Too bad you have so much trouble connecting the dots. You worry about health education and infrastructure expenses (i.e. stuff for you) being too high and too altruistic (a la "Why should I pay for somebody else's medical care?" --because they're paying yours!) - that 30 billion to Israel alone (i.e. stuff for strangers) means $1000 out of the pocket of each and every overworked American regardless of age, gender, wealth...more if you're paying for someone who can't...or won't. And you don't get a single bridge rivet, #2 pencil or bandaid out of it. Haha!

Howzat for altruism?

It's also a matter of great curiosity that the US is so wilfully, purposely, deliberately, crashingly screwing up everywhere, eg. the romance with Pakistan.

The world is not laughing with you anymore.

Blame the Saudis for the housing crisis? That's a new one and also ridiculous its the Federal Reserve that caused the crisis along with laxed lending, greedy flippers and realtors, speculators, and Chairman's Bernake and Greenspan. The Federal Reserve and their Wall Street buddies got rich at the expense of the American people. The Chinese, Japanese, and the Arabs keep our currency afloat but are beggining to realize they got the raw end of the bargain. They are even beggining to divest out of dollars and into Euros which will be a big problem for the US.

Otherwise its a well written article particularily the fact that the Taliban were the Saudi's puppets along with Pakistan. The taxpayer waste on arms sales I have to agree with also.

Without oil, the past century of 'progress' would not have happened. We would still be at a mautre steampowered level of technology. Without the support of the British Empire during the '20s, the Al Saud clan would not have been able to sieze the throne, and thereby ensure the flow of oil to the dwindling British Empire and the nascent American Empire.

If anything, the Saudi's are getting their just rewards for helping support the 'Western Decadence' that radical Islam now rails against. That the servant of the 'Great Satan' has to go to them cap in hand to beg for more cheaper oil, which is already flowing at capacity plus, thus depleteing a resource that has officially passed it's peak production, is delicious irony indeed.

It is our our rapacious greed that has brought us to this precipice, as we encouraged the poor and lower middle class to buy into the nightmare that is the 'American Dream' by signing on for sub-prime mortgages at floating interest rates buoyed up by financial trickery and Enron style accounting, trying to get something for nothing as they pay one credit card bill with another.

My question on reading this .... why do we Americans always seem to expect the rest of the world to be 'grateful' to us?

When we give money to a country like Israel, the money doesn't really go there.

The money goes to US arms manufacturers. Likely Lockheed-Martin or Boeing or Ratheon or companies like that that make the planes and the missiles. Israel gets the deadly hardware, the money goes into the arms merchants banks.

So in terms of cash, look at this as a $30 billion subsidy to the arms industry.

The price we American citizens pay for this includes this list.
-- we live in a more dangerous world where there are more high-tech killing machines.
-- the people in Palestine or Lebanon see American killing machines killing them and their neighbors. And when they are digging through the rubble of a building trying to rescue their children and neighbors who might be trapped under the rubble, they find missile parts that are labeled in English and which are clearly American. Picture the reaction in the US if while the teams were digging through the rubble of the WTC if they kept finding bomb parts that said "made in Saudi Arabia" all over them.

So, Israel's victims pay a direct price, and we Americans pay an indirect price for a $30 billion cash flow to the merchants of death.

Didn't the Sarah Connor Chronicles debut last week on the tube? You know, th eone thats all rah-rah about beating a future that has already come to pass, fighting against a Pentagon built AI war machine? The same kind of machines the Penatgon has DARPA trials for out in the desert, trying to build an autonomous tanklike killing machine? And already has pilotless RPVs that make their own decisions about which truck filled with innocent civillians in Iraq to use Hellfire anti-tank misiles on?

I was one of those who once thought that the future would be filled with marvelous tech toys, and good, happy shiney times.

I grew up. The future will be lit by candles.

Also... have to thank the Saudis for detaining and torturing a Canadian citizen for two years on trumped up 'terrorism' charges...

Galen, Maher Arar was sent to Syria, not Saudi Arabia, I thought. Or to whom are you referring in your 2:14 posting?
Craig

PhysicsTeacherGuy: I was refering to Bill Sampson, held on charges of helping set off a car bomb. Totally bogus. The Saudi's has plenty of homegrown fanatics who want the US freeindly regime out, but instead choose to terrorise innocent westerners living and working their counrty who might speak out about what they see.

CHeck the CBC for the full story.

COMarc,

Altruism is apparently only justifiable when aiding and abetting war, torture, oppression, chaos, plunder, and mayhem, and when all the benefits accrue to the most ruthless, elitist, and cruel.

