“Kurdish separatist rebels said on Friday they were crossing back into Turkey to target politicians and police after Ankara said it was preparing to attack them in the mountains of northern Iraq. As regional tensions rose, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan cautioned that relations between Ankara and Washington were in danger over a U.S. congressional resolution branding as genocide massacres of Armenians by Ottoman Turks in 1915,” nearly 100 years ago.

“Washington harbours growing concerns about the possibility of a major Turkish military incursion to crush Kurdish rebels seeking a homeland in eastern Turkey. U.S. officials fear such an action could destabilise a relatively peaceful area of Iraq.”

Now, why is any of this happening?

This is happening because the Democrats — who don’t have the guts to actually vote to de-fund the war in Iraq — are doing a sideshow here of bringing up a resolution that’s already been passed and already been signed twice in this country, condemning Turkey for the genocide of the Armenians in 1915.

So this is being done deliberately to sabotage relations between the United States and Turkey.

Turkey, of course, is crucial in terms of getting supplies and materiel into Iraq from the United States for the troops, to keep ’em resupplied and so forth.

This is just dastardly what these people are doing.

Now, later, this story came across the wire:

“Oil prices extended their rise on Monday after closing at a record high to end last week amid worries that supplies are insufficient for coming winter demand. Pirces has also risen last week on concerns over the conflict between Turkey and Kurds in northern Iraq. … U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Saturday urged Turkey to show restraint in its response to attacks from Kurdish rebels, but Turkish leaders have appeared to be less receptive to Washington’s appeals since a committee of U.S. lawmakers passed a resolution last week labeling as genocide the World War I-era killings of Armenians by the Ottomans — a characterization that Turkey rejects.”

So the Turks are telling Condoleezza, you know, “Take it somewhere else. You guys are going to try to offend us and embarrass us on the world stage. We’re one of your allies here.“

They are a, quote, unquote, “moderate” Muslim nation.

Let’s call this what it is. This is Nancy Pelosi’s war now.

She’s doing everything she can to encourage this little incursion by Turkey into northern Iraq after the Kurds and to disrupt the supply lines — and then there’s this.

“Democrats Press on with Genocide Bill, Despite Turkish Fury.” Pelosi said, “Some of the things that are harmful to our troops relate to values — Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, torture. … All those issues are about who we are as a country,” and she said “possible reprisals affecting Turkey’s cooperation with the US military were ‘hypothetical’ and would not derail the resolution.”

That’s when she said this is about our values. What values?

I am at my wits’ end with these people, what they have tried to do to destroy the morale of the troops, to destroy the mission itself. They run around saying, “We support the troops. We don’t support the mission.“

The troops have one concern, and that’s the mission.

If you don’t support the mission, you don’t support them and they have been trying, Pelosi and the democrats, to undermine the troops since we went into Iraq.

It just is beyond the pale that they said, “Well, no, this is going to help the troops, saying that we don’t support genocide in Turkey a hundred years ago. This will support the troops. We have to do right by these things: Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, torture, all of those issues about who we are as a country.”

This makes my blood boil. This is downright sick.

This is just offensive as it can be, especially coming from these people who have done everything they can to undermine our mission.

Why do you think we have a rotten image in the world, if we do?

My friends, I don’t agree that our image is rotten, but they certainly want it to be, and they want it to be blamed on Bush. But who the hell, in public for four years, has been running around ripping the hell out of this country? Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, John Kerry, you name it, John Murtha, it doesn’t matter. Jay Rockefeller. Take your pick. Ted Kennedy. We’ve had Bill Clinton; we’ve had Al Gore; we’ve had Jimmy Carter, all Democrats traveling the world ripping this country to shreds; saying that it’s immoral; saying that our president is an idiot and agreeing with socialists all over the world that George Bush is an idiot, a clown, or whatever.

It’s just unseemly.

There are Americans who are fed up with hearing their country run down day in and day out for the last four years, our troops run down, criticized, impugned, day in and day out, for the last four years. To have what the Democrats say repeated on the nightly newscasts, on the cable networks, all over the newspapers and so forth, it is unseemly. Now, to offer this resolution, the third of its kind, two previously have already passed, to anger Turkey, the primary supply line for troops, and then to say, “No, this is about our morality. This is about who we are as a country.”

Yeah, where were you during the Rwandan genocide? What are you doing besides flapping your gums over what’s going on in Darfur?

The enemies of this country seem to be the allies of the United States Democrats. It’s just stunning. It’s classless, it’s unseemly, and to me, folks, it is reprehensible.

