Buzzy, I've been to the states several times. Many of the people are great, friendly and helpful. Like anywhere else, the US has its share of red necks like you. Fortunately I do not judge the american people on the efforts of a few like yourself. But as far as the rest of my comments on your diatribe about the land of the free, they still hold.
The problem is that if those in the 3rd world start killing themselves they would blame the US for DOING NOTHING, for not caring, isolationists etc they would accuse us of accomplices of the agressors for not stopping them. it's their mindset and their ideology to blame and criticize America for all of their disgraces. however in this case we are directly affected we have to stop terrorists otherwise they would attack us. the world is not helping. idiots. it goes to show why they are in the thirld world and we in the first.
Let's hear it for the Germans When I see headlines reading "Germany opposes war", I don't think, dirty traitors, snivelling cowards or whatever George and Tony think. I cry "Hooray!" For what could be more reassuring than a peace-loving, war-hating Germany? This is what we spent most of last century praying for; now that we have it, all we do is complain. America is furious with Germany over its lack of support for an invasion of Iraq. Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, went so far last week as to condemn it as "old Europe". There is no greater insult in Rumsfeld's book. But he seems to have forgotten what Americans traditionally mean by it. The US has always thought of "old Europe" as devious, unscrupulous, expansionist and imperialist, regularly threatening the peace of the world. Today, that description would better describe the US than Germany. If, on the other hand, there is such a thing as "new Europe", Germany is clearly it. Almost 60 years since the end of the second world war, no traces of the old Nazi expansionism survive. The Germans have become pussycats. Only a few years ago, it was still possible for Nicholas Ridley to suggest, in an interview with the Spectator, a comparison between Hitler's attempted military takeover of Europe and the supposed economic ambitions of Chancellor Kohl. The interview was illustrated by a cartoon of Ridley as a vandal, painting a Hitler moustache on a poster of Kohl's face. (Ridley had to resign from Margaret Thatcher's cabinet as a result.) This would be unthinkable now. Who could find anything remotely Hitlerian in Gerhard Schröder - a smoothie who may or may not dye his hair, who may or may not have a mistress as well as a fourth wife, but who shrinks from even the most modest kind of international grandstanding. And fears that this may be a false posture - that the Germans may still harbour secretly a desire to lord it over Europe - would not seem to be justified. In a debate last week on the future of Europe, held at the ICA, the German poet Hans Magnus Enzensberger plausibly maintained that Germany is much more comfortable with its diminished role on the world stage than is either Britain or France. He is, perhaps, a little biased. He is a European federalist. But he pointed out that, until its unification in 1871, Germany was a collection of independent principalities whose citizens drew a sense of unity only from a common culture. Their stab at world imperialism in the 20th century was so disastrous and horrible in every way that they were only too happy to revert to the status of a middle-sized power, unburdened by international responsibilities. Britain, which is obviously much closer to Rumsfeld's idea of what a European nation should be like because it follows the US wherever it leads, fits the description "old Europe" much better than Germany. For Britain - or, at any rate, Tony Blair - still can't help hankering after a world role. The Germans are now sufficiently confident of having cast off Hitler's shadow that they even dare insinuate Hitlerian tendencies in others. Schröder was forced to apologise to Bush last autumn after his justice minister, Herta Däubler-Gmelin, accused the US president of using Iraq to divert public attention from domestic political problems. "It's a method that is sometimes favoured," she was controversially quoted as saying. "Hitler also did that." Indeed he did. And, if one were of a suspicious bent, one might even wonder if the British government wasn't up to something similar last week, although in this case to divert attention not to Iraq but away from it. For the police's dramatic if somewhat fruitless raid on the Finsbury Park mosque forced off some front pages the news that the government was sending 30,000 troops to the Gulf. In 2001, Britain spent $34.7bn on defence, about $2bn more than France and $8bn more than Germany. Britain is, in fact, the biggest spender on defence in Europe. This may be a good thing, or it may not, but it is difficult not to be envious of the greater sums spent on health and transport by our largest European neighbours. In any event, Rumsfeld's picture of Germany as "old Europe" and Britain as "new" is very rum. It means nothing at all, in fact - unless "new" is just another word for doing whatever America wants.
In any event, Rumsfeld's picture of Germany as "old Europe" and Britain as "new" is very rum. It means nothing at all, in fact - unless "new" is just another word for doing whatever America wants." Well said. BUZZY: Yes I think, but for myself, and not as dictated by your red neck ramblings !
