Intriguing idea, but I don’t know if I believe you one hundred percent….

Edwards is my favored candidate because I have rather more hope that he would act to end the insanity than any of the other leading candidates, although I don’t know for certain. I don’t even know if any President could, to be honest. The drive to imperium has become so deeply embedded at the highest levels of government and bureaucracy and it’s very, very hard to swim against a strong current. Ron Paul is a loon on a lot of other issues, but he certainly speaks truth on foreign policy.

I just finished reading Chalmers Johnson’s Nemesis. I think he’s certainly right on the perilous state of our Republic, and a lot has happened since he finished it that reinforces his conclusions. I think the US is going to have to be moved by outside circumstances. I don’t think it’s going to respond to its own people.

Hillary and Obama already ARE comfortable about it, and have made it very clear that they do not intend to make a full withdrawal. Not sure whether Edwards has taken a position on this one. No doubt all the Republicans except Ron Paul are more than OK with “sustaining a presence” there. Can’t let all those billions spent to build those military base/small American cities and the Imperial Regional Command and Control Center – ahem! Pardon me, “embassy” – in Baghdad go to waste, now, can we?

So, it’s a done deal no matter who wins – until the Iraqis finally drive them out, that is.

And I wonder if a similar agenda is at work with the surge advocates here. Of course, the surge is a disaster. The war’s getting worse and worse for bot Iraqis and Americans, as anyone with any links to the reality-based community predicted long ago. But that’s not the administration’s concern. Their goal is simply to sow enough confusion about what’s going on, to use enough strategies and enough different people so that it comes from enough different directions that the majority of the public — and enough members of Congress — are thoroughly confused. They don’t care if the numbers don’t add up. Most of them aren’t going to pay attention to Larry’s admirable analysis — or that of the other people who have been paying attention to the debacle. They just want to keep it confused enough long enough to get their way. Keith Olbermann had a fine quote last night and tonight from Robert Draper’s book, Dead Certain, where he quotes Bush as saying “I’m playing for October-November. . . To get us in a position where the presidential candidates, will be comfortable about sustaining a presence [in Iraq].”

That’s what all this business with O’Hanlon and the other useful idiots is all about. It’s catapulting the propaganda once more. Throw enough of it to create a general impression that you confuse the general public, undermine the informed opposition, and end up getting your way after all. Totally cynical.

BY VINCE

The questions from a friend, because I opposed the amnesty bill, were: Where’s your compassion? Doesn’t your heart bleed for them?

Unlike far left “liberals” and most “conservatives” – of whom I am neither – I try to address different issues differently. That said, I have spent enough time in hospitals and ERs to know where illegal immigrants go when they need (free) health care.

I also know where they are coming from.
In Marion County they’re coming from horse farms where they get below-minimum-wage salaries, no benefits and pay little or no taxes. Meanwhile, the ultra-rich (Republican) horse farm owners play at the “sport of kings” with farm subsidies to boot – their prize thoroughbreds living in better housing and receiving better health care than their workers.

Yes, my heart does bleed for them. Yes, I do have compassion for them. I have never regretted one iota of aid this country has sent to people in need.

This bill was a conjunction of evil and greed: the Republicans wanting cheap labor for their corporate friends, the Catholic church and Mormons seeking new members, the Democrats more voters – all seeing a path to more money or more power.

I see immigrants living all around me living on Social Security without ever having worked a day in this country while the IRS is taxing me on Social Security money that I paid back. I see the Christian Right worried about a few (by comparison) abortions but doing nothing to help 47 million Americans – including 9 million children – who don’t have health care. I see Republican candidates sneer at national health care citing long waits, etc., while some patients suffer, slowly waiting for care they desperately need.

In a little more than 200 years, our once great country is in decline – in debt to China, our key industries including defense moving overseas. The Chinese are killing us softly with bad food, bad tires and even bad toothpaste. I see jobs outsourced, benefits slashed and pensions gutted.

Global corporatism has meant the decline of patriotism. Greed is our greatest sin. If we are fighting Islamic fascists, our young men are dying for corporate fascism. It reminds me of Sinclair Lewis’ quote: “When fascism comes to America it will come wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross” – and retired Gen. Anthony Zinni’s comment that the decline of the middle class is the beginning of the end of democracy.

Where is my compassion? How many cures could we have found, how many children could we have insured, how many people could we have educated with the money wasted – in corruption alone – fighting an unnecessary war in Iraq?

Yes, I know how people become Americans. They come, they wait in line, learn the language and embrace our ideals. And I know it’s not easy. My Irish grandfather, living in the “liberal” Northeast, took his turn with shotgun in hand, protecting the Catholic church from other Christians who would burn it down. My mother told me of the burning crosses, and that the Ku Klux Klan hated Jews and Catholics as fervently as they hated people of color.

Somehow we have lost our way, a piece of our heart, of our soul.

If this is truly a great country, then our people must share in both its toil and triumphs. We must all take some share in its wars. We should all share in its bounty and benevolence.

In an April 1953 speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, President Dwight D. Eisenhower said: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone.”

It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 people. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

I can’t wait till the “few dead enders” and “we’ll stand down when they stand up” talking points are recycled again.

-GSD

What are his benchmarks for economic recovery?

“Only 60% unemployment!”

That was over 24 years ago.

Times changed. Administrations changed. Priorities changed.

The Department of Energy had an informal agreement to provide $200,000 a year for five years for maintenance and operations, but the Reagan administration’s funding cuts ended that.”

Imagine trhat, Ronnie Raygun gutted solar initiatives and even removed solar panels off the White House roof.

The money spent in the wrong war at the wrong place and time could have reshaped America’s future and solidified its infrastructure. Creating jobs while doing so.

So how was your energy crisis in California this week? That deregulation Bushco. pushed through is still working wonders, no?

That is as it should be. This is your war, not Iraqis’ war, no matter how hard you have tried to make it theirs.

I don’t know. I am not completely convinced it was Barzani, but knowing Barzani, what he is capable of, and some of the things he has done to the Assyrians, knowing the issues involved, and knowing about the historical conflict between Barzani and the Yezidis, I can see how this is possible.

Doesn’t O’Hanlon remind you of the term – an educated idiot.