Re: Happy Inauguration!
 

Yeah. What we need is another frat boy president who can't be bothered to pay attention to security briefings or sit through debates over policy, and who thinks it's best to spend most of his time in the gym, on his bike, or "clearing brush" on his "ranch." Or "playing" the guitar and eating cake.

Because that worked out so well.

Re: Happy Inauguration!
 

the ominous financial situation is caused by the government itself. He needs to cut spending by 30% immediately. ( start by cutting social security payments to people making more than $40K per year ) But the Obama policy is to spend even more money. How is it that $1 trillion in deficit spending this past year has not grown the economy?

Re: Happy Inauguration!
 

You're stealing bases here, Steve. (Not to mention assuming some whopper counterfactuals.) Do you think that the fact of sacrifice automatically negates a mistake? Is it more respectful, assuming an action is a mistake, to have sent people to die, than it is to publicly acknowledge the mistake?

Re: Happy Inauguration!
 

In a country currently pledging hundreds of billions of future taxation I would expect a Secretary who actually paid his own taxes. Geithner acknowledged in writing to his employer that, for tax purposes, he was self-employed and then proceeded to dodge his Social Security taxes for several years. Honest mistake, my butt.

Re: Happy Inauguration!
 

You can't talk about the "laws of economics" in one breath than say (or write) something that contradicts mainstream economic opinion in the next.

Your view of recessions is identical to Hoover's, and the American people chose the path to recovery instead.

Re: The out of control national debt - why few concerns voiced?
 

the deficit spending has not helped to this point. why will it help going forward? What if the economy continues to sputter after another few years of trillion dollar deficits? Bankruptcy seems the logical result.

Re: Happy Inauguration!
 

Just answer my question. If the deficit spending of the last year has not helped the economy, why will another year of such spending not have the same result? Obama and the democrats are risking everything on the unproven economic theories of Paul Krugman.

Re: Happy Inauguration!
 

It has helped the economy. Things would be worse without it. The Depression ended via massive deficit spending on WW2. It didn't end on the first dollar in the first year of that spending, however.

It's better to risk everything on unproven economic theories (which isn't an accurate description anyway) than to risk everything on proven economic failures. Mainstream economists agree that Hoover paying down the deficit and preaching the values of private work made the Depression much, much worse.

Re: The out of control national debt - why few concerns voiced?
 

Because we'll be spending it on better things, or so I hope.

To someone with your apparent grasp of economics, I don't doubt this seems like a logical result. To others that know better, it's not.

In any case, I am unaware of any plan connected to Obama that calls for "a few years of trillion dollar deficits."

[Added] I'm also amused at your sudden concern for deficit spending. Where was this frugality when your boy George was putting his multi-trillion-dollar adventure in Iraq on our collective credit card?

Yeah, yeah. I know. That was different. We'd all be WMDed to death by now had not the brave red state blah blah.

Re: Happy Inauguration!
 

the depression ended because there were a bunch of new industries, products and technologies that entered the mainstream. Cars, planes, electronics, increased food production. These were all products people could use. Production increased dramatically. How could there be a depression when car production took off? Or the spread of the use of electricity?

what is killing the economy today is a large group of people dont work because they are too old or too little skilled. Another large group does useless government work.

Anyway, I still dont understand how the trillions in deficit spending will be repaid and how that debt will not be a too great a burden for the economy in years to come.

Re: Happy Inauguration!
 

I'm sure Denville Steve was horrified by the Reagan and Bush deficits - the only administrations in modern history (post WWII) during which the national debt didn't decline as a % of GDP but grew dramatically. Truman started out inheriting the highest deficit relative to GDP of any modern President. Denville Steve is an economic illiterate, like most contemporary Republicans who have a blind ideology of tax cuts.

Re: Happy Ibloguration!
 

... but I would assign a "5 : Excellent" rating to diavlog with Mark Schmitt talking to a golden retriever. I'd look to see him given a better foil.

I'm struck by the degree to which many of your right-wing commentators are able to make me think - and actually make me like them and consider them intelligent and even ... sane. I haven't given up on Byron York, but unlike Kagan, Lake, Goldberg, Douhat, etc. he's yet to impress me as anything other than a shallow and preppy, if reasonably intelligent, professional partisan.

How about a celebrity death match with Schmitt & Frum, Kagan, Hitchens, Goldberg or Lake?

Re: Happy Inauguration!
 

I have never taken a business or an economics class; however, I am following this economic disaster like the rest of us. I am clueless to it's cause but am watching the effects. To date, everything the government has done which is enormous has had zilch effects. In fact, it appears to be getting worse.

