COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Saturday, May 17, 2008

What Will Pelosi Do if She Gets Good News in Iraq?



Just a thought, but what does Speaker Pelosi do if she gets good news in Iraq?

____________

Pelosi in talks with Iraqi PM
17/05/2008 20:07 - (SA)


Baghdad - US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi held talks with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Baghdad on Saturday as his troops pressed a major crackdown on al-Qaeda jihadists, officials said.

The Iraqi premier flew to the capital from the northern city of Mosul where he had been directing the latest offensive against what the US military regards as the last urban bastion of al-Qaeda in Iraq.

The US congressional leader, who flew in to Baghdad on Saturday on a unannounced visit, discussed with Maliki the October provincial elections, state Iraqia television said.

"He talked about elections that will be held in October and he assured us that it will be a fair election," the television quoted Pelosi as saying.

"It will also support Iraqi national unity."

Maliki's office said Peloso "renewed US support" for his government and declared that Washington "would stand by efforts to achieve security and stability and ensure national reconciliation in Iraq."

There was no immediate word from Pelosi's side on the outcome of the talks.


27 comments:

  1. Declare victory and demand a withdrawal, by US combat troops.

    Just as President Bush promised, oh, all those many years ago.

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  2. Art Bell--Coast To Coast-- is interviewing--in a replay--Pam Reynolds(psydonym), famous for an operation in which a brain anuerysm was removed, she being drained of blood, heart totally stopped, no brain waves. She is recalling her NDE, noted in the NDE literature.

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  3. Just as Rat says, Declare victory and demand a withdrawal, by US combat troops, maybe adding she was for the success all along.

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  4. Same as she will do, if she gets "bad" news in Iraq.

    "Good" news. or "bad", she wants US to withdraw combat forces from Iraq.

    Given Ms T's logic on the subject, we'd still have US troops in Mexico Ciy, we've gone there twice, already.

    Her thinking is we should have never withdrawn from there, or Manila, for that matter. Where US troops go, they never leave, or perhaps, someday, they may have to go back.

    Back to the Chosin Resevoir!
    Back to Peking!
    No Surrender, No Retreat!!

    No victory, either

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  5. Back to Panama!!
    Back to Haiti!!

    Back to Cuba and Nicoland!!

    Where US troops have ever set foot, it beomes America, from then until eternity ends.

    No Surrender, No Retreat

    Back to the Moon!!

    The Amerikan Empire, forever!

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  6. And, in other NDE news --

    George Ritchie, RIP

    George Gordon Ritchie, Jr., M.D., 84, died at home in Irvington, VA., on October 29, 2007, after a courageious battle with cancer. Ritchie was a widely loved physician, speaker, and author of Return From Tomorrow and My L:ife After Dying. Ritchie graduated from the U of Richmond, interrupting his college education to volunteer for the Army in WWII. After the war he graduated from the Medical College of Virginia and was a general practitioner for 15 years. He then completed a residency in Psychiatry at the U of Virginia, winning the William James Award for Research in Psychiatry. He later helped found the Wilson Hospital in Charlottesville and was president of the Universal Youth Corporation for 20 years.

    Ritchie might be regarded as the stimulus for the modern near-death experience movement. While undergoing basic training in the Army in 1943, he developed double lobar pneumonia and was pronounced dead, precipitating an elaborate near-death experience that included an out-of-body trip to another city that included verified information and resulted in profound personal and spiritual transformation. At a lecture in 1965 in which Ritchie described that near-death experience, U of Virginia philosophy student Raymond Moody first heard about these experiences. Moody later went on to medical school himself, where he encountered many patients who described similar experiences. These encounters led to Moody's coining the term "near-death experience" and the publication of his 1975 book Life Afte Life, which Moody dedicated to George Ritchie.

    Surviving Ritchie are his wife of 60 years, Marguerite, two children, two grandchildren, and two great-granchildren, and a world in which, thanks to his efforts, experiences like his can be discussed openly.

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  7. I've never understood why we didn't claim the moon when we had the perfect chance.:)

    Our flag is still 'flying' there. We should do it now.

    I don't want to go to bed by the light of an Islamic moon.

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  8. DR: Given Ms T's logic on the subject, we'd still have US troops in Mexico Ciy, we've gone there twice, already.

    I don't follow you Rat, but I think you're using my name in vain.

