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Liz Cheney called out President Obama for his early-morning trip to honor fallen soldiers arriving at Dover Air Force Base yesterday, suggesting President Bush honored America's heroes with a bit more class than his successor.
Cheney, on Fox News Radio's John Gibson Show yesterday:
"I think that what President Bush used to do is do it without the cameras. And I don't understand sort of showing up with the White House Press Pool with photographers and asking family members if you can take pictures. That's really hard for me to get my head around...It was a surprising way for the president to choose to do this."
It's not clear exactly what Cheney is referring to when she says, "Bush used to do it without the cameras."
It's true that Bush's Pentagon continued a long-standing policy of banning cameras at Dover when the nation's fallen arrived in flag-draped caskets from foreign battlefields. (Upon taking office, Obama lifted the ban.)
So that covers "without the cameras."
But as CBS's Mark Knoller reported yesterday, Obama was the first president to visit arriving dead at Dover during the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq -- meaning that when it came to taking trips to Dover like Obama did yesterday morning, Bush never used to "do it" at all.
Is this where you're getting your info from lisa??
Fuck you Liz Cheney! You are saying Bush and Class in the same sentence??? Bush NEVER went to Dover to watch the coffins come off the planes because of GUILT. Or wait, maybe it was just his cold heart. He wanted the war and never thought for a minute about the consequences of it!
You know what your problem is Liz and Co., you aren't used to a president having real feelings towards our fallen soldiers so you have to twist the truth and lie or your party looks as evil and heartless as they really ARE!!
Fox news.com has a forum page, an opinion page of sorts. Did you know that?? Fair and balanced IT IS NOT! But, thats OK, let them spew forth their lies.
First they want their readers to believe fatass Christie is up in the polls in NJ gov. race. Not true. Corzine is up by a few points in some polls and tied with Christie in other polls. But they still want you to believe a political earthquake in NJ is about to happen! Woooo ooooo!!!!
Here's some of what I read today,
If all these trends hold true on Election Day, the result will be a political earthquake dramatically upsetting the balance of power in Washington. -- If that happens, here's what will come next: Expect moderate Democrats in Congress to bolt off the reservation, running from the ultra-liberal Obama agenda on taxes, the budget, cap-and-trade, card check, even the health care overhaul scheme. Then, Obama’s domination over Congress will crumble and alternative conservative ideas will gain momentum.
What's even more significant about Tuesday's elections is that stage will have been set for an even bigger political earthquake in 2010. Republicans will be in much better shape to recruit good candidates and raise more money. Further adverse results for President Obama’s foreign and domestic policies could produce an even bigger Republican landslide than in 1994.
Conservatives, tea party activists, taxpayers, small businessmen and others need to pay attention to the growing importance of next week’s elections. I urge everyone to get out to vote in these races. Get your like minded friends, relatives and neighbors out to vote as well. Volunteer to help. Maybe you can even provide last minute campaign contributions. Maybe you can engage in fundraising or organize additional volunteers.
This is a real Paul Revere moment. As Brutus said in Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar": "There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries."
SEE! Is this fair and balanced?? Does MSNBC tell their readers to RUN, HURRY, VOTE DEMOCRAT!!! When rethugs are behind, they get very, very nervous and then the irrational side comes forth,
like with this article:
This year, New Jersey’s registered voters can request a mail-in ballot for any reason. (Before 2005, voters needed to provide a reason for why they needed an absentee ballot.) The state received about 150,000 absentee-ballot applications this year.
On about 2,300 of those applications so far, the signature on the request form does not match the signature on the voter’s registration forms with the state.
In a development that is depressingly predictable, the New Jersey Democratic party is asking the state to provide provisional ballots for all these voters. Those ballots could, presumably, be used to overcome any narrow lead by Republican Chris Christie over Democrat Jon Corzine on Election Day.
Give me a friggin break will ya!! Will there ever be another election where rethugs don't cry foul and have the need to inject fraud, ACORN, and the SEIU into it?? If you can't win an election on the merits, can't win cuz you can't find a candidate worth voting for, then I guess you have to resort to the same 'ole same 'ole tactics. Sorry rethugs you are wrong again! And your fair and balanced website, well you can stick it where the sun don't shine! Morons...
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Tuesday he expects a wave of banks to soon return government bailout money to taxpayers.
"It will depend on the institution, but for major banks in the country I think that money will come back relatively quickly," he said.
Speaking before the annual meeting of Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association in New York, Geithner offered few details on when those repayments could happen and from which companies.
Lenders that received taxpayer aid under the Treasury's Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, have already returned nearly $71 billion to taxpayers, helped by renewed interest by private investors in the banking industry.
Still, some $134 billion remains invested in hundreds of community and regional banks as well big bailout recipients like Citigroup and Bank of America.
