Touchdown For Team Hodes!!!
New Hampshire license plates? Check!
In New Hampshire? Check!
With a Paul Hodes for Senate bumper sticker? Check!
Finally!!!
A documented touchdown for Team Hodes !!!
“Another Democrat For McCain”
It’s been well over 2 years since Johnny Mac shocked the (uninformed) political world in the 2008 NH Primary.
And small signs of the ground game Team McCain ran in the Granite State still abound.
Like this lonely soldier, keeping watch from the back of a street sign up by the Mall of New Hampshire:
Mike Pence Doesn’t Know What He’s Talking About, True Fiscal Conservatives Know That You Can’t CUT Revenue Streams In A Time Of Record Debt & Deficits
$60+ trillion in unfunded entitlement liabilities already on our government’s books. A $1.5 trillion 2010 budget deficit.
And Republicans and Democrats in Washington claim that they can CUT taxes in this environment:
House Republicans’ first move in the majority would be to extend tax cuts set to expire at the end of the year, House GOP Conference Chairman Mike Pence (Ind.) suggested Wednesday evening.
Pence, the third-ranking Republican in the House, said that House Republicans would look to extend the tax cuts they helped President George W. Bush pass in 2001 and 2003, which are set to expire at the end of the year.
“Well, we’re going to stay focused on Election Day. But I think before that, we’re going to continue to demand that this administration and this Congress make it clear that no American will see a tax increase in January of next year,” Pence said during an appearance on CNBC.
“So the first thing that we will do is try to preserve the tax relief of 2001 and 2003 for all Americans — for all small businesses and family farmers. But we also want to look at the kind of across-the-board tax relief, the kind of tax relief that will encourage capital formation, to get this economy moving again,” the Indiana Republican and potential presidential candidate added.
Pence’s assertion adds to the litany of pledges the GOP has made to voters as the fall’s midterm elections approach. Republicans have made taxes a key part of their electoral assault against Democrats, who largely (led by President Obama) favor extending the tax cuts except for the wealthiest earners.
Hogwash.
The whole tax cut “debate” is pure pandering by both Republicans and Democrats.
No serious lawmaker or economist believes that Washington can tax cut their way out of our current massive money hole. The only way to right our financial ship of state is through massive spending cuts coupled with tax increases.
Britain is already trying to figure out how to do it.
Via the Economist:
Radical Britain
Britain has embarked on a great gamble. Sooner or later, many other rich-world countries will have to take it too
Aug 12th 2010OF ALL the politicians elected to high office in the West in the past few years, David Cameron seemed the least revolutionary. There was certainly none of the thrill of Barack Obama’s elevation. Even set against his peers in Europe, Mr Cameron seemed to offer less disruptive élan than Nicolas Sarkozy and a less intriguingly ruthless career than Angela Merkel. Here was a pragmatic toff, claiming the centre ground back from a Labour Party that had lost its vim. When Mr Cameron failed to win the election outright in May and had to share power with Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats, many feared a government as underwhelming as his election campaign.
Yet within its first 100 days the Con-Lib coalition has emerged as a radical force. For the first time since Margaret Thatcher handbagged the world in 1979, Britain looks like the West’s test-tube (see article). It is daring again—not always in a good way but in one that is likely to be instructive to more timid souls, not least Mr Obama and his Republican foes.
The most obvious audacity of hope lies in the budget, unveiled by George Osborne, the new chancellor of the exchequer, in June. To balance the books, he raised some taxes, notably VAT, but three-quarters of the savings will come from spending cuts. Most government departments will shrink by a quarter, though Mr Osborne excluded the National Health Service from his savagery. In the heated debate between Keynesian economists (who worry that a weak world economy needs more government spending) and fiscal hawks (who believe deficits must be tackled now to stave off Grecian disaster), Britain is the prime exhibit for tough love.
Meanwhile, the Con-Lib coalition is pushing ahead fast with plans to overhaul the British state: schools, the health service, the police and welfare all face dramatic change. A lot more government data are being made public. Unusually for the Tories, there is talk of increasing civil liberties and imprisoning fewer people; and in another sop to the Liberals, Britons next year will vote on a change to their voting system.
