The political soap opera
Two news stories illustrate how relationships can change over time as the parties finally recognize each other or themselves evolve to the point when what was once a natural compatibility becomes no longer sustainable. The Islamic intellectual Tariq Ramadan, for example, has been fired from his jobs in Rotterdam and at the Erasmus University in Holland because of his role in Iranian state propaganda. The Middle East Forum says “while the U.S. authorities now seem inclined to allow him on our shores, and Britain appears untroubled by his presence – although the UK bars his associate al-Qaradawi – the Dutch have taken action to curb Ramadan’s ambitions.”
In an official statement, Erasmus University stated:
The Municipality of Rotterdam and the Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR) have decided to terminate the appointment of Dr. Tariq Ramadan… The reason for this is his involvement in the Iranian television channel PressTV, which is considered to be irreconcilable with his positions in Rotterdam… Press TV is a channel financed by the Iranian government. The excessive force used by this government in June against demonstrators, many of whom were students, prompted a number of journalists to cut their ties with the channel. However, Tariq Ramadan chose not to do so, and has since justified his decision in a statement…[T]here is no longer the essential public support for the contribution to the city and the university and…the credibility of Dr. Ramadan’s continued work for the city and the university has suffered lasting damage.
How did this happen? Wasn’t Ramadan an academic star? What changed was Ramadan’s relative position within the political value system of Dutch society. Ramadan, whatever his popularity as an anti-American icon might be, had offended against the Iranian demonstrators. And just as stone blunts scissors, paper covers stone: so Ramadan was out. By some alchemy of court politics, a prince had fallen from esteem in the realm. Jeff Israely at Time Magazine describes a similar, but more gradual change in the Vatican’s relationship with Ted Kennedy.
At the beginning of his career, Ted Kennedy had a special relationship with Archdiocese of Boston. The Kennedys were the face of ‘Catholic America’. But by the end Pope Benedict was agonizing over whether it was even licit to offer the Senator from Massachusetts Holy Communion without risking blasphemy.
“If he had influence in the past it was only with the Archdiocese of Boston and that eventually disappeared too.” Some say the final sunset on the Kennedy name within Catholic halls of power was the Vatican’s decision in 2007 to overturn the annulment of the first marriage of former U.S. Rep. Joe Kennedy, the eldest son of Robert Kennedy. The successful appeal by Joe Kennedy’s ex-wife Sheila Rauch, an Episcopalian, was another blow for the Kennedy image in Catholic circles.
During Benedict’s 2008 trip to the U.S., there was some heated debate (with conflicting photographs and eyewitness accounts) about whether or not Kennedy took Holy Communion at the papal mass at Nationals Stadium in Washington, with conservatives insisting that the Pope says the rite should be denied to pro-choice politicians. With this in mind, Church observers are keen to see if Boston’s Archbishop Cardinal Sean O’Malley will preside over Kennedy’s funeral.
The times had changed. In the early 1960s it was possible to ask whether Catholics could be Presidents in America and there was some basis of alignment between the Vatican and the Kennedys. But by the 21st century, this was old hat. A politician’s stand on abortion had become the Vatican’s primary political concern. And the Irish weren’t what they used to be in Catholic circles either. The demographic center of Roman Catholicism in America had begun to shift towards the Latin Americans. Gradually but inexorably, , the Kennedy-Vatican relationship had diverged.
In what may mark the final flicker of Kennedy influence in American Catholicism, reports circulated last spring that Obama was considering JFK’s daughter, Caroline Kennedy, as the possible next U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican. That was not to be. Indeed in the wake of Uncle Ted’s death came word Thursday that Obama’s final choice had arrived in Rome to take up the diplomatic post at the Holy See. His name is Miguel Diaz, a little-known Cuban-born professor of theology firmly on the record as pro-life.
But the changes still came as a surprise because myths have a way of slightly outliving their expiration date. Even the canny Barack Obama could be fooled into choosing yesterday’s man simply because the reality had not yet caught up with the name. The US changed its policy towards Tariq Ramadan at the very moment when those who knew Ramadan best decided he was uncool and were distancing themselves from him. In the same way, Caroline Kennedy was put forward as Ambassador to the Vatican just when the idea became an anachronism. Choosing has-beens is an occupational hazard of liberal politics; because despite its constant efforts to keep “with it” there always going to be risk of casting behind the times in a system that thrives on celebrity politics. Ramadan and Kennedy may have been stars once; but that was then and this is now.
The abuses of the star-system have become exacerbated by the return of Celebrity Politics. Claudia Rosett described how the Age of Obama has become once again the Age of Great Men; an age good good for diplomats who’ve always wanted One Number to call in a crisis and journalists who prefer one story to cover in each country. Instead of a confusing world of many small people telling complex stories, the Age of Obama offers up again the comfortingly simple stage where everyone wears a signature costume and every utterance can be scripted. It’s a place of comforting narratives with good guys in snazzy suits and bad guys wearing cheap cologne and clutching worn Bibles. You almost know who’s going to win. It’s a great worldsince everything can once again be boiled down into a news magazine you can read at the dentist’s office. Rosett writes eloquently about the attractions of celebrity politics.
There is a strange, alternate universe overtaking the international stage, in which the competition is less about decency, morality or democratic values than about intrigue, thrills, trappings and ultimately the ability to hold the attention of a crowd. And yes, it’s possible that for the novelty of the season, al-Qaddafi at the U.N. General Assembly next month will trump them all. The debate continues over where exactly he will stay, and whether he will bring such affectations as his Bedouin tent–an item which for gossip value promises to briefly outrank even Hollywood’s Jolie-Pitt saga. True to celebrity form, modern despots have their cliques. Between the road shows and house calls in which they now deal as erstwhile equals with envoys of the world’s democracies, modern thugs enjoy advertising their sit-downs with each other….
These are celebrities who answer to no law and no electorates. They are increasingly in the business of eroding rules of conduct that are vital to any civilized world order. They are riding much too high these days, and while it may be human nature to watch them with interest, it would be folly to forget for even a moment that all that glitter, wealth and showmanship–from Bedouin tent to designer shoes to creamy stationery–comes from the barrel of a gun.
Perhaps nothing captures the Obama administration’s atmospherics so perfectly as their vacation at Martha’s Vineyard. The Telegraph writes: “as President Obama flies his family back home to Washington, they will rapidly be followed by an armada of private jets from the tiny local airport. After next weekend’s Labour Day holiday, the exodus of billionaire businessmen, media tycoons and Hollywood stars who summer on the island will be complete. From Oprah Winfrey and Beyonce to Valerie Jarrett and the Clintons, they’ll all be gone. In a matter of days, the island’s population withers from 100,000 to just 15,000.” Camelot is back with an all-new cast and it’s a safe bet that that its promoters feel that theater sales have been slumping recently because the public has been waiting for a re-run all these years. Stun them with the costumes; knock ‘em dead with the glitz. Happy Days are Here Again. No one seems worried that everything appears slightly out of date. And if the opening day box office take is a little small, no matter: a faster change of props will set the audiences hearts a-flutter; though maybe not. As Tariq Ramadan and Ted Kennedy’s change in fortunes reminds us, in the Court of Kings everyone is always just a little past his prime.
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Pro-choice Kennedy was pro-life in 1971
A TALE OF 2 TEDDIES
Democrat believed humans have right
to be born from moment of conception…
While many today regard the Democrat as a champion for abortion rights, the senator, who is Catholic, apparently held a staunch pro-life view before the Roe v. Wade decision in 1972.
In 1971, Tom Dennelly of Great Neck, N.Y., wrote to Kennedy expressing his personal views on abortion.
Kennedy responded to Dennelly, writing: (note: letter is on PDF format)
“”While the deep concern of a woman bearing an unwanted child merits consideration and sympathy, it is my personal feeling that the legalization of abortion on demand is not in accordance with the value which our civilization places on human life. Wanted or unwanted, I believe that human life, even at its earliest stages, has certain rights which must be recognized – the right to be born, the right to love, the right to grow old.
“On the question of the individual’s freedom of choice there are easily available birth-control methods and information which women may employ to prevent or postpone pregnancy. But once life has begun, no matter at what stage of growth, it is my belief that termination should not be decided merely by desire. …
“When history looks back to this era it should recognize this generation as one which cared about human beings enough to halt the practice of war, to provide a decent living for every family, and to fulfill its responsibility to its children from the very moment of conception.”
Matthews always takes the cake on takes:
Chris Matthews – Obama is the Last Kennedy Brother
There is a strange, alternate universe overtaking the international stage, in which the competition is less about decency, morality or democratic values than about intrigue, thrills, trappings and ultimately the ability to hold the attention of a crowd.
