Posts Tagged Cheney
Sarah Palin Nuked Her Own Brain
Posted by Lance Haley in 9/11, Congress, Conservatives, Government, National Security, Sarah Palin, War in Afghanistan, War on Terror, White House, al Qaida, foreign policy on April 12th, 2010
It’s obvious Sarah Palin must have put her head in the microwave oven somewhere along the way.
In her most recent comments regarding President Obama’s nuclear weapons policy, Palin tried to belittle Obama by claiming that his only knowledge of the topic was gained through “his vast nuclear experience that he acquired as a community organizer and as a full-time candidate.”
Excuse me? Palin sees a full-time candidate every morning when she looks in the mirror.
But more to the point. What Palin obviously does not even know is that as a first-term junior U.S. Senator with a coveted seat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Obama introduced his first major piece of legislation in 2005 with Republican co-sponsor Senator Richard Lugar, Chairman of the committee. Known as the Lugar-Obama proliferation and threat reduction initiative, it was designed to limit proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), as well as expand the State Department’s ability to find and interdict weapons and materials designed for this purpose – particularly nuclear weapons.
Betcha didn’t know that one, Sarah?!?
Moreover, when she stated that the Obama Adminstration “treated the Afghan President poorly”- referring to President Obama’s direct and unambiguous criticism of Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s unwillingness to root out corruption and fraud within his own government – she explicitly ignores the fact that his government is financed by and exists only with the support of the United States taxpayer; that Afghanistan has virtually no Gross Domestic Product – as in an economy, Sarah; that Afghanistan’s largest export – opium - directly provides the world with an unending supply of heroin, while simultaneously financing the Taliban and Al Qaeda; and last, but not least, there is strong evidence that President Karzai’s brother is heavily involved in this game of drug trafficking and revenue-sharing with the terrorists organizations.
Yet she maintains that we should continue to finesse Afghanistan, but not Iran. She thinks we should finesse Pakistan, but not North Korea. She believes we should “quit coddling our enemies”, and that we should “respect” our allies – in spite of their unwillingness to respect our own national security interests. Sarah, here is what happens when you coddle an ally too much:
1) As you keep throwing more and more money at them – $21 Billion to be exact, in U.S. foreign aid given to Pakistan from 2001 through 2008 - you perpetuate their willful impotence and institutional corruption. The Bush Administration kept former Pakistani leader General Musharaff propped-up with U.S. taxpayer’s money for seven years with a promise from Pakistan that it would root out and pursue terrorists operating in its own territories. They did little or nothing. It was only after the Democrats had taken back control of Congress in 2006 and then threatened to pull the plug on Pakistan’s foreign aid, that Bush reluctantly decided it was time to “get tough” with Musharaff.
2) You cannot allow your ally’s sovereignty to be paramount to your own national security. Republican Presidential candidate John McCain – do you even recall who his V.P. running-mate was, Sarah (?) – stated that he (McCain) would not violate Pakistan’s sovereignty by going after terrorists in it’s territory if elected President. In deep contrast to that “coddle your friends” policy, President Obama made it clear on numerous occasions while on the campaign trail that if Pakistan would not do the job, he would! Shortly after President Obama took the oath of office, he made good on his word. And guess what, Sarah? Our terrorist enemies in Pakistan do not sleep well at night anymore – as this blog noted some 90 days ago.
3) When the U.S. taxpayer funds $21 Billion in foreign aid under the pretense that it is going to make our country safer, they want a President who is going to make sure that the recipients give us our money’s worth. President Obama immediately recognized that Pakistan’s government was full of graft and corruption, and that it was doing nothing about ousting the terrorists, so he pressed them very hard on the issue - unlike Bush and Cheney – and Pakistan has demonstrated a whole new attitude about going after the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Moreover, they have kept their damn mouths shut about the U.S. “violating their sovereignty” with our incessant and terrifying drone attacks – thus giving the terrorists a taste of their own medicine after seven years of U.S. impotence.
