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Category: Uncategorized (Page 5 of 10)

U.S. Re-Embracing Authoritarian Sunni Regimes

October 12, 2007 / / 0 Comments

Gee, isn’t that what we were doing before the Bushes got their hands on the political steering wheel? Hmm. We’d be better off putting Saddam back in power in Iraq. Oops, I forgot, we killed him. Well, now what? The Sunnis are a minority in Iraq but Saddam was a Sunni. Oh dear, what HAVE we done? This problem was plainly visible to me back in 2003, which is one of the many reasons I spoke against attacking Iraq, but nobody seemed to care because the desire for Iraq’s oil and the phony propaganda linking Saddam with 9/11 was clouding everyone’s minds. So now we have an enormous mess. We have badly upset the balance of power in the Middle East by removing the one force that was directly counterbalancing Iran (Iraq, led by Sunni, Saddam Hussein).

We can’t restore the balance now because we removed Saddam. It was he, as a Sunni leader of a country with a Shiite majority, who created the balance. We’ve now forever lost the ability to restore the balance.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1009/p01s01-usfp.html

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To All Who are Studying U.S. Presidential Candidates:

October 10, 2007 / / 0 Comments

YouTube is an excellent place for “candidate surfing”. Most of the candidates and as well as other politicos (Nancy Pelosi, for example) have their own channels where they post things of their choice, but more interesting are the videos posted by users. You can review all of the debates captured off network TV, listen as many times as you wish, and listen carefully to what the candidates are really saying. Many campaign as well as prior speeches by politicians and candidates are also there on YouTube for you to examine closely.

Just go to YouTube and search on candidate names or keywords such as debate. Note that you will also find plenty of videos expressing opinions on every political topic, which you may or may not find interesting, but there’s tons of stuff showing the candidates speaking for themselves.

Here are some clips to get you started:

Clips from the Democratic debates:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaCxDs5weso
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=un0Up0mY8Hg

28 minutes from the GOP debates:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3ze9sFkSoE

Ron Paul:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNvoaGfwZcc

And there’s lots more up there.

Daylight Saving Time Redux

October 7, 2007 / / 2 Comments

Well the poll is over. I’m sure the sample is too small to have any statistical significance, and the sample population was surely biased, but the outcome is interesting to me anyway. Eight people voted. Two people said they like daylight saving time and six do not. If nothing else, I know that I am not entirely alone in my dislike of DST.

Thank you all so much for participating!

If my blog drew a lot of traffic, I think it would be fun to do a simple poll of all presidential candidates from both parties. But at this point I think I have fewer readers than there are candidates running so that wouldn’t work. Haha.

What is the Matter with George W. Bush?

October 6, 2007 / / 0 Comments

Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with Bush’s politics, it is very disturbing to compare the George W. Bush of 1994 with the same man 10 years later. In 1994, Bush was a capable debater, speaking freely, smoothly, with a good vocabulary, and in long complete sentences. Everything he said made sense. And I’m not talking about whether you agree with what he said or whether what he said was true, I am talking about his ability to smoothly string thoughts together into a logical sentence. Today, the simplest of concepts foul him up and his memory seems to have failed. It’s truly astonishing to compare his performance in 1994 with the same man after 2002. They don’t even seem like the same person.

The following video clip begins with a segment from the 1994 Texas gubernatorial debates. I would be shocked to turn on the radio today and hear President Bush speaking like he does in this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0vEJneflBw

So what happened? You don’t have to be a doctor to see that something has gone seriously wrong, but what? Any doctors or psychiatrists want to chime in with ideas?

Here are a couple more videos of the man who holds the most powerful political office in the world:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqLvBUSJucg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whhbPVrb5KM

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