The Big Trifecta

I’d say Ecky, that you have a fixed point of view, and it’s from one position only.

I’m inclined to move my perspective when things actually change, especially when the facts just don’t support the rhetoric.

Love your rhetoric Ecky, but it’s getting threadbare in the reality department old son.

Catrina,

That’s me: the voice of reason. 😉 (Well, I like to imagine so, at any rate. But just get me started on Iran and … )

Alan Ramsay on the 7.30 Report…download if you missed it, it’s the old curmudgeon telling it like it was, and how it now is.

Classic stuff.

Gee Kirri, I’d say your the one who’s been doing the defaming this afternoon, but such is life. There’s nothing wrong with playing the contrarian, let’s just hope you’re better at it than Gouldie has been. 🙂

Kirri,
good to see you in fine intellectual form but why do you find it necessary to put down decent people you disagree with?
As one of your supporters during the past hoo-ha over the fence, I feel most uncomfortable with the way you increasingly play the man.
Have bitten my tongue, hoping you were ‘having a bad day’, but the snide tone certainly spoils it for me.

megan, I detest humbug, and if you look carefully, the ‘snide’ comments are always there the moment I question the facts.

Funny, but no one seems to mind when I’m being ridiculed, but get oh so ‘touchy’ feely when I respond.

Don’t worry, I’ll get bored with it all again, very soon, I’d guess.

Irate and Independent.
================

A poll of opinion polls shows Americans’ attitudes are changing rapidly.

They are less and less thrilled about the country’s direction and Congress, according to Tom Bevan, executive editor of national polling aggregator RealClearPolitics. He says independent voters are shifting away from the polices of the Obama administration and Democrats.

“Independents have flipped negative,” warns Bevan. “That’s not a good thing for any party.”

The first gubernatorial races since Democrats took control of Washington, in New Jersey and Virginia, show voter angst and ire. Those races appear to be heading in different directions but are two sides of the same coin.
In Virginia — which swung Democrat first in 2006 to Jim Webb in his Senate race, then further to Obama in 2008 — Republican Bob McDonnell leads Democrat Creigh Deeds by widening margins.

What are they actually trying to say? It’s a mish, mash of stuff we already new. But it doesn’t actually say anything in particular. Like, oh the Democrats are getting thrashed. Or the Repugs are getting thrashed. But nothing we didn’t already know.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/10/25/irate_and_independent_98867.html

Well Kirri, you’ve failed to sustain this assertion about Bromwich with facts.

“For, if you bother, you’ll find this guy has made it his ’second job’ for some time, to ‘prove’ the NY Times is either running the US government, or Israel’s or both, or something similar! LOL

He’s hardly credible after 5 minutes ‘research’. ”

I’m still waiting.

[comment redacted under editorial discretion]

DG, that Bromwich would do well on this blog, I’d reckon! LOL

Lot’s of mad claims, no evidence, mostly larded heavily with conspiracy theory, and ALL so very PC Left-over.

Meanwhile, Media Watch is trashing the rightwing nutbags on the MSM for spewing misinformation, lousy data, and straight fantasy for the purpose of scaring people into believing what they want them too.

[paragraph redacted under editorial discretion]

Intellectual dishonesty is still intellectual dishonesty, from the right, or from the left.

“The Burns essay and the Iraq symposium are part of a consistent effort by the
Times — the Pollack-O’Hanlon puff for the surge and the double endorsement of
McCain and Clinton were part of the same effort — to shift legitimate opinion
toward acceptance of a large and permanent American force in the Middle East.
Among lawmakers, only Russell Feingold, Chuck Hagel, and Ron Paul have drawn
sustained attention to the commitments we are entering into. For a major paper
to do the same would be an act of candor. The New York Times, by its elaborate
contrivance of a sham debate, and by the transparent omissions of its analysis,
has done a conspicuous disservice to public discussion.”

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-bromwich/new-york-times-to-america_b_91995.html

He certainly seems to be a persistent critic of the New York Times, and thinks that they have a plan to shape US public opinion such that the hawks are supported.

Very good, that’s three so far. How many has he published this year per chance?

Re my ‘manifesto’, I am a Greens voter who preferences Labor. But I certainly have neoconservative views on the spreading of democracy, and I have some libertarian beliefs.

I am keeping out of this one. I’ll just pick up the pieces. 😈

Good one Ecky, tipping an almost total shift from Labor to Greens. I’ll say 31.5.

I think it’s good that the Greens picked a candidate who has a few definite views about issues. I don’t agree with much of those views, particularly the net filter stuff, but parliament would be much better if there were a few Clive Hamiltons in it.

