“except the stimulus cost more than Iraq, so far“.

Exactly how much more is Iraq going to cost us? That side of the ledger is pretty much done.

Meanwhile, we financed the stimulus by borroing money. And the interest rate is not 0%. That interest can and should be included in the “cost” until it’s fully paid off.

So, as you (and Politico) have so stipulated, the stimulus is currently more expensive than Iraq. And Iraq will have no futher expenditures. And the stimulus will.

How again will my original statement EVER be false?

(+1 for your avatar though. COME ON!!!)

Ah, the old “tap dancing to make a stupid point which is technically true but stated vaguely as to transform it into a larger, more condemning point” game… So you meant to say:

“except the stimulus cost more than Iraq, so far“.

Because, you know, when you’re comparing the relative cost of things, the whole “projection of total cost” business is sort of important, if you’re going to be intellectually honest.

By your logic, I should stop paying my mortgage, because dammit, I already bought the house!

Drones are being used to target entire villages now?

From your link: “Adjusted for inflation, the cost of the Iraq War to date totals $756 billion and the stimulus act totals about $820 billion, according to Harrison. So by that barometer, Tapscott is right that spending on the stimulus exceeds the cost of the Iraq war, although by $64 billion, rather than $100 billion.”

Oliver can certainly speak for himself, brif. But if I were to summarize his opinion it would boil down to:

– I don’t have a problem with using drones to take out the bad guys because they are effective and help minimize the cost and collateral damage.

– I don’t want the President to be the sole person deciding who the bad guys are.

In other words, I don’t see OW being at odds with your “This issue is the lack of oversight or any established procedure to determine who is a terrorist.”

And moonbat turns to the same page in the wingnut playbook as MrGreyGhost:

Step 1, claim everyone in a group believes something even thought they don’t (in FACT, many who opposed Bush’s opening Gitmo continue to oppose Obama’s keeping it open).
Step 2, point out how terrible the people in that group are for believing that thing (which they don’t all believe).
Step 3, get the warm fuzzies from having re-assured yourself that the world is as you need it to be to feel validated (even though it isn’t that way at all).

I totally understand the dangers in giving the president the sole power to designate terrorist targets. I’m not comfortable with that much power residing in the executive office. I would trust Barack Obama with that power, but not George Bush, so I don’t trust any president with it.

Perhaps an objection with some of the targets of drone strikes, but not with the strikes in general?”

It reads more like an objection with the process of designating the targets of drone strikes–the idea being that giving the president the sole authority to designate who is a terrorist and thus warrants a drone strike is a bad idea because it’s inherently open to abuse. Essentially, since he wouldn’t trust every president to make the right call, he doesn’t trust any president to make that call. (I would assume he prefers that we should determine whether the person being targeted is enough of a threat to warrant such a strike before we go forward)

““I would trust Barack Obama with that power, but not George Bush, so I don’t trust any president with it….”

Again as long as there’s a (D) following his name liberals will no sleep over a Prez killing innocent people. Not a wink.”

I believe he’s saying that he doesn’t believe the President should have the sole authority to decide who lives and who dies, regardless of who that President is, because of the fact that “the President” isn’t always going to be the same guy, and just because you trust one President to be fair-minded in how he deploys drones, that doesn’t necessarily mean that any other President won’t be willing to use drones more haphazardly, or to stamp out dissent or further his own agendas.

I would imagine that while Oliver is not necessarily opposed to drone strikes in principle, he believes that we should be as sure as we can possibly be before we deploy them, just as we should be sure of the casus belli before we deploy conventional ground troops or conventional air strikes.

“And the left has a ton of hypocrites.”

Well, assuming an average weight of about 140-150 lbs, that would mean that “the left” has about 13-14 hypocrites. I didn’t know you thought so highly of the left to believe that there are so few hypocrites among its members.

He appears to be ok with drone strikes, but then I’m not sure to what he was referring with:

I totally understand the dangers in giving the president the sole power to designate terrorist targets. I’m not comfortable with that much power residing in the executive office. I would trust Barack Obama with that power, but not George Bush, so I don’t trust any president with it.

Perhaps an objection with some of the targets of drone strikes, but not with the strikes in general?

““If ever one needs evidence of the contingency of history, imagine, if you will, those seven votes going the other way. Jim Crow would have died in the late 1950s, avoiding much of the tumult of the 1960s. The Republicans, led by Richard Nixon, would have been the party of civil rights, not the Democrats and Lyndon Johnson…””

The tumult of the 60s would have been brought forward 7 years, the protests, riots, & such that were race related should still have occurred. Just earlier. So we have LA riots in ’58. But at the same time the Berkley Free Speech movement isn’t affected & so won’t come until the 60′s. So no “Woodstock” in ’61 with Elvis & not Country Joe & the Fish.

Does Jack Kennedy win in 1960? Maybe not. What does President Nixon do with the budding Viet Nam War? Or worse (God help us) the Cuban Missile Crisis? Do we even have a 60′s or do we replay “On the Beach”?

What’s your take Manju? But it’s interesting, thanks.

There were only a handful of such Congressmen, culminating in a whopping 10 by ’64.

And the fact that 100% of all southern Republicans in Congress – every single one of them – voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 means nothing in Man!uland.

Yes, you’ve only insulted some of the commentators here on this blog in the past.

Do you think I am going to stop commenting here because some hebephrenic neurotic from LaLa Land is obsessed with me?

Actually, Dennis lives in Richmond, VA, Frank.

No, I am not leaving just because you are the dregs of civilization, the crumbs that fell off the table of grace and good sense …

That’s right, Frank, act like you’re heroically doing the Internet equivalent of raising the Stars and Strips over Iwo Jima……………..

Wingnut logic, ladies and gentlemen.

(Manju, a hint: There are 1,000 Republicans and 1,000 Democrats in the world. 100 of the Repubs belong to your Evil Hedge Fund, and only 1 Democrat. Members of which group are more likely to be evil?)

Thank you Christopher, you said it more eloquently than I ever did.

There were ZERO Southern Republican Segregationist Senators in office until John Tower in 1961. There were only a handful of such Congressmen, culminating in a whopping 10 by ’64. Everyone should know that Sountern Dems would often run uncontested and would deploy political violence against their Republican adversaries.

Yet, a group of commentators can’t figure out why stuff like this is, as you put it, “wingnut logic”:

If you were an African-American in the South, then the Southern Democrats were more likely to be on your side than the Southern Republicans. (About 95% opposed vs. 100% opposed.)

We are saying that compared to the Republicans at the time, the Democrats were less racist. We have the voting record on the CRA to back it up.

—C.S.Strowbridge

They were never against any of these actions. They were just anti-republican, and saw feigning outrage over his foreign policy as a way to hurt Bush. He and Obama are two-sides of the same coin. And the left has a ton of hypocrites.