klausefluoride

So I was going through the Heritage Foundation's supposed list of 10 time Obama has apologized for America.... and not one of them is an apology in any sense of the word. They're statements of fact that never use the word "sorry," or "apologize" or "forgive" or anything like that.

The closest one is this one: "In America, there's a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world. Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive."

That's what you see when it's quoted by people with a right wing agenda. What you never see is the rest of the quote: "But in Europe, there is an anti-Americanism that is at once casual, but can also be insidious. Instead of recognizing the good that America so often does in the world, there have been times where Europeans choose to blame America for much of what's bad."

And going through the whole list reveals not one actual apology: http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=32296

So what gives? It's a totally made up slander that's repeated often enough to sound like truth. More terrifying, I think, is the mindset of the people pushing this idea that America is blessed by god and supremely ordained to be the greatest country on earth, ever: easily debunked by looking at international rankings for... pretty much anything. Healthcare? **** no, worst system in the OECD. Education? Economic mobility? Internet access? Transportation? Entrepreneurship? Innovation? ANYTHING GOOD?

If so, please explain your support for unaccountable, secretive and criminal government activity.

Do you think Daniel Ellsberg should have been prosecuted? (Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers, a similar collection of 4,000 Top Secret documents that proved the US government was outright lying and committing criminal acts in Vietnam)

"It’s unsurprising that political leaders would want to convince people that the true criminals are those who expose acts of high-level political corruption and criminality, rather than those who perpetrate them."

Here is a link to a large number of lies and criminal activity that Wikileaks exposed:

http://www.salon.com/2010/12/24/wikileaks_23/singl...

The ACLU is really the only entity I see consistently defending the constitutional rights of US citizens.

If you're really critical of big government and value freedom and the constitution, you should be focusing on the government mandated intrusions of the patriot act, SOPA, indefinite detention without trial, guantanamo bay, the never ending "war on terror", the unwinnable "war on drugs", and the myriad of other issues that cut into our personal freedoms.

I fail to see how defending the "right" of big businesses to pollute our air and water, to spend billions on campaign contributions, or to pay lower taxes and deprive Americans of healthcare and pensions has anything to do with freedom. Quite the opposite: it's privatized tyranny that is fighting to kill democracy to ensure its profits.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,8...

A rather clear eyed and rational analysis of the race.

All Reagan did was carry out all of the policies he implemented.

1. The funding of the Mujahideen and the creation of Islamic terrorist networks predated the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The CIA, under Carter's direction, lured the Soviets into the Afghanistan quagmire. Reagan's efforts to arm them with stinger missiles and such was the logical and pre-planned continuation of this policy.

2. The creation of CENTCOM in response to the Iranian Revolution stationed several aircraft carrier battlegroups in the region to protect oil supply lines. Reagan's flagging of Kuwaiti tankers in the 80s was part of this.

3. Even the massive military buildup of the 80s was initiated under Carter, not Reagan. Carter instituted a peacetime draft in the late 70s, ordered 200 MX missiles (Reagan cut this order down to 50), ordered a grain embargo against the soviet union, and began funding the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.

The whole line of Carter weak, Reagan strong was nothing but propaganda. Carter's National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, was about as Hawkish and warmongering as they come.

1. Have you ever heard of Mutually Assured Destruction? If Iran nukes Israel, we're basically looking at the apocalypse. And no, no matter how radical and fundamentalist religious Iran may be, they're not looking to usher in a nuclear holocaust.

2. Any nuclear weapons attack on Israel would result in the deaths of millions of Palestinians, as well as lots of Arabs and people in the surrounding nations. It would be utterly counter productive.

Thoughts?

Considering that the US is already letting our roads, bridges and ports fall apart, that our students are graduating college with insane and ever skyrocketing debt loads, and that government research and development funding is the lowest its been since before WWII, should we really be cutting these essential public goods?

Now don't get me wrong, there's plenty of wasteful spending to cut: national security eats up more than $1.2Trillion in 2011, the war on drugs costs tens of billions every year (even more to build those prisons and lock all those people up) and we hand out insane amounts of cash to big agribusiness to make sure sugar and junk food are cheap.

But the spending everyone's so focused on isn't raw consumption, we're not just burning the money (like we do when we buy missiles), when you spend on infrastructure, science, education and healthcare, you're making an investment into your people that will more than pay off in the future.

Britain recently introduced massive austerity measures, and unemployment has shot up as a result:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica...

With the exception of Ron Paul, Gary Johnson and Jon Huntsman, all of whom have almost no chance of winning, all the GOP potential nominees have promised a war with Iran.

We're already spending more, adjusted for inflation, than we've ever spent since WWII on the military, and if Newt or Romney or Santorum or Bachmann or these other folks win, we're going full on world war 3.

Thoughts?

Article 1, Section 9, Clause 7: "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time."

The budgets of the CIA, NSA and the 14 other intelligence agencies are not published. We have no idea what they're spending it on or how much they're spending. This is utterly unconstitutional.

Answer: Ronald Reagan