Dejavu

[101A]

From RealClearPolitics (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/03/a_dishonest_gimmicky_budget.html)


Deception at Core of Obama Plans

By Charles Krauthammer (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/author/charles_krauthammer/)
WASHINGTON -- Forget the pork. Forget the waste. Forget the 8,570 earmarks in a bill supported by a president who poses as the scourge of earmarks. Forget the "$2 trillion dollars in savings" that "we have already identified," $1.6 trillion of which President Obama's budget director later admits is the "savings" of not continuing the surge in Iraq until 2019 -- 11 years after George Bush ended it, and eight years after even Bush would have had us out of Iraq completely.
Forget all of this. This is run-of-the-mill budget trickery. True, Obama's tricks come festooned with strings of zeros tacked onto the end. But that's a matter of scale, not principle.

All presidents do that. But few undertake the kind of brazen deception at the heart of Obama's radically transformative economic plan, a rhetorical sleight of hand so smoothly offered that few noticed.
The logic of Obama's address to Congress went like this:
"Our economy did not fall into decline overnight," he averred. Indeed, it all began before the housing crisis. What did we do wrong? We are paying for past sins in three principal areas: energy, health care, and education -- importing too much oil and not finding new sources of energy (as in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Outer Continental Shelf?), not reforming health care, and tolerating too many bad schools.
The "day of reckoning" has now arrived. And because "it is only by understanding how we arrived at this moment that we'll be able to lift ourselves out of this predicament," Obama has come to redeem us with his far-seeing program of universal, heavily nationalized health care; a cap-and-trade tax on energy; and a major federalization of education with universal access to college as the goal.
Amazing. As an explanation of our current economic difficulties, this is total fantasy. As a cure for rapidly growing joblessness, a massive destruction of wealth, a deepening worldwide recession, this is perhaps the greatest non sequitur ever foisted upon the American people.
At the very center of our economic near-depression is a credit bubble, a housing collapse and a systemic failure of the entire banking system. One can come up with a host of causes: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pushed by Washington (and greed) into improvident loans, corrupted bond-ratings agencies, insufficient regulation of new and exotic debt instruments, the easy money policy of Alan Greenspan's Fed, irresponsible bankers pushing (and then unloading in packaged loan instruments) highly dubious mortgages, greedy house-flippers, deceitful homebuyers.
The list is long. But the list of causes of the collapse of the financial system does not include the absence of universal health care, let alone of computerized medical records. Nor the absence of an industry-killing cap-and-trade carbon levy. Nor the lack of college graduates. Indeed, one could perversely make the case that, if anything, the proliferation of overeducated, Gucci-wearing, smart-ass MBAs inventing ever more sophisticated and opaque mathematical models and debt instruments helped get us into this credit catastrophe in the first place.
And yet with our financial house on fire, Obama makes clear both in his speech and his budget that the essence of his presidency will be the transformation of health care, education and energy. Four months after winning the election, six weeks after his swearing in, Obama has yet to unveil a plan to deal with the banking crisis.
What's going on? "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste," said Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. "This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before."
Things. Now we know what they are. The markets' recent precipitous decline is a reaction not just to the absence of any plausible bank rescue plan, but also to the suspicion that Obama sees the continuing financial crisis as usefully creating the psychological conditions -- the sense of crisis bordering on fear-itself panic -- for enacting his "Big Bang" agenda to federalize and/or socialize health care, education and energy, the commanding heights of post-industrial society.
Clever politics, but intellectually dishonest to the core. Health, education and energy -- worthy and weighty as they may be -- are not the cause of our financial collapse. And they are not the cure. The fraudulent claim that they are both cause and cure is the rhetorical device by which an ambitious president intends to enact the most radical agenda of social transformation seen in our lifetime.


Well, it is pretty well documented that Bush's agenda included a fair amount of deception, along with a convenient "crisis" to do what he REALLY wanted to do: go Nation Building in the ME, and take out his Dad's nemesis in the process. This is the Dem. version. To each the end justifies the means. They're both wrong.