Times that try Americans' souls Commentary: U.S. is crippled by severe shortsightedness By Chris Pummer, CBS.MarketWatch.com Last Update: 8:13 AM ET Feb. 20, 2003 SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- Time to take a vision test: Grab the nearest piece of printed material and hold it before your eyes at a comfortable reading distance. If your eyesight is true, you'll be able to make out the type well beyond arm's length, but pull inward too far and it becomes fuzzy. You just discovered how unsettling the inability to see something right before your eyes can be. It's exactly such blurred vision that's troubling America right now. Human beings are shortsighted by nature, owing to our immediate need for food, shelter and security. Shortsightedness is also a particularly American characteristic -- little burdened as we are by history's dictates -- and we're suffering a severe case of myopia now. The shortsightedness that plagued us in early 2000 -- living like there was no tomorrow while ignoring the glaring risk of an inflated stock market -- has given way to a more troubling view. We now can't envision what tomorrow will bring, so fixated are we on risks of all sorts, both real and imagined. America has lost its vision of the future. Whether it owes to the prospect of war, the effect of a burst bubble or the stress of being the world's lone superpower, we're all struggling to conceive of what 21st Century America will become -- for ourselves and our children's children. "One of the hallmarks of maturity is the capacity for long-sighted thinking," says William F. Fry, Stanford University professor emeritus of psychology. "What makes our present short-range view doubly frightening is there will be some piper to pay for it." Losing our focus For more than a century, the rest of the world set its compass by America's expansive vision that opportunities are boundless. Even detestable communist regimes formed their misdirected dreams from a perversion of our noblest ones. We've withdrawn into ourselves for good reason. If you accept the Bush administration's "Code Orange" terrorist alert and admonition to stockpile three-days of emergency provisions, we should all be cowering in fear. If you suspect the administration is unnerving us to gain support for its war plans, you're likely suffering profound disillusionment with our political leaders. Our epidemic of shortsightedness extends to the administration itself and the implied promise that an invasion of Iraq will be quick and clean. Our technological supremacy aside, can anyone think that the quagmire that is war is so easily managed, especially with the anti-American sentiment being unleashed in the Arab world and among our long-time allies? We've developed such skewed vision that many of us now see "getting it over with" as the wisest course, as if that will cure the glaucoma that's befallen us. We've exhausted the sympathy we drew after Sept. 11 and most of the world now sees us as a vindictive force that needs to be reckoned with. We're becoming a rogue state ourselves, akin to the one the president is trying to neutralize. "No society has ever gone into a war setting an end date," said Stephen Worchel, a social and political psychologist and dean of the University of Hawaii, Hilo. "Yet we're growing comfortable with going in as long as our troops are out by such and such a date -- as if it's the Wild West, we shoot up the bad guys and ride off into the sunset. We're forgetting the West was not so easily won." Absent guiding forces Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan proved last week we can't count on him as a moderating influence on the domestic front. The brilliant, levelheaded Republican mind that Bill Clinton reappointed to keep liberal Democrats in check lacked the nerve to declare Bush's conservative tax-cuts ill conceived in his testimony before Congress. We can't turn to our society's seniors for guidance because many of them are severely disoriented. The elders on whom we rely to warn us of the lessons of history ignored it themselves. Many are still licking wounds from late forays into tech stocks, and wondering what to do with the shattered nest eggs they live on, now that money-market funds earn less than 1 percent. "The notion that the stock market can continuously produce 20 percent annual gains is dead. The problem is now a lack of ideas on what follows from that," said Neil Fligstein, a professor of the sociology of business at the University of California, Berkeley. "People have almost all the toys they want, and it's hard to see on the consumption side what will drive the economy forward," Fligstein said. "There've been periods like this before, such as 1973 to 1981. Everyone is scratching their heads and trying to figure out what to do next." Yet shortsightedness still plagues the stock market, just as it did in the discredited era of the day trader and visions of overnight wealth. Fast Buck Freddy Krueger still haunts our dreams. "A report comes out that unemployment is up or down a couple of tenths and the market goes bananas, but what in heaven's name is the difference between 5.7 and 5.9 percent?" said Maurice Elvekrog, a psychologist and chartered financial analyst from Bloomfield Hills, Mich. "Rockefeller used to line up his investments, take a ship to Europe and a couple of months later check out how they've fared. You can drive yourself batty looking for significance in the short run." Confronting the future If America is to guide the world for another 100 years, it's time for us to grow up. As much as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld disparaged "Old Europe" for political gain, there's truth in his words. France and Germany are cripples of their recent history, just as Great Britain supports us on a quaint memory of being the world's colonial power. Yet we're still buying President Bush's argument that "The Market" reigns supreme -- when Wall Street proved again the market is just a measure of our self-confidence. In the global marketplace of ideas, the Bush administration is a penny stock right now, and we're all holding shares. "We've created a society that's dependent on the quick fix, as if we could spend our way out of recession without some cost to bear, " Worchel said. "Rather than live a healthy lifestyle and practicing preventive medicine, the hope is we'll find the pill." Said Fry: "The mass psychology is being guided around by this administration. There's going to be a backlash, because it's not in our nature to hunker down like this." Chris Pummer is personal finance editor for CBS.MarketWatch.com in San Francisco.
hahahaha oh boy that was fun i haven't read such a delectable hodgepodge of irrelevancies for a long time being a panic peddler must be the easiest job in the world
Since you seem to enjoy reading a hodgepodge of irrelevance, may I direct your attention to the following? http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/search.php?s=&action=showresults&searchid=122274
i won't disgree with you tampa! but look carefully, there's some gold in them thar hills! ps - looked in the mirror lately?
Yes, there is some gold in them there hills - I admit that. It's just that I suspected that you've been mellowing of late, and just wanted to see if I was correct - and I am