This is a terrible blow to democracy, the voting machines have let it down ! I hope the makers will have to pay big buck refunds. I wonder what went wrong? There will be heads rolling in the programming departments.

Although, I was hoping that Condoleeza Rice will take Rumsfeld's place, she has that heroic, bloodthirsty look needed for any and every so called "Defence" minister and secretary for the spreading of real globally competitive, market oriented democracy .

Ed Deak.

Gosh, we are sure going to miss old Bumsfeld! Maybe he will put that slimey turncoat Joe Looserman in his place.

You're doing a heckuva job, Rummy.

Here's a medal - now get the heck out of here!

But didn't Rummy resign in 2004 as well?

I don't know..why do I see him as the Energizer Bunny's evil twin?

Ed: I was thinking the same thing! Diebold must have been told to let this election through, to have more credibility when McCain is "elected" in 2008.

G West:

Is that you flying a plane over Washington D.C. ???

A slap on the wrists for the Neocon Regime, but more cosmetic than representing any significant change in policy.

Still, one more knot in the rope which will eventually hang them.

Of possibly even greater interest to me going forward, is the effect these US Neocon reverses may have on our own neoconservative US Empire Loyalists, hopefully dragging them down with their love interest in Washington-, as events continue to unfold here.

So I guess Rumsfeld like the idea of "cut and run"!

Oops!

So I guess Rumsfeld likes the idea of "cut and run"!!!!!!!!

Rummy out and some dude from the CIA to take up the JOB.

WOW...is that not an OVERT message!

Georgie sez...YA CAN'T SCARE ME !

So,anyways Georgie,what's it feel like to be a LAME DUCK???

How much cash is Rumsfeld walking away with you think ???

This is gonna make the Clueless One feel real bad. After eating all that crow, now his best pal resigns.

Seems Rummy was the fall guy for the Shrub. I don't think we'll see much change in the war policy while Shrub is still president although the house might try to squeeze funding.

THink things are going to change much?

Maybe not. Have a look at this:

http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=12956

Rumsfeld out, after 44 years of public service, the man has decided that he will take a hit for the poor results in the mid term election.
So a guy who ran a cheap, politically correct war is no longer in control.
I hope the new guy doesn't disappoint the liberals. I hope he goes in there with all guns blazin. But this won't happen when the control of both houses have control of the money.
It's unfortunate that it has come to this. Of course I blame liberalism for this. Liberalism creeping into the Republican Party. That's why there were so many pissed off conservatives. So let down by the political party most of them support.
It's not a death of conservatism. Far from it. Many conservatives were elected as Democrats. There was a base of conservative democrats who didn't want the Democrats to go the way of the radical 60's liberals like Pelosi, Reid, Murtha, Kennedy, Conyers and that bunch.
That bunch, to me is what has to be defeated.
Two years until the next election isn't very long. I can only hope the Republican Party gets back to being the conservatives many of us expect.
Conservatives like me, have been supportive of the Republicans because it was traditionally a vehicle for our thoughts. We are truly energized to get this message out for 2008.

Sheesh, Ron, you remind me of Jim Lahey, the drunken supervisor in the hit sit-com Trailer Park Boys. The drunker he gets, the funnier he sounds. But I have noticed that you don't drink in the morning, so I guess you guys are somewhat different as well.

P.S. Did you go see the accountant I told you to go see? Or are you still paying 50% tax?

Ron, you rock. Your blind loyalty mixed with an endearing disregard for reality is what puts you a cut above the rabble.

My only question is, you do realize you're talking about a political party in a foreign country? Right?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSegyAajurg

Hope this'll work. Pretty much sums up my view of your response Ron. Just a flesh wound eh?

See, didn't I tell ya. The Clueless One is upset about his little bum buddy getting the push. Glad he has woken up. We need a bit of comic releaf. Get this:

"radical 60's liberals like Pelosi, Reid, Murtha, Kennedy, Conyers"

None of these people would be out of place in the Liberal Party, most of them in its right wing, they are hardly "60's radicals". I am a 60's radical and know what that means.

Rumsfeld in his early years was into wrestling and loved it. He loves to win all the time. I wonder if, he is not winning he jumps of the ship and moves to something that he can prevail.
* I guess we will never know what goes through a persons mind, even by taking a polygraph.
** Rumsfeld is a born leader and will pop up some place like all leaders normally do. Just a question of time.

