Keep it up, George.....

[pisser]

On track to hit 4,000 by the end of the year!

Other developments

The Pentagon on Monday identified four U.S. National Guard units that will return to Iraq for a second time: the 39th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, based in Little Rock, Arkansas; the 45th Infantry Brigade, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; the 76th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, Indianapolis, Indiana; and the 37th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, Columbus, Ohio. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates signed papers Friday for the four brigades to return to Iraq later this year or in early 2008. The 12,000 troops are to be rotated into the country to replace forces that are leaving.


Six American soldiers died in Iraq on Sunday, including three killed by a roadside bomb south of Baghdad, U.S. commanders reported. In another attack south of the city, one soldier was killed and three wounded Sunday when their unit came under rocket or mortar fire, according to the military. Two more soldiers were killed in fighting north of Baghdad, in Salaheddin and Diyala provinces, U.S. commanders said.


Four U.S. soldiers also were reported killed Saturday in an explosion in Diyala, which includes the restive city of Baquba. The U.S. death toll in the Iraq war stands at 3,280, including seven civilian contractors of the Defense Department.


A powerful car bomb killed at least 17 civilians and wounded 26 others Sunday in Mahmoudiya, south of the Iraqi capital, authorities said. At least five people were killed in blasts Sunday in Baghdad, police said. Also Sunday, 17 bodies were found

[Drakonix]

So then, what would you do (be specific)?

Tell us how your plan would stop the civilian deaths, jihad, and global advance of terrorism.

[pisser]

Originally Posted by Drakonix

So then, what would you do (be specific)?

Tell us how your plan would stop the civilian deaths, jihad, and global advance of terrorism.

Easy:

Get the fuck out now, let the chips fall where they may.

[Mazer]

In other words, it doesn't matter to you what happens to us as long as we leave Iraq in ruins. Nice plan.

[albed]

Over 16,000 people are murdered each year in the U.S.


Get the fuck out now pisser.







Btw what are gasoline prices now? hahahaha.

[pisser]

Originally Posted by Mazer

In other words, it doesn't matter to you what happens to us as long as we leave Iraq in ruins. Nice plan.

Nope. Idiot george should have thought out what would happen beforehand, but no, had to get saddam out cause he insulted his daddy.

we need to get the fuck out now, before it's too late.

[pisser]

Originally Posted by albed

Over 16,000 people are murdered each year in the U.S.


Get the fuck out now pisser.







Btw what are gasoline prices now? hahahaha.

Too bad you aren't one of them, mr. bonehead.

Suck hard on my gasoline ass, bitch, since you are the authority on asses.

[Mazer]

Originally Posted by pisser

Nope. Idiot george should have thought out what would happen beforehand, but no, had to get saddam out cause he insulted his daddy.

we need to get the fuck out now, before it's too late.

Too late for what?

[pisser]

Originally Posted by Mazer

Too late for what?

4000

[Mazer]

4,000? Is that the magic number then? Big deal. We once fought a battle in which nearly 8,000 American soldiers died in only three days. And after that we fought a month long battle in which more than 26,000 American soldiers died. Granted, those were the bloodiest battles this nation has ever fought, but even compared to more recent wars like the one in Vietnam, this one is rather tame. 4,000 is just a number, and you want to boil our soldiers' sacrifice down to a politically-loaded statistic. That's just cold, and wholly irrelevant unless you also consider the deeds those soldiers have accomplished over the past four years. But you won't acknowledge that the war has done any good whatsoever, so damn your statistics, they don't mean a thing.

[pisser]

Originally Posted by Mazer

4,000? Is that the magic number then? Big deal. We once fought a battle in which nearly 8,000 American soldiers died in only three days. And after that we fought a month long battle in which more than 26,000 American soldiers died. Granted, those were the bloodiest battles this nation has ever fought, but even compared to more recent wars like the one in Vietnam, this one is rather tame. 4,000 is just a number, and you want to boil our soldiers' sacrifice down to a politically-loaded statistic. That's just cold, and wholly irrelevant unless you also consider the deeds those soldiers have accomplished over the past four years. But you won't acknowledge that the war has done any good whatsoever, so damn your statistics, they don't mean a thing.

So tell me what good it has done, exactly, how are we any safer from terrorists, etc? How is our standing with the international community any better? hmm..?

[Mazer]

Do you actually care about such things?

[albed]

Heh heh, Mazer's doing a good job making pisstard his bitch.

