"Hmmm - I doubt our founding fathers had the well being of other countries on their mind when they created our country  They sure didn't want foreign countries telling us how to run ours either.  That's why we had the Revolutionary War."

I don't disagree, but turn it around and imagine what the average Iraqi thinks of George W. Bush saying "They can have any type of goverment they want, as long as it's a democracy." We may think a democracy is just pissa, but the Iraqis may not. And it would damn sure piss me off if the leader of the country that's bombed the shit out of my country twice in 20 years tells me what kind of goverment I ought to want.

artie_fufkin wrote:

"And the afgan and Iraq wars."

Which, of course, occurred in the 21st century, not the 20th.
(Sorry, my previous response to Max pretty much calling me out as an ignorant dufus has put me in a pissy mood. So you're all forewarned I have no idea what the rest of my responses to this thread are going to be ...)

Ignorant SLUT.  Rinse, lather and repeat.

forsberg_us wrote:

I'm not sure that's the direction Web was headed Max.  The way I read her response was that we shouldn't necessarily be obligated to direction from the UN (i.e., not letting foreign countries tell us what to do).

Well, if that's the case, you can see where I got confused:

"Hmmm - I doubt our founding fathers had the well being of other countries on their mind when they created our country  They sure didn't want foreign countries telling us how to run ours either.  That's why we had the Revolutionary War."

Shows you how often I see Hannity - almost never.  Thank heavens for my DVR so I can speed through anything that looks seriously slanted.

Webstergrovesalum wrote:

Shows you how often I see Hannity - almost never.  Thank heavens for my DVR so I can speed through anything that looks seriously slanted.

I kind of gave up on corporate news a few years ago. There's a local all-news station here that lets me know what I need to know, and I'm surprised at how little opinion is expressed. And one of their weather forecasters is a woman who I find very pleasant and attractive, so that helps.

artie_fufkin wrote:

Webstergrovesalum wrote:

Shows you how often I see Hannity - almost never.  Thank heavens for my DVR so I can speed through anything that looks seriously slanted.

I kind of gave up on corporate news a few years ago. There's a local all-news station here that lets me know what I need to know, and I'm surprised at how little opinion is expressed. And one of their weather forecasters is a woman who I find very pleasant and attractive, so that helps.

Yay for news stations with "little" expressed opinion! What a novel idea!  Our local (well Denver anyway), NBC affiliate seems able to keep their opinion to themselves & they have great weather people, along with a traffic gal named Amelia Earhart!  Yep, she's a great niece of the lost aviator & became a convenient joke for Jay Leno during one of his "on the street stupid people" skits.  Apparently one of his stupid people on the street was a Denver tourist & when asked who Amelia Earhart was said; "the Denver 9 news traffic person?"   (shocked)

forsberg_us wrote:

You can't leave everything to the UN because its various members each have their own interests at stake. Any of the five permanent members of the Security Council have the authority to veto a substantive resolution.  Thus a resolution could have 14-1 support, but if the one dissenting vote is one of the five permanent members, the resolution cannot be passed.

What if North Korea suddenly launched a military action against South Korea, but China refused to authorize any action to stop North Korea. Should the rest of the world stand by because a resolution cannot be passed?

Along those same lines, lets say the UN did pass a resolution authorizing military action throughout Africa.  Should we send troops just because the UN says so?

You mean like our own government that we leave everything to?


The rest of the world shouldnt stand by.  We should be part of the group that doesnt.

I dont think the UN shits gold but it is there for a reason and hosted in our own country.  We should listen to it heavly.

Last edited by APRTW (3/30/2011 8:31 am)

Webstergrovesalum wrote:

Does anyone really enjoy watching golf?

Golf appeals to a certain demographic that has the trait which sponsors covet the most - disposable income. In the golf era B.T. (Before Tiger), a live broadcast of a non-major tournament would get a 4.5 rating whether it aired on a major network or the Vegemite Foods Network. Golf fans would find it and watch it. For a major, especially the Masters and the U.S. Open, the rating would bump up to about a 7.
Before he got caught with his harem, Tiger's inclusion in a tournament would boost the ratings by about 50 percent. He still pulls in a bigger crowd, but between those who disapproved of his extramarital affairs and the fact that he's pretty much sucked at golf post-Elin, his appeal isn't what it used to be.

