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Post by gailkate on Apr 19, 2011 15:58:09 GMT -5
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Post by doctork on Apr 19, 2011 18:53:17 GMT -5
I'm not surprised.
It is the typical action of a totalitarian government, especially in this case, since pet dogs are seen as an evil western concept.
The logic is very similar to the Taliban and their prohibition on owning birds and flying kites. Afghans had long been bird lovers, and kite flying had always been a major sport (just think about the theme behind the book/film "The Kite Runner").
The government just wants to rein in any independence amongst the people, and remind them "We are in charge of your lives. You will not brook our authority!"
(Just like TSA at US airports commanding irradiation of groping in order to travel by air, or the Chicago school that dictates that all students must eat the school lunch at the cafeteria - kinda scary.)
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Post by doctork on Jul 1, 2011 21:41:47 GMT -5
I am upset at the destruction and killing that took place at the Inter-Continental Hotel in Kabul several days ago. I have been there many times.
I think I posted somewhere here about the time we had dinner there on the 2008 trip. The musicians playing in the dining room had received an invitation to perform in Paris, but the letter and the related contract were in French. I translated French to English, then one of our Afghan staffers translated from English to Dari!
The "Bookseller of Kabul" (subject of a non-fictional book by the same name) operated a bookstore in the hotel, as well as the one on Chicken Street.
Very brazen of the Taliban to stage that attack, as they mostly limit themselves to just outside the city of Kabul.
I am glad to have a 3 day weekend, and I do not feel one bit sorry for those members of Congress who have to go back to work after the 4th instead of getting a whole week of vacation. How 'bout you?
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Post by gailkate on Jul 1, 2011 23:36:52 GMT -5
I think they might get more done if someone were to short-circuit the A/C.
Yes, it's a pity about the Kabul hotel. The NPR reporter on-site said the horel has a big wall around it, but the pictures I've seen don't look that way.
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Post by rogesgallery on Jul 28, 2011 1:21:31 GMT -5
No one is talking about the petty ideological struggles of Congress these days. it is interesting that I was sitting in a Walmart parking lot listening to the President's address the other day. I turned it up loud and watched the reactions of the people who passed by. I wasn't surprised that no one stopped to listen with me, but I was surprised at the number of sneering expressions from passerbyes.
There is no convincing the American public that the degradation of this countries standing in the world is a Fait accompli brought about by their own blind investments; and that we allow our social fellowship to be based on economic status. But this is the way it has been with humans since beyond, beyond.
I am not a religious person but the Bible often contains tidbits of wisdom that lead me to believe that it would be easy for the prophet to foretell far into the future.
1<> Truly God is good to Israel, even to such as are of a clean heart. 2But as for me, my feet were almost gone; my steps had well nigh slipped. 3For I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. 4For there are no bands in their death: but their strength is firm. 5They are not in trouble as other men; neither are they plagued like other men. 6Therefore pride compasseth them about as a chain; violence covereth them as a garment. 7Their eyes stand out with fatness: they have more than heart could wish. 8They are corrupt, and speak wickedly concerning oppression: they speak loftily. 9They set their mouth against the heavens, and their tongue walketh through the earth. 10Therefore his people return hither: and waters of a full cup are wrung out to them. 11And they say, How doth God know? and is there knowledge in the most High? 12Behold, these are the ungodly, who prosper in the world; they increase in riches. 13Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency. 14For all the day long have I been plagued, and chastened every morning. 15If I say, I will speak thus; behold, I should offend against the generation of thy children. 16When I thought to know this, it was too painful for me;
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Post by doctork on Jul 28, 2011 21:52:53 GMT -5
I thought this article/chart on the debt crisis is interesting. It was mentioned in the "Comments" section in response to a Wall Street Journal editorial saying that President Obama is blaming all the debt problems on Republicans, due to his lack of leadership This chart communicates the source of the debt crisis succinctly: www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/07/the-chart-that-should-accompany-all-discussions-of-the-debt-ceiling/242484/The editorial slanted right (it is the WSJ after all) and the comments spanned the gamut, mostly foolishness from the right and left wings (I'd have expected more thoughtfulness from WSJ readers), but I thought the Atlantic article and the accompanying graphic made a lot of sense.
