Unilateralism
Robert Kagan says that whether Israel deserved a tongue-lashing from Barack Obama or not, it can console itself by observing that it is in good company on the outs. Britain, France, India, Poland, the Czech Republic and Japan are all huddled under the bus along with it. That’s not to mention the occasionally abandoned, like the Iranian dissidents or the Dalai Lama, who had to come through the door where they take out the trash to talk to the press. Israel is where all the other allies have been at one time or the other. What’s instructive, Kagan says, is who’s remained inside the bus and not crushed under the wheels.
Who has attracted attention in the Obama administration? The answer, so far, seems to be not America’s allies but its competitors, and in some cases its adversaries. If there were a way to measure administration exertion in foreign policy, the meter would show the greatest concentration of energy, beyond the war in Afghanistan, has been devoted to four endeavors: the failed first-year attempt to improve relations with Iran; the ongoing attempt to improve relations with Russia; the stalled effort to improve cooperation with China; and the effort — fruitless so far — to prove to the Arab states that the United States is willing to pressure Israel to further the peace process. Add to these the efforts to improve relations with Syria, engage Burma and everything with Af-Pak, and not much has been left for the concerns of our allies.
Maureen Dowd doesn’t see any pattern to the President’s actions. She believes that the President’s pique at Israel was spontaneous because of the “supremely aggravating character of Bibi Netanyahu”, but Kagan suggests the President has a tendency to take alliances for granted while attempting to mollify enemies. This makes sense from a certain point of view. He’s a wooer, not a keeper. His whole life has been focused on getting to the next rung, the next office. Once that rung is attained, why it’s meant to be stepped on to get to the one above. And why not? Since your friends are already your friends you don’t need to be nice to them. On the other hand you have to convince your enemies to like you because they don’t like you yet. And a smart man should unsentimentally work on them.
As for your friends, well Carly Simon captured the attitude of the alpha man who expects friends to be grateful if he doesn’t kick them. It’s enough to be a sometime entry his black book. What do they want to be, the final stop?
You walked into the party
Like you were walking onto a yacht
Your hat strategically dipped below one eye
Your scarf it was apricot …
But you gave away the things you loved
And one of them was me
I had some dreams they were clouds in my coffee
Clouds in my coffee
Carly Simon may have been miffed by whoever it was, but wrote the song for him anyway. I had a friend once who came home the same time each afternoon, turned over his whole paycheck and went to bed at exactly at 10 pm each evening. His wife left him because she said it was like being married to a corpse. The excitement is in the pursuit. You don’t expect anybody to write a song for Poland or Israel. That’s just nuts. There’s no glamor in it. A Palestinian Keffiyeh is a fashion accessory, but a Polish sausage or a potato knish is something you leave in the back of the refrigerator until the cat thinks it’s something dead. Maybe it is better to have a President who can bridge the gap with America’s enemies even if he has to walk over the backs of America’s friends. That’s what peace making is about isn’t it?
Maybe not. The problem is that over the long haul international relations are about the keeping, not the wooing. Building a really stable international framework, as opposed to getting a photo op, means creating a foundation based on shared values. Sometimes the bad guys like being bad guys. After all is said and done, Venezuela will import 30,000 Cuban advisers whether Obama has been nice to Chavez or not. Although it’s politically incorrect to say it, one reason why America has enemies is because there are some countries out there that are not worth making friends with.
Robert Kagan wrote that “this administration pays lip-service to ‘multilateralism,’ but it is a multilateralism of accommodating autocratic rivals, not of solidifying relations with longtime democratic allies.” I think Kagan is wrong. The administration sometimes acts like it is the center of the universe. Real multilaterism is possible only when an administration is able to see itself as part of a community; a leader perhaps, but not separate from a group of nations which shares certain common interests and beliefs. President Obama’s foreign policy is strikingly unilateral in the sense of the kind of man who flies on a whim to “see the total eclipse of the sun” because it really revolves around him.
You’re so vain
You probably think this song is about you
You’re so vain
I’ll bet you think this song is about you
Don’t you? Don’t you?
Once a single, overarching point of view is established then “friends” are there fore one and only one reason. To support the official line. Rahm Emmanuel called liberal activists “retarded” at a meeting on health care. You would have thought that people don’t call their most ardent admirers retarded. The Politico reported:
Last August, Emanuel “showed up at a weekly strategy session featuring liberal groups and White House aides,” the Journal’s Peter Wallsten reported last Tuesday.”Some attendees said they were planning to air ads attacking conservative Democrats who were balking at Mr. Obama’s health-care overhaul. ‘F—ing retarded,’ Mr. Emanuel scolded the group, according to several participants. He warned them not to alienate lawmakers whose votes would be needed on health care and other top legislative items.”
But that would be to misunderstand the nature of friendship. Dan Riehl says that just as Emmanuel predicted, the administration got clean away with slapping them around. What were the “activists” going to do? Starting believing in the free market all of a sudden?
Alliance politics on the left is really the science of taking useful fools for a long ride in the country to a predetermined destination. And the really amazing thing about it is however hard you kick them in the face, these are the kinds of friends who’ll be back for more, right there, drooling on the kicker’s shoe through their broken teeth. “United Front” tactics aren’t about multilateralism as about one line, one leader, one bright and immutable way. Health care can be “deemed” to have passed — a word which by the way is etymologically related to “doom”. Get with the program. And if you disagree, why, you’re no friend.
embedded by Embedded VideoYouTube Direkt
Tip Jar or Subscribe for $5
Britain, France, India, Poland, the Czech Republic and Japan, also China, Columbia, Honduras, … Israel is in good company.
Obama is such a yutz.
W – There was the greatest generation who fought WWII. with the vanity of this pres, is this the last generation ?
When there are no more challenges, nothing more for O-bambam to strive for, what then?
One vote does not win
It took many idiots
Who guessed so many
After this Circus leaves town the only job available will be cleaning up.
If the British were to swallow their pride a little it would be wonderful if they hosted a Conference of the Rejected. They are good at throwing such a party. It could be like the Salon of the Rejected that formed the Impressionist Movement and fueled the burst of creativity that under the label of Modernism carried Western culture for 100 years. Liberated from the dead hand of Narcissistic Collectivism we could achieve great things and confound our enemies.
If the Australians and Israelis and British and Hondurans and Poles etc did get together and achieved amazing things in six months Joe Biden would show claiming it as another triumph for the Obama administration. Audacity has proven to be nothing but chutzpah after taxes.
Carly Simon supposedly wrote “You’re So Vain” about either Mick Jagger or Warren Beatty. She could have done better, although Jagger has a real brain to go with his talent. I still remember the album cover.
My inescapable feeling is that we are going through motions talking abut worthy topics but waiting for an answer on the machinations in Congress that may eviscerate the Constitution. They stumble towards a conclusion like an epileptic carrying dynamite. Is this what it feels like for the child of an alcoholic as they watch an adult weave towards a motor vehicle?
Carly, herself, recently admitted that the song was written about David Geffen.
Perhaps she didn’t know he was gay.
Geffen is notable as one of the earliest big Hollywood moguls who threw total support to BHO BEFORE he was moving in the polls.
blert,
FWIW the wiki does not agree with you about the song.
wretchard,
drooling on your shoe through their broken teeth
Scene setting worthy of Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett.
Barack Obama strikes me as the kind of man who casually wipes his hands on your shirt. Rahm Emanuel is more like the guy who comes up to you and says “Nice watch.”
One day some quiet backwater Congressman is going to explode on Rahm and the Capital Police will stand there figuring how slow they can move. His obscenity at supporters that Riehl focuses on was over six months ago. The shower encounter with Massa was more recent.
Surreal, am I commenting on the ghost of a comment?
There’s probably some kind of symmetry as to the effects of vanity as it relates to foreign and domestic friends.
It’s striking to see an O fan as devout as Matthews so far off-message. He’s genuinely worried about how this will play. And he should be.
Video: Slaughter strategy ripped by … Chris Matthews
Women always love the Big Shot. No wonder Wretchard’s friend had his wife leave him — women crave excitement, domination, thrills, and will put up with violence, humiliation, life-threatening danger, to get it. See also, Carly Simon.
But men are not women. The most dangerous guy around is someone who has been “disrespected” one too many times, and not then lifted up. Obama does not understand men much, having been around women, no real father, and lots of changeable and fairly effeminate men in his life (Rev. Wright, the folks at the Mosques, Bill Ayers, etc.)
And even women have breaking points. While ObamaCare polls around 58% disapproval by men and 51% disapproval with women, according to Hotair, women though more positive for Obama (because he’s a big shot who humiliates other men, something women love), he’s still negative with them.
No woman loves a big shot enough to risk dying by breast cancer. And so on.
Beatty and Geffen and Jagger may have skated and inspired a song, but lots of other guys with much higher stakes tick off far too many men and get open, hard rebellion.
Suppose you are a Red State Congressman who is a Democrat. How is Obama going to get you re-elected? Can you TRUST HIM to KEEP HIS WORD to appoint you something if he doesn’t? Can he even keep the Reps and Tea Partiers from calling you in front of Congress to testify on sneaky, probably illegal deals you made to sell your vote?
Why wouldn’t you make a deal with Obama for something, and then double cross HIM? What’s he going to do, undo the deal? All the better, since not getting something you were not going to get anyway and would cause you trouble is a plus.
David Geffen, Mick Jagger, and Warren Beatty could only exist in the hot-house of Hollywood and Malibu. Outside that, they risked outraged husbands inflicting grievous harm, ticked off locals giving them a beating, and so on. Going to Nova Scotia to see the total eclipse of the sun does not work when lean and hungry types figure your private jet should belong to THEM.
Saddam, Stalin, and the rest of those types understood that the thugs had to match the glitz. Saddam’s death chambers killed tens of thousands just to stay in power. That’s where that game goes outside Hollywood.
The United States under Obama, then, is a worthless ally who will betray you at the drop of a hat, and a harmless enemy who will stand by and do nothing while a nation like Iran kills American soldiers and develops nuclear weapons. This is Obamas true legacy and I do not think it will take very long for former allies and current enemies alike to draw their own lessons.
So, I hope all those who voted for Obama and who hoped he would win here and abroad – enjoy the world your master is creating. A world without a policeman shares one important feature with a neighborhood where the police never come – it is a dangerous place to be.
Looking at Joe Cocker tonight it occurred to me that the stricken grief in his face as he sings this tune would make sense if he were at his own front door, drunk at 4 am. The door is open but his wife has barred the entrance. She is very angry and she has a rolling pin she’s ready to beat him with.
Joe Cocker – You Are So Beautiful
You are so beautiful to me
You are so beautiful to me
Can’t you see
Your everything I hoped for
Your everything I need
You are so beautiful to me
Such joy and happiness you bring
Such joy and happiness you bring
Like a dream
A guiding light that shines in the night
Heavens gift to me
You are so beautiful to me
I have never in my life been so gripped by visceral dislike for a president and his policies. I fervently look forward to seeing him crushed and politically injured, even if that means America will get scathed in the process. I can’t believe I’m saying it, I can’t believe I’m thinking it. But on some level any harm which befalls us as a nation will pale against the cancers and toxins he’s unleashing if they’re permitted to persist. His entire regime must be repudiated completely, and Obama, along with the infants, morons, and malignants who elected him must not get access to the levers of power again.
women always love the Big Shot.
Whiskey, you are crazy.
In all my life I’ve never known a woman like that.
Where the hell are you from?
Back in the Pacific War the collaborators who worked for the Japanese Kempeitai wore a hood over their heads to conceal their identities. This lowered their individual exposure to retribution to the level of the average risk that all suspected collaborators would face. Although Investors Business Daily argues that the Democrats would get “slaughtered” in November even if they voted with the veil of the Slaughter rule; if they voted with the hood on. I think IBD is wrong, because wearing the hood only exposes the members to the average public anger. It doesn’t expose them individually to the voter’s wrath. I think there’s a real possibility that health care “reform” will be deemed passed.
By cleverly combining the anonymity of the kempeitai hood with bribes, the Japanese got people to betray their “friends” wholesale. When some of the collaborators were exposed after the war, many were revealed to be the bosom buddies, old pals and even relatives of those they betrayed. Whiskey says Obama doesn’t understand men. I fear the President knows a certain type of man all too well. A lot of politicians are going to be thinking of that payoff and their hands are even now reaching for the hood. If people can be betray their relatives to the Japanese torturer, politicians can betray their constituents.
One should never make the mistake of thinking something is so low, disgraceful or shameful that a politician won’t stoop to doing it. It’s amazing how many people are willing to get kicked in the face and come back crawling on their bellies for more. But there will be heroes too. The strange thing about human nature in a crisis is the key people are bimodal. They are either going to behave sublimely or make you ashamed to a member of the human race.
Which will it be? I told the story once about how, during an earthquake about 8% of people became leaders; and 8% broke down shrieking. The rest waited paralyzed to see who would lead. My belief is that the vote on health care will be like that. A lot of guys will be standing like deer in the headlights, waiting for someone to make a move. Some, for reasons even they don’t understand, will be impelled to act like heroes. Others will snivel so disgustingly you won’t want to watch it. Which side wins will be, from the scant information we have in open source, determined by a roll of the dice. We we await the deem, or the doom as you like it.
Let’s see–
Not my mother
Nor my grandmothers
Nor my sister
Nor my aunt Agnes
Nor my aunt Ina
Nor my aunt Alice
Nor my aunt Jennie
Nor my aunt Ellen
Not even my wife
Nor any of my girl friends
Where are all these women you speak of?
Where are these women, that lust after the “Big Man”?
And why can’t I get the woman of my dreams?
After all, I’ve got some serious bucks, and am good looking.
hush little baby, don’t you cry
You’re pappy’s rich, and your mother is good lookin’
heh
it ain’t like that atall.
women always love the Big Shot
There was an ad campaign some years back called the Gamekillers which sold, of all things, underarm deodorant. They created a series of bogeymen who would somehow swoop right into the middle of an almost certain kiss and hijack the lady. The British Accent Guy, Sensitivo, Cash Money, the IQ, Mr. Muscles, etc.
I think the ad campaign appealed to the very basic need to hate somebody for a romantic setback. And while I don’t completely deny the partial truth of those deodorant-ad stereotypes, I’ve taken the view over the years, that the only thing one can ultimately control is oneself. If I’ve been feminized, wimpified, tongue tied or otherwise typecast as a loser, it’s my own damned fault. Similarly, if the politicians are messing stuff up, ultimately it’s because too many people have let them. So there’s no sense in blaming the Big Man.
Very few of the women I’ve loved over the years have used deodorant,and I like it like that.
A lot of songs, Wretch, but you forgot one. Get Out And Get Under. It’s a 1913 song about the joys of driving that new-fangled craze, the automobile, but with a few word changes it might serve the Obama administration.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNZSjSOOVxQ
He told the Brits to get under, get out and get under
They got a box of CDs
That they could play at their ease
He told the Poles to get under, get out and get under
The missile shield’s off for good
Just join the Brits ‘neath the hood
The French would have to get under, get out and get under
With Brits and Poles if you please
Don’t like their stinky old cheese
And so they’d have to get under, get out and get under
Obama’s driving the bus
He doesn’t think about us
New Delhi had to get under, get out and get under
The Pakis are our new friends
That’s how it goes with these trends
The Czechs are in a new orbit now
‘Cause Russia is our newest best pal
So they will have to get under, get out and get under
There’s room for many and more
Obama’s adding the score
And soon ‘twill be so crowded under there
But Prez Obama doesn’t seem to care
And soon there’ll be no one to ride the bus
And underneath will be everyone of us
Because he’ll put us all under, we’ll all get out and get under
While he smoothes out the world’s every muss
wretchard,
never make the mistake of thinking … that a politician won’t stoop to doing it
Politicians are funny people, like everyone else. Specifically they are like Cops who no matter how cynical or tired or even corrupt probably took the job when they still remembered their youthful idealism and wanted to make something better or even protect something innocent or better than themselves. The strangest people may remember the corny cliché and rise to condemn the corrupt bargain. It is not something to plan for but it is a reason to hope. If one that they thought was owned rises to his feet and condemns the game then it could become a stampede. Just as every soldier carries a Marshal’s baton in his knapsack so even the most dirty Pols may suddenly fancy themselves as Mr Smith. That is the “Big Gun” argument.
