For the record - I didn't say I wanted to be there. Just said that those were a few examples of societies that actually went through actual government redistribution of wealth.

I know. I have no doubt that you don't want to get there. What I want to know is who is going to stop the pendulum from swinging there?

Out of interest if anyone knows more about the economic setup in Germany I'd be very interested in learning more about it - this is purely on the basis that its one of the strongest economies in the world in terms of trade balance, yet this obviously isn't because of cost of labour advantages ... anyone know more about things there (either sites to look at or books to read).

I heard a Marketplace story on Germany a few months back. The gist is that at least with large corporations the labor unions have guaranteed seats on the board of directors. The representatives of the workers have a tremendous sense of ownership and loyalty and are very willing to sacrifice when needed, but also take a far greater share of the profits than companies in the US would find acceptable.

I obviously didn't get a complete breakdown of the German corporate system, but I'd be a very strong advocate of workers on the board. If you want workers to car about the company they need to have a say in the operations. I'm all for a real partnership between owners and labor.

I've read a few articles about it lately - in Bloomberg Business Week and The Economist - what are you looking to find out?

Just some general facts about the setup of their economy - what makes it competitive, what are the main exports; I'd also be interested in the tax rates that they have over there in comparison to other countries ...

(are those articles in current copies incidentally?)

Fairly current copies - within the last month or so I'd say. I'll see if I can come up with some sort of summation if you want. A lot of talk about how their economy has kind of lucked into exporting exactly what other economies (china etc) have been looking for - a lot of specialization - for example they are the best at making the machines that enable production of high-quality solar cells, things like that. So they don't make the actual end-products, but they sell a lot to china etc. so enable them to make the end products themselves.

That and of course the automobiles, and the growth of Siemens.

I'll have a look in Books a Million tomorrow (any excuse to go in, I need to get the second 'Witcher' book anyway :D) and see if they're still in then, if not then a summation would be useful thanks.

sure thing.

BBC News - Why do the German and UK economies differ sharply?

Marc, check this out, probably right up your alley.

Thanks - much appreciated

What about privately-held businesses?

It seems like Germany's success lies in the fact that are very good at skilled manufacturing and engineering. Something that is harder to outsource in comparison to unskilled labor.

I was a little off on the BoD analogy. Their are multiple levels of corporate governance in Germany. Here's a short primer:


That's not the only thing currently working in Germany. A greater reliance on manufacturing, a much greater investment in worker training, and other factors have helped Germany.

Having spent quite a bit of time in Germany in High School, it really starts with the education system IMO. Much more hands on and technical than the UK and what I've seen of the US, and they separate the kids who really want to learn from the kids that just want to get some vocational experience early on. Light years ahead of us in that regard.

Aye. And that's one of the reasons why the German model would be so hard to import to the United States--here in the US, the idea that "anyone can be anything that they want to be" is an important part of our self-image. The German model basically sorts kids out at an earlyish age, puts them on specific tracks from which it is difficult to deviate, and tells most of them that "no, you cannot be anything that you want to be, you can be this."

Germany also benefits greatly from the currency situation in Europe.

There's really just no end to how far the GOP will go if given a chance.

There's a Georgia state rep that wants police to investigate all miscarriages.

You can't be serious?

Haven't seen the story or heard it mentioned elsewhere, so I'm going to take a wild guess: the guy from up in the NW corner of the state (not Rossville, but up that way. Chickamauga maybe? Mullis I think it is)?

Out of curiosity, what age does K start there?

Just looked it up and it is real. Bobby Franklin is the guy's name.

Was he joking or being sarcastic and it got taken out of context? A miscarriage is a traumatizing event and I couldn't fathom putting a woman through an investigation into it and questioning.

Most likely serious. He definitely wasn't my first suspect, Mullis is an extremely Christian right guy but this sounded up his alley to me somehow.

Franklin (R-Marietta) is actually better known lately for things such as "bills requiring the exclusive use of gold and silver as tender in payment of debts by or to the state; a bill seeking to eliminate crop management regulations; another bill banning forced vaccinations; a bill to stop the collection of the Georgia income tax; another to stop all property taxes and yet another to end eminent domain."

He seems to have become a rather odd mix of extreme religious right AND extreme libertarianism. Imagine Ron Paul crossed with Pat Robertson if you can. I suspect he's going for the title of "Author of Most Bills That Never Get Out of Committee" this year.