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Post by gailkate on Jul 29, 2011 0:14:43 GMT -5
That chart is brilliant, K. I wish news media felt an oligation to inform rather than simply reporting what the politicians choose to feed them. This is serious business, but we hear very little that is factual.
Straightforward facts and a hard-hitting psalm at least once a week - think where we'd be if that's what the news had been giving us over the last few years?
The psalm Rog quoted brought to mind the Seven Deadly Sins. Except for lust, they all figure pretty substantially in this stand-off, with Pride and Greed way out in front.
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Post by rogesgallery on Jul 30, 2011 1:17:23 GMT -5
That is an interesting chart K. Thanks for sharing your research.
It is interesting to note that this President is only the second democrat in our history to raise discretionary spending.
Gail? I wouldn't bet heavily that lust doesn't figure in there somewhere — though my imagination balks at the possibilities.
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Post by BoatBabe on Jul 30, 2011 9:49:10 GMT -5
The word "hubris" certainly has been used a lot lately!
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Post by gailkate on Jul 30, 2011 9:54:38 GMT -5
:)Well, lust for lusious lovers might figure in there, on the grounds that power and wealth get the babes (and dudes). They do all sort of overlap - envy and gluttony have to do with wanting more, more, more. There are a number of excellent graphs and interactives in the NYT today. Go here to see where the debt came from, who holds the debt and the deadlines on specific payments due. www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/07/28/us/charting-the-american-debt-crisis.html?ref=politicsI am stunned by the ignorance of some of these new reps. Wouldn't they all pay their own bills? these are obligations, not future expenditures. Now there's a list of state entities that might lose their AAA credit ratings. A Moody's spokesman said such factors as dependency on federal revenues, reliance on capital markets, exposure to overall economic cycles and cash reserves played into which entities are being reviewed. Nationally, the review list includes 162 local governments, 14 housing finance programs and one university. Those who signed Grover Norquist's pledge not to raise taxes (which is specifically cited as a power granted by the Constitution) seem to be refusing to do their job. They were hired to think, to weigh options and make decisions. What they've said is they refuse to do that. They even want a constituional amendment to require a balnced budget, which makes it patently obvious they don't know how that process works. It would take YEARS. I need my check next week. So much for the "full faith and credit of the United States."
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Post by doctork on Aug 2, 2011 5:03:53 GMT -5
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Post by doctork on Aug 2, 2011 9:11:39 GMT -5
I find the footage of Gabby Giffords' return to Congress very moving and inspiring. An all too rare example of something positive on Capitol Hill.
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Post by rogesgallery on Aug 15, 2011 7:00:25 GMT -5
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-14500115I dunno if the Republic could survive another Potentate Texan made a patsy by big money backing. I hope he''s just pissin into the west Texas wind. A Democrat turned Republican for popular appeal. Take note that at a time when the Corporate establishment is determined to make us third world consumers and establish a Dalit caste in middle America, this prospective candidate has voiced no opinion on corporate responsibility — how felicitous www.ontheissues.org/rick_perry.htm.
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Post by rogesgallery on Aug 25, 2011 23:03:27 GMT -5
There seems, to me, to be a greater than usual lackadaisical attitude toward the coming election. Is it just me and my practice of only catching up on network news once a month when I go into Bobs and watch TV and shop for a few days? What does it seem like to you who probably are more in tune to the conventional sources?
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Post by Jane on Aug 26, 2011 7:17:40 GMT -5
Maybe everyone has too much to worry about!
The Republicans don't seem to have a viable candidate. Perry and Bachman are just short of loony (and getting closer by the day), and Romney is boring plus there's the Mormon thing (which I don't think is that big a deal; he needs to go on tv and do the Kennedy thing where JFK said that country trumps Pope). People still like Obama, but the Democrats want him to man up and he still scares the Republicans.
The extremists make all the noise, and they are especially noisy right now.
