Outrageous Fortune
American Spectator says that Pamela Geller (Atlas Shrugs) has received a notification that her PayPal online account has been discontinued. “[A]fter a recent review of your account, it has been determined that you are currently in violation of PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy,” the PayPal e-mail said. “Under the Acceptable Use Policy, PayPal may not be used to send or receive payments for items that promote hate, violence, racial intolerance or the financial exploitation of a crime.”
Everyone has to take responsibility for what they say. The reason comments on this site are moderated is because there are always lines that shouldn’t be crossed and you try, insofar as you can, not to cross them. But whether or not one agrees with Pamela Geller, it is far from clear that PayPal should be in the business of determining what constitutes “hate, violence, racial intolerance or the financial exploitation of a crime.” For example, PayPal as of few minutes ago served Revolution Muslim. I’ve attached a screenshot of the site showing the PayPal button just above the the picture portraying Barack Obama as Hitler.
Now PayPal may have reasons of its own for allowing one and not the other. For considering Pamela beyond the pale but showing consideration for a site whose voiceover, when you get it to it, extols the virtues of sharia law and the desirability of giving your spare wife to a Muslim Brother, and portrays the president in the likeness of the Great Dictator. Who knows but some might agree?
But in order to avoid that discussion and other discussions which may ensue, it might be wiser to leave such determinations to the legal system or to the market.
Ed Driscoll reported that Warner Brothers recently asked YouTube to pull the “We Con the World” video parodying the peace flotilla from Gaza. Warner’s problem with the video wasn’t politics but copyright.
That’s not to say that political motivations aren’t being read into it. Driscoll writes, “[Caroline] Glick notes that the video was pulled by Warner/ Chappell Music, Inc. The blogger who made the exceptional ‘Burning Down the House’ video, which pointed the blame for the financial crisis of the fall of 2008 squarely on government-controlled Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the Clinton-era Community Reinvestment Act also had his video pulled by a Warner-related entity, until he replaced the music with generic backing tracks.” However that may be, there is a good reason for companies to keep business and politics separate and even work at preserving the appearance of it even when the distinction is not factually maintained. There always comes a time when the prevailing political winds shift and the shareholders ought not to be held hostage to the vagaries of such fortune.
Yet to some extent anyone who acquires an audience, such as Pamela Geller has, inevitably attracts flak. Long ago I told an audience at the Rockefeller Center in New York that “you don’t have to care what you say when you only have a hundred readers a day, but you must be exceedingly careful when you have ten thousand.” Pamela has gotten to where her audience is substantial enough for people to take notice. Inevitably that brings some kind of Nemesis after you. The rule of thumb appears to be the bigger you are the harder they want you to fall. Rush Limbaugh said, “I know I’ll be destroyed eventually.”
In an e-mail sent to Zev Chafets, author of the new book “Rush Limbaugh: An Army of One,” Limbaugh admitted, “I know I am a target and I know I will be destroyed eventually. I fear that all I have accomplished and all the wealth I have accumulated will be taken from me, to the cheers of the crowd. I know I am hated and despised by the American Left.”
The message was sent the day after President Obama laughed at comedian Wanda Sykes’ joke about Limbaugh’s death during last year’s White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner.
In a diatribe against Limbaugh, Sykes said: “Rush Limbaugh, ‘I hope the country fails’ – I hope his kidneys fail, how about that?”
The dinner was broadcast nationally on C-SPAN, and a clip has been posted on YouTube.
Obama can clearly be seen laughing as Sykes delivers her line about Limbaugh’s kidneys failing.
Limbaugh probably will be destroyed. And that’s how it is. Fair ain’t got nothing to do with it. Once you get past a certain point you’ll have writers renting vacation houses near your home and pundits wondering whether you’ve had a breast augmentation operation. Celebrity, even minor celebrity, ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. Don’t do it for anything except the muse and a good conscience. And then you try to dodge the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. But if you catch it, then you can always console yourself if you believed in what you did.
When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur’d like him, like him with friends possess’d,
Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least:
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee,–and then my state
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings’.
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I believe it’s likely that the Left and their Muslim buddies are going to become exponentially more dangerous before we get through Obama’s tenure. A perfect storm seems to be brewing, and confronted with the abject failures of their schemes, from the failure of the AGW redistribution swindle, to the failure of the “stimulus” payout to Big Labor, to the catastrophe of “Obamacare”, to disintegration of Obama himself, they will be unable to face the fact that Obama’s failures are theirs – and that the Left’s failures are due to the utter wrongness of their outlook. They are setting up and increasingly lashing out at scapegoats. Tea Partiers, Rightwing Media, Israel, flyover people … The components of very dangerous times are coalescing – and the vile Left, who always seeks to alter externalities rathe rthan self-rwflect, and to collectively impose their agenda, will double down on all their blunders until the world is set aflame.
This is not the first example of jihadists attacking freedom of speech by intimidation, and so far, it seems to work, like the mayor of NYC shamelessly acquiescing to the outrageous ground zero mosque, promoted by the smooth talking imam in cahoot with hamas, the muslim brotherhood, and the wahabi money channels. How long will it take for Americans to wake up to the systematic assault on their values? America has awaken in the past, like it did with Pearl Harbor. The jihad, in both its violent and its underhanded forms, is unrelenting, and we elected a CEO who does not know better than to court it!
We need to support the courageous “Mama Grizzlies” like Pamela Geller, Wafa Sultan, Brigitte Gabriel, Phyllis Chesler, Aayan Hirsi Ali, Nonie Darwish and others, the authentic feminists, among the strongest voices calling our attention to deadly seriousness of the threat.
1. Morton Doodslag -
I’ve felt the same way and my fear is that when we get someone sane as President will we, and the rest of moral society around the globe, be able to recover from all the damage being done.
Reiterating a point made and corroborated by BC witnesses on The Singer and not the Song thread:
It sounds like doublethink Wretchard. What we could call, instead of always recalling back to Orwell, “Prior prior restraint.”
Does that sit well with you?
Or as Tcobb suggests below, maybe you’ll suggest we simply resolve to put the shackles on ourselves? We should bow to Marcuse.
Everyone has to take responsibility for what they say…because there are always lines that shouldn’t be crossed and you try, insofar as you can, not to cross them.
This is true, but too often these days the lines that shouldn’t be crossed are being redrawn in a tighter and tighter square around us. And, not that I’m accusing you of it, but often such terminology is used as code for “don’t say anything that conflicts with my agenda–lest you be stoned you heretic.”
And who should draw those lines? Perhaps that is the central question. Do we draw them for ourselves based upon our own sense of morality and ethics or shall they be drawn for us by outside forces? In the former case we are men, perhaps deeply flawed, but men. In the latter case we are but mice bred for the experiments of our masters.
And who should draw those lines? Perhaps that is the central question. Do we draw them for ourselves based upon our own sense of morality and ethics or shall they be drawn for us by outside forces? In the former case we are men, perhaps deeply flawed, but men. In the latter case we are but mice bred for the experiments of our masters.
I think we draw should them ourselves in 99.999% of the cases. The flip side of this should be the freedom of others to establish their own sites. In a perfect world both Pamela Geller and the RevolutionMuslim site should be allowed to continue until either one of them goes broke or is judged according to the justice system as having crossed the overall line. Now maybe Paypal is worried about liability. If so, it underscores the larger problem of “lawfare”. Taken beyond a certain point it has a chilling effect on debate. Mark Steyn got hauled before a “human rights” tribunal in Canada. Savage got banned for traveling to the UK. Hirsi Ali is persona non grata with a large section of polite society. Lawfare is everywhere. It is the new ‘McCarthyism’ of the age.
The reality is that the political opposition is going to go after you with everything at their disposal and more besides. That’s just a fact. Look at O’Keefe. He hit Acorn and eventually someone got back at him. The culture wars are dangerous in their own way and you can get hit with vilification, financial loss or a jail term. In certain cases it can go further. The real rite of passage in politics and political action is when you figure out you are playing with real money; for keeps. You can lose a real amount of personal freedom; you can lose a real limb. What all stable democracies do is keep the stakes from being raised to revolution-like levels. That way we can all be friends against after the ballots are counted. One of the real danger signals is when the cap on the consequences to speech is removed. When people get too greedy, ambitious or afraid then the stops are removed. Then the hurts are no longer forgettable and people start keeping score. And if one thing creates instability it is the existence of scores which can’t be erased by an election.
Ironically a real ‘revolutionary’ in the sense of the Founding Fathers understands that part of the change process is not only to destroy but also to limit destruction. That is a peculiar conservative curse to which is the Left is not bound. If anything worries me about the Left it is that they don’t have that instinct to preserve nor feel an obligation to do it. History demonstrates this time and again. They keep raising the stakes, often on their own hook. And that’s destabilizing in itself. The challenge is not only to defeat the Left to manage their incidental destructiveness. You’ll have to catch the plates they drop while you hustle them off the stage.
Can it be done? Who knows. But eventually the sun rises in the morning and things work out, though everything may look a little and unnecessarily the worse for wear.
Every American killed by an illegal alien is a score which can’t be erased by an election: 2,000 per year, and year upon year. Many politicians of both parties are morally responsible for these deaths. The assault on our country has already gone beyond polite politics. And yet our hands must be stayed? Not likely forever. Some have suggested a million person march to the border by Americans exercising Second Amendment rights.
At BC, I have pointed out several times that black-on-white crime is 30+ times that of the reverse, but not on a single occasion has there been a response, not even an attempt at rebuttal; you all just avert your eyes from my inconvenient fact. Even here, most of you are frogs being simmered.
“Everyone has to take responsibility for what they say…because there are always lines that shouldn’t be crossed and you try, insofar as you can, not to cross them.”
Under the US system of government, those lines are placed by elected representatives of the citizens. What we are speaking to here are the “gatekeeping” functions of the media. The Constitution protects freedom of the press. The Supreme Court decided back in the early part of the 19th century that freedom of the press applied to those that owned the press, not those reading it.
The gatekeeper function was enshrined in law by the argument that letters to the Editor, which are protected by the 1st amendment, did not have to be printed by the newspapers because of limits on space and materials. That gatekeeping function was carried over to Radio, Television and then the WWW, despite the argument of lack of space being applicable. There are no space limitations on the internet, just time limitations.
BC is a fairly popular for a right wing site. Every post ever made at the Belmont Club could be stored on a terrabyte class hard drive. For around 100$US.
There is legislation in process that will change that. The Democrats are holding that up, since they like things the way they are. After all, it’s Socialists that decide who gets censored (lines that shouldn’t be crossed) and which propaganda is allowed.
I, like the founders that wrote the Constitution, don’t think there should be lines. PERIOD.
Social pressure will accomplish the same things that those lines do with much less fuss and bother.
Try posting a lucid, rational, analytical argument against homosexuality and see how quick your post gets deleted.
At BC, I have pointed out several times that black-on-white crime is 30+ times that of the reverse, but not on a single occasion has there been a response, not even an attempt at rebuttal; you all just avert your eyes from my inconvenient fact. Even here, most of you are frogs being simmered.
Ridgerunner, no one is obligated to respond to another commenter’s posts. Heck, we are not even obligated to respond to Wretchard’s posts. What gets responses is subject to all the vagaries of schedule, mood, frame of reference, intellectual stimulation, etc of every individual who hangs out here, multiplied by that many individuals. I have not attempted to keep count of (and I doubt anyone has, not even Wretchard) how many “incidental” topics have been raised by an individual commenter in a thread which no one else has responded to. But it is probably well into the thousands.
So what’s your problem? That your pet issue doesn’t get attention when you raise it? Well, start your own blog. That way, you can control the discussion. Until then, you will have to settle for your pet issue being subject to the vagaries of freewheeling conversation, which includes getting ignored.
