Mark Steyn observed that President Obama’s speeches, even when ostensibly about foreign countries are really about domestic politics. His Afghan speech signalled the current state attitude of the cop in Washington and by implication, told the dictators of the world about what they could or could not do. The cop it said, will be walking around the beat between these and these hours and then will attend the Benevolent Association Ball. The bad guys are free to draw their conclusions and they will. They will all over the world. And maybe now the international scene is like an intersection with a green light showing in all four directions. Steyn described the new opportunities for political entrepreneurs:
One of the most interesting developments in recent months have been the emerging alliances of convenience between Iran and its clients, on the one hand, and the likes of Russia, North Korea, and Venezuela on the other. Some of this is simple mischief-making, but, in the vacuum of the Hopeychange, a lot of it shows a shrewd strategic calculation. A nuclear Tehran, for example, serves Moscow’s interest in promoting itself as a guarantor of Eastern European “security.” It’s one of the oldest of protection rackets: You need me to protect you from my psycho friend.
But Steyn’s first principle is that domestic politics is the foundation of everything. Here the situation is a little different: unlike inernational scene the green light is operating in two directions only. The problem is that the light never changes. One side is stuck and the other side runs through unhindered. This creates an instability of its own.
One instability is fiscal. Restraint is fraying. The Sacramento Bee says that California’s debt may reach half a trillion dollars — and it has just issued another earmark laden bond issue. “The days of blithely heaping more and more debt burden on the general fund are over – at least they should be,” California State treasurer Lockyer said. But why should it be? Who’s going to demonstrate restraint by example? The Federal government?
Just days before Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislators finalized a water package, including an $11.1 billion bond issue, state Treasurer Bill Lockyer warned them not to do it.
California is already deeply in debt, Lockyer warned, has huge budget deficits and can’t afford another big bond issue.
“The days of blithely heaping more and more debt burden on the general fund are over – at least they should be,” Lockyer said.
Rahm Emmanuel’s dictum that one should never let a good crisis go to waste has started a stampede which is ultimately undermining the President. Even the weakest left wing interest is determined to get a slice of the pie no matter how little sense it makes. Nothing else explains why people like Kevin Jennings are “Czars” in the Obama White House. He’s not particularly competent or particularly wholesome, but he’s one of the boys and has to be rewarded. If the era of Hopeychange is a go-ahead for aggressors abroad, domestically it is a signal for all of the hacks to make hay while the sun shines.
This go-ahead has caused entropy to grow both domestically and internationally. Whenever something is “too good to last”, it probably won’t. And that creates another source of instability. Whether on the subject of health care “reform” or “climate change” the rapid decline in the President’s political fortunes signals that the window of opportunity is closing; that the lights having been been showing green in only one direction for nearly a year are going to change. The irate motorists who have been held up at the red for so long are spilling out of their cars and making for the signal box. The green light lane goes faster because they don’t want to be caught by the inevitable red. The interesection becomes a very dangerous place.
President Obama is now coaxing the last miles out of his remaining momentum. He is counting on his personal “magic” to get an agreement in Copenhagen, envisioning himself as a literal tie-breaker in a conference that would be doomed to deadlock without him. The LA Times writes:
Increasingly optimistic that decisions by China and India will yield a breakthrough in international climate negotiations, President Obama announced Friday that he would take a more active and dramatically timed role at this month’s climate summit in Copenhagen.
Obama will push back his visit to the conference to its final scheduled day, putting him in a better position to help broker an agreement, the White House announced.
The White House also said the United States would pay “its fair share” of a $10-billion-a-year, short-term financing package from wealthy nations to help developing nations adapt to rising temperatures and make the transition to low-emission energy sources. It’s unclear what that share would be, but Obama included more than $1 billion for such efforts in his proposed 2010 budget.
California Treasurer Bill Lockyer has got it wrong. A soaring debt doesn’t mean that “the days of blithely heaping more and more debt burden on the general fund are over”. It means that now more than ever they should begin. Go back to the example of the interesection. Everyone knows what the lights mean: red means stop; green means go; yellow means go faster. When President Obama runs out of steam and money, he’ll simply think of something else.
embedded by Embedded VideoYouTube Direkt
Hat tip: American Digest
This is just another vile, racist attack on our new Leader.
Like it or not, racists, President Obama rules this country now. He will lead us into a new world of peace and justice.
Your time has passed. Just pay your reparations, shut up, and go away.
Where does Obama go from here.
I’m imagining he’d like to greatly beef up the taxing and enforcing power of the UN, then become the General Secretary, er, Secretary General of it, er, the world.
Hussein Obama shows in the most lurid detail the disaster of affirmative action. “We Are Doomed” as John Derbyshire says in his new book.
The most important driver is money. As Michael Crichton pointed out, the ban on DDT has killed 30 million people, mostly people in the Third World. Climate engineering, if not based on sound science, is likely to kill many more. Anybody who thinks this is about “peace and justice” will soon discover that it is about money and more money.
One of the things that is to easy to predict predict about the next few years and even months is that the poor will get much poorer and a certain subset of the very rich will get much richer. The problem is that people are beginning to understand this: that Socialism is for the few, not the many. It’s not sold that way, but that’s the way it will work out. Thus the rush to sell as many of these products before people open it up and see the actual contents of the box.
What is interesting is the rate at which this discovery is happening. The communications revolution means this is happening at an unprecedented speed. During the Middle Ages it was possible for a king to die and for that fact to remain unknown for years. Often, it would simply be denied. The memory of a powerful king reported deceased by rumor would simply be greeted by denial. The public would dis-believe it. Thus, Barbarossa is simply sleeping, one of the many Sleeping Heroes we inherited from that time of bards and legends. But today the legend of kings truly dies and we may be watching a meme in the process of disintegration.
Some scholar may be able to discover what the modern ability to create and destroy legends rapidly has signified. But there’s one thing that is fairly sure. It’s not February 2009 any more.
Tony Blair tried this. He built up the EU and transferred much of the UK’s sovereignty to it calculating perhaps that he would become the first President of the EU. But he was betrayed by events, forgetting perhaps how parochial things still were and how unwelcome on the continent a Briton was — he was condemned by the very identity he sought to erase. I think President Obama, if he hasn’t learned his lesson at the hands of the IOC and the during his Asian tour yet, will discover that the international “infatuation” with President Obama is more a product of his claques than it is of reality. Other peoples have a very different view of race than the American media does. They don’t see things the way they are portrayed inside the Beltway.
—This is just another vile, racist attack on our new Leader. Like it or not, racists, President Obama rules this country now. He will lead us into a new world of peace and justice.–
This is another signpost – or traffic signal that we are all in bizzaro world. Is this post sarcasm?