For anyone who thinks Pelosi is "radical" read this
http://www.socialistworker.org/2006-2/609/609_05_Pelosi.shtml

...Good to see him go.

Maybe more Peace eh,

-Bear

He really did have that boogey-man look down, didn't he? The man who drummed up (some say stole) the idea of "fake" sugar, is finally gone. And Bob Gates... makes you wonder how badly he's been brainwashed, how good he is at brainwashing, or both! We can only cross our fingers in hope that he's not a red button nutter.

I think you've included some years in the private sector.
See the biographical info cut and pasted below.
--------------

From 1977 to 1985 he served as Chief Executive Officer, President, and then Chairman of G.D. Searle & Co., a worldwide pharmaceutical company. The successful turnaround there earned him awards as the Outstanding Chief Executive Officer in the Pharmaceutical Industry from the Wall Street Transcript (1980) and Financial World (1981). From 1985 to 1990 he was in private business.

Mr. Rumsfeld served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of General Instrument Corporation from 1990 to 1993. General Instrument Corporation was a leader in broadband transmission, distribution, and access control technologies. Until being sworn in as the 21st Secretary of Defense, Mr. Rumsfeld served as Chairman of the Board of Gilead Sciences, Inc., a pharmaceutical company.

"My only question is, you do realize you're talking about a political party in a foreign country? Right?" observed Frank.

Which demonstrates out of the mouths of Neocon babes like Born Again Ron, that these guys really are US Empire Loyalist traitors of their own country. They really are convinced in their own minds that the North Amerikan Union is already in place.

For which much of the initial spadework is already done I grant them, but it is not yet the fully done deal these guys tend to assume in practice that it already is. And even when it is finally fully proclaimed from on high by officialdom, it may only be then that Canadians actually too late already wake up and understanding the project these cacksuckers have been about all along, and only then begin to seriously resist.

Given the present levels of understanding in "mass society", it is often that the horse is already out of the barn before folks finally commence to chase it down and close the barn door.

The naivete is that even these guys could not surely be that treacherous.

But one really does need to pay attention to these Freudian slips of the Neocons.

I am actually inclined to agree with so-called Workingman above that there is likely no major change about to occur here yet. The turfing of Rummy is largely window dressing, to "enable" a unified agreement with the Democrats on future conduct of the war.

That's my own view.

But that said, there is some Neocon opinion in the US which I have been reading and even listening to on CNN this morning, that the war in Iraq is already irretrievably lost, and that the throwing of Rummy overboard is reall the signal that the Bush Whitehouse is actually ready to work in a "bi-partisan" way to prepare the ground for a US surrender/retreat (their words) from Iraq.

The intent is, listening to this guy on CNN this morning at least, to re-stage their strength, more or less as old Murtha called for, in Afghanistan and directed against North Korea.

Now whether or not these guys really know what they are talking about or not is another question, but there is a certain ring of plausability to their "insider" claims.

The problem with today's so called "conservatives", which includes the phoney name the BC Liberals are conspiring under, is that they ain't no conservatives, but fascists.

Just as the so called "communists" weren't, but also imperialist fascists.

Any ideology, or religion, that puts a certain sector, race, or power elite into power to rule over others is basic fascism.

Neither communism, or capitalism could survive under true democracy, which shows how phoney and fraudulent the various and often, technically opposing, political systems really are.

Ed Deak.

I don't know, Pure. When I see the label, "born leader", my thoughts go to a little nugget from The Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon.
"the psychotic group known as paranoiacs had always provided us with the great leaders of the the world and always would. This is a clinical and historical fact. With their dedicated sense of personal mission (a condition that has been allowed to be tainted semantically with the psychiatric label of megalomania) with their innate ability to falcify hampering conditions of the past to prevent unwanted distortion of the future, with that relentless, protective cunning that places the whole world, in revolving turn, into position as their enemies, paranoiacs simply had to be placed in the elite stock of any leader pool".
Are there any other names you may want to add to this "born leader" list?

You're correct, Rocky, the same people will end up in "leading positions" regardless of the flag, or religious symbol, they work under.

I have watched this under every known ideology and whenever I'm forced to see Harper's face on TV, I can see a Totenkopf or GPU hat over it. If there ever was a psycho in a leading position..........

Ed Deak.

