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WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama has no plans to pull U.S. troops out of Afghanistan. After eight years of war there, withdrawal is not among the options the administration is considering as it designs a new strategy. Also not being considered is any exploration of possible peace talks with the Taliban, the indigenous Islamic group that once controlled large swaths of Afghanistan. When asked whether the U.S. could withdraw from Afghanistan -- a country known as the "graveyard of empires" -- White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said: "That’s not something that has ever been entertained." "I don’t think we have...

Obama's liberal buddies are blocking a surge. This is from the blog at TheHill.com, the Briefing Room. "Nearly two dozen House liberals have signed onto a bill introduced this past week that would prohibit an increase of troops in Afghanistan. A bill introduced by Representative Barbara Lee (D-CA) Thursday would bar funding to increase troop level in Afghanistan beyond its current level. Lee and 21 lawmakers, largely from the liberal Congressional Progressive Caucus..." Do they really need a separate liberal caucus in the House? Aren't they all liberal socialist jerks? They need their own separate caucus? They introduced the bill,...

Here is video of Helen Thomas pressing White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs yesterday over whether President Obama still supports a "Public Option" for Health Care, and whether he will "fight for it." Gibbs customarily dodged the question, and Thomas called him on it, saying she continues to ask about it because "I want your conscience to bother you." . . . (VIDEO)

RUSH: Yesterday at about this same time in this program we shared with you the details of a story in the National Post in Canada (the only place I have found such details) about how irritated with Obama the French president, Sarkozy, was in the way he's dealing with the Iranian situation and their nuclear ramp-up. And it was clear that -- we read the quotes from Sarkozy and things that he had said (that, again, were not reported here in the State-Controlled Media in the United States) he clear thinks Obama is an idiot. He thinks he's naive and...

WASHINGTON -- Have you noticed a climate of hate and mean spiritedness in the land? Whether inspired by racism or not, it certainly exists. This isn’t a unique psychological phenomenon. Remember the brutal anti-unionism of the 1930s, the McCarthy-era anti-communist scare of the 1950s and the Vietnam War protests of the 1960s and early 1970s? President Barack Obama -- the first black U.S. president -- tries diligently to reject claims that racism underlies the public rancor against his health care reform plan and other administration aspirations. He acknowledged recently that there are "some people out there who don’t like me...

(CNN) -- Former President Jimmy Carter said Tuesday that racial politics played a role in South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson's outburst during President Obama's speech to Congress last week and in some of the opposition the president has faced since taking office. Former President Carter tells "NBC Nightly News" that racism has surfaced in opposition to President Obama. "I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he's African-American," Carter told "NBC Nightly News." "I live in the South, and I've seen the...

WASHINGTON -- Do presidents and other public officials lie? Do birds fly? That age-old question was recently evoked when Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., shouted "You lie" after President Barack Obama told a joint session of Congress that his national health care proposal would not cover illegal immigrants. Wilson’s verbal attack was reminiscent of the back benchers in London’s House of Commons where rhetorical bombast is more frequent than in the halls of Congress. Wilson apologized for his blast but that didn’t stop the House from voting 240-179 to rebuke him for a breach of decorum "to the discredit of the...

RUSH: And you enjoyed it for all the reasons that you've mentioned. But we've gotta be really, really careful here, Dana, about this left versus right government thing. You mentioned third party, and we've been through this with Perot. CALLER: I know that. I know that. And I think Perot helped Clinton get in, I don't doubt that. I do believe there has to be a huge movement before people can vote that way. RUSH: But a third party is not going to do anything other but ensure the reelection of Obama and every other Democrat running for office because...

Conservatives Claim Obama Pushing Socialist Agenda WASHINGTON -- What have we come to when conservative politicians and parents tell their children not to listen to President Barack Obama? It turned out that his message in his back-to-school address to students was good old-fashioned advice: Stay in school and study hard. The right wingers had claimed the president wanted to promote his "socialist agenda" and involve the federal government in educating their children because of his speech, timed to coincide with the start of the school year. Would they really eliminate Uncle Sam’s financial support of public schools? Of course not....

