finknottle

Case in point, IMO. If every time we say "hey, Obama has no experience and will run up the deficit even faster than it is now" we feel compelled to start argueing that Bush was a great president and that Clinton was terrible, we will make no headway with a mainstream America that disagrees on those points. It gives them a glaring reminder of why not to trust our judgement.

It does seem oddly sensible.

I certainly don't want to defend Bush, but the fact is that he has managed a government (Texas) and been involved running businesses. I do not think Obama has ever had a management role outside of running his personal political staff, and his experience with the profit-loss side of the private sector is limited (I think) to his first year out of college when he worked for a private company which helps US companies open operations overseas. It was not a management position. (He also scooped ice cream at a resort one summer.) Experience is not the be-all and end-all; there are plenty of guys with impressive resumes who stunk up the joint every where they went. 'Qualified' doesn't neccessarily mean they will do a good job. It is only in that sense that I say Bush had the qualifications to run the country. But just as there are plenty of qualified doctors who are terrible, I'd be very reluctant to use that as justification for turning to somebody without any medical experience. And I think Obama's management experience pales next to, say, the owner of a car dealership. The latter has a real-world appreciation of labor issues, materials, supply and demand, investment and financing, recessions and inflation. Making the case that legislative experience is a good qualification for running a nation is risky. If they've been doing it forever and in a wide variety of areas, then maybe... But as a legislator, Obama's record is very short and remarkably thin. You can also make the case that world experience is an important qualifiucation, but there too Bush had it all over Obama. He may not have been terribly interested, but he was much more traveled and had greater exposure to foreign leaders than Obama. There's one more interpretation of qualifications that can be made: Obama is simply right in his views, and is therefore qualified. But it's obviously an empty definition, which I only mention because I suspect it is what colors most peoples subconscious thinking about Obama.

They are the boy who cried wolf. For 20 years the over-the-top rhetoric and the obsession with the Clintons whom - I'm sorry - most of the country quite liked, has done nothing but discredit their criticisms as tired unobjective partisanship. Nobody listens to the right anymore. And now we have a democratic candidate who I am unabashedly comfortable describing as to the left of the democratic party, a flip-flopper, a true tax-and-spend democrat, and unqualified to be commander in chief. Guess what? That's been said about absolutely every democrat for the last 20 years, regardless of merit, and the words mean nothing now. You could not *pay* the media to run with those stories. Barring a miracle, the most dangerously unqualified candidate we have ever had on the ballot is going to sail through in November, and we have only ourselves to blame for our warnings going unheeded.

So all we are giving him is some grain... How about two million tons of oil a year as has been reported? And what about dropping all the counterfeiting charges and crediting their banks with the seized money? And of course the promise to drop them from the proliferation embargo - presumably if the do it again, any attempt by the US to sanction them through reinstatement would nullify the nuclear agreement. Two million tons of oil a year and diplomatic immunity buys us the statis quo. If you don't want to call it balckmail, fine. But you must at least admit that those are pretty nice trade incentives. Do all our friends get offered them?

No. There is a very simple difference between North Korea in 2002 and Iran. North Korea *already* had the means to blackmail us. They didn't need nukes. They have enough artillary poised on the border to literally wipe out Seoul and most of northern South Korea within 15 minutes. It is a cornerstone of their military doctrine. And that is why no action was contemplated by Bush in 2002 - the effect on the intertwined world economy would have been devestating. It is the same reason that Clinton did not bomb when the nuclear issue first came to a head (though technically it came to a head at the end of Bush I, who punted). IMO it's not about assigning blame between Clinton and Bush (*). That does nothing but avoid the simple fact that in a world of proliferation, any slimeball can hold hostage the responsible countries. North Korea already had their deterrence, a get-out-of-jail card that lets them get away with state-sponsored drug smuggling, missile trafficing, and counterfeiting. Like the cold war, all you can do is try to contain them through an embargo - you can't push them. Iran doesn't have that deterrent yet, but will soon. (*) IMO. the experiences of the Clinton presidency explains Hillary's more hawkish positions, including the IRGC designation and her refusal to disavow voting for the authorization of force in Iraq. Iraq wasn't about WMD in the here-and-now, it was the likliehood that Saddam was not going to be a good citizen when sanctions were lifted, and the recognition that with pressure from Russia, France, and the left (remember the demonstrations against starving Iraq's children?) they would not remain in place much longer. For the Clintons, proliferation was the central national security threat, whether it be rogue states or loose nukes. Once the bad guys have the means to cause damage, like North Korea, you have no cards to play other than sanctions - and that's a losing position in the long run. If you are the US, you will usually wind up having to pay them off in the end.

