Archive for May 2010

Boehner says Obama “Tries” to be soft on terror

May 29, 2010

Today on thehill.com

“I don’t know why the administration continues to change the terms of the debate. Why they refuse to say that this is a war against terrorism or a war against terrorists,” Boehner said in an appearance on the conservative Mike Gallagher radio show.

“I guess they are trying to be soft,” Boehner said. “They are trying to be kind and considerate.”

Boehner is, of course, lying.

Obama frequently uses the words “terrorist” and “war on terror.”

Boehner is safe in his lies because nobody on the right will question them. Almost all Obama’s speeches are on line but nobody on the right is going to look to see if it’s true or not.

This is from Obama’s 2009 State of the Union address:

We are now carefully reviewing our policies in both wars, and I will soon announce a way forward in Iraq that leaves Iraq to its people and responsibly ends this war. And with our friends and allies, we will forge a new and comprehensive strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan to defeat al Qaeda and combat extremism. Because I will not allow terrorists to plot against the American people from safe havens half a world away.

In Obama’s speech on national security in May 2009, he used the word “terror” or “terrorist” 27 times.

During his recent speech to West Point he used the word “terror” or “terrorist 5 times including this:

Al Qaeda and its affiliates are small men on the wrong side of history.  They lead no nation.  They lead no religion.  We need not give in to fear every time a terrorist tries to scare us.  We should not discard our freedoms because extremists try to exploit them.  We cannot succumb to division because others try to drive us apart.   We are the United States of America, and we have repaired our union, and faced down fascism, and outlasted communism.  We’ve gone through turmoil, we’ve gone through Civil War, and we have come out stronger — and we will do so once more.

The 90,000 troops in Afghanistan and more than 100 drone attacks prove Obama isn’t soft on anything. He’s done WAY more than Bush did to combat terrorism and the right wing is struggling hard to make that somehow not be true.

Good luck with that.

Obama’s a Citizen. Get Over It.

May 27, 2010

Why do the wingnuts still claim Obama isn’t a citizen?

I discovered recently that the FBI does a deep background check on all presidential candidates. It only makes sense. If someone is going to be privy to the highest level secrets in the country, we need to know if they are a convicted felon or a citizen of another country.  For me, this is the knock-down argument but then I believed Obama was a citizen all along.

It’s astounding to me that the birthers didn’t think the Secret Service, the FBI and the CIA would be the slightest bit interested in this issue. They didn’t imagine those agencies would have slightly more access to the original birth records than the average redneck. In addition to that don’t you think every single news organization from the Zimbabwe Daily Mail to the Bombay Times Herald would have fleets of investigators out there trying to get the biggest scoop of the century? Don’t you think Hillary Freekin’ Clinton would have clawed down the Honolulu Hall of Records with her own hands if there was the slightest hope that Obama was unqualified to be president?

The Tea Baggies don’t like him. I get that. If he’s not a citizen then not only is he not president, he’s never BEEN president. It can all just be erased like it never happened. I can see why that’s an attractive (to them) idea.

But it’s  nuts. He produced his birth certificate, it’s on line in several places, the State of Hawaii says it’s valid, the FBI has verified it. That’s the end of it. He simply can’t be removed from office that way.

Drachonian Arizona Immigration Law

May 25, 2010

The problem with the new Arizona law is that anybody can be stopped anytime for any reason or no reason and asked for an ID. If you can’t produce an ID they can arrest you. It matters not one tiny bit that you are an American citizen. If you happen to leave your house without your driver’s license (and I do all the time, why not? it’s a free country) then you are screwed. They handcuff you and drag you off to jail. If you are a LEGAL alien and you happen to leave the house without your ID you can go to jail for six months.

Yeah, I’m sure they’ll catch some illegals. Meanwhile all the Americans in Arizona are living in a police state. I’ve read that they don’t pull people over at random in Red China, though I understand it was very popular in Soviet Russia.

It’s astounding that people are so filled with hate and vindictiveness that they are perfectly willing to throw away their freedom to hurt a minority.

Portugal’s Drug Decriminalization Policy Shows Positive Results

May 18, 2010

In the face of a growing number of deaths and cases of HIV linked to drug abuse, the Portuguese government in 2001 tried a new tack to get a handle on the problem—it decriminalized the use and possession of heroin, cocaine, marijuana, LSD and other illicit street drugs. The theory: focusing on treatment and prevention instead of jailing users would decrease the number of deaths and infections.

Five years later, the number of deaths from street drug overdoses dropped from around 400 to 290 annually, and the number of new HIV cases caused by using dirty needles to inject heroin, cocaine and other illegal substances plummeted from nearly 1,400 in 2000 to about 400 in 2006, according to a report released recently by the Cato Institute, a Washington, D.C, libertarian think tank.

read the whole thing here:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=portugal-drug-decriminalization