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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: i-node who wrote (496503)	7/20/2009 12:18:36 PM
From: Alighieri	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1581879

And the side benefit was that we could fight the bad guys in Iraq instead in the US. Yeah...all the new ones we created by invading it. Saddam dealt the hand by being uncooperative and just generally being a problem. What a hurdle that sets for a target of invasion...the right mind is a mysterious thing. Al

To: i-node who wrote (496503)	7/20/2009 1:09:38 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1581879

The GOP.......the party of NO! OH, NOW THERE'S A 'CHORUS'.... Newsweek has a good piece in its new issue on economist Joseph Stiglitz and the fact that the White House hasn't sought his input much, despite his prescient understanding of the global financial meltdown. It's worth reading. There was one paragraph, though, that caught my eye. Stiglitz had been hammering at Obama's economic team for its handling of the financial crisis. He wrote that the stimulus program was too small to be effective -- a criticism that has since swelled into a chorus, though Obama says he's not adding more money. Oh, sure. Now the media has noticed there's a "chorus" that says the stimulus package wasn't big enough. There was a sizable group saying the same thing in January and February, but they were ignored, especially by major news outlets, who turned instead to Republicans over and over again. While the debate was ongoing, the political establishment considered this a fight pitting those who supported the stimulus as it was against those who wanted it to be smaller. The "chorus" that was correct -- the ones calling for a bigger, more ambitious stimulus -- was not part of the equation, and the dynamic led to a weaker recovery effort, thanks to demands from moderate Senate Republicans. (To this day, we hear GOP lawmakers complaining about Obama's "$1 trillion stimulus," despite the fact that the stimulus was nowhere near $1 trillion.) The criticism hasn't necessarily "swelled into a chorus"; the chorus' members have been there the whole time, wondering why no one took their prescient advice seriously.

To: i-node who wrote (496503)	7/20/2009 1:12:22 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1581879

More from the party of NO........a bunch of nada. KRISTOL: PARTY LIKE IT'S 1994.... Everyone no doubt remembers Bill Kristol's now-infamous advice to congressional Republicans when then-President Bill Clinton pushed health care reform in 1993 and 1994. Kristol said the GOP should overlook the policy and the consequences for Americans, and just "kill" the initiative outright. To do otherwise would be to risk more Democratic gains, and put Republicans in a difficult position indefinitely. With that in mind, it's worth noting that Kristol is offering similar advice once again. Here's the Weekly Standard editor this morning. With Obamacare on the ropes, there will be a temptation for opponents to let up on their criticism, and to try to appear constructive, or at least responsible. There will be a tendency to want to let the Democrats' plans sink of their own weight, to emphasize that the critics have been pushing sound reform ideas all along and suggest it's not too late for a bipartisan compromise over the next couple of weeks or months. My advice, for what it's worth: Resist the temptation. This is no time to pull punches. Go for the kill. [...] Throw the kitchen sink at the legislation now on the table, drive a stake through its heart (I apologize for the mixed metaphors), and kill it. This isn't the identical message from '93. Then, in a private memo, Kristol made no effort to hide his motivations -- Republicans, for their own good, had to put the party's interests above the country's. The GOP had to stop the Democratic reform campaign because it was a Democratic reform campaign. Today's message, in a public post instead of a private memo, is at least framed in a less callous way. Kristol ostensibly believes the Democratic proposal(s) are wrong, and believes once the current reform efforts are destroyed, then the political world can rally behind a Republican-style reform package that protects insurance companies and protects the very wealthy from an additional tax burden. I can hardly wait. Kristol concluded, "We have plenty of time to work next year on sensible and targeted health reform in a bipartisan way." Spare me. Bill Kristol is suddenly concerned with "bipartisan" solutions to health care? For crying out loud, does Kristol actually expect people to take this seriously?