Israel Today…And So Long, For Now

If Friedman’s article is true, it is terrifying. The Israeli public is disinterested in politics? I’m sorry folks, but you are blockading the 1.5 million people in Gaza, and there are over 2 million more in the West Bank. And there are these two things, “demography,” and “the linear progression of time,” neither of which are at all on your side.
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It’s like running up a $50,000 credit card bill thinking that the end of the month will never come. They just don’t have the moral or practical option of indifference.
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Stay safe on your trip, Joe. Can’t wait to read what you have to say about it– your reporting from and on that region has been unfailingly illuminating and engaging.

Travel safely, Joe.

Have a good trip, and stay safe.

Looking forward to what you have to say when you get back!

Your incisive articles will be missed.

Have a good one.

LM
http://theblindspotsofgod.wordpress.com/2010/01/22/criminals-use-technology-to-trackrape-and-kill-innocent-people/

You aren’t going to thank us for all the fish?
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Just kidding.
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Good luck and hopefully, you will eventually give Kristol and Co a collective heart attack…
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On the subject of Israel having peace, I think Elvis is MOT.

Take care and be safe, Joe.

“My understanding is that the President remains absolutely firm in his belief that the Israelis should stop building them.”

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Should read…
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“My understanding is that the President remains absolutely firm in his belief that the Israelis should stop building them, but will condone Iran’s pursuit for nuclear weapons threatening the security and safety of not only Israel, but the world at large”.
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The “appeasement” of Iran as Obama promised us he would do is not working. Iran has simply thumbed up it’s nose at any and all actions from the Obama Administration. Obama has failed miserably, now we are at risk along with the Israelis too.
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The only thing which will satisfy someone like Obama is when Ahmadenijad finally has a nuclear bomb to threaten anyone he chooses. Joe Klein will probably then say “Next year in Jerusalem, oh that’s right, there isn’t a Jerusalem anymore it’s been blown to smithereens by the Iranians”.

Joe

”It’s a lovely city and it deserves to be free.”

Free from what, Joe? Have they told you that they are in bondage?

http://ikejakson.wordpress.com/2010/03/18/joe-the-fumbler-on-the-ropes/

Perhaps … ahh well, you won’t understand anyway.

All neo-cons, please exit, stage left!!

Why is it that people with your belief structure always seem to think that peace can only be attained through the barrel of a gun?? There are other, more desirable ways.

The problems with Iran, IMHO, will be solved before they can develop a bomb — either via diplomatic channels, with the assistance of the US, or by more forceful means, via Israel dropping a few missiles on them. At least, if it is the latter, it won’t be by the US.

I really think we have killed enough people the last nine years. Oh, as well as almost bankrupting us.

And I do not believe that a policy of diplomacy, combined with ever increasing sanctions, as required, constitutes appeasement.

Contrary to what many might believe, the US is not the world’s policeman, at least not any longer.

that’s not hyperbolic at all

are Ike Jakson and Michael Furey the same person?

I don’t know about Ike and Mike, but AIPAC, US neocon foreign policy gurus and the right wing Israeli government are all the same. On the nuclear front, you need to worry more about them than about Iran’s fledgling nuclear industry. Why? Because Iran hasn’t committed genocide lately and because Russia is there watching what is going on.

Flaklyresponseblog,
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Obviously the United States has far more influence with Israel than it does with Iran.
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Is there any specific course of action you would recommend.
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You and John McCain may have the same response.
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As for our influence in Israel not pouring fuel on the Islamic fire, 41-46 percent of Israelis call for an Israeli
settlement freeze in East Jerusalem.
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http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2010/0319/Nearly-half-of-Israel-supports-Quartet-call-for-Israeli-settlement-freeze
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I think we are, by pressuring a democratic ally rather than threatening a non-democratic adversary, we are going in the exactly the right direction.

Rusty blog seems to ignore 2 realities :
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1. Iran does not have a bomb yet and has said it will not make one. There are diplomatic alternatives being worked out right now, to make sure that is the case.
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2. Israel already has several nuclear bomb to defend itself with a hypothetical Iranian nuclear attack.
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Also, I have serious trouble in taking someone (i.e. Rusty) seriously when they talk about a “one state solution”, where Palestinians are forced out of their land into other Arab countries.

If I were a strategist for Iran, I would want to constantly bring in nuclear materials and never build a bomb?
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Why?
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Bringing in nuclear material is enough to get attention and fear, but not enough to get get clobbered by Israel or the US.
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Building a bomb would be signing the death warrant for Iran.
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It’s government has less public support than the Bush Administration, so, it is in big trouble domestically.
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It may have an internal revolt any time over the next five to fifteen years.

To Ryan Priest

I am just Ike Jakson. If the person you mention shares similar points of views I would like to visit his/her Blog Site to verify the situation. If he is present of anyone wishes to send me a link to him I shall appreciate.

A good place to send it to would be:

http://ikejakson.wordpress.com/2010/03/26/cycles-and-circles-updated-for-2010/

Ike, you realize that blogwhoring is extremely poor etiquette, right? Link in your username if you must (even Rusty has managed this). If you ever want to seriously engage here (i.e. be taken seriously by commenters who aren’t primarily about peddling their egos) you might want to consider this advice.

If you have something to say to Joe Klein or a fellow commenter, make your pt. fully here, in the confines of the post. Don’t absurdly think that you’re going to generate traffic to your blog by leaving bread crumbs in the Swamp. It’s the equivalent of the Russian vixen in my spam offering ever so much more if I merely visit her site.

Have a safe trip Joe.

jcapan

With all due respect, I do what I do not for the reasons you assume but to expedite flow of information.

I prefer short comments; I never go off topic; nor do I ever get involved in arguments or mudslinging. I read views that agree with mine and even more so those that do not agree; it’s a learning process to try and find the overall majority viewpoints.

Joe Klein is notorious for changing his presentations to suit himself; he flip-flops from one point to the other. That’s why I specifically addressed my comment to him.

I accept all ping-backs and links; and I read them; we are a small group that compares notes for research purposes. And I have broadened my knowledge and my friendships but we also have a lot of fun.

Now it is getting much too long and I don’t want to bore the other readers any longer. You are free to visit my Blog but you don’t have to; if you do you will be cordially received and we can discuss anything that you wish where we don’t disturb others.

Please, no offense taken, or intended in this reply.

Question that comes to mind.. is Joe in Afghanistan? along with the President?
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Freidman is a buffoon. He’s been wrong on everything for over a decade. The Israeli’s are not disinterested in politics they have assigned it it’s proper space. What is the sense of negotiating with a party that has no intention of peace and doesn’t hide the fact? Sharon brilliantly took control of the situation with an aggressive assassiation strategy and building the fence which protects jews. With his Reaganesque policies of deregulation and lower taxation Israel has boomed and continues to do so allowing higher investment in military R&D and an even stronger defenses and offensive reach. This cycle favors Israel. The next advancement in chipsets will work it’s magic such that much of their hardware will be better in 18 months and then better again in another 18 months. The increased wealth is part of increasing trade ties and expanding economic relationships. Profitable trade creates diplomatic support.

In 5 years Israel GDP could credibly increase by 50% or over $100B. Since a large part of their economy is defense industry the increasing profitability will allow Israel to invest less in military spending and even start outsourcing some personnel functions taking more of the stress off the population.

Tom’s problem is that Israel’s are able to live a more normal life and not panic when someone like Obama comes along. That’s why politics are not as important. He’s wrong to suggest the politics are more pressing in the USA. Among liberals perhaps but that’s it. Israel’s support is near all time highs among Americans. The suggestions by clowns like Joe that aid could be cut is preposterous. Congress will not be cutting aid and will over-ride any attempt to do so.

Israel merely needs to hold and delay Obama. Their economy is starting to boom again. It’s a matter of keeping and then extending their tactical advantages.

“What is the sense of negotiating with a party that has no intention of peace and doesn’t hide the fact?”
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Palestinians have and will continue to lose more lives than Israelis in this conflict due to their absolute and obvious lack of military. Clearly the civilians can be coaxed into a reasonable peace agreement over time.
I can’t imagine why building settlements would do more than postpone the day when Palestinians will negotiate.
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“He’s wrong to suggest the politics are more pressing in the USA. Among liberals perhaps but that’s it.”
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It is liberal to want fewer reasons for Islamic extremists to gain wider support and come to New York and kill one of my distant relatives. (A man I never met, not a close relative).
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Is it liberal to want to beat Al Qada through hearts and minds with as few causalities on either side as possible?
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You have not justified those statements at all.

“In 5 years Israel GDP could credibly increase by 50% or over $100B. Since a large part of their economy is defense industry the increasing profitability will allow Israel to invest less in military spending and even start outsourcing some personnel functions taking more of the stress off the population.”
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So rdw56, are you in favour of suspending the $3 billion in military aid to Israel?
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Given that Israel is self-sufficient, deficiet hawks like you should have no trouble in supporting the throwing away borrowed money (which your children have to pay back) as aid to a country that does not need it?
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Maybe we can give the $3 billion away to Haiti.. they desperately need all the money they can get.

I am absolutely not in favor of suspending aid. The dollar amount isn’t the significant issue but the access to advanced technology. Suspending aid isn’t an issue. It’s not going to happen. Obama doesn’t control the budget. Congress controls the budget and they’re not even thinking about it. They can and will override any attempted veto.

But the fact is as a financial issue the aid isn’t anywhere near as critical as people think it is. Moreover it’s not a zero sum game. The money is used to buy US products and influence Israeli defense sales. The USA has a number of agreements in place Israel will not compete with the USA on certain arms sales. The lose to US industry will exceed the $3B per year.

Netanyahu is far to smart to act as if this aid is anything but critical to Israel’s survival. Thus max out the political cost of cutting the aid. It’s politics 101. you should also consider the fact BiBi has been running a clinic on Obama. Joe desipses his ‘ghandi’ act but it’s been effective. As long as Netanyahu is the reasonable partner and Obama the angry man Netanyahu wins.

Whenever a Joe Klein or Thomas L start babbling about cutting aid understand it’s frustration. They are venting.

It is absolutely liberal to hope you can appease islamic extremists. It’s also cowardly. Neville Chamberlain proved the sensibility of that poilicy. if someone attack you when you are doing what you think is correct the only response is to kill them.

You can’t just give $3B to Haiti. Every dime will get stolen. Israel is an advanced progressive democracy.

“They can and will override any attempted veto.”
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Just to be clear, I was asking for your opinion, not what Obama/Congress can/will do.
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“The dollar amount isn’t the significant issue but the access to advanced technology.”
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What if Obama and DoD decide to dump duds worth $3 billion on Israel? Surely, that is within their control.. Maybe they can sell some Gulf war era Patriot missiles that consistently missed their targets
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Also, if you think the security wall and advanced technology can keep the peace, I wonder why Great wall of China and Star Wars were such abject failures..You should also understand that the Palestinians have also progressed from throwing rocks to launching missiles. This is exactly what Clinton alluded to, in her speech at AIPAC conference.
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“It is absolutely liberal to hope you can appease islamic extremists.”
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Ever heard of Nelson Mandela or the Provisional IRA? Yesterday’s terrorists are today’s freedom fighters.

Yes, in Northern Ireland Jerry Adams and Ian Paisley one leaders of paramilitaries set on killing each other are nicknamed “the chuckle brothers” since in the provisional government they are spending all of their time handling mundane tasks together where they very often are in complete agreement.
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It would be great for Israel and Palestine both if they, eventually make peace.
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Obviously it wouldn’t be too bad for our country, either if being a friend of Israel does not convince Muslim Fundamentalist extremists want to kill us.

Turns out it was MS who went on the AF1 with the POTUS to Kabul..
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And all he had to show for the trip: A report which says Some WH folks allegedly changed channels on some TV there.
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I think Time can do better than that !!

OK you want Obama to sell trash for $3B. No that’s not illegal. That’ll do great things for our business reputation. Ain’t gonna happen. Obama doesn’t sell anything. They defense contractors do the selling and they’re not going to sell trash.

Could you imagine if Obama sold bogus weapons to Israeli’s and they lost a war and were massacred as a result. Obama’s life expectancy would be measured in days and his family would not be much longer.

The provisional IRA was defeated. They fought to reunite ireland and failed. Hamas promises to exterminate the jews and remove Israel from the face of the earth. One doesn negotiate for their existance. Until Hamas and Fatah recognize Israel’s right to exist negotiations are pointless.

LOL.. Your alternative sense of history is quite interesting and entertaining.
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Provisional IRA never not get defeated. Only an idiot would go about trying to defeat an army engaged in gurrilla warfare.
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But that is besides the point. Question is if IRA was considered to be a terrorist organisation, why did the British govt negotiate with them under US mediation?
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Similarly, Do you consider Nelson Mandela to be a terrorist? After all, he was one of the founders of an organisation, which was officially designated as a terrorist organisation by the US Govt.

BTW, people on the left seem busy making history (First Black President, GFC rescue, HCR, START treaty) while the right wing seem busy trying to re-write recent history (Torture helps prevent attacks, Iraq war was a good thing, Deficiet/GFC/terrorist attack never happened during our watch etc).
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But for people like Dubya, Cheney, Palin, Rove et al.. I don’t think history will judge them very kindly.. regardless of how much effort people like you put in order to re-write history.

Rdw56,
I know Irish history.
First, let me say, even my ancestors from the North, the son of the last immigrants who knows their story is 96 years old, as sharp as tack but as deaf as a post. (If you yell a question to him he can tell you everything he knew about his grand mother and grandfather in the North). My own family never raised a hand against anybody.
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The first English encroachment across the Irish Sea was eight hundred years ago.
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To make a long story short, Israel has two choices:
1) To continue to reach out to the Palestinians.
2) Follow the English example, but in a bloodier campaign deal with terrorism for another seven hundred and fifty years.
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The North of Ireland due to English and Scottish settlers referred to only as “the protestants” (not concerned about religion per se but were, like Israeli settlers unwilling intermarry or participate in the local, secular traditions) outnumbered Catholics after the Anglo-Irish War which liberated twenty six of the the thirty two counties or Ireland.
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The IRA and Sinn Féin, it’s peaceful political counterpart fought for another seventy five years to reunite Ireland. The Protestants fought to keep The North a part of England.
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Like Scotland, Norther Ireland is semi-autonomous but under British jurisdiction.
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Hence, this is a compromise, not a defeat.
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How many more do you wish to sea dead on both sides in Israel?
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If the answer is 0, stop the settlements and your goal will be closer to being true.
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Jerusalem will, hopefully, have two leaders with a nickname something like “the chuckle brothers” (a derogatory term in the North for both sides who still have hostility, but have not used their AK-47s lately).

