Why settle for a Harvard graduate who sees a vision of a kinder world.
Posted By: Barack Obama is his name and don't you forget i on 2008-08-29
In Reply to: Maybe we don't have to settle for - Not for McCain or Obama
I didn't believe him initially. I felt he had a hidden agenda, pay back time for the wrongs done to his ancestors until I saw his family photos, mom and grandpa as white as mine. This guy was raised as a white boy. And maybe that is why he expects more from the black men (raise your kids).
Give him a chance. Listen to his speeches over the years. Research him.
Though honestly, I would vote for Lou Dobbs in a New York minute.
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- Why settle for a Harvard graduate who sees a vision of a kinder world. - Barack Obama is his name and don't you forget i
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I think that history will be far kinder to Bush than
we have been. He is, by far, NOT the worst president in history, IMO. Blaming Bush for all the world's bad seems to have become a national pasttime, but I think that in the end, the historians will see it differently. Don;t get me wrong, I don't believe that there will be a glowing halo over his head or anything, but the worst is not a title that I believe will be bestowed on him.
Maybe we don't have to settle for
the lesser of two evils. How about we find a totally different person to be president than McCain or Obama? I am terrified Obama will be president. I don't like him at all. I barely like McCain. I was watching Glen Beck last night and I must say that I was quite impressed by Bob Barr. My husband and I both think he deserves serious consideration for president. So I want to get the word out so people start to research him because maybe we don't have to just settle for Osama Bin Biden or McBush.
Obama may be a kinder gentler candidate...
wish I could say the same for his posse. Good day to you!
we care about what is in his harvard
trained mind, not what he decorates himself with.
Settle down - I was just poking fun at your remark.
Chill, chick. Seriously.
I was just commiserating with you and your 'names I've been called' remark. I don't take anything personally on this board. Why would I? And why would you?
You do realize what "LOL" means, right?
I don't know why you flew off the handle like that.
Maybe you need to take a few minutes away from the MB to just go out and enjoy life and get a little perspective.
Why would anyone with any sense at all spend $500,000 instead of $12.00 if he could settle it...
Makes sense -- spend 500,000 to block all the lawsuits but not 12.00 for your BC. Where is everyone that was hollering about what was spent on Palin's wardrobe.
I guess Harvard fails to provide that course, eh?
x
They're called ''Columbia, Harvard and 'Yale.'' nm
x
Did you graduate kindergarten this year?
This is an opinion piece from a graduate of
Will not be accepting this as gospel without further resarch and investigation. My gut's telling me somebody somewhere is trying to serve a partisan agenda. Pardon me while I go check a few facts, read the bill for myself and get a few more viewpoints before buying into this hook, line and sinker.
Tunnel vision
don't think a little thing like a massive natural diaster will stop gt from her hate Bush vendetta.
BTW, to them Bush caused the hurricane anyway. Just more fuel for their fire.
Olbermann is a graduate of Cornell University...
and you are a graduate of what?
Oh please, Rep - your tunnel vision is really getting tiresome.
It really seems YOU are the one so consumed with hate that you can't get past that schtick to really listen to what anyone else is saying. You see liberal, you think hate. It's a totally childish and lazy way to process information. When are you actually going to THINK about the issues and take some resposiblity for forming more three-dimensional and realistic opinions that are actually your own?
I mean truly,is that the best you Bush cheerleaders have got? Either you're posting under 10 names here or else you all sound like precanned recordings - you're so filled with hate! Blah blah blah! You're so hateful! Blah blah! What a crock. Do we ever have to wonder what interesting insights you might have? I guess! You can't get off the Limbaugh talking points long enough to actually express one.
Just eat it and get over it - Tillman was a huge fan of Chomsky, he was killed by not so friendly fire (there's a little HATE for you) and Rove's propagandists tried to make it all pretty and nice-smelling up to and including lying to the parents, but it's the same old tired smelly garbage they tried during Viet Nam. What, they think it'd work better now?
So if you have some defense to make of the Pentagon for that, why don't you just go ahead and DO IT if you can? Nobody's interested in hearing about your hate theories about liberals around here - big YAWN. What else DO you have?
LOL! It appears that you have something in your *right* eye blocking your vision.
You crash this board and admonish my behavior, yet you can't see the same behavior on the other board. You're over there kissing up to them.
Yeah. You call them as you see them.
With your right eye closed.
You're just another lying phony crashing this board. 
they had to join a community service organization to graduate?
x
Your vision might improve if you stop *glaring*
* Bill Clinton: Did not serve. Student deferments. Entered draft but received #311.
Can you get anymore tunnel vision and one-sided?
Equal opportunity for all Americans is not a new vision.
Get with the program.
Certified graduate of the *How to Insult like a kindergartener* school of insults. SM
Jon Butler, Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
HNN History News Network Because the Past is the Present, and the Future too.
12-20-04 An Interview with Jon Butler ... Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?
By Rick Shenkman
Mr. Butler, Dean of the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences at Yale University, is the author of Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People(Harvard University Press, 1990). This interview was conducted by HNN editor Rick Shenkman for The Learning Channel series, Myth America, which aired several years ago.
