Taiwan
 

I just noted it as reason 144572 that France is the true enemy. But it did get me thinking about the issue and that is why the questions to the committee. I know it was a delayed reaction, but I get confused very easily.

Taiwan
 

I thought one of these guys would at least explain why it doesn't show how transparent the Country's policy decisions are. It would be a bullshit explaination, but I'd like to hear something other that "there's money to be made in China!"

Of course the clear parallel to its Iraq stance stands in the shadow, but is becoming more illuminated.

Taiwan
 

I think you may be right. Doesn't that make you nervous? I think it is possible that they will Invade, and a conflict with China makes me uneasy. China can hit the West Coast with their ICBMs, and as a resident of the left coast that is a little unsettling.

I prefer discussing armed conflict in this forum, to having it actually come to my front doorstep.

I agree with your first two sentences. It has already amounted to much more than your third sentence suggests -- though it could probably use restructuring.

Given the juxtaposition of your third and fourth sentences, are you praising Bolton or insulting him?

S_A_M

Taiwan
 

Yes, but if they wait 20 years to do it, they'll carpet bomb right back.

Unleash Chiang!
 

There'd be enough advance warning of any invasion (logistics) that they'd have to get past the Seventh Fleet. Even Bill Clinton sent the Navy into the Straits of Formosa when the Reds rattled their sabers a little too loudly last time.

Taiwan
 

I'm assuming you meant, now, with Bush in charge. I see Bush as the kind of person who will see that we have treaty obligations to do so, and so will do so. But, it might well stop with a few big boats parked next to T, and some overflights while people talk. Then, having technically complied with the treaty, we'd move on to pure diplomacy. But, I can't see Bush just ignoring the obligation. And I bet China would be pragmatic enough to understand exactly what Bush had to do, and accept it without escalation.

So, it's cynical, but I'm more optimistic that it would turn out okay in the end (unless you live in Taiwan, of course.)

Taiwan
 

The French don't give a shit because they have no strategic interests at stake in East Asia (at least none since 1954). Kinda like how we didn't give a shit when the Indonesians invaded East Timor in the seventies to "re-unify" the archipelego.

I'm pointing out his suitability for the job.

Taiwan
 

I hope you are right. However, sometimes it seems that China is more concerned about "face" and respect than stability.

Taiwan
 

Me.

Taiwan
 

I think China sees itself as inevitably THE world power in 50-100 years once the economic changes kick in. I frankly don't think it will invade because it knows it can just wait it out until we couldn't stop it anyway (I'm not saying I think we'll weaken- but I believe China does).

Taiwan
 

Or when Hutus started slaughtering Tutsis.

Taiwan
 

I think China recognizes everything you say, and so is pragmatic enough not to invade in the first place. So, if China were to invade, it would be for one of two reasons, I think. (1) the pragmatism that is stopping them now has weakened or vanished, or (2) they have for some reason come to doubt the US resolve. If it's (2), then I think your outlook is right -- we respond militarily, demonstrating that their analysis was wrong, and things calm down. If it's (1), things could quickly get out of hand.

Boobies!
 

Important consideration before making up your mind one way or another on the stem cell debate. (spee: bioethics blog)

finally
 

Some non-hackery from Alan Greenspan:

• "Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said yesterday, for the first time explicitly, that he expects tax increases to be part of any eventual agreement to reduce the federal budget deficit. Greenspan... also acknowledged that his support for tax cuts in early 2001... led to policies that helped swing the federal budget from surplus to deficits.... Greenspan reminded lawmakers that government economists at the time predicted budget surpluses 'as far as the eye can see.' Yet Greenspan had warned then in congressional testimony that the forecasts might be wrong, and he recommended some 'trigger' mechanism that would limit the tax cuts if certain budget targets were not met. Greenspan said he thinks 'it's frankly unfair' for critics to blame him now for the fact that Congress chose to 'read half [his] testimony and discard the rest.'
  
  Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes (D-Md.) said he believed it was 'fair to consider how your message would be taken' and that lawmakers saw Greenspan's 2001 remarks as 'providing a green light' for tax cuts, which were enacted without triggers.
  
  'I plead guilty to that,' Greenspan said. 'If indeed that is the way it was interpreted, I missed it. In other words, I did not intend it that way.'... 'The federal budget deficit is on an unsustainable path, in which large deficits result in rising interest rates and ever-growing interest payments that augment deficits in future years,' Greenspan said in his prepared testimony yesterday.... The Fed chief called for 'major deficit-reducing actions' and proposed several procedural steps Congress could implement to restrain the deficit's growth. Greenspan has frequently said he would prefer the deficit be shrunk as much as possible through spending cuts.... But he also implied that reaching a bipartisan agreement to reduce the deficit will require some compromises, saying, 'We can raise taxes, and I don't deny we probably at the end of the day will do them [tax increases] in order to get an ultimate resolution of this.'

finally
 

This is the part of his speech that needs to be focused on.

finally
 

And in mid-"war," what spending would you propose be cut?

Taiwan
 

You're saying this 'cause Bush is a big respector of treaties?

Taiwan
 

Oddly, I agree.

strategic bombing
 

So much for your credibility on political issues...

I take it that those two sentences are meant to be unrelated?

The UN was intended as an alternative to, and means to prevent, war. It has worked at times and not worked at others. But it was certainly at least a factor in keeping the cold war largely cold.

Despite conservative American paranoia, it isn't world government. And to the extent that it has the ability to evolve into it, it will be based on consent (e.g. the international criminal court).

