The Golden Carrot...that would be a metaphor...do you need me to spell this out for you, Connor?

Okay, you wait right here and I'll go get help!

WOW!

Man....see what happens when the fool isn't around to lighten the mood?

::::CHeesy grin:::

Dawn

AH! Help has arrived...

James...

Is that supposed to be a joke because I am not laughing

It's okay. Eventually I'll either make you laugh or cry, sometimes both. Ask Andy.

Dawn

Gee, your memory is very short. Didn't we inherit this war (on 2 fronts) from Bush? (sorry, I meant Cheney)

If you want to quote me verbatim to make some point, don't quote me at all...find the evidence against the list that I blogged and counter the point or piss off!

Ok, lets take two of your allegations and look into it. How about the one that he promised more transparency into government. I find the following:

I Obama set up http://www.recovery.gov so anybody could follow the stimulus funds and their payback.

II He also set up FinancialStability.gov so anyone could find out about:
1. Mortgage Refinancing
2. Executive Compensation,
3. www.Data.gov allows easy steps to a massive amount of information in Federal Data Bases

III Made White House visitor logs available making massive amounts of data on what exactly the Executive branch is currently doing on issues.

IV The economy grew at a rate of 3.5 percent in the third quarter and, while unemployment may not yet have peaked, the odds of a strong and fairly swift recovery have greatly improved. (If the EU gets back on track)

V On national security, Obama moved at once to categorically renounce torture—a big step toward removing the ugly stain that Bush and Cheney left on our national honor.

VI With regard to Guantanamo, its being closed but its behind schedule.

VII If you have any ideas about health reform, you can make your voice heard at www.HealthReform.gov.

VIII If you have suggestions about how the FCC handles applications for radio spectrum, like 3G data etc, you can make suggestions at www.broadband.gov

XI If you have suggestions about how the military should handle Afganistan, you can do so at www.DefenseSolutions.gov

You would never get this transparancy in a conservative administration.


These things make you a loud-mouth liar. Consider yourself pissed off.

regards,

MetatransparencyThe Obama administration's brave new disclosure policy.
By Christopher Beam Posted Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2009, at 7:04 PM ET
On his first full day in office, President Obama promised a "new era of transparency" for government. But that promise has gone largely unfulfilled, as the executive branch launched a gajillion clunky Web sites and a nifty Flicker photo stream. Today, the administration finally pinned down its transparency policy: The White House is not just making things public. It's making public the process of making things public. This is not just transparency; it's metatransparency.
That's the theory behind the administration's new Open Government Directive (pdf). The initiative, unveiled Tuesday by the Office of Management and Budget, requires every federal agency to come up with three "high value data sets" and release them in the next 45 days. Agencies then have to set up their own open government Web sites—http://www.[agency].gov/open—to showcase their transparency efforts. OMB will then regularly check in about new ways the agencies are improving in the areas of "transparency, participation, and collaboration."
How do we know the agencies will play ball? The White House is setting up what it's calling an "Open Government Dashboard" to monitor how the different agencies are doing. Think of it as a combination of data.gov and a high-school hall monitor. On the dashboard will be the best data sets and evaluations of each agency's progress at meeting the new transparency standards. If your agency is doing well, everyone will know. If you're not doing well, everyone will know. Meanwhile, on each agency's Open Government site, readers will be able to browse the newly disclosed data sets, discuss them, manipulate them, rearrange them, and request new ones.
Advertisement
The executive branch already has a bunch of data sites and several blogs. But none of them is particularly revolutionary. For one thing, the changes weren't governmentwide. For another, they were fairly superficial. It's fun to see Obama shooting hoops. But it doesn't change the public's relationship with government.
Tuesday's directive does—or it will, if the White House follows through. "It is going to take work for this to be significant and have an impact," says John Wonderlich of the Sunlight Foundation. The White House has already signaled to agencies that it's serious about getting good data out of them. Now it has to prove it.
The first problem is figuring out what kind of data the public cares about. For example, what exactly is a "high-quality data set"? As any researcher knows, there are good data and there are bad data. Good data means accurate, timely, well-formatted (spreadsheets) digital information that can be stored, sorted, reorganized, graphed, and combined with other good data. Bad data means old, poorly organized, crappily formatted (paper or PDF) information that takes hundreds of man-hours to organize properly, let alone analyze.
Here's one example of "good data" just announced by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. (Every Cabinet department had to announce a new data set as part of the launch; see an appendix here.) Inspectors across the country examine public housing projects and give them a rating based on how they comply with building standards and housing codes. You can then rank the buildings and cross reference that list with owners of the buildings. "That would answer, 'Who are worst slum lords in the United States?' " says Bill Allison, also from the Sunlight Foundation. You could then cross-reference that list with campaign donations and see whether big contributors are getting HUD contracts.
Then there's the risk of oversharing. In 2007, the private site FedSpending.org published old records from the United States Department of Agriculture that included Social Security numbers and names. When the USDA found out, it removed the data from the Web. Similar snafus are possible under the new initiative. But despite the rhetoric about changing the culture of governance, chances are agencies will err on the side of nondisclosure rather than overdisclosure.
Some skeptics argue that transparency and efficiency are inversely related—that the time an agency spends prepping data could be better spent actually administrating. (Lawrence Lessig, meanwhile, argues that it makes us see skeeziness where skeeziness doesn't exist.) The Obama administration rejects that framework. Quite the opposite, it says: Transparency and efficiency go hand in hand. The data are already there. They just need to be better organized. Making them public makes better organization possible—both by the agency and by academics, businesses, and activists. And better information means greater ability to figure out what works and what doesn't. The tricky part will be getting agencies to comply. At least we'll all have the chance to watch.