But to call Belmont Clubbers, of all people, insensate and indifferent (“since none of you has responded to my pet issue means all of you are frogs in a simmering pot”), is about as ridiculous a statement as any I have ever seen posted here by a regular. (Trolls inhabit their own galaxy of preposterousness.)
The racial breakdowns of crime statistics are well-known to most and possibly many BCers. But I’m not going to engage the topic itself since I don’t think you should be rewarded for spoon-banging. Which BTW I have seen at least one other commenter engage in. It’s silly. It’s not all about YOU. Silence from the Club implies as many things as there are individuals here … not indifference, not cowardice, not stupidity. Maybe it was just that 80% of us were watching a really, really, really tension-filled nail-biter of a soccer game. And the other 20% were busy watching paint dry. The point is you don’t know what non-response implies. So don’t go reading into it.
If anything worries me about the Left it is that they don’t have that instinct to preserve nor feel an obligation to do it.
I don’t personally know this type of Lefty. The ones I know are aging baby boomers — mostly ex-government workers — who like luxury while preaching a Green world. I don’t see them going to the barricades. I don’t see them at the local firing range, either.
From my limited perspective, it appears all the ammo that’s disappeared in the last two years has gone into basements of the Right (and I’m happy about that), but maybe I’m mistaken. In my area at least, I’d think the Left would come off poorly in a civil war, though there are indications the LEOs have become dependent on federal handouts, too. Of course, even the “winners” would come off poor in civil unrest at that level.
Can y’all enlighten me about the other Lefties you envision going into violence mode? Are they SEIU and union types? The extreme Greenies? New Black Panthers? Just curious.
Thank you for your timely post…. I actually lost sleep last night learning about Paypal, “We Con the World” and such.
I have been watching and digesting a world gone insane lately…
A world where the deaths of 9 terrorists are now looked upon as the deaths of innocents and the deaths of millions of innocents are deserved because they live in a small square of land that the surrounding 100′s of millions dont like…
The world is quickly moving to a major war…
Thanks for pointing out the insanity on our own shores that is contributing to such stupidity..
Government is force. This isn’t news to BCers but I’m afraid far too few everyday Americans have a bone-deep appreciation for what that statement means. Call it the luxury of living in a long-time Constitutional Republic. Citizens of similar forms of government are subject to the same forgetfulness. People living under dictatorships, juntas, etc. don’t have to be reminded about the force bit. It’s in their face, daily.
Government is force. It exacts compliance from the citizenry in various ways that escalate the use of force: comply, or we’ll harrass you; if you still don’t comply, we’ll fine you and/or strip you of property other than your money; if you still don’t comply, we’ll imprison you; and if you don’t comply to any of that, we’ll execute you.
As I have said at least twice prior on BC, government by its very nature is capable of doing exponentially more evil than any individual. The Founders understood this, and that is why they sought to frame a system that placed such severe restraints on government. Restrain government, and you restrain its capacity to do evil. THAT is a far better long-term service to the citizens of a country than any expansion of government powers in order to “help” people could ever be. For the “help” comes at a terrible price. Long after the condition that instigated the citizens’ call for “help” goes away, the government power remains. Reagan understood this, too: “The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program.” Humorously put, but it points to a darker truth: Government seeks to become a perpetual-power machine; and its power is over YOU.
Ironically a real ‘revolutionary’ in the sense of the Founding Fathers understands that part of the change process is not only to destroy but also to limit destruction. That is a peculiar conservative curse to which is the Left is not bound.
Not a bug, but a feature. The Founding Fathers sought to promote individual liberty. The Left seeks to promote power; specifically, their power. For the Founders and for conservatives, you achieve liberty by destroying the machinery of and avenues to the concentration of power. The Left achieves power by destroying the framework of liberty (the Constitution) and its distribution to individual citizens. Destroying accumulated power while promoting individual liberty is a delicate processs that requires a scalpel. Destroying individual liberty while promoting accumulated power, however, requires only a sledgehammer. That is why the Left can be indiscriminate while conservatives cannot.
What all stable democracies do is keep the stakes from being raised to revolution-like levels. That way we can all be friends against after the ballots are counted. One of the real danger signals is when the cap on the consequences to speech is removed. When people get too greedy, ambitious or afraid then the stops are removed. Then the hurts are no longer forgettable and people start keeping score. And if one thing creates instability it is the existence of scores which can’t be erased by an election.
Life, liberty, property. Unalienable rights.
“Governments are instituted among men … to secure these rights.”
Funny, but I did not notice the part about “spread the wealth around” in any of our founding documents.
When government becomes an apparatus of robbing Peter to pay Paul, then every single election becomes, de facto in some form, an event that is going to generate score-keeping: who gets to take what from whom, who gets to keep what. Elections in America today aren’t about erasing scores; they are about creating them. And that is by design … the design of the Left. Any wonder then, that every subsequent election then becomes “the most important election of our lifetime”? I have been hearing this used of every election, including mid-terms, since at least the 1990s. Perhaps it goes back longer than that. At any rate, the constant threat mode tends to exhaust people. This, too, is by design.
This is one of the many damnable legacies of the Left. Elections, which in healthy Republic are an expression of stability, become, in a captured & corrupt system, not just an expression of but a cause of instability. After the SHTF, and it will, how do you get people to trust in elections again? It’s a mindset as much as it is anything else. People either believe in the ballot or they believe in the bullet as the ultimate arbiter of political differences. Trash people’s trust in the ballot, by making the ballot a means of effecting violations of liberty, property, and life … and …. well, gee, thanks again, progressives.
The currently operating system is unstable. By forcing instability while accumulating power, however, the Left will find it has a tiger by the tail. At a certain point the instability gyrations take on a force all their own, and no one will be able to control them.
The question is not whether there will be a crash, but whether, on the other side, anyone will want to put their faith in such a thing as the First Amendment again?
I don’t see as we have any other choice. Otherwise it’s the tiger all over again.
Thanks bogie wheel for proving my point in spades. Attacking the messenger is the first tactic of those who don’t like the message.
You ignorant maroons just don’t get it, do you?
Here’s a clue for you:
Geller is a F…… Joo!
Jeeze!
PBUPaypal
wretchard
you can lose a real limb
You can lose your head. I have seen the Danny Pearl vid.
The problem with the conflict we are all engaged in is that it is asymmetric in its costs. If we withdraw and concede the field we do not get peace but death. In victory the extreme Left will not raise marginal tax rates by 10% and build huge ugly public housing projects. That was your father’s age of liberalism. These people are allied to the jihadis because they both seek to achieve their utopian goals through blood. These are people who read Nineteen Eighty-Four in High School and said to themselves, “That’s a plan.” They have arrogated to themselves the authority of the God of Isaiah who said (KJV 29:15)
Conservatives seek to conserve not to conquer, but those who attack us will accept no peace and offer no quarter. To surrender means immediate death or future betrayal. On the Hamas ship they chanted the war cry “Khaybar Khaybar ya Yahūd, jaysh Muḥammad saya‘ūd.” The Jews of Khaybar surrendered to Muhammed and 13 years later Umar revoked the peace treaty and expelled them. Two years earlier the Banu Qurayza Jews of Yathrib surrendered and were massacred by the hundreds. Given the technology available this was done as systematically as any genocide of the 20th century.
When Youtube or PayPal or Google acquiesce to the thuggery of those who seek to dominate and destroy the United States and all of Western Civilization they are not being even handed and protecting the innocent from hate. They are supporting those who champion hate and creating more victims. They do Evil.
ridgerunner
Most of the time I assume that Silence=Consent and people not only agree with me but that I exhaust the point so thoroughly that no direct reply to my windy posts is needed. Others frequently make similar points later without attribution. Of course I could just be kidding myself.
“Limbaugh admitted, “I know I am a target and I know I will be destroyed eventually.”
“Destruction” is in the eye of the beholder. I have no doubt that the Left thinks they destroyed Pres G.W. Bush but I think the man himself and a great many others would disagree. I am sure they think they destroyed Newt Gingrich, but he is still writing best-sellers. Similarly, they think they have destroyed Sara Palin and she too is laughing all the way, both to the bank and to the podium. Many people think of Al Gore and JF Kerry as being destroyed but I doubt they agree. And the Left has managed to destroy the concept of racism without meaning to do so. A Belmonter told me recently that he would coldcock anyone who called him a racist; I responded that I could not imagine why he would care what such a person thought of him. I doubt very much that 65 years ago B-17 crews sat around obsessing over the Nazi posters depicting them as “air gangsters.”
To “destroy someone” has traditionally meant to have them depicted negatively in the press. But given the destruction of the traditional media, and the rise of the Internet, that means less and less every day.
Pamela Geller is a Civilian Irregular Information Operator Psychological Operations counterpropagandist.
Her enemies are attempting to impose Restrictive Measures upon her by interdicting her revenue stream.
Restrictive measures. This technique denies the audience access to the propaganda [in her case, the counterpropaganda]. Jamming, physical destruction, and occupation of media outlets are some examples of this technique. Restrictive measures must be evaluated for their potential negative feedback potential before being implemented. This technique may also bring additional attention to the propaganda and encourage the audience to seek out the propaganda via covert means. When used in peacekeeping operations by U.S. forces, restrictive measures (such as shutting down radio stations) invite hostile propaganda against the supported unit concerning freedom of the media and freedom of speech. In addition, these measures are often used by repressive regimes, inviting the inevitable comparison.
That her enemies find Restrictive Measures necessary indicates that she has become a painful thorn in their side.
Totalitarians cannot tolerate unbelievers. The most publicly visible unbelievers must be destroyed to crush the morale of The Resistance.
“you don’t have to care what you say when you only have a hundred readers a day, but you must be exceedingly careful when you have ten thousand.”
That’s right, you can make a “emotional” billet for a intime audience, no more if you you intend to write for thousands of persons, then you have to get some distance vis-à-vis the subject you treat, and weight each word for what sense you want that it means to different publics. I used to attend P. Gelder’s blog some times ago, and was hurted by the message delivered against my country, based on mere clichés, and biased interpretation of our history, that I found as first grade anti-French sentiment, that, a place like “Creeping Sharia” doesn’t deliver, and that, for good reasons, I find more objective. One has the right to not worship a country policy, but demonnizing a whole population, without analysing the true context of facts, is mere racism, and counter productive for what one’s purpose was at the beginning. Anyway, it’s incredible the number of places where we were/are demonised, not the Germans, isn’t it odd !
Can y’all enlighten me about the other Lefties you envision going into violence mode? Are they SEIU and union types? The extreme Greenies? New Black Panthers? Just curious.
With respect to Wretchard’s remarks on ‘lawfare’, the Holder Justice Department’s intervention into the case against the New Black Panther Party, for its blatant 2008 voter intimidation in Philadelphia, is a new twist in that direction. Apparently a large fraction of ‘civil rights’ lawyers feel and act as if enforcement actions are only to be undertaken against white defendants. Hence the NBPP case, won by default in 2009, has been ordered abandoned by Holder’s political appointees, who have also stiffed Congressional inquiries into the case. This is an example of corrupt ‘lawfare’ spreading downwards through the Justice Department from the head.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/friends-high-places
“Destruction” is in the eye of the would-be destroyer, and in the eyes of all the various audiences said “destruction” is intended to influence. Newt was neutered. He’s still around, but his ability to thwart the designs of his enemies is negligible.
What about the Daily Kos? Do they have a Paypal button? What about the hate and threats that have streamed from that site?
Excellent post @ 12 Bogie Wheel.
I am currently about two-thirds through reading “Lies The Government Told You; Myth, Power, and Deception In American History”. A very good book I think.
Thanks bogie wheel for proving my point in spades. Attacking the messenger is the first tactic of those who don’t like the message.
