My family affairs are none
Posted By: firm on 2008-09-12
In Reply to:
of your business. I am being viciously mistreated by the press. Wait, film this. It will get me some votes. Watch me bravely send my first born off to the endless war my political party started.
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Yeah and guess what the Bush family has tight ties with the Bin Ladin family....
so give it all a rest would you.
Sad state of affairs.
So very very sad.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0704-04.htm
I know and it's a sad state of affairs that is already
happening.
sad state of affairs
Good grief!!! "CHANGE??" I think not!!! and Hilly for SECRETARY OF STATE -- well, we transcriptionists are in deep poop -- we have a new Prez -- NO track record and I have been involved with "Illlinois politics" all of my life -- what people don't realize and it is this way in ANY major city, is that THAT particular city RULES -- look at the "print media" -- I come from DeKalb, which last Valentines Day was the LAST massive campus shooting but the media reported "downstate Illinois" while we are 60 miles to the west ---
Regressing and living in Laramie WY when Matthew Shepard was MURDERED -- I typed his preliminary reports -- I could not go out and get groceries without the press HOUNDING -- the day after Matt died, I was watching Dateline and here was MY apartment with my curtains open on NATIONAL television -- thing of it was, I found out they took shots from I-80 -- FIVE miles from my home!!!!
Think about it and the press and SENSATIONALISM!!!!
It is a rather sad state of affairs
a comedy show has greater basis in reality than the so-called news networks.
Sad state of affairs - see New Yorker
UP IN THE AIR
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
Where is the Iraq war headed next?
Issue of 2005-12-05
Posted 2005-11-28
In recent weeks, there has been widespread speculation that President George W. Bush, confronted by diminishing approval ratings and dissent within his own party, will begin pulling American troops out of Iraq next year. The Administration’s best-case scenario is that the parliamentary election scheduled for December 15th will produce a coalition government that will join the Administration in calling for a withdrawal to begin in the spring. By then, the White House hopes, the new government will be capable of handling the insurgency. In a speech on November 19th, Bush repeated the latest Administration catchphrase: “As Iraqis stand up, we will stand down.” He added, “When our commanders on the ground tell me that Iraqi forces can defend their freedom, our troops will come home with the honor they have earned.” One sign of the political pressure on the Administration to prepare for a withdrawal came last week, when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told Fox News that the current level of American troops would not have to be maintained “for very much longer,” because the Iraqis were getting better at fighting the insurgency.
A high-level Pentagon war planner told me, however, that he has seen scant indication that the President would authorize a significant pullout of American troops if he believed that it would impede the war against the insurgency. There are several proposals currently under review by the White House and the Pentagon; the most ambitious calls for American combat forces to be reduced from a hundred and fifty-five thousand troops to fewer than eighty thousand by next fall, with all American forces officially designated “combat” to be pulled out of the area by the summer of 2008. In terms of implementation, the planner said, “the drawdown plans that I’m familiar with are condition-based, event-driven, and not in a specific time frame”—that is, they depend on the ability of a new Iraqi government to defeat the insurgency. (A Pentagon spokesman said that the Administration had not made any decisions and had “no plan to leave, only a plan to complete the mission.”)
A key element of the drawdown plans, not mentioned in the President’s public statements, is that the departing American troops will be replaced by American airpower. Quick, deadly strikes by U.S. warplanes are seen as a way to improve dramatically the combat capability of even the weakest Iraqi combat units. The danger, military experts have told me, is that, while the number of American casualties would decrease as ground troops are withdrawn, the over-all level of violence and the number of Iraqi fatalities would increase unless there are stringent controls over who bombs what.
“We’re not planning to diminish the war,” Patrick Clawson, the deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told me. Clawson’s views often mirror the thinking of the men and women around Vice-President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. “We just want to change the mix of the forces doing the fighting—Iraqi infantry with American support and greater use of airpower. The rule now is to commit Iraqi forces into combat only in places where they are sure to win. The pace of commitment, and withdrawal, depends on their success in the battlefield.”
He continued, “We want to draw down our forces, but the President is prepared to tough this one out. There is a very deep feeling on his part that the issue of Iraq was settled by the American people at the polling places in 2004.” The war against the insurgency “may end up being a nasty and murderous civil war in Iraq, but we and our allies would still win,” he said. “As long as the Kurds and the Shiites stay on our side, we’re set to go. There’s no sense that the world is caving in. We’re in the middle of a seven-year slog in Iraq, and eighty per cent of the Iraqis are receptive to our message.”
One Pentagon adviser told me, “There are always contingency plans, but why withdraw and take a chance? I don’t think the President will go for it”—until the insurgency is broken. “He’s not going to back off. This is bigger than domestic politics.”
Current and former military and intelligence officials have told me that the President remains convinced that it is his personal mission to bring democracy to Iraq, and that he is impervious to political pressure, even from fellow Republicans. They also say that he disparages any information that conflicts with his view of how the war is proceeding.
Bush’s closest advisers have long been aware of the religious nature of his policy commitments. In recent interviews, one former senior official, who served in Bush’s first term, spoke extensively about the connection between the President’s religious faith and his view of the war in Iraq. After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the former official said, he was told that Bush felt that “God put me here” to deal with the war on terror. The President’s belief was fortified by the Republican sweep in the 2002 congressional elections; Bush saw the victory as a purposeful message from God that “he’s the man,” the former official said. Publicly, Bush depicted his reëlection as a referendum on the war; privately, he spoke of it as another manifestation of divine purpose.
