WHAT'S SO HARD TO UNDERSTAND ABOUT CLIMATEGATE? EVERYTHING
"I have no reason to doubt their anaylses or conclusions. That’s because I barely have a clue of what they are writing about. "
So are you saying that believing them is the default position? It should be the opposite. You should see no reason to believe their analyses or conclusions if you haven't a clue...
Comment Posted By Tano On 8.12.2009 @ 13:41
MY TURN TO MOURN FOR FRED (UPDATE: FRED OFFICIALLY OUT)
Wow, rick, your grief has turned your head upside down.
Fred was not entertaining? Huh?
Thats all that he was. A few good one-liners, a nice timely righteous rant - other than that nothing but a recitation of the old ideology that is clearly out of touch with today's reality.And Obama an empty suit? Geez. Partisanship will lead people to say just about anything, I guess.
Comment Posted By Tano On 22.01.2008 @ 16:55
OBAMA PRAISES REAGAN AS "SINGULAR FIGURE"
"Obama’s surprising words about Reagan won’t garner him too many GOP votes."
Correct. But it will help him get some Democrat votes.
Comment Posted By Tano On 17.01.2008 @ 16:14
Reagan Democrats.
Add that to an already resurgent main-line Democratic party and you are starting to look at something big.
FACING UP TO THE UNBEARABLE TRUTH
Forget about Rudy - it aint happening.
What does seem interesting is that it might come down to John McCain in a death match against Huckabee (against evangelicals) in South Carolina.
Does that have some historical resonance or what?
Comment Posted By Tano On 5.01.2008 @ 02:08
NO DEAL FOR THE LEFT ON HYPOCRISY IMMUNITY
Digby is being really silly.
Comment Posted By Tano On 16.12.2007 @ 17:22
Why worry about the whining of the noise machine?
It will be every bit as effective in slowing down the Dem president as the libs have been in slowing down Bush.
I.e. not at all.
IRAQ IS NOT LIKE VIET NAM EXCEPT WHEN IT IS
"The aftermath of Viet Nam – like the aftermath that will occur in Iraq – would have been manageable if we hadn’t pulled out so precipitously and completely. If we had made it clear to the North that bombing would have resumed the moment they reneged on the treaty and if we had kept a substantial residual force in Viet Nam with the promise that our troops would return if they broke the peace agreement, I doubt very much that Saigon would have fallen."
Sorry John, but this is just insane.
You deserve much credit for trying to analyze the situation in Iraq in a clear-headed manner, something so rare amongst your fellow nuthouse inmates.
But you seem utterly unwilling to face the reality of Vietnam.
Whereas we saw the Vietnam war as a proxy war in the greater cold war with the Soviets, the actual people fighting us in Vietnam saw the war as the last chapter in their decades-long war of independence from foreign colonialism.
Just like we Americans would have done if it had been our country, the Vietnamese would not have stopped fighting until we left.
Most Americans began to understand this in the late sixties. Even as early as '68, Nixon ran on a platform of ending the war - having abandonded the fantasy of "winning" anything. Although he wasted tens of thousands of American lives, and well more than a million Vietnamese lives in an effort to withdraw "with honor", the underlying decision, by the government and the people, that the war had been a mistake had long been made.
Most combat troops were out by the end of '72, when the war was effectivly over for us.
American culpability in the Cambodian killing fields can only be sustained by reference to the overthrowing of the traditional government by the CIA, and its replacement with a puppet military dictatorship - sparking a civil war that led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge. Yes, the Times is right - it was our involvement in SE Asia that led to these tragedies, not our withdrawl.
What madness is it that proposes that we would have maintained half a million troops in Vietnam, for another 5 years - and then what? Used them to invade Cambodia to stop the KR?
In the end it was the Vietnamese that invaded Cambodia and stopped the killing fields, while the US, under Ford, Carter and Reagan continued to recognize the Khmer Rouge government.
I imagine that the insights you have arrived at regarding Iraq should lead you to understand, on a deep level, how utterly dishonest and manipulative of real-world evidence so many of your colleagues on the right really are. This nonsense revisionism of the Vietnam era is part and parcel of their propaganda. The truth of the matter means nothing to them - these are fantastic arguments put forth for no other reason than to try to leverage some advantage in the arguments of today.
