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Um...51 BILLION?!?!!! That's a good trick with a population of around 7 billion.
How does it save every person that's ever died of malaria...and why would you do that? We're overpopulated enough already.
*quality inventions. I'm glad these immigrants got to go to Stanford instead of Mumbai Tech.

If you want to know what true poverty is, Genji, you might want to read something like Maximum City, a book about Mumbai, or even watch something like Slumbdog Millionaire...you'll find out that you have quite a few advantages living in this country.

How the hell did someone like Dr. Ben Carson, or Colin Powell, or Condoleeza Rice make it, being black and all?

Because this is a great country where you can create your own life.

But go ahead and believe whatever you want, everyone hates you because of your color etc and cry into your beer until you're 101.

Citation provided. Well done. Always be weary of statistics though http://i.imgur.com/XE9Iu.png
>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:

I can't be arsed running through this again so I'll just politely ask you to cite your statistical evidence.
How many terrorist acts have been committed or attempted in U.S. territory by caucasian males aged 3-5?
Answer: Zero
And how many terrorist acts have been committed or attempted in U.S. territory by foreign-born Muslim males age 17-40?
1983
April 18, Beirut, Lebanon: U.S. embassy destroyed in suicide car-bomb attack; 63 dead, including 17 Americans. The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility.
Oct. 23, Beirut, Lebanon: Shiite suicide bombers exploded truck near U.S. military barracks at Beirut airport, killing 241 marines. Minutes later a second bomb killed 58 French paratroopers in their barracks in West Beirut.
Dec. 12, Kuwait City, Kuwait: Shiite truck bombers attacked the U.S. embassy and other targets, killing 5 and injuring 80.
1984
Sept. 20, east Beirut, Lebanon: truck bomb exploded outside the U.S. embassy annex, killing 24, including 2 U.S. military.
Dec. 3, Beirut, Lebanon: Kuwait Airways Flight 221, from Kuwait to Pakistan, hijacked and diverted to Tehran. 2 Americans killed.
1985
April 12, Madrid, Spain: Bombing at restaurant frequented by U.S. soldiers, killed 18 Spaniards and injured 82.
June 14, Beirut, Lebanon: TWA Flight 847 en route from Athens to Rome hijacked to Beirut by Hezbollah terrorists and held for 17 days. A U.S. Navy diver executed.
Oct. 7, Mediterranean Sea: gunmen attack Italian cruise ship, Achille Lauro. One U.S. tourist killed. Hijacking linked to Libya.
Dec. 18, Rome, Italy, and Vienna, Austria: airports in Rome and Vienna were bombed, killing 20 people, 5 of whom were Americans. Bombing linked to Libya.
1986
April 5, West Berlin, Germany: Libyans bombed a disco frequented by U.S. servicemen, killing 2 and injuring hundreds.
1988
Dec. 21, Lockerbie, Scotland: N.Y.-bound Pan-Am Boeing 747 exploded in flight from a terrorist bomb and crashed into Scottish village, killing all 259 aboard and 11 on the ground. Passengers included 35 Syracuse University students and many U.S. military personnel. Libya formally admitted responsibility 15 years later (Aug. 2003) and offered $2.7 billion compensation to victims' families.
1993
Feb. 26, New York City: bomb exploded in basement garage of World Trade Center, killing 6 and injuring at least 1,040 others. In 1995, militant Islamist Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and 9 others were convicted of conspiracy charges, and in 1998, Ramzi Yousef, believed to have been the mastermind, was convicted of the bombing. Al-Qaeda involvement is suspected.
1995
Nov. 13, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: car bomb exploded at U.S. military headquarters, killing 5 U.S. military servicemen.
1996
June 25, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia: truck bomb exploded outside Khobar Towers military complex, killing 19 American servicemen and injuring hundreds of others. 13 Saudis and a Lebanese, all alleged members of Islamic militant group Hezbollah, were indicted on charges relating to the attack in June 2001.
1998
Aug. 7, Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania: truck bombs exploded almost simultaneously near 2 U.S. embassies, killing 224 (213 in Kenya and 11 in Tanzania) and injuring about 4,500. 4 men connected with al-Qaeda 2 of whom had received training at al-Qaeda camps inside Afghanistan, were convicted of the killings in May 2001 and later sentenced to life in prison. A federal grand jury had indicted 22 men in connection with the attacks, including Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden, who remained at large.
2000
Oct. 12, Aden, Yemen: U.S. Navy destroyer USS Cole heavily damaged when a small boat loaded with explosives blew up alongside it. 17 sailors killed. Linked to Osama bin Laden, or members of al-Qaeda terrorist network.
2001
