(V):Rubbish. You're making a false statement (as usual).  You quote me out of context (a typical ploy of the lying liberal left media). Here's what I did say:

Subject: But you DO use Fox News as a major source of information, correct?
Modified by Artful Dodger (6. March 2009, 21:53:28)
The Usurper:No I don't

and

"I don't get my news from Fox.  I get it from many sources...."

It's ONE source. I've said it's the best source for news but it's NOT my only source.  Don't try to put words into my mouth.  Would you like a list of the various sources? I really get tired of your constant manipulation of what people (particularly me) say on this board.  If you can't get your facts straight, then stay out of the conversation.

9/11... I dont think it is possible to conceive and plan and implement and cover up to the extent that would be needed to pull this off....

I have read many many things and watched many many videos on the subject, I just dont see it.

I look at a blurred video of a plane flying into the pentagon, and see a caption asking if it really looks like a plane, and how does a plane going so fast fly so close to the ground blah blah blah... well to me it does appear that it could be a plane, and yes it is not impossible for it to fly like that.... all your hopes lie in supposition that it could not have happened the way they say it happened, the way we all saw it happen, well I have at least the same on my side, there are just as many people, even more, who will tell me it could have happened just that way, as those who will tell me it is possible it did not happen this way, and yes, I can sleep just fine, and it bothers me as much that you are so paranoid that you cannot sleep as it bothers you that I am so blind that I can, get over it already, you have no proof that you are right, you have no proof that I am wrong....

The Usurper: Are you kidding me??? Really??? You have movies made by liberals that garner awards from other liberals who also make movies, and even a Nobel peace award from more self serving liberals, all pushing for liberal agendas, gets to the point where every school kid in America was forced to watch, and then be crammed down their throats as truth....


You got no problems with any of that crap????

Artful Dodger: That's not what you've said in the past.

Artful Dodger: Your telling me that I get my 9/11 info from Rosie O'Donnell is a good start. lol

The Usurper:Now I gotta come up with some Dodgerisms. 

Artful Dodger: lol :o)

The Usurper:
  You got me on that one! 

Artful Dodger: When he's diplomatic, I respond in kind. And his Czuchisms are met with Usurperisms. It's all par for the course. I hope you are correct, that he cherishes truth. Fewer Czuchisms might be more convincing. Just as in debate with you, however, it sometimes gets heated. Yet fondness and mutual respect grows sometimes in spite of these things, or perhaps even because of them. It's our world. The challenge for all of us is to understand it and make it better. To some extent all these debates, from whichever side, are conducive to those ends & represent a real striving for something better.

The Usurper:Czuch never bothers me.  Fortunately, I agree with just about everything he says.  And more often than not, he's very diplomatic.  His other stuff is simply Czuchisms and should be taken as such.  He doesn't disdain truth any more than you or I.  He cherishes it. 

But easy for me to say since I like the guy and appreciate his POV since it most closely mirrors mine.  His snippy comments make me go or but most often get a from me. 

Artful Dodger: My comment to Czuch about not disdaining truth was apropos, and frankly meant to be insulting, because of the way he himself insinuates insults into his specious statements. "Answer a fool according to his folly." Czuch hits below the belt at times, so I return the favor. You ought to be able to see this.

That you are a skeptic at heart is very healthy. So am I. And because you and I both, though we disagree on many issues, nevertheless DO have an interest in obtaining to the truth, on whatever topic, wherever the evidence may lead, there is hope for us both. Czuch has a taller hill to climb, in my opinion. He resorts to ridicule more often than he tries to articulate a point. To my knowledge, he does no private research on any of these issues, nor does he appear to lose an ounce of sleep over matters of the greatest importance.

So...there is the rationale for my different approaches to debate. I'm not perfect, but it's like a wrestling match...you have to think on your feet.

The Usurper:  I'm not going to defend Fox or any other cable network.  Think what you want about them.  As I've said, I couldn't care less about this theory of yours.  It's meaningless to me.  I don't get my news from Fox.  I get it from many sources and I am a skeptic at heart.  I don't believe everything I read or hear.

