A post-mortem of the Coakley campaign by the New York Times describes her failure as a case of too little and too late; overconfidence, but most of all an inability to detect the “pent-up anger of electorate”, but toward what exactly is not said.
“One of the things we missed, and I guess you could call it a mistake, was the pent-up anger,’’ he said, likening the mood to 1990, when the state elected a Republican governor in the midst of a regional recession. “There was some very pent-up anger and people took it out at the ballot box, and I think we misjudged that and he tapped into it.’’
The three causes of Coakley’s failure are essentially restatements of the same thing. Her campaign (and the national Democratic establishment) didn’t see it (the pent-up anger) coming until it was almost upon them. It wasn’t as if they weren’t looking. They took the the polls, gauged the temperature of the water, and figured it was safe to swim.
A poll the campaign conducted just before Christmas showed Martha Coakley, the Democratic attorney general, with a 19-point lead over Mr. Brown, said Dennis Newman, the Coakley campaign’s chief strategist. Ms. Coakley took some time off the trail to celebrate Christmas, prepare for the debate, film ads and try to raise money.
As late as the night before the election, liberal pundits figured that Coakley had nothing to worry about. Matt Yglesias predicted she would win because Brown didn’t the use his window of opportunity to show he was liberal enough. Yglesis figured that if Brown split the difference in his policy conflicts with Coakley then he might have a chance. He wrote:
Brown finds himself running in a winnable race, and yet he’s overwhelmingly likely to lose. … But the formula for winning as a Republican in Massachusetts is pretty clear—you want to be independent from the machine, and generally for lower taxes and less regulation than your Democratic opponent, but also decidedly not as right-wing as the kind of guys the GOP runs for Senate in Alabama. … but Brown’s not doing it. And this kind of ideological inflexibility is the best way for a party to squander a very favorable electoral landscape.
President Obama’s claimed an intimate familiarity with the forces which swept Scott Brown to victory while failing to spot it. The President claimed that he was too busy working to stay in touch and thus missed the mood shift among the voters. ABC News reports:
STEPHANOPOULOS: Robert Gibbs was saying that you were surprised and frustrated by the vote. Is that accurate?
OBAMA: Well, I think not last night, but certainly I think a lot of us were surprised about where this was going, about a week ago.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So you saw it coming by then?
OBAMA: By that time, we did. And here’s my assessment of not just the vote in Massachusetts, but the mood around the country.
The same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office.
People are angry, and they’re frustrated. Not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years, but what’s happened over the last eight years.
You’ve got really hard-working folks all across the country, who have seen their wages flat line and their incomes flat line.
They feel more secure than ever. Then suddenly you’ve got this bank crisis in which their 401Ks are evaporating, their home values — their single-biggest investment — is collapsing.
And here in Washington — from their perspective — the only thing that happens is that we bail out the banks.
Only a few weeks ago the President was blaming his intelligence officials for not “connecting the dots” on the Christmas Day bomber. And here he was saying that despite an army of political operatives, access to pollsters, a political machine that he likes to boast went right down to the grassroots, that neither he nor Martha Coakley saw it coming. I believe him.
Intelligence failures are often the result of fitting undeniable facts into a preconceived framework. But in this case they do not explaining everything; the facts on Christmas day were comparatively reassuring. Martha Coakley was leading by 19 points. The sea was calm. There was not a cloud in the sky. So where did the rogue wave come from?
The answer is probably that the voter’s preferences were very susceptible to an alternative orientation. Given an alternative which produced a lower-energy solution to their preferences the same sets of voters could realign very quickly along another axis. Once Scott Brown became a credible candidate with a credible message, one which aligned with the voter preferences in a more natural way than Martha Coakley’s then the stage was set for a rapid realignment. From this perspective the administration’s intelligence failure wasn’t simply a failure to “connect the dots”; it was the inability to see that someone else could connect the dots in a far superior and more natural way.
Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch argue that the voters are obsessed with three broad questions right now. These are the dots which the voters are likely to be trying to connect.
- Health care;
- The economy; and
- National security
Gillespie and Welch argue that the Democrats have made a dog’s breakfast of their policies and are saved only by the fact that their Republican opponents are inept. They are like two second raters waltzing around the ring in a parody of a boxing match. “In their hour of darkness, all the Dems need to recall is that they are running against Republicans. And vice versa. Independents–the only reliably growing voting bloc in an electorate long since fatigued by two-party politics–are swinging violently against Democrats after throwing the Republican bums out in 2008 and 2006.”
The problem each party faces is that fitting into a new set of policy clothes requires a draconian change of lifestyle of which they may not be capable of. A fat man can fit into any set of clothes he wants. The only obstacle to effective dieting is infirmity of will. But as many readers — alas — know, the will is a pretty infirm thing: it is a shorter distance to the refrigerator than it is to the jogging track in the park. So while it is likely that Washington has been given a shock, it’s more than likely that they will cast around for a diet plan consistent with their appetites. Most people have nothing against diets except it means eating less. Politicians may give up pork; and give up perks, but it’s safe bet they will do so only with a heartrending reluctance; each night they pray on their hands and knees to give up these things if that is the price of staying in power, but “not yet, Lord, not yet.”
Here’s a famous historical figure commenting on the election in Massachusetts.
embedded by Embedded VideoYouTube Direkt
Tip Jar or Subscribe for $5
Comparing Obama’s lust for power to Hitler is a little over-the-top… but just a little.
Who’d a’thunk it?
There are none so blind as those who will not see.
As Susan Estrich said last night to Greta: “There’s a storm brewing out there and tonight didn’t make it go away.”
Um, sir — when you continue saying the phrase “over the last eight years,” that’s going to continue to include a larger and larger part of your time in office. Sir.
Just so you . . . never mind, sir.
Regardless of any outcome, elections are just an amusing feature of our continued enslavement. We don’t need a Brown, we need a Pinochet.
Actually, the video clip subtitles imply that Hitler, in this case, is probably representing Reid. In the HealthcareBunker. Just resist the impulse to connect “Der Fuhrer” and Obama for the moment.
I think the perspective might be Reid’s lust for power rather than Obama’s
Hilarious!
Whistling in the dark,
Whistling past the graveyard.
Not just a river in Egypt.
Ask them all again in a few weeks.
Somewhat OT, the folks at Just One Minute figure that there is a MAJOR scandal (Major Garrett of Fox News thinks so too) regarding WHO authorized Mirandizing and lawyering up the Undie Bomber Umarmutallab: link here. Most figure that Obama and Holder personally authorized it, for a variety of reasons.
My take is that the undie bomber is Black (and Muslim) and that was enough for Holder (see his dismissing the case against the New Black Panther Party members AFTER they pled guilty to voter intimidation).
Which ties into National Security. Brown made hay on Coakley’s assertion that she does not favor the Death Penalty for terrorists, and her assertion that Afghanistan had no terrorists, and her desire (and Obamas) for lawyers for Jihadis.
People don’t like being afraid that an airliner will drop on their house, or friends and families houses.
Do anyone else find it as astonishing as I do that Obama blamed even *this* on Bush?
It’s simply too funny for words…
I think that O’Bama has awakened the sleeping giant.
I asked a local (downstate GA) dem congresscritter something to the effect that wasnt it alarming that roughly 30% of GDP went to the government. He had no more idea what I was talking about than if I were speaking Sanskrit.
There is a clear disconnect between the Government (State and Federal and large local) and the people. The latter want to be left alone, mostly. They want the evil and feeble and the feeble-minded to be taken care of by somebody and its ok if the gov’t wants to do that, but dont bother us with it, and make sure they dont create a self-perpetuating underclass in the process.
The problem with the progresso-fascists is that they want to fix us all to their template. Make everybody do what they consider is the “right thing” Get health insurance, cause if you dont you’ll have financial problems. (rest of us say: it can cost as little as $100/mo: Man up) They say Man is screwing up the earth (We say: show us and dont do anything til we think its necessary)
Its the difference between knowing whats best for oneself and having somebody else force you to do what they ‘know’ is in your best interest.
I think this sank into the minds of the majority in Mass. Tho they still owe us for 50 years of teddy kennedy and the millions lost in SE Asia because of his refutation of our duty.
During the presidential election campaign of 2008, young white women fell in love with Barack Obama, the cool, the hip, the strong, beautiful black man they lusted for in their dreams. Obama Girl was one of these, gaining momentary fame with her YouTube songs in praise of Barack the Savior. Obama Girl and her sisters got their wish, they got their dream. Unfortunately, their dream has turned out to be a nightmare for the rest of us. The results in Massachusetts throw a small roadblock in the path of the socialist juggernaut, but it is no Stalingrad. Obama is with us for three more years, and he will not easily give up his dream of destroying the United States and remaking it in Saul Alinsky’s image.
What have you done, Obama Girl?
You’ve put the country in great peril
You’ve put in place a president who seems
To think that dressing up like Mao
And giving emperors a bow
Is just the kind of prez who meets your dreams
But is this what you had in mind
When you and others of your kind
Went to the polls and voted in Barack
Who smiled and said it would be neat
If he had Oval Office seat
And country’s sins forgiven ‘cause he’s black
He’s tripled up the national debt
He’s vowed that Fox News he would get
He’s from Chicago, he means what he says
He has a long name enemies list
With very few that he has missed
You just can’t disagree with this here prez
He wants to gut our good health care
And put in place one that is fair
A health care plan that’s run by union goons
The same fine group of gals and guys
Who work for Acorn, no surprise
Who’ll make you wait for treatment many moons
The unemployment rate is up
The country drinks from bitter cup
The dollar shrinks and China says no way
That we continue buying bonds
With interest paid with magic wands
From now on when we ship you stuff you pay
With all this going on, my dear
The man you loved has made it clear
That he’s a man who loves to bow and scrape
To kings and emperors alike
And as Iran prepares to strike
He thinks by doing nothing we’ll escape
What have you done, Obama Girl?
You’ve placed the country in great peril
You’ve put in place a president who seems
To want the country on its ear
And what is more, we greatly fear
There’s more to come than in our blackest dreams
Obama’s analysis is not far off the mark. He knows what Americans are concerned about, at least economically. But Richard had the correct analogy several posts ago: the Monkey Trap. Obama’s got his Chicago fist in the federal coconut and even if he knows how to get it out he can’t do it.
That St. Paul dude was all over the monkey trap thing, in Romans, chapter 7: “For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate . . . I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil that I do not want is what I do.” This may be true for a lot of politicians in D.C.
But actually I think Obama did exactly what he willed to do. He knew what the American people were anxious about, e.g. their retirement accounts, and he decided to spread their wealth around anyway. That’s wicked bad.
My only objection to the Bunker video is that Hitler is not depicted as Obama, only talking about Obama. Maybe someone will make the correction in a new “Bunker” video.
Obama is an idiot if he thinks voter anger is non-partisan and will just sweep out the incumbents (well he’s an idiot either way you cut it but that’s beside the point). Americans want to control health care costs which are rising much faster than inflation, but Obama is focusing on 100% coverage which will make it cost much more, especially if Unions don’t have to help pay, and if shaky Dems get $100 million dollar payouts to get a little spine.
Americans want to feel safe when they fly, they don’t want Obama to sit on his ass and treat Al Qaeda as a run-of-the-mill street gang.
Americans want to go back to work. Obama complains about “inheriting” an 8.1% unemployment, but right now that looks pretty damn good. Cap & Trade and socialized medicine will only make it go up.
Obama promised to change the “tone” in Washington, then flies Air Force One to Boston and makes fun of Brown driving a truck. And now he’s getting ready for his State of the Union speech where he’s going to promise to really get serious about changing the tone in Washington. Nobody cares about the damn tone. The tone was pretty bitter in 1998 when the President was being impeached over MonicaGate, but nobody cared then either, because everyone had a dot-com job.
That video had me rolling on the floor. That was hilarious! Thanks for that, Wretchard, you just made my day.
“OBAMA: By that time, we did. And here’s my assessment of not just the vote in Massachusetts, but the mood around the country. The same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office.”
No, it’s NOT the same thing. Some people see only what they want to see. Anybody that out of touch with reality with the power he has is a danger to everyone in the world. Gotterdamerung in der Fuhrerbunker is not as unlikely a hypothesis as I wish I could believe.
Classic illustration, W, and I’m assuming “Hitler” is a generic stand-in for the DNC. As for what it means, long-term, I’m mostly going with Spengler’s failed state theorem:
Here is an excellent description of voter anger about Obama’s health care proposals (as well as Obama’s overall conduct as President) that I haven’t seen broken down before:
“The harsh reality is many voters consider the health care bill a multibillion-dollar transfer of taxpayer money to the uninsured, a population disproportionately, although by no means exclusively, made up of the poor, African Americans, Latinos, single parents, and the long-term unemployed. Providing medical care to this population is an explicit goal of the legislation, and a worthy goal, but political suicide in the current environment.”
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/ghost-story
It’s that combination of entitled unfair preferential treatment that I think drives American voters crazy. Because of the color of your skin, you’re not expected to work for your living by our President, but you are encourged to expect the same standard of living (including a full range of free health care for you and your illegitimate children, free abortions, and color treatments to lighten your skin) as the people have around you who *do* get up in the morning and trundle off to a job.
Then when Obama shows the same sort of unrealistic, preferential treatment to non-American terrorists who also happen to be people of color, his policies will *really* become unpopular, very very quickly.
First rule is, don’t take advice from the enemy. You can read him for the purpose of getting in his head but do not let him into yours. Grant did not send a note over to Lee asking if he wanted to inspect the lines together at the Wilderness for old times sake.
Brown is of course very in tune with the voters in Massachusetts. To many Republicans are trying to cram him into some conservative mold. Rush was a little more enthusiastic about the national political implications than I thought prudent. Brown in office will probably align with McCain and represents what I consider the Romney wing of the party. Personally I am fine with that given the community that elected him. Reasonable expectations at the beginning can help avoid the pain of dissapointment in the future.
My take is that Clinton read his ’94 defeat in Congress as a message to tack to the center as he was a former governor and had learned how to be pragmatic about getting things done. Plus Clinton got caught with his hand in the cookie jar enough that he generally (but not always) knew how to behave once and only if he got caught.
Obama, on the other hand, has never had a real job and never has had to sweat any of the details about getting tangible results. And since he believes himself immune from making a mistake, he doesn’t even know how to correct course. So I suspect that he will remain tone deaf (unless Axelrod hits him in the face with a 2 X 4) and continue on with his ideological rhetoric as many of the “double down” comments in an earlier post suggested.
Just saw the ABC News, they edited Obambus’ comments. They played the words, “The same anger that elected me elected Scott Brown”, but omitted words I already heard earlier, “… because voters are so mad about the last 8 years”.
(8? not 9?)
… I wonder if they’ll play the rest of the words on the longer Nightline, or whether someone at the White House decided there are some blame shifts we will not eat.
whiskey, Teresita Scott Brown had this to say about terrorists in his Victory Speech:
“And let me say this, with respect to those who wish to harm us, I believe that our Constitution and laws exist to protect this nation – they do not grant rights and privileges to enemies in wartime. In dealing with terrorists, our tax dollars should pay for weapons to stop them, not lawyers to defend them.”
Commendable and agrees with what most Americans think and want. But how many in our Congress or even in the present Federal AG office feel that way? I wouldn’t bet a plug nickle on it being more than 50 percent.
After all, little brown/black men with too much time on their hands and no wives couldn’t be that dangerous could they?
Behind jobs, comes more jobs and an economy that is not afraid of the big bad government is what needs to happen but also this government has got to acknowledge the oath that each of them took in protecting and preserving our Republic. How many will?
And how many of those will stand up and tell Obama and Holder and his thugs to toe the mark and do their jobs their position calls for?
Maybe a couple but that is not enough to haul them back and put them in check.
Papa Ray
VDH asks Why the Great and Growing Backlash?
Good question and is the one we are discussing.
Papa Ray
I would have included this in prior post but edit function was MIA.
I think the analogy is not to the one or reid but to whoever is the puppetmaster, financing and organizing both Hillary and the one.
Wow. Just wow.
This is what happens when you live in an echo chamber, as an alto in a Tone Deaf Choir.
Singing to the tone deaf choir, and hearing your clunker notes as sweet dulcet melodies.
The “Coakley Karaoke”…you have to be so drunk with power to not know…what everyone else in the bar knows.
“… I think Obama has awakened a sleeping giant…”
Don’t tell me… Rosie O’Donnell?
The smaller fry in the political world are probably more risk averse than the President, who as long as he doesn’t do anything indictable or impeachable, is probably set for life. These range from the small time political operators whose influence is limited to fixing traffic tickets to the lobbyists who are all too aware how precarious their existence is. Unlike people with a real skill-based job, politics and to some extent journalism, is about the surfing a frothy wave.
I think one commenter observed that the difference between Bill Clinton and Barack Obama was that Bill was strictly small-time with a penchant for greasy food, big hair and shiny little gimmes. He had vision alright, as long as it wasn’t obstructed by views a little lower down. That made him, despite his faults, strangely more human. When you think about it, it’s Bill’s weaknesses that make him more accessible than the Olympian Barack. The small timers are going to want to pull back when they know they’ve run into trouble because they’ve lived in a world where sometimes you play at the pool hall and at other times have to grift nickels and dimes outside to scare up enough to get back in the game. They accept the rules of the system, and often in their more candid moments, their own disreputable and shabby role in it.
But the true believer isn’t interested in fried peach pie or big hair. Money is nice, but ultimately of little use except to give them what they really want: which is antiseptic power — the Luciferian fix. I don’t think the President is entirely a true believer. He came up through Chicago, after all. He cared about a house and all. He left community organizing because he didn’t want to be poor, after all. So I don’t think he’s pure “true believer”. But some part of him just might be. Still, I don’t think his underlings are going on a “death or glory” ride with him.
Sometimes I think that the real genius of the American political system is that it is fundamentally hostile to electing people like Bill Ayers who lack even the humanity to be conventionally greedy.
