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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: greenspirit who wrote (109210)	4/19/2009 1:21:28 AM
From: ChinuSFO	Respond to of 541414

The Iraq war was a nonsensical war. The buck stops at the US President's desk and Bush should hold himself accountable for the war. That was why the people elected him. Telling the American people that he ordered the war because the Congress told him to is like saying I did so because my wife told me to. I can imagine Obama holding a press conference and telling the world that the size of his stimulus package was OK with his OK and hence his budget is what it is. AQ denounced Saddam. They branded him a kafir because he killed Muslims during the Kuwaiti invasion. Besides he and his sons indulged in wine and woman, a no no for Islam. The AQ, in keeping with the tenets of Islam did not associate themselves with a "kafir" like Saddam. Bush and Cheney knew this from their advisors who were well versed in Islam. But they went and lied to the American people that AQ and Saddam were synonymous. 9/11 was a revenge against America. It was a revenge for all the dastardly acts that the US politicians played around the world post-Kennedy era. No longer is the US a super power. It it is a super power, then it would have successfully influenced the outcome of the Pakistani terrorist activities. Nuclear Pakistan cannot be bullied by Pakistan anymore. However, it the Pakistanis are treated with respect and considered as equals, the US may have a chance. And I commend our current President for taking the approach of a rapproach.

To: greenspirit who wrote (109210)	4/23/2009 9:57:38 PM
From: J_F_Shepard	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541414

The nazi's talked like that too....

To: greenspirit who wrote (109210)	4/24/2009 8:28:40 AM
From: Bread Upon The Water	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 541414

The torture ruckus the hard left wants to talk about ad naseum is a bunch of silly noise. If preventing someone from getting sleep and living with a caterpillar in a small space constitutes torture, then we've been torturing every service men and woman for decades. It's more torturous to pick tobacco for a living, or run 5 miles with an 80 pound pack on your back. How about not seeing the sun for 6 months underwater? I notice you left out the waterboarding which is good because I've done most of that other stuff sans tobacco picking and the 6 months underwater (but know people who have done those too--but they don' spend 6 months underwater--or run 5 miles with an 80 lb. pack) and I've seen the waterboarding and none of that stacks up to the waterboarding-- IMHO.

To: greenspirit who wrote (109210)	4/24/2009 4:47:26 PM
From: cnyndwllr	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541414

Greenspirit, re: "The torture ruckus the hard left wants to talk about ad naseum is a bunch of silly noise. If preventing someone from getting sleep and living with a caterpillar in a small space constitutes torture, then we've been torturing every service men and woman for decades." This is not a one dimensional, flat world issue. Except for those tortures that fall at the extremes, you'd have to look at all the circumstances before you could make a determination regarding whether certain practices constituted "torture". This should have been clear to anyone who had taken the time to discuss this but you seem to have missed the nuances so let's look at a few possibilities. Is it torture to force someone to bend over and touch his, or her, toes? No, but does it become torture if you force them to maintain that position for 10 minutes, an hour, or maybe 24 hours? Try it for 10 minutes and see of you get some hints. Is it torture to allow a volunteer to experience a brief episode of drowning? You could argue that it isn't, but does it become torture if they don't volunteer, you force substantially more water into their lungs, make them believe you don't care if they live or die and do it over and over, again and again? And torture is not simply the activity, it's a combination of the activity and the individual. Is it torture to put a man in a small space with a bug? Who knows? What man, what bug and what space? Of course maybe those of us on the "left" simply don't understand that those of you on the not-left can shrug off hours of extreme discomfort, sleep deprivation and techniques designed to attack your basic survival instincts. After all that hero of the right, John Wayne, did it many times and others of us are so masochistic that we pay people to beat us. Maybe that's the difference between Americans like you and those of us on the "left?" So I'd like to see you deprived of sleep for days (how do you think they'd keep you awake?). If you're not a closet "lefty" I'm assuming you'd be ready to do it again, still confidently insisting that viewing sleep deprivation as torture is a bunch of "silly noise." Or maybe not. You might want to actually read up on the science of the effects of forcing people to stay awake for days. Ed

To: greenspirit who wrote (109210)	4/25/2009 1:49:31 PM
From: Suma	Respond to of 541414

You are too funny. Where on earth do you get your ideas about what constitutes torture ? Would you like done to you what was done to those terrorists ? Ask yourself that question.