You use only .gov web sites as your resources for this argument...that is like Hitler being the judge at his own mass murder trial...I am not a liar and you have nothing to back up what you say except what you find on Obama's own propaganda web sites...you will have to try harder! Typical liberal crap...demonize the opposition or any one that opposes the administrations views...there is a massive amount of information to counter all that Obama claims...
James...

Senate Democrats Plan To Strip Funds For Gitmo Closure
By Andrew Ramonas | May 19, 2009 12:13 pm
Senate Democrats plan to strip the wartime spending bill of the $80 million requested to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Politico reported this morning.
Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) is also expected to introduce an amendment to the bill that would forbid any transfer of Guantanamo Bay detainees to the United States.
The bill could go up for a vote in the Senate as early as this afternoon.
We previously reported that the House passed its version of the bill with restrictions on the transfer of Guantanamo Bay detainees. President Obama would need to detail the reasoning and cost behind any detainee transfer, in addition to any security risks associated with prisoner resettlement in the United States, before any funds are allocated for the closure of the facility.

Funny how all the Dems. have found a way to take the heat off their president's promise to close GITMO. The problem for Obama is that the moment the detainees hit American soil they are no longer prisoners of the phony war, they must be given attorneys and the clear light of the unlawful actions of GITMO must be revealed!

The American Recovery and Investment Act cost the tax payers 787 billion dollars and if you go to that web site and query the amount of money that remains in the program you will find nothing! The fact is that the Obama administration has requested 55 billion additional dollars to fund the failing program because the money is now gone!

Not much you can do to defend that!

Obama has "denounced" torture but it hasn't ended and will not until all the "secret" prisons are fully disclosed and GITMO is closed...Obama believes in arresting people with out warrants and promised to repel the Patriot Act...he lied!