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Post by doctork on Aug 26, 2011 8:46:35 GMT -5
I think thee is indeed a lack of interest. It is August 2011 and the election will happen in November 2012, which is well over a year away. The president elected in November 2012 will take office in January 2013 which is almost a year and a half away. The politicians have been yammering about this since 15 minutes after Obama was elected.
No one in their right mind wants to concentrate on presidential elections 24/7/365 every single year.
It's all just political posturing to make money for other people. Most of us are not going to pay any attention until September 2012, after Labor Day next year. Except maybe on the day our state has a primary.
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Post by gailkate on Aug 26, 2011 9:58:09 GMT -5
None of the candidates will say anything concrete. They're all slamming Obama without suggesting anything specific. I'm waiting for just one person -of ANY party - to spit out the truth. The only way to create jobs in this country is for all of us to insist on buying American. From Walmart to Niemann Marcus, corporations would be forced to change their strategy and bring jobs back home. Bring textiles and all raw materials back home.
And the American people would have to have the guts to pay the price till things turn around.
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Post by rogesgallery on Aug 26, 2011 14:39:59 GMT -5
Maybe everyone has too much to worry about! The Republicans don't seem to have a viable candidate. Perry and Bachman are just short of loony (and getting closer by the day), and Romney is boring plus there's the Mormon thing (which I don't think is that big a deal; he needs to go on tv and do the Kennedy thing where JFK said that country trumps Pope). People still like Obama, but the Democrats want him to man up and he still scares the Republicans. The extremists make all the noise, and they are especially noisy right now. Do we really have much to worry about Jane? It would be glib of me to bring up all the people of the world who genuinely have reason for worry — fear for the future being relative to circumstance. As to a viable Republican candidate; what intelligent candidate would want to inherit the mess we're in. Did the Democrats really want to win the 2004 and inherit Bush's mess? I don't think so. If they had, John Kerry wouldn't have been their candidate; or at least he would have stumped more than his Vietnam experience. Kerry had an ultimate out by way of his marital infidelity. I don't know if Obama (the Democrats) have backed Republicans into a corner through policy (an apropos Chicago artifice ) or if it is agreed by both parties that 8 year terms are more productive for economic goals (an equally apropos Beltway strategy), but it appears to me that the last three administrations have won the second term elections buy default. In politics things are never what they seem. The banality of politics makes the reality seem impossible... just my opinion of course.
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Post by Jane on Aug 26, 2011 15:47:45 GMT -5
Most of us have first world problems (quite unlike third world problems) like losing $30,000 in a day in our retirement fund (not that I'm counting...). But a lot of us have financial, employment, foreclosure etc issues that seem overwhelming. And all the politicians keep talking jobs, jobs, jobs but not much is happening.
What Obama inherited from Bush was a country at the top of a hill, just starting to snowball down the other side.
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Post by Jane on Aug 26, 2011 15:53:30 GMT -5
BTW, I am reading "A Covert Affair" about Julia Child and her husband and the OSS during WW 2 and after. She said in a letter written in 1953, appopos of the McCarthy period, "Most McCarthy supporters are good-hearted but fat-headed people who are hopelessly stuck in the past."
She said, "McCarthy tapped into people's fears about the futue. Suddenly the new enemy is also communism. It is these nasty foreigners with their socialistic ideas, these nasty intellectual egg-heads, who like the foreigners and who have always caused the trouble. What we want is to return to 1925, when we had no world responsibility and no truck with foreigners."
The more things change, the more they stay the same!
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Post by rogesgallery on Aug 27, 2011 0:59:21 GMT -5
Most of us have first world problems (quite unlike third world problems) like losing $30,000 in a day in our retirement fund (not that I'm counting...). But a lot of us have financial, employment, foreclosure etc issues that seem overwhelming. And all the politicians keep talking jobs, jobs, jobs but not much is happening. What Obama inherited from Bush was a country at the top of a hill, just starting to snowball down the other side. It makes me wonder what the Bush administration was thinking when they proposed that the entire the American public put their retirement in the hands of corporate investment funds. Did they really think that there was enough time to make those investments valid in the global economy. I mean really; after fifty years of hollow investment in the domestic market and twenty years of corporate bleeding and offshore negligence. AAaack I still think that the corporate structure should be trashed and transitioned into employee ownership. And to hell with competition — sports should be reorganized so that the ball is the object and both teams assist each other to get the ball to the goal. What Obama inherited from Bush is a goal shrouded by polemics.