The former senior official said that after the election he made a lengthy inspection visit to Iraq and reported his findings to Bush in the White House: “I said to the President, ‘We’re not winning the war.’ And he asked, ‘Are we losing?’ I said, ‘Not yet.’ ” The President, he said, “appeared displeased” with that answer.
“I tried to tell him,” the former senior official said. “And he couldn’t hear it.”
There are grave concerns within the military about the capability of the U.S. Army to sustain two or three more years of combat in Iraq. Michael O’Hanlon, a specialist on military issues at the Brookings Institution, told me, “The people in the institutional Army feel they don’t have the luxury of deciding troop levels, or even participating in the debate. They’re planning on staying the course until 2009. I can’t believe the Army thinks that it will happen, because there’s no sustained drive to increase the size of the regular Army.” O’Hanlon noted that “if the President decides to stay the present course in Iraq some troops would be compelled to serve fourth and fifth tours of combat by 2007 and 2008, which could have serious consequences for morale and competency levels.”
Many of the military’s most senior generals are deeply frustrated, but they say nothing in public, because they don’t want to jeopardize their careers. The Administration has “so terrified the generals that they know they won’t go public,” a former defense official said. A retired senior C.I.A. officer with knowledge of Iraq told me that one of his colleagues recently participated in a congressional tour there. The legislators were repeatedly told, in meetings with enlisted men, junior officers, and generals that “things were fucked up.” But in a subsequent teleconference with Rumsfeld, he said, the generals kept those criticisms to themselves.
One person with whom the Pentagon’s top commanders have shared their private views for decades is Representative John Murtha, of Pennsylvania, the senior Democrat on the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. The President and his key aides were enraged when, on November 17th, Murtha gave a speech in the House calling for a withdrawal of troops within six months. The speech was filled with devastating information. For example, Murtha reported that the number of attacks in Iraq has increased from a hundred and fifty a week to more than seven hundred a week in the past year. He said that an estimated fifty thousand American soldiers will suffer “from what I call battle fatigue” in the war, and he said that the Americans were seen as “the common enemy” in Iraq. He also took issue with one of the White House’s claims—that foreign fighters were playing the major role in the insurgency. Murtha said that American soldiers “haven’t captured any in this latest activity”—the continuing battle in western Anbar province, near the border with Syria. “So this idea that they’re coming in from outside, we still think there’s only seven per cent.”
Murtha’s call for a speedy American pullout only seemed to strengthen the White House’s resolve. Administration officials “are beyond angry at him, because he is a serious threat to their policy—both on substance and politically,” the former defense official said. Speaking at the Osan Air Force base, in South Korea, two days after Murtha’s speech, Bush said, “The terrorists regard Iraq as the central front in their war against humanity. . . . If they’re not stopped, the terrorists will be able to advance their agenda to develop weapons of mass destruction, to destroy Israel, to intimidate Europe, and to break our will and blackmail our government into isolation. I’m going to make you this commitment: this is not going to happen on my watch.”
“The President is more determined than ever to stay the course,” the former defense official said. “He doesn’t feel any pain. Bush is a believer in the adage ‘People may suffer and die, but the Church advances.’ ” He said that the President had become more detached, leaving more issues to Karl Rove and Vice-President Cheney. “They keep him in the gray world of religious idealism, where he wants to be anyway,” the former defense official said. Bush’s public appearances, for example, are generally scheduled in front of friendly audiences, most often at military bases. Four decades ago, President Lyndon Johnson, who was also confronted with an increasingly unpopular war, was limited to similar public forums. “Johnson knew he was a prisoner in the White House,” the former official said, “but Bush has no idea.”
Within the military, the prospect of using airpower as a substitute for American troops on the ground has caused great unease. For one thing, Air Force commanders, in particular, have deep-seated objections to the possibility that Iraqis eventually will be responsible for target selection. “Will the Iraqis call in air strikes in order to snuff rivals, or other warlords, or to snuff members of your own sect and blame someone else?” another senior military planner now on assignment in the Pentagon asked. “Will some Iraqis be targeting on behalf of Al Qaeda, or the insurgency, or the Iranians?”
“It’s a serious business,” retired Air Force General Charles Horner, who was in charge of allied bombing during the 1991 Gulf War, said. “The Air Force has always had concerns about people ordering air strikes who are not Air Force forward air controllers. We need people on active duty to think it out, and they will. There has to be training to be sure that somebody is not trying to get even with somebody else.” (Asked for a comment, the Pentagon spokesman said there were plans in place for such training. He also noted that Iraq had no offensive airpower of its own, and thus would have to rely on the United States for some time.)
The American air war inside Iraq today is perhaps the most significant—and underreported—aspect of the fight against the insurgency. The military authorities in Baghdad and Washington do not provide the press with a daily accounting of missions that Air Force, Navy, and Marine units fly or of the tonnage they drop, as was routinely done during the Vietnam War. One insight into the scope of the bombing in Iraq was supplied by the Marine Corps during the height of the siege of Falluja in the fall of 2004. “With a massive Marine air and ground offensive under way,” a Marine press release said, “Marine close air support continues to put high-tech steel on target. . . . Flying missions day and night for weeks, the fixed wing aircraft of the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing are ensuring battlefield success on the front line.” Since the beginning of the war, the press release said, the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing alone had dropped more than five hundred thousand tons of ordnance. “This number is likely to be much higher by the end of operations,” Major Mike Sexton said. In the battle for the city, more than seven hundred Americans were killed or wounded; U.S. officials did not release estimates of civilian dead, but press reports at the time told of women and children killed in the bombardments.
