Archive for May, 2009
Tonight I had the sickening experience of listening to Sean Hannity argue that water boarding is fine and that the President has the right to order it to protect America. His guest made a statement that Sean Hannity vigorously agreed with. The guest said. “There is nothing in the Constitution that prevents the President from doing this”. Oh gee I guess that is what you call a “non-activist” approach to the Constitution! Yet Hannity and his fellow travelers will preach to us about the value of a “Strict Constructionist interpretation” of the Constitution! Then they will preach “the lessons of history” as if we Democrats don’t know how freedom can be lost to the feels good solution to problems!
Well the video below shows the reason why you don’t torture! President Obama said it in his speech today! We want enemy troops to surrender to ours! They will do so if they can expect good treatment. Giving them good treatment SAVES AMERICAN TROOPS! Remember the video below how the Iraqi troops could not wait to surrender and were happy to do so! Would they be so enthusiastic after hearing Cheney?
The video above shows the good that can happen when we follow our American ideals and values! If enemy troops were to fear being water boarded or mistreated they would hold out longer thus more American lives would be lost! If they were higher ups they might even commit suicide and then we would never get the information we needed by traditional methods of interrogation! We must follow the Geneva Convention as President Obama has advocated.
Dick Cheney has criticized our President for trying to appeal to allies with his approach. Well listen to Dick Cheney in the video below when questioned in 1994 about the first Iraqi War. Note that he wanted to have allies join with us. He did not consider it wrong to appeal to allies.
The problem is that we all know that America will be attacked again and the Republicans want to set the Democrats up. Rudy Giuliani, if he were President would most likely do what he attempted as mayor and want to extend his term! Yes the lessons of history are something that Republicans preach but never learn. Our nation survived a Civil War and still had elections.
Now here is a scenario for Republicans to consider! If we allow water boarding to be defined as not constituting torture then what is to stop “enhanced interrogation techniques” from coming to a police station near you? If we allow the smirking George Bush to get away with his statement, “this is America and we don’t torture” and his definition to enter our legal code then a future President could do the same to his opponents! Am I being paranoid?
Well now what if we had a President who was “a pal of terrorists”! What if this same President wasn’t a “real American” and wanted to water board his opponents during some trumped up crises! Now you Republicans do believe President Barrack Hussein Obama is not a real American and a “pal of terrorists” don’t you? This just shows how opportunistic and shabby the Republicans are in their arguments! Republicans should be the first to make sure “water boarding” is defined as torture and illegal. But then again they lied about Obama being a pal of terrorists, because if he were Anti-American they should be the first to out law him having the authority to use it.
As I have mentioned in prior posts I would accept a limited, open and transparent “Allan Dorchowitz Court Torture Warrant” in the event of a terrorist nuclear bomb. But then again I would not desire to turn the operation of America’s ports over to the Dubai. You know the country that Halliburton has moved their corporate headquarters to. Yes Dubai that allowed covert shipments to Pakistan of materials needed by them to make nuclear weapons!
Dick Cheney is wrong that he and his fellow traveler George Bush protected us from a second attack! The first WTC attack happened in 1993! The second in 2001. It takes them a while to set up a new attack! The Republicans did not do anything spectacular. Yet the NEWS MEDIA never challenge them on this! This constitutes ANTI-LIBERAL NEWS MEDIA BIASES!
We live in a dangerous world but we must still balance security with the rule of law! The President swears to defend the Constitution of the United States not to follow the “feels good solution”! Time to learn the lessons of history else we will suffer in America our own “Reichstag Fire”!
Nancy Pelosi has been a first rate wimp over the last two years as Speaker of The House. She did not want to pursue the impeachment of Bush or Cheney! Despite all the lies about the facts leading up to the war she did nothing to pursue a rigorous investigation of intelligence gathering.
Now over the last week surprise! Nancy Pelosi is waking up! She is also appearing just as wimpy and flip flopping as before! If she had lead the charge against Bush and Cheney the focus would be now on them rather than her!
