Yeah...I don't really think she cost McCain the election as much as McCain didn't capitalize on opportunities...but I still think she could have helped him more if she had been taken more seriously.

Here is the problem with Romney, Palin, and Newt. They are all conservatives (or pretend to be) and split that vote amongst Republicans. It's why a John McCain was able to sneak in and win the primary.

If Republicans truly want a conservative candidate, they have to get together and pick one of those to stand behind. Splitting up the vote between those 3 would just allow a more moderate candidate to take their nomination.

This was Romney's contention and why he was angry with Huckabee for staying in the race for as long as he did.

Part of me tends to agree with this...though it still may not have been enough to get people past Romney's lack of charisma.

I certainly took my medicine on Palin. I had read a great deal about her by fairly reputable people and the impression I got was that she was much more like Hillary Clinton (except from the right). Instead, she was a disaster down the stretch on numerous issues/interviews. It's a shame as the republican party could really use a strong "non white old man" candidate, but she certainly isn't that person.

Michelle Bachmann?? :)

I think Huckabee has a good shot. He appeals to the religious right but also has a real likeable personality. I remember him doing well with young people in the primaries. He can also out-Jesus Obama to grab the religious minorities.

I could easily see him winning the nomination. Much easier than Palin doing it.

SI

Sure, but if they're both running, then Romney wins in a walk.

Yes...I can see that as well. When I heard pundits commenting on Palin's "Reaganesque" charisma...I thought to myself...she has charisma, no doubt; but it isn't anything like the appeal Reagan had. Huckabee, on the other hand, was the candidate who actually reminded me of Reagan in many ways. I think his biggest issue in 2008 was name recognition...add in a TV show, plenty of guest appearances, and I think 2012 is a different story for him.

Huckabee is actually quite progressive (in the traditional sense of the word) in terms of overhauling the tax code and depending on how the economy seems to be fairing by 2012, could have a highly relevant campaign to mount. I don't think the economy being in the toilet helps him beat Romney (though Romney may help him beat Romney), and certainly a prosperous economic condition doesn't help him beat Obama...but I think right in the middle of those 2 is where he could have a shot.

Basically, his campaign would need to be about reducing the size and scope of government, reducing the tax burden to encourage job creation, while increasing or maintaining tax revenue by overhauling the tax code.

To go a little off topic, I see Germany, France, and Britain want to cap bank bonuses:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2...uses-cap-brown

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2...onus-sanctions

so Tom Ridge just said in an interview that he believed at the time that Iraq had WMD's and would have given them to Iraq!!

so here you've got a guy...who is ostensibly in charge of "Homeland Security" and he's so unintelligent and misinformed that he believed something that I could have told you at the time as a college student was 100% not going to happen (Saddam giving WMD's to Al Qaeda).

wonderful. fucking idiots.

and he just said "quite obviously the people who made the decision to invade iraq knew more than you and i did. at that time, given what they knew, and they knew more than you and i did, it seemed to be the right thing to do, and the decision was made in the best interests of our country."

LMAO. are you fucking kidding me??

I think the main problem we are making are thinking in terms of the last primary. There is a very good chance that a new crop of candidates will arise in the next few years that'll make Palin or Huckabee or Romney (or 2 of the 3) look to be a silly hope in the aftermath of Obama's victory. One or two of these candidates may be serious contenders, but not all of them. No chance.

Wow, this Ridge interview with Maddow is brutal. I can't believe this guy was in charge of Homeland Security. He's backtracking, saying contradictory things over and over again, and doesn't seem to have a clue what he's talking about.

yeah - i posted a couple nuggets from it above. she absolutely kills him and he ends up looking like the biggest idiot.

I was trying to follow some of the stuff with him. He wrote in the book that the Bush administration pressured him to raise the terror alert levels. But now he says that he lied in his book? I'm confused on that controversy.

I don't know if Huckabee's tax proposal is progressive. It's actually a regressive model that hurts poor people much more. The Fair Tax has a lot of issues with it and would reduce many of the wealthiest Americans income tax rates to single digits. Now many will say the rich pay a lot anyway which is true, but I don't know how you pass a tax system that will tax the poorest people 20%+. I'd much rather get behind a candidate with a flat tax.

