Charles Ferguson is a hero!
Posted By: piglet on 2007-11-27
In Reply to:
I finally had time to sit down and watch the movie No End in Sight. Finally! The truth is coming out. I encourage everyone to watch it, and considering I read a recent poll that 40% of Americans think that Sadam was behind 911 and that is why we invaded Iraq, tell everyone you know to watch it too.
Like Whorn, I was riveted. It angers me. President Bush, his administration, and Congress should be held accountable for allowing this nightmare to happen and to continue. President Bush in particular is complicit in destroying Iraq and should be brought out to answer a few questions to say the least. This is all at his feet due to ineptness to lead and putting the wrong people in charge of things they had no business being in charge of and not listening to the advice of those who knew best simply because he didn't want to hear it. I am rather surprised that there are not more protests marching on Washington. I think there may be before he exits the White House.
The most important thing for me is it solidified my belief that we need to pull out of Iraq posthaste. I was on the fence about pulling our troops out. I am no longer on that fence.
I could go on and on, it's a passionate subject. It is predicted that this venture will cost 1.5 trillion dollars. That should shoot the conservatives right up the wazoo. How could anyone possibly justify that? Who the heck is going to pay for it? Think our taxes will go up? I'd bet on it. Oh, probably not, they'll budget cut to cover the blunder and leave more of our children poorly educated. Over 3000 Americans dead, well over a half a million dead Iraqi's, the government won't disclose how many Iraqi are currently being detained. I could scream.
You've got to watch it.
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Hero of what? Hero to Wright, Rezko, Ayers, and
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the Scottish guy is Craig Ferguson...nm
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Charles Krauthammer is in a wheelchair...
suffers from a demylienating illness. That is why he stutters and has difficulty talking. This is really mean-spirited. I don't like his politics, but I am not going to make fun of someone who is ill.
And he's related to Charles Keating!
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A wonderful op-ed by Charles Krauthammer...
The Fierce Urgency of Pork
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, February 6, 2009; A17
"A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe."
-- President Obama, Feb. 4.
Catastrophe, mind you. So much for the president who in his inaugural address two weeks earlier declared "we have chosen hope over fear." Until, that is, you need fear to pass a bill.
And so much for the promise to banish the money changers and influence peddlers from the temple. An ostentatious executive order banning lobbyists was immediately followed by the nomination of at least a dozen current or former lobbyists to high position. Followed by a Treasury secretary who allegedly couldn't understand the payroll tax provisions in his 1040. Followed by Tom Daschle, who had to fall on his sword according to the new Washington rule that no Cabinet can have more than one tax delinquent.
The Daschle affair was more serious because his offense involved more than taxes. As Michael Kinsley once observed, in Washington the real scandal isn't what's illegal, but what's legal. Not paying taxes is one thing. But what made this case intolerable was the perfectly legal dealings that amassed Daschle $5.2 million in just two years.
He'd been getting $1 million per year from a law firm. But he's not a lawyer, nor a registered lobbyist. You don't get paid this kind of money to instruct partners on the Senate markup process. You get it for picking up the phone and peddling influence.
At least Tim Geithner, the tax-challenged Treasury secretary, had been working for years as a humble international civil servant earning non-stratospheric wages. Daschle, who had made another cool million a year (plus chauffeur and Caddy) for unspecified services to a pal's private equity firm, represented everything Obama said he'd come to Washington to upend.
And yet more damaging to Obama's image than all the hypocrisies in the appointment process is his signature bill: the stimulus package. He inexplicably delegated the writing to Nancy Pelosi and the barons of the House. The product, which inevitably carries Obama's name, was not just bad, not just flawed, but a legislative abomination.
It's not just pages and pages of special-interest tax breaks, giveaways and protections, one of which would set off a ruinous Smoot-Hawley trade war. It's not just the waste, such as the $88.6 million for new construction for Milwaukee Public Schools, which, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, have shrinking enrollment, 15 vacant schools and, quite logically, no plans for new construction.
