Bush Supporters' Aftermath Thread III

Foxy fails to assail anything specific that K has said. Maybe that is because he is essentially unassailable.

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Advocate wrote:

JTT, you make an excellent point about the dearth of reporting of the suffering and destruction of Iraqis. Some time ago, I wrote to my local paper to complain about this. Happily, there has been a little improvement.

What did you complain about? Did your letter read along these lines:

Quote:

Dear Sirs,

I am writing you to complain about the lack of coverage in your paper of all of the suffering and destruction the American military has wrought upon the Iraqi people. Your war coverage is clearly slanted to be supportive of the American military, and that chaps my hide. Please correct this immediately, or I shall no longer buy your little rag.

Your friend,

Advocate.

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Tico, that's not a bad letter. BTW, I guess it is of no concern to you that we have killed hundreds of thousands in Iraq, and wounded countless others, in this unjustified war.

I guess you would ask your paper to leave out references to Iraqi casualties because they are worthless, non-American scum.

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Foxfyre wrote:

Not at all McTag. It is no secret that I think Krugman to be a negative, angry, old man with nothing good to say about much of anything which all by itself blows his credibility to pieces as far as America and Americans are concerned. Does he remind you of anybody you know?

You do not, of course, represent either "America" or "Americans".

In any case, your complaint is entirely irrelevant as Krugman merely referenced the study.

But their may be, and I think there is, clear sense in claiming that America has changed since the WW2 era, but that would seem to me to refer to certain social trends, eg openness regarding matters of sexuality, greater racial inclusiveness, advanced equality for women, greater percentage of the population who've attended higher education, perhaps a diminishment in religious affiliations, greater resistance to arbitrary traditions and the authorities who advance those traditions, etc.

But to label a change such as greater racial equality or sexual openness or rejection of authoritarian tendencies as instances of "leftism" is to define yourself (and "the right") as merely attached to bygone values and ideas, quite regardless if they might further the very principles of liberty, equality and individual choice which your country is founded upon.

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Blatham writes

Quote:

But to label a change such as greater racial equality or sexual openness or rejection of authoritarian tendencies as instances of "leftism" is to define yourself (and "the right") as merely attached to bygone values and ideas, quite regardless if they might further the very principles of liberty, equality and individual choice which your country is founded upon.

I would agree if I or anybody else had done that. Each subject could be discussed on its own merit, but I didn't mention any of them or draw any inferences about them. The fact that you assume to attach them to what I said is not only disingenous, but downright dishonest. Or I will accept delusional if you reject the first two.

You are the one to attach the Eisenhower administration to the 1940's, not me. I think you should back up and address what was actually said instead of making it up as you go along so you'll have something to contribute.

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Interesting intra-Republican stuff: never heard of Oregon Senator Gordon Smith before, but here he is twice in a row.

TNR reports that Smith played a decisive role in helping Trent Lott be elected as Minority Whip by a single vote, dramatically turning the mood with a "deeply emotional address" to the closed-door nomination meeting:

Quote:

He described Lott's honorable character and talked about the possibility of redemption. He even quoted from Mark Antony's funeral oration in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. The room fell silent; Lott wept.

And then there he was again, on a strikingly contrasting note, as the first Republican senator to ask for immediate Iraq withdrawal: Watch the short video of Smith's restrained, earnest words.

Quote:

His old-fashioned haircut and blazer make this whole tape of Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Oregon, feel like a throwback to a different era. So does his plainspoken honesty, as he became the first Republican senator Thursday night to break ranks and call for the immediate troop withdrawal in Iraq, suggesting the war may be "criminal."

What does it all mean? What current or trend within the Republican Party, if any, does it illustrate?

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foxfyre

If not those social elements, then what elements do you perceive as having altered between the WW2 period and now? It was your initial claim that the US has moved in a certain way. I actually wasn't meaning to put words in your mouth, but merely to guess what you were thinking because you didn't explicate or make reference to anything, you merely asserted.

