… Nicaraguan President and unreconstructed Marxist, Daniel Ortega, endorses Obama. Article here.
If and when people get over their adolescent crush on the man, they may want to take a look at what this guy has been up to when he’s not out on tour feeding the hungry and healing the lame.
The Rock Star has sponsored something called the Global Poverty Act which will commit the U.S. taxpayers to $845 billion over what they already spend on foreign aid over a 13 year span which works out to $65 bil/year. The annual Foreign Appropriations Bill of ‘04 was over $20 billion dollars. And this does not even include military aid to our allies, government loans to developing countries, private donations made by citizens, HIV/AIDS money, work done by religious groups and overseas disaster relief performed by the military such as tsunami relief.
And people bitch about how much the War is costing. The War on Poverty, that is, which is 44 years old now and is one in which we have neither an exit strategy nor any end in sight. Yes, declaring war on global poverty is just a logical extension of this brilliant domestic strategy into which we have sunk $9 trillion as of 2004.
But we’d gladly pony-up for this tax if it prohibited all the other insanity to which this Act commits us. Its as if all the sovereignty-stripping wackiness of the International Left was wrapped up in one Big (bad) Idea. Its all there: The International Criminal Court, the Kyoto Protocol, the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, etc. etc. What… no condemnation of Israel?
If we are guilty of an ever-reflexive defense of this nation’s sovereign wholeness its merely in response to what we see as an ever-reflexive impulse by our elected leaders to give away, bit by bit, this country’s collective self-determination. We can only hope our knee-jerk reaction then, is directed in such a manner that it results in a boot up the ass of those deserving it in Congress.
At least its one big fat juicy target that’s making its way through Joe Biden’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee as we speak.... easier to track. We’ll try to keep tabs on it and report out as necessary.
If and when people get over their adolescent crush on the man, they may want to take a look at what this guy has been up to when he’s not out on tour feeding the hungry and healing the lame.
The Rock Star has sponsored something called the Global Poverty Act which will commit the U.S. taxpayers to $845 billion over what they already spend on foreign aid over a 13 year span which works out to $65 bil/year. The annual Foreign Appropriations Bill of ‘04 was over $20 billion dollars. And this does not even include military aid to our allies, government loans to developing countries, private donations made by citizens, HIV/AIDS money, work done by religious groups and overseas disaster relief performed by the military such as tsunami relief.
And people bitch about how much the War is costing. The War on Poverty, that is, which is 44 years old now and is one in which we have neither an exit strategy nor any end in sight. Yes, declaring war on global poverty is just a logical extension of this brilliant domestic strategy into which we have sunk $9 trillion as of 2004.
But we’d gladly pony-up for this tax if it prohibited all the other insanity to which this Act commits us. Its as if all the sovereignty-stripping wackiness of the International Left was wrapped up in one Big (bad) Idea. Its all there: The International Criminal Court, the Kyoto Protocol, the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, etc. etc. What… no condemnation of Israel?
If we are guilty of an ever-reflexive defense of this nation’s sovereign wholeness its merely in response to what we see as an ever-reflexive impulse by our elected leaders to give away, bit by bit, this country’s collective self-determination. We can only hope our knee-jerk reaction then, is directed in such a manner that it results in a boot up the ass of those deserving it in Congress.
At least its one big fat juicy target that’s making its way through Joe Biden’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee as we speak.... easier to track. We’ll try to keep tabs on it and report out as necessary.
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3 comments:
If by "this country’s collective self-determination" you mean, e.g., big industry's right to fire as much CFC's, soot, smoke, and other poisons into the atmosphere as they deem necessary to produce maximum profit, then I have no problem with us negotiating to agreement for the collective good of the world. That's called acting responsibly on a global stage. It's when we continue to act as a rogue superpower that not only should the world be concerned about us, but we should be concerned about the world.
You wouldn't give a youngster carte blanche freedom without expecting some of the worst results possible. I sometimes wonder if the young age of our nation, mixed with its peculiar maximum emphasis placed on freedom and liberty for major industry instead of people, hasn't yielded some of the same results.
We are just an on-going experiment, after all.
We are 300,000,000 people living on a small planet with 6 billion others, and climbing fast. At the same time, available resources world-wide are dwindling at a geometric rate. The very notion that we as the richest, most inventive, and most powerful nation on earth would just hunker down and not become the essence of constructive involvement in international cooperation at such a time is not only irrational, it's suicide.
We've become rich by running roughshod over all corners of the earth. The check is on the table. It's time to pick it up.
- Mongo
Mongo, Please explain how being responsible stewards of the environment requires beholdence to any number of irresponsible and potentially abusive unelected and unaccountable Eurocrats an ocean away? We fought a war over two centuries ago to rid ourselves of a similar situation.
And explain how it is exactly that this $845 bil (above and beyond) will eliminate poverty... how it will reduce pollution? And explain how this is going to be squared with the budget.
"Available resources world-wide are dwindling at a geometric rate." I hope to G#d you're not talking about oil? We can't fire a Jed Clampett shotgun without finding more of that sticky stuff in the ground. And when THAT finally runs out... guess its nuclear power. "Noooooo!" cry the libs.
And if running roughshod over the corners of the earth is what has netted us this ridiculous bounty, explain the failure of the Soviet empire.
Half-baked Marxism here and supranational meddling from abroad are no answers for whatever ails this planet.
Two centuries ago, the world was a much larger place. Oceans no longer separate. If life is to survive on this planet, America needs to stop acting out in a manner which suggests "Because we said so!" and start using our power to bring about a planet that is sustainable.
I, for one, no longer accept labels such as "irresponsible and potentially abusive unelected and unaccountable Eurocrats". How do we know until we hear what they have to say? They could be extremely capable and good-willed Eurocrats, along with Japanese, Angolans, Chileans, Hondurans, Bora Borans, et al. There are some good things that come from countries other than America.
Actually, you'll find environmentalists quite willing to go along with nuclear power. You'll also find them eager to go with other things clean-burning, wind and solar chief amongst them. The question you want to ask, BwD, is why those aren't being R&D'd to the N'th degree when there is so much to gain by their implementation (including $$) and so much to be lost (including human health and soldiers' lives) with the "sticky stuff in the ground".
And who is claiming that the Soviets knew anything about capitalism? Ghengis Kahn knew a lot about conquering terrain, too. He didn't know a hell of a lot about how to run an empire. America (and the British) just knew how to combine the two -- unfortunately at the expense of many, which brings us back to why we are not on too many nation's Christmas card lists. - Mongo
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