If Barack Obama has only finished the first part of a plan to re-architecture US society, as Charles Krauthammer warns, as a prelude to an even more ambitious second act involving the “massive regulation of the energy economy, federalizing higher education and ‘comprehensive’ immigration reform”, the question is whether the political opposition to Obama’s policies ought to take the same long range strategic view. If Krauthammer is right, and the President plans nothing less than capturing the ideological opposition’s political capital to destroy it forever, then the logical response of any opponent would be symmetrical. A liberalism intentionally out to flatten its opponents risks being paid back in its own coin. After all, who marches on Moscow stakes the life of Berlin. Yet isn’t all this apocalyptic talk jumping the gun? How can anyone be sure the President has the long term aims that Krauthammer suggests?
No one can yet. Until a political conflict is perceived in these zero-sum terms no opposing group going all out in the other direction can be expected to emerge. You have to first convince enough people an existential threat impends for them to take that step. Whether Krauthammer is right or wrong, the President has to be allowed the first-move advantage. Consequently there will be no single opposition to a grand plan that has yet to unfold unless it unfolds alongside it. That has happened in the past in the form of coalitions.
The Napoleonic Wars are an example of opposition growing in response to a threat of initially unknown magnitude. A total of seven coalitions were successively raised against Napoleon before he was finally defeated. As Napoleon grew from the master of France to the master Europe the scale of his enemies rose correspondingly. His enemies shadowed his rise. If Napoleon had not had continental ambitions he would not have had continent-wide foes. And not always the same ones. By the end of it Russia, Austria and Prussia would switch sides. The one constant was the unswerving strategic hand of Britain which patiently organized a league of enemies against him until it ended on a field in Belgium some seven million casualties and nearly 30 years later. Britain underwrote coalition armies; hired mercentaries and used their command of the sea to ensure that Bonaparte’s victories were never permanent.
So anyone really worried that Charles Krauthammer’s prediction will come true should be thinking in terms of contingent coalitions: a long-term plan to cripple the liberal agenda if it decides to permanently cripple the conservative one. In this case the President gets to show his hand first and it gives him a crucial edge. The party with the first move advantage acting vigorously enough may be able to pre-empt the emergence of hostile coalitions if it sweeps the the political field so completely it eliminates any place from which an opposition comeback can be staged. That is in part how one-party rule has effectively been achieved in Chicago which has only one Republican alderman on the City Council. It is proof of the efficacy of Democratic coalition strategy starting from the 1930s in which every important ethnic group was a given a piece of the pie in exchange for backing the machine. That formula has ensured dominance to this to this day, allowing for changes in ethnic composition
Krauthammer thinks he sees the signs; he believes that Obama’s unwillingness to compromise signals his determination to push past mounting public opposition to capture of all the bases. Then he will have his own Chicago but on a national scale. Krauthammer writes:
That’s why there’s so much tension between Obama and congressional Democrats. For Obama, 2010 matters little. If Democrats lose control of one or both houses, Obama will probably have an easier time in 2012, just as Bill Clinton used Newt Gingrich and the Republicans as the foil for his 1996 reelection campaign.
Obama is down, but it’s very early in the play. Like Reagan, he came here to do things. And he’s done much in his first 500 days. What he has left to do he knows must await his next 500 days — those that come after reelection.
The real prize is 2012. Obama sees far, farther than even his own partisans. Republicans underestimate him at their peril.
‘They misunderestimate him at their peril’ — that is — when they are estimating anything at all. Conservative victories are often won in a state of absentmindedness and their defeats are likewise characterized. The problem is this time they may be taking too much for granted on the assumption they will have a base from which to stage a comeback: the equivalent of a Napoleonic-era Britain from which to hatch as many coalitions as necessary until President Obama and his successors meets their Waterloo. But Chicago didn’t get that chance, because unlike England there was no place the Boss could not go. By contrast England’s special geographical position always meant there was somewhere Napoleon could not go. But where in America if Obama achieves his goal could his party not go? The historical parallel founders on this difference. England’s island position meant there were seven bites at the cherry. If 2010 and 2012 don’t work who’s to say there will be opportunities beyond that?
The importance of a secure base cannot be overstated. After Bonaparte’s armies had swept aside all continental opposition an invasion scare swept England and Admiral Jervis was asked to render his opinion on the likelihood Napoleon would be in Britain. He said he could not answer for the army but … “I do not say, my Lords, that the French will not come. I say only they will not come by sea.” That base would eventually defeat Napoleon and he knew it. In Mahan’s words, “those far distant, storm-beaten ships, upon which the Grand Army never looked, stood between it and the dominion of the world.” What is the equivalent wooden wall for a conservative movement in retreat?
The key then to ensuring a contingent response to a contingent threat is the assured survival of a secure base.
But a secure base does not have to be defined by geography. It can be built on human terrain and augmented, subject to some constraints, as a meme in cyberspace. Therefore a conservative strategist who is concerned that Charles Krauthammer’s dire prognosis will happen cannot go far wrong building up a widespread, grassroots organization with extensions into the online world. This is separate and distinct from building up the ordinary party machinery. In that way even if the traditional political forms of conservatism are scattered, defeated or machined out of existence in 2010 and 2012 there may survive a core of opposition that can organize a series of coalitions against the men who would be permanent leaders. But more importantly it will remove the temptation to go for the whole hog. By strengthening the grassroots on terms not bound to the party affiliation but independent of the leftist infrastructure, conservatism can create a defense in depth. This has a stabilizing effect. The further complete and total victory is placed from the grasp of even the most ambitious activists of the Democratic Party the less likely they are to persuade their more moderate colleagues to roll the dice. And that’s good. Because all realistic worry about one side completely dominating the other can be effectively dismissed to the probable benefit of everyone. Politics was never meant to be winner-take-all.
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The passage of Obamacare was a clear signal of intent to destroy
the conservative opposition. As was pointed out by a number of
people (Mark Steyn and Rush come immediately to mind) with the
establishment of some form of socialized medecine the playing
field itself is permanently shifted so that instead of competing
at the fifty yard line the contest is shifted left and is battled
out at the twenty. Every entitlement established puts both parties
in the position of having a debate about who will administer them
more effectively and to mention actually doing away with these
gives the opposition mountains of ammo to use in portraying their
enemies as heartless, cruel, uncaring and out of the mainstream.
The left is very close to final victory. Conservatives see this
and fear greatly. Even if the elections this year and 2012 bring
a general shift away from the left to the GOP will there be any
real move to roll back the enormous increase in government
domination that has been relentlessly pursued by BOTH parties over
the past century? The GOP has been thoroughly conditioned to
give support to entitlements and expansions that all parties KNOW
are bankrupt and will eventually collapse and bring ruin to the
nation. This is so ingrained now that one GOP argument against
Obamacare is that it undermines Medicare.
Until the electorate puts people in office who are willing to
take on the entire entitlement mess the best we can hope for is
a slowing of government’s relentless drive to establish soft (and
maybe not so soft) tyranny.
Where are our reluctant heros? All we have are small men with big ego’s. While most republicans have held the line, they have still not come together with a consistent counter strategy. In this they remain weak and allow the Marxists to advance. We will make no progress until a group emerges that can subordinate their individual goals to a plan to save the Republic.
A secure base via the Internet: Didn’t I read recently that the Dems are lining up the power for Obama to shut down the Internet — in times of crisis — he couldn’t be thinking that many moves ahead could he?
Have never disagreed with Krauthammer more.
Obama is toast.
The Challenge is to avoid an outright depression.
Almost no one believes BHO is, or will be in 2012, the right person for the job.
Fed’s volte face sends the dollar tumbling
“The Fed is throwing in the towel,” said Gabriel Stein, of Lombard Street Research. “They are preparing to start QE again. This was predictable because the M3 broad money supply has been contracting for months.”
—
Tim Congdon from International Monetary Research said the US authorities have botched policy response. “They are forcing banks to contract lending by raising their capital asset ratios. They have let M3 shrink by 1pc a month, as in the early 1930s.
Wretchard, this is compelling stuff, but it misses a some points, I feel.
One, chessmen and their families don’t die when they’re taken off the board.
Two, we should be able to LEARN from history, not doom ourselves to endlessly repeating it.
Three, “online” will cease to exist if BHO does indeed capture enough bases – he’ll ensure that one of those is the Internet Kill Switch.
Finally, the only real power of any grassroots lies in the ballot box or, when that fails through ACORN-style corruption as it has begun to, the ammo box.
The thing is: BHO and his like-minded ilk have already made their first move. Several, in fact, all in clear and conscious violation of the rules of play. Pretending they have not may be a luxury someone like Krauthammer can afford. But the rest of us?? The Republic itself? I don’t think so. So how is further waiting, pondering and planning justified?
You write “[a] liberalism intentionally out to flatten its opponents risks being paid back in its own coin,” but how true is this in the practical reality we currently inhabit? My assessment: not at all.
First of all, the hysterical Dems, in their mad rush to use this once-in-a-century advantage to corral the rest of us inside the confines of their Utopia, care not one whit about retribution. They are effectively above it. That much has been made clear by their own actions, which are consistently at odds with the will of the American majority; it’s demonstrated by the elitist manner in which they persist in either lying to their constituents, shouting them down, or just plain avoiding them. All this “Democratic Party Civil War” baloney is just so much kabuki intended to throw off the opposition – which is something the left has excelled at since the 50s. Again, we’re falling for it.
Second, there isn’t a single facet of any conservative political organization capable, right now, of delivering any sort of in-kind payback. The levers of power are all in the hands of the socialists, and will remain there until they’re forcibly removed. If we learned anything from the Napoleonic episode, it’s that. Personally, I’d prefer we not wait so long this time because we are far closer to checkmate than anyone realizes. That won’t end the game, it’ll just move to a new phase – civil war.
In my observation, detached though it’s been of late, the only viable base from which any significant opposition may yet be built is the States, themselves. And there are precious few left with governments who recognize their precarious situation. Grassroots should be focusing their efforts at that level, IMHO. “Coalitions” are fine, but they don’t command armies of attorneys, large treasuries or, in the worst case, National Guard troops.
Either way, be careful betting anything on the online world. It may not exist in the socialist Utopia the Dems are building.
Kingston “Where are our reluctant heros? All we have are small men with big ego’s. Great line and unfortunately so true.
All we can hope is that someone or some group emerges (Tea Parties ?) that puts our Constitutional first principles first, and not their own political prospects for once. Things are often blackest before the dawn, particularly in a democratic republic.
W-”A liberalism intentionally out to flatten its opponents risks being paid back in its own coin.” I’ve been thinking the same thing for a while. The Left is selfish and foolish. Much of the left derive their entire livelihood from the guvmint. Maybe that’s why they’re so strident? The absolutely necessary, thorough and justified house cleaning of our Nanny State would wipe millions of them out. Beyond that, a vengeful retribution could easily grow violent and lead to some very nasty things, not that almost all of those Democrat Legislators. Leaders and their staffs who have mid-wifed this anti-Constitutional coup don’t deserve to be tried for treason, convicted, sent to prison or shot.
“Politics was never meant to be winner-take-all.”
Who says? Certainly not totalitarians like V.I.Lenin who famously stated that after the Communist Party seized control of the levers of power the *State* would “wither away” (i.e., the end of all politics–the “political” question having been decided by the ascendancy of the Communists to power) and all that would be left would be “the administration of things.” –by the CPSU, of course. A like American result is Obama’s vision. Raised by a “progressive” leftist Mother, and a Communist Father and mentored by yet another Communist (“Uncle Frank”) and sent to the most leftist possible school in Seattle (one of its islands, actually–practically an entire colony of Communist-inspired leftists) and admitting in one of his own biographies that he sought out the most extreme revolutionary leftists possible in college to associate with; and spending decades listen to the most Communist-inspired leftist “Black Liberation Theology” from his Minister, Obama is a committed ideologue who seeks nothing less than the permanent radical transformation of the entire social edifice of America into his leftist Utopian dream/vision–to mend its “shameful” racist past once and for all. Such things do not admit of opposition.
Perhaps THE major take-away from WW2 was that we all should have read Mien Kampft and taken the proclamations of Herr Hitler seriously.. Obama has written TWO Mien Kampfts–he has told us twice what his vision is. And we can see with our own eyes with whom he has surrounded himself with and put in power. And just how his minions have acted–from Sec. of Interior Salazar’s blythly ignoring two court orders to Attn. General Holder’s refusal to
prosecute the Philadelphia New Black Panthers while at the same time filing suite against a State (AZ) that is attempting to stop illegal aliens from violating our borders consonant with Federal law.
Wretchard, if I read you right, you are whistling past the graveyard.
There is no “Final Victory”. Never has been; never will be. Obama is not the End of History. Big wheel keeps on turning.
Lenin prevailed unambiguously in the Soviet Union. Sorry, that should be the Former Soviet Union. Mao wiped the field in Communist China — now the world’s leading capitalist nation.
The only question is how nasty things — for us and for them — get before Obama and his Political Class are expunged. Does Obama get to die in his bed like Stalin, or face the guillotine along with his family like the French Ruling Class?
PS: I should have added: Or in the immortal words of another great “liberal,” RFK, “We’ve got 51 votes–so SCREW “EM!”
There is a long but excellent article in spectator that applies to this discussion, called ‘America’s Ruling Class’:
http://spectator.org/archives/2010/07/16/americas-ruling-class-and-the/print
And how about the hundreds of millions that died in the interim, Kinuachdrach? You take a pretty casual view of history. To hell with concerns about Obama “getting away with it” to die in bed–what about the millions who will inevitably suffer greatly in the meanwhile?
Java Thread #3 and Goy #5: completely agree that the Internet is NOT a space in which “defense in depth” is possible, as the Russians traded territory for time and let Napoleon overstretch his logistics. State-level redoubts seem marginally more plausible but none of them is organized that way, nor able/willing easily to think in those terms (a new Confederacy? that’s a big leap). And most of them are as broke as the Federal government, with the added disadvantage of being unable to print money. The most likely future is one in which all are mired in more and more regulation and dependency, none quite ready to make the break, no critical mass ever quite assembling. Wretchard’s vision is truly fearsome.
As Mr. Fernandez pointed out Bonaparte was defeated because he
could not directly attack England. They had the English Channel
and the most powerful navy on earth to patrol it. So Bonaparte
resorted to his “Continental System” and tried to force British
submission by a continent-wide embargo of English trade. And
he nearly succeeded – would have if the English hadn’t been willing
and able to bribe, threaten and use naked force to induce some of
Bonaparte’s partners to ignore the embargo and open up their ports
to the English merchant fleet. In his efforts to force his
continental partners to adhere to the system Bonaparte ended up
warring in Spain and Russia and these, in turn, contributed greatly
to his ultimate defeat.
So where is conservatism’s “unassailable” stronghold? It is
certianly not the GOP. Conservatives form a wing of that party and
can wield enough political power to intimdate the party into going
along (albeit reluctantly) with professions of conservative
principles. But the GOP has demonstrated time and again that its
leadership will dump these for political advantage or expedience.
Nixon created the EPA. Bush I signed the ADA. Bush II signed off
on the drug entitlement and went along with binge spending. This
is why since 1932 conservatives can point to precisely ONE
president as being an actual conservative. And even Ronald Reagan
found himself forced to go along with some things that, had he
been given firm backing by the “conservative” GOP, he would never
have signed off on (taxe hikes in the second term and amnesty for
illegals come to mind).
It seems to me that the only islands of firm conservatism are to
be found in talk radio and on the net. Rush has done more to
maintain and even expand conservatism than the entire GOP. Sites
like this one provide a forum for some really brilliant people to
expound conservative principles and to put forward proposals for
implementing these. The left is, of course, fully aware of this.
So it is completely unsusprising that the left makes moves to try
and regulate the net and airwaves in order to reduce or eliminate
the two bastions where their enemies are most effective.