To: greenspirit who wrote (109210)	4/26/2009 2:06:07 AM
From: ChinuSFO	Respond to of 541414

As Nation's Mood Lifts, Can Obama Capitalize? By Dan Balz Sunday, April 26, 2009 The most striking finding from the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll released today is the change in the public mood. Since Barack Obama was elected president in November, the pervasive gloom of 2008 has given way to a sense of hopefulness and considerably more optimism about the state of the country. How much of this change is directly attributable to Obama's leadership rather than the nascent signs of improvement will become fodder for the cable shows as the president's 100th day arrives this week. What's important is that he now enjoys the power of public confidence. He will need all the backing he can muster as he moves into what is likely to be an even more difficult phase of his presidency. Half the country now thinks things are moving in the right direction. That compares with 8 percent in October, during the election's final weeks. The shift in public sentiment sets Obama apart from many of his predecessors. It took Bill Clinton five years and a successful reelection campaign before Post-ABC News polls recorded a majority believing the country was on the right track. Other recent presidents have seen the mood turn sour before it improved. No one should mistake the current mood for euphoria, given the state of the economy. But the poll shows an across-the-board boost in spirits. Among Democrats, 71 percent say the country is going in the right direction -- the first time since 1999 that figure has hit the 70 percent mark. Among independents, 44 percent are positive -- the highest since the fall of Baghdad in the spring of 2003. Republicans are far more pessimistic, with 27 percent saying the country is going in the right direction -- but that's still double what it was in February. Obama has set a fast pace in his first months and has been rewarded with high approval ratings. A sizable percentage of Americans approve of the job he is doing, and they have a highly favorable impression of him personally. More than half say he is doing a better job than they expected. That compares favorably with early reviews for Clinton and George W. Bush. Barely four in 10 said Clinton and Bush were doing better than expected. Obama is the dominant figure in Washington by a wide margin. Perceptions of the Republican Party are low and have gone down in the past month. Almost two-thirds of the public now disapprove of the performance of congressional Republicans, and the lack of credible opposition also gives Obama more running room. All this suggests that Obama's biggest worry is not Republican resistance but his own performance: Can he sustain the pace and the successes of his first months -- and what happens when he stumbles? The surge in public optimism not withstanding, the poll exposes areas of concern about the economy, national security policy and the president's performance. Worries about the deficit remain strong, with only a bare majority approving of how Obama is dealing with that potentially huge issue. His call to his Cabinet last week to cut the budget by $100 million doesn't represent even a down payment on a deficit strategy. Obama's handing of federal assistance to General Motors and Chrysler now get negative reviews, a reminder that bailouts are unpopular. The president has been freely exercising the powers of his office and the federal government in dealing with the economy, but it's clear he has not yet won over the public on how much government they want in that area. More than six in 10 say Obama has accomplished either a great deal or a good amount so far. Yet only a third say the big stimulus package approved two months ago has helped the economy. Overall, a strong majority say that the stimulus program will help, but the early verdict is tentative. The controversy over the Bush administration's policies regarding harsh interrogation techniques, as well as Obama's decision to end them and release Bush-era Justice Department memos outlining the legal justification for the policies, highlights a deep split within the country. Obama's hopes of heading off a full-scale debate over the past may have been misplaced; his change in policy has not produced a new consensus on the difficult choices the threat of terrorism has raised. The uproar this past week is a reminder that the bad loans on the books of financial institutions are not the only toxic assets Obama inherited that remain to be cleaned up. Beyond questions of how terrorism suspects are treated, the president has wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to deal with. Interestingly, his highest approval ratings come on those two conflicts. Seventy-one percent approve of his handling of Iraq; 63 percent say they approve of what he has done with regard to Afghanistan. Overall, 67 percent approve of his handling of international affairs -- and that comes after he was criticized by conservatives for appearing to be too cordial with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. Those high numbers reflect in part the lack of confidence Americans had in Bush at the end of his presidency. Any change was welcome. But after a week of suicide bombings in Iraq, deepening problems in Pakistan and instability in Afghanistan, Obama still confronts treacherous hurdles in making his policies work. White House officials who follow the numbers have been cheered by the lift in the country's mood. They know better than to read more into it than is warranted, but they are determined to try to leverage public sentiment as they marshal support for the rest of the president's package. Much of the country has invested its hopes in Obama, and he has made a powerful first impression. The glimmers of optimism that go along with the glimmers of improvement in the economy have accrued to his benefit. But ahead lie major battles over health care and energy. How durable and sustainable his support, and how he uses it, will be the story of the next 100 days -- and the next 100 -- of his presidency. washingtonpost.com