Homeland Security Politically Filtered FOIA RequestsFollow

Wasn't someone spouting off about how we'd go into a super-inflationary period after Obama and the Dems took over? It was probably Varus but I always laughed at that prognostication.

What about the patriot act, Gbaji? YOU FORGOT ABOUT THE PATRIOT ACT.

Jeez.

After eight years of Republican silence over Bush era spending and deficits, the liberals thought you must be okay with it. I mean, duh.

Hehehe... no.


The Pentagon stated that they were on track to be at 50,000 in September. Are you saying that Bush had promised to have the same guys out in 16 months and Obama criticized this? This is interesting stuff.


Seriously? I don't even know where to begin on this. You were already shown to have no clue about Obama's plan for Iraq (which he is following pretty much to the letter) and are apparently ignorant of the 22,000 men who were sent to Afghanistan before the GOP crying that Obama wasn't at McChrystal's beck and call. And then of course the 34,000 men scheduled for deployment following Obama making a decision there. In fact, even prior to the December decision, we already had 40% more men in Afghanistan than at any point under Bush.

But aside from not having a clue... you were spot on!


No, your point was "he'll ultimately find that the policies of the Bush administration in those areas were right after all". But I can understand why you'd want to move the goalposts now that you've fumbled.


No, it eliminated the funds for Yucca Mountain. You realize we have something like 120+ other sites where we store waste at, right? But just to be clear, your brilliant idea here is that Obama and the Democrats are working to get billions of dollars in loan guarantees approved so power companies (some of which are already short-listed to receive them) can secure the loans and then... sabotage!!?

Well, that sure makes sense.


Likewise! You're 0-4 in this post alone! Great job!

Are you seriously arguing that dropping to 50,000 soldiers in Iraq by September of 2010 meets the redeployment promise you quoted from the campaign? Talk about buying the spin...



No. I'm saying that the Bush administration said that we'd maintain troop levels in Iraq based on what was needed to be maintained in Iraq and remove them as we were able to with no assumptions about timetables for doing so. Obama took a kinda waffled approach, on the one hand saying withdrawals would be based on conditions on the ground (a concession during the campaign which was a change from his earlier position prior to the success of the surge), but at the same time still insisting on some kind of fixed timetable. He was playing to the "get out of Iraq now!" crowd.

If he'd told that crowd that we'd have 50,000 soldiers in Iraq in summer of 2010, do you think they would have thought that was a good plan? Of course not!



Lol. Are you actually still under the deceptive belief that Obama wants us to continue fighting in Afghanistan? The only reason he puts any effort into it is because he has to. Political rhetoric has turned into military reality of the worst kind. That's a dumb way to decide where to send combat soldiers Joph...



Why hasn't he closed Gitmo Joph? It's because he's realized that there's a need to stash people we've captured along the way (in Afghanistan even!), and Gitmo is the best place legally and logistically to do so. It's the *most* transparent location. We could be tossing these guys into secret CIA locations around the globe, but we aren't. What he's realized is the exact same reality which caused the Bush administration to open Gitmo and place detainees there is still real.

He hasn't closed Gitmo because there's no better place to detain people captured during the "war on terror". Whatever you think of the actions themselves, you can't both support his focus on Afghanistan and then insist that the decision to keep Gitmo open when he does it is magically different than the reason Bush made the same decision. The same need exists. Gitmo serves the same purpose. That's why his promise during the campaign hasn't been met.



Which is needed (or a site like it) if we are to expand our nuclear power capacity in this country.



Yes. With contracts with existing nuclear power plants, but little or no room or political will to expand them to allow for new sources of nuclear waste. Are you being deliberately dense? Building nuclear power facilities without any means for them to contract for waste disposal means that those plants will either not be built after all, or will be built, but not utilized. Most likely the former, but you never know just how ridiculous the left might push this if they want. I didn't think they'd push for such a wasteful health care bill just for the sake of saying that they "passed health care reform", and in that context, the cost of a few nuclear power plants that wont ever be used just to say "we support nuclear power" when asked, might just be in the cards. It's your party Joph. Tell me how willing they are to waste public money in order to benefit themselves politically cause I haven't seen an end to that so far.



No. Silly scenario above aside what will happen is that they'll guarantee the contracts but they wont actually be used to build many or even any nuclear power plants. That means that they can build the plants, and will receive some funding assistance if they choose to do so. But someone has to actually decide to go ahead and do it. And before they do so, they'll have to line up all of the resources they'll need. That includes sources of nuclear material, approval at the local level (for a host of things), and a contract for disposal of the nuclear waste.

Any one of those things will stop or stall the project. Thus, the contract funding is an empty gesture. It's like offering a prize, but rigging the game so that no one can win. Well, not quite the same, because it's possible someone could take the contract money and then build a plant anyway in the hopes that in the future they'll be able to find someplace to store their waste. But until they do, the plant can't be operational. Same effect except we wasted a ton of money. The best we can hope for is that some future administration has the balls to actually fully support nuclear power and removes those blocks (like waste disposal) and those plants Obama is funding the construction for may someday become operational. Until then, it's just political boondoggle.


Of course, what will likely happen is yet more money spent on researching nuclear recycling efforts. That way they can say that they're funding nuclear power, without actually building any nuclear power plants (for awhile anyway). And they can funnel that research money in creative ways which benefit them politically. Brilliant! Not...

