... DemocraticUnderground accusing the Washington Post (of all papers!) of having a pro-Republican bias smacks of the old adage that ``if you think everyone in the world is out to get you, you may be the one with the problem''.
That, as has been repeatedly pointed out, DU posted the post-filtering comment log as evidence that no offensive comments had been posted just makes the whole thing sweeter, of course.
No, you're right -- my analogy was extremely unfair...
... to the wolf. At least the wolf, when it breaks into the fold, is trying to feed itself and its pack. These punk kids are just breaking things for the joy of hearing them break. It's not like it's 1983 again, either -- these things have been against the law (and the law has been enforced) for the entire lifetime of some college freshman now downloading shellcode which he couldn't write and doesn't really understand.
Ah yes, that old standby of dorm-room logic, ``proof by vulgarity''. Well done.
As flyinwhitey has pointed out, FISA is a court which authorizes law enforcement activities which are too sensitive to be heard in an open court. FISA has no jurisdiction over wartime and peacetime intelligence gathering activities, so asking FISA for permission to carry out such activities, either before or after the fact, would not only be irrelevant, it would be a serious abdication of power and responsibility on the part of the executive. The courts have upheld this fact a number of times, and the past half-dozen presidential administrations have acted accordingly.
Now, you would be quite correct if you were to point out that materials gathered without a warrant would not be admissible in a criminal court case -- no one is contesting this. This does not make gathering such information for other purposes in the least bit `illegal', however.
You're putting words in my mouth. My central position is that I want no nation to have the bomb. My observation is that the behavior of the nations in the nuclear club is
terribly unhelpful towards that goal.
`Unhelpful' only if you believe that, were we to disarm, Iran would no longer want nuclear weapons. Since Iran has stated, as a matter of policy, that it seeks such weapons, not as a deterrent, but to wage genocidal war on another nation in its region, I consider your position rather silly.
More generally, your persistence in considering it equally bad for any nation to have nukes suggests that if, per your suggestion, the US were to disarm tomorrow, and Iran were to gain the bomb in the meantime, we would be no worse off than the present situation where we have the bomb and they do not. Do you believe this?
One more point: Nations have no morals. Thus it makes no sense to talk about if it's morally equivalent for the US and Iran to have the bomb, that's just idle talk.
Incorrect. You are proposing a specific course of action (the US should disarm, and we should take no action to prevent Iran getting the bomb). A course of action is either moral, or it is not. Do you think this course, which will, materially, make both the US and the world less safe, is the moral course? Do you?
Your claim that a democratic nation is somehow more right to have the bomb than other nations is ridiculous in the light of the destruction that democratic nations have brought
upon our world.
A-ha! Thank you for getting to the heart of the matter. I think its reasonable for the readers of this thread to judge your position by your similtaneous disdain for Democratic self-government and desire that no action be taken against brutal totalitarian regimes. Don't you?
Add to this the moral compasslessness of considering an invasion of the Japanese mainland preferable to the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, even though such an invasion would have resulted in far more casualties -- indeed, far more civilian casualties.
I do not doubt that you have neither studied the battle of Okinawa, nor been taught about it in school. Had you, you would note that far more Japanese civilians (and far, far more Japanese in total) died in that fight than died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. That these two bombings spared a much larger such cataclysm on Honshu and Hokkaido of itself makes the bombings the more humane course of action.
It is pathetic to suggest that the US (and other nations) should be allowed
to have nuclear weapons and others not, especially when the nations in the
nuclear club have threatened to use the bomb against nations that don't
have them (US, UK, and most recently France).
Thank you for putting this so succinctly. This `big idea' -- that there is no moral difference between nations who have nuclear weapons, and thus we should be no less willing to accept Iran having such arms than the US -- seems to be your central position; it is a position I find laughably detached from reality.
