At the Summit
Arms control is primarily a political task. As technology advances eventually there will be so many dangerous ‘whats’ that nonproliferation will become a question of ‘who’. In a few years weapons like biologicals may become more dangerous than the original Hiroshima bomb. September 11 showed that the modern life contained so many potentially lethal objects, like wide-body airplanes, that preventing mass mayhem must shift to finding bad guys. Arms control is a political problem. In a technologically advanced world the best hope for preventing mayhem is to encourage the spread of responsible government and to dismantle or prevent the emergence of totalitarian or failed states.
But if the administration shares that philosophy it’s not showing it. Today the Washington Post writes “Obama’s disregard for media reaches new heights at nuclear summit”. In an article bylined Dana Milbank, the WaPo says “World leaders arriving in Washington for President Obama’s Nuclear Security Summit must have felt for a moment that they had instead been transported to Soviet-era Moscow. … In the middle of it all was Obama — occupant of an office once informally known as “leader of the free world” — putting on a clinic for some of the world’s greatest dictators in how to circumvent a free press.”
Yasmeen Alamiri from the Saudi Press Agency got this lesson in press freedom when trying to cover Obama’s opening remarks as part of a limited press “pool”: “The foreign reporters/cameramen were escorted out in under two minutes, just as the leaders were about to begin, and Obama was going to make remarks. . . . Sorry, it is what it is.” …
Arabic-language MBC TV’s Nadia Bilbassy had this to say of Obama’s meeting with the Jordanian king: “We were there for around 30 seconds, not enough even to notice the color of tie of both presidents. I think blue for the king.” …
The Press Trust of India, at Obama’s meeting with the Pakistani prime minister, reported, “In less than a minute, the pool was asked to leave.” The Yomiuri Shimbun correspondent found that she was “ushered out about 30 seconds” after arriving for Obama’s meeting with the Malaysian prime minister. A reporter with Turkey’s TRT-Turk went to Obama’s meeting with the president of Armenia, but “we had to leave the room again after less than 40 seconds.”
Even the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, was more talkative with the press than Obama. Michelle Jamrisko, with Japan’s Kyodo News, noted that Hu, at his session with Obama, spoke to the Chinese media in Chinese, while Obama limited himself to “say hello to the cameras” and “thank you everybody.”
Reporters, even those on the White House beat for two decades, said it was the most restricted set of meetings they had ever seen in Washington. … The restrictions have become a common practice for the Obama White House. When Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu came to the White House a couple of weeks ago, reporters were kept away. Soon after that, Obama signed an executive order on abortion, again without any coverage.
Foreign Policy noted that President Obama is still working on perfecting democracy in the United States, so he is no position to judge anyone else.
President Obama said Sunday that the United States is still “working on” democracy and a top aide said he has taken “historic steps” to improve democracy in the United States during his time in office.
But for arms control to be meaningful, it must be exactly that: a judgment of who is allowed to handle deadly weapons in a 21st century world. And if the the behavior of the summiteers toward the press is any indication of the membership of the Club, it hardly inspires confidence. Any Club of rulers that is sufficiently inclined to operate in secret has got something to hide.
The administration was probably anxious to ensure that nothing sensitive leaked to the Press and even more determined to provide the guests with the kind of atmosphere they were used to at home. That is fair enough. But the fact remains that any workable arms control regime critically depends on who is going to implement it. A world which can control nuclear weapons (as a opposed to a world without nuclear weapons) is one which aspires to a minimum standard of governance. In the short run it may be necessary to limit Press access at a summit of this nature. But in the long run any world political system which is hostile to transparency will fail utterly at preventing the spread and use of weapons of mass destruction.
Tip Jar or Subscribe for $5
The emperor has no CLOTHES! Some day even the MSM in the USA will notice.
Oh, they’ve noticed. But they dare not see, hear, or speak of what they know. Some day the MSM might grow a pair of gonads too, but don’t count on it.
so sorry that the WaPo got their egos bruised. never mind that this administration is spending this country into oblivion and compromising our security daily. what’s important is that Obama and the press corps aren’t BFFs any more. welcome to our world, bud.
# 2 Rock
But they dare not see, hear, or speak of what they know.
They have made their choice and it is too late for them to turn back. Right now, they face losing the fabled “access”; just as CNN would have lost “access” to Saddam Hussein if they would have reported about the women and children being run through shredders for his amusement. So they keep quiet.
Today, there is the threat of not being part of the favored regime in-group. Some day, there may be Nacht und Nebel. And they know it. They will report what they are told to report, cover up that which they are not specifically told to report, and they will trumpet the freedom of the press in this country, even as they are herded about like sheep. Think MiniTru.
Someone at WaPo will be doing a carpet dance in front of the boss for letting those comments through. And there will be apologies.
Subotai Bahadur
There are two reasons why Obama shooed the press off before the meeting; Copenhagen and, ah, Copenhagen.
Obama was publicly humiliated twice in that town, the first time when he stumped for Chicago getting the 2016 Olympics and then when he went in to “save the day” at the climate summit. Obama is, one, dreadfully incompetent at international politics (he still has no clue how a summit works) and, two, has an innate fear of being publicly humiliated (I think in part to his personality and in part to his Alynskiite fear of being ridiculed). If these world leaders humiliate Obama during the summit, you can be sure that the press will never hear of it, if he has anything to say about the matter.
P.S. I almost forgot a third time that Teh Wun was publicly humiliated, which was by the Republican participants of his health care summit…which was televised nationally and live.
It’s not the operating in secret that’s at issue, that is generally true and mostly harmless.
It’s the IDIOCY of travelling 15,000 miles in high profile, trailing streams of glory, and THEN seeking privacy. That just puts it up everyone’s nose.
Someone might tell Obambus, or Hildabeast, that the way it is done, is you meet in public and talk in private, before, during, or after.
I still say it’s Hildabeast who made our modern Washington with her utterly incompetent and hyperpartisan mis-handling of health care in 1994. Even a moderately competent handling would have established bipartisan national healthcare in 1994 – for better or worse.
Oh, I don’t know…
Steeple said “what’s important is that Obama and the press corps aren’t BFFs any more”
And what’s that old adage about a woman scorned?
Ah yes, here it is…
“Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned,
Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.”
Wretchard:
September 11 showed that the modern life contained so many potentially lethal objects, like wide-body airplanes, that preventing mass mayhem must shift to finding bad guys. (Emphasis mine)
I remember back in the 1990’s when the Royal Canadian Air Farce put on a parody of Preston Manning from the Reform Party. If I remember correctly, they had him supposedly say the following.
”Guns don’t kill people. Idiots kill people. So, don’t register guns. Register idiots!”
Wretchard, you are sounding like something the Canadian liberal media once regarded as a parody of a man they perceived as an idiot. I hope you take that as a high compliment.
#4 Subotai Bahadur
The disease of the press is laziness, and it appears that it may be terminal. You put your finger upon it when you talk about “access.” That is the key. In the days of old “journalists” were people with widespread connections to the society at large. They knew people from all walks and strata, from the underworld to high society.
Today, most journalists do their jobs over the telephone. And who do they call? Usually someone in some governmental department, be it the local police department, District Attorney’s office, or whatever. Its far easier than getting off their asses and down to the street to seek the unfiltered information. And if they don’t take the position of a cheer leader for the government office that gives them information, that information stream dies. That would complicate their lives tremendously.
And the more the government regulates our lives, the more they have information that will be at the essence of the “news.” For example, in the days of old, if someone was suspected of abusing their children the press, upon such a tip, would talk to the neighbors. Today they just talk to the government officials in charge of investigating such matters. Its so much easier to do.
And the more the government regulates, the easier it is for the press to get their information from the government. Its an ugly symbiotic kind of thing.
The press thinks it’s entitled to
Speak with any king or two
Who happens to be visiting these shores
They feel as any dog would feel
When master tells them all to heel
And acts in ways the press surely deplores
The press cares not Obama seeks
To raise the debt to untold peaks
They care not all if Iran nukes the Jews
They get upset and only when
Obama treats them not like men
But like a lapdog he can well abuse
Of course the press will surely find
That loving Obie Wan is kind
Of like them loving someone’s chilly stare
Obama treats them all like dirt
They grovel more the more they’re hurt
And why should we, or Obie, really care
Yeah. Maybe the scariest thing is these are heads of state and heads of government, and the Obama press managers, probably because they know their own guy’s limitations, don’t trust anyone to do 2 minutes with the press without either embarrassing themselves or spilling some international super-secret stuff.