I also don't know how progressive you can be when you believe the Earth is 6,000 years old and evolution isn't real. I don't want to make it about religion, but it takes a special kind of stupid to look at the massive amounts of scientific evidence and say "I just don't see it". Religion is fine with me as long as it doesn't infringe on your ability to make intelligent decisions. His stance on the issue is no different than someone coming out and saying I don't believe we move around the Sun. No one would vote for the guy period.

For the life of me, I can't see Palin as the GOP candidate in 2012; political parties do not try and commit hara-kiri. That being said, her odds are still higher than that of Huckabee, who just lost his entire evangelical base to her and then some. My gut on the GOP nominee in 2012 like Imran is Romney, then someone who isn't on the radar (a John Thune?). Its also worth noting that there will be no Dem primary in 2012 to speak of, so the independents and people looking to vote will be over at the GOP side; something that does not bode well for Palin.

At 5000 posts/one year from the election/one year from inauguration I think it'd be interesting if a new thread with a new poll were created. Or this thread could be kept going for the discussion but I would like to see if FOFC's overall sentiment has changed much in the time since this poll's creation.

Yeah, I'm not even sure you can even take his comments concerning intentionally raising terror levels at face value. He seems to be all over the place. Seems like he's fluffed a lot of his information just to sell a book.

As much as Obama blasted military contractors during the election, you'd think he'd be leery of using them. Yet he continues to increase their numbers in Afghanistan. It's a way for him to increase the fighting force by 14,000 troops without showing any increase since the number of U.S. troops is unchanged. He's just backfilling the support job with contractors. This is a pretty good indication that the administration is concerned that any reported increase in troop numbers would send his approval rating into the tank. Either way, this move isn't going to make the liberal base very happy.

U.S. to boost combat force in Afghanistan -- latimes.com

I'd really like someone in charge to clarify what victory means in Afghanistan.

Without starting a tax debate (which is a good debate to have)...in theory, it is progressive in that it is based on consumption. Those who have more wealth tend to consume more. But the marginal rate of taxation tends to bother some because it is lower than the current rolled up rate for the wealthy. But the idea is that you are able to make this tax work (or...fair if you will) because you would be getting markedly higher tax revenues from people who do not currently pay income taxes and encourage more jobs to come back to the states due to low (or no) corporate taxes.

I'm not trying to sell you on it...just pointing out that the assertion it is regressive for poor people isn't overly accurate as it has a tax rebate advancement for those qualifying up to the poverty level. I think a better argument is that it could raise the tax liability on the middle class...which is why I'm not 100% sold myself...but I think it is on the right track, in principle.

I'm definitely for simplifying the tax code and adding revenue from people who manage to escape their share when they have the means to pay it...as I'm sure most are.

It would be easy enough to have a progressive consumption tax.

Tax income.
Don't make any distinctions between types of income (capital gains, wages, etc.)
Set your marginal tax rates like you have today (0% on the first $X, A% on the next $Y, B% on the next $Z, etc.)
Get rid of all current deductions.
Set up accounts like IRAs for people. These accounts have no limits. Any money that you put into that account that year (i.e. that you did not spend) is tax exempt. These accounts could be very sophisticated investment vehicles. The only thing that they need to be is separate from your "spending" money.

Therefore, you are only taxing the money that people spend--not the money that they save. A consumption tax.

And, by changing the variables in the marginal rates listed above, you can make this as progressive or regressive as you like.

I know that this would never fly politically. And it might even be bad policy. But it is easy enough to set up and see how a progressive consumption tax is doable in theory. (And, when people say that some level of regression is necessary in a consumption tax, they are probably much more personally motivated by the regressive aspects of the tax than the consumption aspects.)

A simplification (w/o a flat tax) is long overdue, I think.

Well...I mean that is how the current tax system started. But the deductions are all added because (a) it isn't fair to hard working parents with kids (b) we need to encourage homeownership investment (c) we need to encourage green investment (d) the list goes on and on...

Dola,

hit post accidentally...meant to add that a progressive consumption tax makes the most sense. But I'd like to see everything we tax on the front or back to be in plain view.

