RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events Barack Hussein Obama in '08?

More of the liberal media love affair. They say Bush must put partisan politics aside and push through Obama's agenda in the closing days.

President-elect Obama's transition chief said Sunday the incoming administration is reviewing President Bush's executive orders on stem cell research, oil and gas drilling and other matters.

John Podesta said the president can use such orders to move quickly without waiting for Congress to act, highlighting the extraordinary powers a president can wield beyond signing legislation approved by Congress. Podesta said people should expect Obama to use those powers to reverse many policies of the Bush administration.

The federal Bureau of Land Management is opening about 360,000 acres of public land in Utah to oil and gas drilling, leading to protests from environmentalists.

"They want to have oil and gas drilling in some of the most sensitive, fragile lands in Utah," Podesta said. "I think that's a mistake."

if the Conservatives that were basically told to stay home by the press had came out and voted, this would have been a McCain victory.

Is continuing dependence on Iran for oil change?

WASHINGTON – The U.S. military has conducted nearly a dozen secret operations against al-Qaida and other terrorist groups in Syria, Pakistan and other countries since 2004, The New York Times reported Sunday night.

Citing anonymous U.S. officials, the Times story said the operations were authorized by a broad classified order that then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld signed and President Bush approved in spring 2004. The order gave the military authority to attack al-Qaida anywhere in the world and to conduct operations in countries that were not at war with the U.S.

One such operation was the Oct. 26 raid inside Syria, the Times reported. Washington hasn't formally acknowledged the raid, but U.S. officials have said the target was a top al-Qaida in Iraq figure. Syria has asked for proof and said eight civilians were killed in the attack.

In another mission, in 2006, Navy SEALs raided a suspected terrorist compound in Pakistan's tribal areas.

The raids have typically been conducted by U.S. Special Forces, often in conjunction with the Central Intelligence Agency, the newspaper said. Even though the process has been streamlined, specific missions have to be approved by the defense secretary or, in the cases of Syria and Pakistan, by the president.

A Defense Department spokesman had no comment Sunday night on the Times report.

WASHINGTON -- A Republican congressman from Georgia said Monday he fears that President-elect Obama will establish a Gestapo-like security force to impose a Marxist or fascist dictatorship.

"It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he's the one who proposed this national security force," Rep. Paul Broun said of Obama in an interview Monday with The Associated Press. "I'm just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may -- may not, I hope not -- but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism."

Broun cited a July speech by Obama that has circulated on the Internet in which the then-Democratic presidential candidate called for a civilian force to take some of the national security burden off the military.

"That's exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it's exactly what the Soviet Union did," Broun said. "When he's proposing to have a national security force that's answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he's showing me signs of being Marxist."

Obama's comments about a national security force came during a speech in Colorado about building a new civil service corps. Among other things, he called for expanding the nation's foreign service and doubling the size of the Peace Corps "to renew our diplomacy."

"We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set," Obama said in July. "We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."

Broun said he also believes Obama likely will move to ban gun ownership if he does build a national police force.

Obama has said he respects the Second Amendment right to bear arms and favors "common sense" gun laws. Gun rights advocates interpret that as meaning he'll at least enact curbs on ownership of assault weapons and concealed weapons. As an Illinois state lawmaker, Obama supported a ban on semiautomatic weapons and tighter restrictions on firearms generally.

"We can't be lulled into complacency," Broun said. "You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was elected in a democratic Germany. I'm not comparing him to Adolf Hitler. What I'm saying is there is the potential."

Obama's transition office did not respond immediately to Broun's remarks.

President-elect Barack Obama met Thursday with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) at his transition headquarters in Chicago as a growing chorus of advisers pushes her for secretary of state.

This would give him a “Team of Rivals” Cabinet that would allow him to focus on the domestic economy while Clinton traveled the world to shore up America’s image with allies.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — No students showed up at Mirwais Mena girls' school in the Taliban's spiritual birthplace the morning after it happened.

