Usa Thread

[Flashermac]

The Federal government is on a crusade or something. California and I think Alaska have decriminilized mairjuana, maybe some other states. But the Feds always come down on them - even over medicinal use of ganja as a pain killer by seriously ill or even terminally ill people.

 

The solution to the drug problem - and the related drug crime - is obvious, except to those in the government in Washington.

 

 

 

 

 

[Bangkoktraveler]

The Federal government is on a crusade or something. California and I think Alaska have decriminilized mairjuana, maybe some other states. But the Feds always come down on them - even over medicinal use of ganja as a pain killer by seriously ill or even terminally ill people.

 

The solution to the drug problem - and the related drug crime - is obvious, except to those in the government in Washington.

 

 

Arizona citizens have voted in medical marijuna 2 seperate times but the 'true' powers of the 'state' still consider medical marijuna a criminal offense.

[Bangkoktraveler]

KUHNER: Obama’s Watergate

 

 

A year ago this week, U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered. He died protecting his country from brutal Mexican gangsters. Two AK-47 assault rifles were found at his death site. We now know the horrifying truth: Agent Terry was killed by weapons that were part of an illegal Obama administration operation to smuggle arms to the dangerous drug cartels. He was a victim of his own government. This is not only a major scandal; it is a high crime that potentially reaches all the way to the White House, implicating senior officials. It is President Obama’s Watergate.

 

Operation Fast and Furious was run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and overseen by the Justice Department. It started under the leadership of Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. Fast and Furious enabled straw gun purchases from licensed dealers in Arizona, in which more than 2,000 weapons were smuggled to Mexican drug kingpins. ATF claims it was seeking to track the weapons as part of a larger crackdown on the growing violence in the Southwest. Instead, ATF effectively has armed murderous gangs. About 300 Mexicans have been killed by Fast and Furious weapons. More than 1,400 guns remain lost. Agent Terry likely will not be the last U.S. casualty.

 

Mr. Holder insists he was unaware of what took place until after media reports of the scandal appeared in early 2011. This is false. Such a vast operation only could have occurred with the full knowledge and consent of senior administration officials. Massive gun-running and smuggling is not carried out by low-level ATF bureaucrats unless there is authorization from the top. There is a systematic cover-up.

 

Congressional Republicans, however, are beginning to shed light on the scandal. Led by Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Rep. Darrell Issa of California, a congressional probe is exposing the Justice Department’s rampant criminality and deliberate stonewalling. Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer, who heads the department’s criminal division, helped craft a February letter to Congress that denied ATF had ever walked guns into Mexico. Yet, under pressure from congressional investigators, the department later admitted that Mr. Breuer knew about ATF gun-smuggling as far back as April 2010. In other words, Mr. Breuer has been misleading Congress. He should resign - or be fired.

 

Instead, Mr. Holder tenaciously insists that Mr. Breuer will keep his job. He needs to keep his friends close and potential witnesses even closer. Another example is former acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson. Internal documents show Mr. Melson directly oversaw Fast and Furious, including monitoring numerous straw purchases of AK-47s. He has admitted to congressional investigators that he, along with high-ranking ATF leaders, reassigned every “manager involved in Fast and Furious†after the scandal surfaced on Capitol Hill and in the press. Mr. Melson said he was ordered by senior Justice officials to be silent regarding the reassignments. Hence, ATF managers who possess intimate and damaging information - especially on the role of the Justice Department - essentially have been promoted to cushy bureaucratic jobs. Their silence has been bought, their complicity swept under the rug. Mr. Melson has been transferred to Justice’s main office, where he serves as a “senior adviser†on forensic science in the department’s Office of Legal Policy. Rather than being punished, Mr. Melson has been rewarded for his incompetence and criminal negligence.

