Harvard yard collects myth. John Harvard’s statue, for example is locally known as the “Statue of the Three Lies”. The inscription claims that it depicts John Harvard, Founder, 1638, but John Harvard did not found the university, which was founded in 1636. And the statue really depicts a student, who the sculptor used as a model. Thus the Three Lies.
Another myth is that somewhere in Harvard Yard during World War 2 a distinguished group of faculty members worked out the physics of creating man-made firestorms. The legend probably derives from the work of Dr. Louis Frieser, whose Harvard research team beat chemists from Du Pont and Standard Oil to develop napalm, a substance which needs no introduction, after much other work in incendiaries.
But it is the concept of a firestorm which lends itself to the most analogues. Joseph Stalin once remarked that “quantity has a quality all its own”. The idea applies to a firestorm because it is based on the concept that if you create a fire big enough and of the right shape, it eventually transforms itself into a forced draft furnace. The fire itself comes alive and hunts abroad like a living thing looking for ever more to consume.
A firestorm is a conflagration which attains such intensity that it creates and sustains its own wind system. … A firestorm is created as a result of the stack effect as the heat of the original fire draws in more and more of the surrounding air. … This wind shear is capable of producing small tornado- or dust devil-like circulations called fire whirls which can also dart around erratically, damage or destroy houses and buildings, and quickly spread the fire to areas outside the central area of the fire.
One of the most horrifying phenomena associated with firestorms is the flame devil. These are columns of intense heat which rampage down streets, melting asphalt underfoot and pursuing terrified survivors like an apparition from hell. A firestorm is by its nature an out of control conflagration. It stops only when it has sated itself. It is interesting that firestorms have returned to Cambridge in another form. What started out as a foregone exercise to fill the Senate seat formerly occupied by Ted Kennedy in Massachusetts has gradually turned into an incandescent furnace drawing in national figures and forces from all over into a kind of cauldron. What comes out of the smoke at the end of the process will be known after Tuesday.
The Boston Globe says Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Bill Clinton, John Kerry have come in other their respective sides. President Obama has arrived to campaign for Coakely and says that his entire agenda hangs in the balance. Even the little guys are getting into the act. A reader send me an email describing a curious and possibly isolated incident at a Friendly’s involving some persons spray painting cars which bore a Brown bumper sticker. “None of this has been reported in the local news”.
A lot of fuel is being dropped into Massachusetts? What will be the result? Open thread. (Please be civil and reasoned in your commentary)
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“We see, as through a glass darkly…”
Who can believe that it will begin in Massachusetts? Yet, Hope springs eternal.
Interesting times for sure.
Wretchard, awhile back you suggested that the Left and Right would soon confront each other in a “meeting engagement”, similar to the Battle of Jutland.
I would suggest that Tuesday is Der Tag.
As for the “flame devils”…if Brown wins big, the Left will explode with self-righteous anger and fracture the Democratic Party coalition.
The result? Brown 50.6%, Coakley 46.2%, Kennedy 3.1%
And the Obama administration will continue to ram health care “reform” down our throats.
And they lose even more national support as a result of this.
I’m thinking it will be about June 2010 when Obama will decide he needs to be a moderate. And almost noone will believe it. A one-term president is his destiny.
Spray paint? That sounds about right. Let’s pray for Brown’s success.
Whatever the result, Obama has had it. He’s over. Resistance only stiffens from here on out. The rats leave the sinking ship.
I must say that these elements of vandalism are beginning to annoy me.
And it always seems to be liberals attacking the property of conservatives. (I live in the Bay Area and have heard too many stories of people with anything Republican showing on their car or lawn getting their paint scraped, their tires slashed, their houses egged/teepeed.)
Why is it always the liberals who do this? If I could know reality I would wager that the numbers are a hundred to one liberal to conservative. Of course it has to do with property rights and the rule of law.
It would do me good to know that some of these people are caught and punished.
“quantity has a quality all its own”.
I believe that is paraphrased Marx, playing Hegel.
Yes, we have to shut up and take it. Dresden was bombed, and it is questioned, yet the Nazis killed millions and we are to blame. Amazing…
“War is hell”
For a year or more I have been in a funk.. The direction of the nation has scared me more than at anytime in the 50 years I have walked the planet.. And just as I was at my blackest a crack of light started to penetrate the darkness.. I was not alone, nor was I crazy…
Now the tipping point has arrived, it will not be stopped, it’s a tsunami, regardless of Brown’s victory (or not) the shot has been fired again that was heard around the world…
The pelosi/reid/obama axis is the emperor with no clothes…
And more and more people are waking up from the cult of personality that was the ONE we were waiting for…
Andy Warhol pegged America well when he spoke of people having 15 minutes of fame… Obama had his and every time he speaks, more people wake up…
Sadly we still have 3 years to deal with the repercussions of just 12 months orgy of irresponsibility..
Storm clouds are gathering in the world and we do not have a national leader capable of the 3am phone call…
It aint over yet but I see at least crack in the armor of Mordor…
No matter what happens on Tuesday, I think the message has already been “heard round the world.” The Obama agenda is, frankly, toast. People are just plain sick and tired of being lied to and abused; and now that they have the chance to do something about it, they will. As I said before, I believe Brown will win the Senate race. The really interesting question becomes, “What happens next?” Obama and his majority congress (imagine that) will be a lame duck. Will they step aside gracefully, or will they force a sleeping giant to awaken? Also, there is the matter of a power vacuum to fill. Even though progressivism in its entirety will be discredited, there is as yet no organized movement to fill its place. There is no leader around which conservatives can crystalize, no platform about which they can agree. If the Soviet collapse is in any way analogous, then it seems we will get first a Yeltzin, then a Putin. That is, first we will get an oligarch who cares for little except power and frank class/family interest, then we will get steely-eyed bureaucrat who knows how to get a job done but doesn’t mind breaking a few eggs in the process. This, ultimately, will be a good thing. The difficult comes from the fact that contemporary Americans (especially conservatives) are very much dependent upon the very system they despise, and few realize to what degree.
As a Roman Catholic, I think (and hope) the repudiation of the Kennedy legacy will mean the final liberation of the Church Militant from the spell of FDR, JFK, the USCCB, labor unions, community organizers, radical environmentalism, pacifism, ecumenism, appeasement, and the Democratic party in general. The perennial philosophy, and its decisive formulation in the revelation of Christ, has been so heavily larded with ersatz social progressivism that it is no longer recognizable. This certainly needs to change. The challenge for the present generation will be great, but at the other side of this cataract is a free, clear air which we have not breathed in some time. May God speed its coming.
Oh, fraptuous day! Calloo, callay!!
MSNBC’s
Schultz- I’d Cheat To Keep Brown From Winning In Massachusetts
The other similarity is the myth and lies told by the Coakly campaign. I play cards with my buddies, and I never cheat, and I win an awful lot- Coakly is using the Al Franken method, and is going to cheat, lie, and try to steal this election, and the voters of MA will be the big losers if she does. If you live in MA, make sure you vote Brown. If you don’t, make sure you stop lying cheating Dem’s from crossing the border to vote Coakly.
rule303L Dresden was bombed, and it is questioned, yet the Nazis killed millions and we are to blame.
Just as John Kerry is not to blame for millions of dead South Vietnamese as alleged in the last thread, the Nazis are to blame for the Holocaust, not the Allies. But strategic bombing proved to be of limited value. The rail yard in Dresden was back in operation after three days. The firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945 would not have hastened the end of the war anymore than firebombing Mosul or Basra would have made Saddam bend. The benefits of targeting civilians do not overcome the moral cost (a lesson that seems lost on one BC regular who wants to carpet nuke a billion Muslims in retaliation for catching one guy with a panty bomb). That I speak the truth is seen in our emphasis on precision bombing rather than more and more lethal ways to eradicate whole populations.
Elroy: I’m thinking it will be about June 2010 when Obama will decide he needs to be a moderate. And almost noone will believe it. A one-term president is his destiny.
Hopefully when Obama leaves office he won’t leave America with eighteen percent inflation, fifteen percent unemployment, dozens of hostages in some Muslim hellhole, $250 oil, $6 gas, and Russian tanks rolling in the Ukraine.
This firestorm comes with a laugh line. The most creative ads are coming from who-knows-where and are posted on You Tube. One “Coakley” ad sneeringly accuses Brown, over and over, of being a “Republican.” Another “ad” raises the possibility that Brown and Billy Buckner are on and the same, not least because their names both start with a “B,” a “transcendent alphabetical correlation.”
Boston humor, once it finds its target, is “wicked” funny. And relentless. Poor Obama.
Maybe the voters recoil from Obama, Pelosi and Reid at the precipice but enormous damage has been inflicted on the country. Can the damage be fixed? There are still millions of socialists that want their American collective. The tide was turned once before when Reagan was elected in 1980 but the socialist surge came back bolder than ever. Where are the conservative leaders who will get us back to the republic that the founders gave us? We are a badly fractured society now. How can we ever come back together short of a national tragedy? I just don’t know.
We can hope Brown scores a Carthaginian Cannae, be ecstatic with an Anglo-Prussian Waterloo, and happy with what the Union got at Antietam (which enabled the Emancipation Proclamation… not a bad metaphor, eh?)
Or maybe as Churchill said after El Alamein—not the end, not the beginning of the end, perhaps the end of teh beginning.
I see the GOP put out a call for lawyers–they’ll need ‘em. Private security people, too, I hope; lots of ‘em, to escort people to and from the polls and protect them when the cops won’t. Off-duty cops would be great for that, methinks. I hope the GOPs are planning for the worst, because the Dems will make it worse than anything they can imagine.
Could be blood in the streets in a few places; wouldn’t surprise me to see ACORN and SEIU types trying to crack heads. This is going to be nasty, but only a small preview of what the Obamanauts are planning for November 2010 and 2012.
Stuff like the Schultz thing linked above @ 11 tells people it’s OK to do that. Very bad thing; Sometimes he makes Olbermann seem sane.
We firebomb Hamburg and Dresden while the Russians rape their way across Germany. And all anybody remembers is that the US bombed civilians. Nice. I want to puke when young folk discuss WW2. Trying to make war look pretty is a fool’s errand.
INTRADE Election Markets on Day Obama Stumped for Coakley : 9 PM EST — Brown 65, Coakley 34.6
Last Price For Brown: 65.0 What does this mean?
65.0 means the market predicts there is a 65.0% chance that this event happens.
In darkened streets the sirens sound
The few abroad look skyward
In darkened houses close to ground
Deep shelter is the byword
The sirens wail, the bomber stream
Fills darkened sky with thunder
Below the children clutch and scream
As mothers only wonder
Can they survive another night
Then come incendiaries
The firefighters try to fight
Amid their family worries
The flames take hold and spread so fast
The wind whips round the corners
And then it’s over, burnt at last
With few surviving mourners
In Cambridge town the bomber stream
Does not bring death, but trouble
For Obie’s socialistic dream
That’s now reduced to rubble
Yeah, good ole ‘lection day when the dead vote and the right is never prepared to counter the thugs that are sure to show up …. golly gee I sure wish the Reps would grow some cajones and get ready for that type of intimidation. I mean we all know when seconds count the police are only minutes away…especially in Mass.
A firestorm within the Democratic Party would be a beautiful thing and I wish them as great a success as I do teresita in changing her residence to her natural environment on the island of Lesbos….I understand that is a great compliment to lesbians far and wide….. speaking of firestorm inducing experiments the most strange I believe was project X Ray in WWII
It involved dropping bats with small incendiary bombs attached to them. They were to thaw out as they fell through the atmosphere, take up residence in the wood and bamboo homes in Japan and ka-boom. It was cancelled during testing when one of the critters flew into an admirals car and, well, ka-boom.
Another good piece of news. According to Fred Barnes, the Democrats month long certification delay gambit of a Scott Brown victory ( if it happens) won’t work:
“Appointed Senator Paul Kirk will lose his vote in the Senate after Tuesday’s election in Massachusetts of a new senator and cannot be the 60th vote for Democratic health care legislation, according to Republican attorneys. …
But in the days after the election, it is Kirk’s status that matters, not Brown’s. Massachusetts law says that an appointed senator remains in office “until election and qualification of the person duly elected to fill the vacancy.”
Peggy Noonan warned the Republicans of a “catastrophic victory” in 2010 that would lull them into complacency and reinstate business as usual.
I think she is wrong and the proof of that is what is happening to the Democrats right now. They had assumed that “Happy Days Are Here Again” only to discover to their chagrin that the period has been drastically foreshortened. Maybe “Happy Hours Are Here At Last” are a better description. If the Republicans go back to “business as usual” their triumph will be very short-lived. Business as usual as a strategy is dead. Maybe Noonan is right to think the Republicans may try it. But it can’t be tried for long. The reason for this is simple and basic.
The system has been squeezed dry. It is no longer able to sustain alternating episodes of looting whose only check is that the incoming freebooters kick out the outgoing freebooters. Somehow the overall load on the system has become unbearable. And that is reflected in high unemployment, insupportable levels of debt and impossible entitlement programs.
One way or the other, the Party’s over, whether you are a Republican politician or a Democrat. The sole advantage of the Republicans is that they are more open to the changes that must entail in principle. But in practice it will be painful. Yet any long term attempts by either party to chart an economically unsustainable and national security irresponsible path will be visited by electoral punishment.
But because old habits die hard, there will the temptation among some to turn things into a permanent kind of corrupt rule, like a Chicago or Detroit on a universal scale. This is probably going to engender more conflicts because while you could move out of Chicago, you can’t move off the planet.
So about the only thing that can be safely observed is that Brown is leading but he hasn’t won yet; and that no matter what happens it is only the setting the stage for an even more titanic struggle down the track.
Is the Obama bubble bursting? I think so. Whether the health program passes or not it’s not helpful to liberals. If Coakley wins she will be looked at as a stooge. If Brown wins and they pass it on reconciliation it looks arrogant. If Brown wins and and it doesn’t pass they look like idiots.
Nothing will change though because the system can only maintain itself, it can’t deliver desired results to anyone except those who work for. People understand this but there is currently no way for this to turn into actual reform.
Brown wins even if he loses. If he loses, he has still become a national political figure since his firestorm has drawn in attention, recognition, and significant money to a man who, just a month ago, was a local politician in the state. As a national political figure he has, as they said in one of the Tom Clancy books to Jack Ryan, “A chip in the big game.”
If he wins, he wins more than a senate seat and the chance to derail the POR Express…. he wins a senate seat and the chance to become, at some future date, president of the United States.
Terestia, I’m a fan of you. But you are wrong about Vietnam, in my opinion, and since you want to bring that debate in here from the last thread, I’ll say so.
The tragedy in Vietnam is not that we went there, and fought there, but that we abandoned it, and for no good reason. We gifted very, very bad actors, and we had the damn thing won, too.
We have no excuse. We let the leftists dictate the result, back then. We’re about to do so again and this time the target is domestic policy, not foreign.
Once again it seems like we’ll let them. Our problem is that most folks in America, and in the West and the East, do not understand what a poison leftism is. They confuse it for a virtue a lot of times. It is not.
You’ve got a convert ready to pick up a gun or strap on a suicide belt if you can blame IT on America or capitalism. How easy. How stupid.
The tragedy over Vietnam is that South Vietnam knew what a nightmare communism was, and we cut them off and sent them to that fate. We face a Hall of Shame over that move, and what it cost the Vietnamese, for letting the leftists win on that one.
Never let the leftists win.
Never.
Never.
NEVER.
Time only moves in one direction. Enormous damage has been done. Real assets, military, political, financial and moral, have been consumed. In the Ukraine the Putin ally, their would be Zelaya, leads after the first round of voting and the would be ally of Nato has been repudiated.
If there is a firestorm then it is consuming the natural acquiescence of the people to their elites. This has been a bad time for Harvard. Spitzer, Obama, and Conan O’Brien all traded on the reputation of the school to convince the rubes that their judgments deserved special approval. Nature abhors a vacuum and elites serve a function. Who will replace them? When the wise-asses entertain themselves by debunking the myths of John Harvard or undermining the legal and social system that his followers constructed in service to the Commonwealth, then they consume what others produced and spend capital that they have not earned.
Teresita,
Random violence against civilians is counterproductive in most cases but that does not mean that under the right circumstances massive and disproportionate violence may not have a desired political effect.
The downside of the mass. battle is that obama will decide the US needs to change its demographics before his agenda goes through. he’s in for the long haul. he communicated on martin luther king day in washington dc sunday morning that he was in for the long haul. that means that he’ll try to pack as many Haitians into the USA as possible. they’ll all vote democratic.
Tampa florida has been warned to start expecting plane loads of haitians.
Most recent internals
Brown 50.8%
Coakley 41.2%
Kennedy 1.8%
Not Sure 6.2%
It seems to me that we are seeing an escalation over the last few years by the Democrats. Both Democrats and Republicans cheat at elections where they can, but the difference is that Democrats seem to do it as an organized, planned activity while Republicans seem to do it mostly in individual or small group situations. But with the tactics by the Democrats of trying to demonize and vilify every single Republican of note, their repeated blatant stealing of close elections (the Washington governorship, Al Franken for the Senate, the attempt to take Florida for Gore in 2000, and others), their attacks on personal property (not just in this election, remember the election vans with all their tires slashed?), their physical attacks on critics, and intimidation at the polls – all of this adds up to a significant escalation. And now we have a situation where the Democrats are openly saying they’ll cheat however they can to keep Brown from being elected, and if elected, from being seated before their current lead agenda item is passed in the Senate.
I think the Democrats have been counting on three things to get away with this: the ongoing support of the media, the general apathy of the voters, and the complaisance of the Republicans (who whine, but do not retaliate in kind). The problem the Democrats face is that the media is increasingly being bypassed for online sources; the people are getting both upset and motivated to action (moderates, independents and Republicans, I mean; the Democrats’ professional activists have been there for decades); and the only thing keeping the political system from devolving into near-warfare is the Republicans’ restraint. But given the recent attempts by the Democrats to destroy the lives of even private citizens who disagree with them, to criminalize policy differences, and to openly rig the electorate to favor the Democrats regardless of public sentiment, how long can the Republicans’ restraint hold? And when that breaks, and the Republicans start playing on the Democrats’ field, what then will the Democrats do?
Don’t underestimate the Left.
The electorate is very volatile. It appears now that Brown is heading to victory, but collectivists are still firmly ensconced in Washington. They have the votes, and they have the virtually unlimited resources of governments at both the federal level, and in almost all of the populous states. They’ve already made it over the hurdle of cloture in the Senate on healthcare. There are plenty of levers still to pull.
The question is whether they have the will. Problem is: what they want is power, and power attracts the willful. Those who have waited a lifetime for this opportunity will not go silently into the night.
So, even if Brown wins, they will trade on that to solidify their allies. Fear is a great motivator.
The fundamental challenge of conservatives is this: we do not want the power, but rather we want the power to go away. The power only exists because of a concentration of decision-making; if the decision-making is dispersed among the body politic, the total power actually decreases. That is our aspiration, that is our goal.
But those who seek the power know this, and will do whatever they can to prevent its dispersion. This is why teachers’ unions fight charter schools; why regulated companies fight deregulation; why politicians fight (and legislate to prevent) the emergence of third parties; why real estate brokers fight for stricter licensure laws; etc.
The benefits, you see, are concentrated, and the costs are widely shared. And once you have the money and the power, it becomes even harder to break. Money protect the power which disburses the money which buys the power. It is an old story, full of ecstasy and tragedy, pride and hubris, joy and woe.
And power is inherently corrupting. Our Founders and Framers knew this. They built a system that has scaled two orders of magnitude, over more than 200 years, and it still (largely) intact. It was a remarkable achievement, the creation of a democratic republic without equal in history.
But unless we devolve the decision-making, and reduce the power, this will be just another case of unrealistic expectations. We need more than electoral victory; we need a system of accountability, one that holds those who surf this tsunami to a high standard, and a specific mission:
Departments need to be eliminated, not “right-sized.” Entitlements need to be sunsetted, not “managed.” Immigration needs to be assimilative, not exploitative (of either the immigrant or the nation). Laws need to be rescinded, not “reformed.”
So, yes, if Brown wins, it will be a strong signal. But many a revolution has been stopped in its tracks by leaders who sell out once they get a taste of the power. And make no mistake about it: the other 99 men and women who inhabit the Senate have no interest in giving up what they’ve spent a lifetime accumulating.
Until the conservative movement creates the infrastructure necessary to hold politicians accountable for their actions, they will continue to act as free agents, available for sale to the highest bidder. And when the other bidders have the world to offer, how are we to compete?
