A
Alex Jones
Guest
Everyone should read this and discover just how "conservative" the Bush administration really is: http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2007/11/30/paulsons-plan-to-punish-the-public.aspx
wkmac
Well-Known Member
The economic thought of republicans had it that a good thing is to make as many people as you can home owners and in principle I would agree. The problem is that in their zeal to make folks homeowers who had never been before, a false market of homeloans were created in order to achieve this goal. Many people who borrowed for homes didn't even have the downpayment so creative loans were made to to fulfill that market. At the same time as the article in the first paragraph spoke of the "unintended consequences of greed!" People debate about what greed means but the unintended consequeces IMO is a pretty good match up.
Now that the false market has in effect collapsed, it would appear that instead of forgetting this and moving on, the Bush Adminstration decides to entrench and perpetuate the false market through gov't policy. Now one could argue and rightly so that the real victims in this mess are the homeowners who by slick mortgage brokers in concert with real estate agents got suckered into deals way beyond their means and they didn't have the economic sophisication to catch the trap being laid if you will. You could let the false market die on the vine but the real barbarians at the gate have their money and laugh all the way to the bank. The poor foreclosed homeowner is left holding the bag and what about the big mortgage brokers? Oh, their protected by their corp. charter and the moment the heat is on, they kill the corp. and then re-open under a new name scott free of former liability to do the process all over again.
One of the earmarks of fascist economics until the Mussolini model (corporatism)is State control of a private market through regulatory policy. IMHO, this latest action fits that model very nicely! Am I calling some of our gov't practices Fascist? Yeah, but I'm not doing it for political effect like Sean Penn and Rosie do because they also believe in fascist ideals but have yet to look in the mirror to see themselves as such!
Now that the false market has in effect collapsed, it would appear that instead of forgetting this and moving on, the Bush Adminstration decides to entrench and perpetuate the false market through gov't policy. Now one could argue and rightly so that the real victims in this mess are the homeowners who by slick mortgage brokers in concert with real estate agents got suckered into deals way beyond their means and they didn't have the economic sophisication to catch the trap being laid if you will. You could let the false market die on the vine but the real barbarians at the gate have their money and laugh all the way to the bank. The poor foreclosed homeowner is left holding the bag and what about the big mortgage brokers? Oh, their protected by their corp. charter and the moment the heat is on, they kill the corp. and then re-open under a new name scott free of former liability to do the process all over again.
One of the earmarks of fascist economics until the Mussolini model (corporatism)is State control of a private market through regulatory policy. IMHO, this latest action fits that model very nicely! Am I calling some of our gov't practices Fascist? Yeah, but I'm not doing it for political effect like Sean Penn and Rosie do because they also believe in fascist ideals but have yet to look in the mirror to see themselves as such!
wkmac
Well-Known Member
That is absolutely 100% true! Tie has said that very thing on numerous occassions as I've witnessed this myself.
I got ya back Tie!
SimpleUPSer
Active Member
There will never be true success of any one party in our system. If one party did everything "right" then the other party would cease to exist.
They feed off of one another, making money from everyone in the process. They take the "sides" they do so we think there is a choice.
It's like gambling, just when you think you have had enough of losing, you get a free play or win one to keep you in the game.
In 4 or 8 years people will be griping for a change again.
We need to eliminate bipartisan politics and actually find politicians who work for the people. We are too forgiving, too ignorant or too lazy to do anything (I say this in general, not trying to raise anyone's ire).
The answer? Who knows, but it will take the effort of everyone in the country to make a difference.
Maybe we just need to settle for more taxes, that is always a nice fix...
They feed off of one another, making money from everyone in the process. They take the "sides" they do so we think there is a choice.
It's like gambling, just when you think you have had enough of losing, you get a free play or win one to keep you in the game.
In 4 or 8 years people will be griping for a change again.
We need to eliminate bipartisan politics and actually find politicians who work for the people. We are too forgiving, too ignorant or too lazy to do anything (I say this in general, not trying to raise anyone's ire).
The answer? Who knows, but it will take the effort of everyone in the country to make a difference.
