I was more just making fun of you for saying that he brought it up tomorrow, which would make it a hell of a thing for you to know already

jerseyhoya wrote:I was more just making fun of you for saying that he brought it up tomorrow, which would make it a hell of a thing for you to know already

Glenn Greenwald tears apart Evan Bayh:

Bayh wants to send other people into every proposed war he can find and keep them there forever without ever bearing any of the costs himself -- not in military service for him or his family nor even in higher taxes to pay for his glorious wars. Sacrifice is for everyone other than Evan Bayh and his friends. He runs around praising himself as a "deficit hawk" while recklessly supporting wars and indefinite occupations that the country can't afford and which drive us further into debt. He feigns concern over the "deficit" only when it comes time to deny ordinary Americans benefits which he and his family already possess in abundance. He is a loyal servant to the insurance and health care industries over his own constituents -- as his wife sits on the Boards of numerous health care giants, who, right when Bayh became a Senator, began paying her millions of dollars in cash and stock. And this Sermonizer of Personal Responsibility is the ultimate by-product of nepotism, following faithfully and effortlessly in the footsteps of his Daddy-Senator, whose seat he now occupies. The fact that he's a Democrat -- and was Obama's close-second choice for Vice President -- just underscores how bipartisan these afflictions are.

Real deficit hawks should be the strongest advocates of bringing back the draft. Only then will we step back from our imperial pretensions and maybe start to get our spending priorities straight.

I'm perfectly fine (as most liberals evidently aren't, based on what I've been reading the last few days) with entitlement reforms. But cutting Social Security or Medicare, let alone the relative pittance of discretionary spending, while continuing to write blank checks for unwinnable if not pointless wars gets it exactly wrong.

Once again, because you support staying in Afghanistan, does not mean you support staying in all situations for "unwinnable" wars.

I'm a left leaning liberal and I'm telling you that you're cutting and running.

To be fair, dajafi, it turns out right wingers strongly oppose any cuts to at least one entitlement program--Medicare.

jeff2sf wrote:Once again, because you support staying in Afghanistan, does not mean you support staying in all situations for "unwinnable" wars.

I'm a left leaning liberal and I'm telling you that you're cutting and running.

You're a left-leaning liberal using a mindless right-wing talking point. Po-mo.

But even if it's true, I'd really rather use the trillion bucks on something else and have some terrorist (who's likely not really a terrorist, but someone who wants foreign soldiers the fuck out of his country just as you or I would) think I'm a wuss.

What you haven't made clear is if you support this war for penile insecurity reasons, because "the military says so" (which I think is like asking a mechanic if maybe you should get some work done on your car), or for some actual practical reason. If it's the last, please, share.

edit: my original point was to highlight the hypocrisy and mindlessness of those whose deficit concerns melt away whenever it's time to fuck up some dark-skinned baddies. If you care about unsustainable budgetary practices, at least be consistent. But I'm happy enough to argue about Afghanistan and our overall transformation into an empire if that's what folks want.

First off, I was being ironical with the cut and run thing.

But again, it's NOT like I'm war crazy. I just don't believe the facts on the ground have changed as much as you do during the last 10 months.

I also am ticked that you, and many others like you, told Bush he should listen to his generals with respect to Iraq.

Now I come to find that a president should only listen to his generals when they support what a given party wants.

jeff2sf wrote:First off, I was being ironical with the cut and run thing.

But again, it's NOT like I'm war crazy. I just don't believe the facts on the ground have changed as much as you do during the last 10 months.

I also am ticked that you, and many others like you, told Bush he should listen to his generals with respect to Iraq.

Now I come to find that a president should only listen to his generals when they support what a given party wants.

I don't remember writing that Bush should "listen to his generals," though I might have. (I'm also not crazy about being lumped in with "the liberals," but I know this is your style; you over-generalize.) But if it makes you feel better, I thought the Iraq War was a dumb idea in the first place. Not having wanted to go in, I wanted to do whatever would most quickly facilitate getting out. Still do.

On Afghanistan, I think what's changed in the last ten months is that there's now no excuse for having any illusions about the Karzai regime. His total lack of legitimacy is the closest parallel to Vietnam. While he's in power and inept/corrupt, we can't succeed there. And we can't or won't force him out.