In recent months, the tempo of American bombing seems to have increased. Most of the targets appear to be in the hostile, predominantly Sunni provinces that surround Baghdad and along the Syrian border. As yet, neither Congress nor the public has engaged in a significant discussion or debate about the air war.
The insurgency operates mainly in crowded urban areas, and Air Force warplanes rely on sophisticated, laser-guided bombs to avoid civilian casualties. These bombs home in on targets that must be “painted,” or illuminated, by laser beams directed by ground units. “The pilot doesn’t identify the target as seen in the pre-brief”—the instructions provided before takeoff—a former high-level intelligence official told me. “The guy with the laser is the targeteer. Not the pilot. Often you get a ‘hot-read’ ”—from a military unit on the ground—“and you drop your bombs with no communication with the guys on the ground. You don’t want to break radio silence. The people on the ground are calling in targets that the pilots can’t verify.” He added, “And we’re going to turn this process over to the Iraqis?”
The second senior military planner told me that there are essentially two types of targeting now being used in Iraq: a deliberate site-selection process that works out of air-operations centers in the region, and “adaptive targeting”—supportive bombing by prepositioned or loitering warplanes that are suddenly alerted to firefights or targets of opportunity by military units on the ground. “The bulk of what we do today is adaptive,” the officer said, “and it’s divorced from any operational air planning. Airpower can be used as a tool of internal political coercion, and my attitude is that I can’t imagine that we will give that power to the Iraqis.”
This military planner added that even today, with Americans doing the targeting, “there is no sense of an air campaign, or a strategic vision. We are just whacking targets—it’s a reversion to the Stone Age. There’s no operational art. That’s what happens when you give targeting to the Army—they hit what the local commander wants to hit.”
One senior Pentagon consultant I spoke to said he was optimistic that “American air will immediately make the Iraqi Army that much better.” But he acknowledged that he, too, had concerns about Iraqi targeting. “We have the most expensive eyes in the sky right now,” the consultant said. “But a lot of Iraqis want to settle old scores. Who is going to have authority to call in air strikes? There’s got to be a behavior-based rule.”
General John Jumper, who retired last month after serving four years as the Air Force chief of staff, was “in favor of certification of those Iraqis who will be allowed to call in strikes,” the Pentagon consultant told me. “I don’t know if it will be approved. The regular Army generals were resisting it to the last breath, despite the fact that they would benefit the most from it.”
A Pentagon consultant with close ties to the officials in the Vice-President’s office and the Pentagon who advocated the war said that the Iraqi penchant for targeting tribal and personal enemies with artillery and mortar fire had created “impatience and resentment” inside the military. He believed that the Air Force’s problems with Iraqi targeting might be addressed by the formation of U.S.-Iraqi transition teams, whose American members would be drawn largely from Special Forces troops. This consultant said that there were plans to integrate between two hundred and three hundred Special Forces members into Iraqi units, which was seen as a compromise aimed at meeting the Air Force’s demand to vet Iraqis who were involved in targeting. But in practice, the consultant added, it meant that “the Special Ops people will soon allow Iraqis to begin calling in the targets.”
Robert Pape, a political-science professor at the University of Chicago, who has written widely on American airpower, and who taught for three years at the Air Force’s School of Advanced Airpower Studies, in Alabama, predicted that the air war “will get very ugly” if targeting is turned over to the Iraqis. This would be especially true, he said, if the Iraqis continued to operate as the U.S. Army and Marines have done—plowing through Sunni strongholds on search-and-destroy missions. “If we encourage the Iraqis to clear and hold their own areas, and use airpower to stop the insurgents from penetrating the cleared areas, it could be useful,” Pape said. “The risk is that we will encourage the Iraqis to do search-and-destroy, and they would be less judicious about using airpower—and the violence would go up. More civilians will be killed, which means more insurgents will be created.”
Even American bombing on behalf of an improved, well-trained Iraqi Army would not necessarily be any more successful against the insurgency. “It’s not going to work,” said Andrew Brookes, the former director of airpower studies at the Royal Air Force’s advanced staff college, who is now at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, in London. “Can you put a lid on the insurgency with bombing?” Brookes said. “No. You can concentrate in one area, but the guys will spring up in another town.” The inevitable reliance on Iraqi ground troops’ targeting would also create conflicts. “I don’t see your guys dancing to the tune of someone else,” Brookes said. He added that he and many other experts “don’t believe that airpower is a solution to the problems inside Iraq at all. Replacing boots on the ground with airpower didn’t work in Vietnam, did it?”
The Air Force’s worries have been subordinated, so far, to the political needs of the White House. The Administration’s immediate political goal after the December elections is to show that the day-to-day conduct of the war can be turned over to the newly trained and equipped Iraqi military. It has already planned heavily scripted change-of-command ceremonies, complete with the lowering of American flags at bases and the raising of Iraqi ones.
Some officials in the State Department, the C.I.A., and British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government have settled on their candidate of choice for the December elections—Iyad Allawi, the secular Shiite who served until this spring as Iraq’s interim Prime Minister. They believe that Allawi can gather enough votes in the election to emerge, after a round of political bargaining, as Prime Minister. A former senior British adviser told me that Blair was convinced that Allawi “is the best hope.” The fear is that a government dominated by religious Shiites, many of whom are close to Iran, would give Iran greater political and military influence inside Iraq. Allawi could counter Iran’s influence; also, he would be far more supportive and coöperative if the Bush Administration began a drawdown of American combat forces in the coming year.