Maybe we just need to settle for more taxes, that is always a nice fix...
satellitedriver
Senior Member
Tie,
Face it, you are a famous personality, in the B.C. universe.
An anon,(did I just stutter?) can put your avatar in the title of a thread and be assured everyone is going to read it.
The price of fame.
I hope you can handle the pressure.
I am willing to bet,(and I am not a gambling man) that I could start a thread saying,
"Tie admits to being the love child of Elvis.", and it would be one of the most viewed.
Oh, the burden of fame.
J.friend.K. was far more conservative than G.W.
I just wish I could say the same about his brother.
PAX
T
The Loony Ward
Guest
Neil, Jeb or Marvin?
tieguy
Banned
Jfk the father of trickle down economics? Yep I agree.
I'll probably end up remembering GW for being a better choice then Kerry or Gore.
For his stubborn stance behind his convictions which is both a plus and a minus.
The war effort accounts for a lot of the spending issues. In fairness to him some can be legitimately blamed on 9/11.
But it seems like the spending never stopped once he opened up that pandoras box.
Its interesting watching the democrats take control of congress. I still see the same issues that divide them as they continue to struggle trying to make any headway.
Our government right now is reminiscent of a four wheeler sliding around in the mud. Lot of wasted motion moving from side to side and occasionally they do a 180 and go off in the wrong direction.
I will take some heat for this but oh well. I think history will be far kinder to Bush. I think Bush could have been remembered as one of the greatest maybe top ten. However that opportunity I believe slipped away.
I think he will be remembered for leading the country out of the ashes in the aftermath of 9-11. The attacks were devastating, not just from the loss of life incurred on American soil, but those attacks nearly wiped out the economy. We could just as easily be in a depression right now if the wrong moves were made. I think for at least a month or two, everyone in the Congress had a genuine fear for their lives and way of life if more devastating attacks followed 9-11. For the first time in a long time, both sides did what was best for the country. As time went on and more attacks didn't follow they fell back into their old partisan ways and politicized the war. They are all back to business as usual in their pursuits of power.
He will also be remebered for his impact on the Supreme Court. It is very likely that if the right abortion case comes before the court Roe Vs Wade will be overturned. I think a majority of the country will look favorably on this.
Iraq will make the difference between a great President and being a notch or two better than a mediocre President. Only time will tell. If Iraq tanks, so will Bush's legacy, and this is the most likely scenario. If things end up working out, and the freedom spreads into the Middle East he will be a top tier President (Iraq may succeed but I don't think it will spread). Only time will tell.
As far as Bush being a conservative, if you lined up everybody running for President from most conservative to most liberal, Bush would be standing between Guiliani (the least conservative Republican) and Joe Biden (or whoever you think the least liberal Democrat is).
Char
diesel96
Well-Known Member
To bad GW was sidetracked and derailed by his advisors to attack and set up a permanent camp on an oil rich non-nuclear Iraq. Bush could have scored more points if he "stayed the course"and delivered justice to the actual 9/11 perpetraters in Osama and the gang. Last time I checked he's still meandering and recruiting around the Afgh/Paki Mtns.
BTW...Your not going to change middle Eastern cultures that have existed for thousands years and hundreds of generations.
BTW...Your not going to change middle Eastern cultures that have existed for thousands years and hundreds of generations.
av8torntn
Well-Known Member
Who are you checking with? Since you know where he is we may can work out a deal. You tell me where he is, I will just pick him up real quick and I will give you say 5% of the reward. Sounds pretty easy to me.
diesel96
Well-Known Member
By checking with nat'l intelligence reports released to the public.......But you know the inteligence could be 3-4 yrs old like the recent release of intel that Iran ceased their nuclear weapons program in 2003. Yes, Iran is still enriching their uranium (supposedly for nuclear energy)...But I agree, the world doesn't need them to obtain a nuclear bomb, but why does this Adminstration hold back that kind of intel then lie to the American Public that these intel reports are new to them. And create a false sense of urgency that Iran is real close to bldg a bomb and WWIII is near and we should take them out. Isn't this how we got into Iraq with false intel to begin with.
av8torntn
Well-Known Member
You have access to national intellingence reports? They really should keep a tighter lid on those things.
diesel96
Well-Known Member
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/02/cia_bin_laden_i.html
http://www.williambowles.info/nsa/2007/nsa140807.html
Sarcasm?....Whatever, here's jsut a few links out of hundreds that mention intel reports.
