Still Hating America.

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop

"... and these are McCain's testicles, kept in a jar on Dick's desk."

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
You are the only person I know of who thinks this is what the Democrats are trying to do.

What is it that they are trying to do? It looks like a withdrawal to me, which is fine, but I didn't see that advocated by most during the election season. Some did and got elected, but most dodged the issue.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by sgtclub
What is it that they are trying to do? It looks like a withdrawal to me, which is fine, but I didn't see that advocated by most during the election season. Some did and got elected, but most dodged the issue.

They're trying to ratchet up the political pressure to get Bush to change course. I think they recognize that they can't force the issue, politically or constitutionally.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Champagne, caviar and a tickertape parade.

:partytime

That'll probably distract them from the porn.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
I don't think I implied (1) or (2). Maybe you should respond to what I actually say instead of what you fear I may be implying.

Then what was the purpose of your hypos?

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
You are the only person I know of who thinks this is what the Democrats are trying to do.

Make that two (isn't that exactly the goal of Murtha's plan).

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
They're trying to ratchet up the political pressure to get Bush to change course. I think they recognize that they can't force the issue, politically or constitutionally.

Why do you use the vague term "change course" when you can use the specific term "leave Iraq"?

(and leave Iraq is not an alternate strategy, it is a course of action that almost all experts agree will lead to a complete disaster).

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
Then what was the purpose of your hypos?

As I've said multiple times already, I was trying to figure whether your support for free trade was motivated by the principle of doing the most good (i.e., net gain to the country) or helping the most people (i.e., doing what is best for the majority) by posing a hypothetical in which the two pointed in opposite ways.

Your posts have convinced me -- at least for the moment -- that your support for free trade is not principled, in the sense that you believe free trade is consistent with one or more principles to which you're committed and that you would abandon free trade if those principles dictated, but rather that it's ideological, in that you are committed to free trade as such and espouse whatever principles are convenient as a justification for that result.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
Make that two (isn't that exactly the goal of Murtha's plan).

No. Murtha is not anti-troop, and anyone who knows anything about the man finds it recockulous that Slave says this. He served in active duty and the Reserves for almost 40 years (which is almost 40 years more than Slave, you and me combined, if I'm not mistaken).

This business of trying to paint Democrats who disagree with Bush's policy as anti-troop is just odious political opportunism. If the only thing you cared about was "supporting the troops," you'd be a pacificist who wants to keep them home. The conservatives who reflexively call for a militaristic foreign policy understand on some level that they're asking other people to fight and die, and they compensate for this by smearing the Jack Murthas of the world.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
Why do you use the vague term "change course" when you can use the specific term "leave Iraq"?

Because while Democrats and most moderate Republicans agree that Bush's policy has been a disaster, they don't have a broad consensus about how to deal with the mess he's made.

[Spanky]

A lack of courage in their convictions

By George Will


http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Indiscriminate criticism of President George W. Bush is an infectious disease. Some conservatives seem to have caught it, but congressional Democrats might be crippled by it.

Consider some conservatives' reflexive rejection of the administration's achievement — with China, Russia, South Korea and Japan — of an agreement that might constrain North Korea's nuclear weapons program. Voicing the obvious with a sense of originality, critics exclaim that North Korea is a serial liar. And, echoing the equally reflexive disparagement of the agreement by some liberals, these conservatives say it is not significantly different from President Bill Clinton's 1994 agreement, which failed.

The new agreement might not bring Pyongyang to heel. It is, however, unlike that of 1994, in three particulars.

First, China was infuriated by North Korea's October nuclear test, which fizzled but expressed defiance of China. So now China seems amenable to serious pressure on its mendicant neighbor, which is substantially dependent on China for food and energy.

Second, the new agreement, like the 1994 pact, is an attempt to modify behavior using bribery. But under the 1994 agreement, North Korea got the bribe — energy assistance — before being required to change its behavior. Under the new agreement, North Korea will receive just 5 percent of promised oil — 50,000 of 1 million tons of heavy fuel oil — before it must fulfill, in 60 days, the first of the many commitments it has made.

Third, the administration believes it found, in Banco Delta Asia, a lever that moved Pyongyang. The Macau bank was pressured into freezing 52 accounts holding $24 million — yes, million, not billion — of North Korean assets because Pyongyang has been using them for illicit purposes. If Pyongyang flinched from being deprived of $24 million — less than Americans spend on archery equipment in a month — Pyongyang's low pain threshold suggests how fragile, and hence perhaps how containable, that regime is.

Regarding Iraq, the Democratic-controlled Congress could do what Democrats say a Democratic president would do: withdraw U.S. forces. A president could simply order that; Congress could defund military operations in Iraq. Congressional Democrats are, however, afraid to do that because they lack the courage of their (professed) conviction that Iraq would be made tranquil by withdrawal of U.S. forces.

So they aim to hamstring the president with restrictions on the use of the military. The restrictions ostensibly are concerned with preparedness but actually are designed to prevent deployments to Iraq.

