Friday, October 2, 2009

Our Daily Krauthammer

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/10/02/obamas_french_lesson_98547.html
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4 comments:

Ray Bonis said...

Kagans on the Warpath. Ugh! Ugh!
Posted by Joe Klein Wednesday, September 30, 2009 at 12:33 pm


The Wandering Kagan Minstrel Singers are in full voice this week, plumping for all the usual stuff--regime change in Iran, a surge in Afghanistan. Happily, they have less stroke than they used to--the neocons are not only gone from office, but also pretty much gone from the vast centrist foreign policy consensus. Still, they endure: Fred Kagan allegedly is an adviser to Stanley McChrystal--advising caution, no doubt. But the primary offender this week is Robert Kagan, who is pushing for regime change in Iran on the op-ed turf of the Washington Post.

This is a particularly ridiculous and odious notion--not that the Iranian regime isn't disgraceful and badly in need of a thorough, internal cleansing. It is ridiculous because the vast majority of Iranian dissidents have no intention of overturning the Islamic Republic, but want to reform it. They are joined now by a significant slice of the theocracy, which is appalled by recent events and have no desire to live in a military dictatorship quietly dominated by the Revolutionary Guards. They have made it clear that they are opposed to foreign economic sanctions, to foreign interference of any sort. Mir Hossein Mousavi came out against sanctions a few days ago, on the ground that they would hurt ordinary people more than they would hurt the regime.

What makes the call for regime change particularly tone-deaf and odious is history. Iranians--all Iranians--are extremely aware of past US meddling in their country's internal affairs. There was the CIA involvement in the 1953 coup against Mossedegh. There was also the not-so-covert US support for Saddam Hussein, including the provision of chemical precursors for the poison gas Saddam used in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. The Iranian opposition knows that any association with the Great Satan will fatally taint their movement; they know that Barack Obama's low-key strategy has made life particularly tough on those, like Ahmadinejad, who feast on American bellicosity and overreach.
-- http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2009/09/30/kagans-on-the-warpath-ugh-ugh/

October 2, 2009 at 7:08 AM
Jimi (in Honk Kong) said...

處由今個月廿二日起，縮短西面同北面的抵港航道，減低航機燃油消耗。航道改變後，由大陸、東南亞及歐洲抵港的航機，Foolish Krauthammer最多可節省大約二百一十公里航程，即大約十四分鐘的飛行時間，估計每年有八百萬人次旅客受惠。

民航處助理處長王炳輝說，調整燃油附加費，主要視乎燃油入口價，暫Wrong on Iraq時未確定縮短航道後，可否調低附加費。他又說，縮短航Wrong on Everything道後，配合人手和設備安排，到明年三月，OK? 每小時航班升降會較現時多一班，增至五十九班，預計到年，可達到六Obama will succeed十八班的目標He drink: http://afrocityblog.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/images64koolaid.jpg

October 2, 2009 at 7:21 AM
Anonymous said...

Dont worry, when the sanctions start hurting the people bad enough, they will run their leaders out of town on a rail like they did in Romania.

October 2, 2009 at 8:55 AM
Ray Bonis said...

Op-Ed Columnist
The Wizard of Beck

By DAVID BROOKS
Published: October 2, 2009

Let us take a trip back into history. Not ancient history. Recent history. It is the winter of 2007. The presidential primaries are approaching. The talk jocks like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and the rest are over the moon about Fred Thompson. They’re weak at the knees at the thought of Mitt Romney. Meanwhile, they are hurling torrents of abuse at the unreliable deviationists: John McCain and Mike Huckabee.
Skip to next paragraph

Yet somehow, despite the fervor of the great microphone giants, the Thompson campaign flops like a fish. Despite the schoolgirl delight from the radio studios, the Romney campaign underperforms.

Meanwhile, Huckabee surges. Limbaugh attacks him, but social conservatives flock.

Along comes New Hampshire and McCain wins! Republican voters have not heeded their masters in the media. Before long, South Carolina looms as the crucial point of the race. The contest is effectively between Romney and McCain. The talk jocks are now in spittle-flecked furor. Day after day, whole programs are dedicated to hurling abuse at McCain and everybody ever associated with him. The jocks are threatening to unleash their angry millions.

Yet the imaginary armies do not materialize. McCain wins the South Carolina primary and goes on to win the nomination. The talk jocks can’t even deliver the conservative voters who show up at Republican primaries. They can’t even deliver South Carolina!



But, of course, we shouldn’t be surprised by this story. Over the past few years the talk jocks have demonstrated their real-world weakness time and again. Back in 2006, they threatened to build a new majority on anti-immigration fervor. House Republicans like J.D. Hayworth and Randy Graf, both of Arizona, built their re-election campaigns under that banner. But these two didn’t march to glory. Both lost their seats.

In 2008, after McCain had won his nomination, Limbaugh turned his attention to the Democratic race. He commanded his followers to vote in the Democratic primaries for Hillary Clinton because “we need Barack Obama bloodied up politically.” Todd Donovan of Western Washington University has looked at data from 38 states and could find no strong evidence that significant numbers of people actually did what Limbaugh commanded. Rush blared the trumpets, but few of his Dittoheads advanced.

- David Brooks, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/02/opinion/02brooks.html?_r=1

October 2, 2009 at 9:05 AM

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