1. Mary

   02/25/2009 at 9:59 am

   Thanks for the blow-by-blow, because on account of my hypertension it is not good for me to watch that guy on TV or listen to him talk. It’s a health issue.

   Reply
   • Tiger Tiger Tiger

     02/28/2009 at 1:03 am

     Mary,

     What you don’t know is that Our President Barrack Obama is going to turn this country in the right direction. What Bush’s people did to the poverty afflicted and the gays during the past eight years is utterly atrocious. He took away the condoms, anti-STD drugs, and planned parenthood checks in order to keep unwanted brats from being born into a cruel world.

     I was raised in a house that received unemployment funding all of my life, and rightfully so–my dad has asthma and couldn’t afford cigarettes and Jack Daniels some days–and I think what Our President Barrack Obama is doing for people like my parents is golden. They’re going to have money to put gas in their Beamer and they won’t have to pay their mortgage anymore! Come on, they’re 55 and 57 years old respectively for Christ’s sake!

     In a country where the poor are oppressed, finally they are going to get the GOD DAMNED government checks they have earned by being red-blooded Americans! Finally we can say God *BLESS* America if you catch my drift.

     And I want my GOD DAMNED national healthcare! I work three-day workweeks and I think I earn it. What are we? North Korea?

     Thanks and praise to Our President Barrack Obama!

     -Tiger Tiger Tiger

     Reply
     • Linda Stemberger

       03/06/2009 at 8:05 am

       yOU ARE SIMPLY OUT YOUR MIND IF YOUT THINK THE LYER IS GOING TO GIVE YOU ANYTHING, are you brainless all he is doing is taking away

       Reply
2. Critical Facts

   02/25/2009 at 10:05 am

   I find it fascinating how you blame, today, the democratically controlled congress from ’06 to ’08 for jacking up the national debt to obscene levels while, during the same period, screaming FOR passage of enormous spending bills for the military. Sorry, cj, but you cannot have your cake and eat it, too. You got what you asked for then – the Dems gave it to you with much regret – and we are now faced with the unfortunate result. It is time for you to rally behind the president, stop your moaning, and let him try and fix the mess that bushco – with the enormous support and encouragement of drooling war-hawk repuglicans – brought us.

   Reply
   • SSgtJ

     02/25/2009 at 11:04 am

     CF, There you go again … “rally behind the president” … just like you did Bush … don’t you feel any hipocracy at all?

     BTW, the Iraq War cost less than your guy wants to spend to pay off the unions, lawyers and hollywood.

     Reply
     • Critical Facts

       02/25/2009 at 12:10 pm

       Sarge:

       Obama is doing something that needs to be done (unless you are happy to simply allow the economy to collapse). Bush did not need to invade Iraq.

       Reply
       • CJ

         02/25/2009 at 12:39 pm

         Funny how you keep bringing it back to Iraq, a tired argument that you lost on ASP. If we don’t need to be there, why isn’t te Messiah simply getting us out. We’ve won. We can pull out now.
   • CJ

     02/25/2009 at 12:38 pm

     CF, there go throwing around words without anything to back it up. I notice first of all that you didn’t disagree with me. But, I’m more interested in when I was “FOR passage of enormous spending bills for the military.” I’m sure you can easily provide evidence to back your irresponsible statement. I’ll stand by.

     Reply
     • Critical Facts

       02/25/2009 at 1:00 pm

       cj:

       Well, were you or were you not in support of the spending requests made by bush to support the military in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yes or no should suffice.

       Reply
       • CJ

         02/25/2009 at 4:54 pm

         I was absolutely FOR them while at the SAME time chastizing ALL attempts to tack on additional funding unrelated to war funding. The fact is that our Soldiers are at war. If the country is going to keep them there, they MUST be funded or they die. They need bullets, water, food, and equipment. I was very vocal AGAINST spending by Republicans and Democrats to tack on pork to these bills.

         CF, did you see how easy that was to answer a simple question? You should try it some time.

         Next.
3. Marijuana

   03/01/2009 at 1:05 am

   CJ: quotting a speech, ha ha ha. You are very clever. The is ONE simple answer to all of this. Stay out of other countries problems, stay envolved in our own and keep the “us” in USA!!! We needs to pull out of iraq and use that money in country to make green cars and green electricity for Americans. Bush got rich while our family members went to war. Go-Bamma!!!

