Gesundheit! That’s to say ‘bless you’ or ‘may you have good health’. Is hatred as cathartic as sneezing? That explanation may not satisfy Leon Wieseltier, who spends a lot of elegant and erudite prose in the New Republic trying to understand why Andrew Sullivan’s seems to hate Jews lately. But generic hate is good enough explanation for Dan Riehl, who advises Wieseltier to relax because Sullivan hates everybody. Sullivan, he says, is a hater. It doesn’t matter who he hates, just so there’s something. The Jews are just the flavor of the month. But don’t worry, Riehl says, wait long enough and it will be everybody’s turn; and in the end Sullivan might even finish up hating himself.
That makes Sullivan uniquely enlightened in his own way. Most of us are partisan haters. He might be an equal opportunity one. One wag advised the world to “end discrimination, hate everybody”. That view has more merit than one would think. Sociologists have theorized that both beneficence and hate have their roots in group competition. They argue that solidarity is the emotional glue that binds groups together in the struggle for scarce resources. Hate is the complementary emotion; it is the shared feeling reserved for those who don’t belong — to the other — the enemy. If solidarity binds a group together, hatred animates it to face outward against the foe. If Sullivan as Riehl believes, hates everybody, it’s only because he is alienated from everyone, the lone wolf flitting from pack to pack.
Hatred and solidarity are more useful than we’d like to admit. The modern economy harnesses the milder forms of these emotions in the process known as competition. Our professional goal in life is to dominate the competitor. Make him eat our dust, or failing that, eat our shorts. Sports teams harness the same dynamic. Many sporting events are stylized arenas in which the drama of love and hatred are acted out. We want to wipe out the other team, blown them out of the arena. Maybe ten thousand years ago those expressions would not be figures of speech.
The Left has long known the power of hatred and shamelessly harnessed it. George Orwell’s put the Two Minute’s Hate at the very center of Communist Liturgy. It wasn’t ideological theory that defined the Party: it was shared loves and hatreds. Even Winston Smith who knew it for the manipulative experience it was could not help but be pulled along in its orgiastic wake. No student of modern political life and certainly every observer of the blogosphere should fail to study Orwell’s fascinating description of the process. The Two Minutes Hate involves the dehumanization of the enemy and his juxtaposition with the all-wise, beneficent paternal figure of Big Brother, who is dehumanized in his own way, turned from a man into a messiah; a kind of god figure for the Communist faithful. Crucially the Two Minutes Hate must take place in a group setting. It rarely happens when you are alone and reflective. Hard to work up a lather by your lonesome. Here’s Orwell’s description of that ceremony.
It was nearly eleven hundred, and in the records department, they were dragging the chairs out of the cubicles and grouping them in the centre of the hall opposite the big telescreen, in preparation for the Two Minutes Hate….
The next moment a hideous, grinding speech, as of some monstrous machine running without oil, burst from the big telescreen at the end of the room. It was a noise that set one’s teeth on edge and bristled the hair at the back of one’s neck. The Hate had started.
As usual, the face of Emmanuel Goldstein, the Enemy of the People, had flashed on to the screen. There were hisses here and there among the audience. Goldstein was the renegade and backslider who once, long ago (how long ago nobody quite remembered), had been one of the leading figures of the Party, almost on a level with BIG BROTHER himself, and then had engaged in counter-revolutionary activities, had been condemned to death and had mysteriously escaped and disappeared.
The programmes of the Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was none in which Goldstein was not the principal figure. He was the primal traitor, the earliest defiler of the Party’s purity. All subsequent crimes against the Party, all treacheries, acts of sabotage, heresies, deviations, sprang directly out of his teaching. Somewhere or other he was still alive and hatching his conspiracies: perhaps somewhere beyond the sea, under the protection of his foreign paymasters, perhaps even – so it was occasionally rumoured – in some hiding-place in Oceania itself.
Winston’s diaphragm was constricted. He could never see the face of Goldstein without a painful mixture of emotions. It was a lean Jewish face, with a great fuzzy aureole of white hair and a small goatee beard – a clever face, and yet somehow inherently despicable, with a kind of senile silliness in the long thin nose, near the end of which a pair of spectacles was perched. It resembled the face of a sheep, and the voice, too, had a sheep-like quality. Goldstein was delivering his usual venemous attack upon the doctrines of the Party – an attack so exaggerated and perverse that a child should have been able to see through it, and yet just plausible enough to fill one with an alarmed feeling that other people, less level-headed than oneself, might be taken in by it. He was abusing BIG BROTHER, he was denouncing the dictatorship of the Party, he was demanding the immediate conclusion of peace with Eurasia, he was advocating freedom of speech, freedom of the Press, freedom of assembly, freedom of thought, he was crying hysterically that the Revolution has been betrayed – and all this in rapid polysyllabic speech which was a sort of parody of the habitual style of the orators of the Party, and even contained Newspeak words: more Newspeak words, indeed, than any Party member would normally use in real life. And all the while, lest one should be in any doubt as to the reality which Goldstein’s specious clap trap covered, behind his head on the telescreen there marched the endless columns of the Eurasian army – row after row of solid-looking men with expressionless Asiatic faces, who swam up to the surface of the screen and vanished, to be replaced by others exactly similar. The dull rhythmic tramp of the soldiers’ boots formed the background to Goldstein’s bleating voice.
Before the Hate had proceeded for thirty seconds, uncontrollable exclamations of rage were breaking out from half the people in the room. The self-satisfied sheep-like face on the screen, and the terrifying power of the Eurasian army behind it, were too much to be borne: besides the sight or even the thought of Goldstein produced fear and anger automatically. He was an object of hatred more constant than either Eurasia or Eastasia, since when Oceania was at war with one of these Powers it was generally at peace with the other. But what was strange was that although Goldstein was hated and despised by everybody, although every day and a thousand times a day, on platforms, on the telescreen, in newspapers, in books, his theories were refuted, smashed, ridiculed, held up to the general gaze for the pitiful rubbish that they were – in spite of all this, his influence never seemed to grow less. Always there were fresh dupes waiting to be seduced by him. A day never passed when spies and saboteurs acting under his directions were not unmasked by the Thought Police. He was the commander of a vast shadowy army, an underground network of conspirators dedicated to the overthrow of the State….
In its second minute the Hate rose to a frenzy. People were leaping up and down in their places and shouting at the tops of their voices in an effort to drown the maddening bleating voice that came from the screen….In a lucid moment Winston found that he was shouting with the others and kicking his heel violently against the rung of his chair. The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic…
The Hate rose to its climax. The voice of Goldstein had become an actual sheep’s bleat, and for an instant the face changed into that of a sheep. Then the sheep-face melted into the figure of a Eurasian soldier who seemed to be advancing, huge and terrible, his sub-machine gun roaring, and seeming to spring out of the surface of the screen. But in the same moment, drawing a deep sigh of relief from everybody, the hostile figure melted into the face of BIG BROTHER…
The Two Minutes Hate. Nor has much changed in the intervening period except that Keith Olbermann, unlike the Ministry of Truth in 1984 needs at least 3:57 to work up a head of steam.
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Why do we watch a guy like Olbermann? To be dazzled by his intellect? Bowled over by his manly good looks? Probably not. We watch him to join in his hate or hate him for his hate. Either way it’s fun.
If the sociological theories are right, Emmanuel Goldstein, Sarah Palin, the Jew and even Barack Obama play a very special role in the world. They act as a foci for hatred around which groups form and dissipate, like attractors which pull things in or repulsors which push things away. They do what dry theory and statistics never do. They agitate us. An agitator appeals to a different part of the brain than a mere advocate does. Dick Morris says that while Obama’s policies (and their consequences in unemployment and national security) are driving the political discontent Sarah Palin represents an “existential threat” because she threatens to pull white women away from the Democratic Big Tent. Like Goldstein she is a special kind of menace: the kind that can break up a group. Unemployment presents a contextual threat. Sarah Palin threatens the pack. And when that happens the ancient memories kick in. Something in Olbermann’s unconcious brain brings him up on his legs to howl because his pack is threatened.
From that point of view, Sullivan is a rather sad figure. Maybe he has no tribe, just a generalized distaste for the world, being what was once called a guy with a chip on his shoulder. He flits from pack to pack and inhabits the margins paying his way with a kind of redirectable anger. But it is good enough on the day. We home into hatred like sharks to blood. It would be interesting to discover what percentage of Andrew Sullivan’s reader’s visit his site simply because they enjoy strong emotions. Perhaps mankind is capable of something better. Or maybe we enjoy hate; or more disturbingly, maybe we need it.
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It resembled the face of a sheep, and the voice, too, had a sheep-like quality.
There’s a Demon Sheep ad for you right there.
Olberman has a different effect on me- instant distaste and a wariness. I get the same uneasiness as when I feel I am being stalked in a rough neighborhood- move along with purpose but be prepared to fight. He ruins football for me also- no one wants a smarmy know-it-all talking football. Hey, NFL, dump the chump.
Wieseltier article seems very erudite, but who has the time, especially for a head case like Sullivan?
Lovely essay, wretchard.
There is much more of a constituency for hate on the left than there is on the right, especially today and in the USA. I mean foaming, hysterical hate, like Olbermann and Sullivan. Glen Beck barely registers on that scale, and I don’t think anybody else on the national platform is, either. Rush maybe registers a one on a scale of a hundred, where Sullivan is 99 and Olbermann 101. Katie Couric probably registers around a three, for when she asks some bone-headed loaded liberal pov question of a candidate. Pat Buchanan on a bad day might register somewhere north of 50. Obama apparently hates republicans and the British, to name two, but occassionally tries to pretend otherwise, at least in regards to republicans.
Andy is channeling Jimmy Carter through this Mel Gibson moment.
I can’t help but feel that Walt & Smearsheimer influence on Andy isn’t also reflective of the Robert Malley, Samantha Power, Rosa Brooks wing of the administration.
It’s enough to scare the Brzezinski out of anyone with a Jewish background…and certainly any Israeli.
Andy can simultaneously suck up to the administration by doing their dirty work, floating this trial balloon of anti-Israel feculence…while patting Jewish liberals on the head, saying “but, not you dearie.”
Wretchard, Sullivan DOES have a tribe. It is the same tribe, grouping, clan, that Daily Kos, or Huffington Post, or Marvel Comics writers, or Charles Johnson from Little Green Footballs have: SWPL.
“Stuff White People Like” (from the website and book by Christian Lander) are upper-income or aspiring upper-income yuppies who have a world view shaped and shared by Hollywood movies and TV programs: all sin stems from lower class White people (inter-White competition is the main driving force of SWPL), who conspire with evil, Middle Class and Upper Class Corporate White Male executives to prevent the world of Unicorns, Rainbows, and magical Black guys (Obama) from providing peace everywhere and an AVATAR utopia.
This is a powerful group because of its wealth, social conformity through social climbing aspirations, and the lack of even a tenuous connection to past culture and ethnic groups.
What made 1984 so powerful was what was all gone in the acid of modernity: tradition, social connections via ordinary life, non-state institutions, individuality stemming from family, deep connection to land and ancestors, and so on. Most of the SWPL have severed these connections in one way or another, for Sullivan obviously it his gayness that prevents him from belonging to a traditional community. For others it is social climbing or ambition or desperate desire for approval by one’s “betters.” This latter a feature of women and feminized men that one sees in the SWPL crowd.
Dick Morris is reliably wrong on Sarah Palin. Palin appeals mostly to men, women HATE HATE HATE her for the most part. Women hate Palin, because she repudiates EVERYTHING in their daily lives. NOT climbing the social ladder of the Ivy League and validation of one’s self-worth (look at any Gossip Girl, Gilmore Girls, Mercy, or other night-time soap operas filled with female character validated by an Ivy League degree). Palin shows success by NOT taking on enormous debt or being a lucky princess, at the University of Idaho, preceded by ordinary community college.
Men have no idea how threatening this is to most younger women.
Secondly, look at Palin’s personal life. She gave birth to instead of aborting a Down’s Syndrome Child. Women HATE HATE HATE this for the most part. She *MARRIED* and had five kids with an ordinary, but good looking and non-Metrosexual, non-Master of the Universe, non-Big shot guy, who was supportive enough to enable a woman with no connections to have a political career AND kids.
This is a slap in the face of women who want the brass ring of the Big Shot-Big Man husband who gives them status, the Bill to their Hillary Clinton, the John Edwards to their Elizabeth, the Eliot to their Silda Spitzer. Women dream of a big-shot, celebrity husband who is important! dambit! as an expression of their superior sexuality (i.e. only the most “special” woman could land that big fish — and keep him tamed enough!) The very ordinary-ness and homey nature of Palin’s husband and family is like a cozy coffee mug stain on the cover of the magazine “Fine Living.”
Finally, there is Palin’s accent and down-home persona, that rejects the primacy of New York and the Harvard-Yale group. The ticket punching, elite urbanites who drive most of the “princess fantasy culture” in the persons of Tina Fey and the View (who hate her the most). Sarah Palin is a Cinderella who REMAINED Cinderella, and stayed in the cottage, and became powerful anyway — REJECTING THE PRINCE AND THE PALACE.
The male equivalent is a guy who regularly trashes the concept of Superman and Steve McQueen in favor of man-purses and general effeminacy.
Men, of course, love Sarah Palin for all these reasons: she’s not a spoiled princess but an “Action Barbie” come to life. Hell she even hunts! A turn-off to women (very Liberal Eliza Dushku caught hell for bow-hunting once) and catnip to men.
Palin to elite men (like Gibbs) is a peasant who does not know her place, and is White besides (thus the subject of fear and hatred because of the threat of a “peasant revolt.”)
Pure, unadulterated hatred of an opponent blinds one to both his strengths and weaknesses. Lack of any strong emotion or desire to attribute the best not the worst to an opponent leads to lack of energy and desire to use the strongest reason in chiseling away at the debris surrounding these innate strengths and weaknesses.
The strength of the Tea Parties (depicted by Marvel Comics in the latest Captain America comic book as racist lynch mobs, unsurprising given who writes the stuff) is that it does not depend on one man, but many people, each empowered by computers and the internet to do things that would have taken man-months before, in a few minutes. This allows Glenn Reynolds “Army of Davids” to use thousands of chisels, in showing both the strength and weakness of the elites, media, SWPL, Obama, and the Democrats. Who remain all interlinked and much the same.
Whiskey seems to know a lot about women. Maybe our assumptions about his gender are misplaced. How else to explain how misplaced his own assumptions are about Sarah Palin. After all, Whiskey believes women are the worst judge of women, real women.
I agree with Whiskey that women hate Palin. That’s my anecdotal experience.
Hate is the bug driver of liberal emotion, and it’s the hate that pretends to be love that’s the worst part. Opponents of liberalism and socialism have to learn to hate it. Anger and hate are critical sources of emotional energy to accomplish difficult tasks.
I’ll point out again that Orwell was an orthodox communist and all in favor of the secret police rounding people up and torturing and killing them, just as long as they weren’t communists.
I think liberals are really scary people. There are certain perversion on their twisted mind. They support killing babies, most of them are drug users and have grandeur delusion of their collective intellect.
Whiskey writes:
The very ordinary-ness and homey nature of Palin’s husband and family is like a cozy coffee mug stain on the cover of the magazine “Fine Living.”
Well said, sir! Well said!
Orwell was an orthodox communist and all in favor of the secret police rounding people up and torturing and killing them, just as long as they weren’t communists.
He great awakening came when he realized, in Catalonia, that the secret police was coming for them all. That’s when you realize you can’t do a deal with the Party.
But I think one aspect of the threat Palin poses stems from the circumstance that not everybody will get to be Cinderella. However many make overs they get, however slavishly they follow the latest fashions there’s the weary realization that this game is rigged against the outer court and those pressing to get in. The stage will only hold a few. The hard logic of things is that only one foot fits the crystal slipper.
Maybe the pickup truck is the 2010 equivalent of long hair. Take your carbon credits and shove it; I ain’t driven a Prius anymore. Even if you’d rather buy a Prius. “Almost cut my hair. Happened just the other. But I didn’t and I wonder why? Seems like I owed it to somebody.” Rebellion takes off when there are role models who show it can be cool. When you’ve struggled to fit into that two sizes two small dress, when you’re tired of pretending a leaf of lettuce with truffle oil is dinner; when you’re aching to put on a pair of sneakers or walking shoes then the smoke of doubt enters into the liberal church.
Maybe it is cool to write on your hand. And that’s why Gibbs and company have got to make fun of it, like the old timey aristocrats turned up their noses at the antics of the crowd, not because it’s beneath their notice, but because it is so damned subversive.
I’m not absolutely convinced that there are millions of female zombies out there who hypnotically directed from women’s magazines and blindly walking over a cliff. Or maybe there are, but then the Svengali’s fear has got to be that some ordinary voice, some conversation bearing a snippet of childhood memory might wake them up. In any event, the Palin threat isn’t intellectual; it is to the social dynamic of the Left. And thus, she becomes an object of hate.
It seems to me we have gotten into a bad habit of using the word hate too often. Surely, as wretchard says, there is something in all of us that likes to see and feel strong emotions; and surely we are all susceptible, at some level, to the temptation to genuine hatred. But I would reserve the word for extreme instances only. Most of the time, short of such cases, it seems to function almost like the words racist and racism, as an uncontrovertible accusation and a dialog stopper.
I think of the relationship between General Grant and General Lee. Nobody doubts they were committed enemies to each other. According to Shelby Foote, Lee could find no term strong enough to express his emotion about Grant; he worked around the problem by calling him “that individual.” During their battles, though, neither seems to have thought the other was stupid, or even personally vicious. When they finally met at Appomatox, if the stories are to be believed, they treated each other with elaborate, and ultimately heartfelt respect and appreciation. Such are the virtues of real soldiers.
Unfortunately, some tacticians in the present war have not cultivated enough respect for the enemy. (And I would maintain there is no contradiction between calling him an enemy and maintaining respect.) I think of the discovery that Afghan insurgents’ captured computers contained downloaded images from unmanned drones, and the apparent fact that the software needed to watch that video in realtime was shockingly cheap. Someone knew this was a possibility before it became a confirmed reality, and decided not to plug the hole in the system–evidently thinking the enemy is too stupid or torpid to take advantage of it.
I maintain that we owe our enemies something: we owe them a worthy opponent; i.e., one who respects them enough to fight with all our resources, coldly, implacably, and unemotionally.
Hate may have some political value, but even as propaganda and manipulation of the public for what is perceived as good and necessary purposes, I wonder if it doesn’t come back to bite its practitioners more often than not. People with more knowledge of history and of proganda may know better.
Meanwhile, I’d counsel some restraint in using the word. I don’t mean resorting to euphemism; that would only make matters worse. Where hatred is really the motive, fine, use its proper name. But where mere group identity over against some other group, even when that comes to combat, I suggest it’s worth considering in more detail what the real motives and necessities are. Hate, like love, is blind. Blindness is no help in a battle.
MaryJ @ Feb 9, 2010 – 5:22 pm:
It has been my experience in my long life that women are the worse judge and definitely the worse jury of other women.