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  9. Bobal: I've never understood why we didn't claim the moon when we had the perfect chance.:)

    We're signatory to the Outer Space Treaty. Among other wunnerful things, the OST says no one can claim land in outer space, and it says no NGOs in outer space unless a nation signatory to the OST hosts them. So al Qaeda would have to fly under the Saudi Arabia flag or something.

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  10. 'S 'nother treaty we shouldn't have signed.

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  11. Speaking of Near Death Experiences, According to CNN's estimate, Obama now has 291 superdelegates to Clinton's 274.

    There goes the last statistic that Clinton could brag about.

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  12. Why, not at all, T.

    DR, McCain's plan is to withdraw our forces to their Iraq bases. Obama's plan is to withdraw from Iraq totally, which would require a re-invasion if things go south. Patton hated to take the same real estate twicet.

    The US military has marched to Mexico City, twice.
    By your logic, we should have never left, as the US military may have to go there, again.

    We've invaded Mexico, twice, third time's the charm.

    You now, in this reincarnation, support the establishment of Empire, to avoid future conflict.

    The Amerikan Way.

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  13. DR: You now, in this reincarnation, support the establishment of Empire, to avoid future conflict.

    I don't care if the Shi'ites and the Sunnis and the Kurds get in a three-way free-for-all, as long as they don't tangle with our bases. The future conflict I hope to avoid isn't the low-intensity carbomb crap in the Arab Street, it's Iran's 320 combat helicopters and 1565 tanks, I'm thinking about.

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  14. Those bases, part of your Amerikan Empire that never withdraw from what's been taken.

    The Iranian military is no strategic threat to US. If they tried to use any of the assets you litney, it'd be death from above.

    The, paraphrasing Mr Gates, "under engaged" US Air Force and Naval assets of the US could be engaged in that effort, rather than the Army.

    Or no death at all, if the US administration chooses to allow the Iranian aggression to advance unopposed.

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  15. Striking Out on Energy
    By Lawrence Kudlow

    President George W. Bush and Sen. John McCain went to bat on energy policy this week. And guess what? They both struck out.
    ...
    What's to be done?

    Sen. McCain weighed in with a cap-and-trade program that he alleges will solve our global climate and energy problem. It's a bad idea. It's really a cap-and-kill-the-economy plan, as well as an unlimited spend-and-tax-and-regulate plan. It's a huge government command-and-control operation that would make any old Soviet Gosplan bureaucrat smile.

    Ironically, the U.S. has virtually the cleanest air of any country in the world. And market forces over the past thirty years have increased all manner of energy efficiency per unit of GDP by more than 50 percent. In fact, according the editorial page of Investor's Business Daily, U.S. carbon emissions grew by only 6.6 percent between 1997 and 2004, compared with 18 percent for the world and 21 percent for the nations that signed the Kyoto protocol on greenhouse gasses. (Think Europe.)

    Then there's a bunch of scientists who don't think we have a global-warming problem at all. And many who do acknowledge the threat link it to solar warming, or increased solar activity, rather than carbon.

    Cap-and-trade, in other words, may very well be unnecessary. Meanwhile, it will surely reduce economic growth in the years ahead.

    The regulatory aspects are mind-boggling. All manner of U.S. businesses -- be they small pig farms, large power plants, or the millions of companies in between -- will be subjected to government rulemaking and standard-setting. EPA inspectors will literally have to visit five million American businesses in order to evaluate carbon emissions and figure out allowances for trading permits.

    Think of it. Some sort of federal cap-and-trade department will send out 100,000 inspectors to comb through American corporations and calculate their carbon stories. This is total insanity. The Congressional Budget Office guesses it will cost at least $1 trillion. And a lot of that cost comes from the government's willingness to give companies carbon allowances which then can be traded in some sort of after-market.

    Later on, according to the McCain plan, the government will auction off these allowances, reaping a gigantic windfall. But so far there are no strictures on this revenue honey pot and the unprecedented federal spending it will fuel.

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  16. Responsible people like Harvard's Greg Mankiw have even suggested taking the carbon-tax revenue and using it to cut income-tax rates. This is a much better idea -- that is, if you buy into global warming at all.

    My friend Art Laffer tells me Al Gore wants a carbon tax, with the revenues being used to abolish the Social Security/Medicare payroll tax altogether. Laffer would prefer a big income-tax-rate reduction that would get us to a 13 percent flat tax. I agree. Either way, taxing carbon, when compared to cap-and-trade, is the lesser of two evils.