Live on a corner and used to have the usual light. Red meant either stop or run it, green was for highway speeds, and yellow caused acceleration up to escape velocity. Campaigned to have it changed to a four-way flashing red. Now, most drivers reluctantly stop and look before heading through and away.
All the US and the rest of the world need is a flashing strobe and siren for governing under the influence (OK, except for sober/ing China.)
The most upsetting thing about the debt that’s being piled on is that it’s ethically unacceptable to grab some for yourself (it’s tainted money, inflicting misery on future generations), but there’s no where to run when the bill comes do. There’s a feeling of helplessness, and it’s enraging.
I would feel better though if the government, in an effort to regain it’s fiscal footing, seized the personal assets of every politician who has served in Congress for the last 50 years. It wouldn’t amount to much, but damn if it wouldn’t feel good. “What are you worried about, Congressmen? – you’ve got Social Security and Medicare!”
red means stop; green means go; yellow means go faster
Heh.
Besides Lawrence’s flashing red, I have to admit that the red-light cameras in LA intersections have cut light-runners dramatically (and slowed down senior citizens to even slower crawls!).
But I’m not sure I quite followed the path from Steyn’s analysis of Obama and Afghanistan, to this fiscal policy. Hmm, I guess the common element is self-interest, not over other-interest but over valid arithmetic and optimal game theory. Obama, in Afghanistan and perforce economically, is playing a game where he (thinks he) maximizes his personal win, even at humongous costs to others – even perhaps Obama’s complete self-destruction at the end.
Lo, how the mighty will fallen.
Obama rules this country now
Umm, we don’t have “rulers” in this country and let me make this clear, the Luo doesn’t rule me. Believe that.
The chickens will come home to roost and the sooner, the better.
#4, Wretchard: So dang true.
Since I’ll be 65 in 2010 I’ve been following the Health care thing with a worried eye since the doctors I trust won’t deal with Medicare/Medicaid direct. With Medicare Advantage I might have stood a chance though it would mean I’d have to find a cheaper place to live. Well I’ve moved that to maybe #3 on my worry list.
For the first time in a long time they aren’t raising the Soc. Sec. payments to adj. for inflation. We are supposed to be in a deflationary recession. However the Summer of 2009 and now the weather in the temperate food growing zones has been not good. So both food and fuel prices are heading up and if we have another bad Summers in 2010 things are going to get expensive world wide which is just peachy keen with the dollar dragging the bottom. But on top of that there are regimes are going to be facing the problem of feeding the populace before the populace feeds on them.
I’m starting to see the possibility of whirlpool of despair starting up and sucking everything down.
Tony Blair tried this. He built up the EU and transferred much of the UK’s sovereignty to it calculating perhaps that he would become the first President of the EU. But he was betrayed by events, forgetting perhaps how parochial things still were and how unwelcome on the continent a Briton was — he was condemned by the very identity he sought to erase.
I don’t think that Blair lose the EU presidency because of his identity, but rather because UK’s policy was denigrating EU since the beginning. Brits were Europeans only when they could ge profit of it.
Plus, Blair has some old frying pans behind him, he was just too nice to american Bush administration when the contenent wanted to take some distance
Also he was very controversed in his own country
uh, got lost somewhere
1. Yes we did:
That was satire, right? Otherwise I’d hate to think that they let you out unsupervised.
continent, not contenent, sorry
It seems to me that Obama and his handlers are proceeding toward a more or less unhidden goal, that of the kind of coup that Chavez has accomplished. The so-called stimulus money is actually directed toward controlling the levers of the vote. Unsustainable debt merely helps toward the goal.
It is true that the focus is on domestic politics and not on foreign distractions. In the news are a series of distractions, some created by the administration: the KSM trial, the White House intrusion, et al. Ecology and energy are other distractions, in themselves of little or no interest to the administration. On the other hand, the health care bill promises great power to the labor unions and great additions to the socialist bureaucracy along with levers for limiting the freedoms of entrepreneurs and libertarians.
I add, Blair didn’t pass, not because of France, Sarkozy was one of his supporter, but rather because Merkel and some other leadershad an aversion for him
AS far as me, I am pleased that he was out, not that the actual result is interesting, I would have preferrered a Luxembourgeois
Have you ever been in a casino next to a slightly inebriated tired fellow in the middle of a losing streak? What most do is double up.
Isn’t the fiercest resistance what happens shortly before defeat? Consider December 16, 1944 in the Ardennes forest.
What does an alcoholic do the week before he is about to enter rehab? He goes on a supposedly “final” binge.
You are right. Green means go. Yellow means go faster. Red means go as long as you don’t get caught.
And while we are contemplating such things, how much do you think the Taliban and AQ can accomplish between July 2011 and November 2012?
Archduke WHO?
Too many green lights in 1914 was what started things. They ain’t finished yet?????
PS: toad I’ll be applying in a few days. Will keep you posted on what I experience.
I can’t stand this carping
Why are we still harping
On things that Obama can’t do
Like solve global warming
Prevent summer storming
Deliver a speech in Bantu
Let’s give the man credit
‘Twas wise man who said it
“To suffer a fool is a crime”
He thinks we’re all fools
For handing the tools
To a man such as he at this time
So cut him some slack
Let’s cover his back
The country’s in very best hands
Don’t mind that the past
Is catching up fast
With the hour glass running the sands
Of COURSE 1. Yes We Did: was sarcasm. It was spelled correctly so couldn’t have been from a Kosevite. Chill, already, and laugh.
Interesting thing about some traffic lites now being equipt with sensors that read coded strobe-lite flashes from approaching emergency vehicles and turn all the lites red for a brief period. Maybe the administration thinks it has cornered the market on strobes?
And M C thanks for the comments re: Blair. I agree. If W is right about his ambitions, it was “an impossible dream”. Although I like VDH’s idea of moving the UN to a third world capitol like Lima and then electing BHO it’s secretary general. Two birds, one stone.
Something really bad is going to happen, but what? Anybody care to speculate?
In “Gone with the Wind” Rhett Butler, the Confederate blockade runner, food speculator, and general scallawag, noted:
“One can get rich building up a society but one can get richer faster when it is being torn down.”
Steyn is half right in that nefarious world leaders will start taking advantage of Obama’s half assed surrender first- hot air blowing administration. The half that he is wrong about is that they have already>/i< started taking advantage of his poor leadership and his ignorance and the ignorance of his backers.
Witness the state of the world today. I won't go into the specifics as everyone here knows what is going on and in the works, and it is not pretty but scary.
Or you can believe like many Americans and actually a lot of others do.
That this last year is a carefully caculated pre-planned, step by step unfolding of a global attempt to destroy the greatest Nation ever on this planet.
I really don’t know. And the not knowing is keeping me up some nights. The total distain and lack of respect for American Citizens by this transplanted Chicago gang of thugs and by the corrupt and our distainful American Congress is almost unbelievable.