Often when I hear GOP politicians speak of the left I hear them
refer to these people as “opponents”. As if what is happening is
no more than a spirited debate about alternative proposals aimed
at accomplishing a common goal. But the left does not have the
same goal in mind for America. Conservatives want a strong, free,
moral America. Conservatives want all to have the opportunity to
pursue their goals with minimal interference from government
regulation but with maximum application of justice by government
in the event that opportunity and enterprise turn into trespass,
fraud and coercion. The left is not interested in equal
opportunity. They want government to oversee and channel every
endeavor. The left wants to prevent the possibility of
wrong doing or even error. To do this it must circumscribe
freedom and reign in enterprise. And the standards set are to be
those arrived at by a consensus of the left. The left is the
avowed enemy of liberty and enterprise. It is the diametric
opposite of conservatism. These people are not “opponents”. They
are enemies and they will use whatever force is necessary within
the bounds of expediency to ensure their will is imposed all
across the nation and on every aspect of life.
The Tea Parties are a sign that many are coming to realize that
the nation is almost lost. The American Dream which is a dream
of LIBERTY (and not home ownership or a successful business or
owning more stuff) has been nearly extinguished. They recognize
that the left is hopeless and many in the GOP are nearly so. And
so they work to nominate people who are not in the “mainstream”
(which is nothing more than to be in general agreement with the
prevailing political zeitgeist and to go along with the relentless
erosion of morals, principles and the rule of law). I have little
faith that a majority of the electorate will respond by putting
enough of these “extremists” in office to make a real difference.
I’ve been reading from a site called the 29th day (go here) that was
posted over at freerepublic. I think this site speaks
to Wretchard’s subject. His point is that there are exponential solutions to exponential problems that are occurring today. The trouble is that most people think linearly. For example Paulson’s tarp was an exponential solution to an exponential banking problem. Whereas the democrats spending program–by which they just propped up state funding problems for two years –was a linear solution to an exponential problem–that won’t work. The guy also thinks there’s an internet solution to the building exponential problem–but I havn’t got that far.
Here’s how he states the exponential problem
There is a RIDDLE about a little boy who owned a pond. There was a lily pad on the pond which doubled in size each day until, after 30 days, it covered the pond. The riddle is, on what day did it cover half the pond?
Well, we think, that seems obvious – when does it cover half the pond?, let me see, half the pond, half the days, 30 days to cover the whole pond, half of 30 is 15, so the answer must be that the lily pad covers half the pond on the 15th day.
It seems like a pointless, silly riddle that even a child could solve easily.
The problem is that the lily pad does not cover half the pond on the 15th day. It covers half the pond on the 29th day, because the lily pad doubles in size every day. So if it covers the entire pond in 30 days, it covers half the pond the day before, or the 29th day.
When the financial crisis occurred in September, 2008, we thought, because of the way we think, that it must be the 15th day. What terrified us was to be told that it was really the 29th day. Suddenly, we were out of time.
Merlin said: “We were one man, a bear, two boys, and one of them a knave – and yet we prevailed”.
I’m no expert on Napoleon, but I always assumed he simply ran out his string. England defended and kept counterattacking, so it was a bit more than rope-a-dope, but it was still mostly staying on the field. The British Navy played a small role in Russia – the US navy played a much bigger role 100 years later doing lend-lease against the Wehrmacht.
The lesson is to rally disparate interests in a coalition, but where are the Ents in US politics?
@15. Josh – where are the Ents in US politics?
I believe they are the governors of the United States. And this is a wonderful analogy, IMHO, because they’ll likely need the same cajoling and exposure to an existential threat (or threats, i.e., to their constituency) that the Ents experienced before they were finally forced to act through lack of reasonable alternatives.
#8 Kinuachdrach – Unfortunately, the reason why the Soviet Union collapsed and China is now capitalist (although very far from free) is precisely because the USA was (and for the moment is) a functioning capitalist democracy and also rather militarily powerful.
Who’s going to be the example if the USA falls apart, or becomes Euro-style socialist, or a theocracy (which is distinctly possible)?
Talk Radio’s theme this week has been “Be of good cheer! The end of the welfare state is near, they are out of money”.
Maybe this is just to buck up the base.
I need to heard clear strategy from conservative leaders.
@12. oMan: – State-level redoubts seem marginally more plausible but none of them is organized that way, nor able/willing easily to think in those terms (a new Confederacy? that’s a big leap).
Good points, which is why I suggest that it’s the area where grassroots should focus their efforts – significant ones. We have to fight on the ground we have, not on the ground we wish we had, and I don’t see other alternatives.
State legislatures may be only marginally more answerable to their constituents, but that margin may make all the difference. I can drive to my capitol or my State Rep’s house if need be, along with several hundred of my closest friends and neighbors. That’s not the case at the federal level. State’s command control over local economies – some very large – and have the ability to tax, so their inability to print money seems irrelevant unless there’s a complete economic breakdown, which is one of the things we’re trying to avoid.
Surely a complete turnover in D.C. is required, but that will initially result in stasis, at best, not a turning of the tide. As before, such a stasis will lull rank-and-file conservatives back into their leave-me-alone-and-let-me-live-my-life mode, which is where the left flourishes.
“New Confederacy” is in fact a big leap – but the leap was yours. It’s not at all what I’d suggest.
Rather, I think we should be loudly and widely discussing an Article V Convention (pls read up on it if you’re not familiar with this specific mechanism – it’s not the “free-for-all” some folks mischaracterize it to be). Get the governors and the State Legislators discussing it – on the news, online, in town meetings, etc. Even if such a convention is never held, the widespread discussion of this mechanism, alone, would raise political awareness to a significant degree – lack of awareness is the thing Socialism relies upon most heavily to achieve its ends. IMHO it’s the next logical step up from the Tea Party phenomenon.
Numerian@10/
Thanks for the link. Really says it all–an excellent precis/essay. (Except he left out the stuff about guns & pitchforks.
)
The tyrannical left strategically plans geographically too.
The right’s base is in the south and stood to gain ground in congress. Many newly retired planned to head south and increase conservative ranks. Many unemployed also were seeking a new start in the south.
The oil spill, drilling halt, attack on Arizona have all imperceptibly hurt the reputation of the sunny areas, further draining their treasuries and appeal. The attack on air conditioning and what the EPA might do in the future also gives many pause.
In the twenty-two years of the Napoleonic wars, the Royal Navy never lost a single ship action. Indeed, so overwhelming was the British superiority at sea, morally and materially, that a British captain, in the presence of two French, did not hesitate to attack, and win. And yet, in the face of this superiority, during the War of 1812, the American Navy, contemptuously dismissed by the British as a collection of “fir-built frigates”, won a succession of single ship actions, to the point where, in 1815, the Admiralty issued a directive that no single British frigate shall engage an American 44. How did the American Navy achieve tactical and individual superiority? By building superior ships. Joshua Humphreys’ 44 gun 24 pounder frigate was superior in every way to the standard British 38 gun 18 pounder frigate. That is the only way to defeat a collectively superior force: build an individually superior force. The Tea Party is a beginning, but only time will tell if it has staying power. The base is there, the once solidly Democrat South will not easily be subsumed into Obama’s socialist collectivist paradise. There will arise a leader, or leaders, from that region, the region that has historically fought our wars and produced our military leaders. Will Napoleon come? I do not say he will not come, my lords, I only say he will not come by Kentucky.
@22. Walt:- That is the only way to defeat a collectively superior force: build an individually superior force.
Yes. And again, I believe this points to the individual States, themselves. There’s not much else left to work with, realistically.
I’m feeling a bit disoriented after reading this post.
We, as an aggregate, see a weak President getting overwhelmed by events, but Krauthammer, who is no Limbaugh or Beck, is making noises like a talk radio host about the existential threat he thinks Obama is. To me this is very significant, and perhaps could even be considered a tipping point. When this sense of alarm is openly expressed by a member of the establishment, albeit on the minority side of the roster, I think it is momentous.
Who’s right about Obama? Is he a fraud and a fool in over his head, or is he, or his “handlers” exceedingly crafty and ruthless?
There is no question that the Obama Administration and the Democrat Congress are using their majority to rule against the wishes of the people. I have never seen anything like this before. The elections of 2010 and 2012 will tell us whether or not the people or their elected officials rule this country.
As to a base for opposition, in my view, the States are the best bulwark against the federal government, as our founders intended.
We need to repeal the income tax, which is the source of the federal governments ever greater power over the states and the citizenry. Returning to election of Senators by state legislators would also help return power to the states qua states.
Usually agree with Dr. Krauthammer, but I think he’s let the inside the beltway view of things obscure his thinking. He still thinks Washington is the center of control for what happens to the future – what he can’t imagine, but what I believe is inevitable, is that Washington is irrelevant to what happens in the future.
And not just the distant future – the very near future, as in the next couple of years. I’ve got a collection of links open – just from my reading today!!! – and the sheer number of these stories, and the way in which this news is cascading, is evidence that we are about to go through what Schumpeter called one of his great waves of creative destruction. Not only is the world 10 years from now going to be *vastly* different than the world today; that world is going to be different in ways that we can not imagine or even guess at today. And whatever government we have is going to be lamely trying to figure out how to catch up to what has happened,and not doing too good a job of it. (One of the main reasons I’m in favor of smaller government is that it means there will be less of it that will be obsolete and useless after the world changes)
I know that sounds overwrought and dystopian – but I’m not that depressed about it, because something new alrise rises from the ashes of the old, and we have far too much deadwood accumulated in this society that needs to be figuratively burned away. It’s built up to levels now that the conflagration is inevitable, and it is coming soon.
Some links worth reading: First, even that reliable House Organ of the State, CNN, is seeing the possibility that there will be no significant economic growth for at least 10 years.
http://money.cnn.com/2010/07/15/news/economy/lost_decade/index.htm
Students of history recall that International Trade collapsed during the Great Depression, fueling and amplifying the downturn. Today the Baltic Dry Ships index is probably the best proxy for estimating international trade flows. Check out how it’s doing:
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/another-day-another-baltic-dry-decline-longest-sequential-drop-15-years
Want to know exactly how our joblessness numbers are faked, and what REAL unemployment is right now?
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/540390/201007141854/Real-Joblessness-Grimmer-Than-Govt-Stats.aspx
Charles Nenner: “Long-Term Investors Should Wait Until Dow Hits 5,000″ Unfortunately Nenner’s been pretty accurate with his picks over the last couple of years.
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/charles-nenner-long-term-investors-should-wait-until-dow-hits-5000
What do the markets see coming in October?
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2010/07/14/285751/is-something-really-scary-coming-in-october/
And finally Doctor Zero on the Great Crash that’s coming: it’s not just political, it’s not just financial, it is systemic. And we can’t put it off very much longer, no matter how long we want to. The time till the denouement is now measured in months, not years.
http://www.doczero.org/2010/02/the-great-crash/
Dr. Zero does hold out hope, but it will not be easy (or, I think, likely):
“Simply returning to the bloated budget of George Bush’s final year would require a historically unprecedented cut of over 15% in total government spending. The budget President Obama just submitted would swell the federal workforce to over two million. Trimming it back to where Bush left it would put half a million people out of work. Correcting this ruinous course will be an achievement unlike any the world has ever seen. The world has also never seen anything like the crash that awaits us if we fail.”
Okay, so I read the America Spectator piece suggested by Numerian @ 10. It’s well done and correct about most everything but the solution it offers: start a new party.
This is exactly wrong and feeds into the Glenn Beck (I feel he’s a mole) pox on both their houses theme, which will further divide and weaken.
We need to take over the Republican party. Elect conservatives where ever we can. Take over the state legislatures. Starting a new party now would be disaster of Perot-like consequences.
Why instead don’t we push for the Left to start a new even Lefter party?
“start a new party” gave us the Clinton Permanent Crime Syndicate via R Perot –and even worse gave us the first Progressive (and thus WW1 and thus Versailles and thus Hitler) and the ‘progressive amendments’ to the Constitution –via Teddy R and the Bull Moose Party.
Both Teddy R and Ross P were more or less self-made men, great successes in their fields, brave and stalwart heros, and the country would’ve been far better off had each had a stroke right after selling EDS and storming San Juan Hill.
goy:
Right on! The right approach could even persuade blue states like California and New York that they will benefit by returning power to the states. Could they not cover their shortfall if they could hang on to the money currently siphoned off by the feds?
Repeal of the 17th Amendment alone would drastically change the dynamic not only for taxes, health care and energy policy, but also in things like Supreme Court nominees.
As things grow worse I expect push-back / civil disobedience from Oklahoma, Texas and similar states, perhaps even flirting with Nullification. It’s hard to see how we right the ship otherwise.
Terrific article by Michael Barone:
The Return of the Jeffersonian Vision and the Rejection of Progressivism
http://tinyurl.com/26vpsdp
perhaps tipping the Obama/strong vs Obama/weak sense of the near future is the massive and not-fully-emerged internal contradiction of a presidential secret agenda that must break laws like crazy while at the same time the citizenry obeys laws like crazy.
for example every pander vote he secures now will cost him a vote elsewhere –the effect of our new fear-focused attention span. the lily pad is a great visual –
another is that Nimitz-class carrier that has been bearing down on your rowboat against the wind so you never heard it coming until it emerges from the fog towering overhead and changes your world in the instant.
Still up for grabs: is it you or is it obama in the rowboat?
Folks:
Look at your fellow Americans.
Not just those who agree with the BC POV – look at all of the 300 million+.
How many actually want a return to state sovereignty?
How many actually want a dramatically-less empowered FedGov?
How many actually are willing to stop stealing (via proxy) from the ever-shrinking productive class and forego the .gov benefits that they have “earned”?
How many are actually worthy of the label “Americans”?
The facts support an answer of “not enough” to each question above.
The Mighty Kenyan has successfully expanded Leviathan around both the financial world (your money) and medicine (your life), and is on track to push through cap-and-trade, even if by lame-duck session.
Look at the facts.
Rather than wasting time and energy on fantasies about how to electorally revive limited government in a nation which shudders from the thought, might it not be worthwhile to consider how to survive as a despised minority while Leviathan grinds to its inevitable demise?
Might it not be time to sit back, relax, and starve the monkeys?
Virgil Xenophon @ 11: “And how about the hundreds of millions that died in the interim, Kinuachdrach? You take a pretty casual view of history.”
If my view seems casual to you, it is only because of my inartful use of language. Hitler’s Thousand Year Reich barely lasted a decade. The sun set on Queen Victoria’s “Empire on Which the Sun Never Sets”. It is completely certain that Barack Obama and his Democrats will one day be reviled or more likely forgotten. Just as most of us have forgotten the Spaniards who ejected the Muslims from Andalusia and went on to build an empire in the New World. Big wheel keeps on turning.
None of us (except Bill Clinton) asked to be present at great moment in world history. Yet here we are. Most of us hope for a peaceful resolution to the Clear & Present Danger that is Obama; but the only guaranteed peaceful resolution would be our submission.
To me, it is a cheering thought that even if we fail the test and submit, or resist and are defeated, that still will not give Obama a “Final Victory”. If we drop the standard of Liberty (or worse, fail even to pick it up), better men will eventually come along and raise it high once more.
Yes, you are right Virgil that the price of our failure to resist Obama would be hellish lives and brutal deaths for millions — possibly billions — of human beings. Just look at China between the 15th & 20th Centuries, after the Chinese leadership rejected technology. All you & I can do is make sure that we don’t fail for lack of trying.
PS, forgot to say, the lily pad has a reciprocal –if leviathan lily pad covers half the open water every day, it will never ever cover all the open water.
“England expects that every man will do his duty.”
(the prize system must have helped a little . . .)
Goy @ 19: agree on the importance of the States. A new Constitutional Convention sounds worth a look.
Walt @ 22: great analogy. In modern political terms, what’s a 24-pounder look like?
oMan/34
In modern political terms, a 24 pounder will be someone who shoots straight and has balls.
I tend to agree with Krauthammer…when this admin controls our money, health and energy what is left, and who needs Congress? Watch for an outbreak of Anarchy soon. And then another dramatic consolidation of power.
I hope I’m wrong.