Until the conservative movement creates the infrastructure necessary to maintain long-term public support for the ideals of limited government, federalism, fiscal responsibility, entrepreneurship, national security, and assimilative immigration, there is no way to hold politicians accountable.
So, if you live in Massachusettes [sic], by all means cast your vote for Scott Brown. But do not fool yourself that this solves the fundamental problem.
There is no safe place for the Ring of Power. It wants to be found.
L3
#7 rule303 writes:
“Yes, we have to shut up and take it. Dresden was bombed, and it is questioned, yet the Nazis killed millions and we are to blame. Amazing…“War is hell””
I have an uncle who rode across France in a tank during WW2. He is a very accomplished, happy, popular man who really loves life. Yes he is rather old. But you ask him about the war and you get total silence. He has not said a word about the war to his son. In my experience, that is the way of WW2 vets. Why was Dresden bombed? All of our guys were using every ounce of strength all the time to destroy Nazi resistance. That’s why Dresden was bombed. That’s the meaning of “war is hell.” Ask another question: Why were the death camps not bombed? There wasn’t another ounce of strength to spare.
January 17th, 2010 7:13 pm
Sunday PJM/CrossTarget Poll: Brown up 9.6% among likely voters
A poll taken Sunday afternoon while President Obama was in Massachusetts campaigning for Democrat Martha Coakley against Republican Scott Brown for the open Senate seat in that state showed Brown leading his Democratic opponent by 9.6% (51.9% to 42.3% with 5.7% undecided).
The poll, conducted via telephone for Pajamas Media by CrossTarget, was of 574 Likely Massachusetts Voters and has a margin of error of +/-4.09%. CrossTarget used the exact method – Interactive Voice Technology (IVR) – it used in a similar poll for PJM on Friday. The previous poll showed Brown ahead by approximately 15%.
A poll released earlier Sunday from the Merrimam River Group shows Brown up by an identical 9.6%.
Since this is an open thread, and desiring to lighten the bomber stream to a little Obama strafing, Waltradamus, the all-knowing and all-seeing, having listened to the haunting music of the spheres while dealing hundreds of hands of tarot cards in the dark, offers his predictions for the coming year. It cannot be too often stressed that you are cautioned not to bet the rent money on any of it.
Paul Revere will ride again
Whipping up all patriot men
As cheering folks in Cambridge town
Flock to the polls to vote for Brown
The coming months will see the flames
Of many men and many names
As White House men and White House girls
Are swept aside in ‘Bama swirls
Chicago gals, Chicago guys
Will only see their fortunes rise
As ‘Bama hunkers down inside
The White House on his downward ride
The winter with its cold and snow
Will cause the global warmists woe
As temperatures go in decline
But Mr. Gore will do just fine
The Persians will before year’s out
See a bomb without a doubt
But it won’t be what they have nursed
As Israel will get there first
The New York Times on their Page One
Will show a picture of the sun
And claim the picture clearly shows
That there will never be more snows
An angry mob will storm the gates
As White House staffers fill the crates
With all two hundred years and more
Of history and close that door
In 2010 men will unearth
Clear proof that one Obama’s birth
Was not the same as B. Hussein’s
And were arrested for their pains
The Phillies play good ball and beat
The Yankees when next time they meet
In the World Series 2010
And after that they’ll win again
For those who are asking if the Republicans will be ready after a “Progressive” implosion, the answer is:
IT’S THE ECONOMY, STUPID!
Slash taxes. Slash spending. Indefinitely postpone health care reform, cap and trade, EPA action on CO2, and any new item that would increase the deficit.
Then Prosecute the War on Terror to the fullest. Reform DHS. Close the borders. Do away with the so-called Department of Education, outlaw teachers’ unions. The plate is totally full. There is plenty to do.
Rick Santorum can do it.
Agree with your views, Jeff; although it may be that the Dem’s simply have no plan B. Look at Canada, the Grits used every method of chicanery and fraud to hang onto power, but when they finally fell they collapsed completely. I think that may happen here.
Also the Dem’s were counting on something else as well; like all socialists they assumed the economy would be self-correcting and there was nothing they could do to seriously hurt it. They have no idea that an economy can be ruined by bad laws, they believe it is a constant. That’s why they saw the chance for a “stimulus” as a great opening for a grab bag for all their supporters, and they were sure they would get the credit for a recovering economy which they knew would happen.
Harsh reality has jumped up and slapped them silly, and they have no idea what to do. The current government is about to lose, as the Chinese say, “The Mandate of Heaven.” Not a religious term, but meaning that they will have lost the moral right to govern in the eyes of the populace. Once that line is crossed, who knows what happens next.
I think if Brown wins Obama is effectively knocked out of the game for a while.
People have said that the Democrats are trying to import European-style government to the U.S. One aspect of European government is that is doesn’t matter if a politician of the “correct” party wins or loses an election. If they lost they just get a seat in the EU somewhere.
I suspect that’s what some of the Democrats may be calculating. Read and Pelosi may consider falling on there swords to pass Obamacare a small thing, that if worse comes to worse there will be a post somewhere in the government for him regardless.
Of course that all depends on the Democrats holding onto the government and putting that in doubt might be the real result of a Brown win. If you can’t hold onto Massachusetts then what guarantee of a seat at the table is there?
There’s the illegal cheating and then there’s this sort of cheating. On Oct 02 Torricelli was 13 points behind (Nov 05 election), so he withdrew and Gov Jim McGreevy ran in Lautenberg (benched for awhile via Abscam) –far too late (the legal limit of 51 days before the election) to make a ballot change. Pubs took it to the judge, who said, more or less, nah, the Dems had been discussing the change since before the 51 day clock started, so what the hey. The actual prescribed procedure for the ballot change was deemed a secondary issue by the connected court and within judicial purview to grant a variance. Of course, this was unprecedented, but as upporters of the last-minute shuffle said at the time, “precedents have to start somewhere!”
It’s always nice to think that strategic bombing doesn’t work yet flies in the face of the actual successes of such acts. Several times, due to poor morale in North Vietnam, their leaders were forced to return to the Paris negotiating sessions. During World War II morale among the British after years of heavy bombing then intermittent raids virtually collpased when the rocket attacks began. Several MPs argued on the floor of the Commons that the war had been won and now was the time to negotiate.
lso Teresita claims that the rail system was up and running in three days which is more than problematic as all of the bridges in Dresden were destroyed over the four day period. The Germans were then simply unable to reinforce their Eastern Army Group who, though fighting well, were constantly retreating.
Also only 1/5 the tonnage compared to Essen was dropped on Dresden but surprise of the intensity of the bombing and the complete breakdown of the city’s civil defense systems compounded the death toll. And to paraphrase Bomber Harris Dreseden simply wasn’t worth the death of one more grenadier if the city could be neutralized by bombing. Of course he borrowed that phrase from Bismarck.
There’s the illegal cheating and then there’s this sort of cheating. On Oct 02 Torricelli was 13 points behind (Nov 05 election), so he withdrew and Gov Jim McGreevy ran in Lautenberg (benched for awhile via Abscam) –far too late (the legal limit of 51 days before the election) to make a ballot change. Pubs took it to the judge, who said, more or less, nah, the Dems had been discussing the change since before the 51 day clock started, so what the hey. The actual prescribed procedure for the ballot change was deemed a secondary issue by the connected court and within judicial purview to grant a variance. Of course, this was unprecedented, but as upporters of the last-minute shuffle said at the time, “precedents have to start somewhere!”
Well, now that Walt has graced us with a two-fer, I’ll throw in a bit of doggerel as well:
—
His new Camelot came with a crown
But of late he has seemed like a clown
As he pushed to the left
He lost most of his heft
And now can’t stop th’ election of Brown
Still he cannot yet give up the fight
And go silently into the night
So he’ll sure go “all in”
(Just a question of when):
Articulate and clean, but not bright
So his days in DC will soon end
And he’ll run out of money to spend
No more White House rent beds
Or Time Magazine spreads
But the nation will then start to mend
—
L3
Peggy Noonan worries the republicans if and when they win, won’t take it seriously. Wretchard observes the old games are over now.
Me, if I’m going to worry, it’s that the government is paralyzed, and that both contributed to the present problems and will prevent any real action by either party to fix them. We’ve had a paralyzed assembly in California for over 20 years, and sho’nuff, we’ve shown the way for the country once again.
It will be ugly. But, I suspect the old games will continue in a new and uglier context.
I’m more worried about exogenous events, an 8.0 in the Dominican Republic, or on the San Andreas. Israel attacks Iran, that closes the Straits of Hormuz. Asteroids. Pandemics. El Nino. UN-Eurowienie hysteria about AGW that further collapses only the honest businesses.
Three elections in near time show the ebb and flow of something in an age where political currents are spun around the world via Facebook™ and 140 character tweets. What that something is will be a proof left to the reader. In Chile the right wins an election for the fist time since 1958 amid mutual pledges of reconciliation and good fellowship. In the Ukraine the Russian bear looms ever larger as all of Europe edges towards accommodation and both sides seem to repudiate Nato. In Massachusetts a sclerotic and complacent left wing oligarchy will either collapse or seek to survive through brazen fraud and confrontation to stop a moderate Republican whose campaign has focused not on socially divisive issues but on simple respect for the rule of law and for the electorate.
for those that are wondering why Dresden was bombed
See what the Nazis did to population and with flamethrowers in 1944 when they were retreating, mere gratuitous crualty !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjIos1y2bjA
BTW Chile has a new president of the right side
HotAir this afternoon comes to numbers similar to those mentioned above or about 9-10 point advantage for Brown.
There will be more polling numbers to come out at midnight tonight.
…Whatever happens, we have got, THAT MAN , Scott Brown….and they have not.
strata-sphere much the same as the numbers above 9% up for brown–but their graphics suggest the final numbers may be much higher.(coakleys collapse merged against brown’s ascent suggest a large pot of the 9% undecided will go for brown.)
Well, i tried to keep in the cork
but i do feel a tinge of the Bork
the thread-close causation
on Mz T straw-zation
left me flopping and beached like an Orc
Wow. That last point at the end of the video, that Hitler was planning to use Dresden as the secondary capitol after Berlin. The Allies were denying him his future. I didn’t know that until now, after all these years (53) of withstanding the debate.
As for the MA election this Tuesday, so much of our recent elections call to mind Schrödinger’s box, where the cat is both alive and dead. Welcome to the era of quantum uncertainty. I always thought all those extra dimensions stayed curled up inside the nucleus.
Cowboy: Terestia, I’m a fan of you. But you are wrong about Vietnam, in my opinion, and since you want to bring that debate in here from the last thread, I’ll say so. The tragedy in Vietnam is not that we went there, and fought there, but that we abandoned it, and for no good reason…
The tragedy is that we went there and fought for the South Vietnamese (not our own interests, LBJ said exactly that) and the South Vietnamese refused to step up and do their part with an effective counter-insurgency. We won every single battle, but lost the war, because the South Vietnamese just didn’t have their heart in winning the thing. The North was fighting for the cause of national independence and unification. The South had no such ideal to rally around, other than maintenance of the economic status quo and their continued status as an occupied protectorate, under the Americans instead of the French. Korea was a UN operation like Gulf One, but we should have steered way clear of Vietnam.
And now here was are in Afghanistan, even after the Soviet Union had their “Vietnam” there, with foot soldiers taking out training camps and Taliban leaders who could be taken out by Predators any day of the week.
We abandoned Vietnam for a very good reason: We are a representative democracy, and after Jan-Feb 1968 the majority of the American people wanted out, just like the American people wanted out of Iraq after the bombing of the Golden Mosque ushered in the main phase of the insurgency. The last time someone said he would stay in an overseas war for a hundred years despite the majority of Americans wanting out, he lost the Presidential Election.
For an interesting view of what the other side is thinking, this is worth a read:
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/01/fivethityeight-still-rating.html
This guy, Nate Silver, is definitely “of the Left,” but he is very analytical. He is calling the race a toss-up.
He may be engaging in wishful thinking. Or he might be correct. Time will tell.
Point is that there is a lot of volatility and unpredictability here. No one really knows what to believe right now. That is likely to result in a huge influx of hard-core supporters to try to push the election their way. And, this being Massachusetts, most of them’s from the Left.
Oh, and there is apparently a weather system descending upon the state. From weather.com:
A very interesting mix: cold weather and a hot electorate.
L3
tragic and arguably revenge bombing as it was, to pick out Dresden from the overall horror is to don the peacock feathers and parade. not a soul among the boys of Bomber Command or 8th AAF wanted to be up there doing it –the combatants were in the grip of war god Mars and all were hurtling toward the stop.
wretchard @ 22
I fear Noonan may be right, tho it’s too soon to say, obviously. And, if 2010 is a big GOP year, they will be the ones to decide, collectively, if she is right or not.
But what I read her saying is we could see a repeat of 1994, with a big and principled rejection of an over-reaching Democratic majority, followed two years later by a GOP that is in a defensive crouch mainly trying to protect its majority in Congress and nominating for President a good man, but one who really stands for little more than his party’s being in power.
I hope not, but can’t dismiss the possibility.
Dennis,
Careful with that Schrödinger analogy. Our host doesn’t take well to discussions of dead cats. Even when they’re also alive…
Cheers,
L3
“The tragedy over Vietnam is that South Vietnam knew what a nightmare communism was, and we cut them off and sent them to that fate”
Specifically, it was that fat murdering drunk Ted Kennedy who cut them off and sent them to their fate.. firing squads, re-education camps, or leaky, overcrowded boats.
It will (dare I hope?) be SO delicious if it’s Edward the Lesser’s seat that marks the fall of the Left.
Mongo @ 50–indeed. war develops a logic and momentum of its own.
Dennis @ 47–don’t get all excited about what a newreel said in February 1945—that is wrong and there was no information basis for it, it was the rankest speculation. The Red Army was only a few days away, and Dresden fell long before Berlin, and anyone with a good newspaper and a map at the time would have seen through that assertion, God knows where it came from.
Hell, even by the internal logic of the newreel, if Dresden was a staging point for German troops headed to the front, it was too close to the front already and would make no sense for the govt to leave Berlin and move there.
If Scott Brown wins, he’s probably going to look a lot like a Democrat to most of the United States, excepting health care reform issues. The reason for all the attention in the first place is that MA, with half of a largely educated & informed voting populace unenrolled, has already rejected the conservative movement of the Republican party, along with most of New England. Voting one near-conservative into office (no matter whose office it was) is more like a fit of temper than a real change. There is a message being sent. Congress and the Obama Administration have received it. I’m not sure what happens next, but I would not build dreams upon it.
buddy larsen @ 36–excellent point.
That business about Kirk can’t vote immediately after the election… hah!!! That’s a GOP lawyer talking, and from what I read it’s not terribly persuasive to begin with. But even more, let’s see what the majority of the Senate, which ultimately decides such questions, says. (59 or 60 Democrats, obviously)
And to go with buddy’s example, don’t assume the court would be sympathetic to the GOP if it DID get involved.
GOP can try to go to court, but the courts will be very reluctant to open that separation of powers can of worms unless it’s clearly a constitutional question, and from what I read the GOP lawyer’s position depends on precedent, some iffy, and a very particular reading of election law, but nothing constitutional that would get teh courts to tell Congress how to run its business.
I live in Massachusetts. I had to disconnect my answering machine because of all the calls from campaigns, and pollers. I just can’t wait until it’s over.
I’m on the ground, working in the Brown campaign here in Massachusetts, knocking on doors, making the phone calls. From what I’ve seen, there’s a lot of resentment by the regular people over the way the liberal aristocracy is treating them and taking them for granted. Ted Kennedy got a pass because he was John’s little brother. These people knew the Kennedys, and Coakley is no Kennedy.
OK, sorry to keep pointing to left-leaning sites, but this is fascinating:
http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/24502
Now, the post itself is unremarkable. What is much more interesting are the comments. An unscientific sample, yes, but lots of expressions of disgust from “progressives.”
Kinda reminds me of when GWB pushed through Medicare Part D and worked with Ted Kennedy on immigration reform. And when Iraq was off the rails, but we kept doing more of the same (i.e. pre-Petraeus). Bush’s collapse in popularity didn’t come from the left (who always hated him), or even that much from independents (who are always ebbing and flowing). His big drop came when he lost his base.
Looks like a similar situation is brewing among “progressives.”
What this means for Tuesday? No idea.
FWIW.
L3
Matt Beck at 9 said–Even though progressivism in its entirety will be discredited, there is as yet no organized movement to fill its place.
Progressivism is never entirely discredited. It’s the zombie that won’t die.
The progressives–including Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake–are saying to vote against Coakley, because they think that the current health care reform legislation isn’t left enough.
For progressives, communism has never been tried.
Never ever believe that we can ignore them again. Part of why the Left is so strong now is that we were attacked in the middle of our culture war, and the Right and the Center thought that it would be honorable to shake hands with the Left to fight against Islamofascism together. Then the Right and Center failed to notice that the Left acted as a fifth column at home and abroad the whole time, because it seems, they could not believe that Americans would do such a thing.
Since we’re down memory lane, one of my friends from the Cambridge, Mass days was an interesting ex-Special Forces captain, a West Point, Harvard Business School alumnus who was doing a doctorate at Oxford in history. The subject was whether Hitler could have won if he didn’t blunder on the Eastern Front, ceteris paribus (and leaving aside the fact that America would have had the bomb in 1945).
One problem with Hitler’s strategy on the Eastern Front was he turned everything into an existential question. The stand fast orders were essentially double-downs. Either you won big or you lost your shirt. This was a very bad strategy for Hitler because he did not have an unlimited amount of capital in this military casino. When he ran out of chips he wound up in the bunker.
This tendency to double down and turn everything into a referendum of change is an interesting one. Why does the President feel he needs to stake his prestige on Coakley? Is it because he absolutely has to have this health care bill when the electorate, if the polls are to be believed, hate it? Stand fast. Stand fast. Die in place. That’s how you create Stalingrads.
That’s not to say that the President doesn’t know how to readjust lines, but seems to do so very grudgingly and only at the margins. His Afghan policy seemed to demonstrate, not strategic patience, as Andrew Sullivan believed, but a kind of miser’s reluctance to part with even a small crumb of his political cookie.
My guess is that Barack Obama really seems himself as a “change agent”, not an administrator. The present holds no attractions for him. Coakley is important because she is a cobblestone on the path to change. Change is always in the future. I’m not sure this is an adequate reason for his inflexibility, but it’s one theory.
I think it is dangerous to think that the election of Brown means we have a direction going forward.
Right now, we’ve got Right, Center, and the Confused (those “independents” and “moderates” whose social and fiscal positions contradict each other) and even some minor members of the Left all screaming STOP!
They can all unite to elect someone who can apply the brakes. It doesn’t take agreeing on a star to sail by to stop the boat. But the currents will still pull it in some direction. Right now, the Dem agenda needs everyone who can to apply brakes, so this is good. But it is not enough.
The original Boston revolution was an attempt to say STOP to the British. The American revolution wasn’t about what came next. Blessed we were with George Washington and the Founders, men who spent decades thinking about what stars they wished to steer by. There is a long way to go before the culture war is won. Scott Brown himself seems like a genuine individual, but which side of the culture war he is on is still indeterminate.
More new founders, who can articulate the legitimate role of the state and its limitations, are needed. It can’t happen without educating the young away from the progressive stranglehold they are under.
Bohemond/53; Pol Pot say “Hey, what about me?”
Anyhoo, the current senator from Massachusetts was not “an elected official” until 1974 –the Kefauver committee signal treachery by a knowingly-lying Kerry and all the other protesters who gave Ho Chi Minh the high sign to pray start up Vietnam War Post Paris Peace Treaty, did so under a president who had won in 1968 and then won again and the second time by landslide in 1972, on a platform of ‘Peace with Honor’ –which did NOT envision what the so-called Watergate congress of 1974 was going to do. So much for the elected officials executing the will of the of the people. Speaking of Ted Kennedy (BTW, this isn’t off-thread, it’s Massachusetttes senatorial traditions) if you read (Fox reporter) James Rosen’s recent book about John Mitchell, you’ll see how the Kennedy machine met and made specific plans to amp the third-rate burglary, using the captive prress and liberal establishment, to hound Nixon from office as a deliberate plan. Makes me wonder if the burglary itself hadn’t been a set up by the swimming senator.
anyhoo, as was said clearly on the prev thread, it was this VN war-phase 2 and the hellish denoumont that could have been avoided had not the new left in USA so wanted an American and ARVN ‘i told you so’ defeat, that the entire nation –a treaty partner in the ASEAN of the USA’s –of South Vietnam, along with the sacrificial effort of the American military the emblem of which is etched on the wall 58,000 times, could as far as the new left was concerned be dumped into the communist wasteland without so much as a fare-the-well. Human beings had lost out against a narrative –a narrative needed to continue the advance of leftist dehumanization.
