Eat the rich.
 

Yeah, I realize you aren't really upset about the estate tax, but it's become a bedrock republican-party issue. And I don't get it--if you have those kind of assets, you can afford to do the planning. If you don't, you're dumb. It's not so much a "death tax" as a stupidity tax.

Eat the rich.
 

Current political reality means that the left cannot support cutting defense spending. It also requires ridiculous balancing of spending among the 3 branches and between operating and capital (i.e. new weapon systems) expenditures--which leads to wasteful spending on unneeded new weapons systems and ill-advised allocations to the Navy and Air Force during a war being fought by the Army (leading to the Navy and AF getting huge $$ that could be better spent right now supporting the troops on the ground in Iraq). If you want the defense budget cut, ask a republican congressman.

When the world is running down, you make the best of what's still around.
 

Indeed. Another round of Knob Creek? It's on me this time.

When the world is running down, you make the best of what's still around.
 

Woodford Reserve. If you haven't tried it, do so. It's gooooooood.

Eat the rich.
 

Its taken on a moral element and once it does that the whole debate becomes a little irrational. I agree with you. I used to think it was unfair for people with that money to be forced to hire financial planners or tax lawyers, but I've come to believe that's a ludicrous criticism, and probably borne more of my intense dislike for Taxwonk than anything else.

Eat the rich.
 

Those kind of issues are the sorts of things we need to see vetted in the Journal and NYTimes oped pages instead of debates between shrill idiots which gloss over the holes in ther respective positions and push silly polarizing ideologies.

The simple rational consideration that govt should be made more nimble isn't a partisan thing. Move the money where it needs to be, like a business.

Rumsfeld had a good idea in remaking the military along those lines. And then he went nuts. Selah.

When the world is running down, you make the best of what's still around.
 

I'm going out on a limb here and saying NotBob doesn't need Bourbon (whiskey where he is) advice from the likes of you or me.

Eat the rich.
 

Even before hw went nuts he wasn't making any headway on the inter-branch budget parity nonsense. Just breaking the hold of that idea would save ten of billions per year and end the most ridiculous weapons programs. But if Rumsfeld (and this administration) couldn't even get the idea serious consideration, we're a long way away.

Eat the rich.
 

"Why We Fight" is a great movie. It'll scare you.

Eat the rich.
 

"It's A Wonderful Life" was his better work.

Eat the rich.
 

Ahem, the Jarecki version.

Eat the rich.
 

The whole M-I complex is the business lobby to kill all others. What's irrational even within the corrupt system is the steady allocation among the Army, Navy, Air Force, regardless of the actual and genuine potential threats (35 percent to the Air Force, 35 percent to the Navy, and 30 percent to the Army, per Fred Kaplan (e.g. http://www.slate.com/id/2133059 ), going back at least 25 years). While I wouldn't advocate allowing our air and naval superiority to erode significantly, there isn't any foreseeable need for a brand new fighter/interceptor as we already have total, global air superiority.

Like Ernst Stavro Blofeld, but smarter.
 

Grover Norquist shows that he can learn from the mistakes of other nefarious super-villains:

• I am intrigued by your assertion that "like a James Bond villain" I have an irrepressible penchant for spelling out [my] master plans in their full, nefarious detail." The challenge for Blofeld, Dr. No, Goldfinger and company is that they explain things in the penultimate scene to the disarmed Bond, who, when freed, is able to use that information to interrupt those plans.
  
  This has tended to be unwise.

link

Eat the rich.
 

Dude, we totally need a new fighter or whatever thingy that flies. Because things that fly are cool. Nifty, even.

Eat the rich.
 

We defray the costs of product development by selling export versions, presenting a justification for investing in the next generation of aircraft. See, e.g., the F-14s we sold to the Shah.

http://www.afa.org/magazine/dec2002/1202iran3.jpg

Eat the rich.
 

So, you have a lot of company stock?

Eat the rich.
 

None! And I don't work there anymore. But I think planes are cool. Especially unmanned aerial vehicles.

Eat the rich.
 

Planes are cool. And UAVs are super cool. But UAVs are cheap to make, relatively cheap to develop and don't cater to the fighter jock part of the USAF (i.e., those in charge). So that's not a good replacement for the F-22 (or whatever we're up to) from a budgetary/profit/prestige perspective.

Eat the rich.
 

Then my love for them must be unselfish.

Eat the rich.
 

my largest client is somewhere on that food chain of the newest F whatever, so STFU.

Like Ernst Stavro Blofeld, but smarter.
 

It's scary because it's true.

Eat the rich.
 

I think the message of Why We Fight has a much broader reach than the military/industrial complex. There's a real problem with the government - state and federal - becoming the biggest client of a lot of businesses. I see a lot of atrocious spending going on because business has been in a cost cutting mode for the better part of the last six years and in the place of private sector revenues, companies are eager to grab Uncle Sam or their state's business.

