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that is not true - see article

Posted By: Kendra on 2008-10-28
In Reply to: Sorry Sam, but the Bush cuts were only for those over $250K nm - Mrs. M

http://www.heritage.org/research/taxes/wm956.cfm

Written in January 2006, so in no way is it anti-Obama, by the way.


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Each brown place in the link takes you to a different article that supports this article...nm
x
So does someone's comment at the end of the article, discredit the whole article??
Unbelievable. 
That's true - and Barack Obama is a true Patriot too.
Again we can agree to disagree. How John McCain has voted goes against everything I want as a President, but there are an equal number of people to me who feel opposite. That's the way it goes.

Your last comment brought to mind how true that is. Being a true patriot is not harmful in a candidate. John McCain is a patriot. So is Barack Obama.
Well, I don't know about this article...
I don't really have the time to sit and read it, but I will tell you that the ACLU has its tentacles ALL OVER the Democratic party, and they do some pretty repulsive things.  You might want to inform yourself of some of the stuff they defend.  Like the NAMBLA website that tells gay pedophiles how to seduce young boys.  They defend NAMBLA's right to that website, specifically with the court case filed by the Connecticut 10-year-old who was raped and murdered by some sicko who read that website and carried out his dastardly deed.  They've gone around the bend these days.  They used to be reasonable years ago, doing some good things.  But not anymore.
NYT article

This whole Rove thing is not about outing anyone, it is about the uranium and Wilson finding no evidence that Saddam was trying to buy it.  Great article.  Link is below.


 


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/opinion/17rich.html?incamp=article_popular


article
Why Bush Can't Answer Cindy
    By Marjorie Cohn
    t r u t h o u t | Perspective

    Thursday 18 August 2005

    Cindy Sheehan is still waiting for Bush to answer her question: What noble cause did my son die for? Her protest started as a small gathering 13 days ago. It has mushroomed into a demonstration of hundreds in Crawford and tens of thousands more at 1,627 solidarity vigils throughout the country.

    Why didn't Bush simply invite Cindy in for tea when she arrived in Crawford? In a brief, personal meeting with Cindy, Bush could have defused a situation that has become a profound embarrassment for him, and could derail his political agenda.

    Bush didn't talk with Cindy because he can't answer her question. There is no answer to Cindy's question. There is no noble cause that Cindy's son died fighting for. And Bush knows it.

    The goals of this war are not hard to find. They were laid out in Paul Wolfowitz's draft Pentagon Defense Planning Guidance in 1992, and again in the neoconservative manifesto - The Project for a New American Century's Rebuilding America's Defenses - in September 2000.

    Long before 9/11, the neocons proclaimed that the United States should exercise its role as the world's only superpower by ensuring access to the massive Middle East petroleum reserves. To accomplish this goal, the US would need to invade Iraq and establish permanent military bases there.

    If Bush were to give an honest answer to Cindy Sheehan's question, it would be that her son died to help his country spread US hegemony throughout the Middle East.

    But that answer, while true, does not sound very noble. It would not satisfy Cindy Sheehan, nor would it satisfy the vast majority of the American people. So, for the past several years, Bush and his minions have concocted an ever-changing story line.

    First, it was weapons-of-mass-destruction and the mushroom cloud. In spite of the weapons inspectors' admonitions that Iraq had no such weapons, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice, and Bolton lied about chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Bush even included the smoking gun claim in his state of the union address: that Iraq sought to purchase uranium from Niger. It was a lie, because people like Ambassador Joe Wilson, who traveled to Niger to investigate the allegation, had reported back to Cheney that it never happened.

    The Security Council didn't think Iraq was a threat to international peace and security. In spite of Bush's badgering and threats, the Council held firm and refused to sanction a war on Iraq. The UN weapons inspectors asked for more time to conduct their inspections. But Bush was impatient.

    He thumbed his nose at the United Nations and invaded anyway. After the "coalition forces" took over Iraq, they combed the country for the prohibited weapons. But they were nowhere to be found.

    Faced with the need to explain to the American people why our sons and daughters were dying in Iraq, Bush changed the subject to saving the Iraqis from Saddam's torture chambers.

    Then the grotesque photographs emerged from Abu Ghraib prison outside of Baghdad. They contained images of US military personnel torturing Iraqis. Bush stopped talking about Saddam's torture.

    Most recently, Bush's excuse has been "bringing democracy to the Iraqi people." On June 28, 2004, he ceremoniously hailed the "transfer of sovereignty" back to the Iraqi people. (See Giving Iraqis What is Rightly Theirs). Yet 138,000 US troops remained in Iraq to protect US "interests."

    And Iraq's economy is still controlled by laws put in place before the "transfer of sovereignty." The US maintains a stranglehold on foreign access to Iraqi oil, private ownership of Iraq's resources, and control over the reconstruction of this decimated country.

    For months, Bush hyped the August 15, 2005 deadline for Iraqis to agree on a new constitution. But as the deadline came and went, the contradictions between the Shias, Sunnis and Kurds over federalism came into sharp focus. The Bush administration admitted that "we will have some form of Islamic republic," according to Sunday's Washington Post.

    So much for Bush's promise of a democratic Iraq.

    The constitutional negotiations are far removed from the lives of most Iraqis. When journalist Robert Fisk asked an Iraqi friend about the constitution, he replied, "Sure, it's important. But my family lives in fear of kidnapping, I'm too afraid to tell my father I work for journalists, and we only have one hour in six of electricity and we can't even keep our food from going bad in the fridge. Federalism? You can't eat federalism and you can't use it to fuel your car and it doesn't make my fridge work."

    Fisk reports that 1,100 civilian bodies were brought into the Baghdad morgue in July. The medical journal The Lancet concluded in October 2004 that at least 100,000 Iraqi civilians had died in the first 18 months after Bush invaded Iraq.

    Unfortunately, the picture in Iraq is not a pretty one.

    Bush knows that if he talked to Cindy Sheehan, she would demand that he withdraw from Iraq now.

    But Bush has no intention of ever pulling out of Iraq. The US is building the largest CIA station in the world in Baghdad. And Halliburton is busily constructing 14 permanent US military bases in Iraq.

    George Bush knows that he cannot answer Cindy Sheehan's question. There is no noble cause for his war on Iraq.





    Marjorie Cohn, a contributing editor to t r u t h o u t, is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, executive vice president of the National Lawyers Guild, and the US representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists.
article
My mom, not Cindy Sheehan, is Bush’s biggest problem


Thursday, August 25, 2005

By John Yewell/City Editor

With Cindy Sheehan gone home to take care of her stroke-stricken mom, President Bush can enjoy the last week of his Texas vacation free of the distraction of her encampment outside his ranch. But a grieving liberal mom whose son died in Iraq demanding an audience may not be Bush’s biggest problem.

His biggest problem may be my mom.

My mother is a lifelong Republican. She got it from her father, a yellow-dog Republican if ever there was one. As unofficial GOP godfather of Fillmore, Calif., he collected absentee ballots every election for his large family and marked them himself. No sense in taking chances that someone might vote for a Democrat.

So when my mother called me the other day and told me she was considering registering as a Democrat, I was, well, stunned. Somewhere in a cemetery plot near Fillmore a body is spinning.

