Comments Posted By michael reynolds
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I feel your pain. 450 pages into a manuscript that will reach about 550, round numbers. In the process I've thrown out 50 pages: plot lines that didn't work, characters I didn't like, scenes that read like such shit I began to wonder if I still know how to do my job.
Whatever I eventually send to my editor will be painstakingly picked apart. Then, when it's published I have the regular critics. Then all the bloggers and the people on Amazon and BN and Goodreads. It seems I am both great at character and suck at character, a master plotter and an incompetent fool, deep and shallow, brilliant and mediocre.
If you don't occasionally read your own stuff and begin to fantasize about Scotch and sleeping pills you're not a writer.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 29.12.2009 @ 12:36
Dave:
Bravo.
I would just add that an enormous number of these most nervous nellies live in cities and states Osama bin Laden hasn't even heard of. New Yorkers seem pretty calm, although they've been the main targets. Washingtonians seem equally relaxed. But Alabamans and South Dakotans run around with their hair on fire.
Of course NYC and DC are both Democrat strongholds.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 29.12.2009 @ 10:40
Jim:
I did not distort your position. And just so you don't repeat that, let me quote you in your entirety:
1) As Rick has pointed out the American response to the brutality proffered by the Tehran regime has been belated and muted since the revolt erupted. This is definitely a silence that constitututes acceptance. We should have been forthright in our condemnation for the very beginning and we should have placed diplomatic pressure on the regime.
You repeat, but you do not support. Nor do you rebut. Explain how we have been silent when we have in fact condemned? Explain how that constitutes acceptance?
2) President Obama (and his supporters) promised us that his administration would jump-start relations with Iran, defuse the atomic crisis and bring stability to the region.
Oh? Show me where Obama said that.
One year has passed, they (the mullahs) are closer to the Bomb, Iran has made no perceptible movement toward peaceful resolution and we are, as noted, exactly where we were 1/20/09. During the Bush Administration it was made perfectly clear that it was not in anyone’s interest for Tehran to have a Bomb. Convincing them to abandon their nuclear ambitions was a tenet of Bush policy. President Obama said he would achieve it, so far he has made no progress. It is quite possible we are going backwards.
North Korea became a nuclear power during Mr. Bush's administration. And Iran advanced its program. Even as Mr. Bush eliminated Iran's biggest strategic opponent (Iraq.) So explain how any of this is Obama's failure? Explain how Mr. Obama's approach has been less successful than Mr. Bush's?
This bears repetition:
Convincing them to abandon their nuclear ambitions was a tenet of Bush policy.
One of the tenets of my policy is that Angelina Jolie should climb in mmy bedroom window some night. MY policy is 100% as successful as Mr. Bush's.BTW Iran still uses the Great Satan card, and they have lost no credibility that I can see. In fact, since the majority of Shias in the world live in Iran it is hard to see how they would lose credit in the Shia “world.”
There is an open split within the ranks of the mullahs. Even within Iran itself Shia Islam has split.
I agree with Rick’s position. Nothing you have said provides a valid counter-argument.
Not so much. Rick's position and yours pretty much came apart like wet crepe paper.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 29.12.2009 @ 00:09
Jim:
I searched in vain for any part of your comment that was true.
In this case silence does constitute acceptance.
We haven't been silent, we've kept a reasonable profile. So you're objecting to the volume level. Do we need to turn the amps up to 11? Is that it? And then what? Khamenei surrenders?
The problem is that, as you note, we have gotten nothing from our one-year experiment in “engagement.”
What did you think we were trying to "get?" And what did we "get" by the previous 8 years of empty bellicosity? Can you give me a single, concrete example of anything Mr. Bush "got" from Iran? Anything? In fact, it was Iran that profited because we did them the immense favor of eliminating their chief strategic opponent.
Seriously, do you think we expected Khamenei to fold his tent because we extended a hand? What we expected is that we would unite the world against Iran by no longer playing the easily-caricatured bogeyman. (Done.) What we expected was to weaken the hand of the Tehran government in exporting revolution. (Done.)
