And congrats to you Balta for eeking out the Lefty Award right from under me. It's probably because I finally bought a car recently.

I wasn't even nominated dudes.

s*** is rigged. Chicago politics.

Still trying to figure out why he's so widely respected on this forum.

 

 

 

LINK

"I suspended my campaign -- as did Senator Obama"

Just for the sake of benefit of the doubt, could he have meant Obama suspended campaigning? McCain said he shut down his operation. Obama stopped campaigning (if my memory servers me right), but kept his organization running at full steam ahead.

no you couldn't.

Unless you're a big fan of equivocation.

Speaking unto an audience of anti-immigration advocates, global-warming deniers, and members of the Tea Party Nation, former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin gave forth utterances Monday that reportedly opened the sixth seal of the Book of the Apocalypse.

 

"Wow, it's good to be here, just shootin' the breeze with a bunch of real, hardworking Americans who love their freedom," said Palin, her words echoing across the Idaho Falls Civic Auditorium as mighty tremors caused great unrest beneath the land and the sea. "So are the little guys like you and me gonna fight these Washington insiders with their big government agenda? You betcha we are!"

 

And lo, there was then a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair; and the moon became as blood; and "gosh" was spoken repeatedly; and the stars of heaven fell upon the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken by a mighty wind.

Link

Harry Reid has realized his job is in jeopardy.

I was referring to soxtalk members. He was cited on several response posts for the "best/favorite politician" thread...or whatever it was called.

It's a recent thing, in the last couple of years he's turned into a complete and total hack.

Link

I didn't realize that was an Onion article until the last sentence or so.

Tweet from journalist friend aamer madhani

aamermadhani

 

Just interviewed Ayad Jamal Aldin. Says U.S. will need to stay in #Iraq if Shiite religious parties win #March 7.

 

What do you think lost?

I don't understand what he's trying to say.

 

At this point it kind of doesn't even matter to me anymore. There's nothing we can do that can make Iraq any less of the clusterf*** it's eventually going to be.

Sullivan sums up my exact thoughts quite nicely:

 

I believe - and have said so for some time - that the US occupation will likely be in place as long as Iraq remains ungovernable. Which means the rest of my lifetime.The surge failed. The idea it succeeded in its critical criterion was and is untrue.

 

If Obama does not have the courage to withdraw regardless of the consequences, he will end up entrenching Bush's insane gamble, not ending it, as he was elected to do. If Obama increases troop levels in Afghanistan and extends Bush's timetable for leaving Iraq, why on earth did we support him? Those were McCain's policies. Why have elections if they are essentially meaningless?

 

Occupations are the foreign equivalent of entitlement programs. They never end. Why should Americans be denied basic access to health insurance because the money is going to sustain 50,000 troops in Germany, for Pete's sake, or to tamp down sectarian conflicts that have existed for centuries in a country we had no troops in for all of US history until 2003?

 

When will this madness end? Do we really have to go completely bankrupt and be forced to withdraw from these anachronistic pretensions? Are seven years not enough?

Obama always talked about increasing troop levels in Afghanistan.

Obama always talked about increasing troop levels in Afghanistan.

 

That was to "get the job done" whatever that meant. Now that it's obvious that we aren't going to make it better, his stupid surge is just going to replicate Iraq and we'll most likely be stuck in both places until my children become grandparents.

Now that it's obvious that we aren't going to make it better,

I'll admit some skepticism too, but really, this hasn't exactly been a bad week.

Obama is doing in Afghanistan pretty much exactly what he said he'd do during his campaign.

 

edit:

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles...fghan_strategy/

If elected, Obama says, he would immediately withdraw thousands of ground troops from Iraq and send them to Afghanistan to help undermanned US forces defeat the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

 

"It's time to refocus our attention on the war we have to win in Afghanistan," Obama said in a speech last week. "It is time to go after the Al Qaeda leadership where it actually exists."

Edited February 25, 201016 yr by StrangeSox

I'll admit some skepticism too, but really, this hasn't exactly been a bad week.

 

You're going to use Western media as your case for that? How many civilians were killed this week?

You're going to use Western media as your case for that? How many civilians were killed this week?

 

How many girls attempting to get an education didn't have acid thrown on them by the Taliban?

How many girls attempting to get an education didn't have acid thrown on them by the Taliban?

I don't know but why is that our business? What about the 5 million that have been killed in the Congo?

How many girls attempting to get an education didn't have acid thrown on them by the Taliban?

In my view, there are very few situations so bad that humanitarian war makes sense. Stopping the Khmer Rouge, something like that level.

 

I could easily respond to you by asking how many lives could have been saved if the money that is paying for this week's offensive was put into buying Mosquito Nets and providing anti-retroviral drugs in Africa. Or providing health care for 15% of Americans.

 

I can still believe there is a legitimate strategic reason for our presence in Afghanistan. I think the captures this week in Pakistan are part of that. But don't tell me you're killing people to make them free.

No, I wasn't, I was just making a flippant emotional argument to counter BS's emotional argument.

I don't know but why is that our business? What about the 5 million that have been killed in the Congo?

 

You're a progressive; shouldn't you be looking past national identities and seeing them as another human being?

Let's listen to the women of Afghanistan and see what they have to say.

 

Warning this website has some shocking images.

 

http://www.rawa.org/index.php

Health care summitt

 

I'm guessing after the positive reviews of showing the shallowness of republican obstruction at the question time, now when it's showed they will take the republican talking points from admiral ackbar that it was a trap, and the republicans great proposals were never seriously considered.

The Sunlight foundation is streaming the summit. And they're using modern technology to display, ever time a person speaks, the campaign contributions they've receivedf from the Health Care industry.