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Thursday, April 21, 2005
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Rice In Russia.
"Da, nyet, nyet, nyet!" ~ Kommersant Rice In Russia
Sean-Paul Kelley | San Antonio | April 21
The Agonist - By all accounts our intrepid Russian expert and Secretary of State made a complete fool of herself during her most recent trip to Russia. I'm not surprised.
[The Agonist]
9:55:59 PM 
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Replacing one independent from Vermont with another?.
I'll get into the possible candidates and musical-chairs game in today's political round-up this afternoon, but it's important to consider the choice before Vermont Dems when looking at the now-open Senate race. Sen. Jim Jeffords, who announced yesterday he would not seek re-election, is an independent who left the GOP in 2001 to caucus with Dems. [...]
[The Carpetbagger Report]
9:50:02 PM
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In Your Heart, You Know He's Right.
Kerry: Don't tell me what God wants
``I am sick and tired of a bunch of people trying to tell me that God wants a bunch of conservative judges on the court and that's why we have to change the rules of the United States Senate,'' Kerry told a group of Bay State residents who traveled to Capitol Hill for U.S. Rep. Martin Meehan's annual legislative seminar.
The Bay State senator was referring to a possible GOP move to alter Senate rules that would prevent Democrats from filibustering President Bush's judicial nominees.
``I am sick and tired of (them saying) they somehow have a better understanding of Christianity, of the Judeo-Christian ethic, of values,'' Kerry added. ``We're talking about values? You show me where in the New Testament Jesus ever talked about the value of having taxes and taking money from poor people to give to the rich people in this country.''
It's time we stop these loons from hijacking our nation's true values. [Oliver Willis - Like Kryptonite To Stupid]
9:42:38 PM
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Santorum's Pay For Play Approach To Hurricane Warnings.
After getting campaign contributions from a private weather forecasting firm, Ricky Santorum introduced a bill last week that would ban the National Weather Service from competing with the firm, and may even prevent the NWS from issuing online hurricane warnings....
[The Left Coaster]
9:39:15 PM
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Health of Nations: Germany.
It's been a long day, I desperately need some coffee, and it's really hot in my room. So you wouldn't believe how excited I am to dive into yet another country's health care structure. Let's just say I love...
[Ezra Klein]
9:33:18 PM
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War woes.
Gilliard has a spectacular overview of the Iraq quagmire, complete with cool maps and diagrams. After a good analysis, he arrives at the following conclusions:
Rumsfeld's eagerness to use Iraq as a test bed for his transformation of the military was a disaster. While the US handled stage one capably, his indifferent to disorder set the stage for stage two.
Leaving open the ammo dumps set the bed for the resistance. The Iraqi resistance is the most lavishly equipped in history. Every unit well armed with modern weapons.
Poor planning left the US without their Third World auxillary armies to provide basic security. Without the large Pakistani and Nigerian units to patrol towns and provide basic area denial, US units have had to do two jobs, security and quick reaction.
Disbanding the Army set the stage for the resistance to have trained people running it. These men didn't learn war from textbooks. The senior folks learned in combat and passed those lessons down
US forces have adapted to tactics only to have those tactics shift.
The Iraqis have minimized the use of helicopter units and limited them to observation and attack.
The Iraqi resistance has also limited the use of the roadnet. Without convoys, resupply is impposible. This control is so dominant that US units now get some supplies by air.
They have also thoroughly penetrated US assets in Iraq. No Iraqi unit can move without the guerrilas eventually finding out.
US units are unable to leave their bases except on patrol. During the Vietnam War, Americans could frequent bars and live in the cities. No American can live in Iraq without security at the risk of kidnapping and death.
The lack of infantry leaves the US unable to sustain military successes when they do occur. The scarest military resource is not armor, but trained combat infantry. Sure, you can send artillerymen out on patrol and get tankers on foot. But infantry is irreplacable for guerrilla warfare. US combat deaths are down recently, but it's not because of any pacification of the country. Violence is as high as ever. It's because since the elections, the Iraqi armed forces have taken a greater burden of anti-insurgency operations. And even then, we're still losing an average of well over a soldier a day.
As Gilliard shows in his post (like I said, go read it), the insurgency is broad-based, country-wide, and has effective control over the nation's ground transportation routes. Diplomatic failures ensure that the US doesn't have the forces to conduct offensive operations and rear guard duties (the usual role of coalition alllies without the advanced offensive weaponry the US enjoys), nor the forces to follow up on successful operations and press the advantage. Rummy's obsessive efforts to "reshape" the US military based on fanciful think-tank theory has led to untold deaths and a military ill-equipped to handle a modern insurgency (think humvee armor). Tactical mistakes (like disbanding the Iraqi army and refusal to guard high-explosive weapons dumps) have fueled the insurgency.
It's been what, three months since the election, and still no government? Beheaded bodies are washing up on shores. Helicopters are still being shot down. Sectarian violence is on the rice. US forces are still taking daily casualties, while Iraqi forces and police take massive casualties.
Iraq is no closer to being pacified. Victory is nowhere in sight.