It has also been my experience that women that have few women friends but a lot of men friends are the most “down to earth”, logical and level headed.
But then again, I have only known a few hundred women in my life. I could be wrong.
But I don’t think so.
Papa Ray
Wm. Kerrigan, on feminism taking over Random House Webster’s College Dictionary,
“We are men and women. It almost always matters which we are. Men and women are aggressive. Their regard for each other is clouded by grudges, suspicions, fears, needs, desires, and nacrissistic postures. There’s no scrubbing them out. The best you can hope for is domestication, as in football, rock, humor, happy marriage, and a good prose style. Jokes trade on offensiveness; PC is not a funny dialect. The unconscious is a joker, a sexist and aggressive creature. Our sexuality has always been scandalous.”
The two interesting points being domestication, and a good prose style as domesticated aggression.
It’s funny, I was just thinking this morning how cool it was that whiskey had actually gotten to the point where he was writing entire posts – consecutive ones, even – without a word of ax-grinding about women. I guess it was too good to last….;)
wretchard @ Feb 9, 2010 – 5:43 pm:
Oh but in my experience that is exactly what at least thousands are. But not just from women’s mags but from office talk, blogs and the media. Especially Hollywood.
Papa Ray
Ironically, one of the standard Leftist complaints against Ronald Reagan was that he thought the USA needed an enemy. The fact that we never have to gin one up but instead they seem to arise naturally does not seem to occur to them.
And if anyone went looking for people to hate, it was Bill Clinton. Aside from the many troubles mysteriously visited upon his personal enemies, we had to go kill people and blow things up in Serbia, Kosovo, and Africa.
Funny that the Left never seems given to its characteristic introspective reflection on “why do they hate us?” when it comes to American conservatives.
Hate is such a wasted emotion.
The person or object you hate feels nothing. In fact both often neither know nor care if you hate it/them.
Hate does however absolutely destroys the person who hates. It is corrosive and actually has a physical effect on the persons psychology and overall health.
Now planning and executing revenge is an entirely different thing involving an entirely different midset and if done properly can lead to great fulfillment.
Earliest advocate; Marie Joseph Eugène Sue: la vengeance se mange très-bien froide — there italicized as if quoting a proverbial saying — published in English translation in 1846 as revenge is very good eaten cold.
Forget the hate, get revenge.
marymcl @ Feb 9, 2010 – 5:58 pm:
Millions of men have “axes to grind” when it comes to women. Most do it in private. whiskey lets some of it out here.
I could fill up pages of “axe grinding” but in the interest of bandwidth and preserving women’s rights and having become in my older age more forgiving…and other considerations…
I will let whiskey and others have their say. But it doesn’t mean I don’t agree with them or in some instances actually don’t agree.
But women now-a-days are actually different than in my long life with them. I have only now four females in my life. My daughter, my two grand daughters and my dog, Sissy.
And let me tell you, that is more than enough. But I have never hated a woman, even my ex. Distain, distrust and pity…yes.
Papa Ray
It’s a measure of civilization that we’ve been able to suppress our hatred, or at least be more considered about it. And part of the reason for that is that the fires of passion, once stoked can turn on and burn those who feel it.
I maintain that we owe our enemies something: we owe them a worthy opponent; i.e., one who respects them enough to fight with all our resources, coldly, implacably, and unemotionally. … Hate, like love, is blind. Blindness is no help in a battle.
It is this blinding aspect to strong emotion that makes us mistrust it. If by and large conservatives lack for passion, they are correspondingly rewarded by a lack of the attendant insanity. But I have to admit that the dividing line between being a damp squib and leader in the field is to arouse strong emotion. Its blinding nature becomes an advantage in situations where reason tells you to run away, in situations where you need temporary blindness, if only to go on. Not very many people rise up against a dictator for some cold ideological reason. They do it ’cause they’re temporarily blind with anger. Of course you need the cool heads to make sure things stay in bounds. Military organizations, with their combination of discipline and motivation, are probably optimized for harnessing strong emotion and keeping the lid on it.
Back in the day when we were trying to raise up opposition to Marcos, it was an adage that nobody actually crosses the line into full opposition until he takes it personally. They had to have a personal experience. Their emotions had to be engaged. So the emphasis was always in getting people to lead themselves; experience the trepidation themselves and the corresponding elation of triumph. Man is no angel. If he has a soul; he has a body, subject to impulses. Capable of love and hate; capable of being swept up to heaven by a loving God and capable of damning himself to hell.
uh Whiskey is naive, Cindrella’s career was made through medias, and she certainly knows how to use t’em as a professional ! so I don’t buy this legend of authenticy, but the good use of it, otherwise she would be that poor Boyle skilled marvel of one performance, due to authenticity
Not to belabor the obvious, but Sarah Palin is a woman and Keith Olbermann is a man and there are millions more like them. In fact there are plenty of stereotypes available, both male and female, to suit any and all prejudices. It all gets pretty boring after a while.
Back to the gist of the matter, hate is really over-rated these days. It’s interesting that it didn’t qualify as one of the seven deadly sins of antiquity and on reflection it’s not hard to see why. Greed, envy, pride, wrath, lust, gluttony and sloth – plain old hate looks like a tempest in a teapot by comparison.
Women hate Palin. That’s my anecdotal experience.
It certainly isn’t mine, and I know a number of women who attend or work in the local university who don’t hate Palin; some, in fact, admire her greatly. I think Wretchard is correct in saying that fears of an army of female zombies driven insane by Hollywood and the other usual suspects are exaggerated.
And I have many friends– about an equal number of males and females. So much for the notion that “women that have few women friends but a lot of men friends are the most ‘down to earth,’ logical and level headed.” Some of my closest women friends, in fact, go back to college days, longer ago than I care to admit.
A CNN poll on Palin conducted on Dec 2-3, 2009 shows Palin to have a 46% favorable rating.
“Eight out of ten Republicans questioned the survey have a favorable opinion of Palin, with more than seven in ten Democrats viewing her unfavorably.
Independents are evenly divided on Palin. According to the poll, 51 percent of men see her in a positive light, with a nearly equal amount of women viewing Palin in a negative way. (which also means 49% of women independents approve of Palin)
“The gender gap on Palin is not simply a function of the fact that women tend to identify with the Democratic party more than men do,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “Even within GOP circles, Republican men like Palin more than Republican women do. John McCain put Palin on his ticket in 2008 to appeal to female voters, but it looks like men are a natural constituency for her.”
Remember, that’s after the most vicious smear job by the media ever conducted upon a candidate…
I asked my sister, a conservative, libertarian type what she thought most women thought of Palin. After saying, Oh, I don’t know. She speculated that it depended on their political/social/cultural views.
I think she faces a threshold or approval ceiling, set by the MSM’s thrashing of her. In another 2 years with near-constant exposure on FOX, where people will see that’s she’s not a moron, or a liberals shallow caricature of a Christian, I predict she’ll break through that ceiling and her approval ratings will rise considerably.
There’s a flip side to whiskey’s yuppie women’s disapproval; adoption… a kind of she may be a bitch but she’s our bitch. Palin’s not being a graduate of elite schools, etc. is secondary to being a successful woman and that’s a role model young women will increasingly find attractive.
She’s also a hell of a natural speech giver and connects to people on a visceral level.
And Palin has an important intangible, the ability to be as assertive as Hillary but without Hillary’s nails-on-a-chalkboard abrasiveness. In time, that’s going to win her admirers.
Finally, she has, in this writers opinion, the proverbial “right stuff” and that is an absolutely priceless political asset.
Agree with Habu, why bother hating? I much prefer to mock and ridicule the lames on the left. How can you hate an utter moron like Pelosi, or Barnie Frank suffering no doubt from “Rectum-Darn -Near-Killed Him Disease” or a sanctimonious prick like Oberdouche? Central casting at Warner’s Brothers in the 30′s didn’t have a stable of characters like this.
This is the first time I’ve felt so far on the outside here. I guess your tribe is labeled male and being members of the “He-Man Women Haters Club” you guys hate “the other.” Very sad.
marymcl,
I think Whiskey was refering specifically to SWPL women, not women in general, in his last post. Obviously, he doesn’t lump Sarah Palin in with those he is excoriating.
wretchard @ Feb 9, 2010 – 6:14 pm:
True. I don’t know how it is now, but in my day I remember one day that our Sgt said these exact words:
Well I lived, even if I did have to spend six months in WR. But I have never told my kids or anyone else about that day. But many of my buds went on before me and I did tell their stories to their kin.
Not that it helped.
Papa Ray
The clause regarding “hate speech” has been deleted because readers criticized it as being too loosely defined. We agreed.
I’m glad Wretchard could post this thread without running afoul of any speech police.
Lucy, don’t take ‘em so seriously, they’re just howling at the moon. It’s an old male pastime to vent about women in private and then meekly say “yes ma’am” whenever there might be any real, personal consequences to taking that attitude.
Like PA Cat, I know a whole lot of women who like Palin, too. In fact most of the women I know like Palin. Well, most of the women I know hunt. Whiskey needs to hang out with a better crowd, rather than remaining miserable by staying around people he doesn’t like and who don’t like him. Life’s too short to live like that.
It kind of reminds me of a quote from Goethe regarding Beethoven after a visit with him: “he unfortunately has a tumultuous personality, which is not completely wrong in thinking the world repulsive, but undoubtedly he makes no effort to render it more pleasant to himself or to others.”
Of course Beethoven got away with it because he had the talent it took to get people to put up with him.
A parting shot – with regard to the Thread title and the article which inspired it:
Andrew Sullivan doesn’t say “Hate Choo” when he sneezes, he says “Hate JEW!”
(okay stole that from Woody Allen)
PA Cat
If your going to quote me, at least get the quote right.
I don’t know your age, but even without it, I could say that you have little idea how it is with other women. Where as I believe I do at least in my life.
Hate is something that lazy people do, and like Habu said, it only effects those with the hate and not the object of their “hate”.
I actually don’t hate people but their ideas and their efforts to force them on me and my family.
Papa Ray
@ 5 I really like your analysis of why women hate Sarah Palin, or at least the elitist ones do. An important factor is how threatening her beauty is to women who in this day and age spend untold riches on their appearances. She is quite clearly all natural and low-maintenance, only trussing herself up for public appearances the way one wraps a gift. These women who hate themselves because they aren’t attractive to men or don’t want to be attractive to men HATE Palin because her charisma is so much of what Whiskey described, the Cinderella who rejects the prince. Not that they loved Hillary because she was unattractive yet “smart.” She had to be a scorned woman to gain their sympathy, and thus was made, scuse my french, the b*tch. No wonder Obama was allowed to trample all over her during the primary. Oh how I would love to be Mrs Palin’s speechwriter when she goes up against him in ’12. (
I vaguely recall in some social psych class being told that women tended to judge other women more accurately than did men, etc.
Palin? Er. Whatever negatives she might generate, one would hope that “hate” would not be judged an appropriate reaction, except in the metaphoric manner that children “hate” spinach, etc.
So, when someone like Sullivan really seethes about whatever, Jews or Palin or Bush, it’s really the inappropriateness of the reaction that is the issue, not the direction of the value judgement nor its magnitude.
At least that’s my take, “seething” is a symptom of its own, and if “hate” cannot be grounded in something pretty serious, along the lines of a clear and present danger, than it too is a pathology and not a rational basis for discussion.
Palin should keep the “Notes on the Hand” schtick and display it at every opportunity. The ridicule will soon vanish. If she could walk out to a lecturn with no notes but those on one hand to do a 40 minute stand up she would surely make BHO look like a putz.
(oh! Wait! He doesn’t need any help!)
“I vaguely recall in some social psych class being told that women tended to judge other women more accurately than did men, etc.”
Maybe but you know how PC universities are.
Grist for the mill.
Sarah Palin by the numbers
There are polls and then they are more polls…
Papa Ray
In politics hatred is like a vector. It has a magnitude and direction. The magnitude is less important than the direction. Thus, hatred in certain situation is both cultivated and righteous. Cambridge university in England recently invited:
And over at Oxford, it is the same story with slight variations.
Strange as it may sound, it’s not inconceivable that some of those who are yelling “slaughter the Jews” are saying it as a fashion statement. Militancy is, as one person described it to me once, simply an escape from mediocrity. It’s hard to overstate this effect. The number of people who for one position or the other purely on the basis of intellectual rigor is very small. I think someone once observed that the Nazis were popular in large part because their uniforms were so nice. Thus, the problem that Palin presents is that she may actually make it acceptable or cool to be patriotic or wear an Israeli flag lapel, in addition to an American one.
Maybe the President’s greatest fear isn’t being wrong so much as being passe.
“the Cinderella who rejects the prince”
How does that line make any sense at all? Who says Todd Palin ain’t a Prince? I think he’s living the life that all men dream of if only they had the balls to really do it. And a big part of that is telling the corporate office world to go stuff itself and not giving a damn about the consequences.
As a man, I admire Tood Palin a hell of a lot more than I admire any of those jaggoffs in Congress – or Wall Street, for that matter.
@20 wws
LOL – in my experience nothing frightens the tough guys like the sight of a woman with a syringe
@30 Papa Ray
OK, OK, we get the point, you don’t like us very much!
“Who says Todd Palin ain’t a Prince?”
He may or may not be a Prince but he had a hell of a lot to do with his wife’s running of the Alaska government. Since it turned out mostly good in the end, I would say he is at least as smart in politics as his ol’ lady is.
Maybe more, but then I would be picking a side and wouldn’t want to at this point.
But Sarah seems happy with him and that says enough.
Papa Ray
Okay, it’s listmania time! While there are many people whom I dislike, it’s surprisingly difficult to think of more than a few whom I truly hate, and most of those are not public personalities. Here are a few of the notables:
Judy Collins
Wayne Dyer
John Shelby Spong
Barack Obama
Thomas L. Friedman
Ian McKellen
George Tiller
Oddly enough, that’s all I can think of for now. That was an interesting exercise. In formulating this list, I felt compelled to pass over many people with whom I have sharp disagreements, and others who are objectively worthy of punishment; I just couldn’t bring myself to hate them. The key factor in making the list, it seems, is neither having fallen into formal error nor having incurred my personal animus, but obstinately clinging to a spirit of insatiable pride which vitiates the meaning of life itself.
OK, marymcl, you can quit pulling my chain, I’m already house broke and heel smartly.
I’ve had more decades being trained by women than you have been alive.
Papa Ray
25. Lucy:
This is the first time I’ve felt so far on the outside here. I guess your tribe is labeled male and being members of the “He-Man Women Haters Club” you guys hate “the other.” Very sad.
Lucy,
There is the maxim “Cherchez la femme” ..look for the woman. It was not meant to flatter.
Il y a une femme dans toutes les affaires ; aussitôt qu’on me fait un rapport, je dis : « Cherchez la femme !
Translation:
There is a woman in every case; as soon as they bring me a report, I say, ‘Look for the woman!’
The expression comes from the 1854 novel The Mohicans of Paris by Alexandre Dumas.
In the sense that, when a man behaves out of character or in an otherwise apparently inexplicable manner, the reason may be found in his trying to cover up an illicit affair with a woman, or to impress or gain favour with a woman.
I prefer to go with Chauncey Mitchell Depew who said A pessimist is a man who thinks all women are bad. An optimist is a man who hopes they are.
wws @36
I would venture to say this gentleman shares something of your point of view, as do I.
A language warning of sorts(NSFW) and a h/t to samizdata
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XY3TfjOeuhM
Strange as it may sound, it’s not inconceivable that some of those who are yelling “slaughter the Jews” are saying it as a fashion statement. . . . Maybe the President’s greatest fear isn’t being wrong so much as being passe.
When The O starts wearing a keffiyeh, we’ll know that fashion trend is over.
Lest we forget Reut Cohen’s PJM article from (almost) a year ago: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-keffiyeh-fashion-trend-or-political-statement/
The thread has turned from being about Andrew Sullivan to being about Sarah Palin. If I may, I will digress and give my thoughts on Andrew Sullivan.
Just who is Andrew Sullivan?
He asked with inattention
What has he done or hasn’t done
That rates him all this mention?
He has a blog, the other said
And heads up The Atlantic
He advertises for gay sex
And sometimes seems quite antic
Right now he claims two Jewish guys
Are running this here nation
That Wieseltier and Krauthammer
Are causing him frustration
Because he thinks progressive thoughts
Should be their daily diet
That right wing thought should never be
For Jewish guys to try it
I see, the first man said at last
If gay sex is his fancy
I’d say his mama named him wrong
She should have called him Nancy
And by the way he’s not a lone wolf
Searching for his pack
He wants a big tough alpha wolf
Just covering his back
Oh for crying out loud Papa Ray, where’s your sense of humor? I don’t “train” men, I don’t consider you a dog and I haven’t been pulling your chain. Lighten up a little – and while we’re at it, don’t assume you’re the oldest and wisest person in the room. You don’t know how many decades I’ve been alive
Well we’ve had a lot of comments about hate and about women in reply to a post on Andrew Sullivan. Fitting, I suppose, given who he is. I read Sullivan a lot many years ago. I can’t even say how many years ago it was, but it was in the age of internet, so I suppose in the past dozen years. Perhaps in the end of Clinton’s term. Then I stopped reading him or thinking about him. He was really a nonentity. More people could benefit from reaching the same conclusion about him. Althouse, Instapundit, Belmont Club and at least one other blogger have all had posts on Sullivan in the past week. That’s at least 4 too many. He has had far too much bandwidth. Let’s ignore him. Better yet, let’s bring back the old New England practice of shunning in regard to him. F
“You don’t know how many decades I’ve been alive”
Maybe not dear, but I been “trained” to always underestimate a woman’s age by at least a decade.
Heh…
Papa Ray
Papa Ray, Hearing about your crucible of fire, I was reminded of the fine song, “Drive On” by Johnnie Cash. Are you familiar with it? Being from Texas you likely are. If not give it a listen.
wretchard @ 35: Militancy is, as one person described it to me once, simply an escape from mediocrity. It’s hard to overstate this effect.
That’s kind of where I was going with it.
I suppose “escape from mediocrity” is a nicer way of saying it, than “pathology”. Only when the symptom is hate, there ya go.
I’m an Independent woman, married, with children, working happily in a male-dominated field, and I have a very low tolerance for Sarah Palin. I was ambivalent about her when she was running for VP, knowing she faced a hostile and barely competent press and was sticking pretty tightly to a script. Now, she’s off on some other campaign. Nothing about her impresses me except her ability to command publicity, and that’s taken on a soap opera quality. When she resigned, I thought “jumped the shark”, and wrote her off. I don’t actively dislike her though, and I still retain a lot of sympathy for how she was treated.
Politicians are poor role models. I believe it’s important for my girls to know this, regardless of the gender of the politician.
39. Matt Beck
I’m amazed that someone could hate Wayne Dyer, just had to mention it.
On Andrew Sullivan,
I , for the life of me, can’t figure out why so much ink has been spent on this guy. He has done little good to deserve so much fame. And much despicable.
On Sarah,
To me, for many people who consider themselves SWPL, hatred of her is a self litmus test. It is a fashion statement, as is W’s description of leftwing militancy.