Star Wars was the most successful weapons program of all time. It brought down the USSR without firing a shot.

A Thomas L pointed out the fence has been quite effective in contributing to the Israeli sense of normalcy. There hasn’t been a suicide bombing since 2006. As regards the ability of Iran and Syria to smuggle bombs into Gaza that will always be true but then there’s the outcome of the last war. The kill ratio was 150 to 1 and Israel is on the cutting edge of rapidly developing technology. One of Osama’s great miscalculation is the US war machine has shifted it’s R&D toward counter-insurgency. If Hamas were to send another missle into Israel and this time hit one of the schools they aim at the response would be catastrophic.

Hamas would be devastated. This time they’ll have a new concern however. When Israel is done with them Fatah will move in and finish the job. As you might imagine, proportionality and the Geneva conventions won’t be a factor for Fatah and of course the left will watch quietly. The silver lining there is Israel will have a united Palestnian govt to negotiate with.

The simple fact is Israel is an advanced western democraticgovernment growing ever more propserous fully aware of the existential threat and investing and preparing accordingly. The old Reagan saw, peace thru strength, is at work here.

Star Wars was the most unsuccessful waste of money of any weapons program in US history.
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The Soviet’s had started and given up on their own RD and for Star wars in 1972 since it was such a miserable failure.
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It is like trying to shoot a bullet in mid-air.
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it has never been done predictably or successfully.
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Since the Soviet’s knew it was impossible, they were not frightened.
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In the off chance that there was some limited success, they were, economically, planning to, instead, increase the number of warheads to each ICBM which would out number the mid-air rockets.
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Laser technology Reagan described not only was not successfully created, no counterpart to it exists to this day outside of science fiction movies.
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With Soviet Archives opened for more than fifteen years, it became obvious what really happened: The Soviets had been sliding dangerously towards bankruptcy since the late 1960s.
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Gorbachev did not react because he could not afford to.
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Ask any Russian or somebody from a former Soviet Country or research it.
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Very unpatriotically, Russians will tell you that their leaders drove them straight down the toilet.
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You are strikingly unaware of history.

I know very little about Israel’s domestic fiscal or monetary policy, but, Reagan is not the way to go.
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Two years of recession followed by five years of prosperity followed by five years of recession was the Reagan-Bush Sr years.
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Spending huge amounts of money on the military functioned like a stimulus package within our own country, but, instead of roads, bridges and things which, also, would have done good for our country, we had built weapons we would never use.
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Low taxes at the top created more savings which went into over-evaluation of the Stock exchange and real estate markets.
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Few things proving stimulus to the poor and middle income people did not increase spending at pace with stock evaluation.
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How about Beirut? That was the textbook definition of “cut and run” after we got bombed.
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Find something else like about Reagan, but, his economic policies were a flash in the pan and his foreign policy did not cause the fall of the Soviet Union.

Patrick,

quite right, you know little of history or economics. Star Wars was successful because Gorby was terrified of it. We had better technology in our dolls than they had in their planes. Gorby understood there was no way socialism could compete with capitalism and our military R&D would eventually enable us to crush Russia.

As far as Reagan the greatest economic boom in US history started in 1981 and lasted almost 30 years. Lowering marginal tax rates from 70% to 28% was one of the greatest economic and legislative acheivements of all time.

Sorry about Ireland but you are wrong. I am Irish as well. The comparison doesn’t work on any level. Arabs wish to exterminate the jews who we know from history were there 1st. The Irish invaders were set on defeating the irish not exterminating them. They did 800 years ago what the Arabs did to the jews and other natives of the middle east in the 7th and 8th century. They conquered them. I believe that would be illegal today. They’re called arabs because they’re from arabia.

There cannot be any serious consideration of peace talk until Islam has a reformation and the radicals accept Israel. Only then can they negotiate borders. Israel will always talk. Freidmans column was an acknowledgment that he’s finally starting to figure out how nuch has changed since the infatada and 9/11. You do not negotiate with terrorists you kill them. They cannot kill little jewish girls in malls if they’re dead. The average Israeli is dramatically safer and more prosperous today than in 1998. Good fences make good neighbors. The average Israeli can look forward to by the the most prosperous decade in Israeli history. They have a very well educated and well developed economy with booming trade partners such as the Indians. Eastern Europe, Asia, Panama, Colombia, Chile, Australia, etc.

Israel’s has established the true meaning of proportionality. Joe Klein tried to sell some stupidity. Israel is entitled to do whatever is necessary to end any attacks on it. Thus Gaza was widely supported in the USA despite the lopsided nature. Hamas now can appreciate the risk of attacks on Israel to it’s own existance. Israel won’t finish off Hamas but Fatah would.

The goal of the iRA was to reunite Ireland. They failed. Northern Ireland is part of the UK, not Ireland.

The “real” IRA is still heavily armed and if you think it is hard to get at Charlton Heston’s guns…
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The Real IRA can wreck havoc at any time it wants to.
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My double major was economics and international relations and I was in college from the Summer of 1989 through 1993.
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The Cold War was the obsession of US policy.
When the Soviet Archives were opened, many things were discovered. The Rosenbergs were guilty (but the Soviets had better information starting in the Manhattan Project itself) and Alger Hiss was, also, guilty.
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The bigger news is that the CIA had counted triple the actual number of missiles the Soviets really had.
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Furthermore, there was no increase in Soviet Missile production during Reagan’s era.
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In Reychavik, Iceland (and this was never classified) during a summit, Gorbachev proposed a complete dismantling of all nuclear weapons with verification by both sides. Reagan turned him down.
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Half of that was to turn down the heat of ICBMs being pointed at the other side for twenty five years. The other half was that the Soviets were already broke by 1985.
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The Soviets had created the A-35 anti-ballistic missile system around Moscow by 1971. They knew the limitations of that strategy: send more missiles or, just warheads per missile and the system would be overwhelmed.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-35_anti-ballistic_missile_system
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Gorbachev wasn’t scared. He was broke.
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To this day we have not found anything more successful than the weak protections of the A-35 anti-ballistic missile system.
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For a country like North Korea, which may only have ten missiles in their arsenal, taking one hundred to one thousand A-35 rockets to destroy them mid-air is possible, but, even then slightly unlikely.
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Star Wars created jobs.
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We had a stock market crash in 1987.
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Things were so bad that, after five consecutive years of jobless growth, stagnating wages and another recession, the Clinton’s 1992 campaign was “It’s the Economy, stupid!”.
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Our next downturn – not a full recession – was when the dotcom bubble burst followed immediately by 9/11.
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For two years we have been in recession.
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By contrast, in the 1970s under Nixon, Ford and Carter, there were two recessions caused by oil embargos. The 1950s and 1960s were, also, prosperous times.
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So, Reagan did not beat the average.
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This was the beginning of Reaganomics:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_1980s_recession

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This was the end of Reaganomics:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Monday_%281987%29
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The Longest era of prosperity in US History was nine years from the fourth quarter of 1992 until the second quarter of 2001 with Bill Clinton.
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The term “Reaganomics” was like “Obamacare”. It was an elbow to the ribs, not a congratulations (but not really a smear, either).

In retrospect, I went to college at the peak time for all of the issues at hand for both majors for econ:
1)The failure of never peer reviewed and very contradictory “Supply side economics” and a recession.
2)Ending with the 1992 race where health care economics was a topic.
3)The fall of the Berlin Wall through the Fall of the Soviet Union.
4) Right before the Olso Accord.

Patrick,

Have to disagree about prime tme for College, at last for economics and you can cram the bogus concept of peer revew. That scam was just exposed with the peer reviewed science of global warming we have confirmed was garbage.

The best time for economics was the late 70′s and early 80′s when we had what was supposed to be an impossible situation under the theory of Keynsian economics. That being high inflation and high unemployment at the same time. Mainstream economics was buffalowed. Reagan came along and solved their problem for them with a combination of restrictive monetary policy (Jimmy Carter sucked but deserves some credit for appointing Paul Volkner) and stimulative fiscal policy based on tax cuts and to a lessor degree defense spending.

Reagan set off a 30-yr boom. The historically short recession of 1990 was due to a banking crises created by poor regulation and the even shorter recession in 2001 due to the collapse of an asset bubble as well as restrictive fiscal policy. The entire period of economic surge was based on Reagans tax cuts and deregulation. (Carter also started deregulating but unfortunately went the opposite way on energy and helped preciptate the gasoline crises. )

Reagan was without question the finest economic manager of the last century. It’s very possible the 1st supply side President, John F, Kennedy, would have been of that quality but he died too young. Hoover and FDR set off a stream of govt regulation and management that caused a recession they extended into a depression that did not end until WWII. LBJ inherited a healthy economy but with a surge in spending set up the decade of inflation that was to come. Nixon reversed many of JFKs tax cuts and was an awful economic manager. Carter inherited a mess and made it worse. Clinton was solid but hardly exceptional having inherited a strong low inflation economy. A true centrist his smartest move was NAFTA followed by appointing and then listening to Ron Rubin. For his 1st 6 years he was fiscally disciplined although heavily assisted by the peace dividend and lower defense spending enabled when Reagan ended the USSR. The boom line is the boom of the 90′s was Reagans boom not Clintons. Reagan cut marginal tax rates from 70% to 28%. By comparison Clinton was playing at the margins making incremental change.

That’s not to insult Clinton but comparing his effort with almost any other President of the last century is ridiculus. He inherited a growing economy, low inflation and the end of the cold war.

patrick,

Your rendition of history is bufoonish. Gorby was terrified of Star Wars. It’s the sole reason why Reagan walked away from a deal in Iceland. And it was Reagan who wanted to get to zero nuclear arms but not with just the Russians. China at the time was called Red China and unfriendly to both nations. Neither was even thinking of leaving China with an advantage.

You are quite correct the USSR was bankrupt and if you were to read the papers of the day it was Reagan first and foremost predicting the collapse of communism while ALL of the leading lights on the left were preaching we had to find common ground and learn to live with the soviets because they’d be here forever. They were all still huge fans of Fidel. Reagan and history have made total horses asses of what passed for the left in the1980′s.

Reagan was famous for telling Gorby offensive Russian jokes at these summits with dozens of people in the room listening. Jokes by average Russians trashing their disaster of an economy. The left found Reagan ignorant and insulting. Reagan of course had lengthy experience negotiating labor contracts for the Screen Actors guild as their President and cheif negotiator. He negotiated two as President and was brought back for a 3rd. Add together all of the journalists in the MSM and the twits at Harvard and none had his experience. He ignored them. It was his way of telling Gorby, “I don’t listen to Harvard bullsh*t. I know your economy. Socialism cannot compete with Capitalism. We will bury you. “

Things were so bad that, after five consecutive years of jobless growth, stagnating wages and another recession, the Clinton’s 1992 campaign was “It’s the Economy, stupid!”.
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Our next downturn – not a full recession – was when the dotcom bubble burst followed immediately by 9/11.

*****************************************

You are simply a moron. There wasn’t 5 years of jobless growth at any time after the 1981 tax cuts. The recession during GHWBs term was at that the the shortest, tamest recession on record lasting less than 6 months. It was cause by a regulatory crises related to the S&L’s. That recession was well over before Clinton took office. There WAS a recession in 2001 and it replaced the 90 recession as the shortest, shallowest on record. It too was less than 6 months.

‘Gorby was terrified of Star Wars.”
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/20/AR2009092002189.html
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“Documents from inside the Kremlin during the late 1980s — as well as diaries, memoirs, records of Politburo discussions and interviews with key participants — tell a more complex story about one of the Cold War’s most important turning points. The evidence shows that Reagan’s dream of a global shield was not the driving force that reversed the arms race. Rather, the agent of change was Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. He decided not to compete with Reagan on missile defense, and at the same time he was waging a fierce internal struggle against his own military-industrial complex to turn back the Cold War arms buildup.Gorbachev had concluded that the sprawling Soviet defense establishment — the army, navy, air force, strategic rocket forces, air defense forces, and all the institutes, design bureaus and factories that supported them — was a monumental burden on the country. “Defense spending was bleeding the other branches of the economy dry,” he recalled. The extent of the bleeding was concealed by such deep secrecy that even Gorbachev said he had trouble obtaining accurate information.”
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Somebody forgot to tell Gorby this.

“n 2003, the Wall Street Journal declared the debate over supply-side economics to have ended “with a whimper” after extensive modeling performed by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) failed to support the most extreme claims of supply-side policies.”
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply-side_economics#The_1990s

http://www.economics-charts.com/gdp/gdp-1929-2004.html
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Look most in the second graph, the changes in GDP.
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Look at the dips.
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There was jobless growth followed by recession.
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There were more dips.
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Down means recession, flat means stagnation despite population growth and up means good times.
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Although I do not exclusively thank Clinton for it, that was the best era of stable growth.
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Reagan had a little roller coaster.

http://www.economics-charts.com/gdp/gdp-1929-2004.html
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Look at the second graph for changes in GDP.
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Up means growth, down means recession, flat means stagnation despite population growth.
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This is what economics is all about: facts, not opinions.
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Reagan had a roller coaster and Clinton had a hill.
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I do not fully thank Clinton for that, but I can teach you about that later.

“That scam was just exposed with the peer reviewed science of global warming we have confirmed was garbage.”
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http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/globalwarming/index.html?scp=1-spot&sq=Global%20warming%20&st=cse
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Nothing but confirmation as of December 9th 2009.
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Did Faux News tell you that it was a Hoax?
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Peer review is, basically, when people in your own academic sub-sub-specialty, like red ants of Northern Arizona for a biologist, play a game of, as Sara Palin says, “gotcha”.
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They work hard to prove you wrong.
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When they are done beating your work into the ground, you come back for more until they can’t find anything at all wrong with it.
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Then it is peer reviewed.
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Next thing I expect you to say that there is no such thing as evolution and that the earth is flat.
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Companies sell products which release CO2 or use a great deal of it are the ones playing the Hoax on you, R2D2

It is an opinion that you loved Reagan’s speeches, and that is an opinion.
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Economics and History are facts.
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Don’t call people you debate bafoons and morons and, please don’t be a real Tea Bagger and start shooting us for giving you facts.

