Cynical Nation

Agreed. A true idiot.

I disagree completely with you. I think Carter is a great man. His book is not as bad as it has been portrayed by the right wing press. He is most definitely NOT antisemitic. I am as pro-Israel as you are, if not more, but that does not mean that I can not tolerate criticisms. Criticism from friends is a good thing, and thats all Carter is doing.

As for his comment about Hamas, maybe you should blame the neocons and NOT Carter for that issue. Israel did NOT want the palestinian elections that the idiotic neocons in the Bush administration pushed for then. The outcome? The palestinians voted to elect as goverment a terrorist-lunatic group (Hamas). The problem here are the neocons who pushed for this and not Carter. Carter simply respects the democratic process. Unfortunately, the Palestinians have proven again and again that they can not leave like a civilized nation next to Israel and they went ahead and elected islamic lunatics like Hamas as their representatives.

Yeah, Carter is an idiot. I mean, he is the OPPOSITE of Bush, and we all know Bush is a genius!

Carter garnered tremendous right wing hatred for saying that the cherished Republican values of greed, power, and more greed were perhaps not really the values our nation should pursue.

Just listen to JMK, he will tell you that GREED IS GOOD all day long. Oh yes, Free Enterpise, Free Markets, ah, all that freedom! Unrestrained freedom! It is so great.

The funny thing is, the founding fathers (whom JMK and other alleged conservatives profess to adore) did NOT think that greed was good. They were quite dead set against even Usary. Go ahead, check it out!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usury

This country wasn't founded by Corporatists, Fascists, and Credit Card companies.

When Carter pointed this out, the wingnuts went wild because he was CRITICIZING A SITTING PRESIDENT, oh my!

The Repulican Party's downfall started with the slow awakening that the Party of Values was anything but.

Unforgivable. So now they foam at the mouth no matter what he says.

Oh, and Michael more is FAT.

John Kerry is a COWARD compared to Chimp, who spent his "service" AWOL, drunk, and on drugs.

Oh yeah, and John Edwards gets $400 haircuts, which are TWICE as expensive as the $200 haircut Bill Clinton once received, which was also reported on endlessly by righty motormouths.

Chimp cuts his own hair, obviously.

America's Founders based their entire economic vision on Adam Smith's 1776 work The Wealth of Nations, which espoused free market principles..."all day long."

They based their governance on "Life, LIBERTY (individual responsibility/self-ownership) and the pursuit of Happiness (a/k/a PROPERTY)."

That is NOT exactly "espousing greed," but merely economic liberty or economic freedom - based on private property rights, individualism and self responsibility rooted in self-ownership.

They supported personal self defense (the right to bear arms), police powers (ensuring domestic tranquility) and military powers (a strong national defense)....they left free individuals pretty much "on their own" to forge the best lives they could.

Please don't denigrate or misrepresent America's Founders BH, while there where plenty of well-off, landed gentry among them, there wasn't what anyone today would call a "socialist" among them...not a single one.

JMK,
For sure there were no neocons among America's founders. Or were they?

BW, I don't even know what a Neocon is.

I know that it originally was a term for Jewish Liberals who came over to the Republican Party in the 1970s.

Norman Podhoretz, William Crystal and Co. were all Neocons...now that term has been misused by far-Left Liberals for anyone who disagrees with the Liberal position on the WoT - that the WoT "doesn't exist."

In fact, today's "State sponsored terrorists" are very much akin to the Barbary Pirates who patrolled the Mediterranean boarding European and American ships, plundering the cargos and holding the sailors for ransom.

Just as the Barbary States (Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli) all used state sponsored piracy for profit, many rogue nations today use state sponsored terrorism for the same ends.

President Thomas Jefferson, America's third President, refused to pay the "duties" that European nations had and wound up invading the Barbary states, ending the threat from the Barbary pirates and setting the tone for American interventionism abroad that has since become a hallmark of this country.

We forced the Spanish-American war that Spain did everything it could to avoid, and in the process took Cuba, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Phillipines from Spain.

We wrangled our way into WW I with the phoney Lusitania charge - the Lusitania was, just as Germany had asserted, been carrying arms.

We cut off Japan's access to oil and iron, which threatened to grind its war machine to a halt, sparking Pearl Harbor and our entry into WW II.

We ginned up the Gulf of Tonkin incident to escalate Vietnam.

