Anne Bayefsky at Forbes isn’t sure whether the Obama Administration is participating in Durban II, because despite some indications that it isn’t, there are some indications that it is. Confused? Read on:
Barack Obama just added double-dealing to his foreign policy repertoire. On Friday, administration officials led many Jewish leaders to believe that the president had decided to boycott the United Nation’s “anti-racism” conference known as Durban II. At the same time, however, human rights organizations were being led to believe that the administration was not pulling out and was looking for a way to “re-engage.”
Although the US is ostensibly walking away from the conference, it left the door open to “re-engagement” provided certain forms were observed. Bayefsky argues that the American conditions don’t even mention “many other troubling provisions still on Durban II’s negotiating table.”
After sowing confusion over the phone lines, the State Department chose late Friday night to put the real deal in print. Their release reads: “the current text of the draft outcome document is not salvageable,” and “the United States will not … participate in a conference based on this text,” but we will “re-engage if a document that meets [our] criteria becomes the basis for deliberations.” A new version must be: “shorter,” “not reaffirm in toto the flawed 2001 Durban Declaration,” “not single out any one country or conflict,” and “not embrace the troubling concept of “defamation of religion.”
In fact, she alleges that even if the administration were to skip Durban II, it would simply mask a more substantive concession: participation in the UN Human Rights Council.
The administration’s decision to slip in the Human Rights Council as a consolation prize for Durban enthusiasts is an attempt to downplay a major move. State Department officials intimated that they intend not only to observe but to run for a seat–subject to the “likelihood of successful elections.” Council members and human rights gurus, like China, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, are sure to welcome the instant legitimacy provided by U.S. participation. The Council–controlled by the Organization of the Islamic Conference–has adopted more condemnations of Israel than all other 191 U.N. states combined, while terminating human rights investigations on the likes of Iran, Cuba and Belarus. Obama’s move denies the opportunity to leverage the prospect of American membership to insist on reform.
The word ‘nuance’ comes from Middle French nuer to make shades of color, from nue cloud, from Latin nubes; perhaps akin to Welsh nudd mist. It means a “sensibility to, awareness of, or ability to express delicate shadings (as of meaning, feeling, or value)” But its effect in this case is to keep everyone guessing; and it enables the administration, for the time being, to come down on both sides of the issue. Is America participating in Durban II? The short answer is ‘it depends’; it depends on what participating means and whether you take the large or the small context.
This is why Obama and his team are disasters. They are going to lose, very quickly, any Jewish support, and of course are OK with that, since Jews don’t make up much of the population or wield much domestic power.
However, reflexively siding with enemies of the US: Iran, Cuba, China, Russia, etc. comes with a terrible price — the US will be unable to respond to any attack because Obama and Company, reflexively anti-American and pro-Islamic, will have constrained the US ability to respond to say, nuking of an American city.
What this will do of course is simply undermine any legitimacy of the Obama Regime, and precipitate his ouster in one way or another.
It’s worth noting that Weimar did not fall because Germans were uniquely evil or uniquely riddled with extremists — it fell because there was no one willing to fight for it. Since the regime stood in and of itself for nothing.
Obama and Company feed their hatreds of the US at the cost of turning their own regime into Weimar II.
hey
durban, shmerban…double talk for king obamam is an art form.
today in the midst of fear mongering over our economic future for weeks, his highness will drop a cool 900 MILLION on the folks of gaza, errrrr HAMAS as a means of ”coming together as two great people”.
are we all nuts to let this crap sandwich pass in front of our noses without a whimper. even the gulf arabs aren’t that dumb…
what a way to start monday
I am not so sure that Barack Obama is going to lose support among his followers any time soon. If deception has worked to his advantage so far it was largely the self-deception among those who felt compelled to believe in him. BHO’s great talent was knowing how to tap into this need and package himself so that he passed, like a shiny silk cloth which changes color depending on the angle of the light, as anything you wanted him to be at all.
The real political task isn’t to defeat BHO in the next election but revive among his cadre of supporters the ability to see things as they are. Otherwise they’ll simply elect someone else like him. I think the biggest challenge among conservatives is how to radicalize the liberals: radicalize as in getting them to see the root. There is no way things will change unless at least 20% of the voters who elected Obama find a way to see things differently. It won’t happen automatically. Peretz of the New Republic is apoplectic at the appointment of Chas Freeman yet still can’t bring himself to accept that Freeman is Obama’s creature: his appointee. Over the past month one nominee after the other has been found to have tax problems, legal problems or ethical problems and they’ve all been put down to “blunders” or “mistakes” — as if the President was somehow misled, or naive or didn’t know these people when he chose them despite having all the resources of a great state at his disposal. But how many have drawn the obvious conclusion. His appointments are consistently shady because the core of the administration itself is shady. They flow from the source and are not incidental to it. But no one will believe this, because there is a need to cling to a light-worker, a transcendent figure or at least a Cool Cat.
And it will go on indefinitely longer, perhaps endlessly, until the spell is patiently broken by a potent counter-conjury. But to rely upon it happening spontaneously? It may never happen.
“I am not so sure that Barack Obama is going to lose support among his followers any time soon.”
I agree. It’s becoming increasingly apparent to me that followers of Obama are mainly interested in “what’s in it for me”, and the prospect of a turned-on spigot from the Federal bureaucracy directly into their unemployed, bankrupt, over-mortgaged pockets is making them giddy with anticipation.
Will an ACORN follower give a tinker’s damn about Durban? Will that black woman who wanted Obama to give her free gas and pay her mortgage blink an eye if we also give free gas money to Hamas?
Why on earth did America’s Jews vote to support him in the first place? All he has to do to placate them is give them a conference call once in a while, and then toodle merrily on his way down the yellow brick road.
The *only* way that Obama is going to lose the support of that class of people is if someone — or lots of someones — can firmly turn off the promised flow of free money courtesy of the American taxpayer. And then they won’t blame Obama, but will blame Da Man, again, but at least this time if there’s riots in the streets I’m pretty sure we won’t be seeing a lot of white guilt in response.
I tend to come down with Wand NahnCee on the “losing the Jewish voter support” question. Whiskey’s point assumes that as a class they will vote their interests. That has not been true in this country for over three decades, so I think in this he is wrong.
Why should supporters of Israel be expected to change now? They are genetically created to vote for the party they perceive as supporting “little people”. Its makes no difference their perception is based on smoke and mirrors. They vote democrat, their children vote democrat and their grandchildren will vote democrat. They cannot change. To do so would be an admission of massive class failure. The few who think as individuals and vote intelligently are thought to be “throwbacks”, and shunned.
I am not so sure that Barack Obama is going to lose support among his followers any time soon.
I also agree. One of the nasty side effects of political polarization is that it becomes difficult for people to even privately admit to making a mistake in the voting booth. If I know that my political opponents will never forgive me for disagreeing with them, there is little to no incentive for me to admit to any mistakes.
Being able to get Obama supporters to see their mistake must involve a certain level of forgiveness and a willingness to let them know, “Welcome to the Club.”
For the time being, most Jews will continue to support Barack Obama. It’s difficult for any Jew to admit even to himself that he may be supporting a false messiah, especially if that false messiah’s name is Hussein. To even suggest that Barack Obama may be a shady character and a fraud is to imply that he may be the Shabbatai Zevi of our time, and that David Axelrod would be a modern day Nathan of Gaza. Remember, it took Shabbatai Zevi’s conversion to Islam (however insincere) to convince most of his supporters that he was a fraud. And this was after Nathan of Gaza managed one of the most impressive press campaigns of all time.
