All this talk and nobody has mentioned catalog sales yet?

Posted at October 31, 2007 11:53 AM in response to The Success of Amazon: Welfare as We Should Know It

To paraphrase, "Conservatism is not the solution. Conservatism is the problem."

Posted at October 31, 2007 9:23 AM in response to Bad Habits Continue in Philly

"The United States is probably the only country in the world..."

I give you Jacques Chirac, president of France for more than 8 years, and owner of a long trail of scandal and scurrilousness.

I give you Helmut Kohl, chancellor of Germany for more than 8 years, recipient of donations in black bags, benefiting from off-the-book contributions whose donors he knows but has never revealed even before a parliamentary committee of inquiry.

I give you Silvio Berlusconi, on-again off-again prime minister of Italy, originator of several laws to get himself out of legal jeopardy.

America has no monopoly on scandals, even at the highest political level.

Posted at June 14, 2006 12:56 AM in response to Mr. Rove is Ready for His Close-Up

We Democrats can certainly run against Bush in 2006 and 2008. To take a recent example, Republicans ran against Clinton in 2000. Heck, in some ways they're still running against Jimmy Carter, and he's been out of the White House a quarter of a century. How long did Democrats run against Herbert Hoover? Let's not allow a pesky detail like whether or not the man is on the ballot keep us away from a political strategy that works!

I have to take issue with M.M. -- Bush did not destabilize the Middle East. It was already unstable, and it was unstable in a way that produced the men who flew planes into buildings. Yes, Bush's decision to invade Iraq has made things worse. Nevertheless, the status quo ante was not acceptable to any US government; the question is what are the right choices to improve American (and incidentally global) security.

Posted at March 28, 2006 2:26 PM in response to Reagan Again

The point about the ponies still stands, too. On all four legs, no less.

Posted at February 27, 2006 10:39 AM in response to Mars

TC, I'm reasonably sure Mr Begala had his tongue in cheek when he called the War what he did...

Posted at December 6, 2005 1:56 AM in response to DeLay Country, or not ...

The Financial Times and the Financial Times Deutschland both lean on Human Rights Watch for their sourcing. One of the persons quoted from HRW says they have the means to track CIA flights. So this is a Washington-sourced story, which rules out Scenario Three.

But now with the European angle, many other reporters are keen to get onto the story. One of the sites mentioned is in northeast Poland. It's the sort of area where small jets flying in and out would likely be noticed. The other is an existing base in Romania, so activity would be less obvious.

If there are five other countries involved, don't expect this story to die down any time soon. There are simply too many interests in having it out there.

Posted at November 4, 2005 8:20 AM in response to Secret CIA Prisons: Preemptive Strike or Surprise Attack?

To the main post, I would only add that it's not just that Germany has agreed to limits on deficit spending as part of launching the euro (indeed, Germany was the main driver of said limits), it's that the country has clearly exceeded them in recent years and is unlikely to get back under the limits this decade. So the government is already engaging in deficit spending; it just can't indulge in any more.

Seen from Munich, some of the comments above are puzzling, to say the least. aztec, the kind of rhetoric you're using is a total non-starter for at least 80 percent of the German electorate. There is as much desire here for a "push to reduce the social welfare state" as there is nationalizing industry in the US. Couched in the terms you use, it ain't gonna happen.

One of the more significant obstacles to job creation in Germany is the comparatively large number of bureaucratic hurdles needed to start a company. It's generally in the bottom quarter of EU comparisons in this area. That means the small businesses that drive so much job creation in the US are sparser on the ground. This is one area where government action can make a difference. Another obstacle is in non-wage costs. This is a hard problem. A third problem is of depressed regions, mostly in the East. All post-communist countries have this problem, and eastern Germany is no exception.

Maven, I really think Schröder is headed for retirement, of the Grand Old Man style. Muntefering's agenda is his agenda, so there's little point in undermining the Grand Coalition. Further, there's not a cabal of Schröder supporters to make that sort of supposition work. He's moving on.

thebluenomad, I think you may have been reading too much of The Economist. People do know that change is coming, and they want it work out well, but as the author of the main post points out, the German system is designed to make haste slowly. Also, the political bargaining so far has been a situation in which the significant parties want to have everybody else's sacred cow for hamburger, while concediing none of their own privileges. The FDP talks a good liberal game, but votes to protect its backers' professional perks. The CDU campaigned like a wholly owned subsidiary of the Chamber of Commerce; no wonder their 20-point polling margins dropped like rocks. And what do you really mean by "significant civil unrest"? It's a scary sort of phrase, but I wonder what it really contains.

Posted at October 13, 2005 2:25 PM in response to A Grand Coalition?

Thanks, that is a good summary. I'm also glad to hear that there are standard responses to what I am sure is a standard gambit. Now all we have to do is get reporters to listen...

Posted at October 11, 2005 1:28 PM in response to He Said, She Said, We're Clueless

Chris, what do you tell aspiring journalists to say when someone intent on, say, pushing an ID viewpoint says, "Well, we all know of cases when the consensus has been wrong, just think of Galileo"? I'm sure that's one of the rhetorical moves that interviewers encounter. What should they do?

Posted at October 11, 2005 5:37 AM in response to He Said, She Said, We're Clueless