Maybe all of you surpass me on this, but I’ve only recently begun exploring internet sites such as Delicious, Digg, etc. What intrigues me most about them is it seems the most important news stories of the day are chosen through a popularity contest. The hive (the sites would probably prefer “community”) members determine, by voting, what news stories are most reading. Yet it appears (and I’m still learning) that the news feed into some sites is decidedly left-wing. So the hive members choose what’s cool out of what’s Progressive.
This morning my explorations lead me from such a site into Google Reader, which carried stories about what the Huffington Post and Thomas Friedman considered important news sites. Visitors were invited to make Huff and Friedman’s very most favorite links — displayed — their very own. It seemed to me that all of these social networking, bookmarking, and news sharing sites were rotten with left-wing politics.
Is this one reason why young people leaned toward Obama in 2008?
#3 Salt Lick:
Regarding your comments about social networking and the Left, please see one of my comments to an earlier Belmont Club post, in which I substantially agreed with you.
duplicate removed
Salt Lick: Welcome to Web 2.0. This his been going on for some time. It is certain that this all had a lot to do with Obama’s election. This is how today’s young have been reared. The reduction of all to the drumbeat of trivialization and “self-expression”–what is unapologetically referred to as “User Generated Content”. Herd Politics. High School Politics.
But for all its faults, it is much better than the kind of indoctrination which goes on in our schools.
This is why Plain’s Facebook page, or the recent conservative overwhelming of twitter are so notable.
BTW< Google reader is really just a "feed aggregator". Those HuffPo feeds are just default feeds. You cann delete those, add you own and customize it. You need not take in that bilge. (Pardon me if you already know this.) Reader is great tool though; I have BC in my Reader subscriptions, for example.
I am not sure that we should be frightened of this technology; we need to adapt to it. My rss reader is the start of all of my "news" and political information. I very rarely watch TV. I have not even converted it to the new digital standard. Recent insider media studies show that the vast majority of the "young adault group" (14 to sy 28) do not watch much standard television. Not much at all. The internet (and games) are their medium, much like TV was the medium of the boomer. So it is a good thing, Web 2.0
The nice thing is that we can utilize New media to push ideas in front of young people which they may not normally hear. I have had more than one young person tell me that she did not really understand what conservatives really believed until she encountered them on the internet. There is every sign the the non-left is adapting now.
This assumes of course that the Left does not take it away from us. They will try.
We will have to fight for our freedoms here too.
Salt @ 3
Young people go to school and watch television (yes it is true – less and less).
That is why they are pro-Obama.
Gentlemen:
Thanks for your guidance on Web 2.0. I’ve spent the last two days up to my eyeballs in Facebook, MySpace, Delicious, Bloglines, Digg, and other places I can’t remember. I’m still reeling and synthesizing.
Matt Beck: Enjoyed the link back to your blog. I’d forgotten wretchard’s post on “outfriending the Left.”
Have you read Flannery O’Connor’s collected letters, “The Habit of Being?” I’m reading them through the 3rd time. Smart woman and her observations from the 1950′s and 60′s on the developing Beat and Youth Culture, as well as comments on the Catholic Church, and secular modern life, are like fresh, cool water. And I’m not even Catholic.
Mongoose, you wrote Reader is great tool though; I have BC in my Reader subscriptions, for example.
Is a “reader” better for you because you visit a lot of sites? My surfing habit includes coming to BC (bookmarked), then using it as an entry port (via the PJ Media links in the right column) to visit other sites. By using a handful of blogs this way, I feel I get all the news I need. What efficiencies am I missing — just having all my sources on one page?
Cheers.
Young folks voted for Obama because.
1. He was half black and it felt good to elect a black man as President.
2. Obama promised to redistribute the wealth from rich to poor. This felt good to vote for.
3. Obama promised to end all wars. This felt good to vote for.
Basically young folks voted for Obama because “It felt good, stroked their self esteem by voting for something that made them feel all warm and fuzzy inside.”
It’s the way these young folks are taught, everybody plays ball, everybody wins and everybody gets an award!
It just feels good!
I don’t think it was even that deep, Barry. Mostly, they voted for Obama because he’s cool.
Barry 0351:
Young folks voted for Obama because.
1. He was half black and it felt good to elect a black man as President.
2. Obama promised to redistribute the wealth from rich to poor. This felt good to vote for.
3. Obama promised to end all wars. This felt good to vote for.
Basically young folks voted for Obama because “It felt good, stroked their self esteem by voting for something that made them feel all warm and fuzzy inside.”
It’s the way these young folks are taught, everybody plays ball, everybody wins and everybody gets an award!
It just feels good!
Yes, it just felt so good, so right to vote for Obama, and not just for the younger voters. A feel good vote, hope and change, a new first family that has taken more time off, most of it at our expense in the first 8 months of office, a president who has not got a clue about how to run this country except to the far left, and over the cliff.
The age of Obama will not be known for anything great except the debt that we have
thrown upon the backs of our children and their grand children. It will be known for the wholseale weakening of our intelligence agencies, our military and known as the watch when America became Amerika. The luster and polish will be stripped away by reality. Now that Obama is getting exposed for what he really is(some of us knew, long ago)the new Camelot will have a very short life. For that we should be thankful and we can start fixing the damages wrought by this administration.
On my Safari Bookmarks bar is a “News” toggle that default carries NYT, Google, CNET, ESPN, LAT, BBC, NPR and USA Today. I usually glance at a couple those just to see what the official noise of the day is and I added Infolicious from Breitbart. Once a day I spend several minutes scrolling through that. The problem is that the front end is still the same biased AP reporting.
Regarding EMK, Ramadan and BHO as yesterday’s news. PJ O’Rourke once said that young women knew where the cutting edge was and got there. That was in the 80′s when the cutting edge was conservative. Sorry whiskey but he had a point. Well timed Alinskyite tactics could cripple the Left with ridicule and swing crucial cohorts away from them.
barry, maineman, re young generation –the film industry (so important as an enculturer for that cohort) may be becoming less hopeless. the story around the March 2009-released film “Watchmen” is very interesting. 18-24s reacted along the lines of lefties hated it (apparently largely without understanding why) but the others loved it. It’s that comic book superhero movie. Big hit. Ya gotta see it to understand how it does it –but it has securely nailed the lie underneath the entire cosmos of the left, and Obama-think in particular –and always in the visual 18-24 language. As well, it regenerates in that same language some much-needed oomph back into the crucial value of, and reason for, there being such a thing as ‘conservativism’ in the first place. The whole thing is weirdly encouraging –suggest see it if you want an unexpected lift re our young gens.
this doesn’t really do it justice, but…
It is even worse in the court when the King is a little past his prime. Such a tragedy for a man so young.
On Ramadan, shouldn’t he be surprised? He didn’t change anything. He was a critic of democracy before, and he was simply being consistent. What’s the difference?
Is a “reader” better for you because you visit a lot of sites? My surfing habit includes coming to BC (bookmarked), then using it as an entry port (via the PJ Media links in the right column) to visit other sites. By using a handful of blogs this way, I feel I get all the news I need. What efficiencies am I missing — just having all my sources on one page?
When my feed reader (Bloglines) goes down, I’m lost. I have just a handful of blogs where I participate, but I read the headlines of over 200 blogs/news feeds/opinion each day at the very least. On my own blog, we don’t do many longer pieces, more an aggregate of various topics where I make one liner comments and then link list others commenting on the same topic in greater depth. I make the assumption going in that if I get it, so will my readers without a lot of commentary from me. Afterall, who really cares what my individual opinion is?
I used to bemoan the fact that we get very few commenters at P2P. We do get large numbers of retweets from our Twitter feed for the blog. Our links get passed along with retweets and trackbacks, but no large community has ever developed of friends/commenters. On the other hand, the blogs where I do participate, I do so because of the comment community more so than the quality of the blogging or the topic being written about. So even on those, many which only have a headline of Open Thread, I will check the comments for the day.
On my original blog, I used to write long pieces, maybe one every two or three days. We got lots of comments, but in 2 years, barely broke 100,000 on the hit counter even with several instalaunches. When I developed P2P and changed our format to the shorter, pithier commentary accompanied by lots of links, pics and videos, the comments dropped to nearly zero and nary a single instalaunch, but by our 1st blogiversary, we were at just over a million on the counter.
10. Barry 0351,
It is not the way young kids are taught (that is some of it) it is the habits of youth.
Remember: “If you are not on the left in your 20s you have no heart. If by your 40s you are not on the right you have no brain.
For anyone perusing the celebrity gossip magazines at the checkout counter at the supermarket, one big fact jumps out: celebrities appeal almost exclusively to women.
Look at how, say, Peyton Manning sells Direct TV’s “NFL SUNDAY TICKET” in his commercials — “regular guy goofball” with corn-pone humor, and so on, while “celebrity’ QB Tom Brady with movie star looks is nowhere to be seen.