4 or 5.

Franklin also proposed a bill to rename rape victims as "accusers".

There's actually a reasonable logic to that one though, even though it seemed to get the dander up for a handful of folks online

o amend Titles 16 and 17 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, relating to criminal law and criminal procedure, respectively, so as to change the term “victim” to the term “accuser” in the context of a number of statutes making reference to circumstances where there has not yet been a criminal conviction;

Given a number of false rape claims in the news around here (i.e. Athens) lately, I can see where this isn't really unreasonable. It's more semantical than anything & probably ought to be applied wholesale to all charges.

That was the distinction I was looking for, turns out that the answer is five.
I can definitely see where mandatory 4 would draw the ire of a goodly number of parents (and especially those who aren't using it as government-funded daycare).

Probably worth noting here too that mandatory K is very new in New Hampshire, only became a statewide rule as of 2009.

To be fair- that's true of a lot of local politicians of all stripes. This is why I just roll my eyes until I get some more meat to an argument whenever I see the words "this should be decided at a more local level".

SI

:D

SI

I would be careful of making the broad generalization regarding US companies. Companies based in the north I agree with, but many factories in the south have profit sharing with their employees or are employee owned. We used to joke that you could tell if you were in a steel mill up north or down south by going to the break room. If you were up north, there were always at least 15-20 guys in there. If you were down south, it was a ghost town.

But you can't separate the kids! You can't say that they all can't achieve the same things or all don't want to learn!

Sorry, had a conversation with my kid's teacher the other day and this exact conversation came up.

The problem here in the U.S. is that we've taken away even the OPTION of vocational education. I agree that going Germany's route is overkill, but plenty of kids used to CHOOSE that path by high school here in the US. And as long as "test scores" which measure college prep readiness are used to measure school performance, we'll have a very difficult time going back there.

One of Reagan's former budget directors, Bruce Bartlett, saying federal taxes are too low to balance the budget.

Can you do the math and tell me what percent of GDP equals how much money? How much of a dent would we make in the deficit if we went to the 18.5 percent mentioned? Or the 20 percent mentioned?

Given that the budget in the 90s was less than half what's being proposed right now, I'd like to know exactly how much of that deficit is going to be overcome.

My guesses based on the budget figures I've seen ($1.6 trillion deficit on $3.7 trillion budget means $2.1 trillion revenue) would be that you are talking about upping revenue by (4 / 14.5 = 27.5%), which would mean revenues go from $2.1 trillion to $2.6775 trillion, so you've cut $500b out of the deficit and still need to cut around $1 trillion from this budget. At 20% GDP we get to $2.97 trillion in revenue, and still have just over $700 billion to cut from this budget.

So even taking taxes to the levels mentioned in your quoted article, if I plug in the other numbers I've seen, there are still HUGE cuts that are necessary. You want to take taxation back to Clinton levels, while I'd like to see spending more in line with his administration. This budget has been increasing at alarming rates that will outstrip any reasonable tax increase.

We need to do both in order to fix the problem. One or the other isn't going to get it done, that's the problem.

What DT said. I'm not opposed to some spending cuts, I just think it's unrealistic to get to balanced with only spending cuts.

What has changed taxation wise? I'm checking out http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/browse/coll...-TAB&ycord=630, the official government page, and we have been right up there in percentages of GDP in revenue until the last two years (2007 = 18.5, 2008 = 17.5, 2009 = 14.9, 2010 = 14.9). So yes, I'm willing to go back to 2008 or even tax levels.

In raw numbers, first column is year, second column receipts, third column outlays, fourth column is surplus / deficit:

2000	2,025,191	1,788,950	236,241
2001	1,991,082	1,862,846	128,236
2002	1,853,136	2,010,894	-157,758
2003	1,782,314	2,159,899	-377,585
2004	1,880,114	2,292,841	-412,727
2005	2,153,611	2,471,957	-318,346
2006	2,406,869	2,655,050	-248,181
2007	2,567,985	2,728,686	-160,701
2008	2,523,991	2,982,544	-458,553
2009	2,104,989	3,517,677	-1,412,688
2010	2,162,724	3,456,213	-1,293,489
2011 estimate	2,173,700	3,818,819	-1,645,119

There may be a mild problem with that second column (partially Bush-era tax cuts, partially economy-related), but the third one is going out of control and needs its growth curve to line up more like the second column.