Blair has assigned a small team of operatives to provide political help to Allawi, the former adviser told me. He also said that there was talk late this fall, with American concurrence, of urging Ahmad Chalabi, a secular Shiite, to join forces in a coalition with Allawi during the post-election negotiations to form a government. Chalabi, who is notorious for his role in promoting flawed intelligence on weapons of mass destruction before the war, is now a deputy Prime Minister. He and Allawi were bitter rivals while in exile.
A senior United Nations diplomat told me that he was puzzled by the high American and British hopes for Allawi. “I know a lot of people want Allawi, but I think he’s been a terrific disappointment,” the diplomat said. “He doesn’t seem to be building a strong alliance, and at the moment it doesn’t look like he will do very well in the election.”
The second Pentagon consultant told me, “If Allawi becomes Prime Minister, we can say, ‘There’s a moderate, urban, educated leader now in power who does not want to deprive women of their rights.’ He would ask us to leave, but he would allow us to keep Special Forces operations inside Iraq—to keep an American presence the right way. Mission accomplished. A coup for Bush.”
A former high-level intelligence official cautioned that it was probably “too late” for any American withdrawal plan to work without further bloodshed. The constitution approved by Iraqi voters in October “will be interpreted by the Kurds and the Shiites to proceed with their plans for autonomy,” he said. “The Sunnis will continue to believe that if they can get rid of the Americans they can still win. And there still is no credible way to establish security for American troops.”
The fear is that a precipitous U.S. withdrawal would inevitably trigger a Sunni-Shiite civil war. In many areas, that war has, in a sense, already begun, and the United States military is being drawn into the sectarian violence. An American Army officer who took part in the assault on Tal Afar, in the north of Iraq, earlier this fall, said that an American infantry brigade was placed in the position of providing a cordon of security around the besieged city for Iraqi forces, most of them Shiites, who were “rounding up any Sunnis on the basis of whatever a Shiite said to them.” The officer went on, “They were killing Sunnis on behalf of the Shiites,” with the active participation of a militia unit led by a retired American Special Forces soldier. “People like me have gotten so downhearted,” the officer added.
Meanwhile, as the debate over troop reductions continues, the covert war in Iraq has expanded in recent months to Syria. A composite American Special Forces team, known as an S.M.U., for “special-mission unit,” has been ordered, under stringent cover, to target suspected supporters of the Iraqi insurgency across the border. (The Pentagon had no comment.) “It’s a powder keg,” the Pentagon consultant said of the tactic. “But, if we hit an insurgent network in Iraq without hitting the guys in Syria who are part of it, the guys in Syria would get away. When you’re fighting an insurgency, you have to strike everywhere—and at once.”
Family values....Obama's family can't even agree
@@
I feel very sorry indeed for Sarah Palin and her family, she ran for VP, not her family, she should
on her experience, her political record, etc, period, no attacking children, and no one throwing stones at "sinner" daughters, that is what I mean, the media wants to put people on pedestals and then throw stones at them at they hunt down not just the public figure, but all their loved ones, I think it is disgusting, it is a HUMAN issue, has nothing to do with politics on either side, why twist my post that way?
Interview with Charmaine Neville, family member of the Neville musical family
September 7, 2005
Women were Being Raped, Babies were Being Killed, Alligators were Eating People, But Where the Hell was the National Guard?
How We Survived the Flood
By CHARMAINE NEVILLE
This is a transcription of an interview Charmaine Neville, of New Orleans's legendary Neville family, gave to local media outlets on Monday, September 5.
I was in my house when everything first started. When the hurricane came, it blew all the left side of my house off, and the water was coming in my house in torrents.
I had my neighbor, an elderly man, and myself, in the house with our dogs and cats, and we were trying to stay out of the water. But the water was coming in too fast. So we ended up having to leave the house.
We left the house and we went up on the roof of a school. I took a crowbar and I burst the door on the roof of the school to help people on the roof.
Later on we found a flat boat, and we went around the neighborhood in a flat boat getting people out of their houses and bringing them to the school.
We found all the food that we could and we cooked and we fed people. But then, things started getting really bad.
By the second day, the people that were there, that we were feeding and everything, we had no more food and no water. We had nothing, and other people were coming in our neighborhood. We were watching the helicopters going across the bridge and airlift other people out, but they would hover over us and tell us Hi! and that would be all. They wouldn't drop us any food or any water, or nothing.
Alligators were eating people. They had all kinds of stuff in the water. They had babies floating in the water.
We had to walk over hundreds of bodies of dead people. People that we tried to save from the hospices, from the hospitals and from the old-folks homes. I tried to get the police to help us, but I realized they were in the same straits we were. We rescued a lot of police officers in the flat boat from the 5th district police station. The guy who was in the boat, he rescued a lot of them and brought them to different places so they could be saved.
We understood that the police couldn't help us, but we couldn't understand why the National Guard and them couldn't help us, because we kept seeing them but they never would stop and help us.
Finally it got to be too much, I just took all of the people that I could. I had two old women in wheelchairs with no legs, that I rowed them from down there in that nightmare to the French Quarters, and I went back and got more people.
There were groups of us, there were about 24 of us, and we kept going back and forth and rescuing whoever we could get and bringing them to the French Quarter because we heard that there were phones in the French Quarter, and that there wasn't any water. And they were right, there were phones, but we couldn't get through to anyone.