America has actively sought out its role in foreign affairs since its inception and since so many of our corporations have become global entities, that role has been greatly expanded out of a very basic economic necessity.

I not only LIKE American interventionism, I demand that our government be responsible to those entities that have created so much of the prosperity most of us take for granted here - our global corporate network.

That's actually a strong, Conservative, pro-business stance. I agree with the great Calvin Coolidge, "The business of America IS business."

I think Thomas Jefferson would've agreed with that stance as well, judging from his military intervention in the Barbary States.

"BW, I don't even know what a Neocon is."

Look in a mirror :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism

You can put wiki and almost anything else into Google and get almost any information you like, JMK.

Really, don't wait for Rush Limbaugh to tell you what to think, go ahead and read.

Is Grampa Carter acting up again?

Once again Barely, you misunderstand.

Since I've successfully assisted you on better understanding Rico, I'll try and help you here as well, that is, if you'll oblige me; ABOVE, I quite accurately defined what the term "Neonconservative" originally meant, to wit, "...a term for Jewish Liberals who came over to the Republican Party in the 1970s."

"Norman Podhoretz, William Kristol and Co. were all Neocons...


Your Wiki definition agreed completely with my own (because, as usual, I'm right) "The term neoconservative was first used derisively by democratic socialist Michael Harrington to make clear that a group, many of whom called themselves liberal, was actually a group of newly conservative ex-liberals.

"The etymology of this type of conservatism is based on the work and thought of Irving Kristol, cofounder of Encounter and its editor from 1953 to 1958, Norman Podhoretz, and others who described themselves as "neoconservatives" during the Cold War.

"Prominent neoconservatives are associated with periodicals such as Commentary and The Weekly Standard, and with foreign policy initiatives of think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA)."


Most of today's far-Left fringe, which BW and yourself seem so enamored of (the Moore-Gore-Soros Axis) don't even know who William Kristol is (HINT: he's NOT the commedian, "Billy").

But of course, that original definition MINE, backed up by Wiki, is NOT how far-Left kooks define Neocons today.

As I said, to naive folks like Blue, a "Neocon" is anyone who agrees with any one or more of these undeniable realities; (1) the global jihad is a viable worldwide threat, (2) we are currently fighting al Qaida in Iraq and (3) the WoT MUST be conducted Militarily.

Dopes like these consider Liberal Dems like Joe Lieberman (who opposed the Bush tax cuts that have been great for the economy, supports more social spending, and 93% of the Left-wing Democrat agenda) "neocons."

And Blue, since "Neocons" are, according to the actual definition, "newly conservative ex-liberals," I don't fit the bill - I've NEVER been more Liberal than I am today.

If supporting "American intervention abroad to defend American business interests," is "Neocon," according to your lame standard, then yes, I am a Neocon, and so were Jefferson, Hamilton, Franklin, Madison and Monroe, to name a few of America's Founders who supported "American interventionism abroad to defend American business interests."

" Most of today's far-Left fringe, which BW and yourself seem so enamored of (the Moore-Gore-Soros Axis) don't even know who William Kristol is (HINT: he's NOT the commedian, "Billy")."

JMK,
I will disappoint you but I know very well who he is. And believe it or not I have read many times the weekly standard. And you are right, he is not a comedian. He is just a joke.

You have a right to that opinion (the same one I have of folks like Gore & Moore), but that's NOT the issue at all.

The issue is this new and erroneous expanded definition of the term "Neocon."

I think I've shown, by way of historical comparison, that those who support "American interventionism abroad in defense of U.S. business interests are NOT "Neocons," but are, in fact, very much in line with the very American traditions espoused by the likes of Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, Ben Franklin, James Madison, etc.

For instance, just because Joe Lieberman believes that "(1) the global jihad is a viable worldwide threat, (2) we are currently fighting al Qaida in Iraq and (3) the WoT MUST be conducted Militarily," does not make him a "Neocon."

He's actually just a typical Liberal Democrat who happens to understand the current reality.

Really? When did Thomas Jefferson lie to the country so that we would invade Iraq? I missed that one.

Oh, you must have missed that part, so here it is again;

"In fact, today's "State sponsored terrorists" are very much akin to the Barbary Pirates who patrolled the Mediterranean boarding European and American ships, plundering the cargos and holding the sailors for ransom.

"Just as the Barbary States (Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli) all used state sponsored piracy for profit, many rogue nations today use state sponsored terrorism for the same ends.