Actually, ridgerunner, you were the one who launched the first attack, by insulting an audience who had not responded to your comments. My point was that (A) you cannot really read into what non-response means from a whole slew of different individuals, esp. on an internet forum (though LOTM correctly offers the traditional standard, Qui Tacit Consentire), and that (B) you chose the unfortunate action of trying to provoke a response by resorting to insulting your audience, characterizing most of us as “frogs being simmered.”
That is spoon-banging, by definition: ratcheting up the noise and annoyance level so that someone, anyone, will respond.
And please note this is a description of a TACTIC, one that I thought was ill-chosen on your part. As such it had nothing to do with your character or you personally. If I had called you a spoon-banger, THAT would have been “attacking the messenger.”
That I did *not* call you, personally, a spoon-banger should have indicated to you that I found your snipe at your fellow BCers uncharacteristic of you & not up to the standard of your usual posts. (Really, the more likely case is that if you WERE a chronic punk, I would have let the comment pass, since I would have considerd a reprimand not worth the effort. Ignore the gnats and all that. Which kind of illustrates my point that you can’t really read into what non-response means. Sometimes, yes, silence does indeed imply consent. At other times, it implies “meh, whatever.” At other times it implies “ignore the troll.” At other times, something else still.)
If calling out someone for an out-of-bounds insult, and focusing on the behavior and not the person, somehow makes me the provocateur and low-life here, then I guess I am on the wrong forum.
See Friends in High Places link above, then inventory your ammunition.
The .58 Minie arbited many a good ole rebel the last time we did this.
According to the Times online the Paki ISI not only supports the Taliban, they have seven agents on the 15 man Quetta Shura council.
Just sent a slightly edited version of this email to aup@paypal.com
***
subject Cutting off The Atlas Shrugs blog?
mailed-by gmail.com
hide details 10:10 AM (0 minutes ago)
To whom it may concern,
I read today that you have declared the Altas Shrugs blog in violation of your Acceptable Use Policy.
Apparently someone in your department has made the determination that this news and politics blog promotes hate, violence, racial intolerance and/or seeks to financially exploit a crime.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
I’ve read this blog periodically over the past several years and have found the posts to be well-reasoned, thoroughly-researched, and open to debate. Can the tone be strident sometimes? Sure. Do the politics of the hostess rub some people the wrong way? Without a doubt. But is Atlas a hate site? Absolutely not. But for argument’s sake, let’s assume it is.
Then out of a sense of even handedness, it would seem to me that a website like “Revolution Muslim” definitely meets one or more of the four AUP criteria. In case that name is not familiar, this is the group that delivered the thinly-veiled death threats to the South Park creators earlier this year. (Just google “South Park” + “Revolution Muslim” for a ton of information). As of 10AM Sunday June 13th, the RM site proudly displays the paypal button–right next to a picture of Barack Obama made in the likeness of Adolf Hitler!
In my opinion you need to conduct a thorough review of the processes that support your AUP. The policy is, in my estimation, a perfectly sound and reasonable one. There is, after all, no good reason why promoters of hate, violence, racial intolerance, etc. should have the benefits of your service. However, arbitrary and misguided enforcement of that policy makes a mockery of it. And that is what is happening here. By cutting off a legitimately operating political and news blog, someone in your organization is overstepping their bounds. Someone is letting their partisan political preferences guide the enforcement of a fundamentally sound organizational policy. That reflects poorly on whomever runs this unit and ultimately will not redound to the credit of the organization as a whole.
It is also my opinion that you should act swiftly. It’s not too late to rapidly reverse this decision before more examples of the uneven enforcement of your policy are brought to light. Anything more than a few days and your decision concerning Atlas Shrugs could go viral with the likely outcome being a loss of some number of accounts and a lot of ill-will engendered to boot.
I, for one, really like using your service. It makes my online transactions much more efficient and I value that highly. However, your decision regarding the AS blog–if not reversed quickly–would mean I’d have to close my paypal account. That would be a lose-lose situation. Please do the right thing here and reinstate the AS blog. But if you must go down this road, at least begin with the real haters, not the people with whom you happen to disagree. There is a difference.
thoughtfully
Starling
BTW Richard, I’ve just made a donation to BC. It is too little, too late considering the education I’ve received here.
I am afraid that Geller might not be the last who has their account closed for exercising free speech. As I have informed PP I fully intend to close my account at the end of this week if this decision on Geller isn’t reversed.
Which dictates the question; Is there some other method I might make further contributions to BC?
18. Marie Claude
Propaganda left over from the De Gaul era. De Gaul had a truly prodigious talent for pissing off Americans. He made an enemy for life out of Ike within minutes of meeting him for the first time. Ike was promoted to his position because he was easy to get along with. For everybody except De Gaul.
De Gaul expected to be made King of France by the Americans. FDR told him to stuff a sock in it. If Dylan hadn’t been assassinated, HE would have ended up in the spot De Gaul eventually filled. De Gaul never got over that.
Toss in the killing of about 1/4 million French citizens by the US and the UK, and it’s easy to understand why France had a different POV on being “liberated” from the Germans.
Very few American are aware that the Army Air Corps bombing of the Railroads killed many times more French then the Germans did. When you consider that the bombing of rail lines was useless as far as preventing the Germans from using rail transport to move troops and supplies, the whole thing should have been treated as the war crime it was. The Army Air Corp knew it too. They had photo recon showing that the Germans had the rails repaired before the B-17′s got back to their base. Nobody at the upper (political) levels wanted to listen to evidence that they were wrong. Sound familiar?
The other thing was the US decision to print out millions of copies of the Atlantic Charter ( foundation document for the UN Charter that stressed human rights and promised then to the Arabs) and spread them out in what were French colonies, thereby making the Arabs serfs think the mighty USA was going to support them if they revolted against France.
So you have France in the position of being saved from the Germans, who weren’t that bad as long as you weren’t Jewish. At the same time the USA was humiliating the future leader of France and acting to strip France of their colonies, while killing enormous numbers of French citizens. It was only natural that the French developed an attitude problem toward American.
The USA already had attitude problems with the Brits and Soviets, so they responded poorly to the French.
Those were the seeds that grew into the hedge of discontent between France and America today.
FDR was a Socialist. Truman was a coward, so it is no accident the the post WW2 period was the USA making one diplomatic mistake after another. The politics of the period ’46 to 52 is where most of the current world problems of today were planted and nourished. Now we harvest them and take the best seeds and plant them as new problems for our grandchildren.
What can you expect from a society that is insane enough to consider sending 19 year old boys and girls off to die in a war moral while targeting the corrupt and evil men creating those wars immoral? Yes, I know that is an awkward sentence, but the thought behind it isn’t. It’s just one of those thoughts that the establishment would censor under the mistaken fear that it could be them looking for a Predator overhead one day.
I’m glad that my last Paypal transaction (using up a small balance sent to me by my sister) went towards buying half a dozen pro-Israel T-shirts. I won’t be using them again.
I think political correctness is rooted in stupidity. To confuse reality with what you consider correct of ideal is the first step toward disaster. As an example calling an illegal alien a “undocumented worker” changes the perception but not the reality. This person did in fact violate federal and possibly state laws. The motivation for doing so is a different issue, and does not excuse the violation. To allow this behavior to be rewarded with ” legal status” fosters future illegal behavior and makes civilization much more difficult to maintain.
One more example is leaving Muslim out of discussion when talking about attaacks on the Nation. ALMOST, not all attacks since 1993 have been by Muslims and falure to recognize this fact could be fatal.
Lifeofthemind @ 15
I certainly have never explicated the issue of disproportionate crime rates to the extent that others would have been able to feel that nothing more could be said. I have raised the issue in other contexts. I raise it here because Wretchard’s topic is political correctness and because I agree with Rosinante that no lines should exist on free speech about issues that affect the national population. As cases in point, 1) What does it mean that the top of the black political leadership (Waters, Jackson, Sharpton) is hostile to whites? Does that guidance motivate the lowest black stratum to target their criminality particularly at whites? Are those politicians responsible at all for the disproportion, or does it derive only from the fact that black middle class targets are just not abundant enough to satisfy the needs of the black criminal class, and therefore whites must be targeted. 2) Is any politician responsible for the thousands of deaths of American citizens at the hands of those illegal immigrants who are either predators or are criminally negligent with their vehicles? Is George W. Bush responsible?
My earlier point, apparently irritating to some, is that BC commentary is typically reluctant to violate PC standards regarding racial conflict. And racial conflict will become a more prominent as Obama’s “rule” fails. I was in Honduras shortly after its Soccer War with El Salvador. A local physician told me that when the cross-border firing began, he and other middle class Hondurans in his locale armed themselves and non-violently expelled Salvadoran squatters who had entered his country illegally. Are we allowed to discuss this kind of precedent, or does that breach PC?
Ridgerunner:13,
Belmont Club, IMHO, is blessed with a deeply insightful owner and a unbelievably well educated, well read, cosmopolitan, and “very willing to share” commentariat. I am constantly amazed at the wide variety of knowledge shared on this blog, ranging from quantum theory, advanced robotics, economic theory, viewpoints from many other countries than my beloved America,…well, the list is actually too long to list comfortably.
And one of the really great things about most of the commenters is that when I spew forth, in anger or attempted trollery, a comment that clearly should have been left unwritten, the others politely ignore my comment and continue with the serious discussion in progress. That is true friendship.
Thanks guys and gals.
programmer
Cannoneer -
I actually read that article yesterday that Insufficiently Sensitive linked to. GMTA and all that.
The challenge is to discern the difference between the American Colonists’ actions and the philosophy of Mao, which is obviously what I was alluding to in that statement. The Declaration provides the context: “But when a long train of abuses and usurpations …” (the whole sentence is relevant, I’m just editing for length), and “In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.” Knowledge of history helps, too (the Americans’ armory at Concord being marched on by the British for confiscation, surprise surprise, battle erupts).
Were the American colonists pacificts? Obviously not. But there’s still a Grand Canyon between them and Mao. We know that because of the fruit that each revolution bore. One produced liberty, the other tyranny and 50 million slaughtered. The Founders’ faith in the ballot was enormous and produced many blessings for posterity. But they were not stupid; hence, the Second Amendement. But nor were they despots; hence, the rest of the Constitution. Parsing that term “ultimate arbiter” requires an understanding of all this. I’m not saying that you don’t, just making the observation that others don’t.
Suffering that long train of abuses and usurpations does appear to be a moral necessity. As do the many and repeated petitions for redress.
BTW, Glenn Beck has been urging his listeners to get their own houses in order — financially, morally and especially spiritually. Enough fake dirt will be dug up on the advocates of liberty & the Constitution that real dirt will be a real and serious drag. Take this advice FWIW. But the machinery of government is largely in the hands of Leftists, and due to the architecture of government they have built, where every jot and tittle of your life is recorded on a bazillion computers to which they have access, they do indeed have the means to destroy anyone who is not Mother Theresa. And they will even make some Mother Theresas look like Charles Mansons. Dumpster-diving in Wasilla and the illegal search of Joe the Plumber’s records by no less than six different government agencies are, alas, just mild versions of what’s in store.
It appears that Paypal has rescinded it’s association with Revolution Muslim.
Forgotten man – This is a common problem today, and it’s exacerbated by the shrinking politeness that leads people to think that they are obliged to accept other people’s evaluation of themselves as definitive. Thus, “I want to be called…” seems almost unanswerable. I think it was Richard Burnham who wrote “A garbageman will smell the same though we pass a law requiring everyone to call him Philosopher King.”
Wretchard, to tie this in to a previous theme of yours, it’s not just that the “center” lacks sufficient interest for sustained political activity, but in addition, the extremists are actively raising the price of political involvement (cf “politics of personal destruction”). I leave it to other commenters to what extent this is a deliberate strategy.
ridgerunner:
“you all just avert your eyes from my inconvenient fact. Even here, most of you are frogs being simmered.”
