Nov 12 2008
Liberal Petty Vindictiveness Can Be Very Dangerous To America
What do the Democrats want to do for those who kept America safe from another terrorist attack on this nation over the past 7 years? Something no one would dare to predict after 9-11, that we could go 7 years without another attack on US soil. What is the gratitude to be showed to these critically important people we Americans owe our life to, and the lives of our families? The boot of course:
A number of influential congressional Democrats oppose keeping Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and CIA Director Michael V. Hayden in their posts because both have publicly supported controversial Bush administration policies on interrogation and telephone surveillance. One Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee said there is a “consensus” view on the matter.
Other Democrats and many intelligence experts, however, give high marks to the current cadre of intelligence leaders, crediting them with restoring stability and professionalism to a community rocked by multiple scandals in recent years. A government official who has closely followed the evolution in the intelligence leadership in recent years argued that it is important to keep at least a few “seasoned” professionals in place during wartime.
Obama transition officials, who have steadfastly declined to discuss the personnel selection process, said yesterday that no decisions have been made regarding intelligence appointments. McConnell and Hayden, both career intelligence professionals, interpret the Obama team not reaching out to them as a sign that they will not be kept on, intelligence officials said.
Indulging in petty vindictiveness is not a smart move by liberal democrats (of course using the term ‘smart’ with ‘liberal democrats’ is oxymoronic to the nth degree). There was stupid cries of dropping the ball by hallucinating radical democrats after 9-11. Their answer – do what they claimed Bush did, bungle an all important transition.
There is no rush here, and Obama needs to remember he needs people with opposing views to test and validate his orders, or else there is no feedback from the bureaucracy if he tries to execute a really dumb and naive action or order. No President worth their salt has only pandering yes-people echoing back how ingenious the President’s decisions are. A good President sprinkles his team with a range of voices and views and then selects which path to take.Â
And he has time. He can work up new leaders if he wants. But if the dems rush to move these proven heroes out of their positions before next summer, while al-Qaeda is planning to test this President (his VP even admits this), that would be a certain recipe for disaster. My guess is, knowing the petty thought processes of liberal democrats, is they will take the risky path and give al-Qaeda an opening to test Obama like Bush was tested.
This country has gotten very use to the idea again it is safe from attack. Democrats would be wise to not allow that mythos to be shattered early and abruptly as they try to wave those magic wands and bring about Utopia.
kathie:
No, sorry, I’ve never been outside the U.S.
You’re missing “Obama” ‘s real aim. It is not to institute healthcare
or to save the planet.
Audio and Video evidence discovered – Obama and Emmanuel
agreed two years ago to seize power and hold it indefinitely.
Obama will mount a coup against America. That is what the
“civil defense force” is for.
You can view and listen here:
http://patdollard.com/2008/11/discovered-2006-audio-obama%e2%80%99s-chief-of-staff-describes-mandatory-civil-service-plan
Pat Dollard is a Army-Marines oriented site. There is some bad
language, but it is justified about this plot, just be forewarned.
THIS EVIL PLOT NEEDS TO BE STOPPED or there may be no
further elections.
I’m sorry, dave m – but Rahm seems to be talking in that clip about the mandatory service in Israel (in which he himself served), and how that might apply to America, in some theoretical sense. Granted, it would be a lot clearer if the person who had produced that audio (not video) clip had actually left everything in context – including the full question, the full answer, etc.
I mean, it’s heavily clipped and edited, so I understand how someone might misinterpret some portions of it. But I don’t see anything in there that seems to suggest that Obama is going to institute a “civil defense force” in the U.S.
I just don’t see how Rahm Immanuel saying “Israel has a program for this, and I supported it”, necessarily implies that Obama plans on implementing the same plan in this country. Could you explain that further?
AJ, I am curious:
Why do you use photos of a terrorist attack that occurred while a Republican was the President, as proof that we have to be worried about an attack that might theoretically happen while a Democrat is President?