Myself, I would make two points:
a.) there is a difference between a nation which has shown itself capable of holding such weapons responsibly having the bomb and a nation which has stated as a matter of policy that it would like to use such a weapon at the earliest opportunity.
and b.) a point which is so obvious that I wouldn't feel the need to mention it at all if your repeated mention of Pakistan didn't suggest you had missed it: once a nation already has the bomb, one's choices in dealing with it are quite constrained (see, eg, North Korea), so it behooves us to take action, whatever that action may be, before this comes about, not afterward.
To me, Israel's 1981 destruction of the Iraqi nuclear facility at Ossirak stands as a great success in dealing with nations trying to acquire the bomb, as does recent diplomatic successes with Libya (diplomacy made possible only by the counter-example of Iraq). Our own dealings with Iran and our dealings with North Korea back when we could have made a difference equally stand as great failures in this field.
So, we are agreed that Iran is trying to obtain nuclear weapons. Good. And we are agreed that this is a problem. So far so good.
Having agreed that a nation which as a matter of official policy wants to destroy another nation in its region, and as a matter of rhetoric is undeterred by the possibility that it would be nuked in the process is working to obtain nuclear weapons, it seems a little odd to then turn around and say ``who can blame them?'', however.
After all, for all your grand rhetoric of disarmament, there's not really any use in pretending that either a.) the world would be a better place, or even as safe as it is now if the brutal totalitarian regime in Iran had nuclear weapons, or b.) it is ``just the same'' (morally equivalent, that is) for a large, stable, and peaceful democracy such as the US to have nuclear weapons as it is for a totalitarian regime whose stated policy is genocide to, right?
If our goal were to ``increase supply'' alone, surely signing off on French requests that sanctions against Iraq be dropped would have done this more quickly, more cheaply, and more effectively than invading, no?
Which said, I'd like to thank you for pointing out the basic fluidity (no pun intended) of crude as a commodity -- a point which makes claims that the US is ``deeply concerned'' about Iranian oil sales to China or the EU rather laughable, after all (as you point out, Iran selling oil to China or the EU reduces the demand from those places for other sources of oil, thus lowering oil prices for us).
It appears that you were not paying attention when Iran recently stated that they do not need or intend to develop nuclear weapons.
Oh, I was paying attention. I've also been paying attention to the last two and a half decades of statements by Iranian leadership when they speak to domestic and pan-Islamic audiences. Judging a nation only by what they say at the negotiating table isn't very bright, after all.
But enough dodging the question: do you believe that Iran is not developing nuclear weapons? Do you?
It must also be mentioned that the planned invasion March 2006 was announced half a year ago, the western propaganda to justify this planned invasion is extremely easy to see through if you had been paying attention the last decade.
Oh, is it March now? Do you realize that you guys are beginning to sound like the folks who keep telling us that the Rapture will happen on such and such a date, and then hastily rescheduling when no one disappears? Just look at the `certain' dates of US war with Iran which have been declared so far:
``Ritter said that President George W. Bush has received and signed off on orders for an aerial attack on Iran planned for June 2005. Its purported goal is the destruction of Iran's alleged program to develop nuclear weapons, but Ritter said neoconservatives in the administration also expected that the attack would set in motion a chain of events leading to regime change in the oil-rich nation of 70 million -- a possibility Ritter regards with the greatest skepticism. '' (source here)
William R. Clark, author of the popular lefty flight of fantasy ``Petrodollar Warfare: Dollars, Euros and the Upcoming Iranian Oil Bourse'', had originally projected an invasion ``by December 2005'' (Mr. Clark, no stranger to wild predictions which have failed to come true, seems to have ceased naming specific dates, perhaps a sign that he is not as sure of his claims as he would have us believe)
Michel Chossudovsky and others now assert that not only is war with Iran planned for `early march, 2006', but that it will begin with a US nuclear first strike against Iran.
Since you yourself seem convinced that the last of these three dates is correct (even if the first two were not), let's make an agreement: let's revisit this thread on April 1, and if the US has not invaded Iran, will you admit that you were wrong?
