President Barack Obama
It is sad but true for the republicans. President Obama and the SEALS killed Bin Laden and General Motors is alive and well. Bin Laden is Dead and GM is the #1 auto maker in the world. Mitt Romney is lying with every breath and John McCain is still not over Obama beating him last election. Republican spokesmen are crying and whining on every tv show that will host them. How dare Obama mention something he did that the American people love.
Aren't those republicans silly? Ask them about anything President Obama is doing and they will tell you they would do it better, quicker, more completely and make miracles happen. Republicans can reduce the price of gas to $1.79 and create enough jobs to employ everyone in the country. Ask them how they will do anything and beyond cutting taxes on the upper 1% and big business and you get only silence. Now President Obama has done something they wish they had done and guess what? They would have done it exactly that way, except of course they didn't. Republicans are only talking trash when it comes to killing Bin Laden. President Obama got Bin Laden NOT the party of big talk and no action, not GW BUSH or Dick Cheney, Not the republicans. Republicans are just blowing smoke.
Old, Dissatisfied and Unable to Get Over His Defeat in the Last Presidential Election, It's Sarah Palin's running mate John McCain.
The political party of the “Mission Accomplished” banner on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln in May 2003, the party that gave us George W. Bush as an adorable dressup fighter pilot, now accuses Barack Obama of “spiking the ball” because he runs an ad about the order to take out Osama Bin Laden in May 2011.Are they kidding? If it had been Bush who ordered the hit on Bin Laden, the Republicans would have wanted to make the day it happened into an instant national holiday. Instead they send out Sen. John McCain to issue a statement about the President who kicked McCain up and down the Electoral College four years ago.
“Shame on Barack Obama,” McCain says, “for diminishing the memory of Sept. 11 and the killing of Osama Bin Laden by turning it into a cheap political ad.”
Listen: You don’t have to line up with Obama on health care or the stimulus program or bailing out the automobile industry. You can talk about how he hasn’t done enough about jobs, about the deficit, about him making the talk-show rounds. You can line up with all the bullhorn media yahoos obsessed with getting Obama out of office, and all the deep-pocket donors who will spend any amount of money to make sure that happens in November.
But the idea that this President isn’t allowed to remind people that nearly 10 years after Bin Laden killed nearly 3,000 of our own in New York and tried to blow up lower Manhattan it was his — Obama’s — order that finally took the guy out is plain stupid, even for a smart guy like John McCain. It is "extra special" stupid for John McCain to play this game
I frankly don’t remember McCain being offended nine years ago when Bush made that jet landing on the Lincoln and stood in front of that “Mission Accomplished” banner and said, “In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.”
After that day, after Bush took that victory lap, there were more than 4,000 more American casualties in Iraq and so many more wounded, and that is just the count of American dead and wounded. In a war Bush started. In a country that had nothing to do with Bin Laden or Sept. 11, 2001.
Bush was the one who declared that this country would get Bin Laden “dead or alive.” Only it didn’t happen on his watch, didn’t happen until May 1 of last year, didn’t happen until Obama gave the order and SEAL Team Six went up those stairs in Pakistan and took the bastard out.
I would have done the same thing as Obama in killing Bin Laden. Even Jimmy Carter would have made the right call, even Rick Santorum!
Is this some huge pressing campaign issue in the America of 2012? It’s not. More than anything, Bin Laden’s death is just another reminder about how long a year is in politics, and especially presidential politics. On that Sunday night one year ago, when word began to get around about what had happened across the world in Pakistan, there was this cockeyed notion that the 2012 campaign was over before it had even begun, that it was game, set, match for Obama.
Can Obama run only on that in 2012? Of course not. But the Republicans also aren’t allowed to somehow use Bin Laden against him. It actually seems to make them a little crazy — or crazier — that they can no longer campaign against Obama with the idea that he is soft on terrorism, now that the opposite of that is true.
