Today’s links to interesting news and analysis…
- “No exit“, Andrew Bacevich (Colonel, US Army, retired), American Conservative, 1 February 2010 — “America has an impressive record of starting wars but a dismal one of ending them well.”
- “Get ready for China’s domination of science“, Jonathan Adams, New Scientist, 06 January 2010
- “Afghanistan: What Could Work“, Rory Stewart (bio here, Professor of the Practice of Human Rights at Harvard), New York Review of Books, 14 January 2009 — Another endorsement of the war, assuming a strategy we will not use. It’s the feel-good solution for liberals — macho predicated on fantasy.
- A rare bit of sense in the media about the housing crisis: “Walk Away From Your Mortgage!“, New York Times, 10 January 2010 — Corporations strategically default on debt, but our ruling elites say it violates God’s laws for the peasants to do so. If done a large scale it will change America, in ways as yet unforeseeable.
Below are today’s special features:
(a) Quote of the day, by David Broder
(b) An even better quote of the Day, by Rudy Guiliani
(c) Graph of the day by Paul Krugman
(a) Quote of the day, by David Broder
“Failed Christmas bomb plot will likely alter Obama’s agenda“, David S. Broder, op-ed Washington Post, 8 January 2010 — Excerpt:
Was Christmas Day 2009 the same kind of wake-up call for Barack Obama that Sept. 11, 2001, had been for George W. Bush? The near-miss by a passenger plotting to blow up an American airliner as it flew into Detroit seems to have shocked this president as much as the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon did the last. … Bush reacted with anger and a determination to punish the people who wreaked the havoc. Obama was just as mad, but a good portion of his anger was targeted at the members of his own intelligence bureaucracy who he said had missed the abundant clues and failed to forestall the attack. Like Bush, he vowed to see that the consequences also fell on the foreign country that gave birth to the plot — Afghanistan eight years ago, Yemen today. For now, we are conducting a proxy war in Yemen, but that may change. Al-Qaeda’s local enablers must learn that there is a price to be paid when Uncle Sam is attacked from their bases.
The Big Lie continues to thrive, despite the 9-11 Commission debunking, that “Afghanistan gave birth to the plot.” Knowing our sloth and disinterest, our ruling elites lie to us with impunity. When that changes America will change. Character matters. More than the words of the Constitution or any other structural features of our society.
Nice summary by Mark Thompson (The League of Ordinary Gentlemen):
I think it important to note how Broder gets to draw an equivalency between the murder of 3000 and a guy blowing up his junk in order to justify using the latter incident as a basis for war. This is the position of the DC establishment that Broder so often seems to represent. Somehow, this is deemed a “moderate” opinion…
Why do America’s most widely featured pundits and geopolitical experts so often advocate war? As Brad Delong (Prof Economics, Berkeley) says, “Remember, the Cossacks work for the Czar.”
(b) An even better quote of the Day
George Stephanopoulos interview with Rudy Giuliani on ABC’s “Good Morning America”, 8 January 2010 — From the full transcript:
“And if he {Obama} recognizes we’re at war with terror, a lot of things follow from that. … What he should be doing is following the right things that Bush did — one of the right things he did was treat this as a war on terror. We had no domestic attacks under Bush. We’ve had one under Obama.”
Rational responses having proved useless to this conservative insanity, only mockery remains. Such as these from Matthew Yglesias blog at ThinkProgress.
Don’t forget the DC sniper, the LAX shooting, the Lackawanna Six, the Fort Dix plot, etc., etc. Because they all prove that, like, terrorists were on the run, or they would have been successful, except for the cases that were successful, because those prove, um, toughness, and this one’s being unsuccessful just reminds us of how serious a successful one would have been, but those others couldn’t have been successful, on account of all the great strategies that prevented them.
Shooting sprees by lone nuts on school campuses, abortion clinics, cafeterias and churches are not terrorism. The shooting spree at Ft. Hood by a lone nut was terrorism because the perp was a Muslim (as is the President!) However, the DC sniper attacks were not terrorism, despite the perps being Muslim. The LAX shooting was not terrorism because Los Angeles is not American soil.
9iu11ani was just on CNN explaining how since the Anthrax attacks weren’t attributed to Muslims, they really weren’t terrorist attacks.
The timeline basically proves that government is nearly powerless to protect us against terrorists or criminals intent on killing us. Governments are organized to protect us and that works when state-on-state wars evolve i.e. World War II. They also worked pretty well in WW III aka The Cold War. But against invisible threats, individuals with weapons do better. … Where’s my .45 Colt? Just where it always is, on the nightstand!
Dipshit, do you know your chances of being the victim of a terrorist attack in your home? Someone recently compared it to the chances of being emasculated by a shark – given the number of terrorist attacks that have occurred in reach of a nightstand .45, the metaphor must be extended. Your chance of staving off a terrorist attack is roughly the same as your chance of being emasculated by a shark in your bedroom. …
(c) Graph of the day
From “CRE-ative destruction“, Paul Krugman, blog of the New York Times, 7 January 2009
For some reason I haven’t seen this: a comparison of commercial real estate prices from Moody’s/MIT with housing prices from Standard and Poor’s/Case-Shiller. Here it is … From my perspective, the CRE bubble is highly significant; it gives the lie both to those who blame Fannie/Freddie/Community Reinvestment for the housing bubble, and those who blame predatory lending. This was a broad-based bubble.
Afterword
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