This creates the worst of all worlds by encouraging profligate govt spending. I think business has unfortunately learned that its much easier to service the govt than compete with it, which was the original aim of the push toward privatization. I still beleive in privatization, now more than ever, but I'm not sure business does anymore. I think its a lot happier to just be a subcontractor where we all pay for the redundancies.

I have a state contract right now and I hate it. Its wasteful. The service provided to the govt is a service necessitated because its own workers are too lazy to perform their job properly. The redundancy is awful. If the state fired the dept we provide the service for and inserted us in its place we could do it for 1/5 the cost to taxpayers.

But that will never happen because its politically unpalatable. It's fine for me. I get paid either way, but it really does fuck taxpayers and people who might benefit from the wages paid to those state workers.

Fuck it, right... That's the human condition. The useless have to do something. We can't just let them starve.

Politics before the Nation's interest
 

You reading comprehension is diminishing again. Civilian control of the military has nothing to do with Congress

Depends on the fight. If they are fighting the good fight (a fight for a policy that is the best interest of US security), and Bush can't carry the water anymore but the military picks it up then that is good for all of us.

The ridiculousness of your position is that people may assume Warner speaks for the military, but in this case they are clearly wrong because the military disagreed with him. So in this case he clearly is not speaking for the military.


If memory serves, Patreus was voted in unanimously and congress asked for a report from him in September. So Congress chose this general, now that are just upset because he is not telling them what they want to hear.

Cite (and please make it a primary source; otherwise it is not really a cite.

Again, the Senate unanimously endorsed Patreus and asked for a report in September. They chose the man in this case.

Politics before the Nation's interest
 

This ( http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/02/wa...1173d7&ei=5070 ) only covers part of Ty's point--that Bush relieved Gen. Casey of the Iraq command b/c Casey supported withdrawal of troops--and it isn't a primary source, but I will assert that it is, indeed, a cite.

If you insist on citation to actual, primary sources for defense-related decisions of the current administration, you've made your positions unchallangeable without the existence of leaked documents.

C edibility
 

Spanky,

Two questions:

(1) How are those benchmarks going?
(2) Can you identify a past prediction on Iraq by any of this administration's talking heads that panned out?

"the unanimous disagreement of the Joint Chiefs of Staff"
 

Our government has three branches, not one.

We'll just have to disagree there, because my view is that our government gets to decide what the country's foreign policy is, not our military, and it's not the military's place to argue with the government about what's in the best interests of the country.

You don't seem to have understood what I said there.

They're not happy that he's allowing himself to be the tool of the White House press office.

It's no secret that much of the military disagreed with the surge. See the article Cletus cited. Here's an article from two days ago (titled "Among Top Officials, 'Surge' Has Sparked Dissent, Infighting"):

• The polite discussion in the White House Situation Room a week ago masked a sharper clash over the U.S. venture in Iraq, one that has been building since Fallon, chief of the U.S. Central Command, which oversees Middle East operations, sent a rear admiral to Baghdad this summer to gather information. Soon afterward, officials said, Fallon began developing plans to redefine the U.S. mission and radically draw down troops.
  
  One of those plans, according to a Centcom officer, involved slashing U.S. combat forces in Iraq by three-quarters by 2010. In an interview, Fallon disputed that description but declined to offer details. Nonetheless, his efforts offended Petraeus's team, which saw them as unwelcome intrusion on their own long-term planning. The profoundly different views of the U.S. role in Iraq only exacerbated the schism between the two men.
  
  "Bad relations?" said a senior civilian official with a laugh. "That's the understatement of the century. . . . If you think Armageddon was a riot, that's one way of looking at it."

Nominally Petreaus reports to Fallon, but we know that Bush is the decider here.

On the specific assertion that I made re the Joint Chiefs, how's this for support:

• The Bush administration is split over the idea of a surge in troops to Iraq, with White House officials aggressively promoting the concept over the unanimous disagreement of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to U.S. officials familiar with the intense debate.

WaPo, 12/19/06.

C edibility
 

Question:

Do the Democrats actually want to force troop withdrawals? Or do they simply want to keep the issue alive through Nov. 2008?

C edibility
 

Some do.


Some do.

Some don't really want this, but absent the votes to force troop withdrawals, are content for this to be the result.

C edibility
 

Were those questions that hard to answer?

Yes, I think it's clear that most Democrats want troop withdrawls, though the extent of them would be debated.

Do you really think Dems would look to keep the war going through 2008 in hopes that they will inherit an even bigger mess than we have now? Remember, the longer this drags on, the more Congress' ratings decline as well as the President - there was a clear mandate to the new Congress to force a change of course on Iraq.

Hey Spanky, read George Will.

yes. That the President choose to visit one area instead of another is proof positive that everytihng is failing.

Similarly your cites earlier today from several unnamed sources prove positive that Bush ignored everyone and did what he wanted.

you win! It's not Will trying to force some point from a geographic choice, and the other sources don't really just evidence the opposite of your point, that there is discussion and several viewpoints across the people who are involved in the decision.