Down to earth women as far I’ve seen don’t have a problem with her. Now the fashionistas, both men and women, feel she is a threat to their elitist sense of superiority.
Unsk, Sullivan is a topic because he was a very clear conservative – and gay – voice during the Clinton follies. That got him attention. Then, he spun around 180 after Bush was elected, apparently because Bush did not back gay marriage. This one issue seemed to spin everything in Sullivan’s world. Now he’s just Olbermann with a typewriter and a better sense of style. But it’s the journey, not so much the destination, that is the story.
You probably knew all that, and this is just a recitation, it still doesn’t really explain why anyone cares. I don’t. Wrote Sullivan off years ago and haven’t looked back. But it is a case worth mentioning, I suppose, on the proper occassions.
Hate like anger can be valuable. It is when the hate or the anger becomes an obsession or takes over the rational does it become dangerous.
Last summer I sat with an old (in both senses of the word) friend. She is a lifelong Democratic voter having voted for FDR, JFK, and had a portrait of Obama on the wall next to the JFK portrait. She confessed to me she liked Sarah Palin a lot and that is why the Dems and the left revile her so much.
In a way an interesting juxtaposition has occurred. For years and years the left and Dems have insisted women can have it all, it was just us guys oppressing women. Now there is just such a woman on the stage and the Dems now blast her for not being home barefoot with the children.
Palin is human.
Scary innit?
maybe ‘resent’ is a better word than ‘hate’. read the wiki on Kierkegaard –i think he explains the anti-Palin phenomena. We think we have shucked the idea of thinking what we’re told to think, even though we think that because we were told to think that. Sensing how close we are to being trivial, we have to nip that in the bud and angrily resent being judged. Soon enough truth is subjective if you want it to be, and life is lively as you want it to be, a series of short-lived enthusiasms which without self-examination and commitment always flame out always leaving another resentment –resenting whatever keeps making you resentful –whatever has that authority. So life is a series of leaps of faith leading to resentment of authority. Kierkegaard said, “Resentment becomes a constituent principle of want of character, which from utter wretchedness tries to sneak itself a position, all the time safeguarding itself by conceding that it is less than nothing. The ressentiment which results from want of character can never understand that eminent distinction really is distinction.”
IOW, you can be nothing if you want, and you can make that nothingness seem as important as a principled position, but you can’t do it without a crowd of others doing it too. If a Sarah Palin comes into the picture, she’s not gonna be sympathetic to your being locked and knotted in irony and angst about such crap as this comment is composed of, and she may get something going with the crowd, and it may decide you really are nothing, in the sense of your being pretty much actually really nothing.
i hope that makes sense –if it doesn’t, don’t tell me, i’ll figure you for someone who is so confident that you might, oh, organize a big speech in your mind, and just write a keyword for the major elements on, hmm, no pocket handy, just use your hand, to have, as Forrest Gump said about what Lieutenant Dan did in selling Bubba’s Shrimp and putting the money in Apple at about a dollar a share and making Forrest a multimillionaire: “One more thing less to worry about, y’see.”
***
Also writing in about the same times, Nietzsche took a turn at describing these people. He called them “Tarantulas”.
Habu, Alexandre Dumas had a “neger” who wrote quite a few of the books that were signed by AD
a movie is on screens at the moment, that relates the tumultuous relation of Dumas and his “neger” (a bit of a love/hate relation)
http://www.francesoir.fr/cinema/2010/02/10/l-autre-dumas.html
BTW, for what it is worth I know Stephanie. She is for real. Now if only I could get someone to vouch that I am for real.
Radar, could you step into the office? The Colonel needs to sign your Security Clearance forms in his capacity as your Commanding Officer. Oh by the way, while you are there please remember to sign his Security Clearance forms in your capacity as Company Clerk.
I will bet none of you watched and listened to Sarah Palin after the Tea Party….
Sarah Palin “off the cuff” after the TEA Party Convention.
Listen to her. Agree or disagree if she should ever run for anything again, you have to see what she believes in and is not afraid to say if you watch and listen to this.
She said she will live and die for the people of America and I actually believe she means it.
She has that fire within, just like Reagan did. I think that she not only believes in America and all of us, she is determined to make us all believe in ourselves again.
Papa Ray
As strange is the hatred for Palin from the left I’m even more baffled by the love for this out of her depth woman from the right. Is the latter a reaction to the former?
hate has to do with a collectivity, old fears, obscur avertions can generate hate towards a group, or a person, and paralyse your faculty of analysing, it makes this group or person react incontrolable
resentment with individuals, like someone who is humiliated, will never perdon the person who did, and it doesn’t annihilate your faculty of analysing and of forecasting a vengence
I watched her and I couldn’t agree more Papa Ray.
She’s got the “right stuff” and her heart and mind are in the right place. Those who can’t see it… need to do a self-diagnostic.
No Coisty, it’s not a ‘reaction’, it’s recognition of the above.
Sometimes what’s right in front of us is, at the time, beyond us.
For me, it was Reagan. I never fully appreciated him until long after he was gone.
There’s far more to Palin than meets the skeptical eye.
MC/60; nice distinction, MC –hates destroys, resentment annoys –?
C/59; i wonder, what depth is that that she’s out of? you must have had something in mind –tell us –persuade us –
@ #39 Matt Beck
Wayne Dyer! lol. that’s very funny. I knew a lady once who abolutely hated him and PBS for airing his BS.
I would say that I “detest” Sarah Palin, or i “can’t stand” her. But I don’t hate Palin.
Thomas Friedman is a pompass ass, He’s the closest to hate I get. But I’m just more annoyed by Friedman or “put off” by friedman, I don’t hate friedman. I feel the same way about Olberman and Maddow.
I’m now moving into FEELING SORRY for Obama, After fear and disgust. He’s such a narrow minded arrogant inexperienced little leftist failure. LOL! the people that probably “hate” Obama are on the left!!
To me, all of this is kind of a hobby, and fun. We are all news-junkies on this blog. Just like some folks like stamps or sports I get my kicks off of news and politics. Olberman, Maddow, Limbaugh, Beck, they are all part of the theater that entertains us news junkies. When I start taking this stuff too seriously I remind myself of this. Olbermann’s “special” commentaries are some of the funniest pieces of phony seriousness going. i howl with laughter at him! Alex Jones is especially entertaining in this way too! LOL!
MaryJ — the crosstabs in poll after poll, reported ad nauseum at HotAir, shows women dislike Palin by about 11 points, versus men, and younger women dislike her more intensely. Gallup, Rasmussen, NBC-WSJ, poll after poll finds this result (women dislike Palin intensely, men like her). That’s par for the Gender Gap course. See the above CNN Poll cite, even Republican women dislike Palin while Republican men like her.
The most brutal treatment Palin received was from women such as Katie Couric and Tina Fey, and the View ladies. Not even Olbermann has given her such venom.
———–
Women are not zombies, hypnotized by women’s magazines. Rather, the dynamics of women’s magazines, gossip rags featuring celebutards (those retarded enough to think their celebrity makes them “special” and immune from life’s ravages), advertising, and so on reflect the hugely changed dynamic of most women’s lives from just thirty years ago: single far longer, often single mothers, in a brutal dynamic all their own (only a few can reach the brass ring of marrying up). The popularity of “Real Housewives of …” and HGTV (itself fairly shocking in the PC driven, real-estate consumption mania) is mirrored by the hectoring divas and gay trainers straining to turn fatties into Cinderella hotties. Because for more than 30 years, women have been pursuing a markedly different social environment in the West (from times past) that while making them happy overall, has tremendous social pressure and desire for conformity, with ultimately as Wretchard notes, only a few lottery winners. [Charles Murray is doing some research on this, noting that among White women illegitimacy is 40% among the working class and 20% among the middle class.]
This is why Palin is so threatening — she breaks apart the social conformity which affects women far more than men (men generally respect individual “mavericks” if they actually accomplish something). Agreed that the Palin threat is not intellectual. This is precisely why she generates such hate, most of the intensity among moneyed, celebrity women.
Marymcl — You cannot deny the Gender Gap nor that women are far harder left than men. Recognizing profound differences is not axe grinding. It merely means your eyes and mind are open. It certainly profoundly affects politics, as Democratic policies and voting efforts are BASED on the Gender Gap. Two pick four notorious examples, Carol Porter-Shea opined that all ObamaCare differences could be ironed out by women (because they had superior reasoning and moral principles), Sen Patty Murray, D-WA, said that Osama Bin Laden was popular in the Muslim world because he built day-care centers, Obama dumped infrastructure spending on physical stuff in the Stimulus because NOW and the Feminist Majority demanded it be spent all on women (it was: female-dominated social spending on “human infrastructure ” of health, education, and welfare workers instead of bridges and roads), and Obama exempted ANY discretionary spending on women from his self-imposed spending freeze (for discretionary funds). These things didn’t happen because of axe grinding. It happened because women are (especially those under 45) FAR DIFFERENT than men in almost every aspect of social and political views and interests.
——————
Wretchard it is hard to hate when the good times are rolling and everyone is making money. It is when the money STOPS that the danger starts.
wws — It is not what men think it is what women think about men. Most young, SWPL women would find Todd Palin acceptable for a fling, but never marriage. They’d rather have Mr. Big. Even Tiger Wood’s mistresses who knew going in he was NEVER going to leave his wife for them dreamed of it, by their own account. You can’t change human nature.
wretchard 19: the dividing line between being a damp squib and leader in the field is to arouse strong emotion. Its blinding nature becomes an advantage in situations where reason tells you to run away, in situations where you need temporary blindness, if only to go on. Not very many people rise up against a dictator for some cold ideological reason. They do it ’cause they’re temporarily blind with anger. Of course you need the cool heads to make sure things stay in bounds. Military organizations, with their combination of discipline and motivation, are probably optimized for harnessing strong emotion and keeping the lid on it.
I defer to your experience. I shouldn’t have implied that emotion per se is counterproductive; it’s hard to imagine not having some emotion about one’s cause. But it’s the cold, calculating, and as you have said ruthless approach that I think will prevail. (I must admit I’ve never been a soldier, so this is learned, if I may claim any learning on the subject, from better men than I.)
“Hate” (whatever that is) is too often equated with that approach, when I think it need not be. I don’t want to see us intimiated by accusations of “hate,” as though that sufficiently explained our determination to prevail, and not the real pragmatic perfidy of our enemies.
I know this flies in the teeth of a lot of supposedly “Christian” thought. (BTW, I claim and pray God that I may be considered a Christian when my day comes.) Jesus indeed said “love your enemies,” but he did not pretend there are no such things as enemies.
(Another thing I hope and pray is that the comment just made will not derail us into an off-topic tangent.)
Thanks for your response. TD
Poor old Andrew Sullivan. Talk about jumped the shark, hit the water, and sank without a trace!
Wretchard in his munificence devotes a column to AS and poor old AS barely gets a nod in the comments, except from those wise souls who note they stopped paying attention to him long ago. Yep, Andrew. Time to head on back to England; you are past your sell-by date. Or maybe Australia — there is at least one guy there who acknowledges your existence.
Men and women come in many varieties. Some men who have been hard core Obama supporters who are disappointed that he hasn’t been enough of a revolutionary. Some women are hard-core fans of Sarah Palin who see her as the greatest avatar of common sense they have ever heard of in modern politics.
Most people aren’t news junkies and don’t know the ins and outs of politics. And it’s no accident that college towns and state capitals are often more polarized than productive regions. The news media with their polls typically overestimate the actual polarization within a community. And that’s a good thing. I don’t think it would be a good idea for the electorate to be as internally polarized as the Beltway. Or Hollywood.
We shouldn’t assume that everybody in politics is a raving lizard.
Well, i found it –i found the depth that Palin’s out of: well. Well depth.
http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/93551/
That Wieseltier piece is awful:
I was not aware that they comprise a “wing” of American Jewry, or that American Jewry has “wings.” What sets them apart from their more enlightened brethren is the unacceptability of their politics to Sullivan. That is his criterion for dividing the American Jewish community into good Jews and bad Jews–a practice with a sordid history.
I thought it was lumping all Jews together as a monolithic group that had a sordid history. So referring to a monolithic Jewish worldview is anti-Semitic and so is pointing out differences of opinion among Jews. I think Wieseltier would just prefer people who disagree with him to shut up or he’ll call them a bigot.
Buddy,
Have you ever listened to Palin trying to answer questions? All she does is repeat the slogans she’s been coached to say. She’s like a female Bush. I can’t understand why conservative Americans love these inarticulate but folksy leaders.
wretchard:
When you talked of Cambridge and Oxford, I felt a song coming on. Imagine some obscure graduate student singing a song at a bar/coffee house in a college town, with a few engineering students joining in the chorus. And what a chorus…
Allahu Akbar Zeb
There was a day at Cambridge
When Muslims got red faced
There was a day at Oxford
When prigs all fled in haste
There was a time at Belmont
When taste was at low ebb
That was when a poster said
Allahu Akbar Zeb!
Allahu Akbar Zeb!
Allahu Akbar Zeb!
They say Allah’s the greatest what?
Allahu Akbar Zeb!
The Hindus have their lingam
The Pharaohs had Heb Sed
Let’s tell the Muslim Brotherhood
Allahu Akbar Zeb!
There was a mosque in Norway
The muezzin made the call
All of Oslo heard him
They heard him one and all
He woke them from their slumber
And here is what they said
He called “Allahu Akbar!”
They shouted the word “Zeb!”
Allahu Akbar Zeb!
Allahu Akbar Zeb!
They say Allah’s the greatest what?
Allahu Akbar Zeb!
The Hindus have their lingam
The Pharaohs had Heb Sed
Let’s tell the Muslim Brotherhood
Allahu Akbar Zeb!
The Saudis cannot stand it
It’s their word of shame
They cannot stand a man
Who has it as his name
They shout “Allahu Akbar”
But the last part is unsaid
They will not let a man in
Whose name is Akbar Zeb!
Allahu Akbar Zeb!
Allahu Akbar Zeb!
They say Allah’s the greatest what?
Allahu Akbar Zeb!
The Hindus have their lingam
The Pharaohs had Heb Sed
Let’s tell the Muslim Brotherhood
Allahu Akbar Zeb!
A bunch of Muslim frat boys
Starved of their sexual pork
They had this penis envy
Of the towers in New York
They blew them up in autumn
Dubai built one instead
What else is there to say but
Allahu Akbar Zeb?
Allahu Akbar Zeb!
Allahu Akbar Zeb!
They say Allah’s the greatest what?
Allahu Akbar Zeb!
The Hindus have their lingam
The Pharaohs had Heb Sed
Let’s tell the Muslim Brotherhood
Allahu Akbar Zeb!
T-shirts go proclaim now
What everyone must face
Folks are getting tired
Of Islam’s weird embrace
They cannot say in public
But surely do want said
They’ll write the words in Arab script
Allahu Akbar Zeb!
Allahu Akbar Zeb!
Allahu Akbar Zeb!
They say Allah’s the greatest what?
Allahu Akbar Zeb!
The Hindus have their lingam
The Pharaohs had Heb Sed
Let’s tell the Muslim Brotherhood
Allahu Akbar Zeb!
They say we really want it
We protest but we do
They say we want their fond embrace
And want it through and through
They say we really like it
When they say they want us dead
But they cannot say in public
Allahu Akbar Zeb!
Allahu Akbar Zeb!
Allahu Akbar Zeb!
They say Allah’s the greatest what?
Allahu Akbar Zeb!
The Hindus have their lingam
The Pharaohs had Heb Sed
Let’s tell the Muslim Brotherhood
Allahu Akbar Zeb!
There once was a born Muslim
Who bowed down for his fief
He was known throughout the world
As Commander in Chief
Reactionaries hated him
And leftists lived in dread
He could not stand the words we say
Allahu Akbar Zeb!
Allahu Akbar Zeb!
Allahu Akbar Zeb!
They say Allah’s the greatest what?
Allahu Akbar Zeb!
The Hindus have their lingam
The Pharaohs had Heb Sed
Let’s tell the Muslim Brotherhood
Allahu Akbar Zeb!
If you don’t want us talking
‘Bout how your god’s a dick
You shouldn’t claim your god
Tells you to be a prick
You shouldn’t threaten harm on us
Or claim we should be dead
You think you are the bully when
Allahu Akbar Zeb!
Allahu Akbar Zeb!
Allahu Akbar Zeb!
They say Allah’s the greatest what?
Allahu Akbar Zeb!
The Hindus have their lingam
The Pharaohs had Heb Sed
Let’s tell the Muslim Brotherhood
Allahu Akbar Zeb!
A good thread at Auster’s site on Palin:
A QUESTION FOR PALIN SUPPORTERS
BTW needing to write on her hands the talking points she’s been repeating for ages is just another sign that she’s winging it or doesn’t really understand what she’s talking about.
Wow, it’s really difficult to take a large group of people (like, say, 150 million-plus American women and girls) and lump them all into a single psychological profile, but that obviously hasn’t stopped more than a few people here from trying.
But I’ll try my hand at the oversimplification myself, since it’s one of the going trends on this thread. In MY experience (Gen X, raised with 4 sisters by single mom … work in department with 6 women, ages range from 26 to 60, boss is a woman, department morale excellent … 4 years of drama club in college – DON’T LAUGH, it is an excellent observatory of the “fringe female” personality, i.e. the non-conformist who isn’t in a sorority and/or doing the social-climbing activities) …
… there are at least two main types of “women with lots of guy friends, very few female friends” personalities.
One is the type that Papa Ray mentioned, the low-maintenance, level-headed type. Often hangs out with guys because she enjoys guy activities (hunting, fishing, other sports). Doesn’t consider herself a “sister” but doesn’t consider herself one of the guys either; tends to consider herself an individual first, i.e. she’s “Mary” in her eyes before she’s “A WOMAN” or some other group identity tag. Again, in my experience, this type usu. has a background of having a strong relationship with her father. She hangs out with guys not because she doesn’t like other women (she actually gets along fine with a lot of them, just not the weak & silly ones, for whom she has little patience), but because she happens to prefer the activities that men do. And she does not expect men to be like women.
However, there is another type I have seen that PR did not mention. That’s the kind of woman who mainly hangs out with guys and has few or no women friends because she doesn’t like other women, because she doesn’t like the competition. In a room full of women she’s just one of the crowd, no one special (although if she’s beautiful, she may feel, rightly or wrongly, that the other women resent her looks) … but in a room full of guys, she’s the standout. Even if she overcompensates by trying to be “one of the guys” (anyone remember the character Anyone in West Side Story?) she’s not fooling nobody and everybody knows this; there’s that weird kabuki of how the “see how unfeminine I am” hyperattitude only draws attention to the fact that she’s not a guy. At the other extreme (but still working from the same motivation) is the great-looking girl who gets to be queen bee in the company of a group of males; a high and a level of attention she never gets in the company of other women.
I also have to mention that, while the women in my department at work get along really well, the department across the hall has 2 women who make life hell for every other woman in that department. This “Delta Beta” (as one of the departing women called it – ie the insufferable sorority cliqueishness) atmosphere flies right under the radar of the guys in that department, but has been noticed and commented on by the women in my department.
