Mac Cool wrote:
HeyBub:

Stormin Mormon wrote:
Towards socialism.

If history repeats itself, Obama will be tested. Recent examples:

JFK - 5 months into his administration, the Berlin Wall was erected.
JFK does nothing.
7 months actually and there was nothing to do. The wall was built
inside East Germany at the direction of the Soviet Union, where
before existed a barbed wire fence. This might be the kind of thing
an idiot like GW might go to war over but no reasonable person would.

Reagan - 2 minutes after inauguration, Iran releases hostages.
How was this a test?

Bush II - 9 months, WTC terrorist attack, Bush makes up a series of
lies
to justify his desire to invade Iraq despite long held opinions that
there was no clear exit strategy and that the country would devolve
into chaos; opinions that turned out correct.

Fixed for you. Bush Jr. failed his test catastrophically, weakened our
alliances, has allowed our infrastructure to deteriorate, threatened
our Bill of Rights, failed to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, all
but lost the war in Afghanistan, failed to secure Iraq allowing the
theft of millions of dollars worth of antiquities, weapons and US
cash; allowed Al- Qaeda to gain a foothold in Iraq. It really is
amazing that anyone could delude themselves to the point of voting
for another four years of that crap.

Observations on your opinion of the Bush activities:

Weakened our alliances - Maybe. 'Strong alliances' is a sop to the past.
Countries always do what is in their own best interests. Witness France,
Germany, Russia, and others subverting the oil-for-food U.N. program.

Deteriorating infrastructure - The federal government has almost no role in
infastructure (interstate highways, some airports excepted). Falling bridges
are the responsibility of individual states.

Lost war in Afghanistan - Remember, the war in Afghanistan is a NATO war,
not a U.S. one. As such, it kind of puts paid to your ideal of 'strong
alliances.'

Bill of Rights - In times of peril, rights are often curtailed. That's just
the way it is. From the Whiskey Rebellion, to Lincoln suspending habeas
Corpus, to FDR interning Japanese, restrictions happen. When normalcy
returns, so do rights. Every state - and the federal government - has a
statute that allows the chief executive to suspend virtually any law or
regulation on the books to deal with the emergency. For example, here's the
model Public Health Emergency Act:

http://www.publichealthlaw.net/MSEHPA/MSEHPA.pdf

which allows persons, property, or just about anything else to be seized,
contained, or destroyed without warrants, hearings, lawyers, or any other
"right" solely on the decision of (usually) a single individual. Similar
statutes are already on the books and are exercised every year by governors
dealing with the aftermath of tornados, floods, hurricanes, or Grateful Dead
concerts.

Further, the only reasonable claim of recent BOR violations stems from
intercepting communications without a warrant. The first wire-tapping that
ever took place occurred during the Second War of Independence when both the
Union and the Confederacy tapped the opposition's telegraph lines. To not do
so is to subscribe to Henry Stimpson's 1929 dictum: "Gentelmen don't read
other gentelmen's mail" as he shut down the State Department's cryptanalytic
office.

And so on. Point is, there are often several ways of looking at the same set
of events. Sadly, those not schooled in history or law often reach
simplistic conclusions. As one Supreme Court justice said: "The Bill of
Rights is not a suicide pact."

Minor correction: In spite of agitation to the contrary, it was never the
goal of the United States to kill or capture bin Laden. If either happened,
it would be a plus, but the goal of the U.S. since just about day one was to
prevent another attack on the United States or U.S. civilian interests
abroad. Focusing on a single individual or group is law-enforcement-think,
not war strategy.

This goal - preventing an attack - involved intervention in terrorist
communications, training, financing, support, movement, recruiting, and the
harboring of terrorists by friendly regimes. These efforts have, so far,
proved successful.

In the decade of the '90's, there was about one attack per year on U.S.
interests: WTC1, the USS Cole, embassy bombing, kidnapping of diplomats, and
so on. In the past seven years, coincident with the above plans, there have
been no attacks, successful or otherwise, against the U.S. or U.S. civilian
interests abroad.