Bullshit Paul. That sums up my opinion of those who simply close the door on this issue without giving the other side of the argument a fair go. And you haven't done that. Go to one of the more evenhanded sites. They aren't promoting conspiracy theories as much as they are asking serious questions which get no answers from anyone. Questions like how come 3 weeks after the disaster there is a fire inside the site that is still 2000 degrees F, and you see images of debris being lifted from the rubble containing dripping molten hot iron? No amount of aviation fuel could account for such temperatures. How come WTC 7 fell? It was never hit by a plane. It never had anything worse than some office fires. It fell in precisely the same manner as the other two buildings - straight down into its own footprint, at the speed of gravity, leaving no pancake layers of collapsed flooring but molten hot iron and pulverized concrete. Are those such unreasonable questions? Am I really a kook for simply asking for a reasonable answer? I disagree with your assessment that REAL scientists looked at this and agreed with the official conclusion. There are many many engineers and scientists with first rate qualifications who have deep and unanswered questions about this event. You have insulted all of them. You have insulted me. You have insulted anyone who asks honest questions about a horrific event - branding us all as kooks because we don't share your and Chomsky's lofty opinions. And yes, I'm afraid it DOES bear all the trademarks of the Kennedy assassination - the perpetrator was immediately named without proper investigation, the media broadcast it everywhere, no real questions were asked, a committee was assigned the duty of a political investigation with predictable conclusions, all the evidence at the scene was quickly removed, and anyone who disagreed was branded a kook and a conspiracy theorist and otherwise humiliated by the media, by the government and by intellectuals. Well, I don't humiliate that easily. And I have serious questions about what went on September 11, 2001. An enormous amount of data is accumulating to support the reasonableness of these questions. We can't get to the answers because government files are sealed from the public. Only an official investigation by a investigatory agency would be able to gain access to such records and start the long hard job of putting together the pieces. But that won't happen. And it won't happen because people like yourself have closed their minds to even the possibility that some just might smell here and consequently refuse to lobby for such an investigation - and worse, you belittle those what are willing to put the pressure on. But of course what a waste of time an official investigation would be. You know that. It's apparent to you. Really smart and informed people would come to the same conclusion as Popular Mechanics, a truly responsible, authoritative and unbiased investigatory source - at least of the caliber as Readers Digest. Only kooks would disagree with such a source. Only unstable conspiracy theorists would persist.

idea of ¨hero¨, so this man, who has devoted his life to unraveling and publishing a very difficult truth is reviled because he cannot be all things to all people.

 

I must have hit a nerve.... ;-)

There are calls to action all over ZNet and  ZMag...Its an activist outlet. In fact the site goes way beyond resistance to dedicate an enormous amount of energy to the devleopment of a full-blown alternative to corporate state-capitlalism. So-called "gatekeepr" Chomsky's great contribution -- widely hailed by ACTIVISTS --- is (it seems to me) quite logically invested mainly in the work of social, historical, and policy criticism/analysis. NC is just incredibly skilled at cutting through the offiial orthodoxy (the bullshit)...at demystifying and disentangling policy, ideology, social structure, and history in ways that are just indispensable for radial democratic activists and ordinary people (and intellectuals in my opinion).   Personally, if I had done droves of marvelous widely read books and could fill up lecture halls and auditoriums with thousands of progressively inclined people any day of the week, I would dedicate at least the last fifteen minites (maybe more) of each lecture to What Is to Be Done?  (one can embrace Lenin's pamphlet title without being a Lenninist) and not just on immediate resistance (to whatever the latest policy outrage is) but also towards a revolution/societal alternative.  But that's me and that would be a disastrous thing to impose on the aforementoned  "gatekeeper," who has helped liberate many minds from othodoxy....no small accomplishment. 

Thank you so much. You're right. It is www.gerryfordhoax.cabanova.com

Didn't you mean www.gerryfordhoax.cabanova.com?

Gerald Ford is alive. His death was a hoax. www.geraldfordhoax.cabanova.com

organizations fighting for internet freedon, making calls and sending e-mails, please tell me.

I agree, the internet has been responsible for my learning as much as I have, also for learning that I am not alone in my thinking. I have been very isolated for most of my life, but this makes it possible to know not only how others think, but why. It is easily the most valuable tool the common man has had, ever. 

