yes. which is why alla dem people having a tea party. black prez elected, with hold taxes needed for the country as it has always been needed just to prove a point.
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: evanovitch</div><div class="ubbcode-body">first bipartisan defeat was handed to the prez yessiday re the 80million r wateva he wanted to close dung GITMO
dis mawning, former VP Cheney is having di rebuttal to the prez's speech....
</div></div>I don't think he had a Honeymoon the GOP voted no on his budget and no on the Stimulus Plan.
Last week when there was an argument about flip-flopping I pointed out that 49% of the Citizens of the USA polled agreed with torture, therefore the Senate is only siding with their Constituents.
Many USA Citizens do not want these guys on the USA mainland, they want them blamed for 9/11 the Iraq war, every terrorist act that ever occurred and they want them tortured then put to death for their crimes.
The President of the USA alone cannot unilaterally change the ballgame unless of course he is flaming neocon such as Herr George Bush.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Bent over his speech text, reading in a monotone, former Vice President Dick Cheney could not have presented a more stark contrast to the glitzy style of President Barack Obama.
And yet, as evidenced by his blistering critique on Thursday of Obama's handling of terrorism, Cheney has emerged as one of Obama's toughest critics and the staunchest defender of President George W. Bush's post-September 11 policies when Bush has chosen to remain silent.
The invited guests and journalists in a nondescript conference room at the American Enterprise Institute, several blocks from the White House, waited for Cheney but first got Obama instead -- on a big TV screen.
Cheney had scheduled his speech weeks ago and some in the room said they believed Obama timed his remarks to take the steam out of the former vice president's appearance.
Cheney, backstage, waited patiently for the former Democratic senator to finish his 50-minute speech, but could not resist the first of many barbs when he stepped to the podium almost an hour behind schedule.
"It's pretty clear that the president served in the Senate and not the House of Representatives, because in the House we have the five-minute rule," said the former congressman from Wyoming and veteran Washington political infighter.
He then spoke for 35 minutes.
An unsmiling Cheney delivered his shots without any significant inflection -- even as he described the most dramatic hours of the Bush presidency, the chaos of September 11, 2001 when hijacked airliners were on the loose and Cheney was moved to an underground bunker.
Such an event, he said, "can affect how you view your responsibilities."
Cheney, who often took a low-profile role as vice president, was off on a high-profile, wide-ranging attack.
* <span style="font-weight: bold">On Obama's decision to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay without a plan for dealing with the prisoners:</span>
"The administration has found that it's easy to receive applause in Europe for closing Guantanamo. But it's tricky to come up with an alternative that will serve the interests of justice and America's national security," Cheney said.
* <span style="font-weight: bold">On Obama's decision to stop the use of harsh interrogation methods on terrorism suspects:</span>
"<span style="font-style: italic">It is recklessness cloaked in righteousness and would make the American people less safe," </span>he said.
* <span style="font-weight: bold">On Obama's release of classified memos describing interrogation techniques while withholding documents that detail any information gleaned from them:</span>
"<span style="font-style: italic">For reasons the administration has yet to explain, they believe the public has a right to know the method of the questions, but not the content of the answers,"</span> Cheney said.
The Obama team's editing of one document to take out a conclusion that the tactics had yielded intelligence dividends was an "inconvenient truth," said Cheney, a play on the title of Democrat Al Gore's book on global warming.
Charging that Obama has reserved the right to order tough tactics himself, Cheney said: "You would think that President Obama would be less disdainful of what his predecessor authorized after 9/11."
Turning his attention to House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has been caught in a storm of controversy over whether she knew about interrogation methods in 2002 that she now condemns, Cheney was dismissive.
He said some lawmakers were notorious for demanding classified briefings and supported them in private "and then head for the hills at the first sign of controversy."
"In my long experience in Washington, few matters have inspired so much contrived indignation and phony moralizing as the interrogation methods applied to a few captured terrorists," he said.
