Category Archives: Obama Presidency

Government Terrorists

The word “terrorists” has been used more and more lately to describe the small group of GOP congressional representatives who are now holding this country hostage. Now, I have always tried to shy away from hyperbole on these pages, mostly because I think it doesn’t help any argument to get hysterical. I never thought Bush’s crimes rose to Hitler’s — that sort of thing. However, I have to agree with the terrorism comparison when it comes to these GOP reps. They are shutting down government and putting 800,000 families out of work solely because they don’t like that we had several national referendums on the Affordable Care Act and that they were on the losing end of ALL of them.

The Affordable Care Act has survived numerous challenges to de-fund it, repeal it in part, or totally kill it.

It is law.

Strange then, that a small minority who claim to live and die by the Constitution would threaten to harm this country by taking it hostage because they didn’t get their way when it comes to the ACA.

Make no mistake about it, this is terrorism. If you don’t believe the government shutdown falls under high crimes, check out this article from Allen Clifton over at Forward Progressives.

Not all terrorism involves the killing of innocent people.  Terrorism can be seen as any calculated, and planned, attack on the United States meant to purposefully inflict harm.

Tell me, how is willingly crashing our economy not a “purposeful” act which would harm millions of Americans?  How is shutting down our government not a “purposeful” act to harm our nation?

Because President Obama has made it clear that the law of the land as per our Constitution “Obamacare” will not be defunded.  So if the Republican responses to that are proposals which include it being defunded, they are then willingly threatening to crash our economy or shutdown our government unless “their demands are met.”

Sounds like terrorism to me. How about you?

 

Secret Memos Finally Released

Back in April of 2008, I wrote a post about the Bush Cabinet creating the torture policy for the United States, and about how the Office of Legal Counsel authorized the use of torture on enemy combatants. I also talked about the John Yoo memo that said the Fourth Amendment did not apply to actions of the US military within the United States. This memo was not released by the Bush administration, it was only referenced in a footnote of another memo.

This week the Obama administration released a handful of these “secret memos,” over many objections by various government agencies. Glenn Greenwald over at Salon dissects the whole mess very well, and you can get copies of the memos from his links.

It’s amazing how suddenly there’s all this talk in the press about the radical measures the Bush administration took in order to “win’ the “war on terror.” Our rights! Our rights! Oh my god! What hath they done?

I’m reminded how little notice this got in the mainstream press at the time. Meanwhile, the liberal blogs were screaming about how rights given to us by the Constitution were actually being TAKEN AWAY. You’d think this would have gotten a little more attention WHILE it was happening. But no, we were just Bush haters who wanted the US to wave the white flag of surrender in the war on terror.

While I’m unhappy that President Obama seems to want to “stay the course” as it were with many aspects of Bush’s policies on Iraq and Afghanistan and so-called “enemy combatants,” I’m encouraged that he is finally allowing some of the more outrageous DOJ/Office of Legal Cousel opinion pieces to see the light of day.

Not that I think most people are paying attention.

Either With Us or Against Us

Didn’t George W. Bush say something about how you’re either with us or against us in the war on terror?

It’s interesting in light of the recent quote by GOP Rep. Patrick McHenry, where he says “Our goal is to bring down approval numbers for [Speaker Nancy] Pelosi and for House Democrats.”

Gee, you’d think House Republicans would have other goals — like trying to act in the best interests of America by coming up with creative and viable alternatives to Democratic proposals on the economy.

The fact that the Republicans sent to the House and Senate by their constituents to work in their best interests are instead so obviously playing politics and trying merely to be obstructionists should be the final nail in the coffin for this party to any thinking, red-blooded American.

How could anyone vote for these people? Aren’t they supposed to be delivering alternatives instead of just obstructing those who are trying to do something about the dramatic crises facing this nation? There hasn’t been something this potentially disasterous for America since 9/11 and when George W. Bush called on us to pull together to get through the tough times, Americans got behind him.

President Obama didn’t even get 30 days before Rush Limbaugh was saying he hoped the President failed.

These people are truly anti-American. There’s just no other way to say it.

Dems Strategy? Keep Rush Talking!

Who needs the fairness doctrine? Are you kidding, Rush? THEY WANT YOU TO KEEP TALKING!! As long as you keep talking, the Democrats keep winning. You’re eating up the attention since it brings you ratings, but perhaps somewhere inside that drug-addled mind of yours you think you’ll somehow convince those who aren’t already dittoheads that your arguments make any kind of sense at all? If the polls in this article are correct, it’s just not going to happen. People under 40 don’t like you. They know what you are, who you are, and they are not buying that “this is Obama’s economy — he owns it.” No, this is Bush’s economy and Obama inherited it, and Americans know that.

The brilliance of the Democratic strategy is just amazing though. You need to read this article at Politico, no matter if it reveals the magician behind the curtain.

James Carville, I owe you an apology. You, sir, are still brilliant.

Just Another Recession?

I don’t think so. This is from Nancy Pelosi’s office:

This chart compares the job loss so far in this recession to job losses in the 1990-1991 recession and the 2001 recession — showing how dramatic and unprecedented the job loss over the last 13 months has been.  Over the last 13 months, our economy has lost a total of 3.6 million jobs – and continuing job losses in the next few months are predicted.

By comparison, we lost a total of 1.6 million jobs in the 1990-1991 recession, before the economy began turning around and jobs began increasing; and we lost a total of 2.7 million jobs in the 2001 recession, before the economy began turning around and jobs began increasing.

FDR’s New Deal Failed, right?

If you’ve listened to any of the Sunday morning shows or right-wing radio over the last few weeks, you’ve probably learned from the neo-conservative pundits that FDR’s New Deal was actually a failure and that it was only World War II that brought us out of the Great Depression.

This is a total, outright, bald-faced lie.

Check out this article from ourfuture.org which lays out the official statistics from the Commerce Department and the Federal Reserve to support the truth — FDR’s New Deal almost immediately had an impact in turning the economy around. In fact, the only point at which it seemed his plans might fail was when he actually “took his foot off the gas” in 1937, when he dramatically slashed New Deal programs in order to balance the budget.

By the time Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, US GDP had more than doubled when compared to the time just before the economy started to slide into the Great Depression. US Industrial Production was at record levels when December 7th 1941 changed everything.

Don’t let them lie to you. They will try to rewrite history against all known statistics and facts, and 20-30% of you will probably believe them when they do it.

Just remember — if they can lie so boldly in the face of certain fact, what else are they lying to you about?