So, most Jews will probably support Barack Obama especially after his flaws become patently obvious to his critics. Remember, Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza warned against Shabbatai Zevi, but few people listened to him then either. I suspect that most Jews would support a man with all of the worst features of Adolf Hitler, Ayatollah Khomenei, and Charles Maurras so long as he gives the impression that he comes with a divine mandate. And some Jews kept on supporting Shabbatai Zevi long after his fraud became abundantly obvious to everybody else.
Well I’ll be darned, if it aint so
I never thought I’d live to
See the day the saintly O
Would stoop so low to give two
Versions of the same deceit
He always likes to practice
With answers sharp but incomplete
Like spines upon a cactus
That stick you just about the time
You’ve bought the thing he sells you
And then you find taint worth a dime
To anything he tells you
To say he’s nuanced would be wrong
I say the man just misses
The shiftiness that must belong
To the man who said, …”what is is”
49erDweet:
Why should supporters of Israel be expected to change now? They are genetically created to vote for the party they perceive as supporting “little people”. Its makes no difference their perception is based on smoke and mirrors. They vote democrat, their children vote democrat and their grandchildren will vote democrat. They cannot change. To do so would be an admission of massive class failure.
Exactly. A lot of Jewish identification with the Democratic Party comes from the Republican Party’s historic identification with 1930′s Isolationism and petty anti-Jewish discrimination by country club Republicans. It’s difficult to get over the “Cossack” reputation of the Republican Party. It’s gotten to the point where if Adolf Hitler were to campaign for President as a pro-Israel Democrat, he would likely get the majority of the Jewish vote because he must be an improvement over the Bush crowd.
Uncritical support for Barack Obama by any faction creates disincentives for the opposition to seek that faction’s support in the future. Few things foment political polarization more than sentimentality.
Spinoza’s words on the nature of G_d still strike me as the truth as we can know it. This Presbyterian apostate’s rabbi. On the Democratic party association, it’s been explained to me by younger Jews that the association of the ‘right’ with nazi-ism is all it takes for older Jews to vote ‘left’. A long-lingering Leninism, this branding of nazi-ism as ‘rightist’.
There may be cause for optimism regarding the Jewish supporters of Obama coming around to see reality as it is. All through 2008, I had debates with my Jewsih friends over what a disaster Obama would be on many fronts. I asked them how they could so enthusiastically vote against their own interests. They suffered from Bush Derangement Syndrome, so reason never worked. At the end of each debate, I could only shake my head and say “now I understand how so many went quietly to their deaths in Europe 70 years ago”. That was about the point where my wife would kick me REALLY HARD under the table. However, I started wearing cowboy boots several years ago, so it is no longer as painful for me to express my opinions.
One such acquaintance responded to my last email with “I can’t believe what this moron is doing to the markets and Israel. I will understand if you never want to talk to me again.” I assured her that I was pleased to see her come to her senses and that I wished she had listened last year, but now that we are where we are, she had a duty to share her revelations with her friends and help them to see what is in fact. That is progress. There is still hope. We just need the Blue Dog Democrats to slide into opposition and stop further damage from Washington.
It’s reasonable that the United Nations should try to organize an international effort against racial discrimination. It’s reasonable also that opponents of Israel would exploit that effort in order to condemn a belief that Jews are “the chosen people of God” who enjoy a divine right to the territory of Israel.
It is possible to conduct a reasonable discussion among reasonable people on the subject of whether the Jewish religion might be considered to be a kind of “racism.”
The problem in this situation is the most energetic party in this actual discussion is the world’s Moslems, a population that believes that the Angel Gabriel visited a seventh-century Arab-desert bandit in a cave and dictated the Koran, a preposterous religion that essentially deifies forever the primitive superstitions and society of seventh-century Arab-desert bandits.
The only way for really reasonable people to conduct a really reasonable discussion, therefore, is to subject ancient Jewish and Moslem teachings to the same modern, skeptical objectivity. If we snicker at the claim that God gave the biological descendents of Abraham the right to rule the territory of Israel, then we ought to snicker with similar sophistication to the alternate claim that God gave the religious followers of Mohammed the same right.
Also, if the United Nations condemns the belief that some people are superior merely because of their ancestry, then why does the United Nations ignore the fact that so many countries — especially in the Moslem world — are ruled by hereditary kings. Why isn’t the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia summoned to the conference to explain its publicly declared belief that God wills that one family owns and rules the entire country absolutely by divine right.
Unfortunately, it is impossible for the United Nations simultaneously 1) to conduct a reasonable discussion about the legal equality of all the world’s people and 2) remain respectful and deferential toward Islam and toward all the world’s hereditary despotisms.
While Obama may be giving himself an out if the Durbanites were to change their statements I don’t believe that anyone thinks that can happen. As Bayefsky states, the whole purpose of Durban II is to demonize Israel. They won’t be changing the tenor of their statement just because the US demands it.
A few days ago the question was whether it was OK for the US to engage by attending these preparatory meetings. Now the question is whether the EU will also boycott the conference and if it does what effect that will have. I haven’t seen any other question of what the administration’s statement means except for this Bayefsky piece.
At this point I believe that the US won’t attend. If that were to change, without a fundamental change of the tenor of the meeting, O would definitely loose credibility, not only in Israel and among Jews.
The world’s Moslems proclaim and enforce a religious belief that Allah has ordered that no non-Moslems can live in or even visit the city of Medina.
Did you happen to be born into and grow up in a Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist or athiest family? Would you like to visit Medina? No can do! God says you are unworthy, a pollutant to holy ground.
Did you happen to be born into and grow up in a Moselm family? Would you like to visit Medina? Welcome, welcome! Allah says you are worthy to visit and stay on this holy ground at any time!
If you were born and grew up in a Moslem family, then you are inherently superior because of that ancestry. If you dishonor your superior ancestry — for example, if you are a Moslem girl who would like to date a non-Moslem man — then your parents and older siblings have a moral right and duty to murder you.
How do you say Apartheid in Arabic? Can a daughter of the Saudi royal family marry a commoner if she desires? Even if the commoner is a Moslem? Can a daughter of the Saudi royal family marry, for example, a Kurdish merchant or a Berber craftsman? Or does such a daughter’s superior ancestry prohibit such mixing of superior and inferior bloodlines?
The world’s most obnoxious and arrogant people — Moslem Arabs — are proclaiming the world’s standards for social inclusiveness, cultural respect and legal equality.
My response to posts 2-7: people can and do admit that they were wrong. The years 1977-81, when Jimmy “Dhimmi” Carter brought his act on stage were an eye-opener for a lot of people. They manned up and reversed course.
I agree with Wretchard, NahnCee, 49erDweet and others. Obama is a deceptive Idol who is backed by some of the wealthiest Jews (like Soros). The above posters have made most of the good arguments. I will add one more.
Obama and his cronies are quickly entrenching themselves so deep that it will practically take dynamite to dislodge them – and they are doing it with other people’s money.
The answer to the problem is one of two things: luck or hard work.
1. Luck. It would be lucky if Obama is impeached on some solid legal charged.
2. Hard work. The neutering of the MSM.
The second one maybe more realistic. The MSM can be neutralized by exposing and hammering the editors of every major news outlet.
It must be done one-by-one and step-by-step with intensive sunlight and/or other anti-septic solutions.
Some enterprising individual could list each MSM editor (or talking head) and subdivide the task of exposing said editor(s) to small groups of conservatives. These small groups must start drilling holes in the fabric of the MSM until it is Swiss cheese.
Then continue to drill until it totally collapses. In these hard economic times that might not be too difficult. Then replace leftists with conservatives.
If that fails, then conservatives should quit feeding the MSM – turn off the Tube and quit the NYT subscriptions altogether.
This would hurt both the MSM and their advertisers. The advertisers would feel pinch and put the heat on the MSM to either reform or reconstitute with conservatives.
