bob tube comment on Krugman's editorial

His is better than Krugman:

• Bob Tube
• Los Angeles

FLAG

Dr Krugman, here's what you got wrong: Republicans are all FOR economic stimulus and huge amounts of deficit spending -- as long as the President is a Republican. You need look no further than the Bush II Administration for proof --reckless tax cuts, unfunded Medicare Part D, Bridge to Nowhere, two wars on our children's credit cards. Then, when a Democrat became president, Republicans suddenly came to Jesus (in more ways than one) and wanted to cut spending and reduce the deficit, even if it would worsen the economic suffering of Americans. If Romney wins, be assured the first thing Republicans will do is have yet another come-to-Jesus moment when they decide we must stimulate the economy NOW and cut deficits later (when a Democrat is president.) Get it? Republicans in power: reckless spending is good; Democrats in power: sound the deficit alarms and cut spending

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NOTE PANETTA'S CONCERNS, BY NATION. 

NOT SO MANY MUSLIMS IN THE GROUP.

THIS IS THE KIND OF THING BOBBITT HAD HINTED AT IN THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES.

MUSLIM THREATS ARE REAL, 

BUT WHO HAS MORE TO GAIN, OR LOSE, REALLY, 

AMONG CIVILIZATIONS, OR GREAT POWERS, 

THE ONLY THINGS THAT COUNT, REALLY?

RE PANETTA WARNS OF DIRE THREAT OF CYBER ATTACK NYT

Our open internet system enabled this state of affairs to unfold.

We, as a nation, caused this threat ourselves.

Now corporations, beholden to no one anymore, the beneficiaries of much of it, have blocked weak efforts to gain some security control over it here.

ITS ABOUT TIME SOMETHING OF THEIR REAL AGENDAS WERE FLUSHED OUT FOR THE FOOLS AT THE TOP HERE TO SEE A GLIMMER OF

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/11/world/asia/china-snubs-financial-meetings-in-japan-in-dispute-over-islands.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20121011&_r=0

KENNAN RE WILSON RE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION IN MARCH 1917

Wilson:
"Does not every American feel that assurance has been added to our hope for the future peace of the world by the wonderful and heartening things that have been happening within the last few weeks in Russia?  Russia was known by those who knew it best to have been always in fact democratic at heart, in all the vital habits of her thought, in all the imtimate relationships of her people that spoke their natural instinct, their habitual attitude towards life.  The autocracy that crowned the summit of her political structure, long as it had stood and terrible as was the reality of its power, was not in fact Russian in origin, character, or purpose; and now it has been shaken off and the great, generous Russian people have been added in all their naive majesty and might to the forces that are fighting for freedom in the world, for justice, and for peace.  Here is a fit partner for a league of honor."

Kennan: "I need scarcely remind you that practically every element in this moving statement--...--reflected a complete misunderstanding of the real situation in Russia."

RE HUAWEI ZTE BBC

Why would this surprise anyone?

Market global capitalism has been an abject failure.

re jigged when should have jagged re socialism and Communism

Some of my favorite examples of this are in certain passages in Kennan, Russia and the West Under Lenin and Stalin.

The reluctance to join WW I, until the Russian Revolution provided an ostensible reason to fight a 'rich man's war'. 

The revolution was welcomed here back then. President Wilson's statement, classic. 

RE THURSTON HOWELL ROMNEY

Term search this site with bing: Thurston Howell

SEE DAVID KAISER'S CURRENT POST

On Rand and Atlas Shrugged.

FRET LESS STRINGS

String players who can play in tune, with in tune sympathetic vibrations, with dynamics and rhythm also correct and expressive, on good instruments, vanishingly rare, for a variety of different kinds of reasons. 

RE BBC JAPAN CHINA MINISTERS IN SEVERE MEETING

Please.

Send in Mary Poppins.

She can solve their problems with her parasol.

RE THURSTON HOWELL ROMNEY NYT BROOKS

He occasionally writes a sensible essay, as he does here.

He paints Romney very much as my fictional variation on Thurston Howell III.

Term search: Thurston.

My Thurston had said, 06, at Boca : 

"Who do you think they will bail out, you or me?"

RE IT TAKES ONE TO KNOW ONE NYT

Kristof has had a good moderate moment here.

RE BBC CHINA PROTESTS JAPAN SUSPENDS SOME COMMERCIAL OPERATIONS IN CHINA

This is a good thing to do.

Also, in the Muslim world, suspend operations too, 

most everywhere, very prudent.

The other shoe is dropping now all around.

BBC AMERICANS ARE BEGINNING TO WORRY ABOUT AN ASIAN WAR OVER ISLANDS ETC

Amazing that Americans should only now be wondering about this, after fomenting growth, first of one, then the other, then another, and so on, and resulting rivalries over there, for decades.

It can hardly be that the grand strategy was to get them fighting each other.

No, something much more pedestrian was afoot: laissez faire globalist market capitalism, unmoored from any strategy whatsoever.

ONE OF THE GREAT THINGS ABOUT MERCANTILISM

Was that it was used quite often as a doctrine to restrict or prohibit trade, or even god forbid take over trade, as well as at times to promote or encourage international trade, for national or imperial interests.

Economic 'sanctions', trade restrictions or prohibitions, are now normally a holding back of otherwise widely available market access.  

Simply preventing, or at least hindering, others from economically expanding, at one's expense (a non Smithian concept admittedly), when done on other than adverse overt military terms, 

has not been on the West's agenda.  

RE APRES RAHM, LE DELUGE BROOKS NYT

The theory he retreats to here 
can be summarized in just one word:

bull.

RE THOMAS FRIEDMAN IN CHINA WE (DON'T) TRUST

 Friedman, very predictably now, slamming his erstwhile globalization darling.

And doing it trying to talk about a term like ' trust ', 

a term the meaning of which has now been lost here for a long time, 

and which exists elsewhere politically only fleetingly.

THE CHINA PRICE THE GINA RINEHART WAGE SAME BASIC THING

RE E J DIONNE THE VITAL CENTER SO TO SPEAK

Just a remark here to mention I have been going back into this little tome, Why Americans Hate Politics.

He purports to be a rather well informed political theorist and historian.

One little detail I would point out about his reporting on the vital center issue Ch 5, p. 117:

"From the end of WW II until the 1960s, there really was broad agreement within the country..." 

'Fundamental' as it is, he doesn't think hard enough to criticize it against both parties when it comes to its fundamental tenets: 

"a free market economy... to underwrite a globalist foreign policy, a modest welfare state, and steadily increasing standards of living...."

The really idealistic naive parts, 

which it does not even occur to Dionne to tackle, 

even though they are fundamental to both parties he criticizes, 

were the free market economy as connected with a globalist foreign policy, together with the unrealistic goal of a perpetually rising standard of living.

It has been precisely these shared fundamentals which have been so catastrophic for America as a commonwealth.