51 Year old Veterinarian to wear "Dog Tags"

[Shapley]

OT:

RE:His predecessor didn't go to war over it, and continued to cooperate with the U.N. with regards to dealing with the threat(not that the U.N.'s a saintly organization, either)

While Koffi Anan's son, and countless others, enriched themselves from illicit profits from the Oil-for-Food program. There was a reason the U.N. didn't want to go to war, and world security wasn't it.

[Shapley]

Criminy! Who moved the biergarten?

Here it is St. Paddy's Day and I'm sober, and discussing politics, to boot!

Bad boy! Bartender, set up another round. When I drink, everybody drinks!


And, When I pay, everybody pays!

Spoken like a true Irishman!

V/R
Shapley

[OperaTenor]

That's what happens when you wander into the Barracks. Again..... :p

I agree, OFF was at least a mistake, and quite possibly a criminal one at that. It gets right back to that whole integrity thing I keep harping about.

Please, just don't give me any of that green crap, St. Pattie's day or no.

[Serenity]

...and GWB is in Ireland.....kissing Irish booty...Happy St Patrick's Curious George

[Trumpetmaster]

Originally posted by Serenity:
...and GWB is in Ireland.....kissing Irish booty...Happy St Patrick's Curious George

ROFL - It figures!

[piqaboo]

Haggis, Sadie was being specious about her 31 yr old relative not being called up? :p <oops, that was Saxy's relative>

I heard today that the Nat'l Guard increased their # recruiters by over 1000, and that they are sending recruiters to Iraq, because they are getting significantly fewer Army folk entering the NG once their Army tour of duty is up, and this hurts both numbers and experience. They are also offering a $10K signing bonus to new recruits. Dont know if this has always been standard practice or is new due to dropping enrollment.
Possibilities for decline include:
a) NG "supposed to be" a free ride, low risk and now its not
b) folks who might have gone into the NG are joining one of the big 4 instead (army, navy, AF, marines)
c) other.

Have a beer on my tab! Make it a Harp, since we're harping on the same old topics all over again!

<small>[ 03-17-2005, 03:01 PM: Message edited by: piqaboo ]</small>

[haggis]

Actually this is something that I can cheer about. We are in this current crisis (manning and manning problems of reserve and NG units) because successive administrations (Repub. and Demo.) tried to do national defense on the cheap.

I suspect no one except the historically minded or us old timers can remember why we had a nuclear race to begin with. Need a hint?

Money. Presidents and Congresses starting with Eisenhower advocated the build up of nuclear weapons because they, nuclear weapons, were/are cheap to build, cheap to maintain and cheap to deliver.

You don’t need 20 Army Divisions to take irradiated moonscapes, so, cut the payroll, reduce the forces and lets see who can build the first 200 megaton nuke to squeeze into a toothpaste tube.

President Reagan realized that the only way we were going to defeat the Soviets was by hitting their pockets, thus the conventional and nuclear build-up of the Reagan era.

After the Cold War, Congress thought they would save money by slashing the active duty force and pushed much of our airlift, reconnaissance and tank heavy combat units to the Reserve and Guard.

If you’re just reading the paper, it’s understandable that you think buying new weapon’s system are expensive, but equipment is cheap, always has been.

Take a few minutes to review the defense budget in any year and you’ll see that people and people cost are always the bulk of the defense budget.

By pushing the equipment to the Guard and Reserve units the cost to the budget is minimal, salaries for one weekend a month and two weeks a year, versus the cost of maintaining a similarly equipped active duty unit of the same size is a hell of a cost savings to the budget.

It works great, as long as a sustained deployment of combat forces are not required!!!

Thank your representatives for the current state; where an annual budget is more important that long range defense needs.

Well, the chickens have come home to roost and I, for one, hope that reservists and guards numbers do decline. Then we can put the teeth in front of the tail again and have a properly trained, motivated, professional (and expensive) military force to defend us.

[shostakovich]

A while back Shap wrote: "I'm still waiting for someone to present a factual list of lies this President has told."

Well, back in 2000 he made 2 big campaign promises I recall: 1) to cut taxes, and 2) to have a new bill making the cost of medications for the elderly cheaper during 2001. He rushed into the tax cuts. He meant that one. NOTHING was on the horizon about #2 when 9/11 hit. If he had meant to carry through the second promise there should have been SOMETHING mentioned about it before 9/11. There wasn't. It was simply a lie to counter the more generous medication promise of Gore to be enacted in 2002.

In 2002 when he was beating the drum for war he would tack on a half-hearted "as a last resort". Lie. War with Iraq was a first choice. He tipped his had with "That's the guy who tried to kill my dad". WMD was a smokescreen lie.

Recently his "Attacking Iran is ridiculous. Having said that, all options are on the table." contains a contradiction. Attack is ridiculous, but on the table. One of those parts is a lie.

He has called himself a "compassionate conservative". Two words, two lies. THAT'S economy! His compassion amounts to words during campaigns and nothing else. Conservatism tends toward status quo by definition. Sometimes it's good and sometimes it's bad. Without addressing good or bad (although you know how I feel), war, massive debt, major change in SS and Medicare are liberal (open to change --- not necessarily good or bad) moves. As for the environment, I'm not sure whether conservatism and conservation are connected, so I don't know whether putting the environment in the hands of industry is conservative or liberal.

So there's a list of lies. Bush is not the only liar in politics. It goes with the territory. But Bush LIES with the best of them.
Shos

[haggis]

Uh, Shos??? I think you posted on the wrong board....or, maybe not

<small>[ 03-17-2005, 09:28 PM: Message edited by: Haggis ]</small>

[shostakovich]

Hi Haggis. The quote came from this thread, posted 3/17 at 9:27 AM.
Shos

[OperaTenor]

You need proof that GWB lies?

Let me find a photo of him with his mouth open...............

[Shapley]

Shos,

GWB proposed, and Congress implemented, the Medicaid Drug Card Program. You may remember it, the one they had to beg seniors to sign up for. It may not have worked, but it was an honest proposal to lower drug costs. It was, I believe, based on the type of drug card program that many insurers use to lower their own costs, such as the one I have.

Among the aspects of it, it requires the use of generic drugs in place of name-brand ones when a generic exists. Many seniors oppose that. As long as their not paying for it, they want the best.

So I believe you lose on that one.

And you've already pointed out that the other campaign promise was followed through on.

V/R
Shapley