the all-purpose Sarah Palin thread

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do you mean, 'what do I believe is the cause of the price of oil going so high?' the answer is that a lot of it has been speculation. In the last month or two the price has fallen more than $30/barrel; neither supply nor demand has changed that much in that time period. I think that we need to limit speculation on this resource (California has had some experience with the effects of energy speculation; it does no one any good but the speculators).

If you mean, 'what do you think is the answer to our energy crisis,' I would have to say that there is no single answer. I think that increasing fuel efficiency standards would be a big start (and would help the moribund American car industry,which has seemed determined to commit suicide for the last 20 years by ignoring the energy trends). I think that California's law limiting diesel came at a bad time, given that diesel trucks get hugely better mileage than gas trucks for the same power, despite the particulates. I think we need to invest more in R&D on new energy sources and forms of storage (my local university has a tiny branch working in a garage-like setting on hydrogen storage and hydrogen fuel cells that has, nonetheless, managed to build a hydrogen fueling station), and start utilizing the energy sources we have with new power plants (wind and wave are big ones here). I don't like the idea of becoming dependent on nuclear because it can only ever be a stopgap (fissible material is non-renewable just like fossil fuels), but as an acknowledged-to-be-temporary stopgap, it might be a good idea to bring some of our old nuclear plants back online (cheaper than building new ones? I don't know for sure, but I would imagine so).



Well, I can't argue with you over the CIA and FBI dropping the ball; however, I would have thought that a PDB titled 'Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States' might have brought a directive from on high to pay a little more attention to arabic guys (racial profiling, I know) doing suspicious things like learning how to fly planes but not land them (as we know was noticed by at least one FBI agent). Furthermore, Clinton was putting effort into tracking Bin Laden and Al Quaeda; Bush stopped it.
http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2006 ... linton.asp
http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/d ... nce_1.html


And I shouldn't have summed up his entire career to one bad opinion. He did do a good job at the Fed; I'd be a fool to deny it. But he wasn't soley responsible for a healthy economy during Clinton's presidency. The fact is, the housing mortgage crisis is just the biggest example of an out-of-control credit sector in America; I've seen people predicting a crash for decades. Housing aside, when I first got to college I used to get 3-5 offers a week for credit cards with spending limits up to 100K. An economy cannot survive on debt alone, but a huge fraction of American consumption, not just of houses, has been debt for a long time. Credit is necessary for growth - you often have to spend money in order to make money - but Americans by and large have been living beyond our means. Credit problems are not Bush's fault, as far as I know; that problem has been brewing for decades. The inequality between rich and poor, however - greater now than at any time since the great depression - has not been helped by neoliberal philosophies.



I haven't heard anything about charges of racism; I think it was just pure, unadulterated greed. The people who sold the mortgages took no personal risk: they re-sold packages of mortgage debt to second parties at huge profit, so there was no reason for them to deny anyone of any color a mortgage - as big of one as possible - for any reason.



I'm of two minds about that. On the one hand, yes: they should pay for their mistakes. On the other hand, they can't be allowed to take down the world economy with them. I'm for punishing the individual board members and CEOs but propping up the companies.



Knee-jerk responses:
Lowering taxes on the poor and middle classes.
Lowering taxes on small companies and increasing them on huge companies (tax net, not gross).
Investing in American infrastructure (which saves everybody money in the long run, not just the poor) instead of Iraqi infrastructure.
Taxing the hell out of companies that send their factories overseas, and providing tax breaks for those who keep their factories here.
Raising the minimum wage. Or, perhaps, making a law along the lines of 'the highest executives in a company cannot make more than 100X the lowliest employees, per hour.' Allows someone to profit from hard work and learning, but not to an obscene degree. Companies that wanted to pay their CEOs obscene amounts would have to increase the wages of their employees first, and might re-invest the money not spent on execs. in increased production, advertising, or other productive venues.
http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/webfeatu ... _wage_2004
http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/webfeatu ... _greenspan
http://www.ocpp.org/1999/es990602.htm
http://www.ocpp.org/1999/es032399.htm
http://repositories.cdlib.org/iir/iirwps/iirwps-111-05/

The problem is that corporate tax loopholes do not "create jobs," or at least not jobs in the United States.



