Quietly, in the pleasant afterglow of the inaugural bacchanalia, the White House sent Congress its latest request for an additional $80 billion for ongoing operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, not in that order of course.
This brings the acknolwedged cost of the Iraq fiasco (Afghanistan represents a small fraction of what we spend on Iraq– so small as actually not really effecting the number) to around $280 billion… and counting, most of which will make their way into private hands so that the appropriate kickbacks can be paid, etc.
Nancy Pelosi, continuing to be the poster child for what is wrong with Democrats, says “well, of course we can’t shortchange the troops; we’ll give them whatever money they need…”
The money appropriated is largely for private contractors charging the government 10 to 20 times the actual value of their services so there is plenty of cash to slosh around in Republican coffers. War is the health of the Republican praetorian state.
The only answer is: Mr. President, our creditors won’t lend us any more money if we keep spending like this. Either we raise this money through current taxes (i.e. TAX INCREASES) or we won’t appropriate a dime of it (and back it up with fillibusters). After the body and vehicle armor flak-jacket flap, it should be obvious to all that this money is not about “supporting our troops” any more than the war was about “bringing democracy to Iraq”.
Which segues into my point. The Dems are in a position to outmaneuver Bush on taxes– but they have to NOT PANDER by trying to buy voters with special tax breaks (the classic Republican lobbyists’ game). What Dems should propose is actually something the Republicans TALK ABOUT, but don’t do.` That, of course, is a more or less flat tax– of whatever percentage of GDP federal spending represents (now 22%, IIRC).
Simple. I’d propose four brackets (the lowest being… zero, the top being 27%). We exempt the first ten or fifteen thousand dollars entirely, tax the next fifty thousand dollars at fifteen per cent, tax the next hundred thousand dollars at– you got it– twenty-two per cent, and tax everything over that at twenty-seven per cent (top rate one point lower than St. Ron’s Tax Reform of 1986). Oh– all income is taxed at these rates– ALL INCOME– whether wages, business income by corporation or partnership, inheritance (WHICH IS INCOME TO THE RECIPIENT– and income the recipient didn’t EARN at that), interest, dividends, or capital gains…. ALL INCOME. Once and for all– our tax system is about raising revenue– not social policy. Hence– NO DEDUCTIONS– not for state and local taxes, not for oil or race horse depreciation, not for mortgage interest or anything. Simple, easy. Business income will have the usual complications (how to depreciate long term assets and so forth), but those problems can be solved.
This proposal is simple, its fair, these taxes WOULD INCLUDE PAYROLL TAXES now taxed in addition to income tax, and best of all, these taxes would force BUSH to explain and justify why wages that people need to eat and pay their rent should be taxed, while inheritances, money that isn’t earned and falls out of the sku, shouldn’t be (along with interest, dividends, capital gains, etc.) Because we can LOWER THE RATES, we can afford to simplify and do away with deductions. It’s fair: most people would probably pay around the same or less in federal taxes (remember– my rates INCLUDE PAYROLL TAX.)
Democrats: its there. We can tie it to the war. We can beat Bush over the head with this. DO IT. TAKE YOUR HEADS OUT OF YOUR ASSES!!!
tdog
If Iraq is such a fiasco, it sounds like you’d rather have Saddam and the Taliban still in power.
Or it could be that because your concept of war is a mold of operational perfection you are easily miffed when a car bomb explodes in Fallujah or we accidentally kill some civilians, or some contractor gets caught with their hand in the money jar.
I don’t give a shit how much this war is gonna cost. It had to be waged sooner or later. As long as I see dead scumbags on the tube, Gitmo fill to capacity and once-shithole nations transform into republics, the gov’t can raise my taxes.
Jebus Jay–
Where have you been? So much fertile ground for your inimitable take has gone by without your input…
No matter. My concept of a war fought by the United States is that said war is in the interests of the United States and advances the security of the United States.