Why do you use photos of a terrorist attack that occurred while a Republican was the President, as proof that we have to be worried about an attack that might theoretically happen while a Democrat is President?
That attack took approximately eight years–i.e., from 1993, during Clinton’s first term–to proceed from the initial go-ahead to final execution. During that time, the Clinton administration responded weakly–if at all–to multiple terrorist attacks against US citizens. The most notable response of the Clinton administration to terrorism was to either try to blame it on Republicans and talk radio (Oklahoma City) or to attempt to conceal its existence (TWA Flight 800, Able Danger).
Obama’s prospective attorney general, Jamie Gorelick, established a “wall of separation” between the intelligence community and law enforcement that prevented the intelligence community from sharing information that would have, at a bare minimum, led to the arrest and deportation of most of the hijackers–including the ones who could actually fly the damn airplanes.
(BTW, between blinding US law enforcement to terrorist threats and pocketing $25.6 million dollars from screwing up Fannie Mae, is there ANYTHING Gorelick hasn’t touched in the past 15 years that turned into a complete catastrophe?)
Had Clinton actually gone after the terrorists as aggressively as he said he would, 9/11 most likely would not have occurred.
Shiva:
Oh. I had not considered the idea that President Clinton was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. That’s an interesting theory. Two questions that do occur to me:
1) The OK City attack was done by two white, American-born, U.S. citizens. How was that related to the Al Qaeda-led attacks on 9/11? I’ve never read about any ties between Al Qaeda and Timothy McVeigh before (although I agree, they were all evil).
2) Where have you read that Jamie Gorelick (who, I admit, I’m not terribly familiar with) was going to be Obama’s Attorney General? I haven’t seen that anywhere, and I’ve been paying pretty close attention to staff and cabinet position announcements.
Perhaps the most powerful argument yet advanced as to why “Obama”
is not President of the United States and cannot be.
http://texasdarlin.wordpress.com/2008/11/12/this-is-what-a-work-horse-does/#comments
scroll down to DEMOCRACY RULES
Obama cannot be President
Dr. Robert Coambs
a small excerpt:
(5) From this we can construct the following syllogism:
Major Premise: To be POTUS, the candidate’s eligibility must be publicly known.
Minor Premise: Obama’s eligibility is not publicly known.
Conclusion: Therefore Obama is not POTUS.
(6) How Categorical Syllogisms work
When we learn logic in school the categorical syllogism is often taught like this. It begins with a Major Premise, like this:
All humans are mortal.
Then one introduces a second, or Minor Premise, like this:
Socrates is human.
Then we combine the major and minor premises to get this Conclusion:
Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
This method of deductive logic is more than 2000 years old and is taught in almost every introductory logic course in the world. According to these rules of deductive logic, as described by Aristotle (Prior Analytics, 24b18-20) if both premises are true, then the conclusion is true.
Logic is a branch of mathematics, and these rules are like those of arithmetic, where 2+2=4. The result is not negotiable. It is not subject to debate. These rules are universal, they apply everywhere in the known universe. At any time or place one can imagine, 2+2 will equal 4.
SNIP
Read the whole thing.
As to our new “Obama” troll, you waste your time addressing me.
I will not bow down to “Obama” nor do as he says. He was not
elected President by the greatest nation on earth, sorry AJ,
he cannot BE elected President and therefore he WAS not elected
President. It was a simple attempt to overthrow the USA and the
Constitution. I will not let it succeed while I live and breathe.
dave m:
I’m sorry, I did not realize that asking you a question was defined here as “trolling”.
I’ll leave you alone with your conspiracy theories from here on out.
Oh. I had not considered the idea that President Clinton was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. That’s an interesting theory.
Clinton had eight years, in which he did nothing at all to hinder al-Qaeda’s operations. Bush had less than eight months as of 9/11.