Pick your options.
The biggest problem that the Obama Administration has in trying to engage in the Durban conference is not the Israel issue — rather, it’s the proposal to outlaw criticism of Islam. The USA’s liberals have promoted free speech far too long and far too energetically to swallow and digest such a prohibition.
In popular conversation in the USA, there is a broad, vulgar idea that Barack Obama is somehow a Moslem. For some people, the idea is serious, for others the idea is hilarious. A subtle hint to the idea suffices. Everyone understands the insinuation or gets the joke immediately.
If President Obama somehow associates himself with an international prohibition against criticism of Moslems, then the resonance through US society would be powerful and negative. It would be like erecting a mile-high tuning fork and then then hitting it with a mile-long sledge hammer.
But Mike, “Free Speech” has a different meaning to those on the left, and especially to rabid supporters of The One.
Political Correctness determines that they have free speech, and those that disagree with them do no.
No need to recount all the instances in the recent past in which one way or another, dissent was stifled.
“whether the Obama Administration is participating in Durban II, because despite some indications that it isn’t, there are some indications that it is.”
Once again with a Clinton it comes down to the meaning of the word “is”.
Ordinary liberals advocate free speech on principle.
Of course, we all know that some have tried to enforce “political correctness” in ways that contradict that principle. Those cases have been odd and have not prevailed.
In general, liberals do support the principle of free speech and will reject any prohibition of criticisms of Islam. The liberals or leftists who would speak up in favor of any such prohibition would be a tiny minority.
Mike, there is also the slave reparations issue. But neither that issue or the proposal to outlaw criticism of Islam are sufficient reasons for the US to boycott the conference.
The reason that Colin Powell walked out of the conference in 2000 was the anti-semitic hatefest that it devolved into. That this conference is looking to be as bad or worse is the reason to boycott the conference.
Another issue of the conference is the problems of migrants. The idea here is that immigration restrictions are racist.
The complaints that Palestinians cannot immigrate into Israel already have been followed by complaints that all the Third World’s riff-raff cannot immigrate into the USA or into Europe. The issue is on the conference agenda as a racist outrage that must be resolved.
This issue too would become a political nightmare if the Obama Administration associates itself with the Durban conference’s agenda. Grappling with the illegal-immigration issue is already politically painful and dangerous enough without adding some UN declaration that immigration restrictions are racist.
The left was all for ‘free speech’ back in the day. The Berkeley Free Speech Movement comes to mind. It gradually turned into an effort to flood the marketplace with pornography of all sorts. Now of course the same type of folks want to shut down talk radio. Even police the internet. I don’t think it’s going to work out for them however. Americans like to talk about stuff. And will find a way.
I think Team Obama is going to rapidly lose support. Sooner or later energy prices are going back up, the only thing keeping them down now being the recession. If we work our way out of the recession, energy prices go up. I think he is in a kind of no win situation. And particularily since he seems to have no energy program to address the issue. I believe people will tire of this sooner rather than later.
I believe people will tire of this sooner rather than later
lordy, i hope so. every day brings more shocks to the system. i mean MY system. i feel like Wallace Beery in one of those old fight films, hoping that by the time the other guy punches himself out, i’m still alive enough to get in a swing.
This Ogden deal, out of all the qualified lawyers in the country, did the O team have to pick the porn –including kiddie porn –industry’s main shield?
These people who insinuate that Rush Limbaugh is overstepping the 1st Amendment? And that child pornographers aren’t?
Did our new president of all the people really, really have to do that? Why? Why?
Senator helped fund organization that rejects ‘racist’ Israel’s existence
JERUSALEM – The board of a nonprofit organization on which Sen. Barack Obama served as a paid director alongside a confessed domestic terrorist granted funding to a controversial Arab group that mourns the establishment of Israel as a “catastrophe” and supports intense immigration reform, including providing drivers licenses and education to illegal aliens.
The co-founder of the Arab group in question, Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi, also has held a fundraiser for Obama. Khalidi is a harsh critic of Israel, has made statements supportive of Palestinian terror and reportedly has worked on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization while it was involved in anti-Western terrorism and was labeled by the State Department as a terror group.
—
The AAAN, headquartered in the heart of Chicago’s Palestinian immigrant community, describes itself as working to “empower Chicago-area Arab immigrants and Arab Americans through the combined strategies of community organizing, advocacy, education and social services, leadership development, and forging productive relationships with other communities.”
It reportedly has worked on projects with the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, which supports open borders and education for illegal aliens.
—
Malley, a principal Obama foreign policy adviser, has penned numerous opinion articles, many of them co-written with a former adviser to the late Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, petitioning for dialogue with Hamas and blasting Israel for numerous policies he says harm the Palestinian cause.
Study: 3 in 4 U.S. mosques preach anti-West extremism.
Secret survey exposes widespread radicalism
ht – Al-Bob
Well, in the meanwhiles, til this all sorts itself out, we can listen to Maria McCool
I think I have fallen in love with that woman.
re anti-West extremism, this Scruton essay, snip (read it all pls), bolding mine (apologize for length, will not repeat ‘wall of text’, pls indulge this once):
Pornography and the Courts
by Roger Scruton
February 09, 2009
The nomination of David Ogden reminds us of the problems caused by pornography, both at home and abroad.
President Obama’s choice of David Ogden for Deputy Attorney General is not of concern to Americans only. The world-wide explosion of pornographic material, and its exploitation through the internet, is to a great extent the result of legal activism in the United States. Legal activism is a threat at the best of times—a way in which elites and special interests can circumvent the democratic process and impose themselves on the majority. In the case of pornography it also opens the way to a temptation against which ordinary people are inadequately protected.
Porn exploits the existing screen-addiction, induced by TV and the internet, in order to catalyze a far worse addiction, which is the addiction to vicarious sex. Psychologists, philosophers and social critics concur in the judgment that this addiction is immensely damaging, not merely in undermining family relations and exposing children and other vulnerable people to sexual predation, but in destroying the capacity for loving sexual relations. It is one of the great social diseases, and it is looked on with dismay by the majority—including a majority of those who are addicted to it.
Yet it is legal activism in America that has paved the way for the world-wide flood of pornographic material, and for the world-wide revulsion against a society and a culture that seems to find nothing wrong with it. The issue of pornography is therefore not just a major domestic problem: it is, or ought to be, at the top of the foreign policy agenda. For President Obama to be making overtures of conciliation towards the Muslim world—something that is certainly needed—while appointing to high legal office one of the most virulent advocates of a culture that poses the greatest threat to Muslim society is, it seems to me, indicative of a deep confusion—a confusion inherent in the essential negativity of liberal politics.
The idea that pornography is “speech,” within the meaning of the first amendment, and thereby protected by the Constitution, is so absurd that it is hard for an outsider to see how American judges have been persuaded to accept it again and again. Of course porn is big business, and can afford to keep beating at the doors of the courts. But the real reason for the legalization of pornography in America lies in the culture of the liberal elite and in the strategy of legal activism whereby that elite continues its relentless assault on majority values. Porn has been incorporated into the “culture war” precisely because ordinary Americans see it as a threat to family and religious values. This fact is sufficient to prompt the liberal establishment to add porn to its agenda, as one more thing to be defended in the court against the legislature. Again and again we have seen this process at work, as the values and transgressions of elites are seized upon by the ACLU and similar organizations, rebranded as essential liberties, and defended as constitutional rights, regardless of their subversive effect on society as a whole. In the course of the battle the old distinction between liberty and license, made vividly by Locke and essential to the defense of a truly liberal constitution, is forgotten. Transgression is defended as an “alternative life style,” regardless of the damage.
(read more @ link)
Haunting, is a word that comes to mind, among others.