[Mazer]

Oops. Didn't mean to take your bitch from you, albed. You can have him back if you promise to stop kissing my ass.

[albed]

I can share.

[theknife]

Lee Iacocca on Bush:

Am I the only guy in this country who’s fed up with what’s happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We’ve got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we’ve got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can’t even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, “Stay the course.”

Stay the course? You’ve got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic. I’ll give you a sound bite: Throw the bums out!

You might think I’m getting senile, that I’ve gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to speak up. I hardly recognize this country anymore. The President of the United States is given a free pass to ignore the Constitution, tap our phones, and lead us to war on a pack of lies. Congress responds to record deficits by passing a huge tax cut for the wealthy (thanks, but I don’t need it). The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs. While we’re fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is waving pom-poms instead of asking hard questions. That’s not the promise of America my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for. I’ve had enough. How about you?

I’ll go a step further. You can’t call yourself a patriot if you’re not outraged…. Why are we in this mess? How did we end up with this crowd in Washington? Well, we voted for them — or at least some of us did. But I’ll tell you what we didn’t do. We didn’t agree to suspend the Constitution. We didn’t agree to stop asking questions or demanding answers. Some of us are sick and tired of people who call free speech treason. Where I come from that’s a dictatorship, not a democracy.

[Mazer]

You can’t call yourself a patriot if you’re not outraged.

Imagine him telling the rest of us who are and aren't patriots. The neocons tried playing that game and they lost. What makes him think he can win it this time?

This isn't your daddy's Vietnam war. The stakes are lower, the troop deployments are lower, and the casualty rates are lower too. If you're wondering why there isn't as much outrage, that's why.

[albed]

Really scraping the bottom of the barrel when you have to quote an old fat cat capitalist famous for sucking big from the government teat.


It's perfectly legal to pay extra taxes if he doesn't like the reductions...help pay for all the "phone taps" and the war. Funny he doesn't seem to notice the other response to record deficits, increased spending, but he might be getting senile so he's excused.


As to all the "we" stuff he thinks he's involved in; I suspect he's actually just sitting on his ass and bitching without participating in any of the things he claims "we" are doing. I'm certainly not in any "mess" and I wonder what kind of mess a much wealthier person could be in.


Just a cranky old man with a famous name who just happens to bitch about all the same things theknife and all the liberal parrots bitch about.

Parrots of a feather....bitch together.

[theknife]

i'm glad you guys agree - i only posted this stuff because he's right . here's more for you to swing away at:

The Test of a Leader

I've never been Commander in Chief, but I've been a CEO. I understand a few things about leadership at the top. I've figured out nine points—not ten (I don't want people accusing me of thinking I'm Moses). I call them the "Nine Cs of Leadership." They're not fancy or complicated. Just clear, obvious qualities that every true leader should have. We should look at how the current administration stacks up. Like it or not, this crew is going to be around until January 2009. Maybe we can learn something before we go to the polls in 2008. Then let's be sure we use the leadership test to screen the candidates who say they want to run the country. It's up to us to choose wisely.

So, here's my C list:

A leader has to show CURIOSITY. He has to listen to people outside of the "Yes, sir" crowd in his inner circle. He has to read voraciously, because the world is a big, complicated place. George W. Bush brags about never reading a newspaper. "I just scan the headlines," he says. Am I hearing this right? He's the President of the United States and he never reads a newspaper? Thomas Jefferson once said, "Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the latter." Bush disagrees. As long as he gets his daily hour in the gym, with Fox News piped through the sound system, he's ready to go.

If a leader never steps outside his comfort zone to hear different ideas, he grows stale. If he doesn't put his beliefs to the test, how does he know he's right? The inability to listen is a form of arrogance. It means either you think you already know it all, or you just don't care. Before the 2006 election, George Bush made a big point of saying he didn't listen to the polls. Yeah, that's what they all say when the polls stink. But maybe he should have listened, because 70 percent of the people were saying he was on the wrong track. It took a "thumping" on election day to wake him up, but even then you got the feeling he wasn't listening so much as he was calculating how to do a better job of convincing everyone he was right.

