Originally posted by vvv
rs7, don't mind max, our fruitcake in residence.
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the speech gore should have given, but never did:
Gore as Youâve Never Heard Him
Don't you mean as Algore never heard himself? So many subtopics. Each could provide a thread in and of itself. Let's tackle some of the points.
You wrote:
The American economy is dead in the water, and the Bush administrationâs loose war talk during the summer only made things worse ...
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A large portion of what we are experiencing is political in nature. The democratic party has its reasons, and we have their pain! But I do also think the administration did not do a good job of forcing its economic plans out there and modifying them as needed. For the democrats, the claim is the administration is not bring the proposals correctly. Translated, they aren't offering us enough stuff for our cooperation. More pork swapping and associated credit needed in their eyes. The upcoming elections will either break the dam or continue it as is, in which case the public needs to stop whinnying and understand that the fate is our own to alter.
Then there was:
AL GOREâS SPEECH TO the Commonwealth Club last week was intelligent, but ultimately about tactics, not strategy. Gore believes that Saddam Hussein is a growing threat to the United States and the worldâand one that must be dealt with, using force if necessary. But he dislikes the manner and sequence in which the president is conducting policy. That makes for a column, not a campaign.
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Algore's speech of tactics further shows his weaknesses and the reason that he does not make a good leader (in my book). Strategy implies having made a determination of direction, and a plan. But for Algore, there's no conviction other that looking as though "He's the man!" The only thing that Algore believes in this instance is that he should be in charge. He has no plan, only a good supply of Algoreism's. But so do most presidents so we should not really look at them for much other than great articulation (the real reason for Clinton, and in many eyes Reagan, popularity when he has no real clue).
Next:
The American economy is dead in the water and the administration seems not to have noticed. Treasury Secretary Paul OâNeill confidently tells us that the economy is poised for a recovery, as he told us six months ago, as he told us a year ago. But the reality is stark. Every day we hear of a new round of layoffs, a new bout of cost-cutting, a new set of economic numbersâall worse than expected. Profits and business investment have fallen more sharply than at any point since the Great Depression. This year the average American householdâs net worth will decline for the third year running, which has not happened since World War II. The traditional optimism of Americans is being replaced by nervousness and gloom.
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The American economy is not dead in the water. Everyone knows that. What we have is no clearly, loudly stated plan or direction for what the administration believes needs to be done to push things forward. The belief that the president can move mountains (in this case) is wrongly assumed here. Take action towards a position, the economy governs itself accordingly. The administration seems to be hampered on two fronts.
First, there is the democratic agenda. Second, there was a need to weed out a ton of corruption by the markets themselves. Until that is done AND an economic policy is put in place and acted upon, we will flounder.
Next:
âThe key force holding back economic growth today is uncertainty:
Stop right there and that would have been the truest and most complete statement that Algore could make. The balance of the Algore fantasy speech is enough rhetoric and headache causing to make me fade. I won't follow it here.
Let me just say this, no matter which party is believed to be the one that should be in charge, we need a strong appearance at the top and a solid group of teams in each discipline beneath them. President Bush has not put together a very strong economic team IMHO. He also seems not to be able to handle multiple fronts at the same time. The world is not a concurrent place.
For me this flaw is one that is seemingly a quality that we all do not like but, we are settling for in a lot of key decision making positions. Likeable seems to be winning out over competent in far too many instances of late. Hopefully we don't pay the ultimate prices now for shallow criterion then!
Algore honestly believes being president is his "destiny." I pray not. There are many others on the sidelines waiting and planning their assention, so to speak. Greatness should not be planned, it should happen. When they grasp that fact, then they may be correctly forced to become no more than just another footnote!
strike on iraq
- Thread starter ElCubano
- Start date
Originally posted by canyonman00
Originally posted by vvv
âThe key force holding back economic growth today is uncertainty:
Stop right there and that would have been the truest and most complete statement that al gore could make. The balance of the Algore fantasy speech is enough rhetoric and headache causing to make me fade. I won't follow it here.
Let me just say this, no matter which party is believed to be the one that should be in charge, we need a strong appearance at the top and a solid group of teams in each discipline beneath them. President Bush has not put together a very strong economic team IMHO. He also seems not to be able to handle multiple fronts at the same time. The world is not a concurrent place.