Or maybe they’re afraid some of the other guys will embarrass The One by showing how much they know about the subject at hand, compared to him?
The Wall Street Journal says Syria has given Scuds to the Hezbollah. This has been confirmed by US officials. And it worries them how? It may set back their diplomatic game with Syria.
What I can’t figure out is how, if diplomacy can’t stop Hezbollah from getting Scuds, how then is this summit going to work with bigger game? If the State Department gun you’ve got won’t stop a varmint, how’s it going to stop a T-Rex? Because it must? That’s arguing backwards. The President is going to need more than another piece of paper to stop nuclear proliferation.
Joseph Stalin, who knew how to hurl an insult, once called Trotsky “a noisy champion with faked muscles”. Mao who in his oriental way was master of the same art described “paper tigers”. I can see the intel justification for the nonproliferation effort, but I can’t see why it should be any more threatening than a paper tiger on its own. There has to be another piece.
wretchard
provide the guests with the kind of atmosphere they were used to at home
Do you suggest that we chain people to the walls?
If any foreign leader chooses to humiliate Obama his locking up the press is not going to hide the story. If a senior politician, excluding some senior Americans, does something it is because he wants to and if he wants the word to get out it will. After all we have been told they are more subtle nuanced and sophisticated than Americans.
If Medvedev wants to lean over and give Obama a wedgie he will and the story will get out. The last people to be informed however would be the Americans. After 40 years of worshiping the power of the free press that brought down Richard Nixon they cry now that the Masters they sold out to no longer need them. They are sunk below the level of publicity flacks, reducing national security to the standing of entertainment gossip as they chased The Sweet Smell of Success.
Find the links.
w @ 12: see powerline The fruits of Obama-style engagement
Faster, pussycat, bow, bow, meow!
That picture of Obamba as the Joker is become more and more apt with each passing day.
“Do I really look like a guy with a plan? You know what I am? I’m a dog chasing cars. I wouldn’t know what to do with one if I caught it. You know, I just… do things.”
“Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I’m an agent of chaos. Oh, and you know the thing about chaos? It’s fair!”
“Chaos(sic) is like gravity… all you need is a little push”
“You see, it’s all part of the plan.”
Folks, this isn’t that complicated.
“Access” for a reporter is, in the end, just another word for income stream guarantees. If any particular reporter has the ability to get direct face time with politicians and report the mumblings of those in power, then editors and programming directors will want to keep that reporter around. If they lose that, they lose their job. Don’t kill the gig, and all that. Sure, most reporters now are far leftists and this helps along their personal agenda. But it also helps them eat and pay the mortgage. In the absence of being a newsflack, what would they be able to do for a paycheck? For most of them the answer is “very little”.
How else do you explain the cover of Newsweek, which proclaims that the recession is over and the economy is roaring? Patently untrue, yet it will please the current administration well enough, allowing Newsweek “reporters” continued ability to get whatever information the leaders deem useful for us little people to know (true or not).
Or Business Week magazine, which has been in total tongue-bath-for-Obama mode since Bloomberg took it over, essentially doing the same thing as Newsweek with bigger words?
These reporters and editors know that if they spin stuff rosy they’ll continue to receive the favor of those currently in power and the gravy train can continue.
O’Success = O’Failure.
O’s AGW-Nuke Deals = n’O Deals x 2.
1. n’O Nuke Deal:
“Both Obama and Harper described the summit as a success despite the fact that it concluded without a formal or binding deal requiring states to secure their nuclear materials.”
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Politics/2010/04/13/13567696-qmi.html
…-
2. n’O AGW Deal:
“UN climate chief: new deal ‘out of reach for 2010′
With a little over a year until the Kyoto Protocol expires, the United Nations’ climate chief has warned that a new deal is still a long way off. The first global climate talks since last year’s near-fiasco in Copenhagen were held at the weekend in Germany and afterwards, UN climate negotiator Yvo de Boer bluntly confirmed a new deal was out of reach for this year.”
http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/connectasia/stories/201004/s2871136.htm
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/mt/mt-comments.cgi
He’s trying to do it incrementally, with a series of baby mis-steps.
I don’t think arms control negotiations and treaties and summits are really about arms control, they’re opportunities for all involved to test their adversaries in their own idiosyncratic ways to reveal what they know about those adversaries – that and the photo-op, of course. There cannot possibly be a country that does not cheat on arms control commitments, including USA; presuming the implacable Mongoloid malevolence of your opponent, it would a derogation of duty not to cheat. But since all parties must know this, what then are these farces for? Even if the “international community” reached a consensus agreement to launch all deployed and mothballed nuclear weapons, tactical and strategic, into space, does anyone believe the USA would not retain strategic reserves of all varieties of weapons hidden in some Yucca Mountain or other? Obviously Russia would never, ever, ever give up it’s nukes.
The Hezbollah example is a telling one; the Ukrainian agreement to give up its HEU is another. Perhaps arms control talks are useful because they cause each country to do something that they ordinarily might not, or provide an excuse to reveal something the context of the negotiations makes reasonable where otherwise it would be diplomatically rude. But it cannot be about arms control – such public discussions about existential capabilities are not really about possibly divesting oneself of such power. That is properly the subject of intelligence agencies, and the secret war will never end.
Lord Obama just saved the world from Saskatchewan. And you people are bitching.
This country brought the Nuklear Age to the World via Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
BHO’s bowing to the oppressed around the World is therefore appropriate and justified.
We are the oppressors, after all!
If we ever get Democracy right, only Democrats will be elected.
Whirreled Peas will have been achieved, and the bowing will stop.
Grabbing ankles will be the order of the day.
Carry on.
—
Jane Mayer’s Disaster
A dishonest, error-filled review provides a textbook case of how the Left smears the CIA and its defenders.
Obama really seems to have it in for the media. No press conferences, for months; driving off to see his drug dealer (or was it his daughter not playing Euro-soccer?) while leaving the press behind; blowing the media off at the conference in which The One saves the world.
[Channeling Whiskey, maybe] — This has to be reminiscent of the cool bad boy in high school, again & again humiliating the girl with whom he has grown bored. And she, poor thing, is the only one in the school who refuses to recognize that he does not love her any more, if indeed he ever did.
“After all we have been told they are more subtle nuanced and sophisticated than Americans”
got to say, that you don’t abandon a bone that has such a juicy marrow, and the making of amalgams (and or conspiracies) is a compensation for someone whose scenario isn’t bought
BTW
Sarkozy to whom it was ask to delet 20% of the nuclear potential:
Sarkozy: “will not give up nuclear weapons”
“I cannot jeopardize the security and safety of my country”
He also hinted that major powers like the US and Russia should pioneer the scaling back of their nuclear weapons stockpiles.
“You have to realize, we’re a country of 65 million inhabitants,We have fewer conventional weapons than the US, than Russia, than China, for that matter.”
and they are defensive, unlike these superpowers
“I have inherited the legacy of the efforts made by my predecessors to build up France as a nuclear power. And I could not give up nuclear weapons if I wasn’t sure the world was a stable and safe place”
Could Pater Doloroso insert these sentences into the Medvedev-Sarkozy “cool” dialogue
The Moscow Times
Scent of Shale Gas Hangs Over Katyn
dan, I back your analyse
Off Topic – but not reported via lame stream news as LoTM said:
“After 40 years of worshiping the power of the free press that brought down Richard Nixon they cry now that the Masters they sold out to no longer need them. They are sunk below the level of publicity flacks, reducing national security to the standing of entertainment gossip as they chased The Sweet Smell of Success.”
Yea, I know…a little late to be posting this but you still have time if you hurry and follow the link to the nearest Tea Party Rally near you. Also other interesting links. We have ordered signs, T-Shirts and such.
Sorry for not posting this earlier.
FREEDOM!!
Papa Ray
Wretcherd, this is diplomacy. The goal isn’t to accomplish something, but to LOOK like you are accomplishing something.
If the Usurper wanted to make his mark in foreign affairs, he could just establish a common definition of Terrorism.
Right now the 4th World claims anything that causes terror is terrorism. So the gang banger with a bag under the seat and a handgun in the glove box is being terrorized when the blue lights start flashing behind him. Which makes the local cop a terrorist.
