Politics: J'accuse!

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by bilmore
I dunno. You make it seem like the Lil Rascals all huddled around the cute girl who yells "I know!! Let's put on a SHOW!" My reading leaves me contemplating a very cowed and nearly-enslaved peasantry paying, on pain of death, rather large and crippling percentages of their cashflow, usually to the church-landlord, sometimes merely as a multi-tithe apart from land rent. They could refuse, but then be shunned, driven out, denied salvation (which had a much more immediate impact to a people who died in their twenties and had to live in a religiously homogenous society that depended on communal life for . . . well . . . life), or actually even be killed at the direction of the priest. Not quite the "leave it in the anonymous envelope in the bowl" scenario.

I've not spent the time reading on this topic that you have, but have to say in response only that you must find today's Church much more acceptable, at least measured by its wealth, and in its influence and power over its subjects.

By that measure, I'd imagine that you'd be even more pleased sitting in a progressively more secularized Europe, so long as you're not (say) sipping cappucino in the streets of Rome. Excepting their troublesome foreign policy positions, of course.

Finally, I gotta say that you and Atticus trading calm, informed, interesting debates has been too long absent from this board, and I find the overall effect disorienting. What's come over you two this weekend? Must be the Passover/Easter holiday, no?

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by Not Me
I encourage the rest of you if you have never done so to take the tour of the Temple Square. It is creepy but enlightening regarding how cult-like mormons are. Not that all religions aren't cults. They are. Some are just more dangerous and damaging cults than others.

Whew! Good thing you added this. Based on your otherwise glowing recommendation, I was planning to go buy my Book of Mormon and meet you for Wednesday night's services.

[Skeks in the city]

The unemployment rate is at 5.7%, which is only a bit higher than the average of 5.6% for the past 50 years. However, that doesn't take into account people who are laid off from full time jobs and are involuntarily biding their time as part-timers, students or retirees. The employment-population ratio gets at all that, and the ratio is at a 10 year high.

[Say_hello_for_me]

Originally posted by Skeks in the city
The unemployment rate is at 5.7%, which is only a bit higher than the average of 5.6% for the past 50 years. However, that doesn't take into account people who are laid off from full time jobs and are involuntarily biding their time as part-timers, students or retirees. The employment-population ratio gets at all that, and the ratio is at a 10 year high.

It looks like a lot of people made enough money to retire in the '99 era stock market. Then again, for everyone who made millions on Razorfish,

:wtf:

someone else was left holding the bag.

Plus, as the population ages while people are trying to retire earlier, I'd imagine those numbers make sense.

Do you have any stats for the population above, say, 50 or 55, and how those percentages have changed?

Hello

[Skeks in the city]

Originally posted by Say_hello_for_me

as the population ages while people are trying to retire earlier, I'd imagine those numbers make sense.

Do you have any stats for the population above, say, 50 or 55, and how those percentages have changed?

Early retirement doesn't explain it. Employment for males 55 and over was higher in 2002 than 1994. And Boomers are also notorious for having low savings rates, so I wouldn't expect they're retiring earlier than prior generations, if anything later.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Skeks in the city
The unemployment rate is at 5.7%, which is only a bit higher than the average of 5.6% for the past 50 years. However, that doesn't take into account people who are laid off from full time jobs and are involuntarily biding their time as part-timers, students or retirees. The employment-population ratio gets at all that, and the ratio is at a 10 year high.

I think you're being too simplistic. Look at the graphed data for a much longer period, and start to factor in all of the various and sundry social trends and movements that might be affecting this shape:



and I think you end up not having proved your expressed point.

For instance, the percentage of two-worker families has seen a drop in the past four years. Could this be a measure of the falling need for that second income? Wouldn't that reflect in this graph in just the pattern shown in your smaller sample?

[bilmore]

"AN ALTERNATIVE HISTORY: washington, april 9, 2004. A hush fell over the city as George W. Bush today became the first president of the United States ever to be removed from office by impeachment. Meeting late into the night, the Senate unanimously voted to convict Bush following a trial on his bill of impeachment from the House.

Moments after being sworn in as the 44th president, Dick Cheney said that disgraced former national security adviser Condoleezza Rice would be turned over to the Hague for trial in the International Court of Justice as a war criminal. Cheney said Washington would "firmly resist" international demands that Bush be extradited for prosecution as well.

On August 7, 2001, Bush had ordered the United States military to stage an all-out attack on alleged terrorist camps in Afghanistan. Thousands of U.S. special forces units parachuted into this neutral country, while air strikes targeted the Afghan government and its supporting military. Pentagon units seized abandoned Soviet air bases throughout Afghanistan, while establishing support bases in nearby nations such as Uzbekistan. Simultaneously, FBI agents throughout the United States staged raids in which dozens of men accused of terrorism were taken prisoner.

Reaction was swift and furious. Florida Senator Bob Graham said Bush had "brought shame to the United States with his paranoid delusions about so-called terror networks." British Prime Minister Tony Blair accused the United States of "an inexcusable act of conquest in plain violation of international law." White House chief counterterrorism advisor Richard Clarke immediately resigned in protest of "a disgusting exercise in over-kill."

When dozens of U.S. soldiers were slain in gun battles with fighters in the Afghan mountains, public opinion polls showed the nation overwhelmingly opposed to Bush's action. Political leaders of both parties called on Bush to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan immediately. "We are supposed to believe that attacking people in caves in some place called Tora Bora is worth the life of even one single U.S. soldier?" former Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey asked.

When an off-target U.S. bomb killed scores of Afghan civilians who had taken refuge in a mosque, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Aznar announced a global boycott of American products. The United Nations General Assembly voted to condemn the United States, and Washington was forced into the humiliating position of vetoing a Security Council resolution declaring America guilty of "criminal acts of aggression."