I would advise some careful, dispassionate research and hard thought before repeating the nonsense that the right is putting out.
Comment Posted By Tano On 23.08.2007 @ 15:36
BLOGS MISSING THE REAL STORY AS USUAL
A rare dose of sanity from the right. Good show, Rick.
The really great irony here is that the dishonesty through exaggeration and outright making-stuff-up that we have seen in the RW blogs far exceeds anything that Beauchamp did.
They claimed that TNR was part of this vast left-wing conspiracy to denigrate the troops, ignoring the obvious truth that TNR was a fervent supporter of the war for a long time, and even today takes a pro-surge position - hardly the blood lines of knee-jerk military-bashers.
They also claimed that the dreaded "left" is just salivating over any opportunity to denigrate the troops. Ignoring the fact that there has been NOT ONE posting, or even comment that any of us has seen trying to draw derogatory conclusions from the rape and murder convictions of some soldiers. Apparently the "left" needs to believe that some soldiers will taunt an injured woman, but a conviction, in military court, of soldiers for rape and murder somehow isnt seen as good ammo for this fight that the left is supposedly making.
The credibility of these RW thugs is about as low as it is possible to get. How many countless things have they been wrong about?
How can they, with a straight face, try to apply a standard to TNR that they never apply to themselves, that they wouldnt come within a million miles of meeting themselves?
Comment Posted By Tano On 7.08.2007 @ 12:52
MY EXCELLENT ADVENTURE AT YEARLYKOS
'..America governed by this metrosexual priss would be an invitation to every terrorist, thug nation, and rogue beauty consultant to descend upon this country en masse and make our lives a living hell."
Heh, heh.
Right on! Lets elect a drag queen instead!"...as I scanned the faces of attendees to the Presidential Leadership Forum where almost all YKos was gathered, my rough estimate was 75% white – perhaps larger."
Gee Rick, what percentage of the American population is "white"?
Comment Posted By Tano On 6.08.2007 @ 20:18
MY INTERVIEW WITH SERGEANT DAVID AGUINA
As far as I can tell, the issue is clearly that the guy was attending a political meeting, and making a political argument, while wearing the uniform of the United States military.
How can anyone defend that? It crosses a very bright line, one that is absolutely essential to the health of our democracy.
I think Stoltz's reaction was wholly appropriate.
Why did the guy insist on wearing his uniform when he knew it was wrong? Why didnt he just go in civilian clothes and ask his question or make his point?
Comment Posted By Tano On 6.08.2007 @ 01:25
SCIENTIFIC DEBUNKING OF LANCET STUDY: DOES IT REALLY MATTER?
Shannon,
It sounds like you are arguing that we are unable to make judgements about the course of events as they happen, because history is always, and necessarily uglier when you are living through it. But what to do then? Suspend all attempts to understand and just sit back and follow the leader? I dont see much value to this argument, for it is certainly incumbent upon us to make the best decisions that we can in real time.
"The Kurds were judged to fractious and to much under assault by external actors to ever come to an accord."
i dont recall anyone saying that. No doubt there has always been a competition, sometimes violent, between the two factions, and they have subsumed that for now. But it wasnt because of "external actors", and the entente that they have achieved seems to be based on the one point of agreement that they share - that the goal should be independence.
"I for one do not wish another Cambodia on our collective conscience."
Huh? In what sense is Cambodia on our "collective conscience"? I hope you are not making allusion to the absurd charge that one hears from time to time, that somehow America is responsible for that. To remind you, briefly, America was never in Cambodia, except for a few months when Nixon invaded the border provinces. The notion that our withdrawl from Vietnam enabled, or had anything to do with what happened in Cambodia is beyond ridiculous. Unless you believe that if we had maintained 500,000 troops in Vietnam for an additional 6 or 7 years from when they started to withdraw, and then we dropped whatever we were doing in Vietnam and moved them into Cambodia and then tried to stop the KR...is that your point?
Sorry if I misunderstand you. Perhaps you were just making allusion to the more reasonable point that the events in Cambodia were set in motion by our overthrowing of their traditional government and replacing it with the military dictatorship of Lon Nol, which provoked all manner of resistance, leading to the triumph of the most insane faction etc.... Was that you point? And if so, what is the lesson of that?
Comment Posted By Tano On 25.07.2007 @ 19:36