1) The OK City attack was done by two white, American-born, U.S. citizens. How was that related to the Al Qaeda-led attacks on 9/11? I’ve never read about any ties between Al Qaeda and Timothy McVeigh before (although I agree, they were all evil).
There is considerable circumstantial evidence to indicate that McVeigh and Nichols had a great deal of assistance in building the truck bomb, including “John Doe #2” (as well as JD #3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8), none of which has been properly tracked down. Among other things, where they supposedly assembled the bomb (outdoors, near a lake in Kansas) had extremely high humidity at the time–which would have rendered the ammonium nitrate (which is extremely hygroscopic) too wet to detonate. They had to have had access to a climate-conntrolled facility for device assembly.
Also, Nichols traveled extensively in the Philippines–in areas with strong Islamist terrorist connects–during the same time that Ramzi Yousef was in that country.
Finally, Jayna Davis did some real, no-kidding investigative journalism, and found some disturbing ties between McVeigh and a bunch of “Iraqi Army deserters” who had settled down in Oklahoma City.
2) Where have you read that Jamie Gorelick (who, I admit, I’m not terribly familiar with) was going to be Obama’s Attorney General? I haven’t seen that anywhere, and I’ve been paying pretty close attention to staff and cabinet position announcements.
Note that I said “prospective.” Hasn’t been formally announced, but she’s leading the charge on the DoJ end of transition, so she’s definitely on the short list.
GuyFawkeson 13 Nov 2008 at 11:29 am
dave m:
I’m sorry, I did not realize that asking you a question was defined here as “trollingâ€.
——————————————————————————–
If it looks like a troll, squawks like a troll, and bleats like a troll once
it’s been spotted – it’s a troll.
Methinks the troll doth protest far too much
dave m:
Well, I guess you and I will have to “agree to disagree” on the definition of “troll” then.
I asked what I felt was a very basic question: what does Rahm Emmanuel’s opinion on the Israeli military have to do with Obama’s alleged intention to create some form of “civil defense force” in the U.S.?
If you wish to ignore that question, then that is your prerogative. But if so, then I question why anyone should take your postings seriously, if you refuse to defend their very premise.
What I am most worried about is a media making the current economic situation worse in order to give Obama a “mandate” to take more drastic measures when he takes office.
I say that because every indication is that in September, California was starting to climb out of the housing mess. Housing inventories were down, sales were up, and the decline in values leveling off. I have indications that values actually went up in October in many towns where they had been declining but October’s numbers aren’t out yet.
Keep in mind that most of the foreclosures happened in 2007. The market was depressed in 2008 as those 2007 foreclosures were sold off. The inventory of these unsold foreclosures is now declining and I am seeing evidence of prices now recovering.
This article on California September sales gives indications of a market recovery similar to previous housing market recoveries.
We were also hit with a double whammy in that considerable oil refining and production capacity was taken offline when two hurricanes hit the gulf coast. That capacity is now recovering and Gulf oil and oil products are now recovering to normal levels. In fact, upgrades were done at some plants while they were down for repairs so it looks like we might come out of this with additional refining capacity and a lot of maintenance done during the repairs that won’t have to be done later this winter.
If the media can turn down the hype, things might actually be turning around in November. Also, I am seeing NO indication of any slowdown in consumer spending where I live. The malls are packed, people are still eating out (lines out the doors at many popular places). What *is* tight is credit and capital for businesses. But that should begin to recover once the major financial houses are out from under the worst of the mortgage problems. Raising home values will begin to lift many of those mortgages out from “under water” status (loan balance greater than home value) where they can again be marked as assets rather than liabilities on the books of the lender or on the books of the US Treasury, whoever is holding them at the time.
Right now things don’t look too bad if people can just be patient and give things another month or two to recover.
Guy Squawks,
Bait not taken.
Sometimes the answers do not lie in debate, especially not in debate
with a troll.
(I am not worried about losing my credibility. AJ told me that had already
happened – shortly before he called the election for McCain!)