    To be fair, Sen. McCain does favor nuclear power. But he is opposed to Tillerson's idea of drilling offshore and President Bush's idea of drilling in Alaska. That's not good.

    And make no mistake about it, his cap-and trade plan will vastly increase the cost of doing business everywhere, including gas prices at the pump. And when you cap something like power, well before so-called alternative-energy technologies have been invented or commercialized, you put a cap on economic growth and prosperity.


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  17. And, This

    Our strength is, or was, in our technology and expertise. Anything that hobbles our strengths is to be avoided. Mexico doesn't have the expertise to utilize their own assets.

    By the way, we used to have a lot more cattle around here than now. The hills along the rivers all had cattle grazing. It was really marginal and is mostly gone now. This happened with the coming of the big feedlots in the mid west. Now too, we have another critter on the hills--the yellowstar thistle, which is a bitch to get rid of. Part of the problem is where the land is marginal it is worth it to spray with roundup or some other good chemical. We have been trying some imported beetle that feeds off the flower, with mixed results.

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  18. There is a lot less cattle in the National Forests too, simply because of economics, and, some new regulations. The catte were making a mess along some of the streambeds too, so I'm not really sorry to see some of them go. I have a friend who has a herd of about 35 or 40 on his farm. He is one of the last. He really works hard at it. Really nice cattle though. He's only had one downer in his whole life. Nice shiney black coats, makes the mouth water.

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  19. McCain favors nuclear, a long term project with little possibility of passage, but opposes utilizing US oil reserves, in ANWAR or offshore.

    Which could begin tomorrow.

    McCain promises that for his entire term of office, '09 - '13 he sees the continued need for combat troops, on police patrol and defensive perimeter missions, in Iraq.

    Withdrawal to begin after his first Presidental term of office is complete

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  20. Motorists are furious with oil at $125 a barrel and a $4 pump price for gas. And they seem to be taking it out on the GOP. That may not be fair, since Mr. Bush does favor a pro-production energy policy that includes off-shore drilling, building refineries, clean-coal development, oil sands, natural gas, and nuclear power. But Democrats in Congress stridently oppose these ideas, as does Hill-Bama on the campaign trail. They want an excess-profits tax. Brilliant.

    from Rat's article

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  21. Where did the metal originate that makes men crazy? Gold and its origins. Astronomy Picture of the Day.

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  22. totally off topic.......................


    The Global Islamic population is approximately 1,200,000,000
    ONE BILLION TWO HUNDRED MILLION or 20% of the world's population.

    They have received the following Nobel Prizes:
    Literature:

    1988 - Najib Mahfooz

    Peace:

    1978 - Mohamed Anwar El-Sadat
    1994 - Yaser Arafat:
    1990 - Elias James Corey
    1999 - Ahmed Zewai
    Economics: (zero)
    Physics: (zero)

    Medicine:
    1960 - Peter Brian Medawar
    1998 - Ferid Mourad
    TOTAL: 7 SEVEN
    ______________________________________________________________________________

    The Global Jewish population is approximately 14,000,000
    Only FOURTEEN MILLION

    or about 0.02% of the world's population.

    They have received the following Nobel Prizes:

    Literature:

    1910 - Paul Heyse
    1927 - Henri Bergson
    1958 - Boris Pasternak
    1966 - Shmuel Yosef Agnon
    1966 - Nelly Sachs
    1976 - Saul Bellow
    1978 - Isaac Bashevis Singer
    1981 - Elias Canetti
    1987 - Joseph Brodsky
    1991 - Nadine Gordimer World

    Peace:

    1911 - Alfred Fried
    1911 - Tobias Michael Carel Asser
    1968 - Rene Cassin
    1973 - Henry Kissinger
    1978 - Menachem Begin
    1986 - Elie Wiesel
    1994 - Shimon Peres
    1994 - Yitzhak Rabin
    Physics:

