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Stewart
Trad climber
Courtenay, B.C.
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Donald Thompson - You are an ignorant, brainwashed pig. Sorry - that's an insult to pigs. You were apparently born without a cerebral cortex, and pigs actually do have brains.
Here's some FACTS about Canadians in the two World Wars : In World War One, approximately 660,000 Canadians wore a uniform during the war. That does not mean that anywhere near this number fought overseas in that conflict. 60,000 of our soldiers died in that war, which translated to a fatality rate of approximately 1 in 11 of our entire army. In World War Two, approximately 1,000,000 joined up & again nowhere near that number fought overseas. We sustained a combat fatality rate of 40,000 - which translates to about 1 in 25. I have supplied these numbers because you are lack the intellectual capacity to calculate them yourself. Of course, you could easily check these facts in a library, but I doubt that you have ever actually read a book, or for that matter have even checked a fact from an authoritative source in your entire life. Perhaps you could take a rest from quoting directly from the Fascist handbooks that you use for information sources.
Furthermore, Canada entered World War One in 1914. The U.S. entered the war in 1917 - after the discovery of the Zimmerman telegram, which was an attempt by the Germans to persuade Mexico to invade the U.S.
In World War Two, we entered the war in September of 1939. The United States stayed out of the war until the attack on Pearl Harbor (note my use of U.S. spelling) on Dec. 7, 1941. Naturally, the U.S. immediately declared war on Japan but, for reasons I cannot understand, did not declare war against Germany. Hitler declared war on the U.S. instead.
Perhaps in your drooling bigotry you are unaware that Joseph Kennedy (JFK's father & the U.S. ambassador to Britain at the time) at the height of the Battle of Britain urged FDR to cut off all military assistance to that beleaguered nation. Fortunately, FDR ignored his advice. There is a persuasive argument to be made that the reason for the U.S. reluctance to enter the war was because of the powerful lobbying efforts of the America First party, a Fascist front similar to your present-day Republican party. Their advocates included such names as Charles Lindbergh, Henry Ford and Nelson Rockefeller(sp?) along with many other prominent Nazi sympathizers. As a matter of fact, Dubya Bush's grandfather was investigated under the Trading With the Enemy act. I guess it runs in the family.
It is an insult to suggest that you prevented Canada from being conquered by the Fascists. In the event that Britain was bombed flat and incapable of resisting occupation, the British Commonwealth consisted of nations all over the planet including India and its population of hundreds of millions. The Royal Navy was by far the most powerful on the planet at the time, and would have sailed to Canada to continue the war from here. Furthermore, strategically speaking, it is ludicrous to suggest that Germany and its allies could launch a serious invasion attempt upon the shores of North America with the resources available to it at the time. All of this is moot, however, since Hitler with his brilliant military judgement decided to invade the Soviet Union BEFORE the U.S. entered the war and his armies, after their rapid initial gains, were shattered. By far, the largest losses sustained by Germany and its allies during World War Two were inflicted on the Eastern Front. By the way, the average estimate of Soviet fatalities during the war number 25 million.
It is ludicrous to insinuate that the Soviet Union would have attacked Canada, since the only logical route of attack would have been through the Bering Straight to Alaska. I assume that a successful landing would have automatically resulted in a nuclear response from the United States. In the ridiculous scenario that such an invasion was initially successful, their armies would have to maintain gigantic supply lines through some of the most rugged and desolate terrain on the planet and kill every bush-wise Canadian on the way.
ALL of the above aside, be assured that if the Swastika or the Hammer and Sickle had succeeded in being raised over Canada, you can bet your last dollar that the U.S. would have been next.
So, Donald, our troops can and do fight with honour in the defence of freedom. It is a result of your lack of even a glimmer of intelligence that causes you to scribble this crap.
That said, I also recognize the bravery and sacrifice of U.S. troops on the battlefield so, if there are any veterans on this forum please do not take offence at what follows, since this one's for Donald personally: I would be astonished if our wimpiest bureaucrat couldn't deck you with a single punch. Go back to school, throw away your crayons and get an education before polluting this forum with your Fascist rhetoric.
