Archive for March, 2007
Poised walking
One has to wonder what was Iran goal in abducting fifteen British sailors, in Iraq’s territorial water, and how should it be handled. However trying to answer these questions, with the little knowledge we have is no more than a , not very smart, gamble.
While I will not try to answer those question I would highlight some points that I don’t hear in the public discussion. Which seems to repeat several slogans, or someone’s talking point, without even attempting to say something original.
I am still convince that our policy toward Iran is wrong. Since the revolution we are failing to realize that Iran’s diplomacy, it aspirations, short and long term interests and challenges didn’t start at the late 70’s of the 20th century. Lack of understanding that although Iran is controlled by leaders with religious ideology it is mostly ruled by Iranian leaders and those has Iran’s interests high in their priority list.
We failed to understand that Iran’s worries from its Arab neighbors , Pakistan - with its nuclear arsenal - and Russia, with its long history expansion toward Iran’s border, didn’t change after the revolution. Instead we emphasized how dangerous Iran is, and how we should prepare to long confrontation. It was only worse by the fact that this policy confirmed Iran’s own’s, wrong, predictions and prevented from building more realistic diplomatic policy.
Assuming that Iran’s leadership is, as it always was, mostly logical we should try to figure out how the abduction integrated in Iran’s long term goals. Is it intend to local consumption - to calm the growing unrest and discomfort after the impose sanctions? Or is it part of Iran’s effort to ensure American failure in Iraq? We should try to figure out why Iran’s thought that this move will help its effort to develop nuclear capabilities. And another question we should figure out - why does Iran believe we cannot retaliate, or at least incapable to retaliate effectively?
We should also ask ourselves what should we try to achieve from this crisis. It is very typical that the approach represent all over the media is how we are going to win this conflict, but maybe we shouldn’t? maybe it will serve our long term interests if we will allow Iran to achieve tactical victory? Or on the other hand why should our range of responses should be limited to war or negotiations only? Why can’t we use a mix of diplomacy with limited demonstration of power. Sinking Iranian ship can be a fairly good demonstration of power and willingness to use it, and it can be used, as the Iranian demonstrate, as part of the diplomatic process.
But all of these are, obviously, only speculations of one whose knowledge is based on reading the newspapers. And since I had the gall to start guessing I will continue with my personal, unsupported, theory about Iran’s goal initiating this conflict. It seems that the negotiations about Iran’s nuclear aspirations got into stalemate, and worse the international sanctions having a growing internal negative effect. Iran needed a move to re-open the diplomatic negotiations, and it needed to be able to appear as having some advantages. This is somewhat similar move to the Egyptian strategy in 1973. While I think that having Iran wins some points isn’t essentially wrong, I think that Iran’s policy of using violence as part of its diplomatic efforts should be discourage. And while I don’t think it is our interest to set ultimatums It wouldn’t be necessarily wrong to retaliate with limited attack on some Iranian naval targets.
And if all of these doesn’t work, we can always follow Oliver’s policy…
Tags: Strategy Iran Crisis Nuclear Weapons England Hostages
It wasn’t about the war
Reading this reminded me an old Joke: A men met his daughter fiance, a poor yeshiva student, and was inquiring about his plans to provide for his new family - so he asked the young man: "How do you plan to buy food? " and the young man answer: "God will provide", "how will you afford to buy house" he asked again and the reply is again "God will provide". As the conversation end the man go home very happy, and when his wife wonder why his he so happy he say: " I just met the young man who is going to marry our daughter and he already thinks that I’m god!"
But unlike the man in the joke, I am not happy when our elected representatives think about us as Santa:
EMERGENCY spending bills are called “Christmas trees,” for the unrelated “ornaments” that are added by members of Congress. (They are exempt from budget rules and are almost never vetoed, making them magnets for pork.) The nickname is usually not literal, but the Senate’s version of the fiscal 2007 supplemental appropriations bill that passed yesterday includes, among scores of other nonessential items, money for Christmas-tree growers.
[...]
Despite their campaign talk about earmark reform last fall, the new Democratic leadership shamelessly used pork to buy votes — before the vote, Representatives Collin Peterson of Minnesota and Peter DeFazio of Oregon acknowledged that add-ons for their districts would influence their decisions.