I like the idea of the political cookie, but I cannot understand why this cookie was worth the battle, (such as it was) if so many of the people who supported the idea at the outset are now angry voters. Was wondering if the problem is with the disillusioned voters themselves, who have learned that having universal health care coverage might actually cost something. Perhaps I am being uncharitable.
An article in the Times Online (i.e., The Sunday Times of 17 January 2010) indicates that the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is on the point of issuing a retraction of a report that Anthropogenic Global Warming is causing Himalayan glaciers to disappear.
Excerpted first few sentences:
A WARNING that climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 is likely to be retracted after a series of scientific blunders by the United Nations body that issued it.
Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world’s glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.
In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC’s 2007 report.
It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.
The rest of the article may be found at the link above.
Seems like a lot of the Left’s Idols are suddenly cracking and crumbling.
Time to turn up the heat on’em.
Teresita @ 13:
T, you have had nine (9), count ‘em, nine years to realize that a goodly portion of the Muslim world wants you conquered and submissive or dead. That is the truth and you still are tone deaf to reality. Given the chance they would do the same to us. Why do I know? Because they have said so.
Jeebus. Get off your lazy and do the research.
Lifeofthemind @ 41:
That made me laugh. Politics for budding narcissists and attention span limited idiots?
Lord help us.
If Brown wins the vote look for HUGE court challenges to tie this thing up for months. THAT was the message The Won brought with him. They are going to ‘Franken’ the result if they have to until the GoP gives in.
The current crop in the GoP is just worshipping hard to not be eaten first. I think that most of them just want to be the “opposition” party and play second fiddle for eternity. They found out that actually running the country is HARD.
Wretchard’s points deserve amplification: THERE IS NO MARGIN.
No more money to steal, no more terrorism to ignore, no more give. Forget “GOP Catastrophic victory” (unlikely, the grass roots Tea Partiers are taking over the party machinery from the bottom up). Rather, the issue is that Obama cannot play Clinton.
Clinton could go along with a GOP Congress to provide good times, and use the end of the Cold War margin for a party. No problems, lots of fuzzy thinking. No worries about jihad + nukes. Party like its 1999.
Well, its not 1999 anymore. Its not even 2005. [Haiti btw is the Katrina for Obama, his guy has been less able than Michael Brown. Relief coordination has been a mess.]
Obama has to deliver, Americans are not going to sign up for another two years of speeches and hoping for the future which never comes.
The fight will be particularly ugly, and we won’t go back to status-quo ante either. Obama of course has zilch understanding of ordinary Americans, since culturally he is not one.
Re: “Progressives”
If you have never read the following from David Horowitz on “progressives”I suggest you check it out. Much of it rings true to me, they are in a no holds barred war, we are playing by the rules.
David Horowitz’s Ultra-Popular “Alinsky, Beck, Satan, and Me” Series
http://preview.tinyurl.com/ycrdb77
onesimus
LOL, Wretchard, I love it :::
As you said, what is the tolerance for change from the “change agent”?
Anybody want to venture in on that?
Win or lose, Scott Brown’s showing in Mass will almost certainly produce significant secondary damage to the leftists… perhaps this is one of the first examples of that “damage”:
http://www.redstate.com/brianfaughnan/2010/01/17/driehaus-insists-on-stupak-language/
Apologies:
This url for David Horowitz works with out the preview necessity.
http://tinyurl.com/ycrdb77
onesimsu
wretchard @ 61:
Correct. I believe that 0bama sees himself as “the one we have all been waiting for…”. The unannointed ‘Savior’ of the world. I think that his pathological narcissism has colored his thinking, such as it is, along these lines. He has no patience for governance, as noted above, because it is not trans-formative and does not lead him down the path that he believes is his rightful due. Yes, I think he is this deluded and dangerous. Consider that judging his actions so far in this light then explains perfectly the “why’s and wherefore’s” of his policies. The Won believes he is ushering in the “New World”.
But as I have said, the Repubs are just adrift and going with the current. Like Palin said, the only fish that “goes with the flow” is ….. dead.
wretchard @ 61—
Over the past few months, several people have speculated that Obama does indeed see himself as a change agent, and he would rather serve one term than 2, if in that term he could start an irreversible change of America into a European Social Democracy (or even more left).
It is more and more looking like that speculation might be correct. The alternative is that he and those around him are stupid. While I don’t think he’s the genius some make him out to be, I don’t think he and his circle are stupid, either.
They may be too insulated in a “Yes-man” bubble, but every day that gets harder to believe.
The other alternative is the really scary one that gets tossed around here, at times. He’s gonna push it to the max and if the Dems lose control of the electorate they may make a move toward either really massive vote fraud, or even cancelling elections. Then, all hell breaks loose, and as America eats itself up, what happens in the rest of the world? And what does the rest of the world do to a weak, divided America?
Bertolt Brecht’s joke about East Germany ca. the 1953 uprising: the people no longer have the confidence of the government and are going to be replaced.
As you often point out, we are indeed coming upon an inflection point, but what exactly it is has not yet been written.
As much of a disaster as I thought Obama would probably be, the pace and magnitude of this potential catastrophe are breathtaking.
Obama as a “change agent”?
Well, somebody ought to tell him, part of a change agent’s job is to get the axe, and have everything blamed on him, as half the changes are rolled back so that the half remaining are accepted.
I don’t see Obama as that well informed about what it means to be a change agent, nor willing to take the fall.
If elections are how the Left could lose power, then the Left will try to control the legal machinery controlling voting.
Holder has purged the Voting Rights Division in the DoJ of both conservatives and those who abide by the law. Here’s a good piece with details of what’s going down there. Remember the New Black Panther Party and their thugs?
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NzE5NjcyNjM4MmQ4YjI3MzBlODBmN2M4MDllNmYwMzg=
At the other end of the governmental chain, the county voter registrars need to be under close scrutiny by us.
I thought Obama was an avid poker player. If so, then why did he risk so much to go to MA? After the Olympics and Copenhagen, if he swings and misses again, he will have a three data point plot for loserville. I heard about his pitch at the campaign rally there, where he tied the success of the election to his future projects healthcare, cap and trade et al. Why is he gambling so wildly, throwing all his money into the pot, while he’s holding a 50-50 hand? Are these the actions of a good poker player? Or a jejune neophyte?
Any ideas?
Lots of work to do and these bozos are not playin, MA or not. The far far left (remember SDS) has waited since the 60′s hidden behind university tenure and in foundations they seized like the Tides or Annenberg. Why was the Chicago New Party not a discussion item for MacCain and Obama?
Ayers and his friends have control of the message in the schools and are driving hard for multiculturalism and polygamy, with advocates including the gay and/or pedophile promoter Jennings, a Safe School Czar. The curriculum is also under attack by Islam and lefty revisionist historians. America must be damaged culturally for them to achieve long sought objectives. Saudi must be removed from having an impact on text books from pre-K to Harvard.
Google “Soros + almost any country”. Soros is in over 60 counties and his wack job friends, lewis, sandlers and others are locked in for the long haul and well funded. Only way to a one world govt is to knock down the USA.
Soros said world equilibrium and govt require bringing down the USA and capitalism and his friends have raised hundreds of millions just to attack our economic system with his political fronts.
The war is just beginning, a long slog and we are at risk. They will firebomb without remorse.
Picturing Robert Duvall grinnin’, bare-chested and hunkered down on his haunches, “I love the smell of liberal heads exploding in the morning. It smells like victory.”
Reading here and there around the blogosphere, the very very very few liberals who are still propounding pro-Obama/Coakley, and they are reduced to bleats about racism. And moans about the lost cause of health reform. And taunts about “Tea-baggers”. Really good PR on the part of these Obama Progressives, as they go about convincing undecided voters that they are the righteous party which needs to remain in power.
I was also reading earlier today a call-to-arms for attorneys to flock to Massachusetts to be poll watchers, in the sure certainty that Democrats would try to cheat. My god, have we *always* been this certain that elections are routinely stolen, or is this something new and not-wonderful?
I’m now also seeing that California’s Boxer might be imperiled. By the same “firestorm”, one hopes. I would love to see more of California’s Liberals start to bite the dust, especially the various minorities who never met a white person they couldn’t simultaneously hate and rip off.
InstaPundit keeps saying, “Don’t get cocky.” Seems to me a little cocky might come in handy if there’s further voter intimidation, ear-biting-off, and/or street confrontations.
Rather, the issue is that Obama cannot play Clinton. Clinton could go along with a GOP Congress to provide good times, and use the end of the Cold War margin for a party. No problems, lots of fuzzy thinking. No worries about jihad + nukes. Party like its 1999.
I agree. By some cruel irony, Obama was born 20 years too late. Clinton had the money, but he didn’t have the ideological grimness and determination. Obama has the ideological grimness and determination. But he doesn’t have the money. The heart of Obama’s strategic dilemma that it is a redistribution strategy based on available free energy, born of a world view that was formed at a time when there really was free energy.
Tony Blair was far more successful at remaking British society than Bill Clinton, successful enough to give socialism a decade and a half run until the money ran out. Labour is going to get annihilated this year, but their swath of destruction has been so comprehensive there really is no easy way back any more. Moreover, the British conservative party was so successfully RINO’ed it became Labour Lite leaving the reform field dangerously open to parties like the BNP. It’s a classic problem. The Left can succeed so well at destroying the opposition that crazies emerge as the only alternatives. Things like that set up the Second World War.
If America dodges the bullet a lot of credit will probably go to its Federal structure and citizen’s groups like the Tea Parties who serve the function of preserving the center even when the political class has lost its bearings. Like a gyroscope the US has a some ability to maintain its orientation even when Washington is doing nonsensical aerobatics. The problem of course is that every system has its limits and even gyros can tumble and lose their orientation.
What’s really interesting is whether the current political crisis will lead to a recovery of the center or whether it simply presages wilder maneuvers. One thing to watch, I think, is what happens internally to both political parties. I think both parties are carrying dysfunctional mindsets which came into existence in eras long gone by. Can the Democratic party “reform” itself? The shadow of 1968 is still like a monkey on its back. Can the Republican party do likewise in its own way, and thus can politics realign itself in such a way that a new stability based on sensible and productive policies can emerge?
One thing I am convinced of is that Barack Obama is not the man to do it. His ideas are old in the worst of ways; not as in validated by long weathering but as in repeatedly rejected by history. But they are all he has. And the really scary thing about his aloofness and indifference is that he may really live in a place that you can’t go.
So my guess is that while he has no money and no prospect of getting any, the President knows only one move: double down again.
The metaphor of the meeting engagement may be apt. What comes out of Tuesday may be a political Jutland. The question is exactly how it will unfold.
Consider that a month ago, if Scott Brown lost the election, no one would have raised an eyebrow. It was expected. The shape of the battlefield has changed drastically.
It would have been considered a rebuke to the Democrats if Brown would have lost by only 15% of the vote. Miribile Dictu, now, in every timely poll that is anywhere near statistically valid [likely voters, large enough sample size, and a reasonably accurate party breakdown of the sample to match the electorate] Brown is leading by anywhere from 4% to 15%. And while the pessimist in me wants to throw out the 15% as an outlier figure, the situation on the ground makes it seem almost feasible.
The Brown campaign is inundated with volunteers begging to be able to do something, anything. People who have worked with campaigns will vouch for the fact that someone who will present their body for work is gold beyond price. Brown’s phone banks are ALWAYS manned, with volunteers sometimes lined up behind phones waiting for their turn. Coakley’s banks are manned by people hired by the DNC, because they don’t have the volunteers [even dragooned union thugs] to man their phones.
The Brown campaign cannot keep yard signs in stock. If an office gets a delivery of 1000, they are all handed out in a couple of hours. And travelling through Massachusetts [ I spelled it correctly, unlike Coakley's campaign media people who could not even be bothered to look at their candidate's state letterhead.] it is a sea of Brown signs. When the supply ran short, people started making their own signs to put in their yards, even in the deepest, darkest heart of Liberal Boston/Cambridge. Coakley signs? Not many people are willing to put them out. In fact, is has been documented that she has been hiring people to carry her signs at her events.
Brown is out and about, all over the bloody state [thankfully, eastern states are smaller than ours out west], frequently in his own pickup truck. He meets people, face to face; evincing neither the fear nor the aristocratic disgust that Coakley shows in abundance. It was once considered to be an error by her handlers that she did not actively campaign. That is, until after the “money bomb”, when she started making appearances. Her handlers were right. Combining the cold arrogance of a daughter of the Prussian Junker nobility with the incomprehension of the lives and interests of what she must regard as the “peasants” worthy of a Tsarist Grand Duchess … plus an ability to put not only one foot in her mouth, but actually get two in and compete and fail for a slot on “So You Think Can Dance”, that has gotten her described as ‘Joe Biden in drag’; she is arguably one of the worst candidates ever to face a statewide vote. And if you think that description was harsh, let me say that the only thing I fear as a reaction for it, is that Joe Biden may sue me for slander.
I mentioned the “money bomb”. Coakley has had literally millions of dollars given to her by the DNC, the Unions, and lobbyists. In December, Brown had a campaign fund of $50,000. And no support from the RNC or RNSC. A little over a week ago, they had the nationwide “money bomb” fundraising event. The goal was to raise $500,000. In 24 hours they raised $1.3 million, in small donations from all over the country [average donation $74]. And money and volunteers from all over the country have been pouring in since.
Coakley events are small, almost hidden away, and frequently have more than twice the number of vocal Brown supporters outside them than Coakley supporters inside. Today Buraq Hussein himself came to campaign for her. They had a venue that would seat 3,000. They claimed 2,500 attended. The fire marshal said 1,100. Their venue was in Boston proper; within easy access by public transportation and within walking distance of at least a half a dozen colleges.
Brown had an event 30-40 miles away in Worcester [sp?] that filled its 3,500 seats in the main room, filled a 1,000 seat overflow room , and another 600 seat overflow room, plus 1,000 outside in the cold. And they attended knowing that they would have to drive home in a major winter storm.
Every indicator, include the White House, is saying that Brown is going to win. The White House publicly is supporting Coakley, but the story being put out today “on background” is that her loss is a) not a referendum on healthcare or Obama, and b) that they will force healthcare through regardless.
White House denials of this being any sort of referendum notwithstanding, the very reason that there have been huge nationwide contributions and volunteers for Brown is his explicit pledge to stop the healthcare abomination being forced down our throats. And given that the entire Obama administration and Democrat Congressional Caucus is tied to that abomination; there is no way to avoid that this is both a referendum and an indication of what Democrats can expect in November 2010 if they face the voters.
Regardless of whether attempts are made to blame Coakley [with truth] for being a horrendous candidate and running a horrendous campaign; this is for a large portion of the country, the politically active portion of the country, both a referendum on Obama’s administration and the only chance to register opposition since all other avenues have been blocked. Brown came literally out of nowhere based on that engaged part of the body politic doing exactly what the civics textbooks say to do. They followed all the rules, ran an open, honest campaign, gave time and money, and exemplified everything that free elections in a free country are supposed to be.
There are a couple of possible outcomes, sadly not unlikely outcomes, that may have consequences far, far beyond what the administration can foresee.
Consider. Brown is the frontrunner by all indications. Coakley has reached the point where even Democrats in Massachusetts who have endured her terms as Attorney General have had enough of her.
So what if on Wednesday morning we find that through some “unprecedented” twist of fate, Coakley is declared the winner. Or suddenly ballot boxes full of Coakley votes start appearing in attics, car trunks, and closets and are counted over the next few weeks [see Washington State and Minnesota]. Nationwide, the expectation already is that there will be Democrat fraud, the only questions being how much and how effective?. What are the odds that this will be accepted as an honest win? What are the odds that it will be assumed that the Coakley victory was legitimate? Or perhaps more to the point, will there be anyone who will not believe that the election has been made a farce and that the act of voting is now meaningless?
Or what if we find that the Democrats in Massachusetts deliberately delay Brown’s seating in the Senate, or that the Senate Democrats allow Kirk to vote for Massachusetts regardless of the election?
[see http://hotair.com/archives/2010/01/17/can-paul-kirk-cast-the-60th-vote-for-obamacare/comment-page-1/#comments Comment #5, which contains a discussion of Senate past practice and court decisions on the transition between appointed and elected Senators]
In that latter pair of cases, the votes will still have been negated.
The net effect of these would be to convince a significant segment of the body politic that electoral politics is hopelessly rigged and is a mug’s game. That segment can only grow.
There are the apocryphal three boxes in a Democracy. The first is the Soapbox. That has been tried at all levels up to and including the largest political demonstration in the history of the country on 9/12. Congress insults and attacks citizens, in some cases sets thugs on them with the approval of the White House, and in all cases ignores them.
The next is the Ballot Box. Decades of routine election fraud and gerrymandering has lessened the faith of people in the efficacy of this. If voting is blatantly rendered meaningless by fraud or outright disregard of both the spirit and letter of the law, what is the critical mass that has to be reached before the Ballot Box is rejected as being a lost cause? Keep in mind that this has become, in effect, a national election campaign.
The Democrats and this administration seem determined at all costs to impose their will on an unwilling country. They may view a “victory” in this election as being worth the cost. But the cost may be more than they can conceive. Firestorm indeed. The third box is also Pandora’s.
Subotai Bahadur
Misty, Er MizT,
(I am reminded of an earlier than Monte Carlo Eastwood flick here, but…I digress without having made progress).
If its not too close a series of recounts will commence until al Frankin can be achieved, complete with magically appearing ballots and poorly registered voters. If a moderate blowout… the lesson of Fla was to never admit to anything, until the “win ugly” lawyers say so.
But such tactics may backfire, as more and more folks tire of the scam and realize that if it can happen in their neighboring state at progressive hands then what is to keep it from happening to them too?
I don’t think folks will legitimize even borderline illegal acts. Appearances are damning the dems.
Health care is fast becoming radioactive as a measure. It does however include choice…death by detonation or death by radiation.
The democrat ops en mass, are trying to irradiate Brown with Governor Palin’s pictorial fashion statement, among other affects. Poling will show if it is effective.
Yup, this a toin coss Especially if Brown wins.
This political battle reminds me of Guadalcanal in 1942. A special election in Massachusetts has resulted in a major confrontation in national politics, because of the implications of its outcome. It is more than a skirmish, but not a great battle, but it portends of great battles to come that will shake this republic to its foundations. This is a historical moment for our country, folks, for good or ill.
The inverted World of Paul Krugman:
“So will this actually make political waves? If Brown were a Democrat, it would instantly be a huge scandal. The outrage machine would be working overtime. And the news media would, of course, pick it up.
But Democrats don’t have the same kind of outrage infrastructure. Can they nevertheless find a way to use this? I guess we’ll soon find out.”
I hadn’t watched the video:
Brown, talking about Palin pregnancy, mentions Obama’s mom was only 18 when she gave birth to the immaculate one.
Krugman goes from that to Brown being a birther in the Limbaugh right wingnut category!
“Brown is clearly aligning himself with the Limbaugh wing of the GOP, in which slurs along these lines are standard fare.
And as Steve Benen points out, claims about Obama’s illegitimacy were an integral part of the birther craziness.“
“If Brown were a Democrat….” ?
This am a New York Times lede columnist? But maybe ‘Brown’ is like ‘dove’ and there was were was a whole covey of Scott Brown in the studio off-camera gaffing in unison.
“But Democrats doesn’t gots the same kind of outrage inframastructure. Cans dey nevertheless finds’em a way to use dis? I guesses we’uns is gwan soon finds out.”
Arrrgh, if Krugman was a fake economist, it would instantly be a huge scandal. And he is! And it is!
But he IS a Nobel Prize for Economics winner. Hmmm….among those crashing idols the mad fiddler mentioned….
Next he’ll win the Pull It, Sir? prize –for what he tries to do over your eyes with the wool.
84 Doug
The ironic fact about that “birther” stuff is that Michelle Obama is the source of the statement that Stanley Ann Dunham was not married when her son was born:
http://legalinsurrection.blogspot.com/2010/01/look-whos-claiming-obamas-mother-was.html
As Professor Jacobson remarks, “I couldn’t care less if Obama’s mother was married at the time of his birth, and neither could Scott Brown. But since the left-wing blogs claim that any expression of doubt about the marital status of Obama’s mother makes one a Birther, I expect they promptly will denounce Michelle Obama.”
“And as Steve Benen points out, claims about Obama’s illegitimacy were an integral part of the birther craziness.”
