Cipherdom (deprecated)

All kidding aside, I don't think everyone who disagrees with me is evil or immoral. Mostly just the ones who actively facilitate capricious wars.

Also, for the record, I obviously don't think all Bush supporters are idiots. Many are too smart for their -- our -- own good.

I don't think "researching all sides to any issue" needs defending on this blog ... it needs implementation. Let's start slowly by repeating after me, "Those that disagree with me are not evil and immoral."

When I'm not searching the web for great online casino sites, there's always Bartleby.

In defense of researching all sides to any issue:

The investigation of the truth is in one way hard, in another easy. An indication of this is found in the fact that no one is able to obtain the truth adequately, while on the other hand, no one fails entirely, but everyone says something true about the nature of things, and while individually they contribute little or nothing to the truth, by the union of all a considerable amount is amassed. – Aristotle

Unless you think thusly:

Truth titillates the imagination far less than fiction. - Marquis de Sade

And more truth: my first two observations are correct. The last two were...oh you know...insert appropriate emoticon here.

Yes, I'll settle for Harper's when Workers World Daily is in short supply. ;^)

Deano, I'm obviously partial to extended metaphors, so the Capitalism/Islam one drew me right in. Extremists of nearly any stripe are to what screws up the world. Trouble in America, IMO, is that the place has turned extreme but not enough people recognize it.

TOF, Re: hot links, I have the blog configured so you need to type the following HTML to create a link in your email: NAME OF SITE, substituting the proper URL, obviously. I could switch the setting so users can just type a URL (http://www.verncipher.com) and it would automatically appear as a link. But the current way tends to be better.

Your last two observations are correct.

TOF relies more on The Economist and VC looks to Harpers. I bet VC would agree with this.

Interesting article. It answers some questions I've had about Bremer's timing. I've also been wondering where the IMF has been so far. Seems the Bush Admin was arrogant enough at the time, to believe they didn't need to consult with actual economists, experienced in global market reconstruction. Which totally jives with their normal go it alone approach. So classically symptomatic of small, insecure, minds.

TOF, your quote is from The Economist's '02 review of her book 'No Logo.' Normally, I'd say that makes it utterly irrelevant to the issues raised in Klein's Iraq article. But I'm sure your citing it because you consider this piece is yet more well written adolescent ranting. Or maybe it's just a good & easy soundbite.

“Ms Klein's harshest critics must allow that, for an angry adolescent, she writes rather well.” This quote, from The pesky Economist, seems to say it all for me … it works well allegorically too.

All right, I give up how do you create those text hyperlinks?