Theodore's World

Democrat Barack Obama arrives in Washington on Monday. On the campaign trail, Obama has styled himself a centrist. But a look at those who’ve served as his advisers and mentors over the years shows a far more left-leaning tilt to his background — and to his politics.

Before friendly audiences, Barack Obama speaks passionately about something called “economic justice.” He uses the term obliquely, though, speaking in code — socialist code.
Investors Business Daily
During his NAACP speech earlier this month, Sen. Obama repeated the term at least four times. “I’ve been working my entire adult life to help build an America where economic justice is being served,” he said at the group’s 99th annual convention in Cincinnati.
And as president, “we’ll ensure that economic justice is served,” he asserted. “That’s what this election is about.” Obama never spelled out the meaning of the term, but he didn’t have to. His audience knew what he meant, judging from its thumping approval.
“Economic justice” simply means punishing the successful and redistributing their wealth by government fiat. It’s a euphemism for socialism.
In the past, such rhetoric was just that — rhetoric. But Obama’s positioning himself with alarming stealth to put that rhetoric into action on a scale not seen since the birth of the welfare state.
Obama also talks about “restoring fairness to the economy,” code for soaking the “rich” — a segment of society he fails to understand that includes mom-and-pop businesses filing individual tax returns.
It’s clear from a close reading of his two books that he’s a firm believer in class envy. He assumes the economy is a fixed pie, whereby the successful only get rich at the expense of the poor.
Following this discredited Marxist model, he believes government must step in and redistribute pieces of the pie. That requires massive transfers of wealth through government taxing and spending, a return to the entitlement days of old.
Of course, Obama is too smart to try to smuggle such hoary collectivist garbage through the front door. He’s disguising the wealth transfers as “investments” — “to make America more competitive,” he says, or “that give us a fighting chance,” whatever that means.
Among his proposed “investments”:
• “Universal,” “guaranteed” health care.
• “Free” college tuition.
• “Universal national service” (a la Havana).
• “Universal 401(k)s” (in which the government would match contributions made by “low- and moderate-income families”).
• “Free” job training (even for criminals).
• “Wage insurance” (to supplement dislocated union workers’ old income levels).
• “Free” child care and “universal” preschool.
• More subsidized public housing.
• A fatter earned income tax credit for “working poor.”
• And even a Global Poverty Act that amounts to a Marshall Plan for the Third World, first and foremost Africa.
His new New Deal also guarantees a “living wage,” with a $10 minimum wage indexed to inflation; and “fair trade” and “fair labor practices,” with breaks for “patriot employers” who cow-tow to unions, and sticks for “nonpatriot” companies that don’t.
That’s just for starters — first-term stuff.
Obama doesn’t stop with socialized health care. He wants to socialize your entire human resources department — from payrolls to pensions. His social-microengineering even extends to mandating all employers provide seven paid sick days per year to salary and hourly workers alike.
You can see why Obama was ranked, hands-down, the most liberal member of the Senate by the National Journal.
The seeds of his far-left ideology were planted in his formative years as a teenager in Hawaii — and they were far more radical than any biography or profile in the media has portrayed.
A careful reading of Obama’s first memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” reveals that his childhood mentor up to age 18 — a man he cryptically refers to as “Frank” — was none other than the late communist Frank Marshall Davis, who fled Chicago after the FBI and Congress opened investigations into his “subversive,” “un-American activities.”
As Obama was preparing to head off to college, he sat at Davis’ feet in his Waikiki bungalow for nightly bull sessions. Davis plied his impressionable guest with liberal doses of whiskey and advice, including: Never trust the white establishment.
“They’ll train you so good,” he said, “you’ll start believing what they tell you about equal opportunity and the American way and all that sh**.”
After college, where he palled around with Marxist professors and took in socialist conferences “for inspiration,” Obama followed in Davis’ footsteps, becoming a “community organizer” in Chicago.
His boss there was Gerald Kellman, whose identity Obama also tries to hide in his book. Turns out Kellman’s a disciple of the late Saul “The Red” Alinsky, a hard-boiled Chicago socialist who wrote the “Rules for Radicals” and agitated for social revolution in America.
Obama reunited with his late father’s communist tribe in Kenya, the Luo, during trips to Africa.

