Monday, October 01, 2012

More W-P Comments: September 2012


Please, please, folks. Don't call it lying. Don't say prevarication. Let's all agree to simply characterize it as a mischaracterization.
It's the stock-in-trade of the New GOP (as opposed to the old); a transplant from the hedge-fund-takeover-private-equity style of the best and brightest from Wall Street.
PRESIDENT's vacations are not exactly freedom from the duties of the presidency. There is no time and no place when the president is not assaulted by the requirements of the executive branch of government. Everybody knows/understands this; but it seems only when the president is listed as being of the political party they personally favor.
"a mammoth bureaucratic organization "... Oh yes! We are indeed fortunate that (before President Obama) we were not afflicted with the evils of a federal bureaucracy! Amazing how that blasted socialist managed to fill the country with lazy-ignorant-unionized-leftist-obstructionist bureaucrats. In only a few months too!
He did indeed have a lot of nominal Democrat-labelled legislators in the congress. He also had a really awful tendency to try to be a negotiator-in-chief. It took him a while to discover that one cannot negotiate with an opposition that will not negotiate under any circumstances.
Well, I do recall it as a chilling moment, when Pres. Carter said "I will not lie to you."
While Pres. Bush told too many lies, Pres. Carter told too few! 
"Complicit" is the term you're looking for.
But... There's no room left in the jails for these cold-blooded killers. The cells are all taken up by those evil weedsmokers.
Stilted. Romney is stilted. Reagan was folksy. All the etch-a-sketch the Governor is up to now won't change that fact.
It would actually be a really great thing if the presidency was decided on issues and principles and abilities. But it's decided on the basis of the competing myths of the candidates.
That's why it's called a "Boobocracy".
Well, sure; he got rid of the war tax. But please remember, he had a "Secret Plan" to end the war. The secret plan was, as we all suspected, to declare victory and come home. But not until saturating the countries nearby Vietnam with bombs and mines. Still blowing the feet off children and water buffaloes all these decades later.
The secret plan to end the war in Afghanistan is just a repeat of the previous. Except, give the various factions more dollars to spend at the US weapons market.
Fact is, we are at loggerheads here. Everybody actually has the same plan to end deficit spending. Unfortunately, the "plan" is to Cut My Taxes and Cut Your Benefits. Once Gordon Gecko becomes the everyman hero, there really is no way to make the economy, or the country, work.
The single event that would most unite the Arab world (which is, admittedly, a bit of a fiction), is a certain declaration by the US that they were prepared to attack Iran for working to produce the same sort of bomb that Israel was pretty much given by the US.
There comes a time when playing the victim card becomes counterproductive. Bibi - Are You Listening?
Very true, thrh. The Romney's face doesn't seem to exhibit any signs of thought. Looks like a biddable puppet for pretty much any nearby neocon.
"Less Vague Than Romney's". Not a very high standard, is it? The only kind of budget-balancing claims that could be MORE vague than Candidate Romney's is the old standby: "We'll Balance The Budget And Eliminate The Deficit By Cutting Waste And Fraud." Which is itself a fraud. Interesting, time honored irony, that.
You'd think that with the backing of Sheldon Adelson and Binyamin Netanyahu the director could have made a better film! Still, it had the desired effect of creating violent responses that could be used as inserts in the follow-on propaganda campaign against Iran.
With the humidity, the heat index in Chicago is greater than Libya OR Death Valley! We're number one!
Yeah. It is, after all, how you parse it. There is no way in heii that Fox & Frens is a news program. Therefore, there are NO news reporting errors on the show. The same can be said of all the other offerings on Fox.
I do agree though, the station does have better (read: better funded) production values than any other cable station I'm aware of. Which makes it the best circus to hit town since Ringling merged with Barnum (& Bailey).
I read some time ago that if church-owned property were not exempt from property taxes, most states would have balanced budgets even if they reduced other taxes. Additionally, I've long railed against the US government subsidizing religious activities. Ex.: The Chaplain Corps in the military. Just how did it come about that you and I are paying priests to pray for god to be on the side of our glorious troops? That isn't even medieval - it's antediluvian!
