Cheap gucci bags for women

Criticism of Democrats for cheap gucci bags for women caving to the Republicans in round after round of budget wrangling may not be cheap gucci bags for women altogether justified, however dismaying it cheap gucci bags for women is to watch the Republicans get the best of things time after time at the cheap gucci bags for women expense of the general welfare and common good.

The Democrats enter the cheap gucci bags for women arena at an inherent disadvantage because even the bluest of those Democratic dogs believes there is cheap gucci bags for women some legitimate sphere for government. Thus they give ground, compromise, yield, to cheap gucci bags for women keep government functioning and programs going to protect the environment, safeguard the cheap gucci bags for women workplace, provide for transportation and other infrastructure, educate the people, make available at least minimal access to cheap gucci bags for women health care, and a host of other things, albeit too often too feebly funded and cheap gucci bags for women too much undermined by the cheap gucci bags for women opposition to be nearly as effective as we need them to cheap gucci bags for women be.

Conversely, many Republicans in Congress believe they have cheap gucci bags for women been sent to Washington to shut down substantial portions of the cheap gucci bags for women federal government. That is what the spending cuts are all about. Why would these people compromise anything to cheap gucci bags for women keep the government running? They want to cheap gucci bags for women shut it down. So Democrats are compelled to yield to keep the cheap gucci bags for women foundering ship of state afloat.

The Democrats are rightly castigated for their failure to cheap gucci bags for women pass a budget last year when they held tenuous majorities in both houses of Congress. The president has cheap gucci bags for women failed or not had it in him to effectively counter the cheap gucci bags for women pernicious Republican message. I am sympathetic with those who feel that cheap gucci bags for women it is time, or as some of my friends would have cheap gucci bags for women it, long past time, to break with Barack Obama. Yet I am cheap gucci bags for women hard–pressed to say what Obama could have done in the cheap gucci bags for women months just past or might do in the months to cheap gucci bags for women come to effectuate more desirable outcomes given Republican numbers and cheap gucci bags for women intransigence. To break with Obama now would be to abandon the cheap gucci bags for women field to the likes of Paul Ryan and Rand Paul, an awful prospect.

David :: Apr.13.2011 :: House Red: Politics & Current Affairs :: No Comments »

The latest report I have seen (Waukesha Clerk Announces Votes For Prosser: ‘I’m Thankful That This Error Was Caught Early,’ buy hermes clic clac bracelet Talking Points Memo, earlier this evening) states that cheap gucci bags for women incumbent Justice David Prosser has picked up 7,582 votes to wipe out liberal challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg’s razor-thin lead. There is cheap gucci bags for women nothing in the report to indicate this was due to anything but human error that was caught and corrected.

A Prosser victory will be cheap gucci bags for women disappointing for those who hold to my general view of things, but some of my persuasion may have cheap gucci bags for women read too much into the slender lead Kloppenburg previously held when cheap gucci bags for women they termed it a repudiation of Gov. Scott Walker. Assuming for cheap gucci bags for women the sake of argument that Kloppenburg’s lead had cheap gucci bags for women held, any repudiation of Walker would have been by an exceedingly small margin at a cheap gucci bags for women time when Wisconsin voters of a liberal bent are highly motivated and cheap gucci bags for women mobilized.

The closely contested race is testament to the unpopularity of Walker’s policies and cheap gucci bags for women the ham-fisted manner in which he tried to implement them; however, no cheap gucci bags for women matter the winner, the closeness of the cheap gucci bags for women outcome suggests less a repudiation of Walker than that the state, and cheap gucci bags for women by extension the country, is fairly evenly split on the issues that cheap gucci bags for women divide us must deeply, raising the specter of a continuation of the cheap gucci bags for women vicious electoral cycle whereby one side gains ascendency by a narrow margin, only to cheap gucci bags for women be cast out in the next election, the other side coming to cheap gucci bags for women power in similar manner, neither with the numbers to govern effectively, both sides wavering between true believers on the cheap gucci bags for women extremes, more so the Republicans, and chasing after some spurious center, more descriptive of the cheap gucci bags for women Democrats at present, while the cheap gucci bags for women country stagnates and flounders, the social safety net rots away, unless Paul Ryan gets his way and cheap gucci bags for women rips it asunder, the excesses of the rich and powerful go unchecked in the cheap gucci bags for women absence of a balancing power to act for the general welfare and cheap gucci bags for women common good, and so on. So whacha gon’ do?