That really gives me a lot of hope. What Scott Brown’s election and the subsequent fear many Democrats felt means is that the political system still works. I don’t think the true believers are numerous enough yet to try and steal it all. The next few weeks will provide clues about how the internal debate within the Democratic Party is going. And here again, the hopeful thing is that the money is running out. Even the densest party hack must know that a fundamental shift in approach is probably going to be necessary at some point. Maybe the Republicans are also getting the sense that business as usual is no longer possible.
Obama may not like it, but unless he’s in Kamikaze mode, I think he will have no choice but to tack with the new wind. If he doesn’t, that’s data too.
In a week if asked about Martha the Democrats will answer, “The talking dog?”
OT
Great tweets.
latimestot
Leno: Harry Reid says Scott Brown won in Mass because hes a lightskinned brown with no Negro accent. latimes.com/ticket
RedState
Wow. Marc Thiessen Smokes Amanpour and Sands http://bit.ly/7Yb4bZ
Both of the videos in this 2 parter deserve watching. Thiessen is a brave man for taking on the harridan in her lair.
I reported here a number of times that many Obama voters were not exactly “firm” in their support of what he wanted to do. I would make dire predictions about the likely results and they would never say to me “You’re wrong!” Instead I’d get more of a look from them like maybe the parachute had only partially opened or something. That happened last spring when I explained to an Obama voter why The Presidents policies would result in high — and persistently high — unemployment. Up until he talked to me, he thought the President was doing well and two minutes later it was “OMG.” He was simply never exposed to another point of view, and it kind of hit him between the eyes.
So I thought even many Obama voters could be moved to vote for conservatives simply by giving it to them straight.
Normal Democrat voters who did not like Martha had the option of staying home. The fact that many of them went out to vote for Scott Brown should really concern the Democrat Operatives. I always gave them credit for at least knowing politics. But apparently they know nothing but how to spin and package. A few days ago I read of a White House Aide talking about how they would position the opponents of socialized medicine “rhetorically.” Of course he started by calling Socialized Medicine something else.
I think one commenter observed that the difference between Bill Clinton and Barack Obama was that Bill was strictly small-time …
That’s always what I say about Bubba.
Dick Morris was on Hannity today claiming that Clinton was always a conservative democrat, that’s how he governed in Arkansas, and that really even Hillary was. But, that Obama is not, Obama is a True Believer, who is happy to die for the cause.
I don’t even want to *start* to unpack that steaming pile, but that’s what the toe-sucker said.
“Her campaign (and the national Democratic establishment) didn’t see it (the pent-up anger) coming until it was almost upon them.”
Only because they refused to see it- wilful blindness, a species of confirmation bias.
Hasn’t the anger been on display in streets and parks and townhalls across the country and even the Capitol lawn, for months? But the libs stuck there fingers in their ears and pretended it wasn’t real; it was GOP astroturf, it was a small fringe of right-wing extremists, the crowds weren’t really all that big. To the extent the libs did notice, it was only to make smutty schoolboy jokes about it.
Utimately, the libs in their arrogant smugness never conceived that the peasantry would dare rise up. That’s what Louis XVI thought, too.
Obama’s interview with Stephanopolous this morning — from what I read, as I just will no longer watch ABC/NBC/CBS — tells me that Obama has NOT learned anything from the election of Scott Brown. He continues to blame the outcome on others, including the previous administration (!)
My reading of the election is that it was won by an outpouring of energy from all over the U.S. I live in the western U.S. and I donated, as did several of my neighbors, to Brown’s campaign. This was a tea party at the polls instead of in a park, which is where my previous tea party experience has been. This was a statement not only about Obamacare (which a previous commenter has already pointed out exists smaller measure in Massachusetts). More importantly it was a statement from all over the U.S. of citizen indignation at government involvement in so many aspects of daily life. Obamacare is the most poignant example of government interference because it will damage so many people in so many ways.
And Obama does not get it. He sees this in us/them, Republican/Democrat terms. It was not Republicans who beat Coakley, it was tea partiers from all political stripes, including Democrats and Independents alongside the Republicans, who worked for and voted for Brown. And in staggeringly stupid fashion politicians keep talking about “giving” more and more to voters and look askance at voters who don’t say “thank you” by re-electing them.
This is a warning shot for elected officials, but not just Democrats. Democrats might bear the brunt of the disaffection in next November’s election, but only because they outnumber Republicans. ALL incumbents or should be worried by yesterday’s vote in MA, and I think John McCain is as likely to be voted out in ten months as is Harry Reid. F
PR @ 21: Thanks for the VDH link, veddy good VDH: The best thing that could happen to Barack Obama is more Democratic losses in hodgepodge elections that might yank away our young transfixed Narcissus from his mesmerizing reflecting pool.
Second excellent VDH in the last week or so, maybe he’s getting back on his game, I think he’s been rather off for a while – almost since he shifted to Hoover.
Cooldog, #9: Do anyone else find it as astonishing as I do that Obama blamed even *this* on Bush?
It’s simply too funny for words…
Indeed… One unofficial role of any POTUS is that of “politician-in-chief” for his own party – that is, in Obama’s case, helping his fellow Dems get elected or re-elected. Obama blaming Coakley’s defeat on Bush is tantamount to admitting that Bush, despite being out of the Oval Office for one year to this day, is still doing that part of his job better than Obama has while in office!
I’m an independent in Massachusetts. People outside the state have frequently asked, in some form, “what changed since Coakley had a commanding lead in the polls to explain Brown’s meteoric rise?”
I believe the answer (to a first-order approximation) is very simple, and has nothing to do with actual events during this interval. Put very bluntly, Massachusetts voters slowly came to realize that there was a general election.
With Kennedy’s death, the vacancy was seen as an opportunity for some Democrat to rise to national significance, and the main question was who would be bold enough to run for the prize. Once candidates came forward, it was generally assumed that this was a race between Coakley and Capuano, with two dark-horse minor Democratic candidates. Because Massachusetts is so liberal, it was a universal meme that the next senator would be a Democrat.
Before the December primary, ALL attention was on the Democratic race, which was assumed to be the only important vote. In that field, all four Democrats tried to demonstrate that they had the strongest commitment to Obama’s health reform.
With Coakley’s primary victory, she was the presumptive Senator-elect, and at first everyone simply assumed that the general election was as symbolic as an Electoral College vote.
But with a large segment of the public opposed to the bills, there was an untapped seed around which opposition could crystalize – stop the bills. Only after the primary did people slowly wake up to the fact that there was also a general election, and a real alternative in Scott Brown.
Once the polling gap closed to single digits, people perceived that there was a real choice, and the crystalization happened almost instantaneously. This did not depend on external events or changes in the news – it was all about realizing that we actually had a vote, and that we were not alone in our opposition.
“The same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office.”
Tonight on Fox News Britt Hume said “They would have us believe that the people of Massachusetts are still so angry at the Bush Administration that they elected a Republican to the Senate for the first time in decades.”
Gretta VanSustrand on Fox News last night said that Croakley was running well ahead of Brown until the special deals cut for the health care bill became known. The other big thing that happened was the UndieBomber. It would be interesting if you could correlate poll numbers with these events.
Note that the State of The Union speech was delayed and was uncertain until recently. I don’t recall this ever happening before, and I would suspect the driver was the same series of events, each of which required a different approach in order to to maintain the mythology. And that’s just the stuff we know about.
My reading of the election is that it was won by an outpouring of energy from all over the U.S. I live in the western U.S. and I donated, as did several of my neighbors, to Brown’s campaign.
I agree; I noticed yesterday that Professor Jacobson’s live blog at Le-gal In-sur-rec-tion drew commenters from all 50 states; only 6% of nearly 2000 participants were from Massachusetts. And I’m another out-of-state person who donated to Brown. I can’t recall any state-level election that went national so quickly and so intensely.
Think of the electorate as a huge, powerful, and poisonous frog. If you wish to make it into soup, offer it a hot tub and turn up the temperature ever so slowly, because if you do it will never notice that it is being cooked alive.
But if you get too impatient, and speed up the heating too quickly, it will jump out of the water. And then, as all frogs do, it will start eating the insects around it without mercy of any kind.
The insects wanted frog soup. It doesn’t look like they’re going to get it this time. In point of fact, the would be cooks may end up being the special of the day on tomorrow’s menu.
Ah well, justice can be cruel.
The natives are restless! You know I googled that in hopes of finding where it originally came from but it is so commonly used I was unsuccessful. The context seems to be a British colony, either in Africa or India. But the British had officials and military officers who knew the native language and could go out on the streets in native dress and understand what was going on. Our liberal sahibs, sadly no. I find baseball really boring and even *I* know who Curt Schilling is.
In an act reminiscent of his claim to be a blank slate onto which people project what they want to see, Obama today attempted a shape shift. Josh points out above in the ABC Stephanopoulos interview Obama claiming that the same anger which elected him elected Brown. It is a painfully contorted lie, one tried more clumsily earlier during Gibbs’ lengthy Press grillling.
A mere month ago, Obama & Co. depicted themselves separated from, fearful of, revolted by that angry mob. They were “Teabaggers”, dangerous right wing extremists, racist white middle-aged men, Amerikkkan terrorists, Nazis, lunatic war vets, militia types. Now Obama is trying to claim them as his constituency. It won’t play because it can’t.
What constituency does he imagine he’s playing to? What audience could this charlatan now fool? Wretchard seems pretty sure he’s not a ‘believer’, so what is he? This pivot is a simulation of a clever move by a political tactician, but this attempt to claim the narrative is really quite bizarre. Any sane reading of the Massachusetts election would tell any competent human that something new is needed, something real. But this scary husk of a man seems to think we’ll buy it if he pretends something new.
I know this type. It’s the schtick of the alcoholic and the junkie. It’s the scam of the con man and the pathological liar. Obama is seriously damaged goods. And like the liar, like the junkie, it’s really impossible for him to pivot into reality, or to come up with something real. In that way he’s a genuine believer, but only in the fervent lies he weaves in covering the gaping bottomless pit where his soul should be.
What the american embassador in Paris says (video, english)
http://www.lexpress.fr/actualite/monde/si-les-republicains-veulent-simplement-faire-perdre-obama-ils-feront-perdre-l-amerique_843396.html
Obama’s interview this morning was the second time he’s blamed Bush big time. Remember that old Russian story about the three envelopes? He’s only got one envelope left. The message in this one is “prepare three envelopes.” F
Basically my earlier post said that the electorate is not generally aware of the machinations of the Gummint.
Thats both good and bad.
Good in that they arent concerned about the Gummint’s goodies.
Bad in that they dont concentrate on the Gummint’s taking of Freedom.
When the latter sinks in, hilarity ensues.
(I understand from people in the “industry” “hilarity ensues” that how chaos is described in movies)
The Marie Claude clip has the US ambassador depicting the defeat in Mass as a “hurdle” but not a referendum on Obama and basically hoping the Republians won’t be obstructionist on health care.
But if we’ve learned anything about Obama, it is that it takes an effort to understand him. His disappointed supporters assumed that they knew him, only to learn differently. Even his opponents, I think, never pegged him quite for what he was. They assumed he was worse or better in some ways than what he is. I think you could get a lot of people on both the Left and the Right to agree on one thing: Obama is a bait and switch. We know what the bait was, what has been switched is still — amazingly — not clear one year into the process.
The President remains a mystery to his closest admirers. Paul Krugman just said he was about to abandon Obama because Obama wasn’t what he hoped he would be. Maybe the union guys are feeling the same thing. Maybe those who thought he would “get bin Laden” are feeling the same thing. What’s crazy about it is that they’re disappointed for different reasons. The real Obama is still not in public view.
Over time I’ve come to refine my own personal understanding of the man. Each event makes me revise the estimate just a little, a posteriori. We might actually run out his term without a consensus on who he is. Maybe he doesn’t know himself. But at any rate, his Presidency will stand on it own objective merits, as its own narrative. What that will be, well let’s wait and see.
Every time the Dems lose it’s because of “anger” that is free-floating in that it has no real cause, and is an irrational or sub-rational emotion. Just read the MSM. Every time.
Somehow, Obama et al would have you believe, the people are still angry at Bush 14 months after voting to repudiate him, so they voted for a GOP? That makes as much sense as the argument that Congress should pass teh health care bill becuase after it’s passed, everyone will suddenly learn about it and fall in love.
There’s a term for this sort of thing. “Psychosis.” Not necessarily murderous totally deranged psychosis (tho, some here would argue that is exactly what it is), but a significant disconnect from reality and inability to process the environment in a logical factual way, for sure.
I suspect some Dem pros actually try to figure out what is going on and respond to it–for example, the Dems ran away from hi visibility gun control legislation after their 1994 debacle.
But teh media spin and the sense in the kultusmog (to use Tyrell’s term) is it’s just these crazy guys (angry men, usually), what can you do, it’s irrational? Dems are rational, scientific, logical and warm-hearted. GOPs are irrational, unscientific, illogical and cold.
Like those academic papers that surface every couple of years about how liberals have all the admirable traits, conservatives all the despicable ones.
Tonite, Hannity said he can’t see how Obama doesn’t change course, but he’s happy if Obama doesn’t becuase it’ll just dig the Dems in deeper.
Obama has never before been challenged in any significant way. He has no experience evaluating unhappy facts and changing his behavior; he has never had to do that. Among teh mmany riticisms one could level at him, I would include “childish.” He’s like an over-protected little princeling who always got his way, suddenly out in the big bad world, with no experience or reference points.
We’re in trouble. He will tear the country apart because there are just enough people stupid enough or craven enough to follow him.
I’ve yet to see the Mass. vote broken down by political/social interest groups, although I could have missed something.
My hunch is that the election of Brown would not have happened had not the screaming oldsters constituting the “Tea-Party” contingent not done the unthinkable and stood up to insult their congress people to their races at high volumes.
IOW, this is a middle-class, middle-aged revolt, and I don’t think we’ve seen anything quite like this before in this country.
They are revolting against several of other political interest groups, all of which have been listed at various places in the comments above: (1) the Unions; (2) foreign illegals; (3) the bi-coastal intellectual/think-tank establisment. Perhaps even more important as notably not among their enemies are (1) corporations and banks; (2) people who do work for profit; (3) the military; (4) in general, the huge “fly-over” population in this country (a colored map after Obama’s election showed an huge band of red reaching from the south-east to the north-west through the middle of country: these were the counties that went for McCain-Palin–and these are not among the tea-partiers enemies).
What I’m describing, in short, is a “civil war by other means.” The make-up of the two sides is, as indicated, highly original in some respects.
And I submit that it is blindness to these antipathetical line-ups that characterizes the democratic party and the Obama crowd. Perhaps the Republicans will eventually catch on to where exactly their new constituency lies.
anyone else notice how we (not just here, but a truly global “we”) spend an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out Obama’s psyche? Very reminiscent of Nixon and LBJ, for those old enough to remember.
Those Presidencies turned out OK, so why am I worried?
hhmmmpphh!
Obama seems to think Martha Coakley == George W. Bush and Matt Yglesias thinks Scott Brown == Jeff Sessions. No wonder Democrats are having trouble making sense of it all.
Even Barney Frank, furiously combatative and relucatant to ever back down, has a the fear of the voter in him. His district went strong for Brown and the message got through Frank’s bluster.
Maybe he doesn’t know himself.
He can’t know himself, God isn’t done with him yet.
No, I’m serious. The only real question is whether he has any interest in learning on the job, and, y’know, governing. Or whether he’s just a post-colonial airheaded pseudo-intellectual petty academic, which seems to me pretty much his own self-image, up to now.
I don’t think he’s a secret Muslim or a Cloward-Piven whatever. If he’s either, he’s not terribly good at it.
Let’s be hopeful, as VDH said above, maybe now that he has to govern a little more bi-partisanly, he’ll learn to do so. Never had to learn no governin’ when he was a back-bencher.
Re: #21 linked VDH article
To me, one data point the ClimateGate-Copehagen-then government fiat thru EPA cinches everything wrong with this admin’s overreaching.
Even though we would not hear it as a contributing factor for the MA election. But anybody paying just a little bit of attention can see through the transparency of “No matter what we are going to jam down some piece of sh%* for your own good’.
Just this morning, David Plouffe on GMA was saying, once the Healthcare Reform bill is signed, the public then will find out how wonderful it is going to be for everybody, cutting cost, more benefit, for universal coverage, yada yada yada. Before a George Stephenopolous cut him off, incredelously “This WH is still going through with a HCR bill?” and Plouffe said yes.
Before a George Stephenopolous cut him off, incredelously “This WH is still going through with a HCR bill?” and Plouffe said yes.
You have to wonder whether he has a choice. The whole political machine runs on money. Just because you don’t have it doesn’t mean they don’t need it. How is he going to keep his army together if he can’t provide them with something to despoil? President Obama wouldn’t be the first person to try and square the circle. The political system has been trying to do that for years. The unsustainable nature of entitlements never kept anyone from wanting it. Just kick it down the road.
Now we’re at the end of the road. What to do? Just kick it. But if Massachusetts is a wall, then we’re about to find out what happens when the can comes rattling back. My prediction, they’ll kick it again, only harder. “It worked before, why doesn’t it work now?”
Most of us have been in this place some time in our lives. When you’re out of moves. When you keep dialing the phone and nobody answers, or keep pushing the ATM card into the machine and no money comes out.
So if Plouffe is right, well, try again. And just as I was closing this comment, I noticed that the Democrats have proposed a $1.9 trillion increase in the debt limit. And “Democrats” is exactly the wording the AP article used.
44 Voltimand
Have a look at John Judis’s article at TNR:
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/he-doesnt-feel-your-pain
This should release some pent-up energy:
George Will :: Townhall.com Columnist
Off-The-Cliff, But Catching On
Here is the dog getting wagged or the Black Swan. If this goes through it is the end of the Republic. The cause of death will have been suicide.
1. Patriot Front:
Comparing Obama’s lust for power to Hitler is a little over-the-top… but just a little.
This Hitler scene has been used to death. Here are some examples.
Getting tickets for a Bears’ game.
Getting a 401k statement.
Hitler wants Burger King.
Who is the person most likely to lie to you? Go to the mirror. There he/she is.