"And There Were No Weapons of Mass Destruction"
And by the way? The previous administration’s idea of an aggressive war on terror was to start a corrupt war in Iraq. Maybe Sen. McCain could be a little more offended about that, even late in the game, than he is about Obama using Bin Laden to make some political hay.Barack Obama was the one who had to issue the order on Bin Laden and did, even as others in his administration were telling him it was a mistake, there was too much risk involved, that the downside of a failed mission for Obama — already being compared with Jimmy Carter — was him looking as bad as Carter had with the failed hostage rescue in Iran in 1980.
So Obama made the call, and Bin Laden was shot dead by Navy SEALs, and if it wasn’t the end of the movie, it was at least a form of closure for those who lost family or friends on Sept. 11. So this was an American President giving you a real mission accomplished, taking out a real weapon of mass destruction, not imagined ones.
And please imagine what the cheering from the other side would have been like if it had been Bush who made the call on Bin Laden, if Bush had still been President when it happened. They wouldn’t have just spiked the ball in the end zone, they would have started a conga line that stretched all the way down Pennsylvania Ave., would have danced all the way to Election Day.
President Obama and the Somali Pirates
President Obama 's Foriegn Policy Victories place him head and shoulders above Mitt Romney
Mitt Romney lived in France, opened Swiss Bank Accounts and Hid Money in the Cayman Islands so he has some experience dealing with issues out of country. So does President Obama. Lets go back and look at how Obama coped with the Somali Pirates and Why Obama's Action Against the Somali Pirates Matters. Americans judge a president by how he handles the sudden challenges from far away and Obama made a good impression with his steady actions. When asked how he would have handeled the matter Mitt Romney replied "I would have done the same thing Obama did".
Somali Pirates wait for a ship to attack
Sometimes, even small international dust-ups can generate big consequences for a commander in chief. History is peppered with cases where an American president was forced to deal with an emergency in a faraway place that wouldn't have amounted to much if handled correctly but damaged his reputation when the job was botched. Barack Obama's decision to use force against Somali pirates this week fits into the success category. Above all, the plan worked, giving Americans a feel-good moment and showing off the new president's coolness under pressure, his good judgment, and his decisiveness. But it probably won't make an enduring difference in Obama's public standing. "He will get a short-term boost, but in the long run, it's not the kind of incident that makes
or breaks a president's reputation," says Julian Zelizer, a Princeton University historian. The stakes, after all, were relatively low since the homeland wasn't threatened. Most important, it was the American military, particularly Navy SEAL sharpshooters, who deserved the credit for taking down the pirates and rescuing Richard Phillips, the U.S. captain of the Maersk Alabama who was being held hostage in a lifeboat.
Republicans are bothered by Obama's treatment of the Somalia Pirates. The GOP says he should be more gentle.
But there would have been hell to pay if the operation had failed. "If he had tried dialogue and they killed that guy, he would've been in for a lot of criticism," says a veteran Republican strategist. As the crisis continued for five days, some Republicans, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, began beating war drums and calling for Obama to strike quickly. The critics resurrected questions from the campaign that Obama might be too inexperienced and naive to be an effective commander in chief. Zelizer, a specialist in national security issues, says failure under such circumstances "can define an administration and leave the perception of a weak president."
Now that the operation has succeeded, there will be no negative fallout. But the positive impact is likely to fade quickly. "In six months," Zelizer says, "Obama's reputation will be shaped far more by his conduct of the war in Afghanistan and his policies toward Europe and Russia."
Presidents have had mixed results in dealing with hostage situations and other potentially violent incidents abroad. For instance, President Jimmy Carter's failed mission to rescue U.S. hostages from Iran in 1980 badly damaged his reputation as an effective commander in chief and hurt America's image as a military power.
President Bill Clinton's embarrassing withdrawal of a shipload of U.S. troops from the coast of Haiti in 1993 after the vessel was threatened by an armed mob gathered at the dock in Port-au-Prince was also a serious blemish. But presidents can recover. Clinton won re-election; Carter, dealing with a much tougher and longer-
term problem, didn't.
On the positive side, Thomas Jefferson ordered U.S. warships to the Mediterranean in 1801 to stop Barbary pirates from capturing American and European ships and demanding ransom. His show of force succeeded, at least temporarily.