As much in taxes. Not as much in economic growth. Call me a protectionist, but if American workers are going to compete with Indonesian workers (without settling for $0.80/day, or forming international trade unions), then we as a country need to start treating those companies who employ Americans preferentially. Being able to buy cheap crap that one doesn't need from Wal-Mart does not make up for having one's job outsourced to Indonesia.



the point was that corporations were not suffering before the credit crisis: they were not struggling to pay their utility bills, as you implied. They were making record profits, and their stock values were soaring. I'm not proposing taxing corporations to the degree that they can't make a profit; I'm proposing taxing net profits. What's left over *after* the utility bills, et. all, are paid.
I was also tying in to the point of bottom-up or trickle-down: the 2006 distribution of wealth, with huge corporate and CEO profits and relatively low worker wages, also mirrors the situation right before the stock market crash that brought on the great depression.




Are you not aware that Palin attends a dominionist church? That she thinks that creationism should be taught in public schools? That she believes that abortion should be illegal even in cases of rape and incest? That she thinks 'abstinence only' birth control works (despite both personal and social evidence to the contrary)?


No - just the ones who want to put 'values' straight out of the middle eastern desert two centuries ago into law here and now.
I'm actually cautiously supportive of California's Governator, for example. I respected McCain before he started bending over so far backwards for the religious right that his head went up his ass (say, 5-10 years ago, before he started thinking about a presidential run).



Like many girls, I grew up thinking that boys were quite icky, and never planning to have anything to do with them. That didn't prevent me from growing into a completely hetero woman. I don't think that I would have had bi or lesbian tendencies no matter what my teachers had suggested to me.



Evidence?



First, reproduction does not depend on marriage. Iceland has the highest birthrate of any european country, and also the highest out-of-wedlock pregnancy rate. If you're worried about demographic warfare, keeping gays from getting married is not going to help. Secondly, it's a myth that a gay family cannot be as strong as a straight one. Thirdly, I know and have known quite a few gays, both male and female. None of them has ever said that marriage was being 'shoved down their throats,' though not all of them wanted to marry even after it started being legalized in Canada. No one is going to force anyone to get married, even after it is legalized.



Specifics. Fine.
McCain/Palin et. all want to keep pouring money into a hole in the Iraqi sand, despite the fact that it has not yet made America safer or stabilized American access to oil.
McCain/Palin et. all want to sustain Bush's economic policies, despite the fact that they have led us to recession.
McCain/Palin et. all want to keep America dependent on fossil fuel rather than investing in renewable resources, despite the fact that doing so can only ever be a stopgap measure.
McCain/Palin et. all talk about bombing Iran and kicking Russia out of the G8, despite the evidence of the last 8 years that saber-rattling and warmongering does not accomplish as much with recalcitrant nations as does diplomacy.
McCain/Palin et. all think that making decisons 'from one's gut' is a legitimate way to run a country, despite 8 years of evidence to the contrary.



victim-ideology? would you define that, please?
When have I ever said that anyone is a victim?



My overwhelming emotion towards politics right now is burning fury. I freely admit that. I can try to tone down the insults, but I'm not going to pad my gloves any more than that. I do appreciate you keeping an even tone throughout, and will try to reciprocate - but I'm not going to pretend respect where I have none.

No desire to completely ignore your response, I just got back in town from working up in Canada for the week.

Its a double edged sword. Part of that means when we're looking at hard times the prices will spike up, part of it means that when the government claims that it will do something that will lower demand - it will drop sooner than the months or alternately the 5 or 10 years depending on the site of extraction for oil or the new alternative fuel that will get the job done (ie. like if T Boone Picken's proposition of LNG got enough traction with the auto producers).

