Hudson: Thatcher's Road to FIRE

[Woodsman]

Re: Hudson: Thatcher's Road to FIRE

Barack Obama is a Statist - with clear socialist tendencies.

Sure he is, Raz. That's why this statist with socialist tendencies is proving his red diaper bona fides by cutting social security, letting the insurance lobby "reform" healthcare and surrounding himself with Wall Street fat cats.

To prove what a fellow traveler he is, Obama has decided privatize the most successful and popular government program since the moon landing, the TVA:

Buried on page 51 of President Obama's new budget proposal is a short section titled "Reform TVA" — where "reform" is likely to mean "privatize."
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/polit...ing-tva/64133/

Obama floats idea of selling TVA
http://www.tennessean.com/article/20...ea-selling-TVA

Obama is turning out to be the best conservative president since Reagan, statist and socialist tendencies notwithstanding. But maybe it's just a cunning plan to lull us into a false sense of confidence before he abolishes religion, sets up collective farms and changes the national anthem to the Internationale.

[don]

Re: Hudson: Thatcher's Road to FIRE

Obama is turning out to be the best conservative president since Reagan, statist and socialist tendencies notwithstanding. But maybe it's just a cunning plan to lull us into a false sense of confidence before he abolishes religion, sets up collective farms and changes the national anthem to the Internationale.

Choosing Obama to "lead" the nation is FIRE's greatest dog and pony show ever. It buffaloes the "conservatives" and hoodwinks the "liberals". Note how close, nay identical, the analysis of Obama is from both groups - for the "right" he's secretly planning great harm, for the "left" his hands are tied forcing him to do these things he doesn't want to do. Political pygmies run rampant in the land of the Free & the Brave.

[don]

Re: Hudson: Thatcher's Road to FIRE

George Galloway

[Raz]

Re: Hudson: Thatcher's Road to FIRE

Sure he is, Raz. That's why this statist with socialist tendencies is proving his red diaper bona fides by cutting social security, letting the insurance lobby "reform" healthcare and surrounding himself with Wall Street fat cats.

To prove what a fellow traveler he is, Obama has decided privatize the most successful and popular government program since the moon landing, the TVA:

Buried on page 51 of President Obama's new budget proposal is a short section titled "Reform TVA" — where "reform" is likely to mean "privatize."
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/polit...ing-tva/64133/

Obama floats idea of selling TVA
http://www.tennessean.com/article/20...ea-selling-TVA

Obama is turning out to be the best conservative president since Reagan, statist and socialist tendencies notwithstanding. But maybe it's just a cunning plan to lull us into a false sense of confidence before he abolishes religion, sets up collective farms and changes the national anthem to the Internationale.

I heard these complaints from Obama voters back in 2010. I couldn't believe my ears.

This guy comes out of nowhere, has done nothing or accomplished nothing; got "elected" to the Illinois House by having his opponent disqualified; after only a few years of voting "present" he's catapulted into the United States Senate by the most corrupt political machine in North America since Tammany Hall and Boss Tweed, but those who voted for him actually think they'll get "Honest Abe"???????

[Raz]

Re: Hudson: Thatcher's Road to FIRE

...You might want to check out their editorial standards or any good journo stylebook or ethics handbook. There's also plenty of excellent texts on historiography I could recommend. If you read them, you'd learn as I did that discovering the truth requires a commitment to accuracy, fairness, completeness, honesty and impartiality that's hard for most people achieve consistently even when applying proven methods and practices. In the end, the point of it all is to internalize in the writer a sense of fairness as the best means to reach the truth of what actually happened. That and avoiding libel actions.

This means giving equal attention to the best arguments for and against. It requires attention to nuance and clarity. Fundamentally, it requires an independence of thought that puts getting to the truth as more desirable a goal than than either "winning" an argument or proving that your perspective is "right." Clearly things have changed in the news business and publishing, but you did nothing to honor truth here.

Woodsman, you're an exceptionally nice guy; you really should stop making assumptions about me. I did NO such thing. I posted a hyperlink without comment - I gave no praise or claims to Moore or anyone else. I stumbled accross this yesterday and just posted the hyperlink in case you hadn't seen it. The only interesting part to me was Moore's statement that Foot never sued Gordievsky.

Of course Moore is biased: he wrote a biography on Thatcher, no doubt praising her to the high heavens!

