi is under fire about what she knew of the enhanced interrogation techniques used by the Bush administration and when she knew it.

At the same news conference where she accused the CIA of misleading her on the topic, Pelosi acknowledged for the first time that she knew in 2003 that terrorism suspects were waterboarded. She said she learned that from an aide who sat in on a briefing in February 2003.

For weeks, Pelosi had dodged questions about what she knew about waterboarding and when she knew it. Republicans have called her a hypocrite for criticizing techniques as “torture” when she tacitly agreed to the practices after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. At least one lawmaker — Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) — called on Pelosi Friday to step down as Speaker.

At the same time, liberal groups could question why she didn’t push back harder against the Bush administration. Pelosi defended herself for not speaking out at the time about information disclosed in a classified briefing. Asked why she didn’t co-sign a formal objection by Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), who attended the briefing with Pelosi aide Mike Sheehy, Pelosi said any objection would have done little good.

“No letter could change the policy,” she said on May 14 at a news conference. “It was clear we had to change the leadership in Congress and in the White House. That was my job, the Congress part.”

Tincture of Lawlessness
Obama’s Overreaching Economic Policies

By George F. Will
Thursday, May 14, 2009

Anyone, said T.S. Eliot, could carve a goose, were it not for the bones. And anyone could govern as boldly as his whims decreed, were it not for the skeletal structure that keeps civil society civil — the rule of law. The Obama administration is bold. It also is careless regarding constitutional values and is acquiring a tincture of lawlessness.

In February, California’s Democratic-controlled Legislature, faced with a $42 billion budget deficit, trimmed $74 million (1.4 percent) from one of the state’s fastest-growing programs, which provides care for low-income and incapacitated elderly people and which cost the state $5.42 billion last year. The Los Angeles Times reports that “loose oversight and bureaucratic inertia have allowed fraud to fester.”

But the Service Employees International Union collects nearly $5 million a month from 223,000 caregivers who are members. And the Obama administration has told California that unless the $74 million in cuts are rescinded, it will deny the state $6.8 billion in stimulus money.

Such a federal ukase (the word derives from czarist Russia; how appropriate) to a state legislature is a sign of the administration’s dependency agenda — maximizing the number of people and institutions dependent on the federal government. For the first time, neither sales nor property nor income taxes are the largest source of money for state and local governments. The federal government is.

The SEIU says the cuts violate contracts negotiated with counties. California officials say the state required the contracts to contain clauses allowing pay to be reduced if state funding is.

Anyway, the Obama administration, judging by its cavalier disregard of contracts between Chrysler and some of the lenders it sought money from, thinks contracts are written on water. The administration proposes that Chrysler’s secured creditors get 28 cents per dollar on the $7 billion owed to them but that the United Auto Workers union get 43 cents per dollar on its $11 billion in claims — and 55 percent of the company. This, even though the secured creditors’ contracts supposedly guaranteed them better standing than the union.

Among Chrysler’s lenders, some servile banks that are now dependent on the administration for capital infusions tugged their forelocks and agreed. Some hedge funds among Chrysler’s lenders that are not dependent were vilified by the president because they dared to resist his demand that they violate their fiduciary duties to their investors, who include individuals and institutional pension funds.

The Economist says the administration has “ridden roughshod over [creditors’] legitimate claims over the [automobile companies’] assets. . . . Bankruptcies involve dividing a shrunken pie. But not all claims are equal: some lenders provide cheaper funds to firms in return for a more secure claim over the assets should things go wrong. They rank above other stakeholders, including shareholders and employees. This principle is now being trashed.” Tom Lauria, a lawyer representing hedge fund people trashed by the president as the cause of Chrysler’s bankruptcy, asked that his clients’ names not be published for fear of violence threatened in e-mails to them.

The Troubled Assets Relief Program, which has not yet been used for its supposed purpose (to purchase such assets from banks), has been the instrument of the administration’s adventure in the automobile industry. TARP’s $700 billion, like much of the supposed “stimulus” money, is a slush fund the executive branch can use as it pleases. This is as lawless as it would be for Congress to say to the IRS: We need $3.5 trillion to run the government next year, so raise it however you wish — from whomever, at whatever rates you think suitable. Don’t bother us with details.

This is not gross, unambiguous lawlessness of the Nixonian sort — burglaries, abuse of the IRS and FBI, etc. — but it is uncomfortably close to an abuse of power that perhaps gave Nixon ideas: When in 1962 the steel industry raised prices, President John F. Kennedy had a tantrum and his administration leaked rumors that the IRS would conduct audits of steel executives, and sent FBI agents on predawn visits to the homes of journalists who covered the steel industry, ostensibly to further a legitimate investigation.

