Call for entries.

Like many of you, I’m spending a great deal of time today reading the news, in many different forms. This is also a day when I have to do prep work for a great wad of deadline stuff coming up in another couple weeks, so I’m pretty much in laptops-and-phones mode. Might have some thoughts on current events in a few hours, might not. In the meantime, you-all are invited to leave your thoughts in the usual place.

Posted at 1:57 pm in Current events |
 

18 responses to “Call for entries.”

  1. brian stouder said on August 10, 2006 at 2:15 pm

    I heard the president use the term “Islamic facist” today, and winced. Then I heard a (completely expected!) story that some Islamic group took exception to that particular term……and then the thought occurred that if today’s BREAKING NEWS was that 8 jumbo jets had gone missing in the North Atlantic ocean…then it really would be fade-to-black on tolerance and human understanding, right about now.

    In any case, when self-described ‘Christian Fundamentalist’ lunatics do something newsworthy – say, holding a book burning bonfire – it is simple truth and accuracy to label them ‘Christian Fundamentalists’, yes?

    Still, made me wince

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  2. mary said on August 10, 2006 at 2:20 pm

    I get a weekly report on layoffs in companies all over the country, in case I want to seize on the opportunity to hire some of the laid off folks. This week I got this one, among others. Bear in mind that HCA is the company owned by Bill Frist’s family.
    HEALTHCARE

    HCA Inc.
    Nashville, TN
    Riverside, CA

    Starting last Friday, Certified Nursing Assistants, Dietary Aides, Environmental Service Aides, Sterile Processing Technicians, Emergency Room Technicians and other healthcare workers were abruptly laid off at Riverside Community Hospital. Management gave the caregivers no prior notice before executing the staffing cuts, which occurred on all hospital floors, including Medical Surgery and Orthopedic Units where patients in acute condition require intensive care. Most caregivers were told by their managers that the decision was made in advance because the hospital fell short of its budget goals in the month of June. Riverside Community Hospital is owned by HCA, the most profitable healthcare chain in the world, which posted $1.4 billion in net profit in 2005.

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  3. nancy said on August 10, 2006 at 2:32 pm

    They also just took themselves private for something like $20 billion. They’re going to be missing a lot of budget goals in the future, I think.

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  4. mary said on August 10, 2006 at 3:41 pm

    The people they laid off were all in the $8.50 to $14.00 per hour range. The lowest paying jobs in the hospital. I think you could dig enough spare change out of the seats of Bill Frist’s SUV to pay these guys.

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  5. Joe Kobiela said on August 10, 2006 at 4:48 pm

    I suppose some people will blame the President for this, saying that if we were not in Iraq these people would not be plotting to blow jets up and murder civilians, however I am going to hit my knees tonight and thank God we have the people in charge that we do.
    Joe

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  6. nancy said on August 10, 2006 at 5:05 pm

    I don’t blame the president for this, but I’d sure as hell like to know why we thought fighting a war in Iraq would stop British citizens from plotting another slaughter-by-airline.

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  7. Danny said on August 10, 2006 at 5:30 pm

    I guess that really is the rub. This is guerrilla war being carried out against civilians. There is no standing army to attack. About the only option is to go after nations that sponser terrorism. Ther may not have been a real strong tie in Iraq (blame it on faulty intelligence, incompetence or whatever), but I bet we were going to have to deal with Sadam sooner or later

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  8. nancy said on August 10, 2006 at 5:53 pm

    No strong tie to Iraq? There was no tie to Iraq, except in a few imaginations. None. If you go by hijacker passports alone, the strongest ties were to our good friends the Saudis. It’s hard to see how we were “going to have to deal with Saddam” when, after we invaded the country, we found not much of an armed force and no WMD. It’s hard to see how he could mount much of an effort against us, surreptitiously through small cells or any other way, when it seemed he had his hands full keeping his own unruly country under the bootheel.