A leader has to be CREATIVE, go out on a limb, be willing to try something different. You know, think outside the box. George Bush prides himself on never changing, even as the world around him is spinning out of control. God forbid someone should accuse him of flip-flopping. There's a disturbingly messianic fervor to his certainty. Senator Joe Biden recalled a conversation he had with Bush a few months after our troops marched into Baghdad. Joe was in the Oval Office outlining his concerns to the President—the explosive mix of Shiite and Sunni, the disbanded Iraqi army, the problems securing the oil fields. "The President was serene," Joe recalled. "He told me he was sure that we were on the right course and that all would be well. 'Mr. President,' I finally said, 'how can you be so sure when you don't yet know all the facts?'" Bush then reached over and put a steadying hand on Joe's shoulder. "My instincts," he said. "My instincts." Joe was flabbergasted. He told Bush, "Mr. President, your instincts aren't good enough." Joe Biden sure didn't think the matter was settled. And, as we all know now, it wasn't.

Leadership is all about managing change—whether you're leading a company or leading a country. Things change, and you get creative. You adapt. Maybe Bush was absent the day they covered that at Harvard Business School.

A leader has to COMMUNICATE. I'm not talking about running off at the mouth or spouting sound bites. I'm talking about facing reality and telling the truth. Nobody in the current administration seems to know how to talk straight anymore. Instead, they spend most of their time trying to convince us that things are not really as bad as they seem. I don't know if it's denial or dishonesty, but it can start to drive you crazy after a while. Communication has to start with telling the truth, even when it's painful. The war in Iraq has been, among other things, a grand failure of communication. Bush is like the boy who didn't cry wolf when the wolf was at the door. After years of being told that all is well, even as the casualties and chaos mount, we've stopped listening to him.

A leader has to be a person of CHARACTER. That means knowing the difference between right and wrong and having the guts to do the right thing. Abraham Lincoln once said, "If you want to test a man's character, give him power." George Bush has a lot of power. What does it say about his character? Bush has shown a willingness to take bold action on the world stage because he has the power, but he shows little regard for the grievous consequences. He has sent our troops (not to mention hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens) to their deaths—for what? To build our oil reserves? To avenge his daddy because Saddam Hussein once tried to have him killed? To show his daddy he's tougher? The motivations behind the war in Iraq are questionable, and the execution of the war has been a disaster. A man of character does not ask a single soldier to die for a failed policy.

A leader must have COURAGE. I'm talking about balls. (That even goes for female leaders.) Swagger isn't courage. Tough talk isn't courage. George Bush comes from a blue-blooded Connecticut family, but he likes to talk like a cowboy. You know, My gun is bigger than your gun. Courage in the twenty-first century doesn't mean posturing and bravado. Courage is a commitment to sit down at the negotiating table and talk.

If you're a politician, courage means taking a position even when you know it will cost you votes. Bush can't even make a public appearance unless the audience has been handpicked and sanitized. He did a series of so-called town hall meetings last year, in auditoriums packed with his most devoted fans. The questions were all softballs.

To be a leader you've got to have CONVICTION—a fire in your belly. You've got to have passion. You've got to really want to get something done. How do you measure fire in the belly? Bush has set the all-time record for number of vacation days taken by a U.S. President—four hundred and counting. He'd rather clear brush on his ranch than immerse himself in the business of governing. He even told an interviewer that the high point of his presidency so far was catching a seven-and-a-half-pound perch in his hand-stocked lake.

It's no better on Capitol Hill. Congress was in session only ninety-seven days in 2006. That's eleven days less than the record set in 1948, when President Harry Truman coined the term do-nothing Congress. Most people would expect to be fired if they worked so little and had nothing to show for it. But Congress managed to find the time to vote itself a raise. Now, that's not leadership.

A leader should have CHARISMA. I'm not talking about being flashy. Charisma is the quality that makes people want to follow you. It's the ability to inspire. People follow a leader because they trust him. That's my definition of charisma. Maybe George Bush is a great guy to hang out with at a barbecue or a ball game. But put him at a global summit where the future of our planet is at stake, and he doesn't look very presidential. Those frat-boy pranks and the kidding around he enjoys so much don't go over that well with world leaders. Just ask German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who received an unwelcome shoulder massage from our President at a G-8 Summit. When he came up behind her and started squeezing, I thought she was going to go right through the roof.

A leader has to be COMPETENT. That seems obvious, doesn't it? You've got to know what you're doing. More important than that, you've got to surround yourself with people who know what they're doing. Bush brags about being our first MBA President. Does that make him competent? Well, let's see. Thanks to our first MBA President, we've got the largest deficit in history, Social Security is on life support, and we've run up a half-a-trillion-dollar price tag (so far) in Iraq. And that's just for starters. A leader has to be a problem solver, and the biggest problems we face as a nation seem to be on the back burner.