The Obama administration’s agenda of maximizing dependency involves political favoritism cloaked in the raiment of “economic planning” and “social justice” that somehow produce results superior to what markets produce when freedom allows merit to manifest itself, and incompetence to fail. The administration’s central activity — the political allocation of wealth and opportunity — is not merely susceptible to corruption, it is corruption.

Thanks 2 George F. Will and The Washington Post

Stopping Dem 60 ‘real hard,’ Cornyn fears

Simmons is set to face at least two primary opponents, including former Ireland Ambassador Tom Foley, and Portman also faces a potential primary with state Auditor Mary Taylor, though he would be heavily favored.

Cornyn said the party is unlikely to take sides in open primaries and likely won’t spend money on any primaries, including Specter’s, but he reserved the right to do either.

“I may be a minority, but I tend to think primaries are not all bad,” he said, before adding with a laugh: “Late primaries can be pretty bad.”

Cornyn said he had met with Steelman and Toomey and would back either if they won their primaries. NRSC staff also met with a potential challenger to Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) “as a courtesy,” Cornyn said, adding that the committee is backing Bunning.

Bunning has caused Cornyn a special kind of heartburn among the incumbents he must defend. The Hall of Fame pitcher has raised little money, and though he has said he will run for a third term, both Cornyn and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) have suggested Bunning may not run.

That has left Bunning openly furious, suggesting that McConnell has a hearing problem and that he could bring legal action against the NRSC if it backed a primary challenger.

On Monday, Cornyn acknowledged his relationship with Bunning has been “a little rocky,” but again seemed to question whether Bunning would run.

“I’m concerned for Sen. Bunning and I wanted to make sure we hold onto that seat,” Cornyn said. “I’ve said all along whether he runs or not is a personal decision that only he can make. Again, my goal is to hold onto that seat.”

Cornyn said he is aiming to help his incumbents avoid the trap into which former Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.) fell last year, when she was caught off-guard by a surprisingly strong challenge amid accusations that she rarely returned to her home state.

Thanks 2 thehill.com

To read excerpts from The Hill’s interview with Sen. Cornyn, please click here .

What if Cheney’s Right?

By Richard Cohen
Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Blogger Alert: I have written a column in defense of Dick Cheney. I know how upsetting this will be to some Cheney critics, and I count myself as one, who think — in respectful paraphrase of what Mary McCarthy said about Lillian Hellman — that everything he says is a lie, including the ands and the thes. Yet I have to wonder whether what he is saying now is the truth — i.e., torture works.

In some sense, this is an arcane point since the United States insists it will not torture anymore — not that, the Bush people quickly add, it ever did. Torture is a moral abomination, and President Obama is right to restate American opposition to it. But where I reserve a soupçon of doubt is over the question of whether “enhanced interrogation techniques” actually work. That they do not is a matter of absolute conviction among those on the political left, who seem to think that the CIA tortured suspected terrorists just for the hell of it.

Cheney, though, is adamant that the very measures that are now deemed illegal did work and that, furthermore, doing away with them has made the country less safe. Cheney said this most recently on Sunday, on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “Those policies were responsible for saving lives,” he told Bob Schieffer. In effect, Cheney poses a hard, hard question: Is it more immoral to torture than it is to fail to prevent the deaths of thousands?

Cheney is a one-man credibility gap. In the past, he has said, “We know they [the Iraqis] have biological and chemical weapons,” when it turned out we knew nothing of the sort. He insisted that “the evidence is overwhelming” that al-Qaeda had been in high-level contact with Saddam Hussein’s regime when the “evidence” was virtually nonexistent. And he repeatedly asserted that Iraq had a menacing nuclear weapons program. As a used-car dealer, he would have no return customers.

Still, every dog has his day, and Cheney is barking up a storm on the efficacy of what can colloquially be called torture. He says he knows of two CIA memos that support his contention that the harsh interrogation methods worked and that many lives were saved. “That’s what’s in those memos,” he told Schieffer. They talk “specifically about different attack planning that was underway and how it was stopped.”

Cheney says he once had the memos in his files and has since asked that they be released. He’s got a point. After all, this is not merely some political catfight conducted by bloggers, although it is a bit of that, too. Inescapably, it is about life and death — not ideology, but people hurling themselves from the burning World Trade Center. If Cheney is right, then let the debate begin: What to do about enhanced interrogation methods? Should they be banned across the board, always and forever? Can we talk about what is and not just what ought to be?

In a similar vein, can we also find out what Nancy Pelosi knew and when she knew it? If she did indeed know about waterboarding back in 2003, that would hardly make her a war criminal. But if she knew and insists otherwise, that would make her one of those people who will not acknowledge that the immediate post-Sept. 11 atmosphere allowed for methods that now seem abhorrent. Certain Democratic politicians remind me of what Oscar Levant supposedly said of Doris Day: “I knew [her] before she was a virgin.” They have no memory of who they used to be.

