SAY IT AIN'T SO, JOE COURTNEY!!!!

If anyone else wants to boot this idiot... (3.25 / 4)

..I'm all for a show of hands.

---

by: Scarce @ Sat Mar 17, 2007 at 16:45:47 PM CDT

And to think that I took up for you ... (2.50 / 2)

the other day Weicker Liker. You were asking questions regarding Jim Hines and I could not see anything out of line with them. Little did I know that you had already been trolled and not all of your comments were visible at the time.
Joe Courtney is a fine man. For some unknown reason as we say down south "you've got a wild hair on your ass" for him. Well buddy, I say thumbs down to you. I really don't want to listen to your bs for the next two years. I've known Courtney for twenty-three years and you won't find a better person.

---

by: Missy's Brother @ Sat Mar 17, 2007 at 19:35:45 PM CDT

Liker, is there a person you support and will vote against this? n/t (0.00 / 0)

---

by: drowsy @ Sat Mar 17, 2007 at 20:31:11 PM CDT

My ONLY complaint is the Democrats didn't load up this bill (2.50 / 2)

with HUGE TAX INCREASES ON THE WEALTHIEST 10%.

No Republican can possibly say they have even a little concern about spending after the last 7 yrs.

Eat shit, Weicker Liker.

---

by: ctkeith @ Sat Mar 17, 2007 at 22:26:08 PM CDT

Troll vs. Republican (4.00 / 2)

WL is a Republican who does not like Joe Courtney. I don't know who he likes (Rob Simmons?).

Personally, I think this community is stronger than any troll, nor any Republican with ulterior motives. With all the strong personalities and intelligent wits on this statewide blog, I think we can make mince meat out of any opinion which holds no water.

The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice. --Martin Luther King, Jr.

---

by: connecticutyankee @ Sat Mar 17, 2007 at 22:37:20 PM CDT

Combat with Trolls... (3.00 / 2)

I am torn about engaging in intellectual warfare with Trolls...on the one hand it would be fun to shred their arguments...on the other hand,to take them on in a battle of wits,goes against my aversion to fighting with unarmed people.

But let justice roll down like waters...Amos 5:24a

---

by: Jake Blount @ Sun Mar 18, 2007 at 15:27:36 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Concern Troll (0.00 / 0)

This is a concern troll diary. Don't be duped into thinking Weicker Liker is actually concerned about Joe Courtney's liberal cred.

Disclosure: I'm proud to work for the Service Employees International Union

---

by: Matt Browner Hamlin @ Mon Mar 19, 2007 at 22:55:10 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

But that... (4.00 / 1)

doesn't mean that we can't hijack the thread to talk about substansive issues.

This thread opened up the discussion on the deficit, debt financing, military bases overseas, potential ways that the deficit and debt can be reduced, alternative spending priorities, etc.

Just because a troll exists and posts doesn't mean that progressives can't take their troll and turn it into a useful discussion of the issues that effect us.

WL did start a useful discussion on the need to focus on the domestic issues of financing, the fact that he is a troll with nothing to add to a conversation has no bearing. Getting us, as a community, to discuss and share facts and information that makes us better informed is really a good thing.

I mean, if WL had any real balls, he would go back and look at all the pork and wasteful spending of Shays and the GOP for the last 6 years and take them to task. But that would be so un-troll-like.

The question is not what you are, we already determined that, we are now negotiating price.
electrealdemocrats.com Online since 3/07 -- TimetogoJoe.com Online s

---

by: Met00 @ Tue Mar 20, 2007 at 04:14:59 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Getting Personal vs. The Facts (2.00 / 4)

Once again your comments get personal when your Congressman forgets about the very reason he and the others were elected.

They pledged to stop this abuse of loading up budgets with reckles spending.

---

by: Weicker Liker @ Sun Mar 18, 2007 at 07:56:11 AM CDT

Nothing "reckless" at all (0.00 / 0)

Wasn't it REPUBLICANS who have argued for 7 yrs that "deficits don't matter"?

I want this bill loaded with every peice of pork any Democrat in the house feels would benefit his district BUT not one dime for any Republican district.The final pricetag for this bill should be at least 250 billion.

Lets see W Veto it!!

---

by: ctkeith @ Sun Mar 18, 2007 at 09:15:57 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Deficit Spending (2.00 / 4)

I don't like deficit spending anymore than you do.

The difficulty here is that Democrats were very forthright in their interest in cleaning up how things had been done in the past.

It was a center part of their "100 Hour Agenda"

Just seems like they are backing off important promises they made to their supporters on issues that made their majority possible.