Both companies have been anxious to get out from under the government's thumb, given the level of scrutiny on such issues as how they compensate their employees.
As two firms that were recipients of "exceptional" government assistance, they were required to submit compensation packages for their top 100 most-highly compensated employees to the White House "pay czar."
Geithner's comments Tuesday were tempered, however, by his expectations for automakers General Motors and Chrysler, both of whom double dipped on bailout money.
Even as both firms are putting massive restructuring plans into actions, the Treasury chief warned that it could take some time before either company returns taxpayers funds, especially if nationwide auto sales continue to remain weak.
"It will take time to get out of those companies," he said.
Conservatives will twist and turn this story, I can't wait to hear the cries! Even if the banks are doing this payback quickly just because they want government out of their business, well thats a good thing. President Obama has every right telling these companies to cut out the excess bonuses and paychecks while they still owe the taxpayers money. At least Obama had a plan behind his TARP, unlike the Shrub and his tossed- to- the- wind- billion giveaway.
Why would rethugs not welcome this news? Because if everything Obama said will happen Does actually happen, then they have nothing to whine and complain about!
One of the most notorious far-right activists is Randall Terry, who founded the organization Operation Rescue, a radical anti-choice group. In the past, Terry has warned that he and his followers would engage in terrorism unless Congress excludes funding for abortions in health care legislation, launched a “Defeat Sotomayor” campaign that depicted the Supreme Court judge as a skull-faced killer, and used the occasion of the assassination of George Tiller to declare that the doctor, who performed abortions, was a mass murderer.
In his latest attempt to drive attention to his hate-filled agenda, Terry has launched a contest to encourage people to make videos burning House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) in effigy. Randall Terry’s press release states:
Randall also recorded a video demonstrating how to burn an effigy of Pelosi and Reid, telling the audience that “Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid will be waiting in HELL!Join a Contest! Win Prizes!
Who Can make the best “Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid BURN IN HELL!” video?
First prize: Expenses paid for weekend here in DC during Roe vs Wade anniversary, Jan 22-24, including pro-life training seminar (Includes travel stipend!), and full Insurrecta Nex television series. [...]
Legal Mumbo Jumbo: Obey local laws on open flames; be careful; if under 18, do not burn Nancy Pelosi in effigy unless your mom or dad is with you, and gives you permission, and strikes the match; do not burn yourself; do not burn another human being; do not burn small animals; do not burn large animals; do not burn anyone from PETA; and remember: this is not a threat to Nancy Pelosi’s or Harry Reid’s person…it is a prophetic witness of what awaits them when they die if they do not repent for this horrific sin.
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Why is one lone republican causing so much confusion?? This woman is totally making me ill, I can't listen to her for another minute! Would the rethugs put up with this if they had the majority? HELL NO!! Get with the program Mr. President, are you listening to us??
Michael Moore's Action Plan: 15 Things Every American Can Do Right Now
FIVE THINGS WE DEMAND THE PRESIDENT AND CONGRESS DO IMMEDIATELY:
1. Declare a moratorium on all home evictions.
The comments appear to mark a shift for Cheney, who, after a series of interviews and speeches last spring in which he declared Obama had put the country at an elevated level of risk, has remained relatively quiet over the last few months as he works to complete his memoirs set for release next year.
Instead, Cheney's eldest daughter Liz has become the most visible member of the family, launching a group last week aimed at organizing conservative opposition to the Obama administration's foreign policy approach.
He also talked about the Bush administrations 'enhanced interrogation techniques' and criticized Obama for abandoning these 'techniques'. Why keep talking about torture, Dick?
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"And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them."Bush believed the time had now come for that battle, telling Chirac:
"This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people's enemies before a New Age begins".The story of the conversation emerged only because the Elyse Palace, baffled by Bush's words, sought advice from Thomas Romer, a professor of theology at the University of Lausanne. Four years later, Romer gave an account in the September 2007 issue of the university's review, Allez savoir. The article apparently went unnoticed, although it was referred to in a French newspaper.
Once again our friend Linda is so fearful of healthcare reform that I am forced to try and show her some more of the facts. Yes this post has been taken from Huffington Post and written by Sen. Sherrod Brown, but who better to explain than he?
So here we go again...
A majority of Americans support a public option. An overwhelming majority of Democrats in Congress support a public option. Doctors support a public option. Why then is the public option seen by some as the third rail of health insurance reform?
We know the disturbing facts by heart: Millions of Americans are one illness -- or one pink slip -- away from bankruptcy because of high health care costs and lack of access to affordable insurance. 30 million Americans are without health insurance. Nearly 400 Ohioans lose their insurance every day.
Middle class families pay $1,000 annually in hidden taxes to recoup the cost of care for our nation's uninsured.