You hear it all the time from the right wing. The United States was founded as a Christian country. What do you make of that?
Well, first of all, it wasn't. The United States wasn't founded as a Christian country. Religion played very little role in the American Revolution and it played very little role in the making of the Constitution. That's largely because the Founding Fathers were on the whole deists who had a very abstract conception of God, whose view of God was not a God who acted in the world today and manipulated events in a way that actually changed the course of human history. Their view of religion was really a view that stressed ethics and morals rather than a direct divine intervention.
And when you use the term deists, define that. What does that mean?
A deist means someone who believes in the existence of God or a God, the God who sets the world into being, lays down moral and ethical principals and then charges men and women with living lives according to those principals but does not intervene in the world on a daily basis.
Let's go through some of them. George Washington?
George Washington was a man for whom if you were to look at his writings, you would be very hard pressed to find any deep, personal involvement with religion. Washington thought religion was important for the culture and he thought religion was important for soldiers largely because he hoped it would instill good discipline, though he was often bitterly disappointed by the discipline that it did or didn't instill.
And he thought that society needed religion. But he was not a pious man himself. That is, he wasn't someone who was given to daily Bible reading. He wasn't someone who was evangelical. He simply was a believer. It's fair, perfectly fair, to describe Washington as a believer but not as someone whose daily behavior, whose political life, whose principals are so deeply infected by religion that you would have felt it if you were talking to him.
Thomas Jefferson?
Well, Jefferson's interesting because recently evangelicals, some evangelicals, have tried to make Jefferson out as an evangelical. Jefferson actually was deeply interested in the question of religion and morals and it's why Jefferson, particularly in his later years, developed a notebook of Jesus' sayings that he found morally and ethically interesting. It's now long since been published and is sometimes called, The Jefferson Bible. But Jefferson had real trouble with the Divinity of Christ and he had real trouble with the description of various events mentioned in both the New and the Old Testament so that he was an enlightened skeptic who was profoundly interested in the figure of Christ as a human being and as an ethical teacher. But he was not religious in any modern meaning of that word or any eighteenth century meaning of that word. He wasn't a regular church goer and he never affiliated himself with a religious denomination--unlike Washington who actually did. He was an Episcopalian. Jefferson, however, was interested in morals and ethics and thought that morals and ethics were important but that's different than saying religion is important because morals and ethics can come from many sources other than religion and Jefferson knew that and understood that.
Where does he stand on Christ exactly?
Jefferson rejected the divinity of Christ, but he believed that Christ was a deeply interesting and profoundly important moral or ethical teacher and it was in Christ's moral and ethical teachings that Jefferson was particularly interested. And so that's what attracted him to the figure of Christ was the moral and ethical teachings as described in the New Testament. But he was not an evangelical and he was not a deeply pious individual.
Let's move on to Benjamin Franklin.
Benjamin Franklin was even less religious than Washington and Jefferson. Franklin was an egotist. Franklin was someone who believed far more in himself than he could possibly have believed have believed in the divinity of Christ, which he didn't. He believed in such things as the transmigration of souls. That is that human, that humans came into being in another existence and he may have had occult beliefs. He was a Mason who was deeply interested in Masonic secrets and there are some signs that Franklin believed in the mysteries of Occultism though he never really wrote much about it and never really said much about it. Franklin is another writer whom you can read all you want to read in the many published volumes of Franklin's writings and read very little about religion.
Where did the conservatives come up with this idea that the Founding Fathers were so religious?
Well, when they discuss the Founding Fathers or when individuals who are interested in stressing the role of religion in the period of the American Revolution discuss this subject, they often stress several characteristics. One is that it is absolutely true that many of the second level and third levels in the American Revolution were themselves church members and some of them were deeply involved in religion themselves.
It's also true that most Protestant clergymen at the time of the American Revolution, especially toward the end of the Revolution, very eagerly backed the Revolution. So there's a great deal of formal religious support for the American Revolution and that makes it appear as though this is a Christian nation or that religion had something to do with the coming of the Revolution, the texture of the Revolution, the making of the Revolution.
But I think that many historians will argue and I think quite correctly that the Revolution was a political event. It was centered in an understanding of what politics is and by that we mean secular politics, holding power. Who has authority? Why should they have authority? It wasn't centered in religious events. It wasn't centered in miracles. It wasn't centered in church disputes. There was some difficulty with the Anglican church but it was relatively minor and as an example all one needs to do is look at the Declaration of Independence. Neither in Jefferson's beautifully written opening statement in the Declaration nor in the long list of grievances against George the Third does religion figure in any important way anywhere.And the Declaration of Independence accurately summarizes the motivations of those who were back the American Revolution.
Some of the conservatives will say, well, but it does make a reference to nature's God and isn't that a bow to religion?