For the last year or more my mother has been gradually expressing ever greater exasperation with President Bush, the war, and the religious right. “Have you heard about this James Dobson guy?” she asked me on the phone, referring to the head of Focus on the Family. “If they overturn Roe vs. Wade, that’ll be it for me,” she said.

Then she mentioned Cindy Sheehan.

For all the efforts to discredit Ms. Sheehan, what she accomplished in drawing attention to the human cost of the war, if my mother’s opinion is any indication, crossed party lines. There’s a Mom Faction in American politics, and while it isn’t a monolithic Third Rail, it’s at least and second-and-a-half rail. When their children are dying on a battlefield of choice, you touch it at your peril.

My mother has her fingers on the pulse, and scalps, of many such women. She’s a hairdresser with a clientele that has been coming to her regularly for decades. Now grandmothers, these women were moms during Vietnam, in which over 50,000 American sons and daughters died. They worried then about their kids’ safety, now they’re worried about grandkids - theirs or someone else’s. Most are pretty mainstream, most Republican, and most, my mother tells me, pretty much fed up with George Bush.

There is other evidence of trouble on the Republican horizon. According to the latest compilation of state polls produced 10 days ago by surveyusa.com, of the 31 states Bush won in 2004, he now enjoys plurality job approval in only 10. This includes a 60 to 37 percent disapproval rate in the key state of Ohio, and a 53 to 44 disapproval rate in Florida.

A recent assessment from the influential and scrupulously nonpartisan Cook Political Report reads: “Opposition to and skepticism about the war in Iraq has reached its highest level, boosted by increased American casualties, a lack of political progress inside the country and growing signs of an imminent civil war. Given the centrality of the Iraq War to the Bush presidency and re-election, a cave-in of support for the president on the war would be devastating to his second-term credibility and influence.”

If Republicans are wondering where Cook is finding this “cave-in of support,” they could start looking in worse places than my mother’s one-chair salon, where Cindy Sheehan found sympathetic ears.

According to various reports, Bush and his team concluded that granting Sheehan an audience would only have encouraged other malcontents to demand similar attention from the president. Whatever the rationale, the decision alienated the clientele of Natalie’s Beauty Shoppe.

In the end my mother decided against changing her registration. Any criticism she might have of Bush, she decided, would be more credible if she stayed in the party, a sophisticated conclusion I admire and applaud.

Although Democrats can’t count on being the automatic beneficiaries of such dissatisfaction, Bush’s refusal to acknowledge fault, his “because I’m the Daddy and I say so” attitude, doesn’t work for a lot of women anymore. Women resent being patronized, and that’s how many view the president’s treatment of Cindy Sheehan.

The next election may be 14 months away, but when my mom and a lot of others like her walk into their voting booths, they may well be reflecting on their children and their choices, and which party is less likely to put either in harm’s way.

John Yewell is the city editor of the Hollister Free Lance. He can be reached at jyewell@freelancenews.com.


It's the name of an article. Hello??? nm

thanks for the article!
Thank you for this article..its not too long for me to read, as others have suggested (the mentality of many in America and our downfall, if you ask me..dont want to spend the time to research, read, decide with their own mind..too much paper work to sift throught, oh please!)..as I care about what is going to happen to America and frankly the world..Bush has opened a Pandoras box and heaven help us all for the future..I dont get scared much about anything in life but what Bush has done sure concerns me to the max..Took an ant hill and created a mountain of monsters..
Here's another article
Clinton Claimed Authority to Order No-Warrant Searches
Does anyone remember that?


In a little-remembered debate from 1994, the Clinton administration argued that the president has inherent authority to order physical searches — including break-ins at the homes of U.S. citizens — for foreign intelligence purposes without any warrant or permission from any outside body. Even after the administration ultimately agreed with Congress's decision to place the authority to pre-approve such searches in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court, President Clinton still maintained that he had sufficient authority to order such searches on his own.















  
The Department of Justice believes, and the case law supports, that the president has inherent authority to conduct warrantless physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes, Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on July 14, 1994, and that the President may, as has been done, delegate this authority to the Attorney General.


It is important to understand, Gorelick continued, that the rules and methodology for criminal searches are inconsistent with the collection of foreign intelligence and would unduly frustrate the president in carrying out his foreign intelligence responsibilities.


Executive Order 12333, signed by Ronald Reagan in 1981, provides for such warrantless searches directed against a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power.


Reporting the day after Gorelick's testimony, the Washington Post's headline — on page A-19 — read, Administration Backing No-Warrant Spy Searches. The story began, The Clinton administration, in a little-noticed facet of the debate on intelligence reforms, is seeking congressional authorization for U.S. spies to continue conducting clandestine searches at foreign embassies in Washington and other cities without a federal court order. The administration's quiet lobbying effort is aimed at modifying draft legislation that would require U.S. counterintelligence officials to get a court order before secretly snooping inside the homes or workplaces of suspected foreign agents or foreign powers.


In her testimony, Gorelick made clear that the president believed he had the power to order warrantless searches for the purpose of gathering intelligence, even if there was no reason to believe that the search might uncover evidence of a crime. Intelligence is often long range, its exact targets are more difficult to identify, and its focus is less precise, Gorelick said. Information gathering for policy making and prevention, rather than prosecution, are its primary focus.


The debate over warrantless searches came up after the case of CIA spy Aldrich Ames. Authorities had searched Ames's house without a warrant, and the Justice Department feared that Ames's lawyers would challenge the search in court. Meanwhile, Congress began discussing a measure under which the authorization for break-ins would be handled like the authorization for wiretaps, that is, by the FISA court. In her testimony, Gorelick signaled that the administration would go along a congressional decision to place such searches under the court — if, as she testified, it does not restrict the president's ability to collect foreign intelligence necessary for the national security. In the end, Congress placed the searches under the FISA court, but the Clinton administration did not back down from its contention that the president had the authority to act when necessary.


Byron York--NRO


article
October 13, 2006


Book Says Bush Aides Dismissed Christian Allies




WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 — A former deputy director of the White House office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives is charging that many members of the Bush administration privately dismiss its conservative Christian allies as “boorish” and “nuts.”


The former deputy director, David Kuo, an evangelical Christian conservative, makes the accusations in a newly published memoir, “Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction” (Free Press), about his frustration with what he described as the meager support and political exploitation of the program.


“National Christian leaders received hugs and smiles in person and then were dismissed behind their backs and described as ‘ridiculous,’ ‘out of control,’ and just plain ‘goofy,’ ” Mr. Kuo writes.


In an interview, Mr. Kuo’s former boss, James Towey, now president of St. Vincent College in Latrobe, Pa., said he had never encountered such cynicism or condescension in the White House, and he disputed many of the assertions in Mr. Kuo’s account.


Still, Mr. Kuo’s statements, first reported Wednesday evening on the cable channel MSNBC, come at an awkward time for Republicans in the midst of a midterm election campaign in which polls show little enthusiasm among the party’s conservative Christian base.


While many conservative Christians considered President Bush “a brother in Christ,” Mr. Kuo writes, “for most of the rest of the White House staff, evangelical leaders were people to be tolerated, not people who were truly welcomed.”


The political affairs office headed by Karl Rove was especially “eye-rolling,” Mr. Kuo’s book says. It says staff members in that office “knew ‘the nuts’ were politically invaluable, but that was the extent of their usefulness.”


