Waging peace
There have been some attempts to radically change the way government does business. One current proposal is truly extraordinary. GovTrack has this entry for H.R. 808, “A bill to establish a Department of Peace and Nonviolence,” sponsored by Rep. Dennis Kucinich [D-OH]. The bill was introduced February, 2007. It aims to establish a new Department of Peace and Nonviolence with the following offices:
Office of Peace Education and Training.
Office of Domestic Peace Activities.
Office of International Peace Activities.
Office of Technology for Peace.
Office of Arms Control and Disarmament.
Office of Peaceful Coexistence and Nonviolent Conflict Resolution.
Office of Human Rights and Economic Rights.
Intergovernmental Advisory Council on Peace and Nonviolence.
According to the bill’s text, a representative of the Department of Peace and Nonviolence will sit on the National Security Council, recommend policy to the Attorney General and advise the Secretary of Defense and State on all matters concerning national security. One of the justifications for the bill is the following:
We are in a new millennium, and the time has come to review age-old challenges with new thinking wherein we can conceive of peace as not simply being the absence of violence, but the active presence of the capacity for a higher evolution of the human awareness, of respect, trust, and integrity; wherein we all may tap the infinite capabilities of humanity to transform consciousness and conditions which impel or compel violence at a personal, group, or national level toward developing a new understanding of, and a commitment to, compassion and love, in order to create a `shining city on a hill’, the light of which is the light of nations.
I suppose the bill has no realistic chance of being approved either today or in the near future. But the bill’s 70 sponsors are making some kind of statement. The bill has outside support from a group called The Peace Alliance which is a 501(c)4 organization.
According to Wikipedia, some of the possible concerns of the Department will be “to develop policies to address violence against animals” and “develop new approaches for dealing with the implements of violence, including gun-related violence and the overwhelming presence of handguns”. From some points of view, the establishment of the Department isn’t a fringe idea but a return to America’s best traditions.
The idea for the establishment of a U.S. Department of Peace and Non-violence can be traced back to debates by the framers of the U.S. Constitution. An essay on the establishment of a peace organization was written in 1792 by Dr. Benjamin Rush, a physician, educator, and signer of the Declaration of Independence. His proposal called for the establishment of a “Peace Office” which was to be on equal footing with the “War Office”. It saw an urgent need for the establishment of “an office for promoting and preserving perpetual peace in our country” in order to maintain the greater welfare of “these United States.” But it also called for free schools for youth “carefully instructed in reading, writing, and arithmetic, and in the doctrines of a religion of some kind”, distributing free Bibles at public expense, and putting a sign over the door of the War Department proclaiming “An office for butchering the human species”.
Interesting concept.
Yeah. I suggest Dennis Kucinich move overseas permanently and take his theories to places like Sudan, Russia, Mozambique, North Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, China, Pakistan. There is a whole plethora of places on earth that could really use some “re education.” It would take a lifetime.
After examining the list of 70 sponsors…they should go with him.
Okay, what happened to Lead Kindly Dark. I thought it was such a nice title. You could almost sing it.
Okay, what happened to Lead Kindly Dark.
It was too depressing. This is far more cheerful. Editorial balance and besides, it’s a weekend.
Also known as the Office of Naivete. Or how about FC-OFF: Federal Commission Of Further Fleecing. Pronounce as spelled and that about sums up my support.
Overreach.
WHEN not if a major Western city dies, this will be hauled out, and waved around, and Democrats (and Obama) will own it, and pay the political price.
We live in a Science Fiction world. The spread of technology around the globe makes the IDEA of a Department of Peace impossible. Since now tribal people who’s social organization (tribe, polygamy, etc.) makes them violent, approach the same destructive power as ourselves.
Our problem is not one of insufficient devotion to “peace” but rather insufficient self-defense.
Why limit ourselves to Peace? Let’s really get ambitious and create a Department of Human Perfection with the following offices:
Office of Personal Training and Re-Education.
Office of Domestic Water and Help.
Office of International Purity of our Precious Bodily Fluids.
Office of Technology for Cosmetic Surgery.
Office of Arms, Abs, and Glutes.
Office of Perfect Coexistence and Erectile Dysfunction.
Office of Human Experimentation and Economic Redistribution.
Intergovernmental Advisory Council on Intergovernmental Advisory Councils.
Our justification for the bill is the following:
As Unsk said, ridicule. Power to the people!
L3
But [Dr. Rush's Peace Office proposal] also called for free schools for youth “carefully instructed in reading, writing, and arithmetic, and in the doctrines of a religion of some kind”, distributing free Bibles at public expense, and putting a sign over the door of the War Department proclaiming “An office for butchering the human species”.
Would this not have been blatantly unconstitutional under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment? Or, to put it another way, if this had actually been implemented and eventually upheld by SCOTUS, would this not have fundamentally altered the course of First Amendment jurisprudence, not to mention the way we look at the church-state relationship (or lack thereof) today?
whiskey,
Why would they incinerate a city when we’re going to give it to them?
Anyone remember Babylon 5′s Ministry of Peace, and its version of the SS, the Night Watch?
Didn’t Oceania have a Ministry of Peace? Of course, that was twenty-four years ago and times may have changed since then.
I’ll bet that most people cannot define the word “Peace,” anymore than they can define “torture,” or “war” anymore.
These words all have had their meaning wrung out of them by our popular wordsmiths.
Just take the word, “war.” If you can’t define it, how can you define its absence, “peace?” Look at how wrong Kucinich’s Peace-Wing has been about “war” of late.
Most of those fretting about Bush’s nation-building project in Iraq, which has been comparatively low in American casualties, have gotten it so wrong that they’ll need to radically recalibrate their rhetoric along with their expectations for avoiding casualties when we find ourselves in another, fer-real war.