It is a bow to religion but it's hardly a bow to evangelicalism. Nature's God was the deist's God. Nature's God, When evangelicals discuss religion they mean to speak of the God of the Old and the New Testament not the God of nature. The God of nature is an almost secular God and in a certain way that actually makes the point that that's a deistical understanding of religion not a specifically Christian understanding of religion. To talk about nature's God is not to talk about the God of Christ.
John Patrick Diggins has advanced the argument that not only were the Founding Fathers not particularly religious but in fact they were deeply suspicious of religion because of the role that they saw religion played in old Europe, where they saw it not as cohesive but as divisive. Do you agree?
The answer is yes and the reason is very simple. The principal Founding Fathers--Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin--were in fact deeply suspicious of a European pattern of governmental involvement in religion. They were deeply concerned about an involvement in religion because they saw government as corrupting religion. Ministers who were paid by the state and paid by the government didn't pay any attention to their parishes. They didn't care about their parishioners. They could have, they sold their parishes. They sold their jobs and brought in a hireling to do it and they wandered off to live somewhere else and they didn't need to pay attention to their parishioners because the parishioners weren't paying them. The state was paying them.
In addition, it corrupts the state. That is, it brings into government elements of politics and elements of religion that are less than desirable. The most important being coercion. When government is involved with religion in a positive way, the history that these men saw was a history of coercion and a history of coercion meant a history of physical coercion and it meant ultimately warfare. Most of the wars from 1300 to 1800 had been religious wars and the wars that these men knew about in particular were the wars of religion that were fought over the Reformation in which Catholics and Protestants slaughtered each other, stuffed Bibles into the slit stomachs of dead soldiers so that they would eat, literally eat, their words, eat the words of an alien Bible and die with those words in their stomachs. This was the world of government involvement with religion that these men knew and a world they wanted to reject.
To create the United States meant to create a new nation free from those old attachments and that's what they created in 1776 and that's what they perfected in 1789 with the coming of the federal government. And thus it's not an accident that the First Amendment deals with religion. It doesn't just deal with Christianity. It deals with religion with a small r meaning all things religious.
What about the conservatives' belief that we need to go back to the religion of the Founding Fathers?
If we went back to the religion of the Founding Fathers we would go back to deism. If we picked up modern religion, it's not the religion of the Founding Fathers. Indeed, we are probably more religious than the society that created the American Revolution. There are a number of ways to think about that. Sixty percent of Americans belong to churches today , 20 percent belonged in 1776. And if we count slaves, for example, it probably reduces the figure to 10 percent of the society that belonged to any kind of religious organization.
Modern Americans probably know more about religious doctrine in general, Christianity, Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism, than most Americans did in 1776. I would argue that America in the 1990s is a far more deeply religious society, whose politics is more driven by religion, than it was in 1776. So those who want to go back would be going back to a much more profoundly secular society.
What do you make of the politicians who take the opposite point of view. It must make you go crazy.
It doesn't make me go crazy. It makes me feel sad because it's inaccurate. It's not a historically accurate view of American society. It's a very useful view because many modern men and women are driven by a jeremiad, that is jeremiad lamenting the conditions in the wilderness. We tend to feel bad when we hear that we are not as religious as our fathers or our grandfathers or our great grandfathers and that spurs many of us on to greater religious activity. Unfortunately in this case the jeremiad simply isn't true. And I don't think that those who insist it is true would really want to go back to the kind of society that existed on thee eve of the American Revolution.
Americans do become religious in the nineteenth century, don't they? That's what you say in your book.
The American Revolution created the basis for new uses of religion in a new society and that was conveyed in the lesson taught by the First Amendment. If government was no longer going to be supporting religion how was religion going to support itself? It would have to support itself by its own means. Through its own measures. It would have to generate its measures. And this is what every one of the churches began to do. As soon as religion dropped out of the state and the state dropped out of religion, the churches began fending for themselves. And they discovered that in fending for themselves that their contributions were going up, they were producing more newspapers, more tracts, they were beginning to circulate those tracts, they created a national religious economy long before there was a secular economy. You could trade more actively in religious goods than you could in other kinds in the United States in 1805, 1810.
What happened in the United States is that the churches actually benefited from this separation of church and state that was dictated by the First Amendment. In addition to which America became kind of a spiritual hothouse in the nineteenth century. Not only did the quantity off religion go up but so did the proliferation of doctrine. There became new religions--the Mormons, the spiritualists--all created in the United States. New religious groups that no one had ever heard of before, that had never existed anywhere else in western society than in the United States.
NeoCon cult vision promotes more fear.
nm
But I can guarantee you he sees himself a just
@
Unlike yourself, not everyone sees
Dem party, specifically Obama, and total imperfection in the Rep party. None of us have figured everything out as perfectly as you have yet, but that does not entitle you to call anyone a liar because you are too smug in your little world to listen to what anyone else has to say. All you want to do is keep arguing just for argument sake. You aren't worth bothering with, we have bigger fish to fry.
Huckabee sees sm
the One World Government coming and what is going to happen according to bible scripture. The people that you think are trying to scare you might be trying to warn you of what is coming. It is your choice of whether you believe it or not.
