The Washington Monument
Mike Allen’s account* of the grievance meeting between the White House Press Corps and Secretary Robert Gibbs feels like watching a once famous profession in a sad state of decline. At a 75 minute meeting the White House Correspondents Association begged for crumbs. They complained the administration was going direct to the Internet on everything; as in staff photographers posting Presidential pictures while the Press Corps was denied photo opportunities; of news releases being posted after the business day was closed (“full lid”); of cutbacks in travel pools on Air Force One at a time when news organizations couldn’t afford to charter their own planes. The most pathetic demand of all was for Internet access in situations when they had to file. How important could they be if the pool reporting wasn’t worth a couple of dozen megabytes of uploads? That’s less than a few minute’s action on World of Warcraft.
Where one is on the totem is everything in Washington. The idea of hierarchy permeates every situation. Behavior is a question of knowing your place; when to say ‘thank you’ and never speaking out of turn. If you can’t understand the rules you’re a rube. Because of the default presumption that you are at Court; it follows that beneath every courteous speech ultimately you want something from the king or the duke or the duchess. And this is where Bill Clinton has got it subtly wrong.
The former President argued that political discourse had gotten so strident that certain individuals on the right have crossed the line between criticizing government officials and “demonizing them.” Things now remind him of the days preceding the Oklahoma City bombing when Clinton’s unpopular actions were unappreciated by an America lucky to have him.
CLINTON: I worry about these threats against the president and the Congress. … I just think we all have to be careful. We ought to remember after Oklahoma City. We learned something about the difference in disagreement and demonization.
TAPPER: You said that this time reminds you of — of that time. Politically does this year remind you of 1994?
CLINTON: A little bit. We passed the bill which reversed trickledown economics by one vote. Close like the healthcare bill. And it led to an enormous flowering of the economy in America. And that bill was responsible for, take is more than 90 percent of the weight of the balanced budget. But people didn’t realize its benefits.
I think the same thing is happening now with the healthcare bill. Where people are still reading into it all manner of dark things. And they haven’t felt the benefits of it yet. But America is a different country now. We are culturally a different country. We are more diverse. We’re more communitarian. That is, we understand we have to solve a lot of these problems together.
The point Bill Clinton is missing is that the danger doesn’t come from right wing ‘anger.’ The anger is just a byproduct. The voices he hears from the Tea Party crowds aren’t threats; they’re warnings. The real peril is coming from somewhere else: the demographic decline in industrial world working populations, the increasing cost of energy and the international movement in the factors of production. A whole generation of failed policy from both parties is coming to a head and it probably means that the welfare state, the European Union and by consequence the Chinese economy are heading for a cliff.
What’s driving the Tea Parties isn’t amorphous hate. It is concrete fear: worry that pensions have been devalued; medical care will become unaffordable; taxes are too high and jobs are gone, never to return. And a look around the world shows there’s no place to hide. When the wave hits it will be global. In the UK membership in political parties is at near historic lows. In America Congress’s popularity is lower than whales**t. The Eurozone is cracking up under its weight of debt. First Greece, now Portugal are being ripped off the cliff face like a zipper — and all the climbers are roped together. Japan is like a kamikaze sub heading for the depths and tapping out a sayonara. Russia was history long ago. And China, when it has used up its flowering moment, will face the consequences of its one-child policy. And Middle Eastern potentates, stuck in the same old, same old, are warning about a Summer War. The Tea Parties aren’t about putting some country club Republican in the White House, though Bill can’t help hearing it like that.
The cheese-paring scene at the White House Press Corps is just as indicative of the coming storm as the Tea Parties. It is yet one more sign that the old institutions are making plans for a future that isn’t there; moving trillions of dollars in projected revenues around a five year plan like Hitler’s fictive armies were moved around a map in 1945. When you hear Gordon Brown describe the billions he’s going to spend to save the world and heal the planet; when you read news about the proposed legislation on “cap and trade”– the issue isn’t the “right wing hate” but where’s the money going to come from? The most telling fact about Bill Clinton’s speech is that 2010 reminds him of 1994. If he — or the political establishment — can’t tell the difference between the decades, that’s your problem right there.
But the average Joe can. His pocketbook talks to him as loud as his cell phone; he has to live in a world where five bucks is a lot of money. So the man in the street can see things that are invisible from Olympian Washington. Robert McCartney of the Washington Post found to his surprise that once he tuned into the frequency that he could hear it too.
I went to the “tea party” rally at the Washington Monument on Thursday to check out just how reactionary and potentially violent the movement truly was.
Answer: Not very. …
I found that I agreed heartily with the tea partiers on what is perhaps their single biggest concern: that America’s swelling government debt seriously threatens our long-term prosperity.
A lot of people live in 1994. Time to switch the channels.
But perhaps the most unremarked thing about the Tea Parties is that they’re not calling for a repeal of the Constitution but for its enforcement. They are the complete opposite of what Clinton thinks they are; an affirmation, not a call to create “a different country” that Clinton congratulates himself in attaining. And that may be an advantage. If the world descends into a prolonged and tectonic crisis, the one clear advantage that America will have going into it is a clear and widely shared sense of the legitimacy of its foundational principles. That may not seem like much, but if a crisis impends a widely shared sense of legitimacy will be among the most precious things in a planet gone awry.
Yet politicians can’t see it. For perfectly natural reasons they fall into the habit of thinking everyone is a supplicant. It’s an understandable outcome of living in a world where someone is constantly asking them for something: photo opportunities, access to news releases, seats on Air Force One or Internet access. Nothing throws them for a loop more than something that doesn’t want anything they can bestow. The Tea Partiers already know the establishment is bankrupt. They don’t want to be the next Botox Queen, the next guest on Oprah or the man with Internet access on Air Force One; they only want their freedom and a chance to meet the crisis with common sense, if that’s not asking too much. It’s a novel idea which will take a little time for politicians to understand. But give them time and eventually someone will take credit for it. Tolkien understood both how power worked and its blindness.
For he is very wise, and weighs all things to a nicety in the scales of his malice. But the only measure that he knows is desire, desire for power; and so he judges all hearts. Into his heart the thought will not enter that any will refuse it, that having the Ring we may seek to destroy it. If we seek this, we shall put him out of reckoning.
*I misattributed this to Jake Tapper. This was a grave error on my part for which I sincerely apologize. I’m sorry Jake, sorry Mike.
Tip Jar or Subscribe for $5
During the last presidential campaign the “White House Press Corps” moved itself – nay, propelled itself, into the position of a toothless and closely-pedicured tiger. They did this on purpose by deliberately shying away from and refusing to illuminate any “controversy” pertaining to their preferred candidate. The result was entirely foreseeable.
Why should any administration – or even any citizen – fear them anymore? They are passe, foisted on a petard of their own construction. Good riddance, I say.
The only argument now should be centered on what replaces them. Btw, this could all change in 30 days if they went about their job properly again, but little chance of that. The Kool-Aid was too strong.
What can be said here of the Tea party members, the same can also be said of American’s Christians. God Bless America!!
Wretchard,
Two very useful, very important, and clearly stated distinctions: Not anger but fear, not a wish to overturn the Constitution but to enforce it.
Thank you, again.
Jim Nicholas
I would have felt better about Bill Clinton’s warnings if he had spoken up when leftists and Democratic Party activists were making death threats while George W. Bush was our president. His timing is hypocritical.
Hate comes from the Left just as much as it comes from the Right. Indeed, much of the anger I see in the Tea Party is a reaction against the raw hatred that propelled Barack Obama into the White House in the first place.
Perhaps Bill Clinton ought to calm down and do his part to refrain from raising the political temperature.
Reading a book called “Angry Wind” by Jeffrey Taylor, a travel writer like Robert Kaplan. In the book he goes native and travels across the Sahel of Muslim black Africa. It is interesting in that it shows Muslims not as monolithic murderous savages (probably nuking them all is a bit of overkill, friend Habu) but struggling, ill-informed, largely harmless people trying to survive in broken lands. It also pictures lands without built in survival mechanisms like our Constitution provides. Thank God we live in America.
The voices he hears from the Tea Party crowds aren’t threats; they’re warnings. … What’s driving the Tea Parties isn’t amorphous hate. It is concrete fear: worry that pensions have been devalued; medical care will become unaffordable; taxes are too high and jobs are gone, never to return.
w, on a high today, some great language.
And maybe you did bridge the chasm between the opening topic of the white house press corpse (!) and the tea parties.
On the one real topic here at BC day in and day out – what is real, what is true, what is right.
also excellent: Things now remind him of the days preceding the Oklahoma City bombing when Clinton’s unpopular actions were unappreciated by an America lucky to have him.
Clinton taking credit for “ending trickle-down economics” with his tiny marginal tax changes, is his typical absurdity at work. Wintel and the Internet made the late 1990′s boom that produced a surplus, that and Greenspan’s first exercise in financial bubbles.
But does the national press make any sense out of the rantings of Bubba? Nope. Thank Cthulhu for the Internet and BC.
The White House Press room occupies the space that held the swimming pool built for the polio crippled FDR using money collected as dimes from America’s schoolchildren. I think that a candidate for President should promise to honor the memories of FDR and the sacrifice of those children in the Great Depression by restoring his swimming pool. Move the press corps to a Quonset hut or a Winebago™ out back. Honestly what reason do they have to be in the building as opposed to across the street in the Old EOB?
Thirty years ago I thought that news organizations would become aggregators of freelance contributors. The Internet has accelerated that trend. Rotating pools of freelancers should be given access to report on the White House and all Departments. The program should be modeled on the military embed system.
Back in the late sixties, early seventies I watched the local “community organizers” (Maoists) suck naive kids in by giving what the wanted… sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll.
Then demands would be. Most complied through loyalty or guilt. If not, they were shunned. That would usually bring them back into compliance.
The same things is being done to the media. Once they and The One were as one. Now some in the media have made the sin of deviating from the path. I think they will be shunned until they comply. Their fellow media cohorts will, of course, pressure them to conform.
Time will tell if the “deviants” cave or finally grow a pair!
Back on the opening topic of the white house press corpse in the Obamanation, … I am reticent, oh yes, reticent. In better days I would has said that the press has a role to play and has a valid grievance, but with *this* MSM, well, who cares? Nobody listens to them, they don’t present facts, they are incredibly biased, they are all Helen Thomas. Yet, should Obama of all people be protected from them? Is it good public policy for the white house to become the new Ministry of Truth? Are Twitter and Facebook really a valid replacement for the old ways?
Well, y’know, no, they are not. Because politics, leadership, management, are all people processes, not technical matters of channel management, mushroom management, stuff rolling downhill. Unless the Obamanation is really 1984 made real after all.
Muslims in the Sahel are too poor and isolated to be the Wests enemies. They don’t even have TV, the internet, or radio. No wonder they are merely struggling to survive. Wealthier Muslims who have these things, however, are assuredly our enemies.
Rather, in the end it will be to make Muslim nations poor and starving (and likely, China who will do it) rather than killing them all. But that is another matter.
Contra Wretchard, I do not see a return to the Constitution as possible. The bullet cannot be called back. Already, the 1st, 2nd, and 10th Amendments are dead letters. Meaningless. Congress, as Congressmen, Senators, and Presidents have reminded us, do what they want. Constitution? Lawmakers can do anything, any time, any where.
It does not matter. What the Tea Partiers want, what ordinary people want. Power is power. It won’t be called back, or cast into Mount Doom.
America’s practical advantages include, a lot of natural resources. Still existing technical skills. Ability to mostly feed itself. A mostly well educated population. A still existing military force. NUKES.
This, more than a Constitution that died a long time ago, matters most. Realistically, after things hit the fan, we will see a sort of “Tribune” rule by a series of strong men, a set of Cromwells who run things. Until we get a new set of rules. Just as Cromwell was not replaced by the Divine Right of Kings, so too we won’t go back to Constitutional federalism. Or limited government. Stakes are too high, needs too great.
Just to get everyone back to work and surviving, after a great crisis, will require a central strongman. It always does. Yes, self-organization and independence will be critical. But that does not make Texas send power to Colorado, to use a hypothetical. Or send money, manpower, and resources to the border to stop a collapsing Mexico from simply moving north en-masse. To use another.
We are not unvarnished heroes, and our political opponents unremittant villains. This is not Lord of the Rings. Power is not the One Ring. It is tragic the Constitution is effectively dead, but for good, moral reasons (fighting racism, the legacy of Segregation, and so on) it was killed, bit by bit. You cannot resurrect a corspe. Cromwell was a terrible man (ask any Irishman) but was “good enough” to allow England to survive into something after the Lord Protector.
Clinton revises history again.
That bill he talked about passing by one vote was a tax increase on high earners.
The OK City bombing was more likely linked to (if anything) the Waco massacre.
That a man as intellectually shallow as Clinton could become President in the first place was always the result of a convergence of depraved sponsorship with the fracturing of the electorate with a major percentage of the vote going to candidate H. Ross Perot.
William Jefferson Clinton was from the beginning understood by his patrons to be a conveniently malleable man-whore, whose wife clearly was always ready to steer toward the main chance.
Let’s remember, folks, that specimen of fecal matter rose to the top for the same reason that turds float in a toilet: low specific gravity.
All that vaunted intellect has never been used for any purpose but pimping, conjuring crooked deals, and charming his way out of cesspools of his own making.
The ascension of husband and wife team Clinton marks the onset of period of U.S. history that will be known as the Era of the Kleptocrat. Mr. Present Hussayn Nothing simply represents the logical progression of the series. He and his half-assed communist-fantasy masturbators are no more in charge of things than was President I-don’t-control-my-own-willie during his nominal tenure.
One thing that comes clear from reading history, both secular and Biblical – like it or not – there are forces at work in the world far beyond the rule of mortals. And grand cycles. While we can certainly learn from history, the main lessons that seem to emerge from its study are first that control is an illusion, and then that the most crucial thing we can hope for is learning to recognize the patterns.
Those who study magnetism have observed that when you pound lump of iron repeatedly, it gradually is transformed into a magnet. The theory is that each microscopic crystal making up the structure has its own magnetic field. In a lump of iron in which the microcrystals are randomly aligned, the aggregate is an imperceptibly low magnetic moment. Each blow momentarily frees each microcrystal and allows it progressively to align itself with the prevailing magnetic field.
