Alexis de Tocqueville, author of Democracy in America wrote that “the greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults”. De Tocqueville wrote at a time when faults, as in broken wagon wheels or barn roofs, were meant to be repaired. But Wallis Warfield Simpson, whose occupation is listed as socialite, captured the concerns of those for whom the word ‘malfunction’ meant ‘wardrobe malfunction’. She said of a her world, which was devoted to the perfection of leisure, “you can never be too rich or too thin.” And she might have added this advice for politicians, given the fate which befell the Duke, that you can never be too publicly virtuous.
Michael Totten, writing in Commentary, contrasts the lack of controversy over President Obama’s “recent decision to green-light the targeted killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen hiding in Yemen” with recent the outrage over detaining enemy combatants in Guantanamo Bay. Why the indifference at killing after the froth over mere imprisonment? David Cole of the Nation put it another way: “In our peculiar post-9/11 world, it is apparently less controversial to kill a suspect in cold blood than to hold him in preventive detention.” There is nothing peculiar about it. It simply follows. As Sherlock Holmes once said, “when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”.
Cole to his credit, understands the absurdity of a human rights policy that prefers blasting someone to smithereens over detaining them in tropical Cuba. His answer to the dilemma is simple: do neither. And that way you will neither have to commit the crime of killing the enemy nor the inhumanity of taking them prisoner. Totten thinks that Cole may somehow have missed the point:
Cole is quite right that detaining an enemy combatant for the duration is a lesser step than zotting him from the heavens. That would be true no matter how long the conflict grinds on. Even life imprisonment beats the pants off the battlefield equivalent of capital punishment, at least for most people. Imprisonment with the real possibility of being set free beats both.
Maybe I’m reading him wrong, but he seems to be suggesting the U.S. should restrict, if not outright ban, both the targeted killing and indefinite detention of terrorists. There are reasonable suggestions out there for how we could do both slightly differently and a little more ethically, and citizens in democratic societies should always debate these kinds of questions, but a sharp curtailment or prohibition of both would be ludicrous, especially while tens of thousands of our soldiers are deployed in war zones and some unknown but appreciable number of terrorists still plan to wreak havoc.
It is well that Sherlock never met the modern liberal. They would have an answer to his dilemmas. “When you are trapped by the impossible, change the terms of reference. There is no problem so intractable that you can’t parse your way out of it.” The fact that Cole’s prescriptions won’t work can always be explained away by asking what “won’t work” is. That would probably bother de Tocqueville. Whether it might worry Wallis Warfield Simpson is debatable. The American ability to solve problems, according to de Tocqueville, was rooted in their ‘addiction’ to “practical rather than theoretical science”, which in turn arose from its turbulent democracy rather than from the fixed ideas of an aristocracy “in repose”. Americans of de Tocqueville’s period were more interested in pins than how many angels could be made dance on the head of a given one. He contrasted the American attitude to mandarin-ridden China in which forms were more important to elite than the function. Thus, a mandarin might worry whether it was humane to take an enemy prisoner, but an American of the period might worry about winning the war. De Tocqueville described the difference between the practical thinker and the devotee of the fixed idea thus:
All that I mean to say is this:—permanent inequality of conditions leads men to confine themselves to the arrogant and sterile research of abstract truths; whilst the social condition and the institutions of democracy prepare them to seek the immediate and useful practical results of the sciences. … The Chinese, in following the track of their forefathers, had forgotten the reasons by which the latter had been guided. They still used the formula, without asking for its meaning: they retained the instrument, but they no longer possessed the art of altering or renewing it.
In a world of perfect mandarin ideas failure is the outcome of not having tried the known solution hard enough. This is an appoach which solves problems by adding constraints rather than degrees of freedom. Michael Totten calls this campaign for perfection “lobbying for the impossible”. And why not? If doorways are opened by bashing your head against them then the key to a locked vault is a running start leading with your noggin. President Obama recently flew to Los Angeles to raise money for the faltering campaign of Barbara Boxer. He acknowledged that while his programs had proved unpopular it was only because they needed time to work. One more double-down and the impossible would be attainable.
Mr. Obama acknowledged the public discontent with his presidency but cast it as impatience for change that he saw in letters from everyday Americans every day.
“Nothing is more heartbreaking than reading these letters and knowing that change is not coming as fast as we’d like,” he told supporters. “But here is the main message that I have for all of you: change is coming.”
When “change” is based on pre-conception it is limited by the information content of the original vision. It’s stuck in its immutable roots. Therefore ‘public discontent’ is not treated as new information or useful feedback, but a hindrance at best and sedition at worst. Just up the ante, double the bet and all will be well. Yet as de Tocqueville pointed out, this monomanaical behavior was a substitute rather than a product of real thinking. In decadent public policy, Tocqueville wrote, “the source of human knowledge was all but dry; and though the stream still ran on, it could neither swell its waters nor alter its channel.” Really alarming thing about modern political culture is the disconnection between the means and the ends: the solution to debt is more debt; the answer to terrorism is to define it out the policy lexicon; the way forward in the Middle East is to get Israel to make more concessions.
That’s because the link between cause and effect has been broken and we are left with only the forms. It’s the same dog with a different collar. But what a collar, such diamonds, such rubies! That counts for something in a world where you can never be too rich or too thin.
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I’m sure it has occurred to others that killing someone by missile from a drone is a bit like buying meat in plastic wrap in a supermarket.
Animal? What animal? Slaughterhouse? Huh? What’s that got to do with dinner?
That combined with the Oops! Too late to campaign about the injustice to poor Ahmed. He’s gone and the circus has moved on.
It takes intellectuals awhile to get a head of steam up about their issue du jour. Meanwhile off in the mulga another Ahmed bites the dust. Not newsworthy. There was no one there to take pics or idolize the survivors.
Somewhere a lawyer, probably from the ACLU is working on the issue. It’s working too well for them to allow it to continue.
But the technology has gone rampant and the ditherers and other intellectulaoids can’t keep up with it. The human body radar signature was yesterday. There’s much more in the chute and the ponderers just aren’t in the race. It’s beyond their wildest imagination and their convoluted processes are wallowing in the wake.
On one level it’s like a Monty Python skit.
failure is the outcome of not having tried the known solution hard enough
In the Soviet military plans, elaborate and detailed, arrived from Staff at HQ. Junior officers in the field were judged by their effort expended in executing the plan. Contrast this with the American military in which goals are determined and their achievement is left to the ingenuity of the local unit. In WW-II Naval Aviation had the motto “When in danger or in doubt, turn in circles scream and shout.” That was because the immediate problem, being lost, was not foreseeable and any improvised activity to solve it was justified, or in the case of breaking radio silence defensible. The Soviet equivalent would have been “When in danger or in doubt keep flying until out of gas.” Junior officers in trouble could expect messages from HQ demanding more “activity.” Sometimes more effort expended on a plan overtaken by events is just what you don’t need.
Michael Ledeen popularized the phrase “Faster please” that Glenn Reynolds and others use to showcase real change. Real change is not dragging the world into a Disney portrayal of a sovkhoz circa 1930.
To the true believer a doubter can be challenged the way Adolphe Menjou’s General Broulard challenged Kirk Douglas’ Colonel Dax in Kubrick’s Paths of Glory. Just a little more dash and elan and you could have taken the Anthill.
I’m sure it has occurred to others that killing someone by missile from a drone is a bit like buying meat in plastic wrap in a supermarket.
Since you’ve mentioned meat it may be a good time to raise the subject of Sacred Cows. The reason mandarin China was so sterile was the implicit condition that all problems had to be solved by mandarins. In the modern age any solution to a problem can be put forward, so long as the solution involves Washington. This implicit condition means you are stuck with bureaucratic repertoire, which may play Rock Around the Clock on all occasions, both funerary and celebratory.
De Tocqueville observed that it was alright to have rich people in a democracy, so long as they were replaced by a different batch of rich people in the next generation. A certain amount of flux and mobility are necessary for creativity. The price of a practical solution is the acceptance of winners and losers alongside the promise there’ll be a next round. The ossification of public policy into a trajectory where new solutions are simply more grandiose versions of old failures is the result of a parallel ossification in political classes. If change were genuine then you could imagine a situation where a department might be there in one generation and gone the next.
In software the problem of dealing with objects which have served their purpose is solved by garbage collection routines. You write destructors in code to prevent your app from being overrun by all these zombie objects. Maybe the government ought have a similar destructor function built into the model. Perhaps Congress should devote a third of its session hours to simply taking laws off the books. But the tendency is to add more restrictions rather than to to create avenues for opportunity.
I get the feeling the President ain’t reading all his mail.
Form beats function for the left. Their vision of the future takes the form of them running everything (the ruin will be blamed on others). If the current form don’t conform to the vision, then it is bad — no matter how well it functions. In fact, making it function less well — even downright horribly — is how they want the form to preform when they ain’t in charge — so they can hoot and holler about it and claim they’ll do better for you (not themselves).
Once they are in charge of all the forms (and you are filling them out), then what small minds call “successful functioning” is no longer important. What is important is getting more resources (so if you could hurry-up and fill out those forms and pay your taxes and fees and bribes and get back to work, it would be appreciated).
Question: What if the Fed Govt eliminated political correctness as it has terrorism from our lexicon would this change anything? We are still fighting terrorist but would we still have or need all the government programs that support political correctness?
Then Alexander subdued the Pisidians who made headway against him, and conquered the Phrygians, at whose chief city, Gordium, which is said to be the seat of the ancient Midas, he saw the famous chariot fastened with cords made of the rind of the cornel-tree, which whosoever should untie, the inhabitants had a tradition, that for him was reserved the empire of the world. Most tell the story that Alexander finding himself unable to untie the knot, the ends of which were secretly twisted round and folded up within it, cut it asunder with his sword. But his personal scribe Aristobulus tells us it was easy for him to undo it, by only pulling the pin out of the pole, to which the yoke was tied, and afterwards drawing off the yoke itself from below.
How about the absurdity of gnashing one’s teeth over hundreds held at Guantanamo, and ignoring as irrelevant the tens of thousands held for years on the very same island?
And LOTM, as you speak of Soviet doctrine here, I cannot help but remember the somewhat relevant event of Operation RYAN, as revealed to Thatcher and Reagan (to their horror) by defector Oleg Gordievsky.
Namely, Mr. Andropov became convinced that Reagan was about to lauch nuclear war, so he put out orders to his KGB (his, absolutely) to gather the evidence to prove it. Once those orders went out, what do you think happened to agents who then reported either “nothing to report here”, or “hey, here’s some evidence that your premise is not correct”? Assuming those agents remained in place, what do you think happened in their reporting once they were firmly shown the error of their ways, the risks (career, at minimum) of continuing such reports, and the benefits of, shall we say, instead providing a rather different bent to their reporting.
Thus, every British bridge being repaired (so tanks and missiles could cross), every new blood drive, every agricultural slaughter (meat for the troops, of course), every defence related office with a light bulb burning at 3am, became obvious evidence of Reagan’s coming inevitable war, forcing the Soviets to ratchet up their end ever higher.
Just an example of how this kind of snowballing thinking can send us all rocketing to catastrophe.
Talk about “doubling the bet”!
