The Obamanation

[BigV]

Though it has little to do with President Obama, where do you place "society" on the scale from seven billion individuals and cogism, henry quirk?

[henry quirk]

Ants have *societies; human individuals (should, I think) engage in *civilization.

Don't know that I answered your question (directly, anyway).

*shrug*




*each one servicing all others.

**the on-going, ill-defined, result of at least two individuals agreeing not to steal from one another, not to hurt/rape one another, not to kill one another, so that each can go and do something other than (constantly and overtly) self-defending al the time.

[Spexxvet]

WE will accomplish more than Henry Quirk singularly will.

[sexobon]

@Dani: If you haven't already seen it, the PBS Frontline story Top Secret America (Premiere Date: 09/06/2011 - video|transcript) may help you further sort things out.

Here's an excerpt:

"RICHARD CLARKE, White House Terrorism Advisor, 1998-01: So in the past, covert action was done by CIA. The President had to approve covert action and notify the Congress. Now a lot of what looks like the same sort of thing, covert action, is done by JSOC. Now they say when they do it, it’s not covert action. It’s a military operation. So the president does not by law have to approve every operation and the intelligence committees are not notified.

NARRATOR: Then in Afghanistan, a story circulated that Rumsfeld wanted to use JSOC forces on a new battlefield, Iraq.

GARY SCHROEN, CIA, 1970-02: You could see changes being made in the U.S. military staffing in Afghanistan, that the Green Beret units, the 5th Special Forces group for the most part were being pulled out to refit and get ready for Iraq. And it was clear that the kind of guys that I think a lot of us believed were essential U.S. military personnel with special operations capabilities were being pulled away.

MICHAEL SCHEUER, Former CIA Officer: By 2002 in the springtime, it was almost taken for granted that we were going to go to war with Iraq.

NARRATOR: The president needed a convincing reason for war with Saddam Hussein. George Tenet and the CIA said they had no evidence Saddam had helped al Qaeda, but Secretary Rumsfeld did. A secret unit at the Pentagon claimed it had found a connection.

MELVIN GOODMAN, Fmr. CIA Officer: They needed an office that would produce the intelligence that the CIA wouldn’t produce. Rumsfeld said, “I can solve your problem,” and they created the Office of Special Plans.

DANIEL BENJAMIN, Nat’l Security Council, 1994-99: So they’re going to do their own analysis. They’re going to show what the CIA’s been missing all along about the true relationship between Saddam and al Qaeda.

NARRATOR: They worked in a vault deep inside the Pentagon. They had what is known as “all source clearances”─ total access to intelligence information.

F. MICHAEL MALOOF, Defense Dept., 1982-04: I went into the system, our classified system, to see what did we know about terrorist groups and their relationships, as well as their connection, associations with not only al Qaeda, but also with state sponsors.

NARRATOR: The information was rarely vetted. Instead, it moved up the chain of command to the office of the vice president.

MELVIN GOODMAN: And this became material that was then used, sort of in white paper-like fashion, to be leaked to journalists or to create links between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.

NARRATOR: It was delivered to the American public and the world.

Vice Pres. DICK CHENEY: New information has come to light. And we spent time looking at that relationship between Iraq on the one hand and the al Qaeda organization on the other. And there has been reporting that suggests that there have been a number of contacts over the years.

NARRATOR: And they began relying on a new phrase, “weapons of mass destruction.”

CONDOLEEZZA RICE, National Security Adviser: ─nuclear weapons, but we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.

COLIN POWELL, Secretary of State: Leaving Saddam Hussein in possession of weapons of mass destruction for a few more months or years is not an option, not in a post-September 11th world.

NEWSCASTER: A rapid series of 40 explosions lit up Baghdad in the early morning hours.

NEWSCASTER: Military officials have been using the term “shock and awe” to describe the assault on Iraq.

NARRATOR: By the spring of 2003, the U.S. had attacked Iraq."

[Undertoad]

The very fact that we are STILL discussing this 8 years on, means that it is a question upon which intelligent people can disagree.