Wretchard wrote, correctly, I believe: ” . . . the best hope for preventing mayhem is to encourage the spread of responsible government and to dismantle or prevent the emergence of totalitarian or failed states”
But, of course, that would require the cultural confidence and resolve that enabled us to midwive Japan and South Korea, and keep the Soviets at bay in Europe for nearly half a century. Today, this sort of thing is decried as imperialism or derided as delusional.
In re: obama dissing the press
Reporter#1…Hey, has obama ever been circumcised? (titters of laughter)
Repoter#2….. Why no. You wanna know why?
Reporter#1 ….yeah
Reporter#2 …there’s no end to that prick.
Dana Milbank wrote an entire article on this?
Actually that is significant — not earth-shaking, but significant. I would say that more and more people are starting to feel uneasiness about this administration.
15. Tarnsman
Such an essential truth to understanding the Great Dissolution. Nicely done.
imo, it’s probably just because dana milbank is a little bitch. he finally did see the ussr/obama connection though, which is something.
How does obama give the Secret Service the slip?
Where was the Football during his low down?
Are Negros ( it’s a fair word I heard Denzel use it many times in the American Gangster) really as stupid as we have thought they are all these years or is it just tribalism on auto-pilot that they continue to support obama?
Why are our top military men not retiring and speaking out against this pretender? Are they so militarily brainwashed that they feel even in retirement they can’t speak out?
Finally, somebody in the CIA ,FBI, or the intelligence community knows what this guy is doping up with … we have a right to know.
All Obama has to do with Milbank and his fellow travelers is to blow a little kiss in their direction, maybe some flowers once in a while, and they will be falling all over themselves while they race to jump back in bed with him.
They will tell themselves that a desperate love is the best love of all. And they’ll accept it because deep down, they know that they don’t deserve any better.
And she, poor thing, is the only one in the school who refuses to recognize that he does not love her any more, if indeed he ever did.
Oh, she knew then and there on after. But if it makes Obama feel imperious cool to believe he’s still breaking the Press’s heart, who are they to disabuse him of his good sense of self? Since 95% of them vote D as good “activist journalists” (DNC/ACLU/SEIU/SDS PR flunkies), they’re probably happy he’s happy.
That said, Obama really needs to consider a policy of diserminement, his robes have come too dear. Many of us non-journos could support him as a citizen President better.
“… diserminement…”? LOL
OT ?
Something else the MSM is not covering:
Argentina seizes pension funds to pay debts. Who’s next?
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/ambroseevans-pritchard/5504137/Argentina_seizes_pension_funds_to_pay_debts_Whos_next/
#37 Langley
Probably us. In order to “protect” the people of America from the evil fluctuations of the free market, they will force us to trade the assets in the 401(k)’s over to “secure” government bonds. They get real assets, and we get IOU’s. Then they can sell the real assets off to their political cronies at a huge discount.
Make no bones about it. The history of “re-distributing the wealth” isn’t about lifting the poor up, its about bringing the middle down to the level of the poor.
I really must disagree with the incrementalism of Wretchard and many posters (such as previous thread Armageddon Rex, et al) who are buying into this meme of spreading “responsible” or “accountable” governments as some form of antidote against WMD attacks against us.
I believe this categorically: The 21st Century threat of WMDs is a Muslim threat.
Turkey and Malaysia are held up by Wretchard as examples of responsible accountable Muslim nations, but are they? Both are rife with “Islamist” leadership. In both nations, there appears to be a direct correlation between prosperity, power, prestige, and fondness for Jihadist rhetoric. (see comments made in recent years by Gul, Erdogan, or the former PM of Malaysia and virulent antisemite Muhathir Muhammad).These supposed allies (Turkey betrayed us in Iraq), these supposed ‘moderate’ Muslim exemplars are never more than one tantrum away from unleashing their rage, always expressed through a strictly Muslim, completely Jihadist megaphone.
For BCers I don’t need to go into the hideousness of our other Muslim allies such as the abominable KSA, Gulf Arabs, or Pakistan. They all murder our citizens and fund and spread widespread Jihad. Tell yourselves fairytales all you want but Iraq and Afghanistan will end up no differently. For proof see how Karzai repays the US by threatening to join the Taliban.
Muslims will always be one tantrum away from Jihad, they will always be closer to their Jihadi terrorist brethren than they will ever be with us, the so-called ‘infidels’. Alliances where this or that Muslim individual, group, or nation appears aligned with our interest is highly temporary, unstable, and doomed to eventually fail catastrophically. That is the reason that incrementalism when approaching the rising nexus between Islam and WMD is doomed to fail. It guarantees that we will be attacked, that Muslims will be the perps, and that ultimately either KSA (the Sunni branch) or Iran (the Shiite) branch) (or both) will be behind the attack. It is all the same poison fruit which falls from the deadly tree of Islam.
umm, Langley – did you notice the story you quoted was dated a year and a half ago???
For the umpteenth time – there is no need at all for anyone to confiscate anything as long as Treasury and the Federal Reserve can simple invent and pump out an infinte amount of dollars. Why incur the trouble caused by confiscating $100 billion in assets, after all, when all you have to do is snap your fingers and $1 Trillion (or $10 Trillion!) just appears out of thin air?
I think it’s almost impossible for even experienced people to wrap their minds about what this means. It’s all fake. The entire dollar system is a giant ponzi scheme, and the game has gone on so long that there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.
If you noticed, Greenspan just testified to Congress that we will have an “extended period of low interest rates.” Translation – the Fed has made a political decision to continue pumping new dollars out the door as fast as they possibly can, regardless of the consequences.
No one is going to confiscate anything – instead, they are just going to collapse the entire dollar denominated system. Anything you own that can only be valued in dollars (pension benefits, SS, IRA accounts, other long term promises) are already worthless. And there is nothing you can do about it.
Hard assets that you can hold in your hands (and hide from the Revenuers) are going to be the only things that will retain any modicum of value.
Scuds to the Hezbollah.
Retaliation to Damascus.
#40 wws
With all due respect, this really isn’t true. You can’t feed the army of bureaucrats with worthless currency. If nobody is willing to trade it for the actual necessities of life someone is going to have to take it from the producers to do so. Confiscation of real assets, given our present course, is inevitable.
They will take your pound of wheat, and will give you a piece of paper that isn’t even good for toilet paper in exchange. And if you object–you will end up in jail.
Morton Doodslag,
Yes incrementalism, as opposed to saying “Oh My God we must kill one billion people by yesterday or the world will end.” Are you suicidal? Seriously I have no desire to cause pain but the despair is over the top. Islam has waxed and waned for 1400 years. The confluence of post WW-1 trauma and petro-dollars for the Ummah is a recent and passing problem. We ace real dangers and hard choices but panic is not the answer. On the last thread, on my bberry I only get one window and commenting is a pain, DWB is screaming that the Patriot Act gives Obama super secret unlimited powers to suspend elections. This is not only untrue but it makes us all look bad. Be of good cheer, we have a lot of work to do. People side with happy warriors.
wretchard,
“If the State Department gun you’ve got won’t stop a varmint, how’s it going to stop a T-Rex?”
You don’t have to stop a T-Rex, you just have to stop calling it a T-Rex, and call it something nicer. Like a “large short-armed pre-mammal.” Then it will stop being aggressive.
Take a look at the Security Summit’s Logo –UN colors, the crescent moon world.
I’ll bite, buddy. Exactly right about the logo, although I’m not convinced anyone here would see same or care. Funny how performance art is akin to fishing…
LOTM – Your characterization of my position is ludicrous and obnoxious. Did defeating German or Japanese genocidal supremacism require the extermination of the Germans or the Japanese? We hit the epicenter of their ideology – and did not seek accommodation with their creed. We took aim at the software that made them dangerous.
In both Iraq and Afghanistan we enshrined Islam and Sharia into their constitutions, thus protecting and perpetuating the software which made them genocidal menaces in the first place.
to be filed under: Leftist-like distortions, hysterical blogger pots calling reasoned kettles black…
GA/46; if that’s an accident, i’m Marie of Romania.
President Obama and Israel – disinformation theater.
Blocking press access to Nuke talks (discussion follows):
Everyone was invited except North Korea and Iran.
Everyone told there might be some bright flashes in
the night sky over Iran. Any problems with that?
The Left has always been better at dissembling than the Right.
If I’m right, you owe me a cup of tea. If I’m wrong, I’m in good company.
BL/48
Of course that’s an unintentional crescenty and starrish graphic, so now we know you’re a woman in ermine.
Somehow that’s a letdown, but eminently survivable, eh?
