tempest Tuesday &some News

11/09/2010 Nativegrl77

Today … President Obama is in Indonesia but will be cutting the visit short due to Volcanic Ash –

When will RTP constituents get it -it was Republicans who had absolutely no control fiscally, engaged in big govt by waging 2wars, 2tax giveaways to the rich without paying for them btw, the last guy permitted mass amounts of deregulation in nearly every sector of business which brought our economy to its knees – Republicans say they are fiscally responsible but what President Obama walked into does not sound like responsible behavior and it continues with tantrums about wanting to extend the Bush giveaways permanently without paying for them -and on whose backs?

Though we have pulled out most of our troops in Iraq there are over fifty-thousand serving on behalf of all Americans, we have Corporations in the private and or public sector who are not hiring enough to get us out of this recession, or have changed the rules by limiting the work available, Democrats just got voted out of being the majority in the House but still control the Senate and we have a Democratic President. We have far too many public servants with personal agendas, Tea Party or Teabaggers, who were only a small group a while ago have been able to put a few in the US Congress after the midterm elections. I am not pleased but the current rhetoric or exchanges among themselves is encouraging because it is clear that jobs and or our economy was a distraction used by the RTP and what won them the House. While we are all watching, waiting the truth is going to unfold and folks who voted them into office will finally see the ugly RTP agenda which is that they are going after President Obama instead of creating jobs or a better economy. We all know this group has very extreme ideas about what they will do when on the floor of Congress and while the voters decided to send a message to the folks on Capitol Hill i am still confused about what voting against your best interest does for anyone but make things even worse. I am upset about it and as a democrat i think people need to take control over their own ability to get good information and dissect it to make intelligent choices. The loss of the House, the things we all wanted as dems, libs and or progressives has been put at risk by all the anger votes made. I want to believe people truly had no idea what was at stake and treated the midterms as the no big deal state based elections. The only problem is only 4.7% of Blacks voted plus women and lgbt voters deciding to lean right is one of the most confusing moves by people who need support from the govt and only time will tell how much we all will suffer or for how long.

If the lean to the right was a tantrum because your group or issue did not get voted on yet or was passed but was not what you wanted that is childish behavior. I would also say people need to stop whining and understand the governing process because if not we all will suffer for it. I cannot ask enough how selfish could someone be to hold their vote hostage or vote right of center just because they are angry is not only offensive but makes me wonder how American is that. It is when Democrats are not united or in solidarity do we lose and only then is when i wish the Democratic Party was more like the RTP in so far as the group mentally they maintain until now did not wane no matter what glitches or tweaks that may be needed. The RTP knows if they can get a bill passed it can be manipulated maybe democratic constituents do not know this –

I will never understand anyone willing to vote against his or her best interests.

It is obvious that our economy was in much worse shape then what we thought maybe worse off than what the last guy told the Obama Administration before leaving never to look back again. . Certainly, it was unprecedented and while it is obvious they were flying by the seat of their pants trying to fix the core of the problem it seemed like there were several branches that if tweaked the wrong way could be big trouble. The Party of No has managed to stifle progress in Congress yet folks continued to hold the Obama Administrations feet to the fire and not the Republicans. In my opinion, Americans have been too impatient, are swayed by “the Media” definitely uninformed and maybe did not care about the facts because of their own status in the world. It is unacceptable to think twenty months is long enough to fix anything as big as the US economy, which reached out globally. That coupled with the overt effort on the part of i guess the Heritage Foundation, the chamber of commerce, big business and Republicans all decided to stop progress by any means necessary. Who knew that we have a group of people willing to throw Americans from all stages of life under the bus to gain back their country in an effort though the 2008 elections were legal done correctly and 53% of the population voted for Barack H. Obama. If anyone has been watching all the issues being juggled by President Obama which have been many and include jobs, pirates, terrorists, 2Wars, exiting a war, dadt, immigration, racism, signing over 200 bills that definitely will make positive changes to all our lives. The legislation that could have pushed us into the 21^st Century probably will likely to be a memory if democrats continue to split off instead of unifying as a group to get things done during the lame duck session. It is also upon democratic constituents to participate by calling your member of Congress to let them know what is important call the Republicans to tell them you are an American and while they have fooled some we all are watching as they abandon the peoples business for tearing apart our government.