I bring this up to illustrate that IMO it often comes down to the mixture of particular personalities. You can have a group of women who get along very well. Or you can have a catfight on your hands. And sometimes all it takes to instigate a catfight is one or two bee-yotches who are for whatever reason unhappy in their personal lives, or who feel slighted somehow over their roles at the office, and are thus compelled to duke it out verbally and attitudinally, mostly with the other women.
What kind of difference does this make? A lot. In my department we have not had a single personnel turnover since July 2006 (and one new hire). In that same time, the other department has had more than 10 people leave.
BTW, about what others have termed the “stupidity” of many Americans: One of the women in my department is in many respects a complete ditz. Oblivious to politics, retains names & movie plots & complex computer instructions not at all, has had umpteen cooking disasters over the years due to falling asleep or forgetting she was cooking something. IOW the kind of person you are sure would have been picked off early back in the Stone Age, and only by the benefits of living in the age of smoke detectors and 911 is she still around. AND YET. She has survived 2 bouts with cancer. When you talk to her about medications, insurance, her diagnoses and treatments and specific procedures, you would swear you are talking to a different person. The ditz is suddenly sharp as a tack. She learned and retained *everything* on a hugely complex range of related subjects. My explanation for this phenomenon is, she had the strongest motivation to learn and retain all that she did. Her very survival was at stake.
I have no doubt there is a certain percentage of the population that is irredeemably stupid — i.e. too dense to adapt under any circumstances. But I think there is also a portion that some might dismiss as stupid who are IMO not … just currently unmotivated to learn. But given the right motivation, they do adapt & learn. They are just, erm, slower than the fast adapters & the foresighted.
Also, since dismissing the vast majority of Americans as stupid is a favorite tactic of the left, I am leery of leveling this charge myself. Aside from the danger of mis-labeling, the very act of positioning onself in a state of permanent superiority to most other people often translates into contempt.
Which is what the entire left and the elitists-disguised-as-conservatives feel for Sarah Palin. It’s one thing to be “unimpressed” by her as Tee is. Palin is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea … no public figure ever is. But it’s quite another thing to unleash the cauldrons of flaming contempt on someone as was done to Palin. That in itself should be indicative of something. As in, “If you’re not drawing flak, you’re not over the target.” Palin *did* and still does draw tremendous flak from the left and the DC-NY-media establishment, ergo … even if she doesn’t jazz you personally, as a conservative you would recognize that she is at least on your side of the battle line.
Why all the hatred towards Palin? IMO it is several things. First, because she does not speak the feminist code. Women who achieve power are supposed to see themselves as sisters first, wives and mothers and everything else second. Palin, by her refusal to play the sister (and, just as importantly, to position herself as a female victim-of-something), is not paying tribute in the temple of Diana or whoever it is that NOW worships (Baal? but more on that in a moment). And that enrages them. In their eyes, they are the gatekeepers of female validation. Palin has ignored them and gone and hopped right over the fence.
Second, she appears to be pretty happy with who she is and the family she has. And she is happily married to a guy’s guy and has 5 kids, the youngest born while she was governor and born with Down’s Syndrome. This aspect of her life, that she did *not* sacrifice her marriage or her child for career, is what really frosts the feminists’ cookie IMO. For all the feminist talk about “choice” and “having it all,” the real-life examples of women who achieve levels of great power completely on their own (ie, were not born & did not marry someone powerful or rich) and also manage to achieve relational happiness with a traditional nuclear family are pretty rare. Which is to say, for all the feminist talk, I think they know that the vast, vast majority never do “have it all” — and the vast, vast majority of them have sacrificed satisfying marriages and children to achieve the elite media and political positions they now occupy. Their hatred of Palin is good ole fashioned green-eyed, spittle-flecked envy. She has what they want. And she got it without divorce or abortion. How DARE she.
Whatever else she may or may not turn out to be politically, Palin is certainly one of the most clarifyingly divisive (divisively clarifying?) public figures we have had in a long, long time, and her presence is being felt not just politically but culturally.
Like the Tim Tebow Super Bowl ad, if *this* is what offends the left and sends it spinning into dervish-like rage … that says much more about the left than it does about the object of their hatred. And it is a lesson to the rest of us flyover-territory rubes, should we ever find ourselves the ones in the spotlight.
Lastly – Habu … good joke.
Coisty, how on earth can she be ”winging it” if it’s ”talking points she’s been repeating for ages”? You can’t be in two places at once, you have to pick one or the other. For example, either she doesn’t understand what she’s talking about, or you don’t understand what she’s talking about; one or the other.
But seriously, you DO understand, right, that you are making yourself look foolish –not for taking the disingenuous position that you do not understand that extemporaneous speakers invariably list their key prompts somewhere, a 3×5 usually, so that they don’t have to worry about a stage-blank, not for even attempting to portray yourself as such, not for assuming that we don’t all perfectly understand all the several levels of the deception you’re attempting to contrive, but for failing to think to ask yourself what on earth you think you’re doing except to persuade us even more strongly that Palin and her supporters are on the right side of the by-far most important issue there is, the character issue?
***
A #68 there’s a link –it goes to a letter Palin –or one of her team –has written to the Dep’t of the Interior. The letter exposes several levels of deception –official deception –that in turn point ever-so-clearly at just what we all know to be true –that this admin wants to cripple this nation. Palin is who got the info together and got it out into the public. This is power. People like an ally who has power.
What’s with the categorizing of women in one big lump? Isn’t that a typical leftie trope?
Palin has many women admirers. The women who don’t like her are generally reacting based on ideology and lifestyle choices. Have the “women hate Palin” posters in this thread forgotten the huge enthusiasm for Palin by a whole lot of women in 2008?
“Most” young women don’t want Todd Palin because they want someone to provide them with the horse, chariot, castle, kingdom, servants, and surrogates so they don’t have to get fat. Mr. Big is in all likelihood a homosexual. People also seem to overlook the inherent racism in the disdain for the Palin’s marriage/family life- Todd is part Native American (Eskimo) and therefore not white. Sarah Palin is just the arctic version of going off the reservation.
coisty: You are right. Sarah is the biggest hayseed in the room. Evidently the fact that she talks three feet over your head seems to confuse you.
Sarah, Buddy, Dubya, wws, Papa Ray and Yours Truly all had the same speech coach. I think you can add Eggplant to that list as well.
Piece of advice fer ya; Don’t try to take a job as a Niner Six Charlie; them that you deal with in that occupation would drive you
batty. Nor do I recommend Eleven Bushfoot.
Sarah on the other hand could handle a KIll Truck if the need arose and could certainly be a good Mud Girl for Haliburton. And be outstanding on the wire line for Schlumberger. Which she would call Shoe Lum Burger like it says to do in the Bible.
Like it’s corollary, lust, hate is a form of idolatry which transforms you into the thing you hate as its fascination and rage consume you. Anger is the emotion that informs us that we have witnessed or suffered an injustice, and gives us the energy to redress that injustice and/or drive it’s perpetrator away (killing him counts). As our society increasingly insists that even well modulated displays of anger are offensive and unacceptable, anger, which is natural to mankind is displaced into forms of violence which are acceptable even as they are denied, glorified even as they are condemned. Thus the PC demand, to choose one example, that no word of criticism be whispered against Islam simultaneously champions the suicide bomber as a heroic freedom fighter.
You are over there, Father Malloy,
Where holy ground is, and the cross marks every grave,
Not here with us on the hill—
Us of wavering faith, and clouded vision
And drifting hope, and unforgiven sins.
You were so human, Father Malloy,
Taking a friendly glass sometimes with us,
Siding with us who would rescue Spoon River
From the coldness and the dreariness of village morality.
You were like a traveler who brings a little box of sand
From the wastes about the pyramids
And makes them real and Egypt real.
You were a part of and related to a great past,
And yet you were so close to many of us.
You believed in the joy of life.
You did not seem to be ashamed of the flesh.
You faced life as it is,
And as it changes.
Some of us almost came to you, Father Malloy,
Seeing how your church had divined the heart,
And provided for it,
Through Peter the Flame,
Peter the Rock.
72. coisty:
A good thread at Auster’s site on Palin:
A QUESTION FOR PALIN SUPPORTERS
BTW needing to write on her hands the talking points she’s been repeating for ages is just another sign that she’s winging it or doesn’t really understand what she’s talking about.
She wrote five words on her hand, but spoke a few thousand. How many words can a teleprompter hold? Unlimited? ANd who bring TWO telprompters and a lectern to an elementary school? NOT Palin, right? And speaking of elementary school visits, but President “NOT Palin” read “My Pet Goat” without a teleprompter?
Almost forgot: Sarah’s phrase “Death Panels”
not only got those things stricken from the record but also monkey-wenched (er, wrenched that is) the health care conspiracy.
Biggest two words since a man thought to be an amiable dunce said “Evil Empire”.
I’ll lay you five bucks to a sackful of doughnut holes that the objections, both left and right, to both phrases and both personalities reflect the same autoproctological disorder.
Habu has this one right.
Long enduring hatred will burn you up.
His advice about getting revenge instead of hating is very sound.
I’ll point out that it requires the hater to have been harmed by the object of hatred.
Many folks today say they “hate” a person with excessive casualness when they realy mean: dislike, detest, fear, etc. instead of a visceral deeply felt hatred that will motivate a person to get revenge.
If the object of your hatred never did anything to you or yours, you need to grow up, remove the chip(s) from your shoulder(s) and move the object of your scorn to the “dislike”, “detest”, “disgust”, etc. categories instead of “hate”.
I don’t hate anyone. I don’t sweat the small stuff. Much of the big stuff that would cause me to hate is self inflicted, random bad luck, or if you prefer, an act of G-d.
Differentiating the small from big is called wisdom, and I’m still working on that with vigor.
To Habu’s quote: “revenge is very good eaten cold…”
I’ll add: “…and served in 175 grain HPBT dollops!”
Sullivan and Olberman inhabit different worlds. Fifty years from now, when Olberman will only remembered, if at all, as an answer to a daytime quiz show question, Sullivan will still matter to some people. He is a citizen of the Republic of Letters by virtue of letters patent issued by Magdalene College Oxon, The Atlantic and Harvard where he studied under Harvey Mansfield. The actual quality of his contributions over the last 8 to 10 years is irrelevant.
Olberman is an argument for a shareholder’s revolt in corporate governance equivalent to the Tea Party revolt in political governance. Olberman destroys value. To me he symbolizes Management unzipping its fly at the sweaty masses who pay the bills. He is there because it pleases them to keep him there.
The insecure Bourgeoisie women whiskey describes hate Sarah and Todd Palin because they fear that she will show how shallow they are. They may dream that they are Lady Di but in their bones they are merely Keeping Up Appearances. They are no better than the pretentious Hyacinth Bucket. In their minds the Palins are no better than Rose and Onslow.
The breadth and durability of the damage done to Palin is impressive. I have heard from people who are from all points on the political spectrum reflexive denunciations of her delivered with all the certitude and reflexiveness of well crafted agitprop. “She could not name a newspaper she reads.” That is said by people who themselves stopped buying newspapers 5 years ago. People who pride themselves on their reasoned analysis of any problem fall into the trap. It can happen to any of us.
Why do men obsess over women, blaming them for our failures or attributing our triumphs to the inspiration of a Muse? It is an old story and often the most common of us are inspired to reach far, even beyond our capacity. Habu was right on this. There is always a woman, art tells us so.
We need more love in this world. Because ultimately that is what life is and without that there is nothing.
Thomas Drew,
Hate does serve a purpose. It can focus and marshal our resources. Professionally used it does not detract from reasoned analysis. The dangerous emotion that it is often confused with is contempt. That is an indulgence that will blind. We should fight to achieve Victory over an Enemy not to Prevail over an Adversary. We should not be so arrogant as to assume that we merely have to chastise the ignorant. It is a very short step from that to an inversion in which the elites who despise the masses that they know decide to appease the superior wisdom of the Other.
#73,
Great comment! Wow, very impressed. And I’m a baby boomer but can still recognize profound insight when I stumble across it.
When you were describing the type of woman that Papa Ray mentioned, the low-maintenance, level-headed type, I immediately recognized both my daughter and my sister. Both have a great, very strong relationship (mutual respect) with their fathers and both enjoy the company of men and don’t expect them to be like women.
The only caveat I would offer is that neither is into mens’ activities, though they are comfortable with mens’ interests.
And your thoughts into the dynamics driving the various attitudes toward Palin were profoundly insightful.
I’ve had a couple periods of life wherein i had to make a few speeches –or presentations before a good-sized roomful of mostly strangers. I found that taking a written speech to the lectern or podium is a bad idea –creates a little note of anxiety that if you draw a blank you’ll have to read for your place –and split seconds count when the idea is not so much to be perfect but to have your memorable points be your high points, not your low points.
Reading the thing is just lousy –OK for info dissemination at a trade convention, pis spoor for politics, sales, and the hortatory effect. Going out with zippo props raises that little anxiety that can easily become the self-fullingest of self-fulling prophecies, that of ‘what if i draw a blank?’
I found that about five key words, the keys to prompt the riff each section of the speech that any speech will break down into, was the best method.
A key word, the topic or theme, writ on a card, hand, napkin, or anything that will be in your sight cone, not just alleviates the blank-out, but having the words eliminates the anxiety running thru your mind –the ”i hope i remember the next part” competing with the thoughts you’re voicing to the crowd –that both causes a freeze, because you already know it might and are thus already partly frozen in one part of your mind -AND draws down on your breezy cheer and confidence that you’ll be OK, and replaces it with a little whiff of tightness, seen in the face and posture –and heard in the voice.
me n’ Sarah bof done found de bes’ way ta do it!
***
PS –twoby is right –even if your topic is ‘my life’ –which NOBODY knowsthe material better than you do, you ARE the material –the speech needs a dramatic arc, and you’ll want to keep the order of your chapters handy so you don’t have to think about anything but connecting to the crowd while you’re out there.
The points written on hand… this is such a non-thing.
It is a way to store some pointers in memory. One does not have to look at the hand to recall the main points. Just the physical act of writing it does the trick. Some people do it on paper, some people on hand (usually). In my school years, I did it not to have a rescue cheat, but to combine visual and pressure data as sort of a “store” command. Worked pretty well. I could also visualize the hand with the writing without looking at it.
@47 Papa Ray
That’s the spirit!
@64 whiskey
I don’t deny that there are profound differences between men and women. Which is all to the good, believe it or not. But we don’t inhabit a different world and the fact is we have more in common with each other than with anything else on the planet. You can cherry-pick dumb remarks by women like Patty Murray or the directors of NOW from here to kingdom come and I still say they don’t speak for me and what’s more the so-called gender gap is a liberal stalking horse that should have been sent to the glue factory a long time ago.
Buddy: off topic. But earlier reference to Galen at Townhall. Dated by now but in past columns department when his name pops up.
Also off topic: I am convinced that the latest
stock marke jitters are a reflection of furrin
difficulties, not more trouble here at home.
Not that we are out of the financial woods, but nice to know where the incoming originates. Plumb important too.
Hmm, time for me to perform Saturday night abolutions a wee bit early. Will check back in when hot water depleted.
I don’t. Intellect? You cannot be serious, he is not even coherent most of the time. Ewww, that part makes me ill. No, I do not watch this type. I cannot join in it. I find it reductive from both sides. Reason must prevail or I cannot even watch them for a short time. That is why I like Krauthammer, he deconstructs with a cool detachment and is quite thorough with it.
whiskey @ 5:
Not the ones I know that are the least conservative. In fact, they like her for the reasons you say they should hate her. You may be correct about Liberal wymens though. I think you are over reaching again, pal.
heyyoukids…… @ whatever: “Harden the frakk up!” Too funny!
re: Palin from all – I recommend that some read “Odd Girl Out” by Rachel Simmons. From the description:
My personal take on all the Sarah Palin bashing from certain groups of women is that we are dealing with immature social constructs such as those described by Simmons. I read the book trying to understand my then teenage daughter and what was going on with her. The knowledge from the book allowed me to ask the ‘right’ questions. Many of these girls treat the successful, good-looking other females as the ‘odd girl out’. They make them ‘the other’ as a means of bolstering their own feelings of inferiority. Often, the best looking girl in a group is treated the worst. This makes for a toxic mix that must be defused if it is not to do real damage to the individuals. IOW, all this Palin bashing is because she is ‘the pretty girl’ and does not really come from any principled position about political belief or moral philosophy.
i used to love Ronald Reagan’s speeches –one of the things that tickled me to do was watch for the quick, deft, almost invisible way he slipped his little notecard out of the same inside jacket pocket with the same motion at the same time every time he spoke. He’d do it just at the point the applause was cresting, and would always use the motion of waving at the crown and then lowering his arm to slip the item out onto the lecturn. –it was just so professional –the master at his work.
***
(thanks, Dave –hope you right –i’m buying in here –bleeve it or not, intel & microsft –feels like the 90s, hey! but watch those two –you’ll see whut i mean –)
Some people do it on paper, some people on hand (usually).
The use of a palm-sized aide-memoire goes back a long way. When I was in grad school, I had a part-time job with the Jonathan Edwards Center, transcribing Edwards’s handwritten sermon notes for publication of his previously unpublished sermons. Edwards used good-quality rag-based paper (quite expensive in the mid-18th century), which he cut down to sheets that would fit in the palm of his hand. He sewed these sheets together to form small booklets for writing out his sermon notes. They are not easy to read because his handwriting is very small. He also compiled his own set of symbols for such common words as “Christ,” “God,” “Church,” “world,” etc. to save space. But his sermon notes are meticulously organized under numbered heads, making it easy to follow the flow of his thought. Given Edwards’s effectiveness as a preacher during the Great Awakening– and his later work as a missionary to the Stockbridge Indians on what was then the Massachusetts frontier– it’s hard to fault him for using written notes the size of a modern index card. And according to contemporary reports, Edwards had no difficulty making eye contact with his congregants, as many people said they felt he could see straight into their souls.
But yea, points on hand is so archaic and telemprompter is so in, hi tek and kewl!
/sarc
You know, all this nitpicking about Palin is just opportunistic mudslinging, which by now we should all realize is the Left’s most highly developed art form. If she was a pacifist who supported Obamacare and believed in AGW the Left would be trying to turn learning disabilities into political capital. They hate her because she’s a conservative. It’s that simple. All the things they supposedly despise about her – her family, her faith – they would just as readily praise if her political agenda fell in line with their own aims.
I’ve done some public speaking myself, back in the days when I was absorbed in identity politics, and there’s nothing unusual about having a note or two, whether on an index card or the palm of your hand, just to make sure you stay on track and make all the necessary points. Again, this obsessive criticism of Palin is just mudslinging for its own sake. And considering that Obama, who’s supposedly the greatest orator since Lincoln, can’t even address a grade school audience without a teleprompter, it’s pretty pathetic mudslinging at that.
James Lipton of Inside the Actors Studio has made a nice living with the stack of index cards that he brings to each interview. He and others have parodied it. buddy larsen regarding the need to prepare and focus on key concepts is correct and any good politician or trained speaker, newscasters and politicians and business tycoons included will vouch for that. This is a skill that is highly prized in industry. In the 20th century ambitious businessmen joined the Toastmasters not only as a social networking club but to practice a craft.
