Treasury Secretary Geithner says that the important point to be taken from economic data released last week is that two key indicators of private-sector demand, business investment and consumption, are getting stronger. Even a surge in imports demonstrates increasing demand, he says. "By taking aggressive action to fix the financial system, reduce growth in health care costs and improve education, we have put the American economy on a firmer foundation for future growth."
Drink the Kool-Aide, Timmy; bathe in it. New York Times Op-Ed.
Posted by: Bobby ||
08/06/2010 07:10 ||
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#1
I guess the same could be said about 'Berlin, June 1945: Economy on the track for future growth'.
It must have been gloomy for Democrats when the nation's governors met last month in Boston for their annual summer get-together. The reason: If congressional races look bad for Democrats, the 37 gubernatorial contests are even worse.
A quick survey of the political landscape shows six of the seven Democratic governors running for re-election are polling under 50% and in danger of losing, while all six GOP incumbents seeking re-election are expected to win. In the 24 open gubernatorial contests, Republicans lead in 15 and are tied in three others.
More than half of Americans are likely to have a new chief executive for their state come November. Democrats are burdened by President Barack Obama's low approval ratings and, in some open races, by widespread public dissatisfaction with the state's retiring Democratic incumbent.
That's not to say the GOP has had all smooth sailing. In Colorado, plagiarism charges have crippled Republican frontrunner Scott McInnis. Less dangerously, Florida Republicans are locked in a bitter primary. But these are the exceptions.
The GOP's edge in statehouse contests could have major ramifications for a long time to come, including next year's redistricting of the House of Representatives. The more GOP governors, the stronger Republican dominance of the process will be. Eighteen of the 21 states that could add or lose congressional seats have governors' races this fall. There also will be a lot more Republican legislators after November to help draw redistricting lines for the coming decade.
Republicans are poised to elect a new generation of leaders. After this fall's election, the GOP could have two Indian-American, two Hispanic, and as many as seven women governors. This would provide powerful evidence of the GOP's diversity and help refurbish the party's image.
More importantly, the GOP's crop of new governors can demonstrate that conservative ideas work. Just as GOP governors helped lay the foundation for the Republican resurgence in 1994 by pursuing far-reaching reform of welfare, education and taxes, so could new policy-minded chief executives reinvigorate the Republican Party's reputation as the "party of ideas."
Already, the GOP victors in last year's gubernatorial contests are providing powerful contrasts to Mr. Obama's policies. Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell erased his state's nearly $2 billion deficit without raising taxes. Facing a $13 billion shortfall, a hostile Democratic legislature and more than $7 million in negative ads launched against him by labor unions, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie nonetheless balanced the budget while cutting taxes.
Governors also have far more electoral impact on their states than do distant, often-absent senators and congressmen. Since 1994, Republicans have won 26 Senate seats previously held by Democrats. Twenty of those pickups were in states with an incumbent Republican governor or a GOP gubernatorial candidate who won that same day. Governors matter even more when it comes to picking a president. When George W. Bush won the White House in 2000, there were GOP chief executives in nearly every important battleground, helping move swing states like West Virginia, Tennessee and Arkansas into his column. By comparison, the only major swing-state the GOP controlled in 2008 was Florida.
The GOP wave is so strong right now that Republicans could simultaneously win the governorships in the critical Great Lake battlegrounds of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Illinois. And the GOP is likely to win the governorship in other presidential battlegrounds like Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico and Oregon.
If this comes to pass, it will be no accident. Under the remarkable leadership of the Republican Governors Association chairman, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, and his wunderkind executive director Nick Ayers, the RGA has turned into a political juggernaut.
At the end of June, the RGA had $40 million in cash, even after spending nearly $11 million earlier this year to aid GOP challengers. In Ohio, for example, the RGA spent $2.8 million to blunt a $3 million Democratic effort to trash former Ohio Congressman John Kasich. Mr. Kasich now leads Democrat incumbent Ted Strickland by eight points.
And in Wisconsin, the RGA has helped put Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker ahead of Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett by eight points in the latest Rasmussen poll by outspending the Democrats 3 to 1 on television ads.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/06/2010 00:00 ||
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Tuesday was a day that was full of news from Lebanon, starting with the battle over the "tree" in southern Lebanon between the Lebanese and Israeli armies which caused casualties on both sides, and ending with the speech by the Hezbollah leader that implied a lot about Israel, both internally and externally. Therefore, what is the most important implication of what happened on that day?
