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Tuesday, July 14, 2009

An Article 2 Army for a Vice President?

Was anybody surprised by this revelation, that a surrogate President might want a ... personal army?

...the Bush Administration, at the top, was conceptually clueless about how to wage a war against an organization like al-qaeda. And, their process of 'discovery' was so bad and so influenced by their GOP political ideology, that it took years, nearly a trillion dollars of debt-spending, and hundreds of American servicemen's lives for the leaders to clue in, let alone the havoc brought to non-Americans.
The framers of the constitution knew that checks and balances were ineffective, behind closed doors. A get-out-of-jail-free National Security 'secrecy blanket' and a 'classified budget' are as ripe for abuse as grapes for peeling.

The Democrats appear to have no comprehensive "liberal" strategy for national security issues of this type. It's a pity. They could find winnable electoral issues, I think.

Indeed, to some, team Obama's more-of-the-same is well off track.

Last, of course, we see that the Bush Administration, at the top, was conceptually clueless about how to wage a war against an organization like al-qaeda. And, their process of 'discovery' was so bad and so influenced by their GOP political ideology, that it took years, nearly a trillion dollars of debt-spending, and hundreds of American servicemen's lives for the leaders to clue in, let alone the havoc brought to non-Americans.

Friday, July 3, 2009

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

DEFINITION OF BI-PARTISANSHIP: INFLUENCE THE LEGISLATION, THEN DON'T VOTE FOR IT, AFTERALL

The regional Republican critique of the "stimulus" makes one laugh, even if CNN thinks it is newsworthy (you could print almost anything on Politico and they would cover it).

Still, as the polls show, you do not have to be right or truthful to be popular. Their disinformation machine is formidable, yes?

PARTY OF NO IDEAS AND BAD IDEAS

Remember when we were told (sold?) we would need tax cuts (except on gasoline...the Pigou Club never disbanded), because that was all that was available to be timely?

Well, more data is in that suggests that you cannot induce job creation through tax cuts, in the short term, either.



Regarding Krugman's wingflapping, I have to say that it appears that his argument has already lost inside D.C. From afar, it looks like Geithner and the Congress have accepted a quasi-policy of hope, as did Japan. I believe this when I hear phrases like "we are past the peak of foreclosure activity". I have less confidence, today, that so much signals a floor to asset valutions ...

It's not we haven't learned from history. It's that there are forces interested in not having a dispositive test of what we learned in the historical record, like a stimulus without massive tax cuts, for instance, something purely demand-side.

What's more, we are political victims of our own stabilization. The political will to take the bold decisions necessary isn't there because we have unemployment insurance, this time around.

Quote for the Day

The widest circulation print paper is hardly liberal-biased ...

All of this is par for the course; the WSJ editorial page has been like this for 35 years. Nonetheless, it got me wondering: what do these people really believe?

I mean, they’re not stupid — life would be a lot easier if they were. So they know they’re not telling the truth. But they obviously believe that their dishonesty serves a higher truth — one that is, in effect, told only to Inner Party members, while the Outer Party makes do with prolefeed.

The question is, what is that higher truth? What do these people really believe in?

-Paul Krugman


Uh, ... themselves?

On a less cynical note, the regional Republicans, today, are partly like 60s leftist radicals - they believe only in criticism. How else can one justify holding mutual exclusive beliefs, even allowing for temporization?

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Art for Life

AN ART-LIFE LINK BEYOND AESTHETICS

A topic, a perspective that I suspect Hugh Hewitt, for one, would never understand (or embrace, really).

If we [Iranians] attend the banquet of silence to which we have been invited [by the Iranian government], the result will not only be suffocation and loss of our voices, but also eternal shame for ignoring the bloody murder of Neda [Agha Soltan, the 27-year-old Iranian woman killed by thugs in Tehran, who has become an icon of the struggle]. I believe in what [Julius] Caesar said [in William Shakespeare’s play] that, “a coward dies a thousand times, but the valiant tastes death but once.” Hence, it is with hope for freedom and justice for all Iranians that I take this perilous step [of writing the note].

-Bahman Farmanara, Iranian movie director


Photos of the ballot fraud, unwittingly provided by State Run Media Lie, IRNA.