Recently I joined about a dozen others from the American Red Cross in Greater New York at the opening of the Nasdaq. My smiling face was among those flashed on the outside of the building over Times Square. Our head of Public Affairs got to say a few nice words and press a button. What was impressive was how the person in charge of this little ritual for the Exchange introduced her by talking about charity and Haiti for five minutes without a piece of paper before him. Most people couldn’t do it.
I have had to address the troops at morning quarters and I have taught. Public speaking takes preparation, it is work. Professionals simplify and bring less paper with them. As Churchill noted it takes more time to prepare and memorize a short good speech than to read a long dull one. When I was best man at a wedding I did get one of those old fashioned stacks of green folding computer print out, that tells you how long ago this was, and threatened to read my speech from it. Then I dropped it with a thud and toasted the couple.
My guess is that in a year it will be a punch line for Conservatives to pretend to read notes written in odd places and the year after everyone will do it. If Obama sinks as fast as some think though the Left may do it first.
Usually I comment under another name. But I want to say a few things that usually I would never say. So I’ll be anonymous, this once.
This is about Sarah Palin.
People who say she is not smart enough to be President astonish me. I think I am pretty good at spotting very intelligent people. (BTW, that includes quite a few here on BC.) And I would bet a bundle that she is highly intelligent. (Here’s what I would usually never say: My IQ is in the top 99.997%, I have graduate degrees, have taught at universities and been successful in business. And have been around lots of extremely bright people. Many were in academia, most were not.)
Sarah Palin does not have a shred of pretentiousness. She is indifferent to status and status symbols. But neither of these reflect on her intelligence. Sharp? She out-negotiated Big Oil! She’s terrifically smart. But more important, her character is sterling, her values couldn’t be better, and she has real courage. Underestimating her is a big mistake.
True, she is beautiful. So what? Women don’t need to be jealous of her. She is never going to look at any guy but her husband. Thatcher was a good-looking woman too, with a good, beloved husband. Good looks do no harm, and are a net plus.
As a woman, I’m very conservative and not easily fooled. Also a bit reserved. Yet when I first saw Sarah on TV, the night that McCain introduced her to us, I laughed, I cried, I even jumped up and down and clapped. Then emailed my friends about her. I understood what a gift to the country she was.
In time, I predict that most people will come to understand that.
This is the kind of jewel that a nation may get once in a generation. It would be a great loss to waste this leader.
Lotm –LOL –good one –bringing in a thick sack of notes and then dumping ‘em for a toast –slick, slick –
***
anon lady –you’re not alone –in your reaction to that first speech –on the tarmac review stand. I like everyine had been hearing her name and had seen a brief clip or two on tv or net, but had never heard her speak or say anything ‘serious’. I sat in front of the tv that day –long blue, covered with the glum context of all my faves having dropped out and poor old ancient mariner McCain with his broken arms and nonplussing quirks up against this smooth strange languid Obama operative –and watched her speak for the first time, and reacted pretty much as you did. well, i didn’t jump up right away, but i could not stop from welling up and spilling tears. My youngest walked into my office about halfway and asked me what was the matter why did i have tears in my yes. I said, sweetheart, we just won the election. She watched with me awhile, and agreed.
fooey.
Re: Palin’s IQ: When you are trying to gauge a person’s intellect through speeches and interviews, which is almost exclusively what the general public witnesses of political figures nowadays (on a previous thread commenters were lamenting the lack of actual SCHOLARLY books authored by today’s pols … all we seem to get are memoirs), it is a very narrow slice of what comprises intellect. Verbal facility and mental agility are not unimportant, but in and of themselves they are not guarantees of especially high intellect. They could just be what amounts to glibness.
The way you try to separate the glib from the truly smart & articulate is to take the person off-script (and off teleprompter, for that matter). Reveal the glib person for the carney huckster they are IOW. OTOH if you are dealing with a smart and not-so-articulate person, or a smart and inconsistently articulate person (i.e. would need training to come across as articulate every time), playing “gotcha” is only going to make them come across worse than they really are.
Add in the additional factors of not just tough but downright hostile interviews and selective editing, and you can make just about anyone look like a nincompoop.
All that said, if you are aware of the interview gimmicks and not outright prejudiced against the interviewee, you may still get a general sense of where they fall intellectually if you have several sample interviews and speeches to draw from. My general sense is that Palin is not the sharpest knife in the drawer but she’s sharp enough for the Oval Office. What’s more, I get the impression that she has good character and even better instincts, things that are indispensable to people who want to serve (as opposed to rule) in high executive positions.
Palin to me is a WYSIWYG. The real puzzle is Obama. I can’t decide whether he’s a moderately intelligent but highly glib person, or a highly intelligent and highly articulate person. Or a highly articulate? glib? person only in highly controlled circumstances. The hermetically sealed media treatment of him makes it difficult for me to determine any of this.
But what I am convinced of is that *he* certainly believes he’s the sharpest knife in the drawer. That this self-regarded ginsu of ginsus is also evidently a man of low character is not good for any of us.
Re: Palin’s HQ (hottie quotient): One of my favorite anecdotes was when David Frum (no Palin fan, if you were not keeping track) accused her of deliberately sending out “sexual signals” with her wink(s).
The nuttiness of the comment is quite a shame, because I actually had a brief e-mail exchange with Mr. Frum several years ago and found him to be exceedingly civil and thoughtful.
It’s just that the comment reminded me of nothing so much as Monty Python:
“She turned me into a newt! (beat, quietly and sheepishly) …. I got better.”
Some people used to bash Bob Hope for his large staff of writers and advance men seeking out local humor. However, those critics
could never, ever come up to delivering
like Old Ski Nose.
He also used 3 by 5 cards. That is 3 feet by 5 feet. Called them his Idiot Cards. Had a man in the audience hold them up one at a time in a prearranged sequence.
And if something went haywire, he improvised.
Just like The Gipper and like Sarah.
All these aids are nice. Still takes talent to use them to good effect. Yes, that pertains to Obama and his excessive use of teleprompter too. Let us not join our opponents in denying serious opposition.
Now to round up the Pinkerton Posse to find out who Ticked is. I’ll do that manana.
Back to Andrew Sullivan: an interesting comment by Gregory Koster over at American Digest in explanation of Sullivan’s recent tantrums:
1. Under present law, AS’s HIV infection makes him ineligible for citizenship, or even permanent residence.
2. Let AS go back to Britain, and he is dead. The jihadists have not forgotten, nor forgiven, his howlings against them in the days when AS worshipped Geo. W. In London, he’d be beaten or worse, and he knows this.
3. AS has written that his last visa here will expire in March 2011 unless something changes.
4. There’s only one way something can change. Even if the law isn’t changed, The One can wave his magic wand (Holder) and AS will stay in this country. Law? What does Sully care for law? Hain’t he got the Acting US Atty for Western Mass. under his thumb?
5. The price for this devil’s bargain is complete subservience to The One. The pumps the Dutch use to keep their polders clear of water have less suction than AS is using to The One.
6. Let AS gain permanent residency, and he will go haring off on some other idiotic quest, full of pretension and bunk. The One, skilled in such judging, knows this, and hence will keep AS dangling as long as possible. Besides, it’s fun: “There’s Sarah, Rover. Sic ‘em!” It’s a joy for The One to watch blind fanaticism in his service. The One reads AS’s blog, smirking and nodding his head at every paragraph. David Bradley appreciates this, as does AS. AS is giving Bradley exactly what he wants. AS’s skull and crossbones will fly at THE ATLANTIC until The One is canned at the polls by the plain people, or AS gets permanent residency, whichever comes first.
http://www.americandigest.org/mt/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=11796
Thoughts or reactions, anyone?
As a Subject Of The Queen, could not Sullivan
hop up to the Dominion of Canada rather than
chance Londonistan?
@96 bogie wheel
Very astute comments, especially your observation about the effects of hostile interviews – IIRC Camille Paglia described Katie Couric as having a narrow, agenda-driven mind and moreover called her the stupidest interviewer she’d ever met. Personally, I think Ms. Couric turned her husband’s death into a cash cow, but then I’m a cynical old shrew…
btw I couldn’t help but notice your use of the name Mary to illustrate a point in an earlier post – I don’t mind telling you I liked that a lot
As a Subject Of The Queen, could not Sullivan hop up to the Dominion of Canada rather than chance Londonistan?
He’d be taking his chances with socialized medicine in either place. The NHS might well do him in faster than the jihadis.
A late-thread correction that matters if anyone cares to delve into the original literature related to the Bowles/Choi article.
Historically “sociologists” have been intellectually and politically opposed to seeking evolutionary explanations for human behaviors. E. O. Wilson in 1976 crystallized the early efforts to explain human behavior evolutionarily under the term “sociobiology.” More recently this research tradition has marched under the banner of “evolutionary psychology.”
Bowles appears to be an eclectic researcher, but most sociologists are doctrinaire deniers of evolution’s impact on human behavior, and doctrinaire leftists as well. The two views are complementary because if humans are evolutionarily hard-wired for many traits, e.g., selfishness, nepotism, then the left’s project to perfect society through governmental controls is a fool’s errand, unless as everyone at BC knows, the goal is control rather than perfection.
Andrew Sullivan is a fool and a half but his decline has been a sad thing to watch. In the days following 9/11 I was desperate for news and comment but knew little or nothing about the internet and blogs. I’d seen an article Sullivan had written in the NYTimes magazine and googled up his name, which led me to his blog. I read it every day for weeks and through him learned of a new blog called The Command Post, which rapidly became my new daily haunt. And it was through the Command Post that I learned of wretchard and the Belmont Club. (thank you jackson zed, wherever you are) Recently I was cleaning out some desk drawers and found an index card on which I’d copied something from wretchard’s old site, about the subjective nature of historical inquiry and the crazy fact that it worked. Anyway the point is even though Sullivan is a nutcase, he’s done some good in spite of himself, at least as far as I’m concerned.
But he’s turned out to be an idiot all the same. If, as PA Cat suggests, he’s got some unholy alliance going with the powers that be, it wouldn’t surprise me.
ridgerunner/102
evolution’s impact on human behavior
… is a recent phenomenon, initiated by publication of Darwin’s theories.
I suspect… you meant evolution of human behavior?
If that is refuted, then the leftist worldview and a denial of evolution of human behavior are doctrinally contradictory.
They would be complementary if the tacit goal is control.
But, knowing that the capacity for a cognitive dissonance of the leftist post-modernist thinkers is without bounds, then they can hold a view that they can “make people better”. They just need the “power” to accomplish it.
2×4,
The left’s powers of convolution and self-contradiction are a Gordian knot, for sure.
I was never that caught up in the whole Sarah Palin fervor. My indifference towards McCain’s candidacy turned to disdain in August 2008 not when he nominated her as his running mate (the only smart thing he seemed to do on the campaign trail) but when he tried to play ‘the Russkies are coming’ card to save his failing campaign and his buddy Misha the Tie-Eater. McCain’s aides rushing to leak to the press how dumb Palin allegedly was confirms my low opinion of them as a bunch of cowards along for the ride, too arrogant to look in the mirror for their own failure to run a good campaign. If they’d had balls they would have told McCain to vote against TARP and he instantly would have picked up ten points. Instead McCain played it safe and ‘for the good of the country’ bailed out Wall Street, providing zero reason to vote for him other than opposition to The One. (Incidentally, Jerome Corsi’s The Obamanation is on sale in Moscow, under the title Obama: Cult of Personality. What else could a Russian publisher choose besides the Stalin reference?)
I do not think Sarah Palin will make a good President, both because of her polarizing nature and due to the Washington establishment’s inevitable insane overdrive to undermine her, like Newt’s downfall in 95-96 after leading the Republican Revolution. I think she is much better suited to play the role of the Pasionara of the Right, driving the Left and folks like Sully into fits of insanity, and exposing them that way.
I’m also concerned that some Soros types will try to funnel amounts into the Tea Party movement because they know Obama’s only chance of re-election is to pull a Clinton in 92′ and split the center-right opposition. It is far better for Tea Partyers to seize the Republican Party by the horns than to run a third party candidacy likely doomed simply because of the first past the post system and the deeply entrenched nature of the Dems. The Dems could run a yeller dawg and get him 35% because SEIU will find a way to round up (pay for) the votes.
MC, what do you think, would Palin make a nice stand in for that well-endowed lady who in the famous painting leads the charge against the Bastille?
comment deleted
geeze louise @ 107,
That is exactly why, after 9-11, the U.S. should have seized the Saudi oil fields as compensation, and have been done with it. No nation building in two hopeless countries, just simple Old Testament pay back. Much, much cheaper and psychologically healthier.
I find it interesting to note the kind of person that the Democrats go for in a big way and the kind that Republicans go for in a big way.
It may at some level, explain the cognitive dissonance that arises when each side attempts to deliver its core message.
Sarah Palin, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Gerald Ford, all have an affability factor that is readily apparent. There is a marked lack of pretense, a “genuine” quality that is endearing to the “rules followers” and their natural instincts to like and admire “genuine” people.
Bill Clinton, John Edwards, Ted Kennedy, …notorious philanderers, with notable attachments to horrific stories that included: cheating on a wife with incurable cancer, a child with his mistress that he tried to weasel out of with an aide taking responsibility; the death of a naked mistress left alone after drunk driving her to her death; and serial groping and sexual harassment charges of subordinate women, who were then given promises of advancement in their careers.
Al Gore/John Kerry, unserious students who adopted a “signature” issue, the former…a science he didn’t and doesn’t understand, which has been exposed as a Weather Y2K. The latter, an anti-military passion play complete with planted memories “seared” in his brain.
Jimmy Carter/Barack Obama…the “Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, won’t you be my neighbor facade”, covering the intense need to constantly grandstand and display the overarching narcissism that lies beneath.
The “rules breakers”, the “revolutionaries” in constant revolt against the “way things are”…will overlook any character flaw, whitewash any crime, bury any indiscretion, …as long as their candidate is attacking the status quo ante.
The rules followers, are not drawn to those who speechify their thoughts with great rhetorical flourish. They don’t seem to care about fumbling words or malapropisms. They don’t care about grades or Ivy League pedigrees.
So, to each side…the opponent appears either stupid…or venal.
Rules followers vs. rules breakers live by a different code. And the visceral reaction that one gets, is based upon whether you live in one camp or the other.
Rules followers like their lives to be neat, orderly, to have good and decent people in them. Honor, integrity, living by a code…makes sense to them.
Rules breakers want to expand the narrative. To preach to people about how to make things “better”. They are constantly in need of finding something “wrong”, so that they can “theorize” how to “fix” it.
If you don’t see “their” way…you are “stupid”, “not nuanced”, “greedy”, “homophobic”, xenophobic, racist.
Our Andy Sullivan, had a metamorphosis…rare, but not unheard of in either direction. He went from a rules follower, to a rules breaker.
And now, he attacks from the left in the usual fashion. Which includes, the anti-America, anti-Israel jaunts and jigs. Jewish leftists are given a “pass”, but, the net effect is the same.
Hate is easy. Understanding why…not so much.
Geeze Louise/107
hold a view [belief] that they can “make people better”
An oblique ref to Serenity-Firefly, FYI.
It is also the basis of marxist … can’t use philosophy … crapulence. For some reason, it always ends up with a lot of people dead. Well, yes, they see it kinda like making omelettes.
And that is regardless the level of tech. Tech may make breaking eggs somewhat easier and more remote, automatized and clinical.
Sure new tech always causes frictions on the political scene, mostly by the nature of who has it and who does not and wants it bad to make better omelettes. But once we get into time control, then the real fun would start.
As for ME, the simple fact is that oil is a weapon. Though US imports only about 16% of oil from ME, there is no reason why it should be so. The Bakken fields hold 3 times as much oil as the whole fooggen ME. Mind boggles. True, if US was reliant on domestic, CAN and MEX oil only, the ME oil would be bought by Japan, India, China and Europe. So the sand oil tick would be still expanding their volume. No easy answers.
We need something like ZPE, then the ticks would go splat.
Maybe, I was incorrect. Keith Uberturd maybe the “Biggus Dickus” and Obumlus is the stupid emperor in the ‘Life of Brian’
See:
http://tinyurl.com/ybpkbqr
rr@108: the U.S. should have seized the Saudi oil fields as compensation
If we were Kings in a perfect world, but, more realistically, the Iraq War should have been conducted as a war and not an intervention. Fallujah never should have happened the way it did.
2×4@110: I missed the Serenity reference. I don’t disagree with anything you write. Technology modifies the political environment only in tenor and focus. My comment was more of a stress fracture reflecting boredom with the subject of Gay Marriage. Hopefully the public debate will be sharpened and prioritized and re-channeled within more suitable venues (as per JMH I believe) before technological advance forces the issue. (I am half way through the time control interview with Art Bell – I haven’t formed all my impressions/conclusions other than to note that Anderson is speaking very carefully.)
What worries/angers me is the future conduct of Middle Eastern states who now operate with a level of concentrated sovereign wealth that is effectively self-sustaining, courtesy of the short-sighted and narrow policies emerging from this country.
PS to marymcl – agree about Couric (all of it – funny you should mention that) and still think Palin should do herself a favor and stay in journalism, but my IQ barely registered on the radar screen. Which I say despite the observation that Ms Anonymous has a writing style very reminiscent of yours.
Geeze Louise @112,
You make my point. We choose not to be a King, but instead the World’s Janitor.
Geeze Louise/112
What worries/angers me is the future conduct of Middle Eastern states
Point in case: Iran’s Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Monday that Iran is set to deliver a “punch” that will stun world powers during this week’s 31st anniversary of the Islamic revolution, AFP reported.
“The Iranian nation, with its unity and God’s grace, will punch the arrogance (Western powers) on the 22nd of Bahman, February 11, in a way that will leave them stunned,” Khamenei, who is also Iran’s commander-in-chief, told a gathering of air force personnel…
Likely: A nuclear test.
I don’t disagree, ridgerunner, but as Wretchard and L3 have emphasized, the course reversal will be (semi) long and (fully) tough. I do think it is obvious at this point that our *leaders* will not get us through this period of history. The future of this country is squarely in the hands of We The People.
For better or worse.
I am rather ambivalent about Palin, except the disgust I have for people who diss her the same way they did Bush or Cheney: not debating the substance of whatever issue was presented, but rather over the presentation or the presenter.
One thing that bothers me about Palin though is that she cannot have it both ways. She cannot claim to be the caring, traditional conservative mother of 5 and at the same time be jetting all over the place making speeches, etc. IMO being a good mother (at least in the traditional sense) entails sacrifices, and no good mother could possibly also be President. Sorry NOW. Sorry Sarah. In this sense she reminds me of Angelina Joli.
For those of you who haven’t already seen it, Olbermann’s rant about Scott Browns election is not to be missed….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLRhk-0EiZE
2×4: “will punch the arrogance (Western powers) on the 22nd of Bahman, February 11, in a way that will leave them stunned”
I’ll defer to the A-team to handle that one, but I have to assume this will be a game-changer. I still don’t have a clear picture of who is setting foreign policy in this White House – Gates, Clinton, Axelrod, Price, Power, JCS? I guess we may find out shortly. We could be at war by Valentine’s Day.