That's because they have already crossed the threshold where they can blackmail us, and they are effectively doing so. Would we be negotiating with them over exactly how much aid we will give them if they didn't have the capability and will to destroy Seoul? Would we turn a blind eye to any other country counterfeiting our money? And not just pretend it didn't happen, but credit them with 25$ million in seized assets, just to get them back to the table? Talk about taking care of their dirty laundering! It's all about blackmail, and with North Korea we have already lost. It is one thing to secretly pay off one regime in the interests of peace and stability. But as more and more countries line up to the secret trough, where does it end? How much have we already paid the former Soviet republics to give up their arsenals? (We are still funding 'retraining programs' for Russian scientists, believe it or not!) How much have we paid countries like Brazil and South Africa to shut down their facilities? I'd wager it's a non-negligible piece of the black budget. The problem with authoritarian countries like North Korea and Iran is that they can play hardball, their threats are more credible, and they can keep coming back for more. North Korea will certainly do so.

I look at it another way. "Developing our own sources" is a popularist talking point. It suggests that if we drill our oil, it goes to the american consumer, lowering prices. It doesn't. It goes on the world market, at best bringing overall prices down a few pennies - but I would expect the Saudi's to curtail production to compensate. So what does it do for americans? Nothing at the gas pump. Instead, the treasury gets revenue from the leases (history suggesting below-market prices), and it gets sucked into the budget. So I look at it not as a solving of our energy needs, but simply as more selling off of our national resouces just to piss it away during an era of fiscal irresponsibility. It's not worth it - let the others pump theirs first, and save ours for the next century.

From the oil companies perspective, it is not about pumping oil today. It is about locking up reserves for tomorrow. Having long-term drilling rights to a big chunk of ANWAR puts you in a strong financial position regardless of when you start tapping into it.

I've been pretty clear in my utter contempt for those who defend the outing of Wilson's wife. Having said that, Wilson has nothing to do with this. The NIE is about connecting a million dots to build up a probable picture. It is not a law-enforcement document, hanging on singular facts which must be proved or disproved beyond a shadow of a doubt. Wilson's findings in Niger were just one data point, to be weighed and contrasted with all the other data points about Iraqi intentions. It say's nothing about whether other procurement activities were ongoing.

What course of action an administration chooses to pursue based on the findings of its experts and how they sell them is completely different from whether or not they accept the findings. I am unaware of any community findings that were 'sent back' to change the conclusion. Are you saying that there were NIE's that originally said Saddam was *not* looking to reconstitute his WMD programs? There *was* credible evidence. The fact that it was trumped up by Saddam, to fool even his own generals into believing that they were backed up by chemical weapons and to sow uncertaintity in the coalition forces opposing him, doesn't change that.

I will never be accused as an apologist for Bush's foreign policy debacles, but this credibility stuff is bunk. The intelligence community and those of all of our allies all concluded Saddam was working on WMD. They were fooled - but that's hindsight. The point is that it was their job to assess things, and that's the conclusion they gave. The conclusions of the experts is credibility by any reasonable definition. So would Obama have fallen victim to the same thing Bush did, or is he magically different? Where will he find 'credible' sources on Pakistan harboring terrorists if not his own services, who can sometimes be wrong? MoveOn and the Carter Foundation? Or is he going to pick and choose when to listen to the professionals within his own government, whether it be the CIA, NASA, or the OMB, and call their findings credible only when it suits him? That sounds suspiciously like Bush...

http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/W...a0256_06_19.asp Coming on the heels of Castro's kind words and those of Hamas, I can see that an Obama presidency will go a long way towards restoring the US image in the places that count.

