The Respectfully Republican Conversation

I want to post a link about AlaskaDeb.  It's on Gina's website.  She is saying that it wasn't the cancer that took Deb.  You can read the rest.

http://www.websitetoolbox.com/tool/post/nosurrenderbreastcancer/vpost?id=3257488&pid=31483380#post31483380

Shirley I LOVE that.........thanks for sharing.............Shokk

Shirley...that You Tube is awesome...now if only, well you get my drift!

EDITED TO ADD: I received a p.m. from a board member asking what I meant by the above post...here is the p.m. and my response...just in case anyone took my post the wrong way:

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On Gitmo closing in a year, to me that is a no brainer, it probably would have happened anyway. There is time to figure out what to do with the remaining prisoners, making the closing date a year in advance was a smooth move on BO'S part, politics at its finest! Give the people what they want, make it look as though something is happening, hit the ground running! Very smooth move. But as I said, no doubt in my mind the Reps would have done the same. 

The stim package, I hope the Reps keep tearing it apart, give Pelosi another reason for another face lift, literally and figuratively!

Rocky what's wrong with a water park in Florida?............I mean heaven knows they need more water............it's not like they have enough water parks and beaches there..........the poor Floridans really, really, really need a new water park.......now see........this is why Republicans are such mean spirited heartless windbags..........and are all ugly (well except for the women)........they question the necessity of things like water parks..........jeez.............Shokk

What do you girls think about Phil Berg's lawsuit - regarding the birth cert issue?

Well, I haven't seen the lawsuit but I think this is a waste of taxpayer money!  This kind of wastefulness gets me so mad... like when Ken Starr went after Bill "where's my pants?" Clinton.

His mother was a US citizen .. he was born from her, naturally, not adopted, etc.  I don't care if he was born in Timbuktu .. he is automatically a citizen in my book.  If I was travelling abroad and living abroad for a time, and got pg, I think my kids are entitled to automatically be citizens.  

But I think they have shown the birth cert .. the birth announcement in the Hawaiian newspaper and he went to a school in Hawaii that only allows native born state citizens (as opposed to native "ethnic" Hawaiians).

I agree with Rock on the birth certificate issue...but even if you are born abroad of American parents it does not make you an automatic American citizen. My daughter was born in Germany and we had to file paperwork with the state department in order for her to be considered an American citizen.

I don't have an opinion one way or the other...I was just curious about what you girls thought about it. Although...just fyi...the tax payers aren't funding this. It's all through private donations. The one thing I thought was weird is that his stepmother said he was born in Kenya, his sister said he was born at one hosp in Hawaii and BO said he was born at a different hosp in Hawaii...huh?

Obama is now trying to sell the stimulus package.  Sorry, but it is full of pork that doesn't create jobs.  Too many billions will be spent foolishly again.  They threw in every pork project that didn't get voted on in the last Congress. 

These Senators and Congress people are not working for us, or our country by doing this.  It is highly doubtful that as it's written today, with such large pork projects, it will create 3-4 million jobs as promised.  More money will be needed as they again have to say ooops.  No ooops this time, take the time and do it right.

I'm writing my Senators which doesn't do much because they already agree that this package could be the biggest boondoogle known to mankind.

The one thing I can promise about the stimulus package.  Some people will get very rich.  During the S&L crisis, the Resolution Trust took over the toxic loans, then after a while sold them.  A friend of mind, was buying up loans from them at 3 cents on the dollar.  He dealt with the ones in Houston.  Most all the loans were either secured or were by companies that had real estate.  He then negotiated with the original debtors to clear their property for anywhere from 20 to 50 percent of value.  He then took the balance of the bad debt and turned them over to new collection companies that sprang up solely to harass the debtors that was left and shared on a 50/50 basis.  In a little over 6 months, he made over 10 million dollars.  Before Gary got into that business, he was a gold broker, he sold bars and coins and had a ton of Political clients, that dealt in cash for gold.  That is how he was able to become an approved RTC buyer. 

So believe me when I say, this share the wealth stimulus plan will make a very few well placed people very rich. 

This is too huge a project for haste.  There are real projects and there are ways outside of government hiring, to create jobs.  It's done by lowering taxes and business will figure it out how to use it, or if we don't trust them, give a tax incentive to those who hire.  It's an easy fix that creates jobs everywhere. 

If the democrats will allow input from the repubs, and be willing to really look at the projects, where will jobs be created and how many, and get rid of the unnecessary junk, they just might be able to kick start us, but only with tax incentives to business.  It won't happen without them.

Vivre, you asked about BHO's Arab interview, read my new favorite columnist ...

President Barack Obama is being praised for choosing an Arabic TV network for his first formal television interview: the Dubai-based, Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya news channel. I think we can all appreciate the thinking behind such bold outreach, given that the media at home has chortled to the world that our new guy's unusual background, in sort of Zen-fashion, has befuddled the radical Islamic movement.

