61. Here is a link to the signers of the, "Project For A New American Century."

http://rightweb.irc-online.org/charts/pnac-chart.htm

I think it's kind of sweet that bob and I both agree that they are kooks.

For those of you as intellectually lazy as bob, I've included a partial list of the KOOKS who have signed the, "PNAC."

Richard "Dick" Cheney
Donald Rumsfeld
Jeb Bush
Elliot Abrams
William J. Bennett
Edwin Meese III
Dan Quayle
Steven Forbes
Paul Weyrich
R. James Woolsey
Robert Zoelick

the list goes on buy my tolerance doesn't. I've provided the link.

Republicans, you should be ashamed of yourselves for not knowing this stuff. These are the goals of the bush-cheney junta. You support them.

Captain Negative at 9:27PM on Jul 9th 2008

62. WE ARE WATCHING A TRUE LIBERAL IN ACTION.
THEIR POLICIES DON'T WORK.
THEIR OBJECTIVES ARE OPPOSED BY THE MAJORITY.
THEIR MOTIVES ARE NOT IN THE BEST INTERESTS OF OUR COUNTRY.
THEY CANNOT BE HONEST ABOUT THOSE POLICIES, OBJECTIVES AND MOTIVES AND STILL GET ELECTED.
WE ARE WATCHING OBAMA DO WHAT ALL LIBERALS AND DEMOCRATS HAVE TO DO TO GET ELECTED.
HE IS VERY DANGEROUS.

CK at 9:38PM on Jul 9th 2008

63. The USS Ross, an Aegis-class destroyer, has taken up station off the coast of Lebanon. Military observers speculate it is there to help defend Israel from missile attacks.
Captain Negative at 8:26PM on Jul 9th 2008
---------------------------------------------------
The USS Ross (DDG-71) is an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer in the United States Navy.
Cruisers are the only Aegis class ships in the Navy and they are capable of shooting down missles possessed by Iran.---back to the topic.

Obama is flip-floping for one simple reason, he doesn't have a clue. He thinks the world is like Chicago and Illinois. His tax plan sucks, you want an 18% raise on your taxes, vote for Obie. Every position he took to get support and $$$ from the left was just that. His handlers are realizing that they have an empty suit on their hands and Obie is just doing what he's told to try and move to the center.
Guess what? The center is tired of getting used like a condom by both parties. $4.00 gas and Obie is all for 'limited drilling'. The center doesn't want limited drilling. Like it or not oil is going to be our major source of energy simply because all the infrastructure is in place to refine and distribute it. Odd that icons of the left like Al Gore, John Edwards get to use tens of thousands of kilowatts and Kerry and Kennedy block windmills off their coastline while the rest of us paupers have to put up with them, and they still don't produce adequate energy. The Sun is the only viable soufrce of energy from hydrogen and there is no growing enough of corn, cane, beets or hemp to get what we require.
You better start to love global warming because plants like warm sunshine and CO2. Another hoax perpetrated on the public. The same NASA engineer who said we only have 20 years left, said that 20 years ago. He's since upped the ante with a few more years added on until Armageddon.
PNAC, the Downing Street memos, Joe 'the mouth' Wilson couldn't find any evidence of 'urainium purchases' by Saddam, yet we just removed 500 tons from Iraq that was sealed by inspectors from the UN. That's odd, look up what Niger exports that Saddam would have wanted.
Obie will say anything that he thinks will get him elected, but this time the middle, D's and R's aren't buying into 'tell me what I want to hear and blow in my ear when you do it! Obies handlers have their hands full. Jesse Jackson had to apologize for saying he'd like to "rip his balls off" and to top it off, his sone that he got the Budwieser distributorship for by extorting Bud Corporate had the nerve to say his dad "shouldn't say such nasty things" Oops, truth will out. If and when there's a riot in Denver at the Convention, you can write off the next 4 years, no democrat in the white house. Hillary was a better shot, but the bigshots in the party decided that the Clinton years were over and ripped her guts out, which is only getting what she deserved for doing it to others.
PS: Thanks for your compliment Bob J.