By strengthening the grassroots on terms not bound to the party affiliation but independent of the leftist infrastructure, conservatism can create a defense in depth. This has a stabilizing effect.
I don’t think this only goes for conservatism. I think liberals and even leftists need to keep their distance from Obama and his juggernaut. Why? What happens when Obama gets discredited? If they don’t create “defense in depth”, they may succumb to the blowback from Obama’s attempt to “fundamentally transform America”.
After the collapse of the northern Klan in the late 1920’s, Klan membership lists often wound up in the hands of Catholic and Jewish leaders. These men would then use Klan lists to blackmail former Klan politicians into voting the way they wanted. Imagine if conservatives got hold of Moveon.org membership lists. Along these lines, the race for Illinois Attorney General is very important. This is because the Illinois Attorney General would be in a position to aggressively investigate political corruption.
Defense in depth is important not merely politically, but especially culturally. Future generations ought to be aware of regional traditions, indigenous American languages, and state history, as well as our history as a federation. The United States is a union of peoples, peoples as represented by states.
Over the past century, there has been too much talk of “states rights”, and not enough about state responsibilities – I dare say duties – to the people of each state to guarantee liberty and justice for each citizen. This duty is also cultural – a duty to create and foster “defense in depth” against any foreign invader who would attempt to rob Americans of our liberty.
Although political defense is important against any “fundamental transformation of America”, a cultural “defense in depth” is at least as important. Promoting the teaching of state history in schools, the teaching of family history within families, and teaching a sense of continuity in America is important.
Without a “cultural defense in depth”, I worry that stealth Islamists or Communists would seize the citadels of English language culture and use them to enslave future generations of Americans.
The future of politics as I see it, will be between the old guarde, and the new guarde. The old one is, well, fixed, established, comfy cozy in its position, and obselete. Democrats running for office in 2006 ran as fiscal conservatives, and won because congress had spent roughly 10 trillion dollars (over five years) of taxpayer revenue with a half trillion more committed spending as debt, i.e. in deficit spending.
For the dems their gambit of running as fiscal conservatives paid off, but only because it depended, on enough disaffected republican voters, and, I guess so-called “independents” to stayed home, or else jumped on the dem “fiscal conservative” bandwagon. We knew they were lying, because democrat party was thoroughly radicalized a good while back. And because it would be Peloski cracking the whip of radicalism if democrats gained the majority in the House or congress. Both houses swung democrat party.
The media did it’s nefarious job well prior to the ’06 election, not so much in promoting dem candidates (they did of course), but more so subliminally opening up the hole and exploiting the key issue, which was, at least fiscally, for conservative voters- spending at national level. Half a trillion doesn’t seem like so very much now, at least compared with the trillions committed in the direction of twenty five trillions and perhaps a lot more. (Reagan left the governors office in California with a half a trillion Surplus, btw).
But sometimes the wind starts blowing from the other direction, and the time will come, or it maybe it already has come, where newly elected democrats who ran as “fiscally conservative” candidates back in 2006 will have to decide whether they are ever going to make good on their 2006 promises and posturing. Side with Obama Red, and Paeloski, or get re-elected. That time is here. It is election season, and most, but not all of them, have voted with peloski and/or Red.
On the repub side, there is a better chance for there to be races with some competition for new candidates not (yet, at least) seduced by the national government beltway mentality. Christ versus Rubio, or Christie in Jersey against whoever he defeated in the primary, etc.
The rebub side has a whole host of rinos (both senators in my state) who guzzle a whole lot of that D.C. swamp swill (what is it in the water there in D.C.?) A particularly irksome example is Gingrich’s idea to pit two groups against each other, NAAACP and tea party organisations (which one, Newt?) in “town hall meetings” when he has no reach or influence with either group. Tea party organizations, such as they are, grassroots organizations, owe nothing to some burnt out D.C has-been such as Newt Gingrich. He’s the reason Clinton won re-election, and he thinks he will wear the crown, by usurping organisations in direct opposition to the failed leadership he squandered.
The conservative agenda, from social to fiscal, will rule the future in politics. That is, it depends, on the nerve and the firmly planted feet to stand against the out-of-control usurpations by the national government in D.C., and then the ability to move forward to take the offensive whether the opportunities to do so present themselves or not. Democrat politicos from so-called “blue” states will be on board when the time, and more importantly, the momentum comes, they already feel the breeze.
It’s up to us to make it so the ruling class in D.C. live in fear of how we the people feel, and run to the bathroom three times a day with diarrhea worried about how we the people will react to what they do. The media has inserted itself to distract and monitor the goings on in D.C. with their usual statist mentality, because they think we the people have NO business being involved in the handiwork of our betters, and they have gained a lot of lost ground since 2005. An election can and will change that to their disadvantage. Big time.
One thing I never hear addressed is the impact of the Clinton Administration’s stealing of the 900+ FBI files. If this incident didn’t raise the small hairs on the back of your neck when it happened, you weren’t paying attention.
Perhaps that explains the Repub’s unwillingness to engage, nay, their acquiescence to most everything the Dems seem to try. If it does not explain their actions, then cowardice is probably the answer. They really don’t believe what they say they believe.
Blackmail is such a beautiful and silent weapon. And it is 100% effective – like having a J-Dam to counter a six-gun.
Checkmate.
But bottom line, they are my representatives, so any one who votes for them has no one to blame but themselves.
It’s C’est la vie; not Bahala na.
Sauron’s forces are on the march. Rohan and Osgiliath are under attack, Minas Tirith is imperiled, he controls Moria and the mountain passes; Lothlorien, Rivendell, and the Shire are isolated. From his stonghold in D.C. he seeks the Ring. Who has it? What is it?
Anybody: when did such words as ‘data’ and ‘media’ become singular? Do economists still call currency ‘a medium of exchange’?
America is at its Allende moment.
Worse will follow.
@39. Sgian Dubh: - Perhaps that explains the Repub’s unwillingness to engage, nay, their acquiescence to most everything the Dems seem to try. If it does not explain their actions, then cowardice is probably the answer.
No point in agonizing over which is more likely. The solution to both is a complete turnover in D.C. this November.
I am beginning to think that the Constitution does need to be amended and that it should be done by having the States call a constitutional convention. This would totally take the Federal politicians out of the loop altogether. And if nothing else, whether or not you got enough States to call for one the mere fact that a significant number of States were calling for such a convention would scare the Hell out of the powers that be. After all, who knows what state might jump on the bandwagon next?
Nothing focuses your attention so much as looking down the bore of a gun held by someone who doesn’t like you. You won’t clean up your act? Fine– we’ll clean it up for you. And when we are considering what the Final Solution for political corruption and incompetence should look like you don’t get a place at the table Mr. Federal government person. You had your chance and you threw it away.
Martin McPhillips 42:
I agree. The situation in Chile when Allende was in power provides a rough but appropriate analog to the present circumstances in the U.S. If Krauthammer is right, I can see myself edging ever so steadily, and by increasingly bigger steps, toward supporting a movement for secession, revolution, civil war. But I live in Cook County (with Chicago) and I’m conditioned to be paranoid about government. It’s said that nothing lasts forever, but Democratic rule of Illinois in general and Chicago in particular may come darn close.
There is no secure base for conservatives.
I am Roman Catholic, quite orthodox, belonging to a parish that is faithful to the Magisterium. Through that parish and other homeschooling related organizations, I am in contact with people who are passionately pro life. And yet, on every other front, many of these very same families share little connection with conservatism.
Recently, a conversation at a Catholic mom’s group was about how one member was now grocery shopping at the local food shelf. She was raving about the quality of produce she could get for a dollar a paper-shopping-bag full. “I don’t know how they can do it!” she said. She was thrilled to have a grocery bill that was nearly nothing for produce.
Her husband is a college professor at a small expensive liberal arts college. She is at home with her kids, but is a registered nurse. She had no concept that she was accepting welfare, or that there was anything wrong with her “shopping” at the food shelf. She didn’t see anything charitable about it.
Another conversation was with a woman whose husband lost her job. Other ladies were telling her to go on WIC. One, a woman whose husband was in the military and has a pension, and they have 7 children ranging from college age to toddler, went on to say that she was still on WIC, and had been for *a decade* because it made her eldest qualify for more federal financial aid. It didn’t occur to her at all that what she was doing was wrong.
These are women who daily talk about being Christ like, practicing adoration, saying rosaries for the unborn. They have no idea that their entitlement attitudes feeds the same evil beast that they claim to be against. They have no problem taking govt money. They have no shame. They have no sense that their own claims of charity are corrupted by government largesse and intrusion.
Conservatism can’t win when they’ve already lost the ladies who are the last stand at teaching subsidiarity to their children. They want the public teat, and if push comes to shove, they will vote for Obama and his Ds because they don’t want their supply turned off.
BTW, and re my previous post, I repeatedly told friends and acquaintances elsewhere in the country, before the election that put Obama in the White House, that Obama sought at the federal level what Daley has achieved in Chicago and Madigan in the rest of Illinois: permanent, unassailable rule by the Democratic Party, and the destruction of effective opposition to same. They didn’t believe me than and, sadly, most still don’t believe me now.
One point– Obama ain’t Napoleon. I rate Krauthammer– he said we’d get O-care when everyone thot it was dead. And maybe he’s right– maybe O does play a long game.
But I’m not overly worried about being tied up in some gooey unescapable socialist legislated cell. Anything built by man can be destroyed by him. Now the cost– that’s another issue.
I’m optimistic. I see millions engaged in the response to this madness and an intellectual debate that is increasing being won by the good guys. They (the lefties) have lost heart. You can smell it.
73,000 blogs taken offline. ISP remains silent.
Looking for a new host to provide your website with hosting service?
BurstNet is the hosting company that hosted Blogetery.
Blogetery was a collection of WordPress sites, covering some 73,000+ separate entities.
In any conflict you can’t look at your opponent’s strengths/weaknesses you have to look at your own.
Ours are:
-Philosophically most of the military is with us
-Food production is mostly in red states
-2300 years of history and culture reinforcing the primacy of the individual.
Can things go wrong? Sure, and at high cost. But remember Thermopylae, the Teuotoburg forest, the Spanish Reconquista, the Alamo and D-Day. God has placed greatness of courage and perseverance in the humblest. The elites ignore that at their peril.
34 oman & 44 tcobb: the first Constitutional Convention was presided over by giants who carefully considerd how their new document would impact future Americans.
Do you really think the morons now legislating, who don’t even read the excrement they produce, would do better?
They’d gut everything.
Hold on tight to what we’ve got and make them change, make them follow the law, make them follow the constitution, make them stay away from our property.
U.S. Authorities Shut Down WordPress Host With 73,000 Blogs
http://torrentfreak.com/u-s-authorities-shut-down-wordpress-host-with-73000-blogs-100716/
20 Anonymous said…
We need to find a way to make P2P hosts for blogs, so there’s not a central server that they can shut down.
—
@20 Anonymous:
That solution does exist! It’s Osiris. Since it’s an italian software, I think it’s mainly used in Italy at the moment. It’s a CMS which lets you easily create serverless portals (like blogs, forums, generic sites…) which spread and duplicate thorugh p2p. No central server needed. Indestructible if a portal has several members/readers, because it duplicates in its integrity on every and each node.
At the moment Osiris is being used for torrent indexers, but of course it can be used especially whenever freedom of expression is at stake.
http://osiris.kodeware.net
@51. Mel:- Do you really think the morons now legislating, who don’t even read the excrement they produce, would do better?
My answer: of course not. That’s why an Article V Convention is more appropriate at this time. This is not the sort of “anything goes” affair that most people associate with the phrase “Constitutional Convention”.
The individual State governors now have two crucial reasons to consider this mechanism in concert, and to discuss it openly and frequently amongst their respective citizens: immigration and health care. A third issue will be emerging when cap-and-tax is passed, in whatever form. These are three areas where the feds need to be slapped down, hard, and an Art. V Convention is designed to do just that. A fourth would involve specifically prohibiting the federal government from maintaining entitlement programs or, at least as a first step, amending the Constitution such that those programs can no longer rob the general fund of the Treasury, as Medicare and Social Security presently do in order to remain operational.
Delegates to an Art. V Convention are elected, they are not just automatically selected from State legislatures, etc. So the morons now legislating don’t even need to be part of the process.
Teresita said…
“In 1790, there were 650 census workers who counted an average of 6,000 Americans each, riding on horseback and using a pen and little scraps of paper.
In 2010, with two-thirds of Americans reporting by mail, 650,000 census workers counted an average of 475 Americans each.“
#51 Mel
Yeah– and those giants wrote into the Constitution a way to change it that makes a total end run around the powers that be in the Federal Government. Read it.
The time to do it is now. Most states are “red states.” And the power to amend the Constitution via a Constitutional convention vests in the States irrespective of their populations. Idaho has the same power as New York or California or Texas under this formulation.
It is possible to end the nanny welfare state. But even if it is done structural changes must be made to ensure that it cannot rise back up from the grave. A stake must be pounded through the heart of “Progressivism.”
46. Greifer
There’s a clear answer for such in scripture. Has something to do with, “the road is wide, but the gate is narrow.”
There are also those who answer the question thus:
“Why should God allow you into Heaven?”
“Well, because I’ve been a nice person and lived a good life.”
“Is living a good life enough?”
“Of course, why wouldn’t it be?”
The question, ”On what criterion?” stops the conversation.
If that’s how seriously some Christians consider their salvation, why the heck would they give a rip about taking welfare when they ought to be able to afford enough secular “things” and leave the welfare to those who actually need it?
Simple Rationalization.
“Conservatism can’t win when they’ve already lost the ladies who are the last stand at teaching subsidiarity to their children. They want the public teat, and if push comes to shove, they will vote for Obama and his Ds because they don’t want their supply turned off.”
I always wondered why about 40% of Christian women voted for the Dems. The reason is simple – there are just some things more important than a right to life. The reason is because the Dems promise a right to YOUR life over any others. Some have said those who don’t abort their offspring will win the world, but not if those that survive the abortion mill believe just as do those who abort.
Dude, how could anyone turn down that offer? /sarc
Perhaps their hope is in “collective salvation.”
39@Sgian Dubh: I think the FBI files the Clintons stole, for which no one was even indicted much less convicted, have already been used. Remember how during Clinton’s impeachment, we suddenly learned how Henry Hyde had a child out of wedlock, and how Speaker Bob Livingston had had an affair. Livingston resigned, and Hyde died.
The files are now old info, plus after Billy boy’s shenanigans, the MO is to confess right away and then drop the subject. See Vitter, Ensign, and Larry Craig, the guy in the restroom in Minneapolis. Note that all these guys were Republicans. The MSM continues to ignore the shenanigans of Edwards and Gore.
Digital Diplomacy
Jared Cohen and Alec Ross, two young members of the State Department, are hoping to nudge diplomacy into the 21st century, one Twitter post at a time.
—
God help us all.
I think someone compared 2010 and 2012 to the Battle of Britain and D-Respectively. The thing to remember in this analogy was that the Battle of Britain was simply one of survival. Years of defeat lay lay in the future, Pearl Harbor, Singapore, Burma — you name it. The BOB was simply the beginning of the Via Dolorosa just a ticket to walk the road of penance to make amends for the Long Weekend and the Men of Munich. D-Day we now tend to forget, was also a beginning. Ahead lay the campaign in Normandy, the Bulge, Hurtgen Forest, etc. And beyond that stretched the Cold War. But it was the beginning of the Via Gloriosa. The ticket to a new dawn.
A lot of people tend to think of 2010 as the end of President Obama, or the point when he becomes a lame duck. Maybe. But that would be like some British voter, seeing a wishy-washy Cameron in coalition with a leftish Clegg, concluding that his struggle against overreaching bureaucracy was over. Far from it. Single elections do not restore “balance” any more. If they did we would not be at the edge of the cliff. The first step to making 2010 meaningful is to regard it as a step, but only a step. Not the end, nor the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning. The biggest mental change is to regard the coming years not as a fight against the Democratic Party, nor a fight against Obama, nor even a fight against the left. Rather it is a struggle between human individuality and statism.
