Hypocrisy, American style

Today's quote of the day from The New York Times:

QUOTATION OF THE DAY

"It is not appropriate to invade a country and at the end of a barrel of a gun dictate what you are trying to achieve."

JOHN KERRY, secretary of state, on Russia's actions in Crimea, a region in Ukraine.

Oh, really?

All of a sudden.

Someone should have told George W. "I'm Gonna' Blow 'Em Up Real Good" Bush back in 2003, then.

Where was this US policy then?

Notes on sacrifice

Notes:

First, it's great to see our own Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill joined this group and effort to give back to their country and people. It's more than just symbolic.

Second, the only "R" after any of these names belongs to one Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel.

Fossil fuels, climate change, our American Troops and terrorism

From Senator John Kerry :

The Pentagon recently released their quadrennial defense review, and they included the instability from climate change as a factor that could cost the lives of the men and women who serve in our armed forces.

The Center for Naval Analysis brought together a blue-ribbon panel of generals and admirals who concluded that "climate change is a serious national security threat." And General Anthony Zinni said flatly that if we don't deal with climate change now, "we will pay the price later in military terms. And that will involve human lives."

And these veterans know it already does.

The politicians don't have it tough. The troops do. End of story. Now the Senate needs to do its job -- for them.

------------------------
Conclusions:

We need out of the Middle East.

We need to reduce, dramatically and quickly, our use of fossil fuels.

We need to pass a comprehensive, effective Clean Energy bill in Congress.

All, at minimum.

It's hard to not think we're blowing a ton of money

President Obama signed a bill was today to send $7.5 billion dollars to Pakistan in aid.

Seven and a half billion.

Yowza.

And maybe it's a good idea but you'd have to have a lot more information to know this is the right thing to do than what the lay person on the street has, for sure.

Pakistan is one poor country and it's so full of needs. It's particularly difficult to think this money will be well-used when a report from The Guardian UK reports that "Up to 70% of US Aid to Pakistan is 'misspent'". (See link, below).

So that news today comes on top of word from President Obama and the White House that they plan to give every senior citizen in the country $250.00 as part of the stimulus plans.

Forget the fact that the cost of living dropped in the last year 2 points, in effect giving the seniors additional money, now we're throwing money at them, too.

NPR reported that this is likely to "buy votes" of this very important voting lobby.

The cost for that little give away?

13 more billion dollars.

Yi.

At what point do we stop?

At what point to we quit borrowing from future generation's finances?

I'm a liberal to the core, socially, but I think this is all just way too much and that we need to rein in spending and drawn down the outlays from the treasury.

Links:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091015/pl_nm/us_pakistan_aid_usa
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/27/pakistan.usa
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113805482&ft=1&f=1003

We can't do this anymore

I just heard on NPR this morning how Senators John Kerry and Richard Lugar want to give 7.5 billion dollars to Pakistan, to build them up for security in the area.

First, let me say, I respect Senator Kerry and have no reason not to respect Senator Lugar.

That said, I think it has to be pointed out that the time has long since come and gone when the United States can throw money at problems, at other countries or whatever, in an effort to improve the situations in the world.

We're broke, folks.

We are busted.

We don't have any money.

We're borrowing boodles just to function now. And that's just to cover our own inner workings.

We're in debt. Big time.

We have to stop operating on the now old notion that we have money--plenty of money--to fix things this way.

We can't do it. Not any longer.

We can't afford all the banks that are going broke right now. We can't afford our own problems, let alone fixing those of countries 'round the world.

It's over.

Let's recognize our reality and operate from there instead of fooling ourselves into thinking it's still 1962.

It ain't.

Link to original atory:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104154389

Back to more important things

Time magazine has two terrific articles out just now. One is by a soldier in Iraq, about the meaning of 4,000 soldiers dead due to the Iraq war. It's very poignant. You can find it at the following link:

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1725642,00.html

And the other, second article quotes Senator and Presidential Candidate John McCain as saying we need to "collaborate more with allies." You'll find it here:

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1725541,00.html

I'm more moved by the first, soldier's article, of course, but find this second one fascinating, too, because, if you'll recall, Senator John Kerry was "shot down", forgive the image, 4 years ago when he was running for President for saying just this. "Too wimpy" it was said. Too soft.

How far we've come. Now we think, after all this time and all the soldier's deaths and all the billions of dollars and materiel we've wasted--along with blowing up and destroying a country, only to have to put it back together--when we finally come back around to realizing that maybe talking with our allies was a good idea after all.

And not wimpy.

Watching PBS' "Frontline" series Monday and Tuesday night should have been required for all American citizens this week so we could all know where this Iraq war came from, what it's done and who's been responsible for what, including the lies and misrepresentations.