Chaney administration

an interesting perspective...


"The degradation of the ideals of the United States became very apparent starting with the 2000 elections, when we got president Cheney. Georgie was playing tiddledywinks, and just signing Executive Orders put in front him, designed by the most devious in his administration, in order to dismantle every conceivable law and regulation that helped to protect the interests of the people. Cheney's administration knew that no matter who got elected in 2008, the road was carved to either continue the plunder or make it so difficult for the opposition that it would be too difficult to fix. We know what happened, and they succeeded in many ways and I think that President Obama has done an admirable job doing what he could in areas where he could, such as the brave Affordable Health Care Act. "  --  unitedwestand

It's all about presidents for Presidents with power

Dan Gillmor  -  Nov 15, 2011  -  Posting on Google+

The Obama administration, demonstrating again that it is more hostile to basic liberty than any of its predecessors, says it's a federal crime to do anything whatever that is not allowed in Internet companies' terms of service. No, they probably won't prosecute you.

But when governments create laws that are broken by essentially everyone, they are holding in reserve the ability to punish anyone for any reason. This is an extremist stance by Obama's Justice Department, but sadly it's not surprising.

Is Lying On The Internet Illegal? : NPR

Under a Department of Justice interpretation of existing law, it's possible for the government to bring charges against Internet users who for example lie about their weight on Match.com.

 

 My response:

For me its all about the precedents that were set.  Pick a subject...  say, war powers.  Used to be the president had limited powers regarding waging war.  Then !!!emergency!!! and all of a sudden prez has more power...  and its really really hard to take that away and it takes a truly great man like Washington to walk away. 

For example, drones.  It was unthinkable that a president 150 years ago could have launched an attack, killed 20-50 people and it wouldn't even make the weeks top news stories and nobody would debate it and that the event would cost the prez no real political capital.  Slowly it has become ok to reach out and "touch" those we disagree with... unless they are citizens.   Whoops.. that one went by the way side this summer.  President set... next one will be easier.

Korea was a "police action"  that made Vietnam easier which made gulf war 1 a piece of cake.  Then !!!tragedy!!! 9omg11 and we panic and attack without declaring war killing over 1 million.  Now we can launch unmanned vehicles to take out pretty much anyone and no one raises an eyebrow.  The precedent has been set...  its only controversial the first time you do it.  We are the frogs in boiling water.

It takes real leadership to reverse this... it also takes the collapse of a presidential administration.  After Nixon resigned lots of checks were put into place.  But its been a while since any of the war powers have been reigned in... 

GWB was not Hitler.  But He may have been "John the Baptist" clearing the way for a truly charismatic and power mad President who will react to some !!!event!!! and use the power it grants him to make major changes in our republic, turning it into something that more openly resembles a totalitarian empire.  Or not... if we can reset some of those precedences and limit executive power. 

Happy One Month day

Happy Obama plus one month.

We voted for change....  and so far so good.

Its over. We won.

The last 10 days have been amazing.

Its over.

We the people won.

The NeoCons lost.

We voted for change. Some we will like, some we will not. But it should be a much better ride than the last one.

Whoooo hooo

Response to McCains statement that bringing troops home is "not to important"

Iron Man Versus the Imperialists

Heroism, when applied to foreign policy, is a moral vanity that usually prescribes a cure more corrosive than the disease it confronts. It will always be good celluloid for Iron Man to incinerate terrorists who -- living out their own imperial perversions -- overrun villages full of innocents. But the real world does not contain magic suits that kill the bad guys without harming the civilians and let the good guy fly away without a scratch on him. In that world, the actual answer to the Iron Man complex is one of two things. America either needs to submit the Iron Man armor to a series of institutions to govern its just use, or it needs to take off the suit once and for all.

Korean War -Truth about mass killings comes out

Fifty-eight years ago, at the outbreak of the Korean War, South Korean authorities secretively executed, usually without legal process, tens of thousands of southern leftists and others rightly or wrongly identified as sympathizers. Today a government Truth and Reconciliation Commission is working to dig up the facts, and the remains of victims.

How could such a bloodbath have been hidden from history?

Among the Koreans who witnessed, took part in or lost family members to the mass killings, the events were hardly hidden, but they became a "public secret," barely whispered about through four decades of right-wing dictatorship here.

"The family couldn't talk about it, or we'd be stigmatized as leftists," said Kim Chong-hyun, 70, leader of an organization of families seeking redress for their loved ones' deaths in 1950.
Kim, whose father was shot and buried in a mass grave outside the central city of Daejeon, noted that in 1960-61, a one-year democratic interlude in South Korea, family groups began investigating wartime atrocities. But a military coup closed that window, and "the leaders of those organizations were arrested and punished."

Then, "from 1961 to 1988, nobody could challenge the regime, to try again to reveal these hidden truths," said Park Myung-lim of Seoul's Yonsei University, a leading Korean War historian. As a doctoral student in the late 1980s, when South Korea was moving toward democracy, Park was among the few scholars to begin researching the mass killings. He was regularly harassed by the police.

Scattered reports of the killings did emerge in 1950 — and some did not.

British journalist James Cameron wrote about mass prisoner shootings in the South Korean port city of Busan — then spelled Pusan — for London's Picture Post magazine in the fall of 1950, but publisher Edward Hulton ordered the story removed at the last minute.

Earlier, correspondent Alan Winnington reported on the shooting of thousands of prisoners at Daejeon in the British communist newspaper The Daily Worker, only to have his reporting denounced by the U.S. Embassy in London as an "atrocity fabrication." The British Cabinet then briefly considered laying treason charges against Winnington, historian Jon Halliday has written.

Associated Press correspondent O.H.P. King reported on the shooting of 60 political prisoners in Suwon, south of Seoul, and wrote in a later memoir he was "shocked that American officers were unconcerned" by questions he raised about due process for the detainees.

Some U.S. officers — and U.S. diplomats — were among others who reported on the killings. But their classified reports were kept secret for decades.