Your focus now on my demarcation point of the Eisenhower administration doesn't make much rational sense. I chose it because that was the demarcation point beginning the study I noted and because his presidency began in '53.

Unless you are arguing that those three years encompassed all the significant change to the left you posit.

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Foxfyre wrote:

The American Democrat of 1941 was far to the right of the average Conservative of any party today. The huge majority of all Americans in 1941 were far to the right of the average Conservative of today.

Thats quite a bold statement.

It may hold true for some issues - race, for example, springs to mind immediately. Gender, too.

On other subjects, however, the opposite is clearly true. The mainstream American of the '40s and '50s was far more inclined to support a strong role for the state in the economy, for example; far less inclined to the libertarian notions that hold sway today. Long after WW2, during which the top tax rate on regular income rose to 94%, that top tax rate remained at a level that even a Swedish government wouldnt dare think of nowadays (throughout the 50s and early 60s it stoodat 91%).

Now I realise you were specifically talking war politics. I dont have much of a rejoinder there, since I think WW2 and the Iraq war are too different. I do sympathise, though, with the concept that when the nation is at war, it should be considered inevitable and self-evident that the whole country shoulders the costs in solidarity, to make sure that the soldiers are equipped as well as they can be.

That, however, is ironically one lesson that the President you so ardently support has consistently ignored. Although the US was again at war, he's actually slashed taxes on the rich - they wont have to worry about contributing to the war costs. Meanwhile, the administration sent out the troops with a shortage of equipment and men, with Rumsfeld forwarding the notion that a smaller, leaner army could do the job - in the shortest of times. We are three years on now, and what can one read:

Quote:

The Iraq Study Group [..] explicitly ruled out a large, continual boost in U.S. forces. "America's military capacity is stretched thin: we do not have the troops or equipment to make a substantial, sustained increase in our troop presence," the group found.

That echoes the sentiments of numerous retired military officers [..]. "Unless things start to improve, we will start to see a serious problem in six to nine months," Bernard E. Trainor, a retired Marine Corps three-star general and a former deputy chief of staff under Ronald Reagan, told Salon in April 2005.

The new Baker Commission report suggests that serious problems have already arrived. "U.S. military forces, especially our ground forces, have been stretched nearly to the breaking point by repeated deployments in Iraq," it says. Second and third combat tours are grinding away at personnel and equipment to the point where now, less than one-third of Army units are "currently at high readiness levels." [..]

During the confirmation hearing for incoming Defense Secretary Robert Gates this week, McCain [..] added that the strain on the military could have been avoided had Washington followed his advice years ago to make the Army bigger. "There were some of us three and a half years ago that said we needed to increase the size of the Army and the Marine Corps," McCain told Gates. [..]

U.S. Central Command Commander Gen. John Abizaid told McCain at a Senate hearing Nov. 15: "We can put in 20,000 more Americans tomorrow and achieve a temporary effect. But when you look at the overall American force pool that's available out there, the ability to sustain that commitment is simply not something that we have right now with the size of the Army and the Marine Corps."

[..] Perhaps the most complete analysis [..] was prepared by the Democratic staff on the House Appropriations Committee in September, which found that the "vast majority" of 23 active-duty Army combat units not currently in Iraq at that time were at "the lowest readiness levels." It added that roughly half of all Army units everywhere, including reserve units, "received the lowest readiness rating any fully formed unit can receive." [..]

In a speech [..] on Thursday night, Nebraska Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel [warned,] "Our ongoing deployment in Iraq is debilitating our military force structure [..] We are decimating the most powerful fighting force the world has ever known, and we are only beginning to understand the astounding cost and time it will take to rebuild our force structure."

(Source)

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nimh wrote:

Interesting intra-Republican stuff: never heard of Oregon Senator Gordon Smith before, but here he is twice in a row.

TNR reports that Smith played a decisive role in helping Trent Lott be elected as Minority Whip by a single vote, dramatically turning the mood with a "deeply emotional address" to the closed-door nomination meeting:

Quote:
He described Lott's honorable character and talked about the possibility of redemption. He even quoted from Mark Antony's funeral oration in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. The room fell silent; Lott wept.