This guy gets it. Sees through the phony Obama
nm
Way to go. At least he sees the change coming.nm
my doc is so awesome -- sees me for free
i am so blessed. knows i don't have insurance, doesn't bill me. says if i pay for Rx's and lab work, he won't charge me. and, unbelievably, spends at least 60 to 90 minutes with me talking -- just amazing. small office, just doc, secretary and nurse. says he's not in it to be a millionaire. (put himself thru med school, 1 of 12 kids in his family.) i even know the names of his cats and all of his hobbies. he's in his mid 50s and i hope he never retires...
I don't care what Huckabee sees
believe in separation of church and state. That is the American way - whether it is popular or not.
Don't bother to warn me about Jesus coming, I'm ready. Please stop assuming you know things you don't.
I think that Obama sees himself as Christian, but
the Muslins see him as Muslim because his father is Muslim.
If O stays silent, believe me, it is not because he takes sides, it is because now it is better to be cautious than confrontational.
If O is a powerless puppet why do you then constantly put him down and criticize him?
Since Kennedy all president are puppets pulled by very elite people, true. And these elite people picked Obama as winner soon after he declared himself a candidate, because he is so charismatic, similar to Kennedy (I heard this also in this video 'The Obama Deception'), true.
Amd yes, the Iranian people are screwed, also true.
But believe me, Obama, puppet or no puppet, till now proved himself to be a very good diplomat.
I am much more interested in the foreign politics than in the domestic stuff, that's boring.
Democratic Hawk Now Sees War as a Mistake
Friday, November 25, 2005 - 12:00 AM
Permission to reprint or copy this article or photo, other than personal use, must be obtained from The Seattle Times. Call 206-464-3113 or e-mail resale@seattletimes.com with your request.
![src=http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2005/11/24/2002645096.jpg]()
Rep. Norm Dicks voted in 2002 to back the war. ![src=http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2005/11/24/2002645169.jpg]()
JIMI LOTT / THE SEATTLE TIMES, 2003
U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks, center, with military officers at ceremonies marking the opening of new facilities at Naval Station Bremerton in 2003.
Defense hawk Dicks says he now sees war as a mistake
By Alicia Mundy
Seattle Times Washington bureau
WASHINGTON — It was after 11 p.m. on Friday when Rep. Norm Dicks finally left the Capitol, fresh from the heated House debate on the Iraq war. He was demoralized and angry.
Sometime during the rancorous, seven-hour floor fight over whether to immediately withdraw U.S. troops, one Texas Republican compared those who question America's military strategy in Iraq to the hippies and peaceniks who protested the Vietnam War and did terrible things to troop morale.
The House was in a frenzy over comments by Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., who had called for the troops to leave Iraq in six months. In response, the White House initially likened Murtha, a 37-year veteran of the Marines and an officer in Vietnam, to lefty moviemaker Michael Moore.
Then a new Republican representative from Ohio, Jean Schmidt, relayed a message to the House that she said she had received from a Marine colonel in her district: Cowards cut and run; Marines never do.
During much of the debate, Dicks, a Democrat from Bremerton, huddled in the Democrats' cloakroom with Murtha, a longtime friend. Both men are known for their strong support of the military over the years. Now, they felt, that record was being questioned.
There was a lot of anger back there, Dicks said in an interview this week. It was powerful. I can't remember anything quite as traumatic as this in my history here.
Near midnight, he drove to his D.C. home, poured a drink and wondered how defense hawks like he and Murtha had gotten lumped in with peaceniks by their colleagues and the administration.
And he thought about all that had happened over the past couple of years to change his mind about the war in Iraq.
Voted to back Bush
In October 2002, Dicks voted loudly and proudly to back President Bush in a future deployment of U.S. troops to Iraq — one of two Washington state Democratic House members to do so. Adam Smith, whose district includes Fort Lewis, was the other.
Dicks thought Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and wouldn't hesitate to use them against the United States.
After visiting Iraq early in the war, Norm told me the Iraqis were going to be throwing petals at American troops, Murtha said in an interview this week.
Dicks now says it was all a mistake — his vote, the invasion, and the way the United States is waging the war.
While he disagrees with Murtha's conclusion that U.S. troops should be withdrawn within six months, Dicks said, He may well be right if this insurgency goes much further.
The insurgency has gotten worse and worse, he said. That's where Murtha's rationale is pretty strong — we're talking a lot of casualties with no success in sight. The American people obviously know that this war is a mistake.
Dicks, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, says he's particularly angry about the intelligence that supported going to war.
Without the threat of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), he said, he would absolutely not have voted for the war.
The Bush administration has accused some members of Congress of rewriting history by claiming the president misled Americans about the reasons for going to war. Congress, the administration says, saw the same intelligence and agreed Iraq was a threat.
But Dicks says the intelligence was doctored. And he says the White House didn't plan for and deploy enough troops for the growing insurgency.
A lot of us relied on [former CIA director] George Tenet. We had many meetings with the White House and CIA, and they did not tell us there was a dispute between the CIA, Commerce or the Pentagon on the WMDs, he said.