The whole celebrity superstar culture, with married women writing about fantasizing about sex with Obama! in newsmagazines is based on the extraordinary amount of money in women’s hands. Studies assert that 85% of all consumer purchasing decisions are made by women, and TV, movies, news (around 75% of Kansas J-school grads are women and similar numbers can be found elsewhere) are no different.
The superstar phenomena is a female one. Men find hierarchies like Teddy Kennedy’s or Castro’s a threat — because it directly impacts their ability to find a mate. Women find it beneficial, because it directly impacts their ability to have staggering sums of money/power/influence as a mere mistress rather than a mate to a boring, humdrum guy.
The Netherlands pushing back against Ramadan is a signal that men have started to assert themselves against an overwhelmingly female-driven consumerist/superstar culture, largely because women and gays are starting to see men like Ramadan as a threat in the Netherlands, finally.
Obama is riding the wave of female backing and worship. Look around at any football team, or military unit, or other all-male organization. You will find patronage networks, pecking orders, status, hierarchy, but never worship on a widespread celebrity scale. Because men are innately in competition with each other and cooperation is hard, requiring rules limiting the ability to scarf up the scarcest resource (women).
This is why Obama’s coalition is unstable. He depends almost entirely on women, who voted for him (single women) 70-29. His worship and the hatred of Sarah Palin (who women HATE with a passion for NOT being a celebrity, basically) come at the price of radicalizaton of men, and male dominated institutions. Look at Tom Brady: he MUST deliver for the Patriots, he has no good-old-boy humble persona like the Mannings or Favre to fall back on.
Kay Hymnowitz has written of the “New Girl Order’ of fashionably dressed, wealthy young women from Warsaw to Wisconsin. Spending lots of money and moving the culture (ever leftward towards celebrity). What happens when their money runs out? When all the institutions (media, TV, entertainment) founded on extracting money from them one way or another fall apart?
Every strength is also a weakness, and Obama’s is women.
Who put the ram in the rama-dama-ding-dong?
M Simon #18
I have to say, I don’t know if everyone has had the same experience (obviously many have or there wouldn’t be such a saying) but I personally have had life experience exactly in line with that. I grew up in suburban NJ in a place where when Reagan bombed Tripoli the environment (at least in my high school, where kids no doubt echoed their parents’s politics), was Bravo.
Then I went to Columbia as an undergrad (only initially interested because my grandfather had gone there and then loving the impressive campus and accessibility to the city yet with a “campus” feeling that say, NYU can’t provide) and was astounded when, on the eve of the Gulf War, many students marched on masse down Broadway to protest “imperialist aggression”. I tried to understand their point of view, and certainly turned more left than I had been via inundation of information as well as political indoctrination from the radical leftist faculty there. I sent a letter to an anonymous soldier during one of those “send a letter to a soldier” drives and was shocked, and hurt, and embarrassed (to the extent that I nearly blocked this episode from my memory) to recieve a letter back from somebody saying essentially “this isn’t WWII, get over your bullshit patiotism, you’re a dupe” in response to my patriotic, perhaps naive letter stating, “we support you, we’re behind you and the USA”.
Then over the years I think I slowly turned right but the real turning point for me was 9/11. I had voted for Gore and (although I thought it pretty clear Bush had actually won the election despite the shrill cries of “cheating” and “stolen election” from the left) my first reaction when I woke up on 9/11/01 to read on my TV on the scroll across the bottom of the screen “World Trade Center attacked and destroyed” was “Thank god Bush is president and not Gore”. I guess you’d call me a 9/11 National Security conservative, as I think that is the governments primary duty, and if they’re not doing that well, nothing else matters.
I’ve heard about “9/11″ conservatives (or republicans, though I wouldn’t describe myself that way, as the republicans are mostly as corrupt as democrats and not worthy of voting for merely on the basis of their party affiliation, mostly just because they are the lesser of two evils), but I’ve often wondered how many people truly were changed to that extent by 9/11. Anyone here?
Whiskey #19:
When I was a teenage girl, I was into the movie mags and gossip, when I was in my twenties, I was more into specific stars, rather than the more general interest to keep up with fads of my teen years. By the time I was over thirty and into my forties, the whole celeb scene was good for a good laugh now and then, but any interest or influence was long gone, left to the less mature.
I certainly know more Sarah Palin types than I know the types who go ga ga over Obama or any other celeb. But, then I’m no longer associating with the shallow world of upwardly mobile women. Thank God!
I will make my point again of a few days ago. It has nothing to do with looks or money, it has everything to do with leadership and power. Obama has neither. He may hold the most powerful position in the world and be trying to put into place an iron-clad top down power structure, but his popularity is in free fall because it is becoming obvious that he is not a true leader and worse, it is becoming clear that he is incompetent. Women have nearly zero tolerance for incompetent men.
I’ve stopped trying to figure out either men or women’s tastes as it seems to me, at least on the surface, that women judge other women by how attractive men find them and then either try to emulate or avoid whatever those women are doing. Men, OTOH, seem to be far more one track, as in mine is bigger than yours. I don’t think either criteria is a good way to select a political candidate.
My d-i-l, BTW, loves Peyton Manning. She has been heard to say that he’ll wipe the floor with the pretty boy Brady. For me, it is all in the eyes, whether a rock star, football star, or politician. I look at the eyes and look for a sign of intelligence there.
Senator Edward Kennedy has a good reputation, considering the circumstances. He only killed one woman that we know of.
Luddy B @ 14 – I watched “Watchmen” recently, at the advice of my son (my kids did NOT vote for Obama, quite the opposite
). Noble Rorshach stole the show, of course, and paid the price.
I was struck a day or two later seeing a rendering of President Obama, in the NYT Magazine (what high quality paper publications lack in connectivity they more than make up for in image quality). In this rendition of the O, he was the exact same pale blue as the omnipotent Dr. Manhattan in the Watchmen. shudder
Here’s the final entry in Rohrshach’s Journal He completes his journal quickly by adding that he regrets nothing, has lived his life free from compromise and steps ‘into the shadow now without complaint.’
Sara/22– Re your third paragraph: I agree on the lack of competence and the importance of that for women–my wife agrees also, saying that ‘competence’ in a man means being sure of himself, knowing how to handle things, etc. Women feel more secure around a guy like that.
I would add that I think O is weak. Not puny, not effeminate, but lacking strength of character. He would only face down someone weaker and never stand up for someone if it would cost him.
Salt Lick: Well in BC’s case I often come directly here.
I do not mean to tell you what to do, but if you want to know how I handle things I will tell you. Bookmarking is great too, and if you have a process that works for you surely you should use it. But since you asked, if it helps, let me answer you at some length–ignore it if it does not help you.
I recommend using some sort of RSS reader, though you do not have to use Google’s product as there are lots of alternatives. I perfer googles reader for its clean interface and some of its features.
I think a RSS reader gives helps with the following:
1) Organizing and focusing info. This is useful if you use the internet a lot and go lots of sites and need to deel with information overload.
2) Paradoxically, throwing some surprises at yourself and getting different angles on things, and being able to do this ad hoc. (breaking info habits as it were).
3) An aid to staying current, at least in certain fields. (I should say it helps as a starting place to work from to stay current.
4) Getting the pulse of things (sort of group/cultural gossip)
5) Sharing information, but with pretty focused privacy control.
Bookmarks do not quite do this for me, but I suppose that Del.icio.us and such come close.
So i view a reader as a way to “stream” information into different “rivulets” (i.e., categories,) which i can drill down on at my leisure, interest and whim. I guess it is this change in web usage that makes RSS so attractive for most folks. You can see the titles of things, drill in and if you really want to go to the site itself. I think it is one of the reason that info and ideas get around the net so fast.
I use the internet a great deal: I am professionally on the internet all day, and along with books and music, it is my key medium for my private life. I have been deeply involved with the internet since the ARPANet days so it is just second nature to me. I rarely watch TV. (I am just telling you my perspective here). If I was a more casual user, an RSS reader might not be worth it.
So I generally bookmark sites that do not have feeds; otherwise I use my reader to organize things (actually, as we shall see, I keep my bookmarks in the reader too). For places I go a lot that have feeds, I have a “daily read” directory/label in Reader. There must be a scores in that one, and i do not drll down on everything in there, obviously. Then I keep directories by topic much like I imagine you like you organize bookmarks in “directories”. I must have at least a couple of thousand feeds in my reader, though most of those have nothing to do with political or conservatism. I am adding and deleting feeds all tha time (I have pretty broad interests). I suppose I have around 100 directories/labels.
Google reader has some nice features:
1) Categories are labels, not directory. so a feed can have several labels. This is great–I think of a label as an info streams. So say that you read a lot of European blogs, and politics is only one of your interest. So you can have national labels like “germany” “poland” etc. for foreign blogs, but you can also have the more political of these foreign blogs labeled as “EU poltics” too. So you can filter by general interest and country, or by politics and region. This is great stuff. Of course, you can do this with any area of interest. So here you can make feeds that you will find surprise by throwing new stuff at you by combining what seem to be disparate blogs into a new interest stream; yet you can still keep more conventional organizations/streams too.