On your next paragraph, I agree as well - we need everything we can get. The only sketchy thing is where businesses have to retool. Speaking in terms of vehicles, if we found a new form of energy that we were going to take a stab at and it required the gas stations to refit and reinvest capital for extra pumps of another variety; they would need reassurance that they weren't buying a movie store's worth of Beta or HDVD and the car/truck companies would need reassurance that they aren't going to be buying all kind of extra dyes and hiring all kinds of extra engineers for the new 'flavor of the week' - otherwise both would suffer horribly (particularly with gas stations - many of the owners barely make enough overhead to make a profit, with the Giant Eagle Get-Go's I'd be surprised if many don't just go under; asking for capital switch-outs would be a lot). Just for those reasons, with vehicles at least, I'd be for something - like LNG, that could be filled up at home or something that would be very inexpensive for the gas stations - the automakers you really can't do much for as they'd need all new engines and supporting apparatus regardless.

I very much agree with you on hydrogen though, I think that's almost anyone's dream-fuel; if we could make that work we'd have the best of pretty much all worlds (though true, the splitting process takes energy, that could be electrically fueled to future hydro stations via more nuclear reactors - which of course I'd think if we don't socialize we would want them audited for internal controls and safety and have to pass yearly if not quarterly audits).



Regrettably the first link isn't working. With the second link however there was another instance which I think is what most people talk about was the 1998 incident where they knew where he was, could have had it hit with missiles and Clinton was stuck in the situation of either lobbing a missile to the spot through Pakistani air-space without giving them a heads up or permission or alternately waiting until he could get the clearance. He waited, got the clearance, and missed. Hindsight is 20/20 of course, I can't think of how many other people would have done the same in that situation. Still, he did declare war on the U.S. twice by that point and I am curious on how much funding if not agents as well were added to counter-terrorism units of the CIA (J. Cofer Black had some rather scathing things to say during the 9/11 commissions). If the threats were as dire and if Bill Clinton was getting these reports across his desk day after day, I really think he should have brought that too people more. On other notes, what I am greatly displease with him on - selling missile technology to China, trying to sell them a base in San Francisco, Sandy Berger shoving documents down his trousers regarding a lot of what happened up until 9/11; if anything I think having a triste with Monica was probably the smartest thing he did - it kept everyone's eyes diverted from a lot of other issues and made it easy for his party to deflect almost any criticism, some far more valid, and make it look like it was all morals and all about sex.



I want to get back to you on more of this but, its almost 10:00 and I need to flip to ABC. I'd like to corroborate some of the things I'd heard on this matter. I had heard that they dodged audits by both GAO and big 4 for a long time - not sure if its true or not. Also, I have heard a certain Senator's name dropped constantly in regard to the scandal - someone who should have had direct accountability for failing the link between these agencies and oversight in Washington, won't go into full detail on it before I research it to find out.

You don't mind the square jaw?

As a true conservative, I must admit to misogynistic tendencies and a repressed homosexuality, so that is only a turn on!

Actually, Bush was briefed by the CIA not long before 9-11. The CIA described Al Qaeda as a major threat to the US, said they wanted to hijack planes inside the United States. Bush dismissed the agent who did the briefing with a comment "Ok, you've covered your ass, now get out of here." Richard Clarke had been asking for meetings to call for action, but this was postponed by the White House.

Within days of 9-11, Cheney and Rumsfeld were pushing for the invasion of Iraq - before any 'intelligence' was gathered or cherry-picked.

