idrankwhat

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Everything posted by idrankwhat

  1. I heard this last night on "Marketplace". This dude nails it on the head as far as I'm concerned. JEFF BIRNBAUM: So far, the scandal surrounding Jack Abramoff has produced some vivid examples of modern Washington graft--skybox tickets, pricey meals, golf junkets to Scotland. Yet at the center of it all is something more prosaic, and potentially far more explosive: good old-fashioned campaign donations. Deep in plea agreements won by Justice Department lawyers are admissions by the defendants--Abramoff and his cronies Tony Rudy, Michael Scanlon and Neil Volz--that they conspired to use campaign contributions to bribe lawmakers. Even though these gifts were fully disclosed and within prescribed limits, the government said they were criminal, and the defendants agreed. This aspect of the case hasn't gotten much attention. But if similar prosecutions were to become commonplace, the paid persuaders of the captial and their big-money clients would be dealt a body blow. If prosecutors begin to assert as a matter of routine that lobbyist gifts and campaign contributions are a form of bribery, it could open up a whole new front in the decades-old effort to break the nexus of money and politics. That would be a terrific development. After all, Congress has tried for years to reform itself and has failed miserably. Money continues to grow as an influence on the system, and lawmakers do nothing to alter that trend. "Phyisican heal thyself" doesn't have its equivalent when it comes to national legislatures. But it should, campaign finance laws, after all, are built on a legal fiction. It's this: donations are considered within the law even though they are actually bribes at root. Think of them as "legalized bribery." Interests give money to buy votes. Only the fact that campaigns have to be privately funded has forced our legal system to accept them as legit. Perhaps the only way to rein in Washington's money culture is to stop pushing elected officials to change the system but to gin up investigations like the Abramoff cases that would put lawmakers and their donors in jail. Jeff Birnbaum is a columnist for The Washington Post.
  2. Probably not much choice knowing Mollohan was on the committee. There's that fetish again. You attack one Democrat our of the ten people on the committee and ignore that it was two Republicans who voted to admonish DeLay for his conduct, and who were subsequently replaced because they the ethical backbone to refuse to change the house rules to help out DeLay. After the two new party loyalists replaced them they shut down the committee. Talk about a lack of integrity.
  3. Our weapons contractors make billions when we blow shit up and the supply/rebuilding contractors make billions in the aftermath. Follow the money. Who did those groups donate to most heavily in the last two elections?
  4. Damn, and here I thought we were making some progress on open minded dialog. Obviously it doesn't take long to fall off that wagon. Do you remember what this thread was about? It was about this being a premeditated war against Iraq, that it had nothing to do with terrorism or 9/11. I'm not the one refusing to see the facts. You even showed a glimmer of realization there for a moment. As for Israel, no. I don't hate Israel but I do hate what they're doing. They are doing NOTHING towards striving for peace. They say that they want it but since Bush took office and swore his loyalty to Israel they have continued to occupy territory that is not theirs, are building a wall in the west bank in an obvious land grab, bulldozed over 60,000 Palestinian homes, some with people in them, and pretty much killed at will. They currently have about 60 UN resolutions against them for their behavior and those are 60 that the US DIDN'T veto. All of this is being done with huge sums of American taxpayer money. We have people wanting to kill us because of our unyeilding, blind, two faced support of Israel's terrorist behavior as well as our occupation and nation building project going on in rest of the middle east. Enough is enough. If we want to "win the war on terrorism" I suggest that we play hard ball with Israel, starting with cutting off their funding and recognizing Hamas is the legitimate, democratically elected authority. Then we "let the market sort it out" with regard to oil. The middle east has it. Tell them we're great consumers and we'll buy it from whichever country isn't threatening their neighbor. No exceptions. I know that the multinational oil companies won't approve of that approach but screw 'em, it's in the interest of our national security. Who's (supposed to be) running our country, US or them?
  5. The military is supposed to be used only for the defense of our country, not for resource plundering (I use the term "corporate mercenary" these days) or the defense of Israel. Certainly not for nation building. As for your assertion that we needed to hit Iraq after 9/11, I have two questions. Actually, no I don't. We've been down this road before and that part of the argument is pointless.