So I come back to a matter of degrees. Sure, bump taxes up a bit, but ONLY if you really bring in that spending that has gone nuts over the last 2-3 years. We should be pulling in $2.6 - $2.7 trillion according to that (+$500 billion or so), and that's also what we should be spending (-$1.1 trillion or so). Show me you can even start getting spending under control and I'll be willing to talk tax increases.

It's unfair to look at FY 2010 and 2011 spending without acknowledging that some portion of the increase is short term stimulus and not locked-in long term spending. Even if you don't agree with the stimulus spending it's unfair to look at it as a continuing sharp slope upward.

edit: And, a big portion of increased spending is medical. HCR starts to address that, but it's still the elephant in the room. The long term deficit can't be fixed without somehow addressing medical inflation. Of course that means paying providers less or cutting services and we saw how that discusion played out.

If it's short-term, why do we need increased taxes that won't go away?

I think you guys have convinced me that a tax increase is probably warranted, if it's a small one, based on the numbers I've been looking at. Bring our taxes back in line, maybe I can agree to. But it needs to include cutting this budget back to the bone. We need to get balanced and pay off the debt so we can spend that money somewhere useful instead.

We quite simply cannot afford the budget being put forth right now, stimulus or not, medical care or not.

I'd also add that the tax increases should be targeted sensibly - corporate tax rates, corporate tax loopholes, tax on carried interest (how those hedge fund managers manage to make all that money tax free), etc., rather than just saying "well let's raise everybody's taxes across the board by X%." There are segments of the population that by far are not paying anything close to "their share." (if you'll allow me to use that shorthanded phrase to encompass that idea)

But we can't afford to cut/tax too much right now. Both will have a temporary drag on the economy. Cutting spending by several hundred billion combined with billions more in state cuts will put hundreds of thousands out of work which will throw us into a double dip recession which will lower tax revenues and... increase the deficit. There are really three essentials to balancing the budget, more revenue, spending cuts and economic growth.

This is why it's essential to solve the structural deficit problem that had been at least temporary solved by Clinton. We need to be able to live with short term deficits, even large ones, in economic downturns, but to do that the structural deficit needs to be under control. Starting from 500bil in the hole killed us when revenue decreased from the recession and stimulus spending/tax cuts were used to help jump the economy. Now we're in a position that even without increased stimulus spending we'd still be 1tril or more in the red due to decreased revenue and a long-term structural deficit.

Yes to this.

Agreed all day on this, especially the bolded part, but you can't get blood from a turnip, either.

The opportunity to provide the baseline for growth was wasted on the stimulus bill. I actually agree with the Paul Krugmans of the world who said it wasnt big enough...the problem with it however is that it wasnt the right type of debt to rackup that would eventually payoff. Sort of like having your car breakdown and now having a choice of putting yourself in debt to...(a) get new rims on the broken down car...(b) buy a cheap car to get you back/forth to work until you can do better. And we chose (a).

I know I'm getting on my soapbox again for my silly thinking that energy independence was the way to go...but it is (IMHO) the only initiative in today's economy that you can spend trillions on, and expect a sizable return from. Its, of course, much more complicated than just "do that energy thing...and hurry up" but there really aren't that many options to grow the largest economy in the world even further.

Jobless benefits...no realistic ROI. Continuation of Bush tax cuts...no realistic ROI (unless you believe all people are over taxed as it is...a separate debate). Jobs with benefits...ROI. Tax cuts for investment in the energy independence initiative...ROI. What we needed to do was to put people to work on energy independence and a structural energy grid rather than focusing on giving people unemployment for 2 years.

I'll hop down now as I dont have all of the answers. But I do wish our elected leaders had just a smattering of vision...for once.

I only disagree with you on unemployment extensions which have been shown to have a good multiplier. I hated the 40% of the stimulus that went to poorly targeted tax cuts and I would have loved a much clearer energy/infrastructure employment focus on the spending. I don't think it could have passed, but since we're talking preference that's what me as emperor would have done.

Well, after cutting Jon's internet and allowing boobs in the images thread.

If the stimulus & HCR were passed, I'd have a hard time believing energy independence couldn't.

Agree that it wouldn't pass now, though. It wont even be on the radar int he next 2 years.

Obama administrations drops defense of DOMA.

