Tex -USMC-

Dear Frogs, Iraq is fine. It's a little hot, but the natives are friendly and always eager to lend a helping hand. Wish your nation's intrinsic cowardice wasn't keeping you from being here. Love, Sam or something to that effect.

Ahh, just took a look at your profile- didn't realize you weren't American. Knock yourself out.

Don't go. Wait for a better exchange rate.

Yeah, that's a bitch that Microsoft employees are buying iPods rather than Microsoft's own mp3 play- wait a second.

Lazy bums, all of you! I had the final draft all hammered out, but neglected to keep a copy after I posted to the forum. Whoops.

Long overdue, but the timing's rather bad.

From the trailers, it looks like it's worth seeing, even if it's only for the wargasm factor.

Do you really think that was the real reason? Considering the job that's been done in the post-invasion reconstruction, I'd say the possibility that our leadership is just utterly incompetent is not a possibility I'd throw aside so lightly.

Racism? Bad? Getting a bit controversial in here, n'est-ce pas?

You mean this? http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2....printer

403 Forbidden

Let's keep in mind that it's Canada, it's January, and it's fucking cold out.

'blame' is the wrong word, because operations involving the US military that the Clinton administration anticipated occurring in Iraq were focussed on containment. Not only was the US military well suited to this task, but hindsight is making it clear every day that containment was an infinitely preferable alternative to the current situation. You can't launch into a war of aggression based on an utterly unprecedented set of policies and doctrines and then pass the buck to the previous administration that didn't share your outlook.

Fixed.

Western nation exploits death and suffering in the 3rd World for political gain? I am shocked, just shocked to see that there is gambling going on in this establishment! In other news, India finds time in their busy schedule of tsunami recovery to shun Dalit (Untouchable) victims of the disaster. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm....chables Nothing like a disaster to cast a collossally moronic and barbaric social injustice into sharp relief.

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3534346

Confirmation hearings for Bush's nominee for Attorney General, Alberto Gonzalez, began this morning. http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/01/06/gonzales.hearing/index.html

From Economist.com premium...

Sic transit obses

It's premium content from The Economist, but here's the link anyway: http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3524771 The point is that, while Econ101 tells you that devaluing a currency will increase exports and shore up the current account deficit, the reality of the situation dictates that when the currency in question is the bulwark of the world economy, the implications of weakening the currency for the sake of shoring up an ever-widening gap in the account balance are, to put it mildly, serious. How this will all end, whether it be a recession in the US or worldwide economic armageddon, remains to be seen. It does bear monitoring, however.

Not necessarily. Though investing in a country with a weak currency isn't attractive on that particular set of parameters, the relative weakening of the currency increases a foreign investor's purchasing power and essentially gets them more bang for their buck- why do you think that our decreased purchasing power wouldn't translate into relative adjustments for our competitors? In the case of America, that's the only way to close the current account deficit significantly, because we simply do not make enough stuff anymore for exports to do the job on their own. At any rate, the tendency of a weak currency increasing foreign investment will only continue insofar as the investors expect the currency to strengthen in the relatively near future. That's something the dollar has shown a distinct unlikelihood of doing lately.

All that has very little to do with the fact that the devaluation of the dollar has been a purposeful move on the part of the Fed- the reason is that our current account deficit (trade imbalance), while always high, has gotten worrisome. The only way to correct that imbalance is to attract foreign investment- in fact, foreign investment was largely responsible for America's economic recovery in 2001-2002, moreso than the tax cuts ever were; we have the impending decision to weaken the dollar to thank for that. The problem is that policymakers are either unwilling or unable to correct the trend, now that it is no longer advantageous.

You like saying that, don't you? The silver lining I see is this: the fact that this is a lose-lose situation could encourage governments to act in a slightly more rational manner than they normally do, because minimizing losses in the looming market adjustment is the best they can hope for. The problem is that America's economy is a freight train heading toward a rail bridge that was washed out 5 years ago. edit: You're angling for the title of first European continentalist, aren't you?

Well, it looks like Williamson County Sheriff's Department might not actually file those possession charges, and the dean cut me some slack and extended my contract probation to this semester instead of sending me to the disciplinary committee So I guess I'm batting about .500, heh