Roadmap to HELL - One man caught on a barbed wire fence ....

[Moonlit_Angel]

...oooooooooh. Yeouch.

Why the hell would she say that? That's incredibly stupid.

Angela

[Irvine511]

agreed. awful comment, Ms. Thomas.

[anitram]

I immediately assumed that she may be going senile. The woman is pushing 90, it wouldn't surprise me (given the various strange things said by my assortment of grandparents when they got to that age).

[MrsSpringsteen]

Or she just felt entitled to say it because of her age-that happens too

She has announced her retirement

[Strongbow]

Originally Posted by popshopper

If you knew anything about the situation instead of spouting the same crap over and over again you'd know this.

I'm not the one calling other people names and making comments about other people like that. Its one think to comment and debate the issue, its another to call people names and express the above.

Hamas are not the only group firing rockets at Israel from Gaza.

I'm aware of that, but that does not prove that Humas did not fire any rockets during the ceasefire.

The ceasefire ended attacks by Hamas, and was far more effective than an illegal blockade.

Well, where is the proof that none of the rockets fired during the ceasefire were from Hamas?

Also the, the issue is not just the firing of rockets, but the smuggling of weapons into Gaza from Iran and other places. The ceasefire certainly did not stop the smuggling of weapons.

I imagine the reason Hamas etc fire rockets into Israel, is that they believe their homeland has been stolen. It's probably that simple. I agree with Israel's right to exist (if a enough people want to form a country, feel free) but I recognise that existence came at a terrible price for the Palestinians

The 1948 UN peace plan was more than fair, but the Palestinians and Arabs rejected it and chose war. Its this war which the Palestinians and Arabs chose that is the cause of the suffering of the Palestinians.

You can argue about historic rights to the land, but the bottom line is before Israeli's returned, people were living on that land, and the Israeli's weren't exactly gentle in moving them off.

1. There have actually been Jews living in the area, although small in number, consistently for thousands of years, although this not really the relevant issue here.

2. From the early 1500s to the end of World War I, this land was Ottoman land. The Jews who moved to the area in the late 1800s and early 1900s joining Jews that were already living there, did so lawfully and with the permision of the Ottoman Empire.

3. When the Ottoman Empire collapsed at the end of World War I, the lands and nationalities of the area certainly had every right to form their own state on the land they already privately owned.

4. In addition, many Jews who came after World War I legally purchased land in the area.

5. Unlike the Palestinians, the Jews did not oppose the Palestinians right to form their own independent state.

People forget the existence of Israeli was based largely on the sort of terrorism that the Israeli's condemn Hamas for

The Israeli's were not against the formation of an independent Palestinian state as long as they could have their own. After Israel was formed in 1948, it was brutally attacked by the Palestinians and 5 Arab countries and has been under constant attack by Terrorist for the past 62 years.

As with the formation of Israel peace is only going to come from negotiations which neither side has had a stellar record in.

Israel has a good record which starts with their acceptance of the UN peace plan in 1948. Since then the majority of Palestinians have rejected the peace plans, and chosen terrorism over non-violent protest. This poor choice by palestinians is the primary cause of their problems and inability to form an independent state.

[anitram]

Originally Posted by Strongbow

4. In addition, many Jews who came after World War I legally purchased land in the area.

Less than 7% of the land by 1947. For the record.

[INDY500]

Originally Posted by Bluer White

Since it hasn't come up in here yet...

Should Helen Thomas finally be retired from her seat in the WH press room?

Here's a past thread about how popular Helen is with some here.

http://www.u2interference.com/forums...se-188869.html

[coolian2]

Originally Posted by INDY500

Here's a past thread about how popular Helen is with some here.

http://www.u2interference.com/forums...se-188869.html

nothing changes in two years.

[A_Wanderer]

Originally Posted by anitram

Less than 7% of the land by 1947. For the record.

7% of which land?

[financeguy]

Originally Posted by Strongbow

I'm not the one calling other people names and making comments about other people like that. Its one think to comment and debate the issue, its another to call people names and express the above.

I'm aware of that, but that does not prove that Humas did not fire any rockets during the ceasefire.

Well, where is the proof that none of the rockets fired during the ceasefire were from Hamas?

Also the, the issue is not just the firing of rockets, but the smuggling of weapons into Gaza from Iran and other places. The ceasefire certainly did not stop the smuggling of weapons.




The 1948 UN peace plan was more than fair, but the Palestinians and Arabs rejected it and chose war. Its this war which the Palestinians and Arabs chose that is the cause of the suffering of the Palestinians.



1. There have actually been Jews living in the area, although small in number, consistently for thousands of years, although this not really the relevant issue here.

2. From the early 1500s to the end of World War I, this land was Ottoman land. The Jews who moved to the area in the late 1800s and early 1900s joining Jews that were already living there, did so lawfully and with the permision of the Ottoman Empire.