    1905 - Adolph Von Baeyer
    1906 - Henri Moissan
    1907 - Albert Abraham Michelson
    1908 - Gabriel Lippmann
    1910 - Otto Wallach
    1915 - Richard Willstaetter
    1918 - Fritz Haber
    1921 - Albert Einstein
    1922 - Niels Bohr
    1925 - James Franck
    1925 - Gustav Hertz
    1943 - Gustav Stern
    1943 - George Charles de Hevesy
    1944 - Isidor Issac Rabi
    1952 - Felix Bloch
    1954 - Max Born
    1958 - Igor Tamm
    1959 - Emilio Segre
    1960 - Donald A. Glaser
    1961 - Robert Hofstadter
    1961 - Melvin Calvin
    1962 - Lev Davidovich Landau
    1962 - Max Ferdinand Perutz
    1965 - Richard Phillips Feynman
    1965 - Julian Schwinger
    1969 - Murray Gell-Mann
    1971 - Dennis Gabor
    1972 - William Howard Stein
    1973 - Brian David Joseph son
    1975 - Benjamin Mottleson
    1976 - Burton Richter
    1977 - Ilya Prigogine
    1978 - Arno Allan Penzias
    1978 - Peter L Kapitza
    1979 - Stephen Weinberg
    1979 - Sheldon Glashow
    1979 - Herbert Charle s Brown
    1980 - Paul Berg
    1980 - Walter Gilbert
    1981 - Roald Hoffmann
    1982 - Aaron Klug
    1985 - Albert A. Hauptman
    1985 - Jerome Karle
    1986 - Dudley R. Herschbach
    1988 - Robert Huber
    1988 - Leon Lederman
    1988 - Melvin Schwartz
    1988 - Jack Steinberger
    1989 - Sidney Altman
    1990 - Jerome Friedman
    1992 - Rudolph Marcus
    1995 - Martin Perl
    2000 - Alan J. Heeger

    Economics:

    1970 - Paul Anthony Samuelson
    1971 - Simon Kuznets
    1972 - Kenneth Joseph Arrow
    1975 - Leonid Kantorovich
    1976 - Milton Friedman
    1978 - Herbert A. Simon
    1980 - Lawrence Robert Klein
    1985 - Franco Modigliani
    1987 - Robert M. Solow
    1990 - Harry Markowitz
    1990 - Merton Miller
    1992 - Gary Becker
    1993 - Robe r t Fogel

    Medicine:

    1908 - Elie Metchnikoff
    1908 - Paul Erlich
    1914 - Robert Barany
    1922 - Otto Meyerhof
    1930 - Karl Landsteiner
    1931 - Otto Warburg
    1936 - Otto Loewi
    1944 - Joseph Erlanger
    1944 - Herbert Spencer Gasser
    1945 - Ernst Boris Chain
    1946 - Hermann Joseph Muller
    1950 - Tadeus Reichstein
    1952 - Selman Abra ham Waksman
    1953 - Hans Krebs
    1953 - Fritz Albert Lipmann
    1958 - Joshua Lederberg
    1959 - Arthur Kornberg
    1964 - Konrad Bloch
    1965 - Francois Jacob
    1965 - Andre Lwoff
    1967 - George Wald
    1968 - Marshall W. Nirenberg
    1969 - Salvador Luria
    1970 - Julius Axelrod
    1970 - Sir Bernard Katz
    1972 - Gerald Maurice Edelman
    1975 - Howard Martin Temin
    1976 - Baruch S. Blumberg
    1977 - Roselyn Sussman Yalow
    1978 - Daniel Nathans
    1980 - Baruj Benacerraf
    1984 - Cesar Milstein
    1985 - Michael Stuart Brown
    1985 - Joseph L. Goldstein
    1986 - Stanley Cohen [& Rita L ev i-Montalcini]
    1988 - Gertrude Elion
    1989 - Harold Varmus
    1991 - Erwin Neher
    1991 - Bert Sakmann
    1993 - Richard J. Roberts
    1993 - Phillip Sharp
    1994 - Alfred Gilman
    1995 - Edward B. Lewis

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  23. It's true. Jewish people have been a creative people, and should be applauded for their works.

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  24. Those Nobel judges, always on the money, themselves

    1994
    The prize was awarded joinly to:

    YASSER ARAFAT , Chairman of the Executive Committee of the PLO, President of the Palestinian National Authority.

    SHIMON PERES , Foreign Minister of Israel.

    YITZHAK RABIN , Prime Minister of Israel.

    for their efforts to create peace in the Middle East.


    political eyewash.
    rewarding posture, not performance.

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  25. 1994
    The prize was awarded joinly to:

    YASSER ARAFAT , Chairman of the Executive Committee of the PLO, President of the Palestinian National Authority.

    SHIMON PERES , Foreign Minister of Israel.

    YITZHAK RABIN , Prime Minister of Israel.

    for their efforts to create peace in the Middle East.

    political eyewash.
    rewarding posture, not performance.



    fine, let's subtract those 3 from the total...

    doesnt change a rat's ass........

    ReplyDelete