http://www.masslive.com/newsflash/topstories/index.ssf?/base/politics-5/1128536946167451.xml&storylist=

Uh, yeah, but this isn't what you guys told us two years ago.  Whatever happened to "Mission Accomplished"? 

Cheney conflates the Iraq war and the "War on Terror."  He's now telling us it will take decades of patient effort to get the Iraqis to love freedom enough to make it for themselves. 

Does he think we're all on dope or something?  Whether we stay there another twenty months or another twenty years, we're only holding off the inevitable civil war among ethnic groups and religious factions.  Look at Yugoslavia.  Marshal Tito ruled with an iron fist for thirty years.  It took another ten years after his death for the whole phony conglomeration to crumble, but crumble it did.  Well, we're surely not prepared to install a Marshal Tito in Iraq are we? 
I mean, there's this hogwash going around about how we're going to train all these Iraqi battalions to do our bidding, but Cheney is still saying "we" will be over in Iraq for decades.
WTF?!  Cheney's rhetoric smacks of the half-baked lies of a garden variety sociopath who cares for nothing but getting his own way.
>:(


The War on Terror is the sequel to the Cold War.  It justifies a fascist surveillance state domestically, an imperial foreign policy, and pork barrel defense contracting out the yingyang!
::)

No need to add to that.  You have said it all.  ;)

http://www.masslive.com/newsflash/topstories/index.ssf?/base/politics-5/1128536946167451.xml&storylist=

Uh, yeah, but this isn't what you guys told us two years ago.  Whatever happened to "Mission Accomplished"? 

Cheney conflates the Iraq war and the "War on Terror."  He's now telling us it will take decades of patient effort to get the Iraqis to love freedom enough to make it for themselves. 

Does he think we're all on dope or something?  Whether we stay there another twenty months or another twenty years, we're only holding off the inevitable civil war among ethnic groups and religious factions.  Look at Yugoslavia.  Marshal Tito ruled with an iron fist for thirty years.  It took another ten years after his death for the whole phony conglomeration to crumble, but crumble it did.  Well, we're surely not prepared to install a Marshal Tito in Iraq are we? 
I mean, there's this hogwash going around about how we're going to train all these Iraqi battalions to do our bidding, but Cheney is still saying "we" will be over in Iraq for decades.
WTF?!  Cheney's rhetoric smacks of the half-baked lies of a garden variety sociopath who cares for nothing but getting his own way.
>:(


The War on Terror is the sequel to the Cold War.  It justifies a fascist surveillance state domestically, an imperial foreign policy, and pork barrel defense contracting out the yingyang!
::)


Yes, yes, but what makes it worse is that the defense contracts are still focused on fighting the last was, like the French with the Maginoe line (sp) after WWI. 

The War on Terror is the sequel to the Cold War.  It justifies a fascist surveillance state domestically, an imperial foreign policy, and pork barrel defense contracting out the yingyang!
::)


That is one of the most important statements I've seen made here in a long time. The "virtues" of today's Republican elite were at their zenith during the Cold War under Reagan. When the Cold War ended, Americans started to lose that fear, and we lived without it for over a decade. In that decade, we were able to bring the more socially progressive legislation into the main stream because we were no longer concentrating on beating the enemy, and we could focus more on bettering our own country. Now with the war on terrorism, the neocons have their golden opportunity to bring back the good ol' days of Reagan by fueling the economy on fear, and raking in the benefits of war manufacturing. It's even worse now that the poor have been villified, and the rich deified to the point where even working class and low class individuals come to admire someone just because they have money, and to buy into the notion of meritocracy. "The rich are rich because they deserve it, they worked harder than anyone else." When in most cases the fact is the rich are rich because they were born rich, and/or they have utuilised the labour of other people to get where they are, and they stay where they are by working to supress the lower classes.

People say that poverty is invanquishable, but it's simply not true. With the immense resources we have, extreme poverty can disappear to the point where a "poor" family, is just one that doesn't have cable or drives an economy car instead of a Mercedes SUV. "If it's so easy, smarty pants, why hasn't it been done?" you ask... well the answer is that there has been a lack of motivation for it on all parts. Orwell said that the upper class works to keep themselves upper class, and so forth on down the line. It just so happens that the halls of congress and the White House are and always have been filled with the upper class, only looking out for number one! People are selfish, but the American upper class and bourgeoisie are the most selfish of all. They don't have the best interests of the country on their minds, all they care about is keeping themselves at the top, or at least in the middle in the case of the bourgeoisie.

I've got news for a lot of people... you're NOT middle class. Most families who maintain the notion that they are middle class are actually working class, and they could lose even that second-tier status in a heart beat if things don't start getting taken care of. The working class comprises about 70% of the US population (Wikipedia - "Social Structure of the U.S."), there is enough clout in that 70% to take advantage of the power of the federal government to force economic change to create a society, not necessarly classless, but with the middle class expanded and the label of "lower class" virtually done away with. Today's "lower class" would move up to working class and this would allow for more access to higher education, better jobs, and would allow for more class elevation. Then someone really could "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" as the adage goes, and it wouldn't take a goddam miracle for it to happen.

Bravo, McDonald!

The American public might change their minds if they understood that America is not a rich country.  America is a country with a lot of rich people in it, but the country itself is in hawk to the central banks of China, Japan, India, and various private and public bonholders worldwide.

If there is no class struggle, the working classes will take it in the shorts no matter what kind of calamity visits our bedeviled republic. 
I remember having a discusstion with some collective farmers here in the Valley.  They were saying how they were showing the way of the future because when the oil supply runs out, we won't be able to transport produce long distance economically. 
They were talking about the end of cheap oil being a blow to bourgeois America.
I said yes, but it won't be a blow to the American bourgeoisie!  By the time we are so desperate for oil we can't ship iceberg lettuce from California, the Constitution will have been shredded, and you'll be indentured sharecroppers slaving off your debts to the man!
Who really gets hurt by high gas prices?  Rich people who drive Hummers or poor people who drive Toyotas?  Without class struggle, whatever misfortune befalls the rich shall befall the poor ten times over and then some!