Funny things happen on the way to the quorum.
Coisty, its called “off the cuff” for a reason.
Sarah Palin is modern woman personified in a way many modern females abhor, admire and ultimately must respect. She sounds like the “church lady” character to Tina’s Feyfem. But unlike the Church lady Governor Palin’s stated sentiments make sense.
Only those seeking to find dis-ingeniousness are unaware of the sanctimonious nonsense of that which they seek. Like the claim Palin is a liar seeking to deceive. How fraudulent is the intellectual reach made to arrive at such stuff. C Hitchens lost esteem going there.
Why? Guilt by association?
LOL! Okay, that guy made my day!!!
heyyoukidsgetoffmylawn @ Feb 9, 2010 – 7:46 pm:
Public figures occupy a professional space and a personal space. In the old days the two spaces had considerable overlap such that one could feel comfortable with both the professional and the private personas. That’s not true anymore.
One can agree, if not admire, the professional message, more specifically the political message, while exhibiting some, to significant, discomfort with the private context.
Palin, Clinton (Hillary and Bill), Limbaugh, Sanford, Huckabee, even Paul Ryan. The modern political bench is very schizoid in the disconnect between public and private.
Of course 24/7 media intermediation is a modern factor, which reinforces my earlier point that the judgment and common sense of We The People will make the critical difference – one way or another.
/end arm chair psychology/
I was in the ministry for several years, I’ve delivered hundreds of sermons, homilies and ferverinos. I used a single index card with a key phrase outline for most of those years. A senior pastor challenged me to get rid of the cards and speak totally without notes, which I did, and which worked – mostly. Nothing worse than stepping up to the pulpit and going blank, and having to deliver *something* on no notice. By the grace of God I pulled it out somehow, but brother, let me tell you, I’d rather have the notes.
I think that Palin has the right stuff internally to be president–likely too it helps that her hubby is a guy guy. Something to remember when we consider the wives of great men.
On policy what I like about Palin is that she understands the most important policy thing for the USA to do is to become energy independent.
Becoming energy independent pushes back to the far horizons all the problems that beset the USA today: government deficits, unstable money, moslem extremism, the vanishing future of space exploration.
that the USA needs to unwind the energy policies/politics/business models of the 1970′s.
Its really a shame that the O team’s ideological blinders prevent them from doing much that’s meaningful on the energy biz. And the energy biz is the most important thing the O team can work on. But now it looks like in the main — that work will be done by the next admin but only after the USA has piled on trillions of new debt.
To the O team’s credit however, they are wiring rural America for broadband–which will bring some truly great voices into the American talk fest and speed the dispersal from the cities.
On Speeches
Franklin Roosevelt obviously in his tenure gave many speeches. On the occasion of his son James giving one ,James inquired of the president what to do. FDR told him
Be sincere, be brief, be seated
Sound advice.
Dave: since you brought up the wireline of Shoe-Lum-Burger, might as well mention that I spent 12 years there. (’81 – ’93) That company’s got an amazing internal culture, as do a lot of oilfield companies. I would say it’s about as close as you can get to being in the military while not working for a government – and that applies to both the good AND the bad aspects. It did pay better, though.
And yeah, when I was doing perforating we handled RDX explosive charges almost every day. (commercial C4) At that time almost all of the management was ex-military and they set up a system they were most comfortable with. From the contacts I’ve kept it’s still about the same.
Regarding women’s reactions to Palin – it’s probably always going to depend on the personal baggage people are carrying with them. Bogie, I have known well a couple of women who fit exactly in the type of the cute girl who loves to hang around the boys and who can’t stand any competition being around. I think some of the animosity towards Palin comes from a secret suspicion that she’s that type, which quite naturally is a type other women have hated since they were all in middle school together.
On the other hand, my wife is *strongly* supportive of Palin and gets very angry at the attempts to drag her down, but of course she has her own baggage – she grew up in a family that had a small family business, and 3 sisters and 2 brothers. Dad ran it, and being an old fashioned kind of guy he always told the girls they had no sense for business and shut them out of it. Eventually, one of the brothers took it over and proceeded to make a hash out of it, probably because he’d been told since he was small that He Could Do No Wrong and he’d gotten to where he believed that. Didn’t matter when the girls (who still technically owned a share) tried to tell him they didn’t approve of what he was doing with it – what did they know?
So anytime she sees “the men know better” scenario playing out it sets her blood boiling, no matter what context it’s in.
And that just goes to show that in real people’s lives, the personal is almost always going to outweigh any general inclincations. For both sexes.
Far be it for me to agree with “Whiskey’s” fevered female conspiracy theory.
On the other hand, where one of the cars where I park for work has a “Women for Kerry” bumper sticker with the tag line “It’s Up to the Women, Vote!” What is that supposed to mean?
No, no, no, must . . . not . . . agree . . . with . . . anything . . . Whiskey is saying.
@59. Coisty:
“..out of her depth..”
Exactly what qualifications does Obama have?
Palin at least ran (the admittedly small) government of the State of Alaska. Obama had no experience, and it is showing.
He works real hard at looking serious but all I see is the quizzical expression that often accompanies the thought: “W.T.F. is going on?” His complete inability to think, or speak, on his feet leaves me wondering how he got the moniker “Great Orator”
But he’s turned out to be an idiot all the same. If, as PA Cat suggests, he’s got some unholy alliance going with the powers that be, it wouldn’t surprise me.
You know, marymcl…these rather stark and immediate “transitions” also leave me wondering.
Take for an example the Little Green Footfalls that crept into a hypothetical person’s boudoir one evening…and completely, wholly and utterly transformed …turned into a pod person…a hypothetical gentleman. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is up with that?
How does someone accomplish that complete reversal…overnight.
Don’t get me wrong…I understand how someone can evolve to a new position, either by being fed new information (which can be accurate, or in the nature of brainwashing…inaccurate)
Roger Simon, Ron Radosh, David Mamet, Dennis Miller, Robert Downey, Jr., David Horowitz…are prime examples.
Victor Davis Hanson was a registered Democrat at one time, I believe.
Charles Krauthammer was once a classic liberal.
The transformation came through the critical thinking necessary to weigh positions and find clarity of thought.
But, these microwaved “conversions” that infect the brain stem and cause personality disorders such that a gay man obsesses over the private parts of a female politician, and a warrior against radical Islam becomes all the rage…literally…of the frothing left…leaves me totally befuddled.
How does that happen? Does somebody “get to them”? With a threat? A promise?
I sure would love to hear some explanation…it doesn’t make an ounce of sense to me.
Jeez…so many great comments.
Can we bottle all this and sell it on the side of the roads of America?
I wish. Actually I wish we could mix it with the water supplies of all of America’s water districts and add a flavor of patrotism and immunity to PC and socialism.
Many millions need that.
Can women rule the world and ol’ gay perverts let them? Sometimes I wish for that. Except that women would want to help every single living thing on this planet and I don’t think that we could afford it.
My Mama with a forth grade education had more sense than all of our Congress, but she is gone and they will suffer from not knowing her or listening to her wisdom.
Now we have to suffer the new generation that wants to have their way and think that us ol’ foggies should stand aside. That is as it should be, even if they are not appriciated nor thought to be ready.
Read what one young lady has to say about this sorry state of affairs:
The torch has been passed to a new Generation..and it doesn’t include Racism
While I admire her spunk and her ambitions I want to let her know that the flag of racism has been carried for the last twenty years by the blacks in America, not by anyone else.
She will learn soon enough about the Sharptons, Jacksons and the liberals that want to keep racism alive and well.
And the feminists who want to keep the blame, hate and disdain going against the male of the species.
Papa Ray
Ticked:
If some American city got nuked, I think there’s a good chance that half of the Left would warm up to Sarah Palin. Why? She is seen as mean spirited and vindictive.
She is smart. She is effective. She is pretty. The main reason why the mainstream media fear her is because she is downright ferocious. The powers that be are simply not accustomed to having a hard-edged warrior princess in their midst.
I suspect Dick Morris is essentially correct – the Democrat party is terrified of Palin in terms of losing the white woman vote to her. Deep deep down, there’s an unspoken & powerful feeling among these women. Even among those that are currently boxed into ‘hating’ Sarah Palin because of the antithetical life they’ve created for themselves, the truth is that they would much more like to be like Sarah Palin than what they currently are. Palin is (seemingly) a good wife, a good mother, overtly sexual and respected by men (and this last one is the killer).
Look at how many of the white ‘go-getter’ type women of the workplace you encounter that explicitly reject their woman-ness. How many say with pride, “I don’t cook,” or make a showing of not displaying family photos on their desks: they almost scream out loud, I AM PROUDLY A BAD WIFE AND MOTHER AND I AM SO BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT IT MEANS TO HAVE A CAREER!
These women are unhappy with their choices – Palin shows them another way.
I don’t go out of my way to hate any person, place or thing much less a region, country or religion. That being said though some folks of a particular sytem of worship have forced me to hate them 24/7/365 by their actions. If these folks would settle down and just Co-exist with the rest of us in peace and harmony I wouldn’t have to hate anyone.
I believe though, this bunch thrives on hate and creating hate otherwise their lives would be empty except for the stoning of women and such.
Some folks make it not just easy to hate them but quite necessary to my survival.
Came to this thread late. A few comments on hate:
(1) Hate is in this way like love–it implies involvement, concern, IOW the opposite of indifference. You don’t hate what you’re indifferent to, just as you don’t love what you’re indifferent to.
(2) Hate means you are attached on some way to the object hated. Ditto for liking or love. Love and hate are opposites, while hate and indifference are mutually exclusive.
(3) As Shakespeare shows in Othello, hate and love are twins. Iago loves Othello–in his way, no “gay” explanation necessary because it doesn’t fit–and therefore Iago hates Othello.
(4) The real interest for me in all this lies in indifference, not hate. And in this I can’t think of anything more relevant than various forms of Buddhist meditation, particularly the twin-pair “vipassana” and “samadhi” forms of meditation. The second is the key, and it is meditation involving complete emptying of the mind of things that we desire and things that we are averse to. “Vipassana” meditation is the “minding mind” mediation, the perspective that monitors the maintenance of “empty-mind” meditation.
The result of this kind of mediation is that one is freed from both love and therefore hate. Some buddhists like to call is “going with the flow,” or “kindness,” or “nirvana.”
There are alternatives to hate, called “love,” and then there are detachments from hate (also from love or “desire”), and my single point in this post is that the significant difference is not between love and hate, but between detachment and non-detachment.
Sullivan switched from love to hate? If not predictable, at least very plausible.
Mr X
what do you think, would Palin make a nice stand in for that well-endowed lady who in the famous painting leads the charge against the Bastille?
Like you, I think she would make a god passionara for the teapatiers, though I don’t see her as a political leader, so far it wasn’t her who made her own way to be on the international scene, the GOP MacCain fetched her to add more supporters in his campain, that he need for his domestic image.
Now, if America’s policies would only be domestic, probably that she has her chance to gain the white house seat, but America has a wider influence, and from her interviews, we know that she is very weak on this aspect, and in such a global interference, she would be likely making some diplomatic faults, like her counterpart for the left, Obama, also like him, she would also be monitored, but I don’t expect her to be so docile though, therefore some paralysing clashes would happen with the state department end her “impulsivity”. I would rather appreciate these clashes with persons aware of the geopolitical stakes like Kenedy, Nixon or whatever great american leaders, but with Sarah, that would turn into an opera bouffe.
We have a candidate that could be compared to Sarah Palin as a media political star, Ségolène, but their difference is that Ségolène is a “political” animal, that gained her place by alliances and very well prepeared poker coups like a military to win a campain (BTW, her father was a colonel, and her fratery is also in military curriculum.
From her military background, we can say that she has the same moral familiy values as Sarah, (she has 4 kids, she still regrets that her former husband divorced, when you built a family you have to make all your possible to keep it alive)
Some people here labelled Ségolène as a medias opportunist, but after watching her activity for more than a couple of years, she is a determined person, that doesn’t abandon a fight, that won many battles, that défends her people economical situation (in Poitou she stirred heavens and grounds to keep the economical tissue alive and wealthy enough to resist to the big money crisis).
I voted Sarkozy, because he said he wanted to eliminate some big state priviledges, and would defend France interests abroad, but he just was a renegat, that wants to create more taxes and blah blah, while Segoléne managed a good job with what she has in her hands.
So like Sarah, she is good for domestic policies, though her skill to scenarise a strategy to win her agendas, is much more like of a warrior, and now, being from a socialist party or from a right party doesn’t make much difference, when you have to deal with a global world, because your possibility to advance your pawns is so little, and in n international context, I’m sure now, that Ségolene would be a state man too, she will defends France ever, and she is quite firm when she makes a decision, no tergiversations like our last decades politicians, included Sarkozy the blah blah and opportunist, she would fight with more energy and strategy, so, from a lefty woman, she is becoming the right woman, like her family bred her
Sorry, Whiskey, some women are good values
#109,
“Rules followers vs. rules breakers live by a different code. And the visceral reaction that one gets [toward S. Palin], is based upon whether you live in one camp or the other.
Rules followers like their lives to be neat, orderly, to have good and decent people in them. Honor, integrity, living by a code…makes sense to them.
Rules breakers want to expand the narrative. To preach to people about how to make things “better”. They are constantly in need of finding something “wrong”, so that they can “theorize” how to “fix” it.”
There’s much truth to that observation, liberals want to ‘fix’ what at root, they perceive to be life’s essential unfairness. Progressivism, indeed all ism’s that come from the left is, at base simply an infantile protest against existential reality’s inequality.
Conservatives accept it and its most thoughtful, even understand why reality must be constructed in that fashion.
Which brought to mind, Paradise Lost by John Milton.
And the angels that remained loyal to God, in their hearts, followed his direction in all things.
But the angels that followed Lucifer resonated to his cry when banished from Heaven; “Better to rule in hell than serve in heaven”.
Lucifer rationalized, to himself and others, that he could do a better job than God, that he could ‘fix’ things but in his heart of hearts it was lust for power wherein his motivation lay.
The left will deny the connection but cannot in honesty deny the fruits of its labor and “by their fruits you shall know them.”
Hand-writing, palm-reading
I had the gig of doing the “technology pitch” for prospective customers. 40 minutes on, plus 20 minute Q&A for small groups, twice a day 5 times a week. I used 11″X14″ photographic transparencies on an overhead projector (member those?). No text. This style permitted me to maintain constant eye-contact with the audiennce (and to ask questions of anyone who was about to doze off). $5M per box at stake.
I was more than a little anxious about being asked to go do my shtick at a breakfast honoring my boss Gene Amdahl and Fred Brooks, then head of computer science at NC State (co-inventers of the 360 series for IBM), which was to be attended by the dept. heads in Computer Science from Duke, UNC and NC State. 30 of’em plus Dr. Gene and Dr. Fred. Although I had my crib notes on my palm, I didn’t need to even glance at them. The doctors were all extremely cordial and interested.
Since this was the first time in years Gene and Fred had got together, after breakfast we were to have an informal get-together with some computer science students over at the Bourroughs-Welcome auditorium, which I had never visited.
And then both Gene and Fred asked if I’d do my presentation as a warm up. I figured it can’t be nearly as stressful as being grilled by the dept. heads. I thought maybe 25 of the geekiest would show. Wrong.
When they opened the curtain there were 900 computer nerds (SRO), from all 3 schools, waiting to hear those two icons of computer design holdforth. I asked myself, “what am I doin here.” Notes on palm are truly helpful in overcoming stagefright.
Like her or hate her, Palin has “it”, aka unmistakable presence. No big deal you’d might think, but you’d be wrong: I think the Walkers are her marketing people:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBle2l-MhWs&feature=related
And she definitely keeps walking forward no matter what.
BTW, anyone, I repeat, anyone can be President. That is the beauty of America. Only the elites among us think that the office is closed to a few. But if a B actor and a hat seller can become President and be among the greats, then who is to say that a mother of five, who hunts and fishes, speaks plainly and is a good-looking woman can’t be President and be a good one at that? It is not about smarts, it is about CHARACTER and the ability to judge the character of others. That is what makes for a great President. Mrs. P has that quality in spades. She may not be the smartest, but I would absolutely trust her as President to do the right thing and do what is in the best interests of our country even though it wouldn’t the most popular, or the ‘smart’ thing to do. And right now that will be a great improvement over the current occupant of the White House.
From what I understand of Segolene, if she could have kept her own house in order she would have had a much better chance of being given the chance to put la France in order.
That may be unfair, but it does seem to be how events played out.
Revelation 12:7-12
7And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. 8But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. 9The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.
10Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say:
“Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God,
and the authority of his Christ.
For the accuser of our brothers,
who accuses them before our God day and night,
has been hurled down.
11They overcame him
by the blood of the Lamb
and by the word of their testimony;
they did not love their lives so much
as to shrink from death.
12Therefore rejoice, you heavens
and you who dwell in them!
But woe to the earth and the sea,
because the devil has gone down to you!
He is filled with fury,
because he knows that his time is short.”
This fellow might be as good as Monty Python. Marie Claude what’s your take on this guy?
Iconic French Philosopher Falls for Literary Hoax
But why write on your palm? What’s wrong with the same notes on a napkin, or paper? That it’s a prop? But I like props! Like, fiddling with your glasses, shuffling a few papers, even checking off the points as you go. Maybe not appropriate to a Saint Crispin’s Day speech, but for a sit down interview? Er, well, still better than on your palm, I think. And if it’s just three or four words, heck, write them on little wooden blocks and set them up on a table in plain view. Or write them on two-foot wide cue cards and have them carried onstage by dancers dressed in red, white, and blue!
Regarding public speaking stories, I was once caught up, supposed to address a large, national assemblage of accountants (that’s like a exaltation of larks, only with suits) about the wonders of our particular technological marvel product and associated concepts, and was *promised* some thematic materials so that I could *prepare* something, and we arrived there without my getting the materials, and I was the next speaker and I still had not gotten the materials, so I swear to Buddah I grabbed a napkin and wrote down a few bullet points and key phrases, spoke for about fifteen minutes from that – and it was the best presentation I’ve ever given, was very well received. (OK, I’d been giving roughly the same speech four times a week for six months, but I did modify it for the audience, and I found I was more stimulated by the large audience rather than scared).
Hey, what do the Toastmasters have to say about writing on the palm? Are there still Toastmasters in the world?
http://www.toastmasters.org/
Well, they have a web site!
“All the things they supposedly despise about her – her family, her faith – they would just as readily praise if her political agenda fell in line with their own aims.”
NYT, “Americans Jailed in Haiti Plead for Aid From U.S.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/10/world/americas/10prisoners.html?th&emc=th
The NYT story is bad reporting, never providing much in the way of who, what, when, why, etc. regarding the people in jail. The real story, and the one that provides some elaboration of Richard’s post, is in the comments. If there was ever a window into the mind of the NYT readers, this is one.