This answer that she gives here, “Well, the president hasn’t called me.” You shouldn’t need a phone call from the president to understand what you’re doing. She doesn’t need a phone call. She knows exactly what she’s doing. They all do on the Democrat side of this, know exactly what they’re doing. Some of the things are harmful to our troops. Does she really believe that the rumors, the lies, the smears of US soldiers at Guantanamo, at Club Gitmo, are actually hurting our troops in Iraq?

What’s hurting our troops in Iraq is Democrats and their judges. A soldier from Queens kidnapped in a surprise attack by Al-Qaeda in the triangle of death. We are not allowed to get wiretaps on the phones in the communications, the kidnappers are using for ten hours, because the lawyers have to approve the request for a warrant, in the middle of a war! Not in the middle of street crime; in the middle of a war!

They are trying to hand victory to the enemy. They are failing, because Al-Qaeda is on the run. There are even more stories today about how it’s getting really, really tough to deny here that things are improving in Iraq.

It’s an editorial in the Washington Post, of all places, from yesterday. “The evidence of a drop in violence in Iraq is becoming hard to dispute. But meanwhile, some seemingly important facts about the main subject of discussion last month — whether there has been a decrease in violence in Iraq — have gotten relatively little attention.”

I wonder why?

Two journalists last week, (paraphrasing) “We can’t report good news, why, one month doesn’t make a trend. Besides, how do we verify these numbers? We can’t be sure these numbers are accurate.” Yet the death toll goes up, “Oh, the numbers have no question about them, they’re totally accurate, and that of course is news.”

It’s maddening.

“A congressional study and several news stories in September questioned reports by the U.S. military that casualties were down. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), challenging the testimony of Gen. David H. Petraeus, asserted that “civilian deaths have risen” during this year’s surge of American forces. A month later, there isn’t much room for such debate, at least about the latest figures,” and they go on cite how they have plummeted. “Nevertheless, it’s looking more and more as though those in and outside of Congress who last month were assailing Gen. Petraeus’s credibility and insisting that there was no letup in Iraq’s bloodshed were — to put it simply — wrong.”
Washington Post

The last thing they can afford is the perception by the American people that we are winning and that vector is at hand. Politically that cooks their goose; politically that finishes them, because they’ve already got us losing. They’re fundraising on it; they’re running for office on it. The last thing they want is victory. And Mrs. Pelosi runs around and says this crap to Stephanopoulos.

She ought to be ashamed.

The timing of this has nothing to do with anything other than sabotaging what is now turning into positive news out of Iraq because they can’t afford for that to happen. They’re too politically invested in defeat.

I’m telling you, it’s just unseemly.

I was watching Neil Cavuto‘s show on Fox one afternoon, and the deficit numbers were released.

The White House went out and made a big deal about the deficit coming way, way down.

Let me give you the numbers, by the way. Since the 2003 tax cuts — and that is an appropriate starting point for this.

Since the 2003 tax cuts took effect, the deficit, despite what’s been spent on the war, despite the national disasters like Hurricane Katrina, despite the necessitated recovery after 9/11, despite all of the growing federal entitled programs.

Since 2003, when the tax cuts went into effect, the federal deficit has gone down by nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars. In February of this year, the budget deficit for 2007, this year, was projected to be $244 billion.

The budget deficit is now just $163 billion. Now, it’s interesting, you say, “Just $163 billion.” That’s a lot of money, but it’s coming way, way down.

This is inarguable as to why. It is the tax cuts. They create jobs. They create more taxpayers. They create more economic activity, which leads to more taxing.

It works.

You get more people paying smaller rates of taxes, the small tax rates, or the reduced tax rates. They’re not small, but the reduced tax rates create incentive to continue to earn dollars. It’s the Wal-Mart strategy — and that really irritates the left when you do that. With so I’m watching Cavuto’s show, and he had one of these usual television debates on there. He had Al D’Amato speaking in favor of tax cuts, and he had some lady from the Democrat National Committee.

So D’Amato is making the case for tax cuts pretty well, and Cavuto goes to the lady. And the she says, “Well, there’s no way the president can take credit for this. There’s absolutely no way. The president has added to the debt, irresponsibly.”

Cavuto said, “Now, wait a minute. Wait a minute. The debt is a total different thing than the deficit. The national debt is the sum total of all the deficits in the history of the country. The deficit, the annual budget deficit is how much the government spends, how much more it spends than what it takes in, and it’s taking in a lot more than anybody projected, because nobody dynamically scores the effects of tax cuts.”

And the Democrat lady said, “If Bush were really responsible for all of this, then he wouldn’t have vetoed the health bill for children.”

It’s a total non-sequitur.