Some people on this form like to generalize and tell people what they are thinking.  Some like to twist words or create caricatures of others.  Some of  the things you say are a passive form of insulting.  Some not so passive.  "Some of us don't distain truth."  That is an arrogant statement.  When you make these kinds of statements, I just start ignoring you and I certainly don't take what you  say with any degree of seriousness. 

One of the most effective ways to get someone to consider your view, is to put a stone in their shoe.  The reason I don't buy global warming is I had a stone (of doubt) put in my shoe.  I am not a conspiracy theorist but there are some things about 911 that just don't add up for me.  Again, stone in the shoe.  I don't think the Republican party is always right.  But I hold strongly to conservative views and think that our country is better off run from conservative principles.  Still, I have some democratic congressmen that I respect.  I like Alan Combes now that he's off with Hannity.  He's so much better as a Fox News Contributor.  He brings a different view to the issues and he articulates them well.  I also like Dr. Marc Lamont Hill.  He's pretty much a Left kind of guy.  But he's brillant and gives excellent reasons for his views.  He's a regular on Fox.  He NEVER agress with the conservative viewpoints.  That's why I like watching Fox.  I know of MANY left leaning political commentators that are regulars on Fox. 

To my knowledge, neither Homer or Bart has appeared on a Fox news program for their views on anything.

Artful Dodger: "It's illogical to assume that just because a show like Family Man contains positive messages supporting global warming that somehow this attitude bleeds over to the hard news."

Why is this illogical? At the top, you have one man (Murdoch) owning both.

In the article itself, there is this sentence: "In 2003, Rupert Murdoch himself admitted that the corporation had “tried” to help the Bush administration sell the war in Iraq."

And embedded within this sentence is a another link, to this:

Murdoch Admits He Tried to Shape Public Opinion on Iraq

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JF9HpuZm6-g

How did he try to shape public opinion? Why, through programming, whether entertainment or news. He utilized the means at his command. What can be simpler than this?

The Usurper:It's illogical to assume that just because a show like Family Man contains positive messages supporting global warming that somehow this attitude bleeds over to the hard news.

And when you can read minds then, and only then, you will be able to tell me the motives behind Fox Executives.  Otherwise, you simply have an opinion and as I've already stated, opinions don't add up to facts. 

Artful Dodger: I'm glad to hear that. Now if I could convince my liberal friends to stop getting their news from MSNBC, we might get somewhere.

The Usurper:No I don't

Artful Dodger: "This all coming from someone who gets his 911 information from Rosie ODonnell."

Cute. But you DO use Fox News as a major source of information, correct? That would include Hannity & O'Reilly, among others. You think Murdoch pulls the strings on Fox entertainment for political purposes, then leaves Fox news alone?

The Usurper:Duh Greg.  I don't consider Prison break or The Simpsons a major source of information.  Give me a break.  I couldn't care less about your meaningless suggestion here.  This all coming from someone who gets his 911 information from Rosie ODonnell. 

Artful Dodger: "so what"

So your adopted favorite source of information plays deceptive games with the minds of the public, that's what. This includes Fox News. I don't deny that so does CNN, MSNBC, etc.

Seems pretty important to me.

Czuch: "why bother, it fits perfectly into your model"

Because some of us don't disdain truth, even if it forces us to modify our own opinions, when it comes to light.

"and with 9/11 its not evenly divided at all"

The only science supporting the 9/11 official conspiracy is pseudo-science. You could learn that for yourself if you would "bother."

The Usurper: haven't thoroughly studied it for myself.

why bother, it fits perfectly into your model.... create fear to promote or advance some agenda...

The Usurper:So what.

The Usurper: Scientists are genuinely divided on the issue, or appear to be so;

and with 9/11 its not evenly divided at all.. so that should not matter

Czuch: Exceptionalism.

Google it for the definition.

As to Al Gore, he is a propagandist for the global elites.

About the global warming conspiracy, my difficulty wrapping my head around it, to this point, has been two things: 1) Scientists are genuinely divided on the issue, or appear to be so; and 2) I haven't thoroughly studied it for myself. That being the case, I ought not to assert an opinion too strongly pro or con before doing my homework. Is that fair?