Hopefully this is a sign of things to come. Perhaps the recent actions in Wisconsin can energize Democrats to finally start standing up for their principles.

So looking at the stories of Dems leaving various state legislatures to avoid votes on bills, what happens when budgets don't pass and thus there is no money to spend? Aren't they just going to put out of work all the workers they are allegedly defending?

Don't act like this is something new and horrible from the Dems. This has a long and rich history. I can think of one respected lawmaker, who saw that a key vote was going to go against them, and tried to hide in the State Senate's change room.. when that didn't work, he tried leaving, only to find the doors locked, but this plucky "representative of the people" fled the building by the expedient of jumping out of a second story window and fleeing the premises.

This scofflaw and horrible person?

Abraham Lincoln.

(Also, Walker's currently losing support, I'm hopeful that he's the one who folds and not theunions)

Indiana GOP blinks...

Indiana kills 'right-to-work' bill - Jennifer Epstein - POLITICO.com

I understand, and hate these tactics from either side. I'm just wondering about it in this particular instance, where it seems like it can easily backfire if work can't get done, budget can't get passed, and all these workers the Dems are worried about are out of work until a budget bill can get passed.

As a die-hard conservative republican, I agree. Worst thing that came out of this recession is the folks who put us there got away scot-free with no real ramifications for all the money they made.

And all these attempts to keep money flowing by reducing interest rates just mean that we have a continuation of the post-9/11 disincentive to save, since the Feds are giving these folks free money, there's no reason for them to pay the rest of us for the use of ours.

I hate it all.

Hell, there was stories recently that the top companies are sitting on record amounts of money that isn't doing anyone any good. Find a way to encourage them to reinvest it, or somehow get it back into circulation. I don't know how to do it, mind you, any attempt to get it out via taxes is doomed, and I'm sure the preferred method of using it (acquiring new companies, etcetera) will cause the same out-of-control financial engine that threw us into this current recession.

The American Energy Independence Initiative would be a nice start.

If you look at polling it's pretty clear people would blame Walker and the GOP. The unions are willing to make all the financial sacrifices but they aren't willing to give up collective bargaining. That message seems to be getting across and it makes Walker and the GOP look worse each day.

Union voters are only slightly pro-Dem. This is a big losing issue for the GOP and that's why Daniels in IN and Scott in FL want no part of it.

Sort of sad that more people don't care about this.

Bipartisan agreement here.

And Walker has already said a compromise proposal by my GOP State Senator is still not acceptable.

What is has done is mobilize a lot of apathetic union people. My ex-roommate is a union electrician that has never voted in his life and he was down at the Capitol yesterday protesting. Sure, it's the fault of people like him that we've got an ass hole like Scott Walker in there.

Oh did I ever mention how Walker put something into the budget repair bill where he gets the right to sell Wisconsin public utility companies without soliciting bids? Yeah..... the Koch brothers already have job openings posted for utilities that they don't even own yet in Wisconsin.

Yeah...nobody cares because there is no partisan points to be scored.

Repubs & Dems alike are equally crooked & neither side has a real claim to integrity on this issue.

Speaking of Indiana: I can't fault the state AG's office for their reaction to some very stupid statements made by a Deputy AG, I just wonder how some of his comments didn't surface before now and if they did, why he wasn't fired before:

Indiana Official: "Use Live Ammunition" Against Wisconsin Protesters | Mother Jones

Partisians are the bane of this country. Politics as sport for these people.

When did JiMGA move to Indiana and become Deputy AG?

Lovely. What a fucking sleezeball.

How is the Koch fake phone call playing in WI?

DeputyAGinMiddleIN?

Now that's just confusing.

It's making noise.... the spin machine of course says there is nothing new here. But I think the phone call makes it pretty clear that this isn't a budget balancing bill more than it is a union busting bill.

That.... and how the fuck did he get tricked like that? On the other hand, if he was TRULY in the Koch Brothers pocket, you'd think he'd know what they sounded like on the phone.


edit to add: Also Walker considered planting trouble makers amongst the protesters.

I really didn't hear much in terms of Walker giving anything up that he wasn't saying anything publicly (wasn't the best thing, but it wasn't an expose). Sounds like "Koch" was trying to bait him, but Walker didn't bite.

