Politics

Off Topic
21

"Just curious, you as a Ranger, a Warrior, how do you feel about the President sending men off to die when he had the opportunity to taste combat, but ducked it. "

You clearly missed the memo… After his training in the National Guard as one of the top 5% of all pilots in the country, Bush volunteered to get sent off to Vietnam. He ASKED to go over there to fly sorties as the war was being stopped (early 70’s). His request was refused because they were already pulling troops back home, and they had enough pilots.

Check your history. Bush wasnt ducking anything…for that you would have to look to Big Bill

22

Oh yeah Lumpy:

Here’s one for your wisdom concerning tax cuts (which, by the way, will only need to be “paid for” to the extent the government spends more money than it takes in – given your concern with the state of spending, I can’ imagine you would blame tax cuts for deficits…):

The Wall Street Journal
Tax Cut Lessons
April 30, 2004; Page A14

The first quarter economic growth figure rolled in yesterday at a 4.2% annual rate, with some on Wall Street professing disappointment that it didn’t meet their higher forecast. Well, some people are never happy, and the past year’s growth of 4.9% is the fastest since 1984, faster even than during the 1990s’ “boom.” Initial weekly jobless claims also fell yesterday, another sign that the employment market is continuing the comeback we first saw in March.
In short, we’re arriving at the point where we can say the economy is on the path of robust, self-sustaining expansion. We are also at the point where we can begin drawing some policy conclusions from the economic debates of recent years.

To wit, the Bush tax cuts have worked. Perhaps not as rapidly as everyone hoped, for reasons we will explain below. But as the nearby chart shows, the recession that began shortly after President Bush took office was relatively brief and is now finally fading into unblessed memory.
One important policy lesson is that both the kind and pace of tax cuts matter a great deal. Recall that in order to get his first round of tax cuts through the Senate in 2001, Mr. Bush accepted New Jersey Democrat Jon Corzine’s proposal to put money in consumers’ hands more quickly – in short, the tax “rebate.” The theory was that poor and middle-class people spend money, while rich folks save it, so cut taxes for them but not for the rich.

He and his fellow Democrats resisted Mr. Bush’s plan to cut marginal income tax rates and demanded that those cuts be phased in over five years. So in the case of the 2001 tax cuts, only small reductions were immediately implemented, with the rest coming in 2002, 2004 and 2006.

We now know that the “stimulus” from those tax rebates was indeed ephemeral. They gave a short-term lift to demand, as Keynesian theory posits, but once the money was spent, the impact faded. Take another look at that nearby GDP chart.

Meanwhile, a new paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research confirms that the initial reaction to the phased-in marginal rate cuts of 2001 was also muted, or may even have been negative over the short term. Some of us worried about this at the time, because we remembered that the Reagan recovery that took off in 1983 was delayed for two years after his marginal rate cuts were also phased in.
The new study by economists Christopher House and Matthew Shapiro shows that the most powerful effect of tax cuts is their ability to change future behavior on the supply side. That’s because workers and firms respond rationally to incentives, and they produce more when they are allowed to keep more of the gains. But when tax cuts are deferred, investors and businesses naturally postpone some of their economic activity until a later date when tax rates will be lower.

The second round of Bush tax cuts were by contrast effective immediately. The 2003 cut accelerated the marginal rate cuts first passed in 2001, and the additional cuts in dividend rates (to 15% from regular income rates) provided another incentive boost. Only since this tax cut passed – over the heated resistance of Mr. Corzine and his former Goldman Sachs partner Robert Rubin – has the economy begun to gain genuine momentum. Had Mr. Bush ignored their advice earlier, the expansion might well have accelerated sooner.

We recognize that other things have contributed to the recovery, notably an accommodative (currently too much so) Federal Reserve policy. The ebbing of the corporate scandals and business adjustment to terrorism risk have also helped to restore animal spirits.
But you can certainly bet that if the economy were weak, liberals would be giving tax cuts the blame, as some of them still do contrary to all available evidence. As for Republicans, it’s about time they stopped being so defensive over charges of “tax cuts for rich” and started pointing out that their policies are once again giving everyone a chance to get rich.

23

RangerTab-
I did not feel we needed to for the safety of our country go into Iraq, and as far as the reasons presented to us, I feel they were lies.

Now that we are in it, no I don’t think we can just pull out and leave a vacuum over there that who know’s what will fill.

In my opinion if we were totally focused on the war on Terror, Afganhistan would have been our total focus until Osama and his troops were totally waxed and the next target would have been the madras in Pakistan and Saudi Arabi, delt with covertly if need be.

Bush Sr did not roll into Bagdhad back in 92 for the exact reasons we are seeing now. So many people think gee why don’t these poor Iraqi bastards want the freedom were giving them. They fail to understand these people have an entirley different outlook on the world tempered by religious fanatiscm and thousands of years of culture!