In 1904, Theodore Roosevelt sent the Navy to threaten Sherif Ahmed er Raisuli, a Moroccan known as the last of the Barbary pirates, after Raisuli kidnapped a wealthy Greek-American named Ion Perdicarus and his stepson near Tangier. Roosevelt told the Republican National Convention in Chicago that June, "This government wants Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead." Memorable words, to be sure, but the ultimatum wasn't what ended the
showdown. That happened when France intervened and brokered a deal.
In 1975, Cambodia seized an unarmed U.S. cargo ship, the Mayaguez, in disputed waters in the Gulf of Siam.
Somali Pirates Captured, The GOP says they should have cushions to set on, shade from the sun and a bottle of water close at hand.
Steady and Cool President Obama Captian's the Ship of State
President Obama is now enjoying the afterglow from the U.S. military's display of prowess off the coast of Somalia. But he shouldn't rest easy. Pirate leaders say they will take vengeance on the United States, and on Tuesday thugs tried unsuccessfully to board another American freighter carrying food aid to Kenya, the Liberty Sun. It's clear that the story of this president and the pirates isn't over.
Withdrawing From Iraq
President Obama Announces Withdrawal of Troops
We Step Back in Time Once More to View the Foreign Policy Experience of President Obama. Mitt Romney has zero experience if you discount his vacation in France, his Swiss Bank Account and the Hiden Money in the Cayman Islands.
Remember the Bush/Cheney Never Ending Adventure in Iraq. Well it finally did end and it was President Obama that brought it to an orderly end. Republicans moaned, warhawks like John McCain cried and they tried to sell the idea that the US should stay for ten or fifteen more years. John McCain likes the smell of war and has never encountered one he did not instantly love and want to expand. Mitt Romney complained as he does about everything Obama does and said that if elected he would send the troops back to Iraq and maintain a force there for ten or more years. The GOP makes money off of war. War makes donations to republicans bigger and as they buy more and more military items the donations continue to grow. Thanks to President Obama for breaking
this dirty partisan circle.
BOTH!!!
Is Romney a Fool?, a Idiot? or both? Mitt Romney is a man who wants to be president so badly he will do or say anything to get closer to the white house. Romney has been on both sides of most of the issues and has flipped more than twice on some. Is it Flip Romney or his twin Flop Romney or his other persona etch a sketch Romney? Eventually the Romney trio will say something you like and agree with. Snap a photo immediately, it won't last for long as Romney changes again. Romney is the man republicans fought thru 21 debates and 35 primaries or caucuses to award the GOP Candidate status to? Is that too funny or what???
President Obama announced that the United States will pull all its troop from Iraq by the end of the year (end of 2011). We have gone back in time to view President Obama's Foreign Policy experience.
“Today, I can report that as promised, the rest of our troops in Iraq will come home by the end of the year,” the president said. “After nine years, America’s war in Iraq will be over.”
Obama vowed to work with the Iraqi government in the coming years, and said the two were “in full agreement about how to move forward.”
On a broader scale, the president stressed that “the end of war in Iraq reflects a larger transition.”
“The tide of war is receding,” he said of the war that started under President George W. Bush in 2003.
About 4,000-5,000 security contractors will remain in Iraq, the White House said.
The Status of Forces Agreement between the United States and Iraq expires at the end of the year. Officials had been discussing the possibility of maintaining several thousand U.S. troops to train Iraqi security forces, and the Iraqis wanted troops to stay but would not give them immunity, a key demand of the administration.
“This deal was cut by the Bush administration, the agreement was always that at end of the year we would leave, but the Iraqis wanted additional troops to stay,” an administration official said. “We said here are the conditions, including immunities. But the Iraqis because of a variety of reasons wanted the troops and didn’t want to give immunity.”
Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough told reporters that the U.S. assessment determined that Iraqis were ready and they proved they could fully take over their security. The U.S. will have a robust diplomatic presence and continue to train Iraqi forces, he said, but it will be similar to what it has in other countries.
