Politics: Onward from New Hampshire

[Not Me]

How much longer are we going to wait to means test for Medicare? When it is broke? We have to start shifting some of the cost of Medicare onto those who can afford to pay. This ponzi scheme known as social security/medicare is about to crash and burn.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/23/po...d01c44&ei=5062

WASHINGTON, March 23 — Medicare's financial condition has significantly deteriorated, partly because of exploding health costs and partly because of the new Medicare law, the government reported today.

In their annual report to Congress, the Medicare board of trustees said the program's hospital insurance trust fund could run out of money before the end of the next decade.
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The trustees have made such projections in the past, but this one was much bleaker than the outlook reported just last year.

By contrast, the financial outlook for Social Security, though shaky in the long run, changed little from last year. . . .

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Not Me
That is all my point was. He was there but doesn't now want to admit it so he is claiming he resigned in July when he knows he was there.

It makes no sense to do these kinds of things. I would have more respect for him if he just said, I was there, there was crazy talk going on , so I said bye-bye peeps, I don't want to be associated with you anymore.

I guess my point is less substantive than tactical.

Of all the voters who might be impacted by this, most are going to chalk it up to the tensions of the times. I'm the prototypical one, and I just want to pass it by. Leave it to the thirty-something Clintonites to raise it as a badge of honor for kerry, though, and he's gonna get deluged. Anyone really wants to claim that he was brave, though, is gonna have to deal with the ROE and Kerry's ignorance of them, and how that ignorance affexts his "story".

[bilmore]

They selected Rantisi as their new leader.

It would have been simpler just to staple GPS bombfinders to their heads.

Fucking idiots.

Darwin lives.

[SlaveNoMore]

Hank Chinaski
If i truly believed a president was doing something so despicable i would be rioting in the streets/stealing socks in mexico/aztec dancing. that you are not Ty, shows you are not a man of conviction. I put it to you Ty, if you stand idly by while such wrong occurs in something as important as the country your children are being raised in, how can the administration here rely upon you to take action when necessary for the good of the PB. J'acusseTy. J'acusse.

Slave it is time to ask for Ty's resignation.

Yeah, but who's gonna do it? You? You Lieutenant Weinberg?

[notcasesensitive]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
If i truly believed a president was doing something so despicable i would be rioting in the streets/stealing socks in mexico/aztec dancing. that you are not Ty, shows you are not a man of conviction. I put it to you Ty, if you stand idly by while such wrong occurs in something as important as the country your children are being raised in, how can the administration here rely upon you to take action when necessary for the good of the PB. J'acusseTy. J'acusse.

Slave it is time to ask for Ty's resignation.

fringey's right. you are funny. j'accuse, Hank.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
If i truly believed a president was doing something so despicable i would be rioting in the streets/stealing socks in mexico/aztec dancing. that you are not Ty, shows you are not a man of conviction. I put it to you Ty, if you stand idly by while such wrong occurs in something as important as the country your children are being raised in, how can the administration here rely upon you to take action when necessary for the good of the PB. J'acusseTy. J'acusse.

Slave it is time to ask for Ty's resignation.

Is doing favors for your political base necessarily that despicable? Or do you think it's despicable because they're already so rich?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Not Me
I think some people are; they are just not claiming that he agreed with the plan. They are claiming he heard these conversations and then promptly ended his association with the group.

Cite, please. That's not in the CNN article.

As Bilmore indicated, no one can remember a cub scout meeting when they are 5 years old. However, grown men, indeed decorated vietnam war veterans turned anti-war activists, would be far more likely to remember a meeting in which someone said "hey lets kill US Senators" and which prompted him to resign from the group.

Perhaps so, if he heard it.

He claimed he remembered resigning from the group in July (which was a few months before the meeting). It is just that he forgot attending the November meeting. Seems like he can remember things he wants to "remember" that happened 30 years ago.

No doubt he's been shown documents relating to the July meeting recently, and they refreshed his recollection.

So when I ask you "cite please" you tell me to research it myself but I am supposed to do your research for you?

Why don't you just tell me what you think I said before that I'm contradicting now? I had a law school professor who played "Guess What I'm Thinking?" too, and it wasn't fun then, either.

Ok, see now neither one of us has to find your old posts. You are clearly implying something fishy about Bush's national guard service right here and now.

I was suggesting that he didn't show up for service in Alabama. Don't we all know this?

It is my understanding that all the records have been released and the records show he missed some weekends but made them up (which apparently is commonplace in the guard). If you are saying they haven't released all the records, then cite please.

They say they have released other people. According to stuff posted (I believe) on Kevin Drum's old blog, http://www.calpundit.com, one would expect there to be other sorts of records in the ordinary course that haven't been released.