But I understand your disdain. The only thing worse than watching golf on TV is listening to golf on the radio: "What a great shot by Mickelson! Wait, you didn't see it. But trust me, it was really, really good ..."

APRTW wrote:

forsberg_us wrote:

[I'm not sure that's the direction Web was headed Max.  The way I read her response was that we shouldn't necessarily be obligated to direction from the UN (i.e., not letting foreign countries tell us what to do).  I'm not sure that the UN approved of our action in either Grenada or Panama, but it didn't stop us from acting, and it doesn't mean that the actions weren't justified.  As I recall, one of the issues in Grenada was the safety of US students at a college in Grenada.  Similarly, I seem to remember that Noriega had threatened the lives of Americans in Panama before we took action.

Also, didn't Congress approve of the actions in Grenada and Panama?  I don't know, but for some reason I thought they had.  Constitutionally, that's supposed to be the benchmark for US military intervention.  Personally, if Congress approves of the action, I don't care what the UN says.

I agree that America doesnt always have to ask the UN for premission.  I also agree that Congress should be the ones to approve military action and not George Bush and Tony Blair.  You cant put set rules on these kinds of things. 

In this situation with Lybia, I think it was handled corrected.

For the record, Congress approved the invasion of Iraq.  It was not asked for approval regarding Libya.

artie_fufkin wrote:

"Beck is done.  He's so far out of it he has become a weight around the ankle of movement conservatism"

I remember hearing the same types of things about Ronald Reagan in 1976.

Correction: Beck is done on the the Faux Television Network.  His brand of paranoid lunacy will always have a following for the 3-5% of Americans for whom O'Reilly and Hannity are too liberal.

Max wrote:

FWIW, I think the broader complaint of movement conservatism with the MSM is not so much in expressed opinions but more so in what makes the news (the filter) and the angle from which it is covered (bias/perspective).

The bias claim is a dubious argument, usually from a person in the media with a particular point of view who doesn't hear or read what he/she wants to read.
Part of the what is/isn't covered debate, again, goes back to the O.J. Simpson trial. If someone had found a cure for the common cold the day that verdict was handed down, the story about the cure for the common cold would have been the number two story on the nightly news. People are fed live coverage from the Channel 7 Eyewitness News Crime Chopper of high-speed highway pursuits because live coverage of high-speed highway pursuits generates viewers, and viewers generate ratings, and ratings generate advertising dollars. And the corporate media loves advertising dollars.
If conservatives want to complain about double standards when it comes to coverage, they can focus their ire on Dan Quayle, who hoisted their petard with that "family values" rhetoric he uttered at the GOP convention.
When a senator tries to solicit anonymous gay sex in airport men's room, it's a story about the solicitation of anonymous gay sex. When a senator solicits anonymous gay sex in an airport men's room after he's voted in favor of the federal marriage amendment, it's a story about hypocrisy.

forsberg_us wrote:

You know this because your crystal ball said so?  If we're going to talk about "strange deaths," should we also discuss James McDougal, Ron Brown, Vince Foster, Ed Willey and a whole host of people with ties to the Clinton Administration who turned up dead during his presidency?

Wellstone was in do danger of losing his seat at the time of his death.  Subsequent to the plane crash that killed Wellstone, his wife, and daughter, the seat was lost to Norm Coleman.  The GOP wound up in a tie for the senate, and as we know, the VP breaks a tie in the senate.

The other deaths, while possibly strange, have nothing to do with the senate ultimately providing the president with what was effectively a declaration of war with Iraq, which as you recall, is the topic of this discussion, counsel.   




