finknottle

True irony will be achieved when the CIA joins the class action suit. I'm sure agent training is even worse.

Even if he does not, the problem is that the damage is done. Just raising the possibility encourages an underlying tendancy. A problem with most government workforces is that the incentives are different - advancement generally comes from a combination time in grade and working in various offices, not productivity and achievement. The upside of doing something positive and out of the norm does not outweigh the downside of screwing up. Thus the mantra "keep your head down and don't make waves." The smart choice is to do the task assigned and never be pro-active, always punt potentially controversial actions or decisions to other organizations, and to low-ball expectations on productivity to management ("our job is hard" and "we don't have enough people"). Because at the end of the day, management doesn't ask 'how many widgets did my underlings produce,' but rather 'did my underlings screw up, upset my bosses, and hurt my own chances at promotion.' The smart manager is just there to have his ticket punched - he keeps his head down, and wants like-minded individuals working for him.

Good piece about the 'slow-roll' phenomona among workers at the CIA. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...9042102969.html Paralysis from their already risk-averse legal counsel would be icing on the cake.

They can both be leftists and still not agree. Last time I checked, Pat Buchanon and Charles Krauthammer had pretty different views of conservativism.

You mean the years after the first World Trade Center bombing? Isn't that the period when the practice of rendition and the handing of suspects to foreign services is supposed to have dramatically increased? Sounds to me like the answer to your question may be 'yes.'

A non-loaded political question is politely asked, and nobody knows how to respond. What a collection of tools.

So - our bad example in interrogation is what makes people hate us even more and makes us less safe. Will someone remind me why they chose to crash the planes into US targets and not, say, Israeli? Could it have anything to do with the fact that Israel is ruthless enough to shoot them down in a moments notice regardless of whether innocents are on board? Or why didn't they go after countries they hate even more, like the governments of Egypt or Saudi Arabia? Last time I checked, Egyptian jails were reported to be filled with tortured Islamic fundamentalists.

People voted for him for the symbolism he represented and out of anger towards Bush, and the inertia behind their support continues to propel his ratings. They did *not* vote for him because of these policies, for the simple fact that the issues we face never came up, and on those issues he did discuss in '08 he was vague even by politician standards. Maybe I've been living under a rock, but I don't recall him saying he would dramatically increase taxes on tobacco, dwarf the Reagan and Bush deficits in his first year in office, or cap salaries in the auto and financial industries... To say the american people support whatever solutions he proposes just because they like and voted for the man and/or despise Bush or the Republicans is simply not true.

ieatcrayonz strikes again!

What do you think the policy response will be the first time it occurs to somebody to board with a bomb in their luggage, stow it, get off in Wilmington, and blow up Penn Station? TSA. How will that effect the cost-and-convenience comparison between air and rail? I say this as a proponent of regional rail. Nevertheless, we can't delude ourselves that it will remain as convenient as it has been.

The voters in the now-competative state of North Carolina can look forward to a fat federal agriculteral subsidary paying them variously to grow and then destroy tobacco or to grow nothing at all. (*) (*) See Stimulus Spending

Simply amazing how people can criticize Bush's quickly-eclipsed deficit spending and then turn around and argue with a straight face that it doesn't matter what you spend it on as long as the wheels of the economy are being greased.

Yeah, he's been a living "Profiles in Courage" his whole political career. Pelosi is shaking in her boots.

Obama - Ooops, I mean Chavez - is expected to sign a decree next week targeting executive pay in the oil industry. It will clamp down on permissable salaries, bonuses, parties, phones and cars.

And this is based on Obama's track record of bucking his party and taking unpopular positions with his constituients? He will encourage the Senate to make it go away. But I predict that if something does get passed, you won't see an Obama veto. He will roll over and pronounce it grand just like he did on earmarks.

You know what is a civil-rights crisis? The plight of speeders in this country. Tens of millions of Americans regularly drive over the speed limit on highways - too many to lock up all at once. And the suffering they endure with the laws the way they are right now - constantly looking over their shoulder for cops while driving, the immoral profiling that exists on the I-95 corridor based on what car they are driving... All they want is to arrive at the American dream sooner - I bet some of your ancestors sped. Drivers should not have to live in fear when they are on the road. We need to change our laws to de-criminalize these peoples lifestyles.