#47 Morton Doodslag
The sickness of the West in these days and times is that we tolerate those who would not tolerate us if the positions of power were reversed. Its a recipe for disaster. The little alligators may be cute, and you may feed them, and feel all so good about yourself for doing so, but one day they become big enough to consider having you for supper, at which point they feel no qualms about doing so.
History may not repeat itself, but stupidity does, like clockwork.
More current story being ignored:
http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/jan2010/pi2010018_130737.htm
GA/50;
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
Dis-ermine our weapons can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Romania.
(a Dorothy Parker bowdlerize, *groan*)
***
TC/51; re that stupidity repeating itself, it might also be called “human nature” repeating itself. And really, what choice is there, short of, well, divine guidance, that thing the Founders were always asking for –evidently trying to break some sort of feedback loop.
The sickness of the West in these days and times is that we tolerate those who would not tolerate us if the positions of power were reversed.
Tcobb, is it all about relative power or relative right? While there’s an argument to be made that it’s about a simultaneous both, I would hold that that the right right makes might and not that the right might might make right. The problem these days is the wrong right making us weak while we tolerate the wrong right strengthening others to the detriment of us all.
Obama is hiding in plain sight. As long as the bulk of the hoi polloi believe it can’t happen here and eat the info prozac spooned out by the media ; Obama can take giant steps forward to his socialist nirvana. But the masses seem to be awakening so it might tend to get a little uglier. I can’t imagine a day though where conservative operatives would suffer broken legs and fractured skulls at the hands of union thugs or agent provocateurs would pose as the opposition to poison political rallies, not here in the USA….oh wait.
#54. Yanomama
With all due respect, I have no idea what you’re talking about. “wrong right,” “right right,” and “relative right” are terms which I do not understand.
Doubleplus ungood.
Y/54; hold on a sec –if it’s “right to be wrong”, and “right to be right” is wrong, then it’s “right to be right” after all, right? Or wrong?
***
trang, you’re talking about Bobby Jindal’s staffers that got the holy crap beat of ‘em in New Orleans, right?
I just woke up from my after workout nap so I’m a bit groggy but I see that there’s a kerfuffle between Morton Doodslag and a few other contrbutors on how to handle muzzies/islam.
To those bright lights that want to keep them around, for who knows what reason since they’ve been nothing but trouble since their inception, I say CRAP . Wipe the SOB’s from the face of the Earth or at least a billion of them. The list of why’s is long and dirty and to coddle them any longer is to perpetuate a slimy cult of pedophiles ,murders, and misogynists that serve only to keep the world in turmoil.
I didn’t bother reading some of the defenders of why we should keep them or how much mankind would suffer a giant brain f*rt of guilt if we killed and burned a half to a whole billion because it’s, as I said before ,it’s got to be some over educated, bleeding heart that keeps an ememy on his feet who has a sworn DUTY to kill you or enslave you. I believe I labelled it CRAP which is what that thinking is. Flush out your headgear.
You kill the SOB’s. And to the lace doily crowd don’t worry we won’t lose our own humanity by doing so, no more than we would executing John Wilkes Booth (apropos since this evening he will shoot Abe Lincoln)
Morton Doodslog,
Very glad to see we agree on what is important. If you look back I did try not to make my criticism to personal and my concern, about people reinforcing each others fears not just as to the intentions of the administration but about our prospects for avoiding failure and defeat, was not entirely unreasonable. Someplace in the archives are my own concerns about the constitutions we sponsored in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as speculations regarding the governance of the oil fields. Just yesterday I wrote in excruciating length about the possibility that the lines between combatants and civilians and sovereign states and dominant subsystems have become so blurred that threatened nations and communities may disburse and preposition WMD for retaliatory purposes. Yesterday Iran essentially announced their intention to do so.
Present company excepted, we have had trolls attempt to seed the blog with either defeatist or inflammatory content. Some time ago at one at least one of the regulars at LGF was deliberately submitting calls for violence or hate speech into PJM blogs. We know that there will be efforts to disrupt tomorrows tea parties. No one should be offended if someone offers a hand and says, “Steady on, it may not be that bad.”
A defense of “incrementalism” is not a defense of current policy. It is an acceptance of the intent behind the original, highly assertive in most people’s opinions, Bush-Cheney Doctrine. The concept of really changing their culture, using all the tools we have as we did with Japan and Germany, is a positive pro-American policy that over time may transform the Middle East. The actual specifics were subject to dispute. If we believe in our culture we have to believe that what it does for peasants who come to America it can also do to peasants in Mesopotamia. When conservatives reject that policy they do not get Patrick Buchanan’s policies as an alternative, thank God. The same as when they stayed home rather than vote for John McCain did not get them a more conservative choice. If we do not want Obamas we need to support the best we can get. Bush-Cheney had a good plan worthy of support. It was certainly to good to be conflated with the current program of retreat and surrender.
To be added to the blog thread “Don’t Panic.”
34. wws
“They will tell themselves that a desperate love is the best love of all. And they’ll accept it because deep down, they know that they don’t deserve any better.”
I’ve know quite a few whores that were like that. Now the real prostitutes..that is a different story. They usually have a high opinion of themselves, are smart and charge a lot for their services. While the whores either give it away or charge little, maybe just enough for a rock or two.
Which might our esteemed used-to-be “journalists” be?
I guess in the long run it makes no difference. There is no half way house for ex-journalists, nor a self help program.
Yet.
__ . __
39. Morton Doodslag
Please keep saying that and say it often and in as many places as you can.
Papa Ray
__ > __
40. wws
“If you noticed, Greenspan just testified to Congress that we will have an “extended period of low interest rates.” Translation – the Fed has made a political decision to continue pumping new dollars out the door as fast as they possibly can, regardless of the consequences.
No one is going to confiscate anything – instead, they are just going to collapse the entire dollar denominated system. Anything you own that can only be valued in dollars (pension benefits, SS, IRA accounts, other long term promises) are already worthless. And there is nothing you can do about it.
Hard assets that you can hold in your hands (and hide from the Revenuers) are going to be the only things that will retain any modicum of value.”
You have it figured out, now all we have to do it convince the American Public. But that is going to be worse than herding millions of cats. Cats are smart, many Americans are not. Why? Well because the liberals have had forty years of controlling our American Educational System and have brainwashed most of them and those that were not brainwashed don’t care as long as that government check or food stamp card has money on it.
Papa Ray
Gee, Tcobb and bl, you didn’t actually diagram that, did you?
It’s all about the right write. Please reconcile for me how “might” makes right when it’s just an iffy sounding word.
The sickness of the West in these days and times is that we tolerate those who would not tolerate us if the positions of power were reversed.
That’s an endless everybody loses loop, imo. How is this not righteous attitude equals disastrous rectitude? React we must, but I’d rather we not consider the reverse power results (“if we were they”) and, instead, formulate our response on firm principles we hold dear. Then we shoot, if we must, and not because they themselves would make war against us for their reasons. It doesn’t matter what they tolerate or would obliterate, because their thinking is mush. It only matters they’re wrong and offensive, nothing relative about that.
They shouldn’t frame our reaction, just beg it, good or bad.
43. LoTM
“People side with happy warriors.”
Well OK, Happy as in the Mongals that were happy to slice the heads off of women and children or happy to place nice with their enemies like some of the French in WWII?
The Warriors I know are not optimists, but realists and somewhat pessimistic. They always look at intentions as well as supposed capabilities. The intention of Islam is to dominate the world and they will never, ever, ever give up that belief and effort because their Qur’an and their god tells them so.
If we have to kill or capture them by the thousands before they pause in their efforts it is on them.
If we have to kill even more, well it is still on them. It is their beliefs that are killing them.
Islam is the Muslims worse enemy as well as ours.
Until you finally understand and believe that you will be part of the problem.
Papa Ray
Ode to Marie of Romania:
If loving you is wrong…
I don’t want to be right
If being right means living without you
I’d rather live wrong than right
49 programmer
“Everyone told there might be some bright flashes in
the night sky over Iran.”
Iran [recently] has told it’s population that they will be struck with massive earthquakes in the near future and the government has prepared several re-location camps and other emergency measures.
Yep, if enough bunker busters are dropped the result might be that Mother Nature might just have an earthquake or two.
Wouldn’t that be icing on the cake.
Papa Ray
40. wws
“No one is going to confiscate anything – instead, they are just going to collapse the entire dollar denominated system.”
