'Who's paying for the war?' Good Article from William Buckley

WHO'S PAYING FOR THE WAR?

Tue Jul 20, 8:00 PM ET

William F. Buckley
 
For all that the critics rail against the war in Iraq (news - web sites), surprisingly little time is given to decrying the sheer cost of it. Somebody, somewhere, was cluck-clucking about $87 billion back during the Democratic high jinks that preceded the ouster of Howard Dean (news - web sites) and the anointment of John Kerry (news - web sites). We do hear of ancillary costs. For instance, with the call-up of the National Guard, the state governors are running out of the backup manpower they habitually look to for help with crime and fire-fighting. You can let crime slide for a while, but not forest fires. And that means extra expenses to lure men and women from retirement or to train recruits.

But how are we feeling the pinch of the direct expenses of the war? We coast along as if we can take care of that kind of thing simply by borrowing. In the last two years, our deficit spending has been in the neighborhood of $800 billion. If you are sitting at the national poker game you can get away with a fugitive smile by counting in current inflation. At 3 percent, we can figure that the $7 trillion national debt gives us back $210 billion, inflated away (whsk!). But reasoning along those lines wouldn't make much political headway in an election year. We need some straight talk, and straight talk speaks of impositions on U.S. citizens, foremost of which is -- taxation.

We have been waiting for word from Sen. Kerry. Here is his most recent on the subject: "George Bush wants to defend giving a tax cut that's permanent to people who earn more than $200,000 a year. I'm fighting to roll back George Bush's unaffordable tax cut for the wealthy and invest it in --" a new and better Army? a new fleet of aircraft carriers? a missile defense? increased pensions for soldiers?

Oh no: "-- invest it in health care, education, job creation, and to build America again." Therefore, raise taxes in order to increase social spending. That leaves -- untouched -- the expenses of this war and any correlative privations. Again, wars are free.

The Democrats would certainly be entitled to call on President Bush (news - web sites) to advise the public in the matter. Using political language, it's his war, not the Democrats' war, and the costs of it should be his to apportion. The administration has made no public accounting of the cost of the war framed in this language. Candidate Kerry could seek to reorient the whole question by telling us what we have forfeited on account of the war -- more health care, education, job creation and America-building. But he can't do this effectively without first telling us how to do away with the war in Iraq and its attendant implications. To talk about raising taxes on the wealthy may be effective boob bait, but it leaves unanswered the question of how to finance national defense operations.

President Bush can try to skim over the question much as President Reagan did. If the economy grows, so do tax returns at current levels. But Mr. Bush has to take a very deep draught of optimism to explain how we are going to alter the current forecasts, other than by inflation. The debt is at $7 trillion and is projected, in 10 years, to be at $9 trillion. That figure can only be attenuated by a relative rise in income, over against outlays. Or -- by inflation, which, whatever its incidental benefits, is the surest enemy of stable growth and an impartial reward to savings and enterprise.

The administration isn't in a position to establish absolutely that the tax relief for the wealthy generated more for the economy than the amount of that tax relief. Mr. Bush profoundly believes that this is so, and practitioners of supply-side economics accept this as a doctrinal matter. But Mr. Bush has to arrive prepared to cope with the immediate appeal of Candidate Kerry's call for more taxes for the wealthy. This is not easy to do, because the imagination tends to freeze when higher taxes on the rich are pleaded. In the good old days we could begin our thinking the other way around, not by saying that the tax cuts help or hurt, but by saying simply: The money is theirs, not ours. So think of something else.

Mr. Bush has some fine writers on his staff. Add this one to their special challenges.