Ok, getting back to a few more of these:

NAFTA and GAT didn't help just in terms of wiping out a lot of 'honest hard work' type jobs; I live in Ohio and both our state and Michigan have been hit hard by outsourcing of that nature. An audit I was even conducting recently was a half and half - half the year it was in my area, half the year the accounts payable function was picked up by a new office out in India. Part of this makes me very much want to back to school and get a masters degree in Economics. I hear what liberals are saying, I hear what conservatives are saying, and primarily when I side with conservative policies on economics I look at Wall Street's opinion, I look at Bob Jindal's success in how many jobs he was able to bring back to Louisiana in terms of corporations deciding to headquarter there - part of it of course was the good-ol-boy system of bribes needed to get a business in prior to that, not sure how much of it on his part was gov't reform vs. tax cuts; but I would think that if companies are now flooding into Louisiana there has to be a cost benefit factor. Sounds like they are looking out for numero uno, that's what companies do as not to fall prey to their competitors, so it ends up being a contest of which countries offer the highest amount of net perks. Something else, and I'll disclaimer it: I've heard can't remember where, that our country - the U.S. - still has one of the most unfriendly tax structures for business (aka. jobs - the man is us and vice a versa).

On another note, talking strictly about supply-side economics (aka. 'tricke-down' or 'Reaganomics'); I realize that if we were looking at the United States in isolate it could easily be seen as a question of "Which comes first - the chicken or the egg?" as in I could see the debate being extended to the idea that if you give actual reimbursements that are non-tax related and do wealth distribution that it could fuel a demand-side push which would have people purchasing, reinvesting, and buying product - thus creating jobs by fueling a surge on the consumer market. On the other hand, in worldview, we have a huge trade deficit - ie. we import far more than we export. In that context, supply isn't limited to U.S. saturation but rather world saturation and it really comes down to (to the best of my understanding) how expensive it is for people in other countries to buy U.S. products. If increase in supply lowers cost, often to both the supplier and the consumer, its a difficult market to saturate when looked at globally. That said, impinging on the free-will of businesses to do whats in their best interest really means that they just pack up and move to another country and, if worst comes to worst, you'd see far fewer companies filing for corporation status in the U.S. - they'd want nexus somewhere else.

Right now its a bit of a national security threat that Russia and China are rising up and finding a balance between economic success as well as still maintaining dictatorial tendencies (particularly China, Russia's more on-the-way). Part of our survival as a country is staked in being able to control the situation. Its not that we don't want to see other countries do well, we just really don't want to see dictatorships endangering democracies around the world (and I'd admit - for issues of human rights, for the founding aspects of our own constitution regarding unalienable rights, and yes - I would imagine fair or at least survivable lopsided global trade policies, without us in control we could and I'm rather certain would be bullied).



After watching BBC World News and getting an idea of how much foreign investment was in those companies I think it would have been a very sticky situation, both for foreign investment in the U.S. and while I'd heard it would only burn the stockholder's I don't who would repossess the mortgages, how that would affect the valuation etc.. Questions like that do fascinate me because they do matter a great deal.



Taxes I think I've addressed pretty well. Minimum wage, before raising it we'd have to have the boarders sealed air tight. Artificial floors cause black markets and in labor, that ends up being illegals (and of course there's the inflationary aspect as well).

Here is one thing that scares me in that, telling a company what they can or can't pay someone - monkey-wrenches both liberties of business owners and gives thrm s great deal of grief when they really need to hire someone on who's a 'fixer' who can supposedly reform the company and reshape, make it more efficient. We tend to hear about these things when these guys do a bad job, which I'm guessing happens far less often than the opposite outcome. Almost anything you do to tap or tamper with these sorts of things has secondary consequences, tertiary consequences, and it has to be mapped out and well understood to the best of the decision maker's ability. With all the vested lobbyists its another reason why I'd much prefer the private sector to yield to demand pressures from the labor or consumer market rather than having the House of Representatives or Senate involved; when Washington gets involved the results are scary - the levels of Medicare fraud are one good example.

Don't get me wrong, I definitely want social justice, but it also happens that when a company takes the lead - if the people like it they'll get good resume and it would be a big product endorsement, their competitors would be forced to conform to the same emerging standards if they wanted to stay in the game in the long term rather than see the other companies slowly creep ahead of them and leave them in the dust.