And in this we can cast our net for friends wide. World War 2 would have been far more prolonged and expensive without coalitions. Stalin was once Hitler’s angel. At the time of BOB Stalin was Hitler’s partner in the East. That would only change in the following summer with Barbarossa. Before the balance is restored conservatives are going to have to be in coalition with some factions of the left, and large parts of the leftist base. With people who don’t even know they are going to be our allies. And this is the posts which suggest that some kind of ethnic reckoning or gender enmity will happen are counter-productive. We will need coalitions.
But coalitions are only possible with a hard core of clear principle. The prerequisite for organizing a coalition isn’t the lack of belief but rather the existence of purpose. Therefore we go back to the original Napoleonic question: where is the secure base? Where is the hard core of farsighted leaders who will tirelessly harry Napoleon for 30 years? My own conclusion is that they don’t exist, but they exist in potential. Too many are trapped in the party structure. They need to think Land, Sea and Air (if I can mix my WW2 and Napoleonic metaphors). You will need regular politics, grassroots organizing and online efforts to roll back the giant state. Sarah Palin for all her faults is the first major politician to wander outside the political campfire. Sadly John McCain never had what it took to step outside and take the risk. But Sarah Palin-types can’t do it alone. They will need McCains and Liebermanns and Democrats on the inside; they will the tea parties on the outside. They will need sympathy abroad. They will need to generate powerful memes in cyberspace, reach for that tipping point button.
What has driven the administration so far down? Is it efforts by the Republicans? In part. But the rest of it, maybe the bulk of it has been Land, Sea and Air. Finally Obama cannot shut connectivity down. Not without driving everything back to the stone age. Connectivity is actually the culprit in all of this. It has actually provoked the crisis. They can shut down blogs, websites, etc. But they cannot shut down the flow of information without cutting off their own power, turning off their own lights, dismantling their own tax base. Connectivity is the fatal drug of governments. Reject it and they are vulnerable to the old expressions of discontent; embrace it and they become vulnerable to the new. All social upheavals are 99% about ideas.
In short things are going to go forward in much the same way as before, except this time people will be governed by a consciousness of why they are doing things; animated in the conduct of their means by intent. Lenin once wrote that Communism was socialism plus electricity. Maybe somebody should have said that what would finally topple his empire was ordinary political life lived with a purpose.
Wretchard: A couple points to quibble over.
To continue with the chess metaphor in your title, Obama already made the first move, starting with the GM/Chrysler takeover and stimulus package, and he’s clearly shown just how far (and low) he’s willing to go. I would argue that both the Obama administration and the resistance (is it too early to call them that?) have finished their opening moves and the all the pieces are in place for the real game is to start…and it may have already started with the passage of the so called health care reform.
There’s a major difference in the reason why Democrats were able to take over cities like Chicago and Detroit was aided by the fact that people could (and did) move out of the city into the neighboring suburbs and they took their politics (and prosperity) with them. The people figured that the fight just wasn’t worth it, ceded the ground to the Democrats, moved on in search of greener pastures where “the boss could not go” and all but severed any relations with the old city. In once case, in Michigan, the city of East Detroit even changed its name to Eastpointe in 1992.
Now, if Obama is set on clearing the field and turning the US into a one party autocracy, then Republicans, conservatives and all the other comparable groups have nowhere else they can go, so they have little choice but to fight. And if the administration backs them into a corner…well Sun Tsu had a few words to say about fighting on death ground. The question that I’m worried about is can Obama be stopped peacefully or will there be bloodshed?
56. TCobb
There are some very serious dangers inherent in a constitutional convention, namely that the constitution could be entirely rewritten in ways you and I could not expect…or possibly approve. After all, our founding fathers set that very precedent back in 1787.
A constitutional convention may be one of those cases of be very careful of what you wish for…
From Chapter II of the 29th Day.
This chapter is about CIC (pronounced kick).
CIC is the force which has been unleashed by modern computers and the internet. It is the force created when creativity, information, and communication, each an exponential force, combine and reach a critical mass. So, it becomes a “triple” exponential force. CIC transforms power into a very different and unfamiliar form.
The source of Creativity is a religious and a philosophical issue. Creativity itself, however, is exponential power, whether in the form of a wheel, a rifle, a printing press, or a computer. Creativity acted as its own catalyst, synthesizing the products of creativity to produce information.
The Industrial Revolution began when CI (Creativity and Information) reached a critical mass. After creativity combined with information, each acted as a catalyst on the other. The resulting force grew exponentially until it generated enough power to act as a catalyst for a Revolution.
CI without Communication is a power-generator. The dominant characteristic of the Industrial Revolution was success through the concentration of power generated by CI. The transformation of existing systems, and the creation of new systems was based on the principle of concentration of CI-power.
The dominant system structure was the pyramid in all major systems – political, economic, social, religious, educational, financial, defensive, and industrial. The generic technique was the transfer of individual responsibility, power, and freedom to each system in order to concentrate power. Each system became more powerful as it was able to absorb more and more individual power. Each individual became weaker. The resulting wealth and magnitude of systems created by CI-power was unprecedented.
The major exception to the CI-power revolution, viewed worldwide as an aberration and an experiment, was the development of democracy in the United States of America. Although much of it was based on the CI-power structure, it was in many respects a precursor of the next major evolutionary step, the CIC Revolution.
Within each step is sown the seeds of the next step. What fueled the engine of the Industrial Revolution in each major system was an expanding “market”, whether the product was cars, health care, government, religion, or working conditions. As the Industrial Revolution progressed, and expanding “markets” were observed to be the fuel for its engine, communication in general and mass communication in particular emerged as the key to such expansion.
The results were dramatic as the exponential forces of Creativity, Information, and Communication combined and began to act as catalysts on each other. The new force created by this combination, CIC-power, began to expand exponentially.
What has only recently been observed is that the addition of Communication to CI-power did more than expand “markets”. In fact, the major result of CIC has been to transfer power from each major system to its “market”. In effect, Communication is a power-distributor, not a power-generator.
Consequently, whereas CI-power was a power-generator-concentrator, CIC is a power-generator-distributor. What we are experiencing now, therefore, is a clash between the two forces which are diametrically opposed in what they do with power – CI concentrates power, CIC distributes power.
#62 Kae Arby
Read the Constitution. If it is done the right way, the Amendments that such a convention makes would still have to be approved by three quarters of the state legislatures for them to come into effect, or, and this would be stupid, by three quarters of individual state conventions. Once again, read the Constitution.
Calling an Article Five Constitutional Convention is not quite the scary thing you perceive it to be. Once started it is not a Frankenstein’s monster that can do what it wills. It still needs the consent of three quarters of the states in order to have effect. Radical changes aren’t going to get that level of approval.
Link to Montreal Gazette online article on Canadian judge who has given suspended sentence – no jail time – to a Muslim woman convicted of strangling her teenaged daughter.
The article says woman is a refugee from Chechnya whose husband was killed by Russians, and one of her feet was severely damaged as a result of gunfire. Goes on to indicate she testified her daughter was rebelling against traditional values, and had assaulted a teacher at her school, and physically attacked her mother.
The knife the mother claimed her daughter held while the mother managed to strangle her with a headscarf, had no fingerprints, and a medical doctor testified that it would have taken some 2 and 1/2 minutes for the girl to die from the strangling.
Gee, what a compassionate judge.
- “…Obama cannot shut connectivity down.”
Not necessary.
Charlie will correct me if I’m wrong, but back when I was writing Socks server code, when Netscape was still the Mosaic browser and maybe 50 companies had an internet address, the first thing I realized about Internet DNS is that it’s fairly easily filtered.
For example, if 72.2.118.141 were removed or pajamasmedia.com redirected to another IP in the distributed name service system – whether surreptitiously, by rule of (some new) law or by FCC directive – Pajamas Media and all its hosted subsidiaries would cease to be accessible. To anyone. This would have no effect on nyt.com, Amazon or any other domain whose IP address is still indexed by domain name.
@ 63. Kae Arby: – There are some very serious dangers inherent in a constitutional convention, namely that the constitution could be entirely rewritten…
This is a commonly held and erroneous misconception. And a dangerous one.
“In short things are going to go forward in much the same way as before, except this time people will be governed by a consciousness of why they are doing things; animated in the conduct of their means by intent. Lenin once wrote that Communism was socialism plus electricity.
Maybe somebody should have said that what would finally topple his empire was ordinary political life lived with a purpose. ”
Townhall after Townhall revealed citizens with a better grasp of the issue than the Pols.
Then there were no more Townhalls.
—
“The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.” …”
– Thatcher
—
“…by that standard, capitalism isn’t some far-off theory about the allocation of capital; it is a commonsense description of what motivates pretty much all human beings everywhere.
That is why devoted socialists worked the bureaucracy to get the best homes, get their kids into the best schools, and provide their families with the best food, clothes and amenities they could. Just like people in capitalist countries.
It’s why labor unions demanded exemptions and “carve-outs” for their own health care plans from ObamaCare. And why very rich liberals still try their best to minimize their taxes.
The problem with socialism is socialism, because there are no socialists.
Socialism is a system based upon an assumption about human nature that simply isn’t true.”
– Goldberg
Correction:
http://www.keitholbermann.com/
Re #51: Donn71inWA
>> In any conflict you can’t look at your opponent’s strengths/weaknesses you have to look at your own.
Ours are:
-Philosophically most of the military is with us
-Food production is mostly in red states
-2300 years of history and culture reinforcing the primacy of the individual. <<
Additionally, most of the gun owners are in the red states. The red states also produce the most energy and have the most resources available for development. Cheers -
We will need coalitions. But coalitions are only possible with a hard core of clear principle.–Wretchard @61
But this is precisely where the fault line lies.
[O]ne cannot remain faithful to any set of principles if one’s highest priority is gaining and retaining power. Thus, the sharper the contest between the [Democrats and Republicans] has become, the less interest their operators have taken in political principles of any description. Officeholders’ oaths to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States” are broken almost immediately upon their being seated.
Politics in our time resembles nothing quite so closely as gang warfare.–Francis W Porretto
So, how does one include self-serving Republican pragmatists within a coalition resistance movement without compromising the essential principles of limited government and rule of law?
Lets just see if the repukocrats take the house and repeal and undo many of the Obamanations/dumbocrats legislation.
I doubt it … but all you repukocrats will go along anyhow thinking how much better off we are.
Sad. Really sad.
You all voted for the dumbocrats and here we are.
You all voted for the repukocrats and here we are … STILL!
If any of you are interested, its not too hard to exempt yourself from the Healthcare legislation. You have to be able to answer a few questions. Some of your answers in some of your cases might be lies.
Here is your site. Signing up for this essentially makes you immune from the Health Care plan. But I don’t know how it will affect your employer.
http://mychristiancare.org/medi-share/
http://mychristiancare.org/exemption.aspx
You all voted for the dumbocrats and here we are.
You all voted for the repukocrats and here we are … STILL!
You all ought not presume how all other people vote.
I have the strong feeling that there have been forces set loose that no man or group of men have any control over, except to make worse by an arrogant attempt to manipulate them. Obama (or whoever ‘owns’ Obama–”paging George Soros”) may have plans for the total takeover of America, but I suspect that there are events looming that no one can manage. I think we’re in for a very wild ride very soon, and that hard cold reality is going to smack a lot of people painfully.
There is no presidential executive order that cannot be rescinded, by the same president who issued it, or by a subsequent president.
There is no law that cannot be repealed, even if a malicious legislature includes language to the contrary. Such provisions are in and of themselves unconstitutional. The constitution itself has been amended, and in one famous instance, the amendement itself has been reversed by a subsequent amendment when the inutility of the original amendment was recognized.
There is no appointed or elected office that lasts forever.
And although there is a continuing nod toward the doctrine expressed in the latin “STARE DECISIS ET NON QUIETA MOVERE” the left have shown they have no hesitation whatsoever of bending, distorting, twisting, torturing, and simply abandoning this principle whenever they want to.
For the short term, please do not have any illusions that The Wise Latina or an empowered former Harvard Law School Dean with not a single hour of judicial experience will scruple to trash the decisions of earlier esteemed justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. Their judgment were tainted, pre-disposed as they were to oppression by their culture and their gender. Excepting, of course, those whose views coincide with the comedy team of Sonia and Elena…
Wretchard’s points about the Napoleonic era cut to the heart of things. Europe benefited from England’s island sanctuary, and in the fullness of time, Napoleon was defeated.
But remember: Because of it’s legacy of settlement and development by the French (yeah, and the Spanish), the State of Louisiana to this day shows that legacy in it’s language, legal codes, place names, and culture. This is in addition to Francophone populations scattered around the world — Africa, the Caribbean, Madagascar, India, Syria Southeast Asia, North and South America. Each of those with some unmistakable legacy of French culture, scars included.
I just have large hopes that the old system is the strong system and will give a good corrective this November. I cannot see beyond it at all.
re: Article V (is calling)
Which requires firm conservative control of 50% of the state legislatures (and the ability to craft appropriate carrots and sticks to bring another 25% more of the states along). We don’t need control of D.C. (and likely don’t want it given our own demonstrated corruptibility when it comes to the seduction of power and the DC’s current license to control $10B a day in spending and influence another $10B).
Part of the solution is a determined recognition that any powerful central government will reflect the worst of the human condition (even when well-intended). We must make it less powerful than the states (each hopefully subdivided into 20x more political and near sovereign jurisdictions) for all matters related to domestic affairs if we are to put this beast back in its cage for another 200 years.
Good news is 25 states are not that many given current local support and engagement as evidenced in town-hall meetings and changing legislature make-up – a hard push by an organized effort of elected state-legislator advocates is both achievable and a force that will stun D.C. Bad news is it will be perceived as, and arguably is, undemocratic (not one man one vote). Given the socialists, communitarians, one-world-ers, “the left” has already made the first move (not just as evidenced in D.C. and it’s current behavior but long term in cities like Chicago and Detroit), we should not be reluctant to use the most powerful political tools available uniquely to us.
A couple of danger points:
(1) Moves in the courts to constrain, reinterpret Article V use. Needs to be pre-emptively fought. Perhaps even start an Article V activity after we have control of the state legislatures for something of use to the Left and then repurpose it. A related worry is a 51st state that is hard left.
(2) Any compromise before success at redistributing power back to the people and small political jurisdictions (along the lines of what existed in the 1700s and the Founders’ thinking). Why? because D.C. will fold early (nothing like facing the hangman to clarify one’s mind) and offer very attractive compromises while retaining their institutions as a center of domestic power – knowing full well that even conservatives can’t resist the siren call to attempt to use government to improve-the-human-condition, which they will then co-opt again.
It would be wonderful if and when the dust settles the more prestigious political positions are a State Senator and Governor (that are a step up from a local jurisdictional office), much more so than whatever remains in the “New D.C.” (which should by law move every decade to the next most troubled / destitute jurisdiction) – where we have something like a hired city manager to insure that whatever is left of domestic federal government has a competent management team, transparency, and an accurate set of books.
A tbd is the shape and form of the federal government dealing with the common defense and outward facing issues, and how that’s funded. Can’t be with an income tax, likely a tithe paid by the political jurisdictions, and fees on services related to borders.
Well, I can dream.
jWarrior @59 & Sgian Dubh:
Could this explain how come The Newt pursued a case against Billy Jeff for two years for constitutional violations – and the moment he became Speaker with the power to hold hearings and impeachment proceedings, he lost all interest, proclaimed Clinto irrelevant and dropped the enetire matter? IMO, it was this miraculous escape which transformed Clinton into an untouchable and invinceable superstar and began the continuous decline of the GOP control.
You have to first convince enough people an existential threat impends for them to take that step.
The evidence of increased investment in metals, from gold to lead, suggests that enough people are convinced.
Wretchard @ 61: “Too many are trapped in the party structure.”
So that’s the same conclusion as the American spectator article. The author of which is out of Boston U.(distrust,yes). For this election, conservatives need to state their case, that’s where the clearness of purpose will come from. Coalition and compromise is what got us into this mess.
