Enhanced Interrogation Tecniques (EIT)

There has been much debate about the EIT used after 9/11. I find it interesting that George Bush was blamed after 9/11 for not doing enough to prevent 9/11 with a little info that he had. Now he is being blamed for his interrogation techniques that led to some vital information that saved thousands of lives.

One of the common things the left says is that the EIT will make the terrorists hate us more and be used for a tool for recruitment. I believe this is completely false. There were more terrorist attacks during Clinton's time in office than in the Bush years. More people were killed and/or injured during Clinton's time in office

In 1993, terrorists bombed the World Trade Center, hoping to bring down the towers In 1995, terrorists bombed U.S. facilities in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; In 1996, U.S. servicemen were killed at Khobar Towers; In 1998, terrorists attacked U.S embassies in East Africa; In 2000, terrorists murdered American sailors on the USS Cole; And in 2001, terrorists hijacked planes and brought down the World Trade Center and attacked the Pentagon, leaving 3,000 Americans dead.

All of the above attacks happened before the Iraq War and before the EITs. Radical Muslims have hated the US for decades and didn't just suddenly become popular.

Democrats like to support things when they are going smoothly but duck and run when things get shaky. The war in Iraq was supported by both democrats and republicans. The policy for regime change was signed by Bill Clinton in 1998 because he deemed Saddam a threat to the US. Check out this great video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5p-qIq32m8 which shows how the Dems bailed on the issue of Iraq.

The outrage over the EIT is really political payback clothed as morality and righteousness. Why do I say that? Pelosi one of the people leading the attack to prosecute Bush officials has now found herself entangled in this mess. She knew about the EIT in 2002 and had no problem with it then but all of a sudden she is outraged. Obama says that Enhanced Interrogation Techniques are immoral and yet what noone speaks of the fact that Obama didn't get rid of it. In fact, he alone can approve the use of these interrogation techniques in matters of high national security. Isn't that what Bush was doing to begin with? If an issue is wrong, it is wrong. If it is right, its right. This proves that this is completely politically motivated in order for Obama to score points with the far left.

People think that CIA officials waterboarded anybody and everybody. Wrong. They only waterboarded 3 people and valuable information was learned from interrogating these terrorists.

Not only was the head of the CIA against releasing the techniques that were being used but four of the previous heads of the CIA. Obama's own National Intelligence director even said valuable information was obtain from these techniques that saved thousands of lives.

It is interesting that Obama releases the method of obtaining these confessions such as waterboarding but does not reveal the full content because then people would realize he is merely catering to the far left.

Obama is running out of people to blame

Great article from the Wall Street Journal:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123604419092515347.html

The next article shows the effect that taxing the rich will have. Taxing the rich hurts everyone because the rich will have to layoff the little people.

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Economy/story?id=6975547&page=1

Rush Limbaugh's take

I recommend you guys watch his whole speech, but here is just an excerpt. I try to ignore his cockiness and listen to the great great information.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MyDsRWwQvc&feature=related

Bush's legacy

I hope people reading my blog don't think I'm just bashing Obama. I'm taking shots at the message. The messenger just happens to be Obama. Everyone believes that Obama is bringing some new ideas to the table. Truth is for the most part he isn't. It's just the democratic platform thats been there for decades being repackaged. I'll write a blog about that later.

I wrote that Obama has been saying that the people have rendered their judgment and brought him in to change things. Well, Bush also had this type of arrogance when he was relected in 2004. He said that he won alot of capital with his re-election. Political capital to be exact and he intends to spend it. I was asked by a friend on my thoughts on Bush and here it is:

The Good:

1) On the social issues, Bush was a true conservative. The limits he put on abortion and embyronic stem cell research, received much praise from most of the country. He was a true conservative on social issues such as gay marriage. The US is a centrist country that leans right. How else do you explain the most liberal state in the country defining marriage as being between a man and woman...twice.

2) His faith based initiatives were also well received. Giving power to local organizations such as churches to serve the community. He realized that who would know the needs of the people better....some bureaucrat sitting in Washington or the people in the local communities that serve the people everyday. It was such a good plan that Obama plans to continue the funding to the faith based initiative program.