When you look at the plan on its merits, the opposition makes little sense. It saves money. It will be available everywhere in the country -- providing reliable, affordable, quality health care to those in need. It injects competition into a marketplace that in most parts of the country is dominated by one or two companies.
What will happen if we hand over taxpayer-funded subsidies to the insurance industry and rely on them to cover all Americans? Insurers will demand higher and higher subsidies each year. Why wouldn't they? It's called profit maximization. After all, these are the same companies that pay their CEOs tens of millions of dollars each year while millions of Americans go without any health insurance.
A strong public option means competition for private insurance companies. It means coverage continuity in every part of the country. It means health insurance reform that ensures affordable access to coverage for every American.
I have held nearly 140 roundtables across Ohio in the last two years, and half a dozen health care town halls and events in the last two months. I have heard story after story of individuals and families who can't afford to buy insurance -- and can't afford not to. They watch their savings drain away as their health care costs soar.
The insurance industry has been in business for nearly a hundred years, and it has not managed to cover all Americans. Instead of wishing the insurance market would change, we need to change it. That's what the public option would do.
Progress rarely comes easily. It took a united Democratic party, committed to change, to establish Social Security and Medicare -- progressive milestones that pulled seniors out of poverty and increased Americans' life expectancy. Progressive milestones that were staunchly opposed by Congressional Republicans.
The public option is the moral compass of health reform. In the last 100 years, Democrats have yet to be on the wrong side of progressive reform.
There you have it, reform in a nutshell. Those who oppose this are fearful of the change to come, they fear insurance companies will be run out of business. Were they with Medicare? NO. And they won't be with a public option either. Insurance companies are fearmongering, they want you to believe they will fold, it's a lie. If you call this a lie, then I have nothing more to say, you are on your own. If I hear or read one more word on HCR, I will explode!
"To prohibit the use of funds for any Federal contract with Halliburton Company, KBR, Inc., any of their subsidiaries or affiliates, or any other contracting party if such contractor or a subcontractor at any tier under such contract requires that employees or independent contractors sign mandatory arbitration clauses regarding certain claims."
I was standing on a bridge last night, ready to commit suicide over the inability of our government to actually DO anything about stuff like health care, reining in the greed of Wall St. and the Banksters, the millions of foreclosures, the increasing number of homeless resulting from that, kids going to bed hungry while CEO make 57,000 dollars an hour, the trumpeting that the recession is over while we have HUGE unemployment, the Corporate control of our government, the fact that we STILL find it necessary to kill Brown People in various locations around the world and of course....Climate Crisis. When, all of a sudden....a funny little man appeared beside me just as I was about to jump.
"Wait," he said, going completely off script, "let me show you a world without Republicanism!"
I thought for a moment and then realized that the 6 foot drop into a culvert of dirty stagnant polluted (by Republicanists) water probably wouldn't kill me...but might give me a nasty case of tetanus or e coli or something and said...."Sure, dude, like, whatever."
We walked back into a different town than the one I had left. A town designed to minimize travel by car, well planned with pleasing greenery and solar panels and brightly decorated windmills everywhere. We passed the geothermal plant, the community run, government funded, child care center/health clinic, the streets were well paved and there were no potholes.
Bright little Mom and Pop stores lined the streets with nary a Big Box store or national franchise to be found. Apparently without them, the citizens of the town were able to make a comfortable but not excessive living supplying their neighbors with goods and services instead of wearing stupid ass uniforms and working at Target Mart for just above minimum wage while all the profits were shipped to the vaults of The Ruling Class thousands of miles from our community.
The sun rose over the well funded and technologically advanced public school, and a news boy was dropping off the early edition of the local paper, the headline read 'World Peace Boring the Heck Out Of the Planet's Armies"
I looked at Clarence and he saw my raised eyebrow. "Yes, World peace!" Clarence said, "without a Foreign Policy based on extracting resources from poor countries or exploiting poor people for cheap labor, the warring nation's of the world finally ran out of excuses to kill people." He frowned. "There is still some terrorism but on a planet of six billion people ("Wait!" I exclaimed, "SIX billion people??? Clarence winked and whispered in my ear...."Birth Control and intelligent Family Planning!") there will always be malcontents that can find some reason (mostly religious extremism) to want to blow up their fellow humans. Fortunately, well regulated and monitored International Law Enforcement groups are able to contain the worst of it. After all with so many happy people in the world, the unhappy ones tend to stand out. Negotiators and moderators have replaced the bulk of armies though, and so most disputes are taken care of well before they erupt into violence."
"It worked well in the Middle East, where we finally learned that a HUGE percentage of the worlds violence actually WAS based on economic disparity. When we shifted from funding the defense industries into providing food, shelter, medicine, education, job training and infrastructure to the world's hot spots, it worked remarkably well!"