Without naming names, the book says staff members complained that politically involved Christians were “annoying,” “tiresome” or “boorish.”


Eryn Witcher, a spokeswoman for the White House, said that the administration would not comment without reading the book but that the faith-based program was “near and dear to the president’s heart.”


Suevon Lee contributed reporting.










width=1
There is an article on
the Common Dreams website that is pretty much a transcript of what was said, on all sides; you can read it and decide for yourself whether or not it was biased. I think it was pretty fair; they included both sides of the argument.
Article.
Attacks, praise stretch truth at GOP convention



By JIM KUHNHENN, Associated Press WriterWed Sep 3, 11:48 PM ET



Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and her Republican supporters held back little Wednesday as they issued dismissive attacks on Barack Obama and flattering praise on her credentials to be vice president. In some cases, the reproach and the praise stretched the truth.


Some examples:


PALIN: "I have protected the taxpayers by vetoing wasteful spending ... and championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. I told the Congress 'thanks but no thanks' for that Bridge to Nowhere."


THE FACTS: As mayor of Wasilla, Palin hired a lobbyist and traveled to Washington annually to support earmarks for the town totaling $27 million. In her two years as governor, Alaska has requested nearly $750 million in special federal spending, by far the largest per-capita request in the nation. While Palin notes she rejected plans to build a $398 million bridge from Ketchikan to an island with 50 residents and an airport, that opposition came only after the plan was ridiculed nationally as a "bridge to nowhere."


PALIN: "There is much to like and admire about our opponent. But listening to him speak, it's easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform — not even in the state senate."


THE FACTS: Compared to McCain and his two decades in the Senate, Obama does have a more meager record. But he has worked with Republicans to pass legislation that expanded efforts to intercept illegal shipments of weapons of mass destruction and to help destroy conventional weapons stockpiles. The legislation became law last year. To demean that accomplishment would be to also demean the work of Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, a respected foreign policy voice in the Senate. In Illinois, he was the leader on two big, contentious measures in Illinois: studying racial profiling by police and requiring recordings of interrogations in potential death penalty cases. He also successfully co-sponsored major ethics reform legislation.


PALIN: "The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes, raise payroll taxes, raise investment income taxes, raise the death tax, raise business taxes, and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars."


THE FACTS: The Tax Policy Center, a think tank run jointly by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, concluded that Obama's plan would increase after-tax income for middle-income taxpayers by about 5 percent by 2012, or nearly $2,200 annually. McCain's plan, which cuts taxes across all income levels, would raise after tax-income for middle-income taxpayers by 3 percent, the center concluded.


Obama would provide $80 billion in tax breaks, mainly for poor workers and the elderly, including tripling the Earned Income Tax Credit for minimum-wage workers and higher credits for larger families.


He also would raise income taxes, capital gains and dividend taxes on the wealthiest. He would raise payroll taxes on taxpayers with incomes above $250,000, and he would raise corporate taxes. Small businesses that make more than $250,000 a year would see taxes rise.


MCCAIN: "She's been governor of our largest state, in charge of 20 percent of America's energy supply ... She's responsible for 20 percent of the nation's energy supply. I'm entertained by the comparison and I hope we can keep making that comparison that running a political campaign is somehow comparable to being the executive of the largest state in America," he said in an interview with ABC News' Charles Gibson.


THE FACTS: McCain's phrasing exaggerates both claims. Palin is governor of a state that ranks second nationally in crude oil production, but she's no more "responsible" for that resource than President Bush was when he was governor of Texas, another oil-producing state. In fact, her primary power is the ability to tax oil, which she did in concert with the Alaska Legislature. And where Alaska is the largest state in America, McCain could as easily have called it the 47th largest state — by population.


MCCAIN: "She's the commander of the Alaska National Guard. ... She has been in charge, and she has had national security as one of her primary responsibilities," he said on ABC.


THE FACTS: While governors are in charge of their state guard units, that authority ends whenever those units are called to actual military service. When guard units are deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, for example, they assume those duties under "federal status," which means they report to the Defense Department, not their governors. Alaska's national guard units have a total of about 4,200 personnel, among the smallest of state guard organizations.


FORMER Arkansas GOV. MIKE HUCKABEE: Palin "got more votes running for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska than Joe Biden got running for president of the United States."


THE FACTS: A whopper. Palin got 616 votes in the 1996 mayor's election, and got 909 in her 1999 re-election race, for a total of 1,525. Biden dropped out of the race after the Iowa caucuses, but he still got 76,165 votes in 23 states and the District of Columbia where he was on the ballot during the 2008 presidential primaries.


FORMER Massachusetts GOV. MITT ROMNEY: "We need change, all right — change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington! We have a prescription for every American who wants change in Washington — throw out the big-government liberals, and elect John McCain and Sarah Palin."


THE FACTS: A Back-to-the-Future moment. George W. Bush, a conservative Republican, has been president for nearly eight years. And until last year, Republicans controlled Congress. Only since January 2007 have Democrats have been in charge of the House and Senate.

___

Associated Press Writer Jim Drinkard in Washington


this article did nothing to

allay any of my doubts about SP.  If she were an 18-year-od college student, this would be a flattering piece.  As a VP candidate, shallow, uninformed, asking polite questions, flashing some gam.  No thanks. If you think she is qualified -- let the press ask her some questions!!!  If not, put her in a wet T shirt poster and be done with it.


 


 


 


according to this article...

okay, in going to the site you posted, and going to the subheading of what you'll pay in taxes, with Obama, I will pay $1118 less and with McCain only $325 less -


Now for me, that is a no brainer!  Of course if I am worried about the economy in general, and my household in particular, I would have to choose Obama!


Article XIV

In your other post above, you wrote: This country has laws to protect people from being murdered, from having their lives taken from them by another person.


Those "people" are called "citizens" under the Constitution, and the "phrase" you refer to that defines citizens is found under article XIV reads as follows:


Amendment 14 - Citizenship Rights Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.


 


As you can see, the words fetus, embryo, or twinkle in my daddy's eye are NOT included in the definition.  One must be born first in order to be a citizen and receive protective services.


 


IMHO, when life begins is mostly a matter of philosophical and/or religious belief and not something to be legislated.


an article

What does this say for our future?  If what this writer is saying is true (or evenly remotely a little bit true) looks like a lot of hard times ahead.  What I found of particular interest is the paragraph that talks about unemployment (the last 3 lines are in all caps).  What would happen to this country if unemployment reaches 30-40 percent?  Would we be able to survive?  Are there any plans in the future that Obama had promised during his campaign that will turn things around.  He had a lot of plans/ideas during his campaign, but now all I hear him keep saying is "it's going to get worse" or "it's really bad", but not hearing of any of those plans.


Also, I didn't realize that there were so many people receiving welfare and food handouts in this country (11 million?).  There shouldn't be any reason for this.  Not well Wall Street execs, politicians, etc. are still flying on luxury private planes and certain politicians are staying in $9 million dollar ocean front homes.


I'm just wondering if people who read this are following along and believe a lot in this article may come true or could happen what are you doing to prepare? 