[DarkReign]

Well, it is pretty well documented that Bush's agenda included a fair amount of deception, along with a convenient "crisis" to do what he REALLY wanted to do: go Nation Building in the ME, and take out his Dad's nemesis in the process. This is the Dem. version. To each the end justifies the means. They're both wrong.

Well put. This does scream "Democrat Agenda Realized". Whereas Republicans are more foreign policy oriented, Dems are more domestic.

All in all, there just isnt much hope for rational thought and progress in government. Maybe its always been this way, or at least long enough that the history before it is immaterial.

Regardless, its astonishing to think that I (we) might actually see the fall of an empire in our lifetimes.

I used this phrase for a long time (middle school) before someone here explained the deeper meaning to me (RG, i think?)...

"May you live in interesting times."

...turns out, the phrase is meant as a pseudo-curse than a blessing.

Define irony.

[DarrinS]

t's hard not to see the continued sell-off on Wall Street and the growing fear on Main Street as a product, at least in part, of the realization that our new president's policies are designed to radically re-engineer the market-based U.S. economy, not just mitigate the recession and financial crisis.

The illusion that Barack Obama will lead from the economic center has quickly come to an end. Instead of combining the best policies of past Democratic presidents -- John Kennedy on taxes, Bill Clinton on welfare reform and a balanced budget, for instance -- President Obama is returning to Jimmy Carter's higher taxes and Mr. Clinton's draconian defense drawdown.

Mr. Obama's $3.6 trillion budget blueprint, by his own admission, redefines the role of government in our economy and society. The budget more than doubles the national debt held by the public, adding more to the debt than all previous presidents -- from George Washington to George W. Bush -- combined. :wow It reduces defense spending to a level not sustained since the dangerous days before World War II, while increasing nondefense spending (relative to GDP) to the highest level in U.S. history. And it would raise taxes to historically high levels (again, relative to GDP). And all of this before addressing the impending explosion in Social Security and Medicare costs.

To be fair, specific parts of the president's budget are admirable and deserve support: increased means-testing in agriculture and medical payments; permanent indexing of the alternative minimum tax and other tax reductions; recognizing the need for further financial rescue and likely losses thereon; and bringing spending into the budget that was previously in supplemental appropriations, such as funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The specific problems, however, far outweigh the positives. First are the quite optimistic forecasts, despite the higher taxes and government micromanagement that will harm the economy. The budget projects a much shallower recession and stronger recovery than private forecasters or the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office are projecting. It implies a vast amount of additional spending and higher taxes, above and beyond even these record levels. For example, it calls for a down payment on universal health care, with the additional "resources" needed "TBD" (to be determined).

Mr. Obama has bravely said he will deal with the projected deficits in Medicare and Social Security. While reform of these programs is vital, the president has shown little interest in reining in the growth of real spending per beneficiary, and he has rejected increasing the retirement age. Instead, he's proposed additional taxes on earnings above the current payroll tax cap of $106,800 -- a bad policy that would raise marginal tax rates still further and barely dent the long-run deficit.

Increasing the top tax rates on earnings to 39.6% and on capital gains and dividends to 20% will reduce incentives for our most productive citizens and small businesses to work, save and invest -- with effective rates higher still because of restrictions on itemized deductions and raising the Social Security cap. As every economics student learns, high marginal rates distort economic decisions, the damage from which rises with the square of the rates (doubling the rates quadruples the harm). The president claims he is only hitting 2% of the population, but many more will at some point be in these brackets.

As for energy policy, the president's cap-and-trade plan for CO2 would ensnare a vast network of covered sources, opening up countless opportunities for political manipulation, bureaucracy, or worse. It would likely exacerbate volatility in energy prices, as permit prices soar in booms and collapse in busts. The European emissions trading system has been a dismal failure. A direct, transparent carbon tax would be far better.

Moreover, the president's energy proposals radically underestimate the time frame for bringing alternatives plausibly to scale. His own Energy Department estimates we will need a lot more oil and gas in the meantime, necessitating $11 trillion in capital investment to avoid permanently higher prices.

The president proposes a large defense drawdown to pay for exploding nondefense outlays -- similar to those of Presidents Carter and Clinton -- which were widely perceived by both Republicans and Democrats as having gone too far, leaving large holes in our military. We paid a high price for those mistakes and should not repeat them.

