He won points with me when he said he'd talk to "enemies," like Ahmadinejad, and said our refusal to do so made us look arrogant. And he won more when he stood by that comment in the face of Clinton, Dodd and the press hammering him.
I can't, for the life of me, figure why the Brits like Hillary. Is it some kind of desire for a Thatcheresque figure, similar to the (very gay) obsession Republicans have with Reagan? Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
I can't, for the life of me, figure why the Brits like Hillary. Is it some kind of desire for a Thatcheresque figure, similar to the (very gay) obsession Republicans have with Reagan?
However, I think Jérôme over-reaches when using even this to pillory Britain. One could just as well take the second quoted table to show that Italy is the odd one out, ans that Britain is more anti-American than anyone but Spain. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
And here, quite simply, the English have a history, unlike most of the rest of Western Europe. Nil aon leigheas ar an ngra ach posadh
Here are a few less broad outlines:
5, 9-10: come on. BTW, French trains also drive on the wrong side of railways!
6: that's about a minority of the population, which is in good company of say Italian colleagues. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
BTW back at you, it's impossible to say french trains drive on the wrong side of the railway since french trains are the best in the world, which means whichever side we drive them is the best side and the rest of you must be wrong, just look at those supposedly engineering giants in germany who drive them on the "right side" and yet have so many accidents with their slower trains. (And don't even get me started on brit rail...)
And you can't really tell me with a straight face that I am wrong about the food. A country's food tells you a lot about its people. And in england's case it tells me they absolutely had to become an imperial power if but to eventually be able to provide average english with good south asian, chinese and caribean recipes to be able to have prepared for them in restaurant, lod knows they can't make it for themselves since it isn't prepared with some bland white sauce, baked beans or cucumbers. Nil aon leigheas ar an ngra ach posadh
No. There is also such a thing as different election systems. (To boot, I think the elites 50 years ago very rather different from those 25 years ago.)
Are you saying there isn't a deeply atlanticist, anti-european current pervading english society which makes it impossible for any english government to actually commit england to Europe?
I think there is such a current, it may even be stronger than everywhere else (maybe with the exception of Italy and Germany), but I do not think that it makes such a commitment impossible. At least not via the election (or referendum) booth.
so many accidents with their slower trains
Uhm... slower trains, so many accidents, where did you take that? At any rate, the side French trains drive on is the British side, they took railways from them. How much more civilised right-driving trains are is shown by the fact that France has not converted right-driving lines in the Alsace back to left-driving in 80 years :-) *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
They could've just bought TGVs you know.
I wholly agree with you on political systems and the English have the same hidebound first past the post political tradition which hobbles the Americans too. This being said, at what point does a nation need take responsibility for an outdated and undemocratic political system?
Is this true about Alsace? Even the TGV Est line? Nil aon leigheas ar an ngra ach posadh
Yes, you are! You are linking to one single accident on a conventional line. It's not like the TGV would not be prone to accidents in the same low-speed situation :-) Also, Siemens was only one consortia member for that train, but made the trains currently commissioned for the highest speed, Spain's S-103, completely, while the TGV Est sees parallel service of German ICE-3 and French TGV POS (<-acronym in a civilised right-driving language, Paris-Ostfrankreich-Süddeutschland!) at the same top speed :-)
Is this true about Alsace? Even the TGV Est line?
Yes, it is true. The TGV Est line hasn't reached Alsace proper yet, presently the end of the line 'solves' the change-over (I can testify from travelling both via Strasbourg and via Saarbrücken). *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
European Tribune member Redstar was found dead at home yesterday. A post-mortem determined he was killed with a large dose of Marmite-laced beans on toast. In addition, an army NCB weapons team later located a booby-trapped haggis in the bathroom, a large amount of glow-in-the dark custard, and a baking tray full of spring-loaded toads-in-the-hole. According to a police source speaking on condition of anonymity, the latter are "reminiscent of the chestburster creature in Ridley Scott's film, Alien (1979)". The Shadow Home Secretary has accused the government of "a cavalier attitude in the defence of British food and cultural icons". Later during Prime Minister's Questions, Gordon Brown announced that sausages will be banned from the hand luggage of airline passengers.
But to be more precise, it is also not english! Nil aon leigheas ar an ngra ach posadh
Pancakes anyone? You can't be me, I'm taken
I have mine on matters of war and peace, as well as on her anti-democratic behavior in the campaign. I have the fact that her management style -- incompetent, surrounded by Yes Men -- is precisely the style that has been so disastrous under Bush. I have her failed health care attempt in the 1990s -- failed, largely because of her stubborn attitude, trying to steamroll other plans that enjoyed bipartisan support in an effort to ensure her sacred mandates made it into the bill (thus alienating Congress).
Seriously, where do people get this idea that Hillary Clinton is anything close to a liberal? The fact that so many assume she is a liberal is proof to me that Democrats would eat paint if we spent enough money on advertising. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
Then we have a contradiction in terms. You accuse her of not being liberal enough, and then you talk of bipartisan support for non-mandated health care in the early 1990s. Mandates are an absolute must to enact government health insurance. Without them the system collapses. Bipartisan support of people funded by for-profit health companies and the pharmaceutical industry is almost worthless. What we need is a real plan that's going to work, and if it doesn't have mandates, any gov't program is going to collapse of its own weight and forever sully the name of government medicine in the United States.
The position you're taking sounds familiar, circa 2000 when people equated Gore with Bush and ended up voting for Nader.
I think the Hillary yopu speak about was long ago. I think she has been grinded up and shut off from reality by too many PR advisers. I see her as a tragic person trying to find her way, but the personal level doesn't change my negative expectations on policy and governance. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
I've been on this board for a couple years, and on dealings with Eastern Europe, I think I've always railed against Albright and Holbrooke. Would I take them over Condi/Rove/Rumsfeld, etc? Yes.
But I'm not comfortable with Obama's team either. You should read Susan Rice's papers given at her thinktank. She makes Holbrooke seem great. And though I like Samantha Power's book quite a lot, her conclusions in that same book would have led us to a wide war if she were in charge. She is an interventionist, albeit one who believes in humanitarian causes. In Bosnia, she was a vocal critic of the Vance-Owen plan because she saw it as a sop for the Serbs. OK, that's fine with me. But when James Baker scuttled the plan, the result was 100,000 murdered in the ensuing three years. The peace agreement came and Dayton looked like Vance-Owen. So, if you're going to scuttle one plan, you have a responsibility to prevent the death of 100,000. That means killing a peace plan and then intervening with hundreds of thousands of soldiers on the ground to prevent the Serbs from committing genocide. For what? When a peace agreement was in the offing already?
Her approach is maximalist. Not unlike Holbrooke and Albright's.