I think by virtue of having a new president with his stimulous package there will be at a minimum a short rebound. That said this recession/depression seems to have a life all it's own and am concerned about the government's ability to rectify it. By the speed of it's unraveling I think we will get a verdict in the next couple of years on the efficacy of the new administration's policy to thwart a modern day depression.

John

Re: Happy Inauguration!
 

Quoting BJ: It is, instead, a strong indicator of sanity to loathe everything about Bush and his cronies.
1. Katrina was not Bush's fault. People who want to live below sea level in a hurricane zone should understand that no president can hold back the waves. Katrina was a great opportunity for libs to stampede public opinion against Bush and the war. Libs can't prosecute a war (Bay of Pigs, Viet Nam, Somalia), but they're great at PR campaigns.
2. Bush's administration won the Iraq war, despite Hillary and Harry Reid and all their sniping. He actually doubled down to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Now the U.S. military can be ratcheted down and restructured from a position of strength and not from a position of base humiliation.
3. Of course you'll dispute 1. and 2. with your dying breath, and you continue to attack Bush about "smugness". So in bi-partisan spirit here's some word association for context on the whole character issue: Ted Kennedy-Marthas' Vineyard Manslaughter, Bill Clinton-Perverted Bald-Faced Liar, Spitzer-Vice Lord, Blago-Caricature Criminal.

Re: Happy Inauguration!
 

It is a measure of how little even you really believe your revisionist history about Bush that you can't back up your empty assertions, but instead need immediately to attack random Democrats.

Re: Happy Inauguration!
 

Quoting BJ: (You). . . attack random Democrats.

Nothing I could write about Chapaquiddick Ted, Definition of Is Bill, or Lick My Boots and then My Booty Spitzer would ever wound them as much as your labelling them "random". Thank you.

Re: Happy Inauguration!
 

Always happy to help.

Re: Happy Inauguration!
 

But the levees can. At least, when everyone responsible for their maintenance and engineering/upgrades, does their job (including the man at the top who is supposed to oversee it all.) I guess accountability doesn't really matter then huh.

It's like the "nobody could have prevented 9/11" claim. Yeah, except maybe a president who reads "Al Qaeda to attack United States" in an intelligence briefing and chooses to respond with something other than "ok, now you've covered your asses." Now that's smug.

Re: Happy Inauguration!
 

First criticism of President Obama: either stick to basketball or take some dance lessons. I thought I was bad on the dance floor but you could be worse than me.

John

Re: Happy Inauguration!
 

John, It's hard to judge based on gala-event slow dancing. Somebody needs to throw on some N'awlins funk and then see what he can do.

I will say that the affection between the Obamas seemed far more sincere than anything I've seen on a political stage in awhile (and not nearly as gag-inducing as Al/Tipper.)

Re: Happy Inauguration!
 

I hope you saw this Byron, laugh of the thread.

Re: Happy Inauguration!
 

Okay, Uncle Ebeneezer. Do you also believe that Roosevelt choose to ignore warnings of an attack on Pearl Harbor so that the U.S. would be forced to enter the war? How many warnings of terrorist attacks do you think the president receives in a week? And he was supposed to take that particular warning at face value, but not the CIA's assessment that Saddam Hussein was sincere when he claimed he had WMD's. And he's supposed to keep the country safe without tracking overseas phone-calls and money transfers? Heaven forbid he uses Gitmo to interrogate captured insurgents. Do we need to remind you that Truman ended WWII with two ATOM BOMBS in Japan and firebombing of German civilians? Can't you libs just enjoy your electoral victory without subjecting us to more of this hypocrisy and utter bull. On the issue of smugness and style points, I think few can compare with Bill "definition of is is" Clinton (so existential and ivy league), Harry "these constituents sure are smelly in the summer months" Reid , Eliot "if you don't agree with me or laugh at my jokes, there's a subpoena on the way to you" Spitzer and John "how dare you accuse me of cheating on my sainted wife?" Edwards. Not to mention Ted Kennedy Vth (as in pleading the fifth). I'll remind you, most of the bowdlerizations above were taken from primetime, not some mystery source that you credit to Bush. These were real abuses of trust and power, not suppositions. Finally, the whole Katrina "negligence" story is nonsense. I guess if Katrina had hit three years earlier the levees would have held? What would have been an acceptable response? What is the yardstick? Forgive me if we assume that whatever assistance provided would not have been sufficient to the New York Times, Oprah or to you. Bush won the Iraq War with a surge that Hillary and Harry and your ilk opposed with every fiber, and yet you still persist in saying it was a defeat. You are not credible and your bull will not prosper. Just look at the New York Times, which instead of Business, Arts, Sports will soon have only one section entitled Chap 11, which will be devoted to glowing reports on law and order in Mexico.

