C-span 1 is airing now conversations LBJ had about Vietnam and other foreign policy discussions on the telephone.

It may be that super patriots who leave the flag out all night long don't have enough sense to come in out of the rain.

Sorry, I wrote an extremely clumsy paragraph on Kristol (I don't want him calling to complain).

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Graph five should read: "Kristol holds up Kipling to pick at Democrats. Kristol quotes Orwell, who said that Kipling "identified with the ruling power and not the opposition."

Let's see. What's $10 bil divided by $12,000?

http://www.threecupsoftea.com/Intro.php

In 1993 [Greg] Mortenson was descending from his failed attempt to reach the peak of K2. Exhausted and disoriented, he wandered away from his group into the most desolate reaches of northern Pakistan. Alone, without food, water, or shelter he eventually stumbled into an impoverished Pakistani village where he was nursed back to health.

While recovering he observed the village’s 84 children sitting outdoors, scratching their lessons in the dirt with sticks. The village was so poor that it could not afford the $1-a-day salary to hire a teacher. When he left the village, he promised that he would return to build them a school.

I do not normally get to read Glenn's posts on the weekends, meaning that by the time I read them there are typically several hundred comments. Thus, I typically do not comment on weekend posts, and am unable to review the majority of very insightful and amusing comments.

After reading this post, however, I feel compelled to comment on this Republican derangement with a thought that has been bouncing around in my head for a few days now: STOP THE MADNESS!!! Literally, the Republican Party is infected with a mental defect that, if left untreated (by removal from power), poses a far greater threat to our daily lives than the "Jihadis" do.

The Declaration of Independence identifies three of our inalienable rights as "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Whenever I hear someone from the right (e.g., Mitt Romney) say that our most important right is to be kept alive, I cringe. In order to keep a citizen alive, all a country has to do is put him in a cage and give him three meals a day (at most). However, is life really worth living if we do not have the companion rights of liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Ask the citizens of the former Soviet Union (or the current Russia) how just being kept alive is working out for them.

So once again I say: Stop the madness - vote a Republican out of office!

"The Democratic party (of America) will again become the party of war and oppression, of that I have no doubt. We will always have among us those that reject unity - those that cannot reconcile individuality with the common good... to them I say only this: 'have the courage of your convictions - if you want to walk alone, then so be it, don't hide behind words - don't quaver in your cowardice, speak plainly your intentions and we shall deal with you on universal terms. Stand up and be the 'man' you claim to be, and the rest of us will deal with you as the law proscribes, the same law to which we bind ourselves.

-- DogFather

Wise observation. Both Parties are war-parties; but the Republicans are bat-shit crazy at the moment. The power that has accumulated in the White House over my lifetime will drive even the best person mad with power and the answer is obvious; reduce the power drastically.

Bucky1

Our savior, Ron Paul, has been reduced to selling pin-up calendar girl hotties!

http://www.hotties4ronpaul.com/

Meanwhile, that communist Krugman sings the praises of that evil warmonger LBJ!

Poverty Is Poison

By PAUL KRUGMAN

“Poverty in early childhood poisons the brain.” That was the opening of an article in Saturday’s Financial Times, summarizing research presented last week at the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

As the article explained, neuroscientists have found that “many children growing up in very poor families with low social status experience unhealthy levels of stress hormones, which impair their neural development.” The effect is to impair language development and memory — and hence the ability to escape poverty — for the rest of the child’s life.

So now we have another, even more compelling reason to be ashamed about America’s record of failing to fight poverty.

L. B. J. declared his “War on Poverty” 44 years ago. Contrary to cynical legend, there actually was a large reduction in poverty over the next few years, especially among children, who saw their poverty rate fall from 23 percent in 1963 to 14 percent in 1969.

But progress stalled thereafter: American politics shifted to the right, attention shifted from the suffering of the poor to the alleged abuses of welfare queens driving Cadillacs, and the fight against poverty was largely abandoned...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/18/opinion/18krugman.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

In thought, if not in body.

She states, with carefully thought out arguments and lovely phrases, that Muslims are scum. Like Golden Boy (before his apparent conversion), she refuses to say what she would "do about Muslims", she just pops in to argue how repulsive they are, then shuts up when asked the logical end of her repulsion.

Personaly, I think yellow crescent arm bands for all Muslims would be a good first step. Don't you, Kasimira?

Like Golden Boy, she reminds me of someone -- Michael Ledeen, maybe? Or a Mossad agent? Hard to say.

As an active gamer, one of the things I relish about games is that they are clearly fantasy. When I drop a bomb on a city, real people don't die. When I slay an orc, their orc-children back in the cave don't go hungry. I'm able to engage in this fantasy without anybody being hurt. Isn't this a healthy outlet for the human desire to conquer? How is this different from somebody who enjoys detective novels or TV shows? The war hawks who cheer this war from the sidelines are like fans of a crime serial for whom fantasy is no longer enough, and they now need to go out and commit real murders just to get a thrill.