The word never is a tricky one.

But so is the word "sovereignty." There are lots of things about which nations may agree that it is in their interest to submit to an international body (see, e.g. the maritime treaties and the WTO).

But I agree that the current form of the UN is unlikely to get the U.S. support needed to progress. I disagree, however, that Bolton and Bush possess any sort of vision for a future, more effective or meaningful UN.

finally
 

We should ignore the part where he says "'We can raise taxes, and I don't deny we probably at the end of the day will do them [tax increases]"??

Should we also ignore his view that there should not be any tax cuts unless spending is also cut, and that tax cuts should have triggers so that they are revoked if spending is not also cut or revenues don't rise?

Yeah, you probably think we should ignore all of that -- after all, that's what the Rs have been doing ever since the Clinton era of fiscal prudence ended.

iron-cage match
 

From a recent poll, via Julie Saltman:

Discuss.

iron-cage match
 

A Republican Bill Clinton would probably poll even higher.

etft -- t.s.

iron-cage match
 

you really need to vary your reading- no seriously, post the questions over at DU just dso we can get a second on the results, okay?

etft -- t.s.

Without that Amendment Reagan would have been president until he was drooling out of a cup. And Clinton would have never moved past governor of Arkansas

Until?

really? You think he would have been out in 1985? I don't think the polls are with you....

I'm not so sure about that -- people now tend to forget how badly Iran-Contra hurt him after 1986.

Assuming, that is, that the Donkeys put up someone other than Michael "I'd rather be a emotionless robot than president" Dukakis as the nominee in 1988. Can you imagine the campaign? Even a non-pro like me can put together commercials showing clips of Reagan saying things like "in my heart, I know we didn't deal with terrorists" interspersed with clips of ayatollahs burning American flags. And maybe a dramatic reinactment of Bud MacFarlane handing the Iranians a cake and a Bible.

Nancy Reagan?

Bush Taps DeLay
 

Looks like W will be taking Tom DeLay on the fun-filled Social Security sales pitch tour.

Using DeLay to sell privatizing Social Security. This should be interesting.

I can hear the echo of Spanky's screams. On the plus side, it looks like I may not have to write a check to DeLay to help him stay firmly in the party vanguard.

Bush Taps DeLay
 

Apparently they are going to go after Reid on SS. They have pulled up a 20 year old bill that he sponsored that, as I understand it, proposed to exclude members of congress from SS.

Bush Taps DeLay
 

Well, in fairness, he asked some Dems to go, too, but everyone was too tied up redrafting and refiling all of their disclosure forms for the past five years which show that they were all doing the same things they want to demonize Delay for now.

Too funny.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7634382

Bush Taps DeLay
 

A 20-year old bill from Reid seems like an excellent rationale for dismantling one of the most effective government programs of all time.

Bush Taps DeLay
 

I'm looking for the part of that article that says Dems refused to participate in discussing Social Security because they were revising their travel records.

Or did you just make that up?

Bush Taps DeLay
 

effective at what? Mortgaging the future?

Let me be somewhat more clear, so as not to be accused of dumbing down the dialog: Social security has been extremely effective at eliminating, or reducing substantially, poverty among the elderly. Arguably it has also stimulated the labor market by giving an incentive for less efficient workers to move into retirement, rather than hang onto a job. It's design, however, rested on a premise that time has disproven--that the fundamental contours of the age pyramid would remain the same, yet it hasn't. Because of the commitments put in place 50 or 75 years ago, the government now faces, or will face in future years, substantial payment obligations well beyond the funding available for them. While of course those obligations can be met, it will require resort to general tax revenues. In itself, not necessarily a problem. But the bigger pictue problem remains: how much of the country's future are we willing to mortgage by supporting an older generation who has been lulled into complacency with respect to supporting themselves by an ever-growing social support state.

Interesting article by Thomas Sowell, proposing that culture (more specifically, Southern culture), rather than race, is the primary reason for the disparity between blacks and whites:

• Slavery also cannot explain the difference between American blacks and West Indian blacks living in the United States because the ancestors of both were enslaved. When race, racism, and slavery all fail the empirical test, what is left?
  
  Culture is left.
  
  The culture of the people who were called "rednecks" and "crackers" before they ever got on the boats to cross the Atlantic was a culture that produced far lower levels of intellectual and economic achievement, as well as far higher levels of violence and sexual promiscuity. That culture had its own way of talking, not only in the pronunciation of particular words but also in a loud, dramatic style of oratory with vivid imagery, repetitive phrases and repetitive cadences.
  
  Although that style originated on the other side of the Atlantic in centuries past, it became for generations the style of both religious oratory and political oratory among Southern whites and among Southern blacks--not only in the South but in the Northern ghettos in which Southern blacks settled. It was a style used by Southern white politicians in the era of Jim Crow and later by black civil rights leaders fighting Jim Crow. Martin Luther King's famous speech at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 was a classic example of that style.
  
  While a third of the white population of the U.S. lived within the redneck culture, more than 90% of the black population did. Although that culture eroded away over the generations, it did so at different rates in different places and among different people. It eroded away much faster in Britain than in the U.S. and somewhat faster among Southern whites than among Southern blacks, who had fewer opportunities for education or for the rewards that came with escape from that counterproductive culture.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editor...l?id=110006608

Bush Taps DeLay
 

Could you first show me a copy of your check for Delay's re-election before I answer this?

(Damn, man, if there's no room for humor here, it's going to be a dry, boring place.

Oh, wait, . . .)

Translation: I can piss off everyone at once!