"Bob Noel" wrote in message
...
[...]
that stuff is neither necessary nor sufficient for a decent place to live.

And aviation is?

Frankly, I'm not that surprised Jay continues to dig his hole. He's just
not the kind of guy to engage in any sort of retrospection. Suffice to say,
however, that:

* Aviation seems to be reasonably healthy in France in the first place,
in spite of the gas prices (his analysis is completely lacking, never mind
that correlation does not show causation)

* Even if the French people decided to eliminate aviation, if that's
what they want to do as a people, I don't see what's so "dunderheaded" about
that. Not the course I'd take, but I fail to see how it's an inherently
"dunderheaded" thing to do.

* Even if it were "dunderheaded" to do so, calling an entire country
"dunderheaded" is still offensive. It's no different than calling all
Americans "dunderheaded", just because 50% of them were "dunderheaded"
enough to reelect a president who willfully fabricated justification for a
war. The other 50% weren't, and saying they are is offensive.

Bob F, I appreciate you pointing out that this isn't so much about getting
Jay to understand his errors (a futile goal, if ever there was one) as it is
about showing the rest of the readership that not all participants of this
newsgroup are as narrow-minded and bigoted as Jay. But I think we've
accomplished that goal...we're not going to get anywhere by continuing to
feed the bigots.

Pete