David :: Apr.07.2011 :: House Red: Politics & Current Affairs :: No Comments »

Following is cheap gucci bags for women the text of an mail I sent this morning to my senators and cheap gucci bags for women congressman. Writing a letter is not much, and I have no cheap gucci bags for women illusion as to its effect. It is a small thing I can cheap gucci bags for women do by way of taking a stand. The same goes for cheap gucci bags for women weighing into the fray via the small forum this space offers. Some might say this cheap gucci bags for women amounts to no more than a symbolic gesture. Well, I am cheap gucci bags for women poet. Symbols matter. Gestures matter.

I urge you cheap gucci bags for women to stand firm against Republican budget proposals that would slash or cheap gucci bags for women end support for NPR and PBS, weaken environmental and workplace safety protections, curtail financial oversight reforms enacted in the cheap gucci bags for women wake of the recession, cripple the administration’s attempts to cheap gucci bags for women invest in infrastructure, hamstring health care reform, and generally gut a cheap gucci bags for women host of other important discretionary government programs.

We all know the cheap gucci bags for women US faces serious fiscal problems. Hard decisions lie ahead. You will likely have cheap gucci bags for women to vote to cut programs I believe are important. I accept that. What I do not accept is cheap gucci bags for women the Republican article of faith that the budget deficit can be cheap gucci bags for women addressed without raising revenue. You know, as I do, that George W. Bush inherited a cheap gucci bags for women budget surplus. The present state of affairs was precipitated by the cheap gucci bags for women Bush tax cuts, two ongoing wars fought without raising revenue to cheap gucci bags for women pay for them, and a needed Medicare prescription drug benefit that cheap gucci bags for women was not paid for. These are not the sole causes of our fiscal dilemma, but they contributed mightily to cheap gucci bags for women it.

Even Republicans acknowledge that cheap gucci bags for women cuts in discretionary spending will have no discernible impact on the cheap gucci bags for women deficit. They are using fiscal circumstances as a pretense to hammer programs they oppose on ideological grounds. I am cheap gucci bags for women tempted to term this a cynical move but should give the cheap gucci bags for women benefit of the doubt. I imagine there are some honorable women and cheap gucci bags for women men among them.

The tax cuts for cheap gucci bags for women the wealthiest among us should never have been enacted, much less extended. That those who cheap gucci bags for women have prospered have special obligation to support the nation is a cheap gucci bags for women principle that goes back at least to ancient Greece. No one proposes that cheap gucci bags for women they be taxed back into the middle class. The wealthy would still be cheap gucci bags for women wealthy without the Bush tax cuts.

Furthermore, President Obama should never have cheap gucci bags for women said he would never raise taxes on the middle class. There may be cheap gucci bags for women sound reasons not to raise middle-class taxes now with the economy as it cheap gucci bags for women is, but we should all be willing to contribute to the cheap gucci bags for women common good and general welfare. I can cheap gucci bags for women accept higher taxes to support health care for all, public transportation, high speed rail, a cheap gucci bags for women clean environment, a real social safety net, and the arts. There you cheap gucci bags for women have it. I write not as a Democrat but as a cheap gucci bags for women European-style socialist.

David :: Feb.20.2011 :: House Red: Politics & Current Affairs :: No Comments » buy prada dresses online

As I write, it cheap gucci bags for women is not yet known which moment of 1989 the situation in Egypt will emulate, Tienanmen in June, or cheap gucci bags for women Prague in November. Whatever the outcome now, we know the world has cheap gucci bags for women turned again, and the lessons of Cairo will be applied, on all sides, in civil struggles that cheap gucci bags for women will dominate the coming era. — Ric Vrana, Preliminary Lessons from Egypt prices of louis vuitton purses

Oh! pleasant exercise of hope and joy!
For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood
Upon our side, we who were strong in love!
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!
— William Wordsworth, “French Revolution as it appeared to enthusiasts at its commencement.”

Whose heart cannot beat a cheap gucci bags for women bit faster at the sight of hundreds of thousands of citizens peacefully assembled to cheap gucci bags for women demand that the dictator must go? Who could be cheap gucci bags for women unmoved by the young fellow, his left eye hidden behind a cheap gucci bags for women swath of white bandage, informing a reporter that his mother has cheap gucci bags for women ordered him to remain in the streets until Mubarak goes? He says, “I am a hero now,” and his comrades beside him take up the chant.