The lady knew she had nowhere to go, so she had to go get political and attack Bush for this attack they are making on the S-CHIP expansion.

I don’t want to run the risk of offending you with profanity or tossing around words like “treachery“or “treason.”

• Resource Link: Turkey recalls ambassador after genocide vote

Briefly, the story is about the Democrats in Congress and their latest scheme to secure defeat in Iraqwar on terror, and in the process of securing defeat, they are attempting to screw up our attempts to pacify the Middle East. and in the

At this very moment in time, at this period of international sensitivity, the Democrats and the Left in this country is obsessed with denouncing Turkey for genocide against the Armenians 100-odd years ago.

Why now?

Similar resolutions were passed in 1975 and 1984.

Why now?

Turkey is allowing the passage of much of our supplies and over-flights into Iraq.

Why now?

Turkey can either help stabilize or destabilize the Kurdish area in northern Iraq.

Why are they doing this now?

The president and eight former secretaries of state are pleading with Congress, to stop this.

I keep asking the question, “Why?”

This is their way to secure defeat and stop the war. If they can’t stop the war themselves with their own votes, with their own lack of guts to de-fund the effort in Iraq, they will trash one of our best and most needed allies, as close as we’re gonna get as a moderate Muslim regime that is an ally to the United States of America without whose help we could not be securing victory in Iraq.

The Democrat Party on Capitol Hill continue to explore and discover new depths of plain depravity.

What the hell business is it of theirs to be declaring this now, when there have been already been two resolutions about the same thing that have passed in previous years?

Turkey is a key supply route to US troops in Iraq, has recalled its ambassador to Washington. They did so yesterday.

“It has warned of serious repercussions if Congress labels the killing of Armenians by Turks 100 years ago as genocide. This has been ordered after a House committee endorsed the genocide measure. The summons of the ambassador for consultations was a further sign of the deteriorating relations between two long-time allies and the potential for new turmoil in an already troubled region which is just now,” beginning to show some amazing success. The Sunnis and the Shi’a are joining together, and they are rejecting Al-Qaeda.

I say this next, purposefully and intentionally.

The one thing, politically, that the Democrat Party cannot afford, because of positions it has previously taken, is victory in Iraq. They cannot allow that to happen, because they own defeat, and they have already pronounced the war over. They have already said, “We can’t win.” They have done their best to secure that in the minds of as many people as possible, including our brave and courageous uniformed personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan.

They have done everything they can to engage in efforts to demoralize them, to impugn them, to criticize them — and now, when unable to enforce votes, or not with the courage to de-fund it, they now take this step, purposely attempting to split an ally away from their country, the United States of America, so as to see to it that the Bush administration does not secure a positive result in Iraq when we are on the verge of securing that nation with a victory.

This is unconscionable.

It is difficult to catalog all of these destructive efforts that the Democrat Party, the leadership in both houses of Congress have engaged in, and put one at the top as worse than any of the others.

I don’t know how I draw comparisons between their attempts at impugning military personnel, attempt to secure defeat, calling our troops murderers, rapists, and thugs, false accusations, not apologizing for it, or now this, forcing the Turks to withdraw their ambassador to the United States, because they want to pass a resolution condemning Turkey for a slaughter of Armenians, genocide, a hundred years ago.

It is nothing but pure politics.

They are trying to anger the Turks. They want the Turkish government to withdraw the ambassador. They want a split in the allies here, they want Turkey to not allow us to use their state, their country to get supplies and other equipment into Iraq so as to hamper the effort.

If anybody ever had any doubts that the Democrats are about defeat and losing for their country and for their military, this story ought to leave zero doubt.

• Resource Link: The Problems of Victory

These are the Democrats who claim to be so worried about our image in the world. They say they’re so concerned what the world thinks of us.

What the hell is Turkey, an ally, going to think of us, having pulled their ambassador?

It’s a gutless, cowardly way to try to secure defeat because they are scared to death we’re on the verge of being able to say, “We are going to win this.“

There’s too much happening over there that’s good for the country, that’s bad for them.

The Sunnis and the Shi’a are getting together, rising up against Al-Qaeda.

The surge is working.

Al-Qaeda is fleeing. They’ve been disbanded.

They’re just a bunch of renegades, engaged in little actions here and there. The Iraqis are rising up against these people.

They’re fed up with it.

The Democrats are so invested in defeat, and defeat is so — or the continued illusion that we’re losing — is so politically important to them that they have to now pull this stunt. Pelosi is going to bring this to the floor for a vote.

Let ’em do it.

The Democrats do not know — because they get puff piece coverage from the media, they do not know — how they are coming across to average Americans.