A "NO VOTE" on this bill by any Democrat - including Courtney, John Larson Rosa DeLauro or Chris Murphy - would be courageous.

---

by: Weicker Liker @ Sun Mar 18, 2007 at 11:17:56 AM CDT

Uprated (4.00 / 1)

I have uprated WL's last 2 comments because I believe that he has raised a valid issue. As a Democrat I am all for a balanced budget.

I would recomend that WL watch Ben Cohen explain our current fiscal policy with oreos

http://www.truemajor...

Now, I agree witrh CTKeith, we have to go back to a progressive tax system and get rid of the giveaway to the wealthiest 10%. I also would like to see the Congress give President Bush exactly what he asked for for his Iraq misadventure, but assign a small portion of it to troop redeployment and the balance of it all to the VA.

The sad fact is that we have congress critters fighting for a few hundred million for a sub base when they should be fighting for a few billion for energy self sufficency research and development.

Here on the west coast we get to see the future first. We see the sub-prime markets failing and forclosures increasing. We already see $3.00+ per gallon gas and we are looking at $4+ by the 4th of July. We see the slow failing of our economy as it ripples through the retail sector (retail non-service sales are down about 25% on average).

The facts are in. The days of wine and roses are over. We have mortgaged our countries future to China. WL is right, we have to stop gouging our budget for special interests, but he is wrong to state that there is only one way to do it.

The single biggest chunck of our tax dollars is what is spent on war. We spend more than the next 10 countries combined. And that is not even including the fiasco that is Mess-o-potamia. So, let's take that money, cut it by 50% and reallocate it to R&D. We know for a fact that R&D always pays off, even if it's in ways that we never considered (look at your computer and thank NASA and JFK's waste of going to the moon). So, let's R&D! The long term payoff will far outweigh the initial investment.

So, the plan is simple.
1) go back to the 1954 tax system, adjust all values for inflation
2) reduce spending on the military by 50% and re-invest that money into R&D projects like energy self-sufficency
3) balance the budget
4) include in that balanced budget a plan to pay off the principle of the debt

But, unless you are willing to do all those things, and this is a major change in how we address our countries finances and our needs, then you had best not bother. This is not a plan of action that can be done by half measures. You don't stop being an alcoholic by saying that you will only drink half as much. Either we, as a country, have to be willing to undergo the shock of a massive transformation, or we as a country had best get ready for one hell of a tough long ride.

The question is not what you are, we already determined that, we are now negotiating price.
electrealdemocrats.com Online since 3/07 -- TimetogoJoe.com Online s

---

by: Met00 @ Mon Mar 19, 2007 at 11:44:53 AM CDT

I Uprated Too (0.00 / 0)

There is nothing offensive in these comments. I believe we should be open to a variety of opinions.

---

by: Jon Kantrowitz @ Mon Mar 19, 2007 at 13:28:45 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Our military spending (0.00 / 0)

In theory, I agree with the concept of a balanced budget--but, in contemporary terms, it has also translated into a "screw the poor" strategy.

Read this BBC article on Clinton for example. Under Clinton, the gap between the rich and the poor increased exponentially although it declined somewhat during the later stage of his presidency--still afterwards it never reached the pre-Clinton levels.

It was President Bill Clinton who recognised when he took office that his first priority would have to be pleasing the government bond-holders on Wall Street, rather than tackle poverty through increased government spending.

That led him to advocate balanced budgets and welfare reform, ultimately discomforting the Republicans under Mr Gingrich and securing his re-election

Check out the Nation article on Clinton's "welfare reform"  and this article to find out just how bogus it really was.

I agree that reducing the military budget is the sensible option--but any Democrat who advocates reducing it by 50% will be called a "sissy" and lose any shot of the presidency.

We have military bases in over a 100 countries around the world--and, in my view, they are not there for "self defense" as no nation-state would be retarded enough to send a missile our way (we face threats from individuals not nations-states) but rather an imperial purpose--to make sure none of our underlings step out of line, raise their heads, and challenge our hegemony. This is part of the reason, the US is so freaked out by China's military buildup.

Even now, most of the military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan are around the oil pipelines...in some ways, our military functions as a global oil protection service.

US General Smedley even admitted the main purpose of our military in this 1933 speech:

On War, by U.S General Smedley Butler (1933)
I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.

I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.

During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

We've had our military bases on Saudi and Japanese soil...perhaps, we should ask ourselves how we would feel if we had Saudi or Japanese troops stationed on Texas, for example. As an American, how would you feel about that? Why do we expect foreign peoples to feel happy about our troops on their land?

