SUPPORT Cindy and OUR TROOPS! Countrywide Vigils Tonight

Lol - "Get the UN out of America" ought to be a bit of an indicator of where the anti-anti-war sponsor organization is coming from!

saw that too. also saw "support john roberts" etc. on the sites.
that's fine. they have their right to an opinion. but, jeez, don't claim that you are non-partisan when you clearly are.

Having a look now at JW's "racist anti-war miovement" thing now. here's a gem:

" One of the made-for-television signs held up behind Cindy during the news event I attended was particularly disturbing. "Iraq," read the sign held aloft by two prosperous looking white women,"is Arabic for Vietnam."

By holding this sign, I presume they would favor that the Iraq war end the same way the war in Vietnam ended. ...However, the sign just as probably is meant to convey that Iraq is going to be an endless bloody quagmire, ...Ah - it goes on to say things in Iraq are way better - presumably implying that anti-war people want things to be bad for Iraqis?

i have, someplace in my TimeWarp Box, a similar button that reads "El Salvador is Spanish for Vietnam". at the time it was given to me, i was still a young struggling rock singer and working as a valet at bonwit-teller in bev hills (cash tips everyday = FOOD!!!!). several of my fellow car jockeys were refugees from san salvador. while i wasn't real interested in seeing the usa get involved in another guerilla war so soon, i in no way wanted to see these folks harmed. they were nice people. they actually didn't seem to want us involved either.

on the same lot we also had a young guy from afghanistan, named Mohmad. good kid. he had managed to get out and was trying to get enough cash to bring his wife and baby over. the russians were making a shambles of his country, he was scared shiteless. he was also worried that if the us got involved, it would be a world war between the us and russia. all he wanted fthe us to do was give the mujahadin better weapons, meds and some food.

the pro-war (again, i say this is a ridiculous sounding phrase) folks of today realize that the bush whitehouse has totally cocked this up. and like their fearless leader, refuse to admit a mistake or even suggest that perhaps there needs to be a "course correction" to make a decent ending of the thing. all they can think of, in their usual black & white view of things, is that it's "stay the course" or "cut and run".

with nothing defensible, all they have left is to accuse the left of anything and everything. including racism.

ludicrous. they've been shrilling for years about "those multiculturalist lefties", but now the lefties are racists. in fact, they even go after centrists and moderates for daring to question the almighty in the whitehouse.

preposterous is the polite word for it.

i'm pretty sure, based on some conversations, that some making these claims were either not born or very, very young during vietnam. it's funny for them to pretend to know what i, or other anti-war people of the time thought.

but if it's helpful to you, i can tell you that it was not the anti-war people screaming about "gooks".

Distorting this stuff to make a claim for racism in the anti-war movement is too far for the human body to bend.

Doubtless there are racists IN the movement - just as there are in your ranks. They are everywhere. But this smear stuff you people are touting makes you look really dumb.

don't think. just repeat.

it really is too stupid an assertion to take seriously.

DontTreadOnMe wrote:

Setanta wrote:

You got some examples, such as Squinney provided, of such "sins" committed by the Democrats, over which she should feel outrage?...

i'm still trying to find who the random freaks are that lash was complaining got maligned by the democrats.

asked twice so far, and get nothing back, really...

Good God, DTOM. You're not that dense. What groups that attach themselves to the GOP do you and others criticise? Religious fanatics, abortion clinic bombers, skinheads, ... Now, they are proving to be equal opportunity attachments--and I am glad. I don't want them. You guys take them.

We don't want leftist Johnny-come-latelys who are misleadingly protesting this war as if the war is about oil (not true), or as if it's right-wing patriots who launched this war (not true) to hijack the issue from us.

We want to challenge these leftists with the fact that their leftist leaders, like Hillary Clinton, are on the same War for Israel team as the cowardly Republicans who have been bought and paid for in the Senate, House, White House, and Media by the Jewish Neocon political machine.

The Left, in particular the Bushophobes, have no concept of what is involved in the solution.

Stupidity may be defined as persiting in the pursuit of a consistently failed course of action in expectation of improved results.

That may be true, but unfortunately, the administration doesn't seem to know either.

And the Right, particularly the Bushofans, seem to think that cheering rah rah rah is good enough.

