<p>Drb, when the right wing is backed into a corner and forced to look at the hideous legacy of their policies - the debt, fear and division they have visited upon our nation, what can they do but start pointing at the very least powerful among us, and start screaming “Don’t look at us! Look at them! It’s all their fault!” Is it any wonder that when th heat is on the right wing cranks up the machine to spew bile about homosexuals, abortion, unauthorized immigrants, and other powerless and insignificant factors in American life? As long as the gullible are kept from contemplating the obscene results of 30 years of implementation of Republican policy they big guys are happy. Truth? Facts? They don’t care about facts - lies have served them so well.</p>
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<p>bz2010, The above tax rates are misleading because they fail to take the Alternative Minimum Tax into account. </p>
<p>The AMT raises marginal tax rates. The Brookings Institutes estimates that by the year 2010, the AMT will impose higher marginal tax rates than the regular income tax for 93 percent of AMT taxpayers.</p>
<p>I won’t tell you what I think of the AMT. (Hint: It’s not good.) It’s a hidden tax that masks the true tax rates of millions of taxpayers.</p>
<p>Thanks for info, all.</p>
<p>BTW - I’m not sure you’d find many people, conservative or otherwise, who are really “in favor” of the Iraq war. Given the intelligence we had prior to the invasion, and foreseeing a possible/probable threat, most people - dem legislators included - thought a preemptive strike was warranted. Obviously this “war” has not been waged as effectively as it should’ve been, but we still must strive for the best resolution possible and try to ensure something positive results - does that imply that I’m “in favor” of this war? I don’t think so. And I don’t think others who want to finish the job we started are necessarily “in favor” of this war either.</p>
<p>And I just saw a headline on Yahoo that al Qaeda in Iraq is near defeat. Haven’t read the article yet, but maybe we are close to resolution!</p>
<p>^^Problem is, for us to ever have any hope of lasting success, the local people have to want us in their country and have to display the political will to form functioning government and get on with running their country.</p>
<p>In Viet Nam we kept justifying an ill-advised war against guerrillas by striving to “finish the job” and produce “positive results” there too. Eleven years and 50,000 American lives later we finally smartened up and realized we were wasting the lives of our troops and our money and went home.</p>
<p>Bedhead: “Wow, what this post really indicated is that you think a person should prostitute themselves by ignoring their better judgement in order to stay loyal to the sponsor of their career, no matter what that sponsor does.”</p>
<p>I didn’t say anything about how I thought things “should be”. Read my post again. I spoke to typical human behavior in the employment marketplace. </p>
<p>Ah, the classic liberal vs. conservative battle, between what “should be” and “what IS”.</p>
<p>Kluge: “Truth? Facts? They don’t care about facts - lies have served them so well.”</p>
<p>Well, I am relieved that at least one of the two major political parties can be counted on for complete honesty. Whew!</p>
<p>This is the first I’ve heard about a “hideous legacy” for either party. I look around, and I see a great nation thriving. The greatest nation in the history of the world. I don’t see any hideousness. No perfection, but certainly more to celebrate than not (by far).</p>
<p>Maybe your words can solve our illegal immigration problem. Let’s tell all of the millions risking their lives to get in here about the “hideous legacy”. I bet that will stop them.</p>
<p>drb: "As long as we are using mindless meaningless generalizations, we should balance the purported influence of the “subversive left” with that of the “fascist right”.</p>
<p>Do you really find that the words “subversive” and “fascist” balance each other? Maybe they should put this on the SAT’s.</p>
<p>drb: “They will have to, in order to pay for the war the Republican administration started.”</p>
<p>Somehow I feel safer having spent the money on this war, versus turning on the news and hearing about terrorism against our country (like the USS Cole, our embassies, the first WTC attack, and finally the destruction of the towers which was planned for years under Clinton). </p>
<p>It seems pretty clear to me that the better move was to stop the escalation of terrorism, which Bush accomplished. Otherwise, a far worse event would have happened on OUR soil, and it would have been way more expensive and damaging than this war. This is common sense.</p>
<p>Extreme Islamic fundamentalism professes to want to destroy our country and way of life. We have already been attacked - many times (and a threat is enough). Why is it so difficult for some people to understand that war was declared on US? For President Bush not to have responded properly would have been shirking the #1 duty he has as president, that of protecting this country. In the era of nukes, to think like Chamberlain is a risk we cannot afford.</p>
<p>spidey–I think Bush would have responded properly by “staying the course” in Afghanistan until we actually captured Osama bin Laden. That should have been his Number One priority following 9/11 and he should have focused on it like a laser beam until a successful result was achieved. Instead, he allowed his attention to wander, launched a war that would stretch our military to the breaking point and cost us billions and billions of dollars, resulting in the slaughter of tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens along with 4,000-plus of the flower of our own youth, and the squandering of the good-will of the international community. And for what? Osama bin Laden is still out there, somewhere. The Taliban, which provided him safe haven, is regrouping and the atrocities against women (and others) in Afghanistan are on the increase again.</p>