Biltritewave-
I think that memo was bullshit, if Bush truly wanted to go fly sorties in Vietnam, it could have easily been arranged! Tell me more about the authenticity and credibility of this memo where did it come from?

24

Iraq is just getting a foothold. Now we can move on to countries like Saudi covertly because we are in place. Anybody that thinks that Iraq is the real target doesn’t see the whole picture.

For years the CIA had us convinced area 51 was an alien testing lab. Is it? We’ll never know, and that’s the way they want it. Our govt isn’t as stupid as everyone thinks, and beleive me the president doesn’t run shit except public policies and actions. Give a look at a season of 24 sometime and imagine if that was happening now. We would either have no idea what’s going on, or would think the president was an idiot for not telling us anything.

A person is smart. People are stupid. We’re not meant to know everything.

25

Elkhtnr1,
“Focusing more on Afghanistan” would not have meant capturing Osama.

Now that Iraq’s oil is on the market and our military base is there, we can now put the pressure on Saudi Arabia–the center of radical Wahabbism–we couldn’t before, that most liberals are clammoring for (sincerely?).

So if you don’t believe that replacing a dictatorship with a democracy in the heart of the Arab world is a way to fight Islamic terrorism, then at least you can rationalize Iraq based on old-fashioned realpolitik. I prefer to be about liberating societies whenever possible, though.

26

Brian Smith
Your views to me seem vary neoconservative regarding your outlook on the middle east. I will say this we have the next ten to fifteen years to see if the whole Iraq situation will be a positive or negative for us. Thank you for your last response.

27

Elkhtnr1,
If you just think it’s easier to label me, and walk away, that’s pretty lame. It is overly simplistic to say “neoconservative” anytime someone believes in liberating a society from totalitarianism and spreading democracy. Was John F. Kennedy a neoconservative?

28

BB- Good article. Thanks.

Where do you find the time to look up all these articles? Are you reading a bunch of news/political sites a day?

Just curious is all

29

Brian Smith

A hypothetical question:

You feel completely justified in exporting your ideology (internationalism) and system of government (liberal democracy, an oxymoron since democracy is what ever the people choose it does not have to be liberal) under the force of arms.

How can you object to someone else doing the same? For example Arabs under force of arms forcing their way of life (Sharia law) and system of government (theocracy) on someone else?

30

Brian Smith

By liberating a society you may well have awakened something that you do not like. At the moment there is still a free press in the Arab world. Whether it be from Al-Jessira or the pulpits of the mosques different points of view can be aired. Evidence shows that the people are choosing distinctly ?anti-liberal? views (remember peoples choice = democracy).

In fact it appears that the only way to ensure liberalism (or some ideology that the powers that be in the West like) in the Muslim world is not democracy but totalitarianism. For example Algeria, Egypt, Pakistan.

31

Bluey, I don’t see a contradiction inherent in “imposing democracy by force,” despite the line fed us by the Arab intelligentsia. At least there is no contradiction, when the force displaces a totalitarian regime that stays in place by violence and quells all internal movements toward democracy.

As far as whether people within the country reject democracy in favor of fascism, that is a different issue. If the whole country feels that way, then it is a hypocritical absurdity to attempt to forcefully impose democracy from the outside. But there are those who still argue that there is no fundamental hypocrisy, since in the long-run, a democratic society will uphold human rights, whereas a fascist society will vanquish them–therefore, the imposition of democracy is still a moral imperative. (And that as it develops, democracy will persuade the people that it is “the better way,” as it did in Japan, for example). …not sure how I feel about that degree of idealism and violent intervention.

But, Bluey, you must admit that just become there are fascist elements in a society does not mean that the society as a whole rejects a democratic form of government, or imply that the society is bred–genetically, historically or culturally–to tear down democracy. Where is Germany today? Irshad Manji has a phrase, “the soft racism of lowered expectations.”

32

This isnt really in line with the subject but its political, could a socialist, I mean Democrat, tell me what the exceptable level of tax is?

(I also love it when people make comments about the rich getting tax cuts, like the top 10%, well no shit sherlock, the top 10% starts at roughly $75,000. That same 10% pays 62% of the total tax burden.)

I bet a lot of people dont realize how quickly the tax monster is closing in.

33

Bluey,
I was moved by Stanley Crouch’s column about a month ago in the NY Daily News comparing the mutilation of the bodies of the American security contractors to the wide-spread lynchings of African-Americans in our own past:

IRAQ CAN COME BACK DESPITE FALLUJAH HORROR U.S. IS MODEL OF HOW A NATION CAN PROGRESS

BYLINE: BY STANLEY CROUCH

BODY:

The images of those burning bodies in Fallujah last week reminded me of the photographs in “Without Sanctuary,” an essential book about American injustice.