And then there he was again, on a strikingly contrasting note, as the first Republican senator to ask for immediate Iraq withdrawal: Watch the short video of Smith's restrained, earnest words.

Quote:
His old-fashioned haircut and blazer make this whole tape of Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Oregon, feel like a throwback to a different era. So does his plainspoken honesty, as he became the first Republican senator Thursday night to break ranks and call for the immediate troop withdrawal in Iraq, suggesting the war may be "criminal."

What does it all mean? What current or trend within the Republican Party, if any, does it illustrate?

Odd bit of stuff there, isn't it. The Pacific Northwest tends to be rather more granola than god and Smith doesn't appear to be much of an ideologue of any recognizable stripe.

On first glance, the only tie-together element I can see here of possible significance is the de-empowerment of the Rove/DeLay nexus which arguably permitted Lott's re-ascention and also the freedom for Republican politicians to go so far off the previously mandated/bullied message discipline.

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blatham wrote:

foxfyre

If not those social elements, then what elements do you perceive as having altered between the WW2 period and now? It was your initial claim that the US has moved in a certain way. I actually wasn't meaning to put words in your mouth, but merely to guess what you were thinking because you didn't explicate or make reference to anything, you merely asserted.

Your focus now on my demarcation point of the Eisenhower administration doesn't make much rational sense. I chose it because that was the demarcation point beginning the study I noted and because his presidency began in '53.

Unless you are arguing that those three years encompassed all the significant change to the left you posit.

My post was in response to another post and was not intended to be a blow by blow analysis of conservatism vs liberalism of more than a half century ago. Anybody interested in an actual discussion rather than the 'gotcha' game would see my intent I think, or if not, might have asked. And yes, America in 1941 was a different place than it would be post Korea and especially after the social revolution of the 1960's.

If you are interested in discussing Krugman's view (or anybody else's view) of conservatism and liberalism in the era post WWII and Korea, I'm sure you would get some response in a thread devoted to that subject.

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I wasn't playing gotcha. I was challenging a highly questionable assertion which arrived with no evidence to support it and which was delivered as something axiomatically or self-evidently so.

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From nimh's post: The Iraq Study Group [..] explicitly ruled out a large, continual boost in U.S. forces. "America's military capacity is stretched thin: we do not have the troops or equipment to make a substantial, sustained increase in our troop presence," the group found.

Nobody seems to question the simple fact that Bush has repeatedly told the American Public that we would provide more troops if the generals asked for them. The generals continually tell us they do not need more troops. What's wrong with this picture? We are fighting world terrorism in Iraq. We cannot control or secure Iraq with 150,000 troops (the current levels) Whos lying?

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Quote:

Negotiate with Iran?
How many Americans do they need to kill before we get the point?the vanguard made victorious by God in Iran. There the vanguard succeeded to lay down the bases of a Muslim state which plays a central role in the world. We obey the orders of one leader, wise and just, that of our tutor and faqih (jurist) who fulfills all the necessary conditions: [Ayatollah] Ruhollah Musawi Khomeini. God save him!
[i]I was aware of certain contacts between al Qaeda and al Jihad organization, on one side, and Iran and Hezbollah on the other side. I arranged security for a meeting in the Sudan between [Imad Mugniyah], Hezbollah's chief, and Bin Laden. Hezbollah provided explosives training for al Qaeda and al Jihad. Iran supplied Egyptian Jihad with weapons. Iran also used Hezbollah to supply explosives that were disguised to look like rocks.[/i]
[i][T]here is strong evidence that Iran facilitated the transit of al Qaeda members into and out of Afghanistan before 9/11, and that some of these were future 9/11 hijackers. There also is circumstantial evidence that senior Hezbollah operatives were closely tracking the travel of some of these future muscle hijackers into Iran in November 2000.
[i]The ultimate choice is the destruction of the United States by operations of strategic symmetry through weapons of mass destruction, namely nuclear, chemical, or biological means, if the mujahideen can achieve it with the help of those who possess them or through buying them. [/i]
[i]In this very grave war, many people are trying to scatter grains of desperation and hopelessness regarding the struggle between the Islamic world and the front of the infidels, and in their hearts they want to empty the Islamic world. ... They [ask]: "Is it possible for us to witness a world without America and Zionism?" But you had best know that this slogan and this goal are attainable, and surely can be achieved.[/i]
[i]We have no need for a nuclear bomb. We have overcome our enemies so far, without the nuclear bomb. The Iranian people have been defeating America for the past 25 years, is it not so? America has been defeated by the Iranian people during the past 25 years. What has it been defeated with? Have we defeated America using a nuclear bomb, or by our determination, will, faith, and awareness? The world of Islam has been mobilized against America for the past 25 years. The peoples call, "death to America." Who used to say "death to America?" Who, besides the Islamic Republic and the Iranian people, used to say this? Today, everyone says this.[/i]

