Chirac chooses Villpin

On Tue, 31 May 2005 17:09:25 +0200, Earl Evleth
wrote:

On 31/05/05 16:54, in article ,
"nitram" wrote:

The "good news" is that the euro is at around
$1.23. Good for American tourists and those
of us who import money from the US.

Bush can fix that too :-)


The government deficit is not good news for a strong dollar, but that
is independent of the trade deficit. The real deficit is in the
mental ability of the Bush gang.

More yours. I notice how you have now switched over to the budget
deficit from your original bull****.


The other news of the day is Dodo Cheney saying
that "he expected the war would end during President Bush's second term,
which ends in 2009"

I love it when fatass failures like Evleth criticize people like
Cheney who has a lifelong record of successful government service.
It's that penus envy thing again with the 4Fer.


http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/05/30/cheney.iraq/index.html

This from a guy who is generally bad at this sort of thing.

"We believe Iraq has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons" [Meet the
Press, 3/7/03].

Note the slick language. Does in mean "In fact we believe --" which is true
the idiots did. or that Iraq in fact has reconstituted nuclear weapons.

Isn't this a fine case of the pot calling the kettle black? Evleth
who neither has one fact correct in anything he says nor any trackable
record of anything but bull**** rambling on about others. HAHAHAHA!


The use of the word "in fact" tried to cancel out the "ifyness" of using
the word "we believe". "We know" would have been more in keeping with
the degree of self-deception they were practicing.

As opposed to you babbling about how critical the trade deficit was
and now switching to the budget deficit fatass?

Miss L. Toe wrote:

[]
Yes, the economy is doing well - the question is how is that attributable to
Mr Blair ???

Much as I don't like him, and much as you can attribute many factors to
the success of the UK economy, you simply can't argue that it's an
accident which Blair was simply lucky enough to preside over. Not in my
opinion anyway.

--
David Horne- www.davidhorne.net
usenet (at) davidhorne (dot) co (dot) uk

On Tue, 31 May 2005 08:13:52 -0700, Go Fig wrote:

In article , Earl Evleth
wrote:

Villepin to replace Jean-Pierre Raffarin
as Prime Minister.

Very unexciting. Villepin gave a nice speech
a couple of years ago, putting down the
American false pretensions in Iraq but he
that is about all. Normally he is an inflated
speaker, and I guess he is a nice guy. But
he is not the man of the hour needed
to straighten out a lot of dossiers.

The "good news" is that the euro is at around
$1.23. Good for American tourists and those
of us who import money from the US.

The minute to minute chart of the Euro seems to indicate that the
appointment of Villepin was more "good news" for the strength of the
U.S. $, no big stretch there... as this guy isn't going to call for the
needed reforms... just more 'talk' about creating jobs.

Well, as the old Russian joke went:

Stalin, Kruschev and Breznev were travelling on the Siberian express.
The train breaks down and Stalin gets up and shouts "I'll get it
going" and goes up and shoots the fireman. Then, he comes back and
sits down and says "now watch the engineer get it moving."

Nothing happens. So Kruschev stands up and says "Josef, you come from
the old Russia. Watch and I'll get it moving." Whereupon he goes up
to the locomotive, takes off his shoe, beats it on the locomotive and
shouts "get this train moving." He comes back and sits down and says
"watch it move now!"

Again, nothing happens, so Breznev says "both of you come from the old
Russia and are plainly out of date. Watch how it's done in modern
Russia." He then just sits there, so Stalin and Kruschev naturally
say "what are you doing. Nothing is happening?"

Whereupon Breznev replies "I'm pretending it's moving."

"Miss L. Toe" wrote:

"chancellor of the duchy of besses o' th' barn and prestwich tesco"
wrote in message
news:1gxfppa.12alpsz1c798dxN%this_address_is_for_ ...
Miss L. Toe wrote:

"chancellor of the duchy of besses o' th' barn and prestwich tesco"
wrote in message
I think history will judge him poorly
on this- and it's a sad legacy for someone who has, in other respects,
achieved a heck of a lot.

Such as ????

The flip answer is getting a third term.

However, I'm really the wrong person to ask, because I'm not a Blair, or
Labour, supporter, but the fact remains that there have been _lots_ of
things that his government has done, often botched, but they've been
done nevertheless, and with varying degrees of success- but some
successes nevertheless. Some very minor things (relatively) have
affected me, such as the change in immigration law to allow same sex
partner immigration, and indeed the partnership laws coming into effect
in December- which will have the same rights and responsibilities as
marriage in everything but name.

However, those are, as I say, minor changes. I think that the amount of
extra funding going into schools across the country have made a huge
difference, as has the funding going into the health service.

Well, where I am the health service is going downhill fast, doctors not now
on call 24 hours, local A&E service closed.

