I have never witnessed hatred of a President the way Republicans hate President Obama for absolutely no reason at all. President Obama bends over backward to bring about bipartisanship, they simply slap it away. They have proven to be untrustworthy of confidence by the American people.
This is abuse of power to play to the lucrative interests of the Republican war machines. If ever there were a group of people more misguided to the best interests of the nation, it the Senate Republicans.
Hagel Becomes First Filibustered Defense Nominee (click here)
by FRANK JAMES
February 13, 2013 7:09 PM
...Then on Wednesday afternoon, Reid announced he was filing a cloture motion, Senate-speak for an attempt to end a filibuster. He couldn't reach agreement with Sen. James Inhofe, the Oklahoman who is the top Republican on the Armed Services panel, to end debate.
Among Inhofe's stated concerns about Hagel, he has said, is that the Iranian Foreign Ministry supports his nomination. Sen. Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who is the committee's chairman, has suggested that perhaps the Iranians are being bomb throwers and trying to cause mischief in American policy circles.
In any event, Reid has scheduled the vote to end the debate for Friday unless an agreement is reached beforehand....
They always think it is politics most important, even when a teacher from his home state sees it differently.
...“Tonight we heard President Obama (click here) emphasize the importance of building and supporting a strong American middle class, one that gives opportunity for all to achieve the American dream. Tonight, Ms. Susan Bumgarner, an exceptional teacher from my state of Oklahoma, from Norman, Oklahoma, sat in a seat of honor with the First Lady. As a teacher, Susan plays one of the most important roles in helping young Americans someday achieve this dream. As for the President, his four-year record on quenching these opportunities speaks louder than his rhetoric tonight....
Republicans are scared down to their skivvies. They are losing their grip on their crony's money and they don't know which way to point the gun, so every direction is better than a possible losing direction.
- By Frank Oliveri
- Roll Call Staff
- Feb. 7, 2013, 4:36 p.m.
...James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma said (click here) his panel would focus on the military’s response to the assault. But, he said, “as bad as everything that I’ve stated is, what I think is worse is the cover-up.”...
It is easy to cry cover up when there is nothing there is nothing to cover up. It is like building a bridge to nowhere. While the bridge is being built it seems like the correct path to take, but, to realize it has accomplished nothing in the end is the real proof of the putting.
...Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Inhofe,(click here) the incoming Ranking Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, expressed outrage over the leak that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s will lift the ban on women in combat Wednesday....
Inhofe has major control issues. I heard he wets his pants everything a dime is cut from the military budget. Not because it is necessary to bring down the national debt, but, because he is afraid of the country being invaded.
...While the Oklahoma senator expressed frustration at the leak, he spoke highly of women’s abilities in the military and noted that he served on the House Armed Services Committee with Les Aspin, a former Wisconsin congressman and secretary of sefense under President Bill Clinton....
Now, dear God, what is the USA going to do when a woman needs to power her nose before capture? Secretary Panetta should have worked out all these details before releasing this to the press!
Because their leaders have become shallow, ignorant, and totally unserious on the issue that matters most.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Wednesday, Feb. 13, 2013, at 6:22 PM ET
...Hagel’s Jan. 31 confirmation hearings had been appalling enough—not just for his own lackluster performance, but more for his inquisitors’ bizarrely narrow focus. They asked almost nothing about the issues that will face the next defense secretary: the budget, the roles and missions of the Army, the balance of drones vs. manned aircraft, the size of the Navy, the future of Afghanistan, or the “pivot” from Europe to Asia. Instead, they hectored the nominee about the adequacy of his fealty toward Israel, his animosity toward Iran, and whether he was right or wrong about the 2007 troop-surge in Iraq....
...Sen. Claire McCaskell went further, warning Inhofe and Cruz, in a “have you no shame, senator” moment, to “be careful” with their tactics of character-smear and guilt-by-association....
Oh, my God, Hagel is going to deactivate the USA nuclear silos!
...Hagel’s co-authorship of a 2012 report by an ad hoc group called the U.S. Global Zero Nuclear Policy Commission. Ayotte expressed shock that, in the wake of North Korea’s third nuclear test, Hagel had not removed his name from this report, which called for eliminating one leg of our nuclear triad. “We have three legs to our nuclear triad,” she said (yes, senator, that’s why it’s called a “triad”), as if it were some nuclear holy trinity.
Ayotte too is new; she seems not to know what a nuclear triad is. She certainly isn’t aware that, even among conservative thinkers in the nuclear-weapons realm, the idea of scrapping one leg of the triad—namely, land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles—is at least a respectable notion. The argument is that ICBMs are vulnerable to nuclear attack and, at the same time, tipped with multiple, highly accurate warheads that make an opponent’s ICBMs vulnerable to attack. In other words, by their very existence, ICBMs create an incentive for both sides to launch a pre-emptive attack in the event of a crisis.
But Ayotte’s remarks were seconded by Sen. Jeff Sessions, who does know something about nukes yet seems trapped in 1982. Hagel, he charged, “comes out of the anti-nuclear left,” as if, first of all, there is such a thing these days. It’s worth noting who wrote that Global Zero report along with Hagel: Thomas Pickering, a veteran U.S. diplomat and former ambassador to Moscow; Richard Burt, a State Department negotiator in the Reagan administration; retired Gen. John Sheehan, former commander-in-chief of U.S. Atlantic Command; and—not least—retired Gen. James Cartwright, former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and, before that, head of U.S. Strategic Command, which manages the nuclear arsenal. Hardly a pack of lefties....
Incompetence rules the GOP. The more incompetent and rhetorical they are the more they shiver in fear with demands for greater and greater spending on weapons THAT DO NOT WORK!
These are the men that sent our troops into battle in Iraq with little to no armor to protect them and forced them to cannibalize any and all metal in the immediate vicinity to protect them from bullets, bombs and flying frying pans.
They should be ashamed of themselves. And if they can't find the dignity to be ashamed of themselves, then their constituents should be ashamed for them.
Steve Tarlow August 17, 2011
In a 51-page Aug. 1 report, the U.S. Department of Defense’s Office of the Inspector General found that the Army did not properly test body armor before sending it into the field in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Associated Press reports that more than 5.1 million pieces of body armor were rushed into action at a cost of $2.5 billion, and most — if not all — of the body armor escaped testing for minimum safety standards.
Body armor or hillbilly armor
Defense contracts awarded between 2004 and 2006 for ballistic inserts were found to include either defective body armor plates or plates that were the wrong size. The harsh environment and temperatures in Iraq and Afghanistan made extracurricular field tests impossible, so potentially a few million U.S. Army troops were forced to use the body armor in trial-by-fire scenarios.
As The Moderate Voice reminds, reckless safety testing has been an issue in the U.S. military before. In December 2004, then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld met with Army specialist Thomas Wilson. Wilson asked Rumsfeld why U.S. soldiers had to dig through scrap heaps on the field of battle in order to assemble “hillbilly armor” for themselves and their Humvees. Rumsfeld’s response was accurate, if catastrophically inappropriate:
“You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”
And the Republican Bozos have the audacity to ask questions of qualifications to Senator Hagel who has pledge to be on the side of the soldier?
I don't think so!
The band of Republican Senate Brothers are incompetent and untrustworthy. And McConnell leads the way. This is his first filibuster of this session of Congress. Well done on that filibuster reform, Harry. A little egg on your face, Harry?