As to 9/11, I have done my homework and that's why my conviction is strong on the matter.

The Usurper: But at any rate... global warming fits into your theory so neatly... how do you justify blaming the US government for 9/11 but you cant wrap your head around a global warming conspiracy?

The Usurper: You believe in the myth of American exceptionalism.

Maybe I need to update my spell check then, since it says it is not a word, or at least a correctly spelled word?

The Usurper: What about Al gores role in brainwashing?

Pedro Martínez: thanks sweety....I cant understand the differences in spelling, like color and colour, valor and valour etc

Czuch: Exceptionalism is a word. Buy a dictionary.

Art and I debated global warming, and my conclusion was that both sides of the debate have merit.

As to how the issue is being used politically, I agree with you. Notice my post to Art on Global Warming just below, where I link to an article exposing Fox TV's role in brainwashing the public.

The Usurper: You believe in the myth of American exceptionalism.


Well, first I want to find out why you seem to dismiss the problem solution blah blah when it comes to global warming??? You dont just neglect responding to any of my posts as of yet, but this topic seems to have slowed you down maybe?

Secondly, exceptionalism isnt really a word...but I know you will not pass on the opportunity to explain further what exactly the "tragic consequences" you speak about are?

Bernice: "Canceled" (or "canceling", "cancelable", "canceler") is proper American spelling. The rest of the English-speaking world spells it with double L.

Artful Dodger: Fox Admits To Planting Political Brainwashing In Popular TV Shows

--Corporation boasts of “inserting messages” about global warming into hit shows like The Simpsons, 24, Prison Break & Family Guy--

http://www.prisonplanet.com/fox-admits-to-planting-political-brainwashing-in-popular-tv-shows.html


A spade is a spade.

Bernice:Oddly enough, it's spelled both ways. 

Artful Dodger: is that how americans spell cancelled?

Global Warming 

ARE ELITISTS SHOOTING THEMSELVES IN THE FOOT?
My husband and I just listened to a CD of Ed Griffin explaining the formation of the Federal Reserve. It's shocking how much manipulation and deception of which we are the victims, under the banner of Democracy. Having this perspective now, I understand why you say that the labels--Socialism, Facism, Republican, Democrat, etc. just don't matter.

We do have a question: Who is going to bail out the US when we citizens no longer have the money to pay? If the goal is to reduce the citizens of the US to poor "peasants" like other 3rd World countries, then the time is coming when we peasants won't have the money to pay the interest OR the principal on loans. Does not the whole fraudulant system then collapse? Where then is their power? Won't those in power eventually be shooting themselves in the foot?
Mrs. Cook, 2009 Feb 28

Hello Mrs. Cook.
This concept deserves thoughtful analysis covering many aspects of the drama but, in my view, it all boils down to this: The elitists do not expect the common man to pay for this current debt in terms of money. In the face of crisis, people now are exchanging their personal freedom for security, or at least promises of security. At the end of that process, money as we have known it disappears and becomes merely digital impulses in accounts assigned to each person. Those digits will be used to acquire the necessities of life. The quantity people receive will depend on their service to the state and their willingness to cooperate. Those who obey will be told where to live and what work to do. Those who dissent will be cut off and will starve or beg. The elitists’ power will lie in total control over the economic lives of their subjects. Common people will support the government, not with taxes, but with human effort. They will be slaves to the system. Money is not a significant factor under slavery. Masters do not collect money from their slaves. Instead, they possess the output of their labor.
Ed Griffin

"Obama Admin. continues Bush policy of denying prisoners in Afghanistan the right to challenge their imprisonment. Prisoners in Guantanamo may be moved to Afghan prisons. Isn't it great to have two opposing political parties?"

http://www.smmp.pt/?p=3041

Turley: Bush terror memos are 'very definition of tyranny'

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Turley_Bush_terror_memos_are_definition_0304.html

World Trade Center 7 Demolition Acceleration

"NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) finally admits Freefall Speed."

http://www.freedomsphoenix.com/Find-Freedom.htm?EdNo=001&At=046815

Economic Destruction of America Step One of A Global Banking Power Grab

"The economic meltdown is merely a means to an end. It is being done deliberately, they say, at the very highest levels to achieve a well-planned outcome. What outcome is that? Global rule over all banking, of course."

http://www.freedomsphoenix.com/Find-Freedom.htm?EdNo=001&At=046816

The US Army Document That Proves the US is the World’s Number One Sponsor of World Terrorism

http://www.freedomsphoenix.com/Find-Freedom.htm?EdNo=001&At=046818

Czuch: I believe your lack of political insight & blindness to real American foreign & domestic policy can be summed up in this one sentence:

You believe in the myth of American exceptionalism.

