winsor

I did not go to the German source to see what he actually said, but I do not see where anything in his position is ill-considered. His position was unpopular, not stupid. Palin is an idiot. If she says something that is accurate, it is a matter of happenstance. She shows no sign of being able to differentiate between the valid and the nonsensical. The only comparison between the two is that they both left their positons, but it ends there. Palin somehow thinks she is qualified to stay in the game after she abandoned her post. Kohler simply hung it up and left. Would that we had someone with his stones on this side of the pond. BSBD, Winsor

Ooops, I forgot to hit spell check before hitting post reply. License for Bill to make fun of me. Looks like you missed the main point Bill made, then. It *wasn't* about the spelling. Nope I caught that! See I'm not as ignorant as y'all accuse me of being. Note: the surest guarantee that you're dealing with an idiot is if they start off with "I'm not an idiot..."

Oh, when the other side is in power their opponents bitch just as loudly. I, OTOH, hold both groups in utter contempt (for slightly different reasons), and I consider the failure of all parties to uphold the Constitution to be a violation of their oath of office. If only the issues pointed out in the article were the worst we had to face. If anything, the imbalance in our system of government is symptomatic of the ills to which we are succumbing in stages. The "unsinkable" ship is still afloat, the lights are aglow and the band is playing a rousing rendition of "Closer My God To Thee" - and the outcome is a foregone conclusion. Enjoy yourself, it's later than you think. BSBD, Winsor

Get a clue from El Al. And Mossad.

Gosh, that's terrifying. It makes me very, very scared. It think it is unfair that The Government cannot make us safe as in our mothers' arms, so that we can live forever.

The Mitzvah was to "go forth and multiply." I'm sure they could borrow a "Mission Accomplished!" banner somewhere.

If they weren't incompetent retards, they would have been disqualified early in the application process. Zero sympathy.

Ditto.

Hmm since you hate Nazi's so much... should we bring up the Bush family ties to the Third Reich??? Some people seem to go to great lengths to gloss over that support and complicit business dealings over a long period of time. Hate Nazis?! WTF? It is not so much hating them as it is being the tiniest bit nervous about a group of people with the stated intent, as well as a track record, of dedication to extermination of a group of people of which I am a member. I am just a bit leery of ANY group of people who says "KILL ALL THE xxx!!!" if I am part of group xxx. As far as the Bush clan goes, where did you ever get the impression that I am even the slightest bit in favor of that crowd? GWB undid years of progress in the public standing of retarded people, and it will take many Special Olympics to wipe out the bad name he gave to stupidity. Having lived in Germany for years, I do not have so simplistic a view of the whole NSDAP thing. Thanks to Communists (for real) rioting in Kiel, the Kaiser sued for peace; it was NOT a surrender. Unfortunately the Communists - who are universally assholes - who were responsible for the riots were largely Jewish (what did you think Marx was, a Scientologist?). Due to the terms of the armistice, the ReichsMark collapsed in 1923 and hundreds of thousands of Germans died of starvation and starvation-related illnesses. The Jewish economy operated somewhat in parallel with the German economy, primarily due to regulations put in place by the Germans, so a lot of the Jewish community was spared the brunt of the economic disaster that befell Germany in the '20s. Thus, people blamed "the Jews" for losing the war (partly true), and never forgave Jews for being able to eat while their family members starved to death (also partly true). It is easy to condemn the raw hatred that fueled the Nazi movement, but it is not hard to understand when its source was from people watching their family members die a slow, nasty death. That level of cold fury does not lend itself to much in the way of reason. I doubt that Prescott Bush had Nazi leanings beyond turning a buck wherever possible. His record makes accusations of Nazi affiliation particularly unlikely. OTOH, Joe Kennedy was gleeful in his admiration of Berlin. I suspect he would have supported anyone that gave the British a hard time, but he was rather in tune with the business model of the thugs from Bavaria. To a large extent, many of the people who supported the Third Reich were in denial, and were horrified when the extent of their excesses became known. FWIW, Joe Stalin & Chairman Mao made Adolf & Co. look like rank amateurs when it came to capricious cruelty. BSBD, Winsor

