Obama to Encourage States to Build Health Exchanges

Libby, no one should put a lot of credence in polling. This race is not going to clarify until after the conventions and debates. I I am really looking forward to the Biden-Ryan debate. Biden’s best line is that Republicans are going to put citizens in chains. It is frightening that he is only a heart beat away from being President.

His comment was in response to Ryan’s statement about putting the American people in unshackles. He used “chains” instead of “shackles”. What is frightening about that? Alot better than some of the dumbass remarks made by yours truly, George Bush.

Oh, really?? How about these from our PRESIDENT!

“Do you have blacks, too?” –to Brazilian President Fernando Cardoso, Washington, D.C., Nov. 8, 2001

“This is an impressive crowd — the haves and the have mores. Some people call you the elite — I call you my base.” –at the 2000 Al Smith dinner

“I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn’t do my job.” –to a group of Amish he met with privately, July 9, 2004

And on the war in Iraq:

“You know, one of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror.” –interview with CBS News’ Katie Couric, Sept. 6, 2006

“The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq were the ones who attacked us in America on September the 11th.” –Washington, D.C., July 12, 2007

“Oh, no, we’re not going to have any casualties.” –discussing the Iraq war with Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson in 2003, as quoted by Robertson

“I think I was unprepared for war.” –on the biggest regret of his presidency, ABC News interview, Dec. 1, 2008

“The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” –State of the Union Address, Jan. 28, 2003, making a claim that administration officials knew at the time to be false

“The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him.” –Washington, D.C., Sept. 13, 2001

“I don’t know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don’t care. It’s not that important. It’s not our priority.” –Washington, D.C., March 13, 2002

“So what?” –President Bush, responding to a an ABC News correspondent who pointed out that Al Qaeda wasn’t a threat in Iraq until after the U.S. invaded, Dec. 14, 2008

Agent, you really went out on a limb criticizing Joe Biden’s gaffe. Bush is such a gold mine of dumb comments and he was your Commander in Chief. Please!

We were talking about gaffes. All I did was point out that there are plenty of them on Bush’s record. That’s all. If you dish it out, you should be able to take it. I don’t hate anyone. I just want a fair representation of the gaffes on both sides. And, you might not want to admit it, but Bush was full of them! As far as what Obama said to small businesses, you may not agree with it but it wasn’t a “gaffe.”

I understand you see some of Obama’s policies as trying to “convert our country to a Progressive Socialist State, make people dependent on government, take away the work ethic and propose nationalizing our industry and healthcare” but does that really sound like an agenda ANYONE would want for this country? You are painting him as totally UnAmerican. That’s not a fair representation. That’s the problem with outlandish claims such as these. They are totaly indefensible.

If you are going to quote Obama, at least include the entire quote. Here’s what Obama said, in context:

OBAMA IN PUEBLO: “We’ve got a bunch of examples of the differences, the choice in this election. When the American auto industry was on the brink of collapse, more than 1 million jobs at stake, Gov. Romney said, let’s ‘let Detroit go bankrupt.’ I said I believe in American workers, I believe in this American industry, and now the American auto industry has come roaring back and GM is number one again. So now, I want to do the same thing with manufacturing jobs, not just in the auto industry, but in every industry. I don’t want those jobs taking root in places like China. I want them taking root in places like Pueblo. Gov. Romney brags about his private sector experience, but it was mostly investing in companies, some of which were called “pioneers” of outsourcing. I don’t want to be a pioneer of outsourcing. I want to in-source. I want to stop giving tax breaks to companies that are shipping jobs overseas.”

And I suppose you disagree with that sentiment?

Well, we can agree to disagree on your characterization of Obama. I do not view him in those terms. Not saying I agree with everything he does, there are some things I take issue with. But I don’t think it’s as dire a picture as you paint. The Supreme Court ruled on the constituionality issue and found he did not violate the Constitution by trying to avoid using the word “tax” and trying to soft-pedal it by calling it a penalty. The word tax inflames conservatives, but in reality tax/penalty = potato/potato.

Bob – Again you are WRONG.

Regarding Iraq: WE were the ones bombing innocent people in Iraq.

Regarding Uranium: He KNEW the statement to be false when he made it.

Regarding It Being Hard to Tie Iraq to 9/11: It’s hard because THERE IS NO CONNECTION. His subsequent quote, which you did not mention was, “So what?” –President Bush, responding to a an ABC News correspondent who pointed out that Al Qaeda wasn’t a threat in Iraq until after the U.S. invaded, Dec. 14, 2008 He didn’t dispute that Al Qaeda wasn’t a threat until after he invaded Iraq. He said SO WHAT?? That statement says he agrees.