Hang on a second I am Canadian! We are the second largest supplier of oil to the US. We have massive oil reserves. I guess we better abrogate our adherence to the non-proliferation treaty and start developing nuclear weapons aimed at Washington now. It could be the only way to stop the army of the evil empire invading from us.
Actually, you are the first. The fact that you Canadians do not actually consider the US a threat to your safety and security (if you did, your current low expenditures on military preparedness could only be described as suicidal) kind of puts the lie to your myth of the big bad oil-grabbing US, now doesn't it?
Okay, I'll put you down in group 2, ``isn't bothered by the idea of a nuclear Iran''. Thanks for answering the question.
As for the remainder of your post, the fact that you see no operational difference between a large, stable democracy like India having nukes, and a totalitarian regime like Iran which has stated as a matter of policy that it believes that another nation in its region should be obliterated having nukes tells us much more about your reasoning than anything else you've said.
Okay, that's not quite true. Your ignorance about jthe world oil economy tells us a lot too (hint: can you name the top 10 nations selling oil to the US? Do you think the list supports your claims about the importance of Iraqi, Iranian, and Russian oil? Well, do you?).
Care to back that statement up, neocon? As far as I know, they've claimed to develop a peaceful, civil nuclear program to generate power.
I'd say you haven't been paying attention. While it is true that the negotiation stance of the Iranian government has always been to make the (laughable, in light of their specific acquisitions and actions) claim that they are only pursuing peaceful nuclear arms, it is as true that representatives of the Iranian government have been much more direct about their goals when speaking to audiences within the Islamic world:
Outgoing Iranian President Rafsanjani, in a speech at Tehran University on December 14, 2001, called for the `Islamic World' to develop nuclear weapons for use against Israel, noting that ``"If a day comes when the world of Islam is duly equipped with the arms Israel has in possession, the strategy of colonialism would face a stalemate because application of an atomic bomb would not leave any thing in Israel but the same thing would just produce damages in the Muslim world''
Hassan Ruwhani, Secretary of the Iranian Supreme National Security Council, has stated explicitly that "The reason that Iran becomes signatory to international conventions is to pave the way for access to modern technology which developed countries have made commitments to provide."
The destruction of the state of Israel, by any means necessary, has repeatedly been stated as a vital policy goal of the Iranian regime, from the first generation of Iranian leaders such as Khomeini (``Every Muslim has a duty to prepare himself for battle against Israel.'') to`reformers' such as former president Khatami (``"We should mobilize the whole Islamic World for a sharp confrontation with the Zionist regime. If we abide by the Qur'an, all of us should mobilize to kill.'') through the current leadership, such as president, Ahmadinejad's call for Israel to be ``wiped off the map''.
All of which is pretty much a moot point, however. As you yourself, in a desperate attempt to have it both ways, point out, no one really believes Iran's nuclear aims are purely peaceful. Such groups as the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (hardly a bunch of raving right-wingers, after all!) have documented Iran's quest for dual use and purely military technologies at great length. So the question remains, unanswered by you: Do you really believe Iran is not seeking nuclear weapons? Or do you really not have a problem with them doing so? Or are you merely seeking to have it both ways, wanting them not to have such weapons while also wishing to condemn anyone who shares your concerns as being ideologically impure?
Nope, nothing here giving Congress any authority to regulate business in the U.S., let alone China.
Hmm. Would that be Article I, Section 8:
Section 8. The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;
Okay, I'll bite. Which of the following is the case:
You don't believe, despite their own claims to be doing so, that Iran is developing nuclear weapons
You believe Iran is developing nuclear weapons, but see no problem with them doing so
You believe Iran is developing nuclear weapons, and see a problem with this, but nonetheless persist in accusing anyone else who sees a problem with this of having shady motives
Had responded to the article before I saw your comment. There, I wrote:
For whatever it's worth, John Derbyshire self-published his second novel (his first novel, and his
subsequent pop-math book about Prime Number theory were published traditionally, and have been modest
successes) using a Print-on-Demand shop. His account of the whole self-publishing experience (he's
generally happy about it) can be read here.
