Twelve Steps to Cutting Poverty in Half

Last Wednesday, at the Center for American Progress (CAP) in Washington, the CAP Task Force on Poverty released the results of fourteen months of work in its report, From Poverty to Prosperity: A National Strategy to Cut Poverty in Half.

The report offers twelve concrete recommendations to reduce over the next ten years, creating a stronger middle class and setting our country on a course to end American poverty in a generation.

Sen. Edward Kennedy and Ways and Rep. Charles Rangel, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, were both on hand to pledge their leadership on what Task Force co-chair Peter B. Edelman, professor of Law at Georgetown University, called "a national shame…. There should be no one [in this country] who's poor."

This is one of the great scandals of our times. In the richest industrialized nation in the world, 37 million Americans--one in eight citizens--live below the official poverty line (just $19,971 income for a family of four); in 2005, more than 90 million Americans had incomes below 200 percent of the poverty threshold (less than $40,000 for a family of four); the United States ranks 24th out of 25 developed nations in the share of the population with an income below 50 percent of the national median income--and the US is dead last among 24 rich nations when the same measurement is used to assess child poverty. Nearly 20 percent of American children are poor, and it's estimated that allowing children to grow up in persistent poverty costs our economy $500 billion per year. Lastly, income inequality has reached record highs and is getting worse.

"From 1947 to 1973, we saw every economic quintile growing together, and those at the lowest level were growing the fastest," Kennedy said. "In 1980, with President Reagan, you see the beginning of growing apart...And now, those at the lowest end of the ladder are not even keeping up while there is an explosion at the highest level."

In fact, the post-tax income of the top 1 percent rose $145,500 between 2003 and 2004; it rose just $200 for the bottom fifth during that same period.

"The goal to cut poverty in half over the next [ten] years is not an overly ambitious task when you look at what other industrialized countries are doing," Kennedy said. He noted that Great Britain has raised its minimum wage to $9.78 an hour and brought 900,000 children and 2.5 million workers out of poverty in the last three years. Ireland has reduced childhood poverty by 40 percent with a minimum wage of $9.60.

"No single measure is going to answer the problem," Kennedy said. "But nonetheless we can see how important it is that we put [actions] together... [The Task Force] summary of what we can do to move a whole group of our fellow citizens forward makes enormous sense."

"With the exception of getting the hell out of the Middle East," Rangel said, "I can't think of anything more patriotic that we can do than eliminate poverty."

Edelman said that the Task Force worked hard to pull out some key points from the extensive list of what needs to be done to address poverty. It was not a top-down process, he said, but rather a response to what people in diverse communities feel is needed.

"The focus here is not just what we technically call ‘poverty' in this country," said Edelman. "That's a concept that's deeply flawed. Thirty-seven million people is bad enough. But when you take the idea that an income of a little bit over $15,000 gets a family of three out of poverty, an income of $20,000 gets a family of four out of poverty, it's a really bad joke. It's not true. In vast, vast, vast parts of this country, when you get a dollar over those numbers, you're not out of poverty. And so this report is really about everybody in this country who's having a difficult time... who has trouble making ends meet, who has trouble paying the bills at the end of the month...Who has to make a decision whether or not to go see a physician for something quite important because they're not sure that they're going to [be able to] pay for it. And so really this report is about roughly 90 million people whose incomes are up to twice the poverty line… all the way down to the bottom--those nearly 16 million people who have incomes below half the poverty line--below $7,500 for a family of three--astonishing! And that's gone up by over 3 million people under the current administration. Our focus is on full inclusion in this country for everybody who has a tough time."

The twelve recommendations revolve around four core principles: promote decent work that pays enough to avoid poverty, meet basic needs, and save for the future; provide opportunity for all--maximizing people's opportunities for success from childhood through adulthood; ensure economic security so that no American falls into poverty when work is unavailable, unstable, or doesn't pay enough to make ends meet; and help people build wealth so that they can weather periods of flux and have the resources that may be essential to upward mobility.

Here are key excerpts from the twelve recommendations:

1. Over a 10-year period, raise and index the minimum wage to half the average hourly wage--that would presently be $8.40 an hour. The report notes that for most of the 1960's and 1970's a worker with a full-time minimum wage job could lift a family of three above the poverty line. Now it's at its lowest level in real terms since 1959.

2. Expand the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit. The EITC is an earnings supplement that raises incomes and helps low-income working families build assets. The Task Force recommends tripling the EITC for childless workers and expanding help to larger working families. The Child Tax Credit provides a tax credit of up to $1,000 per child but provides no help to the poorest families. It should be made fully refundable so that it's available to all low- and moderate-income families. (Currently people with incomes below $10,000 do not receive this credit. "Totally absurd," Edelman said. "This is a powerful anti-poverty step…. It will get over 3 million people out of poverty just from that one, single public policy step alone.") Doing all of the above would move as many as 5 million people out of poverty.

3. Promote unionization by enacting the Employee Free Choice Act. This would require employers to recognize a union after a majority of workers signs cards authorizing union representation. "It's very important that we get this legislation enacted this year," Edelman said. "Unions are absolutely a backbone of getting fair labor standards and fair wages in our country."

4. Guarantee child care assistance to low-income families and promote early education for all. Federal and state governments should guarantee child care help to families with incomes below about $40,000 a year. "We're not going to achieve this unless communities take the initiative with civic leadership to pull that together," Edelman said. "We would have an Innovation Fund as part of that effort." The funding would be about twice the level of current federal funding for quality state initiatives. This childcare expansion would raise employment among low-income parents and help nearly 3 million parents and children escape poverty.

5. Create 2 million new "opportunity" housing vouchers, and promote equitable development in and around central cities. Nearly 8 million Americans live in neighborhoods where at least 40 percent of residents are poor. We should seek to end such concentrated poverty. Over the next ten years, the federal government should fund 2 million new "opportunity vouchers" designed to help people live in opportunity-rich areas. "The housing vouchers that we currently have reach only a quarter of the people who are eligible," Edelman said. "People should also be able to choose where they live, they should be able to live near the jobs and get to the jobs." Any new affordable housing should be in communities with employment opportunities and high-quality public services, or in gentrifying communities.

6. Connect disadvantaged and disconnected youth with school and work. About 1.7 million poor youth ages 16 to 24 were out of school and out of work in 2005. The federal government should restore Youth Opportunity Grants to help the most disadvantaged communities and expand funding for effective and promising youth programs--with the goal of reaching 600,000 disadvantaged youth through these efforts. A new Upward Pathway program would offer low-income young people opportunities to train in fields that are in high-demand and provide needed public services.

7. Simplify and expand Pell Grants and make higher education accessible to residents of each state. Low-income youth are much less likely to attend college than their higher income peers, even among those of comparable abilities. Pell Grants play a crucial role for lower-income students. The Pell grant application process should be simplified, and the grants gradually raised to reach 70 percent of the average costs of a four-year public institution. States should develop strategies to make post-secondary education affordable for all residents, following promising models already underway in a number of states.

8) Help former prisoners find stable employment and reintegrate into their communities. The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world--600,000 prisoners are released to their communities each year. Most are low-income, minority men returning to high-poverty communities. Two-thirds are rearrested within three years and about half return to prison. States should not bar former prisoners from receiving public benefits like food stamps or deny them the right to vote. All states should develop comprehensive reentry services aimed at reintegrating former prisoners with full-time, consistent employment.

9. Ensure equity for low-wage workers in the Unemployment Insurance system. Approximately 35 percent of the unemployed, and a smaller share of unemployed low-wage workers, receive unemployment insurance benefits. States should reform eligibility rules that screen out low-wage workers, broaden eligibility for part-time workers and workers who have lost employment as a result of compelling family circumstances, and allow benefits to continue when workers are in programs that upgrade their skills and qualifications.

10. Modernize means-tested benefits programs to develop a coordinated system that helps workers and families. A functional safety net should help people get into or return to work and ensure a decent level of living for those who cannot work or are temporarily between jobs. Our current system fails to do so. The government should simplify and improve benefits access for working families and improve services to individuals with disabilities. The Food Stamp Program should be strengthened to improve benefits, eligibility, and access. And the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Program should be reformed to shift its focus from cutting caseloads to helping needy families find sustainable employment.

11. Reduce the high costs of being poor and increase access to financial services. Lower-income families often pay more than middle and high-income families for the same consumer products. Federal and state governments should address the foreclosure crisis through expanded mortgage assistance programs and by new federal legislation to curb unscrupulous practices. The federal government should also establish a $50 million Financial Fairness Innovation Fund to support state efforts to broaden access to mainstream goods and financial services in predominantly low-income communities.

12. Expand and simplify the Saver's Credit to encourage saving for education, homeownership and retirement. For many families, saving for purposes such as education, a home, or a small business is key to making economic progress. The federal "Saver's Credit" (a relatively new tax provision which matches voluntary contributions to retirement savings accounts with a tax credit) should be reformed to make it fully refundable. This Credit should also be broadened to apply to other savings vehicles such as individual development accounts, children's saving accounts, and college savings plans.

The Urban Institute studied the impact of just four of the Task Force recommendations--the minimum wage, EITC, child tax credit, and child care assistance expansion--and found that together they would reduce poverty by 26 percent, more than halfway toward the ten year goal.

The combined cost of the twelve recommendations is approximately $90 billion a year. The current annual costs of the Bush tax cuts (skewed for the wealthy) enacted in 2001 and 2003 are approximately $400 billion. In 2008, the value of tax cuts solely for households exceeding an annual income of $200,000 is projected to be $100 billion.

"Making a commitment to cut poverty in half in a ten year period is a bold goal," said Angela Glover Blackwell, Task Force co-chair and Founder and CEO of PolicyLink. "This isn't just about lamenting the fact that we have so much poverty, this is about doing something about it, and doing something in a time period that people can measure and hold us to…. Also, this report comes at a time when the mayors, when the faith institutions, the civic organizations, are all looking at what we're going to do about poverty… [So it] comes into an atmosphere in which Americans are saying ‘we can do something about this'."

"What we need here is a massive effort to reach out both through every communications method and the grassroots," Edelman said. "Maude Hurd, National President of ACORN is a member of the Task Force--they work with millions of people around the country who are struggling for economic justice. [We are] working with the unions--Linda Chavez-Thompson [(Executive Vice President of the AFL-CIO)], was on the Task Force...with faith-based groups...This has got to reach all around the country and people need to own it, and bring it back, and say this is what we have to do...We know what to do, we know what it will accomplish. The question is the political will. Are we as a nation going to do what we should be doing?"

Comments (289)

1. Well, lets see, KATRINA, we have a college lawyer, a minority Democrat from New York, and Ted Kennedy deciding how to fix the never ending fact that there is never enough to go around-hence the term "dismal science" as applied to Economics. Wish I had the time right now to find numbers to combat yours, cause I know what you are throwing at me is spin: Suffice it to say I'll need to hear some conservative opinion here before I trust my economic future to a guy (Kennedy)who will never be effected by the results of his disasterous economic ideas (should they ever come to fruition.

   But you'll be happy I guess, cause at least we'll all be equal-equally poor.

   Posted by CHIP THORNTON at 04/30/2007 @ 1:56pm

2. Wow....you know if we did all that stuff, and it worked efficiently and raised people out of poverty forever, and it would cost only a paltry $90 Billion ....we ought to come up with some catchy name for such a plan destined to cut poverty in half.....

   off the top of my head...how about "The Great Society"...or "The War on Poverty"!?!?!?

   Posted by Mask at 04/30/2007 @ 2:04pm

3. By the way...

   "From 1947 to 1973, we saw every economic quintile growing together, and those at the lowest level were growing the fastest," Kennedy said. "In 1980, with President Reagan, you see the beginning of growing apart..."

   Well, gee, Ted maybe if you hadn't undercut President Carter with a primary fight, he might have beaten the old man, huh?

   Posted by Mask at 04/30/2007 @ 2:06pm

4. Mask is a typical centrist. On the occasional issue (abortion, Iraq), he'll attack the right-wing, but he spends most of his time and energy taking pot shots at anyone he perceives to be to his left, from Hillary Clinton (another centrist, for heaven's sake!) to that amorphous but monolithic blob, "the American Left."

   Posted by cka2nd at 04/30/2007 @ 2:39pm

5. Posted by CKA2ND 04/30/2007 @ 2:39pm

   Hmmm....massive insult there...calling somebody a centrist, but I'll try to carry on, as best I can.

   Now, who did I attack here? Ted Kennedy? Well, the old guy DID mount a primary challenge to Carter, thus weakening him going into the 1980 Convention (though he was pretty weak to start with). So, I'm "attacking" Ted (a leftist) by chastising him for helping to elect Ronald Reagan (a rightist) over Jimmy (a somewhat centrist)...that the problem?

   Or is it my cynicism for yet another war on poverty that will "only cost $90 Billion....we PROMISE this time!"?

   Posted by Mask at 04/30/2007 @ 2:47pm

6. KVH: "....the United States ranks 24th out of 25 developed nations in the share of the population with an income below 50 percent of the national median income--

   Ms. KVH,

   I already know that you are rather weak on math! But please, look up the definition of "median"!

   Something kinda tells me that in each of the 25 countries, exactly 50% of the population have incomes that are below the "median"!

   Posted by Happy at 04/30/2007 @ 2:58pm

7. Throw the entire list out as it requirs more taxes from the very people you want to help...any family making $ 40,000 a year doesn't need another fucking program from ol' Teddy...NONE of his ideas help...let all these people keep every penny they earn from their labor and takes ZERO Fica, MED, state or local taxes from their check and you will double their take home pay over night...and add ZERO govt employess...

   Change the tax system to tax spending with elimination of 99% of all deductions, set income levels at $ 40,000 and the poor will have a windfall as will the middle..

   and forget unions, only place unions are growing in is govt and that is really sick,...they trap people in positions regardless of efforts..an idea who time went out with the 50s...unions will be the death of mahufactoring jobs....its the main reason heavy manufactoring jobs flee over seas...

   Posted by john maasch at 04/30/2007 @ 3:01pm

8. Posted by MASK 04/30/2007 @ 2:04pm

   Wow...a mere $90 billion? Well that'd run the "War on Terror" (Operation Desert Debacle) for like 9 months. Guess that's too steep a price for improving our nation....

   Posted by leftofcenter at 04/30/2007 @ 3:02pm

9. Should read.."set income exemption levels at..."

   Posted by john maasch at 04/30/2007 @ 3:03pm

10. 3. Promote unionization by enacting the Employee Free Choice Act. This would require employers to recognize a union after a majority of workers signs cards authorizing union representation. "It's very important that we get this legislation enacted this year," Edelman said. "Unions are absolutely a backbone of getting fair labor standards and fair wages in our country."

    Funny how supporters of this legislation never mention that it does away with secret ballots. This provision should really be called the 'Open Season for Worker Intimidation Because We Can't Win Fair Elections Act.'

    Saddam did away with secret ballots and abracadabra, he got 100 percent of the vote. No wonder the left cries so much over his overthrow, they've got a lot in common.

    Posted by pontificus at 04/30/2007 @ 3:15pm

11. 5. Create 2 million new "opportunity" housing vouchers, and promote equitable development in and around central cities. Nearly 8 million Americans live in neighborhoods where at least 40 percent of residents are poor. We should seek to end such concentrated poverty. Over the next ten years, the federal government should fund 2 million new "opportunity vouchers" designed to help people live in opportunity-rich areas. "The housing vouchers that we currently have reach only a quarter of the people who are eligible," Edelman said. "People should also be able to choose where they live, they should be able to live near the jobs and get to the jobs." Any new affordable housing should be in communities with employment opportunities and high-quality public services, or in gentrifying communities.

    This approach has been tried and it fails. Housing works according to the 'bad apple' theorem - all it takes is a few bad apples to destroy a neighborhood. Contrary to leftist dogma, poverty IS a pathology - most poverty is caused by lack of personal responsiblity or substance abuse. Subsidizing people with these problems, and providing them a free place in communities with people who DO NOT have these problems, is not a valid approach.

    Posted by pontificus at 04/30/2007 @ 3:24pm

12. Poverty on this scale is a sympton of a dysfunctional economy.

    Posted by mtspence05 at 04/30/2007 @ 3:32pm

13. Posted by MADLIB 04/30/2007 @ 3:33pm

    Well, I know you DON'T, but do you have any sort of research or anything other than your feeble thought process to back up such an outrageous claim? I figure I should give you a chance to prove that in whatever way you can, before you look like even more than an ass.

    Personal experience and common sense my friend. I spent the first 20 years of my working life in bad neighborhoods.

    Ever looked at the studies on lottery winners, pal? Did you know that 90 percent of people who win million dollar lotteries end up poorer than when they started? And you think poverty is caused by lack of money?

    Posted by pontificus at 04/30/2007 @ 3:37pm

14. Anecdotal evidence from defecatious. Well, there you have it, it must be so.

    Posted by mtspence05 at 04/30/2007 @ 3:40pm

15. It's just so simple.

    Posted by mtspence05 at 04/30/2007 @ 3:40pm

16. Posted by MADLIB 04/30/2007 @ 3:33pm

    Lottery Winners Are Broke! By Michael A. Verdicchio Platinum Quality Author

    Article Word Count: 671 [View Summary] Comments (0)

    Have you ever seen or heard news reports about lottery winners becoming broke? Can you imagine? They have no money left!

    Many lottery winners, especially those who take a lump sum are now poor. How could that possibly be? Many people think that if they could just win the lottery, their whole life would change for the best. They think that once they win all that cash, then all their problems will disappear. Therefore, week after week they buy lottery tickets, hoping to win.

    I once read about a woman who won the New Jersey lottery twice! She won in 1985, and then again in 1986. She won millions. The money has been gone for a long, long time now, and she lives in a trailer. She said, "There are a lot of people out there like me who don't know how to deal with money. Hey, some people went broke in six months. At least I held on for a few years."

    There was a man in Pennsylvania who took home 16.2 million dollars after taxes. He had a lump sum of 16.2 million dollars! All of that money is gone and he now lives on social security. These are not isolated incidents. Circumstances just like these continue to happen repeatedly. What is the reason?

    So many lottery winners are broke because winning the lottery did not change their mental attitude about finances. Receiving a big chunk of money did not change their poverty mentality. Their poor, poverty thoughts simply continued to bring to them what those thoughts have always brought to them – poverty. A recent study of people who come into a windfall shows that they will typically prioritize buying a house as number one in a list of twelve choices, while investing is at number eleven.

    I've never met anyone who said, "I like being poor." It's just the opposite, is it not? Most poor people would readily admit that they don't like being poor. They are tired of just getting by. They are tired of scrimping and doing without just to make ends meet. They are tired of one financial crisis after another.

    Perhaps you have noticed that poor people tend to talk a lot about their lack. Therein lies the problem. Those who have great lack always talk about their great lack. They will tell you all day long how lousy things are, how they never get a break and how their boss is greedy. And, worst of all, they think that none of this plight is their fault. They see themselves as victims in this cruel life. They don't see anything changing. They see themselves destined and shackled to a life of misery, unless of course, they win the lottery.

    So, what happens if they do defy the almost impossible odds? Winning the lottery may give them some cash, but it doesn't change their mind set. They may be distracted for a while, but they still carry the same mentality wherever they go, and whatever they do. Deep down inside, they see themselves as poor and having nothing. Even though they acquire a great increase, they end up throwing it away, spending it away, or giving it away.

    It is our habitual mental attitudes that do shape our lives. Our lives can and will change as we change our thoughts, and change what we dwell on. This is true for positive and negative thinking. The Bible says, "As he thinks in his heart, so is he." That is absolutely true for positive thinking as well as negative thinking.

    Negative thoughts are destructive thoughts that neutralize all your efforts and hard work. Positive thoughts are constructive thoughts that lead you to positive results.

    Change your mind by focusing on the things you do desire, instead of thinking, focusing on and complaining about the way things are right now. Continue to think about where you desire to go and what you desire to accomplish.

    Change always starts with thoughts first. When those thoughts get into your heart there will be change.

    Posted by pontificus at 04/30/2007 @ 3:42pm

17. Posted by LEFTOFCENTER 04/30/2007 @ 3:02pm

    Remember LOC, the war in Iraq was going to "pay for itself" in oil revenues, according to Wolfowitz or Pearle or some idiot. And we're now several HUNDRED billion into this fiasco, because the idealogues were wrong and lots of things they said couldn't go wrong, did go wrong....

    Now, let's take a DIFFERENT group of idealogues and their "Project for a New American Prosperity" (or whatever) and let them say it's "only going to cost $90 Billion and a recinding of the Bush tax cuts and we'll cut poverty in half"....and maybe 5 years later, when they're saying "Okay, we just need this NEW program and it'll fix those old programs and it'll ONLY $180 Billion"....

    we can call it a "Surge"!

    Posted by Mask at 04/30/2007 @ 3:43pm

18. More 'anecdotal' evidence for EMPTY and MADLIB to ignore. I know you folks aren't open to reason, it's intellectual dogma on the left to blame poverty on the fundamental unfairness of capitalism. I might as well argue with the Pope about Jesus than try to dissuade you leftwing cultists from your dogma. This is actually posted for people with an open mind.

    Continuing drug use is one of the main reasons why homeless people remain homeless says NACD

    14th April 2005

    Media Contact: Jane O'Dwyer (086 6491408) / Pat Montague (087 2549123) Montague Communications, tel. 01 8377960

    Thursday, 14 April 2005 – Ireland's first major report on drug use and homelessness has revealed that drug use and homelessness are clearly linked both complicating and aggravating one another. Launching the Report Drug Use Among the Homeless Population in Ireland, Mr Noel Ahern TD, Minister of State with responsibility for the National Drugs Strategy and Housing said "people who carry the burden of both problematic drug use and homelessness are particularly vulnerable. I welcome this timely research which provides much needed clarification on the nature and extent of drug misuse by this group. "

    The research was commissioned by the National Advisory Committee on Drugs in part fulfilment of Action 98 of the National Drug Strategy and carried out by Merchants Quay Ireland. It involved interviews with 355 homeless people across the country (70% were from Dublin) and 14 focus groups with 64 homeless and drug service providers.

    Key findings from the report include:

    * Whilst drug use is not the primary reason for people becoming homeless, it is a key reason for them remaining homeless. The primary reason for becoming homeless was family conflict; * Other reasons for remaining homelessness include access to housing, money problems, family conflict and continuing alcohol use; * The prevalence of drug use within the homeless population was high with lifetime (74%), recent (64%) and current rates (52%) substantially higher than those found in the general population (19%, 6% and 3% respectively); * Cannabis was the most commonly used illicit drug followed by heroin over each time period – lifetime, last year (recent) and last month (current); * Alcohol remains the primary drug of choice among the homeless population (70%); * Over half (52%) of the homeless population surveyed are currently drug users; * 36% of those surveyed were problematic drug users; * 19% of the study population were currently injecting drugs, of these 1-in-2 injected in public spaces; * Those who reported current drug use on average used 3 different drugs; * 1-in-4 of current homeless drug users in Dublin used 5 or more different drugs; * Almost two thirds of those who reported current use of cocaine (17% currently using cocaine powder) were injecting it; * 30% of the study population have been diagnosed with a psychiatric illness; * 55% of the study population had been in prison.

    Posted by pontificus at 04/30/2007 @ 3:47pm

19. Posted by MTSPENCE05 04/30/2007 @ 3:32pm

    Hey EMPTY, I was hoping to hear you give us a reprise about how taking away the secret ballot in union elections is a GOOD thing. Why, those people don't need secret ballots! Come on, give it another swing!

    Posted by pontificus at 04/30/2007 @ 3:50pm

20. Poor defecatious. He suffers the smugness that only ignorance and a closed mind can produce. First he offers up some garbage that a "motivational speaker" scribbled out, and now he serves up a report on drugs and homelessness that reaffirms that poverty is a sympton of a dysfuntional economy. Try reading the "Key findings" info, moron.

    Posted by mtspence05 at 04/30/2007 @ 3:52pm

21. Poor defecatious. He suffers the smugness that only ignorance and a closed mind can produce. First he offers up some garbage that a "motivational speaker" scribbled out, and now he serves up a report on drugs and homelessness that reaffirms that poverty is a sympton of a dysfuntional economy. Try reading the "Key findings" info, moron.