The heavyweights also led by example: the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, added $20 million to eradicate Mormon crickets, and David Obey of Wisconsin, the House Appropriations Committee chairman, came away with $283 million for the Milk Income Loss Contract Program.
So if it seems that the main debate about the emergency funding to to the war in Iraq is the attached schedule to end the war, Or that the main concern of the senators and congressman’s before voting was about the war in Iraq - it is only illusion. In fact many of them jumped on the wagon to add earmarks, that have nothing to do with the war, and bypass the regular budget rules. When roughly 40% of the bill’s budget are designated to pork, it is hard to believe the representatives that added these earmark are going to vote on the merit of the bill alone.
Regardless of one’s position about the government role in society and one’s position about wealth distribution, once the tax is collected it should not be mishandled. I only wonder why this isn’t a causing a real public outrage - as it should.
Is he really fiscal conservative?
Doug, from The Liberty Paper, wonders how committed is Rudy Giuliani to tax cutting. Rudy Giuliani presents himself as a fiscal conservative and pointing to his record as the mayor of NY:
Rudy is the real fiscal conservative in the race. He cut taxes 23 times in New York and turned a $2.3 billion budget deficit into a multi-billion dollar surplus, while balancing the city’s budget. Because he turned his conservative principles into action, New York City taxpayers saved more than $9 billion in taxes and enjoyed their lowest tax burden in decades, while the economy grew and city government saw its revenues increase from the lower tax rates. Rudy Giuliani believes in supply-side economics, because he did it and he saw it work.
If this is the case, wonder Doug, why did Giuliani oppose Pataki’s tax cut plan so much that he endorsed Mario Cuomo…
I would guess that the answer is a little more complicated. Firstly Giuliani isn’t a Libertarian and shouldn’t be confused as one. Although his agenda might be sometime close to the Libertarian agenda it is not the same. But mostly, I suspect, the reason Giuliani endorsed Cuomo was his personal relationships with both Pataki and Cuomo and the proposed tax cut were only a public excuse.
And the answer to Doug’s question "Will someone, somewhere, please tell me what Rudy Giuliani really believes in?" is rather easy - last most of them Giuliani mainly believe in himself 
But on a more serious note, I guess we will need to make our choices selecting the best available candidate. At this point in the race we can support candidates like Ron Paul, who is obviously much more Libertarian than any other candidate, but I’m afraid that this will not last long. As it seems right now Giuliani is more acceptable candidate to Libertarian than other Republican and Democratic candidates, and unless someone will prove me wrong I will hope for his successes.
Tags: Giuliani Tax Cut 2008 Campaign Fiscal Conservatives Libertarianism Pataki
Reminder
Just a quick reminder for today’s demonstration to request the china to use its influence to stop the genocide in Darfur. The demonstration will take place:
Friday, March 30 4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Across from the Permanent Mission of the People’s Republic of China to the United Nations
1st Avenue
(between 35th and 36th sts.)
New York, NY 10016
It is maybe just a symbolic gesture, it will probably will have no effect on China nor on Sudan - but this is the little bit that we can do to try to stop the Darfur genocide.
Tags: Darfur China Genocide Sudan Amnesty
Let Kareem go
In the spirit of the coming holiday - Passover, the holiday of freedom, we are appealing the Egyptian government to pardon Kareem. After all, blogging shouldn’t be a crime:
Four years in prison for blogging: three of them for inciting “hatred of Islam” and one for “insulting the president.” That’s the sentence handed down by an Egyptian judge to a young Egyptian blogger, Abdelkareem Nabil Soliman, generally known in the blogosphere as “Kareem.” On his website, he had criticized his university, Al Azhar, for being close minded and for suppressing thought — for which he was expelled. He called Egypt’s president Mubarak a dictator — for which he was arrested and imprisoned. As he noted, “I broke the widespread traditions in the Great Jail of the Arab Republic of Egypt!” For that he was sent to jail.
mubarak, like it was was asked many years a go from Pharaoh, we asking you today: "Let Kareem go".