…
“Attacking the messenger is the first tactic of those who don’t like the message.”
Thank you for taking time to post here. I know how busy you are with your day job as a Carnegie Course instructor.
Marie Claude (#18): “it’s incredible the number of places where we were/are demonised, not the Germans, isn’t it odd !”
Not at all; it’s simply that compared to the historical alternative, we are much relieved to have the Germans be obnoxious undermining pacifists. Oh, and I’m sure que “most of you are frogs” ne te visait pas
.
programmer (#32): Nicely put.
I think we labor under the illusion that “it can’t happen here”. It certainly can happen here and will if we don’t derail the train these amoral idiots are driving toward the cliff. They will use every means at their disposal , in my opinion, including violence to hold onto power. November can’t get here fast enough and God held us if the GOP rolls over and says “Yes Massa” when the left commits widespread voter fraud and then defines the terms of challenge to the election results. I remember Chavez stealing an election and then loosing his thugs to shoot down a few protesters in Caracas before his Stupidness, the venal Jimmy Carter came in to declare the election “fair and honest”. These jokers are a bigger threat to our freedom and existence than all one billion Muslims and the camels they rode in on and the goats they sodomized. Just saying.
I do hope Ms Geller is lawyering up.
Paypal appears to be a stooge and youtube a tool. Is it Stockholm or china syndrome?
Reflections on Fair Columbia’s loss, Peace insecure- afraid for her life.
LXIV
When I have seen by Time’s fell hand defac’d
The rich-proud cost of outworn buried age;
When sometime lofty towers I see down-raz’d,
And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the watery main,
Increasing store with loss, and loss with store;
When I have seen such interchange of state,
Or state itself confounded, to decay;
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate —
That Time will come and take my love away.
This thought is as a death which cannot choose
But weep to have, that which it fears to lose
William Shakespeare
We can choose.
Never liked PayPal for a dozen reasons, but the issue here is lawfare and a misjudgement of Atlas Shrugged. Too bad if Pamela Geller lacks the money to sue them for libel.
ridgerunner, the site or something ate my longer more thoughtful comment to your request for comment on that ’30x’ stat. Now, i’m only good for rewrite on the conclusion: ‘collective guilt’ is precisely exactly what the left is selling, it’s the heart of the left’s racial-separation policy.
I just do not want to help that along, which the right can easily do via treating collective guilt as a fact, to thereby rebuff a priori so-branded individuals who in large part are guilty of nothing you and i aren’t guilty of (i.e. comparative ease of interpreting phenotypes the closer they match one’s own).
This is to unjustly demoralize innocent individuals, and that is to help the left make its message.
I’m sure you know all that and were looking for something more helpful –what to do about it, and such –but i got nothing, just commenting because you asked for comments.
“Under the Acceptable Use Policy, PayPal may not be used to send or receive payments for items that promote hate, violence, racial intolerance or the financial exploitation of a crime.”
I’m guessing that this language was crafted by lawyers, but it becomes problematic in the particular.
Define “promote.”
Define “hate.”
“Contributing to the progress or growth of” “an intense feeling of dislike” is what you get if you combine the dictionary definitions.
So is all hate, automatically and by definition, unacceptable, spiritually and civically? Is it not even okay to hate child molestation or ritual Satanic torture and murder?
“Oh, but those are actions. You can hate actions. You just can’t hate people.”
Okay, so it *is* okay to hate at least some entities. But the AUP doesn’t stipulate this. It just says that PayPal may not be used for items that promote hate, period. So you can’t fund your blog via PayPal if you create a post stating that you hate child molestation and ritual Satanic torture and murder. Meanwhile, the blogger who funds his blog via PayPal and who says, in a general sort of way, that he has no problem with these sorts of actions, or who says in an even not-so-general sort of way that he loves him some blood every now &then, gets … what discipline from PayPal, exactly?
In terms of who is saying what, the field of acceptable “pro” speech (i.e. taking a position on anything ranging from marginally accommodating to wildly enthusiastic) is quite vast. We have drawn the lines wayyyyy out there so that freedom of speech includes some of the most heinous language and ideas imaginable. As long as you’re “for” it, whatever “it” is, or you adopt that live & let live stance.
It’s the “anti” speech that, these days, appears to be resulting in the most conflicts and codes. By their own AUP, PayPal would have to discontinue the passionate anti-child-molestation blogger while allowing the “hey, man, if raping kids is your thing, who am I to judge?” blogger remain with PP.
IOW we have a problem with zealous criticism, in and of itself. Why? Because as a culture we have lost our moral bearings. We have severed the relationship between criticism and the object of criticism, between behavior and character, between existence and purpose. In a sane society, you would of course be allowed to unleash an artillery regiment’s worth of withering criticism on your blog against ritual Satanic torture and murder, and nobody would have a problem with that. These days, however, all it takes is for a handful of self-declared Satanists to scream “HATER!” and you are unsponsored and/or banned.
Would it not be logical to say that if the field of “pro” speech is allowed to be vast and generous, accommodating even some of the most wretched & objectionable stuff, that the field of “anti” (criticism) speech should also be vast and generous, even if it provokes firestorms of objection? I guess it would be logical, if this were about logic, but it’s not. It’s not even about tolerance, really. It has always been about enabling malevolence while disarming the critics of malevolence and its practitioners.
Only a society with a strong moral compass can afford to be generous with its official boundaries, because citizens, both as individuals and as freely associated private groups, end up largely self-regulating. It’s precisely when the center no longer holds that people start calling for walls and troops at the outer edges.
Hmm, PayPal is an eBay company. So I went to eBay and looked up things for sale, and I found Mein Kampf and a whole bunch of Nazi periphenalia. Then I looked up La Raza and ditto. Then I looked up famous murderers like Che Guevarra, Fidel Castro and Chairman Mao only to find lionizing items being sold with no disclaimer. There’s a whole communist murderer fashion chique in fact, and you can even accessorize with Maoist purses to go with the Che earrings. Then, I looked up Hamas and the wonderful scarves available to complement it all.
Maybe eBay has found out that there’s lots of money to be made promoting hate and death from the Left, while from the right, eh, not so much.
Wretchard,
Gellar’s PayPal accounts aren’t being shut down for anything she said or wrote, it’s for what she believes in. Limbaugh won’t be destroyed because he crossed some line that nobody should cross, but because his enemies moved that line. This isn’t about civility any more; it’s not about watching what you say or write, it’s about watching what you think and what you believe. We are at a point where certain groups are doing their damnedest to silence, delegitimize and then criminalize their opponents. I can promise you this; if the islamists can shut down Gellar, if the leftists can destroy Limbaugh, then they will eventually come for you. It doesn’t matter how carefully you choose your words or how tightly you monitor your comment section or even that you’re on the other side of the world, they’ll come for you because you’re their enemy just as much as Gellar and Limbaugh. And then they’ll come for me…and I’m nobody.
Cowboy/42; wonder izzat what Jerry Brown alluded to with his quickly-retracted ‘nazi’ comment about Meg Whitman?
Meanwhile, In Kyrgyzstan, a glimpse of a multicultural future?
Buddy,
As you can see @31, I am not trying to assign collective guilt. Ask yourself what would be the reaction of the left if virtually all white political leaders (imagine an inverse of the Black Caucus) were hostile to black Americans and it just so happened that whites criminally victimized blacks disproportionately by 30+ times. Would not every morally responsible person object to the attitudes of the White Caucus? This is the kind of jujitsu that needs to be at hand when the Black Caucusians blame the failure of Obama on white racism, because you know they will. They should be asked what is more important, an arrogant man’s reputation or the lives and property of millions of innocent victims; they should be asked to cease their provocative rhetoric in the interest of preventing black-on-white crime. However, such a retort will be impossible if it is politically incorrect to refer to the racial disproportionality of victims. My point is that if BCer’s are not willing to enter that territory, then it’s hopeless to expect Republican politicians to go there.
another aspect of outrageous fortune, Obambus today is promoting $50b for state and local governments. IOW, SEIU, teachers unions.
Powerline has a good take:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/06/026523.php
Increasingly, the central conflict in American politics is between the cash-strapped private sector and lavishly compensated public employees. With government workers now out-earning those in the private sector by something like two to one, many taxpayers are saying “enough.” But President Obama, with his usual tone-deafness, is pressing ahead with plans to widen the gap between the lush public sector and the hard-hit private sector even more
For those needing Donations. Go with GPay, (formerly known as GunPal)
and set BlogAds and others to pay via check.
That is all.
-Pat
#1 Morton Doodslag,
The 4GW situation is indeed gettin interesting. I still believe the sane can win. We gotta be cool ourselves in the truest sense of the word. Many good suggentions have been made on this and like sites and I believe the sane with common sense have been taking steps and developing the correct mindset. I think about the vendor on Times Square and the Dutch man who tackled the undie bomber. I am optimistic for us.
Salaam eleikum vriend
Whomever back up this thread said that the left seems to want to push all the way to the edge. Well remember collectivism was founded on the French revolution. These guys think that they can bring a revolution and end up with an American equivelant of the USSR. Remember there were 2 revolutions. The second brought the Bolshivicks to power. Just look at the tapes made of Bill Ayers and others of his ilk to see where they want this to go. They believe that they can destabilize the system and then control the outcome. I will bet a whole lot of ammo that they will be surprised at the outcome if it happens.
The obvious plan is to destabilize/demoralize us first just as the October Revolution did and then control the outcome of the second revolution. Old copy being applied here.
docbill/50; also, note how Obama & inner circle have seemed from the getgo to be reconciled to a short term –the first Russian rev had Kerensky’s government, which prepped the way for Lenin to succeed. Little known, Lenin’s Bolshi economy failed so utterly that by 1923 he was reinstituting free markets as fast as he could. Then he died and Stalin took over, and decided that rather than the markets he would try terror and famine.
***
Kyrgyzstan –ain’t it mystifying how the rise of PC multiculturalism exactly matches the fall of religious and cultural tolerance? PC keeps stopping up mighty rivers with flimsy dams that collapse as soon as the waters get deep enough to cause an unexpected disastrous surprise catastrophe crisis.
I searched the first couple lines of the poem w used –learning it was the bard’s sonnet 29 –the good prof’s analysis at exampleessays.com begins “Weather it be from family members, peers, or even a pet, everyone desires to be loved.” Suddenly my barometric pressure fizzled as rain began falling in the occluded front of my mind. “Oh, isobar’d with this,” thought I, reaching south southwesterly toward my drought-stricken keyboard….
Someone questioned whether LEOs – regardless of their desire to fulfill oaths to the constitution or to follow their consciences – might be held hostage by government agencies and chains of command dominated by traitors appointed by a traitorous administration. (I recognize I’m filling in detail…)
Just musing… theoretically, you know: Such a situation might be mitigated by private citizens who exercise NOW their 2nd Amendment rights, and accumulate supplies appropriate to counter such an eventuality.
Sorry to be so oblique. We could probably write in Ig-pay Atin-lay and defeat most of the inspectors from the tyrant’s crowd of shirrifs.
So what I’m saying is that just because you may only own a device that uses project iles of 3/10 inch diameter, no reason you can’t have a supply of other diameters, to share, trade, or barter at a later date.
That was me, Mad Fiddler, and the observation grew out of a couple of things. One, my surprise years ago when the Fraternal Order of Police threw its support behind Bill Clinton’s second term, and two, blog conversations (other, local blogs) where commenters claiming to be LEOs supported Obama’s increased government spending because it’s “saved lots of police jobs.”
Let’s see — a nation’s law enforcement officers beholden and supporting whichever political party provides it with the most goodies. What could go wrong?
Kae Arby: I can promise you this; if the islamists can shut down Gellar, if the leftists can destroy Limbaugh, then they will eventually come for you.