Resource Link: Hippie Diplomacy

There’s a headline here in the New York Times “Democrats Seem Ready to Extend Wiretap Powers.“ Another disappointment for the lunatic fringe of the Democrat base! So apparently the Democrats in the Senate are going to sign on to spying on people outside the country without warrants.

Well, after all this hullabaloo about all the “civil rights violations” of Bush and “spying on Americans“, now all of a sudden, when the rubber meets the road, the Democrats in the Senate say, “Guess what? We’re going to let him go ahead and do it. We’re going to extend his power.”

What the hell is that? You people in the kook base have got to be scratching your head or kicking something in the corner. (Just don’t kick your dog or cat; draw a line there.)

You people have got to be livid! You buy into all of this stuff: “This is a destruction of civil liberties and civil rights, he’s spying on Americans.” I guess now we can throw the Democrats in that group, too, then, because they’ve authorized more spying on Americans, have they not?

In Response to:

Which, goes a way to explaining why we’ve spent more money reconstructing Iraq than Germany and Japan but have received inferior results. And in the interests of “keep most of what you earn” apply to today as well as tomorrow? Are you concerned about the massive budget deficit we’ve built. Don’t you think that cost-plus contracts go against the notion of the free market and capitalism? And that the government should be able to account for $8.8 billion of $12 billion that it flew over to Iraq in huge wooden pallets (http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=2852426)? If not, why not?

Given the war has already cost over $450 billion, what do you estimate the total cost of this war to be? Would you support raising taxes to support it, or would we have to make drastic cuts to social spending and infrastructure?
codesmithy

<special thanks, for the engaging comment!>
PL

———————————————————————————-

“government should be able to account”

Besides a Military, that is capable of winning wars, the government bureaucracy, the larger it becomes, the larger the failures become. Think about it… what local / state/ federal department actually works well?

It cost, what it cost to win. Losing, is the death of our nation/way of life.

“Would you support raising taxes to support it…”

No, and when you see the record of tax cuts, that seemed to always work. The Kennedy tax cuts, which came in under Lyndon Johnson worked. The Reagan tax cuts worked. The Bush tax cuts have worked, clearly. And when we see when Bill Clinton raised taxes in 1993, it did not lead to a recession, but it did lead to downturn in the economy, which grew less. But then when they reduced the capital gains rate in 1997, you saw the stock market really boom.

It’s a good day to talk about the virtues of tax cutting, a day when unemployment declined, many more jobs were created, the S&P 500 hit a new high, the dollar actually increased against the Euro. And the federal budget deficit was projected to be the lowest in five years.

———————————–
By Alexandra Twin, CNNMoney.com senior writer
October 9 2007: 5:44 PM EDT

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Stocks rallied Tuesday, sending the Dow and S&P 500 to all-time highs as investors breathed a sigh of relief that the minutes from the last Fed meeting supported hopes for another interest rate cut by the end of the year.

The Dow Jones industrial average jumped more than 120 points, ending at an all-time high of 14,164.53. The blue-chip barometer had hit an intraday high of 14,166.40 shortly before the close.
FED FOCUS ECONOMY HOT STOCKS INVESTOR RESEARCH CENTER

The broader S&P 500 index hit a record intraday high of 1,565.26 right before the close, and ended the session just short of that at 1,565.15.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite added 0.6 percent, ending at a fresh 6-1/2 year high.

———————————

Imagine; after the dot com bursting bubble, after 9/11, during to wars (Afghanistan / Iraq), and the normal cycles of the economy, it is quite amazing, how depressed everyone that listens to the media, or their favorite liberal politician. I think prozac or suicide-watch may need to be utilized.

Context:

September 2007 is the 49th consecutive month of job growth, setting a new record for the longest uninterrupted expansion of the U.S. labor market. Significant upward revisions to employment in July and August mean employment growth has averaged 97,000 per month over the last three months. Since August 2003, our economy has created more than 8.1 million jobs, and the unemployment rate remains low at 4.7 percent.

The U.S. Economy Is Growing And Dynamic

* Real after-tax per capita personal income has increased by over 12.5 percent – an average of over $3,750 per person – since President Bush took office. More than 30 percent of the Nation’s net worth has been added since the President’s 2003 tax cuts.

* Real wages have grown 2.2 percent over the 12 months that ended in August. This is much higher than the average growth rate during the 1990s, and it means an extra $1,266 in the past year for a family with two average wage earners.

* Exports have increased by over 14.8 percent in the 12 months that ended in July. This has resulted in an $8.3 billion reduction in the trade deficit.

