yabits's past comments

  • 0

    yabits

    Definitely a Republican congress, but done with Bi-Partisan support. A whole lot of Democrats supported it.

    The Democrats who didn't support it were correct according to the Republicans who are reversing course today. I can't recall any Republicans who opposed it -- not to say there wasn't a smattering, much to Herr Karl's dismay.

    A "whole lot" -- LOL! A "whole lot" of Democrats voted against it at the time.

    Posted in: U.S. Congress rethinks 9/11 law on military force

  • 1

    yabits

    Sorry, but what did Cheney do that was illegal?

    LOL! You have to ask?

    trying to keep VP records secret under executive privilege

    Yes, secret from the American people. And here I thought he was supposed to be working for us. Meeting with energy executives? What is he hiding?

    He also kept things secret from his president. But that is perfectly OK with you too.

    Just read the news that the administration knew about the IRS problems

    Readers can be assured that you don't have a single clue about the IRS "problems."

    Posted in: White House: Obama is no Nixon

  • 0

    yabits

    Let's not forget the one who has most resembled Nixon in sheer criminality over the past decade: former Vice-President Dick Cheney. He's the current holder of the "I'll-Tell-You-I'm-Not-A-Crook-But-I-Really-Am" Award, and it's not likely anyone will challenge him for it anytime soon.

    Remember when Nixon tried to convince people that the president was above the law? ("When the President does it, it's not unconstitutional.")

    Well, compare that to Dick Cheney trying to argue that the Vice-Presidency was a fourth branch of government that didn't have to answer to either the executive or legislative branches. (Since the VP has a role to play in both branches.)

    Posted in: White House: Obama is no Nixon

  • -2

    yabits

    The U.S. Congress is rethinking the broad authority it gave presidents to wage a war on terror after the Sept 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in light of how President Barack Obama has used the power to target suspected terrorists with lethal drone strikes.

    Fact: In 2001, it was a Republican-controlled Congress that gave a Republican president "broad authority," which included invading a nation illegally -- a nation that had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. Recall that this was the same Republican congress that tried to argue against the U.S. getting "entangled" in Bosnia (!!). Now that a Democratic president is using the power to make surgical drone strikes, many of the same Republicans are finding it necessary to "rethink" things. Perhaps because the drones have been tremendously effective at seemingly minimal financial cost, and thus greatly benefits the president who authorizes their use. (And they just don't want a Democratic president enjoying any benefits of success in what they used to call the "war on terror.")

    Posted in: U.S. Congress rethinks 9/11 law on military force

  • -3

    yabits

    This along with the IRS, AP survaiance, Fast and Furious....

    Yeah. add them to the "Clinton death list," and join the putzes.

    Posted in: White House releases Benghazi emails

  • 1

    yabits

    You won't find them because your not giving a complete picture of the very complicated cold war geopolitical situation at the time.

    It's quite natural that those inclined to criminality want to hide their immoral behavior behind a smokescreen of "complications." It's how Nixon secretly invaded Cambodia, triggering events that led to the overthrow of the government and subsequent genocide. And how his continued daily bombings took the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent Indo-Chinese.

    It's also why these conservatives viciously attack and undermine any American leaders who won't join them in their criminality. Carter knew what Saddam was and didn't want his country to deal with him.

    Soviet Union was still a very going concern then and still ensconced in Afghanistan. The Iran and Iraq war was in the interest of the U.S to try to keep it a stalemate

    Soviet experts in the U.S. knew their system could not be sustained into a second generation of leadership. Its failures were evident and there were just no believers among the young people.

    The real question is: What does the U.S. demonstrate to the people of the world when it deals in such a two-faced and Machiavellian manner as trying to play both sides against the other? (Answer: That it can't be trusted.)

    U.S Stark was hit also by our NATO partner provided French made Super Etendard jet with a French exocet missle that Saddam had bought from them along with a host of soviet weaponry.

    LOL! Funny how one arguing about complications tries to over-simplify things. The green light for arms sales to Iraq was given around 1982 after Reagan took office and tried to make nice with what he thought would be his new buddy. If the United States truly wanted its NATO partners not to transfer weapons to Hussein, they could have easily managed that. The sailors of the Stark [1987] were actually very much victims of the Machiavellian machinations of their own leaders -- and used as pawns in a game played to stalemate.