“We’re going to have the kind of robust cooperation with the Iraqis that we have with allies all over the world,” McDonough said.
President Obama convened a secure video conference this morning with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to talk with him about this news, a source said.
More than 1 million Americans have served in Iraq since the war began nine years ago. More than 4,000 troops have died, and over 32,000 injured during these years.
There are 39,000 U.S. troops in Iraq as of this week. From the beginning of operations through July 31, 2011, the Defense Department has obligated $704.6 billion for Operation Iraqi Freedom/Operation New Dawn (OND). The monthly cost of the war right now is about $3.8 billion.
Today’s announcement fulfills one of Obama’s central campaign promises. In 2002, Obama called the intervention a “dumb war” and as presidential candidate, vowed to bring troops home in his administration.
The Iraq war has become deeply unpopular among Americans. In a Gallup poll conducted in January, 66 percent of Americans opposed the war and a majority did not think it was worth fighting, given its costs versus the benefits.
One Dollar Coins Say Good By, US stops minting $1 coins
There's a lot to like about $1 coins. They are more durable than paper money, and they're easier and cheaper to handle. The only problem is, Americans hate using them.
Because of that, the Federal Reserve has literally entire warehouses full of unused $1 coins returned to them by banks because people don't want them. From Robert Benincasa and David Kestenbaum at NPR's Planet Money:
The federal government will stop minting unwanted $1 coins, the White House said Tuesday. The move will save an estimated $50
million a year.
Earlier this year, we reported on the mountain of $1 coins sitting unused in government vaults. The pile-up -- an estimated 1.4 billion coins -- was caused by a 2005 law that ordered the minting of coins honoring each U.S. president.
We calculated that the unwanted coins had cost taxpayers some $300 million dollars to make. There were so many coins piling up that the Federal Reserve was redesigning a vault in Texas to help hold them all.
We got to see a vault in Baltimore. It was the size of a soccer field, filled with bags of dollar coins.
On the merits, dollar coins are all-around better than dollar bills, but as long as you make them optional, rather than taking $1 bills out of circulation to force the change, Americans will kick them to the curb.
That's true for a couple of reasons. First off, I think people in the U.S. have kind of stopped thinking of coins as real money. Most people seem to look at coins as "loose change" and "pocket change," not holders of real value.
The other reason is that American men generally don't carry an item that's pretty much ubiquitous in places with valuable coins: a coin purse or wallet capable of securing coins. Whenever I'm in Europe visiting the Swedish branch of my family, I'm always struck by how pretty much every dude walking around over there has a coin holder, which is a real rarity in this country and in approximately the same class of coolness as, say, a calculator watch or Velcro shoes.
Of course, that problem would immediately be solved as soon as $1 bills were eliminated. While it might take a while for men to abandon their classy money clips, there are a few things people hate more than losing money.
It would only take a few bucks rolling out of their pockets to make men reconsider the style characteristics of coin-carrying wallets.
But people like paper money, and they hate $1 coins, and Congress is having difficulty even mustering up the political will to keep the lights on at this point, so I don't see it happening anytime soon. As a result, it's probably smarter for the government to keep the $50 million.
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Amherst County Republicans and Cousin Mitt Romney
Amherst County Republicans have so much in common with Mitt Romney. Local republicans pay a very low rate of taxes, somewhere in the 12 or 13 percent area like Mitt. Local republicans have their money stashed all over the world in tax dodges just like Mitt. Their religons have so much in common, Mormans are just like Catholics and Baptist except for the planetary travel. Amherst county building permits show a boom in elevators for automobiles being issued to local republicans. Local republicans think the trees are just the right height. The Amherst Republicans like to fire the people who work for them. And last but not least, Romney is white. You know its true!
Perhaps you earn a little extra money speaking like Mitt. ''I get speaker's fees from time to time, but not very much.'' said Mitt, who earned $374,000 in speaking fees in one year according to his personal financial disclosure.