I knowe I am wasting my time trying to educate Clueless, but here is what real conservatism looks like. Sober up a bit and check this out:
http://www.vivelecanada.ca/article.php/20061108093624286

anarcho:
Was trying earlier to link to Vive - for other reasons (BBV et al) and couldn't bring up the site. You too?

I'm on vive all the time without any problems.

http://www.vivelecanada.ca/

Ed Deak.

I wished he had resigned in 2002, the twit thought he could invade Iraq with 30,000 troops, when his staff recommended 300,000 to arrogant to listen to his commanders, there are a lot of US army types that will be happy about this.

Thew same as NATO trying to bring "democracy" to Afgh, with 20,000.

Waste of lives and resources

Ed Deak.

Alcibiades
;Was trying earlier to link to Vive - for other reasons (BBV et al) and couldn't bring up the site. You too?"

I have no problem with it.

Ed
I was up your way last week picking up some Bison meat, looked nice with the snow on the ground, lucky you guys didn't get pounded like Vanderhoof area!

Colin, the snow is long gone. We had it very mild for a few days, but this morning it was -11, but now a beautiful, sunny day.

Cheers, Ed.

Ed, Anarcho:
Thanks for the heads up on VIVE - my difficulty appears to have only been temporary - however, I've spoken to a couple of others who had difficulty signing on this morning too.

"Waste of lives and resources." Amen...but now what? The war continues.

Slate's take is that Daddy's friends are stepping in to take care of Bush 43's egregious errors. How long will that take? If this is a new Vietnam, I guess it bears mentioning that the US was in that one for nearly 15 years.

Yammer
Maureen Dowd said it in the Times too.
Good funny column. Times Select is free this week so head on over and check it out.

The war and all wars will continue as long people are willing to put up with politicians either brainwashed with pseudo religious economic ideologies, or are outright crooks.

It is never people who wage wars, but rulers and governments who either force, or persuade their subjects to do the dirty work, while believing that it is somehow the wish of the gods.

Yep, the Money God, created by men, as usual, who has no physical presence, but lives in and rules from computers in our day. Doesn't even need "scriptures" any more.

Ed Deak.

Yes, Ed, but some wars have positive ends. Would it have been better to let Tojo have Asia or Hitler to have Europe? Would it have been better to have Napolean in charge of England?

I keep thinking of Bush and Lincoln. Ok, it's ludicrous, but consider: an unpopular Republican president who was widely scorned as a hick, suspending habeus corpus and fighting a shockingly bloody war ostensibly about human rights but more to preserve the economic hegemony of the North.

I never liked either President Bush and particularly was a dismayed by this one's apparent dumbness. I never wanted W to be in charge of the West's armed response to Islamic Fascism, but the optimistic and/or contrarian part of myself thought...well...stranger things have happened...maybe this could work out.

As of 2006, it clearly hasn't. Rumsfeld's ouster is the first step in what will be an ignominious withdrawal.

It would be interesting to see how this plays in history, though, depending on the timing of the (I think) inevitable Islamic Reformation. How ironic if Bush 43 is eventually seen as the great defender of human rights.

yammer
I think you need to look at little more closely at Lincoln's reasons for fighting the Civil War. All the glory and honour stuff is typical yankee ex post facto crap - human rights had nothing to do with it - just as it has only been grafted on after the fact since WWII.

If Tojo had confined his expansionist desires to China - where the Japanese had been for nearly a decade before Pearl Harbour - do you think that America and Britain would have done a thing? I don’t.

Ditto with Hitler; had he stayed out of Poland - or never signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and moved into the USSR instead - do you think the plight of the Russian 'Communists' would have moved France and Britain to war? - And certainly not to defend the Jews or the other minorities inside the Nazis' borders. Every western leader knew what was happening to the Jews’ civil rights and they didn’t give a damn.

IF some deal can be patched together now to 'save' Iraq, it won't be BUSH 43 that does it, it'll be BUSH 41 and his pragmatic advisors who - I'll wager - have been silently steaming on the sidelines ever since this insane war with Iraq started. I fact, there are quotes out there from Barbara Bush today saying exactly that.

Just watch the papers over the next few weeks. I think you're gonna find a lot of folks Bush thought were in his corner have been holding their noses for years.

Bush 43 is not going to be anybody's hero and he'll never, in my view, be the defender of anyone's civil rights. He’s going to busy trying to cover his own ass.

