Guess he didn't have room for his beloved pie.
Posted By: see photo link on 2009-01-14
In Reply to: its nice to see him in an - dditzil
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/0ftD7Y7dCn1mI/340x.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.daylife.com/photo/0ftD7Y7dCn1mI&usg=__pkklKSLi37kzI-vyh3oHYNXbrzk=&h=425&w=340&sz=33&hl=en&start=6&tbnid=tiw8xBS9CFOXFM:&tbnh=126&tbnw=101&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dobama%2Blooks%2Bpie%2Bphoto%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den
LOVE this shot of him. A man, alone with his pie.
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I guess I didn't take B's post that way. SM
I use God as a comparison when I am really trying to make a point. I think that is what was going on, but only B can answer that. At any rate, I agree with B.
I guess you didn't pay attention....(sm)
when it came to direct quotes and video footage of Bush. In other words, Bush has video out there that directly contradicts what he is saying now in his exit interviews. For example, he is saying now that if he had known that the intelligence about WMDs was incorrect he would not have gone into Iraq. Previously he had said that it didn't matter that there were no WMDs, he would have gone ahead and invaded Iraq anyway---which he did. Exactly how much more proof do you need?
Guess you didn't see the post I did below
showing that Bush tried to regulate the industry as far back as 2001, but the dems would have none of it....those most opposed were all on the "take"; i.e., getting thousands of dollars in contributions from FM/FM.....or don't you believe it even when it comes from their own mouths?
Open your eyes and listen, or do you need a hearing test?
Gee....I guess I didn't realize
we wanted him to run our country further into the ground, spend a record amount of money, and turn our country into a socialist country. I mean....if we are dumb enough to really want that.....yes....Barry is doing an absolutely wonderful job!!!
Guess you didn't notice all the times he...
disagreed with Bush? No, of course not....
Guess you didn't read this part . . .
From Wall Street Journal and other sites:
"At 8:30 this morning, Senator Obama called Senator McCain to ask him if he would join in issuing a joint statement outlining their shared principles and conditions for the Treasury proposal and urging Congress and the White House to act in a bipartisan manner to pass such a proposal," Mr. Burton said in an email to reporters. "At 2:30 this afternoon, Senator McCain returned Senator Obama's call and agreed to join him in issuing such a statement. The two campaigns are currently working together on the details."
McCain released statement minutes after responding to Obama.
Ummm...guess you didn't see the apology below....
I had not read through all the threads yet. You took exception to McCain but it looks like you and I have a bit of a hair trigger ourselves....eh?
I am not hung up on Sarah Palin. I do like her. I think she is the most genuine of the 4. I think that is the way she talks in her everyday life, and doesn't bother to window dress and act like something she isn't. And how she expresses herself has nothing to do with intelligence or the lack thereof.
So put that in your pipe and smoke it (there is a folksy one for ya...lol).
This is my favorite, I use it all the time, and I could apply it to the big O's explanation of his association with Ayers:
Barack, sweetie, that dog don't hunt. lol.
Guess that 1-day stock market rally didn't exactly
x
I guess we didn't know it was a joke...if you go back and read (sm)
you said you have a very strong opinion and you keep it to yourself...which sounded like you were saying that is what we should all be doing too. But the point in response to you was that the board is for political opinions to be expressed and if it bothers anyone, they don't have to come on here. I am sorry you got your feelings hurt though. I am sure it was just a communication problem.
Guess you didn't read the post I made from a few days ago.
Sorry, but I haven't been able to post lately due to some problems, but the FOIA report I posted and said to pay attention to certain pages....Clinton KNEW there were WMD's in Irag in 1996! Did he do anything? Nope. He left the country he was visiting right before a bombing; i.e., he knew it was going to happen. The jist I got of the report was that he knew and did nothing.
Did you read that report? Don't want to dredge up old presidents but you seem to do it every chance you get, so I just have to respond to that. Bush also knew but did nothing because the CIA,DOJ, FBI and whatever other departments were to keep him informed but never worked together on anything so he got conflicting reports all the time. Was he a mind reader? Doubt it or 911 would not have happened.
Sorry, but this post does not hold water IMHO.