Article I read at www.peroutka2004.com

What’s Wrong With the Pro-Life Movementby Bob StrodtbeckThis article originally appeared on DaveBlackOnlineThe pro-life movement defends the principle of protecting the right-to-life for all people. As America’s post-modern culture attracts more individuals with the allure of convenience and relativism, the pro-life principle covers an increasing number of individuals from embryos created in a laboratory to incapacitated geriatrics in nursing homes.The national debate over abortion has kept a high profile for most of the nearly three decades that Americans have been erroneously told that killing babies in the womb is protected by the U.S. Constitution. The focus of the debate has been on the Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, which asserts a penumbra right to privacy in the Bill of Rights entitles women to access abortion procedures.Over the years that the national debate over abortion has been measured by polls and propaganda America has been dragged into a relativistic culture that endorses killing babies in the womb and applauds scientists creating babies in the lab. Meanwhile governments are increasingly subjected to the desires of wealthy international corporations or the whims of unrestrained judicial branches which show an interest in both.It is not the advocates of abortion rights that have forwarded this lurch into social destruction, however, but the pro-lifers who have wasted 30 years pursuing an agenda rather than fighting for principles that have defined American liberty.The U.S. Constitution establishes multi-leveled government with defined responsibilities so the nation would not be subjected to the whims of power-lusting individuals. This balance of powers is not limited to the branches of national government outlined in the Constitution, but includes the state governments that are referred to in Article I, Section 3, clause one (the selection of the Senate was originally under the authority of state legislatures) and in the tenth amendment.Roe v. Wade did not so much create a right out of thin air, but was an usurpation of state legislative authority by the federal courts. This expansion of federal judicial power is now so broad that any state or local law can be struck down by judicial fiat. The power grab by the courts is a clear violation of its limits to hear only “...cases in law and equity, arising under this (the U.S.) Constitution....” This means the federal courts have the authority to hear cases regarding laws written by the U.S. Congress and enforced by the president.The pro-life movement, however, has been preoccupied with attempting to influence the national government to support its agenda when it needed to educate the general public of the dangers of a central government taking power unto itself.  In pursuit of this unfruitful strategy, pro-lifers are busy raising support for the reelection campaign of President Bush in spite of his lukewarm action on pro-life principles.Pro-life support for Mr. Bush is creating more threats to the structure of constitutional government than even Roe. Mr. Bush is an unflinching internationalist who seems to have no problems eliminating American borders and converting the military into a rapid deployment force for political and economic agendas that are poorly defined and executed without a shred of constitutional support. His agenda focuses on unconstitutional expansions of federal authority into education, medical practice, and church missions. He has further expanded executive control over the use of lands that was initiated through executive orders written by Bill Clinton and his lust for fast track trading authority for trade agreements has subverted congressional oversight in relations with trade partners.Pro-lifers are willing to accept these abuses of power because Mr. Bush will use their politically correct clichés at opportune moments. This concession on the part of pro-lifers, though, is in absolute defiance of the major principle that the framers of the Constitution used to develop legal limits on federal office holders – that is that human nature is self-serving and continually seeking personal aggrandizement.The pro-life movement seems to be committed to gauging its influence by endorsements it gets from national political celebrities, but time has proven that those platitudes won’t stop babies from being killed. The movement’s support for the current president might even help to finish the work of destroying the U.S. Constitution that was so hideously forwarded by Roe.---Since 1993 Bob Strodtbeck has been writing commentaries for The Apopka Chief, a news weekly circulated in a community ten miles north of Orlando. His analyses investigate a wide range of topics from what he calls a “Christian pragmatic” view – that is to say, he considers that human interactions are largely driven by the human instinct toward self-service, which is traditionally known as sin. This perspective has given Bob great liberty to criticize governmental officials from both parties upon the standards of constitutional laws they swear to uphold and review cultural and economic phenomena from moral standards defined in the Bible. Bob currently lives in Orlando with his bride Pam and children Charlotte and Richard. He may be reached for comment here.

Outfoxed and other links

some great clips are available here from the documentary Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism.   MoveOn.org sponsored a national house party showing of the video; however, I didn't go. 
 
Another link to interesting videos here.  Viewer discretion advised due to strong language on some of them.         
 
A funny video about election 2004 mudslinging. 
 
Also, everyone needs to make sure they are registered to vote, which can be done here.

A vote for Bush is a vote for...

