Keith Devens .com

Yawn. I'm a perfectly ordinary stay-at-home mom in the suburbs. I am sick of hearing I don't like America (actually, she usually says I hate America, she must have been having an off day) because I don't vote Republican. No, I intensely dislike Ann Coulter and the cruel and callous place she would wish to make America. And isn't calling roughly half of the country (based on recent election results) a bit treasonous in itself? Isn't the one-party rule that people like Ann Coulter seek something for the Soviets?

You'll probably delete this, because, of course, I hate America and all. But I pray you instead consider that there was a time when political discourse hovered somewhere within the realm of reality, when disagreeing with policy decisions of an administration or a party did not equate to treason.

Seems to me for at least eight years, Ann Coulter considered it the most patriotic thing in the world to persecute a duly elected president of the United States. What makes it treason now?

as far as I can tell it has been a 1 party rule. The dems have so destroyed this country with handouts and buying the votes of minorities. They have chopped up and redistricted the states so it is almost impossible for them to lose once they get in. They seem to tax and spend as if they earned the money. The demacrats have so destroyed my state (CA) it is going to take years to fix. I am wondering what the demorates have actually done for a suburban stay at home mother other than making it harder to stay at home and making it more difficult to raise a child with any kind of moral compass.

What exactly have the Dems done for you?

Anonymous #2 - The democrats helped create a public educational system where I learned how to spell democrat correctly. Two inconsistent, incorrect spellings?

Anon #2,

Did you completely miss the point of Anon #1? She wasn't having a go at Republicans, she was having a go at people who are logically rude

(Inventing your own markup is stupid, imho. Stick to the standards, I don't want to learn a new system for every website I visit.)

(Inventing your own markup is stupid, imho. Stick to the standards, I don't want to learn a new system for every website I visit.)

Nope, not allowing HTML.

She is a pathetic, and mean little hag. May she end up in the same place as Strom.

You're a pathetic, mean little hag. Wishing death on somebody... you should be ashamed of yourself.

Coulter defends McCarthyism in her latest screed.

Perhaps you'd like to explain the ethics and morality of my grandfather (a WWII vet) being fired from his job as a school teacher and not being able to find work because a collegue of his named names and said (falsely) that my grandfather had attended a solialist meeting.

You agree with Coulter?

Technically anyone in this country who tries to defend the status quo, embracing stagnation, is guilty of treason This document lays out the basis for that fact, it is why presidents are now limited to 2 terms, why congressional districts are realigned during census years and so forth, as for McCarthy, he was a scared coward that feared that if socialism reared it's head in this great nation, he'd be out of a job, because of, for and by the people this country isn't, wasn't and probably will never be.

Coulter quoted from the interview:

RE: McVeigh quote. Of course I regret it. I should have added, "after everyone had left the building except the editors and reporters."

Aha, so she's not actually wishing death on somebody? Maybe it's okay because what she says is radical, Take-no-prisoners-esque... go figure.

<I have just awakened to this remarkable fact: Ann Coulter is REALLY Tucker Carlson IN DRAG. You never see them 'together'.......they both have that LONG HORSE-FACE, and I think I once saw Tucker at the WIG COUNTER at Robinson-May but they did NOT have any stringy, long-hair that suited him. HE ended up by going to a Veterinarian and scooping up all that Long Hair from the cuttings of a Russian Afghan-Hound.

&#8220;It&#8217;s always so comforting when Muslims cite the precise verse from the Quran that tells them killing is wrong. Don&#8217;t all empathetic human beings understand that instinctively? What if they lost their Quran that day and couldn&#8217;t remember?&#8221; (Ann Coulter in &#8220;My Name Is Adolf&#8221;, 9/11/2002)

&#8220;My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building.&#8221; (Ann Coulter in a New York Observer interview, 8/20/2002)

Enough said.

She&#8217;s a dangerous, reactionary idiot whose mouth vomits whatever hatred her pea brain is contemplating at the moment.

Anyone who considers anything she says without serious reflection is simply &#8220;not thinking&#8221;.

Another personal favorite of mine is how Ann Coulter attributes the fall of the former Soviet Union to Ronald Reagan&#8230;he was just the lucky idiot in charge when they went broke. There was 40 prior years of politics involved in it&#8217;s bankruptcy that seems to escape her revisionist views of history. That addle brained actor couldn&#8217;t orchestrate the tying of his own shoes, let alone the fall of a super power. Yet she sings his praises as savior of the free world whenever possible. Her revisionist history lesson to the &#8220;uneducated masses&#8221; on McCarthyism are not suprising to me. What suprises me is that so many supposedly highly educated professionals buy her crap.

Ann, Go sell crazy someplace else. I ain&#8217;t buying.

Hey, I don't care that much what you say about Ann Coulter, but you're dead wrong about Ronald Reagan, who is and was a great man.

Rahjur

"lucky idiot in charge when they went broke."

Man, speak of revisionist history. Why not practice what you preach?

Better yet, this is a geek blog. Do the math kiddo. Reagan instituted a policy of out spending the Soviets at every turn. Moreover, he demonstrated he wasn't going to continue the policy of appeasment set forth by his predecessors.

From "little things like" Operation Urgent Fury to deploying big, expensive tatical nuclear missles in Germany. All which compelled the communist to spend themselves into the ground.

Also, by firing up the economy (or what revisionists called back in the 80's crass consumerism) Reagan was able to use the U.S. dollar like a battering ram in third world countries.

Take it from one who's old enough to have lived through it.

Better yet, go to the U.S.Archives and look up the actual stat.