So, if benign, nation-building is “War” to some, can these same fooled persons be trusted to design a “Peace” department? It’s hard to say so: they’d have more credibility to me if they had supported Operation Iraqi Freedom and the UN’s SC resolutions before claiming to design something ad hoc that they might call “peace.”
It would never occur to a monomaniacal lightweight such as Kucinich that every federal department and agency outside of DoD has a mission of “peace.” One could also argue that DoD itself is in the “peace” business.
But far more emotionally satisfying to characterize it as “An office for butchering the human species.” You can just feel the heavy cloud of smug over the enterprise.
One of my projects was to figure out exactly what “Christianity” is. To do so, I studied Christian heresies. Most of these were well defined by 400 or so, and have popped up over and over again for the past 2000 years.
The heresy we see Kucinich dabbling in is called “millinarianism.” That is, humans don’t have to wait for Judgement day to experience Paradise; we can make Heaven here and now on Earth. Paradise is the place where the Lion lies down with the Lamb (and with Dennis Kucinich) in Peaceful Amity, and one of the things we need is a Department of Peace, replacing that nasty, ugly Department of War place.
Note also, that Nazism and Communism, and Environmentalism all share in this heresy. Their proponents “know” that if we humans would behave differently, in line with their theories, then…
the Lion will Lie down with the Lamb.
Aren’t you glad Kucinich has no real power… yet?
Don’t you suppose this is what B. Hussein was talking about when he said he wanted a civilian organization equal in power to the military? This very simply is the first step in setting up a cabinet-level department in national government of brownshirts whose primary goals are (1) to tattle on their neighbors regarding whether or not they engage in politically incorrect “hate speech”, (2) to monitor the green footprints of everyone around them and to report those who aren’t recycling or biking to work or are wasting water by watering their lawns instead of growing organic vegetables, and (3) start a full-out attempt to disarm *all* civilian gun owners.
Obama’s brownshirts (or green shirts, as the case may be) will probably be modelled after Canada’s Commission on hate speech and will be above or outside already established laws and the Constitution. In other words, there will be no recourse in public courts and every one accused in an Obama Court will be found guilty and fined into bankruptcy.
One thing this effort will accomplish is that it will provide gainful employment to all the angry liberal moonbats who are still trapped in their parents’ basements, but who don’t have the gonads to volunteer and join the military to learn how to do something besides writing haiku.
Of course, the other end goal in all of this is to emasculate the military to the point where the civilian greenshirts are just as powerful as the Marines and so said Officially Commissioned Civilian Moonbats can stand up and spit in the eye of ANY one, including cops and soldiers. Be interesting to see how they would handle it once the Mexicans and Muslims and pirates start flooding in and blowing shit up because there’s no one out there any more to make sure that they don’t.
in order to create a ’shining body on a hill’
Charlie Ryan – Hot Rod Lincoln
In the fall 2004, The Bridging Tree, newsletter of The Lifebridge Foundation, Inc., said this:
“If people can come together to ensure their right to own guns why can’t people come together to ensure peace and harmony under the umbrella of an organization like The Federation of Peacemakers of America? What we would have to do is to elect a national board of prominent peacemakers. The Board would oversee the activities of the federation, which would be staffed by professionals. Each affiliate organization and individual would pay a monthly fee. Can we be as committed to peace as the NRA members are to their agenda?”
I believe the purpose of peace groups is to disarm our nation of firearms and to influence the population to devalue the U.S. military.
One only has to look at the goals of Robert Muller, former assistant secretary general of the UN and founder of the University of Peace in Costa Rica and his many “alternative schools” around the world which are educating future peace wagers. Schools such as the Robert Muller Center for Living Ethics in Fairview, Texas and Robert Muller Schools International in Arlington, Texas are teaching this world peace curriculum to young children. Robert Muller’s goals of Paradise on Earth can be found here: http://robertmuller.org/
Charles,
Nice tune, sweet rides. “I whispered a prayer, just for luck.” Yeah.
L3
This sounds like a public works program for the undereducated but overdegreed offspring of our elite who can’t be expected to get their hands dirty with a real job.
Time to fisk,
but the active presence of the capacity for a higher evolution of the human awareness, of respect, trust, and integrity
There is no such thing as “higher” or “lower” evolution. Evolution by natural selection has nothing to do with “respect”, “trust”, “integrity” or “compassion”. Those are irrelevant emotions. Here is the theory, “Two major mechanisms drive evolution. The first is natural selection, a process causing heritable traits that are helpful for survival and reproduction to become more common in a population, and harmful traits to become more rare. This occurs because individuals with advantageous traits are more likely to reproduce, so that more individuals in the next generation inherit these traits.[1][2] Over many generations, adaptations occur through a combination of successive, small, random changes in traits, and natural selection of those variants best-suited for their environment.[3] The second is genetic drift, an independent process that produces random changes in the frequency of traits in a population. Genetic drift results from the role probability plays in whether a given trait will be passed on as individuals survive and reproduce. Though the changes produced in any one generation by drift and selection are small, differences accumulate with each subsequent generation and can, over time, cause substantial changes in the organisms.” Evolution is all about sex and survival. If you cannot defend yourself, then you’re not gonna survive, have sex, and reproduce. The implications of evolutionary theory are very politically incorrect. One of them is that pacifism is a lie. The evolution of life over the past 3.5 billion years has been one long arms race. No department of peace is going to change the fact that humans are just animals. There will always be violence. Most of the animal kingdom itself cannot survive without violence, after all, most animals must attack, then consume other organisms (plants, fungi, protists, other animals, bacteria etc.).
