Yes, but that other trillion or so bought us a “militarily successful” surge. Or something like that.

I predicted just this outcome based on the fact that a comparative reading of the known statements of OBL and GWB revealed one to be a smart and rational individual with a sound appreciation of history and strategy. And it ain’t GWB.

Politically, GWB and OBL are the best things that ever happened to each other.

Good morning Attaturk, wigwam, and gregory.

But fearless leader told us in 2002 that OBL is not much of a concern:

President Bush Holds Press Conference

THE PRESIDENT: Well, as I say, we haven’t heard much from [Osama bin Laden]. And I wouldn’t necessarily say he’s at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don’t know where he is. I — I’ll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him. I know he is on the run. I was concerned about him, when he had taken over a country. I was concerned about the fact that he was basically running Afghanistan and calling the shots for the Taliban.

But once we set out the policy and started executing the plan, he became — we shoved him out more and more on the margins. He has no place to train his al Qaeda killers anymore. And if we — excuse me for a minute — and if we find a training camp, we’ll take care of it. Either we will or our friends will. That’s one of the things — part of the new phase that’s becoming apparent to the American people is that we’re working closely with other governments to deny sanctuary, or training, or a place to hide, or a place to raise money.

My bold.

So, you see, all is well with the world thanks to the eternal vigilance of fearless leader. Why is the Times bringing this up again? Why do they hate our troops? Why they hate Amerika?

Wasn’t Al Qaida’s strategy to bankrupt the United States?

He got the US to fight a two front war (something that even he wasn’t able to do with the Soviets). He dragged in the United States when a sissy cheerleader President who always had a fear of being called a wimp got “elected”. He attacked an Administration that was just loved having an attack occur so they could justify their authoritarian demolition of the Constitution and reconstruction of the economy to favor the wealthy corporate war-profiteers.

This was a President who saw nothing wrong in shifting the total tax burden onto States and Counties as well as all services….while at the same time creating bogus units like Homeland Security and Faith-Based Programs.
Anyone ask just how much George W. has actually “cut government” recently? How many new agencies exist? How many more Federal workers or Federalized private contractors are now out there?

~Meanwhile property taxes have gone up 50% since he entered office…thanks to his great scheme to create a housing bubble.

~Foreclosures have trebled due to the phony “low interest” sub-prime loans, sold on a Ponzi Scheme.

~Credit card debt has increased to levels incomprehensible to those who saw good credit ratings as a criteria for a sound economy.

~Bankruptcies (both business and personal) have hit record levels…due to the sub-prime crisis, escalating credit card debts, and increased tax appraisals on homes. This despite the passage of a bill that makes bankruptcy declarations an onerous burden akin to debt slavery for many borrowers.

~ Bond rating agencies and insurers are desperate for bailouts as they face trillions in unrecoverable debt.

~Bush shrugs his shoulders as foreign STATE (China, Singapore, Japan, Korea, Germany) investors acquire controlling shares in US corporations at bargain levels since the latter need cash-flow, and there is no domestic source.

~Bush utterly ignores the trillions in Foreign Debt and Internal Budget Deficits HE is creating…while blaming the Democrats in Congress for spending much smaller amounts on social safety net programs like Children’s Health Care coverage (SCHIP).

Amazing how bin Laden was able to get the US to

Wasn’t Al Qaida’s strategy to bankrupt the United States?

If it wasn’t originally, it certainly turned out to be a pretty nifty unintended consequence (for them).

The irony is that Bush was probably correct in 2002 when he claimed that OBL was of little importance. Had this country followed an even marginally rational foreign policy between that time and now, we’d be sitting pretty at this point.

I think bankrupting this country was part of the plan (ours, not bin Laden’s). The reason? An excuse for dismantling the social security program and dumping the money into the stock market. And why is that important? The baby-boomers are hitting retirement age soon. Not only will we (yup, I’m one) be drawing our social security but we will be closing out our 401-K’s, putting the money in CD’s or something more secure than stocks. I imagine the market will take a nosedive when that happens.

Right. Grover Norquist, in particular, was recommending that tactic.

Good morning.

In related news, NY Times stenographer Elisabeth Bumiller’s kneepadded bio of Condoleezza Rice reviewed here:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v30/n01/shat01_.html

You guys are on it like a duck on a june bug this morning!

Good morning pups!

Wouldn’t that be a december bug? I dunno I’m still a little sleepy.

Right. Grover Norquist, in particular, was recommending that tactic.

Wasn’t it Patl Robertson who said the reason not to allow abortions was to create a a new Baby Boom “to pay for us in our Old Age”. Or maybe that was some other fundy Preacher.

