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August, 2006 |
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August 5, 2006 - It isn’t news anymore. The allied death toll in Iraq and Afghanistan rose above 3,200 this week. That milestone did not rate a mention in the daily press. Thirty-Eight have died during the first 26 days of July. It isn’t news because it is routine. America’s soldiers and those of her allies go out to die every day with little to mark their progress. Dead soldiers just aren’t news. Perhaps the number pales in significance when viewed alongside the number of Iraqis and Afghans who are killed daily in the civil wars our policies helped to foment. Perhaps it is because the events in Baghdad, Basra, Kandahar and Kabul have been overshadowed by the capture of three Israeli soldiers and their nation’s response to that military threat. Perhaps it is because we have been watching the count rise each day for more than four years. But whatever the reason the deaths of one or two soldiers each day has become commonplace...click here for entire August 5, 2006 - The President has gone back to where he was five years ago – Crawford, Texas. It is fitting that he should do so. It was, after all, in Crawford, Texas that he took what was perhaps the most important decision of his Presidency. He was at the ranch when he decided not to decide to do anything in response to an intelligence briefing warning him that Al Qaeda was going to strike inside America. It was a decision that made him a war President and defined the future that his leadership would make for his country. Five years later he can sit on his front porch and take his ease unmindful of the travails besetting the nation and the world. He is on vacation and on vacation one leaves worry’s behind. The President need not reflect that Shiite crowds of 100,000 thronged the streets of Baghdad shouting death to Israel and to America. That, and more deaths, was the news coming out of occupied Iraq yesterday. In a little more than three years the President’s policy has been a howling success – if viewed by Teheran, that is. As evidenced by the largest single anti-American – anti-Israeli demonstration in the Islamic world the President’s policy has been a success if the objective was to create an Iranian Shiite Satellite in Mesopotamia...click here for entire August 5, 2006 - The Republicans tried a political squeeze play but hit into a double play to end the inning. Senators Chaffee (R-RI) and Voinovich (R-OH) joined with Senate Democrats to kill effort. For 10 years the Republican majority has frozen the minimum wage at $5.15 an hour or $10,700 a year for a worker putting in a 40 hour week and taking no time off. The House Republicans finally sponsored an increase to $7.25 and hour bringing that worker up to $15,080, still well below the poverty level for a family of two. No, the Denny Hastert has not suddenly become champions of the common man. They tied the measure. The House Bill tied the increase in the minimum wage to the permanent elimination of the Estate Tax – a measure to benefit 8,100 of the wealthiest American families at a cost to the treasury of 268 Billion Dollars over the next ten years. The House Republicans thought they would benefit their favorite constituency by putting the Democrat minority in a vise. Either they voted for the tax cut for the very rich or they voted against the minimum wage. Either way they thought that it would play well in November and especially among the major donors...click here for entire |
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