There’s a metaphor in there, but it’s ambiguous, innit?
Well of course we’re all shocked to learn Bill Clinton made a speech in which he re-wrote history (but just a LITTLE bit) to make himself look good and opponents look bad. This is the Clinton legacy: half-truths that reflect well on him and poorly on those who think poorly of him. Surprised? Not I.
As for the White House press corps, I have worked with them on more than a few occasions. In the old days they were arrogant poseurs who got by more on bluster than brains. (Interesting sidelight: many of the talking heads who came to interview my boss turned out to be shorties! On the TV screen they always looked life-size. Imagine my surprise to learn they were mostly around 5’2″ tall.)
Now that they have sold their soul for Obama’s victory they wonder why he and his team scorn them? Because they are seen inside the White House for the whores they are. And not very smart whores at that. F
#12 Mad Fiddler
Those who study magnetism have observed that when you pound lump of iron repeatedly, it gradually is transformed into a magnet. The theory is that each microscopic crystal making up the structure has its own magnetic field. In a lump of iron in which the microcrystals are randomly aligned, the aggregate is an imperceptibly low magnetic moment. Each blow momentarily frees each microcrystal and allows it progressively to align itself with the prevailing magnetic field.
There’s a metaphor in there, but it’s ambiguous, innit?
Let me see–the lump of iron is the political system, beating on it is electing dishonest incompetents to office, and when it gets magnetized it picks up money and power it wouldn’t have done when it was just a plain lump of iron.
I think I see.
… or maybe I’ve been drinking too much.
I saw some MSM types praising congressman Paul Ryan (Wisconsin Republican) for his willingness to reform Social Security and other entitlements to help balance the budget. This should nicely set up the “Republicans want Granny to starve in the snow” meme for the fall.
It is possible that the White House believes the MSM is biased against them. It seems a far fetched notion but President Obama and the First Lady grew up in the “hot house” Leftist environment. And the Left always despised “the money press.”
Nowadays it’s actually the “lose other people’s money press.” The Journalists are destroying a multi-billion dollar industry while trying to promote the cause. But for a real Leftist they are not doing it fast enough. We think the press nonobjective but the Left Democrats think they are not “nonobjective” enough. For the Left, conveying their truth requires telling more lies and covering up more failings than even our media is willing to do. Giving them half — or three quarters — of what they want only leaves them demanding more.
It is unlikely today’s journalist would ever stop committing journalism and engage in straight reporting. As I commented the other day, they see themselves as “the mental hygienist to the nation” — reporting in such a way as to lead their consumers to the appropriate conclusions. Still, it is interesting to speculate what might happen should they try. First, the Left would really get angry with the apostates — spittle spraying mad (hey, it could be bullets — see Bolshevik). Meanwhile, most of the “news” consumers would continue to give the journalism involved a “reverse slant” to compensate for press bias. They would conclude that the nation is much deeper in the crapper than they had supposed. Millions would try to book passage to New Zealand.
But the Obama White House should not worry about the press turning honest. Why, the Iranians are more likely to get nukes.
Wow. You are SUCH a bard:)
“The Tea Partiers already know the establishment is bankrupt. They don’t want to be the next Botox Queen, the next guest on Oprah or the man with Internet access on Air Force One; they only want their freedom and a chance to meet the crisis with common sense”
–Wretchard, this is a very, VERY good blog. thank you sir.
jason
Thin as eggshell mantle slides
Creating tectonic divides
As continents on magma creep
Subducted in the ocean deep
And so it proves in man’s affairs
When times are good that no one cares
Who gets to sit on Caesar’s throne
Or who decides the culture’s tone
But when the movement starts to speed
When things grow dark and start to bleed
It’s then America grows tense
And some will say with common sense
We’ll stop the madness in its tracks
If act before the mirror cracks
If not then just as plates collide
We’ll be subducted in the slide
And pass from history with a sigh
Without so much as a goodbye
Few things I have heard show the DC press corps high opinion of themselves than a radio commercial I recall hearing back in the early 90’s when I worked inside the Beltway and lived a stone’s throw outside of it.
The commercial was for a DC TV station that bragged about the fact that they had News at Five instead of waiting until 6 or 7 like everyone else. It featured a supposed conversation between some conspirators figuring out how to handle a piece of bad news. And then they realize “Channel Smix has a five o’ clock news program? Oh, we’re dead, dead! We don’t have time to come up with a story before they break the truth.”
Now, today, Channel Smix also is trying to figure out how to come up with a story that supports the Obama viewpoint, only to realize that Fox News already broke it at 2PM. Thus have the mighty fallen.
A couple of weeks back someone sent me an e-mail with a link to a absolute tirade by a CNN reporter over Obama’s lies and evasions. The note with the e-mail said that when even the Clinton News Network is disgusted you know that things have gone too far. Maybe, but I think they have been whoring for Leftism so long that it’s like Hitler discussing plans for a wonderful new building with Albert Speer in the bunker in Berlin in April of 1945. It’s the conversation that matters, not the lack of an associated reality. The conversation is their alternative to the reality.
And what the MSM and most of DC really fail to recognize is that if the End comes, the streets, and homes and stores and schools will be guarded and defended by … the Tea Party members, who, after all, built and paid for all that stuff in the first damn place.
By the way, folks, today is the anniversary of Paul Revere’s Ride in 1775 and of the Doolittle Raid on Japan in 1942. We have no choice but to be brave and great.
Mr.Fernandez,
Thanks for writing this
It is not impossible to roll things back. In fact Roosevelt did a little of this shortly after coming into office with “A Bill to Maintain the Credit of the United States Government”. It cut government salaries by $100 million dollars (big money at the time) and cut both government pensions and veterans’ compensation payments. My brother-in law retired from the military after a 30 year career and told me last year that he would be surprised if the government didn’t cut his pension. If it comes down to it, Social Security, Medicare, and pensions will be slashed and there will be pain. But the republic will survive.
Tea Parties may be the first time in history when people protested — demanding that the government STOP “giving” them so much.
Ultimately, aside from fears of debt, high taxes and resultant unemployment, redistribution of wealth, control over their every day lives, control over free operation of their businesses, etc., etc., and “stop” means stop taking from us and then giving to us from what is our own –what it boils down to is “stop “giving” us stuff!”
Well, at least Clinton’s eyes didn’t well up with crocodile tears like Auntie Nasty did in her plea for people to tone it down. Thank God. Frankly I think the McVeighs of this world will do their evil deeds regardless of what the political climate actually is.
As for the press, well, maybe some of them are getting their just reward. How naive of them to think they wouldn’t pay under this administration for their apostasy. They can always pay back the snubb by giving honest coverage to the issues, the tea party and go to work to help bring down this administration. And boost their media ratings in the process. Are they mad enough yet?
Aqua, yes. They dread that they would hear more and more the: “We are from the government and we are here to help.”
To Kingston 53, post #22:
Your comment brings to mind the Bonus Army, made up of WWI veterans and their families, who gathered from around the country and established a shanty-town in Washington, DC on the Anocostia flats in 1932.
They were gathered to demand the U.S. government pay out early benefits granted to them for their service in the Great War under the Adjusted Service Certificate Law of 1924, which were not due to be redeemable under the act sooner than 1945!
You think it’s mean-spirited of Obama and “Big Sister” Janet Napolitano to portray U.S. military veterans as potential domestic terrorists and public enemies?
Just keep in mind that Herbert Hoover finally ordered the U.S. regular Army to clear out US military veterans and their wives and children, who by their service and sacrifices should surely be first to be considered for recompense. Initially the D.C. police had unsuccessfully tried to clear the veterans, but fighting broke out, and with wounded and dead among the resisting civilians. Army Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur (yep, same guy who’d been awarded a Medal of Honor in WWI, and later commanded U.S. forces in the Philippines, Japan, and Korea…) along with a couple of young officers name of Eisenhower and Patton, used tanks, foot soldiers with fixed bayonets, and mounted cavalry to drive out the civilians. Many were injured, and a few died, although reports were not well documented.
In the calculus of raw power – the de facto currency under this REGIME – the people who will be given largesse by the rulers will be those who demonstrate personal loyalty, not those whose service was out of faith in some dead document or discredited “boy scout” pseudo-philosophy.
Someone could probably make a pot of money starting a betting pool on just exactly when the Lord of All will set up the former ACORN staffers with badges and weapons and powers of arrest and confiscation, after they swear personal allegiance and fealty to the GREAT OBAMA.
How do you like your gruel? With or without maggots?
Eva, since 1979, when Newsweek admitted that they are not in business of providing news, but to shape opinions and all the MSM got on the bandwagon, they have been on a slippery slope to eventual oblivion ever since.
See, they still think that and don’t realize that is their problem. The original purpose is so far remote from their reality that it does not even enter their conceptual framework.
So, no, they won’t be paying back by providing honest coverage. They would behave like an abused wife, asking for forgiveness whenever Obamaklatura would be displeased.
Mad Fiddler/26
In 2012, fall, if/when they manage to crash the economy, they would form the initial structure. Then after presidential elections (which they think they’ll win after the crash), the actual blueshirts force would be officially established.
What’s that old adage? If you’re having an affair with a married woman you’re a fool to marry her if she gets a divorce because if she cheated on her last husband she won’t mind cheating on you either.
That same principle applies to politicians who don’t mind throwing their own grandmother “under the bus.” They should have known better than to think that loyalty would be reciprocated. To The Won traits such as loyalty are merely weaknesses to be taken advantage of when the time is right. I have no pity for those journalists at all. May they drink the bitter wine that is brewed from crocodile tears forever.
Time’s Klein: Beck, Palin Potentially Committing Sedition against U.S. Government; Heilemann Adds Limbaugh
Nothing. Got that? So all of you opponents of Obama’s policies had better sit down and shut up, if you know what’s good for you. Obama’s policies are good and right, and anyone who disagrees is a dangerous violent racist nutjob.
I expect to see the demonization of mainstream Americans start to pick up speed from here on out. Totalitarians always have to dehumanize their enemies, in order for their followers to justify using extreme measures against them.
It seems a far fetched notion but President Obama and the First Lady grew up in the “hot house” Leftist environment. And the Left always despised “the money press.”
Very true. If you listen to or read hard-core Leftists, like The Nation or Pacifica Radio, you’d know they have for decades despised all of the MSM, even the NY Times, as a tool of right-wing capitalist interests. Well you know, the MSM does, now and then, utter a word about Cuba that might possibly be seen as negative. Enough to enrage the hard Left.
And that’s where Obama comes from.
History is strewn with the wrecks of nations which have gained a little progressiveness at the cost of a great deal of hard manliness, and have thus prepared themselves for destruction as soon as the movements of the world gave a chance for it. — Walter Bagehot
I fear those movements are afoot.
Unfortunately, Wretchard, I have to agree with Whiskey on this one. It would be nice, indeed best by far for the country, if we could go back to the constitution. Sadly, it has been a dead letter for some time now. When you have a congress and executive that can FORCE American citizens to buy a product they do not want, on pain of escalating fines if they refuse, then you have a government whose power is limited only by the will of those wielding it.
Now consider this: The social bonds which used to hold this country together, belief in the constitution, a common culture, a distinctly American identity and sense of citizenship, have been all but destroyed in recent years. Increasingly, America is a balkanized country with mutually hostile groups based on race, gender, socio-economic status, and perhaps religion in the case of Muslims, demand wealth and priviledges for themselves at the expense of the majority. From about 1965 until now, civil peace has been bought with money and special priviledges extorted from the white majority. Now the money is running out.
In my opinion, we will be very lucky indeed to end up with a Cromwell, as opposed to a Stalin or a Mugabe.
31. peterike:
Yes, I know. I have read The Nation and listened to Pacifica, and the true leftists despise the “corporate-controlled media”.
26. I like it with buzzard and vulture, fattened on the flesh of the tyrant’s army, prepared by bludgeoning it to death after they have become too drunk on the blood of the same to fly, and cooked over a fire fueled by the fallen army’s weapons.
great article.
The ring of power needs to be destroyed and by ring of power we mean the feudal largess system that or politicians love so much.
Clinton, linking McVeigh to legislation and agitated discontent, is wrong, wrong, wrong. McVeigh bombed the Alfred P. Murrah building in retaliation for the deaths of 76 people, including women and children, at Waco, Texas.
There isn’t the remotest similarity.
Clinton conveniently forgets that terrible wrong.
Another convenient lefty lie.
As for Bill Clinton’s worrying about 1994 and the potential for violence from the TEA Partiers (not), he conveniently forgets the insanely violent bent of his AG Janet “the Gunslinger” Reno and the hyperinflated egos of her FBI and related federal law enforcement agencies of that decade. Those were the days of Ruby Ridge, Waco, the Gestapo-like abduction of Elian Gonzalez. And have we forgotten Eric Rudolf? TWO HUNDRED federal agents swarmed the boondocks of Hillbillistan for TWO YEARS to catch one little man hiding in the woods, which a competent tracker and a sheriff’s deputy could have done quicker and with far less intimidation and expense. After all the G-men with their big guns left and things quieted down, a rookie cop caught him eating out of a dumpster. But it is a mystery to Bill Clinton that with all that firepower aimed at the populace, the ole boys went to camp with their rifles. And the TEA partiers and those ole boys are not the same people anyway.
7. Life of the mind.
An even better plan would be to refill the old pool and then drop them all through the floor together. That includes Gibbs.
It wouldn’t catch Obama though, he won’t condescend to do press conferences anymore.
Washington is not going to change from the inside out. It corrupts most who go there with a mind for reform, and the rest are there only to siphon off as much from the gravy train as they can before entering the Congressman-Lobbyist circle jerk. Simply “electing the right people” won’t help. There just aren’t enough of them.
Washington must be dismantled as a center of power, this is the only way we will ever return to a true constitutional republic. There are two ways there…by armed revolution, or by the final collapse of the currency, the central bank, and the debt-based economy. The former could give us something infinitely worse, the latter will involve mass suffering followed by a return to frugal, simple living.
