#2
American Legion commander K. Ike Landsman, was blunter. These are communist ingrates who don't appreciate this great country and they ought to be deported to Iran or Afghanistan where they would be welcome."
Perusing the Times so you don't have to.
By PAUL KRUGMAN
On the day after Al Gore shared the Nobel Peace Prize, The Wall Street Journals editors couldnt even bring themselves to mention Mr. Gores name. Instead, they devoted their editorial
to a long list of people they thought deserved the prize more.
And at National Review Online, Iain Murray suggested that the prize should have been shared with that well-known peace campaigner Osama bin Laden, who implicitly endorsed Gores stance. You see, bin Laden once said something about climate change therefore, anyone who talks about climate change is a friend of the terrorists.
What is it about Mr. Gore that drives right-wingers insane?
Partly its a reaction to what happened in 2000, when the American people chose Mr. Gore but his opponent somehow ended up in the White House. Both the personality cult the right tried to build around President Bush and the often hysterical denigration of Mr. Gore were, I believe, largely motivated by the desire to expunge the stain of illegitimacy from the Bush administration.
And now that Mr. Bush has proved himself utterly the wrong man for the job to be, in fact, the best president Al Qaedas recruiters could have hoped for the symptoms of Gore derangement syndrome have grown even more extreme.
The worst thing about Mr. Gore, from the conservative point of view, is that he keeps being right. In 1992, George H. W. Bush mocked him as the ozone man, but three years later the scientists who discovered the threat to the ozone layer won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In 2002 he warned that if we invaded Iraq, the resulting chaos could easily pose a far greater danger to the United States than we presently face from Saddam. And so it has proved.
But Gore hatred is more than personal. When National Review decided to name its anti-environmental blog Planet Gore, it was trying to discredit the message as well as the messenger. For the truth Mr. Gore has been telling about how human activities are changing the climate isnt just inconvenient. For conservatives, its deeply threatening.
Consider the policy implications of taking climate change seriously.
We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals, said F.D.R. We know now that it is bad economics. These words apply perfectly to climate change. Its in the interest of most people (and especially their descendants) that somebody do something to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, but each individual would like that somebody to be somebody else. Leave it up to the free market, and in a few generations Florida will be underwater.
The solution to such conflicts between self-interest and the common good is to provide individuals with an incentive to do the right thing. In this case, people have to be given a reason to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions, either by requiring that they pay a tax on emissions or by requiring that they buy emission permits, which has pretty much the same effects as an emissions tax. We know that such policies work: the U.S. cap and trade system of emission permits on sulfur dioxide has been highly successful at reducing acid rain.
Climate change is, however, harder to deal with than acid rain, because the causes are global. The sulfuric acid in Americas lakes mainly comes from coal burned in U.S. power plants, but the carbon dioxide in Americas air comes from coal and oil burned around the planet and a ton of coal burned in China has the same effect on the future climate as a ton of coal burned here. So dealing with climate change not only requires new taxes or their equivalent; it also requires international negotiations in which the United States will have to give as well as get.
Everything Ive just said should be uncontroversial but imagine the reception a Republican candidate for president would receive if he acknowledged these truths at the next debate. Today, being a good Republican means believing that taxes should always be cut, never raised. It also means believing that we should bomb and bully foreigners, not negotiate with them.
So if science says that we have a big problem that cant be solved with tax cuts or bombs well, the science must be rejected, and the scientists must be slimed. For example, Investors Business Daily recently declared that the prominence of James Hansen, the NASA researcher who first made climate change a national issue two decades ago, is actually due to the nefarious schemes of who else? George Soros.
Which brings us to the biggest reason the right hates Mr. Gore: in his case the smear campaign has failed. Hes taken everything they could throw at him, and emerged more respected, and more credible, than ever. And it drives them crazy. Ya gotta admit, Paul does know deranged...