I found some police officers. I told them that a lot of us women had been raped down there by guys, not from the neighborhood where we were, they were helping us to save people. But other men, and they came and they started raping women and they started killing, and I don't know who these people were. I'm not gonna tell you I know, because I don't.
But what I want people to understand is that, if we hadn't been left down there like the animals that they were treating us like, all of those things wouldn't have happened. People are trying to say that we stayed in that city because we wanted to be rioting and we wanted to do this and, we didn't have resources to get out, we had no way to leave.
When they gave the evacuation order, if we could've left, we would have left.
There are still thousands and thousands of people trapped in their homes in the downtown area. When we finally did get into the 9th ward, and not just in my neighborhood, but in other neighborhoods in the 9th ward, there were a lot of people still trapped down there... old people, young people, babies, pregnant women. I mean, nobody's helping them.
And I want people to realize that we did not stay in the city so we could steal and loot and commit crimes. A lot of those young men lost their minds because the helicopters would fly over us and they wouldn't stop. We would make SOS on the flashlights, we'd do everything, and it really did come to a point, where these young men were so frustrated that they did start shooting. They weren't trying to hit the helicopters, they figured maybe they weren't seeing. Maybe if they hear this gunfire they will stop then. But that didn't help us. Nothing like that helped us.
Finally, I got to Canal St. with all of my people I had saved from back there.
I don't want them arresting nobody else. I broke the window in an RTA bus. I never learned how to drive a bus in my life. I got in that bus. I loaded all of those people in wheelchairs and in everything else into that bus, and we drove and we drove and we drove and millions of people was trying to get me to help them to get on the bus, too.
Charmaine Neville is a member of the third generation of New Orleans's legendary Neville musical family. She fronts the Charmaine Neville Band.
Being faithful to his family
You're kidding, right?
I saw a show on TLC about this family...
To each his own, especially if you're footing the bill yourself, but this family is just uplain creepy. The children are all homeschool and virtually isolated from any other children other than another family or two who share the same nutty religious convictions. They even have their OWN church at home. The girls all wear these horrid sad-sack Little House on the Prairie identical plaid potato sack dresses that look like they were made from discarded curtains and when asked their only aspirations are to have lots of children and to be a mother. The boys also dress identically in little Leave it to Beaver short-sleeved dress shirts. It's called Full Quiver parenting, as in having as many kids as you get before you get to menopause or your uterus falls out, whichever comes first. I find the whole thing rather odd, but who am I to judge I suppose.
Your family will be in my prayers. nm
nm
Are you the one who has been threatening him and and his family?
and I commend you and your family
You are to be honored, and I do honor you all.
According to the bin Laden family sm
They disowned Osama a long long time ago. In fact, the bin Laden family owns probably the largest construction company in the Middle East. They built the new U.S. military installation in Saudi Arabia. I am thinking they were allowed to leave for fear of retribution by Americans. That was always my thought and I never really questioned it because I knew of the alienation between Osama and his family.
Horrible for her family...
and hearing the candidates' (both sides) reactions to it have been interesting. All have the similar thread tho...must preserve democracy in Pakistan.
family values
She was left unsupervised at a very critical age (like the Down baby will be) and did not receive enough parental guidance to prevent this tragedy.
family values
Barack and Michelle have been married for years with not a hint of scandal. they have two beautiful age-appropriate children. Joe Biden has a beautiful blended family that truly loves each other. McCain dumped his gravely injured first wife for a beauty queen. Then he was pressured into picking another beauty queen with an Down infant who obviously needs a full time mother and pregnant teenager for his running mate. Family values, family values, family values.
I think they had a family discussion ...
and they decided as a family to go forward. And this would not be an issue had there are those judgmental among us who decided to make it one. In this day and time for the Dems here, of ALL People, to act all holier-than-thou and act like being pregnant not married still carries some kind of stigma just stinks to high heaven. These same people who have told us to go back to our churches and not push our morality on them. The hypocrisy is staggering. The very people they called judgmental are the ones surrounding this family to support them, not ostracizing them like they had announced their daughter was a pedophile or a serial killer.
I would put the judgment here much MORE in question than Sarah Palin's, and I think a lot of people out there in America whose lives this very thing has touched will do the same.
And I would say that regardless of what party affiliation she has too. If that was a Democrat running for VP and people wre bashing her in this way I would be yelling foul just as loud.
It just amazes me the depths some will sink to for political purposes. INcluding fileting a 17-year-old. Just because her mother made the announcement did not mean poeple were obligated to attack..that was a choice and it taking that choice says a lot about character...or the screaming lack thereof.
So you are saying now that they have NO family values because their...
daughter is pregnant and not married? Are you REALLY saying that?
there is for their family to decide ... and ..
apparently they did just that. What is right for them very well may not be right for others.
I just think it's a shame people won't let this go and focus on the issues!
Palin family...
They looked great to me. Cindy McCain reached for the child, it wasn't handed off to her. Bristol looked anything but terrified. She looked proud of her mother. And well she should be. She is running for VP of the United States. I thought it was especially sweet with the little girl licked her hand to smooth down the baby's cowlick. Circus freaks are the last words I would use to describe this family.
