...hey, I was here first buckaroo! You'll have to hold down the
all-important 'Dispeptic Democrat' slot on the forum, and leave the cranky commie stuff to me.

Actually it was Bell Helicopter that was heavily tied to the Johnsons, in fact I belive the wealth of Lady Bird's family was based on Bell stock. Texas defense industries did very,very well in the Vietnam war. The cities of Dallas/Ft Worth would not exist today as a huge cities if it was not for Vietnam which brought Bell, Vought, General Dynamics, Pratt and Whitney etc to the middle of a freaking desert.

Johnson was the worst President we ever had. I am ashamed to claim him as a Democrat, and call me a conspiracy guy, I still believe he had JFK killed. No president is worthier of contempt, except for the present one. They are two Texas peas in a pod.

I bow to the Truth in Labeling Act, as exerted so well here by you, you Bolshevik turd.

....actually, that would be Trotsky's turd. I'm that lone long-forgotten floater swirling around the 'bowl' of American political thought and opinion.

So, no vacation in Mexico for you?

...me? I'm in the middle of a move, and home remodel projects back at the farm. No time for your bourgeois 'time-outs'. We proles are always hard at work for the motherland!!!

Can I at least be a "fellow traveler"?

Clinton Welfare Reform?????????????
 

The Republican Congress passed the welfare reform bill. Clinton veteod it twice before his political advisor convinced him to sign it. I give him credit for signing it, but let's get the facts straight. Most of his party was against it. They want people dum and dependent on the government so they will vote for the party that promises all types of wasteful programs.

I'll take a gallon of education myself.

My point was that we are under IMMINENT threat, supposedly. Can the government do more than one thing at once? C'mon Bot, they can't EVEN do one thing at once.
Did the country feel that gay marriage or (INSERT FAVORITE RELIGIOUS RIGHT BOGEYMAN HERE) was worthy of discussion on September 12, 2001? The freaking wacky comments by Jerry Falwell, about us bringing the attacks on ourselves, was shouted down by almost everyone.
I would prefer that Bush stay in his Jacuzzi forever, but for the time being he has his finger on the button AND took an oath "TO PRESERVE, PROTECT, BLAH,BLAH,BLAH......" I'm pretty sure that oath applies 24/7/365. So while they are raising the threat level in Washington DC as I write this, Bush is watching rubber duckies float around in his tub (and trying to figure out how they do that!) OK, not really, he's out running around the country campaigning. He is CinC, again for the time being, his primary responsibility is protecting us.
You are right about some of my facts. They are suppositions, like this one. Tom Ridge warns of imminent attacks 2 weeks ago, today they raise the threat level on Washington DC, and yet Bush wants to take a leisurely stroll past the 9/11 report and wait till after the election to act, if at all. Yeah, I want educated debate, and you've read the report yourself, I'm pretty sure there are portions of it that could be adopted RIGHT NOW. Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton on CNN said 2 1/2 years later we're still sitting ducks. Why? If this is the effective leadership Bush offers, and speaks about ALL THE TIME, we're screwed.
One more point, Do you think Bush has actually sat down and read the 9/11 Report cover to cover? BIAS ALERT: I don't.

Jim is correct, why should someone (beyond self-pride) go out and work for $5.15/hr when you can get a welfare check instead and work off the books on the side? Maybe if minimum wage was actually a living wage, say $7/hr, you could reasonably expect people to take some iniative and get a job. Remember, if they're on welfare it probably means they have failed a few times and were probably not excellent employees.

Right now welfare is such a tiny portion of our budget that if one is looking to cut wasteful spending there are much bigger concerns than welfare.

Red Herring Alert!
 

Examples of corporate welfare dwarfs individual welfare expenditures by wide margins. Fraud, contract padding, and pork barrel expenditures have a far more insidious negative impact on the federal budget. But, I guess it's always more fun to pick on the poor and defenseless--that's the American way.

Have you read Kill Zone? I read that book with a grain of salt, but the author did one hell of a job showing how the evidence fit his conclusions on what happened.

Kirk,
Is that like asking if I'm still beating my wife?
Dems like to assume they know more and better than everyone else. I've NEVER used "welfare" as a code word for anyone. Maybe some have. I bet, if you are honest, you could even come up with some code words for the left.

LK1 as Bot has said you have placed the bar quite high. As a matter of fact you ( and your ilk( love that term)), will blame Bush regardless of what happens on any issue. If we are attacked, he was a sleep at the swithch, If we aren't attacked, then Bush lied about the threat. Pretty hard to win in that case, isn't it.

I doubt Bush has read the 9/11 Report. I hope he hasn't. If he has to get the information important for fighting terrorism from an open-source book, we're in deep doo-doo. Wait a minute: We are in deep doo-doo!

I have not yet finished the book. Her's what's up with that.

The first third reads almost like a Clancy noverl. It is extraordinarily well-written, detailed and very interesting. On several occasions I had to remind myself that this is REAL and NOW.

The middle third is the portion about which everybody's favorite conspiracy propamentarian as made his hugely successful movie, so I read it with as much care as I could to see if I could find evidence of a vast conspiracy from the Whitehouse. The information is tedious and full of names and dates--very diffiuclt especially when the names are unfamiliar--the Yusefs, Mohammeds, etc are just really hard for me to keep up with. Call me a bigot, but there it is.

I found that portion of the book less well-written. Perhaps a different lead author? I don't know.

The last third is smoother and written with lots of political consideration. Please note that politcial consideration is not the same thing as partisan party politcis. I mean politics in the sense of 'polis' and 'polity'. To me, this is very interesting but not as informative as the first 2/3. Worse, a lot of it depends on the reader having learned lestens from the middle third.

But I cannot begin to tell you much I appreciate the good efforts of teh 9/11 Commission and they degree to which they were able to publish classified, sensitive material. Its always a risk to publish that stuff and I hope that it is worth teh risk. It will be if citizens read the book and learn from it.

A Warning: Much as I lik ethe book, it is not Holy Writ. They make proposals, and a lot of them. Many have great potential for infringement on citizens' civil liberty. I hope that Congress doesn't rush into this stuff and create systems and laws far more dangerous for us than the USA Patriot Act.

If I were the Prez (hope he calls soon), I'd invite Biden, Lieberman and a few others (sorry, can't recall any intelligent Republicans names interested in foreign affairs and law) over to the house for some beers and strategy for fair and detailed hearings.

Damn straight I placed the bar high. The reality is we are currently at about 5% of where we should be (that's the number of containers being inspected in our ports) 2 1/2 years after 9/11. My point is that if protecting us is Mr. Bush's NUMBER ONE priority in the post 9/11 world why the hell has he fought reforms tooth and nail, called for us to put a man on Mars while our first responders go unequipped, called for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage while N. Korea, Iran and Syria have nukes (or are trying damn hard to get them)? If there is no country left it ain't gonna really matter who marries who.
Pursuing a religious right wing agenda while we are under attack will not make us one iota safer and underscores my point that THE BUCK should stop with Mr. Bush regardless of what happens.
Do you truly believe that Mr. Bush has given your and my safety the undivided attention it deserves? If he spent every day of the last 2 1/2 years doing ONLY things to make us safer I would be the first to understand if a terrorist managed to slip through. BUT HE HASN'T EVEN COME CLOSE! IMO.
Everything else he has done has been nothing more than a distraction and waste of time.
Rebut at will.