AGG - You don't like the Iraq situation and that's fine. But the ISSUE is not Iraq, it is Barack Obama's judgment and his fitness for the Presidency. So let's look at just one area where Obama HAS VOTED and shown us his "judgment" and his concern for the American people.


"As in Chicago, conservatives and liberals in Washington often find common ground on issues of good government.

As in Chicago, Barack Obama is not usually part of that agreement when it happens.

In less than four years as a United States senator, he has voted for some of the worst bipartisan special-interest legislation to move through the chamber. At times - as with the question of ethanol - he has positively championed corrupt systemic arrangements.

The media have uncritically applied to him the "reformer" label because of his promises to change Washington. It seems unimportant that he has done virtually nothing while in Washington to change it.

In The Audacity of Hope, Obama worries about the ugly image that Americans project to the world in the area of trade. We demand, he writes, that "developing countries eliminate trade barriers that protect them from competition, even as we steadfastly protect our own constituencies from exports that could help lift poor countries out of poverty."

This laudable concern did not prevent him from voting for a farm bill this year whose purpose was largely to "protect our own constituencies from exports that could help lift poor countries out of poverty." By supporting the farm bill, Obama voted to increase subsidies for American crops - the majority of the money goes to commercial farms with an average net worth of nearly $2million. He voted to keep in place tariffs and import limits against crops from developing countries, especially against sugar from developing countries like Brazil and the Caribbean nations. The bill Obama voted for even bars the U.S. government from providing food aid by purchasing crops from developing countries we try to feed. When the Bush administration vetoed the bill, demanding at least that this last provision be changed, Obama voted to override the veto.

While taking this vote, Obama had at his side several Republican and Democratic senators from farm states, who are equally obeisant to big agribusiness. When it comes to corporate plunder of the federal government, Obama's record reflects his ideas of unity and "post-partisanship."

This is even truer on the question of federal ethanol subsidies. It is a rare policy on which you'll find National Review's editors agreeing with Paul Krugman, the liberal columnist at the New York Times. But then again, it's a rare policy that is so nakedly wasteful with such a negative net public benefit.

Krugman wrote about ethanol on his Times blog in February 2008: "Bad for the economy, bad for consumers, bad for the planet - what's not to love?"

But Obama loves ethanol. He loves it so much that his energy plan would outlaw new cars that can't run on high-ethanol blends (that includes most cars sold today). He brags about how he inserted ad new ethanol subsidy into a 2006 tax bill. He gushes over ethanol in The Audacity of Hope:

'The bottom line is that fuel-efficient cars and alternative fuels like E86, a fuel formulated with 85 percent ethanol, represent the future of the auto industry. It is a future American car companies can attain if we start making some tough choices now…'

In 2008, ethanol's ravages started to make headlines - this "green fuel" was contributing to record-high food prices and causing food riots in the developing world. It was exhausting water supplies, driving up gasoline prices, and exacerbating smog. Environmentalists, who almost universally oppose ethanol, complained that its production process is driving up emissions from coal. Consumers were suffering and the impact on the environment was a net negative.

Worst of all, ethanol makes no substantive contribution to American energy independence. Consider these statistics, and I will do the math for you below.

- A gallon of ethanol contains 75,700 British Thermal Units of energy.

- A gallon of gasoline contains 115,000 British Thermal Units of energy.

- American firms produced 6.5 billion gallons of ethanol in 2007.

- Americans use 388.6 million gallons of gasoline per day.

- To produce five gallons of ethanol from corn, one must spend the energy equivalent of roughly four gallons of ethanol for farming, shipping, and processing. (In other words, ethanol has a 25 percent net energy yield.)

Run the numbers, and the answer is that America's entire 6.5 billion gallon ethanol production created the net energy equivalent of 2.2 days' worth of American gasoline consumption. If you want a more generous estimate, call it three days' gasoline consumption. But do not call it "energy independence."

That's the physics of ethanol.