Edited, Jul 26th 2010 2:28pm by gbaji

Why do you feel you have to "spin" this Joph?

The only difference between the Bush plan for Iraq and Obama's was a timetable for troop withdrawals. He hasn't meet that timetable. Predictably.

Obama promised to close Gitmo. He hasn't.

Obama promised transparency. He hasn't delivered (and the Dems in Congress have *really* failed on this one).

Obama promised to end special interest lobbying. He's failed moderately at meeting the literal words of his promise and has failed completely at meeting the spirit of the promise.

Obama promised to be a "post racial" president, and yet he's appointed people with particularly partisan and racist pasts *and* has himself jumped into issues by applying his own racial bias (Saying a police officer "acted stupidly" when he had no facts other than the skin colors of the officer and the "victim").

Obama promised to end bi-partisan bickering and yet his administration has pushed the most partisan agenda I've seen in my lifetime, and Congress has echoed this in their legislative actions.

Obama simultaneously promised increased social spending, decreased taxes, and decreased budget. He failed to deliver on those promises (except the increased spending).

Obama promised that if we voted for his stimulus plan, unemployment wouldn't go past 8 percent. He was wrong.


The nuclear power thing is a minor sidenote Joph. I enjoy debating it with you, but honestly the time frame involved in actually building one and making it operational (which is the only true test) makes it more or less impossible to determine which of us is right. I firmly believe that Obama is simply telling people what they want to hear when it's convenient for them, and then telling other people what they want to hear and hoping they don't stop to compare notes. City councils do this all the time. They hand out zoning permits and licenses for industrial businesses in order to be able to claim to be a supporter of business, but then block building of the infrastructure necessary to actually operate those businesses in a cost effective manner in order to get support from the local environmentalists. Most people are smart enough to see through that, but you keep insisting that we should just buy the line without question. Um... Whatever.


The bigger point is that many of these failings were predicted by conservatives during the election. Obama was making promises that were quite obviously not going to come true, but when we pointed this out, we were derided and often called racists. That aspect of this is far more important of some detailed examination of a small subset of those cases which you want to focus on. At the end of the day, he hasn't been able to deliver on a large chunk of what he promised when he was running for for office. Certainly, the expectations created during the campaign (legitimate or not) have not been met.


It's not just about promises not met, but expectations about who he was and how he'd preside. The aspects of his political positions which people were concerned about and which got swept under the rug during the campaign have ended out being the guiding principles of his administration. While the aspects which were touted over and over as the "real Obama" have hardly been seen. Guess what? A whole lot of the swing votes who tipped the election in his favor voted for him because of the positive aspects they were sold. They hoped that the speculations about his past associations and actions really were just right wing nuts making stuff up. Unfortunately, Obama's own actions since taking office has confirmed many of those things. That's what matters. That's what's going to kill the Democratic party.

They rose to power by basically misleading the people about what they stood for. And now, they've forgotten that lie and have pursued an agenda that the voters not only didn't vote for, but were told repeatedly would not happen if the Dems came to power, all the while insisting that the 2008 election represented a "mandate from the masses" to do precisely what they downplayed or denied during the election itself.. And they're wondering why they're in the doghouse?

Edited, Jul 26th 2010 4:36pm by gbaji

But that's not what the campaign quote you provided said. It said that the troops would be "removed" by Summer 2010. It said a "residual force" would remain. I'm pretty certain they never said that residual force would be 50k. Can you acknowledge that this was about placating the anti-war wing of their party?

Don't get me wrong. I'm pleased that reason prevailed and he didn't do what he promised on this one. The point though isn't about whether I like him more or less. I didn't vote for him, so my opinion doesn't really matter, does it? My point is that he's disillusioned voters who supported him and the Democratic party in the last election. He made many promises which he just failed to deliver on. That's going to cost him and the party in this election.


It's not like what I'm saying isn't being said by virtually ever single political pundit right now Joph. I'm not sure why you have to make such an issue of it.



It's not about him being right or wrong. Boy have you missed the point!


It's about him saying one set of things during the campaign, but doing something very different once in office. Voters tend to not like that much.



Sure. Because you knew (as I did) what was really inside. So you aren't surprised when you open the can of pork and beans and it's just a can of beans with a tiny bit of pork fat hidden somewhere inside. My point is that a number of the swing voters who made the difference in that election, naively or not, believed the label and are now wondering why the insides don't match their expectations. You can dance around insisting that they shouldn't have expected that, or insist that no one technically mislead them into having those false expectations, but that doesn't change the fact that they did have them, they did vote because of them, and they are now being turned off to Obama and the Dems because of that.


It's not about how you or I feel about the guy Joph. We're not likely to change our votes.

We've had 35 thousand + in Japan since WWII. So what's the problem?

Michele "We need to investigate Congressional Reps for anti-American sentiment" Bachmann is leading the official Tea Party Caucus in the House. That says enough about the Tea Party all by itself.

Is now a good time to coin the term "Bachmannism"?

What about it? More Democrats voted against the HCR bill (in raw numbers and percentages) than Republicans voted for it. Elne's point stands.

I seriously hate dealing with FOIA requests. The legalese and rigamorole that you have to go through for these are just ridiculous.