United States Agrees to Withdraw all Troops From Iraq by 2011
Last week I wrote this post about the United States and Irag agreeing on a basic “timetable” to withdraw American troops from Iraq’s cities by the year 2009. It appears as though the talks have progressed well beyond that stage now, and the United States and Iraq have agreed to the possible total withdrawal of United States troops by the year 2011, based on certain criteria being met of course.
“There is an agreement actually reached, reached between the two parties on a fixed date which is the end of 2011 to end any foreign presence on Iraqi soil,” Maliki said in a speech to tribal leaders in the Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone.
“Yes, there is major progress on the issue of the negotiations on the security deal,” Maliki said.
The Bush administration is still refusing to comment on this as President Bush has always wanted to keep the actual timetable private so as not to alert the enemy about future troop movements.
Barack Obama has had many conflicting positions on troop withdrawal that he has rotated in and out during his campaign. From immediately withdrawing troops, to having troops home by 2013, to having troops home by 2016, to consulting the generals on the field before making any decisions on withdrawal. All of these positions have been his “official policy” at least once during his campaign. Just today I saw a commercial which holds his current campaign slogan on troop withdrawal. In this commercial he claims he will withdraw the troops responsibly.
So today I would like to congratulate Barack Obama for finally agreeing with President Bush that the troops should come home responsibly. That has been the president’s policy all along. As the Iraqis are ready to take control of their country we will gladly relinquish control. That is the responsible way to bring the troops home. We will bring them home in victory.
It appears that the progress in Iraq, while much slower than anyone wanted, has now reached the point where a “timetable” can be negotiated. There was always going to be this timetable, the Bush administration just wanted it to be private, however Maliki needed to show his people that the United States would not be there forever, he needed to appear tough so his government leaked the timetable that was being negotiated. If President Bush had done the same perhaps Republican candidates would be in better shape, however the president put victory in Iraq ahead of politics, while Barack Obama and the rest of the Democrats played politics with the war and the lives of the soldiers.
Progress in Iraq os being made, there is talk of withdrawal in victory, and at the Democrat National Convention there must be cursing, they didn’t want this to happen until after the election so that they could get credit for it.
Barack Obama Chooses Joe Biden as his Running Mate
President Obama has chosen Joe Biden as his running mate, by now that is no longer news but I thought I would throw my two cents in. What does this mean for the future president? Will this choice help him? Was it the right choice?
I think that this was probably the best choice that President Obama could have made, but it doesn’t come without any baggage. President Obama had a glaring weakness and that weakness was his lack of foreign policy experience. The month of August has demonstrated how lacking he is in that field. Joen Biden shores up this deficiency. He brings 30 years of experience to a man who has none. I think that this is an acknowledgement by President Obama that he needed someone to guide him when it comes to foreign policy.
Biden’s biggest problem is that his mouth sometimes gets him in trouble, President Obama is going to have to hope that Biden doesn’t say anything that could cost him in the polls.
So how will this affect the polls? I don’t think this will sway voters one way or the other. Other than President Obama naming Hillary Clinton as his running mate I don’t believe any choice he made would drastically change the polls. Joe Biden is not going to bring many “on the fence” voters onto his side. Most people don’t vote for president based on who the vice presidential candidate is, but this year could be different. Both candidates have serious weaknesses that need to be filled and I think that President Obama successfully did that with his pick of Joe Biden.
President Obama could not risk naming one of the “darkhorse” candidates whose names have been floating around the last week or so. With President Obama’s lack of experience in general (he only served 140 days as a US senator before abandoning his position to run for president) he needed to pick a candidate with experience and he has. It will be interesting to see how the campaign can still call for change now that a beltway veteran of thirty years is on the ticket.
Joe Biden may help with blue collar voters, the voters that went in large numbers for Hillary Clinton, but will it be enough to put him over the top in an election year that should have the Democrat candidate up by twenty points already? I think he will receive a bump, but I don’t think it will make much of a difference.
President Obama made the one choice that could help him with his biggest weakness and now John McCain is next. Who will McCain chose? John McCain’s biggest weakness, in my opinion, is that conservatives hate him. He is going to need to make a choice that will help shore up the Republican base. That is an odd weakness to have and McCain doesn’t seem to acknowledge it based on the names that he is considering. As with President Obama, I really don’t think that there is a candidate out there who will help McCain get over the top.