Is it just me or have democrats in Congress left the messaging up to the President… oh we have some Representatives like Patty Murray, Debbie Wasserman Shultz, Alan Grayson, Anthony Weiner, Sheila Lee Jackson, James Clyburn, Keith Ellison , Jim McDermott, Stabenow and McCaskil others but we need more of them getting on the air and touting the legislation as being absolutely positive things for Americans. The Democratic Party needs to meet and decide what direction they want to go; our President needs to tell them what he wants done and they all need to get on the same page and get it done. The fact that this President did not write the HCR bill himself or let the House write, create and pass bills, which is their jobs upset folks on the left because it was not single payer pouted and voted for Republican is beyond me. The midterms confirmed how uninformed most of the public is on what it takes to get a bill on the floor of Congress let alone passed and made a law. Again, I may not have been completely satisfied with the legislation but the alternative was much worse and knowing that legislation can be tweaked made it tolerable for me.

Twenty months ago there was a bipartisan agreement to bailout the big banks and since then they turned their backs on President Obama and while apologizing in public they promptly began giving huge bonus’s to their people, have continued to flex their muscles and refuse to lend money to the everyday people that hire folks, insurance companies are inserting millions to fight HCR for all, credit card companies are bashing people with fees, our Supreme Court has caused a problem for our Democracy, reports of at least 12 terrorist attacks have been waged on the US, republicans have held up the Presidents nominees for his cabinet and recently, we came close to having several planes bombed. I am sure i forgot something but this President has been busy and is making sweeping changes to a system that was broken. I believe we were in a perfect position to make the changes we voted for and needed but maybe the Obama Admin and the Democrats in Congress did not have a strategy, had idea what was in store for the midterms and had no back up plan or understood how serious that waterloo comment was. Those of us sitting back waiting for change need to become more engaged by making our voices heard in support of this President’s efforts to move Americans into the 21st Century. If you think any President can get legislation passed without the help of their base you are sadly mistaken. The tent of Democrats is huge and though HCR for example was not popular it needed to be dealt with will save money, create more jobs and discrimination based on pre-existing conditions got knocked out, kids in college don’t have to worry about insurance and while there are no death panels in the bill Republicans might create an environment similar by privatizing healthcare, medicare/caid and social security if given the opportunity. The midterm elections had so much at stake but folks voted in anger as Republicans said this that and the other about being fiscally responsible only to get on camera after taking over the House that they are if you pay attention listening are not just going after the President say they can get things done if President Obama does what that want which continues the irrational, uncompromising loud defiant obstructionist behavior Republicans have resorted to for 20 months and begs democrats to rise up against.

Other News …

G20 begins Nov. 12th

The WH does not support stripping out DADT out of defense bill

Missile launched off Coast of Cali -a mystery

GM lays off Mr Goodwrench

Amazon comes to Seattle with 10,000 jobs?

New Chevy Volt on sale in Seattle next Fall

President Obama will meet with new congressional members Nov.18th

CDC:59.1 million lacked ins in 2009 -outrageous

Seattle bank fees are the highest in the country 2.60 while the average is 2.33

11thousand cribs made in China sold at JCP 2003-2007 models have rail hardware prob

Tony Hayward admits they were unprepared to deal with the BP oil spill

CSPAN …

State Department Press Briefing
Monday

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) Heritage Foundation Speech
Monday

Pres. Obama Address to India’s Parliament
Monday

Defense Department Briefing on Iraq
Monday

Weekly Addresses
Saturday

Supreme Court Oral Argument: Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants
Friday

Fed Chair Bernanke Q&A with Jacksonville University Students on Monetary Policy
Friday

Bureau of Labor Statistics Monthly Jobs Report
Friday

Georgetown University Review of 2010 Midterm Elections
Friday

Weekly Standard Review of 2010 Midterm Elections
Friday

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

BUSH LEGACY: Decision Points Of Failure

11/09/2010 Nativegrl77

President Bush’s new memoir, Decision Points, hits stores today. In a series of promotional interviews with mainstream and conservative news outlets, Bush opens up about his personal fight with alcoholism, his mother’s traumatic miscarriage, and some of the most defining moments of his presidency. Judging from press accounts, the memoir offers few substantive revelations. It is, as the Washington Post‘s book critic Jonathan Yardley describes it, “not a memoir as the term is commonly understood — an attempt to examine and interpret the writer’s life — but an attempt to write history before the historians get their hands on it.” Indeed, Bush’s memoir is full of the kind of half truths, stubborn rationalizations, and outright misrepresentations that dominated his eight-year presidency. Throughout the book, Bush admits only to the most cursory of mistakes and communications failures, while defending his most unpopular decisions.