    Posted by mtspence05 at 04/30/2007 @ 3:54pm

22. Posted by MASK 04/30/2007 @ 3:43pm

    Remember LOC, the war in Iraq was going to "pay for itself" in oil revenues, according to Wolfowitz or Pearle or some idiot. And we're now several HUNDRED billion into this fiasco, because the idealogues were wrong and lots of things they said couldn't go wrong, did go wrong....

    Hey MASK, ask yourself two questions:

    a) How much did 9/11 cost the American economy, and how many 9/11's have we had since Bush's war on terror started?

    b) How much will $100 bbl oil cost our economy if the Democrats successfully force a retreat and subsequent collapse of Iraq?

    Posted by pontificus at 04/30/2007 @ 3:56pm

23. Posted by JOHN MAASCH 04/30/2007 @ 3:01pm

    and forget unions, only place unions are growing in is govt and that is really sick,...they trap people in positions regardless of efforts..an idea who time went out with the 50s...unions will be the death of mahufactoring jobs....its the main reason heavy manufactoring jobs flee over seas...

    I think most American auto jobs stayed here. These jobs are now in the South, where Americans build Hondas and Toyotas, and definitely DO NOT want unions. That's why the unions are trying to do away with secret elections, and why MTSPENCE, like any lockstep leftist who is told what to think, must support the elimination of same.

    Posted by pontificus at 04/30/2007 @ 4:00pm

24. HR 800 EH

    110th CONGRESS

    1st Session

    H. R. 800

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------ --------

    AN ACT To amend the National Labor Relations Act to establish an efficient system to enable employees to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to provide for mandatory injunctions for unfair labor practices during organizing efforts, and for other purposes.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

    SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

    This Act may be cited as the `Employee Free Choice Act of 2007'.

    SEC. 2. STREAMLINING UNION CERTIFICATION.

    (a) In General- Section 9(c) of the National Labor Relations Act (29 U.S.C. 159(c)) is amended by adding at the end the following:

    `(6) Notwithstanding any other provision of this section, whenever a petition shall have been filed by an employee or group of employees or any individual or labor organization acting in their behalf alleging that a majority of employees in a unit appropriate for the purposes of collective bargaining wish to be represented by an individual or labor organization for such purposes, the Board shall investigate the petition. If the Board finds that a majority of the employees in a unit appropriate for bargaining has signed valid authorizations designating the individual or labor organization specified in the petition as their bargaining representative and that no other individual or labor organization is currently certified or recognized as the exclusive representative of any of the employees in the unit, the Board shall not direct an election but shall certify the individual or labor organization as the representative described in subsection (a).

    `(7) The Board shall develop guidelines and procedures for the designation by employees of a bargaining representative in the manner described in paragraph (6). Such guidelines and procedures shall include--

    `(A) model collective bargaining authorization language that may be used for purposes of making the designations described in paragraph (6); and

    `(B) procedures to be used by the Board to establish the validity of signed authorizations designating bargaining representatives.'.

    (b) Conforming Amendments-

    (1) NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD- Section 3(b) of the National Labor Relations Act (29 U.S.C. 153(b)) is amended, in the second sentence--

    (A) by striking `and to' and inserting `to'; and

    (B) by striking `and certify the results thereof,' and inserting `, and to issue certifications as provided for in that section,'.

    (2) UNFAIR LABOR PRACTICES- Section 8(b) of the National Labor Relations Act (29 U.S.C. 158(b)) is amended--

    (A) in paragraph (7)(B) by striking `, or' and inserting `or a petition has been filed under section 9(c)(6), or'; and

    (B) in paragraph (7)(C) by striking `when such a petition has been filed' and inserting `when such a petition other than a petition under section 9(c)(6) has been filed'. (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/C?c110:./temp/~c110QLNpus)

    Posted by mtspence05 at 04/30/2007 @ 4:06pm

25. a) How much did 9/11 cost the American economy, and how many 9/11's have we had since Bush's war on terror started?

    b) How much will $100 bbl oil cost our economy if the Democrats successfully force a retreat and subsequent collapse of Iraq?

    Posted by PONTIFICUS

    How was something like 9/11 possible to begin with? Has squandering billions of dollars to destabilize Iraq and alienate Muslims world wide made the US safer? No. Osama's happy that the US invaded Iraq.

    Posted by mtspence05 at 04/30/2007 @ 4:09pm

26. Posted by MTSPENCE05 04/30/2007 @ 4:09pm

    How was something like 9/11 possible to begin with?

    Eight years of inattention by Clinton, and eight months of inattention by Bush?

    Has squandering billions of dollars to destabilize Iraq and alienate Muslims world wide made the US safer? No.

    In your own head? Not much. In the real world? 100 percent effective, apparently.

    Posted by pontificus at 04/30/2007 @ 4:11pm

27. "...its the main reason heavy manufactoring jobs flee over seas..."

    An idiot quoting a fellow idiot.

    Jobs are not "fleeing" overseas. Capital is fleeing overseas because the labor oversears is much, much cheaper, the environmental standards are far below par, and in nations such as China there is a strong central government that can and will insure that there is no labor unrest, union formation, etc.

    Posted by mtspence05 at 04/30/2007 @ 4:12pm

28. Posted by MTSPENCE05 04/30/2007 @ 4:06pm

    Yep, EMPTY, that's the section dealing with elimination of secret ballots, allowing for workplace intimidation, just like the eliminatino of secret ballots gives people like Saddam and Fidel 100 percent approval in totalitarian states. And you and KVH want to institute that system here. Pretty telling, I'd say.

    Posted by pontificus at 04/30/2007 @ 4:13pm

29. In your own head? Not much. In the real world? 100 percent effective, apparently.

    Posted by PONTIFICUS

    How many US soldiers died this month?

    Posted by mtspence05 at 04/30/2007 @ 4:14pm

30. Really? Where does it say there are ballots, secret or not?

    Posted by mtspence05 at 04/30/2007 @ 4:14pm

31. Posted by MTSPENCE05 04/30/2007 @ 4:14pm

    How many US soldiers died this month?

    Our army is made to fight terrorists. Protecting this country is what they're for.

    How many civilians killed her on 9/11?

    How many since, dipshit?

    Posted by pontificus at 04/30/2007 @ 4:17pm

32. "I think most American auto jobs stayed here. These jobs are now in the South, where Americans build Hondas and Toyotas..."

    And did it ever occur to a pea brain like you that Honda, Toyota practise superior management styles vis-a-vis labor, just like they produce a superior product to GM, et al.?

    Posted by mtspence05 at 04/30/2007 @ 4:18pm

33. Posted by MTSPENCE05 04/30/2007 @ 4:14pm

    Really? Where does it say there are ballots, secret or not?

    Wow, last time we had this conversation, I showed you where secret ballots were eliminated, then you started arguing that no-one needs them. How many times are we going to have to go over this?

    Posted by pontificus at 04/30/2007 @ 4:19pm

34. Well, Al Qeada doesn't have a navy to project itself over here; there is not native support for an insurgency over here. How exactly is Al Qeada going to attack us? After almost 8 years of Georgie Jr are borders are still vulnerable to a terrorist cell?

    Posted by mtspence05 at 04/30/2007 @ 4:21pm

35. Really? Where does it say there are ballots, secret or not?

    Answer the question, moron.

    Posted by mtspence05 at 04/30/2007 @ 4:22pm

36. Posted by MTSPENCE05 04/30/2007 @ 4:21pm

    Well, Al Qeada doesn't have a navy to project itself over here; there is not native support for an insurgency over here. How exactly is Al Qeada going to attack us? After almost 8 years of Georgie Jr are borders are still vulnerable to a terrorist cell?

    Empty, you are now in the bonus round which will determine if you are possibly the stupidest person I have ever met. How did Al Quaida attack us the first time?

    Posted by pontificus at 04/30/2007 @ 4:24pm

37. The US? It's only a small fraction of the population that is moving capital overseas. It is not the "US".

    Posted by mtspence05 at 04/30/2007 @ 4:24pm

38. Iraq Study: True Costs of Iraq War Could Top $2 Trillion by Corey Flintoff

    Day to Day, January 13, 2006 · The cost of the U.S.-led invasion and continued occupation of Iraq could top $2 trillion, according to a new academic study -- a sum far larger than any estimates by the Bush administration. The study factors in the long-term costs, such as replacing worn or destroyed military equipment, paying interest on the debt used to finance the war and providing lifetime care for disabled veterans.

    WE DON'T HAVE THE MONEY TO SPEND ON AMBITIOUS SOCIAL PROGRAMS!

    We clearly are going to need to address the deficit, funding the true cost of the war in Iraq which is going to go on and on, funding social security to insure basic benefits, medicare, and maybe a government means tested health insurance program for those who can't afford or are declined from coverage. Why is this even being discussed? What kind of never never world are we living in?

    Posted by OneVote at 04/30/2007 @ 4:26pm

39. EMPTY, I'm not going to waste my time arguing with the willfully ignorant such as yourself. You can join WILL C, champion of OJ Simpson's innocence, RESE, and PLUNGER in the IGNORE bucket. Enjoy the company.

    Big Labor's Latest Target: The Secret Ballot

    With Democrats assuming control of Congress this week, Big Labor is targeting one of America's most basic institutions – the secret ballot.

    Union-proposed "card-check" legislation would eliminate secret balloting during representation elections, and thereby eradicate workers' fundamental right to vote without fear of intimidation or retribution.

    Labor unions, which now spend up to 60% of their discretionary dollars on purely partisan political activities (as opposed to work-related matters for which they were originally established), are progressively losing their power over American life. As recently as the 1950s, 30% of American employees were unionized. Today, private-sector unionization has declined to approximately 8%.

    As a result, unions desperately seek methods to inflate their membership rolls and bolster their political influence.

    Enter their card-check campaign, which would abolish rank-and-file employees' right to a secret ballot when voting on union representation. The term "card check" refers to a method by which labor unions compel formal recognition by employers without an actual employee vote. Under this process, union representatives personally canvas the relevant workplace and make face-to-face "requests" that employees sign a card indicating union support. The union merely needs to convince (or intimidate) a majority of employees to openly sign the card in order to become the recognized bargaining unit.

    Just like that, more mandatory dues flow into union coffers.

    Anyone familiar with labor unions and their frequently deplorable behavior is well aware of the manner in which this type of activity can occur. Namely, the union dispatches burly, intimidating "organizers" to targeted worksites, who then stop each employee and menacingly present a recognition card. Unfortunately, as most people know, awful behavior by union thugs, such as physical violence and severe property damage during strikes, is anything but rare.

    For precisely this reason, federal labor laws protect employees' right to a secret-ballot vote on whether to recognize unions. That way, each worker can decide in the privacy of a voting booth whether to accept union representation, without fear of retribution of any kind.

    Obviously, the secret ballot ensures against any sort of retaliation from employers as well.

    With a straight face, however, AFL-CIO's Organizing Director Stewart Acuff proclaims that secret-ballot elections, which have served America perfectly well for over two centuries and counting, "just don't work." That's quite a statement, considering the fact that the AFL-CIO's official website trumpets the phrase "Protecting Workers' Freedom to Choose."

    The reality is that declining union membership has more to do with the changing nature of our technological workforce and market economy than some alleged flaw in the election process. And frankly, Big Labor is more concerned with its ability to wring more mandatory dues from employees, which it subsequently spends on political activities, than it is with employee freedoms.

    Regardless, with Democrats returning to control in both the Senate and House of Representatives, Big Labor has seized momentum and made card-check legislation its first priority. Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy has sponsored the Senate's card-check bill, and California Democrat George Miller has done so in the House. Need we say more?

    Ironically, this legislation has been misnamed the "Employee Free Choice Act," which would be amusing if the bill wasn't so pernicious. With 42 co-sponsors in the Senate, and 215 co-sponsors in the House, this noxious legislation appears dangerously close to majority passage.

    The pivotal question thus becomes whether timidity on the part of Congressional Republicans or President Bush will allow this abomination to succeed.

    Imagine for a moment the reaction from Big Labor and Senator Kennedy if corporations said that secret ballots "just don't work" and demanded the right to summon individual employees before intimidating management officers and present them with a declination card. Or imagine that political activists and their media accomplices could monitor citizens' votes during American elections. The absurdity of such scenarios is obvious.

    Simply put, Americans' right to a secret-ballot vote is nothing less than the foundation of our democratic republic. Our ability to vote according to our individual consciences, free from worry about intimidation and retaliation, depends upon it.

    Workplace votes are no different, and should be conducted free from coercion or publicity by either side. Voters, businesses and political leaders must therefore demand that workers' right to free, secret-ballot elections be preserved.

    This may also be the perfect opportunity to President Bush to dust off his veto pen.

    Posted by pontificus at 04/30/2007 @ 4:27pm

40. Well, the airlines never wanted to spend the kind of money it takes to ensure a cockpit cannot be entered without authorization (El Al has a reinforced double bulkhead system). And then, of course, the Bush administration was asleep at the wheel. I would think that after all this time and all the money spent that another episode such as 9/11 is not possible.

    Posted by mtspence05 at 04/30/2007 @ 4:27pm

41. Hey PONTI, ask yourself two questions:

    a) Why didn't your strategeric genius Bush stop the FIRST 9/11, if he's so good at stopping "the ones we WOULD have had"?

    b) How come oil was a HELLUVA lot cheaper BEFORE we invaded Iraq and would have remained so if we hadn't?

    Posted by Mask at 04/30/2007 @ 4:28pm

42. And how does having troops in Iraq--which was never associated with Al Qeada (unless you're still believing Cheney's lies)--keep terrorists from making an attack on US soil?

    Posted by mtspence05 at 04/30/2007 @ 4:30pm

43. Posted by FREIHEIT

    For big capital it is not.

    Posted by mtspence05 at 04/30/2007 @ 4:31pm

44. Ponti-Your article on the lottery has convinced me that we shouldn't give each poor person millions of dollars in cash even though I would be one of the recipients of the cash.I guess not having much could cause someone to overspend if given too much at one time.I agree that the poor and homeless need quality mental health care and drug and alcohol rehab.Thanks for pointing that out.I have to disagree that the war on terror has stopped anymore 9/11 type attacks,however since such attacks are expensive,time consuming,and difficult to conceal under the best of conditions.Terrorists can only pull off something that big on rare occasions when the leaders are asleep at the wheel.We know from the rampage at Virginia Tech,however,that pulling off small attacks would be quite simple,but they aren't doing any despite the fact that they easily could.Your kind has made it easy enough for a foreign terrorists to legally buy weapons that they wouldn't even have to look to the black market for guns.Apparently,they don't want to do anything more here.9/11 served it's purpose and now we're bogged down in a war just like Osama wanted.He expected the war to be in Afghanistan,but Bush was nice enough to attack Iraq and get bogged down there and have Sharia law be the law of the land in Iraq just like the terrorist types wanted.

    Posted by i'm nobody at 04/30/2007 @ 4:34pm

45. Why America Needs Employee Free Choice Act by TeamsterPower Thu Jan 11, 2007 at 12:13:31 PM PDT

    Almost one-in-five union organizers or activists can expect to be fired as a result of their activities in a union election campaign. This revelation came last week in a report (pdf) by The Center for Economic Policy and Research.

    "Aggressive actions by employers -- often including illegal firings -- have significantly undermined the ability of U.S. workers to unionize their workplaces," said John Schmitt, CEPR senior economist and lead author of the paper. "With the legal penalties for such actions being so slight, employers can break the law to head-off organizing efforts and face almost no real repercussions."

    TeamsterPower's diary :: :: The right of workers in this country to freely organize and bargain collectively is one of the sacred freedoms we have as Americans. It is just as important as free speech. It is also an essential human right. And since 2000 has been under increasing attack by the Bush Administration and large corporations, as CEPR's study reflects.

    "We find a steep rise in the 2000s relative to the last half of the 1990s in illegal firings of pro-union workers," the study says.

    In 1948, almost one-in-three workers was in a union; by 2005, the fraction had fallen to just one-in-eight. The drop-off in union membership has been particularly stark in the private sector, where, by 2005, only about one-in-twelve workers was unionized.

    Several explanations have been put forward about the causes behind this decline, the authors write, including "a systematic attack on unions" by employers with "substantial legal support and cover."

    This paper reviews evidence that provides significant support for the final explanation for union decline - that aggressive, even illegal, employer behavior has undermined the ability of U.S. workers to create unions at their work places. The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) makes it illegal for employers to fire workers involved in union-organizing campaigns. The penalties associated with "discriminatory discharges" under the NLRA, however, are small: back pay for illegally fired workers minus any earnings that workers had after they were fired. Given these small penalties for illegal firings, the NLRA, in practice, has given employers a powerful anti-union strategy: fire one or more prominent pro-union employees - typically workers involved in organizing the union - with the hope of disrupting the internal workings of the union's campaign, while intimidating the rest of the potential bargaining unit in advance of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)-supervised representation election.

    ... Employers engaging in illegal firing activities will generally discharge key union activists, rather than random employees believed to be sympathetic to the union.

    ... If we assume that ten percent of pro-union workers are union activists, then we can estimate that in 2005 union activists faced almost a 20 percent chance of being fired during a union-election campaign.

    About card-check In a traditional organizing campaign, organizers collect signed cards from workers saying they want to be union members. When organizers collect cards from a majority of workers, they take the cards to the employer, who generally requests that the NLRB hold a secret-ballot election to verify the card count.

    "The period between the time when unions present management with the signed cards and the actual NLRB-supervised election is typically the most active period for employers that engage in aggressive and illegal anti-union behavior, including illegal firings," the CEPR report says.

    Employers, however, also have the option to recognize the union based solely on the collection of cards, which is where the Employee Free Choice Act comes in.

    Simply put, the bill would require employers to recognize a union after a majority of workers sign cards for union representation. It also would provide for mediation and arbitration of first-contract disputes, and authorize stronger penalties for illegal firings and other violations of the law when workers seek to form a union.

    After all, as former Sen. John Edwards repeats often when speaking to labor unions: "If anyone in America can sign a card to join the Republican Party, they should be able to sign a card and join a union."

    And he's right.

    Unfortunately, George Bush's America, which the Republicans like to hold up as a model of freedom and democracy in the world, is anything but when it comes to union elections.

    Human Rights Watch found that freedom of association is a right under severe, often buckling pressure when workers in the United States try to exercise it. Violations of this right occur across regions, industries, and employment status because U.S. labor law is feebly enforced and filled with loopholes. Some workers still succeed in organizing new unions, but only after surmounting major obstacles.

    According to statistics from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the federal agency created to enforce workers' organizing and bargaining rights, the problem is getting worse.

    ... Simply put, if the rights of workers are not respected and protected, then the strength of American democracy and freedom is diminished. Both historical experience and a review of current conditions around the world indicate that freedom of association is a vital element of democratic societies. Human rights cannot flourish where workers' rights are not enforced.

    Testimony of Kenneth Roth, Executive Director, Human Rights Watch (pdf) Before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions June 20, 2002. (http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/1/11/134354/395)

    Posted by mtspence05 at 04/30/2007 @ 4:36pm

46. Dropping the Ax: Illegal Firings During Union Election Campaigns

    John Schmitt and Ben Zipperer

    January 2007

    Center for Economic and Policy Research

    Summary

    This paper uses published data from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to update an index, first developed by Weiler (1983) and modified by LaLonde and Meltzer (1991), of the probability that a pro-union worker will be fired in the course of a union election campaign. The paper uses the more conservative LaLonde and Meltzer methodology and makes adjustments for the rise from the mid-1990s in card-check-based organizing campaigns. We find a steep rise in the 2000s relative to the last half of the 1990s in illegal firings of pro-union workers. By 2005, pro-union workers involved in union election campaigns faced about a 1.8 percent chance of being illegally fired during the course of the campaign. Even after we (over) adjust for the rise in card-check-based organizing campaigns, pro-union workers in 2005 appeared to have a 1.4 percent chance of being illegally fired. If we assume that employers target union organizers and activists, and that union organizers and activists make up about 10 percent of pro-union workers, our estimates suggest that almost one-in-five union organizers or activists can expect to be fired as a result of their activities in a union election campaign. Even after we adjust for the increase in organizing campaigns not built around NLRB-elections, our calculations suggest that about one-in-seven union organizers and activists are illegally fired while trying to organize unions at their place of work. (Page 1)

    It sounds like unions are not left with much of a choice, due to the illegal actions of owners, management.

    Posted by mtspence05 at 04/30/2007 @ 4:43pm

47. Maybe defecatious can post something from another motivational speaker to refute it all.

    Posted by mtspence05 at 04/30/2007 @ 4:46pm

48. b) How much will $100 bbl oil cost our economy if the Democrats successfully force a retreat and subsequent collapse of Iraq?

    Posted by PONTIFICUS 04/30/2007 @ 3:56pm | ignore this person

    THESE ARE THE TYPES OF STATEMENTS FROM THE TYPES OF PEOPLE THAT REALLY, REALLY MAKE ME CHUCKLE.

    This veritable MENSA candidate is STILL in the arena of predictions despite the fact that EVERY single prediction that these dickwads have made regarding Iraq have been absolutely entirely wrong.

    Listen peabrain your almighty leaders have entirely categorically screwed up the middle east / Iraq. Time and time again it has been crystal clear that your leaders have NO CLUE of cause and effect as far as Iraq / middle east goes so you can take your useless predictions and try scaring someone who might still be retarded enough to believe you (maybe try the zoo).

    Posted by freedomplease at 04/30/2007 @ 4:54pm

49. An effective minimum wage will increase unemployment. If the wage is ineffective, what is the point? I would like to hear someone from the so-called progressive community explain why, if a minimum wage of, say, $9.00 is great, why a minimum wage of $20 or $50 is not even better? Is the answer not perfectly obvious, even to progressives?

    Posted by TVAnderson at 04/30/2007 @ 4:56pm

50. Posted by FREEDOMPLEASE 04/30/2007 @ 4:54pm

    Too bad you, the presumed MENSA candidate, chose to cast ad hominem attacks rather than address the question.

    Posted by pontificus at 04/30/2007 @ 4:59pm

51. Posted by MASK 04/30/2007 @ 4:28pm

    a) Why didn't your strategeric genius Bush stop the FIRST 9/11, if he's so good at stopping "the ones we WOULD have had"?

    We all have our theories on that; it's purely academic. It's what we do in response to 9/11 that's important, and how effective these measures are. I don't see any benefit in apportioning blame to Clinton or Bush, both are culpable if you ask me.

    b) How come oil was a HELLUVA lot cheaper BEFORE we invaded Iraq and would have remained so if we hadn't?

    I have no idea. If I did, I'd be trading oil futures and not wasting my time arguing with idiots like MTSPENCE.

    Posted by pontificus at 04/30/2007 @ 5:02pm

52. Posted by MASK 04/30/2007 @ 4:28pm

    MASK, I dont see how you can know how much oil would have cost if we hadn't invaded Iraq.

    Posted by pontificus at 04/30/2007 @ 5:04pm

53. Circulation at the Top 20 Newspapers

    Monday April 30, 10:59 am ET

    By The Associated Press

    Average Weekday Circulation at the Top 20 U.S. Newspapers

    Average paid weekday circulation of the nation's 20 largest newspapers for the six-month period ending in March, as reported Monday by the Audit Bureau of Circulations. The percentage changes are from the comparable year-ago period.

    1. USA Today, 2,278,022, up 0.2 percent

    2. The Wall Street Journal, 2,062,312, up 0.6 percent

    3. The New York Times, 1,120,420, down 1.9 percent

    4. Los Angeles Times, 815,723, down 4.2 percent

    5. New York Post, 724,748, up 7.6 percent

    6. New York Daily News, 718,174, up 1.4 percent

    7. The Washington Post, 699,130, down 3.5 percent

    Posted by Happy at 04/30/2007 @ 5:05pm

54. So the WSJ is right up there with USA Today and the New York Post? That's great company to be in. What does that say about the WSJ?