Well intended, and I agree - rent hasn't gotten cheaper, housing won't stay cheaper for long, property taxes are the same, electric, water/sewage, gas, etc..

Take a look at About.com page 3 regarding the effects of tariffs though:
http://economics.about.com/cs/taxpolicy/a/tariffs_2.htm

Playing the protection game I'd imagine can work on small scale in the short term, and I would agree to the idea that we're throwing 3/4 of a trillion at foreign oil producers - which I am disgusted with and one of the reasons why I am so much for us tapping our own national resources. Still, from the sound of that - some of the jobs like textile - sounds comparable, but for some of the others its pretty far over the top. Cutting taxes might not be a cure-all but it could definitely usage the problem. One of McCain's more liberal ideas as well (which I'll admit, didn't get much applause at the RNC) was government spending to help retrain and re-educate workers who have lost manufacturing jobs. Its of course tricky just because, we are human beings and not machines, some people will take easily to that some just aren't built for it. Part of me really believes that the more attention we pay to the sort of Benthamist greatest good in this sense though the less government will have to fill in the gaps.



She's articulated pretty well that with her religious views, she has her own but wouldn't push it on the next person in regard to creationism. The rumor had come up that she wanted ID taught side by side with evolution (which I don't even understand - ID's pathetic, its an apologist system that even has origins that make most people wonder about the originator of the philosophy's true intent). What has been made clear is that she only wants evolution taught but wishes the debate to be open for the students or if the students ask the teacher to compare and contrast they aren't stuck with their hands tied. If that does get to be too much of a slippery slope and no one agrees with her, I'd really doubt she'd go postal over it.

Abortion is one of those issues that has a lot of facets. On one end its reproductive rights of a woman, its looking at the quality of life for possible offspring of what we'd really consider our living breathing side-effects of American liberties (trash of any ethnicity). What I've come to understand about the pro-life stance is that it in and of itself has nuanced reasoning as well. Partly its a matter of how sacred we hold human life. Yes, we have a distinction set in place by law that if a girl (such as one I actually went to high school with but its another story) gives birth to a baby and kills it herself its not abortion, its a jail sentence for murder as well as legal offenses related to mishandling and disposal of a corpse. The pro-life debate, leaving religion out, still has secular purpose. First, while in some cases we can guess what sort of child would be born, in most we can't and we aren't scientifically advanced enough to see into the future to see what that life could have been, who it could have become - we could have had cures for cancer, we could have had our first black president in the 90's even - and its because we still don't have such a great grip on how human life works that we can reign that in. Also societal norms creep together; peer pressure ends up having its own group economics, kids do stupid things based on that peer pressure, and as human nature works - the more abortions had the more will follow. NARAL has changed its founding guidelines as well recently, from "safe, legal and infrequent" to "safe and legal" partly that due to their own funding they have become something like a for-profit business; its come to be in their best interest to encourage more abortions. Here is how I see it though, if Sarah Palin does get the VP spot and, should tragedy occur end up President, she has indicated that she wants to make it a states rights issue.

This gets back to abstinence training. With abortion being an easy option, yes, it doesn't work because all it gets anyone is dissed through highschool for being a virgin (guys or girls). Your right to an extent in saying that someone like Sarah Palin would want to reverse the changes of social norms by changing the consequences of the action. In her view the life born is a gift to society not a burden to the parent, if the parent thinks so they're free to give the baby up for adoption. In the case of rape and incest - its a very sensational area, a few months ago I would have disagreed with her on this but understanding the fact that the embryo is the seed of a human being that is neither the mom or the dad and has no culpability for what the dad did, its one of those situations in life where I do cringe at it but I would strongly suggest this; that if things were changed and lets say that Roe v. Wade was overturned - the same people who were so for getting it overturned OWE her BIG for biting the bullet on that; whether its getting her the heck away from the perpetrator, psychological help, support groups, but overall people patting her on the back every day through it, telling her how strong she is, and reinforcing to her that again - the child is not her fully, not the dad fully, not the sum of its parts but a developing sentient being and that she's absolutely free to give the child up for adoption the second she goes through labor. All of that could sound a bit naive but I think of it this way; its probably one of the few ways we'll be able to undo the terrible damage that the 'free love' movement of the 1960's and 1970's did to our world, did to how we treat one another in general, its like while we've gained a good degree of civil rights (+) we've also done a lot of very stupid things on the side just because they've never been tried before - and we're finding out why little by little.