And as Elmer Fudd points out, melodies by Richard Wagner can be sung in a cartoon titled “Kill The Wabbit”.
***
Constructing an algorithm for testing whether smearing Brown on ‘birther’ is worth the damage of bringing up ‘birther’, crack Obama administration statisticians “burn the midnight oil”!
I’m unemployed. I keep my thermostat at 60. My wife and I live on her salary alone and our diet is mostly oatmeal (breakfast), tuna (lunch), and spaghetti (supper).
I’ve donated twice to Scott Brown.
I’ve donated once to Danny Tarkanian.
Whether Brown wins or loses is irrelevant. General Nathanael Greene lost every battle he fought in the South, yet he won the war. “We get beat, we rise, we get beat again.”
I will continue to feed this firestorm fuel. If still unemployed next Spring, I will volunteer full time in the enemy’s weakest front — most likely Tom Pierello’s Virginia seat.
Then, term limits.
And to the cynics and naysayers here at Belmont, I will paraphrase Don Rumsfeld — “You take back your country with the politicians you have, not with the politicians you wish you had.”
Hello, Fellowbabies,
A few posts back – I specifically recall Synthianeedle, sorry if I missed anyone else – a few other posters and I mentioned the special elections to fill Kennedy’s seat and the problem that the mainstream was not giving Brown any publicity—-that is, they weren’t mentioning the fact that he was campaigning. Sending money to his campaign is still a good idea, but happily thousands, maybe millions of voters all over the country did so this week. Belmonters may not know that Sean Hannity gave Brown an interview on his radio show, and he may have had Brown on his TV show that evening; plus Hannity has has given Brown more publicity by talking about the Massachusetts election for several days thereafter. In fact Rush mentioned Pajamas Media/Crosstarget Poll in talking about the election activities. And I have been pleased to see that Belmont has a promo for Brown. Probably an interesting side note if we ever learn how that came about.
well… guess I can stop waiting for Brown to call and thank me for all my help… sniff
Thanks for providing such a strong forum for for free political expression, Wretchard. I have regarded blogging as just a social event, and I confess I never appreciated that among most important aspects of the conversation here is that **it is publication — making opinions and ideas widely known** Unhappily, I am the only one I personally know that has downloaded HR3200, spent time reading and taking notes, and considering the implications, and it is upsetting to be surrounded by people who shrug and say, “The Democrats just couldn’t be that mean.” In my adult life, I have disagreed with the policies of three Administrations; I can’t tell you, friends, how good it is to read that I’m not the only one who has been freaking out these last seven months. I have never seen an Administration so flawed that within it’s first six months I was already dedicated to countering it’s proposed legislation, and by the eighth month I have began to fear that the whole of the Bill of Rights was in jeopardy. I never really appreciated the political importance of this activity; and, once again, thank you Wretchard; years from now we may look back and see – this was the start of Radio Free America.
85 Mongo
“If Brown were a Democrat….” ?
Krugman is not having difficulties with a singular noun; the verb is not a plural. It’s in the subjunctive because it’s contrary to fact (i.e. Brown is not in fact a Democrat). That point of correct usage used to be a staple question on the verbal section of the old SAT.
Wretchard @ 61 – thanks for reminding everyone here that 80% of the German army’s casulties came on the Eastern Front. That is not to belittle D-Day or The Bulge, but simply to put them in perspective and shut the mouths of those who dismissed the Russians as strategic amateurs, when it was they who had to pay in blood after being invaded on a thousand mile front with 3.5 million men, Germans plus Italians, Romanians, Hungarians, and later SS volunteers from those oh so innocent ‘Captive Nations’ who were mostly used to burn villages and murder people in the Nazi rear. Dieppe and the early defeats in the Pacific and North Africa were a drop compared to the buckets of blood for both sides in Russia.
You are right that there is something Napoleonic in Obama that demands accomplishments now now now even if Obama’s progressive base is starting to realize that the health care bill is an abortion, that it started with the goal of making health care a right for every American and ended with mandating that every American pay each year to the health care cartel with lobbyists entrenched in Washington or face fines. In other words, the classic definition of corporatism, the coercive economic side of fascism, rather than ‘socialism’ in the old Fidel or Soviet sense. Sure after WWII we had what was good for General Motors was good for America, but that made sense when GM was the largest employer in the nation and no one was going to fine you for driving a Ford or a foreign car instead.
@ 27 Life of the Mind – “Time only moves in one direction. Enormous damage has been done. Real assets, military, political, financial and moral, have been consumed. In the Ukraine the Putin ally, their would be Zelaya, leads after the first round of voting and the would be ally of Nato has been repudiated.”
Was Ukraine ever ‘ours’ to lose? The pro-Russian candidates lead for two simple reasons: Ukrainians have abandoned Yuschenko over their nation’s economic agony (basically Ukraine’s only competitive product was cheap steel made from subsidized Russian gas that Moscow could no longer afford to barter for political concessions like in the 90s). They also realized Yuschenko was a Western Ukrainian ultranationalist who hid his Russophobia behind a thin veneer, and he was a bought and paid for by Soros. And Daddy Warbucks Soros himself is merely a front for the interests in Washington that were set to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian /Georgian (go look at their demographics, which are far worse than the Motherland). Yuschenko is probably the least popular elected politician ANYWHERE in the world right now and insulting Soviet veterans while decorating Banderisti who fought on the side of the Nazis as national heroes didn’t help, it was almost as maniacal as Saakashvili blowing up a monument to Georgians who died fighting Hitler in WWII.
Seriously, conservatives need to acknowledge some reciprocity when it comes to Russia, otherwise if we keep collapsing while pushing our luck we’ll see Chinese advisors in Caracas before long. I don’t think you want that kind of tit for tat and neither do I. As Wretchard says, the old order is falling apart for lack of resources, and that old order included endless wars in the Mideast, NATO expansion, Colored Revolutions, and other things America can no longer afford.
Wretchard, is there some way i can delete comment #92? It’s undermining my infrastructure…wait…wait…i think i’ve GOT it…(ahem)
“The OLD SAT, PA Cat? The OLD one?
(there!)
***
Mr. X, when y’all get thru with Mr. Putin, could the republicans borrow him for about four years?
I say “old” SAT because it hadn’t yet been dumbed down for the sake of PC and multiculturalism.
i know –i was just trying to squeeze a laff out my snotty denunciation of krugman’s grammar when it were me what was rong. but he’s STILL a lousy economist, his prescriptions are skewed ideologically away from the invisible hand, which he hates. which would elicit no complaint if his newspaper would even acknowledge the existence of another philosophy.
The gap between the character defining promises that Obama made to get elected and the character that has become evident from his actual performance in office is so huge that it can no longer be crossed with “normal” politics.
Americans are by and large apolitical and content to stay that way for so long as the system oscillates between tweedledum and tweedledee. The Democrats naked plunder of the national treasury to reward its friends and buy itself a permanemt majority is so obviously beyond the scope of normal expectations that even the politically somambulent are viscerally reacting to it.
The huge interest in Tea Parties and the willingness of so many Joe Sixpacks to confront and challenge Congress Critters at town halls is evidence of the feeling of uneasiness within the electorate. Sarah Palin’s popularity is part of it. Scott Brown is proving that this perception that something-is-wrong extends even into the heart of the Democrat Homeland. I think that many BCers have sensed that we were in the middle of something big and historical and here it is.
The stakes are huge. Either the Democrats (and a cooperative GOP) are going to permanently consolidate political power in Washington with bread and circuses for the masses and government employee union enforcement in the hinterland, or state’s rights movements will gain enough momentum to fracture the center and decentralize the power of Government. The Constitution says it should be the latter but perhaps it is the Republic itself that is up for grabs.
“But strategic bombing proved to be of limited value.”
NOT true. Actually Strategic bombing won WW2, it just didn’t do so directly, as it proponents claimed in the 30′s it would.
WW2 was about air power. The side that controlled the airspace over the battlefield NEVER lost the battle. Without the fighters that the Nazi’s had to keep over Germany, they lost control of the airspace over the Eastern front. Any chance of fending off the Soviets was lost with that control.
It wasn’t the bombs dropped by the USAAF that won the war, but the fighter pilots killed trying to stop those bombs. It takes 18 to 20 years to make a fighter pilot, fighter planes can be cranked out like automobiles.
By mid ’44, the USAAF had stopped training most pilots and sent the talent to the regular army.
Germany wasn’t short of men, they just had no fuel or air space to train. When US pilots had a minimum of 200 hours before going into a squadron, the German pilot was flying a potential combat mission EVERY time he took off. Even his first training mission.
Without strategic bombing the Allies would never had gained control of the German sky. That would have meant no invasion of Germany and an eventual peace treaty that left Nazi Germany intact.
A large part of the British population thought fighting on after ’40 was stupid. Churchill kept them going by the thinest of margins.
Stalin negotiated peace terms on and off from 42 to mid 44. They just couldn’t work out a deal.
’44 was the year of decision in WW2. If the Nazi’s had the 800+ fighter they were using in the air war over Germany available for other theaters, they could have won that decision.
Take 400 of those fighters, move them from Germany to France and the USAAF doesn’t knock down the Railroad bridges to seal off Normandy. That means the afternoon of June 06, 1944, several Panzer divisions drive Overlord/Neptune back into the sea.
German control of the air in the East means no Operation Bagration, since the Soviets needed surprise to pull it off and with German recon planes able to fly where they want, there could be no surprise.
War is a complex endeavor. It is not at all unusual for an action taken here now to have an affect there next week. It’s called the indirect approach.
@96 Mongo BL
Sounds like you sir have been reading your ‘Spengler’ aka David Goldman, although that gent over at First Things has probably watched Firefox once too often, judging by his interest in Israeli avionics for Russian jets/missiles. Israeli nanotech is of far more interest in foreign capitals than hardware for jets and missiles.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/KL24Ag01.html
I’m afraid I am not a Russian citizen so I cannot answer this question about Putin. But I think if you are waiting for his work to be finished in Russia you will be waiting a long time.
The growing chutzpah of American cartelism/corporatism, led by the top bailed out banks like Government Sachs but by no means limited to them…Big Government Oligarchy, whatever you want to call it, this is my favorite hobbyhorse here at Belmont Club. That is, besides Russia and the regrettable acceptance by LOTM and a few others here of anti-Russian propaganda as fact. So a pro-Putin pol is winning in Ukraine? So what? Why is Ukraine’s testy relationship with Russia our problem? Especially now that the gas pipes are being built to bypass them when they really don’t pay up? But when it comes to Ukraine, all talk of free markets goes out the window in Washington, they should be subsidized forever as penance for the Holmodor. You know, Ed Lucas and the Economist’s (plus the WSJ, WaPost) view that Russia is Mordor and the Shadow is creeping across Eastern Europe while the Chinese are our good buddies and any talk of protectionism vs. Beijing is wrong.
At least the Russians haven’t made a pact with Washington to force their shoddily-made but cheap merchandise on the American people in return for buying our debt. That is, you can buy any clothing you want in America as long as it’s Made in China. For that exotic European stuff, good luck finding it even at Neiman Marcus. True, the Russians bought some Fannie and Freddie but bailed out as quickly as they could and in general their oligarchs have gotten hosed on the U.S. steel mills they bought (and probably the New Jersey Nets will be next) just like the Japanese did when they bought Rockefeller Center at the peak of their real estate bubble in early Nineties. But don’t hold your breath waiting for the WSJ to condemn Moscow and Beijing for buying…wait for it…TOO MUCH U.S. government debt!
Even the Corn Lobby with Big Ethanol and putting corn starch/syrup into food and drinks with consequent expanding beltlines and derriers across the Fruited Plain is the result of a government-backed cartel. The Embargo against Cuba cannot really be explained except as a means to keep down a competitor for sugar plus cheap pharmaceuticals and health care ninety miles from Seniorville USA in Florida. The ability of the health care lobby to loot and plunder with impunity in Washington is exceeded only by that of the banks.
But then again, I am just an American who happens to have observed his country for some time from abroad so perhaps my views are easily dismissed as having gone native or ‘Euroweenie’. In fact, I am still a conservative though I have not voted Republican in a while. I think if William F. Buckley were still alive he would give Rich Lowry a swift kick in the rear for having National Review opine that we should leave poor Ben Bernanke alone and let The Fed do its job of devaluing the dollar with no audits from pesky Ron Pauls or Bernie Sanders.
But yes, when you get down to it, I do wish some Goldman executives were now sharing a cell next to Mr. Khodorkovsky’s in Siberia. Because at a certain point, as another poster pointed out, if Obama is America’s Gorby, beloved by the world but destined to be despised as a weak leader who let things fall apart at home, then our own Putin is coming. And he’s going to be a right wing populist that will make Washington liberals long for the days when they despised Dubya while raking in government contracts/lobbying bucks from his and Pelosi’s spending spree and Obama’s last blowout sale.
95. PA Cat said,
“I say “old” SAT because it hadn’t yet been dumbed down for the sake of PC and multiculturalism.”
And as cover for the Dem/NEA lock on monopoly education.
…and “parents” in denial who would rather believe all is well in smallbrainsville.
—
Child Actor/student of a different sort.
80 SB
Brown is out and about, all over the bloody state [thankfully, eastern states are smaller than ours out west], frequently in his own pickup truck.
The delicious part about that is Teh Won’s dissing Brown’s pickup, as in “Everybody can buy a truck.” As Gateway Pundit notes, “Maybe Barack Obama didn’t notice that Scott Brown’s truck is a GM truck. . . . Maybe Obama forgot that the US now OWNS General Motors. You’d think he’d want Americans to ‘Buy GM’ not ‘Bash GM’? You’d think.”
http://gatewaypundit.firstthings.com/2010/01/oh-this-is-good-obama-bashes-scott-brown-his-truck-its-a-gm-truck/#comments
“Because at a certain point, as another poster pointed out, if Obama is America’s Gorby, beloved by the world but destined to be despised as a weak leader who let things fall apart at home, then our own Putin is coming. And he’s going to be a right wing populist that will make Washington liberals long for the days when they despised Dubya while raking in government contracts/lobbying bucks from his and Pelosi’s spending spree and Obama’s last blowout sale.”
I can think of worse fates than that – an old fashioned purge in Washington might be very rewarding to watch for a little while. Past that, well, now you know why so much ammunition hording is going on. The biggest difference of all, of course, is that the American people aren’t nearly as weak as the Russian people were after 70 years of communism. There will be no Holmodor here.
RagnarD: T, you have had nine (9), count ‘em, nine years to realize that a goodly portion of the Muslim world wants you conquered and submissive or dead. That is the truth and you still are tone deaf to reality. Given the chance they would do the same to us. Why do I know? Because they have said so. Jeebus. Get off your lazy and do the research.
Lazy. I was in the Reagan Navy and helped wrap up the Cold War. I repair guidance and power systems for torpedoes when they fail on the range (something that you can’t do with missiles because they don’t land nice and neat on a runway).
It is true that the Q’u'r’a'n says the infidel must be converted or killed, but when I brought up the fact that the Torah in three places demands an eye for an eye, Pork Rinds for Allah held me to account by revealing that there is an Oral Torah that is used to unveil the meaning of the Written One. The same situation exists in Islam. Jihad in many cases is “spiritualized” to mean an internal struggle against personal sin, written in the language of warmaking.
But lets assume the entire Muslim world accepts the literal fundamentalist interpretation that jihad calls for forcible conversion of infidels, and requiring the payment of tribute from Jews and Christians.
So there is motive, but there is no means. Fire on America and America fires back.The United States is the sole remaining superpower and a military hyperpower at war with an enemy that controls no country, no army, and has no seat of power.
Our enemy’s most effective weapon was a commando takeover of an airplane, turning it into a manned missile, but now that weapon is impossible to use because passengers will no longer accept assurances that if they stay in their seat everyone will be okay. Our retaliation for that was to remove the Taliban from power in Afghanistan and create a center of US military power projection in the heart of the Middle-east (Iraq and Kuwait) blocking Iran from marching on Saudi Arabia or flying to Israel and with the ability to reach out and touch neighboring Syria.
They are reduced to pathetic attempts to bring down individual airplanes with bombs secreted about their person. Our response to that is to install x-ray machines that can see right through burquas. Pirate attempts invite a SEAL team. Build a training camp and you invite a Predator drone. Osama bin Laden has to go around dressed like a woman, and even then he has to put on the best performance of his life to avoid being tagged by analysts at Langley sniffing right up his very asshole.
In short, we are winning the Long War. Most Americans believe there would be eternal consequences for nuking the Muslim world, and there would certainly be hard questions to answer before the Throne for even suggesting it in on the Net.
Britain’s strategic bombing campaign was in compensation for the much smaller contribution that the British Army was making in the war. The decision was made years before WW11 as the politicians horrified by the losses in WW1 vowed never to use the soldier as cannon fodder again. The losses suffered by Bomber Command and its near suicidal efforts has to be seen in that light. The generals were no longer to send British soldiers charging into enemy lines, and compensated instead by deploying high-tech substitutes such as the Lancaster bombers. Churchill knew that the British could not match the titanic determination of the millions of Red Army men then grimly eviscerating the Wehrmacht, they had to make their contribution in a different way.
The Intrade Beat Goes On.
I wonder what in the Heck is going on with Rasmussen?
He had nothing but an outdated poll on Mass.
Now his site has been down for 24 hours!
—
View from the Left
Looks like the Rasmussen poll on the January 19th special election for Massachusetts Senate was not a fluke. From Public Policy Polling:
“Because of the heavy interest we’ll try to get our Massachusetts numbers out over the weekend. But because we’ve already conducted most of the interviews for it here are some of the major storylines we’re seeing:
At this point a plurality of those planning to turn out oppose the health care bill. The massive enthusiasm gap we saw in Virginia is playing itself out in Massachusetts as well. Republican voters are fired up and they’re going to turn out. Martha Coakley needs to have a coherent message up on the air over the last ten days that her election is critical to health care passing and Ted Kennedy’s legacy- right now Democrats in the state are not feeling a sense of urgency.”
Scott Brown’s favorables are up around 60%, a product of his having had the airwaves to himself for the last week.
I don’t see a single person who looks like they’re under the age of 40 in that crowd of Dems behind Obama (Fox News clip on the Gateway Pundit site), and it’s heavy on well…heavy set, middle aged women, white and black. I feel a Whiskey rant coming on about The One activating the fantasies of middle aged lady bureaucrats while destroying the blue collar jobs of their working class ex-husbands…
At least in video of Russian political events I see a few slim twentysomething blondes, of which Russia has in abundance, near Medvedev or Putin. Hell, some of them get seats in the Duma. So what gives? When did America become a country where a middle aged elite gets to so blatantly discriminate against the young, from jacking up housing prices in Blue Cities to empowering the all-important credit score which stays artifically low for all of those who never missed a payment but neglected to start their credit history at the age of ten? Why? I thought America was supposed to be a young country but so far what have twentysomethings received from Hope and Change? The highest unemployment since WWII for those under 25…good luck getting married boys, or even moving out from Mom and Dad…
Ivan is correct on WWII, and thanks to Teresita for urging fellow BCers to prevent Three Conjectures from becoming nukyulur war porn.
Midway –
Some months ago I posted a comment here comparing our political fight to the Battle of Midway. All we could do was continue to make swarming attacks, never knowing if or when the crucial dive bombers might arrive.
We’ve done our job and it now looks like a large dive bomber by the name of Scott Brown has appeared over the Leftist Fleet at a very opportune moment.
A brave union official endorses a commonsense reform to improve accountability.
In what could prove a turning point in favor of education reform, American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten came out in favor of considering student performance on standardized tests as one part of teacher evaluations. If Weingarten turns her words into real actions, and if the teachers’ unions follow Weingarten’s lead, it will improve teacher quality across the country.
Support for using student test scores to evaluate teachers is a departure for Weingarten. Two years ago, when New York City planned to start using test scores as part of its teacher evaluations, it was Weingarten, then head of the city’s teachers’ union, who pushed state lawmakers to ban the city from doing so. The legislature caved. New York’s education reformers are working to eliminate the ban.
—
In the last decade, researchers have developed statistical tools capable of measuring teachers’ independent contribution to their students’ learning, as reflected by their scores on standardized tests. When carefully applied, these measures can separate the influence of the teacher on a student’s test scores from the influences of other factors, such as the student’s background characteristics and even the quality of his home life.
It’s true that test-score analysis, if used improperly, can do as much harm as good. And test scores alone are not broad enough to be used in isolation in evaluating teachers. Nonetheless, they are valuable tools for strengthening those evaluations and the employment decisions that might result.
