Hail to the ChiefFollow

Insofar as each of you has actually answered the questions that were asked of you, you have all failed Presidential Campaigning 101.

The correct answers are:

1. Given the situation in Iraq as it is today, and assuming that situation will not worsen until you act (though your action could also improve the situation), what would your policy be on a U.S. presence in Iraq?

Ban gay marriage.

2. The U.S. economy seems to be heading for browner pastures. What would you do to improve the current economic situation?

Blame it on Bill Clinton.

3. You have just recieved concrete, irrifutable proof that Osama bin laden is hideing in an Iranian military bunker. It has been verified, there is no chance the intel is wrong. He is there and will be for the next 24 hours. What do you do next?

Raise the terror alert level to distract the public from this news when it inevitably leaks.

Sleepover & a blanket party.

1. Given the situation in Iraq as it is today, and assuming that situation will not worsen until you act (though your action could also improve the situation), what would your policy be on a U.S. presence in Iraq?

Use economic influence in order to get a true "coalition" into Iraq while continueing a phased withdrawl of troops. Use same influence to get UN troops (I'd "concede" to sign the Kyoto protocals in order to do so) and NATO troops involved. Cede US bases in the Middle East to NATO and UN troops as well.

2. The U.S. economy seems to be heading for browner pastures. What would you do to improve the current economic situation?

Raise taxes on any and every company that "outsources" jobs while giving tax breaks to companies the reloacte jobs back to the US. Give blanket Amnesty to illigal aliens who contribute to our society while taxing their wages 5% until all back taxes they would have paid, had they been legal, are paid off. Legalise Marijuana and add a Federal Tax to it (States can add their own). Use $ from troop withdrawls and ceded military bases to lower taxes for individuals across the board.

3. You have just recieved concrete, irrifutable proof that Osama bin laden is hideing in an Iranian military bunker. It has been verified, there is no chance the intel is wrong. He is there and will be for the next 24 hours. What do you do next?

A joint Moussad/CIA/SAS strike force would be sent in, with full deniabilty set up ahead of time. Tom Clancy can draw up the battle plans.

Funnily enough (or not so much) back in the dialup days I had set my web browser's homepage "about:blank" so it wouldn't load anything, but I mistyped it to "aobut:blank" which achieved the same result, so I left it for quite some time.

Punish?...that's funny.

If avoiding taxes were the only reason businesses were going out of the country I might consider tax-breaks. Reducing the minimum wage to about 2 bucks an hour and rescinding labor and environmental laws might encourage them to stay.

Omega's idea made more sense.

Taxes are a cost of doing business in America. If you eliminate a good chunk of the cost of doing business the attractiveness of offshoring jobs decreases. There are enough "hassle factor" costs associated with offshore resources and back-office processing that taxes and general accounting practices may not be the only reason but they are a big part of it.

I have worked with firms that pulled business back from an offshore provider because of those "hassle factor" costs. I currently work for a company that enjoys significant savings from the use of offshore resources. The former became too expensive to make it cost effective. In the current situation I have seen enough of the books to know that it wouldn't take much to make the investment unattractive.

These are white collar/office examples. For blue collar examples, I don't think you have to look any further than the auto industry. Detroit is closing plants all over the country, taking concessions from it's unions and still falling deeper and deeper in to a hole of unprofitability. So how then is Toyota able to keep expanding it's workforce here, keep expanding it's market share here and keep making money hand over fist here? Maybe its because the unions have f'ucked over the American economy for 60 years. Maybe its because liberal politicians continue to f'uck American businesses.

As far as I know, Toyota still answers to OSHA in this country, but they tell UAW to get f'ucked and pay a decent wage to their working employees while not keeping thousands of workers on the payroll for years to sit in a room and play checkers 8 hours a day because of a union contract.

As for Omega's idea, amnesty for illegal immigrants, regardless of their productivity, is a terrible idea on principle and her plan for repaying "back taxes" is unworkable in practice. Although I am totally in favor of the legalization and taxation on pot, and more, this is far too puritanical and reactionary a country to ever make it work. Ceding bases to the U.N. is just f'ucking dumb.

But I understand how it would make sense to you. You're not very bright.