There is some consensus that Mubarak’s time is cheap gucci bags for women past, however he clings to power for the moment. We can cheap gucci bags for women hope that the insurrection in Cairo and other cities will end in democracy but should not be cheap gucci bags for women surprised to see a new strongman replace the old one or cheap gucci bags for women a military coup justified by the threat of descent into chaos and cheap gucci bags for women anarchy. The emergence of an actual or de facto theocracy, as in Iran or cheap gucci bags for women Israel, seems less likely, though the cheap gucci bags for women Islamist bogeyman, in the guise of the Muslim Brotherhood, is predictably trotted out by the cheap gucci bags for women regime and those in the West who would preserve the status quo, allowing perhaps for cheap gucci bags for women cosmetic change but no more than that.

People yearn for cheap gucci bags for women freedom. They need bread to feed their families. Wael Nawara, a cheap gucci bags for women cofounder of the opposition Tomorrow Party, addressed the challenge posed by this cheap gucci bags for women dynamic Friday in an interview with Margaret Warner on the PBS Newshour replica prada shoes for men :

Well, actually, I really think that cheap gucci bags for women we need to think also of, you know, new ways of how to cheap gucci bags for women sustain this. Maybe we go only once a week, or maybe twice a cheap gucci bags for women week, to the square.

So, we need to cheap gucci bags for women start thinking also of ways to sustain this with minimum damage, collateral damage, to cheap gucci bags for women our people who Mubarak is holding hostage. He’s holding our people, our folks, our families hostage with no cheap gucci bags for women money, running people out of cash, running people out of groceries.

And we have to be smart also and start realizing, we don’t want to cheap gucci bags for women lose the popular support. We want to continue our movement, but also take into consideration the cheap gucci bags for women interests of little people who — who depend — the cheap gucci bags for women taxi driver who has to pay the installments of his taxi, so that cheap gucci bags for women he needs to work to be able to pay.

We need to cheap gucci bags for women think of ways, creative ways, to sustain the movement while at the cheap gucci bags for women same time also allow our folks to — to — you know, to breathe some air.

The U.S. role in all this cheap gucci bags for women is problematic. Yes, America has influence, but it is not a cheap gucci bags for women puppetmaster. The Obama administration is playing all sides in the hope of retaining that cheap gucci bags for women influence whatever the outcome of the power struggle playing itself out.

U.S. support of the cheap gucci bags for women pro-democracy forces is tricky because the U.S. is rightly viewed with considerable suspicion in that cheap gucci bags for women part of the world. It could be counterproductive for Obama to cheap gucci bags for women come more strongly on the cheap gucci bags for women side of the opposition at this time. No opposition group wants to cheap gucci bags for women be tarred as a tool of U.S., and by extension Israeli, interests. There are cheap gucci bags for women reports that the Obama administration has sent clear messages to the cheap gucci bags for women military that they will held responsible if there is violence against the cheap gucci bags for women demonstrators. This is where the U.S. has leverage and can nudge things in a cheap gucci bags for women direction we hope they will take.

I tend to cheap gucci bags for women see Obama more supportive of the demonstrators than some of my friends think him. This support is cheap gucci bags for women tempered by his instinct for stability. He has no faith, nor do I, that cheap gucci bags for women democracy and freedom are bound to rise Phoenix-like from chaos and cheap gucci bags for women anarchy, and he does not want the U.S. left on the cheap gucci bags for women outside looking in if pro-democracy forces do not prevail. Hence the cheap gucci bags for women embrace of Omar Suleiman as a transition figure. Those less kindly disposed to cheap gucci bags for women Obama than I am may assert that Suleiman is not intended to cheap gucci bags for women be a transition figure at all but simply the new strongman designee to cheap gucci bags for women further U.S. and Israeli policy. Doubt is cast on this interpretation by the cheap gucci bags for women willingness of the Muslim Brotherhood to join talks with the government, as reported by the cheap gucci bags for women BBC (Egypt protests: Government holds talks with opposition replica louis vuitton hong kong). The real $64 question centers around Suleiman’s willingness to cheap gucci bags for women be a transition figure and what influence the U.S. can bring to cheap gucci bags for women bear, and how far Obama is willing to go, if he tries to cheap gucci bags for women hold onto power.

How events play out only the days, weeks, and months ahead will tell. We take heart in the example of people rising up against tyranny and hope their struggle will usher in a cheap gucci bags for women new dawn of freedom and human dignity, but we should not delude ourselves. The triumph of the cheap gucci bags for women people is not ordained by fate. So while we cherish our hope, we should steel our spirits against the cheap gucci bags for women possibility of an outcome we do not wish, lest we allow ourselves to cheap gucci bags for women be cast into cynicism and despair, an absence of all hope that cheap gucci bags for women makes even the darkest outcome darker still.