In any event, our overreaching military is unsustainable...we can't afford it...china owns most of our debt...so we really have a choice: Is it hegemony or survival?

"If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy."--James Madison

---

by: sufi @ Mon Mar 19, 2007 at 13:44:21 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

reducing our military (0.00 / 0)

doesn't mean not supporting our troops.

1) Star wars failed. Stop funding it.
2) Close 50% of our military bases overseas
3) Stop "outsourcing" what we can do
4) Convert single purpose installations into Joint Forces installations and close 25% of the US installations
5) for every state where an installation closes offer "matching funds" for 5 years for R&D projects to offset the cosure.

The key to making this work is #5. In CA there are a number of redundant bases. If we were to close 50% of them the economy in CA would be badly hurt. If the "money" that is associated to those bases were to be turned into R&D funds for energy self-sufficeny projects it would creat a new sector and economy that would be growth driven and NOT reliant on continued federal intervention (funding). At the end of those five years there would be a new economic engine creating growth, and then those funds could be used to pay down the debt.

So, if we were to take $200,000,000,000 and use it to fund R&D for 5 years, thus creating new industries, and then start to use that money to pay off the principle of the debt, within 12 years we would have created massive new industries within the US, and paid off a small portion of the debt principle.

As of noon 3/19/07 the US debt stood at: $8,736,402,537,000 and was increasing by about $6,000,000 per minute (for more on our debt see: http://www.brillig.c... or http://www.toptips.c... ). Now the key thing to remember is that debt, in and of itself is not bad. What is bad is interest on that debt.

Despite improvement in both the fiscal year 2006 reported net operating cost and the cash-based budget deficit, the U.S. government's total reported liabilities, net social insurance commitments, and other fiscal exposures continue to grow and now total approximately $50 trillion, representing approximately four times the Nation's total output (GDP) in fiscal year 2006, up from about $20 trillion, or two times GDP in fiscal year 2000.

As this long-term fiscal imbalance continues to grow, the retirement of the "baby boom" generation is closer to becoming a reality with the first wave of boomers eligible for early retirement under Social Security in 2008.

Given these and other factors, it seems clear that the nation's current fiscal path is unsustainable and that tough choices by the President and the Congress are necessary in order to address the nation's large and growing long-term fiscal imbalance.

Now you have never heard that before. Who said it? Why, it was the United States Government in the introduction to the Treasury/OMB report entitled Financial Report of the United States Government that was quietly slipped out on a Friday (12/15/06).

Like I said, it's not the debt that's killing us, it's the $4+ trillion in unpaid interest that we add to the debt every year. Even if we were to balance the budget tomorrow, we would still need to find $4+ trillion to make the interest payment with, and then trillions more to start paying down the principle.

The starting point is to admit that there is no dire threat that we need to have a military operation that is bigger than the next 10 biggest countries combined. We need to refocus that money to R&D for the next generation of the economy and paying off the debt principle.


The question is not what you are, we already determined that, we are now negotiating price.
electrealdemocrats.com Online since 3/07 -- TimetogoJoe.com Online s

---

by: Met00 @ Mon Mar 19, 2007 at 14:31:35 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Do You Think Any candidate Would support this? (0.00 / 0)

What do they say about reducing military expenditures, if anything?

---

by: Jon Kantrowitz @ Mon Mar 19, 2007 at 14:50:38 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

overseas bases (4.00 / 1)

I think your point #1 is doable. Point #3 not doable since outsourcing benefits the bottom lines of big corporations that donate to our politicians. Point #4 sounds like a good idea and actually might be achievable. Point #5 is great idea and, in my view, acheivable.

Point #3 is sensible but I don't think it's even remotely realistic. Even none of the leading Democrats are talking about shutting down the new US military bases in Iraq.

Please read this great article on US military overseas basis. I'll post some good excerpts here:

At Least Seven Hundred Foreign Bases

It's not easy to assess the size or exact value of our empire of bases. Official records on these subjects are misleading, although instructive. According to the Defense Department's annual "Base Structure Report" for fiscal year 2003, which itemizes foreign and domestic U.S. military real estate, the Pentagon currently owns or rents 702 overseas bases in about 130 countries and HAS another 6,000 bases in the United States and its territories. Pentagon bureaucrats calculate that it would require at least $113.2 billion to replace just the foreign bases -- surely far too low a figure but still larger than the gross domestic product of most countries -- and an estimated $591,519.8 million to replace all of them. The military high command deploys to our overseas bases some 253,288 uniformed personnel, plus an equal number of dependents and Department of Defense civilian officials, and employs an additional 44,446 locally hired foreigners. The Pentagon claims that these bases contain 44,870 barracks, hangars, hospitals, and other buildings, which it owns, and that it leases 4,844 more.