[paragraph redacted under editorial discretion]

When you actually use facts and logic, I’ll call it a ‘theory’! Re-hashing Left-overs hardly qualifies old chap.

“Alternative”…yep, if you mean devoid of facts and immune to reason.

Yes, but before we can even discuss your thread’s header, we were ambushed by the old chestnut “pipeline” and throwing up the facts, the history, the eventual pipeline, the economics…no, that’s just ‘another opinion’, while the fact-bereft statements of righteousness must be given the status of hallowed truth, because, well, just because! Oh, yeah, I forgot, because they use the “oil, USA, imperialism” mantra, and that is sacred, cannot be challenged, and hey, only neocon nutjobs would say that, eh?

Left-overs.

Stale, meaningless, self-congratulatory and tedious.

But, if you like ersatz Gonzo journalism done by someone who has done it for decades, smelled the napalm in the morning, and is still alive to distill all those years into a ripper yarn with a purpose, then you cannot go past Fred.

Fred Reed, and his blog, Fred on Everything never fails to be about something, written with a fresh zippyness that stings your eyes when you read it, clever, funny, absolutely anti-PC and as clever as anything you’ll read anywhere.

His latest offering is a clanger:

October 25, 2009

In re Afghanistan, why, you might ask, is the world’s hugest, expensivest, most begadgeted military unable to defeat a few thousand angry tribesmen armed with AKs and RPGs?

Easy: Character. The men running the war are mentally the wrong ones to do it.

Think about this for a moment. Suppose that your boss at the lab or law firm or newsroom demanded that, when he entered the room, you leapt spasmodically to your feet, stood rigidly erect with your feet at a forty-five degree angle like a congenitally deformed duck, and stared straight ahead until he gave you permission to relax. You would think, correctly, that he was crazy as a bedbug. If he then required reporters to stand in a square so he could inspect their belt buckles, you would either figure he was a gay blade or call for a struggle buggy and some big orderlies. This weird posturing is not normal, nor are those it appeals to.

Suppose you showed up for freshman orientation at Princeton and your professors bellowed at the tops of their voices, three inches from your face, “Your shoes ain’t shined good, puke. Get down and give me fifty.” (Pushups, that is, which in the military doesn’t mean the better sort of bra.) You would decide that the loon had lost whatever mind he had ever had, and call Domino’s for a cheese pizza, double Haldol.

Should you be so unwary as to suggest the foregoing in print, the response will usually be that militaries need discipline. True, and so do newspapers. However, there is a distinction between discipline and ritualized lunacy. At every publication for which I have worked, the editor was clearly and absolutely in charge. Yet I, seldom senior, could say, “Yeah, Wes, but if we do that, won’t thus-and-so bad thing happen?” His decision was law, but he was happy to hear from subordinates, who might know something he didn’t. Editors do not require vaguely sadomasochistic submissiveness.

This hoopla is not of use in combat. The Taliban seem to be doing rather well. Do you suppose their commanders check their beds to be sure that a quarter will bounce from their blankets?

Now, what kind of kid wants to go for robot training at West Point or boat school at Annapolis? Statistically these kids are bright, gregarious, “motivated” (a favorite military word), athletic, perhaps Eagle Scouts. Psychologically they want (need?) to live under a regime of rigid conformity and obedience that would appear as absurd as it is if we were not accustomed seeing it among soldiers. That is, they are autoselected not to think for themselves or question decisions from above. They are exactly what universities exist not to produce.

The service academies reinforce these unfortunate characteristics. Their schooling consists of four years of learning what to think, not how to think. There are hours of running in formation (“If I die on the Russian front….”), close-order drill, manual of arms (“Hen-spection…harms!”). Why? There is no military value in being able to shift your rifle from shoulder to shoulder crisply. Like the endless inspections of everything, all of this participation in the hive inculcates groupishness and a curious sense of safety in conformity.

The effects are remarkable and, from a standpoint of civilization, undesirable. Large authoritarian organizations make easier the compartmentalization of morality. A colonel typically will be a good neighbor, civic-minded, responsible, unlikely to steal your silverware or kick your dog. If the Pentagon tells him to bomb a city he has never heard of and has no reason to bomb, killing people who pose no threat to him, he will. He feels no individual responsibility for atrocious behavior ordered from above. “I vas only followink orders,” the Nuremberg defense, is the bedrock of military ethics, if any.

Men trained in conformist obedience can work marvels. They just don’t care whether the marvel is good or evil. If you need to handle some vast natural disaster, call on the military. They have the manpower, the aircraft, the medics, the co-operation to get things done now. They will stay on their feet for forty-eight hours without sleep. They take the “mission” (another favorite military word) seriously.