Except that this is not a nightmare, but is really, really happening right before our eyes. I fear for my grown children and my five grandchildren and their children.
And I will tell you. I am not a man used to being afraid. I have been through hell, high water, and terrible things in my life and have not had this level of fear before.
I’ll let you in on another fact. Fear breeds resentment, anger and violence.
That is a fact you can take to the bank.
Papa Ray
The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed – where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.
2009 Judge Alex Kozinski
Let me attempt a little fisking for fun of the LA Times article Wretchard quotes.
Based on what exactly? India has announced that they cannot be bought, only rented. While they are graciously willing to accept several billions worth of technology transfers to improve the efficiency and competitiveness of their factories they will do nothing that reduces the future growth of their GDP. China is an even simpler problem to dismiss. They may promise anything but there is absolutely no reason to believe them. They will do as they please and sell you pretty pieces of paper labeled “Carbon Credits” but they might as well say “Blue Sky Developments.” When they get tired of the charade they will be publicly rude, as they were to Obama on this last trip.
This is nonsense on stilts. The media flacks are still acting as if Audacity will allow them to slide a howler past unchallenged. Arriving after the negotiations are concluded means that you have to accept what everyone else has already agreed to. If he was truly going to “broker an agreement” then he would hole up in a room for two days with Brown, Merkel, Hu and whoever India sends. If they did get together they should have something a lot more important to talk about than Al Gore’s magic money machine. Maybe the possibility of nuclear war around the Himalayas would seem more important.
Woody Wilson sailed to Paris and discovered that he wasn’t the global mom showing up to tell the kids to get back to bed. Wilson had to accept the Versailles Treaty that the adults had agreed to while he was busy shredding the Constitution and defending quaint traditions like the KKK necktie party. Fortunately for America Henry Cabot Lodge refused to be stampeded and the Senate rejected the contraption. With the current United States Senate we may not be so lucky. Obama will fare no better than Wilson in dealing with foreign politicians. Wilson’s peers felt that they had no need to sit for his lectures, as they had paid the price in blood for four years to reach their own conclusions. As Prime Minister Clemenceau said “Mr. Wilson bores me with his Fourteen Points; why, God Almighty has only Ten!” Audacity divorced from Reality fares no better than l’audace did against machine guns in WW-I. That lead to the Nivelle mutinies.
What stands out about this is how small the sum being pushed for the US to swallow is. An enormous regulatory and legal regime is being proposed that will fundamentally shift the management of the world economy in the direction of Socialism and the United States is expected to cough up a fraction of $10 billion to make the world safe? This is chump change that is clearly already allocated to bank accounts in Switzerland, the Cayman Islands and China. Dubai is probably off the list this week. One way to look at this is to think of the plan like it was a development project in Chicago and divide by 1,000. If a $10 million plan to beautify the South Side was coughed up by Congress it would be natural to find in the fine print that several millions would vanish in Springfield and City Hall with maybe a quarter million going to someone like Tony Rezco for services rendered. Only a chump would expect anything meaningful to get built. In Copenhagen they are just adding more zeros.
Nearly every modern tyranny has worked under the assumption that there are great things to be gained through the exploitation of destruction.
Some of the more notable ones were able to create the necessary destruction even as they transmogrified their responsibility into useful (to them) blame.
In this modern world this instinct has been virtually codified into science…A consensus.
That’s what this attempt at the third Caliphate is all about…accelerating through the yellow light, doubling bets drunk. What it really amounts to is a star dying nova-like. A bright flash and then nothing.
Let’s all we believer go out in a big ball of fire and maybe Allah will see our dedication and intercede.
I can see the reason for the Great Apologizer’s subliminal sense of kinship…similar situation. If we can’t get socialism through under my administration it will never happen.
The trouble with the guy accelerating through the yellow light, with the family man who blows his paycheck, with the guy who goes out in a big ball of fire, is the collateral damage.
wretchard: “The problem is that people are beginning to understand this: that Socialism is for the few, not the many.”
why 110% of all human beings on the earth don’t know this reflexively by now is a deep mystery to me. a cursory glance at the history of ANY political plan even remotely based on an idea by Marx/Engels would show even the dumbest dolt that this thing doesn’t work, it doesn’t do what it says its going to do. Instead it creates more human misery, murder, and poverty for more people than free markets, open societies, and democratic republics could even think of, not saying the latter are PERFECT but come on!
the only hypothesis that makes any sense to me when I try to answer this is that marxoidism is a religion to the far left, and since they eschewed with disdain traditional organized religion, marxoid ideology filled the void. could it be that marxism is the opiate of the religiousless?
i suppose there are other factors, ie conqueror’s guilt and perhaps a yin/yang universal principle (whenever a majority paradigm comes into being it automatically and instantaneously creates an opposite paradigm). but evidence is evidence.
Something has been puzzling me: All of the incisive, un-relenting, take-no-prisoners investigation that has been directed by the MSM toward a certain golfer’s private life – when will this force of nature be unleashed on the the obviously compromised supporters of AGW?
Yes, but you run the risk that folks will come looking for you after the tearning down part is over. There’s not always a general amnesty, and even when there is, some people, coarsened by the recent bout of every-man-for-himself, don’t abide by it.
I’m up for bail-out tribunals in 2013. If the guilty don’t have the money to pay back their theft by then, we can always take a que from those Peruvian cosmetic gangs.
Thrasymachus #21 — “Something really bad is going to happen, but what?”
Agree that this is not likely to end well. My guess is — something unexpected. Not Iran nuking Israel or China invading Taiwan or any of the other potential disasters for which people are preparing.
Perhaps Mexico collapses, spreading civil war into the US. Or Venezuela implodes, driving the price of oil into the stratosphere? Or Russia uses its firm grip on the EU’s gas supply to make demands at which even the EUnuchs baulk?
Or perhaps this phase of civilization ends with a whimper rather than a bang? The US economy collapses, leading to follow-on collapses in the places with unsustainable trade surpluses, such as China & Germany.
We live in interesting times.
JMH,
I’m up for bail-out tribunals in 2013
Historically some lackeys of an usurper have been allowed to keep their ill gotten gains if they acquiesce to a restoration. In England much of the wealth that had been distributed by Cromwell to the Whig Lords and gentry was kept by them. Some of the displaced old nobility were compensated with lands in Ireland, some were disappointed and other lines conveniently died out. A similar process happened in France where the Bourbon restoration did not mean the eradication of all who had profited under Napoleon. The reason to tolerate the injustice is practical. Where this principle does not hold, as in much of Latin America, violence becomes endemic. Personally I believe that the theft of GM and Chrysler, companies that I had no personal interest in, was unconscionable and that anyone purchasing one of their products is in effect a receiver of stolen goods.
To be blogged under the title “After the Declaration of Breda.”