But maybe Rummy is going to have to be careful where he travels in future:

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1557842,00.html

Perhaps he and Kissinger could hang out together.

Alci:
ROTFLMAO "Come back ! I'll bite 'yer legs off ! "
Too funny . "It's only a scratch "
Clueless ,really,believes the Republican party controls Canada .
Yep, that's him alright . To a T .

Legal argument for Rumsfeld as war criminal:

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forumy/2006/11/donald-rumsfeld-war-crimes-case.php

There were rumblings in the media, one of the CBC talking-heads shows I think, about the Democrats pursuing Bush & Co. for war crimes; might have been Chantal Hebert opining off the cuff; it was passed over by the host of course.

Maybe Rumsfeld figures he's made enough money, and needs some time to spend it......?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_of_America

Let him hear their cries

Since Rumsfeld "called in his markers" to achieve aspartame approval in the 80s, millions of cases of aspartame poisoning have been reported where ever aspartame is found in foods, beverages and medical preparations. According to FDA records, adverse reactions to aspartame comprise about 80 percent of consumer complaints. The agency has published a list of 92 symptoms of aspartame poisoning which includes blindness, joint pain, chronic fatigue, weight gain, sexual dysfunction, mental illness and death. Its use is linked to chronic illnesses such as cancer, diabetes, lupus, multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer's disease-illnesses that have become globally pandemic since aspartame was approved. During the 1980s when congressional hearings were being held on the dangers of aspartame, Dr. H.J. Roberts predicted that, if aspartame approval was not reversed at that time, in five or 10 years "aspartame disease" would be a global plague. By 2001, Dr. Roberts had published the 1,038-page text "Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic" proving his prediction came to pass.

http://www.rense.com/general74/legacy.htm

Too bad he can't be sentenced to eat and drink nothing but aspartame laced foods.

What about this, nana?

Sir - Patients at our diabetes clinic have raised concerns about information on the internet about a link between the artificial sweetener aspartame and various diseases. Our research revealed over 6000 web sites that mention aspartame, with many hundreds alleging aspartame to be the cause of multiple sclerosis, lupus erythematosis, Gulf War Syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome, brain tumours, and diabetes mellitus, among many others. Virtually all of the information offered is anecdotal, from anonymous sources and is scientifically implausible.

Aspartame, a dipeptide composed of phenylalanine and aspartic acid linked by a methyl ester bond, is not absorbed, and is completely hydrolysed in the intestine to yield the two constituent amino acids and free methanol. Opponents of aspartame suggest that the phenylalanine and methanol so released are dangerous. In particular, they assert that methanol can be converted to formaldehyde and then to formic acid, and thus cause metabolic acidosis and neurotoxicity.

Although a 330 ml can of aspartame-sweetened soft drink will yield about 20 mg methanol, an equivalent volume of fruit juice produces 40 mg methanol, and an alcoholic beverage about 60-100 mg. The yield of phenylalanine is about 100 mg for a can of diet soft drink, compared with 300 mg for an egg, 500 mg for a glass of milk, and 900 mg for a large hamburger (1). Thus, the amount of phenylalanine or methanol ingested from consumption of aspartame is trivial, compared with other dietary sources. Clinical studies have shown no evidence of toxic effects and no increase in plasma concentrations of methanol, formic acid, or phenylalanine with daily consumption of 50 mg/kg aspartame (equivalent to 17 cans of diet soft drink daily for a 70 kg adult) (1, 2).

The anti aspartame campaign purports to offer an explanation for illnesses that are prominent in the public eye. By targeting a manufactured chemical agent, and combining this with pseudo-science and selective reporting, the campaign makes complex issues deceptively simple. Sensational web site names (eg, aspartamekills.com) grab the browser's attention and this misinformation is also widely disseminated via chat groups and chain e-mail.

People consult the internet about medical issues for various reasons and many users regard online sources as being authoritative and valid. The medical profession has a role in teaching our patients to be discriminating consumers of the information offered there.

Anthony Zehetner, Mark McLean

Department of Endocrinology, Westmead Hospital,
Sydney NSW 2145, Australia

References

1. Aspartame. In: Gelman C R, Rumack B H, Hess A J, eds. DRUGDEX® System. Englewood, Colorado: MICROMEDEX, 1998. Edition expires 1999.

2. Anon. ADA position statement: use of noncaloric sweeteners. Diabetes Care 1991.