—-
Tech note Tocque failed again, “F undefined.”
When Obama says that most people don’t care about the procedure, what he’s really saying is that he himself doesn’t care about it. Ditto his administration and all the liberal dems. He’s the one who doesn’t care how it gets done, so long as it does get done. The end justifies the means.
He declares that people want health care reform and that’s all that counts, but he can’t possibly be unaware of all the polls showing that the majority doesn’t want Obamacare.
When he disdainfully dismisses procedure like this, he’s also telling everybody just how trivial the Constitution is. In this particular case, that would be Article 1, Section 7, addressing the procedure of how a bill becomes law, “But in all such cases the votes of both Houses shall be determined by yeas and nays, and the names of the persons voting for and against the bill shall be entered on the journal of each House respectively.”
It’s hard to understand how he can think he can get away with this. But what’s even harder to understand is how close he actually is to getting away with it.
Whiskey. One-note Whiskey. How little individuality or variability he grants women. I’m tired of that one-note monotone tune. He’s obviously got plenty of brain power, might he manage to come unstuck from this obsession of his and come up with something else for a change?
“along with the infants, morons, and malignants who elected him”. You mean Americans?
Morton, forgive me if I’m wrong but I’m assuming you are an American – and that means that your countrymen elected this small-time empty suit as president. (Small “p” intended.) Speaking as an outsider, your country (should it ever have the chance) needs to take a long, hard look at how it happened. Starting with the education system, I suggest.
Also speaking as an outsider, Americans as a whole give the impression of having a great many things in common with a spoiled eight-year-old boy.
In the States, it appears to be quite common a misconception to think that merry old Europe had been entirely idle as events in the Middle East unfolded during the last couple of decades. Let me assure you that this is not the case – the Old Continent has been very eager and effective at gaining hearts if not minds in the ME and in doing so Europe has put America at quite a disadvantage, I may add. Especially, since the Oil Price Shock and the Terror of the Seventies did to Europe something similar to what 9/11 did to the U.S.: in ways of putting that particular region “The Orient” on the map again and demonstrating the West’s dependency and its vulnerability in an exemplary if not brutally strikingly traumatizing manners.
Since those days, and during the cause of the last decades, Europe had time to learn her lesson well and Europe did swallow her pride whole-heartedly when it comes to the regimes of the ME. Of course, the governments of Europe couldn’t all go by writing “I love you”-cards to those very despots, monarchs, “spiritual” leaders and what have you least somebody in the West wondered what the hell was going on and least the Europeans wanted it to be seen as very dull and unsophisticated a move entirely unworthy of their cultural heritage. So they chose a different approach: in order to do well by Arabian standards, Europe took a more “critical” stand towards – Israel!
How very cunning. Criticizing Israel didn’t cost the Europeans any of their money and the troubles with “The Orient” soon eased – albeit just a tiny little bit since never, alas, would terror disappear if it was to remain effective. Again, all out anti-Semitism was not the order of the day in the Europe of just thirty years after Shoah. Just make it slightly tilted attitudes when it comes to reporting on Israel, to begin with, governments and media saved all out, full-fledged media bias for later on in the program. So, at the start it was all dressed up neatly with a ribbon round the neck and put in the current zeitgeist’s most attractive, “anti-Imperialist” guise: call it anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism becomes almost undistinguishable to itself. Call it “critique of Israel” and bashing the Jew amongst states acquires an air of almost non-chalant cosmopolitan connoisseurship. All very aspirational stuff governments and media tried feeding us with over here, lots of technique, very Academy of Arts.
Still, the fear that was instigated upon Europe by events like Munich 72 or Entebbe would never go away. Terror was here to stay and it soon became a reality to live with – and it had to be in order to be effective! People were kept on edge very subliminally.
So, why am I telling you this? It appears to me that the current American foreign policy when it comes to Israel and the Middle East is very much a copy of the European strategy of the Seventies: Ease tensions and appease the Arabs by bashing Israel – wins the streets from Cairo to Amman, from Morocco to Malaysia. The French knew how to do it, the Brits knew it, we Krauts are proving ourselves true masters at it – just look at who are the Mullahs’ top trading-partners in weaponry but only do this on an empty stomach.
And why shouldn’t Americans also have a go at “bettering their relations with the Muslim world”? The price for this will conveniently be paid by an unrelated third party that despite all what history teaches or could teach, is still taken for granted as the world’s favorite hate object for the infuriated masses, whether in Beirut or Brussels, in Nablus or New York!
But, and this is being said entirely off-record: I would always trust Mr. Obama to advise kindly ask the Mullahs not to put the bomb in the wrong hands once they have it. But what can you do, Mr. Makemanydjihad will say to Mrs. Clinton once she complains to him asks him politely over the telephone, it just slipped away. Mossad must have passed it to Hamas, Mr. Makemanydjihad will go on saying, as a pretext for Israeli intrusion into PA-territories. Sure, what can you do, Mrs. Clinton will say and hang-up the receiver contendedly (thinking of it, she may only send an email in the first place).
From here on the one thing that I find worthy of thought is how to make sure that Israel must never again make the experience of getting pushed under the bus by fake friends like Mr. Obama. Any clues would be greatly appreciated.
(I know the text grew out of proportions but many thanks for carrying through with it anyway. Cheers to all)
Whiskey annoys some folks because he generalizes and fails to insert caveats for the numerous exceptions that always exist in human behavior. However, the power of his observations is substantial because they are based on evolutionary psychology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_psychology). A recent example is the report that 58% of the cases of sexual misconduct with prisoners is committed by guards who are female (http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gQmnFXBsZmPjzJuztfNPWVK3uPCAD9EEH5GO1). Given that the male sex drive is generally higher and that a guard takes considerable risks for having sex with a prisoner, the disproportionate misconduct by female guards must necessarily have a psychological basis, perhaps one rooted in the need to convert her situation from that of a dominant to that of a submissive.
I always read Whiskey’s posts carefully because his point of view is based on evolutionary causation, even if he himself comes to the view through personal observation rather than from scientific data. The typical behavior of any animal is determined by what actions increase evolutionary fitness. That is a scientific fact as well as a principle. It is easy to postdict the failures of Marxism and Islam entirely from that basis. Give Whiskey his due.
Is this what it feels like for the child of an alcoholic as they watch an adult weave towards a motor vehicle?
I can answer that question.
Yes. You pray that they are too drunk to start the car, and that they don’t tell you to get in.
The field of statistics, according to Bob, go something like this:
“I know six people who commited suicide, so everyone committed suicide.”
The size of N matters.
If this is the same Bob I’ve encountered here before, his grasp of statistics includes the proclamation that if we build dozens of new medical schools and admit all the students who couldn’t get into or flunked out of the current ones that the quality of health care would improve or at worst not be negatively affected.
If not, apologies to the current Bob.
Israeli’s were NEVER fooled by Obama, no matter how many Jews the nefarious sob surrounded himself with.
Most people in America are gravely uninformed when it comes to Israel. Ideological convictions take the place of finite reality squandering any opportunity for a comprehensive revision.
Obama Jews are by far the worst, overcome with dissonance they remain entrenched in their stubborn beliefs, clinging to the arms of their own garroters.
I’ve watched this occur in my own synagogue, smart, intelligent very highly educated people who lack basic exposure and a general understanding of Israel.
“You’re where you should be all the time
And when you’re not, you’re with
Some underworld spy or the wife of a close friend
Wife of a close friend”
After all, what are friends for?
“Back in the Pacific War the collaborators who worked for the Japanese Kempeitai wore a hood over their heads to conceal their identities.”
“I fear the President knows a certain type of man all too well.”
The Norweigian underground in WWII had an interesting practice for dealing with collaborators. They would kidnap the person, take then to a remote, secret and well equipped hospital, and cut his tongue out, leaving them with just enough of a stump to be able to eat. Then they let them go. Obviously, they made sure that the collaborator never got any more information, but more importantly, he was forevermore marked with the fact that the had helped the Nazis.
Obama is depending on not just universal adulation but the Memory Hole to make sure that what he does is not recalled at an inopportune time. The President thinks that the vast majority are “a certain type of man.” But the MSM are in the process of having their tongues cut out and the “certain type of man” will prove to be just that when comes the reckoning. Old Gus Hip, head of the CPUSA, announced after the USSR fell that the problem was that the Soviets did not employ “Real Communism.” I am sure that there are many who will scrape the Obama bumper stickers off their cars and then say that Obama did not employ “Real Hope and Change” – but we will recognize that choked gobbling sound for what it is.
I quess it’s possible I’ve hung around with independent minded, high class women all my life. Says something good about me, anyway.
We’re having a high school reunion this summer. Looking through the old year books, all I see is high minded independent women.
Not a luster after the big man among them.
Just normal people.
if we build dozens of new medical schools and admit all the students who couldn’t get into or flunked out of the current ones
Give me a break. I’m certain we have the brain power sitting around to fill the seats of some new medical schools. Which we need.
his point of view is based on evolutionary causation
o my ass, it’s not like that at all
Powerful men and poweful nations build their power by always lavishly rewarding their friends and harshly punishing their enemies. This has been true throughout history and in vastly different contexts; it was true for the Romans militarily, it was true for FDR and LBJ politically. People, not surprisingly, are attracted to power but ONLY when that power is used to pay off it’s supporters. (Hated, oppressor regimes are those that have run out of the money they need to keep paying off the majority) When talking to older people in Texas who recall when LBJ was a huge force in state politics, I notice that they all agree that he was a huge crook, to the point that this was common knowledge statewide. So why did he have so much support? Because he was so assiduous about sharing his winnings with his supporters and his State that no one was going to say a thing to stop the gravy train from rolling on, and they were all going to combine to shout down anyone who tried. For those who forgot, LBJ is the only reason NASA was in Houston and not in Florida, next to the launch site where it probably should have been – and don’t even get me started on the depletion allowance! Thing is, those who supported him profited strongly from that support.
I bring up LBJ because he is one of the past Democrats that Obama supposedly wants to emulate – and yet Obama doesn’t have a clue as to how a man like LBJ (the prototypical strong man) operated. Yes, a man like that uses threats, but he also uses lavish rewards and he passes both out constantly. And he is *very* careful to identify his most important supporters and to reward them above all others *before* he asks anything of them in return. This is how political machines are built.
Contrast that to how a typical inexperienced, green around the gills, cowardly wannabe “leader” operates. This man is all show, and like a bad card player can’t hide the fact that he’s bluffing and has no nerve. Therefore he *always* backs down when confronted by someone who looks to him to be powerful – in Obama’s case, it’s the Iranians and the Chinese, among others. The good card players always catch the scent of a wannabe very quickly, and push him mercilessly. (That’s what being a good card player is all about) So what’s the wannabe’s next step? Even he knows that it’s political death to get rolled all the time, and he has to at least *look* tough some of the time. So he picks on the easiest targets – if he lives in a trailor home, he kicks the dogs and throws a beer can at the kids who are smarting off, and if he’s Obama he treats the CBC like crap and has his hired hand call liberal bloggers “retards.” “Betrayal” is a word that means nothing to a man such as this, because the academic coward has no internal moral compass – he probably considers words such as “right” and “wrong” to be interesting philosophical constructs that can be employed in the art of persuading those less intellectual than himself, but nothing more.
Internationally, he picks a big fight with Israel because he is confident that he can get away with it – he wants some “victory” somewhere, and this is the easiest one he can find. Betraying trust is always easy, standing up to a fierce opponent is hard. Obama is easy to predict – he always chooses the easy way out in the short term. This is true even in the health care fight -let me point out that ideology is always easier than pragamatism and adjusting to harsh realities – ideology requires no thought, no adjustments, just the simply binary choice of life as the hero if you win or life as the victimif you lose. Personally, I think Obama is most comfortable personally with the idea of Life as a Victim, and that, combined with his inexperience telling him to always take the easy way out of any situation in the short term, explains why he is choosing policies that are all guaranteed to fail in the long run.
Because of his inexperience and lack of depth, he is incapable of forseeing the end result of this policy of always attacking friends and rewarding enemies; it does not take people (even Democrat Congressmen) very long to figure out that it is far more profitable and rewarding to be an enemy than it is to be a friend of someone like this. And of course, this realization tends to come in a rush, the proverbial “tipping point” we keep hearing about. Obama only has one thing left going for him, and that is the fact that he somehow, with no accomplishments of his own, became identified with the leftist movement in America. He, for the time being, has a free ride as the incarnation of all of their hopes and dreams, no matter how unworthy he may himself be. The day they finally realize that they have been worshipping a false messiah will be the day he is truly finished.
He probably does realize that much, which explains his now frantic catering to their goals. But he hasn’t gotten enough support elsewhere to push his program through, which means in the end he’ll disapoint them and they will turn on him. He made it to the Presidency without ever realizing that the President *has* to build support across a wide coalition of views or else he is guaranteed to fail.
My prediction is that after November he will be reduced to a sad, bitter, caricature of another Jimmy Carter who is seldom seen and universally loathed. I would not be surprised to see him find a reason to resign before his term is over.
I think the folks voted for this turkey out of racial generosity, and the show is over.
The white people are getting pissed.
It’s over.
wws LBJ was a Texan, through and through and had balls as big or bigger than Texas. Obamaone will never, ever be even near the class nor stature that LBJ was. Obama and his backers are nothing more than posers who think that they can foist socialism and even worse upon Americans.
They have no idea who they are up against.
On another subject, while on my second toddy of the AM, I was listening to this while purusing the net and thought I would share…for what ever reason, I have forgot.
Anyway…sung by my hero WJ.
Someone’s gonna get hurt before you’re through
Someone’s gonna pay for the things you do
How many hearts must break,how many will it take
To satisfy you,just to satisfy you
Another love,another fool
To play your game
Another love,another fool
They’re all the same
Someone’s gonna get hurt before you’re through
Don’t be surprised if that someone is you
You’re gonna find when it’s too late,a heart that just won’t break
To satisfy you,just to satisfy you
How many tears were cried,how many dreams have died
To satisfy you,just to satisfy you…..
Yea Obamaone, just how many??
Papa Ray
When I think of all the women I have known, there is a common thread, save one woman only, and that is gardening.
They all liked to grow stuff.
Wretchard,
Obamacare is creating an inevitable grass roots tax revolt.
The consent of the governed is the cornerstone of American governance. All the legitimacy of American Federal, state and local government is based upon that compact between the people and the government. This concept is DNA hard coded into the institutions of American government to include the voluntary compliance system built into the American tax code. Woe to any American government that abuses the public’s belief in the legitimacy of the laws, regulations and rules passed to govern them, because the voluntary nature of the US tax code means rogue American governments are highly vulnerable to tax revolts.
The bottom line up front:
Use of the Slaughter rule to pass Obamacare would create great disrespect for the law and thereby imperil the American voluntary income tax system.
As Andrew McCarthy at NRO’s Corner has pointed out, the “consent of the governed” is exactly what is at stake here with Obamacare:
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NzFjYTQxODU3MGUyZDUyNjY2N2U2NmVmMWExYTU4NjE=
“This is what is happening to the legislative process. Sure, we don’t make lawmakers dot every “i” and cross every “t” every time. But that doesn’t mean we’ve abandoned the right to make them play it by the book when it comes to a controversial matter. When there’s a real dispute, they have to pass the bill the regular, constitutionally mandated way: Both houses on the exact same text, with every legislator accountable for his vote.