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corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
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TGT - How can we not wonder if they were collecting evidence at Solyndra to preserve it or the opposite?
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corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
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Dr F - Oh go ahead. After a close exam reveals the different type set used to construct the fake Obama birth certificate we can assume there is no length they won't go to.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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cut and paste from the net but pretty much says it all
Let's take a stroll down memory lane, shall we?
1980: Ronald Reagan runs for president, promising a balanced budget
1981 - 1989: With support from congressional Republicans, Reagan runs
enormous deficits, adds $2 trillion to the
debt.
1993: Bill Clinton passes economic plan that lowers deficit, gets zero votes from congressional Republicans.
1998: U.S. deficit disappears for the first time in three decades. Debt clock is unplugged.
2000: George W. Bush runs for president, promising to maintain a balanced budget.
2001: CBO shows the United States is on track to pay off the entirety of its national debt within a decade.
2001 - 2009: With support from congressional Republicans, Bush runs enormous deficits, adds nearly $5 trillion
to the debt.
2002: Dick Cheney declares, "Deficits don't matter."
2009: Barack Obama inherits $1.3 trillion deficit from Bush; Republicans immediately condemn Obama's fiscal
irresponsibility.
2009: Congressional Democrats unveil several domestic policy initiatives -- including health care reform, cap
and trade, DREAM Act -- which would lower the deficit. GOP opposes all of them,
while continuing to push for deficit reduction.
September 2010: In Obama's first fiscal year, the deficit shrinks by $122 billion. Republicans again condemn
Obama's fiscal irresponsibility.
October 2010: S&P endorses the nation's AAA rating with a stable outlook, saying the United States looks to be
in solid fiscal shape for the foreseeable future.
November 2010: Republicans win a U.S. House majority, citing the need for fiscal
responsibility.
December 2010: Congressional Republicans demand extension of Bush tax cuts, relying entirely on deficit
financing. GOP continues to accuse Obama of fiscal irresponsibility.
March 2011: Congressional Republicans declare intention to hold full faith and credit of the United States
hostage -- a move without precedent in American history -- until massive debt-reduction plan is approved.
July 2011: Obama offers Republicans a $4 trillion debt-reduction deal. GOP refuses, pushes
debt-ceiling standoff until the last possible day, rattling international markets.
August 2011: S&P downgrades U.S. debt, citing GOP refusal to consider new revenues. Republicans rejoice
and blame Obama for fiscal irresponsibility
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Gary
climber
Desolation Row, Calif.
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Gary we are socialist already.
You're being sarcastic. Right?
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Bob D'A
Trad climber
Taos, NM
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Karl wrote: 2001: CBO shows the United States is on track to pay off the entirety of its national debt within a decade.
Republicans in denial...they started two wars, funded two wars without pay as go, lowest tax rate for the wealthy in modern history and a unpaid prescription plan that cost billions.
They tanked America...you get my middle finger.
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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So Barry, Harry and Nancy run up the same debt in two years that George did in eight.
That's your answer?
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Gary
climber
Desolation Row, Calif.
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The answer, TGT, is that your side drove us over a cliff, and now you're bitching that we want to pull the 'chute chord.
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Jingy
climber
Somewhere out there
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The Fading Bachmann 'Momentum'
09/09/2011 by Peter Hart
It seems like just yesterday that Michele Bachmann was in the "top tier," thanks to her narrow victory in the mostly meaningless Iowa straw poll. She had "momentum." Then came this week's debate and, well, things are looking different. As the Washington Post described the scene at the debate:
Meanwhile, any momentum that Rep. Michele Bachmann (Minn.), who won the Iowa straw poll in August, may have had from that victory has been extinguished by Perry.
The debates have been a forum in which Bachmann has shone, but she was sidelined on Wednesday night.