A/7; the story i heard was that the whole situation was being mapped on a giant perspex checkerboard, where the standing order was, once every square was checked off, it was “Launch” –and that the thing was very nearly filled when Andropov croaked. probably not true, sounds too crazy.
I don’t know. To me it seems like the solution of the Anwar Al-toasty problem was an example of American ingenuity, an adaptation by our military to the political madness by which we are all increasingly ensnared.
Cole is just a useful idiot. He has an incoherent world view, but one that is grounded in some inverse moral substrate that is consistent but delusional. I suppose he wants a kinder, gentler U.S., one that is more impotent, like the dysfunctional rest of the planet, except . . . No, wait. Those places tend to be as vicious as the day is long. Well, there’s the incoherency.
Obama, meanwhile is a fellow traveler at best, a party member at worst. His approach involves the practicality of a Mussolini or a Stalin. In this case, he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about some poor schmuck overseas. He’s got to focus on furthering Marx’s Darwinian paradigm in which the salt of the earth eat the meat that gives purpose and structure to their lives. Delusional, yes, but as practical as the internal combustion engine.
I have no ethical problem with targeting anyone outside the country that is openly plotting attacks on the US or American citizens. I don’t understand why so many prisoners are still in Gitmo after six, or eight years. These people should have been tried by now with one of three outcomes. Either prison sentence, death, or held as a POW until the end of hostilities be that a week or a century.
I think that lawyers have don’t more damage to the United States than all of the Muslim radicals combined and that political correctness may destroy us all. How can we “feel bad” for women abused by Fundamentalist Muslims and not force them to change? Either they do bad things and they are forced to change or die, or we leave them alone to abuse their women. I don’t think you can reason with them any more than you can reason with a rock.
Back toward the topic. We need to force our government to deal with foreign problems with the understanding that they are to protect Americans and American property, and without nation building or attempting to tell others how to live.
Funny you should mention the “socialite class” wherein “you can never be too rich or too thin.” It sounds an awful lot like pre-Revolution France that de Toqueville certainly had in mind when he studied post-Revolution America. That such a thing exists in modern America would indeed be, if not a surprise, at least a disappointment to the Frenchman.
Also, you hint at something that goes very deeply into what I think is a primary symptom of the illness of modern society: our inability of unwillingness to fix anything that’s broken. Chair broken? It was just cheap WalMart crap, go buy another one. Computer on the fritz? Ah, it was old and slow anyway; better to kill it and put it out of its misery. Not only are we losing the skills our parents and certainly our grandparents had in repairing cars, and clothes, and things around the house. We’re also losing our willingness to even consider repairing them and, even worse, the confidence that we can actually repair our worlds on our own if we so choose. Pothole on your street? Better to file a complaint with the city’s transportation bureau than get some sand and fill it in yourself temporarily.
I think that Cole’s “answer to the dilemma” is based on the same horrifying thing most of the anti-war movement knows quite well. Their personal viewpoint is utterly incapable of dealing with the circumstances, so they just want it all to go away so the can get back to the issues they are more comfortable with, such as whether Brad and Angelina really are breaking up.
And you don’t have to go all the way back to the Mandarins. Early in WWII the Royal Navy was trying to cope with the German dive bombers. There were not enough AA guns available so they were developing alternatives, such as rockets, some of which would tow cables aloft to provide the equivalent of instant barrage balloons. One day a scientist who had been looking the various approaches sat down with the senior RN officer in charge of ship air defenses and explained the alternatives. After a couple of hours of discussion the RN officer said “I say, I wonder if you can explain to me just what is this dive bombing you have been talking about?” And that might explain why the RN AA defenses were so inadequate.
One day Obama might sit down with his advisors and say “I say, can anyone explain to me just what are these Tea Parties they have been talking about?” And the reality is, no one in the meeting will know, really.
RWE/12; that reminds me of the two overly-formal chess players who sat in deep thought staring at the board for six hours, until one of them looked up and said, “I say, is it YOUR move, or mine?”
Wretchard wrote: That’s because the link between cause and effect has been broken”
It may be worse than that. The link between cause & effect has been re-wired.
For example, within living memories, a teenage girl getting pregnant outside marriage was a catastrophe — for herself. Consequently, most young women were eager to avoid that fate.
Now, especially in Europe, getting pregnant outside marriage is efectively a career choice for a young woman. She is automatically entitled to income & housing, better than she could earn by working — as long as she stays unmarried.
This rewiring was done with the best of intentions. Only a few young women ever get pregnant outside marriage, so why let them suffer? But the consequence of the rewiring has been to encourage teenage pregnancy on a vast scale and destroy much of the basis of society.
The unintended consequences of trying to be nice will be the end of society. Just as the unintended consequence of falsely claiming “torture” is proving to be death from the skies in a foreign land.
There have always been weirdos – people who live separated from reality and for whom the actual consequences of their acts are irrelevant, but this appears to be the first time that weirdos have complete run of the U.S. government.
Over the last 200 years either something has gone terribly wrong with the process of human thought or technological advances have somehow enabled the least capable among us to gain positions of control and influence for which they are singularly unqualified.
I think we have to redo the Enlightenment.
I think that many persons love to debate in the abstract because they are unable to successfully perform in the reality.
One day Obama might sit down with his advisors and say “I say, can anyone explain to me just what are these Tea Parties they have been talking about?” And the reality is, no one in the meeting will know, really.
It is incomprehensible to Obama and his ilk that there are some people who really do want very little from the government. They have spent their entire lives as advocates for Mo Gubmint, surrounded by constituencies made up almost entirely of the government dependent. That’s why they can’t wrap their minds around what the Tea Parties are about. It *must* be astroturf, a GOP sabotage effort, because independent-minded, self-organizing citizens, like unicorns, simply *can’t* exist.
“Bitter clingers” is about the closest Obama comes to recognizing that there is some portion of the population out there who are agin his agenda … but notice that, in his interpretation, the motive must be pathological … racial animus, frustration over collapsed job sectors, religious fanaticism, violent tendencies.
That the pathology might reside in his own head (say, a compeltely Pavlov-ed mentality, “push the agitation lever, get the government cheese … [lather, rinse, repeat]“) is quite literally unthinkable to him.
And that, IMO, will be his downfall. We understand him and his ilk pretty damn well. They understand us not at all.
Fellers, you may be overlooking something. Remember that the Number 1 job of Mandarins was to sow salt in the fields of those who had the effrontery to solve their own problems.
This is the same mindset that those behind the jihadists have. They view themselves as the only ones with the authority to make anything work.
This is the same mindset our domestic problem children have. The rest of us are seditious if we presume we know how to (fill in the blank) and get health care or petroleum or financial security etc without a license
and the express written consent of the (self) annointed.
THEREFORE; In their view of things, detained terrorists
are but misdemeanants who need releasing rather ASAP. These worthies just need a little fine tuning and their subsequent efforts will be on behalf of good progressives.
It is American citizens that are incorrigible and who
should be assasinated.
Cheerful thought, ain’t it?
I don’t think “the best of intentions” and a takeover by “weirdos” quite covers what’s happened. That was my point earlier. The useful idiots have the best of intentions and are weird, for sure, despite being misguided to the point of being out of touch with reality.
But the people who did the rewiring, from Rousseau to Sanger to Zinn, were driven by an antisocial, destructive zeal. Unconscious, perhaps, but as viciously aggressive and hostile as the monster in Alien. They have been working for generations to tear down the prevailing paradigm, have had a lot of help by the passive, silent majority as well as the useful idiots, and it’s going to take a High Noon type moment to save the day at the end.
And Bogie, I’d have to disagree somewhat. I think they underestimate us but understand what they’re dealing with quite well. The attempt to paint the progenitors of the Tea Partiers as a vast right wing conspiracy worked extremely well for Clinton, once he got his McVeigh. If this crew doesn’t get something like that handed to them, they’ll have to manufacture it. And that just might work again.
I didn’t understand any of this discussion. I do worry that someone is calling Lord Obama a hypocrite.
“De Tocqueville observed that it was alright to have rich people in a democracy, so long as they were replaced by a different batch of rich people in the next generation. A certain amount of flux and mobility are necessary for creativity. The price of a practical solution is the acceptance of winners and losers alongside the promise there’ll be a next round. The ossification of public policy into a trajectory where new solutions are simply more grandiose versions of old failures is the result of a parallel ossification in political classes. If change were genuine then you could imagine a situation where a department might be there in one generation and gone the next.”
How does that go?…The definition of insanity?
But when the whole world acts insane (time after time) where does that leave you?
Well, it leaves you with the total responsibility of protecting your family and friends.
Don’t count on there being a “next round”.
Don’t forget that.
Papa Ray
The left does not share conservatives’ obsession with the rule of law. For them, it is about putting power in the hands of the virtuous. They can do whatever they want, because they are good people; targeted killings and indefinite detention by George W. Bush are unspeakably evil, by Barack Obama they are a necessity.
The New Deal- the current government of the United States- is based very much on the idea of a highly educated (Ivy educated) technocratic elite. They are in charge of everything, and if there is any problem it is because they don’t have enough power or control, there is not a set of laws for them to administer, there is not an agency for them to run.
http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/97935/
Don’t miss this one, guyz n galz –
For example, within living memories, a teenage girl getting pregnant outside marriage was a catastrophe — for herself. Consequently, most young women were eager to avoid that fate.
Now, especially in Europe, getting pregnant outside marriage is efectively a career choice for a young woman. She is automatically entitled to income & housing, better than she could earn by working — as long as she stays unmarried.
This rewiring was done with the best of intentions. Only a few young women ever get pregnant outside marriage, so why let them suffer? But the consequence of the rewiring has been to encourage teenage pregnancy on a vast scale and destroy much of the basis of society.
I have had multiple debates over the years with a friend of mine on precisely this issue. Friend’s position is, if bogie wheel is a Christian, then bogie wheel is morally obligated to help the child who results from that unwanted pregnancy.
bogie wheel’s position is:
(1) There’s a BIG difference between locally administered private charity, and bureaucratically administered government welfare; the former is voluntary, gets better results in the cases at hand, and because help is individualized, not institutionalized, there is far less of a chance that it encourages widespread irresponsible behavior.
(2) When government policy and social taboo hold firm on the “get pregnant and you’re on your own” rule, and would-be pregees are highly aware that any help they might get is limited & voluntary (i.e. they are not “entitled” to it), the balance of societal pressure comes down overwhelmingly on the side of discouraging out-of-wedlock pregnancies. “It’s NOT okay, and we as a society are NOT subsidizing it, PERIOD” is a *lot* more firm and clear a message than the muddled message currently sent, “Well, it would be better for you to get married first, but we don’t want anyone to feel condemned, and your baby shouldn’t be punished in any instance, so we’ll give you $$$ to help you along but please don’t think that we want you to make this an ongoing lifestyle.” That kind of idiotic doublespeak pretty much guarantees that the unmarried mother on government assistance IS going to make it a lifestyle. Because she is being “rewarded” for her irresponsible behavior.
(3) The bleeding hearts are all too ready to accuse traditional moralists of being uncaring for any unhappiness of kids who are born out of wedlock in a traditional moral environment. However, those same bleeding hearts refuse to take responsibility for the unhappiness of vastly greater numbers of kids who are born to single moms in a welfare environment.