London calling to the faraway towns
Inside Westminster people like to point out that none of this is entirely novel. For instance, other countries—notably Canada and Sweden—have slashed budgets sharply, though they did so at a time when the rest of the world economy could pull them along; the school reforms are based on Blairite ideas (blocked by Gordon Brown). But there is a danger of missing the wood for the trees. The onrush of so many projects at one time is certainly daring: not since Mrs Thatcher has a British politician seemed in quite so much of a hurry to do a lot. And, again as with Thatcherism, there is a hint of a big idea.
For some time Mr Cameron, prompted by his closest domestic adviser, Steve Hilton, has talked about creating a Big Society, with more citizen volunteers taking on the state’s work. In office this vague idea has formalised into radical decentralisation: handing power to parents to run schools, to general practitioners to run the NHS, to local voters to pick police commissioners. In many cases, rather than just reduce the supply of the state, the Tories want to reduce the demand for it, changing a culture in which Britons have looked to government for services and answers they could provide themselves.
Why has Britain suddenly become audacious? Ideology has something to do with it. The Tories retain a Thatcherite edge—and one of the (few) beliefs they share with their new Liberal allies is a fear that the state has got too strong. Another factor is the country’s overcentralisation—arguably the greatest in the West. So much power has been grabbed by Whitehall that it is much easier than elsewhere to identify bureaucracy to hack at. Meanwhile, the lack of checks and balances in Britain gives even a coalition prime minister near-dictatorial powers to get laws passed quickly—something Presidents Obama and Sarkozy must envy.
Yet the main prompt has been necessity. The Tories inherited such a massive budget deficit (11% of GDP) that there was little political upside in postponing the pain. Indeed, if there is a spiritual godfather of Britain’s punk politicians, it is that old Celtic headbanger, Gordon Brown. If he had not trashed the government’s finances before the recession, Mr Cameron, who back then was muttering about “sharing the proceeds of growth”, might have had a “muddling through” alternative.
There could be a row going on, down near Slough
As with all gambles, it could go wrong. The biggest danger is that fiscal tightening throttles the recovery: Mr Cameron may need a less hasty plan B. Similarly, many Tory bets, such as the elected police chiefs, could have done with a pilot project. There are possible rifts, even over the Big Society. Mr Osborne’s focus is slimming the state, Mr Hilton’s is decentralising it, which may need cash to lure in “social entrepreneurs” (see article) and local volunteers. And opposition will grow. Teachers and doctors (many of whom supported Mr Clegg) seldom welcome change. In swathes of Britain, including Scotland, the state accounts for the bulk of the economy.
Two of the Tories’ obstinacies look especially worrying. First, they should have used their disastrous inheritance as an excuse to break their promise to maintain NHS spending: even a 5% cut in that bloated department would have eased pressure elsewhere. And second, their redesign of the state is limited by their mistrust of local councils, often a more logical place to devolve political power to than unelected busybodies.
So a gamble it remains. But it is one that in general this newspaper supports. Throughout the rich world, government has simply got too big and Mr Cameron’s crew currently have the most promising approach to trimming it. Others—and not just the tottering likes of Greece and Spain—will surely follow. That includes America. At present, unlike in the 1980s, there is no Reaganesque echo from the other side of the Atlantic: despite the Tea Partiers’ zeal, the Republicans seem as clueless as Mr Obama in producing a credible medium-term plan to balance America’s budget. But pretty soon, as in Europe, somebody will have to come up with one—and Britain, for better or worse, is likely to be the place they will come to for ideas.
Stop the pandering, Pence.
And let’s get serious, America.
Don’t Attack Saddam by Brent Scowcroft, August 15, 2002
Originally Published in the Wall Street Journal
Our nation is presently engaged in a debate about whether to launch a war against Iraq. Leaks of various strategies for an attack on Iraq appear with regularity. The Bush administration vows regime change, but states that no decision has been made whether, much less when, to launch an invasion.