Sept. 11, New York City, Arlington, Va., and Shanksville, Pa.: hijackers crashed 2 commercial jets into twin towers of World Trade Center; 2 more hijacked jets were crashed into the Pentagon and a field in rural Pa. Total dead and missing numbered 2,9921: 2,749 in New York City, 184 at the Pentagon, 40 in Pa., and 19 hijackers. Islamic al-Qaeda terrorist group blamed.
2002
June 14, Karachi, Pakistan: bomb explodes outside American consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, killing 12. Linked to al-Qaeda.
2003 1
May 12, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: suicide bombers kill 34, including 8 Americans, at housing compounds for Westerners. Al-Qaeda suspected.
2004
May 29–31, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: terrorists attack the offices of a Saudi oil company in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, take foreign oil workers hostage in a nearby residential compound, leaving 22 people dead including one American.
June 11–19, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: terrorists kidnap and execute Paul Johnson Jr., an American, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. 2 other Americans and BBC cameraman killed by gun attacks.
Dec. 6, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia: terrorists storm the U.S. consulate, killing 5 consulate employees. 4 terrorists were killed by Saudi security.
2005
Nov. 9, Amman, Jordan: suicide bombers hit 3 American hotels, Radisson, Grand Hyatt, and Days Inn, in Amman, Jordan, killing 57. Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility.
2007
Dec. 11, Algeria: more than 60 people are killed, including 11 United Nations staff members, when Al Qaeda terrorists detonate two car bombs near Algeria's Constitutional Council and the United Nations offices.
2008
May 26, Iraq: a suicide bomber on a motorcycle kills six U.S. soldiers and wounds 18 others in Tarmiya.
June 24, Iraq: a suicide bomber kills at least 20 people, including three U.S. Marines, at a meeting between sheiks and Americans in Karmah, a town west of Baghdad.
June 12, Afghanistan: four American servicemen are killed when a roadside bomb explodes near a U.S. military vehicle in Farah Province.
July 13, Afghanistan: nine U.S.soldiers and at least 15 NATO troops die when Taliban militants boldly attack an American base in Kunar Province, which borders Pakistan. It's the most deadly against U.S. troops in three years.
Aug. 18 and 19, Afghanistan: as many as 15 suicide bombers backed by about 30 militants attack a U.S. military base, Camp Salerno, in Bamiyan. Fighting between U.S. troops and members of the Taliban rages overnight. No U.S. troops are killed.
Sept. 16, Yemen: a car bomb and a rocket strike the U.S. embassy in Yemen as staff arrived to work, killing 16 people, including 4 civilians. At least 25 suspected al-Qaeda militants are arrested for the attack.
Nov. 26, India: in a series of attacks on several of Mumbai's landmarks and commercial hubs that are popular with Americans and other foreign tourists, including at least two five-star hotels, a hospital, a train station, and a cinema. About 300 people are wounded and nearly 190 people die, including at least 5 Americans.
2009
Feb. 9, Iraq: a suicide bomber kills four American soldiers and their Iraqi translator near a police checkpoint.
April 10, Iraq: a suicide attack kills five American soldiers and two Iraqi policemen.
Dec. 25: A Nigerian man on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit attempted to ignite an explosive device hidden in his underwear. The explosive device that failed to detonate was a mixture of powder and liquid that did not alert security personnel in the airport. The alleged bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, told officials later that he was directed by the terrorist group Al Qaeda. The suspect was already on the government's watch list when he attempted the bombing; his father, a respected Nigerian banker, had told the U.S. government that he was worried about his son's increased extremism.
Dec. 30, Iraq: a suicide bomber kills eight Americans civilians, seven of them CIA agents, at a base in Afghanistan. It's the deadliest attack on the agency since 9/11. The attacker is reportedly a double agent from Jordan who was acting on behalf of al-Qaeda.
2010
May 2, New York City: After discovering a bomb in a smoking vehicle parked in Times Square, authorities arrest Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani who recently became a naturalized U.S. citizen, and charge him with attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and several other federal charges. American officials later announce that the Pakistani Taliban likely played a role in the bomb plot, including training Shahzad.
The underwear bomber. The shoe bomber. The ink-cartridge bomber. 9/11. Foreign-born Muslim males age 17-40. Profiling isn't prejudice or racism. It's just statistics.