In the beginning, and for whatever reason, the initial reaction to this day -- whether with regards to Hassan Nasrallah's speech, or the incident between the Lebanese and Israeli armies with regards to the tree -- is that the Lebanese army has taken the lead from Hezbollah, or that Hezbollah has slowed down and finds itself in second place, or describe this in whatever way that you will. This was something that was clearly evident in Hassan Nasrallah's speech which justified -- at length -- Hezbollah's decision not to enter the fray and help the Lebanese army, while he also promised that the resistance will cut off the Israeli hand that reaches out to attack Lebanon, but "next time."
The other issue with regards to Nasrallah's speech was what he said about the special international tribunal that is investigating the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri; for although Nasrallah welcomed the tripartite Saudi -- Syrian -- Lebanese summit, his message was clear, which is that Hezbollah intends to wait and see if this inter-Arab rapprochement will lead to the disruption of the international tribunal, otherwise something else will happen. Nasrallah said "we must all cooperate to pacify the situation until the results of this effort are revealed, and we can build something on this." In other words, Hezbollah will pacify the situation for a fixed time, and this is a clear threat, not desire for cooperation and calm!
What confirms this is that Nasrallah's talk about calm was accompanied by his accusing Israel of being responsible for the Rafiq Hariri assassination. From this announcement, it is clear that although Nasrallah is talking about calm, what he really wants to do is back his Lebanese political rivals into a corner, and prepare the ground -- in a demagogic fashion -- for the coming stage i.e. what will happen should the efforts to disrupt the international tribunal fail. For Nasrallah's accusation of Israel intends to back the Lebanese -- and therefore the Arabs -- into a corner; for in the event of the international tribunal issuing the expected decision accusing Hezbollah [of being responsible for Rafiq Hariri's assassination] everybody who calls for justice and cooperation with the tribunal will be portrayed as if they are defending Israel. This was confirmed by Nasrallah saying "I presume that what I said and will say about the Israeli issue will not bother anybody, unless they want to go out and defend Israel." This is a clear plan to cause confusion and fear.
It is also worth noting that Nasrallah said that he will present evidence proving Israeli's involvement in the Hariri assassination next week. However the question that must be asked here is: why did Nasrallah wait -- keeping hold of such evidence -- without publicly revealing it, especially when the fingers of accusation were being pointed at Syria? Would it not have been better to expose the Israelis [prior to now]?
Therefore, the battle of the "tree" and Nasrallah's speech demonstrate that the situation in Lebanon is heating up, and although the situation has not reached critical point, the smoke that is being seen there reveals that there is a high degree of tension within Hezbollah, and that Nasrallah is worried about everybody in Lebanon. This can be seen in his over-use of the expression "one of them [the leaders] told me" even when referring to his own friends and allies!
Posted by: Fred ||
08/06/2010 00:00 ||
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It hasn't been confirmed, but there was reportedly a small seismic event in northwest Missouri yesterday. The temblor was centered near the town of Independence, where President Harry S. Truman is buried. Mr. Truman, it seems, can no longer rest in peace, given the U.S. decision to send a representative to this Friday's ceremony in Japan, officially marking the 65th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
More from AFP, via Breitbart:
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday that US President Barack Obama "thought it appropriate" to recognize Japan's atomic bomb anniversary as he wants to rid the world of nuclear arms.
The United States, 65 years after a mushroom cloud rose over Hiroshima, will for the first time send an envoy this Friday to commemorate the bombing that rang in the nuclear age.
"President Obama is very committed to working toward a world without nuclear weapons," even if he sees it as a "long-term goal," Clinton told reporters when asked for comment on the anniversary.
"I think that the Obama administration and President Obama himself believe that it would be appropriate for us to recognize this anniversary and has proceeded to do so," she said.
Why has the U.S. never dispatched a representative to the event in the past? Because its solemnity is something of a fig leaf; the annual ceremony has anti-American, anti-nuclear and anti-military overtones, with no effort to explain the events in the broad sweep of history. Listening to some of the participants, you'd never know that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was preceded by almost four years of bloody war that began at Pearl Harbor. That important context is typically missing from the Hiroshima remembrance, but we're still dispatching our ambassador in Tokyo to attend the event.
