I again just think that with our country needing to take care of some of its issues we need to quit focusing on trying to govern the rest of the world.
I can’t help but be frustrated hearing this over and over again.
We have not been sticking our nose in other countries without any reason since the 40’s. The fact that we are asked to be in most places and be part of things like NATO, does not mean we have to be there. We get things in exchange for our presents and in most cases this actually benefits all parties involved.
The internal problems are and will always be an issue but are not the fault of the president or the congress for that matter but the problem that we the people are too stupid and complacent to do anything about it. We vote the same people into office and give them the power to do things to us but then we blame the president who has nothing to do with the issues we face in our daily lives.
Yes, someone mentioned us being the first to help in crisis, no doubt about it.....but look at Myanamar, they as their own sovereign country refused our help. Whether its right or wrong, why do we think it is our right to say so. Maybe not helping for awhile, will not make us so threatening to other countries and calm tensions down all over the world.
I also get very frustrated with this idea that we are forcing others to take our help. Let’s be very frank about Burma, the UN, not the US but the UN was trying to find a way to invade Burma and take over the government to ‘aid’ the people. We stood on the sidelines and worked through our diplomats to find a way to aid the people but we didn’t. China did and so did a few other countries. But my point is that the UN, not the US, has been doing a lot of things that they should not be doing, which causes us, the US to react and to provide military assistance and aid and then we get blamed.
Iraq, for all it is worth is not Bush’s war, it is our war. Iraq was caused not by the US but by the UN, go and learn what resolutions have been passed and what we were asking the UN to let us do back in the early 90’s.
No one is threatened by us.
Oh and one other thing, I was reading a request from the international Red Cross, it seems that they are rather ****ed off at the UN because they are going into places that the UN will not go into and are running out of money. I think we need to shift every dime from the UN to the IRC to support the work they do.
But by doing that refocus our money and strength on our own problems become an example again. Pelosi didn't have anything to do with the gas increase, shoot that was happening before her. It didn't seem like a big deal when it was going from a dollar to two dollars but that increase started shortly after 9/11.
Well Pelosi and congress has EVERYTHING to do with the high prices we have today. While other countries are providing incentives for their oil companies to drill and find more natural resources, our congress refuses to let us even explore at the same time blaming the oil companies for the high prices. The bigger issue is we set aside ANWR to explore and drill for oil but we can’t touch it. Ecologically speaking it is nothing in the bigger picture of things and there is no wildlife or even anyone visiting that part of the area to be affected by using the area for Oil but congress will not permit anyone to go up there, so I ask why are we being held hostage by our own congress if Pelosi and congress has nothing to do with the price of oil?
In history I kinda remember the U.S threatened an embargo on Japan and provoked the attack on Pearl...If it weren't for you guys, Europe had only the Germans to fight....Your government was only too happy to sell arms to Great Britian and profit from the war....you only got into it because Japan attacked you...
The American government was asked for help as early as 1940 and request denied....But I also remember British and Canadian troops in Burma and the Phillapines because the U.S was getting their butts whipped as well....
SO all things being equal it was a collective effort on everyones part.
We did have oil and scrap metal embargo on the Japanese but it wasn’t instant and it wasn’t all that effective. The problem was we were seeing china just get destroy by the Japanese and hearing what was going on over there was too much. Remember that Nanking was so horrible that the German’s in Nanking were told not to send back any more pictures because Hitler could not take see the carnage. We acted through what we though were proper channels and did not make any threats to the Japananese. What ended up happening was the Japanese attacked us, the US, the UK and the Dutch. They also fought the Russians
Were there Canadian troops in a US territory?
The Iranians are lunatics. Agreed. The rhetoric they get away with is scary. I wish Iraq was stronger, there would be some balance there. We "helped" Iraq in the 80's during the Iran - Iraq war. I think we went after the wrong nation......however if we just left well enough alone.
Iraq is a lot stronger now than it was 6 months ago, but the Iranain thing is that we can’t go to war with them, we have to help the people who are now seeing success in Iraq to change their government. Talking to Iranians where I used to work and a few who live near me, I hear the same thing – if the US attacks them, they will defend the country regardless who is in charge but the people look at the US as hope and freedom. I think there is a balance that is becoming stronger but it will all take time and we have become so impatient over things here.
When Clinton left office, didn't we have a balanced budget? I'm afraid for my kids in 10 to 20 years what they will be facing. But I still believe we have to take care of affairs at home before abroad. Spend some of this missle defense money on creating jobs and the homeless.
Our culture is not like Canada, or England or the Swiss but our culture for most of our history has been about the individual. Where the other countries it is about the state and a collective mass. We used to praise success, we used to praise people who pulled themselves out of the mess but since our ‘war on poverty’ we no longer do that. In fact as of the first of the year, we have a country that 51% of the people receive some sort of benefit directly from the government, and I don’t mean tax related.
In order for things like socialized medicine to actually work here in this country, we have to finish destroying the idea that the individual has rights over the collective mass. That also means we have to raise taxes to pay for it because we can’t afford any system to be standing on its own right from the start.
Now the thing is, when you say you don’t want to have you children, children’s children or their children pay for any of this, you are on the right track but miss a few things along the way.
The absolutely first thing that you miss is that we need to go back to allowing people to work for their money and their goals, not to tax them on their labor. This means going back to the individual over the collective mass. We won’t with the preset congress or a candidate who says he is going to ‘save’ the middle class. Obama for all intent and purpose wants to put more controls on the people and squeeze more money out of them to make things equal. Remember this country was not built on everyone being equal but everyone having an equal chance to succeed.
The second thing that you miss is that defense should always come first, that is the job of our federal government first and foremost. We borrow for our defense, so when you think that we can shift money from one pile to another, it will all balance out but it does not – we are still borrowing.
The third thing you miss is social security (I am not talking about retirement benefits) has been in the hole for years and again in a different form we borrow to cover the expenses for this. In order for us to get out of the mess, we need to retire the programs that are not only
We can’t create jobs with money that is being spent on defense or other programs.
We create jobs by;
Allowing people to lift themselves up
By not taxing labor
By removing constraints on individuals to plan and save for their own future
See where I am going with this?
No I don't like the fuel prices, but I attribute that to Bush. I believe the speculators will have the prices go down when the rest of the world sees that we have a president that isn't so confrontational, no matter who it is.
Bush can lower the price of oil on the world market by telling the world he will push for coal to gas plants, building nuke plants on an accelerated scale and by demanding congress to open up drilling in the gulf, ANWR and even the great lakes. AND yes Turtle, he can use NASA to also come up with improvements to the present technologies we have instead of spending millions on using the shuttle as a taxis service for toilet parts and condoms.
Oh mypie, no disrespect but get a grip on things and learn what Hitler and others were like before saying things like that. You have no clue that Obama is closer to Hitler than Bush can ever be but Obama is more of a socialist than Hitler was. You do know that Churchill made the comment that if he met Hitler, he would not have gone to war with him because the guy had the same charisma and warm personality to a lot of leaders and that this same style appears in Obama. Remember that Hitler ran the National Socialist Workers Party, pretty close to the democratic party who supports unions and ‘the middle class’, don’t you think?