Bush justified his attack on Afghanistan, and the detention of 19 men of Arab descent who had entered the country legally, on grounds of intelligence reports suggesting an imminent, devastating attack on the United States. But no such attack ever occurred, leading to widespread ridicule of Bush's claims. Speaking before a special commission created by Congress to investigate Bush's anti-terrorism actions, former national security adviser Rice shocked and horrified listeners when she admitted, "We had no actionable warnings of any specific threat, just good reason to believe something really bad was about to happen."

The president fired Rice immediately after her admission, but this did little to quell public anger regarding the war in Afghanistan. When it was revealed that U.S. special forces were also carrying out attacks against suspected terrorist bases in Indonesia and Pakistan, fury against the United States became universal, with even Israel condemning American action as "totally unjustified."

Speaking briefly to reporters on the South Lawn of the White House before a helicopter carried him out of Washington as the first-ever president removed by impeachment, Bush seemed bitter. "I was given bad advice," he insisted. "My advisers told me that unless we took decisive action, thousands of innocent Americans might die. Obviously I should not have listened."

Announcing his candidacy for the 2004 Republican presidential nomination, Senator John McCain said today that "George W. Bush was very foolish and naïve; he didn't realize he was being pushed into this needless conflict by oil interests that wanted to seize Afghanistan to run a pipeline across it." McCain spoke at a campaign rally at the World Trade Center in New York City. "

(From Easterblog.)

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by bilmore
"AN ALTERNATIVE HISTORY:

So guess you don't subscribe to the "Wag the Dog" theories put out when Clinton launched the cruise missile attacks on UBL during Monicagate? And you agree with Clarke's assessment that Clinton didn't have the political capital either to launch a full-scale invasion? Clinton was an excellent persuader (see, uh, well, you know). Too bad his time was all taken up by a silly and unnecessary impeachment trial.

[sgtclub]

Tony is one articulate dude:

Of course [the terrorists] use Iraq. It is vital to them. As each attack brings about American attempts to restore order, so they then characterise it as American brutality. As each piece of chaos menaces the very path toward peace and democracy along which most Iraqis want to travel, they use it to try to make the coalition lose heart, and bring about the retreat that is the fanatics' victory.
They know it is a historic struggle. They know their victory would do far more than defeat America or Britain. It would defeat civilisation and democracy everywhere. They know it, but do we? The truth is, faced with this struggle, on which our own fate hangs, a significant part of Western opinion is sitting back, if not half-hoping we fail, certainly replete with schadenfreude at the difficulty we find.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Shape Shifter
So guess you don't subscribe to the "Wag the Dog" theories put out when Clinton launched the cruise missile attacks on UBL during Monicagate? And you agree with Clarke's assessment that Clinton didn't have the political capital either to launch a full-scale invasion? Clinton was an excellent persuader (see, uh, well, you know). Too bad his time was all taken up by a silly and unnecessary impeachment trial.

"Wag the Dog"? I do subscribe to that, given he did a totally ineffectual and meaningless, but attention-grabbing, thing. But, did he have the capital to do more? No. No one did. Point is, there is nothing meaningful that could have been done, really, prior to 9/11. We as a society were not willing to accept such a costly effort without having felt the pain first. Few of us would pay thousands to get rid of termites without first seeing termites.

And the idea that OBL would have been handled by Clinton if only Clinton had not been bothered by those pesky problems over his lying under oath doesn't fly, in my mind. I see nothing that indicates that he would have been willing to do such a thing, even with a clear schedule and more widespread support.

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by sgtclub
Tony is one articulate dude:

Yeah, I don't hear 43 using "schadenfreude" all that often.

Say what you will about the British; they have better War Presidents than we do.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
Say what you will about the British; they have better War Presidents than we do.

Churchill would never have made it through a primary.

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by bilmore
Churchill would never have made it through a primary.

Well that's certainly true, with the gay sex and all.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by bilmore
"Wag the Dog"? I do subscribe to that, given he did a totally ineffectual and meaningless, but attention-grabbing, thing. But, did he have the capital to do more? No. No one did. Point is, there is nothing meaningful that could have been done, really, prior to 9/11. We as a society were not willing to accept such a costly effort without having felt the pain first.

He did what his military people recommended, notwithstanding a lack of enthusiasm from the Pentagon. Clarke's book is good on this point, and describes how the Pentagon sandbagged the White House. Since we've seen some of this in this Administration, too, the pattern should be familiar. Obviously what was done in Sudan and Afghanistan wasn't particularly effective, but there weren't a lot of other military options on the table. 9/11 not only changed the internal political calculus, it gave us the ability to go to (e.g.) Pakistan and tell them they had to cooperate in ways they hadn't previously.

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by bilmore
But, did he have the capital to do more? No. No one did. Point is, there is nothing meaningful that could have been done, really, prior to 9/11. We as a society were not willing to accept such a costly effort without having felt the pain first. Few of us would pay thousands to get rid of termites without first seeing termites.

I agree. It's easy to point out missed opportunities --- anyone who's been involved in a malpractice case knows that the "what if he'd caught this" are easy to brainstorm; it's the standard of care testimony you need to worry about. Ultimately, though, I'm not convinced either 42 or 43 did anything egregiously wrong vis-a-vis responding to the AQ threat before 9/11.

What pisses me off is that Rice told a fucking bold-faced lie with Bush's "I don't want to swat at flies" crap. Completely made up. Whole cloth. Conversation never happened. Of course, no one will ever prove that, but I'm more pissed off about that lie --- which I am absolutely 100% convinced was a lie --- than anything that came up previously before the Commission.