The Pentagon and CIA conclude that Iraq is now the most fertile ground for terrorist development… something not the case when Saddam was in charge. Hence, our actions have INCREASED the threat Iraq represents to us, not decreased it.
Further, the Taliban remain active in Afghanistan (and their AQ allies), and as a bonus, heroin is Afghanistan’s bumper crop…
There’s good news and bad news, but for $280 billion… I expect a damned site better news. BTW… aside from our actions at Gitmo being just WRONG in every sense of morality and decency and law, they are bad politics and worst of all, they present dangers to OUR SOLDIERS captured… if WE won’t respect Geneva conventions and international alw, what makes us think anyone fighting us will?
You go, Jay…
Interesting idea, dog. I like it, but it might just encourage defecit spending to keep down the rates at the top. Not like the New Republicans need any encouragement.
I–
The thing of it is, Republicans PREFER high top marginal tax rates, so that they can give real value to their K-Street friends by giving them special tax breaks! As you see– I’m proposing eliminating ALL TAX BREAKS. The Republicans’ heads will explode if thi came from a liberal!!!
Dog,
My career and the holidays have a preemption policy of their own, even keeping me from my own blog.
I’m gonna narrow the scope to avoid tangents (I’ll care more about tax issues when my stock funds start swirling down the shitter and the rates on my next house go up).
For now, I’m going to focus only on the war.
You said: The Pentagon and CIA conclude that Iraq is now the most fertile ground for terrorist development… something not the case when Saddam was in charge. Hence, our actions have INCREASED the threat Iraq represents to us, not decreased it.
Well no shit. Does it take a degree in rocket science to figure out that the highest degrees of fertility for terrorist development is in Iraq? Of course it is!! Iraq is a shit magnet and that’s exactly what we want!
Build it and they will come. And they’re coming into Iraq in droves. And our troops will kill them in droves. They’re hard to kill training in Somalia or Madagascar.
Footnote: When Saddam was in charge, terrorist development was most active in Afghanistan. And that activity led to 9/11. With that said, the levels of terrorist development needs to be observed from a global point of view – not that of a single country. Ultimately, this just isn’t about Iraq. There are scumbags who need a quick visit to Allah all over the world. But let’s stick to Iraq and Afghanistan.
So, all the worthless shits are shifting to Iraq, where we can find them and kill them. If the liberal media would stop persuing its anti-American agenda, this circumstance would have yielded more effectiveness. But there are people in this country who want us to lose this war (tangent stops here).
Finally, the fact that terrorist development is greater than when Saddam was in charge means nothing after reading the foregoing. Like I said, the scumbags are on the move into the killing zone. The increased threat you mention is not to us as country (like it was when Saddam was in charge) but to our soldiers and the people of Iraq. This is called: taking the fight to the enemy. It is something with which I’ve been ridden over by debates with European socialists (tangent stops here).
You said: Further, the Taliban remain active in Afghanistan (and their AQ allies), and as a bonus, heroin is Afghanistan’s bumper crop…
The activity in Afghanistan is nominal. Osama is yesterday’s news. They’re alive, he’s alive, in some form assholes like that will be alive for quite a while. The trick is to make them impotent. And in Afghanistan, they are impotent. Will they stay that way…’depends on the next two, maybe three, Presidents. If a democrat gets elected, I might move to a more remote area.
As for the heroin comment…who gives a shit? I don’t. If people want to ruin their lives by pumping that crap into their veins they’ll be responsible for the consequences.
You said: There’s good news and bad news, but for $280 billion… I expect a damned site better news.
Take your lips off the liberal tit and you will hear more good news. It worked for me. I cheat a little, though: I get reports from the front via people who are close to it.
if WE won’t respect Geneva conventions and international alw, what makes us think anyone fighting us will?
Ok…now it’s time for school.
Lesson 1: The people we are fighting don’t give a dead dog’s dick about the Geneva Convention.
Lesson 2: The people we are fighting are very smart and know that they can exploit gitmo in our media by uttering its name after capturing one of our people.