I think he gave up his plan to trick the Dems into creating a quorum, but that's not earth shattering. The bigger issue is that it both makes Walker and staff look foolish and completely in the pockets of big money men.

Now that corporate money is unlimited, I wonder how long we'll have to wait before we get this century's Teapot Dome?

I find this interesting, not because I care one way or the other about the act, but because when i worked for the state of Florida, we had a similar issue with a law our administration did not want to continue to support in a fight over its Constitutionality, and we conducted a thorough and lengthy bit of research on the issue and determined we were bound to uphold the Constitutionality of the law.

I assume they have made the political decision that any points scored for publicly announcing this will outweigh any negative press that might come from a legal challenge to force them to act in accordance with their duties under the Constitution.

That's interesting. I wonder how the relevant state law is worded, but what doesn't make sense to me in that case, is if you believe the law is unconstitutional, then that trumps state law (and federal law in Obama's case). For example, in California, they were not able to force Gov Arnold or AG Jerry Brown to defend Prop 8.

Rand Paul on Letterman tonight. I think he speaks well to Libertarian crowds and/or Libertarian leaning interviewers. I also think he has a really quick wit. We will see how this plays out in front of a national audience with a more liberal interviewer (don't get me wrong I love Letterman). I know a lot of people who have never seen him or his dad speak already "know" he a is kook because Fox News and CNN told them so. Watch tonight and make your own judgements. Hell I could end up not liking him again!


(I am torn on how I feel about Rand. Loved him when he was first campaigning, mainly due to dad. Started to not like him when he started going more mainstream Republican with the warmongering. Started to like him again when the sabatage attempts by the mass media failed. And am really a fan of his $500 billion dollar spending cut proposal that actually has the balls to take on the military industrial complex.)

Let's see- Rolling Stone and about the bailout. It must be Matt Taibbi so it's definitely time to read it. Again, scary that the best reporter on the financial meltdown is a reporter for Rolling Stone. And I'm sure my faith in humanity will fall another notch or two.

SI

This was my first reaction, but then after looking into it, I think I understand the distinction. The executive branch is required to follow and enforce federal law, but it's not actually required to defend it from constitutional attack. Congress can actually have their own lawyers defend their laws - so the move is really just political. It will just be different lawyers handling the defense.

Since this seems to be our omnibus politics thread, I LOL'd:

Embarrassed Republicans Admit They've Been Thinking Of Eisenhower Whole Time They've Been Praising Reagan | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

SI

It's funny cause it's true.

I was in Belgium this past week. Nothing specific on Obama but some interesting (to me) stuff -

-- Most English speaking channels were multiple BBC channels, some other news channel, and another channel that showed shows (e.g. Nip Tuck). Most of the news were talking about the unrest in Libya.

-- The "other news channel" really irritated me - in the sections I saw, it was somewhat anti-american. They had a special about the prevalence of Ku Klux Klan in current day, the racial tensions etc., and overblown it without the proper context. There were other "news" that talked about American this-and-that.

-- The newspapers were talking about EU's failed "neighborhood policy" where money/aid was spent in these northern African countries and Tunisia and Egypt ranked high in its ranking ... meaning that there was an obvious flaw in their ranking system.

-- Lots of concern in Italy for their import/export relationship with Libya and the refugees that are sailing to southern Italy.

-- It was good not hear about any failed American policies in Africa, mostly europeans assessing how they've supported oppression and are late to the game in supporting the uprisings.

Unbelievable what happened in Ohio today. Senate Bill 5 was not going to make it to the senate floor because of a Republican refusing to vote yes. It would have ended in a 6-6 tie. So what happens? He's removed, vote taken, through to the senate. Nothing short of fascism because the bill wasn't going to make it to the floor as it's written. This thing is really unbelievable when you sit down to read it all. Ohio will become a pisshole.

The Ohio GOP actually removed two guys from that committee to get it passed and then rushed it to the floor.

Funny, I'm so old I remember when a year's worth of hearings, town halls, and negotiations followed by multiple majority votes was totalitarianism.

And North Carolina has a lottery because they waited until 2 key opponents were out of town during a session that was not supposed to involve a vote, they took the vote, passed it, and the head of the Senate at the time is now in jail for corruption. But we still have the lottery...

Was his removal within the rules of the body?

FWIW, Jason Bourne's take on Obama.