The president's proposed limitations on the value of itemized deductions for those in the top tax brackets would clobber itemized charitable contributions, half of which are by those at the top. This change effectively increases the cost to the donor by roughly 20% (to just over 72 cents from 60 cents per dollar donated). Estimates of the responsiveness of giving to after-tax prices range from a bit above to a little below proportionate, so reductions in giving will be large and permanent, even after the recession ends and the financial markets rebound.

A similar effect will exacerbate tax flight from states like California and New York, which rely on steeply progressive income taxes collecting a large fraction of revenue from a small fraction of their residents. This attack on decentralization permeates the budget -- e.g., killing the private fee-for-service Medicare option -- and will curtail the experimentation, innovation and competition that provide a road map to greater effectiveness.

The pervasive government subsidies and mandates -- in health, pharmaceuticals, energy and the like -- will do a poor job of picking winners and losers (ask the Japanese or Europeans) and will be difficult to unwind as recipients lobby for continuation and expansion. Expanding the scale and scope of government largess means that more and more of our best entrepreneurs, managers and workers will spend their time and talent chasing handouts subject to bureaucratic diktats, not the marketplace needs and wants of consumers.

Our competitors have lower corporate tax rates and tax only domestic earnings, yet the budget seeks to restrict deferral of taxes on overseas earnings, arguing it drives jobs overseas. But the academic research (most notably by Mihir Desai, C. Fritz Foley and James Hines Jr.) reveals the opposite: American firms' overseas investments strengthen their domestic operations and employee compensation.

New and expanded refundable tax credits would raise the fraction of taxpayers paying no income taxes to almost 50% from 38%. This is potentially the most pernicious feature of the president's budget, because it would cement a permanent voting majority with no stake in controlling the cost of general government.

From the poorly designed stimulus bill and vague new financial rescue plan, to the enormous expansion of government spending, taxes and debt somehow permanently strengthening economic growth, the assumptions underlying the president's economic program seem bereft of rigorous analysis and a careful reading of history.

Unfortunately, our history suggests new government programs, however noble the intent, more often wind up delivering less, more slowly, at far higher cost than projected, with potentially damaging unintended consequences. The most recent case, of course, was the government's meddling in the housing market to bring home ownership to low-income families, which became a prime cause of the current economic and financial disaster.

On the growth effects of a large expansion of government, the European social welfare states present a window on our potential future: standards of living permanently 30% lower than ours. Rounding off perceived rough edges of our economic system may well be called for, but a major, perhaps irreversible, step toward a European-style social welfare state with its concomitant long-run economic stagnation is not.

[101A]

From DarinS's post:


Increasing the top tax rates on earnings to 39.6% and on capital gains and dividends to 20% will reduce incentives for our most productive citizens and small businesses to work, save and invest -- with effective rates higher still because of restrictions on itemized deductions and raising the Social Security cap. As every economics student learns, high marginal rates distort economic decisions, the damage from which rises with the square of the rates (doubling the rates quadruples the harm). The president claims he is only hitting 2% of the population, but many more will at some point be in these brackets.

Guess I'm slow, but I never considered the ramifications indicated here: Everything the Govt. seems to be doing; printing money, massive monetary infusions all over the damned place portend a significant uptick in inflation.....things cost more, salaries, on paper, go "up". Who benefits from this? Well, anyone who thinks taxes should be higher does: If the tax brackets stay as defined, at the same levels, many, many people will jump to higher brackets, even though their earning in real dollars stays the same, or even declines. Unless I missed where Obama wants to index the brackets to inflation.

[DarrinS]

But few undertake the kind of brazen deception at the heart of Obama's radically transformative economic plan, a rhetorical sleight of hand so smoothly offered that few noticed.

The logic of Obama's address to Congress went like this:
"Our economy did not fall into decline overnight," he averred. Indeed, it all began before the housing crisis. What did we do wrong? We are paying for past sins in three principal areas: energy, health care, and education -- importing too much oil and not finding new sources of energy (as in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Outer Continental Shelf?), not reforming health care, and tolerating too many bad schools.