Proper lesson
A modern version of "get off my property" lesson to Senator McCain. While it didn’t follow the old western tradition of shooting the intruder, it is still pretty effective - and proper - lesson.
Nice job Mike Davidson
Tags: Private Property IP McCain
Protecting the guild
The blog favorite political analyst, Ryan Sagar, celebrates five years to the famous Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 - And what a celebration it is:
Five years ago today, President Bush signed into law the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. Today, American politics is so clean you could eat off it — except for the mud-slinging, back-scratching, favor-trading, influence-peddling, bald-faced lying, indictments, and convictions.
Nonetheless, the folks who brought us the bill known colloquially as McCain-Feingold will be taking a wildly undeserved victory lap this week. After all the big promises leading up to the passage of McCain-Feingold, one is tempted to resort to the phrase "moving the goal posts." But, in truth, the more apt simile would be that the reformers’ arguments are like bumper bowling: So long as they roll the ball in the right direction and manage not to hit anyone in the face, they get to feel good about themselves.
Unlike the image of protecting clean politic the act was, and still, focus on something much more important - making it harder for challenging candidates against the incumbent:
The former senator from Tennessee, Fred Thompson, who championed McCain-Feingold, promised that it would "help challengers reach a threshold of credibility when they want to challenge us in these races." Putting aside the ludicrous notion that 535 incumbent politicians sat down and tried to write a piece of legislation that would make it harder to get reelected, five years later there’s no evidence electoral competition has increased. Sure, control of Congress turned over. But anyone who attributes the 2006 election to McCain-Feingold, as opposed to Bush-Cheney-Hastert-Frist, is delusional.
[...]
Of course, curbing and "slowing" speech critical of politicians by "outside interest groups" (a.k.a. "citizens") is in no way a permissible goal under the First Amendment. But, ultimately, the politicians may have failed in this most nefarious goal. And it’s not just the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth who showed the way around it.
While the Supreme Court has so far upheld the patently anti-Constitutional ban on advertising by citizens’ groups 30 days before a primary and 60 days before a general election, the rise of Internet politics may eventually supercede this atrocity. Witness the anti-Hillary Clinton "1984" ad that caused such a stir on YouTube just last week. Such ads, cheaper than dirt (it costs money to distribute dirt, YouTube’s free), will only be more important with every election cycle.
For this reason, look for Congress to start taking an interest in "unregulated" Internet speech any day now. Money has never been the issue. Cleansing our speech of impure thoughts about politicians is the real agenda.
I’m afraid to think about the 10 years anniversary party of this act, it might get closer to this…
On the road to nationalized health care system
hurry, there is a party and everybody going to have fun. well, until we will get the bill - where we we will pay much more and get even less than we get today.
I don’t know what about you (hmm, for some of you I know pretty well…:) ) but statements like: "spread the benefits of the new economy evenly " or "Everyone going to pay the employers, employees and the government" (which means that the employees and employers going to pay even more) sound very much like a move toward socialized medical system that is failing wherever it is being instituted.
The only thing that these guys refuse to admit is, and it is not only the democrats, is that the cost of health care start rising once the politician felt an urge to fix health care.
Tags: Health Care 2008 Campaign The Free Market Socialized Health Care System
Enough with this waste
"The fact is, that an earmark is something that is requested by an individual member. This item was not requested by any individual member. It was put in the bill by ME!"
(D) Congressman David Obey reaching new level of arrogance
The problem isn’t a specific member of the house, or a poor quote, the problem is a system that encourage spending of other people money on questionable goals. isn’t It time to say enough?
Writing under the influence
Would I not know who wrote this op-ed, suggesting to waste more money on failing education system, I would wonder if he was sober while wring it…
No Child Left Behind is not just a slogan. It’s a national commitment, inspired by our fundamental values and aspirations. It’s a promise to do all we can so that every American child receives the high-quality education he or she needs and deserves. We may never achieve that lofty goal, but if we hope to keep America strong and just, prosperous and free, we can never stop trying.
Joking aside, the idea of throwing more money into the failure program name "no child left behind" is simply horrifying. The sad thing is that it is obviously going to happened.
Tags: No Child Left Behind Vouchers The Free Market Big Government