These numbers, although staggeringly large, do not begin to cover all the actual bases we occupy globally. The 2003 Base Status Report fails to mention, for instance, any garrisons in Kosovo -- even though it is the site of the huge Camp Bondsteel, built in 1999 and maintained ever since by Kellogg, Brown & Root. The Report similarly omits bases in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, and Uzbekistan, although the U.S. military has established colossal base structures throughout the so-called arc of instability in the two-and-a-half years since 9/11.

For Okinawa, the southernmost island of Japan, which has been an American military colony for the past 58 years, the report deceptively lists only one Marine base, Camp Butler, when in fact Okinawa "hosts" ten Marine Corps bases, including Marine Corps Air Station Futenma occupying 1,186 acres in the center of that modest-sized island's second largest city. (Manhattan's Central Park, by contrast, is only 843 acres.) The Pentagon similarly fails to note all of the $5-billion-worth of military and espionage installations in Britain, which have long been conveniently disguised as Royal Air Force bases. If there were an honest count, the actual size of our military empire would probably top 1,000 different bases in other people's countries, but no one -- possibly not even the Pentagon -- knows the exact number for sure, although it has been distinctly on the rise in recent years.

Marine Brig. Gen. Mastin Robeson, commanding our 1,800 troops occupying the old French Foreign Legion base at Camp Lemonier in Djibouti at the entrance to the Red Sea, claims that in order to put "preventive war" into action, we require a "global presence," by which he means gaining hegemony over any place that is not already under our thumb. According to the right-wing American Enterprise Institute, the idea is to create "a global cavalry" that can ride in from "frontier stockades" and shoot up the "bad guys" as soon as we get some intelligence on them.

"Lily Pads" in Australia, Romania, Mali, Algeria . . .

In order to put our forces close to every hot spot or danger area in this newly discovered arc of instability, the Pentagon has been proposing -- this is usually called "repositioning" -- many new bases, including at least four and perhaps as many as six permanent ones in Iraq. A number of these are already under construction -- at Baghdad International Airport, Tallil air base near Nasariyah, in the western desert near the Syrian border, and at Bashur air field in the Kurdish region of the north. (This does not count the previously mentioned Anaconda, which is currently being called an "operating base," though it may very well become permanent over time.) In addition, we plan to keep under our control the whole northern quarter of Kuwait -- 1,600 square miles out of Kuwait's 6,900 square miles -- that we now use to resupply our Iraq legions and as a place for Green Zone bureaucrats to relax.

Other countries mentioned as sites for what Colin Powell calls our new "family of bases" include: In the impoverished areas of the "new" Europe -- Romania, Poland, and Bulgaria; in Asia -- Pakistan (where we already have four bases), India, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, and even, unbelievably, Vietnam; in North Africa -- Morocco, Tunisia, and especially Algeria (scene of the slaughter of some 100,00 civilians since 1992, when, to quash an election, the military took over, backed by our country and France); and in West Africa -- Senegal, Ghana, Mali, and Sierra Leone (even though it has been torn by civil war since 1991). The models for all these new installations, according to Pentagon sources, are the string of bases we have built around the Persian Gulf in the last two decades in such anti-democratic autocracies as Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates.

Most of these new bases will be what the military, in a switch of metaphors, calls "lily pads" to which our troops could jump like so many well-armed frogs from the homeland, our remaining NATO bases, or bases in the docile satellites of Japan and Britain. To offset the expense involved in such expansion, the Pentagon leaks plans to close many of the huge Cold War military reservations in Germany, South Korea, and perhaps Okinawa as part of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld's "rationalization" of our armed forces. In the wake of the Iraq victory, the U.S. has already withdrawn virtually all of its forces from Saudi Arabia and Turkey, partially as a way of punishing them for not supporting the war strongly enough. It wants to do the same thing to South Korea, perhaps the most anti-American democracy on Earth today, which would free up the 2nd Infantry Division on the demilitarized zone with North Korea for probable deployment to Iraq, where our forces are significantly overstretched.