True character consists of the ability to transcend the lies that you know are lies, but would rather for selfish reasons wish would be the truth. No, no matter how much you want it to happen, rocks when dropped will not fall up, they fall down. No amount of visualizing “world peace” or “hope and change” will change reality. It simply doesn’t work that way. It never has, and it never will.
But there are people who do believe that you can fly if you do just keep a “happy thought” in your head. The “Peter Pans” and “Tinkerbells” are far more dangerous to human society than a legion of the likes of Charles Manson or Attila the Hun.
But then again, the very worst of them all is the clone of Attila the Hun who pretends to be Tinkerbell, the wolf in fairy’s clothing.
And what do we have with Obama? Does he really think he’s Tinkerbell or is he just pretending? That is the question. None of the answers really can be deemed to be comforting.
From the libretto of the new rock musical, “President Tommy Obama.”
He seems to be completely unreceptive.
The tests I gave him showed no sense at all.
His eyes react to light; the dials detect it.
He hears but cannot answer to your call.
There is no chance, no untried operation.
All hope lies with him and none with me.
Imagine though the shock from isolation,
When he suddenly can hear and speak and see.
His eyes can see,
His ears can hear, his lips speak.
All the time the needles flick and rock.
No machine can give the kind of stimulation,
Needed to remove his inner block.
I often wonder what he is feeling.
Has he ever heard a word I’ve said?
Look at him, in the mirror dreaming.
What is happening in his head?
What is happening in his head?
Oooooh, I wish I knew, I wish I knew.
Wretchard wrote:
“We might actually run out his term without a consensus on who he is. Maybe he doesn’t know himself.”
‘What Obama knows about himself and when he knows it’ is a fascinating theme. Once a month or so he delivers a psychic mini-eruptions or ‘personality seizures’ that seem to reveal pieces of a larger persona but, still, very hard to put together the big picture about him.
Remember his moment sitting on “The Tonight Show” with Jay Leno? Obama, trying to be self deprecating, said his low bowling score “was like the Special Olympics or something.”
I don’t think we can overinterpret remarks like this enough. It is a very immature remark. It is a lazy remark. It is a stupid and low-class, cheap adolescent remark.
The ability to strike decent metaphor or analogy is a mark of grown-up intelligence. It reflects the quality of a man’s mind; how much he has thought about things, how much he has explored things in his own head, how much he has worked on himself, how much he has taken his own counsel as he puts his picture of the world together.
Most mature men, men who think of themselves as educated (not necessarily college educated), men who cultivate the regard of others have usually combed such low grade analogy from their minds. They might not be geniuses but they know how to strike a modest pose without letting fly with an odious comparison, “like Special Olympics or something.”
The quality of Obama’s metaphors or analogies — these bizarre psychic eruptions — reveal a starkly uncultivated mind, a mind that doesn’t seem to know itself, whose shaky sense of metaphor traps itself into putting down doctors, businessmen, plumbers, truck drivers, upright policemen — and more.
Wretchard please.
Obama is the most obvious and transparent guy in the world.
He’s a Muslim. And a failed Third World Marxist. JUST like his father. He is in fact his father, only probably even less a man than that failed drunken polygamist. That’s who he is. It’s always been who he is.
Obama has made a few compromises, a few cut corners, but he stayed twenty years at Rev. Wright’s church because he as a Muslim (culturally at least) he shares all of Wright’s hatred of Whites and America (the two are interchangeable to Obama, and lets be honest, most Blacks, given the studied silence by all other prominent Blacks in all walks of life re: Rev. Wright, share these attitudes).
I sure as heck didn’t hear, read, or see prominent Black public figures rip Rev. Wright over his statements, beliefs, and actions. So I take that as a “yes” that the overwhelming majority of Black Americans agree 100% with the Reverend. So much so that none dare speak out against Wright’s views. Any more than Muslims speak out against Sharia Imams.
Obama wants two things: 1. PUNISH White People (and lets be honest, nearly ALL Black Americans want this). 2. Make America a Third World Black-Hispanic majority socialist regime, a super-sized Cuba North crossed with his “dream Kenya.”
That’s it. Obama is very, very simple. He’s as obvious as Idi Amin, Robert Mugabe, and Jacob Zuma (who married his fifth polygamous wife recently). He has always been this way, basically another African Big Man.
The African Big Man combines both elements: greasy fixer, and religious-true believer, in one form. The appetites (Kobe Beef burgers, ritzy stuff, shady land deals, etc.) are there, but are only window-dressing to the tribal nature of the true believer.
FWIW, I think Obama has a very high opinion of himself and wants everyone else to share it. He just wants to be worshipped.
Whiskey/56; that’s a catch 22 –the more a majority objects to minority bloc-voting, the more rational it becomes for a minority to do it. Dem kingmakers build a party on it –and likely had what we are experiencing now all figured out long before the right candidate came along: “either a socialist revolution in America, or America will prove the racism charge.” To the Dem kingmakers, the racism charge is devastating –no doubt because they themselves are so neurotically race-conscious –determined to keep skin color awareness as high as possible and campaign on AAs as “bloody shirts” until the end of time.
campaign on AAs as “bloody shirts” until the end of time
Only a matter of time until they accuse Scott Brown (and by extension Red Sox Nation) of waving the “bloody sock.”
You can bet the DNC giant sandworms wish that little redheaded henpecker had had the bloody sock over her head –
What we saw in Massachusetts was a swarm. Over a 2-3 week period, people from all over the country suddenly became aware that the Senate seat was winnable, and that their actions could make an impact. I saw this in Houston: there is a conservative group called the C Club made up of 100 conservative business leaders (no, I’m not a member, but I know a number of them). Anyhoo, the C Club saw a poll that showed that Brown could win, and they all wrote checks and sent them off.
At the same time, people in MA and elsewhere got energized and mobilized, and started getting involved. They block walked, attended rallies, phone banked, etc. It all happened very, very fast – which is the nature of a swarm. You don’t see it coming, and then BOOM it’s on you.
Now swarms require some kind of hierarchy. There were a couple of C Club guys who took it upon themselves to email all of the other C Club members and say, “Hey, this one’s winnable – we have to do something”. But it was not something that was coordinated centrally – it was the dissemination of a key message (Brown’s poll numbers) to a core group of leaders, and their independent, uncontrolled response that caused the swarm. Nevertheless, without the pre-existing association – the C Club – the response would have been de minimus. It took the reputation of the couple of leaders, together with the message, to unleash the response. And this was repeated all over the US.
The thing was, the swarm happened so fast, and was so big, that it overwhelmed Coakley. She didn’t know what hit her. She just knew that she was being stung everywhere she turned – there was no safe place – and she was completely unprepared. If the swarm had happened 1 month earlier (or 1 month later), she would have won. She would have been able to develop a defense – run away, hide, spray mace, something. And others were coming to her defense. They just arrived too late.
The fact is that Brown got the benefit of the swarm, but it’s not clear that he could cause it to occur again. Think about it this way: Obama won because of a swarm, but he has been unable to reconjure one – he tried in New Jersey, Virginia, Massachusetts, on healthcare, cap-and-trade, etc. He can’t do it.
Why? Because the swarm cannot be controlled top-down. The swarm has its own mind, a hive-mind, that is beyond human control. The key is learning to “read” the hive mind, and locate its triggers.
The hive mind lives on the internet now, in places like the Belmont Club. Those who learn to read it will have a tremendous advantage in future political races. But reading is not controlling.
Fact is, they’ll never control it, because they will never control us. We are free men and women, and we will make up our own minds, thank you very much.
These are the real lessons that politicians should learn from Tuesday:
We are free.
Do not try to control us.
Forget this at your own political peril.
L3
Coming to this post late and past my bedtime… but this quote has made me mad the two times I’ve heard it. Obmas: ” ….The same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office.”
It’s all about him. It is always about him. For God’s sakes, man, give it a rest. …sir.
…then we can get to the part where he talks of the anger over the past 8 years – it is boggling how simply and completely out of touch he and the administration are.
L3, the way to handle that hive is to always be honest and straight and truthful with it –THAT’ll make the durn thang believe you –so long as you keep it up.
I know, it seems kinda underhanded –an opponent might call you out: “Why you clean high-life five-flusher you!”
From the tumbril, Obummer promises to give us cake.
He was meaning to, all along. Really.
M-BL-St. Mary,
Re: truth
Fer sure. There are only two problems for most of the political class (aka “Our betters”):
1. They don’t know what the truth is, because they live in an abstract world that is easily detached from reality, and
2. Even when they know the truth, they’re afraid to speak it because they don’t think it’s what we want to hear. (Which is often true, but beside the point.)
There’s reason that decentralized authority works best: decision-makers are closer to reality, and they know the people impacted by their decisions, so they have more credibility, so their message is more likely to be accepted.
Anyhoo, enough choir preaching.
BTW: love your latest nom-de-blog.
Cheers,
L3
P.S. – I should have added – and, of course, the Mass. vote was about him and Congress, just not in the way he articulated it.
Not yet clear what the President wants?
To remake “Goddamn” America.
To change things in America so that there is (he and his minions hope) no going back.
To transform America into, into that “more perfect union” that he and his perfectionist, utopia-logues imagine as the City on the Hill (except that the Great Leader’s plan is to first level that “Goddamn” Hill).
(Keeping in mind that America is this man’s Moby Dick.)
Doing this requires no little sleight of hand, so that the 2008 election was essentially a matter of fooling most of the people most of the time, greatly abetted by a grossly dishonest media and scads of money from the usual suspects.
But the first year of this administration, in spite of Herculean efforts by the president, his minders and the MSM to keep that all-important curtain firmly in place (all struggling desperately to prevent nagging, persistent reality from tugging at the curtain’s heavily-embroidered corner), has seen the confirmation of P. T. Barnum as an even wiser showman than the President himself.
Indeed, you can fool most of the people most of the time. But…!!
And yet, and yet (as discussed several days ago), the President will not, indeed cannot fold. Cannot shift gears, cannot finesse. Cannot take that step back and reassess. Will not change.
Because reality has no place in this administration.
No, the revolution lives. It’s going to be all or nothing. So roll those dice….
And when he (we all?) comes up short, disastrously short, it’s going to get even uglier than it already is.
On the national level, the administration will continue to blame Bush along with the neo-con cabal for the country’s and the president’s (are they not one and the same?…) ills.
In international affairs, the administration, in a desperate attempt to find a focus for his plenitude of failure, will point to Israel (along with its nefarious supporters) as having sabotaged from the get-go his Middle East peace plan and hence his overall prestige.
When all else fails, harp on betrayal. Israel and its supporters are handy and they’ve already been outed by those who have been guiding this administration’s policies.
Yes, it’s going to get mighty ugly.
Josh #47: Let’s be hopeful, as VDH said above, maybe now that he has to govern a little more bi-partisanly, he’ll learn to do so.
I expect Obama will do what he has to do and say what he has to say (like during the ’08 campaign) if he literally has no choice, but as far as actually learning anything… nah. That’s why the election of Brown, and hopefully many more like him in November, is so crucial – to keep Obama and his kind in the box, with the lid locked tight and the nation safe from his brand of fundamental transformation.
But as far as learning anything, that’s not going to happen. Marty’s choice of the word “childish” is right on. Seems to me that if a person can reach a certain age (not sure what that age is, maybe 40?) and still believe wholeheartedly in the childish nostrums of the left, then you are a hopeless case and entirely unamenable to learning anything no matter what experience and reality is showing you. Obama has surely passed that age and yet still retains all the destructive and obtuse willfullness of a child who had best be surrounded by plenty of real grown-ups. (People like Marc Thiessen perhaps… great in LOTM’s link @26. Or our own L3 – what a great representative of the people he’d make.)
After Virginia and New Jersey and now Massachusetts, Obama will not budge one inch toward the center. No matter what he may say from here on out. His kind can only be contained. I hope we can elect a surfeit of people who can do that, and do it quickly, before things get too ugly.
wretchard # 25 – “When you think about it, it’s Bill’s weaknesses that make him more accessible than the Olympian Barack.”
IMHO, Bill’s narcissim (and charm) is of the SNL variety — it loves to be loved, but for Bill nothing is sacred, including his own person. How else to explain a man who gets a blow job in the Oval office while discussing US troop deployments?
Barack’s narcissism is of a, yes, “Olympian” nature. Pampered, feted, adored and given preferential treatment for most of his life, Barack has come to value the person of Barack Obama too much sully it with compromise.
The academic Left doesn’t compromise — it just blames America for not being good enough to live in the Left’s reality.
Whatever the state of Bill Ayers’s “humanity”, he didn’t have to be greedy because his old man owned the store.
Something else that has been pent up is a retrospective appreciation of GWB. Jules Crittenden, Gateway Pundit, and the guys at HillBuzz have all posted their reflections on the anniversary of W’s leaving office.
A Chinese commenter left the following post over at Jim Hoft’s site:
Hi! Anytime, anywhere, a non american chinese here living in asia will loudly applaud president George W Bush and thank him for his brave stance against oppression and terrorism!
http://gatewaypundit.firstthings.com/2010/01/one-year-ago-the-worlds-greatest-liberator-since-world-war-ii-left-office/#comments
re ‘learning how to try new things’ (in the phrase of that NEA obamatron on that notorious ‘art for obama’ conference call), in the interim between Katrina, when the MSM learned it could make stuff up and get away with it, and the 2008 election when it learned it could simply bury news and never report it (nor even allow a hint of its existence) at all, George Bush (and a whole worldful of flabbergasted witnesses) was under the media version of the Cloward Piven overload attack, aimed at making 2008 voters really, really need a radical change. Bemused, confused, nonplussed, we citizens called this attack “BDS” and wondered what the hell was going on with those media chieftains who were if not personally engaging in it were certainly tolerating, meaning encouraging it. What we’ve seen over the last year, Plan 9 from Outer Space was already up and running in the broadcast & newspaper & slick mag executive sweets. We just didn’t know it –it was at the time beyond out experience to be herded like livestock by the commie cowboys. HIGHLY presumptuous and rude commie cowboys. The nerve !
Dylan said as ah but we were so much older then, we’re younger than that now. I’m thinking, maybe Cole Younger than that now.
Mark: But actually I think Obama did exactly what he willed to do. He knew what the American people were anxious about, e.g. their retirement accounts, and he decided to spread their wealth around anyway. That’s wicked bad.
Forty percent of the country is hard left, they will never vote for a Republican. Forty percent of the country is hard right, they will never vote for a Democrat. That leaves twenty percent in the middle.
Scott Brown won 73% of the independent vote.
Obama thinks Massachusetts was really a referendum on the slow pace of his health care “reform” and cap & trade legislation.
Bill Clinton had character flaws but he was an extremely skilled politician, the best I’ve seen in my lifetime. When his own agenda was repudiated he took the best of what the opposition had to offer and made it his own. Whatever his personal motivation might have been Clinton took his obligation to actually govern the country seriously.
During his first year Obama has failed to display both political acumen and leadership ability. That’s not surprising because throughout his adult life he has never displayed any evidence that he actually had any. Outside his milieu of the scripted speech the guy is a dud.
The probability that Obabma will move to the center is probably zero. If there were ever a frog and scorpion story applicable to American politics this is it.
#4, Kevin: Pinochet? You must be a troll. Why not Che Guevara?
I’m not buying for a moment that obamas and his comrades didn’t pick up on the public’s anger. It was hubris.
Let me state this: The President of the United States is following the same format all presidents have followed. Lie when you think you need to do so and if necesssary go back and say you were misquoted.
I think another prominent Socialist Democrat put it this way.
“There’s going to be a tendency on the part of our people to be in denial about all this, ” if you lose Massachusetts and that’s not a wake-up call, there’s no hope of waking up .” Democrat Senator Evan Bayh on Republican Scott Brown’s stunning Senate win in Massachusetts.
O/T with permission requested.
I have one suggested reading and one book on disc that I truly believe will elevated parts of some of our dicussions.
1. Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution http://tinyurl.com/y9rcvzs
and
Founding Brothers, The Revolutionary Generation [UNABRIDGED CD] (Audiobook) [Unabridged] http://tinyurl.com/ygbawk4
Both well worth the intellectual investment.
One caution. These works need to be studied not just used as bathroom readers, or litened to as you nod into la la land.
If you actually take this course of study many, if not most of you will forever be changed in what you thought you knew and what really happened.
The reviews outline the greatness of these works and the works deserve the fullness of attention.
Habu,
Eternal Verity:
Everything sounds more important in Latin!
The Meaning of Massachusetts – WSJ.com
Rep. Bart Stupak, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Michael Barone, Fred Barnes and Arianna Huffington…
And here’s a no-brainer: After a year of being knifed by the GOP at every turn, isn’t it time to give up on faith in genteel post-partisanship? Go after those who oppose your common-sense tax on big banks to recoup the taxpayer-funded bailout money.
Getting the strongest possible health-care bill as quickly as possible is now key. Passing the Senate bill first, and then quickly fixing it through the reconciliation process, could create strong political pressure for reviving the public option or Medicare buy-in.
Passing a bill won’t be the Democrats’ political salvation. But if Mr. Obama and his party fail, it may well snuff out any chance for reform in other areas like financial regulation, immigration and employee free choice.
—
Some, including Sens. Joe Lieberman (I., Conn.) and Evan Bayh (D., Ind.), are saying that the outcome in Massachusetts is an indication that Mr. Obama and the Democrats need to move to the middle and focus on trying to make bipartisan deals. This, of course, is exactly what the Democrats have been doing all year. If they redouble their efforts to curry favor with the Olympia Snowes of the world they’ll be making a grave mistake.
Actually, if you feel you need to read something to get some kind of inkling of what’s going, all you have to do is read the first 50-odd pages of David Stockman’s The Triumph of Politics.
(Or maybe just the preface, at that.)
While Obama, his advisors and backers are destroying our Republic at a rate that is making the world wonder if America has gone mad, there is yet another request from our rabid out of control Congress for more money, always more.
This is going to be forced down our throats yet again and make sure that any prosperity for our grand children and their children’s children is not only denied but assured.
Still the idiots who got us into this don’t seem to understand that this act along with taking out yet another loan to pay off the other loans is just digging the hole deeper and deeper.