Just go away with your Bush pep rally. He was a terrible president and a dumbass.

In the lead up to the Iraq War, U.S. President George W. Bush alleged that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and militant group al-Qaeda might conspire to launch terrorist attacks on the United States, basing the administration’s rationale for war, in part, on this allegation and others. The consensus of intelligence experts has been that these contacts never led to an operational relationship, and that consensus is backed up by reports from the independent 9/11 Commission and by declassified Defense Department reports as well as by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, whose 2006 report of Phase II of its investigation into prewar intelligence reports concluded that there was no evidence of ties between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. Critics of the Bush Administration have said Bush was intentionally building a case for war with Iraq without regard to factual evidence. On April 29, 2007, former Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet said on 60 Minutes, “We could never verify that there was any Iraqi authority, direction and control, complicity with al-Qaeda for 9/11 or any operational act against America, period.”

Go ahead and insult away. I do not have hate in my heart. I just think Bush was/is a fool, a terrible president, an idiot, and severely illequiped to have been President for one term, let alone two. All you names and insults will never change that, so keep ‘em coming. I think it funny.

Bob, I understand Fox News is airing a special on Sunday night, 8:00 CT which will offer a compelling history of Obama and will vette him once again for the folks to see. All the Conservative bloggers and Progressive bloggers on this forum should watch it. Libby, you and Planet should make plans to tear yourself away from MSNBC for that hour and see the truth revealed.

I specifically asked you what personal or business ties Obama had with the Saudis and you never responded. There is no link there.

Agent – he made no mistakes as far as Bob’s concerned. He was the perfect president, a prince, and a scholar. He’ll probably be nominated for sainthood if Bob has anything to do with it.

I’m very interested and plan to watch.

Al Qaeda was aiding bin Laden, but there was no connection with Iraq and Al Qaeda – Bush even said so. He knew it all along. But you continue to insist he was a great president. And I’m the moron. And with your insults and your Hahaha, you sound like the child here.

Go ahead and throw in your comments about recessions and the Roth IRA to muddy the waters. I’m not biting. I’ll stick to the topic I started with. Thank you.

Again, topics I did not bring up. So I will not respond to you so you can call me more names.

Bob, As I recall, Bush was villified by the left for wanting to reform Social Security for younger Americans. They would rather Social Security to go broke than to try to fix it. That is why they are so afraid of Ryan. He might just have a plan that will fix it for age 54 and under. This country is adding 12,000 each week to Social Security and many are going on Social Security disability after they use up their 99 weeks of unemployment. Where is the money coming from to fund this program if changes are not made soon?

Libby–when are you going to say your OWN words, rather than copying/pasting them from the internet??!! If you have your OWN argument, then state it!!

…”So to avoid that, I now try to find factual data to represent my position.” So…the internet’s information is factual? I guess it depends on what your definition of factual is.

JB, the Progressive Socialist Democrats take fearmongering, class warfare, race warfare, hate rhetoric to a new level. Poor misguided souls like Libby & Planet see nothing wrong with what these minions and left wing politicians are doing to the country. I have been around for a good while and I have never seen anything like what we have going on right now. Romney and Ryan will need a strong constitution to stand up to these attacks which only get worse by the day. Truth will be in short supply from the left.

Democrats voted for the war based on lies told by Bush. End of story.

Obama did not make the comments you attribute to him in your post above. But even Ryan admits his budget is pretty radical. I applaud him for getting it on the table and inviting debate on it. But it does change Medicare pretty drastically, going to a voucher system that some think will not keep up with inflation.

I do not dismiss his budget out of hand, but need to know more about it. I think I have said both Romney and Ryan have a proven economic track record. I just have other issues with which I disagree.

Why don’t we debate the merits of Ryan’s budget plan, which could affect us next year instead of arguing about George Bush? He’s long gone, thank God. You will not change my mind about him and I will not change yours. End of THAT story.

You have down graded every post I’ve ever made.

Regarding LIES:

to the millions of people who voted for Bush last Tuesday: What were you thinking?

This is only a guess, but I estimate that Bush received at least 20 million votes from people who might have been willing to vote the other way, but decided for one reason or another that Bush was the better candidate.