So when the “islamists” shut down Geller that was wrong, because businesses should not be able to do whatever they want to do, but when an employer fires a homosexual, that is acceptable, because businesses should be able to do whatever they want to do.
.338 Lupus but I prefer to donate directly.
Like all such donations, timing is important.
We have to give ballots one more chance. If after being behind in all the polls, the Donks pull it out in the last minute on a strange play, then we have to hold another election starting that Wed. A .30 caliber election sounds about right.
Ever notice how most of the Blue Staters use 9′s while us country types go with the .357 for close in voting?
#17 Cannoneer
There was an acronym, MIJI, used during the Cold War in Europe that described one class of communications disruption used by the Soviets. It stood for Meaconing, Intrusion, Jamming, and Interference. It could have come straight out of a high tech version of a Saul Alinsky primer. Many of these techniques are now being emulated on a low tech basis through the Restrictive Measures you speak of, including threats, lawfare, and congressional edicts such as the Fariness Doctrine.
I also have sent a complaint to paypal and will cancel my account within a few days if there is not a reversal in the Atlas Shrugged situation.
Regards to all the great BC commenters. I really respect the opinions expressed here.
@ Teresita (55) who wrote “So when the “islamists” shut down Geller that was wrong, because businesses should not be able to do whatever they want to do, but when an employer fires a homosexual, that is acceptable, because businesses should be able to do whatever they want to do.”
This analogy fails in two respects. Firstly, “Islamists” are are not analogous to “businesses” or “employers.” Secondly, the two properties that they exhibit are not analogous. Specifically, attempting to stifle Geller’s free speech rights is not analogous to an employer firing a homosexual.
Now it is very likely the case that an ‘Islamist” individual, group, or business owner would do both of those things–stifle free speech and fire homosexuals–but that does make those two actions analogous. Rather it makes them joint effects of the same cause. But I don’t think that was your argument, was it?
For more info: http://www.onegoodmove.org/fallacy/falsean.htm
http://www.onegoodmove.org/fallacy/joint.htm
Buddy:
Speaking of Pets…
Anybody ever seen evidence of a Muslim with a pet cat?
Maybe we could practice some Feline Vodun?
—
Anyone else experience PJ pages to be amongst the slowest loading around?
Rossinante,
No, Eisenhower had good relation with de Gaulle (from WW2 collaboration), alsoNixon, almost the only ones.
“If Dylan hadn’t been assassinated” ??? whos that ? unless you ment Darlan, but Darlan was a Vichyst admiral that Roosevelt wanted to promote after the “storm operation” in northern Africa, and assassinated by a “France libre” militant.
Te bombing of France civils had nothing to be correlated with de Gaulle and America antagonism, de Gaulle was a military and knew that a victory would also make innocent victims, that was the hard price to recover our fredom and independance..
uh, I don’t understand the rest of your ranting, mostly incoherent
now, what eagered America, is that De Gaulle left the money paper sytem, based on the dollar value, to opt for a mere gold value, arguing that the countries under this system were bailing out graciously the american debt, and during VietNam war, it was increasing monstruosly.
Also, when he decided to quit Nato burocracy and ask to the American troops to leave France… and the change of policies for France, not anymore alined behind America’s, it’s how de Gaulle developped relations with China, with Russia, and the Arab countries (though in the meanwhile Kissinger promoted a bit the same policies)
Why American rather faforise empathy with Germany:
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/6615/1565/1600/Census-2000-Data-Top-US-Ancestries-by-County.jpg
hmm ceci explains cela !
African-American scholars redefine the meaning of astronomy’s most fascinating phenomenon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oc1zGRUPztc&feature=player_embedded
When you toe the PC line, this is who you’re walking with.
Anybody ever seen evidence of a Muslim with a pet cat?
Well, Wretchard drew a picture of Mohammed stroking his pet cat Muezza (her name has come down to us) for Everybody Draw Mohammed Day.
BL @ 52, LOL, Bea care pfull what recourse you peruse,
O the plague-rism.
When time determines shortcuts I must take
The cost of choice and meaning left to chance
Adjustment to ones thought you once were loath to make
Is now usurped as all ones own, there in a glance
When I have seen the desperate press of grades
Cause momentary collapse of an honest logic pose
And by challenge of the clock, decisions made
Once one thought one not once would not have choose
When caught by subtle pen and sharpened claw,
Or pressed to express the thoughtless flaw
The impressed ne’re touched by pen nor thought at all
Is discovered to be useless thoughtless scrawl.
This thought once a quick if academic death
Is now intoned as flawed, and of justice bereft.
AKA, Buyer be where, er beware, that is a pay for spew sight. Content is not guaranteed only the volume.
Marie Claude @60
Thanks for the graphic. The most interesting thing on it is actually that ONLY in Dixie sensu lato do more respondents self-identify as American rather than as from some extra-continental homeland. My beloved South is the bedrock of modern patriotism. Or would the cynics say that Southerners are just too ignorant to know that they are mostly descended from North Britishers?
@ ridge (61): those guys aren’t scholars. they’re county commissioners. The difference could be measured in parsecs.
55. Teresita
There’s a funny thing here that I’m having a hard time figuring out. I didn’t say anything about whether companies should be allowed to fire homosexuals, for or against, so I’m wondering what that’s all about?
bogie wheel – 12
I’ve been working on the “gov’t is force” theme here
http://libertyfordummies.blogspot.com/
Nothing that you and most BCers aren’t already aware of, but maybe useful nonetheless.
starling
See, you Yankees don’t think we know nothing. It was sarcasm.
@ ridge (68)… yeah, I think I got the sarcasm part
It’s just that anytime I get to make fun of a county commissioner, it’s beyond my ability to resist!
Anytime one can make fun of any government official, elected or hired, the chance should not be missed.
OT, or maybe not, this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eck8hEhzNp0
shows the possibility of using Bahia and Coastal Bermuda hay to trap surface oil in the Gulf. Why haven’t the Feds tried this? Oh yeh, they’d have to put too much money in the pockets of cracker farmers.
When I read this post, one word popped into my head. Thoughtcrime.
“Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime is death.”
Though, I think Doug’s observation above is closer to the truth, sad to say.
Teresita (#55):
Now now Teresita, let’s try to keep the analogies correct. We’re seeing a mild tempest in a not particularly big teapot in the Geller case, but do you have any doubt that if Paypal discontinued an account for “promoting homosexuality,” that would feature prominently in the NYT, CNN, etc?
Marie Claude (#60): “Why American rather faforise empathy with Germany”
Yes, we know how Eisenhauer, of German ancestry, greatly favored Germany.
9. bogie wheel
What you write at #9 is the truth, but it is unfortunate that what Ridge’ wrote irritated you so, and you needed to hit back. Believe me in saying that your writing on this board is of the most cherished.
I “think” I know what Ridgerunner is feeling, because I feel it too. The frustration on this board is maddening; that we all can discuss the destruction of this great nation, calmly, intelligently, stylishly, and accurately with such aplomb is in itself a tad surreal. Many who read this board after 176 or so posts with the same picture lamented over and over and over find it indeed torterous. Those who in their lives court action in addressing problems find no such action addressing no such problems…here.
Perhaps that is as it has to be, because while we feign the existence of true “free speech,” we couch much of what we say, because we already know free speech is as well teetering on the abyss itself. And if what is displayed here is not couched at all, then the “struggle” is, in fact, already over.
I am naive, I know, but hearing Limbaugh say that “they will ultimately get him” and that that does not cause an outrage, or at least a discussion on this board is, rather amazing…
But perhaps you’re right. If we want to talk about those things we ought to start our own blog. But that might mean talking only to ourselves.
————————————
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,
And weep afresh love’s long since cancell’d woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanish’d sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor’d and sorrows end.
Psalm 30:6-12
When I was prosperous, I said,
“Nothing can stop me now!”
Your favor, O LORD, made me as secure as a mountain.
Then you turned away from me, and I was shattered.
I cried out to you, O LORD.
I begged the Lord for mercy, saying,
“What will you gain if I die,
if I sink into the grave?
Can my dust praise you?
Can it tell of your faithfulness?
Hear me, LORD, and have mercy on me.
Help me, O LORD.”
You have turned my mourning into joyful dancing.
You have taken away my clothes of mourning and clothed me with joy,
that I might sing praises to you and not be silent.
O LORD my God, I will give you thanks forever!
Psalm 29:11…
The LORD gives his people strength.
The LORD blesses them with peace.
Starling: Firstly, “Islamists” are are not analogous to “businesses” or “employers.” Secondly, the two properties that they exhibit are not analogous. Specifically, attempting to stifle Geller’s free speech rights is not analogous to an employer firing a homosexual.
That’s precisely why I put “Islamists” in scare quotes. Paypay is indeed analogous to a business or employer. It was another Belmonter who equated Paypal to an Islamist, or at least an Islamist dupe. And free speech and free association rights as set forth in the constitution refer to limitations on the government, not private entities. At least, that’s what we are told by Righties when the Boy Scouts are allowed to fire gay scout masters. But let Paypal send a Terms of Service notice to Pam Geller, a Jew, indicating that she might be in violation of the memorandum of agreement she clicked when she signed up for their service, and suddenly they are anti-Semitic “Islamists” just like Barack Obama.
74. Teresita
“… But let Paypal send a Terms of Service notice to Pam Geller, a Jew, indicating that she might be in violation of the memorandum of agreement she clicked when she signed up for their service, and suddenly they are anti-Semitic “Islamists” just like Barack Obama.”
By George – she finally got it.
I guess you didn;t take my advice on a previous thread, so I’ll say it again – GROW UP.
doug/59, –what cat izzat, what feline do you define, what is vodun, o obscurant one? remember, duke Kahanamoku, in the great fight against coherence, th’art a Warriore of uncommone skille, highly more far-gone than wee southwestern dessert bit owen cameliers.
***
waddayamean/63, heavens naw i wasn’t plagiarism checking on w’s post –he never clutter page when footnote generator computer be right there with reader. i just hadn’t recognized the author –coulda been any of many Englichers twixt Milton & Wordsworth, to my coarse & untuned ear –
***
Here’s a Nyquist from spring of 2004 that i thought i’d re read –plus his latest from Friday. Just stuff out there on the internet, most probly. The way the speaker at the recent Party conclave spoke so glowingly of the administration, as if an end point of a sort had been reached –just kinda creepy, tha’s all.
61. ridgerunner
It gets even better:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx7D2BjlXC4&feature=related
Class on display for all.
I see that Pamela Geller (Atlas) has switched to GPal (https://www.gpal.net/), which has been in operation since Nov. 2009. Is anyone familiar with this company? I’m all for supporting Pamela by switching as long as the word is positive on GPal.
Bob, yes but born in Texas (uh?) and educated in “rightful” warsfare
De Gaulle was friend with Adenauer too
@76 BL, Heavens no, the site you mentioned is a purveyor of academic papers for those with other inclinations.
A more reasonable, not wrapped in Elizabethan English interpretation is found here. The genius of Shakespeare not unlike the genius of Wretchard lies as much in the presentation as in the thought itself.
Bogie wheel “Under the Acceptable Use Policy, PayPal may not be used to send or receive payments for items that promote hate, violence, racial intolerance or the financial exploitation of a crime.” I’m guessing that this language was crafted by lawyers, but it becomes problematic in the particular.
That’s just legalize CYA supporting what PayPay, as a private company, has the right to do anyway. Restaurants do this too when they post a sign that says, “We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone” and no one bats an eye. On the Elephant Bar today, Pork Rinds for Allah is calling for a tactical nuclear strike on the black rock in Mecca (population 1.4 million during non-Hajj periods, and much greater during Hajj) and if he was using PayPay to accept donations, he would clearly be in violation of their EULA and they wouldn’t even have to be “Islamist” to terminate the relationship. Poor what’s-her-name at Atlas Shrugs is just a big drama queen and she’s got enough willing paranoid dupes to suck it up and say, “Yeah, first they came after you, next they’ll come after Rush Limbaugh, then Glenn Beck, then they’ll come after me!”