I think most Americans are more conservative than they realize. My Obama-loving hippie neighbors are very independent–selling eggs at the farmers market, working lots of under-the-table entrepreneurial deals. When they realize where statism leads, maybe they’ll be willing to form a coalition.
Goy @ 68: Mark Levin thinks a new Constitutional Convention is a crummy idea.
.
Coalition building will be difficult when key members of the GOP establishment and the ancien regime see the Tea Parties as nothing but paranoid wingnuts. Take the following op-ed from Bush flunkie and head speechwriter Michael Gerson:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/08/AR2010070804274_pf.html
” . . . But mainstream conservatives have been strangely disoriented by Tea Party excess, unable to distinguish the injudicious from the outrageous. Some rose to Angle’s defense or attacked her critics. Just to be clear: A Republican Senate candidate has identified the United States Congress with tyranny and contemplated the recourse to political violence. This is disqualifying for public office. It lacks, of course, the seriousness of genuine sedition. It is the conservative equivalent of the Che Guevara T-shirt — a fashion, a gesture, a toying with ideas the wearer only dimly comprehends. The rhetoric of “Second Amendment remedies” is a light-weight Lexington, a cut-rate Concord. It is so far from the moral weightiness of the Founders that it mocks their memory.
. . . This is the challenge of a political wave. It requires leaders who will turn its energy into a responsible, governing agenda. So far — in Congress, among conservative leaders, among prospective presidential candidates — that leadership has been lacking.
And so the Republican Party rides a massive wave toward a rocky shore.”
This analysis segues nicely with Obama’s 2012 strategy. Let the Sharron Angles and the Rand Pauls win in 2010, and then run against Palin in 2012 with the backing of RINOs.
79@Rurik: IIRC, Newt had zipper problems of his own around that time. He was fooling around with a young staffer who he later married after he divorced his second wife, so he was certainly not in a moral position to call the kettle black. But he did get strangely silent after declaring that he would bring up Bill’s indiscretions every chance he got.
The Obamacrats are organizing the economic life of the United States into a series of politically controlled economic Cartels for banking, finance, insurance, health care, energy, and — through cap and trade — all of industry.
Cartels are sold as being good for “Ordinary folks.” For instance, the recent financial reform bill was labeled a “consumer protection measure;” health care reform was sold as providing “access”; Cap and Trade will prevent civilization from collapsing. And so on. But the actual purpose of a Cartel is to force the consumer to pay a higher price for a lower quality product.
Cartels are market sharing arrangements where a few big players call the shots, and the others get along by going along. It is the “synergistic” participation of politicians and bureaucrats that make these arrangements durable (they place high barriers in front of new entrants and discipline errant members — basically, those who cut prices or improve service).
After Secretary Salazar said he would keep his boot on the neck of BP, it occurred to a number of corporate big shots that they would be working for the Politicians, rather than the other way around. Corporate CEO’s will become administrators for decisions made elsewhere. Their salaries will be cut to within the range of the top civil servants who supervise them.
One way to undermine new Socialist power is to undermine these Cartels. For instance, provide an easy route out of Obama Care for any who want to take it. It would be a “legal zone” where tort reform and free markets function. To join, people would need a Health Savings account with some minimum amount on deposit and a major medical insurance plan. It would be a legal “safe haven” for patients, practitioners and insurers where Obamacrats cannot molest them — a shelter for those who fear battery by bureaucrat.
Obamacare has to be a monopoly to stay functioning (however poorly). I think having a way to “escape” will be quite appealing to most people. It will be a proposal that will be difficult for the Democrats to oppose.
59. jWarrior:
Thanks for that, but don’t forget one of our most favorite – Florida Congressman Mark Foley.
putting aside practicality as anything that could save us will likely require a populist shift/uprising or non-establishment introduction of some kind…
I know jack about the actual congressional pension system (vesting whatever — also I have a mind that it shouldn’t exist federally and maybe that sens/reps should be paid by state (so they can’t gang up !!)), but this is something that may have made career senators like Nelson/Dodd/name-your-dem think twice. The clear obvious truth is that they are often more beholden to the machine than the voters, as it provides them security/future. so…
- each federal congressional ballot could include:
A box which would allow the constituents to vote yea/nea for,
1) approving of federal pension, with dollar amount printed in large font (so peeps can compare to their own),
and/or
2) allowing future employment in the federal government (the anti-chicago clause),
as it pertains to the previous incumbant(s), if/when they leave office.
one feature: the congress can vote themselves whatever pension they want, but the voters have final say, so eventually congress will see more of a “check” against raising it, not that it’s a fiscal issue. Come to think of it why not just print the (starting and ending) salary on the ballot too.
The main benefit is we get something to scare them with when they decide to go on these suicide missions, especially in final terms. We get the last word, kinda.
I know this is stupid and unrealistic but (what about an online convention?) it’s interesting that it measures, among other things not least of which is congressional approval, the character of society and converts it into political incentive… like if the voters are selfish then they are less likely to award it, maybe.
But then again there is still the lame duck months. hmm… man this is hard.
The interesting thing about the Gerson article is how it describes the Tea Parties as external to the GOP. In that Gerson is correct. The real chasm isn’t between the GOP and the DNC. It’s between insiders and outsiders. And in this respect, the insiders will coalesce among themselves from common interest against the outsiders, who they perceive — rightly — as irresponsible in that if the outsiders get their way the insiders will lose their privileged position.
What has been strikingly lacking in all of this is an anti-statist grassroots movement in the Left. The reason why the “Brown Bag” became the “Coffee Party” became the “One Nation” without apparent change is because none was possible. Ultimately it had to represent the ideology of the status quo at a time when statism is the status quo. What the Left desires to change is the agenda of statism from mere redistribution to radical redistribution. But of the vehicle itself they have no objection.
What is remains to attract away is the vast array of their fringe supporters. The labor union workers, the Hispanics and the Blacks and the lower-middle class intellectuals who are line for their academic credential to receive admission into the nether ranks of the System. Most of these are still enfolded by the leftist activist structure. But like those Obama volunteers of the famous YouTube video who were duped into working for nothing with the promise of payment these guys are headed for a fall.
That is why the bad economy has been so destructive to the Obama cause. It eats away at his ranks; pulls away millions of expectant follows who are discovering with increasing frequency that there is no check in the mail, no final pension they can count on. The entire character of the leftist failure will make itself felt first among the downtrodden they pretend to care for. Only at the last will the activist structure, the hacks, the apologists and the insiders feel the pinch. But the tower will shudder as the sands below are washed away.
The insiders are likely to fight a rearguard action, with varying success, using bait and switch, disinformation, judas goat decoys and misdirection — the whole bag of dirty tricks. But to pay for it they have to ransack the economy even further. Ultimately they are going to run out of steam because all their defense tactics are net losers of energy. They cost more than the prevent. Defending a bankrupt system is like running a political deficit. Good at the start, doomed in the end. At some point they will realize that they don’t — and will never have the energy — to finish off the dissent — they will understand that the counter narrative is permanent and cannot be wholly destroyed. Then it will try counterinsurgency. They will try to manage the threat. Keep the dissidents divided. Set one against the other. Buy off who you can. It will work, but only for a while.
The challenge to the dissidents will be to keep a clear strategic constancy from wherever they can preserve that vision; to repeat a counter-narrative which will in time become gospel simply because it is denied since the Samizdat is always true even when it isn’t. And as events unfold in Europe there’s the hope that things will come together globally in ways that if it happens will seem most wondrous. Most of this, I trust, will happen as a political upheaval, pretty much like the Velvet Revolutions. Overturning a meme is a long, long, painstaking process. But when it happens it is victory in ideas, not brute force that is the key. Then perhaps for the second time in my lifetime and in many of yours the Wall will come down.
No disrespect to you, James, because I have no idea what you believe personally. (and have no need to know) I’ve seen some talk of people doing that, and for some people that may be no problem. But personally my faith would mean nothing to me if I used it to whore myself out for a few of this governments dollars.
Bachmann to start Tea Party caucus in House
Other folks have mentioned they’ve had their comments blocked or lost. Today I accepted a couple of “automatic” upgrades from Apple – java script and security stuff – and several attempts to post a comment have gone squirting off into another dimension like a watermelon seed.
Might be a connection there. Might just be the referee is tired of my feeble attempts at humor.
To stick to the military analogies, I think Statism and Individuality are like two armies pitted against each other. Their lines ebb forward and back. Obama’s aggressive program is an offense that has penetrated the lines.
I believe he thought he could continue his offensive by using ACORN and the Unions as the point of his spear which would make it impossible for the other side, the Individualists, to ever reform their line. To mix metaphors — game, set, match.
He misread the tea leaves. The Tea Parties began to blunt his advance at last summer’s Town Hall meetings. ACORN is in disarray and the Union’s have been far more toothless than we expected. As the polls show, the center has held.
Still, we have this salient that thrusts through our lines. How do we push it back? Not by attacking it frontally, you smash salients by attacking them at their base.
Hit the far left — the news rooms and campuses that are swung too far too the left, and the celebrities and other public figures who are too foolish to conceal their socialist sympathies. Attack them at the root and the salient will wither in time.
jWarrior @83
Exactly! But Newt had also achieved his great ambition, the Corner Office, AKA the Lord Speakership, and thus became a “satisfied power”, ripe for revanchism.
D P 75 I agree. It is less a matter of linear vs. exponential than linear vs. chaotic; man proposes but God -or the gods -disposes. Men are in the end pawns to events. Big fluffy clouds hide the lightning; think Spanish armada. (Bush had other plans too.)
Obama merely wanted to make America into a giant Chicago ward, permanent one party rule; but there’s no place for those not in on the take to move on to. Ergo pushback; bear meet bee swarm.
Socialist takeover? Obama is no Napoleon and the troops are discovering it (Jon Stewart to Axelrod ” Don’t you first need to show a minimum of competence?”]
Failure can’t lie about success but so long. You can’t buy and bribe with bad checks; or blackmail a man on death row.
The only secure base is survival–living to fight another day; i.e. not killing yourself for “the cause.’
There will be blood; when the democrats turn on dear leader for leading them back to the wilderness.
The progressive narrative goes to rot the world over; ripeness is coming to a town near you. Carpe diem.
But to all would be revolutionaries; be careful what you wish for; don’t call attention to yourself when your enemy is destroying himself. The law of unintended consequences underwrites the ironies of history. Just be ready to point and laugh.
Just be ready to point and laugh.
How about the COTUS (Chef of the United States) being named “Senior Policy Advisor for Healthy Food Initiatives”?
“In a comical move even for a czar-happy president who has rewarded dozens of cronies with distinguished titles, the White House has named the Obama’s personal Chicago cook as “Senior Policy Adviser for Healthy Food Initiatives.”
It’s no joke, even though it sounds like a bad one. The Chicago chef’s rapid ascension, reported this week by a conservative Washington D.C. newspaper, has been kept under the radar for the last month. Sam Kass went from being a 20-something, Windy City gourmet cook—privately paid by the Obamas to feed them—-to big-time White House adviser in a matter of months. . . .
Incidentally, the ‘most transparent administration’ in history doesn’t want Americans to know how much the famous family cook earns. Although he’s an important administration wonk, Kass’s salary is excluded in the Annual Report to Congress on White House Staff because he’s considered ‘residence staff’ and those salaries don’t need to be disclosed.”
http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2010/jul/obama-family-cook-named-policy-adviser
PA Cat,
Your comment about Obama and the elevation of his personal chef to a “Senior Policy Adviser” reminds me a lot of the Roman emperor Caligula who made his horse a Senator.
This act screams out the utter contempt this miserable bag of bowel contents has for the people and country over which he presides.
Like everything else he does.
He is really digging a deep hole for himself.
The problem the leafy has is that their appetite for laws and rule making exceeds their capacity and resources to effectively enforce their rules. The rules they want are so all encompassing and “comprehensive” that they require massive resources to enforce except capriciously. The capriciousness then causes resentment among the other barnyard animals. All pigs are equal but some pigs wind up more equal than others regardless of how you ration the wealth. The market may be unfair but not nearly as unfair as a large state bureaucracy.
In the end all systems fail because they fall victim to their own success. Governments always accrete more power to themselves and politicians make more promises than they can keep until the system collapses under it’s own weight. You can stave it off by recognizing the limitations of governing but always there will be a politician out there ambitious enough and stupid enough to promise more than he can deliver and a polity dumb enough to buy that pig in a poke.
Chapter I & II 29th Day
This force, CIC,[creativity, information, and communication] is morally and politically neutral. It cannot take sides, just as a telephone cannot takes sides.
It can be used by good people and by bad people, for good or for ill. As a matter of fact, it is being used both ways today.
It can be used by governments, by institutions, and by individuals. It can be used by everybody and by anybody.
The urgency is that the clock is ticking toward the 29th day. … exponentially. We don’t have a lot of time.
Remember the lilypad.
Right now, exponential power is working against us. So is concentrated power.
We Need To Change That… And We Need To Be Quick!
In general, current events would suggest that, the global “super system” is somewhere at or beyond the 15th day, but not yet at the 29th day.
Some subsystems are now close to a 29th day. Others have already, in fact, arrived at a 29th day, such as the financial system in 2008. These latter systems are like a warning shot, fired across the bow. A rule of thumb is that, if you can see a problem, that system is already at least at the 15th day.
The world today has become a radically different world than it was before CIC was unleashed. The rules are different, the requirements are different, the solutions are different.
The price tag for failure is different, too.
–That is why the bad economy has been so destructive to the Obama cause. It eats away at his ranks; pulls away millions of expectant follows who are discovering with increasing frequency that there is no check in the mail, no final pension they can count on.
Really? Has anyone defaulted on the pension yet? They’ve stolen from bondholders. They’ve stolen from shareholders. But they’ve not emptied the public unions’ coffers, and they haven’t made null and void the public pensions.
EVEN IN CITIES THAT HAVE DECLARED BANKRUPTCY in CA, they’ve declined to use the opportunity to void the pension agreements.
I don’t see anyone moving away. The poor and not-too-poor get more public assistance; the non-white-men receive more versions of more help, be it federal student loans or mortgage programs or food pantries regardless of income requirements. The ones at a loss are the old demographics. They aren’t wanted, and they aren’t the future.
It may be difficult to imagine, but the reason that more people are self identifying as conservative is because the country has moved so far left that ideas that were once middle of the road are now right winger.
What will it take to move the pendulum back? A new ocean to cross. It’s time to prepare our children for discipline and hard work wherever that takes them, as far away as need be. It was a long time before those religious zealots got out of Britain and made it to the US. It may be a long time again before another metaphorical ocean is crossed.
EVEN IN CITIES THAT HAVE DECLARED BANKRUPTCY in CA, they’ve declined to use the opportunity to void the pension agreements.
It will be long in coming but it will happen in the end, as it is happening in the Europe. You can’t fight arithmetic. When you pay out more than you pull in, either you get the money from somewhere else or you at some point debase the currency. After you run out of other people’s money what remains?
The problem with “redistribution” is that you eventually run out stuff to redistribute. Then it’s back to eating your belt, then your shoes and then the shoelaces.
These hopey changey policies only wind the spring tighter and when it snaps back — as it must — so much the worse. All the hokum they tell about “too big to fail” is really the same argument the unsustainable resource user adopts to avoid facing stock management. He assumes the natural forest is endless, the fisheries are limitless and they aren’t. Ultimately you have to reinvest; you have to create; you can’t just shuffle the deck chairs around on the Titanic. This is why they left is ultimately going to fail. However big the ship, if it floods it will sink. They are a net bleeder of energy. Inevitably the energy runs out. It’s not a matter of faith. Only arithmetic.
Scythianeedle #95
This act screams out the utter contempt this miserable bag of bowel contents has for the people and country over which he presides
There’s also the snotty contemptuousness he displays toward individuals as well as groups of people:
“In the latest stop on his ‘Recovery Summer’ tour, rock star President Barack Obama landed in Holland, Michigan Thursday, insulted its congressman, handed American stimulus dollars to a Korean corporation, and proclaimed Obamanomics a success even as Michigan has lost 94,000 jobs since his Recovery Act was enacted.