Randi Weingarten should be applauded for her decision to support the use of test scores to evaluate teachers. However, she is likely to face an uphill climb. While Weingarten’s AFT has shown itself open to some common-sense reforms, the nation’s largest teachers’ union, the National Education Association, has so far pursued a scorched-earth policy not only against using test scores in teacher evaluations, but also against more widely praised reforms such as the expansion of charter schools. It’s also unclear whether local AFT affiliates will be willing to follow their president. For instance, Weingarten’s replacement as president of New York City’s teachers’ union, Michael Mulgrew, has actively fought to keep the ban on using test scores to evaluate teachers.
For the sake of America’s future, let’s hope that Randi Weingarten sticks to her brave words and that the broader teachers’-union community follows her lead.
T stated: It is true that the Q’u’r’a’n says the infidel must be converted or killed, but when I brought up the fact that the Torah in three places demands an eye for an eye, Pork Rinds for Allah held me to account by revealing that there is an Oral Torah that is used to unveil the meaning of the Written One. The same situation exists in Islam. Jihad in many cases is “spiritualized” to mean an internal struggle against personal sin, written in the language of warmaking.
————————————-
Institutional Islam, funded by the state, directed by the state and supported by the state teach the literal meaning of the Koran.. To compare the Torah (oral and written) to the Koran is simplistic at best, specious at worse….
Errant misguided Jews have not been running around gouging out eyes of people who slighted them for centuries screaming “eye for an eye” whereas Jihadism is not a new issue.. and it has been screamed for centuries and has been endorsed by the Islamic hierarchy.
In the case for “eye for an eye” misunderstanding it is NOT the Jews that misunderstanding the issue, it is the other nations that misread this into a false analogy…
In the issue of Islam, “jihad” may contian a meaning of “internal struggle” that some in the west want it to mean, but if you ask Mphammed Atta, the Mullahs of Iran, the Wahabbists of Arabia or the Taliban they will say…. Death to the infidel and Kill the Jews…
I don’t think O sees himself as America’s Gorby –i think he sees himself as America’s Kerensky.
102. wws: What is Holmodor?
Please do not try to make the equivalence between Islam and the Judeo/Christian tradition. Despite the very recent academic push to do the same by calling Islam “Abrahamic” the fact is that Islam does not even share the same God. Allah is much closer to Ba’al than to Jehovah.
If you read the complete Biblical eye-for-an-eye passage you will find that it is an attempt at explaining a concept of measured justice for personal wrongs. The Koran and the biographies are very clear about the meaning of jihad and the obligation of every Muslim to increase the number of Allah’s subjects by any means necessary. There is absolutely no connection between those two traditions.
For 1,400 years Western writers had no illusions about the Saracen, the Musselman or the Turk. It takes a 20th Century education to blur the blindingly obvious.
Jwarrior/111;
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=33350184
T @ 103: They are reduced to pathetic attempts to bring down individual airplanes with bombs secreted about their person.
You miss the point six different ways. First, jihad is a *tradition* of pathetic attempts, they consider this fun and fashionable. Second, bringing down a $100,000,000 airplane and killing 300 passengers is not trivial, much less whatever the airplane lands on. Third, the nuisance value is also an essential element of jihad, and the expense in time and money is very significant. Fourth, that we look at every bearded character as a threat, is their triumph, they have earned respect. Fifth, the activity attracts adherents, cowards and fools of several stripes. And sixth, should they lay hands on working nukes, we all presume they will use them in short order, no matter how pointless, vicious, and pathetic that might be in some larger view.
They do not TAKE that larger view, that is, the crazy element of Islam does not, and the rest of Islam is run by their craziest elements.
Have a nice day, after you take off your shoes and have your entire body x-rayed.
Wretchard writes: “If America dodges the bullet a lot of credit will probably go to its Federal structure and citizen’s groups like the Tea Parties who serve the function of preserving the center even when the political class has lost its bearings.”
Brown is a liberal in many senses. But he is also, willy-nilly at first and now with some precision, articulating a federalist position. Massachusetts is experimenting with health care reform and wants the feds to butt out. I sense that the energy behind Brown is a realization among voters that Obama equals centralization of power and Brown represents resistance to that centralization.
The meme that Obama equals bait-and-switch is becoming common. Americans hate being suckers, and being a sucker twice would be a shame on them. Americans were indeed looking for change. They looked into their hearts and said, “Yes, we are the change we have been looking for,” and they voted for Obama. Now Obama is finding that his voters still want to be the change they are looking for, and they are making the necessary adjustment via the ballot box.
Teresita @ 48:
That is a slander on the people of RVN. By 1972 the ARVN had 11 Divisions and there were 550,000 people in their Territorial forces plus 116,000 in the National police. The Peoples Self Defense Force had 4 Million. There was no insurgency to speak of after Tet. By 1972, the North had almost no forces in the South. They had been run out.
By 72 the only option the North had was invasion. And with US air support he got his ass kicked by the Army of the Republic of Viet Nam. It took them three years to recover.
The democrats led by the Swimmer are responsible for the deaths resulting from the denial of support for South Viet Nam.
Go read a factual account of post-Tet Viet Nam: A Better War Lewis Sorley.
13. Teresita
The firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945 would not have hastened the end of the war anymore than firebombing Mosul or Basra would have made Saddam bend .
teresita, I loathe you beginning six years ago when you misstated that US Marines MURDERED Japanese at Guadalcanal and couldn’t back it up. You then continued over the course of several exchanges to stand mute on Japanese Unit 731 when asked about it. Now you claim you’re of Filipino decent. Well the pictures you use to post looked close enough to Japanese to be the real thing. Not just your avatar but the ones on your lesbian site where you promoted that All American virtue. Then you began a campaign of character assault against me; falsely claiming that I was not a former U.S. Marine or C.I. A. operative. You continue those attacks to this day knowing a sane person would never disclose personal name, rank, and serial number on the f*ucking internet. Well you’ll just have to suck it up because if I could get within arm’s reach of you I could prove it to you. I could show you the documentation, awards signed by the President, (Ford)etc… so it would be best for all concerned if you ceased taking pot shots. I am stating a good deal of this so the unwitting members here can know our history of antipathy . I saw last night where you were jettisoned from the Elephant Bar Blog, the why isn’t important to me, what surprises me is that it took so long. Your first mistake was attacking US Marines. Now you make the above statement.
Prove any part of what you wrote in that sentence. You can’t. War is unlike anything else man does and a battle, an engagement, an entire war can hinge on the most unlikely event. So just stuff it and go back to running your lesbian site and soliciting lesbian “friendships” and spare the Belmont Club your particular style of crap.
“A firestorm is by its nature an out of control conflagration. It stops only when it has sated itself.”
Actually, it stops when it runs out of fuel or oxygen. Technical issue, but perhaps a useful stepping off point if the metaphor is worth pursuing further.
One thing about Brown’s bio that doesn’t get a lot of attention, and that’s his military service. We have sent many of our finest young men and women to Iraq and elsewhere, and they’ve come back to us as tempered steel. At least some of them will become city councilmen, and then mayors, governors, and members of congress. It’s enough to give one hope…
two more Holodomor –pictures worth a thousand words indeed. The second is a very professional-looking short –but all three have different approaches –i really don’t see how this could be a conspiracy to smear Stalin. at any rate, it does help explain the news out of Ukraine. the ‘blues’ –the Russian speakers, including the later wave of immigrants sent in by the 20s and 30s soviets are the urban vote, and vs the rural vote, the ‘oranges’ indigenous Ukrainians –and the offspring of the Holodomor survivors. And if they are trying to forget, and voting to unify with the Russian Federation, i just shake my head and understand it’s their business and none of mine.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3438536352415708547#
http://www.wntube.net/play.php?vid=1643
Rosinante: Without strategic bombing the Allies would never had gained control of the German sky. That would have meant no invasion of Germany and an eventual peace treaty that left Nazi Germany intact.
Throughout 1944 the Luftwaffe fielded about 40,000 combat aircraft, three times more than they did in 1942 before strategic bombing began. But these were systematically destroyed by air-to-air engagements with the Allies, especially against the new P-51 Mustang. The capture of Italy meant the Luftwaffe was being hit from two directions and they were hard-pressed to defend the Romanian oil fields.
Bombing population centers had the counterintuitive effect of freeing up workers from making wiener-schnitzel and putting them on a Me-262 line riveting wings.
No, the Germans were simply outclassed in production of aircraft. In June 1944 the Germans flew 14,000 sorties over Normandy, which was a lot. The Allies flew 130,000 sorties against them.
Talking about “doubling down,”Wretchard:
I find it remarkable that British Labor is touting a “Class Mobility” agenda that, at base, can be reduced down to an increase in the subsidy British taxpayers pay into Britain’s credential hatcheries and into their adjunct hiring farms like the NHS and “education” departments.
Remarkable, I say, because Iran’s going nuclear, Britain’s grandest offspring, the USA, is deeply in debt, Shari’ah and its related terrorism is slowly embedding in English cities, and yet, all that Brown can offer up is more masturbatory statist strategy. And you don’t need a London School of Economics degree in “Environmental Sciences” to be a stevedore, or to build a ship, or to manufacture steel beams, or to plant cabbages, which is the type of labor that both Britain and the USA could use more of today.
All of which suggests two things to me. (1) British Labor is in trouble, and like a smart laying hen before a looming hail storm, is frantically running for the safety of the coop right now. And (2) Labor’s safest remaining “ground” is in its Gramsci-an, labyrinthine architectures, not among the citizens, farm animals, the foundries and streets of England.
Ditto Coakley in Massachusetts.
And Obama. Like America’s Democrat(ic)s, Brown’s modern party is a product of the Left’s urban campuses, and appearances are, he is betting Labour’s prospects on a tax-payer invigoration of these, his academic patrons.
Labor is retreating to its ramparts and preparing to raise the draw bridge. And I think we can take this doubling down as a sign of weakness. So, buck up BC’ers! Things may not be all that bad!
-Steve
PS: Charles, thanks for the link to the Chihuahan meteor-collision theory. It was an excellent thesis, underwritten with great photos, and, best of all, it explodes sclerotic, hidebound science. Gotta luv it!
73) Marty,
“The alternative is that he and those around him are stupid.”
They’re not so much stupid as incompetent and tone-deaf.
“Quantity has a quality of its own.”
Yes, and one of those qualities is that you can’t hide quantity.
Even if Brown loses, hard fought elections like this reveal the quality of the opponents: the Left’s dirty tricks and the Right’s appeal to the common man.
As Wretchard said in his piece on Hillary supporter John Hsu (now residing in jail, by the way) the Ghille Suits are off.
From Nancy Pelosi’s “Well, there’s a lot of stuff said in the campaigns (and so what).” to Obama’s string of broken promises to Geitner’s Turbotax travails to ACORN’s antics, the Dems are about as subtle as the Red Army rolling into Berlin.
Everyone sees who they really are now and they have even quit denying it.
they’re all professional rent-seekers, and they all have been nothing else but their entire lives, and none of them have ever even met anyone who isn’t likewise a lifer rent-seeker. Red staters might as well be from Neptune, or swimming around in the office aquarium.
The significant affect of the WWII bombing in Europe was on fuel production and the damage to the transportation capabilities of Germany. The German armament industry was producing more at the end of the war than at any other point; they just couldn’t get it to the troops, and what did get to the troops didn’t have enough fuel to be used properly.
This morn on local Boston news Ms. Coakley said that those of us who oppose the health care bill do so only because of our ignorance. Oh, and the cost of it all won’t be much for our nation to bear – it’s just too complicated for us to understand. Geez, I’m surprised I found my way in to work this morning without her guidance.
These elitist Dems are completely tone deaf. I would say a Brown win might serve as a lesson in perfect pitch, but I know better.
Regarding bombing of civilians, I believe the Allies did it because they COULD and there was very little else they could do at the time. The capability for precision bombing did not exist. It was not a pretty picture, but as mentioned by others, there were indirect and probably unintended ways that the bombing of cities helped the Allied cause.
One often overlooked item – thousands of Nazi artillery pieces (especially the fearsome 88′s)were busy shooting at American and British planes rather than at Russian tanks during the crucial battles on the eastern front.
Habu: teresita, I loathe you beginning six years ago when you misstated that US Marines MURDERED Japanese at Guadalcanal and couldn’t back it up.
(Easy does it, Habu, W said keep it civil.)
Not correct. There was a US submarine captain who machine-gunned Japanese sailors in the water that gave me pause.
You then continued over the course of several exchanges to stand mute on Japanese Unit 731 when asked about it.
I got no dog in that hunt. I’m an American, I defend the honor of American forces, when they behave with honor. When they destroy villages in order to save them I do not approve.
Now you claim you’re of Filipino decent.
My father was a Filipino who joined the US Navy and became a citizen, brought his wife here, and I was born in the 1960s in Vancouver, Washington. I’m what we call first-generation “Begotten”.
Well the pictures you use to post looked close enough to Japanese to be the real thing.
I know! We Asians all rook arike.
Not just your avatar but the ones on your lesbian site where you promoted that All American virtue. Then you began a campaign of character assault against me; falsely claiming that I was not a former U.S. Marine or C.I.A. operative.
As a fellow veteran I do praise your service in the Marines and I never questioned that service. But Habu, you’re dealing with a real ex-spook here. Enlisted Navy crypto. Those who know do not talk. Those who talk do not know.
You continue those attacks to this day knowing a sane person would never disclose personal name, rank, and serial number on the f*ucking internet. Well you’ll just have to suck it up because if I could get within arm’s reach of you I could prove it to you.
Thank the Lord for the Second Amendment.
I could show you the documentation, awards signed by the President, (Ford)etc… so it would be best for all concerned if you ceased taking pot shots.
Get a scanner, and post the .jpg to a blog. Not that I really give a hoot. But it is far more likely that you are posturing and never were a CIA “operative” than you are an ex-CIA agent who violates the terms of his SF-189 (now superceded by an even more rigid standard form), especially in light of your call to kill hundreds of millions of fellow human beings. That’s very unprofessional, and Central Intelligence is a professional outfit.
I am stating a good deal of this so the unwitting members here can know our history of antipathy.
I don’t loathe you, Habu. I’m the best friend you never knew you had. Iron sharpens iron.
I saw last night where you were jettisoned from the Elephant Bar Blog, the why isn’t important to me, what surprises me is that it took so long.
Well, there’s always the backup persona.
Intrade gets “worse” for dearly departed Ted.
The founding fathers distrusted political parties, but could do nothing to halt their development so here we are.
The Republicans have been cleaned out of Washington and the voters are now looking at the current crop of Democrats who are about to experience the same fate. What will be left? Moderates, I hope, of either stripe. But that’s just me – longing for the return of the mushy middle after too many years of radical politics blindly driving Washington and this country into a second rate future because we all know “it can’t happen here.”
I’m in the Richard Jeni Party – most of the way, but the uncomfortable truth (are you listening Jeni, Jon Stewart, Bill Mahr, etc?) is that somebody has to make government work. We can’t just go home. Al Franken might very well be a fool, but he manned up.** Palin did not – in the end.
http://www.encyclopedia.com/video/rhw8DFSGzvg-richard-jeni-political-parties.aspx
**nobody mentions how abysmally corrupt/bad/incompetent/unpopular Rep. Norm Coleman and the local party apparatus must have been to have lost to such a weak candidate.
re: damaging cars, getting physical with reporters, (patrolling polling places with axe handles, knifing get-out-the-vote bus tires), etc.
Are there any sites that document political thuggery? Snopes-like? Any and all political affiliation? Seems this is something we should document and insist on its elimination. (Perhaps IJ or another constitutional rights firm).
re: Coakley thug. I’ve met this type. Trained in “polite” physical intimidation (i.e. suitable for TV, shove and help-up, apologizing, then do it again). People need to practice sliding to the weaker side (farther away foot) when bumped-and-shoved, and pull that hand/arm/elbow forward as if you’re recovering from a fall (the assailant will stumble past you and fall if they don’t recover by taking a few large strides). Steel yourself and watch the eyes for the tell that they are going to get physical. If you want them to fall hard enough to break something, trip that same leg as it tries to come forward.
Jimbo, very good analogy, comparing Brown to the Hell Bombers over the three Jap flattops. After the election, we need to watch for Hiryu and be ready to lose Yorktown, but by November we’ll have ourselves a Great Marianas Turkey Shoot just in time for Thanksgiving.
On the WWII stuff, I think the biggest tragedy was that the Allies didn’t target German synth fuel plants even more than they did. Pleosti was one of the hardest targets, and the rate for unescorted bombers over Schweinfert was horrific, resulting in the cancellaton of daylight raids without escort until the P-51s could come in. The biggest successes of the Strategic Bombing Campaign as stated earlier probably were drawing 88s and fighters off the Eastern Front, plus killing a lot of German pilots. Was that worth the deaths of thousands of our airmen and hundreds of thousands of people on the ground? That’s a harder question.
Quite simply one of the reasons the Bagration operation (the most successful of the war in terms of enemy killed/captured and territory won back) rolled over the Germans liked an earthquake was because by mid-1944 the Wehrmacht had become a horse drawn army with a petrol fueled Panzer spearhead. They simply did not have the mobility anymore to counter the Russian version of blitzkrieg which was also aided by the hundreds of thousands of American trucks that were then reaching the USSR via Murmansk.
Basically, Lend Lease allowed the Soviets to focus on building weapons and tanks instead of things they were not as good at mass producing like locomotives, trucks, and field telephones and radios for command and control. In 1941 they were almost evenly matched with the German forces that were then the most skilled in the world but they had no command and control, it was a chaotic situation starting with Stalin’s nervous breakdown and spreading paralysis from the top, resulting in the Germans almost reaching the Kremlin. By 1944 the situation was reversed and it was the Germans who were immobilized, getting encircled, and surrendering or getting killed by the hundreds of thousands from Belarus to the Polish border.
The discussion between Habu and Teresita is depressingly familiar. There are real spooks and psuedo spooks but the pseudos can do a lot of damage.
Teresita and Rosinante,
According to the Strategic Bombing Survey that reviewed the bombing results after WWII, the real war-winning tactic against Germany was our bombing of the petroleum industry. This came after several other tactics were tried and failed – ball bearing factories and aircraft production lines for two examples.
Without fuel the German war machine reverted to a Napoleonic mode. For example, over Normandy, German fighters were fuel limited – they had the machines and the pilots but not avgas.
Attacks against population centers seemed to have little effect other than in the satisfaction of vengence legitmately extracted for Conventry, the Docklands, etc.
As to the British Army, Churchill’s multivolume history of WWII starts with a breakdown of causalties. The interesting statistic was that the British NAVY had higher total dead and wounded than the British ARMY. Together, the Brits losses were comparable to the US totals. I think Britain’s air arm was counted as Army but I could be wrong.
As to firestorms, one interesting effect is a clear outer boundary of effects. There will be one big burnt out circle with no damage outside it. Let’s hope the metaphor fails with the Brown/Coakley race and beyond.
“by mid-1944 the Wehrmacht had become a horse drawn army with a petrol fueled Panzer spearhead”
Contrary to popular belief, the Wehrmacht Heer was *always* “a horse drawn army with a petrol fueled Panzer spearhead.” At no time were more than 20% of German divisions motorized; the rest were straight leg infantry with supply wagons and horse-drwan artilley. The Heer had more veterinarians than doctors, just to take care of the draft horses.
Fuel shortages however did increasingly limit the vital Panzer/Panzergrenadier divisions, as seen during the Ardennes offensive; but nowhere was they more a factor than in limiting the Luftwaffe. More than half of the Me.262′s constructed never flew, for lack of jet fuel.
Uh, I’m goin to support Ukraine candidature for the EU
probably because,soon, one ukrainian girl will become my daughter in law
So policy opinions depend a lot on where our feelings are leaning
Rush is a breath of fresh air. It is just a pleasure to hear a professional who does his homework. So many talk radio people give the impression that they just show up and read what is handed to them or unspool a stump speech.
Rush’s endorsement of Scott Brown focuses on his hard work and professionalism. Rush is not getting distracted by marginal policy issues.
To continue with my last point and to further the WWII bombing analogies, let’s look at a tactic used by the USAAF during the Battle of the Bulge.
Rather than being a battle in which airpower played a little part, as the movies have presented it, the Ardennes Offensive saw some of the biggest air battles of the war. Reference book: “To Win the Winter Sky.”
By late 1944 the Luftwaffe was forced to hang its head in shame. Bombing of German cities by both night and day had led German civilians to say “Where were you?” when they saw a German pilot.