When individuals on both sides finally understand their strings are being pulled by corporate and banking systems, maybe then some progress can be made.
Until then it will be the status quo; both sides bickering while their masters pockets are lined with Gold.
Yes, the votes for Perot delivered us Slick Willy on a silver platter. Clinton is a nasty stain on America’s red, white and blue but at least he was only a low-life doofus surrounded by enough people with some gray matter to keep him in check.
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.” -Marcus Tullius Cicero
As Tolkien has Gandalf describe Sauron, so Rowling has Dumbledore describe Voldemort:
Most modern politicians—seemingly of parties of the left and right, but more often actually of one amorphous, all-embracing party of self-interested power—do not understand the simple virtues of ordinary folk. They (and their proctoleichous accomplices in the media) know nothing, for example, of thrift, prudence, practical wisdom, real scholarship, loyalty and patriotism; so, instead of valuing such virtues, they mock those whom they detect clinging thereto, and continue acting improvidently, imprudently, and without virtue.
Deadman/42
If it was that simple. But people aren’t black or white (evil or good sense), most people operate in gray areas towards where the gradients meet.
They have some notion about the values you noted, but they get corrupted by power and money. There is probably nothing in this world that can change that. The only thing that can be done is to minimize the temptation, by term limits and other devices that prevent the corruption that corrodes previously semi-decent souls utterly.
Are there any term limits for bankers? I don’t think so.
Every time the economic problems of today are discussed, one ought to remember who is responsible. Not bankers in the old sense, who performed the useful function of matching savers with borrowers for investment so as to keep the economy going. The bankers who, for personal gain, took insane risks and started a bubble that had to burst – and now it has. And the lawyers who, for personal gain, encourage frivolous and unjustified lawsuits and thus massively increase health care costs (and increase the risks, as well) for everyone.
The people to blame for this mess are the parasites. But not all parasites are employed by government or on welfare. Hedge fund managers, derivatives traders and tort lawyers: What use, precisely, are they?
Whiskey, the 2nd amendment is not dead quite yet; Arizona just passed a Constitutional Right to Carry law- no permit required for concealed carry. Rather, the constitution is your permit.
Also often forgotten about Waco, they could have arrested the leaders out in town but wanted dramatic footage of an assault on the compound. They got more than they bargained for so they burned women and children alive. We all know how the press would have covered it had a republican been in the White House. It does not justify what McVeigh did but there was no one held accountable for that horrible incident.
twobyfour/43: minimize the temptation by term limits
Good thought, but the problem is that the U.S. Supreme Court, in a ruling defying all logic and the Constitution itself, held that any law duly passed by a state legislature imposing term limits on its *own* U.S. senators or representatives was unconstitutional!
Let me cut to the chase: Once the members of existing power structure decided to ignore the Constitution–and were neither slapped down by the courts nor hanged from lampposts by indignant citizens–no legal avenue remained to take them down.
Having succeeded in overturning the restraints imposed by what was once the supreme law of this land, what in the world makes you think they would calmly give you a *legal* avenue to take their vast new power away from them?
Perhaps in the old days Americans might have resolved this problem by force of arms. But unfortunately we’ve lost that skill along with many others. So I see no solution.
Quite sad, really. We had such a promising start.
Fletcher Christian
Goldman Sachs Fraud Case is a Distraction From the Real Issue of Substantial Financial Reform http://huff.to/9v2P4n
Wiskey, on Sahel:
“The Sahel, a vast region bordering the Sahara Desert
and including the countries of Mali, Niger, Chad and
Mauritania, is increasingly referred to by the U.S. military
as “the new front in the war on terrorism”.
http://merln.ndu.edu/archive/icg/islamistterrorisminthesahel.pdf
if the Sahelians have no TV,nor computers, they have cell phones.
Sahara is one of the biggest “deserts” of the world, and has always been crossed by merchands, trafficants, salemen… now terrorists
Walt/18; one of your finest –the imagery is Blakean, Miltonish. yes, Robert Blake and Milton Berle …no really. SO good. And so it all ends, not with a whim but a banker.
Walt’s poems are always so good
that the quality’s just understood
no celebrity he
he writes commerce-free
for dough-liberately less than he could!
re topic, Robert Gibbs joins Barry, Maurice, and Robin Gibbs in a stirring rendition of BeeGee’s hit Stayin’ Alive –ah ah ah ah, stayin’ alive stayin’ alive –
***
Another stirring Democratic party venue, Flint, Michigan, had 12 fires overnight, 10 of which suspected arson, for 107 fires so far in April. Flint laid off 25% of the Fire Dept earlier this month. I’m sure it’s just one or a few jerks, but –a harbinger, when the fat starts getting really cut in the coming months and year or two. The cuttees already think the money is all stacked up in a gov’t warehouse somewhere and if it wasn’t for the suits, everybody could have a million bucks in the morning. It’s ‘moral hazard’, and it starts with the first bought vote. Then it snowballs.
O God Of Earth And Altar
O God of earth and altar,
Bow down and hear our cry,
Our earthly rulers falter,
Our people drift and die;
The walls of gold entomb us,
The swords of scorn divide us,
Take not thy thunder from us,
But take away our pride.
From all that terror teaches,
From lies of tongue and pen,
From all the easy speeches
That comfort cruel men,
From sale and profanation
Of honour and the sword,
From sleep and from damnation,
Deliver us, good Lord!
Tie in a living tether
The prince and priest and thrall,
Bind all our lives together,
Smite us and save us all;
In ire and exultation
Aflame with faith, and free,
Lift up a living nation,
A single sword to thee.
G.K.Chesterton
“Into his heart the thought will not enter that any will refuse it, that having the Ring we may seek to destroy it.”
When the American Revolution ended, King George III asked what Washington would do next. Told that Washington planned to return to his farm, the king said, “If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.”
After Napoleon was deposed, he said, “They wanted me to be another Washington.”
There are still enough of us — especially in the military and retired military — who understand Washington’s example. It’s why Napoleon and Simon Bolivar and Marcos and Rhee and Mobutu didn’t happen here. And won’t happen here.
And the Constitution still lives and guarantees us certain inalienable rights. I’ll be ordering more ammo today. I just responded to a GOP unit RSVP for our local luncheon. I just posted on the local Tea Party site where I’m a member who joins in peaceable assembly. I worshipped in my own way yesterday. I maintained my personal and real property, also.
People who say America is doomed are not Americans. They have succumbed to a European world-weariness, a self-congratulatory cynicism and dogmatic class and race-competition analysis of history that does not pertain in a country formed under exceptional circumstances, by a set of the most exceptional people in history. Most of us have outgrown Marxist class analysis beyond using it as a particular way of turning the kaleidoscope to get a different view. It’s tidy in that it contains a place for everything, and gives the user the sound of authority, but history has shown it to be predictive of nothing.
As RWE alluded, our history says who we are. Our country has been through much, much rougher times than these. That exceptional DNA is in our body politic and it’s beginning to vibrate.
I didn’t write the story you linked to, Mike Allen of Politico did. Thanks.
Another bulls- eye for Pajamas Media. What’s the difference between insiderS of the Blue States and Washington, New York, California and the UN and outsiders of the Red States? Insiders have a small horizon — where is the advantage in access, career ladder, future sinecure in government or Business Boards,whizzing around the world with beautiful companions all on expense accounts private or government. And of course status in the “best” club among the people who “count” and just lurv to push outsiders around those poor saps to pay the bills. Surprise: the bill is finally being presented to the insiders. Outsiders have a larger horizon, i.e. WHAT IS THE FUTURE TO BRING FOR THEIR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN
unto the fourth generation? The future they had worked for,hoped for and for which they “put their money where their mouth is” and now seems to have been stolen from them.? They are waking up,Becoming Fully AMERICAN. To the fact that for the last three generations they have colluded by their uninterest/ passivity in politics and politicians’ behaviours in the betrayal of their lives, their children’s lives and THEIR country by these politicians and their lackeys. The hibernation is over, they’re lean and hungry. They need and want FOOD to strengthen. FOOD, NOT THE GARBAGE fed to them by their “betters”. And they are learning the rules on which their country is based The Constitution and its Bill of Rights. Being “law and order” types, want those rules applied, without favoritism or prejudice to any group or person of whateve social status, race, sex, etc. They are getting, by returning to, the wisdom that WHO PAY’S THE PIPER CALLS THE TUNE. Embodied in the very first words of the Foundation of THEIR nation : WE THE PEOPLE…
Reports on the demise of the U.S. Constitution are premature.
America has been growing economically, militarily and just about every other way you can measure national influence and prosperity since the late 19th Century. Hardly anybody has objected to the growth of the Federal government because it has occurred concurrently with the burgeoning prosperity of the citizenry. One could argue both ways as to whether that prosperity was because of or in spite of the growth of government but the need for that discussion is mooted by the prospect of a declining standard of living.
Poor people do not make revolutions. Prosperous people do when they perceive that their political institutions have become an obstacle to their future prosperity. The Tea Party Movement is aptly named because many Americans perceive the same kind of threat to their future prosperity from the central government as they did in the 1770s.
We do not need to recreate the wheel with another Lexington and Concord. All that heavy lifting was done centuries ago. The 2nd American Revolution will be about the 1st, 2nd, 9th and 10th Amendments, and will be fought with words and bold actions in State legislatures and governors’ offices. I do not know where or when it will happen but as sure as eagles fly some State legislature will tell the Feds and Supreme Court to stick it where the sun don’t shine. That is when you will find out that the Constitution is very much alive and as much a motivating force as it was in 1789.
It took 130 years to get to here but the snap back will happen much more quickly. Anybody who expects tens of millions of bright, energetic and resourceful Americans to roll over and play nice has not studied their history.
A reporter from NBC’s Channel 4 in OKC did a thorough investigation of the McVeigh bombing. It revealed that McVeigh and cohorts couldn’t even build a pipe bomb that worked. An Iraqi Army cell supplied the technical and material support to make it happen. The FBI has yet to deny what she revealed in her book. It’s looks like the coverup was done to keep Bill and Hillery from having to do something about Saddam.
My mother and her neighbor went to the Washington Monument last Thursday. She’s never done anything like that before. She’s 88. She reported that she had a nice conversation with a woman from West Virginia and a woman from Washington State. But she couldn’t tell what the speakers at the podium were saying.
Here’s an interesting piece on the doings at spook central. They retired the guy responsible for the spook deaths in eastern Afghanistan back in January. Appears he was a better political infighter than a war fighter.
TIMMERMAN: A shadow warrior falls
The Tolkien quote is right on the money and encapsulates why neither political party completely understand the dynamics or the strengths of the Tea Party movement. The Elites, including those like Tapper in the media, want to establish an imperial court style atmosphere. They always have. The normal rough and tumble American who does not give a spit about their protocol or pomp and circumstances scares them more than anything else other than the Creator.
The current administration may be the established government but their willful ignoring of the American people and their blatant violation of the Constitution and their corruption makes them a illegetimate government.
GO/56; many question why McVeigh wasn’t kept around for awhile –just in case he decided to talk. Now he can’t ever decide to talk.
The press has become lazy. Almost none of those people can develop a story, expose a wrong, or even stay neutral. The New York Times once the standard by which written new was measure now may not survive. I used to love that paper, now if if fails I don’t care. If I want some dumb opinion I can listen to a drunk in some bar anywhere in the country I don’t need to BUY a newspaper.
If I never hear from Clinton, Carter and even Bush 2 again it is just fine. I would rather listen to Elmer Fudd,or the Three Stooges.
The new Royalty seems to have been created by reporters and the new Royalty. Addressing elected officials and ex-officials by title is unnecessary. Does it show disrespect ta a Senator to call one Sir, Mam, Mr., Mrs., MS or Miss??
Same goes for Judges, Congressmen, Secretary of State and the Garbage Person. It the new Royals don’t like it TS. Hear me Barbie Boxer??
One last item in this rant. Mr. Obama stop looking down your nose at us! I really don’t need to see the empty space in your head, I know it is there.
Beautifully written Wretchard, eloquence and perspicacity, as well as a bonus Tolkien quote. I salute you.
#55 Peter Boston – Hear Hear! No one in the past had our patrimony. Listen to Horace, *nil desperandum* brothers and sisters. It is easier to walk into the Grand Canyon than out, but just because you are down in the valley does not mean you cannot return to the rim, difficult though it will be.
If you want a better government in Washington do not invite to speak, send a nickel to, or otherwise support or vote for any local, state or federal candidate who will not publicly make an unqualified statement of irrevocable support for the exact language of the 1st, 2nd, 9th and 10th Amendments.
That includes elected county judges, sheriffs, school board members, selectman, and dog catchers. If they do not know the exact language of the 1st, 2nd, 9th and 10th Amendments they are ipso facto unqualified and unworthy of holding public office.
We do not have to invent the wheel. We must only take responsibility to assure that the people who want to drive the cart can recognize what the road they should be on looks like.
Salt Lick @ 52: Bravo!
Washington’s officers formed an alumni group they called “The Society of The Cincinnati”, to, apparently, remind themselves ahd their fellow citizens that Cincinnatus went home and stayed there.
Wretchard – Great post!
Whiskey #10 – “They don’t even have TV, the internet, or radio. No wonder they are merely struggling to survive.” Made me laugh out loud. Hope that was intentional.
And I have to wonder about the rest of your comments also. I would agree that the Constitution has been effectively neutralized by the Left, but I wouldn’t agree that it is meaningless. And while we are not literally living The Lord of the Rings, if the ideas in it have no relevance, then what would the purpose of our “rebellion”? We may not all be heroes, and our enemies may not all be villains, but are we not still human beings deserving to live our lives without the foot of Left on our necks? And you may be correct that we will get our Caesar or our Cromwell, but if you see “a strong man” in our future as a good thing or as a way out of our problems, then I suggest you should reread your history.
Of the countless LA City Neighborhood Council meetings I have attended over the last few years, one of the things that has always struck me is how the mere mention of constitutional rights scares the holy living crap out of the hard core left. One of the reasons for this I think is that even the most confused, fashionista liberals who are not of hard core left, still revere the Constitution and our Bill of Rights. Arguing from a Constitutional point of view still wins arguments.