If, instead, the legislative process becomes a farce that departs from the constitutional procedures we are entitled to enforce, then it no longer represents the consent of the governed. It is the first American principle that government derives its just powers only from the consent of the governed, and when it takes on a form that becomes destructive of the fundamental rights of the governed, it is no longer legitimate.”
House Speaker Pelosi’s attempt to enact Obamacare, without a straight up or down vote in the House per article one, section seven of the US Constitution risks a major crisis of government legitimacy that will tube Federal tax receipts.
Pelosi & Obama Democrats assume that Americans are going to be “obedient subjects,” aka Europeans, who will do what they are told. (More fools they, even European “subjects” know European laws are just vehicles for elites to express identity issues, not something to really be obeyed. Just look at the European Union.) Americans are not wired that way.
Legitimacy is the American people’s version of “The Mandate of Heaven.” Most Americans obey the law, most of the time, when they see that law as legitimate.
When they don’t, they won’t, as in:
“I ain’t gonna, and you can’t make me. And even if you can make _me_, you can’t make _all_of_us_.”
This has been true from the pre-colonial stamp tax, to the Boston Tea Party, to the Post-Revolution Whiskey Rebellion, to the fugitive slave laws, alcohol prohibition, Federal court ordered public school desegregation/bussing, California’s Proposition 13 Property tax revolt and now things like systematic vandalism of stop light ticket cameras.
The idea of a full-bore tax revolt over use of the Slaughter rule is occurring to a lot of people. See Glenn Reynolds here:
http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/95795/
“March 16, 2010
IF CONGRESS CAN “DEEM” THE HEALTH CARE BILL PASSED WITHOUT ACTUALLY VOTING, perhaps taxpayers should “deem” their taxes to be considered paid without actually sending a check this year.
Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 6:37 pm”
The California State Controller knows that such “Pack, not a herd” tactics are already in operation. This has grave implications for Federal government cash flow.
See the following is from a California Court trial and motions attorney Tom Holsinger on how legitimacy and consent of the governed problems are hitting California state government tax receipts:
California State Controller John Chiang insisted that the State pay all state income tax refunds on time this year because he knew that another year of delaying payment would get too many Californians to underpay their income taxes so as to ensure that they wouldn’t have any refunds for the State to hold up. This can be done by taxpayers claiming additional exemptions from withholding.
But, as Chiang knew, such tactics if widespread would tube the State’s on-going tax revenues such that it would have to borrow more money during the year in anticipation of a spike of payments around April 15. He ordered prompt refund payments, despite California’s desperate financial problems, to save the state’s voluntary tax system.
But all Americans can do the same (claim lots of exemptions so no income taxes are withheld) with their federal income taxes. Once the federal government is perceived as illegitimate, and particularly when it demands that healthy young uninsureds pay medical insurance taxes, it risks a tax revolt using the present voluntary tax system as a vehicle.
The Democrats assume that Americans are obedient subjects, aka Europeans, who will do what they are told. Some terrorists found out otherwise on 9/11. Glenn Reynolds’ term for this American trait is “A pack, not a herd.”
A tax revolt against ObamaCare would be a disaster for everyone, save America’s freedom.
The aftermath of such a fight would see the legitimacy of big government in general and the Federal government in particular, as the biggest casualty.
This would kill the power of the Democratic Party’s ruling leftist faction for a very long time, because the bureaucratic government institutions they are parasitic on are the ones that would be killed by a tax revenue collapse.
35 wws
Excellent and most discerning and perceptive comment.
Tried to edit my last comment to include this, but edit went tits up and ran away, and one of my bill collectors had my attention on the phone. I love talking to them. Keeps them in a job and feeds their kids.
Papa ray
President Obama removed the bust of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office, which had been given to President Bush by the Prime Minister of Great Britain, and he gave it back to the the present Prime Minister of Great Britain. This shows President Obama’s foreign policy, hatred of Winston Churchill, hatred of liberty – he would have made friends with Nazi Germany and sided with it against Great Britain in World War II.
Well, we’ve had the Imperial Presidency for a while. Now we have an Imperial President to go along with it — and rather imperious one, to boot.
As an occasional beer drinker, I have, on various occasions, encountered half-pints, pints and imperial pints, with hardly any of the encounters ending in disaster. But with the Democrat leaders in Washington, a new “volume” has appeared in American History: The Imperial Half Pint. How else do you take the measure of Rahm and Nancy and the rest of the party activist class?
The Democrats strut like imperialist feeding on power and these imperialist need subject peoples to lord over — folks they boss around and take advantage of without worrying about “native opinion.” Right now, they are working on the Americans, and practicing on allies while snuggling up to like minded autocrats.
I’m thinking encounters with these Imperial Half Pints can only end in disaster. In fact, let’s call them The Democrat Imperialist Half Pints — Dihpsits, for short.
I read yesterday these dihpsits turned off the water to the Central Valley in California at the behest of the powerful San Fransisco Escargot Lobby, thus causing soaring unemployment among the most vulnerable in a large section of that troubled state. But now, after causing the distress, the Imperial Half Pints have offered them a few dribbles of the wet stuff in return for giving up control of Health Care to those Dihpsits who sit in Washington. So the question is, will the inhabitatns of the Central Valley fall down on their knees in gratitude like a true conquered people? Will they praise and thank the Dihpsits who rule over them? Will they help the Dihpsits expand their arbitrary rule over the entire nation?
Good God, that would be embarrassing. To kowtow to the Dihpsit Billionaires, the Dihpsit Lobbyist and Lawyers, The Dihpsit bureaucrats and all the crazy Dihpsit hangers on and rent seekers and tax eaters. Yikes!
Oh. Wait. That is just having a normal set of rulers. You know, like Syria! No more American Exceptionalism for you, Pal.
Trent excellent comment.
“Glenn Reynolds’ term for this American trait is “A pack, not a herd.”
True but actually it is several packs, not necessarily running together but not activately competing either.
The Sheepdogs are the quite ones, standing by until needed. But there, never the less, and ready to defend.
Millions upon millions of them.
Papa Ray
Americans who care about this issue have got to keep their eyes on the ball.
One of the main reasons why the brouhaha over Israel is being milked by Obama for all it’s worth (and then some) is to distract attention (at least, as much attention as possible) from the health care bill (and other attempts to revolutionize American society and grab the purse strings of power).
An old conjuring trick—performed by a master in the art of illusion
Our Conjuror in Chief?
Yes, Americans have got to keep their eye on the ball.
hdgreene
“So the question is, will the people of the Central Valley fall down on their knees in gratitude like a true conquered people? Will they praise and thank the Dihpsits who rule over them? Will they help the Dihpsits expand their arbitrary rule over the entire nation? “
Something to think about for sure, but if we go by past actions and attitudes, the answer is yes or at least in most cases. In this one where water is the most important part, people may change their tune, and some in a most unpleasing manner.
Water is life. Just ask anyone in West Texas.
Papa Ray
(Also Known As, “Keeping yer opponents off-balance”)
The motive of even one person can be complex, when speaking of many people, over-simplification is inescapable.
A lot of people don’t pay attention to politics, until the election is close. Thus they missed many of the warning signs about Obama, and of course the MSM was seriously in the tank. Many of them were taken in by Obama’s “post-partisan” rhetoric, and voting for a black candidate had a lot of feel-good to it.
Fortunately, ObamaCare has taken the better part of a year, even many of those who prefer to ignore politics have paid attention.
Trent, Papa Ray re: sheepdog packs.
Great analogy guys. Something to add… the best dog will turn mean if you starve and beat him enough and that’s what these fools seem intent upon. The previous thread was Days of Rage, well, I think the world doesn’t know sweet about rage. This “vote” passes and things keep on, there will be a real rage demonstrated soon enough. Cold, calculated rage.
Obama, Pelosi, Reid. The nation’s leaders. We are so screwed.
23 Karen Yvonne
I understand an agree with your consern. but I can understand and connect with most of what whiskey writes upon the only screen he has to express his feelings and concern.
Much of what he says in the broad specturm is true about women and politics or even how they manage their lives and others. Don’t forget that women are the strongest in almost every measure except physical strength. They are most definably the most cruel and heartless. Just look at history to confirm this.
On the personal side, I was where he is back in 94 all the way to 1999. It is hard to understand men sometimes because they are supposedly the strong ones or at least the ones who “get over it” or “don’t really care about breaking up”.
But actually the opposite is true. Men are much more apt to be destroyed by women that they love and respect and take much longer (if ever) to get over them. And by the phrase “get over them” I mean actually being able to have other constructive and meaningful relationships with women and losing their anger and/or disdain for women.
If I’m wrong about this, whiskey will let me know in no short order, and I hope without too much pain.
Papa Ray
“I read yesterday these dihpsits turned off the water to the Central Valley in California at the behest of the powerful San Fransisco Escargot Lobby…”
Oh, Good Lord this administration gets worse and worse! It all started out like an episode of “24″ and proceeded on downhill to now emulate an episode of “Green Acres.”
“The San Francisco Escargot Lobby”
I get allllerrgic smelling gay!
Whiskey’s also stuck in Southern California, ground zero for the culture he despises so – the belly of the beast. I don’t know why he stays there, I wouldn’t set foot there even for a vacation. I ain’t ever lost nothin’ in California, and I ain’t goin’ there to look for it.
this thread is becoming funny
#18 Bob,
and did they shave their armpits ?
With three seconds left on the edit function I glanced at my comment (way up there at 42) and saw “inhabitatns of the Central Valley.” And so I asked myself: Am I that fast? So fast that I can correct that in three seconds? And I answered: Yes! Unfortunately, by that time the three seconds had passed.
Now, the other day I wrote “angle” for “angel” (or vice reverse, I forget) and was taken to task. Then yesterday I was corrected in the matter of the space/time continuum. Or was it the matter of the energy of the space/time continuum? But if matter = energy does it really matter? Point is, I’ve had my ear twisted and it still hurts.
But I’m thinking it could be worse. I could have written “The inhabit ants who colonized the Central Valley kowtow” etc. etc. and so on. Gee. Try explaining that that is just a misspelling to Victor Davis Hanson.
Papa Ray, I agree. Water is different. And the water boarding of the Central Valley, tragic. But they have been taking it for forty years now and are, perhaps, use to it. Food Stamps, anyone?
“Americans as a whole give the impression of having a great many things in common with a spoiled eight-year-old boy.” poster Fletcher Christian
Coming from you, that means a lot.
Poster Bob — WTMI.
And the really amazing thing about it is however hard you kick them in the face, these are the kinds of friends who’ll be back for more, right there, drooling on the kicker’s shoe through their broken teeth.”
I see you’ve watched the folks at a democrat fund raiser or two. It also makes me wonder if you ever met a stripper down in Birmingham who was called “Honey”, but that was so many years ago I’m sure it’s impossible.
Regards
Now we get to learn about the “rash” in “rashputin”…? WWTMI !!!!!
“It also makes me wonder if you ever met a stripper down in Birmingham who was called “Honey”, but that was so many years ago I’m sure it’s impossible.”
you reminded me of the great old Deep Purple song about Mitzi Dupree:
flying to salt
lake city
seats 3a and b
i was down and needed
a window
but in 3a sat mitzi dupree
she said hi i am mitzi
the queen of the ping pong
where you going boy
i said nowhere
she said i’m moving on
i thought what is this
i cannot resist
here she is
and i’ve always wanted a girl
with a name
a name like mitzi dupree
she said what do you do
i said i’m a singer in a band
she said ya i’m an entertainer
reached out and took my hand
she was going to a mining town
way up north to do her show
i said it must be cold up there
she said depends on who you know
oh that look in her eye
i can tell you no lies
i’m just a man
she made me feel like a king in my mind
i love you mitzi dupree
i said what is this queen of the ping pong business
she smiled what do you think
it has no connection with china
i said oow have another drink
well i knew right away
that i’d seen her act before
in a room behind a kitchen in bangkok
and three or four times more in singapore
she may not be the first
but i know she ain’t the worst
she was mine but i ran out of time
i miss you i love you mitzi dupree
my darling mitzi dupree
WWW @ 35 said:
“Obama only has one thing left going for him, and that is the fact that he somehow, with no accomplishments of his own, became identified with the leftist movement in America. He, for the time being, has a free ride as the incarnation of all of their hopes and dreams, no matter how unworthy he may himself be. The day they finally realize that they have been worshipping a false messiah will be the day he is truly finished.”
How topical.
What is the lesson of Palm Sunday?
Will there be a resurrection for the Obamamessiah?
bob: I used to date the women you describe. Then I started dating women that like men. Now I get sex and sammiches. Women with make-up and fingernails rule.
“Maureen Dowd believes that the President’s pique at Israel was spontaneous because of the “supremely aggravating character of Bibi Netanyahu”,”
That explains it. She’s gay.
(Note to Whiskey–Bibi is hot.)
Leftists never understand that for them the destination may be an isolated spot in a New Jersey forest. (Or maybe a secure undisclosed location just outside Chicago.)
Perhaps she didn’t know he was gay.
His “scarf it was apricot” and she didn’t know he was GAY?
WWW @ 35 said: “Obama only has one thing left going for him, and that is the fact that he somehow, with no accomplishments of his own, became identified with the leftist movement in America. He, for the time being, has a free ride as the incarnation of all of their hopes and dreams, no matter how unworthy he may himself be. The day they finally realize that they have been worshipping a false messiah will be the day he is truly finished.”
Ah, but you see, the weaker he is, the more dangerously incompetent or even malignant, the greater virtue it is to believe in him.
Or else how could an inexperienced nobody with no past and a name like Barack Hussein Obama, get more than 1% of the vote? I said from the start, that even giving such a serious consideration, is a horrible pathology. Is it even possible for such crazed voters to become disillusioned, or awakened? Only by a greater revelation, not by mere facts.
Don Rodrigo @ 63: His “scarf it was apricot” and she didn’t know he was GAY?
Well she knew he was into fruits …
Anyway, since when is gay incompatible with vain? OK, “… with the wife of a good friend” suggests otherwise, but maybe she thought he was a lesbian.
What the hey.
Love potion number 9, The Searchers
I took my troubles down to Madame Rue
You know that gypsy with the gold-capped tooth
She’s got a pad down on Thirty-Fourth and Vine
Sellin’ little bottles of Love Potion No. 9
I told her that I was a flop with chicks
I’ve been this way since 1956
She looked at my palm, and she made a magic sign
She said, what you need is Love Potion No. 9
She bent down and turned around and gave me a wink
She said, I’m gonna make it up right here in the sink
It smelled like turpentine, it looked like Indian ink
I held my nose, I closed my eyes, I took a drink
I didn’t know if it was day or night
I started kissin’ everything in sight
But when I kissed that cop down at Thirty-Fourth and Vine
He broke my little bottle of Love Potion No. 9
I held my nose, I closed my eyes, I took a drink
I didn’t know if it was day or night
I started kissin’ everything in sight
But when I kissed that cop down at Thirty-Fourth and Vine
He broke my little bottle of Love Potion No. 9
Love Potion No. 9
Love Potion No. 9
Love Potion No. 9
Taking due note of Wretchard at #13 and RWE at #31; I appreciate the comments of Trent Trelenko at #39 and #43 Papa Ray.
If they force through this seizure of power by bribery and a deliberate violation of the Constitution; this is very literally a breaking point in the legitimacy of the government, if you believe in the Constitution. Call it Mandate of Heaven, call it Consent of the Governed, or whatever.
Sheepdogs. I have lived and worked on a ranch. There are dogs who are trained to work with livestock. And there are pet dogs, who will as a matter of course protect from intruders, but who are not trained to work with livestock.