And you can do that in an ad hoc manner, like say around an election or some particular date or period of time. Also, though some balk at the security issue, the nice thing about this is that the data is not stored locally, so you can get at it anywhere you can find computer that is web connected.
2) In Google reader Google bookmarks are integrated with the labels and the feeds. So you can bookmark a site or a page, as you browse, label it and catch it in you own little “personal information architecture”, as it were, which you have built in reader. The bookmarking feature also allows labeling the bookmark, annotate the bookmark with your own text links and you can even grab html off the page. Like a feed, a bookmark can have more than one label. I also like the “star/special interest” feature where you can mark a feed entry as being of particular note.
3) Google reader has this great “recommendation feature” where they recommend blogs to you. It scans you blogs and finds new ones based on that. I must pull 3 or 4 blogs out of this a week. It is super. This scares some people from a privacy POV, and I get that, but it does not bother me in the least. I am hardly shy or silent about my beliefs, as people know hereabouts, so I am sure that the list makers will note me long before google goes completely over to the dark side. I imagine that I am already on those lists. They cannot be worse than the Soviets. Google reader and a great blog search feature too for both your subscriptions and those bolgs/feeds just out there.
4) Google Reader has a nice “sharing” feature where you can share feeds, bookmarks and notes with friends. But it is not a social network; it is off of your email. There is much more control, and you know who yuo are sharing with. I only use it with a select group of friends, as if I did not i would not have any. You can also “follow” peoples “sharings” but again, all involved have some control over it. It is not like facebook or del.cio.us in this regard.
So, Salt Lick, that is my take on it.
re: “Camelot is back with an all-new cast … the public has been waiting for a re-run all these years .. Happy Days are Here Again. No one seems worried that everything appears slightly out of date
With a few critical differences of course, but the differences make a Camelot comparison somewhat laughable.
* A hot war versus a cold war
* A near depression with probably years-long recovery, versus a slight depression followed after Kennedy tax cuts by a roaring recovery
* Critical raw materials in captive markets (e.g. oil), price-controlled by nations hostile to U.S. interests.
* Radically different laws impacting economic development (e.g. we can’t develop the huge energy resources we have because liberal rules prohibit it).
* An Administration with a world view 180 degrees out of phase with Camelot I (e.g. “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”, versus “ask your country to punish the rich guys and do more for you”, and a view of the U.S. military and exercise of military power for “forward defense”, versus a view that views the U.S. military as “dogs of war”, and use of military power in defense of U.S. interests and always illegitimate).
(I’m not criticizing RF’s characterization of the Obama administration as Camelot II; he’s just reflecting how liberals view it.)
The thought of Camelot II type festivities seems licentious, wanton extravagance in a year where:
* 50% of the home mortgages in San Diego County (California, USA) are underwater
* Unemployment has breached the “red alert” 10% barrier and most probably is closer to 15 to 20% (many self-employed like myself who are ineligible for unemployment insurance, even though we pay into the fund, never show up on the governments meter)
* A 1000 banks are failing
* The currency has been massively inflated
* Whole mainstay businesses (e.g. AIG, GM, major banks) are broke or are failing
* Most of the wealth gathered together for the past 15 years to support retirements, nest eggs, college educations, and family emergency reserves has been wiped out.
* Government deficit spending has increased IN A SINGLE YEAR by somewhere between 5x and 10x the annual federal deficit over any year in the past 30, 50, even 100 years – there’s been nothing the amount spent by Obama in the history of creation (world history, uses your own euphemism) as far as I know.
As my own family faces potential financial ruin, and my best friend and the best man at my wedding faces the same, as one sister loses her house, another with a daughter with a terminal disease already near destitute, and as a third sister’s husband, who is a landscape contractor valiantly fights financial-market driven business contraction (80%), frivolous law suits, and now the IRS which seems determined to claim every asset not yet lost to debt, it would be quite easy to lose hope over “the American dream”. However, calmady has not changed our faith in God and America, but Obama’s spending, partying, and huge statist expansion near puts a stake in the heart of those dreams.
I have two kids in college who are witnessing these struggles, and what does a father tell them. Trust in the Lord (Romans 8:28) of course, but what of America? What is their hope, their future? Will they ever be “allowed” to profit or amass any wealth, unless they join the “elite” as Union heads, politicians, chairman of the “correct” 501.C3 organization? Will they be able to graduate from college, start their professional career, purchase their own homes, and start families before the Democrat leftist 70% or 80% tax rates kick in at the lower-middle class level to pay for their spending. Indeed, will they even be able to find a professional job at all?
I guess this is the risk of posting on a BLOG in the world today. It’s hard to stay on topic when so many are pushing us all towards hell with our handbaskets.
Regards … all.
OldSalt
dup removed
Doc: republicans are mostly as corrupt as democrats
Nonsense. You listen too much to the MSM. Dem corruption is not reported. There has been more Dem corruption the last few most than there has been GOP corruption in the entire last century.
OK Whiskey, I have a joke for you.
The setup part of the joke that is for real is that hotair.com is reporting that Diane Watson, and I don’t know the Members of Congress without an official Program, but who is black, female, and a Member of Congress, is charging that opposition to Health Care Reform is from people who
“. . . are spreading fear and they’re trying to see that the first president who looks like me fails”
Um, so President Obama looks like a woman?
(cue snare drum rim shot)
Old Salt, excellent post and sorry to hear about your distressing personal situation. You have my prayers.
Your story brings up a quandary that is continually nagging me. That is, how does one reconcile the teachings of the Bible with Jefferson’s admonition of refreshing the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants?
When in doubt, the teachings of the Bible must prevail. But I honestly struggle in wondering if this is an absolute if the values of our Founding Fathers are being undermined.
tony/24; –LOL –me too –my son tivo’d it and cajoled me into watching it –nuff said on the point about the young gen not being a lost cause –they made this indictment a big hit –& i agree, Rohrshach stole the show. He knew what was wrong but he also felt it –and let that feeling run.
***
steeple/31; –you could refresh yoself on the Book of Judges and close that gap some, perhaps –
“The Netherlands pushing back against Ramadan is a signal that men have started to assert themselves against an overwhelmingly female-driven consumerist/superstar culture, largely because women and gays are starting to see men like Ramadan as a threat in the Netherlands, finally.”
Uh, not quite, rather because Ramadan was close to the Mullahs, and that EU policies are pressing on them, and more since the last few weeks
The bible is not suicide pact. Evil must be fought. Sometimes its disciples but be killed.
It is not murder. There is nothing to reconcile. It is our dudty to save teh vision of the founders. Let us be out happy warriors.
Salt Lick,
I’m just starting to get into Flannery O’Connor again. As I recall, I read And the Violent Bear it Away back in high school but it was a little over my head at the time. I’ll have to check out The Habit of Being. Thanks.
31 steeple
That is, how does one reconcile the teachings of the Bible with Jefferson’s admonition of refreshing the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants?
Jefferson may have been thinking of a treatise that John Milton wrote after the execution of Charles I in 1649 in which Milton tried to justify the execution on the basis of a Puritan interpretation of the Old Testament– that is, there are plenty of stories in I and II Samuel and I and II Kings of bad rulers meeting untimely ends and God presumably approving their deaths. I grant you that there is nothing in the New Testament that could be cited in defense of tyrannicide as such, just the general principle that humans must obey God rather than human rulers (Acts 5:29).
For what it’s worth, I did come across a reference to Count von Stauffenberg’s visiting several priests and a cardinal before he finalized the July 1944 plot to kill Hitler. He was a devout Catholic and consulted them about the legitimacy of killing a tyrant. And none of them told him it would be wrong to kill Hitler. I think their reasoning was that a tyrant is not a legitimate authority but a usurper, and hence removing the tyrant is not acting against legitimate civil authority but seeking to restore it.
I hope this helps at least a little. Christians down the centuries have had different opinions about the moral legitimacy of tyrannicide. And of course, Jefferson was not exactly an orthodox believer.
That is, how does one reconcile the teachings of the Bible with Jefferson’s admonition of refreshing the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants?
How does one not? The Bible is full of stories of those who did their own refreshing, although true that most of the time the credit is given to God. Moses and the plagues, Joshua and the Walls of Jericho, Gideon, David and Goliath, all the prophets raining hail and brimstone, Jesus, who I’ve always envisioned as a no-nonsense outdoorsman and man’s man kind of guy, and the money changers or defying both Roman and Jewish laws, right on thru to Revelation where nearly all become fertilizer.
Hey Mongoose @ 26 – thanks, excellent info, appreciate you sharing the way you aggregate the tools. Thanks. I could never be that organized.