   Reply
4. Thomas Folan

   03/01/2009 at 11:01 am

   ONE MORE THING C.J.
   Please allow me to re-print Ralph Peters’
   column ‘OBAMA’s Phony PULL-OUT’ :
   YESTERDAY, President Obama went to Camp Lejeune. He spoke in front of US Marines, but his real audience was his left-wing campaign supporters.

   And his carefully worded speech – its parsing of language worthy of Bill Clinton – may go down in history as his “Mission Accomplished” moment. We’ll see who leaves Iraq when.

   During last year’s presidential campaign, it was evident that Obama wouldn’t keep his promises to his leftist base to pull our troops out rapidly.

   While he benefited greatly from the troop surge he opposed – which handed him a convalescent Iraq – he’s learning that reality trumps rhetoric.

   Forcefully delivered, his speech to the Marines served up more waffles than the International House of Pancakes.

   Consider his big sound bite: “Let me say this as plainly as I can: by August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end.” What does that mean?

   Will the 50,000 troops he intends to leave in Iraq, the trainers and maintainers, be forbidden to defend themselves? Are they just going to hang out? If terrorists or the Iranians skunk us, are we just going to ask for more?

   The enemy gets a say, too. The situation on the ground will determine when combat operations end. Obama’s just going to call them something else.

   In the immortal phrasing of Ol’ Bill, it depends on what the meaning of “is” is.

   As for Obama’s claim that “I have chosen a timeline that will remove our combat brigades over the next 18 months,” just watch.

   We’re not going to leave 50,000 support troops in Iraq without combat units to protect them. We’ll just ban the word “brigade” and call our shooters “task forces.”

   The reality all along has been that Obama can’t cut and run.

   He began campaigning for a second term on Inauguration Day and he’s not going to let himself be blamed for “losing” Iraq.

   Meanwhile, he’s praying that progress continues in Baghdad.

   As for yesterday’s boilerplate nonsense that “The end of the war in Iraq will enable a new era of American leadership and engagement in the Middle East,” hey, if it does, thank George W. Bush. History has a wicked sense of humor.

   Of course, the rhetoric’s necessary. Obama had to lecture the Marines to placate the angry extremists who put him in office.

   The fundamental purpose of the speech was to hide the 50,000 residual troops in plain sight: “It’s OK, see? They’re not combat troops.” Obama’s scared as a naked sheriff at a moonshiners’ convention.

   He piggybacked on the left’s hatred of “Bush’s war” in Iraq, but had to show his tough-on-security bones during the campaign.

   A strategic novice, he declared Afghanistan the good war. Now it’s his. And while Iraq looks increasingly like a success story, Afghanistan’s going south. Iraq’s the prize, Afghanistan’s the booby prize.

   Success in Afghanistan’s a one-off, while even a half-baked democracy in Iraq changes the Middle East. And Pakistan’s the monster under the White House bed. In artilleryman’s parlance, Obama’s speech to the Marines was all flash, no bang.

   He’s struggling to appear decisive while carving out maximum wiggle room. And in the modern tradition of Democratic presidents, he just wishes these foreign conflicts would go away. But they won’t.

   Welcome to reality, Mr. President

   Reply
5. Thomas Folan

   03/01/2009 at 11:15 am

   One moe THING C.J.
   This was in U.S.A. Today.
   It was written by Ralph Peters.
   I thought your readers would be interested in this.