It is beyond dispute that Saddam Hussein is a menace. He terrorizes and brutalizes his own people. He has launched war on two of his neighbors. He devotes enormous effort to rebuilding his military forces and equipping them with weapons of mass destruction. We will all be better off when he is gone.
That said, we need to think through this issue very carefully. We need to analyze the relationship between Iraq and our other pressing priorities — notably the war on terrorism — as well as the best strategy and tactics available were we to move to change the regime in Baghdad.
Saddam’s strategic objective appears to be to dominate the Persian Gulf, to control oil from the region, or both.
That clearly poses a real threat to key U.S. interests. But there is scant evidence to tie Saddam to terrorist organizations, and even less to the Sept. 11 attacks. Indeed Saddam’s goals have little in common with the terrorists who threaten us, and there is little incentive for him to make common cause with them.
He is unlikely to risk his investment in weapons of mass destruction, much less his country, by handing such weapons to terrorists who would use them for their own purposes and leave Baghdad as the return address. Threatening to use these weapons for blackmail — much less their actual use — would open him and his entire regime to a devastating response by the U.S. While Saddam is thoroughly evil, he is above all a power-hungry survivor.
Saddam is a familiar dictatorial aggressor, with traditional goals for his aggression. There is little evidence to indicate that the United States itself is an object of his aggression. Rather, Saddam’s problem with the U.S. appears to be that we stand in the way of his ambitions. He seeks weapons of mass destruction not to arm terrorists, but to deter us from intervening to block his aggressive designs.
Given Saddam’s aggressive regional ambitions, as well as his ruthlessness and unpredictability, it may at some point be wise to remove him from power. Whether and when that point should come ought to depend on overall U.S. national security priorities. Our pre-eminent security priority — underscored repeatedly by the president — is the war on terrorism. An attack on Iraq at this time would seriously jeopardize, if not destroy, the global counter-terrorist campaign we have undertaken.
The United States could certainly defeat the Iraqi military and destroy Saddam’s regime. But it would not be a cakewalk. On the contrary, it undoubtedly would be very expensive — with serious consequences for the U.S. and global economy — and could as well be bloody. In fact, Saddam would be likely to conclude he had nothing left to lose, leading him to unleash whatever weapons of mass destruction he possesses.
Israel would have to expect to be the first casualty, as in 1991 when Saddam sought to bring Israel into the Gulf conflict. This time, using weapons of mass destruction, he might succeed, provoking Israel to respond, perhaps with nuclear weapons, unleashing an Armageddon in the Middle East. Finally, if we are to achieve our strategic objectives in Iraq, a military campaign very likely would have to be followed by a large-scale, long-term military occupation.
But the central point is that any campaign against Iraq, whatever the strategy, cost and risks, is certain to divert us for some indefinite period from our war on terrorism. Worse, there is a virtual consensus in the world against an attack on Iraq at this time. So long as that sentiment persists, it would require the U.S. to pursue a virtual go-it-alone strategy against Iraq, making any military operations correspondingly more difficult and expensive. The most serious cost, however, would be to the war on terrorism. Ignoring that clear sentiment would result in a serious degradation in international cooperation with us against terrorism. And make no mistake, we simply cannot win that war without enthusiastic international cooperation, especially on intelligence.
Possibly the most dire consequences would be the effect in the region. The shared view in the region is that Iraq is principally an obsession of the U.S. The obsession of the region, however, is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If we were seen to be turning our backs on that bitter conflict — which the region, rightly or wrongly, perceives to be clearly within our power to resolve — in order to go after Iraq, there would be an explosion of outrage against us. We would be seen as ignoring a key interest of the Muslim world in order to satisfy what is seen to be a narrow American interest.
Even without Israeli involvement, the results could well destabilize Arab regimes in the region, ironically facilitating one of Saddam’s strategic objectives. At a minimum, it would stifle any cooperation on terrorism, and could even swell the ranks of the terrorists. Conversely, the more progress we make in the war on terrorism, and the more we are seen to be committed to resolving the Israel-Palestinian issue, the greater will be the international support for going after Saddam.
