Please refer to your letter under the title "Liar...and a murderer?" in the thread "Bush knew Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction" - here you have raised a sizable number of questions that have thus far gone entirely unanswered; and you have asked several times over for someone to give you suggestions. You've asked those questions because the conventional means available did not fetch you results.

Well, I'm describing an 'unconventional approach' that I have found always fetches excellent results where all conventional means have failed. This approach enables individuals and groups involved in complex problems to discover the patterns of relationships held between factors in the complex systems upon which they wish to act.

I suggest you look at a tool called the 'One Page Management System' (OPMS) - I believe this can help, in the future at least to resolve many of the issues you have raised. Tt's surely far too late to do anything about educating and convincing people in regard to the coming election, alas, as it will take at least a couple of months of study (for about a half-hour per day on a real 'Mission') to convince yourself that this approach really does work on complex issues such as the ones you have raised. The OPMS is based on the seminal contributions to systems science of Professor John N. Warfield - outline information about Warfield's books and papers is available at http://www.jnwarfield.com and detailed information is available at the "John N. Warfield Collection" maintained at the library of George Mason University (check out: http://ead.lib.virginia.edu/vivaead/published/gmu/vifgm00008.tp)

The OPMS works out in many ways more simply than the original portfolio of systems design tools of Warfield's: all one need do is to identify a Mission of current interest; respond to a set of 'trigger questions' about the Mission that the OPMS asks with ideas that come to mind; then integrate those ideas into models showing how the various factors in the system "contribute to" or "hinder" each other and the Mission. These models as they develop become effective Action Planning for the Mission.

Write to me directly at gs (underscore) chandy (at) yahoo (dot) com and I shall be happy to send you full information. Better yet, you might like to convince the people at Salon that they can surely go a little further than they have done thus far in enabling effective discussion and resolution of how to get people to act properly together on complex issues as as this one.

-- GSC

Obama @ Harvard (Sunday, September 28, 2008 03:32) posted right here at this thread by Breadbaker is an outstanding response to anyone who questions Obama's credentials from the earlier parts of his life. As to the later parts of his life, it does appear to me that every position Obama has won to date thus far (including this Democratic nomination as candidate for POTUS, 2008) has been on merit.

It will be observed that GW Bush did it all very differently, right through his infamous career.

And GW Bush supports John McBush!

-- GSC

Paul Newman... a different kind of US citizen from GW Bush, War Criminal - he was (/is) as admirable in all ways as GW Bush is loathsome!

GSC

(If her presence on the Republican ticket helps ensure a total wipeout of John McBush and all that he believes in!!)

GSC

RIGHT ON!

...and you guys had GW Bush as POTUS not just once, but TWICE over, and look where the US has reached now!

I wonder if there is any economist properly capable of computing the real costs of the past eight years of the 'Bush Maladmistration' to the US (and to the rest of the world)...

... Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz computed the costs of GW Bush's little adventure in Iraq as costing the US at least 2-3 TRILLION (over the next few years). [In my opinion, that has to be a gross underestimation].

But what are the real costs of this entire 'Presidency'?

GSC

You're entirely right, gehgoeson, those costs are huge, frightening, maybe immeasurable...(though it would be interesting, at least, to see some computations of these costs)...

Those costs should include, apart from money, the loss of respect and admiration for the US worldwide since the advent of GW Bush and his Gang of thieves to power in the US...how does one compute something like that?

Also, the costs to the world of having its attention diverted all these many years to 'GW Bush's little adventure in Iraq' when there were and are real global issues on which we should have focussed: resource and energy depletion; pollution; global warming; etc, etc, etc - and of course the unlimited overgrowth of human population worldwide and its callous exploitation of planetary resources without a thought for our children's and grandchildren's tomorrows (which is the primary cause of all the other ills we are facing globally).

I do hope Obama - assuming he wins in November - will work to focus the world's energies on real priorities and issues for a change...

BUT WATCH OUT FOR THE VERY DIRTY TRICKS EVEN NOW BEING GOTTEN READY BY BUSH-CHENEY-ROVE-McBush-PALIN!!! There will be plenty of these as all the Palin bad news envelops the Republican presidential team. (And only the continuing vigilance of US voters can prevent the Bush+Neocon Gang from stealing the election as they did in 2000).

-- GSC

Based as I am in India, I'm far, far away from the scene where the crimes are likely to be carried out - so my vigilance would not be very useful, I'm afraid. (And I really wouldn't be adequately knowledgable about the variety of dirty tricks that the GW Bush Gang will play).

So it's really for you guys to maintain that preternatural vigilance: develop eyes in the back of your heads to see what's going on behind you, so to speak.

GSC