That is one fine piece of sophistry, for if the government can devalue by hyperinflation or simply devaluing the dollar then they HAVE confiscated your wealth, perhaps in most insidious of ways since the average Joe never feels a thing, he just knows the dolllar he had a year ago isn’t worth a dime in purchasing power.
Nice try.
61. Yanomama
Your going to have to put that in basic English for me to understand. It reads like gobbly gook [to me].
Papa Ray
That’s a big 10/4 good Buddy on the Jindal staffers. These folks on the left are definitely suffering from the totalitarian temptation. Remember when Commissar Phatazz in Venezuela stole his last election. I remember photos of his thugs shooting down the opposition in the streets. I bet these fools in DC salivate over that kind of brutality. The union thugs are a particular worry because the Dems are pulling out all the stops to maintain the unions’ unsustainable pay scales and benefits on somebody else’s dime. You corner a rat he can get down right nasty.
Retaliation to Damascus.
Precisely, Josh.
59. Lifeofthemind
“using all the tools we have as we did with Japan and Germany, is a positive pro-American policy that over time may transform the Middle East. ”
Since they have been at war with the world since their religion began just how much f*cking time would you give them? Eternity. Hell we’ve had troble with them during our colonial period and ever since we formed this nation…your approach is appeasement.
File under: Boy Scout badge of diplomacy
The only good Muslim is a dead Muslim, right Habu?
How is this not righteous attitude equals disastrous rectitude? React we must, but I’d rather we not consider the reverse results (“if we were they”) and, instead, formulate our response on firm principles we hold dear.
Screw that. In the final analysis, when it comes to cultures, what matters is survival. That’s it. Nothing else matters. Nothing. When a culture gets to the point where it believes that some values are better than existence it dies. Always.
The just and the crippled both push up the flowers.
Papa Ray,
Why is the outstanding sin that we tolerate offensive others who’d be intolerant of us were our relative positions of power reversed and not that we brook their thinking whatever the power differential? The former is just about might making (pick your party) right.
Sorry for leaving you a gooky sticky mess, but I’ve got to get back to work.
Langley @ 37:
“Something else the MSM is not covering:
Argentina seizes pension funds to pay debts. Who’s next’
Our own government is much more subtle than Argentina. The US federal government pumps up the stock market through illegal manipulation, then quietly withdraws their appreciated money as the sheeple get greedy and shift in their 401K money. After the federal government fully withdraws, the stock market is left to market forces and immediately collapses. Then after the market bottoms out, the US federal government resumes the cycle buying stocks for 10 cents on the dollar (rinse and repeat). Naturally the federal government can’t lose because the markets are fully controlled by middle men working for Goldman Sachs, etc. The beauty of the scheme is the sheeple voluntarily hand over their 401K money to the US Government rather than have it taken from them under duress through taxation or outright seizure. Should a whistle blower make a scene then Goldman Sachs along with one or two scapegoats from the Federal Reserve will be blamed.
My point not made, TCobb. I’d go for same reaction against our adversaries but for different reason, because we want to recognize ourselves in the future as a people with a history and character, yes? The right might rightly (and vigorously) applied for our reason and not because of the Other’s standards is still within our scope, else we be We are the World already, as in Russia, China, Venezuela, Iran, Gore, Moore and Soros.
If not for our values and way of life (to include giving Gore, Moore and Soros their say, biz and “art” and their opponents same), who are we? Why not yield to the strongman everytime? We’ve already got a parody of one in Obama who would muscle his own citizenry.
Your point that we tolerate the intolerance of America haters is a good one, though, and high irony. No one’s ready to push up flowers just yet, ok?
72. -74. Yanomama
OK, We will leave it at that I guess, English is my third language. So I apologize for my not understanding. Now if you had written it in Redneck or Texican I might might not have questioned you.
But as far as looking back and saying we did or didn’t do the right thing, well sometimes you don’t have a choice or if you do you must decide for your own families, friends and country and to hell with everyone else.
War is War you know.
Papa Ray
Papa Ray –
“Islam is the Muslims worse enemy as well as ours.
Until you finally understand and believe that you will be part of the problem. ”
I think we agree in principle. The only question is, and I think LoTM is just trying moderate things a bit. We don’t necessarily need to put forth, as a forum, the unanimous agreement that genocide is the right answer at this time. It just comes off as extreme though I agree in sentiment. It is just a bit much even if that’s what it eventually comes down to.
Yanomama – I read it and got it…sorta… after reading it a couple of times. Funny but intentionally confusing I’m sure.
WWHABUDO?
Papa Ray,
The Warriors I know are not optimists
Even in combat it does not hurt for a Commanding Officer to crack a smile at the right moment. Politics has its own rules. America is a nation of optimists that believe in the future. Our most successful politicians, no matter how ruthless behind closed doors, always projected a sunny disposition. Go down the list of the 20th century’s Presidents, from Teddy Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan only the duds Wilson and Carter were humorless. Hoover, the first Engineer could have used a more positive image. He tried by asking for a song to make people forget the Depression. He got what became the theme song for the Democrats, Happy Days Are Here Again. Millions of Boomers grew up watching the original Happy Warrior, Hubert Horatio Humphrey sing it in the annual Democratic telethon. Humphrey lost the 1968 election and the bitter and angry extremists captured the Democratic Party machinery but they did not capture America’s heart. Humphrey’s vision became the consensus position that the public supported for a liberal domestic agenda.
Reagan understood that he needed to radiate confidence. Being of good cheer did not mean that he failed to understand reality or did not appreciate danger. When he was shot and he said to his wife “Honey I forgot to duck” and asked the doctors if they were all good Republicans millions were comforted. That was a man you could follow. Who would want to face the prospect of taking a bullet for a prig like Hillary Clinton or Obama? In 2008 the Republicans, among their many failures, were unable to communicate just how unfunny and snarky and nasty Obama was. Now that the American people have gotten a look at him it is a theme that should be ruthlessly hammered home.
Habu,
How long? 100 years ago the Ummah was an impoverished backwater that posed no threat to the advance of civilization. The current problems are I believe transient and the result of specific conditions. If we use our heads we should achieve a victory that reestablishes the primacy of a wealth and knowledge and spiritually uplifting civilization within a period of time no greater than that of the recent expansion of the problem.
Find the link.
To be blogged under the title “Happy Warriors.”
Papagay
“Well OK, Happy as in the Mongals that were happy to slice the heads off of women and children or happy to place nice with their enemies like some of the French in WWII?”
My parrot learnt history in listening to BBC, that’s why he also learnt
to sing the Marseillaise, but you didn’t had this chance as a warrior parrot, too much noise was coming from the toilets
uh for the fun, to Marie of Romania:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6-hXwAcT3o
“To be blogged under the title “Happy Warriors.”
Sorry LoTM…evidently we are talking apples and oranges.
The American public and it’s politicians are not “Warriors” in the sense I was speaking of.
What ever they are it takes much more to make Warriors of them. Take it from one who made that transision long ago and knows many that have also.
Times are a changing. Attitudes, expectations and appreciations are going to have to change also. Then when necessary the final change.
Either a Warrior or an Armadillo will have to be decided in each American’s mind.
For some it will be a hard choice or one they will hide from and regret.
Got to go now.
Papa Ray
Yanomama, is English your second language?
WWHABUDO? That right there is my new bumper sticker!!! Sweet.
All of this talk an such works just like it does back on the block. Yes, these people are wearing ties and tuxes but in the end they are human just like Javier on the corner. They may be more polite about it but they will still try to kill you for what you got. So in order to be relatively safe you have to punch the bully in the nose so to speak. You know establish a pecking order as it were.
The Obama administration is going about this just like soccer mom runs the pee wee league. And Zero is just trying to get his participation trophy and a hot dog…
This is a life and death competition people. Second place is just the first loser.
A/80; I do believe the Yanomama are a tribe of rain forest headhunters, no insult to Y intended.
JFS/81; –that’s what the term ‘moral victory’ is for –it means the other guy won the actual victory.
MC’s youtube is a scream –the poor guy –giving it his best shot and she’s just bored silly –
L@52: from the linked article:
“It’s a great idea [converting 401(k) and IRA'a into annuities], but how much are people really going to get out of it?” she said. A better approach would be to give employers incentives to revive defined-benefit pensions, which have languished as employers have focused on cheaper and more flexible 401(k) plans…
What goes around comes around. Just the cycles seem to be getting shorter. Briefly, let me remind everyone of the typical life cycle of defined benefit plans – cycles that are still playing out their dying swan song among many retirees.
