Public Radio, Obama And The Surge

The Daily News reports Obama has scrubbed his website of his criticism of the surge in Iraq.

"The surge is not working," Obama's old plan stated, citing a lack of Iraqi political cooperation but crediting Sunni sheiks - not U.S. military muscle - for quelling violence in Anbar Province.

Check out this Public Radio report of an Obama event in New Hampshire as recently as July 2007.

Obama: Iraq Troop Surge Isn't Working

Obama told the crowd of more than 500 people that nobody wants to get U.S. troops out of Iraq more than he does, but doing so will require voters to pressure Senate Republicans, including New Hampshire Senators Judd Gregg and John Sununu, to break with President Bush.

Obama says there's no reason to give the president's troop surge more time.

"Here's what we know. The surge has not worked. And they said today, 'Well, even in September, we're going to need more time.' So we're going to kick this can all the way down to the next president, under the president's plan."

Obama claims to have judgment you can trust. I have to assume he's talking to our enemies in the Middle-East given the judgment he displayed on the surge.

Comments

[IslamoLlama]

"-- You are mixing apples and ranges here. I can't answer at length now, but the failures of the S&L and the current mortgage crisis have different causes and the way that each one is dealt with differs as well.

Additionally, the failure of so many of those dot-bomb companies after 2000 is based upon market fundamentals that would not affect the well-grounded and heavily capitalized IT giants like IBM, MS, and Dell. --"

It was an analogy. To claim that the hundreds of mom-and-pop banks that died in '87 were comparable to the Bear Sterns hundred billion dollar giant is silly. To claim that the Bear Sterns collapse wasn't as bad is an exercise in ignorance. And while the collapse in '87 might have been caused by different market forces, the reason it was a sudden drop and not a gradual decline stemmed from lack of oversight, cooked books, and a bunch of Wall Street brokers panicking all at once because they didn't know how much loss actually existed. Lack of transparency does more damage to the market than all the price fluctuations in the world. If I've got to guess how much money your company is actually worth - and I end up wrong, like some many Enron investors did, circa 1999 - I'm going to lose faith in the entire stock system.

Transparency only comes from regulation. If you never need to fear an audit, if you're not held to certain accounting regulation standards and can redefine what it means to "take a loss" or "make a sale" or "owe on a loan", you're living in a financial system that is truly through the looking glass. Both the mortgage crisis and the S&L crisis resulted from people making big loans to those who couldn't afford to pay them back and hiding those loans under deceptive accounting practices. These loans and practices were legal, because the industries had been deregulated. Deregulation effectively allowed industries to lie. Building an economy on a pack of lies has never ended well.

"-- perhaps we could have experienced the economic growth we had under Clinton much sooner, had Clinton been not such a tax-and-spend liberal. --"

Lols! History lesson failure!
Clinton cut the deficit every year he was in office. He gave us a $40 billion surplus after scaling back welfare and making much-needed cuts to defense by closing the same foreign military bases you don't like. Clinton was the best fiscal conservative since Eisenhower. Where were the surpluses under Reagen or Bush 41?

"-- Fraction Reserve banking and the elimination of sound, metallic-based specie (gold, silver, platinum) has resulted in unconscionable and even *evil* burdens upon the taxpayer, who must not only deal with taxes (a necessary burden for the maintenance of government) but also this hidden tax by way of federal seignorage adds an even more burdensome weight upon the lower and middle classes. --"

Fraction Reserve banking isn't going to go away with deregulation. If anything, it increases, as banks - normally regulated into holding a certain percent of their cash on hand - invest even higher percentages than before. Specie only works as a counter-weight to the value of the currency. Pegging dollars to gold or silver still delivers inflation when the price of gold or silver varies. Right now, our dollar has effectively been pegged to the price of gasoline. You'll notice how the value of one moves inversely to the value of the other. And its the price of oil that has been driving the devaluation of the dollar. Since the Saudis buy and sell oil in American currency, higher oil prices mean that previously-traded-for-oil dollars are worth less.