Below is the chilling audio of President Obama claiming that caring for a baby that mistakenly lived after a live birth abortion would be too burdensome on the mother.
He is talking about a living baby when he speaks so coldly about the mother’s original intention. How can any human being be so detached from the idea of human life that he views a living baby as just a problem that we can’t burden the mother with? Just throw this LIVING, BREATHING baby in the trash and be done with it, is that what he prefers? That is a more acceptable option than caring for the weakest among us, the children?
Whatever happened to Thomas Jefferson’s words; We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are LIFE, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. One of the unalienable rights is the right to LIFE and whether or not you are for or against abortion once a baby is born you can no longer argue that it is not life, yet that is what President Obama did.
There is no longer any value placed on life and that is, well I can’t even describe what it is.
New Hampshire Governor’s Race Fundraising Numbers
The fund-raising numbers are out from the campaigns of both Governor John Lynch and his challenger, Republican Joe Kenney, and it isn’t pretty. I suppose I will share with you the dismal news.
The New Hampshire for John Lynch ’08 Committee reported taking in $1,232,088 to date, compared to the GOP hopeful, state Sen. Joseph Kenney, who raised $85,655.
Lynch’s campaign has spent $542,761 compared to $56,355 that Kenney has spent.
The end result is that Lynch, seeking a third two-year term, has more than $689,000 still left to spend while Kenney has $29,300.
I suppose if you are looking for a silver lining John Lynch hasn’t raised as much money in this campaign as he did in the last, but I find no (audacity of) hope in that.
Joe Kenney and his staff are trying to spin this in two different ways, here is the first angle:
Kenney campaign manager Casey Crane said her candidate’s totals are low because he is still introducing himself to voters.
It is not a good sign when you are a candidate and you are still out there trying to get your name recognized and nobody knows who you are. This is dismal, as are the poll numbers I saw last week that had Lynch ahead by something like 67-17%. I am sorry I don’t remember the exact numbers I saw, but I erased them from my memory because they were too depressing.
The other angle that the Kenney campaign is spinning is as follows:
Primaries in smaller state contests will soon end, freeing up money and campaign workers for Kenney
People are focusing on the September 9th primaries and that is why his fund-raising numbers are so low, but just wait until the primaries are over and then the cash will flow in. I don’t buy it, this is going to be another down year for Republicans in this state unless for some reason John McCain energizes New Hampshire Republicans to get to the polls. And I don’t see that happening.
United States and Iraq Agree on Withdrawal Plan
The United States and Iraq have come to a preliminary agreement that could possibly have United States military personnel withdraw from the cities by June of next year. This “timetable” would be contingent upon Iraq meeting certain milestones. The United States would withdraw from Iraq proportionally as the milestones are met.
While Democrats, and President Obama more specifically, will spin this by claiming that the president is finally listening to them after six years of ignoring them because of his stubbornness that is entirely untrue. President Bush and the United States are not agreeing to these terms to capitulate to Democrats, he is not listening to them, he is listening and watching the leaders in Iraq. President Bush has always maintained the position that as the Iraqis stand up the United States will stand down.
With the recent success of the surge and the drastic reduction in violence it is only natural and appropriate that negotiation be undertaken to move into the next phase, and that is what has happened. The circumstances in Iraq have changed to the point that we can begin talking about a plan for withdrawal. That was the president’s plan all along. That is the plan that he stated time and time again. That is the plan that Democrats have mocked. That is the plan that is working.
This is much different than the Democrat’s position that the war is lost, we can’t win, we must leave immediately. There was always going to be a phased withdrawal but the conditions on the ground were going to dictate it not politicians in Washington looking to gain poll numbers with their moonbat base.
President Bush has had the courage to stick to his position through dropping and dismal poll numbers, an onslaught from the Democrats who were hellbent on losing the war, and pressure from an unhappy American people. Now it looks like it may have finally paid off.
Chuck Schumer is Being Investigated for IndyMac Failure
Back on July 13th I had a quick little post about how the feds were partially blaming the collapse of IndyMac on Democrat Chuck Schumer, now it appears as though California is looking into investigating Chuck Schumer for possible wrongdoing.
California’s attorney general is reviewing a request by former employees of IndyMac Bancorp Inc to investigate whether a New York senator triggered the bank’s collapse by releasing confidential information.
Good ole Chuckie sent a letter to the FDIC in June questioning whether the bank would be able to remain open, this caused a ripple effect which led to the bank failure.