A key strategy of the Republicans is to appear decisive and attack flip flopping! She has fallen into their trap and may hurt the Democratic Party because she was not decisive over the last two years in going after former President Bush and Cheney! Republicans know that Americans like ACTION FIGURES! Bush was an action figure by kicking Iraqi butt and initially Americans liked him for that. President Obama got elected because when the issue turned to the economy he was perceived as an ACTION FIGURE while McCain was an advocate of Laissez-faire capitalism!
Republicans know that Americans hate the image of a indecisive person! They cannot hang that on Obama but they can on Pelosi. They have successfully reversed the investigation from Bush, Cheney and the CIA to focusing on her instead. Many Democrats, like myself, felt she was indecisive but now are protecting one of our own. I question if that is right! (See the video below)
The time has come to take FORCEFULL DYNAMIC ACTION to:
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Investigate Cheney and his fellow travelers as they steered from a “STRICT CONSTRUCTIONALIST” interpretation of the Constitution that they swore to defend!
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Bring to America’s attention how the Republicans are not bothered by Insurance Companies standing between doctor and patient while they profit from it and attempt to side track the issue by saying we Democrats want the government in between the Doctor and Patient!
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Challenge the vast salary and compensation gaps between the top 5% and the Silent Majority while the President, with much higher responsibility earns only 400K
We Democrats have been keeping our gloves on far to long. Let Obama play “good Democrat” but we need some nasty boys like Vice President Biden to sock it to them! Did the Republicans care when they made a big stink over Bill Clinton’s sexual problems? No they tied our nation down. We must have the same guts else we will not be perceived as “action figures”. We must be like a broken record, yes even attacking the news media! Hell we allowed the Republicans to get away with making the news media seem they favored us when they did not!
Time to stand up for the Silent Majority!
Well today our President got a harsh reception from some at Notre Dame University because he supports a woman’s right to choose. Remember folks just a few months ago when the right wing made a big stink about free Trojans being in the stimulus package! Well not every teenage girl has a mummy who is the Governor of Alaska! These are the same right wingers who wale and whine about how “our children” are going to be stuck with paying off the debt from the stimulus package!
Forget the fact that abstinence does not work let’s look at this from a purely market approach:
- With no free Trojans we will see a rise in teen pregnancy and who is going to foot the bill for the future welfare mothers of America?
- Who is going to have to deal with the gangs of fatherless boys who will roam our streets, many joining criminal gangs? Great work Republicans! (Have a laugh at their program in the video below).
I also find it amazing that Archbishop Burke who severely criticized our President is a judge on a Vatican Court. Strange isn’t it that he is still an American citizen! I thought our Constitution forbids an American holding foreign office! I find it also strange that a country that is smaller than a park and is really a religious organization should have an Ambassador from the United States! Oh but I guess I am just a “strict constructionalist”!
But back to the nice Republicans who want to block stem cell research that would increase the quality of human life while preaching that they are indeed “pro-life”! I am so happy that President Obama has cut funding for “abstinence education”! Why should the American Tax Payer be straddled with this cost when free Trojans and sex education are fought against! Make no mistake about it the Republicans are not worried that Middle Class Tax Payers will be stuck with higher taxes in the future!
NO what they fear is that they will “only” be allowed to pass on a mere million or two to their children due to an increase in the inheritance taxes on the upper 5%. If Archbishop Burke is so concerned about quality of life issues perhaps he and the Pope would do well to allow Roman Catholic clergy to marry so that the wrong types don’t go for ordination and altar boys can go to church in peace! No I am not disrespecting the Roman Catholic Church. They do a lot of good work running charities and hospitals! I also would like to see abortions greatly reduced by eliminating the need for them by giving free Trojans and sex education.
We can reduce the need for abortions by reinstating FREE TROJANS as part of the stimulus package and making adaption easier, even financially helping those who adapt. Yes sex would be better if people waited until they married but we need to be realistic else our society pays the price with welfare mothers and teenage gangs of fatherless boys roaming our streets!
Remember the days of Nixon when the Republicans whined about “Law and Order”! Oh the Republicans whine about a “strict constructionalist” interpretation of the the Constitution! Today on CBS’s show “Face The Nation”, former Vice President made the mistake in saying his oath was to defend the United States. While that is implied in the oath the actual literal requirement is to “preserve, protect and defend THE CONSTITUTION of the United States…”! (See Video Below).
