My conservative Christian Boss is fed up with Iraq.

[electropop]

We were discussing the destruction of the middle class in this country (yes, he is disturbed about that too), and how outsourcing is one of the biggest causes. We're both engineers, a profession that until recently was assumed to be safe. We agreed that economic forces for it seem unstoppable.

As I sat there in despair, he described his idea to fix the outsourcing problem. He is an expert in logistics. "Logistics win and lose wars. If you want to compete with them, disrupt their supply chains. As the world's policeman, we have been assuring stable supply chain and market conditions to all our 3rd world competitors, and we're paying the bill in blood and treasure." So basically, if we let each country decide for itself whether it wants to spend its money on killing its neighbors or on feeding its people. We don't have to make it possible to do both.

We agreed that if we spent the half-trillion being wasted in Iraq could do a lot of good right here. In fact, he pointed out education and health care as good ways to spend it.

[blue cat]

1. I think Bush will be our countries downfall

Felt that in 1999, when hs was my governor. Nice to see that some are waking up.

[electropop]

3. My condolences on living through so many years of Bushit.

:pals:

[brokensymmetry]

2. You know, he's got a really good point.

We've appointed ourselves to be the global policeman, creating benefits for our competitors on top of the obvious direct costs to us.

[Warpy]

5. Not so much global policemen as hired muscle for cartels of

rich businessmen called corportions. It's more along the line of Mafia protection than it is honest cops. Look at how many democratically elected governments this country has toppled in the past 60 years, and you'll get my drift.

The simple fact is that we simply can't afford this shit any more. We no longer manufacture enough goods ourselves to stand up to a major war with supply lines from the third world disrupted. We're nearly bankrupt. The central banks all over the world are tightening their credit, and it's going to be harder and harder to shop war debt around.

Empires have fallen mostly due to fighting wars of convenience in attempts to control trade outside their borders. This is the history that everyone in government should be taught: war is expensive and ruinous and to be avoided at all costs because it will destroy the country that fights it as well as the generation of men it sacrifices to it.

The first major job of any truly reformist administration will be to redefine the Pentagon's mission and put that building on a very strict diet. The alternative is our destruction.

[panader0]

4. Re: Destruction of the middle calss

Sundays paper said Arizona has the greatest disparity between the ever growing poor and the very rich. Personally, I'm borderline poverty.

[acmejack]

7. You mean Az has finally edged out Texas?

Why congratulations! It must make you all mighty proud to have edged out the most anti-egalitarian state in the Nation for the coveted title of Most Inequitable State! Don't you fret none though, our lege will be back in session soon & do whatever it takes for us to reclaim that much sought after title!

[Coyote_Bandit]

6. Did you point out

that if we had a real war and someone disrupted our supply chain that we would be incapable of feeding ourselves and manufacturing even the simplest of things like underwear?

[LiberalinNC]

8. The problem w/ the election was that people listened to the Gay - Abortion

crap * was throwing around and NOT paying much attention to the war in Iraq. When I run into people who complain about the war but say they voted for *, I say, you only have YOURSELF to blame for putting that jerk back into office. GRrrrrrrrrrrr!

[leesa]

9. Did you point out to him that he just became a Democrat?