Likeable seems to be winning out over competent in far too many instances of late. Hopefully we don't pay the ultimate prices now for shallow criterion then!
while i cannot get into the head of the person who wrote "al's speech" for him, the reasons i agree with the statement that the economy is dead in the water are, amongst others, measured by what our financial flexibility is as defined by our national debt and annual interest payments we have to make, and by what the economy has done for the normal citizens in the middle and lower classes.
i think reagan actually used the same standard when he first ran for president against our new peace nobel prize winner, ie he asked voters to try and judge if they were better off then than 20 years ago.
ie, how much room for maneuvering do we have, and how has the normal person on the street fared, as compared to other highly developed countries. i'm not talking about those 10% at the top of the pyramid, they can always fend for themselves.
30 trillion in debt, equal to 3 times GDP, with commensurate annual interest payments of 2 trillion, doesn't leave us much space to move, and it looks like we're not going to be seeing fiscal propriety and stability any day soon again, either.
included in the 30 trillion in natl. debt is also private debt, we are basically a nation where no one seems to see any merits in saving money anymore, be it for a rainy day, retirement, whatever. understandable during stock market boom days with the feel-rich-factor, but not necessarily financially sound, as can be seen when paper wealth suddenly evaporates.
there are many differences between japan and the usa, but one major difference is that the japanese could spend if they wanted to, as one of the nations with the largest private savings per capita, whereas we couldn't even if we wanted to.
debt is high, 8 million are unemployed post bubble, many of those without what in most other highly developed countries is seen as the most basic insurance, health and pension coverage.
education, numbers of people graduating, at the very minimum, high school, not to talk about getting a real education at university, is another area we have lots to improve upon.
but, what about the others who do have white collar jobs?
in the us, again unlike many other highly developed countries where the trend is the other way around, the normal white-collar employee has been working longer hours for the same pay with fewer benefits as compared to 30 years ago.
according to juliet schor's "the overworked american" (1992), "if present trends continue, by the end of the century americans will be spending as much time on their jobs as they did back in the nineteen twenties"âbefore the eight-hour day became standard.
according to the ILO, the international labor organization of the un, workers in the usa are putting in more hours than anyone else in the industrialized world, counter to the trend in other industrialized nations, where the number of hours worked annually fell during the 1990s, and with no monetary reward for increased work in the usa vs many other highly developed nations.
in 1973 the average new college grad earned $14.82 an hour, which is actually $1.17 per hour more than you earned 25 years later, while the latter practically have zero job security and much fewer benefits any more.
however, insecure companies make for insecure employees. john d. rockefeller invented corporate capitalism as an escape from the atomistic price competition of adam smith, about whom rockefeller said that only a professor could believe that great companies, with high sunk costs, could compete in this way. corporate capitalism sought to replace the invisible hand of the market with the visible hand of management. some economists see the mega-mergers of the past few years as gropings for the stability of global oligopoly, for the return of the visible hand. without system-wide stability accompanied by a global new deal that would protect society from the power of global corporations, the conditions of work ably documented by the book "white-collar sweatshop: the deterioration of work and its rewards in corporate america" are likely to only get worse.
while other countries certainly have their problems one thing seems rather obvious: and that is that, as measured by the wellbeing of the largest majority of a population, namely the middle class, we have a lot that can be improved upon relative to other highly developed countries, at absolutely no detriment to the ability to generate wealth and become rich for those with the ability to do so.
while i'm definitely not in favor of high taxes, let's remember that the real reason they are high in many cases is less because benefits cost so much, it's more to do with incompetent politics.
having said that, one also has to remember that martin buzzy schwartz managed to become a multimillionaire trader living in new york back when he had to pay 57% taxes there, not that i am in any way an advocate of taxes that high.