The truth is, there is no perfect outcome on this … regardless of the societal standards, some girls & young women *will* get pregnant without a husband. But the bleeding hearts childishly refuse to acknowledge this; they refuse to admit that we have only a choice between “lesser suffering” and “greater suffering,” not “suffering” and “no suffering.” They cling to their compassionate desires as signs of their moral superiority, again, refusing to see that they, not the traditional moralists, are the ones directly responsible for the “greater suffering” outcome that we now have.
11. Yokel
“Not only are we losing the skills our parents and certainly our grandparents had in repairing cars, and clothes, and things around the house. We’re also losing our willingness to even consider repairing them and, even worse, the confidence that we can actually repair our worlds on our own if we so choose. “
In the whole you are right, but there are still Americans that pass on to their children skills, attitudes and what my Mama used to tell us:
But even more important than that is the attitude that Millions of Americans still hold and pass on to their children.
That is to take “Personal Responsibility” for your life and your actions.
That life is hard – But it is – what you make of it.
Papa Ray
Buddy #23:
Dick Morris says that Clinton told him that he wanted to get rid of Janet Reno but that she threatened to “tell the truth about Waco” if he fired her.
So what is “the truth about Waco?” It is clear that DOJ went overboard, that the ATF acted like the Gestapo on the first raid with trumped up justification, and the FBI effort amounted to The 3 Stooges Meet Abbot and Costello. But what was Clinton scared of?
“It *must* be astroturf, a GOP sabotage effort, because independent-minded, self-organizing citizens, like unicorns, simply *can’t* exist.”
No, bogie wheel actually they do believe in unicorns and that what is yours should be mine.
But that is just one of the problems but I’m just too busy right now to go into the rest of them.
Papa Ray
One last comment then I’m gone.
16. Hangtown Bob
“I think that many persons love to debate in the abstract because they are unable to successfully perform in the reality.
If I am understanding you correctly, that is exactly what I have been hammering all over the net. It is past time for talking and debating, it is time to get out and –
I hope that people are not only understanding that but making time and plans to get out and get involved personally and to help those that can’t get out or need a push to do so.
Actually I’m doing more than hoping. I’m praying.
Our group has dozens of people out right now, and more in the next months working toward getting conservative voters to vote and making sure that they do.
Get involved, get to work! If not for yourselves…For your children, your grand children and their children.
Papa Ray
And Bogie, I’d have to disagree somewhat. I think they underestimate us but understand what they’re dealing with quite well. The attempt to paint the progenitors of the Tea Partiers as a vast right wing conspiracy worked extremely well for Clinton, once he got his McVeigh. If this crew doesn’t get something like that handed to them, they’ll have to manufacture it. And that just might work again.
Clinton is not exactly the same as Obama IMO. Right hand, left hand, same statist monster, you could argue … but I would say, “right hand, left hand” means they are indeed not the *same* hand. IE they operate differently, and one hand is almost always more dextrous than the other. Clinton, I think, is the more dextrous hand. To the extent that he grew up around any normal people in Arkansas, which he likely did, he knows Jacksonian America exists and is real, i.e. not a GOP construct. I don’t believe Obama ever had any comparable experience. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Jacksonians are completely and utterly alien to him. That he is having great difficulty grasping the existence of Jacksonians, period, means he doesn’t understand what we want and is therefore self-limited (less dextrous than Clinton) in his ability to respond to us. Hence the repeated doubling-down, instead of triangulating. In Obamaworld, *everyone* wants Mo Gubmint. That is all he has ever known. If anybody says they don’t want more government, they can’t possibly be sincere. They are either (1) astroturf mouthpieces for the GOP out to sabotage the DNC agenda, or (2) bitter clingers, and therefore deranged.
The possibility that the administration (either Obama or the Clintons, or some combination thereof) will actively try to McVeigh the Tea Party movement — i.e. go beyond verbal denunciations to action — is real IMO and therefore enormously troubling. The difference is that it is not 1995. Islamic terrorism and economic collapse are wolves howling on the other side of the door, this time around. McVeigh appeared at a time when there was a lot more stability, domestically and internationally. The extremity of his reaction was wildly disproportionate to his grievance, and thus the evil was self-evident to everyone. Even if you hated what happened at Waco, OKC was still disgusting, abhorrent and evil. “What the hell is government doing that warrants THAT?” was the reaction of the broad swath of of Americans.
This time around, the federal government is visibly out of control and is recognized as being such by the majority of Americans. Government is the great destabilizer today … not the Tea Partiers. And I think most non-Tea Partiers (those who aren’t among the 20% rabid lefists, at any rate) recognize this. What is crucial is for the Tea Party movement to continue to refuse being provoked into extremism, but to keep up the pressure nonetheless. Eventually, the tyrants will be the ones who lash out. Because that’s who they are.
Re: Waco. One thing that set off my alarm bells was on the Sunday prior to the assault, “60 Minutes” or a like show did a program on the Branch Davidians which no one had ever heard of. It seemed at the time like information fed from the Clintons to justify the upcoming assault. Was it a grandstand play by the ATF or Clinton trying to demonize the right? One thing we must remember. Don’t judge leftist motive by your own standards. Morally relativist power hungry pols will stop at little to gain said power.
In Mandarin China it was not only the politics that stagnated but the culture also. Poetry had to be in the “proper” form, painting, music, and all forms of the arts. If it was not, the art and the artists were dealt with.
Of course our “Liberal” artists wouldn’t fall into that trap would they?
Since you’ve mentioned meat it may be a good time to raise the subject of Sacred Cows. The reason mandarin China was so sterile was the implicit condition that all problems had to be solved by mandarins.
China needn’t have gone the way of the mandarins. Through the efforts of Admiral Zheng He in the 15th century, China reached out to the world and expanded its horizons. The court eunuchs were the real men of the Chinese elite, but they lost a power struggle to the scholars, who then shut China into isolation, burned Zheng He’s fleet, and even forbade the building od ships with more than two masts. China suffered as a consequence over the intervening centuries.
De Tocqueville observed that it was alright to have rich people in a democracy, so long as they were replaced by a different batch of rich people in the next generation. A certain amount of flux and mobility are necessary for creativity.
Bingo! Excellent point. It has always been the “American way” for the New Rich to supplant or rival the Old Rich. This kept the American socioeconomic system a churning, dynamic stream, and contributed both to our freedom and our growing power. With the kinds of policies falling into place now, it is becoming more difficult to create New Rich in America; we’re running the risk of becoming a stagnant pond, with the established hyper-rich aligning themselves with those in power, whoever they may be, and promoting corporatism and crony capitalism. That’s not America anymore.
“In software the problem of dealing with objects which have served their purpose is solved by garbage collection routines. You write destructors in code to prevent your app from being overrun by all these zombie objects. Maybe the government ought have a similar destructor function built into the model. Perhaps Congress should devote a third of its session hours to simply taking laws off the books. But the tendency is to add more restrictions rather than to to create avenues for opportunity.”
I think the governent if going with the “ignore the increasing server load, resultant errors and increasing latency until the whole thing crashes and a reboot is neccessary” option.
Joke will be on them if we decide to change the operating system to keep it from happening again, though…
Very thoughtful post..thanks. One solution to this “mandarin” problem is better constitutional restraints on our political leaders. We are rapidly approaching the point where there are none.
Points for consideration are modification of the commerce and spending clauses. Another is revision of the 16th amendment to restain taxing authority and regulation. As it stands now, there is no limit on the type of taxes, or use of the tax code for political purposes.
Constitutional amendments are difficult to achieve, but really, what else matters? http://www.hedgehogparty.com
The joke is on us. Cap n’ Trade is coming on April 26. That the unavoidable surge in the cost of electricity may make summer air conditioning, and electrical heating unaffordable to millions of Americans is of little or no consequence. That the purported threat of AGW is based on debunked data fed to unproven computer models is of little or no consequence.
The shutdown of air traffic in Europe has stranded 2.5 million people and has cost at least $1 billion in lost revenue. It turns out that the shutdown was based on a computer model of what might happen rather than the actual dispersal pattern of volcanic ash.
What, me worry?
#26 RWE
As a start, and purely as a theoretical start; if you can get videos of the various network news coverages and specials about the assault on the Branch Davidian compound.
Some things to note:
a) The particular vehicles used to crash into the buildings, the ones with the A-frame hoist on the back. I believe that you will find the acronym CEV involved. A little research will give you the specific mark and model ["M- #"].
b) A little more research will give you operational history, deployments, and plenty of pictures of the field expedient modifications made to it only for use in the field in SE Asia between specific dates, which were removed once outside SE Asia.
c) The same research will give you when it was completely withdrawn from the inventory and replaced in all active and reserve units with a more modern vehicle.
d) One can ponder exactly how BATF got these vehicles, since they were all either scrapped or in mothballs.
e) Detailed examination of those videos on shots of the CEV’s, and comparison with in-action pictures of the same model vehicle as field modified in S.E. Asia might find a commonality of equipment, which was not standard issue.
f) One can then ponder why that particular piece of non-standard equipment was mounted at Waco.
I will note that at the moment of the assault, I was just coming out of a training class, and I happened to watch it on TV with a training specialist friend who was also a trained hostage negotiator. We both agreed that to put it mildly it was as operationally competent as a football bat. I did put the VCR to good use recording all the news coverage that night, and all the network specials I could. [NBC being especially on point] I later went over the details with another colleague who has far more expertise in Army vehicles and their equipment than I do.
Once again, just theoretical, mind you.
As a purely unrelated theoretical train of thought, when analysing the tactics of a force in action, there comes a point when a repeated use of a certain course of action has to be defined as the result of explicit standard doctrine rather than merely a random response to a contingency.
If a force is using a standard doctrine, it is a reasonable response to be prepared to encounter that doctrine until it is shown to have changed.
Once is chance, twice is coincidence, three times is deliberate, planned hostile action.
Subotai Bahadur
http://atimes.com/atimes/Asian_Economy/LB27Dk01.html
I think our gracious host may have something to say about this article, detailing Asian efficiency, organization, new infrastructure (compared to La Guardia or JFK) and even – gasp! – cleanliness in the most teeming cities in the world.
#26 RWE and #30 Trangbang,
Re:Waco,
See this post at Volokh Conspiracy, http://volokh.com/2010/04/19/waco/
Repairing all the old stuff, is “Mandarin” thinking. Get, design, and/or build new stuff is “American” thinking.
Mike @ 40 -
Except when it comes to the Constitution. Nothing more American than that, except perhaps Thanksgiving and 4th of July. Enforcing the Constitution as written would obviate the need to either repair a bunch of old stuff, or design & build new stuff.
BTW, speaking of Volokh, I was on there a couple weeks ago reading a thread on the constitutionality of Obamacare, specifically the individual mandate. I came away grumbling Shakespeare’s remark about lawyers. The intellectual onanism was disgusting. If anything is as plain as day, it is that the Founders wanted a strictly limited federal government (hence the specifically enumerated powers), and that commandeering one-sixth of the national economy takes the federal government so far out of those bounds it surely has Madison et al rolling in their graves. Bickering about the individual mandate, in the context of a piece of legislation that Congress should never have touched to begin with, becomes an exercise in straining a gnat and swallowing a camel. Somebody needs to keep these fracking lawyers away from our Constitution. The Congress and the courts are both drunk with power. WE THE PEOPLE are sovereign in this country.