LOL.. If Star Wars (not the movie) was a grand success in your alternative universe, I wonder what else was a grand success?
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I think I need to establish the parameters under which your alternative universe exist? So in the history books of your “real” world :
.
1. Did Bush jr find WMD in Iraq and was the mission truely accomplished?
2. Did ACORN cause the housing bubble, sub-prime NINJA loans and the resulting GFC?
3. Is Obama a Kenyan Muslim?
4. Did Bush Jr win a landslide election in 2000?
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Once we have established the facts according to you, I think we can have a good debate within those parameters and I can still win

Patrick,

check the polls, The so-called global warming movement and the peer review process as used at Penn State and the University of East Anglia are jokes. Add the UNs IPCC to that list. The science sucks. And if you were on of the millions of fans cheering for that great nobel prize winner and D student Al Gore you are a buffoon.

Also recheck your facts. There was no period between 1982 and 2000 where we had more than 8 months of recession. You said years. Clinton was in fact a roller coaster. The asset bubble that formed during his terms started to burst a year before he left office. The NASD still hasn’t approached the levels of 2000. The economy was in growing mode a year before he took office. Clinton inherited the best economy of any President since Hoover.

Patrick, you confirm exactly what Reagan did. He buried Gorby. Reagan, not a single liberal in the land, Reagan understood Russia could not possibly keep pace with American capitalism. That was the entire basis of his policy. When asked his position on the cold war his response was, “We win, They lose”.

gorby had to give up on missle defense because his economy could not support defense spending as it was let alone add a new program.

“gorby had to give up on missle defense because his economy could not support defense spending”
.
And Reagan had to give up on missile defense because the reality could not keep up with his Hollywood inspired sci-fi dream of space based lasers shooting down ICBM’s.

Reagan never gave up on Star Wars. And for the record your guy cancelled land based installations in Poland and the Czech Republic to instead use ship based systems. Star wars is here.

BTW: The Post article was the laughable effort by the MSM to deflect credit from Reagan by giving it to Gorby. I think Time Magazine named Gorby the Man of the Decade. Not the year but the decade. They’re all embarrased about it now and rightly so. Gorby was more inept than Jimmy Carter. He was a total failure never in control of events. He is despised in Russia. He ran in one of their 1st elections and actually received less than 1% of the vote. Even a horses ass like Biden was getting 2% here.

You must be a member of the British Parliment to know what you claim to know about the University of East Anglia

“- The disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia

The Committee’s Eighth Report of Session 2009-10, will be published on Wednesday 31 March at 00.01 (HC 387-I). Embargoed paper and electronic copies of the report will be available at 11.00am on Tuesday 30 March. Volume II, containing the oral and written evidence, will be published on Wednesday 31 March at 11.00am.

The Committee will hold an embargoed press briefing at the Science Media Centre on Tuesday 30 March, time to be confirmed.”
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The Report is coming out tomorrow and you already know what it says?
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http://www.parliament.uk/parliamentary_committees/science_technology/s_t_pn31_100325.cfm.
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On the UPenn matter:
“Sounds like this group wants to step up the warfare, continue to circle the wagons, continue to appeal to their own authority, etc.,” said Judith A. Curry, a climate scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “Surprising, since these strategies haven’t worked well for them at all so far.”
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/05/scientists-plot-to-hit-back-at-critics/print/
.

In response to a request from Congress, the National Academies have launched America’s Climate Choices, a suite of studies designed to inform and guide responses to climate change across the nation. Experts representing various levels of government, the private sector, nongovernmental organizations, and research and academic institutions have been selected to serve on four panels and an overarching committee.

“The Summit on America’s Climate Choices, held March 30-31, 2009 in Washington, D.C., provided an opportunity for study participants to interact with major thought leaders and key constituencies to frame the questions and issues that the study will address”
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Once again, you are telling the future.
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http://dels.nas.edu/basc/climate-change/
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Watch the video.
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There was no period between 1982 and 2000

Read more: http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2010/03/28/israel-today-and-so-long-for-now/?cpage=1&replytocom=151628#respond#ixzz0jhlv8tzu
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_1980s_recession

“There was no period between 1982 and 2000 where we had more than 8 months of recession”

.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_1980s_recession
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“The Early 1980s recession was a severe recession in the United States which began in July of 1981 and ended in November 1982.[1][2] It has been thought that the primary cause of the recession was a contractionary monetary policy established by the Federal Reserve System to control high inflation.[3]”
.
Early 1990s recession
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“On Black Monday of October 1987 a stock collapse of unprecedented size lopped 22.6 percent off the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The collapse, larger than that of 1929, was handled well by the economy, and the stock market began to quickly recover….It soon turned out that the quick recovery was illusory, and by 1990, economic malaise had returned with the beginning of the Gulf War and the resulting 1990 spike in the price of oil, which increased inflation but to less of a degree as the oil crisis ten years earlier. Nevertheless, for the next several years high unemployment, massive government budgetary deficits, and slow Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth affected the United States until late 1992 ”
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rdw56, are you still in high school?

“Reagan never gave up on Star Wars.”
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okk.. let me rephrase.. Reagan never gave up on Star wars… nor did George Lucas.
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Reality gave up on Star wars and came back to earth (or ship if you prefer). If you believe space based lasers can destroy ICBMs, you might as well believe Jedi knights and light sabres are all real and not works of fiction.

http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/program/nmd/index.html
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To stop third world countries from attacking us, Bill Clinton brought back Star wars
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“The National Missile Defense Program was originally a technology development effort. In 1996, at the direction of the Secretary of Defense..”
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“The primary mission of National Missile Defense is defense of the United States (all 50 states) against a threat of a limited strategic ballistic missile attack from a rogue nation. Such a system would also provide some capability against a small accidental or unauthorized launch of strategic ballistic missiles from more nuclear capable states. The means to accomplish the NMD mission are as follows:

* Field an NMD system that meets the ballistic missile threat at the time of a deployment decision.
* Detect the launch of enemy ballistic missile(s) and track.
* Continue tracking of ballistic missile(s) using ground based radars.
* Engage and destroy the ballistic missile warhead above the earth’s atmosphere by force of impact. ”
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http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/program/nmd/index.html
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It failed.
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“Star Wars faded into the realm of misbegotten high-tech dreams, but the idea lived on. ”
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It, also, was not even a Reagan idea:
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“The Pentagon had explored the feasibility of interceptor missiles designed to seek out and collide with enemy missile warheads as far back as the 1940s”
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http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/m/missiles_and_missile_defense_systems/index.html?scp=1-spot&sq=Missile%20defense&st=cse
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The Soviet Economy was already starting to fail when LBJ was the president:
.
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F50715F8385C147A93CAA9178AD85F408685F9&scp=16&sq=Soviet%20economy&st=cse
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I am not going to pay money for that 1964 article.
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So, unless you are going to say that Ronald Reagan’s skills as an actor in Hollywood scared Gorby and ruined the Soviet Economy, you are just rewriting history.
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I believe that recession number has been revised but I’ll stand correct. The point was after the 81/82 recession we had essentially a near 30 year boom with only two very short, very shallow recessions. The suggestion the cause of that recession is in some doubt is preposterous. Paul Volcker ran Fed funds and prime rates above 20%. Mortgage rates were over 15%. The famous misery index under Carter was near 25% with both inflation and unemployment exceeding 10%. This was the great academic dilemma. This was not supposed to happen under Keynsian theory. Carter appointed Volcker because he was a noted inflation hawk. The plan was to raise interest rates to slow the economy and drive inflation down. Carter had limited success. The recession was absolutely, positively caused by Paul Volckner.

The aftermath was a powerful boom based on lower marginal tax rates. Reagan was to tinker with tax rates many time finally getting marginal rates down to 28% from 70% in the 86′s tax bill. It was in fact a true bi-partisan effort designed to be revenue neutral. The goal was to reduce marginal tax rates to restore the incentives to work and invest. A very simple concept pioneered by John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

“US PRESIDENT Barack Obama’s signing of the healthcare Bill has achieved the political “bump” Democrats had predicted. A USA Today /Gallup poll published yesterday showed 49 per cent of Americans now consider the reform “a good thing”, compared to 40 per cent who said it was negative.”
.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2010/0325/1224267013847.html
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I searched as much as I could for your 1% approval rating for Joe BIden.
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Not even Faux News had it.
.
You must have pulled that one out your most unpleasant orifice.
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So, the trajectory is going towards Democrats since Democrats have delivered a good economy more often than Republicans in recent decades.
.

Patrick, I think we can soon forget about Reganomics or “Vodoo economics” (as Bush Sr called it).
.
We have a new kid on the block, Beckonomics .. Glenn Beck is going to release a .. hold your breadth.. 100 year budget plan (http://mediamatters.org/blog/201003280013) !!
.
100 year plan?? Sounds like socialism to me.. Hope it is not as successful as Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution… in killing millions.

oops.. I mean breath .. not breadth

“So, unless you are going to say that Ronald Reagan’s skills as an actor in Hollywood scared Gorby and ruined the Soviet Economy, you are just rewriting history.”

Reagan didn’t scare Gorby and Reagan didn’t ruin the Soviet economy. Reagans point always was the socialist economies are disasters and socialism will never be a practical alternative to capitalism. Reagans wisdom versus every liberal in thw world is Reagan understood the Soviet economy was a wreck and was never innovative. What technology they had was stolen from the USA.
.

There is a wealth of data from the 80′s of liberal wise men blistering Reagan for his predictions of Soviet incompetence. It was liberal conventional wisdom that socialism was as good as, if not better better than, capitalism at creating economic progress. Reagan professed contempt for socialism and did so to Gorby’s face. He did so regularly and it drove the liberal at the NYTs wild.

Here’s a typical Reagan joke and he would tell these are a beginning of a conference with 40 people in the room: A russians refigerator goes on the blink. He calls a repairman to come fix it. The repairman tells him he can’t make if for another 7 years, April 3 1993. The customer asks, “Morning or afternoon”. The repairman is stunned that it matters and asks, “does it matter’” “Well Yes, I have the phone company coming in the morning”.

These were common jokes told by the russian people mocknig their own system. Reagan had an inexhaustible supply. The Editors at the NYTs STILL don’t know why Reagan would tells such humiliating jokes. Reagan wanted Gorby to know he wasn’t dealing with the fools at the NYTs.

“Like Paul A. Volcker, his predecessor, Greenspan believes that inflation is very destructive, and like Volcker, he calls for measures to reduce the deficit, mainly because it can contribute to inflation.”
.
http://www.nytimes.com/1989/01/15/magazine/alan-greenspan-caution-at-the-fed.html?scp=6&sq=Volcker%20Greenspan&st=cse
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I was taking my first economics class as a high school junior when this happened.
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Volcker and Greenspan are almost identical, but the circumstances were different.
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The stock market crash of 1987 was the first thing that happened when Greenspan took office.
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When the Keynesian adopted Milton Friedman’s more accurate Monetary theory, they took on Friedman’s assertion to raise interest rates to stop the money from flowing so quickly and, therefore, stop inflation.
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In Keynesian, Neo-Classical and Monetarist theories (all of the accepted theories – and, I do believe in discredited supply side as well) inflation means that there is too much money following too few goods and services.
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So, reduce the money supply and increase interest rates.
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When you face recession, you do the opposite.
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As stated above, both Volcker and Greenspan would gladly stop growth if the alternative was double digit inflation.

“I searched as much as I could for your 1% approval rating for Joe BIden”

Check the 2008 primaries. The funniest part of the Democratic primaries was watching to see if Joe Biden or Chris Dodd could break 1%. I don’t think Dodd ever got over 1%. To be fair I think Joe got to 2% several times.

You had to have seen the attempt by the MSM a few months ago to rehabilitate the reputation of Joe ‘this is a big f*cking deal” Biden. Newsweek actually ran a cover article with the caption, “Joe is no joke” (something like that). Well guess what? Even a child understands if Newsweek had to put Joe is no Joke on their cover that means Joe is a joke.

Democrats and communists, a short history:
.
Harry Truman: went into Korea to fight communists.
.
JFK went into Vietnam to fight Communists.
.
When Richard Nixon pulled out of Vietnam since we faced an endless supply of young people willing to die for Communism and Americans who did not believe in the domino theory, as a slur, he decided to say that Democrats liked communism.
.
So, Ronald Reagan told jokes about Communism and people laughed so hard that the Berlin wall fell in the ensuing earthquake.
.
Ronald Reagan was fun to watch on TV!
.
That was his greatest strong point!
.
The Soviets were broke because it was a command economy.
.
“An economywhere supply and price are regulated by the government rather than market forces. Government planners decide which goods and services are produced and how they are distributed. The former Soviet Union was an example of a command economy. Also called a centrally planned economy.”
.
http://www.investorwords.com/951/command_economy.html
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Price and wage controls have the same impact as a command economy breaking the ties between supply and demand.
.
Both the Fascists and, as a temporary measure, the allies used price controls and the black market exploded in the US during World War II.
.
But World War II was historically unprecedented.
.
So, Israel is having going to have an economic boom because the person in charge of it, like Reagan, tells jokes.
.
Fk! We should have elected Chris Rock instead of Obama to the White house!

That has nothing to do with here and now.
.
As vice president, he will gain some credibility.
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I do not know if I would want to vote for him in 2016 or if somebody out of nowhere, like Obama, comes along and impresses me.
.
Hey, former attorney general John Ashcroft has the distinction of being the only man to lose the gubernatorial election of Missouri to a dead man.:
.
http://archives.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/11/07/senate.missouri/
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Now, I thought that was funny.
.
Clinton picked Gore as a former rival.
.
Reagan chose Bush Sr as a former rival.
.
When W asked one of his father’s advisers to start a committee to find a vice president, Dick Cheney found himself.
.
It’s a non-story.

Patrick,

if you want to use polls got to Rasmussen. Clear and away the best pollster and they have the records to prove it.

