Posted on 12/31/2006 4:19:33 AM PST by shrinkermd
Edited on 12/31/2006 5:46:08 PM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
President Bush's legacy is sure to be defined by his wielding of U.S. military power in Afghanistan and Iraq, but there is another, much softer and less-noticed effort by his administration in foreign affairs: a dramatic increase in U.S. aid to Africa.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
"Caring" = "Caring enough to spend other people's money."
The president has clearly shown that he has a heart.
Yup. And he's clearly shown that he has a wallet, too. MY wallet!
LOL!
If you get any replies, it'll be something like, "Why not? don't you CARE too?"
Who slipped the LSD into the FR web server? Since when have "conservatives" tried to out-dickwave each other to prove which one is the biggest LIBERAL among 'em?
Well then let the evangelicals keep passing the plate. Send their tithes to Africa.
Don't be silly. There'll be plenty of payback. And you know the definition of "payback", doncha?
Oh, there'll be payback alright -- in the form of countless Republican politicians turned out at the next election, forced to find real work for the first time in their lives.
No payback, LOL! Now that's funny!
Here's your free newyear's clue: If people want to elect democrats, they'll VOTE for democrats.
If they DON'T want to elect democrats, but all they have are #1: Democrats, #2 Republicans acting like democrats, or #3: Third Party, then they're gonna either go for #3, or else they're gonna stay home.
The days of "well where are they gonna go anyway?" are long since gone. I sincerly doubt we're gonna hear Lord Rove mouth THAT little slap in our faces again.
It does a lot more than that. For example, it creates festering resentment among those who have had the "free" money forcibly taken from them. It makes people regret having voted for a "conservative" when that "conservative" spends THEIR money like a drunken liberal.
I hereby award you the Master of Understatment Award for 2006.
I'm done voting Republican, with the exception of certain LOCAL officeholders -- and I'll be damned selective about those, too, since they've chosen to run with such a major strike against 'em.
I'm resisting the urge to say "I'm done voting, period", but frankly, I don't know how long I'll be able to maintain the illusion that our votes make any difference.
Donate your OWN money, which is what the Lord is asking YOU to do. DO NOT STEAL from others to assauage YOUR conscience, or to LINE YOUR POCKETBOOK with your foreign investments!
When I see syrupy, condescending, preachy crap, used as a vehicle to condemn me for not wanting my pocket picked in order to pay off someone ELSE'S pet project, I begin to understand why "separation of church and state" is such a major issue for some folks.
And I say this as a CONSERVATIVE evangelical Christian.
I'm sorry, sir, but you seem to have dropped your clue. Here it is (above).
I will never forget the time he visited H. Rodham Clinton and "Chuckles" Schummer right after 9/11, and asked them flat out how much money they wanted. They looked like kids in a candy store, and blurted out that they "needed" $40 billion dollars (amazing how they could figure that out, mere hours after the attack).
You could tell that they thought he'd be a bit shrewder than he was -- a bit smarter than he was.
You could see the look of surprise on their faces when he immediately replied sure, ok, $40 billion it is, you'll get that amount.
(I could also imagine them thinking what idiots they were, for not asking for a hundred billion!)
He's always been s sucker for a hard-luck story -- as long as he's able to reach into the next guy's pocket to fish out the checkbook!
FYI: I never was, am not now, and never will be a "SIR".....another 'dumb as rocks' move on your part.
Oh, what a stinging retort, I'm like, wounded. Or something.
Bye now.
The situation in Africa has another dimension totally ignored on this thread. We must rely on the African people to battle Islamofascism in their own lands. The 1998 embassy bombings occurred in Kenya and Tanzania, two East African countries with sizable regional Muslim populations. Terrorist-dominated Sudan commits genocide against Christians, animists, and even other Muslims. Despite its large Muslim population, Ethiopia today battles Somalia. The Lord's Resistance Army terrorizes and steals the children of northern Uganda but operates largely in the Congo with Sudanese assistance. Muslims battle Christians for dominance of Nigeria.
If Christian missionaries and American doctors can penetrate their way through the thuggish governments to the African people, then we can use those people as a base and barrier in the long twilight struggle against the Islamofascists. Some African countries--particularly South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, and Spain--are actually as advanced as Mexico. Other West African countries have not prospered but continue to display encouraging signs that they will throw away the yoke of socialism and instill representative government.
I cannot say whether or to what extent the African aid programs actually help ordinary diseased people, but to the extent that they do work, they allow us to cultivate and strengthen potential allies in a region of the world that otherwise might harbor terrorists. People sick with any of the numerous endemic diseases of Africa cannot fight effectively and often cannot provide even a meager diet for their families. As part of our battle against Islamofascist terrorism, we should find constitutional ways to check the spread of Islam in Africa and elsewhere. Local and foreign missionaries can continue to spread Christianity, the first step toward building a Western civilization that depends upon the merger of strong Christian faith and scientific reason.