#1
Krugman is a small disguised man who couldn't teach correct economic theory (communism and socialism are so passe) that he had to turn to something only the stupid could write, the stupid could agree with and the stupid could understand - BDS. He has 18 months left on his clock.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
10/15/2007 14:25 Comments ||
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#2
Um, no. Krugman is/was a superb economist, particularly with issues concerning world trade.
The problem is, he thought his talent and experience regarding economics translated into thinking great thoughts in just about everything else. Think of him as Alec Baldwin with a PhD in economics and it begins to come together.
Posted by: Steve White ||
10/15/2007 15:25 Comments ||
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#3
I believe he is also a former consultant to Enron.
May I propose that when any MSM columnist writes a piece like this about Al Gore --i.e., a gushing mash note tinged with BDS--that we refer to it as a "Gore-basam."
Posted by: Mike ||
10/15/2007 15:50 Comments ||
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#4
Krugman, Krugman - oh yeah, the goofy putz with the scraggly beard up on twelve, right?
#5
The asshole writes "And now that Mr. Bush has proved himself utterly the wrong man for the job to be, in fact, the best president Al Qaedas recruiters could have hoped for the symptoms of Gore derangement syndrome have grown even more extreme." on the same day that all media runs the headline story "Al-Qaeda In Iraq Reported Crippled" qualifies ole Krugman as Number One Most Obvious Asshole. Timing IS everything.
I'd counter that Gore himself IS insane. Just ask him a question about anything as a baseline, then ask him something about George W. Bush and watch him positively seethe.
Gore is a laughing stock on the right. If Paul Krugman wants to take the cackling to be a sign of insanity, I guess that's his inexpert opinion.
James Taranto, "Best of the Web" @ Wall Street Journal
Consider the following reasons why America might consider military action against Iran:
-- To save Israel from nuclear annihilation.
-- To prevent a nuclear arms race between Iran and neighboring Arab regimes.
-- To keep Iran's mullahs from acquiring a nuclear deterrent, which would give them leverage in Iraq and make it easier for them to wage terror elsewhere with impunity.
-- To topple Tehran's repressive, theocratic regime.
-- To protect America's oil supplies.
What if we told you one of the presidential candidates accepted the last rationale--blood for oil!--but rejected arguments for war based on concerns about human rights or nuclear proliferation? Based on the media stereotypes, you'd probably think Dick Cheney had thrown his hat in. The Associated Press has the real story from Florence, S.C.:
Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton advocated talks to settle differences with Iran but said Saturday that Tehran would invite U.S. action if it were to disrupt oil supplies.
"I will make it very clear to the Iranians that there are very serious consequences attached to their actions," Clinton said.
The New York senator, responding to a question, said blocking oil shipments "would be devastating to the world economy."
Mrs. Clinton is in a difficult spot when it comes to Iran. On the one hand, she doesn't want to seem soft in front of the general electorate. On the other hand, she doesn't want to seem firm lest she alienate the Angry Left in her own party. The position she's put forward is clearly a compromise. Yet you'd think from the Angry Left's rhetoric that promising war for oil--the way they disparage every American military action in the Middle East--would be the least likely approach to appease them.
Then again, if Mrs. Clinton can hold on to her Angry Left support despite this, she will have proved herself to be a truly deft politician. Maybe this is Mrs. Clinton's "Sister Souljah moment."
Posted by: Mike ||
10/15/2007 16:49 ||
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Peter Robinson, a Reagan speechwriter in the last years of the Cold War, posed an interesting question the other day. He noted that on Feb. 22, 1946, a mere six months after the end of World War II, George Kennan, a U.S. diplomat in Moscow, sent his famous 5,000-word telegram that laid out the stakes of the Cold War and the nature of the enemy, and that that "Long Telegram" in essence shaped the way America thought about the conflict all the way up to the fall of the Berlin Wall four decades later. And what Mr. Robinson wondered was this:
"Here we are today, more than six years after 9/11. Does anyone believe a new 'Long Telegram' has yet been written? And accepted throughout the senior levels of the government?"