Anyway...just an interesting article.


http://caps.fool.com/blogs/viewpost.aspx?bpid=122176&t=01000619699519786208


 


An article

 


http://newsbusters.org/blogs/p-j-gladnick/2008/10/08/will-msm-report-obama-membership-socialist-new-party


 


 


Article

http://stoosviews.blogivists.com/2008/10/30/obamaniacs-and-the-cult-of-obama-they-are-coming-for-your-kool-aid/


 


 


An article -

Here's what really stands out in this article - "Obama, on the other hand, is seeking to duplicate the failures of the president he is replacing, only on a far greater scale."


http://www.wmicentral.com/site/news.cfm?BRD=2264&dept_id=581907&newsid=20224719&PAG=461&rfi=9


 


 


Another article

Okay, I'm outta here for the night.  Here's another read.


http://www.noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/11/13/the-terrible-danger-of-a-personality-cult/


 


no article

just wanted to break the string.


 


According to Article 20......... sm
Obama became POTUS at noon, regardless of whether he was sworn in yet or not. I believe this article was enacted to cover situations exactly like this one where the timetable may be a little behind and to prevent confusion over who is POTUS in the event something should happen during the inauguration that would require the POTUS's attention, such as a terrorist attack or acts of war, etc.
Article

Posted below is an article.  Please read.  No it is not gossip or made up, it is real and it is disgusting.  Obama has done nothing about this and will not.


Racism of the Congressional Black Caucus
President's spokesman cites 'membership policies' as explanation


 


Posted: January 26, 2009
10:16 pm Eastern

© 2009 WorldNetDaily


At least three times racism has raised its head in the new administration of President Obama, and now his chief spokesman has cited "membership policies" as an explanation for the all-whites-are-banned practice of the Congressional Black Caucus.


Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs responded to the question from Les Kinsolving, WND's correspondent at the White House, following the conclusion of today's press briefing at the White House.


"To your knowledge has the president ever disagreed with the expressed hope that children 'could live in a nation where they would not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character' as made by Dr. King," Kinsolving asked.


"Has he ever … ," Gibbs asked. "Disagreed," Kinsolving finished.


"Not that I know of, no. I think he believes that's the goal of this country," Gibbs said.


Kinsolving continued, "Since the members of Congress who have applied to join the Congressional Black Caucus have been turned down because, as the black caucus' William Lacey Clay put it, 'they are white and the caucus is black,' my question: Does the president hope the caucus will stop this racial discrimination?"


"I will certainly look into. … I don't know what … prompted Mr. Clay," Gibbs said.


"There have been three of them who have applied and they've been turned down because they are not black, and that is the policy of the Congressional Black Caucus, and if you can ask the president, I would be delighted to hear," Kinsolving said.


"I think the first thing to do is ask members of … ," Gibbs aid.


"I have. I have," Kinsolving confirmed.


"… what their membership policies are," Gibbs said.


As WND reported, U.S. Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., was refused permission to join the organization because of his race.


Kinsolving recently documented in his WND column how Anh ("Joseph") Cao, the Vietnamese-American Republican from Louisiana who defeated the re-election bid of New Orleans Democrat William Jefferson, expressed an interest in joining because the district he represents is predominantly black.


Also, in 2007, Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., who is white, pledged to apply for membership during his election campaign to represent his constituents, who were 60 percent black. It was reported that although the bylaws of the caucus do not make race a prerequisite for membership, former and current members of the caucus agreed that the group should remain "exclusively black."


Kinsolving reported Clay said, "Mr. Cohen asked for admission, and he got his answer. He's white and the caucus is black. It's time to move on. We have racial policies to pursue and we are pursuing them, as Mr. Cohen has learned. It's an unwritten rule. It's understood."


Kinsolving said Clay later issued an official statement from his office: "Quite simply, Rep. Cohen will have to accept what the rest of the country will have to accept – there has been an unofficial congressional white caucus for over 200 years, and now it's our turn to say who can join the 'the club.' He does not, and cannot, meet the membership criteria, unless he can change his skin color. Primarily, we are concerned with the needs and concerns of the black population, and we will not allow white America to infringe on those objectives."


Charges of racism arose after posting of a video showing top Obama economic adviser Robert Reich saying he wanted to make sure economic stimulus money didn't go to just "white male construction workers."


Also as WND reported, Democratic Party strategist Donna Brazile admitted she swiped Obama's complimentary blanket from his inauguration ceremony and then joked it was not a criminal offense because, "We have a black president ... this was free."


Also, outrage erupted over the inauguration benediction by Rev. Joseph Lowery, the 87-year-old civil rights pioneer, for asking God to help mankind work for a day when "white would embrace what is right."


Obama, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus while on Capitol Hill, reacted to the benediction with a smile.


Wow! What an article!!! THANK YOU!!!(nmj)
.
Article
Read this interesting article on Pledging Allegiance and wanted to pass it on.

http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/2006/10/pledge-of-allegiance.html


What I took from the article
I read it and understood it to say that when you pledge allegiance you are supporting the country. You are pledging your allegiance to the ideals of the US. Therefore, you are pledging to the constitution, not an individual leader (especially since that leader could be the next Hitler, Mussolini or Castro - no, I'm not talking about Obama, I'm talking about any past, present or future president.

Nowhere in the pledge does it say to pledge yourself to a person or a religion.

In the article he says..

"But even after learning of all of the deceit and murder committed by our government, I still have strong positive feelings for the United States. My forefathers fought and died for liberty. My ancestors struggled to deliver a nation ruled by laws and justice, instead of by the whims of men. My people gave their blood, sweat and tears to throw off the yoke of the British monarchy and to defeat the ambitions of Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito in World War II."

Another good point I read from the article was a message "to the good and honorable people in the military" - they have sworn an oath to protect and defend the US from all enemies foreign "and domestic". They need to remember that they have sworn their allegiance to the ideals of the constitutional form of government which our ancestors fought so hard and in some cases made the ultimate sacrifice - to defend.

I copied a lot of the info above from the article just because if I was saying it myself, this is how I would word it. It's just a very simple message that makes a lot of sense to me.

Swear your allegiance to defend the Constitution and everything good our country stands for. Protect our country from all enemies whether they are foreign or here on our own land. This is what our forefathers fought for to make a safe place for us, and what our founding fathers had in mind when they wrote the Declaration. But don't swear your allegiance to a specific person or a religion/ religious figure head. You can be an athiest or believe in a different religious figure-heads other than God, and still support the United States and all it stands for.

Anyway...that's what I took away from the article.
Another article
I found this article. Know your busy with work and stuff, but just wanted to pass it on. My understanding is this lady and others are trying to get it so that nobody can have a garden in their own yard anymore.

I have to do more reading up on it, but a link you might want to read whenever you have time. Not too too long.

I just say, if they start taking our rights away to have our own gardens what is next. I could be wrong about it, but everything I'm reading that is my understanding of the bill they are trying to pass.

http://shepardpolitics.blogspot.com/2009/03/hr-875-would-essentially-outlaw-family.html


And this article says different
The article states -

"It was an awkward moment when the normally touchy-feely Michelle put her arm around the Queen. Shocked, the Queen raised her arm, lightly patted Michelle on the back, then quickly dropped her arm in a clear sign to Michelle to remove her arm, which Michelle did."

http://sandrarose.com/2009/04/02/michelle-obama-breaks-protocol-by-touching-the-queen/
Here's the article

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/republican-senator-seeks-to-outlaw-tobacco-2009-06-05.html


If they are worried about teenagers smoking, then make it illegal just like booze. I know they have the soft law now, but it really doesn't work too well (just like the booze but at least it may help). Then when they turn 21, it would be their decision, not the government.