That is why I don’t get why some here want to give up on the Constitution. The Constitution is a powerful tool to be used against the forces of Socialism and oppressive government. Indeed, it is perhaps far and away our greatest tool at our disposal.
Now if only our “Republican” representatives would start arguing for our Constitutional rights again. The reason, I believe that we have lost so much of our rights is that the Republican Leadership, always afraid to called racist and provocative, has in recent years shied away from arguing for our Constitution in order to be “bipartisan” and stay within the good graces of the MSM.
Forgotten Man raises an interesting idea in me. We are burdened by a class of Mandarins of which the WHPressCorpse is a part. It includes the Congress, the rotating Congressional Support Staff, the Permanent Bureaucracy, The Washington Lobby Bar, the whole hive of the District. They are devoted to the status quo ante and can tell you why, in excruciating detail why the Government cannot be changed and why the 10th Amendment is not workable. Curing our problems must include the end of this class, or at least its subordination to the people.
They are supported by a judiciary that does not understand its role or limits. They can easily be controlled by the Congress, if the congress ever understands that impeachment of a judge is a disciplinary measure and not a nuclear measure. If the congress would snatch up a judge a month the quality of the decisions from the courts would improve drastically.
If we had a congress that did that for two years, we’d be much better off.
for Gary Ogletree – the reason I discount that report is that fertilizer bombs are really not that hard to build at all. The only trick is getting ahold of blasting caps and some det cord, but after that it’s easy. No one with even a shred of experience needs any Iraqi specialists to teach ‘em how to do it.
back in the 80′s me and some pals tried to dig out some stock tanks on a ranch in west texas that way. Didn’t really make a good stock tank (that dirt is REALLY hard out there!) but it was a lot of fun trying. The necessary materials were a lot easier to get in those days. Of course after Oklahoma City I wouldn’t be caught dead ever touching any of that stuff again.
Here’s a graph of worldwide growth rates from the 1960′s to the present. It also shows that aggregate world wide growth rates dropped in the 1970′s from their highs in the 1960′s. And they have not returned to their highs of the 1960′s. Its of a piece with graphs that I’ve posted before that showed US deficits dropped way into the red during the 1970′s. Here’s a graph of worldwide growth rates(The accompanying article here also shows that worldwide growth for 2010 has been revised upward to 3.9% which is at the top of the range for the last decade. However, the biggest growth will not be in the USA or Europe.)
“The Washington Monument” (or the D.C budget denouement).
Seems dissent of this Administration’s policies in now sedition in the eyes of the Leftists, and no doubt their new meme:
On NBC’s April 18 “The Chris Matthews Show,” Time columnist Joe Klein all but accused former GOP vice-presidential nominee and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, along with Fox News host Glenn Beck of sedition.
“I did a little bit of research just before this show – it’s on this little napkin here. I looked up the definition of sedition which is conduct or language inciting rebellion against the authority of the state. And a lot of these statements, especially the ones coming from people like Glenn Beck and to a certain extent Sarah Palin, rub right up close to being seditious.
As Klein pointed out, the legal definition of sedition is “a revolt or an incitement to revolt against established authority.” And, sedition has been declared a felony in Supreme Court opinions, thus making Klein’s national television accusation a fairly serious one, one of which New York magazine’s John Heilemann agreed with. However, Heilemann added conservative talker Rush Limbaugh to that list.
“And Joe’s right and I’ll name another person, I’ll name Rush Limbaugh who uses this phrase constantly and talks about the Obama administration as a regime,” Heilemann said. “That phrase which has connotations of tyranny. And what’s so interesting about it to me, to get to Norah’s point – what is the focus, what is the cause of this? You think back to 1994, there was Ruby Ridge. There was Waco. There were triggering incidents. There’s been nothing like that. The only thing that’s changed in the last 15 months is the election of Barack Obama. And as far as I can see, in terms of the policies that Obama has implemented, there’s nothing.”
Heilemann also suggested that the alleged up tick in militia activity is a result of the Obama presidency. Klein said it was not only the Obama presidency, but that he was “African-American,” and had “Hussein” as a middle name, along with the “scary” economic crisis.
“Two are two things going on here and one thing is certainly that,” Klein said. “One thing is he is African-American, but that his name is Barack Hussein Obama. The other we’ve had a very scary economic crisis. And when people get scared, they get defensive and they get a little crazy.”
46. sf
“Let me cut to the chase: Once the members of existing power structure decided to ignore the Constitution–and were neither slapped down by the courts nor hanged from lampposts by indignant citizens–no legal avenue remained to take them down. “
Have a little patience and faith. It ain’t over by a long shot. Americans are not prone to hanging somebody without a fair hearing or at least a giving them a chance to “get out of town and never come back”.
But if they don’t listen or cause a ruckus, then American justice will prevail.
How long…? Well over a century ago it might have been a few days. Now it might take a while longer, but the end result will be the same.
Count on it.
Papa Ray
46. sf: The Supreme Court decision outlawing state imposed term limits was 5-4. It would have gone the other way had Robert Bork been confirmed. I hope Ted Kennedy is enjoying the weather in Hell.
2) Slightly off topic: For an eye-opening explanation of just how the public employee unions have strangled California, see here: http://www.city-journal.org/2010/20_2_california-unions.html.
The Democrats have spent the last two generations calling anyone who disagreed with them a Nazi or a racist. If not both.
Now they are complaining about being demonized.
It would be funny, if it weren’t so tragic.
55. – 62 Peter Boston
Thank you for the heart felt and true words.
Warriors like you and the millions of other Americans who will not bow down, but who will stand up and protect and preserve our Republic –
Will not only persevere but win!
Papa Ray
#36, Clinton didn’t forget. He lies, because in this instance, the lies serve his interests more than the truth does.
66 unsk
“That is why I don’t get why some here want to give up on the Constitution. The Constitution is a powerful tool to be used against the forces of Socialism and oppressive government. Indeed, it is perhaps far and away our greatest tool at our disposal.”
I hope that most here are not giving up on our Constitution. But many see that it is being ignored, slandered and marginalized and are disheartened.
And your right in that it is by far our greatest tool and a burning symbol of our Republic, not to ever be diminished by any nor ignored.
“Now if only our “Republican” representatives would start arguing for our Constitutional rights again. The reason, I believe that we have lost so much of our rights is that the Republican Leadership, always afraid to called racist and provocative, has in recent years shied away from arguing for our Constitution in order to be “bipartisan” and stay within the good graces of the MSM.”
Yea, “If Only”. You are correct that the Republican leaders, especially those leaders of the “Party” are all cowards. Afraid to stand up and say the truth and follow up with actions that would not only be correct but force the democrats to defend instead of attack.
The Republicans on the line, that being us, are ashamed of our leaders. Now we are not only ashamed but are telling them that they are not qualified to lead us anymore. But they just won’t listen. They have no shame. They have not only lost touch with what republican values, conservative values have been and always will be – they are now hooked on the crack of power and money, OUR money.
Until they can prove by their actions and not just by their lies, and agree with, understand us and do as we tell them to.
Until they can and will, obey the ones that elected them and that they work for…
We Will Say…!
They are NOT of us anymore.
Papa Ray
71 Tarnsman:
I was asked to leave HotAir because the Lords over there felt that to even mention revolution or secession as possible outcomes of the current troubles was the same as actually advocating it. In the words of AllahPundit, to even mention the subject would make it acceptable and thus it was more likely to happen.
“In the words of AllahPundit…”
Well, he is only about four steps away from being a liberal and he (somehow) grew up to be a woosie, which of course makes him say and believe things like that.
Just pity him. If you can. I just usually ignore him.
Papa Ray
#71 Tarnsman
There really is no inconsistency in the positions that were taken during the reigns of Bush and Obama by the Progressives.
You just need to cut the Gordian Knot by cutting away the labels that Progressives use to obscure. Once this is done, their core value can best be described as “the highest form of patriotism is treason.”
No, there’s no inconsistency in the two positions at all.
From –> The Political Manual: How to Take Political Positions
Buddy 48/49
Thanks for the kind words. It is true I write commerce-free out of sheer nobility, but if you could find me a paying gig I’d take it.
Walt
O/T.
Snip from Al’s Weather (AGW): Big story?
“It looks they made 2.6bn euros before the agencies caught on to them.”
…-
“RajKapoor (08:20:17) :
See below email exchange on Iceland volcano links to money and climate change. Seems like something is rotten in the state of Iceland!!!
—– Forwarded message ———-
From: Halldor Eggertsson
Date: Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 8:11 PM
Subject: Fw: Latest from Iceland
To: rjedwood@dailymail.co.uk
Dear Ron,
The embargo is Midnight GMT 20th April. Please DO NOT publish prior! This is the biggest story our little paper is ever likely to break unless Bjork dies choking on her herrings!!!
Yeah, this is big story. Lot of people sweating here. I dont know how far this goes but lots of angles.
When this breaks its going to go crazy here so lets catch up when the dust settles (no pun intended heh!). We think there may be more to the climate change angle. The team is busy following up on that. It looks they made 2.6bn euros before the agencies caught on to them.”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/19/ash-cloud-models-overrated-a-word-on-post-normal-science-by-dr-jerome-ravetz/#comment-372173
…-
“Ash cloud models – overrated? A word on Post Normal Science by Dr …
19 Apr 2010 … GEOTHERMAL COMPANY LINKED TO ERUPTION GROUNDING FLIGHTS. By Gunnar Skoleskar in Reykjavik and additional reporting from Hanfluss Janesbaer …
http://www.google.ca/search?q=GEOTHERMAL+COMPANY+LINKED+TO+ERUPTION+GROUNDING+FLIGHTS&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
“….I swear to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies both foreign and domestic…”
That is part of the oath of office and commission for numerous public officials both State, Federal, and local as well as the those enlisted in the US military various law enforcement agencies. While many have forsworn this oath a greater number hold to it even though they have returned to “regular” life.
I think this may be part of the reason why Dick Morris is predicting that the Republicans are going to take both the house and the senate November, 2010.
55. Peter Boston
Reports on the demise of the U.S. Constitution are premature.
Excellent post overall, and I do hope you’re right.
Al’s AGW is a spoof.
…-
“Jerome Ravetz (11:02:18) :
Thanks everybody; I just thought I would have a bit of fun, provoking my critics about PNS. I suspect that the item about Prof. Schnellerflugzoeg (? -zeug) is a spoof – sorry to disappoint people.”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/19/ash-cloud-models-overrated-a-word-on-post-normal-science-by-dr-jerome-ravetz/#comment-372173
I had a conversation with a couple of politicos this weekend. Of course the subject of the tea parties came up as I was talking about a LaRouche protest I saw in DC, which is a bunch of nuts that have nothing to do with the tea party or anything else. They said that the tea party doesn’t stand for anything and is misinformed and that taxes were actually going down under Obama. I think they’ll be in for a real shock.
With the likes of Joe Klein & Co., look at how comfortable they are having been assured that they set the memes. His commentary is idiocy and easily turned on its head in five minutes. It’s seditious to use the word “regime” to describe an American adminsitration? Google these words “Stop the Bush Regime” and behold. Then Google “criminal Bush junta”. Where the heck was Joe? If he’s worried about the license for violence issued by a bunch of church ladies and accountants with placards, why didn’t it concern him about radical leftists, with philosophical posturings clearly beholden to Karl Marx’s call for outright revolution, staging an off-Broadway play about the assassination of George W. Bush?
We could go on all day like this given the tumult of the last 9 years pointing out the utter hypocrisy of all this, but it doesn’t matter. Reasonable people will easily be convinced of the hollowness of these charges, but they’ll plunge along with this meme anyway. Reasonable people, it seems, do not figure in their calculations. What counts is the emotional force of their claims and their demand that it be heeded. So, it will, and the shape of debate will be affected in their favor.
Theirs is a gambit which is reasoned, in a strategic sense, but it does not either rely upon reason nor does is concerned overmuch about constraints of reason. It is raw will to power; that’s all, and how ironic, because such is exactly what their charge complains about on its face. While they misdirect and sneak it through the back door.
Toad #84:
I wrote an article on the Oath in 1999 pointing out that US military missions such as we did in the former Yugoslavia, Somalia, and Haiti just don’t fit it. I cannot imagine how whether someone in a foreign country shoots his next door neighbor can be considered as imperiling the US Constitution.
Now WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, I see no problem with in that respect. As I think Pres G.H.W. Bush put it once, Americans inevitably die far from home in order to “protect their beloved homes from the war’s desolation” to use the language of a certain song.
And temporary missions for hurricane relief or to deliver food are not really military missions and in any case are short lived affairs. But combat missions that do not involve a real threat to the USA do not fit the oath.
Ask a politician about this and he will skip over the important part and go right to the “Obey the orders of the President and the officers appointed by him.” They don’t want to tackle the hard part.
If I was administering The Oath today to a bunch of new people joining the US Military I would feel compelled to point out to them that it represents a sacred trust, and that unlike other people who speak the words, they WILL be held accountable to it.
Not to sound like an Shaman or Medicine Man…Many religions CHANT in their rituals. Gregorian Monks, for instance.
(Adult)Children also chant, to shout down all the big mean grownups.
Little children have their UN Piece Signs and Smiley Feces on Mommy’s refridgerator….Flower children plaster them all over their 15 year old Subarus and Saabs…See what I mean…
http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/hh205/dishmael_bucket/teddydrank.jpg
On another of PM’s the word, NARCISSIST, is mentioned.
http://www.nevilleawards.com/liberalmind.shtml
What the liberal mind is passionate about is a world filled with
pity, sorrow, neediness, misfortune, poverty, suspicion, mistrust, anger, exploitation, discrimination, victimization, alienation and injustice.
Those who occupy this world are “workers,” “minorities,” “the little
guy,” “women,” and the “unemployed.”
They are poor, weak, sick, wronged, cheated, oppressed,
disenfranchised, exploited and victimized. They bear no
responsibility for their problems.
None of their agonies are attributable to faults or failings of their own: not to poor choices, bad habits, faulty judgment, wishful thinking, lack of ambition, low frustration tolerance, mental illness or defects in character.
