I am a registered Independent for that very reason.

• Debates---sara palin looks terrified!! - keeps talking about Alaska...who cares about sm
  • What a gorgeous folksy lady - Sarah Palin for President
    • Beautiful, folksy won't cut it - gourdpainter
  • No socialism, nobama, no way. nm - sam
    • Socialism vs dictatorship - gourdpainter
      • I am a registered Independent for that very reason. - sam
        • The difference is you believe her, I don't. S/M - gourdpainter
        • I agree neither choice is great, but will vote McCain just as a vote against Obama. nm - MeMT
          • I commend you - gourdpainter
          • One thing I do like about McCain is I think he is serious... - sam
  • Terrific looking robot - gourdpainter
    • That's an unfair characterization and I think you know that... - sam
      • Unfair? - gourdpainter
        • The robot comment was unfair.... - sam
          • I'm glad you know her so well. - gourdpainter
        • I'm glad to hear you called your - rep
          • It is just wrong s/m - gourdpainter
            • what is really discouraging is that - both Obama and McCain
              • Yes, and that is exactly what I've been saying - gourdpainter
    • She refused to answer the moderator's questions! - Palintology
      • I've heard Chatty Cathy in several places on news. - Who's the parrot now? nm
        • You must be quite young. It is an old saying originating..sm - an old expression
          • No duh. How coincidental that you'd all think - to call her that, especially when...sm
            • The point being she is programmed just like the doll. nm - Chatty Cathy
        • Biden did nothing but regurgitate talking points.... - sam
          • His facts were off about a lot, too. This is outlined - on msnbc.com, both parties' factual errors. nm
      • Couldn't have said it better - gourdpainter
  • She's speaking about her experience - something Obmajad can't do!! - shoog
    • I know, You can't spell and/or has a lisp. - He voted for the Patriotic Act
      • Is English your third language or what? - shoog
      • Deregulation of what, may I ask? Banks, - health ins., which point? nm
      • Doesn't matter to me. I can look up the votes... - sam
    • YOur ignorance and racism is showing - me
      • He has a Muslim name and comes from - Muslim background. Not that far of a .. sm
        • The fact that he has a Muslim name - gourdpainter
      • I love how you cry racist when you have no legitimate point. - shoog
        • HA HA HA HA HA - loved it - me
    • I thought it was a great debate. I would rather vote for a - MSMT
      • I thought it was a great debate - oh pleeze
      • More from willfully ignorant peanut gallery - me
        • Are you for socialism, black liberation theology, - sam
        • Sheep Alert! Oh-baaaaaaaaaaaa-ma! - shoog
        • Ignorance is voting for someone you think? will help - the country. Look at the friends he keeps.nm
          • Yeah, how can you vote for Obama? How could you - possibly trust him? He is anti-American.nm
  • that's not what I see - cj
    • She was very confident. Quit the bashing. - She held her own, and then some.nm
      • Agreed. I thought she did great - Zville MT
      • and that was not aimed at "cj". That was aimed - at the haters who cant see straight.nm
    • Anything of substance she's reading from the - podium top. She's been rehearsing all week.
      • They BOTH had notes. I thought she did - very well at holding her own. (NM)
      • and you don't see him looking down?? - dnh
      • she reminds me of Rose from the Golden Girls - referring to Saint Olaf
        • Is ridicule all you have? nm - sam
    • Must be the HDTV making her look that way - LOL

The messages you are viewing are archived/old.
To view latest messages and participate in discussions, select the boards given in left menu

voted straight ticket. I always vote for whomever I think is the best man for the job. Like or not, I guess you could call me independent.

You are so against pubs and for O no matter what he does, I think you had better start reading up on his history before you start blasting everyone that didn't vote for him. Those people that didn't vote for him, me included, used our heads. We looked at his background. He was not qualified for the office. That's the main reason why I didn't vote for him.

 It doesn't matter to you who was the best man, it just mattered if it was O. You should start voting with your head instead of your heart as all patriotic Americans  do, instead of listening to promises made and broken all the time as O is doing right now. All you do is bash anyone against O, but if you would look at his history, you would see some eye-popping problems. At first, I thought he may be the candidate for change, but when I thought about it and delved into his history, I was wondering how much it was going to cost our country in dollars, and especially in freedom.

Well......we got change, didn't we?....and it hasn't been very good change at that so far. He's weak and he favors speeches over action -----except where spending money is concerned. He pushed through legislation even though most of the people didn't want it and got our country in debt so that our grandchildren will still be paying for it for years to come.

FYI, anyone in the Congress and Senate if they have been there 5 years or longer don't deserve our votes. They have no idea what the real Americans are going through and that is why I wish I lived in all 50 states....to vote those who don't look out for the people.... out of office.  I'm talking mainly about Pelosi, Dodd, Frank, and those who voted for these stimuls/TARP plans that do nothing for permanent jobs, which includes O and McC.

Our country is going down the drain and all you can think about is O. I don't understand your thinking.

You better wake up before it's too late....and this is my last post on this matter.

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.

the sorry's will be from O when he can't fulfill his many promises to his starry eyed followers who elected him. Pelosi herself has already said that many of the things they want to do won't get done and he hasn't even been sworn in yet.

leans conservative.  I don't care for either far left or far right.  I think that there are nut jobs in both extremes.

There are many things that run through my head when I think of President Obama.  To me, Obama is too far left for my taste. 

Some things that we should do right away is get the heck out of the middle east.  Use our troops in rotation to guard our border with Mexico.  Honestly, if we would keep our nose out of the middle east's business, maybe they would just keep fighting amongst themselves and we would have less to worry about.  I know that sounds horrible, but there has been fighting in that region since the beginning of time.  No amount of money we spend is going to change that.  We need to worry more about our problems at home including illegal immigrants.  They are costing us WAY too much money per year.

I do not want big government.  I do not feel that government should have to bail us out.  I believe that government created this problem allowing bad loans to be given out to people who couldn't afford to pay them.  However, I feel that these "programs" that Obama wants to enforce really won't help the middle class he professes to be looking out for.  Bigger government and more government programs does nothing more than promote and reward irresponsibility and laziness.  Our coutry cannot afford to continually bail banks, companies, and people out.  We have no money.  China won't even help us out any more....not that I really like the idea of getting money from China...but you get my point.

What I want is for government to stop handing out and stop spending money it doesn't have.  Get rid of our tax code and have a flat tax for everyone.  You pay more based on the more you earn.  That way it closes loopholes for crooks so they don't have to pay their taxes or they "make a mistake" and don't pay their taxes. 

I'm tired of packages filled with pork and I'm pointing fingers at both dems and pubs on this one as both parties are guilty.  Get rid of the pork and the pet projects. 

The idea of Obama wanting to do away with secret ballots in union votes....I totally disagree with.  Why shouldn't they continue to be secret?  Making that information known just gives unions the chance to bully people and that isn't looking out for employees like the unions claim to do.....even though it is proven that unionized states show less production and less job growth than states without unions. 

Bigger government also scares me because obviously politicians are too crooked....how can we trust them to run everything in this country. 

We also need to reform welfare.  I was truly upset when I heard Obama wanted to get rid of the reform that Clinton had done on welfare.  We need some regulations and limitations to our welfare system. 

I do not have much hope in change.  So far all I see are the same old cronies that were in Washington before.  We have too many crooked politicians and too many people giving money to them in order to get them elected so they have a puppet in Washington to do their bidding.