Somewhat off topic, but does anyone here remember when "food stamps" were actual stamps one had to embarassingly pull out of one's purse at the checkout counter to fund your haul of cheez whiz and frozen pizza? Which left no doubt whatsoever as to who was footing the bill at the Market Basket? As opposed to EFT cards you swipe as though you actually had your own money or credit? Things were a lot better in the old days when there was a decent quantity of public shame associated with accepting handouts. I have no evidence to back this up, but I'm betting people were a lot more motivated to get off food stamps back when they were really stamps.
I was a cashier for Shop Rite when I was a kid. They were pretty bold with the old coupon books back then too. I remember one woman had three carts, paid over $1200 in Food Stamps then asked for help to her car, a brand new fully loaded champagne Infinity with the temp tags on it... First lesson.
Well, obviously, to the extent that kind of fraud is going on, no one is going to defend it. More to my point, though, is that if we as a society are going to make these kinds of benefits available to people, its in everyone's interests not to make it so painless for the recipients. Especially the recipients. I do a lot of work in federally subsidized housing. Where the government pays millions in overhead to keep thousands of people who haven't worked in generations in totally substandard housing I wouldn't keep a dog in. Helps me with my car payments, sure, but fuck if thats a smart way to run a hot dog stand.
Growing up in the pj's Food Stamps were a necessary part of life for some..FOR SOME. While Many who found work were no longer needing the aid and moved out... For others, they acted like it was their paycheck. They'd go to the local corner spot and (illegally) cash them out then go and buy stupid shit. Food Stamps are something that we needed back in the day but I thankfully never had to back to but really wouldn't hesitate if I did. But Seeing moochers still doing the same shit while having another kid and rockin $300 Jordan throwbacks... ugggh...
Saudi Arabia 'warned the United States IN WRITING about Boston Bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2012' http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-application-entry-visa-visit-Mecca-2011.html
3 guys who may well have been conspirators in the bombings. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world...276-11e2-baf7-5bc2a9dc6f44_story.html?hpid=z1 If they cooperate fully they may have a chance but if they don't they'll likely be seen as conspirators both before and after the fact and tried as such. This is the kiss of death. Even if you believe that they might just have been covering for Tsarnaev out of misplaced loyalty to their friend you have to wonder how they would have known to remove a jar of petroleum jelly along with the other stuff. That reeks of knowing how the bomb was constructed, which would make them a conspirator before the fact also.
I take nothing from The Daily Mail serious. It's about as reliable as The Blaze/Drudge Report and The Onion.
Here's the background on William Plotnikov, the guy Tamerlan was hanging out with in Dagestan (http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2013/05/jihadi_told_russians_about_tamerlan) . He immigrated to north america in his mid teens, was a competitive boxer, and became radicalized. Sound familiar? http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/08/20/dagestan/
I thought that was exactly what we did. We armed the locals and thanks to the wonders of asymentrical warfare, the mighty Red Army was defeated. At least they were smart enough to know when to get the hell outta there unlike America in Islamistan.
They'd have died the same natural death in Afghanistan with or without us. They never had a manageable position there unless they were present in numbers to keep the peace. Same position we're in right now BTW. We created multiple organized Islamic resistance groups. What were the odds one or more of them weren't going to turn their attention to the infidel presence in the Middle East?
Pretty much... we created more enemies out of our 'allies" than we had previous to that. I'm not quite old enough to remember but why did the Soviets invade Afghanistan anyway? The minute we put troops in Saudi Arabia all those fighters we armed turned their attention to defending their homeland.
The Soviet Union came in to shore up a gov't that they had installed. Rigged the elections and then the puppet Premier/President asked for immediate assistance with the rebels. We then armed the rebels who went on to defeat the Red Army and then grew up to become the Taliban who then turned on us when we set foot in Saudi Arabia. Lovely buncha coconuts isn't it.. At some point, we will learn that when it comes to fighting a Asymentrical War, the Super Power usually loses.
What Cman55 said. We all look at Reagan and Wilson as the primary proponents of the Afghan adventure but it was Carter and Brzezinski who decided to make the initial foray in interfering in the Soviet war efforts. They saw an opportunity to create a Soviet Vietnam-type failure and they grabbed it. In other words we created this Frankenstein in a bipartisan fashion. The truly amazing thing is that the two superpowers both thought they were immune to the Afghan malaise which had so famously bled the British in the 19th century. The Soviets should have let Afghanistan go. We should have rubbled the Al-Qaida elements in Afghanistan after 9/11 with no concern for the diplomatic consequences with the Taliban and Pakistan. Then we should have told both the Taliban and Pakistan that if they allowed Al-Qaida to regroup in either Afghanistan or Pakistan that we would go on a continual bombing basis wherever they reformed until they were destroyed. "It's your choice" should have been our motto. If we never asked the Taliban to expel Al-Qaida we would never have gotten into the trap of having to invade Afghanistan. All it would have taken is a sustained bombing campaign in the limited areas Al-Qaida was in to make the point. Public opinion across the world was still horrified by 9/11. The Bali bombings reinforced that horror. We had a free hand to decimate Al-Qaida and to do so wherever they were sheltered. Invading Afghanistan was just asking to be bled both in terms of lives and finances. If we chose to do that we should have gone in with a coalition of the aggrieved, not the willing, and finished the job. US-Russia-Iran and Afghanistan is severed into at least three parts. The Northern Coalition gets the northeast, the only part of the country they naturally dominate, the Russians get the north and northwest, the Iranians get the west. Then in 100 years or so the Pashtun people can make the same case the Kurds are making today, maybe with greater success,