But how could ANYONE think Bush was the better candidate? What was the one accomplishment of the Bush administration that persuaded them to give Bush four more years? Was it the fact that the worst terrorist attack ever to take place on American soil happened on Bush’s watch? The fact that Bush spent the first seven minutes after receiving word of the attacks staring blankly at a room full of elementary school children? The fact that the Bush administration willfully withheld an EPA evaluation on how dangerous the air was in downtown NY after the attacks, so that thousands of people, including unborn children, will have health problems for the rest of their lives?

Was it the fact that Bush resisted the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, and the creation of the 9/11 commission? Or maybe it was the fact that Bush willfully withheld information from the 9/11 commission for months, and refused to testify before the commission in person, and then finally agreed to testify but only if Dick Cheney could come along and hold his hand?

Maybe it was the fact that Bush and friends relentlessly politicized the attacks, using them to cast their Democratic opponents as unpatriotic, using Osama bin Laden’s picture in campaign ads in the 2002 midterm elections to smear an incumbent Democrat who had served heroically in Vietnam? Or the fact that they used the attacks to strongarm Democrats into voting for a resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq less than a month before those midterm elections?

Or maybe the war against Iraq was enough all by itself? Was it the way that Cheney and Wolfowitz set up their own intelligence agency, the Office of Special Plans, to cherry pick intelligence reports about Iraq’s WMD capability, so that exculpatory data never made it to Bush’s desk, but inflammatory and often unreliable data did? Was it the way Colin Powell went before the UN and boldly lied about Iraq’s weapons stockpiles? Or the comments Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice and especially Cheney made giving detailed descriptions of Iraq’s weapons capabilities, stating unambiguously types and quantities of weaponry when they knew their statements were based on questionable evidence at best and complete fabrications at worst?

Was it the fact that someone in the White House committed a felony by blowing the cover of a CIA operative working on WMD intelligence, and Bush didn’t really seem to give a damn?

Maybe it was the fact that David Kay and Charles Duelfer both reported unambiguously that Iraq basically never had WMD (since 1998) and never would as long as the sanctions remained in place, yet until very recently, Bush and Cheney both insisted that the weapons really had been there? Maybe it was the way Bush joked around about our inability to find those weapons, even as our troops were getting killed by Iraqi insurgents at the rate of more than one a day?

Maybe it was the fact that we sent far too few troops to Iraq in the first place, and thus have had to withstand much higher mortality rates than if we had gone in with the recommended level of troops. Or the fact that the Pentagon made up a detailed post-invasion plan to secure the country, and Rumsfeld threw it in the trash, confident that U.S. troops would be greeted with open arms and flowers.

Maybe it was the way we invaded a country ruled by a ruthless dictator with no significant ties to terrorism and made it a terrorist haven. Maybe it was the way we shredded almost all of the international alliances we ever had in the process, thus making success in Iraq much more difficult for this president, and making diplomacy in general much more difficult for any American president for years to come.

Maybe it was the way the Bushies raided the U.S. treasury, slashing billions in tax revenues to lower taxes for everyone a little bit, but for the wealthiest a lot. After all, it is ‘our money’. Maybe it’s the way that Bush showed his deep concern for spending every tax dollar wisely by indiscriminately doling out multi-billion dollar no-bid contracts to Cheney’s Halliburton cronies with no oversight.

Maybe it’s the biggest national debt in U.S. history. Maybe it’s the fact that Bush is the first president since Hoover to see a net decrease in the number of jobs during his term of office. Maybe it’s the fact that Bush was so eager to pursue a meaningless and expensive war of choice in Iraq that he let Osama bin Laden get away. Maybe it’s the fact that his administration has done more to damage the environment than any other administration in American history.

Maybe it’s the fact that by invading Iraq, we allowed 377 tons of explosives to get into the hands of terrorists. Maybe it’s the fact that every counterterrorism expert believes that the war in Iraq made the U.S. less safe instead of more safe. Maybe it’s the fact that the administration lied about the cost of the Medicare bill because even congressional Republicans wouldn’t have supported it if they had known the true cost, or the fact that they made it illegal for Medicare to use its buying power to negotiate lower drug costs with manufacturers.

Maybe it’s the fact that a bunch of liars spent a month smearing Kerry’s heroic record of service in Vietnam, and so people decided they’d rather vote for a deserter who to this day consistently lies about his military record.

Again, I think I’ll be able to find plenty. Bush’s statements on Kerry’s war record for one thing. But again, I will need to get back to you with specifics, because I now how important they are to you. And I am going home now.