Obama got a small bump on their daily presidential index some of which has already reversed and he’s back to 47% – 53% on the standard approve-disapprove. 56% want HC repealed. The worst part for Obama is the entire increase came from democrata. He’s gained nothing among independents.

I am from PA and it looks like the GOP will run the table statewide. Gov, Lieu-Gov, Attny Gen, Senate (Toomey over spector) and we’ll pick up 5 congressional seats. Joe Sestak had to give up re-election to run agains spector and will almost certainly lose to Joe and the GOP will get the seat back. In addition John Murtha died and that seat is considered a toss-up. Note in the coakley race in Mass Obama gave one of the worst stump speeches ever. He talked about Scott Browns truck 6x’s. Minorites had one of the lowest turnouts ever in Boston.

Philly is not unlike Boston. There are no minorities in statewide races and no minorities in close races. Obama has proven to have no coattails nor ability to help a candidate other than himself. Arlen Spector lifelong republican and famous inquisitor to Anita Hill, is not going to generate enthusiam in Philly. They have no idea who the candidate will be for governor but as of right now none of the 4 candidates has name recognition. The GOP candidate Corbett has won two statewide races as Attorney General. He was born and raised in near Pittsburg but as a federal attorney has lived in the central part of the state. So he’s homeboy in two distinct places. All of the stars in PA are aligned for the GOP.

Glenn Beck is useless.
No reason to even bother.

rdw,
Republicans set the bar so low that unless Earl Jr changes from being a good doctor (I’ll give him that – I have no idea where he works or anything about him) at the ER to, instead, go on homicidal killing rampages of his own patients, health care will move up in popularity.
.
The polls were screaming for HCR nine months ago.
.
Even if we met the midway point between now and the overwhelmingly large support for, I guess, a perfect health care system (which, like a perfect anything else anywhere in life does not exist) this will, nationally, be a huge gain.
.
I know Boston for fifteen years living there.
.
It is not particularly liberal except for gay rights.
Even when unpopular Republican Governor Jane Swift wanted to run for reelection (before stepping aside for Mitt Romney since she was doing awful) she picked a gay Republican running mate.
.
It has been, since I lived there – maybe a few years before – very fiscally conservative with sixteen straight years of Republican governors.
.
It went from the highest state taxes in New England to the second lowest in those years.
.
So, I was not surprised that it went to the Republicans when the Democrats did not have a strong candidate.
.
Also, I am most concerned about candidates at a Federal, not a state, level.

“As vice president, he will gain some credibility.”

No he won’t. He’s a dick. He’s always been a dick. The man greets Barak Obama as he steps to the podium to announce the signing of his signature piece of legislation. Something he fought for almost his entire term to date and for which 60 members of Congress might lose their jobs. He says into an open mike, “This is a big F*cking deal”. This guy has been near mikes his entire life. But even forgetting the grotesque stupidity you have to ask yourself if anyone in this adminsitration has any class.

It isn’t just that Biden said it. It’s also that Obama is obviously comfortable listening to it. He embarrased both of them. It’s one of those small potatoes moments that speaks volumes about each man in a different way.

Joe Biden, Al Gore and John kerry are all the same men. They were in the senate far too long having far too much smoke blown up their asses. None of them had any legislative acheivements to speak up nor made any major decisions yet all three think they’re geniuses.

You fools trash GWB as a dope while slobbering over Al Gores Nobel Prize. GWB laughs at the fact he was a C student. Gore was a D student and thinks he’s the 2nd coming of Albert Einstein. He could only be that way because people like you made him think so.

The great story of the 2004 elections was the box Kerry and the MSM conspired to put him in. Bush had all sorts of manufactured scandals about his military career. He quickly signed the standard form releasing ALL of his records and ended the rumors. Dan Rather later committed career suicide but that was an issue unrelated to GWBS official records. The SBVs raise an issue about Kerrys records but he can’t release them to prove his case. The MSM dare on ask him too. To this day he hasn’t done as Bush did immediately.

This is so cool. The reason Kerry could not release his records is because his marks, test scores and various ratings were all lower than GWBs. Kerry had repeatedly expressed his contempt for GWBs intelligence. How humiliating would that be to find out GWB was smarter?

Think about that. It’s generally agreed Kerry lost whatever chance he had to gain momentum after the DNC convention to the SBVs. ABC could not report he refused to release his records. Or why obviously. Of course Fox reported it every hour on the hour. Liberals never knew but everyone else did.

I actually like that episode better than Dan Rather. Kerry has to get up each morning knowing that idiot really did beat him and why. As far as Dan the stupid bast*rd tried to use as evidence a forgery that was so bad it was the equivalent of a crayon copy. Pity CBS fired him. He represents liberalism as well as anyone.

patrick, you are dead wrong. Verizon has 100,000 retirees and they were just told their HC costs are going to skyrocket. Current employees were told their current benefits will be cut and don’t expect prescription drug coverage.

He’s raised taxes starting now and the benefits don’t start until 2013. EVERYONE who pays for health insurance is going to get a much higher bill.

Roosevelt did someone similar with SS in 1936 but on a lower scale. He created SS taxes and collected them starting I think in 1936 at 1% for the employee and 1% for the company. He didn’t start to pay benefits until 1938 or 39. That’s a tax increase in the middle of a depression. It’s not for nothing the recovery stalled badly and we saw a sharp jump back to 20% employment in 1938.

We have a very weak economy in a fragile recovery with no sign of job creation, far from it, corporations are taking writeoffs due to higher HC costs. So Obama passes major tax increases to fund HC and this just before he passes massive tax increases letting the GWB tax cuts elapse.

What do you think is going to happen when the 10M or so young healthy people who choose not to buy HC not have to shell out $4K a year for it start doing so. where is that money coming from? What are they going to stop buying. That’s a tax increase and it’s going to be very bad for the economy. And do you really think these people are going to be happy being forced against their will?

Gore got one D in Natural sciences.
Ironic and funny, yes.
.
I read Bush’s record. He was AWOL for two years while at Harvard.
.
It often took political connections to get into the Air National Guard during Vietnam. It is not proven at all how he got in. It may have been luck. Clearly, however, had W wanted to go, it would have been unbelievably easy for W to have gone into combat.
.
Kerry, also, revealed his academic records at Yale.
.
Kerry was a C student, too.
.
Kerry volunteered for the Navy despite having offers to be deferred. After his first tour of duty, he went on a second tour of duty.
.
His medals are real.
.
Dick Cheney married within months of the time the law deferred married men. When the law then said that it would only deffer married men with children, nine months later, almost to the day, his first child was born.
.
Nobody ever claimed Gore did the science. He was a presenter rather than just kicking back and taking an early retirement.
.
A Great VP moment was when Cheney told Vermont Senator Patrick Joseph Leahy to go F himself when he became an independent and did so on the floor of the US senate while presiding.
.
Bush invaded the wrong country. This is a level of corruption, stupidity or both unheard of in at least a century of American presidents.
.
As a reminder, people looked back at who did what at what college and found GWBs grades as an example.

okk.. I understand that your world revolves around Fox News and Rasmussen… That explains a lot of the history in your universe.
.
If Fox’s Hannity were to follow the example of Dan Rather and resign, he would probably have to resign a thousand times over. I am sure the pile of his resignation letters would be thicker than the HCR bill.
.
GWB would have been half-decent president, if it wasnt for Chickenhawk Cheney. It is quite apparent that GWB stopped listening to Cheney, near the end of his second term. i.e. he stopped waterboarding and ensured that “Scooter” Libby remained a convicted felon.

But alas, by then, the damage was done..

You have an F – a terrible F – at 0% in economics this evening.
.
Give me a link to a specific source or it will be like your theory that Reagan huffed and puffed and blew the Berlin Wall down and everybody lived happily ever after.
.
No, I do not trust the Faux News Channell.
.
They pretended that Swift Boat Captains for Justice was not a political group using the guise of Kerry being a public figure (see supreme court rulings) to avoid being sued for slander.
.
Give me a link or admit that you are full of

Patrick,

there are NO candidates at the federal level in 2010. Sen Brown ran a pretty specific surprisingly conservative campaign for New England and he came out of nowhere. He deserves a lot of credit for running well but he also selected several key themes such as GItmo, miranda rights for terrorists, HC and other key conservative issues. Even accepting Coakly wasn’t a good candidate the state party and the national party and the WH did an abysmal job in recognizing the problem and adjusting.

I kid you not several serious pundits called Obama stump speech for Coakly one of the worst they’ve ever seen. This guy is nothing like Bill Clinton. Never in one million years would Clinton have mocked Browns pickup. Obama did 6x’s. Is he that clueless as to how many people have pickups that he can condescend to that crowd? Did he really not know Brown had 200,000 miles on it and it wasn’t a prop?

The fact is during the last two weeks of campaigning for HC Obama was often stiffed by local representatives. Congressmen who 6 months ago would have bee begging for face time with Obama were ‘busy’.

Especially insidious for many in Congress is Obama has been so divisive and has lost the center. His polls among independents have reversed. He’s well underwater. Every Congressment from a state where independents control the outcome are in serious danger. In PA the stimulus was very unpopular. Verizon and At&T are major employers and both announced benefit cuts to active and retired employees.

one of the brilliant things Mitch McConnel did after HC was initially passed was offer over 30 amendments removing the various bribes. The cornhusker kickback was so revolting nelson had to give it back. But the Louusanna Purchase and over 30 other bribes remained. Each Democrat had to vote on each specific bribe to keep it in there. Arlen Spector, Democratic Senator for PA is going to have to explain why he voted for a $300M bribe to the citizens of Louisanna while sticking the citiizens of PA with the bill.

I can promise you every citizen of PA will be aware of each member of Congress from PA who supported keeping those bribes in there. Who issued a specific vote for each bribe.

My opinion is that one fact will cost Arlen Spector his job. The RNC already has the details of the vote and the framework for the commercials. They’ll vary state by state and there will be more than one to keep th subject fresh but the ads that air in PA will essentially be the same that air in OH with the name of the members supporting it being the OH delegation.

It’s really shrewd planning.

“..there are NO candidates at the federal level in ..”
.
You, just got an F in government.
.
Arlen Spector is at the Federal level.
.
Are you going to stop?
.
You have no idea what you are talking about.

When it comes to foul language, I once explained to my Mom (and my uncles – coincidentally Republicans liked this) “in previous generations, people really hated foul language. But in times, nobody really gives F…”
.
(I believe I am discouraged from saying that here.)

Naturally, If my knowledge is enriched daily by only watched F(ox) News, even I would get an F in everything.

Patrick,

what slander?

The single biggest story was the xmas in cambodia. He claimed while in Cambodia one xmas eve he heard Dick NIxon announce US troops were not in Cambodia and not authorized to be in Cambodia. Kerry made this claim repeatedly on previous campaigns. He claimed that outrage led to an ephinany and he had to get invovled as an anti-war protestor. It was a moment he’ll never forget.

John has been an active anti-war critic since 1969. He was accusing NIxon of being a liar and impeachable offenses years before Watergate. He did this in DC as a protestor and as a candidate for Lieut-Gov and then Senator of Mass.

Know what is really cool about the story? After having been around his entire life up through the election the great investigative powers of the MSM were exposed. Having told the story to the press countless times those watchdogs we rely on to protect the democracy never once asked a simple question.

John Kerry was in Asia over Xmas of 1968. Dick Nixon wasn’t President in 1968. The story was impossible. Worse, it’s a really pathetic story. Are you kidding me? These great journalists did what?

Whatever it was it wasn’t journalism was it?

This was the story Fox carried more than all others combined for the simple reason it did such a perfect job mocking the MSM, They had to be humiliated more than Kerry. A child knew immediately it was a shockingly pathetic lie. He got away with it for 30 years. How is that possible?

Kerry could at least say, “I must have had the holiday wrong” (actually that would have been hard because he said that’s why he remembered the date so well and he was so outraged he knew then he needed to fight the ear) kerry could have feigned confusion on some level.

The press was hosed. All they could do was hide. He played them for fools and they acted the part perfectly.

As it happens from records kerry himself kept he got at most within 5 miles of Cambodia and even his biographer Douglas Brinkley admitted it’s unlikely he was ever in Cambodia.

The problem of course is once he got caught pulling a Gore it did not matter. The scandal on Fox was always referred to as Xmas in Cambodia to highlight the pathetic nature of the lie and the MSM obviously hates that reference.

Also, kerry gamed his purple hearts. Douglas Brinkley wrote a bio portraying kerry as the 2nd coming of John Wayne. The reason he only served 4 months in Vietnam is he got 3 purple hearts. Yet he didn’t get as much as a band aid for any of his ‘wounds’ nor did he spill a drop of blood. The claim on his 1st medal was that his CO, one of the SBVs said Kerry asked to put in for the medal. Since he didn’t have a cut or bruise or need to go to the infrimary the CO refused. That CO had been transferred a month later and it’s pretty clear Kerry nominated himself. The CO asked Kerry to release his records to prove he did not nominate himself and he had to refuse because his test scores were lower than GWBs. Also he probably did nominate himself. After it was clear the SBVs had done significant damage the NYTs wrote an editoral admitting Johns wounds were not significant but he deserved credit for serving.

Yes he did. too bad he let his staff play him as a hero. That he wasn’t. He didn’t do anything illegal but his ethics were questionable. We’ll never know which was more of a negative, this or xmas in Cambodia, but the case can be made each made the other worse. The fact he told such a blantant and stupid lie over xmas in Cambodia made it very easy to believe he lied abot everything else.

I had been talking about the federal level. At no point did I refer to the state level. I had mentioned spector and Sestak by name. All federal level congressmen. When you then said federal I assumed you meant national rather than local.

You have no idea what you are talking about.
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Kerry went to war.
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He had friends killed and went back for a second time.
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He won well deserved medals.
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When he got back, he protested the war.
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GWB cheered and cheered for the war and hid from his duties (you didn’t get Air National Guard when you ask to go).
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Swift Boat Captains for justice claimed that Kerry did not deserve his medals.
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An investigative report had shown that none of these people who said that they knew what Kerry did and didn’t do had ever seen John Kerry face to face in their entire lives and that GWB supporters were writing them big, fat checks.
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Dick Nixon?
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He had nothing to do with this except that Nixon, unlike Obama who inherited a war, too, took ownership of it. He began to defend it as if it were his idea, not JFKs biggest blunder.
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You are now failing reading comprehension.
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You’re, actually, becoming really annoying.
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Maverick is right. You are addicted to watching Faux News.