And so it seems to me that you really care about getting to the truth except when it threatens your long cherished beliefs; in this case the Cold War as a Manichean struggle between the godless, evil Sovs and the good Christian West. Here it seems you have no real interest in basic fairness and getting to the truth, because if you did you might have also taken the additional 30 seconds to post sources that both support and detract from the claim of alleged treachery.

Now you're beginning to make me question my previous statement about you being an exceptionally nice guy.

The Soviet regime was one of the most comprehensivey evil, merciless tyrannies this world has ever seen. Anyone who doubts that is either (a) grossly ignorant and/or misinformed, or (b) corrupt and has absolutely no interest whatsoever in historical fact or truth. Blind idealogues, if you will.

The famous British Foreign Secretariy from Labour's 1945 government, Ernest Bevin, said that in regards to human rights there were practically no differences between them and Nazi Germany.

There has never been a "good Christian West"; but that changes nothing about the terrible truth of what the Soviet Union was.

The Wikipedia article is good enough, but I saved you the trouble of reading it again and just posted some money quotes:

"Under a settlement read out in open court, the paper offered Mr Foot 'substantial' damages - which with legal costs are believed to run to at least pounds 100,000 - and an assurance that it had never intended to suggest that he had been a spy."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/su...m-1590325.html

"The former MI6 double-agent, Oleg Gordievsky, yesterday distanced himself from the article in the Sunday Times at the weekend which claimed that the Soviets regarded Michael Foot, the veteran Labour leader, as one of their spies."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/ex...y-1574080.html

"It seems extraordinary that such an unreliable figure should now be allowed, given the lack of supporting evidence, to damage the reputation of figures such as Mr Foot. His claim that money changed hands should have been substantiated before publication."
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/...r-1573992.html

I read the Wikepedia article and saw that Moore's claim of money being passed to Michael Foot was unsubstantiated. Probably a very good reason he was forced to pay damages. So I knew what Moore was well before I posted the hyperlink for his article.

I NEVER said that Michael Foot was a traitor, Woodsman. But I do believe he could have been a "usefull idiot".
You really should slow down with your assumptions.

And from the article you posted:

"There is no evidence that he passed on state secrets."

Those who promulgated the smear against Foot were first and foremost professional liars, the polite name for which is "intelligence agent." The man your story relies on as the sole source is a sight worse than that, being an unemployed intelligence agent and looking for his next paycheck. I'd point out also that he was a double-agent, meaning that he was working both sides against the middle for himself. That the Telegraph was so confident of its sources (and fearful of having to pay an embarrassing settlement like The Times) it waited for Foot to die before publishing this so-called "full account" is instructive enough, except of course for you. Honestly, the final sentence from the piece you posted is probably enough for most people to judge the fairness and objectivity of this writer:

"Luckily, his defects meant that let his own party split, and made this country safe with Margaret Thatcher."

Your assumptions are now making you appear to be an asshole.

Citing articles written by conservative hatchet men sourcing disinformation from down and out spies on the take like Gordievsky hardly makes for compelling evidence, Raz.

I never once considered it to be "compelling evidence" of anything.

Bush called off the Cold War in 1989 and we've had 25 years of scholarship since then. You should check some of it out, as even court historians like John Gaddis and Melvyn Leffler are walking away from the old propaganda. Of course they're just now catching up to the conclusions that William A. Williams, Gar Alperovitz and Gabe Kolko came to in the 50s, 60s and 70s.

Thanks for these recommendations. When I stop losing parts of my posterior in the precious metal's markets I'll take the time to read them.

You're an accomplished and intelligent man, Raz, and it's a shame that you can't seem to understand that these credulous lapses into confirmation bias are largely due to your conservative ideology. It's preventing you from seeing the world as it actually is. Which is sort of curious as that's the very raison d'etre of iTulip and presumably why all of us are drawn to it and EJ's incomparable work in the first place.

So you praise Caesar before you bury Caesar? Go right ahead: continue to assume the worst about me; I won't assume the worst about you - unless you persist in these assumptions.

[Woodsman]

Re: Hudson: Thatcher's Road to FIRE

Metals are getting most of my attention, too. But we've been here before and as EJ said, nothing has changed to cause us to abandon our thesis. Keep steady and let the market do its thing. Hopefully your hedges are doing the job, but times like this make me pucker up too. And I don't have enough cabbage to hedge effectively so all I can do is keep to my convictions.