IRAQ — ‘I WAS A DISSENTING VOICE’: Bush doubles down on the disastrous war in Iraq, writing, “Saddam Hussein didn’t just pursue weapons of mass destruction. He had used them.” “He deployed mustard gas and nerve agents against the Iranians and massacred more than five thousand innocent civilians,” Bush said, adding that he believed Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was stunned to find out that he didn’t. It was “unbelievably frustrating,” Bush told Fox News‘ Sean Hannity. “Of course, it was frustrating. It — everybody thought he had WMD. Everybody being every intelligence service, everybody in the administration .” “No one was more shocked or angry than I was when we didn’t find the weapons. I had a sickening feeling every time I thought about it. I still do,” Bush writes in his book. When asked by NBC’s Matt Lauer if he filtered out dissenting voices against the war, Bush retorted, “I was a dissenting voice. I didn’t want to use force. I mean force is the last option for a president. And I think it’s clear in the book that I gave diplomacy every chance to work. And I will also tell you the world’s better off without Saddam in power. And so are 25 million Iraqis.” Recently declassified documents and press accounts, however, contradict Bush’s version of events and reveal that his administration was looking for a way to “decapitate” the Iraqi government since 2001. As Bush’s Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill — who Bush fired for “disagreeing too many times” with him — puts it, Bush was “all about finding a way to [go to war]. That was the tone of it. The President saying ‘Go find me a way to do this.'” In 2002, Bush also reportedly told then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, while she was in a meeting with three U.S. Senators on how to approach Iraq diplomatically, “F— Saddam. We’re taking him out.” In “talking about why we needed this war,” Bush also later referenced an alleged Iraqi assassination plot against Bush’s father: “We need to get Saddam Hussein…that Mother F—– tried to take out my Dad.” Asked by Lauer if he ever considered apologizing to the American people over the war and the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, Bush replied, “I mean, apologizing would basically say the decision was a wrong decision,” Bush replied. “And I don’t believe it was the wrong decision.”

TORTURE — ‘DAMN RIGHT’: Bush writes that he also has no regrets about authorizing the CIA to use enhanced interrogation techniques on captured prisoners and admits personally authorizing the illegal torture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-professed 9/11 mastermind. When asked whether the partial drowning technique could be used, Bush’s answer was emphatic: “Damn right.” In his interview with Lauer, Bush said his lawyers told him waterboarding was legal. “Because the lawyer said it was legal,” Bush rationalized. “He said it did not fall within the Anti-Torture Act. I’m not a lawyer. But you gotta trust the judgment of people around you and I do,” Bush said. He also dismissed critics like former New Jersey Governor and co-head of the 9/11 Commission Thomas Kean, who has said that the administration simply shaped the legal opinions around their intended policy. [Kean] “obviously doesn’t know,” Bush replied. “I hope Mr. Kean reads the book. That’s why I’ve written the book. He can, they can draw whatever conclusion they want. But I will tell you this. Using those techniques saved lives. My job is to protect America and I did.” It’s not clear that torture did, however. For instance, Mohammed told U.S. military officials that he gave false information to the CIA after withstanding torture, and as a former Special Operations interrogator who worked in Iraq argues, waterboarding has actually cost American lives: “The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001,” he says. In his memoir, Bush also contends that he was “blindsided” by the photos of abused prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and twice considered accepting Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation over the incident. Bush wrote, “I knew it would send a powerful signal. I seriously considered accepting his advice. I knew it would send a powerful signal to replace the leader of the Pentagon after such a grave mistake. But a big factor held me back. There was no obvious replacement for Don.”