The defined plans get underfunded by the company and put into bankruptcy when the company is sold or goes under (see airlines & steel industries, not to mention a handful of lesser know utilities).
Step 2 the law firms step in to negotiate a settlement as part of a class action lawsuit. The settlements bring in healthy service fees to the law firms – anywhere from $5M to $20M – while the class action plaintiffs get 20 to 30 cents on the dollar. Each plaintiff is given the option of accepting the terms of the settlement or writing a strongly worded letter of objection to the court.
Nice gig. Thirty years ago we were told that IRA’s and 401(k)’s would get around that oversight on the part of certain employers.
The failure of businesses to fund their pension plans during the 1970′s – 1990′s time frame is a scandal that has yet to be fully absorbed. (Not to even get into the equally scandalous chop shop raiders of utilities that bought the shop, chopped and sold the pieces, and dropped the liabilities into the nearest bankruptcy receptacle) The last I heard, the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp (PBGC), as the final resort of bankrupt plans, was …
bankrupt.
Another GSE gone bust.
Curious how many of those chop shops are underwritten by Goldman Sachs.
O’messiah.
“Their pacifism acquired a messianic character — they were less concerned with saving their fellow-countrymen than with saving all mankind from war.”
“Private wars would be abolished — only world wars would be allowed.””
…-
“Unto Caesar”
“F.A. Voigt argued that both Communism and National Socialism were revolutionary secular religions that sought to render unto Caesar that which is God’s — that is, to transform religious promises into worldly reality — and that Britain had to act, within realistic constraints, to save the Commonwealth:”
“This passage, in Mencius Moldbus’s opinion, approaches greatness:
The true lover of peace will be more concerned with peace in the concrete than peace in the abstract; with defending his and his country’s peace, rather than with chimerical schemes for extending peace beyond the limits of the possible. He will always reflect whether its extension beyond the frontiers of his own country will be an extension not of peace, but of war. Even a seemingly small extension of peace may be dangerous, as the extension of the Pax Britannica to western Europe is. Inherent in universal peace is the menace of universal war — “indivisible peace” is “indivisible war.”
[...]
The modern effort to establish universal peace is perhaps for this reason mainly an English effort. After the armistice, the English experienced a prodigious revulsion against war. But they also felt an island security which could no longer be menaced, seeing that the German fleet had been destroyed. Their pacifism acquired a messianic character — they were less concerned with saving their fellow-countrymen than with saving all mankind from war. Their own security made them more accessible than any other nations to utopian dreams of universal peace — and blinder to the danger inherent in such utopian dreams.
[...]
Monstrous proposals, like the proposal to create an international air force that would emerge — from some Alpine stronghold, presumably — and bomb the cities of the alleged aggressor, found a considerable following in the post-war years. Such inhuman phantasmagoria had an affinity with the secular religions of the European continent. Indeed, English militant pacifism had something in common with the Marxian dreams of a universal realm of peace, justice and well-being. As we have seen, the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth is inseparable from its own opposite. It can only come about by violence.The threat of universal war as a means of establishing universal peace is a peculiarly English conception that has crystallized in the doctrine of “sanctions.” This doctrine is analogous to the doctrine of the proletarian dictatorship which would establish social peace by making class-war permanent and universal. “Sanctions” are the counterpart of the revolutionary terror — the purpose of either is peace, but the effect of both is the consolidation, through war or the threat of war (whether between classes or nations), of power in the hands of those hold it.
[...]
To erect the “punishment of the aggressor” into a general system would be to concentrate immense power into a few hands and establish an abominable and universal tyranny. In nothing is the evil inherent in universal systems of enforced morality more evident than in the doctrine of “sanctions.”
[...]
There is no reason to suppose that a universal system of “sanctions” would abolish war even for a time. One evil would be replaced by a greater evil. Private wars would be abolished — only world wars would be allowed.”
http://www.isegoria.net/2010/03/unto-caesar/
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSLO93463020090324
Sweden to ban management bonuses at state firms
“We are closing the door to all possibilities for variable remuneration and bonus. All the top managers at state-owned companies will only have fixed wages under the new guidelines,” he said in a signed article in daily Dagens Nyheter.
The French and Dutch governments this week took steps to curb executive bonuses at firms receiving state aid, while in the United States, multi-million dollar bonuses given to employees of AIG (AIG.N) — bailed out with nearly $180 billion of public money — have sparked outrage.
Sweden’s centre-right government, which has pursued privatisation and market-oriented reform since taking power in 2006, said it would also invite other major corporate stakeholders to discuss pay levels at Swedish companies”
Just finished feeding the kids and thought I would pass a few links on to those here. If you don’t click them that is fine and dandy.
Others Will.
Hope Richard doesn’t mind.
First off, this is some of what our prisons are letting loose, besides just your common criminals and according to stats. it is increasing each year.
Muslim Arrested in the Jihad Massacre of Five Family Members — “Allah” Made Me Do it
How does this relate? Well, when the next strike against America comes people like this will be not only encouraged but want to contribute in what ever way they can to our destruction and downfall.
Allah tells them so.
__ .__
Then of course you have this:
Yemen: 2nd child bride hospitalized with genital injuries
Then this, which is worrisome but does not damage anyone:
UK KFC goes halal, grateful Muslims threaten boycott
Of course this would have been way past worrisome if successful, which of course one day will be:
Fourth jihadist in New York subway bomb plot arrested in Pakistan
Of course since this didn’t happen here…who cares?
Philippines: Jihadists in police uniforms attack church, government office
I guess we should believe this guy since he is a Muslim:
Turkish Premier Erdogan: There Is No Islamic Terrorism
But I think he would approve of this:
Blasphemy laws not enough, Pakistan also using alcohol laws to persecute Christians
Then as a closer…you have this which happens all over the world way too often:
Palestinian Muslim Family Murders Daughter in “Honor Killing” — “relative impunity granted to murderers, often sentenced to less than 24 months of effective imprisonment”
__ .__
LoTM said: “using all the tools we have as we did with Japan and Germany, is a positive pro-American policy that over time may transform the Middle East.”
Yea, if we had all those tools today, (the really important ones being guts and determination) over the next hundred years or so, we might be able to slow all of this down or even stop it in some parts of the world. But it would still remain in others, festering and growing and spreading. Just like it has done for almost two thousand years.
So, is it going to be a long war? Are we going to be able to find the Warriors to fight it or the people to convince the Islamic community to change their ways?
Well, I will be long gone but my kids, grand kids and on and on will not be.
I vote to protect them.
Papa Ray
Aristide/80:
Yes. You’re right, you can write really long treatises and I cannot even compose short ones in English. That I live in a foreign land far, far away makes it difficult for me to understand the encoded language and dramatics here. Please accept my apologies, and peace, bright brother. (That means Bye, be happy! I am.)
“That I live in a foreign land far, far away makes it difficult for me to understand the encoded language and dramatics here.”
Yea, us Americans can be hard to understand sometimes. Sometimes we don’t even understand ourselves. But one thing that runs through most all of us is a love of America.
A love so deep that it sometimes rivals family.
And defies belief in some.. in some parts of the world. They mistake it for arrogance and rudeness.
Please don’t apologize, you have made the effort, tried to talk to us and to understand. Perhaps we were not as courteous as we should be and maybe that is because we are all worried, worried to death as my Mama used to say when something really was bothering her.
But Americans might worry but they also know how to get past it and do something about it. That is a trademark of our Nation.
We love peace. Peace is what we want for our families and our Republic but not at the price of losing our freedoms.
We will just not allow that. And it is looking like we will have to fight in more ways than one to make sure of that.
Don’t doubt for a minute we will not.
So…Come back, talk with us more. We will benefit from your knowledge and your viewpoint. After all, Americans came from foreign lands far, far away and learned to get along and all of us fell in love with being Americans in what we think is the most beautiful wonderful land in the world.
Especially Texas !
Papa Ray
If America once again regains it’s composure, it’s strength, it’s courage and it’s fortitude sufficiently enough to decisively deal with the Islamic world, I would neither advocate killing millions unjustifiably or without cause, nor would I advocate coddling Islam in any way remotely like our current politically correct manner.
From a traditional American sensibility, Islam is not a religion. Americans expect religions to promote good and condemn evil. Islam instead promotes almost the whole gamut of evil: death, mass murder, thievery, rape, lying and brutality. That reprehensible conduct cannot be allowed to continue. Period. The consequences are too dire in this nuclear armed world.