That they can make America's problems disappear simply by sticking their tongues out at "the left" and saying "neener neener".

Quote:

Stupidity may be defined as persiting in the pursuit of a consistently failed course of action in expectation of improved results.

Surely you can see the irony.

DTOM--

You keep addressing me, but you're having a conversation with someone else.

Your comments don't apply to anything I've said.

The "Jew hating racists" have found common ground with Cindy Sheehan through her anti-Israel comments and allusions to a "neo-con" agenda, which is becoming a euphemism for Jewish controlled US administration.

Anything further you make of it is your own invention.

We don't want leftist Johnny-come-latelys who are misleadingly protesting this war as if the war is about oil (not true), or as if it's right-wing patriots who launched this war (not true) to hijack the issue from us.

We want to challenge these leftists with the fact that their leftist leaders, like Hillary Clinton, are on the same War for Israel team as the cowardly Republicans who have been bought and paid for in the Senate, House, White House, and Media by the Jewish Neocon political machine.

timberlandko wrote:

The Left, in particular the Bushophobes, have no concept of what is involved in the solution.

That may be true, but unfortunately, the administration doesn't seem to know either. And the Right, particularly the Bushofans, seem to think that cheering rah rah rah is good enough. That they can make America's problems disappear simply by sticking their tongues out at "the left" and saying "neener neener".

Quote:

Stupidity may be defined as persiting in the pursuit of a consistently failed course of action in expectation of improved results.

Surely you can see the irony.

... they were looking to fo down there and confront both sides and mooch off of the camp casey buffett. period.

this is really getting tedious ...

... you're just wasting my time.

boot-styrapped the US Economy out of the doldrums brought on byt the irresponsible, nonsensical policies of The Clinton Era

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Australian

29 August 2005

Dumping of US dollar could trigger 'economic September 11'
There is a potentially fatal flaw at the heart of the global economy: the strong possibility of financial meltdown following a collapse of confidence in the greenback, Clyde Prestowitz tells Bruce Stannard
29aug05

THE nightmare scenario that haunts global strategist Clyde Prestowitz is an economic September 11 -- a worldwide financial panic triggered by a sudden massive sell-off of US dollars that would lead inexorably to the collapse of economies around the world.

If that happens, Prestowitz predicts: "It would make the Great Depression of the 1930s look like a walk in the park."
Australia would be sucked into the vortex of such a recession, which would cause great hardship throughout the world, he warns.

Prestowitz is not a doomsayer, neither is he alone in his views. As president of the Economic Strategy Institute, a Washington think tank, he is in regular contact with the most influential US business leaders, several of whom -- Warren Buffet and George Soros included -- have taken steps to hedge their currency positions against the possibility of a cataclysmic plunge in the greenback.

"Right now," he says, "we have a situation in which the US is running huge trade deficits -- about $US650 billion ($766 billion) in 2004 -- which are financed by borrowings from the central banks of Asia -- mainly the Chinese and the Japanese. All the world's central banks are chock-full of US dollars -- they're holding many more dollars than they really want. They're holding those dollars because at the moment there's no great alternative and also because the global economy depends on US consumption. If they dump the dollar and the dollar collapses, then the whole global economy is in trouble. )emphasis added)

"However, some countries have a bigger stake than others in maintaining the status quo. China and Japan have a big stake in maintaining the flow of their exports to the US and keeping the US economy humming. Russia, on the other hand, does not export much to the US. India doesn't export much to the US. Yet Russia and India are also big dollar-holders. They hold many more dollars than they really want or need.

"It doesn't take any great stretch of the imagination to see what could happen if one of these central bank managers decides to dump dollars. We had a situation recently when a mid-level official at the Central Bank of Korea used the word 'diversification'. It was a throwaway remark at some obscure lunch, but there was instantaneous overreaction. The US stock market fell by 100 points in 15 minutes because the implication was that South Korea might be shifting out of US dollars.

"So picture this: you have a quiet day in the market and maybe some smart MBA at the Central Bank of Chile or someplace looks at his portfolio and says, 'I got too many dollars here. I'm gonna dump $10 billion'. So he dumps his dollars and suddenly the market thinks, 'My god, this is it!' Of course, the first guy out is OK, but you sure as hell can't afford to be the last guy out.

