Rob Shvern on Politics

John McCain has clarified his platform. He says jobs are never coming back, illegals are never going home, and we are doing to start a lot more wars.

You might remember a few weeks ago when McCain said he would like to stay in Iraq for 100 more years. He is now open to staying in Iraq for 10,000 years.

Hillary Clinton has promised to keep troops in Iraq until at least 2013 with at an estimated deployment of at least 75,000.These forces will be used to “fight Al Qaeda, deter Iranian aggression, protect the Kurds and possibly support the Iraqi military.” Clinton’s policy is estimated to cost almost 5 trillion dollars.

You might remember that in the months before the March 2003 Iraq invasion, the Bush administration estimated the Iraq war would cost no more than $50 billion, but a recent Congressional Budget Office estimate warned that the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could total $2.4 trillion through the next decade, or nearly $8,000 per man, woman and child in the country.

  As chairperson and ranking member of the Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee (MILCON) from 2001 through the end of 2005, Feinstein supervised the appropriation of billions of dollars a year for specific military construction projects. Two defense contractors whose interests were largely controlled by her husband, financier Richard C. Blum, benefited from decisions made by Feinstein as leader of this powerful subcommittee.

In 2005, Roll Call calculated Feinstein’s wealth, including Blum’s assets, at $40 million, up 25 percent from the year before. That made her the ninth wealthiest member of Congress. Feinstein’s latest Public Financial Disclosure Report shows that in 2005 her family earned income of between $500,000 and $5 million from capital gains on URS and Perini stock combined. From CB Richard Ellis, Blum earned between $1.3 million to $4 million.

http://www.bohemian.com/metro/01.24.07/dianne-feinstein-0704.html

This is the $16,500,000 mansion the war bought:

And that’s exactly why the Bush administration is so darn bullet-proof. The Democratic leadership in Washington is just as crooked and just as callous.

http://www.counterpunch.org/frank02282006.html