She was not asked a question until 14 minutes into the debate, and during an exchange on healthcare, she shouted for a chance to speak--only to be told that it was Huntsman's turn.
This should serve as a reminder that "momentum" in electoral politics is basically just how much attention media decide to grant a given candidate. Then when the press decide to pay less attention to your candidacy, they can observe that they had no choice--you lost your "momentum."
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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In a poll a month or so ago even Paul ties him.
I'm with him on some domestic issues but his foreign policy stance is somewhere between "unicorns and fairies"
(well maybe dwarfs and elves)
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Bob D'A
Trad climber
Taos, NM
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Gary wrote: The answer, TGT, is that your side drove us over a cliff, and now you're bitching that we want to pull the 'chute chord.
Why try? TGT doesn't have what take to accept the responsibility of Bush's policies.
We were heading to being debt less when Bush took office...he created the dragon and left it up to some else to slay it.
Typical republican leaders...let some else fight my wars.
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Sep 10, 2011 - 07:15am PT
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Myth and Reality After 9/11
Ten years later, we’ve reached a bipartisan consensus.
Why did radical Islamic terrorists kill almost 3,000 Americans a decade ago?
Few still believe the old myth that U.S. foreign policy or support for Israel logically earned us Osama bin Laden’s wrath. After all, the U.S. throughout the 1990s had saved Islamic peoples from Bosnia and Kosovo to Somalia and Kuwait. Russia and China, in contrast, had oppressed or killed tens of thousands of their own Muslims without much fear of provoking al-Qaeda.
Moreover, thousands of Arabs have been killed recently, but by their own Libyan and Syrian governments, not Israeli Defense Forces. Al-Qaeda still issues death threats to Americans even though its original pretexts for going to war — such as U.S. troops stationed in Saudi Arabia — have long been irrelevant.
On this ten-year anniversary of 9/11, no one has yet refuted the general truth that bin Laden tried to hijack popular Arab discontent over endemic poverty and self-induced misery. In cynical Hitlerian fashion, al-Qaeda’s propagandists sought to blame the mess of the Arab Middle East on Jews and foreigners, rather than seeking to address homegrown corrupt kleptocracies, inefficient statism, indigenous tribalism, gender apartheid, and religious fundamentalism and intolerance.
Past Western appeasement of terrorism only convinced the manipulative bin Laden that he might kill Westerners without much fear of retaliation, as he presented himself to the Islamic street as the new Saladin who had humbled the Western infidel.
Another post-9/11 myth assured us that George W. Bush foolishly squandered a rare national unity by enacting unlawful and unnecessary homeland-security measures and starting wasteful and unwinnable wars. The myth seems to suggest that if only we had not gone into Iraq or opened Guantanamo, we would still be at peace and, left and right alike, flying American flags from our cars’ antennas.
But we know that this theory is largely a fable. From 2001 to 2008, almost every domestic and foreign security expert assured us that the next 9/11 was not a matter of “if,” but only of “when.” Yet ten years later, there has not been a single comparable terrorist attack, despite dozens of foiled efforts to shoot and blow up Americans. What happened?
The Patriot Act, renditions, tribunals, preventive detention, new bothersome security measures, and the use of Predator drones have all weakened al-Qaeda and have made it difficult to attack Americans at home. For all the acrimony over Afghanistan and Iraq, tens of thousands of jihadists were killed abroad, and consensual governments that fight terrorists still survive in place of dictatorships.
And where now are the likes of Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, Moveon.org, Code Pink, and the entire anti-war movement that for years dominated the news, assuring us that we had lost our freedoms at home and caused only mayhem abroad?
The truth is they mostly dropped out of the news when Barack Obama was elected president. Apparently these loud megaphones had all along been more interested in partisan politics than principled criticism. In one of the strangest turnabouts in modern political history, fierce anti-war and anti-administration critic Barack Obama, upon taking the office of the presidency, either embraced or expanded almost all of the Bush-Cheney anti-terrorism policies.