These idiots by the way include 98 percent of the republicans.
This has got to stop and be reversed!
Papa Ray
Whiskey: Obama wants two things: 1. PUNISH White People (and lets be honest, nearly ALL Black Americans want this). 2. Make America a Third World Black-Hispanic majority socialist regime, a super-sized Cuba North crossed with his “dream Kenya.”
Except that punishment has an element of benevolence to it. The punisher wants the punishee to improve. Obama’s consituency will be content to see a “descendants of persons historically forced into involuntary servitude credit” make its way into the tax code, which of course will turn America into the apotheosis of the Cubas and Zimbabwes of the world.
Doug: People don’t like being afraid that an airliner will drop on their house, or friends and families houses.
This is the Home of the Brave. People aren’t afraid that an airliner will drop on their house, they are annoyed that the Commander-in-Chief is doing nothing to prevent it, and even making it impossible to prevent it, thus hamstringing the world’s lone superpower.
For some reason–perhaps the relatively normal marriage with Michelle–Obama has always reminded me of Charles I: a relatively small man way out of his depth, who hangs on to the One Big Idea through thick and thin as a way of avoiding a collision with his own mediocrity. Brown’s election was Obama’s Naseby, but he will be no more able to accept the facts on the ground than Charles was. A one-trick-pony, he will continue to pick the wrong fights (the Bishop’s Wars); throw people under the bus, but too late (Strafford, Laud); and ultimately be of no use to anyone, even the moon-eyed Scots. (Like Obama, all of Charles’ promises came with expiration dates.)
A pity: unlike Charles, who might have turned out all right in the end if his brother had lived to cover up his spindley legs with a bishop’s robe, Obama brought it on himself.
80. Barry Meislin
Thank you for your suggestion, but with a BS and Masters in Political Science I’m not sold on the idea that you (I) feel you need to read something to get some kind of inkling of what’s going ….
I’m sure the fifty pages you suggested are just chock full of what’s going on but somehow feel that those fifty pages fall short of the hours of work I have oulined in my two suggestions as to the founding of this nation. I could use the extra time to watch The Simpsons or American Idol however.
As to what’s going on I worked for the election of Barry Goldwater in 1964 and have worked on every Republican campaign since then, so many consider me to be up to speed on what’s what ..however thank you for you contribution.
David Stockman? Risible.
L3,
You are exactly right about the “swarm” concept. I too sent money to Brown but I was not encouraged to do so by a local group that I was associated with but rather by the “swarm” of the conservative political blogosphere. As we are all aware, the MSM never picked up on the building enthusiasm of the supporters of the Brown campaign, but it became appparent to me about a week or two before the election. I missed contributing on the $1.3M day but did so on the following day.
I believe that we should all work toward “nationalizing” many of the upcoming local elections this Fall. By this I mean, contributing to candidates outside of our local District or State. If we can “swarm” upon the likes of Harry Reid, Barbara Boxer, and a few of the other incompetants, and and fill their opponents war chests with a string of $1M days, we might just be able to have a meaningful effect.
Anyway, that’s just my two cents worth.
Hangtown Bob
“I believe that we should all work toward “nationalizing” many of the upcoming local elections this Fall. By this I mean, contributing to candidates outside of our local District or State. If we can “swarm” upon the likes of Harry Reid, Barbara Boxer, and a few of the other incompetents, and and fill their opponents war chests with a string of $1M days, we might just be able to have a meaningful effect.”
Excellent suggestion and bears repeating. The RNC certainly isn’t going to do it or if they do will do it for the “wrong” candidate.
Just like they did for Scott Brown, waiting until almost the last minute to even contribute and only after they saw (and their little pea brains) had figured out what was happening.
Papa Ray
“Yes, it’s going to get mighty ugly.”
Au contraire. As part of the swarm, I’m having a lot of fun and looking forward to further swarm-meets. I’m very hopeful that Barbara Boxer will be one of the next to be stung to death and thrown to the wayside in defeat, humiliation and repudiation.
///
Habu, I have great admiration for you and your erudition, but really … why is it helpful TODAY (with all of its changes and permutations) to know what So&So thought YESTERDAY, especially if it’s in Latin and pompous? If you know and understand and have the time to plow through it, I’ll just sit back in my American laziness and allow you to be my human transcorder and tell me what I need to know from it, whan (and if) I need to know it. (BTW, “laziness” is another way of saying “time management” and “efficiency”.)
Two of today’s headlines resonate.
Initial jobless claims unexpectedly rise
Goldman 4Q Profit Soars Past Expectations
Somewhere between those two headlines lies Revolution 2.0.
Sertorius,
Interesting theory but I think that you do an injustice to Charles.
He genuinely loved his kingdom and was sincere in his efforts to protect what he believed to be the Englishman’s Liberties which had been entrusted to him. At his death he proclaimed, “I Am the Martyr of the People.” He took the integrity of the justice system seriously and would have agreed with Francis Bacon that his judges were “lions under the throne.” Cromwell himself treated the King with deference and was treated with courtesy. The failures that lead to his death 361 years and 9 days ago and the death of many others are real and your indictment of him on that score stands but I think that Charles Stuart himself was capable of recognizing and regretting those errors in a way that Barack Obama never could.
To be blogged under the title “Charles Stuart.”
Barry Meislin – I really like the notion that America is Obama’s Moby Dick. I’ve been thinking along those lines recently. Obama says of himself that he is a blank canvas onto which others project what they wish (he seems to believe this is one of his finest qualities! Disturbing). I believe he also externalizes his internal demons and projects them onto the blank canvasses he perceives around him – “typical white person” , “clinginging to their guns and bibles”, “downright mean country”, “we will fundamentally change America”, etc…
Ahab lethally exrternalized his demons too, projected those horrible parts of himself onto an objectified white enemy, and maniacally set about to destroy it.
Obama’s rally to “fundamentally change America” was not idle rhetoric. His fixation on anger and hatred, and his repeated attempts to project and externalize his hatred onto the American people is really a mirror of the hatred he holds inside himself. This guy was raised by a multiply rejected angry white mother, and Communist grandparents. His polygamous Muslim/Communist father rejected and ignored him. The seething hatred which these disgusting misfits and rejects incubated in young Barry Soetero had to find an outlet, and nursed by an endless parade of anti-American bigots and radicals, stretching from the communist enclaves of Hawaii, to an Indonesian madrass, to the radical cauldrons of ColumbiaU to a corrupt race-obsessed Chicago, to his Black Liberation church, Obama emerged as we find him before us today. Not so much an enigma, as Wretchard finds him to be, but a byproduct of an endless stream of radical communist input, Muslim input, broken families, and craziness.
This simple expression sums him up: GIGO
Didn’t the NYT appoint an editor–undercover–to monitor the ‘sphere for stories they might have missed otherwise?
Maybe he’s not up to speed yet.
’cause the paper of not-record missed this bigger than hell.
Well it looks like The Surpreme Court is doing their part to help “Big Government” stay big. Wonder how the new Obama Latino voted?
Idiots.
Papa Ray
OT,
My tweet & comment on “Court rolls back campaign spending limits,” AP on Breitbart
Papa Ray,
The Daily Beast is Tina Browns toxic take on life from the Left. They are more Obama than Obama is. Think of her as being more Catholic than the Pope in fantasy left conspiracy mongering. A wanna be HuffPo is not a reliable source.
peterike @ 89: Yup.
And you’d think a smart politician might want to get out front on something like that.
OTOH, if you were emperor, what would *you* do about these two issues?
Here’s the transcript of the Amanpour Thiessan interviewon water boarding.
I saw the video posted earlier but somehow it went by too fast for me to understand.
I never understood the case against water boarding until I understood how Amanpour had equated the deadly activities of the Khmer Rouge with what CIA had done.
They are very different animals.
No wonder the outcry and confusion.
#42 Wretchard “Even his opponents, I think, never pegged him (Obama) quite for what he was. ”
Oh – you mean the fact that he was an inexperienced, narcissistic poser trained by Bill Ayers and schooled by Jeremiah Wright? We had him pegged, all right, no doubt about it. There are many of us who weren’t fooled for a second. Why do you think gun and ammo sales went through the roof?
wretchard:
Yes, I agree with you that Barack Obama is practicing “bait and switch”. Yet, while neither his friends nor allies nor worshippers nor opponents nor enemies seem to know who he is, I strongly suspect that Barack Obama doesn’t know who he is either. I think he is a very confused man. He sometimes doesn’t know what he wants. At other times, he knows exactly what he wants – they are different things that cancel each other out.
Barack Obama comes across to me as the kind of man who admires those who reject him and rejects those who admire him. A consummate social climber. A man who projects an image of “Chicago Smooth” while being Hyacinth Bucket at heart. A man who, precisely because he is so culturally foreign to America, has attached himself deeply to “The American Dream”. By “The American Dream”, I mean a strong desire to acquire tokens of legitimacy, tokens of status, tokens of power, tokens of acceptance, and tokens of grandeur. Yet, when a man acquires all of these tokens, he acquires neither legitimacy nor status nor power nor acceptance nor grandeur. All he ever gets is a bunch of tokens.
To Barack Obama, “The American Dream” is America. He doesn’t see America as a people, and he certainly doesn’t see America as rooted in the soil. Instead, he sees America as an idea – and only as an idea. I see a man trapped within his own dreams, a man in a hurry who seeks to leave his imprint upon America without caring about the damage his policies may cause. This is a man who seeks monuments to himself, who scratches his name into the wall of history, a man who desperately wants the admiration of authority figures yet will cease to respect any authority figure who does admire him.
Barack Obama is the emotional creation of a large segment of the American electorate. If he didn’t exist, they would have willed somebody like him into existence. Elected leaders of democracies are often the incarnations of the unspoken anxieties of their voters, and Barack Obama is no exception. Barack Obama really does combine the aspirations of W.E.B. Du Bois with the authoritative voice of Woodrow Wilson. The flip side of this package is getting a culturally Javanese Afrocentrist president who exudes blithe assumption, tone deafness, pedantry, narrow mindedness, and prejudice.
Within these parameters, I think Barack Obama is a patriotic American citizen who is sincerely trying to do the best job he can for America. I don’t think that’s good enough.
There are several things at play here with the Brown victory, some generaland some that were Massachusett culture specific.
Too begin with, Scott Brown looked, spoke and talked “Guy.” His CV was of a “up by his boot straps” guy who climbed the economic ladder, who had made good and had raised some really attractive kids.
He had all the cultural markers of the kind of Male leader white blue collar men and not a few white women women want in times of trouble. He even drove a four year old GM truck!
Those cultural markers drive Leftist SWPL/multi-cultural Democrats nuts.
Coakley, OTOH, was a female, empty suit, Kennedy machine aparatchek.
She appealed to that low turn out Democratic leftist primary voter to get the nomination. So she kept using those inside the Democratic primary voting base put downs with an absolute tin ear for the wider general voting public because all she ever had to run against were Democrats whom she could never allow to get to her left. That echo chamber is where most Democrats and main stream media types live.
This set her up for a lot of really good shots by Brown she never did respond to, like this:
³You can run against Bush-Cheney, but I¹m Scott Brown,¹¹ Brown responded. ³I live in Wrentham. I drive a truck.¹¹
This also let Brown hammer Coakley over on jobs, jobs, jobs and higher taxes.
The first words out of Brown’s mouth in that reply to Gergan over Brown’s filling Kennedy’s seat and killing health care was that “this health care bill will cost Massachusetts jobs, it will cost us real jobs.”
Brown was speaking directly to the NUMBER ONE interest of American voters…and both the Democrats and Big Government DC Republicans like Gergan wanted to talk about where a dead Kennedy put his butt.
Finally, Massachusetts Democrats are so deeply into Bush Derangement Syndrome that they missed the real fact of the 9/11/2001 attack for their local community.
American Airlines Flight 11 & United Airlines Flight 175 both departed Boston-Logan International Airport. That makes Boston the next biggest place hit by 9/11 deaths after the NY metropolitan area. A lot of the people who died on those planes had their biographies and relatives on local news for _years_.
This is a part of the local Massachusetts cultural DNA for independent, centerist Democratic and Republican voters who make up 75% of the Massachusetts general voting population.
Of course things like the Khaled Shiek Mohamad trial would be on Massachusetts general election voter’s minds!
Then, on 24 Dec 2009, we have the failed terrorist attack, while Coakley was on vacation, and the Obama Administration put the terrorist into the US federal judicial system.
Then Coakley choked on the Afghanistan terrorist question and hit that local cultural hot button that was all over talk radio but completely notices inside the Democratic/MSM echo chamber.
And Brown was a Massachusetts Army National Guard Lawyer with multiple tours of War on Terror Service who hammered Coakley over that hot button again and again.
All the “Hate E-Vile Republican” TV spots in the world could not get past that local cultural DNA that Scott Brown was speaking too.
I’ve seen people like Obama in academe, and since at one time he held a position in academe–editor of the Harvard Law Review–I think I know where he’s coming from.
Anybody out there ever read the Harvard Law Review? You don’t actually have to do that, just read through the table of contents of any number of law reviews at a major law school, flip through the articles (and the footnotes–God, the footnotes . . .) and you will get some idea of what crossed Obama’s editorial desk on a regular basis.
The major factor here is a massive absence: he has published as far as a search of Hein online shows it, nothing at all in the legal domain, either at Harvard or anyplace else.
He is in short a professional blank. As I’ve said, I’ve seen these types before. They see others publishing significantly all around them, and they know that this is what this signifies to the people who hold the purse strings: whether the guy/gal has the marbles to make it in the academic world of competitive ideas or not.
Obama “edits” this thing, which means he edits the work of other people, which means that he sees every time he sits down at his desk people doing something very complex, difficult, and deft that he not only knows he doesn’t do, he knows that he can’t do it.
(I saw one academc colleague actually die of alcoholism from the fact that everyone around him was testifying to his zero-quantity of scholarly potential.)
Now, Obama knows one thing about himself, however much he (and his critics on this thread) try to whip up some plot-line about his narcissism, political/racial/ideological chauvinism, etc. etc., and that one thing is that he is at bottom a Great Big Zero. He is completely empty, which is why–watch my every move here–he sounds as if he were completely empty.
Once the humanities went irretrievably political by the beginning of the 1990s, Obama typifies the kind of people with brand-fresh Ivy-League PhDs who were out there to be hired: like Obama, intellectually (which includes a sense of intellectual ethics) they were and remain empty suits. And perhaps even more important, they know they are empty suits.
What do you do when you recognize that you are an empty suit? What do you think about? How do you get up in the morning?
With Obama at the helm we have even a worse situation than you would have if the person steering the ship of state were merely inept, stupid, and uninformed. What you have is the equivalent of no helmsman at all. That is why Obama acts as if he were saying to himself “I have got to do something, whatever it is, and the tough part is I don’t know which ‘whatever’ to choose.” When all you’ve got to steer with is your anger and your ideology, you get a country like the USA in the condition that USA is in at this point in time.
“What Scott Brown’s election and the subsequent fear many Democrats felt means is that the political system still works’-Wretchard
Another great comment by W. What many of us at BC feared is that the Dems could game the system almost at will. The Dems sure acted like they could. Just another one of the great things about the Scott Brown victory; the possibility of the Democrats rigging November’s election just grew much dimmer, not impossible, but much dimmer.
The Democrats refused to see the pent up anger this election because that has been their habit these last forty some odd years. Whenever they can they divert the decision making process to the courts, or some board, commission or bureaucracy and take it out of the hands of the people. Particularly on controversial issues. And you don’t have to wonder why.
And this time the people are not only angry; they are fearful. And they have a right to be.
Just yesterday, the Heritage Foundation opined in their annual survey that America is now in the “mostly free” category and no longer in the “free” category.
The economy is in far deeper trouble than the pundits want to let on and the people know it.
And our enemies are circling us with doomsday threats while the politicians in charge do nothing.
It’s time for real change. And not the Obama kind,either.
re: health care as a priority (Welch & Gillespie)
I think not. It’s a problem like our schools. The majority of citizens like their own schools and think the problem is elsewhere (meaning “leave mine alone please.”)
So what can we do about health care. Since everyone seems to agree health care is “essential” (like food), then let us:
(1) not tax health care like most areas do not tax basic foodstuffs (though pretty soon we’ll see health-care restaurants
(2) make all health-care expenses tax deductible (means businesses will only provide health-care to the least productive of their employees – lowest paid in the lowest tax bracket) and everyone in a higher tax bracket than the business will be better off paying the bills (insurance and not) directly. Better yet, don’t tax the citizens indirectly thru business by eliminating the business tax. Eventually businesses will stop providing health benefits because it’ll be less expensive for the employee to do it themselves and these arrangements will be sustained and sustainable independent of employment, retirement, etc.
(3) allow online amazon-like pharmacies (after all, they can deliver in 24 hours anywhere, and sometimes same day). Permit sharing in real-time this data with public health officials (primarily for pandemic / bio-warfare / etc. alerts and response, but also for individuals and families in trouble – abusing self-diagnosis & prescriptions). (3a) contract out public health to two or three major providers and give them monetary incentives for lowering disease in their area of responsibility. Regularly compete the contracts.
(4) allow most recurring illness to be self-diagnosed by an individual or parent and prescribed, with the pharmacist industry keeping a registry and public health checking for abuse and other issues.
(5) limit graduation rates of lawyers, not doctors. Issue an instant green card for medical professionals that pass verbal and physical skill testing (all disciplines, technician thru heart surgeons and researchers with established citation reputations).
(6) limit the number of total lawyers in the U.S. to something like the per-capita number they have in Japan. Would amount to a total about 10,000 IIRC. Pay the laid off lawyers to do nothing.
(7) permit video online medical calls, across state lines (and across borders to countries that sign a cross certification treaty that comes with prescription issuing rights for a limited number of drugs that cannot be self-prescribed). Imagine always having a doctor available and alert (in some other time zone) twenty four hours a day.
(8) ??
Something else that has been pent up is a retrospective appreciation of GWB. Jules Crittenden, Gateway Pundit, and the guys at HillBuzz have all posted their reflections on the anniversary of W’s leaving office.