I agree that - based on what I've heard about the situation - it shouldn't be constitutional. But as indignant I am about AIG I am far more troubled by the House even considering such a bill, let alone passing it. It is distinctly Chavez-like. A CEO I was talking with today put it well: Pelosi and friends may not be doing Obama's bidding, but Obama and the blank-check mandate he fashioned in the election is effectively an enabler for every unexamined popularist impulse on the left, whether people would have voted for them or not. We've got Congress targeting the incomes of people we don't like, we've got Congress talking about taxing companies Health Insurance contributions, we've got Congress exploring a nationalizing of 401k accounts...

With the Democrats eager to single out and tax the AIG bonuses 90% in this brave new popularist world we live in, I came up with the following idea: NYS has a vested interest in the Buffalo Bills, with the various investments it has put into them over the years. Whenever the Bills suck, we taxpayers are rightfully outraged at players getting paid bonuses for doing a crappy job while we fork over for stadiums and road improvements. So the state assembly should pass legislation targeting everybody in the organization - administrators, coaches and players - and making their state tax 90% on bonuses above their base salary whenever the team finishes with 5 wins or less. Thoughts?

The payouts on SS are 'progressive.' They take your contributions and assign you an interest rate based on how much you contributed. For the bottom contributors (you know who you are), I think it is something like 4%. For people who max out, the return is something like negative .2%.

Your sarcasm is misplaced - put your Obama thinking cap on. The tax cuts for the wealthy saved millions of jobs that would otherwise have been lost had we plunged into a prolonged recession following the twin crisis of the bursting of the dot-com bubble and 9/11.

It's a lot harder to establish union harrassment than management. For example, if management wants to talk to you about unionizing, they have to do it on paid company time at a company location. If they are calling you up at home, it's a clear violation. Any harrassing they do has to be done at the company, which leaves a sort of paper trail. The unions, on the other hand, are given the home addresses of all the employees by law, and are free to contact them at any time. They can call you in the middle of the night. They can hang out outside your house all day and badger you every time you walk out. They can bump into you at the grocery store, be there when you pick up your kids from school...

Coincidentally, after the first of what is supposed to be several stimulus bills was passed and I did the math on how much each taxpayer would owe when the bill comes due, I whimsically looked into emmigration. Switzerland has an interesting policy. Basically, it is this: - You can apply to be a citizen only after you are a long-time legal resident. - Other than being a student or something, the way to become a legal resident is as a businessman. For this, you have to have demonstrable financial resources, pay Swiss taxes, and set up a Swiss company employing at least one Swiss citizen. Gee, imagine that - an immigration policy which transfers wealth *into* the country and actually *generates* jobs for its citizens, instead of letting in poor people willing to work at lower wages than the current citizens.

By objectivity I meant addressing the important issues, as opposed to fawn fluff or fear-mongering. By no means do I say he is non-partisan or without agenda. Remember, the tenor of the talk shows he is on are civil and restrained, entirely unlike talk radio. So all that really distinguishes the pundits are the points they choose to raise, and the media is otherwise content to gush about Obama and focus on the inside baseball side of his legislative agenda. He seems to be the only one on his shows willing to point out the many large elephants in the room on domestic issues.

Funny - I thought the same thing when I read it this morning and contemplated posting it. CK used to be one of my least favorite pundits until things began focusing on the economy. Now he's the token voice of objectivity on the talk shows.

If you want to conclude that the belief in the importance of actively intervening in the world to make it a better place neccessarily leads to budget busting and disasterous outcomes in the aftermath of wars, then fine. We'll go back to the days of realpolitik and the coddling of usefull dictators. I suspect most people object to neoconservatism only because of association with Bush and the mess his administartion made of the Iraq aftermath, not because of what it actaully means. Obama could engage in the same sort of thing and people would herald it as a new chapter in american involvement with the world.