[Mavdog]

Originally Posted by aquaadverse

Not really surprising since you couldn't connect the dots with why it was a concern when I first brought it up with your : "??? presidential pardons? uh, come back to earth will ya?" But it isn't rocket science for most people. I'm not backtracking on anything. Our current AG is perfectly capable of using his position for political purposes. He used his position to bypass the rules and procedures and did it for political reasons. His role wasn't to stop or make a pardon go through but to give his opinion if the subject fit the usual and customary requirements. if you can make a case of why his opinion and conduct as it pertained to his duty shouldn't be considered political and bring up a concern the current decision to investigate being a political ploy to benefit the current administration feel free.

The point was he showed the ability to be less than independent and it was a pretty big example he was quite capable of using the office of the AG for political reasons. It doesn't matter if he could have stopped the pardon or not. We were discussing if the CIA interrogation hearings were a politically ploy or not.

You want to keep focusing on if he was able to top stop a pardon instead of his opinion of neutral leaning to positive being wildly at odds with the facts and showing every indication of being politically motivated, keep on looking foolish. That was my original reason to bring it up and it's the reason he was dragged in front of Congress in 2001 and why it was asked at his conformation hearing.

apparently you believe that the only way that holder could prove that he is capable of being "independent" and succumbing to "political purposes" on the marc rich pardon is for holder to have taken the sword and resigned in protest of the Clinton decision to grant the pardon.

you continue to ignore the FACT that the process is for a pardon request to be sent to justice, and for the justice to forward all the requests (with opinion) to the president who is the only one, the sole decisionmaker, on the pardon request.

holder could have resigned, he could have held his breath till he died, and clinton was going to grant the pardon for multiple reasons, the least of which were anything "political".

continued attempts on your part to link the rich pardon with the cia investigation show complete foolishness on your part.

as has been pointed out, holder has appointed a special prosecutor to handle the cia investigation, and not just any special prosecutor but the special prosecutor who was selected previously by the Bush administration. by that one act he has validated the desire to make the investigation go forward without political coloring.

if the cia investigation shows no illegal acts, it will be over. if the investigation shows illegal acts were committed, they will be held accountable. that is exactly how our system should work.

Really? I could have sworn I saw Daschle and Gephardt standing in front of the Capital holding up a box of detergent saying the Republican tax cuts would give the regular folks the detergent while they get the washer and dryer. The Dems went from vehemently and loudly promising to fight to the bitter end over tax cuts to handing out rebate check. I could have sworn I saw Bush and Kennedy signing a bipartisan NCLB as you say. I thought I saw the crew of a spy plane accused of downing Chinese fighter get them back with little rancor and using diplomacy instead of threats. The idea he used fear and threats to pass his agenda isn't accurate.

you apparently have selective memory, your statement was

"Bush came into office with a fraction of the backing and goodwill Obama has, the Democrats had the majority in both Houses

which is just flat out wrong.
107th congress (1/2001-1/2003): house 221/222 rep, 211/209 dem, senate 50 rep, 48 dem
108th congress (1/2003-1/2005): house 229/225 rep, 209/207 dem, senate 51 rep, 48 dem
109th congress (1/2005-1/2007): house 232/229 rep, 201/202 dem, senate 55 rep, 44 dem
it wasn't until the 110th congress that dems gained the majority in the house (233 to 202) with the senate even at 49

as for "fear and threats", what? are you now bringing in a new subject?

He got reelected in '04 and the Congress remained a Republican majority despite an unpopular war and a full court press of the Democrats. He was able to pass funding for Iraq and there was little change after the '06 switch of majorities leading to a historically low congressional approval rating. He showed political courage in forcefully pushing for the surge at the very lowest point of the Iraq conflict.

Bush took 36 months before he dropped below a 50% approval rating and that was after the clearly controversial Patriot Act and Gitmo among others.

you contradicted yourself on the "majority" item.

bush really had no choice on the surge, he had to go "all in" as they said. thankfully the strategy worked, coupled with other strategic decisions including reaching out to the opposition and creating "awakening" groups that contributed more than anything to the decline in the conflict.

the rove election strategy in 04 worked well, he used the fears of 1) failure in iraq, 2) an attack by terrorist (did you see the claim by ridge on the white house demand he raise the terror level right before the elcetion?) and 3) the social issue lever. rove was not stupid, he was good at what he did. at the ame time it is good to be rid of this type of fearmongering.

Obama is playing checkers in a chess match, and your calling an overwhelming majority of his Party not needing a single Republican vote to pass legislation as a "disadvantage" after an election where the American people obviously want change is ludicrous.

what? why do you fabricate me saying the dems do "not need a single republican vote to pass legislation"?

for any major piece of legislation there MUST be a bi-partisan approach.

if you want to argue with yourself on that, go ahead. have fun, hope you win the argument.

He used Afghanistan during the campaign to revitalize his image after stepping on his genitalia over the Iraq conflict and even that's currently biting him on the ass.
9-11 was a totally surreal event for most of us and Bush took clear and decisive steps to address it. There was little doubt of his policies towards North Korea and Iran. You might vehemently disagree with his stance, but it wasn't a mystery

let's see, the pullout from iraq is going according to plan, and the mess/failure obama inherited in afganistan is being addressed with a change in strategy. how that is "stepping on his genitalia" and "biting hin in the ass" is a rather bizarre remark.

there was a clear "mystery" to the bush strategy on korea and iran, which is what was he intending to do after his ignoring them was proven to fail? while he called them "axis of evil" and refused to work to solve the crisis, these two countries went forward in making more missles/bombs in the case of korea and continued nuclear processing in the case of iran. iran continued to supply weapons to hamas and hezbollah resulting in increased vulnerbility of israel, with another war in lebanon the outcome.

This is a flameout of epic proportions. It's hard to understand why the concept of accusing people with reasonable concerns and questions as being racist and intellectually challenged generating a backlash is such a difficult one.

just like it is hard to understand why the concept of accusing people with reasonable proposals to impprove our system of healthcare as being socialists, racists and corrupt generating a backlash is such a difficult one.