As a Nairobi bureaucrat, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., a Harvard-educated economist, grew to challenge the ruling pro-Western government for not being socialist enough.
He argued for eliminating private farming and nationalizing businesses “owned by Asians and Europeans.”
His ideas for communist-style expropriation didn’t stop there. He also proposed massive taxes on the rich to “redistribute our economic gains to the benefit of all.”
“Theoretically, there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100% of income so long as the people get benefits from the government commensurate with their income which is taxed,” Obama Sr. wrote. “I do not see why the government cannot tax those who have more and syphon some of these revenues into savings which can be utilized in investment for future development.”

Taxes and “investment” . . . the fruit truly does not fall far from the vine.
(Voters might also be interested to know that Obama, the supposed straight shooter, does not once mention his father’s communist leanings in an entire book dedicated to his memory.)
Too much is at stake in this election to continue mincing words.
Both a historic banking crisis and 1970s-style stagflation loom over the economy. Democrats, who already control Congress, now threaten to filibuster-proof the Senate in what could be a watershed election for them — at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.
A perfect storm of statism is forming, and our economic freedoms are at serious risk.
Those who care less about looking politically correct than preserving the free-market individualism that’s made this country great have to start calling things by their proper name to avert long-term disaster.

Wild Thing’s comment………
This is such an excellent article!!!! This “ocialism” is out and out Marxism. We are in for a rough time if he’s elected and has a democrat congress.
This whole thing is getting scarier and scarier by the minute.
This list keeps growing:
* Speeches in stadiums filled with mesmerized, adoring audiences – Check
* An uninspiring background before meteoric rise – Check
* Creates his own new symbols of power – Check
* Associates with racists, hatemongers and violent radicals – Check
* A propaganda machine willing to show him only in the best possible light – Check
* Uses, “glorious leader” style Agitprop posters common in totalitarian nations
* Wants Secret Police force – Check
* Somebody powerful people think they can control – Check
* Often dismissed as a light-weight by his opponents – Check
* Seeks to replace God with the State – Check
* People adopting his name as their own – Check
* Inspires adoration art – Check
* Appropriates symbols of past German glory – Check
* Never plans on giving up power – Check (Obama to be president for the next “eight to 10 years”)
* A narcissistic megalomaniac – Check
* Brazenly Takes credit for other people’s accomplishments – Check
* Wants to build “youth” movement through State service – Check
* Acts as if in power before he is – Check
* Some followers believe him to be divine – Check
* Worshiped and aided greatly by the media – Check

….Thank you Mark for sending this to me.

Bush OKs execution of Army death row prisoner
Washington
President Bush on Monday approved the execution of an Army private, the first time in over a half-century that a president has affirmed a death sentence for a member of the U.S. military.
Bush said yes to the military’s request to execute Ronald A. Gray.
Gray had had been convicted in connection with a spree of four murders and eight rapes in the Fayetteville, N.C., area over eight months in the late 1980s while stationed at Fort Bragg.

“While approving a sentence of death for a member of our armed services is a serious and difficult decision for a commander in chief, the president believes the facts of this case leave no doubt that the sentence is just and warranted,” White House press secretary Dana Perino said.

In the military courts, “Private Gray was convicted of committing brutal crimes, including two murders, an attempted murder and three rapes. The victims included a civilian and two members of the Army. … The president’s thoughts and prayers are with the victims of these heinous crimes and their families and all others affected.”