Likeable seems to be winning out over competent in far too many instances of late. Hopefully we don't pay the ultimate prices now for shallow criterion then!
how true !
this really seems to be the biggest problem: a lack of truly qualified politicians who have the strength and the courage to do what really needs to be done, to be able to proactively develop strategies targeting more than just the next 5 minutes or closest bush fire, and that goes for both republicans and democrats: a singular lack of talent, vision and back bone.
i don't think that al gore has the stuff we need in a leader, just as i don't think that bush has the stuff.
but what i do think is that the middle west is much more important right now than the middle east, to quote from the speech that never was, hehe.
ah well.
brent scowcroft, national security advisor to presidents gerald ford & george bush senior:
Don't Attack Saddam
It would undermine our antiterror efforts
http://www.opinionjournal.com/edito...ml?id=110002133
nice points vvv (kind of). i'm not gonna bother with a point by point rebuttal. just curious as to why you're posting them on a thread which doesn't really aim to discuss any of them. (i'm giving you the benefit of the doubt that you're not just a crazed liberal like TigerO)
if it's supposed to be an attack on the current regime, i think it totally misses the mark, as we just had 8 years of democrat leadership (in case you forgot) for which you make no mention of their competence in addressing the above mentioned faults. (faults which you suggest were exacerbated during the 90s).
Originally posted by vvv
30 trillion in debt, equal to 3 times GDP, with commensurate annual interest payments of 2 trillion, doesn't leave us much space to move, and it looks like we're not going to be seeing fiscal propriety and stability any day soon again, either.
included in the 30 trillion in natl debt is also private debt, we are basically a nation where no one seems to see any merits in saving money anymore, be it for a rainy day, retirement, whatever. understandable during stock market boom days with the feel-rich-factor, but not necessarily financially sound, as can be seen when paper wealth suddenly evaporates.
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The conflicting answer here is that the media takes a slowdown in consumer spending and increased savings as a lack of confidence in the economy. There is some magical comfort in knowing that people ARE spending lots of their money. And when parents do take the saving posture, the evil focus is turned to the advertising community to attack the youth markets as they supposedly have unlimited capital. Their parents!
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debt is high, 8 million are unemployed post bubble, many of those without what in most other highly developed countries is seen as the most basic insurance, health and pension insurance.
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I have a real problem with faulting the masses for lack of taking charge by a few. Don't get me started on the insurance issue. That is truly a cop out. Let me give you one answer that is available to many of us. My brothers and I realized long ago that one day our parents (both working) will possibly need to be assisted in their insurance costs.
We went out and got a whole life insurance policy on each of them so that cash would be available if and when it is needed. We talked with their insurance agent and got an estimate on what it would cost to maintain their premiums until both were at least 95 years old. So now, as responsible sons, we are sure that our parents will be covered as they get old. Once married, I'll do the same for my wife's parents. I also have made sure to cover my parents on one of my policies. All of this is in addition to their own coverage.
I am so sick of hearing senators saying things like, "My parents are wondering about medicine and its costs," all while they earn a few hundred thousand dollars a year. Personal sacrifice for the parents is just too deep a concept.
I don't expect you to maintain full care for MY parents with your tax dollars. Assist me? Thanks! But the main needs will be addressed by I and my brothers. More folks do need to wake up, and plan!
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according to the ILO, the international labor organization of the un, workers in the usa are putting in more hours than anyone else in the industrialized world, counter to the trend in other industrialized nations, where the number of hours worked annually fell during the 1990s, and with no monetary reward for increased work in the usa vs many other highly developed nations.
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Please tell me this isn't the same U.N. that is honestly contemplating making Americans pay a world tax?
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while other countries certainly have their problems one thing seems rather obvious: and that is, that as measured by the wellbeing of the largest majority of a population, namely the middle class, we have a lot that can be improved relative to other countries, with no detriment to the ability to generate wealth and become rich for those with the ability to do so.
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Show me a middle class in another country (first) that enjoys 1/3 of the benefits of the middle class in America. I can't believe that you agree that there is a middle class somewhere in the world that is living better than here in America. Please document that one for me. And please don't single out some solitary difference, I need to see the WHOLE picture.
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while i'm definitely not in favor of high taxes, let's remember that the real reason they are high in many cases is less because benefits cost so much, it's more to do with incompetent politics.
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Not benefits, phantom entitlements. Things like a) the entitlement of cable television; b) the ability to drive well past the age of 70 should they choose; c) the ability to live way out in the middle of nowhere and have the full city services that those who live closer to the utilities enjoy; d) the right to have the cost of anything they think they need for better life subsidized by the masses if it benefits them, etc. And even more so, how dare you the taxpayer decide that you don't want to pay more for them to enjoy those privileges/benefits/entitlements. Please show me the country that even entertains the ability to do all of this let alone the interest.