Sometimes the victories or defeats lie outside the realm of words.
The man who calls himself “Obama” already understands that.
That is why he wants his own little “Brown Shirts” Corp to protect him.
Now I too realize the limitation of just using words, especially in useless places.
And I will not further waste my time.
You may make of that what you will,
But I am outta here.
Guy Fawkes and dave m:
Just for the record, both of you are new guys here. Does that make both of you trolls?
(also for the record, which one is norm, ken, rayinaus,bresch, and I can’t remember them all?) Notice how dave m says: “I am outa here” that’s normally means he is recreating himself and will be back with a new handle within a day or so.
and what’s the deal with the question about the civilian security force? It was Obama that proposed the CSF. That’s not a mystery. The ballet dancer may be pushing it for Obama but it is O’s idea.
My hypothesis is that George Soros engineered and managed the stock market collapse, just as he engineered and planned the fall of the pound to make himself several billion dollars some years back. He had the money, motive, opportunity, ability to do it.
dave m:
I see. Well, you definitely have a unique perspective on the world. This conversation appears to be going as follows:
Commenter 1: “The sky is green.”
Commenter 2: “Okay. I’m pretty sure it’s blue, though. Did you look up in the sky to confirm that?”
C1: “You’re a troll.”
C2: “What? All said was that it’s blue. Why am I a troll?”
C1: “The answers do not lie in debate! I will not further waste my time!”
If you are hoping that these methods will convince anyone of “the truth” – then I wish you luck.
WalMart’s profits are up 10%. So people haven’t stopped spending money. What has stopped are the big ticket items that were often financed through home equity lines of credit such as boats, RVs, cars, and home improvements. But I am seeing an indication that housing values are starting to firm up.
The market value (as stated on zillow) of a friend’s home peaked out at about 600K. Then it dropped to about 250K. In the past three weeks it has recovered to 325K. There for a while it was worth less than she owed on it, it is back “above water” now.
Kathie, Colbalt & Redteam,
First of all, you need to stop putting words in my mouth. I never said that Bush would have avoided 9-11 had he reacted differently. That type of speculation is as stupid as the speculation that we would have avoided 9-11 if we didn’t have the Gorelick wall. It is all pure speculation because there is no way to ever know if the result would have been different. That is especially true for regular folks like us who don’t have access to all of the intelligence.
I was simply responding to Kathie’s statement that “no one in the government thought that there would be an attack on American soil” and calling Guyhawks statements about the August 6, 2001 PDB “lies”. Kathie’s statements are absolutely wrong – no if, ands or buts about it. I was merely attemtping to set the record straight by showing her that the White House itself has publically acknowledged that it is fact. Why you continue to ignore confirmed facts that Bush himself has acknowledged just because you can’t bring yourself to criticize Bush for anything is really baffling to me. It is very odd dynamic to me that we have 80% of the country thinking that Bush has been a poor president and still have the other 20% refusing to blame him for ANYTHING despite all of the crises that we are currently facing. I’m not saying that Bush has done everything wrong during his presidency or that he is to blame for all of our problems, but I’m constantly amazed at how you folks are so quick to make excuses for Bush and blame others when he has been our President for 8 years!
As for what Bush should have done after the PDB, I’ll give you the shorthand response – SOMETHING! The President is the most powerful person in the country. If he is powerless to stop Al Qaeda attacks regardless of what policies or directives he takes, then I guess our country truly is screwed. He could have demanded more intelligence resources be committed to this issue, required each of the law enforcement and intelligence agencies to provided him detailed reports on Al Qaeda’s activities to help piece the evidence together better, he could have demanded a review of airline security since the PDB specifically mentioned intelligence about plots to hijack planes. Bush may not have avoided 9-11 even had he taken action in response to the PDB, but I can’t understand why you are not the least bit concerned that Bush did absolutely nothing in response to a PDB warning him of a worrisome pattern of activity and direct intelligence of Al Qaeda’s desire to strike the US homeland? You all blame Clinton for not taking Al Qaeda seriously enough and not following through on the intelligence he had – why wouldn’t you hold Bush to the same standard?