What will you do the day you sign onto the internet, go to your favorite bookmark, and are greeted with Server Not Found. What are you going to do when the US filters the main DNS Server complexes and locks down domain names which are under their control as a necessary tool to fight terrorism in the world? The time for change is now. Now when we still have the means to resist.

with vigilance and perseverance keep the elections from blatantly being stolen, which might well have been a sop from the money men to appease the population.

As to any changes, which the people voted for, the fat lady has not even hummed yet. She has whispered that there probably will not be any such changes, but she is going to put on quiet a show proving why they are not possible.

We are using the vehicle that is changing the world.

The Internet will prove to be the driving force of change.

The Internet scares governments more than the $4.5Trillion spent on the US Nuclear program.

Maybe not in our lifetime - but governments will become primarily engines of "Economic Justice" or they will be overthrown by the voters.

The election of 2006 proves that we the people are fed up with corruption - Government existing for the benefit of Military Keynesianism -  the military industrial complex, which destroyed Germany and will destroy America if we the people can't rain in the greedy killers.

I believe that anyone that has the obvious interest, intellect, and opinions that you portray on this blog....well, needless to say, you are also welcome in my camp.   Reading, analyzing, thinking, participating, contributing,  ....repeat that several times :-)  

R

is that you are not only well informed and I can learn from you, to say nothing of Ron and Victor, you call a spade a spade and are a bit of a rabble rouser. So am I and wish to learn how to be better at it.

I have only been sharing my thoughts and opinions for about a year and find this site the most enlightening along with Information Clearinghouse.

Please keep up the good work and challenge me. Make me work.   

And for what it's worth, I do openly call for massive popular resistance, defiance, rebellion and even (on occasion...imagine) revolution. People have to follow my writings on the main ZNet page, where most of at least my Interent-political-writing energy goes. There should be investigation into 9/11 and much more. The terrible Warren Commission report on Dallas '63 helped fuel decades of JFK conspiracy madness. Speaking of conspiracies, I've always been intrigued that the murky details of the assassination of the democratic-socialist and anti-imperialist civil right leader Martin Luther King, Jr.  (on April 4, 1968) haven't attracted more attention (they have attracted some, to be sure). When will Oliver Stone do THAT movie?

But, I still say we owe it to ourselves to have a complete investigation with no holds barred or most of the people of the U. S. will always believe that it was an inside job. Will they ever do anything about it? Bit by bit the pols will pay and the divisive monster will be there forever. Plus, just plain simple decency demands an accounting.

If Popular Mechanics has the real scoop, then that should facilitate a real investigation. But, it seems to me that they are working from conjecture and in the dark as far as real evidence is concerned. They are doing the same thing that every theorist out there is doing.

Whether a bunch of Arabs could or could not do this.....where is the evidence? Unless we really know who was involved and what their real abilities were/are, how can one answer that ?

The lack of an investigation is an indecency that the people of this country should not accept.

Secrecy ALWAYS covers up corruption. People may be complacent but they are not complete fools.

One part where I share ground with 9/11 conspiracy theorists is that I agree that there are no moral inhibitions within a criminal administration. But doing 9/11 would have just been completely insane in a practical sense....the number of people that would have to been involved would have made it impossible to stop leaks. The nuts and bolts engineering claims lack scientifc credibility and have recently been demolished in the Popular Mechanics book that (I think) Hayes cites; the conspiracy theorists are citing mariginal experts who lack ther required engineering expertise. If people think they pick up the essential science by watching videos online they're fooling themselves. The notion that the power elite have to create enormous conspiracies like the imagined 9/11 one in order to crush democracy and wage an imperial foreign policy (Iraq War for example) is just incredibly naive about the deeply rooted strutctural and ideological bases of imperial power. And then there's the odd and perhaps uninentional racism behind the implicit notion that a bunch of Arabs lacked (a) the motive and especially (b) the means/caspacities to carry out the 9/11 operation. There's more but I'm out of time.

AND EXECUTING 9/11....................

Why would they shrink from a little nuclear destruction?

Paul, I understand your position and I will even admit you are much better informed than I. What I suspect and what I know are respectively.....it is altogether within the realm of possibility, for all the reasons chronicled by Victor and many more, that our own people are responsible for the planning and execution of 9/11...

...There has been no creditable investigation of this mass murder.

SO, YOU, I, Z NET, SHOULD BE DEMANDING A REAL INVESTIGATION BY REAL INVESTIGATORS WHO HAVE FULL ACCESS TO ALL INFORMATION, WITHOUT THE BS OF NATIONAL SECURITY FOR DISALLOWING NEEDED INFORMATION. 