It's the essential fraud of rushing through a bill in which the normal rules (committee hearings, finding revenue to pay for the programs) are suspended on the grounds that a national emergency requires an immediate job-creating stimulus -- and then throwing into it hundreds of billions that have nothing to do with stimulus, that Congress's own budget office says won't be spent until 2011 and beyond, and that are little more than the back-scratching, special-interest, lobby-driven parochialism that Obama came to Washington to abolish. He said.
Not just to abolish but to create something new -- a new politics where the moneyed pork-barreling and corrupt logrolling of the past would give way to a bottom-up, grass-roots participatory democracy. That is what made Obama so dazzling and new. Turns out the "fierce urgency of now" includes $150 million for livestock (and honeybee and farm-raised fish) insurance.
The Age of Obama begins with perhaps the greatest frenzy of old-politics influence peddling ever seen in Washington. By the time the stimulus bill reached the Senate, reports the Wall Street Journal, pharmaceutical and high-tech companies were lobbying furiously for a new plan to repatriate overseas profits that would yield major tax savings. California wine growers and Florida citrus producers were fighting to change a single phrase in one provision. Substituting "planted" for "ready to market" would mean a windfall garnered from a new "bonus depreciation" incentive.
After Obama's miraculous 2008 presidential campaign, it was clear that at some point the magical mystery tour would have to end. The nation would rub its eyes and begin to emerge from its reverie. The hallucinatory Obama would give way to the mere mortal. The great ethical transformations promised would be seen as a fairy tale that all presidents tell -- and that this president told better than anyone.
I thought the awakening would take six months. It took two and a half weeks.
That's like saying because I LOVE Ray Charles' music, I must shoot up heroin, as he did???....
Do you guys really believe your own rhetoric in these postings, or is this just delusional, absurd thinking by otherwise intelligent people because Obama won, George is gone hallelujah, and McCain/Palin lost??? Don't get me wrong, I am sick of BOTH parties most of the time, like lying, spoiled children, I would love to see a truly Independent party take hold with a REAL candidate, but when you have to pick on Obama's musical tastes in order to make a point, that is showing DESPERATION.
Sarah Palin to be interviewed by Charles Gibson at the end of week
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When your hero, Reagan,
he apparently made you blind. Remember this when more of our infrastructure (already started with levees in Louisiana) falls apart and you wonder why there are more pot holes and you can't afford basic necessities. Look around, it's already happening.
Poverty Increases as Incomes Decline Under Bush
September 21, 2005
By Gene C. Gerard
The day after Hurricane Katrina hit, exposing much of the public to the tragic conditions of poverty in America, the Census Bureau quietly released its annual report entitled, Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States. In some respects, it provided a demonstrable backdrop to the pockets of poverty common to New Orleans and other cities. It also explained why, despite President Bush's assertion last month that, Americans have more money in their pockets, many people aren't faring as well as they once did.
The report indicates that in 2004 there was no increase in average annual household incomes for black, white, or Hispanic families. In fact, this marks the first time since the Census Bureau began keeping records that household incomes failed to increase for five consecutive years. Since President Bush took office, the average annual household family income has declined by $2,572, approximately 4.8 percent.
Black families had the lowest average income last year, at $30,134. By comparison, the average income for white families was $48,977. The average pretax family income for all racial groups combined was $44,389, which is the lowest it has been since 1997. The South had the lowest average family income in 2004.
Interestingly enough, as the Economic Policy Institute notes in their analysis of the Census Bureau's report, not all families did poorly last year. Although the portion of the total national income going to the bottom 60 percent of families did not increase last year, the portion going to the wealthiest five percent of families rose by 0.4 percent. And while the average inflation-adjusted family income of middle-class Americans declined by 0.7 percent in 2004, the wealthiest five percent of families enjoyed a 1.7 percent increase.
Earnings also declined last year. This is despite the fact that Americans are working harder. Since 2000, worker output per hour has increased by 15 percent. Yet for men working full-time, their annual incomes declined 2.3 percent in 2004, down to an average of $40,798. This decrease was the largest one-year decline in 14 years for men. Women saw their earnings decrease by 1 percent, with an average income of $31,223, the largest one-year decline for women in nine years.
