Comments Posted By michael reynolds
Displaying 671 To 680 Of 839 Comments
ISRAEL GOING THROUGH THE MOTIONS OF PLANNING IRAN ATTACK?
What I don't get is why the Israelis would leak this. It's either the Israelis or our intel people. I get the motives of our intel. But if Israel is putting this out there: why?
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 5.12.2008 @ 02:25
Rick:
Setting aside your characterization of things like national health insurance as "far left," you'll find most GOP candidate's web site replete with policies no serious person seriously believes they intend to implement. Banning abortion, for example. The disconnect between GOP rants about abortion and GOP action on abortion is comic.
So, grant that sometimes politicians feed tasty tidbits to their "base." Knowingly false? Of course. Duh. These are politicians who want to be elected, and we're all voters who apparently need to be lied to. Unless you actually believed McCain was going to balance the budget by killing earmarks. Or that he knew how to get Osama Bin Laden, but couldn't tell us until after he was elected. (I could go on, but you know them as well as I do.)
As for radical associations, I warned my GOP friends from the start that this would go nowhere. No one gives a sh*t about Bill Ayers. No one cares about Rev. Wright. If a politician is to to be judged by his broadly-construed "associations" then what do we make of McCain's craven crawl to Jerry Falwell et al?
And if associations are definitive, then why cherry-pick the ones that work to make your point and ignore all the rest? Dick Lugar is a close associate of Obama's. By what logic is Bill Ayers definitive but Dick Lugar is irrelevant? Colin Powell doesn't count, but Rev. Wright does? How does twisting reality that way help one understand anything?
You're trying to get reality to conform to ideology. You predicted a certain outcome -- a radical Obama administration. No one not wearing tinfoil headgear believes Obama is now acting as a radical. You were wrong. Your prediction is simply not accurate.
Now you're proposing the theory that since Obama is not acting as you predicted he would, it must be the result of his sudden awakening to previously undiscovered facts. In other words, you couldn't be wrong, so he must have changed. Or he cleverly deceived us all into believing he was what you wanted us to believe he was.
The problem there is that some of us were able to quite accurately predict Obama's actions, and are utterly unsurprised to find that we have a smart, pragmatic, basically centrist Commander in Chief.
All the way back in March you challenged me to write something realistic about Obama. So I did. It included:
Will Mr. Obama lie to us? God yes. Will Mr. Obama manipulate us? Of course. Can we trust him? Absolutely. Absolutely. Trust is good. And by the way, my car is for sale, I . . . I only took it out on Sundays and then I never drove it over 45 miles an hour. Trust me.
And,
I support Obama for this reason: he promises to reach across the aisle, move away from idiot gotcha partisanship, and try to accomplish something useful. Emphasis on "promises." The fact that he promises this means he will at the very least have to go through the motions of non-partisanship. He will have been elected on that promise. Even if he doesn't mean it (always a distinct possibility) he'll have to at least make an attempt.
Nine months ago. And consistently from that point I predicted he would not be remotely radical, and that GOP attacks on him would fail in part because those of us not blinded by ideology had already figured out that Obama was a uniting, centrist type, and nothing like the GOP's boogey men.
This line of attack will fail, too. You want to beat Obama? You need to wait until he actually does something wrong. Pre-emptive attacks will injure your side worse than they will ours. Keep your powder dry, you may well have occasion to use it. But you don't yet.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 4.12.2008 @ 13:47
This is why you shouldn't drink your own Kool-Aid. The nutty right talked themselves into believing the Rove-ian attacks on Obama, and now they are stunned and amazed to discover that the attacks were nonsense. So, rather than admit they were suckers, they want to spin the story that Obama has suddenly changed paths. Won't fly. In fact it's absurd on its face. As evidenced by the fact that Democrats seem really pretty happy with Obama's actions so far.
In other words, the evidence is quite clear: we got what we expected. You guys on the other hand got suckered by the McCain campaign's smear tactics. Now you're trying to explain away your own gullibility.
Just admit you were wrong and move on.