   The mendacity of hope
   The U.S. essentially has four options — from best to worst — going forward in Afghanistan.
   By Ralph Peters The conflict in Afghanistan is the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time. Instead of concentrating on the critical mission of keeping Islamist terrorists on the defensive, we’ve mired ourselves by attempting to modernize a society that doesn’t want to be — and cannot be — transformed.(Marines on patrol: What’s needed in Afghanistan is not more U.S. troops or hope./
   Rafiq Maqbool, AP)In the absence of a strategy, we’re doubling our troop commitment, hoping to repeat the success we achieved in the profoundly different environment of Iraq. Unable to describe our ultimate goals with any clarity, we’re substituting means for ends.Expending blood and treasure blindly in Afghanistan, we do our best to shut our eyes to the worsening crisis next door in Pakistan, a radicalizing Muslim state with more than five times the population and a nuclear arsenal. We’ve turned the hose on the doghouse while letting the mansion burn. Initially, Afghanistan wasn’t a war of choice. We had to dislodge and decimate al-Qaeda, while punishing the Taliban and strengthening friendlier forces in the country. Our great mistake was to stay on in an attempt to build a modernized rule-of-law state in a feudal realm with no common identity.We needed to smash our enemies and leave. Had it proved necessary, we could have returned later for another punitive mission. Instead, we fell into the great American fallacy of believing ourselves responsible for helping those who’ve harmed us. This practice was already fodder for mockery 50 years ago, when the novella and film The Mouse That Roared postulated that the best way for a poor country to get rich was to declare war on America then surrender.Even if we achieved the impossible dream of creating a functioning, unified state in Afghanistan, it would have little effect on the layered crises in the Muslim world. Backward and isolated, Afghanistan is sui generis (only example of its kind). Political polarization in the U.S. precludes an honest assessment, but Iraq’s the prize from which positive change might flow, while Afghanistan could never inspire neighbors who despise its backwardness.Recalling failures of Vietnam Echoing Vietnam, we’re pouring wealth into Afghanistan, corrupting those we wish to rally; we’re fighting with restrictions against an enemy who enjoys sanctuaries across international borders; and our core enemies are natives, not foreign parties (as al-Qaeda was in Iraq).If the impending surge fails to pacify the country, will we send another increment of troops, then another, as we did in Southeast Asia? As the British learned the hard way, Afghanistan can be disciplined, but it can’t be profitably occupied or liberalized. It’s inconceivable to us, but many Afghans prefer their lives to the lives we envision for them. The lot of women is hideous, and the lives of nearly all the people are nasty, brutish and short. But the culture is theirs.Even “our man in Kabul,” President Hamid Karzai, put his self-interest above any greater cause. Reborn a populist, he backs every Taliban claim that the U.S. inflicts only civilian casualties in virtually every effort against terrorists. Karzai is convinced that we can’t abandon him.We should do just that. Instead of floundering in search of a strategy, we should consider removing the bulk, if not all, of our forces. The alternative is to hope blindly, waste more lives and resources, and, in the worst case, see our vulnerable supply route through Pakistan cut, forcing upon our troops the most ignominious retreat since Korea in 1950 (a massive air evacuation this time around, leaving a wealth of military gear).Ranked from best to worst, here are our four basic options going forward:• Best. Instead of increasing the U.S. military “footprint,” reduce our forces and those of NATO by two-thirds, maintaining a “mother ship” at Bagram Air Base and a few satellite bases from which special operations troops, aircraft and drones, and lean conventional forces would strike terrorists and support Afghan factions with whom we share common enemies. All resupply for our military could be done by air, if necessary. Stop pretending Afghanistan’s a real state. Freeze development efforts. Ignore the opium. Kill the fanatics.• Good. Leave entirely. Strike terrorist targets from over the horizon and launch punitive raids when necessary. Instead of facing another Vietnam ourselves, let Afghanistan become a Vietnam for Iran and Pakistan. Rebuild our military at home, renewing our strategic capabilities. • Poor. Continue to muddle through as is, accepting that achieving any meaningful change in Afghanistan is a generational commitment. Surge troops for specific missions, but not permanently. • Worst. Augment our forces endlessly and increase aid in the absence of a strategy. Lie to ourselves that good things might just happen. Let U.S. troops and Afghans continue to die for empty rhetoric, while Pakistan decays into a vast terrorist refuge.A reality check In any event, Pakistan, not Afghanistan, will determine the future of Islamist extremism in the region. And Pakistan is nearly lost to us — a fact we must accept. Our strategic future lies with India.President Obama pitched Afghanistan as the good war during his campaign, while rejecting our efforts in Iraq as a sideshow. He got it exactly wrong. Now our new president either needs to lay out a coherent, detailed strategy with realistic goals, or accept that, by mid-2002, we had achieved all that conventional forces could manage in Afghanistan.We don’t need hope. We need the audacity of realism.