My beloved skinheads? sm
You are not only ignorant, I think you are certifiable. You choose to believe a newspaper that has put our nation at risk, has reporters who have been known to make up stories (yes, that really gives them credence). You post story after story about how horrible our military is and you have nothing but an insane hatred of all things good in America to back you up. You cannot possibly back up what you are saying because it is not true. Oh, I forgot, it's true because the New York Crimes said it is true. You are a joke. I am sure this will get deleted, but I feel a lot better having gotten all that out of my system. You are a mean, crude, rude, ignorant bully. You despise America, the troops and all they stand for and all your protestations won't do you any good because everything you post says otherwise. Seek help. You are in desparate need of help.
even your beloved Faux
has Obama up 6.
Just wait until she gets her beloved
the other Dem congresspeople in office, see what kind of power they have then!
Maybe your beloved Hamas SHOULD put God in it.
Then they might stand a chance.
As it is, they're on the way to defeat. (And good riddance to 'em.)
Beloved Congresswoman McKinney
BELOVED CYNTHIA McKINNEY
A White Ex Cop Speaks Out About a Georgia Congresswoman
by
Michael C. Ruppert
April 11, 2006 1000 PST (FTW) - ASHLAND -Cynthia McKinney is a friend of mine. Until the day I die she will be a friend of mine. More than that, she will be a role model and an inspiration that I don’t ever expect to be equaled, let alone surpassed. Full disclosure.
Out of several dozen Op-Eds, news reports and commentaries on the now-infamous so-called “cop-slapping” event of March 29th, I haven’t seen a single one that, from my perspective, got it right. So right up front, let me say that if I am forced to look at this one snapshot incident, divorced from context and history, then yes, my very good friend messed up. It shouldn’t have become as big a deal as it has and she bears some responsibility for that. But if I look at the event as part of a continuum of the life of congress, or the life of this nation, and (no less importantly) of the life of this woman, things look and feel a whole lot different.
The virulent, spit-dripping, white, racist commentators from Boortz to DeLay and the oh-so-PC and dainty black Democratic pundits, columnists and pols who pick Cynthia McKinney apart—pretending to defend her while putting her black butt on the E-Bay auction block for November—are actually allies. They both want her to go away. They both want the issues that have come too close to public recognition in this case to go away. Leaders from left and right, black or white, cannot bear the thought of actually looking deeper at what happened with Cynthia McKinney and what it means.
Let me give you an historical hint. As a rule, wars are generally started over big events, (e.g. the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand, Pearl Harbor, North Korea’s Army Crossing the 38th parallel). Revolutions are generally started over less memorable things (e.g. “Let them eat cake,” a tea tax, some government troops opening fire on unarmed demonstrators). People of all colors and political persuasions understand that underlying both wars and revolutions are monstrous icebergs of unresolved inequity. So it is with Cynthia McKinney. And it is her hairdo (new or old, take your pick) that now sits atop an iceberg that both right-wing whites and bought-off blacks would like to go away.
I have walked the halls of Congress with Cynthia McKinney maybe eight to ten times. I have walked into and out of the Cannon and Longworth house office buildings with her. I have walked to hearings in the Rayburn house office building with her. I have walked the underground tunnels from one of those office buildings directly to the edge of the House floor and its anteroom with her. I can tell you one thing for certain because I have seen it and I have felt it. Cynthia McKinney and her staff get treated differently from just about anyone else on the Hill. It’s subtle, but so is the taste of dirt when it’s in your mouth.
ICEBERGS
Between 1974 and 1977, as I prowled the streets of “The Jungle” in South Central L.A. (in uniform and later as a detective and undercover narc) I knew little about being human. The Jungle is the place where “Boyz in the Hood” and Denzel Washington’s “Training Day” were filmed. I was a good cop, a very good cop. I didn’t have any sustained personnel complaints. My rating reports were always “outstanding.” The law-abiding citizens by and large trusted me when they saw me. My liberal education at UCLA had at least partially sensitized me to a world that seemed impossible to understand—a world that scared me just as much as it enticed me with its opportunities for heroism, peer recognition, and self-acceptance. My father had been a war hero and I wanted to know if I was cut from the same cloth.
I was known for being aggressive; eager to embrace danger; a budding, brilliant investigator; and an unmatched report writer. I was a “hard-charger” as they called it in those days. Perhaps the best role model I had as a cop was a black LAPD Captain by the name of Jesse A. Brewer who also taught me about leadership, friendship and loyalty.