None of the victims’ plight is caused by failure to plan for the future or learn from experience.
In the 80′s, the music group “Dire Straits” wrote a song about that mocked “Industrial Disease“. Today, some 2 & 1/2 decades later, we are suffering from “Governmental Disease“
#88) It wasn’t just off broadway plays. Hollywood produced a movie about a Bush assignation.
Blog post “Parading” or how we avoid revolution in New York.
A movie, too? Doesn’t surprise me. We really could go on all day.
I wonder if Klein is out there scraping a bumper sticker off his car, the one that says, “Dissent is the Highest Form of Patriotism!”
We have been overcome by EVIL. All Evil is, is a child, who refuses to, or cannot grow emotionally.
Mankey Jackson and Anna Nicole Smith are evidence of of this. What few adults left in Amerika not only WON’T condemn EVIL, they cannot even IDENTIFY IT!
And, I’m not just talking about MJ and Anna, themselves, but how AMERIKA ABSOLUTLEY SANCTIFIED, SAINTED, CANONIZED AND LIONIZED THEM.
http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/hh205/dishmael_bucket/killbush1_JPG-vi.jpg
http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/hh205/dishmael_bucket/HitlerMuslime.jpg
http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/hh205/dishmael_bucket/Blackberry.jpg
I certainly don’t want a Cromwell. My life would mean nothing to him, just a chess piece to be moved around at will. But I think we will get one.
We are not the Nation of Washington. At that time, America was thinly settled, only White men had any say in anything, Blacks were mostly slaves, with a tiny bit of freed men and women. There were no Mexicans in the US. Women were excluded from all aspects of public life, and many of private life. None of these things were good, but of course, relative to the times the US was a beacon of hope and tolerance. Which got better.
IMHO, it was not Divine Providence, nor God, nor a unique morality, but rather strong social cohesion in a uniform and small population, sitting on unique opportunities of land for all in the West, should they have the will to settle it. Even the worst of the Whiskey Rebellion could be “solved” by simply moving West into Tennessee and Kentucky, fine farmland and with many opportunities. Or Ohio for that matter.
Where are our Ohios, our Tennessees, or Kentuckys today?
Imagine say, that the New Madrid fault shook the heartland, with a 8.1 earthquake, no warning. That Obama for some reason was no longer President, perhaps he resigned under a scandal, or something. It does not matter, it is merely a thought experiment.
How would the nation respond?
Certainly the first response would require people on the ground, locally, to act. No one else could help. After days, immediate relief would be possible from outside forces, coordinated by the US Military and Federal Government.
But how is the heartland rebuilt? Whole cities, certainly Memphis, St. Louis, probably Nashville, likely Oxford Miss, and parts of Arksansas, would need total rebuilding. Lacking codes to deal with such a quake.
As a practical matter, it would require the concentrated effort of the Federal government to marshal an enourmous amount of money, and men, probably with some sort of draft of men in a labor levy or devaluation of the dollar (as we run out of wiggle room money-wise to create new Treasuries) by simply printing money to rebuild rapidly. The lack of money, will, and fear has kept the World Trade Center from being rebuilt.
People say “American Spirit” will prevail. This was the mistake the Japanese made in betting on their “fighting spirit” which was considerable. The World Trade Center is still a hole in the ground, nine years after. So much for American Spirit.
Moreover, America is deeply divided. Divided along class and wealth lines, an elite that loathes and hates the middle and working class (watch television, particularly SNL, or network TV, to see how much middle America is hated). Divided along racial lines. Divided along coastal urbanized lines vs. rural/suburban lines, reflecting the thin class of wealthy folks with really fabulous amounts of money, and those with mere middle class earnings.
This division is about money. The thin elite class sees itself threatened by an upward middle class, its advantage is based on political cronyism not basic productivity (i.e. being the guy with new patents coming out, or new analysis of situations people pay money for, or new entertainment that people love and pay money for). As such, it is to their vital advantage to keep their crony connections alive and destroy the common people.
Bill Clinton is a perfect example of this. He understood G HW Bush was an out of touch, elitist guy who had no real emotional connection to Joe Average and he purposely cast himself as an Average Joe tribune. He had enough connection to ordinary people to make it work. Midnight Basketball, funding for cops on the street, picking fights with Sistah Soljah, Welfare Reform, and so on were small-ball designed to keep him in power against inept, non-populist guys who could not connect with ordinary folks (Bob Dole?)
Now he is in the elite bubble, and his audience is NOT ordinary people but folks who are big shots, movers and shakers, who pay him a couple of million to speak about how great they are.
There is no elite that is credible to act for the Constitution and a system of restraints, and the people see that the Constitution acts to bar them from doing things they want (spoils for them) and force on them things they do not want (open borders, amnesty, welfare for illegal aliens, gun control, ObamaCare).
The Constitution mandates Affirmative Action, and the White Majority being last hired, first fired. It mandates spending on illegal aliens, with the White majority last in line in decisions on spending. It mandates effectively, amnesty and open borders, along with other things (Congress can pass any law it likes). At best, marginal stuff around the edges which are not sufficient in a financial crisis with other threats (from nature, man, etc.) sure to come.
The elite will never change, they cannot, by their nature (they depend on cronyism against the people to be elites), and so the meaning of the Constitution in daily life will not change.
Yes it would be a nice utopia to go back to limited government. But the Constitution as a practical matter forbids it — the Supremes have held that equal protection means that illegals and their children MUST get social spending, including education and health and welfare. That children of illegals born in the US are automatically US citizens, and able to benefit from affirmative action to remedy discrimination (never mind that they and their families are just-arrived from a foreign land).
As a practical matter, this means a gigantic welfare state, to take care of Mexico’s poor. It also means making Whites rather sudden minorities in their own country, as if in 1785, half of China were transported to America, and made instant citizens. I do not think the outcome of that Thought Experiment would have been a happy one.
The civilization challenge of the West is to address the huge imbalance between the elite crony-connection group and the average person. Move power away from the elite towards the average person. I just don’t see how that happens right now. Maybe someone else has ideas. Lets hope.
“the highest form of patriotism is treason.”
There is rather good precedent for that argument. Starting in 1776, I believe.
What, you don’t think George Washington was a traitor? He was, you know. Of course, he ended up having the best excuse for rebellion. If you win, it isn’t treason.
“One thing that comes clear from reading history, both secular and Biblical – like it or not – there are forces at work in the world far beyond the rule of mortals. And grand cycles. While we can certainly learn from history, the main lessons that seem to emerge from its study are first that control is an illusion, and then that the most crucial thing we can hope for is learning to recognize the patterns.
Those who study magnetism have observed that when you pound lump of iron repeatedly, it gradually is transformed into a magnet… Each blow momentarily frees each microcrystal and allows it progressively to align itself with the prevailing magnetic field.
There’s a metaphor in there…
Yes, there are forces at work in the world little understood.
Control may be an illusion but that doesn’t negate the historically transformative actions of individuals and groups dedicated to a sacred cause. Moses leading the Israelites out of bondage, the 300 Spartans @ Thermopylae, the Buddha, Cinncinatus, Christ, Holger the Dane @ Poitiers, Columbus braving the Atlantic, the Founding Fathers, Lincoln holding the Union together, The Greatest Generation, the 3,449 Medal of Honor recipients including the latest, Michael Monsoor. Pres. George Bush withstanding the most severe campaign of hate propaganda ever mounted against a human being. The TEA Party movement.
Your magnetism metaphor would be the reaction created by the American left; the most well informed, best educated American right in history. Our parents and grandparents back in the 60′s knew the left was wrong but we, unlike they, can articulate why it’s wrong.
In time, the truth shall set the young, blinded by the left’s indoctrination, free. And, despite appearances to the contrary, there’s nothing the left can do to stop it.
96. Rebuilding the WTC isn’t urgent. When things are urgent- when the homeland is under fire, or when earthquake, fire or storm destroys entire cities, Americans rally around their countrymen, donating money, supplies, blood and time to aid the victims. It is no different when horrible disasters strike other countries.
As for the elites, screw them. Ignore them. Refuse to even nominate them for any office, high or low. This shall be the first litmus test, for if they fail it, no answer they give to any other can be trusted: anyone who believes he deserves to be in command has no business being anywhere near command of any sort. No mortal is worthy of being placed in command, and only someone humble enough to admit that has any chance of growing into the office that Providence demands of him.
“The elite will never change, they cannot, by their nature (they depend on cronyism against the people to be elites), and so the meaning of the Constitution in daily life will not change.”
If the elite can never change or be otherwise, then how do you explain the Founding Fathers? Most definitely the elite of their society.
Yes it would be a nice utopia to go back to limited government. But the Constitution as a practical matter forbids it
The Constitution can be changed and has been 17 times (Bill of Rights doesn’t count) including modifying the 14th amendment. And, the Supreme Court occasionally reverses itself.
“As a practical matter, this means a gigantic welfare state, to take care of Mexico’s poor.”
Out of control illegal immigration is easily controlled. By really going after the employers. No available jobs and its a repeat of the early 1930s, when more people emigrated from the United States than immigrated to it.
The problem isn’t what to do, it’s gaining the social cohesion to assemble the political will to do what needs doing.
When things get bad enough, the consensus will be there, just as it was after Pearl Harbor. Many of us thought it was after 9/11 but we were wrong, not nearly bad enough.
Yes the Stalin-funded Koch family promotes the usual billionaire-friendly ideas of the free market, deregulation and smaller government to undereducated rednecks easily persuaded in voting against their own interests.
I think Washington, as well most other Virginians up till just past the generation of Robert E. Lee, would have told you himself that he was always a Virginian first. During the French-Indian Wars, during the Revolutionary War, and then as President of the United States, Washington always acted in fealty to sense of honor and his duty to his fellow Virginians. The greatest sting of his lifetime was the discovery of Benedict Arnold’s treachery at West Point, and this too him defined such a dark an unfathomable evil he could scarcely believe it. Poor Major Andre, Arnold’s British Army accomplice whom Washington caught! In the strange case Major Andre, the major’s legal defense was sound, yet on Washington’s insistence he was hung by neck anyway, a casualty of Washington’s rage over the inconceivable betrayal of Arnold.
Treason to Washington was treacherous, dishonorable action that subverted the rights of his fellows, whether by Arnold, Andre, or King George, and he simply brooked none of it.
Come on guys and gals, give the liberals and the leftists currently running our government a break. They fought, protested, dissented, gave away secrets to the enemy, sold out long time friends, and by golly, it finally worked. They won. They are on top, they are in charge, every body domestic and foreign has to look up to them. Every one must see and agree how smart they are.
But as they look out over the country, there are large groups of quiet, polite people coldly staring at them, coldly measuring them, coldly waiting for the promised wonderous results; they are being silently weighed against the standards expected of great Americans,…and the realization is sinking in that the people in these groups are deeming them lacking in so very many areas.
No one in these groups are applauding their obvious exceptional brilliance. No one in these groups is thanking them for having grasped the helm of this fine old ship of state and guiding it firmly toward the rocks of economic collapse.
And so a strange feeling is starting to permeate the expensive glittering elitist get-to-gathers: it is the first tendrils of the creeping, swirling fog of panic. Panic caused by the gradual awareness that there is more to running a successful country than winning an election. There is more to being a successful leader than winning a title. And the cold watchful eyes still stare and wait…
101 You reveal your ignorance of the Kochs by associating them with
Stalin. I hope that you can back up that outrageous claim (along
with your dismissive claim of free marketers as undereducated rednecks).
The Kochs were forged by what Fred Koch saw was done to the industrial
class in Russia by Lenin and his thugs. Nothing like seeing your
customer base jailed or executed to give you an up-close view of how
socialism really works. But that doesn’t fit your narrative, does it?
I thought that trolls like you were becoming a bit more nuanced in
your arguments, but you were able to work in billionaire, Stalin,
undereducated and redneck in short order. Nice.
Come back when you have a logically based argument.
55. Peter Boston:
I hope to God you’re right.
Unfortunately, governors and state legislators are politicians, too.
I’ve found that actually arguing or “debating” with a Leftist Loon, is akin to attempting to get a Schizophrenic family member to take his meds, so he doesn’t think he is Jesus.
Pol Pot was a CIA agent, don’t you know?
Prescott Bush, whoever the bleep that is, was Saint Maggot Sanger’s source of income.
Trig Palin was in the Grassy Knoll..
Trawling, totally agree but I am sick of airheads who have never created jack associating one of the great job and value creators of our generation with the most prolific murderer of all time.
Pres. Clinton knows that the tea party demonstrators are no threat. The Obama administration believes them to be a threat – against their re-election. I find it amazing that both Pres. and Sec. of State Clinton propagate this kind of nonsense given all the derogatory information the Obama campaign spewed against them in the Democratic Primary Election. Their political career is more important than the truth their dignity.
It wasn’t the capitalists who got Trotsky. A lesson today’s statests should take to heart is that the real danger comes from behind them. They had better watch their “six” lest they be considered as “unworthy” to forward the socialist agenda. The left is very big on martyrs.
104@steeple
The free market rained on Fred Koch’s parade, steeple. He couldn’t take the pressure of free-market capitalism in the roaring twenties. The Tea Party movement’s dirty little secret is that it owes its existence to comrade Stalin.
Yasha Levine proved that the secretive oil billionaires of the Koch family, the main supporters of the right-wing groups that orchestrated the Tea Party movement, would not have the means to bankroll their favorite causes had it not been for the pile of money the family made working for the Bolsheviks in the late 1920s and early 1930s, building refineries, training Communist engineers and laying down the foundation of Soviet oil infrastructure.
Then in the 1950s Stalin executed his free-market consumer and blew off Koch. Infuriated that capitalism again spurned him, he made up some stories about undocumented spies in his Siberian tours. It’s funny that after his business failure he became very sympathetic to Soviet engineers, while he was quite satisfied with events during Stalin’s lifetime! Unlike their Western competitors, Koch pleased his Soviet clients by ensuring top quality and helping the cause of socialism.
Kochs—they owe it all to socialism and totalitarianism, ignorant wingnuts.