President Obama is now sending the same message to Afghan President Karzai – PUT UP, OR SHUT UP!
HMMMMMMMMMMM . . .
Amazing how that all works, eh Sarah???
If Palin thinks – and I use the term “think” very loosely in her case - that she has any standing to criticize President Obama’s foreign policy experience, let’s look at the facts. In the previous Presidential election campaign, Palin couldn’t even identify the Bush Doctrine when asked by Charlie Gibson of ABC news - damn those “gotcha journalists”, Sarah. Moreover, that she is not even aware of President Obama’s own prior nuclear proliferation legislation introduced in the U.S. Senate back in 2005 speaks for itself.
Here is the reality for Sarah Palin’s political supporters: well-timed platitudes and folksy quotes are not going to make this country more secure. To the contrary. And our enemies would be more than happy to exploit such blatant foreign policy inexperience and unprecedented ignorance of publically available information. The information contained in this post is not rocket science, and easily accessible to even a 5th grader, Sarah.
Most glaring though, is The Anchorage Daily News’ – as in Alaska’s largest newspaper – recent acknowledgement that “she has little or no foreign policy experience.”. If she cannot even get an endorsement from her own home state newspaper on this very important issue . . . well, that speaks volumes.
Which all leaves no doubt that the terrorists are just drooling at the prospect of her being elected President in 2012.
President Obama: Yes! It’s The Economy, Stupid.
Posted by Lance Haley in Bailouts, Banking, Business and Money, Campaigns, Capitalism, Congress, Conservatives, Credit Card Industry, Dick Cheney, Economics, Financial Crisis, Fox News, Glenn Beck, Government, How and Why We Get Screwed, Media & Communication, Politics, Sarah Palin, Senate, Show Them the $$$, Tea Party, Wall Street, Wealth Disparity & the Ultra Rich, financial industry on January 22nd, 2010
President Obama has been beyond a huge disappointment.
The reasons for his significant failure in the first year of his Presidency are varied, and yesterday I read a very insightful essay on MSN Money by Paul B. Farrell of the Wall Street Journal’s Market Watch that hones in on a number of opportunities Obama could have seized upon as a result of the financial collapse that would have allowed him to increase the already significant political capital that he possessed on the day of his inauguration.
In the simplest parlance - he blew it!
This writer will have more to say on the specifics of those issues, but that is for another entry posted here on this blog. More importantly for purposes of today’s entry, I offer a humble mea culpa for my idealistic beliefs that this man was really different from all the others. I pride myself on being intellectually honest enough to admit that I was wrong about Obama’s willingness to effectuate any substantial change in this country with acumen and finesse. How stupid of me to believe that he would really first focus on the one issue that was at the forefront of every voter’s mind since November, 2007 - one year before the 2008 election – and has continuously been the leading issue for the past two years.
In the words of James Carville’s famous political mantra for the 1992 Clinton campaign, “It’s The Economy Stupid!”
Suddenly this week, the President finally has this incredible revelation that he needs to place the issue of the economy, as well as attend to financial system reform, at the top if his agenda? President Obama – how could you and all of these ostensibly intelligent people you surrounded yourself with have possibly missed that most salient and readily available information? Why did you not immediately address the failure of our economic system in it’s present form to serve the interests of its citizens, and redress the ongoing transgressions by the men who were responsible for single-handedly wrecking the underpinnings of American Capitalism? Why did you not implement substantial changes in how our economy is managed by imposing strict accountability, transparency and limitations on how the banking industry operated? Why did you trust that these financial terrorists would not not rob the national treasury for their own personal gain, instead turning a blind eye to their obvious avarice and indifference to the economic welfare of the country? Why did you not instruct Tim Geithner and the Treasury Department to direct the lending institutions to focus all of that available financial capital at shoring-up businesses and home values in order to preserve the essential assets so critical to the future of the American people, instead of bailing out these corrupt and incompetent financial giants? Why did you not utilize the available “bully pulpit” to chastise both your party and the Republicans for their unwillingness to use their legislative powers to immediately reign in these predatory financial giants, because of the “river of dirty money” (campaign contributions) running through Washington, D.C.?