When the USAAF needed to provide close air support to a specific battlefield in the Ardennes, they would pick a nearby German city and bomb it. The B-17’s and B-24’s out of England were unimpeded by the weather over the continent and could hit targets like cities by use of radar if required. By hitting those cities they forced the Germans to choose between stopping the Allied fighter bombers and stopping the heavies. The correct choice was to focus on the fighter bombers, but the Germans could not bring themselves to leave their cities undefended – it was a matter of honor. So the Luftwaffe would try to do both and end up not doing either well enough to make a difference.
Elections like the one in MA force the Dems to try to both push their agenda through Congress and defend those same actions at the grass roots level. In essence, it as good as puts everything they do on CSPAN for that specific locality.
And Jimbo #127:
Partly right. Here is an actual and revealing conversation among Allied leaders in 1944:
Gen Doolittle, USAAF “I am afraid to have to admit that yesterday I hit the cathedral in Cologne.”
Bomber Harris, RAF “Good for you! I have been trying to hit the place for six months!”
And Mr. X, 133
“…resulting in the cancellaton of daylight raids without escort until the P-51s could come in.”
Wrong! The 8th AF lost 100 bombers against Munster and Sweinfurt in October 1943. They shut things down for a whole two weeks and then just kept right on going. P-51B’s did not get into action until January 1944 and did not really get going until March.
Matt infers (thinks, hopes and prays) that Obama and his agenda is toast. I have to caution against that kind of thinking. It has been shown that the present threat to this Republic has billions of dollars at their disposal and the help of the world’s socialists powers, along with those communists in the world that not only still survive but have learned how to use our systems and ignorance for their gain.
While I am not Catholic, but still just a simple Christian, I am with Matt in that the repudiation of all that he listed is vital before any of the left can be dissuaded or reeducated in their folly. But I am not going to depend or defer to that possibility.
Why? Because I know way too many of those on the left, not even the far left that have been educated and brainwashed for their whole lives in lies and teachings about the evil that is America. Most will never be persuaded that they have been deceived or that they are not smart enough to see the truth.
Lugh reflects that “There are still millions of socialists that want their American collective.” He is more than correct in that statement. He is also right in saying “Where are the conservative leaders who will get us back to the republic that the founders gave us?” Frankly I don’t think that what he is thinking of is available to America today. Yea, somewhere in America there is the man or woman that could bring all of us back together, but that person may or may not even know that they are that person and they would not ever get the backing nor money to present themselves and gain national recognition or even a chance at saving our Republic.
So, what or who will save our Republic? That is the question isn’t it? As long as so many are against the forming of a third party and the fracturing of the defunct and irreverent Republican party, there is little to no chance of doing so. And in my opinion, in the Republican party ( the original Republican philosophy) is long gone and has been for years and years.
Will we ever come back together? The real question is if we were ever together in the first place. Reading a little American history will show you that even when we were, it was because of outside forces and we soon re-fractured time and time again.
Maybe that is a strength and not a weakness? That is for more learned citizens than I.
Marty brings up some real concerns and most likely truths about not only this Brown election but those in the next years. Don’t ever think that those that want to change this Republic into what they want will ever give up. They won’t.
Walt I have to admit that you have not only a God given talent but seem to be able to pick the chafe from the wheat in all situations. Thank You.
Habu You can most times cut to the bone and get past the enticing and deceiving meat. Something to be admired but sometimes too much for the uninitiated and average ignorant American. Perhaps in a year or so, those individuals will be more receptive to your opinions and writings.
wretchard closed his 22. post with: “This is probably going to engender more conflicts because while you could move out of Chicago, you can’t move off the planet.”
This particular comment made me remember what a friend of mine uttered to me at his store. He had just finished adding up his sales for the day and complaining about one of his employees and the fact that the insurance company was giving him hell over getting enough money to fix his roof from a recent hail storm.
He stared out the window and said:
Where in the hell do you go to just give up?
Knowing that he was not that kind of guy, I said, “well why don’t we go down to XXXXX and have a few beers and try to find a place to give up or if not, a place for free Ammo”. He gave me a look and said: “Your nuts”. To which I replied, “most likely, but I’m not going to let the bastards win and you know, neither are you.”
Papa Ray
tersita,
Being an ex squid with crypto doesn’t even come close to making you a spook. What it makes you is someone who claims they are an ex navy squid who had a crypto clearance. Tell us now where you work and what your SSN is so we’re able to check you out….But even that is suspect because when I was in the CIA homosexuals and lesbians were barred from crypto and codeword…so you’re simply full of sh*t.
My best friend?
I’ve stepped in horse sh*t that I’ve preferred rather than to have any part of your ly’in ass around me. Do us and Belmont a favor and do what you did over at EB ..just leave. Tend to your own site.
Why don’t you post your lesbian site for the contributors here to see and let them judge the virtue you’re adding to our society. If you’ve taken it down then pull the archives which I’m confident you still have. Show your contribution to making America a better place by being a lesbian and attempting to influence others that it’s just all dandy. Sure you have full free speech rights but then so do communist, and terrorists. Your style of girl/girl, man/boy love stuff has worn thin with a good many of us and you’re one of the contributors to the rending of our social fabric….so once again just go fu*k yourself and save us all your ly’in perversion…..and no do not count me as a friend.
And let me say one more thing. Former military never get the raw product that CIA produces, they come begging for it and then only get what we wanted to give them, so any knowledge you’re attempting to apply to the CIA of the 70’s and 80’s gleaned from your alleged “spook” experience in the Navy isn’t applicable to the CIA … we ran the intelligence business while all you other folks just got table scraps .. you have no idea of what I signed, what my legend was or how the real intelligence world works. Why? Because you were never inside …..you were a clerk, promoted (if ever) due to quota fulfillment rather than talent. Go suck an egg. BTW are you using government time to blog?
Habu:
Just a gentle admonition, speaking as a former squid-with-a-clearance-
A great deal, in fact most of, what we worked with didn’t come from Langley. It wasn’t the Company that tapped the Soviets’ undersea phone cables, nor ran submarines right into their naval bases, nor surveilled and recorded every detail of their boomers, nor sussed out every physical and EM detail of their missile shoots. Most of what wasn’t ONI product was (unspecified-but-obviously) NSA.
(Yes, that’s all declass now).
**nobody mentions how abysmally corrupt/bad/incompetent/unpopular Rep. Norm Coleman and the local party apparatus must have been to have lost to such a weak candidate.
I don’t live in MN, but the Powerline guys do, and were blogging in great detail about the Franken-Coleman contest and its tortu(r)ous aftermath. I didn’t read every post word for word (appearances aside, I can’t spend ALL my time on the internet) but “abysmally corrupt/bad/incompetent/unpopular” is not really the characterization I got of Coleman from the novella’s worth of writings. My general impression from skimming is that Coleman was vulnerable, the Dems took advantage (someone mentioned previously about getting DNC-hack Secs of State installed, since they oversee elections and election rules … IIRC, Powerline did mention this was a factor in how the decisions came down in MN), Coleman boxed himself into a corner legally on the recounting of certain ballots, and, yes, there were the “ballots found in car trunk” scenarios. Enough to stink. And every time, the decisions broke Franken’s way.
“Abysmally corrupt” would really describe Franken, from what I have read. “Too weak to win over a cheating competitor” would be more the label that fits Coleman, again, from what I have read.
Plus … there was just that whole Nov08 thing going on for the Dems. Whatever could break their way, broke their way. Including the economy (*cough*).
Unless you were paying very close attention to what went down in MN, and by your use of the subjunctive I’m guessing that’s not the case, I would say let’s refrain from blaming the victim here. He may or may not be Mr. Sympathetic (again, I don’t live in MN so I can’t speak from firsthand knowledge) but tarring him with the label of “abysmally corrupt” when you don’t know this for a fact is unfair to him and not the best judgment IMO.
somebody has to make government work.
I most likely share your sentiment, but I hesitate to phrase it this way because the language is basically an open invitation to progressives.
“Making” “government” “work” is their stated mission life. They set about fulfilling their stated mission chiefly by growing government. And sucking up bazillions in taxes to grow it some more. And then attaching all their sisters and their cousins and their aunts to the lobbying and PR and consulting organizations. And then raising taxes a few more times. Because it’ll be SURE to work just as soon as they get enough funding!
This is the cycle of insanity and bankruptcy and systemic breakdown.
I don’t want someone to “make” “government” “work.”
I want somebody who will keep government in line with the Constitution. Which, in our current circumstances, would mean drastic, gob-smacking, shriek-inducing, to-the-bone cuts at the federal level — eliminations of entire cabinet departments (of the sixteen we have, about 75% are arguably unconstitutional) and all their sub-agencies, etc etc.
The government will “work” a helluva lot better when it is substantially reduced and restrained from its current iteration to its constitutional limits. Government efficiency is a BYPRODUCT of adhering to the Constitutional vision … not a precursor of it.
That is my problem with “making” “government” “work” … this is the mindset that results in the tail wagging the dog.
This morn on local Boston news Ms. Coakley said that those of us who oppose the health care bill do so only because of our ignorance. Oh, and the cost of it all won’t be much for our nation to bear – it’s just too complicated for us to understand. Geez, I’m surprised I found my way in to work this morning without her guidance.
This is a recurring theme from the Beltway pols, and I’ve probably heard it more this year in the context of the healthcare bull, uh, bill, than all previous years combined.
“You people just don’t understand. You don’t know everything that we do. You are wrong / misinformed about the contents of this bill.”
As Wretchard and others have pointed out several times, the great myopic arrogance of DC is that they think it is possible for them, or anyone else, to know enough to write these bills that are so far-reaching into the lives of individuals that they darn near compete with colonoscopies for invasiveness.
The kabuki of trotting “experts” and “studies” and “survey results” in and out of Congressional hearings and Congressperson’s offices makes these nimrods think that they are actually learning something that will make monster-sized legislation better. The ones who have no such illusions think WE are the nimrods who will buy the kabuki.
The head of the IRS does not do his own taxes because, by his own admission, the tax code is too complex.
Shouldn’t that be Signal #581,927 that regulatory strangulation and systemic overload are in process and occurring as we speak?
All they have in DC is a big legislative hammer. Unfortunately, they really do see everything, and I mean everything … from steroids in baseball to the pace at which ketchup comes out of a bottle … as a nail. While we, the hammered, pay for all the hammering.
Some system.
Well, if you don’t think you’ll ever get this far again, maybe you want to double down and bet the farm. One win now and the game’s over for the other guy. Hitler certainly thought the Soviets were close to collapsing, like the Russians had done in 1917. Any retreat might give them heart. Any retreat would give them breathing space. Barbarossa was an ambitious gamble from the start.
I think there’s also a tendency to mistake an unprepared or disorganized enemy for a perpetually weak one. The shock of battle, especially of defeat, can prod someone into getting his act together. The Red Army in 1941 was in bad shape after the political purges in the 30′s, but the need to win on the battlefield cost the Kommisars power. Effectiveness became more important than perfectly toeing the party line. The Red Army fighting at Stalingrad was a better army than the one the Nazis has pushed all the way to the gates of Moscow.
The US was similarly unprepared at the start of the war. The peacetime military rewarded officers who didn’t break things or embarrass anyone – cautious folks who weren’t always the best leaders in a war. Or else petty turf-battlers more interested in squabbling with the other branches than with the enemy. And of course there were the Yesterday Men unable to update their thinking to new battlefields and new weapons. And the merely incompetent whos incompetence wasn’t apparent until the shooting started. They all had to be replaced or reformed. In response to Salt Lick’s proposal that “you take back your country with the politicians you have” I say, well, perhaps not with all of them. A few strategic replacements will be necessary. The Kimmels and Fredendalls have to go so the Nimitzes and Pattons can operate.
History has different lessons to teach the two sides today. Obama strikes me as someone too stubborn and prideful to learn any lessons from history. Peggy Noonan worries the GOP won’t learn theirs either.
BTW, Dennis:
Perhaps the explanation is a simple as noting that “avid” and “good” are two different words.
Habu
Once I met Admiral Bobby Ray Inman whose career took him from ONI to DIA to CIA to NSA. He confirmed for me the story that he once had a report of a young analyst who engaged in activities that were deemed incompatible with a security clearance. The Admiral had the person in question called into his office, handed him a telephone, and said, “Call your mother and tell her what you are.” The call completed the Admiral said, “Good, now you can’t be a blackmailed. Now get back to work.”
Teresita,
Your refusal to acknowledge the reality of our tactical victories in Vietnam and the role of John Kerry and media practitioners of sedition in snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, in a campaign that set the pattern for the installation of Obama, puzzles.
Can the strategic targeting of population centers induce a change in the morale and change the culture to effect a political goal desired by the attacker? Clearly yes, al-Qeada did that in Madrid, the Mongols did that with massive demonstrations like in Baghdad, the Romans practiced targeted brutality, as with Carthage, to enable a generally light hand over compliant local subject communities. The Allied air campaign against Germany did result in a desired shift of the German nation towards pacifism. Unfortunately that did not effect the fighting in 1945 in the Ardennes but it did effect the performance of the Germans in Nato towards Poland and Russia and Afghanistan in 2009.
JMH,
There have been arguments made, forgive the passive voice as I do not have the sources, that Hitler’s no retreat order was not irrational in all cases. Given the logistics of the time retreating may have been a riskier strategy. The failure to establish and hold a second line was a fatal error on their part.
To be blogged under the title “On Sex, Intel and Air Power.”
bw@142: Right on both counts – at least wrt (or not!) the ambiguous grammar/syntax. My point about Coleman was intended in the subjunctive “what if” sense to indicate that he (and the Republican Party) lost the race as much as, if not more than, Franken won for reasons that I could only speculate about – parallel to the federal elections in 2004/06/08. (As an aside, I mostly agree with Noonan that the Republicans aren’t even remotely prepared to re-assume the mantle of political leadership – the requirements of leadership, as described by Wretchard, never stopped them in the past.)
In re “making government work”, good point. The allusion was a reminder that USA is still the world’s super power – economically, militarily, politically. From that we can walk away, but that wouldn’t be my first or chosen course of action.
“Some system” is about right. Grim.
The nice (and quite interesting) thing about the current contretemps is that it becomes increasingly clear that by being allowed to fail, Obama is *not* a Manchurian President. In other words, as Wretchard points out, Obama doesn’t have the money to buy Massachusetts (which he desperately needs to continue his plans to turn America into a Russian gulag), the Democrats are *not* demonstrating world-class strategizing, and China / Russia / Saudi Arabia have *not* moved into take over “too big to fail” companies or to buy unused real estate like Mount Rushmore.
What we’ve been seeing the last year is a consistent fall-back to Chicago-style brass knuckles and preferential racism of naming mostly brother and sister blacks to positions of power.
If there was a crazy person cradling a white Persian cat in the background pulling Obama’s strings, I just don’t see the curent Massachusetts mess playing out the way it has played — which is that it will come down to America’s traditional strength of settling things by a majority (secret) vote.
If Obama (and his meglomaniac missus) are on their own with no shadowly superpower supporter(s) behind them, whatever they do manage to do can be fixed. Or blocked. And, actually, it’s sort of fun watching him flounder and knowing that the next city to feel Islamic wrath is almost certain to be a collection of progressives who are reaping what they sowed by voting for him.
(Wasn’t Habu supposed to be coming in from the cold and not playing on the internet any more? Which means either that Belmont Club is more seductive than previously supposed, or that our security rating is not the flaming orange danger that we were thinkin it was.)
I can’t help but think that our friend fred is smiling at this turn of events in Massachusettes ..
I just wish his boots were on the ground knocking on doors and making phone calls.
Obama’s reaction to the heckling at the Coakley event yesterday really struck me. He started up with a perfunctory and unsuccessful chant of “Fired up!” and then got flustered when heckled. He lost control of the crowd, who heckled back at the pro lifer with much more enthusiasm than any reactions to Obama’s presentation, and looked bewildered and stepped away from the podium for almost a full minute as the crowd exploded.
I think the letter from Brian Lamb and this failed rally are truly harbingers of the failure of “hope and change.” I just hope that we can afford a two year lame duck presidency. The only thing that we can pray for is that Obama dedicates himself to the war on terror – the only path open to him for redemption of his presidency.
Papa Ray
In one generation the Romans went from treating the idea of a King as anathema to complete acceptance of One Man government. After Octavian nobody even talked about the Republic.
I doubt that human beings have changed so much in the last 20 centuries that we could say with any certainty that most people in the US would act any differently. Most people will go along to get along when confronted by a seemingly omnipotent power – it has always been so.
Obama will not declare himself the first emperor but if immigration amnesty and universal suffrage become law the result will not be much different. Millions of new voters added to the Democrat rolls will be organized, manipulated and managed by thousands of SEIU and ACORN workers who will have unlimited time and unlimited public money to electioneer for the Party. Every successor POTUS will be determined in a Party caucus and the selectee presented to the people in November every four years for their affirmation.
Look at all that has happened in plain sight over the past year. I suppose we all always knew that we were getting screwed but never before has it been done so brazenly and with such utter contempt for the public. Reid and others publicly scoff at Congress Critters who ask only for cheap bribes. This is a different time.
I believe that the only thing that will save the Republic is a states’ rights movement initiated by the governors and legislatures of the several states that raises the stakes to the level of a Constitutional crises. Unfortunately there is no indication that is likely to happen.
If The Bellwethers Are Really Bellwethers, This Might Not Be Close (Looks like Brown up by 15 ?!?)
NahnCee:
Let’s wait until the smoke clears. The Lefties, I believe, are willing and able to engage in virtually any form of skulduggery to steal this election.
American killed in Haiti.
H/T Drudge
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=TX-PAR-AIP10&show_article=1
Admiral Josh Painter:
This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we’ll be lucky to live through it.
H4RO
Peter Boston,
They kept on talking about the Republic, Octavian/Augustus talked about the Republic. The plot of I Claudius is based on the penchant for Roman historians to keep talking about it. They just didn’t revive it.
Arguably they kept paying lips ervice to the institutions of the Republic unti Diocletion.
What is happening with Drudge? He suddenly went to tape.
Congrats, Marie Claude on the expanding family! I have several Ukrainian colleagues – some of the finest folks, I know. Btw, are you by chance the same Marie Claude appearing on Atlantic Review pages?
LOTM
Agreed. An orderly withdrawal while in contact with the enemy is not easy. Perhaps the better analogy to Obama is Erwin Rommel, another orverrated personage. Rommel is considered a great general, but I demure. An excellent tactician perhaps, but an ignoramus when it came to logistics. His Afrika Korps required supplies to operate. Those supplies had to be landed at Axis controlled North African ports (which were in Libya), loaded onto trucks, and driven to the front lines, wherever those might be. The farther east the front lines from the Libiyan ports, the longer the truck drive, and the fewer the supplies the available trucks could deliver to the battlefield in any given time frame. Plus, the more supplies those trucks would consume per ton delivered to the combat units.
It was mostly an exercise in mathmatics to calculate, given the fixed size of available ports and number of trucks, how far east Rommel could go before he would be unable to supply his men. The High Command back in Germany did the calculation and told Rommel where that line was, and ordered him not to cross it. The vaunted Desert Fox ignored them and chased the British towards Alexandria anyway. He outran his supply lines, overplayed his hand, and was defeated.
I think Obama has outrun his supply of Other People’s Money and his supply of gullible fools. Now, I’m no particular fan of Montgomery’s either, but he was at least competent enough to take advantage of Rommel’s mistake and drive him back. Monty’s reputation is overrated as well, but the British did have worse commanders who could have flubbed it. So will the GOP find at least a Monty? Or will they cough up a Percival?
Peter Boston
Indeed, that “but” is the biggest “but” this side of
Rosie…er, um, it’s a really big “but.” Julius Ceasar didn’t declare himself emperor either. He was proclaimed Dictator, but that was consistent with existing Republic laws, and he resigned the Dictatorship after being elected Consul again. Ceasar did continue to at least partially work within the established system even as he reformed it to his liking, which is why he was in the Senate on the Ides of March. It was those who came after that eventually gave up all pretense of the Republic, but Ceasar had paved the way.Though actually it was probably Sulla who really paved the way, and I find him an interested fellow to contemplate today. Sulla was very attached to the traditions of Rome and justified using his legions to take control of the Republic as restoring the mos maiorum. He thought he was saving and restoring the Republic when he executed thousands of Roman nobles as enemies of the state, siezing and auctioning off their assets. But really he was undermining the last vestiges of political restraint and setting the stage for the civil wars and strongman rule to come.
Obama is one danger to fear. An American Sulla who comes after him is another. The work of dismantling the Progressive dung heap will be delicate business, needing a lot of force applied but in a very controlled manner. It can easily go wrong.
File this one under “different examples from history.”