Ded at 9:45PM on Jul 9th 2008

64. Captain,

The Israelis are probably the most independent thinking sovereign nation in the world, they have to be, they live in the mouth of the lion.

We owe a debt of gratitude to their veracity & expedience of carrying out what is just & having the balls to do it contrary to what others think.

In '81 when they took out the Osiraq nuclear facility under Saddam's nose they did the entire world's dirty work regardless of what we or Europe thought at that time. It wasn't apparent then what the world knows today.

If it had not been for their bravery & willingness to defend themselves then ten yrs later in the first gulf war we would have possibly been facing the threat of nuclear warheads upon our arrival in Kuwait.

Yes, you are correct that the US will defend Israel's sovereignty but your relenting thoughts of a predestined political plan to win this election just doesn't stand up to the fact of what might be inevitable.

Try to reason for once that the sake of the worlds future does not belong in the hands of madmen like Ahmadinejad.

He's got 80 tons of enriched uranium supposedly brewing as we speak, do you really want that?

Bobby at 10:04PM on Jul 9th 2008

65. "Not much I can do for you if you're determined to be an intellectual SLACKER, bob"

Look, Cap.

I'm really trying to stay civil here and stick to the topic and perhaps I made light of what is a serious subject, whether one believes it or not. So I'm sorry for that.

But honestly, when I read that stuff - regardless of the side of the political spectrum - I just can't help wondering what the attraction is.

Right or left, it's always about a bogeyman of some sort.

And to be honest, I find it a bit arrogant. Because to believe most of it you pretty much have to believe that all the other countries and people of the world (Israel aside, naturally) are nothing but clueless dupes ripe for the picking by the bogeyman du jour. Nothing more than chessmen to be moved around a worldwide game board according to a plan laid out in secret by forces of evil who believe they're forces for good.

I give the rest of the world a little more credit than that.

Maybe it's intellectual slacking to you. But to me, believing that some sort of Dr Evil character in a bunker is pulling the strings of not only an entire nation, but an entire planet, is pretty simplistic thinking.

bob at 10:01PM on Jul 9th 2008

66. Bob

You are right of course about PNAC being a wacky think tank for the neocon right but you are totally mistaken in likening it to the Bilderburgers or the Tri-lateral commission.

Unlike those two institutions, the founder of PNAC and its initial signatories did not view PNAC’s aims as something sinister to be kept secret from the American public and so they posted their mission statement for all to see on their now defunct web site.

One of the things I used to enjoy doing to my Republican friends was to ask them “what if I told you there was a super secret organization out there that…”. Then I would describe PNAC and how they stated in their mission statement that they recognized it would be difficult to get Americans to agree to the changes necessary to get PNAC rolling “absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor"

When these friends, right on cue, accused me spreading left wing propaganda, I would gleefully reveal that PNAC was not some super secret shadowy organization at all, but rather an open and vocal organization that felt they had nothing to hide (even after 9/11) and filled with household conservative political names and pundits, some of whom served in Bush’s cabinet or as outside advisors in various capacities (when they weren’t related to him that is such as Jeb Bush).

Disregard the false notions that 9/11 was planned or allowed to happen or that the SCOTUS appointed Bush as this has nothing to do with the formation of PNAC. The fact is that Bush and Cheney (another signatory to the PNAC mission statement) and a whole host of prominent neocons looked toward Bush’s presidency as a path to implementing PNAC.

But the fact remains that PNAC was real,

It was not secret

Its members were mainstream neocons.

And 9/11 was ultimately used to start implementing PNAC’s mission as illustrated by our invasion of Iraq which was one of the goals spelled out in PNAC.

The fact that so many rank and file Republicans are unaware of PNAC as a non-conspiratorial and non-secret organization/plan, serves to underscore how so many Americans turn a blind eye toward what their party is up to and this can also apply to Democrats when we gain the Whitehouse.

Obama has been my choice for president for some time and if he becomes president I am not going to stop worrying about what my government is up to.

Given what has become of this country in the past seven plus years, it appears to me that too many of the Republicans who post here only distrust government when a Democrat is in the Whitehouse even as a Republican is running the US into the ground.