Office of Technology for Peace.
Office of Arms Control and Disarmament.
Office of Peaceful Coexistence and Nonviolent Conflict Resolution.
These things not only deny the fact that humans are animals and are just as subject to the rules of the Serengeti as the zebra and the lion, they deny the technological trends of the twenty-first century. There can be no “Arms Control and Disarmament” in an age of desktop fabricators and personal homemade Bio/nanite WMD’s.
Obama is already preparing to treat CO2 as a “dangerous pollutant.” That move alone will hamstring power utilities and US industry causing economic disaster. But if Obama wins with a Congressional Dem. Party supermajority, he just might take up the cause of a Department of Peace to rival the funding, staffing, and priority of the Department of Defense.
If he’s going to try to bring down the country, why not pull out all the stops?
800 Billion to the UN should buy quite a bit of Peace, right?
Obama's
$845 billion U.N. plan forwarded to U.S. Senate floor
—
When Party Bosses Steal An Election
Paging Jean Jacques Rousseau …
I tend to agree with NahnCee, Steve Skubinna, Checkmate, vb, Robert and others, that “Department of Peace” Act is a red herring with a dangerous agenda behind it.
General rules in politics include:
1. Disguise a power grabbing piece of legislation as “peaceful.”
2. Once said “Peace Act” is enacted discard the veneer of “peace” and plunder the populace.
I think we all know what happened to Joe the Plumber after a “peaceful” interview with Obama. He was smeared and his government controlled driving records and tax records were displayed on every TV screen in America.
I suspect the “Department of Peace” will be nothing but a mechanism to control Obama’s dissenters and a life long employment act for the ACLU.
Greetings:
Did you miss the Office of Peace and Non-Violence Enforcement?
NahnCee,
Those civilian NKVD and Brownshirts who will be displacing the U.S. military do not at all understand what they are up against. I won’t elaborate further, since I’ve smacked so many times here for elaborating further that I have the welt marks to prove it.
The utter foolishness of this piece of legislation is only matched by the hudspah of the 70 members of Congress co-sponsoring it.
What most worries me about this is the message it sends to our Islamic enemies. Nothing good can come of this, and I can envision those savages, here and overseas, being emboldened by it. I cannot imagine this having the support of the majority of the population.
That is the scariest thing I’ve read in a long time. Possibly more interesting than the story of the bill is the part about Dr. Benjamin Rush. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Please allow me to introduce myself, I’m a man of wealth and taste…
Then again, maybe he’s just going to rename the DoD the “Office of Peace and Non-Violence Enforcement” just to play with our enemies heads. Really freak them out and make them think we’re crazy. You know they’d all be like ” Whoa man, they won’t let us use violence, that’s totally offensive. Lets stop the Jihad, guys”.
You’ll see.
Well, like Obama says, he’s going to send a “signal”:
“Joe sometimes engages in rhetorical flourishes. But I think that his core point was that the next administration is going to be tested regardless of who it is,” Obama told reporters after meeting with his national security working group. “The next administration is going to be inheriting a whole host of really big problems and so the president is going to be tested and the question is will the next president meet that test by moving America in a new direction by sending a clear signal to the rest of the world that we are no longer about bluster and unilateralism and ideology but we’re about creating partnerships around the world to solve practical problems.”
He’s not just gonna change America, he’s gonna change the world.
Egomaniac.
Some interesting talk from Mandelbrot on the black swan
Gateway Pundit
Obama Race Baiting Video
All leftists are convinced that they can change the world.
More: they are sure that they can change human nature.
I remember in the 60s, 70s, leftists in Latin America going on about the New Man (“El Hombre Nuevo”) who would supposedly appear after the Revolution, and, even though I was little more than a child, I kept thinking: from where is this “New Man” going to come, from the Moon, from Mars? Because you sure cannot expect humanity to change overnight just because the system of government changed. Well, maybe if you’re a leftist, you can.
There is a lot to be said for correcting Bush II’s failures in the conflicts his Administration faced.
Where he basically told the American public to not step up, but to shop more and worship the “heroes” that found the military more alluring than being underemployed in small towns or larger ones that lost all their industry to the Globalist Elites.
Where he ignored strategic communications, economic solutions to matters like poppy fields nourishing Taliban and Warlord coffers.
Yes we should use more than just “miracle weapons!!” and “our high tech heroes!!” in protecting and advancing our overseas interests. DOD Secretary Gates has stated such, very strongly. Better a bigger State Dept than two “high tech” Navy gunships costing 3 billion each – he says.
That said, Kucinich is an idiot if he thinks a Dept of Peace would work any better than the UN Peacekeepers have if it is set up along idiot utopian lines as the UN Operations have been. If one looks at their record, they seem to only defer and postpone conflicts that are not reconcilable by political means. Ceasefires with UN troops positioned between parties that never settled their dispute usually means that hostility is not diffused and replaced by goodwill, but only intensifies and explodes while “Peacekeepers” are there or when they flee in horror as the dogs of war begin chomping bones in Rwanda, East Timor, the Suez.
Alas, it is just Wikipedia, but the list of UN Peacekeeping operations from the Korea onwards generally only defers resolutions and at best, only fosters stalemate. In only a few cases has it “created peace” – usually by a change in political rule in one of the belligerants.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_Nations_peacekeeping_missions
Sometimes it is good to apply new knowledge, new negotiation theory, recognition of other tools to resolve disputes – economic incentives, control of high breeding rate populations seeking to invade or migrate to other occupied lands…objective statesmen able to convey to both sides the possiblities of not just defeat or victory, but full war being ruinious to all parties.