Women earned only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men last year. Clearly, the gender gap remains real and pervasive. In all major industry sectors, women earned less than men. In the management of companies, women earned 54 cents for every dollar earned by men; 57 cents in finance and industry; and 60 cents in scientific and technical services.
Not surprisingly, the report revealed that poverty increased last year. There were 37 million (12.7 percent) people living in poverty, an increase of 1.1 million people since 2003. This was the fourth consecutive year in which poverty has increased. In fact, since President Bush took office, 5.4 million more people, including 1.4 million children, have found themselves living in poverty. There were 7.9 million families living below the poverty level in 2004, an increase of 300,000 families since 2003.
The average income last year for a poverty-stricken family of four was $19,307; for a family of three it was $15,067, and for a couple it was $12,334. The poverty rate increased for people 18 to 64 last year by 0.5 percent. The South experienced the highest poverty rate of all regions.
The Census Bureau report also demonstrated that health insurance coverage remains elusive for many Americans. Those covered by employer-sponsored health insurance declined from 60.4 percent in 2003 to 59.8 percent in 2004. Approximately 800,000 more workers found themselves without health insurance last year. The percentage of people covered by governmental health programs in 2004 rose to 27.2 percent, in part because as poverty increased, more Americans were forced to seek coverage through Medicaid. The percentage of the public with Medicaid coverage rose by 0.5 percent in 2004.
Last year was the fourth consecutive year in which employer-sponsored health insurance coverage declined. A total of 45.8 million Americans are now without health insurance. The uninsured rate in 2004 was 11.3 percent for whites, 19.7 percent for blacks, and 32.7 percent for Hispanics. Not surprisingly, the South had the highest portion of the uninsured population, at 18.3 percent.
Although we haven't heard President Bush say it much lately, he came into office as a self-professed compassionate conservative. But as the report by the Census Bureau suggests, which was sadly symbolized by the plight of many poor residents of New Orleans, the country hasn't seen much of that compassion in the last five years.
Many Americans are working harder, earning less, and without the benefit of health insurance. It's easy to understand why the report was released a day after the largest natural disaster in a century, when much of the country was distracted.
PK...You are my hero/shero! sm
Coming from another person who finds herself sitting in the middle of the road (seeming sometimes with no place to go :) you speak to the beat of my very heart where politics are concerned, and I'm glad you posted your story because I would have taken you as a hardline liberal. That just goes to show.
I only questioned the wire tapping because it has been an issue that I do not have a stance on. I can see the good in it and the bad that can come along with it, so versus reading an article I wanted to know in your own words what you guys felt about it. I definitely can see why checks and balances are in needed in this program, as with anythng in the justice system. It may take more work, but if there is legitimacy in the tapping then they should be required to get a warrant.
Thank you for sharing your views.
Even the hero of the RWNJ
Rush Limbaugh said Bill-O is the Ted Baxter of Fox news. Falafa, falafa, falafa.
Yes, a true hero (sm)
They gave him full immunity, because they counted on him flipping over on the the administration. So he gets full immunity, and then takes the all the blame unto himself, after shredding thousands of documents under the very noses of the investigators.
Not sure if this part is true, but I guess someone held up a piece of paper as evidence, and asked Oliver North what it was.
His response?
Damn, I must have forgotten to shred that one!!
MCCAIN: NO HERO
How does spending time in a prisoner of war camp make you a hero? You would really rather have had a man who is a "post-traumatic stress disorder" attack waiting to happen, with his hand on the big red button?
If being a POW is heroic, Guantanamo is the LAND OF HEROES.
On this first day of your new hero, you cant stop
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Your hero Hillary's husband had ONLY...
executive experience when he went into the white house. Are you saying he did not function well as president?? As long as you watch the regular media McCain is going to be absent because they are card carrying members of the vote Democrat or die party before everything say whatever youhave to say even if that changes daily crowd.
And if you don't know the Clintons by now your head is further in the sand that mine ever thought about being, and all this yada yada democratic party line mantra....
and as far as her calling hillary a whiner...let me search the internet. I don't think she is the first. Let me also search the internet for what an MSNBC commentator called her during the primaries...didn't see you posting his name here.