I bumped into a guy who worked at one of the first ARPANet nodes beyond the academy, it was an old Burrough’s plant in Great Valley, PA, a sort of Bethlehem for the Borg we now live in.
Your post sent me off meandering, I stumbled upon one of my heroes, Dr. Alan Kay on the Meaning of “Object-Oriented Programming”, he of Dynabook fame (a transistorized version of Vannevar Bush’s “memex”), reminds me of your explanation of information exploitation @ 26:
The original conception of it had the following parts.
– I thought of objects being like biological cells and/or individual
computers on a network, only able to communicate with messages (so
messaging came at the very beginning — it took a while to see how to
do messaging in a programming language efficiently enough to be
useful).
– I wanted to get rid of data. The B5000 almost did this via its
almost unbelievable HW architecture. I realized that the
cell/whole-computer metaphor would get rid of data, and that “<-"
would be just another message token (it took me quite a while to
think this out because I really thought of all these symbols as names
for functions and procedures.
Lifeofthemind:
“PJ O’Rourke once said that young women knew where the cutting edge was and got there. That was in the 80’s when the cutting edge was conservative. Sorry whiskey but he had a point. Well timed Alinskyite tactics could cripple the Left with ridicule and swing crucial cohorts away from them.”
I concur somewhat. What women ( and girliemen) follow is fashion. I think it may be a survival instinct of sorts for women. What Buraq and friends, through their full throttle cramming of marxism/fascism/ socialism down the throats of the America, have presented conservatives a great opportunity; a chance to make the left unfashionable.
The cruel, ugly and sicko side of the left has been exposed. If this sicko side of the left is presented to the public in the right way, the left will not be fashionable anymore. Once the left is distinctly fashionable, all the demographics that Whiskey loathes will run from the left in a hurry.
One of the ways to do this is to make a clear distinction between liberalism and fascism. Liberalism has it’s true roots in classical liberalism which favored freedoms, liberty, Democracy and the free markets. The left has morphed liberalism into the anti-liberalism. Most fashionistas still consider themselves liberals( in human rights/ freedom sense) and will gag if the in crowd thinks them fascist. The Democrat/Buraq agenda is no longer liberal in any true sense; it is almost totally either part fascist, or part stalinist. This point needs to be driven home to any leftist you meet.
Google Reader …So, Salt Lick, that is my take on it.
Thanks again, Mongoose. I will give Google Reader a whirl.
I concur somewhat. What women ( and girliemen) follow is fashion.
I have to stand up for the gals. Women are far more practical than men, tit for tat. Well, except for shoes. We gotta have our shoes. But, how many women would ever put on a pair of heels if not for knowing that men like them so much. The trick is to hang out with outdoors guys, especially rafters/boaters, and athletes, where wearing heels is a character flaw.
Men are by nature preeners. It is genetic and evolutionary. You see it in nearly every species. Gay men take preening to a whole new level, mostly because they are competing exclusively with other preeners rather than the more practical female. Gay men also control the women’s fashion industry and have turned fashion into something only suitable for someone with an adolescent boy’s figure. And one of the reasons that fad fashion resides primarily with the under 25 group.
The quickest way to do in anyone or anything is thru ridicule or by making it yesterday’s news. The left is particularly thin-skinned and yet quite skillful at turning anyone or anything on the right into a buffoon or butt of a joke. Frankly, there are few on the left capable of absorbing more than a soundbite or a bumper sticker slogan, so writing long policy papers or treatises about costs and benefits is never going to be read by anyone who doesn’t already know about the subjects. We need more cartoonists and people adept at witty one liners, sarcasm, and gentle but effective ridicule.
Obama the concept, that is the first African-American to be elected president was in part what carried him into office. Now Obama the man, the person, is being revealed far more rapidly than it would have in the past.
After his term is over will we find out what his college and law school grades were? Will it be then someone will release his SAT scores?
18. M. Simon,
Perhaps I followed a similar paradigm, but with a little different kilter. I was a conservative in my 20s, and by my 40s was Hard Right.
There is another concept, that we receive our political imprinting about the age of ten. For me that meant watching the Hungarian Freedom Fighters in the news. Later in high school one of my friends was a guy, a few years older than the rest of us, who had been resisting the Soviets in Budapest while I was still “playing” soldier in my safe back yard.
The Dutch were fools to even let that snake into their country. The Brits remain fools.
The Pope should issue a Papal Bull of excommunication for all politicians that publicly support recreational abortion, the Kennedy clan included.
The Catholic Church has contributed to the decline in cultural morality, perhaps Western Civilization itself, by not going hard after relativism and naming names right from the start.
Rurik,
When I was in elementary school I had a friend whose parents both had numbers tattooed on their arms. One day I asked what they meant. After they told me they told me how they had run across the bridge between Hungary and Austria with Russian soldiers on their heels shooting at them. They were carrying their infant child, my friend. Then they gave me wonderful food.
Tony: I briefly knew Kay way back when he was at PARC. I saw one his first presentations of the Star Computer way back in the 1970′s. I was just down the road from Xerox PARC and went down there all the time. Smalltalk it still one of the best OOPL’s around. Not used much for anything commercial though. Too intelligent of an language for that.
I also heard one of his dynabook “lectures” back then. He said something to the effect that “one day you will be able to sit in Central Park under a tree and access the Librry of Congress over radio waves form a computer the size of a book.” Most of the people in the room had punched cards at one time or another. Much of this work ws before there were PC’s. The Lisa was modeled hafter the star but that waas almost a decade later.
Everyone thought he was nuts. I remember people looking at each other and scratching their heads. Around that time the Sanford AI Lab had a computer that had like a megabyte of RAM and people just used come down and look at it it was such a big deal (Intel made the first 1K DRAM chips in something like 1969, to put that in perspective). It is amazing that Kay could have see this back then and keep pulling for it when our tech was so primitive. What a true visionary. I have a deep admiration for him. A profoundly creative computer scientist.
Mongoose, thanks for writing back. Alan Kay was in that rare class who can see the future and rough it out in breadboard 3-4+ decades forward. He wasn’t alone, just extremely accurate. Bucky Fuller wrote in 1966 in Education Automation about global libraries, Vannevar Bush in 1945, FDR’s “Science Czar” imagined a MEMEX that was constantly updated with new info (in microfiche!) at your desk, HG Wells at the turn of the 20th Century predicted similar rich knowledge access in “The Time Machine.”
I worked for Xerox way back when STAR was knew, the predecessor of the Mac that we sold for about $25,000 per workstation. We had both a GUI and a laser printer, what a huge leap from character-based screens and printers. Funniest of all, we didn’t have ‘mouse’ but we did have a uni-dicrectional controller circular touchpad on the over-size keyboard called a CAT.
Xerox didn’t care. They let John Warner walk away from PARC with universal document technology (Postscript, then PDF) to form Adobe. Xerox was all about putting toner on paper. IBM sold computers, Xerox sold copiers. Thereby Xerox PARC begat Apple, Adobe, how many others?
Moore’s Law underestimated things, we’re experiencing Kurzweil’s Law” now:
The Law of Accelerating Returns
by Ray Kurzweil
An analysis of the history of technology shows that technological change is exponential, contrary to the common-sense “intuitive linear” view. So we won’t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century — it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today’s rate). The “returns,” such as chip speed and cost-effectiveness, also increase exponentially. There’s even exponential growth in the rate of exponential growth. Within a few decades, machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, leading to The Singularity — technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history.
The future is now.
LOTM 45,
Such encounters render current events much more real, don’t they. And then the news ceases to be merely an abstract concept to be shuffled and traded as a matter of style.
The Law of Accelerating Returns
Will that keep me away from the death panels, or accelerate my demise? The quickly aging wish to know.
I think the intelligence of the toaster surpassed the intelligence of Al Franken some time ago. So we’re here already.
Good thing that guy’s not in the Senate.
Oh, wait ….
Tony/47 I wish I shared your confidence. I see the possibilities, but I also see
1) A political system that has devolved into a corrupt courtier culture, lacking only a king (Obama hasn’t quite got the chops to pull that one off yet. If he could be weaned from a teleprompter, maybe.)
2) A legal and regulatory structure that tangles enterprise and means that pretty much everyone becomes a lawbreaker at some point(*); with the obvious consequences of a disdain for the law and the threat of unexpected accusations. And the more you have to spend on lawyers the less you spend on R&D… If you get more bang for your buck buying Congressmen than engineers, which will businesses invest in? CYA, not innovation
3) Severe rates of family breakups, with the results of lack of trust and of increased crime
4) A split in our civil culture–perhaps not as violent as that 150 years ago but severe enough that the sides seem not even to be speaking the same language
5) A crop of legislators and regulators and administrators who seem hell-bent on shackling us with enormous debts and unsustainable obligations
6) A culture of deferring to experts for decisions–which means many people don’t think through social questions for themselves and rely on increasingly partisan commentators
It seems more like Babel to me. I don’t think we’re going to reach the heavens–or a singularity. The technologies are promising with worlds of possibilities, but their implementation requires a non-technological foundation. People need to trust contracts, not worry that some politically connected rival will regulate them into bankruptcy, trust the people who work for them…
(*) Selling kid’s toys at a garage sale unless they’ve been (destructively and expensively) tested for lead is illegal now.
bob/49; hey that’s why getting old is depressing –joy speeds up time and misery slows it down!
