Ted Rall for July 25, 2013

“He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.” ― Benjamin Franklin

“Yes we can!” evidently = “No, we can’t!”

Why does everyone think a sitting president gets evrything he asks for? Obama cannot shut down Gitmo just by declaring it to be shut down. That power lies in congress, as does the “Drone Surveillance” thing. A president leads by directing the national conversation, most of what is actually done is done by congress according to the Constitution- AND WE KNOW WHAT THE CONGRESS IS DOING FOR YEARS NOW = NOTHING!!!

Proof, please. I’m truly sorry that I can’t just accept your statement at face value, even if I did read it in a comic strip.

“Gitmo is open because it works.”How does it work? The only thing I see is a place to store people forever with no plans to do anything further. And a very good reason for anyone, including militant Islamists, to hate the US. An excellent recruiting tool for Al-Qaeda.

“Drones save lives.”For now. Soon, when the “other side” has the same nanotechnology, the Boston bombings will just be the tip of the iceburg. If there was ANY value in the idea that “we need to fight them over there so we won’t need to fight them over here”, drones will make that value moot.

In response to the ideas you promote about Mr. Obama being a great divider: his very presence made him a great divider even before he was elected president. And while it is true that rich people are not evil per se, when a wealthy person is evil he/she can cause far more damage for a much longer time than if that same person were not wealthy. Witness the continuing banking scandals that the American taxpayer continues to be “responsible” for. And as to your first assertion:

“If he was honest then liberals would have never voted for him nor his party.”

Let’s use the example of the race between Walter Mondale and Ronald Reagan. Mr. Mondale was honest. He said that Mr. Reagan’s deficit spending policies had hurt our economy so badly that a tax increase was mandatory. This was the truth. Mr. Reagan beat the crap out of him, then went on to sponsor the largest tax increase in American history. And many people still consider him to be a saint.

George Romney was considered a lock to win the nomination and presidency in 1968, but he got the cold shoulder when he told us, truthfully, that we had been “brainwashed” about Viet Nam.

Paul Tsongas was honest when he told people that the president can’t be Santa Claus. He didn’t even make it through the primaries. Jimmy Carter was spot on when he made his “malaise” speech. Look where that got him.

The American voting public has shown over and over that honesty is not a high priority, and have often punished those who were honest.

We reap what we sow.

If only we had a President, not an amateur.

If only the House GOP hadn’t defunded the closing of GITMO…

Apparently the people need a more considerate Congress of Baboons.

Meet the new boss, same as the old bossThere’s nothing in the streets, looks any different to me

Riiight, so if Obama or any president could just magically change these things you wouldn´t have the system you got today – is would be defined a dictatorship. Please for Dogs sake take everything into account before letting out all the stupid in your heads …

You make some very dubious assumptions, but I will try to set you straight.

No, I have no desire to let anyone just go home from Guantanamo. It is unfortunate that you equate radical Islamist causes with my own, not only because it is wildly untrue, but also because it makes your points more easily dismissable.

How can you rationalize a country that works diligently to promote the rule of law in other countries, yet pays no attention to it itself? These prisoners should have been brought to trial years ago. If guilty, they should have the full punishment that the law allows. If innocent, they should be set free. Keeping innocents in prison doesn’t make us any safer, and again plays right into Al-Qaeda propoganda. Much the same for bin Ladin: if we had found him, tried him, and fried him, we would still have the respect of the rest of the world, we’d have far fewer of our young people dead and maimed, and we would have spent trillions less in war, rebuilding, and VA costs.

The fact that Congress has voted to not allow our detainees a speedy, fair trial, nor to allow them to be put into American prisons, nor to be tried on American soil has at least as much to do with not closing Guantanamo as anything Mr. Obama might or might not wish to do.

The longer you allow this to fester, the worse it will be for America. You are welcome to believe differently.

As for Reagan’s tax increase: I will refer you to the “Tax Reform Act” of 1986, which was renamed after the sponsors realized that at close to 10,000 pages, they couldn’t continue to call it by its original name: “Tax Simplification Act”. The fact that you call me a liar does not change the truth. Mr. Reagan raised taxes 11 times in 8 years. His own budget director has made that statement dozens of times.

I will accept that you might be mistaken. I would appreciate the same courtesy in return.

I am sorry you did not understand my point about Mr. Obama being a divider. You do not have to be a racist to be an Obama-hater, but you can bet every racist in the country has been working hard to inflame the people who have other reasons for not liking him.

Do you not remember the town hall meetings he conducted which were attended by people carrying weapons so large they were strapped to peoples’ legs? Contrast that to Mr. Bush’s town halls when every attendee was specially screened to ensure he got no animosity from the audience.

When was the last time you saw a president’s wife heckled because of her husband’s policies? When did you last hear someone yell out “You Lie!” (short for the common southern phrase “You Lie, Boy!”)during a State of the Union address? I’ve been around a good while and I have never seen anything like the unabated public hatred I see with this administration.

When Dubya was put into office, I was braced for the worst. But I hoped I was wrong. I never hoped for his failure, because I knew that if he failed, America failed. I hoped against hope that my impression of him and his abilities were incorrect, and that he would actually be capable and competent.

This is still the UNITED States of America. But people like you are making it much harder to keep it that way. You can be part of the solution, or you can be part of the problem. I recommend the former.

Easy, now. The fact that we don’t agree doesn’t call my mental capacity into question any more than it does yours.

You are correct that they are not USA citizens. I never characterized them as such. You are also correct that they are not prisoners of war under a flag. If this is a War on Terror, then, they are prisoners of that war. The “under a flag” is a ruse used to circumvent the Geneva Conventions. Since there is no precedent, we’ll just make one, and it will be a bad one when used against us in the future. It would be foolish to assume that it won’t.

Most of them truly are killers caught on the battlefield. So, why not try them for their crimes and find them guilty? Some of them are not guilty of any crimes. The DOD admits to it, but they fear they have pissed these people off too much to send them home. Again, a shameful failure. Imagine yourself in that position: being in the wrong place at the wrong time, shipped halfway around the world, and then locked up for life when your captors tell you you have no reason to be there.

I don’t give a rat’s patootie where the trials are held. I do believe that if American prisons can hold Charles Manson, Timothy McVeigh, and Ted Kaczinski, they can hold prisoners of war. And I am pretty sure they will have a less pleasant time with US prisoners than with those of their own kind.

The whole premise of a war on terror is ill-advised. You cannot kill an idea with a weapon. As an example, the Romans nailed Jesus to a tree, and 2000 years later his story survives.

Guantanamo’s existence is a wart on Uncle Sam’s ass. It is the antithesis of what we used to stand for. Read your constitution: it states that all men are created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights. It does not say that all AMERICANS are created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights, but others should be dealt with as we please.

Name-calling is unbecoming. Please try harder to stick to the subject at hand in the future. Thanks in advance.

“You guys still defend Bush and Reagan.”.Reagan is one of the most historically significant president of our modern history. “Tear down this wall” will be remembered long after we’re gone….The “shrub”? With each day of the Obama presidency, he keeps lookin’ better and better.