They say the Clinton Administration served during “The Holiday from History.” Currently, the Democrats who control DC administrate and legislate during “A Vacation from Mistakes.” The problems ain’t getting effectively fixed, but the blame sure is.
Tina Brown over at The Daily Beast says President Obama “…feels colonized by mistakes of the past. He feels trapped by the hand that has been dealt him.” In a lopsided sort of way, I think Americans can sympathize with him. Because we are feeling colonized by the mistakes of the here and now, even while the mistakes are apparently not happening. Any day we expect some plenipotentiary from Imperial D.C. to move into the spare room — and then move US out onto the lawn while demanding rent. After all, a government that can make your house affordable can take it.
And those old Washington Hands doing the dealing? As they shuffle those 2,000 page “decks,” they stack ‘em against US and don’t hardly pretend it’s fair. Instead, they let the folks in the Media pretend for them — which they do. Why, even The Climate Research Unit that lies in Jolly Old East Anglia remains cool, even as it gets hot. Or is it the other way round?
It’s unreal—literally, a world divorced from reality.
As I read Steyn’s piece I thought, “If I try to look at all this from the point of view of foreigners (I’m in the USA), what does it look like?
From Iran: nothing to worry about.
From Israel: We’re on our own.
From Syria: I have to negotiatre a course through all these complications–Shiites, Sunni, Hezbollah, Lebanon, Israel, Iran, changes in Turkey; at least I don’t have to care about the USA, which means I also don’t have to care about the EU because the EU won’t do anything unless the Amis drag ‘em kicking and screaming.
From the EU: It’s nice to not have the US embarrassing us about the disconnect between our professed ideals and our actions. Better find out what it’ll take to buy off the Russians for long-term gas supplies. If it’s only a free hand in Ukraine and points east, and keep the Poles in line, we’ll get off cheap compared to what we would be willing to pay.
From China: steady as she goes, keep our currency undervalued, quietly shift out of dollars but don’t be too noisy about it, good time to get rid of some of those pesky dissidents, maybe turn the screws on Taiwan a bit? Hone our cyberwar capabilities in case we have to make a point to the Amis.
From Japan: Time to establish a long-term modus vivendi with China; US hardly a factor any more and in another 2-3 years of trashing their own economy and defense relationships they will be almost irrelevant in our part of the world. How do we deal wit China, economically, when we both have to export and the US economy won’t be strong enough to keep importing like it has been. Better get a nuclear weapons program started, but VERY quietly.
From India: We thought we could move towards the USA to balance the Chinese, but that’s not looking very promising. Pakisan will be out of control when the Amis leave in 2 years, China has been working hard to cement relations in SE Asia, is it too late for us to develop something there? If we try, how will China respond?
Russia: In next 2 years we can solidify the former Soviet Union space as a security zone, and start looking beyond–with the US staying home, are the new NATO members who used to be in the Warsaw Pact vulnerable? Bet we can at least Finlandize the old War Pact areas and who knows, even Afghan once the Amis leave. Need to keep an eye on China, but they need a lot of what we have (energy and minerals), we oughta be able to manage that. Gotta start setting the stage in Europe for 2010-2011 when Iran has the Bomb we’ve been helping them with, where we can offer security guarantees vis a vis Iran. Hopefully by 2015 we can Finlandize all of Europe, no obvious reason why we can’t.
From Saudi Arabia: Oh, shit.
and so on.
There was an atmospheric piece in the UK Times entitled “How Dubai’s burst bubble has left behind the last days of Rome”. It describes grand and deserted concourses, nearly vacant trains, people drinking champagne surrounded by gleaming towers from which a few lights shine — the stragglers left in the aftermath of an abandoned dream.
But the really tragic figures are either invisible men or offstage. The deferential Filipino waiters with no place to go. The investors in those palaces of dreams whose fortunes have evaporated up into the clouds. Their ghosts haunt the pages of the Times article, but they remain unseen. One of the specters is briefly glimpsed “Ross, who asked not to be identified, is one of countless expatriates who have been caught out by the collapse in Dubai’s once-booming property market. … We met at a coffee shop in Dubai’s vast Mall of the Emirates. Around us were some of Britain’s most familiar high street names — Next, Debenhams, Virgin, Costa Coffee and Harvey Nichols. For now trade is still brisk. “I’m struggling to know what to do really,” he said. …
All around them half-vacant developments stare down — and capacity is planned to double by 2011 — if the money can be found. So why not find the money? Why not keep financing the dream? Why not keep surging voltage through the corpse? Keep it twitching. How much of the activity of the last ten or twenty years has really been about passing little pieces of paper to one another? It is as if somewhere along the line a whole civilization forgot that ultimately there had to be a loaf of bread, a bottle of milk — something tangible at the bottom of the pile — someone to tenant those empty towers. A real living person, capable of taking out the trash or descending in the elevator.
What we got instead was a creative economy. A tomorrow that would always be brighter than today. House prices were going to go up. Today they’re down. But don’t worry, the capacity will double by 2011.
And how much authority does the Western world have to scoff at such fantasy even as it prepares to bind itself to a program of social spending that can’t be sustained by its demography; mothball its reactors, throws away its lightbulbs, cars and even its shoes in the name of something called “climate change”, now so named to hedge against the possibility temperatures may go up or down? What does a civilization which is prepared to put its trust in little pieces of paper called engagements in place of a real man with a real gun standing guard at a real border say to Dubai? How different are the towers being built in Copenhagen or London or Brussels or Washington from Dubai’s?
I fear they are not all that different. And when the last lobster bisque is served and the final glass of champagne is poured, maybe the only constant will be the deferential Filipino waiter, optimistic to the last because optimism is his only defense against despair. That and the closing of the door.
The Saudis are beefing up their National Guard a lot these days. The Gulf Arabs seem to have increased their weapon and training purchasing. I can’t find a source but I’d bet a nickel they are hiring in more “mercenaries” also.
49erDweet,
Good grief–Lima is far too nice a place, and what have you got against the Peruvians anyway?
Relocate the UN to Ougadougou or, even better yet, Harare.
RE Lockyer, the same thing is going on all over blue-state America—NY, IL, MA, MI. The pols simply cannot change their habits. Ideally the Stimulus gave them an opportunity to soften the landing, but (predictably) they just took the money and didn’t do anything to prepare for the future. Now, talk of another Stimulus but that is a real longshot, and even if there is one it just pushes it out another few months.
They just cannot deal with the fact that they are severely overstretched, their budgets were starting to fall apart even during the bubble (2006-07) before their revenues went south, and that the recovery is going to be very, very weak.
Basically, the political process, as a way to deal with public issues, has broken down in Washington and most of the large blue states (TX being an exception). State and local govt are not under the Federal bankruptcy code, but in every other respect you will see states and municipalities reach the point of insolvency in 2010. CA is already there, paying vendors in scrip and withholding more income tax than people will ultimately have to pay. IL and NY are close.