[Atticus Grinch]

So I've been reading a few news articles about the 9/11 testimony, and this is what I interpret Rumsfeld to be saying:

(1) Clinton knew AQ was a threat, but did nothing substantive and blew four opportunities between December 1998 to July 1999 to smoke OBL because of fear of UAE civilian casualties (i.e., Clinton/Albright/Cohen were pussies).

(2) If Clinton had done something about AQ before 1/2001, 9/11 would never have happened (this is an implication, but a fair one, I gather).

(3) In the months preceding 9/11 (read: anytime after inauguration), nothing could have stopped 9/11 --- not bombing AQ camps, not invading Afghanistan, not even icing bin Laden.

[church lady]How conveeeeeeeeenient.[/church lady]

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
(1) Clinton knew AQ was a threat, but did nothing substantive and blew four opportunities between December 1998 to July 1999 to smoke OBL because of fear of UAE civilian casualties (i.e., Clinton/Albright/Cohen were pussies).

I think the main point of his testimony was that the lack of a response to the USS Cole bombing emboldened AQ.

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
(2) If Clinton had done something about AQ before 1/2001, 9/11 would never have happened (this is an implication, but a fair one, I gather).

I wouldn't go so far as to say he implied that. My take was that he said the lack of a response to the USS Cole bombing emboldened AQ and that once the terrorists were in the US, nothing we did overseas would have stopped 9/11 unless we were able to get some intelligence that would lead us to these terrorists that were already here.

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
(3) In the months preceding 9/11 (read: anytime after inauguration), nothing could have stopped 9/11 --- not bombing AQ camps, not invading Afghanistan, not even icing bin Laden.

What he said was, once the terrorists were here, nothing we did overseas (unless it gave us intelligence to lead us to the terrorists that were already here) would have stopped 9/11.

The other point that he made was that if you did anything overseas but still did not know about the terrorists that were already here, it wouldn't have stopped 9/11 and 9/11 would have been mistakenly seen as a retaliation for the US aggression overseas.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by bilmore

Kerry was part of the anti-war movement back then. That was the (under forty) mainstream.

I call bullshit. I saw the posters; "Don't trust anyone over 30."
30 b, not 40.

"Lather turned 30 years old today,
they took away all of his toys"

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by Say_hello_for_me
You only wanted to throw away the "we as a nation" part, but the rest is a keeper?

Sure. In 1996, to the best of my knowledge, al Qaeda and bin Laden hadn't done dick to the U.S. or U.S. targets. (i.e. The 1993 WTC bombers were another group of loonies, not directly under UBL. I think that the same applies to the CIA shooter.)

Therefore, based on what we knew then, without the benefit of hindsight, I don't think that the U.S. government should have taken bin Laden into custody in 1996 and quietly murdered him. That's what we're talking about, isn't it?

It wasn't crazy for Clinton to worry in _1996_about what he could actually charge bin Laden with if we had him in custody.
In 1998 -- after the embassy bombings, the calculation changes.

S_A_M

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by Say_hello_for_me
Believe me, 95% of this country doesn't want to know what our G is doing to our own inner cities, so I can't imagine that they really want to know what our G is doing in other countries.

So, is the CIA protecting the crack dealers as part of the genocide of THE BLACK MAN?

or, are you talking about policing?

S_A_M

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by bilmore
They selected Rantisi as their new leader.

It would have been simpler just to staple GPS bombfinders to their heads.

Fucking idiots.

Darwin lives.

Wait just a minute, don't be hasty.

Rantisi just withdrew the: "We're going to attack the U.S." threats that Hamas had issued earlier. "Hey guys, just kidding! No hard feelings?"

S_A_M

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
What service? What records?

29. Three to Get Ready


The Skipper insists a stone found by Gilligan will grant the finder three wishes before sundown. The professor, of course, insists it is just superstition. Two gallons of ice cream later, Gilligan has only one wish left.....and the sun is going down!


b: 17-Apr-1965 w: David P. Harmon d: Jack Arnold

[Say_hello_for_me]

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
So, is the CIA protecting the crack dealers as part of the genocide of THE BLACK MAN?

or, are you talking about policing?

S_A_M

All of it. Public-housing plantations and deliberately concentrated poverty. Unequal sentencing guidelines for ghetto crimes. Incentives for young women to get pregnant and have kids early and out-of-wedlock. Insane criminal laws that put non-violent criminals in and let violent criminals out (perhaps an overbroad statement, but I'm thinking the extremes).

As long as middle america doesn't have to pay for it, middle america doesn't really want to know how it turns out.

Hello


PS I think you've clarified your ObL-execution beliefs to the point where we are more or less in agreement. I just read it originally as saying more or less that we don't push people out of helicopters, as compared to we don't push people out of helicopters without knowledge of, and a well-founded belief in, their guilt.