My only vice is smoking and a drink once in a while. Both these items are getting too expensive but I've been smoking over 40 years and trying to quit 6 times in the past has never worked for me and I'm tired of trying. LET ME ALONE!!!!


LA Times Article

Great article in opinion section of LA Times (you can get it online).  Dated 06/24/2005, "Hustling on K Street" by Jonathan Chait, concerning Bush paying back the lobbyists and big business.


Reps. John Conyers and Maxine Waters are trying to get a meeting going in Congress tomorrow with Republicans joining in this time to debate and discuss the Downing Street Memos.  Dont know if it will be covered on C-Span, sure hope so.


Oh boy.... I glanced at the article...
I was not responding directly to that article, and stated so.  I was only commenting on the crime of molestation.  Doesn't matter whether it was a priest. a gay child molester, or Bozo the clown.  My POINT WAS that the ACLU defends the likes of NAMBLA and that bothers me and SHOULD bother you.  Can we get off the original article.  I diverted a bit, and said that up front, but you seem to be on a single track and can't go along with it.  Loosen up, conversations sometimes drift.  That's the beauty of a human conversation.
article tells it like it is
Yes I am sure that is why this article was written, to bring the whole republican party down.  It is about false information on buying uranium, Mr. Wilson and his wife are being used to try to undermine the real story, the lies that got us into Iraq.  I do not care if a person is republican or democrat, when there is a question of lies that got us into war, it deserves being investigated.  Thankfully, the prosecutor is republican, that way if some are found guilty, it cannot be twisted into a partisan decision.
good article

Why No Tea and Sympathy?








Published: August 10, 2005


WASHINGTON


W. can't get no satisfaction on Iraq.


There's an angry mother of a dead soldier camping outside his Crawford ranch, demanding to see a president who prefers his sympathy to be carefully choreographed.



Skip to next paragraph
 
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Forum: Maureen Dowd's Columns



A new CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll shows that a majority of Americans now think that going to war was a mistake and that the war has made the U.S. more vulnerable to terrorism. So fighting them there means it's more likely we'll have to fight them here?


Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged yesterday that sophisticated bombs were streaming over the border from Iran to Iraq.


And the Rolling Stones have taken a rare break from sex odes to record an antiwar song called "Sweet Neo Con," chiding Condi Rice and Mr. Bush. "You call yourself a Christian; I call you a hypocrite," Mick Jagger sings.


The N.F.L. put out a press release on Monday announcing that it's teaming up with the Stones and ABC to promote "Monday Night Football." The flag-waving N.F.L. could still back out if there's pressure, but the mood seems to have shifted since Madonna chickened out of showing an antiwar music video in 2003. The White House used to be able to tamp down criticism by saying it hurt our troops, but more people are asking the White House to explain how it plans to stop our troops from getting hurt.


Cindy Sheehan, a 48-year-old Californian with a knack for P.R., says she will camp out in the dusty heat near the ranch until she gets to tell Mr. Bush face to face that he must pull all U.S. troops out of Iraq. Her son, Casey, a 24-year-old Army specialist, was killed in a Sadr City ambush last year.


The president met with her family two months after Casey's death. Capturing W.'s awkwardness in traversing the line between somber and joking, and his love of generic labels, Ms. Sheehan said that W. had referred to her as "Mom" throughout the meeting, and given her the sense that he did not know who her son was.


The Bush team tried to discredit "Mom" by pointing reporters to an old article in which she sounded kinder to W. If only her husband were an undercover C.I.A. operative, the Bushies could out him. But even if they send out a squad of Swift Boat Moms for Truth, there will be a countering Falluja Moms for Truth.


It's amazing that the White House does not have the elementary shrewdness to have Mr. Bush simply walk down the driveway and hear the woman out, or invite her in for a cup of tea. But W., who has spent nearly 20 percent of his presidency at his ranch, is burrowed into his five-week vacation and two-hour daily workouts. He may be in great shape, but Iraq sure isn't.


It's hard to think of another president who lived in such meta-insulation. His rigidly controlled environment allows no chance encounters with anyone who disagrees. He never has to defend himself to anyone, and that is cognitively injurious. He's a populist who never meets people - an ordinary guy who clears brush, and brush is the only thing he talks to. Mr. Bush hails Texas as a place where he can return to his roots. But is he mixing it up there with anyone besides Vulcans, Pioneers and Rangers?


W.'s idea of consolation was to dispatch Stephen Hadley, the national security adviser, to talk to Ms. Sheehan, underscoring the inhumane humanitarianism of his foreign policy. Mr. Hadley is just a suit, one of the hard-line Unsweet Neo Cons who helped hype America into this war.


It's getting harder for the president to hide from the human consequences of his actions and to control human sentiment about the war by pulling a curtain over the 1,835 troops killed in Iraq; the more than 13,000 wounded, many shorn of limbs; and the number of slain Iraqi civilians - perhaps 25,000, or perhaps double or triple that. More people with impeccable credentials are coming forward to serve as a countervailing moral authority to challenge Mr. Bush.


Paul Hackett, a Marine major who served in Iraq and criticized the president on his conduct of the war, narrowly lost last week when he ran for Congress as a Democrat in a Republican stronghold in Cincinnati. Newt Gingrich warned that the race should "serve as a wake-up call to Republicans" about 2006.


Selectively humane, Mr. Bush justified his Iraq war by stressing the 9/11 losses. He emphasized the humanity of the Iraqis who desire freedom when his W.M.D. rationale vaporized.


But his humanitarianism will remain inhumane as long as he fails to understand that the moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute


Good article..nm
nm
This article sure hit home.

I remember feeling the very same way that Ted Rall felt, thinking the very same things, and realizing that if I'm no genius and can figure this out, why can't Bush? 


And I agree that the last paragraph IS good!!!  But all they do is talk.  None of them have the guts to go anywhere near the Sunni Triangle.  They're nothing but hot air, which is good for them, because they're going to need all the hot air they can get.


I can't wait until, say, February.  If you think it's tough now just filling the car tank, what's it going to be like for those with oil heating?  I wonder how easy it is to constantly chant the mantra "I love Bush" (or whatever they've been programmed to chant) when your teeth are chattering from the freezing cold.  And I wonder how many, once they regain the consciousness they lost while opening their heating bills, will still think Bush is so great. 


Roberts article
Roberts Disparaged States' Sex-Bias Fight



By DAVID ESPO, AP Special Correspondent 29 minutes ago



WASHINGTON - Supreme Court nominee John Roberts disparaged state efforts to combat discrimination against women in Reagan-era documents made public Thursday — and wondered whether "encouraging homemakers to become lawyers contributes to the common good."






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As a young White House lawyer, Roberts also expressed support for a national ID card in 1983, saying it would help counter the "real threat to our social fabric posed by uncontrolled immigration."


In words that may resurface — however humorously — at his confirmation hearing, he criticized a crime-fighting proposal by Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record) as "the epitome of the `throw money at the problem" approach.


Specter, R-Pa., then a first-term senator, is now chairman of the Judiciary Committee and will preside at Roberts' hearings, scheduled to begin Sept. 6.