MC, right there’s an Abilene in Texas, but also one in Kansas –i think Ike hailed from the Kansas Abilene. Could check, but that takes all the fern out of it.
wadaya/80; ah ok, now i see, rec’d loud/clear, error was mayan, please aztec my apologies, you toltex where he goofed!
***
Let’s join –and subvert!
Wadaya drinking Buddy? Youstin living in the grate state of taxes?
My interest was piqued by Rosinante’s droolings about US killing a quarter million French citizens during WWII. This took no time at all.
Per Wikipedia, WW2 French “Civilian losses include 120,000 killed due to military action and 230,000 victims of the Nazi reprisals and genocide (including 83,000 Jews)” Perhaps in his delerium Rosinante was confusing GIs with the Bosch
— and shame on you Marie Claire – for not even having the intellectual honesty to question such a damnable lie.
No wonder ‘everybody hates America’, its because the entire world lies about American’s positive contributions to history with impugnity.
Theresita, you made my day
Whozzit (#81):
Oh, absolutely. And if a restaurant refuses service to two men who walk in holding hands, then they should just grin and bear it, and not be big drama queens.
red, no need to rectify such assertions, I had already plentiy of opportunities to do it on this blog and elsewhere, so ivribodi could adjust the right numbers
Taking a quick look back at this thread, I must say: Who’d have thought this post would lead to a more heated discussion than the flotilla one(s)?
wretchard said @ 6:
But as vanderleun says in his post pointing to ‘no sheeples here’ “No Sheeples Here: It’s True—All Of These Godforsaken Calamities Are George Bush’s Fault”. You gotta go see the graphic. A Fairey lookalike poster of 0bummer saying “I Am Bush’s Fault”. (http://nosheepleshere.blogspot.com/2010/06/its-trueall-of-these-godforsaken.html) The change process that is being tried here by the Leftists/Statists is inimical to the mainstream of this country. I wonder, is this what it felt like in 1930′s Germany to the decent citizens of that state? Or in Italy? Were those similar to the few sane citizens of the US who see the hyper-destructive path the country is being sent down?
Rosinante said: “Ever notice how most of the Blue Staters use 9’s while us country types go with the .357 for close in voting?” And Texans like .45′s I guess. After all, things ARE bigger here.
nErVeS, pascal/84.
trouble, trouble, trouble. In the last week, Karzai has fired his Interior and Intel ministers, both outspoken pro-NATO, and is now letting it be known he thinks NATO can’t win –he’s gonna do a deal w/ Taliban, just watch –the killer is our withdrawl soon makes it nuts for the locals to back us now, then get left dead men walking as soon as NATO goes away.
Multiple bombs explode at Iraq Central Bank bldng in Baghdad today, gunmen shoot their way into bank bldng lobby, 15 dead, and the news lady on tv chirps “They did NOT get the gold or the US dollars!”
UN Amb Susan Rice on Chris Wallace intrvw with smoothly polished “we’re doing JUST fine” spiel, re Iran bomb and all else.
Paki Tali shoot up big NATO convoy, so two days later announcement of the land route thru Russia being put into service –same day that Kyrghistan explodes, hundreds killed, it’s tribal, the worst kind, and Spetsnaz peacekeeper paratroopers enter on Kyrgh admin’d invitation.
USA/Nato air base in Kyrgh responsible for 80% of all USA personnel in/out Afghan, almost certain to be on borrowed time, leaving one road, through Russia for crying out loud.
Despite war returning on bloody little cat’s feet to Iraqi Baghdad, no change in USA withdrawal timetable –withdrawal from miltarily stabilized lodgement in strategic heart of planet earth, now with so much of the cost sunk and the operation paying off by keeping the west at the OPEC table, surely making that withdrawal the dawn of an oil war to the death, including USA having to go back, under plunging fire, as soon as Americans start getting gnawing hungry.
Sauds open air corridor for Israel vs Iran, but so publicize it that it may be cover for a security-driven KSA lurch toward Russia, the only damn place that seems to know what it’s doing anymore.
Could we see OPEC go ex-mkt allocation, pro niche deal marketing, and under Russian rocket forces umbrella dare the world to do anything about it? i think yes, oh yes, it may be in the cards already. Could oil prices alone create 30% – 40% USA unemployment? yes. Could we see 1930s breadlines again before we even get the Mocando Prospect capped? I wonder.
Therefore i recommend we all join the Communist Party and go underground inside it, and start our long march through the gramsci dale carnegie course.
Now for Domestic policy: first of all, what in the good goshman hell do these people think they’re doin….ahhhg wait a sec –having a stroke –
THAT’s what i’m drinking, pascal –200 proof moonshine fury, disgust, fear, nausea, frustration, the first tendrils of real HATE, and all frozen to the screen hypnotized as the playbook unfolds –waiting on a catalyst ? hell, we’re already at war –and watching TV!
To subvert…, I would be tempted axe cept, they use the academy to subvert, and the odd government job to divert funds for all sorts of pet projects. Sos that would be a nonstarter, but probably fun none the less. Could give a whole other meaning to red state for folks.
I held the attention of an SEIU acolyte over my red Che’ chic tee shirt till she noticed the revolution was Reagan’s and the image was too. Image is everything, isn’t it. And sorry bout the Heil-rol-glib-pics.
Many readers here at BC are fully aware of the things I mention here, but sometimes I think it’s easy to forget how much we take for granted, not having to step over rotting corpses or hide from the rapists in uniform as we pick our way to the single water fountain in our neighborhood.
Our national leadership is without any doubt, deliberately steering this country for a profound impoverishment. Our president has stated unambiguously that he regards our past as shameful, and that the country needs to be humbled. The actions we see that some like to generously attribute to mere incompetence I take instead to be the intentional scourging of America.
Without realizing the extent of their mis-representation, we have elected an alliance of committed revolutionaries many of whom have been planning and working for decades to achieve the decision-making positions of this culture, and use them to turn everything upside down. If you are a sociopath, it’s not that hard. Just as a terrorist can easily commit mass murder in an open society, so can a revolutionary lie and conceal their actual politics and agenda.
It CAN happen here.
It IS happening here, and now.
Consider:
China has a national policy of one child per family. If your family has enough income (i.e., “clout”) it’s possible to get license for additional children, but you’re out of luck if you aren’t among the well-connected. I don’t know if that means only the top 05 per cent or anyone above a level of say a police lieutenant, Battalion fire chief, family practice doctor, or tenured college professor. I’m sure it shades and shifts.
But the basic truth is that if your’e a woman and you’ve had one child and someone reports you as looking like you’re “showing” again – say, after the third month of a pregnancy – the police can arrest you and take you in handcuffs to a clinic to have a forced abortion.
You honestly believe that couldn’t come to pass here?
Obama has appointed assistants the media likes to call “czars” because their decisions have the force of law, until maybe there’s a determined challenge mounted to the constitutionality of individual decrees… Anyhow, there are several who have in public forum stated their admiration for Chairman Mao.
That’s Mao Zedong, leader of the Chinese Communists from the 1930′s, who gladly murdered, imprisoned, starved, and tens of millions of Chinese peasants, doctors, college administrators, merchants, bankers, factory owners and operators, and so onAnd I’m talking about AFTER the Communists gained control of the country in 1949. Every decade or so there was some new spasm of slaughter, murder, imprisonment, and brutalizing always in the name of some Grand NEW “Five Year Plan” for Agriculture, Manufacturing, whatever such. Tens of thousands of cadres of fiercely earnest loyalists would swarm through the Chinese neighborhoods, and stomp about the Chinese landscape, exhorting adherence to the new requirements, taking names of those who were insufficiently enthusiastic, and then cheering at the mass executions of the “counter-revolutionaries.”
Stalin had very effectively and very publicly used prolonged campaigns of murders, disappearances, and even the outright forced starvation of entire provinces to suppress resistance to his program of agricultural collectivization in Ukraine in the 1920′s and 1930′s. Russia emerged from World War II having lost some 20 million citizens – approximately half & half civilian & military – to military action by the NAZIs and disease and exposure to the weather resulting from the war.
That is, Russia emerged VICTORIOUS, despite having murdered more of its own people in the previous two decades than they lost to the NAZIs in the war.
This is a lesson the significance of which has not been lost on tyrants around the world, but it is a lesson around which most Americans cannot wrap their brains.
Since the end of WWII scores of countries have come into being ruled by tyrants who hold their little countries in thrall after creating mass graves full of corpses of people who just wanted to live their own lives. They DOMINATE the United Nations and its subsidiary agencies. UN organizations for decades have been shown to be run like Mafia looting operations, funneling monies meant to help refugees and starving farmers around the world into the coffers of diamond-studded diplomats advancing the aims of their murdering bosses. They consistently stand mute at real atrocities by Marxist and Maoist dictatorships, while condemning the US, Israel, and any other Western democracies. [Remember Rwanda and Darfur.]
Meanwhile, we American taxpayers have been supplying most of the operating budget for this profoundly Anti-American institution since its founding.
Hillary Clinton has publicly acknowledged ongoing discussions to submit United States domestic private gun ownership policies to the United Nations, with the eventual goal of having the UN decide whether U.S. citizens should be allowed to own firearms.
People, this is not “the thin end of the wedge.”
This is not a debate on theoretical potentialities.
We need to wake up to the reality that revolutionaries are transfiguring our nation.
Right now.
Needle: back at your opening line.
Rather than many, I’d say most. Same as with ridgerunner. Some of the details may vary in the play out, just to keep things interesting. As buddy might say, What too due?
Oh, I just remembered.
The guy who made his fortune from PayPal went on to found Tesla motors, the hot electric car based on the Lotus Elise chassis.
Tesla has financial ties to Gore. Put that in you political pipe and see what shapes you can form with the smoke.
The Tesla is a nice car, but not as ultimately clean and pretty as this.
“Under the Acceptable Use Policy, PayPal may not be used to send or receive payments for items that promote hate, violence, racial intolerance or the financial exploitation of a crime.”
Send or receive payments for items … in other words, to purchase or sell items. Can someone explain to me how they can apply this to a donation, which is by definition a gift, not a sale or purchase?
Scyth/93; …and all the harder to cope with because they keeping fading in and out of focus –is this organized crime? is it communist ideology? is it just plain old far-left democrats? is it a grand sabotage by a foreign power?
Crazy-making to keep tripping over things that look like elements of a gigantic treasonous conspiracy. i add the two links below, as a sort of i-told-you-so to folks who could not believe that the 2008 meltdown was anything but bad policies abd bubble-chasers. But after that is the bills, the stim, and the stim II introduced one night and voted into law the next morning without anyone still YET realizing what happened. health care massive destruction, military getting set-up to knock-over (the Afghan election, followed by an orchestrated attck on karzai as a crook, Karzai our only hope to win and get out, discredited by this admin –for WHAT gain? and now look at the results of the smear campaign!) –and now this MACONDO PROSPECT –which is SO beyond normal experience in how it happened, and we still don’t have the details that will –I swear to you –damn far into hell BP and the cabal trying to get the American Power Act passed –and they know it, and will do anything now to avoid it.
***
Denninger at Market Ticker:
•There are lots of questions and few answers surrounding the Deepwater Horizon explosion and sinking. We’re owed answers. Specifically:
◦Was, as alleged on 60 Minutes, the blowout preventer damaged a month earlier? If so, who knew it was damaged and decided to run pipe anyway?
◦Were the hydraulic and control box problems with the blowout preventer known and if so, who knew about them and when? Why was pipe run if these were known inoperative or otherwise not at 100%, and who made those calls?