Separation of church/state should cut both ways. Cut the government out of religious activities AND cut churches out of government activities.
How on earth can anyone suppose that the US has any influence over the insurgent mobs assailing the failed governments of the Arab states and N. Africa? It is obtuse in the extreme to pretend to believe that an uprising to overthrow an autocrat is an attempt to create a democratic state. That's like saying the Lancastrians were fighting York to turn Britain into a democracy! Nonsense. The normal result of the overthrow of a burtal thug dictator is the rise to power of a new brutal thug dictator.
Thus, the president's action with regard to Iraq is correct: he needs to wait for the civil wars to play out in order to know which brutal thug dictator the US ought to attempt to subvert in order to secure Iraqi oil for the international oil companies. It'll be a few years.
OK. Start here: in 1983. Ronald Reagan, responsible for the murder of 241 Americans in Beirut. His response to the attack? Evacuate. Muscular foreign policy indeed!
Beirut. 1983. Marine Barracks. Dead Americans: 241. President Ronald Wilson Reagan's response: Evacuate!
INDEED! Thirteenth century. What was the Christian world like in the thirteenth century? It does seem as though societal systems evolve in much the same way as life forms. Thus, it might make sense to compare Islamic society in the 21st century not to Christian society in the 21st century, but rather to that society in the 14th century. When a denier of christ was at immediate peril of his live! When women were set aside from most parts of the economic life of the society. When jews wre routinely scapegoated. Et tedious cetera.... 
Why has no one pointed out the fundamental illogic of Gov. Romney's two principal campaign claims?
One: He (Romney) has "real" business experience as an extremely successful job-creating entrepreneur.
Two: Past federal tax rates have been so confiscatory as to make successful job-creating entrepreneurial efforts impossible. Thus tax rates must be lowered to make this possible
SO: (TWO) makes (ONE) impossible. SO: How did Romney manage it? Or do we not worry about the reality of the situation when we wish to claim victimhood at the hands of the government?
Add a pound of flesh, and you have a balance diet.
eople who hate blacks, but like the one black who works in their office (He's different). .. I KNOW this guy. His black friend is the exception that proves the rule. Rather than accept that your stereotype MAY be wrong, simply exempt the actual examples that serve to disprove it.
Perhaps "Mischaracterize" or "Misrepresent" would be preferable to "Misstate".
Probably a good bet that contract bidding services will grow as the fight over a shrinking pie gets more intense. As it is, the "competitive bid" process is so byzantine that it takes a pretty savvy legal and tech proposal department to even enter the game. Add that procurement contracts are *supposed* to require multiple sources, and pretty soon one might see the entire DOD budget going for contract support and evaluation, and no contract will ever actually BE AWARDED. 100% OVERHEAD! The ultimate bureaucracy!
I AM SHOCKED! Shocked!
After an entire year of forming a new government, and several months after the election of a government, Libya still hasn't achieved a crime rate of 0%. Such violence would never ever occur in the US now, would it? Everybody here is safe and secure. Because the forces of law 'n order are completely and totally competent to see that no criminal act ever occurs.
Perhaps if we INVADE and OCCUPY Libya, we can restore order there, like we did in Afghanistan and Iraq (and are about to do in Iran).
The Marine Embassy Guard was guarding the US Embassy. The attack was NOT on the embassy. Had the Ambassador been at the embassy, the marines would have protected him. I imagine Mr. Ambassador Stevens was well aware that he was travelling to a risky place, since he'd been there before, during the revolt, alongside the revolutionaries. Expecting a faltering neo-government of a 3rd world state to have a competence we don't see here is a bit extreme, isn't it?
I luv Newt! The man can pack more superlatives into a single sentence than actually exist in nature! Amazing! Astounding! Alarming! Extreme! Extraterrestrial, even.
It appears that Mr. Romney is a victim of the system. He deserves our sympathy. We should award him a pension, and healtcare coverage. Oh: but that would make him one of the 'takers'.
