The Washington Post editors, who generally have cheered climate change legislation, sound quite queasy about the cap-and-trade bill that squeaked through in the House. In particular, the editors are afraid of setting off a trade war with the tariff on countries which haven’t been so foolish as to hobble their own economics with the sort of “mandates, subsidies, and regulations” that Congress saw fit to pass. They write:
Even talk of tariffs sends exactly the wrong signal to skittish trading partners during a global downturn. Now is not the time to invite a trade war.
Are the tariffs’ extra layer of protection worth the risk? It is if you’re an American union boss. The rebate-tariff regime looks like yet another Waxman-Markey sop that the bill’s backers added to ensure its passage. We hope that the Senate, where the action is now, has the sense to remove the tariff provision, fix its trade compensation scheme and scale back the bill’s other excesses.
Yes, and what about those “other excesses”?
Granted legislation is the art of compromise but this one seems to have incorporated the worst elements from every special interest group, thus rendering the bill both economically disastrous and ineffective in its goal of limiting greenhouse gas emissions. Tariffs for Big Labor. Off-sets and free carbon permits for business (thereby nixing the incentive to create those “green” jobs). And plenty of taxes and mandates for Midwestern employers (“polluters,” the president calls them). There is plenty for everyone to hate. What is missing is a coherent scheme that meets its drafters’ stated purpose. Oh, and anything that is likely to produces those “jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs,” which Speaker Pelosi promised us.
if a neo con whines in the forest and no one is around to hear it…
All Trolls Alert, All Trolls Alert: a post on Israel detected. Lester has 1 neocon already. You can do better than that. Man your keyboards…ready, aim, fire.
I have had a creepy feeling about Cohen, that if he had gone to Bergen-Belsen for a story, he would have come back telling us the Jews complimented the management on feeding them at least once a day, and being tough on crime.
Didn’t take long for the reductio ad Hitlerum, either.
Cohen is right.
cohen is only one of many self-hating Jews who have somehow gotten bully pulpits and preach to us un-enlightened. the really sad thing is that Iranian ass kissing is one thing our president does well. (so that’s two so far: reading off a teleprompter and Iranian ass kissing.)
I’m going to give Obama the benefit of the doubt and believe that he’s stupid rather than malicious. but as they said in The Manchurian Candidate, if he was a paid agent of the other side, he couldn’t be doing more to hurt the United States of America than what he’s doing now…
Grumpy: Hitler tops neocon by a mile. I knew the troll troops would heed the battle call.
“he hoped (the Iranians) would rise up and topple a regime led by ”a handful of religious fanatics.”"
Quick, somebody tell Hillary that Cohen and Peres share a lot of common ground. They both want the Iranians to rise up and topple a regime led by a handful of religious fanatics.
Voice of America:
UN Rights Expert Accuses Israel of War Crimes
By Lisa Schlein
Geneva
23 March 2009
A special U.N. investigator says Israel’s military assault on the densely populated Gaza Strip appears to constitute a war crime. Human rights expert Richard Falk is calling for an independent investigation into possible war crimes committed by Israel and the Hamas authorities in the Palestinian Occupied Territory. Falk submitted his report to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.
In his 26-page report to the U.N. Human Rights Council, U.N. Investigator Richard Falk, accuses Israel of launching attacks that are inherently unlawful and would constitute a war crime under international law.
He calls the Israeli attacks a massive assault on a densely populated urbanized setting an inhumane form of warfare that kills, maims and inflicts mental harm on an entire civilian population.
Remember. Cohen has a special, magical insight into what is in Israel’s true best interests. We may not think so, but he writes in the NY Times and he once visited Iran, so there.
Grumpy: When you look in the mirror, do you give yourself the finger. Just curious.
Yeah. Richard Falk. “Human rights expert.” And 9/11 truther. Even more of a dodderer than Kunstler was toward the end.
This story has been around for weeks. Typical Saul’s successor. Yeah.
A commenter above quoted a VOA story about Richard Falk. It is worth noting that in 2004 Professor Falk wrote an enthusiastic foreword to an idiotic conspiracy book about the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. That the UN employs him to produce utterly predictable denunciations of Israeli actions tells far more about the UN than it does about Israel.
It certainly doesn’t matter what Falk says, or thinks, or what kind of fool he is.
What matters is whether or not some of what he asserts it true, and if there is evidence to prove it.
The stories being printed in Haaretz are worrisome.
The UN condemns Israel. That’s news? Next thing you know, Dave will be passing off as revelatory that the sun rises in the east.
Cohen’s ancestors, who braved and survived pogroms and countless indignities, are spinning so fast they could power Manhattan.
Cohen is deaf and blind. He is a committed man of the Left. Anyone against American interests is fine with him. He supports Chavez and Castro, and sympathisizes with every lunatic and fanatic, as long as they are Left or Anti-Zionist.
He recently came to Los Angeles to visit with Persian Jewish refugees who fled, or were driven out, of the Islamic Republic. They gave Cohen an earful, but being tone deaf, it made no impression. He learned nothing, or forgot anything.
He is the friend of the Anti-Semite, the perfect schtetel Jew ready to kiss the ass of his oppressor. His defense is appeasement and surrender. Resistence, fighting back, self-defense, are anathema to him.
Screw him, and the camel he rode in on.
Do you use special prophylactic measures for the camel-screwing, Doctor?
#16: “Screw him, and the camel he rode in on”
Dr. Rubin: please withdraw the second clause in
the above sentence.