Dear Watson, said Sherlock, with eyes closed in pain
I’ve had the most damnedable dream
I hope with my heart I not have it again
For the future’s not what it may seem
‘Twas merely your dinner that caused you to fret
Said Watson, the Times on his lap
I’m certain the dream was from something you et
That preceded your uncertain nap
Nay Watson, ‘twas real, just as real as today
I met with a future most dire
A man who threw virtue and honor away
And let out his good name for hire
He called himself liberal, progressive and such
He said there’s no right and no wrong
And those disagreeing were just out of touch
And they’d banished who did not belong
An ugly dream, Holmes, but the question is how
Did the future become so absurd
If true my dear fellow, I’m glad we live now
Where men live by honor and word
Subotai #37: The vehicles in question were originally called “tank retrievers”. They were tow trucks for tanks. They were built on the same platform as the M48 Tank.
As they were powerful enough to handle even the larger M60 Tank, there were no retrievers (that I know of) built on the M60 platform.
However, tank retrievers were everywhere there were Armored Personnel Carriers or heavier.
M48s were eventually scrapped in the late 1980s or early 1990s. Retrievers remained in service for quite some time thereafter and we may still have a few of them operating today. They were “universal”.
Windy Windsock, Sergeant Halfmast and the lovely Connie Rodd used to post frequent updates on their care and feeding. I would not find any variations on accessories to be a significant indicator of anything.
For example, within living memories, a teenage girl getting pregnant outside marriage was a catastrophe — for herself. Consequently, most young women were eager to avoid that fate.
Now, especially in Europe, getting pregnant outside marriage is efectively a career choice for a young woman. She is automatically entitled to income & housing, better than she could earn by working — as long as she stays unmarried.
This rewiring was done with the best of intentions. Only a few young women ever get pregnant outside marriage, so why let them suffer? But the consequence of the rewiring has been to encourage teenage pregnancy on a vast scale and destroy much of the basis of society.
I think the reaction on each side of the Atlantic has been two different varieties of socialism. On the European side, the socialism is obvious.
Yet, a form of socialism also exists in the United States through mandated child support. In theory, the man is supposed to be responsible for his child. In reality, government mandated child support leads to the creation of a bureaucratic apparatus theoretically intended to force a man to pay for his child’s upbringing.
If a woman doesn’t want to pay for raising child, she can legally kill the child. It’s called abortion. If a man doesn’t want to pay for raising that same child, he often tries to convince the mother to kill her child so he won’t get socked with paying child support.
Then, there are the deadbeat dads. What do you do then, especially when the man had been married? Some men will refuse to work at all rather than get taxed for child support. We are dealing with tradeoffs. The present system in the United States requires child support, but in the worst cases women and children get worse than nothing – the hope of getting something while getting nothing more than lame excuses.
Then, there are the prostitutes. If you had to choose, would you rather see a young woman with mouths to feed become a welfare mother or sell sex to men? There are quite a few prostitutes who are proud of being professional criminals rather than feeling degraded by welfare bureaucrats.
Let’s say there’s a divorced woman with three children, a woman who was abandoned because her husband fell in love with another man. If she works, she essentially abandons her children to a babysitter, day care, or latchkey status. If she doesn’t work, she can spend time with her children but gets sneered at for being on welfare. But if she sells sex for a living, she isn’t on welfare and gets to spend time with her children – if the police don’t catch her and take her children away!
Yes, the family is a good idea. I am worried that state intervention ostensibly to support and help families, particularly to “keep them together”, only succeeds in turning the family into an arm of the State.
Is it better to create a vast bureaucratic apparatus to force deadbeat dads to pay child support or is it better to simply give all women a flat stipend in lieu of future child support obligations by men?
Historically, marriage was supposed to be a protection for women against men who take advantage of women and then leave, never to be seen again. Marriage was also a customary institution. I am not so sure the government has any business conferring any special status to married couples at all.
Insofar as a government recognizes marriage, it should be seen as a contract or a partnership, complete with clauses on how the childcare will be paid for. The question remains how far we as a society are willing to go for a government to enforce the terms of a marriage contract.
In previous eras, religious custom imposed the terms of the marriage contract. Yet, in our present age of religious confusion, husbands and wives often don’t comprehend either their partner’s expectations or their own. It’s like a blank contract upon which each person projects his or her fantasy and then feels betrayed when the other person doesn’t live up those unstated fantasies.
We need to consider the importance of men in the lives of children. If a father leaves a family, what other men should the children see around them? If a mother works for a living and the only men her sons see are gangsters, this isn’t much of an improvement over a mother on welfare living where the only men her sons see are gangsters.
Let’s not presume that the American system of social services is any less imposing than Europe’s system. Let’s not let our desire for the ideal family get converted into a government mandate to turn marriage – and family life – into a Procrustean bed.
The level of foolishness is rising to the point where it is strangling western civilization. The West has not experienced ‘war’ for some 3 generations. I think there is a connection between these two facts.
RWE wrote: One day Obama might sit down with his advisors and say “I say, can anyone explain to me just what are these Tea Parties they have been talking about?” And the reality is, no one in the meeting will know, really.
You’ve identified the weakness of the Obama presidency, and done so in a rather humorous way. Kudos!
The Tea Parties are not a prelude to a French revolution, but they underscore the disconnect between the electorate and the ruling aristocracy. The health care fiasco and the looming Cap & Trade nightmare may very well result in people hunting Democrats with dogs. But if my Marie Antoinette “Let them eat cake” allusion is incorrect, what in the name of all that is good could possibly be driving such American Liberal lunacy?
I’m pretty sure Obama is in his own little world – a world way to the left of the majority of America.
So now I’m reading complaints that the EU hasn’t handled the Icelandic volcano “crisis” correctly. Buggered computer model for the ash dispersion, failure to help stranded passenger, and etc. They are prepared to handle a manufactured crisis like AGW but have a problem with a real one.
Energy supplies are getting expensive while they diddle with low efficiency wind, solar, bio-fuel, and etc. Mean while large areas have had a cold winter, low crop yields, and culled cattle herds. It is going to be costly to distribute food from one area to another so let’s get cap and trade going. Western Europe may be facing a rather cold summer and winter due to the volcano and thus have low crop yields.
The real crisises are bearing down and it doesn’t look like the Mandarins can prepare for them. Next oil shortage due to crappy Mid-East policy leading to war.
“Whom the gods will punish they first make mad.”
Alexis@44
Awesome post. Very thought provoking and educational. For those who don’t knnow what Procrustean bed is (like me) here is the definition.
“a standard that is enforced uniformly without regard to individuality.”
Washington is the solution for everything the way Tokyo is the solution for everything in Japan. Michael Lewis (Liar’s Poker) wrote that everything in Japan is run from Tokyo (even though it is hugely at risk from earthquakes) because it allows vastly coordinated mercantilism, screwing over the Average Japanese person to allow an export model, creating “Tokyo Mushrooms” and of course, hereditary elites that never change.
Look at Toyota, again in the hands of a member of the Toyoda family. China is the same way, and has been the same way, see also France and Paris, and mostly England and London.
To “fix” America it will be necessary to make every elite person, poor. This means practically, the destruction of the media empires (including News Corp, Time Warner, ABC-Disney, and more), and the political-economic elite, the Chris Dodds, the Joe Bidens, the Goldman-Sachs, and so on. I don’t see that happening, without a gigantic political struggle. The elite have a counter-move to being pushed out of power: open borders and making America into Mexico Norte.
Juan Cole would be happy if Americans were killed en-masse, so too would America’s Mandarins. Islamists, Al Qaeda, and the like are not the enemies of Cole or the Mandarins. They are ALLIES. Hence the desire to keep them alive and well and free. After all, shortly after 9/11, did not Susan Sontag and Eric Foner and Norman Mailer celebrate the attack and the deaths? Did they not reflexively praise it? Of course they did.
After all, Michael Moore’s complaint was that Al Qaeda killed Blue State rather than Red State Americans. All around the West, the problem is the same: the Mandarins hate the people and want them dead or replaced, and the people are starting to know this and rebel. It seems akin to the desire for Divine Right of Kings, versus Cromwell.
#11 Yokel – the “unwillingness” to fix things is a function of our wealth. Remember (Time x Effort) + Resources = Money, or Money = Resources + (Time x Effort). Everyone makes that calculation in their heads as to whether or not to fix something or replace it. For many it simply isn’t worth the time and effort to fix something when a readily available replacement is “cheap”. Trust me, if our current economic situation continues or deteriorates further you will see the return of the “Handy Man” (And Whiskey, such men will be in high demand, even by your SWPLs) and people will be fixing what they have rather spend precious money on new things they can no longer afford. We are starting to see this occur even as we “speak”.
Personal story: Election Day 2008 saw me with my brother and father down on a deserted beach in deep, deep Mexico. And yes, I was living a Corona commercial. Anyway, this particular fishing/diving trip my father spent much of the time telling my brother and me stories we had never heard before about our grandfather, and how he adapted to the conditions that were the Great Depression. During the Roaring Twenties he had been fairly prosperous and was able to indulge himself with his passion and hobby: pheasant breeding. That passion drove him to buy a chicken ranch in what was then a rural area north of Hollywood. He had breeders brought in from China and Europe and made nice side income selling eggs and chicks to other breeders, was well as pheasants to local restaurants and feathers to hat makers/hobbyists. Then the Depression came. He lost his job and suddenly his hobby became the means to support his family. Not the pheasants, but the chickens that he had kept as a side project, so to speak. The pheasants still went to the restaurants (Hollywood still was humming along) but the chickens and their eggs became the family’s main source of income. But even that wasn’t enough. The only reason my grandfather was able to hold on to the place is because the mortgage wasn’t held by a bank but rather the widow that sold him the ranch. She allowed my grandfather to make payments only on the interest on the mortgage. Not for a few months, not for a year but for seven years! That was the difference between making ends meet or being homeless. Being short on cash meant that everything was reused and fixed when and wherever possible. Luckily, my grandfather was a German immigrant who my great-grandfather had pounded into his head the values of hard-work, thrift and self-reliance. Being one of the “Handy Men” my grandfather decided to “reward” my grandmother during a more “prosperous” period of the Depression with new cabinets in the kitchen. But wood was so precious during this time that before my grandfather cut one piece he made cardboard duplicates; detailed down to the doors and shelves. And according to my father those cardboard duplicates were works of art and craftsmanship. Think of the added time and effort my grandfather made to make sure that not one scrap of wood was wasted. That is how precious cash was back in the 30’s. And that way of thinking permeated in everything my grandfather did during those dark times, and even into when times became better. I remember how he carefully cleaned his paint brushes, wrapping them in newspaper and placing in special drawer. How every nail and screw was recovered. How he would double and triple measure everything before doing anything. How he would not brook any waste whatsoever. The only time I can remember running afoul of my grandfather was when I threw a piece of cardboard into the trash that he thought should be re-used. After receiving a scolding he made me recover it and then put it in a special spot in his garage. My parents, and my aunts, all grew up during the Depression and came of age during WWII. To say they are frugal and thrifty in their ways is an understatement. Some of their experience was past onto my brother and sisters during our upbringing. I to this day have a very hard time throwing anything away. Sadly, my son, as well as nephews and nieces, doesn’t give a second thought to chucking something into the trash. As paraphrase #45 heathermc, “The level of foolishness is rising to the point where it is strangling western civilization. The West has not experienced an economic depression for some 3 generations. I think there is a connection between these two facts.”
