Good point

A good point was made in the response from Justin to my last post, that most of the Iraqi violence is due to foriegn fighters and not regular Iraqi citizens. This is true. Which is why I would advocate the last of my three options presented below as the best means for a successfull Iraq. While regular citizens are working hard to improve their country, US and Iraqi forces would be free to not only better police the streets of Iraq, but control its borders as well. I don't think enough is being done to control anything in Iraq, much less the borders. If you wanted to use the Southern US as an example of how America is able to provide border control I think there will be enough foriegn fighters coming into Iraq to sustain the insurgency indefinetly. I just wanted to make the point that something new needs to be done in Iraq and the current strategy is not working.

The other news that just plain makes me sad is the new energy bill that was passed by the House this week. The energy bill, which Bush has been pushing unsuccessfully since he was handed the Presidency in 2000, gives huge tax breaks and subsidies to the current energy powerhouses. These companies develope energy from, take a wild guess, oil and gas, coal, and nuclear power plants. Supposedly this will help America in its energy independence and I have to say if you believe that investing in the same old technology that we've been using for decades will benefit the economy or is safer than it was years ago then I'd like to sell you some prime real estate I've been holding down here in Florida just for this occasion. You've got to be kidding me!! Even the staunchest conservative has to admit that not investing in new technologies, in fact, not investing in the future of the country is the stupidest policy an administration can have.

One last thing that I'll mention today is something I'm realizing as I'm reading Bill Clinton's autobiography. Now granted this is from a somewhat biased source. When I read about the "trickle down" economics that persisted in the 80's and early 90's it sounds very familiar with what the current economic policy is reverting back to. In the 80's the federal government gave huge tax breaks to corporations and wealthy Americans and spent billions on defense, giving way to huge deficits and a stagnat overall economy with high interest rates. Now in the 2000's there are huge tax cuts for wealthy Americans, big subsidies to oil companies and other corporations and skyrocketing defense costs for the "war on terror" (which was recently renamed to the "global struggle against terrorism" because the poll numbers started to go down). All of this producing an economy that is growing slowly and ripe for diaster in markets like housing. Didn't we learn the first time that the middle class, and pretty much everyone else, dosen't prosper in these situations? I think that it's time to start campaigning for something better, because we deserve the opportunity to do better.

I'll put my soap box away for now, but I'm sure it'll be a short lived break.