These two posts from earlier in the week deserve more time than I can give them:
The TaxProf , launching with a Greg Mankiw column, took up the question of tax cuts versus spending as a means of stimulus.
And Ross Douthat , citing Tim Carney’s book, “Obamanomics", explained why corporations don't "lean right" unless that is where they keep their wallet.
Reason and logic find their way to the surface. Finally.
Well written and persuasive. Nice to see an informed opinion. Now can we apply the same principles to "Climate Change"?
Posted by: Dan Patterson | December 18, 2009 at 11:59 AM
The second item was one of my shorter posts in the last few days. Just hadda say that.
Posted by: anduril | December 18, 2009 at 11:59 AM
Ross Douthat's piece certainly blows holes in Keith Olbermann's caricature of his employer, GE, the other night. I'm not sure the Progressive sites will enjoy this.
Posted by: Neo | December 18, 2009 at 12:47 PM
Yes nothing the Capitol Legal Foundation hadn't told us years ago, but it's good that it surfaces in the Times
Posted by: narciso | December 18, 2009 at 01:06 PM
Carney's argument isn’t that G.E. (or Pfizer, or Chevron, or Goldman Sachs) has a liberal agenda, necessarily; it’s that corporations have a rent-seeking agenda
-in modern, illiberal liberalism, what's the difference?
Posted by: bgates | December 18, 2009 at 01:32 PM
One for the outbox. These seems like a big story--I heard about the test but didn't realize that the new missile was solid-fuel:
Posted by: anduril | December 18, 2009 at 01:51 PM
Very interesting article by Roger Cohen re Iran: The Inertia Option. He's making the case for doing nothing--like Bush did at the end of the Cold War.
Cohen next addresses how to support those seeking regime change in Iran and emphatically says: do NOT impose more sanctions--that will only undercut the forces of change. I agree with that:
Posted by: anduril | December 18, 2009 at 03:54 PM
That is deeply ridiculous, if Moussavi were in charge, the parallel might work, but this is more Brezhnev than Gorbachev, or more likely Suslov as that we are dealing with
Posted by: narciso | December 18, 2009 at 04:20 PM
"empowering dissenters with our silence" It's the kind of idiocy that Obama would buy,
frankly it's an act of moral cowardice
Posted by: narciso | December 18, 2009 at 04:50 PM
But Brezhnev begot Gorbachev who begot... Who's to say a similar progression couldn't occur in Iran? In fact, Cohen anticipated your knee-jerk reaction, and you SOMEHOW failed to pick up on that:
What's ridiculous is not to read what the man is saying. Moussavi and the other opposition leaders are by no means western secularists or liberals--just as Gorbachev was no western liberal--but, Cohen is suggesting, they may be the Gorbachevs who will later be pushed aside by the forces of change in Iran. If we're willing to patiently allow that to happen.
That's Cohen's point: don't give the regime a rallying cry that could appeal to the strong nationalism of the Iranian people. Remember, Moussavi accused the regime recently of being ready to sell out the Islamic Republic's nuclear program. Don't kid yourself--the opposition at all levels remains deeply nationalistic and would probably close ranks against a West that tried to tighten the screws via sanctions (ineffectively, as Cohen notes, since Russia and China would thumb their noses at sanctions, anyway). So, let the revolution play out, if there is to be one. To interfere would only discredit the dissidents as traitors to Iran.
Posted by: anduril | December 18, 2009 at 04:54 PM
narciso, who invented the game of chess? It's high time we wised up and learned that game.
Posted by: anduril | December 18, 2009 at 04:55 PM
Cohen is a dhimmi reporter, before the election he was surprised at the antisemitism
in Iran, look we will have that council of caution most likely under this administration, and the likes of Vahidi, who
was around at the beginning of the Iranian wave of terror, will take this as a hint to
challenge the weak horse
Posted by: narciso | December 18, 2009 at 06:18 PM
But Brezhnev begot Gorbachev who begot...
...Yeltsin, who begot Putin. Meaning that we're more or less back where we started, with a thug, albeit one with less territory and fewer satellite countries. The only reason Russia isn't as big a problem as the USSR is its weakened economic state. What was your point?