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blatham wrote:

I wasn't playing gotcha. I was challenging a highly questionable assertion which arrived with no evidence to support it and which was delivered as something axiomatically or self-evidently so.

So you challenged my opinion of the way America was in 1941 with a Paul Krugman speech re the Eisenhower administration and thereafter with no verification or backup for it and then followed with a post full of straw men to attack my character. And then you denied you did it. You consider yourself the credible one I presume?

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In response to the piece Tico posted:

http://media2.salemwebnetwork.com/Townhall/Car/b/varv120806a.jpg

http://media.salemwebnetwork.com/Townhall/Car/a/PN091306.jpg

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As Charlie Rangel, the heir apparent to the House Ways and Means Committee, is on the record as saying there is nothing in President Bush's tax policy that he likes and he doesn't intend to support making any of it permanent, as the President has requested, it is probably time to revisit the following.

This is an e-mail that circulates around the country from time to time and has been attributed to various Professors of Economics. When Snopes checked it out, however, the professors denied they were the originators of the analogy, but all had used it as a teaching tool in their classes.

So to those who continue to complain that the GWB tax policy only favors the rich:

Subject: Tax Analogy (a rerun from my morning e-mail)

Sometimes politicians, journalists and others exclaim; "It's just a
tax cut for the rich!" and it is just accepted to be fact. But what
does that really mean? Just in case you are not completely clear on this issue, I hope the following will help. Please read it
carefully. Let's put tax cuts in terms everyone can understand.

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for a dinner special for ten and the bill comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.

The fifth would pay $1.

The sixth would pay $3.

The seventh would pay $7.

The eighth would pay $12.

The ninth would pay $18.

The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that's what they decided to do.

The ten men ate dinner in the restaurant every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve.

"Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to
reduce the cost of your daily meal by $20 "

Dinner for the ten now cost just $80.
The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes,
so the first four men were unaffected. They would still eat for
free. But what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his 'fair share?'

They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they
subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to eat their meal.

So, the restaurant owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce
each man's bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so:

The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).

The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33% savings).

The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28% savings).

The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).

The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).

The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four
continued to eat for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men
began to compare their savings.

"I only got a dollar out of the $20," declared the sixth man. He
pointed to the tenth man," but he got $10!"

"Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a
dollar too.
It's unfair that he got ten times more than me!"

"That's true!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!"

"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison. "We didn't get
anything at all. The system exploits the poor!" The nine men
surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn't show up for dinner, so the nine sat down and ate without him.

But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something
important. At $59 short, they didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how
our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction.

Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start eating somewhere that the atmosphere is friendlier.
http://www.snopes.com/business/taxes/howtaxes.asp

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Quote:

This is an e-mail that circulates around the country from time to time and has been attributed to various Professors of Economics. When Snopes checked it out, however, the professors denied they were the originators of the analogy, but all had used it as a teaching tool in their classes.