* Real GDP grew at a strong 3.8 percent annual rate in the second quarter of 2007. The economy has now experienced nearly six years of uninterrupted growth, averaging 2.7 percent a year since the turnaround in 2001.

Make drastic cuts to social spending and infrastructure?

Well, since I think we use about 4% or 5 % of the GDP for the Military and non-discretionary spending is like 60-70% more or less (I think more…), I remember seeing that figure somewhere, but … I’m sure someone out there, will tell me, if I’m that far off.

So, when it comes to Social spending :

Robert Samuelson who is an economist and columnist for the Washington Post. Ran a piece in the Washington Post is a little problematic for me in some areas. The title of his column was, “Entitled Selfishness.” His theme here is that the baby boomer generation is in a state of denial. Let me give you some excerpts here. “I say this to the 76 million or so subsequent baby boomers and particularly to Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, our generation’s leading politicians: Shame on us. We are trying to rob our children and grandchildren, putting the country’s future at risk in the process. On one of the great issues of our time, the social and economic costs of our retirement, we have adopted a policy of selfish silence.”

Now, excuse me, Mr. Samuelson, George W. Bush for six years has tried to do something about this, and he has been rebuked at every turn. He’s been turned back. Now, maybe he didn’t sell this privatization of accounts as well as it could have been, but you can’t lump him in there with somebody who is apathetic about this. “As Congress reconvenes, pledges of “fiscal responsibility” abound.

Let me boldly predict:

On retirement spending, this Congress will do nothing, just as previous Congresses had done nothing. Nancy Pelosi promises to ‘build a better future for all of America’s children.’ If she were serious, she would back cuts in Social Security and Medicare.

President Bush calls ‘entitlement spending’ the central budget problem.

If he were serious, he, too, would propose cuts in Social Security and Medicare.

They are not serious, because few Americans — particularly prospective baby-boom retirees — want them to be. There is a consensus against candor, because there is no constituency for candor. It’s no secret that the 65-and-over population will double by 2030 (to almost 72 million, or 20 percent of the total population), but hardly anyone wants to face the implications:

Much of the rest of government (from defense to national parks) would have to be shut down or crippled. Or budget deficits would balloon to quadruple today’s level. Social Security and Medicare benefits must be cut to keep down overall costs. Yes, some taxes will be raised and some other spending cut. But much of the adjustment should come from increasing eligibility ages (ultimately to 70) and curbing payments to wealthier retirees.

By comparison, other budget issues, including the notorious earmarks, are trivial. In 2005, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid (the main programs for the elderly) cost $1.034 trillion, twice the amount of defense spending and more than two-fifths of the total federal budget. These programs are projected to equal about three-quarters of the budget by 2030, if it remains constant as a share of national income. Preserving present retirement benefits automatically imposes huge costs on the young — costs that are economically unsound and socially unjust. The tax increases required by 2030 could hit 50 percent, if other spending is maintained as a share of national income.

Pundits and think tanks say they support ‘fiscal responsibility’ and ‘entitlement reform’ and oppose big budget deficits. Less often do they say plainly that people need to work longer and that retirees need to lose some benefits. Think tanks endlessly publish technical reports on Social Security and Medicare, but most avoid the big issues.

Are present benefits justified?

How big can government become before the resulting taxes or deficits harm the economy?

… Our children will not be so blind to this hypocrisy. We have managed to take successful programs — Social Security and Medicare — and turn them into huge problems by our self-centered inattention.

Baby boomers seem eager to ‘reinvent retirement’ in all ways except those that might threaten their pocketbooks.

The politicians are afraid of denying or cutting back benefits, because they will lose the elderly vote. Most baby boomers I know have never even counted on Social Security. They don’t think it’s ever going to be there for them.

The younger you go into generations that follow the baby boom generation, that sentiment is even more profound. “Social Security, give me a break, it’s not even going to be there when I retire.” A lot of baby boomers plan on working beyond 65 for that reason.

I don’t know too many people who are sitting around waiting to collect Social Security, but the current crop of people who are will stop at nothing to make sure their benefits are untouched. Even if it means massive tax increases on their own kids!

They’ll put up with that. They will incur and they will vote for that in order to keep their Social Security coming. Harsh… but true.

So the problem with this is — I’m sure there’s some baby boomers that are going to present a problem here just in numbers, and you can’t deny that, but immediate reform?

Don’t lay that solely at the baby boomers.

You got a current crop of senior citizens who will not put up with it, and they are one of the largest voting blocks out there, and they are not going to be patient or tolerant with this, at all, and that’s why there’s laziness, reluctance, and fear among politicians to deal with this.

AARP is quite a large lobbying group.