3) His attempt to reform education with the No Child Left Behind act was an attempt at bipartisanship. He even reached out to Ted Kennedy to write the bill. Spending on education rose almost 60% in Bush's first three years, this represents a bigger increase in investing in education than Clinton's 8 years. The goals of the bill were for mandatory testing and accountability. Some critics claimed that teachers were teaching to the test, but propents of the bill said at least they were teaching to something. Scores improved drastically for certain grade levels, however the US still lags other countries.

4) Bush sent billions of dollars to Africa for the AIDS epidemic in this country. He was never given enough credit for the help he gave to millions of people living in Africa. He did more for Africa than Bill Clinton ever did.

5) He stood against the alarmists of global warming who said that the world was going to end. He slowed the movement toward a policy disaster allowing facts to catch up with the global warming alarmists. Initially Al Gore claimed that there are no scientists that dispute that global warming is the problem. Now there are over 650 UN scientists that debunk this claim and the numbers are still growing. In fact, scientists now say we are headed towards global cooling.

6) He kept our country safe after 9/11. There were more deaths and injuries from terrorist attacks during Bill Clinton's time in office than George Bush's time in office. A fact many people don't know.

7) He assigned John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court.

The bad:

The war in Iraq was his ultimate undoing. I won't list many because I think the mainstream media has kept everyone well informed of his missteps.

1) The war in Iraq was badly bungled. He didn't send enough troops to begin with and ignored pleas from generals on the ground. Once he did send the surge, it was a great success.

2) While Bush was fiscally conservative when speaking of tax cuts, he was not a conservative when it came to spending. Government grew way too much under his watch.

3) Conservatives believe in less government. Bush did the opposite.

4) Afghanistan is going back into chaos

5) Many people accused Bush for a lack of transparency.

The ugly:

I also believe that the media made him a target. The mainstream media usually do attack conservative candidates more. It's not just me being paranoid. Study after study shows that there is a clear bias in media coverage. You can view the results of an analysis performed by George Mason University as proof. (Time magazine compares him to Jesus Christ)

1) He was blamed for 9/11. They even scrutinize how he reacted when he was told that there had been an attack. He continued to read calmly to children.

2) He was blamed for Katrina even though a majority of the blame should rest on local government. Can you imagine if we got the federal government involved everytime there was a tornado in Oklahoma? Look at what a difference Bobby Jindal has made. He also experienced hurricanes, but he was prepared. No need for the feds.

3) He was blamed for the current economic crisis even though the policies that were put into place happened in the Clinton administration.

4) He was blamed for the price of gas. The price of gas had to do with supply and demand and there was little he could do about it. Well, the reverse is not true. Prices dropped under his watch and guess what...He wasn't given credit for it.

5) Obama is still blaming Bush and will continue to do so for the next 4 to 8 years. It's a great way to escape any sort of accountability. Reagan inherited a bigger mess than Obama did and pulled the country out of it quickly.

I think the biggest problem with George Bush was his inability to communicate. He couldn't even say the word nuclear. If he would have got out and defended his policies more boldly and put rumors to rest more quickly, he could saved a lot of face.

Words do mean alot

Now I am not trying to bash Obama but he has to understand that the whole world is watching and listening to everything the leader of the free world is saying. Every time Obama opens his mouth wall street takes another plunge.

I think this is a key difference between Obama and Reagan. When Reagan was confronted with a worse crisis, he was optimistic and spoke of hope and the will of the American people. His words and his actions built confidence into the economy.

Obama on the other hand is stoking fear into the global economic system with everything he is saying and doing. Using people fears of the recession to his advantage, so he can pass every tax hike, social program and payout to his supporters down our throats and we're all drinking the kool-aid.

Check out the two links below:

The first article is concerning Obama's economic plan:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/29434104

The next article is bankers who are urging Obama to shut his mouth:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0209/19418.html

Government: solution or problem?

I thought I would blog about why I think government should not be the driver but facilitate the recovery.

The US Government can make money in one of three ways.

1) Increase taxes. However, if the government increases taxes on individuals and companies alike there will be less money in the pockets of the people. With less money, people won't buy. When people don't buy, companies layoff, cut salaries and etc. This would prolong a recession.

2) Borrow money. However, borrowing money would only increase our national debt which would increase the crazy amount of interest we are already paying on the trillions of dollars of debt. This would also be a negative impact on the economy.

