President-elect Barack Obama will nominate Steven Chu, a Nobel physics laureate and advocate of alternative energy research, as his energy secretary, a Democratic aide said on Wednesday.
Did W have any nobel laureates on his team anywhere?
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
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How much mileage are you going to get from comparing the administration of the worst President we have had in almost 100years to the new one? Answer-Hummer-like.
Well, I can get a little mileage out of it because of the juxtaposition of the two administrations. And admit it, Obama is doing a kick-ass job with his appointments.
I have deliberately not mentioned, dissed, praised Obama because he ain't President yet. And let's face it, I am not done with the current pork chop.
Can anyone here tell me why the fuck we are still in Afghanistan? Besides the same ol', lame ol' we need to get Osama. We have no national interest in being in this quagmire which is hardly a cohesive country, more a bunch of tribes waiting to get paid off by a foreign power or a drug cartel. Where are the peaceniks who berated Bush(Republicans) over Iraq? Winning in Afghanistan is just as illusory and not worth losing one more American life. We could pull out of Afghanistan tomorrow(unlike Iraq)and the world would not come tumbling down; we would just have some egg on our collective face, a small fucking price to pay. If the Taliban take over, so what. If they harbor assholes who attack us again, fuck them up with bomb laden drones, infiltrate their organizations with spies(with all the time we have spent in these areas, I sure as hell hope we are collecting intelligence assets, but maybe I am wrong)and assassinate the perps. We don't need to send the whole fucking military unless it looks sorta...Presidential.
Can't say I disagree with your position on Afghanistan.
Obviously, we have to 'finish it'. Isn't that the standard hawk line about armed conflicts we get into? Once we get embroiled in some combat situation it just wouldn't be macho and manly to not 'finish it', whatever that means. We have to 'win' before we can leave.
Sounds a little Dick Nixonish, doesn't it Bob. Or maybe that should just be Dickish.
i'm very excited by the steven chu nomination, and the rest of the picks so far. anybody else notice how many professors, harvard grads, mit grads, etc. have been nominated? unparalleled since kennedy. i'm lovin' it.
Bawdy, Corey, I agree completely with you both.
Yeah, corey, you'll love it once the government takes over more and more of our society. The ironic thing is how much of this is happening under the tenure of a supposed conservative(though Republicans can't be trusted with the Constitution either). Fuckin' Bush, ya fat turd!
Also, let's give that Iraqi reporter a Pulitzer or Nobel for throwing that shoe. One for his pick of a target and one for his aim. Priceless.
Bawdy? what does the Chu nomination have to do with "the government tak(ing) over more and more of our society"????
bawdy, i'm not really into the whole anti-government scene. maybe in high school, when i was drawing the anarchy symbol on everything i owned, but not as an adult.
personally, i like it when qualified, intelligent individuals are nominated for positions of power. it's much preferred to bush's corporate cronyism policies, isn't it?
It isn't an anti-government thing, pals; it is a Constitutional thing. I don't have a problem with the federal government taking care of the Country's business as outlined in the Constitution, protecting our civil rights and protecting the Union. I do have a problem with overstepping those bounds which anything that Chu(who I have no problems with personally)would do would do just that.
Why can't qualified, intelligent people try their hand at public service in state governments, all 50 of them, where 50 ideas could originate and the best of those ideas could be enacted(by state governments)throughout the rest of the country.
Oh, that's right, you guys just don't trust the strong central government when people you don't like are in power, but when people who pull at your heartstrings are at the helm it is another matter. Well I take my cue from the Founders, who had a pretty good idea about human psycology and put obstacles in the way of the drive for power by the few and the popular. What I do not understand is how you guys cannot see that there cannot be a good end when you consilidate the amount of power AND money in one place.
Corey, I am not against government; I believe where we have put it is just the wrong place. If you want to place me with all the shit Republicans, go right ahead; I'll think less of you, but what matter could that be to you, eh?
I will use the same lens to react to the new President as I did the last, which I believe is fair and unwavering.
This Madoff scandal is a perfect example of what I am talking of. This guy was a long time Wall Street player and he probably made some friends at the SEC. Is it any wonder the SEC failed on this account or any of the other black holes we have experienced this last year.
Do you guys remember how Eliot Spitzer came to be governor? That is right, a crusading NY Attorney General. Can you now imagine having 20 or 30 of those crusading AGs(I would even give you not all 50 would be worth a shit)all across the country keeping all kinds of comapanies in line? Could you imagine the staffs of all these crusading AGs, dedicated to the citizenry, becoming the next crusading AGs so we would never run out?