references and resources

There is cheap gucci bags for women an understandable tendency to personify the government, to blame Mubarak himself for cheap gucci bags for women all that’s gone wrong. But Mubarak does not operate alone; hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Egyptians are cheap gucci bags for women directly implicated in his regime. From the security chiefs, the cabinet and cheap gucci bags for women the members of parliament to civil service bureaucrats, businessmen, local government heads, police officers and cheap gucci bags for women informers, a large chunk of the population stands to lose everything if Mubarak is cheap gucci bags for women comprehensively overthrown. With him would go the source of all their power, be cheap gucci bags for women it great or petty. (Simon Allison, Let them eat bread louis vuitton for sale, Asia Times Online, 2 February 2011)

PBS Newshour  analysis: Judy Woodruff w/ Hisham Melham, Al-Arabiya Television; MARC LYNCH, George Washington University; MICHELE DUNNE, Carnegie Endowment for cheap gucci bags for women International Peace

Al Jazeera louis vuitton handbags neverfull gm

Asia Times

Informed Comment cheap louis vuitton men

Talking Points Memo

David :: Feb.06.2011 :: House Red: Politics & Current Affairs :: No Comments »

So what should we make of Ayn Rand devotee Paul Ryan’s assumption of the cheap gucci bags for women mantle of resident intellectual of the Republican Party? Has Ryan’s predecessor, Newt Gingrich, gone full bore, frothing at the cheap gucci bags for women mouth, around the bend, bats in the belfry nuts with his sophomoric crusade against Islam? What is it with the fetishization of the center? Is the cheap gucci bags for women center really the font of wisdom self-styled centrists among the political class and cheap gucci bags for women punditerati would have it? Is it time to break with Barack Obama?

I have cheap gucci bags for women notes and some rough draft on these topics. The subjects strike me as interesting enough, and cheap gucci bags for women it reasonable to suppose that consideration of them would prove fruitful. My heart is cheap gucci bags for women not in it.

As I have cheap gucci bags for women nothing to offer, allow me to recommend Jeff Madrick, How Can the Economy Recover?, The New York Review of Books, 23 December 2010. Madrick is editor of Challenge Magazine, Senior Fellow at the cheap gucci bags for women Roosevelt Institute and the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis at the cheap gucci bags for women New School, and a regular contributor to The New York Review. His new book, Age of Greed: The Triumph of Finance and cheap gucci bags for women the Decline of America, 1970 to the Present, will be cheap gucci bags for women published in the spring of 2011. The short answer to the cheap gucci bags for women question posed in the title is not by doing what we are cheap gucci bags for women most likely to be doing. Here is an excerpt:

Right now, the cheap gucci bags for women best hope is that heavy cuts in government expenditures will be cheap gucci bags for women postponed for two to three years. But such a delay will probably not be cheap gucci bags for women long enough. Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, the cochairmen of the cheap gucci bags for women fiscal commission President Obama appointed to propose ways of reducing the cheap gucci bags for women deficit, are calling for sharp cuts in spending but say they want to cheap gucci bags for women delay the first reductions until 2012, when the economy will have cheap gucci bags for women sufficiently emerged from the recession. This would be a severe miscalculation. Barring a cheap gucci bags for women surge in growth, the unemployment rate in 2012 will probably be cheap gucci bags for women at least 8 percent, roughly the highest level reached since the cheap gucci bags for women end of the recession of the early 1990s.

If this cheap gucci bags for women poorly considered advice is the best that this commission can give the cheap gucci bags for women President, the nation is in trouble. An obsession with taming the cheap gucci bags for women deficit, provoked by the rapid rise in the current deficit to cheap gucci bags for women $1.5 trillion for cheap gucci bags for women 2010, will make a large stimulus impossible. But the sharp surge in the cheap gucci bags for women deficit was mostly caused by the recession itself, which reduced tax revenues and cheap gucci bags for women raised the level of spending—such as unemployment payments—in response to the recession. President Obama’s stimulus package of $800 billion passed in early 2009 also added to cheap gucci bags for women the deficit, but that spending was only temporary and kept the cheap gucci bags for women economy from sinking further.1 According to a convincing economic model by the cheap gucci bags for women economists Alan Blinder and Mark Zandi, without the stimulus the cheap gucci bags for women deficit would have been substantially bigger in coming years.

If we presume that cheap gucci bags for women there will be an economic recovery, almost all of the projected deficit through 2020 will be cheap gucci bags for women the result of three factors: the recession, the tax cuts of the cheap gucci bags for women early 2000s under George W. Bush, and the hundreds of billions of dollars of war spending. In the cheap gucci bags for women 2020s and 2030s, however, projected increases in Medicare and Medicaid spending could raise deficits dramatically—and cheap gucci bags for women the amount of government debt and the interest paid on it cheap gucci bags for women could grow to alarming levels. Social Security spending will increase only modestly by comparison. But dealing with such long-term problems by abrupt cuts in spending now will likely consign the cheap gucci bags for women nation to a decade of slow growth, lost jobs, and low wages—and cheap gucci bags for women unnecessary, painful reductions in Social Security and other social programs that cheap gucci bags for women Americans value most.