The FDIC took control of IndyMac on July 11 after depositors withdrew more than $1.3 billion over 11 days. It was the third-largest bank failure in U.S. history. At the time, OTS Director John Reich blamed Schumer’s letter for causing the run on the bank.
In a letter to Attorney General Jerry Brown last week, 51 former IndyMac workers wrote: “From the day (Schumer’s) letter was made public on June 26 until the closure of the bank, a run on the bank took place and the failure became inevitable.”
Chuck Schumer’s letter to the FDIC could have triggered the events that led to the bank collapse. There must be enough evidence to pursue this accusation or it would have been dropped (especially in California).
Strangly enough the mainstream media is quiet on this issue, I wonder why. Oh yeah, I forgot, it’s Bush’s fault.
University Refuses to Release Obama/Ayers Documents
The Prez?
The University of Illinois is refusing to release documents about a charitable organization withties to both President Obama and William Ayers (domestic terrorist). The university claims that they don’t have the right to make the records public, they want to they just can’t. Sorry. BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH. This article states that there was no indication of when an agreement could be reached with whoever donated these documents, but they are trying hard to get them released. I have an indication of when they might be released, after November. How convenient is that?
What is in those documents really isn’t that important anyway, what is important is that President Obama has disavowed any close relationship with his “neighbor” Willaim Ayers and now we are learning that they were connected through this charitable organization, and that William Ayers himself founded it.
Just in case you don’t know who William Ayers is:
Ayers, 63, spent 10 years as a fugitive in the 1970s when he was part of the “Weather Underground,” an anti-Vietnam War group that protested U.S. policies by bombing the Pentagon, U.S. Capitol and a string of other government buildings. Nobody was hurt in the attacks by the defunct organization, which the FBI labeled a “domestic terrorist group.”
He wasn’t only part of this organization, he founded it.
President Obama has tried to distance himself from this relationship, sure he met William Ayers, sure he was in William Ayer’s living room in the past, and sure he is a “neighbor” but surely President Obama can’t be expected to hold a man’s past against him, even if he is a terrorist. That is how President Obama has tried to spin this whole relationship. But now we learn that there is a little more to the story. How much more we may never know.
Here is what William Ayers was quoted as saying in the New York Times on September 11th 2001, just hours before the planes hit the World Trade Center:
“I don’t regret setting bombs; I feel we didn’t do enough,”
He must have stood up and cheered when he watched the news on that day. Let me be clear here, I am not asserting that President Obamaisa terrorist, I am just questioning his judgement. How can a man who wants to be president have any kind of “friendship” with a man like William Ayers?
President Obama is using his judgement as a main reason why he should be president. He claims that he was against the Iraq war from the beginning. He claims that this was a tough decision because the president was popular and being against the Iraq war was an unpopular choice. He claims that this is proof that he has the judgement to be president. He ignores the fact that it is easy to claim you are against something if you don’t actually have to vote on it. President Obama did not have to vote on the Iraq war, it would be interesting to see how he would have voted if he had to. I venture to say he would have also voted for the war. But this association with William Ayers, whether benign or not shows a real lapse in judgement from the man who wants to be president based on his judgement.
The Greatest Do Nothing Congress in the Last Twenty Years
The Democrats dubbed the 109th congress, led by Republicans, as the do nothing congress but it appears as though the current congress has done less than any other congress in the last twenty years.
Don’t get me wrong, the Democrats have managed to do something, just look at this list:
Congress has saluted such milestones as the Idaho Potato Commission’s 70th anniversary and recognized soil as an “essential natural resource.”
Congress has designated May 5-9 as National Substitute Teacher Recognition Week, and set July 28 as the Day of the American Cowboy.
But that isn’t all they accomplished:
Democratic Rep. Charlie Wilson of Ohio, a fourth-generation undertaker, sponsored a National Funeral Director and Mortician Recognition Day. Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss, whose home state of Georgia has 24,000 acres planted in watermelon, pushed a resolution establishing July as National Watermelon Month.
While all of this was going on the congress only passed 294 bills, most of them were symbolic, far less than any other congress in the last twenty years. I guess I should be counting my blessings that only 294 bill have been passed under this Democrat led congress, any more would be devastating.
Wake Up America Banned From Digg, Are Obama Supporters to Blame?