The self-destructive (self-destructive for the US and the human race, though the small groups benefiting in the short term appear to be blissfully unaware of the impossibility of separating their destiny from that of others) and earth-destructive feedback loops are numerous and growing, and it does not appear the cycles will be broken until after all the wheels come off.

WHY is the US so insistent on giving money to Israel or Pakistan? Because of power. It is sickening. Think of the use of that money for the US alone! It would solve our healthcare crisis.

Does anyone remember a long time ago something called the Monroe Doctrine?

"At first, the Bush administration feared that some pro-Israel members of Congress might be able to derail the arms sale deal, but they solved that one by offering Israel $30 billion in new weapons. That's a good deal for the Israelis and for U.S. arms manufacturers, although not for U.S. taxpayers stuck with the tab."

Well, that's just another one of those "unfunded" liablilities that Republicans or Democrats don't want to discuss at any time, especially when they're campaigning on the trail and singing along with Roy Rogers' theme song: "Happy Trails To You".....until you're screwed again.

Frankly, I really don't know how Republicans are able to convince their constituents that social security and medicare are "undfunded" when money is taken out their paychecks every week to fund these programs. WTF do they think they are paying out that money for? Meanwhile, their hard-earned money is being taken from those(future promises)programs and being spent on "illegal wars" and "corporate welfare" programs.

"Happy Trails" to the ignorant voters digging their own graves!

Instead investing the trillion dollars the war has cost in self sufficiency they used it to murder innocent people.
Now we are way beyond broke, married to fleets of gas guzzling SUV's. Ineficient suburban communities with over indulgent McMansions.
Now due to his own stupidity he {Bush] prostates himself to Meca begging to be rewarded with cheap oil for his aberrant behavior.
I don't hate to say "I told you so". We're all going have to pay the price for having a President with frat boy mentality and rich dad economics.
Thanks for supporting this imbecile red staters.

CoMarc, Good list. Let's not leave out General Electric, the world's largest supplier of nuclear weapons AND owner of one of the largest media conglomerates in the world: NBC.

Is there any wonder Big Media loves the Bush Administration's policies of perpetual war and reconstruction and willingly spews propaganda to the American people in support of whatever illegal, imperialist, and psychopathological whim that crosses Bush and Cheney's deeply disordered minds? Forget any serious investigative reports vetting corruption and criminal conduct on the part of our elected representatives in Congress or the White House. After all, War and War profiteering are, well, profitable. Our national motto should be changed from "E Pluribus Unum," (out of many, one) to the more apt "Profit over People," to accurately reflect the reality, the legacy, these criminals have created for all of us.

Corporate complicity and collusion with corrupt governments are the hallmarks of fascism. What ensues is lawlessness, anarchy, and retribution. Bush's legacy is that he brazenly and without conscience disregarded any of the founding ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independence and US Constitution. He and his gang are simply snakes in expensive suits, con men and thugs, who have manipulated a nation into accepting neo-liberal capitalism and plutocratic kleptocracy as 'democracy' and destroyed any hopes of a law-abiding, ethical, and egalitarian nation in the process.

GIOVANNA: Right on!

Wasn't the spectacle of George W. Bush dancing with King Abdullah nauseating? Did you see him, mooning like a lover at the world's most absolute monarch and waving that big sword? Bush gives speeches talking about his promotion of freedom and democracy, and here he is lavishly and dangerously arming a Wahhabi fanatic, a man who supports madrassas promoting violent jihad all over the world, who kills women accused of adultery and Muslims who embrace another religiion, represses all women, and chops of the hands of petty thieves while he and his immense family rob the nation blind. Maybe Bush was just happy to be in the company of someone whose human rights record may be even worse than his own. It was a shameless, disgusting display of hypocrisy and should be featured by the Democratic National Committee in advertisements right before the November elections.

&+ like to @#% that %#@*&@ sword up his @!#!!!

No evidence has ever been produced to show Usama Bin Laden had any involvement in the Sep. 11 attacks. In fact HE DENIED ANY INVOLVEMENT. As for the Taliban, the United States also supported them until 9/11. What a surprise- the author writes for the SF Comical, a study in yellow journalism if there ever was one. PS hey Comical: flag/remove this!

When we went off the gold standard in 1971 we went on the oil standard. We worked out a deal with the Saudis to keep the House of Saud in power and increase oil prices so long as OPEC would only accept USD in any oil sales. With the money they sent back to the US to invest, we used it to enslave third world nations with debt.

