Was he speaking off the cuff, or was this a prepared speech that others reviewed? If the latter, it makes one wonder about the quality of his foreign policy advisors.
The Afghans need to establish the proper infrastructure first before massively committing to acceptable crops, and they need to start with reliable roads. However, they cannot even do that until the security situation improves, as the constant attacks by the Taliban and al-Qaeda make it impossible to build the necessary roads, electrical distribution, and refrigeration systems the Afghans require. What would agricultural experts do in Afghanistan while those issues remain unresolved?
Obama’s rhetoric calls into question whether he has any real knowledge of the issues in either Iraq or Afghanistan in any depth beyond that of the latest MoveOn talking points.
I actually liked Hillary up until a few months ago. Other bloggers used to tell me that Joe and I were too nice to Hillary. People just assumed that we were endorsing her. Now I actually loathe her. She makes me yell at the TV like she’s George Bush, and no one other than George Bush makes me yell at the TV – until now. I actually can’t stand her or her husband any more. I defended her. I defended her husband. And now I’m actually wondering if the Republicans weren’t right about them. That’s how bad she has damaged her reputation. People who actually liked you, who actually helped you, who actually defended you, LOATHE you now. Call me a Clinton-hater all you like, but people like me were the ones who had your back. And we never will again.
May ’08 has been a pretty rough month for the planet and its inhabitants, what with the volcanoes and tornadoes and cyclones and earthquakes, <VOICE=”Professor Frink>and the drowning and the crushing and the evacuating and the staaaaarving, glavin</VOICE>.
Jeff Masters has a roundup and some history, and some inside info on why the death toll in the country formerly known as Burma was so high.
Don’t moan. I’m not going to “pass the wisdom of one generation down to the next.” I’m a member of the 1960s generation. We didn’t have any wisdom.
We were the moron generation. We were the generation that believed we could stop the Vietnam War by growing our hair long and dressing like circus clowns. We believed drugs would change everything — which they did, for John Belushi. We believed in free love. Yes, the love was free, but we paid a high price for the sex.
My generation spoiled everything for you. It has always been the special prerogative of young people to look and act weird and shock grown-ups. But my generation exhausted the Earth’s resources of the weird. Weird clothes — we wore them. Weird beards — we grew them. Weird words and phrases — we said them. So, when it came your turn to be original and look and act weird, all you had left was to tattoo your faces and pierce your tongues. Ouch. That must have hurt. I apologize.
So now, it’s my job to give you advice. But I’m thinking: You’re finishing 16 years of education, and you’ve heard all the conventional good advice you can stand. So, let me offer some relief.
You say that even if global warming turns out to be no crisis (the World Meteorological Organization says global temperatures have not risen in a decade), even unnecessary measures taken to combat it will be beneficial because “then all we’ve done is give our kids a cleaner world.” But what of the trillions of dollars those measures will cost in direct expenditures and diminished economic growth–hence diminished medical research, cultural investment, etc.? Given that Earth is always warming or cooling, what is its proper temperature, and how do you know?
You propose a “cap and trade” system to limit the carbon dioxide that many companies can emit. Is not your idea an energy- rationing proposal akin to Bill Clinton’s BTU tax?
Boy, if I held the cartoon views of conservatives and libertarians held by some of the folks commenting at this post, I’d be unable to call myself a libertarian, and I would look with new eyes at my (apparently) evil conservative friends whose first thought in getting out of bed in the morning (if not upon awakening) is “how do I screw the poor today?”