Re: Happy Inauguration!
 

Oh, I don't know. What about this?

Oh, right. The no-gag rule.

;^)

Re: Happy Inauguration!
 

Salt, I'm not going to waste my time on this. I'll just make a mental note for that day when (god forbid) we get hit by a terrorist attack here or abroad under Obama's watch, and then we find out that he had received adequate intell warnings but was too ditracted on other concerns like countries who don't have WMD's, to do anything about it. I'm sure you will be the first one to step up in his defense, just like I'm sure you did for Clinton when people pointed to the Cole and first WTC bombings as failures on his part.

Re: Happy Inauguration!
 

Judging from the level of discourse it has inspired on the forum, I think I'm gonna go ahead and skip this daivlog . . .

Re: Happy Inauguration!
 

Ooof. You got me. My bad.

Re: Happy Inauguration!
 

Ignoring Byron York is always good policy. However, Mark had some good things to say.

Re: Happy Inauguration!
 

To Ebeneezer: Liberals have a pathetic record when it comes to domestic security. Kennedy brought us the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Iranians held the hostages on Carter for 18mos and then puked them up the second Reagan took office. Clinton pardoned the FALN. You can keep blaming Bush for being alternately too dovish and too hawkish, but you guys can't even find a Treasury Secretary who pays his taxes, so good luck on security. Keep up with these stale Bush tropes all you want, but we conservatives are getting bushels of fresh grist each passing week.

Re: Happy Inauguration!
 

Oh, indeed. Just look at all the grist.

Re: Happy Inauguration!
 

Oh, I googled his dance skills and his wife, Michelle, has affectionally teased him in private about his shortcomings in this area. So, it's not just me who says he can't dance.

John

Re: Happy Inauguration!
 

Re: the comparisons to Lincoln. It really is getting annoying.
Mark Schmitt mentions that Obama is connecting to certain traditions embodied by Lincoln. But Lincoln is a great president because he oversaw the potential dissolution of this country and forced it to stay together. And he is certainly is great. But first off, he's a republican. And secondly he's Lincoln because of his accomplishments not because he was elected. In other words comparisons to Lincoln would have to be made after Obama served for a few years and actually did things.
And secondly Lincoln suspended habeus corpus! Lincoln jailed the press who were against the civil war. Lincoln got Ulysses S. Grant to wage all out war on the south using the scorched earth brand of warfare. I will certainly say Lincoln was great, but his accomplishment of freeing the slaves was not one without significant and extreme costs. If anything Obama reminds me more of the copperheads villifying Lincoln and Bush reminds me of Lincoln. Yes the iraq was not not so momentous as the civil war nor as costly but in truth Bush hasn't done anything close to what Lincoln did to wage his war, and yet gets villified for it by Obama and his cohorts. so I just don't see that Obama can compare himself to Lincoln as I don't see him having the stomach necessarily to do what lincoln was forced to do. But he also wasn't much of a uniter. He had half the country hating his guts with a passion.

I just find it an odd choice to compare himself to Lincoln.

Re: Happy Inauguration!
 

Happy Inauguration indeed.

Full text of the order here.

And see also.

And.

Re: Happy Inauguration!
 

How many Americans died in those examples. How many in 9/11? Iraq?

Re: Happy Inauguration!
 

I'm shocked, shocked(!) to discover a politician highlighting a tenuous link to an iconic predecessor.

Re: Happy Inauguration!
 

Quoting Ebeneezer: How many Americans died in those examples. How many in 9/11? Iraq?
Context counts. Reagan was a hawk on inflation, interest rates and security. What happened? After some pain, he crushed inflation and the market and economy went for a 25 year boom. Bush I continued the hawkish stance towards the Soviets and the USSR imploded without firing a shot. Clinton came in and was economically moderate, but on security he let every affront slide and he flip-flopped in Somalia. Bush paid the price for Clinton flip-flopping on 9/11 the same way Reagan paid the price for Carter-Nixon when he had to jack interest rates to the moon from 80-82 to contain inflation.
3,300 Americans died on 9-11 and 4,000 soldiers died in Iraq. To put that in perspective, 50,000 died in JFK/LBJ's Viet Nam.
There's a reason why the connotation of the expression cajones changes every eight years. Reagan, Thatcher, Bush I and II. On the other side Clinton, Spitzer, Edwards, Ted Kennedy.