Here are the economics of ethanol: In exchange for that miniscule output, federal and state governments provide between $6.3 billion and $8.7 billion in annual direct and indirect subsidies - that includes direct payments as well as estimates of the economic distortions caused by mandates (high food prices, for example). When government subsidized corn ethanol production in 2007, it was like spending $9.00 to create a gallon of gasoline, and doing it 853 million times. If you are still unsure about ethanol, think of it this way: If you could turn gold into lead, would you do it?

Senator Obama apparently would.

Without government subsidies, no one would make corn ethanol. Without government mandates, no one would buy corn ethanol. The ethanol industry receives more in subsidies each year than it spends buying corn. It plunders government with an efficiency that no political Machine will ever match. And Barack Obama is an even bigger supporter of ethanol that he was o the Stroger Machine.

Obama's Illinois colleague in the Senate, [censored] Durbin - long a champion of federal support for ethanol - is finally starting to feel uncomfortable about it.

"I've supported ethanol from the beginning," Durbin said in April. "But we have to understand it's had an impact on food prices. Even in the Corn Belt, we'd better be honest about it."

When Obama came to Washington in January 205, ethanol already enjoyed a special income tax credit, protective tariffs, occasional ad hoc federal subsidies, and a bevy of statewide subsidies for production, processing, and dispensing. Since then, the subsidies have ballooned, and Obama is pushing for more.

Weeks after he was sworn in, Obama traveled back to Illinois for a stop at the ethanol plant of Aventine Renewable Energy, where he endorsed the federal ethanol mandate that has since gone into effect. Current law requires the use of 15 billion gallons of ethanol by 2015.

According to and Associated Press account of the event, "Obama said boosting the nation's ethanol output is a 'no-brainer'…"

Indeed, it is a "no-brainer," but not in the sense Obama meant it.

Three months later, when the mandate was debated on the Senate floor, a coalition of liberal and conservative senators rose up against it. Liberal New York senator Charles Schumer, who argued his constituents were being robbed, offered the following arguments, which are worth reading in light of Senator Obama's "reform" image:

'It hurts drivers and it hurts the free market. It is a boondoggle because it takes money out of the pockets of drivers and puts it into the pockets of the big ethanol producers…It is so unfair to do this. It is wrong to do this. If you come from Iowa or Illinois, and ethanol is good for your gasoline and it is the best way to make it cleaner, that is fine. But if there are other ways to do this…to put a few pennies - and that is all it will be - in the pocket of the family farmer, we charge drivers around the country billions of dollars.

Make no mistake about it, most of those billions will not got to the family farmer, they will go to the Archer Daniel Midlands of the world - a company that was once accused of price fixing. There will be no free market here at all.'

Schumer is here attacking Obama's policy. Of course Obama voted for ethanol - he voted for it twice that day. In 2007, Congress upped the ante again, nearly doubling the ethanol mandate, Obama, again, backed it. He wants to be president, and that road leads through Iowa, twice. Obama does not stand with the reformers. He is part of the bipartisan consensus in favor of government waste.

(The Case Against Barack Obama, the Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favorite Candidate, by David Freddoso, pp. 89-93)


And Obama is on record as saying that he thinks the price of gasoline should be higher, (at $9.00 just to CREATE a gallon of gasoline, I wonder what he thinks the "pump price" really should be for all those hard-working Americans out there supporting his candidacy?) all he "laments" is that it rose so fast. Maybe because that "shock" reveals what he is really after and that he is NOT a "reformer" but a user of the political system for his own advancement.

MEDC - *I* understood what you were calling a "blunder" and I also understood how the libs would try to use your statement to show you were actually in agreement with them.

But also, consider the FACT that TONS of Yellowcake have been found and removed from Iraq, and it's questionable if evidence of Hussein's "working on" getting WMD's, specifically nuclear WMD's "hasn't been found." I would submit that it has been found because that is what Yellowcake is used for.