Steeple all you have in rebuttal is pathetic name-calling and a fallacious argument from ignorance repubs so enjoy employing. And you think you have something to tell ME about the CCCP, you yank? You need to work on reading comprehension, not merely regurgitate one-liners. Moreover repubs epitomize trolls. They have no real purpose other than acting as crypto-catholics for their Vatican/Rothschilds overlords. That is the definition of conservatism. All you do is obfuscate and act as a killjoy. You have no higher purpose other than serving your billionaire aristocracy.
MFD in CLE @ 108
Clinton – dignity!!????!!!!!????
Steeple,
I certainly understand your frustration. What I’ve found that really seems to work for me, is to STAY ON OFFENSE, WITH SOMEONE WHO IS COMPLETELY OFFENSIVE. It cuts down on my wishing to reach through the Cyber, and strangling the little scuzz ball. I grew up with lunatics in my family, with Mensa IQs. BFD!
The little goofball, arguing that Koch got his marching orders from FDR’s Uncle Jo, spends what other time he doesn’t spend on his puter, seriously trying to deduce, how many succubi can dance on the head of a pin.
On some other blogs, I would be chided, or banned, for insulting the little dust bunny.
On a Leftist blog, a few weeks back I was talking to how Bwaney Fwenk and his “wife,” Herbie Moses, caused the greatest nation’s economy to IMPLODE…My name on this blog was, lightingman.
When Adult Autistic Children begin with me about how brilliant they are, I peel, then dice them…Hope you enjoy this.
Hippie Love…to me…Lightingman…Eugene Debs sponsered(sic) by the Church of the presumptious(sic) assumption says(squeals shrieks and bellows):
LightningMORON Please PLEASE kill yourself. Do so BEFORE you breed. Our gene pool cant take much more of your level of abject stupidity
LightingMORON, Go FCUK yourself you pathetic braindead trollscum. Just set yourself on fire. You are so stupid you will never be anything but a burden for decent human beings.
Kochevnik, Excuse me for being a buttinsky (wasn’t he a White Russian count or something?), but you , son are coming off as a paranoid lunatic spouting theories no one in America cares a lick about. Elvis has left the building, why don’t you join him?
Prof. Wretchard,
Thanks for writing this – there is a joyous feeling of shared freedom at the Tea Party rallies, it feels like the promise of America come true. We are free to be good and nice to each other and happy and proud of our own good efforts – the inalienable rights.
If we were the kind of people who could be bullied by rude insults, our ancestors would not have brought us here, we would have stayed home, and believed in state religions like Global Warming.
Instead, we’re people who never felt it necessary to step up publicly before, we’re kinda shy.
But not really shy, when pressed.
I think the MSM, Democrats, and entire inside the beltway crowd have drank too much Kool-Aid and ate too much Government Cheese.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-HiXqqUItM&feature=related
Whisky @96: The civilization challenge of the West is to address the huge imbalance between the elite crony-connection group and the average person. Move power away from the elite towards the average person. I just don’t see how that happens right now. Maybe someone else has ideas. Lets hope.
Realistically, it will happen only when said elites are dragged into the streets by mobs and strung from lamp posts by the hundreds. And even then, what does the new power structure look like? Typically, just the thuggiest mob leaders taking over and we’re back where we started. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
The American founding was, I fear, a unique event never to be repeated, and we’ve just about eaten the enormous pile of seed corn they left us.
Now, let me also say that I don’t think we’ll ever get to the point of mobs and ropes. We don’t have the stuff anymore. I expect a long, grim, grey future.
Tony and Company,
The original Tea Party was carried out by near Super Human Men, who were Freemasons.
To become a Mason, you have to believe in a Supreme Being. That’s IT!
Too much for Satanic Communists, and absolutely maniacle Jihadists, though.
Much of our Constitution is straight from the Mason’s.
America started out a Masonic nation, and became a Judeo Christian one.
Likening the Tea Partiers to anybody else, is Sheer Leftist Lunacy.
I belong to Paul Revere’s Lodge, in Natick, MA., Meridian Lodge.
Clinton knows what he said about the tea partiers was BS. Glenn Reynolds nailed that fact.
The rest is mere commentary.
Kochennik They have no real purpose other than acting as crypto-catholics for their Vatican/Rothschilds overlords. That is the definition of conservatism.
Oh yeah, the Vatican calls the shots! Awesome. You need to stop reading Dan Brown when you’re on your meth binges.
Hillary just declared that AGW is now US policy as the Senate gets set to pass Cap and Trade on April 26th. We are about to lose 10% of our net pay in new carbon taxes that will gut the middle class. Add cold, brutish and nasty to long, grim and grey.
The “magnetism” note was no argument for giving up. The flipside of magnetizing a lump by pounding, is that the same sort of pounding of an existng magnet will make it LOSE its magnetism.
Just need to be intelligent about which thing gets pounded.
I firmly believe that individual actions are decisive.
There is no collective. The individual is the key.
We are not ants, nor merely differentiated tissues in a larger entity. That sort of thinking is the avoidance of the imponderable mystery of existence… like the idea that the world is carried on the back of a giant tortoise, which rides with each foot on the back of a titanic elephant, and all four elephants are in their turn supported by pillars and…[etc. ad infinitum]
We are ultimately all subject to rules and forces that we cannot simply define away, as some seem to believe.
Trang/138; There’s no doubt whatsoever about the USSR and Armand Hammer –sponsor of the Gore family. Here’s something recent, by way of general recap.
Also very recent, re the spring/summer 2008 mystery hedge funds that spiked oil futures (many including myself believe as part of the entire crash itself), heavily involved among that handful of players was London-based Citi unit Phibro, which lo and behold was later (forced, or ‘pressured’, by Obama pay czar Ken Feinberg) to sell itself to…Armand Hammer’s Occidental, notoriously chockful of KGB agents in times past, in an arranged marriage at a price (maybe .30 on the dollar)at which bank analysts were aghast. Dick Bove was one of those analysts, prominent due to his reputation as an analyst and because he raised quite a stink over these mysterious dealings. The cover for the gov’t? During the uproar over the pay packages for the bailed-out characters, the Phibro trader who “made too much money” surfaced amongst the froth and was quickly disappeared via Citi’s decision to just dump the unit and move on –and the impression is, only Occi was standing there ‘to buy’.
yeah, right.
Anyhoo, tho i know nothing about any Koch/Stalin dealings, it doesn’t hurt to note that during the 1920s (and right thru to the post WWII era) an enormous segment of the USA population was sympathetic toward the “I Have Seen the Future and it Works” leadership of the progressive press toward helping the newborn USSR. And in a way, that segment is still strong enough to stay in business, and rumored to’ve helped elect an American president in 2008.
Anyhoo, don’t believe me, just search on aany combo of say, two, three or four of the names mentioned, see the press.
Trawling, Trangbang & Peterike, thanks for the assists. Much appreciated.
I’m not trying to engage our presumed Russian friend here, but I do want to set the record straight on behalf of the Koch family, who I have tremendous regard for. They have made tremendous contributions to the US and we need more stewards of Free Markets like them. I will not allow our Alinskyite to marginalize these fine people. If I may, and I will attempt to keep this brief:
1) Fred Koch was a first generation Dutch immigrant who arrived in the US Southwest in the early 1900s. He and his partner created a refinery technology manufacturing company. However, it was frozen out of business with the Major Oils, who owned their own technology affiliate. So he was obliged to sell his technology overseas, and Russia was one of his markets. His witness of the abuse of power during Lenin’s rule led him to solidify his conservative political views.
2) Charles and David Koch, sons of Fred who are MIT educated engineers and run Koch Industries today, are indeed staunch advocates of Free Markets. They produce real products through their companies such as Georgia Pacific and Invista (Stainmaster carpets, Lycra/Spandex, etc…) along with their investments in a variety of manufacturing businesses. They support such wild-eyed organizations as the Cato Institute. They have created value for society in order to generate their wealth, in contrast to Obama’s sponsor, Mr. Soros, who made his by squeezing the currency of the UK Central Bank.
3) If they were indeed sponsors of the Tea Party movement, I can think of worse things to be accused of. Like perhaps Federal campaign finance fraud. Anyway, I’ve attended a Tea Party rally and they are decidedly low budget affairs from what I observed. I’m sure our troll can’t comment from first hand experience on any of this.
4) They have managed their business with fiscal conservatism (A+ rated by S&P; not easy to earn as a private co.) and have avoided lines of business that require them to appeal to Washington for subsidies or other protected status.
I understand why Kochevnik would not recognize these characteristics, as the wealthy in Russia have acquired their wealth in much different ways.
PS, that Stalin was some kinda party boy, sponsoring both the free-market small-government Koch rednecks AND the statist, all-government, Gore progressives at the same time.
Since this ain’t very smot, and Uncle Joe was very very smot, then ya gots to go where the evidence is –and the FBI actually used to raid the Occi offices, London and USA, from time to time pre WWII, coming away with pay stubs to north America-based Russian herbal medicine and alternative medicine and supernatural health device companies galore –companies trading –often mail order –with (*cough*) fringe elements of the British and American populations. check it out –
Heck ya Clinton knows what he said about the Tea Partiers is BS. But he, and a lot of others, are going to keep saying it. I just watched Bob Beckel claim that one Congressman’s vow to “take the gavel away from Nancy Pelosi” constitutes hate speech. They’re all gonna run wild with it. Why not, it worked before in 1995?
They don’t care to have a rational debate here. They hope everybody else does, though. They’re going to lecture and accuse on anyway, regardless.
Bill says America is different now: We’re more communitarian.
No, Bill, we’re not and therein lies much of the conflict. We’re still individuals (a community of individuals, if you like). You want us to be communitarians. You, for instance, want us to make health care decisions based on what you judge best for the community rather than what we judge best for ourselves as individuals. That’s why we keep harping on the Constitution, a document that addresses individual, not collective, rights. A document that limits the scope and reach of government. A document for which Democrats apparently have no further use.
There’s nothing new about the struggle between self-interest and the collective interest as determined by a ruling elite. Oh, you call yourselves “progressives” and “communitarians” now, but we know who you are.
The Left always insists that any flourishing of Conservative/Right-wing protest or complaint is “funded” or secretly controlled by bankers, oil companies, the CIA, whatever. This is because everything on the Left is funded and controlled in just this way, and they have no other conception that it can be otherwise. Hence, grass roots = astroturf. Blog comments = trolls. And so on. They live in a house of mirrors and always see their own reflections wherever they look.
So when the universes collide, son don’t get caught on the wrong side. — Gogol Bordello
Somewhat off-topic, but the madness continues apace:
Vacationing a human right, EU chief says
101. kochevnik
Yes the Stalin-funded Koch family promotes the usual billionaire-friendly ideas of the free market, deregulation and smaller government to undereducated rednecks easily persuaded in voting against their own interests.
The phrase “voting against their own interests” is a common condescending cliche of the left toward those who don’t share their ideology. You know–the little stupid people–the proles. And to some extent, but probably not in the way you’re thinking, you’re right. For example, many of the stupid little people who attempted to vote with their feet by going over the Berlin Wall and got shot in the back did, in a very real sense, vote against their own interests, not for what they tried, but for what monsters who claimed to be acting in “their best interests” killed them for.
When the Tea Party came out, everybody was expecting them to look like Bolsheviks but they turned out to look a lot like the Lyons Club. Now, are we to believe, “Oh yeah! Well they were funded by the Bolsheviks!”
Yep, peterike, they can’t imagine a protest movement that isn’t bankrolled by some International Workers Syndicate. They can’t imagine the churchgoers they see with signs didn’t hatch from a pre-constitued activist cell. 25% of Americans now identify with the Tea Party, and that’s somehow because the John Birch Society et al. have been strategically faking impotence all these years?
Tcobb is right. In fact, since life is such a complicated thing, since it makes a person think and act whether or not he or she is in the mood at the time, it really would be in a person’s best interest to not be born in the first place. As long as you don’t realize you never lived, you wouldn’t miss it anyway.
This may’ve been what the workers of the Workers Paradise were actually striving for, with the USSR’s prodigious alcoholism, dark-ages life-span, and negative birth rate.
At least the Iceland volcan is regulating the global marcket, so Nature is the master above all the ideologies
150 chinese flight to Europe have been cancelled
Buddy, I’m not all that familiar with Comrade Hammer other than Occidental bought Hooker Chemical which created the Love Canal under 99th Street School in Niagara Falls, NY. We played football there as kids, but I’m happy to report all 4 of my kids were born with the requisite number of limbs. My dad died of industrial related cancer after working there, so I guess I have a beef with Hammer. I’ve tried to shake a conspiratorial mindset since the Kennedy theories and drug abuse almost pushed me around the bend. So I thought Gore Sr. was just your typical Southern Dixiecrat racist and Junior drank the wrong Kool-Aid at a Dead concert and has been insane since.
Boris Badernoff Kochevnik irked me by implying a conspiratorial bent to the Tea Parties. They’re called Americans who love freedom, but what would a neo-tsarist kleptocrat know about that?
#126. SukieTawdry
Bill says America is different now: We’re more communitarian.
Yes–and we should realize that the most communitarian places in America are some of our prisons. All for one and one for all in pursuit of the common good–whether the individuals involved like it or not. Of course, some of the collective (like the prisoners who plow the fields–they do this in Texas anyway) are equaler than others (guards vs. inmates for example) and they love you so much that they would rather see you dead than escape from the love.
Yes– let us aspire to make American society more like a prison or a slave plantation. That’s a goal any pompous prison warden or prebellum plantation owner would stand behind.
#132 Marie Claude
Don’t worry about the volcano. I’m sure the UN will come up with a resolution soon that will order it to stop erupting. Of course, we will have to allocate about $100,000,000 for salaries for UN employees to monitor the volcano’s compliance.
But that’s just the price we pay for modern civilization.
Steeple,
Good work.
Leftism a Movement, Ideology, Religion, of hysterical little girls(emotionally.) They are terrified of EVERYTHING, except things that cause instant death.
Link to this, beneath my nic.
An intriguing analogue to the feminist hysteric is the homosexual activist. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), within the hysterical context, has also said that “in both sexes overt behavior is often a caricature of femininity.”