    Posted by mtspence05 at 04/30/2007 @ 5:11pm

55. MASK,

    I did some actual research just for you...since you stuck your neck out for chopping! Following up on PONTI......Hmmm.....could you explain why inflation-adjusted oil prices were higher in 2000 than 2003? Let me remind you the Iraq War started in early spring (`03) and there where actual declines (after "Major Combat is Over") of Iraqi oil exports.

    $ Nominal Inflation-Adj.

    2000 26.72 29.54

    2001 21.84 23.39

    2002 22.51 23.78

    2003 27.54 28.42

    2004 38.93 54.93

    2005 46.47 47.97

    2006 58.30 58.30 Source US DOE/

    Posted by Happy at 04/30/2007 @ 5:16pm

56. Our army is made to fight terrorists. Protecting this country is what they're for. Posted by PONTIFICUS 04/30/2007 @ 4:17pm

    How motherfucking stupid can you be asshole? Our Army is made to fight large fucking land battles against large troop concentrations.

    Or are you trying to intimate that terrorism really IS a law enforcement problem, which would be the one true fucking thing you may well have ever uttered in your useless bible banging fear filled life?

    My god you are one useless excuse for a pathetic wretch.

    Posted by Dr Decibels at 04/30/2007 @ 5:58pm

57. Posted by DR DECIBELS

    Well put.

    Posted by mtspence05 at 04/30/2007 @ 6:00pm

58. t wasting my time arguing with idiots like MTSPENCE.

    Posted by PONTIFICUS 04/30/2007 @ 5:02pm

    chose to cast ad hominem attacks rather than address the question.

    Posted by PONTIFICUS 04/30/2007

    Hey ponti - when are you going to stop playing the ass?

    Posted by Dr Decibels at 04/30/2007 @ 6:02pm

59. Well put.

    Posted by MTSPENCE05 04/30/2007 @ 6:00pm

    A trifle saucy but Lord have mercy that man is a born again moron.

    Posted by Dr Decibels at 04/30/2007 @ 6:03pm

60. Perhaps ponti can explain how aircraft carriers, b-52's, b-1s, and all the other heavy war machinery was "built to fight terrorism".

    I doubt it, but step up moron. Give it your best shot.

    Posted by Dr Decibels at 04/30/2007 @ 6:08pm

61. Aw, did skeered little ponti boy cut-n-run AGAIN?????

    Posted by Dr Decibels at 04/30/2007 @ 6:14pm

62. Coward.

    Posted by Dr Decibels at 04/30/2007 @ 6:30pm

63. Posted by MADLIB 04/30/2007

    In pontis "christian" world the poor are poor because they want to be.

    Posted by Dr Decibels at 04/30/2007 @ 6:56pm

64. It's a "lifestyle choice" to them.

    Posted by Dr Decibels at 04/30/2007 @ 7:00pm

65. It's what we do in response to 9/11 that's important, and how effective these measures are.

    Posted by PONTIFICUS 04/30/2007 @ 5:02pm

    PONTI, why was invading Iraq a "response to 9/11"?

    Posted by Mask at 04/30/2007 @ 8:08pm

66. Posted by HAPPY 04/30/2007 @ 5:16pm

    So "adjusted for inflation", oil is cheaper now than it was before we invaded Iraq? So why does it "appear" that I'm paying a TON more for a gallon of gas than I did pre-2003?

    Posted by Mask at 04/30/2007 @ 8:11pm

67. Posted by MASK 04/30/2007 @ 8:08pm

    PONTI, why was invading Iraq a "response to 9/11"?

    MASK, did you listen to any of Bush's speeches, where he laid out the rationale for invading Iraq as a response to 9/11?

    Posted by pontificus at 04/30/2007 @ 9:15pm

68. Posted by HAPPY 04/30/2007 @ 5:05pm

    For bonus points, for any of you leftists here who commonly believe yourselves to be God's gift to the intellectual state of mankind, can you tell me what the NY Post and the WSJ have in common with each other, which the other 8 newspapers on the list do not? Other than the fact that these are the only two papers to gain circulation, while the other 8 are in steep decline?

    Posted by pontificus at 04/30/2007 @ 9:20pm

69. Posted by I'M NOBODY 04/30/2007 @ 4:34pm

    Ponti-Your article on the lottery has convinced me that we shouldn't give each poor person millions of dollars in cash even though I would be one of the recipients of the cash.I guess not having much could cause someone to overspend if given too much at one time.I agree that the poor and homeless need quality mental health care and drug and alcohol rehab.Thanks for pointing that out.

    IM, I really respect your ability to absorb things you may not want to hear and which might contradict what you have previously thought. Striving for an understanding of the other side is what brings us all here and demonstrating some flexibility of thought is one of the things all of us should respect the most. I like to think I can keep an open mind when I meet people who actually do think for themselves.

    The lottery is a really sore subject for me. I was a big supporter of it when it first came out. It seemed like such a great idea at first. The way things have worked out I realized what a sap I was. What a con.

    As I was telling others, I lived my first 20 years of my worklife in bad to middling bad neighborhoods. I've never made a ton of money, but one thing I have done is save a lot, enough to improve my lot in life substantially.

    One of the first things I noticed when I moved from bad areas was that there are a heckuva lot fewer lotto machines in good areas, and even these are underused. Not because people are rich in middle class areas, it's just that they know a bad deal when they see one. I can't tell you how many times I stood in line at convenience stores in my younger days watching people who obviously couldn't afford it buying hundreds of dollars worth of lottery tickets just before the terminals closed. Worst thing is, I was told by people who claimed they knew, that many of these people were buying tickets with the proceeds from government assistance checks, which I don't doubt as buying things like cigarettes and beer with food stamps was not uncommon.

    Do you know what the busiest day of the month is for casinos in Atlantic City? The first day of the month, when the social security and other government assistance checks come out. Ask any blackjack dealer or pit boss, they all know. Something is seriously messed up here.

    I have to disagree that the war on terror has stopped anymore 9/11 type attacks,however since such attacks are expensive,time consuming,and difficult to conceal under the best of conditions.Terrorists can only pull off something that big on rare occasions when the leaders are asleep at the wheel.We know from the rampage at Virginia Tech,however,that pulling off small attacks would be quite simple,but they aren't doing any despite the fact that they easily could.Your kind has made it easy enough for a foreign terrorists to legally buy weapons that they wouldn't even have to look to the black market for guns.Apparently,they don't want to do anything more here.9/11 served it's purpose and now we're bogged down in a war just like Osama wanted.He expected the war to be in Afghanistan,but Bush was nice enough to attack Iraq and get bogged down there and have Sharia law be the law of the land in Iraq just like the terrorist types wanted.

    Nobody can know how many attacks we would have here in this country if Bush had not been President. All we know is that there have been none. But if folks blame Presidents for things that happen on their watch, it seems only fair to give them credit for things that do not.

    Posted by pontificus at 04/30/2007 @ 10:12pm

70. Hmm....12 step program. All carrot and no stick. There are alot of inner-city school systems that don't even graduate 50% of their students. You're beating a dead horse by wanting to give them more stuff without any action or accountability on their part.

    Forced busing was tried here in the early 70's as a way to mix students of different economic class. It was around the same years that Dennis Kucinich was the Mayor. This went on for 20-25 years before all the responsible people got the hell out of Dodge. Now the city wants to "regionalize" to share tax revenues (still after all those bastards that had the nerve to leave...how dare they!)

    States should develop strategies to make post-secondary education affordable for all residents, following promising models already underway in a number of states.

    Up until 1937, the State of Ohio covered all college tuition under the states operating budget. It worked well until the libs wanted to give even more money away. Wasn't that about the same year that Social Security started??

    Let's hope old Teddy's math is better on this proposal than it was on the Big Dig.

    States should not bar former prisoners from receiving public benefits like food stamps or deny them the right to vote.

    Actually, I would go one step further and deny the right to vote to Government employees, but that's the right-winger in me talking. Otherwise, we have a massive self-serving voting block with their hands in the cookie jar.

    I knew a guy named Greg when I was in high school that won the lottery when he was 21. I didn't see him for a few years, but heard that he was livin' la vida loca. I ran into him about 6 years later, and the guy was broke. He said it was the worst thing that ever happened to him. Sounded like an M.C. Hammer sob-story ("friends" come out of the woodwork), yet the phone stops ringing when the well is dry. We saw how well cash handouts worked in NOLA. ..stripper bashes and purse shopping...in HOUSTON.

    Since un-fixable disaster #1 (Global Warming) isn't getting much traction, I see that you've gone to Plan B.

    Since you're stating statistics, I believe that it can only get worse if you get your way. Here's why: Right now, the number of workers who make minimum wage is around 2%. So if we hike the minimum wage up $3,4,5/hour, then what percentage of workers NOW make minimum wage? Is it more or less than 2%? And doesn't the median wage move upward, resulting in larger number of workers below the median income? On paper, you will have effectively increased the percentage of people in poverty.

    Posted by Sliver at 04/30/2007 @ 11:35pm

71. Ponti and Freiheit,

    Why are you bothering with EMPTY? Whats the point? Do you actualy think he sees or gets your views? He rejects them outright based on zero experience, but he knows economics..he had 2 courses in school.

    You are arguing common economic sense with a clown who sits at a desk playing with paper clips because there is no demand for whatever it is he has to offer...therefore..he is the very type a union of the 2007 crowd is designed with in mind.

    An umemployable idiot who spends most of his time pushing leftist economic horseshit about China(a place her has never seen except the local take out), capital, labor costs and union pushing...he can't feed himself so he naturally NEEDS a union..otherwise, how is he going to make it? The capitalist market economy screws him by not wanting what he has to offer, so he needs a position from which he can't be fired..a guarentee of a job...regardless if the position has no value...he has that job now....but he sure is good at posting studies...real world, not so good...

    Posted by john maasch at 04/30/2007 @ 11:56pm

72. Happy says:

    KVH: "....the United States ranks 24th out of 25 developed nations in the share of the population with an income below 50 percent of the national median income--

    Ms. KVH,

    I already know that you are rather weak on math! But please, look up the definition of "median"!

    Something kinda tells me that in each of the 25 countries, exactly 50% of the population have incomes that are below the "median"!

    Happy, I think you need to brush up on your reading skills. KVH does not say that "half the population has an income below the median." What she says is that the U.S. has the largest number of people with an income below 50% of the median. There is a difference in those two statements.

    Posted by AnnieMae at 05/01/2007 @ 02:07am

73. Nice to see The Nation putting its feather of weight behind a substantive program.

    Posted by mikecope at 05/01/2007 @ 03:01am

74. Posted by JOHN MAASCH 04/30/2007 @ 11:56pm

    I'm starting to figure out the EMPTY has serious issues. About a month ago we were talking about card check and he claimed that people don't need secret ballots, they should just 'be a man' and refuse to sign the card. Today, he was saying the legislation doesn't do away with secret ballots, and challenged me to say where it does. Then, he was back to saying that people don't need secret ballots again. Bizarre. He's ignored, life is too short.

    Posted by pontificus at 05/01/2007 @ 06:43am

75. MASK, did you listen to any of Bush's speeches, where he laid out the rationale for invading Iraq as a response to 9/11?

    Posted by PONTIFICUS 04/30/2007 @ 9:15pm

    Yes, I did. Did ANY of the rationales he laid....turn out to be true?

    Posted by Mask at 05/01/2007 @ 09:10am

76. The old lying bald coward and defecatious are teaming up? Now that's a brain trust. What an impressive couple of idiots, both deluded with their misconceptions, ignorant of anything and everything outside of their little belief system. A "dynamic, dumbass" duo!

    Your worried about secret ballots, defecatious? Where is all that concern when employers are breaking the law and firing pro union employees, effectively intimidating those that would like union representation?

    And old lying bald coward. How old are you? 54? And still dumb as a rock. My job doesn't define who, what I am. It's a job, nothing more. It's sad to read that you think a job characterizes a person. Afterall, are you not some sort of peddler, chiseling a profit off of Third World labor?

    Posted by mtspence05 at 05/01/2007 @ 09:19am

77. Posted by MASK 05/01/2007 @ 09:10am

    Yes, I did. Did ANY of the rationales he laid....turn out to be true?

    Your question is based on a false premise. Many of the rationales are unproved and essentially unprovable. But the proof of the pudding with regard to Bush's war on terror undertaken after 9/11 is that no attacks on the US or US interests has occurred on his watch, which is all that one can ask.

    A concomitant rationale for invading Iraq, that it was occupied by a murderous regime that terrorized and mass-murdered its own people, are true, and that the world is far better for it. Bush-haters consider the suffering if the Iraqi people under Saddam to be a small price to pay to make Bush look bad, but that pretty much speaks for itself.

    One might argue that since no WMD were found in Iraq at the time of the invasion, they were not and never would be a threat to distribute them to terrorists. Given the still present possiblity that they were spirited out to Syria on the eve of the invasion, and Saddam's previous behavior in using WMD against his own people and Iran, that's a pretty boneheaded presumption. Also, given subsequent developments in Iran, that's a pretty shaky proposition. Iran, which we cannot and never will invade, is reportedly close to developing a nuclear weapon, and North Korea reportedly already has them. Iran makes no bones about their imperative need to use nuclear weapons to wipe Israel off the map. Leftists blithely brush these statements aside because it suits their political agenda, despite the fact that Iran has been sponsoring murderous terrorists for years and clearly intends to continue doing so. Such irresponsible wishful thinking on the part of the left highlights their unsuitability to occupy anything in our society outside of the fringe where they currently reside.

    Both of these states represent clear and present dangers to the world with regard to nuclear proliferation that we will have to live with for years. The fact that there are two to worry about rather than three is a very good thing.

    Posted by pontificus at 05/01/2007 @ 09:37am

78. Posted by MTSPENCE05 05/01/2007 @ 09:19am

    Your worried about secret ballots, defecatious? Where is all that concern when employers are breaking the law and firing pro union employees, effectively intimidating those that would like union representation?

    Ah, the old fallback of frauds everywhere. Your unproven accusations merit a suspension of democratic process. Now where have I heard that before?

    Now, why did I take you off ignore again? Never mind, you're back on.

    Posted by pontificus at 05/01/2007 @ 09:40am

79. But the proof of the pudding with regard to Bush's war on terror undertaken after 9/11 is that no attacks on the US or US interests has occurred on his watch, which is all that one can ask.

    Posted by PONTIFICUS 05/01/2007 @ 09:37am | ignore this person

    First of all that is patently untrue.....we are under attack EVERY single day in Iraq and most days in Afghanistan (or don't you see our troops, Blackwater contractors, journalists and Halibourton employees as coming under the umbrella of "U.S. interests?".

    Second, "all that one can ask"? Ummm, no Ponti some of us want more than a false sense of security. Some of us value liberty. I find it sad that people like you can be so scared as forget such basic underlying principles.

    Posted by freedomplease at 05/01/2007 @ 10:00am

80. Posted by PONTIFICUS 05/01/2007 @ 09:37am

    Are you insane...or merely so deluded by your ideology that you can't even see the illogic of what you write.

    "Many of the rationales are unproved and essentially unprovable."

    So Bush's rationales were unprovable, but you want me to ACCEPT them (MASK, did you listen to any of Bush's speeches, where he laid out the rationale for invading Iraq as a response to 9/11?--Posted by PONTIFICUS 04/30/2007 @ 9:15pm) as valid for invading Iraq?!?!?

    "A concomitant rationale for invading Iraq, that it was occupied by a murderous regime that terrorized and mass-murdered its own people, are true, and that the world is far better for it. Bush-haters consider the suffering if the Iraqi people under Saddam to be a small price to pay to make Bush look bad, but that pretty much speaks for itself."

    So how many have been killed in the war and occupation? And how many have fled as refugees to Jordan, etc.? Seems the "Bush lovers (like yourself) "consider the suffering if the Iraqi people AFTER Saddam to be a small price to pay to make Bush look GOOD, but that pretty much speaks for itself"

    ":One might argue that since no WMD were found in Iraq at the time of the invasion, they were not and never would be a threat to distribute them to terrorists. Given the still present possiblity that they were spirited out to Syria on the eve of the invasion, ....

    The fact that there are two to worry about rather than three is a very good thing."

    SO there's a "possibility" that they were spirited away to Syria, but not certainty. And NO certainty, in fact, the exact OPPOSITE that he EVER had any nuclear program....so how would there have been "three, instead of two"? Do you have some missing proof that Saddam had a nuclear program that even the Bush Administration can't present....or even that it was "spirited away" to Syria???

    In fact, did ANY of the above present ANY facts or supportive data that ANY of the rationales Bush invaded Iraq for...were true (my original question)?

    Posted by Mask at 05/01/2007 @ 10:02am

81. Ponti-It's quite easy to know how many attacks on the US have been stopped by bush anti terrorism policies.None.Bush would have bragging big time had there been any.The terrorists have Bush,Cheney,Rudy,the GOP,and people like you spreading fear for them and have no need to do anything.You do it for them.Your comments about the poor show that you have spent little,if any,time in poor areas and know nothing about the psychology of poverty.Yes,there are people like Maasch who exploit the poor by selling cheap alcohol in poor areas and trying to exploit people with lottery dreams,but there are not nearly the people falling for it as you claim.Your childish nonsense about the union ballots,Saddam,and the left show a childish desire for attention.

    Posted by i'm nobody at 05/01/2007 @ 10:11am

82. nothing to bring out the naysaying bullshitters like pointing out how bass ackwards our country has become over the last couple of decades in terms of fair distribution of income.

    as always, trickle down resembles more golden showers on than a few drops of pure ambrosia in the mouth...

    Posted by ibbleblibble at 05/01/2007 @ 10:17am

83. I love the rightwing rationale that the USS Cole and US Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya represent U.S. interests when Clinton is the President but 3,300 Americans are not a "U.S. interest" when Bush is President!

    Talk about "supporting the troops!"

    Is this what they meant 4 years ago TODAY about "Mission Accomplished"?

    Posted by freedomplease at 05/01/2007 @ 10:21am

84. " My job doesn't define who, what I am. It's a job, nothing more."

    In your case, sadly, it says volumes about you..and you know it...go to Liza and help her with Walmart.

    Posted by john maasch at 05/01/2007 @ 10:33am

85. Posted by I'M NOBODY 05/01/2007 @ 10:11am

    Ponti-It's quite easy to know how many attacks on the US have been stopped by bush anti terrorism policies.None.Bush would have bragging big time had there been any.The terrorists have Bush,Cheney,Rudy,the GOP,and people like you spreading fear for them and have no need to do anything.You do it for them.

    Wait a minute, IM. I'm basing my 'fear' tactics on the stated intent of people like Bin Laden to kill as many innocent American civilians as possible, and their demonstrated history and capability of doing so. You're basing your statements on some kind of blind belief that the threat of terrorism is all some kind of mirage. That simply does not seem reasonable, let alone rational.

    Your comments about the poor show that you have spent little,if any,time in poor areas and know nothing about the psychology of poverty.Yes,there are people like Maasch who exploit the poor by selling cheap alcohol in poor areas and trying to exploit people with lottery dreams,but there are not nearly the people falling for it as you claim.Your childish nonsense about the union ballots,Saddam,and the left show a childish desire for attention.

    Woooooo where does all that come from. Childish nonsense about union ballots? Everything I have posted is accepted as fact in the mainstream; the union legislation does away with the secret ballot, and this will lead to intimidation tactics by union organizers. This is not even in dispute in the mainstream press. What are you talking about, 'childish'?

    You may have different opinions than me about what makes people poor, but that hardly justifies you waving me off because I'm not saying what you want to hear.

    Posted by pontificus at 05/01/2007 @ 10:38am

86. But if folks blame Presidents for things that happen on their watch, it seems only fair to give them credit for things that do not.

    Posted by PONTIFICUS 04/30/2007 @ 10:12pm | ignore this person

    Yes...and because the world hasn't come to an end as yet, we need to give Bush credit for that too.

    Posted by OneVote at 05/01/2007 @ 10:39am

87. Posted by PONTIFICUS

    So we're supposed to believe that unions are going to bully, strong arm people into signing up against their will in an environment that allows businesses to fire pro union employees with near impunity? And, of course, workers don't want union representation; they don't want better pay, benefits, the protection that a union provides.

    Does 2 + 2 still equal 4?

    And you're so concerned with the rights with of labor, right?

    Posted by mtspence05 at 05/01/2007 @ 10:40am

88. ".Yes,there are people like Maasch who exploit the poor by selling cheap alcohol in poor areas and trying to exploit people with lottery dreams,but there are not nearly the people falling for it as you claim."

    ?Lotteries? Never play or recommend..I don't gamble in Las Vegas either..its all rigged, like Hillarys Presidential run, or social security...they are unsupportable on their own after time.

    Looks more like YOU have won the lottery of life in a way...not many places on earth one can be disabled and get a check for life...

    BTW,why would I(or anybody), sell alcohol to the poor? Of course, thats where the libs focus all their campaigns..selling something to the "poor"... They can't pay for it...no profits,see? I would have a better time selling to idiots like Empty who have nothing to do all day but think up foolish economic policys as how things should work...all the while he doesn't work...because he can't do anything worth while...

    Wait!!!!, he could be a greeter at Walmart and then ask those customers if they would want to pay higher prices so he could join a union..and no, there would be no increase in productivity or any more price declines..ever...not in the contract and thats not important..whats important is keeping idiots like EMPTY in a job where he can't be fired. Thats the goal.

    Posted by john maasch at 05/01/2007 @ 10:44am

89. Pontifitard is a blathering windbag of self-righteous bullshit, knowing nothing, signifying nothing, serving only to reveal his hatred and loathing of Christian ideals, and his own rank cowardice in not accepting his shortcomings and failures as a human being.

    You have no honor, no decency, and no character, you fucking coward.

    Posted by Dr Decibels at 05/01/2007 @ 10:45am

90. "Yes...and because the world hasn't come to an end as yet, we need to give Bush credit for that too.

    Posted by ONEVOTE 05/01/2007 @ 10:39am

    Maybe the world is waiting for Hillary? Then come to an end.. Would that be to her credit?

    Posted by john maasch at 05/01/2007 @ 10:46am

91. Posted by FREEDOMPLEASE 05/01/2007 @ 10:21am

    I love the rightwing rationale that the USS Cole and US Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya represent U.S. interests when Clinton is the President but 3,300 Americans are not a "U.S. interest" when Bush is President!

    Talk about "supporting the troops!"

    Is this what they meant 4 years ago TODAY about "Mission Accomplished"?

    FP, the 3,300 of our troops that have been killed by terrorists were killed in a war zone. You are equating these casualties with innocent civilians killed by terrorists. There's a clear logical disconnect there.

    Posted by pontificus at 05/01/2007 @ 10:47am

92. Posted by DR DECIBELS 05/01/2007 @ 10:45am

    Pontifitard is a blathering windbag of self-righteous bullshit, knowing nothing, signifying nothing, serving only to reveal his hatred and loathing of Christian ideals, and his own rank cowardice in not accepting his shortcomings and failures as a human being.

    You have no honor, no decency, and no character, you fucking coward.

    You are a fitting representative of your segment of society, Doc. Keep it up.

    Posted by pontificus at 05/01/2007 @ 10:49am

93. Posted by JOHN MAASCH

    No, but it does say so much about you. You're ignorant, and yet you believe having money makes you better than others, even others much more intelligent, knowledgeable than you.

    Posted by mtspence05 at 05/01/2007 @ 10:50am

94. "So we're supposed to believe that unions are going to bully, .."

    I worked on a block/brick laying crew during college and had my tireed slashed, ganged up on by union thugs threatening more violence if i didn't join the union...and the many layers I worked with hated the union and made more momney on off days scabing jobs on ttheir own..I helped them ...and I lived in Minnesota, home of the DFl most pro union place since Michigan...however, not anymore...

    Posted by MTSPENCE05 05/01/2007 @ 10:40am

    Your ideal maybe the union system, but it is not a place for advancement or improved quality, productivity or growth in todays REAL WORLD..it is for status quo..all the time. The unions time has come and gone...you missed the largest expansion of wealth, income and profit the world has ever seen, the average guy as well as companys have all im;proved lots in general for the last 20 years, and you have like wise missed the era of unions...you were born to late.