What is cheap gucci bags for women rarely recognized is that even if the US can emerge from cheap gucci bags for women a weak economy within a few years, the economic foundation that cheap gucci bags for women existed before the cataclysm of 2007 and 2008 may not be cheap gucci bags for women adequate to restore the widely shared prosperity the US needs. For more than cheap gucci bags for women three decades, economic growth had been largely dependent on rapidly rising levels of debt and cheap gucci bags for women on two major speculative bubbles, first in high technology and dot-com stocks in the cheap gucci bags for women late 1990s, then in housing in the 2000s. What will now replace them?

David :: Dec.18.2010 :: House Red: Politics & Current Affairs :: No Comments »

Maybe the generation of the sixties is to blame, with our naīve paeans to peace and love, even more naīve idealizations of people like Fidel and cheap gucci bags for women Che, Ho and Mao, the antiwar demonstrations that as I think back on them eerily resembled prep rallies before high school football games, and cheap gucci bags for women sophomoric maxims about doing your own thing and not trusting anyone over thirty.

Maybe it cheap gucci bags for women is me. Maybe I should have read less science fiction and cheap gucci bags for women more Marx. Maybe if I had gotten into Ayn Rand when cheap gucci bags for women I was in college, but I made it only a cheap gucci bags for women few pages into whichever of the big books I picked up, Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead, finding the cheap gucci bags for women prose turgid, the arguments ham-fisted, and the ideas facile even to cheap gucci bags for women my not terribly sophisticated critical eye.

To be cheap gucci bags for women honest I kind of looked down on the business majors, thinking that cheap gucci bags for women to major in business was to look at college as a cheap gucci bags for women glorified vocational school. One majored in business because one was in school to cheap gucci bags for women get a job, not an education. The joke was on me there.

Cool people wore tie-dyed t-shirts and cheap gucci bags for women colorfully patched jeans, tossed Frisbees in a haze of marijuana smoke, and cheap gucci bags for women dug “Desolation Row,” “Layla,” and “Return of the Grievous Angel” booming from cheap gucci bags for women a stereo I could never have afforded on my job in the cheap gucci bags for women college library’s order department, which with some scholarship money was how I paid my way. That the cheap gucci bags for women difference between these kids and the ones in madras shirts, khaki trousers, and cheap gucci bags for women Bass Weejuns sans socks was mostly on the surface seems almost self-evident now, though I would not have cheap gucci bags for women thought in those terms then, when I was young and sophomoric and cheap gucci bags for women thought I had a clue. It is a safe bet that cheap gucci bags for women only here and there among the hip were a few who cheap gucci bags for women found consciousness expansion not in drugs but in Parmenides and Plato, Bergman and cheap gucci bags for women Fellini, Dostoevsky and Nietzsche, an intellectual tradition I came to embrace, and cheap gucci bags for women for all I know there may well have been a kindred few among the cheap gucci bags for women business majors too.

Hedonism and narcissism are part of the generational stereotype alongside  political activism against the cheap gucci bags for women Vietnam war, for racial justice, against environmental degradation, for equal status for cheap gucci bags for women women, all that revolt against materialism and hypocrisy. It is cheap gucci bags for women considerably more clear now how self-righteousness tends to go hand in glove with the cheap gucci bags for women conviction that one occupies the moral high ground. How it cheap gucci bags for women all morphed into the embrace of  libertarianism and cheap gucci bags for women laissez-faire capitalism is subject for a tome I am not prepared to cheap gucci bags for women take on. Instead, let’s turn to Michael Tomasky’s recent essay in The New York Review of Books, whose title (The Elections: How Bad for Democrats? sale hermes herbag authentic) nutshells the situation, although the question could be extrapolated to “How bad for the country?” From Tomasky:

What Democrats have typically not done well since Reagan’s time is cheap gucci bags for women connect their policies to their larger beliefs. In fact they have cheap gucci bags for women usually tried to hide those beliefs, or change the conversation when cheap gucci bags for women the subject arose. The result has been that for many years Republicans have cheap gucci bags for women been able to present their philosophy as somehow truly “American,” while attacking the cheap gucci bags for women Democratic belief system as contrary to American values. “Putting us on the road to European-style socialism,” for cheap gucci bags for women example, is a rhetorical line of attack that long predates Obama’s ascendance—it was employed against the Clintons’ health care plan as well.