Instead, you choose to ignore the over-arching importance of these matters, and wasted all of your hard-earned political capital by rubber-stamping the bailouts, and then embarking on an agenda of reforming an equally complex and failed health care system – a pathway that was historically fraught with political pitfalls and epic battles against powerful wealthy corporate interests. Anyone studying the history of American health care reform would know that simple fact.
Now, before any of you Conservatives start hooting and hollering in celebration of my criticism of the President, or my ”concession” regarding his obvious failures, let me inform you that your intellectual dishonesty for the past decade has been nothing short of shameful. Lest you think you are blameless, your willful ignorance of, as well as refusal to admit, the abysmal failure of your leaders, party, spokespersons, and Conservative media to improve the status of this country and its people - particularly Bush, Cheney, Palin, McCain, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Fox News, etc. - is completely reprehensible, and gives you no standing to believe that you have something to crow about.
You don’t.
In fact, part and parcel of Obama’s inability to effectuate change has been due to the ”political noise” you either countenenced or participated in during the election campaign in the Fall of 2008 as a substitute for reasoned and measured dialogue about what was wrong with this country. Labeling him a Muslim – when nothing is further from the truth, and cheering on those who claimed that he was “palling around with terrorists“, willfully distracted the American public from what was really at stake for the future of our country. Many of you continued to increase the sound of that chorus to a deafening roar after he was elected with the most utter nonsense – first claiming he was not a citizen in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, as well as charging that he is a Socialist, hellbent on destroying the foundations of this nation, when in fact his predecessors that you supported, as well as their corrupt political business cronies, had already virtually accomplished that objective.
In so much as you have fostered and perpetuated these opinions by either expressed belief or passive silence as to the truth, you are partially responsible for the demise of this republic. Your behavior is utterly Un-American. It is an absolute certainty that history will be far less kind to you than it will be to President Obama.
Shame on you.
And if you happen to choke to death on your teabags, oh well . . .
Dick Cheney: Have You Even Read the 9/11 Commission Report?
Posted by Lance Haley in Conservatives, Dick Cheney, How and Why We Get Screwed, Politics, Uncategorized, War in Afghanistan, War on Terror, al Qaida, foreign policy on January 1st, 2010
Dick Cheney, you were given fair warning to “quit ditherting, and just fade away.” And just like taking candy from a baby, every time you open your mouth to criticize President Obama, you make it so easyto keep pointing out your transparent hypocrisy, as well as the abject failures of your administration.
So now you say President Obama is “trying to pretend we are not at war“?
Dick Cheney, read this chapter of the 9/11 Commission Report - and specifically the Presidential Daily Brief given on August 6, 2001 , from the National Security Archives – then let’s talk about who was trying to pretend we were not at war. In case you cannot count, that would be just 35 days before 9/11.
Memo To Obama’s Critics Regarding Afghanistan . . .
Posted by Lance Haley in Government, Uncategorized, War in Afghanistan, War on Terror, al Qaida, foreign policy on January 1st, 2010
If anyone on the Right thinks you have a basis to criticize President Obama’s policy in Afghanistan, you are about to have your arse handed back to you on a paper plate.
An official report from the U.S. Army’s Combat Study Institute titled “A Different Kind of War“, is due to be published this Spring. The study reveals that the failed strategy in Afghanistan was evident as early as 2003, and was due in part to the fact that significant resources were being drawn away to support the war in Iraq. It should come as no surprise to any well-informed American that the planning for the invasion of Iraq commenced immediately after 9/11, and combat operations began in March of 2003.
The correlations are beyond damning.