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  • Romney The Liar

    Romney The Liar

    The lies roll off the man's lips like music off Yo-Yo Ma's cello. Both are virtuosos - one a cellist, the other a liar. A partial list. Bush had nothing to do ...

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  • Late Night Political Humor

    Late Night Political Humor

    Happy Friday. The best from Political Humor‘s collection of the week’s late night political humor. "Barack Obama supports same-sex marriage. Mitt Romney doesn't even support same-sex car pools." –David Letterman "The head of ...

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  • Another Unexceptional Republican Claims Obama Is Not An American

    Another Unexceptional Republican Claims Obama Is Not An American

    Republican Rep. Mike Coffman at a Saturday afternoon fundraiser in Colorado. I don't know whether Barack Obama was born in the United States of America. I don't know that. But I ...

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  • Idiot Quote of the Day: The “Gayer” Obama

    Idiot Quote of the Day: The Gayer Obama

    Rand Paul: Call me cynical, but I didn’t think his [Obama's] views on marriage could get any gayer. We won't call Rand cynical. Ignorant, bigoted asshole is more fitting. An adult using ...

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  • Late Night Political Humor

    Late Night Political Humor

    Happy Friday. The best from Political Humor‘s collection of the week’s late night political humor. "President Obama came out with approval of same-sex marriage. He said that over the years, he has ...

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  • What The Hell Is The Problem With Gay Republicans?

    What The Hell Is The Problem With Gay Republicans?

    I've never understood Log Cabin Republicans - gay conservatives who give their support to a homophobic political party that derides their sexuality and refuses to grant them equal rights under ...

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  • Obama – Same-Sex Marriage and Doing The Right Thing

    Obama - Same-Sex Marriage and Doing The Right Thing

    Finally. “I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors when I think about members of my own ...

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  • Another Day, Another Vote – Indiana, NC and Wisconsin

    Another Day, Another Vote - Indiana, NC and Wisconsin

    Election roundup: Indiana. As polls forecast, the Tea Party's efforts to cleanse the GOP of any impure conservatives has Dick Lugar out and teabagger Richard Mourdock in. Mourdock is the new Republican ...

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  • ‘Romney – The Man Who Saved The Auto Industry’ and Other Fairy Tales

    'Romney - The Man Who Saved The Auto Industry' and Other Fairy Tales

    There are lies...and then there are lies. My own view, by the way, was that the auto companies needed to go through bankruptcy before government help. And frankly, that’s finally what ...

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  • A Madman and Fox News

    A Madman and Fox News

    From the papers captured last year at Osama bin Laden's Pakistani hideout comes this. Like any public figures, bin Laden and his advisers were mindful of the media. Adam Gadahn, one ...

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  • Late Night Political Humor

    Late Night Political Humor

    The best from Political Humor‘s collection of the week’s late night political humor. Happy Friday. "Today Mitt Romney visited a firehouse here in New York City. Of course, he was disappointed ...

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  • New GOP Logo

    New GOP Logo

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  • Can Obama Be Swift-Boated?

    Can Obama Be Swift-Boated?

    It happened to Kerry. Can it happen to Obama? Nope says Margaret Carlson. Obama’s belief system -- in that hopey-changey business and the post-partisanship thing -- has been altered by reality. ...

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  • Quote of the Day: The Gay Republican

    Quote of the Day: The Gay Republican

    Sullivan: What do Republicans call a gay man with neoconservative passion, a committed relationship and personal courage? A faggot. Exactly right, but then could one expect anything different from a political party that ...

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  • Christian Pastor: Fixing Gay Is Like Squashing a Cockroach

    Christian Pastor: Fixing Gay Is Like Squashing a Cockroach

    And they claim that atheists are immoral? The ugly side of religion shows its face once again. The words below were spoken at a Sunday sermon by Sean Harris, a pastor ...

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  • GM Alive, bin Laden Dead

    GM Alive, bin Laden Dead

    It's been fun watching conservatives and Romney twist themselves into pretzels trying to undo Mitt's past words on GM and bin Laden. Romney, April 2007: It’s not worth moving heaven and earth ...

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  • Republicans Are The Problem

    Republicans Are The Problem

      In an op-ed piece in the Washington Post, a couple of scholars from liberal and conservative think tanks, discuss the state of American politics. We have been studying Washington politics and ...

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  • Marco Rubio – Just Another Weasel

    Marco Rubio - Just Another Weasel

    Romney's VP-in-waiting, Marco Rubio, is perfecting the conservative sleaze play. He has proposed his version of the Dream Act in which people who entered the country illegally as children will be ...

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  • Obama’s Move Forward

    Obama's Move Forward

    Beyond the rhetoric, the political BS, the lies - that is, the concerted effort by the right-wing noise machine to distort and misinform at every opportunity - is the very ...

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  • Romney’s Etch A Sketch Fun Time Has Arrived

    Romney's Etch A Sketch Fun Time Has Arrived

      It was never a matter of 'if'...only of 'when'. Two constituencies that President Obama is holding onto about as strongly now as he did four years ago are voters under 30 ...

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A Nuclear Iran

Nuclear Iran  http://mariopiperni.com/

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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s latest remarks on Iran are quite a departure from the US’s  position of not allowing Iran to develop nuclear weapons.  …

“We… have made it clear that we’ll take actions, as I’ve said time and time again, crippling action working to upgrade the defences of our partners in the region,” Clinton told Thai television.

“We want Iran to calculate what I think is a fair assessment: that if the United States extends a defence umbrella over the region, if we do even more to develop the military capacity of those (allies) in the Gulf, it is unlikely that Iran will be any stronger or safer because they won’t be able to intimidate and dominate as they apparently believe they can once they have a nuclear weapon.”