Lesson 3: Discussing gitmo in the same essay as the war on Iraq is like bitching about the holes in a burglar’s shirt while he robs your house.
If I read in the paper tomorrow that a storm blew gitmo into the bay and then read the next day on the Talking Dog that all of our troops there miraculously survived and that it was in fact a sunny day…
…I’d take my morning dump and go back to work.
That’s all I have. I wonder what you’ll bitch about after the election this weekend. Was it worth the 280 billion and 1,400 American lives? Where’s our exit strategy? Why were so many election polls bombed?
Name two countries on this planet who can bring democracy to a shithole.
If they can’t do it, who will?
If nobody will, what are the consequences?
It’s time to change the world. Liberals love the status quo when their opponents are in power (and they call themselves progressives?).
It’s time to change the world and change is painful, expensive and inconvenient.
But I’d rather we change it than our enemy for surely with our thumbs up our asses, they will change it.
Jay–
You’ve pretty much left me speechless. Congratulations on that. Well, almost speechless anyway.
OK: I’m famililar with the flypaper theory of “draw the terrorists into Iraq”. It rests on the false premise that the number of terrorists is static, and that “terrorist”, which is simply a name we give a highly motivated, often suicidal, guerrilla fighter, is not something created by our political actions. It might explain why with each Palestinian tennager, child or old person knocked off in the course of Israel’s taking out “a terrorist”, results in many more previous non-combatants willing to take their place (to avenge their families and so forth). But WTF, right?
We seem to agree that there’s both good news and bad news out of Iraq.
The situation in Afghanistan is not static; I will simply acknowledge it might well work out, or it might not (unlike Iraq, which I can safely way WILL NOT work out well, or really for anyone except maybe Iran).
Camp X-Ray at Guantanimo Bay is part of our same system of extra-legal incarcerations that includes Abu Ghraib in Iraq, Bagram Air base in Afghanistan, other locations in Iraq, Afghanistan and throughout the world in CIA “ghost prisons”, and God knows how many other situations estimated to include around 10,000 “undocumented” military prisoners, in blatant violation of international and American law. I suppose that we probably don’t have prisoners at Camp X-Ray from the Iraq conflict (though I don’t know for sure). Other than that, I repeat: we can never guarantee that other parties will themselves respect the Geneva Conventions and common decency when they capture our people; we can sure as hell guarantee that they WILL NOT if we behave like barbarians.
You go, Jay!!!
Jay:
Damn. Not much else to say. I, like Dog, am struck a bit speechless by such rationalizations.
Dog,
Speechlessness. I know what it’s like. I get it almost every time I talk to a liberal. Not with writing, though, because I can think and have the time to think.
You said: I’m famililar with the flypaper theory of “draw the terrorists into Iraq”. It rests on the false premise that the number of terrorists is static
I think it’s ridiculous to even assume I would believe there are a static number of terrorists. Of course there aren’t. Nevertheless, the flypaper theory stands because it rests on the strategy of opening up new war fronts. In other words, the stinkier and more fresh the shit, the more flies will come to it. Taking the war against militant Islam to Iraq did just that. Iraq is the new front…better there than here.
Nevertheless, the same scumbags training in Saudi Arabia, Syria, Afghanistan have come to Iraq – which was ultimately my point about shifting.
What I need you to tell me is how many terrorists there were before the Iraq war and how many terrorists there are now. Since you seem better informed than me, please inform me what the increase is.
If the increase is too high, maybe I’ll join the camp that wants to fold our tents over there, come home, and wait for the next worthless douchebag to detonate himself in Times Square.
You said: that “terrorist”, which is simply a name we give a highly motivated, often suicidal, guerrilla fighter, is not something created by our political actions.
I don’t care what the etymology of “terrorist” is. I refer to them as scumbags, anyway. Well, douchebags, hemorrhoids, piles of shit…I have a list.