#43 Dave
No, not tank retrievers. And this was based on the M-60A1 chassis. M-728 CEV. In Vietnam there was a field modification replacing the coaxial .50 cal. In pictures of the field modification in action in Vietnam, look for a perforated sheet steel barrel shroud, a couple of feet long. And then look at tapes of the raid on Waco.
In checking back, I find that our reference book was wrong on one item. According to what we had, the 728 had been removed from the inventory completely. In fact it still exists, however it was found to have been too slow to keep up with units equipped with the M-1 Abrams, and tended to get deliberately left behind so as not to slow up attacks. Other sources indicate that the BATF got the use of the CEV’s by lying to the army and claiming that they were using them for forced entry into a fortified drug lab complex.
Subotai Bahadur
toad – “They are prepared to handle a manufactured crisis like AGW but have a problem with a real one.”
I blurted out to a small group of guys I didn’t really know yesterday that the government in Brussels better go “fix” that volcano. All of the belly aching about cow farts and they were going to ignore this maleficent act of god? No, they want to dictate my lifestyle because, well, just because.
At work, no time to read the thread, but it seems appropriate here to comment about Obama’s line the other day that “The US is still the only superpower, unfortunately”, or whatever his exact words were.
The idea behind it being (in some part) that it forces us to be the ones to spend blood, money, and style points by being the ones who have to blow up the bad guys. Ewwwie.
CEV Combat Engineering Vehicle… IIRC
Multi-use:
Tow crippled tanks in a hot zone ( lost tracks, etc)
Tow fallen obstacles out of the way in a hot zone ( felled trees )
Pull down dictator’s personal statue
Equipped with a super-winch and a motor-lifting crane…
NOT designed for long-distance towing of disabled tanks.
Normally only deployed in armored engineering formations attached/organic to mechanized units.
——
The whole Waco event was Federally contrived so as to begin an attack on the 2nd Amendment and to reposition Clinton & Crew for the fall elections.
That the Davidians were passive-paranoid waiting for the world to end was manifest. Kooky as they were, they represented a threat level on par with the Amish and Quakers.
What Reno had on Clinton is that the whole thing was ginned up at the WH as Reichstag theatre.
The child carnage caused BC to run away from his off-off-off-way-off broadway production.
The original intent was to hold up the Davidians to scorn conflating doomers-gun toters-and Bible-ists; the perfect straw-targets to run against.
50. Tarnsman
Your grandfather reminds me of my Dad. He almost never threw anything away but stored it neatly and knew were everything was. He was a fixer but not professional about most of it. If he could get it to work or use something on something else to get the desired result he was happy.
He built my bedroom when I was born and it lasted many years until the house was torn down after we sold it. He told me it was totally constructed of used and discarded lumber and materials. You would have never known.
It was the best bedroom a kid could ever have.
He also grew up during the great depression. He made money where he could for himself and later for his self and my Mama. One of the jobs he had for a few months was cleaning the inside of tanks that stored pig guts and such until they were used for other purposes (back then nothing was wasted). He to the day he passed he wouldn’t eat any pork.
He passed on a lot to me, I’m pleased to say. One thing for sure that he and my Mama pounded into my head was -
I have tried to pass that to my kids and grand kids but to varying degrees of success.
Papa Ray
P.S. I would have loved knowing my grand father but he passed when I was only 4 years old.
The warrant said meth lab.
That was a lie.
It also said the Dravidians had parts to make automatic weapons.
That was the truth (the BTAF sole the parts to them)
The meth lab was their excuse for the artillery.
They had Adventist relatives here in Hawaii. The people from Mt. Carmel (sp) are pretty normal.
In California the pursuit of dead-beat dads often leads to ruin all-the-way-around.
1 The judge is normally a woman and sexual impartiality is no part of the process.
2 Not a few situations arose over drug-addiction; in such cases the ex-husband is all too likely to owe child support based on his previous income but now he’s PERMANENTLY financially distressed and unable to ever get back to his previous income.
3 The system expects him to pick up ALL of the skipped payments which must come from after-tax income and the courts do not re-rate downward as a practical matter.
4 The judge normally figures that the deadbeat is a scofflaw and is more than willing to threaten jail time.
5 The ‘Child Support’ that the courts normally pencil up is fat enough in most cases to carry the ex-wife quite a ways.
6 All too often there is no prospect for child visitation: the wife moved out-of-state to prevent it or the ex-husband had to move to where the work is. In such situations, it is very common for the ex-wife to have a succession of boy-friends who never make it to the altar.
—–
By greatly expanding the legal strength of the ex-wife the court load has exploded. Lowering the threshold for escaping the marriage places the burden upon the children and the rest of society.
The consequential impact upon the children in their teen-years raised in an unruled house blooms all over the crime blotter.
Change manufactured to imaginary and it all makes perfect sense. The problem they prepare for only exists as an excuse to implement the solution, it has no independant manifestation. So, the solution always works (or at the very least, works well enough to justify more of the solution).
But real problems require real solutions – the problem exists of it’s own accord and puts solutions (and the mandarins behind them) on the spot for results. Can’t have that.
Subotai/51
re:>”there was a field modification replacing the coaxial .50 cal. In pictures of the field modification in action in Vietnam, look for a perforated sheet steel barrel shroud, a couple of feet long. And then look at tapes of the raid on Waco.”
I’m not certain where this is leading but, speaking theoretically, could it be the replacement of one type of munitions delivery system(.50 cal) with another(suspended particulate regulated by international treaty having known properties incompatible with the stated purpose of its employment in that context)?
Hot Air reports it is Kamikaze Time for Dems.
Scott Brown said Obama is committed to Immigration “Reform” (read: Amnesty and Open Borders) and other reports say he will pick the hardest hard left lunatic he can for the Supreme Court.
Obama and Dems are hoping to fundamentally transform the US into a non-White majority country. Mexico Norte, with a hard-left Supreme Court. All in. The thinking being that while this election can wipe out lots of Dems, “fighting spirit” will prevail by long-term obliterating White voters by a tidal wave of Mexicans as that nation collapses, and we have “instant citizens” who will vote anti-White and thus Democratic.
Obama does not care about the Tea Parties or ordinary people, because he plans to make half of Mexico into Americans. Dem politicos will be out of power for two years, and then the massive new Mexican populace, along with a hard-left Supreme Court, will make Obama and the Dems rulers for life. His wife will run, obviously, after his two terms are up, like Argentina. Then Valerie Jarrett, or David Axelrod, or some other insider.
This is the plan. It will probably succeed.
After all, what can Tea Partiers or Republicans do? Protest? If Democrats are willing to spend two years in a think tank run by Obama, or his Administration, until they run in a non-White majority nation made up of Mexicans, Blacks, etc. then there is no way to stop them.
Congress can vote for whatever they want. A hard-left Supreme Court will validate it. Republicans don’t have the numbers now to stop it and if Blue Dogs are willing to roll the dice on two years in Obama’s Admin or a think tank until they are permanent elected officials, it is all over.
But what else could you expect from a Black President?
Whiskey…
The Emperor as James Buchanan?
Maybe.
It’s the Gonnabee script all-the-way.
PJM is swallowing my posts…
Very hungry….
Heathermc: The level of foolishness is rising to the point where it is strangling western civilization. The West has not experienced ‘war’ for some 3 generations. I think there is a connection between these two facts.
Fifty-eight thousand US dead in Vietnam but that wasn’t a war?
Thirty-six thousand US dead in Korea but that wasn’t a war?
Okay, let’s go with that. There were sixty million dead in the last war the west experienced. That seems pretty foolish to me. There were “only” sixteen million dead a generation before that, less foolish but still pretty foolish.
Re: Waco.
The military vehicles came from Fort Hood, just down the road from Waco in Killeen, TX. There was (is?) a provision in federal law that allowed a way around Posse Comitatus if drugs were involved. The BATF / Federal Marshals told Texas Governor Ma Richards (who was a pretty nasty peice of work and a hard core democrat) that there were drugs involved. Her call was relayed to the nearest military installation – which was Fort Hood, commanded at the time by one Wesley Clark, who was in a dead end last assignment. Clark agreed to send the vehicles which led directly to the murders at Waco. The fact that he also agreed to implement the illegal order tagged him as an instant Clinton General, vaulting him into a succession of high profile jobs including almost starting a shooting war with the Russians over Bosnia a few years later.
Waco was intended to be an anti-gun BATF photo-op scheduled just in time for congressional budget hearings. They were in danger of getting defunded by congress over past abuses and needed to prove their worth. Unfortunately when you try to kick down the door of a group of apocalyptics, demonstrating that the Apocalypse is indeed at hand, they tend to shoot back. And so they did.
Whiskey (60): “This is the plan. It will probably succeed.”
I’d like to be an optimist like Wretchard, but my chips are on a scenario more like what Whiskey describes.
However, there’s another possibility, like the mast breaking on the Ship of Fools. The problem with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money trying to pay for it. And when the money runs out, the whole scheme collapses. And The Collapse can cause all sorts of unpredictable events, whereby things can spin in directions we cannot foresee now. The Ship of Fools might not arrive at the destination where the passengers thought they were going.
well, i, for one – really miss Frank
probably one of the best musicians ever –
along with all the others –
the world is a poorer place without him .
just ask any vegetable
Let’s say there’s a divorced woman with three children, a woman who was abandoned because her husband fell in love with another man.-Alexis (44)
Trouble is, even if this hypothetical woman’s husband fell in love with another woman, she represents less than 2% of all divorced women. Millions and millions of other home wrecking divorced women are hiding behind that hypothetical woman’s skirt. Women initiate from 2/3rds to over 90% of divorces, depending on who’s doing the counting (sociologists or feminists), and women divorce mostly for flight reasons such as “I’ve fallen out of love” or “I want to find myself.”
It’s time to consider father-only custody of children as an antidote to the female-caused (let’s be honest) plague of divorces and out-of-wedlock births in America. No more toleration of deadbeat moms.
uh oh
for the record Alexis, i love to read your posts. now i’m going to take cover.
Just got off the phone with some buds. We were talking about the upcoming efforts of Obama and his hired Congress.
The consensus is that if Immigration is passed that has teeth in it to make millions of illegals citizens (be it after a fine and learning english or what ever other fake hoops they determine).
That going to vote will be just a waste of gas and time because as most can envision, the new “citizens” will vote for the democrats and of course Obama.
And in case you have fallen for that fake number that they came up with about five years ago of them being “12 million illegals in America”, the latest guesstimates are between 20 and 25 million at the very least.
Then to make the destruction complete if Cap and Tax passes and the energy prices shoot through the roof (as we all know they will) millions of Americans won’t be able to afford heating and/or air conditioning plus many other “unintended consequences”.
This will lead to a very pissed off population especially when peoples kids are suffering and old people being found dead of freezing weather or dying of heat exhaustion.
Would or could that be like the point in the battle of Lexington and Concord, where the British fired on and killed American Provincials and burned homes and business, looted and drove women and children before them?
Thereby turning the average dis-interested or at least neutral feeling Colonist into a soldier for the Revolution.
