Thoughts & Commentary on the Obama Administration

[Strike For The South]

Can someone explain to me how Obama is any different than Clinton or Bush?

The last 20 years we've had the same president, the only difference being one liked fat chicks, one liked Jesus, and one likes black people.

Can someone explain to me how;

Bush's medicare expansion is anydifferent than Obamas healthcare expansion?

Clinton's welfare reform is any different than Bush's compassionate consevativism?

How interveinig in the former Yougo, the ME, and ramping up troops in Afghan are any different?

We've been governed buy lame ducks since I've been born.

Since Obama has gotten into office he has been center left at best, while I don't agree with some of his ideas I believe he has a few good nuggets, however these want get any attention because he's a forigen born muslim communist who wants to eat beautifual blonde infants.

[Aemilius Paulus]

Quite simple, SFTS. Or as Watson would say, 'elementary!' - NO, I loathe sherlock holmes, as did Conan Doyle, who hated him with all his heart and wrote about Holmes only because they paid him several pounds for every friggin' sentence of the detective story (true fact)

Anyhow, nice intro , but Obama and Clinton both are pushing/pushed for a healthcare reform, but both bills got mired with the natural Republican opposition. Except that right now the Republicans are being pure pigs, while back in Clinton's time they were about average in their opposition - hey, Clinton passed NAFTA.

Bush did not do much for healthcare. He merely dumped more money on the seniors. Dumping money is easy. Actually fixing the workings of the sytem is a Herculean labour. The American model is setting new high for inefficiency and this must be addressed. Even without medical insurance, US could have decent healthcare if the service was cheaper. Cap the spending on terminally ill, stop the doctor-gets-paid-per-procedure, stop the drug-company-paying-the-doctor, tone down the malpractice lawsuits, take the British approach by approving drugs only after a stringent cost:benefit ratio, tax the wealthy a tad to subsidise certain forms of healthcare, do something about the great gov't Ponzi scheme, a.k.a Social Security. All these are solutions, with varying difficulty of implementation. All these are more than just simple throwing-money-at-the-problem-approach.

'Compassionate conservatism'? Haha, nice buzzword there, I have heard of it... How about 'Tax-and-spend libertarian'? Either makes about the same amount of sense. US conservatives generally favour the wealthy and the liberals favour the working-class. Deregulation and small government is naturally hostile to the poor. I'd like a conservative in the Backroom to try to argue against this.

Kosovo was Clinton's folly, yes, it is true. But that was still Cold War politics speaking there, before the current situation. Dems and the GOP intervened in other nations' affairs nearly equally. Russia had interests in the Yugo wars, and where there is Russia, there is sure to be US, whether US likes it or not. Ramping up troops in Afghanistan? You cannot leave once you come in. The point is to not stick your nose into horsedung in the first place. But Iraq would be a better example for this purpose.

Lame ducks? Blame the 'No' strategy of the Republicans today. Now, Clinton, Clinton does not have an excuse, and neither does Bush. Both faced about average opposition. But hey, chew on this: who was the fiscal conservative? The surplus Clinton or the OMFG-WTF-deficit, and recession President Bush? You decide...

[Crazed Rabbit]

Bush's medicare expansion is anydifferent than Obamas healthcare expansion?

Both use lots of money, but I think Obama's would require more taxes in the end. It also effects many more people, usually in the way of limiting what options they have or freedom to choose the health insurance they desire.

And now; the Obama administration says federal agencies should be able to track anyone's cell phone, at any time, with no warrant.

Even though police are tapping into the locations of mobile phones thousands of times a year, the legal ground rules remain unclear, and federal privacy laws written a generation ago are ambiguous at best. On Friday, the first federal appeals court to consider the topic will hear oral arguments (PDF) in a case that could establish new standards for locating wireless devices.

In that case, the Obama administration has argued that warrantless tracking is permitted because Americans enjoy no "reasonable expectation of privacy" in their--or at least their cell phones'--whereabouts. U.S. Department of Justice lawyers say that "a customer's Fourth Amendment rights are not violated when the phone company reveals to the government its own records" that show where a mobile device placed and received calls.

Those claims have alarmed the ACLU and other civil liberties groups, which have opposed the Justice Department's request and plan to tell the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia that Americans' privacy deserves more protection and judicial oversight than what the administration has proposed.

"This is a critical question for privacy in the 21st century," says Kevin Bankston, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation who will be arguing on Friday. "If the courts do side with the government, that means that everywhere we go, in the real world and online, will be an open book to the government unprotected by the Fourth Amendment."

So much for Obama being good on civil liberties.

CR

[PanzerJaeger]

52 percent of Americans said President Barack Obama doesn't deserve reelection in 2012, according to a new poll.

2012 is eons away, but man, has the lipstick worn off this pig or what?

[Lemur]

An incumbent polls slightly below "someone else," an undefined anyman? Heavens! That's never happened in the history of polling! It's as though the entire people of Earth have turned on the false Obamessiah! And you were there first, PJ!

[PanzerJaeger]

It's as though the entire people of Earth have turned on the false Obamessiah! And you were there first, PJ!

And all I got was this crappy t-shirt...

[KukriKhan]

Let's see... 500bn remaining of 'stimulus' money. 132,618,580 voters last election (= people who cared enough to show up and be heard). Doing long division......

$3,770.21 per voter. Start cutting checks, I say. Wanna help pay down the Nat'l Debt? Endorse the check and send it back. Wanna pay off a credit card? OK, too. Throw it into your dismal 401(k)? No problem. Let the voters decide.

[Lemur]

You just can't win with some people: Bush Official Criticizes Obama for Killing Too Many Terrorists

At a panel on national security policy at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday, a prominent lawyer from the Bush administration's Department of Justice said he was concerned that the higher number of terrorist executions taking place under Obama was compromising U.S. intelligence operations.

"Why have executions increased?" asked Viet Dinh, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center and one of the authors of the USA Patriot Act. Citing a recent Washington Post article on the increased targeted killing of terrorists, Dinh complained that "the president and vice president expound this fact as a fact that they are actually successful in war."

"That doesn't mean I think they are not illegitimate," he added. "No, we have every right to kill the other side's warriors. But at what cost? When we do not have an effective detention policy the only option we have is to kill them before we can detain them. And if we don't detain them, we don't know what they know and what they are up to."

The crowd applauded. Though, it should be noted, Dinh got a scattering of hisses and boos when he defended the Patriot Act.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Let's see... 500bn remaining of 'stimulus' money. 132,618,580 voters last election (= people who cared enough to show up and be heard). Doing long division......

$3,770.21 per voter. Start cutting checks, I say. Wanna help pay down the Nat'l Debt? Endorse the check and send it back. Wanna pay off a credit card? OK, too. Throw it into your dismal 401(k)? No problem. Let the voters decide.

No can do Kukri, they might remember that it IS their money.