Another advantage for shifting our bases out of rich countries like Germany:

One reason why the Pentagon is considering moving out of rich democracies like Germany and South Korea and looks covetously at military dictatorships and poverty-stricken dependencies is to take advantage of what the Pentagon calls their "more permissive environmental regulations." The Pentagon always imposes on countries in which it deploys our forces so-called Status of Forces Agreements, which usually exempt the United States from cleaning up or paying for the environmental damage it causes. This is a standing grievance in Okinawa, where the American environmental record has been nothing short of abominable. Part of this attitude is simply the desire of the Pentagon to put itself beyond any of the restraints that govern civilian life, an attitude increasingly at play in the "homeland" as well.

And the damning conclusion below: All these increases in military bases will do NOTHING to stop the threat of terrorism and is likely to increase the threat of terrorism. Certainly, having military installations in Great Britain did not prevent the London bombings from occuring there. Our bases in Southeast Asia didn't stop terror at Bali.

Not only will these new basis not stop terrorism, they will bankrupt our economy.

By far the greatest defect in the "global cavalry" strategy, however, is that it accentuates Washington's impulse to apply irrelevant military remedies to terrorism. As the prominent British military historian, Correlli Barnett, has observed, the U.S. attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq only increased the threat of al-Qaeda. From 1993 through the 9/11 assaults of 2001, there were five major al-Qaeda attacks worldwide; in the two years since then there have been seventeen such bombings, including the Istanbul suicide assaults on the British consulate and an HSBC Bank. Military operations against terrorists are not the solution. As Barnett puts it, "Rather than kicking down front doors and barging into ancient and complex societies with simple nostrums of 'freedom and democracy,' we need tactics of cunning and subtlety, based on a profound understanding of the people and cultures we are dealing with -- an understanding up till now entirely lacking in the top-level policy-makers in Washington, especially in the Pentagon."

The US empire has really only been in existence since WWII--roughly 60 yrs.

Every empire has come to an end one way or another. The Roman, British, and Ottoman empires lasted for several hundred years...typically, these empires are not destroyed by an external threat--but rather implode from within because they overextend themselves.

With disastrous foreign policies, increasing dependence on foreign oil, unsustainable military policies, outsourcing etc...I think it's fair to conclude that the biggest threat to the United States--is the United States itself...and it's our responsibility to save it.

"If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy."--James Madison

---

by: sufi @ Mon Mar 19, 2007 at 16:13:45 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Great Info (0.00 / 0)

Why do we need to be everywhere? What does it accomplish? And what right do we have to even contemplate remaining in Iraq? To fight "terrorism?" What terrorism? And how will we fight it?

---

by: Jon Kantrowitz @ Mon Mar 19, 2007 at 16:50:09 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

The drawdown in Germany has been going on for some time now. (4.00 / 1)

I was stationed in the town of Baumholder, Germany which was one of the largest concentrations of American troops outside the continental US.  After the Gulf War, they deactivated my division, replaced with another, and Baumholder is scheduled to close in 2009.  There were literally scores of bases in Germany in the 80's and many have been given back to the Germans. 

The last time I was in Germany, I was talking to a man on the train and he told me that one of those former American bases was being used to house refugees from Bosnia.  Our presence in places like Germany has matured to the point that it is time to move out.  Our disastrous policies have made us even more unwelcome than we were before and it is time to come home. 

The Cold War is over, get out of Europe and stop exploiting the poverty of other nations as a way to gain a foothold in places that we would be under normal circumstances very unwelcome.  Mali?  Why are we there?  Talk about exploitation.  The people of South Korea have wanted us to leave for years, so let's grant them their wish.  If we are not going to attack North Korea, the only member of the Axis of Evil that actually has nuclear weapons, then we ought to get the hell out.  I am in no way advocating attacking North Korea, but illustrating the flaws of preemption.

If we were invest in R&D in lieu of a bloated defense budget, we would need even less defense in the coming years because we would not need the foreign oil and natural gas.  Localized conflicts in the energy-producing areas of the world would have virtually no effect on our economy and stock markets.  The hardest decision to make is when to actually committ to achieving the goal.

---

by: snorwich @ Mon Mar 19, 2007 at 20:41:15 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

How to Influence Policy (0.00 / 0)

I went to the Ben Cohen (TrueMajority) link and watched the Oreo video. It was funny, concise and drove home the important point that we're spending far too much on defense.

If we could get more folks to watch the video, more folks would understand the issue and vote accordingly.

I will join TrueMajority.org and try to get my friends and family to check out the video. Can't hurt.

I also played that Operation game. That was fun!

---

by: CaptCT @ Tue Mar 20, 2007 at 10:23:39 AM CDT

[ Parent ]