The "day of reckoning" has now arrived. And because "it is only by understanding how we arrived at this moment that we'll be able to lift ourselves out of this predicament," Obama has come to redeem us with his far-seeing program of universal, heavily nationalized health care; a cap-and-trade tax on energy; and a major federalization of education with universal access to college as the goal.

Amazing. As an explanation of our current economic difficulties, this is total fantasy.





This is a very good point.

The Obama has no sense of how to "triage". They need to stop the bleeding, not embark on a grand social re-egineering experiment.

[101A]

This is a very good point.

The Obama has no sense of how to "triage". They need to stop the bleeding, not embark on a grand social re-egineering experiment.

"Never let a good crisis go to waste."

- Emmanuel
- (and yesterday) H.R. Clinton

Does anybody else have a problem with the statement? I mean, we all recognize that politicians do it, but BRAGGING about it? People are losing their houses/jobs/life savings, and politicians are openly relishing in the opportunity it provides them?

[Winehole23]

What's going on? "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste," said Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. "This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before."The party in power lays itself open to charges of incompetence from its base if it fails to press its advantage.

Is it opportunism? Sure. Just like 9/11 was made into a political football by, well, just about everybody I guess. Expedience is king on both sides of the aisle and power takes care of its own.

[Winehole23]

"Never let a good crisis go to waste."

- Emmanuel
- (and yesterday) H.R. Clinton

Does anybody else have a problem with the statement? I?It seems commonplace to me.

[101A]

Is it opportunism? Sure. J

I get that.

But Rumsfeld never actually SAID, "We are going to use this tragedy on 9/11 to further our goal of overthrowing Saddam Hussein" - we wouldn't want 9/11 to go to waste, would we?"

I mean, I guess it's commendable that the administration is being honest and all, but damn.

[Winehole23]

I mean, I guess it's commendable that the administration is being honest and all, but damn.Saying it out loud is brassy, but that doesn't make it any less a commonplace. Rahm has a rep for pugnaciousness, so it isn't so surprising to me that he said it.

[ChumpDumper]

So the agenda is.

1) Destroy America.

2) Get re-elected.

:lol

[MannyIsGod]

I get that.

But Rumsfeld never actually SAID, "We are going to use this tragedy on 9/11 to further our goal of overthrowing Saddam Hussein" - we wouldn't want 9/11 to go to waste, would we?"

I mean, I guess it's commendable that the administration is being honest and all, but damn.


O Rly? Thats news to me

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51YAKSND9TL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA240_SH20_OU01_.jpg

Bob Woodward wants to welcome you back to 2005.

[Winehole23]

Nice nutshell, Chump.:tu

[RandomGuy]

From DarinS's post:


Guess I'm slow, but I never considered the ramifications indicated here: Everything the Govt. seems to be doing; printing money, massive monetary infusions all over the damned place portend a significant uptick in inflation.....things cost more, salaries, on paper, go "up". Who benefits from this? Well, anyone who thinks taxes should be higher does: If the tax brackets stay as defined, at the same levels, many, many people will jump to higher brackets, even though their earning in real dollars stays the same, or even declines. Unless I missed where Obama wants to index the brackets to inflation.

Tax brackets are already essentially indexed to inflation, as the cutoffs between brackets rise with the cost of living.

[RandomGuy]

The interesting thing about all of this is that even though they have been essentially massively inflating the money supply the dollar is still going up against other currencies, as people are fleeing to dollar assets for safety.

I heard an interesting analysis of this that says that this is probably the indicator to watch for the first signs of economic recovery.

[ChumpDumper]

I'll worry about inflation once the CPI gets back up to the level of last summer. It's currently over four percent off that.

[RandomGuy]

"Our economy did not fall into decline overnight," he averred. Indeed, it all began before the housing crisis. What did we do wrong? We are paying for past sins in three principal areas: energy, health care, and education -- importing too much oil and not finding new sources of energy (as in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Outer Continental Shelf?), not reforming health care, and tolerating too many bad schools.

:bang

ANWAR will not make a farts difference in a hurricaine in the long run.