Dear Mongoose,
I wonder if you ever had any traffic or communication with Pat McGregor, a lady in Northern Calfornia who (I was told by several folks) had been involved in the development of ARPANET.
Seems like the SCA had a good number of folks whose careers were steeped in such activities…
#21 Doc . . .
You wrote, “I’ve heard about “9/11″ conservatives (or republicans, though I wouldn’t describe myself that way, as the republicans are mostly as corrupt as democrats and not worthy of voting for merely on the basis of their party affiliation, mostly just because they are the lesser of two evils), but I’ve often wondered how many people truly were changed to that extent by 9/11. Anyone here?”
I was truly changed by 9/11. I was already disgusted by the incredibly stupid and nasty reporting about Israel after the Oslo agreements (1993 onward) and revolted by the Durban Conference (Aug. 2001) and the despicable writing about Ariel Sharon (Sept. 2001 onward).
Thus, I was already angered by the supreme ignorance and stupidity of the MSM. Along came September 11, and I realized that our terrific civilization actually could be destroyed by medieval maniacs. As I’ve written elsewhere, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out many ways to terrorize and incapacitate various population centers.
Did the MSM and the Democrats understand this? No, they didn’t. They made it almost impossible for Bush to pursue the Iraq War and fight terrorism and Islamism. The MSM and the Democrats have done many traitorous things, which I won’t go into here.
I started reading conservative magazines like Weekly Standard and the National Review. These magazines seemed to be the only ones that discussed the issues as I saw them. Then the internet came along (for me), and I lost my liberal label. I can’t say I’m a Republican because the Republicans seem pretty weak.
Think of me as a “Marine wannabee” stuck in the body of a non-athletic grandma. One who’s read Saul Alinsky, however, and knows what needs to be done to get this fabulous nation back on track.
Sorry Fiddler, I do not remember that name.
#25 Gordon . . .
You wrote: “I would add that I think O is weak. Not puny, not effeminate, but lacking strength of character. He would only face down someone weaker and never stand up for someone if it would cost him.”
O has no strength of character whatsoever. I find him quite effeminate and puny and wonder why many women find him attractive. He is a joke compared to men like Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld–not “movie stars,” but definitely impressive men who reflect strength of character, agree with them or not.
Promethea: 911 forced me to re-examine my religious faith. I discovered I had gotten pretty much off course, and started taking the matter much more seriously. I should tell you that I was down there that morning and I lost no small amount of friends and acquaintances. Also, I happened to live at the time near one of the fire houses that lost a lot of men and new some of them. So it struck pretty close to home for me.
As for politics, 911 was not an awakening for me as I was never much of a liberal.
My real conversion to conservatism was when Reagan started running for president.
I guess you could call me a “Reagan Independent” back the,
The democrats though really irritated me after 911, really angered me. Still do. My feeling toward them has hardened considerably over the last 9 years or so. I do not have a good thing to say about them.
I will also say that I never really felt any disrespect toward Bush, Cheney or Rumsfeld, in fact I admired and liked them. It is sad how they were treated.
As a matter of fact, I think Cheney in particular would make a fine president.
#57 Mongoose . . .
I agree. Cheney would have made a terrific President. He has what is needed–courage, intelligence, and common sense.
It’s too bad his health is so poor. I hope someone like Cheney is out there and will run for President. Palin appeals to me for the same reasons. She seems tough and sensible. I wonder where her political path will lead.
Camelot is back with an all-new cast …
I think it was Jim Treacher who said recently that some may be dreaming again of Camelot at this time, but we are reminded more particularly of the Lady in the Lake.
whiskey @ 19:
That may play here or in the UK but not The Netherlands. I have spent considerable time there and can tell you that except for some cases the Dutch are really the nice guys of Europe. They have tried to do well by all but what is happening now is that their extreme liberal policies towards framlings (are members of one’s own species but from another world or culture) has now hit saturation. They allowed high immigration through political asylum pleas. Their social safety net system has been broken by the freeloaders from the outside. It was okay but the framlings, especially those from North Africa areas and Sudan, that are very violent and pushy towards all, have pushed them over the edge. They are now acting, quietly, to reverse the wrongs they visited upon themselves. The actions against those like Pim Fortuyn, Theo Van Gogh, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and others have pushed the limits of their national long patience.
OldSalt – You have my sympathies. I am in the same boat as you. About 10 years from full Social Security retirement benefits and have found my IRA savings decimated. Then laid off last November and not able to find anything. I am an accomplished professional and should be at the top of my game but that is no longer the case. The last 10 years have seen the industry I was in shoved offshore (semiconductor) because of cost points. There are few factories being built now in the US and that is what I do.
I will soon have nothing much left to lose so if the SHTF, well……
As for Kennedy, I cannot say anything good about the man so will STFU.
And 0bama being the last Kennedy brother, well, that may be fitting and not for any good reasons!
James,
a culture of deferring to experts
One problem with Socialism as a cultural system is that ti debases expertise just as it debases the currency. Both rely on symbolic representations of value that are vulnerable to counterfeiting and inflation.
Have you seen this story from last week? Germany expands probe into Ph.D. bribe scheme. There are two ways to look at this. It could be an attempt by the regulators to justify their existence and by officials in the guild of degree granting institutions to limit access to the field by entrepreneurs. Alternatively, it could be as it purports an indication that less qualified applicants found a way to evade the traditional standards demanded to receive the doctorate.
Americans are as fascinated by titles as Europeans are, maybe more so. We are impressed by a Baron or even a Baronet more I think then people who come from the places that produce such creatures. Our research universities of the 19th century were based on the German model and our devotion to the honorific “Doctor” approaches the germanic. At the same time the conditions of centralized bureaucratic administration that accompany a socialized government regulated society create powerful drives to increase credentialling.
The whole idea of the Civil Service is to remove the ability of politicians and by extension managers to subjectively evaluate people. Therefore there is an incentive to rely on theoretically objective criteria, such as academic credentials. What this really does is off load the evaluation onto the subjective opinion of the authority that granted the degree or certificate. The pay scales become tied to the accumulation of certifications and degrees. This results in an industry that provides government workers with courses and certificates that can be used to justify professional advancement. These can have little relevance to the actual work performed, which is as previously noted difficult to evaluate. There becomes a drive to actually allow this activity to replace the work for which the taxpayers hired these putative experts in the first place.
In the public schools in NYC teachers have mandated paid time for attending these courses and thousands are employed in producing these credentials. The doctorate in education (D.Ed.) from Teacher’s College at Columbia, or from Nobody Heard Of It State, will boost the recipients income and promotability to a Superintendency as much or more then a Ph.D. that represents work of more intellectual merit.
Originally the academic degree granted by a law school was a bachelors degree (the LL.B.) which was not even required to enter the profession and which was considered a sign of a liberal arts education. However when the lawyers who established the federal pay scales realized that importance of possessing a graduate degree the humble Bachelors of Laws metamorphosed into the Juris Doctor (JD).
This pressure to credential is resisted within a hierarchy by the desire to be promoted of those who are not in possession of such externally awarded qualifications. This results in two competing dynamics. Those who rely on credentials and those who rely on tenure. The latter is known as “Buggins’ Law” as in Buggins got here first so he gets promoted.
In the Federal government every job lists minimal qualifications for consideration. These include Knowledge Skills and Abilities (KSAs), minimum level of education for a pay grade and experience. With few exceptions service over one year in the next lowest pay grade qualifies for consideration for a promotion. Therefor consider two candidates, one has spent years at universities and has accumulated a BA an MA and a PhD. He is 28 years old and can apply for a position as a GS-9. His starting income will be about $40,000. Another candidate entered government service at age 19 with a High School diploma as a GS-3 and completed a BA from the local municipal college while being advanced in the normal course of service. Promotions from GS-5 up to level GS-9 are often not competitive and it is even possible to reach GS-11 without facing a review beyond general fitness for employment. Law enforcement jobs automatically promote to the GS-11 level or even higher. The even numbers do not really exist before the GS-12 level. It is possible that if he is minimally competent then before he is 30 he will be able to compete successfully for promotion to GS-11. There he will serve as the Supervisor for the entering PhD. The employee who entered at age 19 can then expect a total income, depending on locality, of around $80-100,000/annum. Obviously he is under some pressure to obtain certificates and degrees also, no matter if they are of lower objective quality, to increase his chances or promotion beyond the GS-9 level.