Unlike in the civilian courts, a member of the U.S. armed forces cannot be executed until the president approves the death sentence. Gray has been on death row at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., since April 1988.
Members of the U.S. military have been executed throughout history, but just 10 have been executed by presidential approval since 1951 when the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the military’s modern-day legal system, was enacted into law.
President Kennedy was the last president to stare down this life-or-death decision. On Feb. 12, 1962, Kennedy commuted the death sentence of Jimmie Henderson, a Navy seaman, to confinement for life.
President Eisenhower was the last president to approve a military execution. In 1957, he approved the execution of John Bennett, an Army private convicted of raping and attempting to kill an 11-year-old Austrian girl. He was hanged in 1961.
The death penalty was outlawed between 1972 and 1984, when President Reagan reinstated it.
Gray was held responsible for the crimes committed between April 1986 and January 1987 in both the civilian and military justice systems.
In civilian courts in North Carolina, Gray pleaded guilty to two murders and five rapes and was sentenced to three consecutive and five concurrent life terms.
He then was tried by general court-martial at the Army’s Fort Bragg. In April 1988, the court-martial convicted Gray of two murders, an attempted murder and three rapes. He was unanimously sentenced to death.
The court-martial panel convicted Gray of:
_Raping and killing Army Pvt. Laura Lee Vickery-Clay of Fayetteville on Dec. 15, 1986. She was shot four times with a .22-caliber pistol that Gray confessed to stealing. She suffered blunt force trauma over much of her body.
_Raping and killing Kimberly Ann Ruggles, a civilian cab driver in Fayetteville. She was bound, gagged, stabbed repeatedly, and had bruises and lacerations on her face. Her body was found on the base.
_Raping, robbing and attempting to kill Army Pvt. Mary Ann Lang Nameth in her barracks at Fort Bragg on Jan. 3, 1987. She testified against Gray during the court-martial and identified him as her assailant. Gray raped her and stabbed her several times in the neck and side. Nameth suffered a laceration of the trachea and a collapsed or punctured lung.
The six-member court-martial panel returned its unanimous verdict after about two hours of deliberations. The panel also reduced Gray from Spec. 4 to private, forfeited all his pay and ordered him to be dishonorably discharged from the Army.
Gray has appealed his case through the Army Court of Criminal Appeals (then known as the U.S. Army Court of Military Review) and the Court of Appeals for the Armed Services. In 2001, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case.
Silas DeRoma, who left active duty in 1999, was one of several military attorneys who represented Gray on appeal.

“It’s disappointing news, as you can imagine,” said DeRoma, who now works as a regulatory attorney in Honolulu for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He said the basis for some of Gray’s appeals focused on the prisoner’s mental competency and his representation at trial.

Bush got the secretary of the Army’s recommendation to approve Gray’s death sentence in late 2005. Since then, it’s been under review by the Bush administration, including the White House legal counsel.
Complicating the administration’s deliberation was a case under review this year by the Supreme Court.
The court ruled in April to uphold the most common method of capital punishment used across the United States. The justices said the three-drug mix of lethal-injection drugs used by Kentucky and most other states does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment. The ruling in the case of Baze v. Rees cleared the way for a resumption of executions nationwide.
It was unclear where Gray would be executed. Military executions are handled by the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Bush’s decision, however, is not likely the end of Gray’s legal battle. Further litigation is expected and these types of death sentence appeals often take years to resolve.

Wild Thing’s comment……….
This man needed a bullet between the eyes a long time ago. I hope his sentance is carried out quickly. He’s eaten too many free meals at our expense already.

….Thank you Jack for sending this to me.

Winning Isn’t News
Investors Business Daily
Iraq: What would happen if the U.S. won a war but the media didn’t tell the American public? Apparently, we have to rely on a British newspaper for the news that we’ve defeated the last remnants of al-Qaida in Iraq.
London’s Sunday Times called it:

“the culmination of one of the most spectacular victories of the war on terror.” A terrorist force that once numbered more than 12,000, with strongholds in the west and central regions of Iraq, has over two years been reduced to a mere 1,200 fighters, backed against the wall in the northern city of Mosul.

The destruction of al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI) is one of the most unlikely and unforeseen events in the long history of American warfare. We can thank President Bush’s surge strategy, in which he bucked both Republican and Democratic leaders in Washington by increasing our forces there instead of surrendering.

We can also thank the leadership of the new general he placed in charge there, David Petraeus, who may be the foremost expert in the world on counter-insurgency warfare. And we can thank those serving in our military in Iraq who engaged local Iraqi tribal leaders and convinced them America was their friend and AQI their enemy.

Al-Qaida’s loss of the hearts and minds of ordinary Iraqis began in Anbar Province, which had been written off as a basket case, and spread out from there.

Now, in Operation Lion’s Roar the Iraqi army and the U.S. 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment is destroying the fraction of terrorists who are left. More than 1,000 AQI operatives have already been apprehended.