He and Murtha tended to give the military, the CIA and the White House the benefit of the doubt, Dicks says. But he now says he and his colleagues should have pressed much harder for answers.
Norm ... has agonized
All of us have gone through a difficult period, but Norm really has agonized, Murtha said this week.
Murtha and Dicks were appointed to the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee in 1979, three years after Dicks first was elected to Congress. They rarely have disagreed, especially in their support of the military.
In October 2002, Dicks made an impassioned speech during the House debate over whether to authorize the president to send troops to Iraq without waiting for the United Nations to act.
Based on the briefings I have had, and based on the information provided by our intelligence agencies to members of Congress, I now believe there is credible evidence that Saddam Hussein has developed sophisticated chemical and biological weapons, and that he may be close to developing a nuclear weapon, Dicks said at the time.
By spring 2003, U.N. weapons inspectors said they hadn't found hard evidence of WMDs in Iraq. But Dicks remained convinced of Iraq's threat.
We're going to find things [Saddam] had not disclosed, he said shortly before the war began in March 2003. There is no doubt about that. Period. Underlined.
By June of that year, with no chemical, biological or nuclear weapons found, Dicks remained steadfast in his support for the war but called for a congressional inquiry into the intelligence agencies' work on Iraq. I think the American people deserve to know what happened and why it happened, he said at the time.
That same month, Dicks was upset when a good friend, Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff, was forced into retirement after telling Congress that the secretary of defense was not sending enough troops to win the peace.
Growing doubts
On July 6, 2003, Dicks awoke to read the now-famous New York Times opinion piece by former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had been sent on a CIA mission to investigate a report that Iraq had tried to buy nuclear materials in Africa.
Wilson wrote that he had found no evidence of such Iraqi intentions and criticized Bush for making the claim in his State of the Union address two months before the invasion.
That Joe Wilson article was very troubling, Dicks said.
Dicks grew somber about Iraq. Rep. Jim McDermott, who represents Seattle and had opposed the war from the start, talked with him about it.
Norm is a lot like Jack Murtha. These are guys with a somewhat different philosophy than me, McDermott said recently. This an extremely difficult time for them because they have to reassess what they were led to believe about prewar intelligence.
The White House maintains it did nothing to mischaracterize what it knew about Iraq and its weapons.
Dicks' private concerns became more public two months ago. At a breakfast fundraiser on Capitol Hill, Dicks surprised the guests with a tough talk against the war.
The White House last Friday called Dicks to gauge his support. House GOP leaders were pushing for a vote on a resolution they hoped would put Democrats on the spot by forcing them to either endorse an immediate troop withdrawal or stay the course in Iraq.
Dicks said he told the White House that their attack on Murtha was the most outrageous comment I've ever heard.
The resolution, denounced by Democrats, ultimately was defeated 403-3.
Dicks says the Pentagon should begin a phased withdrawal and leave some troops to help maintain order and train a new Iraq army. We've got to be very concerned that Iraq comes out of this whole, he said.
But he added, We can't take forever.
Some people say it takes eight to nine years to control an insurgency, Dicks said.
I don't think the American people will give eight to nine years, and I sure as heck won't.
Alicia Mundy: 202-662-7457 or amundy@seattletimes.com
Copyright © 2005 The Seattle Times Company
special assistant to reagan sees the picture clearly
Federal Failure in New Orleans
by Doug Bandow
_Doug Bandow_ (http://www.cato.org/people/bandow.html) , a former special
assistant to president Ronald Reagan
Is George W. Bush a serious person? It's not a question to ask lightly of a
decent man who holds the US presidency, an office worthy of respect. But it
must be asked.
No one anticipated the breach of the levees due to Hurricane Katrina, he
said, after being criticised for his administration's dilatory response to the
suffering in the city of New Orleans. A day later he told his director of
the Federal Emergency Management Administration, Michael Brown: Brownie,
you're doing a heck of a job.
Is Bush a serious person?
The most important duty at the moment obviously is to respond to the human
calamity, not engage in endless recriminations. But it is not clear that this
President and this administration are capable of doing what is necessary.
They must not be allowed to avoid responsibility for the catastrophe that has
occurred on their watch.
Take the President's remarkable assessment of his Government's performance.
As Katrina advanced on the Gulf coast, private analysts and government
officials warned about possible destruction of the levees and damage to the pumps.
A year ago, with Hurricane Ivan on the move - before veering away from the
Big Easy - city officials warned that thousands could die if the levees gave
way.
Afterwards the Natural Hazards Centre noted that a direct strike would have
caused the levees between the lake and city to overtop and fill the city
'bowl' with water. In 2001, Bush's FEMA cited a hurricane hit on New Orleans as
one of the three top possible disasters facing the US. No wonder that the
New Orleans Times-Picayune, its presses under water, editorialised: No one can
say they didn't see it coming.