3. When the Ottoman Empire collapsed at the end of World War I, the lands and nationalities of the area certainly had every right to form their own state on the land they already privately owned.

4. In addition, many Jews who came after World War I legally purchased land in the area.

5. Unlike the Palestinians, the Jews did not oppose the Palestinians right to form their own independent state.



The Israeli's were not against the formation of an independent Palestinian state as long as they could have their own. After Israel was formed in 1948, it was brutally attacked by the Palestinians and 5 Arab countries and has been under constant attack by Terrorist for the past 62 years.



Israel has a good record which starts with their acceptance of the UN peace plan in 1948. Since then the majority of Palestinians have rejected the peace plans, and chosen terrorism over non-violent protest. This poor choice by palestinians is the primary cause of their problems and inability to form an independent state.

Strongbow is actually the Manchurian Candidate.


The Manchurian Candidate (2004)

[AliEnvy]

[maycocksean]

Originally Posted by INDY500

Here's a past thread about how popular Helen is with some here.

http://www.u2interference.com/forums...se-188869.html

That's pretty lame.

How on earth was any one supposed to know two YEARS ago what Helen Thomas would say about Israel today.

That was cheap, INDY. Cheap.

[INDY500]

Originally Posted by maycocksean

That's pretty lame.

How on earth was any one supposed to know two YEARS ago what Helen Thomas would say about Israel today.

That was cheap, INDY. Cheap.

“Ari, does the President think that the Palestinians have a right to resist 35 years of brutal military occupation and suppression?”
— Helen Thomas’s question to White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, April 1, 2002.

Sorry, but there was no more reason to admire this woman 2 years ago when we had that thread than there is today. But the fact that her hateful, ignorant "questions" or comments were usually aimed at Republicans, conservatives or the military gave her a pass. Pass, hell, made her a hero to many, including the dickweeds at HBO.

[Earnie Shavers]

I'm sure you don't like the tone, or suggestion, and there's plenty you might refuse to acknowledge, but that question is not hateful or ignorant. And certainly not even remotely comparable to her deplorable recent comment.

[MrsSpringsteen]

I never kept track of all of her comments and I just had a general impression of her as someone who would ask tough questions, so to call people on that after two years? Whatever (bad flashback of that diamond/Hannity thing). And I'm sure there's no one that you like, admire, etc who has made hateful, ignorant comments or asked hateful/ignorant questions either.

I just thought she had a long and pretty admirable career and broke ground for women. It's sad to see it end that way.

[BVS]

Originally Posted by INDY500

Sorry, but there was no more reason to admire this woman 2 years ago when we had that thread than there is today. But the fact that her hateful, ignorant "questions" or comments were usually aimed at Republicans, conservatives or the military gave her a pass. Pass, hell, made her a hero to many, including the dickweeds at HBO.

Well insert "liberal", "democrat", and "minorities" and this sums up most of your heroes?

[Irvine511]

[BVS]

Sorry I just think INDY enjoys these Limbaugh like attacks way too much, and like Earnie said her question 2 years ago you can not like the tone but it was not ignorant or hateful. What she said recently was wrong, no excuse.

[MrsSpringsteen]

Could Fox News get Helen Thomas's coveted front-row seat in the White House briefing room?

It's possible now that Thomas, 89, has retired in the wake of her controversial and offensive comments about Israel.

"No decisions have been made on the open seat," incoming White House Correspondents Association president Jackson told Poynter. "We have elections for three seats that are open [an at-large organization, magazine and TV seat]. I will recommend that the new board decide the issue, but I don't know what my colleagues will want to do."

Jackson, who takes over on July 16, said that the WHCA will meet Thursday to discuss the Thomas seat.

Speculation centers around Fox News — the only TV network without a front-row seat — and Bloomberg — the only wire service without a front-row seat.

Greg Sargent reports that Fox News and Bloomberg were "locked in a behind-the-scenes 'death match'" over who would inherit Thomas's seat when she retired even before her controversial Israel comments. Both are currently seated in the second row, and "had previously made it known to the White House Correspondents Association that they coveted the seat upon Thomas's retirement," according to Sargent.

The Daily Beast's Richard Wolffe recalls that in 2007, CNN beat out Fox News for a spot in the front row based on its "prior place in the pecking order," but says that "Fox's patience in 2007 may now be rewarded with Thomas' coveted chair."


Still, though the network has been patient, the Daily News reports that Fox News has been gunning for a front row seat for years:

Sources within the White House Correspondents' Association, which oversees the seating chart, told the Daily News that Fox, the nation's largest cable news outlet, has argued for years it belongs in the front row, where CNN, ABC and MSNBC (represented by NBC) already reside with the Associated Press and Reuters.