I can't be arsed running through this again so I'll just politely ask you to cite your statistical evidence.

How many terrorist acts have been committed or attempted in U.S. territory by caucasian males aged 3-5?
Answer: Zero

And how many terrorist acts have been committed or attempted in U.S. territory by foreign-born Muslim males age 17-40?

1983
April 18, Beirut, Lebanon: U.S. embassy destroyed in suicide car-bomb attack; 63 dead, including 17 Americans. The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility.
Oct. 23, Beirut, Lebanon: Shiite suicide bombers exploded truck near U.S. military barracks at Beirut airport, killing 241 marines. Minutes later a second bomb killed 58 French paratroopers in their barracks in West Beirut.
Dec. 12, Kuwait City, Kuwait: Shiite truck bombers attacked the U.S. embassy and other targets, killing 5 and injuring 80.
1984
Sept. 20, east Beirut, Lebanon: truck bomb exploded outside the U.S. embassy annex, killing 24, including 2 U.S. military.
Dec. 3, Beirut, Lebanon: Kuwait Airways Flight 221, from Kuwait to Pakistan, hijacked and diverted to Tehran. 2 Americans killed.
1985
April 12, Madrid, Spain: Bombing at restaurant frequented by U.S. soldiers, killed 18 Spaniards and injured 82.
June 14, Beirut, Lebanon: TWA Flight 847 en route from Athens to Rome hijacked to Beirut by Hezbollah terrorists and held for 17 days. A U.S. Navy diver executed.
Oct. 7, Mediterranean Sea: gunmen attack Italian cruise ship, Achille Lauro. One U.S. tourist killed. Hijacking linked to Libya.
Dec. 18, Rome, Italy, and Vienna, Austria: airports in Rome and Vienna were bombed, killing 20 people, 5 of whom were Americans. Bombing linked to Libya.
1986
April 5, West Berlin, Germany: Libyans bombed a disco frequented by U.S. servicemen, killing 2 and injuring hundreds.
1988
Dec. 21, Lockerbie, Scotland: N.Y.-bound Pan-Am Boeing 747 exploded in flight from a terrorist bomb and crashed into Scottish village, killing all 259 aboard and 11 on the ground. Passengers included 35 Syracuse University students and many U.S. military personnel. Libya formally admitted responsibility 15 years later (Aug. 2003) and offered $2.7 billion compensation to victims' families.
1993
Feb. 26, New York City: bomb exploded in basement garage of World Trade Center, killing 6 and injuring at least 1,040 others. In 1995, militant Islamist Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and 9 others were convicted of conspiracy charges, and in 1998, Ramzi Yousef, believed to have been the mastermind, was convicted of the bombing. Al-Qaeda involvement is suspected.
1995
Nov. 13, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: car bomb exploded at U.S. military headquarters, killing 5 U.S. military servicemen.
1996
June 25, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia: truck bomb exploded outside Khobar Towers military complex, killing 19 American servicemen and injuring hundreds of others. 13 Saudis and a Lebanese, all alleged members of Islamic militant group Hezbollah, were indicted on charges relating to the attack in June 2001.
1998
Aug. 7, Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania: truck bombs exploded almost simultaneously near 2 U.S. embassies, killing 224 (213 in Kenya and 11 in Tanzania) and injuring about 4,500. 4 men connected with al-Qaeda 2 of whom had received training at al-Qaeda camps inside Afghanistan, were convicted of the killings in May 2001 and later sentenced to life in prison. A federal grand jury had indicted 22 men in connection with the attacks, including Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden, who remained at large.
2000
Oct. 12, Aden, Yemen: U.S. Navy destroyer USS Cole heavily damaged when a small boat loaded with explosives blew up alongside it. 17 sailors killed. Linked to Osama bin Laden, or members of al-Qaeda terrorist network.
2001
Sept. 11, New York City, Arlington, Va., and Shanksville, Pa.: hijackers crashed 2 commercial jets into twin towers of World Trade Center; 2 more hijacked jets were crashed into the Pentagon and a field in rural Pa. Total dead and missing numbered 2,9921: 2,749 in New York City, 184 at the Pentagon, 40 in Pa., and 19 hijackers. Islamic al-Qaeda terrorist group blamed.
2002
June 14, Karachi, Pakistan: bomb explodes outside American consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, killing 12. Linked to al-Qaeda.