One of the rules of the game in working with livestock is that if a dog of either sort starts attacking stock at any time, there is no “cure”. There is no “retraining” or redemption. You have to be able to shoot your own dog; put him/her down now. And shoot any other dog attacking stock on sight, without hesitation or remorse. Because no matter how tame, how much of a family dog it may seem around the house; once out of sight it becomes one with the pack. And there are packs of feral dogs pretty much everywhere. It does not matter what breed. I have seen Chihuahuas and Poodles running with German Shepherds and Cocker Spaniels. And as a group they will attack the stock, regardless of size and type.
The trained stock dogs have to defend against the pack of renegades to the death, or until the people come along to make things right.
A dog, even a Sheepdog, that goes against the implied oath and contract he has with the stock and the people; must be ended at all costs. By the fang and claw of other Sheepdogs, or by the armed people. Eventually. The sooner it is done, the less damage is done.
Just some random thoughts.
Subotai Bahadur
Wretchard @ 13,
I think the big fear of Democrats from non-leftist districts is being identified as the 216th vote for “Demon Pass.” In fact, if it passes by 216 votes they will all be the 216th vote — the guy who passed it.
I think this is how “Demon Pass” was suppose to work: The congress critters vote for the fixes to the Senate bill while passing the Senate bill. The Senate then has ten days to likewise pass the fixes. If the fixes are not passed, the Senate Bill becomes law after ten days anyway — forcing Obama to sign it on the tenth day (without the fixes) since such a sweeping bill should not become law without his signature (“I’ve given Republicans Senators a chance…”). So. The reason the Senate bill becomes law without the fixes is Republican obstruction in the Senate, not the vote of the congress critters. You see, the Corn husker Kickback is the result of the Republican obstructionism in the Senate.
Yes, it would be a tough sell. But they could hope that with the help of Soros and his billionaire buddies they could create that “fog” in the mind of the electorate. But as the process drags out (plus the fact that the “other side” will have adequate funds to remind the voter) that looks less likely.
Plus, now it appears the bill has to become law (according to Senate rules) before the fixes are voted on in the Senate. All those fixes might be a lot for the Senate to Swallow. Do Democrat Senators swallow? And if they don’t, do House Democrats look like fools?
My prediction: if it passes, it will pass by 220 votes. Nobody will want to walk the plank alone.
68. No, it won’t become law on the 10th day automatically- because Congress won’t be in session due to the Paschal Recess. If Obama doesn’t sign the bill, the bill dies. This, I believe, is the real reason he postponed his Asia trip- he didn’t want to take the chance that an act of God could thwart the bill by delaying his return. Suppose an earthquake destroyed the airport, and he had to wait several days for an aircraft carrier to arrive to take him back to DC by transport plane- by then, the ten days allotted for signing or vetoing a bill will have elapsed, and, Congress not being in session, cause the bill to die.
#53
Their legs, they shaved
Bureaucracies love complexity. After the Takeover, if you ever have a health problem in the future, the person who can solve it will be your congressperson. And if the congressperson wants a hospital or clinic to improve your health services, the President or Speaker of the House can help with that need, as a favor. It’s the Chicago way. Obama and friends are simply agreeing with the old saying: “If you’ve [we've] got your health, you’ve [we've] got everything.”
deem–to consider, judge
dom–judgement
domesday–the day of judgement, i.e. Doomsday
Domesday Book–so called because William’s accounting of people’s assets seemed to be as thorough as the moral accounting they expected at the final judgement.
–dom suffix–state, condition, e.g. serfdom, thralldom, kingdom, Obamadom . . . .
So, yes, there is something of Doomsday about upcoming DeemsDay.
We are at End Game now. We are naked in the dark with nothing between us and the ring of fire.
We are now Riders on the Storm.
From Twitter:
michellemalkin
Final vote on House endorsing Slaughter Rule Yea – 222 Nay – 203 Not voting 6. Remember in November – http://is.gd/aNCuN
U.S. Constitution Article 1, Section 7:
If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten Days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be a Law, in like Manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their Adjournment prevent its Return, in which Case it shall not be a Law.
Pelosi and Reid would simply not adjourn Congress until the ten days had passed if Obambi wasn’t able to make it back to DC in time. They delayed adjournments last year in the attempt to get this thing passed, so why wouldn’t they do so again?
Myth buster,
Is that recess? Or out of congressional session (end of term, which occurs every two years). Perhaps we need to consult a constitutional scholar. Is President Obama available?
When they originally thought the Slaughter rule up, it would have passed by now and given them the ten day window, allowing Obama to sign both bills at the same time — which seemed to have been the original “vision.”
I see Tarnsman has the passage from the constitution — is it from the official Democratic Party Word Processor? If it is, it might change.
Still, I’m not sure a mere recess adjournment counts. I think the reason for the provision is so the President can veto it and send it back for reconsideration of his suggested changes during the congressional term. Or something. I think President Obama would side with me!
Somehow the link didn’t work. Nice animation in this version. Says its done by drifters.
Love Potion Number Nine
Here’s the more well known version by the searchers
According to wikipedia love potion number nine has been covered by countless rock bands.
RWE said:
“Old Gus Hip, head of the CPUSA, announced after the USSR fell that the problem was that the Soviets did not employ “Real Communism.””
I didn’t realize that Gus Hall had lived to see the collapse of communism. I did a quick Wikipedia check and sure enough, the evil bastard died on 13 October 2000. He lived to see his utopian dream utterly fail. That’s poetic justice!
RWE also said:
“I am sure that there are many who will scrape the Obama bumper stickers off their cars and then say that Obama did not employ “Real Hope and Change” – but we will recognize that choked gobbling sound for what it is.”
I live in the San Francisco Bay area. Still lots of Obama bumper stickers here but they’re getting less common. I do hear the choked gobbling sound from time-to-time. It’s sad but true that many of the local moonbats do not regard Obama as a true socialist.
wws @ 52 said:
I don’t know why he stays there [California], I wouldn’t set foot there even for a vacation. I ain’t ever lost nothin’ in California, and I ain’t goin’ there to look for it.”
As a second generation “Prune Picker” (native Californian), I’m compelled to defend my home state. Sure, we’re cursed with more than our fair share of moonbats but if one is lucky enough to be employed, California is a fantastic place to live. Our beautiful beaches, forests, farm lands and deserts are the envy of the world. Also the weather here can not be beat (particularly now that Spring has arrived). This is a great place to go to for a vacation. Of course, the state is bankrupt and the inmates are running the asylum… One needs to appreciate the good and deal with the bad.
Who does this speak to the most?
Those horrified by the impending death of Freedom under the Law?
Those feckless children rushing headlong into oblivion?
The Narcissist condemning those who will not follow?
The End
#60
But do you get any emotional support?
Do you read books together?
Does she clean the fish?
Getting back to Israel, I am ashamed of our country now. It’s disgusting what we have become. I can’t wait to vote in November. My wife too, and she’s not political, but even she is really ticked off.
Here’s what the Wiki’s say about the pocket veto. I think it shows Mr. Buster and myself to be right in our own way. And that is how it should be in today’s America.
Courts have never fully clarified when an adjournment by Congress would “prevent” the President from returning a vetoed bill. Some Presidents have interpreted the Constitution to restrict the pocket veto to the adjournment sine die of Congress at the end of the second session of the two-year Congressional term, while others interpreted it to allow intersession and intrasession pocket vetoes. In 1929, the United States Supreme Court ruled in the Pocket Veto Case that a bill had to be returned to the chamber while it is in session and capable of work. While upholding President Calvin Coolidge’s pocket veto, the court said that the “determinative question…is not whether it is a final adjournment of Congress or an interim adjournment…but whether it is one that ‘prevents’ the President from returning the bill.” In 1938, the Supreme Court overruled itself in part in Wright v. U.S., ruling that Congress could designate agents on its behalf to receive veto messages when it was not in session, saying that “the Constitution does not define what shall constitute a return of a bill or deny the use of appropriate agencies in effecting the return.” A three-day recess of the Senate was considered a short enough time that the Senate could still act with “reasonable promptitude” on the veto. However, a five-month adjournment would be a long enough period to enable a pocket veto. Within those constraints, there still exists some ambiguity; Presidents have been reluctant to pursue disputed pocket vetoes to the Supreme Court for fear of an adverse ruling that would serve as a precedent in future cases.
Well, I don’t think President Obama fears adverse rulings. But Politically, his henchman would have liked to give Republican Senators a 10-day chance to “obstruct.” Party of no, ya’know. Yes, they forced the President to sign the bill, flaws and all. But of course his goal is to sign the measure, not veto it.
“Sometimes the bad guys like being bad guys.”
And sometimes, they have minimal intelligence and do a rational cost-benefit analysis. Given how the administration treats friends and enemies (as wws (#115) expounded on), the bad guys have no incentive to reform, to the contrary.
“To support the official line. Rahm Emmanuel called liberal activists ‘retarded’ at a meeting on health care. You would have thought that people don’t call their most ardent admirers retarded.”
Hey, let’s not criticize Administration people on the rare occasion that they are being honest.
Lifeofthemind (#6), Wayne (#30), Don Rodrigo (#63): Heh.
Note: apologies for the common name, but please don’t confuse lowercase bob (whose argument with Whiskey about the nature of women I am not getting into) with me. bob, thanks for the disambiguation
.
More on what LOTM commented on MM tweet:
The House vote on the Slaughter Solution: Update: Constitution-butchers prevail, 222-203; Roll call vote added; Calling out Dems Altmire, Lynch
She names names. Two are interesting in that they had spoke ill of the “Slaughter rule” yet voted for it’s use.
Cowards All.
Ace’s comments.
Partial snip of comment:
——————
Either way, its not good.
Papa Ray
Bob — Women do indeed love the Big Shot. Poll after poll after poll shows women more than men like: Barack Obama, Teddy Kennedy, John Edwards, and so on. Look at Charlie Sheen, his appeal has only GROWN after his latest arrest for putting (allegedly) a knife to his wife’s throat on Christmas Eve. Fun times! Sheen is the bad boy women believe they can tame. Two and a Half Men is the #1 rated sit-com.
The “Gender Gap” is real. Much of it based on the attraction women have for “the Big Man” such as the many, many fantasies Profession MARRIED women write about Obama. Or the many women who confessed they had sexual fantasies about Obama. Standard stuff.
That’s not a bogeyman. That’s real. Its why Obama (who now only has posturing as a Big Man left) has not completely cratered with White women voters (though he’s lost them to the point of 51% disapproval). Judith Warner never fantasized about GWB. Obama always has that.
Pedestalization of women prevents an understanding that women are as flawed as men, as human, but their flaws run in different directions. Men generally don’t like the realization that women are as imperfect as they are, but in different ways. But screaming and putting your fingers in your ears does not make reality change.
Wretchard — Obama does not understand men, because he does not keep his word nor have enough means to punish. He’s Saddam without the torture chambers and death squads. Moreover, Fred Barnes notes that the ObamaCare wars will not stop with passage of it, and Senator Coburn has threatened both the deal “If you voted no, and you vote yes, and you lose your election, and you think any nomination to a federal post isn’t going to be held up in the Senate, I’ve got news for you. It’s going to be held.” And also “Number two is, if you get a parochial deal for you or your district, I’ve already instructed my staff that we will look at every appropriations bill, and we will associate that with the buying of your vote. I want to tell you that your deal isn’t going to happen.
And be prepared to defend selling your vote.”
Link here at Ace of Spades.
I am not saying things too low won’t happen. What I am saying is that Obama is forcing many to fight him, far too many for him to crush, because he has not adopted the force-patronage rule. How exactly did things work out for the Japanese again? Obama is like that Roman Emperor Machiavelli references in the Prince. Who used fear only to rule, so that a slave he abused finally got fed up and knowing he was to die anyway, killed him. Where exactly has he peeled off allies, in a broad social sense? Who has he created patronage for, who was against him before? How has he kept his word to show he can be trusted? Who has he made examples of (to create fear) but used it wisely and not indiscriminately? America is not exactly Manila in 1943.
Obama needs Florida … and he gutted the Space Program. For what gain, exactly? Because he does not like it.
After all, Obama’s base in White voters is women. Who love him for the Big Man he is. BUT … he’s created a wedge issue (who gets health care, non-Whites or White women?) that is extremely effective. Big Man worship is not limitless or unconditional. Even the nerdiest, “White Guy” type of Republican can peel off the White female voters by arguing more health care for them at the expense of illegal aliens, Welfare (Black) recipients, and so on.
Which is the logical extension of ObamaCare. Yes it creates a socialist system. But it CREATES raw, naked spoils fights over the basic of human existence: health, and ALONG RACIAL LINES. Indeed, it creates a losing situation.
Because if Government controls health care, who gets it and who gets shafted, even White Women will abandon the Big Man attraction and vote for a White Guy or Woman, who promises to maintain White demographic dominance by whatever means required (currently at 66% or so). Why? Because the Demographic loser LOSES HEALTH CARE. Stakes: your life. Literally. Which means huge pressure to simply deport as many Mexicans as can be found, one way or another.
Democrats have traditionally (since Kennedy played the Big Man card) held women. ObamaCare has the potential to peel off White Women forever, by making Dems choose Blacks/Hispanics over White Women. ObamaCare has a requirement for 40% IIRC of all Med School grads be Black. Instead of 100% competent. It’s the easiest play in the world here.
[Dowd worships Obama as the Big Man. But not even she wants to die of Breast Cancer because of PC selection for doctors, and money going to non-Whites. Socialism only functions in a mono-ethnic society without racial spoils fights.]
Appeasement and isolationism are two sides of the same coin. The best way to appease your enemies is by abandoning your allies.
In the 1920′s and 30′s, for America that meant turning our back on British and French security concerns. For Britain, it meant abandoning France. For Obama, it means Israel.
The global internationalist multiculturalist tone should not blind us to the fundamental isolationism of this foreign policy.
How well is it working? As with the 30′s experience, we are discovering that it is easier to lose allies than it is to turn enemies around.
So, the clock keeps ticking, Iran keeps developing its new holocaust weaponry, and we keep pressuring Israel to make new unilateral concessions to the unappeasable Palestinians.
Let me add, here in shorter form so it is noticed.
Suppose you are a Dem. You vote ObamaCare yes. You get voted out of office.
What then?
You face (as Clyburn threatens above) at least in the House and probably in the Senate:
1. Testimony on how you “sold your vote for office” and possible indictment back home by angry Republican State AGs.
2. Your appointment to office blocked anyway by the Senate.
3. The House definitely and the Senate probably killing any sweetheart deal.
4. Obama NOT defending you, because has not done so for anyone else.
So what is your best interest?
Make Nancy Pelosi (gone as Majority Leader after Nov.) and Harry Reid (just gone after Nov.) happy? Obama happy? A man who cannot really punish you and cannot help you? Yes Obama can go after your donor base. But …
You can always SWITCH PARTIES. Particularly if you are in a Red State. Indeed, the desire of Obama to “punish” those who vote no, or even think of it, means he’ll push people to think “hey it would be a whole lot nicer if Obama was just impeached and convicted. Then life could get back to normal.”
This is the Downside of the Chicago Way. It does not work well outside Chicago, when there is no suburb to flee to and the stakes are do or die.
Papa Ray @50: My comment #23 was a moment of weakness where I lost my usual toleration for Whiskey’s Women Are The Root of All Evil Philosophy. I agree that women are more likely to fall in line with the current zeitgeist and a lot of grief results from that but he takes some of these legitimate observations and runs wild with them, guided by his deterministic, materialist, “evolution causation” beliefs. Where’s the humanity in that? There isn’t any. His women are virtually all shallow, unthinking slaves to fashion who are either so bored or spoiled or sheltered that they don’t know any better than to crave and court danger. Stupid silly children – that’s all they are and, what’s more, they can’t help being that way. Whiskey has had some great comments on here, but he is chiefly Accuser of Women. If we’re going to assign blame, we ALL, men and women, stand accused – women, for failing to use their love/emotion wisely enough to bestow it on the worthy; and men for failing to use their strength to defend the worthy in a world that has turned things upside-down and lost sight of virtue and first principles.