I’ll get back to you on that one. You and Agent seem to think the right has some kind of market for the truth. I will find plenty of lies from the Bush camp, but need to eat my Wheaties before I begin. Tomorrow is another day to do war with you Bob.

The greatest lie is that the Bush administration would not have invaded Iraq if it had known there were no weapons of mass destruction (WMD) there. Its corollary is that the administration did not lie about the presence of such weapons in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
In fact, the Bush administration mounted an intense six-month campaign to make sure that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) produced “evidence” of WMD, and then made sure that such players as National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell parroted the administration’s big lie to the American public and to the international community. President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and their acolytes Lewis “Scooter” Libby and Karl Rove desperately wanted to go to war against Iraq for reasons that have never been explained. As a result, they created and employed a strategic disinformation campaign to convince Congress and the American people of the need for war. Goebbels would have beamed.
This is not the first time the United States has manipulated intelligence to make a case for war. It happened prior to the Mexican-American War to support the policies of President James Polk, the Spanish-American War to support the policies of President William McKinley and the Vietnam War to support President Lyndon Johnson. But the Iraq war marked the first time that the White House mounted a full-court press with such zeal to take the nation to a war that was unneeded, illegal and immoral. Rove and Libby were key operatives in a programmatic “marketing plan” to justify the war, which included the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame, whose husband had dared to challenge the case for war; the phony intelligence documents produced by the CIA and DIA; and the public commentary linking Saddam Hussein to 9/11 and Iraq to al-Qaeda. Bush’s chief of staff Andrew Card has already admitted to the marketing plan, which was introduced in September 2002, because “from a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August.”
In the summer of 2002, the White House Iraq Group was formed to convince public opinion at home and abroad of the need for war against Iraq. The group met regularly in the White House situation room and the regular attendants included Rove, Libby, Condi Rice and her deputy Stephen Hadley. At the same time, Cheney and Libby began meeting directly with analysts at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, an unprecedented procedure. The purpose of these meetings was to garner the intelligence justification for a pre-emptive war to remove Saddam Hussein in order to make a case to the Congress, the American public and the international community. In July 2002, the chief of the British MI6 intelligence service, Sir Richard Dearlove, after several meetings with CIA Director George Tenet, warned Prime Minister Tony Blair about the American misuse of intelligence and the public relations campaign to justify war. Dearlove concluded that “intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy,” and that “military action was now seen as inevitable.”
A major aspect of Rove’s “marketing plan” was to leak unsubstantiated and flawed intelligence (supplied by Iraqi defector Ahmad Chalabi and his minions) to the press and then offer authoritative White House confirmation of the leaked information. The White House selected Judith Miller of The New York Times as the key recipient of these leaks. Miller had a front-page story in the Times on September 8, 2002, citing administration officials as claiming that Saddam had acquired aluminum tubes “specifically designed” to enrich uranium. On the same day, Cheney told “Meet the Press” that “we know with absolute certainty” that Saddam was “using his procurement system to acquire the equipment he needs to enrich uranium to build a nuclear weapon.” Four days later, President Bush took the aluminum tubes claim to the UN General Assembly. The issue was central to Secretary of State Powell’s UN speech in February 2003.
Rove and Libby were also central to the outing of Plame, a CIA operative, whose husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson, refuted Cheney’s charge that Iraq was trying to obtain uranium from Niger. The outing of Plame was designed to embarrass the ambassador and to keep other officials from testifying against the White House’s case for war, which required a nuclear dimension. Rove was not indicted for lying about the outing of Plame, although Libby’s lawyer, Theodore Wells, argued that Libby was a scapegoat to protect Rove. Cheney charged that the White House was failing to “protect one staffer and sacrifice the guy this Pres asked to stick his neck in the meat grinder because of the incompetence of others.” Cheney ultimately scratched out “this Pres” and substituted “that was.”
Rove, of course, was not alone in these efforts. He had help from CIA Director Tenet and Deputy Director John McLaughlin, who lied to Secretary of State Powell about the sources for the secretary’s speech to the UN Security Council. He benefited from CIA senior analysts such as Robert Walpole and Paul Pillar, who helped to craft specious documents such as a National Intelligence Estimate and a white paper that were used to influence the Congressional vote on the use of force authorization in October 2002. As the chief of the CIA’s largest analytic office Alan Foley told his senior managers, “if the president decides to go to war, it’s our job to supply the intelligence to allow him to do so.” Foley’s comments took place only several days after Tenet assured President Bush that gathering intelligence support for a public case to go to war would be a “slam dunk.”
At the Pentagon, Douglas Feith and Abram Shulsky created the Office of Special Plans (OSP) to circulate intelligence that even the CIA did not believe was credible. According to the Pentagon’s Inspector General, OSP’s major mission was to provide the White House with so-called intelligence to make the case for war. Feith regularly briefed the White House on this disinformation in August and September 2002 and then passed the “classified” findings to Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard. The OSP had close links with the Defense Policy Board, whose members – particularly Richard Perle, former CIA Director Jim Woolsey and former Republican speaker of the House Newt Gingrich – peddled the OSP’s disinformation to high-level opinion makers at home and abroad.