Cheney's personal popularity is low and many fellow Republicans would like to see him fade from the scene, thinking that it might help them rebuild a party battered by election losses in 2006 and 2008.
Democrats eagerly pounce on his comments, confident that it helps their case whenever he speaks out.
But the former vice president has shown no sign of concern, choosing instead to go after what he considers an Obama terrorism policy that borders on weakness.
Former Bush press secretary Dana Perino said Cheney has a "absolutely every right" to ignore the critics and speak out.
"I think that a lot of this is noise. I think it's good that in America we're able to have vigorous free speech with frank and open discussions and the former vice president is doing what anyone in his position would've done," she said.
Obama 'Distracted' by Biden's 'Indiscipline,' Book Asserts
FOXNews.com
Thursday, May 21, 2009
President Obama is so "distracted by his vice president's indiscipline" that he has been forced to rebuke privately Vice President Joe Biden, according to a new book by Newsweek journalist Richard Wolffe, who interviewed Obama a dozen times.
"He can't keep his mouth shut," Wolffe quotes a "senior Obama aide" as saying of the gaffe-prone Biden in "Renegade: The Making of a President," set for release June 2.
As evidence, Wolffe reports that during the presidential transition period, Biden insulted Valerie Jarrett, one of Obama's closest friends and confidantes. Jarrett had been considered Obama's top choice to fill his vacated Senate seat in Illinois, but took herself out of the running just hours after Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich allegedly told a wiretapped conference call he would not heed any Obama recommendation without a payoff.
"Soon after Jarrett pulled out of consideration for the Senate seat, the senior transition team met to discuss Cabinet picks," Wolffe writes.
"Biden tried to compliment Jarrett after one contribution. 'You should be in the Senate,' he quipped. After the meeting, as everyone returned to their offices, Obama stopped Biden to warn him not to say anything like that again. 'It's not funny,' he told him."
Obama ended up naming Jarrett a senior presidential adviser. After taking her post in the White House, Jarrett remarked on her boss' private communications with his inner circle.
"Very few people have his BlackBerry e-mail," she told Wolffe. "And they are very careful about using it."
In an e-mail sent to FOX News on Thursday, Jarrett said she took no offense to Biden's remark.
"Any suggestion that I was insulted by the vice president's gracious comments regarding my potential for public service is ridiculous. I was very flattered by his kind words at the time, and enjoy working closely with him in the White House," Jarrett said.
Although Obama was ranked as the most liberal member of the Senate by National Journal magazine, he had high praise for former President Ronald Reagan, a staunch conservative.
"Reagan would probably go down as a great president," Wolffe quotes Obama as saying.
"I don't think there's any doubt that Ronald Reagan had a profound effect on our economy, on our politics, on our culture."
Wolffe describes Obama's youth as "filled with drink and drugs and lazy days in Hawaii." But he said that all changed when Obama attended Columbia University in New York.
"That's when I stopped drinking. I stopped partying," Obama said. "This was my ascetic phase. Everything was stripped down."
Obama, who will travel to Egypt next month to give a major speech to the Muslim world, told Wolffe he wants to convene a "Muslim summit."
"<span style="font-weight: bold">If I had a Muslim summit, I think that I can speak credibly to them about the fact that I respect their culture," Obama said, "that I understand their religion, that I have lived in a Muslim country, and as a consequence I know it is possible to reconcile Islam with modernity and respect for human rights and a rejection of violence. And I think I can speak with added credibility."</span>
The son of a white mother and black father, Obama said his election does not solve America's racial challenges.
"Solving our racial problems in this country will require concrete steps, significant investment," he said. "We have a lot of work to do to overcome the long legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. It can't be purchased on the cheap.
"I am fundamentally optimistic about our capacity to do that," he added. "And I do assert that there is a core decency in the American people and in white Americans that makes me hopeful about our ability to deal with these issues. But these issues aren't just solved by electing a black president."
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