Agreed. Also of note...Obama did not make a JUDGEMENT or reach a CONCLUSION about Iraq. He offered an opinion. The democratic leaders that are so behind him offered a judgement based on what they saw...they reached a conclusion. Wrong...perhaps. But it was based on the evidence at hand.


Anyone can offer an opinion about soemthing. They may be right...they may be wrong. But unless they have something at stake, it doesn't matter...they have nothing invested. I dare say, that like the Clinton's, Obama IF he were provided with the same information from sources he trusted would act the same way.

Well, I was hoping for something above a kindergarden level response, so no need for the spelling lesson.

Let me offer up the idea that whenever a country invades another country, it stands to reason that there will be people in the invaded country who will try to resist the invasion. Now, you can call them militants and bad guys, and say that by killing them we are killing bad guys, but you are forgetting that it was the invasion that made them bad.

Guess what? If we invade Canada tomorrow, there wil be "militants" there to fight against us - will you jump up and down with joy about us killing them too??


Aw, enough with the mindless slogans already. "Helping Iraqi government"? You mean helping the puppett government that we created (starting with that loser Challabi), like we did so well with the Shah, half of Latin American countries, etc? What a joke.


There is no "believing" needed, it is a matter of simple facts. Iran and Iraq have been mortal enemies for decades. You might recall that we provided arms to Iraq to fight Iran. Without Iraq, we eliminated Iran's biggest enemy. Go read up on it.


Radical Islam rises wherever people get disillusioned with the non-radical status quo. Let's bomb some of our friends and see if they don't become radicalized.


You might want to reread your history. The world will always be full of mongrels and fanatics, and it is even today. Killing them all is absurd. Think of Lybia, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela, and half of African countries. Your history lesson apparently tells you that we must kill them all.


There is a difference between appeasement and coexistence. All I hear from you is "kill kill kill". That is McCain's thinking too, and it is very dangerous and clueless.


May want to backup a bit, FH. You jumped from 9/11 to Iraq. As I recall, there was a two year gap between the two. After 9/11, the majority of the world supported us and sympathized with us. We had our moral leadership intact, and we could have truly led the war on terror. But then we went to invade Iraq (which had no terrorists until we created them), and yes, a lot of the world did not back us up. Why would they?


Noted. But you are really clueless to confuse defense and offense. I will be the first to stand up for our freedoms. Iraq did not threaten our freedom.

Your blind rage at Muslims is showing through, but it shows a total lack of understanding of the Middle East.

AGG

Of course, no one is asking you to capitulate. I am just pointing out that aside from spitting out slogans about Muslims and Sharia, your facts about the Iraq war are all wrong. Just as McCain's are.


No kidding? So making a bad decision is better than making a good one? Since when? Bush made the wrong decision. McCain backed that decision. Obama did not. In my book, the person making the right decision shows better judgment than the person making the wrong one. It matters not if Obama had anything at stake or not - he made the right observation. McCain didn't.


You are not making any sense here.. What are you trying to say?


I came to the USA because I consider it to be the greatest nation on earth. Remind me again when I called this country "bad"? And since you can't, then please stop sticking stupid words in my mouth. As I recall, you are the one who was talking about taking off if Obama wins the presidency....

AGG

The intelligence was known to be faulty. Ignoring all the counterindications is very foolhardy, as history demonstrated.

AGG

For me, the issue is who can make better judgments when it comes to the incredible responsibility of starting wars, which is the President's biggest power. McCain has shown that he shares Bush's cowboy "ready, fire, aim" mentality. Obama has shown that he has the ability to consider all facts before acting. So on this issue, I consider Obama much more fit to be President.

AGG

Well, I can't say that I totally disagree, but at the same time, I feel that given the choice between two people who have nothing invested, and one makes a good judgment and the other a bad one, I'd still side with the one making the good one. I'm not sure how the "nothing invested" issue changes the fact that he made the right judgment.

AGG

Once again, you are missing the point. He DID NOT offer a judgment...he offered an opinion. He did NOT have the ability to judge...he offered an opinion. There is a huge difference. The blowhards in the democratic party saw the same intel and decided to attack. Now they run from their votes.

