I'm not exactly comparing Iraq to Switzerland, let's try to keep everything in perspective. It's obvious the entire Middle East is going through some pretty serious growing pains, including Iraq. They are not out of the wood, but hey, at least they don't have a dictator/king to overthrow first.

They have an autocratic president that tortures and persecutes religious minorities.

Agreed.


They had that before the invasion and it was worse.

Apparently now, he's backing away from what he said. That's twice in a week for the moron. If you didn't mean what you said...don't say it in the first place. It's that simple.

Exactly.

Any time I think the GOP can't go further, they exceed my capacity for amazement. Here's the official summary of a bill in the MO leg.

Yep, repealing child labor laws.

Is this one of those things that has no chance of even making it out of committee tho or a legit bill?

SI

With today's GOP who knows?

Yeah- but you know how that goes. There are all sorts of kooky bills proposed every year by all sides that have no chance of even making it to the floor

SI

That doesn't seem to matter anymore. When it won't get through committee either in the Senate of Ohio or the House of Ohio, they just rearrange people until it will.

Yeah, I mean I don't think Saxby has ever sponsored or written a bill that made it out of committee (other than the "recognize today as national georgia pecan day" or something). Could also be something stupid like prevent people who hire 14 year old babysitters from being arrested.

"and it was worse"

Exactly.

I found a copy of a speech Bush gave to the public in late 2002. Here's the relevant passage.

I think the actual starting of the Iraq War is the only Bush foreign security policy that Obama hasn't subsequently been able to "bless" to the general satisfaction of that sentiment who so opposed it during the Bush years. Remember all those spirited debates here and in the media on Guantanamo, indefinite detentions, domestic surveillance, whether we needed to stay in Iraq to "get the job done", etc? I know there's plenty of individual dissenters for those things, but they seem to have conceded the fight and have moved on to the struggle against tea partiers and the silly whacked out shit they say. Partisian politics at its best. Distract and deflect.

Edit: I guess torture has no longer as "official", which is good, though I tend to think that type of interrogation occurred long before Bush/Cheney, and will continue to occur - the bush administration just made a very silly attempt to publically legitimize it.

At least around these boards I can't think of a single person that was against the things you've listed that hasn't said they are still against those things and disappointed with Obama. How often does it need to be said before it counts?

Like I said, there's plenty of individual dissenters who have held their ground on all those things (and I respect all those people, especially the posters here, who I think on average are better/more sincere than the norm in probably every respect), I'm just observing that these are no longer pressing national issues for the democratic party, or in the media, or amongst noteworthy political commentators - they're certainly not as important as if a tea partier misspells something on a sign in a funny way.

Edit: FWIW, I hugely agree with Obama on running the military tribunals (but hate how he continues to waver on it and appears to have the strategy now that we're going to specifically chose which terrorists to try in civilian courts - which IMO is worse than either option). And certainly, Obama seems to be a lot more thoughtful than the previous administration on all of this stuff - maybe we should applaud him for his ability to observe the situation and change some of his views.

Or maybe what the rest of us said all along was actually true, that there is more to this story than meets the eye, and maybe Obama has learned something now that he is President that makes him realise maybe Bush was actually RIGHT to do much of what he did?

And if I missed most of that discussion while I was away, I'll just leave the topic alone for now and not stir it up anymore.

Or a counter view is Obama found out how much the military industrial complex has a hold on even the Presidency and there aint nothin he can do about it.

I can see that on issues like invading Iraq, but not on maintaining Guantanomo.

Obama actually tried to close Gitmo and deserves some credit there, but COngress stopped him by withholding funds. Obama's been terrible on executive authority and surveillance issues, but now that both parties have acquiesced to unchecked executive authority on anything that can be remotely connected to national security there's no going back. The executive is quite happy making whatever decisions they want without the courts getting involved and Congress is generally too timid to want to cast a vote either way.

That second point really *is* a huge deal. Trying to make torture legal and official?