I am not well enough informed to call anyone a ¨gatekeeper´ or anything else, for that matter. I would like to know the whole truth before I die, and it looks like it will take that long to find it, if ever.

Why? Because I spent 55 years in a fog. I owe it to myself to clear my air, and from what I have read so far, I suspect we are all dupes of a few very rich, very evil men, who have been manipulating most of the populations of the world for gain and power and just because they can. I do not see any way to change it.

I am afraid it goes back to Ron´s little treatise on reform and revolution, but on a much bigger scale that just considering the thugs controling this country.

Off subject just a bit, I read a piece by a guy named Mullins, that you could probably label a kook or a crackpot, but it has one delicious word picture in it.........Nelson Rockefeller killed because of a colossal drug deal gone wrong. Gave me the only real laugh this week.  

Paul - Yes, you and I disagree about this. Indeed, I would even reverse the statements "alarming" and "unsurprising".

Alarming, because if tens of millions of Americans really believe their government was complicit in the murder of 3,000 of their fellow citizens, they seem remarkably sanguine about this fact. By and large, life continues as before, even though tens of millions of people apparently believe they are being governed by mass murderers.

I would characterize this as "unsurprising", given a population that has been the victim of cradle-to-grave psychological ops including an elitist owned mass media, a dumbed down educational system, and a rigged political system.

Unsurprising, because the government these Americans suspect of complicity in 9/11 has acquired a justified reputation for deception: weapons of mass destruction, secret prisons, illegal wiretapping. What else are they hiding?

And this I would definitely call alarming because it's simply true. And likely much more is true than we can see or prove. You seem to recognize that the Government is what it is, a criminal organization of the most evil intent, yet you, in the same breath, appear chide people for becoming "paranoid" and "kookish". Given this government's well-documented history of the above, plus its history of false flag operations, and its history of deceiving the people, I frankly don't understand how you can come to any other position than mine. To almost casually admit that your own Government can be guilty of the crimes you yourself have indicated on many occasions that they are indeed guilty of, I find it curious that you can then call anyone a kook because they have taken this to its quite logical end. The same folks who helped finance Hitler's rise to power and intentionally (and with GREAT success) conspired outside of the knowledge of the general American public to develop an atomic bomb, who show no remorse for having used it twice, who have now stated clearly that they are willing to use it again pre-emptively in the cause against "terrorism", who think nothing of killing 650,000 Iraqis and 500,000 (or was it a 1,000,000 - I've lost count) East Timorese and millions of Vietnamese without batting an eye, who was responsible for untold numbers of innocent victims throughout Central and South America, for the intense bombing of Vietnam and Cambodia resulting in the destruction of civilian infrastructure, millions of lives lost, families destroyed, and literally countless other crimes against humanity could indeed plan and execute a heinous crime against their own people if in their eyes it would serve their fanatical purposes and lead to the desired long-term results. If I am betting on one view v the other based upon history and current behavior, then you know well where I would place my bets. Frankly, I fail to understand how anyone could come to any other decision, unless of course you foolishly thiink that they could do these things to THEM of lesser humanity, but to their own, a civilized and free people. I suggest you think again. These people will stop at nothing to see that they win. And to me, it is stupendously alarming that leftist "gatekeepers" do not see this and indeed urge those who sympathize with leftist causes to dismiss such ideas as fantasy and those who promote them as kooks. This is the most deeply disturbing thing I find about about all this. That highly informed and articulate folks like Chomsky and yourself can see the evil, and can gauge its depths, know its awful potential, and yet not demand action of all those who hold freedom dear is entirely beyond me. A wonderful site like Znet has all the potential in the world to call people to action, but instead seems happy to simply moan about how criminal the US is, and how unjust the world is because of that. In the 60s we had the Students for a Democratic Society, whose leadership not only articulated the cause but took incredible risks to stir up public awareness, to take to the streets themselves and put enormous pressure upon the government and the Establishment. These were TRUE radicals. Maybe I'm simply blind, but I never ever see a call to action by the Chomskys of the world. They seem happy to be "gatekeepers" and simply filter leftist content. They seem to have forgotten (or perhaps they never really understood) that being a leader brings with it heavy responsibility - if our leaders are not able or willing to act upon their public professions of deeply-held beliefs, then what hope is there for us? And is it then, truly worth fighting for? I can say something as an individual, but it has not even a fraction of the impact of the "gatekeepers" saying it - but unfortunately, the gatekeepers are calling folks like me a kook - simply because I have connected the dots many of which they themselves put in front of my eyes. Go figure.