As someone who considers himself an environmentalist, I feverently wish they would tap it just to shut the fucktards up who seem to labor under the delusion that somehow we can drill our way out of the coming twilight of our oil supplies.

Health care is 10%+ of our GDP, and these costs are rising faster than our economy is growing, suggesting that this % will only increase.
Energy costs are embedded in literally every physical object we own/build.

If anyone thinks neither of those issues will make a difference to the economy, were we to get more effective policies in place than our current non-policies, you might want to rethink that.

[MannyIsGod]

I'll worry about inflation once the CPI gets back up to the level of last summer. It's currently over four percent off that.

When your house is burning you don't practice water conservation. Is there any wonder why the GOP is seriously losing ground? I read an article yesterday on Politico that pointed out how their leadership is - self admittedly mind you - watching their party free fall and is wondering just when they are going to hit rock bottom. They felt that for sure it was going to be the last elections but apparently they have yet to learn shit.

Its funny that the approval ratings thread died because GOP approval is falling while Obama and the Dems are rising or maintaining their high levels.

[ChumpDumper]

Yeah, I was looking for that thread.

The favorable rating of the leader of the Democrats (Obama) is hovering around 60%.

The favorable rating of the leader of the Republicans (Rush) is something like 26%.

Should Rush's ass really be kissed so aggresively and passionately these days?

[101A]

Yeah, I was looking for that thread.

The favorable rating of the leader of the Democrats (Obama) is hovering around 60%.

The favorable rating of the leader of the Republicans (Rush) is something like 26%.

Should Rush's ass really be kissed so aggresively and passionately these days?

I think Rush's favorables are around 11%, actually.

Is Chump Rahm Emmanuel? Diverting all threads to a comparison between Rush Limbaugh and Barrack Obama?

[ChumpDumper]

I think Rush's favorables are around 11%, actually.Sorry, I was a couple points off.

In a February Gallup poll, 45 percent of respondents said they had an unfavorable view of Limbaugh, to 28 percent with a favorable opinion.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/03/AR2009030300931_pf.html


Is Chump Rahm Emmanuel? Diverting all threads to a comparison between Rush Limbaugh and Barrack Obama?He's the leader of the Republican party, get another leader and we can talk about him or her.

Ultimately this is about whether Obama can get his agenda through. in that respect the polls seem to be in his favor.

[Winehole23]

I think Rush's favorables are around 11%, actually.You may be thinking of this (http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/just_11_of_republicans_say_limbaugh_is_their_party _s_leader)Rasmussen poll.

11% of Republicans identify Rush as the leader of the GOP, based on this question:


"Agree or Disagree: 'Rush Limbaugh is the leader of the Republican Party -- he says jump and they say how high.'"

[101A]

Ultimately this is about whether Obama can get his agenda through. in that respect the polls seem to be in his favor.

It's not about that at all.

He WILL get his agenda through, of that there is no doubt.

I thought it was about what his agenda is going to do once implemented?

[101A]

You may be thinking of this (http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/just_11_of_republicans_say_limbaugh_is_their_party _s_leader)Rasmussen poll.

11% of Republicans identify Rush as the leader of the GOP, based on this question:


Thanks for that.

Sorry for the misdirection, Chump.

[ChumpDumper]

It's not about that at all.

He WILL get his agenda through, of that there is no doubt.

I thought it was about what his agenda is going to do once implemented?I don't really see much deception. It's not like these issues didn't exist until the latest recession. I find it odd that Democrats are being asked to wait to do the things they have wanted to do for decades at the this zenith of their power. Of course Obama is going to push his agenda through -- because he can. He's got two years to do so. If Republicans can actually get their act together in the meantime they can undestroy America in 2011.

[temujin]

And yet with our financial house on fire, Obama makes clear both in his speech and his budget that the essence of his presidency will be the transformation of health care, education and energy.

This Krauthammer is late.
Th financial and military cards have ben played already.

Trasformation of health care could only benefit the US (I can't think of a more inefficient system).
And yes, those energy patents will have to be brought out of the drawers, even if the oilmen don't like it.

With the current crisis, who is EXACTLY paying this guy to write these idiotic "articles"?

