"This is not rocket science.......why are you having such difficulty understanding it?"
No, it's not, which is why your argument is so astoundingly idiotic. For one to gain "at the expense of" another implies that the other has lost something. That the lowest quintile of households saw their REAL INCOMES RISE BY 42% clearly shows that they have lost NOTHING.
Look at it this way - if we both go to work Monday and you earn $550 and I only earn $450, then a year from now your day at work brings you $600 in 2006 dollars for a 9% real gain and mine brings $475 for a 5.6% real gain, have you gotten richer at my expense? Have you taken something from me? Hell, no. We are both better off. Of course, you may express some feigned leftist guilt about getting such a big raise - perhaps you know you didn't deserve it - but the notion that it was at anyone's expense but the shareholders of your employer - if that - is ludicrous.
Now, regarding your post about Richard Holbrooke's whining and worrying, I found this comment about his column title telling:
"The column's title, "The Guns of August", was a reference to a book about the diplomatic follies and indecisive battles that launched Europe into a devastating world war in 1914."
If Laz will pardon the (entirely appropriate) violation of Godwin's Law, a more apt analogy would be to the diplomatic follies - a.k.a. appeasement - that allowed Hitler to gain ground one "all he wants is" at a time, testing the resolve of the democratic west and building his military might until he had taken Paris and plunged the Europe into World War II. That is exactly what the IslamoFascists of Iran, Al Qaeda, Hizballah, et al are doing today, and you and the rest of the anti-war left want to repeat the mistakes of the 1930s, call truce everyone knows is false, and blame America instead.
Look - the Al-Mahdi Scouts, Hizballah's version of the Hitler Youth, even have the salute down.
 |