All in all, another day in the life of an increasingly unpopular president who seems to be living in an alternative universe. . . .
Obama couldn’t even get his manners right. Ever the partisan, he took a shot at his host, Holland Congressional representative Pete Hoekstra who was in the audience. Despite opposing the Recovery Act, Hoekstra attended the ground-breaking ceremony, he told The View, ‘out of respect for the office of president.’
The respect was not returned. ‘Some made the political calculation that it’s better to obstruct than to lend a hand,’ sneered Obama at the end of his remarks. ‘Now that doesn’t stop them from being at ribbon cuttings, but that’s OK.’
And then the president jumped in his 10 mpg Caddy limo and headed to the next stop on his tour to transform what Americans drive.”
http://www.detnews.com/article/20100715/MIVIEW/100715001/1467/opinion01/He-camehe-sawhe-insulted
One commenter observed that Obama’s juvenile behavior is just one more way he is cutting down the United States to what he considers our proper size, i.e. by destroying the dignity of the office he presently holds.
One of BHO’s first acts. (February)
These gems see to it that small business/low bidders are excluded.
Non union companies are required to hire some union employees, interns, quotas, etc etc.
President Obama overturns Bush ban of Federal project labor agreements
“This is yet another reason for working families to be grateful that we have a champion in the White House,
“…Project labor agreements are a win-win for everyone involved. Contractors get highly trained, skilled labor with fixed costs, and workers are fairly compensated with their rights and safety protected.”- Jimmy Hoffa Jr, President International Brotherhood Of Teamsters
Make no mistake about it, former President Bush had a hard on for union construction workers, one of the first Executive Orders of the Bush administration was “Executive Order 13208 of April 6, 2001″, which banned the use of Project Labor Agreements(PLA’s) on Federally funded projects.
Obama is not beyond making mistakes but it would be our own error to count on those too much. I believe Krauthammer is more right than wrong, our own wishful thinking to the contrary notwithstanding.
Of course, as many have pointed out, even if we do win in 2010 and again in 2012, will we have courageous leaders more like Thatcher or more like Bush father and son? Yes, I do credit W with real courage for a while, but he got worn down and wasn’t very good on domestic things even at his peak.
Obama is not a liberal. He is a radical progressive. I fear that weakening America is not a bug but a feature in his plans.
It is not merely that bad programs have been passed or that bad financial decisions have been made. In the past two years traditions and procedures have been run roughshod and scarcely anyone cares or even notices.
I do not think we need a Constitutional Convention, be it Article V or something else. What we need is for the original Constitutional ideas to be restored and observed again. Yes, there is no flawless system that cannot be exploited. But our Constitution served us brilliantly during most of our history. (I know — the Civil War was necessary to correct the most grievous flaw in the system. Lincoln restored the best of the Declaration to trump the worst in the Constitution.)
But with that notable exception, the Constitution served us for nearly 125 years. From 1913 through the 1940′s viruses were introduced, but we even survived them. But the 29th day concept introduced earlier is upon us now.
The rescue and restitution of the Constitution is what is needed. But who even knows more about the Constitution than its name? Other perhaps than those serving in the military, how many Americans under age 30 could write a single page summarizing the main points of the Constitution? My guess is about 10%.
We lost the media in the mid-sixties. We lost education at the elementary school and high school level about the same time. By the late seventies we had lost the main stream Churches. The universities crumbled in the late sixties and early seventies (though Berkeley and Columbia were ahead of that wave). We are on the threshold of losing the culture altogether. When we lose our financial base over the next half decade or so, our vulnerability will be nearly complete. (And I haven’t even mentioned military weakness or giant scale terrorism.)
The reference to Virgil was apt. 500 years? Well, the Israelites were in Egypt for 430 years. The first 30 were pretty good, thanks to Joseph. But then 400 years of slavery must have felt like a very long time to those who lived through it. So I take little comfort knowing that in 70 or 400 or 500 years the bad guys will eventually run out of steam and collapse.
Distributed networks of strategic depth? Generation X will say, “Whatever.” And Generation Y won’t even know what we are talking about.
How is Australia looking these days Wretchard? Want some visitors?
These hopey changey policies only wind the spring tighter and when it snaps back — as it must — so much the worse. All the hokum they tell about “too big to fail” is really the same argument the unsustainable resource user adopts to avoid facing stock management. He assumes the natural forest is endless, the fisheries are limitless and they aren’t. Ultimately you have to reinvest; you have to create; you can’t just shuffle the deck chairs around on the Titanic. This is why the left is ultimately going to fail. However big the ship, if it floods it will sink. They are a net bleeder of energy. Inevitably the energy runs out. It’s not a matter of faith. Only arithmetic.
Ah Wretchard, arithmetic is merely an evil Western construct that is used to oppress others. Ask any post-modernist. All we have to do to make anything happen is just to pretend hard enough. Its not quite like in Peter Pan however, where you can fly if you keep the happy thought in your head. The notion is that everyone must have the happy thought or no one can fly, in which case we must find the appropriate parties to blame for the heresy.
Even as I write this, thinking about Obama the Light Worker, I feel a tingling down my leg. Oh wait–it was just a blood-sucking mosquito. I slapped it and its dead now. I wish our current problems could be solved so easily.
We have great difficulty imagining that a general cataclysm could occur, one that brings the world to a state of collapse and chaos as bad as a tornado, earthquake, or hurricane has done to finite regions.
Even though there are communities that have suffered such events, we all take comfort in a sense that they are just regional, that authorities and NGOs are hovering at the margins of the disaster to bring in aid.
The delusion of the Progressive Socialism is creating something I would compare more with the Black Death of the 1300′s. But a whole battalion of monsters will rise up, not just a single destroying monster.
I predict general collapse, because the idiots in power don’t seem to realize how fragile and delicate the entire system really is, and they have over the last century concentrated a ruling class of delusional turds whose religion places themselves at the pinnacle of creation. They have defined themselves as vastly more intelligent than the pathetic losers whom they rule, and the mere fact that they are the rulers is regarded as irrefutable proof.
So, they continue to promiscuously tear apart systems that have made the U.S.A. able to feed a major portion of the world’s billions; the creative engine that has provided inventions, technologies, pharmaceuticals, medical diagnostics and therapeutic procedures and practitioners that have bolstered the public health of the world. They’ve been like so many giddy toddlers disassembling an electron microscope with hammers. Now as they try to build its like, or any system that will actually perform the miracles they claim to be within their measure, they’re finding to their chagrin that it’s not working.
They have spent generations creating the conditions for disaster, like the CRA and all its linked scams, cons, and idiot policies that created the financial exsanguination of fall 2008.
All those have the potential of interacting and magnifying each other, overwhelming one industry after another as fuel deliveries are disrupted, cascading to failures in raw materials deliveries, spoilage of vulnerable foodstuffs in warehouses without electricity or backup generators, idled by strikes, utilities cut-offs, and inadequate maintenance and cleaning of complex interactive processing equipment.
These moral lepers think they’re in control. Instead they are scuttling the ship, when they don’t even know how to tread water.
Civil WAR? Maybe it will come to that. But I suspect the civil strife will simply be local response to the general interruption of services.
Take a few minutes to think about all the things you take for granted…
While I make my way to the grocery I will not have to step over the corpses of people who died or were murdered last night.
Water coming out of the faucet will not be contaminated with human waste.
Drugs from the pharmacy will actually contain what the label says.
Uniformed paramilitary people will not come to my neighbors or to my house in the middle of the night and take people away.
My children will not denounce me as a counter-revolutionary to the authorities.
I will not have to bribe a police officer today just to get through a checkpoint going to school.
I will be able to get into my car on a whim and drive across the country to visit a friend, or go to Disneyland, without having to get a travel permit from a local political officer, and I won’t have to show my papers to soldiers at the border of the city, or at any state border.
I’m sure each of you can think of plenty more.
Pray for guidance; pray for our leaders to wake up.
Learn self reliance. Buy ammo.
#102 Batman
The Constitution did work fine so long as the powers that be respected its original intent. They don’t anymore. The interstate commerce clause has been used to justify Federal micro-management of nearly every aspect of our lives. That was not its original intent.
Nor was it intended that Congress could pass nebulous laws that allowed the executive branch to write regulations that have the force of law. By doing so they have abdicated their proper function to the executive branch. And most of the “laws” that we do have come in the form of Federal Regulations, not statutes passed by the Congress.
We need structural changes that will dispel the loopholes by which the original meaning was perverted, and to provide sanctions with teeth against anyone in any branch of government who attempts to do so in the future.
89. Doug:
Heard that about Bachmann as well, but I also heard that she had to petition the Speaker of the House for permission…fat chance that’s happening – the spkr hates Bachmann and makes it pretty clear.
Just when we see the ebb and flow along our “lines,” we are granted with the all too usual Benedict Arnold.
Abigail Thernstrom has recently come out scolding Republicans for their unwarranted and uncharitable comments toward that group of choir boys known as the New Black Panther Party.
“Clubs? What Clubs?”
Perhaps she isn’t aware that the FBI very credibly suspects that al Qaeda did some training “dry runs” before 911. I’ll bet our friends in “The City of Brotherly Love” may have conducted their own, as well:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0710/39861.html
Odds game.
Affirmative action preliminary levelling of the playing field: remove White’s KBP and KNP. Remove Black’s KP.
1. PQB4(let’s be friends) … Q-R4 checkmate.
Levity?
Levity.
One sunny day in January, 2013 an old man approached the White House from across Pennsylvania Avenue, where he’d been sitting on a park bench. He spoke to the U.S. Marine standing guard and said, “I would like to go in and meet with President Obama.”
The Marine looked at the man and said, “Sir, Mr. Obama is no longer president and no longer resides here.”
The old man said, “Okay”, and walked away.
The following day, the same man approached the White House and said to the same Marine, “I would like to go in and meet with President Obama.”
The Marine again told the man, “Sir, as I said yesterday, Mr. Obama is no longer president and no longer resides here.”
The man thanked him and, again, just walked away.
The third day, the same man approached the White House and spoke to the very same U.S. Marine, saying “I would like to go in and meet with President Obama.”
The Marine, understandably agitated at this point, looked at the man and said, “Sir, this is the third day in a row you have been here asking to speak to Mr. Obama. I’ve told you already that Mr. Obama is no longer the president and no longer resides here. Don’t you understand?”
The old man looked at the Marine and said, “Oh, I understand. I just love hearing it.”
The Marine snapped to attention, saluted, and said, “See you tomorrow, Sir!”
Yeah, I know you’ve probably heard/read it already. I just can’t help it, I just love hearing/reading it again and again!
While I make my way to the grocery I will not have to step over the corpses of people who died or were murdered last night.
I remember a scene in the movie “The Pianist” — a scene that occurred not too far into the movie — in which the main character and someone else were walking down the street in Warsaw. Without missing a beat in their conversation, they step over a body lying on the sidewalk and keep on walking & talking.
As a bit of filmmaking, showing not the horror itself but instead how people in that situation become enured to horror was, IMO, a masterful choice. Unfortunately, the director being a crapweasel of a child molester, the movie is more or less ruined for me.
You see, Mr. Gittes, most people never have to face the fact that at the right time and the right place, they’re capable of ANYTHING.
Here’s a very good summary of the strategic layout of what confronts us
American Spectator – America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution
http://spectator.org/archives/2010/07/16/americas-ruling-class-and-the/print
The ‘standard’ techniques of politically decapitating up and coming challengers to the status quo – a Newt Gingrich, a Sarah Palin, a Rand Paul – don’t work if there’s no front person. That’s why the Tea Parties have been successful.
The Tea Party organization is a bush – there’s no one neck to strangle. Area attacks – ‘Tea Parties as Racist’ have some efficiacy, but generally fail owing to their manifest untruth.
Any methods or techniques that hew to distributed, collaborative resistance seem to be a necessity, as our opponents don’t seem to be constrained by much.
Any methods or techniques that turn the Ruling Class memes upon the Ruling Class seem best. A strategy similar to what was applied to the Soviet Union under the Helsinki Accords. Examples might be pointing out the contradictions of unequal protection in the DOJ or the response to the BP Oil spill and the environment.
Bell city manager might be highest paid in nation: $787,637 a year
Top city officials in the small, relatively poor city of Bell might be the highest paid in the nation, according to documents reviewed by The Times.
In addition to the $787,637 salary of Chief Administrative Officer Robert Rizzo,
Bell pays Police Chief Randy Adams $457,000 a year, about 50% more than Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck or Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca and more than double New York City’s police commissioner.
Assistant City Manager Angela Spaccia makes $376,288 annually, more than most city managers.
It’s not a matter of faith. Only arithmetic.
Yes, but…
Remember 2+2+5? (A minister’s “truth” can defy reality.)
If we wait until we’re all busted the tyrants have all the excuses for seizing control. (And not just in America–parts of Europe could become Saudi rental property.)
We need to improve the electorate’s math skills so they can see things don’t add up before its repo day 29.
We need to recognize the progressive myth is an ideological grip, not (yet) a structural-economic one.
There are far fewer progressives, but they have had the schools, news media and entertainment. And it IS a matter of faith because it’s a matter of moral self-image–being a nice person, “helping” people. People will believe what they can, and are led to, until they accept what they must. (All the people some of the time.)
Progress utopianism is a myth too good to be true. Historically dystopia is always the outcome of utopian governance; because utopia is but the attractive label on canned tyranny. But how do you tell the true believers?
Beck with his history is moving in the right myth-busting direction. But the recognition that one is actually on the wrong side of history is a difficult conversion. Like most converted liberals, it began in my case by realizing I’ve been played for a fool. MOI? Oui, c’est vrai. The political becomes the personal.
This is why I say grease the rails with laughter. Humor, irony and sarcasm have tactical value and power; it makes inconvenient truths more palatable. Subversion of progressivism via culture will affect more in the long run than contention in politics. More Twain, Will Rogers, Ben Franklin and Orwell please. Get Gutfelid in prime time. Newsbusters needs Colbert’s writers. One good political cartoon is worth ten editorials.
When the repubs take the house back, investigate, subpoena, indict and keep the spotlight on the hypocrisy of this administration’s big brother policies and Chicago tactics. Repeal and replacing legislation won’t work until after the dems are out of the WH anyway. (Defunding is another story.)
When it comes to coalition building, raid the “other side’s” everything. Libertarians and conservatives need to ally to annex gay rights, drug decriminalization, race equality and expanded legal immigration as issues of Liberty and not “progress.” Not to mention the free market of ideas and products as everybody’s RIGHT.
102. batman
How is Australia looking these days Wretchard?
………
Both Australia and Canada are in very good shape.In part
because the they are resource based economies (which
the USA could be if we shifted to natural gas for transportation)–And in Canada’s case–because they enacted
a number of reforms in the 90′s that brought their federal
budgets under control and kept their banking system from self destructing. To my knowledge the Aussies don’t play
as many federal budgeting games and their banking system didn’t get overleveraged.
In the Anglosphere its just the Brits and the USA that are dodgy just now.
The Codevilla article in the Spectator raises the same issue as this post. He argues that what his article terms the “ruling class” has decided to cross the Rubicon and march on the Republic. The article says:
He answers the question I ask in the first paragraphs of this post — have hostilities been declared? — in the affirmative. Codevilla’s only doubt is whether the “ruling class” has the resources to prevail. Codevilla says, “suffice it to say that the ruling class’s greatest difficulty — aside from being outnumbered — will be to argue, against the grain of reality, that the revolution it continues to press upon America is sustainable. For its part, the country class’s greatest difficulty will be to enable a revolution to take place without imposing it. America has been imposed on enough.”
I have been kinder than Codevilla; I don’t know for sure whether the revolution from the top he refers to is really underway. But on the other hand I’ve argued that if it is — if the fight is on, then it will take the form of a race to build rival coalitions around rival visions. His article is an assertion that kind of conflict is underway. This post is about what to do if it is.