You said: It might explain why with each Palestinian tennager, child or old person knocked off in the course of Israel’s taking out “a terrorist”, results in many more previous non-combatants willing to take their place
So which came first, the chicken or the egg? Who blew up who first?
Did it ever occur to you that maybe, just maybe, Israel would stop launching rockets and bulldozing settlements if some worthless shits stopped blowing themselves up in Tel Aviv cafes?
I don’t hear the Israel PM saying Israel will seek the destruction of the Palestinian people. On the other hand, I heard Arafat say that he’d like nothing less than the destruction of Israel.
With that said, the fault of making more terrorists rests with the Palestinian leaders who are not interested in peace with Israel.
That leaves one solution, and one I promote: Israel should build a wall around itself a mile high – either that or bulldoze those fuckers into the Med. That wouldn’t be a popular move I suppose.
About Gitmo, you obviously did not read my lessons so I cannot respond much further. What you seem to not get is that one standard does not apply to all circumstances.
We are not at war with Russia, or China, or France where such incarcerations would have to be done according to the Geneva Convention. I would care about how Russian, Chinese and French prisoners are treated because I know full well that the Russian, Chinese and French governments would be playing by the same rules.
What you seem to not get is that we are at war with scumbags who don’t give a shit about the Geneva Convention. They might say they care about how the scumbags at Gitmo are treated but I can say with sureness that if we imprisoned them at the Waldorf Astoria the enemy would not hesitate to chop another head off. If you think otherwise you are seriously deluded.
I have no clue where you people are coming from. I can appreciate concerns about escalating costs and poor management. I don’t appreciate that it is rarely mentioned that we should even be fighting back against those who want us all dead.
I don’t get it. I know that there are many who hate Bush so much they are willing to compromise our national security for the sole purpose of enjoying his failure. But then they put me and my family at risk. These people are either traitors or stupid. Almost always the latter. Clearly not in Michael Moore’s case (tangent ends here).
I believe in preemption. I believe we need to stop being the world’s punching bag. I believe there are a lot of scumbags who need a bullet.
And I’m not gonna blame my country for it.
Wow! A tour de force of… something.
I don’t really care who we’re at war with. American police forces are forced to go after “scumbags” every bit as nasty as “the terrorists” (sometimes, it’s the same people). And yet, once the scumbags are captured, our police don’t torture them, abuse them, murder them… Because we purport to be “civilized” and have “laws”.
It’ not merely that if we throw away the rule book we are no better than those we are fighting… it’s that we’ve admit they’ve won. They’ve reduced us to their level. We have nothing left except basically caveman vs. caveman. We’re not on the side of “right” any longer. It’s that simple.
I don’t know about you, Jay, but I know exactly where I was on 9-11-01: I was a block of the WTC, in the direct path of the second airplane. Lost my job, lost people I knew, breathed in shit from there that contained God knows what for months, and get to live with periodocially waking up to watching people fall to their deaths 100 yards away.
Yeah, I was pissed: but you know what? I’m perfectly prepared to risk that incident happening again… and again… and again… Rather than breaking down and behaving like savages, in which case… what the fuck HAVE WE GOT?
OH, JAY, BABY: BY THE PENTAGON’S OWN ESTIMATE: 70-90% OF THE ABU GHRAIB PRISONERS WERE PERFECTLY INNOCENT OF ANYTHING (LET ALONE TERRORISM). We just abused people for our jollies– and were most likely to abuse the least violent prisoners. As to Gitmo, the Pentagon ALREADY released between 1/3 and 1/2 the detainees (after years) acknowledging they had no meaningful evidence as to them.
If that’s the kind of country you want, babe– one that locks up and tortures INNOCENT PEOPLE who have no recourse (which is the dictionary definition of “dictatorship”) then you’re welcome to it, man. Right now, we’re still mostly a free country. We have a choice to stop going down this road. You seem to want to step on the accelerator. I pity you, for that, man. I pity you.
Your said: Wow! A tour de force of… something.