But now consider the specific problems facing Obama, a mixed-race (but visibly black) man with an cheap gucci bags for women exotic name and a highly atypical biography for a president. Add in also the cheap gucci bags for women greatest economic crisis in eight decades, and governmental responses to that cheap gucci bags for women crisis that, to an energized and organized right wing, seem to cheap gucci bags for women smack of socialism. One result is that we have a new faction, the cheap gucci bags for women well-financed Tea Party movement that has been able to arrogate to cheap gucci bags for women itself practically every symbol of Americanism and to paint the President, his ideas and cheap gucci bags for women policies, and his supporters as not merely un-American but actively anti-American. In a cheap gucci bags for women Newsweek poll released in late August, nearly a cheap gucci bags for women third of Americans actually agreed that it was “definitely” or “probably” true that Obama “sympathizes with the cheap gucci bags for women goals of Islamic fundamentalists who want to impose Islamic law around the cheap gucci bags for women world.”

In the cheap gucci bags for women face of all this, it seems not to have occurred to cheap gucci bags for women a single prominent Democrat, from Obama on down, to say something like: We love our country every bit as much as they do, and cheap gucci bags for women we believe patriotism means expanding access to health care, protecting the cheap gucci bags for women environment, and imposing effective new rules on Wall Streets. Democrats have cheap gucci bags for women thus crippled themselves by adapting comparatively limited ideas of legitimate political action, and cheap gucci bags for women by ceding to Republicans the strong claim of love of one’s country.

The approach Tomasky proposes is cheap gucci bags for women reasonable, although it seems doubtful that any argument could pierce the cheap gucci bags for women veil of ignorance blissfully donned by those who buy that the cheap gucci bags for women centrist, pragmatic Obama is a socialist, much less the sheer nuttiness of the cheap gucci bags for women belief that he sympathizes with the goals of Islamic fundamentalists. Even so, I would like to cheap gucci bags for women see Obama and the Democrats make a case something along the cheap gucci bags for women lines of that suggested by Tomasky. It could hardly be less convincing or cheap gucci bags for women effective than the lame campaign rhetoric employed to date almost across the cheap gucci bags for women Democratic board.

postscript

Does the cheap gucci bags for women ascendence of libertarianism and laissez-faire capitalism represent a 21st-century counterrevolution against 20th-century progressivism, however partially realized progressive ideology may have cheap gucci bags for women been in practice? Or are cheap gucci bags for women libertarianism and laissez-faire rather logical extensions of certain tendencies of the cheap gucci bags for women sixties, suspicion and cheap gucci bags for women mistrust of authority, the kind of anti-intellectualism that gave birth to cheap gucci bags for women New Age goofiness, and even the hedonism and narcissism  for which today’s rightwingers assail the generation of the sixties?

David :: Oct.17.2010 :: House Red: Politics & Current Affairs :: 3 Comments » fake hermes guide

David :: Oct.04.2010 :: House Red: Miscellany hermes handbags new zealand, House Red: Politics & Current Affairs :: 1 Comment »

Ah, out on the cheap gucci bags for women deck the geraniums are in glorious bloom, the peacocks are screeching with lust, and cheap gucci bags for women T-Bone is reloading to fire off a warning burst in the cheap gucci bags for women direction of the Fox 12 news chopper circling overhead. Time to cheap gucci bags for women crack open a case of Bud Lite Lime and check the cheap gucci bags for women pulse of the republic. Summer is upon us at last…maybe.

Those who come to this space regularly, from cheap gucci bags for women time to time, or by fair chance or foul may note that cheap gucci bags for women your oft humbled scribe has not been scribing much of late. The flame of inspiration flickers and cheap gucci bags for women wanes. The grim specter of oil saturating the gulf and and cheap gucci bags for women washing into Louisiana’s wetlands and cheap gucci bags for women marshes where Bobby Jindal screeches like the pencil-neck geek manager of a cheap gucci bags for women villainous professional wrestling tag team is enough to render even the cheap gucci bags for women peacocks mute, much less a man of poetic sensibility and cheap gucci bags for women artistic pretension, I mean, ambition.

