Comments Posted By Bill Arnold
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I DARE YOU TO MAKE ME A DEMOCRAT
You have criticized efforts to ferret them out through the international banking system. If there was criticism I missed it. The primary issue is European privacy law.
You have criticized legitimate efforts of the government to ferret them out here in America. I'll presume you primarily mean surveillance in violation of the letter of the FISA law. Fix the law. Firewall the targeting of surveillance program from the rest of the executive branch insofar as possible.
Here are a few more to argue about:
Comment Posted By Bill Arnold On 13.11.2006 @ 22:49
(a) Get serious about foreign aid. A small fraction of the $100 billion a year spent on Iraq would go a long way towards increasing goodwill towards America, particularly if spent on non-military aid.
(b) Reduce dependency on foreign oil significantly. I think technology-driven conservation is a no-brainer, but let's have a real discussion, not the faux discussions we've seen over the past several years. Basically this means making the US economy less dependant on oil (less sensitive to oil price changes), period, since oil is basically a fungible commodity.
(c) Off topic but a hot button - reduce the risk of accidental nuclear war between Russia/US by de-alerting. This means taking most weapons (on both sides but Russia is the big risk) off launch-on-warning.
(d) Get serious (more serious) about locking down/destroying all the SNMs (Special Nuclear Materials) scattered about, particularly in the FSU. I mean, really, we are just stupid to not be extremely focused on this.
(e) (I know you covered this) Get serious about non-proliferation. We haven't ever had a president serious about non-proliferation. (Clinton was a disappointment in this aspect just like the others. He handled NK correctly IMO, but mishandled the Pakistan/India arming.) Figure out how to monitor uranium enrichment programs so that the IAEA (or whoever) is more capable of detecting attempts to produce HEU. Etc.
(f) better, as in smarter, border security. Our current security-through-illusion-of-security, with disgraces like security based on names (??), has to be improved with better technology and information systems. As a civil libertarian I have very mixed feelings about making this sort of thing ubiquitous but application at the borders is a reasonable compromise.
(g) Law enforcement is working well for the British. Let's not discount/underfund the law-enforcement approach to terrorism. It is complementary to the aggressive interventionist approachs that are the darling of the right, but it works.
C'MON DEAN! YOU'RE SPOILING OUR PITY PARTY
Re my link yesterday to a graphic layout of tradesports.com Senate race odds, the fortnow site appears to have suffered from a meltdown.
Comment Posted By Bill Arnold On 5.11.2006 @ 12:34
tradesports.com is still up though - the menu is Politics -> US 06 Senate Races.
(Note that betting on this site might be illegal for Americans.)
I was sent a pointer to a graphical depiction of the US political betting market on tradesports.com (Irish) : senate and governor races.
At a glance, three senate races are still considered in play, Missouri, Virginia, Montana. Missouri is "tight as a tick".Just FYI, since there is money to be made if you disagree and are correct. (Not sure it's still legal though.)
Comment Posted By Bill Arnold On 4.11.2006 @ 20:43
IRONY SO THICK YOU CAN BATHE IN IT
Saddam had the raw material. He knew how to enrich uranium. He had a bomb design. Add it up and it doesn’t matter what he showed the UN, his program could have been reconstituted and up and running in a matter of months with a workable bomb ready in about a year.
No - he had no centrifuge lines in 02/03. No nuclear program, not even really a freeze-dried program, just some decade-old expertise sitting in the heads of a few scientists/engineers, rusting away from disuse, and some useful documents. The Duelfur report was quite clear on that. Basically, if sanctions/embargo had been lifted, and Saddam had reconstituted a crash program, he would have been a few years away from a bomb, assuming no intervention, and intervention (covert, and possibly massively overt) would have been almost certain, since it would have been clear that there was a crash program to make weapons.Regardless, the threat that is important is Iran. The evidence (which is still unfortunately ambiguous) for a Iranian nuclear weapons program is much clearer than the evidence of a post-late-90s Iraqi nuclear weapons program.
Comment Posted By Bill Arnold On 4.11.2006 @ 15:51
no2liberals, re I find it disgusting and lurid, and indeed, can’t imagine ever having thoughts such as those about the man and his son.
Comment Posted By Bill Arnold On 27.10.2006 @ 23:26
I can't imagine doing it or even thinking about doing, for sure. Nonetheless, this is an aspect of childrearing practices in some cultures in Asia. I did not know this before tonight, but the material turned up in google searches was quite convincing. (For an academic treatment and if and only if you're not squeamish, there is a unsettling/interesting chapter in "The Emotional Life of Nations", Lloyd deMause)
I am glad I do not live in Virginia. I'd hate to have to choose between these two men. The mudslinging went nuclear a while ago and there may be more left in the arsenal - the sealed Allen divorce records story has interesting potential.
Tradesports.com has the race at 30/70 in Allen's favor. Allen picked up 10 percent today - it was 60/40 yesterday.
In the NorthEast (my domain) the Allen racism story would beat Webb's racy wartime fiction hands down, but Virginia must be another story.
Comment Posted By Bill Arnold On 27.10.2006 @ 22:06
IS DEFINING "VICTORY" IN IRAQ AN EXERCISE IN FUTILITY?
Rick,
Comment Posted By Bill Arnold On 26.10.2006 @ 23:20
Not believing that the insurgents – like the Viet Cong before them – don’t follow American politics and don’t plan to increase the intensity of their operations during the election season is ignorant.
Most of October was Ramadan. That accounts for a lot of the rampup in violence. For instance, here's a CNN story from 2004.
Also, I think you're mistaken about the degree to which people worldwide care about US domestic politics. Most politics are local. Most strife is local.
Some of the rampup in violence can be attributed to world-savvy Iraqis trying to meddle in domestic American politics but I suspect not much.
KENNEDY AND OTHER LIBERALS ANSWER TO A DIFFERENT MORALITY
When intuition fails, I go with the political betting markets. Tradesports.com has the House going to Democratic party control (35% odds of Republicans maintaining control) and ~65% that Republicans maintain control of the Senate. The odds are often off but the political markets are usually pretty reliable at predicting the winners.
Speaking as a partisan Democrat, a Democratic majority in the House doesn't mean as much as Republicans think it does. It means committee leaderships change, but Democrats do not have (and never really did have) the party discipline that Republicans have had in the last 20 years. The left (such as it is; the Democratic party is right-wing when compared to the lefts of the most of the rest of the world) is known for its "circular firing squads".
Comment Posted By Bill Arnold On 21.10.2006 @ 20:09
A LIBERAL MANIFESTO AND OTHER HALLOWEEN FRIGHTS
Karen,
Comment Posted By Bill Arnold On 25.10.2006 @ 00:30
With a Republican Senate and President, though, perhaps the two remaining Bush years will remain at a stalemate and no real damage incurred.
Gridlock is good. Probably the best state of government in this country.
All of which I’m asking Burnham for.
Comment Posted By Bill Arnold On 12.10.2006 @ 19:09
Out of curiousity, have you had any response from Burnham?
