Obama '08?

Didn't okie also say he didn't want food stamps cut? His knowledge about politics and economics probably falls into the category of "none."

You are the one making a fool of yourself, by essentially insinuating there is little or no waste in the federal government.

I will repeat what I have already written, as apparently you are pretty slow to grasp things. I said I would not propose cuts unless and until I have had the time to analyze all of the expenditures in detail, and I do not have the time or information to do that, parados. Does that negate my belief that there are probably lots of areas that can be cut, absolutely not, because waste is just part of the nature of government bureaucracies.

First of all, these are not actual recommendations but I am going to state some suspicions about where I might end up with cuts. I would say this about some of the programs conducted by the Department of Agriculture, I have some basic convictions about what things are the responsibility of government and what things are not. Nutrition for example, unless it is the government provided meals at schools, I don't think it is their responsibility to try to educate us, the people, about that - as that is our business. I have seen food programs expanded in schools to the point of providing almost 3 meals per day, at least 2, and I do not think that is the responsibility of education, it is the responsibility of the education department to educate our kids, and that should be primarily the responsibility of state and local authorities.

In regard to the Forest Service and BLM, I am somewhat familiar with what they do, and I am not impressed in general with what they spend their money on. They don't even manage their own campgrounds in many cases, so they have not much clue about what goes on in those sites much of the time. They instead pay camp hosts to manage those places, including picking up the trash, which is an unnecessary expense. I am also aware of a project in Colorado called "Over the River," for which bureaucrats are spending money contemplating, holding public meetings, having environmental impact statements done, and the list goes on, just because some so-called French artist wants to drape fabric over the Arkansas River for miles and call it art. The thing should have been dismissed out of hand long ago, and the BLM could have avoided spending money on such foolishness. It is my belief that if the BLM can entertain such foolishness, their office is probably way overstaffed and could be reduced significantly in size, plus the office space cost and stuff could also be greatly reduced. So my basic suspicion is that the Department of Interior is very top heavy with too much spent at the top, which possibly could be greatly reduced in favor of more on the ground management, which I think it used to be decades ago.

You probably read on the 6th or 7th grade level, so, can the insults.

Where did I insinuate that? I said you don't have a clue but I didn't say there wasn't waste. I pointed out that 70% of the USDA budget goes for projects you just complained about cutting while at the same time you told us you would make major cuts in the USDA.

Of course. You just want to believe but actually looking at the facts isn't what you want to do. I gave you a link to the USDA budget. It is a fairly quick read.

So.. we need to cut the USDA budget unless Obama cuts it, then it's bad. You are an idiot okie and you try to prove it every day.

I am not as big of an idiot as the federal government, in regards to balancing the budget. I can at least add and subtract, which Obama seems to have trouble doing. I own my home outright, all of my cars outright, no outstanding loans, and I pay my utilities and all of expenses such as groceries, insurance, and other things every month. I do not carry any balance on either of my credit cards, I pay them off every month. And I only have two cards. I have been successful in business and should have a decent retirement, no thanks to the government. Actually, besides my own retirement and the vested retirement I gained from working for an oil company a long time ago, Social Security should also be near max because I paid in the max for many years, but if that money had been invested, no telling what it would amount to by now, Parados.

Well, you may have paid the maximum into social security but there are people who never have and never will because they earn too little.

Talking heads touted the service economy throughout the 80s but a service economy does not provide good jobs.

parados hasn't made that claim. He's only demonstrated that you don't know what you're talking about when you repeat GOP memes about spending. Your argument is thoughtless.

A
R
T

Except you don't add and subtract. You make claims and then admit you haven't looked at the numbers but still want to claim you are correct. It makes you an idiot okie.

okie is good at making false claims; I've yet to see anything he's posted supported by credible evidence. He thinks his opinion is the evidence.

His ego is enormous. He claims to be able to look at what people say and do and then be able to classify them. Yet, he knows nothing of history. What is worse, he refuses to learn anything.

okie lacks social skills. He has no idea how to carry on a conversation, let alone a debate. He attempts to silence others.