[SamIam]

@ Dana - that was some nice research there. I was espescially interested in Sabri's role. I had heard of him, but was only vaguely aware of his contribution to the Great Lie about Iraq.

If the US had been a less powerful country, there is not a doubt in my mind that Bush, not to mention his chief generals and cabinet members would have been tried for crimes against humanity in the Hague. And then there was the torture, but I digress.

I mostly respond to Merc's posts because they give me an excuse to spend some time researching the current political scene and I REALLY want him to answer my question about how he squares his own ethics with the dismantling of the social safety net here in the US.

I imagine he will respond to your excellent research by calling you the worst expletive in his vocabulary - a blank, blank LIBERAL! And of course, Obama as a leader rivals only Adolf Hitler in his misgovernment of the US.

[infinite monkey]

It's God Damn fools.

God Damn's convention is to alway be capitalized.

Don't know why I can't be a God Damn Fool. At least it 'feels' like a real title, something I could wear on a sash or have embroidered onto a jacket or (NOOOOOOOOOO) get a tattoo of.

[classicman]

‎Solyndra

"The DOE pushed the loans through. At the time, it was seen as a great use of stimulus funds. The funds would help build the factories, creating construction jobs, and would then lead to more jobs within the factory itself. It was a perfect photo opportunity.

Florida Congressman Cliff Stearns, Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, warned Solyndra had not been properly vetted. “For months, we have been investigating how and why nearly half a billion dollars in taxpayer money was committed to this financially troubled company” he said.

There has been some talk that the loan was related to President Obama’s relationship with philanthropist George Kaiser, who is also a major investor in Solyndra. Kaiser raised money for Obama’s election."

Link
Some video coverage from ABC here
This could be rather damaging to the "different than the last guy" or the "transparent" administration. The timing isn't so good either. I wonder if this is simply one bad deal of many or if there is a trend. It seems there are a couple other solar companies who received stimulus money which failed a well.
I applaud the administration for investing in renewable energies, but this instance looks more like a payback to a major campaign contributor.

[BigV]

Originally Posted by classicman

‎snip--
this instance looks more like a payback to a major campaign contributor.

Is this your smoking gun?

The primary investors in Solyndra were funds tied to a major Obama fundraising bundler, Tulsa oilman George Kaiser.

Pretty thin evidence so far for a claim of quid pro quo. Did you read about chain of events that have to happen for the government to realize a loss? It is not a foregone conclusion. Or, are you suggesting that Obama directs loan guarantees to campaign contributors, regardless of the success of those contributors' business successes or not? Payback, really?

[classicman]

Smoking gun? Please, don't insult me. I'm not looking for a smoking gun.

Did you read about chain of events that have to happen for the government to realize a loss?

Did you read that the loans were restructures so the private investors get repaid first? AFTER they admin knew this company was going under?
Did you read where their price point was $3.00 when their actual cost was $6.00? Who the heck would invest in that business model?

are you suggesting that Obama directs loan guarantees to campaign contributors, regardless of the success of those contributors' business successes or not?

Read the facts, watch the reportS and draw your own conclusions. From what I read, it appears to be a very real possibility that his agenda overrode the reality that this company was not a good viable investment from the very beginning.

Payback, really?

Do you really think that paybacks are an unusual part of Gov't? Are you so idealistic that you cannot believe that could possibly happen? Why? Because he is on your team? Because that would make him no better than the R's you so despise?
Seems like the emails suggest there may be something more to it. It's only day 2 ...

[SamIam]

So, I got curious about what all the excitement was about and Googled Kaiser. It would appear that he does indeed own a 35% share in the failed company. Kaiser is also like one of the 400 richest people in the country. His views seem to be fairly liberal despite this fact (take THAT, Merc!). Kaiser has indeed been a big supporter of both Obama and the Democratic Party. I have to say that this looks suspicious to me. Just one more example of a billionaire buying himself some influence.