But I always suspected that the real reasons for shifting over to the Big Five managed “Private Investment Plans” (yes, those same Big Five who have so cocked up the sub-prime lending sector) were to

a) lock workers into plans that would higher risk investments that could easily be tracked by other investors with more flexibility

b) allow the multiplication of stock values by those (the wealthy folks) who already were “in” the market.

c) Generate more commissions for the Big Five.

d) Allow businesses that are currently compelled to match the SSI contributions of workers to no longer contribute to these “private” investment funds. In effect this would be a massive tax break for corporations.

e) The trillion dollar bail-out of social security (which, although really quite secure in the long run) would require tax money to cover those who were still in the system, That bail-out would come from Middle Class taxpayers. Thus a shift from corporations and workers making equitable contributions for the needs of the employees would become something only workers would have to support.

Of course the demographic of this would have led to a complete collapse of the “private investment scheme” which would reach an investment plateau in about 20-30 years as the contributions new workers coming into the market failed to keep up with the money taken out by retirees. So the markets (which would rise from the flood of new investment) would then plateau and plummet. Workers would be trapped in the programs (at least the 3 suggested by Bush’s appointed policy Commission) and actually lose their investments. Meanwhile the wealthier investors, with REAL private investment funds with portability could sell off their stocks as the demographic bubble inflated, finding better investments to escape the crash.

Happy Morning, cinnamonape and egregious — and Raven if you’re still here, and neil if you’re near. And always HI! to ccmask :)

ON WASHINGTON JOURNAL
On Monday’s Program…
First, the Houston Chronicle’s Bennett Roth talks about Rep. Ron Paul’s (R-TX) appearance on “Meet the Press.” Then, Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-IL) Senior Foreign Policy Adviser Greg Craig talks about his foreign policy plan. Finally, Barbara Comstock, senior adviser to Mitt Romney discusses the latest in his campaign.

7am – Newspaper Articles & Viewer Calls
7:30am – Bennett Roth, Houston Chronicle, Washington Correspondent
8:30am – Greg Craig, Obama for President, Senior Foreign Policy Adviser
9am – Barbara Comstock, Romney for President, Senior Adviser
9:30am – Newspaper Articles & Viewer Calls

It’s a girl! Born last night–I have a new little niece named Claire!!

One more reason to keep up the good fight.

First, the Houston Chronicle’s Bennett Roth talks about Rep. Ron Paul’s (R-TX) appearance on “Meet the Press.”

Speaking of Ron Paul, Glenn Greenwald has had a lot of favorable things to say about Paul’s foreign-policy and civil-liberties stances. David Neiwert and others have had some negative things to say about Paul’s possible racism. But what I’d really, really like to read would be Krugman’s comments on his libertarian economic views. (IANAE, but libertarian economics looks to me like an extreme form of long-discredited laissez-faire capitalism.)

Congratulations egregious, I love nieces to pieces — and nephews too

Congratulations. fight Fight FIGHT

Congratulations Egregious! Love the name Claire. She’s going to a savvy leader with that name! ;-)

Why couldn’t the aid have been conditioned on some kind of benchmarks? Why not some accountability?

I learn something new everyday
and this morning I learned about this place (thanks to CSPAN’s Q&A)

The National Security Archive is an independent non-governmental research institute and library located at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The Archive collects and publishes declassified documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). A tax-exempt public charity, the Archive receives no U.S. government funding; its budget is supported by publication royalties and donations from foundations and individuals. On March 17, 2000, Long Island University named the National Security Archive as winner of a Special George Polk Award for 1999 for “piercing self-serving veils of government secrecy” and “serving as an essential journalistic resource.”

my bold

it looks like a great resource for information on the US government and I never heard of it before. For example they recently posted this “RENDITION IN THE SOUTHERN CONE: OPERATION CONDOR DOCUMENTS REVEALED FROM PARAGUAYAN ‘ARCHIVE OF TERROR’“

hmm Paraguay…

I just gotta ask you about these wonderful, long, complex comments that you post…do you have all this information in your head and it just pours out appropriate to the topic or is it thoughts you diary constantly….or WHAT? Your contributions to the discourse at the Lake never cease to blow me away!

eg -

What a wizard Christmas present!

amen!

and egregious,
last night a full moon, Claire de lune?

Caught parts of that twice and the guy did a fab job of detailing their functions….loved the chart showing how release of information went thru the roof during Clinton’s administration! Wish all the thugs who keep whining about Hillary “hiding” her records could have heard it b/c he did an excellent job of explaining many of the reasons the process is, in his words, “slower than molasses.”

Accountability and benchmarks are for public schools.

Claire de lune LOL!

Congrats egregious, we always borrow our nephews and spoil the daylights out of em. their parents are always happy to lend em out. merry happy to you and yours.

Look what Ms. Claire was born under:

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/l….._1224.html

Wow! Very cool.

Okay, going to work. Enjoy your day everyone!