Yep, we do agree....sweeetttttt. I am still excited. And will be until its over, and all this hard line party mantra mumbo jumbo is not going to dampen it. And if the ticket loses, I STILL SAY that Hillary Clinton can't carry Sarah Palin's water. Palin has more integrity in her little finger than the Clintons have in their whole bodies. I don't think she has ever committed felony perjury. Wanna talk about travelgate, whitewater...?
Geez. lol. sweeettttt.
hero does not equal presidential - nm
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Oh, that was classy... not!. McCain was the hero
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There are more than one kind of hero in this world,
.
I was just saying to follow the lead of your hero
he lost but he is moving past it, unlike the RRs on this board
You said it - they are the true hero's of the country
Not any message really, just wanted to say the Navy Seals are true hero's. Willing to go into danger and even die saving other people they don't know. Navy Seals, Police, Fire, etc. People who selflessly lay down their lives to protect and rescue the innocent are the true hero's and I hope they are commended for this. - Okay, so I guess I did have a message. :-)
Another RICO suit from 911 hero/survivor.sm
William Rodriguez was the last known person out of the North Tower alive, and helped rescue people out of the tower.
Here is his story:
http://www.911forthetruth.com/pages/Rodriguez.htm
Here is the link to the RICO
suit:
http://www.911forthetruth.com/pages/RodriguezComplaint.htm
Ollie North, the 'true hero' - whatever....
Yeah-a real American Hero
He was on The View and he stated he lives in Mexico 9 months out of the year. He loves Mexico. He's against waterboarding and his answers to questions they asked him were way out there as if he hates the country.
He's a real patriot, isn't he...NOT!
Draft Dodger Cheney attacks War Hero
The words President Murtha are sounding pretty good!
DERRICK Z. JACKSON
White House plays chicken with a war hero
By Derrick Z. Jackson | November 19, 2005
THE WHITE House is so deluded, it actually believes it can turn a soaring hawk into a scrounging chicken. Stung by the call by US Representative John Murtha of Pennsylvania to pull out of Iraq, Scott McClellan, President Bush's press secretary, said this week, ''It is baffling that he is endorsing the policy positions of Michael Moore and the extreme liberal wing of the Democratic Party.
Talk about playing the chicken-hawk card. A White House where most of the architects of war avoided combat in their own lives dared to associate two people who are worlds apart in world views. Moore made the anti-Bush ''Fahrenheit 9/11, which infuriated the right wing by breaking box office records for a documentary film. Moore was booed at the 2004 Republican National Convention.
Murtha is the 73-year-old recipient of two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star for combat duty in Vietnam. He is a Democrat whose three decades in office are marked by support of President Reagan's policies in Nicaragua and El Salvador. Murtha was a top Democratic supporter of the 1991 Gulf War. He wants a constitutional ban on burning the American flag.
In a 2002 press briefing, former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz termed the support of politicians like Murtha for the Pentagon as ''wonderful. In the 2004 vice presidential debate, incumbent Dick Cheney said, ''One of my strongest allies in Congress when I was secretary of defense was Jack Murtha.
For all those shows of patriotism, Murtha was skeptical about the rush to invade Iraq in 2003 of Iraq even though he voted to give President Bush the authorization to go to war. He publicly said Bush beat the war drums before building an international coalition. Murtha said he had not seen anything in intelligence reports that indicated an imminent threat. Murtha said Bush ''has put the country in such a box. He can say, 'You'll undercut me if you don't vote for this resolution.'
One month after the invasion, when no weapons of mass destruction had yet been found, Murtha warned that American credibility was at risk. By the September, the absence of weapons of mass destruction made him join the much more liberal House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, in calling for Bush to fire the planners of the invasion. Despite the proclamation that ''we achieved a marvelous military victory, Murtha became increasingly frustrated with the chaos of the occupation. This summer, Murtha said administration officials were ''not honest in their assessment that they were winning the ongoing battle.