Sunday Times reporter Marie Colvin, traveling with Iraqi forces in Mosul, found little AQI presence even in bullet-ridden residential areas that were once insurgency strongholds, and reported that the terrorists have lost control of its Mosul urban base, with what is left of the organization having fled south into the countryside.
Meanwhile, the State Department reports that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government has achieved “satisfactory” progress on 15 of the 18 political benchmarks — a big change for the better from a year ago.
Things are going so well that Maliki has even for the first time floated the idea of a timetable for withdrawal of American forces. He did so while visiting the United Arab Emirates, which over the weekend announced that it was forgiving almost $7 billion of debt owed by Baghdad — an impressive vote of confidence from a fellow Arab state in the future of a free Iraq.
But where are the headlines and the front-page stories about all this good news? As the Media Research Center pointed out last week, “the CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News and CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 were silent Tuesday night about the benchmarks” that signaled political progress.

The war in Iraq has been turned around 180 degrees both militarily and politically because the president stuck to his guns. Yet apart from IBD, Fox News Channel and parts of the foreign press, the media don’t seem to consider this historic event a big story.

Wild Thing’s comment………
Thank you to our troops!!!!!! Let’s celebrate the heroes. I wish OUR media would write things like this and not only that but speak about our troops like this too.

….Thank you Mark for sending this.

Twin baby moose and mother playing in sprinkler in Anchorage, AK. June 2008

The song was written and performed originally by Dolly Parton. The person who is singing it on this video is Alison Kraus, a blue grass singer.

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Wild Thing’s comment…….
I LOVE this, how precious these babies are and their mom too. All of them enjoying the sprinkler and the babies playing in the yard with each other.

….Thank you Mark for sending this.

Red Faces Over Obama’s Red Mentor
By Cliff Kincaid
Canada Free Press
In a strange development, supporters of Barack Obama’s childhood mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, are openly debating the nature and depth of Davis’s commitment to the Communist Party and his relationship with the Democratic candidate. The debate has gotten heated.
This unusual debate, which is taking place on Obama’s official website, raises the question once again as to why Obama has not been asked by the major media about this relationship. Davis was identified as a Communist Party member by various investigative committees and acknowledged his party membership in a private letter obtained by John Edgar Tidwell, who was sympathetic to Davis and edited his books.
On one side of this debate is somebody claiming to be the son of Davis. On the other side is Alan Maki, a political activist and union organizer with a long history of involvement in left-wing causes. Indeed, Maki confirms that he has been a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and was a communist decades ago when he was in the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).
Although he doesn’t support Obama because of his ties to Big Business, Maki wrote a blog on the Obama website stating that he was grateful to Obama for bringing Davis to his attention, and that he, Maki, regarded Davis as his mentor, too. Maki announced establishment of a “Frank Marshall Davis Roundtable for Change” and invited Obama supporters to join it.
Maki did his homework, which is more than most of our own media have done, and he obtained Davis’s books. It is absolutely clear, Maki stated, that Davis was a communist.
In his 1995 book, Dreams From My Father, Obama cites

“Frank” as someone who gave him advice on various matters, including race, American values, and college, and read poems to him during his high-school years in Hawaii. One of Davis’s poems was a tribute to the Soviet Red Army. Another mocked the work of Christian missionaries.

Frank” was identified as Frank Marshall Davis, a controversial black writer and poet, by Gerald Horne, a writer for a CPUSA publication. Davis’s influence over Obama could help explain why the candidate associated with communists, socialists and anti-American figures through college and his political life in Chicago.

Maki says his intention is to use Davis’s writings “to advance the unity of working people to be a voice to be reckoned with by the Obama Administration, which to me, at this point, looks like will be an overwhelming landslide victory over the Republicans.”

Communist-style Change
Into the picture comes the person claiming to be the son of Frank Marshall Davis, who posted some comments on the Obama website in which he expresses the view that Maki and I are somehow in cahoots because Maki agreed to talk to me about his views on communism and Obama.
While Maki doesn’t personally like my conservative views, he was honest and forthright about his own political beliefs.
Tell the Truth
Clearly, there is an effort underway to sanitize or play down the Obama-Davis relationship and try to intimidate the major media into not covering it. But it is unusual, to say the least, that some of this effort is occurring on the official Obama website. The reaction, which makes the controversy even more newsworthy and significant, suggests that the truth is seeping out through other means, mostly in the alternative media, and increasing the pressure at least on Obama’s supporters to deal with the matter.
In another strange twist, Mark Davis claims some of his comments have been taken off the Obama website, but some freely remain (see comment 37) on the AIM website, which is open to a variety of views in the form of comments on posted columns. Some Davis comments were apparently deleted from the Obama website on the ground that they were “part of a racist, anti-Semitic hate campaign” against Maki. Davis insists they were not of that nature.
Eventually, if this controversy about Frank Marshall Davis continues to build, Obama could be personally forced by the media to respond, in the same way that former Democratic vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro had to hold a full-blown press conference to answer questions about her husband’s alleged Mob connections.
Maki thinks it admirable that Davis was a communist, but the odds are that few Americans would agree with him.
It is a problem not only for Obama and his campaign, but for those who associated with and covered up for Davis.
If Mark Davis is truly Davis’s son, one would think he would know the truth and have inside information about his father. It’s difficult, of course, to determine a true identity based on the limited information available about this person on the Internet. But it is Obama’s website and should be taken somewhat seriously.
It is a long article and the rest can be found HERE.