Last Saturday, Senate Republicans blocked a vote on a resolution disapproving the president's policy because Democrats would not permit a vote on a resolution stating that the Senate will not cut off funds for troops in the field. That resolution would have committed the Senate to not taking the path that many Democrats already are tiptoeing down.

Suppose Democrats write their restrictions on the use of forces into legislation that funds the war. And suppose the president signs the legislation but ignores the restrictions, calling them unconstitutional usurpations of his powers as commander in chief. What could Democrats do? Cross First Street NE and ask the Supreme Court to compel the president to acquiesce in congressional micromanagement of a war? The court probably would refuse to get involved on the grounds that this is a "political question."

The court has held that some constitutional controversies should be settled by the government's political — meaning elected — branches. In 1962, the court said that a case involves a political question when there is:

" . . . textually demonstrable constitutional commitment of the issue to a coordinate political department; or a lack of judicially discoverable and manageable standards for resolving it; or the impossibility of deciding without an initial policy determination of a kind clearly for nonjudicial discretion; or the impossibility of a court's undertaking independent resolution without expressing lack of the respect due coordinate branches of government; or an unusual need for unquestioning adherence to a political decision already made; or the potentiality of embarrassment from multifarious pronouncements by various departments on one question."

In that welter of criteria there are reasons that the court will not rescue congressional Democrats from facing the logic of their posturing. They lack the will to exercise their clearly constitutional power to defund the war. And they lack the power to achieve that end by usurping the commander in chief's powers to conduct a war.

They can spend this year fecklessly and cynically enacting restrictions that do not restrict. Or they can legislate decisive failure of the Iraq operation — withdrawal — thereby acquiring conspicuous complicity in a defeat that might be inevitable anyway. A Hobson's choice? No, Nancy Pelosi's and Harry Reid's.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
A lack of courage in their convictions

By George Will


http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Indiscriminate criticism of President George W. Bush is an infectious disease. Some conservatives seem to have caught it, but congressional Democrats might be crippled by it.

Consider some conservatives' reflexive rejection of the administration's achievement — with China, Russia, South Korea and Japan — of an agreement that might constrain North Korea's nuclear weapons program. Voicing the obvious with a sense of originality, critics exclaim that North Korea is a serial liar. And, echoing the equally reflexive disparagement of the agreement by some liberals, these conservatives say it is not significantly different from President Bill Clinton's 1994 agreement, which failed.

The new agreement might not bring Pyongyang to heel. It is, however, unlike that of 1994, in three particulars.

First, China was infuriated by North Korea's October nuclear test, which fizzled but expressed defiance of China. So now China seems amenable to serious pressure on its mendicant neighbor, which is substantially dependent on China for food and energy.

Second, the new agreement, like the 1994 pact, is an attempt to modify behavior using bribery. But under the 1994 agreement, North Korea got the bribe — energy assistance — before being required to change its behavior. Under the new agreement, North Korea will receive just 5 percent of promised oil — 50,000 of 1 million tons of heavy fuel oil — before it must fulfill, in 60 days, the first of the many commitments it has made.

Third, the administration believes it found, in Banco Delta Asia, a lever that moved Pyongyang. The Macau bank was pressured into freezing 52 accounts holding $24 million — yes, million, not billion — of North Korean assets because Pyongyang has been using them for illicit purposes. If Pyongyang flinched from being deprived of $24 million — less than Americans spend on archery equipment in a month — Pyongyang's low pain threshold suggests how fragile, and hence perhaps how containable, that regime is.

Regarding Iraq, the Democratic-controlled Congress could do what Democrats say a Democratic president would do: withdraw U.S. forces. A president could simply order that; Congress could defund military operations in Iraq. Congressional Democrats are, however, afraid to do that because they lack the courage of their (professed) conviction that Iraq would be made tranquil by withdrawal of U.S. forces.

So they aim to hamstring the president with restrictions on the use of the military. The restrictions ostensibly are concerned with preparedness but actually are designed to prevent deployments to Iraq.

Last Saturday, Senate Republicans blocked a vote on a resolution disapproving the president's policy because Democrats would not permit a vote on a resolution stating that the Senate will not cut off funds for troops in the field. That resolution would have committed the Senate to not taking the path that many Democrats already are tiptoeing down.

Suppose Democrats write their restrictions on the use of forces into legislation that funds the war. And suppose the president signs the legislation but ignores the restrictions, calling them unconstitutional usurpations of his powers as commander in chief. What could Democrats do? Cross First Street NE and ask the Supreme Court to compel the president to acquiesce in congressional micromanagement of a war? The court probably would refuse to get involved on the grounds that this is a "political question."

The court has held that some constitutional controversies should be settled by the government's political — meaning elected — branches. In 1962, the court said that a case involves a political question when there is:

" . . . textually demonstrable constitutional commitment of the issue to a coordinate political department; or a lack of judicially discoverable and manageable standards for resolving it; or the impossibility of deciding without an initial policy determination of a kind clearly for nonjudicial discretion; or the impossibility of a court's undertaking independent resolution without expressing lack of the respect due coordinate branches of government; or an unusual need for unquestioning adherence to a political decision already made; or the potentiality of embarrassment from multifarious pronouncements by various departments on one question."