Odysseus
yes, I assume my identity and my weirdness
As to the wonderful news from Chile, we have an optimistic example of a polity recovering from a worst case scenario and developing a mature Republic. The *reasonable* victory margin of 52-48%, Pinera’s acceptance speech of reconciliation and Frey’s concession all indicate a degree of stability that bodes well for Chile. Perhaps it is also a cautionary tale about the utility of simplistic narratives.
Pinochet’s police state was an abomination, but Pinochet assiduously cultivated Chile’s economy and civil society, making the current situation possible.
Ukraine is a whole ‘nother matter. The Orange Revolution was an abject failure. Yushchenko has cojones and he stood up to Putin, but he was completely unable to overcome the utterly corrupt Ukrainian nationalists (ie. Tymoshenko) to effect any reform in that unhappy country. For the elite, the whole exercise was about reshuffling the privatization deck of former Soviet industries. For the ideological nationalists the point was Ukrainization of a country that is almost half ethnic Russian. For the people at large it was the promise of EU membership and the expectation of Euros falling like manna from heaven.
Four years on, economic conditions have deteriorated. The hrivnya has been devalued, dramatically higher energy prices have swamped consumers (Want an analogy for the potential effects of cap and trade? Look to Ukraine.) and chronic unemployment has increased in the twentieth percentile.
Ukraine’s sole export continues to be Soviet era weapons. Despite the Donetz Basin industrial infrastructure, there is not a single competitive quality consumer item manufactured in Ukraine.
After four years, there is still not a functioning bank system in Ukraine. There might be 10 ATM’s in this nation of 45 million. You cannot use a credit card in Ukraine. Average Ukrainians carry their life savings of hrivnyas, rubles, euros and dollars around with them in shopping bags.
The emphasis of the nationalists has been symbolic and linguistic. In a failed economy that is unable to honor liabilities inherited from the Soviet Union, they have legislated pensions for WW II era Bandera anti Soviet guerrillas who periodically collaborated with the Germans. A repudiation of the evils of Soviet power, but hardly calculated to win the hearts of the large Russian minority. The Rada’s greatest “success” has been to impose Ukrainian as the only official language, at great expense and causing a greater hardening of the Orange – Blue animosity.
President Yushchenko tried to convince ethnic Russians that their interests would be best served by a prosperous, well governed Ukraine. His efforts were derailed by Prime Minister Tymoshenko’s nationalistic policies and authoritarian impulses. Meanwhile, the American educated Yushchenko’s promise to open the country up to foreign investment was unachievable in the face of endemic Ukrainian xenophobia. Orange and Blue alike.
Net result: no economic reform, no economic progress, no improvement in inadequate infrastructures, no improvement in governance. Ukraine remains a comic opera near-failed state with a sclerotic bureaucracy and a population whose most cherished ambition is to emigrate.
Casting Ukraine’s politics in simplistic good guy “pro western” Orange vs bad guy “pro Putin” Blue terms is a mistake. There is no “Democracy movement” in Ukraine, only striving tribal groups.
“The Lefties, I believe, are willing and able to engage in virtually any form of skulduggery to steal this election.”
I’m looking forward to trucked-in SEIU thugs coming up chest to chest and belly to belly with home-grown Massachusetts SEIU thugs who have chosen to vote for Brown.
Obama has no downside that he can see from the Haiti earthquake. If anyone is rescued then it gets trumpeted in the press as a triumph of compassionate government and an example of international cooperation. As the place dissolves into chaos and violence and disease sweeps away hundereds of thousands on camera then all the violence and disorganization will be blamed on the US military and a legacy of distrust going back to Bush.
To be blogged under the title “Heads I win.”
JMH #153
“Obama is one danger to fear. An American Sulla who comes after him is another. The work of dismantling the Progressive dung heap will be delicate business, needing a lot of force applied but in a very controlled manner. It can easily go wrong. “
JMH, this needs more explanation.
From where I sit, I think that moving too delicately would be a huge mistake. Yes, lots of force (within Constitutional limits) must be applied, as many including me have oft repeated on this forum. Thugs like the left might perceive delicacy, however, not as skill but as a sign of weakness, and like all thugs be emboldened.
Might it not be better to be blunt rather than delicate, based on that notion?
Remember, though that Octavian/Augustus, ever mindful of Roman sensibilities and their hatred of monarchy, was careful to maintain the *facade* of the Republic, taking no tile but “princeps,” and exercising what amounted to dictatorial power through an assortment of traditional Republican institutions. The only real breach of the mos maiorum was of course the crucial one- lifetime tenure (by a patrician!) of the tribunician power.
Obama comes from the same sensibility as Augustus. After all, what is the Chicago Machine which nurtured him and his inner circle but a facade of “republican government” disguising an effective dictatorship?
greifer
“More new founders, who can articulate the legitimate role of the state and its limitations, are needed. It can’t happen without educating the young away from the progressive stranglehold they are under.
Thank you for understanding that. I wish many many more did. The brainwashing of our last three to four generations in our vaulted “higher institutions of learning” has been the continuing cause of the cancer of what has been eating away at our Republic. The Progressive attitudes and teachings can be found at the root of almost all of our Nation’s ills.
Papa Ray
JMH 153, NMU 158
Let them over extend. The progs are like compulsive gamblers, they couldn’t stop themselves from cheating if they wanted to. With this race being so close and among their last chances I wouldn’t be surprised to see them try and fraud it, even with knowledge of the intense scrutiny.
Papa Ray, Habu… I spent some time this weekend at the Indianapolis gun show. Over 1500 tables of wares, I estimate 3k to 4k visitors. No pushing, no trash on the floor, no shouting and no ass-hattery even though it was very crowded. It was a jolly, polite crowd. There was a conga line leaving the building, carrying some-things
. These fools have no idea who they’re up against on that day they take the step too far.
After that, we’ll worry about straightening up various foreign problems without a seditious millstone tied to our necks.
Looking for a fix to runaway Progressivism at the national level is a losing game. Prior to the ’08 election Obama’s obvious deficiencies and the harm he would likely inflict on the Republic were well discussed on this forum. None of this was a secret. All the mandarins in the GOP were equally aware but look at how they handled McCain’s campaign by turning over complete control of the scope and substance of the Conversation to the Democrats and the MSM. I think that one of the reasons Sarah Palin boosted McCain’s floundering campaign was the hope and expectation that she would go off the reservation boundaries. When she tried the same mandarins came down on her harder than they ever did on the socialist she was running against.
Where is the GOP outrage against the WH granting special favors to labor unions? Blatant favoritism on that scale is an outrageous assault on the rule of law. The British were opposed by arms for less.
Where is the GOP outrage against the Administration’s use of government employee unions to electioneer? The SEIU is probably the single biggest threat to the continuation of the Republic since the Confederate Army. I have yet to hear a word from the mandarins about abolishing government employee unions or even prohibiting them for political activity. It is an incestuous relationship. SEIU spends 10s of millions to elect politicians who will expand their membership and their power, which is then used to elect politicians who will…ad infinitum.
As I see it the only way out is to decentralize the Government and that by the States asserting their individual sovereignty, in defiance of Federal law and the Federal Courts if necessary. That is not to say that state legislatures are any more virtuous than the Congress Critters but it would at least give us all someplace “else” to go.
History has its ironies. The great grandchildren of the 300 that chose death over subservience at Thermopylae stumbled over themselves to cut deals with the Persians so they could rule over the other Greeks.
Konyok/155; nice post –reminds that it’s said that by his ‘a house divided against itself cannot stand’ speech during the run-up to the Civil War, Lincoln meant not the obvious that the house would fall, but the more subtle that the division would be solved, an accommodation would be somehow wrought. Poor Ukraine! –like Poland without defensible terrain-natural borders, and Moldova inside, whose Russian minority like South Ossetia’s or Abkhazia’s could on signal require humanitarian relief from Russia through Ukraine.
Anyhoo, here’s a very readable and illuminating travel piece you might appreciate.
Weirdness is good, Marie Claude! Odysseus=SC . . . ever wandering in search of a home. I think a return visit to AR may be in order.
ah you’re Ulysse then
SC, don’t remember, are you American ?
AR is sometimes interesting, but often subjects have more a Brussels political approach and how Germany is integrating them well
Uh, another client of AR is also commenting on this board, with whom I had/have many catfights cuz of his professoral ton, he keeps denying that a French could also have a right perception of the policies and or any historical knowledge
141. Bohemond
With all due respect your crypto never or rarely extend all the way to need to know so your statement that CIA wasn’t the genesis for any product you might have received is a statement you can’t make.
As I stated the CIA ran the intelligence world, period. So unless you had a need to know that the product came from CIA (and very, very few people fit that catagory) then you were simply in the squid with a crypto world. Unless you were CINCPAC then you didn’t know any more than CIA wanted you to know and even then depending on what the show was about even the top military people didn’t know…they were told what they were told but it was probabaly just part of the cover.
Habu:
Do get over yourself. I didn’t work with crypto, I worked with photo/ESM/sigint, and it was perfectly bloody obvious that e.g. a periscope shot was not a generous donation from Langley. Unless you’re claiming the CIA runs its own submarines?
The attack boat guys who shadowed Soviet boomers through the world’s oceans with recorders running and the guys who monitored the SOSUS line output and the divers who clamped the tap on the Sea of Okhotsk cable and on and on and on wore blue suits- and weren’t just waiting around for whatever crumbs the Company deigned to toss them.
48. Teresita
Your ignorance is in full bloom in your last paragraph with;
We are a representative democracy blah blah,blah
We are a republic not a democratic anything. Geez if you can’t correctly identify what type of government we have then the mind is mirthful over some of your other absolute statements.
Try some rudimentary civics. First it was gender confusion, now it’s extended to govenment types….so type in “republic v democracy” and find out just the hell you’re spouting off before you do so. Republic…republic…
No mo uro
My only disagreement with your statement is the tense. Moving too delicately has already been a huge mistake. I’m very much in favor of swinging a big axe to dismantle what Progs have built. My worry about an American Sulla is that we keep the target of the axe the ediface they’ve built and resist the temptation to go after the progressives themselves, or to invent our own extra-constitutional justification for “necessary” actions. As much as some Leftists might deserve to be punished, or to have their assets siezed to pay off the monsterous debts they’ve rung up, it’s a dangerous thing. As much as they will, a la Alinsky, attempt to force us to live by rules they freely ignore, leaping into the grease pit with them would be a mistake. We might not be able to get back out of the pit.
Peter Boston said “Look at all that has happened in plain sight over the past year. I suppose we all always knew that we were getting screwed but never before has it been done so brazenly and with such utter contempt for the public.”I have to rephrase that for you a little.
What has happened last year (and in the last two months of Bush’s Administration) has been the public rape and gang bang by not only Obama but our own Congress. Rape of the American public. Many major criminal charges should be brought against all of them.
If only…
Papa Ray
167. Bohemond
Unless you’re claiming the CIA runs its own submarines ?
Get over what? Are you stating with absolute certitude that YOU know the CIA doesn’t have it’s own sub? I mean, let’s see, they did build the YF-112A years before the USAF or anyone else knew about it…and flew it in Aug of 1963. Just think of all those years in secrecy building the special metal alloys and constucting the plane ..what’s your guess 5-10 years from drawing board to flight..takes it back to the 1950′s…so this sub deal…you’re really sure?
They did run Project Jennifer for decades ….
What most everyone I have ever come in contact with outside the CIA who have security clearences think they know the skinny, very few do…
So as I’m getting over myself tell me you know for an absolute fact that the CIA does not have a sub of it very own….#1 you can’t for the same reason Ican’t “prove’ I worked for the CIA, and #2 youradmission you wouldn’t be in “the need to know anyway”
To ease your mind I ain’t gett’n over a thing. What’s got you all sweaty, that you got called on a point? You may notice there are certain times when I don’t make much of an attempt to make any contributor feel special …tomorrrow is another day, let it go.
Workout time …
…. boy habu you’re gonna be elected homecoming king if you’re not careful …
naw, rather be shoot’n in Montana
Actually, what I should have said is, some of the folks who yell “Let’s get ‘em” as they jump into the pit might not want to climb back out. They may find they like the grease pit, so long as they’re calling the shots. Certainly wouldn’t be the first time in recent history that a so-called Conservative leader got really comfortable really quick with the life of a Lordly Incumbent.
Not an easy challenge we have.
LFMajor
Wish I could have been there. We aren’t going to get one close by for months. I’m looking forward to going.
Your right, they have no Idea.
Papa Ray
Habu:
Project Jennifer? The Glomar Explorer fiasco? 1970-1974, the CIA elbowing its way into an ONI operation and making a complete dog’s breakfast of it?
If the CIA had its own miracle submarines, then why was it begging, and using Congressmen to strongarm, the use of Halibut?
Let’s remeber, this was the same CIA that didn’t even see the Iranianh revolution or the fall of the Eastbloc coming. And now you want us to believe that the CIA was flying the stealth fighter in JFK’s day?
Of course your bilge simply confirms what I suspected- you’re a four-flusher, talking out of your ass. Good-bye.
–mercy –not exactly the Army/Navy game but it’ll do –
***
I’ve always wondered what the real skinny is on Scorpion and for that matter if there’s anything to that certain theory out of a faction in the Kremlin re NATO doing in Kursk –
Yes, American, Marie Claude. Out here in the middle (MO) doing a little teaching. Contributed a silly little thing to AR about Rudy Giuliani before the last US election. Was always trying to pour a little cool water on the more enthusiastic NATO busters. Another AR refugee on the board? Hmmm . . . an AR reunion? So the so two of you (who else?) are crossing swords across sites? Nice! And true, AR has a definite Brussels tinge to it.
Bohemond: Just to clarify: Had it been completed, the F-112 would have been the armed version of the SR71. YF was the working prototype designation. The Blackbird on display at the Pima County Air Museum outside Tucson started life as a YF112, then was converted.
F112 was (astutely) cancelled because the craft could never have been a fighter plane.
As a interceptor its only virtue would have been a high closing speed and longer-ranged air-to-air missles nullified that. And since the Blackbirds take an hour and a half
to preflight and stay takeoff-ready for a whole 20 minutes, they are a tad difficult to scramble.
Now don’t tell anybody else, but the top-secret proof-of-concept plane is carefully hidden from public view at the Blackbird Park in Palmdale CA. You have to be able to read plain English in order to brush up on its history.
And the unidentified spook behind the plane? Well, I am unable to uncover his real identity, but most folks called him Kelly Johnson. Seems he had walked around
a former atomic test side called Groom Lake
in the early 1950s. Discovering that only background radiation was left, he decided that that was a good place to build the U2 on the QT. Place got called Area 51 shortly thereafter.
Now the Blackbird that flew in 63 was so well-concealed that only LBJ knew about it.
In 64 some cronies doubted what he was saying so to show them he arranged a demonstration. The group landed at Edwards while the plane took off from A51 on a scenic route to build up speed. Made a couple of Mach 3 passes over Edwards, then landed for viewing. Wouldn’t have done to have POTUS and friends out in the sun, so viewing stands were erected in a hangar. Plane was towed in and the radiant heat from the skin set off the sprinkler system and drenched the whole party.
AS to submarines, I can’t say. They are a bit below my pay grade (pun intended). However, I would estimate that Glomar Explorer was a leetle short of being a total fiasco. I believe that some value was obtained from the effort. Last I heard, the vessel was the only one maintained in seaworthy condition in the Suisun ghost fleet.
In the day, I did thumb a couple of rides on Air America craft. Better than waiting for the afternoon Otter. CIA officers would drop into my workplace from time to time and were known to ask me for advice on whom to interrogate among those available. I was happy to oblige, since they would break in all those brand new waterboards for me.
And yes, I must confess that on one occasion I sinfully yielded to temptation and took money from the CIA. It was a fairly simple arrangement. Straight flush beats a full house. As I turned the pasteboards over, I remarked: “Please! Please! I hate to see a grown spy cry!”
Habu: We are a republic not a democratic anything.
All a republic means is that there is no monarchy, hereditary or otherwise. No kings, just like the Roman Republic back in the Day. All citizens are on the same level. We can call the POTUS “Obama” and not “His Majesty”. At least for the time being.
Our citizens engage in the direct democratic election of representatives, who meet in two bodies and enact laws by democratic election…majority rule, tempered by an executive veto and a written charter designed to prevent minorities from having their rights walked on. A direct democracy is when citizens vote on referendums and initiatives, this occurs at the state level in some states such as California and Washington. On the federal level, we are a representative democracy, as described. Thank you for playing Civics 101, Habu. Please drive through.
Teresita: To get away from polemics and evaluate your VN thesis:
You seem to make one fundamental error. Namely that the communist victory was the result of a successful insurgency that happened to be backed up by conventional military force.
When I departed there for the last time in late 1970, there was no longer an insurgency. The last vestiges of actual insurgent capabilities had been in northern Bind Dinh and southern Quang Ngai provinces
and they were kaput. In prior tours, I had been in both places and paid a price for same
primarily at the hands of Victor Charlies as NVA capabilities were grafted onto the support systems of the NLF.
The South Vietnamese forces had largely cured their problems vis a vis the VC (helped along by the brutalities of the l969 Tet offensive and the deliberate slaughter of VC chu luc battalions by NVA commanders sending them headlong into massed allied firepower.)
In fact, ARVN morale and motivation were clearly superior to that of the NVA who suffered from massive, say again, massive internal desertion rates. Few of them would rally because unlike VC who “di ve chieu hoi” a bo doi had to “di ra chieu hoi”.
The former returned to warm and familar surroundings, the latter had to jump off into the great unknown. Took a while to uncover this crucial difference in semantics,
but ti held the key. A contract spook and I shook hands over making the discovery, then kicked each other in the rear end for not recognizing it sooner.
The NVA went to ground, hiding out the best they could and worked on building up a combat engineering capability through Laos that would enable them to support a field army without popular support. They tried their first offensive this way in 72 and came to grief because US fire support was
still available to ARVN. They did it again in 75 when ARVN had no fire support and after friendly logistics had been depleted through a series of raids etc. That time they won. It was a 100% conventional warfare victory.
Said victory was helped along by various and sundry people here in the USA. Most of those meant no harm. “Useful idiots” are invariably the result of good intentions that do not match with reality.
Then there were and are those who knew full well what they were helping to accomplish
and did it so they could enjoy personal political advantage.
While wishing these latter eternal torture and damnation is a figure of speech, I would enjoy giving them forty lashes well laid on
and one or two do deserve a “suspended sentence”.
Can’t give them that, so some humiliation at the polls will have to suffice.
167. Bohemond. I wasn’t there but this excellent book documents the steel cojones the Cold War submariners had. http://www.amazon.com/Blind-Mans-Bluff-Submarine-Espionage/dp/006097771X/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263867511&sr=1-4.
As Churchill said, “Where do we get such people?”. I think the answer is that a lot of them are born that way, and thank God, a lot of them live in the USA and are willing to fight for our country.
Odysseus
but that was back to 2007, I started to interven on AR in the beginning of 2008
quite a few commenters have disappeared, the problem is that the same subjects come too often on board, and nothing new sorts out
their apparented site “Atlantic community” has a bit more choices, I had to defend my argumentation about nuclear energy in the face of “greenies” here :
http://tinyurl.com/yzl5ywx
I’m generally not “political correct”, so I don’t get much points
MC,
Thank you for the link. I will look at the site.
Ahhhh . . . yes, I remember now that there was a change in format. I had forgotten that. Very impressive looking now. Thanks for the link. I see that John in Michigan is still around. You fight bravely, my dear, as ever. Political correctness is definitely oversold. But, not many points? A Gold Contributor, I see, so you must have impressed more than a few.
Dave, you’re referring to the Lockheed YF-12 (not the F-112A, the Stealth fighter), an interceptor project for the AF developed out of the A-12, which was an earlier CIA project. The interceptor project went nowhere as you say; it morphed into the SR-71
The Glomar Explorer business was *mostly* a failure. The sub broke apart (just like the Navy said it would) and we only recovered the bow section; the only ‘useful intel’ was a nuclear-tipped torpedo we already had the specs for. The central sail/control deck section, containing both the missiles and the crypto, was lost; the Navy’s original and much cheaper plan to recover same from the wreck with a remote submersible was tossed over the side by CIA grandiosity. Aside from the codes and warheads, there was no earthly reason at all to recover an obsolescent Golf-class diesel SSB.
Glomar Explorer is currently back in service after conversion to a deep-sea oil-exploration drill, under lease to BP.
Dave:
Thank you, thank you, thank you for your post on Vietnam. Far too many people who ought to know better have unthinkingly swallowed the “myth of the guerilla,” blithely unaware that the NLF was comprehensively thrashed.
