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Open Thread
I’m bored. Open thread to alert me to all the fascinating and interesting things in the wide world.
22 Responses to “Open Thread”
How about this for possibly constructive news…….
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSIBO13141920070502?src=050207_0822_TOPSTORY_bush_resolute The Iraqi government has sent a draft oil law to parliament, a major step towards meeting one of the political benchmarks Washington has set for Baghdad”The KRG (Kurdish Regional Government) is not opposed to the draft law … they are very happy with the draft law.”
And this from CNN’s Michael Ware…….now, wait a minute, who’s side is this guy on?
Even more than that – If you want to look at it in terms of purely American national interest – If U.S. Troops leave now, you are giving Iraq to Iran – a member of President Bush’s Axis of Evil – and Al Qaeda. That’s who will own it. And so, coming back now, I am struck by the nature of the debate on Capitol Hill, how delusional it is. Whether you are for this war or against it, whether you’ve supported the way it has been executed or not, it doesn’t matter. You broke it, you gotta fix it now. You can’t leave, or it is going to come and blowback on you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5N6zrhBEdZo
Casual Observer’s news is the best (and only) to date.
However:
1. As I told others elsewhere, Social Security reform, complete with detailed plans, should be on every Presidential candidate’s agenda and presented to the voters. There is a demonstrable problem that not even Democrats in denial can avoid facing once Social Security surpluses peak, then begin to decline, which may happen before November 2008. The real date where problems happen is not 2041, the so-called “trust fund” exhaustion year, but in 2017, when the program begins to run deficits. The “trust funds” consist of nothing but claims on federal government revenue, which will have to be increased through more taxes or by borrowing, if benefit reductions are to be avoided. Similar explanations are required and should be provided about any attempt to extend federal health care to more people after 2008.
http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TR/
2. Chavez continues to be a threat in our own hemisphere. Note who he consorts with, and who supports and defends him in the USA and elsewhere in the West.
http://www.coha.org/2007/05/02/memorandum-to-the-press-venezuelas-security-factors-and-policy-goals/
3. If you think our government and its Bush adminstration are dysfunctional, and you are amused at the departure of (resignations by) Bush administration officials,
Imagine: “Rice calls on Bush to resign.”
Livni calls on Olmert to resign
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3394970,00.html
> You can’t leave, or it
> is going to come and
> blowback on you.
And guess who is going to howl the loudest when it does.
> You broke it, you gotta fix it now.
It’s not out of line to consider the possible need to seize the oil fields if the alternative is that the wealth from them will be used to fund terrorism or go straight into Iran’s pockets (to fund terrorism and WMD and ballistic missile programs).
Lee Iaccoca for President!
> Lee Iaccoca for President!
Was this because of his latest book? He comes across as an old-time Democrat (though he liked Reagan). The book is full of Bush-bashing. It does give some good advice to voters in 2008. Why don’t the Presidential candidates give us their complete Cabinet roster? It’s not just one person, it’s the whole team. And that includes the shadow cabinet, as Iacocca also notes. (I’m reading the book before I send it to a Bush-loather in Washington.)
Exerpt:
http://www.bordersstores.com/features/feature.jsp?file=wherehavealltheleadersgone
OK, how about the new Reagan diaries? They once again show a man who was much more intelligent and insightful than his critics on the left will ever give him credit for. Because they are, of course, ‘reality based’.
Oh, and how well the stock market continues to perform.
It is too bad we don’t have a Democratic President, so we could be allowed to think of it as good news.
This is a very interesting study on the psychological makeup of authoritarian people. Not just the leader types, but the kind of folks that “just follow orders”. Among many dots connected for me was the success of right wing talk radio and the failure of left wing talk radio.
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
Regan was moderately successful, and moderately unsuccessful, he was average thats all, but heavily marketed to the public as being someone of greatness regardless…..and he’s dead. so people digging the average president up to hold him up high as some great leader is kinda sad. But considering what his ideological followers have achieved since I guess that makes him the best ever LOL. Aiming low are we?
The stock market is unearned wealth that creates almost nothing as far as jobs and actual economic health for the people that drive the economy…it’s gambling without employing the service workers, bartenders, electricians, security, car attendants, and dealers a Vegas casino would atleast, and doesn’t do squat for the vast majority of americans, nor is it a barometer of a healthy economy since most of the products aren’t made here anymore that drive it. It’s kind of like saying “I won the lottery” and Joe Blow saying “so where is my share?”, which of course the winner would say “this is mine get your own!” Also known as investing in IRA’s where that unearned wealth stays locked away from bolstering the economy, it only drives the investment and banking part of the economy, otherwise we’d be talking about how great things are and we know that isn’t the case at all.
My news for the day is I burped a minute ago.
I cannot logon under my old screen name
I just burped again
Regan was an average president marketed as a great one, revisionist history written by sycophants ain’t reality based anything.
The stock market health is unearned wealth (gambling) that isn;t going back into the economy (re-invested mostly) therefore the economy is not getting those dollars back into circulation (a much healthier economy if so). So the only people that care about the stock market are the few that can afford to play that lottery.
Huey Long for president! If the right gets a crazy one (Bush) the left gets one too! LOL
It would be helpful if your crazy one was at least alive. Or, we can count Carter, and call it even.
> OK, how about the new Reagan diaries?
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/06/reagan200706
> If the right gets a crazy one
Bush isn’t crazy, even if you think his decisions may be.
Not “my crazy one”, just “A crazy one.”
Maybe you don’t care for Carter but he’s nowhere near the dieological wackiness of the neo-con Bush or Socialist Long. Jerkin off to the hate Carter/Clinton thing still? Sad, just sad, don;t you know that’ll make you go blind?
Ok, you call it what you want to, I call it crazy rantings from a childlike man suffering from a messed up childhood, and untreated alcoholism. That combo and the way he acts leads me to think he’s not stable in the head for someone his age.
If you have ever been irritated by a 9/11 conspiracist comment in a blog, or a 9/11 conspiracy blog ad or Loudmouthed ignorant pundits on The View, or nut-case professors from the University of Wisconsin, you’ve just got to check out this site:
AustinRoth: it’s unfortunate that the term “reality-based” has been so disparaged and misused – if you read the original article by Ron Suskind it turns out it is a *very* interesting concept, meaning roughly “implied by existing data”.
From that you can figure out that many decisions are and should be made that way – from what procedures your dentist follows to the number of BTUs your air condition needs to have to cool your house. On the other hand, there are very important decisions that you have to make, like who to marry and whether or not to have children that are clearly NOT reality based because:
1. There simply isn’t relevant data available – you can’t know how things are going to turn out in either of those examples
2. The “experiment” that you are measuring changes – i.e. even if you were to accept that you had some pretty substantial incompatibilities with your spouse, you might work to “create your own reality” (paraphrasing the Bush staffer who spoke to Suskind) to make the marriage work.
Robert – I fully know the history of that term, and the proper usage. The reason I love to use it as a ‘tweak’ is because it is the nutroots themselves that first starting perverting its real meaning, and trying to imply that any opinion they had was due to ‘reality-based’ principles.
Those of us (left and right, to be fair) who know what it does mean, rather than what they want it to imply, were both amused on one hand by the purely oblivious oxymoronic use of that term, and those of us on the right also by the implied ‘you are a f’cking idiot for not agreeing with’ subtext.
So, I will continue to throw that idiotic misuse of a term back into the face of the left for probably years more to come.
But thanks for pointing out to those who likely didn’t know that there was a real basis to the term, and it really does mean something, just not what some people wanted it to mean.
Try throwing it in your own face while you’re at it ya effin idi….hehe you make it too easy.