    Posted by john maasch at 05/01/2007 @ 10:55am

95. Keep it up.

    Posted by PONTIFICUS 05/01/2007 @ 10:49am

    I can keep it up all night. Ask your wife.

    Posted by Dr Decibels at 05/01/2007 @ 10:55am

96. I notice you did not dispute my charaterization of you, therefore, I accept that you acknowledge it as fact.

    Thanks.

    The first step to fixing your shortcomings is recognizing the multitude you have to deal with.

    Posted by Dr Decibels at 05/01/2007 @ 10:57am

97. " yet you believe having money makes you better than others, even others much more intelligent, knowledgeable than you.

    Posted by MTSPENCE05 05/01/2007 @ 10:50am | ignore this person

    "Never ever claimed such nonsense"

    ...but bitching and whining about "illegal firings", or evil corporations constantly does place you in the "I can't figure out the game category"....and speaks volumes about you and your survival capabilities...

    Posted by john maasch at 05/01/2007 @ 10:58am

98. Posted by DR DECIBELS 05/01/2007 @ 10:55am

    Keep it up.

    Posted by PONTIFICUS 05/01/2007 @ 10:49am

    I can keep it up all night. Ask your wife.

    Doc, I'd put you on ignore but it's kind of like watching Fear Factor; you wonder just how much a person will degrade themself in front of others.

    Posted by pontificus at 05/01/2007 @ 11:02am

99. Ponti,

    Osama in his delirious rantings has declared worldwide war on us.

    When he attacks a navy ship in Yemen or when he attacks mostly non U.S. employees in Dar es Salem or Nairobi you get upset but when he continually sucessfully kills thousands of our countrymen and by doing so INCREASES his ability to recruit (because his primary targets are military infidels on holy lands) you think its OK?

    Got it Ponti!

    Posted by freedomplease at 05/01/2007 @ 11:07am

100. Ponti-The thing that was childish was your claim that this union ballot thing meant that the left was like saddam.That was childish and ignorant propaganda aimed at the pathetically stupid.The fear tactic that you folks are using are the moronic and feared based claims that voting Democrat will increase terrorism in America which your kind claimed would happen following the 2006 elections,but has not happened as your kind predicted.The terrorists don't need to spread fear in America.They have Bush/Cheney,Rudy,the GOP,Rush,and many of you doing their job for them.

     Posted by i'm nobody at 05/01/2007 @ 11:07am

101. Ah, poor little college boy. You got to dodge the war with that deferment, unlike the union men you were working with.

     Can you just not wrap your old, feeble brain around the fact that someone has to do the brick laying (and all the other things that keep our society running)? They don't get to just do it during the summer while they're not in school. For the rest of their lives, five days a week, year after year they do the labor. And if they're willing to come in on time, ready to work, why should they not enjoy a decent wage, benefits, medical coverage? Not everyone can be the CEO, President, a doctor; someone has to do the more mundane, menial tasks; somethings cannot be out sourced.

     Everyone is benefiting from the current policies? Pull your bald head out of your old lying coward ass. How would that be possible? With outsourcing there's more labor in the market; union representation is way down. Now I'm not an economics professor, but that means wages have gone down in this miraculous period you describe.

     Another thing, old lying bald coward: Coming on to a unionized work site and running your ignorant mouth should have gotten you a lot worse. Attempting to organize in an anti-union environment is not the same thing. If you possessed any objectivity you could comprehend that.

     Posted by mtspence05 at 05/01/2007 @ 11:09am

102. ...but bitching and whining about "illegal firings", or evil corporations constantly does place you in the "I can't figure out the game category"....and speaks volumes about you and your survival capabilities...

     Posted by JOHN MAASCH

     The game? True, I'm not an unctuous, obsequious, sycophant. Kissing up, just playing along has never been my way. For a lying, war dodging coward it's probably second nature, huh?

     Posted by mtspence05 at 05/01/2007 @ 11:12am

103. Posted by ONEVOTE 05/01/2007 @ 10:39am

     Yes...and because the world hasn't come to an end as yet, we need to give Bush credit for that too.

     This is not a logically coherent statement. Bush has not announced any plan to "stop the end of the world;" however, he does have a clear plan to protect this country from terrorists, and one may reasonably conclude from the results that he has succeeded in doing so.

     Posted by pontificus at 05/01/2007 @ 11:16am

104. you wonder just how much a person will degrade themself in front of others.

     Posted by PONTIFICUS 05/01/2007 @ 11:02am

     When you hit bottom let me know so I can take a picture. You really don't have much of a grip on reality, eh, pontitard?

     Posted by Dr Decibels at 05/01/2007 @ 11:24am

105. Posted by I'M NOBODY 05/01/2007 @ 11:07am

     Ponti-The thing that was childish was your claim that this union ballot thing meant that the left was like saddam.That was childish and ignorant propaganda aimed at the pathetically stupid.

     I'm sorry if I was unclear. What I meant to say was that the secret ballot is a key element of a free democracy, and that elimination of it is a tactic favored by dictators like Saddam and Fidel Castro. You can draw your own conclusions about the sort of people that are in favor of eliminating the secret ballot here in America.

     The fear tactic that you folks are using are the moronic and feared based claims that voting Democrat will increase terrorism in America which your kind claimed would happen following the 2006 elections,but has not happened as your kind predicted.The terrorists don't need to spread fear in America.They have Bush/Cheney,Rudy,the GOP,Rush,and many of you doing their job for them.

     If the Democrats are able to force a retreat from Iraq, the country will collapse, oil prices will go sky high, the terrorists will take over, and this country will be hit with huge direct and indirect costs, quite possibly including increased terrorism here in the US. This is not fear, it's quite likely, unless you believe that terrorism is some sort of mirage.

     Posted by pontificus at 05/01/2007 @ 11:24am

106. ...but bitching and whining about "illegal firings", or evil corporations constantly does place you in the "I can't figure out the game category"....and speaks volumes about you and your survival capabilities...

     Posted by JOHN MAASCH

     Survival capabilities? It makes me think of a cockroach. Yeah, remember how you remarked that your roommate in college was "smarter" than the other guys by dodging the war with a deferment (which, of course, you did to)? You really think acting like an insect is being "smarter" don't you?

     Posted by mtspence05 at 05/01/2007 @ 11:25am

107. "They don't get to just do it during the summer while they're not in school. For the rest of their lives, five days a week, year after year they do the labor. And if they're willing to come in on time, ready to work, why should they not enjoy a decent wage, benefits, medical coverage? "

     I KNOW...I DID IT, TOO...IDIOT.

     Yes, they did do this AND they hated the union...they had insurance anyway...the company provided it EVERYONE in those days...

     My you are really stupid in the full sense of the word..you still don't get the deferment issue, you don't get the simple econmics of the world and you certainly do not undestand how to feed yourself here in America without so sort of help or program...it is no surprise that you are alone in life sitting at an empty desk..you have peaked already..

     I have been aware of only 3 or 4 stupid people in my life time..I have never met you personaly and I have added you to the truely stupid list.

     My God, thats quite an accomplishment. It is so sad for you...you are so...useless...even to your self.

     Posted by john maasch at 05/01/2007 @ 11:29am

108. Ponti,

     Yes Bush's plan to stop the terrorists as far as I can tell is to first let them carry out 9/11 even though any other President would have heeded the flashing siren warnings.

     Then to NOT fully implement the findings of the commission which he initially objected to having in the fist place.

     Now his plan seems to be to put "soft targets" (about 275,000 american troops and contractors) into a holy land in order to act as a recruiting tool and a training ground for our enemies.

     In the meantime Bush has failed to secure our porous borders and failed to implement any serious port container screening system.

     But what he has done, is he's made it quasi legal (until the USSC has to show that its not legal) to spy on Americans without a warrant and to check which books we take out of libraries.

     You could say Bush has done a heckuva job.....if you were into the type of utter hapless mediocrity that Bush is into.

     Posted by freedomplease at 05/01/2007 @ 11:29am

109. Just in case the two idiots didn't read it the first time I posted it.

     Why America Needs Employee Free Choice Act by TeamsterPower Thu Jan 11, 2007 at 12:13:31 PM PDT

     Almost one-in-five union organizers or activists can expect to be fired as a result of their activities in a union election campaign. This revelation came last week in a report (pdf) by The Center for Economic Policy and Research.

     "Aggressive actions by employers -- often including illegal firings -- have significantly undermined the ability of U.S. workers to unionize their workplaces," said John Schmitt, CEPR senior economist and lead author of the paper. "With the legal penalties for such actions being so slight, employers can break the law to head-off organizing efforts and face almost no real repercussions."

     TeamsterPower's diary :: :: The right of workers in this country to freely organize and bargain collectively is one of the sacred freedoms we have as Americans. It is just as important as free speech. It is also an essential human right. And since 2000 has been under increasing attack by the Bush Administration and large corporations, as CEPR's study reflects.

     "We find a steep rise in the 2000s relative to the last half of the 1990s in illegal firings of pro-union workers," the study says.

     In 1948, almost one-in-three workers was in a union; by 2005, the fraction had fallen to just one-in-eight. The drop-off in union membership has been particularly stark in the private sector, where, by 2005, only about one-in-twelve workers was unionized.

     Several explanations have been put forward about the causes behind this decline, the authors write, including "a systematic attack on unions" by employers with "substantial legal support and cover."

     This paper reviews evidence that provides significant support for the final explanation for union decline - that aggressive, even illegal, employer behavior has undermined the ability of U.S. workers to create unions at their work places. The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) makes it illegal for employers to fire workers involved in union-organizing campaigns. The penalties associated with "discriminatory discharges" under the NLRA, however, are small: back pay for illegally fired workers minus any earnings that workers had after they were fired. Given these small penalties for illegal firings, the NLRA, in practice, has given employers a powerful anti-union strategy: fire one or more prominent pro-union employees - typically workers involved in organizing the union - with the hope of disrupting the internal workings of the union's campaign, while intimidating the rest of the potential bargaining unit in advance of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)-supervised representation election.

     ... Employers engaging in illegal firing activities will generally discharge key union activists, rather than random employees believed to be sympathetic to the union.

     ... If we assume that ten percent of pro-union workers are union activists, then we can estimate that in 2005 union activists faced almost a 20 percent chance of being fired during a union-election campaign.

     About card-check In a traditional organizing campaign, organizers collect signed cards from workers saying they want to be union members. When organizers collect cards from a majority of workers, they take the cards to the employer, who generally requests that the NLRB hold a secret-ballot election to verify the card count.

     "The period between the time when unions present management with the signed cards and the actual NLRB-supervised election is typically the most active period for employers that engage in aggressive and illegal anti-union behavior, including illegal firings," the CEPR report says.

     Employers, however, also have the option to recognize the union based solely on the collection of cards, which is where the Employee Free Choice Act comes in.

     Simply put, the bill would require employers to recognize a union after a majority of workers sign cards for union representation. It also would provide for mediation and arbitration of first-contract disputes, and authorize stronger penalties for illegal firings and other violations of the law when workers seek to form a union.

     After all, as former Sen. John Edwards repeats often when speaking to labor unions: "If anyone in America can sign a card to join the Republican Party, they should be able to sign a card and join a union."

     Drop that doing away with the secret ballot crap like you're oh so concerned with the rights of labor.

     Posted by mtspence05 at 05/01/2007 @ 11:30am

110. FREEDOM: "stop the terrorists... What Terrorists? Do"Muslim militants" in Thailand qualify? Nah!

     Monday April 30, 1:27 PM

     Two Buddhists set ablaze in Thai Muslim south

     PATTANI, Thailand (Reuters) - Suspected Muslim militants beheaded a Buddhist man, shot dead his nephew and set both bodies on fire....

     The 30-year man and his 14-year-old nephew were killed in a Muslim village in Pattani,....

     The head was found 5 km away at a government school where three bombs were planted at the entrance, police Lieutenant....

     .....Mobile phone service was switched off in the area to prevent the bombs being set off by phone signals.....

     Posted by Happy at 05/01/2007 @ 11:35am

111. My you are really stupid in the full sense of the word..you still don't get the deferment issue, you don't get the simple econmics of the world and you certainly do not undestand how to feed yourself here in America without so sort of help or program...it is no surprise that you are alone in life sitting at an empty desk..you have peaked already.. Posted by JOHN MAASCH

     Oh, I understand the deferment issue all too well. Those with the money to attend college did not have to go.

     Sorry to disappoint you, but I'm not on government assistance.

     The workers just couldn't stand the union, huh? They didn't like highter wages, insurance (Would the employer provide insurance if he did not have to?)?

     And, no, you did it for only one summer, while you were in college. Can you not read? Look at it again, old lying bald coward.

     Swelling the labor market does not drive down wages? You learn supply and demand on the first day of macro, right?

     Posted by mtspence05 at 05/01/2007 @ 11:35am

112. ""smarter" than the other guys by dodging the war with a deferment (which, of course, you did to)?"

     My roomate had draft numer 2 or 3...so he went to ROTC to enlist to perhaps become an officer(required more time in the military that draft) and they told him his eyes were not good enough..so he waits for draft physical and they take him..he went to court and won..was he smart? you bet..was he smarter than you...my dog is smarter than you..was he, me or milllions like us in the same position smarter? who knows, but definitely smarter than you..and it has nothing to do with the military or being drafted or enlisting..you are stupid plain and simple..even old Forrest Gump would be able to see it in you...

     My god man...by not enlisting in the military as you gives you the right to call others who didn't cowards? Its voulenteer... Explain that to me and the millions of others ..if you are able. I feel it is you who is the coward..you who are afraid to do something...you seem paralyzed and bitter..unable to move yourself in any direction..that is a coward in my book and it has cost you more than you are willing to admit here..you don't even use you real name...

     Posted by john maasch at 05/01/2007 @ 11:44am

113. And I suppose, old lying bald coward, that taking kickbacks from prostitutes is another example of being "smart" and playing the game, huh? Yeah, I can see now that you're so much "smarter" than me.

     Posted by mtspence05 at 05/01/2007 @ 11:46am

114. "The workers just couldn't stand the union, huh? They didn't like highter wages, insurance (Would the employer provide insurance if he did not have to?)? "

     They made more on the side for cash...I worked the weekend jobs with them..I was the tender also and I know how many blocks/bricks could be layed in a given time and was told to SLOW DOWN on the job site but kicked it up on the private site..

     Don't be childish.

     Posted by john maasch at 05/01/2007 @ 11:48am

115. Yeah, yeah, yeah, old lying bald coward. That's not the story you told the first time. And it's not the first time you've changed stories.

     Back then it was not all volunteer and you damn well know it.

     Actually this is my name. Can you not get anything right, old lying bald coward?

     Posted by mtspence05 at 05/01/2007 @ 11:48am

116. "Those with the money to attend college did not have to go. "

     Not in my dorm.

     Posted by john maasch at 05/01/2007 @ 11:48am

117. Posted by FREEDOMPLEASE 05/01/2007 @ 11:29am

     Yes Bush's plan to stop the terrorists as far as I can tell is to first let them carry out 9/11 even though any other President would have heeded the flashing siren warnings.

     An utterly unknowable proposition; speculation posing as fact.

     Then to NOT fully implement the findings of the commission which he initially objected to having in the fist place.

     And this resulted in...what?

     Now his plan seems to be to put "soft targets" (about 275,000 american troops and contractors) into a holy land in order to act as a recruiting tool and a training ground for our enemies.

     American troops, by definition, are not 'soft targets'.

     In the meantime Bush has failed to secure our porous borders and failed to implement any serious port container screening system.

     Again, speculation posing as fact.

     But what he has done, is he's made it quasi legal (until the USSC has to show that its not legal) to spy on Americans without a warrant and to check which books we take out of libraries.

     Has anyone you know been affected by this? Anyone you've heard of? It sounds like paranoid hysteria to me.

     You could say Bush has done a heckuva job.....if you were into the type of utter hapless mediocrity that Bush is into.

     No more attacks have occurredo on his watch, outside of the war zones. And the economy is doing quite well. Sounds pretty good to me.

     Posted by pontificus at 05/01/2007 @ 11:48am

118. JM & MT:

     Somehow, you two remind me of Jack Klugman & Tony Randall!

     Posted by Happy at 05/01/2007 @ 11:49am

119. "And, no, you did it for only one summer, while you were in college. Can you not read? Look at it again, old lying bald coward. "

     Took a year and 1/2 off from school and did it full time...

     you are nearing the end, dear boy.

     Posted by john maasch at 05/01/2007 @ 11:49am

120. Ponti-I can't find these leftists who are advocating the ending of secret ballots.Where are they?Your conclusions as to what will happen if we leave Iraq is pure speculation that is not fact based,but is simply more fear mongering.If you get into the real world you'll discover that there are far more functioning alcoholics then there are non functioning alcoholics because most people can afford to be an alcoholic and don't end up in the projects or on the streets.Do you have any idea how many rehab facilities cater to the upper middle class and to the upper class?There are many.Few people end up poor due to drug addiction or alcoholism and there are numerous examples of those who went up the financial ladder and not down.The vast majority,however, stay in the same socio/economic group that they started out in.For some reason people like you set higher standards for the poor than you do the more well off even though they suffer from the same disease.At least,poor people have a good excuse for wanting to forget,but what excuse do these others have?

     Posted by i'm nobody at 05/01/2007 @ 11:51am

121. "Swelling the labor market does not drive down wages? You learn supply and demand on the first day of macro, right?

     Posted by MTSPENCE05 05/01

     I didn't fool myself into thinking I understood economics by taking econ micro/macro 101 as some here..

     I actually experienced it first hand in the "arena" , got eaten alive and came back to fight another day...but you...UNION! UNION! I need a UNION or I will starve... you are the COWARD.

     Posted by john maasch at 05/01/2007 @ 11:52am

122. They made more on the side for cash...I worked the weekend jobs with them..I was the tender also and I know how many blocks/bricks could be layed in a given time and was told to SLOW DOWN on the job site but kicked it up on the private site..

     And why was that? Were they able to snag more because the union wage had driven up the price of skilled labor?

     Slow down? Is not management always demanding faster? What's the difference? Once again, some little war dodging college coward doing a little work during the summer is not the same as doing it for the rest of your working life.

     Posted by mtspence05 at 05/01/2007 @ 11:53am

123. ...you wonder just how much a person will degrade themself in front of others.

     Posted by PONTIFICUS 05/01/2007 @ 11:02am

     I see from time to time via others' comments, that "person" still have not found the brain that was sucked out of him at birth....a `failed' Dilation & Extraction! Keep posting his further degradation and thanks for saving me time!

     Posted by Happy at 05/01/2007 @ 11:55am

124. Posted by I'M NOBODY 05/01/2007 @ 11:51am

     Ponti-I can't find these leftists who are advocating the ending of secret ballots.Where are they?

     Well, John Edwards is in favor of it. Teddy Kennedy. MTSPENCE. The vast majority of Dems in Congress will vote for the bill. Good enough?

     Posted by pontificus at 05/01/2007 @ 11:55am

125. Oh, a whole year and an half! Oh, well, that's completely different. You're just a regular prole, aren't you? Did you take that year off before or after the war ended?

     Posted by mtspence05 at 05/01/2007 @ 11:55am

126. Happy,

     You are correct...it is like trying to have a discussion with a 12 year old..

     Sorry, I am done...

     won't happen again and I apologise to all for taking up WAY to much space..whether you agree with me or not..it will not happen again with EMPTY SPENCE..THE MANS MAN...

     Posted by john maasch at 05/01/2007 @ 11:56am

127. Swelling the labor market does not drive down wages? You learn supply and demand on the first day of macro, right?

     Well, does it? It's a simple yes or no.

     Posted by mtspence05 at 05/01/2007 @ 11:57am

128. " Once again, some little war dodging college coward doing a little work during the summer is not the same as doing it for the rest of your working life.

     Posted by MTSPENCE05 05/01/2007 @ 11:53am | ignore this person

     How would you know? Sitting behind that desk counting paper clips..coward.(hairy coward?)

     Sorry all..couldn't resist...I am done..really.

     Posted by john maasch at 05/01/2007 @ 11:59am

129. Yeah, and now that he's failed he's gonna attempt to take the high road and pretend he's above me. The same old story.

     It's funny. You berate me for having the time to do this, but you spend just as much time as me here. What does that say about your position? When does all that hard work you're always bragging about happen?

     You're a phoney.

     Posted by mtspence05 at 05/01/2007 @ 11:59am

130. Did you take that year off before or after the war ended?

     Posted by mtspence05 at 05/01/2007 @ 12:00pm

131. failed' Dilation & Extraction! Keep posting his further degradation and thanks for saving me time!

     Posted by HAPPY 05/01/2007 @ 11:55am

     Go fuck your mother. Typical repug tough guy pussy.

     Posted by Dr Decibels at 05/01/2007 @ 12:04pm

132. You and Ponti will be the prime exhibits in the failed evolutionary display at the Zoo. We will stuff your lifeless carcasses for future generations to point and laugh at.

     Posted by Dr Decibels at 05/01/2007 @ 12:10pm

133. Hey DR,

     "Go fuck your mother. Typical repug tough guy pussy.

     Posted by DR DECIBELS 05/01/2007 @ 12:04pm |"

     Tough morning going here, eh?

     Posted by john maasch at 05/01/2007 @ 12:12pm

134. The Howling Monkey Neo-Con Dead-Enders are sure rattling their cages today. Wish they would stop throwing their turds around and just eat them like good little monkeys.

     Posted by Dr Decibels at 05/01/2007 @ 12:13pm

135. I don't take much shit from anyone, JM. We have reached an understanding, but others here seem to love to start shit when they don't have to back it up with their teeth.

     But the weather is sunny, the day is progessing well, so who cares?

     Posted by Dr Decibels at 05/01/2007 @ 12:15pm

136. "But the weather is sunny, the day is progessing well, so who cares?"

     :)

     Posted by john maasch at 05/01/2007 @ 12:28pm

137. Swelling the labor market does not drive down wages? You learn supply and demand on the first day of macro, right?

     Well, does it? It's a simple yes or no.

     Let me guess: You disagree with the premise of my question?

     Posted by mtspence05 at 05/01/2007 @ 12:30pm

138. Ponti-Do you have quotes where people are talking about ending secret ballots?

     Posted by i'm nobody at 05/01/2007 @ 12:31pm

139. Defecatious has only the RNC talking points and references from a motivational speaker.

     Posted by mtspence05 at 05/01/2007 @ 12:34pm

140. This is not a logically coherent statement. Bush has not announced any plan to "stop the end of the world;" however, he does have a clear plan to protect this country from terrorists, and one may reasonably conclude from the results that he has succeeded in doing so.

     Posted by PONTIFICUS 05/01/2007 @ 11:16am | ignore this person

     ANOTHER MISSION ACCOMPLISHED EH PONTI?

     I don't think that it logically follows that because we haven't had another terrorist attack since 9/11 that means that we are safe and secure under the Bush watch. This is wishful thinking on your part. I believe the opposite proposition is equally logical that it is coincidental that we have not had another terrorist attack since 9/11 under Bush watch. Can you name and support one thing that Bush has done to really make our country more safe and secure?

     Posted by OneVote at 05/01/2007 @ 12:34pm

141. Posted by I'M NOBODY 05/01/2007 @ 12:31pm

     Ponti-Do you have quotes where people are talking about ending secret ballots?

     www.google.com

     Type in 'secret ballot Employee Free Choice Act'. Draw your own conclusions. The Democrats DO NOT want to be quoted on this bill, other than to say, bizarrely, that secret ballots ALLOW intimidation of workers, and ELIMINATION of the secret ballot will somehow 'enhance free choice'. George Orwell COULD NOT have satirized this kind of thinking any better.

     Posted by pontificus at 05/01/2007 @ 12:40pm

142. And the economy is doing quite well. Sounds pretty good to me.

     Posted by PONTIFICUS 05/01/2007 @ 11:48am | ignore this person

     By what measure Ponti? The stock market? Recent economic data points to slowing economy, crisis in housing markets, dollar devaluation, continued loss of jobs, lack of consumer confidence.....

