diamond
ONE love, blood, life
Michael Steele has always been an idiot.
...and Charlie Rangel is a rocket scientist.
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Michael Steele has always been an idiot.
...and Charlie Rangel is a rocket scientist.
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Jon Stewart is a pothead.
1. He's not.Jon Stewart is a pothead.
Rangel is a decorated Korean War vet.
And George W. Bush was a crack addict and an alcoholic who got away with it by proclaiming himself a "born again Christian."and a tax cheat.
Right candidate, wrong time. Worst time, actually.I just watched a bunch of YouTube videos of masses of people (especially African-Americans) in the streets celebrating after Obama's election on election night 2008. The world seemed so united.
YouTube - Obama's Election Night
What ever happened to that spirit? My, how times change.
Stewart disrespected him, used him to get laughs.
I watched it too, don't see how he disrespected him. By calling him dude?
Or actually challenging him, albeit in a humorous way. I would also call it mildly challenging. I would think that anyone going on that show, even the President, knows that they'll be "used" to get laughs. It is a comedy show.
But when Limbaugh and Hannity do it, that's all they do, because they have no substance. Stewart had substance aside from the small jokes, and those jokes tended to lead to larger points, points Limbaugh and Hannity lack the ability to make.To turn 'Yes We Can' into a punch line is something I would expect from Limbaugh or Hannity.
Christian Science Monitor, Nov. 3
President Obama is pledging stepped-up military and economic cooperation with Yemen in response to last week’s foiled terrorist operation aboard cargo planes that originated in the country.
Yemen is one of the Arab world’s poorest countries and home to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).
An initial response to Mr. Obama’s promise to step up the fight against Yemen’s Islamist militants may have come Tuesday, when an oil pipeline running through a militant stronghold in Yemen was blown up. The pipeline attack was a reminder that the two-track approach for fighting Islamist terrorists in their strongholds--covert military and intelligence operations and “hearts and minds” development programs to reach the public and deny terrorists their havens--faces a steep climb to success in Yemen.
Some regional analysts are already calling Yemen Obama’s “next Afghanistan,” a weak state where anti-Western extremists have been able to take root. But a comparison to Obama’s approach for the militant havens of Pakistan’s northwest may be more apt. No one expects large numbers of US troops to be deployed in Yemen. Instead, the administration is quietly discussing ramping up covert operations by the Central Intelligence Agency--adding special-operations units and strikes by unmanned drones to what some analysts already call a “clandestine war.” At the same time, the president is talking publicly about increased assistance to Yemen to build up its institutions and reach a poor population.
But some Yemen specialists worry that Obama’s talk of ramping up development assistance will remain just that–-talk--while what they call a “militarization” of US relations with Yemen continues unabated. “If there only were a genuine two-track approach to Yemen: That would be a good thing, but unfortunately, whatever economic aid and attempts to persuade the Yemeni public there have been have been dwarfed by the money and attention going to military options,” says Gregory Johnsen, a Yemen expert and doctoral candidate at Princeton University’s Department of Near Eastern Studies.
...ehind the scenes, the administration is hearing the opinion of a growing number of military and intelligence officials that President Saleh may be losing his grip on the country. And concern is growing that he appears unable to handle an Al Qaeda affiliate apparently growing in sophistication and bent on striking the West.
...But an increase in covert operations such as drone strikes also risks “mistakes,” some say. Exhibit A: the recent strike on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border that killed three Pakistani soldiers--and worsened already-tense US-Pakistan relations. Such “mistakes” have already occurred in Yemen, says Mr. Johnsen of Princeton, with the effect of strengthening AQAP and boosting its recruiting efforts. “Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has been around since 2006, but their argument that Yemen was under Western attack and that therefore it was a Muslim’s duty to strike back wasn’t really catching on,” he says. But then, he says, “word spread” about a number of supposedly covert missile strikes--one in late 2009 that killed a number of women and children, and another in May of this year that killed a government official. “Al Qaeda has been able to say, ‘We’ve been telling you Yemen is under Western military attack,’ ” Johnsen says. “And it has been catching on.”
Saleh has shown in the past that he does not take kindly to unpopular US operations in his country, on several occasions responding by suspending security and counterterrorism training programs. But he may have no choice, some say, but to accept what Obama calls a strengthened US role in his country.
Any US role in Yemen will have to have some military component, Johnsen says. But, he adds, if it is not counterbalanced by more than lip service to the development and public-outreach side of the equation, “the US may be walking into a bit of a trap.”
And then there's the Administration's recently proposed $60 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia, currently under consideration by the House Foreign Affairs Committee (Congress has until Nov. 20 to stop the sale, after which the Defense Department will begin the long process of nailing down contracts). If approved, this will be the largest arms sale in US history. The stated purpose is long-term "counterbalance" of Iran in the region (funny, that was also the Nixon Administration's term for all those arms sales to the Shah). I don't doubt that's the main intent, but the rapidly deteriorating situation in Saudi Arabia's neighbor to the south is surely affecting their calculus, as well.
Knowing our luck, we'll be fighting against some of the military capital from that arms sale in 10 to 15 years
I just watched a bunch of YouTube videos of masses of people (especially African-Americans) in the streets celebrating after Obama's election on Election Night 2008. The world seemed so united.
YouTube - Obama's Election Night
What ever happened to that spirit? My, how times change.
I doubt anyone ever buys $60 billion worth of weaponry as a mere nicety. Granted, we've been arming the Saudis off and on for decades, that much isn't new, but this is a staggeringly large infusion of military technology all at once. I think more likely it points to a shift in the Administration's Iran policy towards longterm containment (despite what their words suggest, and never mind all that talk about disarmament).I'll be waiting for the pictures of U.S. military equipment sitting covered and idle in the Saudi desert. I posit that Saudi Arabia is just buying stuff from us (and will not use it) just to prop-up our economy and government (and to thank us for the oil purchases).