Obama's website is replete with top down, big government, ruinously expensive solutions to problems that could better be handled at the state or local level. I am sorry the planet you've been on for the last 2 years had no TV or access to the internet otherwise you would know this and also realize that there is only one way to ideologically categorize the kook who was advancing these ideas; a far left liberal.
The fact that his past and present is filled to the brim with radical left associates means nothing either, I suppose. He just hangs around those nuts for laughs, right?
Trying to de-left Obama after the fact is what is pitiful.
ed.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 4.12.2008 @ 11:53
Mark:
I made a specific prediction. All available evidence is that I was right.
I wouldn't want to clutter up Rick's comments, but I could also send you a lengthy email on all the other things I was right about.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 3.12.2008 @ 19:07
I expect a degree of b.s. from my candidates. I factor it in, regardless of party.
But I've said and written from the start that Obama would govern from the center. I realize no one on the right believed it, and I realize that many on the left didn't want to believe it, but I've never had much doubt on that score. The center is where he had to go in order to succeed, it's where he had to go to assure the future of his own party, and it's where he wanted to go temperamentally. He was always serious about the whole new paradigm thing, even if he played fast and loose with the details and timing of specific plans.
I think both wings allowed ideology and their own desires to obscure what I believed was obvious.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 3.12.2008 @ 17:55
Obama is delivering change: he's recognizing reality. Something Mr. Bush and his party failed to do in the last 8 years.
He's smart, moderate and rational. In other words, he's exactly what this Obama voter always believed he was, and is doing exactly what this Obama voter expected of him.
I know the shards of the GOP are hoping we Democrats will get crazy over this reality-based governance, but I'm not seeing it yet. We know how badly Mr. Bush and the GOP have damaged the country. We know we have to dig our way out of the hole your side has dug for us before we can make further progress.
If some on the Republican side want to crow that they've fracked things up so thoroughly that we will have to put off middle-class tax cuts I think we'd be fine with them admitting culpability. That would be step one on the GOP's long, long road back to relevance.
When have I ever jumped on the "blame the Democratic Congress that's been in power for two years rather than the GOP who have been in power for a decade?" bandwagon?
I don't deny culpability. But how anyone could think a candidate who proposed a trillion dollars in new spending and whose tax policies - even if they would have been enacted - would have garnered about $600 billion in revenue as a moderate is daffy. Obama - despite your strenuous protestations to the contrary - would have governed left of center. But fiscal reality is bringing him back to earth and everything from middle class tax cuts to massive increases in education and energy funding are kaput. And the world is not all sweetness and light now that he is elected - Mumbai proved that.
ed.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 3.12.2008 @ 17:14
THE INCREDIBLY STUPID THOUGHTS OF DEEPAK CHOPRA
This piece caused me to produce happy molecules.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 1.12.2008 @ 13:41
This is wisdom.
A writer needs to know when he's run out of steam. Some quiet time, some exposure to relatives, the self-loathing that accompanies the temporary joy of going off-diet (I speak from experience) and the agony of watching Obama actually become president 2 months before his inauguration will stoke your boiler.
In no time at all you'll be back to your wrongheaded ways.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 27.11.2008 @ 13:50
IS ALL THE ECONOMIC DOOM AND GLOOM JUSTIFIED?
You know, commentors, the fact that it isn't 1929 does not mean this is phony. This is a real, serious, dangerous mess. To say it's not 1929 is like saying it's not World War 2. That doesn't mean it's not Vietnam or Korea. It's not binary: the choice is not between a) end of the world or b) phony media-generated crisis.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 24.11.2008 @ 09:55
I've been thinking along the same lines as you, Rick. I have no factual basis, no evidence, just a feeling that while this is all pretty damn bad, it's not as bad as all that. I have a hard time seeing hobos with iPhones.
Although, the possibility of an iBindle is certainly intriguing. It'll sell for $300 the first month, $150 the second month and be replaced entirely in the sixth month by a new iBindle 3G.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 23.11.2008 @ 14:47