Wild Thing’s comment……..
For most Obama supporters, having a communist for a mentor is a plus. The younger ones don’t know what a communist is. The older ones know and don’t care. Or don’t know and don’t care.
I’ve long believed that he media supports Obama because of their liberal bias. Then awhile back I realized that they want him elected because of their COMMUNIST bias.
Communists, Black Supremacists, anti-Semites, Weather Underground—you can learn a lot about a person by the company he keeps.
Barack’s rallying cry………Citizens of the world, unite!

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba
(Reuters)
Prosecutors in the trial of Osama bin Laden’s driver unveiled a graphic video on Monday of the September 11 attacks and other al Qaeda operations that is likely to play a repeated role in pending war crimes cases.
The video is entitled “The Al Qaeda Plan,” an echo of “The Nazi Plan” made by Oscar-winning director George Stevens as evidence in the Nuremberg war crimes trials of German leaders after World War II.

“Oh my God” was heard repeatedly as crowds watched the twin towers of the World Trade center collapse on September 11, 2001, in a vivid highlight of the movie shown over defense objections at the terrorism conspiracy trial of Salim Hamdan.

The six-member panel that will decide Hamdan’s fate also saw footage of charred bodies stripped of flesh in the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa and the body of a U.S. soldier dragged through the streets in Somalia in 2003.
Control tower conversations with one of the doomed September 11 planes were also included.

“The Al Qaeda Plan” was made for $25,000 by terrorism consultant Evan Kohlmann for the Office of Military Commissions, which is conducting the trials of terrorism suspects at Guantanamo. Its 90 minutes of video clips depict the history of al Qaeda from its formation in 1988 through the September 11 attacks.

The commission’s lead prosecutor, Col. Lawrence Morris, said the tape would be used in other trials but no decision had been made whether to use it in the trial of accused September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Hamdan’s attorneys objected that the footage would prejudice the jury. “They’re trying to terrorize the members,” defense attorney Charles Swift told the court.

But prosecutors said the video helped illustrate the goals of al Qaeda training and ideology. “It is a very important part of the prosecution’s case,” said prosecutor Clayton Trivett.

Commission Judge Keith Allred approved the video, after first saying it would serve more to prejudice the case than to prove a point. “The planes crashing into the towers and the people screaming doesn’t prove anything,” he said.
A pivotal point of contention is the significance of Hamdan’s role in al Qaeda. The Yemeni native was caught in November 2001 with two surface-to-air missiles in his car.
Defense attorneys say he was a lowly driver, but the prosecution has sought to portray him as a trusted bodyguard who helped bin Laden evade capture and stay alive.
The two sides have also skirmished over an expert’s testimony on the laws of war. With Hamdan being tried as a war criminal under a 2006 U.S. law, the prosecution is seeking to show the United States was in a continuing armed conflict with al Qaeda well before the September 11 attacks.
Hamdan’s attorneys have sought to demonstrate that the battle with al Qaeda did not reach the state of armed conflict until the September 11 attacks, which could make it harder for the prosecution to prove Hamdan’s actions count as a war crime.
Separately on Monday, the Pentagon announced it had filed charges against another detainee at Guantanamo and released three from the detention center.
The Pentagon said Abdul Ghani was accused of attempted murder, material support for terrorism and conspiracy over accusations he fired rockets and planted bombs aimed at U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002, and tried to kill an Afghani soldier in 2002.
The Pentagon said it had released three detainees — one to Afghanistan, one to the United Arab Emirates and one to Qatar. It said more than 65 Guantanamo detainees are eligible for transfer or release subject to talks on where they will go.