Back in my college days, there was much late-night discussion about the “free man” — not politically free, mind you, but free of bourgeois cultural restraints. (The once-important writer Jean Genet, a former petty criminal and prostitute, was often cited.) In political terms, Cheney has been a free man ever since he eschewed any presidential ambitions. He became the most impolitic of politicians and continues in that role, taking neither a vow of penitence nor a vow of silence in his vice presidential afterlife. He says the issues are too important for him to be, as is traditional, mum.

He is right about that. The run-up to the disastrous Iraq war was notable for its smothering lack of debate. That served us poorly then and it would serve us poorly now if people who know something about the utility, not to mention the morality, of enhanced interrogation techniques keep their mouths shut. The Obama administration ought to call Cheney’s bluff, if it is that, and release the memos. If even a stopped clock is right twice a day, this could be Cheney’s time.

cohenr@washpost.com

Thanks 2 Richard Cohen @ washingtonpost.com

Cheney on Colin Powell: “I didn’t know he was still a Republican”

Former Vice President Dick Cheney took an extraordinary public swipe at Colin Powell Sunday, questioning in a TV interview whether the former Bush administration secretary of state was even a Republican anymore.

Cheney, appearing on CBS’s Face the Nation, said he was taking the side of Rush Limbaugh over Powell in the ongoing dispute in the GOP between the conservative talk show host and moderate retired general.

“Well if I had to choose in terms of being a Republican, I’d go with Rush Limbaugh,” Cheney told moderator Bob Schieffer. “My take on it was Colin had already left the party — I didn’t know he was still a Republican.”

A somewhat taken-aback Schieffer asked: “You think he’s not a Republican?”

Cheney responded by pointing out that Powell had endorsed President Barack Obama last fall.

“I assume that that’s some indication of his loyalty and his interest,” Cheney said.

Cheney, a longstanding friend and ally of former Defense Secretary and Powell rival Donald Rumsfeld, butted heads with Powell during the Bush years but usually kept his criticism private.

The comments reflect not just the the former vice president’s lingering dislike for Powell, but his strong preference for keeping the GOP moored to conservatism.

“I think we win elections when we have good, solid conservative principles to run upon and based our policies on those principles,” Cheney said.

And lets not forget what Pastor Manning had to say about all this…

Two Faces Two Colons

Thanks 2 Jonathan Martin @ Politico Live ~ Blog

Related Posts on Other Sites:

Cheney Backs Limbaugh Over Powell on GOP Future

Cheney: As a Republican, I choose Rush Limbaugh over Colin Powell.

EDITORIAL: Pelosi’s amnesia

Either that or she slept through CIA briefings

May. 09, 2009
Las Vegas Review-Journal

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been a leading critic of the Bush administration for authorizing the “torture” (waterboarding) of three captured al-Qaida leaders, despite the fact that former Vice President Dick Cheney says the interrogation methods yielded valuable information from men who had not previously been forthcoming, leading the terrorists to spill the beans on planned attacks that could have killed thousands more Americans.

Now it appears Ms. Pelosi knew all about the methods being used, and raised not a peep of objection. Unless she wants to argue she was dozing during CIA briefings.

Congressional leaders were briefed dozens of times on the CIA’s use of severe interrogation methods on al-Qaida suspects, according to new information released by the Obama administration Thursday.

A chart compiled by the CIA shows that Ms. Pelosi, D-Calif., was briefed on Sept. 4, 2002, on the agency’s interrogation of alleged al-Qaida operative Abu Zubaydah, and that the session covered “the particular (enhanced interrogation techniques) that had been employed.”

As recently as a week ago, Ms. Pelosi contended, “We were not — I repeat were not — told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used.”

Brendan Daly, a spokesman for Ms. Pelosi, said Thursday that “the briefers described these techniques, said they were legal, but said that waterboarding had not been used.”

So … they described tactics they claimed they weren’t using? Why would they do that?

Overall, the chart describes 40 briefings over a seven-year period at which CIA and other U.S. intelligence officials described the agency’s interrogation program to senior lawmakers.

The records were requested by congressional Republicans, who have accused Democrats on Capitol Hill of hypocrisy as majority partisans express outrage over the CIA’s use of the interrogation methods.

Former House Republican and CIA Director Porter J. Goss — who attended the 2002 briefing of Ms. Pelosi — wrote last month in an opinion piece that he was “slack-jawed to read that members claim to have not understood that techniques on which they were briefed were to actually be employed; or that specific techniques such as ‘waterboarding’ were never mentioned.” Mr. Goss described the lawmakers’ claims as “a disturbing epidemic of amnesia.”

Here’s resounding evidence that Democrats’ haughty accusations that only Republicans knew about or condoned waterboarding of the three captured al-Qaida leaders amount to political posturing, and little more.

Thanks 2 Las Vegas Review-Journal