Specie was always an illusionary hedge against inflation, particularly when money is consolidated in the hands of a few. The value of the good itself is illusionary and strapped to the society that values it. Once the market decides your Specie is over/undervalued, your currency begins to swing wildly. We don't want wild swings. Economies want stability.

Modern monetary policies are designed to maintain that stability. This has a side-effect of discouraging rapid swings in wealth - keeping the rich safely rich and the poor perpetually poor. The progressive solution to this problem is incremental wealth distribution. The conservative solution is punching giant holes in the system and letting a handful of robber bandits go from peasant to prince over the weekend. It's the difference between buying a saving bond or putting money down on the lottery. Progressive plans are safe but rather prosaic. Conservative schemes are ballsy when they succeed, but catastrophic when they fail, and they've been failing a great deal lately.

[IslamoLlama]

"-- And I'll disagree with you on the tax cuts, if only they were accompanied by and equal and opposite reduction in government spending. Unfortunately, the butcher's bill for these wars of empire we love so much will come with interest that even my future grandchildren may have little hope of ever paying off. --"

There, at least, I'll happily agree. Whether or not the tax cuts were "good", they could have at least been "affordable" if we hadn't proceeded to blow billions on adventureism.

[seekeronos]

@ THC:

"--- We're not talking about building armies to fight wars. We're talking about post-war occupations. Can you get this basic notion through your thick skull?

...

Or we stay forever, like you and John McCain would like, always pretending that it's just like Japan and Germany. ---"

But you're right: Iraq is neither the Third Reich, nor the Greater Japanese Empire.

The occupation of both of those countries was (as was the vast majority of occupations) quite harsh.

Especially for the Germans, more so than the Japanese (given the circumstances behind Japan - being largely of a different race, and being far more painted as the aggressor in WW2 initially) ... though the nature and details of the Holocaust may in no small way have influenced American post-war policy against Germany.

Consider the Morgenthau Plan, which was essentially a genocidal campaign of starvation limiting rations to around 1,000 Kcal for adults, and less for children, destroying all heavy industry and preventing the mechanization of agriculture, and even forbidding the Vatican from transporting donations made by other nations to German children.

In effect, the Morgenthau Plan laid the groundwork for war crimes that would stand next to the Russian rapes of most women from ages of seven to seventy: what the Russians hoped to accomplish by outright genocide and dissolution by rape (to include sealing up thousands of German women and boys in subway tunnels and then dynamiting the subway tubes over them after having abused them over an orgy of rape lasting several days) the other Allies would do through starvation and privation, as German families were forbidden from rebuilding their homes.

For that matter, US soldiers were not as tightly regulated in their dealings with the German populace vis-a-vis sexual relations (though for a long time they were forbidden from marrying the German women)

Former German soldiers were reclassified from POW status to "disarmed enemies" or similarly oblique wording in order to circumvent Geneva restrictions on their use as slave labour. Any German citizens found with firearms were typically summarily executed.

Fortunately, the character of the German people along with the realization that the continuation of such harsh policies would either drive the German people into the arms of Communism or into a lasting desire for revenge that would long transcend generations, as well as bankrupt Central and Western Europe (forasmuch as Germany had been one of the principal economic engines of Europe) -- Truman relented of this wicked policy and by 1948, the basis of the Wirtschaftswunder would lead to Germany and Europe's economic resurgence.

The Japanese suffered greatly as well, with seeing their god (Hirohito) renounce his deity, and the Japanese military dissolved, to say nothing of the economic upheaval - though arguably, the Japanese had already been suffering substantially under the militarist regime for quite a few years prior to the surrender.

Yet the Japanese surrender itself was noteworthy, for it marked the first defeat and foreign occupation ever in its 2600+ year history.

Iraq by comparison, has been a CAKEWALK for its people, and far more merciful than what the Germans or the Japanese received.

[seekeronos]

Moe:

I'll concede that some regulation is necessary. I do not support an anarchist approach to trade and markets.

What I do dislike however, is going to the other extreme of nationalizing industry, and overregulating markets and industry to the point where doing economic growth is stymied (re: the Carter years).

