Comments Posted By michael reynolds
Displaying 521 To 530 Of 839 Comments
OBAMA'S AFPAK PLAN JUST ABOUT RIGHT
I agree with you. At best in the short term we can pull out a semi-stable Afghanistan and force AQ to keep their heads down in Pakistan.
In the longer term I suppose it is just barely possible that Afghanistan will manage a degree of democracy and stability.
But the key is Pakistan. We can't really win so long at the border is porous and the Taliban has the will and capacity to attack us. It's just about impossible to win a war where we allow the enemy to decide when and where to initiate conflict, and where we are limited to deniable responses.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 28.03.2009 @ 11:30
ALZHEIMER'S: THE PERSONAL IS POLITICAL
I wish there was a better system than a sort of unseemly competition among the advocates for various diseases. I have a hard time believing that we can't make this all more logical, but I don't exactly have a plan at the ready.
Alzheimer's is a monstrous thing. It takes death and extends it out over a decade and in the process drains the life of everyone around. Not a good death.
By the way, a "good death" for me would almost certainly involves Liv Tyler. (Yes, with the elf ears.) Although she might have a different view.
I'll fire off an email to my Senators. About Alzheimer's funding. Not the Liv Tyler thing.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 26.03.2009 @ 11:08
OBAMA HASN'T SHEATHED HIS SWORD OF FEAR QUITE YET
Foobarista:
And where do you suppose he's going to spend that tax money? At Tax-Mart? If we put a billion dollars into, say, building a bridge, I kind of think it's going to go to Joe's Bridge Building Company. Joe's going to buy some stuff from Caterpillar and from Frank's Cement. And then Joe's workers and Frank's workers and Caterillar's workers will spend their pay at Sears, Target, Wal-Mart. And then all those retail folks will spend their money at McDonalds. Right? Money flowing from the taxpayer to the private sector.
So, in other words, you're wrong.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 25.03.2009 @ 12:35
Two months into Obama's term and the housing market may have found a bottom, and the stock market may have found a bottom. Suddenly the word "depression" is falling out of vogue.
Which means the CBO deficit estimate may actually be high. But I have no psychic powers, so I guess we'll see.
Had we actually paid for the trillion deficit dollars we spent on the war -- by raising my taxes to Clinton levels for example -- we'd have a bit of slack now to cover the cost of climbing out of this Republican economic ditch. (Similarly, the prescription drug plan.) I don't recall a lot of Republicans suggesting that. I recall a lot of Republicans yelling that we had to spend whatever we had to spend and could not raise taxes or we'd end up in a ditch. The same ditch we ended up in.
Nevertheless, I welcome the GOP's sudden, partial, inconsistent, hypocritical and politically expedient return to fiscal prudence. We need a GOP that wants to spend less, that's your natural role in the world. And so much more attractive than listening to Chairman Rush race bait.
The specter of depression is more pronounced then ever. And beyond that, how does hyperinflation grab ya?
We are so not out of the woods yet your attempts to find the pony in all that horseshit is laughable.
ed.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 25.03.2009 @ 09:23
<em>THE RICK MORAN SHOW:</em> "TAKE TWO PROZAC AND CALL ME IN THE MORNING"
By the way, looking back my "20%" was a typo. That should have read 30%.
The numbers have been remarkably consistent -- aside from Zogby. It's a two thirds/one third break. Has been from the start. Remains so now.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 25.03.2009 @ 08:23
Lionheart:
RCP average: 61/30. Pollster.com average: 59/33. Gallup: 63/27.
Dude: no one takes Zogby seriously any more. http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/03/worst-pollster-in-world-strikes-again.html
So, not deluded or lying. Just informed by more data than can be gleaned by listening to Glen Beck.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 25.03.2009 @ 08:14
Obama has a 65% approval, 20% disapproval.
The American public is fine. Only right wing wackjobs are depressed.
Reality over HERE. Wingnuts over------------>HERE.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 24.03.2009 @ 22:30
IS OUR NATIONAL WILL 'WILTING AWAY?'
So, Breitbart thinks we need a new triumph of will? And he already has a designated fuhrer, er, leader picked out. Petraeus is a terrific general. So was US Grant. As you point out, success in one job does not guarantee success in another. (President Patton anyone? President Sherman?)
In terms of war fighting what we lack now that we had back in the good old days is a willingness to completely dehumanize our enemies. Now, before I get jumped on as a pansy leftie, let me say that I argued that targeting Mecca was a legitimate threat to put on the table, and I was yelling for more troops and more willingness to use an iron fist in Iraq way back when righties were telling us that Rumsfeld was a genius.
It's not national will, it's a somewhat enhanced sense of decency. We are no longer willing to burn women and children alive as we did in Germany, and to a much greater extent in Japan. If we were, I'd submit that we could solve the Pakistani FATA problem in an afternoon and throw Iran in too.
On the 1-10 ruthlessness scale with 1 being Timothy Leary and 10 being Curtis LeMay I'm probably an 8. But the American people are a 5. And I have a hard time despising people just because they won't act as brutally as I might.
You're not an 8 - maybe a 6. Most supporters of Iraq who comment here are 8's. And I might be a 4-5. Beyond that, I don't think Americans give a hoot for anyone but our own guys. They like Desert Storm actions where we kill 50,000 of the enemy to our 30 dead.
ed.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 23.03.2009 @ 11:58
I HAVE COME NOT TO PRAISE CAPITALISM BUT TO BURY IT
Yes, you're being hysterical. You run around yelling that Obama is killing capitalism and Krugman is running around yelling that Obama has been co-opted by capitalists and you're both wrong.
In fact, far from pushing some crazy socialist agenda, Obama is trying it seems to save capitalism from the capitalist cretins who have done so much to damage it.
Obama's not stoking rage over the AIG bonuses. In fact he was late to the party. The rage is self-stoking. It's sui generis rage. It's the spontaneous combustion of rages and the amazing thing is how restrained it's been so far.
What the Obama administration is trying to do is head off a populist firestorm caused -- in its entirety, 100% -- by the incompetence and sheer, bloody-minded stupidity of the great captains of industry. How in God's name can anyone be expected to justify billionaires getting trillion dollars bailouts while paying themselves millions in taxpayer money? Of course there's rage. It's kind of off the topic, hysterical and overblown, but it's also inevitable.
But Rick, it's been coming for a long, long time. We've smiled benignly at a corporate culture which holds that profits derived from firing workers should be translated into bonuses for the executives who did the firing. How did you think that was going to end up? Didn't you think there might be some pushback at some point? A touch of moderation on the part of corporate greedheads, and a sense of basic decency, would in turn have moderated the pushback but we don't demand moderation or decency, we praise greed and giggle at excess.
If we need to pump the people's money into the banks to refloat the credit market then we need the people to be on board. Which means diverting their rage so that we can get back to what matters. And that's what Obama is doing. With no help from the jackasses in the big New York skyscrapers or from myopic right wing or left wing pundits.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 22.03.2009 @ 12:05
A TEPID BUT REALISTIC DEFENSE OF THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION IN THE AIG MATTER
Like you I try to judge by long-term results. I think Obama is trying to play the long game, which I think is a good idea. But I'm surprised at how off-balance his message machine has been. Is Axelrod on vacation?
I don't know with Geithner whether what we're seeing is a clumsy sort of wait-and-see, or whether he's just lost. It's almost as if with Bernanke and Geithner and the president there's a sneaking feeling that things will sort themselves out over the next months to a year.
They don't seem as scared as their own rhetoric suggests they should be. I find this interesting.
I'm just not seeing a clear narrative that makes sense to me, not from any side.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 19.03.2009 @ 11:20