Robert Heinlein had Jubal Harshaw, MD JD refuse to use the honorific Dr until it will not be confused with a Playground Superintendent.
60 Robohobo
Then laid off last November and not able to find anything.
I’m crawling out on a limb here but will ask on the off-chance it might help: do you have the skills to write or edit books, technical manuals, or journal articles in your field? I’m a member of two professional writer/editor groups and I have noticed some job postings recently for technical writers in engineering and related fields. Even if you’re not interested in a complete career switch, this type of writing or editing might help you use your background in industry and bring in at least some income while you look for work closer to your professional skills and interests. Just a thought.
I agree too that Cheney would’ve made a terrific president. Much as I liked Bush, I always wished Cheney was Pres instead of VP. Bush was always much too constrained by pc, whereas Cheney was always clear and straightforward.
Old Salt @27: …it would be quite easy to lose hope over “the American dream”. However, calmady has not changed our faith in God and America, but Obama’s spending, partying, and huge statist expansion near puts a stake in the heart of those dreams.
Old Salt, your post touched me, especially your worries about your children’s futures. I pray that your faith in God will be stronger than your faith in the American dream because, while I still factor in the probability that we yet possess enough of the founding father spirit to stop the current madness, the thought occurs that we also need to brace ourselves for what may be coming – the loss of our material comforts and the loss of our status as a free people. If it does turn out that we do not prevail, then we will need our faith even more than ever before. We will need our families more than ever. And our families will need us more than ever. We will need to be able to turn from despair and say even if… I am referring to the third chapter of Daniel, where Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.”
My thoughts turned into this brace-yourself mode after our town’s townhall meeting last week. I wanted to go so badly and tried like heck, unsuccessfully, to get home in time, but I heard about it and read the account of it in the next day’s paper. There was ten times the normal turnout, which was good, but a lot of the comments left me nonplussed. Several people mentioned that they had been hesitant to attend after hearing all the reports of tumult and discord at other meetings across the country. Comments were made about being sick of the partisanship. Our reliably conservative senator averred that Obama was a man of character. I could have wept at that one. The general tone seemed to me to be one of a puzzling timidity, considering the gravity of the situation we are in. I thought to myself, these folks still are not fully awake. Well, perhaps our town is atypical, or perhaps people were holding back out of a sense of common decency and propriety. Or perhaps when your Senator is declaring Obama a man of character, you have the wind taken out of your sails, I dunno. Anyway, it’s all got me thinking, “Brace yourself.”
Maybe Teddy’s falling out with the Vatican was due to being an abusive fat boozer, a women killer, an unfaithful husband and all around bore.
Or, it could be th3 fact that he was stingy with his $150 million trust. His politics was all over the map. When he negotiated with his adversaries he started at the high end hoping to 75% of what he wanted. He probably used that method on the Vatican. Who knows the reason?
I suspect that 0bama had little use for him and wants him off the TV screen.
Apparently, Teddy’s dad set up a trust worth about $150 million (And, probably a tax free trust at that).
http://tinyurl.com/l4ombp
This reinforces the Taxpayer’s view that the big 0 is at minimum a hypocrite telling the rubes not to “max out their credit cards” when does the same. But, more likely he is the key attraction in the dem’s traveling ‘medicine show’ complete with Bill and Hillary – but he is the key Medicine Man.
“…nothing captures the Obama administration’s atmospherics so perfectly as their vacation at Martha’s Vineyard. The Telegraph writes: “as President Obama flies his family back home to Washington, they will rapidly be followed by an armada of private jets from the tiny local airport. After next weekend’s Labour Day holiday, the exodus of billionaire businessmen, media tycoons and Hollywood stars who summer on the island will be complete. From Oprah Winfrey and Beyonce to Valerie Jarrett and the Clintons, they’ll all be gone. In a matter of days, the island’s population withers from 100,000 to just 15,000.” Camelot is back with an all-new cast…” -Wretchard
[Banks folding left and right]
“Aug. 29 (Bloomberg) — Regulators closed banks in California, Maryland and Minnesota yesterday, pushing U.S. bank failures to 84 this year amid continuing fallout from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.”
“Regulators have closed banks at the fastest pace in 17 years and more are likely as losses mount from soured real- estate debt. A total of 416 banks with combined assets of $299.8 billion failed the FDIC’s grading system for asset quality, liquidity and earnings in the second quarter, the most since June 1994, the regulator said in a report Aug. 27.”
http://tinyurl.com/l2heyk
Karen: Why do they think that? Why are pople on the right afraid to say what it true?
I do not get it. What is wrong woth the GOP?
PA Cat @ 62: on the topic of technical writing jobs, here’s something from writerlist@prospring.net
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Regarding Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and their team, there is great book called “Rise of the Vulcans” that details this cast of characters very well. Bush was almost too decent, it hurt him, to negotiate major education deals with Ted Kennedy for instance, only to be stabbed in the back when it was “heroic” for Teddy to do so. That seemed to happen over an over with the Republicans during Bush’s time.
By far the biggest disappointment was the unforgivable perfidy of the self-admitted beneficiary of affirmative action Colin Powell, and his right-hand man and legitimate hero of Vietnam, Richard Armitage. Both of them worked constantly leaking classified info and undermining the Bush Administration, with Armitage’s exposure of Valerie Plame and Colin Powelll’s coverup of their part in it during the two years when the whole affair became a morale-destroying burden on America during wartime. Those two, especially Powell, are eternal traitors in my book.
#29 Mongoose
Respectfully, if one considers legislating and ruling on the basis of money donated by lobbyists and campaign contributors, and being beholden not to the voters but rather to those who pay one money (what would in any other venue be called bribes), I don’t see any great difference between the republican and the democratic parties. Republicans are stronger on defense, without a doubt, but I think the Republican party’s failure to rein in spending is in great part due to their addiction to political bribes as much as the democrats.
Doc: Well let is not confound issues. You were talking about corruption, not policy.
And that is quite a statement: The GOP has been bribed to not reign in spending. Got any proof for such a sweeping allegation?
I contend that the GOP corruption is pretty lightweight compared to the DEMs. You never hear about Dem corruption. Take the Unions alone. A great deal of Union electioneering support, paid campaign workers, etc. is quite illegal. Or take Clinton and Loral. What about that Billion or so of campaign contributions, contributions gathered in violation of Federal law, that Obama took in last year? Or the Democrats and Fannie and Fredie. What about TARP and all those Money Center Banks and traders (they are almost all democrat you know)? In fact our whole work-a-day federal employment structure is a corrupt democrat racket. You are letting the double standard of our culture color you perceptions.
The GOP does not come within 100 orders of magnitude of Democrat corruption.
Tony; So true about Amritage and Powell: What wastrels. I would put Gates in that den of vipers too. One wonders if there was not some serious payola going on. If the GOP gat any guts they would oust Powell,
The truth is that we half to take over the party at the grass rots. Primaries, GOTV, all of it. It may take decades. Let us see what Palin and Co. get up to after August is over.
62 PA cat: You describe one of my odd jobs. Editing. I was doing spectroscopy at a local university (in the same town as Robohobo) until last fall when soft money funds ran dry. I then left to work for a family business that then had to be mothballed as the financiers went under. I started a small business R&D / consulting firm that currently has no customers with any funds. So, I occasionally make some pocket money by editing papers, publications, and grant apps for folks who are not native english speakers. Basically I edit and polish and can do so from my desk at home.
I have some technical writing education and experience and have actually made more money off those skills in the last several years than my fancy biochemistry and science skills, though they definately complement each other.
61. LotM: “It is possible that if he is minimally competent then before he is 30 he will be able to compete successfully for promotion to GS-11. There he will serve as the Supervisor for the entering PhD.”
As well he should. He has 11 years of actual real life experience on the job. Doing the job and theorizing about it inside the ivory tower are two wholly different things. And I will take the person without papers but with experience over the paper expert EVERY time. Credential requirement for position is the most insidious scam of the “elite”. It exists only to deter and inhibit the entrepreneur. It’s effect is to hobble the advancement of Mankind. It reduces the total amount of time that a man will produce advancements for society by keeping him out of the workplace and in the ivory tower chasing some arbitrary goal. It is an abomination upon Capitalism.
And for it’s use our society sees men with Masters degrees working in entry level positions clerking in the retail industry. Because their worth wasn’t changed by the paper it only delayed their learning of their worth. People with teaching degrees that shouldn’t be allowed near children.
Now, don’t misunderstand my diatribe. I believe in education. Just not the perversion we see today. We saw such explosive growth in America during the 17th – 19th century because we unchained mankind from the European model of succession and hierarchy. And we have slowly fallen back into the pit. Mankind will eventually escape from the pit. It is in our genes to try. Now that the world has seen that we can escape the pit. It is only a matter of time.