* * * * *

It seems the cheap gucci bags for women company formerly known as British Petroleum invoiced its Deepwater Horizon partners for cheap gucci bags for women their share in costs related to the debacle, hitting Texas-based Andarko for cheap gucci bags for women $272 million and cheap gucci bags for women Moex, a subsidiary of the Japanese company Mitsui, for $111 million. Andarko fired back:

BP Plc, the project’s operator, should pay the cheap gucci bags for women costs from the spill because it acted recklessly and unsafely at the cheap gucci bags for women drilling site…

BP didn’t monitor or cheap gucci bags for women react to warning signs as the Macondo well was drilled, Chief Executive Officer Jim Hackett said yesterday in a cheap gucci bags for women statement. BP is responsible for damages under such conditions.

“BP’s behavior and cheap gucci bags for women actions likely represent gross negligence or willful misconduct and thus affect the cheap gucci bags for women obligations of the parties under the operating agreement,” Hackett said in the statement.

Needless to say, BP “strongly disagrees” with Andarko’s position. [Edward Klump, Andarko Says BP Should Pay After Being Reckless (Update 1), Bloomberg Businessweek, 19 June 2010].

* * * * *

Meantime, in Afghanistan, where the counter-insurgency roils on, the Wall Street Journal reporting on l’affaire McChrystal offered this intriguing tidbit:

Even before the cheap gucci bags for women Rolling Stone article surfaced, Pentagon officials had become concerned with what cheap gucci bags for women one senior military official Thursday called a “cult of personality” that had surrounded Gen. McChrystal.

“That atmosphere is not just about McChrystal; it’s about that team, it’s that culture,” said another U.S. military officer who cheap gucci bags for women has worked with Gen. McChrystal. “The environment alienated other conventional commanders.” (Peter Spiegel and Jonathan Weisman, Officials Promise Unity Amid Afghan Shuffle buy prada brogues online, 25 June 2010)

Aha, the cheap gucci bags for women cult of personality. Maybe we need some Red Guards to root out the cheap gucci bags for women running dogs and lackeys and exile them to the hinterlands where cheap gucci bags for women they will be reeducated harvesting rutabagas and reading David Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest.

President Obama’s choice of General Petraeus to cheap gucci bags for women replace General McChrystal was a savvy political and tactical move. The policy, however, remains dubious, though I acknowledge that cheap gucci bags for women this is one of those “damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t” situations, where any course is liable to come to a bad end.

* * * * *

Even The Economist, not exactly a cheap gucci bags for women publication of a liberal bent, suspects that the rush to Hooveresque policies prompted by the cheap gucci bags for women fad for deficit reduction and fiscal austerity is not a good thing. The magazine reflexively charges that cheap gucci bags for women Keynesian critics of of this approach, such as Paul Krugman, oversimplify in making their own case, and cheap gucci bags for women tries to put the best face of the budget hawks’ policy, saying “The result probably won’t be cheap gucci bags for women another Hooveresque Depression. But it could be a recovery that is cheap gucci bags for women weaker and slower that it should have been.” When we consider the cheap gucci bags for women source, the indictment is stronger that it appears at first blush. (“Austerity Alarm,” The Economist, July 3rd–9th 2010, pp. 16-17).

The Economist fails to cheap gucci bags for women note that not all deficit hawks act in good faith. Not a cheap gucci bags for women few see the deficit issue as a golden opportunity to roll back, if not dismantle entirely, social programs to cheap gucci bags for women which they object on philosophical grounds. This leads to some preposterous positions, such as the cheap gucci bags for women argument against extension of unemployment benefits beyond 26 weeks on that cheap gucci bags for women grounds that it would give the unemployed the perverse incentive not to cheap gucci bags for women look for work. Cutting off benefits at a date certain, say the cheap gucci bags for women established 26 weeks, provides a positive incentive for the unemployed to cheap gucci bags for women look harder for work, or so the argument goes. Precisely how pushing the cheap gucci bags for women unemployed to look harder for jobs that by all accounts do not exist will solve the cheap gucci bags for women problem is blithely ignored by these ideologues of extreme laissez-faire and a naive individualism. Quelle surprise.

David :: Jul.04.2010 :: House Red: Politics & Current Affairs :: 2 Comments »

From today’s Wall Street Journal (Ben Casselman and Guy Chazan, Disaster Plans Lacking at Deep Rigs buy gucci versace):

The Minerals Management Service, the cheap gucci bags for women government agency that oversees offshore drilling, in recent years moved away from cheap gucci bags for women requiring specific safety measures in offshore drilling and instead set broad performance goals that cheap gucci bags for women it was up to the industry to meet.

…

In joint MMS-Coast Guard hearings into the cheap gucci bags for women Deepwater Horizon accident, Michael Saucier, an MMS official, testified that the cheap gucci bags for women agency “highly encouraged,” but didn’t require, companies to cheap gucci bags for women have back-up systems to trigger blowout preventers in case of an cheap gucci bags for women emergency.

