<p>I don’t know where you read this, but that is highly unlikely…I can see them cannonbalizing equipment, but not intentionally blowing the parts up.</p>
<p>
that is also very unlikely…let me give you a scenario</p>
<p>When we were to invade Haiti in 94, nobody was to know the details, however, Ft. Bragg was the staging area…pretty hard to miss a runway filled with heavies from as far away as Tinker. Also many military members ran into town to buy items they needed. The town knew what was going on. Finally, it was a Fayetteville resident who called a family member in Haiti and said the planes have just started to leave, this was on the news within minutes.</p>
<p>When we went to Iraq in 91, I knew that we were invading before it even began. How? We were living in the UK, on a fighter base, in the middle of the night I heard the heavies go over our house, they invaded that night.</p>
<p>You cannot take troops out that easily, it is too much detail. Maybe they won’t know the exact date, but they will know the time frame. These plans take months to draw up…military members will start calling family members churning the rumor mill. Family members will tell other people, and the word would be out.</p>
<p>Final example…Noriega knew we were coming…how…military family member tipped it</p>
<p>I firmly believe the economy will tank, and hard, due to the trillions spent on the war. Of course taxes will have to be raised. Better to hear the truth than to have “Read my lips/ no new taxes” surprises.</p>
<p>And I think the immigration issue, btw, will solve itself. Our economy will be as bad as that of any third world nation, and nobody will prefer to live here. :(</p>
<p>We were a 100% EFC family due to investing for college and illiquid assets. By 2002, college investments were down by 50% from Summer 2001, even though the investments were Growth & Income MF and solid big company stocks. We didn’t have a choice but to take huge variable interest student loans. We were fortunate to be able to later lock in consolidated fix interest loan when he graduated and able to preserve the investments. IOW we got out before the interest bubble popped. </p>
<p>We were scared and petrified in borrowing the amounts, but logic and financial planning dictated that borrowing at 3-5% was cheaper than selling assets that had lost 50% but recovering at 15%+ .</p>
<p>It’s wonderful to read such great economic wisdom on a forum! Obviously, every Joe Sixpack’s theory about the impact of tax cuts and stimuli has to be viewed as fiscally responsible.</p>
<p>Speaking about economy and recessions, anyone care’s to wind the clock back to the last year of Clinton? How did things look in April 2000? How did the economy look in January 2001 when Clinton handed the keys to the White House to Bush?</p>
<p>What a mess we are in. Perhaps the only way to extricate ourselves is to expand the war into other oil-rich states and lose it. Let them rule us for awhile, pay for our war debt, reduce our tax, give us universal healthcare. And, best of all, we don’t even have to decide which presidential candidates to vote for.</p>
<p>Our nation is far more deeply in debt than it was when Clinton left office. Do I truly believe the President has much of an impact on a cyclical economy? No, I do not. </p>
<p>However, how can you possibly argue that the economy is in better shape today than it was when Clinton left office? As I said in my previous post, how can you possibly argue that cutting taxes while prosecuting two wars is a sound policy? One need look no further than Lyndon Johnson (a Democrat by the way) that it is not responsible to pursue a war and an aggressive domestic agenda simultaneously.</p>
<p>Obama’s hatred of rich people is pretty clear. His understand of capital markets is unbelievely poor. Obama will destroy the economy if elected.</p>
<p>I hope he raises taxes so the generation that made these mistakes can start paying for them instead of just passing them onto my generation and the one after.</p>
<p>In any event, I’m looking forward to learning the details of Obama’s secret plan to end the war.</p>
<p>EDITED: Seriously? His entire policy on Iraq is that he’s going to have coffee with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and then make up his mind? Why does *anyone *take this guy seriously?</p>
<p>EDITED AGAIN: I don’t like McCain. Obama’s test run looking forward to a real try in '12 or '16 has accidentally turned into a real campaign and he’s spouting meaningless drivel at a stunning rate. Have I backed into thinking a *Clinton *might be our best candidate? I might have to kill myself. Argh!</p>
<p>Bulletandpima - I’m disgusted with political promises, too - only I’m disgusted with the republican politicians who have, for the past 30 years, sold the public a bunch of three card monte BS about taxes and government services which have resulted in the doubling (+) of our national debt as a share of GDP during times of relative peace and prosperity, because they learned that Barnum’s “one born every minute” contingent would believe the spin and ignore the reality.</p>
<p>Whine, opine, and repeat the blogspeak all you like: Government revenues have to equal government expenditures or you’re just stealing from future generations. The republicans have been doing exactly that for thirty years, while distracting the public with bread and circuses (or abortion, terrorism and homosexuality) while fleecing the Americans who are too young to vote. And you’re complaining about a guy with the balls to actually acknowledge reality.</p>
<p>Xiggi, I hope your college economic courses have taught you that this is not the way to go as wharfrat posted…</p>
<p>“Only a fool (read: George Bush) believes you can cut taxes, fight two wars and make no changes in government services for the citizens. Bush’s fiscal irresponsibility is staggering.”</p>