Regardless of what I'm saying on the life issue - my being a guy makes it difficult for me to really feel like I have much traction on the matter, and I try to be humble on my opinion. However there are a great amount of pro-life women out there and most are just as liberated as any other woman in the U.S..





McCain's doing that for one reason - he has an idea on how to reform bureaucracy, he's unquestionably the expert on foreign policy and defense, though I would debate that he is the same guy he was 5 or 20 years ago; more of a social liberal in general. Having a system where its one of two parties take your pick - he couldn't have run democrat as he would have had to flush all his competencies down the toilet in terms of his stances to appeal to his voting base (him running as affirmative on a laundry list of liberal issues would have had no credibility and he probably never would have even made the draft picks for the primary). Sarah Palin's an odd blend herself though - ie. on one end she's, as you noted, ardent pro-life but at the same time she's admitted to smoking (maybe even being a pothead) in highschool or college, one of her projects in Wascilla was constructing a skate/BMX park (something I'd take it would be frowned upon in a big way by the more traditional sorts), married a professional snow-mobiler, a lot of things about her - sure, make her look like a NASCAR mom, but she's done a few too many things, has a few too many personality traits that seem very habitually moderate, its difficult for me to see her as someone who could have that construct of life if she was - through and through - a religious wackaloon.



Depends which we're talking about. If its 'only the strong societies survive', that was the middle east all through ancient history with the rise and fall of the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Persians, etc. As far as ancient societies accepting it, I'd yahoo both ancient Egypt and Greece. I won't get into specifics because it may sound sensational or even a bit Onion'ish, but from the context it sounds like it had a social context even.



First of all, no intention at all to say that a gay family can't be as strong of a unit as a straight one. Really with this issue the fallout is not with the gays themselves, its with the fact that when freedom of choice for the masses and their own identity comes into crisis so much - people can't tell up from down; which anarchy and disarray can be dealt with effectively by adults but it has weird effects on children who are developing into adults. This is one of those issues where I think if we stay with the times we're saying - in the past it was barbaric that gays were persecuted, it was deeply wrong, and human beings should be respectful and empathetic toward human beings; and yes, we have to put this to rest - even if there are some gays who are so by choice, plenty aren't and when someone literally is who they are; if they're not harming anyone they need to have their liberties upheld against anyone who would want to show them discrimination. The only part in all this that comes in cross with that, figuring out where civil rights and the greater good of the majority need to work out their concessions to stay in balance (the way I handle autism as well, I know that I live in an NT world, that someone would literally just about have to be me to understand it fully, and because of that unless I can't bring myself to try and force the world to adapt to me - I think it would be greatly damaging). However we're at an age now I think where we can look at cause and effect and we don't need religious dogma to be shoveled down on us to dictate our thinking. Even if the end result is correct, if people got to the correct conclusion through what assembles really an ignorant lie tied down to a solid frame - you get the bird-brained bible beaters who, while they have faith and all, they don't understand the context of their own belief or have it matched out well with the real world (ie. they got the most pivotal stuff but, lets say hypothetically they'd run someone out of town for finding out they smoke weed or because they aren't Christian themselves - they got the dogma but that's all they got, the realities of it never sunk in).