What Codevilla misses is the sense that the “ruling class” if it has been forced to roll the iron dice, acts out of a fear that its historic window is closing, driven not only ambition, but by self preservation. One of the roots of the current crisis is the de-mediating nature of modern technology. The gatekeepers are becoming obsolete. Not only that, but even small groups of people have acquired a modicum of hard power.
In retrospect 9/11 must have scared the elite in a totally different way from its effect on flyover country. Flyover country saw it as simple attack on America. The elite must have seen it in part as a warning that control could be lost. The psychological response of the Europeans and Obama is consistent with a desire to re-wrap the world in rules fearing the American anger as much as the Muslim hatred. There was no distinction between the two. Both were equally disruptive of the settled order. For if Muslim hatred could generate such effects, what would happen if American individuals or small groups rose in symmetrical response? The thought did not bear thinking.
It is important to factor the destabilizing effect of technology into the analysis because it suggests that if the conflict exists, it is not a war of choice on the part of the elites but one of necessity. This also implies that the elites are not leading a ‘revolution’ from the top as Codevilla believes they are; on the contrary they a reaction. The old order is fighting for its life, not just against al-Qaeda and similar outfits, but in principle against anything that directly acts in the political and cultural sphere.
If so then sheer initiative, simple self-rule, simple entrepreneuralism and innovation is rebellion itself. This explains the curious antipathy to the Tea Parties, despite their staid, almost boring nature. They are incendiary. In way they are ‘like’ al-Qaeda to a mind whose obsession is ‘enlightenment’ and ‘control’. Take that point of view and see how natural it is to think of Christianists and Tea-Baggers in the same light as Hezbollah. Self-organization in itself becomes subversive when the viewpoint chosen is from the top.
47@Greifer: There has been a lot of brave (hopeful?) talk in BC and elsewhere that sooner or later, the conservative core of America will force government to get its fiscal house in order. I am skeptical, precisely because of the people you mentioned above. And others. For example:
. Seniors get SS checks and were mad this year because there was no COLA. They also get free health care and prescriptions from Medicare.
. Kenny gets workman’s comp because he hit his head at work.
. Sue gets SS disability because she has a bad back and can’t work.
. Frank gets extended unemployment benefits because the steel mill he worked at closed down. He is also getting federal job training to be a cable TV installer. The family gets food stamps because his wife Sue (above) can’t work. The interest only ARM they have on their house was recently extended by the bank, (which is eager to keep the loan on its books at full value), at the urgings of the government which does not want any more foreclosures. Their interest only payment of $1600 a month (real payment would be > $3k) is less than the rents in their area. The cash they took out when they refinanced was used to buy a giant flat screen TV and take a Hawaii vacation.
. Frank’s uncle Joe takes the deduction for mortgage interest that he pays on his house out at the lake.
. John used to be a pilot for Braniff and was looking forward to a pension of $6k a month. He’s been getting $2400 from the PGBC since Braniff went bust.
. 16 year old Linda gets $500 a month from SS until she’s 21 because her dad died.
. Und so weiter . . .
I doubt many of these people consider themselves liberals, and I am sure they think they are just getting what they deserve, or getting back what they ‘paid into’. Some might even believe that the only problem is those ‘lazy insert-race-here on welfare’. And we haven’t even gotten to ‘free’ health care yet.
SS, Medicare, and Medicaid today consume –all- the tax revenue received by the Feds. Everything else is paid for with borrowed money. And, because the US is still perceived at the (relatively) safest place to invest, foreigners continue to lend us money. They were a large part of the buyers of Illinois’ latest bond sale – one that was floated to make an overdue payment to the state pension fund.
My grandfather was a vice-president of a large manufacturing company, and my grandmother said he was the most hated man in that company town because of the hard line he took in union negotiations. But he told me once, “You have to be very careful what you give people, because you can’t take it back”.
There is no more money, and many don’t realize it yet. It’s all gonna get worse before it gets better, and it may be ten years or more.
batman, your 102 comment is what I and many others have been shouting for years, that has fell on deaf ears.
The ears of the multitude of Americans that only wanted to chase their dreams and provide for their families that just wouldn’t listen. Our representatives moved each year further away from understanding and adhering to what America was and should always be. They have become not only the facilitators of America’s destruction, but the enemies that our Founders warned us against.
The long laid and enacted plan by our enemies to infiltrate and dominate our American Educational System has succeeded in brainwashing our generations to where they are not only unable to see the danger and damage but has turned many, many Americans into foot soldiers for that same enemy. Into very useful idiots, some would say.
That same enemy has succeeded in turning generations of blacks, mexicans and the white poor into needed voters for that same enemy by making them dependent on other people’s money. OUR money.
We must all stand up and get on the line to protect our Republic. We can no longer sit and watch or ignore the destruction of our wonderful nation.
We are running out of time in more ways than one.
Get out and talk to not only your neighbors but volunteer to help get out the vote. To help make sure people are registered and have a way to get to the polls.
Stand up and argue, “get in their faces”, point out every failure, every lie, every deception to those that are brainwashed and ignorant as to what is happening and why.
Attend every city, county, district, state meeting you can or let them know by other means what your feelings and concerns are. Give constructive alternate suggestions or choices that will counter the democrats and their agendas.
The democrats and other enemies of our Republic have billions to spend to buy their votes. But we have good people who will defeat them if only they stand up and get out and help in any way they can. Volunteer and get on the line to defeat our enemies. And yes, that is what they are.
NOT opponents but enemies.
If you won’t do it for yourself, do it for our children and their children and the following generations of Americans. Start local, go from there. WE must fight at every level. We must first take back our cities then our states and then we will be more able to fight at the federal level and WIN.
If we don’t stop them now with our votes, we may not be able to stop them by our votes ever again.
Also be villigent at the polls. Report and film and record any attempts to falsify or intimidate.
It will come down to something no one wants if we can’t stop them with our peaceful efforts and votes.
But either way, Americans will not let these enemies from within and without destroy our America.
What say you? Will you stand up and get on the line?
Papa Ray
Ah, Papa Ray,
Yuri has had an effect on you
God bless you Yuri, wherever you are.
The other thing that bears watching is the change in the terms of the debate. The conservative critique of what ails America and the world has taken a decided anti-statist form. That’s always been true but it has filled out and assumed the proportions of a definite body of belief. It is that definiteness that maybe the game-changer; because you now have two sets of rival beliefs not just one. The Left has always had an ideology. What happens when the conservatives evolve one in response? President Obama’s first 500 days have crystallized things on both sides of the aisle. Just go back and look at the development of the arguments since January 2009.
There’s a YouTube video of Dr. Richard L. Rubenstein, Yale fellow, “Distinguished Professor of the Year” arguing with a straight face that President Obama is bent on the destruction of Israel and now, Codevilla writing what is essentially a manifesto of class struggle, but not in the Marxist sort of way. The significant thing to note is that this no longer an uncommon kind of argument. Brezinski senses something is wrong with the country but can find no other words for it but “malaise”. He reasons that Palin, Romney and Gingrich are leading discontented fragments against the grand unifier Obama who somehow cannot find an “organizing principle” around which to lead. Zbig is a perfect illustration of the thesis that Washington can’t think except in terms of an elite. He thinks Palin is kooky because she’s staying out of the system and saying things the elite doesn’t. She’s just the harbinger of things to come. They are no longer normative.
The whole political battle line is displacing and one wonders where it will all end up.
batman @ 102: Obama is not a liberal. He is a radical progressive.
* Nobody in the Democratic party today is a liberal. They are fools, timeservers, dilettantes.
* Very few of them are competent enough to be thought of as radical progresives, but I concede that most of their actions are of that stripe.
* They seek power, they spend money. That’s about the size of their script. Is that “radical progressive”? It may be the same bottom line as a thoughtful radical, it may suffer from the same failures in practice, but it’s “cargo cult” politics, not the real thing.
IMHO
How do such people get elected? Look at Obama vs. McCain. Obama is the classic ink blot. McCain was too old and scattered and a RINO. The problem is at least as much on the Republican and conservative side as on the “liberal” side. In a modern era, even conservatives need a narrative, a context. Conservatism is in some large part standing pat – and that is not a sufficient narrative in the modern day.
Here’s a way I think it can be improved – cast the conservative story as a dynamic battle for freedom. It’s only the truth, and almost a forgotten truth. It takes effort just to keep the machines running, and oh, while we’re at it, sure we’ll make a few improvements, and with our knowledge and involvement, look for even radical improvements that will enhance our lives and our nation and the world. But job one is stepping up, playing on the team, doing for the country.
I’m asking for your vote this election, let’s get out and win one for us all!
… got a little carried away there.
“What is the equivalent wooden wall for a conservative movement in retreat?”
The third branch. The Law. I know that sounds strange considering that trial Lawyers (AKA ambulance chasers)are owned by the Democrats, but as a group they are sorta bright bright people. Smart enough to figure out that Socialism leaves them out of the money. If the State owns EVERYTHING, including the courts, WHO YOU GONNA SUE?
Trial Lawyers will end up pretending to sue the State and the State will pretend to pay them.
http://article.wn.com/view/2010/07/12/Democrats_Obama_stole_nomination_in_2008/
The above URL links to a documentary about how the Chicago machine stole the Democratic nomination for Obama. Unlike the birther thangie, this is well documented fraud, which all sections of America can get behind. Once the slightly left of center and independents get into it, this administration will be ready for the fork.
Right now the Democrats have arrested their slide in the polls thru the application of enormous amounts of money. Republicans are catching up in the money and as ‘an inconvenient truth’ showed, a slick documentary with good timing can have an enormous impact.
Another thing to remember is that in the past, when the Marxists have taken over, it was always being backed up by elements of the military.
That won’t happen in the USA. The US Military is sworn to uphold the Constitution, not whichever a$$hole is sitting in the oval office. While the Army has in the past shoot down protesters, I don’t think that would happen today. I really hope to not find out either way. A good turnout in November, a short impeachment and Biden gets his spot in the history books.
I think Joe will be a fine caretaker President. If he promotes Hill-de-beast to VP and doesn’t run in 2012, the Donks might be able to keep the White house. If Sara runs against Hill-de-beast, it will be the funnest election the last 100 years.
What I fear is Morris or one of the other Democratic puppeteers creating a “Conservative Democrats” party.
That would suck all the air out and while it would hand the Republicans a short term victory, it would kill them in the long term. A Democratic Party of the 50′s and 60′s would command the center of American politics, turning the old Democrats and the Republicans into moldy, politically impotent bookends.
@ Wretchard (119) who said “Just go back and look at the development of the arguments since January 2009.”
That would make an excellent topic for a post–or a series of posts.
In elections, America, you would be better served by choosing random names from random telephone directories than choosing through the traditional channels.
Your enemies have you figured, America; better to avoid the well trodden paths.
They have sat down and worked at it for many decades.
The trouble is, America, you were just too bloody open, even to hostile ideologies.
Your enemies used your very strengths(freedom of speech, openness to hostile ideologies) against you.
The bastards sat down, figured the angles, and well … conquered you.
You were just too bloody sure of yourself.
A damn shame.
Mike Are you refering to this Yuri:
Once you get past his accent, you can see that he speaks not only the truth but from his heart.
America’s enemies come from many places in many forms and it is imperative that we stop all of them. The problem is is getting American’s attention long enough to make them understand and aware of our enemies and their evil intentions.
Once we do, then the fight will really be on.
And we will win.
Papa Ray
P.S. Yep, Mike_W you are correct. We chased our dreams while they plotted our overthrow. But don’t count us out. We have just begin to fight.
Yep, w “What happens when the conservatives evolve one in response? “
I’m damn sure that you are about to find out. It might not be pretty or even PC, but it will be pure American.
Maltzev is full of shit.
More Russian disinformation.
mike_w
“Maltzev is full of shit.
More Russian disinformation.”
If so, show me, prove what you say. I listened to the whole thing and other than his accent there was little I disagreed with, but maybe I am ignorant of him or his motives.
Prove his “disinformation”, educate me.
Papa Ray
From what I heard of Maltzev’s message. it was 100% noise.
Russian disinformation.
It is interesting that you would recommend him Papa Ray.
I prefer another Yuri.
Yuri Bezmenov.
God bless you Yuri
http://cubanology.com/cubareport/?p=1155
Papa Ray #124: “And we will win.”
Yes, we will. In the USSR the Obamas won every year, in every way and under their direction the country improved and improved until it fell apart.
So just as inevitable as a sinking gas gauge on an instrument panel shows the future, we will win. And even if we inherit a wrecked land we will build it back. But it would be nice if it wasn’t wrecked too bad. And how badly it is wrecked will determine if those responsible are merely cleaning out their government-issued desks or hanging from a noose on the DC Mall. Right now I favor at least a few necktie parties.
I fear not for our victory but rather what we may become if it does not come very soon.
Shortly after taking office in 20001, when asked by a foreigner what was the source of America’s greatness, Pres Bush replied that America is great because the people are kind to one another. I thought that was a poor answer. Rush even said it was a poor answer. And then came 9/11/01 and W’s wisdom became apparent; Americans died trying to be kind to strangers.
We will win. But we may have to pass through a period where we are much less kind.
Skip… you say “A Democratic Party of the 50’s and 60’s would command the center of American politics, turning the old Democrats and the Republicans into moldy, politically impotent bookends.”
The old and the new democrats will still be the same with the same backers. Just a new face. The Repubs are already moldy, impotent bookends. It is our job to take the republican party and tear it out of the old one’s hands.
Start anew and make sure the Constitution is followed and that the government is neutered as much as possible.
It won’t be easy and might take two or three generations. But the first things are to gain control of the cities and States and to rip our Education System out of our enemies hands and restore it to a conservative system of not only teaching our children how to think for themselves but to teach them the great history and worth of our Republic. Along with of course teaching them skills to make them productive and important members of our nations work force.
If we fight and help ourselves and don’t give up, God’s grace will once again restore our America…OUR Republic.
Papa Ray
@81. Mel: – Mark Levin thinks a new Constitutional Convention is a crummy idea.
I honestly could not care less what Levin thinks about a ConCon. That’s not what I’ve been referring to here.
An ARTICLE V CONVENTION – which is a mechanism afforded to the several States to propose and pass Constitutional Amendments that the feds might otherwise ignore or reject – is completely different.
One example of this would be a convention to define, propose and pass an amendment that reflects the current sense of the States regarding health care, i.e., that the federal government may not operate a national health insurance entitlement program for all Americans (or better yet, for ANY Americans, which would set the stage for the elimination of Medicare). Another likely issue for this treatment is immigration. The list goes on.
The point of the Art. V Convention is to provide the States with a way to limit federal overreach without having to wait for representatives in the U.S. Congress to address the issues. The points of widely discussing an AVC NOW would be manifold, but the most important would raising the general public’s awareness regarding the detailed nature of the current Congress’ and Administration’s abuses and usurpations. In the parlance of this post and thread, it would provide an important opportunity to form coalitions founded on beliefs. It is the next logical step following the recent (media-embargoed) spate of Tenth Amendment State Sovereignty Resolutions passed by various State legislatures.
Again – if you’re not familiar with the AVC mechanism, I recommend doing some research on it. I’ve already provided links above. It’s not a “Constitutional Convention” in the sense most people have been trained (by a defective public education system) to understand it.
We are ready to upchuck!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4bhGEtm4-U
A repeating existential question I have asked myself as I beeble through life is whether or not dumb people realize they are dumb. I have decided after repeated observation that no, they do not. That the stupid among us are incapable of wrapping their minds around any sort of alternative, and happily imagine that everyone else is at the same intellectual level, and that things like building an atomic bomb, putting a man on the moon, or discovering a new planet are just happy miracles like rainbows appearing after a rain storm, which happen with no real effort on the part of their fellow human beings.
Which is why we repeatedly see bad guys who leave their driver’s license at the bank or terrorists who only want to learn how to take off and not to land a plane or governors who allow themselves to be taped while trying to finagle money out of filling an open political seat or Black Panthers wielding a threatening baton in front of a voting place while being videotaped.