For whatever it's worth, John Derbyshire self-published his second novel (his first novel, and his subsequent
pop-math book about Prime Number theory were published traditionally, and have been modest successes) using a
Print-on-Demand shop. His account of the whole self-publishing experience (he's generally happy about it) can be read
here.
As I already noted in a correction, that's 3.6 billion tickets, not dollars, so you're claim is simply incorrect on its face.
More generally, let's look at the numbers: -- we've just seen that India as a whole sells only marginally more tickets than Hollywood (a third or so more)
on a vastly larger number of films. To be specific, a Hollywood film averages about 2.6b / 333 = 7,807,807 tickets / film, while
an Indian film averages about 3.6b / 1000 films = 3,600,000, or less than half as much.
If we note that, on top of this, as both I and you have now pointed out, Bollywood tickets cost rather less than Hollywood tickets, we can note
that your average Hollywood movie is bigger than your average Bollywood movie on gross revenues as well as ticket numbers...
Yes, those numbers are ticket sales -- still means that any Bollywood flick is getting a fraction of the
penetration of a Hollywood flick. The Hollywood tickets cost more, too.:-)
Horse-drawn wagons and water-wheels are what made America a superpower! The disappearance
of horses from our road and mills from our rivers are a sign that America is dying! If we
don't find a way to revive these industries within 15 years, we'll be dead!
At the risk of pointing out the obvious, if Bollywood is making $3.6 billion a year on 1000 films, and
Hollywood is making $2.6 billion a year (a bit over two thirds as much) on one third as many films, is
Bollywood actually `bigger' in any sense save raw number of films cranked out?
So let's see -- your assertion is that the rate of growth shrunk steadily
through 2000, that it was negative in 2000Q3, that it rose slightly in
2000Q4, and then resumed shrinking in the January 2001 numbers (a month in
which Bush was only President for 10 or 11 days, and in which his economic
team had not yet taken over -- yet this whole process was somehow, magically,
``Bush's fault''.
That doesn't even pass the laugh test
Back here on earth, when we see that a recession has occurred, we look at where
the economy stopped growing and began to shrink for its causes.
But on planet js7a, you believe that lefty think-tanks have `more accurate' numbers
than the official ones, and you mysteriously can't reach any web sites which contradict
your claims. You then assert that the middle of the trough of a recession is where
we should look for the roots of that recession.
This too fails to even pass the laugh test.
You have, once again, shown yourself to be a deeply unserious person, who not only
cannot construct a single post without some major stumble or gaffe, but cannot keep
his story straight (a moment ago, you were claiming that the first signs of shrinkage
were in March, 2001, now you admit the economy shrunk in 2000Q3 after being stagnant
for some time) for two posts running.
On top of your disdain for free speech (which is less important than free drugs to you),
your myriad confusions (such as your not knowing the difference between per capita GDP and mean salary
and your bizarre khasim-like assertion that US elections are held in March), you have long
since shown yourself to be not only a deeply unserious person, but to be a person who will
make any claim, no matter how far-fetched to support his argument -- without even the basic
courtesy to verify that what he is saying is not immediately verifiable as false (not to mention
true).
Given this, nothing you can post at this point is likely to convince the readers of this thread
that you are serious -- or even honest and non-ignorant.
And given that, this thread can serve no further purpose.
Link works fine from here, but you can always get there yourself from here -- but more amusing is that ``everywhere else you look' seems to be `some random lefty think tank which doesn't identify
its donors. Jhon has already provided multiple other sources which disagree with you.
I'd say the readers of this thread should have no trouble judging your ``my lefty think tank's numbers are right, everyone
else is part of the conspiracy!'' defense for themselves...