Obama Backs Extending Patriot Act Spy Provisions
• By David Kravets
• September 15, 2009 |
•
The Obama administration has told Congress it supports renewing three provisions of the Patriot Act due to expire at year’s end, measures making it easier for the government to spy within the United States.
In a letter to Sen. Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Justice Department said the administration might consider “modifications” to the act in order to protect civil liberties.
“The administration is willing to consider such ideas, provided that they do not undermine the effectiveness of these important authorities,” Ronald Weich, assistant attorney general, wrote to Leahy, (.pdf) whose committee is expected to consider renewing the three expiring Patriot Act provisions next week. The government disclosed the letter Tuesday.
It should come as no surprise that President Barack Obama supports renewing the provisions, which were part of the Patriot Act approved six weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
As an Illinois senator in 2008, he voted to allow the warrantless monitoring of Americans’ electronic communications if they are communicating overseas with somebody the government believes is linked to terrorism. That legislative package, which President George W. Bush signed, also immunized the nation’s telecommunication companies from lawsuits charging them with being complicit with the Bush administration’s warrantless, wiretapping program. That program was also adopted in the wake of Sept. 11.
These are the three provisions due to expire:
*A secret court, known as the FISA court, may grant “roving wiretaps” without the government identifying the target. Generally, the authorities must assert that the target is an agent of a foreign power and/or a suspected terrorist. The government said Tuesday that 22 such warrants — which allow the monitoring of any communication device — have been granted annually.
*The FISA court may grant warrants for “business records,” from banking to library to medical records. Generally, the government must assert that the records are relevant to foreign intelligence gathering and/or a terrorism investigation. The government said Tuesday that 220 of these warrants had been granted between 2004 and 2007. It said 2004 was the first year those powers were used.
*A so-called “lone wolf” provision, enacted in 2004, allows FISA court warrants for the electronic monitoring of an individual even without showing that the person is an agent of a foreign power or a suspected terrorist. The government said Tuesday it has never invoked that provision, but said it wants to keep the authority to do so.
“The basic idea behind the authority was to cover situations in which information linking the target of an investigation to an international group was absent or insufficient, although the target’s engagement in ‘international terrorism’ was sufficiently established,” Weich wrote.

Read More http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/09/obama-backs-expiring-patriot-act-spy-provisions/#ixzz0ofooK48S

Economic growth of 3.5% my ass! That number has been down graded three times since...you are far too trusting of what ever comes out of this administrations propaganda machine! the "real" numbers tell a totally different story...Obama? More lies!


Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland


Real GDP: Third-Quarter 2009 Third Estimate
John Lindner
Third-quarter GDP growth was revised down again in the third estimate. The annualized growth rate has dropped in successive estimates from 3.5 percent to 2.8 percent to 2.2 percent, the latest. This most recent revision was greater than expected (the consensus expectation was for 2.7 percent growth). The four-quarter percent change also fell 0.1 percentage point to −2.6 percent.
The downward revision was largely driven by an additional 1.8 percentage point (pp) decrease in business fixed investment and smaller reductions in personal consumption and private inventories. Other declines occurred in government spending and residential investment. Government spending dropped some of the gain ascribed to it in the second estimate, falling from a 3.1 percent increase to a 2.7 percent increase in the third estimate. Residential investment continued its downward path of revision since the advanced estimate, dropping another 0.6 pp to end at 18.9 percent growth. These losses were offset only by a positive revision to exports, which added 0.8 pp to its annualized growth from last quarter.
Real GDP and Components, 2009:Q3 Third Estimate
Quarterly change,
billions of 2005 $ Annualized percent change, last:
Quarter Four quarters
Real GDP 71.5 2.2 −2.6
Personal consumption 63.6 2.8 −0.2
Durables 51.0 20.4 −1.5
Nondurables 7.6 1.5 −0.9
Services 11.8 0.8 0.3
Business fixed investment −19.4 −5.9 −19.6
Equipment 3.3 1.5 −17.9
Structures −19.8 −18.4 −22.9
Residential investment 15.2 18.9 −18.9
Government spending 16.9 2.7 1.9
National defense 14.1 8.4 5.0
Net exports −27.0 — —
Exports 59.3 17.8 −10.7
Imports 86.4 21.3 −14.0
Private inventories −139.2 — —
Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Now, in all fairness, DATA.gov has some potential. I have visited this site to try and glean some information on several occasions and if the administrators of that site can work out more of the bugs it may, in several years, prove effective. I still must say;however, that it is only as good as the information that is put in to it. It is a government web site and I do not trust what they say just because they say it...I have to collaborate their information with other data. That being said, this site is too new to really declare that the Obama administration has made serious inroads toward transparency. Time will tell and I have hopes that the site will become more friendly user in the future.


