Latest poll shows growing support for aspect of Iraq war policy

USA TODAY's Susan Page reports that President Bush is making some headway in arguing that the increase in U.S. troops in Iraq is showing military progress.

In the latest USA TODAY/Gallup Poll, taken Friday through Sunday, the proportion of those who said the additional troops are "making the situation better" rose to 31% from 22% a month ago. Those who said it was "not making much difference" dropped to 41% from 51%.

About the same number said it was making things worse: 24% now, 25% a month ago.

http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2007/08/latest-poll-sho.html

No amount of spin or temporary change in public perception can, of course, alter the facts on the ground.

Re: "...keeping taxes low is the best medicine for a strong America" & "...the U.S. economy is far from crisis status"

It is amazing to me that even those who are anti-Bush swallow whole the idea that the economy is doing just fine. Aside from the highly manipulated unemployment stats, wages are stagnant for the vast majority of Americans, personal debt is at an all-time high (and the Congress and Bush made sure the people couldn't take advantage of bankruptcy laws to escape crushing credit card debt), the savings rate is negative and now the one item that most Americans thought they had in terms of a personal asset -- their home -- is turning out to be their biggest liability.

This is, of course, all by design. The wealthy ruling class, while blowing smoke about the "great economy" (for them) is effectively eliminating the middle class. The end result will be a society of wealthy elite ruling over an impoverished and economically enslaved working class, kept under constant surveillance under the guise of "fighting terrorism".

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Excerpt from The Invisible Hand (of the U.S. Government) in Financial Markets by Robert Bell

The U.S. Treasury holdings of Japan and China are essentially a consequence of a trade imbalance between the U.S. and these two countries, with the balance heavily tilted to the latter. To maintain the imbalance, which they both clearly want to do, both countries must keep their currency pegged against the dollar at a lower rate than it might otherwise be...To keep the items relatively cheap, the central banks of those countries keep their currencies cheap by buying a corresponding amount of dollars, thus supporting the dollar against their currencies. The dollar may essentially collapse against the euro, but not against the yen and the yuan. With the dollars the Japanese and Chinese central banks have bought, they can buy something denominated in U.S. dollars; the item of choice is U.S. Treasuries since it is like holding dollars that pay interest. So this has the effect of pumping the price of Treasuries too. Because the items made in China and Japan are cheaper than those of corresponding quality made in the U.S. (in the case of many Japanese items, there may not be U.S. items of similar quality), the effect is to create manufacturing jobs in those countries while simultaneously losing them in the U.S. In effect the jobs are exported and foreign currency is imported to buy dollars and then Treasuries. This has an advantage for the Bush administration, which has the ruinously ridiculous policies of simultaneously cutting taxes and waging wars or building up for them. In effect, the basic racket is: the Bush administration exports jobs to these countries, and in turn they finance Bush’s fiscal deficit so he can continue his wars and cut taxes for his friends. For the Chinese, the basic racket is too delicious and too ironical. They industrialize their country at the expense of the de-industrialization of the U.S. Not only is it sweet revenge for more than a hundred years of humiliation at the hands of Europeans and Americans, but also at the end they are relatively strong and the U.S. is relatively not. What do they care if the deal isn’t quite as good as it would be in a perfect world and they lose a third, half, two-thirds of their savings in U.S. Treasuries? Besides, in an even mildly less imperfect world, the U.S. President would not make such a blatantly corrupt bargain against the people of the U.S. Billionaire investor Warren Buffett calls this system of indebting U.S. citizens to foreign governments “a sharecropper’s society,” to distinguish it from Bush’s supposed “ownership society.”

http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/reality/2005/0403.html

It is highly instructive to read this article:

US thinktanks give lessons in foreign policy

Brian Whitaker reports on the network of research institutes whose views and TV appearances are supplanting all other experts on Middle Eastern issues

Those who work for US thinktanks are often given university-style titles such as "senior fellow", or "adjunct scholar", but their research is very different from that of universities - it is entirely directed towards shaping government policy.

What nobody outside the thinktanks knows, however, is who pays for this policy-shaping research. (MORE)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,777100,00.html