I read an article yesterday that prophesied the technological advancement at exponential rates instead of linear rates. We as a race would traverse 100 times more this century than we did last century. Now considering that we went from horse and buggy to real time video blogging and actual pictures of molecules. The complete sequencing of the human genome. It would seem that we will become gods by the end of the 22nd century. Maybe even a pill to convert evil men into good men. I wouldn’t bet on it. And yet we seem bent on throwing it all away on some perverted socialistic ideal. SAD.
JFSanders031,
Your point about the value of experience is well founded but my argument meant to focus on the defects of a centralized government bureaucracy in evaluating talent. In your private business you should be able to consider the strengths of all candidates for a job, both internal and external, and fit the right person into each position. My point is that in government both tools, credentials and tenure, are flawed and serve as improper substitutes for real managerial judgement. Once people who rely on these false criteria are promoted they produce flawed evaluations and countenance political manipulation of the HR process. This is either done covertly or can become codified under EEO processes. This decoupling of evaluations and promotions from honest managerial work related judgement is endemic in the government service. Even worse is that the government seeks through the legal system to force private employers to conform to government HR practices.
Mongoose
And that is quite a statement: The GOP has been bribed to not reign in spending. Got any proof for such a sweeping allegation?
If I was in a churlish mood, I’d reply “got any proof they haven’t been bribed?” I mean, there has to be some explanation for the way the GOP governed, for the way it failed to reign in spending and failed to fight corruption. Sure, both would have been (and have gotten) much worse under Democrat control. When you say:
The GOP does not come within 100 orders of magnitude of Democrat corruption
you are absolutely correct. But simiply being less corrupt than the Democrats is a pretty low bar. I think the major problem the Republican Party has is that it’s leadership settled on a marketing strategy of “better than the other guy.” But when the other guy is as corrupt as the Democrats, there’s a lot of room to be better than the other guy and still no where near good enough.
Don’t get me wrong, throwing a tantrum and letting Democrats get elected is no good. If Republicans were pushing the handbasket at a leisurely pace towards Hell, the Obamacrats strapped rocket engines on and are busy trying to light them off before we take away their matches. But the status quo of GOP leadership is not a reliable ally. The real danger comes from the fact we have incompetent commanders as we find ourselves in a serious political war. Sort of like the US Army and Navy at the outbreak of WWII, we have too many time-servers good at organizing parades and looking good in uniform. We need to shuffle them off the stage and identify effective people dedicated to victory to take their places.
Thanks to S. Bahadur for posting a link to the much-cited publication “Unrestricted Warfare”
I just skimmed a few score pages, paying a little more attention in the section dealing with current events and their implications,
There’s a lot of useful insights, especially into the way the authors (and so presumably their patrons among upper echelons of the PRC gummint) view the motives, goals, and weaknesses of the US.
Some of their thinking seems in places out-of-date, limited by their dogmatic filtering, or just weakened by their mis-understanding of U.S. culture. Maybe that impression is a result of MY cultural bias.
Anyhow, it’s definitely worth studying.
Here’s a link to a US mil forum on military strategy, including unconventional:
http://www.strategypage.com/militaryforums/516-2610.aspx
Mongoose @66, I do not know why so many people on the right seem to be afraid to say what is true. Like you, I don’t totally get it either. Lack of awareness combined with a stubborn I-don’t-want-any-trouble cast of mind? That’s my best guess. Personally, I think Subotai’s acronym, TWANLOC (those who are no longer our countrymen), is dead on. Historically, one’s countrymen was based on blood or tribe. America was different. To be American was to subscribe to the idea of America, regardless of blood or tribe. Obama, and the rest of the wrecking crew, mean to fundamentally transform America. They said as much. Did we not hear? Pre-election, it was common knowledge – common knowledge! – that Obama was the most far-left legislator in Washington. The majority voted for him anyway. Now here we are, at the beginning of the process of transformation into something we’ve never as a nation been before (FDR, LBJ, etc. were pikers compared to today’s leftists) and the right still can’t seem to get it together. TWANLOC rolls on, partly enabled by those on the right whose biggest fear laughably seems to be partisanship. It’s the same phenomenon we saw post 911 when Bush announced that Islam was a religion of peace. Now, thanks at least partly to that idiotic admonition, we have a President and C-in-C who has stated, should it come down to the nitty-gritty, that he will side with the Muslims. Many, today, for whatever reason, are simply unable to recognize the truth, or if they do, to say so. It is enough to make one wonder if we are not the ones the End of the Ages has been waiting for – to be the recipients of The Strong Delusion.
41m Sara:”Men are by nature preeners. It is genetic and evolutionary. You see it in nearly every species. Gay men take preening to a whole new level, mostly because they are competing exclusively with other preeners rather than the more practical female. Gay men also control the women’s fashion industry and have turned fashion into something only suitable for someone with an adolescent boy’s figure. And one of the reasons that fad fashion resides primarily with the under 25 group.”
The first part about ‘men as preeners’ is new to me, but the last part, that the fashion industry caters to dreams of an adolescent boy is something I have considered for a long time. Remember when Jane Fonda’s pride was to force her body into looking like a boy’s body.
Thanks very much!
The first part about ‘men as preeners’ is new to me
What can I say, I watch a lot of nature shows. I didn’t mean it as a dig or an insult. Think about, say, a male peacock with his brilliant plumage as compared to the drab brown female, or that beautiful 8 point buck wearing that beautiful rack with pride for all the females to see, or the prancing stallion with his stable of smaller females, the male bear who rises to his massive height to indicate he is bigger and stronger and ready to take on any challenger, the hippo who displays by opening his mouth as wide as he can as a way of saying, you don’t want to mess with me to another male, and on and on.
I raised a boy and a girl. My daughter would primp before a date, my son would preen every chance he got. I’d catch him standing in front of the mirror checking his muscles, striking poses, and practicing his “I don’t give a sh!t” saunter. When we were transferred and I was starting another house hunting excursion, my daughter pleaded with me to find a house where she would not have to share the bathroom with her brother. Her complaint was that if he wasn’t sleeping he was hogging the bathroom to admire himself in front of the mirror.
JFSanders @ 73:
That gives me chills. I am just finishing watching “Serenity” on UNHD. I suggest you see this movie and study M.Sanger Harris and the Eugenicist movement. THAT particular idea sent millions to their deaths the last century. I want nothing of that path.
To RMH, Mongoose and others above talking about who is the most corrupt, Left or Right. That is the wrong question. Why do we have two parties in a two party form of government who are essentially the same? That is closer. Remember that Congress decides budgetary issues and only Congress can pass the laws that decide those issues. To say that the GoP also spent wrongly misses the point. That is like asking who is the bigger thief. If there are deficits it is because they wish there to be deficits. If there are laws on the books limiting basic Constitutional freedoms, it is because Congress has decided that should be so. The President is an enabler to be sure but Congress is to blame. So, if they are moving against the will of the electorate then either that will has been suborned OR that electorate wishes to act against the best interests of the nation. See the problem? It is a system easily suborned if and only if that is allowed OR moved against the will of the governed. Which do YOU think it is?
Me – I believe we have been misled and deceived.
On another thread one of our regulars included this link. The Sequence
by J. R. Nyquist
The whole series of Nyquist’s writings is worth the time. This years are right on point for current events. You either know this, sense it is true or will not sleep too well for a few nights. As for me, this is info I have known about, but Nyquist puts it all so concisely.
PACat – Like aaron says, even he is having problems here. There just ain’t jack going on in this part of the country. 10% unemployment? Nope. The gov’t says, well, ok, 16%. Nope. My guess is more like 20% and trending worse. End up being 30% or worse. These are perilous times.
BTW – I can be reached at my screenname+53 at gmail dot com. You can see from my delusional screeds that I may have enough talent to really hack up someone’s writing. I do have the possibility of a contract moving a fab from one place in the country to another, at least the specific equipment set I am familiar working with. I should know in the next couple of weeks. aaron – how are your mechanical skills? Know anything about robotics, MES or automation controls? If this thing comes through it will be good money for about 8-9 months but requires travel 100%.
Tony – I will check out your links tomorrow. Thank you.
robo/80; –so good to see you finding Nyquist’s cold message worth remarking. The short essays have broken through and left behind any concern about attracting the fun lighthearted set –tho anyone who appreciates clarity will not be unentertained at least on that level. He’s take-it-or-leave-it all the way. Rorschach.
It’s eerie to read the stuff from a year or three ago –makes one see what a careful watching of patterns can do for a historian’s forecasting skill.
Also, that he specializes in keeping up with the other side’s ex (?) cold warriors means a reader will hear of things that otherwise he just flat would not.
The 2006 perorations on the significance of energy policy, had they been printed in the NYT, might’ve saved some mighty wailing and gnashing, very little of which we’ve yet had to experience tho the writing on the wall alas comes ever better into focus.