"American Assassination: The Strange Death Of Senator Paul Wellstone"

http://www.amazon.com/American-Assassination-Strange-Senator-Wellstone/dp/0975276301


Senator Paul Wellstone was, "the first 1960s radical elected to the U.S. Senate." In Senate Race 2002, the White House made defeating Wellstone priority #1. Karl Rove hand-picked arch Republican Norm Coleman to run against him. Despite massive funding, Coleman was trailing the popular Wellstone two weeks before election day.
Then, tragedy struck. On the morning of October 25th, 2002, Wellstone was killed after a mysterious communication cut-out and crash of his small aircraft. He died alongside his wife Sheila, their daughter Marcia, three staff members, and two pilots, while trying to land at Minnesota’s Eveleth airfield. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer insisted to his reporter at the scene that foul weather was the lethal factor in the crash, despite the statements to the contrary from the CNN correspondent. To this day, the public tends to blame the weather.

Ph.D. Professors James Fetzer and Don "Four Arrows" Jacobs present the harrowing truth. The plane was exceptionally airworthy. The weather didn’t bring down Senator Wellstone. Nor were the two pilots incompetent, as the report of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) would eventually claim.

The facts point elsewhere. The FBI arrived at the remote rural crash scene less than two hours after the crash. Could they have known about it in advance? The FBI forbade the ambulance and fire teams to take photos. Even the AP photographer on hand was intimidated, delayed and then highly monitored. For some reason, a member of the U.S. Capitol Police Dignitary Protection Division was also present.

Why did the FBI state that they were treating the site as a "crime scene" although there were "no indications of any criminal activity"? How could the FBI so very swiftly conclude and state publicly, before NTSB arrived, that there was "no evidence of terrorism" involved? Why did the NTSB search for a "black box" for a day and a half and then conclude that there hadn't been one, after all?

AMERICAN ASSASSINATION confirms the worst fears of a nation. Senator Paul Wellstone was murdered.

Both authors are decorated university professors. A Native American, Four Arrows (a.k.a. Dr. Don Jacobs) teaches educational leadership and is a staunch critic of US foreign policy. Dr. Jim Fetzer is a published expert on U.S. political assassinations and the logic of science.

Although no one can prove exactly what happened in the events leading to Wellstone’s death, these two Ph.D.s point out the official story’s inconsistencies and deliberate omissions. With a methodical argument, they present evidence of an official cover-up, a compelling motive for Wellstone’s assassination and advance a more likely explanation for how Senator Wellstone's plane was taken down. Their findings include new evidence and alternative hypotheses that were never considered by the NTSB:

• There was never any distress call from the pilots. Communication was somehow cut off shortly before the crash.

• NTSB’s Carol Carmody handled the Wellstone case. A former CIA official, Carmody is a damage-control expert who handled the NTSB’s investigation of the suspicious aircraft crash of Democratic Senatorial candidate Mel Carnahan, exactly two years earlier.

• NTSB is legally mandated to take jurisdiction over a crash scene, yet it allowed the FBI to control the scene--and then neglected to cite the FBI’s involvement in presence in the NTSB's final report.

• Some witnesses heard the engines cutting out, a phenomenon not consistent with a stall.

• Others reported odd cell-phone and garage-door phenomena that were taking place about the same time the plane lost both communications and control.

• The NTSB's own simulations, which replicated properties like those of King Air A-100s under similar conditions, were unable to bring the plane down—even when conducted under abnormally slow speeds!

• One of the members who actually signed the report, Richard Healing, admitted that they really had no idea what had caused the plane to crash.

Since becoming active in this issue, local residents have contacted Professor Fetzer and related strange electronic interference in the area at the time of the crash. One experienced an odd cell-phone phenomenon with a form of static he had never heard before. Its auditory pattern appears to be similar to that of "electro-magnetic pulse" (EMP) weapons recently developed by the Pentagon to jam the computer-assisted controls of enemy aircraft.

Reports of garage doors that mysteriously opened in the immediate vicinity are surfacing. And radar images from the time of the plane crashes of Senator Carnahan and of Senator Wellstone are suggestive of EMP imprints. These weapons not only jam a plane's electronics but also disable its radio communications.

In the wake of the crash, 69% of Minnesoteans blamed a "GOP Conspiracy" for Wellstone’s death. This book makes the case that, in this case, at least, the people had it right.

In appendices to AMERICAN ASSASSINATION, Paul Wellstone’s courageous stands against the rich and powerful continue to inspire us. It presents highlights from Wellstone’s platform and includes his important speech, "On Iraq."

