Un/underemployment? Tax cut

Recession? Tax cut

Inflation? Tax cut

Trade deficit? Tax cut

Oil prices surging? Tax cut

Instability in capital markets? Tax cut

Credit crunch? Tax cut

You can pretty much assume that any GOP policy consists of Federal tax cuts that are eventually offset by state and local tax increases or budget gaps.

I found most of the authorities reasonably non confrontational and people were generally curious about the world outside the 3CP. The US boycotted that event in protest of the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan. They tried to put a polish on it but it was clear that the whole workers paradise thing was bullshit and it was going to fall apart. A lot rattier than it is now. But generally the sense of it was, no one cared about the boycott. In fact w/o the US the other countries did well in the games and they simply used it to propaganda effect.

Or Honduran nannies, or whatever - a Staff of some kind.

Wars of revolution and identity and separatism are the same pretty much everywhere. A small group fighting a larger group using brutal indiscriminate guerilla tactics like carbombs, massacres and terrorism. The Tibetans if sufficiently motivated could commit acts of terrorism at the Olympics. There's nothing special about Tibet that precludes that other than their refusal to do so. So again I have to wonder why the leftists, who generally support this sort of thing actively push it off the table in this instance.

"In fact, the same all-American flag-wavers who called loudest for war against Iraq are now denouncing Wright as a hate-monger and a traitor, and attacking Michelle Obama for saying that only recently has she had reason to feel proud of her country. "

Gary says that flag waivers e.g. patriotic types are angry misguided fools

"They insist that anyone who is not permanently proud of the United States, whose patriotism isn't plastered on his or her face like the frozen smile of a beauty queen waving from a Fourth of July float, is beyond the pale."

Gay says here that patriotism is a binary choice either you are fawing over America (and that's bad) or you're essentially an enemy of the state (and that's good). Also nice touch of Eastern European Jewish history coming from a guy who's about as antizionist as the Arab press ('The Pale').

"Never mind that the glorious results of their debased version of patriotism -- 4,000 American troops dead, a wrecked Iraq, and a greatly strengthened terrorist enemy -- are plain for all to see."

As oppose to what other kind of patriotism. We've already established Gary feels it is an either or proposition.

"You wouldn't expect the Republican Party, Fox News, Bill Kristol or the readers of FreeRepublic to issue any mea culpas -- they don't acknowledge that they've done anything wrong."

No you would not, this is a nonsequitor.

"But the mainstream media's pious tut-tutting over the Wright affair shows that it, too, has learned nothing from its disgraceful post 9/11 performance."

One of these has nothing to do with one another. Does Gary seriously expect us to draw the parallel that NOT claiming the US basically caused and deserved 911 is the same line of thought as criticizing people who do? That quite frankly is either stupid or insane.

"The worst excesses of media groveling -- the flag pins, the instructions not to run anti-U.S. stories -- may be history, but the timorous mind-set remains the same."

Same as what? I would say that the online blogging news world probably runs 80/20 against the war. It's that 20% that actually agrees with 100% of Rev Wright, even the crazy parts. That's just groveling to a different god.

"Its reaction to Wright shows that the American establishment still cowers before the patriotic idol."

No it's a reaction to hate speech. It might be radical liberal anointed and approved PC hate speech but it's still hate speech.

I mean if Gary wants to play these stupid semantic games than I guess we can assert that all those uppity niggers brought lynching down on themselves too, can't we? Oooh but we're not going to do that because that would be un PC.

I don't think there's much at all to what Gary says. Elections are by definition patriotic affairs. Which is, I suppose why American turnout is typically the lowest in the developed world. We're not really a patriotic people. And this is why people like the people here who apologize for Rev Wright get it confused from the start. They seem to equate dissent with patriotism. It's not, it's dissent, that's just being a concerned citizen. But the notion that "Everything Always Sucks" aka the Liberal Ethos, isn't really the same thing as patriotism.

With the stroke of a pen we could essentially wipe out the housing collapse.

Allow homeowers to take capital loss carry forwards on real estate JUST LIKE THEY ARE ALREADY ALLOWED TO DO WITH ANY OTHER CAPITAL ASSET.

Hell, you can write off gambling losses against winnings. But in the US you get hosed on real estate losses. You have to pay the gains tax on the upside but the law has never permitted you to take losses and offset them against current and future gains. Unless the property is income generating.

that's why they call it work.

Maybe they should take Gandhi's advice to the Jews in WW2: commit collective mass suicide as an act of protest.

You'd have to take that up with the Black and Colored South Africans themselves. They've made their peace with it. That angry Western Liberal Agitators have not, is more their own problem than anyone else's.