Data.gov shows how not to do open government
Developers have tools available, but must use them smartly, panelists say
• By Sean Gallagher
• May 07, 2010
The effort to make data available through Data.gov is only a first step toward fulfilling the promise of the Open Government Initiative — and agencies have a long way to go. That was the message delivered by Dan Kasun, senior director of developer and platform evangelism at Microsoft's U.S. Public Sector, and Steve Drucker, president of Fig Leaf Software, in a panel discussion at this week's Open Government and Innovations conference.
The discussion, moderated by GCN Editor-in-Chief Wyatt Kash, was focused on tools to enable agencies to meet the challenges of the Open Government Initiative. But both Kasun and Drucker emphasized that merely making datasets available isn't enough to foster the long-term success of the effort.
“If we don't have tools for the ongoing sustainability of the data — which means supportability in terms of publishing of it, as well as rapid and useful consumption of it — [OGI] is going to die on the vine,” Kasun said.
________________________________________
Related: 10 flaws with the data on Data.gov
________________________________________
“As a baby step toward open government, putting your high-value datasets online is good,” Drucker said. “But if the user community can't consume the data, that's not really a contribution to open government.”
He said the datasets currently on Data.gov fail the “mom test.” If he pointed his mother to the site, she wouldn't be able to get anything useful, he said. For the data to be useful, it must be easy for the average person to use.
Drucker and Kasun said much of the data isn't even usable by developers. With much of it in static files online, “the barrier to entry [to developing applications based on the data] is very high because of the data conversion that has to be done,” Drucker said. Instead of developers facing a simple, half-day user interface development task, having to convert the data into a usable format extends the simplest application development projects to a week or more of developer time, he added.
Drucker likened Data.gov to what a large law firm might do to a smaller one in discovery in a lawsuit: bury developers and citizens with raw information. “Data.gov is too much information — it's not surgical," he said. "Right now, it's forcing people to download the whole dataset. And from the dataset, it's still hard to get to the data.”

More details that prove that the Obama policies concerning transparency more hype than action....


White House Covers Up Menacing Oil "Blob"

Written by Wayne Madsen

In an exclusive for Oilprice.com, the Wayne Madsen Report (WMR) has learned from Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers sources that U.S. Navy submarines deployed to the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean off the Florida coast have detected what amounts to a frozen oil blob from the oil geyser at the destroyed Deep Horizon off-shore oil rig south of Louisiana. The Navy submarines have trained video cameras on the moving blob, which remains frozen at depths of between 3,000 to 4,000 feet. Because the oil blob is heavier than water, it remains frozen at current depths.
FEMA and Corps of Engineers employees are upset that the White House and the Pentagon remain tight-lipped and in cover-up mode about the images of the massive and fast-moving frozen coagulated oil blob that is being imaged by Navy submarines that are tracking its movement. The sources point out that BP and the White House conspired to withhold videos from BP-contracted submersibles that showed the oil geyser that was spewing oil from the chasm underneath the datum of the Deep Horizon at rates far exceeding originally reported amounts. We have learned that it was largely WMR's scoop on the existence of the BP videos that forced the company and its White House patrons to finally agree to the release of the video footage.
The White House is officially stating that it does not know where the officially reported 10 miles long by 3 miles wide "plume" is actually located or in what direction it is heading. However, WMR's sources claim the White House is getting real-time reports from Navy submarines as to the blob's location. We have learned that the blob is transiting the Florida Straits between Florida and Cuba, propelled by the Gulf's Loop Current, and that parts of it that is encountering warmer waters are breaking off into smaller tar balls that are now washing ashore in the environmentally-sensitive Florida Keys and Dry Tortugas.
Corps of Engineers and FEMA officials are also livid about the cover-up of the extent of the oil damage being promulgated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and its marine research vessel in the Gulf, RV Pelican. NOAA stands accused by the aforementioned agencies of acting as a virtual public relations arm for BP. NOAA is a component of the business-oriented Department of Commerce.
Similarly, the Coast Guard, which takes its orders from the cover-up operatives at the Homeland Security Department, is denying the tar balls washing up on the Florida Keys are from the oil mass. WMR has been told the Coast Guard is lying in order to protect the Obama administration, which has thoroughly failed in its response to the disaster. The White House's only concern is trying to limit political damage to its image in the electorally-important state of Florida while the Pentagon has spent between $25 and $30 billion on oil spill operations in the Gulf and the Atlantic to date.