Guantanamo
 

BY is all in favor continuing Gauntanamo, and disappointingly MS agreed when BY claimed that this time, finally, really, no kidding, only the worst of the worst are still imprisoned there.

Not true. See for example http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwa...rce=newsletter.

Re: Happy Inauguration!
 

Having interacted with a lot of artists for a lot of years, I learned long ago not to take artists seriously when they start talking politics. (It's equally inadvisable to take politicians seriously when they start talking aesthetics.) Pete Seeger was one of many artists who fell for the people-united-can-never-be-defeated romance of communism in the 1930s, and was tardier than most in acknowledging that Stalin was a monstrous front-man for leftist ideology.

That said, what do we make of American conservatives, such as William F. Buckley Jr. and Patrick Buchanan, who supported Francisco Franco as a standard-bearer for anticommunism and/or traditional Catholicism? Franco, erstwhile ally of Hitler and Mussolini, never renounced fascism. Did Buckley and Buchanan repent for their support of Franco in a sufficiently timely manner?

For that matter, shall we all repent for our civic deification of Lincoln because he harbored white-supremacist views or suspended habeus corpus during the Civil War?

Re: Happy Inauguration!
 

Getting back to my original point: One man was in charge of protecting the country on 9/11. One man received intelligence briefings warning of a potential strike and that shady characters were taking flying lessons. An organization that had actually attacked the WTC only a few years earlier. One man was at the wheel when the car crashed. You can try and pin the blame on the manufacturer of the tires or the seatbelts or the guy who invented the automobile or whatever but it doesn't change the fact that W failed and his failure led to the death of 3,000 Americans. If a Democrat had been in power I have no doubt you would be casting the blame squarely on his/her shoulders and screaming about accountability, regardless of the actions of any previous administration. But if you want to continue to go back in time and try and reassign blame, fine. Reagan supported the forces that became the Taliban and that served as the training/planning ground for Al Qaeda. So Reagan is responsible for 911. Now your turn. Pin it on Jimmy Carter. And we can keep moving the responsibility further and further away from W since that seems to be your only goal. Maybe we'll get all the way to George Washington. Or better yet, you can blame it on Obama, or Hillary, or Henry Waxman or some Democrat who isn't born yet.

Re: Happy Inauguration!
 

Ebeneezer, It is just not credible for you to proclaim that the only reason Al Qaeda was successful on 9-11 was because of George Bush. Some hack leaks some memo that supposedly was here and there and suddenly it's a fact according to you. Let me point out that to me your credibility is strained by the fact that many of your political icons (Clinton, Spitzer, Edwards, and by extension their proxies in the MSM) are proven corrupt liars and philanderers. Let me also point out that when it comes to security, American doves can't hold ranks long enough to conclude an actual conflict, forget about preventative measures impinging on others' rights. Let's say I conceded that Bush was stupid (which I don't), but in the interest of looking forward I ask what kind of template the doves' rhetoric indicates for security? What is your cause celebre right now? Torture, of course, and restraining military intelligence. Your judgement is that Clinton or Carter or Obama would have descended on all those 9-11 Arabs and done what? Shoot them? Send them to Guantanamo? Half of the current cabinet would have jumped in to defend them faster than you can say "racial profiling" (certainly Bill Ayers and Rev Wright would). Since the Clintons pardoned FALN and another Weather Underground nutjob, why wouldn't he have pardoned the poor Palestine sympathisers if he had a chance? I'm sure the Saudis could have made another donation to the Clinton Foundation. By the way, who are the most effective in the world at this kind of preventative anti-terror intervention that you seem to want to prescribe? Israel. Who do your fellow travellers despise most? Israel. Your basic argument is self-contradicting: "Why didn't Bush kick more ass before 9-11? He's a stupid wimp. Why did he kick so much ass after 9-11? He's a stupid bully." You schizos doves remind me of a Manhattan divorcee. Logic is useless.

Re: Happy Inauguration!
 

First off, you're not being honest. The intelligence briefings you cite warning of a potential strike do not say how, when or where. THey say that AL Qaeda is determined to attack. I think that woud be self evident and I'd assume that would be true today absent any memos. Short of actionable intel though that doesn't help our intelligence agencies stop an attack. And while its certainly true that shady characters taking flying lessons is suspicious there's no indication that the intelligence agencies realized the significance of this prior to all the pieces coming together after we were attacked, nor is there indictation of them notifying the white house and the white house ignoring the info. So if you want to ping the intel agencies go for it. Not Bush's fault though.

