Comments on: Jaw Jaw

by: Comrade Rutherford

Wed, 21 May 2008 16:51:22 +0000

Maha said, “Military spending needs to be redirected toward restoring our military instead of pouring whatever billion dollars we pour every month into the sands of Iraq.”

I feel we leftists need to be very clear when discussing the looting of the US treasury by the GOP leadership. That sentence should read:

“Instead of shipping pallet-loads of fresh cash to the bank vaults of the War Profiteers: Halliburton, KBR, Blackwater, et al.”

We leftists need to remind everyone that war profiteering is immoral. We need to make sure that every one is painfully aware that these hundreds of billions of dollars are being handed over by the freight-train load to un-American companies (Halliburton is no longer a US company) solely so that they can post record profits for their shareholders.

Every American needs to understand that the Conservative Republican drive for ever-growing profits requires many more dead and maimed soldiers and civilians. For profits to grow, the war also needs to grow. If the war decreases, so do the profits of the CEOs whose sole source of income is more dead Americans — forever.

by: Sondra Fabe

Wed, 21 May 2008 11:02:06 +0000

Hello, I’m posting here for the first time. I love this site and think you are wonderful.

It’s too early for me to do much research but I think I remember that Kennedy would not remove the missiles from Turkey and then the Cuban crisis followed. I don’t remember if they were removed to avoid the crisis, but I sure remember Nikki banging his shoe on the table at the U.N; as far as I know he did not give a speech at Columbia University.with or without protesters.

At any rate, in the reality based world appeasement does not mean what the Bushies think and as you said, only a childish person would equate negotiating with appeasement; he never negotiates, not even with the Dems. in Congress. Come to think of it he doesn’t negotiate with his own party either.

Sondra
.

Sondra

by: Bonnie

Wed, 21 May 2008 01:46:08 +0000

To Craig - Bush has no principles to sacrifice. The man is absolutely soulless.

by: Steve M.

Tue, 20 May 2008 23:07:37 +0000

Obama has pledged to ... cut military spending ... Really? From his foreign policy position page: Expand the Military: We have learned from Iraq that our military needs more men and women in uniform to reduce the strain on our active force. Obama will increase the size of ground forces, adding 65,000 soldiers to the Army and 27,000 Marines. I believe Glick's source for this claim is the ever authoritative Some Guy With A Blog, possibly this guy, who interprets a video statement in which Obama lists specific defense items he'd cut or freeze(e.g., "I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems") as evidence that he's "way too eager to cut defense spending" overall.

by: Craig

Tue, 20 May 2008 22:45:54 +0000

Merriam-Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary has a useful definition. The third definition is the one that applies here: “Pacify, Conciliate: esp : to buy off (an aggressor) by concessions usu. at the sacrifice of principles.”

Obama is no appeaser but he does have principles.

If one is constantly sacrificing their principles, as Bush and McCain have done so frequently this year, then any point they’re supposedly trying to make is reduced to desperation and pathetic name calling and nothing more. That defines the failed leaders of the Republican Party in the 2008 election.

by: Rick Massimo

Tue, 20 May 2008 22:15:23 +0000

“… while claiming to be divinely instructed by a seven-year-old imam who went missing 1100 years ago …”

A pie-throwing contest regarding articles of faith that seem illogical, improbable or eccentric is a contest that no Jew or Christian should want to get into.

by: bruce

Tue, 20 May 2008 21:17:53 +0000

Call me naive, but I think politically these dust-ups help Obama against McCain. First, they expose McCain as a nasty, double-talking slimeball, but more important, they give Obama a chance to talk tough and smart on national security, thereby putting him on an equal-or-better footing than McCain. His arguments that McCain is just following the failed Bush foreign policies give him (Obama) a chance to flesh out his arguments for diplomacy, and I think they could make people more comfortable that he’s capable of the job as C-inC.

If I’m dreaming, don’t wake me.

Bruce K

by: maha

Tue, 20 May 2008 20:25:21 +0000

goatherd — those weren’t “summits,” so to Glick they don’t count. Out of sight, out of mind, you know.

by: Ian

Tue, 20 May 2008 20:10:26 +0000

It really helped me understand the foreign policy ‘ideas’ of the rightwing when I came to understand that their reverence for the president and unthinking, skin-deep faux patriotism has led them to believe that simply sitting down with the president of the US is, in and of itself, a reward. They really seem to believe that leaders of other countries are pining away, hoping against hope that someday they just might get to maybe get the president’s autograph or something… And when one of the lucky few get their chance at an Audience with His Eminence, all the other world leaders are just sooooooooooo jealous they could just DIE!

Pretty much the whole reason the president exists is to sit down with foreign heads of state to facilitate negotiations.

-me

by: Dave

Tue, 20 May 2008 18:35:03 +0000

The problem for us is that there’s absolutely no downside to them telling these lies. They get us in the left into a reaction cycle and by the time we’re able to swat it down, (a) they’re on to the next lie in the pre-approved program, and (b) the uneducated electorate is bored with the story, only getting the accusation, not the response, before switching their TV to Dancing with the Stars or whatever.

We’ve been in this pattern for the last umpteen elections. I love it if we could find a way to get ahead of the cycle and put THEM on the defensive for once.