Tina Brown over at The Daily Beast says President Obama “…feels colonized by mistakes of the past. He feels trapped by the hand that has been dealt him.”
Who has not been? Everyone literally arrives in the middle of an ongoing play. In this Obama is no different from anyone else. And besides, he applied for the job of President of the United States. He wanted to sit at the table; worked hard for it. Raised three quarter of a billion dollars to do it.
And now he finds it’s not all its cracked up to be. One could sympathize with that. Everyone has felt something similar in his life. But there’s nobody around to feel sorry for most of us because the others are too busy with their own problems to offer much sympathy. He shouldn’t feel too bad. President Obama will at some point be part of that history too, a component of that parade of mistakes which are going to be heaped on someone else. And then they will curse him too. It can’t be helped. He should remember what Gandalf said, “all we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. But instead we will have Copenhagen, where we can seek absolution from the rocks.
Kirk Parker.
Mea Culpa. It is a nice place, but it was also easy to spell, maybe? Or possibly it was just one of VDH’s second suggestion on his second page.
But I like your idea better. Or somewhere without sidewalks and curbs so they can park their cars without getting tickets they can tear up and throw away.
Thank you for the opportunity but I am not worthy to edit 37. wretchard:.
From FoxNews
EPA set to declare Carbon-Dioxide a Public Danger.
Is there no District Attorney in America who can get a Grand Jury to declare the EPA a Public Danger? Better yet, thinking back to my earlier comments about the social benefits of ridicule as a tool for protecting the community without resorting to violence, we should find a judge willing to issue a writ that declares them “Dickless.”
It is true that ridicule is a potent weapon that has been used to prepare people to accept violence directed at a target but properly used it can remove a threat before it reaches the capacity to be dangerous.
To be blogged under an obvious title.
49erDweet,
Re VDH: he’s one of my favorite Democrats these days–with Scoop Jackson and Daniel Patrick Moynihan gone, you have to go with what’s available…
Nevertheless he and I seem to differ on the worthwhileness of said organization. There are some small parts here and there worth preserving, but as a whole it should just be renamed the Useless Debating Society and banished to the some unfortunate place.
Yes We Did @ 1 said:
Please justify your slur. What makes it racist? Clarify or be quiet.
Rules? He is not the King of America. He was elected it’s Chief Executive and CiC of the Armed Forces. Please use links or direct quotes to show that he “rules”. Same rules apply.
You can come get your reparations. Good luck with that.
Where do the Demonrats find idiots like this anyway? Searching under rocks at the local United Blood Services?
Josh @ 8:
On steroids. Pathological levels of it. It is the only coherent explanation.
Thrasymachus @ 21:
Concerning what? Copenhagen? Please be more specific and this crowd can get into it for you.
KK Gomez @ 27:
KK, watch the Magicians OTHER hand. All of this TiggerW junk is just distraction. It may well be that since the Senate is meeting over the weekend that HealthScare will come roaring out the gate come Monday. Who know? But the Woods distraction is just that.
LOTM @ 30:
Well, said. It solidified my own scattered thoughts. I purchased a GM car in ’07 – the first GM vehicle I had bought in decades. Immediately, when Pontiac was declared a dead brand, the value of it fell in half. I am Oh So Pleased with Gov’t Motors to say the least. Thank g-d the spouse still drives a Ford.
wretchard @ 33:
Dang. It sounds like a line straight out of “Atlas Shrugged”. If the decline continues then that Philipino waiter can maybe squat in one of the abandoned units while he scrapes to get by. Better there, I suppose, than Manila. When will he shrug? Who is our version of John Galt?
The meme seems to be in the US that times will never be the same again. I ask why? Or why not? Why settle for mediocrity? We do need to make some structural changes and I think that after the ‘Fall’ or ‘Crash’ or whatever is coming that we can. Then, like a Phoenix, arise from the ashes hopefully a bit wiser. And with those Marxist ideas discredited for another space of time. Then someone will once again get the harebrained idea to make man “better”. And we will cull the herd once more.
wretchard @ 37:
Well, no sh-t. He wanted the job. He got it. The people expected, nay demanded, that he would lead. He promised he would.
And what has he DONE? Voted present for the most part. I have ZERO sympathy for this creature. History will not treat this fool well unless he stops flitting about the globe making campaign speeches and stays at his desk and GETS TO FRAKKIN’ WORK. The time for his “we inherited this _____ (fill it in)” is past. The house is on fire and he talks and talks and talks. He needs to put out the fire himself because g-d help him when the real fire brigade shows up.
[/rant off]
Mark Steyn writes that Copenhagen is dead on arrival. No one in the oil-bearing nations is going to keep that oil in the ground. It will be extracted and sold and burned. PERIOD.
Same with China’s coal, and Africa’s, and I wager Australia’s. So Copenhagen is DOA. Obama can issue executive orders all he likes, the Dems will happily impeach and convict the guy if they see themselves swinging from the rafters (metaphorically or otherwise). Think Virginia’s, or Nebraska’s, or Ohio’s Senators want to give up a sweet gig as Senator and actually WORK? Heck even lobbyists have to work and produce RESULTS.
Obama is the typical Black guy, a beneficiary of affirmative action who has never ever been required to produce results. Ever. So he figures he can do what he’s done all his life, give his song and dance, and people will applaud his “genius.” He’s going to fail, and fail spectacularly. Not just with Copenhagen. Israel striking first, or Iran striking first, or Pakistan and India warring with nukes, or Pakistan’s nukes being given to AQ, or Russia simply invading Poland, or what have you, there is a price always to be paid for weakness. Heck Russia has to make examples because AQ and/or the ISI helped the Chechens blow up a train! Without getting caught.
EVEN PUTIN has to reapply fear.
Heck the FT had a story about how the columnist hates the “green” light bulbs that give him a headache and won’t shop at his favorite bookstores because of it. And that’s Gentry Liberalism Central.
The net result of California’s irresponsibility is to insure Chuck Devore defeats Barbara Boxer (Fiorina will be tagged, effectively, as an Arnold RINO) and Whitman defeats Jerry Brown for Governor.
All in all, this is how societies end. The ruling class fails to perceive that the obligations run both ways. Even the warlords of old understood that the peasants they oppressed needed to be protected against the other predators in the world, for if they eat all your peasants, there will be no peasants to eat at all.
But the truly decadent don’t care if the sheep have no food and the wolves are killing them. We have a party to attend–and there are so many sheep– we can’t be bothered with them. There will always be enough sheep for us to live off of.
That’s Obama, Pelosi, and Reid. That’s the environment they understand. There will always be someone to take from, and anyone who challenges you can be bribed by taking the goodies from someone else to give to them. Its worked in Chicago politics for a long time. How could it ever go wrong?