“Without Sanctuary” captures in photographs the brutal history of American lynchings. The pictures show white Americans expressing joy, pride, resolve - every kind of reaction except horror and disgust.

Perhaps the most disturbing photographs are those of young children pushing their heads between the bodies of standing men so that they can see the burning Negro. Anyone who can withstand images of the bloodiest truth should see them.

Yet it is by facing the actions of Americans at their most barbaric that we understand how far we have come in our nation. The distance says much about the hope of the species to liberate itself from animal behavior.

That liberation is never complete, of course. We know from the actions of highly civilized Germans under Hitler from 1933 to 1945 that we are always threatened by barbarism and that when it gets out of the bottle, it is hard to push back in. Rwanda is our most glaring recent example. Before that Cambodia. You get the point.

But we Americans can pride ourselves on a battle against human horror that we have largely won, at least for now.

Think of the images of the World Trade Center towers collapsing, the dust-covered men and women walking in shock through New York on that day. Then remember that this nation did not react with the kind of hysteria it was capable of at the turn of the 20th century.

That kind of self-control is born of democracy and respect for the individual. It becomes more important as we witness various forms of violence the world over.

Doubtless, we have fanatics among us, but the will of America is, finally, a democratic one.

That sort of will is what the Middle East needs. It might well blossom in Iraq, and that would eventually change the nature of the region. With some hard planning, some serious action, some real resolve - and some luck - we might just bring it off.

All we need is to take a look at “Without Sanctuary” to see just how far a nation can come.

======

Crouch wrote a later column discussing how lynching was an act that a vicious, thuggish minority used to play to the culture at large the illusion of strength, like in Fallujah. The idea is to convince people that their society is ultimately in your control, and you will not let it change.

34

You really are missing the point. Democracy gives the people a choice. It matters not if they choose fascism, communism, liberalism, nationalism or theocracy etc.

If you are in favour of spreading democracy then you have to be ready (and approve) what it produces.

In Iraq if there were elections tomorrow the Shia majority would most likely vote in an Islamic republic as in Iran. If you are in favour of spreading democracy then you have to be in favour of this. Similar results would be found right across the Middle East (e.g. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan all currently not democracies).

Given this, do you really believe that this whole thing is about spreading true democracy?

35

Bluey, you seem to be confusing “democracy” and “representative government.” The latter is more what you’re talking about.

36

Brian Smith
I do not claim to be the expert you are on the geopolitical world, you seem to be able to cite any article every published on the subject. As far as the neoconservative comment, I recently read an article detailing the history of the neocon ideology and from what I have read of your posts it seemed to pretty much fall in line with what you think. I did not mean it as an insult, just an observation. Brian what do you do? Is your work in or related to politics or Government?

37

Elkhntr1,
“…you seem to be able to cite any article every published on the subject.”

I have my favorite political writers with whom I often agree, and my favorite political writers with whom I usually disagree. That’s about it. They might refer to a pieces in another publications, which I will try to read. I’m not an expert by any means, and not involved in government or politics for a career (although I did volunteer for the Edwards campaign).

“As far as the neoconservative comment, I recently read an article detailing the history of the neocon ideology and from what I have read of your posts it seemed to pretty much fall in line with what you think.”

I don’t know where you read this article about neoconservatism. So many people haven’t written about it making far-fetched connections (particularly when they start going off about the philosopher Leo Strauss) that it may not be a very useful article. Originally, “neoconservatism” refered to domestic policy and a group of former liberals who turned conservative when they sensed that America was protecting civil liberties and Communism would erode them. I can think of several good articles about the history of neoconservativism, but I know two that might be more interesting because they point the way to the future.

Charles Krathaummer gave a highly regarded speech about why the moniker “neoconservatism” doesn’t fit for the bipartisan foreign policy the U.S. is currently moving toward. Krathaummer (who was from the “realist conservative” school, after he fell out with the Carter administration) suggests the term “democratic globalism.” I can try to find the text of that speech for you.

There was also a good article by George Packer in the New Yorker, who also writes for “Mother Jones,” so you can see why it’s seemingly ridiculous to label such diverse viewpoints as neoconservative just because some consensus arises on our national responsibilities.

I’ve only read these articles, Elkhnrt1, because I have the same questions as you.

38

Brian Smith
Thank you for responding, I am going to look up and read the authors you mentioned. If anything this is certainley educational for me!

39

Sonny S –

Like Brian, I have a few favorites – some of which likely overlap his. I also like to look at a few weblogs, which tend to link to stories I can read if I find them interesting. A few journalism websites I at least peruse most days: The Wall Street Journal, The National Review, The New Republic, the Economist. A few weblogs: www.volokh.com, www.instapundit.com, www.techcentralstation.com, www.wonkette.com.

Also, I just quit my job, so I’ve had an unusual amount of free time this past week as I go through my two-week notice period – I got a new job in D.C… but it won’t begin until late May.