We may not have up to the minute intel, and of course there's intel that won't be released, however the obvious intel does eventually gets released .
wkmac
Well-Known Member
Char,
Well I don't see the temp. rising around here!
I'm no fan of Bush but I agree what you said is most likely true. I won't go so far as to suggest one of the greatest as you did but history has a way of softening our view of persons or events. A couple of cases in point are Truman and Nixon. Truman left office with horrible public approval but as time has moved forward his name evokes positive thought and in some circles he is viewed among the greats. Nixon, who left the WH under the cloud of Watergate, is now seen in a much softer light where his efforts in China now soften the abuses exposed by the Watergate affair.
Even though I think our foreign policy and our lack to fully comprehend how we are seen around the world help to inflame events that nutjobs used to incite actions against us, I do give high marks to Bush and Co. for moving quickly against the Taliban and the Afghan based Al Queda and routing the Taliban from power. Where the marks go down IMO is what I see as a loss of focus on this theater and instead Bush listening to others around him who IMHO clearly had other agendas not directly related and some argue not related at all to capture or killing the very persons responsible for the 9/11 attacks themselves.
Clinton rightly IMO gets blasted for failures to act as a result of other terrorist acts and even some here in this forum rightly blast at Clinton that his failures left Osama and friends to commit the acts of 9/11. By allowing the utter failure of the battle of Tora Bora in the case that Osama and leadership were allowed to slip to freedom at the hands of Rumsfeld (War on the Cheap, the Walmart plan) and the war leadership of the Project for a New American Century, Bush IMO deserves a hit.
Iraq from the rearview mirror looks murky and those who still stand behind the Bush policy (IMO most of that is out of purely republican loyality verses admitting anything that could even look at giving democrats the cause of being right on something) are so adamant that when one reason fails to measure up, they grab another.
I often look with a sense of comedy at the similarity between the reason for the Iraq invasion and the reason for the 1997' IBT strike of UPS. Depending on who you ask and in the case of both, you may never get the exact same reason. Afghanistan was very clear and precise and even though on foreign policy terms I do believe we added to the problem via unintended consequences just as we aided Saddam in the 80's to oppose Iran only to have Saddam come back and haunt us. Without the aid and friendship of the US, would Saddam been able to even invade Kuwait in the first place? It is an interesting question to consider. As to Afghanistan, when the Soviets left town, we backed the Taliban over the Northern Warlords because of US Drug policy that the extreme religious society of Afghanistan would crush the opium drug trade from that country. And it did. But what was the Blowback. Harboring of terrorists who killed Americans and we come back this time siding with the Northern Warlords we opposed earlier to outst to Taliban and what has poppy production done? Gone up of course. When will we get the next round of Blowback?
Where Iraq could totally shift on it's Axis is if 10 years from now, buried in the desert someone finds post 1991' WMD. I am open to that possibility and have said such although it was sometime ago in discussions with Tie and most of you I don't think were even around. If this does occur, Bush will be seen in a vastly different light, no argument. But I do think as time goes by the view of Bush will soften as lesser known specifics of his Presidency become known. The reverse potential is also true that this Presidency has been very close to the vest about itself (I think one reason for all the mistrust) and after the term ends and as years go by, more people in the middle of it all will speak out and we'll have a better picture of what it was like back inthe day!
See, no heat from this quarter!
av8torntn
Well-Known Member
Hmm no intel reports in there. Of course you probably think that intel reports are posted on the internet. My offer is off the table you have no sources.
tieguy
Banned
wkmac
Well-Known Member
AV8,
Just a point of order to your discussion. July 17, 2007, the WH issued a press release entitled Fact Sheet: The Terrorist Threat to the US Homeland in which it pointed out some facts for highlight.