Beyond that, I think our entire military posture is a terrible fit for the global situation of the 21st century. It's more likely than not that we'll never fight a "total war" like WWII again, but that's how our armed forces are structured. And they're so wired in politically that it's all but impossible to get at the spending--thanks largely to people like Evan Bayh and Lindsay Graham, who are Daddy Warbucks when it comes to war but go all Scrooge on domestic expenditures.

I'm not accusing you of being "war crazy." You actually sound more like a JFK/LBJ-era mainstream Democrat than anything else: you want both guns and butter. That's fine, but my belief is that we can't afford both, and I'd rather have the butter.

The guns and butter thing is so played.

I don't want "guns and butter". I want to fight a war that the president I voted for told me we needed to fight and excuse me if I think you, and other liberals, would just find some other reason to not support fighting if the Karzai meme didn't exist.

Fortunately the president sees it my way, which is actually his way.

I'm sure the president is grateful for your blind faith, as well as your evident indifference to all the other things he also campaigned on but hasn't done much, or anything, about: finance industry regulation, equal rights for gays, reversing Bush's detention policies, keeping a meaningful public option in health care reform.

It's always easy in America to be tough and brave with your kids' money and other people's lives. I hope it feels good.

Go ahead and throw your tantrum when you don't get your way. You're acting just like PTK here. You're better than this.

It's my money just as much as it's your money, possibly more of my money depending on who's salary is higher, a pissing match we don't need to get into.

Yeah, I'm just like PtK.

I'm hardly "throwing a temper tantrum," just trying to get you to say anything on behalf of your position besides "I trust Obama and he campaigned on this." He campaigned on a lot of stuff, most of which holds up much better a year later than "let's spend additional billions on a war we probably can't win, or even define what 'win' means."

But at this point I'm satisfied that there's nothing of actual substance in your argument, so we can drop it. Classy with the money thing, though.

I said we don't need to compare salaries, not that I make more than you do (which was a direct response to how I'm somehow freely spending other people's money).

As for temper tantrum, you absolutely are throwing one. I'm sorry that a lot of people more in tune with what's going on there than you, me, and Glenn Greenwald (your favorite) think we need to fight and actually increase our involvement. So a guy who didn't start that war, has shown no willingness to just throw around "other people's money and lives", has decided he will continue to fight this war because it needs to be fought.

The reason, as if this needed to be said, that he's more easily able to "accomplish" this, is because the right also supports him on this. Barack Obama is no war mongerer. He's not likely to keep us there indefinitely with no signs of progress.

What's REALLY hilarious is though, if he DOES keep them there indefinitely, I'll be the one who votes against him while you'll be the one who holds your nose and votes for him.

These are the same people who were just as sure that we needed to go into Iraq because of WMD and Saddam's involvement with 9/11. They never meet a war, or potential war, that they don't want to fight. It's actually kind of cute that you still trust them. It's unfortunate that Obama does, though.

And the fact that the real warmongers are for it, because they're warmongers, isn't much of an endorsement.

What's REALLY hilarious is though, if he DOES keep them there indefinitely, I'll be the one who votes against him while you'll be the one who holds your nose and votes for him.

And you'll vote for... who? The Republican who argues that the problem is we didn't send more troops and start three other wars? Some third-party nobody? This isn't really the devastating ironic retort you seem to think it is.

dajafi wrote:These are the same people who were just as sure that we needed to go into Iraq because of WMD and Saddam's involvement with 9/11. They never meet a war, or potential war, that they don't want to fight. It's actually kind of cute that you still trust them. It's unfortunate that Obama does, though.

And the fact that the real warmongers are for it, because they're warmongers, isn't much of an endorsement.

What's REALLY hilarious is though, if he DOES keep them there indefinitely, I'll be the one who votes against him while you'll be the one who holds your nose and votes for him.

And you'll vote for... who? The Republican who argues that the problem is we didn't send more troops and start three other wars? Some third-party nobody? This isn't really the devastating ironic retort you seem to think it is.

Who are the same people? All the generals and people working at the defense department installed by Democrats... they all clamored for war with Iraq? Again, you're doing the same thing you always do. You don't want to fight any war, Republicans want to fight EVERY war.

And those of us in the middle must find the right path.