What they do not do particularly well is wage war. Why? Because they have in their minds a view of war that is partly that of offensive linemen—you close with the enemy and destroy him—and partly martial romanticism. They speak of duty, honor, country, bravery, fallen comrades, proving oneself. Military history is rife with silly pageantry, nobility of spirit, glorious charges, and impracticality. Having been trained to think rigidly, they do.

Before Agincourt, there were things the French might profitably have learned about long bows, but didn’t bother because chivalry didn’t concern itself with peasants. It was the glory of the thing, not whether they were committing suicide. English generals killed 20,000 young Brits in one day at the Somme; they hadn’t compared the ideas in their heads with then-current military reality (such as that infantry charges over long distances against massed machine guns, artillery, and barbed wire are not especially productive, unless you manufacture embalming fluid.) Authoritarian group-think, love of ritual, romanticism, inattention: not a happy brew.

Further, military service encourages an often-catastrophic sense of masculine potency. Running in formation with fifty other men (“lef-rye-lef-rye-lef-rye-layeff….”) or watching a fighter cat-shot from a carrier deck—the thrill is gonadal, appealing to something deep in the male psyche, a challenge flung at life. It is wonderful, but not a sound basis for judgement.

A consequence is a tendency for militaries of the First World to gravely overestimate themselves, and thus underestimate their enemies. This is why they usually expect wars to be far shorter and cheaper than they turn out to be. As recent examples, the French did not expect those slanty-eyed little zipperheads (les jaunes) to win in Viet Nam, nor did the Pentagon have any idea they the US could possibly lose 60,000 dead and the war in that country, Iraq would be a cakewalk, and those louse-infested towel-heads in Afghanistan had no hope against American swoosh-kerpows. The US military in particular has a compulsory can-do attitude, with slogans like “The difficult we can do today, the impossible takes a bit longer.” This substitution of morale for comprehension is regularly disastrous.

Having no idea what they are getting into is almost doctrine among professional officers. A major does not become a colonel by saying, “General, the French didn’t do all that well at Dien Bien Phu. Maybe we ought to, you know, do something else. We could invade Vanuatu.”

America’s problem is not that its generals prepare for the last war, but that they don’t prepare for it, and then fight it again the same way.

——————————

Goodnight.

Thanks Catrina, now I have to get a chest to pin it on.

Judging by that information the Health Bill is going to play a much bigger role in the 2010 and the 2012 elections than I had imagined. The Republicans are rat shit. The Republicans are stuffed. The Republicans are history. Only a miracle sorry disaster will save them.
Catrina can you put a permalink/bookmark on this, so we can find what I said exactly. Later on?

Perry-Hutchison fight may cause major fallout in GOP.
=========================================

Texas Democrats watching the state’s top two Republicans fight for their party’s gubernatorial nomination are glad that Gov. Rick Perry and U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison have apparently abandoned the Republicans’ 11th Commandment, established during Ronald Reagan’s run for California governor in 1966: Thou shall not speak ill of another Republican.

And they hope that the GOP gubernatorial battle creates enough division within the party to help Democrats in the general election and for years to come.

“There probably will be so many bad feelings . . . that it will benefit the Democratic Party,” said Steve Maxwell, chairman of the Tarrant County Democratic Party. “For now, we’ll sit back and watch. It’s only going to get better.”

Republicans say Democrats shouldn’t get too comfortable, because this gubernatorial race — pitting Perry, governor since 2000, against Hutchison, senator since 1993 — will energize, not divide, their party.

“It’s a spirited race, and sometimes that’s good,” said Stephanie Klick, who heads the Tarrant County Republican Party. “One of the things that’s fair game in any campaign are issues.”

Some point to last year’s Democratic presidential primary battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, noting that, despite the attacks, it didn’t keep Democrats from winning in November. And the same may well happen in Texas with the fight for the GOP’s gubernatorial nomination.

But there could be big fallout, said Harvey Kronberg, publisher of the Quorum Report, an online political newsletter.

“There’s a civil war that’s happening right now, and it has long implications,” Kronberg said. “Nothing good for Republicans can come out of this. Everyone who is an active Republican understands that the losing side is going into exile.

“Neither side will forgive and forget.”

Well maybe I’ll change my mind on Texas again. If you missed it, I gave up on Texas. This might rekindle the “maybe it’s possible to get the Texas senate seat” again.
http://www.star-telegram.com/804/story/1710071.html

In the interest of fairness and balance 🙂 this is a pretty strong editorial from thr NY Times on Obama’s cover-up of Bush era war crimes.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/10/26-2

156
HusseinStWorm says:
27 October, 2009 at 12:21 am

“In the interest of fairness and balance 🙂 this is a pretty strong editorial from thr NY Times on Obama’s cover-up of Bush era war crimes.”