Could be you're a Romney's kind of Big Game Hunter chasing down varmits, you know rats and rabbits and such. What is it, Your wife drives a couple of Cadillacs?, or You bet $10,000 at the drop of a hat. You change your mind a lot like Pro Choice - Right to Life - Whatever gets Your vote - Flip Romney or Flop Romney or Etch A Sketch Romney. Might You have some great friends who are NASCAR team owners like Mitt? Or is it that you believe in an America where millions of Americans believe in an America that's the America millions of Americans believe in. That's the America You love and you're just like Mitt who actually said the above mouthfull of nothingness.
NO that's not it. You like Mitt cause he's white and you can't bring yourself to give President Obama a chance cause he's only half white. Whatever, You've got so much else in common with republicans and Cousin Mitt Romney.
Where in the world is Mitt Romney's money?
President Barack Obama's re-election campaign launched a new webpage designed to answer that question and attack the presumptive GOP nominee for putting his wealth in offshore accounts. "Mitt Romney has invested his money around the world, from the Cayman Islands to Ireland to Australia," the website reads. "We don’t know if he’s using these accounts to avoid paying his fair share in taxes, but we do know that in 2010, Romney’s tax rate was a startlingly low 13.9%."
The Associated Press reported in January that Romney has up to $32 million in accounts overseas. The webpage features a large infographic tracking the locations of these accounts and the amounts of money they contain, though as of now, most of the locations on the map display ominous question marks rather than account balances.
It also provides social media links urging readers to call on Romney to return his money to the United States. The infographic is the latest interactive tool the Obama campaign has created to highlight Romney's wealth. In April, the campaign debuted a calculator allowing voters to compare their tax rates to Romney's, swiping at his relatively low 13.9 percent rate.
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Paul Ryan and his Ayn Rand Connection
For those who do not know Ayn Rand was a batty old atheist who preached a self-serving “philosophy” called objectivism. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) is an Ayn Rand follower and used the objectivism philosophy to craft the republican budget that takes from the poor and gives to the rich in the form of bigger tax breaks. When it became common knowledge that he followed Rand he quickly changed his tune and is trying to distance himself from her.
Rand advocated the right to legal abortion. She opposed involuntary military conscription, but also thought those who avoided being drafted should be held criminally liable. She opposed any form of censorship, including legal restrictions on pornography. Objectivists have also opposed a number of government activities commonly supported by both liberals and conservatives, including antitrust laws, the minimum wage, public education, and existing child labor laws. Objectivists have argued against faith-based initiatives, displaying religious symbols in government facilities, and the teaching of "intelligent design" in public schools. Maintaining that it should be phased out gradually, Rand opposed taxation as she considered it theft and an endorsement of force over reason. How Congressman Ryan became a devoted follower of Ayn Rand is anybodies guess. He is singing a different tune today and denying any connection. Like so many other lying republicans the facts are doing him in.
In 2005, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) heaped praise on Ayn Rand, a 20th-century libertarian novelist best known for her philosophy that centered on the idea that selfishness is “virtue.” The New Republic wrote:
“The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to
credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand," Ryan said at a D.C. gathering four years ago honoring the author of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.”
Ryan also noted in a 2003 interview with the Weekly Standard, “I give out ‘Atlas Shrugged’ as Christmas presents, and I make all my interns read it. Well… I try to make my interns read it.”
But today, Ryan is singing a far different tune. From an interview with National Review’s Bob Costa this week:
“I reject her philosophy,” Ryan says firmly. “It’s an atheist
philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview. If somebody is going to try to paste a person’s view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas,” who believed that man needs divine help in the pursuit of knowledge. “Don’t give me Ayn Rand,” he says.
The key word here is atheist. Ryan, author of the draconian Republican budget, might still keep a secret shrine to Rand but he knows he has to publicly renounce her in order not to offend voters who still find a way to reconcile their selfishness with belief in the Christian god.
AS for Ryan’s bizarre allusion to Aquinas — well, Ryan calls himself a Catholic. It makes sense for him to say he admires a Catholic theologian at a time when the Catholic hierarchy has been condemning his budget plan, which calls for severe cutbacks in aid to the poor. I wonder if he’s read what Aquinas said about the habit of doing good?
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