But in the end, sometimes there are disputes that can only be resolved with bloodshed. And in many cases, war is ultimately a social good to resolve issues that cannot be resolved otherwise.
As in other conflicts, like marital, sometimes peace at all costs between parties is not advisable for either side in the long term. Better a brief and bloody battle, a divorce and resolution. And then focus on a lasting peace rather than a series of mini-battles that are blocked from finality by the intervention of cops or blue helmets acting as temporary “Peacekeepers” – until a family is dead, or a Rwanda happens.
If we are to have a Gov’t group that focuses on International Peace, and succeed where UN Peacekeeping generally failed – to must be located within State and have core objectives:
1. Work by State to address technological threats that may destabilize should continue – that being matters like the excellent State Program created under Nunn and Lugar now gathering up loose nuclear material, liaison with military and Commerce on matters of proliferation, liaison with international groups sharing common objectives.
2. Policies of economic development and birth control tied to internal stabilization and eliminating jobless, impoverished “excess people”. And strategic communications that “couterprograms” against those wishing to raise hatreds to conflict level.
3. Recognition that merely stopping armed conflict by external intervention is not the same as creating a lasting peace. For that, a war may indeed have to be “let happen”. Short of war, Final Borders and settlement of grievances by troops and courts may have to be imposed. Or due consideration may have to be given to arming both sides equally to give the peace of parity – against futile war if both sides can wreck the other side and only get a Pyrrhic Victory. Or Partition.
4. Such a State subdepartment should have full access to military experts and academics involved in negotiation and conflict theory. Which would collaborate with other nations…making a study of factors that underlay what creates durable peace, and what causes war neither side wants..
Heather, that reminds me of a Woody Allen line (way back when he was still a comedian):
“The lion may lie down with the lamb, but the lamb isn’t going to get much sleep.”
Much can be made about Senator Obama’s leftist agenda, but he is hardly alone in promoting socialist policies. I think the aspect of the Obama machine that is downright scary isn’t so much its agenda as the religious devotion of his movement and the potential megalomania it would logically foster.
When I see Barack Obama, I don’t only see a high achieving graduate of Columbia and Harvard who became a U.S. Senator. I also see a bully magnet from the streets of Djakarta. Even when he lived in Indonesia, he always wanted to be in charge. Barack Obama comes across to me as someone who is simultaneously a control freak and someone who feeds off the adulation of crowds.
Barack Obama faces a lingering worry that he would identify with Javanese bullies who threw him into a pond rather than Americans who were nice to him. He faces a lingering worry that he would pine after his Kenyan father who rejected and abandoned him. He faces a lingering worry that Jeremiah Wright is like a father to him, a surrogate father to a man who was abandoned by his genetic father, that Barack Obama could no more reject Jeremiah Wright and his teachings than reject his own maternal grandmother. Barack Obama faces a suspicion that he wears a mask, a mask of smooth self-assurance over a volcanic temper.
Is he intensely appealing to many Americans? Of course. Yet, is he a man who seeks the admiration of millions to salve a wounded psyche? Given how he got so relentlessly picked on in Djakarta, and it would be difficult to imagine how such a man would not have some kind of axe to grind.
What would happen if millions of Americans vote for Dr. Jekyll?
What would happen if millions of Americans vote for Dr. Jekyll?
Let us Hyde.
I’ll match #34 with another Woody Allen line:
“It’s not death I worry about, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”
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Department of Peace = the grave.
Even with a 90% cut in the US military budget it will still be larger than the military budget of France Russia and china combined. Cut the budget by 90%. Cut the generals the accountants the welfare parasites that that protest. Eliminate all foreign aid. Close down all foreign bases. Recall all US gov personnel back home. Recall all military ships and aircraft carriers to home ports. With the exception of the Pentagon, eliminate the complete alphabet soup of federal government departments and agencies. Institute an immediate ban on the sale of new civilian gasoline/diesel/kerosene powered vehicles. Institute an immediate ban on the sale of new civilian energy consuming products that fail to meet green standards, including buildings and subdivision that fail to meet green urban design and transport needs.
Declare Jihad and all Jihadis enemies of the state. Confiscate all Jihadi assets in the US. Those Jihadis that were actively involved in organizing Jihad in the US, execute immediately. The rest deport to the middle of the atlantic ocean. Nuke Saudia, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Turkey, with more to follow in second third forth strikes etc.
At my local elementary school (K-8) they have a 6 or 8 week program (1-2 times a week) where members of the national guard come into the school and work with eighth graders on various issues like leadership, problem solving, teamwork; the program culminates in a ropes course. One mother last year (my daughter was in eighth grade then also) took offence at the fact that the “military” was coming into “our school” to teach “our kids.” She was especially worried that they might be wearing (gasp!) their uniforms (they weren’t). It was as if the eighth graders were being shown something pornographic…..She said something about removing her son to go to “meals for peace” (or something like that) – I don’t know if she ever followed through, though. Her reaction to the program resonated with a number of parents (although not to the degree of her reaction).
I await the creation of this bureaucracy in the New Obama Millenium:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqhlQfXUk7w&NR=1
“The arrogance of bureaucrats and politicians is inversely proportional to their intelligence.”
Charles @ 31
Steve Diamond also has some kind words for Mandelbrot along with links to a fifty two minute discussion on the financial meltdown and PowerPoint slides. Click on the link at the bottom of this post.
The Man Who Should Have Won the Nobel Prize
Here’s a real screamer from SNL as Biden and Murtha compete to unelect obama
Charles @ 31
Steve Diamond has some kind words for Mandelbrot on his blog, along with links to a fifty two minute discussion of the financial crisis and PowerPoint slide.