I resolve here and now that this will be my last objection to anything Whiskey says. I’m sure he doesn’t care what I think, but the rest won’t have to wade through it either. And, Whiskey, I still luvya anyway! Joy Behar and Oprah Winfrey drive me crazy too.
I’m glad I got my prediction in that “the slaughter rule” would pass by 220 votes, or not at all, about two hours ago. It don’t look so daring now!
Still, some of these votes might switch. It might be a matter of “keeping it alive” beyond today. Some congress critters may have been told, “If you vote for this, you can vote against the rule itself.”
If so, Antsy Nancy’s got a problem.
Karen, I do think part of the politics of Health Care Reform is that women “as a group” — who use the health care system more intensely than men — think that men “as a group” will carry much of the extra cost. After all, 20 percent of males are seen by doctors at the time of birth and in the morgue. So women can believe that “the bill” will increase the nation’s health care cost but reduce their own — even if it is a less efficient system. But if they face rationing and early death, they’d rather not. So it is a matter of “how awful will it be?” A more complicated decision for women. Death panels, anyone?
8. whiskey
If you keep telling the truth like you do you’re bound to rock the world of those metrosexuals who haven’t a clue. Cherchez la femme.
H
It is looking more and more like this may come about.
Landmark Legal Foundation to File Suit to Stop President’s Health Plan if ‘Slaughter Rule’ is Used
Will the Judge rule that they have “Standing” or no?
Papa Ray
The recent “findings” that mammographies aren’t really efficient until age fifty, ditto the PSA with its high false positives, can be seen as shaping the battle space.
You’ll see a good many other things you thought were good health practice questioned in the near future.
I find it strange that, when Obama acts unilaterally within Congress, there’s a huge outrage among conservatives, but when George W. Bush acted unilaterally in Iraq, there’s no outrage. Also when Emmanuel says “retarded”, conservatives are outraged, but when Rush Limbaugh says “retarded”, conservatives don’t seem to care. Interesting…
Habu, didn’t you tell us that your wife called you “gros con” once ?
uh, je m’en vais !
“You’ll see a good many other things you thought were good health practice questioned in the near future.”
Like administering medicine to the aged, or perhaps even the desirability of giving birth to children who aren’t genetically “desirable”. This is the thin edge of the blade, and while such topics are worth discussing and debating, the point won’t really be to discuss or debate.
The point will be to take away the decision process from the dumb little individual in order to hand it to the “proper authorities” in the government. The new symbiosis between Big Government and Big Labor extends this mandate to those NGOs such as unions which are also on board with Obama’s coup d’etat. Unions also tax without representation once they are voted into office. Obama is simply using the Big Labor model to fashion the US Government into the biggest Left wing Labor Organization.
There was an article on the front page of the NYT online yesterday:
March 18, 2010, 7:51 AM
The Problem Is Stagnant Pay, Not Stagnant Water
If one can believe it, in the middle of the biggest recession/depression in my lifetime, the fricking garbage collectors in NYC are grousing about their “stagnant” pay, and complaining about how bad it smells to do their job! No joke! We’ve got to strangle these entrenched unions of money — we’ve got to shatter the stranglehold these entrenched politicians have on our money.
And I find it strange that over almost two years before Bush gave the order to attack Saddam, almost every democrat was going on record how the U.S. MUST stop Saddam and his evil government and how he was the most dangerous person in the world and needed to be brought to justice. I guess those were just words, you know words with no meaning.
Like democrats like to do.
Forget Emmanuel, he is gone, not because of just his “retarded” comment, he is just not useful anymore to The Won.
And you should know by now that Rush can hardly say anything that “The Conservatives” don’t like. Just be sure and stay on his good side because he has almost as much power as the loser in the White House does now, and in the future he will have more at the rate Obama’s polls are dropping.
OK, all done, no more feeding of the wantabe trolls.
Papa Ray
Well Whiskey, maybe you’re right, after all I don’t live in the big city, and if you are right, it’s a damned sorry state of affairs we have come to.
I think you are wrong though.
I’ve known many women who have gone to the big city, and come back just as they left, not seeking any big man.
Just a little less noise, is what I think they want. After all, silence is something good.
—–
Habu—goddamn, the figures on Areas 10 and 12 just came out, that is in the heart of the Lolo.
Shit, last year, this from air photos, the count was, 4,111 elk. This year, 2100 something.
And last years count was way down from before. Way way down.
Shit, Habu, we’ve screwed the pooch, we
‘ve wiped out the elk, just like us farmers said we would do.
Now the Idaho Fish and Game is saying, they will not be able to breed the herd. Can’t keep it up.
By Christ, the morons finally figured it out.
And Idaho Fish and Game, they said, in the beginning, they will go for the whitetails first. R i g h t
And they have crossed the Snake, and are into the Wallowas, now.
Shoot, shovel, shut up.
sss
It seems to me that republican memory is on par with goldfish. Here you are talking about alienating friends and you include France. Will someone please remind me who it was that coined the phrase “Freedom Fries” to insult the French. I do believe it was the republican congress after France would not help out with the stupid war the Republicans started. If your only evidence that we slighted the British is over a present then you should probably STFU. Unless you are good friends with Brown, perhaps he really likes music. Why is it that those countries we call friends like us so much better now that Bush is gone. I think Obama is playing chess and you guys are playing Candyland. I would not expect you to understand the complexities of foreign relations. Obama needs good relations with China and Russia so that he can have their votes to sanction Iran. Clearly he sees Iran as an immediate bigger threat than some minor deals to those China and Russia. I agree a fully armed Iran will destabilize the region and he has to deal with that first.
by talking about “deeming” (or it is dimming?) they effectively shifted debate from traditionally required 60 votes to 50+1. Clever. And it shows again that offense is the best defense.
Shorter Adrian (#90):
“Obama=Bush ^ Emmanuel=Limbaugh”
I’m not that bob at 97.
Removed by programmer.
Well, look. You’d think 50+1 would pass any bill, but then you’d think 50+1 would know better than to pass a bill that the other 50 really, truly, loathed. Hence the filibuster. So, if the bill in question were really worth the candle, one could argue that the shenanigans to get *back* to 50+1 were justified. However, going back one *more* step, the Republicans were shut out of the writing of the bill, or they would not so loath it anyway. The shutout was a Democratic tactic and strategy. I suggest they therefore own the problem and are NOT justified in going to great lengths to get back to a 50+1.
Then there’s this:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18669-first-quantum-effects-seen-in-visible-object.html
First quantum effects seen in visible object
A tiny strip of metal visible to the naked eye has been induced to oscillate and not oscillate at the same time in a quantum superposition.
IOW, it has been deemed to be oscillating and not oscillating, though neither state can be determined by observation.
Bibi’s popularity in Israel has increased. To a politician that’s political GOLD!
It also pays NOT to respond to stories where the press is lined up to kick you in the teeth. So not responding is a wise choice.
There’s also the reality that the arabs are very sensitive. Israel doesn’t need provoking idiots by bragging that they’re handling themselves well. And, that in Dubai they had a successful operation. Easier to say Sherlock of Dubai “won.” And, the bamster is another winnah. Who has plugs for a veep. And, hillary over at state. While everything for America is falling apart.
Oh, by the way, Bibi can’t laugh out loud, or snicker, either. But the bamster can’t even sell watermelons. (Will healthcare get shoved down American throats? Or will this thing keep getting kicked around, including back when it goes to the senate? OR when lawsuits show up?)
It seems the bamster does stuff without really checking out their consequences. And, Rahm, by the way, got his tutu caught in the tires, under the bus.
Then there is this:
Scales finally falling from even the blindest of eyes
I meant to post this last night but got caught up in real life.
Obama: ‘Procedural’ Spat Over Health Bill Vote Doesn’t Worry Me
No..I didn’t watch the Video, I can’t stomach more lies from Obama, my blood pressure just can’t handle it.
Papa Ray
bob (#98): “I’m not that bob at 97.”
Surely you mean to say “I’m not that Bob. I’m sure you join me in eagerly awaiting the arrival of b0b, bob!, and boB.
If the case of letters isn’t enough, bob here is the one who argues with certain alcoholic drinks; I argue with certain self-identified gentiles.
@ Whiwkey
“Now researchers believe that improvements in health care in wealthy western countries mean women do not have to worry about so much about the quality of their offspring – and so are picking more feminine looking men”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/7457138/Why-women-now-prefer-Johnny-Depp-to-Sean-Connery.html
ah, that explains that ! don’t worry, soon we’ll be back to the good ol times, as our governments are going all bankrupted !
uh, I still prefer Sean Conery to Johnny depp, as a virtual male, uh may-be cuz we are French… and Sean coonery, Petraeus… ( fichtre, Johnny depp too) have a french wife, so the primitive heros know where to chase
Tocque works.
Troll Be Gone.
Also good for messages.
If only it worked on Congress.
One of you Bobs ought to change your name to NotThatBob or something.
From Whiskey #82: “Socialism only functions in a mono-ethnic society without racial spoils fights.” Really? REALLY?
Par for the course.
As w posted:
“Similarly, if the politicians are messing stuff up, ultimately it’s because too many people have let them. So there’s no sense in blaming the Big Man.”
Much better and shorter than what I posted here and elsewhere over the last year on the web, but here it is again anyway:
“When Americans (or at least a majority of those that vote) finally come to the realization that our Republic (NOT designed nor meant to be a Democracy) has strayed far from the path that our Founders intended. When those Americans finally understand what our Founders feared would happen, has indeed happened slowly and steadily over the last fifty or so years, Obama, Reid, Pelosi and others like them will be given their walking papers. Or you would think so, wouldn’t you? But if we go by our past record, it is not guaranteed.
That my friends has got to change.
In the LAST 10 or so years, it has taken an out of control federal government spending our money and lots of it to FINALLY get (some of us) our attention. It should have gotten our attention over these last fifty or so years, it didn’t because it was a slow and steady drain of our liberty and stealthy building of government theft and accumulation of powers.
There are still millions of Americans that don’t know or care a twit about politics but just vote the party line or even worse…don’t vote at all, and it is getting worse every election cycle.
Our Founder’s not only warned us against all this, but wrote rules and regulations in our Bill of Rights (and it’s Preamble) and in our Constitution that were meant to warn, prepare and enable us to protect the Republic for which they stood, died for and wanted for all of their future generations of Americans.
But over these years, we have allowed the slow destruction of our Founder’s vision, their plan and their hopes for our Republic – by our inability to pay attention. understand and stop those like Pelosi, Reid, Obama and their host of radical thugs.
By our just not paying attention and/or caring about “politics”.
Now we are at the point where all of the years we neglected and forgot our responsibilities to our Republic are going to finally crash down and allow the complete destruction and END of our Republic.
If you don’t see this, you are part of the problem.”
Papa Ray
90)Adrian,
“George W. Bush acted unilaterally in Iraq, there’s no outrage”
Apparently you aren’t familiar with the definition of “unilateral.”
#95 – Why is it that those countries we call friends like us so much better now that Bush is gone. I think Obama is playing chess and you guys are playing Candyland.”
Who on earth are you talking about? Canada? Sure we like you fine right now – our dollar is almost at par as your economy heads down the toilet. Lots of things are cheaper to buy over the border these days; I might head down there myself to pick up some electronics next week. I think Obama is playing with his dick and thinks that IQ is measured in inches.
If female behavior was the result of deep evolutionary conditioning, it is not going to change in a single generation due to prevailing social conditions. MC’s article indirectly undermines that paradigm, I think.
Evolutionary Psychology takes perceived differences and essentially invents a “Just-so Story” to explain them. The problem is that perceptions of how male and female behavior differs between cultures then and now, as a quick glance through Ancient, Medieval, Victorian, and Modern literature will indicate. For example, the pretty-boy emotional, fair-skinned, Orlando-Bloom character sounds like the description of the heroes in some of the soppier Romance writings from the High Middle Ages, a time of greater violence and less healthcare than today. Unfortunately, some ideologues have taken this to mean that all “gender” differences are cultural – which is laughable – but that should not blind us to the fact that culture does have a considerable influence on how the real biological difference are perceived. The idea of the woman as essentially civilized and tamers of men was an invention of the Romantic period and incidently gave the men licence to behave in an uncivilized manner- an attitude reflected in modern society that takes (what I think to be) biological desire for promiscuous sex and celebrates it without much reflection. If the pre-Victorian world, which tended to view men as more responsible for maintaining a stable society, had known that men also respond biologically to the the hormones of a pregnant woman by getting protective (I believe), they would probably have emphasized that and ignored the greater tendency to promiscuity. Modern culture tends to ignore the male reaction to female pregnancy because the “playa” and not the (good, intelligent) father is the idealized male image in pop culture, I think.
Neurobiologists have been hard at work the last couple decades trying to figure out what the biological difference, as opposed to cultural differences are, and while the results are still not entirely clear, is seems that biologically based sexual differentiation of behavior is both prominent and different from many common stereotypes. See Krause’s “Taking Sex Differences Seriously” for more.
My 2 cents.
Grey Fox: and a fascinating two cents it is…
Barack Obama is at his core a coward. His technique is classic passive/aggressive, the preferred course of the weak.
I once read a comment by a young woman. “When given a choice between going with your friend or your enemy, go with your enemy, because your friend won’t hit back.”
That’s Obama in a nutshell.
Hey, the troll button works, that’s pretty cool.
I still haven’t figured out that whole tocquen thing, though. But I’m not sure the Tocque designers have either.
Who are the other states?
Idaho first to sign law aimed at health care plan
Papa Ray
At the bottom of this post is a link to a recent review of evolutionary psychology by one of its leading researchers and his students. To characterize their work as “Just So Stories” is ridiculous. Embarrassingly so when Grey Fox offers as an alternative authority Steven Rhoads (no, it’s not Krause), who is a professor of political science. Rhoads tries to explain sex differences physiologically via hormones. That constitutes a proximate explanation and, of course, is nothing new. Evolutionary psychology looks for ultimate explanations, i.e., those based on the working of natural selection. Proximate explanations are necessary but not sufficient for a complete biological understanding of traits of organisms.
http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/Group/BussLAB/pdffiles/evolutionary_psychology_AP_2010.pdf
and some comely babes at that ridgerunner!
Papa Ray–Our legislature is also passing a bill that says we control the wolves in our own state. I’m not sure if it’s passed, yet, but the movement is afoot.
All these things end up in court, but we are beginning to say, the hell with Unca Sam.
For the first time in my life, I am beginning to think along the same lines as the old very very minority here, that was always talking about getting out of the United States.
I don’t think we can do that, not here, maybe Alaska or Hawaii could, and make it, but the general consensus here is becoming, we are really pissed. Really really pissed.
We don’t want to be governed by the inner city.
I make this prediction…Walt Minnick is gone in November. While he is a blue dog’s blue dog, he voted for Pelosi as Speaker, he has that hung about his neck, which will be a big campaign deal on our side, and we are running a good looking, well spoken Marine veteran against him, and we will win.
“I think Obama is playing chess and you guys are playing Candyland.”
ROTFLMAO !!!! Roll yourself another one and hush up.
Geez, the only Queen Barry knows about is his very close friend who was found dead right before Barry announced he was running for president. You, though, are an excellent pawn so just lie there drooling until the nice men come and tell you you’ve won the Obamacare ‘life unworthy of living’ prize.
The comments posted here are the best I’ve ever seen. They are well thought out with a good amount of historical reference and knowledge.
How about one “Bob” and one “Bob’s Your Uncle?”
Guarding against things like the Slaughter maneuver is difficult because adding an Amendment to the Constitution that says “Read what it already says because we really mean it” does no good. I once heard a Justice explain that the Xth Amendment was a dead letter on arrival for that reason. Can anyone propose a set of Amendments that would work? Let us keep the list down to five. Maybe have a contest and vote for the top ones. The important thing is to emphasis practicality and eschew grandiose fantasies. Here are my Candidates to start.
