Bush Lies in the State of the Union...Surprise Surprise

Today I was reading through the Sunday Edition of the New York Times and I came across a very interesting article called the Budget Illusion.

Now it is no surprise that President Bush lied in the State of the Union, as he has done so about Iraq, the War on Terror and Social Security among others but I just wanted to bring to light this little fib to add to his list of aspersions.

In this most recent State of the Union, Bushy said that we had cut the budget deficit in half from 2004-2006. This is a lie. The deficit fell from $412 billion to$248 billion and if you measure it as a percentage of the economy he was off by an amount equal to about $15 billion. (Thank you New York Times for the figures)

Let me quote for you a little bit more of the rest of the article:

"Mr. Bush greatly compounded his otherwise modest exaggeration by taking credit for the reduction, when the deficit really fell despite his policies, not because of them...The drop in deficit over the past few years was due largely to the cyclical recovery from the earlier recession, and to a boost in revenue when temporary business tax cuts expired after 2004. Mr. Bush, meanwhile, has pursued a single-minded strategy of spending more while slashing taxes. That is the opposite of deficit reduction; it has made the budget hole deeper than it would have been. Still, Mr. Bush wants you to believe that tax cuts caused the economic recovery, and thus the budget improvement.

That was the speech, and then there is reality, which came knocking within days when the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released its annual 10-year budget outlook. The outlook is for a cumulative deficit of $2.9 trillion to $3.4 trillion - about $300 billion a year - if, as Mr. Bush wishes, the tax cuts are extended beyond their scheduled expiration in 2010 and tax relief continues for Americans wrongly afflicted by the alternative minimum tax. In arriving at its estimate, the budget agency also assumed that costs for the war in Iraq would start going down next year, an assumption that, if proved wrong, would result in even higher deficits."

Now you may be saying, it's $15 billion dollars, what's the big deal? The big deal is this is our President, and this is not his first little lie. If he is willing to lie about this among other things, what else is he willing to lie about.

Why the Scooter Libby Debacle Will Be the Last Political Mistake Dick Cheney Will Ever Make

Nobody really liked Dick Cheney in the first place. They tolerated him because he was an experienced business man, who had appeal to the Republican party.

Then, he became a staunch supporter of an increasingly unpopular Iraq war, and attacked Wolf Blitzer on CNN.

Then when Scooter Libby was arrested and held on charges of perjury Dick Cheney must have known that it was over. In an article published a few hours ago, the LA Times said this about a White House aide who recently testified in Libby's trial:

"Vice President Dick Cheney and his former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, were personally and actively involved in an effort to spin news coverage and discredit a critic of the Iraq war even before the fact that his wife was a CIA operative became public, a senior White House official testified Thursday.

Martin testified as a prosecution witness at Libby's trial on charges of obstructing an investigation into how the name of a CIA operative became public. The operative, Valerie Plame, is the wife of former U.S. envoy Joseph C. Wilson IV. Wilson, who had written a government report questioning White House claims that Iraq had sought nuclear weapons material from the government of Niger -- a report that the White House sought to discredit."

So what does this mean for Dick Cheney?

He is a second term Vice-President, who is rarely seen in public, has a scandalous trial in the works and is supportive of a war that even members of his own party are trying to distance themselves from. I'm pretty sure that we're going to be seeing the resignation of Dick Cheney in the months or weeks to come.

6 Reasons Why We Will Be Out of Iraq in Two Years

Here are a number of reasons why we will be out of Iraq in the next two years:

1. Support levels are low for the war
2. Reactions have been mostly negative for the "troop surge"
3. Bush will try to save his legacy by making amends
4. The Republican party will put pressure on Bush to pull out to save their chances for the Presidential election
5. New recruits are scarcely found, and instituting a draft for an already lowly supported war would be suicide
6. The Go Army commercials are getting pretty annoying

Bush Uses the Word "Iraq" Only 16 Times in the State of the Union

In this year's State of the Union address, President Bush used the word "Iraq" only 16 times in his speech. This compared with 27 times last year. He also used the word "Terrorism" only 20 times, as apposed to 27 times last year. Which words were on the rise? The word "World" was used 26 times as opposed to 15 last year and "Iran" was used 6 times as opposed to 3 last year and 1 in 2004.

So what does this mean? It means that we are shifting to the focus from Iraq to Iran, and looking at global issues more carefully. Why is this important? I don't know, you tell me.'

Source

See you soon.

