Still Hating America.

[Gattigap]

Really? Fred Thompson?

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Gattigap
Really? Fred Thompson?

He's an actor, so he must be qualified for the GOP nom

[Tyrone Slothrop]

The Economist flaks for the Bush Administration:

• The Economist takes a massive dive today, as they continue to bizarrely and irresponsibly assume the best (or maybe "the least bad" would be more accurate) of the Bush administration. The last two paragraphs of the story contain the offending bits:
  
  Despite a dispiriting start that saw the imposition of steel tariffs, the Bush administration has made great efforts on trade, pushing forward with both multilateral and bilateral deals. Its biggest goal, a substantive deal from the Doha round of World Trade Organisation negotiations, is currently on life support. But the administration has managed to secure a variety of smaller deals, while letting steel tariffs die a death at the hands of the WTO. Now even progress of that sort may end.
  
  Already, the Democratic influence is showing on the administration's trade team. On Friday March 30th it announced that it was imposing countervailing tariffs on Chinese manufacturers of high-gloss paper to offset indirect subsidies they get from the state. America has usually steered clear of this sort of action against state-run economies, saying it is prohibitively difficult to calculate excess subsidies. But the gaping trade deficit with China, and growing protectionist forces, have altered the political calculus. New tariffs of up to 20% will be imposed immediately. The American economy will survive without cheap Chinese paper products. But this could open the way to tariffs on a wide variety of critical products and signals an unwelcome shift in American trade policy.
  
  The Bush administration has made great efforts on trade?!? The Bush administration's imposition of tariffs on China are due to "Democratic influence"?!?
  
  Please. With the imposition of tariffs on China last Friday, the Bush administration acted in exactly the same way that they've acted for their entire 6+ years in office: being in favor of free trade whenever and wherever it helps important friends industries, and being more than happy to impose trade protection whenever and wherever it helps important friends industries. The Bush administration enacted a host of tariffs, quotas, and subsidies during the six years when it had a compliant Congress, and last week's action was just more of the same.
  
  Furthermore, the Doha Round (the round of multilateral trade negotiations that is intended to finally take serious steps toward helping the developing world) is "on life support" in no small measure because the Bush administration has never seriously tried to make it work, instead focusing on small bilateral agreements that make no difference to anyone in the US except for a few individual corporations. And there are good theoretical reasons to think that a bunch of small bilateral trade deals may actually make it harder to conduct multilateral trade negotiations, putting a world-wide level playing field further out of reach than ever before.
  
  The Bush administration's record on trade policy is a hodge-podge of opportunism and indifference, and owes nothing to Democratic pressures or desires. For the Economist to pretend otherwise is a sad continuation of their baffling tolerance of Bush's long record of incompetence and misplaced priorities.

Kash Mansori

It's a lot cheaper and easier for reporters to regurgitate administration talking points instead of reporting what they actually do, but that doesn't mean I have to buy it.

etft

[Tyrone Slothrop]

I see that the President today accused congressional Democrats of substituting their judgment for that of the generals in Iraq. This is pretty rich, since the whole point of the "surge" is that Bush rejected the advice of the top generals in Iraq, fired them, and found new generals who would do what he had decided to do.

[Shape Shifter]

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Shape Shifter

McCain is already having a bad week. Why is John Kerry kicking him when he's down?

[Adder]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
I see that the President today accused congressional Democrats of substituting their judgment for that of the generals in Iraq. This is pretty rich, since the whole point of the "surge" is that Bush rejected the advice of the top generals in Iraq, fired them, and found new generals who would do what he had decided to do.

Also pretty rich to suggest that decisions whether to invade and/or pull out are usually left to the generals.

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
McCain is already having a bad week. Why is John Kerry kicking him when he's down?

I'd feel safe even in my neighborhood in body armor, surrounded by rooftop sharpshooters and enveloped in a shield of a hundred soldiers, helicopters, and helicopter gunships. Those Iraqis must feel grateful.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Shape Shifter
I'd feel safe even in my neighborhood in body armor, surrounded by rooftop sharpshooters and enveloped in a shield of a hundred soldiers, helicopters, and helicopter gunships. Those Iraqis must feel grateful.

you're like our PPNYC. Do you need advice on how to find decent noodles?

Originally posted by Shape Shifter
I'd feel safe even in my neighborhood in body armor, surrounded by rooftop sharpshooters and enveloped in a shield of a hundred soldiers, helicopters, and helicopter gunships. Those Iraqis must feel grateful.

No neighborhood can be called "safe" until you can stagger through it drunk at midnight, eating a slice of 99-cent pizza.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Adder
Also pretty rich to suggest that decisions whether to invade and/or pull out are usually left to the generals.

There's so much surging and pulling out in Iraq. If we used a sexual analogy for the war, would it be that are teasing Iraq with the tip, or that we're drunk, laying on top of Iraq, flaccid, snoring, the last drops oozing out and dribbling onto the sheets.

It seems the latter the more I read every day.*

*Not that I've ever passed out after sex drunk without first rolling over and going downstairs to get a sandwich.

[bi-partisanship fairy]

Originally posted by Shape Shifter

Putting aside my concerns that Senator McCain may have suffered inflicted mental damage, i.e. "Manchurian Candidatitis" during his war imprisonment in communist Vietnam, in the spirit of bi-partisanship, I support his candidacy for the Democrat nomination for PotUS.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

In the spirit of bi-partisanship, I wonder why President Bush is criticizing Speaker Pelosi for visiting Syria but not the GOP congressional delegation also there now. I also wonder why the major media regurgitates these White House talking points without the latter as context.

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
In the spirit of bi-partisanship, I wonder why President Bush is criticizing Speaker Pelosi for visiting Syria but not the GOP congressional delegation also there now. I also wonder why the major media regurgitates these White House talking points without the latter as context.

And if W really wanted to isolate Syria, why does he send terrorism suspects there?

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/200...050214fa_fact6

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Shape Shifter
And if W really wanted to isolate Syria, why does he send terrorism suspects there?

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/200...050214fa_fact6

Are you sure it isn't a plan to isolate terrorism suspects by getting them all in the same place?