1. A permanent Electoral College is established with the Chief Executive, Senior Judge of the Highest Court of Appeals and Speaker or equivalent of the most numerous branch of each state legislature in office ex officio and others selected by the legislature for terms of four years in two staggered sets as Congress may direct. All vacancies for the Office of President or Vice President are to be filled by the Electoral College. All Presidential elections by the citizens are to be held under the supervision of Congress to advise but not compel the Electors in performing their duties. Such an election shall be held at least 10 days after the certification of the eligible candidates as described here. The determination of the eligibility of candidates seeking the offices of President or Vice President shall be submitted no later than 90 days before the casting of Electoral votes and shall be verified under the supervision of the Supreme Court. A certification of eligible candidates seeking the offices shall be delivered to the President of the Senate for distribution to the Electoral College no later than 60 days before they assemble to cast their votes. However in the event that a vacancy occurs in the office of the President then an expedited schedule for of no less than four days for determination of eligibility and no less than two days for dissemination to the Electors may be established by Congress.
2. The Electoral College shall also function as the final Court of Judicial Review for considering the Constitutionality of an Act of Congress. Such review to happen either by request of the Supreme Court or by petition of at least one fifth of the States.
3. No person shall vote in any election for Congress if they derive the majority of their income from funds drawn from the Federal Treasury but no such inhibition shall apply to an enlisted member of the armed forces who is otherwise eligible to vote. No person shall vote for any State or local office if they derive the majority of their income from funds drawn from the treasury of that State.
4. No bill or resolution of one branch of the legislature that is not acted upon and sent either to conference, or to the President if and only if passed as described in the first article section 7 of this Constitution, shall be effective after the passage of ten days.
5. The 17th Article of Amendment is hereby repealed.
Please tell me what you think. Are there any better ideas out there?
To be blogged under the title “Five Proposed Amendments.”
Tocque needs a Spam warning button for alerting the SysAdmin.
Strangely all day comments have been arrive in email out of order and in bunches, sometimes every few hours.
Ridgerunner,
It is spelled Rhoades, actually – apparently my memory played me false. You will note that I offered him as an investigator of the state of the neurobiological research, not as a counter to Evolutionary Psychology – the only thing I remember is that he makes it hard to argue for a completely cultural basis for sex differences, which was what I was interested in years ago when I read him.
The “just-so stories” is my impression – I am a historian (of sorts), so I see a lot more of the pop-culture stuff – in which category I include Desmond Morris and the like – than scientific papers. Perhaps I misjudged them. However, I do recall reading interview with an evolutionary biologist who essentially said the same thing, so it not universally accepted by the scientific community (the paper you linked to nicely demonstrates that, I think, since they feel thay have to defend themselves.) In any case, any evolutionary explanation for behavior MUST apply only to that which is biologically and not culturally determined. Knowing which is which can quite difficult, I believe. I haven’t seen any pop-culture explanations for human behavior attempting to deal with this. I don’t find much to reassure me in that paper, either, I am afraid.
Addendum: The edit feature seems to be working quite well today.
For sure, Annoy Mouse. A couple of those young researchers invite discussion of new research topics. I’m making my list up now!
LOTM
I always liked this one:
bob
“For the first time in my life, I am beginning to think along the same lines as the old very very minority here, that was always talking about getting out of the United States.”
Texas among others has hinted at that but most Texans would rather fight for our Republic, The United States of America.
Many Americans over the years have died for her and we will not allow their heritage, lives and honorable deaths to be swallowed up by a government that has abandoned our Founder’s ideals and our Constitution.
Texans have always been at the head of the line when it comes to protecting our Republic, both the Republic of Texas and the United States of America.
Papa Ray
Yes. Papa Ray, I agree with you.
But we need a real states right’s movement, without the old racism.
We, WE, can handle our elk.
We can do it ourselves.
For Christ’s sake, we have killed the elk herds here, all coming from D.C., and I am sick to death of it.
What a fiasco.
Where is Nullification when we really need it?
LOTM @121 — Some of the Constitutional Amendments I would like to see would include:
1. A limitation that the Federal Government may tax only the States, not the people directly. And that any change in Federal Government tax on the States would first have to be approved by 2/3 of the States. [Rebalance the power of the States versus the Feds].
2. A prohibition on the Federal Government paying a pension to any person for time served in an elected position. [Stop elected service from being a career choice].
3. All elected representatives are disqualified from running for any elected position (including the one they currently occupy) for a period equal to the length of the term of their current office. [They are elected to serve -- let them serve].
But I am very doubtful there will be any meaningful reform until the current Political Class has had its rope/lamp-post moment.
My vote would be that either the SEIU be declared unconstitutional or congress makes them illegal.
OK…I finally heard a real truth today:
Dem. Congressman: “If you don’t tie our hands, We will keep stealing”
Now I can go to bed.
Papa Ray
#88 Papa Ray and others who think either the courts or elections will have any future bearing.
It is looking more and more like this may come about.
Landmark Legal Foundation to File Suit to Stop President’s Health Plan if ‘Slaughter Rule’ is Used
Will the Judge rule that they have “Standing” or no?
Look at the last decade. Have the Federal Courts ever ruled that anyone who is trying to preserve the Constitution has standing to sue? Look at the last election cycle, when blatant vote fraud was condoned by the Federal Courts because neither the citizens, the Republican party, or the campaigns had standing to simply get them to enforce the plain terms of the law.
What happened with the “McCain-Feingold suppression of speech for everybody but Democrats Act”? Everybody assumed that the Supreme Court would throw it out. It turns out that they are happy as a pig in excrement with the government suppressing political speech.
There is absolutely no reason for anyone to have a good faith belief that the Courts will do anything except go along.
We will fight for a political result, in the very much off chance that there will be meaningful elections in November. But keep in mind that after nationalizing health care by “deeming”; they do not dare have free elections again. Further, the White House announced that they may continue to use “deeming” in place of votes on the rest of their agenda.
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/63032
IF there is an electoral campaign, it can be used to prepare the battlefield for the other side of the Clausewitzian equation.
Sunday they will “deem” control of all health care. That will be the Rubicon. The Democrats, all Democrats, will become the party of Treason and Tyranny. Some choices are irrevocable.
Girding of loins and the buttoning of codpieces are the order of the day.
Kyrie Eleison pro Patria noster
Subotai Bahadur
Also for consideration on the list an amendment on citizenship.
sect. 1 No person shall be a citizen of the United States due to their birth to a parent who is not a citizen, lawful resident or lawfully admitted visitor, however the Congress may establish procedures to naturalize such persons.
sect. 2 No child fathered by a person unknown or not legally present as a result of an assault and whose mother is a citizen shall be deemed a non-citizen, provided that the the unlawful act was reported to the proper authorities within 30 days.
sect. 3 A natural born citizen shall be any person born within the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof or born to a parent outside of the United States due to service with the armed or diplomatic service, unless excluded under the first section of this article of amendment. Congress may establish the means for granting other children of US citizens naturalization at birth and making provisions for immigration and naturalization of all others. No person who is otherwise a citizen shall be deemed as natural born if they subsequent to their seventeenth year take an oath of allegiance to any foreign power or claim a benefit as a foreign resident.
I am rewording my original list to fold the first two together and keep my total at five.
Kinuachdrach,
Your first I disagree with, your second I like and the third has arguments on both sides being a form of term limits. Central tax authority was needed as the Articles of Confederation did not work. If the States select prominent people as Senators and the Electoral College really chose the President then the problem of nest feathering would be held to the Congressmen, who everyone will have fun inspecting and arresting.
Even veiled calls for violence get threads closed and are distasteful, please be careful.
ridgerunner @ 116:At the bottom of this post is a link to a recent review of evolutionary psychology by one of its leading researchers and his students. To characterize their work as “Just So Stories” is ridiculous.
I’ll throw in two cents worth on this.
In complex topics like psychology (especially psychology!) nobody really has one theory that explains everything. As you say, a “proximate explanation” is necessary but not sufficient, but even a great evolutionary story can generally never be proven, and if the proximate cause is still lacking, it may turn out to be totally wrong. So, we need both. Science is a hypothetico-deductive system, you want to work problems from top or bottom, wherever you get a clue. There are certainly abuses of evolution to try to use historicism as a “complete” theory. Compared to a mechanical theory of the present, or even a behaviorist theory of the present, historical theories often fall off the edge into teleological stories such that even if they are true, they aren’t useful. OTOH, when everything comes together, you get the mechanism, its origins and correlations, and everybody is happy, kumbayah. The End.
There ya go, two cents worth, or maybe a penny change.
Mark @.71,
So at an Indian restaurant, I need to run from the poppodom platter?
Subutai Bahador, et al: “Obama Blocks Delivery Of Bunker Busters To Israel”
http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2010/me_israel0217_03_18.asp
As linked from Instapundit. Perhaps this explains the increases at Diego Garcia referred to in an earlier thread?
For SLAUGHTER and ‘DEEMING’ read Hitlers ENABLING ACT which turned Germany’s democratic Chancellor in to the FUHRER. This is what the LYING MOHAMEDAN BOGUS POTUS and the NAZIS oops!!!! sorry you call them DEMS are doing to Amerika now.
Ref #134 by NORM So moonbats still think OBAMBI is not a MOHAMMEDAN??????
bob.94,
Since you brought up the subject of the diminished Elk populations, it seemed appropriate to link to this article.
From the IDAHO FISH AND GAME HEADQUARTERS NEWS RELEASE dated February 26, 2010:
“Wolf predation is the major source of mortality on this elk herd and is affecting population size because too few calves are surviving to replace the adults that die each year. Predation is preventing recovery from a decline that began in the late 1980s and a steep decline following the severe winter of 1996-97.”
This is excerpted from an article under the byline of Ed Mitchell, who gives a fer-Pete’s-sake telephone number! The title of the article is “idaho fish and game completes Lolo zone elk survey”
The point is, the Elk population has plummeted as a result of the reintroduction of wolves into their range, NOT because of humans slaughtering the Elk for trophies. Doesn’t mean wolves don’t have a right to exist, but you can’t blame everything on humans with guns.
131. Lifeofthemind:
Under no part of heaven do we ever want a president again who had just one parent as a citizen–which is the case with Obama.
Therefor
sect. 3 A natural born citizen shall be defined as a person who is born in the USA of parents who were both American citizens.
Norm @ 134: I think this is garbled. Israel had thought they didn’t need bunker-busters, and learned differently during the hamas/lebanon war. It was at that time that the US would not sell them any, and I never heard that that changed. They’re not rocket science, I suppose the Israelis could make their own, building their own precision-guiding system would be harder. I’m not sure what else in that report might be accurate.
Hmm, I wonder if the Israelis think they can trust the American GPS signals anymore …
95. Brian N:
It seems to me that republican memory is on par with goldfish. Here you are talking about alienating friends and you include France. Will someone please remind me who it was that coined the phrase “Freedom Fries” to insult the French. I do believe it was the republican congress after France would not help out with the stupid war the Republicans started. If your only evidence that we slighted the British is over a present then you should probably STFU. Unless you are good friends with Brown, perhaps he really likes music. Why is it that those countries we call friends like us so much better now that Bush is gone. I think Obama is playing chess and you guys are playing Candyland. I would not expect you to understand the complexities of foreign relations. Obama needs good relations with China and Russia so that he can have their votes to sanction Iran.
Wow, french participation in subverting OIF and French politicos embracing of the idea that sanctions ought to be lifted on Saddam’s Iraq equals French culpability in the death of thousands of Iraqi’s, don’t you think? But I suppose that sort of memory can be sacrificed due to the “complexities of foreign relations” which we obviously do not understand.
president Obama made at least three promises during that interview which I know for certain he cannot keep. He has not kept similar promises before now, I do not think he intends to keep these either.
Transparancy, Three days to view a bill. but I guess the bill has already been passed by one legislative house, that does not make it law. But we still do not know nor were we given the opportunity to know what was in the bill. We do not know the language of the reconciliation package. Other promises to fix other bits of legislation once passed have also been ignored so why should this be any different.
Giving the dems control over one third of the nations economy is akin to giving Hugo Chavez control of the oil fields. While I could agree with many of the changes LOTM suggests except for the thing you know the dems would introduce should any attempt to modify the constitution be undertaken. Amendments designed to eliminate the two term limit on being president, and restricting the use and ownership of firearms. The safer bet is to win back the hearts and minds of Americans from the progressive socialists, then establish a fully debated and thoroughly chewed upon list of amendments.
#137
You got it Fiddler. It’s really sad.
too few calves are surviving to replace the adults that die each year
Subotai Bahadur @ 130 said:
“Sunday they will “deem” control of all health care. That will be the Rubicon.”
More like their Stalingrad.
Read Peggy Noonan’s recent editorial and the higher rated comments attached to her editorial:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704207504575130081383279888.html
Obama is facing a total meltdown of public support. He has forfeited ALL of his political coin on this single issue.
It almost doesn’t matter if the damned health thing passes because it’ll be repealed after the November elections (at best, it’ll be a Pyhrric Victory). What an incredibly stupid action for a US President.
Brian N:
Sanction Iran?
Russia just signed on to help with Iran’s nuclear program!
Eggplant:
What about the veto?
Now he’s threatening reconciliation for Amnesty!
Makes me nauseous and sick to my stomach.
Never thought I’d witness something like this.
—
The Biden Incident
Krauthammer
So why this astonishing one-sidedness? Because Obama likes appeasing enemies while beating up on allies — therefore Israel shouldn’t take it personally (according to Robert Kagan)? Because Obama wants to bring down the current Israeli coalition government (according to Jeffrey Goldberg)?
Or is it because Obama fancies himself the historic redeemer whose irresistible charisma will heal the breach between Christianity and Islam or, if you will, between the post-imperial West and the Muslim world — and has little patience for this pesky Jewish state that insists brazenly on its right to exist, and even more brazenly on permitting Jews to live in its own ancient, historic, and now present capital?
Who knows? Perhaps we should ask those Obama acolytes who assured the 63 percent of Americans who support Israel — at least 97 percent of those supporters, mind you, are non-Jews — of candidate Obama’s abiding commitment to Israel.
Grey Fox @122, Josh @132,
Thanks for the comments. Of course, evolutionary psychology must defend its approach because it threatens the current paradigms of psychology. Scholars who invested their careers in the status quo are threatened by a novel approach. Early in the short history of evolutionary psychology, hypotheses were sometimes argued more on plausibility than evidence, but the field is much more rigorous now.
The reason that I believe EP, and by extension, Whiskey’s comments are important is that while a society can repress evolutionarily-based human behavioral tendencies, such a society can never be as successful as one that is less repressive. Islam for example tries to impose a baboon-style mating system (harem formation) on the natural human tendency to be serially-monogamous plus occasional mating in the bushes. As Whiskey points out, that leads to a large proportion of unmated young males and necessitates permanent wars of conquest. Marxism eliminates the incentive for profit, whereas evolution programmed human beings to wake up every morning with the urge to forage, build and create. We know how that repression leads to poverty.
Evolutionary psychology provides a scientific basis for human nature that shows why Marxism and Islam will always bring unhappiness. That is the second reason why it has not been embraced by the social scientists. Conservatives who are hostile to evolution shoot themselves in both feet by giving up the powerful argument for freedom that evolutionary psychology provides.
serially-monogamous plus occasional mating in the bushes
heh, that reminds me of my first girl friend, who has never been happy, though she’s tried and tried….4 husbands, forty lovers, still no happy….
whatdayameanitstoohot,
The two term limit seems the worst of both worlds. One term is spent running for reelection and one is as a lame duck. The four year period seems arbitrary and to cramped to get a program enacted and evaluated. It permits grand ideas to be proposed with the responsibility for results that can be judged to be kicked down the road. The whipsaw effect keeps all branches unstable and helps turn politics into a game for the obsessive, as opposed to a responsibility for adults. Either repealing the limit or going to a single term of 6 or 7 years may be better.