The documents, released simultaneously in Washington and at the Reagan Library in California, show Roberts held a robust view of presidential powers under the Constitution. "I am institutionally disposed against adopting a limited reading of a statute conferring power on the president," he wrote in 1985.


The materials made public completed the disclosure of more than 50,000 pages that cover Roberts' tenure as a lawyer in the White House counsel's office from 1982-86.


Nearly 2,000 more pages from the same period have been withheld on national security or privacy grounds.


Additionally, over the persistent protests of Senate Democrats, the White House has refused to make available any of the records covering Roberts' later tenure as principal deputy solicitor general during the administration of President George H.W. Bush.


Taken as a whole, the material released Thursday reinforced the well-established image of Roberts as a young lawyer whose views on abortion, affirmative action, school prayer and more were in harmony with the conservative president he served. In one memo, he referred favorably to effort to "defund the left."


Democrats say they will question Roberts closely on those subjects and others at his hearings, and they scoured the newly disclosed documents. And despite the apparently long odds against them, civil rights and women's groups are beginning to mount an attempt to defeat his nomination.


Emily's List, which works to elect female candidates, drew attention to a recent speech by Sen. Barbara Boxer (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., in which Boxer raised the possibility of a filibuster if Roberts doesn't elaborate on his views on abortion and privacy rights at his hearings.


"I have the ultimate step," Boxer said. "I can use all the parliamentary rules I have as a senator to stand up and fight for you."


The documents released Thursday recalled the battles of the Reagan era and underscored the breadth of the issues that crossed the desk of Roberts, then a young lawyer in the White House.


He advised senior officials not to try and circumvent the will of Congress when it established a nationwide 55 mph speed limit, for example.


At one point, Roberts drafted a graceful letter to the actor James Stewart for Reagan's signature. "I would normally be delighted to serve on any group chaired by you," it began, then went on to explain why White House lawyers didn't want the president to join a school advisory council.


On a more weighty issue, he struggled to define the line that Reagan and other officials should not cross in encouraging private help to the forces opposing the leftist Sandinista government of Nicaragua.


A memo dated Jan. 21, 1986, said there was no legal problem with Reagan's holding a White House briefing for two groups trying to raise funds. Then, a month later, Roberts warned against getting too close to such groups, toning down letters of commendation drafted for Reagan's signature.


On immigration, he wrote Fred Fielding, White House counsel at the time, in October 1983 that he did not share his opposition to a national ID card. Separately, anticipating a presidential interview with Spanish Today, he wrote. "I think this audience would be pleased that we are trying to grant legal status to their illegal amigos."

Roberts reviewed a report that summarized state efforts to combat discrimination against women. "Many of the reported proposals and efforts are themselves highly objectionable," he wrote to Fielding.

As an example, he said a California program "points to passage of a law requiring the order of layoffs to reflect affirmative action programs and not merely seniority" — a position at odds with administration policy.

He referred to a "staggeringly pernicious law codifying the anti-capitalist notion of `comparable worth,' (as opposed to market value) pay scales." Advocates of comparable worth argued that women were victims of discrimination because they were paid less than men working in other jobs that the state had decided were worth the same.

In a third case, Roberts said a Florida measure "cites a (presumably unconstitutional) proposal to charge women less tuition at state schools, because they have less earning potential."

In a memo dated Sept. 26, 1983, Roberts cited the administration's objections to a proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution.

"Any amendment would ... override the prerogatives of the states and vest the federal judiciary with broader powers in this area, two of the central objections to the ERA," Roberts wrote.

His remark about homemakers and lawyers seemed almost a throwaway line in a one-page memo about the Clairol Rising Star Awards and Scholarship Program. The program was designed to honor women who made changes in their lives after age 30 and had made contributions in their new fields.

An administration official nominated an aide who had been a teacher but then became a lawyer. Roberts signed off on the nomination, then wrote: "Some might question whether encouraging homemakers to become lawyers contributes to the common good, but I suppose that is for the judges to decide."

More than a decade later, Roberts married an attorney.


I read the article. sm

So are we to assume that because these two recruiters did the wrong thing, and they did, that all recruiters are bad. Maybe you, but most certainly not me.  Incidentally, I didn't see this as preying.  Preying would be them pursuing him.  He went to them several times with false stories and expressed an interest (feigned).   They were not preying on him.  I don't agree with what they did but the Army did the right thing and made no excuses for them.  I have worked with MTs who cheated on their line counts. That doesn't mean all MTs are bad.  Generalizations hurt everyone.  I just don't see it as preying. 


Fantastic article
What a fantastic article.  Thank you for this!  Now, I wish all this holy roller Xtian bigots would be quiet about jewish people. 
check article above
Well, we might just get an investigation into the Downing Street Memos after all and then when it is proven that Bush contrived this war and lied for this war, you can post here that yes Bush is a liar.  I refer you to the above post about the Downing Street Memos above.  Interesting article.  States finally a republican is wanting an investigation into the Downing Street Memos, as so far it has only been democrats asking for an investigation.
Dowd article

Hi guys, if you dont agree, pleae dont read, just dont report me once again to the administrator and start a ruckus on this board, like was done last night (by either a conservative or a chicken-sheet who wont come forward)..Thanks.


United States of Shame


By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: September 3, 2005

Stuff happens.

And when you combine limited government with incompetent government, lethal stuff happens.

America is once more plunged into a snake pit of anarchy, death, looting, raping, marauding thugs, suffering innocents, a shattered infrastructure, a gutted police force, insufficient troop levels and criminally negligent government planning. But this time it's happening in America.

W. drove his budget-cutting Chevy to the levee, and it wasn't dry. Bye, bye, American lives. I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees, he told Diane Sawyer.

Shirt-sleeves rolled up, W. finally landed in Hell yesterday and chuckled about his wild boozing days in the great city of N'Awlins. He was clearly moved. You know, I'm going to fly out of here in a minute, he said on the runway at the New Orleans International Airport, but I want you to know that I'm not going to forget what I've seen. Out of the cameras' range, and avoided by W., was a convoy of thousands of sick and dying people, some sprawled on the floor or dumped on baggage carousels at a makeshift M*A*S*H unit inside the terminal.

Why does this self-styled can do president always lapse into such lame who could have known? excuses.

Who on earth could have known that Osama bin Laden wanted to attack us by flying planes into buildings? Any official who bothered to read the trellis of pre-9/11 intelligence briefs.

Who on earth could have known that an American invasion of Iraq would spawn a brutal insurgency, terrorist recruiting boom and possible civil war? Any official who bothered to read the C.I.A.'s prewar reports.

Who on earth could have known that New Orleans's sinking levees were at risk from a strong hurricane? Anybody who bothered to read the endless warnings over the years about the Big Easy's uneasy fishbowl.

In June 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, fretted to The Times-Picayune in New Orleans: It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us.

Not only was the money depleted by the Bush folly in Iraq; 30 percent of the National Guard and about half its equipment are in Iraq.

Ron Fournier of The Associated Press reported that the Army Corps of Engineers asked for $105 million for hurricane and flood programs in New Orleans last year. The White House carved it to about $40 million. But President Bush and Congress agreed to a $286.4 billion pork-filled highway bill with 6,000 pet projects, including a $231 million bridge for a small, uninhabited Alaskan island.