[Daily Kos]
4:15:50 PM
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Alan Greenspan Brings Plenty of Refreshments.
Alan Greenspan shows up for the sane-fiscal-policy party and brings plenty of refreshments, as he calls for the reinstatement of and the strengthening of the 1990 Budget Enforcement Act's PAYGO provisions: FRB: Testimony, Greenspan--Budget process reforms--April 21, 2005: [T]he unified budget ran a deficit equal to about 3-1/2 percent of gross domestic product in fiscal 2004, and federal debt held by the public as a percent of GDP has risen noticeably since it bottomed out in 2001.... [A]s the latest projections from the Administration and the Congressional Budget Office suggest, our budget position is unlikely to improve substantially in the coming years unless major deficit-reducing actions are taken. In my judgment, the necessary choices will be especially difficult to implement without the restoration of a set of procedural restraints on the budget-making process. For about a decade, the rules laid out in the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990 and in the later modifications and extensions of the act provided a framework that helped the Congress establish a better fiscal balance.... Many of the provisions that helped restrain budgetary decisionmaking in the 1990s--in particular, the limits on discretionary spending and the PAYGO requirements--were violated ever more frequently; finally, in 2002, they...
[Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal]
4:14:21 PM
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When Democrats Attack, Part II.
On the same day that Ken Salazar goes after James Dobson and the rest of the creeps at Focus on the Family (see last blog post), conservative Democratic Senator Mark Pryor of Arkansas did much of the same:
Sen. Mark Pryor lashed out Wednesday at the Christian evangelicals who have joined the attack on Democratic filibusters of President Bush's judicial nominees.
Their tactics threaten "to make the followers of Jesus Christ just another special-interest group," Pryor said in a conference call with Arkansas reporters. "It is presumptuous of them to think that they represent all Christians in America, even to say they represent all evangelical Christians," added Pryor, 42, a first-term Democrat who has considered himself an evangelical Christian for 25 years.
The term generally refers to members of conservative Christian denominations who believe that proselytizing is an essential part of the religious experience.
Pryor said he was "very disappointed" that some of the movement's leaders "have entered into this fray." It's clear that Reid is no longer content to play defense. It's time to put the Religious Right on the defensive, and the way you do that is by attacking, attacking, attacking. These two incidents weren't a coincidence. There is a grand strategy behind this all, and so far, it looks good.
[Daily Kos]
4:13:24 PM
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When Democrats attack.
This time, it's Ken Salazar:
Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., lashed out at Focus on the Family on Thursday, saying the group is using "un-Christian" political tactics in the fight over White House judicial appointments.
Salazar defended Democrats' right to filibuster what they consider objectionable nominees and blasted the Colorado Springs-based evangelical Christian group for recent ads urging him to "STOP the nonsense."
"I do think that what has happened here is there has been a hijacking of the U.S. Senate by what I call the religious right wing of the country," Salazar said at a Capitol Hill news conference Wednesday.
He singled out Focus on the Family by name, objecting to full-page newspaper ads that the ministry's political arm recently placed, targeting 20 senators in 15 states.
"I think what has happened is Focus on the Family has been hijacking Christianity and become an appendage of the Republican Party," Salazar said in an interview. "I think it's using Christianity and religion in a very unprincipled way." For a conservative Senate Democrat to argue -- as the increasingly vocal religious left does -- that the Right has hijacked religion for cynical political purposes is a pretty big deal. Our guys have been afraid to take on the Religious Right for fear of being labelled anti-Christian. We need the Salazars in our caucus to fire back. And it's about time it's happened.
(Thanks to rweinst01.) [Daily Kos]
4:12:50 PM
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"My conscience got me,"
declared Senator George Voinovich, prompting the Senate Foreign Relations committee to postpone voting on the nomination of John Bolton as U.N. Ambassador, and almost immediately becoming the newest target of a right wing ad campaign, after an "amazing afternoon."
[Cursor.org]
7:05:43 AM
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The Bush Administration Budget Clown Show Continues.
We need PAYGO. We need super-PAYGO with standby tax increases and spending sequesters. We need it now. Alex Tabarrok has intelligent things to say: Marginal Revolution: No surprise: In February I wrote, "My prediction is that it will be easier to add $540 billion in Medicare spending than it will be to cut $5 billion in farm subsidies." Today, the Washington Post reports: Farm Subsidies May Not Face Limits...The Bush administration has signaled that it will not pressure Congress to enact limits on government payments to big farmers this year...The subsidy cuts and other proposed changes in the farm program were hailed by budget cutters, environmentalists and foreign governments when they were included in the administration's budget proposals in February. They have run into heavy resistance in some parts of the Farm Belt. Southern cotton and rice growers in the GOP's political base would be hit particularly hard. And how is this for a laugh? Reducing agricultural spending by $5.4 billion is [was? AT] a key part of the administration's plan to cut the federal defict in half. So far, however, the the Senate Budget Committee has agree to cuts amounting to just $2.8 billion. The Federal deficit is currently...
[Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal]
6:20:11 AM
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© Copyright
2005
Michael Mussington.
Last update:
5/1/2005; 4:29:08 AM.
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