If America again has the wherewithal to enforce a peace, it will have to decisively demand in the future that Islam rid itself permanently of all it’s Satanic Verses and influences. If the people of Islam resist, then increasing doses of Habu’s and Morton’s solutions may be necessary. But only then.
The problem with proceeding with genocidal violence is that we are a democracy, and the tides of public opinion can turn quickly. We as a people have always sought to justify our behavior from a moral point of view if possible, and maintaining a genocidal posture is not only morally wrong, but politically unsustainable. If we proceeded with a genocide, we would lose quickly support for more conservative foreign and domestic policies, and we would be handling in no short order the reins of power back to the morally ambiguous left. The likely consequence would be that American would again in a short period of time likely face similar problems that we face now.
77. Lifeofthemind
“The current problems are I believe transient and the result of specific conditions.”
Geez man I know you realize that all things are transient. Hericlitus said 2700 years ago that Nothing is constant but change
LOTM your answer is not up to your abilities to break down a problem or to read history as it is. It’s as if you are attempting to will different circumstances than exist in reality. Yes the muzzies MAY change in 100 or 200 years, islam MAY become peace and love a la Haight-Ashbury 1968 but TODAY, RIGHT NOW islam is not at peace nor has it been at peace around the globe for hundreds of years. Open your eyes man.
You are in your way abetting appeasement by averting your mind and gaze from reality. They want to kill us. They have claimed it as a goal.
BTW, have you ever been on the ground with another human in your sights an killed them?
I have and contrary to the movie depictions of it making you sick etc it felt damn good to kill him before he killed one of us…..damn good.
File under Boy Scout diplomacy.
70. sirius_sir
The only good Muslim is a dead Muslim, right Habu?
Any people who follow a ideology/religion that decrees what islam decrees is my mortal enemy for it is my moral duty to protect myself and my country. To protect freedom that has taken the common man most of his written history to achieve.
We are the oldest surviving republic the world has ever known, providing greater opportunity than mankind has ever had available so I get a bit vexed when a bully comes around trying to abridge those qualities or take them away from the common man. So if you can understand that and you have even the most rudimentary understanding of islam then you can most likely through deductive logic ascertain what the answer is, and should be for those who value their life and freedoms.
O/T
Love him or hate him you have to listen to him
Markets could be derailed again, warns Soros
Apr 14, 2010 07:11 EDT
Railway porter-turned-billionaire financier George Soros delivered a stark warning last night that the financial world is on the wrong track and that we may be hurtling towards an even bigger boom and bust than in the credit crisis.
The man who ‘broke’ the Bank of England (and who is still able to earn a cool $3.3 bln in a year) said the same strategy of borrowing and spending that had got us out of the Asian crisis could shunt us towards another crisis unless tough lessons are learned.
Soros, who worked as a porter to pay for his studies at the London School of Economics after emigrating from Hungary, warned us to heed the lesson that modern economics had got it wrong and that markets are not inherently stable.
“The success in bailing out the system on the previous occasion led to a superbubble, except that in 2008 we used the same methods,” he told a meeting hosted by The Economist at the City of London’s modern and impressive Haberdashers’ Hall.
“Unless we learn the lessons, that markets are inherently unstable and that stability needs to the objective of public policy, we are facing a yet larger bubble.
“We have added to the leverage by replacing private credit with sovereign credit and increasing national debt by a significant amount.”
One crumb of comfort could be the 10-year period between the 1998 Asian crisis and the 2008 credit crisis. If the pattern is repeated, it should at least mean we have another 8 years to go before the next crash…
Habu,
I am not naive about the aggression at the core of Islam. The founding myth for the religion is built around an effort to exculpate the betrayal and murder of his hosts by a guest who was given shelter as a suppliant. That is the original sin of Islam and they can never escape it. The crimes perpetrated by Mohammad at Khaybar and Yathrib were so fundamentally incompatible with not only most cultures standards of decency but were specifically regarded as abominations by the codes of Arabs themselves that they can never confront them or purge them from the legal and spiritual system they have been fused into. To do so is more hopeless then the efforts of romantic leftists to separate the nature of the crimes of Lenin and Stalin in an effort to revive the reputation of Communism. It is only possible for them to simply go on without acknowledging the nature of how the edifice was constructed and averting their eyes from poisons that leak from the basement. The foundation is no good however and in the long run, and that may indeed be a very long run, the edifice will collapse.
My optimism and patience rest on three facts;
1. Islam was not just stagnant but in decline before the infusion of petro-dollars,
2. Oil revenues are declining and new technologies are coming on line,
3. Loyalty to Islam is brittle thin and rivals are gaining outside of Europe.
My vision is not one of a long decline that exalts endurance for it’s own sake without any hope for recovery in this world. That was the fate of Byzantium or the doom foreseen by mad Steward Denethor of Gondor. My goal is victory under terms that leave the West not just intact but revived both materially and morally. If we can do that better by enduring the slow ebb of Islam, as we endured the slow ebb of Communism, to emerge without having wounded ourselves with genocide, then I think it will be worth the time and cost involved. That does not mean that I reject all confrontation. Merely that as John Foster Dulles said of our strategic policy in his day, we should respond in a time place and manner of our own choice.
My expectation is not that the intentions of Islam as a system will change. My expectation is that their capabilities will decline, at least relatively and probably absolutely. Further I hope that with targeted efforts some members of that community will see these changes and then may be lead into more productive belief or behavioral systems.
Many years ago I asked my father why we didn’t just keep rolling East in 1945. Couldn’t we have avoided the costs and fears of the Cold War? Leaving aside the fact that we really didn’t have the bombs to support that strategy then, his reply that focused on our moral unwillingness to wage aggressive war and confidence that if we had the right answers we would be OK, that we should not destroy ourselves to preempt our enemy, made sense then. It is hard to hold back, knowing that innocents are suffering while we wait. If we really believe and are not passive, if we fix our own house, and intervene to effect critical changes where they can do the most good, we can build a world more just than the 19th centuries web of cynical imperial alliances but freed of the 20th century’s blight of totalitarianism.
How long will it take for Islam to be no more of a threat to Western Civilization than it was 100 years ago? Why don’t we give it a hundred years and then you can tell me if I was wrong.
To be blogged under the title “Victory Patience Precision.”
Habu, what is Soros telling us but what Heraclitus told us, and what we say hereabouts is “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty”, whoever that attributes to, or as Satchel Paige says it, “… something may be gaining on you!” A bicycle isn’t stable, and a trillion dollar government program won’t make it stable. Nor does it need to be stable.
Regarding your friends the Mooslems, I doubt it’s necessary to kill a billion, we just have to show a small degree of earnestness and I have great confidence that things would stabilize wonderfully. And I suppose, at some point, we will. Just a matter of what it takes before we get there.
93. Lifeofthemind
“How long will it
take for Islam to be no more of a threat to Western Civilization than
it was 100 years ago? Why don’t we give it a hundred years and then you
can tell me if I was wrong.”
The difficulty is that with no real central
authority to help moderate Islam – and with the availability of
inexpensive weaponry, do we have 100 years?
For our next confidence builder see
http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2010/04/14/obamas-israel-problem/
habu, i too sleepy to write anything –but re Soros warning –he regards himself now as a ‘market fundamental’ –as in, the so-called ‘market risks’ (AKA ‘headline risk’) in the lex, as you know, are different than so-called ‘fundamental risk’, the latter refering to actual conditions and the former to perceptions of same. Soros in his megalo dotage has decided that they are all the same, they all call for the same action (buy hold sell or nothing) and as such he himself is a ‘market fundamental’.
He even has a new term for this new element in todays lightning fast black box global hedge enviro, where a rumor or the vulnerability to rumor can cause such big swings that they must be regarded –if deliberately rolled out at certain points, doable in this era of lawless order — a ‘fundamental’.
I can’t think of the term but that he has coined such is the message. When he speaks, he sees himself as ‘creating a new fundamental’. [ Soros Lehman August 2008 ] is a search that will clue what he does.
anyhoo, the 1998 Asian crisis was a shakedown cruise for the 2008. The Indonesian finance minister among others has written on Soros especially (he hates him) but too, Geithner and Summers (under Rubin protection), how they good-cop/bad-copped to big payoffs to the usual suspects in that currency-manipulation-sparked crisis (scam).
just search [ asian crisis 1998 soros geithner summers ] and sample a Tinker to Evers to Chance as it woulda been if Tinker had worn a Yankees uniform doing it.