#1
FREEREPUBLIC > AL QAEDA IN IRAQ IS CRIPPLED; + REALCLEARPOLITICS > TIMES OF LONDON > THE GREATEST THREAT TO THE WEST IS NOT ISLAM; + NEWSCIENTIST.com > Euro Commission > GO NUCLEAR FOR THIRD INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION.
#4
We will fail and never win if we keep going down the PC-multiculturalism-moral equivalence bullshit road. We need to state clearly what we believe, what we will accept and then plan our lives and defense around it. Period.
#5
But, given the choice between expanding the already booming vacation resorts of the Dalmatian coast for their eager Anglo-German tourist clientele or reducing Croatia and Bosnia and Kosovo to rubble over ethno-linguistic differences no outsider can even discern ("Serbo-Croat"?), Yugoslavia opted for the latter.
Steyn neglects to note how the choice was nigh well irreversible. Yugoslavia's fragmentation included a particularly catastrophic form of warfare. The Dalmatian coast was once known as a "second Riviera". Turquoise waters, white sand beaches and luxuriant pine forests gave the region an almost fairy-tale setting. During years of strife a peculiar and devastating form of "environmental warfare" was fought that saw beautiful stone bridgeswhich had stood for centuriesand famous Medieval walled cities all blasted to smithereens. Ancient mansions were torched and their wooded estates chain-sawed to destroy what was once a thriving tourist industry. This was "economic terrorism" and it is emerging as a new strategy to stall recovery and modernization. Rest assured that this horrid practice is being exported elsewhere. Lebanon's famous cedars have fallen prey to this tactic as well. Islam is not just spiritually retrogressive, it is temporally regressive as well andgiven the opportunitywill drag this earth back into the dark ages.
When President Bush declared a "war on terror," cynics understood that he had no particular interest in the IRA or the Tamil Tigers, but that he was constrained from identifying the real enemy in any meaningful sense: In the fall of 2001, a war on Islamic this or Islamic that would have caused too many problems with Gen. Musharraf and the House of Saud and other chaps he wanted to keep on side.
The elite class has every intention of continuing to fight the war on terrorism without naming the enemy, without revealing his beliefs, without unmasking his intentions, without offending his accomplices, without expelling his fifth columnists, and without ever daring to win. Their crime can and must be stopped. The founders of the United States overthrew the colonial government for offenses far lighter than those of which the traitor class is guilty.
[emphasis added]
I'm thinking we need to reanimate the corpse of Winston Churchill. An undead zombie Churchill would scare the hell out of everybody. And it would be nice to have someone with speechifying abilities again.
Most recently according to Michael Beebe of the Buffalo News, Batiste visited the First Brigade Combat Team of his old First Infantry Division now based at Fort Hood, Texas.
The seasoned veterans he would expect to see, he said, were either already in Iraq or had left the service.
We have soldiers pulled together as a pickup team, he said, soldiers who were thrown together 90 days before deployment, instead of cohesive units that had trained for months together.
Folks are going over for their third or fourth deployment, he said. Their spirit is broken.
The troops were green, he said, and the Army fort itself was suffering from neglect.
The infrastructure of the post is falling apart. The training apparatus of the post is falling apart, he said.
Well, sir. Thanks for your eternal fatalism. I am sure the men who are marching off to serve their nation in harms way appreciate this ringing endorsement of their battle readiness. Yet, this is nothing new to my old commander. At a time when we desperately need leadership, Batiste is hell bent on deconstructing the mistakes of 2003 and 2004. He offers only negative rhetoric, while American warriors continue to risk their lives killing terrorists and bleeding real blood in equally real time.