Last I checked, I posted about how I was ticked about them pussing out about the civilian trials and yeah, I'm ticked off about the expansion of executive surveillance power that Obama kept in place whereas one of the reasons I voted for him was to restore some of that sanity.


But just like every day wasn't about Bush and Guantanamo- every day in this administration isn't about Obama and Guantanamo. Every time privacy issues and military come up- we keep saying the same thing. But it seems the political war this time around is on the domestic front.

Don't worry, I'm sure it'll change again. After all, we've always been at war with Eastasia.

SI

Unfortunately, I'm not sure whether to believe (willful) ignorance or overt deception more and more and I suspect there is quite a bit of both on many fronts. I can forgive the latter but not the former and it makes a huge difference to me in my mind. Incompetence can be fixed and is more forgivable in my book than making a conscious effort to do the wrong thing.

SI

Anyone read any good books about the iraq war/global war on terror lately? Specifically if they came out in the last 2-3 years. I'm doing a paper on the War on Terror for a writing class.

I haven't read these, but they are supposed to be good.

The One Percent Doctrine Ron Suskind

Imperial Life in the Emerald City Rajiv Chandrasekaran

I am sure people will roll their eyes at me but I seriously picture a newly elected Obama saying "We really have to end these wars" and a couple of long time generals and spy agency guys laughing and treating him the way any workplace treats the new guy. "You really don't understand how things run around here do you?" I could even see Bush pulling him aside and saying something to that effect upon his election. I think we all admit that corporations and the military are very powerful in this country but I think our jaws would drop if we really knew how much power they had. Pretty sure Eisenhower knew exactly what could happen with his warnings about the United States taking over as the world empire. The funny part is we see so clearly what results with any historical empire and even see it more recently with Great Britian and the USSR but somehow we think we are a different more benevolent kind of empire.

Frankly, that's why I give him a little more leniency, foolishly or not- I still tend to think there was a lot more ignorance there.

On the financial market side of things- I'm starting to doubt that more and more, unfortunately.

Tossup question to you, panerd (or hell, anyone): with hindsight being 20/20- do you think this looks substantially different at all than a Hillary Clinton Presidency? I'll be honest- I thought the policies would be a bit different. Frankly, I think if she were in office, we'd have had mostly the same deals cut with insurance companies and financial companies to not do much - some useful reform but not nearly enough. Only she wouldn't have blown her political cred the way it went down last year and more stuff would have gotten done before the GOP took the House back in 2010.

SI

So why does Bush take so much of the blame if you're willing to give Obama a pass and blame it on the military-industrial complex? Is it the president or the corporations?

You must be confusing me with somebody else. I see no difference in either party, they are both pawns of special interest groups. And I do realize if the Libertarians came to power they would be corrupted as well but at least they seemingly stand for principles I can believe in.

Looks like things will be heating up once again in Madison as the Republicans take the stripping of collective bargaining out of the budget repair bill and made a different bill that doesn't have spending/fiscal matters in it so they don't need the Democrats there to vote on it.

I think Hilary would be exactly like Obama which is just another front for big money that controls both of the major parties. Some seem to handle the job (or make some deals) better than others but at the end of the day she would be no different.

So the WI GOP stripped the collective bargaining issue out of the budget bill, passed it in committee and passed it in the Senate less than fifteen minutes later. Why is it so important for the WI budget? Well it isn't. Here's what the GOP Senate leader said on Fox today:


Sorry teachers, but your collective bargaining rights get in the way of GOP electoral strategy. Tough shit.

Live by the procedural sword ...

Those nasty teachers and their unions bankrupting america. Oh wait, the Wisconsin GOP just said it had nothing to do with the budget, but wait, the governor said that it did and it was needed to help balance the state budget. I'm beginning to think this is nothing more than trying to slay a boogieman.

First political contribution I've made in my life is going to the recall efforts for the eight WI Senators eligible.

Yeah, this is dirty politics. When you have the State Senate Majority leader state out in the open that this is NOT an attempt to "fix the budget" (the fig leaf attached to this), but a direct effort to try to "defund a group that supports Obama", they should all be thrown out on their asses right now. Like JPhillips, I'm sending money to the recall efforts.