I wonder if there is a study, or a graph somewhere, that charts the rise of pornography, and the decline of a society.
None of the religious traditions I have read about celebrate pornography.
Just the opposite. They condemn it. Buffalo Woman, for instance, from our paleolithic good folk here, condemned it.
ah, bob, cool-head bob. reminds me of bob peters. he was getting a haircut one day and his secretary had to go relay a message. she stuck her head in the barbershop door and hollered “bob peters here?” the head barber answered back, “no ma’m, we just do haircuts and shaves.”
The Greeks condemned it too, in their higher moments.
What was that old myth about the young lad, happening upon the goddess, bathing, there with her assitants, and having lustful thoughts, and being turned into a stag, to be run down by his own dogs?
she from “Black Elk Speaks” ?
dang it, assistants, but you knew that, and also, you know the myth is true.
there was another about turning into a tree –Damon & Pythagoras, maybe?
I recommend ‘Black Elk Speaks’.
When he is out of his body, he sees ‘in the spirit’ a river washing away all the lower stuff.
It is a perfect example of the idea of a human being having an experience, then coming back to his society, to help.
A lot like Christ.
http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=9014
(nope –missed by a mile –innerstin link tho)
Diana and Actaeon
also Apollo and Daphne. Apollo chases her away from her true love Eros. Apollo is abusing his power, i guess is the point. he catches her down by the river and as he’s about to have his way, she turns into a laurel tree. Little folks get transformed by big folks learning experiences, i guess. anyway Apollo turns Daphne’s loss into his own triumph of the will, as he makes the laurel wreath the everlasting symbol of victorius hero.
What the myth says, in short, is that there are things higher than the genitals.
and what the new deputy AG says is, screw that.
Well, we’ll go our own ways, as always.
yeh –i reckon Idaho gwan be in da new confederacy.
I’m beginning to wish we could, and that’s the truth. I have never felt this way about the country before.
neither me. even Old Glory don’t look quite the same. flux is here.
keep buying crap, one day you’re broke and full of crap
by the grace of god maybe we can yet warsh up and go back to work
Emerson said there is a balance to all things. I hope he is right. He lived before the time of the totalitarians however.
thta brings to mind a useful thought exersize –that Gestapo had it down so well that unless some outside force had in a sustained paroxysm of maximum violence not battered down its walls, it could have lasted until the end of time. A Gestapo with fleets of nukes and continental resources might do exactly that.
The White Rose
The pretty girl in the middle of the foto was beheaded by a stainless steel and chromium medical device in an aniseptic operating room, somewhere in Berlin.
I’ve noticed that too. Often a situation of oppression is locked in forever, unless an outside force can come in and break it up.
The history of England may argue against this idea, with its home grown struggle for freedom, but the idea bugs the back of my mind.
If we go down, where is the outside force to save us?
oh, meant to say, it was legal. And all proper forms had been filled out and filed.
where is the outside force to save us?
exactly. it would have to be “Mars Attacks!”
another question, sans America, where would refugees from tyrants have been fleeing all this long hundred years war against totalitarianism ? without America, where? going forward, i mean.
Buddy, I got to get some sleep. Give little ‘Winston’ a kiss for me, if he is around your house tonight.
as far as Jungian archetypes, it takes a village. i mean an organization, to allow a plain old ordinary Eric Holder archetype to rise to the Ambitious Power of a Heinrich Himmler. without the day-by-day development of his (cough) organization, why, old Heinrich’s imagination would never have imagined what it did imagine, and then did do.
ok -enjoyed the convo –naw the little feller don’t live here –his ma n pa live in town but not far away –i’ll remember you to him next time i see ‘em next week –the fat l’il feller –lots of fun!
Two gems from George Orwell:
Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stomping on a human face, forever.
“I am not so sure that Barack Obama is going to lose support among his followers any time soon. If deception has worked to his advantage so far it was largely the self-deception among those who felt compelled to believe in him. BHO’s great talent was knowing how to tap into this need and package himself so that he passed, like a shiny silk cloth which changes color depending on the angle of the light, as anything you wanted him to be at all.”
“One of the nasty side effects of political polarization is that it becomes difficult for people to even privately admit to making a mistake in the voting booth.”
“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”
And therein lies the problem. It’s often been said that one of the most defining characteristics of the left is an absolute inability to admit any error of any size or at any level, because doing so means that other errors are possible, and that simply cannot be, due to the ‘perfect’ ideology that they follow (heaven on earth, as it were).
Add to this the adolescent idea that if you buy a lousy car and are more afraid of your neighbors mocking you for the purchase than you are of owning a lemon, you’ll NEVER puclicly have buyers remorse, and will always act as though you own a finely tuned Bugatti instead of a Lada.
Contrast this with the zeitgeist of the center-right, whose tradition is steeped in concepts like original sin and an inherent belief in the imperfection of man vs the perfection of the creator. “I made a mistake” vs “mistakes were made”.
This belief in man being less than perfect is useful in many ways, because it allows for improvement within, but it is often a vulnerability when competing against the left in elections. W was savaged by many conservatives in a way that is literaly impossible (given their mindset) for the left to apply to ANY of their leaders, much less one that gives a good speech.
I believe that the only way that O voters, particularly white O voters, will leave “their man” is if he moves to the center in the realm of social issues. His staying hard left on economics or remaining authoritarian in terms of politics will literally never move them off the dime even if it brings damage and ruin, and in fact may endear him to the more romantic among them even more.
Ledger@15
To add to our further dismay, we find that manufacturing, distributing, purchasing and owning dynamiite is strictly prohibited to most, and those who are permitted are at “top-of-lists” in the local, state and federal bureaus.
Describing how to make or use all categories of explosives will be banned, Comrade. It’s for the children.
– Copyright Holders Challenge Sites That Scrape Content -
“Es lebe die Freiheit!”
If that fails, then conservatives should quit feeding the MSM – turn off the Tube and quit the NYT subscriptions altogether.
The MSM is teetering – Start taking a stand. Tell all your conservative friends and acquaintances – hell! tell everybody you meet – that you and your family have chosen alternatives like Foxnews and the internet exclusively for your news, opinion and commerce, because the MSM is corrupt.
Local merchants are the sole support for the remaining print media. Tell the store manager everytime you purchase something that he’d better look to advertising in different media, because you and your friends won’t see it in the local press.
A nationwide and VOCAL boycott by 48% of the populace will do the trick. More newspapers will fail faster, broadcast channels will fail faster, shows like Mathews will be cancelled faster. Get the word out unrelentingly. It’s all about Wretchard’s “counter-conjury.”
The liberals or leftists who would speak up in favor of any such prohibition would be a tiny minority.
Mike – However, that “tiny minority” includes 1 billion Muslims elsewhere, 3-6 million here at home, and most of those in power in DC, so I wouldn’t be so complacent.
If you want to get really depressed, go read the comments posted to Bayefsky’s article over at Forbes. Everybody’s fine with the Jews/Israleis as long as accept their proper role as paschal lambs. Helluva of genocide of the Palestinians.
If you want your complacency disabused, do go read those comments at Forbes.
I believe that the only way that O voters, particularly white O voters, will leave “their man” is if he moves to the center in the realm of social issues. His staying hard left on economics or remaining authoritarian in terms of politics will literally never move them off the dime even if it brings damage and ruin, and in fact may endear him to the more romantic among them even more.
I think that’s true with the hard-core Left, who are hopeless ideologues. But a lot of O’s support is from the affluent, soft-Left classes. And I have a suspicion that a lot of that group likes their affluence more than their Leftism, which isn’t grounded in anything other than fashion, style and fitting-in. They didn’t vote for Obama out of anything deeper than “cool,” and cool can change on a dime.
