Deinonychus antirrhopus

Damn, the pharmacy in DeLong's hometown is obviously still short of key meds. This reminds me so much of Communist re-education style meetings ( offered in the style of Calabresi / Al Gore / MoveOn ).

What's surprising to me is that all of the posters on DeLong's site all think that the world would be peachy if we just had the right people pulling the strings in Washington...On the other hand, not so surprising, considering the bashing that Public Choice theory receives over there.

The thing that stuns me is: what did they expect for the reconstruction? Did they think it was a couple of month process? Did they think that, in the ME, democracy would flower like it was fertilized? Didn't they realize that the economy needs to be running first? Joe Average Iraqi won't worry about politics until he's sure he can eat.

Japan was like 5 years to get going, I forget on Germany. Both of them rife with problems. And in case everyone has forgotten, we had to do something with the Articles of Confederation, so it didn't even go smooth here.

Whoops, I'm venting. Better get some humor in for Steve:
If swimming is so good for your figure, how do you explain whales?

Why hold Ignatieff to the same standard as the decisionmakers and those with access to classified information? On the basis of the facts presented there was a compelling case to be made for war.

The incompetency of our President was evident early in his term, but really who could have known that it was an infectuous virus that crippled the top leadership of his Administration. That was very well hidden from the public.

Robin is right, this does smack of re-education camps. The holier-than-thou attitude is too much to bear. The oppostion to the war, in light of the information that was being pushed out to the public, was not a position that put the protestors on the wings of angels.

Re-education camps and revisionist history. Hmm, I've read about these favored tactics somewhere.

Bingo Robin, my thoughts exactly. First we'll tie Ignatieff up, parade him through the streets then subject him to public ridicule...and Ignatieff is a liberal. I wonder what Brad has in store for a hard core conservative?

Room 101.

Room 101?

Oh....

How many of MacArthur's troops spoke Japanese?

Less than 100,000, I bet.

Okay, I got another one. Kuwait, where we staged prior to the war, has lots of Arabic-speakers. How many Japanese-speaking Chinese or Burmese or Phillipines or Hawaiians or whatever neighboring, allied troops did MacArthur have access to, if not directly under his command?

I dunno. But less than 100,000, I bet, again.

Wait, one more. In Bosnia and Kosovo, how many of the NATO and UN troops, or even what percent of the few thousand US troop there, speak, uhm, Balkin? Serbo-Croatian? Whatever.

Uhm. Maybe, uh, less than 100,000?

I like Brad, but he sure asks some, er, rhetorical questions sometimes. If doing a reconstruction project depends on having a pot load of bilingual police, it'd NEVER happen. But it has happened, so the question is kind of moot.

Isn't it?

Not in a game of moving goalposts.

Learn from Lei Feng! To the reeducation camp to learn from the workers and peasants, now! The thought of Mao Zedong is a spiritual atom bomb of extraordinary power! All hail Mao Zedong's comrade-in-arms and successor Lin Biao! Impeach the Duke of Zhou! Revile the memory of Peng Dehuai! Liu Shaoqi is China's Khrushchev! Deng Xiaoping is the number two person in authority taking the capitalist road! Deinonychus antirrhopus is a paper tiger... a paper lizard... a paper therapod!

Brad DeLong:

Very nice. Don't forget, however, that we should also read Mao's "Little Red Book," and that the East is Red!

"Deinonychus antirrhopus is a paper tiger... a paper lizard... a paper therapod!"

Deinonychus antirrhopus is a capitalist running yellow therapod.

... And presumably proud of it.

There goes my theory that Room 101 is where Paul Krugman lectures on economics.