I have family in Alaska and they
think very highly of S. Palin. FYI, people don't like her JUST because she is likeable. She's smart, courageous, well-grounded with good morals for starters. She doesn't flip-flop to appease the public (like Obama/now for drilling), and she is NOT self-serving (gave up her plane, personal chef, etc etc that came with the job). She is and has been SERVING THE PEOPLE, not playing politics; McCain has the same history, and together they ARE the party of change. p.s. when was the last time Obama had any part in giving money BACK TO THE PEOPLE like Palin did in Alaska? Look at the facts. You have 2 track records of standing up for the people on the McCain/Palin ticket and pretty talk along with old party politics on the Obama/Biden side. It really scares me to think of Obama winning, with his demonstrated lack of judgment and lack of record, poor associations, etc. p.s., if there is a revolution/take-over of the USA it could only be under Obama. notice too, that now his future position in the white house is challenged, he keeps changing his tune to sound more middle-ground. He's a wolf in sheep's clothing; beware.
I'd want the money but not from that family. sm
The poor have more morals and principles. They make most of their money off of misery, lies, deceit, and thievery. They fund both sides of war conflicts and founded the central banking system, which is robbing everyone blind. She met her husband at a Bilderberg conference.
She did support Hillary and then endorsed McCain, but said she did not trust him because he came off like too much of an elitist. Bizarre statement from someone who is a member of a family who possesses more than half the world's wealth since the early 1900s.
Sounds to me as if you or your family
would never vote for him anyway. I am from a small town in PA, born, bred and live in a small town, and I and my DH have no qualms with any of the so-called elitist statement, and as I said before, as I see it and hear it, he is right! Some people are just too stupid or too bigoted to vote for their best interests, period, and that is the truth. It is incredible to come through 8 years of the worst government this nation has ever seen, in the middle of a financial crisis that is being compared to the Great Depression, to vote for and give those people at least 4 more years that have brought this country to its knees, in one war that was unnecessary, that cast aside the constitution, torture, and all the other horrendous wrongdoings of the Bush administration, to allow race or a few misspoken words stop from electing a good man, an intelligent man, well, that is just stupidity or bigotry any way you slice it. BTW, I am a 54-year-old white woman.... And I know there are more out there just like me who will vote for this man.. Be he elitist or be he a black radical or whatever slur you would throw at him, I will bet that he will be our next president, and Good Lord I hope so!! As I read through your writings here, seems to me you have not even stopped to think about how much this man has gone through to get where he is...as a black man, it could not have been easy for him, but he did, and he is, and I say more power to him. All you can do is slur and impune him, give him no benefit of the doubt, or even think through what another 4 years of Republican rule will do to our country or your own quality of life. You like to repeat the things they say on rightwing radio/TV, which are hateful and downright mean, and you have to be of a certain mindset to even listen to it. I listen to Limbaugh, I watch Faux News, but I can't do so for very long because to me they are nothing but evil. If you want to get religious, they are not very Christian-like, not if Christian means followers of Christ. All I hear from them is a lot of liese, hate and hypocrisy.
I feel for that family as well
that her daughter will be blessed with something wonderful that will keep her strong and make her fight and not be defeated.
the point i was attempting to make is there are soooo many people who abuse it.... government help; yet there are people who actually NEED the help just to get them back on their feet and are turned down; i'm curious how many $$$$ are actually spent in a year for food stamps, welfare, government subsidized housing, etc.
trust me when i tell you we are feeling the pinch ourselves but we are trying to cut back on extras. we actually even have a plan that should worse come to worse, my immediate family would go live with my sister and her family... that would be if things hit rock bottom but even if that were to happen, i know we will be fine.
i wonder if obama starts getting all these government programs going, how soon it will be before it's all tapped out and no one will have any sort of assistance.
Did anyone notice that the one family...sm
they had on there that were all overweight, and complaining about not enough money for snacks? Also, notice the mother had acrylic nails on....know how much those cost? Could buy a lot of milk and food that they say they couldn't afford.
A lot of inconsistencies in that infomercial....
It's mostly Bobby's family
Teddy pays his bills. Who cares what Joe K did anyway? He's been dead a long time. Just goes to show some people on this board will argue about anything.
I pray for his family as well.
How sad that she could not have lived to see her grandson elected president if that happens.
I agree with you and so does most of family.
by picking O and I have been running into a lot more people including strangers who also agree. No more freedom and some of the elderly seem to think our country is going to turn out like Germany years ago. I guess this is what the young people want.
There sure are a lot of people stocking up and buying ammunition too. Afraid guns will be gone and cannot buy anymore. Others believe to stock up on guns to use for barter exchanges down the road. That is what some Americans are seeing how our FREEDOM country will turn out down in the future. You can do A LOT OF DAMAGE in 4 years to this country. Just kissed good-bye to the ole USA as of late Nov. 4, 2008. I WANT MY COUNTRY BACK, DANG IT.
YES, YES, YES. My friends and family are all better
We all receive tax refunds. No matter how much some of my freinds and family hate Bush they say that they've at least gotten tax rebates. Something they never once got while Clinton was in office. While Clinton was in a lot of them lost their jobs thanks to NAFTA. After GW got in they obtained jobs. Their taxes were lower and they had a steady income. Then along came congress and we all know what happened from there - the beginning of the downfall.
YES we are better off than with Clinton in. Unfortunately we've got another 4 years to suffer the same consequences we did when Clinton was in.
I'm from a military family, too
My grandfather fought in WWI and WWII. He received 5 medals for the battles in WWI in France, plus the French Etagierre. My father and mom's brothers were army. My gf retired in the 1970s. My one uncle retired in 1990 from the Army. My son was in the Marines. They all enlisted.
I have family who have been called up....
rrrrrrrrrrrrr
Yeah...that and family values!
