Here’s what I have right now:
- U.N. Finds Signs of Work by Iran Toward Nuclear Device (NYT) — Surprise, surprise, Sgt. Carter!
- Cain Says He Won’t Drop Out Of Presidential Race (NPR) — Hey, that’s just like what Silvio Berlusconi was saying yesterday! He says this as a second accuser steps forward.
- Italy’s Berlusconi vows to resign (BBC) — How do you like the way I set that one up?
- Philly boxing legend Joe Frazier dies (Philadelphia Inquirer) — Don’t know about you, but that was news to me: I thought he was our boxing legend.
- Haley heads to California to raise cash, speak (Post and Courier) — Because, you know, that’s where we, the people SC, need her to be.
- Riverbanks Zoo announces record-setting gift (thestate.com) — Thought you might like a bit of good news.
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We’re up to accuser number 4, by my count. Of course, Cain swears he’s never done “anything inappropriate with anybody”–heck, the Pope has probably done *something* inappropriate with somebody. Seriously bad damage control.
Y’all realize, of course, that Cain HAD to be telling the truth at that press conference, because he had lots of American flags behind him. Pay attention, people…
I got my property tax bill the other day and there were really only two items that I can complain about: 40% of the bill goes for school bonds – basically to pay for the excessive growth in Northeast Columbia over the past two decades AND because the schools that are built go far beyond the basics. Bricks and mortar won’t help kids graduate. Spend it on teachers instead.
And the second item was $26 for Riverbanks Zoo. Hmmm… hard for me to understand that mandatory fee. Zoos are not what tax dollars should be spent on (particularly when only $14 I believe went for Mental Health programs). How about we swap those two? Or shift all the zoo funding to the mentally ill? This is one of those items that gets snuck into the tax bill without any ability for the public to say anything about it.
Seriously Doug, complaining about a $26 bill for the zoo. Ok it may be galling on principle but the zoo does attract tourists to the area and is one of the few things we have to brag about. Not the mountain I would die on.
As for Iran. I hope Brad can understand this very, very basic concept. It’s not hard but somehow I’m sure he and the other all-war, all-the-time folks can at least acknowledge this point. Simply put, when we went into Iraq on false pretenses that makes ALL future threats questionable in the minds of the voters. When we go in to every damn country that has ever done anything mean to anyone regardless of the threat level actually imposed on the U.S. the credibility level is permanently reduced for the administration and future administrations. It is incumbent on the American people to never, ever trust fully and completely anything any administration tells us about the threat from nations who spend 1/50 what we do on weaponry.
And this ties in nicely with the Hermain Cain debacle. He’s obviously not being honest with us. That should tell you something about how he will treat the people in some future crisis. Haven’t we had enough lies from a president on matters of war (Johnson, Bush Jr. especially)? Don’t need another serial liar.
I’ll accept your assertion that the concept is very, very basic, but I reject it entirely.
And I recall no false pretenses.
As I knew you would. Oh well, no new information gained from the second kick of a mule.
@bud
How much did you pay for the zoo?
And multiply $26 by every home in Richland County… kind of a large chunk of money that could be spent on something that benefits more people.
It’s not the amount, it’s the principle. Zoos should not be funded by tax dollars. Imagine the impact we could have on feeding the hungry if all that money went to that cause instead of feeding lions.
But then it’s difficult to convince you that other people shouldn’t pay for the things a few people want for free. You’re for spending my $26 every time.
“And I recall no false pretenses.”
Go watch Colin Powell’s dog-and-pony show for the U.N. Then show us where any of the information he presented proved to be true.
Seems like a pretty good time to update the Bud GOP presidential odds. A whole lot going on right now so here goes.
Mitt Romney is just not gaining traction among about 70% of GOP voters. That suggests his odds are, if anything, dropping a tad.
Rick Perry ads are now flooding the airways and should give him a small bounce.
Newt Gingrich is creeping up and is probably now the number 2 favorite. Like everyone else, including Nate Silver, I just did not see that coming. He does very well in the debates and given his red-meat attacks on the MSM he’s starting to gain traction.
Michelle Bachmann is floundering badly but given the extreme flux in the GOP this time around I’m reluctant to rule anyone out.
Rick Santorum’s chances are still very low. But he could gain some Cain support if Gropegate continues to evolve in ways unfavorable to the pizza man.