Sorry, I take it all back.
asmith1: FYI - The Bush income tax cuts were DESIGNED to expire (that is, be temporary), because it was forseeable that they would explode the deficit. It was also forseen that, after they had been put in place, the taxcutters could yell Tax Increase! loud enough to keep the cuts from expiriing. As has been borne out.
Kind of a fiction. NO WAY would these questions not have been asked and answered long before now. "What'll we tell the Iranians?" indeed. 
Lots of to urists in the "Holy Land". It's where God likes to go on holiday. All those Gods, come to think of it: Yaweh, God, Allah. I guess that's also why so many people like to fight over the place. Because God HATES everybody who doesn't do... Umm... Err... Remind me: What IS the point of this particular place being "HOLY"?
Israel attacked a US Navy ship in the Mediterranean, and we didn't go to war with them. We DID apologize, though.
It seems to me that there are two possible reasons that Gov. Romney has difficulty gaining traction: it's either that he's not very likeable, or he just seems dilettantish. Is he: a. A liberal governor, b. A money manager, c. An IOC director?
He just doesn't seem presidential. And that's odd, because typically by the time the convention is over, the candidate has, by familiarity, come to seem presidential. Heck - even G. W. Bush managed that trick!
Or, as Sen. Santorum put it: "What Snobs!"
Those "Florida election officials" were a single Republican woman, appointed by the Republican Governor.
"Deficits don't matter". If the president is a Republican. If the president is a Democrat, the deficit is unsustainable, and proof the president is unfit for office.
Clear evidence that Gov. Romney is winning the high school junior's vote.
If "Trickle Down" worked, that would mean that, over time, the poor would become rich and the rich would become poor. The actual result of trickle down economics is that we all become poor. Some financially, some mentally.
Dear Ruth,
"...dangers: further ballooning the national debt and further increasing income inequality."
Those aren't the dangers; those are the GOALS!
Especially the income inequality. What's the point of my being rich if everyone else is too?
You should all realize that IF Mitt Romney is elected, the economy will instantly blossom. Reason: Deficits Won't Matter. Deficits are only a bad thing if the president is a democrat.
Non-profit. It's more a technical definition than a distinction between a profitable as opposed to a charitable business. A non-profit corporation is one in which the income in excess of operating costs is distributed in other ways than in ROI. But I'm sure as h*** not going to delve into the IRS book of definitions. That way lies madness.
Mr. Gingrich is also offering *free* advice to Mitt Romney. Worth every penny, I imagine.
I thought "understand economics" was alarmingly cute.
I think both candidates have very specific plans for the deficit. Only two problems: First, they can't actually describe the plans, because they'd cost votes. Second, the plans won't work anyway because they aren't viable "politically".
The plan we're actually going to end up with is the now vintage "Kick The Can Down The Road".
We all know this, we all complain about this, but we don't seem to have the power to change this.
Missing from the bloviation: When Candidate Obama was campaigning in 2008, his healthcare proposal was stated as a plan to REDUCE COSTS while extending coverage. The thesis was that by including the entire population in the pool of covered the costs would be averaged down and economies of scale would occur. The economies of scale are largely, of course, ridding ourselves of the absurdly large overhead created by the insurance industry.
The resulting rather byzantine "Obamacare", which was forseeable given the toxic politics of the congress, may or may not accomplish the extending the coverage/reducing the costs goal.
Consider, though: If you pay MORE in taxes but LESS in insurance - is that an increase or a decrease in YOUR cost?
I leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine this.
More like harvesting organs than harvesting corn. If there were any corn to harvest, that is...
Of course, priestly celibacy is a bit problematic. Unmarried is not even remotely equivalent to celibate. Without the marriage certificate however, it becomes difficult for a priest to transfer the church property he controls to his eldest son. THAT was the problem that caused the church to decide that priests shouldn't have heirs. Which implied that they shouldn't be married.
Very pragmatic. Not in the least a matter of religious dogma, until so defined by extremely carefully constructed arguments.
Speed dating. He had only a few loaves and fishes to offer his multitudes (of dates)
It is u ndeniably true that some saints had feet made of thousands of toebones.
You could look it up. In the reliquaries of the churches and convents around the world.
9/28/2012 11:26 AM GMT+0700
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