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They do in the sense that they are highly charged descriptors that work better as propaganda than as rational argument. So if you accuse the millions of Americans who consider the present administration inept and corrupt of being subversive and treasonous, I will characterize the neocons’ and their enablers’ contempt for the rule of law, debasement of human rights, and misadventure abroad as fascist.</p>
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The usual not-Right confusion about who attacked us - which was not Iraq. The fellow who did is alive and well. </p>
<p>By the way,you may have spent the money on this war, but your children will have to pay for it.</p>
<p>“spidey–I think Bush would have responded properly by “staying the course” in Afghanistan until we actually captured Osama bin Laden.”</p>
<p>Of course this strategy only works if bin Laden agrees to stay in Afghanistan to be caught. But, it is interesting to see how some people buy into that fantasy story as promoted by the Dems. </p>
<p>They probably also buy into the line that we should now abandon Iraq in favor of going after the terrorists where they “really are” - in Afghanistan (of course overlooking that they really aren’t in Afghanistan). This notion of convoluted strategic importance just screams, “naive” and makes me shudder at the prospects of the Dems actually winning and being able to enact such policy.</p>
<p>So, despite having the best military in the world, we require bin Laden’s “agreement” to be caught?</p>
<p>Does everything ned to be spelled out? The operative words were “stay in Afghanistan” - which he hasn’t.</p>
<p>He sure as hell is not in Iraq.</p>
<p>That’s the difference between those who view the war on radical jihad as being a police action to “catch the perps” after the fact and then give them all the benefits of the judicial system afforded citizens versus those who are trying to prevent the unspeakable, but none the less, possible (probable?) terrorist actions of the future.</p>
<p>Indeed it is. The difference between those who consider the rule of law the paramount American value versus those who find it inconvenient and would use means as despicable as those of our enemies to achieve their ends. Which, in fact, they have failed to achieve, as the “perp” most likely to dictate those terrorist acts of the future is alive and well.</p>
<p>My point, fundingfather, was that somewhere along the line, Bush’s determination to find Osama bin Laden “Dead or Alive” segued into, “Never mind, let’s go get that evil-doer in Iraq. At least we know where HE is!” I don’t recall reliable evidence back then indicating that bid Laden had fled to Iraq for sanctuary, but then, the Iraq war was never predicated on “reliable” evidence. And while the “naivete” of Dems such as myself may make you shudder, the belligerent, testosterone-crazed, saber-rattling of right-wing war-mongers who think every problem can be solved by military might scares the hell out of me!</p>
<p>despicable??? Perhaps you could elucidate how we have done anything as despicable as flying passenger planes into buildings occupied by civilians? Or perhaps sawing off the heads of our captives and proudly showing the action on the Internet? Or cutting off the genitals of our captives and then putting them in their mouths? Or going through villages and targeting the children of collaborators for execution to “send a message”. I think you need to rethink your concept of moral equivalence and what is despicable. To equate anything that we have done to what al Qaeda has done is what is despicable.</p>
<p>Hindoo: “the belligerent, testosterone-crazed, saber-rattling of right-wing war-mongers who think every problem can be solved by military might scares the hell out of me!”</p>
<p>This sentence could easily have been written more than half a century ago before we got involved in WW2.</p>
<p>How so, Spidey?</p>
<p>HIndoo: “I think Bush would have responded properly by “staying the course” in Afghanistan until we actually captured Osama bin Laden. That should have been his Number One priority following 9/11 and he should have focused on it like a laser beam until a successful result was achieved. Instead, he allowed his attention to wander, launched a war that would stretch our military to the breaking point and cost us billions and billions of dollars, resulting in the slaughter of tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens along with 4,000-plus of the flower of our own youth, and the squandering of the good-will of the international community. And for what?”</p>
<p>Our problem was and is much bigger than Bin Laden. Bush knew that then, and he was correct. It is still true today. </p>
<p>The spread of extreme Islamic fundamentalism is as much a threat to us as fascism was to our parents’ generation. In some ways, we are fighting a new chapter of the same war. Many of the states which sponsor terrorism are the very same people who aligned with the Nazis. As an added bonus, they wanted to eliminate the Jewish people back then, and they still want to do that today.</p>
<p>It is amazing that the greatest generation had the foresight and courage to support a necessary war before we were directly attacked. This generation, even after being attacked four or five times (a military ship, embassies, the WTC take 1, the WTC take 2, airplanes, the pentagon, etc.) still doesn’t get it.</p>
<p>Extreme Islamic fundamentalists work towards the destruction of Israel. They are the people with whom we are at war. How nice and tidy it would be if it were only Bin Laden! Israel is us, and we are Israel, on a level which includes values, politics, culture, religion, and economics. We have a shared destiny with that nation. If Israel is not safe, than neither are we. I am not Jewish, and I have no Jewish relatives. My opinion is anything but subjective. This is reality. Any enemy to Israel is an enemy to the United States. We should have gone into the Middle East a long time ago, long before our enemy got stronger.</p>
<p>It sickens me that so much of the media is controlled by Jewish people, and so many allow one-sided, anti-war propaganda to dominate the screens and pages. Propaganda which directly harms the future of a nation which is their ethnic and religious fatherland.</p>