Agreed. Our involvement in SE Asia escalated during his years while he had every opportunity to get us the hell out. Wars are best averted at the beginning. Barbara Tuchman was scathing in her criticism of Kennedy's SE Asia policy. Kennedy had the recommendation of Generals S. L. A. Marshall and James M. Gavin that we should disengage militarily at the very least; that the conflict was unwinnable and that we were not on the side of the angels. Kennedy's decision was that he would wait until after the 1964 elections to withdraw, because the lives of troops for whom he was responsible was less important than his re-election prospects. Once he was dead, Johnson was obsessed with not being the first American president to lose a war. Pitted against General Giap, Johnson was outclassed coming and going. Johnson stated "I don't want no DinBinFoo," but he got Khe Sanh and Tet anyway. Had we welcomed the Viet Minh as allies in 1945, things may have been better - but we do have rather a knack for screwing the pooch. BSBD, Winsor

I still wonder what the world would be like now had he not been assasinated that day. I know my life would have been far different because I doubt I would have lost those I did in SE Asia Don't be so sure. Kennedy was, after all, the dumb SOB who got us involved in that mess to begin with and wouldn't pull our troops out for "political considerations". Not that simple. Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap fought with honor alongside us against the Japanese, with assurance from Roosevelt that self-determination would be theirs after victory was achieved. Truman, OTOH, chose to keep the Japanese on as administrators until the French could get around to re-establishing domination over Indochina. Those who collaborated with the Japanese were rewarded and remained in power, and those who fought and died with us remained bainshed to the hills. The French used the Foreign Legion to maintain order; the Legion, being made up of non-French nationals who are skilled at fighting and have reason to disappear, were heavily populated with war criminals from the recent conflict in Europe. Read "SS." Thus, the troops defeated at Dien Bien Phu by the Viet Minh were largely the worst sort of Nazis (the real McCoy). Thus, it was Truman who turned his back on staunch allies (the Vietnamese Constitution is still a near-carbon copy of the U.S. variant), leaving them at the mercy of a series of people against whom we had just defeated, many of whom were guilty of unspeakable atrocities. Kennedy had his own basis for a claim to mediocrity, and the facade was beginning to fail when he was assassinated and beatified. Had he survived his first term, his legacy would be quite different. In short, he made for a great martyr, but was at best a middling president. BSBD, Winsor

I tried that. It did not work. Disregard - I tried it again, and it worked this time.

Home sick from school, watching teevee in the living room when Walter Cronkite came on and said that the President had been shot. I went with my father to his office three (?) days later, and over the radio came the news that Oswald had been shot as well. Each was rather a paradigm shift, where "after" was significantly different from "before." BSBD, Winsor IIRC Kennedy was assassinated on a Friday and we watched Oswald get shot on live TV on Sunday, the 24th. That fits. My father needed to get something from the office on a weekend, so I accompanied him downtown. Thanks, I was too lazy to look up the timeline. BSBD, Winsor

I have not spoken one word to a TSA screener in over 5 years, despite going through security hundreds of times. Saying something that confuses them is a felony, and they are easily confused, so the solution is to say nothing. Finding out that they are on a roll with their new scanner, I have had enough. Just as a matter of principle, there is no way I intend to humor those morons by subjecting myself to their new toy. Nor do I intend to give them their jollies by playing with my crotch. Thus, my intention is to wear a simple nylon suit into the airport so that if I am selected for "special treatment" I can whip it off and have nothing under it but a Speedo. This guy was wearing skivvies, but achieved the same goal. The thing that I find amusing is that the TSA cretins wanted him to get dressed so they could pat him down. Incredible. Since it is legal to be in public wearing a bathing suit, my written response would be that I am sufficiently clad for the necessary inspection, and that physical contact is unnecessary. And no, I will not go into a private screening area - anything they do will be done in public. I contend that mediocrity has become a virtue, and at TSA mediocrity is a goal so lofty as to be unattainable. BSBD, Winsor

Home sick from school, watching teevee in the living room when Walter Cronkite came on and said that the President had been shot. I went with my father to his office three (?) days later, and over the radio came the news that Oswald had been shot as well. Each was rather a paradigm shift, where "after" was significantly different from "before." BSBD, Winsor

