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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dayuhan who wrote (42019)	5/3/2004 9:44:33 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793917

Tell that to the markets. They don’t seem terribly impressed. No? have you checked out the P/E levels lately? or last year's performance? Those markets are discounting an awful lot of future profits already. It’s interesting that all the real successes in the war on terror have come from the quiet war, in which intelligence operatives and small military forces track down individual terrorists, usually with the cooperation of other countries. First, nobody is going to know the real answer to this until 30 years from now. Second, it seems a bit dismissive to say that the fall of the Taliban didn't at least put a dent in OBL's training program. Terrorists need money and safe havens, like other forces. The name of the game is to work to deny them both. Instead of moving on, after Afghanistan, to the next most serious problems and devising tactics to address them, we chose the tactic we wanted to use and looked for a place where we could use it You would have a point - if Saddam Hussein hadn't been a very real and unraveling problem on his own merits. Pursuing only the 'quiet' (read: invisible) war while sanctions collapsed, the US surrendered efforts at containment, Saddam went shopping, and supplied who-knows-what to Answar, Hamas, and whoever else he dealt with, these were not really good options either.

To: Dayuhan who wrote (42019)	5/3/2004 10:04:42 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793917

but I fear protectionism, which is emerging as a key item in the Democratic platform, more than I fear terrorism. Don't forget that it's a long, long way from the Democratic platform to implementation given a Republican Congress. I don't think it matters much what's in the platform.

To: Dayuhan who wrote (42019)	5/3/2004 11:52:01 PM
From: Sam	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793917

Personally, I’m fairly optimistic on the economy, though there are major points of vulnerability. If Bush wins a second term, he will have to cut spending in a serious way, and that is difficult to do. The elderly, the military, and the farmers are all key Republican constituencies, and if you put those aside as sacred cows, there’s not a whole lot of room left for cuts. If this administration has to choose between doing what’s popular and doing what’s necessary, I’d expect them to take the former course. Not a lot of character there. What "vulnerability" are you talking about?! If Bush wins a second term, he will almost certainly also extend the Republican majorities in both Houses. He will then cut taxes even further--after all, as he has said a number of times, everyone agrees that cutting taxes produces more jobs, therefore cutting taxes more produces even MORE jobs. And more jobs means more consumers and consuming, and that means more money in the treasury, and that means, well, just EVERYONE is happy. At this point I’d vote for Bush over Kerry, As you may guess by now, I think that's crazy. I know not many on this board think that's crazy, but so it goes. It is especially crazy given the fact that House will almost definitely have a greater Republican majority than now, and the Senate will be very close even if the Democrats manage to hang onto to the seats they're losing, and will more likely than not be Republican. A second term for Bush with strong Republican majorities in both Houses will lead to even greater deficits. We will have a debt of over $10 trillion by 2008, and possibly well over that number. I know, Cheney says debt and deficits don't matter, Reagan "proved" this. Right.

To: Dayuhan who wrote (42019)	5/4/2004 10:39:52 AM
From: carranza2	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 793917

Tell that to the markets. They don’t seem terribly impressed. The markets, especially the equities markets, are presently responding to the probability that interest rates will rise in the near future because of strong economic growth. Even companies with tremendous records and prospects are getting hammered. While your point may have some diluted validity, it does not adequately explain what's going on in the markets. I think strong economic growth and the consequent inflationary pressure caused by interest rates which have been historically low for a very long time, are probably 66% to 75% of the reasons for the market decline. I prefer to look at the obvious causes. If we don’t go into Pakistan, we can’t go after AQ; if we do, we may very well bring Musharraf down, or force him to back away from us. We all know where that could lead. Islamic bomb, anyone? How about 60 of them? The reality of things is very different, I think, since we are seeing a large number of semi-autonomous groups who do not take direct guidance from AQ, and may have no connection at all to it other than parallel ideological goals, which are creating a lot of havoc. This is actually a worse situation than the one you posit, but facts are facts. The terror web is spreading, but that is not surprising after the war in Afghanistan lanced the boil, spreading the disease everywhere. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are bigger problems than Iraq, just as they were before the Iraq war. We chose not to deal with those problems, because we wanted to be seen using large-scale force and that tactic was not appropriate for dealing with Saudi Arabia or Pakistan. We chose not to deal with SA and Pakistan because the options are severely limited. Got any that might work without impacting the West's oil supply and/or having a huge nation armed with nukes totally out of control?