Grist for the mill, from a blog: http://www.newshoggers.com/blog/2008/06/mccain-energy-p.html This articulates my chief point: in 30 years, if the free market in oil breaks down due to a gross imbalance in supply ad demand, the last countries standing will be those with their own oil supplies. Do we want to be Kuwait, with an ace in the hole, or another tapped-out Mexico?

Virginia is going through that right now. Right now, a felon who stays out of trouble can apply to get his voting rights back, but it takes time. The democratic governer is pushing through legislation to set up an expedited review program to ensure that they can all get them restored in time for the November election.

Apparently sarcasm is lost on you. Of course it is pandering. And horse-trading. It was a bunch of luminaries who played the political games neccessary to get an excellant workable compromise document agreed to. And it was a great success. But your point is my point - they were politicians not very different than today. But there is quite a leap from aknowledging that history to the form of idol worship we have today, wherein we treat the Constitution as the font of all wisdom and carefully parse the writer's intentions, real or imagined, about issues they couldn't conceive of. How should we decide the Napster case? Or Berstein v US in which compilable source code was settled to be speech, and not an item which can be regulated? Let's look at letter's to Madison's mom for clues!

Yeah, their wisdom on everything, from race to economics to medicine and cosmology, is rivaled only by their incredible forsight in anticipating future issues in technology and the environment. I particularly like their priorities. The fact that the government shall *never* levy an export tax is apparently important enough to enshrine in the Constitution (a cynic would call it short-term horse-trading to get the southern states on board, but that's a rediculous accusation to place on such wise men), but trivilaities like slavery could wait.

Nothing really. It grants the government the power to create and collect taxes, to pay debts and provide for the common welfare and defense. Only an idiot would believe that the founding fathers impliticely intended a balanced budget. We would not have been able to fight the Revolutionary War without going into debt. And the fact that they explicitely mention paying debts as a legitimate activity suggests deficits are permissible. (For the record, I am for fiscal discipline. What I am against is the idol worshipping of the founding fathers and their dated perspectives and pieces of papers written for a society that has little resemblance to our own. I really don't care what a bunch of 18th century landowners/weekend politicians thought about economics.)

Sometimes he say's it is the savings from pulling out of Iraq - unless he is being asked about National Security, in which case he says he's going to spend the same but redirect our troops to fighting AQ in Afghanistan.

Now you are the one making no sense. If you believe prices are headed up over the next 50 years, then selling now is selling low. If you believe they are going to come down, then why bother?

To only spend only half the money donated for your presidency campaign when the race is still competative, stay in the race to fund your book tours with the rest, leaving almost a fifth for your own foundation? So *thats* what Clinton was up to all this time! Seriously, my gripe is that a lot of people donated their money for him to run for president, not be a libertarian gadfly. He chose not to go all out in the springboard states despite having the cash. Other candidates went into debt for their shot - he chose to bank it. If he wasn't going to seriously contest Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, he was just taking money from fools.

Let's add all of our oil to the world market now, while we are in an economic slowdown, so that the Chinese can buy it up to fuel their continued economic growth. As long as our price at the pump drops a few pennies it will be worth it. We'll invent a magic substitute if we need it later on.

On the contrary, I think they will simply drill less and keep the prices stable. They have plenty of money - what they fear is an economic crash. If the supply of oil finally dwindles and alternative sources come along slower than we hope, the free market in oil will eventually collapse. The countries who hang on to their reserves longest win - they'll have something to keep them going.

It has been reported that he is dropping out imminently. He'll have almost $5 million left of the $30 million he raised - it will be donated to an advocacy group he is setting up called the Campaign for Liberty, an organization to support Republican Libertarians. As it's first act, since Paul is the standard-bearer in the throng of RL's, the Campaign for Liberty will pick up the tab for Paul's side-convention. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/St...6019&page=1

Republicans have never pretended to be intellectuals.