I didn’t need to beat up innocent people because the streets where I worked were full of guilty people: robbers, burglars, heroin dealers, wife beaters, rapists, and car thieves. I was on the streets (and not far away) the night the Symbionese Liberation Army were roasted like marshmallows after making the mistake of trying to shoot it out with my brothers in blue. We were all men in those days, no women. I was on the streets for months before and after the time when every LA cop had a fear of making a routine traffic stop and facing an automatic weapon, a rocket launcher, a bomb, or a Molotov cocktail. Tense times.
For several years I averaged between 20 and 30 felony arrests per month—good arrests. Who had time to go after innocent people just because they were black? Also in those days, I also used the word “nigger” about 15 times a day. It was the culture. It was my ignorance. In the 1970s, LAPD reports used the official word Negro to describe African-Americans and before I joined LAPD in 1973 I had seen or talked to only around 20 black people in my whole life: maids, taxi drivers, bellmen—you know “colored people.” I talked like those around me talked. I thought it was cool.
As front-page stories in the Herald Examiner described me in 1981, I was “… a white kid from Orange County in a blue uniform sent to a black ghetto.”
The one thing I could not understand for about fifteen years after that was the maybe half-dozen different black men who had approached me in futility and rage, tearing open their shirts and looking at me with absolute sincerity as they said, “Shoot me. Go ahead, shoot me. I got nothing to lose.” They meant it, and it mattered not at all what the last incident was that had taken place before they snapped with that sublime mix of rage and complete despair. A lifetime of inequalities, social and economic; injustices, past and present; and frustrations, ever present; had pushed those men beyond their breaking point. It took me a while to get to that point, but I got there too, and now I understood something about being black.
Through two decades of 12-Step work, intense spiritual effort and personal therapy I have seen my errors, felt genuine remorse, and made my amends. One of those amends came in 1996 when—in a face-to-face confrontation with a CIA director—I challenged the same government I had once protected for smuggling hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States, where much of it was intentionally routed to the inner cities.
Since then, and on more than one occasion, Black America, and black individuals in America have saved my life. No one rushed to take a bullet for me. No, what was done for me was to give me acceptance, support, friendship, a meal and some soul. You can do a lot with a little bit of soul.
Among all of the African Americans I know—and there are many—Cynthia McKinney stands head and shoulders above the rest. Screw her hairdo; It’s the woman’s mind and heart that need to be considered here.
Flash forward a couple of decades from the late 1970s.
It’s now 2000 and my little newsletter From The Wilderness is steadily growing as we look at issues like US Government covert operations in Colombia, death squads, the global drug trade, the prison-industrial complex, drug money flowing into Al Gore’s presidential campaign, PROMIS software and a then little-known company named Halliburton. My friend Al Giordano of the Narco News Bulletin brought Cynthia McKinney to my attention. I emailed her and she responded almost immediately.
There was an immediate friendship. Cynthia McKinney was the first member of congress I had met (about 15 at the time) who actually seemed to be a human being who actually gave a hoot and who actually comprehended all the government criminality people were talking about. She responded to emails. She took phone calls. She actually cut checks from the Treasury to subscribe to FTW. She bought our videos and reports and…she read them. She handed them out.
She asked questions and didn’t pretend to know everything. She read. She listened. She understood.
And then came 9/11.
There are millions of Americans who still have major unanswered questions about the attacks of September 11th. Some are wives, husbands, and children of the victims. Some, like me, are investigative journalists. Many are just average people who could never swallow the galactic inconsistencies of the government account and who have refused to succumb to pressure for conformity. Cynthia McKinney was the one to ask “What did the Bush administration know and when did it know it?” about the scores of detailed warnings received by the administration in the months before the attacks. Contrary to one account from a black commentator recently, she has never retracted that question.
For that question, she was tarred and feathered in the press. From her long-standing support of Palestinian rights and objections to Israeli strong-arm tactics in the occupied territories emerged a new double-edged motive to remove her from congress at all costs. Cynthia McKinney was an un-American, anti-Semitic supporter of terrorists!
An Oreo black candidate named Denise Majette emerged as lots of money poured from the coffers of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) funded not only a hate campaign against McKinney, but in support of her opponent as well. Illegally, thousands of Republican voters crossed over to vote for the Oreo in the primary while the seat stayed safely Democratic, and all were quietly relieved when Cynthia didn’t even make it to the general election.
Cynthia McKinney will tell you that I and the entire 9/11 movement stayed with her loyally throughout her two-year imposed vacation. And I believe she will tell you that it was in part because we organized fundraisers for her and kept her name out there that she made it back—to everyone’s surprise except ours—in 2004.
