Cheers,

I thought the same thing, recently, while watching the History Channel, a show about all the plans and models that Hitler and Albert Speer made for building enormous, ludicrous monuments and domes and structures all over Berlin, trying to make it look like some Cecil B. Demille Roman period film. Didn’t those guys have day-jobs? Didn’t they have a war going on? Weren’t their in-boxes filling up with letters saying, “We’re going to lose if we don’t stop diddling ourselves!”

Apparently true believers don’t worry about such practical matters.

When I hear people say that our Democratic leaders don’t have enough “vision,” I say thank God. There’s already way too much vision for me.

Our presence in Iraq never had anything to do with the plight of the Iraqi people or any other bullshit claim Bush & Co. made. It was all about securing the oil, and opening up the region to western companies with the Iraqis as cheap labor. They are not stupid, but we have been, and we have all been screwed.

The neo-cons hate government, and think private ownership – particularly by corporations – is the panacea for all. They have successfully and quietly privatized security with over 100,000 private contractors unaccountable to anyone, and our own roads, water treatment facilities, and other core infrastructure is already being sold out from under us.

If the Democrats hadn’t taken back Congress, we’d all be pledging allegiance to the United States of America, INC.

You didn’t get the memo? The French are your *friends* again, you’re supposed to stop projecting your own self loathing homophobia on them, and just quietly resume hating yourself for still hiding in the closet…

Comment by Mr. President

Can’t find him, so you call him names? About what I’d expect from a Texas Turd-Bucket …

No wonder the USA GOP supports the later.

Don’t you get it? We don’t want Iraqis to open and run their own factories and businesses. We want them to work in OUR factories and Starbucks franchises for minimum wage – that’s Iraqi minimum wage.

How are we going to be able to set up factories to turn out goods cheaper than the Chinese, and create Tech Centres that cost less to run and staff than the ones in India if we go and give the Iraqis the power to run and control and profit from their own factories and hard work?

What? You think we invaded and occupied Iraq at a cost of 3600 American lives and half a trillion dollars just to go and let liberated Iraqis profit off their new found freedom and independence?

Bloody Lefties! Wake up to yourselves!

All the best,

A Dedicated Free Market Capitalist

(and yes, I’m as shocked as many here by the idea that the State Department would even think of interfering in this way. Clearly giving the Iraqis permanent jobs and incomes would solve many of the social problems there)

Conservatives will always accept their own failure at home or abroad over someone else’s success. Failure IS an option.

Comment by snarkmaster

* “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.” — Henry Kissinger

* “Not a nut or bolt shall reach Chile under Allende. Once Allende comes to power we shall do all within our power to condemn Chile and all Chileans to utmost deprivation and poverty.” — Edward M. Korry, U.S. Ambassador to Chile, upon hearing of Allende’s election.

And here we are again. Better the country implode than go Communist-lite…er…socialist.

We had to burn the village in order to save it.

X(

Even when it is clear that “free markets” aren’t working, the neocons insist that they are. Rather than being satisfied with saying “free markets” work well most of the time, but there are instances where governmental or quasi-governmental (think trade federation, etc.) regulations might be desirable (due to externalities, market dynamics, etc.), the neocons, like all ideologues, must claim that the “free market” works perfectly all the time, even when it is perfectly clear it doesn’t.

Like all remaining Republicans, they’re totally divorced from reality. And if you point that out to you, they’ll resort to petty rhetorical tactics like ad hominem attacks (you’re a terrorist, you’re supporting the Islamofascists, etc.); anything to change the subject from the fact that they’re completely insane.

(I use “free markets” in quotes, of course, because such markets of course are only free from the perspective of owners of mass quantities of capital, and never from the perspective of workers, consumers, or commodity producers to name a few).