As more and more of these urban soft-Liberals see their 401(k)’s vanishing, their spending cash drying up, their lifestyles infringed, their multi-million annual bonuses vanishing, they will start to wonder what the heck is up with O and the Democrats. Every time the Dow drops, it chips away at Obama’s protective shell. Every time some Manhattan power-couple finds that hubby’s big-bucks financial job went up in smoke and wifey’s trendy art-gallery or fashion industry job disappeared, it will work to bring them around.
People will start to re-evaluate what they’ve done when the really important things in life start to shatter: no more vacations at exclusive tropical resorts, no more dinners at Per Se or Babbo, no more new Mercedes every year, no more thousand dollar shoes. Compared to suffering like that, Leftism doesn’t stand a chance.
Joint Chief’s Mullen said yest Iran has the fizz ready. O throws Israel out from under the USA umbrella? Israel needs to be creative here. Maybe Ehud Barak can think of something.
Buddy @#53,
[Aliens gun down running civilians while loudspeakers blare:]
“Ack, ack, cack, cack-ah-cack, ack.”
[Translated]
“Don’t run, we are your friends.”
Religion of Peace, Durban Conferences: indeed!
Interesting how, in the movie, it took a fifties-era crooner and a senile nursing home resident to save us. Can Fred Thompson croon?
Those commenters at Forbes are likely a ready and waiting Pali-symp group running searches for articles to dive bomb. They take the position that USA should wash its hands. but when you have let a friend count on you, washing your hands is not a neutral act. It’s indistinguishable from setting someone up for a fall. it doesn’t matter if that thought is not in the hand-washer’s mind, the effect is the same as if it was. On the other side of the transaction, betrayal is betrayal is betrayal. Pontius Pilate did not break a long-standing alliance with Jesus that day. It sucks in a biblical way that USA can’t rise to the standards of Pontius Pilate.
don’t forget the Kid, steveaz –the kid was the third leg of the planet’s salvation.
I found this fascinating: Mid-eighties Soviet Defector on Cultural Marxism in U.S.. It seems to explain a lot about the forces that we’re still wrestling with.
Take what he’s saying and inject the fact that the conservative/Reagan revolution may have partially “reeducated” America, mitigating, along with the demise of the USSR and communism in general) the intended long range effects, thereby setting up the current cultural divide and impending war.
If you take what Bezmenov says seriously, which I see no reason not to do, his discussion seems particularly instructive as it relates to the impervious nature of the liberal world view when it confronts reality.
I tend to agree with Nahncee, Alexis et al, regarding whether the Jewish voting block will break with O, but for different reasons.
Many Jews left Eastern Europe and Russia as a result of severe persecution and the Pogroms. As a result of the persecution, many Jews became anti-establishment to the core. They greeted the Bolsheviks with open arms. A past post in a recent thread recalled how many Upper Echelon Soviets were Jews. Many of the Jews that came to America came with a Bolshevik/ anti-establishment outlook. For decades, much of the Jewish experience in America revolved around past tales of persecution, which fostered an anti-establishment attitude, although the fruits of assimilation into the USA I believe have dramatically reduced the persecution complex among younger Jews of today.
However, for many older Jews I believe there is still a knee jerk anti-establishment strain, and when they see Obama they see a fellow traveler of the antiestablishment ilk. That bond will be tough to break.
I forgot the kid – you’re right, Buddy. The youngster was the only one who took his nutty ol’ gran’ma seriously.
A true tale: When I was ten years old I lived in Western Iran, and one day my older sister (12 y.o.), her boy-friend (a slight kid of 12), my younter brother and I decided to hike into the apparently endless, deserted salt-flat behind our suburban home. We wanted to see where the goats that had learned to open our trash-cans were hailing from – they had the ability to chew tin-cans, and they seemed to come always from “out-there.”
We got about a mile when we discovered a little mud-walled village with its gates wide open, and a cute little calf that my sister just had to go pet stood like a lure right in the gate-way. A middle-aged woman noticed my sister’s interest and motioned for us to enter. So we walked past the open gates into the walled compound.
Immediately, the women who just minutes ago had invited us inside ran past us and slammed the gates shut – we were trapped! In the next instant, she lunged for my sister’s arm and attempted to steal her wrist-watch (a cheap number she had gotten out of a cracker-jack box as I recall).
A man about a hundred yards away witnessed this, and rushed over to help. He ordered the woman to leave us be, reopened the large wooden gates, and shooed us back out into the desert. I have never felt so relieved.
This was Ahwaz, Iran, in 1977. In 2009, any invitation to enter into anything, be it dialogue or an energy compact, with this culture should be met immediately with skepticism if not outright suspicion. Once bitten…
I think Jackie Mason has it right when he says that all Jews feel guilty because of their success and are essentially self-loathing to the core as a result.
There’s also the moral erosion implicit in secularism, to which most Jews seem wedded.
Then there is the intellectual elitist strain, which forbids contamination by the American salt-of-the-earth types like Sarah Palin, and you have some important contemporary pressures. They are Rush-proofed and commonsense-proofed.
i botched the top lonk, here:
http://www.financialsense.com/stormwatch/geo/pastanalysis/main.html
…But break it will, as much by our efforts as by the fact that Jewish interests are 180 degrees out from the Obama regimes desires. And it will happen faster when we ridicule the disparity between his acts and his speech.
..” You didn’t really BELIEVE that, did ya ? ” and ” How’s that working out for you ? ” have the power to cause folks to rethink their base beliefs. Use them sparingly, but use them.
i think O’s union folks trump all else, and they for sure want us behind the walls of a fortress America, so that if we want a car it will be a $400,000 Dodge Dart. As far as Israel, or any other ally, eh.
Peterike: Just a nit, but your “power couple” group is not that large to matter, and they will never turn from the Democrats–they are as locked ito the same sort of “Stockholm Syndrome” as are nonpracticing, left wing Jews. Odds are that they come from some minor branch of “the Gentry” somewhere in the past, their granddaddy may have been a Rockefeller Republican, but they will never be “Palin Democrats” (or “Romney Democrats” either).
It is actually a level or down from the Manhattan power couple that is the larger sliver O’s “muddle”. They are the “youngish” (and not so “youngish”) couples out in the suburbs of NJ or in the trendier (but not the trendiest) neighborhoods Des Moines who who imagine that they are in the same group as that NYC power couple, and they fastidiously emulate this other group. Here the wife could just as well ride the train into Manhattan and work as a middle manager in a bank, or the husband dive into downtown the Des Moines to an Exec job at an Ag Business insurance firm, and his wife may work at a local real estate firm. Few are self employed or own businesses as nothing could be mreo frightening to them than this.
Here there is a tug of war between monies and their respect for their “betters”. This group is certainly better at understanding cash flows and budgets as they really hail from more modest circumstances, but tend not to think independently. They rely on the MSM to form their opinions. I should say that they are a target group that could show promise, but I would not imagine that they will peel off on their own. Neither will they really of their own thinking come to understanding of what the underlying problem is.
They will need a helping hand.
Comically, the NC power couple detests this sort–all to Middle Class you know. It would be a big plus if they could be made to see this. Sadly, this same group seemed to be the focus of McCain and the is today a primary focus of the GOP, and the GOP seems to imagine that their superficiality must be a catered to and that this catering must be a clear part of the GOP “brand”.
The truth of the matter is that this group is plugged into the whole paper pushing “service” faux-economy that has been our mainstay since the 1990′s. Some of the stimulus money will indirectly wash their way in 2010. They will be more than h to go along with Obama if thy can get enough of it. Certainly, they are one of its target recipients, and, notably, their joint income falls just below the new threshold for “The Rich” that Obama is establishing. All part of the plan. These are the slow boiling frogs. They may just be content to simmer, and even pay for some more of the firewood if asked nicely.