WMR sources also report that the oil mass has resulted in dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico that have cut off oxygen and killed massive numbers of marine creatures and plant life. Seafood wholesalers from the Gulf Coast to New Jersey and New York have been told that the supply of shrimp, oysters, and other seafood from the Gulf is severely in short supply and that they can expect a possible total cut-off as the situation worsens. The shortage will also affect the supply of seafood, especially shrimp, to national seafood restaurant chains like Red Lobster and Long John Silver's.
There is also evidence that BP, Halliburton, and Transocean sank a drill to a depth of 35,000 feet at the Deep Horizon site some six months ago without the required permits from the federal government. WMR has learned from U.S. government sources that the drilling at 35,000 feet caused a major catastrophic event that required the firms' oil rig personnel to quickly pull up the drill and close the drill hole.
However, the Deep Horizon re-sank the drill some six months after the unspecified "catastrophe," resulting in another, more destructive chain of events following the explosion that destroyed the rig, killing eleven workers. When the Deep Horizon blew up, WMR has been told it also "blew down," cracking the the sub-seabed pipe that may have been re-drilled to a depth of between 25,000 to 30,000 feet, again, without a government permit.
Government sources also report that BP is intent on recovering as much oil as possible from the undersea geyser rather than simply plugging and capping the well, which would then place it off-limits to further drilling. The Corps of Engineers reports that BP is playing a game with Obama, convincing him of the feasibility of "shooting junk" into the subterranean pipe, which would stop up the pipe with a manufactured chemical compound called "MUD." However, WMR has been informed that BP actually intends to shoot cement into the pipe in an attempt to cap the well with the later intention of digging a trench for side drilling from the pipe to recover as much oil as possible. The technology that would be employed by BP is the same technology that was used by Kuwait to conduct slant drilling of Iraq's Rumallah oil field -- an event that helped trigger Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.
Corps of Engineers and FEMA sources also give a failing grade to both Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who stands accused of being woefully incompetent in handling the disaster, and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. Government sources say both secretaries should immediately step down or be fired.
Read Wayne’s first breakthrough article on the Oil Spill and other interesting pieces:
The Cover-up: BP's Crude Politics and the Looming Environmental Mega-Disaster
8 Long Term Economic and Environmental Effects of the Gulf Oil Spill
Could There Be A Bright Side To the Gulf of Mexico Disaster
10 Geopolitical Predictions for 2010 & Short Term Strategic Outlook
By. The Wayne Madsen Report for Oilprice.com

Andrew, you can name me whatever you wish...it will not change the fact that this administration is nothing more than an extension of the past four corrupt administrations...if all you use are government based web sites to support your claims then you are not really doing any research...you are just reiterating the Obama propaganda and the arguement you make sucks!