This belief has tragic consequences for your fellow citizens and the rest of the world also. One day you will wake up to this.

Nicaragua (1979-90)
See also: Iran-Contra affair
Further information: Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare

Following the rise to power of the left-wing Sandinista government in Nicaragua, the Ronald Reagan administration ordered the CIA to organize and train the Contras, a right wing guerrilla group. On December 1, 1981, President Reagan signed an initial, one-paragraph "Finding" authorizing the CIA's paramilitary war against Nicaragua.[63]

The Republic of Nicaragua vs. The United States of America[64] was a case heard in 1986 by the International Court of Justice which found that the United States had violated international law by direct acts of U.S. personnel and by the supporting Contra guerrillas in their war against the Nicaraguan government and by mining Nicaragua's harbors. The US was not imputable for possible human rights violations done by the Contras. The Court found that this was a conflict involving military and para-military forces and did not make a finding of state terrorism.

Florida State University professor, Frederick H. Gareau, has written that the Contras "attacked bridges, electric generators, but also state-owned agricultural cooperatives, rural health clinics, villages and non-combatants." U.S. agents were directly involved in the fighting. "CIA commandos launched a series of sabotage raids on Nicaraguan port facilities. They mined the country's major ports and set fire to its largest oil storage facilities." In 1984 the U.S. Congress ordered this intervention to be stopped, however it was later shown that the CIA illegally continued (See Iran-Contra affair). Professor Gareau has characterized these acts as "wholesale terrorism" by the United States.[65]

In 1984 a CIA manual for training the Nicaraguan Contras in psychological operations was leaked to the media, entitled "Psychological Operations in Guerrilla War".[66]

The manual recommended “selective use of violence for propagandistic effects” and to “neutralize” government officials. Nicaraguan Contras were taught to lead:

...selective use of armed force for PSYOP psychological operations effect.... Carefully selected, planned targets — judges, police officials, tax collectors, etc. — may be removed for PSYOP effect in a UWOA unconventional warfare operations area, but extensive precautions must insure that the people “concur” in such an act by thorough explanatory canvassing among the affected populace before and after conduct of the mission.
—James Bovard, Freedom Daily[4]

Former State Department official William Blum, has written that "American pilots were flying diverse kinds of combat missions against Nicaraguan troops and carrying supplies to contras inside Nicaraguan territory. Several were shot down and killed. Some flew in civilian clothes, after having been told that they would be disavowed by the Pentagon if captured. Some contras told American congressmen that they were ordered to claim responsibility for a bombing raid organized by the CIA and flown by Agency mercenaries."[67] According to Blum the Pentagon considered U.S. policy in Nicaragua to be a "blueprint for successful U.S. intervention in the Third World" and it would go "right into the textbooks".[68]

Colombian writer and former diplomat Clara Nieto, in her book "Masters of War", describes the Reagan administration as "the paradigm of a terrorist state" remarking that this was "ironically, the very thing Reagan claimed to be fighting."

We cannot provide here a complete overview of the Iran-Contra affair. We shall attempt, rather, to give an account of George Bush's decisive, central role in those events, which occurred during his vice-presidency and spilled over into his presidency. The principal elements of scandal in Iran-Contra may be reduced to the following points:

1) the secret arming of the Khomeini regime in Iran by the U.S. government, during an official U.S.-decreed arms embargo against Iran, while the U.S. publicly denounced the recipients of its secret deliveries as terrorists and kidnappers--a policy initiated under the Jimmy Carter presidency and accelerated by the Reagan-Bush administration;

2) the Reagan-Bush administration's secret arming of its `` Contras '' for war against the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua, while such aid was explicitly prohibited under U.S. law;

3) the use of communist and terrorist enemies--often armed directly by the Anglo-Americans--to justify a police state and covert, oligarchical rule at home;

4) paying for and protecting the gun-running projects with drug- smuggling, embezzlement, theft by diversion from authorized U.S. programs, and the `` silencing '' of both opponents and knowledgeable participants in the schemes; and

5) the continual, routine perjury and deception of the public by government officials pretending to have no knowledge of these activities; and the routine acquiescence in that deception by Congressmen too frightened to oppose it.