“If Fox’s Hannity were to follow the example of Dan Rather and resign, he would probably have to resign a thousand times over”

I don’t follow Hannity on tv or on radio. but I know people who use the term faux news can never name an actual fraud carried by Fox.

What Dan Rather did was fantastically stupid. It might be the greatest story on journalism of the last 25 years. He tried to pawn as authentic a piece of evidence on something about GWBs in the service that was such a poor excuse of a fraud it was uncovered before the show was over.

It’s one of the great stories of the end of MSM dominance. Rather puts the story out there and some guy watching decides there’s something wrong about the letter. He was a lawyer who had been in the national guard. The format was all wrong. But he didn’t see it long enough to pin it down. so he goes into the shows website where a copy was posted. He gets a closer look and is convinced it’s a fraud.

As a practicing lawyer he’s worked with real documentation experts. He calls a guy up who wrote the code for word perfect in the 70′s and askes him to look at it. He knows in two minutes the letter was written on a word processor. He calls the lawyer back and says he’s 98% certain it’s a fraud. He needs to identify the specific font, find out when it was created and who used it and promises to get back as soon as he can but it might be the next day. The show was still on in the west coast. He puts out a blub on a blog the letter is probably a hoax and why.

Before readers of the NYTs received their morning copy of the paper it had been firmly established the letter had been written on a word processor and could not have possibly date from 1968. It was without question a fraud.

We knew by noon they actually used the default font and spacing for Word.

It’s beyond preposterous just how poorly executed a fraud this was. Dan Rather, his producer and 3 executives were fired. CBS lost over 15% market share permanently and lags far behind ABC and NBC.

Fox of course had a long party over it. The MSM said as little as possible. Dan Rather, God bless him, refused to go quietly. He was an absolute total buffoon and I know for a fact Tom Brokow suffered watching what was a slow motion train wreck.

Dan expected to be heralded for the rest of his life as the dean of television reporting. A legend in his own time. He got the last part right.

Hannity does opinion stuff. He doesn pretend to be unbiased. As far as I know he’s honest. He’s also kicking ass in the ratings. You can call him names but without evidence you are pissing in the wind.,

Are you competing with Freeinpa or rusty for most annoying and least informed person online?

Patrick,

I watch 25 minutes of Fox per day and not every day. I love the roundtable on at 6:35.

I read blogs on both sides but am concervative and prefer the national review, instapundit, powerline and contentions. I also visit andrew suillivan, daniel drezner, real clear politics and their links as well as rasmussen.

If you can’t deal with Xmas in Cambodia you’ll never understood why the SBVs won and Kerry lost.

John Kerry told a bare faced lie, a pathetically obvious lie, about xmas in cambodia for 30 years. It was a turning point in his life. It was a lie.

Once you get caught with your pants down around yor ankles like that your credibility is shot.

I don’t know about his other medals but it’s obvious he gamed the rules for a purple heart to get a tiocket home and the NYTs admitted so.

Had Douglas Brinkley not written such a poorly sourced BIO it’s unlikely Schrum would have built his persona around vietnam and being a war hero. Americans respect everyone who serves but don’t pull a Gore and pretend to be more than you are. Hero’s don’t accept purple hearts for boobo’s. He never received so much as a band-aid for any of his injuries.

I think even knowing that most Americans would have accepted it was a tough period and at least he was there and forget it. But he went too far. they sold him as John Wayne. Sorry, but you don’t sully that name. Either you are or you are not. It’s apostacy to pretend to something you are not.

Again, I think the Xmas in Combodia story was so sleezy it did the major damage.

Pat,

Dan Rather was disgraced and fired. He is persona no grata among serious journalist and the inside the beltway crowd. His reputation is now in tatters.

check out the ratings. Oreilly now gets more viewers at 8 and 11 than Katie Couric gets on CBS. That’s astonishing and that’s Dan Rather.

How’s that for well informed?

Actually they do. It still represent class. Parts of society have become coarser and f-bombs are not shocking but class is still class. It’s only common decency and respect to use proper language in public.

I think Joe Biden is a dick for a thousand other reasons. This is small potatoes as I said. It is also indicative of a fundamental lack of class that permeanates this administration.

You might talk to your parents and grandparents that way but in my family that’s unacceptable.

rdw56, I think the answer for ratings that O’Reilly gets versus MSM media probably lies with what you just said.. People rarely watch news channels to get their news – they get it from other sources, namely blogs and even comedy shows like Daily Show.
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Also, O’Reilly is part of the “fair and balanced” promos that run on Faux News.
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So is O’Reilly’s show is fair and balanced “opinion” show?? Isnt that an oxymoron?
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rdw 56,

During the Soviet Years Pravda, had more copies sold than an US newspaper.

Your logic is that if Faux News is more popular than it must be factually correct.

Then Pravda (known the Soviet people as a totally unreliable source but listed events and gave people something to talk about at work) accord to you must have made people “well informed”.

Al Gore correctly said that he wrote some of the legislation which made the military Apranet and made it into the internet. Since the first internet boom was happening, Gore then said, “I practically invented the internet”.

What he meant was 100% true. He was most responsible for the transition from military to civilian.

Bush’s people then said that Gore said that he completely invented the internet. It was funny, to hear that exaggeration.

John Kerry was the Senator from the state I lived in from 1990 to 2005 as an adult.

I followed his campaign in 2004, too.

If John Kerry ever told anybody anywhere at any time that he spent Christmas in Cambodia during the Vietnam War rather than in Vietnam, is had never been to improve his campaign – never.

I never heard of Christmas in Cambodia until now.

I know that Kerry got decorated for saving sailor’s lives and I was working for a company fund raising for Kerry in 2004.

Dan Rather made an error after being in journalism since the 1950s.

O’Rielly got on air and told everybody that a kidnapped child who got abducted by a child molester and held for six years liked being kidnapped a anally raped.

Your man O’Rielly is a sick Mo fo.

Give me Dan Rather with one serious error every half century any day.

For your “news” besides O’Rielly saying that a boy liked being anally raped for six years of his childhood, Ann Coulter said that the Widows of 9/11 liked it when their husbands got killed!

Your buddy Hannity is educated as a construction worker.

So, you ignore twenty thousand climatologists, all economists, all historians, a man who had fifty years of good experience in journalism for a man who is skilled at fixing toilets only, a woman who says that women like it when their husbands are murdered by terrorists and a man who says that children like it when they are held hostage and anally raped for six years of their childhood.

Tell you what, since you do the opposite of any normal human being, I’ll go find a homeless psychotic to tell you that Bush and Cheney had a Holocaust in the US killing one hundred million people and you, since you go for the least credible sources of information, will believe him even over Fox News.

Why not?

If I met Sean Hannity in person, do you know what I would ask him about? I would ask him to tell me about that leak in the bathroom my landlord hasn’t fixed. He is a construction worker.

If I see Ann Coulter or Bill O’Rielly, I wouldn’t come near them.

O’Rielly, a married man, was sexually harassing the women he worked with – but I bet he would say that they really liked it.

Your view of history is weaker than what I knew in the seventh grade.

TOM SMITH ON ISRAELIS AND OBAMA: Plus this advice from the comments: “Israel should treat Obama in the same [way] the federal workforce treats Republican Presidents… as someone who be gone in just a few short years.”

Patrick, you put way, way too much into formal education. If you want to find socialists in the USA where is the 1st place you look? Any university faculty.

It’s comcial hearing liberals blather on about Hannity and Fox news. Fox is only the most sucessful cable station in history making a fortune for Rupert Murchoch. In most important time spots they get more viewers than the competition combined.

Hannity is the #2 rated talk radio host and dominated Rachel Maddow 3 to 1 on TV. Limbaught makes > $40M per year so my quess is with TV Hannity is very close.

He’s a very good guy. He is a major supporter and donor to a foundation established to educate the famliiies of the fallen. Limbaugh is the major donor to a different foundation for the same purpose. together they’ve donated or raised more than $50M. It’s a permanent trust. The idea is to establish an amount so it can exist in perpetuity so no liberal anti-war President can screw over the troops. Hannity runs a very successful concert tour annually and Limbaugh does a series of events.

Think about how cool this is and you’ll understand why Obama wants to limit the charitable deduction. All of this cash is outside the control of govt and the conservative groups who manage it can support the troops in any way they see fit. Fortunately the casualty count is way down. Speculation is by 2020 they’ll be able to provide full scholarships and other services for the children of the military as well as fund lobbying efforts for more govt services. The soldiers essentially have their own PAC and pool of funds.

It’s one of the many ways people like Limbaugh and Hannity can have amazing influence that will outlast them. These two are human ATM machines. It’s easy to see why the academic elites despise them. Neither graduated college yet each has more influence than the entire Ivy league faculty.

“Your logic is that if Faux News is more popular than it must be factually correct.”

Not quite. They’re factually correct because they have higher standards than CBS and the rest of the MSM. The Dan Rather story is of an impossible level of corruption. A letter that was literally found to be fraudalent within 10 minutes by someone watching the show passed their entire review process. It’s just a fabulous story that will live as long as Dan Rather. I can promise you conservatives are thrilled he’s still working and hope he makes a comback.

The news hour is at least the equivalent of the best of the networks in terms of ethics. The political shows on primetime are not news shows but are also ethical meeting all the standards of any show n ABC.

The joke is ABC pretends to be Objective. They merely mock themselves and are an easy target. Fox is fair and balanced. Brit Hume’s 1st two hires were Mara liason and Juan Williams.

People like you trash Foxnews without ever offering evidence. Hannity isn’t part of the news operation.

Al Gore correctly said that he wrote some of the legislation which made the military Apranet and made it into the internet. Since the first internet boom was happening, Gore then said, “I practically invented the internet”.

What he meant was 100% true. He was most responsible for the transition from military to civilian.

*********************************************************

No he wasn’t. The guys who were most responsible were the guys who did it. Gore was one of 535 comgressmen spending other peoples money and he was NOT the top technology guy.

Not that it matters. The list of his exaggerations is endless. He’s fun because he’s such a dick and he mocks liberals by his mere presence on stage. He’s a D student who inherited his job from his daddy. It’s always fun listending to libs trash Bush the C student and Harvard MBA while praising Gore the D student and graduate school dropout. . You people mock yourself.

I just love the fact he promised the Arctic Ice cap will be gone in the summer of 2012. The man is a dufus. You would think the guy who invented the internet would now about youtube. Ya think we’re going to forget this Nobel Prize winning genius’s prediction? The Arctic Ice Cap is now almost 50% larger than when he said it.

What happened is unusual wind conditions pushed much of the ice south in the summer of 2007 so instead of refreezing in place as it normally does it melted in southern waters. Temps had nothing to do with the shrinkage, This simple ass can’t help himself. He makes a huge campaign out of the disappearing Ice Cap. Too bad it’s not true and we have hourly Satellite pics proving it’s not true,

What was he thinking? What were the frauds around him thinking? They had to know we’d find out. You have to know Fox is going to headline this story periodically from now to 2012 and in the summer of 2012 make it the boggest story of the year. It’s too perfect. It’s very possible by 2012 the Ice Cap willbe double the size of 2007. Are you kidding me? He’s not just a fraud. He’s a really incompetent fraud.

If John Kerry ever told anybody anywhere at any time that he spent Christmas in Cambodia during the Vietnam War rather than in Vietnam, is had never been to improve his campaign – never.

***********************************

This was much bigger than John Krry and what is your point anyway? What does his campaign have to do with it? He man is a liar. This was ‘indelibly etched in his mind”. He remembered it because it was xmas eve and it is the reason he gave for becoming an anti-war protestor. Nixon drove him too it. This was his bio thru EVERY campaign. He ran for Lieut-Gov and then Senate 3x’s.

The funniest aspect of the lie is it’s so pathetic. All of these uber-wise men in the media. The great historian Douglas Brinkley. all of his peers in Congress. They all knew he was talking about Xmas of 1968. They all knew Nixon wasn’t President. This obvious fraud was out there for 30 years. NO ONE in the MSM caught it.

Think about it this way. If just one of them, just one, gave it a thought they would have figured it out and say, “Psst, John, you’ve got a little problem here, you’ve got to adapt your scenario. it doens’t work”. Had they done just 1/100 of their job, even 1/1,000 they would have figured it out. john let them down. They let John down. There is a very good possibility had they done just 30 seconds of critical thinking John kerry would be President today.

Just think for a second what it must be to get up each morning as Gore and Kerry must do and consider how close they came. If in either case the MSM had done just a little to fact check them to get them to clean up their acts you would never have heard of GWB after 2001.

In the summer of 2004 John Kerry was a deer in the headlights. He was in a box entirely of his own creation with an assist from his pals in the media. This was an entirely self-inflicted wound and it cost him the Presidency.

What was it in Al Gore to cause him to lie with such frequency. I can actually cut Al a bit of a break. It isn’t so much he manufactures facts as exaggerates him. The internet thing was just silly. It was effective legislation on his part. But sorry, he wasn’t the only one. He wasn’t in the top 100 in importance. People as a rule hate it when Pols take credit for the hard work of others. Credit belongs to the defense establishment and we would habve had the internet without Al Gore.

We’ve all met Al Gore’s. He’s a garden variety dick. It real story is why did the press enable him? Why did he think he could constantly get away with it. Well, for a good reason. He constantly got away with it.

I think one of the small but key moments on the campaign was that idiotic story about mommy singing the union theme. 1st off it’s plain weird. Wierd that of all of the songs out there she’s singing about a friggin union. wierd that he remembers it. Just how old was he? Talk about a Momma’s boy. But when smoeone not in the MSM checks and it was written when Al was 16 it became a pathetic story.

What drives a man to tell such stupid lies? Is such a man fit to be President?

A lot of people on my side thinks the MSM helps libs. I don’t think so. They created Gore and Kerry. They should have been easy election cycles.

If you’ve been reading Joe Klein and Thomas L for a while you can tell how horrid this decade has been for them. The credibility of the MSM has been shredded. Joe still tried to sell this crap about objectivity but even he know’s no one believes it. Worse for Joe is he writes a few columns a week 1M might read. Limbaugh has 20M listeners. The college dropout has more listeners than the 3 network newscasts combines.