Never said all Muslims. It is a fact that certain countries over there were affiliated with the Nazi party. Not just Palestinians. The Bath Party was also affiliated with the Nazis. Saddam Hussien was heavily influenced by the Nazis through the Baath Party. The Catholic church collaborated with the Nazi's. What's you point? They did not collaborate with the Nazis, they funded them as part of a deal to ensure the survival of the Vatican. However badly the Nazis and Fascists (two entirely different political groups) may have sucked, the Communists were (and are) worse. Having created a system of mythology based on a dead Jew, the Vatican was fine with dead Jews. This, of course, is not much of a problem if you are not Jewish... BSBD, Winsor

This is an example of how carefully we pave the road to hell with our good intentions. Our purpose is, as usual, noble, but the people we task to accomplish our goals have no concept of economy and recoil at the idea of an elegant, efficient approach. As P.J. O'Rourke said, "If you think Healthcare is expensive now, just wait until it is free." BSBD, Winsor

Smith & Wesson - the original point-and-click interface.

If the Saudis back the construction of a Jewish Community Center in Mecca, I might change my stance. After all, Muhammad himself was a wannabe follower of Judaism, to the extent of relocating to the City of David until his death. I am not, however, holding my breath. BSBD, Winsor

How far away is the correct distance to build? 3,500 miles at a minimum.

Expand that to "Department of Homeland Security" and you've got a sale. The problem wasn't the need for a bigger bureaucracy and scare tactics. The problem was inefficient communication. The creation of the DHS was a bad idea from the get go because it put people in charge of things they knew nothing about. The little fiefdoms were easier to control. One got out of hand and you could knock it down a peg, but with the DHS, that's simply impossible. With airport security the responsibility of the airlines, it ran efficiently because they were paying for it. With the government cheese of corporate welfare reliving them of that, it's simply gotten out of control and good luck fixing it now. Thank you 43rd Administration! The "Heimat Sicherheit Amt" harkens to an earlier playbook. Think Godwin.

"Become?" From the first sentence addressing the program it was glaringly apparent that the authors would have to study hard to rise to the level of "clueless." Jack Paar once did a piece where he visited an inventor, in Nairobi IIRC, who was building an "airplane" in an outbuilding, intending to produce the first indigenous African aircraft. Though Paar was just being mean, and the assemblage of lawn-mower motor, corrugated metal and assorted junk made anything put to use by Fred and Barney look like the pinnacle of sophistication, this guy's attempt at an airplane was orders of magnitude more focused and coherent than the attempts by Washington to address our economic woes. To continue the aviation analogy, J. M. Keynes did to economics what an intrepid French pilot did for aviation. In the early days of aviation, a spin was viewed as necessarily fatal. Finding himself in a spin, this pilot decided he would go out with style and pointed the nose down, not up. When this resulted in recovery he did it again, and thus was born "spin recovery." Keyneseans postulate that the way to get out of a downward spiral of the economy is to point the nose down by spending like crazy. Like aviation spin recovery, your results are dependent on the altitude at which you begin. If you go into a spin at 500 feet or you go into a recession $10 Trillion in debt, the results are about the same. The joke goes that, when asked if he wanted his pizza cut into 6 or 8 slices, the customer said "make it 8 - I'm really hungry." Printing more paper (or electronic) money works on the same principle. If you have orders of magnitude more "money" in circulation, it does not change the market itself; a "million dollar car" is not as impressive if all a $ million will get you is a Yugo. The bottom line is that the Keynesian approach CAN work when the problem is liquidity; it will NOT work if the problem is solvency. We elect our "leaders" primarily from the legal profession, and there is no math requirement to passing the Bar. If Attorneys were required to show an equivalent mastery of Mathemetics expected of an Engineering student at the end of Freshman year, perhaps 1% of the Attorneys out there would still be in business, and any that were crafting legislation would have SOME idea of what these numbers mean. Not bloody likely. BSBD, Winsor

Am I being too obvious?

What you mean "we," paleface?

Oh, I think contempt for the Cat'lics in Ulster is rather a given. When they behave in an an ill-mannered fashion, it is usually not even worth the ink to report. Muslims, OTOH, are a more recent infestation; while Catholicism is a chronic ailment, Islam is particularly virulent and notably more acute. BSBD, Winsor