WASHINGTON -- To win concessions from the hardliners on Capitol Hill, President Barack Obama appeared as though he was ready to give up a jewel in the crown of health reform -- the government-run public option. But after liberal Democrats put up a squawk, the White House scaled back, insisting the president’s commitment to the public option hasn’t changed. Will the real President Obama please stand up? Why doesn’t the president come out and say exactly where he stands, where he draws the line? The problem is that for President Obama, there is no "line" on health care. It appears...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: These guys have threatened me again. This was last Friday at the White House, Jake Tapper -- this the presidential daily brief. Jake Tapper says, "Rush Limbaugh went on a very long speech which he compared Democrats to Nazis, the president to Hitler, and I'm wondering if the president's seen any of this. Obviously the Nazi imagery has been condemned by Jewish groups, and I'm wondering if he feels anything about the language being used this way." GIBBS: Any time you make references to what happened in Germany in the Thirties and Forties, I think you're talking...

WASHINGTON -- Secrecy is endemic in all governments. It goes with the turf, especially if their leaders hope to hide illegal or immoral behavior, such as torture of foreign prisoners. Many Americans heaved a sigh of relief last January when President Barack Obama banned the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Image-wise, it made the administration look more humane than the Bush-Cheney team. But that is not the whole story. Obama left unaddressed the possibility of torture in secret foreign prisons under our control as in Abu Ghraib in Iraq or Bagram in Afghanistan, not to mention the "black...

WASHINGTON -- I had an historical flashback recently when I read a Washington Post news story about how the U.S. commander in Afghanistan thinks he may need many thousands more troops to win the war. Shades of Vietnam. Do we ever learn? It brought back memories of the late Gen. William C. Westmoreland, the U.S. commander in Southeast Asia, who kept escalating the troop numbers after the 1967 Tet offensive in Vietnam. His strategy produced a debacle for us. When the besieged Westmoreland requested 240,000 more troops, President Lyndon B. Johnson was shocked. The command in Vietnam had been giving...

WASHINGTON -- It’s not news when the White House tries to manage the news. That has always been the case. But it is news when Obama administration officials -- the folks who proclaimed that they would bring unprecedented openness and transparency to government -- fall all over themselves trying to manipulate news briefings and attempting amateurish stagecraft at public meetings. The president relies on a list of handpicked reporters to call on at his formal news conferences -- and the fortunate few are not necessarily accredited reporters but include new age self-appointed journalists or anyone with a laptop. The White...

You Obama supporters, be honest now. Read the following and tell me how you would have reacted: If George W. Bush had made a joke at the expense of the Special Olympics, would you have approved? If George W. Bush had given Gordon Brown a set of inexpensive and incorrectly formatted DVDs, when Gordon Brown had given him a thoughtful and historically significant gift, would you have approved? If George W. Bush had given the Queen of England an iPod containing videos of his speeches, would you have thought this embarrassingly narcissistic and tacky? If George W. Bush had bowed...

WASHINGTON -- The withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Baghdad and other key cities in Iraq marks the beginning of the end of the tragic war there. While it’s not over yet, the Iraqis are celebrating and happy -- free at last from American control. Well, almost. We have had six-and-one-half years of the on-going conflict, with American war dead totaling 4,320 and more than 31,000 wounded. More than 100,000 Iraqis also were killed and thousands more wounded. Add some 4 million refugees to those formidable numbers of human cost. Then there is the small matter of an estimated $682...

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama had been playing his cards cautiously on the political turmoil in Iran -- until conservatives goaded him to escalate his rhetorical condemnation of the uprising. Obama had tried to steer clear of any public comment about the disputed reelection of Prime Minister Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the massive protests by supporters of the opposition candidate and the government crackdown on the protesters. At a news conference Tuesday, Obama caved in to those right-wing columnists and political hawks who wanted him to hit the Iranian mullahs harder. These are the same critics who pushed the American people into...

WASHINGTON -- A universal health-care system based on the single-payer model appears to be a bridge too far for politically attuned President Barack Obama. A single-payer system -- such as Medicare for everyone -- would solve the problem of out-of-control costs and would provide health care for all. President Lyndon B. Johnson had the courage to weigh in with all his political clout to win passage of Medicare and Medicaid, star accomplishments of the Great Society. President Franklin D. Roosevelt put all his chips on the table to win passage of the Social Security Act that makes the elderly more...