PA Cat, a year ago, when talking to Obama voters (they had me surrounded!) I would detail some action the Democrats wanted to take that would harm our National Security. Then I’d end with a solemn pronouncement: “We need to remind all of America’s enemies that the United States still has an Ace up its sleeve: Jeb Bush in 2012!”
Well, I meant it as a joke — though a rather pointy one, to be sure — and it was taken as such. I pretty much talk to the same people so I stopped using it. Oh, I suppose I could have gone out and met new people and used it on them but that’s not me.
If you said “Jeb Bush in 2012″ now, people will think you’re launching the campaign.
The more things change, the less they seem to change in the way you hope, and the more the change you hoped for circles back around to bite you in the butt — leaving you with a bit butt. I forget how to say that in French, but the Latin is…sorry, I have to brush on my declensions before translating.
Barry Meislin: “(Keeping in mind that America is this man’s Moby Dick.)”
There’s not a lot of value in allegorizing Obama too much, but on the other hand there is something Ahab-like about the man.
Walter A. McDougall, “Our Stillborn Renaissance” (April 2008 “First Things”), writes a fine essay on Melville. Here’s a quotation: “Clearly, Captain Ahab’s obsessive hunt for the elusive white whale that had bitten off his leg doomed not only himself but the Pequod and its piebald crew of sinners, saints, pagans, and salty philosophers. Beyond that the meaning was anyone’s guess, and still is. But so pervasive were Melville’s allusions to current American traits and trends that it is hard not to think Ahab is Emerson’s ‘representative man’ playing God, chasing a millenarian utopia with all the ruthless, conquering passion of Andrew Jackson; enlisting the manifold virtues and credulity of the crew in his mad quest; and taking everyone down with him.”
McDougall quotes F. O. Matthiessen: “But he [Melville] did apprehend therein the tragedy of extreme individualism, the disasters of the selfish will, the agony of a spirit so walled within itself that it seemed cut off from any possibility of salvation.”
And quotes McCune Smith, “that African-American doctor who dreamed of a race-blind society, [and] wrote a long, admiring review of Moby-Dick. He had no difficulty decoding the allegory. The Pequod was the American ship of state, hell-bent on vain pursuit of whiteness.”
McDougall’s article was published prior to the 2008 election. Fast forward to the Obama presidency. Who would have thought that we’d elect an Ahab who was hell-bent not on the vain pursuit of whiteness but in the vain pursuit of destroying the whiteness, which is just the flip side of the same quest?
Obama’s at the helm of the big honkin’ ship of state, and it’s manned and womanned by a crew that shared its captain’s monomania but is getting nervous, at least some of them are, about the captain’s state of mind. Like Ahab, Obama is steering where he wants—Cap and Trade here, civilian trials for terrorists there, doubloons for interest groups everywhere—ignoring the economic purpose of the voyage, compulsively veering away from his job to pursue his reflexive purpose, the killing of the whale, the white whale, the creature that he hates for crippling him so long ago.
Back in Nantucket, i.e., Massachusetts, the locals were just hoping the Pequod was going to be a happy multicultural cruise and was going to deliver a return on the investment, not engage in some racist utopian quest.
I can’t even begin to fathom the psychology of the current white crew that is on the Obama Pequod quest to destroy the whiteness. That crew has some weird guilt, I guess, about white folks’ greed, and the world in need, etc.
I don’t have the impression that Obama is abandoning his quest. He’s got some crew members who are behind him all the way, some for money, some because they hate the white whale as much as the Captain does.
Wretchard is right about the money. The post 1968 consensus, limited Affirmative Action to remedy past discrimination, economic growth, morphed into the Clinton years bubble growth, and government growing (but excluding the White male population save connected elites).
That was not sustainable in the US any more than Greece could vote itself goodies, lie about its debts, and let the EU (in practice, Germany) pick up the tab forever.
Now the reckoning is upon us.
We can’t go back to the status quo ante, because there is no money and no possibility for decades of economic growth. Obama wrecked the economy that bad.
“Winning” fixes a lot of things. If we had economic growth of 4-5%, Obama would be quite popular. We just don’t and can’t.
Just think of Obama as El Supremo, whose character is on display here.
He does not take well to bad news.
See 2:21 and I recommend that you watch the whole movie.
To be blogged under the title “El Supremo.”
LOTM @ 90: Oh, I definitely agree Charles was the most humane of men, and that his dignity upon the scaffold lives on for a reason. But as Machiavelli might say, a worse man and a better prince would have left behind fewer corpses. As for which “side” best represented the “nation” during the English Revolution–I guess that’s why they fight wars! Certainly Cromwell was right when he remarked that the mobs cheering on the New Model would cheer just as loudly to see them swing from the gallows, but I think you’ve got to acknowledge Charles’ willingness to court foreign (read: Catholic) invasions to restore himself to the throne. (The contents of his “cabinet” lost at Naseby was really the nail in the coffin.)
But perhaps more germane to our time is the question: who was more truly revolutionary (or, conversely, authentically English): Charles or Oliver? I’d make a strong argument that Parliament from the early 1630′s onward had as its main goal the restoration of Elizabeth’s “Golden Age;” while Charles himself seemed willing (if not eager) to embrace the “absolutist” philosophy of his in-laws across the Channel at home, while encouraging a supine foreign policy abroad.
Sound familiar?
Two Brown thoughts:
1) Brown’s election forces us to go back and look at the 2008 election; it was easy to think there was a general loathing for all things Republican then. Afterwards, the Democrats misinterpreted the Republican route as a great embrace of all things Democrat/leftoidal madness, etc. Wrong. Now we see that the 2008 voter was sick of both parties. Obama appeared as a novelty (Americans are always curious about new gizmos) and the fed up voter told himself, “why not, couldn’t be worse than what we had.” Now, a year in, voters are ready to toss O.
2) Brown’s easy-going, common sense approach to leadeship throws into relief the ghouls that we have been living with: Reid, Pelosi, Frank, et al (I don’t mean to let republicans off the hook – they have some strange types, too), yikes! I mean Brown can actually form sentences and paragraphs when he talks and he generally makes good sense. I feel like I’ve been wandering in a hospital where everyone has turned into a zombie but I’ve finally bumped into a genuine sane non-zombie doctor in the hallway. He’s saying, “Yeah it’s rough but take it easy; we’ll get through this…”
Elucidating headline in Der Speigel
The World Bids Farewell to Obama
I guess when you strike out your first 100 times at bat that the crowd stops believing you are an All Star. People are flipping on Obama as fast as they can get to a microphone.
Marie Claude: Great video; even his appointees don’t get it.
“…throws into relief the ghouls that we have been living with”
Well said and SO true!
“People are flipping on Obama as fast as they can get to a microphone”
Couldn’t happen to a nicer lie –i mean, guy.
17. Lifeofthemind:
First rule is, don’t take advice from the enemy.
Would that include Jomini, Sun Tzu, etc…
Just mess’in with ya.. we learn from them ex post facto but during an engagement you’re right down the beam.
105. Mark:
After Melville wrote Moby Dick he began to attend a Unitarian church in Brooklyn.
I’ve heard unitarians claim that five american presidents of the US were unitarians from the 19th century including two Adams.
The first Unitarian pastor in the USA was brought over by Franklin from England. They got their start from Newton who was an ardent believer in the Arian Heresy.(He came to that conclusion by applying the scientific method–which presumes that man is the measure of all things–to the question of the identity of Christ.)
By the 1830′s the Arian Heresy was all the rage in the educated northeast. A similiar process was at work in protestant germany under the guise of “higher criticism”. When the revolutions of 1848 exploded across germany the philosophy schools became atheistic and the seminaries became arian.
The arian heresy was not formally introduced to American liberal seminaries until the about the turn of the 20th century. It was dominant by 1930 or so.–in the seminaries. The lay didn’t know about it.
The arian heresy resulted in the nearly total collapse of protestantism in Europe. In the USA the Arian heresy is responsible for the steady decline in the liberal mainline protestant denominations.
What has become clear over time is that the unitarians relied on society for their moral compass. They don’t have an internal moral spring that the evangelical communities have. When the dominant society went bad so did the unitarians.
I agree with comment 65 concerning the swarm effect. However, as the WSJ pointed out, it wasn’t clear that the race would even be competitive until after the date for requesting an absentee ballot had passed. Both the swarm AND its timing were crucial.
To paraphrase Captain Ramius (with my best Sean Connery imitation): They will not make the same mistake twice.
Sertorius,
Concur with your position. It is possible that Charles was actually more in tune with the spirit of the age, just not with the spirit of his location. Cromwell has been described as a Tudor Grandee writ large and painfully out of place with an age of absolute monarchs and international intrigue supported by faceless bureaucrats. By force of personality he came from nowhere to take power, as did his distant cousin Henry Tudor who became Henry VII. He probably spared England the Europeanization that would otherwise have happened or at least postponed it a few hundred years. In a reversal of roles the heirs of the Whigs are now the Labour Europhiles. Obama is the would be absolute Prince, without any of Charles’ personal virtues, whose supporters prefer the sophisticated Metropole to their rustic neighbors.
Habu,
Would that include Jomini, Sun Tzu, etc…
I can read all those foreigners in phonetics as well as anyone, I just don’t know what they mean.
Jomini is an under used treasure. Most just read a 3 page excerpt from Clausewitz and think they are scholars.
Ain’t no health bill go’in through anywhere after today’s SCOTUS decision on corporate spending on campaigns ….and it should just about finish off the Socialist Democrats too.
LOTM
I’m well versed about The Daily Beast, I’ve been reading it since I don’t know when.
Lots of good info there if you know how to dig it out. I’m sure you have heard about knowing your enemy. Any Way. What caught my eye was the lead in:
“The ruling allowing unlimited campaign spending is a huge win for special interests. Mark McKinnon and Steve Hildebrand make the bipartisan case for how Congress can fix the political money mess.”
It is a very informative report, much more so than the source for your tweet.
Papa Ray
108. Sertorius:
90:LOTM
The final flowering of Cromwell’s revolution occurred across the pond +130 or so years later. The denominations that supported Cromwell flowered in America while they subsequently withered in England.(Then once the revolution was accomplished in the USA–Calvinism went into its centuries long decline.)
The difference between Bill Clinton and Barack Obama is that Clinton wanted to be liked and Obama wants to be idolized.
Clinton was a hound dog, always looking for his next romp. Obama is a sire, waiting to be chosen, stroked, admired, then paid…for the privilege of his services.
Clinton was a windsock, bending to the will of the people and willing to govern by plebiscite. Obama is a cipher, a hologram…bending to the image that people project onto their own mental screens of him. He wishes to bend their will to his.
Clinton grew up in Hope, Arkansas to a sometimes abusive and alcoholic stepfather. In his book My Life, Clinton showed between the lines what growing up in the South, drove him to try to accomplish as he ran away from his lack of pedigree.
Obama, left by an absentee father who was an active firebrand Socialist in Kenya, was raised outside the mainland…and for a significant period in a foreign land…certainly with different antipathies toward the West in general… certainly different than Arkansas…or the South. He was left in sleazy bars with Frank Marshall Davis as a designed “mentor”, to infuse in him the “correct” approach to America, especially white America. He did not run away from this, but in Dreams of My Father, ran toward them. As he did in seeking out the most radical professors in college..and on toward finding a mentor in the ragings of Jeremiah Wright.
Bill Clinton drifted toward the center, because that’s where the people were. We can’t know where this administration is going to go…but it calls people bitter clingers, teabaggers, threats to our security and attacks Joe Six Pack plumbers who disagree with policy.
In the Search for the Two Fathers, the difference is stark and glaring. One ran toward America, and one ran the other way.
Habu you would think so but you have to remember that “they” think a lot differently than we do and also don’t understand some of the basics anymore. They have been in la-la land way to long to be reasonable or sane.
This Morning at coffee one of our enemy stopped by and we asked him what he thought about MA. His reply was basically that it was just another election and it didn’t really change anything. We were so flabbergasted that we just let it go. He is past saving and we had a conversation going on about our Military’s great efforts and effects in Haiti anyway.
Papa Ray
88. NahnCee
If I really have to explain to you why it’s important to know the origins of this republics founding and how it is designed to work …
Well the question is an insult to those who have fought and died for the form of government we have … I know I shouldn’t find learning repulsive to many Americans but you just leave me speechless.
You’re no doubt right in going back to being lazy and letting others do the heavy lifting … why you could be the poster person for America today.
I think I’ll go vomit.
Obama’s move this am to effectively restore Glass Steagall to the US banking system seems to be a significant move for him in many dimensions, and helps answer the question about how we would respond to Brown’s win.
It seems like this means:
1) He’s backing off on health care, at least for the moment, in order to pursue an issue where he might be able to replenish some of his political capital. But I think he is more likely to infuriate his base (Banks and hedge funds, funded by same banks are centered around NYC, CT, Boston, Chicago) more than he is likely to get credit elsewhere. So it seems to be a curious move. Guarantee you that Schumer is going ballistic at this moment; this is potentially very bad for NYC.
(Don’t get me wrong; this is actually about the first domestic agenda item I can agree with him on.)
2) The door is now open for an investigation into Fannie Mae, Franklin Raines, etc… Who in Congress is going to stand in the way of that? A great opportunity for a Conservative to step up and take the lead on this.
3) Seperate but related. Three Dems (Landrieu, Lincoln, Nelson; what do they have in common?) have joined with Republicans to challenge the EPA’s endangerment finding on Carbon/Greenhouse Gases. Maybe someone is realizing that they won’t be cashing any healthcare checks and are in hide-saving mode.
Seems like we are living the political chaos akin to when a logjam finally releases and logs start coming at you very fast and in very random ways.
88. NahnCee:
Are you the type that reads an article , book, treatise (who am I kidding) and when you see an unfamiliar word you just pass over it instead of looking it up? I’ve got big money you do.
When you run into a concept you’re unfamiliar with or a person you’ve never heard of do you just move on to the next comment?
I mean you’ve got the damn Internet at the end of your fingertips and more information than mankind has ever been privy to and what do you do ….money says nothing …you’re better off watching the Simpsons
I may not get along with Teresita but I’ll tell you what. I’ll bet she NEVER rests until she digs into something she’s unfamiliar with, and that I respect. You might up your vitamin brain intake and do some self study.
121. Papa Ray
There are perhaps a few more than a handful of people on this site whose thoughts, ideas,contributions and experiences I look forward to soaking up. You are one of them. Thank you.
Workout time ….
I guess when you strike out your first 100 times at bat that the crowd stops believing you are an All Star.
Doofus can’t pitch either, as illustrated by his performance at the All Star game last summer. And ’nuff said about his equally execrable performance in the announcers’ booth during the second inning.
Obama’s interview statement to Stephanopoulos that Scott Brown was elected because Massachusetts voters are angry at GWB calls into question Obama’s cognitive ability. I’m serious about this. The guy is mentally ill. Obama could have said a lot of things to spin the results of the Brown election but what he did say is so far removed from reality that on its face this statement indicates Obama’s inability to recognize the real world even after it slaps him in the face. Not a good situation for the guy who holds the title of CIC.
Bill Clinton was one of the best pure politicians of the 20th century. 1994 was obviously a very bad year for his party but how much worse would it have been if Clinton was a president with merely the average amount of political skill for that office. Instead of 52 House seats lost would it have been 60? 70? More?
Obviously we can’t know. But we have a similar situation today with the Democrats controlling Congress and the White House.
Sadly for them Barack Obama is no Bill Clinton. So how much worse can it get?
Well, they’ve already lost a Senate seat in Massachusetts- of all places. Not a good sign for them is it?
Obama is flat wrong when he claims the anger is due to the Bush years. And if he continues that line of thinking he will watch Congress flip Republican and he will retire after 1 term.
Voters are angry because (a) Congress is dumber than a gift-wrapped box of dog crap. and (b) Obama campaigned on “hope & change” and hasn’t delivered on anything.
Obama is a big zero so far. He’s so bad that people would vote for Bush again. And given that Congress has been a giant zero since 2006, people are regretting putting the Democrats in power.
I’m just wondering if Obama will wake up in time.
# 90 LoTM,
If I may add a thought or two to the mix, the issues in the English-Scottish Civil War were not as clear cut and simplistic as the small attention it receives in scholarship would indicate. [Disclaimer: one of my personal heroes is James Graham, 5th Earl and 1st Marquis Montrose who was the King's Lord Lieutenant in Scotland and who was one of the greatest generals of the age.] It was not a pure “Good Parliament -v- Evil King” or “Good Protestant -v- Papist-leaning Royalty” conflict. While Charles managed to trip over all the major cultural fault lines of the time; there was also the dynamic of the last gasp of the Nobility in trying to be the major power of the land. Would Britain remain a unitary state, or a collection of competing feudal vassals?
One of the initial triggers of the English-Scottish Civil War was the prayer book that Charles tried to impose which was considered “Papist”, and the Covenant was signed in response. Montrose was a signer of the Convenant, but quickly switched to the Royalist cause, basically because he saw his fellow nobles using the situation to seize power and dismember the realm. He reasoned that one King [granting Montrose believed in the Divine Right of Kings] was better than a ravening pack of nobles. There is always a hidden part of the story.
#93 Papa Ray
Sotomayor voted to keep restrictions on political speech. In application, the original McCain-Feingold deliberately leaves large loopholes for the Left [Unions and Soros' minions can do, say and spend anything without even timely disclosure] while restricting everybody else. Hopefully, further challenges are in the pipeline and eventually they will throw the whole thing out.
In my humble opinion, what is needed is more free speech, unbounded by political correctness, and full disclosure of all contributions instantly; along with an absolute ban on foreign contributions, with big teeth.
———————————-
Moving to another topic, the battle for Liberty has many fronts going on at any time. There is a proposal by the administration/Democrats in Congress that taxing and spending decisions be taken from Congress and that an appointed commission decide the budget and Congress only having an up or down vote.
http://townhall.com/columnists/GeorgeWill/2010/01/17/off-the-cliff,_but_catching_on
This bears watching as it is one of those make or break things about being a Republic.
h/t to Robohobo who passed this on.