2003 1
May 12, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: suicide bombers kill 34, including 8 Americans, at housing compounds for Westerners. Al-Qaeda suspected.
2004
May 29–31, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: terrorists attack the offices of a Saudi oil company in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, take foreign oil workers hostage in a nearby residential compound, leaving 22 people dead including one American.
June 11–19, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: terrorists kidnap and execute Paul Johnson Jr., an American, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. 2 other Americans and BBC cameraman killed by gun attacks.
Dec. 6, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia: terrorists storm the U.S. consulate, killing 5 consulate employees. 4 terrorists were killed by Saudi security.
2005
Nov. 9, Amman, Jordan: suicide bombers hit 3 American hotels, Radisson, Grand Hyatt, and Days Inn, in Amman, Jordan, killing 57. Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility.
2007
Dec. 11, Algeria: more than 60 people are killed, including 11 United Nations staff members, when Al Qaeda terrorists detonate two car bombs near Algeria's Constitutional Council and the United Nations offices.
2008
May 26, Iraq: a suicide bomber on a motorcycle kills six U.S. soldiers and wounds 18 others in Tarmiya.
June 24, Iraq: a suicide bomber kills at least 20 people, including three U.S. Marines, at a meeting between sheiks and Americans in Karmah, a town west of Baghdad.
June 12, Afghanistan: four American servicemen are killed when a roadside bomb explodes near a U.S. military vehicle in Farah Province.
July 13, Afghanistan: nine U.S.soldiers and at least 15 NATO troops die when Taliban militants boldly attack an American base in Kunar Province, which borders Pakistan. It's the most deadly against U.S. troops in three years.
Aug. 18 and 19, Afghanistan: as many as 15 suicide bombers backed by about 30 militants attack a U.S. military base, Camp Salerno, in Bamiyan. Fighting between U.S. troops and members of the Taliban rages overnight. No U.S. troops are killed.
Sept. 16, Yemen: a car bomb and a rocket strike the U.S. embassy in Yemen as staff arrived to work, killing 16 people, including 4 civilians. At least 25 suspected al-Qaeda militants are arrested for the attack.
Nov. 26, India: in a series of attacks on several of Mumbai's landmarks and commercial hubs that are popular with Americans and other foreign tourists, including at least two five-star hotels, a hospital, a train station, and a cinema. About 300 people are wounded and nearly 190 people die, including at least 5 Americans.
2009
Feb. 9, Iraq: a suicide bomber kills four American soldiers and their Iraqi translator near a police checkpoint.
April 10, Iraq: a suicide attack kills five American soldiers and two Iraqi policemen.
Dec. 25: A Nigerian man on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit attempted to ignite an explosive device hidden in his underwear. The explosive device that failed to detonate was a mixture of powder and liquid that did not alert security personnel in the airport. The alleged bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, told officials later that he was directed by the terrorist group Al Qaeda. The suspect was already on the government's watch list when he attempted the bombing; his father, a respected Nigerian banker, had told the U.S. government that he was worried about his son's increased extremism.
Dec. 30, Iraq: a suicide bomber kills eight Americans civilians, seven of them CIA agents, at a base in Afghanistan. It's the deadliest attack on the agency since 9/11. The attacker is reportedly a double agent from Jordan who was acting on behalf of al-Qaeda.
2010
May 2, New York City: After discovering a bomb in a smoking vehicle parked in Times Square, authorities arrest Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani who recently became a naturalized U.S. citizen, and charge him with attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and several other federal charges. American officials later announce that the Pakistani Taliban likely played a role in the bomb plot, including training Shahzad.