     Posted by OneVote at 05/01/2007 @ 12:42pm

143. Ponti-I figured you had nothing,but wanted to make sure.

     Posted by i'm nobody at 05/01/2007 @ 12:43pm

144. A supporter of this administration is going to cite George Orwell and Newspeak?

     Posted by mtspence05 at 05/01/2007 @ 12:43pm

145. The irony just doesn't stop with this crowd, eh?

     Posted by Dr Decibels at 05/01/2007 @ 12:45pm

146. Posted by ONEVOTE 05/01/2007 @ 12:34pm

     I don't think that it logically follows that because we haven't had another terrorist attack since 9/11 that means that we are safe and secure under the Bush watch. This is wishful thinking on your part. I believe the opposite proposition is equally logical that it is coincidental that we have not had another terrorist attack since 9/11 under Bush watch. Can you name and support one thing that Bush has done to really make our country more safe and secure?

     Destruction of the regime that hosted and provided a base to the terrorists, the Taliban in Afghanistan?

     Posted by pontificus at 05/01/2007 @ 12:45pm

147. Posted by ONEVOTE 05/01/2007 @ 12:42pm

     By what measure Ponti? The stock market?

     Low inflation, low unemployment, soaring stock market, huge increase in American household wealth?

     Recent economic data points to slowing economy, crisis in housing markets, dollar devaluation, continued loss of jobs, lack of consumer confidence.....

     I offer statistics, you offer 'feelings'. Slowing economy? When does the economy not slow? Loss of jobs? WTF are you talking about? We have 4.5 percent unemployment, historically low! Lack of consumer confidence? What the heck is that supposed to mean?

     Posted by pontificus at 05/01/2007 @ 12:48pm

148. You mean the resurgent Taliban, feeding off our absence to increase their strength?

     Posted by Dr Decibels at 05/01/2007 @ 12:49pm

149. Posted by I'M NOBODY 05/01/2007 @ 12:43pm

     Ponti-I figured you had nothing,but wanted to make sure.

     Oh, okay, well you certainly changed my mind with that unassailable logic!

     Posted by pontificus at 05/01/2007 @ 12:49pm

150. I offer statistics - you offer bullshit wingnut talking points

     When does the economy not slow? Under Democratic presidents.

     Loss of jobs? WTF are you talking about? Jobs being shipped overseas, moron.

     Lack of consumer confidence? What the heck is that supposed to mean? People are worried about their jobs being shipped overseas, asshole.

     Posted by PONTIFICUS 05/01/2007 @ 12:48pm

     I'm sure you have heard it many times before, and will hear it many times since, but blow it out your ass, hypocrite.

     Posted by Dr Decibels at 05/01/2007 @ 12:51pm

151. Destruction of the regime that hosted and provided a base to the terrorists, the Taliban in Afghanistan?

     Posted by PONTIFICUS

     Have you not been watching anything other than the Faux News? The Taliban is on the come back. Georgie failed to finish the job in Afghanistan before he attacked Iraq. It's cowboys and indians in Afghanistan these days.

     And he failed to get Osama when he had the chance, too.

     There are lots of statistics to cite. Maybe you should look at all the economic statistics.

     Posted by mtspence05 at 05/01/2007 @ 12:51pm

152. Terror Attacks Up Nearly 30 Percent, Report Says By Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay McClatchy Newspapers

     Friday 27 April 2007

     President Bush and his aides routinely call Iraq the "central front" in Bush's war on terrorism and likely will say that the preponderance of attacks there and in Afghanistan prove their point. But critics say the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq have worsened the terrorist threat. Washington - A State Department report on terrorism due out next week will show a nearly 30 percent increase in terrorist attacks worldwide in 2006 to more than 14,000, almost all of the boost due to growing violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. officials said Friday.

     Posted by Dr Decibels at 05/01/2007 @ 12:53pm

153. Washington - A State Department report on terrorism due out next week will show a nearly 30 percent increase in terrorist attacks worldwide in 2006 to more than 14,000, almost all of the boost due to growing violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. officials said Friday.

     How the FUCK does that make us safer, pontitard?

     Posted by Dr Decibels at 05/01/2007 @ 12:53pm

154. Ponti-I'm not trying to change your mind.You may choose to exist in ignorance if that is what you wish.I'm only here because it's raining and I can't get outside to do what I enjoy.

     Posted by i'm nobody at 05/01/2007 @ 12:54pm

155. Based on data compiled by the U.S. intelligence community's National Counterterrorism Center, the report says there were 14,338 terrorist attacks last year, up 29 percent from 11,111 attacks in 2005.

     Posted by Dr Decibels at 05/01/2007 @ 12:54pm

156. Hey, ponti boy, I bet we're winning the "war on drugs" too, huh?

     Posted by Dr Decibels at 05/01/2007 @ 12:54pm

157. How much heroin is being grown in Afghanistan now?

     Posted by mtspence05 at 05/01/2007 @ 12:57pm

158. ONEVOTE: Drat! A Big One that got away! After all the money I'd paid into the WSJ!

     Dow Jones & Co. Shares Soar After Bid From Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.

     Tuesday, May 01, 2007

     NEW YORK -- Dow Jones & Co. (DJ), publisher of The Wall Street Journal, said Tuesday it has received an unsolicited bid from Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. (NWS) to buy the company for $60 per share, or $5 billion.

     Shares of the financial news publishing company soared after a cable news channel reported news of the offer earlier Tuesday.

     After opening at $37.12, the shares jumped $20.95, or 58 percent, to $57.28 before being halted on the New York Stock Exchange for news pending.....

     ******************************

     Slowing economy? Not quite! Growth rate has slowed! Don't believe what the NYT says! Even if actually slows (ie, goes in reverse w/contraction), sometimes it is needed to corect for various imbalances!

     Housing crisis? Puhleeze! For every subprime default, 4 to 5 others are homeowners. In case you didn't know, even ?retired? stiffs like you, play the `housing' market and what goes up....(complete the sentence).

     Dollar devaluatin? Exactly as expected and now, leading to major export gains and hopefully, reduce the growth in sales of what Walmart sells (to Liza and Liberals' delight)! Did you know that the S&P companies are now expecting profit gains north of 7% for 1st Quarter due to foreign sales? Stock `analysts' had expected ~4%.....That's Wall Street `smarts' for you!

     Job loss? PONTI covered it!

     Consumer Confidence? Income gain of 0.7% vs. expected 0.3%...damn, look it up yourself! Gotta go (& listen to Rush in my PickUp)!

     Posted by Happy at 05/01/2007 @ 1:11pm

159. Ponti,

     MTSPENCE makes the key point..........if the US was serious about international terrorism (which I contend we are not) then we would not be seeing heroin production at levels GREATER than preinvasion levels in Afghanistan. Do you think that the heroin profits are for anything other than anti US terrorism funding?

     That is how hard Bush is working to keep us safe ponti. And while that might be OK for lovers of mediocrity it's a piss poor performance in my book.

     Let me ask you something if you owned 10 McDonalds franchises would you let GW Bush be the manager at one of them? (I wouldn't).

     Posted by freedomplease at 05/01/2007 @ 1:18pm

160. Let me ask you something if you owned 10 McDonalds franchises would you let GW Bush be the manager at one of them? (I wouldn't).

     I would let him mop the toilets. Period. He's not good for anything else, and I have no doubts he would manage to fuck that up too.

     Posted by Dr Decibels at 05/01/2007 @ 1:20pm

161. The contention by Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney that al-Qaida terrorists were in Iraq and allied with the late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein before the invasion has been disproved on numerous fronts.

     In September, a Senate Intelligence Committee report found that Saddam rejected pleas for assistance from al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and tried to capture another terrorist whose presence in Iraq is often cited by Cheney, the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

     "Postwar findings indicate that Saddam Hussein was distrustful of al- Qaida and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime, refusing all requests from al-Qaida to provide material or operational support," the Senate report said.

     Yeah, victory sure tastes sweet.

     Posted by Dr Decibels at 05/01/2007 @ 1:21pm

162. In Some Industrialized Countries, a Significant Share of the Population Lives in Economic Distress. Almost everyone in the world's more developed countries lives well above the international poverty threshold of US$2 a day ($730 annually). That does not mean, however, that all persons in the industrialized world are economically welloff. Indeed, in many industrialized countries, more than one-tenth of residents have incomes below 50 percent of their country's median household income. Source: Luxembourg Income Study, LIS Key Figures (www.lisproject.org, accessed July 23, 2006).

     Russia 18.8

     United States 17.0

     Ireland 16.5

     Italy 12.7

     United Kingdom 12.4

     Canada 11.4

     Germany 8.3

     Norway 6.4

     Percent of population in relative poverty (around 2000).

     Hey, at least we beat Russia!

     Posted by mtspence05 at 05/01/2007 @ 1:23pm

163. Asked on the Tom Engelhardt thread....

     has ANY aspect of the war in Iraq been "right" (i.e. "correct")? From the rationales for doing it, to the Saddam/Al Queda "connections", to the claims that it would be easy and cheap ('member Cheney promising Stephanopolous that it would be $50 Billion tops, and that projections of $200 Billion were "baloney"...it's now $430 Billion), to the aftermath, to the absence of WMDs, to the "welcoming arms", to the statue pull-down, to the "inspiring democracy across the Middle East"....to even what the Iraqis have NOW being "better" than what they had under Saddam?

     ANY of it?

     Posted by Mask at 05/01/2007 @ 1:24pm

164. Full-Time Work No Guarantee of Livelihood for Many U.S. Families

     by Robert Lalasz

     (January 2005) More than 25 percent of U.S. working families1--9.2 million households with 39 million people--earn such low income that they are struggling financially, according to a new report from the Maryland-based Working Poor Families Project.

     The report, Working Hard, Falling Short: America's Working Families and the Pursuit of Economic Security, found that one-third of all children in working families are in "low-income households"--defined by the report as earning no more than twice the poverty threshold, or $36,784 for a family of four in 2002.

     The report also details how millions of low-income working families are a paycheck, accident, or emergency away from not making ends meet. For instance, over 50 percent of low-income working families pay more than one-third of their income for housing.

     More than 37 percent of these families have a parent without health insurance. And more than two of every five do not receive paid parental leave.

     "Most people can have empathy for what it might take to struggle on a $3,000 or less monthly paycheck," says Brandon Roberts, manager of the Working Poor Families Project.

     Roberts adds that 20 percent of all jobs available in the United States pay less than the poverty rate, leaving some families with stark choices.

     For example, a family of four with two full-time adult workers making minimum wage earns $21,424 annually. If they live in Prince George's County, Maryland, Roberts says, they will net an additional $2,000 in earned income tax credit--leaving them with $1,900 monthly income to live on, plus noncash transfers. "A two-bedroom apartment there costs $1,200 a month," says Roberts.

     Myths and Misconceptions About Working Poor Families Working Hard, Falling Short came out of the efforts of the Working Poor Families Project, a four-year-old national initiative that assesses the needs of working adults and whether individual state policies to aid those adults are appropriate and effective. PRB did data gathering and analysis for the report, which was funded by the Annie E. Casey, Ford, and Rockefeller foundations.

     The report focuses on low-income working families--a subject Roberts says has gotten short shift in recent policy discussions.

     That silence comes, in part, he adds, from myths and stereotypes about the poor--that they don't work, that they aren't married, and that they are overwhelmingly minorities or immigrants. Working Hard, Falling Short explodes these misconceptions by highlighting facts such as:

     71 percent of low-income families work.

     72 percent of low-income working families have American-born parents only, and 47 percent have white, non-Hispanic parents only.

     53 percent of low-income working families are headed by a married couple.

     Robert Lalasz is a senior editor at PRB.

     ------------------------------------------------------------------------ --------

     Reference

     "Working families" are defined here as households whose total work effort by all members equals or exceeds 39 weeks per year. Of the 9.2 million working families in the United States who are low-income, 74 percent work full time--that is, the total work effort by all their members equaled or exceeded 35 hours weekly for 52 weeks a year. For More Information

     Tom Waldron, Brandon Roberts, and Andrew Reamer, Working Hard, Falling Short: America's Working Families and the Pursuit of Economic Security (Baltimore: Annie E. Casey Foundation, October 2004), accessed online at www.aecf.org/initiatives/jobsinitiative/workingpoor/working_hard_new.pdf on Dec. 21, 2004.

     Posted by mtspence05 at 05/01/2007 @ 1:33pm

165. Posted by MASK 05/01/2007 @ 1:24pm

     MASK, I believe your question is mainly rhetorical. It is an article of faith amongst those who oppose Bush that everything he said to justify the war is wrong. It's useless to even debate it here.

     Posted by pontificus at 05/01/2007 @ 2:11pm

166. No WMD's; no connections to Al Qeada.

     There's really not that much to it.

     Posted by mtspence05 at 05/01/2007 @ 2:14pm

167. Posted by MTSPENCE05 05/01/2007

     Clearly beyond a simple minded wingnuts grasp apparently.

     It really sucks living in the reality based community - we have to deal with facts, not flights of fancy and wishful thinking, or blind obedience to a moron.

     Posted by Dr Decibels at 05/01/2007 @ 2:27pm

168. Posted by PONTIFICUS 05/01/2007 @ 2:11pm

     When it is proven to be a fact that bush lied, what oh what will you say then, when your personal jesus has been exposed as a liar, fraud, and incompetent?

     Something witty like "liar liar pants on fire"?

     Posted by Dr Decibels at 05/01/2007 @ 2:28pm

169. And if it is so useless, why don't you just shut the fuck up?

     Posted by Dr Decibels at 05/01/2007 @ 2:29pm

170. It is an article of faith amongst those who support Bush that everything he said to justify the war is true.

     Posted by mtspence05 at 05/01/2007 @ 2:32pm

171. Then faith in a fool is worse than no faith at all, eh?

     Posted by Dr Decibels at 05/01/2007 @ 2:35pm

172. Price Tag for War in Iraq on Track to Top $500 Billion By Ron Hutcheson McClatchy Newspapers

     Monday 30 April 2007

     Washington - The bitter fight over the latest Iraq spending bill has all but obscured a sobering fact: The war will soon cost more than $500 billion.

     That's about ten times more than the Bush administration anticipated before the war started four years ago, and no one can predict how high the tab will go.

     The $124 billion spending bill that President Bush plans to veto this week includes about $78 billion for Iraq, with the rest earmarked for the war in Afghanistan, veterans' health care and other government programs.

     Posted by Dr Decibels at 05/01/2007 @ 2:36pm

173. Before the war, administration officials confidently predicted that the conflict would cost about $50 billion. White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey lost his job after he offered a $200 billion estimate - a prediction that drew scorn from his administration colleagues.

     They are all craven liars, and cowards.

     Posted by Dr Decibels at 05/01/2007 @ 2:36pm

174. And yet they have an abundance of fools that still believe their lies.

     Posted by mtspence05 at 05/01/2007 @ 2:39pm

175. It is an article of faith amongst those who oppose Bush that everything he said to justify the war is wrong. It's useless to even debate it here.

     Posted by PONTIFICUS 05/01/2007 @ 2:11pm

     PONTI, the MIRROR IMAGE of that apparently applies to YOU.

     It is an article of faith amongst those who SUPPORT Bush that everything he said to justify the war is RIGHT (down to "spirited away WMDs" to "Saddam would have been the 'third nuclear power'). It's useless to even debate it here.

     BTW, my question was NOT rhetorical. Seriously, you cannot offer any of the items listed for the reasons Bush gave to go to war in Iraq that are still valid...

     1. WMDs....none found.

     2. Saddam killed thousands....the war and occupation have killed thousands.

     3. Al Queda supposedly "given safe haven in Iraq" by Saddam (though he hated them)....Al Queda given safe haven AND an easy opportunity to kill Americans IN Iraq.

     4. War would "only cost $50 Billion...$200 Billion projections by OMB are 'baloney'"---Dick Cheney......$430 Billion and no end in sight to likely 1/2 a TRILLION.

     5. Democracy would blossom across the Middle East....Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan, al-Maliki Government under domination by Shiite militias, Iranian President (who WAS in trouble) now boosted in prestige, and Lebanon on the verge of collapse.

     Posted by Mask at 05/01/2007 @ 2:43pm

176. 2. Saddam killed thousands....the war and occupation have killed thousands.

     False symmetry. How about this:

     Hitler killed thousands...the war and occupation of Germany killed thousands.

     Does that mean WWII was bad?

     Ultimately, without moral judgement, it's a nonsensical statement.

     Posted by pontificus at 05/01/2007 @ 2:49pm

177. Posted by MASK

     The rationale was that Saddam had WMD's that he would either employ then himself or give them to terrorists, and that Saddam was working with Al Qeada. All the other bs developed when no WMD's were found after the invasion.

     Posted by mtspence05 at 05/01/2007 @ 2:50pm

178. 3. Al Queda supposedly "given safe haven in Iraq" by Saddam (though he hated them)....Al Queda given safe haven AND an easy opportunity to kill Americans IN Iraq.

     Read Tenet's report. Zarqawi was given safe haven in Iraq before the war. There were terrorist training camps in North Iraq.

     But like I said - it's an article of faith to deny these things. Not worth arguing.

     Posted by pontificus at 05/01/2007 @ 2:50pm

179. The area in northern Iraq was not under Saddam's control, moron. Watch something other than Faux News.

     Posted by mtspence05 at 05/01/2007 @ 2:53pm

180. 5. Democracy would blossom across the Middle East....Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan, al-Maliki Government under domination by Shiite militias, Iranian President (who WAS in trouble) now boosted in prestige, and Lebanon on the verge of collapse.

     What a goulash of half-baked statements. Lebanon on the verge of collapse? When did it un-collapse? Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan? So that undoes the entire overthrow of that medieval government? Hardly.

     I've never said Bush was perfect - but this kind of logic does not even begin to address the real issues.

     Posted by pontificus at 05/01/2007 @ 2:54pm

181. Read Tenet's report. Zarqawi was given safe haven in Iraq before the war. There were terrorist training camps in North Iraq.

     But like I said - it's an article of faith to deny these things. Not worth arguing.

     Posted by PONTIFICUS 05/01/2007 @ 2:50pm

     Saddam did not know zarqawi was there - you are wrong

     Saddam did not control the north - again, you are wrong.

     Doesn't it ever get old being so fucking relentlesly wrong?

     Jesus, asswipe, give up. Your backing a losing horse and betting the house on it.

     Posted by Dr Decibels at 05/01/2007 @ 2:55pm

182. He first appeared in Iraq as the leader of the Tawhid and Jihad insurgent group, merging it in late 2004 with Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.

     In the run-up to the Iraq war in February 2003, US Secretary of State Colin Powell told the United Nations Zarqawi was an associate of Osama Bin Laden who had sought refuge in Iraq.

     Intelligence reports indicated he was in Baghdad and - according to Mr Powell - this was a sure sign that Saddam Hussein was courting al-Qaeda, which, in turn, justified an attack on Iraq.

     But some analysts at the time contested the claim, pointing to Zarqawi's historical rivalry with Bin Laden.

     Both men rose to prominence as "Afghan Arabs" - leading foreign fighters in the "jihad" against Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

     It was a far cry from Zarqawi's youth as a petty criminal in Jordan, remembered by those who knew him as a simple, quick-tempered, and barely literate gangster.

     But after the defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan, Zarqawi went back to Jordan with a radical Islamist agenda.

     He is believed to have fled to Iraq in 2001 after a US missile strike on his Afghan base, though the report that he lost a leg in the attack has not been verified.

     US officials argue that it was at al-Qaeda's behest that he moved to Iraq and established links with Ansar al-Islam - a group of Kurdish Islamists from the north of the country.

     He is thought to have remained with them for a while - feeling at home in mountainous northern Iraq.

     http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3483089.stm

     Posted by mtspence05 at 05/01/2007 @ 2:58pm

183. I've never said Bush was perfect - but this kind of logic does not even begin to address the real issues. Posted by PONTIFICUS

     Georgie and Cheney did not sell the war with making democracy in the ME. Do you really think the population would have supported that garbage? You don't spread democracy on the point of a bayonet.

     Posted by mtspence05 at 05/01/2007 @ 3:00pm

184. Ponti-Stop making up nonsense to support the war.It is because you people keep making up Saddam and terrorists connections etc. that few in America take anything you 30%s say seriously.Try honesty for a change.Bush would have been and would still be better off with the truth rather than pander to the 30%.If Bush was a man he would just admit that he totally screwed up and then present his case for staying and made an honest attempt to get fresh ideas from the like of Sen.Biden.

     Posted by i'm nobody at 05/01/2007 @ 3:01pm

185. Asked on the Tom Engelhardt thread....

     Posted by MASK 05/01/2007 @ 1:24pm

     MASK,

     I responded to you at hte TE thread! Is there any rhyme or reason to the way these threads get lumped around?

     Posted by Happy at 05/01/2007 @ 3:01pm

186. If Bush was a man

     Posted by I'M NOBODY 05/01/2007 @ 3:01pm

     And therein lies the problem: bush is NOT a man, he is a snivelling little self-serving opportunistic sonofabitch who has never had a genuine accomplishment his entire life.

     Posted by Dr Decibels at 05/01/2007 @ 3:03pm

187. Destruction of the regime that hosted and provided a base to the terrorists, the Taliban in Afghanistan?

     Posted by PONTIFICUS 05/01/2007 @ 12:45pm | ignore this person

     Low inflation, low unemployment, soaring stock market, huge increase in American household wealth?

     Recent economic data points to slowing economy, crisis in housing markets, dollar devaluation, continued loss of jobs, lack of consumer confidence.....

     I offer statistics, you offer 'feelings'. Slowing economy? When does the economy not slow? Loss of jobs? WTF are you talking about? We have 4.5 percent unemployment, historically low! Lack of consumer confidence? What the heck is that supposed to mean?

     Posted by PONTIFICUS 05/01/2007 @ 12:48pm | ignore this person

     Ponti..last time I heard we are still fighting Taliban? As to Iraq, Tony Snow Job says that Bush never claimed there was a link to AQ & 9/11. (ha ha). Now are you disputing what the Prez says?

     Inflation hasn't been that low. Look at inflation during Clinton administration. What about gas and housing prices? Loss of jobs...yes...and good paying ones too. Look at the layoffs of the automakers and financial institutions recently. Consumer confidence is willing to buy. Retail sales, especially on big ticket items have been disappointing. Stock market fluff based on paying increased multiples on earnings for lower growth is not healthy, it is speculation. This is not a measure of how healthy the economy is, but rather how much free money is chasing stocks. Government printing presses are running full time.

     Ponti...I just don't see your argument.

     Posted by OneVote at 05/01/2007 @ 3:05pm

188. Laura Bush on "The Today Show" April 25, 2007:

     Ann Curry: Do you know the American people are suffering ... watching [Iraq]?

     Laura Bush: Oh, I know that very much, and, believe me, no one suffers more than their president and I do when we watch this. And certainly the commander-in-chief who has asked our military to go into harm's way.

     AC: What do you think the American people need to know ...

     LB: Well, I hope they do know the burden of worry that's on his shoulders every single day for our troops. And I think they do. I think if they don't, they're not seeing what the real responsibilities of our president are.

     AC: It must be hard for you to watch him in this.

     LB: It's hard. Of course, it's absolutely hard.

     Poor little laura - I wonder if she "suffered" so much when she killed her ex-boyfreind? She should suffer. She should suffer greatly.

     Posted by Dr Decibels at 05/01/2007 @ 3:05pm

189. Posted by I'M NOBODY 05/01/2007 @ 3:01pm

     Ponti-Stop making up nonsense to support the war.

     That's funny, because to me it sounds like you're making up nonsense to oppose it.

     It is because you people keep making up Saddam and terrorists connections etc. that few in America take anything you 30%s say seriously.

     Fake statistic. You assume that because only 35 percent think Bush has done a good job, the other 65 percent automatically agree with you. Wrong.

     Try honesty for a change.Bush would have been and would still be better off with the truth rather than pander to the 30%.If Bush was a man he would just admit that he totally screwed up and then present his case for staying and made an honest attempt to get fresh ideas from the like of Sen.Biden.

     Try honesty for a change? I give you facts, and you brush them aside without even bothering to address them. George Tenet contends that Al Quaeda had links to Saddam, and you just ignore them. In the event that you acknowledge inconvenient facts like this, it is mainly for the purpose of categorically dismissing them. You're just wasting people's time even bothering to think that facts matter to you.

