The [Current Year] General Political/Salma Hayek discussion thread, part 4!!!

[nonobaddog]

I am sure not defending wasteful spending. Waste is waste and it is wrong. I don't happen to like the hypocritical way the left *****es about a few thousand while they didn't ***** when their administration was wasting billions.
The obummer administration was the waste king of all time.

 

[Alpo]

Biggest waste in the 21st century: Iraq

Next shooter......

 

[jamil]

Biggest waste in the 21st century: Iraq

Next shooter......

yep. Colossal waste of money and especially lives. And then after all that waste, Obama pissed away the very expensive peace, to the extent any peace was even gained, away.

 

[Alpo]

I blame the British for establishing national boundaries at the end of WWII.

Arrogant bastards. But go ahead and blame Obama. Someone needs to put the the last ornament on the tree, whether it's necessary or not.

 

[Fargo]

yep. Colossal waste of money and especially lives. And then after all that waste, Obama pissed away the very expensive peace, to the extent any peace was even gained, away.

Yeah, I'm really hesitant to say we ever accomplished anything I would call "peace" over there. I tend to think it was a bloody and largely feckless puppet occupation where our vastly superior armed forces rode around exposed and with ROE constraints while the occupied exacted a bloody price. Considering how we left the sympathetic Iraqis hanging out to be slaughtered due to our reneging at the end of Desert Storm, I don't know how else it was supposed to go.

 

[jamil]

Yeah, I'm really hesitant to say we ever accomplished anything I would call "peace" over there. I tend to think it was a bloody and largely feckless puppet occupation where our vastly superior armed forces rode around exposed and with ROE constraints while the occupied exacted a bloody price. Considering how we left the sympathetic Iraqis hanging out to be slaughtered due to our reneging at the end of Desert Storm, I don't know how else it was supposed to go.

We’d have been better off leaving the mostly secular tyrant in charge there. He was mostly harmless to the US. Intervention often has unintended consequences.

 

[Fargo]

We’d have been better off leaving the mostly secular tyrant in charge there. He was mostly harmless to the US. Intervention often has unintended consequences.

I maintain that if he had not tried to assassinate George Herbert Walker Bush in 1993, the Iraq war never would've happened. I simply don't think that the war makes any sense other than in retaliation for that.

9/11 provided the leverage needed for everyone else to wink and go along.

 

[jamil]

I maintain that if he had not tried to assassinate George Herbert Walker Bush in 1993, the Iraq war never would've happened. I simply don't think that the war makes any sense other than in retaliation for that.

9/11 provided the leverage needed for everyone else to wink and go along.

I think that figured into it. But it became evident later that GWB thought his dad was wrong for not going all the way to Bagdad and the Iraq war was at least a little bit about unfinished business. I thought the justifications for attacking Iraq after 9/11 he wrote about in Decision Points at least hinted that.

 

[Fargo]

We’d have been better off leaving the mostly secular tyrant in charge there. He was mostly harmless to the US. Intervention often has unintended consequences.

I think that figured into it. But it became evident later that GWB thought his dad was wrong for not going all the way to Bagdad and the Iraq war was at least a little bit about unfinished business. I thought the justifications for attacking Iraq after 9/11 he wrote about in Decision Points at least hinted that.

Oh, I absolutely agree. What HW did pulling out of that war after encouraging rebellion was a freaking crime IMO. Considering that the whole thing started over the Kuwaitis drilling under Iraq, it just goes to show how once stupid dominos start getting tipped, stuff can go really wrong for a long time.

 

[BugI02]

I maintain that if he had not tried to assassinate George Herbert Walker Bush in 1993, the Iraq war never would've happened. I simply don't think that the war makes any sense other than in retaliation for that.

9/11 provided the leverage needed for everyone else to wink and go along.

I've always thought he was convinced he could set up a proto-America in Iraq and that this would begin a transformation of the ME as others saw how wonderful a free, capitalistic society was in comparison to what they had. Kind of like Cuba v America or RoK v DPRK

 

[jamil]

I've always thought he was convinced he could set up a proto-America in Iraq and that this would begin a transformation of the ME as others saw how wonderful a free, capitalistic society was in comparison to what they had. Kind of like Cuba v America or RoK v DPRK

That seems pretty evident since he often spoke of exporting democracy, after running against "nation building" in 2000.

 

[Fargo]

We’d have been better off leaving the mostly secular tyrant in charge there. He was mostly harmless to the US. Intervention often has unintended consequences.