The political correct disclaimer remains: his service in Iraq and to our nation are admirable. That does not however, give one a free pass to reckless and soulless expression of the ever out of touch far political left. I mean what is to be gained by Batistes mission statement? How many press conferences can we Google to find archived transcripts of John Batiste and Donald Rumsfeld standing side by side discussing how everything was magnificent in Iraq? What world exists that we are to believe a war plan he helped formulate is now fatally flawed only after he leaves command?
This is the pedigree of field grade officers at a time of war? Imagine a disgruntled George Patton, retired and touring the Atlantic seaboard in 1944 complaining about the misadventure of the recent Operation Market Garden and the 17,827 causalities suffered from mismanagement and failed planning.
It was John Batiste that quoted Teddy Roosevelt to my friends, my peers and subordinates to strike while the rattlesnake was coiled before they rolled out and lost their lives battling Al Qaeda trained and supplied terrorists in Iraq. He told us then, that we were involved in a noble defense of our nation and our homeland. If there is to be hurt feelings or confusion over what was said back then it should not come from John Batiste.
As a combat leader of any rank or duty description, you are at times put into situations where you disagree with orders. Sometimes it is menial and regrettably sometimes it is mission oriented. Each and every soldier must decide what is more important: the mission or themselves. If you want an easier job enroll at Devry, I hear they are serious about success. We are professional soldiers and Marines fighting during the most difficult time in our nations history.
The tragic irony is that the motto in our old Big Red One was simple and profound: No Mission Too Difficult, No Sacrifice Too Great Duty First. We lived and literally died by that motto. The least John Batiste could do was pretend to live by it in public.
Leaders after all, never complain down, always up. Yet today, a retired two star General sits and picks apart young officers and cherry NCOs as having a broken spirit. Men who all volunteered to defend liberty after this war took its unpopular turn in public opinion and still stand ready to take the fight to those who want us to convert and comply with a hostile agenda and faith.
Steel managing Batiste, eager to see Al Qaeda in Iraq for at least ten more years.
Privilege and honor are the only words to describe serving under General Batiste in combat. Disgust and outrage are not strong enough to describe what Mr. Batiste has become.
Zinni, Batiste and Sanchez are all going thru post-arguing with Rumsfeld shock. They are all old school. Dave Patreaus is also old school with a stronger will toward continuous improvement. He is like a college professor of chemistry who gets some government grant to experiment and create "flubber'. He is in hog heaven since he gets to prove his CI doctrine is working and is the story-book of the future. Those other guys want to fight the Battle of the Bulge all over again in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in cities, etc. They are mentally, a half-century behind Petraeus and his contemporaries and they resent it and want to blame, Bush, Rummy and Pete Pace. Its almost as if they were never there.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
10/15/2007 14:02 Comments ||
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#2
Jack: These are the guys in charge and had W's ear when we were failing (Not Winning). They failed and look bad in light of the recent success. This is all post Retirement CMA BS for their place in history.
#3
I don't get Batiste & Sanchez -- if things are bad, okay, say so. If things were so unbearable while you had the reigns as the commander on the scene why not quit in protest?? However this seems a too late carping session and a tad too much chicken-little for my taste.
Zinni was bitching about iraqi intervention back in 2003 so that's no surprise. I respect Zinni but obviously disagree w/him.
#3
I don't know if you guys have noticed, but Western civilization itself is an insult to Islam. Pretty much everything we believe and hold dear is un-islamic. The fact that we infidels are successful and thriving only adds to the insult.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Most recently according to Michael Beebe of the Buffalo News, Batiste visited the First Brigade Combat Team of his old First Infantry Division now based at Fort Hood, Texas. 
The political correct disclaimer remains: his service in Iraq and to our nation are admirable. That does not however, give one a free pass to reckless and soulless expression of the ever out of touch far political left. I mean what is to be gained by Batistes mission statement? How many press conferences can we Google to find archived transcripts of John Batiste and Donald Rumsfeld standing side by side discussing how everything was magnificent in Iraq? What world exists that we are to believe a war plan he helped formulate is now fatally flawed only after he leaves command?
