Open Thread

What’s on your mind?

5 Comments

Renee in Ohio on March 29, 2007 at 4:56 pm

Wolves. Our “inner wolves“, that is.

idredit on March 29, 2007 at 5:07 pm

Check this out. Via Steve Clemons TWN

Tom Friedman on Bush (Yes, that Tom Friedman)

At the annual “Opinion Awards” dinner in response to a question from George Stephanopoulos: “Are we just treading water for the next 22 months until the Bush administration leaves office?”

Tom Friedman responded:

We need a new constitutional amendment called “Can I Go Now?” Something less than impeachment but more than resignation.
President Bush just needs a “Can I Go Now?” clause in the constitution.

Friedman got a lot of applause.[.]”

Gawd Please, pleeeeeaaaassse we can’t wait, NOT even for an impeachment. Go already. By my calculation, 96 weeks 11 hrs.

on March 29, 2007 at 6:12 pm

Five-and-a-half years after the September 11 attacks, President George W. Bush’s war on terrorism has emerged as a wasteful, misguided exercise that poses its own threat to U.S. national security, experts say.

A growing number of analysts and former U.S. officials say the global war on terrorism has undermined U.S. influence abroad, forced onerous costs in American lives and money in Iraq, and unleashed a huge government spending spree that has often funded projects unrelated to national security.

It has also produced a climate of fear in the United States that helped justify the war in Iraq and the curtailment of civil liberties at home, they said…

But terrorism experts say the United States has yet to develop a clear understanding of the threat posed by al Qaeda and other Islamist militant groups, despite the war on terrorism and a total of $500 billion spent on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan…

“Iraq has been vastly worse than anything terrorism’s ever done,” said Ohio State University political science professor John Mueller, author of a book about the war on terrorism titled, “Overblown.”

While both Democrats and Republicans have acknowledged the shortcomings of U.S. policy in Iraq, experts say politicians have not questioned the war on terrorism mainly because it remains a vote-getter.

“Politicians are acting this way because they think they’ll lose votes if they don’t. Basically, it’s a big pork-barrel, so the pork-barrel leaders are there in five seconds,” said Mueller, using American vernacular for the politics of self-enrichment.

Bush war on terror draws fire as misguided venture

Like just about anything else that the U.S. government undertakes, the war on terrorism has turned into a racket, just another way of spreading pork.

Since the war on terrorism is so closely associated with Bush, I predict that the phrase will be quietly dropped once Bush leaves office, like a tainted brand name.

Denim Blue on March 30, 2007 at 12:48 am

Circuit City is planning on firing 3400 employees they feel are making too much money, and replacing them with workers at a lower wage. What part about people have to make more than subsistence wages in order to afford the type of toys CC sells don’t the big-wigs understand? They just lost 3401 customers because I’ll never buy anything from them again!