 

Mr. Holder and his aides have given misleading, false and contradictory testimony on Capitol Hill. Perjury, obstruction of justice and abuse of power - these are high crimes and misdemeanors. Mr. Holder should be impeached. Like most liberals, he is playing the victim card, claiming Mr. Issa is a modern-day Joseph McCarthy conducting a judicial witch hunt. Regardless of this petty smear, Mr. Holder must be held responsible and accountable - not only for the botched operation, but for his flagrant attempts to deflect blame from the administration.

 

Mr. Holder is a shameless careerist and a ruthless Beltway operative. For years, his out-of-control Justice Department has violated the fundamental principle of our democracy, the rule of law. He has refused to prosecute members of the New Black Panthers for blatant voter intimidation that took place in the 2008 election. Career Justice lawyers have confessed publicly that Mr. Holder will not pursue cases in which the perpetrators are black and the victims white. States such as Arizona and Alabama are being sued for simply attempting to enforce federal immigration laws. Mr. Holder also opposes voter identification cards, thereby enabling fraud and vote-stealing at the ballot box. What else can we expect from one who, during the Clinton administration, helped pardon notorious tax cheat Marc Rich and Puerto Rican terrorists?

 

Mr. Holder clearly knew about Fast and Furious and did nothing to stop it. This is because the administration wanted to use the excuse of increased violence on the border and weapons-smuggling into Mexico to justify tighter gun-control legislation. Mr. Holder is fighting ferociously to prevent important internal Justice documents from falling into the hands of congressional investigators. If the full nature of his involvement is discovered, the Obama presidency will be in peril.

 

Fast and Furious is even worse than Watergate for one simple reason: No one died because of President Nixon’s political dirty tricks and abuse of government power. But Brian Terry is dead; and there are still 1,500 missing guns threatening still more lives.

 

What did Mr. Obama know? Massive gun-smuggling by the U.S. government into a foreign country does not happen without the explicit knowledge and approval of leading administration officials. It’s too big, too risky and too costly. Mr. Holder may not be protecting just himself and his cronies. Is he protecting the president?

 

 

--------------------------

 

 

Jeffrey T. Kuhner is a columnist at The Washington Times and president of the Edmund Burke Institute.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My link

 

 

GWB bush had identical problems and the Conservatives saw 'no wrong' in that.

 

Strange.

[Steve]

http://autos.yahoo.com/blogs/motoramic/why-millionaire-wants-autoworkers-pay-cut-160603932.html

 

 

 

Former auto czar and wealthy Wall Street financier Steven Rattner told a luncheon in Detroit on Thursday that while the $50 billion GM bailout was successful, "we should have asked the UAW to do a bit more. We did not ask any UAW member to take a cut in their pay." He also said that "friends on Wall Street" were concerned by GM's earnings and communications with the market, pushing the stock down to a level that would lose the goverment $14 billion if it sold its shares today.

 

Meanwhile, at General Motors' Orion Township, Mich., plant about 45 minutes away from where Rattner spoke, there are three tiers of hourly workers. Roughly 900 workers at the top tier, the most senior UAW workers, make $29 an hour, a rate unchanged since 2008. Another 500 or so UAW workers are paid about $16 an hour — a rate, adjusted for inflation, equal to the famed $5 a day Henry Ford started paying his workers in 1914.

 

And at the bottom scale are 200-odd workers technically employed by an outside supplier but who work in the plant moving parts to the assembly line, jobs once done by GM workers paid $29 an hour. The contractors' pay: $9 an hour with no health care, a rate which over a year's work would leave them below the poverty level for a family of four.

 

GM's contract with the UAW that convinced the company to move small-car production to Orion from South Korea allows it to shift such work to the outside supplier. That supplier has resisted UAW bargaining, and the tensions have grown high enough that UAW workers at the plant picketed earlier this month and sought approval from the union for a strike. (They delayed one planned picket so that President Obama could tour the plant with South Korea's president).

