At 10:12 AM 11/5/2004 -0600 Dan Minette wrote: >> > And it is exactly that -- humility -- that I find >> >sorely lacking in America's execution of the war on terror. >> >> I think that the experience in Iraq has been nothing, if not humbling. > >What is worrisome to many of us is that we see no indication of such >humility with Bush and company. I've seen that sort of thing before in >other management teams. Their vision is so absolute, no facts can >interfere with it. Maybe Bush is just putting a brave face on, realizing >the tremendous mistakes he's made...and is a wiser man for it. But, there >are no data that really indicate that.
Well, I won't debate this at length because we certainly shall see. I am personally not one to believe that people who otherwise seem quite intelligent are actually phenomenally stupid. (Please no stupid partisan jokes here.) It is almost inconceivable to me that the past two years' experience in Iraq, the complete scrapping of all of their plans, and the deteriorating situation there almost costing them the election was not humbling. I am inclined to believe that all of this was very much "brave face" stuff designed for the election year. >Indeed, the indications that I get is that he has a mandate to go full out, >now that he actually got more votes than anyone else. He's talking about >making his tax cuts permanent, adding a few more, and revamping Social >Security by letting younger people opt out (or at least partially opt out). >Plus he wants to revamp the tax law....which should mean changing it so it >favors "those who create jobs" even more. I'd be interested in your response to the Slate.com article on this subject I posted in response to Dr. Brin a week ago or so. Your conclusions do seem spot on, although I would not be surprised for Bush to slip some tax increases into a Social Security overhaul (for example, by rolling Social Security into the income tax code and removing the phase-out) or rolling tax increases rather Reagan-like into a TRA86-like tax code overhaul. Or he code produce a tax overhaul that basically leaves taxes at 17% of GDP.... to me that is one of the most interesting questions about the next three years. >All of this should be doable. The only thing that he cannot do is get Roe >vs. Wade overturned. That would give the Democrats an easy way to be the >majority party again. He certainly won't be pushing a Human Life Amendment. He will, however, will only nominate justices who do not find Roe vs. Wade in the penumbra of the Constitution, no matter which justices die or retire. I am hoping that he nominates an "honest liberal" justice as the fifth vote - one who is personally pro-choice, but is honest enough to recognize that the Constitution is silent on the beginnings of human life, and that therfore the several States, or the Congress, have the right to restrict and regulate abortion as they see fit under the Constitution. Since such "honest liberals" may be hard to find, he may need to just nominate an "honest conservative" who would make basically the same ruling. As for your final conclusion, one of the most interesting aspects of this campaign was that John Kerry and John Edwards repeatedly ran away from their pro-choice and pro-gay marriage positions. Maybe the electorally smart position on these issues isn't what it once was? JDG _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