Iraq is almost wrapped up and Obama and McCain are sounding more and more identical on this in terms of their plans. Obama wants to say 2015, McCain is thinking of it more like Germany, South Korea, etc. - minimal presence. On us 'not being safer', its not like we haven't foiled at least a half dozen major planned attacks already. This is where I think the media likes to play politics - we haven't been attacked in seven years which really should be a shock to most people but, the news media claims "Well, Al Queda just didn't have any follow ups planned in the immediate future and they sit it out and take their time" (ie. disqualifying the things that have been done). Ann Coulter made an analogy and I think it works - if city mayor reinforces a bridge that would have collapsed, it gets no positive press. If the bridge collapses - huge negative press. The CIA also keeps more than a fair amount of the information inside for the fact that if terrorist organizations don't know that they're trump cards are up, hopefully they follow up on the same plans, get caught in the process, and hopefully the defense lawyers don't jam everything up.

The recession; McCain and Palin are both saying that they want to conduct serious overhauls on the bureaucratic structure. Yes, it does sound reminiscent of Shwartzenegger, but I think we have people with greater experience and orientation to the cause in them.

Dependency on fossil fuels I have to say is incorrect, they want all the things the democrats want, they believe however that fossil fuels are a necessity until the technologies to make alternative fuels cost effective come along - anything less is economic suicide.

On Russia, Iran, and saberrattling vs. diplomacy, think back to the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Kruschev met JFK, thought he was weak, misjudged JFK of course, but the perception that he could go on the aggressive caused loss of life and a lot of headaches. I highly endorse getting the satellite states of the former USSR into NATO, that way their nation state rights are in writing and other countries would have to do their part in protecting their sovereignty. Iran is a serious problem though, more so than Iraq even was. I'd like to think that the people of Iran can usurp their regime, they aren't like their leadership for the most part, but its unlikely to happen before Israel ends up bombing them, Iran in turn attacks the oil infrastructure, and we end up looking at a WWIII sort of scenario where likely it would be like Iraq and Kuwait, very strong world reaction. On the other hand if Iran can go nuclear, and if they can blow up a major U.S. city - you haven't seen anything yet compared to that economic crash. Overall though - there are a lot of good people in this world but considering the fact that the cream has been pushed to the bottom and the garbage has risen to the top with tanks and guns in a lot of countries, its not a good or safe world in that sense.

As for governing from 'the gut', decisions can come from there but ultimately it takes the agreement of congress, the agreement of the American people, and thus gut decisions by necessity need to be tempered with common sense - when you think about it, a major politician or head of state making a huge fumble like that is pretty much career ending and if its a bad enough mistake can lead to impeachment.

Question - why is this the first time I've heard about that? I can think of at least 12 or 13 senators who'd never stop talking about that, would have had him impeached if that were true, and the newspapers would made the sky fall on him.

Must be your sources of information. I heard that one years ago, soon after the attack. But not from American mainstream media.


At the time when that was news, any criticism of the commander in chief was branded as unpatriotic, bordering on treasonous. By the time that mood had faded enough to allow criticism from the mainstream, the story was old news.

Your joking, right?? That, and worse, has been in the newspapers, and other places, including the 9-11 commission. The way that the Bush Administration dealt with 9-11 is not so different from how they dealt with hurricane Katrina.

This paragraph from the 9-11 Commission indicated that the CIA raised the issue of Bin Ladin with Bush over 40 times:



It was in January of 2001 that an urgent call was put out for a meeting between terrorism czar Clarke and Condaleeza Rice. This meeting never happened.
http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NS ... 20memo.pdf

Condaleeza Rice later said ""I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon." In fact, the 9-11 Commission noted that in September of 1998, the Intelligence Community got information that Bin Laden's was interested in flying an explosive-laden aircraft into a U.S. airport and detonating it.

Not only did they drop the ball on seeing the threat, they were insistent on using the threat to attack Iraq, who they knew were not behind 9-11.



If a political stomach for impeachment should ever develop, there is plenty of evidence.

Here are Kucinich's articles of impeachment, with a lengthy indictment.

http://chun.afterdowningstreet.org/amomentoftruth.pdf

Here's today's news on impeachable offenses: Republican Congressman who was on the fence regarding the invasion of Iraq says VP Cheney misled/lied to him about the links between Iraq and Al Qaeda to get his support for the war.