Bush Family Values
Bush Family Values
MICHAEL DONNELLY | September 8 2006
It's astonishing to see how desperate our homegrown fascists have become. The entire cabal is in full-on media blitz mode with Rummy, Dick and Theodosius, er, Bush slamming their foreign opponents with the latest absurd tag Islamic Fascists; and, their domestic ones as Nazi appeasers. Or, in the deranged mind of Condi Rice; domestic opponents are tantamount to folks who would have stopped the Civil War and allowed slavery to continue in the South.
It's not just desperate; it's monumentally moronic, given the real history. This bizarre trip on the Wayback Machine demands a deeper look--though don't look to the mainstream media. Given the opening, one would think that everyone by now would be fully informed that the Bush Family took Nazi appeasement to far greater heights and were actually part of an American faction of documented Nazi SUPPORTERS.
We're also unlikely to see much mainstream media analysis of the new Islamic Fascist branding of those opposing the Empire's designs on the Middle East. As Sir Winston Bush gets a media pass as he tries to conflate fascism, communism and Islam while also trying to ironically tie his criminal wars to WWII and the Cold War, it warrants our own trip on the Wayback Machine to see just what the Bush family was doing during those earlier good wars.
Samuel Bush: arms merchant
George W. Bush's great-grandfather, Samuel Bush was charter member of the military/industrial complex. In 1918, he was chief of the Ordnance, Small Arms and Ammunition Section for the War Industries Board, with oversight responsibility for Percy Rockefeller's Remington Company. Rockefeller had helped get Bush's son, Prescott into Yale and Skull and Bones in 1916.
A 1926 Senate Munitions Inquiry (the Nye Committee) into the military/industrial complex's WWI windfall examined Samuel Bush's dealings with Remington as part of his War Industries Board duties. Virtually ALL of the records of Samuel Bush's efforts were destroyed by the National Archives to save space.
Prescott Sheldon Bush; George Herbert Walker: Nazi collaborators
George W. Bush's grandfather, former Connecticut Senator Prescott S. Bush was a Wall Street banker with Brown Brothers Harriman. (Averill Harriman was also instrumental in getting young Prescott into Yale and S&B.) Bush's maternal grandfather George Herbert Walker was the bank's first president. Walker built the famed Bush family estate at Kennebunkport on Walker Point. Prescott Bush joined W. A. Harriman & Company in 1926 and became its CEO.
Harriman Bank was the official Nazi financial conduit in the US. Closely tied to Fritz Thyssen, who proudly claimed in his 1941 book I Paid Hitler that he was the Nazi Party's first and greatest financial backer. The Union Banking Corporation (UBC) was a subsidiary of Harriman created by Walker and it was used for Nazi financial matters. Thyssen provided 100,000 gold marks ($10 million in today's dollars) to the Nazis in 1923 just prior to Hitler's failed putsch. By 1941, UBC held a private Nazi stash of over $3,000,000 ($36 million in today's dollars) in its New York vaults.
After the war, a Treasury Department investigation reported that during the two years after the Stock Market crash; Thyssen dedicated his fortune and his influence to the single purpose of bringing Hitler to power. In 1932, he arranged the now famous meeting in the Düsseldorf Industrialists' Club, at which Hitler addressed the leading businessmen of the Ruhr and the Rhineland. At the close of Hitler's speech, Thyssen cried, `Heil Herr Hitler'. By the time of the German elections later that year, Thyssen had succeeded in eliciting contributions to Hitler's campaign fund from all of the big industrial combines. He himself is reported to have spent 3,000,000 ($30 million today) marks on the Nazis in 1932 alone.
During 1933 Thyssen served as intercessor between von Hindenburg, von Papen, and Hitler. He brought them together at a secret meeting which laid the basis for the appointment of Hitler as Reichschancellor.
It was Thyssen, not Prescott Bush as some now claim, who was called Hitler's Angel by the New York Herald Tribune. He later fled Germany in 1939.
Even though Hitler had declared war on the US, it was still legal for UBC to conduct finances for the Nazis. But, after Pearl Harbor that outrage finally changed. After another ten months of Bush/Harriman/UBC work for the Nazis; in November 1942, under the Trading With the Enemy Act, all of the Harriman business interests were seized by the government, including UBC.
The assets were held by the government for the duration of the war and then quickly returned. Prescott Bush' interest in UBC consisted of One Share--worth $1,500,000 ($19 million in today's dollars) at the time UBC was disbanded in 1951. (The Harriman family garnered $4 billion!) It was the money used to start the Bush Family Texas oil empire.
Another Harriman subsidiary through Silesian Holding Co.; Consolidated Silesian Steel Corporation saw the Harriman-Bush group owning one-third of a complex of steel making, coal-mining, and zinc-mining activities in Germany and Poland. The other two-thirds were owned by Wehrwirtschaftsführer (Military Economy Leader) Friedrich Flick. Silesian Holding Company's president was George Walker and its sole directors were Prescott Bush and Averill Harriman.
Silesian Steel used slave labor from Auschwitz (even before the concentration camp was built there) in its coal, iron and zinc mining operations. At Nuremberg, Flick was sentenced to seven years for Silesian's role in building up the Nazi war machine. Harriman, Bush and Walker were never charged.
June 14, 1940, nine months after the Nazis conquered Poland, the IG Farben Company opened an Auschwitz factory and slave labor camp in occupied Poland, to produce artificial rubber and gasoline from coal. This was done in a partnership with Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company (EXXON).