But my GP has got a new Merc and the average GP salary is now over 100k so I
guess we know where our taxes went.

That makes it more likely that you GP will vote Labour. Is that a
worthwhile difference?

--
PB
The return address has been MUNGED

"nitram" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 31 May 2005 16:42:34 +0100,
(chancellor of the duchy of besses o' th' barn and prestwich tesco)
wrote:

Miss L. Toe wrote:

[]
Well, where I am the health service is going downhill fast, doctors not
now
on call 24 hours, local A&E service closed.

There are lots of ways in which it could be improved, but also lots of
ways in which it has gotten better. All things considered, my own
feeling is that the NHS experience is better now than it was 10 years
ago.

I also think Martin's point about the economy is well taken. Certainly,
you could argue that the UK economy was turning around when Blair took
power, and certainly much of the urban regeneration was already taking
place or in planning (in Manchester, Glasgow, Birmingham etc.) but you
can't put the last 8 years down simply to the inheritance of the
previous Tory government.

The NHS, dentistry, teaching hospitals, public transport, police ...
were completely run down when Labour came into power. It takes years
to recover from this sort of mess.

But I don't see any of the above having got any better.

Maybe they have improved in marginal seats or labour strongholds - but not
where I am.

On 31/05/05 17:13, in article , "Go Fig"
wrote:

just more 'talk' about creating jobs.

Probably, like the US, junk jobs at best.

On 31/05/05 17:18, in article
1gxfoxr.19jczi6x3d0wwN%this_address_is_for_spam@ya hoo.com, "chancellor of
the duchy of besses o' th' barn and prestwich tesco"
wrote:

Earl Evleth wrote:

[]
"We believe Iraq has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons" [Meet the
Press, 3/7/03].

Note the slick language. Does in mean "In fact we believe --" which is true
the idiots did.

I'm not entirely convinced of that, but I suppose I'll never really
know. I suspect that, deep down, Bush and his gang decided they wanted
rid of Hussein, for most of their own selfish motives, and WMD was a
comfortable smokescreen.

These guys were and still are stupid enough to lie to us and themselves
and believe it. I am not sure about Blair, I don`t pretend to know
British mentalities in the area of self-deception.

I've been watching some replays of interviews
with Blair recently- including a Frost interview a while back. I've
usually considered Frost a bit of a lightweight interviewer, but in his
easygoing way, he got quite a bit out of Blair. This was during the
'wait and see, we'll _find_ the WMD" stage of his presid^h^h^h
premiership. Blair seemed evangelical in his belief- I found it
disturbing, and unconvincing. I'm a bit tired with his 'let's respect
our different opinions on this.' I think history will judge him poorly
on this- and it's a sad legacy for someone who has, in other respects,
achieved a heck of a lot. My gut feeling is that he didn't truly believe
the intelligence, which let's face it, wasn't made categorical anyway-
but going with Bush was more important to him (fat lot of good he got,
or will get, out of it though), and he had a misguided notion that this
would lead to a 'greater good.' Some Labour MPs still tell themselves
that, despite the ongoing tragedy which is Iraq.

This addresses some of the issues raised---


****RAF Bombing Raids Tried to Goad Saddam into War
****By Michael Smith
****The Sunday Times UK

****Sunday 29 May 2005

****The RAF and US aircraft doubled the rate at which they were dropping
bombs on Iraq in 2002 in an attempt to provoke Saddam Hussein into giving
the allies an excuse for war, new evidence has shown.

****The attacks were intensified from May, six months before the United
Nations resolution that Tony Blair and Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general,
argued gave the coalition the legal basis for war. By the end of August the
raids had become a full air offensive.

****The details follow the leak to The Sunday Times of minutes of a key
meeting in July 2002 at which Blair and his war cabinet discussed how to
make "regime change" in Iraq legal.

****Geoff Hoon, then defence secretary, told the meeting that "the US had
already begun Œspikes of activity¹ to put pressure on the regime".

****The new information, obtained by the Liberal Democrats, shows that the
allies dropped twice as many bombs on Iraq in the second half of 2002 as
they did during the whole of 2001, and that the RAF increased their attacks
even more quickly than the Americans did.

****During 2000, RAF aircraft patrolling the southern no-fly zone over Iraq
dropped 20.5 tons of bombs from a total of 155 tons dropped by the
coalition, a mere 13%. During 2001 that figure rose slightly to 25 tons out
of 107, or 23%.

****However, between May 2002 and the second week in November, when the UN
Security Council passed resolution 1441, which Goldsmith said made the war
legal, British aircraft dropped 46 tons of bombs a month out of a total of
126.1 tons, or 36%.

****By October, with the UN vote still two weeks away, RAF aircraft were
dropping 64% of bombs falling on the southern no-fly zone.