When TLC Fed Chairman Volcker jacked up interest rates to 20% to support the dollar the 3rd world defaulted on their debt and forced us to bail out our own banks and then empowered the IMF to act as our debt collector. We owned the 3rd world after that. But Volcker and Reagans policies destroyed our industrial economy. The chairman of the Atlantic Richfield Oil Company was quoted as saying "they've done more to dismantle American Industry than any other group in history". Now we produce nothing but creative debt and weapons and our workers serve fries and clean bed pans. So it was more than Bush II that destroyed this country (he just put the finishing touches on it).

The Taliban and Al Qaeda were the product of a Pakistan, American and Saudi partnership. Anyone not knowing this by now should go back to sleep. And if you believe the hijacker myth ask yourself with so many Saudis names on the list, why did we help the Saudi's in this country get out so quickly without questioning, including members of OBL's family. Saudi Arabia may be angry we named so many Saudi's as hijackers, we could have said they were all Palestinians or Iraqis. I mean, it's not like this government is so addicted to telling the truth. Maybe we plan to do a regime change in Saudi Arabia one day.

Anyways, Bush II could not care less about his popularity among the critters of the Middle East, nor about his popularity with his own critters here in the US.

FWIW. Halliburton moved to Dubai so they would not have to pay US taxes on their profits from all the fat no bid government contracts we gave them.

Ah, here you go again - blaming everything on Bush and his henchmen. Easier, isn't it, than facing the truth? What about that 180 Americans did after the American-Vietnam War? You know, where they gladly swept their heinous war crimes record under the rug and embraced a senile, decrepit, lunatic Reagan - and the same bunch of wackos now ruining this country? Bombing millions of civiians into oblivion, laying waste to an entire country (and its neighbors), and leaving that gift that goes on giving - land mines - so no Vietnamese would ever forget what real barbarians are really like? Ah, 'morning in America' - no more examing the conscience of a despicable people. How nice that was!

So what did you expect? Did Americans demand that their War Machine - the most terrifying on earth - be dismantled forever? Did they dedicate their lives to rebuilding their society on a just and equitable basis? Did they restore honor to a discredited murderous military? Hell No! They didn't even raise the age for military duty to 25 years - that way they could entice children whose brains (and experience) were not yet fully formed. And you want to blame all that on Bush and Cheney and their fascist friends? You're in denial - most of you - and if you don't wake up, nothing is ever going to change. After all, those who read this site are in a very small minority - like much less than even 5%, althouth I'm sure about 5% of the general population do agree with me - and the smarter guys (and gals) among you.

I know that's hard to hear from a conservative, so hey, rant against me again - it won't change your ignorance one little bit. Preach to the choir - then you don't have to consider anyone else's point of view. How convenient. I get sick of trying to talk to liberals anyway - they all think they have all the answers. They just can't get any political support! Why is that? How's that working for you?

PS - polls have shown that Americans have opted for national healthcare - yeah, socialism - in large majorities ever since Nixon brought it up (I think he was the last.) And don't bring up Hillary - she was just joking - as you found out. Talk about dumb. Go blast Nader too. I voted for him. And I sure as hell aint' no Dumbocrat. I'll never vote for a Dumbocrat - ever - and neither will many of my friends. Too many of the liberal ideas destroyed too many lives - like a social worker in every home, no discipline in schools, and kids running amok. Yeah - great ideas from the 'War on Poverty' - how's that working out now? No fault divorce - gee, what a great idea! Who are the poorest of the poor in America today? It wouldn't be divorced women, would it? Working 2 or 3 jobs to feed their kids while their ex parties with his latest secretary? How about Clinton's fascist ideas? He did more to further fascism than anyone since - well, I can't remember anyone in my lifetime. Go figure. At least Eisenhower didn't ruin the country - and he had a gun to his head. He warned you. Nobody seemed to listen. (And I'm aware of his many warts, believe you me.) We've gone downhill ever since.

"..except for the folks who lose the equity in their homes, but they don't have a lobby that Congress or the president has to worry about."

Where is the peoples lobby? Oh that's right, it is suppose to be our representatives and senators in Congress.

AlexLawyer wrote at 8:37 pm on Wednesday:

Wasn't the spectacle of George W. Bush dancing with King Abdullah nauseating? ...
Maybe Bush was just happy to be in the company of someone whose human rights record may be even worse than his own...

That so rings true.

MiMiCcS Thanks for your posting and the poor Afghans have been the victims of that nasty partnership.