Finally, this week, Murtha unleased a scathing attack on Bush's Iraq policy. He called it ''a flawed policy wrapped in illusion. He said he believed military officials when he visited Kuwait just before the war and they showed him where American forces would be attacked by weapons of mass destruction when they approach Baghdad. But now, with no end to the killing in sight, he said, ''The US cannot accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. It's time to bring the troops home. . .They have become the enemy.
Murtha talked about soldier after soldier he has visited in hospitals, wounded and maimed by the invasion. Yet, there's more terrorism now than there ever was and it's because of what? Is it because of our policy? I would say it's a big part.
In perhaps the most humble admission of his press conference, Murtha said, ''The American public is way ahead of the members of Congress.
This came the day after Cheney threw mud in the direction of critics who gave Bush his war authorization. Cheney accused them of making ''irresponsible comments. He accused them issuing ''cynical and pernicious falsehoods to make ''a play for political advantage.
He said, ''The President and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing their memory -- or their backbone.
This was the same Cheney who gave us some of the greatest falsehoods of this generation with ''There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction . . . We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons, and that we would be ''welcomed as liberators.
Murtha clobbered Cheney's words the next day, saying, ''I like guys who got five deferments and never been there and send people to war and then don't like to hear suggestions about what needs to be done.
This hawk still soars, above the scrounging chicken hawks.
Derrick Z. Jackson's e-mail address is jackson@globe.com. ![src=http://cache.boston.com/bonzai-fba/File-Based_Image_Resource/dingbat_story_end_icon.gif]()
War Hero Murtha wouldn't join military now
US Rep. Murtha says he wouldn't join military now
03 Jan 2006 01:00:32 GMT
Source: Reuters
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WASHINGTON, Jan 2 (Reuters) - Rep. John Murtha, a key Democratic voice who favors pulling U.S. troops from Iraq, said in remarks airing on Monday that he would not join the U.S. military today.
A decorated Vietnam combat veteran who retired as a colonel after 37 years in the U.S. Marine Corps, Murtha told ABC News' Nightline program that Iraq absolutely was a wrong war for President George W. Bush to have launched.
Would you join (the military) today?, he was asked in an interview taped on Friday.
No, replied Murtha of Pennsylvania, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives subcommittee that oversees defense spending and one of his party's leading spokesmen on military issues.
And I think you're saying the average guy out there who's considering recruitment is justified in saying 'I don't want to serve', the interviewer continued.
Exactly right, said Murtha, who drew White House ire in November after becoming the first ranking Democrat to push for a pullout of U.S. forces from Iraq as soon as it could be done safely.
At the time, White House spokesman Scott McClellan equated Murtha's position with surrendering to terrorists.
Since then, Bush has decried the defeatism of some of his political rivals. In an unusually direct appeal, he urged Americans on Dec. 18 not to give in to despair over Iraq, insisting that we are winning despite a tougher-than-expected fight.
Murtha did not respond directly when asked whether a lack of combat experience might have affected the decision-making of Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and their former top deputies.
Let me tell you, war is a nasty business. It sears the soul, he said, choking up. And it made a difference. The shadow of those killings stay with you the rest of your life.
Asked for comment, a Defense Department spokesman, Lt. Col. John Skinner, said: We have an all-volunteer military. People are free to choose whether they serve or not.
Our freedom of speech in this country allows all of us the opportunity to voice an opinion. It's one of our great strengths as a nation, he added in an e-mailed reply.
The White House had no immediate comment.
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Unbiased opion? Oh, gourdpainter, you're my new hero.
I mean, I thought that Macaque Obama was full of sh it. But, lady, YOU take the cake. I mean, YOU make Macaque look downright HONEST by comparison.
Maybe you could work for his campaign. I hear he pays REAL well. (You don't mind changing your name to Chicago Joe's Kid Kamp or Chi-Town Youth Enrichment or something, do you? 'Cuz then he could throw you HEAPS of money and no one would ever figure it out.
FYI. Paul Newman died today. What a guy! A hero of mine. God Bless! nm
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It was blue long ago and turning blue now thanks to OBAMA THE HERO
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