Jon Huntsman seems like such a reasonable guy. That’s probably why he only garners 1% in the polls. Not sure why he continues. Perhaps a book deal? Seems implausible.
Ron Paul will just never get more than his 10-15% given his pragmatic military views.
And of course we have good ole Hermain Cain and Gropegate. This is actually pretty complicated. Even though it’s pretty clear these women are telling the truth, if polls don’t show a drop in support within the next couple of weeks he may very well weather the storm. Sex scandals just don’t seem to have much affect on voter attitudes if a candidate is willing to fight and even lie. Just take a look at Bill Clinton’s various problems in that area. Yet he finished his presidency with high approval ratings. It seems likely that his core support will remain but that he’s unlikely to gain new adherents.
Romney 5-4
Gingrich 4-1
Cain 5-1
Perry 5-1
Bachmann 10-1
Paul 10-1
Santorum 20-1
Huntsman 25-1
Doug, this is also very basic: relaying info or conclusions that turn out to be incorrect does NOT equate to pretense.
A great deal of political acrimony has been generated by people refusing to recognize that.
“relaying info or conclusions that turn out to be incorrect does NOT equate to pretense.”
Really? So then when those conclusions turned out to be incorrect, why did we keep going forward with the mission?
You don’t have to be a complete cynic like me to grasp that there was a possibility that the data was tailored to match a pre-determined objective. There is credible evidence that any data that did not fit the message was ignored.
Doug, this is also very basic: relaying info or conclusions that turn out to be incorrect does NOT equate to pretense.
-Brad
Seems pretensive to presume the “incorrect” information as conveyed by Powell and others was regarded as “correct” at the time. I think they knew it to be false, or at least highly questionable, AT THE TIME THE CLAIMS WERE MADE. Hence the mantle of pretense belongs on the adminstration and their defenders.
But setting that aside I was trying to make a someone different point. If you’re going to claim something as a threat you better take into account the backlash by the public if that threat proves non-credible. Because later on the public is less likely to believe a future threat is real, hence a legitimate threat may not have public support. Not saying Iran is a credible threat but selling it as such is made more difficult by the false claims made about Iraq.
@Doug, and @Brad: without rehashing the whole Iraq argument, I’ll just echo Doug’s comments and reply to Brad by saying that Brad’s (and the Bush Administration’s) explanation that it was error and not deception or twisting/exaggeration would be more plausible were it not for the well-known preexisting geopolitical viewpoints (neocon) of the architects of the policy… Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle, et al. We have a certain amount of historical record that 9/11 was almost seen as a godsend by the most extreme of these, a chance to try out their theories in Iraq, with Bush actually as the more reluctant agent at first. Brad and the Bush Admin officials can protest till the end of time that the errors were honest but a major swath of the American people do not believe these officials and will never believe them, because they were so clearly not objective disinterested evaluators of the evidence to begin with. When the history of the dissolution of popular trust and faith in our federal government is written, these individuals will be front-and-center defendents on historical trial, along with LBJ & Bob McNamara et al, Nixon/Haldeman/Mitchell, and yes even (thrown in here somewhat for Brad’s sake) the wagging finger of Bill Clinton.
I suspect we will always be kicking the Iraq war issue around on this blog. Folks are just so passionate about it. And that’s a good thing. The way we got into it should never be forgotten. Whenever it’s defended it should always be challenged. Otherwise we increase the odds of the same catostrophic blunder again. And that’s just something we can not afford to do.
great, Phillip–now the terrorists win. Why do you hate America?
Thank you, Kathryn. I didn’t want to have to ask that question yet again. Nice teamwork…
Phillip and I are both describing the same elephant, just from different perspectives. Phillip suggests something nefarious about the neocons wanting to deal with Saddam — and, on the larger scale, begin a process of transforming the region from a place where we’d put up with tyranny or anything else as long as the oil kept flowing (and THAT was the big, strategic change post-9/11) — whereas in my mind those were the things to do.
And WMD — which is what y’all are talking about when you talk about “pretense” and such — was never a big part of the reason to go in there, for me.
And yes, I know it was important to other people.