1. Given the situation in Iraq as it is today, and assuming that situation will not worsen until you act (though your action could also improve the situation), what would your policy be on a U.S. presence in Iraq?

Given that the invasion was idiotic and illegal in the first place...... after immediatly withdrawing every last iota of military presence from Iraq (this would also include halting all plans for permanent bases in the country). Then I would bring the architects of the war, from Bush downwards, to account for it. Every single one of them. Charge them all very publicly with war crimes and crimes against humanity then smear them with **** and take photos while they **** each other off. let the world see that even tho the American people were stupid enough to fall for their bull (twice), that they have finally woken up and arent going to fall for it again.

Then I would issue a massive apology to the people of Iraq, and humbly offer them any assistance that they care to ask for in rebuilding their country (after the period of utter chaos that they will inevitably go thru after the US withdrawel).

2. The U.S. economy seems to be heading for browner pastures. What would you do to improve the current economic situation?

Start a massive education programme to help everyone in the US, from the Maccy D's burger flipper, to the people in charge of federal spending, understand that the only way to financial happiness is to spend less than you earn.

3. You have just recieved concrete, irrifutable proof that Osama bin laden is hideing in an Iranian military bunker. It has been verified, there is no chance the intel is wrong. He is there and will be for the next 24 hours. What do you do next?

Get on the phone to the people in charge of Iran and demand that he be arrested and held until some sort of mutually agreeable exchange is affected. If they refuse, use every diplomatic and civilised means to get them to comply. Civilised absolutely does not mean using hi-explosives of any kind or violence in general. It doesn't work and will just end up getting lots more people killed who have nothing to with the situation. (Why you folk suggesting yet more troops and yet more violence as an answer to the violence, refuse to learn from the lessons of the last few (thousnands of) years is beyond me).

What you do not do is turn him into a martyr and the Iranians into victims of the US war machine. That would only create yet more willing participants to seek revenge against the US.

You guys don't seem to want to understand the customs and beliefs of that part of the world. A guest is the most honorable person in the house. He could take a dump on your daughters bed and he would still be treated as a guest. That is the same for a traveller staying in an inn, to a international terrorist hanging out in your country. Thats not to say the host actually wants the guest, ( and secretly may well want rid of him), but honour demands that he be treated as such. If our politicians understood this and tried to work with those beliefs and customs, rather than trying to bludgeon a proud and honour driven society into submission using violence, then a little more progress would be probable.

I think you would find that given the right incentives the Iranians would hand Osama over without batting an eyelid. As long as honour was seen to be kept.

To be honest, I'm a little surprised that no-one on this board has even mentioned that perhaps an apology would be in order.

The general feeling I'm getting from the thread is that most people think that well 'seeing as we're there, we may as well stay'. Even the lefties are going along with the 'we're there to help out those people wether they want our help or not' line. Perhaps thats why the US is in the mess its in. You all (well obviously not every last one of you) have such an ingrained belief in your inherant 'goodness' as a nation, that to admit that your presence in Iraq is wrong on every level, would be to admit to yourselves that there is something really rotten in the fabric of American society. That would be a hard admission to make.

But for even the anti-war folk to be suggesting that more troops, more occupation and more violence to be some sort of answer to the hell on earth that is Iraq today, is imo really quite sad.

1) Immediately stop all campaigns for recruitment and spend most of that money on training an Iraqi armed force to phase out the current US forces there. After that is done keep more US trainers there to help train more troops until the Iraqis can take over that job.
2) Cut Pentagon spending a little and tax the top 1%
3) Send Iran a message threatening to release the information to the UN that they are harboring a wanted criminal unless they allow a US strike team to go in and capture him. Then ship him back over here to be put to trial.

While Iraq was under the guard of the UN, no one was likely to attack. Likewise, it suffered far fewer internal conflicts.As opposed to claiming "any assistance" out of one side of your mouth while advocating flipping the Iraqi government the bird as it asks for our help and letting it fall into chaos out of the other. Gotcha.

Edited to please Smash.

Edited, Jan 15th 2008 4:22pm by Jophiel

Risks of typing in short bursts between desk phone calls and people at my desk. I'll send your remarks up to management.

I edited for you because I desperately crave your approval.

/nod