The Man Who Should Have Won the Nobel Prize
A judge has tossed out Philip Berg’s lawsuit. There goes that shot.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D941NCJG0&show_article=1
Check out this odd bit.
[Judge]Surrick ruled that Berg lacked standing to bring the case, saying any harm from an allegedly ineligible candidate was “too vague and its effects too attenuated to confer standing on any and all voters.”
Any harm “too vague”? Is it me, or did the wise old judge just in effect say “it doesn’t matter the Constitution says about eligibility.”
The dissolution begins.
Sorry that this is not completely on subject, but I just saw this post on American Thinker (http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/signs_pointing_to_a_mccain_vic.html).
In it the author mentions the scarcity of Obama-Biden campaign stickers/buttons in his area (New York). Living in Colorado near Denver I’ve been puzzled by the same thing. Last election at least half of the cars you passed on the road had Kerry or Bush stickers. But this time I’ve seen less than 10 cars total in the past few months that had any stickers. I also noticed this on a recent road-trip to Oklahoma – again seeing less than 5 cars with stickers on the round trip and in the Oklahoma City area. Makes me wonder about the true extent of Obamamania. Probably just wishful thinking, but it is strange. Maybe part of the “I don’t want my tires slashed or my car keyed” mentality? But even if so, why aren’t the “True Believers” broadcasting their devotion to the One? Any of the rest of you BC folks out there notice this also?
@44 John Work:
Yes, I’m seeing more McPalin signs than B HO in a liberal area of NC; not sure what it means, but I’m hopeful.
Peterike,
That was my take also. It seems to me that any one running for president of the United States of America should be able to prove beyond the shadow of any doubt that he or she is indeed a rock solid, wrapped in the red, white, and blue, American. It seems such a simple thing to do. It is almost a triviality, yet it is the linch pin of all that follows in running for president, nicht wahr? Why do so many seem so eager to trustingly thrust the mantle of leadership onto Senator Obama?
As an aside AND a particularly unscientific study at high speed:
I just returned from two weeks vacation to a place in America, so surrounded by hills and trees that I was cut off from the Internet, TV, and newspapers. I drove from Oklahoma thru Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, New York into north central Pennsylvania and in due time, drove back. America’s freeway system is great. It cuts across hill country, farm lands, through and around large cities. And one thing impressed me. The lack of Obama stickers and signs. I saw McCain and Palin signs everywhere. In a small county seat in Pennsylvania, I saw a little old white haired hippy looking lady hawking Obama to assembled masses of one hippiesh looking young man who seemed to be furtively looking around to see if he was being observed by any of the farmers, loggers, and oil/gas workers in town for supplies.
Do not despair. The end is not yet nigh. The only poll that counts is the vote. In a sense, this election reminds me of a great epic novel where staunch, simple, brave men come out of the fields, the woods, the swamps to make battle against the dead warriors raised in the cauldrons of ACORN and activist covens all over. The shadowy priest hood of the MSM stirs and casts spins to trouble the spirit of the hosts of right. …..Whoa, programmer, down boy. The foam flecked rhetoric is starting to fog up my monitor. Any way, I missed this blog immensely and am glad to see the intelligent, well thought out discourse is still bubbling up from the cool, clear wellsping at Wretchard’s place.
.
And I’m still having trouble with metaphors…
Welcome back programmer.
Thought rhinoceri were becoming extinct.
Mika, I will do everything you say to do.
Right after you (a) engage me in mortal combat and (b) live to tell about it.
As to imposing your prewcriptions; You and what army will mange to accomplish all that?
You and what army will mange to accomplish all that?
==
Spoken like a true commie.
Speaking of signage, here in a well-off North Shore of Long Island town, I’d say the signs are probably 60/40 Obama/McCain. But I also agree that in sheer numbers there are very few. In fact, many houses have signs out front for the local races, judges, etc., but without a Presidential sign in the mix. I don’t recall that ever happening before.
One thing I do know is that socially, having a McCain/Palin sign would be a stigma and open you to “friendly” abuse. Democrats are always more willing to chastize Republicans than the other way around, and in New York, even in the suburbs, Bush has been a social embarassment. It takes a very brave person to admit voting for W. People would definitely be more hesitant to make their McCain support public, so maybe that makes the real mix closer to 50/50. I don’t know.
But I agree with John Work that you saw far more Bush/Kerry signs out in 2004. Are the campaigns just not putting the money into signs? (Though it’s hard to believe the Obama camp lacks the money for anything.) Or are people afraid to voice their opinions?
Or, since this is New York, an Obama victory is a given, so maybe the O camp figures “why bother, it’s in the bag,” and the McCain camp figures, “why bother, we’ll never win the state.” But then a Kerry victory was a given too and you saw a lot of Bush signs.
Strange times.
On the subject of O’s “electability,” I’ll say again what I said on a thread some time ago. What if after he wins the election someone finds definitive proof that he wasn’t eligible? Does it go to Biden? And do the streets go up in flames?
The (dis)honorable Judge Surrick, by the way, is a Clinton appointee. Shocking that.
Plasma TVs Draw More Juice from Grid than Plug-In Vehicles
by Michael Graham Richard, Gatineau, Canada on 07.24.08
Plasma TVs vs. Plug-In Cars
We already wrote about a study by Oak Ridge National Laboratory that shows that plug-in cars might not need new power plants (or few of them), and now we learn that a big screen plasma TV actually drains more power from the grid than a plug-in.
“Plasma TVs, industry officials say, consume about four times the electricity as recharging a plug-in hybrid. Yet utilities have managed to cope with the increased loads as thousands of new televisions came on line.”
.