Second, watch the Courts, closely.
After the District of Columbia -v- Heller decision made firearms ownership legal for individuals in Washington, DC; a bunch of lawsuits were filed against local laws that made private firearms ownership functionally illegal. In Chicago the case is McDonald -v- Chicago. Keep in mind that this is the home of Buraq’s political machine. The defense Chicago is using in the case is that the 14th Amendment does not apply at all to state and local government, so they are free to abridge the Bill of Rights so long as they do it on an even-handed basis to everybody.
This does not bode well.
Be ready to swarm at need.
http://balkin.blogspot.com/2010/01/has-chicago-gone-too-far-in-defending.html
Subotai Bahadur
Team 44 making fun of Brown’s GM truck while stumping for Coakley was just stupid and proves how way out of touch they are.
Habu, actually, at one point I tested in the upper 1 or 2% nationally vocabulary-wise. In other words, I know lots and lots and lots of really long words. I *do* usually stop and look up new words when I see them, because it happens so infrequently that it makes me curious (but that’s probably just because I prefer Vogue to Homer so I never run across the Really Good Habu-Approved Words, right?).
Now I think your vomitous reaction bores me and I’ll just move along, and go back to Real Life for a while until Obama does something else stupid and gleefully comment-worthy.
LOTM @ 116/Charles @ 119– Well, when I was at St. Giles last summer, I did pay my respects to that Jacobite airhead, Montrose, but my heart will always be with Jenny Geddes.
BTW, nothing like meeting/reading old school British Tories to be reminded that American “conservatives” have but conserved a revolutionary consciousness…
#102 Unsk
The Democrats refused to see the pent up anger this election because that has been their habit these last forty some odd years. Whenever they can they divert the decision making process to the courts, or some board, commission or bureaucracy and take it out of the hands of the people. Particularly on controversial issues. And you don’t have to wonder why.
What an insightful comment ! We are really in Orwellian territory when the “Democrat” Party is the least responsive to the people, and the most likely to turn over decisions to the elite experts.
What frauds !
Habu: I may not get along with Teresita but I’ll tell you what. I’ll bet she NEVER rests until she digs into something she’s unfamiliar with, and that I respect.
I get along with you fine, Habu, except the homophobia stuff and the nuke-em-all stuff.
About forty-five minutes ago on Twitter VA Gov Bob McDonnell announced that he will give the Republican response to Obama’s State of the Union address next week. He took the gubernatorial race in a state that was drifting blue. In a way, he was first-fruits in this GOP resurgent harvest.
Now if we can only deep-six the Ya Ya Sisterhood in Washington State (Gregoire, Murray, and Cantwell).
132. NahnCee
Readers Digest vocabulary tests don’t count, and at what point was it, third grade?
What does count is how absolutely shallow your initial question was.
It sounded like a grade school kid asking,
Why do we have to study history? It’s sooo boring
No, it’s not the vomitous comment , but rather the self dicipline of reseach that bores you. The vomitous comment was simply insulting. Similar to your question.
But you did say you were too lazy so what’s the beef?
“(Conservatism is dead) In the political wilderness for a generation”
We now know that a political generation = exactly one year.
Wretchard said:
“The answer is probably that the voter’s preferences were very susceptible to an alternative orientation. Given an alternative which produced a lower-energy solution to their preferences the same sets of voters could realign very quickly along another axis. Once Scott Brown became a credible candidate with a credible message, one which aligned with the voter preferences in a more natural way than Martha Coakley’s then the stage was set for a rapid realignment.”
I like this analysis (Wretchard, you’re the greatest!). It’s a nonlinear system that can support many different solutions for a single set of boundary conditions. It only takes a tiny perturbation to kick the system from a meta-stable solution to a more stable solution. Nature prefers the solution that requires the least amount of energy and/or coexists with the greatest amount of entropy.
Subotai–
Whoops, just read your #130: didn’t mean to disparge the valiant Marquis–he would have fit in quite well in the Army of Northern Virgina, don’t you think? (Maybe Longstreet could have convinced him to use pickets/sentries, though.) Still, I have to say the laurel goes to Cromwell and Fairfax–they knew when/where to fight, and at Dunbar especially, Cromwell showed an eye for terrain (not to mention cojones) I’m not sure was equaled under an English commander until Marlborough came on the scene.
BTW, regarding the “feudal” issue: I’ve heard it said that one disadvantage the Royalists had early in the war was that the English nobility had been pretty effectively “tamed” by the Tudor/Stewart regimes and had effectively forgotten how to fight. (Besides, the James’ epicene court produced more Ganymedes like Buckingham than it did men like Raleigh.) Say what you will about a “monopoly on violence,” but the Scots that effectively made up a lot of the Parliamentary officer corps (before the “New Model” purge) had a pretty good education amongst the warlords of Caledonia, not to mention apprenticing themselves under masters like Gustavus Aldophus.
Now that we have on record mutual statements of respect or at least of tolerable functionality between Habu and Teresita we can declare this to be Club Comity Week? Maybe I should declare victory and go out to find myself a job.
Subotai Bahadur,
The old nobility and the peasantry are historically the enemies of the centralizing kings and the kings are usually allied with the modernizing commercial commons. In the 17th century the English King lost his support from the urban commercial class and in the 18th century in France the King lost the support of just about everybody but oddly enough some peasants.
“I’m serious about this. The guy is mentally ill.”
Peter Boston If you read these three excellent pieces and keep in mind Obama’s upbringing and education you will gain a lot of insight into the dark recesses of Obama’s mind and soul.
It scares me.
NARCISSISM AND SOCIETY
Subotai Bahadur You have a point but as long as Political Speech includes bribes and favors for our so called representatives we stand no chance of competing with those with big bucks. Not in the money wise sense of course but in our wants and needs competing with special interest groups and Unions.
Glad to see someone else is keeping up with the subjects you linked on. Socialism by committee, isn’t that akin to what the old Soviet Union had?
Us gun guys have been watching Chicago and the Supremes with gritted teeth for the last year. Like you said, there be bad news coming most likely, but we plan on raising such a ruckus that will get the States attention if nothing else and hopefully something can be done.
We also have to make sure Congress signs off on nothing that the U.N. tries to deceive us with. If we get caught in their traps we will not only have our Congress to blame but ourselves.
They almost got us with the Climate crap and will not let up.
EasyHabu kicking em’ while they are down is ungentlemanly.
Papa Ray
Habu, I love what you bring to the table here, but the past few weeks has seen a rising level of churlish behavior on your part against certain board members. I almost hesitate to say it lest I, too, incur your wrath.
You’re starting to degrade the civility of this place, and Belmont’s civility has always been a key distinguishing feature compared to the rant and rave boards most blogs turn into.
Please stop picking fights with people who are on your side, tone down the invective and stick to being a powerful warrior’s voice for the good and the right. When it comes to that you’re first in the class.
[Just saw that LoTM posted along the same lines at the same time. This is not meant as a pile on, my comments were independent of his.]
135 – Teresita : “Now if we can only deep-six the Ya Ya Sisterhood in Washington State (Gregoire, Murray, and Cantwell)”
I live in WA – those three are about as deaf as a post. They =might=be listening after MA, though. Maybe. It would be nice to bookend the country with ‘west-of-the-Cascades’ WA going red, though. Hey, a guy can dream!
Since some of our more erudite members have mentioned the English Civil War, I don’t =think= the question is OT. Can they recommend one or two key books to read on the subject?
Old Salt,
Start with Churchill’s “A History of the English Speaking Peoples.” There are hundreds of decent studies of the war. One is Christopher Hibbert’s “Cavaliers and Roundheads” ISBN-10: 0684195577. Not that I’m erudite or anything.
LOTM,
“One is Christopher Hibbert’s “Cavaliers and Roundheads””
Can we please stop this constant pushing of LeBron until he wins at least one title?
A dated history of the century prior to the Revolution is “The Crisis of the Aristocracy, 1558-1641,” Lawrence Stone (Oxford, 1967). The economic and social rot was a long time setting in.
But the history books are dry, so a good chaser would be the BBC production (1983-85) “By the Sword Divided,” a historical drama about the Lacey family. Really well done.
A fine novel about the politics of the Civil War is “Wife to Mr. Milton,” by Robert Graves, about the domestic drama in the life of the poet John Milton, who served as Latin Secretary to Oliver Cromwell.
Obama = Moby Dick. Close, but no cigar. Obama is Ahab. Possessed by his hunt for the white whale, damn be the costs. He is also Khan possessed by his desire for revenge on Captain Kirk. Either way, he is doomed by his obession and will be destroyed for it.
Old Salt–
Hardly erudite, but a couple of titles from my shelf:
1. “Going to the Wars,” Charles Carlton. A Keegan-ish “face of battle” exploration of the soldier’s experience.
2. “Soldiers and Strangers, ” Mark Stoyle, A breakdown of how different regions of England responded to the Civil War(s) and the demands from both Royalist and Parliamentary armies.
3. “The English Revolution and the Wars of the Three Kingdoms,” Ian Gentles. A text-book-ish overview of the Civil Wars, with a military slant. (Especially good on the conflicts in Ireland and Scotland.)
But you know, I feel morally compromised just writing this, but I always thought Christopher Hill’s biographies of Cromwell and Milton are some of the most readable books out there, even though the author was a definite Stalinist fellow-traveller and possible (probable?) Soviet spy. Just as Reconstruction attracts American red-diaper babies like Eric Foner, the left in England has tried to own the English Revolution (the phrase itself has Marxist origins, as opposed to “The English Civil Wars.) Still, Hill in these books at least is humane and energetic.
87 Papa Ray
iThe RNC certainly isn’t going to do it
I had heard their coifer is severely limited. Their normal contributors send back empty envelopes or filled with monopoly money.
123 Steeple
It shows that Obama learned the MA lesson but drew the wrong conclusion.
The Obamas heard “the People’s seat’ alright, and they decided to go the populous route. MO greeted WH tourists in person to show them the first couple living in ‘the People’s house’, and for Obama/WH to draw up new boogiemen (Bankers, Big Health Insurance companies, etc) to direct the People’s anger.
And in explaining how within one year people turned against all of his agenda, Obama said he had been working too hard, and not spent enough time to explain his agenda to the public (in his lecturing mode).
I think this thread has given way too much away to Obama by way of comparisons. Capt. Ahab? Charles I? Please.
I think the appropriate analysis should be begin with the premise that “there’s no there there.” How else account for the consistent emptiness of his rhetoric? He simply doesn’t know when he’s saying nothing at all that makes any significant sense. He’s like someone without a sense of humor working away at being funny. The result in both cases is simply embarrassing.
The only things he understands are what his mentors in the Chicago machine have taught him: how to manipulate unintelligent and uneducated people (also AKA “community organizing”), and he thinks he can run the U. S. the same way. People have taken him seriously I suspect out of embarrassment: how is it possible that we elected someone so intellectually and ethically shallow? We simply couldn’t have been that wrong and stupid.
Well, his country has done this before: look at the string of mediocrities leading up to Abraham Lincoln, particularly Tyler, Fillmore, and Buchanan. You simply can’t get dumber than that.
A bellwether to watch is how Obama reacts to the rapidly-developing Chicago Sanitation and Shipping Canal legal battle, where Chicago is in the process of facilitating the arrival of Asian carp into the Great Lakes, thereby guaranteeing the destruction of the ecosystem of the largest body of fresh water on this planet. So far, Obama is playing the “Chicago Pol” right down the middle, while the other cities and states reaching all the way from Minnesota to New York State rally to fight him off.
Air America (how the Left has a penchant for unintentionally ironic names) shut down live broadcasting today and is proceeding with bankruptcy.
One tiny little brick in the giant tower of Mordor has now crumbled to dust. Let a thousand thousand more follow.
151 Voltimand
Point taken about the comparisons to Ahab and Charles I. I was struck by a comment over at Neo NeoCon’s blog to the effect that “Obama is the most bizarre president we’ve ever had.” Tyler et al. were mediocrities, to be sure, and Pierce is reported to have hit the bottle a bit hard, but none of them were anywhere near as weird as Obama. Which probably explains why so many people are looking for some kind of psychiatric category to explain him; weirdness can be scary, and pinning a medical label on it serves as a temporary tranquilizer.
My maritime metaphor: Obama is chum.
Anyone with the name Barack Hussein Obama with the brass to run for president of the United States in the shadow of 9/11, cannot really be held to any standards, after the fact.
OK, so I’ve said he is brassy chum. Block that metaphor!
air america shut down, eh?
http://www.angelfire.com/film/tsss/ss/haha.wav
Wretchard,
This seems a useful time to bring up an article you previously highlighted:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/KJ06Dj04.html
Obama’s permanent depression
By Spengler
President Barack Obama may be remembered for permanent depression, the way that Leon Trotsky’s name is linked with permanent revolution. Fiscal stimulus combined with near-zero interest rates have proven to be a toxic cocktail for the United States, the macroeconomic equivalent of barbiturates and alcohol.
Keynesian spending creates a deficit that sucks all the available capital out of the grassroots economy and transfers it to the Treasury market. Easy funding terms from the Federal Reserve allow financial institutions to make money in government bonds while shutting off credit to the rest of the economy. It’s classic crowding out, in which the government’s misguided effort to spend its way out of recession pushes the productive economy deeper into the hole.
“Old Salt” asked about books on the (mainly English) Civil War.
This one covers only part of a story which is very complex (especially in its non-English elements). Still, check on Alibris.com or similar used book site for “Oliver Cromwell” by one Theodore Roosevelt, published by Charles Scribner’s Sons (NY) in 1928. Roosevelt, as might be expected, was particularly interested in Cromwell’s use of cavalry. But he included a good summary of the overall conflict.
Also interesting, on this particular thread, to see the work of the kind of man who used to be elected President. A man who not only would risk his life doing what he thought was right, but could write a coherent book on a historical figure. No long introduction praising his spouse or his publisher either. In 1928, Roosevelt jumped straight into “The Times and The Man”.
Allow me to put in my 2 cents worth supporting comity and mutual respect here at this amazing forum.
Jamie Irons
One would think that for someone such as POTUS Obama, having achieved all that he has, would have an intuitive grasp of the all important issue of timing. One of those rare individuals who just knows what to say at the right time.
Yet he seems the opposite. Just today, when Goldman Sachs posted record profits he announced an assault on banks and the stock market recoiled everywhere.
Timing is everything.
I still listen to the master of American comedy, Bill Cosby, in his classic recordings (remember ‘chocolate cake for breakfast’ anyone?) He was a master at just the right word-sound at just the right times. The best laughter happens in the pauses…
space between the notes.
For Cosby this was an art which, when on his game, was without thought. Yes he practiced, but when he played it all flowed on those subconscious levels that any game player knows.
All of us are game players of one sort or another. Any player also knows the shanks, when every shot hooks to the left and we start to overthink our moves. That game is lost, but there is another game tomorrow.
It is not hopeless when that happens. Just time to practice more, slow your breathing, and try again. Do it in the right frame of mind and you will be better than before.
I am dissapointed that the admin went mea culpa this time. Not the time for contrition. You and I depend for our lives on ‘no more screw ups’.
Slow down guys.
Spindok
Just today, when Goldman Sachs posted record profits he announced an assault on banks and the stock market recoiled everywhere.
Sounds like good timing to me. I only wish Obama’s comments were more severe and more detailed. As of now, it’s just more mush from the wimp. I suppose the timing *is* suboptimal, you’d think it better in advance, or even a few days later, so as not to *seem* like just a knee-jerk reaction. But better now, than not at all.
#135 Teresita wrote:
“Now if we can only deep-six the Ya Ya Sisterhood in Washington State (Gregoire, Murray, and Cantwell).”
Right on, sister: what are there, about Oh, six or seven conservatives in Washington state? (our fellow staters have no idea how blue western, WA is.) Even so, I’m optimistic; the wave will hit here – this is the home of Scoop Jackson after all…
Another example of O’s perfect timing:
According to Roll Call:
President Barack Obama will appear with politically embattled Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) in Las Vegas next month, according to a White House official.
http://www.rollcall.com/news/42457-1.html
Harry must be so grateful.
142. peterike
I think you are right. No, you are right.
Thanks
Habu
New Spengler today: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/LA20Dj02.html.
Let us all remember the 11th Commandment: Thou shalt not speak ill of someone who is on your side. You don’t see the Dems criticizing each other for ideological purity. Keep the objective in mind.
# 139 Sertorius
No disparagement taken. I envy your visit to St. Giles. And I agree that the Great Montrose would have fit in well in the Army of Northern Virginia, not only by skill and temperament; but also because our Civil War could be in some respects be considered a continuation of the English-Scottish Civil War. Keep in mind that the North was settled largely by the descendents of the Roundheads and their European Protestant religious kindred. The South was settled by the descendents of the Cavaliers and the Celtic peoples. Different conceptions of society and different cultures. The split still exists to some degree today.
Given his ability to motivate and lead poorly equipped and armed Highlanders against artillery and muskets [Tippermuir, sadly for my wish to walk the battlefield, it is now a built up suburb of Perth]; I could easily see him leading Confederates in tearing a whole new set of bodily orifii in the Army of the Potomac. His Anno Miribilis was a masterpiece of warfare against larger numbers of better supplied troops. Imagine him on any of the fronts facing the Union, once he understood the differences in weapons and tactics.
Let me add to the reading list, John Buchan’s Montrose. I can’t find an ISBN in my copy of the book [!!??!!], but it was printed in 1928 by the Riverside Press, Cambridge imprint of Houghton Mifflin.
If we are bringing Teddy Roosevelt into the discussion, may I direct your attention to his own The Rough Riders. Look at the kind of man we once had for president, look at what we have now, and weep for our poor country.
#140 LoTM,
Granting that the British nobility was to a great extent tamed by the 1660′s, the process was far from uniform. Montrose’s loyalty and charge was to Charles as Scotland’s king too. In Scotland, the nobles still had the power, and some the inclination, to tear the country apart for their own benefit. That power was not broken till the ’45 at Culloden; 80 years after Montrose. He lived and fought in the context of the Campbells of Argyll [Archibald Campbell to be exact, of whom it was said he had every attribute of a great man except courage and loyalty.] attempting to use the events of the time and other nobles to gain de facto power over all of Scotland in place of Royal rule.