Obama also left mostly unchanged U.S. policy in Afghanistan and Iraq, and joined a third Middle East war by bombing Libya. Indeed, Vice President Joe Biden boasted that a calm Iraq could be one of the administration’s “greatest achievements.” In 2012, there will be no Obama reelection commercials bragging about the promised closure of Guantanamo Bay, but plenty taking credit for killing bin Laden inside Pakistan, a country where we have increased targeted drone assassinations fivefold since 2009.
President Obama, unlike candidate Obama, understood that the past unpopular U.S. measures kept us safe for seven years, and so had to be continued. He also guessed that when he put his own brand on these once widely caricatured but necessary anti-terrorism measures, the furor that had plagued the country from 2003 to 2008 would simply end in a whimper. And he was absolutely right on both counts.
Conservatives were once demonized for George Bush’s “smoke ’em out” and “dead or alive” tough talk about the War on Terror. Liberals were caricatured for Obama’s “overseas contingency operations” and “man-caused disasters” touchy-feely euphemisms. But the unspoken truth of the decade following 9/11 is that, for all the left and right talking points, Americans institutionalized policies and protocols that so far have kept us safe from another murderous attack.
— Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author, most recently, of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern. © 2011 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
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Gary
climber
Desolation Row, Calif.
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Sep 10, 2011 - 10:35am PT
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What a load of apologistic crap.
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apogee
climber
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Sep 10, 2011 - 12:20pm PT
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"Obama is finished against any Repub other than Paul."
Not even close to true.
Bachmann, Palin or Santorum would get the Teabaggers and the RR motivated, but not the moderates (yes, they exist)- that won't be enough to beat Obama.
The Mormon factor for Romney & Huntsman will make the RR stay home, and the Teabaggers won't be very psyched. End result: not enough to beat Obama.
Cain...just too boring. Paul's positions are primarily Libertarian, and most of the time he comes off as just wacky.
Perry could definitely rally the RR & Teabaggers, and if his campaign handlers spin him properly, moderates would go that way. Perry currently has the best chance against Obama.
Giuliani? Hard to see how he will be any more interesting than he was last time around.
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apogee
climber
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Sep 10, 2011 - 04:30pm PT
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Giuliani's primary 'qualification' was being mayor during 9/11. He gained a lot of criticism for being pretty shallow in his campaign strategy, leaning too heavily on 9/11. Since '08, he hasn't gained much more experience or prominence.
McCain, as has been discussed endlessly here, made the big mistake of selling out his identity as a moderate ('maverick') in order to woo the RR. That, and the ultimate cynical decision to put Palin on the ticket completely undermined his credibility. He was going to need every moderate vote he could get in order to have a hope against the Repug backlash created by Shrub, and sacrificing the primary elements of his personality that made him attractive was his death knell.
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jstan
climber
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Sep 10, 2011 - 04:51pm PT
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That is the danger when you follow a demographic of reflexive voters. Even slight changes in emphasis can sink you. But McCain's decision to become a joke with Palin as the punch line was a self-inflicted injury.
Among other things it finally proved conclusively what many had thought for some time.
He was not up to the job.
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jstan
climber
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Sep 10, 2011 - 07:21pm PT
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That reflexive voters even exist in the US says something has gone very very wrong.
The framers of the Constitution quite rightly ignored this possibility.
Nations possessing such populations can live only under tyrants. The framers had seen that under George and under Louis. They wanted no part of it.
Tyranny is the form of government such people deserve
and ultimately will get.
Just look at the Arab Revulsion going on as we speak.
See where you would have us go.
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Bob D'A
Trad climber
Taos, NM
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Sep 10, 2011 - 09:23pm PT
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LEB wrote: Next came 9/11 - one of the biggest crisis ever faced by this nation in modern times. Rudy came through in shining colors - cancer or no cancer.
He showed up after the fact and he wasn't a first responder..great for him and he continues to take advantage of the fact of just doing his job.
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