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Post by rogesgallery on Aug 28, 2011 3:44:46 GMT -5
BTW, I am reading "A Covert Affair" about Julia Child and her husband and the OSS during WW 2 and after. She said in a letter written in 1953, appopos of the McCarthy period, "Most McCarthy supporters are good-hearted but fat-headed people who are hopelessly stuck in the past." She said, "McCarthy tapped into people's fears about the futue. Suddenly the new enemy is also communism. It is these nasty foreigners with their socialistic ideas, these nasty intellectual egg-heads, who like the foreigners and who have always caused the trouble. What we want is to return to 1925, when we had no world responsibility and no truck with foreigners." I love that bit of history. It is so hard to imagine JC involved in war time intrigue. If I wasn't so involved in American literature right now I would get the book and we could have a discussion group. The more things change, the more they stay the same!
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Post by rogesgallery on Aug 28, 2011 4:04:57 GMT -5
I think thee is indeed a lack of interest. It is August 2011 and the election will happen in November 2012, which is well over a year away. The president elected in November 2012 will take office in January 2013 which is almost a year and a half away. The politicians have been yammering about this since 15 minutes after Obama was elected. No one in their right mind wants to concentrate on presidential elections 24/7/365 every single year.
It's all just political posturing to make money for other people. Most of us are not going to pay any attention until September 2012, after Labor Day next year. Except maybe on the day our state has a primary.If this be the case — if people with freedom and democracy lose interest or are so easily distracted by non life threatening personal problems — then it is no wonder we are ruled by the greedy and corrupt... And democracies never succeed. From "When Democracy Failed: The Warnings of History by Thom Hartmann" I'm not trying to be contentious here but maybe it is not what is in the news that portends the decline of a democracy, but what is not in the news. Certainly there were people who spoke out against fascism in the fall of the German Republic, but there were many more that were just ambivalent.
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Post by doctork on Aug 28, 2011 9:32:45 GMT -5
I don't think people are at all indifferent to politics and government, as all you have to do is note the right and left extremes and their attention loudmouth radio/internet puffers at either end. But most of us do not want to make politics their full-time pre-occupation unless they have nefarious purposes. Do you recall that quaint phrase "off-year election"? Of course people have a full-time, year-round interest in policy, but that is a different animal from politics.
I have expressed so much concern about the decline of our democracy that everyone got sick of me and I had to put it in its own thread (TSA Foolishness) so my concerns could be more easily ignored. Though I do have health concerns about routinely irradiating nearly a billion people annually (even at low doses that is dangerous for some people), my main concern is that TSA represents an erosion of our precious liberties - those antiquated ideas about freedom of speech & assembly, freedom from unreasonable search & seizure, and freedom from self-incrimination (right to remain silent instead of being required to disclose to a government agent where you are going, who you work for, how long you will be gone, who you will visit). Not to mention having to get government permission before being allowed to purchase a ticket and travel domestically - most definitely a totalitarian government tactic.
//It makes me wonder what the Bush administration was thinking when they proposed that the entire the American public put their retirement in the hands of corporate investment funds. Did they really think that there was enough time to make those investments valid in the global economy.//
Do you seriously, naively wonder about this? The Bush administration was solely interested in the enrichment of, and concentration of power in, its cronies in the finance and banking industries, and had not one concern for the well-being of the average citizens, most of whom will rely primarily or significantly on their social security benefits in retirement. Yet the Bushies wanted to dismantle Social Security (which is basically a federally guaranteed, moderately regressive annuity system), which we have paid for/contributed to to for decades, and replace it with a "private plan" managed by his wealthy pals, 100% subject to market whims.
