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Tha was a strong performance from him. No bumbling or stumbling tonight and he had an air of cockiness to him.
Dead on:
-Immigration reform
-Veteran's care and more specifically, giving vets the option to transfer benefits - I LOVE that idea.
-Open debates on earmarks
-Officially condemning genocide in Sudan, but what took so long?
-Increasing funding for physical sciences and adult stem cell research.
To be determined:
-151 programs cut to the tune of $81 Billion dollars - Need specifics on which programs and why the cut.
Dead wrong:
-A Palestinian state living peacefully with Israel by the end of the year? Seriously? Who does he think he is and what kind of pull does he think he really has? I'd love to believe this could happen. Actually, I believe it will invariably ultimately happen, but within the year? C'mon, man.
-Increasing spending on everything else. He mentioned the 151 cuts early and then the rest of the speech revolved around increasing spending on every-damned-thing else.
-Making the '01 and '03 tax cuts permanent. How does this jive with him wanting a surplus by 2012 and wanting to increase spending on every other program he mentioned?
-FISA legislation. He wants it for the good of the country, but not at the expense of the telco's. The telco's are apparently much more important to W than the security of this country. Isay to go ahead and extend FISA, but the telco's should NEVER have immunity. If what they did to help national security really was above board, then there will be no lawsuits anyways. Immunity is only a tool for the guilty, period.
-Beating the war drums on Iran. He calls for Iran to verifiably suspend their 'nucular' weapons program, yet the NIE unanimously found no evidence of a 'nucular' weapons program. He's barking up the wrong tree. His claims that Iran is funding terrorist operations in Iraq may well be true, but the scope of Iran's participation pales in comparison to Saudi Arabia's participation. Let's be real about this, folks.
That's about all for now, but I'll chime in on the other stuff as the conversation unfolds....
I liked Sebelius for that. She was very calming and she brought forth a very strong message of unification. She really got to the core of what America is supposed to be all about traditionally. I think her speech went on a little long for the actual content it had, but she did get to the core....
To be determined:
-151 programs cut to the tune of $81 Billion dollars - Need specifics on which programs and why the cut.
At this point there's almost nothing that shouldn't be on the table. Defense spending as at the top, but I think we know the Republicans aren't going to put that out there and will kick and scream for every last $800 hammer. Pelosi wants to throw more money at social services, but even if we cut defense spending back to early Clinton-era levels, it's still not there. Everything needs to be scaled back, and it's going to hurt. Bad.
Neither party wants to give up anything, so I'm guessing we'll get a full year of immigration hearings so everyone can posture for elections (at least for those who are up for re-elex) while nothing really changes.
Bushco has had eight tries to get the message right and finally, pretty much succeeded.
But lift the blanket of the message up, and you've still got the same old horses@*t underneath. I have no reason whatsoever to believe a single word this man says.
__________________
Here's to the Army and Navy and the battles they have won; here's to America's colors, the colors that never run. May the wings of liberty never lose a feather. ....
Rep Wexler: Bush's State of Disunion
Submitted by davidswanson on Mon, 2008-01-28 17:33. Activism
By Congressman Robert Wexler
Tonight, President Bush will issue what will thankfully be his final State of the Union address; but, little of what he says can be trusted.
For the past seven years, we have watched as America has moved steadily backwards. We have become a nation that is less free and less fair. We have become a nation that no longer values the right to privacy and has tragically retreated from our cherished foundations.
Nothing George W. Bush says tonight will change the sad reality of the America he has given us:
- Our economy teeters on the edge of recession while property taxes spike and homeowners are losing their homes at record levels; - Our educational system is broken and our teachers are abandoned; - Our roads and bridges languish in disrepair, while our borders and ports remain under-inspected and insecure; - Our most basic ideals about law and justice have been tossed out, as our President uses fear to pursue his reckless agenda; and - We remain mired in Iraq – a war built on lies and manipulated intelligence.
Nowhere in American history - not even Watergate - have we been confronted with an Administration so ambivalent about the truth and established law. A recent nonpartisan study found that the Bush Administration lied over 900 times in the prelude to the Iraq war, misleading us on nearly every critical issue.
It is time that we reclaim this country and undue the damage wrought by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
Democrats in Congress must stand up and lead – no matter the cost.