Keep talking, pom. The more you talk, the more chance we conservatives will have of winning the debate here.

That's not how it works okie, but nobody can force you to believe anything you don't want to. You're all checkers at the chess tournament, and your expression is far too proud to realize how out classed you are.

A
R
T

ODDEM (i.e., Obama Democrat Disassembling Egregious Maligners) continue to adhere to these Saul Alinsky principles:

(1) Radicals should be "political relativists and take an agnostic view of means and ends;

(2) To say that corrupt means corrupt the ends is to believe in the immaculate conception of ends and principles.

(3) The radical is not a reformer of the system but its would-be destroyer;

(4) The revolutionary’s purpose is to undermine the system by taking from the HAVES and giving it to the HAVENOTS;

(5) We are not virtuous and are really cowards for not wanting power, because power is good and powerlessness is evil;

6) The radical organizer does not have a fixed truth—truth to him is relative and changing because everything to him is relative and changing;

(7) The most basic principle for radicals is lie to opponents and disarm them by pretending to be moderates and liberals;

(8) The stated issue is never the real issue, because the real issue is always the revolution;

(9) The stated cause is never the real cause, but is only a means to advance the real cause of accumulation of power to make the revolution;

(10) The real objective of the revolution is a democracy which upends all social hierarchies, including those based on merit.

Do you realize that America thru GWB is entering the same phase as the Roman Empire when the filthy rich comprised only 2 or 3 % of the population and 3/4 of the Roman Empire population were destitute and poor, 1/3 were slaves and women even high class women were powerless? That is how the Empire began reaking apart and Christianity the religion ofthe poor gradually became the dominant religion.

GWB with his misplaced trust on de-regulation, nepotism and tax-cut policies have created an America with a very small filthy rich minority and a large un-employed segment of America society with their health and Social Security at risk, is rife or some change of gigantic proportions. The Republicans the cause of this mess for not having checked GWB should e hld accountable.

Do you realize, talk72000, you are just another example of persons succumbing to Salinski advocated lying propaganda.

GWB is no longer President of the USA. BHO has been president of the USA since January 20, 2009.

It has been and is the so-called "filthy rich" in the USA who became rich in the USA and have enabled many more Americans to prosper than would have otherwise.

The Roman Republic preceded the Roman Empire. When the Roman Republic was overthrown and replaced by a string of Ceasars (i.e., dictators), the Roman population eventually evolved into a nation with a large part of its population eventually becoming "destitute and poor, 1/3 were slaves ..."

If the USA does not remain a Republic it is destined to evolve into the same dastardly society. The USA will not remain a Republic if it becomes a socialist, or facist, or nazist, or communist dictatorship. But those are in the direction which BHO is working to drag us.

For sheer stupidity, it's pretty hard to beat one of your postings, Ican. I know that you'll keep up the good work.

He belongs on the Joke thread.

Here is a terrific piece on Obama.



Frank Schaeffer is a New York Times best selling author.

Obama Will Triumph -- So Will America
By Frank Schaeffer

Before he'd served even one year President Obama lost the support
of the easily distracted left and engendered the white hot rage of
the hate-filled right. But some of us, from all walks of life and
ideological backgrounds -- including this white, straight, 57-year-
old, former religious right wing agitator, now progressive writer
and (given my background as the son of a famous evangelical leader)
this unlikely Obama supporter -- are sticking with our President.
Why?-- because he is succeeding.

We faithful Obama supporters still trust our initial impression of
him as a great, good and uniquely qualified man to lead us.

Obama's steady supporters will be proved right. Obama's critics
will be remembered as easily panicked and prematurely discouraged
at best and shriveled hate mongers at worst.

The Context of the Obama Presidency:

Not since the days of the rise of fascism in Europe, the Second
World War and the Depression has any president faced more
adversity. Not since the Civil War has any president led a more
bitterly divided country. Not since the introduction of racial
integration has any president faced a more consistently short-
sighted and willfully ignorant opposition - from both the right
and left.