The most shocking thing about Roger Cohen is his background. It shines and sparkles. He comes out of Westminster School and Balliol, Oxford. It took me at least, until his columns of the last few months, to understand just what a twisted creature this is. He had highly responsible jobs reporting for Reuters, Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. How many other Cohens are there even now feeding us their perverse views?
#4: “Didn’t take long for the reductio ad Hitlerum, either”
The comparison in #3 was not with Hitler,
but with a Hitler apologist.
The analogy is obvious and needs no excuses.
#19, nacl: “He comes out of Westminster School and Balliol, Oxford.”
Kim Philby came out of Westminster School and Trinity, Cambridge…
It becomes at a certain point of analysis difficult to determine which of Roger Cohen’s fulsome characteristics is most pronounced: his ignorance, his stupidity or his self-deluded, megalomania cum arrogance.
However, his latest inane column tilts toward establishing that the self-deluded megalomania holds trump over even Cohen’s stupidity (which is really saying something). Viz. : Obama is doing “everything I called for.” Give me a break!
“It becomes at a certain point of analysis difficult to determine which of Roger Cohen’s fulsome characteristics is most pronounced: his ignorance, his stupidity or his self-deluded, megalomania cum arrogance.”
Really? Neocons accusing others of self-delusion and arrogance??? God I love this blog.
Hey everyone, how are those Iraqi WMDs doing? Anyone seen that yellowcake from Niger? How about the connections between Saddam and Al Quaeda? Anyone? Anyone?
Wow! No. 23 has, most inexactly, left out two zeroes between the two extreme digits, in view of which year’s propaganda it’s regurgitating.
It’s also kind enough to let God know that it is capable of love.
This post has been linked for the HOT5 Daily 3/24/2009, at The Unreligious Right
#24: It’s also kind enough to let God know that it is capable of love.
That wail at the end, “Anyone? Anyone?”,
Is also quite revealing:
When everything is said and done,
Those robots have lots of feeling…
robots, sock puppets and such,
dont read this blog all that much
it’s too hard to fight
through the slime on the right
Gimme a last line, b
Cohen, an apparent adherent of the Sarah Pailin School of International Relations ( “Sightseeing is Knowledge” or “Seeing is Believing”) jumps to facile conclsuions that reinforce patent biases. This approach to knowledge is best explained by two alternative, but not necessarily mutually exclusive, reasons: abject stupidity or self loathing.
#5 Ruth. You are ignorant as well as a fanatic who will always blame an alternative opinion for stupidity. Try learning something about the world as it exists and stop assuming that any critique of israel ( even if possibly wrong) is evil and anti-semitic. And using a teleprompter is not a bad thing for a politician, of whatever stripe; Grow up!!
Since Roger Cohen isn´t really a respected columnist, one has to take this attention to his writing with a grain of salt.
It`s not a question what Roger Cohen writes, but what The New York Times expects to gain by having him appear twice a week as a columnist. His blog at IHT is a stumping ground of 19th century anti-Semitism dressed up as Israeli criticism. The latter isn´t a problem, but the comments at Cohen`s blog really are updated passages out of The Protocols of Zion. If one misses the outdated “Zionist entity” in lieu of Israel itself here is your blog. Imagine a man who supposedly visited Iran and writes a series of columns filled with banal facts and trivia one can find either at Wikipedia or Lonely Planet. (Minus the tips the latter provides in shopping and eating out.) Does The Times possess such wealth as to shower a lazy journalist with a two month assignment in Iran? At least his mediocre talent has gained him some notoriety.
I really do take offense at Norman Abramowitz`s (29) comment. I also don´t agree with the fifth comment, but his response was totally out of line. Worse, he contradicts himself enough to render his opinion worthless. Unfortunately Mr. Cohen`s blog has opened my eyes to Israeli criticism. Israeli society itself produces the best comments. Anti-Semitism lives: Zionist, Necon, Necon-Zionist, etc. nice metaphors for “Jews trying to rule the world.”. President Obama does have an irritating habit of using his good looks and smooth speaking voice to cover cracks. This in itself ís neither evil nor wrong, but it clashes with his law background. So, I do wish Mr. Abramowitz would think twice before lashing out.
The stories being printed in Haaretz are worrisome.
http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=43226
Officers from the brigade suspect that fighters who remained in the lower
story of the Palestinian house thought that he hit the the women, and from
there the rumor that a sniper killed a mother and her two daughters spread.
Regarding the second incident, in which it was claimed that soldiers went up to the roof to entertain themselves with firing and killed an elderly
Palestinian woman, the brigade commander investigation found that there was no such incident..
#19 How many other Cohens are there even now feeding us their perverse views?
Richard of WaPo.
#31 & 32,
Amen.
35- The stories now coming out of the IDF are worrisome.
The IDF says that it killed more than 1200 people. Of these, the IDF has identified about 900, with 600 being men and 300 women and children.
This is not a desirable ratio. If I recall correctly, some 300 Palestinian males were killed in the initial bombardment.
What does this say about the way that ground assault was conducted?
In reagard to comment #35, I imagine the Isreali military will appoint a commission. It wouldn´t be the first. What bothers me is I trust the Israeli media and state appartus before the United Nations. How anyone with such a silly (for lack of words) legal background as Richard Falk could receive such position at the oraganization is downright funny. It isn´t really an exception to the rule. As much as my extended family in Gaza suffered I can´t lay the blame solely at the feet of Israel.