His opposition to the Bush administration helps the reader to understand why the Senator was a likely target for assassination. When the reader meets Wellstone in his own words, his vision is kept alive and lives on in each of us.

Max wrote:

The other deaths, while possibly strange, have nothing to do with the senate ultimately providing the president with what was effectively a declaration of war with Iraq, which as you recall, is the topic of this discussion, counsel.

Neither does the death of Wellstone considering the Senate authorized the use of the military against Iraq by a vote of 77-23.  But don't let the facts impede an otherwise entertaining delusion.

But if you're looking for literature, you may want to try these:

"Ron Brown's Body : How One Man's Death Saved the Clinton Presidency and Hillary's Future"

http://www.amazon.com/Ron-Browns-Body-Presidency-Hillarys/dp/B000C4SSW6/ref=pd_sim_b_2

The mysterious death of Ron Brown has caused much controversy and suspicion, and in this investigative book, Cashill takes a close look at Brown's checkered career as Clinton fund-raiser and commerce secretary and consequently exposes the Clintons' dirty, relentless practices for getting financial backing. Cashill answers the most trenchant questions surrounding Brown's rise and fall: Why did his plane crash? Why did the White House suppress an investigation? What was the purpose of Brown's trade missions? And what larger forces caused the Clintons to seek international cash? Using the case of Ron Brown's untimely death as a touchstone for the Clintons' unseemly and unsavory practices in the White House, Cashill explores the seedy depths of the most corrupt adminstration in American history during its two most desperate years and focuses directly on the machinations of the direst threat to today's political scene, Hillary Clinton.


"The Strange Death of Vincent Foster: An Investigation"

http://www.amazon.com/Strange-Death-Vincent-Foster-Investigation/dp/074324253X/ref=pd_sim_b_6

Ever since the night that deputy White House counselor Vincent Foster was found dead in a Washington, D.C., park, conspiracy theories about his death have abounded. Everyone from evangelist Jerry Falwell to talk-show host Rush Limbaugh has weighed in with his or her own version of events: Foster was murdered; his body was moved; the investigation into his death became a giant cover-up. Christopher Ruddy, a reporter for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, has entered the fray with The Strange Death of Vincent Foster.

As Ruddy goes over the evidence, it becomes increasingly clear that the initial investigative work by the park police and the FBI was mishandled--evidence was poorly collected and documented, the autopsy was hardly comprehensive, and eyewitness accounts differed drastically. In addition, the role of White House counsel Bernard Nussbaum in obstructing the police search of Foster's office and belongings was undoubtedly out of line. Do shoddy police work and overzealous political posturing add up to a vast governmental conspiracy? Ruddy suggests they do.


"Target: Caught in the Crosshairs of Bill and Hillary Clinton"

http://www.amazon.com/Target-Caught-Crosshairs-Hillary-Clinton/dp/0974670162/ref=pd_sim_b_3

Just in time for Hillary Clinton's 2008 Presidential campaign comes Kathleen Willey's explosive new book that details how her life was changed - and nearly destroyed - by Bill and Hillary Clinton. Target contains never-before-released details of the intimidation campaign launched to silence Kathleen...one way or the other. It provides new insight not just into the death of Kathleen's husband -- on the same day that Bill Clinton assaulted Kathleen in the Oval Office - but into Bill's sexual addiction and Hillary's compulsive enabling, a dangerous combination when partnered with the power of the presidency. Willey makes a persuasive case that Hillary should NOT be returned to the White House in ANY capacity.

And, as evidence that the Clintons haven t changed, the terror and harassment continue. Over 2007's Labor Day weekend, Kathleen's home was burglarized. Instead of taking jewelry or computers, the thief took the manuscript for Target, with its explosive revelations that could damage Sen. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.

It was a break-in all too reminiscent of an incident 10 years ago in which Kathleen was threatened by a stranger just two days before she was to testify against President Clinton in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case. It's de ja vu all over again -- and time to stop the Clinton machine once and for all.

Last edited by forsberg_us (3/30/2011 7:22 pm)