.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/07/plasma-tv-television-plug-in-cars-electric.php
In my section of Los Angeles, the signs appear to be evenly split between Obama and McCain supporters. I’m remembering over the past few weeks that the Obama signs went up a month or so ago, and recently McCain signs have gone up in refutation.
I really think people are afraid to either put signs on their lawns or on their cars because of the property damage which has been going on all over the country. Which, in turn, means that the average voter *is* fully aware of the violence and thuggery involved in this election which has to be good for McCain.
Although I keep hearing the Obamaniacs at work talking about “McCain’s tactics” which I’m not aware of any McCain supporters physically attacking people, so I don’t know what that means, and I’m not gonna ask!
Out of fear of property damage and personal attack I have opted to not put McCain-Palin signs on my front lawn or stickers on my car. There are so many TRUE reports going around about vandalism done to Republican property and verbal assaults upon their persons, not to mention petty, snarky insults directed at people, that it just isn’t worthwhile putting a “hit me” target on oneself.
For Peterike-
Michelle O is getting more than a little testy about that being “adopted by a step father” thing. Consider this quote:
“African press International is supposed to support Africans and African-American view,” and she went to state that, “it is strange that API has chosen to support the racists against my husband. There is no shame in being adopted by a step father. All dirt has been thrown onto my husband’s face and yet he loves this country. My husband and I know that there is no law that will stop him from becoming the president, just because some American white racists are bringing up the issue of my husband’s adoption by His step father. The important thing here is where my husband’s heart is at the moment. I can tell the American people that My husband loves this country and his adoption never changed his love for this country. He was born in Hawaii, yes, and that gives him all the right to be an American citizen even though he was adopted by a foreigner”
Could it be his dear old commie Indonesian step dad screwed up little Barry’s American Citizenship when he adopted him as an Indonesian Citizen?
peterike @ 43
Here’s a suggestion that Judge Surrick may take his marching orders from someone else. It appears that a former clerk for Judge Surrick is an attorney at Sidley Austin in Chicago.
Judge Surrick “Received” the Decision He Issued?
Peace!
Fear of thuggery and worse by Obama-Soetoro supporters has suppressed free speech like nothing I can remember in my 60+ years. Talk to a black person about this election? Not on your life. Racism is the primary plank in the Obama-Soetoro platform. Socialism is the second plank. The circles of hate around Obama-Soetoro make it impossible for me to believe that his beliefs are not more like the Wright’s, Ayers’, Dohrn’s, and Khalidi’s than those of what was once called The Average American’s. I pray for millions of, not The Silent, but The Silenced Majority to show up to vote November 4th. We have been shown the tip of the Obama-Soetoro iceberg; the dangerous stuff is still hidden beneath the surface.
No Raila No Peace Nobama ’08
Waging peace is the most brutal form of warfare on your on people. It requires total domination of the populace, with punishments out of proportion to the “disturbance of peace”. All the communist and fascist regimes waged peace on their populations, giving millions the peace of the grave, giving millions more the peace of the gulag. The peaceful few left to be part of the polite society as defined by the peacemakers, knew quiet desperation. Can you hear the silence?
I’m sorry. This Berg suit and the whole gamut of Obama citizenship questions are silly red herrings.
Obviously Berg has no standing. What relief is he requesting from the court? That Obama’s name be taken off of the Ohio ballot? (What kind of future mischief is this inviting? If successful, wouldn’t this suit effectively give the courts final authority over elections? Wouldn’t this ratify Al Gore’s 2000 strategy in Florida?) I don’t think that the constitution says ANYTHING about candidates for president. If there were grounds for such a suit, the federal court could only prevent the inauguration, not the election.
If the citizenship objection were valid, there are two ways that it could played out:
1) A voter could contest Obama’s eligibility to vote at his precinct voting location, 2) the House of Representatives could refuse to recognize Obama’s electors.
But, what is the basis of the citizenship questions?
A) That Barack Obama was actually born in Kenya. This requires proof to substantiate. That his birth certificate seems hinky is simply not definitive enough to prove that he was born outside of the country. Evidence that his mother traveled to Kenya before his birth and returned afterwards is necessary.
B) That Obama’s stepfather changed his citizenship by adopting him. American citizenship is rather difficult to lose. Consider the case of Yaser Esam Hamdi, who never represented himself as a citizen, yet was found by SCOTUS to have all of the rights because he was born in the USA. (Again, point A needs affirmative proof, not simply a doubt.) A minor child is not competent to renounce his citizenship, parents and stepparents don’t have the right. Consider the cases of American born children that are spirited away to Saudi Arabia and other places, they do not lose their citizenship and retain the right to reclaim it when they reach adulthood.
When Barack Obama returned to the United States, he did not travel on an Indonesian passport. Whether he traveled on his own, or on his mother’s passport, he was presented as a US citizen and accepted as such by customs and immigration officials.
Since his return from Indonesia, Barack Obama has represented himself, and been accepted as a US citizen. Absent actual proof that he was born elsewhere, there are no reasonable grounds to doubt his claim.
We can oppose his candidacy, his political philosophy, his campaign strategy and his character, but this particular argument is sterile and unproductive. Indeed, this is just the kind of chimera that the Obama campaign would love to see conservative distract themselves with.
I am reminded of Denethor gazing into the palantir controlled by Sauron. Paralyzed by the terror of what he was shown, he descended into madness.
Contrast with Samwise Gamgee, probably a pretty good plumber, who steadfastly put one foot in front of the other despite the horror around him.
Nowadays, “Joe the Plumber” is a folk hero. Thirty-five years ago, “George the Plumber” (G. Gordon Liddy) was a folk villain.
America’s zeitgeist is different now from what it once was.
