Can't resist....maybe it isn't a duck, maybe it's a republican. LOL

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President Bush is expected to announce that he is now sending more troops to Iraq, despite the fact that his generals, his military analysts, members of Congress, and most of the American people are against the idea. The reason he is doing it? To give Iraq a government that responds to the will of the people.

When I read it, my first thought was "how fitting this would be for those to read who are firm in pro-life, pro-war and its contradiction".

Let�s Count the Ways We�ve Sacrificed for the Iraq War

As children, we learned about Santa Claus � a pleasant, harmless myth. As adults, we�re being taught another myth � that ordinary people haven�t sacrificed anything during the Iraq war.

But the sacrifice myth isn�t an innocent belief we shed before adolescence. And the more people accept it, the more dangerous it is.

So let�s count our sacrifices. One of our biggest came at the start of the war, when we gave up freedom of the press. Media outlets agreed they�d only send journalists who�d be embedded with the troops, so everything we�ve read or seen has been censored.

Worse yet, in 2006, new media rules from the Department of Defense stated, �Names, video, identifiable written/oral descriptions or identifiable photographs of wounded service members will not be released without service members� prior written consent.� Just when should an embedded journalist hand out consent forms?

Photos of dead or wounded Americans in Vietnam swelled the number of anti-war protesters. Back then, we saw horrific images of GIs writhing in pain. We also saw dead GIs, not in coffins, but bloody and dismembered in the field.

Even before the new media rule began, embedded photographers rarely pictured dead or wounded GIs, according to Pat Arnow of Extra, a publication of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. Instead, most of our media�s coverage of Iraq has pictured the injured GIs who can sit up in bed without grimacing to receive a Purple Heart. The few pictures of dead GIs haven�t shown blood or gore; they�ve shown funerals.

Photographers get close to the soldiers they�re embedded with and self-censor pictures of them. If they send their editors explicit photos, the editors declare the images �too graphic to publish,� like the Washington Post did on Jan. 7, 2007.

Embedded journalists also censor pictures of dead Iraqis. �Those pictures overwhelmingly show only one kind of victim � people and things shattered by their fellow countrymen, not by U.S. troops,� Arnow says.

When we do see a photo of an Iraqi killed by U.S. troops, the media distances us by labeling the dead Iraqi �an al-Qaida-linked militant,� or �a militiaman loyal to Osama bin Laden.�

Remember that photo of a terrorized naked Vietnamese girl running from a napalm attack? Today she would be called �a Vietcong guerilla� or �a Ho Chi Minh militant.�

But freedom of the press isn�t the only sacrifice we�ve made. Last month, Congress released �The Hidden Costs of the Iraq War,� a report showing the war�s cost so far at $1.3 trillion. That figure includes direct costs plus interest on the money borrowed to wage the war.

The money we spend on Iraq in one day could fund 9,300 teachers for a year, or 14,200 police officers, or 163,700 college Pell Grants, or 58,000 children�s tuition for Head Start, or 513,000 children�s health insurance. We�ve sacrificed all of those and more.

Worst, we�ve sacrificed human life. In September, the Opinion Research Business firm�s study of Iraqi households found that 1 million Iraqis have died due to violence since the U.S. invasion. We know of 4,000 American military who�ve died, but rarely does anyone ask about American civilian death counts.

And we�ll never know what the world lost when each of those people died. Each life was full of possibility. Who knows what contributions each person could have made to the workplace and the world, to their friends and to their families?

Mary Conroy is a Madison-based freelance writer.

Even as he was pledging to "change the way government does almost everything," the senator from Arizona announced his commitment to much, much more of the same.

He pledged to maintain endless occupations of distant lands that empty the U.S. Treasury of precious resources that might pay for infrastructue renewal, housing and job creations initiatives for hurting Americans.

He outlined trade and tax policies that would extend, rather than alter a failed economic status quo.

He reintroduced flawed proposals for health care, education and entitlement reforms that Americans have wisely rejected.

McCain's rhetoric was that of a liberated man declaring his independence from his party's failed president and corrupt Congresses.

But his platform was that of Republican candidate who, for all of his talk of reform, offers the crudest continuity to a country that is crying out for change.

http://www.truthout.org/article/the-anti-republican-republican-who-is-really-a-republican

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF JOE REPUBLICAN Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards. With his first swallow of coffee, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to insure their safety and that they work as advertised.

All but $10 of his medications are paid for by his employer's medical plan because *some liberal* union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance - now Joe gets it too. He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs. Joe's bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packingindustry.

In the morning shower, Joe reaches for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained.

Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for laws to stop industries from polluting our air. He walks to the subway station for his government-subsidized ride to work. It saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees because some fancy-pants liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.

Joe begins his work day. He has a good job with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe's employer pays these standards because Joe's employer doesn't want his employees to call the union. If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, he'll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some stupid liberal didn't think he should lose his home or go hungry because of his temporary misfortune.

It's noontime and Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe's deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Joe's money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression.

Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and hisbelow-market federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime.

Joe is home from work. He plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive. His car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards. He arrives at his boyhood home. His was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers' Home Administration because bankers didn't want to make rural loans. The house didn't have electricity until some big-government liberal stuckhis nose where it didn't belong and demanded rural electrification.

He is happy to see his father, who is now retired. His father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn't have to.

Joe gets back in his car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show. The radio host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn't mention that the beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day.

Joe agrees: We don't need those big-government liberals ruining our lives! After all, I'm a self-made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have.

Yes, but you did say to me and another person(s) that we were not telling the truth and that is to be taken that you thought we were lying = liar.

Your reasoning appears impaired, your ability to recall what you said and when appears impaired and your ability to define and decipher what is truth and what are lies appears highly suspect. I think you most definitely are a Republican!!!! (with nixon and clinton thrown in just for a laugh).....

This is sam's post from this morning when ANON requested we all take the day off from nastiness on the board in honor of 9/11.

lets try to find the place where we were all Americans and party lines disappeared. If we could get that back without a major disaster to provoke it...therein lies the real hope and change for this country.