Schoonertrash wrote:

Thenice thing about the hurricane is . ..we were 450 nm off shore, Force
two and three, bright blue skies, deck chairs and suntan lotion kinda
cruise.

Yep, we listened to all the Navy ships and MARAD (not sure, what's the acronym
that replaced MSC) ships getting under way before the storm. Interesting
conversations on ch 9 & 13.

In fact one of the cool things about the cruise si that my wife has gotten into
proper radio communication. Part of her motivation is the constant soap opera
going on ch 16, but it's still a good sign (one of many, I'm definitely going to
keep her). We're going to get a SSB/ham set at some point in the future.


When we got back WHOA! Place looked pretty bad. Luckily my
favorite restaurant (seafood place on Willoughby Spit) was all right.

heh heh bet I know the place, right by where Norfolk Rebel docks. They still
weren't open when we left, electricity out for most of tat part of Norfolk. We
met Winchkid there a few times.

More
imporantly very few boats, especially sailboats, were damaged.

Huh? Seemed to me like shredded roller-furl jibs and bashed in topsides were a
very common sight. You must have seen that catamaran tat flipped over onto the
dock, that was right by Willoughby Spit.





Let's see what first. Water actually does run uphill if you don't bite it?
No, that's not it. What I buy into now is the cynical but true union
approach. Whatever hand feeds you . . .eat. Since there is little
difference in the hands . . . does it matter? Of course not. If it isn't
one thing, it s another and if it isn't another its. . . .

Yep... it's like a big circle going round & round.



I do find the WMD business amusing though. At best it's a non-starter and
of no importance. Can't imagine why the Chief Shrub even bothered to
dignify it with an answer. That mistake on his part finally convinced me
he's not as smart as he could be . . .. nor is his staff. For the fun of
it I went back and did a google kinda search on the pre-invasion build up.
Counted the number of times finding WMD was listed as being germane.
Answer: Zero.

Excuse me? Did you not count the State of the Union address, or Colin Powells
"mission" to the UN with photos of trailers etc etc? Methinks you are falling
victim to some sort of wishful thinking.


Then counted the number of times Iraq (the Saddam Regime
gov't) was required to demonstrate they didn't have any. Answer: Thousands.
Silly conversation at best. Can't imagine why anyone would waste time on
it.

As to your final sort of question . . . .Two answers. One relating back to
the Iran/Iraq war is called 'mines'. The other is . . .who cares. If you
all are going to pay us danger pay . . .we all are not going to argue.

New Deal . ..etc. The one thing I can't refute, when trying to argue the
success of that program, is how come the unemployment figures kept going up
and went down only when the nation geared up for war.

Because they didn't. I don't know where you get your figures, but several
sources I can give you show national unemployment definitely cycling down
through the mid 1930s as the New Deal began putting tens of thousands of men on
the gov't payroll.

But I don't expect you to believe *me*.

http://www.korpios.org/resurgent/Timeline.htm
http://www.shambhala.org/business/go...l#Whathappened

There are a couple of great academic articles on monetary contraction, GNP, and
unemployment, thru the Depression, but you'd have to get acces to the university
servers. If you're really interested, email me.


Other than that
little fly in the ointment I'll agree with you. The problem there is the
other factors that I didn't factor in; e.g. monetary policy,

Deficit spending? You bet. That's partly why the neoconservative propaganda is
to say 'the New Deal didn't work' the other reason is that they hate FDR almost
as much as they hate Kennedy, and any lie that discredits them must be good.


banking
regulations, silly fixation on gold standards etc. etc. etc.

That was a bigger problem for England than the US. They clung to the gold
standard when it was clearly a fiscal disaster, in fact tried to go back to it
after WW2.



Now for those of you who aren't used to this sort of interchange . .. .take
note the requirement is to ALWAYS have something sailing related.

No it isn't

Regards
Doug King