Wild Thing’s comment……..
7 years later we are still dealing with the scum responsible for 9/11 only strengthens my resolve to kill them. Kill them all. Set the precedent now!!

Petraeus won’t join bandwagon for Iraq withdrawal timetable
BAGHDAD
The top U.S. military commander in Iraq isn’t buying the increasingly popular idea of a publicly stated timetable for American troop withdrawal.

Gen. David Petraeus, the Iraq commander, said in an interview that the situation in Iraq is too volatile to “project out, and to then try to plant a flag on a particular date.”

With violence at its lowest levels of the war, politicians in both the United States and Iraq are getting behind the idea of a departure timetable. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was first, suggesting he would have combat troops home within 16 months of Inauguration Day. The idea got a big boost during his overseas trip last week, when Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki indicated support for that general timeline.
During a Friday interview on CNN’s “The Situation Room,” Republican candidate John McCain, who had opposed setting a timeline, appeared to shift ground. McCain said that 16 months “is a pretty good timetable” but must be based on conditions on the ground.
Meanwhile, the Bush administration has embraced “time horizons” as it negotiates with the Iraqi government a status of forces agreement over the future role of U.S. troops.

Petraeus said any timetable must have “a heck of a lot more granularity than the kind of very short-hand statements that have been put out.”

“We occasionally have commanders who have so many good weeks, (they think) it’s won. We’ve got this thing. Well we don’t. We’ve had so many good weeks. Right now, for example we’ve had two-and-a-half months of levels of violence not since March 2004,” he said from his office at Camp Victory.

“Well that’s encouraging. It’s heartening. It’s very welcome. But let’s keep our powder dry. . . .Let’s not let our guard down.”

Petraeus is pushing for what he says as a more nuanced debate as both U.S. and Iraqi political leaders are in campaign seasons, with many voters in both countries wanting to hear there is an end. Maliki is trying to sway voters in time for this fall’s scheduled provincial elections by winning support from his political rival, firebrand cleric Muqtada al Sadr, who has called for a U.S. withdrawal date since 2004.
Throughout his tenure, Petraeus has argued for a drawdown based on conditions, saying that the last of the five surge brigades could leave earlier this month because Iraqi forces are increasingly capable of securing Iraq.

Petraeus said that while both Sunni and Shiite extremists groups are weaker, Iraqi security forces still face threats as the groups try to reconstitute themselves throughout Iraq. And because of that, U.S. and Iraqi forces must not assume that the battle here is won, he said.

Maliki’s surprise spring offensive in the southern port city of Basra was a turning point in the security situation. It rid Iraq’s second-largest city of militia control and bolstered the confidence of both the Iraqi people and military. But the Iraqi security forces turned to U.S. troops to help them win, leading some to call for a more cautious withdrawal plan.

Petraeus has said he believes there will be a “long-term partnership” in which the U.S. acts primarily in an advisory role to Iraqi forces, but with enough combat power to step in and help if major battles erupt. But he said that that like most things in Iraq, plans could change.

“We know where we are trying to go. We know how we think we need to try to get there with our Iraqi partners and increasingly with them in the lead and shouldering more of the burden as they are,” Petraeus said.

“But there are a lot of storm clouds out there, there are lots of these possible lightning bolts. You just don’t know what it could be. You try to anticipate them and you try to react very quickly. . . .It’s all there, but it’s not something you want to lay out publicly.”

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Wild Thing’s comment……..
Please God I pray these men ( Obama and McCain) listen to General Petraeus and stop making this pulling out of Iraq with setting a date part of their campaign!!!!!!
Patreaus is a good man and an awesome leader. And why the heck aren’t these men listening to the man in charge of the “troops on the ground?
With all this talk about this the insurgents must be cheering this topic. These things IMO are none of our business nor the insurgents. It is military and should be on only a need to know basis.

“Hamas and Hizbullah as a way to stir up mischief in the region,” –Hussein Obama

Obama: We’ll make sure Palestinians have a state
Y net news.com
WASHINGTON
“The Palestinian people are having a very tough time right now economically, and it is in US interests to make sure that they have a sense of hope and opportunity and a Palestinian state. I think it’s in Israelis’ interest as well,” US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama told NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday on the heels of his Mideast tour.

“What I’ve said is that we’re going to make sure that the Palestinians have a state that allows them to prosper as long as we also have certainty that Israel’s security is not being compromised. I think it’s in the interest of both parties, but we are the critical ingredient in terms of making sure that a deal actually gets done,” he said.