The underwear bomber. The shoe bomber. The ink-cartridge bomber. 9/11. Foreign-born Muslim males age 17-40. Profiling isn't prejudice or racism. It's just statistics.

>> ^quantumushroom:
These fking animals just "happened" to be Muslim. Their barbaric "faith" had nothing to do with their being psychotic killers.

QM is totally right...religion makes people irrational and potentially dangerous. His extreme take on his faith (whether Islamic or something else) was probably the catalyst for this behavior.

>> ^spoco2:
This doesn't get a WTF from me in the sense of 'Holy cow, are they really doing that?'
This gets a WTF from me in the sense of 'Really, people older than about 12 years old find this sort of stuff entertaining?'
Really, Anime fricken leaves me so cold. People wax on and on and on and on about how it's so damn superior to western animation, but really, so much of it is lazy (a LOT has an awful lot of static image in the frame with barely a mouth moving), outlets for the repression of the Japanese culture. The amount of violence and sexual abuse that is in these things is truly horrible. I found the violence funny when I was a kid, but after that, it just bores the pants off me.


How do you know this anime was made for people above the age of 12? Studio Ghibli films are usually for kids, I thought.

As for the rest of your post, I certainly spend more time enjoying animation that's "Made in Japan" than animation that's "Made in America", but I don't see why I should care either way. I'm an American. If I draw a shitty cartoon in my basement, am I automatically an example of shitty American animation? At what point is my failure my own and not my country's? Factor in multi-national corporations/ownership and the whole issue becomes even more muddled. Dreamworks and Pixar, to my knowledge, are the sole two animation companies in "The West" that are admired, and Dreamworks is owned by an Indian company based in Mumbai. Elsewhere, multiple anime titles have been and are being produced by Japanese studios specifically to appeal to "Western" audiences (read: white middle class youth), or at the very least significantly factor in their interests.

Anyway, the giant budget 3D animated movies cost dozens of millions of dollars to produce, and only offer up perhaps 90 minutes of entertainment after years of production time (The Incredibles cost $92 million, Wall-E: a whopping $180 million). Because of the massive budgets these movies require, the scripts of these films rarely take any risks. Everything's rated G and has a story that is very "lowest common denominator" in my eyes. I'm getting far too old to enjoy these films beyond their technical merits, since their target audience is primarily below the age of 14.

Meanwhile, partially due to smaller budget requirements in anime production, I can choose all sorts of anime that tries to cater to a slightly older crowd. Very little anime attempts to appeal to anyone above the age of 30, but even in the "age 13-18" type shows, there's interesting themes to chew on. One of my fav animes, Gundam, is basically Star Trek with robots. Its creators have described the show as a humanist show, and the shows take on imperialism, racism, and war really line up with what I saw in the humanist Star Trek shows (I loved TNG/DS9). Since Star Trek has been dead for a while, it's nice to have a place to go to (btw: the upcoming movie will abandon much of what the shows were about in favor of violence and sex). Most Gundam shows are about a teenage boy who hops into a war robot, gets traumatized by war, manipulated by corrupt politicians into fighting questionable wars, and deals with issues of imperialism. Not the most intellectually challenging stuff in the world, I know, but it sure beats what I've seen in stuff like 24 or Heroes and a lot of other dramas on the major networks. And those are aimed at considerably older demographics. I think the much smaller budget requirements of anime helps studios create things for niche demographics (such as sci-fi loving humanists) and that's good for me. Are they technically superior to something like Wall-E? Not by a long shot. But a 1,000 minute Gundam series didn't cost $180 million every 90 minutes either, and yet still left me more entertained.