If that is what happens, that unintended consequence might be the end of deciding things by vote. But then if they know this will happen, then the democrats and Obama’s mob must have another follow up plan that is even more terrible.
Your guess is as good as anyone elses.
Papa Ray
They do have a plan. Bill Ayers had discussed exterminating about 25 million, White middle class Americans. As the price paid for his Marxist utopia run by his elite. Obama I am sure would be happy with that. As would, let us be honest, most of the new non-White majority.
The only question would be, would the US military, go along with a plan to construct concentration camps as Bill Ayers suggested, or would they mutiny and fight?
You would think that it being already April, Obama and Dems would want to campaign. Yet the economy is only getting worse, and their aim is a bailout bill that allows the President to take control of ANY COMPANY WHATSOEVER without ANY oversight, and run it personally. News Corp, Apple Computer, Google, any of them. Then there is Immigration “reform” and making about 50 million Mexicans instant citizens. In a deep recession. A huge fight with the Republicans over a radical Supreme Court. Cap and Trade.
Obama has a plan. One man, one vote, one time. What else could you expect?
I am presently working my way through Jacques Barzun’s great work “From Dawn To Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life.” (“Working” really isn’t a precise description, since Barzun is a pleasure to read; however, he’s not exactly beach reading.) Barzun makes many of the same points Wretchard does: we are in a decadent era, not because we lack energy, but because basic common sense is ignored and derided and so, as Richard puts it. the link between cause and effect has been broken.
From Roger Kimball’s review of “From Dawn to Decadence”: “Mr. Barzun is right that “When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent.” But futility and absurdity only seem normal to a damaged sensibility. That damage has been wrought by a progressive loss of resistence to humbug. One then becomes susceptible to all manner of cultural viruses. This lowered resistence has affected critics, teachers, and connoisseurs; it has led to a situation in which scholarship is “the pretentious garbed in the unintelligible.” It has also affected the public at large, whose healthy rejection of absurdity one used to be able to count on. No more.”
Barzun notes that we live in a time of cultural sterility, but is cautiously optimistic (“From Dawn to Decadence” was published in 2000). Sooner or later, he says, Western society will remember the now forgotten lessons of the past and will renew itself. The cynic in me says it is easy for Barzun to be optimistic; he is now an astounding 102 years old (imagine: this is a man who remembers German artillery assaults on Paris during WWI and can recall conversations with his grandmother, a lady born in 1830, about Parisian society of the 19th century) and it’s doubtful he’ll be around to witness the crash. But the Church tells me despair is a sin and I find Barzun’s guarded optimism (not the foolish optimism of the leftists who believe a nanny-state Utopia lies somewhere over the rainbow) more congenial than the dark pessimism of many conservatives. 2 + 2 will not equal 5 forever, no matter how many pols, media dolts and fashionable sophists will continue to tell us so; the awakening will be painful, more painful than Barzun, writing in the 1990′s could foresee, but it will come.
Micha Eyli: Remember the film “Kramer vs. Kramer?” I was a liberal when it came out and yet, as the product of a reasonably content two-parent family, I was appalled by the Meryl Streep character, who abandoned her husband and son to go to California and “find herself.” The film showed the husband and son learning to cope with the absence of mom, who then returns and sues for custody. From what I remember, though, the mother was not presented as an unsympathetic character; while her desire for “self-actualization” temporarily hurt and inconvenienced her family (who had to figure out how to make French toast without her), all was well in the end and she was able to return to the all-important business of “finding herself” – yet another boomer cant phrase – without guilt feelings, ’cause daddy was holding the fort down just fine. A man who abandoned his family to go “find himself” would have been (rightly) portrayed as a selfish heel.
Only somewhat off-topic, since it relates to the current administration’s blind-spot of foreign policy (Russian, specifically).
I would like to provide some bits of information I have seen missing on the Kyrgyz situation.
First, as reported by some analysts, the setup has in fact very much been like this:
A bit over a year ago the US was looking to build a counterterrorism base in the southern Kyrgyz Republic (KR), around Batken perhaps. Russia also had floated with President Bakiev their own plans for a similar thing. Why do both parties want this? The south is the Ferghana valley–the populous breadbasket of Central Asia and astride smuggling routes up from South Asia. It’s also the only “hothouse” of Islamic fundamentalism in the region and a source of fighters for the Afghan conflict AND Caucuses. So–Russia gets irritated with the US at this obvious strategic escalation and cuts a deal with Bakiev: he axes Manas airbase and gets instead a big ($2 billion) loan to finish a hydro plant idle since 1991, plus “development money” to be channeled into fixing KR economic issues. The Russian media propaganda arm dutifully aired a variety of anti-US base material, which was helped by the shooting of a Kyrgyz truck-driver by a hapless gate guard.
Predictably, Bakiev takes the first tranche and it vanishes into the Great 2009 Government Reorganization, ending up I think under the control of a new development oversight agency (abbreviated CADII)–headed by the widely loathed Maxim Bakiev (son). Furthermore, Bakiev goes the US and renegotiates. He thinks he understands the deal. Sadly, the US–despite the admin being from Chicago–balks at effectively shoveling money into suitcases for Bakiev, and allocated the “extra” funds into development budgets, which irritates Bakiev. Maxim arrived in Washington around April 7th for “investment” meetings, and to point out that his suitcases were *still* empty….
Putin, needless to say, has NOT been amused at having its backyard despots fail to stay bought. Russia responds by freezing further funding disbursements due to “failure to properly allocate and control” initial payments, and over a series of months begins meeting with opposition figures. Once news of Maxim’s trip comes out, however, the gloves go off: in late March the Russian news channels start broadcasting a series of extremely negative (and likely true) exposes on Bakiev and his family/clan (8 brothers, by the way), that the President can’t block. He already began cracking down on opposition protests, leaders of which had already signaled they were going to start something bigger (“the revolution starts Wednesday”–said the weekend before).
On April 7, morning, several opposition leaders get back from Moscow and are immediately arrested in the airport, where they declare while being dragged off that they “don’t know what they’re doing–Russia is backing us!” The opposition quickly begins protests for their release in Talas and Naryn (northern cities), and to a lesser extent in Bishkek. Very soon both Talas and Naryn municipal governments stop functioning, and around noon protests in Bishkek reach “large” size. Results are all over Youtube, but check http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0F7m2z7sy0&feature=related in particular. Zhanybek Bakiyev, brother and head of state security services, is believed to have ordered use of live ammo (snipers on the rooftops, etc.).
I will not repeat further events that have been widely covered in the media, however what followed on the 7th and 8th especially was a very rapid effort to “not let the crisis go to waste” by organized criminal elements in KR. Widespread seizure of property (businesses, land, houses, cars, etc.) has been ongoing but tapered off in the north somewhat over the weekend. Though Bakiev resigned on Friday and flew out to (presently) Belarus, his family and other southern supporters remain at large in KR and have little interest in stabilizing the country back under the control of the northern (opposition) clans–so the risk of civil war remains, and in a protracted sense is greater now that Bakiev is out of harms way. Bakiev, when he left, took the state treasury with him….
The evening of the 18th, following relative calm in Bishkek, an unknown group attacked a suburb of ethnic Russians and Turkish farmers, in an attempt to seize their houses and fields. Three people died, but as I’m told it was not successful (the public has been banding together for local defense). In response, Medveyev late on the 19th two more planeloads of Spetznaz down to Kant, with orders to “protect Russian civilians”. This brings Russian special forces at Kant to 4 battalions–about 600 troops, and 3 more than normal. See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7vNuNFIJ6Y and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzEP8M7jL88&NR=1 .
Language such as Medveyev’s is interesting (in the Chinese curse sense), because it comes after the casus belli of Georgia regarding mistreatment of “Russian citizens”. These ethnic Russians in KR are not–at present–Russian citizens to be best of my knowledge; though KR does now permit dual citizenship, it does not permit land ownership by foreigners. Also, historically there has been a differentiation by Russians between Russians in Russia and what they consider to be Central Asian Russians (those that emigrated to Russia after independence, or remained in CA). However, Medveyev’s language is consistent with recent Russian Govt moves to open an official government office for ethnic Russians abroad and to project influence in the CIS.
Gehlen would talk now about the “pattern of configuration” of events, and how Russia has exercised the situation to make a real win-win for them: either the new KR government gets its act together and restores order, at which point it owes Russia big for immediate financial support and recognition, or Russia imposes order directly on KR as a failed state.
There are other alternative endings, but one thing is definitely true: the US has been completely and utterly blindsided by events in KR and has no clue what to do. “Head up ass” was the private description by one KZ diplomat, which I think is kind. As an illustration: Russia gives immediate cash of at least $28 million to help the new government keep things running, and US holds–a week and a half later–a *press event* for the handover of $100,000 in “emergency medical supplies”. Also: on the 7th USAID released its next, $30-million, 4-year project announcement for KR work (government and municipalities improvements, etc.).
I could keep going and going like this, and also add in Uzbekistan if readers wish.
–JC
agimarc@65
Clark agreed to send the vehicles which led directly to the murders at Waco. The fact that he also agreed to implement the illegal order tagged him as an instant Clinton General, vaulting him into a succession of high profile jobs including almost starting a shooting war with the Russians over Bosnia a few years later.
It was Kosovo!
Donna V @ 72: imagine: this is a man who remembers German artillery assaults on Paris during WWI and can recall conversations with his grandmother, a lady born in 1830, about Parisian society of the 19th century
Lovely post. And as to that line, amazing indeed. I’m fifty-something, and remember my grandparents’ apartment which preserved something of the 1920s and 1930s, the birth dates of my parents, and that seems forever. I often feel personally as old as Elrond, remembering multiple past ages of the world. And, well, I do, twenty years is a new age of the world these days, arguably ten years, arguably less and less. And little enough of it in a good direction, recently. Surely some revelation is at hand, surely The Singularity is at hand. Hardly are those words out when a vast image out of the Hubble Space Telescope troubles my sight, somewhere in the void of the universe the Earth hurtles towards the event horizon!
#59 tharkun
It was a replacement weapon system. Not particulate matter. You are thinking of the CS gas that was supposedly caused a flashover.
Rather than have the matter revolve around my credibility, I would just have people look at books on the Vietnam War and find pictures of the M-728 in action. Look for the perforated sheet metal barrel shroud on that weapon in use, and look for the news reports/specials about Waco on TV for that same barrel shroud. And ask why that particular field expedient weapon system, which decades before removed, was there.
Subotai Bahadur
77. Subotai Bahadur
I give up.
Why?
Yeah, nice posts Donna V. I’ve written the name of that book down and will buy it.
Only somewhat off-topic, since it relates to the current administration’s blind-spot of foreign policy (Russian, specifically). I would like to provide some bits of information I have seen missing on the Kyrgyz situation.
Thanks JC. I wish we could get other guys to focus on this thread. My guess is that a lot of things are within a caress of happening and it’s saturating the sadly limited engagement cue of the policy makers.
Wow this thread is all over the place. Trouble is, everywhere it goes is interesting.
I’d like to hear about Uzbekistan.