So to those who continue to complain that the GWB tax policy only favors the rich:

According to the Snopes page you linked, only two professors were given false attribution and only one mentions using it as a teaching tool - notably, he makes no comment at all regarding the value of the piece other than as a means to inspire thought.

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blatham, Any student who have studied economics would laugh at such a simplified version of taxation.

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blatham wrote:

Quote:
This is an e-mail that circulates around the country from time to time and has been attributed to various Professors of Economics. When Snopes checked it out, however, the professors denied they were the originators of the analogy, but all had used it as a teaching tool in their classes.

So to those who continue to complain that the GWB tax policy only favors the rich:

According to the Snopes page you linked, only two professors were given false attribution and only one mentions using it as a teaching tool - notably, he makes no comment at all regarding the value of the piece other than as a means to inspire thought.

Well based on your and C.I.'s reaction, apparently it didn't work..

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Foxfyre wrote:

nimh wrote:
[..] PoliPundit

Quote:
I guess we have truly reached a tipping point regarding the GWOT. The US Democratic party does not want America to win that war. The overwhelmingly liberal media share this view. The American public, fat, dumb, and happy, apparently does not care.

Yeah, blame the people. They're just too stupid to realise the genius of conservative thought.

The funny thing is, that the same pundit amply rants against "Blame America" Democrats. Apparently its wrong to blame America, but fine to blame the American people. [..]

[..] The huge majority of all Americans in 1941 were far to the right of the average Conservative of today. And considering the 'stomach' and "will to win" of that generation compared to the modern generation, I think the genius of conservative thought is well worth re-exploring. We have learned to do a lot of things much better than we did back then. But there is also much that is positive that we could learn from them.

I havent read up on this thread since my last post here yet. But I have been chewing over what Foxfyre appears to say here. That today's Americans could learn something from the more steely resolve in the face of war of the WW2 generation. This in defence of the blogger calling today's Americans "fat, dumb, and happy" because they turned away from the Republicans and their war in last month's vote.

And the more I thought about Foxfyre's apparent exhortation to the American people to show the spine and stamina the way it did in WW2, the more it struck me how insanely counterproductive the Bush administration's war policies have been. How bad and vacuous an example the Bush administration set. And how unfair it is to blame the American voters when it failed to rally WW2-style in response.

To break it down:

It's hard to ask the American people to mobilise, if the CinC takes the longest holidays of any President in living memory.
It's hard to ask the regular Americans to make sacrifices, when you start off with giving the richest an immense tax cut give away. The troops dont have enough armor, but the country's richest 1% got a whopping money gift from the administration.
Its hard to ask your people to show stamina, when you're continually telling them that things are going swell in Iraq anyway. That the "mission" has already been "accomplished", that the insurgency is now in its "last throes", that the war will last "weeks rather than months" - or fill in any of the other outrageous assurances Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush made throughout the past three and a half years.
It's hard to impart a sense of the earnestness of the threat facing the nation if you ban the cameras from showing any actual coffin coming back home.
It's hard to pull the nation together in a sense that America has to show discipline in the face of war, when the government party spends its high-profile emergency sessions on matters like whether a woman in a vegetative state in Florida should be kept alive against the wishes of her husband.
It's hard to pull the nation together in a sense that America has to show discipline in the face of war when the Republican Congress thrusts through the largest mass of pork and government office spending in recent history, without veto or threat from the president.
It's hard to ask the people to take your assertion of the seriousness of the threat faced earnestly when you keep fibbing about it ("We believe [Saddam] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." - Cheney, March 2003; "I don't know anybody that I can think of who has contended that the Iraqis had nuclear weapons." - Rumsfeld, June 2003)
It's hard to pull the nation together in any earnest, collective endeavour if you use the terror attacks that triggered the war as partisan fodder, pulling stunts like claiming that "the terrorists win" if you vote for the other party.

And after all that, when the people eventually switched off and voted for an alternative, it's the American people who are dumb, fat and lazy?

Jesus Christ. What an unmitigated disaster this has been. <shakes head>

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Bush Supporters' Aftermath Thread III

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