Jewish neocons have been telling fellow Jews for some time that conservative Christians are the best friends of Israel and of Jews. This is driving the mainstream bonkers, since so many have so much invested in the opposite narrative. And they adhere to this narrative even as the left, in collaboration with the Islamists, is selling out Israel and Jews. But liberal Jews can’t give up the allegiance to the left and the old narrative, and they are trying to prove more and more that they are indeed good leftists and don’t deserve to be stereotyped as the left is stereotyping them.
Leon Wieseltier is a smart man. He sees what is happening, but he’s got his fist in the monkey trap and can’t get it out. The comments at TNR reveal the same confusion as those to the NYT article.
Charles @ 140: Lévy is actually an anti-Marxist and pro-American.
What he was doing blasting Kant I have no idea, and to fall for such a parody is trés embarrassing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard-Henri_L%C3%A9vy#New_Philosophers
wws, are you talking of her own family ? she isn’t the one that had an affair with a journalist, her husband did, and she made him pay it in entering into the political scene, so far it was him who was supposed to lead the socialist party in the campain for Elysées !
But, I know that in America she wouldn’t have had the chance to become a political figure because of her family divorce, here that has never been an argument to keep persons out of political life, then Mitterand would have never been our president too. We consider that it is better to be in adequation with your ouwn feelings than to show off a supposed “moral” behaviour for gaining voices ! eh the french exception !
Charles, I have always considered BHL as a philosophical hoax too, so I’m glad he was taken “la main dans le sac” !
@135 Geoffrey Britain wrote: “Progressivism, indeed all ism’s that come from the left is, at base simply an infantile protest against existential reality’s inequality”
That is absolutely, brilliantly, laconic. May I have permission to use it?
anton/146
It’s a 1/3 of the definition, that form a progression (the real progressivism)
2. Some people are more equal than others.
3. Do as I say, not as I do.
That wraps it up.
68. buddy larsen:
Well, i found it –i found the depth that Palin’s out of: well. Well depth.
http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/93551/
……….
The the opposition of democrats to coastal drilling is based on a lie that’s darn near as profound as the the lies around their global climate change policies.
The opposition to coastal drilling is based on an oil spill in the santa barbara channel in 1969. After that spill– Drilling along the east and west coasts was curtailed.
there was a problem
Starting in the late 90′s birds started turning up dead again along the coast in santa barbara.they were covered with oil. the trouble was there were no ships broken up or oil derricks blowing.
where’d the oil come from that killed the birds?
as the bird kill numbers mounted in the next couple years local public pressure for an investigation increased. In 2005 a scientific investigation was launched.
Four years later the results were announced.
There were oil seeps in the santa barbara channel that leaked oil naturally into the channel and onshore. more oil was laying and rotting off the beaches of santa barbara than lay on the ocean floor after the valdez oil spill.
Of course nothing could be done. After all it was a natural oil spill.
If the oil people were allowed to drill–they could lower the pressure on the natural seeps–so less oil would leak out.
But that wouldn’t quite do either since drilling to lessen oil pressure on the seeps would still be–drilling for oil off the coast.
The report was an embarrassment. It didn’t fit the paradigm. It never made it out of the scientific journals. Rather the report was buried. The first two links in this article link to the scientific work.
Never mind that offshore oil drilling platforms are so much better than oil platforms of the
1960′s that they have taken hurricanes for 20 years in the gulf of mexico without incident. no matter that aerial pictures of gulf of mexico away from the coastal drillers will often show numerous oil slicks from natural oil seeps — especially near the coast of florida where oil drilling is banned.
Out in the blodsphere in an NRO piece
entitled
The Four Horsemen of the Obamacalypse
there exists a summation of an article from the FT outling obama and his current operation.
Another referenced piece is located here:
http://tinyurl.com/yjy2vtm
from the site The Washington Note.
The author felt this topic would begin to develop significant chatter going forward.
110. twobyfour:
The Bakken fields hold 3 times as much oil as the whole fooggen ME.
……….
The big world class discoveries in the USA in the last 24 months have been in natural gas.The US natural
gas reserves have increased from a 20 year supply to a 100 year supply.
The Bakken formations don’t currently have that much recoverable oil.
Might change in the future
From Wikipedia
An April 2008 USGS report estimated the amount of technically
recoverable oil within the Bakken Formation at 3.0 to 4.3 billion
barrels (680,000,000 m3), with a mean of 3.65 billion.[4]
The state of North Dakota also released a report that month
which estimated that there are 2.1 billion barrels (330,000,000 m3)
of technically recoverable oil in the Bakken.[5]
re: THe French exception: it’s not actually divorce that dooms political hopes, it’s all the weirdness and arrogance that usually goes along with it when a political figure is involved. For example, Gary Hart wasn’t politically ruined because he had an affair, he was ruined because he very cockily swore nothing was happening and dared a roomful of journo’s to follow him if they didn’t believe him.
It never occurred to him that one of them just might do that. That public display of arrogance combined with stupidity is usually what does someone in. Now I do still hold Newt Gingrich’s divorce against him, and could never vote for him for dogcatcher because of it – but that’s because he divorced his wife of many years while she was in a hospital bed, 2 weeks before she died of cancer, because he couldn’t wait any longer to run off with some 24 year old staffer. He may be bright, but he’ll always be scum in my book for that.
As I understand it, Segolene’s trainwreck of a marriage split her party. Even if it was all Hollande’s fault, that was still bad planning.
And in the neverending trainwreck of a career and of a life that we don’t want to watch but can’t turn away from – John Edwards is now going to marry the ho’ he was cheating on his supposedly cancer stricken wife with.
http://www.nationalenquirer.com/john_edwards_asks_mistress_rielle_hunter_to_marry_him/celebrity/68137
Guess he decided that the milk was no longer free. I don’t think even old John would be the beneficiary of a French Exception.
Good points 2×4.
I have long considered the modern minions of the left to be spoiled underachievers. They grew up on Mommy and Daddy’s money, went to a good school (that Mom and Dad paid for), were told all of their lives that they were “going places” and now are frustrated little brats.
They have an inflated sense of importance and have been given the impression that they are doing “important things” by their indulgent parents and undemanding educators. They lack the will to work, the mental discipline to rigorously examine their own positions (or anyone else’s). This goes a long way to explaining why so many end up in the “soft sciences” and that their response to every person that they disagree with is an ad-homineum attack.
Having raised five children to adulthood I would say most Progressives are stuck at 24-36 month point of child development. Witness Obama’s pouty responses to his opponents, he never argues his point from a position of logic, simply knocks down straw-men of his own creation.
Anton,
Thanks, it took a lot of thought to reach that simple realization.
The eternal protest of the child, “but it’s not fair!” is the basic premise from which all leftist thought originates and its infantile refusal to accept reality is, its motivation for the creation of all its ism’s.
Ironically, the left, which most cherishes the theory of evolution, remains willfully blind to its most important ramification; if, as evolution posits, life evolves out of adaptive mutation to environmental conditions…then mutation itself is unfair.
But of course, absolutely necessary.
When beneficial adaptive mutation occurs, it necessarily confers an ‘unfair’ advantage upon the beneficiary. Yet without it, life would not have progressed beyond the amoeba stage…
Thus, inequality of results is absolutely necessary to progress and a rising standard of living. Which in no way obviates the inhumanity of man, to his fellow man.
Q.E.D., the left is hoisted upon its own petard.
And yes, you may use it.
Habu @ 149: yes, good article, BUT it continues with the hallucinatory assumption that Obama can and would and should fix the universe, except for these bumbling fools.
http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/2010/02/core_chicago_te/
So, now that Plouffe is back on the job, the philosopher-king Obama will soon have candy skittles shooting out of the unicorn’s ass, just as promised.
Charles – nat gas is the way to go. Don’t let yourself get too hyped up on the Bakken; way too many people who don’t understand how reserves are figured get caught up in the numbers and don’t realize that it’s not about total oil in formation, it’s about max flow potential. The key to the great Saudi oilfields is the incredible rates of flow – at one time all of the Saudi output was coming from less than 400 wells, with average flow rates of 20,000 bopd and higher *per* *well*.
That is a couple orders of magnitude higher than anything possible in a tight formation like the bakken. It quite literally will probably take 10,000 Bakken wells to equal the output of 100 Saudi wells, because of the difference in geology. That number will probably take 30 years to drill even with a very intensive effort, and since the first ones will be dying off long before the later ones can be drilled, the rate of flow will never approach what the middle east can do.
So there is indeed oil there, but it is in difficult to reach rock with very limited flow capacity. People will make money, but don’t get too caught up in the hype. Another thing about the Bakken – in tight formations like that, 30% recovery of the oil in place would be *Very* good, even with the best current available technology. The Saudi’s, again due to the difference in the geology, can probably get 70% – 80%. Luck of the geological draw.
Now with nat gas the prospects for a big surge in supply are much, much better – Alaska has huge reserves ready to produce, sitting there doing nothing because we’ve never bothered to build a gas pipeline even after 30 years of talking about it.
Funny how that never gets mentioned except by crazy people like Palin.
wws
what are you showing in your last rant ?
arrogance, sorry, it is well displayed by your standards too !
uh I don’t care that you label our elite, or even, me as arrogants, in fact, for us it is resistance to a superpower that would only accord us the position of a Suzerin shoes polishers
but, this money crisis will put everyone back to its own place, of cource it would rejoice you that we collapse, but don’t forget that the worm is in your apple too, and it is more likely to become more spectacular to watch how you’re going to fall too
Charles/150
The keyword(s) is “technically recoverable”. This means an estimate what is possible to extract by current standard technologies. But the actual reserve of oil is estimated at min. 227Bbl, up to > 400Bbl. Of course, there are other resources there like natural gas that exceed the oil reserves. As new technologies are being developed, the figures for technically recoverable oil may increase.
wws, yeah, current recoverability is estimated at ~3% of the total reserve. Also, it is a matter of economics. The figure changes up and down depending on the commodity market ppb.
We had something lost in translation, Marie C, I certainly never intended to label you as arrogant! Sorry it came across that way. I was referring to the list of American politicians who’s careers have been ruined by sexual escapades, and the point I was trying to make was that even here it’s never the sex that does in their careers, it’s the arrogance they display just before getting caught.
Another good example is Spitzer – his career as governor wasn’t ruined just because he got caught with a $5,000 per hour “escort”, but because he had been Attorney General and had made a big deal of going after just that kind of thing. Kind of made him look like he was on the take and just clearing out the competition.
Anyway, I suppose the real point is that American and French attitudes aren’t really all that different on this. The press seizes on the infidelity aspect to make headlines, but careers are ended when that turns out to be just the symptom of a much deeper personality flaw, which it often does.
wws, this is where we have different conceptions of freedom of speech, ours stopped when it’s getting on “private life”, and papers that are making their health on such reports are pursued in trial.
so from the beginning, it is different, though I conceide you that sometimes we should consider “private life” too as a refelect of one’s doubtful position
Coisty, how on earth can she be ”winging it” if it’s ”talking points she’s been repeating for ages”? You can’t be in two places at once, you have to pick one or the other. For example, either she doesn’t understand what she’s talking about, or you don’t understand what she’s talking about; one or the other.
You’re so emotional about her you’ve stopped making sense. It’s like the Dubya cult of personality all over again.
I’m saying that rather than having knowledge of her subjects she’s mostly just throwing out the talking points she’s being coached to repeat. (Why else would she need to write these talking points on her hand like an unprepared student going into an exam room?)
Her handlers have so much confidence in her they only let her do softball interviews.
The evidence so far is that she’s an empty suit who craves the limelight, just like Obama. But she won’t have the media covering up for her mistakes. If she becomes the GOP candidate in 2012 most professional people will be embarrassed to publicly identify with the GOP.
BTW why is nobody in the ‘conservative’ blogosphere talking about the successful election in Ukraine.
The thing that worries me about unrestrained Palin enthusiasm is that it could evolve into an iconic movement with all that implies, not unlike a 24/7 Super Bowl. In the bl(w)ink of an eye, men will be sending their females subtle and not so subtle signals that they would like to see us take more of an interest in hunting and fishing and camping. Faster than you can say boutique pink, the racks of WalMart will swell with designer rifles and Thinsulate leggings with matching hoodies and fingerless hiking gloves. Once the band of “I’ll show him” Barbi’s hit the bush with their neon Glocks and color-coded GPS trackers, the Great Outdoors will never be the same again. Guys might be careful what they wish for with this one. It could be a real-time Geeze Louise Moment in H^ll.
154. Josh:
Great pick up on that Josh. It still might get some play given that obama is acting like a Sultan. I’d give the guy full reign on what he’s doing because he’s gonna “hit the wall” in November and spend the remainder of his term in Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1944 existentialist play NO EXIT
NO EXIT is the source of perhaps Sartre’s most famous quotation, “Hell is other people.” In French, “l’enfer, c’est les autres….he is already closing his ring , cut off from his communist mentor and religious advisor. He will end up as Woodrow Wilson did, who at his dead had no friends.
No Exit ….. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Exit
“BTW why is nobody in the ‘conservative’ blogosphere talking about the successful election in Ukraine.”
Well I can tell you why I don’t talk about it, and maybe I’m representative and maybe I’m not. I consider myself reasonably well informed about foreign affairs, but there has been so much cross dealing and back dealing and position swapping and back stabbing that I have no idea who represents what in the Ukraine anymore, and it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that everyone on all sides is just out to carve out lucrative little personal fiefdoms for themselves.
So a failing state held an election for top thief. Wow. Sorry to be so cynical, but that’s what it looks like from my corner of the world.
“So a failing state held an election for top thief. Wow. Sorry to be so cynical, but that’s what it looks like from my corner of the world.”
From my corner of the world, Moscow, it looks exactly the same.
162. Geeze Louise:
I got a chuckle out of your post. An America that spend a majority of it’s time on a computer or in front of a TV watching The Simpsons for the last twenty years ain’t go’in nowhere out in the wild. Wild is just another channel on the dial and that’s what has me frightened ….few Americans are prepared for any hardship at all …most of America is overweight, slovenly, pathetic,couch huggers who spout nostrums on “get’n ‘er done” but haven’t the know how to do so.
Yes some do, but I’d bet it doesn’t exceed 10% of the population.
Still , well written and funny.
I like Sarah Palin. I think that raising a large family and keeping it together has to be a real challenge but probably worth it. I was raised by a single mom. After my dad ran away she raised me and my two older brothers by herself. She was a housewife that had to go to work and support three boys!!! I think about how hard and frightening that must have been for her. Thankfully, she is extremely resilient and hard nosed. She stands just 5ft tall and weighs just under 100lbs. We always had a roof over our head, food on the table, and clean clothes. I think the reason I like Sarah relates to these things. She seems to me a practical woman who works hard at what really matters.
164. wws:
I don’t think you’re cynical I think you’re on target. I mean I ask myself what sources can I trust, if any? I think everyone should be highly skeptical in this world for throughout history “the real word’ has almost always been at odds with the “truth” and been distorted.
I believe I mentioned finishing The Founding Brothers by noted historian Joseph Ellis. In it he points out that T. Jefferson hired a “hit man writer” to distort John Adams positions. Adams denied the allegations in it and the “hit man writer ” gave up Jefferson by producing and having published Jefferson’s letters setting up the hit. Jefferson simply blew it off after being caught red handed ….. so does mankind’s nature really change or are we just naive and callow citizens?
Habu @ 163: Thanks for the kind words, you know what they say, I try to be skeptical enough, but sometimes I can’t keep up.
And yet, I hold out some tiny hope for change in Obambus, that given a situation where Republicans take back both houses of Congress, he might just find a way to go with it. Heck, it’s about time he grew up anyway, and he could start by changing his name to something like Bill HankWilliams Jones.
I am not convinced that a year with McCain and Palin would have been significantly different, especially with Congress still as it is.
–
btw, I’ve meant to post this all day, David Brooks on Charlie Rose last night, Brooks is bucking to lose even his RINO credentials as he was spouting PURE Obamanation talking points all night.
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10852#frame_top
Charlie, btw, did an excellent job of interviewing, is totally back up on his game.
Thanks Habu. Still stuck on that “don’t know whether to laugh or cry” fence. I do both, usually at exactly the wrong time.
A final thought on the Wild West Woman who hijacked this thread. I am suspicious of the twin traps of hero worship and it’s cousin, idolatry. If she so chooses, Palin will enter the political arena, not as a divine being, ala the Obama marketing spectacle, but as a representative of We The People, which means she works for us, not the other way around (yes, the real world is more complicated by reciprocity). That in turn means that she needs to do some homework to be optimally effective as a Politician. “Liking” a candidate is frosting on the cake. Respecting her performance in meeting the demands of a politician is key and not fungible with any other attributes she may possess.
Sarah Palin is a threat to the metro’s and their orderly lifestyles because of her outlier upbringing, values, education and station. Uppity poor white trash does good, and looks better doing it. How gauche. It must be maddening to be handed defeat after defeat by the very object of your ridicule.
Habu, already we’ve had talk of moderation, “voices of reason” as it were, about how to magnaminously govern after our pending landslide victory in November. Not a winning strategy. The Founders made do with your 10% in the worst winter. Those are big shoes to fill, yet I think we should take up the offer. Refuse and we deserve the slavery that awaits.
Louise, your logic is sound, but it’s exactly that. Good old fashioned common sense. After all the faintings and leg tingling that went on prior to this past election, do you really believe that the majority of Americans vote using your same criteria?
Paul Krugman made an interesting comment recently. I paraphrase, ‘Obama and his team are not stupid and they are not evil thus they are a huge improvement over George W Bush’.
As I typed my memory of what Krugman said I could clearly hear Obama speaking.
When Apple pulled the book ’1984′, secretly, from the saved folder of Kindle users, was it a sign, a signal? No of course not.
Krugman, however, is a frikkin’ orange flare pointing to stupid.
;-/
So a failing state held an election for top thief.
……
The best governors are top farmers rather than top predators. They are thinking in terms of growing the tax base rather than feeding off the ….tax base.
On the general topic of love vs hate. Its helpful to remember that hate can do byo motivation about 90%…maybe 95% of what love can do. But its the 5% to 10% that makes all the difference.
Marie Claude 134
“Sorry, Whiskey, some women are good values”
Sorry, MC, but your malapropism here is just too funny. I’m laughing out loud as I write this.
This sounds like a description of an Old West Saloon with bad booze and good prostitutes.
GB 135
“Progressivism, indeed all ism’s that come from the left is, at base simply an infantile protest against existential reality’s inequality.
Swap out the word “infantile” and put in “adolescent” and I think that you’ve nailed it.
From another Pajamas Media site, here’s an interesting take on the Palin “crib-gate” brouhaha… /g
(excerpt)
February 10th, 2010 12:20 pm
Crib Notes Technology Cost Analysis
Most politicians use “crib notes” of some kind while giving speeches.
Some bring 3×5 cards listing key points. Others refer to handwritten rough drafts. And some even read from pages on which the entire speech has been printed out.
But Barack Obama and Sarah Palin each have their own unique crib notes technology. The two diagrams below analyze how much each type of technology costs per speech.