Just last year, Federal Emergency Management Agency officials practiced how they would respond to a fake hurricane that caused floods and stranded New Orleans residents. Imagine the feeble FEMA's response to Katrina if they had not prepared.

Michael Brown, the blithering idiot in charge of FEMA - a job he trained for by running something called the International Arabian Horse Association - admitted he didn't know until Thursday that there were 15,000 desperate, dehydrated, hungry, angry, dying victims of Katrina in the New Orleans Convention Center.

Was he sacked instantly? No, our tone-deaf president hailed him in Mobile, Ala., yesterday: Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job.

It would be one thing if President Bush and his inner circle - Dick Cheney was vacationing in Wyoming; Condi Rice was shoe shopping at Ferragamo's on Fifth Avenue and attended Spamalot before bloggers chased her back to Washington; and Andy Card was off in Maine - lacked empathy but could get the job done. But it is a chilling lack of empathy combined with a stunning lack of efficiency that could make this administration implode.

When the president and vice president rashly shook off our allies and our respect for international law to pursue a war built on lies, when they sanctioned torture, they shook the faith of the world in American ideals.

When they were deaf for so long to the horrific misery and cries for help of the victims in New Orleans - most of them poor and black, like those stuck at the back of the evacuation line yesterday while 700 guests and employees of the Hyatt Hotel were bused out first - they shook the faith of all Americans in American ideals. And made us ashamed.

Who are we if we can't take care of our own?


me again, good article

Hate to be *slamming* guys..Im working this weekend and on break time, Im here *smile*.


Editorials, Including Those at Conservative Papers, Rip Bush's Hurricane Response

By E&P Staff

Published: September 02, 2005 12:30 PM ET


NEW YORK Editorials from around the country on Friday -- including at the Bush-friendly Dallas Morning News and The Washington Times -- have, by and large, offered harsh criticism of the official and military response to the disaster in the Gulf Coast. Here's a sampling.

Dallas Morning News

As a federal official in a neatly pressed suit talked to reporters in Washington about little bumps along the road in emergency efforts, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin issued an urgent SOS. The situation near the convention center was chaotic; not enough buses were available to evacuate thousands of survivors, and the streets were littered with the dead.

Moments later, President Bush took center stage and talked at length about the intricacies of energy policy and plans to keep prices stable. Meanwhile, doctors at hospitals called the Associated Press asking to get their urgent message out: We need to be evacuated, we're taking sniper fire, and nobody is in charge.

Who is in charge?

Losing New Orleans to a natural disaster is one thing, but losing her to hopeless gunmen and a shameful lack of response is unfathomable. How is it that the U.S. military can conquer a foreign country in a matter of days, but can't stop terrorists controlling the streets of America or even drop a case of water to desperate and dying Americans?

President Bush, please see what's happening. The American people want to believe the government is doing everything it can do -- not to rebuild or to stabilize gas prices -- just to restore the most basic order. So far, they are hearing about Herculean efforts, but they aren't seeing them.

***

The Washington Times

Troops are finally moving into New Orleans in realistic numbers, and it's past time. What took the government so long? The thin veneer separating civilization and chaos, which we earlier worried might collapse in the absence of swift action, has collapsed.

We expected to see, many hours ago, the president we saw standing atop the ruin of the World Trade Center, rallying a dazed country to action. We're pleased he finally caught a ride home from his vacation, but he risks losing the one trait his critics have never dented: His ability to lead, and be seen leading.

He returns to the scene of the horror today, and that's all to the good. His presence will rally broken spirits. But he must crack heads, if bureaucratic heads need cracking, to get the food, water and medicine to the people crying for help in New Orleans and on the Mississippi coast. The list of things he has promised is a good list, but there is no time to dally, whether by land, sea or air. We should have delivered them yesterday. Americans are dying.

***

Philadelphia Inquirer (and other Knight Ridder papers)

I hope people don't point -- play politics during this period. That was President Bush's response yesterday to criticism of the U.S. government's inexplicably inadequate relief efforts following Hurricane Katrina.

Sorry, Mr. President, legitimate questions are being asked about the lack of rescue personnel, equipment, food, supplies, transportation, you name it, four days after the storm. It's not playing politics to ask why.
It's not playing politics to ask questions about what Americans watched in horror on TV yesterday: elderly people literally dying on the street outside the New Orleans convention center because they were sick and no one came to their aid.

The rest of America can't fathom why a country with our resources can't be at least as effective in this emergency as it was when past disasters struck Third World nations. Someone needs to explain why well-known emergency aid lessons aren't being applied here.

This hurricane is no one's fault; the devastation would be hard to handle no matter who was in charge. But human deeds can mitigate a disaster, or make it worse.

For example: Did federal priorities in an era of huge tax cuts shortchange New Orleans' storm protection and leave it more vulnerable? This flooding is no surprise to experts. They've been warning for more than 20 years that the levees keeping Lake Pontchartrain from emptying into the under-sea-level city would likely break under the strain of a Category 3 hurricane. Katrina was a Category 4.

So the Crescent City sits under water, much of its population in a state of desperate, dangerous transience, not knowing when they will return home. They're the lucky ones, though. Worse off are those left among the dying in a dying town.

The questions aren't about politics. They are about justice.

***

Minneapolis Star Tribune

But whatever the final toll, the wrenching misery and trauma confronting the people of New Orleans is much greater than it should be -- as it is, in fact, for tens of thousands of people along the strip of Mississippi that was most brutally assaulted by the storm. The immediate goal must be to ease that suffering. The second goal must be to understand how we came to this sorry situation.

How do you justify cutting $250 million in scheduled spending for crucial pump and levee work in the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project (SELA), authorized by Congress in 1995?

How do you explain the almost total lack of coordination among federal, state and local officials both in Louisiana and Mississippi? No one appeared in charge.

***

Des Moines Register

The devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina was the first practical test of the new homeland-security arrangements and the second test of President Bush in the face of a national crisis.

The performance of both has been less than stellar so far.

Katrina was a disaster that came with at least two days of warning, and it has been more than four days since the storm struck. Yet on Thursday, refugees still huddled unrescued in the unspeakable misery of the New Orleans Superdome. Patients in hospitals without power and water clung to life in third-world conditions. Untold tragedies lie yet to be discovered in the rural lowlands of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.


article by bob herbert
Op-Ed Columnist

A Failure of Leadership








Published: September 5, 2005


Bush to New Orleans: Drop Dead


Neither the death of the chief justice nor the frantic efforts of panicked White House political advisers can conceal the magnitude of the president's failure of leadership last week. The catastrophe in New Orleans billowed up like the howling winds of hell and was carried live and in color on television screens across the U.S. and around the world.






The Big Easy had turned into the Big Hurt, and the colossal failure of George W. Bush to intervene powerfully and immediately to rescue tens of thousands of American citizens who were suffering horribly and dying in agony was there for all the world to see.


Hospitals with deathly ill patients were left without power, with ventilators that didn't work, with floodwaters rising on the lower floors and with corpses rotting in the corridors and stairwells. People unable to breathe on their own, or with cancer or heart disease or kidney failure, slipped into comas and sank into their final sleep in front of helpless doctors and relatives. These were Americans in desperate trouble.


The president didn't seem to notice.