Posted by: jimmyk | December 18, 2009 at 06:25 PM
Yes we have a bad czar, in all but crown, whether it's Nicholas 1, from the Crimean War Period, or Alexander 111, or one of the Ivans, although he fancies himself more like
Peter the Great. The SVR is the new Okrana,
or the Third Department of the Chancery, if you prefer
Posted by: narciso | December 18, 2009 at 06:30 PM
The Russian analogy is merely an analogy--which Aquinas defines as a form of equivocation. I think there is actually more hope for a more open form of government and society in Iran than in Russia. The option you seem to be pushing for is to destroy the country militarily. There are two drawbacks to that:
1. My belief is that it's not possible--certainly not for Israel, and I don't think there's any time soon short of extraordinary and direct provocation (act of war) that the US would undertake such an enterprise. For the US, further military adventurism is already unwise from a financial standpoint as well as from the need to rehab our increasingly run down military.
2. Iran won't go away, in any event, but a dramatically weakened Iran might well introduce more instability rather than less into the Middle East and Central Asia.
Posted by: anduril | December 18, 2009 at 07:41 PM
Yes, because Reagan invaded Poland in 1981, to free it from Jaruzelski's grip, I was pointing out the flaws in Cohen's analogy, which was deliberately flawed, to 'equivocate'
as you call it
Posted by: narciso | December 18, 2009 at 08:03 PM
Reagan invaded Poland in 1981, to free it from Jaruzelski's grip
What am I missing here?
Posted by: anduril | December 18, 2009 at 08:52 PM
It's as ludicrous as your premise, aide to dissident organizations in equivalent to invasion, so are Brown and Sarkozy, warmongers
for pushing for sanctions
Posted by: narciso | December 18, 2009 at 09:03 PM
the multinationals will game the system any way they can. Under Clinton, they were Dems, and under Bush they gave to the Republicans. The Wall Street crowp pays off anyone they can, as has been seen quite evidently just in the past week with Turbo Timmys Big Giveaway....It's crony capitalism at its worst.
On the way home from a real capitalist country. It's a hell of a world when the Commies are more capitalist than we are.
Posted by: matt | December 18, 2009 at 11:43 PM
anduril;
Ahmedinejad now has the means to hit Europe, just as we flushed the ABM system in Poland and the Czech Republic. Knowing the Iranians, unless they stole the temetrics from us, it would probably hit Russia anyway.
However, Israel is a lot easier. A year ago, the Israelis begged Bush for his acquiescence in a strike on the Iranian sites. Obama may well change his tune now.
The Iranians have been blowing smoke up our kiesters for the past 9 months and made fools of Obama and the West. They are fqscists who will use any means necessary to maintain control. The society is split, but the men with guns win in that equation. Think Strangelove.
Now that they have demonstrated the ability to master solid rocket fuel technology (or buy it), they have a credible program.The stakes just got upped again. More centrifuges and sites; the most doubletalking political establishment in history..remember, there are still warheads rattling around those old USSR sites or an errant Pakistani or NoKo warhead. And voila'....poof goes something somewhere.
Posted by: matt | December 18, 2009 at 11:53 PM
Obama may well change his tune now.
Hmmmm. Are you a betting man?
Anyway, the Iranians aren't suicidal. Reread the Ariel Ilan Roth article. Nobody expects Israel or anyone else to be happy about Iran getting more advanced missiles or even nukes eventually. However, it probably will happen. We need to plan for that contingency in a serious manner rather than fantasizing about military strikes than probably won't occur because they wouldn't solve the problem.
Posted by: anduril | December 19, 2009 at 12:09 AM
Based on what exactly, not Hassan Abbas's strategic lectures, not Vahidi's involvement
in Beirut, Buenos Aires and Vienna, not Ahmadinejad's c.v. that response seems to be grasping at straws
Posted by: narciso | December 19, 2009 at 12:15 AM
Anyway, the Iranians aren't suicidal. Reread the Ariel Ilan Roth article.
Why not reread Quotations from Chairman Mao while you're at it? It makes as much sense, and at least it's illuminating as to what drivel a totalitarian government can force upon its people.
Posted by: Cecil Turner | December 19, 2009 at 09:34 AM
based on regime change
Posted by: anduril | December 19, 2009 at 09:34 AM
Chairman Mao/Ariel Ilan Roth? Twaddle.