Or Evers-as-Geithner maybe should be the example of uniform confusion.
ok, gotta shut-eye –
Habu and Buddy: what I hear Soros saying can be distilled down to: “Free markets are a bad, baaad, baaaaaaaad thing.” Government must stabilize this wild bad thing. That’s all he’s saying in the quote above. And that’s what I would expect him to say.
I do hate him (well okay, I don’t like him very much) and I don’t have to listen to what he has to say (respect it).
From bl’s link in 96: The New York Fed is not government-owned. Most people fail to recognize this fact. Simply, the Federal Reserve Board (responsible for monetary policy, with a dual mandate of full employment and price stability) is an independent part of the federal government, while the New York Fed is a shareholder-owned or private corporation.
Congressman Ron Paul has a bill in Congress to open the FRB to public audit. Sen. Judd Gregg came out against the concept. A new poll shows Paul in a dead heat with Obama in 2012.
It’ll never happen – neither the public audit nor a President Paul, but it seems somehow a fitting backdrop for where this country is at right now. The viability of significant reform in the absence of strong currents that generally come from one and one thing only seem slim to nonexistent. In that context the Soros comments reek of insufferable pretension.
93. Lifeofthemind
“If we can do that better by enduring the slow ebb of Islam, as we endured the slow ebb of Communism, to emerge without having wounded ourselves with genocide, then I think it will be worth the time and cost involved.”
I have read all of your perfumed words and sophistry on the virtues of patience in the face of an intractable foe and it rings callow and pitiful.
You recitation of Islamic history is not relevant TODAY as they flow into a terroristic killing of mankind with little discrimination. Their trigger is that you are not islam and they are and they are going to kill you to establish a new worldwide Caliphate. You are aiding them with you pusillanimous defense that time will alter their behavior. Yes indeed, enough time and dinosaurs sprouted wings and took to flight …eventually. In the interim of your ill defined “time” the blood of hundreds, perhaps thousands will be on your hands for your failure to acknowledge the nose on your face TODAY. The killing by muslims hiding in street clothes, afraid to face their foes in combat but only in the shadows and in the marketplaces where women and children go is reprehensible and you know it. Yet you’re stuck on the EVENTUALITY that SOMETIME in the future they will alter their behavior.
In your grave you may gain a grin that they finally changed but things are now nuclear and their philosophy remains 6th century. That should show your grin as toothless as your present day theory on EBI, (eventual benign islam) and horrify your spirit. As for me I will not be joining in your celebration for I believe we owe the freedom of mankind the release from a terrorist plagued world, and that can only lead to the answer of a massive killing field of muslims. Anything short of that and they will continue to read the West’s commitment to our principles of human freedom as a paper tiger, a weak horse and infuse them with an ardor to continue indiscriminate killing in their effort to conquer.
Your solution is no solution but the eternal, metronomic, tick tock of the clock and the hope that change will happen. Well, I can guarantee you change will happen but how many are you willing to sacrifice until that time arrives?
File under NAIVETY
I fully agree with all the anti Soros sentiment and I believe the man is evil. I simply posted it because he has the ability to change markets.
After all TIME Magazine in 1938 made Adolf Hitler “Man of the Year”
sirius_sir/70
The only good Muslim is a dead Muslim, right Habu?
Actually, no. The only good Islam is a dead Islam. Muslims are often coincidental to it.
There’s an awful lot of talk here by you smart people about hating and killing people. You seem eager for a showdown, to be challenging others to fight to the end. Lately it appears some of your readers are accepting that inevitability and finality, that we’re going to give the devil his due.
The tripwires are difficult to see.
102. Loomis
“The tripwires are difficult to see”
Not if you are familar with islam and sharia.
If some readers are accepting the inevitable perhaps it has something to do with the unceasing attacks by islam on the West since it’s beginning and more people than ever are now aware of that fact…yeah ain’t facts and history a bitch sometimes.
Go ask Danny Pearl….oh wait , you can’t. He trusted in just a nice journalistic meeting to get the others side of the story …they slit his throat on the internet.
I do not applaud those who are attempting to put makeup the the pig that is islam.
To use an old Raymond Chandler quote:
“From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away.”
islam delinda est
slit his throat on the internet and about the ugly woman—
Lovely, Habu, and so true. It’s a good time to be hating just now.
Lotm@93
My goal is victory under terms that leave the West not just intact but revived both materially and morally. If we can do that better by enduring the slow ebb of Islam, as we endured the slow ebb of Communism, to emerge without having wounded ourselves with genocide,…
If only Islam felt the same, that might be a logical approach. Wars are the engines of genocide. For valid reasons. Wars are not inherenrly bad or evil. Some are just. Self-defense is a moral act. If we only have nukes available, how should we respond to an act of war?
Your rationale above would be more convincing if “our endurance of the slow ebb of Communism” had worked. It hasn’t. A hundred million died, with millions more to come. We’re now underwriting its expansion. We have several avowed socialists/Marxist/Communists and a whole slew (majority) of Leftist/statists now making US Law non-stop. Doubling-down and arming-up daily.
We now face enslavement from which escape seems ever-less a realistic probability. We are being systematic disarmed, regulated and plundered. Our nation is being dismantled. All to the benefit of our Islamic/other enemies, whether that’s the explicit intent or not.
The survivalist scenario, while appealing, works until they hunt you down. A previous Democrat AG, J. Reno, did the first tests: SWAT snipers at Ruby Ridge and the military with tanks at WACO. Egads, now we have Holder.
At some point civility is wasted, no? At some juncture, the ummah has no innocents. So, it won’t be genocide. It’ll be the result of a war they brought on by remaining MODERATE muslims.
Every day you dissuade US from rallying to arms, we kick the can. While I appreciate your always reasonable comments, many times your position on ROEs differs little from what the Left allied-to-Islam would say, if they were in a position to influence the discussion. In ANY compromise between good and evil, only evil gains. If we lose, moral high-mindedness offers nothing to our warriors.
Actually, they cut his head off. The religion of peace.
Here is an interesting and informative website that is devoted explaining the ongoing and present Islamic Jihad and is trying to inform the public about it.
“The Third Jihad introduces the concept of “cultural jihad” as a means to infiltrate and undermine our society from within.”
“The Third Jihad”
Watch the clips and trailer. Or order the DVD and play it at the next gathering or event you have.
Wake people up to the present danger from Islam. Make them understand that it is real and that they mean to destroy our way of life and force all of the world to worship Islam.
Make them understand that the ongoing assault and attack from Islam must be stopped forever.
That Islam is a cult that must be destroyed.
Papa Ray
At least there is a hope:
New 19-country survey: Islam and Christianity in Sub-Saharan Africa http://bit.ly/9HCL3t Sub-Saharians prefer Christianity to Islam, At least there is a hope, if only they could forget the use of machetes
Habu, thank you for post #100. I understand.
h/104; that Raymond Chandler quote is perfect –here’s another, for the fun of it;
At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable
Substitute ‘politics’ for ‘mystery novels’ and there you have a problem of problems –folks only move when when not to, makes something else inevitable.
The only good Islam is a dead Islam. Muslims are often coincidental to it. twobyfour @ 101
You’ll get no argument from me. But I don’t think the solution is for us to arbitrarily kill every single coincidental.
we’re feeling occidentally dis-oriented
So you won’t take offence if I call you Buddha, buddy?
Coincidentally, the Daniel Goldhagen/PBS collaboration “Worse Than War” (The first major documentary to explore the phenomenon of genocide and how we can stop it) is maybe perhaps somewhat germane. It recommends a sober approach that so-called liberals won’t like–too much in the extreme like Bush unilateralism. I highly recommend it.
ss/114; LOL –Buddah mirth –or girth?
but thanks –i’ll look it up. genocide isn’t so astonishing back in the olden times, but i’ve spent a lifetime scratching my head trying to find clues to how we have had so many of them in modern times, what with so much of that history so available to so many eyes. it comes to be in the mind long before the event –
Buddah will be reincarnated as a flatulating bovine in the pastures of the Golden Temple.
POTUS makes genocide in modern times more understandable, being the only Pol in Illinois willing to take a stand in favor of euthanizing babies.
…although it could be argued that permitting a newborn to expire in a closet without his mother might not qualify as an easy or painless death.
But who are we to judge?
D/116; But who are we to judge? –exactly so –horrors, how awful it is to judge, what on earth could be so oppressive ?