[temujin]

More readings from this imbecile.

He was calling for a full blast war of Israel in Gaza and rejection of any cease fire whatsoever.

"The disintegration of Hamas rule in Gaza would be a devastating blow to Palestinian rejectionists, who since the Hamas takeover of Gaza have been the ascendant "strong horse" in Palestinian politics. It would be a devastating blow to Iran as patron of radical Islamist movements throughout the region, particularly after the defeat and marginalization of Iran's Sadrist client in Iraq. It would encourage the moderate Arab states to continue their U.S.-allied confrontation of Iran and its proxies. And it would demonstrate Israel's irreplaceable strategic value to the U.S. in curbing and containing Iran's regional ambitions."


40 (Forty) days later.

No disintegration of Hamas.
More rockets being fired.
No devastating blow to Iran, which gets invited to talks about Afghanistan by the US.
"Sadrist" client to take chargo of Irak, as the US leave (Sooner than later).
No need of Israel for the US to talk to Iran.
Last, but not least, Olmert's party gets booted out of power.

This guy is GENIUS.

Can't he predict an easy win of the Lakers this year?

[DarrinS]

This guy is GENIOUS.



Or maybe even a genius.

[temujin]

Or maybe even a genius.

Yeap.

[temujin]

let's have more fun, this Kreuthammer chap is rapidly turning into a legend.

September 19th 2008.

"For the last 150 years, most American war presidents -- most notably Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt -- have entered (or re-entered) office knowing war was looming. Not so George Bush. Not so the war on terror. The 9/11 attacks literally came out of the blue.

Indeed, the three presidential campaigns between the fall of the Berlin Wall and 9/11 were the most devoid of foreign policy debate of any in the 20th century. The commander-in-chief question that dominates our campaigns today was almost nowhere in evidence during our '90s holiday from history.

When I asked President Bush during an interview Monday to reflect on this oddity, he cast himself back to early 2001, recalling what he expected his presidency would be about: education reform, tax cuts and military transformation from a Cold War structure to a more mobile force adapted to smaller-scale 21st-century conflict.

But a wartime president he became. And that is how history will both remember and judge him.

Getting a jump on history, many books have already judged him. The latest by Bob Woodward describes the commander in chief as unusually aloof and detached. A more favorably inclined biographer might have called it equanimity.

In the hour I spent with the president (devoted mostly to foreign policy), that equanimity was everywhere in evidence -- not the resignation of a man in the twilight of his presidency but a sense of calm and confidence in eventual historical vindication.

It is precisely that quality that allowed him to order the surge in Iraq in the face of intense opposition from the political establishment (of both parties), the foreign policy establishment (led by the feckless Iraq Study Group), the military establishment (as chronicled by Woodward) and public opinion itself. The surge then effected the most dramatic change in the fortunes of an American war since the summer of 1864.

That kind of resolve requires internal fortitude. Some have argued that too much reliance on this internal compass is what got us into Iraq in the first place. But Bush was hardly alone in that decision. He had a majority of public opinion, the commentariat and Congress with him. In addition, history has not yet rendered its verdict on the Iraq War. We can say that it turned out to be longer and more costly than expected, surely. But the question remains as to whether the now-likely outcome -- transforming a virulently aggressive enemy state in the heart of the Middle East into a strategic ally in the war on terror -- was worth it. I suspect the ultimate answer will be far more favorable than it is today.

When I asked the president about his one unambiguous achievement, keeping us safe for seven years -- about 6 1/2 years longer than anybody thought possible at the time of 9/11 -- he was quick to credit both the soldiers keeping the enemy at bay abroad and the posse of law enforcement and intelligence officials hardening our defenses at home.

But he alluded also to some of the measures he had undertaken, including "listening in on the enemy" and "asking hardened killers about their plans." The CIA has already told us that interrogation of high-value terrorists like Khalid Sheik Mohammed yielded more valuable intelligence than any other source. In talking about these measures, the president mentioned neither this testimony as to their efficacy nor the campaign of vilification against him that these measures occasioned. More equanimity still.