We do need greater transparency and accountability with our markets; lower taxes, and a reduction (if not an elimination) of fraction-reserve banking, and a willingness not to tamper with the economy more than what is needed to ensure that trade is both equitable and abuses of the economy are minimized.

Government should not run businesses, but they do have a reasonable mandate to ensure that a "just balance" is maintained to reduce the incidence of those "bandits punching holes" in the system.

Bailouts are, in my opinion, are an unreasonable burden to the taxpayers for the irresponsibility of corporations. Perhaps in this, there is plenty of room for regulation to limit the ability of corporate irresponsibility from taking down larger swaths of the economy along with it.

Ideally, a business that continually makes bad business decisions should be allowed to fail.

[SacTownMan]

THC Abuser says,

"Why can you folks not admit that the stated goal of the surge has not occured? Any reduction in violence is based solely on an increase in numbers and a willingness to wait out our presence."

Dude, you are so full of shit it's running out of your ears.

Not even the most retarded moonbat can still cling to that talking point.

John McCain put his political career on the line to press for the increased troops. He could see the potential for the situation to be turned around in Iraq. Some people in life actually believe in staking out a position and defending their values. This concept is as foreign to Barry as a bar of soap and a toothbrush is to you!

The Iraqi army is continuing to improve to the point they have taken the lead in the battles for both Mosul and Basra. Al Queda is getting it's butt kicked despite you and your kind hoping for an American defeat. The latest moonbat slant is to say "well of course putting additional troops would improve the security but what about those benchmarks".

Despite your smoke induced haze the reality is the strategy pressed by McCain to increase the troop level has saved American lives and helped to stabilize Iraq.

The "They will just wait us out strategy" only works if we are stupid enough to set a timetable for them to plan around (you know like telling them we will withdraw 1-2 combat brigades a month over 16 months like your boy Barry wants to do).

In the meantime the Iraqi army continues to grow and gain experience so when the terrorists decide to "just pop back up" and start again they will be fighting a real organized army of 100,000+ Iraqi countrymen defending their homeland.

Poor Harry and Nancy "Big Eyes" just continue to sit on their asses and watch the positive results and just piss themselves. Despite all of their and Barry's efforts to lose this war they have to watch everything they planned fall apart for all of the American people to see.

The latest gallop poll shows the quality job they are doing.

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/07/16/14-percent-approval-rating-nan-and-harry-hit-rock-bottom/

[IslamoLlama]

"-- What I do dislike however, is going to the other extreme of nationalizing industry, and overregulating markets and industry to the point where doing economic growth is stymied (re: the Carter years). --"

No one is seriously suggesting nationalization of industry. Who would we nationalize? The Oil Companies? Ask Venezuela how well that is going.

Carter's growth was unimpressive, but then it should have been. We were suffering from inflation before he was even elected. Oil prices were spiking then, as they are now. But we didn't suffer anything under Carter that we haven't suffered under Bush 41 or Bush 43. Stagflation is a bitch, and Carter lost his next run because his government was seen as doing too little. Carter's limited government policies sunk him. He didn't put any more regulations on the books that weren't already there.

"-- We do need greater transparency and accountability with our markets; lower taxes, and a reduction (if not an elimination) of fraction-reserve banking, and a willingness not to tamper with the economy more than what is needed to ensure that trade is both equitable and abuses of the economy are minimized. --"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking
I'm not sure if you are aware of what Fractional Reserve Banking is. The only way banks make money is through fractional reserve. If they couldn't loan out the money you deposited, they couldn't turn a profit. Arguing against Fractional Reserve Banking is arguing against Banking, period. They have to keep money on hand to give back to people with accounts at their office, but they need to loan out the rest to stay in business. The only question is what fraction they keep on hand.

And most regulation comes in the form of transparency. SEC demands paperwork and standardized accounting practices that many companies find burdensome. But the results allow a prospective stock purchaser to review the assets and risk of a company before he or she makes a purchase. Regulations that limit how money can be juggled are designed to keep us from seeing another Enron, in which a company sets up shells that hide all their debt, or another mortgage crisis, in which high risk securities are sold as AAA-rated bonds.