>> ^honkeytonk73:
Pop guns and coffee can rockets are a threat to Israel... Right. Sure. Don't believe the propaganda.


Yeah, getting rockets launched into your territory is no big deal! Just chill Israel! It's ONLY 3,000 rockets and mortar shells per year for the past 8 years... they're not high-tech or anything and they only kill a few people, so let's let it slide.

Tell me, what nation in the world would let their neighbours throw rockets into their backyards and do nothing?

Here are some facts.

More than 20% of the population of Israel is Arab... There are OVER 2,000,000 MUSLIMS living in Israel. They are PEACEFUL, HARD-WORKING, GET SOME OF THE BEST FREE HEALTH CARE IN THE WORLD AND THOROUGHLY ENJOY THEIR LIVES AMONG "JEWISH PEOPLE".

There are 1.6 million Arabs (the vast majority Muslim) in the Gaza strip. It is NOT "THE WORLD'S MOST DENSELY POPULATED GHETTO". Hong Kong, London, Monaco and THOUSANDS of other cities have a denser population. Mumbai has OVER 4 TIMES the population density with less than a third the land area.

How people can sympathize with ROGUE individuals launching rockets into another country is completely beyond me... what kind of logic or pathology is it play here?

(sorry for the caps, it is not a habit but some parts REALLY need emphasis.)

Israel is in fact prosecuting the war in Gaza in a humanitarian way

Most liberal Westerners lack a more accurate paradigm in which to view the events in the Middle East. The modern, progressive, liberal democracy of Israel is not seeking to punish poor Arabs. Rather she is liberating 1.4 million hostages from the grip of 5,000 Hamas terrorist thugs.

Israel is fighting the Iranian proxy at its door step that also threatens the entire Middle East, Europe and North America as well. There are still more “battle grounds” in this war where the results are also tragic. But they were tragic for the good guys such as Mumbai, New York’s twin towers and Darfur, Sudan.

When idiotic dictators attack Israel, eventually she responds. The terrorist who rule Gaza invited disaster upon themselves and their captive, hostage, citizens. Their theologically inspired pathetic political philosophy is simply anti-Semitic and dangerously seasoned with immature fantasies of glory.

We in the West drink the feel good “kool-aid” of sympathy for pre-middle ages, totalitarian, apocalyptic, oppressive regimes. The drink is served by a willing liberal Western media who aid and abet our enemy in their pathological manipulation of the news.

Our challenge is to appreciate that Israel is in fact using many very benevolent means to alleviate the suffering that is going on in Gaza. Everyone knows a quicker, more efficient but unspeakable way to stop the Hamas regime. W.W. II ended with these methods.

But Israel is prosecuting a humanitarian method of warfare. The human cost of a few hundred or a few thousand deaths out of 1,400,000 Hamas hostages is the price Hamas is paying rather than simply stopping firing rockets across the border on to 1,000,0000 Arab and Jewish citizens in South Israel.

Rescuing hostages as I present here is dangerous and imperfect. But given the astoundingly stupid regime in Gaza aerial bombing and troop saturation is the better way.

Joe Biden can't even say 'Palestine'.. in the debates he had to call it 'the land to the south of Israel'

He's been Israel's biggest supporter in congress.. so is anyone surprised that he and Obama will support any violence against the palestinian people?

Why does he speak out against the Mumbai attacks but not this?

