Category: Obama

Looks like this little epidemic is getting worse; and of course getting more politicized by the minute.

Looks like the Liberals are now pointing fingers at the G.O.P:

When House Appropriations Committee chairman David Obey, the Wisconsin Democrat who has long championed investment in pandemic preparation, included roughly $900 million for that purpose in this year’s emergency stimulus bill, he was ridiculed by conservative operatives and congressional Republicans.

Obey and other advocates for the spending argued, correctly, that a pandemic hitting in the midst of an economic downturn could turn a recession into something far worse — with workers ordered to remain in their homes, workplaces shuttered to avoid the spread of disease, transportation systems grinding to a halt and demand for emergency services and public health interventions skyrocketing. Indeed, they suggested, pandemic preparation was essential to any responsible plan for renewing the U.S. economy.

But former White House political czar Karl Rove and key congressional Republicans — led by Maine Senator Susan Collins — aggressively attacked the notion that there was a connection between pandemic preparation and economic recovery.

Now, as the World Health Organization says a deadly swine flu outbreak that apparently began in Mexico but has spread to the United States has the potential to develop into a pandemic, Obey’s attempt to secure the money seems eerily prescient.

And his partisan attacks on his efforts seem not just creepy, but dangerous.

There’s only one problem with that; and that’s this:

“President Barack Obama has not yet chosen a surgeon general or the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. His choice to run the Food and Drug Administration awaits confirmation,” Politico reported.

In all, 19 positions and the secretary are empty desks.

Maybe if Obama did something more than preen and pat himself on the back for his first 100 days in office, we would actually have a government that did more than just blame Republicans for all the troubles of the world.

There’s also this here as well:

Sorry to interrupt all the liberal blogosphere’s unhinged GOP-bashing over conservative opposition to flu pandemic funding in the porkulus bill, but…

Well. Just an inconvenient reminder:

“All those little porky things that the House put in, the money for the [National] Mall or the sexually transmitted diseases or the flu pandemic, they’re all out,” Schumer said.

“Porky things.” Er, a rather unfortunate choice of words then. And now.

Leaves a bad taste in your mouth, doesn’t it?

Nothing like a little dose of reality to totally bring the liberal retards back to reality.

However there are some, who have some semblance of a brain; if that’s even possible with the Liberals:

(1) It’s a good point to make that Collins somehow thought pandemic preparation money was not an economic issue deserving of inclusion in the stimulus package. But Collins was for the money being included in some other form. Now, I think her reasoning is stupid — pandemic prevention is part of a recovery plan. But it’s not like she was against the very idea of it.

In fact she has voted for a number of bills that included pandemic prevention in the past, including the war funding bill of 2007. This undermines her point about which basket the funding is in, but also proves that she’s not against the idea of it.

(2) Relatedly, this money is actually the tail end of money ($7.1 billion worth) that President George W. Bush pushed for in 2005. So this is actually Bush money! To pin all this on the GOP is, thus, a little silly.

[…]

(4) Importantly, the vast majority of the pandemic prevention money was passed in March’s omnibus bill, which passed the Senate by (uncounted) voice vote.

Statements like “thanks for the swine flu” or “I hope Susan Collins’ kids get swine flu” are crazy responses to her opinions and the reality of the current funding situation. Just asinine. Same as actually calling or writing Senator Collins. Why? Why are you doing this? Schumer went so far as to call the pandemic prevention funding a “little porky thing,” are you calling him? Are you yelling about him? Additionally, the money has been appropriated, so what’s the point?

Be truthful. Be fair. Be as comprehensive as possible.

Wow… 😮 There are some people on the left who have brains. If there were maybe about couple million more like this one. Maybe President Magic Negro would have never been elected. But when you say that, your a Raaaaccccccciiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiist!

Honestly. I am totally at a loss. It is just that I am so conflicted about the issue, that I really don’t know what to say. On one hand, I like the idea of keeping America safe, on the other, the idea of torture makes me sick.

Here’s what I am talking about, this Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal:

The Obama administration has declassified and released opinions of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) given in 2005 and earlier that analyze the legality of interrogation techniques authorized for use by the CIA. Those techniques were applied only when expressly permitted by the director, and are described in these opinions in detail, along with their limits and the safeguards applied to them.

The release of these opinions was unnecessary as a legal matter, and is unsound as a matter of policy. Its effect will be to invite the kind of institutional timidity and fear of recrimination that weakened intelligence gathering in the past, and that we came sorely to regret on Sept. 11, 2001.

Proponents of the release have argued that the techniques have been abandoned and thus there is no point in keeping them secret any longer; that they were in any event ineffective; that their disclosure was somehow legally compelled; and that they cost us more in the coin of world opinion than they were worth. None of these claims survives scrutiny.

Soon after he was sworn in, President Barack Obama signed an executive order that suspended use of these techniques and confined not only the military but all U.S. agencies — including the CIA — to the interrogation limits set in the Army Field Manual. This suspension was accompanied by a commitment to further study the interrogation program, and government personnel were cautioned that they could no longer rely on earlier opinions of the OLC.

Although evidence shows that the Army Field Manual, which is available online, is already used by al Qaeda for training purposes, it was certainly the president’s right to suspend use of any technique. However, public disclosure of the OLC opinions, and thus of the techniques themselves, assures that terrorists are now aware of the absolute limit of what the U.S. government could do to extract information from them, and can supplement their training accordingly and thus diminish the effectiveness of these techniques as they have the ones in the Army Field Manual.

Moreover, disclosure of the details of the program pre-empts the study of the president’s task force and assures that the suspension imposed by the president’s executive order is effectively permanent. There would be little point in the president authorizing measures whose nature and precise limits have already been disclosed in detail to those whose resolve we hope to overcome. This conflicts with the sworn promise of the current director of the CIA, Leon Panetta, who testified in aid of securing Senate confirmation that if he thought he needed additional authority to conduct interrogation to get necessary information, he would seek it from the president. By allowing this disclosure, President Obama has tied not only his own hands but also the hands of any future administration faced with the prospect of attack.

Disclosure of the techniques is likely to be met by faux outrage, and is perfectly packaged for media consumption. It will also incur the utter contempt of our enemies. Somehow, it seems unlikely that the people who beheaded Nicholas Berg and Daniel Pearl, and have tortured and slain other American captives, are likely to be shamed into giving up violence by the news that the U.S. will no longer interrupt the sleep cycle of captured terrorists even to help elicit intelligence that could save the lives of its citizens.

Now, you all know that I was not a big fan of Bush Administration. But I cannot help but wonder, if the Obama Administration did pull a major bonehead move here.  One thing that is the source of the authority of the right to enhanced interrogation is, that these Terrorists are not subject to the Geneva Conventions. That being because they are not uniform combatants. While I might agree with that sentiment on a legal or a technical level, on a human and or diplomatic level that argument runs into bunch of problems. You see subjecting persons from countries where you are also importing oil from, to torture, does not do much for your Country diplomatically. The problem is, those who argue against the diplomatical arguement, come off sound like a bunch of Isolationists.

So, I am really not sure, did Obama screw the Country? You tell me? I’m open to opinions, as long as you don’t act like a troll.