However, according to Forbes, Kaiser’s heart seems to be in the right place:

Kaiser’s focus remains on early intervention in the cycle of poverty. Giving through his Tulsa-based foundation provides services that include early childhood education, pre-natal health care, public health, in-home parenting, and secondary education, as well as more generalized safety net services that deal with the symptoms of poverty. More recent initiatives have focused on women's incarceration, secondary schools, and reserving land to create an arts and entertainment district in Tulsa. The biggest payout may be yet to come: Kaiser has said he plans to increase his gifts "until I die with one dollar left, assuming I can get the timing just right."

Then I did some more research and discovered that the Walton family of Wal-Mart fame had invested 10%. Not as much as Kaiser, but still… Wal-Mart has traditionally been a big contributor to the Conservative cause, including the Tea Party. In the last election, Wal-Mart sent contributions the Democrat’s way. However the majority of their largess still went to right wing candidates.

So maybe Obama was playing a little game of “Gotcha!” with Wal-Mart. I imagine that if I had the patience to do the research, I could make as good a case for this as the one for Obama paying off Kaiser with a federal plum.

Here’s what Wal Mart Watch.org had to say about the Walton family and their company. I have no idea how valid their statements are, but it certainly does add some spice to the mix. Reminds me of the old “Spy vs. Spy” in Mad Magazine:

Other big backers included Madrone Partners, a venture capital firm affiliated with the Walton family of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., with an 11 percent stake, and U.S. Venture Partners at 10.19 percent, CNN Money reported.

The Wal Mart PAC and Walton family spent nearly twice as much on Republican candidates and leadership PACs in the Senate compared to those of Democrats. In the Senate races, 35% of contributions went to Democrats and 63% went to Republicans…

While the company may have convinced some in recent years that its political contributions are nonpartisan, the Wal Mart PAC and Walton family have clearly continued to support conservative candidates whose ideologies and votes on key issues are not on the side of Wal Mart’s core customers (or associates) at all.

http://walmartwatch.org/files/2011/0...iving_0602.pdf

The more of this stuff I read, the more cynical I become. When are Americans going to wake up to the fact that we are a democracy in name only? The governance of this country would be better described as a plutocracy.

[classicman]

I spent a little time on this as well. Here is what I found. From a rather partisan site, but the info corroborated what I saw elsewhere and was neatly organized.

The Waltons lean to being Republicans. S. Robson Walton himself seems to have given almost exclusively to Republicans over the years but made a notable exception in 2008 to none other than Barack Obama. Here is Walton's record of giving.

Furthermore, it turns out that Madrone and officials of Madrone have been donors to Obama and his Inaugural.

For instance, Greg Penner (an executive of Madrone and a former executive of Walmart, but not a family member) gave to Max Baucus, one of the most powerful Democratic Senators and the Chairman of the committee responsible for drafting taxes and working on the budget. The vast majority of the other giving by Penner has been to Republicans.

Politics make strange bedfellows, and none stranger than when crony capitalism rears its ugly head. The Waltons are known to be astute investors, and while Solyndra is one of their losers, their investment in Barack Obama seems to be paying off.

[tw]

What partisan hyperbolic types forget to mention: nine of every ten innovative investments fail. One big one failed. So politics take cheapshots rather than look for the rare solution that actually succeeds.

Find the exception. Then hype it excessively using 'brainwashing by soundbyte' logic. Most investments in truly innovative technologies fail. Why do so many of those partisan sites forget the numbers? A political agenda. Subjective reasoning could even prove Saddam had WMDs. Rush Limbaugh selective reasoning is alive and well.

[classicman]

partisan hyperbolic type

see post 1363

[Urbane Guerrilla]

As if tw believes in things that sensible and well-advised people believe in anyway, as singularly incapable of politics as he is. He seems pointedly not to consider that the photovoltaic technology used by Solyndra is not anything radical nor too new. I don't think we can lay its failure at that door.

But, to the advancing of the discussion: Did 'W' Squander 9/11 Unity?