But Mariam you are not distiguinshing between Victor's position  and mine: I reject 9/11 conspiracy theories and think it is crackpot kookery of the highest order to posit top U.S. actors carrying out a nuclear attack on a major U.S. city! I just don't think Dick Cheney is getting ready to nuke Chicago.

There's another point. In Christopher Hayes piece (from The Nation) I linked in my last comment, the author says the following:" According to a July poll conducted by Scripps News Service, one-third of Americans think the government either carried out the 9/11 attacks or intentionally allowed them to happen in order to provide a pretext for war in the Middle East. This is at once alarming and unsurprising. Alarming, because if tens of millions of Americans really believe their government was complicit in the murder of 3,000 of their fellow citizens, they seem remarkably sanguine about this fact. By and large, life continues as before, even though tens of millions of people apparently believe they are being governed by mass murderers. Unsurprising, because the government these Americans suspect of complicity in 9/11 has acquired a justified reputation for deception: weapons of mass destruction, secret prisons, illegal wiretapping. What else are they hiding?"

Anyone who believes what Victor (who says "I believe what I believe")claims to believe would (I hope) be dropping every normal daily activity and working 24/7 for the most rapid possible overthrow of the existing American government. Daily routine can no longer be permitted. 

PART OF THE LUNATIC FRINGE FRANKLY  SCARES ME TO DEATH.

Just 2 years ago, I would have chided both for over reaction and prescribed a drink and a trip to the comedy club. The more I learn, the less funny is the comedy club and if I could afford it, I would spend the balance of my life at least half drunk.

"Cuba...isn't that the country ruled by that commie, Fidel Castro, who had the audacity to place missiles 90 miles from our shores?"

Is that island history the only history that we Amerikans understand of central and Latin America?

Does anyone remember history when the government of Guatamala in 1954 was overthrown in a bloody coup (sponsored by the CIA) after freely elected Jacobo Armenz Guzman distributed United Fruit Company land to landless peasants?

Does anyone remember the reasons for the Cuban revolution?...or Batista and his family reign of terror on that island for so many, many years, ...or the United Fruit Company's exploitation of the land and the people?

Does anyone remember when/why Castro asked the United States for economic help (at the UN in '59-60)? After the US refused to offer help, the USSR offered its economic help.

The United Fruit Company remembered. Their wrath and that of the big banks in the US were determined to rid themselves of, first, Armenz Guzman (the CIA sponsored coup) and then, seven years later, Castro, by donating two of the ships used in the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba.

The Cuban people remembered, too, what had taken place seven years earlier in Guatamala. They defeated the CIA invasion. And they took back all the land that the United Fruit Company owned in Cuba -- land that today's Helms-Burton Law is meant to return to US corporate owners.

What of the contra war in Nicaragua against the Somoza family reign of terror? And of the death squads in Salvador and Honduras?

Shall I go on and on? Check your history and you will be saddened.

R

 

Paul,

Humans are a funny sort. When events are such that hope seems lost and times become harder and harder, the turning towards the ideas of "conspiracy" as answers to difficult questions becomes more and more plausible.

From you link in your response, it states:

"...one-third of Americans think the government either carried out the 9/11 attacks or intentionally allowed them to happen in order to provide a pretext for war..."

A tad off subject, but relative, ...considering that over 70 -80% of the US population still believe in God...what else can we expect?

(I realize that this is a loaded question and that it is a whole different can of worms.)

Skepticism about most things unprovable drives me towards investigation about everything conspiratorial in nature. In scope, religion is one of the biggest conspiracies that exists in the world today. Yet it is constantly up there, front stage, on display....occupying lots of theorists' time. It is/has been the basis for most wars throughout the history of this world and, imo, has almost squelched the progress of the species.

Healthy skepticism can keep a person on track and out of the rut of conspiracy arguments. Within the playing field of the idea(s) of what could be vs idea(s) of what is, there are huge amounts of gray-area-territory.