Cynthia McKinney had been the only member of congress to ask real questions about 9/11. And she didn’t stop or forget when she got back either. More than that, she continued to do—no matter what—the things that her conscience bade her to do as an African-American woman who is anything but a racist (unless you want to refer to the human race). In hearings she questioned Donald Rumsfeld about the multitude of wargame exercises I had identified in my book Crossing the Rubicon. She asked repeated questions about 9/11 in repeated hearings and no one on the Democratic side backed her up when her questions were brushed aside, ignored and forgotten. She also kept up her support for the rights of the oppressed everywhere and she didn’t change one single note of her sheet music or its cadence.
She held the only hearing on Capitol Hill where investigators, authors, and families questioning the official version of 9/11 had a voice. She invited me, Wayne Madsen and Ray McGovern to act as questioners at that hearing, and she was the only member of congress to sit through that hearing.
She was there for the victims of Katrina and Rita who fled as refugees to Atlanta last fall. She was there to protect black culture and black history through her Tupac bill. She was there for her constituents and for all of the disenfranchised, battered, demoralized, and desperate Americans of all colors who had come to see her as “the politician of last resort.”
PLATE TECTONICS
Almost every armchair pundit (left or right) who has criticized Cynthia McKinney has told only part of her story.
When she was returned to congress, her party, overlooking well-documented procedure with a number of historical precedents, refused to give her back the seniority to which she was entitled. In terms of committee assignments, instead of being a six-term senior member of her committees, she was a freshman. This placed her last on the list of questioners, last in terms of pecking order, last in terms of recognition, and last in terms of agenda setting. She was denied her old spot on the House Foreign Relations committee. She was moved further and further away from the coveted and influential title of “ranking member” that she should have been approaching. Should the House revert back to Democratic control this year she might have even chaired a committee. God forbid!
They did throw the Negro woman McKinney a bone in the form of a nicer office than before (the only place where her true seniority was recognized). “Here bitch, drive this Cadillac and shut up!”
While House Democratic leadership under Nancy Pelosi of California has been brutal to Cynthia McKinney, the treatment afforded her by the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) has been equally despicable. Not only did the CBC not fight for McKinney’s legitimate seniority, it also seems that they have taken pleasure in snubbing her. Solidarity my ass.
One anecdote paints the picture pretty clearly.
Last fall, after I had acted as a questioner for two panels sponsored by McKinney at the CBC’s annual convention, I was surprised as she handed me a ticket to the CBC formal banquet. This is a big annual event and I sat just a few tables away from John Kerry. Howard Dean was a few tables past Kerry. More than a thousand people, dressed to the nines, filled a crowded ballroom.
Cynthia was a no-show and it didn’t take long to figure out why. As every black member of Congress was introduced by seniority, starting with the Honorable John Conyers of Michigan, Cynthia McKinney’s name was saved for last. Even the Congressional Black Caucus could not recognize a sister’s seniority and service, not even when it wouldn’t have cost them a thing.
Where was Cynthia during that dinner? She wasn’t there. She was off violating a direct order from Nancy Pelosi not to attend a massive anti-war rally on the Mall. She was standing with Cindy Sheehan. She was giving a speech denouncing the war in Iraq and the Bush administration. She was doing her job. I sat at McKinney’s table next to my ad hoc dinner partner Kathleen Cleaver, weeping over the insult on McKinney. Not once since have I seen Cynthia McKinney even flinch over it.
I have watched Cynthia McKinney quietly and gracefully endure monstrous insults, sleights and provocations that I could never keep silent over. I have watched the world wait for a misplaced burp or worse from her and I have watched her refuse to take the bait on at least fifty occasions.
Are revolutions started because those in revolt rise to offered bait? I think not.
In the case of Cynthia McKinney and the Capitol Hill Police officer, I, like the rest of those reading this story, have not seen what happened. There may be a tape that will surface at some point as we wait to see whether a grand jury will indict her on idiotic charges of assault. I don’t know whether the Capitol Hill Cop was white or black, young or old, a rookie or a veteran. I wish it all hadn’t happened and I’d bet Cynthia feels the same way.