Regulation IS transparency in many respects. The rules we set up are designed to keep people from lying and cheating. If you don't support those rules, you are effectively giving the green light for a company to deceive its way into a profit.

"-- Government should not run businesses, but they do have a reasonable mandate to ensure that a "just balance" is maintained to reduce the incidence of those "bandits punching holes" in the system. --"

Governments only tend to run businesses that aren't profitable. This has lead some to claim that government is inherently incompetent. Take AmTrak for example. Offering affordable public transportation through the eastern seaboard was seen as far less profitable than simply selling everyone cars and gasoline. However, the presence of AmTrak is a major boon for the region. It allows low-income workers to live farther away from work, it reduces the strain on numerous downtown traffic venues, and it offers people a low-cost alternative when gas prices get too high.

AmTrak isn't profitable. If a private company tried to run AmTrak, they'd probably go out of business. But without AmTrak, we would see less business and more city congestion in the areas it services.

[scarshapedstar]

If the surge worked so well, why isn't the war over yet?

[scarshapedstar]

"Around 390,000 members of the US Military are currently deployed in 150 countries around the world. We have been in Iraq for a lot less time than we have been in most of them. Where is the outcry to bring our troops home from Germany, Japan, and all the other places we remained after WWII (FDR's war?)and Korea (Truman's war?)? Or would you rather we treat this like JFK's and LBJ's war?"

Can you give me the numbers on how many servicemen have been killed in Germany, Japan, and Korea over the past 50 or 60 years? I mean... you do realize that's relevant, right?

[Fred Be;oit]

Moe say: "No one is seriously suggesting nationalization of industry."

Kaching. WRONG. Maxine Waters and a few other Dem nuts are seriously suggesting it.

[Fred Be;oit]

scar say: "Can you give me the numbers on how many servicemen have been killed in Germany, Japan, and Korea over the past 50 or 60 years? I mean... you do realize that's relevant, right?"

Kaching, WRONG. Can't you read?

"You[Worst] are a pacifist. As such you oppose war. To oppose war is to oppose the military, because the purpose of the military is to get ready to make and to make war. Both parties in war "make war" whether on the defense or the offense. To take positions on a volatile line, such as that between the Koreas, is to be prepared to make war on any attackers. Because an attack could take place at any time or not at all does not take away from the fact that the military is there to make war.

Now I confess I am not articulate, but try to get my meaning through the bad prose...to agree to a military presence is to agree to make war. A pacifist does not agree to make war. You contradict yourself.

Now you may say, with your gentle way, now, my good friend Fred, whatever gave you the idea I was a pacifist? Simply because I oppose all wars does not make me a pacifist. Yes, you may say it. You are quite capable of saying this in spite of your record here. That is why one might question your sanity. Only the insane are unable to recognize the correctness of most logical arguments."

[Fred Be;oit]

scar say: "If the surge worked so well, why isn't the war over yet?"

Kaching, WRONG. The war is over. We won. The savages lost. Now is the mopping up and ensuring that Iraq can protect itself from foreign invaders.

[Yoda]

The war is over, the left's cognitive dissonance is not.

[seekeronos]

"--- No one is seriously suggesting nationalization of industry. Who would we nationalize? The Oil Companies? Ask Venezuela how well that is going. ---"

Well, at least two congressmen (Maurice Hinchey, D, NY-22, and Maxine Waters, D, CA-5) have stated on the record that they favour nationalization of the oil industry. We can only speculate on what other hard-left liberals/socialists in Congress would like to do.

Realistically speaking, it is just rhetoric... or so we are expected to believe. Given the slow nature of our general shift leftward - I'm a bit leery of such rhetoric and this sort of thing is a flag that indicates what a (very likely) Democratic supermajority congress and a (very likely) Democratic POTUS may wish to do.

It is probably nowhere near as far to the left as my "worst case scenario" thinking, but still, the fact that Dem politicians are openly discussing such socialist policies should give any libertarian or constitution-loving American pause.