Yeah, I know. The use of the tax code for social engineering. Sigh.

Tax to raise money. Use other laws to encourage/discourage behavior. Seems so simple . . .

Of course, the federal government would not have the Constitutional authority to get involved in every aspect of our lives if not through the tax code, so I can see why it does that.

I would not mind at all a wholesale return to states rights, personally. And I say that a guy who's party currently controls the White House and the Congress.

We need to get the fuck out of the two-bit dictatorship that is Afghanistan (the Karzai government is corrupt as shit), and we need to get the fuck out of Iraq at this point too.

I might go so far as to say I need to see significant progress on those if I'm going to vote for Obama again.

That being said, it's hardly fair to place the blame onto him as MBBF is trying to do. The guy has had 7 months so far to try to devise a solution to a conflict that Bush had 7 years to get us embroiled in. I'm not ready to say that Obama is at fault at all...but that being said I want us the fuck out of those shithole countries.

Oh, and without reading the article - how many of those contractors are in non-combat jobs versus combat jobs? Cuz i'm totally fine with contractors in non-combat jobs being used to augment soldiers numbers.

1. Going into Afghanistan was a bipartisan decision and, unlike Iraq, there was little question as to the reason for doing it from either side. It's ridiculous to toss this on one party or another.

2. Most of the Blackwater contractors in Iraq weren't on the battlefield either. They were considered 'support' as well. How'd that work out? It's bad if Bush is doing it, but OK if Obama is doing it? C'mon now. I'm against it no matter who is in charge and much of the liberal voting base would be in agreement with my opinion on that matter.

I don't follow all the "promises and pledges", but my impression from hearing Obama in the campaign was that he intended to increase forces in Afghanistan. I thought he ran on a stance of "get us out of Iraq and get back to winning the war in Afghanistan." So, myself I'm not surprised to see him doing this (ignoring the contractor part of it).

I'd agree with that. I have a problem with him using contractors as a way to avoid hits to his approval rating, but I have no issue with him moving more troops in to do another surge. This was something that needed to be done once the Iraq situation was under better control.

Well, maybe if the Bush administration hadn't lied to everyone about Iraq and hadn't poured a bunch of resources and energy into that wasteful endeavor things might have been going better in Afghanistan. Afghanistan was the "forgotten war" for a very, very long time thanks to the whole Iraq clusterfuck. This point was raised time and time again as an argument against the Iraq war and, shockingly, like pretty much every other argument against that war, turned out to be correct.

Much of the blame for the lack of progress in Afghanistan rests squarely on the Bush Administration's shoulders. While there are no guarantees, one would have to imagine that Afghanistan would be much better off today if the Iraq war had never happened.

I wonder if Obama can get through two whole terms with his supporters just blaming the previous administrations for any of his own struggles and problems.

I don't think the campaign rhetoric was along the lines of - "change we can believe in - except for stuff involving other countries. That will still suck but it will be Bush's fault, not mine."

That's an excellent retort without addressing a single point of his, which wasn't about Obama at all.

worked for Bush vis a vie Clinton

You're such a ridiculous party flag waver. It's kind of nauseating. Have you ever disagreed with a Democrat in your life? Is there ONE broken Obama campaign promise that bothers you AT ALL (because there's already several)

OK yes, Bush sucks too, not sure where I made the point that he was awesome.

The Obama administration sometimes isn't even about Obama. That was my point.

To his credit, I've never heard Obama himself play that card. It just sounds ridiculous though, for a supporter to buy into "change", but then excuse the lack of it because Bush ruined things too much.

He does say every once in a while that he is very central and NOT a democrat. Of course there has never been a hint of that in any of his posts.

Afghanistan was bipartisan yes. But the fact that we muddled about and fucked around and still aren't out has to fall on the administration that had us in there for 7 years...just as it did with Vietnam. Failure to finish what they started, or prosecute the war effectively.

I'm not a big fan of Blackwater (or whatever they've rebranded as now). My point was only that it depends on what jobs these contractors are doing - whether they're in combat or whether it's non-combat roles. Maybe it's part of Obama's plan for withdrawl - add contractors to noncombat roles in order to free up soldiers for combat missions in order to get us out. Do I think that's unlikely...yeah. But I didn't get a chance to read the article yet, so I'm not sure of the details.