In the early days of the Korean War, other American officers observed, photographed and confidentially reported on such wholesale executions by their South Korean ally, a secretive slaughter believed to have killed 100,000 or more leftists and supposed sympathizers, usually without charge or trial, in a few weeks in mid-1950.

Extensive archival research by The Associated Press has found no indication Far East commander Gen. Douglas MacArthur took action to stem the summary mass killing, knowledge of which reached top levels of the Pentagon and State Department in Washington, where it was classified "secret" and filed away.

Now, a half-century later, the South Korean government's Truth and Reconciliation Commission is investigating what happened in that summer of terror, a political bloodbath largely hidden from history, unlike the communist invaders' executions of southern rightists, which were widely publicized and denounced at the time.

It was revealed this week that South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission is concluding the US military indiscriminately killed large groups of South Korean civilians during the Korean War in the early 1950s.

The commission has more than 200 cases on its docket, based on hundreds of citizens’ petitions recounting US bombing and strafing runs on South Korean refugee gatherings in 1950 and ’51. The citizens’ petitions have accumulated since 1999, when the Associated Press confirmed the 1950 refugee killings at No Gun Ri in 1950, where some 400 civilians, mostly women and children, were killed by US troops.

Concluding its first investigations, the commission is urging the South Korean government to seek US compensation for victims. South Korean legislators have also asked a US Senate committee to join them in investigating declassified evidence that American ground commanders had adopted a policy of deliberately targeting refugees.

Oakland Post
11-25-1998
U.S. Army Report Indicates Allegations of WWII Massacres Of African-American Troops

United States Representative Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS) received a report from the United States Army November 13 in response to his request the Secretary to Defense, William Cohen, conduct an investigation of the recent allegations that African-American soldiers may have been massacred at an Army base in Mississippi during World War II.

The Slaughter: An American Atrocity recently published by Mr. Carroll Case raises the possibility that more than a thousand African-American soldiers in the 364th Infantry were massacred by the Army while stationed at Camp Van Dorn in Mississippi ...

The bloody atrocity at No Gun Ri, a hamlet 100 miles south of Seoul, has been known in South Korea for decades, but a series of pro-US military dictatorships suppressed any public protest or investigation. The facts were kept secret in America as well, until several US veterans who witnessed the events gave interviews to the Associated Press this fall.

Six veterans of the 1st Cavalry Division of the US Army told AP they fired on the refugees at No Gun Ri and six others said they saw the shootings. Army units retreating through South Korea in the face of the North Korean offensive at the beginning of the war had been ordered to shoot civilians on the pretext that North Korean soldiers might be hiding among them. In the neighboring 25th Infantry Division, the commander told his troops that "all civilians seen in this area are to be considered as enemy and action taken accordingly." The Korean survivors say there were no North Korean troops within miles and the killings were not related to combat.

American soldiers from the 1st Cavalry Division drove out the population from two villages near No Gun Ri, telling them North Koreans were coming. As the refugees neared No Gun Ri, US soldiers ordered them off the road and onto a parallel railroad track. US planes strafed the area, killing100. Americans then directed the refugees into the railroad bridge underpass and after dark opened fire on them. One veteran, Eugene Hesselman of Kentucky, recalled that Capt. Melbourne C. Chandler ordered machine gunners to open fire, with the statement, "Let's get rid of all of them."

Czuch: It was rather brutal, and these are the reported events.

And there are always some bad apples.

Czuch: Sometimes you have to inject money into a system or company for the short term to tide over a bad period.

And ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Income_Taxes_By_Country.svg

You'll see income tax rates