     Posted by pontificus at 05/01/2007 @ 3:13pm

190. ONEVOTE: Drat! A Big One that got away! After all the money I'd paid into the WSJ!

     Dow Jones & Co. Shares Soar After Bid From Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.

     Tuesday, May 01, 2007

     NEW YORK -- Dow Jones & Co. (DJ), publisher of The Wall Street Journal, said Tuesday it has received an unsolicited bid from Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. (NWS) to buy the company for $60 per share, or $5 billion.

     Shares of the financial news publishing company soared after a cable news channel reported news of the offer earlier Tuesday.

     After opening at $37.12, the shares jumped $20.95, or 58 percent, to $57.28 before being halted on the New York Stock Exchange for news pending.....

     Posted by HAPPY 05/01/2007 @ 1:11pm | ignore this person

     Well I am glad that Rupert has so much money to spend for Dow Jones. He previously made a tender offer at $73 +/- years ago, but it was rejected. Maybe this time he will prevail. More consolidation of the media is worrisome Happy. Goes to stock analysis as well as political analysis.

     Devaluation of dollar to boost exports is pretty ridiculous. What about everybody's US based investments? They go down in value.

     So, one homeowner losing their home is justified by 4 others having homes? You think 20% foreclosure isn't going to cause a crisis?

     Glad you agree that the economy has some imbalances. What do think would happen if Congress pulled the plug on military spending?

     Posted by OneVote at 05/01/2007 @ 3:18pm

191. Ponti-I didn't say that the other 70% agree with me.I agree with Sen.Biden and believe that his plan has a chance to succeed,but few even know what his plan is.You keep quoting Tenet.Do you have a reliable source?

     Posted by i'm nobody at 05/01/2007 @ 3:19pm

192. Posted by ONEVOTE 05/01/2007 @ 3:05pm

     Ponti..last time I heard we are still fighting Taliban?

     More nonsense, ONEVOTE. I give you the overthrow of the Taliban, the destruction of a medieval religions state supporting terrorists around the world, and you counterbalance that by saying "yeah, but we're still fighting a few hundred rebels in the Hindu Kush".

     Don't you see what utter nonsense that is? Don't you see how you have lost all sense of logic and perspective?

     Posted by pontificus at 05/01/2007 @ 3:19pm

193. Posted by I'M NOBODY 05/01/2007 @ 3:19pm

     Do you have a reliable source?

     That depends. Do you define 'reliable' as 'a source that you agree with'?

     Posted by pontificus at 05/01/2007 @ 3:20pm

194. Read Tenet's report. Zarqawi was given safe haven in Iraq before the war. There were terrorist training camps in North Iraq.

     Posted by PONTIFICUS

     Once again, moron: He was in a mountainous region with Kurds, in an area that was not under Saddam's control. And you called me "willfully ignorant"?

     Posted by mtspence05 at 05/01/2007 @ 3:20pm

195. The real reason, Tenet suggests, flowed from "the administration's largely unarticulated view that the democratic transformation of the Middle East through regime change in Iraq would be worth the price." That is a truth Bush will never admit and people are dying for every day.

     Tenet knows Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were determined to remove Saddam regardless of the facts. His long-delayed candor is welcome but does not justify his willingness to "go along."

     Posted by Dr Decibels at 05/01/2007 @ 3:21pm

196. Ponti-A reliable source would be someone who was correct about something unlike Tenet who got everything wrong.

     Posted by i'm nobody at 05/01/2007 @ 3:23pm

197. Laura Bush: Oh, I know that very much, and, believe me, no one suffers more than their president and I do when we watch this. And certainly the commander-in-chief who has asked our military to go into harm's way.

     Posted by DR DECIBELS 05/01/2007 @ 3:05pm | ignore this person

     Guilty conscience but not enough remorse to get us out of Iraq.

     Posted by OneVote at 05/01/2007 @ 3:24pm

198. From Tenet's book:

     The intelligence told us that senior al-Qa'ida leaders and the Iraqis had discussed safe haven in Iraq. Most of the public discussion thus far has focused on Zarqawi's arrival in Baghdad under an assumed name in May of 2002, allegedly to receive medical treatment. Zarqawi, whom we termed a "senior associate and collaborator" of al-Qa'ida at the time, supervised camps in northern Iraq run by Ansar al-Islam (AI).

     We believed that up to two hundred al-Qa'ida fighters began to relocate there in camps after the Afghan campaign began in the fall of 2001. The camps enhanced Zarqawi's reach beyond the Middle East. One of the camps run by AI, known as Kurmal, engaged in production and training in the use of low-level poisons such as cyanide. We had intelligence telling us that Zarqawi's men had tested these poisons on animals and, in at least one case, on one of their own associates. They laughed about how well it worked. Our efforts to track activities emanating from Kurmal resulted in the arrest of nearly one hundred Zarqawi operatives in Western Europe planning to use poisons in operations.

     Posted by pontificus at 05/01/2007 @ 3:25pm

199. Defecatious isn't interested in facts. He has "faith" in Georgie. Georgie could start serving grape Kool-Aid and defecatious would fight libertyliar and old lying bald coward to be the first in line.

     Posted by mtspence05 at 05/01/2007 @ 3:26pm

200. Posted by I'M NOBODY 05/01/2007 @ 3:23pm

     Ponti-A reliable source would be someone who was correct about something unlike Tenet who got everything wrong.

     Hmmm. As I expected. You only believe people who were 'right.' And curiously enough, the only people who were right are the ones you agree with. Say no more.

     Posted by pontificus at 05/01/2007 @ 3:27pm

201. Don't you see what utter nonsense that is? Don't you see how you have lost all sense of logic and perspective?

     Posted by PONTIFICUS 05/01/2007 @ 3:19pm | ignore this person

     Have you kept a head count on how many Taliban we've killed? Aren't many experts stating that they believe that their numbers are growing rather than decreasing?

     Posted by OneVote at 05/01/2007 @ 3:27pm

202. Posted by ONEVOTE 05/01/2007 @ 3:27pm

     Have you kept a head count on how many Taliban we've killed? Aren't many experts stating that they believe that their numbers are growing rather than decreasing?

     You have got to be kidding me. You're laughing right now, aren't you? Even you can't possibly believe this, can you? It doesn't matter to you that the Taliban have been overthrown, what REALLY matters to you is that 'many experts say their numbers are increasing'? That's the info you're using?

     Like I said, I can't combat your superstitions. If you choose to deny facts and believe otherwise, you simply can't be helped.

     Posted by pontificus at 05/01/2007 @ 3:31pm

203. From the very outset, Zarqawi's power and influence were exaggerated by US officials. You would think, listening to Bush and Powell's statements in 2002 and 2003, that Zarqawi was influential inside both al-Qaeda and Saddam's Iraq, so much so that he personified the "sinister nexus" between them. We now know that was nonsense. There was no nexus, sinister or otherwise, between al-Qaeda and the Ba'athists. At that time, Zarqawi's links with al-Qaeda were tenuous at best, and there is no evidence that he had any links whatsoever with Saddam's regime. According to Jason Burke, author of the 2003 book Al-Qaeda: Casting a Shadow of Terror, Zarqawi may have had "some contact with bin Laden but [he] never took the bayat [oath of allegiance] and never made any formal alliance with the Saudi or his close associates. He was just one of thousands of activists committed to jihad living and working in Afghanistan in the 1990s." Burke says Zarqawi had "no real relationship with al-Qaeda."

     Powell's evidence that Zarqawi was associated with the Ba'athists was based on the fact that he had been present in northern Iraq since 2002 and had popped down to Baghdad for some kind of medical treatment. Yet northern Iraq is territory that had been wrested from Saddam's control by the United Nations following the first Gulf War in 1991 and turned into a "safe haven" for Iraqi Kurds. And Ansar al-Islam, the group that Zarqawi joined, was vehemently opposed to Ba'athist socialism. If anything, Zarqawi, like bin Laden, would have been decidedly anti-Saddam rather than being in any way associated with him.

     Western officials also claimed that Zarqawi was developing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Powell said in February 2003 that "one of the specialities of [Zarqawi's camp in northern Iraq] is poisons…. He is teaching operatives how to produce ricin and other poisons." When Coalition forces destroyed the Ansar al-Islam camps in northern Iraq on 30 March 2003, the front page of the British tabloid newspaper The Sun said "PROOF: an Iraqi terror camp making ricin poison has been smashed by a huge Allied blitz." Again the claims were unfounded. Reporters visiting the camps in the days after the attacks said there was "no evidence of chemical weapons having been used or stored here." One US official later admitted that he was "unaware that any WMD have been found." (Zarqawi: A Bogeyman Made by the US, Brendan O'Neill, June 10, 2006) (http://www.antiwar.com/article.php?articleid=9119)

     Posted by mtspence05 at 05/01/2007 @ 3:33pm

204. Ponti,

     Fact: 2006 Heroin crop was the largest in history. Fact: Islamic Anti-US terrorism is largely funded via Afghanistan heroin production.

     Reasonable extropolation: We're losing the "war" on terror.

     Posted by freedomplease at 05/01/2007 @ 3:33pm

205. Posted by FREEDOMPLEASE 05/01/2007 @ 3:33pm

     Typical non-sequitur. A large heroin crop means we're losing the war on terror? Because some of the proceeds from heroin are undoubtedly used to fund terror, along with the dozens of other things they've been financing for hundreds if not thousands of years?

     Posted by pontificus at 05/01/2007 @ 3:37pm

206. Ponti-It isn't my fault that those of us who knew this was a bunch of Bs from the beginning were correct.It's your fault for being so easily scared.Considering what Tenet is now saying I wish he was reliable,but he isn't.You ought to read the posts that MTSPENCE has posted.

     Posted by i'm nobody at 05/01/2007 @ 3:39pm

207. And here's a source you might find more believable.

     In 2002, Zarqawi's base in Iraq was located in the northern No-Fly Zone, a region above the 36th parallel which a U.S.-led coalition prevented Iraqi aircraft and ground forces from entering. (Passing on Zarqawi Behind the administration's decision not to kill Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 2002, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross & Adam White, 06/21/2006) (http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/340fc efr.asp)

     Posted by mtspence05 at 05/01/2007 @ 3:40pm

208. Posted by I'M NOBODY 05/01/2007 @ 3:39pm

     MTSPENCE has posted.

     SPENCE is ignored. I can put up with people who disagree with me, but he's gone overboard for the reasons I mentioned above. Fruitless talking with people who can't even keep their positions straight from day to day.

     Posted by pontificus at 05/01/2007 @ 3:41pm

209. Posted by FREEDOMPLEASE 05/01/2007 @ 3:33pm

     Fact: Islamic Anti-US terrorism is largely funded via Afghanistan heroin production.

     Source for that fact, please.

     Posted by pontificus at 05/01/2007 @ 3:43pm

210. Who Lost Zarqawi? The true intelligence failure.

     By Andrew Apostolou

     In recent days, the Wall Street Journal and Slate have charged that the U.S. government fumbled an opportunity to kill master terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Repeating a claim first made by NBC on March 2, 2004, critics argue that the U.S. had accurate intelligence about a Zarqawi-run camp in the Iraqi Kurdish town of Khurmal. They speculate that Zarqawi was in the camp, and could have been killed as early as June 2002, had the White House approved military action. Daniel Benjamin, director for transnational threats at the NSC from 1998-1999, calls the decision not to attack Zarqawi in 2002 "an enormous blunder."

     The critics are, however, only half right -- and they have compensated for the other half with pre-election spin. First, they omit the background on how Zarqawi's jihadists were discovered in northeastern Iraq, and how the U.S. government from the beginning failed to grasp the importance of events there. After all, the critics rely upon Pentagon and NSC sources who have their own explaining to do. Second, to make their case, the critics ignore the context in which the U.S. then operated in Iraq.

     America's Zarqawi problem began not -- as the critics claim -- in June 2002, but in October 2001, with the same intelligence failure that contributed to 9/11: the failure of imagination. Officials from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), an anti-Saddam group in the Kurdish safe haven of northern Iraq, came to the U.S. with compelling evidence that local Islamists had connections to Osama bin Laden. The evidence was also shared with the Turkish government, which, along with the U.S. and Britain, was protecting the Kurds from Saddam Hussein's regime.

     The PUK had picked up indications of links between local jihadists and bin Laden in the summer of 2001, according to a British journalist who was then in northern Iraq. Two of these jihadist factions united as Jund al-Islam (Soldiers of Islam) on September 1, 2001, with Arabs trained in Afghanistan reportedly overseeing Jund's formation -- information that the U.S. received on September 4, 2001. Jund then seized the village of Biyara -- and satellite hamlets such as Sargat and Tawela, in the mountains near the Iranian border -- on September 11, 2001 (the timing was probably coincidental). Fierce fighting raged between Jund and the PUK until December 2001, when it was ended by an Iranian-brokered ceasefire and Jund changed its name to Ansar al-Islam. In one clash on September 23, 2001, Jund captured 42 PUK soldiers and then beheaded them.

     The response from the U.S. government, alike was a cold rebuff. According to sources in Iraq, the U.S. and Turkey dismissed any link between the jihadists in the mountains of Iraq and bin Laden. Both took the cynical view that the Kurds were trying to draw the U.S. into a local squabble. (http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/apostolou200411020824.asp)

     Posted by mtspence05 at 05/01/2007 @ 3:44pm

211. THE ROVING EYE

     Zarqawi - Bush's man for all seasons

     By Pepe Escobar

     He became a jihadi in Afghanistan in the late 1980s against the Soviets, and after returning to Jordan in 1992 spent seven years in jail for possession of guns. In fighting in 2002 following the US-led invasion of Afghanistan to topple the Taliban, one of his legs was severely injured - and may have been, or maybe not, amputated. He then found refuge in Iraqi Kurdistan, protected by the Anglo-American enforced no-fly zone, with Ansar al-Islam, a group with a maximum of 400 fundamentalist Kurdish warriors. And he may have moved to the Sunni triangle after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003. (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FJ15Ak02.html)

     Posted by mtspence05 at 05/01/2007 @ 3:48pm

212. Posted by I'M NOBODY 05/01/2007 @ 3:39pm

     Interesting that you categorically reject anything that comes from Tenet, because he doesn't reinforce your world view. Troubling that people so willingly get caught in these logical fallacies.

     Posted by pontificus at 05/01/2007 @ 3:51pm

213. Ponti,

     Here's another fact....

     Terrorism WOULD be defeated without funding.

     Posted by freedomplease at 05/01/2007 @ 3:51pm

214. Maybe somebody would be kind enough to repost the sources I referenced. Let's watch the worm squirm.

     Posted by mtspence05 at 05/01/2007 @ 3:55pm

215. Fruitless talking with people who can't even keep their positions straight from day to day.

     Posted by PONTIFICUS 05/01/2007 @ 3:41pm

     You should know, oh factless one.

     Posted by Dr Decibels at 05/01/2007 @ 3:57pm

216. Introduction The recent boom in Afghan opium production, propelled by a resurgent Taliban, has had an increasing impact on Iranians--both young and old--across the border.

     http://www.cfr.org/publication/11457/

     Council on Foreign relations ponti boy - can you dismiss this one?

     Despite falling in 2005 for the first time in four years--mirroring worldwide trends--Afghanistan's opium production crept upward in unruly southern provinces like Kandahar (from roughly 12,000 acres in 2004 to 32,000 acres in 2005). This was partly due to the resurgent Taliban, which boosted cultivation levels even higher in early 2006. "Everybody was taken aback," Reuter says of the recent spike in production.

     Posted by Dr Decibels at 05/01/2007 @ 4:01pm

217. Resurgent Taliban raises body count Heroin trade helps militants regroup.

     Published Sunday, June 11, 2006 KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - The deadliest three weeks of violence since the Taliban's fall has left more than 500 people dead, the U.S-led coalition said yesterday.

     The toll included at least 44 deaths last week.

     Meanwhile, a top Afghan intelligence agent narrowly survived a bomb attack on his convoy that killed three other people near the capital, Kabul. Fighting elsewhere killed six insurgents and three police yesterday, officials said.

     Much of the recent Taliban fighting is believed funded by the country's $2.8 billion trade in opium and heroin - about 90 percent of the world's supply.

     The daily violence has raised fears of a Taliban resurgence almost five years after the Islamic extremists were driven out by a U.S.-led invasion for harboring al-Qaida.

     Posted by Dr Decibels at 05/01/2007 @ 4:03pm

218. Go ahead, ponti, be a big boy and admit you were wrong.

     Try to act like a grown up, I know how hard it is for you, but give it a try.....

     We're all rooting for you little guy!

     Posted by Dr Decibels at 05/01/2007 @ 4:04pm

219. Undeniably, the poppy trade and the resurgence of the Taliban are intimately connected, for the Taliban, who briefly banned poppy cultivation in 2000 in an effort to gain U.S. diplomatic recognition and aid, now both support and draw support from that profitable crop. Yet Western policies aimed at the Taliban and the poppy are quite separate and at odds with each other. While NATO troops scramble, between battles, to rebuild rural infrastructure, U.S. advisers urge Afghan anti-narcotics police to eradicate the livelihood of two million poor farmers.

     Posted by Dr Decibels at 05/01/2007 @ 4:06pm

220. Much like the old lying bald coward he lacks the back bone necessary to act like anything even remotely resembling a man.

     Posted by mtspence05 at 05/01/2007 @ 4:07pm

221. Posted by Dr Decibels at 05/01/2007 @ 4:07pm

222. Posted by FREEDOMPLEASE 05/01/2007 @ 3:51pm

     Terrorism WOULD be defeated without funding.

     Clearly. But I understand that the terrorists are supported by a number of sources, including Iran and Saudi Arabia. I'm willing to grant that Afghanistan heroin supports some, but not that terrorism would go away without it, or even that it would be substantially impacted. Do you have some sort which indicates otherwise?

     Posted by pontificus at 05/01/2007 @ 4:07pm

223. the sound of crickets echos softly through the room, the Howling Monkey Reality Deniers having lost their nerve.

     Posted by Dr Decibels at 05/01/2007 @ 4:07pm

224. Posted by PONTIFICUS 05/01/2007

     can't read, huh?

     Posted by Dr Decibels at 05/01/2007 @ 4:08pm

225. Go ahead, ponti, be a big boy and admit you were wrong.

     Try to act like a grown up, I know how hard it is for you, but give it a try.....

     We're all rooting for you little guy!

     Posted by DR DECIBELS 05/01/2007 @ 4:04pm

     we're all waiting, little guy.

     Posted by Dr Decibels at 05/01/2007 @ 4:08pm

226. No balls, no brains and certainly, a complete and utter lack of character.

     But your stupidity and mindless repetition of wingnut talking points is an amazing thing to behold.

     tedious, boring and more than a little insipid, but amazing nonetheless.

     You lose.

     Posted by Dr Decibels at 05/01/2007 @ 4:13pm

227. No Rush Limpdick talking points on how more heroin is a GOOD thing ponti?

     Posted by Dr Decibels at 05/01/2007 @ 4:14pm

228. Ponti-I wish I had been wrong about the Iraq war.I hate the idea that another Nam like fiasco is taking place.I dearly wished that Saddam had been found with nasty weapons making this alright,but the mushroom cloud thing sounded bogus as did the terrorist connection,but I did not want our troops dying just so I would be right.Quite the opposite.I've had little interest in politics since my radical hippie days and didn't even vote in 2000 and was behind Bush following 9/11.I knew next to nothing about Bush prior to 9/11 and had no opinion on the subject of Bush.I never told one person that I thought this war wasn't going to work out until no weapons of mass destruction were found.No evidence of terrorist training camps in areas Saddam controlled have ever been found nor has any real connection to any terrorists have been found.I wish Tenet,Bush etc. would have been right about everything,but they were wrong about everything making them unreliable and our troops are and have been pointlessly dying because these people were either the dumbest group of leaders we've ever had or the most criminal.

     Posted by i'm nobody at 05/01/2007 @ 4:20pm

229. Ponti pulled a Ray-gun - he cut-n-run!

     At least Ponti isn't leaving 240 dead Marines behind him in the dust like Ray-gun.

     Posted by Dr Decibels at 05/01/2007 @ 4:25pm

230. Posted by PONTIFICUS 05/01/2007 @ 2:49pm

     Yes, but when we beat Hitler...the killings stopped. They didn't go on for FOUR YEARS after Berlin fell, did they? Nor did the Marshall Plan bankrupt our country and BILLIONS of dollars of it get "lost". Nor did was the first chancellor of West Germany (Konrad Adenauer) a Communist, backed by Communist militias who killed former Nazi sympathizers, and boosted the prestige of Stalin. (all allegories to the "Shiia", "Sunnis", and the Iranians).

     Do I go on? No....no point....UNLESS you can answer one question more.

     Hypothetical....wildest possible stretch of YOUR imagination....free-form thinking now...

     IF....big "if" ...IF Bush and Cheney were....gasp!...WRONG and them defeatist libs & Dems were right. Not only about invading Iraq but on the handling of the occupation, the costs, etc.....I know, it's a wild thought, but...if that was true...

     how would it be different from the situation now...specifically?

     Posted by Mask at 05/01/2007 @ 4:26pm

231. Interesting that you categorically reject anything that comes from Tenet, because he doesn't reinforce your world view. Troubling that people so willingly get caught in these logical fallacies.

     Posted by PONTIFICUS 05/01/2007 @ 3:51pm

     So when Tenet claims (in his book) that the Bush administration, before the U.S. led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, never had a serious debate about whether Iraq posed an imminent threat or whether to tighten existing sanctions....

     you don't categorically reject that from Tenet, because he doesn't reinforce your world view....do you?

     Posted by Mask at 05/01/2007 @ 4:31pm

232. Go ahead, ponti, be a big boy and admit you were wrong.

     Try to act like a grown up, I know how hard it is for you, but give it a try.....

     We're all rooting for you little guy!

     Posted by DR DECIBELS 05/01/2007 @ 4:04pm

     we're all waiting, little guy.

     Posted by DR DECIBELS 05/01/2007 @ 4:08pm

     Still waiting.

     Posted by Dr Decibels at 05/01/2007 @ 4:32pm

233. Posted by DR DECIBELS

     Don't hold your breath. The eunuch doesn't have the necessary equipment.

     Posted by mtspence05 at 05/01/2007 @ 4:34pm

234. Posted by MASK 05/01/2007 @ 4:26pm

     IF....big "if" ...IF Bush and Cheney were....gasp!...WRONG and them defeatist libs & Dems were right. Not only about invading Iraq but on the handling of the occupation, the costs, etc.....I know, it's a wild thought, but...if that was true...

     Dems right about what? As I have said many times, the Dems object to everything Bush does. The only time they're 'right' is when Bush is wrong, the same way a stopped clock is 'right' twice a day. Technically true, but not a testament to the accuracy of the clock.

     They have no strategy to fight terrorism or anthing except to be the un-Bush.

     In short, it's not a choice between Bush and the Democrats, it's a choice between Bush and not-Bush. Not much of a choice at all, really.

     Posted by pontificus at 05/01/2007 @ 4:35pm

235. Go ahead, ponti, be a big boy and admit you were wrong.

     Try to act like a grown up, I know how hard it is for you, but give it a try.....

     We're all rooting for you little guy!

     Posted by DR DECIBELS 05/01/2007 @ 4:04pm

     we're all waiting, little guy.

     Posted by DR DECIBELS 05/01/2007 @ 4:08pm

     Still waiting.

     Posted by DR DECIBELS 05/01/2007 @ 4:32pm

     Not a shred of integrity, huh ponti boy? Must hurt.

     Posted by Dr Decibels at 05/01/2007 @ 4:38pm

236. Poor defecatious. He reminds me of a chimpanzee that's been taught to type.

     Posted by mtspence05 at 05/01/2007 @ 4:39pm

237. Ponti,

     Try to bring yourself into the real world for a minute.

     If your REAL goal was to impede or defeat terrorism what would you do? You'd go after the funding......heroin production in Afghanistan....controllable. Saudia money....controllable (but at a cost to US oil consumers). Iran money...not controllable because the US millitary is too stretched in Iraq.