 

GM's North American arm posted operating profits of $5.7 billion in the past nine months, on which it will pay little to no federal income tax thanks to a law passed during the bailout preserving tax credits from the years when it bled money. The estimated savings to GM of its tiered wages at Orion: $112 per vehicle, on Chevy Sonics and Buick Veranos that start at $14,500, and can sell for $29,000. By GM's own stats, $29,000 is also the average annual wage of all GM hourly and salaried workers at Orion.

[Bangkoktraveler]

USA politics is about as bizarre as Thai politics.

 

GWB came up with the idea to bailout WallStreet and the Auto industry and Obama implemented it.

 

Obama is called a socialist but GWB isn't.

 

Does not make much sense.

[Steve]

http://news.yahoo.com/miss-mayor-reveals-gay-visiting-gay-sex-shop-142405501.html

 

A conservative Mississippi mayor has said he is gay after an audit showed he had the city pay for a wide range of personal expenses, including a visit to a gay sex store in Canada.

 

Southaven Mayor Greg Davis revealed publicly for the first time Thursday that he is gay, and said he has struggled to keep his sexuality from affecting his public role as mayor of Mississippi’s third-largest city.

[Flashermac]

USA politics is about as bizarre as Thai politics.

 

GWB came up with the idea to bailout WallStreet and the Auto industry and Obama implemented it.

 

Obama is called a socialist but GWB isn't.

 

Does not make much sense.

So by your logic, Obama is really a Republican in disguise.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Flashermac]

http://news.yahoo.co...-142405501.html

 

A conservative Mississippi mayor has said he is gay after an audit showed he had the city pay for a wide range of personal expenses, including a visit to a gay sex store in Canada.

 

Southaven Mayor Greg Davis revealed publicly for the first time Thursday that he is gay, and said he has struggled to keep his sexuality from affecting his public role as mayor of Mississippi’s third-largest city.

 

 

 

Judging from his photo, I'd have suspected he was gay immediately.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yEmEMVsbjo

[Steve]

So by your logic, Obama is really a Republican in disguise.

 

He's a centrist. Some conservatives erroneously and I think knowingly paint him as a liberal. He's no where close to being one. He's cozy with Wall Street for one.

 

Before the election, it was argued that his being a community organizer was insufficient experience to be the President. Obama has made mistakes but its not because he was a community organizer and overwhelmed due to a lack of preperation for the job with years in government service. He simply made bad decisions irregardless of his background.

 

Also his successes have been in foreign policy. The one area we were warned most sternly about. Intellectually, Obama can do the job. As opposed to my reservations about Palin. She was so unsuited to govern the Presidency it wasn't funny. Her governorship also shows how easy the job can be in some states.

[Steve]

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/keystone-pipe-outlook-no-rosier-senate-vote-012028264.html

Senate Republicans claimed victory on Saturday for a bill that may force President Barack Obama to make a speedier decision on a Canada to Texas oil pipeline, but a White House official indicated quick approval of the project is not likely.

 

The two-month payroll tax break extension bill passed by the Senate on Saturday included language that would make Obama decide within 60 days whether TransCanada Corp's 700,000 barrel-a-day Keystone XL oil sands pipeline is in the country's national interest.

 

But the U.S. State Department, which must approve the cross-border project, has said it will not be rushed into a decision before it has time to consider the environmental impact of alternative routes. That could leave Obama room to approve the project in principle but still keep construction at bay.

 

"This bill will stop President Obama's delaying tactics," said Senator Richard Lugar, who had introduced the measure to speed up a decision on the pipeline. "This is a tremendous victory for our security and for creating jobs."

 

I have no proof but I have no doubt that the oil industry lobby put the Republicans up to this. The decision to extend the tax break was wanted by both parties. However, the Republicans were willing to stall or kill it if they didn't have this pipeline. Irresponsible.

 

This pipeline could have been part of the overall infrastructure plan. Its not a necessity but it could be included. Dems aren't immune from criticism. Some senators hold green stocks and have voted with their financial insterests at heart.

 

This country is a mess. No way out in my opinion. Its systemic and endemic.