The states are the ones who sued the dastardly cigarette companies, not the feds. California wanted to make car manufacturers up their mileage stats, but the feds overruled. Anyone here(most I would figure)who doesn't trust global corporations, but thinks it is better to counter them with a concentrated, easily led and power wanton central federal government; well I feel sorry. You are deluded.
And this isn't even speaking of how easy it is for the strong central government to trod all over our civil rights, my big issue. I am trying to speak to term you guys find important.
Corporations and wealthy influential people love predictability. They want to make plans for themselves. Some of these plans don't take the rest of society into account. When some state like California wants to raise mileage requirements, the car companies go to Washington with their lobbyists because they only want one standard, not three, four or ten. This is understandable and logical for them. The corps have the money and influence to make sure the feds will put the state down, but is this right, let alone Constitutional.
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
There it is in all it's crowning glory, The 10th Amendment. These are the words which were to control the Federal Government from becoming what it has become. This has not happened because of the gonad-less Congress, the pliant Judiciary, the Imperial Presidency and an apathetic citizenry.
No I am not anti-government, I am against the one organization which can take my unalienable rights from me and that will be over my dead body.
Change we can believe in? Looks more like the Clinton II files and the scandals have begun even before he is in the White House. More to come- No Doubt!
We don't need a Laureate, we know how to get the alternative and conventional energies, we need someone to implement & manage strategy.
Bush was not even close to being the worst administration in the last 100. Look into LBJ.
laureates? we don't need no stinking laureates! ;D
which part of lbj's agenda did you dislike?
If you believe in the Constitution, Bush is the worst President ever. It is pretty tough to uphold the Constitution when you are using it for toilet paper.
Oh, and there was plenty to dislike in LBJ's agenda, corey. The only thing to like were the Voting Rights Acts, exactly what the federal government is to take on. Gulf of Tonkin, anyone?
If you would like to base it purely on the constitution then Lincoln wins hands down with FDR a close second. I realize Lincoln violates the 100 years but constitutionality is all in the eye of the beholder. Have our justices not proven that w/o a doubt.
Lincoln?!?!?! Constitutional?
LMFAO
Don't get me wrong, I admire Lincoln greatly, be he was no strict constitutionalist!
anony,
I pretty much agree with your assessment with FDR and have posted this before. Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt were reprehensible for expanding the office of the President beyond the Constitutional confines. Nixon, well need I say more.
Lincoln mitigates his trespasses by trying to do his mandated job(protecting the Union)and the results of the Civil War(the ending of slavery). But technically, you are right, he did some unConstitutional things. A bad President overall, I think not.
Bush on the other hand has gone were no man has gone before(i.e. further). And blatantly so. From starting undeclared wars(preemptive, I might add), to the overuse of signing statements and national security letters, for the Patriot Act and all it entails(even the FBI admitted to overstepping it's authority in many of these cases),not following the FISA statute, renditions of foreign citizens on foreign ground, overuse of Presidential Privilege, denying habeus corpus to American citizens, declaring a war which in theory would never end(the fucking War on Terror), pushing protesters into designated "protest zones" where ever he went and there is more but this is all I could come up with right off the top of my head. Add to this his sheer incompetence and you have a bottom of the barrel President.
Corey,
Do you know what movie the "we don't need no stinking_____"(it was "badges" in the movie)line came from?
verification word: stables
Originally, that line appeared in "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre"... but it has been used and parodied all over the place since then. I particularly loved it in "Blazing Saddles," one of my all time favorite flicks.
Excellent, csm.
It also doesn't look like "progressives" are enamoured with ALL of Obama's picks, at least not from what I am hearing. Kinda harkens back to the thought that Obama will have to lead from the center and the left will not get everything they asked for for Christmas.
The line was also parodies in the Weird Al flick UHF, where a guy exclaims "Badgers? We don't need no stinking badgers!"
Well, so far I think Obama has done reasonably well with his picks. Yes, the far left are unhappy about some of them. What I really think is setting them off though is having the gay-hating pastor Rick Warren speak at his inaugural. I do think that is a mistake on Barack's part. Evangelicals are not going to support Obama as long as he is pro-choice no matter who he has speaking at his inauguration. He could have chosen someone less polarizing. The gay community is up in arms, and I think rightly so, based upon Warren's highly public battle against Prop 8.
And civil rights would have been one of the only reasons why any libertarian would have voted for Obama too. Most of these votes would have been contained in the "independent" vote.
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