Good morning, pups, and congratulations to egregious on her new niece! Today it’s Cohen and Krugman in the NYT. Roger Cohen, in a column titled “Italy’s Man From God” says the story of Raffaello Follieri serves as a cautionary tale on what happens when business, charity, fund-raising and politics blur. It also serves as a knife in the back of Clinton’s campaign. Mr. Krugman is writing about unions. He says although the movement is a shadow of its former self, unions still matter politically.

http://mgpaquin.wordpress.com/

The coffee, tea and hot chocolate are ready, and a batch of sticky buns just came out of the oven. Have a wonderful day!

auspicious, isn’t that the word?

happy work

Ahh, so cool…

mMmmm warm stickies!

Thank you Marion, my father always made sticky buns Christmas morning. It smells so good in my head right now.

Thank you Marion. Hot chocolate was just what I needed this morning.

Mr. Krugman is writing about unions. He says although the movement is a shadow of its former self, unions still matter politically.

BO is not the Unions’ friend. He and that Chicago talk show host spoke at a venue in NH that does not welcome unions and now he is trying to curb the Unions’ voice in Iowa. Not so good if you are looking for the Dem. nomination. Edwards, on the other hand, has been an outspoken advocate for Unions, a living wage and healthcare for all. HRC, well she is in the pocket of big industry and let us not forget Nafta.

Morning wisdom from Scarecrow upstairs. He challenges Ian to dueling columns at 20 paces.

Health Care Mandates–Refocus the Debate

Hey, the guy took off his uniform, so what’s the problem? He must need a few new suits an’ stuff.

Hadn’t read the Times yet. Good pick-up, Attaturk. There was this little nugget in the article, too:

United States military officials said the American military was so overstretched in Iraq and Afghanistan that it had no advanced helicopters to give to Pakistan.

Oh well. At least The Surge is working, so it ain’t all bad.

Just think how bad this would be if we had wasted billions or trillions of dollars elsewhere at the same time?

the lost opportunity cost of the bush/cheney/neocon unnecessary, illegal wars of choice are in and of themselves crimes against humanity.
.

Pakistan doesn’t think Al-Qaeda is the enemy, but India. So naturally a huge amount of money is going to strengthen its position against India. Again, the Bush administration’s lack of understanding of the region and Pakistan’s tense relationship with India was a fatal flaw in the White House trusting Pakistan with its money. But more importantly is the low-level corruption among Pakistan’s military and its sympathy for Al-Qaeda. There’s more sympathy of Pakistan’s military for Al-Qaeda than to Pervez Musharraf. I interviewed a Pakistani military officer a few years ago who thought Musharraf was an idiot but had high praise for the goals and policies of Al-Qaeda. His comments were chilling, but he said most officers and rank-and-file soldiers felt the same way.

Government policy is all well and good, but if the boots on the ground don’t feel the same way, the government’s position is meaningless.

[Mod: please provide your blog link with your name at login instead of repeating it at the end of every comment, thanks]

LA Times was all over this last month.

the goal of dismantling Al Qaeda and its hub of operations in the border region has given way to expectations among U.S. intelligence and military officials that the United States and Pakistan face a years-long struggle simply to contain the terrorist network and keep it from expanding.

The beauty of a fiat currency and fractional reserve banking, the dollars we give them are worth nothing. But we have to borrow them from the Fed so they can charge us interest and make money. And a lot of it gets spent on our MIC contractors who make profit. Wars a wonderful thing. The Fed was created so we can finance our wars, and since 1913, we have had one war after another.

Just think, if we didn’t have war, we could just print up them dollars and have stuff like Universal health care, guaranteed minimum income, no personal income tax. But wars allow the government to get stronger under the guise of national security and keeping us safe, and when people are too busy working 2-3 jobs to survive, they do not have time to monitor their government. But what if there is no enemy? No problem, we create the enemy, and if they do not attack us, we attack ourselves and blame it on them. Smedley Butler was right, war is a racket.

On the stock market:

I wouldn’t say the stock market will decline because the Baby Boomers will have retired. It isn’t even entirely because they retire and remove their monies from retirement funds to pay for their current living expenses. It would drop if that happened and nothing else changed. But, our economy is growing and technology improvements and system efficiencies should keep it growing for quite some time. Whether that growth outweighs or counterbalances the reduction of investments by retirees isn’t clear. But, it certainly behooves the Street to find other investors to keep their bubble from bursting.

Perhaps they lack faith in the next generation or maybe they have always been pure cynics who only told us we were great, but always knew it was just the sheer numbers of Boomers which made things go.

On Pakistan:

I’ve heard it said there is a small minority in that country who support Al Qaeda and that if they were active in politics they wouldn’t come close to running the country. But, if certain influential types, like those in the military or ISI, were AQ supporters, then it can only mean trouble for us.

The story about an ISI leader who gave money to AQ people involved in 9/11 is an example of that.

However, many of us have even greater worries, that it is their cooperation with Republican NeoCon Crazies to enable AQ in order to create the political environment for Bushies to be empowered to do whatever they want (”another Pearl Harbor” logic) that is deeply troubling.

Dubya is leaving the next president a very messed up world.