Newsweek runs a cover saying Joe is no dope and it has absolutely zero influence drawing more attention to the fact Joe is a dope. His little open mic episode didn’t help.

“…they have higher standards than CBS and the rest of the MSM.”
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LOL
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If I had a dollar for every time Fox used pathetically low journalistic standards, I would own a major US corporation.
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“People like you trash Foxnews without ever offering evidence. Hannity isn’t part of the news operation.”
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http://www.foxnews.com/bios/talent/sean-hannity/
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“Sean Hannity joined the FOX News Channel (FNC) in September 1996. He currently hosts his self titled program, “Hannity””
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Please tell Fox this. They think he works for them.

Read more: http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2010/03/28/israel-today-and-so-long-for-now/comment-page-2/?replytocom=151763#respond#ixzz0jlDR4Fnj

“Limbaught makes > $40M per year so my quess is with TV Hannity is very close”..
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“He’s a very good guy.”
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The hookers in the Dominican Republic love Limbaugh’s charity.
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http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0706062rush1.html
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“Think about how cool this is ”
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“According to its 2006 tax returns, Freedom Alliance reported revenue of $10, 822, 785, but only $397,900–or a beyond-measly 3.68%–of that was given to the children of fallen troops as scholarships or as aid to severely injured soldiers.”
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http://crooksandliars.com/logan-murphy/sean-hannity-being-attacked-right-mor
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CNN’s a ratings flop, explains the New York Times. But you have to read to the 14th and last graph to learn: “At the same time, Fox News, which had its biggest year in 2009, continues to add viewers.”

****************************************************************

rdw – This greatly pains Joe for he knows what it means. The great story about the SBVs is as much a media story. While Fox was running it 24/7 the MSM refused to acknowledge it. Kerry’s clear media strategy was to ignore it hoping it would go away. Releasing his military records was not an option and clearly the xmas in cambodia story was fabricated. The MSM clearly was supporting his plan. The test was about the ability of the MSM to keep it supressed.

They failed. It’s now proven to be a significant turning point . The power of the MSM to dictate the story has significantly diminished. Gone are the days when network anchors are the great wise men of the media, true elites. Dan Rather proved himself a horses ass and not very bright. The fact he took management with him showed the entire media apparatus not to be very bright and definitely not ethical.

I am certain to this day the SBVs are almost as painful memory a memory for Joe as for John Kerry. The once powerful perch at Time has been widely exceeded in reach by the likes of Limbuagh and Hannity, Drudge and Krauthammer, Steyn and Hanson. The internet allows aggregators like Drudge and Powerline and instapundit to link to great stories from conservatives like Michael Baron and so many others who in 1999 would never be seen. Now they have 10′xs the readership of Joe.

This is how Fox kept Kerry/SBVs front and center. The absolute critical mistake was is not immediately correcting the Xmas in Cambodia story. It was a rotten story and it was obviuous it was rotten. The cover-up hurt Kerry and Klein.

He did not promise anything about the arctic.
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GWB got his job from Daddy all of his life from oil (with daddy’s money through to a baseball team before politics -and even went out of business with oil)
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Faux News does an amazing job with the Republicans of being the pot to call the kettle black before the pot can speak.
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So, Bush attacked Al Gore for his “daddy” before Gore could attack Bush for “daddy” to make Democrats look like copy cats.
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http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.asp
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It wouldn’t let me copy and paste, but the liar was not Gore.
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He said he wrote legislation – he never once said that he invented the internet!

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“Patrick, you put way, way too much into formal education. If you want to find socialists in the USA where is the 1st place you look? Any university faculty.”
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“Main Entry: so·cial·ism
Pronunciation: \ˈsō-shə-ˌli-zəm\
Function: noun
Date: 1837

1 : any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
2 a : a system of society or group living in which there is no private property b : a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state
3 : a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done
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http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/socialism
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This requires a command economy.
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See above.
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I met one person who was a Marxist Idealist in my entire life. He believed that, eventually, people will decide to share everything.
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He was a taxi driver, not a University professor.
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I was at Yale Summer School and Harvard Extension.
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Neither had any Marxists that I know of.
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They economists by the hundreds.
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No economist is a Marxist by definition of economist.
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Main Entry: econ·o·mist
Pronunciation: \i-ˈkä-nə-mist\
Function: noun
Date: 1586

1 archaic : one who practices economy
2 : a specialist in economics
.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/economist
.
“economics

The study of how the forces of supply and demand allocate scarce resources. Subdivided into microeconomics, which examines the behavior of firms, consumers and the role of government; and macroeconomics, which looks at inflation, unemployment, industrial production, and the role of government.”
.
http://www.investorwords.com/1648/economics.html
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So, you are extremely wrong, once again.

Fox tells people what they want to hear.
So, it has an audience by distorting facts like how sure you were that Gore said he invented the internet.
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This is one of Fox’s lies.
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Your posts have no links.
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You are inventing things out of the blue.

“During the 2004 campaign, Kerry released hundreds of documents related to his military service, including his reserve and discharge documents.”
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“Commenting on the Silver Star issue, Republican Sen. John Warner, who was Under Secretary of the Navy at the time, stated “We did extraordinary, careful checking on that type of medal, a very high one, when it goes through the secretary…I’d stand by the process that awarded that medal, and I think we best acknowledge that his heroism did gain that recognition.”[60] Elmo Zumwalt, Commander of the United States Naval Forces in Vietnam at that time, signed Kerry’s original Silver Star citation and defended the award in 1996, saying “It is a disgrace to the United States Navy that there’s any inference that the [medal] process was anything other than totally honest.” Boston Herald, October 28, 1996.”
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“Kerry did not claim to have been sent on a covert mission to Cambodia on Christmas Eve, 1968. Rather, he believed at the time he had crossed the border while on a patrol near the border, during which the boats were ambushed and later came under friendly fire from South Vietnamese soldiers.”
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kerry_military_service_controversy#Cambodia_mission
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What else do you want?
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Fox smeared Gore and Kerry very badly.
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As public figures they could not sue:
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“Under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, as set forth by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1964 Case, New York Times v Sullivan, where a public figure attempts to bring an action for defamation, the public figure must prove an additional element: That the statement was made with “actual malice”. In translation, that means that the person making the statement knew the statement to be false, or issued the statement with reckless disregard as to its truth. For example, Ariel Sharon sued Time Magazine over allegations of his conduct relating to the massacres at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. Although the jury concluded that the Time story included false allegations, they found that Time had not acted with “actual malice” and did not award any damages. ”
.
http://www.expertlaw.com/library/personal_injury/defamation.html#3

From now on, have the courtesy of at least one link not tied to a group with any known political leaning.
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Spewing your dysentery only tells me that you are very ignorant.

What’;s with the links. Just read more clearly. I never said Al gore said he created the internet. I forget his exact words. I said he took too much credit. He did. I don’t need to link to that. you now he took too much credit. This was a story that started in the lalte 80′s. Fox didn’t exist until 1996.

you can look up the Xmas in Cambodia story. The basic facts were never in dispute because they’re indisputable. kerry was in Asia in Xmas of 68. Niixon was not President in 1968. His story was impossible. there’s no possible debate there. He told the story many times over 30 years as a personal ephinany, a memory that was burned into his brain. These were kerrys own words and they were on tape. There was never a debate, never a quesiton about the basic facts.

When you have the basic facts, agree to facts, obvious facts links are un-necessary.

We know for a fact that John Kerry lied about Xmas in Cambodia. It is not possible for it to be true.

We know for a fact the MSM swallowed an exceptionally pathetic fraud for 3 decades without doing the smallest shred of journalism. I can understand kerry getting caught up in emotions, telling a story, embellishing it and upon realizing he was trapped staying with it.

How is it possible for a political junkie like Joe Klein to listen to that story and not know immediately it was stupid. Joe knew when John was in Vietnam. He knew he was there 4 months. The only xmas he was there was 68 and he knew Nixon could never have said that in 1968. Joe Klien had to know it was impossible. How could he miss that? Can he really call himself a journalist. Isn’t that what journalists do?

Or is he a groupie?

rdw56,
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Summery:
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1) Reagan did not cause the fall of communism.
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2)Star Wars did not cause an arms race with the Soviet Union.
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3)Star Wars did not work.
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4)Supply Side Economics was a flop.
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5) Global Warming is real.
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6) Al Gore did not lie.
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7) John Kerry did not lie.
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8) Fox News does very often lie.
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9) Coulter, O’Reily,Limbaugh and Hannity are not good people.
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10)Charity is to poverty what urinating is to putting out a forest fire.
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11) Universities are not prone to having socialists on staff more than private businesses or charities.
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12) Democrats dislike communists.
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13)Both our last two vice presidents publicly said the F word, but one was directed at a person and the other used it for emphasis.
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14) We have had a few serious recessions since 1980.
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15) The IRA was not defeated, they negotiated and remain armed and, should anything go wrong, “The Troubles” will be back again.
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16) Alan Greenspan continued, not contradicted, Paul Volcker’s work.
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Did I miss anything else I taught you today?
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I should bill for my tutoring services. You are very uncooperative and difficult student.

1) If you read, you would know that Kerry told the truth.
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2) If you read, you would know that Gore did not bring up the internet when he was in the Senate. It came up in 2000 when Fox along with Bush made up a fake controversy.
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3) I have no idea why you believe that John Kerry said that Nixon was president when his boat had crossed the boarder. The story was that Kerry was a war hero after volunteering for a second tour of duty, Bush made efforts to hide from the same war while cheering on that other people die. Kerry came back, after taking his life in his hands very literally, and then asked that, even though he did, nobody else should have to go to an unwinable war.
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Kerry’s patrol was near the boarder. In combat, without Nixon or anybody else, he chased enemies to where it is believed that they had crossed the border.
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The specific about it being either very, very near the boarder or being on the Cambodian side is a non-story.
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You need to learn to read better.
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Where to bergin

Kerry lied. Gore lied. That’s why they’ll never be addressed as Mr. President.

GW might be happening but the so-called movement isn’t. As regards the IPCC GW is dead for now. The biggest story on the horizon willbe the Arctic Ice Caps. Gore pomised in the summer of 2012 they won’t be there.

We have a great testable ‘fact’. We’ll all know once and for all. It’s not at all ambigious and very easy to test.

To be honest, at current trends Al is going to be humiliated as will every fool who believed it. The great thing is the teachable element. Every school kid will see his various youtube clips promising disaster and then measure his forecast with actual results. Can it get any fairer? Every school kid will be made aware Al Gore is a dick,

The IRA was defeated. They got nothing and they no longer have the support of a more propserous south that has embraced Reagan style capitalism.

The Irish have gotten fat and prosperous. It’s over. They’re not even remembered fondly.

“I have no idea why you believe that John Kerry said that Nixon was president when his boat had crossed the boarder. ”

Because kerry said so. It’s on tape. It’s also an indelible memory. He was sitting in Cambodia himself on xmas eve when he heard Nixon speak. That’s the crux of the story. He realized then Nixon was lying to the American people about Cambodia. It was his ephinany. He decided while sitting there this was an immoral war and Nixon was the bad guy. In fact it was JFKs and LBJs war but that’s another story. The fact is kerry told a lie that in retrospect was so astonishly stupid it’s almost unbelievable. videotape is a bitch.

rdw56,
Ireland has national healthcare, free college – tons of benefits…
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They are far, far, far to the left of Obama.
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You are saying that you are ignorant and Fkg proud.

If you read, you would know that Gore did not bring up the internet when he was in the Senate. It came up in 2000 when Fox along with Bush made up a fake controversy.

Here are his exact words: “During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.”

In recent days, major newspapers and media personalities have revived the myth that, during his presidential run, former Vice President Al Gore claimed he “invented” the Internet. Although these media outlets persist in repeating or alluding to it, this falsehood has long since been debunked. Gore did not say he “invented” the Internet. In the March 9, 1999, interview on CNN’s Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer that gave rise to the myth, Gore actually said: “During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.”

In the past year alone, The Washington Post, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Associated Press have all published columns, editorials, or articles that repeat or perpetuate the myth that Gore said he invented the Internet, ignoring their own reporting to the contrary:

************

This wasn’t started by Fox. IN 1999 Fox was still small. This was all over the press mainly because it was classic Gore. The man is a dick. The DoD has been working on the technology a decade before Al got into Congress. Give him credit for helping fund it as a congressman but he only played a small role. He implies he was critical. Total BS.

Why are you arguing. Gore is done. Kerry is done

Ireland also has low taxes and very free trade. Once among the poorest of the EU they now rank among the top. I think pre capita GDP is over $45K versus $32K for France and the UK. All of Europe is far to the left of the USA. They are what Obama wants to be. Ireland is the freeest economically.

The other two nations you might watch are Colombia and Chile. They are kicking economic ass south of the border following reaganesque policies. Chile was once low and now is the richest in terms of per capita incomes. Colombia is far behind but Uribe has made dramatic gains. It’s a fascinating comparison between Colombia and Venezuela. Colombia is going the way of the USA under Reagan while Venezuels is going the way of Cuba. Hugo is screwed. The economy is tanking. It’s a classic USA v USSR rematch. Socialism cannot win. Hugo runs a this mouth and Uribe laughs. His energy sector is on the verge of collapse. His threats to move troops to the border of Colombia might have an impact if he had the gasoline to get them there and keep them supplied. Hugo is the classic lefty. As Lady Thatcher noted, eventually lefties run out of other peoples money.

I almost feel sorry for the people of Venezuela but they voted for him. .They have no future. Power blackouts are now common. They did on an ocean of oil. You would think it would be impossible even for a lefty to screw that up.

The Apranet was started in 1968.
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That was the same year John Kerry Chased Vietnamese combatants over the boarder of Cambodia.
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Perhaps Fox was not the first one which made the Gore error..
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The point is, neither one lied.
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This gives you a 0 to fifteen count.

Ireland has the same policy as most of Western Europe since all of the EEC policies are together making free trade agreements.
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France is a part of that group.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_the_Republic_of_Ireland
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Irish taxes are so progressive that the poorest one quarter pay nothing.
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Flat tax or partially progressive is conservative, very progressive is liberal.
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Reagan cut the top tax bracket from 50% to 30% to make it less progressive.
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Hence, it is an FDR system and type of taxation and benefits unheard of by Americans plus, on top of an average 25% tax, a 12.5% sales tax on everything.
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It sounds like it is to the left of Obama, Clinton, Carter (who dropped the top bracket down from 90%) to fit FDR, LBJ or Harry Truman.