Uncle Meat at 10:03PM on Jul 9th 2008

67. Fabricated "windfall" profits no matter how extreme they seem will be challenged & defeated in court.

Drilling to offset demand is the only way to bring competition back to the markets. Taxation will not fill up a gas tank!
xxxx

Neither will drilling.

You need to watch T. Boone Pickens' new ads. He was the bankroller of the swift boat infamy but he's suddenly seen something that liberals have seen all along.

As a result, Pickens has had to decide whether he's in the oil business or the energy business and he chose energy. Trains had to do that a while back when planes came along, too.

He's probably still more libertarian than not, but he says we can't drill our way out of this.

When somebody like Pickens says that you should listen. He's no liberal by any stretch.

He wants to use solar and wind energy to free up mehthane and he's going on from there. He promises to furnish more detail in his upcoming ads.

Now if you and mcsame and bush have their way it will play more like this.

In about ten years some private company will have a little oil that it will sell on the open market. How we would benefit from that at all is far from clear. Even mcsame says the advantage would be 'psychological' but that smells like a crock to me.

I noticed you said a lot of things but you couldn't refute what I wrote, viz. the windfall profits tax over nine years historically did indeed put a stop to windfall profits over $30 per barrel by I think it was August, 1988.

In 1988, prices had stabilized at $28 per barrel and the tax was no longer necessary.

Whatever your prejudices, those are facts - I lived through it and that was the way it played - no instant replays necessary.

And it will work again.

Additionally speculation on oil futures is unregulated. The Enron loophole needs to be closed immediately. That would show an instant reduction in oil prices.

Libertarianism has been around for well over 200 years and it is a failure as an economic philosophy and certainly as a governing philosophy.

States don't 'wither away' under libertarianism any more than they do under communism. Governments just keep growing. Nature abhors a vacuum.

What comes out is what we have now. The wealthiest 300 people in the U.S. have more money than the poorest 150 million.

Since reagan, wealth has been redistributed by a corporate controlled government in a deregulated economy that makes gravity wells out of the wealthiest businesses.

By comparison, under Eisenhower when individual income taxes were much higher, business owners and investors kept their money in the businesses and in circulation.

We had prosperity then to the point that a single middle class income could support a family, a middle class family could own a home and a new car every three or four years and the kids could go to college.

For that kind of prosperity to exist again in America, we'll have to start regulating businesses that profit at the expense of America or her citizens and charge the greater users of the Commons for their actual proportional increase of stress upon them.

Clif Kuplen at 10:03PM on Jul 9th 2008

68. yet we just removed 500 tons from Iraq that was sealed by inspectors from the UN
xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

...because it didn't belong to Iraq. Also it was low grade, usable for nuclear power, not weapons.

This isn't exactly secret. It's on every newscast I've heard.

If it were weapons grade you'd see nothing else on foxfart and you'd hear nothing else from cnn, msnbc and the majors. They're all corporate owned and they profit more from less regulation too.

The news they give you benefits them and their sponsors, not you. They're supply, and this is a supply side economy. You're at the bottom of the trickle, where you will remain if we get the third bush term.

I see a lot of your post is just standard neocon boilerplate crap they always come up with - global warming's a myth, it's ok to out a cia program monitoring Iran's nuclear program during wartime for revenge and barack's a muslim terrorist communist black retard drug munching elitist ghetto hippie who steal girls from karl rove at the country club.

Your party isn't real consistent in how they portray him.

Take just one herring kibble: Obama has made it clear that if you make less than $65,000, you will get a $1000 tax CUT.

If you make up to 97K you'll pay a little more self employment tax. If you make $250,000 or more, you'll pay what you paid under Clinton.

Now how about any democrat anywhere who has a plan to raise taxes 18% on people with incomes of under $250,000?

YOu know you can't name one, let alone prove there would be such a plan.

It is therefore a red herring - a rev babymama hussein madrossa fistjab.

Do you have ANY issue you actually back Mcsame's plan on?

Me either.