But, if we were really to set the economy right and have a more balanced economy, they would be hard pressed to maintain their faux-upper middle class airs for very long. They do not add a lot of value in the sort of society that must come if we are to get back a sound economy.
It would be wonderful if we could get them to understand the nature of the Marxist project of the Democrats, but it is hard to imagine that this will happen.
Their politics in general affectations and they tend to have a lot of problems with were they came from. They are superficial of mind and spirit.
This is the most interesting article on the archaeology of the Garden of Eden that I have ever read
maineman: I have gotten to know some Orthodox Jews in NYC, even Hasidim, and most of them vote GOP. The reasons vary.
than h to= more than happy to
Here is the free republic discussion of the garden of Eden archaeology
Lots of Orthodox over at FR.
As for people not wanting to think badly of Obama, there is a very simple reason.
Fear.
What if the Israelis are right? That they are in fact surrounded by implacable enemies who would destroy them, from children to elderly, if they had a chance?
What if Russia is in fact attempting to rebuild it’s empire of glory, and will kill anyone it can get away with killing to accomplish that?
What if the tough reality of economic failure, from banks to personal bankruptcy due to over enthusiastic mortgaging is the only solution to this mess?
What if in fact the policies and teachings of the modern liberal create a generation of ingrates and dangerously selfish?
Etc.
People will believe anyone right now. The world is incredibly insecure and scary. Since the WTO riots in Seattle a few years ago I’ve been watching for someone to harness the fear and insecurity. Obama has done that. As Wretchard said, he has the uncanny ability to be whatever anyone wants him to be. They will follow him through the gates of hell.
Derek
DOW Breaks below 7K.
Conveniently this is being blamed on AIG.
Cognitive dissonance has disappeared from the American political scene. The ability of people to espuose conflicting viewpoints in the same argument without realizing it or, when challenged, any willingness to concede the obvious simply amazes me. It seems a disturbing number of people lack the ability to think rationally.
JOG; not only that but to feel deadly threatened when someone around them attempts to think rationally.
“They will follow him through the gates of hell.”
By all means, let them.
The economic mudslide that seems to be starting will target the urban first, those who are most dependent on the big and supportive systems for everything. It will engulf particularly those, unfortunately, who are and have been the recipients of our generosity — our devaluing and degrading generosity, one might add. [A double tragedy to be robbed of capacity by the Great Society and now to be cut adrift in the stormy seas.]
Nevertheless, the “winners” will be those with land and a traditional cultural substrate on which to rely.
You racist hatemongers just don’t get it, do you?
You will pay reparations for 400 years of oppression, exploitation, and genocide. You will obey the edicts of our beloved Leader Barack Obama. He is your last chance, fools.
Many people have a great deal invested in ObamOpra emotionally and will go on making excuses.
The release of the Venona tapes showed that Alger Hiss and the Rosenburgs were as guilty as Stalin of supporting tyranny but there are still people who claim that they were framed. It has become an article of faith in some circles and It Shall Not Be Questioned.
Others are corrupt to the core. As Nahncee says in 4. above, as long as the welfare flows in the right direction they don’t care. And as no mo uro says in 58 above they will never admit a mistake.
But some are opening their eyes. My brother is a pharmacist and he says he can’t believe how many people who come into his store say “I voted for Obama but I had no idea he would turn out to be this bad this soon.”
This is gonna be nasty folks, real nasty. We are going to have tot get dirty. We will have to keep up a drumbeat about every little thing, from Durban II to reports of The Great One spitting on the sidewalk. They Left likes this kind of thing and we don’t, but it is the only thing they can understand. As in WWII, we were not the ones that started by burning cities but we damn well better be the ones that finish doing it.
maineman: The problem with that is that millions will swarm out like locusts out of the cities to grab that land. It would wash over flyover country like a tsunami–in fact they will flow put of the native cities of flyover country too. They may be led by government forces, as marshal law would be declared at that point. Deer rifles and shotguns are not going to stop tanks and planes, or even human wave attacks with pikes.
We are all in this together, there is no way around it.
Of course if it gets bad enough, there could be some form of succession backed up by national guards and spit off military units, but without the national government, we are open to attacks from foreign enemies. A notion of a few nukes in flyover country followed by an invasion would give governors pause in going out on their own or in regional coalitions. Such threats could keep the national military in check as well. I would not put it past the Feds to nuke a city in the interior themselves, particularly with someone like Obama in charge.
It is a romantic notion, yeoman in the flyover states beating back encroachments from the blue cities. The reality would be much different.
It would be much like being overrun by the red army, or maybe an ancient Asiatic army.
Even if this did not happen, a complete break down would likely devolve to local and regional “warlordism”. Well, I suppose it depends on the rate of the breakdown.
I will point out that without gasoline and all of the trappings of modern society, there would be plenty of hard times to go around. Farmers do not even have seed corn anymore. I bet that there are not enough draft horses in the continent to even farm the state of Iowa. Power goes to those who can control security, followed by those that can supply food and technology.
A real break down would break a much different way than the scenarios you describe.
Charles, that illustrates that civilisations are mortal, Gobekli seems more to have been a sacred sanctuary where people used to meet for seasonal fests, and not to live around.
I wonder if it was built at some crossing magnetism waves, like the kind of sites were for the menhirs (megaliths) and may-be Stone Henge, though the latter had an ackowledgeable orientation towards the sun rising, also seen in Malta
http://www.sacred-destinations.com/malta/mnajdra-temples.htm
No. 92, “Mongoose”, is correct.
You racist hatemongers will pay what you owe. You can obey our new ruler and pay voluntarily or we will simply take what is rightfully ours, but pay you will.
You had better wake up and face reality.
Alexis de Tocqueville:
“It seems that if despotism came to be established in the democratic nations of our day, it would have other characteristics: it would be more extensive and milder, and it would degrade men without tormenting them.”
“Thus, after taking each individual by turns in its powerful hands and kneading him as it likes, the sovereign extends its arms over society as a whole; it covers its surface with a network of small, complicated, painstaking, uniform rules through which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot clear a way to surpass the crowd; it does not break wills but it softens them, bends them, and directs them; it rarely forces one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one’s acting; it does not destroy, it prevents things from being born; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, compromises, enervates, extinguishes, dazes, and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals of which government is the shepherd.”
dkite said:
“People will believe anyone right now. The world is incredibly insecure and scary. Since the WTO riots in Seattle a few years ago I’ve been watching for someone to harness the fear and insecurity. Obama has done that. As Wretchard said, he has the uncanny ability to be whatever anyone wants him to be. They will follow him through the gates of hell.”
This is a perceptive analysis.
Obama is a calamity.
Unfortunately this calamity was the result of several decades of neglect. If Obama had not come along then someone just like him would have appeared.
Look at some of the stupid stuff we were doing:
1) We allowed Gramscian windup robots to take over academia, the entertainment industry and the MSM (We entertained ourselves to death).
2) We allowed socialist entitlement programs and general deficit spending to bankrupt the federal government BEFORE the economic depression hit (now there is no recourse).
3) We failed to prepare for alternative (non-petroleum) energy supply despite knowing in the late 1950s that petroleum would eventually become an economic problem.
4) For decades we lived beyond our means spending down the wealth of our parents and grandparents.
The Dow is now at 6815. We’re like a submarine that has lost depth control and is slowly sinking to its crush depth. Market capitulation could happen tomorrow or a few months from now but it’ll happen soon.
Obama doesn’t have a clue. The boat is sinking and Daffy Duck is up on the bridge issuing random commands.
Yes we did: In no way am I in agreement with you, nor do you understand me in the very least.