And now you’ve found it on COmmondreams!

Yesterday’s news old chap.

…yes, isn’t it funny HSW, but I actually quoted that NY Times article YESTERDAY!

Reid has been pushing the so-called opt-out public option for the last several days and has spoken to nearly all 60 members of the Democratic caucus. He needs 60 votes to end an expected Republican filibuster and move the bill to the floor.
==========================================
“We’ve spent countless hours over the last few days in consultation with senators who’ve shown a genuine desire to reform the health care system. And I believe there’s a strong consensus to move forward in this direction,” Reid said.
==============================================
Yes! Yes! Yes! 😆

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/26/reid-the-public-option-wi_n_334284.html

Well, it’s not exactly arguing for more troops or staying to secure the country against the fascists, but this piece in Huffpo at least puts the question:

This brings us to Afghanistan where the battle is now fought. America’s intervention into central Asia’s cockpit begs the question: Would a U.S. retreat mark merely a battle lost or the first domino to fall to Osama bin Laden’s vision? In the latter case, do the possible consequences – increased regional radicalization and global terrorism – compare with the 20th century’s unrealized negative watersheds that the success of fascism or communism posed? Or can Afghanistan’s neighbors resist on their own coupled with offshore American support and prevent metastasis?

The answer will turn on the ability of surrounding regimes to immunize themselves from infection. Pakistan, Iran and the former Soviet republics to the north have demonstrated a brutal capacity to suppress political violence to ensure survival. This suggests that even were Afghanistan to become a terrorist haven, the neighborhood can adapt and resist as Pakistan’s military defeat of the Taliban in the Swat Valley demonstrated.

That said, the United States can retreat from the region. This would leave the Afghans to their own devices — as Washington left Southeast Asia, Somalia, Lebanon to theirs — to resolve affairs America cannot. The White House then can rebuild its strategic dikes on friendlier soil in neighboring nations and elsewhere and intervene in Afghanistan, if necessary, in limited targeted missions to strike terrorists and their havens as it repeatedly has done in Somalia. In that event, the United States may look back at Afghanistan — like Vietnam — as one battle lost but clearly not a watershed event.

Still, the pity of a failed American undertaking lies in the opportunity lost. Had Washington mustered a competent occupation, had it concentrated precious military and nation building resources early in the occupation when Afghan society was most malleable, the events begun in 2001 would not only have marked the positive transformation of a country, but, quite possibly, a positive regional and global watershed as well.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bennett-ramberg-phd/afghanistan-and-historica_b_333849.html

…it’s saying they fucked it up badly, should not have but did, and he thinks they can leave and consolidate in the neighbouring Pakistan for example, to whack terrorist training camps at will etc etc.

It’s basically the ‘no fly zones’ translated from Iraq to this region, and I seriously doubt it’s conclusions on a number of levels:

1. US bases in Pakistan flying over Afghanistan will elicit the same response as the ones in the Gulf and Saudi (which the US put in place after the Kuwait invasion). These became focal points for reaction and jihadis. And the whole ‘no fly’ strategy ended up a failure in most repects ie Australia sold wheat with a hefty kickback to Saddam while these ‘no fly’ and sanctions were in place. It punished the population mostly, but maybe had the only good effect of keeping Saddam from sending in the army to the Marsh Arabs in the SOuth and the Kurds in the north. He had done so before, with disastrous effect. This cannot be done in Afghanistan in anything like so effective a way, and the Northern Tajiks will be on their own against the fascists for example. Likewise the Hazara.

2. The inference is: “the domino effect”, much touted as reason to stay in Vietnam, was a chimera, and so in this case, the Taliban will not be ‘expansionary’.

This is a false comparison. The Taliban and it’s colleagues are on record: they want to expand their notion of a Caliphate, they want strict Islamic rule and Sharia Law over ALL Muslim countries.

Which means they will be gunning for Pakistan, (as we can already see), and they will be ‘gunning’ for Iran in the other sense, ie the Shia are considered, in this extreme version of Sunni fundamentalism, as apostate dogs.

So the argument comparing Vietnam with this conflict is utterly wrong in this department. It sounds neat, but it’s misleading.

I think it’s dangerously misleading because it’s meant to appeal to the those for whom the Vietnam war was unjustifiable. It was. But to claim this is the same type of scenario is disingenuous, at best.

Finally, what ARE the consequences of letting Afghanistan fall to the fascists?

It isn’t going to make this region stable, that’s for sure. And it’s wedged between a nuclear armed state and one that soon will be.