Al-Qaeda has protected or regenerated three of the four key elements of homeland plotting: a safe haven in the Pakistan Federally Administered Tribal Area, operational lieutenants, and its top leadership.
- Al-Qaeda will leverage the contacts and capabilities of al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), its most visible and capable affiliate and the only one known to have expressed a desire to attack us here.
To quote the NIE report and thus the point above from the WH PR, look on page 6 of the NIE link above (I would copy and paste but it's a PDF file) under the title "Key Judgements". Look down at paragraph 3 of page 6 specifically (not counting the bullet point under paragraph 2) and you'll find the specific estimate about the concern over the Pakistan Tribal areas that have become areas of concern.
And since this is on the very same subject so to speak let me address this from the Reagan vs. Bush in which you said this in post #16.
Well first off, part of this is my bad. In my post that you were responding I said this:
It would seem to suggest that we launch an invasion immediately or do something now but the word "sit" indicating present tense should have been "sat" indicating past tense linking back to events of the Battle of Tora Bora and actions afterwards. From that perspective is why I see the article the way I do. I see a lost opportunity.
I contend we dropped the ball, lost focus and looked elsewhere and thus we now have this problem on the Pakistani Frontier and that's how I look at this article. We are doing something now, that is true, but how much stronger is Osama and friends now verses 2002'? We may be forced to do something and the folks at Yale University's Center on Globalization because of the al Qaeda buildup on the frontier are asking and maybe suggesting we may have to go much further.
Having gone into Iraq on the grounds of WMD violations, we never found the levels of WMD that was suggested we'd find although I'll completely stipulate Saddam was a bad man but then North Korea has one, Iran has one and let's not forget good ole' Hugo to our south. The world is full of them and many of them our foreign policy helped place in power. Ron Paul's "BLOWBACK" again!
Iraq IMO can over time have an upside if they can become democratically stable but that's left to be seen in the long term, however in the eyes of the world we lost a ton of credibility on our part so to now step up and demand pressure on Pakistan and the region in light of the facts will prove a big task.
I could go a lot further and into indepth detail (you know I'm capable of it
) but let me just say this.There were many agendas going on in respect to Iraq and when I say many I mean many. But there was one interesting agenda that from a certain POV did seem to make some sense and that was if you created a war theater in the region you might draw Osama and his bunch out of hiding in the Pakastani frontier and face them head on and kill them. In one fail swope, you kill all the Al Qaeda terrorists and you get rid of Saddam. A 2 for 1 special. I think you and I would agree this does seem like a pretty good deal.
However and here's the reverse and IMO what happened. Osama and friends are smart as they are western educated and they know warfare, especially guerilla warfare. With all the displaced Sunni Bathist is Iraq and the Iraq army disbanded, much of those are Sunni as well, these folks weren't happy campers as they were the ruling elite in Iraq. Instead of Osama and friends coming to town, either they got Al-Zarqawi or he goes on his own and then you have presense of an Afghani based Al Qaeda operative or it seems to be in Iraq. Osama and Zarqawi didn't get along because Osama's goal was to cleanse the infidel from Saudia lands and Zarqawi wanted to overthrow the Jordanian monarch and attack Israel. Zarqawi even operated his own seperate trainign camp in Herat Afghanistan prior to the Taliban ouster so these guys weren't on the same page. I would suggest to any and all that to understand Al Qaeda in Iraq, you need to understand Osama, Zarqawi, their goals, there focus and mostly their relationship to one another to really grasp Al Qaeda in Iraq but that's JMO.
OK, here's the skinny. Zarqawi and Al-Qaeda in Iraq was a rouse. AQI was intended IMO to hook some of those agenda civilian wonks into thinking they had the perfect strom if you will. You had the agendas of oil control, democratization of Iraq thus destablizing the region of extremism, building up Shia control of Iraq who also control the oil gaining good graces among Iranian moderates to pressure the little man while taking down a big Sunni piece of the puzzle in the Mideast thus destablizing within the Islamic world itself. You could go on and on but I think Osama and boys used AQI to take US focus away from them so they could recoup and rebuild. It wasn't their only goal but I do think it was their principle reason and latest intel seems to at least suggest if it was, it worked. It was a good tactical move IMO if this was the case because it appears to have worked.