If we are truly serious about the war on terrorism, it must remain our top priority. However, should Saddam Hussein be found to be clearly implicated in the events of Sept. 11, that could make him a key counter-terrorist target, rather than a competing priority, and significantly shift world opinion toward support for regime change.
In any event, we should be pressing the United Nations Security Council to insist on an effective no-notice inspection regime for Iraq — any time, anywhere, no permission required. On this point, senior administration officials have opined that Saddam Hussein would never agree to such an inspection regime. But if he did, inspections would serve to keep him off balance and under close observation, even if all his weapons of mass destruction capabilities were not uncovered. And if he refused, his rejection could provide the persuasive casus belli which many claim we do not now have. Compelling evidence that Saddam had acquired nuclear-weapons capability could have a similar effect.
In sum, if we will act in full awareness of the intimate interrelationship of the key issues in the region, keeping counter-terrorism as our foremost priority, there is much potential for success across the entire range of our security interests — including Iraq. If we reject a comprehensive perspective, however, we put at risk our campaign against terrorism as well as stability and security in a vital region of the world.
*Mr. Scowcroft, national security adviser under Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, is founder and president of the Forum for International Policy.
Dated: Wall Street Journal 15 Aug 2002 p.A12
8 years later:
4,400+ US soldiers killed, 35,000+ wounded.
100,000+ Iraq civilians killed.
50,000 US combat troops still in Iraq (and will be for another decade).
Trillions and trillions and trillions of (borrowed) dollars spent.
Oh, and we’re still trying to sort out the Middle East Peace process.
Thanks, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and all the chicken hawks on TV and in the Congress who went all in on this foolish adventure.
A foolish adventure that took root in the arrogance and greed of empire.
A foolish adventure that smart men and women like Brent Scowcroft warned against.
A foolish, bloody, worthless adventure that nobody can now claim was anything but.
Just try.
Possibly The Most Offensive Letter To The Editor Of The Primary (via The Concord Monitor)
Perhaps The Ovide Supporter Believes That This Would Be A More Appropriate Kelly Advertisement?
I’ve mellowed in my old age, so I’ll refrain from the snark.
But this LTE is insulting. To everyone involved.
And I don’t understand why The Concord Monitor would print it.
Senator Tom Coburn Is Only Guilty Of Actually Saying What Most Everyone Is Thinking
Coburn on Newt Gingrich:
Gingrich “is a super-smart man, but he doesn’t know anything about commitment to marriage,” he said of the thrice-married former House speaker. “He’s the last person I’d vote for for president of the United States. His life indicates he does not have a commitment to the character traits necessary to be a great president.”
Coburn on a 2010 Republican takeover of Congress:
“The real problem is that America is asleep,” Coburn said, speaking mostly in response to questions from an audience of about 65 people at the Wagoner Civic Center. “America is not involved. I think this election they’ll be more involved than they ever have been, and the reason is they’re scared.”
The audience generally seemed to find comfort in the potential for a Republican takeover of Congress, but Coburn warned that that alone would not necessarily yield the desired results.
“If the conservatives in Congress gain control and don’t live up to expectations,” he said, “the Republican Party will be dead.”
Coburn on the military industrial complex:
Coburn also expanded on his recent criticism of arms spending, echoing President Dwight Eisenhower’s 1961 warning against the “military-industrial complex.”
“I’m not capable of telling you, because I don’t have the training, whether we have the forces we need,” he said. “I can tell you that if you add our forces and compare them to the next 19 nations, … we’re stronger.”
He continued: “The problem is, we have allowed the military-industrial complex to make things unaffordable. There’s no choke chain. We need a choke chain. When the cost of an F-35 triples during development, something’s wrong.”
I Just Couldn’t Be More Over New Hampshire’s 2010 Primary (even though the next two weeks should be the most interesting)
I’m just grumpy.
It’s a late summer Monday, it’s hot and it feels as though this primary, which has been mostly fought over 20th century ideas, has been going on FOREVER.
Yucka.
Take it away, boys!