      Bush is such a likeable, charismatic campaigner.  When Michael Moore used the clip of Bush saying "Some may call you the elite, I call you my base."  That was George at his best.  On the campaign trail he keeps the jokes lined with political jabs in full force.  Al Franken even admits that the first time he met Bush he could only describe him as charismatic, and those who have seen him on the campaign trail, (or those who have seen coverage of him on Faux news on the campaign trail) will agree that he is charismtic. 
     Many passion-driven humans think to themselves how can all these things that the crazy conspiracy leftist are saying be true about him?  How can Michael Moore's attacks possibly be true? How can a guy that can barely properly use the english langauge, be bent on world conquest?  But Michael Moore at times leaves out the big picture.  I think he leaves out the big picture until the end of his movie with the excellent Orwell quote about the need for poverty, ignorance and perpetual war in order to keep the lower castes in order.  All this is bigger than Bush.  Remember the Afghan Unicol pipeline deal started in 1998 under Clinton, not Bush. 
     Everyone must remember that this is bigger than Bush.  Buss is not a lone fanatical right-winger.  Bush is a man very much so socialized by the dominant power stucture of America (he's a president's son afterall).  When you vote for any candidate, you are voting not for them, but voting for the people supporting them.   If you choose to vote for Bush, your not voting for a charismatic guy from Texas, you are voting to let the uber-wealthy have a carte blanc to continue to control whatever aspect our our democracy they wish.  You are voting for his #1 campaign contributor Ken Lay who pillaged his employee's savings and very lives.  You are voting for Halliburton.  You are voting for the logging industry to be able to cut our forests down at will.  You are voting for business-paid "expertss" that destroyed the ergonomics rules that people tried to hard to get passed, which means your vote says that you believe repetitive motion work injuries are figments of worke's' imagination.  You are voting for the neoconservatives who openly desire American Empire.  You are voting for conservative foreign policy think-tanks that are funded by oil companies!  You are voting for a complacent media structure that won't question the Bush administration talking point of the day because it's not good for their business interests to be good reporters.  You are voting for a media system that only covers foreign tragedies when intervening would benefit American business interests. 
     If you plan on voting for Bush based on religious conviction please listen carefully.  If you support Bush because of your stance on abortion, gay marriage, stem cell research or issues like that, please, vote for Peroutka (http://www.peroutka2004.com/) or another one of the third party candidates (http://www.politics1.com/parties.htm) because people like Bush really don't care about these issues, they only pander to your vote because you will give it to them is they make tough, passionate rhetoric on the issues.  If Roe v. Wade is to be reverse, it will take a much stronger mush more independently-minded pro-life movement then one simply subservient to the business interests of the Bush conservatives. 

Political Paradigms post put through Snoops Dogg's Shizzolator

This is my last post with help from http://www.asksnoop.com/

Political Paradigms: How do yo' ass see society?
Here are several different ways that muthas view society." Which fits yo' ass best?

1. The world is made up of corporations 'n muthas n' shit. Peeps are distinct from corporations." The government is da entity responsible fo' protecting muthas from corporations n' shit.

2. Peeps vrs n' shit. Government." Government has always tried control muthas, know what I'm sayin'? Peeps gots constantly struggle keep da government in check, know what I'm sayin'?

3. Peeps vrs government vrs, know what I'm sayin'? corporations, know what I'm sayin'? Corporations 'n government are both concentrations of power that work against da interests of da muthas, know what I'm sayin'?

4. Society is a struggle between two groups of muthas." The two current groups are those wit little power 'n those who has control in society by ownership of da means of production." The latter group spreads they influence accross government 'n culture." They interests are an contrast wit da interests of working muthas, know what I'm sayin'?

5. There are muthas 'n Dogg." Governments are justly created by Dogg ('n history) n' shit. Everything happens fo' a reason 'n that reason will be revealed if one studies into that shiznit 'n looks hard 'nuff n' shit.

6. There are gravy muthas 'n bad muthas n' shit. While there may be some gravy 'n some bad in izzall muthas, life is fundamentally a struggle fo' da gravy forces in society conquer da evil ones."

7. Businesses simply consist of muthas." Government constantly interferes wit business, therefore government is at contrast wit da progress muthas are trying make."