"--- Carter's growth was unimpressive, but then it should have been. We were suffering from inflation before he was even elected. Oil prices were spiking then, as they are now. But we didn't suffer anything under Carter that we haven't suffered under Bush 41 or Bush 43. Stagflation is a bitch, and Carter lost his next run because his government was seen as doing too little. Carter's limited government policies sunk him. He didn't put any more regulations on the books that weren't already there. ---"

About 50% of Carter's term was dogged by "bad luck", much of it in the economy from Nixon and Ford's running up the budgets connected to Vietnam and social programs that weren't terribly useful, and the external factors like the Arab Oil crisis in 1973.

The other 50% was genuinely on him. But this is not a "bash Carter" thing.

The oil price spike in (1973) were related to Arab discontent at the Bretton Woods gold peg (causing the value of oil in dollars to depreciate relative to the suppliers in the OPEC cartel) ... the idea being that the OPEC would make more money if the price of oil was pegged to the price of goal rather than the $USD; further complicating things was the American involvement in supplying Israel during the Yom Kippur War.

The 1979 spike occurred in the aftermath of the Iranian revolution, which did happen on Carter's watch.

"--- I'm not sure if you are aware of what Fractional Reserve Banking is. The only way banks make money is through fractional reserve. If they couldn't loan out the money you deposited, they couldn't turn a profit. Arguing against Fractional Reserve Banking is arguing against Banking, period. They have to keep money on hand to give back to people with accounts at their office, but they need to loan out the rest to stay in business. The only question is what fraction they keep on hand. ---"

I understand that much; the problem lies in the banks tying their trust into the paper-only fiat dollar, whose value is regulated largely by the interest rates the Fed can supply the banks money with, and this in turn affects the way banks can lend money out as well. How this affects fraction-reserve banking is exactly that loose regulation of how much the banks have to keep on hand to supply the needs of depositors, vs. how much it is free to lend out.

This is actually not much different than how in the middle ages people would exchange gold or silver coin deposits for notes at banks, and how those banks would make money by lending out the gold (or notes for that gold) at interest.

I've been reading on how some banks will keep no more than 10% of their assets in cash, essentially loaning out 10x as many dollars for every dollar physically held in the bank vault. I have also read that the actually liquidity of these banks may be as little as 1%, where hundreds of dollars may be loaned out for each dollar you have on deposit.

Now clearly, this is not a safe or wise idea; business and people may default on their loans, or other economic conditions may come about where people make a bank run.

And the banks can get sneaky too: by printing up more notes than there is money (or gold) to back it up.

Gold tends to act as a brake on that sort of thing, as paper is very easy to print (one FedRes chief has only to "lower the interest rate", and Presto! More money!!) and gold has to mined up out of the ground, certified as pure, and perhaps struck as coin or poured into bullion ingots. There is a lot more labour and rarity of material involve.

Central banks such as the FedRes like to exercise a thing called seignorage, which allows the government to make money by charging a certain amount for the use of its gold (especially when the government has exclusive rights to coinage) or its currency (exclusive rights to print currency).

This can make the lack of regulation (there, I said it) and lack of common economic sense quite dangerous downstream to the average citizen and small business, who in theory should have little reason to trust in the banks if they have no gaurantee that it will be there when they need it.

To get around this, we have the FDIC, which guarantees savings (checking and CDs and other typical bank products) up to $100k and IRA accounts up to $250k if I am not mistaken. This all well and good for the typical American who is lucky if he thinks to leave $500 to cover his outstanding personal cheques at the end of the month. But for the big savers at IndyMac, they will have to fight and wait for the ever-so-grindingly-slow wheels of government to get their first $100k, and then anything beyond that is a beggar's wish.

The smarter fools among us will have multiple bank accounts at different banks to keep our stashes of under $100K, if we are so fortunate to have that sort of money laying about not invested in more profitable options.

Requiring a 100% reserve, gold (or other precious, non-renewable commodity) -backed system would be a strong bulwark against economic foolishness and unsustainable lending... and yes, that would require regulation to some degree.