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i don't think that al gore has the stuff we need in a leader, just as i don't think that bush has the stuff.
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Another difference for us. I think Bush does have enough fortitude to follow through on what he believes. Algore, I don't feel would follow through on anything that wasn't poll driven. The polls show that the democrats and the republicans both have about 46% support for their ability to handle the economy. I'm willing to see.
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but what i do think is that the middle west is much more important right now than the middle east, to quote from the speech that never was, hehe.
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Please call the senate and express your anger. That will immediately tell you were the trouble is. The only hold on the progress that you seek can definitely be found there.
its funny how this thread veers off into a wide critique of american society. The people that are against attacking Iraq really just have a problem with American society, and the Iraq thing is just an excuse. I don't think that anybody is REALLY going to be upset simply because we get rid of Sadam. Also now that the house and the senate have both passed the resolution, we know that dissent in the congress isn't that strong either.
no, an attack on our shortsighted politics in general that have never been very good at coming to terms with consequences, as i have no time for ideology or other political games that are constantly being played without solving any problems.
to a large extent ideology is being instrumentalized like games played by children in kindergarten, mere name calling for the sake of hoping to undermine credibility through compartmentalizing.
not that i think that too many voters are still falling for such cheap games anymore, these games are rather net contributors to the ever decreasing faith many people have in their politicians nowadays as evinced by numerous studies.
and, the actual point is, we have no good reason to go after saddam, nor do we have the money, but we have many good reason to do sthg about the problems in our country.
brent scowcroft, national security advisor to presidents gerald ford & george bush senior:
Don't Attack Saddam
It would undermine our antiterror efforts
http://www.opinionjournal.com/edito...ml?id=110002133
talking about, in the hope that one day they may be tackled, about very real problems this country has, should by no means be confused with an attack without reason, quite the contrary. a status quo leaving much to be desired and that is unchallenged poses the real threat to the future of the usa, not the fact that the status quo is being challenged on grounds of insufficiencies.
the reason some people went down in history, is, inter alia, that they were key agents in change towards the better, however uncomfortable it may have been at the time. of course, the opposite also applies, re history.
and, if any one is using excuses, it's the warmongers in washington who are trying to sell us an absolutely pointless, albeit in human, economic and diplomatic terms, highly expensive war.
The threat from Iraq is exaggerated. Other despotic countries have or are seeking weapons of mass destruction (Syria, Libya, North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia), have invaded their neighbors (Syria, Libya, and North Korea), and even used chemical weapons (Libya in Chad during the 1980s). Moreover, Iraq's military has been devastated by the Gulf War and a decade of sanctions. Americans should ask why the United States -- half a world away -- is more concerned about the Iraqi threat than are Iraq's neighbors.
http://www.cato.org/dailys/08-19-02.html
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The suspicion will not die that the Bush administration turned to Iraq for relief from a sharp decline in its domestic political prospects. The news had been dominated for months by corporate scandals and the fall of the stock market, and the November elections were shaping up as a referendum on the Republican's handling of domestic social and economic issues. Bush is reversing a half-century of strategic doctrine on the grounds that the new enemies America faces are not like the risk-averse Soviet Union.
But at the time George Kennan and others formulated the theory of deterrence, the Soviet ruler had long been Joseph Stalin, not known for being risk-averse. There is no evidence that any of the countries in Bush's axis of evil -- Iraq, Iran and North Korea -- are not deterrable according to the same logic that worked with the Soviets.
In making war against Iraq, Bush is risking not just American lives but America's good name. His high-handed attitude toward our allies has already earned the United States unnecessary ill will.
Unlike the Gulf War, however, the United States is going into this conflict with little international legitimacy or support.
http://www.prospect.org/print/V13/19/editors.html
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as far as congress goes, again, that is nothing new:
Will Congress blink again?
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Posted: September 24, 2002
1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2002 Col. David H. Hackworth
History has repeatedly shown that the military solution is the least-desirable way to resolve conflict. Smart leaders know that "supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting" â as Sun Tzu wrote years ago â and exhaust all other options before they unleash the dogs of war.