(Leftist little girls of both sexes, detest COWBOYS and are deathly afraid of TESTOSTERONE POISONING (T4M)
As with most personality disorders, the diagnostic hallmarks of the histrionic are the evolved childish protections against the knock, knock (or Tick, Tock) of anxiety and maturation. They are the protection against the universal impulse for union and procreation. The monster under the bed has been displaced by anything which smacks of the “masculine”. The anxiety of becoming a responsible parent has been displaced by the eraser of abortion – the power to kill responsibility.
Finally,
If you or I said this, we would be stoned to death, hanged, beheaded and sit in the electric chair for 2 or 3 years, on L.
Anyone who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without feminine upheaval. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex, the ugly ones included.
Karl Marx
kochevnik @ 101: Much of this is Greek to me. What are you *for*, restoration of the Czar, rational empiricism, or wot?
Tcobb, you “hit the nail”
“Ice cap thaw may awaken Icelandic volcanoes”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100416/wl_nm/us_iceland_volcano_climate
more about the volcano:
“As tourists cannot get out of Greece due to the Icelandic cloud, the IMF cannot get into Greece” … f*cking Volcano LMAO
It is important not to concede too much to the Left.
From the last thread, there was the following comment.
…if racism is defined by Bill Maher, Frank Rich, the NYT, Bill Cosby…
If.
What if it isn’t? What if the essential meaning of the word “racism” transcends the definitions of leftist ideologues of the present day?
Racism exists in America, and we must be honest about where it is. Is there racism on the Right? Yes. Is there racism on the Left? Yes. Is there racism among those who voted for Barack Obama because he is “black”? Very definitely, yes.
It is important for the Opposition not to concede the basic terms of reference to the Obama administration, its media allies, or Islamists waiting in the wings. Let’s not concede the meaning of the words “racist”, “Islamophobe”, “sexist”, or “constitutionalist”.
A racist is someone whose fundamental loyalty is to his race. An Islamophobe is someone who is afraid of Islam and particularly afraid of criticizing Islam. A sexist is someone whose fundamental loyalty is to his or her sex. A constitutionalist is someone who is loyal to the Constitution as presently written.
Hence, the ideology of Jeremiah Wright’s church is racist. Hence, Geert Wilders, Bat Ye’or, Andrew Bostom, and Ibn Warraq are leading the fight against Islamophobia when they show a willingness to honestly criticize Islam. Hence, a feminist can be a sexist. Hence, a constitutionalist is as loyal to the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, Fifteeenth, Nineteenth, and Twenty-fourth Amendments as one is to the Second and Tenth.
Let’s not concede to the Leftist media or the Mainstream media the right to define words much as Humpty Dumpty would. Let’s hold – I dare say cling – to clear and honest definitions of words so they stand the test of time.
trang/133; i hear ya –there’s plenty enough sharks right up on the surface of the sea –no pressing need to take the insane bathyscape to the bottom of the Marianas Trench –i have to watch myself continually on that account.
But in Hammer’s case, his dealings –as far back as Lenin –pre-date the ‘cold war’ and were ‘in the news’ –straight commercial oil deals, nothing to hide. However, FBI –this is on record too –thought the guy was facilitating infiltration of agents and so forth –and he was watched, in that account –as he would’ve been had the agents been of any foreign power.
And, again, nothing in the shadows at all, Gore sr and Armand Hammer were partners and allies across a wide range of issues and enterprises –and all ‘in the news’ –not underneath it –in the WSJ for example (scroll down halfway of this):
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=65000067
And, related, the green ministry, brother Al a leading preacher, you must admit, by so hobbling the American petro industry in the critical crunch time coming, has done an irredeemably great job of high-ground positioning the world’s petro exporters.
So, even without any conspiratorial bending at all, effects is effects.
***
Josh Much of this is Greek to me –LOL –i tink you hit de nail on de head –
Stalin funded the Tea Partyers? I go away from BC for a day or two and everyone pulls out the shrooms? Buddy? Habu? Put down the Nyquist-nol…seriously baby it’s not my fault…
And Armand Hammer…dang, he must have been the original GLG-20. What with his scheme to persuade Brezhnev to build the USSR’s first golf course for foreign biznismen…the seeds of the Soviet collapse right there, my friends, next to the Road to Dushanbe! But the Birchers say the Sovs were faking it…all those babushkas and ex-colonels drinking themselves to death or digging through the garbage…ruble hyperinflation, savings of pensioners wiped out twice…hah!Golitsyn admitted it! An elaborate ruse!
But Hammer was whoah, the original double triple quadruple duper agent! Moscow never saw him coming when they thought he was working for them pretending to be working for us and Albert Gore Sr. and the Queen of England. Where’s Lyndon LaRouche when you need him?
posted by Mr. X, a certified non-Trilateral, Bohemian Grove, and disinvited to Bildeberger Mason/Stonecutter lodge. My distant uncle once removed was only a junior Mason…
P.S. : Are you guys sure Kochevnik isn’t a refugee from the eXile? You know where Matt Taibi was given all the super secret Sov files on Goverment Sachs?
If the Obama administration has forfeited moral leadership and the Republican Party has forfeited moral leadership, where do we have to look for moral leadership? Try looking in the mirror. We need to know what we want for the future because we may very well get it.
It is a basic constitutional right for people to willingly and knowingly vote against their own economic self-interests. Why? For the same reason that Brian Davis lost a golf tournament. People have a right to vote honorably. People have a right to vote altruistically for the common good even when it undermines their own interests.
It is a conceit of the Left to assume that people vote for greed. It is a conceit of the Left to assume that the rich ought to be the only ones who vote against their own interests. Yet, the poor and the middle class have every right to vote against their appointed “class interests” when it is what they see as the common good.
Saw this piece at FR a year ago & posted it here. It popped up again. Its still worth re reading.
June 25, 2009
Obama, the African Colonial
Mr X, please, ridicule is an attitude, not an argument. For example, the way to discredit a Nyquist is to link to an anti-Nyquist –it does you little good just to point at him and snort.
BTW, this is about the umpteenth time you’ve mentioned post-collapse Russian grandmothers having to dig thru the garbage for a bite to eat. Is this so?
And if so, is it America’s fault? And if so, which America –the America of the Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission, or the other one, AKA ‘tea party’?
Buddy, I buy it. The perfidy and evil of the enemies of freedom knows no depth. The price of
freedom is eternal vigilance and all that. We have a slew of enemies both foreign and domestic. I believe we can beat back the challenges ,but it’s going to take all we got and then some. I’m in!
We had a tragedy in our greater church axis last night. One of our pastors in Mexico City was accosted by armed robbers trying to steal the offering . They resisted giving the Lord’s money to the cartel devils and one of the pastors was shot dead. Sick world, but right will triumph in the end.
Trang/145; re the incident in Mexico, man, if that’s not getting right to the nub i do not want to know what is. Lucifer the Light-Bearer identifies himself finally when he murders a churchman and steals the money meant to feed the poor.
101. Even if I were to accept your premise that we are voting against our own [financial] interests, so what? I go out of my way to avoid asking my parents for money, because I find it shameful. How many young people leave their parents’ home to rent a place of their own because they want to get away from overbearing parents, even if they’d save a lot of money by staying? The money always comes with strings attached, so if I should say, “It’s more trouble than it’s worth,” what concern of that is yours?
posted by Mr. X, a certified non-Trilateral, Bohemian Grove, and disinvited to Bildeberger Mason/Stonecutter lodge. My distant uncle once removed was only a junior Mason…
You are certifiable, I will give you that, Comrade.
Would love to see you in your little propeller beanie, handing out flyers on the street corner, ala Li’l Lee Oswald.
What you loons on the left do, is obfuscate, and talk gibberish…You are a Demonic Cuckoo Clock.
Here’s your opportunity to tell me to “seek help, double up on my meds, kill myself.” I unclog my nose in your borscht, you little toad stool sample.
whiskey and others who say the Constitution is dead:
The Constitution is primarily about IDEAS, put to paper. America itself is an idea. Ideas cannot die except in the minds of men. So long as a single citizen remembers, they live on. Seems to me an awful lot of citizens not only remember those ideas, they are willing to fight, die and, yes, kill to preserve (restore) them. (Pray God it never comes to that!)
“The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution, are worth defending against all hazards: And it is our duty to defend them against all attacks.” Sam Adams
The Constitution is not self-enforcing, nor is it a magical parchment, immune to corruption. It was written for “a moral people…unsuitable for any other.” Can anyone say that our elected officials (or many citizens) are moral people? How many of us have taken the time to examine candidates in order to select the best one, of sterling character?
We are where we put ourselves…is it right to leave this to our children? Less free, less prosperous, less opportunity and less safe than the country we inherited? Can you look at your children and tell them you allowed their birthright of liberty, prosperity and justice for all to die because it was too hard to restore it? Because it had been infringed for so long that it was no longer worth trying? If you can, then:
“…May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!” Sam Adams
Pretty fascinating thread. You never know where the conversation at Belmont will lead.
Anyway, the reason for all the handwringing about TP violence is very clear. They’re trying to promote this theme to the public, in the hopes that some major violent activity will occur. If it does they’ll already have the table set to discredit the TP movement, via guilt by association, however tenuous any association is. They hope that “normal” people will run from the Tea Partiers. Ol’ BC just invoked McVeigh to make sure that us rubes get the picture.
They may see it dimly, but they understand there’s something afoot in the Country. They’ve tried to stop it using the old racism gambit, but that isn’t working very well for them. So now they’ll try this, and it could be successful if something bad occurs.
OTOH I’m somewhat encouraged by their efforts, since those efforts confirm for me that the enlightened don’t have a clue. They (and GOP leaders as well) are living in the old world, the one where newspapers controlled the conversation, and we were told what they want us to know, in the way they want us to know it. Those days are long gone, and they don’t know how to respond. They dust off the old tricks, but those don’t work anymore. It must be pretty frustrating for them. Too bad.
“Still think she was smiling?”
(scroll a little ways for the ‘high res’ detail)
…a lttle further down:
(she) Bautsch had accompanied a Brennan’s employee outside of the restaurant while the protest was going on, and at that time the Brennan’s employee had told the protestors that all three of the governors had left and there were no elected officials still in the restaurant to hear their complaints. The significance of this is the protestors got a look at Allee Bautsch in advance of her leaving the restaurant….
Great essay – however, my only beef is why anyone would give Mr Bill Clinton any of their precious time by listening to anything he says. He’s consistently demonstrated he’s a liar.
113@ trangbang68
Yet more repub “argument from ignorance” fallacies, thanks.
119@ peterike
Who owns that football field sized cylinder filled with gold bars transported from Fort Knox, peterike? Who funded the discovery of America? Who donated land now called Washington, D.C.? Prove me wrong or be a man and apologize.
129@ Tcobb
It doesn’t take liberalism to spot self-defeating bourgeois, where a pair of eyes will suffice.
137@ Josh
Thank you Josh for an intelligent question. Roman emperor Constatine abolished polytheism in 325AD. Christianity and Islam are Abrahamic religions created under him. Both are monotheistic and hence fascistic. It is impossible for a monotheist to be another way, for he shares the sentiments of his supreme being and is charged with executing it’s edicts. Being geographically and ethnically separated, these religions grew more inward and more intolerant. The latter two have culminated in surreptitious exercises to kill all outsiders. SS priest Himler burned 18million alive. Jesuits persuade the USA to immolate Japanese families in nuclear fire, in revenge for their exiling Jesuits. Chechens blow up Muscovite families in the subway.
One should look for the common thread. Islam and christianity are simply the new Roman empire now divided against itself. Only when fascist monotheism is stamped out will there be lasting peace. Religion should be relegated to mental institutions and perhaps apes when they learn to talk. The rise of religion coincides with man’s brain shrinking 33% in ten millenia. It is no joke that religion causes stupidity.
Conservatism is simply the application of monotheistic theocracy. As such is has NO place in the political arena or the government or education. Monotheism is inherently fascistic and the Vatican has infiltrated every level of society, culminating in the Dark Ages, the Inquisition and the second Inquisition by Catholic priest Hitler and Sedes Sacrorum [SS] priest Himler burning 18million alive.
The USA deserves competing political parties, not a corporatist party and a party of christ psychotics.
142@ Alexis
“Yet, the poor and the middle class have every right to vote against their appointed “class interests” when it is what they see as the common good.”
Who says people can’t vote against themselves? I would like to see proof of your allegation that liberals are denying people the right to vote.
Yes Alexis please vote for the interests of billionaires, and it will trickle down on you, whatever “it” is.
Trang/133; re your mention of Love Canal:
I realize i’m probably raving, but i do want to mention three things related to the upcoming attempt to ram Cap n Trade thru the senate. No, it’s NOT dead; the enormous, mind-bending collapse of the IPCC’s grand scenario is gone down the memory hole, along with the Copenhagen granfalloon.
just today @
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N19159977.htm
WASHINGTON, April 19 (Reuters) – An environmental coalition publicized a new U.S. draft report on climate change on Monday, one week before the expected unveiling of a compromise U.S. Senate bill that aims to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
The Project on Climate Science, a coalition of environmental groups, publicized the report in advance of Earth Day on April 22, a spokeswoman said. The report was released with little fanfare on April 7 and posted on the Federal Register on April 8.
The report, a draft of the Fifth U.S. Climate Action Report that will be sent to the United Nations, says bluntly: “Global warming is unequivocal and primarily human-induced … Global temperature has increased over the past 50 years. This observed increase is due primarily to human-induced emissions of heat-trapping gases.”
Without action to stop them, climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions will rise over 8,000 megatonnes by mid-century, the draft said. By adopting measures detailed in a bill passed last year by the U.S. House of Representatives, these emissions will drop beneath 2,000 megatonnes. They’re now about 6,500 megatonnes. The United Nations measures greenhouse gas emissions in megatonnes, or million metric tons.
The effects of climate change are already evident, the draft said: warming air and oceans, vanishing mountain glaciers, thawing permafrost, signs of instability in the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica and rising sea levels.
The State Department draft, now open for public comment, precedes the expected April 26 unveiling of Senate legislation by Democrat John Kerry, Republican Lindsey Graham and Independent Joe Lieberman.