    Posted in: White House: Obama is no Nixon

  • 0

    yabits

    Obama was asked point blank, whether or not it was a terrorist act. His response... "We're still investigating"

    A United States president has the prerogative to answer a talk show host in his own words. I well understand how the Fox-Limbaugh crowd thinks it is fine to openly disrespect a sitting president (as long as it's a Democrat) -- making the Dan Rather-method of confrontation their ideal rather than trying to set another example. Why not model Jim Lehrer, Walter Cronkite or the late Tim Russert?

    Obama's haters have yet to explain why him using the T-word on a talk show is so vitally important regarding the issue. Especially when Americans can have complete confidence that their president will go after the perpetrators, once all the facts have been gathered. After eight years of loose-lipped, shoot-from-the-hip, "Bring it on," "Mission Accomplished" malarky which ended up in disaster, Obama's measured words are a quantum leap improvement.

    I know you want to defend your boy

    I would rather defend the truth, especially when it's under assault from haters who seem to have set no standard low enough that they still can manage to slither under.

    Posted in: White House: Obama is no Nixon

  • 0

    yabits

    And folks like you have enabled the self-destructive construct the GOP has morphed into to take everything you held dear in terms of proper governance, and perverted it into something unrecognizable and toxic to the average American.

    From the GOP's own report:

    “We have become expert in how to provide ideological reinforcement to like-minded people, but devastatingly we have lost the ability to be persuasive with, or welcoming to, those who do not agree with us on every issue.” [emphasis mine]

    Posted in: White House: Obama is no Nixon

  • 0

    yabits

    What is disingenuous is how the media glosses over reality and highlights nothing but favorable democrat narratives that the GOP is in decline, irrelevant, performing autopsies on itself...

    The "media" did not "gloss over" the internal report that GOP did on itself and released in March. The leadership of the GOP itself admits that it faces serious challenges in the future, not the least of which being the age group between 18-30 is strongly identifying itself with Democrats and progressive policies.

    The GOP leadership conducted interviews in places like Iowa and Ohio, seeking out the views of former GOP voters who have become disenchanted with their party. One of the perceptions delivered in the report is that voters consider the GOP, "scary" and "out-of-touch," views best exemplified by the scary, out-of-touch delusions that it is "the media" who have created this story. It's all a media fabrication that Governor Jindal called upon the GOP to stop being the "stupid" party.

    As for the governors races, political re-alignments often take a decade or more before their effects can be analyzed. As young people become more active in local elections, this cannot bode well for the GOP and its messages of never-ending war, never-ending austerity, and never ending obstructionism with anyone who doesn't toe their line 100%.

    As it relates to this topic, the current attempts to smear President Obama are a sign of the GOP's desperation, and an admission that they can't win with new ideas -- or show any flexibility at compromising with their political opponents.

    The current narrative that the republicans are just out making political hay out of this 'much ado bout nothin' in their stories is just totally pathetic and insulting.

    It is pathetic and insulting when Republicans imply that these events would be treated the same way by them if one of their own was in the White House. Most intelligent people know that these Republicans have no principles other than selling themselves to the highest bidder. Intelligent people recall how Republicans at the time tried to defend and rationalize Nixon's actions -- which were crimes directed by him and his office. (Until, that is, the facts became obvious to everyone.)

    "Anyone who wants to be an ambassador must give at least $250,000," Nixon instructed his chief of staff, Bob Haldeman. Remember how the country found out all about the CREEP (Committee to re-elect the President) money flowing to Nixon -- after some of it was used to pay off the Nixon-directed break-in of Democratic headquarters. Hopefully, young people are intelligent and reasonable enough to realize that some of the laws formed as a result of Watergate -- like donors to political causes having to release their identities and amounts -- have been effectively subverted by the Citizens United ruling.

    Posted in: White House: Obama is no Nixon

  • -1

    yabits

    Can't believe no one has yet mentioned The Arrival.

    Yes, Charlie Sheen could act.

    Posted in: What are your five favorite science-fiction movies?

  • 0

    yabits

    So many great ones have been mentioned. A few on my list that have been not:

    1. Solaris
    2. Moon
    3. The Martian Chronicles (mini-series)
    4. Colossus- The Forbin Project
    5. Phase IV

    Westworld and The Incredible Shrinking Man, for icing on the cake.