And then one day you find that your wealth has gone. The sheep are all dead or they have run off.
A good case can be made that this dynamic led to the fall of the Western Roman Empire. And its happening here.
Obama is the typical Black guy
Now honestly Whiskey, I’m not sure there’s such a thing. At least, not without a lot of qualifications. The black guys in Africa are certainly different. What kind of information is conveyed in the phrase typical Chinese, or typical Indian or typical white guy? It’s a bad descriptor and there are lots of variables in the model which have much more explanatory power over human behavior.
But I’ll grant that various stereotypes exist, even though they are often meaningless, and the tragedy of Barack Obama is that in the end he was marketed as a stereotype anyway. The Left sold him as a typical black guy, just one of a different sort, the type they were selling, but they put him on the political shelf as a package and for that reason alone I won’t go along with the package deal. It’s not that my package is better than their package. It’s the packaging itself I object to.
If you look at every leftist poster ever produced in the last 100 years they’re always full of these tokens. The worker in his cap and hammer, the peasant with his sickle, the intellectual with his book and glasses, the soldier with his scowl and clenched fist and in the distance, beckoning is the rising sun of whatever you get when you buy into these stereotypes. Gee don’t we ever learn?
I remember telling some Party member once that in all my travels I had never seen an actual farmer or worker or soldier who looked anything like the figures they depicted on the posters. What pray tell, were the hammers for? Ever been in a factory and seen people with hammers? And nobody wore bib overalls. Nobody used these sickles any more — at least, not the way they were conventionally drawn. And you know, it didn’t make a lick of a difference that everything I said was true. Ask Shephard Fairey. He’s still drawing his stereotypes in the same way. And they say he’s revolutionary.
Hell no. Fairey’s just stuck on some planet where all these archetypes exist. And he’ll never get off. He’s drawing magical trading cards. I think that the first act of rebellion, by every man and woman, is to tell everyone who sells these stereotypes — including the left — that it doesn’t work that way. I keep asking myself sometimes whether Barack Obama doesn’t secretly prep himself each morning to wear the uniform of the angry something or other and wink at himself when goes to the office. Maybe Irving Berlin had the last world.
There’s no people like show people
They smile when they are low
Even with a turkey that you know will fold
You may be stranded out in the cold
Still you wouldn’t trade it for a sack o’ gold
Let’s go on with the show
Let’s go on with the show!
It’s for the benefit of the MSM and the guys who think they are the bee’s knees. See, they can clap! They can clap!
If Obama wasn’t a disciple of Cloward-Piven, what would he be doing differently? If he doesn’t sympathize with Islam over the west, what would he be doing differently?
It’s obvious why the stimulus money isn’t being spent now, it’s a huge slush fund for future projects. For what, though? Buy future elections? Obama controls the media, he shouldn’t need to do that. The left controls the education system, they’ve created a permanent drone population that will vote for them.
More to the point, what’s his endgame? It can’t be mere chaos and destruction, because as the adage goes fire is a dangerous servant. You can’t guarantee you’ll be on top when the carnage stops, and you can’t guarantee there will be any wealth left to expropriate once the smoke clears.
The most curiously tragic aspect of so many Big Government programs is that so often they have the exact opposite effect of that intended.
Welfare programs are supposed to Help The Poor. Instead they just perpetuate it. Since the West became interested in Africa’s poor the percentage of the world’s poor there has skyrocketed.
Back in the mid-80’s, following a spate of spying scandals, the decision was made to fix this by reducing the number of security clearances in the DoD by a set percentage, across the board. It was obvious from the first that this would merely ensure a larger number of uncleared personnel had access to classified information.
The Space Shuttle was supposed to reduce the cost of space launch while increasing its utility. The result was the highest cost and most limited launch vehicle ever developed.
The CRA was supposed to increase the number of people who could buy a home. Instead we have an incredible number of home buyers who are in default.
Tax hikes are intended to increase revenues. But in New Jersey a tax hike on the wealthiest resulted in a marked decrease in the amount of money collected from that group. The same thing seems to be happening with the cigarette tax increase in Florida.
Peace initiatives not based on first attaining victory but instead just on making peace only ensure more war.
And of course, most importantly of all, such programs always lead to more such programs. Practical failure is not an impediment to bureaucratic success.
Perhaps we are overlooking the upside of announcing an End of War date. Knowing the war is scheduled to end in July, 2011, the Taliban and Al Qaeda will (or certainly should!) cooperate and do everything they can to not delay the end of the war. See, it’s a win-win! President Obama’s policy will be shown to have reduced violence and brought peace in Afghanistan, so we can go home and do a Mission Accomplished parade, and since this one will be as real and undeniable as Global Warming, the media will trumpet it like V-E Day.
And then, after we’re gone and not wasting money on war anymore, we can get back to doing what we do best, giving everyone free healthcare and green electric cars. And Al Qaeda and Taliban can get back to the peaceful pursuit of bringing the fruits of Islam to the world, as they always do.
Remember how great things went in Southeast Asia once the evil American warmongering imperialists were defeated by the noble nationalists.
LifeofTheMind #40:
Reference my #48
Do you think it is a mere coincidence that just as decades of pollution controls are completed that really did clean up the air that a Federal Bureaucracy finds another pollutant, a situation that would have been a “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In” skit in the 60’s?
When my Mom worked in a state pollution control office, representatives of a company that specialized in removing asbestos were visiting and someone asked them what they would do when all the asbestos was cleaned up. There response was “Ha! That’s nothing! You should see how big the fiberglass removal business is going to be!” And I have no doubt they expected to find an enthusiastic Federal proponent of doing just that; it appears that so far they have not been successful – but what a Stimulus package that would be, so let’s keep hoping!
LOTM
Wilson had to accept the Versailles Treaty
http://www.rpfuller.com/gcse/history/2.html
“Most of the points are very general: not all of them stated specific changes. Britain and France looked upon the points as being too impractical, they thought that Wilson was hoping far too much. France and Britain had used much of their wealth on the war, and France had suffered two German invasions (1870 & 1914). France wanted to ensure that no third attack would ever take place, and wanted Germany to be reduced to a minor European State.
…
Reaction of Britain, France and the USA
1.Most people in Britain had wanted revenge and so had gained some satisfaction. Lloyd George was satisfied that Britain had gained most of Germany’s colonies, so that after 1919, Britain could recover its wealth and power.
2.France, however, was not satisfied that Germany had been weakened enough. Marshal Foch of France said in 1919: ‘This is not a peace. It is an armistice for twenty-one years’. By this he meant Germany had not been weakened enough and would rise again in twenty-one years. He predicted Germany’s rise correctly. Britain and America promised help to France should Germany threaten her in the future.