But then again…
THE GREATEST COMPLIMENT OF MY LIFE
In the spring of 2004 as I was arranging a speech and fundraiser for Cynthia McKinney in Los Angeles wherein we visited a small local museum of the civil rights movement. It was only about two miles from where I had once worked. Pictures of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy triggered painful memories for me. As I stood transfixed looking at a picture taken circa 1965 of an LAPD black and white with two helmeted officers wielding batons high above their heads in a street fight with blacks, Cynthia McKinney walked up and stood beside me. Quietly, so that only I could hear she said, “That’s what you used to do when you used to be white.”
Human being.
John Kennedy and even Dwight Eisenhower were forgiven for having affairs. Bill Clinton was forgiven for a dozen crimes. Ronald Reagan was forgiven for everything. Who will dare call it justice when and if Cynthia McKinney is not forgiven and approved of for being real? There is an easy way for most people to avoid reaching their limits and the risk of being embarrassed. The first rule is: don’t do anything risky. Don’t stretch the envelope.
With 2,400 American KIA in Iraq, with the US economy ever-shrinking for the poor and middle classes, with US government corruption reeking like a rotting Elephant in the African sun, with voting rights being violated in a gentrifying and whitening New Orleans, with the crimes of 9/11 not only unsolved but covered up by both Democrats and Republicans, there would seem to be many reasons why the envelope needs to be ripped apart a bit.
I have little hope for it now. All the “just get along” folks seem to be winning the day and my friend Cynthia McKinney has some big choices ahead for her. I and many others will be doing all we can from around the country to get her re-elected again this year if that’s what she asks.
But let me say this clearly: If Cynthia McKinney wants to start a revolution over a cop who touched her, or anything else, I’ll welcome it and I know damn well which side I’ll be on.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Doesn't the beloved Christopher Hitchens write for Vanity Fair.???
He was a liberal and now has become a conservative of immense proportions, so I guess he is a new conservative.
Is there room for one more............sm
I echo all the sentiments expressed here. I believe that God will put the man in this office that needs to be there. I have been praying for this election for some time and that God's will be done. Regardless whether "my man" wins or not, I pray God's guidance for the man that is in office because I believe he will have a lot of work to do. For the man who does not get in office, he will have a lot of work to do still in the Senate and can be a very effective leader from there.
I am happy to have this forum where we can all come together and "cuss and discuss" things. I know I may have been a bit abrasive to some here, and if I have offended, then I truly apologize. You see, I love to argue......errrr, debate....most any subject and sometimes get a bit carried away, but truly none of my words were meant to be hurtful or insulting, and If they were, again, I apologize. 
All the best to each of you and I hope that, whoever wins the election, your life will be blessed.
Now, back to business................
I'd like to see Ann escorted into a room ....
...of pie-bearing New York City first responders and let her explain herself to them.
You got that right. Just imaging how much room
nm
BDayes gets at least as much room
nm
Never has been. Trying to make room
su
you should go to the emergency room
x
sam, you have no room to call anyone
your posts speak for themselves, and frankly I'm done reading them. Arrogant? No, just tired of talking to a brick wall. You call me arrogant and closed-minded and yet you're the one who doesn't want to concede a single point. You have to have the last word on everything, but we'll see who has the last word when the votes are counted.
So I should stick myself in a room
and never go anywhere because it's everyone's right to display sex drugs and violence everywhere? Where is my right to live in a society that doesn't bombard us day and night with those lifestyles?
We do not have enough room for our own prisoners.
x
That's the elephant in the room...
that very few posters on this forum are willing to acknowledge. They would much rather pay to kill people overseas than give a penny to the poor in this country. Pretty sickening, if you ask me!
But he has so much ''wiggle room''
explaining the VAT. He can claim that he is not charging the people a new tax. He is charging the growers, manufacturers, haulers and merchants. (As if magically this is not a cost of doing business to be borne by the consumer.)
I always have to laugh when people yell, ''raise taxes corporations.'' Who do they think ultimately pays that tax? It is the end user of any product. Raise corporate taxes and anyone who purchases goods or services from that company pays a higher price for it. So it is a tax on all citizens/consumers, just indirect and invisible.
You and JTBB might want to get a room.
nm
You have a lot of room to call someone else a liar...
I saved the conversations, so I know the truth and that is what is important. You have lied so long under so many monikers to so many people you wouldn't know the truth if it bit you.
I did not lie about the bashing thing. I am not bashing you and I never said you email stalked me or threatened me, that was another poster. However, I WAS emailed in nasty, nasty terms when I was silly enough to give someone from this board my email address. It could have been you under still another moniker. I don't know that to be a fact.
