2007 January 05 | Hanlon's Razor

A new general in Iraq

By Hanlon, on January 5th, 2007 at 10:30 PM

I was hoping to go for something not-Bush and not-Iraq. Then I found out about Bush’s brilliant new strategy. See, he’s been trying to get support for his troop-increase plan, but has found that it butts heads with his previous claim that he listens to General Casey due to one little wrinkle: Casey supports troop reductions. Bush’s brilliant solution? Get a new general. A special appearance by Captain Irony along the way.

Senior administration officials said that the choice of General Petraeus was part of a broader effort to change almost all of the top American officials in Iraq as Mr. Bush changes his strategy there.

“The idea is to put the whole new team in at roughly the same time, and send some clear messages that we are trying a new approach,” a senior administration official said Thursday.

Ah yes, a new approach. Or, more specifically, a whole new bunch of people who’ll stop trying to get Bush to try a new approach. Once again, rather than actually fixing the problem or doing what everyone’s telling him to do, ol’ Dubya seeks out people who’ll tell him what he already wanted to do is right.

He will replace General Casey, whose plan for troop reductions in Iraq faltered last year in the face of escalating sectarian strife and who initially expressed public wariness about any short-term increase in troops in Iraq, a move that is now a leading option under consideration by the White House.

Exactly. When you go against what Bush wants to hear, they push you out (Casey was going to leave anyway, but not until the middle of the year). When you do what you’re told and don’t ask questions, you get a medal even when it all bursts into flames.

Bush wants troops in Iraq always and forever. It’s nearly four years after the invasion, nearly four years after “major combat operations ended”, and we’re looking at troop increases. If this war had been managed well and ended cleanly, even us opponents wouldn’t have been able to say much. This is just absurd.

Pat Robertson: still a moron

By Hanlon, on January 5th, 2007 at 01:21 AM

Just in case anyone was curious. Just a quick link I caught with your friend and mine, the good Pat Robertson, talking about his upcoming predictions for 2007. According to him, we’re all gonna die.

Evangelical broadcaster Pat Robertson said Tuesday that God has told him that a terrorist attack on the United States would cause a “mass killing” late in 2007.

“I’m not necessarily saying it’s going to be nuclear,” he said during his news-and-talk television show “The 700 Club” on the Christian Broadcasting Network.

Uh-oh. That’s no good. Well how’s his track record? Thankfully, CNN provides that for us. He predicted Bush would easily win in 2004*, that he would pass all sorts of laws and nominate conservative judges**, and that he predicted lots more storms and possibly a tsunami in 2006***, none of which came true. Your response, Patty O’Robertson?

“I have a relatively good track record,” he said. “Sometimes I miss.”

Sure ya do. I may need to get rid of my “stupid” category. It’s filling up too quickly.

* Bush’s victory margin (2.4%) was the smallest for an incumbent in US history.

** Bush’s attempt at reforming Social Security failed, and “predicting” that a conservative president with a Republican majority Congress would put a conservative judge on the bench is like watching a guy drink 15 beers and predicting he’ll get drunk.

*** No tsunami, and actually an unusually calm hurricane season, far calmer than 2004 or 2005. For some reason Pat said that because rainstorms happened that means he was kinda right, because clearly rainstorms never hit the coastline.

Recurring themes in journalism

By Hanlon, on January 5th, 2007 at 12:37 AM

Sometimes you can tell a lot about what a writer is REALLY saying by paying attention not to what they say in one article, but by what they say over course of a few articles. Let’s take a look at James Pethokoukis, a writer for US News & World Report. Apparently he’s a smart guy (after all, the fact that he won Jeopardy is in his little bio blurb), so let’s take a look at exhibit A, the Democrats and tax increases:

The Dems’ version of pay-go would also be another step toward killing the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts, due to expire in 2010.

Right off the bat he’s phrasing it as “Democrats killing the tax cuts”, rather than “Democrats trying to repair the fact that Bush has been running the country with a credit card” but that’s fine. If he wants to phrase it that way, more power to him. Moving on (emphasis mine).

So over 10 years, the period over which the costs of these things are usually calculated, elimination of the tax cuts means a $2 trillion tax increase–assuming no effect on economic growth. The repeal might make budget hawks happy but maybe not families who would see a $500-a-kid cut in their child tax credit or investors who would face higher capital gains taxes.

Eesh. The thing that gets me is that this is always tilted as though it were a bunch of “budget hawks” just wringing their hands and laughing as they steal money from the poor families. Now, I could rail into the argument itself and how the tax cuts have hurt us plenty and this is damage control, but I was talking about patterns. Here’s exhibit B, discussing corporate tax breaks.

In short, CEOs think we live in a more dynamic, risky, and chaotic world. As a result, they’re keeping more cash on hand to deal with this challenging business environment. So cutting corporate taxes might indeed be one way, though hardly the only way, to help workers.

Now obviously the guy likes tax breaks. But piece the two arguments together: Democrats are trying to cost you trillions, and we should cut corporations taxes because they live in a “risky” world and doing so would actually help the little guy. Ignoring that even CEOs who get ousted in disgrace tend to get multi-million dollar pension plans and they somehow find ways to line the pockets of politicians, apparently they REALLY are just saving the money for a rainy day and mean ol’ Democrats are hurting average workers by taxing them.

Would it be unfair to say James Pethokoukis is hoping that cheap appeals to fans of “the little guy” will make people support irresponsible tax cuts for the wealthy? I don’t think so, but then what do I know? I stay up at night fantasizing about making families pay more taxes for no good reason.

I really do think one of these days we should split the country in half for a while. The republicans get the south, democrats get the north (I figure we can’t split it east and west since we’d lose either California or New York). Then in 10 years we’ll see where all of the working families are going.