Cheer up it could be worse. You could have to grade the paper proposals I've been reading!

My Republican State Senator voted against this, yet he is being targeted for recall.

Shultz(sp?) is one guy I wouldn't go after. I doubt I would agree with him on a lot of issues, but at least he has the courage not to be a part of this fiasco.

Well, I consider myself pretty liberal and have always voted for him despite his handicap of being a Republican. He ran for a House seat and lost and I even voted for him over a Democrat I like a lot (and vote for now).

Knowing how WI Repubs are running things, I'm guessing they will make Schultz's life miserable. I don't see him leaving the caucus though.

My problem in this mess is while it was clearly dirty politics on the part of the Governor, etc, I also hate the NEA and what they're doing to education, and think many other unions add at least as much red tape as management does (wait 3 weeks and get approval from the Director for someone to come out and run some network cable my ass...), so putting them in their place was a plus in my book.

The aside here is I understand where and why unions got their start, the good they once did, and the good some may still be doing, but many are just trying to justify their existence these days, and mostly end up just sucking money out of working folks to fund the union management and their political activities. Bleh.

Unions are about the only upward force on wages. They aren't perfect, but as this recovery has shown, given their druthers management isn't going to share increased profits with labor. For all the faults of unions, what else is going to help the middle class keep wages up?

Pretty much this. The state had a chance to vote in who they wanted. They did. Those elected officials abided by the rules and passed something. Deal with it.

I don't really have a side on the issue. I think both sides have gone off the deep end and are using dirty political tactics to win for their respective donors. This isn't about teachers or the state budget, it's about one side wanting to appease big corporation donors and the other wanting to appease union donors. Neither side cares about the people at the center of this. Just who lines their pocket for the next political campaign.

I don't have a problem with the way Republicans are going about this. No procedural rules were broken. You can't expect the Repubs to play nice when the Democrats left the state. BUT, I think the Republicans will lose politically in the end. I haven't seen any polls outside of Rasumussen that show this to be popular.

Only way Republicans don't lose politically is that they were smart enough to do this very very early and people are dumb in general and will forget about this once it has passed.

This is some seriously corrupt bullshit.

This part of that article sounds like something from the onion:

"But recently, KV Pharmaceutical of suburban St.Louis won government approval to exclusively sell the drug, known as Makena (Mah-KEE'-Nah). The March of Dimes and many obstetricians supported that because it means quality will be more consistent and it will be easier to get.

None of them anticipated the dramatic price hike, though"

NOBODY COULD HAVE IMAGINED a government-authorized monopoly would cause a price spike. NOBODY. Right.

Well, competition for labor for one. I'm not unionized, and my wages go up in an effort to keep me employed here rather than going someplace else. If you happen to be in a field where there is a large labor supply and limited jobs, why is there artificial pressure to keep wages higher than they should be? If a company can't pay enough to keep their employees, they go out of business. If the employees are in a field where a number of other people can do their job and want it, well, they need to be willing to work for less, or learn a different trade.

Now, killing off some of the 19th century labor practices that turned employees into indentured servants was a great move by unions. Helping create safe workplace laws. But we're pretty much mostly past that with laws in place to cover those issues.

But there needs to be some force that balances management's desire to get labor for as cheaply as possible. Your wages may be rising, but over the past four decades or so the wages of the middle class have remained static while the top 1% has risen dramatically. What stops that trend? Corporate profits are at record levels, productivity is up and yet wages are stagnant and unemployment is still 9%.

Work for less! That would make an excellent slogan for today's GOP.

That's called supply & demand.


Damned sure shouldn't be governmental interference.


The first half of this statement proves that this aspect isn't broken. Unemployment is what it is because taking on additional employees isn't justifiable. Wages are stagnant because paying more makes zero sense.


"Work to make yourself more valuable" would be considerably more apt.

Hooray for the Galtian utopia! Where we party like it's 1199!