What the president did note with some pride, however, is that beyond preventing a second attack, he is bequeathing to his successor the kinds of powers and institutions the next president will need to prevent further attack and successfully prosecute the long war. And indeed, he does leave behind a Department of Homeland Security, reorganized intelligence services with newly developed capacities to share information, and a revised FISA regime that grants broader and modernized wiretapping authority.

In this respect, Bush is much like Truman, who developed the sinews of war for a new era (the Department of Defense, the CIA, the NSA), expanded the powers of the presidency, established a new doctrine for active intervention abroad, and ultimately engaged in a war (Korea) -- also absent an attack on the U.S. -- that proved highly unpopular.

So unpopular that Truman left office disparaged and highly out of favor. History has revised that verdict. I have little doubt that Bush will be the subject of a similar reconsideration.

[Nbadan]

Actually, Kreuthammer has been an idiot for a lot of years, your just now discovering the level or his idiocy....

[temujin]

More on the visionary capacities of the "expert".

Russia reacts to Georgia's aggression.

1. Suspend the NATO-Russia Council established in 2002 to help bring Russia closer to the West. Make clear that dissolution will follow suspension. The council gives Russia a seat at the NATO table. Message: Invading neighboring democracies forfeits the seat.

2. Bar Russian entry to the World Trade Organization.

3. Dissolve the G-8. Putin's dictatorial presence long made it a farce but no one wanted to upset the bear by expelling it. No need to. The seven democracies simply withdraw. Then immediately announce the reconstitution of the original G-7.

4. Announce a U.S.-European boycott of the 2014 Winter Olympics at Sochi. To do otherwise would be obscene. Sochi is 15 miles from Abkhazia, the other Georgian province just invaded by Russia. The Games will become a riveting contest between the Russian, Belarusian and Jamaican bobsled teams.

All of these steps (except dissolution of the G-8, which should be irreversible) would be subject to reconsideration depending upon Russian action -- most importantly and minimally, its withdrawal of troops from Georgia proper to South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

The most crucial and unconditional measure, however, is this: Reaffirm support for the Saakashvili government and declare that its removal by the Russians would lead to recognition of a government-in-exile. This would instantly be understood as providing us the legal basis for supplying and supporting a Georgian resistance to any Russian-installed regime.

1) Big blow to whores and nightclubs in Brussels.
2) No.
3) G8 called in evey other week by US president, starting from late october.
Actually extended to G20.
4) Sure, boycott the Olimpics.

Saakashvili president still in place.
No need for yet another war a la UCK in Kosovo.
May I remind him that Russia is NOT Yugoslavia.

I seriously cant' think of someone systematically getting predictions more "wrong".

[temujin]

Actually, Kreuthammer has been an idiot for a lot of years, your just now discovering the level or his idiocy....

The more I read, the more I am stunned by the fact that he makes money out of his articles.

[temujin]

OK

Going to bed.

Relieved, actually, of the gllomy future this guy predicts in the original article that started this thread.

[Nbadan]

The more I read, the more I am stunned by the fact that he makes money out of his articles.

Pfff....he's part of the wing-nut media......your talking about a media conglomeration that can put books by Ann Coulter, of all people, on the N.Y.T. top 10 list...

[Nbadan]

....facts don't matter......just get the message out....over and over........

[Winehole23]

I seriously cant' think of someone systematically getting predictions more "wrong".
http://www.foxnews.com/bios/img/Bill%20Kristol%20headshot.jpg

[Nbadan]

http://imgsrv.kvwm970.com/image/kvwm/UserFiles/Image/Sean.jpg

[balli]

http://weblogs.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/politics/blog/george-w-bush-picture.jpeg

[Nbadan]

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Ink_wSsKtVQ/Rwt8ryPSi2I/AAAAAAAABO8/_RGkh4bbxe8/s400/jerryjonesStreeter_Lecka.jpg

[Nbadan]

http://spurstalk.com/forums/image.php?u=171&dateline=1214551189 (http://spurstalk.com/forums/member.php?u=171)?

[balli]

:lol

[temujin]

http://spurstalk.com/forums/image.php?u=171&dateline=1214551189 (http://spurstalk.com/forums/member.php?u=171)?

:lmao