(end)
For the full graphical analysis see:
Crib Notes Technology Cost Analysis
wws @ Feb 10, 2010 – 12:23 pm:
Really high levels of extraction for the KSA seem doubtful: Water-flood is hampered with sea water — and cheap fresh water is not at hand.
In the fullness of time Iraq should be able to out produce KSA, water-flood being the difference.
no mo muro, may-be cuz you have “l’esprit mal placé” upside down, la “tête dans le cul” !
It’s strange that we’ve gotten this far into a discussion of hate without talking about its most striking eruption in recent years: the amazingly successful ginning up of widespread hatred for George Bush.
Why did this work?
Sergey writes: “’So a failing state held an election for top thief. Wow. Sorry to be so cynical, but that’s what it looks like from my corner of the world.’ From my corner of the world, Moscow, it looks exactly the same.”
Yes, precisely what the Putinists want us to think: It’s just all too hopelessly complicated! Let’s leave it to Vlad to fix!
Right.
MC-
It wasn’t an attack on you, merely an observation. You perceived malice in my response which simply wasn’t there. Just humor.
Your grammar resulted in something that looked funny at first glance.
I think you meant to say “Sorry, Whiskey, some women have good values.”
Substitute the word “are” like you did, and the phrase takes on a whole new meaning in English, not a very savory one!
Ma tete n’approche jamais mon cul. Soyez plus sage avec les mots! Je ne suis pas l’enemie.
I have no idea who represents what in the Ukraine anymore
But many neoconservatives (and liberal hawks) pretended back in 2004 that they DID in fact know who represented what in Ukraine. They claimed Yuschenko, Tymoshenko and the Orange Rev. represented Good (the triumph of democracy and expanding American influence) whilst Yanukovych represented Evil (the opposite of all neocons hold dear). Yet the 2010 election reversal has been completely ignored presumably because it doesn’t fit the Bushian/neoconservative worldview. Those who adhere to such a worldview should try to address what happened, instead of flushing it down the memory hole, Soviet/Trotsky style.
and it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that everyone on all sides is just out to carve out lucrative little personal fiefdoms for themselves.
I agree. It is called politics. It was no different in 2004 and it is not that different in the West. It is why conservative realists (like me) are always suspicious of those ideologues (neocons) with a Manichean worldview.
So a failing state held an election for top thief. Wow. Sorry to be so cynical, but that’s what it looks like from my corner of the world.
Cynicism is good! I’m glad to see it at this site.
To clarify cynicism is good when it comes to politics and the motives of anyone involved in politics. Everyday life is another matter.
“Cynicism is good! I’m glad to see it at this site.”
I’m so glad you’re happy.
no mo muro, I didn’t take it your post as a malice reflexion, just that I made la réponse de la “bergère au berger”, uh whiskey will explain you
I’ll put what I’ve tried to say, for years, about Andrew Sullivan another way:
Andrew Sullivan has long outlasted his precociousness…and preciousness…in all their varied manifestations…he has long been not more than the Left’s organ grinder’s monkey, wherever he may have traversed libertarianism.
@112 Geeze Louise
“PS to marymcl – agree about Couric (all of it – funny you should mention that) and still think Palin should do herself a favor and stay in journalism, but my IQ barely registered on the radar screen. Which I say despite the observation that Ms Anonymous has a writing style very reminiscent of yours.”
Sorry, wrong number
I like Palin well enough, but on the whole I think she’s a better lightning rod than presidential candidate. That said, she’s better than the fool we’ve got in the White House now – (didn’t we talk about this once before back on the what-do-we-do-about-the-trolls thread? I seem to recall we were both singing Giuliani’s praises)
btw I don’t mind being confused with genius but the lady with the IQ in the top 99.997% might not appreciate your observation!
“But many neoconservatives (and liberal hawks) pretended back in 2004 that they DID in fact know who represented what in Ukraine. They claimed Yuschenko, Tymoshenko and the Orange Rev. represented Good (the triumph of democracy and expanding American influence) whilst Yanukovych represented Evil (the opposite of all neocons hold dear). Yet the 2010 election reversal has been completely ignored presumably because it doesn’t fit the Bushian/neoconservative worldview. Those who adhere to such a worldview should try to address what happened, instead of flushing it down the memory hole, Soviet/Trotsky style.”
Jeezis hotspur, you haven’t heard, the election is still in flux –there’s been no concession, and it looks like it may go to court –and here you are already sailing off half-cocked on another “aHA! thus PROOOVING what i KNEW all along….”
reminds me of you on Palin, enraged at all the “emotion” –LOL –
“I’ve told you a MILLION times not to exaggerate!”
Buddy, forget the yammerhead fer a minute. Get on over to mysa.com and sign the Condolences Book for Charlie Wilson. WE owe him.
Remind me to tell you some day how his gals
got busy and helped defang a disastrous foreign aid program from coming about. He did a lot of stuff like that in addition to the more publicized foray into Afghanistan.
I’ll do it –and i’ll remind you –and you’re right about Charlie Wilson. feller had more than a little in common with Stephen F. Austin.
Mark is wrong, Sergey and Coisty are right to be more cynical about Ukraine. How exactly was Timoshenko anti-’Putinist’ anyway, when Putin himself called her a woman he could ‘do business with’ and Yuschenko denounced her for cutting deals with Moscow on gas while he wanted to keep playing the victim card?
Hell, the Ukrainian election isn’t the only inconvenient story the anti-Russian neocons have ignored of late. Try this one:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/32290.html
CIA moonlights in corporate world – Politico
I guess we’ll have to wait a while before the WSJ, Weekly Standard, NRO, Economist comment on that one. Because of course, no one told them what to say during the Georgia War…and you guys wonder why Russians are cynical about U.S. intentions and ‘media freedom’?
They always wrote that the difference between America and Russia was that if you do business with Russia, you’re doing biz with KGB men, and everyone can quote the Putin line about there being no such thing as ex-KGB men, hence KGB. So with Simon Johnson writing in The Atlantic that America is becoming like the Russia of the 90s, where’s the difference now?
Still useful on some domestic policy things (except for Rich Lowry’s weird defense of Ben Bernanke, which should earn him a swift kick in the butt from Bill Buckley’s shade), but when it comes to foreign policy, useless hypocrites nearly the lot of em’.
MR X
lightening your link, it explains how this suddain attack on Greece (and by extension on the whole eurozone)was so well managered
Try Rene Girard on the purpose of scapegoating. Wretchard, you must know Girard. If not, you’re in for a surprise.
As for Sullivan, he became the next Arianna Huffington about five years ago. He’s shallow and homocentric. Never got why anyone would make a fuss over him, except perhaps his former pose as a “gay conservative,” which was more of a costume he wore to the masquerade ball.
Some of the folks aboard here might –for the purpose of skipping over the BS and getting to brass tacks –might entertain the notion that not everyone must wait for ‘the line’ to emerge before voicing an opinion, and the corollary that even what might appear to be the parrot mode might not be; might just be a spontaneous individual self-derived appreciation of whatever the thing might be.
I can only speak for myself re the Ukrainian election, and i see Putinism being Putinism, the Boss operating his frankly acknowledged Russian nationalism on his border –who can blame him for that? Blame him for what, anyway –not being an American politician?
No, my opprobrium is reserved for a split USA, which can no longer operate a foreign policy because it can no longer operate a domestic policy. The Orange Revolution was one of many ‘color’ revolutions taking place off on the strength of what appeared to be an American commitment to aid these nascent republics morally if not materially. Since these revolutions came to be under this theme, when the theme collapsed in Bush Derangement Syndrome (and its target’s non-deign to engage same) suddenly there was not much long term political power for the pro-west revolutionaries in Ukraine as well as several other notable nations, to draw upon.
“Left Hanging High and Dry” is a good term for a lengthening list of USA allies, going all the way back to the successful coup against Nixon known as Watergate. KGB needs no winning message other than, “we don’t every two years let crazy moonbats have a shot at running the government”.
ah Buddy, emotionally involved with Ukraine ?
http://www.turkishweekly.net/op-ed/2634/the-orange-revolution-turns-blue.html
*ouch* –LOL –you’re sharp with that needle, MC –
Buddy,
You are correct that the Georgian people were left high and dry, by our support for Saakashvili pushing it to the limit, then when Russia called his (and Uncle Sam’s) bluff having to retreat in humiliating fashion. Read Ben Smith’s piece in the Politico – it’s really appalling, either Bush’s national security advisors were shockingly ignorant of the region or they were played, by Soros or someone else, like a fiddle.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/32487.html
That’s also what happens when you pick fights with other people in their back yard and they (the Russians in this case) have far more at stake then you do.
We should have learned that lesson by staying out of Vietnam which Eisenhower wanted to do, only sending advisors, but Kennedy and perhaps the people who killed him wanted to escalate. The last two years has led me to question everything and start wondering if the Kennedy assassination and other conspiracy theorists have a point.
Better get set to host more Afghan restaurants in D.C., that’s all I can say, because that will probably be one of the only places left in America in five years where the folks can still afford exotic eateries.
Mr X/198, much as i wish the conditions were such that i’d have to dispute your comment, i can’t. Afghanistan –i won’t say –because i’m only barely lightly informed, what those same last two years that have parted your veil have done to my own…er, veil, but suffice to say the conditions are there for a major, existential take down of the American system –on several fronts if you get my drift. i fear the US Military is on the ”to be betrayed” list, and there’s nothing for it but to pray the institution has its own prescription for the spreading miasma. You should read up on how our special envoy to AfPak handled ‘East Timor’. Straws in the wind, burgeoning complaints from officials in Russia re heroin addiction. Holbrooke has never done anything but sell USA down the river, and now he’s loose in AfPak, shielded by the dangerous turf fiefdom created in the noxious relationship between the Hillary and the Obama royal domains. we’re in a race to see if we can rid ourselves of these people before they get us all kilt. I’d say right now it’s a coin flip. i wish i wasn’t so dark all the time, i probably ought to quit mulling all this ugly stuff and just hitch up the bass boat and go fishin’.
Holbrooke = Soros = ? (the ‘kill America’ desk in the Kremlin?)
Mr X: Ike and Ridgway also had a regiment of Marines in NE Thailand. These had the Ho Chi Trail interdicted. It was their withdrawal
that lit the fuse for a ground war in SE Asia.
I’ll concede that Dien Bien Putin is a bit more sober than JFK, but he and his entourage
are as astute as Robert S. McNamara. They’ll come to grief just like USSR did.
When it comes to winning and keeping empires, the USA will reign supreme, never fear. Superior logistics, a definitely superior culture reflected by superior soldiers. If Russians don’t defoliate pronto, we shall have them by the short hairs.
dave, that’s what i was trying to say with “…there’s nothing for it but to pray the institution has its own prescription for the spreading miasma” –meaning, an ”understanding” with the creepos currenty savaging the country from the executive branch. The Rubicon doesn’t have to be an actual river.
Dave/200; Mr. Putin can’t defoliate the North Caucasus –gonna have to be ‘silver or lead’, ‘gold or gunpowder’ –again.
I keep forgettin if Holbrooke or Snowcroft is Buddy’s favorite Pol, and why:
Brent Scowcroft, China Inc’s most valuable Player.
Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, said he is concerned the new policy will be skewed toward promoting business at the expense of U.S. national security.
“This new policy is a giant push by industry to export technology that was developed by taxpayer dollars for defense purposes,” Mr. Milhollin said. “This also appears to include a push to decontrol manufacturing technology for defense items, which if carried out, will send high-tech defense jobs overseas.”
He added: “If industry gets its way, and we drop controls on dual-use technology, then [other countries] will do the same. It will be impossible to keep dangerous items out of the hands of the Iranians and the Chinese.”
Edward Timperlake, a former Pentagon technology-security specialist, said there is broad agreement that export controls need reform, but warned that the national-security risks are proven by the aggressive efforts foreign spies make to steal or illegally acquire U.S. defense technology. These efforts could be made redundant and U.S. counterintelligence pointless if the goods become freely available.
“The counterintelligence challenge has been to stop military technology from falling into the hands of Chinese intelligence agents,” Mr. Timperlake said. “And now it is possible that the effort could be undermined by a new policy that puts the entire program in doubt.”
The Scowcroft report, “Beyond ‘Fortress America’: National Security Controls on Science and Technology in a Globalized World,” stated that current export controls “now quietly undermine our national security and our national economic well-being.”
—
The panel recommended eliminating export controls on dual-use goods for items available on the international market, and setting up two units to streamline export licensing and appeals.
Courting Disaster
Odonnell Meltdown
Intel?
We don’t need no stinkin Intel!
Keith Olbermann on Scott Brown.
UPDATES AT END OF POST: Joe Scarborough calls Olbermann out for these disgusting remarks — now including video!
“In Scott Brown we have an irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude model, teabagging supporter of violence against woman and against politicians with whom he disagrees.”
Such was actually said Monday evening — on national television!!! — by a person currently employed by one of America’s largest corporations, General Electric.
If the following “special comment” by MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann is considered acceptable discourse on a cable news network today, there really is something very wrong in our nation (video embedded below the fold with transcript)
—
Thomas Sowell: The Fallacy of “Fairness”
…Some years ago, for example, there was a big outcry that various mental tests used for college admissions or for employment were biased and “unfair” to many individuals or groups. Fortunately there was one voice of sanity— David Riesman, I believe— who said: “The tests are not unfair. LIFE is unfair and the tests measure the results.”
If by “fair” you mean everyone having the same odds for achieving success, then life has never been anywhere close to being fair, anywhere or at any time. If you stop and think about it (however old-fashioned that may seem), it is hard even to conceive of how life could possibly be fair in that sense.
http://blogs.aljazeera.net/europe/2010/02/12/putin-and-finlandia-summit
“Putin is very small. Even President Sarkozy is taller” from the author LMAO
so Putin is cgoin to clean St Petersburg rivers !
It was a good news day for the Baltic and the 100 million people who live around its shores
I had no idea the Baltic shores were so heavily populated –
Doug/203 –it’s already well underway anyway –one of Aldrich Ames’ old bosses –covered by John Deutch (in his short CIA Director run before he got caught “mishandling files” –sending top-secret CIA files to Russia –and had to be pardoned by Clinton the last hour of his last day in office, only to be resuscitated to Obama’s Defense Science Board as spy-sat advisor) and proposed early on by Obama as a possible CIA Director –has an ex/im deal going out of Jacksonville, FL.
It’s all on the internet, want a few URLs ?
I think the transport of CIA hard drives should be contracted out to Fedex, the better to get crucial info to dinnerjacket and the Chi-Coms in a timely and secure manner.
More immediate threat that WILL result in deaths of US Citizens was Barry’s dump of classified info that Thiessen documents so terrifyingly well.
—
AP Lies on Binyam Mohammed
[Marc Thiessen]
An Associated Press report in today’s Washington Post declares (emphasis mine):
Intelligence ties between London and Washington have been jeopardized by a British court’s disclosure that a terrorism suspect was beaten and shackled in U.S. custody, diplomats and security officials said Wednesday.
This is patently untrue. Here are the paragraphs that were revealed on the Foreign Office website. Nowhere do they say that Binyam Mohammed was “beaten.” AP owes a retraction.
—
I had no idea the Basaltic Shores were even habitable.
Seems like a rocky existence.
best way to get rid of the baltics is to go to the movies. buy some salty popcorn, and while you’re watching the film, pour some popcorn down your pants. after awhile the baltics will get thirsty, and when they leave to go get a drink, you change seats.
Amazon.com: Me, the Mob, and the Music: One Helluva Ride…
Miller had Tommy James on, great stories.
100 million records, 300 covers!
There’s gonna be a movie.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068473/
uh, I’m watching “Deliverance”, exactly what Habu would describes about surviving, but the very courageous one, isn’t who we would expect
MC, John Voight –the courageous one.
Doug –but, did anyone ever figure out what’s a “Shondell” ?
MC, for you, an essay on writing in a second language. NOT that you need it –you don’t –this is just for your enjoyment, something i’ve just found while reading Maggie’s.
http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/archives/10929-On-Writing-Well-The-Anglo-Saxon-will-set-you-free.html
Buddy:
A Shondell is defined as a maximum performance climbing turn through 180 degrees while maintaining a constant turn rate.
A Shondell to the left is quite different than one to the right because of the ever increasing amount of p-factor in the second half of the maneuver.
Buddy, it is funny that you were reading this article yesterday night, I was myself reading something about the same subject too, (can’t find the article back at the moment) it was about how our two different structures of society and economy are rooted in our very civilisational languages, the Anglo-Saxon’s and German’s vs the Roman’s (such as French, Italian, Spanish Portugese) that have been always in opposition, Latins are more inclined to generate ideals and concepts than caring of domestic policies like the Anglo-Saxons and the Germans, this is why our economies are less competitive too. Though actually the Anglo-Saxon conception of economy is in a deep crisis, it has no more certitudes in the confrontation with the emergeant economies like China and India, of which definition of economies is also different and also related to their civilisational roots.
I must find back the article, very lightening !
ah, there it is (in french) :
http://www.dedefensa.org/article-genie_latin_et_germanisme_de_guglielmo_ferrero_1917_08_12_2008.html
http://books.rediff.com/book/author-guglielmo-ferrero
this historian is capital to understand our nowadays conflicts
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/13nov/ferrero.htm
“The Riddle of America”
by Guglielmo Ferrero (in english)
MC, thanks for the great links –yes, that is an interesting line of study — semiotics of the language/culture interface (Argh! jargon alert!). So much is revealed in a language –but only to an outsider studying that language. I worked in S America for years (oil patch in 70s and 80s) and, becoming a fair hand at the Spanish lingo, i saw many things of the two cultures’ ideas about each other, reflected, imbedded, in the structure of the language.
Differences in behavior, treatment of detail, romance, specificity, generalization, all sorts of different degrees of emphasis in life, are also in volume and quality both, right there in the building blocks of the language.
The glimpse into their complexity and ‘otherness’ makes one appreciate foreign cultures much more.
Doug, i’ll bet doing them shondells really did a number on the boy’s coiffures. If their arms ever get tired, they could try using airplanes and doing chandelles
(*groan*)
Shonell left, shondell right, all same same and no sweat with counter-rotating props.
“Climbs like a homesick angel!”
oh, esp that J –or was it L –model, with the paddlewheels and pressurized cockpit (with HEATER).
Talking to a neighbor who grew up surronded by the Astronauts. Talking about Alan Shepherd being a nice guy. Neighbor said he had dinner with him 7 or 8 times.
On to Yeager:
Neighbor has a physical disability, when Yeager would pass him in the hallway, he’d say:
“What’s wrong with you kid?” !
My eye guy worked @ Edwards, saw Yeager fly a Phantom when he was 80 something!
Betcha a dollar your neighbor was going through a hangdog period, and CY was trying to buck ‘im up, old style. Think, not just unPC but PC turned inside-out –
From the hollers of West Virginy to Paradise, California, eternal Paradise calls.
Who better to become heaven’s Chief Test Pilot?
Southwest Stews in the Good Old Days
HOT DAYUM !!! I remember them uniforms –those were the days alright –