How does that compare with Vietnam?

It doesn’t.

HusseinStWorm,

The differences between Rudd and Howard were in some respects (but by no means all) superficial. The differences between Obama and McCain on many issues were … wide, shall we say?

The NYT, along with the Washington Post, has always had a reputation as a left-leaning, Democrat supporting newspaper. The New York *Post* is the New York newspaper that is right wing. Thus, the attacks on the NYT can only be seen – at least be me – as far left bizarreness.

Rant:

My step-daughter, who is in year 9, yesterday had a sex ed class. And what did they learn in their publicly funded lesson on something that is crucially important for adolescent social development, self esteem and physical health? That you can become gay by watching gay porn, become sexually attracted to animals by watching bestiality (thus making a link in the minds of these children between homosexuality and bestiality) and that female virginity is ‘precious’ and that it should not be given away or stolen.

Formal complaint time? You betcha. That this dangerous religious claptrap is being taught to anyone in the world is terrible. That it is being taught in the heart of one of the most socially progressive cities in Australia is a wake-up call for those who think that we are close to moving on from homophobia, right-wing religious propaganda and outright lies regarding sexuality being taught to our children.

end rant

Chris B @ 161
It’s pleasing to see there’s a real chance of health reform in the US. Still has a way to go, but just a matter of weeks ago seemed most of the mainstream media were concluding there would never be a public option.

From what I’ve read, the opt out will be practically meaningless – ie it’s thought that no state would opt out.

DG, that is utterly appalling.(your daughter’s ‘instruction’ ie)

Go get ’em, and more strength to your arm.

Gotta go now, so have fun in the sandpit today!

HusseinStWorm,

Okay: comparatively, the NYT and the Washington Post are way to left of the New York Post. Huffington Post is to the left of the NYT. And Obama is in many ways to the left of Rudd; however, Rudd is situated in a country that is further to the left than the country that Obama is situated in. That means Obama’s options are constrained to a very large extent.

For me, the evidence is pretty clear that Bromwich is a conspiracy theorist who believes that the New York Times is at the heart of some evil but unspecified plan involving Israel, the military industrial complex, the oil companies and covert ops generals from the Pentagon. Left-wing silliness.

Catrina,

I have just spoken to the school principal. The program is supposed to be a federal government *drug* education program – nothing to do with sexual education at all. It looks as though the presenter injected the sex misinformatio component of his own accord. However, there were supposed to be teachers present.

My suspicions are raised that the school’s priest – you know, that wonderful program of having priests as school councillors in government schools introduced by Howard and continued by Rudd – arranged the program and possibly had the teachers present handpicked so as not to cause trouble.

The principal is looking into it and is going to get back to me this afternoon.

Of course, I realise that that is a conspiracy theory 🙂

Thinking more rationally, t is more likely that the guy introduced the topic and the teachers were not really paying attention or did not feel confident enough to interrupt if they had a problem – after all, they had been told that the program was government approved.

Chris B,

It will be very interesting to see if any Republican state legislatures are brave enough to opt out of the public health system …

I think that effectively the public option is going to be secured by this.

174
David Gould

Flying visit from me!

DG, it took you how long to discover Bromwich is hardly reliable as a source on this topic?

And yet HSW still is trying to say he needed me to ‘prove’ it for him! LOL

Now, more importantly, that episode at school is really unsavoury, and I’m keen to hear how the principal handles it…and I’ll watch out for our school.

Gotta go (again)

Interesting. I certainly like the notion of luring away the footsoldiers. They generally fight because they have no options. Given them options, and they will be less willing to risk their lives for a goal that they probably do not even really believe in (at least, that will be the profile of those vulnerable to this kind of tactic).

I would imagine that the decisions have (mostly) already been made and that it is a question of how they sell those decisions at this point.

Off topic, I just bought Dreams of My Father as an audio book. I think hearing Obama read it will be a fascinating experience.

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/pm-makes-no-apologies-for-being-unapologetic-20091026-hgru.html

Funny stuff. 🙂

Oh wicked *WICKED* Firstdog.
Bang goes another keyboard and I’ll never be able to look at a poodle in quite the same way again.

http://media.crikey.com.au/Media/images/091027-NannyState-a6674591-952e-4a18-a0c0-3faf9eb00faa.jpg

It seems that the British census office can take a joke, however: “390,000 Jedis there are” 🙂

“Chris Bryant: I hate to say this, but it is also true that several hon. Members have placed light sabres in the Cloakroom in the place where they could be hanging their swords. I do not think that that means that anyone believes genuinely in the power of the force in the sense of a religion.”

Not umbrellas, but swords.