His presence will be widely interpreted as a de facto apology from the United States. That's hardly surprising; some wags have described President Obama's foreign travels as a global apology tour, and there's genuine speculation that he will offer some sort of mea culpa for Hiroshima and Nagasaki when he visits Japan in November--after the mid-term elections.
Of course, this entire episode leaves us wondering: what does the U.S. have to apologize for? Looking for the quickest way to end the war--and reduce casualties on both sides--Mr. Truman made the fateful choice to use atomic weapons. His decision is more remarkable when you consider that Truman had never been briefed on the Manhattan Project as a senator or Vice-President; he didn't learn of the nation's nuclear program until after President Roosevelt died in April 1945, leaving it up to Mr. Truman to give the final okay.
Harry Truman was every inch a realist. He understood the terrible new weapons would inflict horrendous casualties, and Japanese civilians would not be spared. But Mr. Truman also realized that a planned invasion of Japan's home islands would be even more horrific. U.S. commanders expected our troops would suffer a minimum of 250,000 casualties during Operation Olympic the preliminary invasion of Kyushu (the southernmost of Japan's main islands), scheduled for November 1946.
Olympic would be followed by Operation Coronet, the main landings on the island of Honshu and the Tokyo Plain. Enemy resistance was expected to be determined and fierce; Japan hoped to shatter the invasion forces on land and at sea with massive suicide attacks. Japanese kamikaze pilots sank 32 American vessels during the battle for Okinawa; they hoped to destroy up to 800 U.S. ships supporting the invasion of Japan, using more than 12,000 aircraft still at their disposal.
By comparison, U.S. intelligence believed the Japanese military had only 3,000 planes to defend the home islands, and our estimates were off in other areas as well--mistakes that would have added to the carnage during the planned invasion. Intel officers believed the U.S. would suffer 1,000,000 casualties by the fall of 1946 (less than a year after the first landings on Kyushu), and that estimate was considered conservative in many circles. Casualty totals among enemy military personnel and civilians was expected to be much, much higher, as the Japanese literally fought to the death.
Against that backdrop, President Truman made his decision to unleash atomic weapons. An estimated 64,000 Japanese died at Hiroshima, while 40,000 perished at Nagasaki. While tragic, their deaths were less than 10% of the estimated U.S. casualties in the planned invasion of Japan. When you factor in projected Japanese military and civilian casualties, the death toll at Hiroshima and Nagasaki represents (perhaps) five percent of those who would have been killed, wounded or maimed in a U.S. invasion of Japan.
That is another, vital contextual elements that is missing from the Hiroshima ceremony, but it won't deter the White House or Mrs. Clinton's crew at Foggy Bottom. They view the atomic bombing of the Japanese cities as a wrong that must be corrected, to enhance America's standing in the world. Harry Truman never saw any need for that; he understood that war is a terrible business that sometimes requires leaders to make the most difficult decisions. From what we've read, Mr. Truman had no regrets over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and felt no need to apologize for ending a war that Japan started.
As Sarah Palin would say, the man from Independence had "cajones." That used to be a requirement for the presidency.
Twas not an endorsement, Doc. My favorite characters supported the contitution, even though they thought the President and Congress were wrong to support the unilateral disarmament. I seem to remember Kirk Douglas, George Kennedy and the guy that played the conservative senator. Burt Lancaster's general and the others were not admirable characters.
The point is/was that people sometimes act irrationaly out of perfectly rational fears.
#7
As I've said before, I used to be ambivalent about the bombings until I read "Downfall" by Richard Frank. He covered the events leading up to the bombing, including the firebombing of Tokyo and other cities, which also caused horrendous civilian casualties.
If we had not bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and if the Japanese had not surrendered, we would have started bombing the railroads and bridges that went from the farms to the cities. The result would have been mass starvation. This is besides the civilian casualties that would have resulted in an invasion. The civilians were being trained to resist the Americans in any way they could - even if it meant their deaths.
Not to mention, if the Japanese had not surrendered when they did, the Russians were getting ready to invade the northern islands, which they would have claimed as war booty.
What the bombings did is to give the Japanese Emperor a face saving way of surrendering. Even though it was obvious that Japan was losing the war, there were still elements in the military that wanted to keep fighting to the very end.