Similarly, consider the President's belief that his appointee, Brown, has
been doing a great job. Brown declared on Thursday - the fourth day of flooding
in New Orleans - that the federal Government did not even know about the
convention centre people until today. Apparently people around the world knew
more than Brown. Does the head of FEMA not watch television, read a
newspaper, talk to an aide, check a website, or have any contact with anyone in the
real world? Which resident of New Orleans or Biloxi believes that Brown is
doing a heck of a job? Which person, in the US or elsewhere, watching the
horror on TV, is impressed with the administration's performance?
Indeed, in the midst of the firestorm of criticism, including by members of
his own party, the President allowed that the results are not acceptable.
But no one has been held accountable for anything. The administration set this
pattern long ago: it is constantly surprised and never accountable.
The point is not that Bush is to blame for everything. The Kyoto accord has
nothing to do with Katrina: Kyoto would have a negligible impact on global
temperatures even if the Europeans complied with it.
Nor have hurricanes become stronger and more frequent in recent decades.
Whether extra funding for the Army Corps of Engineers would have preserved the
levees is hardly certain and impossible to prove. Nor can the city and state
escape responsibility for inaction if they believed the system to be unsafe.
Excessive deployment of National Guard units in the administration's
unnecessary Iraq war limited the flexibility of the hardest-hit states and imposed
an extra burden on guard members who've recently returned from serving
overseas. But sufficient numbers of troops remained available elsewhere across the
US.
The real question is: Why did Washington take so long to mobilise them? The
administration underestimated the problem, failed to plan for the predictable
aftermath and refused to accept responsibility for its actions. Just as when
the President took the US and many of its allies into the Iraq war based on
false and distorted intelligence. Then the administration failed to prepare
for violent resistance in Iraq. The Pentagon did not provide American soldiers
with adequate quantities of body armour, armoured vehicles and other
equipment.
Contrary to administration expectations, new terrorist affiliates sprang up,
new terrorist recruits flooded Iraq and new terrorist attacks were launched
across the world, including against several friends of the US. In none of
these cases has anyone taken responsibility for anything.
Now Hurricane Katrina surprised a woefully ill-prepared administration.
President Bush and his officials failed in their most basic responsibility: to
maintain the peaceful social framework within which Americans normally live and
work together.
Bush initially responded to 9/11 with personal empathy and political
sensitivity. But his failures now overwhelm his successes. The administration's
continuing lack of accountability leaves it ill-equipped to meet equally serious
future challenges sure to face the US and the rest of the world.
This article originally appeared in the Australian on Sept. 5, 2005
German Lady Sees Obama and Recalls Hitler...
http://swordattheready.wordpress.com/2008/10/30/german-lady-sees-obama-and-recalls-hitlers-call-of-change/
What in the world are you
talking about ??? Oh, wait, I get it. The writer above said his mother said If Roe v. Wade is overturned, that's it for me. Out of that entire article that one sentence is what jumped out at you??? Our country is in a really really big mess both domestically and foreign policy-wise. The full and total attention directed towards the empire the Bush administration is so desperate to build will be what finally does us in and Roe v Wade is the most important issue on the table for you??. Prioritize, and by the way, we are killing babies, ones who are already here, the unborn ones in Iraq, in their mothers' wombs when their mothers are shot, men and women, American and Iraqi, British, Italian, etc. right now. Killing is killing is killing. It is what it is. It is not wrong in the US to kill the unborn but just fine and dandy in Iraq.
World War III....sm
With the news of Israeli conflict, Iran's missles, Iraqi War, I feared we were entering WWIII, so when I read this article today it confirmed my suspicions.
I don't know how in the world...
you turned this article which is about the major cheerleaders for the Iraq war, the neocons, into something that maligns the left. The only thing left about this article is me and the fact that I posted it on the liberal board. This article says neocons are upset. Neocons think the current administration is incompetent. Neocons regret what they have done in the past and would not do it again. None of this has anything to do with the American left or all those worldwide who thought attascking Iraq was a farce from the beginning. We have not turned on public opinion. We have been anti-war since before it started. Public opinion was very much against us in the early days of the war, in this country anyway, but some of us knew this would turn out to be the disaster it is. I myself was flabberghasted when I read what these neocons said. I never thought I would see the day Richard Perle or David Frum would have regrets and voice them to the public.
Just in your little world....
you are rather ad nauseum in your hate and bile...keep it up, you'll help her get elected....
How do you know what my world is.....
You make that assumption when in fact, you know nothing about my life. I come from a home where we were dirt poor but it was all I knew, so I didn't know we were poor. And there was no 2 of us as in your home. There was a single mom with two children. She worked a factory job where ladies there were treated horribly, making very little. We grew our own food when we could and I ate the same stuff over and over until I was sick of looking at it. But it was ours. No one said it was easy to get a job but my uneducated mother found a job and because she had no college education, she worked her butt off for very very very little. My clothes were homemade and not store bought like the girls I went to school with. She worked 2 or more jobs to have something under the tree at Christmas. She took a cheese sandwich to lunch everyday (and nothing else) and went to work burning up with a fever because as far as the boss cared, they could find somebody else to put in your place. My mother gave and gave and hasn't gotten anything financially to show for it to this day. Work is all I knew. I applied for a PELL grant to go to college (and for the poor, they can also get those, even those that aren't really considered poor can get them). I worked more than one job, went to classes, and then went to work again. I didn't know what a free ride was and never knew anything about welfare, etc. My mother NEVER took a dime from the government. I bought a piece of a junk car to get around in...seemed good enough for me, because that's all my mother had as well. You just prayed it kept running.