Do you get that once the President has made a decision, the people who urged against that direction are always people that weren't able to control the direction. That was true when Washington was President.

I realize your blogger eye view makes you see the running of governemnt as something quite focused, but anyone who has clue one of the relaity realizes this type citation is only so much tripe; all big executive decisions start with disagreement and various views.

Six years later, what have we learned?
 

• Six years later: What have we learned?
  Amos N. Guiora
  
  On the eve of the six-year anniversary of Sept. 11 and in the fourth year of the war in Iraq, what have we learned about fighting terrorism? Are we wisely spending our tax dollars? Is there "rhyme or reason" with respect to America's counter-terrorism policy? Is there a policy?
  
  Unfortunately, one of the results of early presidential primaries is that the candidates - many of them with legislative responsibilities - will be spending their time campaigning rather than legislating and overseeing administration policies.
  
  Furthermore, the early primaries mean an enormously long time before the general election, which promises us vapid 20-second sound bites rather than genuine debate and discourse.
  
  However, since the bad guys are out there, we must prepare a tough, substantive check list of questions to ask the presidential candidates in the limited time we have with them.
  
  In answering the broad questions above, we must demand specific answers. The devil is always in the details. We are well beyond President Bush's rightly maligned phrases: "We are winning the war on terrorism," "Bring 'em on" and "Mission Accomplished." So where are we?
  
  The answer is suggested by something I recently witnessed while standing in an airport security line. A 3-year-old boy traveling with his mother was subjected to the "blower." The blower - an unpleasant experience for an adult - detects material required for making explosives. What does subjecting a 3-year-old to the blower unattended by a parent (his mother went through the blower previously) tell me?
  
  It tells me that we have yet to begin risk assessment and analysis, identifying legitimate threats has not been begun and sophisticated cost-benefit analysis of counter-terrorism is apparently in its infancy. How dangerous is this? Very.
  
  As long as 3-year-old boys are made to go through blowers at airport security lines, we clearly are not focusing our limited resources on genuine threats. Rather than develop sophisticated prototyping models, we only hear "you have been selected for a random search."
  
  Effective counter-terrorism can be based neither on 20-second sound bites nor subjecting young children to the blower. Minimizing the terrorist threat requires the following: dramatically improving our intelligence gathering and analysis ability (requires foreign language skills), understanding terrorist motivations and goals, developing terrorist prototypes (not ethnic-based profiling, which is both unconstitutional and ineffective) and developing sophisticated risk-assessment models facilitating cost-benefit analysis of counter-terrorism measures.
  
  Until we develop these four measures, we will continue to subject children to blowers at the nation's airports. Were Osama bin Laden to witness what I observed, he surely would have a good laugh. We need to wipe that smile off his face and get serious - and smart - with respect to counter-terrorism.
  
  We have little, if any, time to waste; the dangers and threats of six years ago have been replaced by far more sophisticated terrorism. Be it cyber-terrorism or bio-terrorism, the terrorist imagination literally knows no bounds.
  
  The determination and motivation to sacrifice for a cause drives terrorists the world over. Their motivation is matched only by their seriousness and sophistication. Measure their sophistication with ours and worry lines need to appear on our collective faces.
  
  While politicians offer vapid generalities, the bad guys are planning the next attacks. It is not "if" but "when." The time to address the four measures was yesterday; we can't wait until tomorrow. Let us resolve to address them, honestly and intelligently, today. We can't afford the inanity of subjecting 3-year-old boys to blowers at the nation's airports.
  
  ---
  * AMOS N. GUIORA is a professor of law at the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law. E-mail: guioraa@law.utah.edu

Salt Lake Tribune (more here )

Tell Spanky. He's the one who's surprised that there was disagreement within the military over the surge.

Six years later, what have we learned?
 

The scariest thing of late is the rise of homegrown terrorists, like the German guys arrested last week.

but I still don't see why profilling Islamic people is not "effective." it might be unconstitutional, it might be wrong, but why is it not "effective?"

honest question.

Six years later, what have we learned?
 

When we have this conversation, it's never clear to me what different people mean by "profiling."

Six years later, what have we learned?
 

do you know what your guy meant?

Six years later, what have we learned?
 

No.

But I think I've been pretty clear that TSA relies too much on rules and not enough on discretion.

Six years later, what have we learned?
 

discretion? wow. you have faith that those guys could operate that way? I guess they do all use their own judgement on what the 4 oz. bag rule means, so maybe your way would work.

Six years later, what have we learned?
 

This a crazy idea, so sit down and hold on to your seat. Ready? I'll just wait another second to make sure you're all set. OK? I think TSA should hire better people.

Six years later, what have we learned?
 

do you realize the hiring restrictions placed upon a civil service agency? Maybe the Dems made a mistake insisting it be set up that way?