Despite all the bluster of the media over the 2nd Amendment, and the willingness of the Left to now Rahm through anything without using due process, I doubt that any Constitutional change on that issue would get through the states until after a series of other disasters have already struck us. The pending immigration amnesty is one such disaster. That does not mean that I deny that it is on their agenda but rather that it is probably a strategic goal more than a tactical maneuver.
No constitutional changes should be adopted unless they have first been “fully debated and thoroughly chewed upon.” Your concerns are valid. That is why I am skeptical of the enthusiasm I occasionally see for a new Constitutional Convention. I could easily see a convention being hijacked the same way that David Axelrod managed to pack the Iowa and Texas caucuses to get Obama nominated.
To be blogged under the title “Amendments II and XXII.”
bob,
Public Health menace?
Re: ev psych.
The late Robert Ardrey wrote several books on the subject, the most famous being “African Genesis”.
Some of his points have been threatened by new evidence of which pre-humans came when and did what.
His general proposition in “Genesis” is that we are naturally born to weapons and conflict.
His last book, “The Hunting Hypothesis” begins by stating the race has spent 95% of its time on Earth as hunters. This had to have an effect. How could it not?
Liberals and especially feminists disdain ev psych. If ev psych is true, then the patriarchy can’t be blamed and you can’t change things by sneering at men and making them take womyn’s studies courses.
It is interesting that the group most likely to howl at the suggestion of creationism, young earth creationism, old earth creationism, or any version of intelligent design would insist that a million years of evolutionary pressure can have had no effect at all in this one area of human affairs.
How can a trillion dollars of new spending lower the deficit?
Easy:
By having us give a whole lot more money to the government, the deficit will be lower than it would have been if we hadn’t!
—
Lifeof,
Poor lady could never find satisfaction after having bedded Bob!
—
Richard said,
“…you can’t change things by sneering at men and making them take womyn’s studies courses.”
The heck you can’t:
The ratio of men to women in college has never been lower!
Doug,
That must explain popularity of the dangerous Olympic sport, the “bob”-sled.
Did you mean “Bob” or “bob?”
LOTM @ 131: “Even veiled calls for violence get threads closed and are distasteful, please be careful.”
Mind — looks like you are projecting there. And that kind of morally-superior projection leads to political correctness and hate speech laws, to suppress discussion.
My comment was not a call for violence. It was an observation that there is little chance of getting the current Political Class to go along with reforms which will reduce their power & perquisites. Not until they realize they have gone too far, and become afraid of the consequences of their own actions.
That comment was NOT a call for us all to converge on Congress and off our Congress-critters today. I am surprised (and a little offended) that you chose to misinterpret it.
Good day, sir!
Actually, al-Bob is a Big Time Luger
Land Luger, that is.
Whiskey/ Subotai position confirmed – Via REDSTATE:
“The United States has diverted a shipment of bunker-busters designated for Israel.
Officials said the U.S. military was ordered to divert a shipment of smart bunker-buster bombs from Israel to a military base in Diego Garcia. They said the shipment of 387 smart munitions had been slated to join pre-positioned U.S. military equipment in Israel Air Force bases.”
“This was a political decision,” an official said.
51. RWE “I get allllerrgic smelling gay!”
Fookin’ luverly!
I spit coffee all over my keyboard when I read that. The IT guy told me that if I wreck another one I will have to start paying for them, please put some sort of alert on screen when you are going to drop something like that on me.
Big time loser, al Doug.
“And the really amazing thing about it is however hard you kick them in the face, these are the kinds of friends who’ll be back for more, right there, drooling on the kicker’s shoe through their broken teeth.”
Pretty much describes the Dems treatment of the blacks since the Civil War. Never understood that one at all.
Kinachdrac,
My intent was not to offend. If I thought that you were either a posturing troglodyte from the Right or an agent provaceteur from the Left I would not have addressed you. For your distress I apologize.
It is not m place to speak for our genial host but. I was projecting it was on him and not you.
Guys,
The problem with whiskey isn’t that he generalizes too much and leaves out a few exceptions and qualifiers, it’s that he extrapolates from a small sample w/o having the slightest notion if his sampling is representative or not. (Hint: taking the US as a whole, it’s not.)
On the other hand, bob, you probably actually have known some woman like that, or at least met them–just not in a context that would reveal that side of their personality. While they may amount to (warning–SWAG zone ahead!) < 5% of the overall population of American women, they might represent a huge majority in the entertainment industry and certain other enclaves. Read Cosmo magazine and contemplate their non-zero circulation figures, or read The Frisky, if you need evidence that such people do exist.
Finally, if wws is right and our friend is stuck in SoCal, then that explains a lot about his perspective and his overestimates.
Oh, and finally finally: #84 shows that whiskey does indeed have more than one note on his saxophone. I sure wish he’d blow those other notes more often.
Couldn’t resist
159. Robert,not Bob, or bob: Couldn’t resist
There oughta be a special bloggers’ circle of Inferno reserved just for your type… /grin
It makes no sense for Israel to bust up iran’s nukes. Up until now, what she has been doing is taking out scientists one by one. And, possibly? Also sending in equipment that fails.
Back, before Osirik was destroyed; Israel had Saddam scrape the sides of the equipment; laughing all the way. But, yes. It then proved it could hit irak. Which is closer to Israel than iran. And, it did this probably to give the air force something to do. Saddam became a millstone around the USA’s neck. Poorly conceived fight. Poorly executed, too. While the saud’s are shaking in their boots?
If nukes fly? I expect mecca goes up, long before anybody else has to deal with ‘fall out.’
As to Israel being intimated, I’d disagree. It’s the legacy media that’s hitting out. Just as we learned how great Sherlock in Dubai, was. Until this got clamped down on! And, not by the Israelis. By scared in their pants CIA and UK types. Distrust is the new game in town.
whatdayameanitstoohot
Wow, french participation in subverting OIF and French politicos embracing of the idea that sanctions ought to be lifted on Saddam’s Iraq equals French culpability in the death of thousands of Iraqi’s, don’t you think? But I suppose that sort of memory can be sacrificed due to the “complexities of foreign relations” which we obviously do not understand.
someone didn’t already tell you it was a hoax ! you were the main subverter (and the initiator) of the “oil for food” business, but behind some letter boxes in Dubai, in Jordany, in Egypt… and also the main beneficiary of the cheap oil, (say, your cars and industry were the most greedy demanders for it), besides it wouldn’t be in the capitalist rules to spit on such opportunities
and who lifted the sanctions ? bizarrely, you too, once you were the rulers of the place
121 LOTM:
Why just the ‘enlisted’ in the armed forces? Got something against officers?
Re Career Politicians my suggestion:
No pension.
No benefits.
No automatic raises.
No extra power from seniority.
tomw
bob, comments #12 and #14:
In all my life I’ve never known a woman like that.
Where are all these women you speak of?
Where are these women, that lust after the “Big Man”?
bob, comment #146:
first girl friend, who has never been happy, though she’s tried and tried….4 husbands, forty lovers, still no happy
Remarkably, bob can’t put the two together.
@exhelodrvr
The war in Iraq was unilateral. The British weren’t pushing for war in Iraq. We were. It was a U.S.-led coalition.
And I use the word “coalition” cautiously. If 300,000 American troops and 1,000 Ukrainian troops and 61 troops from New Zealand invade Iraq, then its pretty much a unilateral U.S. operation. And the most the British had was 40,000, and they now have 5,000 stationed there as of 2007, which was still under the Bush administration. So still pretty much unilateral.
ntk, maybe if bob bought a big black car… naw… the woman he mentioned may have been after badass prince charming, who knows.
There is a physical effect when someone is falling in love (does not work for all people, a marginal group exists that has almost no such experience). When people use a word besotted, they really mean it. A small minority is able to repeat the process with the same partner–they are the happiest people on earth. This woman was prolly a junkie after the chemical that is involved, but through all her exploits she did not realize that changing partners may not be the only answer.
tomw,
Got something against officers?
An Act of Congress said differently. In the good old days many officers were so ostentatiously apolitical that they did not vote.
Glenn Reynolds has “An Army of Davids” and we get “A Bevy of Bobs?”
2be4, you mean that big black cars are some kind of “aspirateurs à minettes” (vacuum cleaners for pussies)?
uh, we say that here too
Adrian,
Unilateral involves only one side. It is an opposite of mutual. Your attempts at deconstruction are lame. Coalition is a mutual business. The parties involved did contribute as much as the could, given logistics and other factors like the size of their forces. It was similar to the first Gulf War and no one objected that the deployment was multilateral then, so the same rules apply.
Numbers:
USA: 150,000
UK: 46,000
Other 38 nations combined: 24,200
That is by no means a feeble contribution.
If the US supplied a smaller force, the war may have been lost at the beginning, given that Iraqi forces were 254,000 (security and IRG, without police numbers-additional 227,000) and army (375,000), I hope it is clear to you.
MC,
Cream – Politician (1968)
Hey now baby, get into my big black car
Hey now baby, get into my big black car
I wanna just show you what my politics are.
I’m a political man and I practice what I preach
I’m a political man and I practice what I preach
So don’t deny me baby, not while you’re in my reach.
I support the left, tho’ I’m leanin’, leanin’ to the right
I support the left, tho’ I’m leanin’ to the right
But I’m just not there when it’s coming to a fight.
Hey now baby, get into my big black car
Hey now baby, get into my big black car
I wanna just show you what my politics are.
Hey, hey now baby, get into my big black car
Hey now baby, get into my big black car
I wanna just show you what my politics are.
I support the left, tho’ I’m leanin’to the right
I support the left, tho’ I’m leanin’ to the right
But I’m just not there when, when it’s coming to a fight.
Political man and I practice what I preach
Political man and I practice what I preach
But I’m just not there, when you’re in my reach.
Hey now baby, get into my big black car
Hey now baby, get into my big black car
I wanna just show you what my politics are.
Hey, hey, hey
I wanna just show you what my politics are.
heh, but on the
Wenaha, we na ha (my daughter is taking
Sahaptin this year, which a Japanese put together, over twelve years) up there a bit, you got to work to get there, I have been perfectly happy.
The mind goes out of itself, and it is silent, finally, cept for the beautiful sound of the ever river running, always running.
That is
saw
hop
tin
MC, there always has been that type of woman. But it does not always work out. For example, in France, after the WWII, these become the first skinheads.
Professor W, just got around to reading this excellent analysis, it really is starting to feel that we have the Joker for President.
Loved this, in general: Once that rung is attained, why it’s meant to be stepped on to get to the one above. And why not? Since your friends are already your friends you don’t need to be nice to them.
Tony, one glitch, friends can become unfriends. There may be some kind of three strikes rule.
1. Coincidence, looks like.
2. Mistake, no doubt.
3. F****g bastard!
uh nevermind for us, we never were friends but concurrents !
uh 2be4, the berlines by us look more like italian cars, ie the seventies movies ! but nowadays, these don’t impress anmore ! seems that girls prefer restaurants and discotheques !
There were two interesting opinion pieces on jpost today regarding the dust-up between the O Administration and Israel. One by the Editor, David Horowitz, and the other by Caroline Glick.
By deliberately inflating the Ramat Shlomo issue into a public crisis of faith in its ally, the Obama administration has encouraged Israel’s enemies.
Obama claims he’s launched a political war against Israel in the interest of promoting peace. But this claim, too, does not stand up to scrutiny.
Horowitz covers the ground thoroughly. He brings up, among many other things, the testimony by Patreus in which the general stated that the failure to solve the Israel-Arab conflict results in American deaths in the ME. I gotta believe that these statements were given on orders from the top. The remarks are simply ridiculous. As if OBL hates the US because of the Israel-Arab conflict. As if peace were to break out tomorrow then OBL and the Iranians and Hamas and Hezbo would start to love the US. As if the fundamental beliefs of the US and Israel were not the same and the fundamental beliefs of the US and the Pals and all the Muslim lands were the same. Is Patreus a leftist? If he’s not then he was forced to make these remarks and they are indicative of a full-court-press against Israel or against Netanyahu personally.
Caroline Glick, as is her wont, takes a hard line. She claims that the administration has given Netanyahu a take-it-or-leave it ultimatum. Give the Administration what it demands regarding building in Jerusalem or Netanyahu will be shunned by the US govt. Hard to believe that this would be the case but one doesn’t know. Netanyahu is supposed to be in the US next week to address AIPAC. If he comes and is shunned by Obama then we’ll know. Is it really possible that O wants to go down in history as the president that lost Israel? Is it really possible that he doesn’t realize that this could ruin his presidency? Can you spell One Term?
162. Marie Claude:
someone didn’t already tell you it was a hoax ! you were the main subverter (and the initiator) of the “oil for food” business, but behind some letter boxes in Dubai, in Jordany, in Egypt… and also the main beneficiary of the cheap oil, (say, your cars and industry were the most greedy demanders for it), besides it wouldn’t be in the capitalist rules to spit on such opportunities
and who lifted the sanctions ? bizarrely, you too, once you were the rulers of the place
Marie Claude, votre feuillet montre..
Some lowlights, Total Fina Elf contracts and contacts with Saddam, French Interior minester Charles Pasqua and at least eleven other Frenchmen named on the list of names found in the wreckage of the Iraqi Mukhabarat and Foreign Ministry showing Cirac’s government “shared with Baghdad the contents of private transatlantic meetings and diplomatic traffic from Washington” in addition to complicity in the kickback scheme which supplied Saddam’s regime with and estimated 10.1 Billion dollars instead of using such moneys collected to feed the citizens of Iraq.
Pardonnez-moi, mais voilà pourquoi votre gouvernement précédent est tombé à Sarkozy, il n’est pas?
Once Saddam’s rule from hell fell, there were no more need for sanctions, so of course we would have favored lifting them then. The French wanted them lifted even while Iraqi missiles were attempting to shoot down ‘Coalition’ aircraft.
Friends don’t treat each other that way. That is of course why it is so painful to watch our current president throw similar dirt on Israel while getting cozy with such azhats as Baby Assad and Ahmadineajad. Our president’s words, lead me to wonder if our government has not sold out Israel for a chance to succeed in Afghanistan. A similar arrangement is no doubt in the wings for Columbia and its dealings with Venezuela.
whatdayameanitstoohot,
Heritage Foundation
Our MissionTo formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.
American leadership
Energy &Environment…
Tout est dit !
This is a partial opinion that reflected the American aegerness at us
but no condamnation was delivered
Besides Irak is calling us back in business and it is forgering some prosecutions against a few countries, mainly America, and us for not having delivered the ordered material and planes in maintenance, and Israel for having bombed the Osirak civil nuclear site, I let you the pleasure to investigate for America.
Now, a few papers of your favorite reading, among them, WP (that I already brought on this board), was telling that the US had more oil traffic than any other counties, because of the reason I invoked above.
have a look at that, it’s an “educative” anecdote
http://mysoupis.blogspot.com/2008/10/before-i-leave-my-last-concern.html
2X4 – snicker! Friends, what good are they if you can’t use ‘em?
As for our pal Adrian, I suppose the 16 Security Council resolutions against Iraq were unilateral, too. And of course, the continuous combat air patrols over Iraq enforcing the resolutions during the 90′s were all unilateral too. Likewise, the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 was passed with a unanimous vote in the Senate and signed in law by President Clinton was most certainly a unilateral Bush dealyo.
Unilateral or not, I think reasonable people can agree that besides finally removing one of the world’s deadliest dictators and possibly instituting democracy in the heart of Arab despotism, it was also nice that our unilateral action led to Gaddafi’s surrender of his WMD programs in Libya, the break-up of the worldwide nuke and missile proliferation ring under A.Q. Khan and Israel’s annihilation of the Syrian nuclear facility near Iraq.