“I give the Bush administration credit that the Annapolis process has gotten Prime Minister (Ehud) Olmert in Israel and President (Mahmoud) Abbas in the Palestinian territories to have very serious and frank discussions. I think they have moved the ball forward. They may not be able to finish the job. They certainly can’t finish it without serious participation by the next administration, and we’ve got to start early”.

According to Obama, if the US can “solve” the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, “then that will make it easier for Arab states and the Gulf States to support us when it comes to issues like Iraq and Afghanistan.
“It will also weaken Iran, which has been using Hamas and Hizbullah as a way to stir up mischief in the region,” he said, “if we’ve gotten an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, maybe at the same time peeling Syria out of the Iranian orbit, that makes it easier to isolate Iran so that they have a tougher time developing a nuclear weapon.”

Responding to Meet the Press’ Tom Brokow’s remark that “anytime an American goes to the Middle East, goes to an Arab capital, on the street or in a corridors of power, they say, ‘You just do whatever the Israelis want you to do, and the politicians come out here looking for Jewish votes’,”

Obama said, “I don’t think that’s entirely fair. This is my second trip to Israel and the West Bank. And the first time that I went, I did meet with Palestinian businessmen, I did talk to Palestinian students in Ramallah.

“When you’re in a region for a day, you’ve got a lot of boxes that you’ve got to check. And in Israel in particular, a big chunk of our day was meeting with not only the current prime minister, but former prime ministers and a whole bunch of people who intend to be prime minister. And it was important for us to make sure that we had covered our bases there,” said the presidential hopeful.

Wild Thing’s comment…….
Hey Obama, they don’t want a state. They want Israel pushed into the sea so they can turn the land into a garbage heap like everywhere else they reside.
“we’re going to make sure that the Palestinians have a state that allows them to prosper “
Gosh, I didn’t realize that the Israeli/Palestinian problem was all about economics. Just give those poor peeps jobs and they’ll put down their weapons. Just like in South Chicago, eh Obama?
“…hope and opportunity…”
The Palestinians hope they have opportunity to wipe Israel off the map.
“Iran, which has been using Hamas and Hizbullah as a way to stir up mischief”
Stir up mischief, well that is one way to put bombing, and and killing innocent people and cutting off their heads.

“Best appreciated when humming the tune of the popular Civil War song, “When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again,” or the Irish folk classic, “Johnny We Hardly Knew Ye.”
Also, with sincere apologies to my Hibernian forbears whose folk lyrics and music I keep misusing for political purposes. Somehow, however, I think their Irish eyes are smiling.” — Russ Vaughn

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When Barry Comes Flyin’ Home Again…
When Barry was comin’ to see the troops, hooah, hooah;
The brass they made us jump through hoops, hooah, hooah.
With sand in our boots in sweat in the eye,
We stood in the sun ‘til we liked to die,
But it all was for naught, cause, “Barry we never saw ye.”
He met all the generals sure as life, hooah, hooah;
He picked their brains about the strife, hooah, hooah.
But a private soldier he never met,
He’s comin’ home an’ he still ain’t yet,
But all we can say is, “Barry we never saw ye.”
Our wounded off to Landstuhl go, hooah, hooah;
To stabilize there for America, Ho! hooah, hooah.
But Barry there ignored our troops,
To go to the gym and shoot some hoops,
So all our wounded can say is, “Barry we never saw ye.”
So this whole damned trip was just a show, hooah, hooah,
Using us troops to make it so, hooah, hooah,
He wants to be our commander in chief
But has of our mission no true belief,
So all we can say is, “Barry the devil with ye.”
When Barry comes flyin’ home agin’ hooah, hooah
We’ll remember how Barry used us then, hooah, hooah
And vote for the warrior who bore the pain,
Who earned our respect that’s John McCain,
And we’ll all be verily sayin’ “Barry we never saw ye.”
Russ Vaughn
Vietnam 65-66

….Thank you Russ.

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Wild Thing’s comment………..
If he wins I sure hope we don’t have to watch him dance. This guy has NO rhythm, as seen when he attempts to dance and move around at the beginning of the video with Ellen Degeneres. It must be something that leaves the body when a person goes too far to the left.
This hype about Obama is all so sick!