R

Paul, I wish I could tell you I am kidding. And I am quite aware of how I must sound (the word "kook" comes to mind). Nevertheless, I believe what I believe. And what I believe is that there are extremely powerful folks in this country that not only have the motive, but the means to carry off such a horrific event, and are awaiting only the opportunity. Two things are most likely in such a fearsome scenario: 1. Total and indefinite marshal law will be declared - all civil rights disbanded, detention centers activated for protesters, control of all media and communications, including the Internet. At this point the United States of America as we know it will pass into history. 2. A tactical nuclear strike against Iran wiping out "nuclear" facilities, civilian infrastructure, and military Command and Control facilities, followed by the expansion of the military occupation forces in Iraq into Iran. Being under marshal law, the US population will get only limited and focussed news of the war and military plans, thus freeing up any political opposition that will certainly arise.

Victor, please tell us you are joking and (a) do not honestly believe that powerful actors the U.S. government are conspiring to wipe out a major U.S. city --- like, say, NYC or Washington DC --- with a nuclear weapon and (b) understand that nuclear terrorism from outside is a real threat to the U.S., deeply incited of course by U.S. foreign policy, which unfortunately gives real motives to act on real capabilities likely within the reach of outside actors.  I have written in the past about some fatal flaws with 9/11 conspiracy theorizing but this would go beyond even all that.   Here is a recent and wonderfully instructive piece on paranoid 9/11 conspiracy kookery...why it's just plain nuts, where it comes from, and why it's not surprising in the current U.S. political context.

"The mayhem we are imposing on the ME today may well cost us a major city in the next decade or so." I think that's already been planned - but not by anyone in the ME...

There's an at least implied false dichtomony Jojo: either (a) "stand idle" or (b) take it as an opportunity to go public with a big deadly game of nationally televised Nuclear Chicken (and thereby hopefully overcome the imperial  humiliation of the Bay of Pigs fiasco) in which it turns out we came shockingly  close to mass annihilation (sp).  The one that happened was of course (b).The way it was handled was very nearly totally disastrous.  

And then there's an implied double standard.  Do you pose the same historical question to the Soviets, inquiring if they were supposed to "stand idle" while "nukes" were placed in Turkey (right under Russia's southern border) and on U.S. submarines (right off the Soviet shorelines) and on B-52s (within rapid flying distance of Moscow and Leningrad) and ...so on (you get the idea)? Even if fully installed and tolerated, Stalinist missiles in Cuba would not have undone the massive superiority of U.S nuclear forces, obscured and then furthered by superhawk Vietnam War initiator JFK's terrible lies about a "missile gap." 

One lesson of possible relevance for the 21st century is for Uncle Sam to stop trying to dominate others.  The United States'  arrogant imperial mischief against the heroic and noble Cuban Revolution created an opening for the Soviets'  mad missile move.

The mayhem we are imposing on the ME today may well cost us a major city in the next decade or so.

So, to bring things more up to date, do you ask the outraged millions of the occupied Middle East if they should "stand idle" while the Yankee Crusader sustains a mass-murderous invasion that seems like something out of bin-Laden's worst/best-case scenarios for extremist Jihad?  .

Interesting comment abou the missle crisis. Do you think the U.S. should have stood idle as nukes were placed in Cuba - 92 miles from our southern shores? 

 If yes, why?

Does the entire country smell of vomit?

It should!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!After 5 days of sickening BS.

Or has the sales of Clorox convinced those corp owners that they need to do it again?

Mariam, it's probably best to just keep the television off except when being used to show a DVD of your own selection. Contrary to  the tendency of some us to see it as little more than childish amusement/distraction,  the non-news broadcasting is also heavily loaded with ruling-class ideology. Saw some drama a few weeks back --- one of the networks has recently given birth to an affluent new family headed by Sally Field (who once played a wondeerful role as a radicalized textile worker in one of Hollywood's few [2? 3?] pro-labor movies ["Norma Rae"]) ---- that was meant (among other things) to compel empathy for a wealthy young woman's decision to eliminate a number of good paying factory jobs.  You see she had inherited the factory from her cheating Daddy and now she needed some emotional support from friends and family as she made the painful decision to close down the jobs and lives of proletarianized others.  It was a real tear-jerker. 