You can't be a leader if you don't have COMMON SENSE. I call this Charlie Beacham's rule. When I was a young guy just starting out in the car business, one of my first jobs was as Ford's zone manager in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. My boss was a guy named Charlie Beacham, who was the East Coast regional manager. Charlie was a big Southerner, with a warm drawl, a huge smile, and a core of steel. Charlie used to tell me, "Remember, Lee, the only thing you've got going for you as a human being is your ability to reason and your common sense. If you don't know a dip of horseshit from a dip of vanilla ice cream, you'll never make it." George Bush doesn't have common sense. He just has a lot of sound bites. You know—Mr.they'll-welcome-us-as-liberators-no-child-left-behind-heck-of-a-job-Brownie-mission-accomplished Bush.

Former President Bill Clinton once said, "I grew up in an alcoholic home. I spent half my childhood trying to get into the reality-based world—and I like it here."

I think our current President should visit the real world once in a while.

The Biggest C is Crisis

Leaders are made, not born. Leadership is forged in times of crisis. It's easy to sit there with your feet up on the desk and talk theory. Or send someone else's kids off to war when you've never seen a battlefield yourself. It's another thing to lead when your world comes tumbling down.

On September 11, 2001, we needed a strong leader more than any other time in our history. We needed a steady hand to guide us out of the ashes. Where was George Bush? He was reading a story about a pet goat to kids in Florida when he heard about the attacks. He kept sitting there for twenty minutes with a baffled look on his face. It's all on tape. You can see it for yourself. Then, instead of taking the quickest route back to Washington and immediately going on the air to reassure the panicked people of this country, he decided it wasn't safe to return to the White House. He basically went into hiding for the day—and he told Vice President Dick Cheney to stay put in his bunker. We were all frozen in front of our TVs, scared out of our wits, waiting for our leaders to tell us that we were going to be okay, and there was nobody home. It took Bush a couple of days to get his bearings and devise the right photo op at Ground Zero.

That was George Bush's moment of truth, and he was paralyzed. And what did he do when he'd regained his composure? He led us down the road to Iraq—a road his own father had considered disastrous when he was President. But Bush didn't listen to Daddy. He listened to a higher father. He prides himself on being faith based, not reality based. If that doesn't scare the crap out of you, I don't know what will.

A Hell of a Mess

So here's where we stand. We're immersed in a bloody war with no plan for winning and no plan for leaving. We're running the biggest deficit in the history of the country. We're losing the manufacturing edge to Asia, while our once-great companies are getting slaughtered by health care costs. Gas prices are skyrocketing, and nobody in power has a coherent energy policy. Our schools are in trouble. Our borders are like sieves. The middle class is being squeezed every which way. These are times that cry out for leadership.

But when you look around, you've got to ask: "Where have all the leaders gone?" Where are the curious, creative communicators? Where are the people of character, courage, conviction, competence, and common sense? I may be a sucker for alliteration, but I think you get the point.

Name me a leader who has a better idea for homeland security than making us take off our shoes in airports and throw away our shampoo? We've spent billions of dollars building a huge new bureaucracy, and all we know how to do is react to things that have already happened.

Name me one leader who emerged from the crisis of Hurricane Katrina. Congress has yet to spend a single day evaluating the response to the hurricane, or demanding accountability for the decisions that were made in the crucial hours after the storm. Everyone's hunkering down, fingers crossed, hoping it doesn't happen again. Now, that's just crazy. Storms happen. Deal with it. Make a plan. Figure out what you're going to do the next time.

Name me an industry leader who is thinking creatively about how we can restore our competitive edge in manufacturing. Who would have believed that there could ever be a time when "the Big Three" referred to Japanese car companies? How did this happen—and more important, what are we going to do about it?

Name me a government leader who can articulate a plan for paying down the debt, or solving the energy crisis, or managing the health care problem. The silence is deafening. But these are the crises that are eating away at our country and milking the middle class dry.

I have news for the gang in Congress. We didn't elect you to sit on your asses and do nothing and remain silent while our democracy is being hijacked and our greatness is being replaced with mediocrity. What is everybody so afraid of? That some bobblehead on Fox News will call them a name? Give me a break. Why don't you guys show some spine for a change?

[albed]

That stuff really doesn't turn normals on like it does you knife.


You could condense it down to reasonable size if you want it read but it'd probably end up indistinguishable from your standard squawks, which even you seem to have grown tired of.