On divorce — I fear for my young sons. Women these days easily hold all the cards & can break your life. Got a neighbor whose wife divorced him, won custody and child support. He’s a plumber and hasn’t been able to find steady work after the bubble popped, so he went to court to get relief on his child support payments. Federal guidelines exist that explain when fathers qualify for such a thing, but only one percent of those who seek it get it. My neighbor got a feminist judge who not only denied his request but upped his payments because he’d gotten behind and she wanted to send a message to deadbeat dads. Now, the man’s been made a practical outlaw and there’s a warrant for his arrest. I’ve seen him twice running out the back and through the woods when the police have pulled up looking for him. I hide, too, because I don’t want to answer their questions and have them make a liar out me. I hope my boys see this, and are taking notes, and are heeding what I tell them about how careful you must be around women, if you must get involved with them emotionally. And then, there’s the harrowing tales of two of their uncles …
On Obama’s latest moves, what he’s got in mind on “immigration” surely is a pill, but before that look out on this financial “reform” package. It does contain langauage that would allow a president to take over any troubled business, not just financial ones. The same loophole that enabled GM and Chrysler to get TARP money is in there. Originally they had it tied to a $50 billion fund, but when the GOP objected to the while idea Obama’s “compromise” was to untie to the fund but leave the loopholes in place. That is, it’s a trick compromise that actually untethers and strengthens the president’s hand over the objection. Dirty stuff, this. Oppose it an you’ll be tarred as being for the Wall Street fat cats, when the effect of it is to codify Too-Big-To-Fail and place any American industy in the crosshairs. Make no mistake, if you give them the power to use this then they will use it.
Here is something for your late night reading.
Guaranteed not to put you to sleep.
nite…
Papa Ray
bob: It’s well worth your time. Barzun makes recommendations throughout the book (“The book to read is:” and then he names some famous or not-so-famous book written during the past 500 years) and he seems to have read absolutely everything. Well, if you live to be over 100, you have the time, I guess. Barzun possesses wisdom, which is a quality many of our elites lack these days. There’s a lot of glibness and snarkiness around, but wisdom is in pretty short supply.
Josh: I was always floored by the fact that my own paternal grandfather was born in 1870 – just 5 years after the end of the Civil War. He died in 1938, the year his native Czechoslovakia was handed over to the Nazis; my father always maintained that grief and worry over his relatives in the “Old Country” had much to do with his worsening health. My father, at age 19, was suddenly responsible for supporting his mother and 3 younger siblings – and he did it, working in a factory and doing farm chores in the evening. Imagine supporting 4 dependents at age 19. Imagine any 19 year old you know doing it now. I can’t.
As has been pointed out from time to time, Clinton used the prolonged distraction of the WACO mess to replace EVERY SINGLE FEDERAL PROSECUTOR that was within his legal authority to appoint or relieve.
Remember that at that time, a huge number of Democratic Reps had been under criminal investigation for their outrageous abuse of the House Bank – kiting checks, writing overdraft checks without repaying the insufficient funds for years at a stretch, et cetera. Activities that would get the rest of us sent to prison for a decade. But Clinton replaced all the former administrations REPUBLICAN prosecutors with his Democratic prosecutors, and suddenly all the investigations were abandoned.
What a Freaking Surprise.
This is the same pres who freed a crowd of convicted terrorist bombers and murderers of police officers to assist his Wife’s senate election, and sold hundreds of pardons and commutations on the last day of his presidency to major drug dealers, Ponzi schemers, embezzlers, con artists, and assorted crooked supporters.
What a prince.
No wonder the Democrats idolize the guy.
Subotai/77
I can assure you I have no problems regarding your credibility… /g
Unfortunately I don’t have ready access to any Vietnam footage showing the modified M-728 you described in action. I searched on Youtube.com in hopes of finding something there, but the footage I found only showed models using the bulldozer blades.
I am stymied. The only other possibility I can think of would be an actual disguised(the sheet metal shroud) flame thrower masquerading as a CS boom delivery system. I noted the metal shroud in some of the Waco footage but not having seen it in use in the Vietnam footage I’m having trouble visualizing what you’re hinting at.
Wretchard: “When “[foreign policy]” is based on pre-conception it is limited by the information content of the original vision.”
I would be reluctant to belabor the point if it were not part of the original post, however the current State Department administration (and those they report to) came to office with a specific world view for their relations with other states, why the world was the way it was as of election, and what they want to do with it. Like the single-minded domestic plan the Obama team is following, no alteration in reality internationally is capable of derailing it or altering the underlying vision (pseudo-reality) of their world.
The State Department itself is overwhelmingly liberal democrat–we know this. Appointment of the new administration locks the organization even more within its ideological blinders, that otherwise were twisted in more useful ways by Bush and Co. If there are any rational (read: conservative) people left in State, they are presently working very hard not to be noticed, in order to survive for another 3 years.
This means that even when something that should impact US policy arrives–such as reality continuing on its own course in various ways despite the election of Obama–it gets filtered out until the ripple of events disturbs an object that IS part of the monitored set. The OODA loop for foreign events is therefore best described with physics and descriptors normally reserved for modeling the Solar System. I’d estimate Russia and its actions (or lack) is perhaps Jupiter. Central Asia is Pluto.
#81 Cowboy “I’d like to hear about Uzbekistan.”
Your wish is granted.
I will, with permission, paste an abbreviated status email a colleague of mine here circulated this morning.
—————
The expanded risk is that disorder will trigger the tinderbox in the Ferghana Valley and engulf the region. In the best of times, UZ [Uzbekistan] is a under immense pressure due to political and economic difficulties caused by Stalinist polices and oppression by Karimov in UZ. With a significant Uzbek population in [Southern] KR due to Stalin’s borders in Central Asian (drawn across ethnic groups, natural transport corridors, and natural resources) so that the countries could never rise and survive independently, there is always a chance revolt can spill over. This was seen in 2005 that led to the Andizhan massacre by the UZ Govt. With an estimated 40-50% of the UZ population employed by the security services, some of these people have been deployed in UZ as a slow of government strength to prevent an uprising, but the expectations are that when Karimov goes, conflicts between competing clans will be violent.
Tajikistan, under pressure, at the western end of the Ferghana Valley could be caught up as well.
A further risk is how the Russian deployment, especially if force is used, is perceived in KR and the wider region. There is a vein of nationalism and rejection of Russian control that flows through the region. Sometimes religious groups can tap into this, but it is also ethnic as used by the current leaders to establish or reinforce national identities after independence (including the reestablishment of historical heroes, renaming of streets, official rejection of the Russian language, and even restrictions on allowable baby names(TJ)).
Hopefully order will be restored and things will improve in the KR, but they haven’t yet.
Foreign policy driven by what countries can do for the US in Afghanistan ignore the issues and problems of host country citizens. If assistance is no more than gifts to those in power, driven by the wishes of corrupt tyrants, fundamental issues on which free and stable societies are build are ignored in favor of whatever current regimes want in geopolitical tradeoffs that are not consistent with the American spirit.
—————-
Monday was the first time in two years that Karimov visited Moscow, and I doubt it was for pleasure and a wreathe at Lenin’s tomb. Uzbekistan represents the next best airfield left, at Karshi-Khanabad, and the DoD has been feeling Karimov up for months on this point (a visit by Petraeus in February was “not about a base”–sure). My imaginary conversation in Moscow starts something like “My dear friend Putin, I may soon be offered several large suitcases of dollars by the Americans, and I do not think I have space under my bed for all of them–would you like a few?” Karimov and Russia have not been that close in recent years, but the old man is far from stupid, and knows when he’s running out of friends.
A large, Central Asian airfield really is critical to the Afghan effort for two reasons:
1) It gives the US a stopping point from either Europe or over the Pole (assuming Russian permission, which will probably be granted–balls in a vice and all that), that bypasses Iranian airspace.
2) It serves as the main staging field for refueling tankers. Without which they will have to fly much, MUCH further before loitering on station. This is, in my opinion, the more critical point.
Russia, at this stage, has completely negated the political capital built up during Bush’s years and any “push” from strong actions following 9/11. It has moved further, in fact, by announcing in the past year–and then rapidly pursuing–a customs union between itself, Belarus and Kazakhstan. Now KR is saying it sees its future in the union as well. This will be interesting, since KR is a WTO member…. Regardless, the Common Economic Space as it’s called is a shell for much larger regional economic cooperation, under the benevolent guidance of Russia, of course.
–JC
Russia, at this stage, has completely negated the political capital built up during Bush’s years and any “push” from strong actions following 9/11. It has moved further, in fact, by announcing in the past year–and then rapidly pursuing–a customs union between itself, Belarus and Kazakhstan. Now KR is saying it sees its future in the union as well. This will be interesting, since KR is a WTO member…. Regardless, the Common Economic Space as it’s called is a shell for much larger regional economic cooperation, under the benevolent guidance of Russia, of course.
Without having much area expertise my uneducated first impression is of a Russia trying to rebuild the old empire on a shoestring, except that that in this case the bricks of the new edifice consist of detonators painstakingly extracted from volatile ordnance.
I have this theory that the present crisis is waiting on the resolution of three things: the demographic timebomb that is now blowing up under the West, Russia, Japan and in a short while, China. The massive movement in relative factors of production to places that are not very stable. The third factor is increasingly expensive energy. These are the drivers of change; the bringers of bankruptcy. Their solution, or at least mastery, is the key to success.
These three things repeat recursively like one of those Escher tile drawings. But of this triad the only factor which can be altered in the relative short run is energy. The human factors are going to be a given in the short run. In a conversation with someone who should know I was shocked to learn how dysfunctional the school system was. It’s almost designed to destroy human potential rather than unlock it; its burning the future for the sake of the salaries of the teacher’s unions. Between the low birthrates — I think someone will soon make the economic argument against abortion, and the anticipatory defense is already that motherhood as involuntary servitude — this plus the destruction of families and the educational system, the damage will take a generation to repair. Human capital is the decisive factor, but it is also the hardest thing to ramp up. So the only way to push economies forward or keep them from stalling is to lower or maintain the price of energy.
Now it seems to my simple minded way of thinking that Russia and to some extent Central and South Asia are deeply influenced by the energy game. Pipelines, oilfields, all that kind of stuff in countries with historical baggage and susceptible in places to radical Islam. And since energy may be volatile then maybe Russia and the region will be volatile. Hence the remark about the bricks of detonators. A lot of unforeseeable events are waiting to happen; some of them bad. If the world went into this perilous house of surprises with a firm leadership and a strong reserve, then ok. But currently the international system has very small margins and is led by an elite who see it as their sacred duty to pare the margins even further, for reasons I am almost ashamed to say, of reflexive fashion.
Anyhow thanks for the update.
tharkun #85: Nope, no flamethrowers day of fire. No need for same. The tank retrievers——okay CEVs—–lobbed cannisters of CS into various parts of the building. When they go “pop” they generate varying degrees of heat. Enough to ignite grass outside or sheetrock debris inside. Additionally the CS particles
themselves can prove flamable.
The CEVs knocked holes in both ends of the building and, in conjunction with the prevailing wind, turned the whole building into a combustion chamber. Once ignition occurred, things burned so rapidly that the majority of inhabitants had no chance to escape. Especially not those women and all the children who huddled in what they thought was a protected position and who suffocated before they could move.
Now was that fire dumb or diabolical? I think both. The majority of participants were (somewhat wilfully) blind to what would occur. Then there was a mind or three well aware of what creates spontaneous combustion
with plausible deniability. Or blame it on the Davidians themselves. While I doubt the official line of mass suicide, there were various and sundry coleman lanterns and cooking fires inside and no doubt these helped things along.