The Civil War in Scotland had distinct differences from the Civil War in England.
Disclaimer: I am married into Clan MacPherson, which leads “Clan Chattan”, a confederation of Clans founded in 1609 to resist the various other nobles [eventually under the control of Argyll] trying to take over the whole country. Argyll eventually allied itself with the Hanoverians.
Yeah. Chinese and German by blood, Highland Scots by marriage; with more than passing interest in Mongol history among others. When I worked for the state they kept making me take training courses in “Diversity”. I kept telling them that I was more diverse than they were.
——————
Moving back to the problem of our current regime; I see his move on the banks [and I am not averse to regulating them to limit the risks they themselves take in breach of their fiduciary responsibilities] as an attempt to bash on business so he can pretend to be populist at the SOTU. The problem is, he cannot really whack on then hard since he functionally owns them now, in the name of the United States. And he does not think through the consequences of how he regulates.
Watch for two things.
1) See if his moves in this direction help trigger the double-dip. Part of the drop in the stock market in the last couple of days is based on the increased value of the dollar -v- the Euro over that time span. Part is uncertainty in that the Federal fiscal supports for the market can’t reach much further.
2) Today’s statements aside, watch for some middle of the night move to get something they can call healthcare reform in place that sets up a framework for a total takeover down the line.
TWANLOC make Archibald Campbell look like a paragon of virtue.
Subotai Bahadur
Going forward I will work toward developing a more Oscar Wilde sense and presentation of the human condition with perhaps a dash of HL Mencken thrown in to avoid the ravages of rapid decompression. I can’t promise, nee even hope to approach their mastery, nor can I say there won’t be the occasional slip. This is going to be a Twelve Step Process. First I’ll have to reread Dr. Norman Vincent Peale and Dale Carnegie and a few others and set aside my Soldier of Fortune and How to kill with a spatula
But change is can be good, so what the heck. If I’m gonna make Homecoming King I’d better start being a nicer person. I know the friend I use to have thought so.
Ok, here’s my first attempt.
obama sucks !
Did I do ok? I’m not use to seeking approval but this is part of the process.
Well, it looks like the edit permissions on the comments are fixed. I was presented with the ‘Click to Edit’ button on Subotai Bahadur’s comment, but was told I did not have permission to do so when I clicked it.
So we shall have to find something else to argue about. Over to you, Habu.
habu:
You write:
I will work toward developing a more Oscar Wilde sense and presentation of the human condition…
That will be challenging (I know I couldn’t do it!), but when you succeed, I’ll look forward to your coming up with quips like this Wilde-ism, my all-time favorite:
Fox hunting (def):
The unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible.
Jamie Irons
Kinuachdrach, I looked up Roosevelt’s “Cromwell” since the 1928 date bothered me. That Scribner edition was a reprinting, apparently the first edition came out in 1900.
What bothered me about the date was that Teddy died in 1919. It does look like a very interesting book that I had not heard of.
Voltimand“Well, his country has done this before: look at the string of mediocrities leading up to Abraham Lincoln, particularly Tyler, Fillmore, and Buchanan. You simply can’t get dumber than that.
I beg to disagree with the first sentence.
America is not HIS country. I’m not sure if he has one but is not our Republic. He is NOT an American except by his birth in our far off Island State, that has always been more of a reluctant and recalcitrant state of these United States.
Obama’s childhood and teen years were influenced by Islam, communists, a sexual deviant and a neighborhood of white hating racists, followed by our best socialist higher learning university.
Habu I don’t know if you have read this little rant from July of last year. I ran across it again yesterday and along with the good doctors three part series and the background and upbringing that have been documented (too little, by the way) paint a picture that I’m afraid Historians such as VDH will not be proud to write of this President.
But the truth will come out as you know in your heart it always does.
Goodness Gracious, This has been a great thread, not the greatest of the last year or so but very informative and motivating.
And I must correct you- NO, Obama does not suck, he blows hot air empty of substance and laden with lies.
Now we must in “Real Life” hit the top of the trench and go for broke among our enemies. Giving it all, our life and treasures to save this wonderful proud Republic.
Of course in the respite of the toe to toe battles, we must come back here to reload and gather our strength, because it is going to be a battle seemingly without end and we must not falter till victory.
Papa Ray
P.S. Have you seen this link? I meant to post it yesterday but life got in the way.
152. peterike
It was good to read that Air America finally was taken off life support. Now I can wear my genuine AA flight patch which I had taken off my jacket lest someone read me incorrectly. In closing some Oscar Wilde.
“Men become old, they never become good.”
Jamie Irons @ 169
“Bad poetry is always sincere.”
O.W.
I have been thinking about the Charles I comparisons and a thought struck me (rare as that is!) how much alike are the current USA and Stuart England? This isn’t a regional confrontation so much as a cultural one. Sure the coasts are pretty much Commie Country but the rest seems pretty mixed.
For example; I have lived as a neighbor to a die-hard Socialist for years, his kids and mine went to the same schools. He is an automotive engineer and I’m a cop. We are nearly the same age and our parents were normal ’60s types (dad working for one of the Big Three -remember them?- mom staying at home to mind the kids) but our world-view are utterly opposed.
At a personal level he is a swell guy, I invite him over for barbeques, we go shooting together, we help each other with building projects around the house. He is just nuts when it comes to politics. If it ever comes to when the fecal matter hits the rotary air circulation device I’m sure he will be under the Red Banner while mine will say “Don’t Tread On Me”. I would really hate to have to put a round in him.
Is this how Stuart England was just before the balloon went up? I defer to my more learned colleagues to answer that.
Another point, I am pessimistic that the current situation can be righted, even if small-government, fiscally responsible conservatives (note that I did not say Republicans) gained supermajorities in both houses and then claimed the WH in 2012, can we realy get out of this mess without deadly trouble?
169. Jamie Irons
I fear you are too correct. I do not think we will see his particular wit again. As a consequence I will simply have to plagerize some of his quips and hope hoi polloi will be none the wiser and I will appear in writing as Plato’s Allegory of the Cave was to those unfamiliar with forms.
No doubt this is cheap and tawdry but it must be part of the process or I’ll certainly lapse back to the banks of the river Styx.
habu:
You write:
…No doubt this is cheap and tawdry…
Yeah, well there are always critics. Let them cavil.
I say, if it’s cheap and tawdry, at least it’s cheap and tawdry in a good way!
Jamie Irons
the brave Scott warriors might have had a Pict ancestry, which is common to the Celt population that lived in my province, le Poitou, with Poitiers as capital, we still call the inhabitants Pictons
http://svowebmaster.free.fr/Histoire_Pictes.htm (in french, though there is a map)
also the Stewart dynasty is apparented to our Stuart (Marie)
so whenever you digg into history, there is a Gallic bastard at the origin
About the Picts
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/history_scotland/71337 (english)
http://svowebmaster.free.fr/Histoire_Pictes2.htm (french)
171. Papa Ray:
Yes, I had seen that piece and similar pieces.
I am also have your additional insight into obama’s breather habits and certainly do not take issue with your diagnosis. In particular your close, struck for me, the righteous and proper chord.
Now we must in “Real Life” hit the top of the trench and go for broke among our enemies. Giving it all, our life and treasures to save this wonderful proud Republic .
Of course in the respite of the toe to toe battles, we must come back here to reload and gather our strength, because it is going to be a battle seemingly without end and we must not falter till victory .
Finally,since I have given ink to Oscar, I offer this:
Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
H. L. Mencken
Err America goes off the air
Nazi Pelosi says the House won’t be able to accept the Senate HC bill as written.
Boy, electing Scott Brown was like opening Pandora’s box. Even the TelePrompTer screen is going red.
He was an early role model for me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1XbThrkQMs&feature=related
Mil-Tech Bard: Keynesian spending creates a deficit that sucks all the available capital out of the grassroots economy and transfers it to the Treasury market. Easy funding terms from the Federal Reserve allow financial institutions to make money in government bonds while shutting off credit to the rest of the economy
Nice gig while it lasts. Eventually, with all that money the Fed creates out of thin air floating around, and insufficient value of real assets to buy with it, inflation rears its ugly head. If inflation exceeds the rate of return of government bonds, you lose purchasing power by holding them. Then money moves off-shore to China or what-have-you, and Geitner starts seeing his auctions fail. Then the whole Bernie Bernanke scheme comes crashing down.
Subotai @ #165:
Ha, Argyll really didn’t cover himself in glory at Inverlochy, did he? At any rate, I’ve read Buchan, as well as Stuart Reid’s “Campaigns of Montrose” which is considerably less hagiographic, but I think coming up with a coherent order of battle for any of those Scottish hairballs (e.g. Sheriffmuir) is probably more an art than a science.
BTW, I have no idea if McWhiney’s “Attack and Die” thesis is true or not, but it’s the only work of military history this Celtic Southerner has read that left me laughing on the floor–my family history suddenly became crystal clear…all variations of impaling oneself on a Roman gladius.
Karen Yvonne: “Seems to me that if a person can reach a certain age (not sure what that age is, maybe 40?) and still believe wholeheartedly in the childish nostrums of the left, then you are a hopeless case and entirely unamenable to learning anything no matter what experience and reality is showing you.”
I don’t think this is true, but I also don’t know how to reach these people (and I work in the People’s Republic of Cambridge so I think about this a lot).
A large part of the idea of progressivism is good intentions. It is important to have good intentions; in fact, that might outweigh any other consideration.
So progressivism as a doctrine invites the follower to take up the doctrine as part of his or her own self-worth.
And progressives do just this. Demonstrating one’s fealty to the cause is important, and not just because of peer pressure.
All this insulates the progressive from ever considering that he or she is embracing a fantasy that cannot be realized, and that there might be empirical evidence (thank you, Thomas Sowell) that progressive policies are ultimately counterproductive, not to mention oppressive to others.
That’s my take on why progressives become so unbudgeable.
#165 Subotai Bahadur: Let me add to the reading list, John Buchan’s Montrose. I can’t find an ISBN in my copy of the book [!!??!!], but it was printed in 1928 by the Riverside Press, Cambridge imprint of Houghton Mifflin.
The great thing about books that old is they are often readily available on the intertubes.
I <3 archive.org
http://www.archive.org/stream/montroseahistory001221mbp#page/n7/mode/2up
What is the definition of a “progressive” anyway?
I know what regressive is- opposing progress; returning to a former less advanced state
backward – directed or facing toward the back or rear; “a backward view
If I wanted to go back to the 60′s and Woodstock Nation, that would be regressive. I’m just not sure how that, at the same time…is progressive.
I see NOTHING “progressive” about standard leftist pap. Everything that was peddled as “progressive”…turned out to be a hoax, a sham, or a shakedown.
If “progressive” means playing a grifter’s con game…then, ok, that’s the definition. If it means something else, there’s no evidence of what that might be in practice…rather than parlance.
wws wrote: “I looked up Roosevelt’s “Cromwell” since the 1928 date bothered me”
Good catch, wws! Thanks for that. I took the 1928 date from the frontispiece of my copy (which had originally been gifted to the Newark NJ Public Library, by the way — the stories that books could tell!). The next page notes that the original copyright was in 1900, as you had said.
As an aside, John Buchan also wrote a book on Cromwell, titled “Oliver Cromwell”, Houghton Mifflin 1934. Buchan had been Governor-General of Canada as well as being a successful novelist. But judged by these two books, Teddy Roosevelt was the better writer.
Interesting that the Western World once had politicians who could – and would – write history. Now the best we get is ghost-written autobiography. Where did we go wrong?
qrstuv yes it is frustrating to the point of wanting to grab them by the neck and shake them. But as you know all that will get you is a stay in jail and most likely a fine and lawsuit.
I am in a group of “Patriots” that are all old men, long in the tooth to the point of being surprised that we wake in the morning. All of us are Veterans except one who through no fault of his own had a spinal curvature that was two degrees from going to Vietnam. We accept him as our brother in arms not only because he is an excellent shot but because to this day he carries the guilt of not serving.
To the point. We all make the point in our daily lives of talking to the enemy. We do not start off spouting talking points and challenging to debate nor even to a small argument but know when the discussion (or probing) is making our target so unconfortable to make them run. We try to find common points of interests or beliefs or even mundane things such as our families and travils there in. The object is to get to know the person, and to show them that you actually are a good person and believe they are also. From there to where ever we can take it, sometimes to actually getting them to be more informed or be suspect of some of the things that they have been taught or exposed to.
It is not an easy battle and it takes time, but I much prefer it to having a gun battle with them. At least now I do.
Who knows what the future will bring, but I do know that America must be brought to a point where each man or woman must choose if they want the Republic our fathers and fore fathers fought and died for or something that has been constructed in the evil minds of men.
This is the daily battle we must partake of with determination. That and sending our treasure to those we deem worthy so that they have the chance of being elected.
It is more difficult than it seems, time consuming and frustrating but very satisfying when you see the light of understanding and contrition in the eyes of your new friend.
Papa Ray
Nahncee @ 88 or (**):
No it isn’t. Words mean what they mean.
It looks as if San Fran Nan is still going to try to push ObamaCare through and damn the consequences:
Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.), the ranking member of the House Budget Committee, tells National Review Online that House Democrats are planning to use the budget-reconciliation process in order to pass Obamacare. “They’re meeting with each other this weekend to pursue it,” says Ryan. “I’ve spoken with many Democrats and the message is this: They’re not ready to give up. They’ve waited their entire adult lives for this moment and they aren’t ready to let 100,000 pesky votes in Massachusetts get in the way of fulfilling their destiny. They’ll look at every option and spend the next four or five days figuring it out.”
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YTIxZmJiOGUwMTViYjYxODVjOGYzNGUxOTkzNDcyYWU=
Thoughts, anyone?
Papa Ray,
“We all make the point in our daily lives of talking to the enemy”
I have been talking with my neighbor for years, patiently pointing out time and again where liberal policies hurt him, his family and his kid’s future. It doesn’t seem to get through. He admits this or that policy is counterproductive but falls into the trap of “for the greater good” nonsense.
Maybe it was some childhood programming by his parents, I never knew them. I just wish I could find the chink in his Red armor, he is actually a pretty good guy otherwise.
PA Cat, I saw video earlier today of Nazi Pelosi saying that she couldn’t muster the votes for the Senate Bill to be adopted by the House. She might be lying, she has been known to mangle the truth in the past. I hope that the bill is dead and they move on to something less likely to ruin the country.
This is off topic but on target as far as the broad discussion of politics and Obama.
You won’t get the punch line watch it till the end.
I know, it will be hard but it will be worth it.
Papa Ray
Anton if your that close maybe you could recommend some good contemporary books for him to read. Or even check on out of the library or buy one for his birthday or such.
It is worth a try. I’m sure the BC guys and girls can make some recommendations.
It can’t be a real leftist, progressive basher, as that would turn him off, but one that focus on the principles of what America is. A Republic like no other and not a democracy.
I have read many but right now can’t decide which to suggest and I have chores that must be done before bed.
Night all.
Papa Ray
Voltimand:
Some people can be very convincing at not making any sense.
It is possible to believe utter nonsense from somebody when one has a strong emotional bond with that person and then suspends disbelief. When the bond snaps, the typical reaction in dazed wonder is, “How did I ever believe that guy?”
The liar takes advantage of the fact that other people don’t want to believe that he’s really a confidence artist. The worst liar in any confidence game is usually the mug because he doesn’t want to admit to himself that he has been conned. For this reason, people who prize their own intelligence (such as college faculty) are particularly vulnerable to confidence artists.
I tend to be suspicious of anybody who tells me what I think he thinks I want to hear. Although flattery is flattering, it is best to not let one’s self get too easily flattered.
If only Teddy R hadn’t made that third party ‘Bullmoose’ run which elected Wilson! The mind boggles at the alternate path from there before the first shots of the 20th century hundred years war. Wilson led the parade from the intellectual salon, and soon Lenin (who had been hard at revolution for thirty years before the Bolshevik 1917), Hitler, Mao, PolPot, the whole sorry parade of the Progressives. Reminds me of that clean-up man with his shovel and wheelbarrow bringing up the rear of the circus parade, shoveling up the manure. Someone asked him why he didn’t quit such a crappy job, and he answered “What? Leave Show Business?”
192 anton
I saw that video too but Ryan’s statement came out later in the afternoon. Meanwhile (hat tip Hot Air) the AP has a different “narrative”: “Obama Health Plan in Doubt as Dems Reject Fast Fix”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_health_care_overhaul;_ylt=AnbbPzcWFHQab4xGfaF5xMhv24cA;_ylu=X3oDMTM3ZmliNGxhBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTAwMTIxL3VzX2hlYWx0aF9jYXJlX292ZXJoYXVsBGNjb2RlA3JhbmRvbQRjcG9zAzEEcG9zAzEEc2VjA3luX3RvcF9zdG9yaWVzBHNsawNvYmFtYWFsbGllc24-
So it seems to be anybody’s guess whether this is just disinformation or what else might be going on behind closed doors. Or as you noted, Pelosi might just be lying again.
Conservatives: Beware of McCain Regression Syndrome (McCain wants to hijack GOP, Tea Party)
Anton@174:
“Another point, I am pessimistic that the current situation can be righted, even if small-government, fiscally responsible conservatives (note that I did not say Republicans) gained supermajorities in both houses and then claimed the WH in 2012, can we realy get out of this mess without deadly trouble?”
I don’t think so. The trouble may come from our creditors, but I think more likely that it will come from within. Americans have become soft over the decades. They get angry and may go across the counter to do violence to the kid serving them if they have to wait 15 minutes at Burger King. What do you think they will do if/when they are faced with real deprivation like the Haitians are dealing with right now? We’ll eat our own and ask for seconds.
This is a subject that has been consuming me for the best part of a year now, since I woke up to the mortal peril our leaders have dragged us into. This isn’t a Dem or Repub thing, it’s an everybody thing. We owe a lot of money to people that own nuclear weapons and a reputaion for hard-nosed business dealings. Think on that as you lay trying to go to sleep at night.
