Can anybody tell me what happened to Bebop-O?
— Lobelia

Yes. He was drafted and sent to Vietnam where he witnessed and participated in things that have forever warped his mind so that he can no longer see the glory of war, but can only decry the wanton slaughter of the innocent (and perhaps even of the guilty).

On the other hand, if you mean what handle is he currently posting under, it is GoodCelery!

Surely there must be something of interest in the world besides having generals on TV during a war. This is hindsight hysteria of the partisan kind. Lord, could you at least push for EVERYONE to cite credentials and conflicts of interest? Or is fairness just too much to ask? Tsk.
— shooter242

Shorter shooter: Please stop. Everybody lies. I know this because I lie and everybody else does what I do. Besides, it's all Clinton's fault for inventing lying in the first place.

shooter: Yet the left seems to continue falling behind, held back by the ball and chain of denigrating the very people it wants as an audience.

So are you saying that the left is like you or are you saying that you are like the left? Inquiring minds want to know.

... for why shooter is always so angst-ridden.

Ignorance is angst.
— shooter242

It is a first step shooter. You can't solve a problem until you realize there is a problem. There is hope. As long as your angst is ignorance-related rather than stupidity-related it can be cured.

quickstrategy: this is the active duty head of the Joint Chiefs making claims to serve his political masters.

The JCS, and particularly the Chief of the JCS is a purely political position. The JCS are no longer in the operational chain of command. Their function is purely advisory and administrative. The Chief of JCS may be the principal military adviser to the president, but as the senior ranking active-duty military officer he is answerable to the commander-in-chief. He can either say what the president tells him to, face a court martial, or resign. Those are his choices. The same is true for any active-duty officer. We recently saw Adm. Fallon exercise the last option. In some cases he may be able to request a hearing before Congress if he feels that there is something that falls under Congress's oversight prerogatives.

Asher Steinberg: If you're going to keep sarcastically calling him the Serious candidate, at least quote someone, anyone, calling him such. And it would help for your argument if that someone wasn't David Brooks or some guy working for the American Enterprise Institute. I don't see this "Serious" meme or bias anywhere.

Here, try this one:

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2007/04/john_mccain_serious_candidate.html

You obviously haven't been looking very hard. Or are you just very selective about where you look?

You left out of your summation that a significant portion of aid to Israel is a result of agreements reached as a result of the Israel-Egyptian peace treaty. This is why Israel is the largest recipient of US aid with Egypt not far behind:

1979 Israeli-Egyptian Peace Treaty.
The 1979 Camp David Peace Treaty between Israel and Egypt ushered in the current era of U.S. financial support for peace between Israel and her Arab neighbors. To facilitate a complete cessation of hostilities and Israel’s return of the Sinai Peninsula, the United States provided a total of $7.5 billion to both parties in 1979. The “Special International Security Assistance Act of 1979” (P.L. 96-35) provided military and economic grants to Israel and Egypt at a ratio of 3:2, respectively.
— CRS Report for Congress, U.S. Foreign Aid to Israel, January 5, 2006
http://digital.library.unt.edu/govdocs/crs//data/2006/upl-meta-crs-8124/RL33222_2006Jan05.pdf

Another "Mission Accomplished"

They hate the idea that somebody can go buy a home.
— Baldie McEagle

Letting the housing market collapse is just the Republicans way of cutting property taxes.

I'm also uncomfortable with the 'fairness doctrine' because it assumes a stable center against which various viewpoints can be measured.
— Paul Dirks

Are you saying there's no such thing as honesty and fairness? This is the "stable center" that is supposed to govern the presentation of information under the fairness doctrine. The fairness doctrine also provides that if someone considers that if some position or statement has not been presented fairly or honestly that person has to be granted a right to reply and set the record straight.

Like WT, I'm really curious here. Are you saying there is no way to determine whether a presentation is fair and accurate even in the presence of federal guidelines that require fairness and accuracy in broadcasting?

The Fairness Doctrine, all constitutional objections aside, was and is a joke. As if there are two, and only two, views on any given issue, and the government can be trusted to determine when the "right two" views have been represented.
— -Mona-

Well, you're in good company. Both the Heritage Foundation (http://www.heritage.org/Research/Regulation/EM368.cfm) and Michelle Malkin (http://michellemalkin.com/2007/04/15/fairness-doctrine-watch/) have said the same thing. The quashing of the fairness doctrine by the FCC in 1987 led directly to Rush Limbaugh as well as the rest of rightwing hate radio. If formed the basis of Fox News' successful defense of their right to lie to their audience (http://projectcensored.org/publications/2005/11.html) because the court held that there is no law that requires "news" organizations to present the news factually or without distortion. This is the result of the removal of the fairness doctrine.

I can understand why those who need to lie to make their points would oppose the fairness doctrine, but I can't see why anyone else would.