But no flamethrowers.
Wretchard #87: As to the energy portion of the equation: The monetary price of energy is important, but not crucial. The crucial element(s) are adequacy of supply and stability of price.
If, here in the USA, refiners were cut some anti-trust slack, they could issue contracts to buy any and all domestically produced petroleum (and similar refineable products) for $80 to $90 a barrel for the next 30 years. (We’ll throw Mexico and Canada into the deal as well.) That will give us an ongoing surplus that can be exported if anybody else is being squeezed by the barbarians.
Result will be adequacy and stability everywhere. Our price at the pump? Maybe $3.50 a gallon. High enough to inspire conservation but not high enough to bankrupt. Similar conditions elsewhere.
Every so often robber-baron price fixing serves a useful purpose.
Buddy, L3, Eggplant, any other oilpatchers out there:
What say ye?
#87 Wretchard
Now it seems to my simple minded way of thinking that Russia and to some extent Central and South Asia are deeply influenced by the energy game. Pipelines, oilfields, all that kind of stuff in countries with historical baggage and susceptible in places to radical Islam. And since energy may be volatile then maybe Russia and the region will be volatile. Hence the remark about the bricks of detonators. A lot of unforeseeable events are waiting to happen; some of them bad.
—–
I’ll take your “simple mind” over any western analyst in current administration(s) any day.
But, the issues with Russia go deeper. Yes, the time in Central Asia since ’91 is rightfully called the “New Great Game”, and this game is primarily focused on energy supplies rather than lebensraum like the first (Russo-British) time it was played, but to Russian thinking it is still a matter of empire.
Or rather, I should say to Moscow thinking: as Peter Hopkirk explains in early sections of The Great Game, Moscovy developed it’s strength in rebellion to the oppression of the Golden Horde and conflict with Novgorod. In short, it was surrounded. The Russian (later Soviet) empire is Moscow’s empire. All roads lead there, all thought comes from there. And Moscow has a pathological fear of being surrounded by enemies, and need to expand the empire–that’s what makes Moscow’s identity. It’s what it is, and should Moscow ever cease to expand the empire, then it will no longer be “Russia”, and become something else.
The time from the collapse of ’91 to the rise of Putin represents an intake of breath, a relaxing of grasp from exhaustion, a lean against the plow. There were too many things taking the wind out of the Soviet sail, and especially those ruinous economic approaches and demographic issues (that are now more or less resolved). But now, Russia wants/needs to be Russia again, and though it can’t quite get away with rolling the cossacks across the steppe and bouncing local satraps out of their adobe castles, it will reclaim the form of power over what those hovels have become.
This is a trap, as empire always is.
I don’t see the model for this empire as being best represented by a jigsaw of detonators. Instead, imagine a collection of appendages from the morgue, all being sewed back to the beast that owns them–but no-one is bothering to extract the meathooks and chains from which they dangled. They’ll be attached to the body once again, and come to a semblance of greater life than before as new blood is forced through them. But, when these chains trailing off into darkness are pulled taught, either that arm pulls loose in a worse wound, or the whole beast of Gog is pulled, squealing, to the slaughter.
–JC
jeeeez…get behind on these belmont threads and find a hundred new essays, each with a valuable definite well-expressed thesis or proclamation, and then, what, trade two-three hours and read ‘em all, or what?
No Buddy. Just the important ones—-such as #89.
BTW Buddy; Did you just get up or is insomnia running wild again?
Anyway, I am gonna leave the Morning Tower to you.
Past time for me to get some ZZZs.
Since I am at the bottom of the thread I will make it short.
The Big Zero and his mob politics is the disease and time is the Federal Pen is the cure.
Dave, ledger, it’s 5:38 am, what are you guyz doin’ on the internet at this hour? No don’t answer, i’m all out of consternation.
He is just following Stalin’s way. No man, No problem.
@91, As Spock would say to McCoy, “THAT, is the conundrum.” I often find myself in such a dire circumstance. But now that I have my Crackberry! I can follow along on my lunch break. Which has two benefits. 1. It makes me stop for lunch and 2. I usually don’t eat as much because I don’t want to get ketchup on my phone…
Dave/88: The scenario as you described it agrees well with my own long-held understanding of the causative factors involved and of how things transpired. The mystery here now is that Subotai has alluded to an additional new possible element in the mix (theoretically speaking…) which has me completely stumped (which ain’t all that hard to do…/g).
My speculation about a possible concealed flamethrower mechanism was simply a SWAG because I certainly didn’t see it in the video clips I’ve viewed. The CS, in conjunction with the other factors you mentioned, was perfectly sufficient.
It seems there may be compelling reasons he can’t explain it more explicitly (which given his background is completely understandable), so we’ll just have to dig a little deeper to figure it out. Of course, in view of current events we may all soon be far too busy dealing with new conflagrations to have time to devote to “old news”.
JFS/97; did you mean ‘conundrum’ or ‘condiment’?
news –big rig explosion south of NOLA –10 or 12 missing –i think it’s Transocean’s Deepwater Horizon but the CG report is hazy –
“you can never be too rich or too thin.”
larsen/99–a friend of ours is a superintendent on that rig; just got a call from a relative. I’ll post more if I hear.
Thanks Gordon –it’s on a BP job –Deepwater Horizon is a (if not the) top rig in a (if not the) top fleet (Transocean) –it just set ‘the’ world depth record @ over 35K. All those guys do besides drill is train against accidents –
89. Dave
“Buddy, L3, Eggplant, any other oilpatchers out there:”
Well, I drink coffee with several almost every morning, but I’m not in the oil business, I’m in the raising grandkids and fighting (anyway I can) for our Republic business.
But one thing I hear over and over (besides “Drill Baby Drill”), is that we need at least two new refinerys.
They (the refinerys) should have started construction about ten years ago at least. Refinerys are complex and expensive to build and nobody of course wants them in their back yard and construction would take over five years and possibly ten depending on those nasty government regulations, rules, specifications and such.
Right now almost all the tanks in the US are full and there are even tankers sitting waiting to be unloaded but with the oil no place to be unloaded to, because we just do not have the refining capacity we need. In the last year this has been further degraded by a couple of accidents at our refinerys. Repairs have been completed but it has been a problem for several months.
Another thing always discussed at coffee with those that work in the Oilpatch is those nasty government regulations. Never have I ever heard a good word about them. The conversations salted with West Texas expletives can’t be repeated here on BC.
OPEC is discussed like the rich old uncle who likes child porn. Nobody thinks much of it (them) and most have nothing good to say about them or their pimps in Congress and the EU. Not to even bring up Iran or Iraq (although many have bitched about the Chinese and others (not the U.S.) getting in on the ground floor of the bonanza of oil that will soon come from that liberated country, that we have invested so much blood and treasure in. They might be a real player in the Oil Market if they don’t kill each other first.
I could go on for a long time on this but I have to go and try and find out why I have a “check engine light” from one of my buds who has a scanner.
Another of life’s little adventures.
Papa Ray
It was reported at the time of the Waco raid that the federal agencies could borrow military equipment. But they had to pay for maintenance and repair. Except if the issue was drugs, in which case the maintenance and repair did not come out of their budget.
Consequently, almost any op for which military equipment is desired is going to be about drugs.
Whether or not.
Papa Ray, we’ve got plenty of refineries now that product demand is
stagnant to falling. The constraint is on finding more oil, and some
good work is being done there.
Two of the staunchest, most outspoken backers of the war on drugs, Pelosi and Biden, are energetically ‘for’ every form of personal-behavior license there is, except the one that keeps organized crime’s profits as high as the market will bear.
Curious, ain’t it?
news flash –the eleven missing crewmen just found –alive –must’ve been in a orange donut pretty far away –the explosion was 10 pm yesterday so –long drift in the Mississippi River debouch. The rig is listing –i think they said seven degrees –this is a floater, a BIG one –aircraft carrier sized iron. She could capsize. This is not good.
75. Aristide – Right you are. Many thanks for the correction.
Larsen/107–the fellow we know is now listed as missing; cross your fingers for him.
JC in KZ
an interesting article from “Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service” (he’s been writing a few articles on the subject), which has more or less the same approach:
“A hot summer lies ahead for Uzbekistan (and Tajikistan) as veteran Islamist warriors are trekking back from the battlefields in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border areas. Karimov would share Medvedev’s unspoken fear that the next revolution could turn out to be green in color.”
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/LD20Ag01.html
also
http://www.eurasianet.org/index.shtml another site that is informative
** Mr. Obama acknowledged the public discontent with his presidency but cast it as impatience for change that he saw in letters from everyday Americans every day.
“Nothing is more heartbreaking than reading these letters and knowing that change is not coming as fast as we’d like,” he told supporters. “But here is the main message that I have for all of you: change is coming.”
**
Whenever someone quotes a president or politician I wonder why? I’m past the point of even thinking anything that comes out of their mouths will be in any way related to the truth of their behavior. To even quote the liar is to sort of acknowledge that his words have some kind of meaning in reality. In the middle of Bush W et al. I finally gave up on paying any attention at all to the content of the things they say. I don’t know what took me so long, its not like Clinton was a paragon of honest talk. I guess I was still hoping someone who sounded “conservative” still might be a tad better than the other guys. pffft. lol! I was so much younger then!
having said that, I suppose the loophole in my clause would be to use a quote in the manner Wretchard and some others do, to point out the utter farce that is our modern politician and to show that the truth is usually the exact opposite of what they say.
Gordon/109; will do. Have learned they’d just set pipe –it must have been surface pipe and ‘shallow gas’ –still the worst possible combo –rare as hell but happens –the gas came up the riser expanding and there you have the classic spud-in disaster only on the other side of the surface pipe. but –there’s procedeures for that –and this was top hand operation –mystified –but at least we know it wasn’t some earthfirster or Iranian Qods from Venezuela out to sabot the queen of the fleet.
praying for your friend.
Gordon: Buddy: One of the silliest things ever said was “no blood for oil”. The blood price will be paid in various and sundry ways.
No blood for oil? Those who believe that deserve neither.
After all, they didn’t call Red Adair “hellfighter” for nothing.
Dave, you’re right –wars have been around since mankind –whatever makes him fight and whatever enabled the slow-running naked ape to survive, is probably the same thing. And through it all, competition for scarce resources has been the bone of contention. Blood for food, blood for tomorrow, blood for life, is what it amounts to. But what do we know. Someday the ‘no blood for oil’ people might figure out who they’re working fer –probably as they walk up the steps to the noose.
MF/84; re your Clinton used the prolonged distraction of the WACO mess to replace EVERY SINGLE FEDERAL PROSECUTOR that was within his legal authority to appoint or relieve –that was 93 Reagan and BushI appointees (plus 3 or 4 of his own, who’d been biting strippers and choking reporters and such).
Later, when BushII fired all of 8 of Clinton’s some 124 appointments –for actual clear dereliction (sandbagging ‘certain’ investigations) –well you’d have thought he’d been caught in bed with Lucifer. It actually ended Alberto Gonzales’ career and he was damn lucky they didn’t find a way to execute him.
And you’re right, what a prince of a guy that Bill Clinton is –no wonder they idolize him. feh.