This is just an aside but for a time in Iraq, all we heard was Al Qaeda or so it seemed. Well things have quited down and we should be encouraged but we can also look back and analyze past events. A good starting question IMO would be just how many attacks did Al Qaeda commit? Well we know Zarqawi and his friends were there. They called themseves Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn which translates "organization of Jihad base in the country of the two rivers" or AQI for short.
How many attacks are they responsible for? In March 2007' Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty analyzed attacks in Iraq for that month and came up with the following:
1) AQI had taken credit for 43 out of 439 attacks on Iraqi security forces and Shiite militias
2) AQI had taken credit for 17 out of 357 attacks on U.S. troops.
OK, as they say at UPS, one month don't make a trend and they be correct. But let's look at estimated numbers compared to the larger theater and see if those numbers would suggest this may in fact be more the trend.
Some estimates have AQI strength at anywhere from 850 to several thousand or 3 to 5 percent of the Sunni insurgency. One source for that is: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2007/0710.tilghman.html
In 2006', the State Department through it's Bureau of Inteligence and Research estimated AQI membership at "more than 1000" which puts AQI at less than 1% of the insurgency. For the sake of discussion, let's used the State Depart. estimate of more than 1000 which I would take as less than 2000 (they didn't say more than 2000) so let's use the upper figure of say around 1800. If you compare that number proportionally to the total number of attacks and then the number Al Qaeda has claimed, it would seem logical to consider the number of attacks claimed by al Qaeda as about right. This would also suggest based on total number that Al Qaeda alone is a minor player to the problem rather than a major player but I'll stipulate that's also based on interpretation of the data. Case in point is a single Al-Qaeda attack on scale is far greater impact that tens of non-Al-Qaeda attacks but I can't confirm or deny either case. I offer it out to be open to all potentials.
Another interesting but lenghty read on the subject is:
http://intelligence.senate.gov/phaseiiaccuracy.pdf
This is the 2006' Senate Select Committee on Intelligence reporting on postwar findings of WMD and Al Qaeda in Iraq. If you think it's a post election democrat con-job, the report was issued before the Nov. 2006' elections that swung Congressional control over to the democrats.
AV8,
You correctly questioned in another thread a concern you had about whether the US Army was being truthful about a certain situation and I think we are all in agreement that we hope and pray they are for obvious reasons on the part of good men and women. Your concern it appeared to me was that they might not be completely forthcoming about certain information. Did it ever occur for a moment that civilian appointees of elected officials might have gotten into a position to assert a certain political agenda not on the grounds of the best interest of the country at large but rather to the behest of a political click who had their own agendas and now have spun a tale that over time is just not measuring up?
av8torntn
Well-Known Member
I know you want to help diesel out but he claims to have checked national intelligence reports and know the location of someone I would like to meet. You can put this in whatever color you like but it still is not a national intelligence report. Someone could be telling a fib to try and make a point. I would say also that the national intelligence estimate is a much different thing than the national intellingence report.
For AQI to be a rouse the sure can put up a pretty good fight. I would say they even put up a stronger fight than the democrats in congress. Hey maybe they are a rouse also.
For AQI to be a rouse the sure can put up a pretty good fight. I would say they even put up a stronger fight than the democrats in congress. Hey maybe they are a rouse also.
av8torntn
Well-Known Member
You ask how much stronger now is Osama than in 2002 and I say he is much weaker as an organizational leader. He once had control of an entire country with lavish houses and lots of power. According to the NY Times we have tracked and seized millions of dollars in his assets. Also according to the NY Times we can track his electronic and voice communications. We have also captured and questioned more of his top leaders than you will ever know of. You were correct when you said we just sit by and do nothing that that was not correct. As Rumsfield said we fight with the Army we have.
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