Geezzz...talk about the pot calling the kettle black. You lied about being Taiga and Teddy until you slipped up yourself, and I have those conversations saved. I don't know if they are in the archives or not, as many posts were deleted, but I have them...I know you, Taiga/Teddy, in all your chameleon monikers and personalities...and you KNOW I do.
As you said...WHATEVER. lol.
My husband said....Put all the people in a room....sm
that have known Obama for years and years and can vouch for his character and things he has truly done and been influenced by....put them in a room, these people from the last 25 years ago, from his college days until he ran for public office.
Where are these people?
Who are they? Where are they hiding?
It just might be an empty room. That's another scary thing to me.
You might have either have Rev. Wright, Ayers, and a bunch of socialists.....but he dumped them under the bus and says they never influenced him...so really...empty room?
Where are they? Obama doesn't want us to know who they are maybe?
So....No one in the room at all.
I had to leave the room when NP and BF were speaking
I absolutely got sick!
Wow! There are people protesting outside the room.
People were just yelling something about the bailout and somebody yelled "Put the money in the food bank so people can eat."!!!
Sure, but I'd rather be in a small room with a caterpillar!
nm
Get a room? Something on my nose? Simply
because I was polite to someone, chose to give one of the "nice" ones the benefit of the doubt while finding posts like yours uninformative, childish and a pure waste of keystrokes?
I agree, given the never-ending bitterness and hatefulness you have, it will all come back to bite you in the butt some day. One usually gets back what they give.
No thanks!. Was just checking on the kids room.
nm
How about A ROOM for JTBB & Marman! sm
Apparently these 2 have more time than anyone else. The few times I even refresh the MQ section, they seem to have a leg up on the whole show. It's all the time!
Honestly, it's just tiresome!
Sho you right. Not enough room in society for evil perverts.
Keep it coming, you make plenty sense. I enjoy your posts so much :):)
Not thinking logically....you have room to talk....
you obviously don't know squat about how the government is run, but I am sure some of your fellow Democrats (try Harry Reid) could explain to you how there is a budget, and there are certain monies that go into each budget and they don't cross over...although I have to agree in spirit, the way the Democrats have raped Social Security and pulled money from it to put into other entitlement programs that fell short...yeah, I am sure the Democrats could get the money from somewhere. And if you do not see the difference in funding our military and funding social programs...talk about a person without sound judgment. I don't know why when you Democrats (or some of you) get backed into a corner you want to start personally attacking people, telling them they are not thinking logically and without sound judgment and run the the favorite Dem backup, the war, the war, the war.
As to the cigarette tax..I am not a smoker, never have been, but it seems erally arrogant to me to single out a certain portion of society to almost double a tax on to pay for this. In what alternate reality is that FAIR?? Many of them are ones who would be users of the SCHIP program. If you are asking THEM to fund their own "free" insurance, should you not be willing to do the same? You sign up to have an extra 3% taken off the top of your gross income to be dedicated to SCHIP. You are behind it 100%. Everyone who signs up to use it signs up to have an additional 3% of their income off the top given to SCHIP. All Democrats who want to expand the program, pledge 3% off the top of your gross income from now until you die. You fund it. Works for me. You won't hear me complain.
Sam leaves us no room for real issues.
It has been nothing but a sam Blitzkrieg on the political board these past few weeks. Sam posts messages with the express intent of wreaking havoc and instigating arguments, as evidenced by her comments such as, "Let the games begin." If sam would be so kind as to step away, we might be able to discuss the issues that are important to all of us in an intelligent and adult manner. I for one will no longer feed the sam troll by by acknowledging any post by her.
Someone who understands that chat room bashing
?
Obama has no room to talk about earmarks....and neither he nor Biden...
have much room to talk about flip flopping. Ahem.
Enter the elephant in the room not beind discussed
Under the Obama administration, reform in trade agreements, incentives to keep jobs stateside and targets plans to make it easier to unionize will be changing that picture. Pubs have lost this grip, no matter how loud they protest, how many GOP alert memos they send or how hard they pretend otherwise. Look for the unions to make a long overdue comeback. Then we shall see just how outdated they are.
Bush said Obama asked to see the room where his girls would sleep -
Bush said it was obvious that Obama was going to be a family man even in office.
hotel room, like the guy said, the Alaska plane is not a famil station wagon. Sounds like fat cat to
no message
Good don't guess. It's my guess though.nm
x
I didn't miss any part and didn't say...
anything either way. I just posted a link.