It seems the decades of education and economic equality funded by money that used to be spent on killing people ...and long denied or quashed by Republicanist lawmakers had produced an educated and informed world wide electorate, who over the decades had embraced democracy and equal civil and economic rights and peacefully overthrown or voted out most of the world's bad actors. Apparently....once voter suppression efforts by The Ruling Class had been eradicated world wide and everyone had voting rights and true access to their elected representatives....
Access that lobbyists and special interests did NOT have, thanks to the fact that every election was financed by the public, and the quaint notion of Corporate personhood had been...executed...
They no longer felt that the world was an unfair, ugly place with the deck stacked against them. It turned out that most people very much enjoyed participating in their government and communities, and were willing to work hard and sacrifice....in a FAIR system of governance
"Yes," Clarence said, the sunlight gleaming off of his nose, "it all turned around in the 1960's, when in this world, the news about Watergate broke BEFORE the 72 election and Republicans were recognized as the greedy, corrupt, War For Profit, polluting, hateful basta....folks that they were!"
He went on to tell me how under the Democrats, now lead by the ideals and idealists of the young generation of that time, truly equal civil and voting rights for ALL were strictly enforced and the electoral and financial reforms that transformed America and then the the world were enacted.
When the ecology movement sprang up in the seventies, it was embraced as not just a way to save the only planet we have, but to honor it and learn to live in harmony with it...instead of raping it's resources and the profits going to...the vaults of the Ruling Class.
As America sought peace with the Soviet Union...which lead to a new democratic socialism and economic system, the money from the peace dividend was poured into the Green Revolution and alternative energy sources took over from oil in the eighties, not just cleaning the atmosphere, but providing a new economic base for the whole planet. More labor intensive, it provided jobs for everyone that wanted to work. and since the new economy was based on an employee owned business model, everyone had plenty of incentive to succeed.
Capital was provided for new enterprises by HEAVILY regulated private institutions. They were taxed at such a high rate that they were forced to put their profits right back into circulation and into further research as well as a vast philanthropic wave to avoid the high tax rate.
That wave of philanthropy also helped to transform the poorer countries of the world, programs to provide alternative energy sources, schools, medical clinics, and vocational as well as higher education spread throughout the globe, giving every human the chance to fulfill...or ignore their potential as they wished.
Some of the greatest technical and philosophical geniuses and advances came out of countries that had been mired in poverty, starvation, political upheaval over resources and ignorance.
The world was transformed on every level. A new ethos of equality and justice swept the world....without Republicanism to hold it back through it's economic, political, and educational suppression. All of which had been designed to keep the Lower Classes subjugated, so that the Ruling Class could retain it's stranglehold on the wealth, power, and resources of the world.
The population stabilized, new technologies were embraced not repressed, and without the prevailing influence of the Republicanists....systematic raw naked greed at the expense of all others, the Human Race thrived in a peaceful prosperous and just world!
Suddenly, we were back at the bridge. Clarence looked at me with a tear in his eye and said, "Yes, we missed THAT chance. Nixon and Republicanism won, leading to Reagan and the Bushes with a stop over to impeach Clinton for being a Liberal."
"But now, now we have another chance at it! The world got a look at what nearly unfettered Republicanism has done to the planet over the last decades, and they DO NOT like it! The Republicans are destroying themselves again, and there is an amazing new generation of bright committed young people ready to change the world....if.."
"If?" I said.
"If," Clarence continued we could just get rid of the last remnants of the Republican leaders and the corrupting influence of Republicanism and Me Firstism on every aspect of society! especially the corrupting influence of greed that makes everyone have to sink down to their level!"
He looked me in the eye and asked me The Question.
"Well, son? Are you going to give in to despair and hopelessness and apathy? Or are you going to stick around and help build this new world."
I got down from that bridge, got to work.... and never looked back.
And that's very important because, A, I don't think they want him to be successful in reaching out in the kind of diplomatic fashion in the broad strategic sense that he's outlined because it really cuts against this sort of very jingoistic, militaristic, go-it-alone foreign policy that's been the bedrock of the Republican Party and conservative right for a very long time now."
We have a president who is using diplomacy, thats what this country so desperately needed after 8 years of going it alone bullshit. So, go ahead fucktards and remind the people what it was like with Bush/Cheney. You are doing Democrats a great service by your anti-American activities!
Thanks Infidel! You can read his comment, and he left us this interesting piece from Reuters Life I'd like to share right here.....
The United States is the most admired country globally thanks largely to the star power of President Barack Obama and his administration, according to a new poll. It climbed from seventh place last year, ahead of France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Japan which completed the top five nations in the Nation Brand Index (NBI).
“What’s really remarkable is that in all my years studying national reputation, I have never seen any country experience such a dramatic change in its standing as we see for the United States for 2009,” said Simon Anholt, the founder of NBI, which measured the global image of 50 countries each year.