Matt Damon: Not a fan of Obama - CNN.com

I don't get us contemplating no-fly zones for Libya. The benefit vs cost/risk doesn't seem to be there. If we want to help, help on the border of Tunisia or Egypt, send food, tents etc. Interesting to note Hillary vs Gates power struggle - wonder who really has Obama's ear.

Obama Says Qaddafi ‘Must Leave’ Libya Now - NYTimes.com

He used the far left during his campaign for momentum purposes knowing full well he'd be a moderate president. I guess every presidential candidate kind of has to do this.

So Huckabee just keeps running his flappers. Hey Mikey, Natalie Portman isn't single. She's engaged you fucking moron.

I think that's his point. She's pregnant and not yet married.

Interesting Friedman column today in the AJC.

This Is Just The Start - NYTimes.com

Who knows but it would be interesting to do a post mortem and interview regular folks to see if this was even a factor.

Also might have to consider that they've looked at Iraq and seen what can happen and started to think they wanted it for themselves. Then some credit would have to go back to Bush.

I'm surprised that anyone would miss that connection. People said Dubya was crazy for thinking he could build a democratic Iraq or in any Muslim country for that matter. It took some time, but it's working in Iraq and people are taking matters into their own hands. Obama certainly continued to push the Bush doctrine, but the roots of these movements go back to what Bush did.

If you all really believe Bush should get credit for this, then do you favor us sending in troops to Libya?

Crediting Bush for this is as silly as crediting Obama's election. This is about 20th century governments trying to hold power in a 21st century world.

Two different arguments there. The end result didn't justify everything that was done in regards to Iraq. But there's little question that a democratic Iraq that is working surprisingly well is an inspiration to some of these people. Good for the rest of these people that they took that idea and ran with it.

Iraq has been having plenty of protests and deaths the past few weeks too.

Yup - Iraq bastion of peace and democracy .... no hint of a continued war going on there at all still, wait no ....

http://warnewstoday.blogspot.com/

PS - Yes its a blog, but the links are mainly to respectable sites, ie. Reuters, reputable newspapers etc.

We took out Saddam Hussein because he was screwing with our economy, that's a good enough reason for me...I hate high gas prices afterall. So what's in it for me to send troops into Libya? The people there are doing a decent enough job of overthrowing their government, why ruin the role of President Obama as the apologist?

There is no doubt that Iraq has an influence on the other repressive regimes of the middle east. Nobody else thought this was even possible.

I agree that middle eastern turmoil was inevitable with these 20th century dictators, but I would argue that Iraq's stability and promise acted as an accelerator.

The middle east is a copy-cat league afterall. :)

I don't think MB is saying its perfect. Its pretty clear to me its much better than its been since the invasion (or did I miss a context to your comment?).

Now if your argument is that it was better prior to the invasion to now ... that's a different discussion.

Are we so arrogant that we need any revolution to be a direct result of American influence?

and Dutch: Screwing with the economy? Really? That' what the Iraq war was about? Wanna bet if I did a forum search on screwing with the economy I wouldn't find any hits in the lead in to the Iraq War?

I think its impossible for us to judge as 'outsiders' whether its better than before the invasion.

Before the invasion they had a dictator in charge, lots of oppression and random victimisation but a relatively stable society with a reasonably decent infrastructure and suchlike in place.

Now they have an unstable military supported democracy with ongoing gun battles as a regular occurrence and a fractured infrastructure as much was wrecked during the invasion.

Which is better? - personally I'm not in a place to judge and wouldn't want to live there under either scenario .... however my glasses aren't rose-tinted enough to say that things are far better now than before.

(ask again in 20 years time and we'll see how things stand - if the country hasn't devolved into another dictatorship (or worse theocracy) then I'll probably agree with you, however as it stands the situation isn't stable enough to know where its heading once western interference is removed imho)

PS - My personal take on the 'positive' media reporting which seems to be common in America at present is that its preparing for a full withdrawal and making the invasion appear to have been successful to the public, whether that actually reflects reality ... no idea but I'm a natural cynic.

If thousands of Americans can lose their lives so Dutch can save a couple bucks filling up his gas tank, it must be worth it.

Laugh. Iraq, stable and full of promise?

Yeah, no.

Iraq had nothing to do with the Middle East blowup. In fact, they're one of the countries experiencing turmoil as a result of the whole Tunisia-Egypt chain that kicked this whole thing off.