Frank wrote:
Who would have thunk it?


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/eart...ndal-ever.html

And then, yhere's reality.
http://www.politifact.com/punditfact...icated-temper/

On Saturday, March 14, 2015 at 10:45:05 PM UTC-7, Bob F wrote:
Frank wrote:
Who would have thunk it?


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/eart...ndal-ever.html

And then, yhere's reality.
http://www.politifact.com/punditfact...icated-temper/

Thanks, Bob F. for another mention of Politifact (I cited them under Subject "Pants on Fire" as one of the primo debunk sources for those not wedded to their beliefs in disregard of facts.

Here's link to St. Petersburg Fl (yes, really, Florida!!!)* Pulitzer Prize** for Politifact's national reporting on, inter alia, 2008 election

http://www.pulitzer.org/citation/200...onal-Reporting


* FF (foreign friends) Florida is not, uh, the most "progressive" -- in the old, true, non-crazy sense -- State in the Union.

**FF - you no doubt know that the Pulitzer Prize is THE honor that journalists and other of the written word aspire to.

pulitzer.org

Curious if your countries have something similar.

HB

On 16/03/2015 4:21 AM, Hypatia Nachshon wrote:

* FF (foreign friends) Florida is not, uh, the most "progressive" -- in the old, true, non-crazy sense -- State in the Union.

Indeed. "Jeb Bush" says it all really.


**FF - you no doubt know that the Pulitzer Prize is THE honor that journalists and other of the written word aspire to.

Yes, we all know about that too.

pulitzer.org

Curious if your countries have something similar.

Well our country does. It's called the Walkley Awards.

There is an old saying: "When the US sneezes, the world catches a cold".
In essence that means that the world watches, and reports on
happenings in the US very closely. From comments I've sen over many
years online, I'm not convinced that the reverse applies.

To support my point, all you have to do is to read Cotton's letter to
the Iranians and then read what the Iranian Foreign Minister wrote in
response. One of those letters reads like it came from a smart, urbane
informed person. The other letter reads like it comes from the pen of a
parochial, patronising, ill informed person.

Fran Farmer wrote:
....
To support my point, all you have to do is to read Cotton's letter to
the Iranians and then read what the Iranian Foreign Minister wrote in
response. One of those letters reads like it came from a smart, urbane
informed person. The other letter reads like it comes from the pen of a
parochial, patronising, ill informed person.

i'm very convinced that the USoA could be governed
much better by random selection than by what we get
from mass-media driven erectoids.

after 2 years there is a referendum on encumbents
to continue, then if they pass that election of
confirmation they have to pass a new referendum
every 4 years.

that way we keep the good ones, boot the bad ones,
and have a truely representative government with
nobody beholden to corporate campaign contributions.

far more efficient, far more likely to get some
decent people in office who aren't photogenic or
ignorant nepotists.

i'll take a random dud any time over the folks
we seem to elect these days.

oh, and as for pay and benefits, the longer you
are in office the better your pay and health care
percentages are, but you don't get a pension or
anything any different than most USoAians. in
other words, there's no reason the government should
be paying someone's health care the rest of their
life if they've only been in office a few years.
instead they can contribute to an IRA or some other
retirement slavings plan just like the rest of us...


songbird

On 16/03/2015 12:14 PM, songbird wrote:
Fran Farmer wrote:
...
To support my point, all you have to do is to read Cotton's letter to
the Iranians and then read what the Iranian Foreign Minister wrote in
response. One of those letters reads like it came from a smart, urbane
informed person. The other letter reads like it comes from the pen of a
parochial, patronising, ill informed person.

i'm very convinced that the USoA could be governed
much better by random selection than by what we get
from mass-media driven erectoids.

after 2 years there is a referendum on encumbents
to continue, then if they pass that election of
confirmation they have to pass a new referendum
every 4 years.

that way we keep the good ones, boot the bad ones,
and have a truely representative government with
nobody beholden to corporate campaign contributions.

far more efficient, far more likely to get some
decent people in office who aren't photogenic or
ignorant nepotists.

i'll take a random dud any time over the folks
we seem to elect these days.

:-)) A friend of mine says frequently that politicians and governments
are like underwear: they need to be changed often to stay fresh. I
certianly see a lot of wisdom in that.

oh, and as for pay and benefits, the longer you
are in office the better your pay and health care
percentages are, but you don't get a pension or
anything any different than most USoAians. in
other words, there's no reason the government should
be paying someone's health care the rest of their
life if they've only been in office a few years.
instead they can contribute to an IRA or some other
retirement slavings plan just like the rest of us...


Indeed. We had a politician who 'retired' in his early 30s and he will
live out the rest of his life on a very generous, fully indexed pension
paid from public coffers and will never need to do another day's paid
work in his life. Thankfully, there was such an outrage when his paid
loungeing around at public expense became public that his former
collegaues changed the pension arrangements for our Federal politicians.