The subtext of our satisfaction has been that Obama - African-American, son of a Muslim father, erstwhile resident of Muslim Indochina, with Hussein as his middle name - makes it far harder for the Arab Islamic world to typecast America unfairly as the Great Satan than would be true in the case of an evangelical, Texas-drawling, hard-core conservative Chief Executive like good ‘ole boy George Bush.

True enough, no doubt.

But triangulation is a touchy art and it takes the genius of a Dick Morris cum soulless Bill Clinton to pull off such disingenuousness. In less experienced hands it can be explosive and turn on its user. And Obama will soon learn the dangerous game he is playing. Consider:

1) When abroad it is not wise to criticize your own country and praise the antithetical world view of another - especially if yours is a democratic republic and the alternative is a theocratic monarchy that has a less than liberal record on human rights, treatment of women and homosexuals, and tolerance for religious plurality.
But here's what Obama said:

... All too often the United States starts by dictating...in the past on some of these issues...and we don't always know all the factors that are involved. So let's listen...Well, here's what I think is important. Look at the proposal that was put forth by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia...I might not agree with every aspect of the proposal, but it took great courage...to put forward something that is as significant as that. I think that there are ideas across the region of how we might pursue peace.

The end, if unintended, result is that the Saudi King comes across as courageous, while the U.S. President and State Department (e.g., "the United States") are portrayed as dictatorial-like ("dictating") in the region.

2) An unspoken rule of American statesmanship is not to be overtly partisan abroad. And in Obama's case it is high time to arrest the campaign mode, cease the implied "Bush did it" (which ipso facto has a short shelf life), and begin dealing with the world as it is, rather than the world you feel was unfairly presented to you by someone more blameworthy in the past. But again consider:

But if you look at the track record, as you say, America was not born as a colonial power, and that the same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago, there's no reason why we can't restore that. And that I think is going to be an important task... And so what we want to do is to listen, set aside some of the preconceptions that have existed and have built up over the last several years. And I think if we do that, then there's a possibility at least of achieving some breakthroughs... but I think that what you'll see is somebody who is listening, who is respectful, and who is trying to promote the interests not just of the United States, but also ordinary people who right now are suffering from poverty and a lack of opportunity. I want to make sure that I'm speaking to them, as well.

Perhaps. But once again, the impression comes across as ‘past America bad'/‘present and future America good.' (Even the senior George Bush learned that lesson at home with his serial "kinder, gentler nation" [e.g., kinder than what?]). And nothing is offered here (other than our lack of a colonial past) about the actual impressive record: amazing American good will in saving Kuwait, objecting to the Kuwaiti deportations of thousands of Palestinians, speaking out against Russia on behalf of the Chechens, trying to save the Somalis, bombing a Christian European Serbia to save the Kosovar and Bosnian Muslims, helping the Afghans against the Soviets, removing the Taliban and Saddam Hussein and trying to invest a $1 trillion in fostering democracy in their places, billions in disease relief for black (and often Muslim) Africa, timely help to the Muslim victims of the tsunami, and liberal immigration laws that welcome in millions of Arabs and/or Muslims. I could go on but you get the picture left out that America, far better than China, Russia, or Europe, has been quite friendly to the Muslim world.

Instead the supposition is that somehow the culpability is largely ours - and therefore ours to rectify. In fact, the widespread hatred in the Islamic world, manifested, and sometime applauded, on September 11, was largely a result of the failures of indigenous autocracy - whether in the past Pan-Arabist, Baathist, theocratic and Islamic, Nasserite, or pro-Soviet statism.

©2009 Victor Davis Hanson

The whole idea of rebuilding the good will of the United States in the Muslim world after the Bush disaster irritates the H^ll out of me.  I still say the second worst act of radical Muslim terrorism ever, was the assassination of a family member of a former President, a former Attorney General, and the man who would have been President in just a few months of his death.  Robert Kennedy was killed by a Palestinian because of US policy in the mid east.  He was killed on US soil.  This was in 1968, Bush was still a college kid at the time.  The US embassy was invaded (the same as invading US soil) and the staff taken hostage in 1978.  Carter was president and he had just betrayed the the pro American leader of that country so the radical fundamentalist could gain power.  Carter was a man that not only would bend over to pick up the soap in front of anybody that hated the US abroad, he would provide the soap.  There is also that nasty fact that the planning and initial implementation of 9/11 was under Clinton.  This even though Arafat spent so much time in the Lincoln bedroom that he had to pay property taxes in DC.

So let President Hussain Obama kiss up to the muslin world, we can tell by history how much they respect what they see as weakness.

Mr Spouse,

I usually agree with you but not on the Resolution Trust issue. I beleive you that some people got rich fast and exploited some of it. But it did do its job as far as the banks bailout. The banks moved on and the economy kept churning. I have more problems with the stimilus package full of pork projects. 

So now I am in agreement with you only 99% of the time

Saw on the fox news website

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has launched an online petition to express outrage at conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh for saying he wanted President Obama to "fail."

Wow they are really afraid of him now, aren't they ? And what happened to the freedom of speech.? I don't know why but the liberals have really tough time with this concept.