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Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MJ who wrote (63387)	4/20/2009 7:45:05 PM
From: longnshort	2 Recommendations Respond to of 224729

And the way Michele walks like a cow, I love that, reminds me of my days on the farm

To: MJ who wrote (63387)	4/20/2009 10:36:29 PM
From: lorne	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 224729

MJ...his hussein obama is a scary thing with all the radicals he has given power to. Pentagon official blames U.S. for al-Qaida attacks Worked for George Soros, argued for government control of media April 20, 2009 By Aaron Klein © 2009 WorldNetDaily wnd.com She believes al-Qaida was an "obscure group" turned into a massive threat due to U.S. policies. She's referred to former President Bush as "our torturer in chief" and a "psychotic who need(s) treatment" while comparing Bush's arguments for waging a war on terrorism to Adolf Hitler's use of political propaganda. She's worked on behalf of George Soros' philanthropic foundation. Meet Rosa Brooks, the Obama administration's new adviser to Michelle Fluornoy, the undersecretary of defense for policy, a position described as one of the most influential in the Pentagon. "I prefer to think of (my new position) as my personal government bailout," Brooks wrote in a departing piece at the Los Angeles Times, where she served as a regular columnist. Brooks' new boss earlier this month briefed Congress on U.S. policy in Pakistan and Afghanistan, two countries for which she has enormous power concerning drafting future military doctrine. "Brooks will wield an extraordinary degree of influence in helping shape U.S. policy. Her extreme views should therefore be closely scrutinized," wrote Nile Gardiner, a contributor to the London Telegraph's online blog. Indeed, Brook's recent L.A. Times columns evidence views some may find concerning. Get "Shut Up, America! How to fight the end of free speech" In 2007, she labeled al-Qaida as "little more than an obscure group of extremist thugs, well financed and intermittently lethal but relatively limited in their global and regional political pull. On 9/11, they got lucky. … Thanks to U.S. policies, al-Qaida has become the vast global threat the administration imagined it to be in 2001." Also that year, she called the surge in Iraqa "feckless plan" that is "too little too late" with "no realistic likelihood that it will lead to an enduring solution in Iraq." The surge was widely credited with helping to stabilize Iraq. Brooks wrote Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney "should be treated like psychotics who need treatment. … Impeachment's not the solution to psychosis, no matter how flagrant." She also penned a column about Bush entitled "Our torturer-in-chief" in which she inferred attacks against the U.S. were a result of torture policies. "Today, the chickens are coming home to roost," she fumed, but "the word 'accountability' isn't in the White House dictionary." In another column she referred to the regimes of Iran and North Korea as "foreign authoritarians," while calling the Bush administration a "homegrown" authoritarian regime. In a column last month, Brooks claimed the Bush administration's Office of Legal Counsel arguments for prosecuting the war on terrorism were similar to tactics used by Hitler. According to Brooks: "How did such dangerously bad legal memos ever get taken seriously in the first place? One answer is suggested by the so-called Big Lie theory of political propaganda, articulated most infamously by Adolf Hitler. Ordinary people 'more readily fall victim to the big lie than the small lie,' wrote Hitler." Last week, FoxNews.com highlighted Brook's departing column in which she argued for more "direct government support for public media" and government licensing of the news. Wrote Brooks: "Years of foolish policies have left us with a choice: We can bail out journalism, using tax dollars and granting licenses in ways that encourage robust and independent reporting and commentary, or we can watch, wringing our hands, as more and more top journalists are laid off." In response, L. Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center, countered, "The day that the government gets involved in the news media you see the end of the democratic process, because an independent news media is absolutely essential to the success of a democracy." Brooks is also a law professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, where she serves as director of Georgetown Law School's Human Rights Center. She previously served as special counsel to the president at Soros' Open Society Institute. She has consulted for Human Rights Watch and served as a board member of Amnesty International USA.

To: MJ who wrote (63387)	4/23/2009 10:26:41 AM
From: lorne	1 Recommendation Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 224729

PROMISES, PROMISES: Obama and black farmers By BEN EVANS – 1 day ago google.com WASHINGTON (AP) — As a senator, Barack Obama led the charge last year to pass a bill allowing black farmers to seek new discrimination claims against the Agriculture Department. Now he is president, and his administration so far is acting like it wants the potentially budget-busting lawsuits to go away. The change isn't sitting well with black farmers who thought they'd get a friendlier reception from Obama after years of resistance from President George W. Bush. "You can't blame it on the Bush administration anymore," said John Boyd, head of the National Black Farmers Association, which has organized the lawsuits. "I can't figure out for the life of me why the president wouldn't want to implement a bill that he fought for as a U.S. senator." At issue is a class-action lawsuit known as the Pigford case. Thousands of farmers sued USDA claiming they had for years been denied government loans and other assistance that routinely went to whites. The government settled in 1999 and has paid out nearly $1 billion in damages on almost 16,000 claims. Farmers, lawyers and activists like Boyd have worked for years to reopen the case because thousands of farmers missed the deadlines for participating. Many said the filing period was too short and they were unaware of the settlement until it was too late. The cause gained momentum in August 2007 when Obama, then an Illinois senator, introduced Pigford legislation about six months into his presidential campaign. Although the case was hardly a hot-button political issue, it had drawn intense interest among African-Americans in the rural South. It was seen as a way for Obama to reach out in those areas, where he was not well-known and where he would need strong support to win the Democratic primary. The proposal won passage in May as sponsors rounded up enough support to incorporate it into the 2008 farm bill. The potential budget implications were huge: It could easily cost $2 billion or $3 billion given an estimated 65,000 pending claims. With pressure to hold down costs, lawmakers set an artificially low $100 million budget. They called it a first step and said more money could be approved later. But with 25,000 new claims and counting, the Obama administration is now arguing that the $100 million budget should be considered a cap to be split among the successful cases. The position — spelled out in a legal motion filed in February and reiterated in recent settlement talks — would leave payments as low as $2,000 or $3,000 per farmer. Boyd called that "insulting." Boyd noted that Obama's legislation specifically called for the new claimants to be eligible for the same awards as the initial lawsuit, including expedited payments of $50,000 plus $12,500 in tax breaks that the vast majority of the earlier farmers received. "I'm really disappointed," Boyd said. "This is the president's bill." "They did discriminate against these farmers, maybe not all of them, but a lot of these people would prevail if they could go to court," he said. The administration wouldn't discuss specific budget plans or commit to fully funding the claims. But in a statement to The Associated Press, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said the department agrees that more needs to be done and is working with the Justice Department to "ensure that people are treated fairly." Kenneth Baer, a budget spokesman for the White House, also suggested that the White House is planning to do more. "The president has been a leader on this issue since his days as a U.S. senator and is deeply committed to closing this painful chapter in our history," Baer said in a statement.