Clif Kuplen at 10:24PM on Jul 9th 2008

69. "And 9/11 was ultimately used to start implementing PNAC’s mission as illustrated by our invasion of Iraq which was one of the goals spelled out in PNAC"

I happen to believe that 9/11 was used as an excuse to attack Iraq. I think it was basically nothing more than a bunch of leftovers from Bush Sr's Administration who felt like they got their dicks stepped on first time out and who were determined to finish the job, one way or the other.

That being said, in order for some sort of "plan" to still be running as designed, you have to do so many intellectual backflips (neocons falling on swords left and right for the "cause", for instance) that it just gets untenable. You'd have to believe that every misstep and mistaken assumption and misstatement was calculated for us to arrive at precisely where we are today.

And again, I go back to the almost complete lack of any consideration given to the fact that outside our borders is a whole world full of countries and people who act of their own volition in ways that have as great an impact on the rest of the world as we do.

I just can't take that leap.

bob at 10:29PM on Jul 9th 2008

70. Senator Obama was seated next to a little girl on an airplane.

He turned to her and said, 'Let's talk. I've heard that flights
go quicker if you strike up a conversation with your fellow passenger.'

The little girl, who had just opened her book, closed it slowly and said to the Senator, 'What would you like to talk about?'

He said, 'Oh, I don't know,' 'How about nuclear power?' and he smiles.

'OK, ' she said. 'That could be an interesting topic. But let me ask you a question first.

A horse, a cow, and a deer all eat the same stuff - grass - .

Yet a deer excretes little pellets, while a cow turns out a flat
patty, and a horse produces clumps of dried grass.

Why do you suppose that is?'

Obama, visibly surprised by the little girl's intelligence, thinks about it and says, 'Hmmm, I have no idea.'

To which the little girl replies, 'Do you really feel qualified to discuss nuclear power when you don't know shit?

Jim at 10:46PM on Jul 9th 2008

71. Captain Negative

Did I see you taking my name in vein??

You have a problem with me correcting a post I made??

You have a problem with me posting on another site using a different name???

Robert OKane at 11:10PM on Jul 9th 2008

72. Clif,

you've skewed the landscape as usual.

Carter deregulated pricing controls on domestic oil back in '79 causing it to double to the highest historical price ever aside from today. Mideast political upheaval with the overthrow of the Shah & the Iraq/Iranian war dismantled OPEC's unity & caused wild gyrations in world supply.

This is the actual historical chart of global oil pricing. You quoted the price of 28 p/bbl in '88. That was the adjusted price for inflation in real time today. In '86 Brent light crude was under 9 bucks a bbl. In '88 it stabilized around $15. Pricing on the far right is ADJUSTED for INFLATION CLIF..


1980 $37.42 $97.68
1981 $35.75 $84.58
1982 $31.83 $70.91
1983 $29.08 $62.74
1984 $28.75 $59.47
1985 $26.92 $53.76
1986 $14.44 $28.29
1987 $17.75 $33.56
1988 $14.87 $27.05

As usual, your arguments are based on how you see the world Clifford.

Carter's windfall taxation had absolutely nothing to do with world oil pricing. Especially back then it was solid economics of supply & demand.

You seem to mix era history always with the greed & supposed hatred of America today. There was a time when true economic factors spelled out how markets reacted as a reality of circumstances, not the same as today.

One more reality Clifford, we've been losing our grip on oil production for the past 30 yrs now. You make it sound like the democrats have been powerless during all that time to implement a better energy policy. Now you claim that that same democratic policy of holding us back from utilizing our own resources hasn't been the largest part of the problem all this time. Now you say it's stupid to think about 5 yrs down the road utilizing those same resources to OFFSET our domestic needs.

That's the punchline Clifford, to OFFSET you simpleton. Billions of excess barrels of oil & trillions of cubic ft. of natural gas should just sit there for all time according to you & your detached party.

Bobby at 11:16PM on Jul 9th 2008

73. Obama is holding Hillary in his back pocket, dangling her to appease her angry supporters....but he will likely choose someone else if he feels he doesn't need her to win. There are a lot of things I can't stand about Obama, but near the top is his arrogance. He thinks he's smarter than black Americans and White Americans, and can manipulate both. He is a master manipulator, and disingenuous to the core. I left the Democratic Party after this sham of a primary, and will gladly vote for McCain. Whatever he is, it's more geniune, and more experienced than Obama.

