Comments Posted By michael reynolds
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It's a beautiful piece of writing.
Looking at the sneering, hate-filled, rageoholic comments at PJM I have to ask: Rick Moran, why are you still hanging around with those people?
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 20.01.2009 @ 10:32
I WILL MISS THE LEFT'S BUSH DERANGEMENT
Techie:
Actually, I believe by clicking on my name you get a link to the blog that I occasionally write.I don't include links in comments because it seems rude. This is Rick's site and it feels wrong to be diverting traffic to other sites. That, plus I don't actually know how to insert links in a comment.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 19.01.2009 @ 21:34
Bald and Techie:
Baloney. Now conservatives talk about dissatisfaction with Bush. Now that he's toxic. Now that he's all-but killed your party. But for most of 8 years he could do no wrong. Conservatives wet themselves and squealed with delight as they saw him stride across the aircraft carrier in his manly flight suit.
He was brilliant. He was brave. He was a great man and a great president and even something of a genius. He belonged on Mt. Rushmore. He was right not to fire Rumsfeld, and he was right to allow torture, and right to pack the DOJ with hacks, and right to hire idiots to run FEMA and to handle Iraq reconstruction. Conservatives gave him -- and still do -- almost universal support in the polls.
So don't pretend that your side was rational. You swallowed the whole act, hook, line and sinker.
And to put it in historical context, BDS came after a decade of liberal-bashing by conservatives that was at least as over-the-top and irrational as anything aimed at Mr. Bush. Your side set the tone. Now my side is finally growing past that. We invite you to join us in a new era of civility. The Obama era. I just know you'll enjoy it!
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 19.01.2009 @ 14:25
What of the other side of the coin? The conservatives who, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, continued to tout Mr. Bush as a great leader, a great man, a great president?
There's been plenty of derangement on both sides.
The difference is that the left was fundamentally right: Bush was a lousy president. He was arrogant, incompetent and shallow. If it's my only choice I'll take people who were hysterically right over people who were hysterically wrong.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 19.01.2009 @ 12:15
Your "oops" is fact-free and assumption-heavy.
The IMF spokesman is operating from an absurd premise: that his ethics office has a clear and complete picture of all tax problems involving IMF members allowing him to declaim authoritatively on the incidence of tax problems among IMF employees. This is nonsense.
Beyond that we have unnamed sources expressing a sort of vague dubiousness.
And all of that in the National Review.
You are still operating on the assumption that Geithner must have known, and nothing has yet supported that position. It remains an assumption. I'm not advancing the opposite assumption that he must not have known, just saying it's entirely possible.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 17.01.2009 @ 15:47
Oh, look: Chris the tax preparer agrees with me that it could be an honest (albeit careless) mistake. The assumption that Geithner had to know is just that: an assumption.
More information may come out but right now there's no prima facie case that Geithner deliberately did anything wrong. And if the standard is that we can only hire people who've never made an error on a US tax return we're going to have to start hiring from abroad. If you've filed taxes you've made errors.
Ooops!
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MmY2ODY3MzkxZTViMGFkNDA3YjY3YzZlYTQ1ODEyNDU=
ed.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 17.01.2009 @ 12:45
Every quarter my accountant sends me some stuff to sign and I do. Tells me how big a check to make out and I do. I pay attention to what I'm good at, and delegate that stuff to him.
Once a year or so I have to negotiate a book contract. My lawyer explains stuff to me over the phone while I read blogs and say, "Uh huh." Then I sign the contract. For all I know I've agreed to help establish the Fourth Reich.
I just leased a car. No idea what's in the documents I signed. I sign off on various software terms of service. No idea what any of those say.
People delegate. So it's not necessarily bullshit that Geithner didn't know. That's an assumption. Like assuming I know what's on page 32 of my contract just because I signed it. You might fairly conclude I'm careless and indifferent to detail, (which might be damning enough in Geithner's case) but you could not conclude that I knew said details.
As for the reason that Geithner's taxes aren't on the media's radar, I suspect it has something to do with the way our (still) president and his brain-dead party have driven the country off a cliff. As we plummet it may be that the media has more pressing things on its collective mind. What with the whole bailing out of banks, rescuing of auto companies, nosediving property values, blown up 401K's, job-losing, health-insurance-losing, staring at a depression, in trouble in Afghanistan, middle east erupting again thing going on, maybe they're covering stories other than the latest Republican "nyah nyah nyah, you promised change" whine. (Also, US Airways landed in a river and there's video, so the media are helpless.)
All the "change I can believe in" that I require from Mr. Obama is to be less of a screaming disaster than the one your preferred party has stuck us with over the last 8 years. In fact if we could rise to the level of mediocre, I'd be thrilled.
Excuse me but please read what this guy is accused of. If it were just a question of him signing his form prepared by his accountant, that's an "honest mistake."
But when he is reiumbursed by the IMF for taxes and then "forgets" to turn that money over to the IRS, that's a whole different ball of wax. He had the check in his hand and knew damn well where it was supposed to go. And if you believe differently, I have a nice bridge here in Streator I'd like to sell you. It is a magic bridge that when you walk on it takes you far, far away where the unicorns roam and dragons are friendly.
ed.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 16.01.2009 @ 13:12
"Bush is no Lincoln."
Answering the question, "Can Rick Moran give an example of understatement?"
We need to stop using Lincoln and Washington as points of comparison. It's like asking if a woman is as pretty as Anne Hathaway or Angelina Jolie. I think our new standard of comparison should be Glenn Close. More realistic. As for presidents, why not Eisenhower? He was very good without setting an impossible standard.
And of course Bush is also no Eisenhower. Or Glenn Close, for that matter.
He's got Angelina's eyes, though.
ed.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 16.01.2009 @ 13:52
RIGHT OR WRONG, BUSH MADE AN IMPACT
I'll give you one: A president who promised to get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive" and failed does not go down in history as a great president. Bin Laden, Zawahiri and Mullah Omar are all still alive.
Tora Bora, Don Rumsfeld, Terri Schiavo, Abu Ghraib, Katrina, Alberto Gonzalez, Fannie and Freddie, stem cells, a nipple-obsessed FCC, Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby, Iraq reconstruction, Afghan reconstruction . . . we could do this all day.
But say what you will, he didn't sit around with his thumb up his ass while we stumbled into civil war. So there's that.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 15.01.2009 @ 12:52
INVESTIGATING THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION A PARTISAN MINEFIELD
I have a suspicion that the NSA computers work about as well as most voice recognition programs. So I'm guessing for every "Jihad!" they intercept they get half a million "Gee, Dads!"
I understand NSA is working on a super-secret phone tree that will ask you to clarify so that it can direct you to the proper department. "Did you say 'Fill all the shoes?' If yes, press 1. If you said 'Kill all the Jews,' press 2."
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 15.01.2009 @ 18:02