As the President's poll numbers have fallen so has his support from
some on the left that were hailing him as a Messiah not long ago;
all those lefty websites and commentators that were falling all
over themselves on behalf of our first black president during the
2008 election.

The left's lack of faith has become a self-fulfilling "prophecy"--
snipe at the President and then watch the poll numbers fall and
then pretend you didn't have anything to do with it!

Here is what Obama faced when he took office-- none of which was
his fault:

# An ideologically divided country to the point that America was
really two countries

# Two wars; one that was mishandled from the start, the other that
was unnecessary and immoral

# The worst economic crisis since the depression

# America's standing in the world at the lowest point in history

# A country that had been misled into accepting the use of torture
of prisoners of war

# A health care system in free fall

# An educational system in free fall

# A global environmental crisis of history-altering proportions
(about which the Bush administration and the Republicans had done
nothing)

# An impasse between culture warriors from the right and left

# A huge financial deficit inherited from the terminally
irresponsible Bush administration.

And those were only some of the problems sitting on the
President's desk!

"Help" from the Right?

What did the Republicans and the religious right, libertarians and
half-baked conspiracy theorists -- that is what the Republicans
were reduced to by the time Obama took office -- do to "help" our
new president (and our country) succeed? They claimed that he
wasn't a real American, didn't have an American birth certificate,
wasn't born here, was secretly a Muslim, was white-hating "racist",
was secretly a communist, was actually the Anti-Christ, (!) and was
a reincarnation of Hitler and wanted "death panels" to kill the
elderly!

They not-so-subtly called for his assassination through the not-so-
subtle use of vile signs held at their rallies and even a bumper
sticker quoting Psalm 109:8. They organized "tea parties" to sound
off against imagined insults and all government in general and
gathered to howl at the moon. They were led by insurance industry
lobbyists and deranged (but well financed) "commentators" from
Glenn Beck to Rush Limbaugh.

The utterly discredited Roman Catholic bishops teamed up with the
utterly discredited evangelical leaders to denounce a president who
was trying to actually do something about the poor, the
environment, to diminish the number of abortions through
compassionate programs to help women and to care for the sick! And
in Congress the Republican leadership only knew one word: "No!"

In other words the reactionary white, rube, uneducated, crazy
American far right,combined with the educated but obtuse
neoconservative war mongers, religious right shills for big
business, libertarian Fed Reserve-hating gold bug, gun-loving
crazies, child-molesting acquiescent "bishops", frontier loons and
evangelical gay-hating flakes found one thing to briefly unite
them: their desire to stop an uppity black man from succeeding at
all costs!

"Help" from the Left?

What did the left do to help their newly elected president? Some of
them excoriated the President because they disagreed with the bad
choices he was being forced to make regarding a war in Afghanistan
that he'd inherited from the worst president in modern history!

Others stood up and bravely proclaimed that the President's
economic policies had "failed" before the President even instituted
them! Others said that since all gay rights battles had not been
fully won within virtually minutes of the President taking office,
they'd been "betrayed"! (Never mind that Obama's vocal support to
the gay community is stronger than any other president's has been.
Never mind that he signed a new hate crimes law!)

Those that had stood in transfixed legions weeping with beatific
emotion on election night turned into an angry mob saying how
"disappointed" they were that they'd not all immediately been
translated to heaven the moment Obama stepped into the White House!
Where was the "change"? Contrary to their expectations they were
still mere mortals!

And the legion of young new supporters was too busy texting to pay
attention for longer than a nanosecond. "Governing"?! What the hell
does that word, uh, like mean?"

The President's critics left and right all had one thing in common:
impatience laced with little-to-no sense of history (let alone
reality) thrown in for good measure. Then of course there were the
white, snide know-it-all commentators/talking heads who just
couldn't imagine that maybe, just maybe they weren't as smart as
they thought they were and certainly not as smart as their
president. He hadn't consulted them, had he? So he must be wrong!

