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swchandler
Joined: 08 Nov 1993 Posts: 10588
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Posted: Mon Dec 30, 2013 11:23 pm Post subject: |
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NW30, I'm glad that you re-thought the post to the Southwestern forum. I shows me that you can be reflective and reconsider your actions. That's good in my book.
Like reinerehlers, I have deleted posts. Not many, but at times I can get carried away, and I can ultimately regret what I did. Yet, sometimes I'm smart, and I choose to abandon my comments before submitting them.
Regarding the hate thing, I think that I would like a more intellectual Republican party. One that is about less disdain for others, and more about positive ideas. The important thing to keep in mind is that folks remember what you say and what you promote over time. |
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GURGLETROUSERS
Joined: 30 Dec 2009 Posts: 2643
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Posted: Tue Dec 31, 2013 4:35 am Post subject: |
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Nice post S.W. There's good in everyone.
But doggies are nice cuddly pets only at Christmas then...
(Bow wow! ) |
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keycocker
Joined: 10 Jul 2005 Posts: 3598
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Posted: Tue Dec 31, 2013 1:17 pm Post subject: |
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Good post SW. Your stuff is always worth reading whether I agree or not.
This time I am with you 100%.I was an active member of the GOP when it was like that. And Talk was considered entertainment for ignoramuses by educated conservatives. |
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boggsman1
Joined: 24 Jun 2002 Posts: 9120 Location: at a computer
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Posted: Tue Dec 31, 2013 1:23 pm Post subject: |
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Happy New Year wind lovers...what a year!!! This thread might be the place for "Obama's epic failures" but the stock market and technology and real estate are not part of that thought process....may 2014 be as prosperous and successful as 2013 was....carry on. |
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keycocker
Joined: 10 Jul 2005 Posts: 3598
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Posted: Tue Dec 31, 2013 1:30 pm Post subject: |
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I read a great article discussing the idea that libs and those who believed in Obama and the recovery did very well in those areas Boggsy mentioned.
Guys like Iso bought gold or sold stocks short on margin and lost big while hunkered down in their bunkers in the Bitterroot Valley, assuring each other it didn't matter since the end was near.
I bought real estate and couldn't be happier. |
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boggsman1
Joined: 24 Jun 2002 Posts: 9120 Location: at a computer
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Posted: Thu Jan 02, 2014 9:29 am Post subject: |
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KC ...its pretty funny watching peoples investor attitudes affected by their political bias. The gold crowd is dominated by right leaning end-of-the worlders...and the tech buyers(NAZ +38% in '13) and believers are progressive types who believe in Tesla, rather than mock Elon Musk. |
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nw30
Joined: 21 Dec 2008 Posts: 6485 Location: The eye of the universe, Cen. Cal. coast
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Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2014 6:53 pm Post subject: |
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Well I'm happy for all you investors, me being one myself, stocks mostly, no gold, so for now I will continue to ride the propped up wave, but always on the lookout for the government's crutch to start to bend.
But back onto the thread.
It looks like that Robert Gates has no love for BHO, serious ouch!
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Robert Gates, former defense secretary, offers harsh critique of Obama’s leadership in ‘Duty’
By Bob Woodward, Tuesday, January 7, 11:41 AM
In a new memoir, former defense secretary Robert Gates unleashes harsh judgments about President Obama’s leadership and his commitment to the Afghanistan war, writing that by early 2010 he had concluded the president “doesn’t believe in his own strategy, and doesn’t consider the war to be his. For him, it’s all about getting out.”
Leveling one of the more serious charges that a defense secretary could make against a commander in chief sending forces into combat, Gates asserts that Obama had more than doubts about the course he had charted in Afghanistan. The president was “skeptical if not outright convinced it would fail,” Gates writes in “Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War.”
Obama, after months of contentious discussion with Gates and other top advisers, deployed 30,000 more troops in a final push to stabilize Afghanistan before a phased withdrawal beginning in mid-2011. “I never doubted Obama’s support for the troops, only his support for their mission,” Gates writes.
As a candidate, Obama had made plain his opposition to the 2003 Iraq invasion while embracing the Afghanistan war as a necessary response to the 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, requiring even more military resources to succeed. In Gates’s highly emotional account, Obama remains uncomfortable with the inherited wars and distrustful of the military that is providing him options. Their different worldviews produced a rift that, at least for Gates, became personally wounding and impossible to repair.
It is rare for a former Cabinet member, let alone a defense secretary occupying a central position in the chain of command, to publish such an antagonistic portrait of a sitting president.
Gates’s severe criticism is even more surprising — some might say contradictory — because toward the end of “Duty,” he says of Obama’s chief Afghanistan policies, “I believe Obama was right in each of these decisions.” That particular view is not a universal one; like much of the debate about the best path to take in Afghanistan, there is disagreement on how well the surge strategy worked, including among military officials.
The sometimes bitter tone in Gates’s 594-page account contrasts sharply with the even-tempered image that he cultivated during his many years of government service, including stints at the CIA and National Security Council. That image endured through his nearly five years in the Pentagon’s top job, beginning in President George W. Bush’s second term and continuing after Obama asked him to remain in the post. In “Duty,” Gates describes his outwardly calm demeanor as a facade. Underneath, he writes, he was frequently “seething” and “running out of patience on multiple fronts.”
The book, published by Knopf, is scheduled for release Jan. 14.
For the rest, it's a long read~
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/robert-gates-former-defense-secretary-offers-harsh-critique-of-obamas-leadership-in-duty/2014/01/07/6a6915b2-77cb-11e3-b1c5-739e63e9c9a7_print.html |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999 Posts: 17747 Location: Berkeley, California
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Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2014 7:05 pm Post subject: |
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Substantively, was the Afghanistan war, including the surge, a success? I think not--making Obama right and Gates wrong. So the military wanted a surge, Obama didn't, it didn't work--and now it is Obama's fault. Got it. Same old same old for the haters.
Go ahead and buy the book. Reading it might do you some good. |
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MalibuGuru
Joined: 11 Nov 1993 Posts: 9300
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Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2014 10:04 pm Post subject: |
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You have got to be kidding Mac. Thousands of our soldiers dead, Obama withdraws, and Fallujah is now controlled by Al-Quada. Why didn't we just leave 5 years ago? |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999 Posts: 17747 Location: Berkeley, California
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Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2014 10:34 pm Post subject: |
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Bard--the Iraq war was the worst foreign policy mistake in our history. Crafted by Cheney, who broke laws to create the rush to invade. But the thread was about Afghanistan. I can tell you blame Iraq on Obama too. eh?
I think that if Obama had bigger stones, and stood up to the military earlier, we would have moved out of Iraq sooner. I agree that five years earlier would have been better. But you are wrong on most of the details. |
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