Comments Posted By michael reynolds
Displaying 431 To 440 Of 839 Comments
RJC:
Do you happen to have the complete list of litmus tests?
I think it would be really helpful to have the complete, detailed list of things a person must agree with in order to be acceptable to folks like you.
But in this case, I think you're right to push hard on this issue. As a Democrat I'd love to see you folks alienate the dwindling portion of the Cuban community who might still be considering voting Republican. I think you should keep at it until there's not a single Hispanic left in the GOP.
No half measures! Extremism in the defense of electoral suicide is no vice!
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 15.05.2009 @ 15:54
This is going to be so good. Must remember to stock up on popcorn and beer.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 15.05.2009 @ 14:32
FIRE STEELE AND BRAND THE RUMPS OF RNC COMMITTEEMEN
You guys have an additional problem: you had the White House for the last 8 years. So ideas you suddenly come up with now will beg the question as to why you didn't advance them over the last 8 years.
You have to ditch the base. They've already lost on all their major issues anyway. They are a spent force. Look to the future.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 15.05.2009 @ 00:00
C3:
. . .it would simply further the perception of a party in disarray.
I'm not sure that's mathematically possible. Once you achieve 100% disarray and 0% credibility, I think you're at the limit.
On the plus side, there's nowhere to go but up.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 14.05.2009 @ 15:17
Manning:
Your rather pathetic attempt to attack my premise that in a matter of a decade or so the Russians could have a superior military to ours shows your own ignorance and bias most clearly. (It was never my premise that the Russians could best us today on the battlefield…that is your distortion.
This thread subset didn't begin with your premise, it started with B. Posters:
There are at least three countries on earth now who are capable of beating America in a stand up war. These are Russia, China, and India. In fact, with Russia’s advamced muclear arsenal it would probably prevail in any confrontation with Aemrica. Iran, Venezuela, and Pakistan to name just three are builing impressive militiaries.
As for substance. You say:
It is historically factual that extremely strong, even massive, military forces can be generated within a decade: witness Germany in the late 30’s and 40’s, Russia in the 40’s, the US in the 40’s, and Britain in the 40’s. In fact, most of these huge buildups took only 3+ years.
One wonders then how the DoD was unable to produce armored Humvees in three years. But setting that aside, you show your ignorance in equating the construction of massive numbers of landing craft or light tanks or B-25's, with the building of modern weaponry.
The development alone of new sophisticated weapons systems takes years. The Russians have nothing in their arsenal or in development that can challenge our air superiority or battlefield control systems. The Russians cannot wake up tomorrow and decide to build 2,000 new Migs that can go toe to toe with F-16, 18's and 22's. That's a paranoid fantasy.
In every case that American weapons have gone head-to-head with Russian weapons (take Israel 1973 or Iraq in either war) the Russian systems have underperformed. In the most recent war American armored personnel carriers were taking out Soviet-made tanks.
Russia's geographical limitations have become even more crippling than those of the USSR. The USSR had deep, secure borders to their West. They have no such depth now. They lost their Polish and East German ports. They lost their Ukrainian coast. They now share space with a resurgent China and a newly-nuclear India.
They are economically weaker, poorer, older, sicker, less able to recruit or retain soldiers. They have precisely zero meaningful allies. Their population is about half of ours, not at par as it was under the Soviets.
Their tanks are out of date, their command and control systems primitive, their fighters at least a generation behind ours, their missiles (conventional and nuclear) are inaccurate. As mentioned before, their tanks have lost battles against Bradleys, let alone against our tanks.
So, despite your alleged experience, you're full of it. Russia is a military and economic basket case, a sad, washed-up relic, a joke.
Find me a credible military analyst who believes Russia will be able to take us on in 10 years.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 15.05.2009 @ 17:35
B. Poster and Manning:
Neither of you knows the first thing about military force, technology, preparedness or as far as I can tell, anything else.
There is not a single credible military expert in the US or in Russia or in China or in India who believes any of those countries, or a combination of those countries, could take us on in a straight-up conventional war. Which was the original premise.
No one. No one at all, anywhere, who is not a complete idiot, thinks the Russian army is a match for the US army, or is about to be a match, or even has the possibility of matching anywhere on the horizon. I guarantee you that there lives not a single Russian general or admiral who is salivating for a battle with the US.
You're living in a paranoid fantasy world.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 14.05.2009 @ 09:59
There are at least three countries on earth now who are capable of beating America in a stand up war. These are Russia, China, and India.
I assume you're trying to be funny? It's hard to imagine what terrain we'd be fighting on, but in any conventional war we'd wipe the floor with any of the three, and take all three at once fairly easily.
As for Venezuela or Iran, um, what? Really? Venezuela?
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 12.05.2009 @ 21:19
The Posner essay should be required reading. He's not saying anything you haven't said, but it's an effective distillation.
The difference between conservatism now and conservatism in 1964 is the power and persistence of the Jesus wing of the party. You guys had more freedom of movement then. You have almost no freedom of movement now. In fact, by far the biggest antagonists of a new conservatism are people who call themselves conservatives but are no such thing -- the radio loudmouths and their office-holding allies.
You need to shed these people. They are a dead weight stifling any attempt at intellectual progress or innovation.
There's no escaping it: actual conservatives need to break from the religious radicals. Form a new party. Make it a three-way game where conservatives can be free to appeal to independents who find the religious wing not just unattractive but repellant.
You'd have a reasonable chance at my vote for such a party, but I will never, ever, under any circumstance, be under the same tent with Dobson and Hannity and Palin.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 12.05.2009 @ 12:26
IS THE GOP ANTI-SCIENCE? OR JUST ANTI-RATIONALIST?
Busboy:
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 11.05.2009 @ 20:16
I agree. ID should be taught. Perhaps in psychology class.
The liberal counterpart to conservative stupidity on evolution can be found on any number of environmental issues.
On balance it's probably a good thing to avoid extinctions, but no, the world will not become a cold, dark, joyless place if we subtract one subspecies of worm or fish or bat.
And the word "big" is not synonymous with "evil."
And we are not running out of open space -- climb in a jet, look out the window: lots and lots of open space. Fresh water not so much, but open space?
While we're at it, there's no scientific basis for the morbid fear of second-hand smoke. It smells bad, but it won't kill you if your neighbor smokes a cigar in his back yard while, let's say, just to pick something completely at random, typing a comment on Rightwingnuthouse.com.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 11.05.2009 @ 10:17