If even a single year ago you had told me I would be spending close to half of each paycheck today to buy stuff and stash it in my basement, on my property and burying it on public property, I would have laughed at you and called you nuts. It never occurred to me to consider buying a wood-fired kitchen stove. Now I’m really trying to find one that won’t cost me an arm and a leg. I’ve got buckets of grain, a huge stash of non-perishables, more guns than I ever thought I would own, several thousand rounds of ammo (rapidly growing stash with each paycheck), tools, first aid supplies, seeds, and most of the other things that every good googly-eyed survivalist needs to be happy. I just wish silver and gold coins weren’t QUITE so damned expensive on ebay.
And the threats will not be from foreigners, I don’t think. It will be the people from the cities after the grid goes down. I’m at the very outside of their range on foot (probably 10 days’ walk), but I think my family’s survival will come down to whether I have the stones to fire on people who are desperate and starving.
I fear that I will find out one day, and I fear that that day is much closer than many would credit. And it’s all because a bunch of Washington politicians couldn’t find the political courage to balance our budget back when it wouldn’t have been that difficult. I truly hate those people, Democrat, Republican, and most of the idiots in between.
RagnarD
uh I understood sumthin else, lazyness, in the occurence, isn’t intellecual lazyness, but rather means that Nc has sumthin better to do than to digg or to read Habus’ quotes, (written with style I must style), and that could be some benefitful idleness
“of the praise of idleness”, very priced by us and for the Romans
“The problem each party faces is that fitting into a new set of policy clothes requires a draconian change of lifestyle of which they may not be capable of.”
While some folks said that Nelson was doing his job representing his constituency as a senator should, most of his own constituency rejects his pandering on their behalf, when it means stiffing another generation with the bill. If this isn’t done “for the children”, it is certainly being done to the children and their children’s children’s children. That is no way to buy a vote, IMO.
The rules must change, but inorder to change the rules the certain relationships need to be reexamined. First among them the relationship of efficiencies of scale to what is or ought to be considered desirable circumstance.
What ought to be the relationship between governments, Business and the citizen consumer, employee. It is a huge question.
“written with style I must style” oops, lapsus, –> I must say
John McCain is still waiting for the Republican Senate Cloakroom to select him for Miss Congeniality.
Kinuachdrach,
The last American President who wrote actual books on serious subjects, as opposed to a politician writing about the least serious of topics, themselves, that he could then sell to the public was Richard Nixon. The last Senator who wrote seriously that comes to my mind was Daniel Patrick Moynihan. While the Democrats have one Senator now who has sold middlebrow novels, and bad poetry abounds, good fiction is not to be found. Is this because of the conditions of public life, as opposed to journalism or academia, or is it due to a general decline in the educational system that effects all presumptively educated members of society, politicians no more than everyone else?
The English, especially the Tories, have a literary tradition among their politicians. Both Disraeli and Churchill made their living by writing. A more recent but less happy example of talent gone astray was Jeffrey Archer. The Left tends to confuse the whole concept of fiction (which they confuse with budgeting) and nonfiction (which they confuse with dour bureaucratic regimentation.)
To be blogged under the title “The Republic of Letters.”
always right @ 150:
re: The GoP
The tone deaf buggers (RNSC) send out an email trying to claim their ‘support’ for Scott Brown yesterday. Like they had been doing this all along. When you lie to the Far Rightists such as I, it just makes you sound stupid. My answer to them was …. colorful. But, yeah – the GoP, Steele and RNSC get their snail mail sent back empty – until they grow a set and find a clue. So far – Mheh….
The Big Fat Zero, 0bama, is what he is.
Abandoned child
Schooled as Muslim
Convert to Marxism and pedophilia at the hands of Frank Marshall Davis
Radicalized product of affirmative action
Alinskyite
Failed lawyer who never practiced to amount to anything
Part time law school teacher but never vetted in academia
Pathological narcissist
Druggie
The toxic stew is seen only in the worst cases on the mean streets of the inner city. But someone decided he was usable, polished his edges, gave him some pushes and now he has “made history”. What bothers me is that most decent folks – like the denizens of this board – would most likely not even let him in their house if he came to the door needing help. There is something in the eyes, the carriage, that is off-putting – bothersome. That he has made a deal for the contents of his soul a long time ago – shows.
wdyam/201; What ought to be the relationship between governments, Business and the citizen consumer, employee. It is a huge question
Too huge –that’s why we need to go back to the future and emphasis our wonderfully framed fifty state laboratories, and then we can just stand back and folks will vote with their feet. This leaves the DC hurdy gurdy overloaded with too much energy for the attenuated mission, but luckily we don’t need to lower that activity level the old way with fire and sword, we can just use the stand-in, money, and quit sending so damned much of it to DC.
Counties know when work needs to be done, and they can float the usual bond sale the usual way –Fedgov stimulus money ought to be just flat rejected by all entities -stop this crap from the both ends at the same time. The worship of financial efficiency has turned out to be not just a golden calf but an exploding golden calf. IF we can learn from our mistakes, we can be better off than ever, just in new and better ways –’grounded in reality’.
A couple of books folks might be interested in regarding the links between England and the English Civil War and American history are “The Cousins’ Wars” by Kevin Phillips, arguing that the English Civil War, the American Revolution, and the American Civil War were all essentially religious wars born of a continuous worldview; and “Albion’s Seed,” by David Hackett Fischer, which looks at the continuity of regional cultures in both England and America and the roles they played in shaping modern America.
MC,
During the 5th century AD a lot of Britons fled from the encroaching Anglo-Saxon invaders and took refuge on the Breton penninsula, leading to its name “Brittany” (in English – I don’t know what it is called in French). The monk Gildas wrote one of the very few sources we have on the so-called Arthurian period in Britain from the safety of Brittany. The celtic language of Brittany resembles that of Cornwall and the two areas maintained close contact until a few hundred years ago, I believe.
What overtook Coakley and the MA Dems was hiding in plain sight. The first manifestation was obviously the Tea Parties the second was the contentious congressional town hall meetings from last summer.
I can not say whether or not the Democrats really believed the cr@p they were telling us, but on reflection I do not think so, at least from the leadership. That was there was tremendous pressure to get it done ASAP.
Buncha stinking inelleckshuals. If I didn’t have to look up so many words to unnerstand you smart alex I would enjoy this blog a lot more.
Sometimes I just want to go back to my comic book collection. But my mom sold it in a lawn sale.
I have her heart in a jar on the mantle.
Dear Belmont Club,
This is Mad Fiddler’s mother writing. He is in the basement in time out. I didn’t sell his comic book collection; he lost it in a poker game.
Does anyone know a good online source of Thorazine?
MF/209; lemme see if i can say this without giggling:
“Jamie Irons is a mental health professional”
(no, seriously!)
But odds are you’re ok. Just thinking you’re nutz is a great sign of sanity. Which reminds me of the naked guy who walks into the psychiatrist’s office. Nurse says “Sir, please take a seat, I can see you’re nuts.”
*** (ta boom –now get him off the stage)
Anyhoo, did SCOTUS just break Big Labor’s vice-grip on the Democrats’ scrot…, er, “ear”?
Does anyone know a good online source of Thorazine?
Paging Dr. Irons, STAT!
I have her heart in a jar on the mantle.
That’s one hell of an Oedipus complex.
161 Das – “what are there, about Oh, six or seven conservatives in Washington state?”
Eastern WA pretty much is a Republican stronghold as far as I know – east of the Cascade crest, as the saying goes. West of the Cascades, it’s blue to the sea.
There are at least 10 conservatives here on the Olympic Peninsula in my immediate area that I know personally. Heh.
Thanks very much to those folks who gave me all those titles to pursue regarding the English Civil War. It’s an area in which I have a great deal to learn and absorb.
Grey Fox
it’s called Bretagne, yes there are similarities of dialectic Celt languages with the both Cornouals of Bretagne and of UK. The Brittons that came then formed communauties that had no relations with the other different settlements, thus one could say that each village developped its own dialect then. Most of them disappeard since the end of 19th century, children were forbidden to speak in their own mother tongue at school. Today just a few elders can still speak their original languages. The University of Rennes created a chair in Celt languages that were recreated, (one for the northern part of Brittany, one for the southern part’s) with a new grammar, but they don’t really correspond to the old ones, it’s a university language, that some baba-cools want to reimplant in Brittany, and they are some kind of “fashist” persons that paint the french roads and villages pannels, previously in french. Now they have imposed the double languages.
#213 Old Salt
I know, thanks, I tried to insert “western” before the word “Washington” but I couldn’t get into the Edit mode.
Meantime Seattle, with the state’s in 2 billion dollar deficit, just voted in a dim-watt ecologist hippy mayor and a taxtaxtax county executive – neither of whom will stand up to any public-sector union…the usual leftoidal, invertebrate, ultra conformist, politically correct liberal dumdums. Seattle hasn’t seen a new political idea since 1972. ..don’t get me started…
MC/214; Mais MC, c’est exactement le meme que du Montreal Francais ne au Canada!
The problem they face with using reconciliation is that it’s only valid for budget bills, not general regulations. So they would either have to do one of two things: flaunt the rules they established for themselves (which they’re certainly not above doing, but will come across as yet one more flagrant “up yours” to the voters and cost them come November), or they could break the bill into two parts, one dealing with taxes on cadillac policies etc, and one with all the regulatory mandates (everyone has to buy a policy, etc.). Even the latter would be at least bending the rules, but assuming they did it, each of the two “reconciled” bills would need a majority vote to pass in each house, with no chance of a Senate fillabuster. But the regulatory bill has no chance of passing by itself (all the various kickbacks and bribes end up in the tax and budget bill), so at best they get half a bill that pisses everyone off.
They may still try it, they may still go for the 7.0 on VDH’s response scale, but it’s looking more and more like political suicide to do it.
Plus, every time Pelosi and Reid ignore an inconvenient rule to rahm this bill through, they give a future Congress (or President) one more argument for abrogating the entire bill. Could you imagine a President, um, for lack of another candidate at the moment, Palin taking time out form the inauguarl ball in 2013 to order the Federal Government to stop enforcing Obamacare because it had been fraudulently passed?
Old Salt and Das,
There are a few conservatives here in the Cascade foothills of eastern King County. Considering that Seattle is across a body of water (on the other side of Lake Washington) and takes such an imperial view of her country-bumpkin subjects, I think I know how the signers of the Declaration of Independece felt, and why they started shooting their British cousins.
qrstuv: What you said at #184 sounds like something I could have said pre-9/11. After 9/11, it got a lot harder to maintain that level of generosity in explaining progressives’ blind “fealty to the cause.” I agree with you that it’s more than peer pressure; they’re less concerned with approval from others than with approval of themselves in their own eyes. It’s fine to want to be good and honorable when looking in the mirror but when that desire is so strong that glaring contradiction after glaring contradiction can’t budge it, then you’ve got somebody with a serious character flaw, and experience, facts, history or common sense is as nothing in the face of it. They seem to be a remarkably incurious lot, too, and not subject to doubt. When this or that policy doesn’t work or a slew of awful unintended consequences ensue, they never question their premises; it only indicates time to double-down or that we just haven’t done ENOUGH. You’d think a tiny kernel of self-doubt might creep in there somewhere but it never does. No, the truly unbudgeable progressives just need to be contained. Rendered harmless.
Papa Ray’s method of gentle persuasion, described in his post #188, is probably the best that can be done, but it won’t work with the truly unbudgeable. The incorrigible won’t believe you; they just have to learn it for themselves, like Dorothy learned: there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11BQQvVy8LI
There’s no place like the USA. Click your heels, libtards, and we could get our country back in 2 seconds!
Das said…
“…the usual leftoidal, invertebrate, ultra conformist, politically correct liberal dumdums. ”
—
Prototypical Left Coast Urban “Leaders” from the Seattle to San Diego.
LA’s deficit $400 Million and rising.
Dept of Water and Power making massive investments in solar with in house expertise, which is to say no expertise at all.
—
Ex-Helo’s Fantasy Ride
This Week in Liberalism
[John J. Miller]
1. The Democrats lost Ted Kennedy’s seat, sending their health-care takeover efforts into a tailspin.
2. The Supreme Court wiped out the central feature of McCain-Feingold, in a victory for free speech.
3. Air America declared bankruptcy.
Since we are at war with ourselves,
it is good that we no longer fight to win.
Terror Interrogations & the MA Senate Race
Next to health care, the issue that has dominated the debate in the Massachusetts Senate race is terrorism.
Scott Brown, the Republican running ahead in the race for Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat today, has campaigned as an unabashed supporter of enhanced interrogation.
Brown – who serves as a JAG lawyer in the Army National Guard – has argued that the Christmas Day bomber should be interrogated as an enemy combatant, not given the right to remain silent.
And he has said of waterboarding,
“I do not believe it is torture. America does not torture … we used aggressive, enhanced interrogation techniques.”
—
There is a lesson here for Republicans. If an outspoken supporter of waterboarding can run this strongly in the People’s Republic of Massachusetts, imagine how the issue will play in the rest of America.
The fact is President Obama has placed our country in grave danger by dismantling the CIA’s program to interrogate senior terrorist leaders like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. By limiting all terrorist interrogations to the techniques in the Army Field Manual, Obama is actually requiring that captured terrorists receive better treatment in the interrogation room than common criminals being questioned at your local police precinct. Not only has he eliminated lawful interrogation techniques, under his administration the United States is no longer trying to capture the leaders of al Qaeda alive, and bring them in for interrogation so they can tell us their plans for future attacks.
Polls show that the more the public learns about the CIA’s interrogation program, the more Americans support it. A recent Rasmussen poll found that 58% of Americans say waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation techniques should be used to gain information from the terrorist who attempted to bomb an airliner on Christmas Day. Just 30% were opposed. There are few issues on which conservatives have a more disparate advantage.
Doug, Eric Holder’s law firm –i believe he is a partner –more or less represents AQ/Yemen, and has for years. Look it up. I don’t know whether to call that ‘bizarre’ or ‘bazaar’.
220) Doug,
Thanks!! But they need to come up with a better name than “Puffin”!!
Mongo BL Santa Maria, oie
“I don’t know whether to call that ‘bizarre’ or ‘bazaar’.”
I’d call it Bashir.
Assad from all that lawyerin’ they run a candy gram service too. I heard them say, “‘l’hez boil a’ couple of eggs fer dinner, oh” or was that ‘Let Hezbolla hop to it for dinero?’
What deNero would have to do with those clowns is beyond my comprehension. but maybe they are artists just trying to make a movie?
Bozhe moi!
P.S. I think voting with ones feet gives advantage to those with eleven toes and the disadvantage to those sans Popsicle toes. While the bacterial admixture lends itself to an odor that is pure scent-i-ment. Like a Pepe le pew heaven and…
No need for elite airs.
You two are makes the joke! we are mehsure you for leg irons!
F@30: ALL [Democrats and Republicans] incumbents or should be worried by yesterday’s vote
Two points.
First, the question to ask is who will run against them? Baucus is targeted in Montana, but everybody is scratching their heads wondering who will oppose him. His last opponent was a pipefitter from Billings. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but the question speaks for itself. Washington is so entrenched that the backbench is essentially non-existent.
The second part of the first point is what happens to the Washington newcomers? Jon Tester from MT is making no waves. He adheres to the Democratic policy line. (I know from the form letter I received in response to my health care reform concerns.) This leads directly into the second point.
Which is the Washington establishment – call it what you will – is convinced – I repeat – convinced that the *average* American opposed to the spectrum of Democratic policies is simply expressing inchoate fear derived directly from unemployment and post-recession insecurities. In other words, those of us AA’s opposed to the current policy direction coming out of Washington are somewhere south of caveman stupid. Make all the nasty scary stuff go away (Lenin’s three meals a day) and we be happy happy.
With a (small) handful of exceptions, not a single Washington insider will credit the emerging demographic of AA’s with the insight to actually object to Washington patronage politics on its own (de)merits. As “F” put it so succinctly, health care is probably the most intrusive and personal part of our lives, and the government wants to play Freddie with our Fannie.
That is a goofy joke but I honestly don’t know whether to laugh or cry at the unmitigated arrogance of a political elite who so overtly expresses their contempt for the middle class wage earner in this country.
We the people – who built this country – are today too stupid to know what is good for us.
Wait until the regulatory reform gets into high gear. I’ve been listening to the opening salvos and I just start to stutter and spit.
Yeah, I’m unimpressed with the RNSC and the GOP fundraisers in general. I got a letter from them in IRS font with a return address of “Office of Audit and Review” with some POBox in Washington D.C. No indication it was from the GOP till I opened it.
I think the best thing the RNSC could do right now to re-establish some credibility and shed the image as a money-grubbing outfit that sees political ideas as nothing more than marketing campaigns, would be to send out letters listing all the Republicans running for Senate with a note saying “If you want to send us money, great, if you’d rather contribute directly to these campaigns, here’s their contact info. Please support our candidates in this critical election blah blah blah…”
“the English Civil War” Old Salt@144.
Lifeofthemind beat me to it, Christopher Hibbert’s “Cavaliers and Roundheads” is an excellent and enjoyable overview. Anything by Hibbert will probably satisfy, but please also try this:
http://www.amazon.com/Redcoats-Rebels-American-Revolution-Through/dp/0393322939
Don’t miss the appendix at the end, which contains some brilliant summaries of the what the various survivors went on to do with the rest of their lives.
“a lot of Britons fled from the encroaching Anglo-Saxon invaders and took refuge on the Breton penninsula” Grey Fox@206.
When William of Normandy invaded Anglo-Saxon England, a large part of his army was Breton. What goes around comes around, or something…
2000 (according to the legend), though Brittons had not fled only to Brittany, but also to “Normandy”, so you can say that 4000 former Brittons were in William’s army out of about 8000, the rest was from the northern provinces
MC, William is known to’ve had nearly 700 ships –at the time, for the ship types, many historians place his army closer to 20,000. The thinking is, the size of the force would have followed the shipping available, not the other way around.