Disco Stu wrote:http://www.philly.com/dailynews/columnists/stu_bykofsky/20070809_Stu_Bykofsky___To_save_America__we_need_another_9_11.html

:roll:

Ask Clark, he'll tell you.

Karl Rove resigns, yay?

To take a spot at Halliburton or Titan?

Disco Stu wrote:http://www.philly.com/dailynews/columnists/stu_bykofsky/20070809_Stu_Bykofsky___To_save_America__we_need_another_9_11.html

:roll:

That's pretty disgusting

Let's have another mass tragedy so that the elephants and donkeys can get along?

heard on 1210 AM 6:43 pm

"We haven't paid a price at all, not including those families that lost soldiers. In the first Iraq War we lost 300 people people and killed over 100,000. We won by a landslide."

same caller:

"There are 16 provinces in Iraq and we only have problems in 2 or 3 of them."

That's like comparing North Dakota to California in population, but I give caller credit.

pacino wrote:"We haven't paid a price at all, not including those families that lost soldiers. In the first Iraq War we lost 300 people people and killed over 100,000. We won by a landslide."

This is obviously not someone with a keen grasp of how budgets work, or the concept of "opportunity cost."

Not that either of those considerations would invalidate the war, were things looking like we were going to get the desired outcome and putting aside the basic moral questions involved in an invasion undertaken despite the lack of a direct threat (which are complicated, of course). But a world absent the Iraq war is a world in which we never spent $500 billion and counting, a world in which Afghanistan was probably a complete success, and a world in which Iran and China (by virtue of holding so much of our debt) are a lot weaker strategically than they are as things stand today.

Also, I suspect the qualifier "not including those families who lost soldiers" wouldn't sit real well with anyone in those families. Or their friends. Or the women and men who served with those killed or maimed.

Okay, the caller's an a-hole. Probably best just to leave it at that.

I think it is time to remove the amendment that keeps a president from serving more than 2 terms. It is silly in nature as if the people want a guy in there longer, they just keep voting him in. But it also keeps us away from lame duck presidencies which I think can create some bad situations for the country.

Is the US headed for the same fate as the Roman empire?

US Comptroller General issues warning

The US government is on a 'burning platform' of unsustainable policies and practices with fiscal deficits, chronic healthcare underfunding, immigration and overseas military commitments threatening a crisis if action is not taken soon, the country’s top government inspector has warned.

David Walker, comptroller general of the US, issued the unusually downbeat assessment of his country’s future in a report that lays out what he called "chilling long-term simulations".

These include "dramatic" tax rises, slashed government services and the large-scale dumping by foreign governments of holdings of US debt.

Drawing parallels with the end of the Roman empire, Mr Walker warned there were "striking similarities" between America’s current situation and the factors that brought down Rome, including "declining moral values and political civility at home, an over-confident and over-extended military in foreign lands and fiscal irresponsibility by the central government".

The fiscal imbalance meant the US was "on a path toward an explosion of debt".

"With the looming retirement of baby boomers, spiralling healthcare costs, plummeting savings rates and increasing reliance on foreign lenders, we face unprecedented fiscal risks," said Mr Walker, a former senior executive at PwC auditing firm.

Current US policy on education, energy, the environment, immigration and Iraq also was on an "unsustainable path".

oh please

Walker's a patriot. There is nothing more American than telling hard truths to power, and that's what he has tried to do for years upon years. Since his agency is not part of the executive branch, he can't be purged in favor of a Loyal Bushie (or Loyal Hillie). Thank goodness for that.

He has laid out the economic case for a disengagement from empire (which is NOT the same as isolationism, btw). The moral case, I think, is fairly self-evident. Now we need a charismatic politician to make it work as far as winning elections. It won't be this cycle--you need a better champion than Ron Paul, who's the only guy talking about this now and is a nut on so many other issues--but eventually someone will figure out you can win with this. If the Bush/Rove faction is really shoved aside, my guess is it will be a Republican, maybe even one I can support...

omg. omg. omg. if the economy collapses will we still be able to afford the internet?

Dick Cheney, circa 1994
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BEsZMvrq-I[/youtube]

Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein's government, then what are you going to put in its place? That's a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off: part of it, the Syrians would like to have to the west, part of it -- eastern Iraq -- the Iranians would like to claim, they fought over it for eight years. In the north you've got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey. It's a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq.

The other thing was casualties. Everyone was impressed with the fact we were able to do our job with as few casualties as we had. But for the 146 Americans killed in action, and for their families -- it wasn't a cheap war. And the question for the president, in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad, took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein, was how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth?

US seniors head south to Mexican nursing homes

Douglas was shocked by the high cost and impersonal care at assisted-living facilities near her home. After searching the Internet for other options, she joined a small but steadily growing number of Americans who are moving across the border to nursing homes in Mexico, where the sun is bright and the living is cheap.

For $1,300 a month - a quarter of what an average nursing home costs in Oregon - Douglas gets a studio apartment, three meals a day, laundry and cleaning service, and 24-hour care from an attentive staff, many of whom speak English. She wakes up every morning next to a glimmering mountain lake, and the average annual high temperature is a toasty 79 degrees.

anyone see stewert interview chaneys biographer? really good stuff. that was followed by colbert sticking it to o'reilly for the 10000th time. it never gets old.

Phan In Phlorida wrote:US seniors head south to Mexican nursing homes

Douglas was shocked by the high cost and impersonal care at assisted-living facilities near her home. After searching the Internet for other options, she joined a small but steadily growing number of Americans who are moving across the border to nursing homes in Mexico, where the sun is bright and the living is cheap.

For $1,300 a month - a quarter of what an average nursing home costs in Oregon - Douglas gets a studio apartment, three meals a day, laundry and cleaning service, and 24-hour care from an attentive staff, many of whom speak English. She wakes up every morning next to a glimmering mountain lake, and the average annual high temperature is a toasty 79 degrees.

This sounds so awesome, despite my dreams of retiring to Miami, I'd seriously consider Latin America or the Caribbean. Rio, here I come!!!!

Hmm.

On some level I don't claim to entirely understand, it really pisses me off that Kucinich has a wife that hot.

dajafi wrote:On some level I don't claim to entirely understand, it really pisses me off that Kucinich has a wife that hot.

She's clearly WAY out of his league...i mean his ears alone...

jemagee wrote:

dajafi wrote:On some level I don't claim to entirely understand, it really pisses me off that Kucinich has a wife that hot.

She's clearly WAY out of his league...i mean his ears alone...

He probably thinks--hey, I married her, how hard can it be to win the Presidency? By the way, she has a tongue stud.