Raz, I call it as I see it and I've seen enough to make my call. When the information changes, I hope to re-examine my position. You call my statements assumptions, I call them extrapolations from the text. You don't like my style, I can see that, but I don't believe you've laid a glove on my positions.

I had an old redneck Navy SEAL buddy who would almost always respond to the charge of "assholeness" by smiling and saying "thanks for noticing, have a nice day." It worked better for him - a 6'4'' behemoth with arms the size of my thighs - but a soft shelled crab like me just winds up looking like... well like an asshole. So it's okay; you won't hurt my feelings as I fully know I sometimes am just that. But after reading many of your posts, I believe you and I could start an a-hole club together. I'm betting we'd have more than a few other iTulipers who'd pass initiation, too. And had we been in agreement - as we've been in the past - I expect I'd come off as less of a sphincter to you.

Honestly, does it really matter what we think of each other? Up until now, we've been rather civil in our discourse even though my habit using unequivocal language makes you upset. We've avoided name calling and kept generally to the tone I've come to see as the normal iTulip volume. I've called you wrong, I've pointed out blind spots, I've challenged your ideological assumptions, but only now have there been any genuinely intemperate remarks.

Raz, I am a nice guy and a tool, too. It all depends on the context. What I am most though is intellectually honest (no, I'm not implying that you are not) and there are few things can make a person look like an asshole than that. But surely I'm not the first person with whom you've locked horns here, am I? Of course not. Your 8K + posts carry a lot of water around here and I can't understand why you'd be surprised that you'd encounter strong disagreement at times. You're fond of making bold assertions too, Raz, but less fond when someone calls them out. Maybe you're not used to being challenged by some pissant (peasant?) out of nowhere; I don't know. But this pissant has the courage of his convictions and knows of what he speaks. If my style makes me an asshole to you, well I can live with that as I know you can too. And vBulletin has a block feature, doesn't it, so there's always that nuclear option available to you.

I guess I can see how pointing out a what I consider to be evidence of a dogmatically conservative point of view (and the perils of that ideology) would be considered particularly asshole worthy, but I didn't just come to the assumption or extrapolation by miracle. I read many of your posts and drew my conclusions. Me, I'm steeped in the conservative mythos (the lefty one, too) and am quite familiar with the propaganda and historical fallacies promoted by the American and British right.

When Raz sticks to macroecon and trading he is often sublime. When he opines on history and politics, the ice sometimes gets a bit thin under him. For me, it's just about the opposite and why I do my best to try and listen and learn when macroeconomics and trading are the topics du jour. But the history of American diplomacy, military and intelligence is a forte of mine and I can hold my own reasonably well. And do read Williams and Kolko when you get the chance. They might piss you off as much as I seem to, but they're miles ahead of me in every respect so it's worth the price of admission.

The Sovs were not nice guys, sure, but neither were the White monarchists and the rightist elements in the West that supported them. We were able to work with the bolshies to defeat Hitler, but was it nice of Truman to threaten them with atomic bombs in 1945 if they refused to tow our line in Asia and Europe? Was it nice for the West to invade Russia in 1917 and surround them with nuclear missiles in the 50s and beyond? Stalin was a paranoid nut job, but generally rational and predictable enough for us to work with him during the war. After he died, Kennedy and Khrushchev took their best chance to end the Cold War, thereby avoiding the quagmire of Vietnam and 50 years of conflict with Cuba. But Curtis LeMay actually lobbied for preemptive nuclear war to rid the world of the Soviets by late 1963 and was kind of pissed when JFK left the room in disgust ("and we call ourselves the human race," he remarked to Rusk). The Helms/Angleton/Bissell clique at CIA saw to it that normalization with Cuba was off the table by sabotaging Kennedy's secret peace initiatives to Castro. If not for the unprecedented marksmanship of a lone nut gunman with a damaged rifle and a misaligned scope, the world today might be different place for our grandchildren. Once JFK was out of the picture and the hardliners in the Kremlin disposed of Nikita K., that was all she wrote until 1989. No nice guys anywhere, we agree.

Anyway, I was content to let you have the last word until I saw you carrying on with the smear against Foot. You posted the link indicating that you considered it some sort of meaningful retort and I blew it out of the water like the leaky boat it was. Now you're walking it back a bit. If you knew the source was compromised, why bother to post it?