I'll put the blame where it belongs. On Al Qaeda. They were the ones planning the attack. Any president relies on various agencies to provide him information and if they don't have it then they don't have it. But if you go up the chain there are thousands of people who had to do their jobs and gather intel prior to it getting up to the presidents desk. What a bastard for completely scapegoating the president on this. Sometimes attacks get through. Intelligence agencies are not infallible (as evidenced by them telling Bush that the WMD's in Iraq were a slam dunk case).
You say BUsh had adequate warnings but was too concerned about countries that didn't have WMD's, but we didn't do anything about Iraq for another few years and in any case the warnings were not at all adequate unless you can tell when an attack will occur without any actionable intel whatsoever. And if so you should be working for the CIA.

Except there was a previous attempt on the WTC by Al Qaeda in 1993 and I didn't hear this caterwauling by the right or the left about how Clinton was to blame. Yes they were able to put some people in jail for that, but the attack was still carried out. And dont' forget the Khobar Towers, and don't forget the USS Cole. The attackers were the ones to blame not Clinton. You could fault problems with the intelligence agencies and how they collect data or say that rather then worrying about prevention they cared more about prosecuting crimes aftert the fact, and demand that more be done and better data collection be performed so that we can stop attacks but isn't that what the patriot act was all about? And how did the left and dems respond. THey raised high hell about any and all reforms. They leaked our monitoring program to the Times. THey complained about things as trivial as us looking into library books.
And they were awfully disingenous to boot. They trotted out Richard Clarke for example to say that not only should Bush have known (because of some completely non descript action report that states the obvious) but that Al Qaeda was the BIGGEST threat and we were warned. Yet as soon as Bush and co bring out the Patriot Act and the various reforms the same people were arguing that there was no threat, that it was an attempt by bush to create a bogeymand and instill fear in the public. I'd think that if Clarke were right before and if 9/11 actually occured then there would be no reason by the left and dems to suggest that somehow Bush was hyping any threats. Yet that is what they did. For 6 years.

At the previous election people were suggesting that Bush was actually holding OBL for an october surprise. If you want to talk about politicizing events and attempting to strike fear in the populace.

And actually just to show you how disingenous the left and dems were lets take your memo that you say was sufficient to show Al Qaeda were to attack us and hypothetically pretend that the very exact memo was released when we had our warning system with the various color alerts and the left was saying that Bush was tyring to scare us. ARe you seriously going to suggest that if THAT particular memo came out that the left wouldn't say that it was merely there to hype a non existent threat? They'd be arguing there was nothign in it with any detail whatosever, no discussion of who, where, when, or how. And they'd be right! Because all it does is express intent, which anyone following Al Qaeda already knows is there. (Though if there were another attack I'm sure they'd then immediately use that same letter again to say "see, see, Bush is yet again ignorning the threats.". Just remember Michael Moore's "There is no terrorist threat. Yes, there have been horrific acts of terrorism and, yes, there will be acts of terrorism again. But that doesn't mean that there's some kind of massive terrorist threat." and then square that against Richard Clarke saying that Al Qaeda was the biggest threat. For the past 6-7 years I'd argue that the dems and the left have been arguing Moore's point not Clarke's.

That was all the democrats. This country was hit and caught unaware, and rather than projecting that anger towards who did it the dems quite quickly directed all their anger just towards Bush and made him the villain. Just as you're doing now.


It's kind of hard to take you seriously about others improperly assigning blame considering you're assigning all blame on one man. But we can all play that game. We don't have to go that far back actually to Carter or Reagan we can blame it on Clinton foresquare. Back in the 90's Osama bin Laden declared a fatwah on the US because of among other things, our containment and sanctioning of Iraq which was all clinton.
The dems so quickly forget that prior to Bush saying there were WMD's in Iraq the dems were beating that horse (not to mention the brits and the UN and all the intel agencies) and had actually gotten really tough with Iraq and imposed tough sanctions against them (not to mention bombed them set up no fly zones and passed numerous resolutions through the security councel.

Here's Osama Bin Laden in his own words:
And so Al Qaeda began targeting American interests around the world. So if you want to blame a president for his actions causing terrorism and scapegoat people then blame Clinton for containing Iraq needlessly and causing the deaths of 600,00 children needlessly (as there were no weapons) thus bringing down Al Qaeda's wrath on our heads.
I don't blame Clinton of course as I thought Clinton was fully justified in trying to contain Iraq because Iraq under Sadaam was a threat, but if we follow your logic about blaming Bush then you should blame Clinton who caused the deaths of 600,000 children for nothing and then passed that off to Bush to deal with. Yet the funniest thing is when we were about to go to war the left was saying that containment worked!