"we are just not buying into the mentality that we should just be lucky to have jobs and we should just work hard for our money" That is called entitlement mentality. Our community is packed full of those that feel entitled. Have another child, feel entitled. Too good to flip hambugers?, no problem, feel entitled.
"I totally disagree with you and I am not all that intereseted in what people who have money think or what their opinions are about what to do with my money." Really? Obama is rich and feels perfectly at ease telling you what to do with your money and what he wants to do with your money! That doesn't bother you? I have no problem with a social program for those unemployed who needs food/clothing/shelter until they get back on their feet. That is not what happens....it becomes a way of life for millions who get very used to not having to do anything but feel "entitled".
"I am talking about rich people who do not pay taxes and get all the tax breaks and credits while I pay higher in percentage of taxes on everything, such that I cannot even survive on what I am making now." Obama is one of those.
I don't know where you live but there are PLENTY of help for the disadvantaged in my community. Taxpayer dollars have built new low income housing, single family housing at that, to the tune of millions. While my mother still lives in a home over 100 years old, those living in a brand new home (complements of taxpayers) at a reduced price, while they are able to ride around in a brand new vehicle. They have 24 hour security protection even though I am already paying for that once by the name of local police.(I don't have private security protection). They have ellaborate wrought iron fences that surrounds their little estate that costs taxpayers to the tune of thousands and thousands (I don't have a wrought iron fence around my home). Like this is going to keep out any unsavory people. Right!! THey just drive right in.
In addition, the people who really need this are the single moms and elderly who are struggling. This type of housing takes any incentive away to do anymore than they have to to to live there. After all, just one spouse has to work so they can say they don't make anymore than they do, and this affords them free housing, food, healthcare, and free babysitter by the name of Head Start. Why isn't the other spouse working? Because they may hit that magic number by a couple of dollars that put them over the "entitlement" line. My mother's highest grossing income ever was 11,000 dollars and she NEVER took a handout. She is now of Medicare age and living paycheck to paycheck. If I offer to help her pay bills, she will not accept it. I have gone in and taken her electric bill and just went down and paid it before she knew it.
"have you ever had to decide whether to buy groceries or to pay the electric bill that is going to be shut off" You make 40K a year and can't pay your electric bill? I'm certainly not implying that's a lot of money, but sister, my mother's total for the year is $10,800 and she pays her electricity, buys her groceries, pays home insurance, pays gas bill, small phone bill all with that. And that's on top of her health care bills and medication. She has just underwent breast cancer and mastectomy and still has managed, so don't tell me you can't afford to live on 40K a year. My husband and I raised two children on less than that and he didn't want me working for a lot of those years so I could be there with the children. And there are two of you working. Mother drives around in a jalopy of a car without air conditioning and we are in the humid south. She now has watched her beautiful neighborhood turn into HUD housing (also paid for by me), loud obnoxious children who manage to walk around in Tommy Hilfiger and other such expensive clothes but their two parents can't afford to pay their own rent? Same parents have new model vehicles sitting in their front yard while mother drives around in a wreck. Nobody paying for her house.
My daughter and her husband didn't make that until just recently and they still managed to put money away for hard times just in case and good thing, he lost two jobs back to back with downsizing and mergers. They never went to a movie, ate at home every night, no newer vehicles, just what they already had.
"the republicans just seem to want to get rid of dead weight and just use people as servants" (Where have you been?) When Obama gets through taxing you to death to pay for his own "social programs", just who do you think will be dead weight. Who do you think will be servants then? How in the world could you possibly think you will be better off financially by being taxed more to pay for more garbage programs? You will then definitely be a servant....to the government!! That's what welfare states are....that's what our public education system is.....they can't turn a page in a book without the government telling them it's okay. They can't teach what needs to be taught unless the government tells them what to read, how to teach. This didn't start with Bush...it started a long time ago. Public education is completely dependent on government funds and that is what has turned all the students in them into servants. It's a reality now, not after the next election. It's been a reality for several decades now.
As far as crime is concerned, even our local police chief (who is black) said the people committing crimes are and will continue to be just plain thugs, criminals. They have no excuse. Honest hardworking people do not just start going out and committing crimes because the economy is bad. What happens is little Johnny can't get his $200 sneakers and $80 jeans anymore (which is the parent's fault in the first place), so he feels "entitled" and goes out and robs, steals, and kills for money to buy them. Those who will do those things will do them regardless. It has nothing to do with the economy.