<p>Bush has been beyond terrible. Fiscally irresponsible. And McCain has Gramm as an advisor? You have got to be kidding.</p>
<p>All of Gramm’s lobbying will never pay for the losses UBS has suffered. I don’t want Gramm anywhere near anybody who makes decisions that can affect this country.</p>
<p>"Later, he became a major player in its government affairs operation. According to federal lobbying disclosure records, Gramm lobbied Congress, the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department about banking and mortgage issues in 2005 and 2006.</p>
<p>During those years, the mortgage industry pressed Congress to roll back strong state rules that sought to stem the rise of predatory tactics used by lenders and brokers to place homeowners in high-cost mortgages.</p>
<p>For his work, Gramm and two other lobbyists collected $750,000 in fees from UBS’s American subsidiary. In the past year, UBS has written down more then $18 billion in exposure to subprime loans and other risky securities and is considering cutting as many as 8,000 jobs."</p>
<p>"The Bush administration is proposing a sweeping overhaul of the way the nation’s financial industry is regulated. </p>
<p>In an effort to deal with the problems highlighted by the current severe credit crisis, the new plan would give major new powers to the Federal Reserve, according to a 22-page executive summary obtained Friday by The Associated Press.</p>
<p>The proposal would designate the Fed as the primary regulator of market stability, greatly expanding the central bank’s ability to examine not just commercial banks but all segments of the financial services"</p>
<p>Now we are going to have a regulator of market stability? What is that? </p>
<p>Wow. Even the republicans have given up any pretext for supporting free markets. This sounds like policies of the USSR.</p>
<p>If the Republicans want to win in November, they simply cannot have a nation in financial depresssion, two failing wars, energy policy failure, and people with out homes and jobs, and no place to borrow for student loans. Pick one that you least want to have.</p>
<p>Have you ever tried Wine Cheese? Cheap red wine, cheap cheese, sells at big prices.</p>
I think I share your sentiment. Unfortunately, Obama is not going to raise taxes on a generation, he is going to raise taxes on those who are not causing the fiscal deficit. The people causing the fiscal deficit are those with incomes below $75,000 and who demand ever more social welfare and government spending on them. It is those people who are the truly greedy but they vote in larger numbers than the so called rich.</p>
<p>$75,000 represents roughly the 80th percentile of American taxpayers. And Razorsharp - you’re dead wrong. “Those people” are paying more and more each year for normal middle class activities which used to be supported by taxpayer dollars - public colleges, parks and recreation, etc. - than ever before, as government funding for those services is cut and cut and cut in relation to their cost.</p>
<p>Calling the middle class “greedy” in comparison to the rich is staggeringly obtuse. The middle class pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes (of all varieties) than do the rich. They receive fewer services than the wealthy (if you had any idea of how much the government subsidizes businesses of all sorts, both directly and indirectly, this would be clear to you.) In short - you’ve repeated baseless propaganda of the most raw and false sort. Try investigating the facts for yourself. Seriously: check it out. Not on the blogs with their clever spin and half-truths. Sit down and examine what parts of government expenditures at all levels benefits who. Look at actual tax rates. We have socialism for the rich in this country, not for the poor and middle class. If the Bear Stearns bailout didn’t drive that home for you I don’t know what will.</p>
<p>You are living in a liberal fog, Kluge. If I use the government to take money from you and give that money to me, that is greed of the worst sort. If the government wasn’t involved it would be called theft. </p>
<p>Your assumptions about percentage of income are plain wrong, but your first assumption is to incorrectly assume that should be the measure. Our government costs dollars – it does not cost percentages of income. Percentages of income are irrelvant. I have not had time to update my figures but based on 2000 IRS data:</p>
<p>Top 1% earns 20.81% of income but pays 37.42% of income taxes.</p>
<p>Top 5% earns 35.30% of income but pays 56.47% of income taxes.</p>
<p>Top 10% earns 46.01% of income but pays 67.33% of income taxes.</p>
<p>Top 25% earns 67.15 of income but pays 84.01% of income taxes.</p>
<p>Top 50% earns 87.01% of income but pays 96.09% of income taxes.</p>
<p>Get that Kluge. The top one percent pays 80 percent more in taxes than their earn income. The bottom fifty percent don’t carry their weight. The receive far more in federal government benefits than they receive.</p>
<p>He wants to raise taxes? Good. I, for one, am a high income taxpayer and don’t have an objection to paying more in taxes if the proceeds are spent on national healthcare, repairing and replacing crumbling infrastructure, crime prevention and making our public schools as good or better than those of our economic competitors, among other things. You know . . . the way that America USED to be. Can tax increases to raise the money for domestic priorities possibly be any worse than the staggering bill that is coming due because of the billions that we’re throwing away in Iraq? I’m not sure where this country got the “I want to have my cake and eat it too mindset,” but it’s about time that we had a leader who has the backbone to tell us the truth. There is no free lunch and there never was.</p>