It is annoying, to say the least.
The only upside to all this money-vomiting is that I think part of the reason he did it was to prop up the economy.
Since I'm not an economist and don't even resemble one, I don't understand is why it hasn't caused massive inflation. Or, why pumping up the national debt hasn't caused it. Yet. Tax cuts, good. Pork spending by ignorant self-serving pols, bad.
Aqmazing - the WP praises Bush and evangelical Christians in teh same article. Next: al-Sadr converts to Catholicism.
Your point is good. If we can help fuel Ethiopia's b*tch-slapping of the Islamo-nuts, I'm all for it. I'm just tired of fueling thugs' offshore accounts and palace-building mania, as we did with lowlifes like Arafat for decades. That made no sense whatsoever.
The problem is that the Bible commands Christians to be compassionate to the poor; it does not decree that the government be the institution through which our "charity" is funneled. Government welfare programs are not charity, nor are they ministry for Christian "donors" who have no choice but to "give."
Real ministry is Chrsitians working through churches, individually, or collectively to give of themselves to help others. As Washington said, government is force. It is not compassion.
You're one of those people who believes that spending a third party's money on a second party refered to in those scriptures, makes you compassionate. There's a major problem with this approach --- thou shalt not steal.
It is annoying, to say the least.
The only upside to all this money-vomiting is that I think part of the reason he did it was to prop up the economy.
Since I'm not an economist and don't even resemble one, I don't understand is why it hasn't caused massive inflation. Or, why pumping up the national debt hasn't caused it. Yet. Tax cuts, good. Pork spending by ignorant self-serving pols, bad.
There is part of me -- a small part, to be sure -- that is wincing, crossing its fingers, and hoping against hope that it's a sham, and that the "relief workers" sent over there are really CIA spooks, using "the AIDS crisis" as a pretext, and the "relief worker" role as cover, to establish an effective network for the purposes of thwarting China and Russia, who are both working overtime to do what they've always done. That continent is a gold mine, both literally and figuratively, in terms of untapped natural resources.
Someone is gonna claim it...
Since I'm not an economist and don't even resemble one, I don't understand is why it hasn't caused massive inflation. Or, why pumping up the national debt hasn't caused it. Yet. Tax cuts, good. Pork spending by ignorant self-serving pols, bad.
The dirty little secret is that it has caused massive inflation. There's a reason they suddenly decided last year to drop the M3 numbers into stealth mode.
Without knowing the M3 -- the total amount of money in circulation -- we can't know the actual level of inflation.
Too, we continue to be hammered with the lie, that "inflation" has something to do with price indexes, and can only be calculated by comparing prices against this, that, and the other thing, with various and sundry items at some other point in history.
That's pure mitigated flimflam.
"Inflation", is, by definition, the "inflation" OF the money supply.
True, the more you inflate the money supply, the less "buying power" each dollar will have -- but the decreased buying power -- the increased prices of "stuff" -- are a SYMPTOM of "inflation", not "inflation" itself!
It's really easy to calculate inflation. Compare today's M3 with the M3 at some previous point in time. Oh, but we can't do that anymore. How convenient.
Still, the indicators are there. The printing presses (real and virtual) are going like gangbusters.
Remember, "money" is NOT something that is ONLY "created by the government. BANKS "create money" every day, it's what they do. The "fractional reserve system" means, divorced from all the voodoo mumbojumbo, that when you deposit money in the bank, the bank gets to "lend" it out multiple times. Then, when the recipients of those loans deposit the money they received, it gets multiplied again. The system cascades and cascades and cascades... the "size of the money" is quite fluid.
Then there's the matter of the immense amount of debt that is held by our avowed enemy, sworn to our destruction, China. They hold something over a trillion dollars of government debt. Not to put too fine a point on it, but more and more, it appears that China owns us. Strange, how we continue to cut them slack right and left. We pretty much have to do their bidding, lest they yank our chains, and watch us collapse like a cheap suit.
Look at China, then the middle east oil dictatorships, which are gradually shifting to the Euro, from the dollar. Once they've finished the job, we are screwed beyond recognition. Between China and the oil creeps, we're getting "triangulated" out of relevancy as a world power -- and right into third world hellholedom.
Meanwhile, there's.... Mexico!
The "shadow" state that has been working a "stealth" convergence of the USA, Canada, and Mexico into a clone of the E.U. will quite likely use the fall of the dollar as the excuse to switch over to the "Amero" -- and then, to "unify" the three countries.
Oh, how I wish this were mere paranoid delusion! Sadly, it's for real, and "for real" power players are working overtime to bring it into being. And they are not accustomed to NOT getting their way.
We live in interesting times. Interesting, and terrifying.
I blame it on pure unmitigated fatigue. (I feel like I've been going at this all year long, har har har.)
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