Instead, our president seems single-mindedly obsessed with attacking Iraq. For months, the Bush war team has been talking up taking out Saddam and sneaking so many war toys into places like Qatar and Kuwait that it's a wonder our desert launching pads haven't already sunk from the weight of our pre-positioned gear and ammo.
So far, the emir of Kuwait has been picking up the tab for the American muscle deployed outside of his palace that lets him sleep at night without worrying about Iraqi tanks roaring through his front gate, as they did in 1990. But probably a key reason President Bush is so keen on pressing Congress to sanction his unrelenting march to battle is because thousands more armored vehicles and tens of thousands of warriors are already on the move. Since it will soon be impossible to hide the buildup or cost, Bush clearly needs congressional consensus before the boys, bombs and bullets become the lead story on prime-time television.
Now it looks as though Congress is about to give Bush the green light for his shootout with Saddam rather than standing tall and insisting that U.N. weapons inspectors get another go at defanging the monster.
Almost 40 years ago, Congress kowtowed to another president from Texas and approved the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution â based on the repeated lies of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara that Red patrol boats had attacked U.S. warships on a supposedly routine mission off North Vietnam, which the senior admiral in the Pacific had predicted months before would provoke exactly this type of response and result in an escalation of the Vietnam War. Only Sens. Wayne Morse of Oregon and Ernest Gruening of Alaska stood tall and voted "nay." When Morse chillingly predicted we'd lose the war and LBJ would go down in flames, most members of Congress responded that they were patriotically backing the president in a time of crisis.
Before Congress blinks again, rubber-stamping one of the few wars in our country's history in which we've fired the first shot, the members should visit the Vietnam Memorial and read every name aloud on that black wall before blindly accepting their party machines' go-along-to-get-along directives. They should ask themselves: Do I want to be remembered as a William Fulbright â who pushed LBJ's bad resolution through the Senate, knowing all the while that he was repeating McNamara's spin â or as a Morse or Gruening?
They should also match what the ordinary folks who elected them are saying against the national polls' war chantey, "Let's Push With Bush Into Baghdad." Last week, I visited four states, and all of the hundreds of average Joes and Janes I spoke with were for U.N. inspectors returning and our tightening the choke leash on Iraq enough that nothing gets in or out without going through a U.S.-manned checkpoint.
A Vietnam combat Marine told me: "Certainly Saddam is a tyrant and a threat to his neighbors. But so are the leaders of Syria, Iran, North Korea and, for that matter, Pakistan. All of our comrades who died in Vietnam and those of us who vowed 'never again' will now again watch another generation march off to war without the approval of the American people."
"Who'll pay for it?" asks another citizen. "We all know it'll be our kids. They're the ones who will pay, as it has been since the Revolutionary War. Those who reap the rewards are of a different category."
Congressmen and congresswomen, which category are you? Will you vote for your own political future or the future of our country and its current generation of defenders? Will you challenge the rush to war along with Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., who said last week that giving Bush the same broad, unchecked authority Congress gave LBJ is tantamount to allowing him to start a war and saying, "Don't bother me, I'll read about it in the newspapers"?
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"Steel My Soldiers' Hearts" is here! One of America's most decorated soldiers, Col. David Hackworth, writes about the hopeless to hardcore transformation of the 4/39th Infantry Battalion and lays bare his most daring and legendary tour of duty.
Col. David H. Hackworth, author of his new best-selling "Steel My Soldiers' Hearts," "Price of Honor" and "About Face," has seen duty or reported as a sailor, soldier and military correspondent in nearly a dozen wars and conflicts â from the end of World War II to the recent fights against international terrorism.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=29035
btw, the nobel peace prize for jimmy carter was a very clear signal from the nobel committee against bush's agenda re saddam, sthg that has never happened in the long history of the nobel peace prize before.
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brent scowcroft, national security advisor to presidents gerald ford & george bush senior:
Don't Attack Saddam
It would undermine our antiterror efforts
http://www.opinionjournal.com/edito...ml?id=110002133
"tackling and talking about very real problems this country has should not be confused with an attack, quite the contrary. a status quo leaving much to be desired and that is unchallenged poses the real threat to the future of the usa, not the fact that the status quo is being challenged on grounds of insufficiencies. "
You just proved my point. This opposition isn't about Iraq, it is just about being a good liberal.
You just proved my point. This opposition isn't about Iraq, it is just about being a good liberal.