A day earlier, men on motorcycles attacked 15 girls and teachers with acid.

The men squirted the acid from water bottles onto three groups of students and teachers walking to school Wednesday, principal Mehmood Qaderi said. Some of the girls have burns only on their school uniforms but others will have scars on their faces.



"Today the school is open, but there are no girls," Qaderi said Thursday. "Yesterday, all of the classes were full." His school has 1,500 students.

Afghanistan's government condemned the attack as "un-Islamic" and blamed it on the "country's enemies," a typical reference to Taliban militants. Qari Yousef Ahmadi, a Taliban spokesman, denied the insurgents were involved.
Related



Girls were banned from schools under the rule of the Taliban, the hard-line Islamist regime that ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. Women were only allowed to leave the house wearing a body-hiding burqa and accompanied by a male family member.

Qaderi said he believes there were multiple teams of assailants because the attacks took place at the same time in different neighborhoods. Provincial Police Chief Mati Ullah Khan said three people have been arrested. He would not provide further details because the investigation was not completed.

The country has made a major push to improve access to education for girls since the Taliban ouster. Fewer than 1 million Afghan children — mostly all boys — attended school under Taliban rule. Roughly 6 million Afghan children, including 2 million girls, attend school today.

But many conservative families still keep their girls at home and the acid attacks are a reminder that old biases remain.

"They don't want us go to school. They don't like education," said Susan Ibrahimi, who started teaching at Mirwais Mena four months ago. She and her mother, also a teacher at the school, were wearing burqas on their walk to work when the motorbike stopped next to them.

"They didn't say anything. They just stopped the motorbike and one of the guys threw acid on us and they went away," Ibrahimi said in a telephone interview.

The acid ate through the cloth covering Ibrahimi's face and left burns down her left cheek. The acid also burned her mother's hand.

"I am worried that I will have scars on my face," said Ibrahimi, who is 19 years old and not married.

Fifteen people were hit with acid in all, including four teachers, Qaderi said.

Ibrahimi said it was the Taliban that attacked her but then explained that she used the term to refer to anyone who was against education for women.

The United Nations called the attack "a hideous crime."

First lady Laura Bush on Thursday decried the attack as cowardly, saying in a statement the "shameful acts are condemned by honorable people in the United States and around the world."

The attacks are "contrary to previous assurances Afghans have been given that there would not be further attacks against schools or students," the U.N. said in a statement.

Arsonists have repeatedly attacked girls' schools and gunmen killed two students walking outside a girls' school in central Logar province last year. UNICEF says there were 236 school-related attacks in Afghanistan in 2007. The Afghan government has also accused the Taliban of attacking schools in an attempt to force teenage boys into the Islamic militia.

In Wednesday's attack, three young women were hospitalized for burns. Two were released Thursday morning, but 17-year-old Shamsia Husainai was still lying on a hospital bed unable to open her eyes. Her brother Masood Morbi said her body shook about every 10 seconds.

She could talk, but her brother said her words were mangled. Her face was covered with a cream to treat her burns. The doctors were giving her pills to blunt the pain.

Husainai's younger sister told The Associated Press on Wednesday that they had been walking on the street with a group of friends, all of whom were wearing a typical Afghan school uniform of black pants, white shirt, black coat and white headscarf.

Fourteen-year-old Atifa Bibi was also badly burned on her face but she was released from the hospital late Wednesday.

Qaderi, the principal, said no one in the school had reported any direct threats but one of the teachers attacked Wednesday had reported an incident two days ago in which two men threatened her.

"She told me when she was walking two men said to her, 'Oh, you are putting on makeup and going to the school. Okay, we will see you.'"

Husainai and Bibi's aunt, Bibi Meryam, said no one had threatened them but they would consider keeping the girls at home until it felt safer.

A handful of teachers showed up Thursday, but Qaderi said the only students who tried to attend were about 20 primary school students who arrived late in the afternoon and were sent home because the school had already decided not to hold classes.