The millions made off the labor of hundreds of thousands of Nazi victims were inherited by William S. Farish III, grandson of William S. Farish, the head of the IG/Standard cartel. Farish III is George H.W. Bush's best friend and the person who took over Bush's assets and managed them in a blind trust after Bush was elected vice-president.
Investigator John Loftus has said, As a former federal prosecutor, I would make a case for Prescott Bush, his father-in-law (George Walker) and Averill Harriman to be prosecuted for giving aid and comfort to the enemy. They remained on the boards of these companies knowing that they were of financial benefit to the nation of Germany.
I've yet to take the Wayback Machine back to investigate Rice's whopper that decrying the carnage of the U.S. Civil War meant supporting leaving Slavery in place. But, I'm pretty certain that the same unsavory links to what John Trudell calls, the colonial industrial class were just as odious in the 1860s.
I am not talking about YOUR family planning...
it is the additional life that is created that I am talking about who, in my opinion, has every much as right to life as YOU do. Period. If you could stop for one minute and realize, it is not all about YOU. Or perhaps that is the problem. You absolutely think it IS all about YOU.
I think she did a good job and I think they are a beautiful family...
wish they did not lean so far to the left. That being said...she is very attractive and articulate and obviously loves her family, and you can't fault someone for that.
Perhaps she has a supportive husband and other family
Not all children with Down syndrome are created equal and some are quite functional. I would never think of that child as a burden, either. Many children have disabilities of varying natures but that doesn't mean it's any more of a burden. Perhaps you should educate yourself before you make such harsh judgments. As an MT, I would think you'd know this, but apparently not all MTs are created equal, either.
Personally, I think these facts make Palin that much stronger and more capable of handling whatever might be thrown her way. She's proven that she faces her difficulties in life without running away from them or escaping into alcoholism or drugs or whatever, which is more than I can say for many mothers these days. It amazes me that any working mother could say that another working mother is somehow not capable of doing either job well. Tsk, tsk.
Yes it is. That family off limits rule did not
nm
I agree! No one knows their family dynamics ..
but them. And I also am not comfortable referencing her by name.
Sex, Drugs and Oil - How's that for Family Values????
Oil man in office - SURPRISE!!!!
http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/10/news/economy/oil_officials.ap/index.htm?postversion=2008091015
biden appears to be a family man
when i heard about the tragic accident that his family was involved in and then when i saw the media in the hospital room.... just makes me wonder how family oriented he is to invite the media into that....
What a hypocrit! Family values?
You think a man who has no problem with a baby left to die after a botched abortion has values of any kind?
Left to die in a bucket? Maybe you need to ask yourself what his true family values really are.
I personally feel that family should be
left out of politics. However, Bristol didn't do anything illegal. She was perfectly within her legal rights to get knocked up out of wedlock. What Obama's aunt did was and is illegal. There is a huge difference there. For whatever reason this was found out and came out in the open, it cannot be ignored because it is illegal. Whether or not Obama knew his aunt was living here illegally....we will never know because either he didn't and is answering honestly or he is lying just like every else and saying he doesn't know. Deport her and move on. This isn't going to change Obama's sheeples' minds.
"Obama and his beautiful family..."
He's so dreamy....*swoon*
LOL
I feel for you and your family. I agree with you.
My dad is just, well, dad. My mother became very ill at the age of 30 with severe rheumatoid arthritis. The disease deformed her body to look like a little 90 year old. She could no longer live in Michigan due to the cold winters and would often leave to go to Florida and stay with her parents. Finally, we had enough of family being apart for the winters and so we moved to Arizona for my mother's health at the end of 1981 when the economy in Michigan was once again hurting. I loved Michigan and still to this day. I miss the snow terribly. Sick of the darn heat and blue skys day after day after day. What is a cloud?
Sorry to hear your story.
I agree - shameful to use your family that way
oh wait....he's a crat. I remember how Hillary "pimped" out Chelsea and hubby dear during her campaign.
He's set and his family is set for the rest of their lives
Why should he care about us. He just plain doesn't and it's coming out every day.
Punish the hard working, honest people.
So tell us: Where is the morality in bombing family
The TRULY morally bankrupt do more evil in this world than everyone or everything else combined, and then then hide behind their 'religious beliefs'. Or their pointed white hoods. Same difference.
Derogatory remarks about the Kennedy family.
Oh you mean like the fact that Joseph Kennedy thought Hitler was a great man. That fact? Or that he made much of his money bootlegging. That fact? Or maybe that Ted killed a young woman and was never prosecuted. That fact? Okay. I got it now. 
Again I say, he probably stays away from funerals out of respect for the family...
so that along with him does not show up Cindy Sheehan, the pink ladies and who knows who else. Clinton came to OKC after the bombing there but I do not recall seeing him at any soldier funerals, and yes, soldiers died in Somalia and other places under his administration. As I have stated, the President has met with numerous families of fallen soldiers and to me that shows his respect as much as showing up at the funeral. I don't know why you are so upset he showed up at VA Tech. I think it is a wonderful thing that he did. Good grief. Not sure where all this animosity is coming from. He wasn't attending a funeral, he was attending a memorial service. I doubt if he will personally attend any of the victims' funerals. What he did at VA Tech is similar to what I have seen at countless visits to military bases across the country where he personally met with families. Just because you don't see it on mainstream liberal media does not mean it is not happening. As I said, they would rather eat dirt than telecast something like that. I for the life of me cannot figure out why someone would have a problem with the President being there or somehow think it is an affront to fallen soldiers that he did. Shaking my head....
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