1. Schooled the world not to mess with America when it has a mentally unstable president.

2. Provided the armed forces with an excellent real – world training for a quick invasion and dealing with the logistics of a difficult theatre; new technologies including microwave-beam crowd disbursement, “voice of God” sonic messaging (very fascinating potential applications), on-going training for remote drome operations.

3. Established permanent military bases for the 50,000 or so troops expected to remain on top of major middle east oil reserves for the foreseeable future.

4. Taught many bright young marines about traditional Arab customs and how other peoples live via daily night raids on houses.

5. Demonstrated that their are limits to America’s conventional military capacity, useful information for both Americans and for America’s enemies.

6. Taught the world to think for themselves and not to trust America’s leaders no matter how good Americans claim their intelligence to be.

7. Demonstrated the near uselessness of millions of people demonstrating around the world against the pending illegal invasion of another nation.

8. Proved that American leaders have no more regard for world cultural heritage and similar treasures as the Taliban who blew up the 2000 year old giant Bamiyan Budda statues.

9. Provided enormous employment opportunites for doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, physiotherapists and related support personal – potentially for decades.

That’s all I got right now.

The right says the same thing about the Democrats not purging lowlifes, Ted Kennedy is the poster child, with Byrd a close second, it is just the perspective one comes from. People, myself included never think their sports team and race car driver gets enough press, it’s just human nature. My biggest gripe with Dodd and this economic mess is holding up the bill that would have regulated Fannie and Freddy several years before the meltdown, never letting even come to a debate. Obviously there was way more to the collapse than that, but there were some things that Dodd and Frank did unilaterally to make things way worse. Now they were within their rights to do those things, I’m not saying they should be criminally charged as people like Hannity have said, but they should have been held accountable at the ballot box.

Couple examples, as much as I appreciate what Duke Cunningham has done for our country he got what he deserved, same with a couple guys caught in sex scandals, I never stood up for them, Bush and immigration and some of his economic policies, I wasn’t on board with that. I try and be fair. I think I have been fair with Obama so far. Of course I agree with Republicans the vast majority of the time or I wouldn’t be one. Part of the reason you don’t hear me criticize them is I am probably not going to be against the bill as a whole but only a certain portion of it and discussions rarely get that nuanced here Enky usually runs into the room with a sledge hammer flailing over his head way before that.

Jayson,

Thanks, I thought that was what it probably was but I had never heard of it. Your right about my analogy, it really isn’t that deep, it is meant to answer the question of what will happen to those people who will lose there jobs, whatever jobs those are. But it works better for industries that evolve over time. For instance it would work well for jobs in power plants as we change technologies but less well for jobs lost in the textile industries for the reasons you cite.

There’s lots of people to blame for that, and yes, some are from “your side”.

You should learn to hold them accountable as well. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you outraged at a Republican member, in fact you seem to always defend them.

What I’ve noticed about the Left is that they try to purge assholes from their ranks as quickly as possible. The right, it seems, isn’t very good at that.

I’m still pretty cold on ebooks. I like actually reading the paper for some reason.

I don’t think the blacksmith thing holds up when the skilled labor moves to where the people get paid $1.67 an hour.

Excuse my ignorance, but what is Kindle?

I feel for people displaced but I really don’t have a solution. I always use the example of the blacksmith, once upon a time there was a blacksmith in the smallest of towns and seemingly on every corner in larger ones, as cars replaced horses the need was less so those men changed into mechanics, welders, and such. It was a natural transition, the skill sets transferred. But while that happened quickly in historical timelines it was still a transition of several decades, there was a time when a man could be the best at shoeing horses, train his son, and his son could fix cars on the side, eventually all his grandson did was fix cars, so the family business over time morphed. In this case it seems we could see the newspaper industry go away in maybe ten years. A lot of it will just depend on the demand of people, I still like to hold a book, but will my grand kids? I haven’t gotten a newspaper for years though and haven’t missed it but will enough people just want to hold a paper and not an electronic device.

See that’s the thing though. I don’t read the NYT. I read either the Akron Beacon-Journal or the Cleveland Plain Dealer. I don’t dislike gadgets, but I do for the Kindle and other ebook readers. (I tried the whole thing with my Palm and my iPaq already) I just want local news on it.

I also don’t think putting all the pressmen out of a job is a good thing, not even remotely unless the paper is paying for them and their families to relocate to China so they can all transition to jobs building Kindles.

hmmm, need more data before we declare Dodd’s career Dead
don’t miss Jane Hamsher’s take down of the current media frenzy

jayson – Someone did a cost/benefit analysis (or something like that) where they discovered it would be cheaper for the NYTimes to simply give every subscriber a Kindle and in a relatively short time (six months) the thing pays for itself. All those presses, union labor, distribution systems all go poof!, remade by the power of the intertubes. Not sure how advertising works on the KindleNYT. but since the thing is already leeched onto your credit card and the DRM etc is in place, this looks to be the future of newspapers. We’ll call em slates or something.

http://www.businessinsider.com/2009/1/printing-the-nyt-costs-twice-as-much-as-sending-every-subscriber-a-free-kindle

thx goog! good boy, now sit

For books, I like that only if it’s something in the how-to category and even then only maybe. I still like an actual book.

By the way shcb, congratulations on producing your new YouTube movie! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NaAcAgQgoY&feature=player_embedded

Same with the hatchet.
owned

Same with the wwnj whining about taxes… you douchebags are net RECIPIENTS of Fed tax expenditures. Yet you can’t help reflexively humping the leg of big money (see wwnjs rushing to defend the AIG bonus, Rush Slimeball? came out today in favor of these unwarranted, unearned bonuses)
owned

Earmarks
owned

That mediaresearch.ugly web site was painfully amateurish…
and it offered nothing but opinion. Media matters is working to restore fact-based news and reporting.
again, owned

Seriously lil ricky, it is no wonder people snicker behind your back, or to your face, your ‘information’ is partisan bullshit. Please don’t take offense at my scandalous use of such a strong word, as jbc uses it repeatedly in his lies.com manifesto.
owned

btw – fox had to ‘apologize’ for their ‘accidental’ misquoting the current VP.
Come on, they had to very carefully edit that clip to make it say what they wanted it to: an intentional distortion that leans pretty much on the lie side of the line. The only thing they are sorry about, is that they were caught red handed.
owned yet again

How stupid are wwnjs?
very

Show me where I ever used Hannity as an example of news.

I just get really tired of continually having to correct you guys on things you perceived I said that I didn’t. You guys also have the attention span of a knat if you think you can catch someone in a gotcha. It gets old. NL says above that I am saying Hannity is full of shit, I never said such a thing, the point was that we were talking about how news is gathered and reported and Knarly gives Hannity as an example. My point isn’t that Hannity can tell things that aren’t true but that as an opinion show he is not relevant to the conversation. He is not obliged to give both sides of an argument like a news program for instance, that is the job of another host or his guests. It gets old.

Sorry that facing reality is just too much for you. But do clutch your pearls, weep dramatically, declare victory and keep up the partisan poltroonery.

I mean really, you were presented with over 5000 instances of foxNOISE distorting the truth and all you can say is “George Soros”? weak

You can dish it out (weakly, like a tepid cup of tea, er I mean vitriol) but you can’t take even the slightest in return. What a bunch of glass-jawed popinjays. The party that Lincoln founded is dead, you idiots killed it. Heck of a job lil-ricky, heck of a job.

The reason I wanted to cause bodily harm to that poor woman was because she was a jerk, not because of her opinion. The rest of this discussion has just degenerated past my pain threshold.