Supporters of the bill hope this will pave the way for the full Senate to debate and pass a measure in June or July.
It’s just SO crucial to these people to take over –while they can –the American energy, manufacturing and utilities industries, that they’re resolved to simply ignore the IPCC Scam of the Century.
***
Anyhoo, the three ravings (i’ll be brief):
1) Occidental (ding!) buried some bad stuff, and then along came an enterprising local reporter (ding!) who discovered it, and launched the career of one Carole Browner, Socialist International board member and now your EPA czar and leader of the coming Cap & Trade charge, who rode the subsequent press-hyped Corporate Evil Environmental Disaster to power & glory (ding ding ding!). The template, Rachel Carson and Silent Spring will never ever get a word in the MSM, even tho the resultant DDT ban is killing people in uncounted numbers.
2) Three Mile Island, identifier and freezer of American nuclear power where it stood when it happened, happened 12 days after the premiere of the epochal anti-nuclear power movie The China Syndrome –and with the same precise initial malfunction, too, according to what i can dig up on da net.
3) Chernobyl has an alternate, political, story, based on its effect on the West German Green Party, which really sprang to life, never to slack back, even with copious evidence of overdone fear, in West Germany (und den der Vorld!) when the prevailing winds of the season carried some amount of radioactive particulate over the border.
***
How far will these people go? Well, they’ll “do” a twenty-year IPCC scam, then when it incontrovertibly blows up their faces they’ll simply ignore that it blew up in their faces.
How can they? Beats the shet outta me. I think they control the armed forces, and people send them scads of tax money, i guess THAT’s how they do it.
How an Icelandic volcano helped spark the French RevolutionProfound effects of eight-month eruption in 1783 caused chaos from US to Egypt, say experts
Just over 200 years ago an Icelandic volcano erupted with catastrophic consequences for weather, agriculture and transport across the northern hemisphere – and helped trigger the French revolution.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/15/iceland-volcano-weather-french-revolution
Aux Armes Citoyens….
who are we going to dethrone ? there’s a plebe in Brussels that are awaiting to be shortened
so, Kochevnik, let me get this straight, you would describe yourself as a religious skeptic, then?
***
MC –?
It is obvious that the WHPC sees themselves as an extension of the White House. If they were smart and truly independent, they’d use their leverage to embarrass the White House. Unfortunately, they have too much invested in the myth of credibility that surrounds this administration.
What they don’t realize is that if they’d just do their job as real journalists, that we’d read and listen to them. They have misread who their audience is and it looks like it is a terminal mistake.
Buddy
look what a idiot EU commisionner invented :
http://tinyurl.com/y7thr59 Antonio Tajani, commissaire européen à l’entreprise et à l’industrie said:
“les jeunes et les personnes qui ne sont pas assez riches pour faire du tourisme verraient leurs voyages payés par les contribuables européens”
Youngs and not wealthy enough persons for affording tourism trips, will get their travels paid by the EU taxes payors
“C’est la légitimisation du vol et de la prédation, sous prétexte de justice sociale”
predation and robbery are legallised under the pretext of equality and social justice”
So, I’m calling my people to resist and to make the necessary revolution
Aux armes citoyens….
MC, it is insane. Where is the justice for the robbed? This is madness. Yes, it is time for us all to remember who we are, and to act against the madness.
Alexis/139
I think that this needs to be repeated and bolded out and italicised:
A racist is someone whose fundamental loyalty is to his race. An Islamophobe is someone who is afraid of Islam and particularly afraid of criticizing Islam. A sexist is someone whose fundamental loyalty is to his or her sex. A constitutionalist is someone who is loyal to the Constitution as presently written.
And deconstruction was originally meant to discover the hidden meaning behind words, not to obscure it more so words can be then used as meaningless constructs that acquire meaning as the narrator pleases.
kochevnik/154
I would like to see proof of your allegation that liberals are denying people the right to vote.
They aren’t. As long as you vote liberals, they would facilitate, by any means, your right to vote, even post mortem. But given the political reality, they can’t directly take away your right to vote non-liberal. Once they fix the system that they have a monopoly on the power, they would even expand your right to vote by removing different obstacles and conundrums like selection of candidates (streamlined candidacy list where there is only one candidate per district) and why taking the valuable time of people they have to spend on voting booths when it all can be made by acclamation?
Then you have such success stories as 98% voting participation in my old country a mere quarter a century ago. A clear indication how voting rights were expanded!
/sarc
…and when they talk about the environment, Kochevnik, they mean the environment broadly, as in everything that exists in three dimensions (or four, counting ‘time’). The mass-less abstraction known as ‘your thoughts’ they don’t include in ‘the environment’, as they haven’t yet found a way to reliably program your thoughts, other than the ‘no man, no problem’ shortcut, which will forever be the blackheart of the 20th century.
Kochevnik, parliamentary system is not the panacea. The idea that in US are only two (major) parties is not really the case. They are de facto coalitions that reflect often a shifting political landscape–one party or another grabs most of the center (or not) on occasion.
The “theocratic” segment of the Republican party is a minority, and insignificant at that. I can’t say that about the “corporatist” segment of the Democrats–currently major segment of their base as the political power goes. Just scan the donations to DNC and it would become crystal clear.
Why corporatists are so enamored with leftism? If you what to create a monopoly, what would be a better system than socialism? All the headaches of competition would disappear, and what is the better system to lock the power elite in perpetuity? With the feel good facade to boot?
Yea, buddy, you know that VHEMT is funded by Tide (=Soros)?
“kochevnik” is nothing but a troll, interested in nothing but saying ridiculously outrageous things, picking fights, and hurling insults about “manhood” to try and make posters pay attention to him. He will go away if he doesn’t get enough attention.
Twobyfour,
When we have the time to read a little at the website you linked (“Voluntary Human Extinction Movement”) we find they are not so much hiring out their services to dispose of nominees (like the MOB) as they are advocating self-denial in the matter of reproduction.
They’re actually a little behind the times. Evidently they’re unaware that the entire EU already subscribes to their philosophy.
Kochevnik, I’ve been a little perplexed about certain mysteries of history but now that I understand that the Jesuits were behind the nuking of Japan it’s all clear. In the words of Mr. Dylan, you need a dump truck to unload your head. What a psychotic rant that last one was. Take your meds, Napoleon.
2x/165; killers with a facade. nauseating bastards –
I don’t buy it. The establishment democrat machine will never give up the tremendous advantage they have with the mainstream media.
Buddy, I made a new fiend there :
The idiot, there, accuses me to be a FSB agent http://tinyurl.com/y5ypwdz
check the referrence he is basing on for saying that the polish plane crash must be a Putin coup, and he has a radio and a paper, poor America, lost by conspiracists http://tinyurl.com/y3dqok8
I told him i would advertize his cabbage sheet
MC, bare the FSB agent thingy, your insistence that “there is nothing to see here, move along” is a form of a self-imposed blindness.
There are things that raise a red flag. Until more data comes out, one should not jump to conclusions. See, Katyn 1940 was a “conspiracy” once too.
Answer this question: Did Pooty benefit from the accident?
Yes/No
(It does not mean that he staged the accident, but he should have immediately transferred the investigation to independent international outlets. He did not and thus he is fueling the alternate explanations)
Dear Kochmoonbat,
You are White Noise…You are, In Between Stations…Obfuscator Extraordinaire. Gobbledegook Nightmare.
Let’s talk about the Egyptians, for a moment, shall we?
The pharoahs ALL dressed and acted like women..Were married to their sisters or daughters…Were thought of as Gods…Went extinct because of inbreeding…Tut, being the last…Two CHOICES were mummified in Tut’s tomb.
In 1899, Churchill wrote, Mohammadenism is as dangerous in a man, as hydrophobia is in a dog. This was 18 years before the Satanic Revolution.
The love of bureaucracy is very Leftist and hence “correct”. Who said this? “Account must be taken of every single article, every pound of grain, because what socialism implies above all is keeping account of everything”. It was V.I. Lenin
Basically, Leftists are Anal Retentives, on steroids…You cannot count the beans too many times, and you NEVER are satisfied with the final tally.
One of you little flakes quoted Anakin Skywalker, to me once.
East Timor? Big Tobacco, Big Oil, Big Pharma…The answer? BIG EFFING MONOLITHIC GOVERNMENT!
You are schizophrenic, paranoid, narcissistic, hysterical and anti-social, on your BEST DAY!
You probably have more than 15 points over me on your IQ. BFD! I can see you walking outside with one hiking boot and a Birkenstock on the other foot…
“There are things that raise a red flag” and what are they apart suppositions?
if the named suspect had not the adequat profil, you could agree on the analyse of the objective facts.
Why would Putin repeat Katyn, just when he had acknowledged it and apologize for it.
And that was the very act ment to warm Poland and Russia relations.
Seems that if he had wanted to make another Katyn, his reputation, and Russia’s would be definitly ruined, and surely he wouldn’t be able to get any benefit from it. Then, do you think that the Poles are such dumb idiot for not seing that Putin tricked them once more ?
And Putin might loose these forecasted warmer relations, if by the opportunist accident, and by the return of the veneration for the Kaczynski brothers that followed the tragedy, the 2nd brother could win the next presidential elections, when all the political analysts saw Donald Tusk as the winner.
but he should have immediately transferred the investigation to independent international outlets. He did not and thus he is fueling the alternate explanations
It is ignoriring the international laws for aviation : when a Y plane crash happens in a X country, the legal uses make that only the X country is acknowledged as the authorised one to investigate. As far as I know Putin (knowing the conspiracies) allowed a polish delegation to work with the russian team.
if you remember Lokerbie crash, only the Scottish investigators work on it to the damn of the Americans, also the last Airbus crash between Rio and Paris, only the Brazilian investigators work on it, also to the damn of the French, that wanted that the plane that was looking for corpses and remains could fly longer, when the Brazilians decided that they had past enough time and spend enough money on researches.
D’ya know, I didn’t even know all these rules before, though as the “conspiracy” look too evident for being true, I made the effort to search on the right places, where pilots discussed of the plane crash and analysed the plane trajectory, comparing each given facts and witnesses, with the equipment of the airport and the aeras.
Anyway, the guy above, if you’ve read his source for infos (2nd link), isn’t a journalist but a joke
http://www.largeur.com/?p=3124
I am definitly ashamed of our arrogant and unuseful EU elite, they didn’t bother to attend the President of Poland funerals, while, t’em, the Russians were
http://wyborcza.pl/duzy_kadr/1,97904,7789948,Spotkania_na_Wawelu.html
Kochevnik, there is not enough gold on the planet to fill a football stadium, and the land for DC was donated by Virginia and Maryland. The State Department was filled with Communist spies, not some kind of Jesuit conspiracy.
If the Holocaust were a Vatican plot, why were so many Catholic priests among the victims? No, the SS was not the Sedes Sacrorum, but the Schutzstaffel.
Islam had nothing to do with Constantine, nor the Roman Empire at all. Islam arose after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and it formed outside the Byzantine Empire, and it was the perennial enemy of Byzantium. Islam isn’t even Abrahamic; that’s just a lie propagated by Muslims and repeated by people who don’t know any better. Muslims don’t worship the God of Abraham; they worship the moon demon, Sin, known in their language as Allah.
Lastly, man is inherently evil, so every effort by man to control his own destiny ends in destruction. You know nothing of human nature, and you know nothing of biology, either! Brain size has little to do with intelligence. Indeed, a large brain can be a liability due to its size.
153. kochevnik One should look for the common thread. Islam and christianity are simply the new Roman empire now divided against itself. Only when fascist monotheism is stamped out will there be lasting peace. Religion should be relegated to mental institutions and perhaps apes when they learn to talk. The rise of religion coincides with man’s brain shrinking 33% in ten millenia. It is no joke that religion causes stupidity.
Conservatism is simply the application of monotheistic theocracy.
.
. . . . . . CUCKOO…CUCKOO…CUCKOO!!!
.
Right Wing Realist…Thanks for posting Kolchack’s Lunacy. Kolchack(Night Stalker..Darren McGavin) is the type of throwback, who manned the guillotines, or just loved nailing Christians to crosses.
I’m usually put off by people putting up scripture, because it always seems to be about forgving EVIL…See if you can pick out anybody from Paul’s letter to the Romans, a few years after they crucified Jesus…Romans 1;
God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper,
29being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are (AZ)gossips,
30slanderers, (BA)haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, (BB)disobedient to parents,
31without understanding, untrustworthy, (BC)unloving, unmerciful;
32and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of (BD)death, they not only do the same, but also (BE)give hearty approval to those who practice them.
Blood slurping Communists have butchered about 300,000,000 INNOCENT people, for FUN! This is not including the 50,000,000 our Femarxist sisters have CHOSEN to flush…
The Crusades were to WIN BACK the land that the Muslimes conquered, and the Inquisition, killed about 5000, give or take, in a span of about 300 years..
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE1.HTM
Just to give perspective on this incredible murder by government, if all these bodies were laid head to toe, with the average height being 5′, then they would circle the earth ten times. Also, this democide murdered 6 times more people than died in combat in all the foreign and internal wars of the century. Finally, given popular estimates of the dead in a major nuclear war, this total democide is as though such a war did occur, but with its dead spread over a century.
MC, i luvs ya dearly but twoby in 172 has a big point –you’re stating your beliefs, in regards to the accident, as fact-based, when, like everybody else’s they are intuition-based and only fact-directed. It makes you sound a little bit as though you are ‘taking a position’ on the matter. This is what the ‘red flag’ means –not a commie flag, but like a check mark the IRS uses to note information which needs closer reading. search [ irs red flag ] –
if that don’t make sense it cuz i jus got back frum Denver
http://www.kdvr.com/news/kdvr-420-smokeout-pg,0,2886834.photogallery
Buddy, might be, but I’m not relying only on them, I’m keeping my mind alerted on new facts, so far the Smolensk guy has given the most interesting explanations, and he’s keeping on writing articles (at the moment 4, click on the right side to watch them)
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=pl&ie=UTF-8&sl=ru&tl=en&u=http://smolensk.ws/blog/168.html&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.pl&twu=1
so you are fond of “rave” parties ? (ie Denver)