You'll especially want to stay away from daytime television, which is apparently now loaded down with "court tv" (the ever-proliferating successors to Judge Wopner...there's now a goofy Judge Alex, a revolting Judge Judy, and a laughable Judge Joe Brown and a few others I can't remember the names of) shows displaying an endless parade of offically designated lower-class idiots (disproportionately nonwhite) who are meant to prove the inherent stupidity of the non-professional masses.  The sorry multitudes need their work processes, lives, feelings, bodies and thoughts to be properly coordinated from above by the wise, noble, and caring sorts of heroic upper-middle- and upper-class prosecutors, attorneys, doctors, physicians, FBI investigators, crime-scene investigators, and casino managers we are instructed to deeply respect on such popular rabble-loathing shows as ER, Law and Order, CSI, Las Vegas and so so on.  And when the noble benevolence of the smooth and caring professionals proves inadequate to control the dangerous idiocy of the deservedly disadvantaged lower and working classes (the proles), there's always the harsh stick of repression so favorably portrayed on proto-fascistic police shows like COPS.

Christ almighty but I couldn't even watch the Tostitas Fiesta Bowl (what a game, not joking: most exciting college football game I've ever seen) without having to be told that the Naval Academy Choir singing the national anthem contained holy crusaders from "the nation's best citizens"...who exist by divine providence to "defend the nation" and "advance freedom" around a grateful world.  

A basic theme throughout "our" corporate-crafted "popular" and  "amusement" culture is that most of the people are childish idiots who are thoroughly unfit to rule. Another theme is that people who advocate protest and solidarity and resistance are dangerous and/or stupid threats to reasonably selfish and private living.  

Even (or perhaps especially)the commercials are just full of nefarious corporate/bourgeois ideology masquerading (ala Antonio Gramsci's concept of hegemony) as popular "common sense."  One particulalry long-running advertising campaign tells us that "Life Takes VISA." The brazenness with which corporate television continues to shove SUVs, big nasty pickups, speedy big-engine cars and other non-efficient vehicles of planetary destruction down the throat of American citizen-consumers is a fit subject for a future revolutionary tribunal.  

We're being "more than entertained" as (I think it was) Robert Cirino once wrote.  I now read television, so to speak and keep a pad of paper and a spare pen handy at all times, because unfortunately it matters.

James Shannon today Ford was eulogized in Michigan by a truly evil man named Donald Rumsfeld, the disgraced war criminal who received a hero's send off at the White House late last year (when the blood-soaked imperialist butcher Dick [Darth] Cheney referred to Rumbo as "the finest defense secretary this nation has ever had"). The unmitigated imperialist asshole Rumsfeld finished off by mentioning efforts last year to get a Navy warship named after Gerald Ford and said that it was "fitting" that a vessel carrying Ford's name will be "patrolling the high seas next year."

Paul -

Ford's eulogy was just more of the continuing social fraud that has been perpetrated against the citizens of the World, by these United States. I was so outraged I had to turn it off.

Military Keynesianism continues to demand that those who witness corruption in government simply forget what's happened and accept repeated lies, for the "Good of the Nation". Who's Nation and Who is it exactly that benefits.

Facts are facts - the repeated lies only benefit those in positions of power and wealth and universally serve to bring about destruction of civil society. America is on the verge of bankruptcy - just ask David Walker, Comptroller General of the GAO, even he is afraid to tell the whole truth for fear of political revolution, and the crash of the financial markets. 

You can only fool some of the people some of the time. The world knows different.

Ford's was a truly evil man. Our living history proves that his Presidency was an extension of the evil that has a hold of our government. The Military / Industrial Complex described by Eisenhower and used by Hitler and most American Presidents since WWII to destroy human life, for the financial gain of a few. 

 

Paul, I just turned the television off or watched anything but the ¨news Shows¨. My stomach is just not that strong. 

Sorry if this is a bit off topic but check out this excellent anti-war video, and please help to spread it;

Guernica Iraq
http://blogs.zmag.org/node/2926

FYI, interesting answer to the first question (Just substitute "Gerald Ford" for "George Bush").

Walter Bagehot put it this way 130 years ago: "The best reason why Monarchy is a strong government is, that it is an intelligible government. The mass of mankind understand it, and they hardly anywhere in the world understand any other." It's a shame this viewpoint popular in England at one time still finds strong resonance here...

This article is what we've been lacking this week. During all the replayed drama of "the pardon," I kept waiting for someone to acknowledge Ford's role perpetuating the CIA's involvement in Angola's civil war causing an untold number of deaths and destruction. There was/is a distinct disconnect between reality and what we are supposed to remember about his presidency.