"You would then see an immediate cascade effect -- a world financial panic on a scale that would dwarf the Great Depression of the 1930s."

Prestowitz says the panic could be started by something as simple as a hedge-fund miscalculation.

"We had exactly that scenario in the US recently," he points out, "when a big hedge fund called Long Term Capital Management went belly-up. These guys were pros. They had two Nobel prize-winning economists writing their trading algorithms, and their traders were the creme de la creme among New York bond traders.

"They made a big bet -- a trillion dollars leveraged 20 to one, and they blew it. They went belly-up. That threatened to bring down the whole system so US Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan had to organise a bail-out through the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

"Now consider this: there are currently 8000 hedge funds in the US alone. Every day $6 trillion of derivative instruments trade on international markets. If there are four people in the world who understand those trades, I'd be surprised. So the potential for another disaster is not insignificant. This is why Warren Buffet, chairman of investment giant Berkshire Hathaway, is betting $US21 billion against the dollar. This is why currency speculator and hedge fund manager George Soros has also made a big bet against the dollar.

"Soros is one of the greatest currency speculators of all time. He was the guy who broke the British pound in the early 1990s by betting $US10 billion it would fall. He made a quick billion when it did. In 2002, he warned that the greenback was in danger of losing a third of its value. Of course, it could be argued that Soros is a professional hedge fund manager whose job is to play the ups and downs of currencies and his remarks could be seen more as manipulation than prophecy. And yet, in conversations with me, Soros has expressed concern about the market fundamentalist view that prevails in Washington and parts of Wall Street.

"This is the belief that markets are self-correcting and best left alone. Soros calls this a dangerous siren song. Far from being self-correcting, he emphasises, markets tend to excess. They over-shoot. Anyone with any experience of markets knows this.

"When markets are going down, all the weaknesses get concentrated, and you need intervention at the right time to stop things from getting out of control. If the dollar started to melt down, the results could be really nasty. A 1930s-style global depression is not out of the question."

To underscore the point that he is not alone in this, Prestowitz cites Paul Volcker, head of the Federal Reserve before Greenspan, who has said publicly there is a 75 per cent chance of a dollar crash in the next five years.

"No wonder people look at this and say, 'Holy cow!'," he says. "No one knows for sure what will happen, but clearly the global markets could implode very quickly. The lack of an alternative to the dollar is the only reason it hasn't taken a big fall already."

Prestowitz, formerly a trade adviser and negotiator for former US president Ronald Reagan, believes the US will continue to be the world's most powerful economy for the foreseeable future. But he foreshadows an inexorable decline, a trend that is likely to continue "depending on the way we play our cards".

"Right now, we're playing them just about as badly as it's possible to play them, and that has geo-political implications." he says. "We've outsourced trying to deal with North Korea to China, we really can't deal with Iran, so we've outsourced that to the EU, which is struggling, and Iran is cozying up to China. Other bad actors like Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe and Sudan are cozying up to China.

"America's global hegemony is already under challenge, and that challenge is going to become more and more evident as the extent of the relative US economic decline becomes evident. Right now, the US dollar is probably 40 per cent overvalued versus the Japanese yen or the Chinese renminbi. How's the US going to look as a global power when the dollar is at 50 per cent of its current value?"

Three Billion New Capitalists by Clyde Prestowitz is published by Basic Books at $US39.95

So that whole balanced-budget thing, not a good idea?

FreeDuck wrote:

So that whole balanced-budget thing, not a good idea?

You gotta get new talking points.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, current policies are moving the deficit in the right direction. Bush proposed to halve the budget deficit by 2008, and is ahead of schedule in the endeavor. It should be pointed out as well that the effect of higher-than-anticipated tax revenues, directly attributable to tax-cut-driven increases in domestic economic activity, have been greatly instrumental in this. Also worth noting is that by the only meaningful measure, percentage of GDP, the current budget deficit is well within supportable range, is declining, and is in fact below the average level over the post-WWII period. Continuing with Administration initiatives in such areas as Labor Policy, Tax Policy, Social Security, Healthcare, Energy Policy, Welfare, and Education, among other things eliminating or at least curtailing many of the free-ride entitlements and anti-business restrictions enshrined by The Democrats over the past few generations, will only better the picture.

Bush proposed to halve the budget deficit by 2008, and is ahead of schedule in the endeavor.