  6. It might help if the Republicans hadn't shut down the ethics committee after it admonished DeLay three times. He should have been gone a long time ago.
  7. Actually, I'm not sure why this is such a big issue this time. Israel killing Palestinians is nothing new. They shoot 'em up and call them "suspected terrorists" and that's the end of it. They killed those three Egyptians a couple of years ago and their accepted excuse was "we thought they were Palestinian militants". And about four or five years ago they ran over a young female protester from Seattle with a bulldozer. All I heard about that was what I read on the BBC.
  8. There..fixed that for you. Ohhh.......and I was sooooooo hoping for "I know you are but what am I?"
  9. I can't say I agree with these assumptions! I'm not sure to what extent Israel still controls movement in gaza, I have to check, but they are still building a wall in a land grab in the west bank and they refuse to leave those west bank settlements that they are illegally occupying. Also, Hamas is the democratically elected leadership now. We should have greeted them as the new leadership and treated them with some diplomatic respect. It would have been a good start to trying to make peace. Let them do something wrong before you refuse to deal with them and take their money. I'll admit that they need to bring something in the form of compromise to the table but we put them on the defensive and essentially tried to get rid of them right off the bat. Personally, I think that we should quit sending money to Israel. I think it's about $12million/day. That will get their attention.
  10. I haven't read the article yet so I won't comment other than to point out that part about the "six artillery shells fired by the gun boat".
  11. Yea, I guess I should have clarified my post. There is a lot of "liberal" programming (latino USA, cooking, art, science, music, Thomas Jefferson Hour, Car Talk, Prarie Home Companion, Wait wait, etc.) and I find a lot of that very entertaining. But if you want solid, thorough (fair and balanced) news reporting you can't do any better than morning edition, all things considered and marketplace. Good stuff.
  12. That's what I've always been pointing out. The administration always said "protecting our interests" but then never elaborated. And I don't have a problem with the fact that you will admit that you agree with their strategy. That way we can debate whether or not protecting Israel and destabilizing/restabilizing oil rich countries for our benefit is: a) how we want to deal with our petroleum dependance b) whether or not this is a Constitutional use of our military. I'd love to turn the debate over to such truthful matters as opposed to 9/11 hearing about 9/11 WMD's, 9/11, liberating the oppressed, 9/11, our security, 9/11 mushroom clouds.
  13. What is your problem? Quit putting words in my mouth. The only thing I alluded to was the possibility of a deal. I already showed you where Rove admitted that he conveyed the information to Cooper. He admitted it himself!!!! And for the record, Ken Starr was an "independant" counsel. Please tell me that you don't think that politics had an influence on him. Tell me straight up, your posts have nothing to do with the acutal issues at hand do they? I'm pretty sure that you simply use every issue as a vehicle for an attack on whoever is to the left of today's arbitrary "lefty" line. Admit your fetish. It's the first step towards recovery.
  14. What? "Wilson's wife" doesn't count? Who's grasping at straws here? This is just sad. Why wasn't Rove charged, then. I can't tell you why. But I know this wouldn't be the first time that someone's made a deal and I'm sure it won't be the last. Besides, this administration has done one thing very successfully. They've done an outstanding job of appointing people who will protect the executive branch from investigation and they have a very loyal following in the upper leadership of Congress. Yea, I'd like to see Rove go because I don't like his political style. But my real question goes more towards why Cheney isn't being scrutinized more over this. He's already opened the door with his declassification executive privilege comments and his refusal to disclose if he's ever done it unilaterally, without Bush's knowledge. But, like everything else these days, I'm sure that's protected under "state's secrets".
  15. Well the PNAC does state right up front that they want us to take advantage of our post cold war position as lone superpower to create a world order that is suitable to our interests. That aside, it pretty much comes down to oil and Israel. I've got a number of quotes dealing with our how important the oil interest is but it basically boils down to whoever has control of the oil over there has dramatic influence on the world economy. What's not as obvious is the Israel thing. Iraq was not a stable country recently under Saddam. If Iraq were to fall into a failed state then it's quite likely that Iran and Syria would be able to take advantage of a very resource rich country. This would be the worst case scenario for Israel . So basically, we help Israel by overthrowing Saddam and installing a government that is favorable to Israel, backed by the US government, and keeping Iran and Syria in check.