KATRINA — KANYE’S COMMENTS WERE ‘THE WORST’: Bush did accept some responsibility for the government’s slow response to Hurricane Katrina, telling Lauer, “Yes. The lack of crisp response was a failure at all levels of government.” But he seemed most disappointed about the unfortunate picture taken of him in Air Force One, flying over New Orleans, and the criticism he received over the incident. Bush said he looked “detached and uncaring” in the photo, admitting, “It’s always my fault. I should have touched down in Baton Rouge, met with the governor, and, you know, walked out and said, ‘I hear you.’ I mean, ‘We know. We understand. And we’re gonna, you know, help the state and help the locals, governments with as much resources as needed.’ And — and then got back on a flight up to Washington. I did not do that and paid a price for it.” Bush also explained his now infamous “heck of a job” comments to FEMA director Mike Brown. “My intention was simply to say to somebody who’s workin’ hard, ‘Keep workin’ hard,'” Bush rationalized. “And it turns out that– those words became a club for people to say, ‘Wait, this guy’s out of touch .'” Unfortunately for Bush, the criticism is far harsher than that. A 2006 report compiled by House Republicans slammed what it called “a failure of leadership,” saying that the federal government’s “blinding lack of situational awareness and disjointed decision making needlessly compounded and prolonged Katrina’s horror.” The report specifically blamed Bush, noting that “earlier presidential involvement could have speeded the response” because the president alone could have cut through bureaucratic resistance. Still, for Bush, the worst moment of the disaster — and possibly his entire presidency — came when rapper Kanye West said “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” during an NBC telethon. “I faced a lot of criticism as President,” Bush writes in his book. “I didn’t like hearing people claim that I lied about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction or cut taxes to benefit the rich. But the suggestion that I was racist because of the response to Katrina represented an all time low.” When pressed by Lauer on why “the worst moment in your Presidency was [not] watching the misery in Louisiana, but rather when someone insulted you because of that,” Bush replied, “No, I — that — and I also make it clear that the misery in Louisiana affected me deeply as well. There’s a lot of tough moments in the book. And it was a disgusting moment, pure and simple.”

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Protect the Arctic Refuge as a new National Monument

11/09/2010 Nativegrl77

If last week’s election results are any indicator, we’re about to see some big changes in Congress — and not for the better. Ask Obama to protect the critical Arctic Refuge as a National Monument before new oil-hungry Reps can attack it with drills.

Don Hazen
Executive Editor, AlterNet.org

Dear friend of Alaska wilderness,

Congress has some crazy ideas for the Arctic Refuge, but we’re keeping it wild!

Tell President Obama to declare the Arctic Refuge a National Monument!

Election night confirmed it: The U.S. Congress is about to change dramatically.

To the new extremists in power, the tragic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is long forgotten. Don’t think for an instant that “Drill, baby, drill” isn’t on the tip of their tongues – or at the top of their agendas. The attacks on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge will begin immediately. They will be brutal and constant.

But what if I told you that we could protect the Arctic Refuge before Congress ever bangs a gavel next year?

Click here now: Tell President Obama to protect the Arctic Refuge as a new National Monument!

Congress sure has some crazy ideas for the Refuge, but we’re keeping it wild! Today, we’re launching a massive online effort called “Keeping It Wild!” to convince President Obama to declare the Arctic Refuge our newest National Monument. It’s both a stepping stone to future protections and a maneuver to help shield the Refuge from congressional attacks.

The Arctic is one of our last refuges for wildlife – invaluable, iconic and alive! Big mammals still roam this land and millions of the world’s birds feed and nest on the plains. They come here each year, seeking refuge from a world of encroaching hazards to receive their most sacred needs: sustenance and safe harbor for bearing their young. For 50 years, this cycle has remained unhindered by human development, so life in the Arctic Refuge has continued to thrive. As Americans, we have a moral and civic duty to ensure that this cycle is not broken – not on our watch.

The time for action is now: with Congress poised to change significantly and the Refuge’s 50th anniversary only weeks away, President Obama can make a real statement that America will not submit its greatest treasures to the follies of the past or the whims of the present.

Tell the President: Protect the Arctic Refuge as a National Monument!

Alaska Wilderness League is the first line of defense for the Arctic Refuge. We’re keeping it wild – but we can’t do it alone.

Thank you for all that you do,