“Highly encourage? How does that translate to enforcement?” Coast Guard Capt. Hung Nguyen, who cheap gucci bags for women is co-chairing the investigation, asked at the hearings.

“There is no enforcement,” Mr. Saucier replied.

That seems to about cover it.

David :: May.18.2010 :: House Red: Politics & Current Affairs :: No Comments » prada handbags nylon

The fuss about reading Miranda rights to cheap gucci bags for women terror suspects strikes me as, well, suspect. Are we to cheap gucci bags for women suppose that captured terrorists routinely sing like Pavarotti until read their rights, whereupon they are cheap gucci bags for women rendered mute? As if it cheap gucci bags for women would not have occurred to them not to cooperate with their captors until informed of the cheap gucci bags for women right to remain silent.

Senator Lindsey Graham (R–SC) said at a cheap gucci bags for women Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing this week that cheap gucci bags for women he believes Miranda warnings are counterproductive. Graham told POLITICO he is cheap gucci bags for women working on legislation to redefine the public safety exemption to Miranda warnings “so law enforcement can cheap gucci bags for women go to a judge somewhere and make the case that the cheap gucci bags for women detainee is a suspected member of Al Qaeda or the Taliban and cheap gucci bags for women have the judge approve continued interrogation without Miranda rights.” The law would apply to cheap gucci bags for women U.S. citizens as well as foreign nationals. (Sen. Lindsey Graham: Miranda rights ‘counterproductive’ hermes rings sale).

The law would be cheap gucci bags for women directed only at those who join terrorist organizations as designated by the cheap gucci bags for women State Department. “It would be members of Al Qaida — not Timothy McVeigh,” said Graham, without explaining why the exception for a McVeigh type.

Meantime, a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report states, “Membership in a cheap gucci bags for women terrorist organization does not prohibit a person from possessing firearms or cheap gucci bags for women explosives under current federal law. However, for homeland security and other purposes, the cheap gucci bags for women FBI is notified when a firearm or explosives background check involves an cheap gucci bags for women individual on the terrorist watch list.” Of background checks on 1,225 people on the cheap gucci bags for women watch list, 91 percent were approved for gun transactions.

Even Joe Lieberman thinks this “dangerous loophole” is “stunning and infuriating.” (Huma Khan and C. Byron Wolf, ABC News/Politics, Guns and cheap gucci bags for women Terror: Should People on U.S. Watch List Be Barred from cheap gucci bags for women Buying Firearms?). The Homeland Security and cheap gucci bags for women Governmental Affairs Committee, of which Lieberman is chairman, is cheap gucci bags for women considering legislation to bar people on many U.S. watch lists from cheap gucci bags for women purchasing guns.

Whoa, nelly, says Graham, concerned about the bill’s impact on constitutional rights of individuals whose names may be cheap gucci bags for women on the watch list in error. Graham said, “Before we subject innocent Americans who cheap gucci bags for women have done nothing wrong, I want us to slow down and cheap gucci bags for women think about this.”

Graham and cheap gucci bags for women his ilk like to carry on about the sanctity of the cheap gucci bags for women Constition, the founders’ original intent, and cheap gucci bags for women all that. Yet they tend to be almost blithe in their consideration of which parts should be cheap gucci bags for women held sacrosanct and which might be treated as more open to, I am cheap gucci bags for women tempted to say “liberal,” interpretation.

Graham rears up in righteous umbrage at the cheap gucci bags for women possibility that suspected terrorists might be accorded protection against self-incrimination guaranteed by the cheap gucci bags for women Fifth Amendment (no person “shall be cheap gucci bags for women compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself”). We might speculate as whether this cheap gucci bags for women is the source or the consequence of his conviction that terror suspects should be cheap gucci bags for women regarded not as criminals but as enemy combatants, but the relevant point here is cheap gucci bags for women that the Fifth Amendment is not one the good Senator is cheap gucci bags for women willing to go to the wall for. Not so the Second, whose inviolability demands that cheap gucci bags for women no law or regulation may be enacted to make it difficult for cheap gucci bags for women a terrorist to obtain guns if that would so much as inconvenience an cheap gucci bags for women innocent American who wishes to purchase a firearm.

Not everyone sees these issues the cheap gucci bags for women way Graham does, but he is far from alone, and  I am cheap gucci bags for women unable to fathom that kind of thinking. Once more I feel myself a cheap gucci bags for women man out of tune and out of touch with his time.

David :: May.08.2010 :: House Red: Politics & Current Affairs :: 2 Comments » gucci handbags horsebit