I would be in favor of increasing compensation/benefits of being in the military to the point where we don't need things like Blackwater. Everyone loves to pay lip services to the troops, but we need to treat the troops well enough that good people actually WANT to be in the military.

That's not at all what I said and wasn't the point I was adressing. Go back, read the post I quoted and read what I wrote.

As for your point, it's been 7 months since Obama took over. The war in Afhanistan has been going on for what, 7 years? Given everything that's going on in this country economically and with this whole health care debate, I'm not surprised that "change" hasn't quite happened yet in Afghanistan. I am hopeful that the Obama administration will do something to effect change there, but the fact that shit didn't turn into gold the moment Obama got elected isn't at all surprising nor was it at all expected.

These things take time. Hopefully Obama can right the ship. If things don't turn around over the next year or two, then, yes, I think it will be time to look at what Obama has or has not done and be critical of it.

:+1:

I think Obama is getting some guilt by association. He's having to deal with two totally inept leaders in Congress who appear to have no idea how to run their party when it sits in the majority position. They were good at offering opposition in the minority position, but have no clue how to call the shots.

look back a few pages.

Against writing checks to individuals on stimulus.
Pro-bank bailout.
Against keeping Gitmo open.
Against rendition continuing.
for increasing benefits and pay to the military
for legalizing Marijuana (which is new for me in this stance)
Pro-Death Penalty
Pro-Gay Rights (marriage)
Pro-Palestinian statehood
Pro-Surge in Iraq (and Afghanistan since it worked for Bush in Iraq)
Anti-CNN

I think that that is fairly balanced....so now, after you said what you said, and I posted that, where do we go from there? There is nothing wrong about being wrong IMO and Im wrong often.

FWIW Obama is the first Democrat I've ever voted for for President. So far, he's been very disappointing. He hasn't been progressive enough where I would want him to be progressive (gay rights, drug policy, torture) and he hasn't been moderate enough where I would want him to be moderate (everywhere else). However, I can understand that his first term is about 15% over and will not be drawn into making grandiose claims about his presidency as a whole just yet.

While Obama isn't the first democrat I've voted for, my feelings on him, so far, are pretty much on parr with Ronald Dobbs The Second. I also agree that it's early yet and given what he inherited (not all of which is Bush's fault, but simply a matter of timing).

All that being said, I still don't feel like I made the wrong choice last November. Not at all.

If I had a dollar for every person that felt that way...

A) I would have close to $70,000,000
B) There would be a Libertarian president

Of course the argument is always that by voting for Libertarian you will waste your vote and if they did somehow become elected they will become just as corrupt. So feel free to continually be disappointed by your vote and have politicians (on both sides) that have already proven they are corrupt.

I have voted Libertarian, but only locally (and in Mass., it's certainly a case of voting my heart even though it is a "wasted vote"). I'm not sure I want Libertarian Party leadership on a national level, though. I disagree with both the extent of several positions, as well as the concept of non-interventionism as a whole.

Removing forces from Afghanistan before the country was secure in order to fight a war in Iraq was not a bipartisan decision, however. This is important because it was that decision, not the original decision to invade Afghanistan, that has led directly to the situation the country finds itself in now.


The battlefield was everywhere in Iraq. Just because someone wasn't technically assigned to combat doesn't mean they weren't "on the battlefield" by any reasonable definition of the term as it applied to Iraq.


Anyway, I would imagine a big part of the reason for the uptick in contractors in Afghanistan is the continuing manpower problem in U.S. Forces, with a huge force still in Iraq, a huge force in turnover from multiple deployments, and no way to quickly get large amounts of force into Afghanistan until the real drawdown from Iraq really happens (which it hasn't yet). All common sense though I, too, would prefer the use of actual U.S. soldiers for these jobs as opposed to contractors.

Didn't Obama know this when he was running for office? Didn't the voters? What's changed here?

I'm pretty sure Obama ran on a platform of "winning" in Afghanistan which I assumed would mean the addition of more troops once he pulled them out of Iraq (can't remember if he ever said that explicitly). So I'm not seeing the disconnect, here.