I'm not saying it is easy but if my mother can live o less than $11,000 a year, I feel 40K a year is doable, unless for some reason you have out of control debt through no fault of your own (credit cards, expensive vehicles, luxury items, etc.). I know unexpected medical bills can put many right over the top and I understand that. My husband's medical bills due to a chronic condition is growing every day and that is a concern for us but I see people with things they want but don't need and they complain they don't have enough money. I was listenign to a cashier at WalMart the other day griping about how she just didn't know how she was going to buy her baby's Bday present, and yet, she had hair braids that cost $180 to get done (I asked her, while she went on and on about how long it took to get it done)and salon nails to the tune of $50 a pop and yet she couldn't afford her baby a birthday present?!!
How in the world
can they compare the republicans to Hitler. I do believe that McCain wants smaller government.....not bigger government. A comparison of Hitler and Obama sounds much more feasible.
Why in the world does he need one
Is he running for office too?
How in the world
can you say the economy was doing great before the Dems took control of Congress? Bush has borrowed, borrowed, borrowed and now he's borrowing even more so his cronies can take billions before he leaves office.
What in the world
is this country coming to????? For goodness sake! I did not vote for Obama, but the man is human. I was nervous. Good grief!!! He is about to take a very big step in his life with responsibility that most of us in our right minds would not take. He looked nervous and excited to me coming towards the steps, and I am sure he was very nervous when he was being sworn in. I wish you people would just grow up.
Many of you sound like high school girls - - did you see Michelle's dress.... blah, blah, blah..... Bush had an embarrassed look on his face..... blah, blah, blah.....
GROW UP!
In a PC world, you
have to be politically correct at all times. Many people are sensitive about their children with disabilities. I could see where his comment could be offensive. However, it does not personally offend me and I have an autistic son myself.
I think a lot of people need to simmer down. Yes, it was a bad joke and he probably should not have said it, but his main point was that he sucks at bowling....nothing more.
Political correctness has really hurt our country. Any time someone says anything about color, sex, or race.....certain people will jump up and scream about it. Being the president, you are under a much bigger magnifying glass.
It is my opinion that he probably shouldn't have said it....but it isn't the end of the world. However, I'm sure if this had been Bush's goof.....the liberal media and dems would all be screaming about it.
So what? Not everyone in the world wants to become
N/M
How in the world is
this going to boost the economy? Joe Biden said yesterday that he would tell his family not to go anywhere in confined spaces like airplanes, subways, etc. The White House had to back peddle and rephrase what he said but I personally agree with Biden. You won't see me flying anywhere, etc. until I know for sure how serious this is. Less people are flying. No one is flying to Mexico. Do you know how devastating this will be to airlines, etc. if more and more people don't fly because of this? The airlines are already hurting.
Blame Mexico? It is true that this started in Mexico, but things happen. I don't hate Mexicans. I'm just tired of paying for illegal ones. I don't blame them for this flu. It could have started anywhere, etc. and as much as people travel...something like this was bound to happen some time.
I think your post sounds more like a conspiracy theory and I don't get into those. Besides, we have no vaccine for this. Money may have been given for research into a new flu vaccine but there is currently no vaccine for swine flu. So I really don't see where you get that we got a vaccine and now all of sudden....boom....everyone has the swine flu.
This is something that cannot be blamed on the current administration. I personally don't like the idea of Obama having been in Mexico with this all going on but we didn't know at the time. I personally feel that Obama has handled this swine flu thing well. He has tried to be informative yet to keep people from panicking at the same time. I personally do not feel that this is something we can hold over Obama by saying he hasn't kept us safe because the swine flu is in the US. I think that is just insane to say. Besides, the normal flu strain kills thousands of Americans each year and no one thinks a thing about that.
Why in the world would say
something like that? I know for a fact that these people take their religion very seriously. I don't think we should be making rude comments about other religions.
Why in the world would they
create such a program when common sense tells you that you have to give people more than what they paid in. Did they really think this was going to be sustainable? I'm sorry but free Viagra? I can't even get birth control covered by any health plan I've ever had and Medicare is making sure old farts can get a hard on for free.
I think if it was God' will to take him out of the world
He would have done it a lot more gentleman-like than this...heart attack at night...take him in his sleep...etc. I don't think He would have done it this way.
Of course, I cannot say what God does or doesn't do, because I'm not Him, but I just don't believe He would do it this way. I believe this was Satan's work, because it obviously hurt the pro-life movement instead of helping it. There will always be another Dr. Tiller around the corner, so killing them does not help anything, except to paint us as extremists (which we're not).
I just feel horrible for his family. I couldn't imagine losing my husband this way. It always terrifies me to think that I may not get to say goodbye.
I believe this man was wrong for what he was doing, but he didn't deserve this. I do hope they sentence the guy who did it appropriately.
Why in the world would we allow
people who aren't citizens have a say in our elections? If you want the right to vote, become a citizen....sheesh.
Exactly! At the end of WW I. (World war One)nm
nm
The world is going
x
too complicated of a world
In this complicated multifaceted world, nothing is black-white, good-evil..everything has to be weighed and judged..
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