As for laying the blame of 9-11 primarily on Clinton, I want to lay out that same reasoning with respect to Obama and Bush so you all can see how silly it sounds from the other side. God forbid if there is another attack on American soil while Obama is president, but if so your same reasoning will be used to blame it all on Bush. Bush is the one who didn’t finish off Bin Laden and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and allowed them to find an even better safehaven in nuclear-armed Pakistan. Therefore, any attack by Al Qaeda during Obama’s first few years will be primarily Bush’s fault because he had 7 years to take them out and didn’t. Obama will be absolved of any responsibility regardless of what intelligence he was provided before the attack because there is nothing he really could have done about it -I mean, after all, he is only the president and can’t be expected to protect us from every harm. Sounds stupid doesn’t it?
As for what Bush should have done after the PDB, I’ll give you the shorthand response – SOMETHING!
It’s not enough to say that he should have done “SOMETHING!”
Especially when you’re Monday-morning quarterbacking.
Kindly note, dear reader . . . after 9/11, Bush did do “SOMETHING!”
And you and your sputniki promptly screamed bloody murder about us violating the “civil rights” of known terrorist scumbags by monitoring their phone calls, watching their banking transactions, and by not giving them five-star luxury accomodations at Gitmo.
Shiva:
I know I’m new here, and everything – but I just want to point out that Conman (what a strange username to choose when you’re playing the part of the “opposition party” on a political blog) did indeed point out several definitive things Bush should have done, right after “SOMETHING!”
So, to respond with, “It’s not enough to say that”, would imply that you simply stopped reading after “SOMETHING!” Which, to me, doesn’t do much to move the dialogue forward, if you are going to ignore the 100 or 200 words immediately after that. I mean – we all can scroll up one page and see it for ourselves.
And the NSA surveillance project is something I’ve done a lot of reading on recently. I’m pretty sure that no one has “screamed bloody murder” for monitoring the phone calls of known terrorists. Indeed, what they (and I count myself as one of them) are concerned with is unsupervised, warrantless wiretapping of U.S. citizens. If you’ve read the Bill of Rights, I think you can see quite clearly that the Founding Fathers were vehemently against this type of behavior on the part of the government.
If you disagree with that, and believe the government should be able to spy on its own citizens as it sees fit – then just say so. Don’t mischaracterize the arguments of your opponents – it demeans you, and serves no purpose in this dialogue.
Which, to me, doesn’t do much to move the dialogue forward, if you are going to ignore the 100 or 200 words immediately after that. I mean – we all can scroll up one page and see it for ourselves.
What conman proposed was the usual sort of pointy-haired boss time-wasting idiocy that one sees in Dilbert.
He didn’t propose that Bush do anything effective–anything that would actually hinder al-Qaeda’s operations.
And the NSA surveillance project is something I’ve done a lot of reading on recently.
And most of what you read is simply wrong.
I’m pretty sure that no one has “screamed bloody murder†for monitoring the phone calls of known terrorists.
Actually, they did.
Indeed, what they (and I count myself as one of them) are concerned with is unsupervised, warrantless wiretapping of U.S. citizens. If you’ve read the Bill of Rights, I think you can see quite clearly that the Founding Fathers were vehemently against this type of behavior on the part of the government.
Generally, if the Founding Fathers learned that you were chatting amiably with mass-murdering psychopaths who happened to be at war with this country, you could reasonably expect to be hung by the neck until you were dead after a relatively perfunctory trial.
If you disagree with that, and believe the government should be able to spy on its own citizens as it sees fit – then just say so.
If said “citizens” are chatting amiably with known terrorist scumbags, abso-damn-lutely.