She's a bigot. What else needs to be said?

She's unqualified?

try

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2006 ... st_to.html
http://www.snopes.com/rumors/clinton.asp

(I'll check them after I post, and try to edit if they still don't work).

edit: they seem to be ok.

I hear you. I don't know enough about economics to decide what the right answer is in terms of globalization. We need trade, I don't think that there's any doubt of that, but we also need a little protectionism (and so do other countries!), and California shipping rice to china at the same time that India is shipping rice to California just seem stupid. NAFTA and GAT and the WTO are areas where I disagreed with the Clinton administration - not, again, that they were completely bad - just that it seems as though they went too far.



I agree with traditional conservative ecoonomic policies far more than I agree with the neoliberal policies that have recently become the baby of many republicans. Laissez-faire economics ruled in the gilded age and brought about the great depression; the current situation seems to mirror that far more than is comfortable.



If you can find a link with numbers, I'll read it. However, I don't think that lowering taxes on corporations necessarily translates into jobs. Look at oil companies, for example: they're making record profits, and that money isn't going to job creation or to drilling on the unused leases that they already hold. It's going to huge executive bonuses and shareholder dividends. Shareholder dividends aren't entirely a bad thing - I have a 401K like half of the rest of the country - but current corporate policy seems to focus far more on immediate profits than on future longevity. The American auto companies, for example, could see the winds blowing towards more fuel efficient cars a decade ago, but chose to ignore it and ramp up their production of enormous SUVs and trucks. Now they're begging for government handouts to re-tool their factories for smaller vehicles.



Why would they have to be non-tax-related? Money in the pocket is money in the pocket.



That is a very good point, and leads back to the whole trade issue.



from what I've heard, export companies are one of the few sectors that haven't been in a tailspin this last year. With the dollar falling, people in other countries are not only buying U.S. products, but also buying U.S. property as vacation homes (at least, according to a 15-minute report on NPR I heard a few weeks ago...). Maybe the dollar has been artificially overvalued, and the correction of that is part of this whole mess. It seems that all of our necessary corrections are coming due at once, unfortunately.



That implies a race to the bottom that is simply unacceptable. Ecological protection is bad for corporations; should we thus allow them to clearcut every last old-growth tree, for fear that they'll move on to the Russian taiga (which they have done) if they can't? Should we allow them to dump toxic effluent into our streams and soil because it costs less than cleaning it up? Should my hospital be allowed to dispose of chemotherapy and radiation therapy left-overs in the regular trash, because it costs them far less? Should we, like China and Indonesia, outlaw unions and minimum wages, because benefits and high wages cost employers more here than they do in those countries?



But a stable dictatorship is often better for business than an unstable democracy, with its messy regular regime changes and its populations demanding expensive rights and regulations.


{rant}I was unsurprised to learn that Freddie's and Fannie's CEOs got termination bonuses of 9+ million and 14+ million. How can you drive a company into the ground and be rewarded for it?{/rant}



fair point.



The problem here is that an individual worker (which most of those working at minimum-wage levels qualify as) is virtually powerless set up against a large employer. A company that employs 1K is going to say 'faretheewell' to individuals who say, 'you're not paying me enough,' especially in high-turnover, low-skilled jobs. Without either unions or government oversight, it's simply not a level playing field. As far as medicare fraud - I don't think that the levels are as high as is claimed (or as frequent as is implied, anyway), and if Medicare reimbursed at least at cost, hospital admins might not feel as pressured to fudge their diagnoses. Most hospitals take a loss on their medicare patients, and are required by law simply to eat it.

I have to go to work, so I will return to this later.

Kilroy on Sarah Palin;

she's a psycho
if I voted (in america) I'd vote for the black guy

I could care less what her kid is called or what those nammies did to mcain

Wow, Palin appears to be overshadowing McCain.