Posted by: anduril | December 19, 2009 at 09:35 AM
Well it seems more like Richard Falk's belief that Khomeini, was some sort of peaceful dissident, based on no evidence
Posted by: narciso | December 19, 2009 at 09:53 AM
your comments have nothing at all to do with either cohen's or roth's articles, nor with anything i've said. babble on, if you wish.
Posted by: anduril | December 19, 2009 at 09:55 AM
Cohen is a remarkable dingbat. I'll surprised anyone bothers to read him except perhaps for laughs.
Posted by: clarice | December 19, 2009 at 10:00 AM
*I'M surprised***
Posted by: clarice | December 19, 2009 at 10:05 AM
No, because they are not related to the thirty year experience we have had with the Iranian Revolution, does it seem quiescent to you, after Quassemlou and AMIA and the Israeli
embassy
Posted by: narciso | December 19, 2009 at 10:12 AM
Back on topic, Mankiw's suggestion the Administration "rethink the remedy" elides the fact that they ignored their own experts when implementing it.
A CBO report that noted most of the spending didn't occur until 2010 was the subject of a risible lefty food fight in which they pretended there was no such report (and then carefully explained why the report which didn't exist was actually a good thing). A letter from the CBO noted the stimulus was actually counterproductive in the long term:
[apologies if this results in a duplicate; typhuspad ate this thing twice, so I've cut it in half to try again]
Posted by: Cecil Turner | December 19, 2009 at 10:38 AM
And a far more recent report explains why that didn't matter . . . because it was never about jobs anyway:
The question is not really whether tax cuts or stimulus are more effective, it's whether we should've skipped the pork sausage in favor of nothing. The answer: "yes" . . . unless you're a Democrat making money from it.Not surprisingly, Ms Pelosi (Democrat making money from it) rammed through another bloated "stimulus" package last week.
Posted by: Cecil Turner | December 19, 2009 at 10:38 AM
Hmmmm. Dems are corrupt and don't give a shit about "good government." Who woulda thunk it? Independents, I suppose.
Posted by: anduril | December 19, 2009 at 11:47 AM
Here's a really fascinating article that may well tie into Cohen's "inertia option" and the new twin news items from Iran: launch of a solid fuel missile and seizure of a disputed oil well:
Islam vs. Iran's 'Islamic Republic'.
This is a fairly lengthy article, but hopefully I can capture its flavor with a few quotes:
OK. So what about the military news. Here's my speculation. The Iranian regime knows what's coming with these religious festivals and is trying to preempt them by staging crises and fomenting international outcries against Iran--in the hope of getting all Iranians to band together in solidarity against the outside world. This is a technique that China has used to good effect to quiet domestic discontent, and there is reason for the Iranian regime to be hopeful that it could work--after all, within the last month or so Moussavi's opposition tried to play the nationalist card against the regime by claiming that the regime was negotiating away Iran's nuclear program.
This is where Cohen's "intertia option" comes in. His advice would be for the West, especially the US, not to allow itself to be played by Iranian regime provocations. The regime is no doubt hoping that new--and, of course, ineffective--sanctions will be imposed, so that they can claim that these sanctions (which will hurt ordinary Iranians) were imposed in support of the opposition. Thus, the regime would claim to carry the standard of Iranian pride and independence against foreign interference. The "inertia option" has a lot to be said for it, especially since neither military nor the sanctions options are likely to be successful.
The Iranian regime is nothing if not clever, after decades of successfully playing us, so either way lie pitfalls. But support for the opposition through inertia may be the wisest course in the long run.
Posted by: anduril | December 19, 2009 at 12:08 PM
Anduril: I'm wildly interested in your take on what other people think about Iran [well, so long as they're about two bubbles from plumb].
Do you have a couple of million words you could post, with all the important/interesting stuff that supports your particular hobby horse highlighted?
Thanks.
Posted by: JorgXMcKie | December 19, 2009 at 05:30 PM
Good one Jorg, LOL!!!
Posted by: mockmook | December 19, 2009 at 06:53 PM
Don't forget, it was also "fascinating"!!!!
Posted by: mockmook | December 19, 2009 at 06:54 PM