The Obama critics' ideological ideas defined their idea of reality
rather than reality defining their ideas-say, about what is
possible in one year in office after the hand that the President
had been dealt by fate, or to be exact by the American idiot nation
that voted Bush into office. twice!

Meanwhile back in the reality-based community - in just 12 short
months -- President Obama:

#Continued to draw down the misbegotten war in Iraq
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

#Thoughtfully and decisively picked the best of several bad choices
regarding the war in Afghanistan
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

#Gave a major precedent-setting speech supporting gay rights
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

#Restored America's image around the globe
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

#Banned torture of American prisoners
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

#Stopped the free fall of the American economy
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

#Put the USA squarely back in the bilateral international community
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

#Put the USA squarely into the middle of the international effort
to halt global warming
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

#Stood up for educational reform
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

#Won a Nobel peace prize
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

#Moved the trial of terrorists back into the American judicial
system of checks and balances
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

#Did what had to be done to start the slow, torturous and almost
impossible process of health care reform that 7 presidents had
failed to even begin
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

#Responded to hatred from the right and left with measured good
humor and patience
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

#Stopped the free fall of job losses
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

#Showed immense personal courage in the face of an armed and
dangerous far right opposition that included the sort of disgusting
people that show up at public meetings carrying loaded weapons and
carrying Timothy McVeigh-inspired signs about the "blood of
tyrants" needing to "water the tree of liberty".
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

#Showed that he could not only make the tough military choices but
explain and defend them brilliantly
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)

Other than those "disappointing" accomplishments -- IN ONE YEAR --
President Obama "failed"! Other than that he didn't "live up to
expectations"!

Who actually has failed...

...are the Americans that can't see the beginning of a miracle of
national rebirth right under their jaded noses. Who failed are the
smart ass ideologues of the left and right who began rooting for
this President to fail so that they could be proved right in their
dire and morbid predictions. Who failed are the movers and shakers
behind our obscenely dumb news cycles that have turned "news" into
just more stupid entertainment for an entertainment-besotted
infantile country.

Here's the good news: President Obama is succeeding without the
help of his lefty "supporters" or hate-filled Republican detractors!

The Future Looks Good

After Obama has served two full terms, (and he will), after his
wisdom in moving deliberately and cautiously with great subtlety on
all fronts -- with a canny and calculating eye to the possible
succeeds, (it will), after the economy is booming and new industries
are burgeoning, (they will be), after the doomsayers are all proved
not just wrong but silly: let the record show that not all
Americans were panicked into thinking the sky was falling.

Just because we didn't get everything we wanted in the first short
and fraught year Obama was in office not all of us gave up. Some of
us stayed the course. And we will be proved right.

PS. If you agree that Obama is shaping up to be a great president,
please pass this on and hang in there! Pass it on anyway to ensure
that his "report card" gets the attention it deserves.

Advocate, I could take all of the points point and by point and tell you why they are all wrong, but it would be a waste of time pointing out the obvious to folks like you. In fact, virtually none of the problems he has inherited have been improved by Obama's presidency, and we now have more problems where none existed before.

In the first place, he lost me and he should lose every decent American as soon as he said "white hot rage of the hate-filled right." It is in fact the hate filled left that is the problem. I am a solid conservative and I have no hate whatsoever for Obama, but I do oppose the man vigorously because he is poison for this country and he does not share the same values as good decent traditional Americans have historically had. If you want to know what hate filled is, listen to Obama's friend and spiritual advisor and mentor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Now there is a man that is filled with hate if you ask me. And I believe Obama harbors some of the same hangups that Wright carries around.

What is sad is there are people like this Schaeffer guy that will continue to hang onto his notions of Obama being some kind of a Messianic figure for the country, when in fact he has been a morbid failure, because he is incompetent, plain and simple. The sooner we sweep the guy out of office along with all of his Congress enablers, the better off we will all be.

P.S. I was visiting with an 85 year old top notch farmer, one of the most respected in the community, honest and hard working throughout his life, a military vet and all the rest, and he said Obama has to be the worst president in all of the country's history, no contest. I had to agree.