Hmm, the national debt skyrocketed under Reagan (kinda like it is now, deja vu?), he spent trillions on Star Wars defense which he was told would never work and never did (now George W is putting money back into it) and he illegally sold arms to our sworn enemy Iran and gave the money to fund some rebels that were slaughtering thousands of innocent people in Nicaragua.

He cut education spending and spending on the environment and loosened oil and gas restrictions and cut all the energy programs Carter had tried to start to get us less dependent on foreign oil. All this so he could pour more money into defense.

Also if you ask any economist about 'trickle down' spending, they'll tell you how it was an abysmal failure and all it did was make the rich richer and the poor poorer.

Yeah, Reagan was a gem.

Hmm, the national debt skyrocketed under Reagan (kinda like it is now, deja vu?), he spent trillions on Star Wars defense which he was told would never work and never did (now George W is putting money back into it) and he illegally sold arms to our sworn enemy Iran and gave the money to fund some rebels that were slaughtering thousands of innocent people in Nicaragua.

He cut education spending and spending on the environment and loosened oil and gas restrictions and cut all the energy programs Carter had tried to start to get us less dependent on foreign oil. All this so he could pour more money into defense.

Also if you ask any economist about 'trickle down' spending, they'll tell you how it was an abysmal failure and all it did was make the rich richer and the poor poorer.

Yeah, Reagan was a gem.

Hmm, the national debt skyrocketed under Reagan (kinda like it is now, deja vu?), he spent trillions on Star Wars defense which he was told would never work and never did (now George W is putting money back into it) and he illegally sold arms to our sworn enemy Iran and gave the money to fund some rebels that were slaughtering thousands of innocent people in Nicaragua.

He cut education spending and spending on the environment and loosened oil and gas restrictions and cut all the energy programs Carter had tried to start to get us less dependent on foreign oil. All this so he could pour more money into defense.

Also if you ask any economist about 'trickle down' spending, they'll tell you how it was an abysmal failure and all it did was make the rich richer and the poor poorer.

Yeah, Reagan was a gem.

Star Wars Defense: Hello? We've used the results of that successfully in the Iraq war. It works right now. Still not perfect, but it's surprisingly effective, and will only get better. Reagan was right.

Re: restrictions: While I'm not sure what you're referring to specifically, excessive regulation is bad - we've seen that in the recent blackout. Most of the problems in our power grid today are due to excessive regulation. And Reagan was right in spending on defense, it led to the downfall of the USSR.

Economics: My macro-economics professor, even though he has many socialist tendencies (he said explicitly that he's for income redistribution), attributed the enormous economic boom in the 90's largely to Reagan's policies in the 80's.

excessive regulation is bad - we've seen that in the recent blackout

How did excessive regulation cause the blackout?

excessive regulation is bad - we've seen that in the recent blackout

How did excessive regulation cause the blackout?

Oh my God why does everyone do multiple posts?

Did you read the articles I linked to in my last comment?

The op-ed piece you link to states, "Officials' early guess is that Thursday's power outage was due to a massive transmission-system failure originating at an upstate power complex."

Considering it is not known yet the cause of the blackout, how can the cause be "excessive regulation"? We still don't know what happened.

Considering it is not known yet the cause of the blackout, how can the cause be "excessive regulation"? We still don't know what happened.

You're confusing root causes with the specific cause of this particular blackout.

Sorry, don't see the connection. Please elaborate.

Also, didn't the California energy crisis have something to do with de-regulation?

Sorry, don't see the connection.

Those articles claimed that one of the reasons the energy grid is in bad shape is because of excessive regulation. A cause of a particular blackout can't be a long term process like that, it's something like lightning hitting a transformer or whatever. Understand the difference?

Also, didn't the California energy crisis have something to do with de-regulation?

To be honest I'm not that familiar with the situation in California. I'm reading this (PDF) and this right now. Everything I'm seeing is saying that heavy-handed goverment screwed this up, rather than letting the market take care of it. For instance, they did try to deregulate the energy system, but as part of that they required power companies to sell their plants, and there were no plans to build others. So demand outstripped supply, and there you go. Prices were also set by the government, rather than being chosen by the market, which seemed to cause other problems. There also seemed to be a general miscalculation of the amount of power that would be needed, especially with the tech boom of the late 90's. But because of the price freezing, it seems that consumers were generally unaware of the problem and it hit everyone all of a sudden. So when the price fixing went away as part of the deregulation, prices skyrocketed since power companies had to borrow money to pay the bills while the fixed prices were in effect because they couldn't pass the costs onto the consumer.

There were also lots of weird things I don't understand, like the "market clearing price" of wholesale energy. They call it part of "deregulation" in the article, but it seems to me that if everyone is forced to pay a certain price for wholesale energy that's actually more regulation.

And to fix it, the only solutions the article mentions were being discussed were more ways to control prices by all these state regulatory committees. It seems that because the "deregulation" was done in a completely broken way that people blame "deregulation" itself, and not the way it was botched by the government. At least going by that article I just finished.

But, I certainly can't claim to be an expert on the Cal energy crisis. The overall impression I've always gotten is that the government severely botched things.

>Everything I'm seeing is saying that heavy-handed goverment screwed this up, rather than letting the market take care of it.

Markets don't always handle everything on their own. The government does have a role in markets. See the recent success with selling pollution credits (which incidently I didn't think was going to work).

>Most independent experts now believe that during 2000-2001, price manipulation by energy companies, mainly taking the form of "economic withholding" — keeping capacity offline to drive up prices — added billions of dollars to California's electricity bills. A March FERC report concluded that there had been extensive manipulation of prices in both the natural gas and electricity markets.

from - http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/02/opinion/02KRUG.html