◦Who made the decision to displace the well despite apparent anomalous pressure readings? And by the way, who thought you could take an accurate pressure reading without being able to close the blowout preventer fully (if the above allegation is correct)?
◦Why did the generator(s) explode? This was the proximate cause of the fire and sinking. Specifically, diesel gensets used where the atmosphere could entrain combustible materials (including the gensets own lube oil, such as through a turbocharger seal) absolutely need to have air doors on their intakes and systems to close those doors if the unit goes out of spec on RPM and the normal cut-off of fuel through the injection system fails to immediately establish control. There clearly were either no air doors on those gensets or they were inoperative. This is wildly dangerous in an environment that might contain an explosive atmosphere and is the proximate cause of ignition and the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon. Who either knew there were no airdoors or that they were inoperative on those generator engines and yet was operating those generators anyway?
•The people who made the decisions above are responsible for the deaths of 11 men and the catastrophe in the gulf. They need to be held personally to account as a matter of criminal liability for manslaughter (e.g. negligent homicide.) Each and every person with knowledge of any of the above who failed to “stop work”, and is still alive, is culpable. If any of the first three above points had not occurred, the rig would not have caught fire. The 4th, had it not been the case, likely would have prevented the ignition of the methane and thus the explosion and sinking as well.
•The persons in emergency response who are dicking around instead of physically closing bays and estuaries where possible until the threat of oil ingress has passed must be identified and strung up by their balls. We cannot stop the oil from coming. We also can’t realistically keep it off the beaches. We can keep it out of some, but not all, bays and estuaries. Where we can, we must – period. Those who claim “process” or other impediments must be run out of town on a rail.
(close Denninger quote, read more at link)
***
I ask, what is the term for an event that happens as a result of deliberate negligence? Is it an accident, still? maybe? Okay, what if the negligence included horrifically terrible actions that were known to be likely to produce another kick, but this time with some oil in it which could make a small spill and break the thirty year record of the Gulf offshore oilpatch and change the political situation? maybe it got out of hand, like the financial looting that was supposed to enrichen the cabalists while electing Obama, but wasn’t really meant to destroy permanently union pension funds.
Things get out of hand, when there’s fricken Evil afoot, that’s when they get out of hand.
***
(from January 27, 2009)
Evidence suggests that Bernard Madoff, former chairman of the NASDAQ stock market, had ties to the Russian Mafia, Moscow-based oligarchs, and the Genovese organized crime family…He was also the principal architect of SEC rules that made it easier for “naked” short sellers to manufacture phantom stock and destroy public companies – a factor in the near total collapse of the American financial system.
(read more at link)
***
(from April 20, 2010)
It is perhaps beyond the ability of an innocent public to believe this, but there is a growing body of evidence that a few mad scientists might have engineered the near-destruction of the American financial system.
(read more at link)
***
Note that besides Fall Guy Bernie, not a single one of these destructors has had any but the most desultory problems with the administration –and most of the civil servant end of it is STILL in power !
***
i think the only thing we can do, as it stands now, without further major disasters which could change everything, is to howl, howl, howl, like scalded dogs, at these sonzabitches –and yes participate in the political process too, but call these people –get a workable narrative of the major crimes in your head and spill it on the lady in the grocery line. Add to the “People are REALLY PISSED” conventional wisdom. We got to watch out and not let the thing’s sheer size and amorphous omnipresence beat us down and demoralize and enmeeken us.
Sara #78: I also would like to know about GPal. Or can anyone recommend another good alternative to PayPal?
To all: Let’s give credit where it’s due: This article ends with Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29. #73 Sgian Dubh gives us Sonnet 30. (Nice touch, putting it alongside Psalms 29 and 30).
“We Con the World” did NOT infringe on anyone’s copyrights. See: http://www.jpost.com/HealthAndSci-Tech/InternetAndTechnology/Article.aspx?id=178341
PS, …meanwhile, the 2010 Q1 deficit came in equal to 95% of the 2009 combined Q1, Q2, & Q3 deficits.
i dunno, maybe we need to ask for some help.
BL the adverse selection of the Syn-CDOs becomes ever more obvious.
And the REAL explosion/implosion still lies ahead.
Ms. Gellar obviously hasn’t been threatening enough in her rants to intimidate Paypal. Perhaps if her followers bombvest a few eBay customers Paypal will give her back her account.
70 Ridgerunner
check the video, a French invented a ship to catch oil on seas, he’s going to Louisiane with a few of them
http://catamar.20minutes-blogs.fr/
Buddy # 97 I agree that all the questions about the state of the blow-out preventer etc. are crucial, but I can’t tell if you are stating/implying that those things were an Obama plot…..or what? Cutting corners to save time and money seems to be the most plausible explanation, eh?
Other ramblings:
I loved this quote from the original essay: “Limbaugh probably will be destroyed. And that’s how it is. Fair ain’t got nothing to do with it.” Rush, of all people, knows that it’s not about fairness, but what you can get people to listen to.
In general, big wars lead to, or go hand in hand with big government. Righties don’t have problems (any more; post Pearl Harbor) with big wars, but seem to think that you can have a military “welfare” state, without a domestic “welfare” state. Nope, it’s like love and marriage…you can’t have one without the other.
Good sonnet.
I hate to ask a practical question amidst all the bluster, but can anyone explain what the difference is between my using my Paypal account, as opposed to using an echeck on that account? Does the money essentially come out of my account automatically either way? That policy seems to have changed (or option added) some time in the last six months, maybe.
This country is becoming more and more under Islamic influence. We have a president who does not like Israel regardless of what his press people say, the muslims are actually talking of building a mosque on the wreckage of the World Trade Center, so what’s next? They have infiltrated this country and we have a problem that is going to be hard to overcome. I don’t trust anything that comes out of this administration. And I am beginning to wonder if they want this country to become bankrupt!
http://www.turntoislam.com/forum/billspaypal.php
While Paypal may seem to be conducting business according to some socialist agenda, if you truly believe in both free speech and in personal liberty, then it must follow that businesses who “behave badly” must be allowed to hoist themselves upon their own petard. Meaning: a bad business decision causes a loss of business and corresponding loss of revenue.
This is the time to let the full force of a free market come bearing down. Certainly write to Paypal and tell them you feel they’ve made a bad business decision, but the only way to get them to change their mind is to make them feel it in their bottom line by cancelling your own Paypal account. If they choose to remain a vehicle for funding the socialist agenda, well, that down the road that sounds like quite a nice, juicy expose for someone to write. The distribution of which will in turn cause further loss of revenue (as the average JPQ catches on and account cancellations continue) and will make the administration’s intentions even clearer to the general public if they step in to “help”.
Paypal is not “in the business of determining what constitutes ‘hate, violence, racial intolerance or the financial exploitation of a crime’ in a society-wide sense, but in the business of determining with whom they wish to associate.
Paypal is not the government. They have no obligation to determine with whom they want to associate in any “fair” way. If they think Pajamas’ Media, or the IRS, or Rosie O’Donnel, or Manchester United fans are “hateful” and don’t want to do business with them (I can’t say they’d be wrong in the last case), that’s their prerogative.
Does anyone other than me think the Muslim religion should be thoroughly and agressively humiliated on a world wide stage? Any organization that would seek to undermine that effort should be treated likewise.
Apparently blatant and open anti-semitism is not one of those lines that can’t be crossed on this site.
OT, sorry but this is veeeerrrry ineresting: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.html
It is a NY Times article about the discovey of vast mineral wealth in Afghanistan. We are talking Trillions! We are talking vast, possibly world’s largenst deposits of LITHIUM! This would be a big help to the battery industry and bipolar folks!
What a blessing! Maybe Allah is blessing Afghanistan with diversificatin away from opium! Maybe Allah is blessing the Coalition with the opportunity to get it right this time when dealing with developing Muslim nations. Maybe a constructive relationship develops for the long term between USA Iraq and Afghanistan? Maybe due to these new relationships KSA and Iran will be less relevent with less levarage? I see awesome opportunities here!
Slaaaaaaam eleikum Y’all!
It’s coming to fulfillment that any difference of DOGMATIC AGREEMENT with the democratic socialists makes you a threat to socialist (at least) government. Free speech has been THE pillar of American liberty. Once it is GONE government will rule the very air you breathe. And we already know that is their intention, they have said so in plain language.
Let’s see — a nation’s law enforcement officers beholden and supporting whichever political party provides it with the most goodies. What could go wrong?
Salt Lick:
Police department upper echelons, especially in large urban areas, routinely support stringent gun control. Recently, a gaggle of big-city police chiefs objected to the Arizona immigration enforcement law as being “too big a burden” on law enforcement. Cops on the beat are often fine with outrageously arbitrary domestic violence statutes, because it makes their jobs easier.
There are two phenomena going on here that I think I can identify: 1) The bigger the urban area, the more likely the police force will go with a statist phylosophy. Smaller jurisdictions have cops more in tune with the needds and desires of their citizenry. 2) Police forces have been burdened with such a huge mandate of enforcement, including arresting children inside schools for infractions that used to be handled easily by principals, that they prefer any methods that make their job easier, no matter how arbitrary and stupid the enforcement mechanism is.
Question:
Someone could create an alternative to PayPal, couldn’t they?
Re Scyth@93, Buddy@97, Ruler@112,
Remember the Boy Scout’s motto.
#92
Many years ago during my junior year abroad, I visited an English language book store in Paris. While in a loft area above the book store where students would gather and talk shop, I engaged in a conversation with a beautiful,young English girl who was enamoured with my being from Cuba. However, when she said that she was enamoured of Fidel Castro and the revolution, I couldn’t help but explain that I wasn’t ‘that kind of Cuban’, that I was an AMERICAN, born in Cuba whose parents had fled Cuba after the revolution. Suddenly, my perception, my ‘image’, in her eyes changed and our promising conversation ended….I don’t regret it.
T/116; you should’ve asked her under what conditions she would try to paddle 100 miles through a shark-filled sea on a forklift pallet lashed to a tire inner tube, and why aircraft and patrol boats from her point of departure would machine-gun her in the water, on sight, for so doing.
DR/113; anyone who knows a cop or has one in the family or at church, might think of engaging him or her in conversation on this topic. The gun-control wedge issue has generated a very large body of research that the more armed citizens the less vbiolent crime. That’s pretty much the end of the debate, for any honest person.
R4y/112; too late, the senate last week okayed the EPA taking diktat control of the air you breathe.
MF/115; yes but how? Can’t eat gold, can’t shoot your own neighbor’s kid in a nat’l guard uniform come to round you up as an enemy of the state.
D/104; Plot, but not a simple one.
First, you need to understand the way the offshore drilling system works, mechanically and administratively, from the tungstun carbide boring thru the earth to the telemetry antenna atop the derrick –and exactly what happened April 20 on the rig, and what is being withheld, and why that might be being withheld. See my Denninger link above –it focuses on a certain ‘who’ gave ‘the’ critical orders.
You have to understand the mechanics of abnormal pressure control and understand the equipment and procedures of it.
then you have to study the BP global ops, the partners, the venues. Then you have to study BP’s lobby work with the green wing and green mafia –including openly paying off Rahm Emanuel and openly drafting Sen Kerry’s American Power Act (which is mostly cap and trade with 2 or 3 times the goodies for BP).
Then you have to understand the politics of the APAct as it is languishing DOA in the senate, with an unfriendly election approaching in 140 days.
Then you have to understand revolutionary strategy & tactics, the communist morality of the crisis, and its use in power and control, and the role of the saboteur in communist history and myths of origin.
Then you have to understand who Carole Browner is, and study her past work, and how Love Canal (connected to BP accomplice Oxy) was a scam, and how the enviro cleanup industry funded by the $500 billion (in a 70s dollars segue to present and counting) take from Love Canal stands to make an incalculable amount from BP Spill.