I always had a fondness for G. Gordon. Compared to the mealey-mouthed stabbers-in-the-back like Haldemann and Erlichmen there was something vivacious and refreshing about Liddy’s over-the-top machismo. I thought he might be a fun father to have, like a pistol-waving Buckley.
Alexis,
What I find fascinating, and encouraging, is that the working class hero is a Republican icon this time out.
Who do the Dems have? The One himself, the dear leader. (Funny how we’ve not seen a single grateful beneficiary of his community organizing, with an inspirational story to tell.)
Their message has evolved dramatically. From championing the Working Man to fighting for Working Families to saving the Middle Class. whiskey is right – they will NOT be able to deliver the expected patronage to all of their interest groups.
Wretchard was right months ago, the left is on its last legs.
@ Twolaneflash #57: “Fear of thuggery and worse by Obama-Soetoro supporters has suppressed free speech like nothing I can remember in my 60+ years. Talk to a black person about this election? Not on your life.”
1. Your life would definitely NOT be at risk by talking with me about the election
2. But be forewarned, my fellow Clubber, if you think you and yours are being called “racist” a lot now, trust me when I tell you it will happen a lot more often and a lot more vociferously if Obama is elected. More over, much of the flak will come from the usual suspects, that rogues gallery of liberal enablers, only a small portion of whom are black.
3. And speaking of clubs, it is interesting how certain of the enablers perversely enjoy beating conservatives over the head with the r-word… and then claim to be my protector! But I know better. When I see a group of people staring at me with glazed eyes and holding bloody rhetorical truncheons, I know those clubs could and would be used on me too, the job itself outsourced to one of my own, of course.
Konyok-
I always thought that the courts would find in Barrack’s favor if there was any possible reasonable precedent they could cite, whether the judge was conservative or liberal. The precedent you cite seems reasonable enough to me. Although Michelle’s quote seems even more over the top than her normal over the top self.
Unsk,
It’s not question of precedents. In America the plaintiff has the burden of proof, the defendant the assumption of innocence.
It simply blows me away that conservatives could hang their hopes on a court decision.
It’s unfortunate that Michelle reminds me of Omarosa, and has done absolutely nothing to change that characterization.
Omarosa
[I didn't know who that was - had to look it up.]
The disappearance of the Real Deal – replaced by layers of caricatures of varying degrees removed from the cartoon.
Is the historical dialectic playing itself out in the post-modern world or is it nostalgia for a reality that was more easily understood?
The Deep Thinkers: Barack, Michelle, John, Cindy, Sarah, and Joe.
Barney, Nancy, Chris D. Chris C., Harry, Tim M., John M., ………..
I’m reminded of a joke: [h/t Sam @ Elephant Bar]
A hypnotist performs at the Senior Citizens Center on Friday night. He starts by swinging his watch on a pendulum until the crowd is out. The watch drops and breaks. “Shit.” It took three days to clean up the place.
I’m an erstwhile buddy of Dr. Benjamin Rush’s great great great great great granddaughter: an admirable woman in many respects, who is a principal in a San Francisco (where else?) company that flogged Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS) paraphernalia online, recently at radically slashed prices. I sent her a couple of wise-ass emails referring, I think it was to an Iowahawk piece (before the present mortgage bubble burst), predicting disastrous knock-on effects across the economy after 6 Nov, when BDS mdse becomes a drug on the market, and that it sure looked like her company was at the forefront of that trend. “That’s not funny”, her response probably would have been, if there was one but indeed there wasn’t.
Picking up on John’s comment about the lack of Obama bumper-stickers in some major cities…
Here in ultra-liberal Flagstaff I’m noticing the same thing. Compared to the Kerry/Edwards stickers that I saw everywhere back in 2004, Obama’s stickers are very hard to find.
I did an informal poll while walking through the Flagstaff Sam’s Club parking lot yesterday. I counted 4 McCain/Palin stickers and only 1 Obama one.
Something’s going on. Thing’s aren’t adding up.
67. Konyok:
It simply blows me away that conservatives could hang their hopes on a court decision.
….
You’re over reaching. No one is hanging their hopes on any of this stuff. This birth certificate stuff is just another writ that seems to have stuck to obama because his people won’t produce a hard copy birth certificate.
The mistake is with the obama campaign for not squelching the argument by producing a hard copy birth certificate. The McCain campain did that after the NY Times ran front page articles in the spring which questioned his citizenship.
Obama’s birth certificate sealed by Hawaii governor
why do this? why would obama’s campaign staff not simply release these records so as to put the rumors to bed.
“That’s not funny”
No it’s not. Neither is the sub-text.
Bring back the Sons of Liberty
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sons_of_Liberty
At the risk of sounding onverly conspiracy-minded, I can visualize one reason for concealing the birth certificate;
To make as many people as possible believe they are being ruled by an all-powerful “illegal alien” and that resistance is futile. On your faces, dhimmis! And all that.
Probably a stretch on my part, but it IS in character for those people.
I just want proof of his citizenship and his validity to run for the President of the US. I can’t believe people are willing to hand over the Presidency to someone who wont’ turn over their birth certificate. Just because Obama is intelligent and has an amazing personality doesn’t make him prepared to run our country. His lefty illuminati politicians in DC think they’ve found some puppet to do their dirty work and the American people are falling for it.
47. John Work:
…
In it the author mentions the scarcity of Obama-Biden campaign stickers/buttons in his area (New York). Living in Colorado near Denver I’ve been puzzled by the same thing.
…
But even if so, why aren’t the “True Believers” broadcasting their devotion to the One? Any of the rest of you BC folks out there notice this also?//
======
John;
It’s that “inch deep” thing. The Bradley Effect is on course to be historically replaced by the Obama Effect, in which voters whose unease with the Super-PC candidate are resentful of intimidation and being called “racists” at the drop of a hat use the Ballot Hammer to strike back.