Hm. Not a good way to start a reply. That tells me that not only do you not understand what I said but removes incentives for me to continue this conversation. But I’m on my lunch break so I will.
You said: I don’t really care who we’re at war with.
Then we have a problem that cannot be reconciled because who we are at war with makes the difference. I articulated why in my previous post. We can table this one.
I don’t know about you, Jay, but I know exactly where I was on 9-11-01: I was a block of the WTC, in the direct path of the second airplane. Lost my job, lost people I knew, breathed in shit from there that contained God knows what for months, and get to live with periodocially waking up to watching people fall to their deaths 100 yards away.
Which bewilders me over why you issue serious indictments to this country over some really innocuous stuff. It bewilders me even more that I have not read here any promotions of the war against militant Islam.
My father lost his soul killing Japanese for a living in the Solomons during WW II. What’s the connection? There’ll be snowball fights in hell the day I sleep while people pelt this country with stupid little faults long enough to take her eye off the ball. I see democrats do it almost every day. I see the liberal media do it everyday.
That won’t get by without a slam on my watch.
It’ not merely that if we throw away the rule book we are no better than those we are fighting… it’s that we’ve admit they’ve won. They’ve reduced us to their level. We have nothing left except basically caveman vs. caveman. We’re not on the side of “right” any longer. It’s that simple.
This is liberal utopian bullshit. They win because we stooped to their level? That’s ridiculous. We won every war in this country’s history by stooping to the level of the enemy. They win when enough of us get killed to cause us to no longer wage war against them!!
You said: Yeah, I was pissed: but you know what? I’m perfectly prepared to risk that incident happening again… and again… and again… Rather than breaking down and behaving like savages, in which case… what the fuck HAVE WE GOT?
Not me. And what have we got? Why not ask the people of every exising democracy what we’ve got. Starting with the Iraqi people this coming Monday morning.
You are totally overreacting. Reading your post one would think the Gestapo rules the American War machine. Get a grip.
OH, JAY, BABY: BY THE PENTAGON’S OWN ESTIMATE: 70-90% OF THE ABU GHRAIB PRISONERS WERE PERFECTLY INNOCENT OF ANYTHING (LET ALONE TERRORISM). We just abused people for our jollies
I don’t care if they all were innocent. Do you expect a court system like ours to spring up over night? Suspects are detained. That is the nature of war. Also, a FEW people got their jollies. It’s idiotic to project the work of 20 fools onto 130,000 troops.
You said: As to Gitmo, the Pentagon ALREADY released between 1/3 and 1/2 the detainees (after years) acknowledging they had no meaningful evidence as to them.
Then create a Save-The-Potential-Scumbag Relief Fund so we can airlife lawyers over to Iraq. Until that country stabilizes more innocent people will be detained than would otherwise be detained if it were stabilized.
You said: If that’s the kind of country you want, babe– one that locks up and tortures INNOCENT PEOPLE who have no recourse (which is the dictionary definition of “dictatorship”) then you’re welcome to it, man.
‘You want some prozac with that cheese? Name one war in history that was executed to perfection. What happened at Abu Shithole was noted, the people who did it are gonna do time.
You said: Right now, we’re still mostly a free country. We have a choice to stop going down this road. You seem to want to step on the accelerator. I pity you, for that, man. I pity you.
The kind of country I want is one that lives without the prospect of experiencing another act of terrorism.
You are making a supreme mountain out of a mole hill. Some prisoners at one Iraqi prison are abused and an unknown number are being held at Gitmo who Might be innocent, and suddenly America is swirling down the shitter of moral ambiguity, Bush is Hitler, conservative war hawks are modern day Gestapo, and we’re gonna lose everything we worked so hard for and we’ll never, ever be able to get it back.
Shit, now I need a drink.
And save your pity for the next idiot I see burning a flag.
‘Gotta back to work, now.
I don’t care if they all were innocent.
Well, Jay, I guess you’ve made your point.
It’s about time.