  16. What? "Wilson's wife" doesn't count? Who's grasping at straws here? This is just sad.
  17. Well you have to admit that when he lied about his involvement to prosecuters, then changed his story and admitted leaking her name during his five visits to the grand jury, one might think that he might be charged. He admitted leaking her name? Please let us know where you got this information from. Best I can do on short notice: Rove told the prosecutor that at the time he had no recollection of that short conversation with one of the scores of reporters he talks to in his job. "Cooper later testified and then a wrote a first-person account that Rove told him that Wilson's wife was in the CIA and had authorized her husband's CIA mission. Rove would later tell the grand jury that he had forgotten that conversation and remembered it only after his legal team unearthed a crucial e-mail." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/26/AR2006042600849_2.html
  18. If you're referring to my use of his nickname, Bush gave that to him. For obvious reasons. And for the record, no judges were involved. That's the problem.
  19. BINGO!!!!!!!! We have a winner!!!!!!!!!!! DINGDINGDINGDING!!!!!!
  20. (sigh) You've never read any of my other links that I've provided apparently. If you go to the PNAC website and read their letters, statements and publications then you'll have a very good idea as to where our current foreign policy comes from. The letter to Clinton was the first. Read the names of the signatories on the site. They should look familiar. I highlighted a few key members. Elliott Abrams, Gary Bauer, William J. Bennett, Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney, Eliot A. Cohen, Midge Decter, Paula Dobriansky, Steve Forbes, Aaron Friedberg, Francis Fukuyama, Frank Gaffney, Fred C. Ikle, Donald Kagan, Zalmay Khalilzad, I. Lewis Libby, Norman Podhoretz, Dan Quayle, Peter W. Rodman, Stephen P. Rosen, Henry S. Rowen, Donald Rumsfeld, Vin Weber, George Weigel, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard L. Armitage, Jeffrey Bergner John Bolton, Robert Kagan, William Kristol, Richard Perle, Peter W. Rodman, William Schneider, Jr., Vin Weber, R. James Woolsey, Robert B. Zoellick
  21. Well you have to admit that when he lied about his involvement to prosecuters, then changed his story and admitted leaking her name during his five visits to the grand jury, one might think that he might be charged. This isn't really that surprising, considering that this administration has done such a good job of protecting itself and this is a crucial election year. Bush would be serving fries at a Texas drive through if it weren't for Rove. Now "Turdblossom" is free to bloom this fall.
  22. We must be listening to different NPR's and Fox's. I could have said the same thing with the names reversed. Example: Listen to FOX's coverage of Lieberman's comments on the domestic spying issue and you get: "But this is a critically important program to the prevention of terrorist acts here in the United States. And I don't know a person here in the Senate who is against this program." Listen to NPR and you get: "I've said before that I disagree with the Bush administration's legal judgment on this one. I don't believe that they have operated within the law as it exists. But this is a critically important program -- the prevention of terrorist acts here in the United States. And I don't know a person here in the Senate who is against this program." See the difference?
  23. I think the Rumsfeld doctrine is an abject failure, and Dick Cheney is the prince of darkness. Bush should have listened to Colin Powell. We'd be in a different place today. My sentiments exactly. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Rice, Hadley, Abrams.....if people are looking for civilians who are against the military, that's where you start.
  24. Again, I'm not talking about that sort of military contingency planning. I'm talking about plans made by civilian political think tanks.
  25. There's rooms full (well, probably computers full now) of plans for all sorts of wars, all sorts of people against other people. Full of what parts of the military go where, etc. Every little detail has already been planned. The last two Iraq wars and the war in Afganistan was preplanned long before we went. So will be any war we get into in the future. Do you honestly think that the military sits around and waits for something to happen to react? That would mean it would take about a year for the military to mobilize to react. That's not the kind of planning that I was talking about. The deliberate, military strategic plans that you are referring to were actually thrown out by Rummy and his civilian advisors. The plans that I'm referring to are the ones posted on the PNAC website. They pretty much spell out a military and economic imperialist view of transforming the rest of the globe. Iraq was a big first step. They wanted Saddam out by any means, they got into office, then they used 9/11 to justify the war and cherry picked their information to those ends.