After the war, Gen. MacArthur ran Japan for several years. He saw to it that the Japanese were fed. When Americans said we should just let them starve, his reply was "We're better than that". And we are.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
08/06/2010 20:34 Comments ||
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#8
After the war, Gen. MacArthur ran Japan for several years. He saw to it that the Japanese were fed. When Americans said we should just let them starve, his reply was "We're better than that"
There were other possible outcomes. There was a faction of Imperial militarists who attempted to depose Hirohito secretly & then speak in his behalf. They would never have surrendered under any circumstances. Hirohito himself was so little known to his subjects that when he did address them over the radio after the nuke attacks, his subjects had trouble recognizing the emperor's dialect.
There were plans for Imperial forces to murder all the POW's and civilian internees should the Home Islands be invaded.
Consider if this had all happened, there had been no surrender after the first 2 nuke strikes, and then all the prisoners had been executed.
I suspect the Allies would have been quite content to let the Japanese starve at that point. Either that, or build up a larger nuclear arsenal & repeat the nuclear attacks until there was no possible further resistance. We were basically good people, but there are limits to what any nation will tolerate in extremis.
#9
Anguper, we only had three nukes at the time. The first one was tested at Trinity Site, the second dropped on Hiroshima (Kyoto had been first choice as of May '45, but that changed) and the third on Nagasaki (secondary target to Kokura, the primary target, which was too clouded over that day to make a valid assessment of the damages).
It would have taken up to six months to produce another bomb.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
08/06/2010 21:39 Comments ||
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#10
I've said it before so forgive me if you've read this bit but...
In his autobiography Akira Kurosawa talked about how everyone expected the Emperor to order everyone to suicide rather than face the shame of occupation. Kurosawa was one of the most western folks in Japan at the time and his response to this thought was to get married so he'd be married before he suicided.
Let that sink in a bit. The entire nation was expecting to kill themselves and a large chunk of them probably would have.
Add that to the number of Americans that were expected to be casualties of an invasion of the main Japanese islands and the number of folks saved by those two bombs is incredibly, astronomically high. Anyone that says the bombs were bad is ignorant.
#14
"Why is this man laughing?" Because he (Albert Einstein) believed in the America that existed when this picture of him was taken---We've devolved considerably since then. Today, we would NEVER mention the BATAAN Death March or the Japanese atrocities upon an unsuspecting, undeserving Chinese population. FUC* these LIB crybabies who have no sense of our history! Stupid Ass-H*les
#15
It would have taken up to six months to produce another bomb.
I'm aware of that. My proposed scenario after Japan's refusal to surrender after being nuked twice, would have had the US face a population bent on death before surrendering while producing the maximum number of casualties on US invasion forces. The US then would have had to choose an invasion or then taking the time to produce & then use further nukes.
#2
Well, the state has sanctioned serial polygamy and polyandry with no fault divorce. Is it much of a leap that next we'll see the point that why even go through the paper work ritual. It's not like sperm donors have to support children that aren't of their making. Oh, wait, never mind...
Posted by: Grenter, Protector of the Geats ||
08/06/2010 13:36 Comments ||
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#5
Bigomy and Polygomy work for the elite males in a society. I'm sure there are a lot of people coming up with excuses right now of how it would be a good thing.
#8
I think there is a Constitutional Right for any of us to marry dead people, particularly those with huge estates, like the late Howard Hughes. Whether the fiance is still alive or gives consent, is a mere bagatelle that the likes of Elena Kagan can easily reason past.
WMF > IRANIAN MUSLIM MILITARY WOMEN IMAGES: PRE-ISLAMIC REVOLUTION VERSUS POST-ISLAMIC REVOLUTION.
ARTIC = Generally, the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran led to Shah-era Iranian Armed Forces female Servicemembers to stop wearing MODERN OR COMTEMPORARY FEMMEZ MIL DRESS/UNIFORMS, in favor of TRADITIONAL FULL-BODY BURQUAS SAVE FOR AK-47's + COMMAND SWORDS.
#10
Bigamy was actually legal in the US until President Lincoln signed the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act in 1862 as part of a crackdown on the practices of the newly emergent Mormons.
Posted by: Gaz ||
08/06/2010 23:04 Comments ||
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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.