Slashdot Mirror
That, as has been repeatedly pointed out, DU posted the post-filtering comment log as evidence that no offensive comments had been posted just makes the whole thing sweeter, of course.
Throw the book at 'em. :-)
``Lambs'', of course, are innocent and defenseless. I think you mean ``wolves thrown to the farmers''...
As flyinwhitey has pointed out, FISA is a court which authorizes law enforcement activities which are too sensitive to be heard in an open court. FISA has no jurisdiction over wartime and peacetime intelligence gathering activities, so asking FISA for permission to carry out such activities, either before or after the fact, would not only be irrelevant, it would be a serious abdication of power and responsibility on the part of the executive. The courts have upheld this fact a number of times, and the past half-dozen presidential administrations have acted accordingly.
Now, you would be quite correct if you were to point out that materials gathered without a warrant would not be admissible in a criminal court case -- no one is contesting this. This does not make gathering such information for other purposes in the least bit `illegal', however.
`Unhelpful' only if you believe that, were we to disarm, Iran would no longer want nuclear weapons. Since Iran has stated, as a matter of policy, that it seeks such weapons, not as a deterrent, but to wage genocidal war on another nation in its region, I consider your position rather silly.
More generally, your persistence in considering it equally bad for any nation to have nukes suggests that if, per your suggestion, the US were to disarm tomorrow, and Iran were to gain the bomb in the meantime, we would be no worse off than the present situation where we have the bomb and they do not. Do you believe this?
Incorrect. You are proposing a specific course of action (the US should disarm, and we should take no action to prevent Iran getting the bomb). A course of action is either moral, or it is not. Do you think this course, which will, materially, make both the US and the world less safe, is the moral course? Do you?
A-ha! Thank you for getting to the heart of the matter. I think its reasonable for the readers of this thread to judge your position by your similtaneous disdain for Democratic self-government and desire that no action be taken against brutal totalitarian regimes. Don't you?
Add to this the moral compasslessness of considering an invasion of the Japanese mainland preferable to the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, even though such an invasion would have resulted in far more casualties -- indeed, far more civilian casualties.
I do not doubt that you have neither studied the battle of Okinawa, nor been taught about it in school. Had you, you would note that far more Japanese civilians (and far, far more Japanese in total) died in that fight than died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. That these two bombings spared a much larger such cataclysm on Honshu and Hokkaido of itself makes the bombings the more humane course of action.
Thank you for putting this so succinctly. This `big idea' -- that there is no moral difference between nations who have nuclear weapons, and thus we should be no less willing to accept Iran having such arms than the US -- seems to be your central position; it is a position I find laughably detached from reality.
Myself, I would make two points:
a.) there is a difference between a nation which has shown itself capable of holding such weapons responsibly having the bomb and a nation which has stated as a matter of policy that it would like to use such a weapon at the earliest opportunity.
and b.) a point which is so obvious that I wouldn't feel the need to mention it at all if your repeated mention of Pakistan didn't suggest you had missed it: once a nation already has the bomb, one's choices in dealing with it are quite constrained (see, eg, North Korea), so it behooves us to take action, whatever that action may be, before this comes about, not afterward.
To me, Israel's 1981 destruction of the Iraqi nuclear facility at Ossirak stands as a great success in dealing with nations trying to acquire the bomb, as does recent diplomatic successes with Libya (diplomacy made possible only by the counter-example of Iraq). Our own dealings with Iran and our dealings with North Korea back when we could have made a difference equally stand as great failures in this field.
Having agreed that a nation which as a matter of official policy wants to destroy another nation in its region, and as a matter of rhetoric is undeterred by the possibility that it would be nuked in the process is working to obtain nuclear weapons, it seems a little odd to then turn around and say ``who can blame them?'', however.