by Mike Masnick
Fri, Jan 30th 2009 7:12am
Obama Administration Fails Its Own Transparency Promise Just Days Later
from the is-it-that-difficult? dept
While some of the complaining in the press about President Obama's lack of transparency is overblown, you would think that the new administration could at least live up to the rather simple promises it made days ago on transparency. On inauguration day, the administration promised, among other things:
We will publish all non-emergency legislation to the website for five days, and allow the public to review and comment before the President signs it.
That's great! If only it actually happened. Jim Harper points out that Obama signed the "Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009" into law just a day after Congress sent it to him. This is a "non-emergency" law. The Whitehouse did put it on the website for review, but not for five days. And, it's especially troubling since there actually is a fair amount of controversy over the law. No matter whether you support it or not, the administration made a great promise that we support: putting it up on the website for five days to allow public review and comment, before the President signs it. And they didn't live up to that.

Yea, right! You follow a president that has put himself in a corner that he will never get out of!

James...

James, your original claim was that Obama is a Communist. We ask for proof and you tell us instead about all the promises he did not keep. He told the us, soon after his inauguration, that his campaign promises have to go on the back burner because his total attention was focused on the economy.

Thats ok. For the same circumstances that caused you to conclude he is a Communist, someone else has concluded that he is an Islamo-Fascist of some kind. Thats totally at the other side of the political spectrum.

This leads me to believe that I am not communicating with people that know the difference between either one of them. I am going to leave this forum and you can try your style of debate on someone else.

goodbye and good luck.

You are really full of shit...I called him a socialist...run coward, run! Can't handle the truth, your sacred president is corrupt and you can not defend him. You can not debate the reality of the facts. Fine. You will find no evidence to justify this 'man'...because that is all he is, not the Savior of the world...

good luck to you as well, and if you read the post I submit you will see that I called him a socialist not a communist and I do know the difference...so you go ahead and chicken out...it isn't like this is truly hurting anyone...it is just ideology, right?

James...

Andrew...he pasted you...and you sound really lame coming back with...well...YOU said he was a communist...and he's NOT...so there!
Really guy, that's pathetic.

I have to say, the policies coming out of this admin really build on many of the policies from the Bush years. Bush really got the police state thing going and Obama has really built the government control up.
You are fond of saying 'he's better than Bush' but, he's actually very similar to Bush...better at the big changes.
The real difference I see between the two presidents (Obama/Bushjr) is the weight and clout of the machine behind the men.
This machine is far more powerful and wealthy.

I'm still reading Carl Marx by the way. Fascinating stuff but, if you think there are no similarities between Obama's policies and Marx, you are mistaken. More on that later.

Dawn

James, would you like some lemonade and a few bandaids for your worn out fingers? Damn!
LOL

I would absolutely adore some fresh squeezed lemonade...it is in reality one of the best cold beverages on a hot summer day but I will skip the bandages. It has taken a very long time to build up my typing skills...about 85wpm at 90%...I am trying to catch up with my youngest...this girl has some mad skills...95/95+ respectively!

:::tall ass glass, a lot of ice, and leave the jug:::

James...

92/89...I would be more accurate but I have a sticky key...

Obama isn't a socialist, our country, naturally, is a mixed market economy. This means that we have a little Socialism and Capitalism. And a little socialism is good. without it, small children would be able to be employed, or buy cigarettes. So, no, he's not anymore socialist than George Bush is for not totally removing the drinking age to give alcohol companies full freedom to sell alcohol to anyone.

Our postal system is run on socialistic lines. Morons.

I am trying to find the war that the President involved the USA.The only wars I know of at the moment, at least, is Iraq and Afghanistan. Which good ole George and his co-conspirator Cheney put you into, supported by that sycophant,lying Blair.
Why having a national health service makes America communist,I am at a loss to understand. Britain has a NHS National health service since 1947/8. Are we communists? don't think so.
Would you deny your fellow Americans who cannot a afford health care, free health care? From the "Land of the Free and home of the brave"
McCain and Palin.Did you really belive that this two people would have made a first class Team?? McCain,too old but, uhmm.Palin you need to see a doctor.