What was really unilateral was the treasonous weakness and lack of courage of the Democrats who voted for the Iraq War in 2002 and who quickly betrayed their vote and their country as soon as the going got tough in 2003 – that would be John Kerry, et. al.
Marie Claude, (with apologies for using so much bandwidth)
pulling up to a gas station for refueling is not the same as trading oil vouchers for milk then milking it to buy guns and politicians. It is not all France’s failings but it is not capitalism either. It is criminal.
From the Duelfer report we know quite a bit of the operational facts of Oil for Food. But it is from the UN special Commission of three, Volker, Goldstone and a Swiss Banker dude almost nothing of value can be obtained as the UN did not give them any investigative power nor governmental weight.
I agree that the Powell-Wilson-France and Iraq OFF connections have not been thoroughly investigated. But please note the bbls were sold at a 21%markup to advantage a huge kikback scheme hardly worth the price of a fill up. That OFF money was in escrow in Banque Nationale de Paris bank until 2001, only underlines the fact that french political ties with Russia helped Saddam pervert the effect of OFF and .
The List
The following is a select part of that list and description:
United States: Samir Vincent received 10.5 million barrels. In 2000, Vincent, an Iraqi-born American citizen who has lived in the U.S. since 1958, organized a delegation of Iraqi religious leaders to visit the U.S. and meet with former president Jimmy Carter. Shaker Al-Khafaji,the pro-Saddam chairman of the 17th conference of Iraqi expatriates, received 1 million barrels.
Great Britain: George Galloway received 1 million barrels. Fawwaz Zreiqat received 1 million barrels. Zreiqat also appears in the Jordanian section as having received 6 million barrels. The Mujahideen Khalq [3] in Britain received 1 million barrels.
France: The French-Arab Friendship Association received 15.1 million barrels. Former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua received 12 million barrels. [4] Patrick Maugein of the Trafigura company received 25 million barrels. Michel Grimard, founder of the French-Iraqi Export Club, received 17.1 million barrels.
Switzerland: Glenco Re, the largest commodity trader in Switzerland, received 12 million barrels. Taurus, which has been associated with Iraq for 20 years and was the first company to renew its business with Iraq after the fall of Saddam, received 1 million barrels. Petrogas, which is listed under three sub-companies – Petrogas Services, Petrogas Distribution, and Petrogas Resources – and is associated withthe Russian company Rosneftegazetroy, received 1 million barrels. Alcon, listed in Lichtenstein and associated with larger oil companies, received 1 million barrels. Finar Holdings, which is listed in Lugano, Switzerland, and is under liquidation, received 1 million barrels.
Yugoslavia: Four Yugoslav political parties received vouchers: the Yugoslav Left party received 9.5 million barrels. The Socialist Party received 1 million barrels. The Italian Party received 1 million barrels. A nother party, whose name in exact transliteration is “kokstuntsha” – possibly Kostunica’s party – received 1 million barrels.
Other political parties: The Romanian Labor Party received 5.5 million barrels. The Party of the Hungarian Interest received 4.7 million barrels. The Bulgarian Socialist Party received 1 2 million barrels. The Slovakian Communist Party received 1 million barrels.
Brazil: The 8th of October Movement, a Brazilian Communist group, received 4.5 million barrels. Fuwad Sirhan received 10 million barrels.
Egypt: Khaled Gamal Abd Al-Nasser, son of the late Egyptian president, received 16.6 million barrels. ‘Imad Al-Galda, a businessman and a member of the Egyptian parliament from President Mubarak’s National Democratic Party, received 14 million barrels. Abd Al-Azim Mannaf, [5] editor of the Sout Al-Arab newspaper, received 6 million barrels. Muhammad Hilmi, editor of the Egyptian paper Sahwat Misr, [6] received an undisclosed number of barrels. The United Arab Company received 6 million barrels. The Nile and Euphrates Company received 3 million barrels. The Al-Multaqa Foundation for Press and Publication received 1 million barrels. [7]
Palestinians: The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) received 4 million barrels. The PLO Political Bureau received 5 million barrels. Abu Al-Abbas received 11.5 million barrels. Abdallah Al-Horani received 8 million barrels. The PFLP received 5 million barrels. Wafa Tawfiq Al-Sayegh received 4 million barrels.
Oman: The Al-Shanfari group received 5 million barrels.
Syria: Farras Mustafa Tlass, the son of Syrian Defense Minister Mustafa Tlass, received 6 million barrels. ‘Audh Amourah received18 million barrels. Ghassan Zakariya received 6 million barrels. Anwar Al-Aqqad received 2 million barrels. Hamida Na’Na’, the owner of the Al-Wafaq Al-Arabi periodical, received 1 million barrels.
Lebanon: The son of Lebanese President Emil Lahoud received 4.5 million barrels. Former MP Najjah Wakim received 3 million barrels. Nasserist Party head Osama M’arouf received 3 million barrels. National Arabic Club Chairman Faisal Darnika received 3 million barrels.
Jordan: Former Islamist MP and head of the Engineers Union Leith Shbeilat [9] received 15.5 million barrels. Former MP and Jordanian Writers Union head Fakhri Qi’war received 6 million barrels. [10] Former Jordanian chief of staff Mashhour Haditha received 1 million barrels. Former MP Toujan Al-Faisal received 3 million barrels. [11] The Jordanian Ministry of Energy received 5 million barrels. Muhammad Saleh Al-Horani, the Amman Stock Exchange head and former Minister of Supplies, received 4 million barrels. Lawyer Wamidth Hussein Al-Majali received 6 million barrels. [12]
Qatar: Qatari Horseracing Association Chairman Hamad bin Ali Aal Thani received 14 million barrels. Gulf Petroleum received 2 million barrels.
Ukraine: The Social Democratic Party received 1 million barrels. The Communist Party received 6 million barrels. The Socialist Party received 1 million barrels. The FTD oil company received 1 million barrels, as did other Ukrainian companies.
Belarus: The Liberal Party received 1 million barrels. The Communist Party received 1 ton [sic] of oil. The director of the Belarussian president’s office received 1 million barrels.
Russia: The Russian state itself received 1,366,000,000 barrels. The list also included the following:
Companies belonging to the Liberal Democratic Party received 79.8 million barrels – t he list notes the name of party president Vladimir Zhirinovsky. The Russian Communist Party received 1 million barrels. The Lukoil company received 63 million barrels. The Russneft company received 35.5 million barrels. Vladimir Putin’s Peace and Unity Party received 34 million barrels – the list notes the name of party chairwoman Saji Umalatova. The Gazprom company received 26 million barrels. The Soyuzneftgaz company received 25.5 million barrels – t he list notes the name Shafrannik. The Moscow Oil Company received 25.1 million barrels. The Onako company received 22.2 million barrels. The Sidanco company received 21.2 million barrels. The Russian Association for Solidarity with Iraq received 12.5 million barrels. The Ural Invest company received 8.5 million barrels. Russneft Gazexport received 12.5 million barrels. The Transneft company received 9 million barrels. The Sibneft company received 8.1 million barrels. The Stroyneftgaz company received 6 million barrels. The Russian Committee for Solidarity with the People of Iraq received 6.5 million barrels – the list notes the name of committee chairman Rudasev. The Russian Orthodox Church received 5 million barrels. The Moscow Science Academy received 3.5 million barrels. The Chechnya Administration received 2 million barrels. T he National Democratic Party received 2 million barrels. The Nordwest group received 2 million barrels. The Yukos company received 2 million barrels. One Russian company which phonetically reads as Zarabsneft received 174.5 million barrels. Vouchers were also granted to the Russian foreign ministry, one under the name of Al-Fayko for 1 million barrels, and one to Yetumin for 30.1 million barrels. T he Mashinoimport Company received 1 million barrels. The Slavneft Company received 1 million barrels. The Caspian Invest Company (Kalika) received 1 million barrels. The Tatneft Tatarstan company received 1 million barrels. The Surgutneft company received 1 million barrels. Siberia’s oil and gas company received 1 million barrels.
In addition, the son of the former Russian Ambassador to Iraq received 19.7 million barrels. Nikolay Ryjkov, a former prime minister of the USSR, received 13 million barrels. The Russian President’s office director received 5 million barrels.
Oil vouchers were also distributed to companies and individuals from the Indonesia Sudan, Yemen, Canada, Chad, Cyprus, Turkey, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Myanmar, Pakistan, the UAE, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Panama, Thailand, Chad, China, Nigeria, Kenya, Ireland, Bahrain, and the Philippines. Two Saudi companies were also listed.
Internal scapegoats at the UN are known. Follow up legal action on the 2004/5 Senate investigations and GAO report have been stymied politically by the same group that is bringing us universal single payer health care and bailouts of large financial institutions.
whatdayameanitstoohot,
very kind of you, but I’m afraid, I have to reject your source that isn’t reliable, as it expresses a personal opinion not based on facts but on the official policy of the moment
…
August 1-2: Sunday Times and Financial Times both report that Rocco Martino says he was the source of the false stories and documents related to Iraq’s alleged attempts to buy uranium from Niger. Says he did so for profit after learning of keen French interest in preventing unauthorized sale of uranium from French-owned uranium mines in Niger.
Also states U.S. and Italian governments were behind disinformation operation. “It’s true, I had a hand in the dissemination of those (Niger uranium) documents, but I was duped. Both Americans and Italians were involved behind the scenes. It was a disinformation operation.”
…
July: Italian parliamentary report on the forged Niger uranium documents. Names four men as the likely forgers of the documents: Michael Ledeen, Dewey Clarridge (CIA operative involved in Iran-Contra Affair), Ahmed Chalabi and Francis Brookes (member of a “public relations” body formed by the Pentagon engaged to promote Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress). Suggests forgeries may have been planned at December 2001 Rome meeting involving Ledeen, Franklin.
Late July: Italian government receives a letter from Robert Mueller, the director of the FBI, expressing the highest appreciation for Italy for its cooperation with the investigation of the Niger document forgeries
November 7: In his National Review Online column, Ledeen implies that France responsible for Niger forgeries, claims French President Jacques Chirac wanted to embarrass the Clinton administration in power at the time they were forged and help Saddam Hussein…
that is the most idiotish supposition, Chirac had nothing against the Clinton who went into france more than once and had supper together, that unfortunately (or fortunately) that your actual president always had avoided with Sarkozy
from an historian who worked on facts:
http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp11092005.html
Now, I am astonished that the persons who forged this conspiracy have still an open door in your society, they were true liars.
your second link is of the same accabit, from an organisation that aimed at ruining us, it took any opportunityfor pushing ahead its agenda, for the motive that we have the 2nd biggest jewish community after the US, and that Israel needed badly to repopulate, harsh advertizings were made for our jewish population that should desert France. Too bad, they like it better by us, a majority is “socialist” !
So, Whatdayameanitstoohot, wether you aren’t aware of what is going on behind official discourses, wether you are part of the conspiracy for supporting such BS
Your country wasn’t innocent, but it needed a enemy: the French, to rally behind the banner of Irak war, (where still up to now,the WMD haven’t been found !) This is why Blair is going to be prosecuted for lies in UK, I don’t expect that Italy will prosecute its fanfaron and liar president, Italians would sell their fathers and mothers for some bribes of shoes polishes. Your former administration ? when declasified documents will be authorised ! But anyway History is already on its way for sorting out the truth.
The most evident war that should have been launched, and on what you would have made the whole ralliement, was a war against Iran, they were and still are the sponsors of most of the terrorist actions in the world against our western countries, but that is anothe big fish much more dangerous than Irak was, it retaliated and will always fight back !!!
Your fellow’s “An Incomplete Chronology” written in 2005, is aptly named. The amount of effort put into disinformation and the amount of effort put into staying quiet about who said what to whom re Plame is damning, for the entire case the article makes is based on false information about the principles involved. The writer had no way of knowing what information about valeri was false, or that the downing street “memo” was fabricated from the memory of someone who was perhaps not present for the damning discussions if they indeed took place at all. Funny that your writer in 2005 insists the Italians and US were fabricating stories based on a French Fabrication from 1997.
The documents uncovered in post invasion Iraq were not forgeries, however. And the volume of links to Official French involvement in undermining the OFF is deafening. There are links there to the US as well, and one of those links lead to president Obama’s friend Mr. Tony Rezko. I really do look forward to the Iraqi’s pursuit of justice.
As a side note, the assertions about Mr. Leiden are not something I find entirely credible couched as they are in speculation and clothed in conjecture.
I remain amazed at the duality of motive assigned to the players for the narrative to fit, especially of Powell. Someday we may know the full reality of the deals made and undone. I am fully aware of the amount of duplicity in our government. For this issue the question remains about French government culpability in undermining UN sanctions and using the plight of Iraqi citizens to enrich themselves. Using profit motive to excuse such collaboration smacks of the
Vichy.
The Obama administration’s culpability in the attempted destruction of Israel will also have repercussions. There is no denying that the embarrassment to vp Joe Biden was overblown and made to fit a narrative. Selective injury, PC at its finest. Huzzah
And the volume of links to Official French involvement in undermining the OFF is deafening
the volume that finds your agreement doen’t mean that you are right, and you never investigated their counter version, that exists too.
French government culpability in undermining UN sanctions and using the plight of Iraqi citizens to enrich themselves. Using profit motive to excuse such collaboration smacks of the Vichy
so I was right, you’re taking into the conspiracy (one who hasn’t updated his infos, cuz most of your opinionists have already burried the link to Niger and to us as possible suppliers of uranium to Saddam). Ol right, Vichy is your “Godwin” argument for every thing that comes from France, even though, you don’t want to know the details of this history too.
Now, I didn’t deny that France has her part in the business “oil for food”, but we weren’t alone, and certainly not the biggest benefitor.
As far as De Villepin’s performance at the UN, I always found it silly, and it is more because of his personality, than France’s position on the deal, that had some good reasons linked to the US interference in the EU policies, more than plotting against the US, otherwise we wouldn’t have been in the first Irak campain too, and our anti-terrorism renseignments services wouldn’t have collaborated with your country the very first days after 9/11, nor we wouldn’t have gone to Afghanistan too. And we still had the courage to voice our opinion to the US super power, while others were following with the hope to get some bribes for their collaboration, now that they got nuthin, they aren’t that much enthousiast to help you anymore, see the Nato coalition in Afghanistan is going uncertain, some counties are removing their troops.
Sorry if my infos didn’t find your appreciation, you can still control them from the quoted sources that this historian provided. Though, I’m sure that you will not, as you are deeply persuaded that we are evil.
Though how many of your people think that too ? say, a small percentage that people like you represents, thus a drop considerating the lot that don’t share your views on the planet !
Have a good night !
More like their Stalingrad.
Indeed, but the question (asked by Wretchard several weeks back) remains:
Does this administration care?
Does it care about its own political future?
Does it care whether the Democratic Party is drawn and quartered?
Does it care about the future of the US (economically, socially, militarily)?
I’m not exactly happy about it, but I’ve concluded that this administration, in its single-mindedness, with its very clear goals (for any who aren’t blinking) is the political equivalent of a suicide bomber.
The SCOTUS may well be the only stand between this administration and disaster. (In which case, the SCOTUS may well be the next object of demonization.)
Doodslag
Now we get to learn about the “rash” in “rashputin”…? WWTMI !!!!!
Oh, man, there were no medical consequences as you imply and if you had seen Honey Dew you would have, too.
Marie Claude,
I am an Idiot. Must be, no other explanation is available.
whatdayameanitstoohot:
whatdayameanitstoohot
So they’ve pushed 3 more from that list into the nuclear club; Poland, Czech Republic, and Japan. They each have the knowledge, ability, and reactors capable of producing the material. To the best of my knowledge, they’ve foregone the option in the past due to their view of our relationship to them, but now?
“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”
to # 189 Jay
“And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”