We need to finally act on the promises of the 2006 election and stop at nothing to bring our troops home from the Iraq. If we do not act Bush will install a permanent US presence in Iraq and John McCain's vision of a 100 year US occupation will become reality. (Click here to read my recent editorial on the Failure of the Bush Surge in Iraq.)
It is time that we faced up to our global responsibilities and begin to prevent global warming. In the richest nation on earth, it is long past time that we provide health insurance to every single American.
We must aggressively pursue impeachment hearings for Vice President Dick Cheney due to serious allegations of abuse of power including illegal wiretapping, torture, and deliberate lies to bring us to war. Click here to see my recent speech on the floor of the House calling for impeachment hearings.
Fifteen members of Congress - including 4 Judiciary Committee members - have already joined my call to Chairman Conyers for impeachment hearings and more are joining each day: (Click here to see the letter I am sending to Congressman Conyers and the list of members who have joined as signatories.)
Bush Administration officials and cabinet members must answer questions - on the record - regarding illegal wiretapping, torture, and what I perceive as deliberate, knowing lies to the American people in an effort to bring us to war in Iraq.
Impeachment hearings are essential because the Administration has recklessly used claims of executive privilege to block key witnesses from testifying. Impeachment hearings could force the Administration to drop their executive privilege claims and we would then finally get the answers this nation deserves. We are making progress with over 216,000 Americans already registering their support at http://WexlerWantsHearings.com
We must rededicate ourselves to the core values of this nation and finally deliver to the American people the change they demanded when they stood up and voted for Democrats in 2006.
I value your support, and I am thankful for your patriotism.
Together, we can begin to restore the state of our Union.
__________________
In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." --Voltaire
What a hoot!!! And the Democratic response.... my ribs still hurt!!!!
__________________
Here's to the Army and Navy and the battles they have won; here's to America's colors, the colors that never run. May the wings of liberty never lose a feather. ....
Last edited by UncleChris; January 29th, 2008 at 03:13 PM.
A fact check from the National Security Network on President Bush’s State of the Union comments regarding Afghanistan show the country is still in a state of disrepair. Bush claimed that:
A nation that was once a safe haven for al Qaida is now a young democracy where boys and girls are going to school, new roads and hospitals are being built, and people are looking to the future with new hope.
A fact check from the National Security Network on President Bush’s State of the Union comments regarding Afghanistan show the country is still in a state of disrepair. Bush claimed that:
A nation that was once a safe haven for al Qaida is now a young democracy where boys and girls are going to school, new roads and hospitals are being built, and people are looking to the future with new hope.
What were you expecting? Reality and truth from George W. Bush?
I forgot all about that part in my original post The crazy thing is that when he said that during the SOTU, my head kinda cocked to the side like a confused dog. He was talking about how great it is going in Afghanistan and how it is a model for success in the rest of the ME then he says, "That's why I am going to deploy an additional 3,200 Marines there" (or something to that effect.
Afghanistan is bad and getting worse. The regime we deposed is hunkering down and rebuilding and reasserting. This was a HUGE lie in the SOTU....
By Sean D. Naylor - Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday Jan 30, 2008 6:26:43 EST
The American Enterprise Institute, the think tank that came up with the “surge” strategy for Iraq, has just completed a re-evaluation of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan and concluded that another surge of U.S. forces is required, this time into southern Afghanistan.
AEI gathered at least “two dozen” experts for three days of discussions that finished Sunday, according to a Washington source familiar with the proposal. The AEI team was headed up by resident scholar Fred Kagan and included “many of the previous participants” from the discussions that preceded AEI’s Iraq surge proposal, including retired Army Gen. John M. “Jack” Keane, the source added.
In a telephone interview, Kagan said AEI did not conduct the study at the administration’s request. While a “core group” of AEI employees worked on both studies, along with a small number of retired Army officers, “otherwise the personnel were [experts on] Afghanistan instead of Iraq,” Kagan said.
“Our goals are just to take a look at this obviously very important issue, understand it and make recommendations about what should and should not be done,” he added.
The Iraq strategy of surging some 30,000 additional troops to conduct counterinsurgency operations in the Baghdad area, implemented by the administration early in 2007, closely tracked the recommendations made in a paper authored by Kagan and titled “Choosing Victory – a Plan for Success in Iraq.” The paper was based on the work of an ad-hoc collection of experts gathered by AEI and called the “Iraq Planning Group.”