Andrew Sullivan suggests giving the seat to a blogger instead of a traditional reporter:

I don't see why the front row should belong just to reporters. Their total submission to the news cycle and making news renders much of their questioning a big old kabuki show. Why not allow bloggers in the front row? We'd sure make the awful, smug, useless Gibbs less comfortable.

[Irvine511]

what's crazy is how people like INDY or Sarah Palin are trying to make it seem like anyone who has a different opinion than them supports her comments -- that's what Palin tweeted yesterday, about how the media was coming to her defense. which is demonstrably untrue.

this seems to be a fairly representative of how it's being handled:

The sad farewell of Helen Thomas

By Dana Milbank
Tuesday, June 8, 2010; A02

Afew months ago, White House reporters settled on a system for preserving the sanctity of Helen Thomas's front-row-center seat in the briefing room. On those frequent occasions when the 89-year-old legend didn't show up for a briefing -- a pardonable event for somebody who has done the job for 50 years -- reporters from other outlets would take turns occupying the seat to deny the prominent perch to less-reputable characters in the room.

But nobody dared take the seat with Thomas's nameplate at Monday morning's briefing. Her desk in the nearby work space was also unoccupied, a laptop open but the screen dark. It was two hours before she would announce her resignation/retirement as a Hearst columnist, but it was already clear that it was time for her to get the hell out.

It was a sad end to a storied career.

You'll find no defense here of her anti-Semitic suggestion that Jews should "get the hell out of Palestine" and "go home" to Poland and Germany -- where they were slaughtered by the millions. There's no excuse for that, and Thomas deserved what she got.

Yet the White House press corps will be diminished without Helen front and center, and not only because she was in that job before the current president was born. She brought a ferocity to her questioning that has eluded too many in subsequent generations. At a time when others were getting cozy with sources, her crabby, unrelenting hostility was refreshing.

"When are you going to get out of Afghanistan?" she challenged President Obama two weeks ago. "Why are we continuing to kill and die there? What is the real excuse? And don't give us this Bushism, 'If we don't go there, they'll all come here.' "

Then there was her questioning -- heckling, really -- of press secretary Robert Gibbs: "What's the difference between your foreign policy and Bush's? . . . Why don't you know your position on Glass-Steagall? . . . What are you hiding? . . . Yes or no? . . . Why does the president have this audacity of hope for the health plan when it's so clear the perception from yesterday was he struck out?"

Think that was rough? Recall her questioning of President George W. Bush in 2006 after he finally ended a long boycott of Thomas questions. "Your decision to invade Iraq has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis," she began. "Every reason given, publicly at least, has turned out not to be true."

Thomas kept up her harangue as Bush tried to answer, requiring him to plead "Hold on for a second" and "Excuse me, excuse me" and "Excuse me for a second."

Given that history of hostility, it's not surprising that one of the first to push Thomas out the door was Bush's former press secretary, Ari "Watch What They Say" Fleischer, who temporarily left his sports marketing business to hustle over to the Fox News set and demand Thomas's firing. The most recent recipient of Thomas's heckling, Gibbs, used the words "offensive and reprehensible" when asked Monday about the matter.

Even the White House Correspondents' Association piled on with a statement saying it "firmly dissociates itself" from Thomas's words. This was the same group that once feted Thomas (a past president) for her remarkable career. Though she criticized her colleagues, sometimes unfairly, for being too soft on Bush, the WHCA offered to defend her to the White House during Bush's refusal to call on her at news conferences.

Had she retired even a week ago, those would have been the memories. Colleagues would have remembered Obama visiting her with cupcakes in the briefing room and singing "Happy Birthday" to her last August. They would have recalled the late Tony Snow referring to her as "Secretary of State Helen Thomas" or an exasperated Fleischer, during a grilling, saying, "We will temporarily suspend the Q&A portion of today's briefing to bring you this advocacy minute."

Before last week's suggestion that Jews "go home" to places where they were annihilated, Thomas's liberal politics and predictable questions on the Middle East were generally tolerated. Knowing smiles would break out when she would advise Bush not to "keep threatening war every day" or ask of Gibbs, "We go in to kill and maim and send drones -- is that Christianity?"

Those questions take on a darker connotation now. Just before Thomas announced her resignation, the White House Correspondents' Association called a "special meeting" to consider "whether it is appropriate for an opinion columnist to have a front-row seat" in the briefing room.

But being an "opinion columnist" isn't what got Thomas in trouble; it was her bigoted remark in the White House driveway to a rabbi with a video camera. Now that Helen is gone, there's more need than ever for others in the briefing room to share her opinion -- specifically, the opinion that anybody standing on that podium should be regarded with skepticism.

Dana Milbank - The sad farewell of Helen Thomas