Death and the stink of decay were all over the city. Corpses were propped up in wheelchairs and on lawn furniture, or left to decompose on sunbaked sidewalks. Some floated by in water fouled by human feces.


Degenerates roamed the city, shooting at rescue workers, beating and robbing distraught residents and tourists, raping women and girls. The president of the richest, most powerful country in the history of the world didn't seem to notice.


Viewers could watch diabetics go into insulin shock on national television, and you could see babies with the pale, vacant look of hunger that we're more used to seeing in dispatches from the third world. You could see their mothers, dirty and hungry themselves, weeping.


Old, critically ill people were left to soil themselves and in some cases die like stray animals on the floor of an airport triage center. For days the president of the United States didn't seem to notice.


He would have noticed if the majority of these stricken folks had been white and prosperous. But they weren't. Most were black and poor, and thus, to the George W. Bush administration, still invisible.


After days of withering criticism from white and black Americans, from conservatives as well as liberals, from Republicans and Democrats, the president finally felt compelled to act, however feebly. (The chorus of criticism from nearly all quarters demanding that the president do something tells me that the nation as a whole is so much better than this administration.)


Mr. Bush flew south on Friday and proved (as if more proof were needed) that he didn't get it. Instead of urgently focusing on the people who were stranded, hungry, sick and dying, he engaged in small talk, reminiscing at one point about the days when he used to party in New Orleans, and mentioning that Trent Lott had lost one of his houses but that it would be replaced with a fantastic house - and I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch.


Mr. Bush's performance last week will rank as one of the worst ever by a president during a dire national emergency. What we witnessed, as clearly as the overwhelming agony of the city of New Orleans, was the dangerous incompetence and the staggering indifference to human suffering of the president and his administration.


And it is this incompetence and indifference to suffering (yes, the carnage continues to mount in Iraq) that makes it so hard to be optimistic about the prospects for the United States over the next few years. At a time when effective, innovative leadership is desperately needed to cope with matters of war and peace, terrorism and domestic security, the economic imperatives of globalization and the rising competition for oil, the United States is being led by a man who seems oblivious to the reality of his awesome responsibilities.


Like a boy being prepped for a second crack at a failed exam, Mr. Bush has been meeting with his handlers to see what steps can be taken to minimize the political fallout from this latest demonstration of his ineptitude. But this is not about politics. It's about competence. And when the president is so obviously clueless about matters so obviously important, it means that the rest of us, like the people left stranded in New Orleans, are in deep, deep trouble.


E-mail: bobherb@nytimes.com


Great article
Great article by Noonan. LOL, she is one of the people the right wingers just love and love to quote her articles..Guess they wont be quoting much from this article.  I love it.  I sit back and laugh when I see conservatives, staunch Bush supporters, speaking out against decisions he has made and then the ones who are still trying to defend this total screw up person, LOL. 
Very good article, thanks. nm
nm
Good article.
















Published on Monday, December 26, 2005 by the Miami Herald

Fear Destroys What bin Laden Could Not

by Robert Steinback
 

One wonders if Osama bin Laden didn't win after all. He ruined the America that existed on 9/11. But he had help.

If, back in 2001, anyone had told me that four years after bin Laden's attack our president would admit that he broke U.S. law against domestic spying and ignored the Constitution -- and then expect the American people to congratulate him for it -- I would have presumed the girders of our very Republic had crumbled.

Had anyone said our president would invade a country and kill 30,000 of its people claiming a threat that never, in fact, existed, then admit he would have invaded even if he had known there was no threat -- and expect America to be pleased by this -- I would have thought our nation's sensibilities and honor had been eviscerated.

If I had been informed that our nation's leaders would embrace torture as a legitimate tool of warfare, hold prisoners for years without charges and operate secret prisons overseas -- and call such procedures necessary for the nation's security -- I would have laughed at the folly of protecting human rights by destroying them.

If someone had predicted the president's staff would out a CIA agent as revenge against a critic, defy a law against domestic propaganda by bankrolling supposedly independent journalists and commentators, and ridicule a 37-year Marie Corps veteran for questioning U.S. military policy -- and that the populace would be more interested in whether Angelina is about to make Brad a daddy -- I would have called the prediction an absurd fantasy.

That's no America I know, I would have argued. We're too strong, and we've been through too much, to be led down such a twisted path.

What is there to say now?

All of these things have happened. And yet a large portion of this country appears more concerned that saying ''Happy Holidays'' could be a disguised attack on Christianity.

I evidently have a lot poorer insight regarding America's character than I once believed, because I would have expected such actions to provoke -- speaking metaphorically now -- mobs with pitchforks and torches at the White House gate. I would have expected proud defiance of anyone who would suggest that a mere terrorist threat could send this country into spasms of despair and fright so profound that we'd follow a leader who considers the law a nuisance and perfidy a privilege.

Never would I have expected this nation -- which emerged stronger from a civil war and a civil rights movement, won two world wars, endured the Depression, recovered from a disastrous campaign in Southeast Asia and still managed to lead the world in the principles of liberty -- would cower behind anyone just for promising to ``protect us.''

President Bush recently confirmed that he has authorized wiretaps against U.S. citizens on at least 30 occasions and said he'll continue doing it. His justification? He, as president -- or is that king? -- has a right to disregard any law, constitutional tenet or congressional mandate to protect the American people.

Is that America's highest goal -- preventing another terrorist attack? Are there no principles of law and liberty more important than this? Who would have remembered Patrick Henry had he written, ``What's wrong with giving up a little liberty if it protects me from death?''

Bush would have us excuse his administration's excesses in deference to the ''war on terror'' -- a war, it should be pointed out, that can never end. Terrorism is a tactic, an eventuality, not an opposition army or rogue nation. If we caught every person guilty of a terrorist act, we still wouldn't know where tomorrow's first-time terrorist will strike. Fighting terrorism is a bit like fighting infection -- even when it's beaten, you must continue the fight or it will strike again.

Are we agreeing, then, to give the king unfettered privilege to defy the law forever? It's time for every member of Congress to weigh in: Do they believe the president is above the law, or bound by it?

Bush stokes our fears, implying that the only alternative to doing things his extralegal way is to sit by fitfully waiting for terrorists to harm us. We are neither weak nor helpless. A proud, confident republic can hunt down its enemies without trampling legitimate human and constitutional rights.

Ultimately, our best defense against attack -- any attack, of any sort -- is holding fast and fearlessly to the ideals upon which this nation was built. Bush clearly doesn't understand or respect that. Do we?

Email Robert Steinback at: rsteinback@MiamiHerald.com.


1. Article VI of the U.S. Constitution
makes treaties into which the U.S. has entered the supreme Law of the Land. The United States is a signatory to the U.N. Charter, and under the UN Charter, there is no clear legal authority for war on Iraq. Accordingly, if the war violates international law then it also thereby violates U.S. law.

2. While the President is the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, Congress alone has the power to declare war.
This is an excellent article.

This guy has his finger on the pulse of the majority of Americans.


Thanks for posting it.


Link to article
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002765299
Your article was not censored. sm
The thread was deleted because of bashing.  Unfortunately, that takes the entire thread with it.  Feel free to post it again; however, I don't appreciate being accused of censorship. 
Lurker, was it this article?
We Won't Be Quiet. If so, I read it. It was fantastic!!! The other link was about Iraq. I will repost the link.

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0901-28.htm