And here’s a brilliant analysis of this hollowness in the poll numbers: http://tinyurl.com/thepumafactor . The strange behavior of the McCain camp is thus explained: they have their own accurate read of the situation, and are using that “inside info” to best effect.
This whole Waging Peace crock reminds me forcibly of every other unilateral disarmament movement in recent history. The Progressive belief in its own persuasiveness and irresistible eloquence is certainly embodied par excellence in Oblabla.
1) Dennis Kucinich is a ventriloquist dummy from the Vega Star System
2)”a higher evolution of the human awareness,” bespeaks a profound ignorance of and contempt for human nature, which will never change. I repeat: never.
One of the greatest sources of misery in the world comes from this notion of the perfectibility of man at the most elemental level, which is a total impossibility. We choose such things as reason over violence and compassion over cruelty because we know we are capable of the alternative and wish to avoid it (or should, when we pay attention to our better nature). These pseudo-moral cretins have this notion that we can become “more highly eveolved,’ or some such garbage.
And, what the Hell is it with Cleveland? They had that simple idiot as their mayor, and then insist on sending him back to Congrress repeatedly. Cleveland, I would think, is as representative of the American heartland
ALREADY HAVE IT
We have a Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation.
This is the follow-on to the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. An agency is higher than a bureau, apparently, as the Agency didn’t report to the State Department but directly to the White House, if memory serves.
If we can get others to sign up, it’s the Kellogg Briand Pact, part II. Ah, what a wonderful world it will be.
Deploy them to Darfur, let’s see them make peace where war is.
Put them to the test.
“My husband and I know that there is no law that will stop him from becoming the president” M Obama
“Someday, someone, will say this is illegal.. let’s make sure that by that time we are the ones who say what is legal or not.” L Ron Hubbard
“War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength” – Orwell
“I suppose the bill has no realistic chance of being approved either today or in the near future.”
Why would you suppose that? Obama has called for a civilian security force as strong and as well funded as the Pentagon. Who’s going to stop a liberal super-majority from giving it to him?
This is much worse than a silly multibillion dollar boondoggle. Read the entire text of the bill. The domestic agenda is frightening and extends to almost all aspects of public life.
“War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength” – Orwell
There’s a whole lot of Orwellian stuff in HR 808.
The proposed Offices below already exist…
Office of Peace Education and Training. “Department of Defense”
Office of Domestic Peace Activities. “Homeland Security”
Office of International Peace Activities. “US Navy”
Office of Technology for Peace. “DARPA”
Office of Arms Control and Disarmament. “US Office of Arms Control and Disarmament”
Office of Peaceful Coexistence and Nonviolent Conflict Resolution. “Department of State”
Office of Human Rights and Economic Rights. “UN Ambassador” and “Chief Trade Negotiator”
Intergovernmental Advisory Council on Peace and Nonviolence. “Department of Justice”
This is not a joke. Stop treating it like one. Some excerpts from the Act:
(3) develop new policies and incorporate existing policies regarding crime, punishment, and rehabilitation;
(7) make policy recommendations to the Attorney General regarding civil rights and labor law;
(6) administer the training of civilian peacekeepers who participate in multinational nonviolent police forces and support civilian police who participate in peacekeeping;
(1) seek assistance in the design and implementation of nonviolent policies from media professionals;
(2) study the role of the media in the escalation and de-escalation of conflict at domestic and international levels and make findings public; and
(3) make recommendations to professional media organizations in order to provide opportunities to increase media awareness of peace -building initiatives.
(1) develop a peace education curriculum, which shall include studies of–
(A) the civil rights movement in the United States and throughout the world, with special emphasis on how individual endeavor and involvement have contributed to advancements in peaceand justice; and
(B) peace agreements and circumstances in which peaceful intervention has worked to stop conflict;
(A) commission the development of such curricula and make such curricula available to local school districts to enable the utilization of peace education objectives at all elementary and secondary schools in the United States; and
(3) work with educators to equip students to become skilled in achieving peace through reflection, and facilitate instruction in the ways of peaceful conflict resolution;
(6) create and establish a Peace Academy, which shall–
(A) be modeled after the military service academies;
(2) develop new policies and build on existing programs responsive to the prevention of crime, including the development of community policing strategies and peaceful settlement skills among police and other public safety officers; and
(1) study the impact of war, especially on the physical and mental condition of children (using the ten-point agenda in the United Nations Childrens Fund report, State of the World’s Children 1996, as a guide), which shall include the study of the effect of war on the environment and public health;
(2) gather information on and document human rights abuses, both domestically and internationally, and recommend to the Secretary nonviolent responses to correct abuses;
SEC. 112. CONSULTATION REQUIRED.
(B) for any matter involving the use of Department of Defense personnel within the United States.
There’s so much more in the text of the House Resolution which is available on the Library of Congress web site. Please go and read it yourselves. We need to start the fight now. This bill already has 70 co-sponsors.
Barney Frank says they will cut the U.S. Department of Defense by 25%. Peace activist groups are lining up now to get a part of it. Here is the North Texas Peace Learning Center camp for peace stating they want a piece of the money pie:
Campaign to establish a United States Department of Peace
“Peace wants a piece of the pie”
http://northtexaspeacelearningcenter.schools.officelive.com/peacecamp.aspx
If it bothers you that so much money went to Ayers’ education initiatives, then you haven’t seen anything yet. If Obama is elected, the U.S. government will start to funnel money into these groups.
They even want to establish a U.S. Peace Academy on the same scale at our military academies.