    To use the term from the bestseller list, this war has been a fiasco start to finish. A friend says, “Can you imagine if Gore had won in 2000, and 9/11 had happened? Rush Limbaugh would still be starting every show saying, “Day 393, and OSAMA BIN LADEN REMAINS AT LARGE.” Only now it’s closer to 1,800 days, and guess what.

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  9. Danny said on August 10, 2006 at 6:23 pm

    There was no tie to Iraq, except in a few imaginations.

    I disagree. Atta and one or two others were shown to have either gone to Iraq or met outside of Iraq with Iraqi officials. And there is no question that Saddam would have been totally cool with allowing a terrorists to train in Iraq. YMMV.

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  10. Scout said on August 10, 2006 at 6:25 pm

    hey, where’d the trolls come from? there had better not be anyone feeding them or you’ll never get them to leave.

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  11. Danny said on August 10, 2006 at 6:44 pm

    What trolls, Scout? I’m a regular here and I think I’ve seen Joe’s name quite a bit too. Here, we don’t always agree on everything, but it’s a pretty cool place in-spite-of or because-of that.

    If you want some place where every MUST agree with certain points of view, maybe go over to kos or poorman.

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  12. Joe Kobiela said on August 10, 2006 at 8:52 pm

    I have posted a number of times and have read Miss N since she began in Fort Wayne, Can you say the same Scout??
    Although I do not agree with N’s politics I still enjoy her writing. We are of the same age, so a lot of what she did and writes about is familiar to me. We tend to disagree on some things and agree on others, I feel she is like a friend. Not overly close but some one you can talk to.
    Joe
    P.S. Danny it is nice to have some one else on board that shares some of the same views on the world. It was starting to get lonely in here.

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  13. Jenny said on August 10, 2006 at 9:25 pm

    “And there is no question that Saddam would have been totally cool with allowing a terrorists to train in Iraq.”

    In fact, there are significant reasons to question this premise. Saddam was an authoritarian secularist. The last thing he’d have wanted was a fundamentalist who wants to overthrow governments not inspired by his particular brand of Islam.

    Here’s a link to a 2004 article from the Washington Post that discusses contacts between bin Laden and Saddam during the years that bin Laden was in Sudan. Apparently he sought help from Saddam, but Saddam was not interested.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47812-2004Jun16.html

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  14. Danny said on August 10, 2006 at 9:54 pm

    Jenny, you make a good point, but there is also the saying that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Saddam wass a secularist, but he also hated the US and had plans to assassinate Bush 41. I think is hatred was more sacred to him than his secularism and he could easily have found a way to work with the likes of B. Laden without endangering his own regime.

    Joe, I’ve begun to look upon the regs here as brothers and sisters. Of course, I am sometimes the little bratty brother that gets picked on. 😉

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  15. Dorothy said on August 11, 2006 at 7:56 am

    Okay Danny I’ve been wracking my brain but I can’t figure out what the heck “YMMV” means. Can ya help me out here?

    The closest I can come is “Your Move, Mistress (of) Virtue!”.

    And you aren’t a brat, OR a troll! Scout is the newbie (unless he/she has been reading and not posting very much).

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  16. Danny said on August 11, 2006 at 10:11 am

    Thanks, Dorothy.

    YMMV = Your Mileage May Vary

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  17. Jim from Fla said on August 11, 2006 at 8:24 pm

    The 911 Commission report also supports Jenny’s post above. While Saddam may have hated the US, the report found no evidence that he cooperated with or supported Bin Laden or any of the 911 hijackers. In fact, prior to 1991 Bin Laden was supporting anti- Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan (P 61 of the commission report) and in 1997 Atta said he considered Saddam a US stooge (P 161). Pages 228/229 of the report debunk the assertion that Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in April 2001.

    There’s a lot of speculation that Saddam was part of the 911 plot, but few (if any) facts to support it.

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  18. Danny said on August 14, 2006 at 1:57 pm

    I stand corrected. Did some research. It appears that the news of meetings in Prague between Atta and Iraqi officials are not believed to have happened. Thanks, Jim and Jenny.

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