Crossposted on Grizzly Groundswell
By Mr.Pink Eyes
Some of you may have noticed over the last few days that the little “digg this” icon that used to appear on my posts is missing. It is not because I no longer wish to have my posts “dugg”, it is because digg no longer wants anything to do with me.
Last week I tried to access my account on Digg and found out that my account has been suspended and that the decision is final and irreversible. I have been banned from digg. Me, just a nobody with an opinion who happens to write about his opinions on the internet.
Anybody who has visited digg knows that it is a bastion of liberal intolerance, so this is not really surprising. I tried to get another point of view on their site, but I have been silenced. Only in America, huh?
The part of this that bothers me is that on August 5th I posted an article about President Obama’s supporters who were reporting websites that were anti-Obama as spam and getting them shut down. Ten days later I am no longer allowed on digg, I was reported as submitting spam. What a coincidence. The only crime that I committed was posting conservative articles on a liberal website, if that is spam so be it.
Needless to say, when I received the email explaining to me why I was banned and that I could never be reinstated as a digg contributor I fired off a reply that after several versions was cleaned up quite a bit. In this reply I accused them of considering a conservative viewpoint spam, and asked them if it could possible have been Barack Obama supporters that got me banned. I will be interesting to read their reply, if they do.
On August 12th I posted an article about how the fairness doctrine may be used to control web content if the Democrats widen their majority in the house and senate and Obama becomes president. My fear was misplaced as I didn’t even have to wait that long, it is happening right now. It has happened to me.
My first amendment rights of freedom of speech and freedom of the press have been violated. I have no voice on digg any longer but you do. I ask everyone to stand up and shout, get your voices on digg, don’t let them silence the conservative agenda. We need to be heard. Please flood digg with conservative articles, they can’t shut every conservative account down, can they?
If you are up to it submit my articles to digg, don’t let them infringe on my rights, let my voice be heard. Don’t let them silence me. I am an American dammit and I have a right to be heard!
Where is the ACLU when you need them?
RINO
As if conservatives needed yet another reason to turn their backs on the man that turned his back on conservatives, we find out that John McCain is seriously considering Joe Lieberman as his running mate.
John McCain is seriously considering choosing a pro-abortion-rights running mate despite vocal resistance from conservatives, with former Democratic vice presidential nominee Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) very much in the mix, close McCain advisers say.
Despite vocal resistance from conservatives, now that’s a big fucking surprise, huh? This man has made his name by bucking vocal conservatives positions, why would he stop now. That is why this whole attempt by President Obama to tie McCain to Bush is so laughable. The only people who buy into the notion that McCain would be serving a third Bush term are the far left moonbats who would never vote for McCain anyway. He is not going to get new votes with that angle and this story is just another example of why.
Multiple GOP sources say that party officials in Washington and in the states have been contacted by the McCain campaign in the past two weeks and asked about the fallout from such a choice. One person familiar with the calls said the party was being instructed to prepare for different candidate prototypes — including one in the mold of Lieberman, who is an independent but still caucuses with the Democrats.
John McCain is still pandering to the left to try and gain their votes, he is so arrogant that he believe conservatives will just fall in line. Maybe some will and maybe I would except that I am stubborn and I refuse to just fall in line, especially when someone as arrogant as McCain thinks that I will. I will blank the presidential portion of the ballot just to spite this man.
But GOP sources say McCain and his close friend Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) still haven’t given up hope on making what some believe would be a game-changing decision by tapping Lieberman.
It certainly will be game changing, but it will backfire on McCain and it will change the game into President Obama’s favor. Many conservatives are still planning on holding their noses and voting for this fraud but if he chooses Lieberman that all bets are off. Many conservative are still undecided about whether they are going to vote for McCain or not and are waiting to see who he picks as a running mate. You can kiss those votes goodbye.
Senator McCain stands to lose more votes than he gains by choosing the man who was once Al Gore’s running mate. He is once again ignoring his base and pandering to people who are never going to vote for him anyway.
President Obama has nothing is unable to gain any traction in a race he should be running away with, but this will be just what he needs to extend the gap between he and McCain.
“Lieberman would blow things up,” said the American Conservative Union’s David Keene. “That would be like Obama picking some right-winger that agrees with him on one thing.”
That is exactly right. How fast would the moonbats abandon President Obama under that circumstance? They would be like cockroaches when the light is turned on. And the same should happen to McCain if he does something this stupid.
How the fuck did we ever get stuck with this turncoat as our nominee? Damn you New Hampshire, damn you to hell.