Then you have to understand how the Santa Barbara spill killed drilling on the left and right coasts (add to dubious crisis list ‘Three Mile Island’, happened 12 days after film ‘China Syndrome’ came out, aped the same error–no one harmed, but killed nuke power for 30 years and counting in USA) but how the southern rebel gulf coast refused to knuckle under.
Then how that gulf coast safety and enviro record (no blowout in 30 years and tens of thousands wells, no deep water blowout ever) had kept it safe from the now-inside-US gov’t, kremlin-policy enacting, academy cabal –as well as how deeply that had infuriated that ruthlessly ideological cabal.
Then you have to understand the Armand Hammer-Kremlin-Gore-elements in UK Royal Family-Gorbachev-UN AGW IPCC (Earth Day April 20) nexus and how it has steadily powered-down the otherwise unbeatable American dynamo and made Russian oil & gas a decisive weapon of the battle for European and middle eastern political-military alignment.
Oh jeez, there’s SO much you have to understand, in order to wrap your mind around the enormity of the stakes represented by American Power Act, by the BP Oxy Colombian holdings, how those relate to Hugo’s Bolo Rev (search ‘Macondo’ –it has two sources, BP well is one, take a look at the other), Hugo’s connection to the boomer Dems of DC (Jimmy Carter ‘made’ Hugo), and how the entire global oil geopolitical equation was on the balance depending on how the Mississippi Canyon proved out, and how BP got there, and drilled what is now wasting (to leave out the sea and land and economic damage) but what by another company would have been a huge politically and economically important strike, what would have been the top, or in the top five, at worst the top ten, wells EVER in America’s gulf coast. *EVER*
BTW, as i type this, ace financial crime investigator Charles Gasparino (search him too), who is pretty sure (as am i) that Lehman commited suicide for ‘the cause’, is on TV saying something for the first time i’ve heard anywhere besides inside my own head: “This spill is starting to smell like Lehman Brothers”.
dwight, study all that, spend a few hours or weeks in search, then, then, let’s talk about your question and my answer –okay?
Submission IS Treason! That’s why islame works so well – especially with the financial industries like the New York bunch who voted for building a mega-mosque at ground zero! How can this be? Well, we are all ruled by hypocritical SALESMEN – traders who will sell us out and sell us off in exchange for promisory bills of goods; for mere IOU power-tokens (“money”) at every opportunity! WHY? Because then they can pretend they’ve done a brave and necessary thing; they’ve made the hard choices, Decided to Deal with it; here’s Islam!
“I, Muhammad, ‘prophecize’ that when I threaten you with violence and Pain, you will Submit to the Fear of my pain, and out of this ‘respect’ you will give me all your… er, I mean MY, stuff (back)! See, Big Al-lah said that he already gave me everything, so ‘your’ stuff, is really MY stuff – you just don’t know that, yet! AND, once you give me back ‘my’ stuff, I further prophecize that you will then help me to get back the REST of ‘my’ stuff, from everyone else! And then I may be generous enough to loan you some of my stuff, CAPISCE?! Further, you will then justify your “decision” in any way that makes you feel comfortable with it (i.e: “Must’ve been the ‘Will of God,’ or something, I guess)… SO: My name is Muhammad, and I’ll be your new Master. Just do everything I say and we’ll get along fine!”
SUBMISSION *IS* TREASON: (“If I vote FOR the current THREAT now, then later I can pretend to have made a *mistake,* but at least the threat will be over and I won’t be afraid any more! Whew!”)
PS This is known as pre-posterous self-justification and Rationalization, NOT as Reason (!) aka: outrageous victim-blaming “Cowardice” and Kappo-like complicity.
Signed,
-Joe (and Jane) Lefty-
The only thing wrong with this article is lumping Pamela Geller – who recognizes this REAL existential threat to our Western Culture – and Sarah Palin, who is a mere Salesman for the Big Oil Companies (which all SUPPORT the muslim invasion; remember the PortsWorld Treason?!). Weak-willed Lefties (and here I include Palin) rationalize their cowardly destructiveness and victim-blaming thus: “If I don’t rush in (and drill up and destroy my State for money) then someone else surely will and then they’ll beat me to it! SO I might as well anyway, and I’ll damn-well torpedoe anyone who says we must preserve our stuff! Sell it all out NOW! Sales before Safety! Sales before Sanity! WOO! Our Team, Right OR WRONG! Usa! Usa!! USA!!!” Sound about right? If true Conservatives think: “We distrust change, becasue there will be unforseen consequences” and Liberals think as I’ve just described them (“Hey – Let’s all Attack first and worry about the silly pesky ‘consequences’ later, if ever!”) then REAL Conserve businesses would be true responsibility-taking partnerships, and not big “Limited Liability” corporations, desinged to avoid all human responsibility like this: “Hey – I didn’t do it, the “GROUP” did it! Wheeeeee…!” True Conservatives are moral by definition: we obey the Golden Rule, which boils down to in all cases of human interaction, we all agree TO NOT ATTACK FIRST. Liberals are immoral weasels who think as I’ve described above; they SUBMIT to their fear. Which is why Liberals and muslims have so much in common and get along so well with each other.
Finally, here’s the simple difference:
Bibles: “THOU SHALT NOT KILL!”
The Qur’an: “THOU SHALT KILL!”
Simple, eh? See? Get it, now?
Islam IS “Different” (!)
Bud, I’ll bet that there is no end of the stuff that you think I need to understand. I’ll go with my explanation and recommend for you a shave with Occam’s razor.
dwight/119, suit yourself –i’m not selling anything but some boring research –which if you wanted to understand, you would need to do a bit of –but if you don’t, then you don’t.
will offer that your ‘cost-cutting hurry-up’ explanation would have to account for a $6oo mm ‘top o the world fleet’ rig –which had just set a world depth record on a previous well, which had redundant systems and supervisors drawing top wages, thus a top level crew, on a hole that had cost already $200 mm, blew it all toi save two to four hours pumping a ‘bottoms up’ before they did the mud/seawater displacement.
“Bottoms up” is the fail safe exam of what shape the hole is in, and is absolute standard op procedure on the safest step-out hole in the tiredest old field by the crummiest rigs and crews anywhere and everywhere, and the order to skip it –the order which brought in the kick which then blew out when the well control hardware failed –caused the type of fight on the rig that is so rare that most have never seen the like.
I did just turn on the Glenn beck show, in time to hear him bellow “The president is going to use the oil spill to ram cap and trade right down your throat” –so at least i’ll have some company in the barber shop, hey.
Paypal Called, Paypal Caved
Paypal backed down. Excelsior!
FROM TODAY AT ATLAS SHRUGS: http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/
As many of you know, on Friday of last week, my paypal account was “restricted.” After a recent review of my account they said,” it has been determined” that I was “currently in violation of PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy. Under the Acceptable Use Policy, PayPal may not be used to send or receive payments for items that promote hate, violence, racial intolerance or the financial exploitation of a crime.”
Huh?
I posted it over the weekend and received over a thousand letters of support, hundreds of ccs of paypal account cancellations…….. the people spoke. Love that.
And so today, about an hour ago, a very pleasant and rather deliberately clueless executive called me from paypal to say it was all a big misunderstanding and Atlas ( and the subsequent restriction of SIOA and FDI) would be reinstated.
Not so fast, Leslie.
I asked her why I was singled out and who designated me as a hate speech site and on what basis? Why was revolution muslim (who threatened to murder the producers of Comedy Central) and Imam Awlaki DVDs part of the paypal stable of vendors. She said she was “unaware of a hate speech designation and would inquire and call me back.”
And so she did.
She said Atlas was mistakenly designated when “in review.” I asked why was Atlas in review. Paypal has been on this website since 2005. She did not have an answer. I asked what recourse do smaller websites have? As this is my real concern. My soapbox is pretty big, but what about small blogs?
I told Leslie reinstating me was not good enough. If a site is designated a “hate site” who decides? Once designated, you have two choices – lose paypal, or change content. Unfair, mon frere. Leslie agreed, she said she was going to recommend a third choice so that one could contest the designation before a mandatory choice must be made or either signing off of paypal or changing content.
Frankly, I find this weak. They should remove the designation all together. If they are going to allow jihadis to raise dough using paypal, what’s the point of any hate speech designation?
Needless to say, I am not going back. I told her that too. She wished I would reconsider. But, no. I am sticking with Gpal – the G stands for guns
The real story is we stood up and the weasels backed down. We will fight each battle this way.
…
Here is the Paypal follow-up:
Dear Pamela Geller,
Thank you for contacting PayPal.
This is Leslie from PayPal’s Executive Escalations team. It was a
pleasure speaking with you and I appreciate your willingness to inform
me of your concerns. As we discussed, you have full access to both of
your PayPal accounts. I understand that for your Account,
stopislamization@aol.com, you are working with our Compliance team to
provide the information we require of all non-profit accounts. I also
notified our Compliance team that your other Account,
writeatlas@aol.com, should not be handled as a non-profit account.
Again, Ms. Geller, thank you for speaking with me today.
Sincerely,
Leslie
Executive Escalations
PayPal, an eBay Company
UPDATE: The nazis and the haters over at CAIR issued a press release cheering the Paypal restriction.
CAIR Applauds PayPal’s Decision to Drop Anti-Islam Hate Site
WASHINGTON, June 14 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) today applauded a decision by PayPal, the leading online payment service, to drop the anti-Islam hate site “Atlas Shrugs,” whose owner claims that “Hitler and the Nazis were inspired by Islam” and that Islam “mandates” lies and deception.
Both true – the Mufti Haj al-Husseini was Hitler’s ally and was responsible for over 400,000 murdered Jews (mostly women and children) and Islam mandates taqiya, deception to advance Islam.
Will CAIR issue a new press release now that Paypal came crawling back?
Bwahahahahahahahahaha!
WELL PAM WE’RE ALL SO GLAD THE GAYPAL “COMPLIANCE TEAM” ALLOWED YOU TO EXIST; LUCKY YOU! OTHERWISE, THE BORG WOULD STILL BE SAYING: “RESISTANCE IS FUTILE; COMPLY WITH OUR DEMANDS THAT YOU ASSIMILATE AND SUBMIT PEACEFULLY TO ISLAM – CAPISCE?!”
#121
Yeaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!
Right, that’s why she put pressure on BP, Exxon, and Conoco Phillips to clean up their operations as oil commission ethics officer, and spoke out against the cozy pipeline deal, that Murkowski had arranged
Dwight, the easy answer isn’t always the right answer, especially when the easy answer goes against human nature or the laws of physics.
Liberals like easy answers. Things like, if someone is poor, give them money and now they aren’t poor. Simple, even a liberal can understand it. The answer as to why this simple solution never works is a lot more complicated, but it is still right.
Mark, Give me a better reason.
You are trying to tell me that shaving a corner to save a little money is not the most believable explanation?
Yes, they might have taken the next level of precaution and it MIGHT have blown anyway. By the way, if you are trying to somehow assert that righties go for the non-easy solutions, you’ve got some convincing to do. Left and right both go for easy answers when they are out of power; when they are in power, they have to tell us how complicated reality really is, as in Rumsfeld explaining war-screw-ups, or Obama explaining our current economic woes, or the oil spill.
If the righties truly acknowledged that fubar was the normal human condition, then they really would have a step up on the lefties, but instead, they end up asserting that fubar is BECAUSE of the lefties (something that parties always have to do to get back in power) leaving us with a hell of a choice, eh?
Therefore, let each of us take our own personal experiences and prejudices and project them as “reality.” Personally, I know that mine are better than yours…. but I wouldn’t bet my house on it.
MTG/124; Dwight is right –ignorance and knowledge are artificial political constructs used by an oppressive exclusive hierarchy to ‘know more’ than an oppressed blissful ignorarchy.