You are opening your soul to the deepest evil. You need to get a hold of yourself before it is too late.
Eggplant: Obama is a figurehead. What we have elected is a political machine, a Nomenclature. This is what we must be rid of, not just Obama.
habu, I’m onto your agent provocateur hobby, you rascal you.
Mongoose #80
By some miracle you have been channeling my thoughts in an eerie way on this.
In contrast to Peterike’s hypothetical couple, you have posted some with which I am all too familiar. Your examples are good. I’ll throw another example at you: a guy who is a mid or low level IT manager in the public sector, whose wife is a public school teacher. Neither of them went to a high end college, or graduated ‘on time’, but later while having kids managed to get degrees from local colleges.
OK so far.
But then they tried to own and run a small business, failed at that, then tried to make it in the corporate world, but did not have the work ethic or smarts or ability to sacrifice to make it there, either. So they’ve ducked back into safe places where income stream security is pretty much assured. They (like your examples, no doubt) likely have NPR (the official broadcast network for those who are educated but not very intelligent) on at their house and in their car 24/7. They imagine that they are blood brothers with the Ivy League cultural elite by doing so, and by signing onto the NPR cultural elite program, they are “in with the in crowd”. In fact, they believe that having discovered this ‘club’, and becoming a member, they are absolved of any need to actually deal with the reasons for their failures elsewhere.
These people, as well as your example, do exist in vast numbers, and they vote.
The only way of peeling them off is to make them realize that the true elites are as condescending and bigoted towards them as they are towards conservatives. And unfortunately, I don’t know how to accomplish that.
93. Marie Claude:
Yes it may have started out as a seasonal site like stonehenge but it changed. To support the change they took up farming.
ie they took up farming to support the theology. and then the farming proceeded to degrade the land. until they couldn’t live in the area anymore. eveidence suggests that they may have buried the whole thing before they left.
the reason this is totally plausible is — as the article stipulates–the origin of domesticated cereals and animals comes from this area. Further, as the OT states and various contemporary mesoptamian texts affirm –this area is where Eden is located.
the pattern of land degradation by over farming/land exploitation just happens over and over again everywhere around the world in the archaeological record from asia to easter island to the Maya.
but the most fascinating thing –as I mentioned — is that farming was set up to support the religion and not the other way around. why? hmm its more than that though.
and it makes a great frame through which to look at the modern era in which the tools are forcing a change almost as profound as that from hunter gathering to farming.
part of what makes it fascinating is that there are enough old bones around from the transition era such that they can compare farmer bones to hunter gatherer bones. What they see is that the hunter gatherer bones were healthier. so why would people move forward into a less healthy or happy lifestyle.
perhaps this is like asking why people would work in “dark satanic mills”
Yes We DId:
I’ll pay. Do you accept .223 X 45′s or 7.62′s? Either is fine by me.
Keep in mind that you don’t HAVE a tank, MoFo!
“Gramscian windup robot” is at once the most humorous and most sobering description of the average public school teacher or humanities/arts/social science professor that I have ever seen.
Thanks (I think) for the chuckle, and hopefully I have permission to use the term myself, Eggplant.
no mo uro: Indeed. I do not know the answer either. It need direct exposure.
nobody but a complete moron would start a race war against 70% of the population. pull THAT scab and lord knows WHAT aryan brotherhood skinhead would be the next president. depending on the previous bloodshed and property seizures, he might start repatriating whoever started the mess. lawlessness is a double edged sword –look at the boothills still out there in the old wild west.
no mo uro #103:
I’m pleases me that you enjoyed it. By all means, make use of it if you see any value in it. To complete the imagery, I was visualizing those cheap metal Japanese windup robots that we played with as kids, i.e. I’d wind one up and let it rattle around willy-nilly on a hardwood floor. The Gramscian windup robots were set into motion during the 1960-1970s by clever KGB Agit-Prop opertives. They represented a fifth column that was intended to make things easier for the Soviet invasion of Western Europe that was probably planned for the 1980-1990s. (Un)fortunately the Soviet Union imploded but the Gramscian windup robots are still running around following their pathetic program.
Buddy #99:
Great minds work alike. Habu is having some fun. It’ll be amusing to see who gets sucked in.
@ no mo uro: NPR (the official broadcast network for those who are educated but not very intelligent)
Brilliant description!
Lets figure up them reparations. 1mm slaves average over 100 yrs vs 200mm whites x 40 yrs of Great Society x .15 (percentage of year worked to pay for social programs) =
100mm workdays vs 120mm workdays. close enough for government work. Yes You Can –keep the change.
Mongoose,
I find myself agreeing with a lot of what you say, but I would take issue with your response to my thesis that breakdown would be most profound where it already is most present. Maybe I’m naive, but you first of all seem to be assuming capacity on the part of the urban poor that I’m not at all sure exists, at least not without organizing leadership. Seems to me we’d be more likely to see replays of Katrina than anything else.
Second, I think we’re a long ways off from having a military or police forces that would turn their fire on their neighbors and fellow citizens. Another several years of this and maybe that changes, but the only scenario under which we sit and stew that long is one involving the resumption of relative stability.
Thirdly, it doesn’t sound that easy to me to walk from NYC or even DC to South Carolina. Suburban and rural New Jersey would be in some trouble, I suppose.
Finally, the red states believe in things that they would die for, whereas no one else in this country really does. Not to mention the potential for organized citizens militias and gated towns if it comes to that.
Believe me, I would like nothing more than for all of us to pull through this together, but part of the problem is that we have nurtured a segment of the population that would never have made it to maturity in any other place or time. How can we move forward without either a viable system for nurturing them to health and independent viability, which we are decades from having at best, or some uncomfortable culling of the herd?
Remember, the urban underclass is the benificiary of decades of Democratic Party social work.
Gosh, without all that help, they’d REALLY be in trouble, right?
Jesus.
@Eggplant #107 The Gramscian windup robots were set into motion during the 1960-1970s by clever KGB Agit-Prop opertives.
Agree completely, but HOW on earth do you explain this to people? Once or twice I’ve tried, and I might as well be saying “and then in 1960, a flying saucer landed and little green men shot commie mind rays into the unsuspecting denizens of academia.” In fact, that explanation might get more respect than the real story.
The old saying about the Devil — his greatest trick is to make you believe he doesn’t exist — is equally valid for Communists. Their greatest trick was to make us all think that Communists were the equivalent of Little Green Men, mere fantasy objects used to frighten children. And worse, only the Worst Rightwing White Males told those stories. In other words, McCarthy.
The whole spin of the McCarthy hearings, the complete hijacking of the narrative, is the gift that keeps on giving for the Left. I’m really at a loss to get an alternate viewpoint across to people without immediately being labeled a crank, and a dangerous crank at that. It’s weird, you talk to a normal, middle-of-the-road person about 9/11 Truthers, and they will admit that maybe they’re not really right, but you know they have a point and there are a lot of unanswered questions and…. blah blah blah. In other words, the Truthers actually get respect.
Start to tell this same person about Communist infiltration of culture, and you’re a nutjob.
DOW breaks below 6800
peterike: Yet up to 1965 or so, the average person would have understood you.
No 93, Marie Claude:
I’ve never been to Malta but I’ve been to the Newgrange burial mound in the Boyne Valley, Ireland. It’s extremely interesting Newgrange is about as old as the Great Pyramid in Giza, Egypt (been there as well). The inner most chamber at Newgrange is dark for the entire year except for the dawn of the winter solstice. The main passage is perfectly aligned to allow sunlight to pass down only during that time. Almost nothing is known about about the cuture that produced Newgrange. They were pre-Celtic (original Irish?) and presumably wiped out by the Celts after they invaded Ireland.