As I mentioned in a prior post these are Republicans, you know the folks who think that having a nice semi-automatic weapon in your living room is as American as apple pie. It must be remembered that the reason they believe they need to have such powerful weapons is that these weapons are the last line of defense against our own government! Well maybe we should have weapons at home since Blackwater is being used to replace our armed forces in many instances!
The real issue is not if three terrorists were tortured but what is to protect us from future Presidents of the United States (Republican or Democrat) from isolating Americans from the courts and then torturing those they do not like. Well if I am an alarmist then why do right wingers need assault weapons in their homes? I grew up in the Vietnam era and I do fear the loss of civil liberties!
What I really find laughable about the Republicans is that they are the ones who lecture us Democrats about the evils of “ethical relativism” and the “feels good solution”! I would distinquish between the three who were tortured vs. the the majority of captured Al Qaeda prisoners. I would accept the Alan Dorchowitz solution for a public “Torture Warrant”! What can I say I am a liberal and do believe in ethical relativism and the “feels good solution” sometimes!
However when I hear former VP Dick Cheney saying that the Justice Dept. lawyers should not be prosecuted “simply because they gave bad advice” then perphaps we should subject Cheney to waterboarding! I am sick of the “newspeak” being practiced. OK I would under some situations, such as the threat of a dirty nuclear weapon, use TORTURE! But we need to have a LEGAL method that is such as proposed by Alan Dorchowitz! The real issue with torture is what has happened in Iraq! There our use of torture actually served to recruit young men into Al Qaeda!
Has anyone noticed that the Republicans continue to say that they protected the United States from further attacks? Excuse me but the first World Trade Center attack occured on February 26, 1993! The second did not occur till September 11, 2001. That is a long space between attacks without any military intervention! Yet no Democrat ever seems to challenge this Republican assertion that they protected our nation. Actually with the Republican SOCIAL ENGINEERING EXPERIMENT in Iraq we wasted valuable time and resources, not to mention lives, when we should have been hitting the Al Qaeda heartland in Afganistan and Pakistan!
We Democrats need to be more aggressive in our attacks on the Republcians!
Well before we all start laughing at Joe Biden and his comments about swine flue, does anyone remember the TB scare we had two years ago! Remember the scare about being in the same plane with someone who had TB? In the current crises concerning the swine flu virus we have been told that airplanes have special “air filters” that can screen out bacteria and viruses! Well a virus is extremely small in comparison to a TB bacteria. Yet there were concerns about people flying in a plane where the issue was not the tiny virus but the much larger bacteria! This does not add up. Below is a clip from the Rachel Maddow Show concerning the then crisis about the passenger on the plane who had TB.
I am a Liberal Democrat but not an PC Orthodox one. I wonder if Rachel Maddow (a fellow liberal) has as much zeal now to attack the CBC now that we have a Democratic Administration. You will note her strong advocacy for defending America from allowing diseases to cross our open borders! In the above case it was a returning American from Italy. I wonder why that isn’t Anti-Italian? Oh dear I am not being politically correct! Yes dear viewer I am a rabid anti-corporate leftie liberal but I am also for the pursuit of TRUTH no matter where that takes me. Just view some of my posts with my raging attacks against the corporations and the stupidity of George Bush. But I also have posts (hold your breath now) in support of Star Wars at least for the possible defense of the United States.
While the consensus is that the TB scare may have been overblown that would be based on the assumption that corporate America has the American Middle Class best interests at heart! Yeah Right sure! So let’s not go overboard on criticizing Vice President Biden as depected in the humorous, I admit, video below).
Well to end this on a humorous note I know why we have the “swine flu”. This is the judgement of a rightous God against a decadent neo-Socialist America!
Doen’t any one see the connection with God’s punishment of America due to our election of Barrack Obama?
“Pork Barrel Spending” and Democrats “Bringing home the bacon” THEN we get SWINE FLU! Yes indeed the judgment of a “Righteous God”!
The last line actually must be from Sarah Palin’s inner thoughts!