As for the rest of it, I've basically said all I care to say and I wish Fred would move our asides to Rant and Rave. It's muddying the waters as to the discussions on the disastrous Thatcher legacy and its lessons for us here in the US. This is an important thing for us to get our heads around in my opinion, as the broad outlines of the Thatcher/Blair/Brown playbook are at work here at home. I believe that the experience of Britain under Thatcher can offer us a useful model for our current predicament under the thumb of FIRE. I'd like to get back to that now, thanks, and will do my level best to just let my previous posts stand or fall on their own.

But don't think I'm standing down for good, friend. I just need a little rest before the next wave.

[Raz]

Re: Hudson: Thatcher's Road to FIRE

...Raz, I call it as I see it and I've seen enough to make my call. When the information changes, I hope to re-examine my position. You call my statements assumptions, I call them extrapolations from the text. You don't like my style, I can see that, but I don't believe you've laid a glove on my positions. ...

I haven't really tried to, Woodsman. I admitted being wrong in my tone and use of words about Michael Foot. Did you overlook that?
I also said that I didn't believe him to be a traitor to his country and that I shouldn't have mentioned the KGB episode because it wasn't fair.
Did you miss that, too?

Honestly, does it really matter what we think of each other? Up until now, we've been rather civil in our discourse even though my habit using unequivocal language makes you upset. We've avoided name calling and kept generally to the tone I've come to see as the normal iTulip volume. I've called you wrong, I've pointed out blind spots, I've challenged your ideological assumptions, but only now have there been any genuinely intemperate remarks.

You have questioned my beliefs and biases and that is perfectly legitimate; you have also questioned my character and my honesty, which is not.

... What I am most though is intellectually honest (no, I'm not implying that you are not) and there are few things can make a person look like an asshole than that. But surely I'm not the first person with whom you've locked horns here, am I? Of course not. Your 8K + posts carry a lot of water around here and I can't understand why you'd be surprised that you'd encounter strong disagreement at times. You're fond of making bold assertions too, Raz, but less fond when someone calls them out. Maybe you're not used to being challenged by some pissant (peasant?) out of nowhere; I don't know. But this pissant has the courage of his convictions and knows of what he speaks. If my style makes me an asshole to you, well I can live with that as I know you can too. And vBulletin has a block feature, doesn't it, so there's always that nuclear option available to you.

Now why on earth would you characterize yourself - and me by way of implication - in such a manner? And you truly don't believe you are biased??

I guess I can see how pointing out a what I consider to be evidence of a dogmatically conservative point of view (and the perils of that ideology) would be considered particularly asshole worthy, but I didn't just come to the assumption or extrapolation by miracle. I read many of your posts and drew my conclusions. Me, I'm steeped in the conservative mythos (the lefty one, too) and am quite familiar with the propaganda and historical fallacies promoted by the American and British right.

Perhaps you could point out some of the fallacies, failures and propaganda of the Left so that I could see a display of your even-handed and fair appraisal of all things political.

The Sovs were not nice guys, sure, but neither were the White monarchists and the rightist elements in the West that supported them. We were able to work with the bolshies to defeat Hitler, but was it nice of Truman to threaten them with atomic bombs in 1945 if they refused to tow our line in Asia and Europe? Was it nice for the West to invade Russia in 1917 and surround them with nuclear missiles in the 50s and beyond? Stalin was a paranoid nut job, but generally rational and predictable enough for us to work with him during the war. After he died, Kennedy and Khrushchev took their best chance to end the Cold War, thereby avoiding the quagmire of Vietnam and 50 years of conflict with Cuba. But Curtis LeMay actually lobbied for preemptive nuclear war to rid the world of the Soviets by late 1963 and was kind of pissed when JFK left the room in disgust ("and we call ourselves the human race," he remarked to Rusk). The Helms/Angleton/Bissell clique at CIA saw to it that normalization with Cuba was off the table by sabotaging Kennedy's secret peace initiatives to Castro. If not for the unprecedented marksmanship of a lone nut gunman with a damaged rifle and a misaligned scope, the world today might be different place for our grandchildren. Once JFK was out of the picture and the hardliners in the Kremlin disposed of Nikita K., that was all she wrote until 1989. No nice guys anywhere, we agree.