   Ralph Peters is a retired Army officer, a member of USA TODAY’s board of contributors and the author of Looking For Trouble: Adventures in a Broken World.

   Reply
6. Thomas Patrick Folan

   03/01/2009 at 11:46 am

   This is from the L.A. Times
   Pentagon Request Would Curb Growth in Total Military Spending
   (Los Angeles Times, Feb. 27, 2009)
   An eight-year run of rapidly escalating defense costs appears to be coming to an end. The base defense budget is to grow 4 percent, to $533.7 billion from $513 billion. A separate war-funding bill for Afghanistan and Iraq will ask for $130 billion for next year, down about 8 percent from the $141.4 billion projected for this year. About $66 billion of the current year’s war costs have been approved by Congress, and the Obama administration said that an additional $75.5 billion would be needed.

   Reply
7. Thomas Patrick Folan

   03/01/2009 at 12:04 pm

   REMEMBER GITMO !
   ONE MORE THING C.J.
   GETTING BACK TO GITMO.
   From Congressman Peter King:

   The Real Gitmo 100% HUMANE
   HAVING just re turned from leading a con gressional delegation to the terrorist-detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, I am more convinced than ever that President Obama’s executive order to close Gitmo by next Jan. 22 is wrong and misguided and, if fully implemented, will threaten American security at home and abroad.

   To be fair, the president deserves much credit for a series of key decisions he has made in the war against terrorism: 1) launching predator missiles against Taliban and al Qaeda locations in the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater; 2) detaining, without trial, enemy combatants captured and imprisoned overseas, and 3) invoking the “state secrets” privilege to block a lawsuit on CIA renditions (the practice of allowing other nations to interrogate non-US citizen terror detainees).

   Unfortunately, his Gitmo decision undercuts these positive actions.

   It has become an article of faith among the MoveOn.org crowd and the Democratic Party’s liberal base to denounce Guantanamo as a symbol of inhumane treatment and torture. (Indeed, in his address to Congress on Tuesday, the president announced the closing of Guantanamo in the same paragraph in which he said “that is why I can stand here tonight and say . . . the United States of America does not torture.”)

   Yet that symbolism doesn’t square with the real Gitmo.

   Detainees at Guantanamo are treated far better than most American prisoners in the US jails and prisons I’ve inspected over the years. The unfounded accusations that are so regularly and cavalierly made about Guantanamo are a slander against the brave men and women of our armed forces, who perform their duties at that facility so professionally and under such duress.

   If there’s any scandal at Guantanamo, it is that the detainees are treated too well. Consider what I observed:

   * Detainees get three full meals a day with a choice of menu.

   * Each detainee receives a Koran and a prayer rug.

   * Arrows throughout the facility point toward Mecca.

   * Detainees receive full medical treatment – including psychiatric services. There is one medical personnel for every two detainees.

   * Detainees who comply with regulations are allowed out of their cells for 16 to 20 hours a day and participate in various recreational and educational activities including soccer, language training and art classes.

   * Noncompliant detainees – including the hardest of the hard core – are allowed out of their cells for four to seven hours a day. (It was particularly galling to observe a vicious terrorist reclining in the sun like a Palm Beach retiree.)

   * Detainees have access to live TV, books and two daily Arab newspapers plus USA Today. (I suppose it would be inhumane to subject them to The New York Times.)

   * Detainees are allowed to confer to discuss courtroom strategy.

   * Guards within the facility are not armed and are regularly subjected to abuse and harassment, including having human feces and urine thrown at them.

   These are not just my conclusions. The Defense Department has just finished its review of Guantanamo as ordered by President Obama and determined that conditions comply with the Geneva Conventions: “No prohibited acts were found and conditions are humane.”

   We are at war with Islamic terrorism. Gitmo is a major front in that war. Closing Guantanamo could well mean releasing deadly Islamic terrorists overseas or bringing them to American soil. It would be craven surrender to left-wing groups and uninformed, self-righteous world opinion. We must do all we can to convince President Obama to reverse his decision.

   Rep. Pete King (R-LI) is the ranking member on the House Homeland Security Committee

   Reply
8. Thomas Patrick Folan

   03/02/2009 at 9:38 am

   From Sally Pipes:
   BAM’S BAD MEDICINE
   PRESIDENT Obama’s new budget dedicates $634 bil lion over the next 10 years to what he calls health reform. He promises – or perhaps threatens – that this vast sum will be a down payment for universal coverage, which could require more than $1 trillion.

