I could be wrong, but I think the Trader_anover and such posters kept bringing up Obama since they didn't want to talk about the scintillating GOP field. Some of these posters always want to just criticize the liberal instead of offering anything positive from their own perspective. It has a great lineage (and it exists on both sides of the aisle, Roger Aisles, that is.)
obama has been a good little corporatist so the puppet masters have already decided that he gets to play president for another 4 years. this election is already decided.
I guess sanity is relative in Repub circles these days, but the man vigorously sold the Iraq War (his cost and time projections were just a tad off) and through his words and actions intentionally wrecked the US economy. Not to mention he's one of the key players in creating Prozac nation when he worked for Eli Lilly. And this... Maybe he's not insane, just evil.
No argument from me on your first point. Really, there IS no argument. Didn't know about the Prozac thing with Eli Lilly. I work there a couple of summers during college waaay back. How would you judge his time as governor?
At least a portion of this is actually out of context. He was asked to make projections for the current year (for OMB budgeting purposes) and that's what his agency did - those numbers actually turned out be fairly accurate (and actually higher than the real cost). Somehow, people started talking about it as though it was a projection for the entirety of the war and then claiming it was way off. Here's the rebuttal to the NewYorker article: http://spectator.org/blog/2010/03/02/did-mitch-daniels-fudge-the-ir#
There's nothing that is out of context. I saw the rebuttal and that's one of the reasons I didn't quote the whole article. I think the point in the part I quoted does stand however. Nobody should go into a war without any contingency plans or projections. That he just looked at what he was assigned to do and then presented it and sold it as if it would be the only possible outcome is a massive failure of staff work. That there is this one little kernel that defenders grasp (Oh, he was just misunderstood... nevermind that this misunderstanding fell in line with exactly what the Bush admin wanted to do) I guess looks good compared to the utter ridiculousness of so many GOP types these days, but come on... having plausible deniability on one of the central issues of our time does not a leader make. I don't understand why anyone with any appreciation for how this country was wrecked under W could look at this guy twice, much less favorably. Plus, he's 5'7". Madison and Van Buren aren't walking through that door now that we have TV.
I'm not quite as sympathetic. He made a 6 month projection under the assumption we'd overthrow Saddam, set up a government and get out in that time which is absurd. Lawrence Lindsey (the Bush economic advisor at the time) had made a projection of more than double that. Daniels repeatedly said in interviews that his projections consisted of the entirety of the US presence in Iraq. Now you can argue that he was using the crappy Pentagon projections of a 6 month timeframe but he was also projecting the war, reconstruction, developing a stable government, and withdrawal. Even if it were only a 6 month war to suggest that doing all of that would only cost around 60 billion is nonsense. Also the author of your link suggests that Daniels actually overprojected the amount of money required at the time. Again Daniels' projection included elements that could not even be spent on at the time. He budgeted money for things like elections, developing government institutions, withdrawal, etc.. None of which were applicable to fiscal year 2003. Additionally when the Coalition Provisional Authority asked for more money in April he gave them whopping 2.5 billion dollars when they needed a massive cash infusion since a) they were underfunded and b) were totally incompetent. (sadly part b shouldve been fixed along with a funding boost) It's easy to deflect blame because he was just the guy making projections for the administration but his budget was supposed to include every single dollar that we were going to spend in Iraq which was apparently supposed to take about 6 months time. And he failed at that. This wasnt a one time 6 month projection. He said in interviews he was projecting the cost of the entire war and Packer points out that when pressed in 2003 on why his projections were LESS than the total cost of the 1991 Gulf War, he didnt have an answer. He was in the same alternate reality that the rest of the Bush Administration was in at the time. I mean Lawrence Lindsey got fired for suggesting that the total war would cost 2-3 times more what Daniels was suggesting (and even he was nowhere close to correct). They were all delusional and Daniels deserves to be included.
LOL, yes I suppose that's why populist orgs like the Chamber of Commerce and the libertarian Koch brothers are such big supporters of his, lol.
LOL at you samuel. i suppose thats why corporations like GE/NBC, goldman sachs, JP morgan, microsoft and the health care industry are such big detractors of his, lol. must be nice to be an obama connected, multi-billion dollar corporation like GE who pays pays no taxes! im sure it has nothing to do w/ the fact that their former CEO is now chairman of obamas economic council. or bank of america, who received a trillion dollar bailout from our government, but still got a couple billion tax refund. wish i had friends in high places like they do. lol, indeed.
These guys, with the exception of Microsoft, IIRC, are all members of the Chamber of Commerce - I don't know why you are arguing against the incredibly unremarkable position that interest groups like those used by the libertarian koch brothers and other shills funnel billions to defeat iniatives by the President that would hurt them, but argue away, genius. Juco rocks.
Given that they were using those tax loopholes long before Obama, you'd be correct in saying their paying limited taxes has nothing do with being on Obama's economic council. You wish you lost the vast majority of your wealth and you got to borrow money from the US government to survive at 20% interest rates? Just FYI, you can replicate this pretty easily - throw all your money away in a failed business (this will give you the tax refund you crave) and then go on a credit card debt spree (this will let you borrow money out of desperation at crazy high rates).
Basically.... he has learned well from Clinton, Bush Jr. and Ronny Ray-gun... the last man to stand up to the establishment was banished to one term purgatory (Carter) and now is viewed as a marginally insane do-gooder.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politi...im-Pawlenty-enters-2012-race-how-he-might-win Tim Pawlenty has entered the race. Thoughts on him?
Apparently his support of cap-and-trade was a mistake and he is willing to flip-flop on any issue that requires a Norquist litmus test.