The response from Israel’s minister of intelligence…

“I was not thrilled to hear the American statement…that they will protect their allies with a nuclear umbrella, as if they have already come to terms with a nuclear Iran. I think that’s a mistake”

The take on this is that the US’s hope to  deter Iran’s nuclear ambitions by way of diplomacy is wavering.  If sanctions fail what are the alternatives to stop Iran from developing it’s nuclear arms?  Israel’s the wild card here and while an Israeli first-strike is unlikely, it is not improbable.

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Obama Meets Russia’s President (wink-wink)

putin-obama

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Obama playing the Russian duo of Putin and Medvedev.

Obama’s meeting with Putin lasted two hours _ about 30 minutes longer than planned. They met a day after Obama held talks with President Dmitry Medvedev and they agreed that the two countries would seek by year’s end to cut their nuclear stockpiles by up to a third. Obama told Putin he thought he had had “excellent discussions” on Monday with Medvedev.

Medvedev, Putin’s hand-picked successor, is the one getting the bulk of Obama’s attention and negotiation time. All sides know Putin still holds much power, too, but Obama sought Monday to cast his meetings with both men as simply reaching out to the whole government.

And then the Freudian non-Freudian slip…

Obama referred to Putin as “President Putin” in an interview with NBC, and then said, “I don’t think it’s Freudian. He used to be president.”

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Iran – U.S. is Playing it Smart

Ahmadinejad

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Everyone should be ecstatic that when John McCain mouths off on his simplistic approach to foreign policy, it is not as president of the United States.  Here’s his take on the Iranian elections.

“He [Obama] should speak out that this is a corrupt, flawed sham of an election and that the Iranian people have been deprived of their rights.”

[the Iranian people] “should not be subjected to four more years of (President Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad and the radical Muslim clerics.”

Dumb.  The worst thing the US could do at this time is to speak out forcefully against Ahmadinejad. Doing so would allow Mousavi’s opponents to tie him to the United States and portray him as a U.S. lackey.  Obama’s approach so far has been to comment on the post-election violence but not show support for either side.  Sen. Richard Lugar, “the leading Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee thinks the Obama administration’s arms-length stance is just right.”

“I think for the moment our position is to allow the Iranians to work out their situation.  When popular revolutions occur, they come right from the people.” He said he did not think it would be wise for the United States “to become heavily involved in the election at this point.”

More to the point is this advice from an Iranian spokesman.

“But I think it’s wise for the U.S. government to keep its distance.”  The White House can and should “show concern for human life and protesters’ safety and promote tolerance and dialogue.” But to get any further involved, even rhetorically, would “instigate the cry that the reformers are somehow driven and directed by the U.S., whether under Bush or under Obama, and there’s no reason to give that unfounded allegation” any chance to spread.

Thankfully, John McCain is not president.

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Obama On How to Lose a Good Enemy..or Two

Obama and His New Amigos

Obama and His New Amigos

What is going on here? Someone’s got to teach the President how to keep an enemy. At the rate he’s going, there won’t be anyone left to go to war with.

On his recent European trip, he made amends with Turkey and extended a hand of friendship to the Muslim world. He has opened the door to talks with Iran. And now he’s tackling Latin America.

The President said he’s looking “for a new beginning” with Cuba as he loosened restrictions for Cuban Americans  in dealings with family back home.    Raoul Castro responded by stating that Cuba is willing to speak to the US and that everything is on the table.   Wow.  No doubt there will be Cuban cigars on the shelves before the year’s end.  After 47 years of isolation, the head of the Organization of American States even said he’ll ask his group to invite Cuba back.

And then, of course, there’s this buddy-buddy thing going on with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.  A year ago, Chavez is referring to Bush as the devil and claiming he could still smell the fumes of sulphur from the spot where Bush had spoken the day before…and now he’s shaking hands with President Obama and giving him books as gifts.

Next thing we know, Obama’s going to be handing an iPod to Korea’s tyrannical dictator Kim Jong il.  How will we ever get a good war going on in this world if everyone is speaking to everyone else.  The best way to ruin bad relations with an enemy is to actually speak to them.

Enough already, I say!  We need to go back to a Bush approach to foreign policy.  As we all know, you just can’t have enough good enemies.

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A New Approach For Iran

Opening up to Iran

Opening up to Iran

You can add another ‘X’ on the policies of former president George W. Bush.   Bush’s isolation policy toward Iran is being scrapped as the new administration embarks on putting into place another of President Obama’s campaign promises.  In a followup to Obama’s video talk to the Iranian people last month on the occasion of Iran’s new year festival, the president has embarked on a new foreign policy in regards to Iran.

From the New York Times:

“The Obama administration said Wednesday that the United States for the first time would participate regularly with other global powers in negotiations with the Iranian government about its nuclear program.”

“The announcement marked a significant step toward the direct engagement with Iran that President Obama has promised. It came after the United States and five other powers — Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia — invited Iran to join a new round of talks on its nuclear program. Also on Wednesday, the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, made unusually conciliatory remarks about the United States.”

Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad responded with guarded caution but indications are that Iran welcomes the dialogue.  “The Iranian nation welcomes a hand extended to it should it really and truly be based on honesty, justice and respect,” Ahmadinejad said.

The State department noted, “If Iran accepts, we hope this will be the occasion to seriously engage Iran on how to break the logjam of recent years. If Iran accepts that invitation, we look forward to direct engagement.”

A step in the right direction.  Naturally, there is no guarantee that the first diplomatic relations between the two countries since the 1979 Islamic Revolution will bear fruit but it does mark a positive beginning.

Stay tuned.