AEI is referring to the Afghanistan policy experts who met over the long weekend as the “Afghanistan Planning Group.” Kagan said he planned to publish a report based on the group’s findings in March.
The Bush administration has given signs recently that it is becoming increasingly concerned about security in southern Afghanistan, where North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies provide the bulk of the coalition’s combat power. A Jan. 16 Los Angeles Times article quoted Defense Secretary Robert Gates criticizing those allies — without naming them — for not following proper counterinsurgency approaches.
But the White House has apparently come to the conclusion that trying to shame the allies into providing more troops and fighting harder is not working, and that more drastic steps might be required, according to the Washington source.
“They’ve finally woken up to the fact that all is not well in Afghanistan, and that brow-beating NATO is not really going to do the trick,” the Washington source said. “Then there’s the NATO ministerial [meeting] coming up in April. Basically what you come down to is that this was the moment for contributing good ideas as the administration tries to figure out what to do.”
Driving the process, according to the Washington source, is the fear that the Taliban’s recent gains in Afghanistan have imperiled the parliamentary and presidential elections scheduled for 2009.
“The forcing function really in Afghanistan is the ’09 election,” the Washington source said. “It is the judgment of all knowledgeable observers that conditions in some parts of the country are not safe enough to conduct an election in 2009 of the sort that we had in 2005, and that the failure to do so would be a huge strategic setback on a variety of fronts.”
The Afghanistan Planning Group made the following recommendations, according to the source:
• Deploy an extra U.S. brigade into Kandahar and a Marine battalion into Helmand in 2008 and maintain that force level through 2009. Some 28,000 U.S. troops are now in Iraq, about half the total coalition force there.
The administration has already announced plans to deploy an additional 3,200 Marines to Afghanistan, including a battalion to be stationed in Helmand.
• Deploy to extra brigade combat teams into southern Afghanistan in 2009.
• Expand the Afghan National Army more quickly than currently planned, using U.S. money if necessary.
• Provide NATO forces in southern Afghanistan, where the Taliban are strongest, with the necessary “enablers” such as engineers, aviation, surveillance and command and control assets.
• Use Commander’s Emergency Response Program money to build forward operating bases for Afghan National Army units in eastern and southern Afghanistan.
Overall, the group concluded that a “surge” of three additional brigades was required to secure southern Afghanistan: one brigade in Kandahar province, one in Oruzgan province and a third split between Helmand province and the mission to establish border patrols, according to the Washington source.
The group also proposed a complete overhaul of the U.S. strategic approach to Pakistan, the source said.
“You have to go through a pretty rigorous not only internal Afghan but regional geopolitical assessment in order to be able to sort out what’s essential from what’s inessential,” the source said. “Part of the problem is we’ve never had a really consistent, clear, long-term strategic idea for Afghanistan, let alone for Pashtunistan or Pakistan.” Pashtunistan is the name sometimes given to homeland of the Pashtun ethnic group, which straddles the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
The AEI study participants concluded that al-Qaida and its allies have established a major safe haven in Pakistan’s Pashtun tribal areas that border Afghanistan. This threat demands a sophisticated strategy aimed at the entire region, not just Afghanistan, the Washington source said.
The Afghanistan Planning Group recommended a series of U.S. policy measures aimed at Pakistan, including:
• Threatening the Pakistanis with unilateral U.S. strikes into Pakistani territory unless the Pakistanis take the initiative to clear al-Qaida’s safe havens themselves.
• Making U.S. military aid to Pakistan — which is largely aimed at bolstering Pakistan’s conventional forces that are focused on the perceived threat from India — contingent on the Pakistani government asserting itself throughout the Baluchistan and the North West Frontier Province, as well as in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, which have traditionally enjoyed autonomy.
The view of the Afghan Planning Group was that Pakistan was allowing the Taliban to enjoy a safe haven in Quetta, a city in Baluchistan because it had long seen the Taliban as allies, according to the Washington source.
AEI will brief government officials in the days ahead, the source said. But he declined to go into detail about which government officials had requested the study or which specific individuals were scheduled to be briefed. “This thing is extremely delicate,” he said. “The sensitivity of this is pretty high.”
Spokespersons at the Defense Department and the White House could not be reached immediately for comment.
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