"The Sovs were not nice guys". That must be the understatement of the new millenium. The White Monarchists (or the Czars) didn't set up camps to deliberately, systematically murder more than 15,000,000+ of their own people - more than twelve percent of their population at that time.
Lenin said that the French Revolution failed because they didn't kill enough people and he wasn't going to make that mistake. Do you really believe it justified in comparing Harry Truman with such men?

Was it "nice" of Stalin to overthrow the elected governments of Czechoslovakia and Hungary and imprison or murder their elected leaders?
How about arming and instigating Kim Il Sung to invade South Korea? How about funding communist parties in Italy, France, Britain, Greece, et cetera, in attempts to overthrow their elected governments? And what was Truman supposed to do? We had completely demobilized a military of over 11 million while Stalin only reduced the Soviet military from over 12 million down to 6.5 million, keeping huge Soviet armies in the Eastern Sector of post-war Germany and in Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland. How else was Truman supposed to respond?

I agree with your assessment of Kennedy and his attempt to head off what became, for the US at least, the worse part of the Cold War.
But are you certain of your own objectivity and lack of bias?

Anyway, I was content to let you have the last word until I saw you carrying on with the smear against Foot. You posted the link indicating that you considered it some sort of meaningful retort and I blew it out of the water like the leaky boat it was. Now you're walking it back a bit. If you knew the source was compromised, why bother to post it?

I posted it for the reason I gave you. You do not believe me. That's you're privilege, but here's the big difference I see in this whole series of exchanges between us: you see yourself as knowledgable and unbiased, accurate, even-handed, fair, honest and sort of "above the fray".
Believing this you seem to impugn my honesty and question my character. Until I said that you were now acting like an asshole I never said anything to impugn your person but shared my opinions, however low they might have been, of Michael Foot, Harold Wilson, and James Callahan as the persons in question.

You have made me a person in question.

As for the rest of it, I've basically said all I care to say ...

Me too.

[Woodsman]

Re: Hudson: Thatcher's Road to FIRE

"So let us begin anew, remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof."

John F. Kennedy

In that spirit, I apologize that I appeared to have impugned your honesty and character, Raz. I accept that you hold your positions sincerely and that you arrived at them with similar rigor and contemplation as I have my own. I regret that I did not take more care to pay as much heed to the quality of my tone as I did to the quality of my ideas. I am sorry for causing offense.

[shiny!]

Re: Hudson: Thatcher's Road to FIRE

Raz and Woodsman, I for one hope that FRED does not move your conversation to Rant and Rave. IMO it is a fine example of two gentlemen hashing out a disagreement or miscommunication with intelligence and integrity. It's part of the reason why I love iTulip.

[don]

Re: Hudson: Thatcher's Road to FIRE

Raz and Woodsman, I for one hope that FRED does not move your conversation to Rant and Rave. IMO it is a fine example of two gentlemen hashing out a disagreement or miscommunication with intelligence and integrity. It's part of the reason why I love iTulip.

+1

[Raz]

Re: Hudson: Thatcher's Road to FIRE

"So let us begin anew, remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof."

John F. Kennedy

In that spirit, I apologize that I appeared to have impugned your honesty and character, Raz. I accept that you hold your positions sincerely and that you arrived at them with similar rigor and contemplation as I have my own. I regret that I did not take more care to pay as much heed to the quality of my tone as I did to the quality of my ideas. I am sorry for causing offense.

I readily accept your apology, Woodsman, and offer my apology to you for (a) the unfairness I displayed concerning Michael Foot and any of those other men in question, and (b) any intemperate language and hostile tone I displayed towards those men as well as any use of the same toward you. I believe you to be an intelligent and considerate man of genuine conviction and look forward to conversing with you again.

[astonas]

Re: Hudson: Thatcher's Road to FIRE

I readily accept your apology, Woodsman, and offer my apology to you for (a) the unfairness I displayed concerning Michael Foot and any of those other men in question, and (b) any intemperate language and hostile tone I displayed towards those men as well as any use of the same toward you. I believe you to be an intelligent and considerate man of genuine conviction and look forward to conversing with you again.

Nicely done, guys. I've learned a lot from both of you in this exchange, as I usually do when ideas clash here on the 'tulip. There were a lot of moments when this one could have gone way off the rails, but you guys kept it in check like pros. Thanks for the education!

[Woodsman]

Re: Hudson: Thatcher's Road to FIRE

Thank you, Raz.