After all, for all your grand rhetoric of disarmament, there's not really any use in pretending that either a.) the world would be a better place, or even as safe as it is now if the brutal totalitarian regime in Iran had nuclear weapons, or b.) it is ``just the same'' (morally equivalent, that is) for a large, stable, and peaceful democracy such as the US to have nuclear weapons as it is for a totalitarian regime whose stated policy is genocide to, right?
Which said, I'd like to thank you for pointing out the basic fluidity (no pun intended) of crude as a commodity -- a point which makes claims that the US is ``deeply concerned'' about Iranian oil sales to China or the EU rather laughable, after all (as you point out, Iran selling oil to China or the EU reduces the demand from those places for other sources of oil, thus lowering oil prices for us).
Oh, I was paying attention. I've also been paying attention to the last two and a half decades of statements by Iranian leadership when they speak to domestic and pan-Islamic audiences. Judging a nation only by what they say at the negotiating table isn't very bright, after all.
But enough dodging the question: do you believe that Iran is not developing nuclear weapons? Do you?
It must also be mentioned that the planned invasion March 2006 was announced half a year ago, the western propaganda to justify this planned invasion is extremely easy to see through if you had been paying attention the last decade.
Oh, is it March now? Do you realize that you guys are beginning to sound like the folks who keep telling us that the Rapture will happen on such and such a date, and then hastily rescheduling when no one disappears? Just look at the `certain' dates of US war with Iran which have been declared so far:
Since you yourself seem convinced that the last of these three dates is correct (even if the first two were not), let's make an agreement: let's revisit this thread on April 1, and if the US has not invaded Iran, will you admit that you were wrong?
Will you?
Actually, you are the first. The fact that you Canadians do not actually consider the US a threat to your safety and security (if you did, your current low expenditures on military preparedness could only be described as suicidal) kind of puts the lie to your myth of the big bad oil-grabbing US, now doesn't it?
As for the remainder of your post, the fact that you see no operational difference between a large, stable democracy like India having nukes, and a totalitarian regime like Iran which has stated as a matter of policy that it believes that another nation in its region should be obliterated having nukes tells us much more about your reasoning than anything else you've said.
Okay, that's not quite true. Your ignorance about jthe world oil economy tells us a lot too (hint: can you name the top 10 nations selling oil to the US? Do you think the list supports your claims about the importance of Iraqi, Iranian, and Russian oil? Well, do you?).
Why dodge the question though -- do you believe Iran is not seeking nuclear arms?
Do you?
Care to back that statement up, neocon? As far as I know, they've claimed to develop a peaceful, civil nuclear program to generate power.
I'd say you haven't been paying attention. While it is true that the negotiation stance of the Iranian government has always been to make the (laughable, in light of their specific acquisitions and actions) claim that they are only pursuing peaceful nuclear arms, it is as true that representatives of the Iranian government have been much more direct about their goals when speaking to audiences within the Islamic world:
All of which is pretty much a moot point, however. As you yourself, in a desperate attempt to have it both ways, point out, no one really believes Iran's nuclear aims are purely peaceful. Such groups as the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (hardly a bunch of raving right-wingers, after all!) have documented Iran's quest for dual use and purely military technologies at great length. So the question remains, unanswered by you: Do you really believe Iran is not seeking nuclear weapons? Or do you really not have a problem with them doing so? Or are you merely seeking to have it both ways, wanting them not to have such weapons while also wishing to condemn anyone who shares your concerns as being ideologically impure?
Well?
Hmm. Would that be Article I, Section 8:
Nice try, though...
- You don't believe, despite their own claims to be doing so, that Iran is developing nuclear weapons
- You believe Iran is developing nuclear weapons, but see no problem with them doing so
- You believe Iran is developing nuclear weapons, and see a problem with this, but nonetheless persist in accusing anyone else who sees a problem with this of having shady motives
?Well, ``keep asking the people until they give us the answer we want'' is the EU way, is it not?