"President Thomas Jefferson, America's third President, refused to pay the "duties" that European nations had and wound up invading the Barbary states, ending the threat from the Barbary pirates and setting the tone for American interventionism abroad that has since become a hallmark of this country.

"We forced the Spanish-American war that Spain did everything it could to avoid, and in the process took Cuba, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Phillipines from Spain.

"We wrangled our way into WW I with the phoney Lusitania charge - the Lusitania was, just as Germany had asserted, been carrying arms.

"We cut off Japan's access to oil and iron, which threatened to grind its war machine to a halt, sparking Pearl Harbor and our entry into WW II.

"We ginned up the Gulf of Tonkin incident to escalate Vietnam.

"America has actively sought out its role in foreign affairs since its inception and since so many of our corporations have become global entities, that role has been greatly expanded out of a very basic economic necessity.

"I not only LIKE American interventionism, I demand that our government be responsible to those entities that have created so much of the prosperity most of us take for granted here - our global corporate network.

"That's actually a strong, Conservative, pro-business stance. I agree with the great Calvin Coolidge, "The business of America IS business."

"I think Thomas Jefferson would've agreed with that stance as well, judging from his military intervention in the Barbary States."

"When did Thomas Jefferson lie to the country so that we would invade Iraq?" (BH)


Actually NO ONE lied to get us into Iraq.

Saddam refused to comply with UN Weapons Inspectors, because he needed to maintain a facade of strength through a strategy of Detterence by Doubt. In the process, he violated UN Resolution 1441, triggering the invasion of Iraq.

In short, Saddam lied as part of a survival mechanism.

Now the question isn't whether Bush & Blair lied (they DIDN'T) as virtually every Intelligence Agency in the world, including the French and Russians believed Iraq had WMDs, but whether England and America could allow that lie to be maintained in a post-9/11 world, though no one knew it to be a "lie" until later. That's what made it an effective strategy.

Since there are no polls on that, I must base my presumption on my "gut feeling," but I believe that a large majority of Americans agree that we could not allow Saddam to use that strategy of "Detterence by Doubt" in a post-9/11 world.

Hey! Ironically enough, you COULD say that Saddam's LIES got us into Iraq!

So, you are saying that Iraq was a pirate state making us pay for protection, so Chimp bravely invaded to stop this abuse?

I thought Iraq was a country with a no-fly zone, completely cordoned off by our military, with weapons inspectors on the ground saying there were no weapons of mass destruction.

Wasn't Hans Blix right? I mean, really, where are they? Chimp said they were there. He said we would find them. Oddly enough, they didn't even really look. Our troops raced by weapons depots to secure the oil fields without even looking.

Chimp looked for those weapons about as hard as he looked for his family friend Osama bin Laden.

If all the world's intelligence agencies knew that crazy Saddam had nukes, why weren't they willing to join us? I guess they were just being liberal pussies.

Sure JMK, sure. Did you drop a lot of acid before you were "born again" like Chimp?

The direct correlation speaks for itself.

Just as the Barbary states profited from Piracy, current rogue Islamo-fascist states profit from terrorism.

Again, the existence of WMDs was immaterial. Saddam Hussein refused to comply with UN Weapons Inspectors (Blix included, who stated that Iraq kept running them around to "sanitized sites").

Hussein used a strategy of "Detterence by Doubt" to keep both internal and external enemies at bay. America and England found that unacceptable after 9/11...the UNSC agreed and signed onto Resolution 1441 as a "Last Chance Resolution." When Saddam Hussein refused to comply with 1441, that triggered the invasion.

And the rest of the world DID join America and England....except for France, Russia, Germany and Belgium.

Funny story, turns out they were all protecting illicit deals they had with Saddam's iraq in violation of the Oil-for-Food program.

In short, there is a basis on which to oppose the way the post-Saddam operation in Iraq has been handled, but there is no way to argue that the initial invasion was either "illegal," nor "unjustified," as it was neither.

Wow, JMK. If that is what you believe, I don't even need to discredit you.

Every single fact is against you. You believe in Chimp out of sheer faith, and because Rush tells you to.

Talk about sheep.

Every single one of those facts is documented.