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Post by joew on Aug 28, 2011 12:25:19 GMT -5
One important difference between 1933 and 2001-3 is that Bush did not do what he did as a ploy to allow himself to take permanent possession of power.
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Post by rogesgallery on Aug 28, 2011 17:42:39 GMT -5
I wouldn't say naively — I do wonder though. in the same way I wonder what a nurse was thinking when he/she was euthanizing elderly patients, or what Clinton was thinking when he chocked the screen door open for a flood of crucial employment capital to leave the country, or what a developer is thinking as he/she clandestinely destroys the habitat of a known endangered species.
I am aware of the prevalence of short sighted ideological pragmatism in the World, and the consequence of it in the hands of the powerful; especially present powerful "American" corporations and politicians. What I wonder though is do these people care about or consider the consequences and outcomes of their actions beyond their pitiful lifespans, beyond the accurate memory of history, beyond their social class, beyond their understanding? Do they take the evaluations of "Think Tanks" and their rote educated advisers as gospel? Are they seeking positive change, or do they just wish to maintain the status quo?
You yourself said that the position paper of the PNAC was relatively benign and typical. That in itself made me read it over several times and reevaluate the state of mind of the actors, the era of its writing, and the current validity of the document. That is what I mean by wonder.
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Post by rogesgallery on Aug 28, 2011 20:16:36 GMT -5
One important difference between 1933 and 2001-3 is that Bush did not do what he did as a ploy to allow himself to take permanent possession of power. Of course we can't be certain of the intent of that administration, Joe, as shrouded in deception as it was. Had the financial meltdown been more convergent with 9/11 the outcome might have been considerably different than it was. That is not to say we would have suddenly succumbed to fascism but the constitution in this country does allow for a martial state which might drag on for a protracted period.
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Post by rogesgallery on Aug 28, 2011 21:34:29 GMT -5
None of the candidates will say anything concrete. They're all slamming Obama without suggesting anything specific. I'm waiting for just one person -of ANY party - to spit out the truth. The only way to create jobs in this country is for all of us to insist on buying American. From Walmart to Niemann Marcus, corporations would be forced to change their strategy and bring jobs back home. Bring textiles and all raw materials back home. And the American people would have to have the guts to pay the price till things turn around. I, for one, agree with you on that point Gail. Other than set policy that may or may not promote employment growth the government can't do much. I used to think that US workers had the savvy and ability to maintain their rights in the workplace without labor unions, but outsourcing, and technologies like self checkout and even ATMs proved that this is not the case. Instead of money going into the pockets of 100,000 people the same money just ends up in the pockets of 100 people. We jist aint smart enough yet to know wats go fer us.
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Post by doctork on Aug 28, 2011 21:56:02 GMT -5
What is PNAC?
I think Bush 43 cared about his personal/family/dynasty/crony wealth, as is characteristic of corporatocrats. I would agree with Joew, I do not think he wanted permanent possession of political power; he himself complained often about how hard the work is being president. There is a lot more power in mega-bucks and multinationals. They care about furthering their own interests.
I think Clinton cared about political expediency, developers care about making money by developing. If you are referring to Dr. Anna Pou and nurses Lori Budo and Cheri Landry in the alleged euthanasia cases occurring at Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, I can tell you what reliable reports from my classmates indicate about their thoughts: they were acting in the best interests of their patients to relieve pain. Still many who were not there made sniping remarks and passed judgement in order to curry political favor at the expense of dedicated professionals.
Starting a "War on Terror"was good for financials; you may recall that the NYSE was closed for 4 days and got back to a somewhat rocky start upon reopening. However, wars are generally good for the economy (defense manufacturing), thus a near-financial meltdown occurred mid-September 2001 but the recovery was quick.
The Constitution may allow for a martial state (though I am not sure where that power is enumerated), but the Bill of Rights allows for citizens' right to bear arms (Second Amendment) for some specific reasons.
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Post by rogesgallery on Aug 28, 2011 22:04:26 GMT -5
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