     You'd also inspect inbound containers and you wouldn't reccess appoint related but unqualified's like Julie L. Myers to key anti terrorist government positions.

     There are no signs that we are in the least bit concerned with global terrorism.

     We're in Iraq for several different reasons, but not because even the most retarded person thinks it is to thwart terrorism. Osama kisses the ground that Bush / Chenney walk on for the gift of American imperialism in Iraq a gift that keeps giving (even FOUR years after mission accomplished).

     Posted by freedomplease at 05/01/2007 @ 4:46pm

238. Posted by PONTIFICUS 05/01/2007 @ 4:35pm

     Nice speech...can you answer my question?

     Suppose, just for a moment, that Bush and Cheney were wrong about Iraq, reasons for it, future of it, true effects on terrorism, etc......just for one tiny moment, PONTI....try hard....

     If Bush and Cheney were wrong and us awful naysayers and defeatists were right about the uselessness, even negative effects of it....

     how would the situation be different from what we see today?

     Posted by Mask at 05/01/2007 @ 4:50pm

239. In 1993, Sen. John McCain led an effort to cut off funds immediately for military operations in Somalia after a firefight in Mogadishu killed 18 U.S. troops. The former prisoner of war in Vietnam brought a hush to the chamber floor when he asked what would happen if Congress failed to act and more Americans died.

     "On whose hands rest the blood of American troops? Ask yourself this question," said McCain, R-Arizona.

     Congress ultimately agreed to back President Clinton's request to give him until March 1994 to get troops out, with funding denied after that date.

     This time the blood is on the hands of the cowardly deceipt filled Repugs.

     Posted by Dr Decibels at 05/01/2007 @ 5:09pm

240. Spin THAT, ponti, you punk.

     Posted by Dr Decibels at 05/01/2007 @ 5:09pm

241. Posted by MASK 05/01/2007 @ 4:50pm

     how would the situation be different from what we see today?

     For one thing, there would have been MANY successful terrorist attacks on the US. Instead, there have been none.

     If it had been a horrible mistake, we would be fighting the entire Iraqi population, instead of just embedded terrorists. The invasion and conquest itself would have been far more costly, as was persistently and wrongly claimed by the Democrats, instead of the relatively easy conquest it was.

     If it had been a horrible mistake, the entire Middle East would be inflamed. Instead, it's business as usual.

     If it had been a horrible mistake, Libya would probably still be an instrument of terror, instead of being surrendered in terms of terror.

     Those are some things I can think of off the top of my head.

     And in response, you might want to consider what MIGHT have happened it we DID NOT invade Iraq - the mass graves that went unfilled, the women who were not raped, the people who were not tortured to death, the villages not gassed, a third war not started.... Are you going to take responsiblity for THESE?

     Posted by pontificus at 05/01/2007 @ 5:12pm

242. In 1993, Sen. John McCain ☼ led an effort to cut off funds immediately for military operations in Somalia after a firefight in Mogadishu killed 18 U.S. troops. The former prisoner of war in Vietnam brought a hush to the chamber floor when he asked what would happen if Congress failed to act and more Americans died.

     "On whose hands rest the blood of American troops? Ask yourself this question," said McCain, R-Arizona.

     Congress ultimately agreed to back President Clinton's request to give him until March 1994 to get troops out, with funding denied after that date.

     This time the blood is on the hands of the cowardly deceipt filled Repugs.

     well, pontitard?

     Why was it right then but wrong now?

     And who cares how many mass graves Saddam filled, why is that OUR problem?

     Where was that concern during Kosovo?

     Posted by Dr Decibels at 05/01/2007 @ 5:17pm

243. Oh, and by the way, Tenet claims that if we had not invaded, Iraq would have a nuclear weapon by now. Just like Iran is very close to a weapon itself. I know it's fashionable to categorically dismiss everything Tenet says because it doesn't hew to the preconceptions, however.

     Posted by pontificus at 05/01/2007 @ 5:19pm

244. Ponti-Has nothing to do with preconceptions.It has to do with facts and you have no facts.Facts are that Saddam had nothing,was building nothing because he didn't even have the basics,like a place to build a bomb.You were wrong and your inability to admit that is sad.

     Posted by i'm nobody at 05/01/2007 @ 5:25pm

245. Like I said, I can't combat your superstitions. If you choose to deny facts and believe otherwise, you simply can't be helped.

     Posted by PONTIFICUS 05/01/2007 @ 3:31pm | ignore this person

     Are these facts?

     Taliban Attacks Increase in Afghanistan By Robert Burns The Associated Press January 16, 2007

     CBNNews.com -- KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Tuesday the United States must engage Pakistan in talks to curb an increasing flow of Taliban fighters across the border into southern and eastern Afghanistan. He did not rule out increasing U.S. forces in the country.

     U.S. military officials said the incursions explain a dramatic increase in attacks on U.S. and allied forces in eastern and southeastern parts of the country. They said Taliban fighters seeking to regain power in Afghanistan are taking advantage of a recent peace deal with the Pakistan government to infiltrate the border, they said.

     "The border area is a problem," Gates told a news conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai after the two met at the Presidential Palace. "More attacks (are) coming across the border (and) there are al-Qaida networks operating across the border."

     Asked about prospects for increasing U.S. troops levels in Afghanistan, where the Taliban resistance has been growing, Gates said that if U.S. commander asked for more, "then I would be strongly inclined to recommend that to the president."

     There are nearly 24,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, which Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said was the highest number since the war began in 2001. He said he sees no prospect of reducing the U.S. troop presence during 2007 and he held out the possibility of adding some troops.

     Eikenberry told reporters earlier Tuesday that he has recommended to the Pentagon that an infantry battalion of the 10th Mountain Division, which is about halfway through a scheduled four-month deployment in eastern Afghanistan, be ordered to stay for the remainder of the year.

     The unit is scheduled to deploy to Iraq later this year, an illustration of how stretched U.S. forces are by the two wars.

     Eikenberry said in an interview that Taliban attacks surged by 200 percent in December. A U.S. military intelligence officer said that since the peace deal went into effect Sept. 5 the number of attacks in the border area has grown by 300 percent.

     "It's going to be a violent spring," Eikenberry predicted.

     Other officials said it has become commonplace for the Pakistani military at border outposts to turn a blind eye to infiltration of Taliban fighters.

     Col. Thomas Collins, the chief spokesmen for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said the Pakistan peace deal has backfired.

     "The enemy is taking advantage of that agreement to launch attacks into Afghanistan," Collins said.

     In another development, Afghanistan's defense minister, Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi, was quoted as saying that Defense Secretary Robert Gates, visiting here, told him the United States will not desert its Afghan mission.

     "We will not leave you alone," Azimi quoted Gates as saying during a meeting with Gen. Abdul Raheem Wardak. "We will be with you ... until you can stand on your feet," Gates was quoted as saying.

     Azimi called Gates' trip "an important visit" because the United States was helping Afghanistan train and equip its army.

     Meanwhile, Pakistani officials in Islamabad said Pakistan's army destroyed suspected al-Qaida hideouts in an airstrike near the Afghan border on Tuesday, killing 10 people.

     They said the raid was in South Waziristan, close to North Waziristan, where the government in September signed a controversial peace deal with tribal elders to halt military operations against militants.

     Eikenberry spoke to a group of U.S. reporters traveling with Gates, who had closed-door briefings from military officials on the resurgence of the Taliban in recent months. Gates was accompanied by Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

     Gates has publicly expressed concern that a resurgent Taliban could put areas of Afghanistan in danger of reverting to a haven for terrorists. U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 to oust the Taliban, and although gains have been made to stabilize the country, the Taliban has recently made inroads.

     Other U.S. military officers who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity because the information included sensitive intelligence, painted an even bleaker picture of the result of the September peace deal, which the Pakistan government portrayed as a vehicle for assisting U.S. efforts in Afghanistan.

     U.S. officials recently gained firsthand evidence that Pakistani forces at a border control point opposite Afghanistan's Khowst province turned a blind eye to infiltration of a substantial number of Taliban fighters. U.S. troops at a base known as Forward Operating Base Tillman urged the Pakistanis to block the infiltrating fighters but nothing was done, one U.S. military intelligence officer said.

     "This is common," another intelligence officer said.

     The U.S. military intelligence officer disclosed for the first time full-year statistics on insurgent attacks in Afghanstian. Suicide attacks in 2006 totaled 139, up from 27 in 2005, and the number of attacks with roadside bombs more than doubled, from 783 in 2005 to 1,677 last year. The number of what the military calls "direct attacks," meaning attacks by insurgents using small arms, grenades and other weapons, surged from 1,558 in 2005 to 4,542 last year.

     The officer noted that some of the increase can be explained by the fact that U.S., NATO and Afghan forces conducted more offensive operations in more areas last year, but the officer said the insurgents also have begun to launch more sophisticated - and in some case, more coordinated - attacks.

     Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

     Posted by OneVote at 05/01/2007 @ 5:51pm

246. Posted by ONEVOTE 05/01/2007 @ 5:51pm

     I even showed him the same news from HIS type sources, and not a peep.

     The man cannot admit he is wrong. Reminds of some putz who temporarily resides at 1600 Penn Ave.

     Posted by Dr Decibels at 05/01/2007 @ 5:57pm

247. The man cannot admit he is wrong. Reminds of some putz who temporarily resides at 1600 Penn Ave.

     Posted by DR DECIBELS 05/01/2007 @ 5:57pm | ignore this person

     Scary DR huh? Its hard to believe that "the 30%" would rather stick to their beliefs than actually look at the facts. Fits the Right Wing Authoritarian stereotype.....they are never wrong...and how dare you question their beliefs or ask for support. Ponti as a child would have been a good recruit for repressive Taliban like movements and regimes.

     Posted by OneVote at 05/01/2007 @ 6:14pm

248. Posted by ONEVOTE 05/01/2007 @ 6:14pm

     The truth can be a hard nut to swaller, that's fer sure.

     Posted by Dr Decibels at 05/01/2007 @ 6:24pm

249. Democrats' version of bi-partisanship?

     Biden: We're Going to Shove Bush Veto Down His Throat

     Tuesday, May 01, 2007

     * E-MAIL STORY * RESPOND TO EDITOR * PRINTER FRIENDLY VERSION

     White House hopeful Sen. Joseph Biden recently told a supporter that after President Bush vetoes the Iraq war funding legislation, "we're going to shove it down his throat."

     Shaking hands with supporters at Rep. James Clyburn's annual fish fry on Friday, Biden, D-Del., responded to a guest's question about what Democrats will do after Bush vetoes the bill.

     "When he vetoes the bill, what's going to be the next version of the bill that you will send him?" the man asks.

     Biden responds: "The idea that we're not building new Humvees with the V-shaped things is just crap. Kids are dying that don't have to die. Second thing is, we're going to shove it down his throat."

     Click here to watch the clip from C-Span posted on YouTube.

     Clyburn, D-S.C., hosts a fish fry each year to thank supporters, calling it an opportunity to thank the people who help get out the vote.

     "Many of them cannot afford a $500 hundred plate of cold chicken. but they can enjoy some hot fish and a little cold beer, none of which they have to pay for," Clyburn said at the event, which this year was attended by six of the eight 2008 Democratic presidential candidates.

     Posted by pontificus at 05/01/2007 @ 7:46pm

250. Posted by ONEVOTE 05/01/2007 @ 6:14pm

     If I was going to admit I was wrong, it would certainly not be due to DR DECIBEL's (ignored) Tourette's Syndrome or MTSPENCE's cognitive dissonance. And I still don't see the point in posting about troubles in Afghanistan, unless that's where the left plans to commit to retreat and defeat next.

     Posted by pontificus at 05/01/2007 @ 7:50pm

251. If it had been a horrible mistake, we would be fighting the entire Iraqi population, instead of just embedded terrorists. The invasion and conquest itself would have been far more costly, as was persistently and wrongly claimed by the Democrats, instead of the relatively easy conquest it was.

     Posted by PONTIFICUS 05/01/2007 @ 5:12pm

     Okay, let's talk numbers....how much of the Iraqi population ARE we fighting?

     and how COSTLY has the invasion been? You mean it would be MORE than 1/2 a TRILLION dollars?

     Posted by Mask at 05/01/2007 @ 8:01pm

252. Posted by MASK 05/01/2007 @ 4:31pm

     So when Tenet claims (in his book) that the Bush administration, before the U.S. led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, never had a serious debate about whether Iraq posed an imminent threat or whether to tighten existing sanctions....

     you don't categorically reject that from Tenet, because he doesn't reinforce your world view....do you?

     I don't dispute either of those claims. I don't think Iraq was ever an 'imminent' threat, and I don't believe the Administration did, either. If you have a quote contradicting that, by all means supply it.

     And as far as sanctions go, they were a complete waste. The only people they affected were the rank and file Iraqis. Besides, the Democrats' French, Russian, and UN pals were busy busting them and they were about to fall apart. This was part of the so-called 'Democratic alternative' about which we here so little nowadays, because it was a complete failure. Remember the 'Oil for Graft' scandal run by the UN? Or did you forget about that already?

     Posted by pontificus at 05/01/2007 @ 8:06pm

253. Posted by MASK 05/01/2007 @ 8:01pm

     Okay, let's talk numbers....how much of the Iraqi population ARE we fighting?

     Good question. I don't think anybody knows the exact answer at any point in time. Certainly we're always fighting Al Quaida, their numbers are put at less than 5,000. But we also may be fighting various factions of Sunni and Shiites at any given time. It's very fluid, and linked to the political situation. But the polls show that most of the population is sympathetic to our mission, just not too happy with the security situation.

     and how COSTLY has the invasion been? You mean it would be MORE than 1/2 a TRILLION dollars?

     Could well be. But the point is we have to balance the costs of that with things such as: How much would another 9/11 cost if we just sit and try to play defense? How long before somebody gets a nuke to use on one of our cities? What would be the cost if the entire Middle East came under the sway of Iran and other terrorist states?

     The Democrats, and certainly those who post regularly on this board, would have us believe if we just sit at home here in the States and think 'Deep Thoughts' and stop being mean to the rest of the world, then all the bad stuff will just go away. Pathetic, and wrong.

     Posted by pontificus at 05/01/2007 @ 8:19pm

254. And I still don't see the point in posting about troubles in Afghanistan, unless that's where the left plans to commit to retreat and defeat next.

     Posted by PONTIFICUS 05/01/2007 @ 7:50pm | ignore this person

     I thought that was part of your idea of GWOT? You seemed focused on fighting terrorism....AQ & Taliban (even claimed the toppling of Taliban as a Bush plus). Wasn't the toppling of the Taliban in Afghanistan? So....you would agree then that Bush has accomplished nothing positive in Iraq?

     Posted by OneVote at 05/01/2007 @ 8:21pm

255. Posted by ONEVOTE 05/01/2007 @ 8:21pm

     Wasn't the toppling of the Taliban in Afghanistan? So....you would agree then that Bush has accomplished nothing positive in Iraq?

     Of course not, that statement is ludicrous. I simply don't see why you think it undermines the entire GWOT that an utter state of grace has not been achieved in Afghanistan. There's been huge progress made in that country, it's idiotic to believe that because it's not perfect right now that we have failed.

     Posted by pontificus at 05/01/2007 @ 8:24pm

256. would have us believe if we just sit at home here in the States and think 'Deep Thoughts' and stop being mean to the rest of the world, then all the bad stuff will just go away. Pathetic, and wrong.

     Posted by PONTIFICUS 05/01/2007 @ 8:19pm | ignore this person

     Ponti...if we could turn the clock back....and knowing what we know now...would you still have supported the invasion of Iraq?

     Posted by OneVote at 05/01/2007 @ 8:25pm

257. BTW....there are lots of lefties here that believed that we do have a strategic interest in Afghanistan (myself included) and do believe in nailing terrorists. Lots of the lefties here just don't buy that the invasion of Iraq was designed for that direct purpose and result.

     Posted by OneVote at 05/01/2007 @ 8:29pm

258. Posted by ONEVOTE 05/01/2007 @ 8:25pm

     Ponti...if we could turn the clock back....and knowing what we know now...would you still have supported the invasion of Iraq?

     Knowing what we know now? I'm not sure, the costs have been horrific. A lot of bad has come of it, for sure. But so has a lot of good. For example, it's silly to argue that Bush's GWOT has not been successful in protecting this country, because we have had no attacks since 9/11. The opposite theory (that we have had no attacks because no one has tried) is just absurd on its face.

     It's hard to get a good reading of the benefits of the Iraq war to Iraq in particular, because the media only reports bad news. Nothing is ever reported about the peace in the north of Iraq, for example. Moreover, there was short shrift given in the media about the mass graves and other systematic atrocities found in Iraq, and there still is, so people don't properly credit the invasion with ending the horrors of Saddams rule.

     It doesn't really make sense to ask in hindsight whether it was right to invade Iraq. The vast majority of the country supported it, and the decision was made. You could certainly argue that Bush and Rumsfeld bungled the occupation, and that I would agree with, however, and that seems to be the cause of a lot of the problems.

     But a lot more of the problems have to do with the way the war is covered, and the virulence of the anti-Bush vote. In this media age, there is no question that the reportage of the war and the fuel it gives to Bush's opponents directly encourages terrorist attacks in Iraq and throughout the world. These attacks have no military value, they are designed exclusively to take advantage of our media and the way the anti-Bush segment of society is bolstered by coverage of suicide bombings, etc. This is an artifact of our media age that our society still has not come to grips with.

     Posted by pontificus at 05/01/2007 @ 8:50pm

259. Posted by PONTIFICUS 05/01/2007 @ 8:19pm

     PONTI, I asked you two question and you ONCE AGAIN gave me no clear answers to either (as you didn't on the other questions, where you merely claimed that "things would be worse").

     You said we would be fighting "all of the Iraqi population", yet have no idea how many "factions" of the Sunnis and Shiites we are fighting....perhaps as many as would be fighing us in that "hypothetical Bush was wrong" situation???

     Secondly, how much did 9/11 cost us? WAS it on the order of HALF A TRILLION dollars? The deficit went up, but was corollated to the Bush tax cuts (which I supported) and if they hadn't been in place, the deficit would have ATLEAST been halved....which BY THE WAY we STILL are racking up even with the war. So we have the "9/11 deficit" AND the cost of the war.

     Final question...is your faith (truly it falls on that term) in this war in Iraq based on a belief in the neo-conservative view of our "eventual successs in bringing democracy to Iraq"...or in George W Bush and believing everything he says is factual and accurate?

     Posted by Mask at 05/01/2007 @ 8:50pm

260. Posted by ONEVOTE 05/01/2007 @ 8:29pm

     BTW....there are lots of lefties here that believed that we do have a strategic interest in Afghanistan (myself included) and do believe in nailing terrorists.

     Of course we do. And taking out the Taliban was almost worth it on its own. Did you ever see those videos of people getting their hands and arms and legs chopped off for minor crimes in front of crowds in the soccer stadium? What kind of people would oppose the overthrow of such a barbaric regime?

     Lots of the lefties here just don't buy that the invasion of Iraq was designed for that direct purpose and result.

     Yes, and the alternative motivations I have heard set forth by these people, e.g., Bush and Cheney did it to get rich, just do not hold water. Neither has gotten rich, or has much prospect to do so. Moreover, they have made life extremely difficult for themselves and their Party. The only reasonable explanation for their actions is that they did what they felt the had to do to keep this country safe, and largely succeeded, albeit at great cost.

     Posted by pontificus at 05/01/2007 @ 8:57pm

261. Posted by MASK 05/01/2007 @ 8:50pm

     You said we would be fighting "all of the Iraqi population", yet have no idea how many "factions" of the Sunnis and Shiites we are fighting....perhaps as many as would be fighing us in that "hypothetical Bush was wrong" situation???

     I said we are alternately fighting some factions of Sunnis and Shiites, from what I can gather, but nobody seems to really know how many, other than that it is a relatively small fraction. It's certainly not a general uprising, as might be expected in the 'Bush was wrong' scenario.

     Secondly, how much did 9/11 cost us? WAS it on the order of HALF A TRILLION dollars? The deficit went up, but was corollated to the Bush tax cuts (which I supported) and if they hadn't been in place, the deficit would have ATLEAST been halved....which BY THE WAY we STILL are racking up even with the war. So we have the "9/11 deficit" AND the cost of the war.

     It's not just the cost of 9/11, which are huge but certainly open to various interpretations. It's the cost of doing nothing and waiting for worse things to happen, e.g., a nuclear bomb placed by terrorists. Unless you choose to believe that could never happen, the potential costs of that are calamitous, certainly greater than the cost of the war. Worth thinking about as Iran moves steadily towards acquiring one.

     Final question...is your faith (truly it falls on that term) in this war in Iraq based on a belief in the neo-conservative view of our "eventual successs in bringing democracy to Iraq"...or in George W Bush and believing everything he says is factual and accurate?

     I don't know if we'll be successful in Iraq, but I think that trying was the right thing to do. I don't think GWB is always right, but given the horrendously bad alternative offered by the Democrats (really, in fact, not an alternative at all, just raw hate in most cases), America doesn't have much choice, does it?

     Posted by pontificus at 05/01/2007 @ 9:05pm

262. PONTIFICUS:

     I call bullshit on that. Never mind the fact that Cheney still owns an enormous position of Halliburton stock in a blind trust. It's gained an ENORMOUS amount of value since he took office.

     You're simply lying again.

     Posted by jorcheim at 05/01/2007 @ 9:49pm

263. Posted by PONTIFICUS 05/01/2007 @ 9:05pm

     Reason I asked, was because among the deluded (and I think you are), I'm interested in how many are neo-cons/If we don't hit them in Iraq where it'll be "easy and we'll start democracy spreading like a weed" types....and how many cult of personality Bushites there are.

     One (the Bushites) are less dangerous. Years later, they may be fighting over how "Hillary lost Iraq...Bush was winning in 2008" or how the financial collapse from TRILLIONS in debt was the fault of Congress but not dear George...but they'll be mostly harmless, like Carter apologists are today.

     The other (the "Iraq is just like World War-2...except it's not when it comes to how long, how much, and al Maliki isn't Konrad Adenaur" types are more dangerous, because they might actually come back to power some day and WASTE thousands of US troops and BILLIONS of dollars again on their failed dream.

     Either way, it's unimportant because this is what will happen...and you'll actually claim "victory" after it does--

     Iraq will fall (barring the Saudis and Iranians cutting a deal). It will happen into 2009-2010 when Hillary (maybe Obama or Edwards) FINALLY begins a re-deployment when the situation is no better after THEIR "Surge" attempt early in their term. Neo-cons/Bushites like yourself will of course blame them for the failure (not the FOUR YEARS of failure that proceeded them), and a small contingent of the 70% of the public that wanted out...may turn on them.

     We will have wasted atleast 4500 lives by then and ATLEAST 500 Billion dollars (1/10th of which would have protected us from your hypothetical nuke attack).

     Fortunately, neo-con'ism as a military option will be dead for 10 years (maybe more), and people like you will be bitchin' and moanin' about how the Democrats are raising taxes to prevent the Chinese from buying us out as well as assigning blame for us going from a contained Saddam regime...to a fundamentalist Shiite regime now allied with Iran.

     Unless Hillary or whoever REALLY screw up (your fervent hope, I'm sure) 2012 will be hers/theirs...and MAYBE a Repub will have a shot in 2016 and you MIGHT see a GOP Congress by 2020.

     In addition to just generally US (America)...George Bush and the neo-cons have screwed the Republicans for atleast a decade.

     Congrats.

     Posted by Mask at 05/01/2007 @ 10:39pm

264. As far as "strategic interest" in Afghanistan... again, bullshit... maybe the strategic interest of UNOCAL... but not in the interests of the US population at large.

     Posted by jorcheim at 05/01/2007 @ 10:49pm

265. ...this is what will happen...

     Posted by MASK 05/01/2007 @ 10:39pm

     MASK,

     I can see you frothing at the mouth over the Iraq War and getting, hmmmm, a bit carried away with your self-assuredness! Is this your equivalent of somebody's World War III scenario? The more you dig in, the less credible you are sounding! We can't even predict weather beyond a few weeks, so,....I'm sure you get my drift!