OK, here's the last time I'll post that NY Times link that documents Saddam's "Detterence by Doubt" strategy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/12/international/middleeast/12saddam.html?_r=2&adxnnl=0&adxnnlx=1142132938-g+zmA6soi5lK28n2EbRmqQ&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin

UN Resolution 1441 was indeed (as I noted above) passed unanimoulsy by the UNSC as a "Last Chance Resolution." That's how both England & America presented it.

Saddam's Iraq violated 1441 because he needed to maintain that "Detterence by Doubt" strategy and THAT violation, of the 13th consecutive UN Resolution, triggered the invasion, which only France, Germany, Russia and Belgium opposed....and yes, on the basis of those illicit Oil-for-Food deals.

Hey! You earlier claimed that YOU actually documented your claims!

That appears to be UNTRUE!!!

This post of yours is about as much "documentation" as I've ever really seen from you....your misguided opinion.

You once posted an article that proved my contentions about the H-1B Visas and you recently posted one proving my contentions about RICO, you know - "Confiscation AFTER conviction."

Hmmmm, it seems that in those rare cases you attempt to provide some "documentation," your documents prove MY contentions!

Once again, I've said thanks for that, although it would be nicer if you just took heed of some of the things you yourself post.

You've been wrong about RICO, wrong about H-1B Visas and pretty much wrong on everything else too.

That doesn't make you a "bad person" Barely, just misinformed.

But JMK, you COMPLETELY DISCREDITED the NY Times repeatedly, and I NEVER used them as a reference source, ever.

How can you try to use as a trustworthy source a newspaper that you have discredited? Ohhhhh, because they said something that Rush, er, I mean that YOU agree with!

So basically, you use discredited sources to prove your points, and I use unbiased neutral sources.

I'm sorry that you are stupid, JMK, just refer to my previous links and try to grow frontal lobes. Read again. Will that neocortex to grow!

You were wrong, and I was right.

I offered you a piece from the NY Times because that's your "Liberal Bible."

Sure, I revile their "work from home program" in journalism. Walter Duranty wrote fictional accounts of Stalin's "Worker's Paradise" from his Lower East Side apartment and Jayson Blair wrote a series of articles from his own pad, but THIS one has been veriified by numerous other sources.

In other words, there is no question that Hussein used the strategy of "Detterence by Doubt" and that he felt he had to maintain that to keep both internal and external enemies at bay.

Regardless, he violated 1441, and that was a "Last chance Resolution," which triggered the invasion of Iraq.

Sorry stupid, I have never once quoted or used the NY Times in any way, so when you say it is my Bible, you are just lying.

1441 did not, in any way, suggest the use of force. In fact, it went ON RECORD that it was NOT permission for the use of force.

That is why no country went with us, except for a few thousand brits, five Pollocks, and maybe a Bulgarian unicyclist -- with our what, 130,000?

You know all this, yet you continue to lie. Chimp and Chimp Jr., they both lie a lot, don't they?

"Sorry stupid, I have never once quoted or used the NY Times in any way, so when you say it is my Bible, you are just lying." (BH)


I'm merely acknowledging that you ARE a diehard Liberal, whether you like it or not, and the NY Times IS the "Liberal Bible."


1441 did not, in any way, suggest the use of force. In fact, it went ON RECORD that it was NOT permission for the use of force." (BH


Actually YES it did.

It was drafted by America and Brittain as a "LAST CHANCE Resolution," stating that it was offering Iraq "a FINAL opportunity to comply with its disarmament OBLIGATIONS"

That's a "LAST CHANCE Resolution" alright.


"That is why no country went with us, except for a few thousand brits, five Pollocks, and maybe a Bulgarian unicyclist -- with our what, 130,000?" (BH)


Well, THAT is another erroneous statement.

In fact, ONLY France, Russia, Germany and Belgium opposed the invasion...and it turns out that all of those countries had illicit deals with Saddam's Iraq in violation of the Oil-for-Food program. I'm not insinuating that those illicit deals were the reasons those nations opposed the invas-.....Oh wait a minute, THAT'S exactly what I'm insinuating.


"You know all this, yet you continue to lie. Chimp and Chimp Jr., they both lie a lot, don't they?" (BH)


Well, that was somewhat less cordial than I was expecting......OK, no it wasn't, but you do realize, don't you, that every time I get you to respond with insult and invective, I take that as indicative of your ackowledging your own defeat.

Like with RICO...and the H-1B Visas, I've carefully explained things to you over and over...and I'll continue to try, because I just hate to see someone insisting that so many falsehoods are facts.