I know right-wingers aren't very bright on foreign policy (durrr . . . blow it up?) But the Iranian regime NEEDS us to be enemies. They PROFIT from American chest-thumping and threats. We DON'T need THEM to be enemies. So we profit from a weakening of hostilities and they lose.
More hostility = good for them. Less hostility = bad for them. Bad for them = good for us.
Right now the Iranian regime has lost legitimacy throughout Shia Islam and can no longer play the Great Satan card. Which is the kind of pay-off Mr. Bush was incapable of achieving. And all we had to do was stop the loud-mouthed posturing so beloved by goal-blind, bluster-loving critics.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 28.12.2009 @ 19:06
To date, the Obama administration has failed to demonstrate they are as clever or nuanced as Ambinder makes them out to be here.
No, you're just not a guy to see subtlety in those you dislike. Or subtlety at all, really.
We have made statements condemning the Iranian government. What we have carefully avoided doing is hurting the greens by throwing our loving arms around them.
The greens don't have an army, or a central leadership or a party. So if they're going to win this thing they're going to need Rafsanjani and/or the regular Iranian army to win for them. How us bigfooting the issue would help someone like Rafsanjani or the generals remains a mystery to me. Maybe you could explain.
The point is to prevail, to get what we want, not to make people feel good by prancing around and drawing focus like the desperate reality-TV attention-whores we were through the previous administration.
This is their fight, their revolution (we hope.) And we should follow the example of Bush the Wiser, not his son, Bush the Fucktard. Did Bush the Wiser throw his arms around the velvet revolutions in the Eastern Bloc? No, he did not. Did we get exactly what we wanted? Yes, we did. Did we dance on the Berlin Wall and moon Moscow? Now, we did not. Did we get a bunch of new NATO members? yes, we did.
Results, not bombast. Objectives, not emotions.
As for the (Man In The Suicide Underwear the less said by the POTUS the better. How in God's name would it help to again draw focus from this embarrassment to Al Qaeda? They just sent a guy to burn his own nuts off. When your enemy's embarrassing himself, let him.
Do you need reassurance, Rick? Because I don't. And I don't know anyone who does. Anyone out there panicking? I mean, aside from Glenn Beck.
Sorry, Rick, but Obama's just plain smarter and more focused than you are.
Get well.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 28.12.2009 @ 16:32
MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM AN ATHEIST TO ALL YOU BELIEVERS
I'm an atheist as well and also never had a problem with Jesus per se. (Christians are a very different matter.)
Maybe I'll start thinking of Christmas as being a bit like Martin Luther King Day or President's Day or Veteran's Day -- a good time to reflect on what I owe to much better, much braver men.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 25.12.2009 @ 12:46
THE WORST PIECE OF LEGISLATION IN MY LIFETIME
We should form anew political party and call it the "Good Enough Party." I'd be thrilled at a nice long period of good enough.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 25.12.2009 @ 14:31
Busboy:
There are certain stages Republicans have to go through when confronted by change:
1- Hysteria. (Condemn it out of hand using the wildest rhetoric they can come up with.)
2- Bluster. (Pretend they were just about to address the problem themselves and would surely have done it better.)
3- Harrumphing. (Offer grudging support.)
4- Lies. (Deny they were ever opposed to begin with.)
5- Stupidity. (Condemn the next proposed change out of hand, having learned nothing at all, rinse and repeat.)
We're in transition from state 1 to stage 2.
Within 5 years conservatives will be loudly proclaiming their devotion to what Rick now pretends is the worst legislation (still, not actually written) he's ever seen ever, ever, ever.
Within 7 years you won't be able to find a conservative who admits to opposing this bill.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 24.12.2009 @ 12:26
The CMS report you link to appears only to deal with the House bill. Which is not the final bill. In fact, it's probably pretty much irrelevant. But by all means, let the misplaced hysteria proceed.
And Richard's right: the idea that your party of spittle-flecked rage-o-holics, conspiracy nuts and racists would have worked with Democrats doesn't pass the laugh test.
GOP policy is to destroy the Obama presidency without regard for reason, or the nation's well-being, or for that matter, mere sanity.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 24.12.2009 @ 11:36
Tim:
I blame the communists. They're everywhere, you know, everywhere! Quck, look under your bed!
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 24.12.2009 @ 11:55