In that welter of criteria there are reasons that the court will not rescue congressional Democrats from facing the logic of their posturing. They lack the will to exercise their clearly constitutional power to defund the war. And they lack the power to achieve that end by usurping the commander in chief's powers to conduct a war.

They can spend this year fecklessly and cynically enacting restrictions that do not restrict. Or they can legislate decisive failure of the Iraq operation — withdrawal — thereby acquiring conspicuous complicity in a defeat that might be inevitable anyway. A Hobson's choice? No, Nancy Pelosi's and Harry Reid's.

I saw this column the other day, when it was published, and thought Will was really mailing it in. It's not like Pelosi and Read lack the courage of their convictions. Unlike their predecessors on the Hill, they can't just snap their fingers and make their party follow. And for that matter, they recognize that if they don't find a way to get a significant number of Republicans along, their efforts are not going anywhere. And there are constitutional questions about the ways in which Congress can constrain a President's foreign policy. So they're framing a strategy to slowly build the pressure on the President and Republicans. There's nothing hypocritical about that.

[Spanky]

How did you reach this conclusion:

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Your posts have convinced me -- at least for the moment -- that your support for free trade is not principled, in the sense that you believe free trade is consistent with one or more principles to which you're committed and that you would abandon free trade if those principles dictated, but rather that it's ideological, in that you are committed to free trade as such and espouse whatever principles are convenient as a justification for that result.

From these posts?

Originally posted by Spanky
One scenario where this might occur would be where the people that were helped were the bottom forty percent and it hurt the top sixty percent. So the people that were helped were the people that really needed it, and the people that were hurt (the upper and upper middle classes) had enough money any way. Then in that case I might think it (trade resrictions) helped the country as a whole even though it hurt the most people.

Originally posted by Spanky
Your are making an assumption that if sixty percent of the people are hurt by something that it still could be considered good "in the aggregate". Doesn't that depend on your definition of "aggregate"? If sixty percent of the people are hurt, especially the bottom sixty percent, no matter how much the wealthy benefit I don't see it as "good in the aggregate". Like I said, if it benefited the bottom forty percent at the expense of the top sixty percent, then it might be considered good in the aggregate but definitely not the other way around.

Originally posted by Spanky
I already said that if something (trade restirctions) benefited the poorer forty percent of the people at the expense of the wealthier sixty percent I might support it.

And why are you so "obsessed" with my inner thinking? When did this change to the psychology board? First you want to me to really "focus" on the pain suffered by people that get hurt by free trade instead of just acknowledging it. Then you are obsessed with knowing my inner motivations. Why not just focus on the logic (or illogic) of my posts?

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
As I've said multiple times already, I was trying to figure whether your support for free trade was motivated by the principle of doing the most good (i.e., net gain to the country) or helping the most people (i.e., doing what is best for the majority) by posing a hypothetical in which the two pointed in opposite ways.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
From these posts?

I don't recall.

Originally posted by Spanky
Like I said, if it benefited the bottom forty percent at the expense of the top sixty percent, then it might be considered good in the aggregate but definitely not the other way around.

That wasn't my hypo, which you completely muddied. You've omitted the question how much the respective groups are helped or hurt, which is crucial to what I was getting at. What you say here "might be considered good in the aggregate" but also might not. I was very specific.

Any why are you so "obsessed" with my inner thinking? When did this change to the psychology board? First you want to me to really "focus" on the pain suffered by people that get hurt by free trade instead of just acknowledging it. Then you are obsessed with knowing my inner motivations. Why not just focus on the logic (or illogic) of my posts?

I don't give a rip about your motivations or psychological issues. Those subjects have little to do with a discussion of policy and policy goals, such as trying to help the most people, or those least able to help themselves, etc.

I will say that I have found it odd that conversations about free trade with you get so polarized and contentious, when we appear to agree on quite a bit. I think the reason is that for you it's a political issue, and you have a big interest in accentuating the differences between the parties. Since you fundraise for GOP candidates, this makes all the sense in the world. For my part, I'm more interested in kicking around questions of policy, and therefore am happy to dwell on points of disagreement rather than where we agree.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
I don't recall.



I don't give a rip about your motivations or psychological issues. Those subjects have little to do with a discussion of policy and policy goals, such as trying to help the most people, or those least able to help themselves, etc.

I will say that I have found it odd that conversations about free trade with you get so polarized and contentious, when we appear to agree on quite a bit. I think the reason is that for you it's a political issue, and you have a big interest in accentuating the differences between the parties. Since you fundraise for GOP candidates, this makes all the sense in the world. For my part, I'm more interested in kicking around questions of policy, and therefore am happy to dwell on points of disagreement rather than where we agree.

if spanky started a blog would you give him more respect then?