     Someday, maybe 50 years from now, history will look back and judge that at least one western country believed in the ME to have committed its soldiers and treasury! How will this war end? I don't think anybody really knows, on any side!

     You already know my risk-taking tendencies.....I feel fairly confident that when my days end, I won't have much regret with a huge list of "I wish I had blh, blah, blah..." I give Bush credit for trying, beyond the easy task of removing Saddam, and hope for the best! Like it or not, America--that's you, me and everybody on this board--is in Iraq. What are going to do if and when you travel abroad, slap "I voted against Bush" stickers on everything and all clothing...to distance yourself from `Bush's war'?

     Posted by Happy at 05/02/2007 @ 12:02am

266. Posted by JORCHEIM 05/01/2007 @ 9:49pm

     I call bullshit on that. Never mind the fact that Cheney still owns an enormous position of Halliburton stock in a blind trust. It's gained an ENORMOUS amount of value since he took office.

     You're simply lying again.

     Wrong, JORCHEIM. He HAD a lot of stock options, which he donated to charity so he could run for VEEP. JACKRABBIT and I have been over this. Some had speculated that he could break the donation, but I believe it's too late for that now.

     Posted by pontificus at 05/02/2007 @ 07:46am

267. More info on Cheney's donation of his Halliburton stock options:

     Cheney made a binding legal agreement when he became Veep that hires a law firm to exercise his Halliburton (among others) stock options when the time seems right to maximize the resulting profits, deduct fees for the attorneys and taxes owed, and then donate whatever is left over according to the following (as quoted from the Factcheck.org piece):

     The agreement specifies that 40% will go to the University of Wyoming (Cheney's home state), 40% will go to George Washington University's medical faculty to be used for tax-exempt charitable purposes, and 20% will go to Capital Partners for Education, a charity that provides financial aid for low-income students in Washington, DC to attend private and religious schools.

     Posted by pontificus at 05/02/2007 @ 09:25am

268. Posted by JORCHEIM 05/01/2007 @ 9:49pm

     So as you can see, JORCHEIM, far from profiting from the Iraq War, Cheney actually made what was probably an enormous personal financial sacrifice to become VEEP. Instead, if anyone is profiting from Halliburton stock, it appears to be several very worthy charities, some of which (UofW) are probably paying the salaries of rabid Bush haters (professorial elite). Pretty admirable, in my view. Somehow I doubt if anyone here shares that sentiment; blind, irrational hate doesn't really allow any other companionship.

     Posted by pontificus at 05/02/2007 @ 09:35am

269. Ponti-Don't be so naive.With people like Cheney it isn't just about profit,but it's,also,about power and Cheney is probably the most powerful VP we've ever had.He is hardly Mother Teresa.

     Posted by i'm nobody at 05/02/2007 @ 09:47am

270. Someday, maybe 50 years from now, history will look back and judge that at least one western country believed in the ME to have committed its soldiers and treasury! How will this war end? I don't think anybody really knows, on any side!

     You already know my risk-taking tendencies.....I feel fairly confident that when my days end, I won't have much regret with a huge list of "I wish I had blh, blah, blah..." I give Bush credit for trying, beyond the easy task of removing Saddam, and hope for the best! Like it or not, America--that's you, me and everybody on this board--is in Iraq. What are going to do if and when you travel abroad, slap "I voted against Bush" stickers on everything and all clothing...to distance yourself from `Bush's war'?

     Posted by HAPPY

     If you possessed any understanding of history you would appreciate how preposterous and ill informed the decision to invade Iraq was.

     How will it end? Let's hope the next President will have the people capable of adopting a diplomatic approach. Without the cooperation of Syria and Iran there will be no credible peace in Iraq. Engaging these two nations--along with the others bordering Iraq--is the only way to establish a stable, peaceful Iraq, it that's at all possible. It's a mess. It's "our" mess.

     At this point I feel our only hope is for the next administration to be more flexible, more willing to compromise. In order to salvage something positive for the US out of the current mess the next president will have to have an imagination and the ability to take chances. And even then the end result will be far less than pipe dreams the current administration has been peddling. What you want and what is possible are often two totally different things.

     Posted by mtspence05 at 05/02/2007 @ 09:53am

271. Posted by I'M NOBODY 05/02/2007 @ 09:47am

     Ponti-Don't be so naive.With people like Cheney it isn't just about profit,but it's,also,about power and Cheney is probably the most powerful VP we've ever had.He is hardly Mother Teresa.

     I really don't get it with you folks, IM. First you say he took the country to war to get rich. Then when I disprove that, all of the sudden it's some other issue altogether, completely unprovable one way or the other this time. What gives?

     Posted by pontificus at 05/02/2007 @ 09:54am

272. You see, I'm getting this 'you just don't get it, Cheney is the DEVIL' vibe. You're right, I just don't get it!

     Posted by pontificus at 05/02/2007 @ 09:56am

273. Published on Thursday, April 3, 2003 by CommonDreams.org

     Halliburton, Dick Cheney, and Wartime Spoils

     by Lee Drutman and Charlie Cray

     When Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle revealed that he was getting $725,000 to help Global Crossing navigate the national security issues surrounding the sale of its assets, the press jumped all over Perle, and rightly so. There was indeed something fishy about the chairman of a board that advises the Pentagon making that kind of money to help a company that was having problems with national security issues. Perle is also on the board of Onset Technology, the leading provider of message conversion technology and a major supplier to Bechtel - one of the leading candidates for rebuilding the Iraqi infrastructure.

     As the Center for Public Integrity has documented, this kind of thing is quite prevalent on the Defense Policy Board, where at least nine of the 30 members have ties to companies that have won more than $76 billion in defense contracts in 2001 and 2002. As more and more wartime contracts are announced, more and more conflicts of interest are coming to light. After all, the Bush administration is riddled with ties to the weapons, engineering, construction, and oil companies that have the most to profit from a war in Iraq. Perle's story is certainly not unusual.

     However, of all the administration members with potential conflicts of interest, none seems more troubling than Vice President Dick Cheney. Cheney is former CEO of Halliburton, an oil-services company that also provides construction and military support services - a triple-header of wartime spoils.

     A few weeks ago, the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers awarded a no-bid contract to extinguish oil well fires in Iraq to Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR), a subsidiary of Halliburton. The contract was granted under a January Bush administration waiver that, according to the Washington Post, allowed "government agencies to handpick companies for Iraqi reconstruction projects."

     The contract, which was not announced until more than two weeks after it was awarded, was open-ended, with no time limits and no dollar limits. It was also a "cost-plus" contract, meaning that the company is guaranteed to recover costs and then make a guaranteed profit on top of that. Its value is estimated at tens of millions of dollars.

     This is not the first buck that Cheney's former company has made off military conflict and likely won't be the last. KBR currently has thousands of military support personnel on the ground in Kuwait and Turkey as part of a multi-year contract worth close to a billion dollars. The engineering subsidiary was also one of a select few firms invited to bid on an initial $900 million USAID contract for rebuilding post-war Iraq. Though it didn't get that job, Halliburton says it is still in the running for subcontracts and there will likely be plenty more opportunities. After all, the American Academy of Sciences estimates the rebuilding Iraq will cost between $30 and $105 billion dollars. At a recent investor conference call, Halliburton reported a 30% increase in year-over-year revenues, to $1.6 billion, for KBR.

     Cheney, who served as CEO from 1995 to 2000, continues to receive as much as $1 million a year in deferred compensation as Halliburton executives enjoy a seat at the table during Administration discussions over how to handle post-war oil production in Iraq.

     The Cheney-Halliburton story is the classic military-industrial revolving door tale. As Secretary of Defense under Bush I, Cheney paid Brown and Root services (now Kellogg Brown and Root) $3.9 million to report on how private companies could help the U.S. Army as Cheney cut hundreds of thousands of Army jobs. Then Brown and Root won a five-year contract to provide logistics for the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers all over the globe. In 1995, Cheney became CEO and Halliburton jumped from 73rd to 18th on the Pentagon's list of top contractors, benefiting from at least $3.8 billion in federal contracts and taxpayer-insured loans, according to the Center for Public Integrity.

     But the Halliburton story is more than just a simple revolving door tale. Even without the Cheney conflicts of interest, serious doubts remain about whether a company with a record like Halliburton's should even be eligible to receive government contracts in the first place. This, after all, is a company that has been accused of cost overruns, tax avoidance, and cooking the books and has a history of doing business in countries like Iraq, Iran and Libya.

     Cost overruns: In September 2000, the General Accounting Office (GAO) found that the U.S. Army had not taken appropriate steps to limit the $2.2 billion costs Kellogg Brown and Root charged for logistical and engineering support in the Balkans. According to the report, Army officials "frequently have simply accepted the level of services the contractor provided without questioning whether they could be provided more efficiently or less frequently at lower cost."

     Questionable Accounting: The SEC recently formalized an investigation into whether Halliburton artificially inflated revenue by $234 million over four years. Halliburton switched to a more aggressive accounting method in 1998 under Cheney.

     Access to Evil -- business dealings in Iraq, Iran, and Libya: News reports suggest that Pentagon is currently using the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA) to draw up a blacklist of non-US companies that have done business in Iran. Yet, Halliburton has conducted Business in Iran through subsidiaries. When Cheney was CEO of Halliburton, he inquired about an ILSA waiver to pursue oil field developments in Iran. In 1997, Halliburton subsidiary Halliburton Energy Services paid $15,000 to settle Department of Commerce allegations that the company had broken anti-boycott provisions of the U.S. Export Administration Act for an Iran-related transaction. Halliburton recently agreed to evaluate its operations in Iran, after the Securities and Exchange Commission rebuffed the company's request to dismiss a New York City police and fire pension funds shareholder proposal for the company to examine its role in Iran.

     Also forgotten is that story about how Cheney's Halliburton did business with Saddam. According to the Washington Post, "Halliburton held stakes in two firms that signed contracts to sell more than $73 million in oil production equipment and spare parts to Iraq while Cheney was chairman and chief executive officer."

     Halliburton has also done business in Azerbaijan, Burma, Indonesia, Libya and Nigeria. As Dick Cheney once said, "The good Lord didn't see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratic regimes friendly to the United States."

     Tax Havens: Under Cheney's tenure, the number of Halliburton subsidiaries in offshore tax havens increased from 9 to 44. Meanwhile, Halliburton went from paying $302 million in company taxes in 1998 to getting an $85 million tax refund in 1999.

     All told, the IRS loses about $70 billion a year in offshore tax sheltering by corporations and wealthy individuals - almost enough to cover the $75 billion Bush has asked for to cover the first six months of war. (http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0403-10.htm)

     Posted by mtspence05 at 05/02/2007 @ 10:13am

274. Ponti-You didn't prove anything.You have no idea what back room deals Cheney may have made or what all investments that he could be tied to.How much stock does his wife or other family members own?How about his friends?

     Posted by i'm nobody at 05/02/2007 @ 10:18am

275. The New Yorker

     Contract Sport By Jane Mayer

     After Cheney's tenure at the Pentagon ended, in 1993, with the arrival of the Clinton Administration, he spent much of the next two years deciding whether to run for President. He formed a political-action committee, and crossed the country making speeches and raising money. He also became affiliated with the American Enterprise Institute, the conservative think tank. Records from the Federal Election Commission show that Cheney's pac contributors included executives at several of the companies that have since won the largest government contracts in Iraq. Among them were Thomas Cruikshank, Halliburton's C.E.O. at the time; Stephen Bechtel, whose family's construction-and-engineering firm now has a contract in Iraq worth as much as $2.8 billion; and Duane Andrews, then senior vice-president of Science Applications International Corporation, which has won seven contracts in Iraq. (Page 4.) (http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/02/16/040216fa_fact?currentPage=4 )

     Posted by mtspence05 at 05/02/2007 @ 10:26am

276. It doesn't really make sense to ask in hindsight whether it was right to invade Iraq. The vast majority of the country supported it, and the decision was made. You could certainly argue that Bush and Rumsfeld bungled the occupation, and that I would agree with, however, and that seems to be the cause of a lot of the problems.

     Posted by PONTIFICUS 05/01/2007 @ 8:50pm | ignore this person

     Yes, the reality of the present (and future) deserves our focus. But hindsight (history) serves well to teach us lessons, and so its not a totally futile exercise. Time will tell Ponti. Thanks for your considered response.

     Posted by OneVote at 05/02/2007 @ 10:27am

277. Posted by I'M NOBODY 05/02/2007 @ 10:18am

     Ponti-You didn't prove anything.You have no idea what back room deals Cheney may have made or what all investments that he could be tied to.How much stock does his wife or other family members own?How about his friends?

     Do you have anything to offer along these lines? Any solid basis for your suspicions? Or are they all in your mind?

     Posted by pontificus at 05/02/2007 @ 10:33am

278. It is so complicated to secure an Iraq contract from the United States government that several big Washington law firms have gone into the business of shepherding applicants through the process. More than twenty billion dollars has been set aside for Iraqi relief and reconstruction projects, with work contracts being awarded by the Defense, State, and Commerce Departments, and by the U.S. Agency for International Development, in coördination with L. Paul Bremer, the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority. There's an additional five billion dollars sitting in the Development Fund for Iraq, also administered by the C.P.A. Officials at the C.P.A. say that contracts are awarded on the basis of competitive bidding, but rumors proliferate about political influence. When asked if connections helped, an executive whose firm has received several contracts replied, "Of course." One businessman with close ties to the Bush Administration told me, "Anything that has to do with Iraq policy, Cheney's the man to see. He's running it, the way that L.B.J. ran the space program." (ibid. page 6.)

     Posted by mtspence05 at 05/02/2007 @ 10:38am

279. Okay enough of trying to win over hearts and minds (PONTI and HAPPY's that is....hehe), let's look at the ugly, unvarnished, likelhoods about Iraq...

     It's going to fail. UNLESS our friends the Saudis (who are funding the Sunni insurgents who are attacking us) and our enemies the Iranians (who are supportive of our friend al Maliki and the government of Iraq) get together and come up with a political solution.

     President Bush will NOT pull out troops from Iraq...period. The Democrats scared s**tless of being blamed for "cutting the funding and losing the war" will eventually pass a bill with goals, time-tables, targets...whatever you want to call them....so VAGUE that Bush will "regrettably" sign it...and when the time comes for the first "goal" comes in October....he'll claim it IS happening and he's abiding by the supplemental spending bill and no troop withdrawals are needed (or "plans for SOME withdrawals are being looked at...but nothing definitive"). The war will go on, pretty much as it has.

     Petraeus will come out in late summer/early fall and claim some successes....like "suicide bombers are down from 13 a week to 'only' 8 a week" and US troop casualties are down from 5 dead and 20 wounded a month to 3 dead and 17 wounded a month. ("sadly, Iraqi civilian deaths are up from 45 to 53, but who cares, huh?")

     Then we're into the Primaries. Everybody will talk about "their plan to get out of Iraq" (if Dem) or "their plan to achieve victory in Iraq" (if Repub). Another supplemental will come up and the same fight, same veto, same compromise and it'll be pushed off until January 2009. Bush leaves office and it gets passed off.

     President Hillary (or Obama or Edwards or Mike Gravel if you like) will pull out the original "2007 Surge" troops...but no more. They'll SAY they're prepared to "re-deploy" but it will get delayed. Eventually they will start a pull-out by early Summer 2009 and it will be so gradual that any up-tick in violence can be spun as "not related to the tiny pull-out".

     Eventually, we get the "Saigon 1975" moment. Baghdad erupts into full-scale sectarian violence, even Petraeus (long retired) calls it a "civil war" and Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and the Beltway Boys on Fox tell PONTI, HAPPY, and the 30%ers that "it's Hillary's fault we lost Iraq". They dutifully post it here and elsewhere.

     Without a deal between the Saudis/Sunnis and the Iranians/Shiia, the thing goes "Lebanon" and the Iranians might even move some troops into the oil fields. Oil prices will skyrocket (get your Prius NOW, if you haven't already) and Hillary/Whoever gets a nice little recession on her hands with a visible deficit back in the 300 Billions and an invisible one (from all the "off-the-books" spending on Iraq since 2003) in the 400 Billions.

     No "New Great Society" my liberal friends. Robert Rubin and the financial guys will tell her to cut all discretionary spending and look at raising the retirement age and trim back Medicare. The idea of a new universal health care plan will likely fade, unless it can be shown to be revenue-neutral (not likely).

     But no, this DOESN'T mean a resurgence of the Republicans. Bush and the neo-cons have ROYALLY screwed them for a decade (as well as us). Anybody sounding like he wants to "fight the terrorists over there, so we don't have to fight them here" won't get dime one from the GOP Money Boys....no profit in it anymore. The Social Cons are bankrupt, since Foley-gate and the idiocies of Robertson, Falwell, etc. And all the Fox News in the world isn't going to blame the deficits on the Democrats, if they're cutting spending (and they aren't suicidal enough to pass anything more than a modest tax on the "super-rich").

     So, gang...we're in for interesting times, as the Chinese (who own our deficit) used to curse with. And our ONLY hope....is that King Abdullah of SA and Ahmadinejad and the Kurds....pull our (and the world's) bacon out of the fire.

     Posted by Mask at 05/02/2007 @ 10:53am

280. Ponti-Don't be so naive.With people like Cheney it isn't just about profit,but it's,also,about power...

     Posted by I'M NOBODY 05/02/2007 @ 09:47am

     NOBODY,

     For people of some smarts, drive, and understanding of how our capitalism works, to be quite frank w/you, it's not that difficult to become wealthy. You may have noted a news blip a few days ago as to how the number of millionaire households have hit a record....my H-town hit No. 7 on the list of top 10 (in no. of such households).

     For folks like Cheney and Bush, and I'll even extend it to Hillary, Edwards, Romney, Giuliani, etc..., I can just about guarantee you their drive to be the top of their profession (pols), ain't remotely about money for them (or their buddies). Power, absolutely! So I agree w/you there. However, it is, IMO, the desire to make an impact, change, and leave a legacy.

     What do you suppose George Sorros is after when he backs the looney Left? I know from personal feeling, after one reached X in wealth, the incremental wealth means less and less and less....Say you've got 100 cases of your favorite beer, does gaining or donating another 5 cases really, really mean that much to you? How about the ability to do something so that most everybody can have 30 cases of beer for cheap? I would be very `turned on' by the `power' to do that!!!!!

     Posted by Happy at 05/02/2007 @ 10:55am

281. TIME

     The Paper Trail

     Sunday, May. 30, 2004 By TIMOTHY J. BURGER AND ADAM ZAGORIN

     Vice President Dick Cheney was a guest on NBC's Meet the Press last September when host Tim Russert brought up Halliburton. Citing the company's role in rebuilding Iraq as well as Cheney's prior service as Halliburton's CEO, Russert asked, "Were you involved in any way in the awarding of those contracts?" Cheney's reply: "Of course not, Tim ... And as Vice President, I have absolutely no influence of, involvement of, knowledge of in any way, shape or form of contracts led by the [Army] Corps of Engineers or anybody else in the Federal Government."

     Cheney's relationship with Halliburton has been nothing but trouble since he left the company in 2000. Both he and the company say they have no ongoing connections. But TIME has obtained an internal Pentagon e-mail sent by an Army Corps of Engineers official--whose name was blacked out by the Pentagon--that raises questions about Cheney's arm's-length policy toward his old employer. Dated March 5, 2003, the e-mail says "action" on a multibillion-dollar Halliburton contract was "coordinated" with Cheney's office. The e-mail says Douglas Feith, a high-ranking Pentagon hawk, got the "authority to execute RIO," or Restore Iraqi Oil, from his boss, who is Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. RIO is one of several large contracts the U.S. awarded to Halliburton last year.

     The e-mail says Feith approved arrangements for the contract "contingent on informing WH [White House] tomorrow. We anticipate no issues since action has been coordinated w VP's [Vice President's] office." Three days later, the Army Corps of Engineers gave Halliburton the contract, without seeking other bids. TIME located the e-mail among documents provided by Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group. (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101040607-644111,00.h tml)

     Posted by mtspence05 at 05/02/2007 @ 11:02am

282. Posted by HAPPY

     Delusions of grandeur. A legacy? Too bad money can't buy some class, common sense, a little objectivity and knowledge.

     Posted by mtspence05 at 05/02/2007 @ 11:09am

283. ...cut all discretionary spending and look at raising the retirement age and trim back Medicare....

     Posted by MASK 05/02/2007 @ 10:53am

     Whole-heartedly agree this is what's needed, regardless of Party in control, but not at all sure (as you seem to) it will get done sufficiently to truly ease the `crunch'. One thought: like Welfare, I was correct that it DID take a Dem President to reform it and of course, Clinton had the GOP Congress to work with.

     On the even more difficult SS & Medicare, I feel the same....UNLESS the GOP makes a huge comeback within the next 2~6 years! Beyond that time frame, no chance for serious reforms....the Boomers will have begun to collect and harping just like AARP has been! I absolutely abhor those AARP folks, selfish to no end....but constantly soliciting my membership! F*** them! Bush's biggest fiscal mistake was the prescription med program and he got `negative returns' from it! Now, I'm beginning to froth at the mouth! LOL!!!

     Posted by Happy at 05/02/2007 @ 11:12am

284. Posted by MTSPENCE05 05/02/2007 @ 11:09am

     MT,

     I `tolerate' your visibility here but try to have meaningful stuff to post!

     Posted by Happy at 05/02/2007 @ 11:13am

285. Posted by HAPPY

     Don't do me any favors, numb nuts.

     Posted by mtspence05 at 05/02/2007 @ 11:16am

286. Posted by HAPPY 05/02/2007 @ 11:12am

     Bush's biggest fiscal mistake was...the drug plan?!?!?

     Not the fact he never vetoed a spending bill? Nor the fact that he (and the GOP Congress) put ALL of the Iraq funding into supplementals that were "off the books" for deficit figuring...or the fact that the costs of that war went from Cheney's prediction of "$50 Billion" to FOUR HUNDRED-FIFTY Billion?

     Medicare costs us $256.8 billion in fiscal year 2002. If it was TOTALLY ELIMINATED, it wouldn't be but HALF the cost of the war in Iraq.

     Sorry, there's an elephant in the living room and you're blaming the crowding on the Shetland pony!

     Posted by Mask at 05/02/2007 @ 12:30pm

287. The obvious very first step is to deport the illegal aliens-they just suck money out of any and all programs designed to help Americans.

     Posted by tucanofulano1 at 05/03/2007 @ 03:01am

288. ...Not the fact he never vetoed a spending bill?....

     Medicare costs us $256.8 billion in fiscal year 2002. If it was TOTALLY ELIMINATED, it wouldn't be but HALF the cost of the war in Iraq....

     Posted by MASK 05/02/2007 @ 12:30pm

     Bush exercised the `veto' pen on `Bridge to Nowhere' bill....But most importantly, he vetoed the `Timetable to Defeat in Iraq plus misc. Soundry Pork Bill' just 2 days ago!

     You are off your rockers to compare Medicare $$ to Iraq War $$....Medicare is an ANNUAL & FAST RISING `fixed' expense while the Iraq War $$ you alluded to is a CUMULATIVE amount that will taper off....perhaps dramatically if your `acceptable' dreamgirl Hillary becomes El Presidente! Is you math like that of KVH?

     Posted by Happy at 05/03/2007 @ 10:08am

289. Bush exercised the `veto' pen on `Bridge to Nowhere' bill....

     Posted by HAPPY 05/03/2007 @ 10:08am | ignore this person

     Really Happy? In this make-believe parallel universe where you apparently live, did Bush veto the entire appropriations bill? Or did the Republican Congress give Bush the brand new 'line item veto' power that he wanted?

     Because here, in the reality where the rest of us live, neither of those things happened. The 'line item veto' bill got shot down (thank God) and the appropriations bill...with the $315 million Bridge to Nowhere passed. And Bush signed it.

     And now, the price tag on the 'Bridge to Nowhere' has ballooned to $395 million, so those 50 residents won't have to take the ferry anymore.

     Thanks Republicans!

     Posted by Lillian at 05/04/2007 @ 7:30pm