I remember it crossing my mind at one point in ’02 — What if the WMD isn’t there? I thought, What if Saddam is double-faking everybody on this, and he’s actually gotten rid of the stuff? That didn’t seem even remotely likely, but it crossed my mind. And when it did, I thought ohmygod, it will be just like Vietnam all over again — people will be so demoralized and angry that we’ll crawl into our shell for a generation. Again. The reason I worried was that, while the administration had articulated all the other reasons to go in, I worried that the WMD was being overemphasized.
Fortunately, that wasn’t going to happen (the WMD not being there, I mean). But it did.
And that is a very bad thing.
If everything had gone as planned, and we’d found the caches of gas that we know Saddam once had, and shown them to the world before destroying them, and everyone agreed that the U.S. had gone in and done exactly what it had planned (and if we hadn’t bungled the occupation for several years, which I REALLY didn’t see coming), then we probably wouldn’t be having this trouble with Iran. Not quite like this, anyway.
The problem now is that Iran knows that the West is highly unlikely to intervene until it is too late to prevent them from having the Bomb. If we were still seen as a superpower that might jump on you with both feet at any time it’s hard to imagine them playing this same game.
Being perceived as the chastened power that is hesitant to act militarily does not give you a strong hand in world affairs. Quite the opposite.
Fortunately, things could be worse. Obama may do a good impression of a guy who’s hesitant to commit — all that business of letting Britain and France take the lead in Libya and then reluctantly joining in — doesn’t obscure the fact that he is WAY more likely to go after your butt if you cross America than the tough-talking Texan ever was. He just prefers special ops and drones to sending in the mechanized divisions.
Brad, you always get on to others who don’t read what you say so I know you will go back and read what I’ve said at least twice now. Rather than “Bud thinks it’s Great” I’m saying here BECAUSE we went in to Iraq on false pretenses (whether the Bush administration knew it to be false or not, that’s beside the point for this discussion) when the WMD DID NOT SHOW UP our credibility was lost AND that made it more difficult to deal with a future REAL crisis. And that’s one of the real tragedies of Iraq – the lost credibility – a BAD thing. So why can Iraq be seen as a good cause given this obvious effect? Even setting aside the huge costs in lives and treasure we have this immense cost – It has weakened us as a world power in both the eyes of others and in the credibility voters to trust the president. And now Obama has to deal with this credibility problem created by Bush and company.
You know what, Bud, you are absolutely right. I got carried away, writing that in a hurry, and I made an assumption that was directly contradicted by what you had said.
I’m going back to change it.
It’s fixed now.
I really feel bad about that, Bud. I did something I abhor, using you as a straw man.
My only excuse is that I had read your comments earlier in the day, while in a meeting, and only had a chance to answer at any length hours later.
I hadn’t even intended to respond to your comments — I set out to respond to Phillip — so I didn’t go back and look at yours. Then I got carried away and swept you up into it.
The really bad thing about what I did was that I really HATE it when someone uses the “people like you” rhetorical device. You know, like when they say, “you pro-life people only care about life until the baby is born,” which is grossly unfair and untrue. Yet people say it because they have at some time or other run into someone else of whom it WAS true. And I hate that kind of lumping people together. As you know, as an antipartisan, I think it’s important to treat each person in terms of what that person actually says and believes, not as some automaton representing a group.
And that’s what I did. I’ve seen so many arguments in which antiwar people talk about it being a good thing for the U.S. to have “learned its lesson” so it won’t ever try to use its power in the world again (mostly with reference to Vietnam, but I’ve heard echoes of it more recently) that I just threw you into that box.
And that was wrong.
But I just realized a really cool thing. For once, maybe you and I actually AGREE on something having to do with Iraq.
We disagree on whether it was a good idea to go in, but we agree that now we are less likely to be credible in leaning on Iran…
That’s cool. Let’s not say anything else and spoil the moment…
y’know, I was thinking back to the good old days when neocons were the scariest thing on the right. [sigh]
Now we have yet another of the GOP POTUS contenders saying he won’t drop out of the race. I actually feel for Rick Perry. I had one of those embarrassing forgetful moments several years ago. I was assigned to introduce one of the speakers at a big convention held in Charleston and I forgot her name. After about 30 seconds of shear, unadulterated panic I finally rememebered. So even though I don’t care for Rick Perry I can empathize.
I’m with you, Bud. In fact, I just said the same thing in a separate post. I think his campaign’s spin on this is right — it just makes him human.
But boy, it was excruciating to watch.