BTW: Dan Rather does make some big gifts to charity.
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http://www.kbtx.com/collegenews/headlines/33398489.html
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Unlike Fox people, he does not use it to improve his image.
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We’ve been through Fox people.
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It is very obvious to me that if anywhere else on the political spectrum paid more than conservatives, every single person working for Fox or AM radio will jump ship to go there.
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That is a hypothesis. It can not be proven right or wrong unless a progressive news channel opens up and starts giving our huge paychecks for many years.
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O’Reilly: says kidnapped child anally raped for six years liked it. It was to be controversial, contrarian and to lift ratings if he believed or not.
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O’Reilly: sexually harassed women at Fox while, also, married.
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Hannity: takes big cut of money from charities leaving almost nothing to the cause.
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Coulter: Says that, due to his having sex with many women that Bill Clinton is gay. (Having sex with women proves you like women). I do not know why, but she, also, said John Edwards is gay. Said women who lost their husbands in 9/11 were happy that their husbands were dead.
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Limbaugh: Has sex with prostitutes.
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So, even if you find ten or fifteen MSM who are doing something immoral in their spare time, unless it is mass murder, you can not say that the Right wing has the high ground on morals.
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Dan Rather does not have his own charity, but contributes and was never caught cheating on his wife.
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No, he was not incredible, but Katie Couric is too ditzy to be taken seriously and too old to be sexy and scares away viewers Rather had.

I’m not quite sure why you keep bringing up the primetime hosts. They’re not part of the news program. They’re opinion shows. They’re entertainment.

The relevent comparison for Dan Rather is Brent Bair. Couric is a lot less ditzy than Gunga Dan. Her probelm is she is liberal pretending to be otherwise. People don’t accept the lie. I’m a conservative. There’s nothng wrong with liberals. Aside from the stupid thing. I don’t think conservatives are better people. Katie is a talking head. she reads a telepromprter. At that she’s fine. The problem is she is also managing editor. She often decided what gets on the news.

A classic example of how news is covered is Obama’s retreat from Copenhagen. The networks didn’t want to report the irony of Obama leaving global warming netotiations earely due to a snowstorm on the US East coast. They bever reported Northern Europe was in the middle of an unusual cold snap and that snow on the ground that time of year was unusual. Fox covered all that. Fox wasn’t honest. Couric/CBS wasn’t dishonest.. They didn’t lie. They didn’t say it was warm in Copenhagen.

The managed the news as any liberal would. There’s no grand conspiracy. Katie didn’t call up Brian Williams and agree on their coverage. The fact is they all have a point of view. They tailor their coverage to that point of view. It’s the easiest game in town. A child can play.

I don’t think Dan Rather is evil. I think Dan is stupid and a zealot. He and Rush can have sex anything their hearts desire with anyone they choose. It doesn’t effect his razor sharp analysis. That’s what matters.

Gore and kerry lie chronically. it;s why they’re not President. I never said Gore lied about the internet. I said he took too much credit. I also said he’s a dick. I also said I am thrilled you nominated this D student dick to head the GW effort. The man is from central casting. He’s perfect for my side. Like his good friend Joe Biden he doesn’t know what’s going to come out of his mouth next.

Al Gore did not lie about climate change:
“British Parliament: Climategate scientists’ actions ‘in line with common practice”
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http://www.examiner.com/x-25061-Climate-Change-Examiner~y2010m3d31-British-Parliament-Climategate-scientists-actions-in-line-with-common-practice
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When English conservatives tried to use England’s twisted libel laws where the conservatives did not have to prove that he lied, but Gore had to prove that it was true, Gore, also, won.
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“Mr Justice Barton yesterday said that while the film was “broadly accurate” in its presentation of climate change…”
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/oct/11/climatechange
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So, with “climategate” just like the “whitewater scandal” (where it was proven that the Clintons very legally chose to invest with friends- one of whom had bi-polar disorder- lost their investment completely) once again, it seems as if the conservatives are the liars.
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What is it that Gore and/or Kerry lied about?
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If you say that you do not like government taking care of problems, that would be one thing. The word “liar” is a word with a specific definition not just cool looking marks on page or random sounds to make with your mouth.
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If you, instead say, “Kerry, just like Gore, are awful speakers” that is different than “liar”.

Patrick, you have to focus in. citing a liberal newpaper committed to the GW apparatus as confirmation Al Gore is telling the truth is worthless. There’s np need or value in getting into the weeds on this one. The fact is Kyoto never happened. it was a total and complete flop. The fact is Copenhagen was a total and complete flop. It’s not quite a fact yet but in all probability the UN is going to be out of the business because there is no public support for these grand deals. Support in the USA was never high and is down sharply. Support is down even more sharply in the UK where they did a much better job of covering climate gate and the various IPCC scandals.

The fact us your cause is lost. Cap and Tax ain’t happening. Gov christie of NJ is reversing every single GW policy enacted by Corzine that costs a dime. He’s created a few boards to advise on global warming. If they ever form they will not be unpaid. He moved one budget from $300M to ZERO.

The single coolest thing about Gore is he is just as big a dick as Biden. He’s on record now having repeatedly promised the Arctic Ice Cap is going to disappear by 2012. It’s more than 40% larger now. It’s absolutely not gonig to disappear. This Ice Cap watch will be the single biggest GW issue the next 2 years. We are all going to watch. Albert is going to have to explain why it got bigger. Children aware of the facts already know he’s a fraud. You too will find out.

Kerry lied about Xmas in Cambodia. How often do weneed to go over this?

Kerry said that he chased Vietnamese along the waters across the border in 1968: true.
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Richard Nixon did not have to get on board the boat for it to cross over to Cambodia.
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So stop talking about Richard Nixon since Kerry did not say that he was stationed in Cambodia.

So, twenty thousand (literally) climatologists, the English Parliament, the English court systems, the UN and the Democratic party have all gotten together in some secret location to forge data, have the English courts and the English Parliament cover up for it so that somebody could get a tax on your gasoline to fund research and plant trees?
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Now you are going to tell me that there is an Easter Bunny.
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If not, do explain two things:
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1) How would all of these parties conspire.
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2) Why would anybody ever want to believe that there is global warming since it such and unpleasant thing?
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Obviously we all wish that global warming wasn’t there, but, facts are not opinions.

If a climetologist successfully finds evidence that there is no global warming, a few things will happen:
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1) Every unmarried conservative woman will be his girlfriend.
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2) He will be on every newspaper in the world.
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3) He will win the Nobel prize.
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4) He will get hired by a huge oil company for tens of millions of dollars a year.
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What will happen if he finds more of the same evidence:
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Nothing other than that he gets to stay in the basement of a university doing math problems.
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So, if everybody wants to disprove global warming but nobody can get it past peer review, then it must be over-the-top obvious.
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I would love it if I could drive an RV around with cheap gas and no taxes on gas. But, that is simply not going to happen unless we willingly degrade the environment further.

“He will get hired by a huge oil company for tens of millions of dollars a year.”

Patrick, big oil benefits from the GW crowd. 1st note it’s a political movement not a science movement. They seek to restrict the burning of fossil fuels and part of that is preventing the production of fossil fuels. This move obviously makes them scarcer and more expensive. Exxon doesn’t care if CA passes some emisisons scheme. Their future isn’t CA. Their future is China and India and the huge 3rd world.

As it happens Exxon is a major investor in battery technology. If cars do go electric they make a lot more money off batteries. It isn’t like 3rd world nations can embrace electric. They don’t have the infrastructure. Venezuela has daily blackouts because they cannot produce electricity. What good are electric cars? IN most of the rest of the world gasoline demand will continue to surge. If the USA tomorrow were to develop a viable electric car Exxon sells just as much oil and then makes more off batteries.

You can’t outsmart capitalists.

“Israel should treat Obama in the same [way] the federal workforce treats Republican Presidents… as someone who be gone in just a few short years.”
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Wait a minute.. Are you by any means suggesting that Israeli politics and demographics (including % of Arab population) will remain static and Bibi will remain Prime minister forever?
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Good luck with that…

There’s no GW conspiracy. It’s a gravy train. If you want to get govt money to study GW it’s to prove it exists. All of the money is on the pro side. You can’t get a job in academia if you are not PC.

It doesn’t matter. GW is dead. There are still far too many people invested in it for it to go away but the political goal of a Kyoto type deal is dead. There won’t be a cap and trade system. There is zero support in the USA for spending a dime on GW.

If I were you I’d be livid. The political people could not have played this any worse. Al Gore is a disaster. You can give a Nobel Prize to a D student but he’s still a D student. He lost the election on 2000 because he was not in control of his mouth. There is an arguement for GW. That dick just blew is so out of proportion he blew it for you. The fact is the IPCC is a shambles. It has no credibility. Nor does the Univ of East Anglia, Penn State, Science and other magazines and the entire peer review process.

All we need to do is watch the Arctic Ice Cap. We have hourly data going back to 1979. Al said the Ice Cap will disappear in the summer of 2012. Lets just watch what happens. I say it will confirm for the 15,000 time Al is a dick but let’s see.

What about Bill Gates? Is he a socialist fool who believes in climate change and reducing green house gas emmissions?

What about Bill Gates? Is he a socialist fool who believes in climate change and reducing green house gas emmissions?
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Or is he a capitalist who is putting money where his mouth is?

“So stop talking about Richard Nixon since Kerry did not say that he was stationed in Cambodia”

You need to work at this harder. You are not doing a credible job. What does stationed in Cambodia mean? Who said Kerry was stationed in Cambodia?

Kerry said, and it’s on tape, He was in Cambodia one Xmas Eve when Nixon said in a press address US soldiers were not in Cambodia. Kerry was outraged and this key event cause him to oppose the war. The memory was so vivid because it was Xmas Eve.

Kerry L I E D. The story is I M P O S S I B L E.

Whats your point? That Kerry is a serial lier and Nixon isnt a serial lier?
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LOL.. Best of luck trying to prove that !!

Here is the latest example about how Fox and Fox News contributer Sarah Palin lie all the time :

“Sarah Palin will kick off her new Fox News series with one of the most diverse guest lineups in memory: LL Cool J, Toby Keith, and Jack Welch. The three very different guests will speak to Palin for her inaugural episode of ‘ American Stories ‘ on April 1st.” – Fox News.
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The tiny problem with that statement is.. Sarah never ever spoke to them.
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http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/31/publicist-for-toby-keith-also-baffled-by-interview-on-palin-show/?src=mv

I sent you John Kerry’s quote and it said that he crossed the border, he did not say “stationed in”.

How do you change oil wells into battery factories?
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Oil companies may chose to diversify, but, if a government prescribed decrease in oil consumption occurs, oil wells and oil refineries costings combined hundreds of billions of dollars will be worth a great deal less.
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Exxon wants to make use of everything they have. They do not have the people with the expertise or the inclination to become a battery company.
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As it is, there are very few companies which can make a battery to an electric car. One of the companies got bought with patent rights by an oil company and very promptly closed. This was so that the oil company would not have the competition.
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If you can tell me how you turn an off shore oil rig into a car battery factory, turn petroleum engineers into electrical engineers and oil riggers into battery factory engineers, you, yourself would be a billionaire.
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It’s not like a butter producer becomes a cheese producer or a yogurt producer.
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Exxon hired many of the professional doubters and pays them huge sums of money to provide their PhD to claim that there is no climate change.
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Together they are 2% of climatologists and none of them have had their work peer reviewed.

Did blacksmiths become car producers?
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Did beeper companies become cell phone companies?
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Did cigarette companies become health food stores?
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No?
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Then change causes pain to some.
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Exxon Mobil are the ones who provide people to be interviewed. They open so-called think tanks and provide all of the money, pay far, far more than other think tanks and universities but require that the result is the same.
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As tobacco companies could not switch to health food stores, they hired fake think tanks, too.
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They, also, had 2% of the doctors researching this say that smoking was great and not a health problem.
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Do you or would you share cigarettes with your children or nieces, nephews or grandchildren?
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No?
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Then why poison the air with a 98% consensus when you will not poison your family with a 98% consensus?

what does Nixon have to do about anything? The serial liar claim was directed more towards Al gore. Al is in a league by himself

Exxon has proprietary technology it is liscensing to several battery companies. Exxon is one of the great corporations in history. Many of the advancements in drilling technology were from Exxon. They’re a technological powerhouse. Exxon may or may not manufacture batteries but has a good chance of seeing it’s technology adapted for which it will collect a handsome fee. That is a different business decision.

two things:

Sarar Palin is on the Fox News Network. She is not part of their news operation. Neither are O’rielly, Beck, Hannity and Greta. The News operation is separate. The stars of that effort at Bret Baer and the group on the 6 o-clock news hour.

Others are part of the entertaiment operation.

two – as far as the Palin thing, which I am not following since I don’t watch Fox at night, The quote says Cool J WILL be on. She WILL speak to LL. You are saying she hasn’t yet. OK. so what? What is the conflict?

Politico notes that CNN has suffered a 40 percent decline in prime time viewers since 2009. And it speculates about how to “fix” CNN’s broken operation.

Politico’s advice is based on the premise that CNN is losing out due to its “down-the-middle news strategy.” According to Politico, CNN should seriously consider abandoning that strategy and emulating Fox and MSNBC “with their ideological slants and big personalities.”

There are at least two problems with Politico’s analysis. First, as the New York Times reports, MSNBC’s ratings are also down. Second, the claim that CNN plays it “down-the-middle” is subject to serious dispute.

In my view, CNN’s problem is that it matter-of-factly presents the news from a liberal perspective. Viewers might watch an old-fashioned, matter-of-fact news cast on cable television, but only if they are confident that it actually is down-the-middle. Tone, in other words, should match content.