The point is that even as your stomping your feet and calling everyone who disagrees with you cavalier/reckless, you're still going to vote for him.

I honestly don't know why you're being so shrill. I'm sorry I disagree with you, but I'm not just going to let you get away with talking about how you're the only responsible one here because of what you believe. It's PTK by the numbers.

Yeah, most of those Democrats were for the Iraq war. They were in think tanks at the time, writing guest pieces for The New Republic and going on CNN to prove how tough they were.

It is true that I pretty much don't want wars, unless our security is directly threatened. Then again, this isn't a war anymore, and hasn't been since the Taliban government fell. It's an exercise in security and nation-building that you seem to think we can do by remote-control from halfway around the world, in a culture we don't understand, with a governing partner who's basically a heroin grower with a funky wardrobe, at a cost of a trillion bucks or so. Are you really okay with putting it "on the card"? You've got kids. I don't (yet).

As you're starting to get a little shrill yourself, I think you must be realizing that your position is pretty substance-free... as is generally true of those who fetishize moderation for moderation's sake. (Also, it's impressive that you've gone from "left-leaning liberal" to "the middle" in an hour or two.) If calling me PtK helps you process all that, I'm glad to help.

Left leaning liberal was a typo, or an unnecessary redundancy if you will. I lean to the left though am in the middle and I should have edited it as soon as I saw how stupid that sounded.

I don't think they were for the war so much as they weren't as strongly opposed to that as they could be (or they realized they had no shot of stopping it and did a political calculus, which is ugh, but whatever).

If you don't see a little bit of PTK in this, I don't know what to tell you. Think about what you're doing. You're telling someone who you've met in person, who helped you start the GoodPhight about a subject that you just said "you know very little about" that he's "happy to spend other people's money and other kid's lives".

That offends me. I'm not sure that what they're doing in Afghanistan is correct or winnable or whatever. But since the people I trust to do the job say it needs to be done, I'm going to support them for a little while longer. I'm sorry this now equates to me being a neo-con.

I didn't mean to offend you or call you a monster (or even a neo-con), nor to present myself as self-righteous. Maybe I'm wrong; since our country is doing this, I sincerely hope that I am wrong, and that you and Obama are right.

But what worries me is that it won't work out, as it generally hasn't on war decisions in the last 50 years (I'll concede the first Gulf War, and even the initial decision to knock off the Taliban was defensible; if we'd done what we're about to do seven years ago instead of getting all Trotskyite in Iraq, that might have worked out), and not realize it, and continue to make basically the same mistake yet again in Iran or Venezuela or wherever else.

And, again to get back to my original point, we can't afford this--certainly not if we also want to address fairly pressing domestic needs. I make no apology for thinking it's much more important to fix health care and invest in education and workforce than to wage strategically questionable, low-percentage wars far away.

Question for those in the know - as I noted some time ago I am strongly considering a run for school board this coming April. I am trying to estimate my current level of support so I can plan my "campaign" going forward. Is there any guideline for the level of what I'll call "periphery support" I can anticipate? So I am clear, what I mean by that is votes that I might get from a friend of a friend-type of thing. Or is there no such thing. TIA!

traderdave wrote:Question for those in the know - as I noted some time ago I am strongly considering a run for school board this coming April. I am trying to estimate my current level of support so I can plan my "campaign" going forward. Is there any guideline for the level of what I'll call "periphery support" I can anticipate? So I am clear, what I mean by that is votes that I might get from a friend of a friend-type of thing. Or is there no such thing. TIA!

As a real political scientist, I can say we know next to nothing about local elections outside of big cities. There's just a bunch of anecdotes. Generalizations aren't worth much.

However, I've thought seriously about doing this myself, and this is what I've come up with.

It seems that you've got a chance if either 1)There's a vacancy or 2) people are pissed off for a specific reason at the current school board. Most school boards are made up of people who run unopposed over and over again, and unseating someone can be difficult. School board elections are generally low turnout affairs.

On the other hand, depending on the size of the district, you might be able to tap into some unarticulated resentment with friends and friends of friends. So, what I would do is find some of those friends who support your candidacy, and get them to host a "coffee" where they can invite their friends, and you can talk to them about why you are running and what you hope to accomplish. Yard signs and such probably won't make much difference. Meeting people and persuading them to vote for you will.