3.Most remarkable of all, America refused to ratify the treaty. Wilson was a Democrat. The republican part in America opposed Wilson’s involvement in Europe, and in the autumn of 1918, the Republicans had a majority in Congress. Congress refused to sign the Treaty of Versailles because:-
a.Republicans were against Democrats
b.Republicans wanted ‘isolation’
France still felt insecure, because Britain would not support France without American aid.”
hmm the “mom” was part of “the big three”
and mom didn’t want to be left over in the partition of the ottoman and german empires though, this american involvement into WW1 was motivated by that, also this was the first official american world commitment, but still at the benefit of the Brits, which wasn’t the case at the end of WW2 anymore, where America finally found her righteous world place
‘Thrasymachus #21 — “Something really bad is going to happen, but what?”
Depression? Revolution? War?
It doesn’t bear thinking about.
RWE,
Do you think it is a mere coincidence that … a Federal Bureaucracy finds another pollutant …?
That should be known in the literature as “The Polio Problem” or the “The March of Dimes Dilemma.” Actually I just made up the terms but here is hoping they catch on. Just because you have solved the problem that induced people to expend time and money on you is no reason to go out of business. The only thing that a bureaucracy is efficient at is self perpetuating.
The only intelligent thing to do with asbestos is to paint it over, to seal it, and then leave it alone. Asbestos was a miracle substance that saved lives if properly handled. If you are caught in a fire you want to find an old asbestos blanket that someone forgot to dispose of. You do not want to open up the emergency use only locker to find a note from Milo Minderbinder at the EPA stating that the blanket has been removed for your own protection. The lower floors of the World Trade Center had asbestos installed. The law changed during construction so none was installed in the top 2/3rd’s of the Towers. If the Twin Towers had been built as designed then lives would have been saved.
Forty years ago the Left started a hate campaign against Dow Chemical. Agent Orange does contain dioxins and their use does entail a severe risk of future health risks. As General Healy said to me 30 years ago, “Hell I threw that stuff out of the helicopter door with my bare hands. We had to cut back the jungle. It saved my boys lives.”
To be blogged under the title “Problematic Prophylactics.”
46. wretchard:
Obama is the typical Black guy
……
Obama Is a Long Legged Mack Daddy – Pastor Manning
Off topic:
Is Islam a threat to America?
BTW…I don’t appriciate my comment last night being deleted. If the truth hurts or you think it hurts your blog…your being very unfair to yourself and your readers.
Papa Ray
#44 whiskey
Well said. But “heck” just doesn’t seem the right word for me or you.
Papa Ray
The two components of Agent Orange were both sold (individually) retail and widely used as herbicides here in the US until the one with dioxin byproducts (2,4,5-T) was banned, in the late 70s IIRC. 2,4-D is still used. If I understand, the health problems in Vietnam primarily resulted from sending troops into areas that had just been sprayed, causing high exposure levels.
LOTM
Oh, I completely agree. I think though that you need to strike a balance between punishing enough lackeys (and harshly enough) to give people second thoughts about joining in in the future and granting enough amnesty to avoid the endemic violence.
Part of the reason we have this problem today is the thug element of society is no longer frightened of the Decent Folks. We’ve become too damn decent, not enough Righteous Wrath. Now, Righteous Wrath certainly has it’s dangers. Like so much about human nature it’s good in small doses and disasterous in large ones. Our natures are as like fire, a useful servant and a dangerous master.
But we’ll need a little cleansing fire or else theft-via-government will become endemic too. It’s certainly par for the course with our current lot. The question is will the next (hopefully peacefull via that ballot box) US revolution bring in a new group that rejects such theft, or will it become the new SOP.
Whiskey @44: Do you have some special inside information or a gift at clairvoyance? “The net result of California’s irresponsibility is to insure Chuck Devore defeats Barbara Boxer (Fiorina will be tagged, effectively, as an Arnold RINO) and Whitman defeats Jerry Brown for Governor.”
I’ve been hoping for Boxer’s defeat for so many elections that I can’t keep up, but it never happens. And when it comes to RINO’s, do you really think Fiorina is a worse RINO than Whitman?
Rasmussen says “A new Rasmussen Reports Election 2010 survey in the state shows Boxer leading former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina 46% to 37%. Five percent (5%) like some other candidate, and 12% are not sure how they will vote.” and “Boxer leads state Assemblyman Chuck Devore 49% to 39% this month, after leading by nine in October. Five percent (5%) prefer another candidate while 13% are undecided.”
As for Governor, Jerry Brown is the smartest Democrat in the state. Even though he is tainted by his ACORN behavior he is a very clever politician. During the Proposition 13 era he pivoted in a nanosecond from opponent to supporter. Steve Poizner is more to my liking than Meg Whitman. And remember, this time Brown will be running against a (nominally) Republican administration.
But none of it will make a bit of difference as long as the Legislature is as one-sided as it is and as long as the State Worker contracts continue to strangle the state.
Besides, the voters whom you are counting on have been moving out of California and are being replaced by voters looking for State handouts.
(Sorry for all this inside baseball analysis.)
#10 TOAD; Didn’t the MSM tell you that congress got an auto raise which 3 times they refused to surrender. And our beloved federal workers received an across the board 2% raise, reduced by The Won from 2.4% based on his emergency economic powers. As one federal worker wrote on some blog, which one I don’t remember, that he/she was not worried about inflation because they always receive across the board pay raises. Couple that with, now decent pay scales, excellent healthcare and generous (the government portion greatly unfunded), early retirements, they have nothing to worry about. Oh, maybe you were not a federal worker, well neither was I, but hey, we have to support them with our taxes on our retirements and SS. And the federal payroll is growing with all of these new programs. I just can’t wait for our free, deficit neutral ObamaCare to kick-in; ah, I forgot that I’ll be on Medicare which will be cut by $500 billion. Death panels here I come.
Batman, as a former Californian who left decades ago all I can say is that there has been more than enough water under that bridge that if the electorate of that once great and wonderful state wanted to do something about it they would have done it by now.
Yes, certainly there are corrupted elections, but it is still a fact that if the majority of the voters would have voted in large enough numbers they would have chucked the whole of the Liberal Democrat machine and their RINO enablers long ago.
We have to face the fact that this is what the voter “wants”.
The best we can hope for is to localize the cancer and hope it does not spread further to other states.
I truly fear, however, that California is our national future.
In the end, enough Boomers have to see the light and move hard toward the right.
The key institutions controled by the left, which are in fact most of the key institutions of this society, have to be to some degree openly shown to compromised and discredited for this to happen. I believe that much of this age cohort does not much care about the future of their nation or their civilization–in fact I think the very concept of them having a nation and civilization eludes a great many of them. Indeed, i wonder of they even care about the future of their own children. They have to be shown that their future is at risk to a pack of liars that are stealing their old age from them. the Bail out shenanigans, the AGW BS and the attendant assistance of a corrupt Media are key point ith which to start this education.