The ARVN did one hell of a job at Easter ’72 (spotting them US air support). 1975 would likely have been the same but for the fat drunk girl-drowner and the American fifth column.
Bohemond: Stealth “fighter” = F117.
Me and google are ganging up on you for this one. Last number is “7″ not “2″.
Believe this one was Kelly Johnson’s last project.
Googling F112 or YF 112 gave me data on how this was one of a series of designations for
aquired MiGs etc being evaluated. Dunno.
I got my info from a docent at Pima County back in 94. Maybe my memory off?
At any rate, Kelly Johnson offered any member of his staff $50 if they could find an easy way of doing things on the Blackbird.
He later commented that he might as well have offered $50,000. NOTHING on that bird was easy.
I am surprised though that you haven’t heard that the CIA invented Area 51 so they could make an extremely sophisticated movie set to
fake the moon landing.
161 LFMayor
“I spent some time this weekend at the Indianapolis gun show. Over 1500 tables of wares, I estimate 3k to 4k visitors. No pushing, no trash on the floor, no shouting and no ass-hattery even though it was very crowded. It was a jolly, polite crowd. There was a conga line leaving the building, carrying some-things . These fools have no idea who they’re up against on that day they take the step too far.”
Does Eastman put on that show? I haven’t attended one in quite a while (family tends to soak up discretionary income), but the Eastman shows in the Atlanta area in the 1990′s were exactly as you describe. I recall being amazed over a candy table that was unmanned – only the candy w/price tags plus an open cigar box full of cash. People handled their own purchases, made their own change – I watched off and on as I walked past table after table of an astonishing assortment of firearms, knives, leather goods, etc… and as far as I could tell, every transaction at that unmanned candy stand was an honest one. “An armed society is a polite society.” Yes, indeed!
The vendors were very friendly and helpful; the attendees likewise. I never attended a show where I didn’t feel perfectly comfortable and at home. Good people, the sort you want on your six if it ever came to that.
Triton
dave, did you mean for that post to be #180 ? The 180 @ 180 on why the war 180′d? Anyhoo, the history is out there but people manage to argue the case without it all the time. then along comes someone who is in the story.
nice stuff on Kelly Johnson too. the Skonk Works –what a story –what a bunch. Somewhere –where was it –just lately someone ran a picture of the ladies at Panchos place –cute gals –
coincidental to a few posts here and there upthread, two fresh Instapundit entries:
http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/92068/
Dave:
Wowza! MAJOR brain-fart on my part!
Sorry. I know better.
Incidentally, I’m a huge Kelly Johnson fan, from the P-38 on.
Best aircraft designer EV-VAR. As the kids would say. If they knew a damn thing about it, anyway.
“Sure, we are braver than hell.
On the ground, all is swell.
In the air, its a different story.
We fly our track through fighters and flak,
We are willing to split up the glory.
There is nothing to do but to see things
Through until all this shooting abates.
So give us the courage to fight ‘em
And could you spare one other small item?
An escort of P38s.
The above is from Lightnings In The Sky.
Google that up and you can see the whole thing. And if you will try “82nd Fighter Group” you will see what one bunch did back then.
Well, Mongo, you mentioned Pancho Barnes. You can see the ruins of her place from the Rod and Gun Club at Edwards. I elevated the front sight and sent a couple of rounds out there. Least I could do to show my respect.
My favorite Pancho story: Somebody doubted that Chuck Yeager and Bob Hoover were good enough pilots to break the sound barrier.
Pancho replied “Listen Buster, those two could fly an airplane up your asshole sideways, tickle your right eyeball and do it so slick you never would learn why you were suddenly farting shock waves.”
When Pancho was found dead in Boron in 1975,
she had left handwritten instructions for her funeral. She listed desired pallbearers by name and then said to deliver
the eulogy to contact “the little bald-headed bastard”. Jimmy Doolittle was happy to respond.
Speaking of other Antelope Valley denizens:
What movie star used to ride a horse to school
out there?
Same star survived two assassination attempts
in the US, one in Mexico and a fourth in Vietnam. One of these was by professional SMERSH agents picked by Stalin. A tip from an imprisoned screenwriter was smuggled out of the Gulag via the Jewish underground. Target and a friend took the hit men prisoner, transported them to a remote area, made them kneel, place muzzles next to their ears, told them to say their prayers and then clicked on empty cylinders. By the time they were turned over to the FBI they were babbling like crazy about all those state secrets.
Give up? I’ll give you a hint, pilgrim.
K & L Corral in Boron has in the back room a mini “Duke” museum. This includes a couple of rolls of John Wayne toilet Tissue. So called because “It’s rough. It’s tough. And it won’t take crap off of anybody”.
I was honored to have met and swapped lies with “Walking George”, a genius of a chemist
who discovered hundreds if not thousands of uses for borax.
BTW: It was really two horses and eighteen mules that hauled all that ore back when. “Twenty Mule Team” just sounded better.
There is also the tale of the airplane without a propeller being flown by a gorilla wearing a derby and waving a cigar. The XP59. It was often not officially seen by aviation cadets strafing that Japanese battleship in the Mojave desert, the Muroc Maru.
Tradition continues to this day with X-Cor
and Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites doing their thing over at the Mojave Spaceport.
After all, where else can you go to find a spaceship that flies using laughing gas and old tires?
Out there, Kelly Johnson was just one of many. From mule-drawn wagons to spaceships, we owe them debts we cannot pay save by continuing what they have started.
Konyok at least gets some things right after all the brainwashing and propaganda hacks like the Jamestown Foundation have pumped out in Washington the last several years in support of the Orange Revolution/Orangeists.
McCain too showed an almost megalomaniacal messianic view of history when he talked about how Ukraine had been a captive nation of Russia (NOT the USSR!) for ‘centuries’ on the campaign trail (imagine a Russian or Chinese pol calling Mexico a captive nation of the U.S. despite the millions of Mexican-Americans) and how it was up to the U.S. to save Ukraine and Georgia from the big bad Russian Bear. At that moment I think most of his audience was yawning and wondering when they would see Sarah Palin, whom McCain’s aides were busy calling a rube and moron behind her back.
Unfortunately I would even add the Washington Post to the list of Russophobic media in the States, but the Wall Street Journal, perhaps due to its owner Rupert Murdoch’s soft spot for the Chinese, has moderated its Russia bashing slightly of late, admitting that the Ukrainians can’t pay for the gas and aren’t just victims of outside forces, etc. I think the Post has moderated its Russophobia only because so many journalists there have been busy polishing their resumes and looking for work elsewhere as it sinks.
I would add however that some of what Konyok says is exagerration – there is no shortage of ATMs in Kiev – this sounds like one of those gullible American husbands who posts on immigrant forums that his Russian bride says there are no ATMs or automatic car washes in her hometown in Moscow region. He thinks Russia is still the USSR cerca 1992 and she is not going to contradict her man otherwise even if he makes himself look silly online.
Nonetheless, real wages in Ukraine have been declining due to the devaluation of the hyrvna while in Russia despite crisis they have somewhat stabilized. The ruble is backed by oil at least where the hyrvna is backed by nothing but IMF loans. Some people perpetually use the excuse that Russia is just a bigger version of Ukraine and can only find temporary successes due to oil and gas reserves, and thereby Ukraine and Georgia’s worse economic and demographic performance since ‘pro-Western’ govs took power is excusable. I think this is self-deluding thinking and that the Soros backed governments that took power in the Orange and Rose Revolutions unquestionably have made things worse. All post Soviet nations need investment from all comers, not zero sum games based on the idea of Russia as ‘the Shadow’. In reality, the biggest winners in the U.S.-Russia great game for energy have been the Chinese.
I cannot really argue with Konyok’s statements about Tymoshenko she was known as the Gas Princess for a reason back before Russia started shutting off the taps when the bills weren’t paid. Think a more ruthless and far richer version of Hillary Clinton.
“After four years, there is still not a functioning bank system in Ukraine. There might be 10 ATM’s in this nation of 45 million. You cannot use a credit card in Ukraine. Average Ukrainians carry their life savings of hrivnyas, rubles, euros and dollars around with them in shopping bags.”
Perhaps what he means here is not the ATMs don’t exist but that Ukrainians rightly still do not trust banks.
“The emphasis of the nationalists has been symbolic and linguistic. In a failed economy that is unable to honor liabilities inherited from the Soviet Union, they have legislated pensions for WW II era Bandera anti Soviet guerrillas who periodically collaborated with the Germans. A repudiation of the evils of Soviet power, but hardly calculated to win the hearts of the large Russian minority. The Rada’s greatest “success” has been to impose Ukrainian as the only official language, at great expense and causing a greater hardening of the Orange – Blue animosity.”
I think Belmont Clubbers would understand Ukrainian politics a lot more easily if you just say Ukraine is like Russia’s Mexico – only without the narco trafficking wars. Thank God also some BCers realize that if they don’t like Soros backed NGOs Secretary of State electoral manipulation games and support for Leftist causes in the U.S. then why should patriotic Russians like what Soros has been up to in Russia’s near abroad for the last decade?
Soros is about promoting nationalism in small nations and transnational orgs like the E.U. while tearing down the sovereignty of large countries like Russia and the U.S. – plus making money from inside government information, period.
I saw a report the other day, an Ukrainian guy was saying that the only job he could expect was some sort of sweeper’s with a broom, and that he couldn’t expect more than 72 euros per month for the job. And yes, the youngs are trying to emigrate, girls can make it easier, cuz of their attractiveness, also we find many of them in Hotel reception desks or Companies receptions’s too, not the highest wadges, but still a lot more better than in Ukraine
I remember having a Ukrainian group visiting Dieppe (we managed an hotel there too)at the end of the seventies, they were the persons that won the award for being a “good employee”, and the whole lot made the “fiesta” on evening with dances and songs, jokes at the nomenklatura, with the help of beer. When we argued that it was surprising to see them so decontracted, they replied that they were not Russians, but Ukrainians. They left us quite a lot of their propaganda badges and pins,
179. teresita
re; Republic.
What do you do just start making stufff up? You obviously did not read any of the wealth of material on the net or prior to the net any of the writings of Aristotle in the State, or Politics . Had you done so you wouldn’t look loikr the fool you do.
In political science republic v democracy has been extensively written about. You should avail yourself of the learning process and get up to speed on the differences prior to shooting off your keyboard …
It also happen to have been a major talking point with the founding fathers so just about any avenue you care to take oon the subject will, in fact , help you out of your ignorance.
175. Bohemond
Gosh, I’m really sorry I got your panties in a wad mentioning Project Jennifer.
I notice you and several other commentators added what was eventually printed in the NYT and LA Times and apparently you swallowed that excellent reporting similar to what squids swallow. Keep using those sources; they’re probably excellent for you and obviously have credibility with you.
As far as what was retrieved and what was lost, who speaks to those points with full knowledge? If they are telling you they are I’m saying they are lying bastards right now for to this day that is a closely guarded secret.
As far as “making a hash” out of the project…that is risible beyond the meaing of the word. You’re just having a fit of pique and are a bit mad about being so far out of the loop you have to hear it told years later. You shouldn’t feel bad. As you perhaps may know but appears you don’t, intelligence work, codeword projects, etc, are compartmentalized so no one knows the full skinny. Even in WWII the President of these here United States was such a security risk that he was left off the “MAGIC” list of people who needed to know.
Finally, and no doubt a continued waste of my time with you is asking a question but you seem to have some passion aimed at me rather than the CIA in operations they have attempted that “blew up”.. ..tell me wise guy. List for me the successes they have had over their existence? Yeah, just what I thought. You can’t because those you don’t get to know about … they’re not covered by your newspaper or your knitting circle, so I guess in your mind the CIA is just a total failure since you don’t know of any successes. Enjoy that chew toy, it will comfort you.
Don’t feel bad, just realize that in their day prior to 9-11 the CIA was the lead dog and the view the rest of you had never changed. Ok , you’re dismissed.
**********************
…geez habu that should really frost the guy. ..he probably won’t send you a Christmas card now or vote for you as homecoming king….
Possumtater, you know how concerned I’ve been about that for years now…
Yeah.
So I should change, for a few of the peckerwoods?
Naw, I guess not , but you could do what most of them do.
What’s that?
You know, dance around, be sweet and diplomatic, and write in a haughty vanilla prose so they won’t dislike you.
Look Possumtater. I’ll write the way I write, they can believe or not believe and we’ll all go forward. I’ll probably never meet any of these people. It’s doubtful any will have an influence on my life and the absolute best thing that could happen for me is to gather them all together and shove my documentation down their throats. That would remove all doubt about what I speak and for sure would shut them up. I mean after all I’m the one with no debt three home , two over 3200 sq. ft and a cabin in teh Elkhorns of Montana, a pile of money in the bank including the gold I bought at 400/oz and silver at practically nothing.
(*% of then would know how to operate in the financial sector in even executing a buy order for an option. I’m the one worth well over a million in net worth and another now simply in foreign currency and diversified worldwide investments. Most of them have nothing close to that. But then they’ll just say, well ole Habu is a liar…that’ll add a nice poltice to their wounds.
Well Habu, I’m back to da bayou and Ms Daiseytater ..take care my man.
You too ‘Tater.
Well if Michael Scheuer made the cut, who’s to say that Habu didn’t?
201. Mr. X
Now you’re getting it. Except I’m a fully beat the Dems ass Rep…BUT the main point is that getting into the CIA wasn’t hard.
During Vietnam they hired thousands of people. I had the right pedigree for the time given my military background and connections. After all my father was second in command of all US Marine Air Bases on the East Coast and I’d met lots of people.
That’s why I find the doubt so curious.
I can’t say thanks for the particular person you chose for my comparison but the acknowledgement that people join the CIA every day isn’t a huge secret….heck they even advertise for people in various newspapers and journals ..you do have to pass a good many tests and have a bit of the right stuff (back then) etc but yes, the CIA actually hired me just like they hired thousands of others.
Gee, Mr. X you’re really a bright guy.
Mr. X:
I’d be willing to bet that there are other former gen-u-ine former CIA people who write on this site. I’m not talking about ex Army TS, crypto , or Navy or AF or Coast Guard; but CIA.
But after watching the cascade of doubt about my service they are being smart and simply stating their opinions and responding to various threads …who could or would blame them? It’s the smart play…why take any of the crap when you don’t have to?
I made my mistake too many years ago so I’ll defend the truth of it but had I to do it over I’d never have mentioned it ….then no doubt some disgruntled contributor would claimed I wasn’t an air breathing being, or I was a mole for some wanker organization ….you’ve seen it ..it’s the internet.
Mr. X,
There may be more ATMs in downtown Kiev, but not in the smaller cities.
Ukrainians are loath to use banks because of what happened in the first round of privatization – all of the assets were looted by the new owners. to one degree or another, the same was and is true of all formerly state owned enterprises. This license to steal is the real prize of Ukrainian politics. The steps of the Mazurka (more culturally apt than “kabuki”) are 1) to privatize, shares going to the politically connected, 2) to allege fraud and malfeasance, 3) redistribute the privatized shares to another set of cronies, 4) repeat until any productive assets are thoroughly looted. Tymoshenko is very adept at this dance.
Orange revolution notwithstanding, private enterprise, and private employment, is still considered exotic and somehow parasitic in Ukraine. The labor laws were drafted right after the fall of the Soviet Union. Private employees are required to draft a yearly contract with their employer and personally submit that contract, with a fee, to the Ministry of Labor. (No, not the employer, the employee … ) The only thing that has changed in the last four years is that the documents must now be submitted in Ukrainian – a boon for translators in the Russian speaking areas, and an additional expense and inconvenience for the employee. Natually, this kind of silliness leads to a larger informal economy and further avoidance of banks, and less efficient tax revenues.
I had high hopes for the Orange Revolution and still admire Yushchenko’s grit. But, it has proved a distraction for the kind of reform that Ukraine really needs. Mind you, Yanukovych offers nothing better, just another round of Mazurka.
Good disc on Ukraine, guys n gals –beaucoup instructive –looks to me like incrementalism is going to be the order of the day for linguistic tribes trying to estabish autonomy anywhere in the bear’s near abroad. Orange & Rose Revolutions –like Nato moves East –are gonna have to contend with not the existential challenges to the Kremlin THEY think they are, but what the Kremlin thinks they are. I’m still wondering why the west botched the wall fall so badly. Why are the old Warsaw Pact countries all bankster-busted? Is Putin the emperor of the World Island already, and we just don’t know it yet?
I mean, we can read about VP Gore and the Chernomyrdin
Commission ’til we turn blue in the face, but (imho) the big question is, why did the Clinton administration, IMF, et al, so want free Russia to fail?
Dave, you sent me to search of that hollywood assassination story –damn –there’s a LOT of stuff on it –that’s the craziest sh*t i’ve ever heard –can it be? maybe Stalin had just lost his mind by then –what a ploy –had it succeeded and then been exposed –i mean, that would have been immediately connected to Dallas November 1963, and –ka-boOM.
***
habu, i never doubted you for a minute –not since those Marion Carl posts way long long time ago –then those year & two year early calls on the derivative melt sequences –nah –you just get sniped at because you’re very self-assured tone-wise and while most enjoy it and get a kick out of it, certainly not everyone always will. That’s why they call sticking your neck out “sticking your neck out”! There’s gotta be somebody to bring up the spectre of total war as a probable end result of assuming that total war can’t happen.
Buddy,
I never thought otherwise of you and your keen insight into the human condition re: sticking out of the head is so very true.
I know when I’m being a rough cobb and when I’m sugar coating things so they go down better but I read so much of that and so little of what (maybe I’m wrong here) “You can’t handle the truth” writing that I just go for the rough cobb and wait for the incoming.
Most contributors didn’t have my Dad who was one tough cookie as an example of telling it like it is but he did and I try.
Hope all is well with family and you.
Best,
Habu
PS. They’d go absolutely nuts if they knew I met and had conversations with Hyman Rickover, Kelly Johnson, Admiral Red Raborn, Gr, Edward Teller, and others but it’s true. Rickover and Raborn I met while in Jr. High School when my father, as senior military officer at Penn State hosted a cocktail party for the Penn State-Navy game. Later in life they gave me a boost.
But my favorite and a man I worked directly under for about six weeks was Lt.Gen Vernon Walters …there was a life.
A small point perhaps, but I think we need to distinguish between the day- and night-bombing campaigns.
In Europe, the British largely bombed by night, and the Americans by day.
The British did so because they could, gaining the cover of darkness but losing the chance to bomb with much accuracy.
The Americans did not do so partly because they initially had insufficient crews trained in night operations, but also because they hoped to avoid civilian casualties through accuracy.
It was the night-bombing which caused the most civilian casualties and the horrors of the fire-storm, though sometimes the day-bombers would unintentionally add to the toll by arriving over targets still obscured by fires caused by night raids, and bombing without being able to clearly identify targets.
Downed American bomber crews were less likely to be lynched because German civilians perceived that the Americans were at least trying to hit industrial targets, whereas the RAF were not only more likely to hit civilian areas, but were often being directed to do so in preference to industrial targets.
In Britain, there was a good deal of guilt and shame associated with that policy, despite the V2s, which were still falling on London in the spring of 1945, and 60 years after WW2 there were still arguments as to whether or not the few remaining RAF Bomber Command survivors should receive a campaign medal.
Anyway, Go Scott Brown !
habu, thanks for the well-wishes and the same back to you. Re meeting those titans, it doesn’t surprise me at all –a family with a dad in all those a-borning postwar information crossroads would –and a dad with a son interested in the project would introduce him every chance. Herman Wouk’s great two volume fiction ‘The Winds of War” and “War and Remembrance” follow just such a family –the patriarch, Commander (later Admiral) Pug Henry (how do i recall that 20 years after reading the book –yay me!) is a Naval Person with adult kids, some Mil and some not –with their families & or intendeds –scattered across the world’s great cities in a variety of professions — when the WWII balloon goes up.
Wouk follows them as they try to return to the center (the pre-war life of mind) through their brushes with great individuals and events of that conflict. i know, sounds in this thumbnail kinda familiar as a device –& too great a conceit to wrap around the topic –but a great writer can pull it off and here did. Wouk is mainly writing history from the other end of the microscope, from the extremely tight focus of someone caught in a giant web of place and duty and ambition and loyalty and fear –and who has no idea what is coming round the corner. Result, a serious new perspective for the reader.
Oops –off track –my point was how the paths crossed in the academic-military-education-diplomacy world, and how the combat commanders were pulled back in to the center to lecture the high & the mighty on what was happening out on the ring of fire. –pick up the first volume and read half an hour, and betcha you’ll plow nonstop straight thru Vol II.