This is the reason we are in Iraq and it's the same reason I didn't vote for him in 2000: Didn't
his own personal reasons.
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050620/why_george_went_to_war.php
The Downing Street memos have brought into focus an essential question: on what basis did President George W. Bush decide to invade Iraq? The memos are a government-level confirmation of what has been long believed by so many: that the administration was hell-bent on invading Iraq and was simply looking for justification, valid or not.
Despite such mounting evidence, Bush resolutely maintains total denial. In fact, when a British reporter asked the president recently about the Downing Street documents, Bush painted himself as a reluctant warrior. "Both of us didn't want to use our military," he said, answering for himself and British Prime Minister Blair. "Nobody wants to commit military into combat. It's the last option."
Yet there's evidence that Bush not only deliberately relied on false intelligence to justify an attack, but that he would have willingly used any excuse at all to invade Iraq. And that he was obsessed with the notion well before 9/11—indeed, even before he became president in early 2001.
In interviews I conducted last fall, a well-known journalist, biographer and Bush family friend who worked for a time with Bush on a ghostwritten memoir said that an Iraq war was always on Bush's brain.
"He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999," said author and Houston Chronicle journalist Mickey Herskowitz. "It was on his mind. He said, 'One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.' And he said, 'My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.' He went on, 'If I have a chance to invade…, if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency.'"
Bush apparently accepted a view that Herskowitz, with his long experience of writing books with top Republicans, says was a common sentiment: that no president could be considered truly successful without one military "win" under his belt. Leading Republicans had long been enthralled by the effect of the minuscule Falklands War on British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's popularity, and ridiculed Democrats such as Jimmy Carter who were reluctant to use American force. Indeed, both Reagan and Bush's father successfully prosecuted limited invasions (Grenada, Panama and the Gulf War) without miring the United States in endless conflicts.
Herskowitz's revelations illuminate Bush's personal motivation for invading Iraq and, more importantly, his general inclination to use war to advance his domestic political ends. Furthermore, they establish that this thinking predated 9/11, predated his election to the presidency and predated his appointment of leading neoconservatives who had their own, separate, more complex geopolitical rationale for supporting an invasion.
Conversations With Bush The Candidate
Herskowitz—a longtime Houston newspaper columnist—has ghostwritten or co-authored autobiographies of a broad spectrum of famous people, including Reagan adviser Michael Deaver, Mickey Mantle, Dan Rather and Nixon cabinet secretary John B. Connally. Bush's 1999 comments to Herskowitz were made over the course of as many as 20 sessions together. Eventually, campaign staffers—expressing concern about things Bush had told the author that were included in the manuscript—pulled the project, and Bush campaign officials came to Herskowitz's house and took his original tapes and notes. Bush communications director Karen Hughes then assumed responsibility for the project, which was published in highly sanitized form as A Charge to Keep.
The revelations about Bush's attitude toward Iraq emerged during two taped sessions I held with Herskowitz. These conversations covered a variety of matters, including the journalist's continued closeness with the Bush family and fondness for Bush Senior—who clearly trusted Herskowitz enough to arrange for him to pen a subsequent authorized biography of Bush's grandfather, written and published in 2003.
I conducted those interviews last fall and published an article based on them during the final heated days of the 2004 campaign. Herskowitz's taped insights were verified to the satisfaction of editors at the Houston Chronicle, yet the story failed to gain broad mainstream coverage, primarily because news organization executives expressed concern about introducing such potent news so close to the election. Editors told me they worried about a huge backlash from the White House and charges of an "October Surprise."
Debating The Timeline For War
But today, as public doubts over the Iraq invasion grow, and with the Downing Street papers adding substance to those doubts, the Herskowitz interviews assume singular importance by providing profound insight into what motivated Bush—personally—in the days and weeks following 9/11. Those interviews introduce us to a George W. Bush, who, until 9/11, had no means for becoming "a great president"—because he had no easy path to war. Once handed the national tragedy of 9/11, Bush realized that the Afghanistan campaign and the covert war against terrorist organizations would not satisfy his ambitions for greatness. Thus, Bush shifted focus from Al Qaeda, perpetrator of the attacks on New York and Washington. Instead, he concentrated on ensuring his place in American history by going after a globally reviled and easily targeted state run by a ruthless dictator.