My Market Theory

Well, lately I have been thinking a lot about the stock market. It seems like an easy way to make a lot of money very quickly, or lose a lot of money very quickly. But I think I found a strategy that over time when well applied virtually guarantees at least some gain from money invested.

Granted, I could be totally off the mark on this one, and if I am I would love to hear your theories, but I thought this was worth writing about. (That and I couldn't think of anything else, ;) .)

The first thing that you have to do is to pick a reliable stock. Something that isn't going away any time soon, and is traded in high volume. Make sure it's E/P is fairly low too, it needs to be a well valued stock.

Second, buy a some shares in that stock lets say 15.

Now comes the weird part.

If the stock goes down by two dollars, buy 15 more shares. If it goes down another two dollars buy another 15. (Obviously you have to set a limit for yourself i.e if it goes down buy 40 dollars you shouldn't still be buying, unless you think it is grossly undervalued.)

If the stock goes up by two dollars, sell 15 shares. If the stock keeps going up, and you have no more shares to sell, look at the E/P and if it is extremely high and the stock goes down by two dollars, don't buy more shares. Wait until you get a reasonable E/P before you start the cycle over again.

If you test this theory either with a fake portfolio or with the real deal, I would be very interested to hear about it.

The Roots of Hatred: How the Terrorist Problem Began and What to Do

Terrorism itself has been around for centuries. It has arisen in many cultures from Hinduism, to Judaism. It has been dealt with (and not dealt with) in the past in a variety of ways. What I want to talk about today is the roots of the terrorist problem in the Arab nations of the world, and what we can do about it.

To fully understand the terrorism problem, we need not look to the past 3,000 years as I and other have previously suggested, but to the past 30. This is because it is in this time period that the thriving cultures of the Arab nations, from Iraq to Lebanon, have gone from forward thinking and prosperous, to war ravaged and poor.

The problem starts in the 1950's and 60's. Here, Americanism was revered and many Arab nations attempted to mimic America's success and forward thinking policies. With leaders like Gamal Nasser of Egypt, the Arab world was trying to take the step forward into modernism. Republics were formed, civil liberties instituted and everything was on course for success. Then everything fell apart. Nothing was implemented correctly and suddenly these American ideals poorly utilized led to dictator's and a step backward in Arab culture. Women's rights were stripped, fundamentalist Islam was born and the beginnings of the Arab problem began.

This failure of the Arab regimes lead to a disillusionment with America, something which is exploited by terrorist movements. Youth's looking up to America, wanting to study in America, and wanting their countries to be like America felt like America was looking down on them, like they weren't good enough. This fact is exploited by terrorists in a specific demographic: young, impressionable, angry young men.

But perhaps most shocking of all is that many of the young people who choose to become terrorists are not poor and uneducated. Consider this, Mohammed Atta the lead terrorist on American Airlines Flight 11 grew up in a home that was not particularly religious and where studies were put first. He got good grades, and then went to Cairo University where he received a degree in architecture. At this point, he was still not very religious. Then he went went to Germany to earn his master's degree, and everything changed. Mohammed Atta the well schooled student became Mohammed Atta the terrorist.

It seems that this is a pattern. Previously un-religious young Arab men who move to foreign countries to study, are looked down upon by the western inhabitants. They then move back to the more conservative ways that make them feel at home and safe. From there they get into militant Islam, and there is no turning back.

So a disillusionment with the west created by feeling like an outsider, prompts young men who are angry at being treated as inferior to terrorist groups lead by charismatic leaders who twist the words of an inherently peaceful religion to spew fire at their perceived "oppressors."

Great, so what do we do about it?

We take a multilateral and multifront approach to correct misconceptions, turn public opinion and cut the knee's off the terrorist groups who are a threat to our way of life.

The first thing to do is turn public opinion away from terrorism, specifically in the young person demographic. We set up charities, and massive food drops. We emblazon our name on everything and hire an experienced PR firm to help.

The second thing to do is set up schools to correct misconceptions about the West that many young people are brought up with in the Arab world today.

We make it seem ridiculous to be a terrorist, show the people Islam as it was intended, as a peaceful religion.

Then, we take care of the existing terrorists. We find them where they are hiding, and we kill them with covert operations. No invasions. Nice and clean.

Now if we cut their heads off with covert ops, they can't regrow because their source for recruits has been turned against them.

Then we pull out of Iraq, do something that doesn't involve an invasion about Iran, and deal with China, North Korea and Russia.

See you soon.

Blog

Ok, so I've been doing some thinking, and this blog is now going to be totally about politics. And some technology. Technolitics I believe is the best term. See you later.