Really???? I don't think it was. If it was KNOWN to be faulty, why did the democrats vote for war????

I am pretty certain that the bi-partisan Senate Intelligence Committee found that while the information that led to the war was incorrect that there was NO coercion on the part of the administration and that both parties believed the intelligence to be accurate.

If you have other information, please pass it along.

Probably the cynicism.

In the US where we have the freedom to believe, we have become, in general, cynical. In Russia, where a friend of mine is from, they have had a boon in faith, due to the oppression there.

Cynicism precedes oppression, as far as I can tell. Oppression seems to precede overwhelming faith.

Not really.

From Dictionary.com:


AGG

Many sources, here is just one:


AGG

And just for the record, I do consider those democrats blowhards for voting for the war. I am not the blind "democrats can do no wrong" idiot that some folks here are trying to paint me into.

What I am saying is that Obama did not support the dumb war, and McCain did. So of the two, McCain is the bigger blowhard.

All the counter evidence was there for the taking. Bush's personal animosity towards Hussein was well known, years before the war and 9/11. So it did not take a rocket scientist to figure what the war was all about. Certainly it was not about terror or WMD.

AGG

Who the hale cares what Hans Blix thinks?

The fact is we were fully justified to use military force against Iraq, even knowing what we know now, hale, ESPECIALLY what we know now.

The Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq had plenty of reasons that justified our going into Iraq. And only some of them mentioned WMD.

The authorizationn never claimed that Iraq had large stockpiles of modern WMD in 2002.

READ IT FOR YOURSELF

Justified? By who? Did God tell us to go obliterate the country?

If not, give me one good reason to go to that war. The only reason I could think of that has any leg to stand on is that Hussein was a bad guy. I'll grant you that, and then ask what about the dozens of other bad guys in the world? Why not go invade those countries too?

Other than that, the war was an idiotic strategic blunder. Look at the facts:

- Iraq was not an Islamic nation. It had no Sharia law.

- Iraq had no Al Queda (as a news flash to McCain and FH, Al Queda has closer ties to Iran, as pointed out in the 9/11 Commission report)

- Iraq was a counterforce to Iran's expansion

- Iraq did not threaten the US, either directly or indirectly

Now, please tell where in this picture we had a morally-supportable reason to go to bomb that country back into the stone age.

As a result of the war, we have:

- More militant Iran

- More militant nuclear Pakistan

- Loss of credibility in the world

- Loss of thousands of lives

- Loss of trillions of dollars.

- Absolutely nothing gained.

AGG

Read the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq, AGG.

REALLY GOOD NEWS FROM IRAQ, REPORTED BY THE NYT!

"Market by market, square by square, the walls are beginning to come down. The miles of hulking blast walls, ugly but effective, were installed as a central feature of the surge of American troops to stop neighbors from killing one another.

"They protected against car bombs and drive-by attacks," said Adnan, 39, a vegetable seller in the once violent neighborhood of Dora, who argues that the walls now block the markets and the commerce that Baghdad needs to thrive. "Now it is safe."'

"On Oct. 1, the Sunni-dominated Awakening movement, widely credited with helping restore order to neighborhoods that were among the most deadly, passed from the American to the Iraqi government payroll in Baghdad. There is deep mutual mistrust between the new employer and many of its new employees, many of whom are former insurgents.

Another element of the transition, which has attracted far less notice than the Awakening transfer, is the effort by the Iraqi Army to begin turning over neighborhoods to the paramilitary National Police. In the future, its officers, too, will leave and be replaced by regular police officers.

All three moves mark a transition to an era in which Iraq's Shiite-dominated government seeks more control over its own military and sway over America's.

"The Iraqi security forces are now able to protect Iraq," said Joaidi Nahim Mahmoud Arif, a National Police sergeant in Dora, in southern Baghdad. "They will depend on themselves above all."

LINK

thanks for that link Marsh.

After reading that, I rescind my "it was a blunder" comment.