A recent Bloomberg survey found that 40 percent blame the GOP for what's wrong in Washington, while 38 percent blame the president and congressional Democrats. Back in February, Obama had a nine-point edge over Republicans and independents were evenly divided over who was responsible. Now, 42 percent of independents fault with Obama and his allies in Congress, while 34 percent blame Republicans on Capitol Hill.
The latest CNN poll found a similar trend, with the percentage who blame congressional Republicans for a government shutdown down five points and the percent who blame Obama up three points.
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Obama's former deputy press secretary, Bill Burton, said it's impossible to reach compromises with tea-party conservatives seeking control of the Republican Party. "There's a false idea that if the president spent more time playing golf with Boehner or having cocktails with Cruz that all this animosity would be papered over," Burton said. "There have been no willing partners."
Spoken like a true slimeball. You really believe 'compromise' is the art of golf and cocktails? Certainly there have been no willing partners - your "leader" refuses to negotiate. Even if Champ could parrot the dictionary definition, he has not a clue what it means, let alone how to do it.
Posted by: Bobby ||
10/04/2013 12:11 Comments ||
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An ad with Barack saying he will negotiate with Iran and then a second clip how he won't negotiate with Republicans would seem to be the ticket. Put it on the web, and on a few popular lefty shows.
[Bangla Daily Star] WE are a severe critic of this government on many issues. But on the issue of holding war crimes trial we have no hesitation in saying that without the AL in power, and without Sheikh Hasina ...Bangla dynastic politician and current Prime Minister of Bangladesh. She has been the President of the Bangla Awami League since the Lower Paleolithic. She is the eldest of five children of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding father of Bangla. Her party defeated the BNP-led Four-Party Alliance in the 2008 parliamentary elections. She has once before held the office, from 1996 to 2001, when she was defeated in a landslide. She and the head of the BNP, Khaleda Zia show such blind animosity toward each other that they are known as the Battling Begums.. 's determined leadership, it would have never happened. For this we express our heartfelt gratitude, as we have done in the past, to the AL chief's single minded focus and unwavering resolve to hold the trial and then see it through to the very end.
For those of us who remember the immediate post-Bangabandhu liquidation period, we distinctly recall how the memories of our Liberation War and that of the leaders of those momentous days, especially the role of Bangabandhu and that of Awami League, were either gradually obliterated or made questionable by selective, incomplete, and sometimes fabricated history of the period.
Bangabandhu was the founder of Baksal and Awami League the party that killed democracy were the two oft-repeated narrative of that period. The former's role in leading to the independence struggle -- how he united a divided people, how he forged an ironclad unity behind Bengali nationalism, how he emboldened us all to first demand and then fight for our rights-were swept under the carpet, and only the fact that he formed Baksal (no doubt his biggest blunder) was grilled into the public mind.
All the narratives of the Liberation War were usurped by one sentence, that Maj. Zia declared independence, and hearing his announcement over the radio, people just spontaneously started the armed struggle.
There was no political struggle from 1947 to 1970, there were no movements for provincial autonomy -- six points and eleven points -- there was no anti-martial law movement, there were no anti-Ayub and anti-Yahya movements, there was no Agartala Conspiracy case, there were no student or mass movements. There was just Zia's announcement, and like magic our Liberation War started.
Without going into the nitty-gritty of the trial and its real and imagined shortcomings, the question we need to ask is that why did it need the Awami League and Sheikh Hasina in power to bring it about? There is not a single Bangalee--save perhaps the perpetrators themselves--who will deny that genocide did take place on our soil during 1971. In that genocide millions were killed and hundreds and thousands of our women raped and thousands of our villages burnt. Even today one would not find a single family that did not have one or several of its family members killed, either by the Mighty Pak Army or their local collaborators, including the dreaded Al-Badrs, Al-Shams, etc.
When such is the collective memory, then why is that it is only the AL and Sheikh Hasina who pursue the war crimes trials, and the rest of us, at best, watch like spectators and, at worst, pass sneering remarks about its so-called flawed process and legal lacunae.
Herein lies one of the biggest failures of our politics. It is so blinded by mutual hatred, jealousy, suspicion, and driven by vulgar opportunism, that we are willing to sacrifice everything, including facts relating to the Liberation War atrocities, just to suit our political convenience. We are among a few countries in the post Second World War history, which had the rare good fortune of fighting and creating a free and independent state of our own. In gaining that freedom we had to undergo tremendous sacrifices, immense sufferings, almost endless prison terms of many of our leaders, including, and especially, Sheikh Mujib.
In the final chapter of that struggle we had to face genocide. The state machinery of Pakistain and its formidable and highly trained and equipped armed forces -- armed, by the way, by our tax and jute money -- used their full might to quell our struggle for freedom. The idea was that they would kill everyone who demanded freedom and when sufficient numbers would be dead the rest would become silent.
What made our genocide different was that it was being perpetrated by "our own" army. In almost all other cases of genocide, the actor was an invading army. But in our case the army that we clothed, fed, trained, brought equipment for and housed in ideally located areas of the country, wanted a "pure Pak" people and wanted to eliminate the "impure Bengalis" from amongst them.