3) Print more money. However, this would have the negative affect of creating out of control inflation. There would be too many dollars in the system chasing too few goods. This would also have a negative impact on the economy.

The government can only worsen the problem in any scenario. This is why government should facilitate the recovery by allowing the principles of supply side economics to give power back to the American people and not to the government. Money in the hands of small and large business alike will allow companies to reinvest and hire more employees. Reinvestment can create new discoveries in any field such as healthcare and computers which can create an entire new industry which would allow even more people to be employed and create more wealth.

In the short run, government will lose revenue but in the long run revenue will increase because of the scenarios mentioned above. Giving power back to the American people by allowing the innovation and ingenuity of the American mind to take over, will be what takes this country out of the recession and to even greater heights.

It is also worthwhile to mention that anything that the government undertakes incurs great waste and is riddled with inefficiencies. That is why anything that is government owned is slow, inefficient and incurs great losses. The government has no market value on anything they produce because their input is always constant.

The salaries and overhead costs from the government jobs created by the stimulus package will have to be paid for by taxing the very people to whom they are trying to help along with everyone else. Is that productive?

These reasons should be plenty why I think that Obama's stimulus package is wrong for this country and will in the long run hinder growth.

Random thoughts

I have a few thoughts about Obama's speech. While this post will be large, each point will be short and simple.

First off, is concerning Obama's following comments: "And that is the responsibility to ensure that we do not pass on to them a debt they cannot pay"....Followed by the partisan line "With the deficit we inherited...."

A half truth is really no truth at all. Lets take a deeper look.

1) Obama is slamming the idea of deficit spending as one that is not sound but crazy. He is ready to point the finger at the Bush administration, but all the while the Obama administration is continuing on with even more deficit spending. To be correct, this is the largest spending ever which will bury our children and grandchildren in debt. He can point the finger at Bush as he deserves it, but don't turn around and do the same thing. That just makes you a hypocrite.

2 ) Obama must remember that the deficit he inherited was with a Congress controlled by Democrats for the last couple of years. The deficit grew with the approval of the $700 billion TARP. It was supported by the Democratic controlled Congress and by Obama himself so this deficit was not only by Bush's design. TARP would have been approved regardless of who was in the White House.

I am not saying that the last two years caused all of this. I am merely giving the other side or view point. When Obama uses the phrase "the last 8 years", he must remember a Republican Congress was there for 6 of those 8.

3) Obama asserts the federal government should be the driver of pulling the U.S. out of the recession. He asserts that we need to grow the federal government, but guess what....the federal government did grow under Bush. In fact, USA today reported that spending on social programs, from education to veterans health care, rose faster under Bush than at any time since the 1960s. Federal spending under Bush's administration doubled the federal spending of the Clinton administration.

If federal government is the answer, then why didn't Bush's spending pull us out of the recession by now? The nearly $1 trillion spending bill was a big payout to Democratic supporters such as big unions, ACORN, Global warming wackos and etc. It had little to do with stimulus.

4) Obama stated that things would have gotten worse if the spending package was not approved. However, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) contradicts this claim. The CBO actually says that the stimulus package will actually have a negative affect in the long run than if he did nothing at all. The CBO said the stimulus package will help in the short run but in the long run there would be so much government debt that it would crowd out investment in the private sector thereby lowering GDP.

5) The claim during his campaign that 95% of working families will receive a tax cut is slick talk. When more than 40% of Americans that don't pay taxes to begin with receive a tax cut, this is called redistribution of wealth. How can you take out from what you didn't put in to? Is it fair to take from others? There are hard working people who pay taxes but are being robbed of their hard earned money by giving it to others who didn't put in.

Now people may be tired of hearing the word "socialism", but this is not socialism. Socialism is where all people work for the common good. Obama's plan is where some people work for the rest of the population. This is much worse.

6) The claim that tax cuts go to the wealthiest two percent is a half truth as well. What people don't talk about is the fact that approximately 10% of the population pays 80% of the taxes. But those of us who pay more taxes, use the same roads, get the same service from police officers as those that don't put in at all. I would say that those top 2% deserve our admiration rather than our scorn.

I have much much more to write, but this blog would go on forever. I hope that people find this information as power to see through half truths and lies.