I've always thought he was convinced he could set up a proto-America in Iraq and that this would begin a transformation of the ME as others saw how wonderful a free, capitalistic society was in comparison to what they had. Kind of like Cuba v America or RoK v DPRK

If he really believed he could do that, he was much stupider than I ever thought.

 

[Kutnupe14]

In the "How Corrupt is Scott Pruitt" news:

[FONT=&amp]EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt attended a basketball game last December where he sat courtside in seats owned by a billionaire coal executive with business before Pruitt's agency.[/FONT]

http://thehill.com/policy/energy-en...tside-in-seats-owned-by-coal-executive-report

I'm sure when the guy running the Environmental Protection Agency, and been removing restriction from the coal industry, scores the seats from a coal baron, it's nothing more than pure coincidence. /purple

#drainingtheswampwithafirehose

 

[jamil]

In the "How Corrupt is Scott Pruitt" news:
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-en...tside-in-seats-owned-by-coal-executive-report

I'm sure when the guy running the Environmental Protection Agency, and been removing restriction from the coal industry, scores the seats from a coal baron, it's nothing more than pure coincidence. /purple

#drainingtheswampwithafirehose

Be nice if we could keep cronies out of government.

 

[BugI02]

In the "How Corrupt is Scott Pruitt" news:
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-en...tside-in-seats-owned-by-coal-executive-report

I'm sure when the guy running the Environmental Protection Agency, and been removing restriction from the coal industry, scores the seats from a coal baron, it's nothing more than pure coincidence. /purple

#drainingtheswampwithafirehose

Using your cite, you left out a few things :shocked face:

In a statement to the Times, a spokesman for Craft's company Alliance Resource Partners stated that Pruitt purchased the use of the seats from Craft for "market value," and said the company did not receive special treatment from Pruitt's agency.

EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox confirmed the purchase, saying it was valued at $130 per seat, paid in cash. Wilcox did not explain why Pruitt paid cash for the seats.
“Administrator Pruitt and Joe Craft are longtime friends; he paid cash for the UK tickets which were approved by career EPA ethics officials beforehand," Wilcox told The Hill in a statement.

Pruitt attended the game with his son. Hardly seems like the ideal venue to sell out the proles - unless of course we decide that Pruitt's son is already hopelessly steeped in evil because;bad genes

Oh, and the buying or repaying at face value, it's the same as politicians traveling in corporate jets or gov't aircraft and only having to repay the cost of an airline ticket. I think it has something to do with the difficulty of valuing something that might be costly due to scarcity or luxury. In the case of that game, likely a regular citizen could not have purchased those seats for any price, so how to place a concrete, fact-checkable value on them at other than face value

Eric Holder's massive travel bill is tax-payer funded - NY Daily News
Eric Holder's massive travel bill is tax-payer funded

Attorney General Eric Holder accrued $4.3 million in taxpayer-funded travel expenses in just over three years, including $697,525 in personal travel costs, records showed Monday.
Holder took 213 out-of-Washington trips from March 27, 2009 to August 24, 2012, according to public documents obtained by the conservative organization and website Judicial Watch.

His 31 personal trips included two jaunts to Martha's Vineyard that totaled $95,184 in flight expenses, eight visits to Farmingdale, N.Y. for $118,553 and an Atlantic City break for $118,553.

For personal trips, President Obama's chief law enforcement officer must reimburse the government for the equivalent of a commercial air fare, the official added.
That can be much less than the total trip cost, partly because Holder frequently flies on a Gulfstream V private jet — the same model used by many celebrities.

 

[printcraft]

Biased reporters?! No Way!

 

[nonobaddog]

Biased reporters?! No Way!

That shows that he thinks very little of the intelligence of his readers. The sad thing is he is probably right. Some people eat that propaganda up and never think once about it.

 

[BugI02]

Sciutto should be careful about claiming anyone other than Bad Hair Boy runs the DPRK. He could get that guy killed

 

[BugI02]

Prolly won't be long before twitter moves to restrict [STRIKE]evidence of two-faced, partisan stupidity[/STRIKE] archiving

 

[Kutnupe14]

For the INGO lawyer contingent (real or imagined). ...

Trump Jr has a meeting with Russians, for what we now know was to dig up dirt on Clinton. It was originally told to us, falsely, as a meeting about Russian adoptions. A statement was drafted, which presented the idea that the meeting was about adoptions, supposedly written by Trump Jr. We know know that was also false, and that the statement was dictated by the president.

What is "Consciousness of Guilt," and can it relate, in any way, to the above?