I'm only giving a limited view of the case however; Murray Rothbard of the Ludwig von Mises Institute does a far better job of explaining it here:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/frb.html

"--- Regulation IS transparency in many respects. The rules we set up are designed to keep people from lying and cheating. If you don't support those rules, you are effectively giving the green light for a company to deceive its way into a profit. ---"

I'm not disagreeing with you here that regulation is necessary to some extent. However, Regulation to the exclusion of the free market is just as bad: it allows the biggest players in the financial market to have undue sway over the government to write policy that favours only their interests. Therefore, the best regulation should be that which comes from the dynamics of the free market, with certain absolute rules built in (such as 100% reserve banking, auditing and accountability to the shareholders and SEC upon demand, I'm sure we can think of a few others).

You ask then, "how might a bank still make money off of its deposits?"

Let them loan the money out based upon certificates of deposit or other like securities (where the depositor agrees to receive a share of the income by usury with the bank, with the tacit understanding that the depositor will not require the deposits before the term of the certificate, which then can be loaned out at a substantially higher rate of interest.

"--- Governments only tend to run businesses that aren't profitable. This has lead some to claim that government is inherently incompetent. Take AmTrak for example. Offering affordable public transportation through the eastern seaboard was seen as far less profitable than simply selling everyone cars and gasoline. However, the presence of AmTrak is a major boon for the region. It allows low-income workers to live farther away from work, it reduces the strain on numerous downtown traffic venues, and it offers people a low-cost alternative when gas prices get too high.

AmTrak isn't profitable. If a private company tried to run AmTrak, they'd probably go out of business. But without AmTrak, we would see less business and more city congestion in the areas it services. ---"

I am not so sure that I agree with that assessment. The market has largely favoured the cars and freeway systems we have developed, and that combined with the growth of that aberration called the "suburbs" have ensured the demise of the intercity/interstate train transit industry.

Even with the outrageous prices of gas, it is still generally cheaper for me to travel by car or by plane to most destinations I go (and if I am traveling with family, the car is definitely the best bet in terms of people per miles per gallon of gas).

[Fred Be;oit]

Which of our great military leaders or experts wrote this?

"Yes. M1 tanks will do us all sorts of good in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Christ, man. The least you could do is pick the right analogy and try pimping our naval gear.

Either way, a token force is a token force. We would need to massively re-deploy to any of the numerous places we claim to "defend". Japan has its own "police defense force" consisting of tanks, planes, missiles, unmanned UAVs, and what have you. If we cleared out our bases, I'm sure they'd be happy to man them back up again with red-blooded native Japanese citizens.

And "beating the Chinese" isn't the point. The Chinese aren't going to attack us. We buy all their shit. It would be like the manager from KFC going down to your house and throwing a brick through your window. Why? He doesn't want to lose your business.

The point is that we have these 10k guys here / 20k guys there military bases that aren't designed to repeal any actual assaults without massive re-enforcements. All these bases do is suck down tax payer money. They haven't been needed in decades and everyone knows it."

No, not Patton, no not Petraeus. It was that eminent pacifist, Moe the Great (Compare with Alexander the Great at a military store near you): "Yes, bring them[our troops] all home. First the troops in Iraq, then the rest. Bring them all home."

(Note that, like a true pacifist, Moe wants to surrender in Iraq, where we need troops, first, then bring them home from Germany, where we may need them least.) Moe says that military "adventureism" is too expensive and is preventing his favorite charities from being supported by the government--we the taxpayers-- to the extent that Moe feels is appropriate.

But you want ultra expensive adventureism? Try PREVENTING CLIMATE CHANGE (which used to be called PREVENTING GLOBAL WARMING before it became obvious in recent years that the earth was cooling).

http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/did_a_un_agency_cook_the_numbers_in_global_warming_analysis/

[Fred Be;oit]

chris/Boob, here is more grist for your mill:
http://campaignspot.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MjcxNjUyYzQ5YWU1YmVkNTU3NmM3OGRkYjAyMzZmYzQ=

[IslamoLlama]

"--

Moe say: "No one is seriously suggesting nationalization of industry."

Kaching. WRONG. Maxine Waters and a few other Dem nuts are seriously suggesting it.
--"

Show me the legislation. Show me the votes.