    Posted in: What are your five favorite science-fiction movies?

  • 0

    yabits

    Here's Ronald Reagan in 1982: "President Rios Montt is a man of great personal integrity and commitment" and "My administration will do all it can to support his progressive efforts."

    And thus Reagan made the United States complicit with genocide.

    Posted in: Ex-Guatemalan dictator found guilty of genocide

  • 2

    yabits

    Another Republican, Senator Orrin Hatch, also saw ominous echoes in the IRS drama. “I’ve never seen anything quite like this, except in the past during the Nixon years,” he said.

    Hatch must have totally slept through the Reagan-Bush years. In terms of the sheer number of administration officials indicted and convicted of crimes, it stands as the most corrupt regime in American history. Sending arms to Iran -- whose proxies in Lebanon murdered scores of Marines -- and then denying he did just that, makes Benghazi look like a Sunday school picnic. Running a secret government out of the White House to bypass Congress and support genocidal murderers like Rios-Montt of Guatemala (see JT article, barely a week old), trumps anything Nixon did.

    Posted in: White House: Obama is no Nixon

  • 0

    yabits

    The real scandal is how the IRS is not enforcing the rules behind tax exempt status for organizations whose activities are primarily political.

    Why aren't conservatives concerned about that?

    Posted in: U.S. tax authorities admit Tea Party scrutiny

  • 1

    yabits

    Inform the North Koreans that the next carrier we send will be the USS Dennis Rodman.

    Posted in: N Korea slams U.S. aircraft carrier's arrival

  • 0

    yabits

    Due process would require showing that the person has committed a crime.

    Appending this remark, I believe there should be a process/protocol whereby ordinary citizens can file an affidavit expressing "no confidence" of members of a community towards individuals whom they have reasonable doubts about with regards to keeping guns on their property. The process would be very much like seeing a restraining order against someone.

    There would then be some requirement on the individual to demonstrate -- with supporting witnesses -- why they should not be considered a risk.

    Posted in: NRA kicks off annual convention, saying it is fighting 'culture war'

  • 0

    yabits

    Rios Montt seized power in 1982 and ruled until 1983 in what is widely considered one of the darkest periods of the country’s agony of civil war between the military and leftist rebels.

    He was strongly supported and lauded by US conservatives at the time -- who completely denied the allegations of wholesale murder reported by human rights groups.

    Posted in: Ex-Guatemalan dictator found guilty of genocide

  • 0

    yabits

    I do believe posting a you tube video of himself smoking dope should be more than enough for a mental health professional to file the appropriate court documents disallowing his 2nd amendment rights by due process...

    Due process would require showing that the person has committed a crime. If the laws of his state allow for the medical use of a certain substance, then neither using nor filming that use is a crime. We still have a First Amendment.

    From my observation, Kokesh has a much better grip on reality than do many of the gun owners who are upset at him for his active and articulate demonstration of what he regards as his personal freedoms.

    Posted in: NRA kicks off annual convention, saying it is fighting 'culture war'

  • 0

    yabits

    Which brings us to most interesting thing that about your posts. Since the tragedy at Sandy Hook you've have been quite vocal in advocating for a more intrusive Government to identify those that should not be allowed to have guns.

    Not so. There are simply too many examples -- and now you add Kokesh to the list -- of the gun community being unable to provide anything in the way of ideas or willingness to truly take on the responsibilities closely tied to what the second amendment describes as a "right."

    Rather than a "more intrusive" government identifying anyone, I have advocated a free-enterprise, private-sector solution. I don't know who picks up the costs for all of the damage caused by guns falling into the wrong hands, but it seems to me that the gun industry and gun-owning community ought to be a lot more responsible for those costs, rather than socializing them on the rest of the community.

    I have not seen one truly effective idea coming from them. The NRA once were strongly for universal background checks -- until they came out against them.

    Posted in: NRA kicks off annual convention, saying it is fighting 'culture war'

  • 1

    yabits

    What I don't get is that it is the IRS that has broken this story -- admitting that a sudden flurry of new requests for tax exempt status by "patriot groups" triggered the more thorough checkout. Keep in mind that many watchdog groups are suspicious of the granting of tax exempt status to groups that are, in reality, primarily political in nature. (And thus not eligible for tax-exempt status.)

    Posted in: U.S. tax authorities admit Tea Party scrutiny

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