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Politics : DON'T START THE WAR -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tsigprofit who wrote (13221)	2/26/2003 11:56:33 AM
From: LPS5	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25898

LPS5 - you are libertarian, right? Yes. What industry are you in? Financial. I'm sure you benefit from living in the US, and from the research and infrastructure the US taxpayers provide. Sure; I benefit from the military (which I served in), and from certain public goods. Being that you understand libertarianism (or seem to), I don't think you'll have any trouble with the concept (whether or not you agree is something completely different) that I'm a little more inclined toward access fees and markets than forceful redistribution and statism. We are all in this together. I don't think we are, Matt. Not in the sense you're speaking of. LPS5

To: tsigprofit who wrote (13221)	2/26/2003 11:58:09 AM
From: Karen Lawrence	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 25898

Tax dollars pay for roads, public parks, police, schools, plenty of things lp45 takes for granted. I don't think children of this nation of plenty should go hungry, and I know you don't either. It's absurd to believe that some children deserve to starve because they are poor. if they survive they will become a problem to society. Feed them now, educate and mainstream them and they will be a productive rather than destructive part of this great country. Some folks don't have the foresight to know that, they are more to be pitied than scorned.

To: tsigprofit who wrote (13221)	2/26/2003 11:58:57 AM
From: PartyTime	Respond to of 25898

Bush's Warsaw War Pact By MAUREEN DOWD [W] ASHINGTON The diplomatic motorcade pulled up to the White House yesterday with great fanfare. The two Marine guards at the door of the colonnaded West Wing saluted smartly. TV cameras pressed close to get pictures of the vital American ally alighting from the black sedan for his one-on-one with President Bush. It was a summit of the two great strategic partners, America and Bulgaria. Bulgaria? As the world's only remaining superpower was conferring honor upon one of its only remaining friends, America smashed through the global looking glass. To get Saddam, the Bush administration has dizzily turned the world upside down and inside out. Our new best friends are the very people we used to protect our old best friends from. During the cold war, we safeguarded Old Europe from the Evil Empire. Now we have embraced the former Soviet Bloc satellites to protect us from the Security Council machinations of our former paramours France and Germany. NATO was created to protect Western Europe from the Communist hordes ? namely the Bulgarians, who tried to outdo the bizarro Albanians as the most Stalinist regime in Eastern Europe and were renowned for the "thick necks" who did wet work for the K.G.B. The U.S. is now in the process of wooing the "minnows" ? as some in the Pentagon disparagingly call the small countries that could deliver the votes for a Security Council resolution on going to war with Iraq. It's the battle of the pipsqueak powers: we dragoon Bulgaria to offset France dragooning Cameroon. The Bulgarians used to be the lowest of the low here. In 1998, just before the visit of the Bulgarian president, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel met with President Clinton. The visit was so icy that a Clinton aide joked to reporters about Mr. Netanyahu: "We're treating him like the president of Bulgaria. Actually, I think Clinton will go jogging with the president of Bulgaria, so that's not fair." Now Secretary Don Evans flies off to Bulgaria to discuss trade, and Rummy hints we may move U.S. troops from Germany to Bulgaria. In diplomatic circles, our new allies from Eastern Europe are dryly referred to as "Bush's Warsaw Pact." As one Soviet expert put it, "Bulgaria used to be Russia's lapdog. Now it's America's lapdog." The Bulgarians were such sycophants to Russia that in the 60's they proposed becoming the 16th republic of the Soviet Union. Mr. Bush will not be the only one having trouble with the Bulgarian prime minister's name. We all will. In some press reports it's spelled Simeon Saxcoburggotski, and in others Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. The tall, balding, bearded prime minister was formerly King Simeon II, a deposed child czar. He is a distant relative of Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's consort, but not Count Dracula. That's our other new best friend, Romania. Is this a good trade, the French for the Bulgarians? Sketchy facts about Bulgaria rattle around: It has a town called Plovdiv; it wants to become big in the skiing industry; its secret service stabbed an exiled dissident writer in London with a poison-tipped umbrella ? a ricin-tipped umbrella, in fact; its weight-lifting team was expelled from the Olympics in a drug scandal in 2000; it sent agents to kill the pope. During the cold war Bulgaria was valued by Moscow for the canned tomatoes it sent in winter, and by France for sending attar of roses, distilled rose oil that was the binding agent for French perfume. Three famous Bulgarians: Carl Djerassi, who invented birth control pills; Christo, the original wrap artist; Boris Christof, the opera singer. In "Casablanca" there was the Bulgarian girl who offered herself to Claude Rains to get plane tickets. Avis Bohlen, a former second-in-command at the American Embassy in France and an ambassador to Sofia in the late 1990's, calls Bulgaria "a very gutsy little country" that has worked hard to improve. Ms. Bohlen is dubious about the Bush administration's volatile snits at old allies. "You can't build a foreign policy on pique," she says. She says Bulgaria will be a good ally: "They're really brilliant at math and science, and they have famous wine." So, we don't need French wine after all. nytimes.com