(note: I am a boomer myself as I know are many here on BC. Please, I am not talking about every single boomer, but the collective effect of the cohort.)
Much hinges on the next couple of elections and the leadership that emerges.
If we cannot get leadership that understands that we are in a real point of crisis and that we must begin a decades long restoration of our culture, then we are headed fo sad fates. It is quote possible to turn all aroun–it is just all the result of Leftist machinations–but these machinations must be articulated in the mainstream as facts, accepted as real by the majority and firmly rejected.
it may be that state like California has to be forced into sanity by outside forces.
Never has socialism fallen from power on it own.
BTW, the American Left wants America destroyed. They think of little else, except perhaps about raising China or the EU to world powers. It is not a case of decadents ignoring what is essential to their survival. It is a case of decadents actively destroying their world.
And are they merely decadents? I would say that they are barbarians and perverted traitors, and of the most bestial sort. It is easy to compare this with Rome, but the analogy soon breaks down under deeper analysis. This has been wrought in a handful of years, and it has really been done out in the open. It is less a matter of rot, though there is obviously plenty of rot to see, but rather a case of actively hacking away at the foundations of our civilization, society and culture. Rome took centuries to fall, and believe it or not, this was not because they lacked twitter of Facebook.
What is to blame? Perhaps it is a simple as universal suffrage. Perhaps humankind does not wish to be free and prosperous.
Whatever it is, it is preposterous. Here is a nation and a civilization astride the world that has thrown in all away in less that 20 years. This is new to history so far as I can see. A Nation achieves the greatest level of freedom, prosperity and accomplishment–we even walked on the moon, for Pete’s sake–and is hustled into throwing it all away by some of the most hideous and talentless mediocrities in history.
There is no real necessary reason for this fall. It has literally been self willed by the most pampered elements of our society.
You can talk all you want about letting a portion of the “keep their wealth” but this is really beside the point.
Wealth in the world, in this fake economy they have created,is really nothing more than the control of institutions. There is little “real wealth” to “keep” otherwise. Not in a Globally rationalized economy with the USA on the short end of the stick. What ae we talking about here? Letting them keep California and half the universities? This will hardly work. The whole corrupt ediface must come down. That is what “restoration” means. They cannot keep “their wealth”, for their “wealth” is just what is systemically the problem.
But more importantly, the cataclysm that will follow after their betrayal will sweep all in the West away. There will be nothing to “keep”. Thy imagine that their foreign masters and clients will reward them with provincial ruling powers, They are wrong.
This is the true insanity of it all. They wish to destroy their civilization and prosper. This is an impossibility.
How dangerous does this administration become when they realize that not only are they not going to get re=elected but that history is going to rank them somewhere between Warren Harding and George III on the list of American leaders?
It is pretty hard to imagine how these bozoos can turn this thing around. Do they react to their own failures by blaming someone else like maybe the unenlightened and unwashed proles out there in flyover country? How is their own party going to react when it is reduced to little more than a rump in some inner-city congressional districts and college towns? The Obama administration’s failure is so complete and so dramatic that it might actually pose a threa to our whole political system. If climategate has taught us anything it is that the elites on the Left no longer believe in anything except their own right to make all the rules.
Come gather round people wherever you roam and admit that the waters around you have grown because the times they are a changing.
I agree substantially with Mongoose, as I usually do. His comments are intellectually astute and conceptually very deep.
Barack Obama is a nihilist; in fact, he is suicidal. But as an extreme egotist who identifies himself with the meaning of Western world history, his suicide (in the nature of the case) must involve the destruction of that historical narrative. In short, he wants to drive us all over the cliff. Hitler had a similar pathology.
It is going to take a major effort to restore the meaning and value of our civilization to anything resembling its former glory, and by that I mean at least a generational effort. To purge the government, the universities, the corporate class, and the collective consciousness of our race of all traces of leftism is a task so gargantuan that its execution can scarcely be imagined; still it has to be done.
Since even the journey of ten thousand miles requires that the first step be taken, I propose this as a modest beginning: Let us begin, right here and now, the popular movement to call on President Obama to step down.
It has to start sooner or later. The resentment builds and the blunders multiply. There are many men of good will here at the BC who have the same inarticulate sense that events are escalating to a level which can no longer be born. It is time for that voice to awaken and be heard. Whatever happens, we owe this to ourselves and our posterity.
Obama, it’s time for you to resign.
I would feel better though if the government, in an effort to regain it’s fiscal footing, seized the personal assets of every politician who has served in Congress for the last 50 years. It wouldn’t amount to much, but damn if it wouldn’t feel good. “What are you worried about, Congressmen? – you’ve got Social Security and Medicare!”
My response to your idea is so visceral that I can hardly contain myself. That is the closest that we can get to decapitating the class of authors-of-misery that I have read.
It is What Needs To Be Done.
Matt Beck, #65: It is going to take a major effort to restore the meaning and value of our civilization to anything resembling its former glory, and by that I mean at least a generational effort. To purge the government, the universities, the corporate class, and the collective consciousness of our race of all traces of leftism is a task so gargantuan that its execution can scarcely be imagined; still it has to be done.
What you’re describing is nothing short of a cultural (counter-)revolution. The bitter irony is that such a gargantuan task may well have to be highly centralized in nature just to keep it from being pulled apart at the seams in a thousand different directions by smaller sub-movements and individual counter-revolutionaries with their own specific ideas and agendas. The closest historical example to this would be Mao’s China – not exactly a comforting thought, to put it mildly.
Perhaps even more ominously, it’s not just the institutions you mentioned that we would have to either win back or defeat – it’s a huge swath of the American public, among them (at least if my own wildly divergent extended family is at all representative of the nation as a whole) a substantial portion of our own loved ones. It seems to me that this is what could strangle any attempt at a counter-revolution in its crib. What happens when irreconcilable ideological differences collide head-on with unconditional love?
#21,
Something really bad is going to happen, but what? Anybody care to speculate?
Follow the money…
Obamao is the hand picked boy-king of the owner of the Corruptocrat party, George Soros.
One of George Soros’s specialties is the collapse of countries currency. he has done it to other countries, he tried to do it to the UK and failed.
Every action Obamao and his merry band of czars has taken is designed with one goal in mind-the looting of the US treasury and the total collapse of the Dollar not only as a reserve currency but as an instrument of international trade. It will also give Obamao and the Corruptocrat totalitarian regime the “crisis” they desire to totally suspend the Constitution and the Bill of Rights which will more then likely lead to a civil war.
If they succeed in doing this, and they are so close to doing so right now, it will lead to a disaster not only in the US but worldwide. One that will take a hundred years to recover from. One that will lead to wars, death, starvation, etc.. Your grandchildren will live an existence that resembles the 17th century, not the 20th. They will live in the second coming of the Dark Ages.