****Tommy Franks, the allied commander, has since admitted this operation
was designed to "degrade" Iraqi air defences in the same way as the air
attacks that began the 1991 Gulf war.

****It was not until November 8 that the UN security council passed
resolution 1441, which threatened Iraq with "serious consequences" for
failing to co-operate with the weapons inspectors.

****The briefing paper prepared for the July meeting - the same document
that revealed the prime minister¹s agreement during a summit with President
George W Bush in April 2002 to back military action to bring about regime
change - laid out the American war plans.

****They opted on August 5 for a "hybrid plan" in which a continuous air
offensive and special forces operations would begin while the main ground
force built up in Kuwait ready for a full-scale invasion.

****The Ministry of Defence figures, provided in response to a question from
Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, show
that despite the lack of an Iraqi reaction, the air war began anyway in
September with a 100-plane raid.

****The systematic targeting of Iraqi air defences appears to contradict
Foreign Office legal guidance appended to the leaked briefing paper which
said that the allied aircraft were only "entitled to use force in
self-defence where such a use of force is a necessary and proportionate
response to actual or imminent attack from Iraqi ground systems".

On Tue, 31 May 2005 16:18:11 +0100,
(chancellor of the duchy of besses o' th' barn and prestwich tesco)
wrote:

Earl Evleth wrote:

[]
"We believe Iraq has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons" [Meet the
Press, 3/7/03].

Note the slick language. Does in mean "In fact we believe --" which is true
the idiots did.

I'm not entirely convinced of that, but I suppose I'll never really
know. I suspect that, deep down, Bush and his gang decided they wanted
rid of Hussein, for most of their own selfish motives, and WMD was a
comfortable smokescreen. I've been watching some replays of interviews
with Blair recently- including a Frost interview a while back. I've
usually considered Frost a bit of a lightweight interviewer, but in his
easygoing way, he got quite a bit out of Blair. This was during the
'wait and see, we'll _find_ the WMD" stage of his presid^h^h^h
premiership. Blair seemed evangelical in his belief- I found it
disturbing, and unconvincing. I'm a bit tired with his 'let's respect
our different opinions on this.' I think history will judge him poorly
on this- and it's a sad legacy for someone who has, in other respects,
achieved a heck of a lot. My gut feeling is that he didn't truly believe
the intelligence, which let's face it, wasn't made categorical anyway-
but going with Bush was more important to him (fat lot of good he got,
or will get, out of it though), and he had a misguided notion that this
would lead to a 'greater good.' Some Labour MPs still tell themselves
that, despite the ongoing tragedy which is Iraq.

Do again tell us what the ongoing tragedy with 25 million people being
freed of a mad homicidal maniac, 8 million voting in a free election,
Lebanon now having freed itself of Syria, Kuwait allowing women to
vote for the first time, etc. etc. is?

"nitram" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 31 May 2005 17:12:16 +0100, "Miss L. Toe"
wrote:


"nitram" wrote in message
.. .
On Tue, 31 May 2005 16:42:34 +0100,
(chancellor of the duchy of besses o' th' barn and prestwich tesco)
wrote:

Miss L. Toe wrote:

[]
Well, where I am the health service is going downhill fast, doctors
not
now
on call 24 hours, local A&E service closed.

There are lots of ways in which it could be improved, but also lots of
ways in which it has gotten better. All things considered, my own
feeling is that the NHS experience is better now than it was 10 years
ago.

I also think Martin's point about the economy is well taken.
Certainly,
you could argue that the UK economy was turning around when Blair took
power, and certainly much of the urban regeneration was already taking
place or in planning (in Manchester, Glasgow, Birmingham etc.) but you
can't put the last 8 years down simply to the inheritance of the
previous Tory government.

The NHS, dentistry, teaching hospitals, public transport, police ...
were completely run down when Labour came into power. It takes years
to recover from this sort of mess.

But I don't see any of the above having got any better.

How much do you know about any of the above? Public transport has got
better.

Not where I am.

There are far more police.

So what if crime is going up

NHS has heavily invested in
training staff.

And they are closing hospital A&E departments.



Maybe they have improved in marginal seats or labour strongholds - but
not
where I am.

Where are you?

South East UK.

Aaah I wondered how many times a day you would give us the news
How about the weather

"Earl Evleth" a écrit dans le message de news:
...


Villepin to replace Jean-Pierre Raffarin
as Prime Minister.

Very unexciting. Villepin gave a nice speech
a couple of years ago, putting down the
American false pretensions in Iraq but he
that is about all. Normally he is an inflated
speaker, and I guess he is a nice guy. But
he is not the man of the hour needed
to straighten out a lot of dossiers.

The "good news" is that the euro is at around
$1.23. Good for American tourists and those
of us who import money from the US.

earl