Hako at 11:42PM on Jul 9th 2008

74. Cenk

How about a little outrage at ABC doctoring a story?????

ABC News had Martha Raddatz cover a recent trip to Iraq by Sen. John McCain. Raddatz was ecorted by an Army Captain and an enlisted soldier and she queried GI's walking past them. The two Army personel kept count of the soldiers as Raddatz asked 60 GI's who they plan on voting for in November. 54 said McCain,4 for Obama and 2 for Hillary.

The following night ABC presented a skewed news story, showing a total of 5 GI's being asked by Raddatz how they were going to vote in November, 3 for Obama and 2 for Hillary. No mention was made of the 54 GI's who said they would vote for McCain.

The reporter obviously thought her escorts was comprised of brainless morons who wouldn't see what was going onin front of them. Wouldn't be the first time a reporter in the MSM turned out to be the brainless moron.

Cenk-you missed that story about our troops in Iraq.

Robert OKane at 11:59PM on Jul 9th 2008

75. Take just one herring kibble: Obama has made it clear that if you make less than $65,000, you will get a $1000 tax CUT.
Clif Kuplen at 10:24PM on Jul 9th 2008
----------------------------------------------------

New data from the IRS will be out in a few weeks on who pays how much in taxes. My contacts at the Treasury Department tell me that for the first time in decades, and perhaps ever, the richest 1% of tax filers will have paid more than 40% of the income tax burden. The top 50% will account for 97% of all federal income taxes, while the bottom 50% will have paid just 3%.

But Barack Obama has decided the rich still don't pay enough. He would redistribute the tax burden even more heavily on small business owners and the entrepreneurial class (two-thirds of the tax filers in the highest income tax bracket are small business owners.) The nonpartisan Tax Foundation's Scott Hodge has just crunched the numbers on the Obama plan and concludes that "more than $131 billion would be redistributed from the top 1 percent of taxpayers to all other taxpayers."

Sounds fair, no? Only 1.13 million taxpayers, out of some 128 million, would end up paying higher taxes, according to the Obama camp.

But in the real world, who ends up paying a tax is not just the person on whose tax return it falls. History has demonstrated time and again that raising tax rates on the wealthy in the name of "redistribution" leads to so much income shifting, reduced work and investment, and redeployment of money into tax shelters, that the rich usually pay less, not more taxes, at higher rates. The burden of paying for government shifts to others, including some who may not file an income tax return at all -- because they no longer have jobs or no longer earn enough to pay income tax.

Economist Glenn Hubbard of Columbia University has shown that in 1970, when the highest tax rate was 70%, the top 1% shouldered 16.7% of the income tax burden. Today the top tax rate is 35% and the same class of taxpayers pays a whopping 39% of the burden. The worst way to "soak the rich," Mr. Hubbard finds, is to raise tax rates.

Somebody needs to give the Obama campaign a refresher on all this. The Tax Foundation's Mr. Hodge wonders: "Can a tax system so focused on redistribution be compatible with economic growth?" Probably not but the Obama brain trust wants to give it a try anyway.

-- Stephen Moore

You can add in the loss of the child deduction as well. You might want to leave the Eisenhower era and avoid the Carter years as well. Eisenhower had the aftermath of WWII and the cease-fire at Panmunjong with an economy booming from vets going to school and getting jobs, the parents of the "Boomers" making the American dream you so despise become a reality. Fast forward to Carter who was politically inept as far as the economy was concerned that double dight inflation ate up a paycheck faster than Iraq does. His ineptness when Iran, in effect, declared war on the US by taking over our Embassy and having the staff held for 444 days showed just how much Carter had on the ball.

You can call what I write boilerplate as opposed to the constant repetition of fascist corporatism combined with your other trademark combacks. You should get a job as a shill for Obie. He needs a spotter for the flipflops. Toodles.

Ded at 12:11AM on Jul 10th 2008