>> ^RedSky:


I have to agree on your first point, PEPFAR did a lot of good, and it's probably the most common thing people put forward when asked "what did Bush do right?" Still, the point Olbermann makes about not funding groups who promote condom use goes to show how petty Bush can be, even when he's doing something that's working out well.

The Muslim theocracy in Lebanon is referring to the elections Bush pushed for that resulted in a big, legitimizing win for Hezbollah -- something Bush's own advisers had predicted. You can argue that maybe other courses of action might have had the same outcome or worse, but you can't argue that giving Hezbollah legitimate influence over a country's government is anything but a lost battle in this "war on terror" he's so fond of.

As for the Mumbai bombings, and Benazir Bhutto's assasination, they're outgrowths of a policy towards Pakistan that involved simply trusting Musharraf, and giving him buckets of aid with little to no accountability. Instead, all we ever hear is "Pakistan is on our side, Iraq is the main battlefront on the War on Terror." Looking for bin Laden in Waziristan is off the table.

You have a point about North Korea being a global failing, but they were trending towards dismantling their nuclear program during Clinton's diplomatic efforts. Bush stormed in with his "we don't talk to bad guys" policy, dismantled the talks, and North Korea responded by reverting to their old ways. They were left unchecked (again, Iraq was to be our main/only focus) until they were able to build a nuclear weapon.

As for the one-sided nature of Olbermann, there's not much to argue there other than to say "they started it first." Are Hannity, Glenn Beck, and Bill O'Reilly some sort of multifaceted objective political commentary? I don't want MSNBC to become the left's Fox News, but I think the media environment can tolerate one Olbermann, and many Maddow-like personalities, for there to at least be two sides doing the whole spin-as-news shtick.

If it were me, I'd love for the media to give believably objective reporting of current events, facts, and history, but all of the outlets that try to do so are either a) struggling to "prove" their objectivity by trying to show that both parties have equal responsibility for all failures or b) are flagged by people as being left-leaning because objectively speaking, Republicans haven't gotten anything right in quite a while.

We'll see how long people keep accusing, say, PBS or the NYT of being "liberal" now that Democrats are in power. I suspect even HuffPo and TPM will get credit for doing fact-based reporting, now that Democrats are in the driver's seat. After all, the "liberal" press loves to attack authority, no matter who they are. "Conservative" press will keep doing what it's been doing; smear Democrats at all times, praise conservative Republicans at all times, and frame all failures as a direct outgrowth of failure to adhere to conservative principles, or failure to pursue them drastically enough.

Regardless of his religious preconditions, PEPFAR was both an extremely generous foreign aid investment and highly effective at providing antiretroviral treatment against AIDS, although yes some of the funding did go to abstinence education. If anything Bush's still high favourability ratings in Africa are testament to that.

How was the election of a Muslim theocracy in Lebanon Bush's doing? He supported Israel's invasion post-occurance, but unless he exacted any direct control over Israel's foreign policy there I can't see the connection.

Olbermann infers connections to the Mumbai bombings, the killing of Benazir Bhutto, again where is the link? The US was never proposed to be the sole global guardian against terrorism.

Preventing Kim Jong-il from acquiring nuclear weapons again is a global failing. Applying more stringent sanctions, whether they would have had any effect or not was vetoed by China. You could argue more effective diplomacy was required, but as it stands it is not a failing specifically of his administration but more of an unrealised success.

As for the rest, there's little I can argue on. I'm no apologist, but I take offence to Olbermann and for that matter, much of MSNBC providing factually correct, but one sided news.

As for why I sifted it, I want to raise my star rating and no one likes my music >.<

"An estimated crowd of several hundred dumbasses gathered to announce how fucking ridiculous they are complaining about a fucking sign while people are dying over a lie in Iraq, Afghanistan is blowing up, terrorists kill hundreds in Mumbai, and the US economy is spiraling out of control."

>> ^Krupo:
Fedquip, how the heck did you even see this blocked video? Oh wait, internet pipeline to the border, right?


Binoculars