Dow 6,795.15 -267.78 (-3.79%)
S&P 500 703.82 -31.27 (-4.25%)
Nasdaq 1,328.60 -49.24 (-3.57%)
10y bond 2.90% -0.03 (-1.02%)
Yesiree, deliver yourself to wander forty years in the desert of Democratic Progressivism, and your children too can enjoy a 70% out-of-wedlock birth rate, a 60% high school dropout rate, and half your young men spending half their lives transiting in and out of the prison system.
GOP shoulda run Bill Cosby instead of McCain. If we’re gonna be about race now for the coming years. No damn wonder Obama is a commie, he’s sick of Liberals, too.
I’m with Buddy. I think too ‘Yes We Can’ is Habu, relaxing out in Montana, and having a belly laugh.
The Obama stock market don’t look so good today.
I call it ‘Plumb bob’.
Hey Buddy! I am all for reparations!
Figure $1000 for each slave, removed from the legal owner without due process or proper compensation, invested in a mutual fund for 144 years at a modest ROI of, say, 5% a year = $1.1M each.
Don’t know how much all that comes to in total, but we Confederates will sign away all past and future claims for a current lump sum payment of, say, $800B.
Bob,
Me too. Having excoriated Yes once, I’m now onto the game.
It is effective, I think. I can do it, too:
“Yes, us Americans are filthy and racist, but even we must sacrifice to Obama’s Umma. All white devils must repent unto our new Master. Kneel now and pray.”
Habu, looks like you’ve taken your own advice and looked “deeper.” Good man!
the wall between the races IS Democratic Progressivism. in fact, the wall is the message of the party –it’s all the party is. Verbalized, it’s “Hands Off My Poor People!”
When we’re all dead broke, we’re gonna get pissed off.
Charles @101…
Based on the manipulation of corn genes thousands of years ago so as to produce a better mash for religious ceremony…
I’d bet that the Edenists started cultivating this and that specifically to create Kosher sacrificial offerings.
It would have meant much to the Edenists to offer up totems of grain, fruit and flesh right on the rite schedule.
That is the reason that domestication occurred.
Imagine that you’re a neolithic man and it’s time to celebrate the equinox but the requisite critter is not to be found. With no method of preservation possible for a living sacrifice… Well, it’s easy to see why the priests started raising pen-able animals.
The end of the ice age disrupted weather everywhere so it stands to reason that sheep stepped into the gazelle’s hoof prints. It’s nicely slower, and its wool makes for a great throw rug.
“What are you gonna do, suh, with yore new fortune?”
>>”Lawze, ah reckon ah’ll jes invest it ’til it runs out.”
“Well, me too, then.”
>>*&^%)$@!
Agreed about Yes We Can and I think it in very poor taste to pour gasoline on a fire, laugh at the suffering, or do a minstrel act. Besides Mobys are leftists impersonating rightists on conservative blogs. I do not know a term for a righty impersonating a lefty on a conservative blog.
‘Eden’ is a psychological condition, not a place on Mother Earth. There never was such a place.
Yet to the illuminated, all places are ‘Eden’.
peterike said:
“Agree completely, but HOW on earth do you explain this to people?”
You can’t. Fortunately the Soviet Union is dead but it’s useful to understand their techniques for future reference. After we hit botton, we’ll need to reforge our society such that it has some immunity against this method of attack (no clue how we’ll do that).
Peterike said:
“Once or twice I’ve tried, and I might as well be saying “and then in 1960, a flying saucer landed and little green men shot commie mind rays into the unsuspecting denizens of academia.” In fact, that explanation might get more respect than the real story.”
In all seriousness it would. It’s amazing how many people believe in flying saucers. I do aerospace for a living and people always ask me about where we hide the flying saucers. By the way, I’ve been doing aerospace for over 30 years and never once have I heard so much as a hint that flying saucers are real. This actually amazes me because they should be real (there are billions of “Earths” in our galaxy). Where are they?
Peterike said:
“The old saying about the Devil — his greatest trick is to make you believe he doesn’t exist — is equally valid for Communists. … The whole spin of the McCarthy hearings, the complete hijacking of the narrative, is the gift that keeps on giving for the Left. I’m really at a loss to get an alternate viewpoint across to people without immediately being labeled a crank, and a dangerous crank at that.”
This is a very perceptive comment. Joseph McCarthy was a bad guy and caused enormous harm. Through his anti-communist demagoguery, he effectively opened the front door, beckoned to America’s enemies, and said, “Come on in and make yourself at home!”
Probably should get riled sooner Bob, ja think?
peterike/115; re ‘sounding like nutjobs’ –Yes We Can! We Have To! it’ll only hurt a little while, while the old Carefulman dies (the environment gonna kill him anyway soon enuff) and the new Krisp Pissedoffperson learns to sing.
90:
No I won’t. You’ll send me into a gas chamber before I’ll do any such thing.
LOFTM: Fishmeal? (ans in “Call me…”
LOFTM: Fishmeal? (as in “Call me…”)
lotM/129; habu is a force of nature, and as such is beyond considerations of taste. WAY beyond.
I like Habu.
Eggplant: After we hit botton, we’ll need to reforge our society such that it has some immunity against this method of attack (no clue how we’ll do that).
Zat mean we get to hang’em?
RE Where are they?: Maybe none of those alien civilizations has perfected teleportation yet? Although Reid & Pelosi might be examples of failed attempts, where several “bits” didn’t get precisely reconstituted.
Bad guy or not, McCarthy was correct in identifying commies in high office, as later demonstrated by Venona.
At the risk of feeding the goofy troll (who does sound somewhat like a Righty pretending to be a Leftie), I find this sort of remark fascinating:
You can obey our new ruler and pay voluntarily or we will simply take what is rightfully ours, but pay you will.
It’s that word rightfully. I know I can’t get a real response from a troll, but I’m fascinated by the thought process that conceives there is something “rightfully” yours for which you did nothing. Umm… how, exactly is it yours? By what standard of morals, ethics, philosophy, economics, anything, do you deserve something that belongs to someone else? Because you exist? I breathe, therefore I’m owed?
Really, so much Leftie-think comes from their economic ignorance. It’s always a zero-sum game with them. Because The Man has a dollar that means some poor slob had that dollar taken from him.
Note to troll and passing Liberals: it doesn’t actually work that way. The Man has a dollar because he earned it (Senators and Congressmen being obvious exceptions to that rule). The poor slob doesn’t have a dollar not because someone took it, but because he’s a slob.
And at the current rate, soon none of us will have dollars, and then… paradise!
bob/126; remember your Emerson. there is human capital too. of course, human capital with pocketsful of Kreuggerands is a definitely sturdier model.
The way that the NSA and the FBI fed McCarthy… particularly in the beginning… makes him a cut-out for the counter-intel crowd.
It was essential to exploit the Venona tapes once their existence was compromised in the late forties…
Without the NSA to FBI to McCarthy link he’d never have had the track record for exposing Reds that he built.
Eventually, Ike threw him under the bus: cut off any agency intel.
His terminal cancer/ morphine medication also had a powerful impact on events.
At one point in Clooney’s film he zeros in on McCarthy’s late to the hearing moment: The junior senator had just been shooting up so as to face the day.
There are lots of stories within stories…
It’s all so politicized that most accounts are fog and bunk.
Dow at 6,764.97
The hull is groaning and rivets are starting to burst in like bullets. It’s about time for Bernanke to do his manipulation again.
Cheer up and read Denninger.
habu and bob arguing–but who’s habu and who’s bob?
Another day, another hundred billion dollars. maybe Colonel Geithner will finish his mint julep someday and wander in off the veranda and pick up the phone and suspend the (*yawn*) mark-to-market rule.