Best part:
“The GOP proposal isn’t what I would consider real reform. It’s more of a document that Republicans have put out so they can say they have some sort of health care bill that reduces premiums at a fraction of the cost of the Democrats’ bill.”

This hunk of junk they floated out in 2009 was never taken serious. This wasn’t a plan. It was never intended to go through and even the GOP knew it was a non-starter because it did so little I don’t think you could even call it reform.

The partisan gridlock in this year’s Congress is no joke: The 112th session — which includes 2011 and 2012 — is on pace to be the least productive congressional session since World War II, USA Today reports.

So far, Congress has passed into law just 151 bills during this session — 90 in 2011 and 61 in 2012. The only other year since 1947 in which Congress failed to pass at least 125 bills was 1995, USA Today reports after reviewing congressional records. This Congress is even set to beat the notorious “do nothing” Congress of 1948.

The gridlock may be disappointing, but it is not surprising. It was largely predicted after Republicans took control of the House in the 2010 election with the Tea Party directive to halt the Democratic agenda. With Republicans in control of the House and Democrats still in charge of the Senate — and compromise out of fashion — the prospect of getting much done was bleak.

Some conservatives may prefer the gridlock over the sort of productivity seen in the 111th Congress. In the 2009-2010 session, Democrats had control of both chambers, as well as a Democratic president to help move along their agenda.

That Congress passed 383 bills into law, including the Affordable Care Act, Wall Street reform, the $787 billion stimulus package, the first-time home buyer tax credit, “cash for clunkers,” a crackdown on credit card companies, student loan reform, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, tobacco reform and food safety reform. The Senate also confirmed two Supreme Court Justices.

Libby, You complain about gridlock in Congress and it is absolutely true. The mid term Shellacking of 2010 stopped the juggernaut of the Progressive agenda and the massive spending deficit imposed on the American People. If you want to blame gridlock on anyone, place it at the feet of the infamous Harry Reid who has pronounced all bills passed by the House and sent to him for debate and vote on as DOA. The House has passed numerous bills this year to help the economy and wonderful Harry has pitched them into file 13.

Libby, you are right to some extent about both sides being wrong. There are Progressive RINO’s and Progressive Democrats that I hold accountable for the mess this country is in. However, when you have one man with the power to keep legislation from being debated on or voted on in the Senate, I think we can put the blame squarely on him for the current gridlock. Why is he so afraid to let the legislation be debated or voted on? After all, he still has the majority for a few more months at least. If the legislation is so bad, he could get it voted down. Harry has to go and I can’t believe Senators of good will on both sides of the aisle have not demanded that he step down.

All I know is I got the rug pulled out from under my life in 2008 and it didn’t happen overnight or AFTER Obama was elected. It took many years for that to culminate. And Republicans controlled Congress for those years, 8 of them with a Republican President. Now I am not an economist, but it doesn’t take one to figure out Republican President + Republican Congress = your life down the toilet.

99/01 – 45 D 55 R Senate – 211 D 223 R House
01/03 – 50 D 50 R Senate – 212 D 221 R House
03/05 – 48 D 51 R Senate – 205 D 229 R House
05/07 – 44 D 55 R Senate – 202 D 231 R House
07/09 – 49 D 49 R Senate – 233 D 198 R House

Who had the majority during almost the entire Bush administration?

Agent – don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s just rain trickling down…

Actually Libby, your guy is peeing on the leg of all America. It is called Trickle Up Poverty. Have you noticed the wealth of the Middle Class has declined 25% in the past 3 1/2 years. Don’t bother to blame Bush for that again. We are tired of that line.

I forgot to mention that we have had net job gains every month since Obamacare was signed. Not enough to lower the unemployment rate each month, but better than net job losses.