Ibrahimi, the young teacher who was burned, said she and her mother stayed home.

"Yesterday we didn't go to school. Today we didn't go to school. I don't know about the future," she said.

Change sammitch can believe in!

Cut Government spending...

in half and the problems will be gone in a year and a half.

Interestingly, Dan Morain of the L.A. Times has just discovered that Barack Obama has a pretty thin resume [1] prior to being elevated to the presidency. Between 1993 and '96, Obama, the much-ballyhooed "Constitutional scholar," had only an unusually low 3,723 billable hours of legal work accrued over a four-year stint with his law firm employer Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Gallard. Further, he seems to have worked on but few cases and made little impact commensurate with his reputation. The question I have, of course, is why is the L.A. Times only NOW interested that Obama was "involved in relatively few cases before entering politics"? Where was this investigating before the election?

The Morain piece begins by recounting how Obama has so often made a big deal out of his days as a "civil-rights attorney" claiming it a key ingredient of his early, formative community development years. Yet, Morain finds that there isn't much record proving that Obama did a whole heck-of-a-lot back in those days. (bold mine)

Senior attorneys at the small firm where he worked say he was a strong writer and researcher, but was involved in relatively few cases before entering politics.

So, Obama, for all his claims of being involved in the lives of "churches and community groups" as a lawyer with the firm is... what? Blowing smoke? If the paper trail reveals he didn't work on many cases or have very many billable hours, how is it that he found this experience to be a monumental involvement in the community that shaped his career?

Morain doesn't directly ask these questions in his piece, wisely preferring to let the facts talk to the reader. But, a careful read of his L.A.Times piece cannot help but elicit the pertinent question: what the heck was Obama doing during those four years, anyway? After all, it sure doesn't look like he was doing much legal work!

Here's how Morain sums up Obama's paper trail:

30: The approximate number of legal cases Obama was involved in:

4: The number of years Obama was a full-time lawyer

70%: The amount of time Obama spent on voting rights, civil rights and employment, generally as a junior associate. (The rest of his time was spent on matters related to real-estate transactions, filing incorporation papers and defending clients against minor lawsuits.)

3,723: The number of billable hours Obama accrued while working at Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Gallard.

According to Morain, some of Obama's "big" cases were the case of a shortchanged babysitter, the case of a cold building tenant, and a lawsuit against a corporation that owned low-income housing on behalf of a guy that slipped and fell down. Additionally, Obama was involved in the enforcement of the federal Motor Voter law in Illinois -- at lest that one being a higher profile case.

So, it appears Obama has less billable hours during those four years than most young lawyers are expected to accrue (which is up to 2,000 hours a year [2] according to some estimates), worked on but few cases, and only on one notable one. On top of that, he was rarely more than a "junior associate" the whole time.

This is the man that was praised for his extensive legal career? A slighted babysitter and a guy that fell down are the amazing legal challenges he faced as a young lawyer?

Of course, the biggest question is, why are we only now seeing this report in the L.A. Times? Where was this report two months ago or more?

Need I even ask?

Sorry, in light of bush's record on this matter, it's ridiculous that you bring it up in regards to Obama.







Now you're just a right wing talk show jackass.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081020/ap_on_el_pr/obama




Well the endorsement is becoming a little clearer now, apparently there is a informal deal in place for an endorsement for a job.

...

Maybe you should have thought of that before you endorsed someone simply because of their skin color, General.

How do we know? How do you know the sun comes up in the morning?

How do you know he endorsed Obama because of his skin color?

Powell was a major McCain donor previously. They share a military backgound and, in general, a belief system. Powell had more in commons with McCain's philosophy than he did with Bush's.

The only thing Powell didn't have in common with McCain, in fact, was a skin color and a belief in affirmative action.

Sure, Powell made some half-assed, incoherent, attempts to explain his decision but there was no logic to them. Anyone not blinded by politics could see that Powell wanted to support the first major party black president nominee and, therefore, endorsed a member of his "race" over his friend and ally