Viewers might also watch left-liberal dogma if it is entertaining, although MSNBC’s use of this model is hardly a raging success. But at least its tone matches its content

However, viewers clearly have no use for slanted news presented blandly. Thus, Anderson Cooper, who found it so amusing to talk about “tea-baggers,” finds himself losing at times to repeats of shows on MSNBC and HLN, according to the New York Times. And liberal Larry King, formerly CNN’s rock, has only a little more than one-fourth of Sean Hannity’s audience, is losing to Rachel Maddow, and is even threatened by a new host, Joy Behar ( a comedian) on HLN.

rdw- the above is from powerline. Joe Kleins fury at Fox, and yours, is you refuse to acknowledge your own lack of objectivity and are incapable of recoginizing in those who share the same lack of obkectivity. Joe isn’t just liberal, he’s pretty far left. He mocks himself pretending to be a centrist and objective and thus regularly gets ridiculed by serious outlets. Joe has a running battle with Commentary that has been embarrasing for him. He can’t ignore them because he knows they have a very wide following especially amng his peer group, other ‘journalists’.

For example a few months back Joe tried to chide Charles Krauthammer for his lack of nuance in supporting Bush on Iraq. He specifically mentioned the fact if he had been able to visit Iraq perhaps he would have had ended up closer to Joe’s position. CK is paralyzed and in a wheekchair. It was an incredibly stupid thing to say as well as petty and classless. How someone who idolizes FDR could cite the limitation of a wheelchair is rather astonishing. As glaring as that was Joe could not have been more wrong on Iraq. He ridiculed the surge and Petraeus. CK supported it. So how nuanced was Joe?

Joe apologized and had to be mortified. Krauthammer, an authentic genius and brilliant essayist, never responded to the bait. Probably the most widely read conservative in the country CK could have easily humiliated Joe further. But class dosn’t punch down.

Fox isn’t surging in the ratings and making buckets of cash because they’re unbiased. They are trusted. They are trusted because they don’t pretend to be unbiases. CNN and ABC are frauds. They are liberal bews organizations who slant the news. Fox tries to be fair and balanced. They are honest with who they are. CK is on the roundtable because he’s a conservative, Mara Liason and Juan because they’re liberal. They tell you who they are and let you decide.

BTW: How does Politico write this piece without mentioining MSNBC is ALSO getting hammered? Oreilly is crushing Olbermann. Beck, Hannity and Greta are crushing MsNBC. The answer is because Politico is liberal. The cool thing looking back at the SBVs is the MSM lost to Fox. They put a blockade on coverage of the SBVs. Still Fox was able to keep the story alive and Kerry was soundly defested. That was 2004. What happens in 2012. The Networks have also been hammered in audience share. I’ll argue the MSM caused Kerry’s loss because they advised him not to deal with a scandal I think because it was even more embarrasing to them. But either their ability to drive the narrative is much weaker.

What did Al Gore lie about?
Not Climate change.
Not the Internet.
Al Gore did not lie!

Exxon owns many one hundred million dollar oil platforms in the ocean.
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If, due to restrictions on CO2 emitting fossil fuels, all of those hundreds of billions of dollars of equipment are now worthless.
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Exxon bought battery companies in the past to buy the patent.
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Then, with the patent, the shut down the company and laid everybody off.
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Why?
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The same reason GM bought up the private streetcar companies of LA: destroy your competition.
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Exxon will loose an incredibly large amount of money if actions to stop global warming take place.
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In the movies, this what evil executives hire hit men for.
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In reality, Exxon has not killed or threatened to kill any climatologist, but, instead, bloodlessly uses through advertising and influence Fox and AM radio hosts to do a character assassination.
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Exxon has you hook line and sinker.
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I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn I have been meaning to sell. I’ve got to hurry because, if you don’t buy it, I have another bid from the Easter Bunny.
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(I bet you’ll believe that, too.)

Cable News Ratings for January 27, 2010; Fox News Leads State Of the Union Viewership On Cable

Posted on 28 January 2010 by Bill Gorman
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25-54 Total Day
FNC –565,000 viewers
CNN –244,000 viewers
MSNBC –155,000 viewers
CNBC – 79,000 viewers
HLN- 164,000 viewers
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http://tvbythenumbers.com/2010/01/28/cable-news-ratings-for-january-27-2010-fox-news-leads-state-of-the-union-viewership-on-cable/40443
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NBC ABC CBS
• Total Viewers: 8,360,000 7,386,000 5,656,000
• A25-54: 2,447,000 2,063,000 1,780,000
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http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser
/evening_news_ratings/
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Once again, you are spouting your dysntary on the swamp full of misinformation and fake facts.
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Fox is a big fish in the small pond of cable news.
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In the big ocean of all TV, Faux News is not very big at all.
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Now, tell me why you believe in the tooth fairy?

Let me explain this again:
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In the movies when somebody finds a secret that will bring down a trillion dollar company, the company will hire hit men to kill the person.
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Why, nothing is much more fun than gun fights, car chases and exploding things in a movie. I love it, too.
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Why do I love it when I am self employed in my living room? Because it is totally unlike my life. If I were a gangster, I guess I would like movies about Commercial Real Estate agents.
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In reality, extremely few big business CEOs are homicidal or even able to consider the thought.
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So, what do they do?
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They do not threaten anybody. They take a huge amount of money for advertising and spend like drunken sailors on advertising on News stations and during news broadcasts. When somebody talking about their company might get on, they have a little chat with the station’s manager about how the station or network will lose millions if they PO their advertisers.
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Next, they hire a fake think tank.
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The fake think tank has all of the PhDs but pay far, far, far more than the real think tanks and Universities.
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So, when a network or news channel starts to get out of line and wants to put somebody telling the truth on the air, they bring on a fake expert to confuse the issue.
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Nobody gets worse than hurt feelings. Nobody can go to jail for this. The person telling the truth about global warming or any other unprofitable fact will look less credible and get very little air time.
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Exxon continues to make record profits. Nobody gets hurt.
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Sure, there are hits put out on people, but by drug dealers and other criminals – not corporations in the United States.
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So, since everybody would love it if there were no climate change and a fake expert jumps on with a real expert (representing 98% of the field – with the other 2% in fake think tanks) it gets cloudy for your average American who is watching this while thinking about paying bills, the kids, tomorrow’s work and all kinds of other things.
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It’s incredibly easy, non-violent, legal and undramatic.

Reagan cut the top tax bracket from 50% to 30% to make it less progressive.

*********************************

Reagan cut the top bracket from 70% when he took office to 28%

Okay.
If that is correct, then it proves my point about how Ireland and their recent (but temporarily discontinued years) as the the Celtic Tiger are from doing the opposite of Reagan even more clearly.

I’m not sure of your point. Reagan absolutely cut rates from 70% to 28%. He also did a substantial amount of deregulation. It’s hard to compare nations directly in terms of legislation but the overall theme of Ireland was lower taxes and regulation. The Heritage foundation does an annual ranking of economic freedom and there is a direct, strong correlation between economic freedom and prosperity. Cuba and the USSR were/are basket cases. You don’t need an MBA to see the correlation.

“The Financial Crisis of 2008 is currently affecting the Irish economy severely, compounding domestic economic problems related to the collapse of the Irish property bubble. Ireland was the first country in the EU to officially enter a recession as declared by the Central Statistics Office. Ireland was stripped of its AAA credit ranking and downgraded to AA+ by Standard & Poor’s ratings agency, due to Ireland`s bleak financial outlook and heavy government debt burden.”
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Sounds like a basket case to me..

I have no idea of your point. The data doesn’t match the headline. The headline is about the SOTU while the data is total day. Which is still damning but the only important numbers are primetime and Fox kicks ass. Beck gets more viewers at the dead hour of 5 than anyone from CNN, MsNBC and HLN at priimetime. Oreilly is killing Olbermann and Hannity is killling King. Oreilly gets more on his repeat at 11 than Olbermann gets at 8.

I didn’t realize ABC took such a bath with Diane Sawyer, Right now Rush Limbaugh has a larger audience than NBC, CBS and ABC combined. That’s just stunning.

What has Joe Klein so upset are the trends. In 2004 they could not carry the narrative for Kerry as regards the SBV. They could not defend Dan Rather. Joe understands but can’t grasp the fact his reach is so limited. He is unable to adjust.

The worst part here you are not appreciating is the role of profits. Fox is VERY profitable. When Orielly draws 4x’s the audience of Olbermann he can charge 4x’s the rates. Oreilly makes a lot more for Fox than Couric makes for CBS. It’s already a given Couric will not be back or will take a very substantial pay cut. So substantial she won’t be able to accept it.

I MADE NO POINT ABOUT TRICKY DICK

It used to be the poorest country in Europe.
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Before the crash it had a higher per capita GDP than England, it’s former master.
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Free healthcare and free college education makes today’s Irish Immigrants jewelers, bankers and computer technicians, not firemen and cops.

My favorite Al story is rather innocent but indicative. At some meeting with union types Al told a story about how mommy used to sing him to sleep with the union theme song. Except the song was written when Al was 16. This pattern is constant thru Al’s life.

He’s full of crap

rdw56,
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You don’t have an MBA?
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No kidding!
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From all of the misinformation you have, I was surprised you could spell “MBA”.

The financial crises of 2008 had been a disaster for many. Neither of you address the basic point. The celtic tiger was once among the weakest economies in Europe and has since moved to among the highest in per capita incomes.

For some reason the two of you ignore per capita income.

hmmmmmmm??

I do have an MBA. And a CFA and CCM.

The point is that Fox may get the biggest corporate sponsors, but, it is not going to dominate the upcoming elections since most Americans, also, have other news sources.
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Rush needs money. Huge amounts of food, whores and drugs cost a lot of money.
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Who cares how much they make?
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If Letterman or Leno make more than them, would you watch them as your biggest source of facts?

LOL!
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You’ve got a BS.
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A hell of a lot of BS!
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There’s no way I am going to believe that you went beyond an associate’s degree.

RWD,
That has to be the dumbest reason not to vote for somebody.
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Invade the wrong country: just fine.
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Torture people ruining a hard earned 200 year reputation: Dandy.
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Send the economy into a tailspin: just nifty.
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Tell a story about your childhood with a possibly accidental anachronism: THAT SOB!

“I MADE NO POINT ABOUT TRICKY DICK”
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You even got that wrong “I MADE NO POINT… [I am just being a] DICK.”
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You seem to mistake having the last word for winning an argument.
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I have time to kill this week, but, don’t make that mistake in the future because it will give you a false sense of self esteem.

59.4
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I wrote about per capita GDP.
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What are you doing?
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Do you really care so much about winning an argument against your political rival?

rdw56, the argument was never about whether communism is better than supply-side economics.
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I don’t know why do you want to bring Cuba and the USSR into this? Maybe because you have run out of ideas?

“The quote says Cool J WILL be on. She WILL speak to LL. You are saying she hasn’t yet. OK. so what? What is the conflict?”
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WOW.. rdw, I guess your part of the blogosphere has suppressed the following facts:
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Tweet from LL: ” Fox lifted an old interview I gave in 2008 to someone else & are misrepresenting to the public in order to promote Sarah Palin’s Show. WOW,”
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Response from Fox : “We are cutting his interview from the special and wish him the best with his fledgling acting career.”
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Then Toby Keith says he was never interviewed by Lady Sarah – http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20001550-503544.html
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“Real American Stories” .. Yepp.. the stories are real.. But it isn’t Sarah Palin’s Real American Stories”
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PS: Fox, the only thing fledgling right now is Sarah Palin’s media career.

“if a government prescribed decrease in oil consumption occurs, oil wells and oil refineries costings combined hundreds of billions of dollars will be worth a great deal less.”

Individual Govts can’t mandate global consumption levels. The USA has 5% of the worlds population. We might drive less or might drive more efficient cars but much of the other 95% is going to consume more and more gasoline every year.

Exxon is one of the best managed companies on the planet. They are highly diversified within the industry as the leading technology company. They lead in all aspects of drilling operations including the seismic end which is by itself a huge and profitable business. They have partnerships all over the world in refining operations. Which is by itself a huge and profitable business. And then there is the drilling almost all of which is done outside the domestic USA.

There is no reason for Exxon to even exist within the USA anymore. They can and do refine most of the oil they produce outside the USA. They sell here because that’s been their major market since their inception but Oil can be sold anywhere. Exxon is positioned such that if Obama were tomorrow to declare a huge net tax on them they won’t have to pay it. They can take their ball and jax’s and play anywhere.

One of the great Hugo stories is his decision to go after the internationals who had been in Venezuela. Exxon and Total were among the largest. Exxon knew nationalization was coming and had some properties in the rich fields offshore Brazil. Exxon gradually disinvested in their Venezuelan facilities while fighting Hugo in Venezuelan courts. All new rigs planned for Venezuela were rerouted to Brazil. The French company Total tried to bargin with Hugo. Exxon did not. When Hugo decided to fully nationalize the industry Exxon had already effectively ceases operations right under his nose. All spare parts and essential equipment had been removed and transferred to Brazil. Total was stung. Exxons losses minimal. Hugo took over inoperative rigs. Venezuelan production is still down by over 20% and they’re dealing with major blackouts which are obviously killing industry. Hugo is such a socialist dolt it took him 3 years to figure out it was a bad move. Now he’s trying to attract foreign producers back.

Hugo tried to screw over Exxon. Exxon screwed over Hugo.

Exxon has been able to increase production almost every year for the last 25 and has increased their reserves each year for the last 20. That does not include several extremely promising properties off Brazil and Africa. Offshore Brazil might hold as much Oil as Iraq. Exxon can sell that oil anywhere and not pay a dime in US taxes.

Maverick,

This is trivial and irrelevent. Fox just had it’s best year ever while CNN lost 40% of it’s viewers. Fox is more profitable than the networks. It’s a cash cow.

Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity are all cash cows.

Sarah Palin is making a fortune and working with the tea party crowd is going to turn at least 50 democrats out of office.

She just got 10,000 to show up in searchlight nevada i the middle of a desert. No one can draw those crowds.

Before the crash it had a higher per capita GDP than England, it’s former master.

*************************

After the crash it had a dramatically higher per capita GDP than England, it’s former master.

You’re way out of your league for what you are proposing.
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However, let me summarize with this short video:

I’m not proposing anything. I’m saying Exxon is one of the best, if not the best, run companies in the world. I was also getting to the point as a multi-national they don’t depend on any one govt or market for anything. That would include the US Govt. The huge bulk of Exxon Oil assets are outside the USA. They are Exxons assets not Obama’s and there isn’t a thing he can do about them.