   Unfortunately, the president intends to spend all this money on the basis of several pernicious myths common in the health-care debate. As a result, his reforms would ultimately hand the health-care system over to the government and lead to rationing.

   The president’s budget repeats the popular claim that 45.7 million Americans are uninsured. The figure is taken as proof positive that the current system is failing – and that the government must step in to provide a remedy.

   But that misleading number includes millions we can hardly call uninsured. About 18 million of the uninsured make more $50,000 a year – and almost 10 million have yearly incomes over $75,000. More than 10 million aren’t US citizens. And as many as 14 million are already eligible for government programs like Medicare, Medicaid and SCHIP – but haven’t signed up.

   For most folks, health insurance is simply too expensive. And ramping up funding for government health programs, as Obama proposes, won’t make insurance cheaper. In fact, it could cause private insurance to become more expensive.

   After all, the feds reimburse hospitals and doctors at below-market rates for Medicare and Medicaid patients. So those of us with private health plans have to pay more to fill the gap – and that hidden tax is about 10 percent. In California, for example, private payers paid an extra $45 billion to compensate for unpaid Medicare costs in 2004.

   Obama’s budget also takes aim at prescription-drug costs by forcing manufacturers to give Medicaid a bigger discount, probably 20 percent, on brand-name drug purchases (it already gets a 15 percent break). That might help curb Medi caid’s expenses, but it will raise drug prices for everyone else, who will have to make up the difference.

   Taken as a whole, Obama’s health plan is predicated upon the misguided notion that government can deliver care more efficiently than the private sector. There’s ample evidence to the contrary
   Just look at the failure of existing government health programs – both here and abroad. Many Medicaid patients have a difficult time finding a doctor. According to a 2003 study by the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, doctors are five times more likely to turn away Medicaid patients than those with private insurance.

   The situation is even worse in countries like Canada and Great Britain – whose government-run systems Obama’s health braintrust has cited approvingly.

   More than 725,000 Canadians languish on months-long waiting lists for surgery and other necessary treatments. Doctors are in short supply – thanks largely to the government takeover of the health sector. In the early 1970s, when Canada launched its “universal coverage” system, the country ranked second among 28 developed countries in doctors per thousand people. Today, it’s 24th.

   Further, Canadians often lack access to the advanced medical technology that Americans take for granted. Canada ranks 19th among 26 reporting OECD nations in access to CT scanners and 14th out of 25 reporting OECD countries in access to MRI machines.

   In the UK, the government-run health system explicitly rations medical treatments through the publicly chartered National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. NICE evaluates data from clinical drug trials to decide if newer medical treatments are more effective than older, cheaper alternatives. It then makes recommendations to Britain’s state-run National Health Service about which treatments are worth paying for.

   Last summer, British patients with kidney cancer were denied access to four lifesaving drugs. NICE’s clinical and public health director said of the drugs at the time, “Although these treatments are clinically effective, regrettably the cost to the NHS is such that they are not a cost-effective use of NHS resources.”

   In other words, the British government admitted that patients would likely die without these treatments – but refused to pay for them anyway.

   This could happen here. Obama’s stimulus package includes $1.1 billion for NICE-style comparative-effectiveness studies.

   As the costs for his health reforms mount, Obama will be forced to employ the same strategies that Canada and Britain have to cut spending. That means the rationing of care (and significantly higher taxes).

   Obama’s budget represents a major effort to transform the US health-care system. Patients should ask themselves whether they’re ready for his medicine.

   Sally Pipes is president & CEO of the Pacific Research Institute. Her latest book is “The Top Ten Myths of American Health Care.”

   Reply
9. Linda Stemberger

   03/06/2009 at 8:42 am

   please lets get rid of him he is evil i just know it, cannot anyone see the danger he is to us, why is he getting away with lies i can look into his eyes and see a souless person just really look at him, pray there is a God and that G is looking after us because I am so afraid of that evil man and his evil wife, even when they smile they look evil PLEASE, AND NO I AM NOT CRAZY

   Reply

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