Had responded to the article before I saw your comment. There, I wrote:
For whatever it's worth, John Derbyshire self-published his second novel (his first novel, and his subsequent pop-math book about Prime Number theory were published traditionally, and have been modest successes) using a Print-on-Demand shop. His account of the whole self-publishing experience (he's generally happy about it) can be read here.
For whatever it's worth, John Derbyshire self-published his second novel (his first novel, and his subsequent pop-math book about Prime Number theory were published traditionally, and have been modest successes) using a Print-on-Demand shop. His account of the whole self-publishing experience (he's generally happy about it) can be read here.
As I already noted in a correction, that's 3.6 billion tickets, not dollars, so you're claim is simply incorrect on its face.
More generally, let's look at the numbers: -- we've just seen that India as a whole sells only marginally more tickets than Hollywood (a third or so more) on a vastly larger number of films. To be specific, a Hollywood film averages about 2.6b / 333 = 7,807,807 tickets / film, while an Indian film averages about 3.6b / 1000 films = 3,600,000, or less than half as much.
If we note that, on top of this, as both I and you have now pointed out, Bollywood tickets cost rather less than Hollywood tickets, we can note that your average Hollywood movie is bigger than your average Bollywood movie on gross revenues as well as ticket numbers...
Yes, those numbers are ticket sales -- still means that any Bollywood flick is getting a fraction of the penetration of a Hollywood flick. The Hollywood tickets cost more, too. :-)
Horse-drawn wagons and water-wheels are what made America a superpower! The disappearance of horses from our road and mills from our rivers are a sign that America is dying! If we don't find a way to revive these industries within 15 years, we'll be dead!
Or not...
At the risk of pointing out the obvious, if Bollywood is making $3.6 billion a year on 1000 films, and Hollywood is making $2.6 billion a year (a bit over two thirds as much) on one third as many films, is Bollywood actually `bigger' in any sense save raw number of films cranked out?
Just askin'...
So let's see -- your assertion is that the rate of growth shrunk steadily through 2000, that it was negative in 2000Q3, that it rose slightly in 2000Q4, and then resumed shrinking in the January 2001 numbers (a month in which Bush was only President for 10 or 11 days, and in which his economic team had not yet taken over -- yet this whole process was somehow, magically, ``Bush's fault''.
That doesn't even pass the laugh test
Back here on earth, when we see that a recession has occurred, we look at where the economy stopped growing and began to shrink for its causes.
But on planet js7a, you believe that lefty think-tanks have `more accurate' numbers than the official ones, and you mysteriously can't reach any web sites which contradict your claims. You then assert that the middle of the trough of a recession is where we should look for the roots of that recession.
This too fails to even pass the laugh test.
You have, once again, shown yourself to be a deeply unserious person, who not only cannot construct a single post without some major stumble or gaffe, but cannot keep his story straight (a moment ago, you were claiming that the first signs of shrinkage were in March, 2001, now you admit the economy shrunk in 2000Q3 after being stagnant for some time) for two posts running.
On top of your disdain for free speech (which is less important than free drugs to you), your myriad confusions (such as your not knowing the difference between per capita GDP and mean salary and your bizarre khasim-like assertion that US elections are held in March), you have long since shown yourself to be not only a deeply unserious person, but to be a person who will make any claim, no matter how far-fetched to support his argument -- without even the basic courtesy to verify that what he is saying is not immediately verifiable as false (not to mention true).
Given this, nothing you can post at this point is likely to convince the readers of this thread that you are serious -- or even honest and non-ignorant.
And given that, this thread can serve no further purpose.
Link works fine from here, but you can always get there yourself from here -- but more amusing is that ``everywhere else you look' seems to be `some random lefty think tank which doesn't identify its donors. Jhon has already provided multiple other sources which disagree with you.
I'd say the readers of this thread should have no trouble judging your ``my lefty think tank's numbers are right, everyone else is part of the conspiracy!'' defense for themselves...