Dennis Kucinich is pushing for Impeachment. Na ga na ha pen.
Finding a pair of particularly radical Congressmen in the 435 person house isn't hard. There are Congressmen who want to dissolve the Department of Education and the IRS (see: Paul, Ron) but they are so far outside the mainstream that it is laughable to claim this is some sort of party platform.

[Fred Be;oit]

"Moe say: "No one is seriously suggesting nationalization of industry."

I don't have to chow you no stinkin' votes. Can't you understand "...seriously suggesting..." even when you are the one who wrote it. Guess you need to be a more careful writer.........That'll be the day.

[Fred Beloit]

Moe say: "Yes, bring them all home. First the troops in Iraq, then the rest. Bring them all home."
Posted by: IslamoLlama | Tuesday, July 15, 2008 at 01:57 PM

Beloit say: "Kaching, WRONG. The war is over. We won. The savages lost. Now is the mopping up and ensuring that Iraq can protect itself from foreign invaders."

Now, is Obama's position at this time closer to Moe's or to Beloit's position?

[SacTownMan]

"Now, is Obama's position at this time closer to Moe's or to Beloit's position?"

Good question Fred. Which way is the wind blowing today?

[IslamoLlama]

"-- I don't have to chow you no stinkin' votes. Can't you understand "...seriously suggesting..." even when you are the one who wrote it. --"

Of course you don't have to show me votes or legislation or anything other than a random quote in the morning newspaper. Because, after all, anything that leaves Maxine Water's mouth instantly becomes law. So you better watch out, because next thing you know, she's going to be talking about a 100% income tax or outlawing speculation. And then, poof! We're all Communists.

Here, have a change of pants and brush up on your Civics.

[Gov. Orval Faubus, D-Arkansas]

"--- Of course you don't have to show me votes or legislation or anything other than a random quote in the morning newspaper. ---"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KN6s1KVFBNg&feature=related

[Fred Beloit]

Thank you, Governor. Perfectly timed and apt.

"But it ain't no f-----g LAW. IT AIN"T NO LAW." You don't have to write this, Moe. I saved you the trouble.

[IslamoLlama]

"-- You don't have to write this, Moe. I saved you the trouble. --"

*rolls eyes*
Yes, and next she's going to fly in on a black UN helicopter and take your guns. Because she's Maxine Waters: Supreme Overlady of America. Better high-tail it to Canada!

[Fred Beloit]

Well, she's not that exalted, Moe. She's only the the Secretary Supreme Overlady, under Madame "Let cars eat corn" Pelosi.

[WAHOO WILLIE]

".........ensuring that Iraq can protect itself from foreign invaders."

Fred; The Iraqi government (elected by the Iraqi People) has asked us to name a "horizon"...in short to leave. Know what an army is in a country where it is no longer welcomed? YES!!! An occupying force......Frankly the same "outside invaders" didn't do much harm to the Iraqis the last time they attempted. "Trizzle, trazzel, trozzle, trome, time for this one to come home" (Who among us knows that line?)

[Fred Beloit]

Wahoo writes: "Fred; The Iraqi government (elected by the Iraqi People) has asked us to name a "horizon"...in short to leave. Know what an army is in a country where it is no longer welcomed? YES!!! An occupying force..."

Well, Wahoo, there is the Whermacht und SS occupying France and then there is usuns in Iraq. So I guess you would say we turn into the Whermacht and SS in mid-2010. I think not. But, you might ask, why should we stay in Iraq beyond 2010 with any kind of forces at all? France, The Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, and Italy won't like us if we do, neither will the government of Maliki.I would invoke the Anglo-Saxon for that question...TS.

There is a place called Iran that is fixin' to become a nuclear weapons power, or so I hear. That can't be permitted. Our presence on Iran's west will help to keep that from happening. That is more important. And, yes I know nobody is saying that for public consumption, not Bush, not McCain. So what. What makes good sense for our future and the world's and is more important for now than what the Maliki government would prefer. Anyhow they owe us some slack, don't you think?