The Herskowitz interviews add an important dimension to our understanding of this presidency, especially in combination with further evidence that Bush's focus on Iraq was motivated by something other than credible intelligence. In their published accounts of the period between 9/11 and the March 2003 invasion, former White House Counterterrorism Coordinator Richard Clarke and journalist Bob Woodward both describe a president single-mindedly obsessed with Iraq. The first anecdote takes place the day after the World Trade Center collapsed, in the Situation Room of the White House. The witness is Richard Clarke, and the situation is captured in his book, Against All Enemies.
On September 12th, I left the Video Conferencing Center and there, wandering alone around the Situation Room, was the President. He looked like he wanted something to do. He grabbed a few of us and closed the door to the conference room. "Look," he told us, "I know you have a lot to do and all…but I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this. See if he's linked in any way…"
I was once again taken aback, incredulous, and it showed. "But, Mr. President, Al Qaeda did this."
"I know, I know, but…see if Saddam was involved. Just look. I want to know any shred…" …
"Look into Iraq, Saddam," the President said testily and left us. Lisa Gordon-Hagerty stared after him with her mouth hanging open.
Similarly, Bob Woodward, in a CBS News 60 Minutes interview about his book, Bush At War, captures a moment, on November 21, 2001, where the president expresses an acute sense of urgency that it is time to secretly plan the war with Iraq. Again, we know there was nothing in the way of credible intelligence to precipitate the president's actions.
Woodward: "President Bush, after a National Security Council meeting, takes Don Rumsfeld aside, collars him physically and takes him into a little cubbyhole room and closes the door and says, 'What have you got in terms of plans for Iraq? What is the status of the war plan? I want you to get on it. I want you to keep it secret.'"
Wallace (voiceover): Woodward says immediately after that, Rumsfeld told Gen. Tommy Franks to develop a war plan to invade Iraq and remove Saddam—and that Rumsfeld gave Franks a blank check.
Woodward: "Rumsfeld and Franks work out a deal essentially where Franks can spend any money he needs. And so he starts building runways and pipelines and doing all the necessary preparations in Kuwait specifically to make war possible."
Bush wanted a war so that he could build the political capital necessary to achieve his domestic agenda and become, in his mind, "a great president." Blair and the members of his cabinet, unaware of the Herskowitz conversations, placed Bush's decision to mount an invasion in or about July of 2002. But for Bush, the question that summer was not whether, it was only how and when. The most important question, why, was left for later.
Eventually, there would be a succession of answers to that question: weapons of mass destruction, links to Al Qaeda, the promotion of democracy, the domino theory of the Middle East. But none of them have been as convincing as the reason George W. Bush gave way back in the summer of 1999.
My guess would be
THREE!
guess what
Now you know how it feels, don't you?
That's anybody's guess. sm
But I think it is an educated guess to think most democratic voters in this election were against the war and most republican voters were for the war. Just my guess.
I guess your'e in the 39%
Bush approval rating dips to 39 percent - poll
Wed Oct 12, 9:47 PM ET
President George W. Bush's job approval rating has fallen to a new low of 39 percent in an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released on Wednesday.
Bush's approval rating dipped in the poll below a mid-September ranking of 40 percent. The survey also found only 28 percent of respondents believed the country was headed in the right direction, NBC reported.
Bush's political challenges have been piling up in recent weeks, from criticism over his handling of Hurricane Katrina, to growing unease over rising gas prices to conservative discord over the nomination of Harriet Miers to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Many conservatives are outraged that Bush picked the White House insider with no judicial experience instead of a judge with clear-cut conservative credentials who could be counted on to move the high court firmly to the right.
Twenty-nine percent of people surveyed said Miers was qualified to serve on the highest court in the United States, while 24 percent thought she was not qualified and 46 percent said they did not know enough about her, NBC said.
The poll also found that strong majorities did not believe that recent charges against former House Republican leader Tom DeLay of Texas or a federal investigation of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican, were politically motivated, NBC said.
DeLay has been indicted in Texas on money-laundering and conspiracy charges linked to campaign financing. Frist is being investigated over a stock sale.
With the 2006 congressional elections a year away, 48 percent of respondents said they preferred a Democratic-controlled Congress, compared with 39 percent who said they preferred Republican leadership, NBC said.
The 9-point difference was the largest margin between the parties in the 11 years the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll had been tracking the question, NBC said.
The poll of 807 adults was conducted from Saturday to Monday and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points
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