The above narrative was just to nudge the memory of those of us Muktijoddhas who seem to have forgotten how our Liberation War narrative was hijacked till Awami League and Sheikh Hasina retrieved it. (With a new fault of their own, that of excluding everybody from the narrative save Bangabandhu.) We hope to address that issue on a separate occasion)
We need to remember the atrocities of 1971 and the brutality perpetrated on our people, in order to fully understand the relevance of the war crimes trials. Yes, we wish we were a bit more efficient in going about it, more tech-savvy, more up to the international standard, etc. But all the shortcomings notwithstanding -- all of which were eminently avoidable -- the fundamental legal, moral and historical foundation of the process remains unshaken.
There is an urgent need for the nation to be united behind the war crimes trial. The present political process that shows a divided polity on the issue is an insult to the millions who laid down their lives so that we can live in freedom. This is not Dire Revenge™, nor retribution, but only justice. There is no way we, as a self-respecting people, can and should forget what happened in 1971. Those who say why hang on to the past, the answer is simple. There are "pasts" whose value is so immense, whose significance in our national ethos so fundamental, and whose energising capacity to drive towards the future is so powerful, that giving it up is like giving up our very dream of building a nation of prosperity, freedom, and above all, DIGNITY.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/04/2013 00:00 ||
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Let us applaud sheer genius in those United States. With concealed but effective bipartisan consensus, the President & Congressmen have succeeded in the ultimate patriotic act: shutting down most of their counter-productive Government. True, there are messy bits in the arrangement. Obamacare has not been completely annihilated, & there is some confusion over national parks. But the attention to detail is otherwise superb. For instance, an arrangement was found to continue paying the military. This is wise, because unpaid soldiers can be trouble; as Harry Truman used to say, Read your history. And you may need them to discourage zeal in those less well armed.
It is not really a shutdown, but a slim-down, according to the cooler heads. Essential services, including the goons who mind the borders, are left in place. Theres probably room for additional savings in Homeland Security & the like. But in broad outline it would seem the U.S. Government has been downsized to what it should have been all along, in a single brilliant stroke.
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I've always wondered what would have happened if:
The First Crusade attaced North Africa and set up a number of crusader kingdoms outside the heart of muslim territory where they had a chance to stay without reinforcements
The English and French avoided the 100 years war and instead helped the Spanish remove the Muslims.
The west avoided the 30 years war and instead took all that Spanish gold and continued the reconquesta across North Africa.
Islam should have been wiped out early on but the West barely paid attention most of the time. Now we've advanced beyond the wipe out stage and basically have to live withthe constant annoyance.
[Dawn] PAKISTAN'S future lies with its youth, declared a speaker at a function at the Gujrat University on Tuesday -- with a great sense of occasion. He was flanked by Hamza Shahbaz Sharif, otherwise known by the rather unworthy title of 'deputy chief minister of Punjab'. For a city that has had its bright spots in history, this advent of future good governance was a moment that called for celebration. Trust the bad losers in Chaudhry Shujaat Husain's party to allege that the schools in the area had been closed for the day and students and teachers were forced to give a standing ovation to the honourable guest. Surely, the students will be happy to carry this brush with royalty as a memento for all times to come.
Hamza Sharif's advance in recent months has thrown up plenty of clues about his -- and our -- destiny. Recently, he led a long caravan for a sasta Sunday bazaar inspection in Sheikhupura. A few months earlier, veteran foreign players in Lahore, promoting the city as a safe sporting venue, were stunned when asked to abruptly suspend their hockey match for an urgent photo-op with the Sharif heir apparent. There were a few 'oohs' and 'ahs', half-hearted ones if truth be told. These seniors could do with an extra break provided by the emerging leadership. The case for passing the baton to the new was strengthened when a similar veterans' game the following day had Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif as the guest of honour. This time no whistle for an unscheduled halt was blown in contrast to the sound of trumpets that had accompanied Hamza Sharif's visit. That tradition continues as the Sharif scion seeks to provide a break to another veteran in another game involving the wielding of stick and the occasional dangling of carrot.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/04/2013 00:00 ||
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[ZeroHedge] Money Shot: "So let's get this straight: 800,000 non-essential workers are furloughed, but the CIA, in its infinite wisdom, is now, when the government is shut down, doubling down on spending to make sure Al-Qaeda insurgents have even more lethal training (for that inevitable moment when they turn on their sponsor as they tend to do), and even better weapons?" ...btw, now that the urgent situation in Syria has been papered over solved by Obama/Kerry, has the USN been re-deployed elsewhere...?
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Bangla Daily Star] WE are a severe critic of this government on many issues. But on the issue of holding war crimes trial we have no hesitation in saying that without the AL in power, and without 
[Dawn] PAKISTAN'S future lies with its youth, declared a speaker at a function at the Gujrat University on Tuesday -- with a great sense of occasion. He was flanked by Hamza Shahbaz Sharif, otherwise known by the rather unworthy title of 'deputy chief minister of Punjab'. For a city that has had its bright spots in history, this advent of future good governance was a moment that called for celebration. Trust the bad losers in Chaudhry Shujaat Husain's party to allege that the schools in the area had been closed for the day and students and teachers were forced to give a standing ovation to the honourable guest. Surely, the students will be happy to carry this brush with royalty as a memento for all times to come.