Now, in Mr. Krauthammer’s musings, it occurs to me that what we may be seeing is the opposite of my original existential question: can smart people understand and appreciate stupid when they see it, or must there always be some other Machiavellian reason for what is essentially dumb behavior.
Personally, I’m plunking for really really stupid in explaining Obama’s reactions. His comment after the election that “I won” as an end-all be-all answer and reason for EVERYthing strikes me as the essence of self-satisfied dumb-osity. I continue to believe, however, that there is a very good possibility that he is a puppet president and someone else is pulling his strings. Or trying to, because if you’re good at being stupid, you will always find a way to screw things up, which is what Mr. Obama has been doing consistently.
However, the thing that’s caught my attention currently is the Farrakhan extortion letter to America’s Jewish leaders. Why was this written now, and why in that hectoring and demanding tone. Does Mr. Farrakhan and his Nation of Islam think he has White House (and DOJ) backing to extort the Jews, or are America’s underclass of unemployed and uneducated black people getting *so* desperate for income – any income – that it’s come to this?
I just finished reading the American Spectator article that Pikadon linked @ 111.
I second the recommendation. It’s truly a must-read.
Mike_W “From what I heard of Maltzev’s message. it was 100% noise.
Well, then maybe you should listen to the clip I left in the link. You have proven nothing except that you are not even willing to listen to someone.
OH, BTW, I didn’t “recommend” him, read what I said again.
I have read what Yuri Bezmenov has to say and the link you left is great. I have watched and listened and read him for years. If you wanted to tout him, you should have been more clear on which Yuri you meant and I should have mentioned that I had just ran across the Russian that I left the link for.
So, misunderstandings aside, I still need more education as most people do.
So I still need that education I asked for. Tell me all about “disinformation”.
Papa Ray
At Canada Free Press,
Keys to a Real Revolution
By Bruce Walker Thursday, July 15, 2010
***start snip:
Conservatives often blame elected Republicans for not producing revolutionary changes when in power. This frustration is understandable, but it is also wrongheaded. No political party can make revolutionary changes in American government unless that party not only controls the House of Representatives and the White House, but, critically, has a filibuster proof majority in the Senate.
Until 1919, debate in the Senate was unlimited. There was no Senate Rule which allowed for cloture, or limiting debate. A determined Senate minority could effectively stop any congressional bill, any presidential appointment (which required Senate confirmation) and any treaty.
When Democrats have had that combination of power, they have used it to radically change America. FDR had four consecutive Congresses in which Democrats could do virtually anything they wanted, because Senate Democrats could pass a cloture motion. Democrat majorities Democrats also had filibuster-proof Senate majorities from 1963 to 1967, the years in which LBJ’s Great Society program was passed.
Senate rules were changed in the 1970s. Cloture only required a three-fifths majority instead of a two-thirds majority. Under these new rules, Democrats had filibuster-proof Senate majorities, along with control of the House and White House, from 1977 to 1979. Until Scott Brown won his special election earlier this year, Obama’s Democrats did not need a single Republican to pass his stimulus bill and related measures.
In these four separate eras in which Democrats could invoke cloture without Republicans and also controlled the House and White House have produced those giant leaps towards big government and socialism which bedevil us today. So why have Republicans not rolled Democrat program when they had power? Since the cloture rule was adopted over ninety years ago, Republicans have never had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate (much less had that supermajority in the Senate and also controlled the House and White House.)
(ellipse here –for brevity’s sake skipped the middle section –but do read it if of a mind –it’s important background to help nurture some optimism)
In 2014, the odds again favor Republican gains. Begich in Alaska, Pryor in Arkansas, Udall in Colorado, Landrieu in Louisiana, Baucus in Montana, Sheehan in New Hampshire, Hagan in North Carolina, Franken in Minnesota, Johnson in South Dakota, and Warner in Virginia hold ten Democrat seats which Republicans could easily win. In other races, like West Virginia, if Rockefeller retires, and in New Jersey if Lautenberg retires, Republicans also have real chances to gain seats. What this means is that after 2012 or 2014, Republicans may well have sixty or more Senate seats – and the House and White Housee.
What might that mean? Revolution! – assuming that Republicans control the House and the White House too. The left transformed America during just such brief periods of total control. National Right to Work, once passed, would cripple coercive union power forever. Gerrymandering at all levels of government could be outlawed. Tough federal voter registration laws and laws to insure a fair counting of votes should be used to end voter fraud.
Obamacare could be repealed and replaced. Republicans could pass a flat tax and repeal taxes on capital gains, creating a boom of prosperity. Home schooling and the variety of other alternatives to the failed public school system could helped and funded. English could be made the legal language of the United States. Huge chunks of federal bureaucracy could simply be abolished. Modest entitlement reforms could be passed to make systems solvent, and individual accounts in the Social Security System could be introduced. Tort reform and expedited drug approval by the FDA (for drug long used safely in Europe) could reduce medical costs naturally.
Would federal judges stop this? Not if Republicans have the will to tame the federal bench. Congress could simply remove jurisdiction from federal courts over many issues. It could also create a number of new federal judges and justices and appoint conservatives to those seats, or it could abolished and reorganize the whole federal judiciary (only the Supreme Court has any constitutional existence and its powers and size are set by Congress.) It could impeach and remove judges who grossly misinterpreted the Constitution – what a novel idea?
In short, Republicans could produce a conservative revolution which achieves, in two short years, everything we have been seeking for the last fifty years. All this would require great boldness and vision. But our nation needs just such a revolution. Half-measures and compromises simply prolong our slow death. We need a revolution. We have the means to that revolution within our grasp soon.
***stop snip
I quoted all that as an attempted riposte to Mike_W @ #123′s use of the past tense in his otherwise inarguable comment. I concur with the whole thing except the elegy tense –it’s all too true, we went out and found –and tolerated if not created –Nemesis and invited it into the castle keep.
Must be that same all-or-nothing mutation that pulled the settlers over in the first place.
129. Papa Ray
I’m not arguing against anything you said, Papa Ray. I just want to highlight that phrase, which is very collectivist and Rooseveltian, to show how much the Left has taken control of the language and defined the terms of discussion.
I would say that the goal of education should be to make productive and important individuals. They will naturally go on to benefit their communities and the nation at large.
NahnCee asks: “However, the thing that’s caught my attention currently is the Farrakhan extortion letter to America’s Jewish leaders. Why was this written now, and why in that hectoring and demanding tone. Does Mr. Farrakhan and his Nation of Islam think he has White House (and DOJ) backing to extort the Jews, or are America’s underclass of unemployed and uneducated black people getting *so* desperate for income – any income – that it’s come to this?”
As to why now, I think it is just a follow up to the idiots at the NAACP or maybe just to muddy the waters even more before the elections.
Is it just he believes he has the WH and DOJ backing? Well, yes he certainly does. He knows if they will back the Black Panthers and have no doubt that Obama loves Muslims and his wife loves blacks – Farrakhan knows he can certainly count on both of them.
And yes, blacks are getting desperate at least as far as I can tell from the net and around here locally. Jobs are getting harder to find and mama’s welfare checks just don’t give a guy much party money. Selling food stamps at a 50% return, doesn’t work out to much pocket money either. And people don’t have as much free money for drugs now.
But crime still pays. According to my reading, stealing stuff will still make a passable living and selling drugs will get you even more bling, and even drugs at a huge discount. Not counting all the whores and new cars you want.
Disclaimer- It is not all blacks and minorities, including some poor white population that are on the government dole or are trading in drugs or having kids outside of wedlock and where the men are not supporting their children. But the millions that are black and fill that role, are worth noting. And the fact that the democrats made it so is a fact of life.
OH-OH, starting to sound like whiskey. Better let it go at that.
Papa Ray
From buddy’s link:
“What might that mean? Revolution! – assuming that Republicans control the House and the White House too.”
That is a big assumption, considering that not one election is going to be without democrat fraud and abuse.
“Would federal judges stop this? Not if Republicans have the will to tame the federal bench. Congress could simply remove jurisdiction from federal courts over many issues.
This I think is way easier to say than done. Someone with more information and education should address this.
But still a great link, and yes please read it all.
Thanks buddy for the boost. I am going to need all the help I can get because I have several more months on the line trying to get out the conservative vote and attend all the local and county wide meetings I can. I might even get a trip to Austin if all goes well.
Papa Ray
rickl
“I would say that the goal of education should be to make productive and important individuals. They will naturally go on to benefit their communities and the nation at large.”
I stand corrected.
Papa Ray
So, some of you are clamoring for a Constitutional convention, and others seem to think that things can be turned around by Republican control of both Congress and the Presidency.
Ha, Ha. Very funny.
The left controls all those non-government institutions that amount to a shadow government when Repubs are in power, and an auxiliary government when Democrats hold the reins. They will always try to (and often succeed) in sabotaging the intent of legislation they don’t like.
This being the reality, a constituional convention under these conditions would be co-opted by the Left. Fuhgeddaboudit.
Unless the non-left understands the need to wrest back all those institutions owned by the left, and is willing to act on it, it will be like fighting an insurgency from fortified posts known as Congress and the White House. Even the executive branch is loaded up with bureaucrats who consider a Republican administration as occupiers, and a Democrat one as liberators.
papa ray/138; –i thought it was important too –i mean, look what it does –our biggest problem is less that we can’t seem to get Democrat-levels of production out of our pols, but more that we can’t figure out what’s wrong.
In lieu of any knowledge otherwise, that pernicious run of mal-cloture power has left us feeling the Mark of Cain.
So it’s really pretty vital to understand that obscure technical check. We should all know it of course, it should be familiar as a nose on a face. That it isn’t is just one more proof of how we’ve let ourselves become mushrooms –kept in the dark and fed manure.
@ 140. Don Rodrigo: – So, some of you are clamoring for a Constitutional convention…
Amazingly, it’s beginning to look as though a few visitors here are just as obtuse as the regulars at DKos.
I see no one “clamoring”, and I see no one suggesting a Constitutional Convention.
Look it up: an Article V Convention is NOT a “Constitutional Convention” (and, by definition, could not be “co-opted” by anyone, since passage of any amendments involved would require significant State majorities). It’s a vehicle organized by the several States to define, propose and pass Constitutional amendments on issues the feds prefer to ignore, i.e., to address issues involving federal overreach.
The main point of such an exercise – at this time and, at least, initially – would not necessarily be to follow through on the convention itself. Rather, it would be to pick up where the various State Sovereignty Resolutions left off in terms of (a) building coalitions around public awareness regarding this Administration’s and this Congress’ various abuses and (b) putting the feds on notice and forcing them to provide answers to pointed questions of Constitutionality, rather than responding with “Are you kidding? Are you kidding??” Like the Precinct Project, it would be a perfect vehicle for Tea Party activism, as both require construction from the bottom up (read: grassroots).
The main problem is that the Democrats are basically a lie. They at core, do not believe in a democratic republic of the nature birthed by the U.S. Constitution. When they take their oath’s of office, they are certainly lying, as they are the antithesis of the limited government codified in the Constitution.
So, the left plays to end any Constitutional constraints on their power to rule. When they take office, all levers of government power are deployed to defeat conservative Americans. When conservatives take office, they use all levers of government to level the playing field – to ensure limited, Constitutional government.
Simply put, conservatives can never “level the playing field” because their principles forbid using the Democrats Machiavellian strategies against them. They are always “behind”, and can never turn back clock to the prior status duo. The field advantage is always to the left. While the left intends to “win permanently”, e.g. winning election by reinterpreting the hanging chad, deploying Acorn and Black Panthers, politicizing the Justice Department and rule of law, and so forth, the political right will never do the same. Wayward Republican politicians, for example, like “Tricky Dick” and Duke Cunningham are purged from office and/or sit in jail, while wayward Democrats like Charles Rangel remain in power, are lavishly rewarded financially, are never brought to justice, and enjoy their vacations in their graft-obtained villa’s.
I’ve watched and participated in politics for 35 years, and am a student of history as well. The left/right political battle has always gone on like this. Even in “victory”, conservatives lose (e.g. leftward tilt of USSC Justices appointed by conservatives). Conservative Americans are destined to fail and “lose permanently” unless we are willing to pursue a more permanent victory, i.e. one that puts those who violate their constitutional oath’s out of office and into jail. The left WILL do this to us based on political gain, if we don’t do it to them based on the Constitution.
Winston Churchill once said that “jaw jaw is better than war war”. In fact, the Constitutional rule of law is what has held America together via the vehicle of “politics” and “republican democracy”. When that is no more, we will “war war” instead of “jaw jaw” – think El Salvador or Nicaraguan style politics and street justice. I suspect that the majority of Democrats haven’t thought that far ahead, but certainly Obama has, as evidenced by his Administrations concern about “racist” Tea Partiers, Minutemen and “right wing militias”.
I think we’re heading into an economic Depression. I am certain of the worst, because as night follows day, the US private sector cannot be economically strip-mined by government and still thrive and create jobs. All factors are in place for 1929-1933 again. I am not certain of the ultimate political destination – be it endless legal battles and a socialist government, or some sort of civil war. All I know is that the Democrat leftists have certainly launched the war, and they clearly intend to win a victory that converts Constitutional rights into political privileges, with Democrats as king makers.
Old Salt
142 goy:
Darn, you wanted me to look something up and do my homework?
Oh, that Article V! I went back and read Article V, so I can skip detention, right? OK, that notion has merit, but it would require a long, hard slog through the state legislatures, which is fine by me. I prefer long, hard slogs called amendment processes to having some idiot “living Constitution” judge “change” the Constitution lickety-split.
You are correct that it would be hard to co-opt such a process, since, if one was called, it would be in an atmosphere where our side would have the means and fortitude to call one, and therefore, considerable power.
@ 144. Don Rodrigo:- …it would require a long, hard slog through the state legislatures…
Precisely. At this point in time, the long hard slog – and the public discussion it would catalyze – is the whole point. An actual amendment passed by a sufficient majority of the States which, say, rendered Shamnesty, Cap-&-Tax, Obamacare or Medicare unconstitutional would be icing on the cake.
The important thing here is that this process does not require Congress’ involvement – it can be triggered by sufficient resolutions at the State level which, in turn, can be pursued in the same way the State Sovereignty Resolutions were achieved. No one State in the process can be demonized by the feds for passing such a resolution (i.e., the way AZ is being demonized now for having the impertinence to actually enforce federal law). And when sufficient resolutions have been passed, the process of electing delegates and actually holding the convention is – or can be – automatic.
As you observe, this is a portion of ground were small-R republicans can take and hold the initiative. IMHO it is a perfectly effective use of Tea Party resources.
Folks -
Any effort that might be placed toward reducing voter fraud would help.
An example. In Western Pennsylvania, a friend of mine ran for school board in ’96 or ’98. The existing school board was run by the wives and husbands of teachers in the district. He was part of a coalition to reduce the cost and impose a more student-centered governance.
Initially, he won. Uncounted absentee ballots were discovered shortly after, and were added in. After two recounts, the vote was tied, a coin flip occurred, and my friend lost the flip.
Note when I went out looking on the web and the newspapers, every single town I viewed – Washington, Greensburg, Pittsburgh, Latrobe – and others – the local newspapers reported irregularities in voting. There were multiple, widespread, accusations of voter fraud in that election cycle.
Note this is the area that John Murtha covered this past cycle.
No newspaper in the area connected the dots, no one mentioned the widespread aspect of these complaints.
==
I spoke with another elected official in Northern Virginia at a tea party on the 5th. He’d lost his last election owing to absentee ballots breaking for the Democratic candidate. Historically, those ballots normally go majority Republican.
==
Minnesota Senator Al Franken was elected by a margin less than the number of felons who illegally voted.
==
Every candidate, at every level, should be questioned as how they’d support authenticated and authorized voting. How would they help guarantee non-fraudulent voting?
==
A real issue with the Department of Justice in DOJ Voting Rights attorney J. Christian Adams’ accounts, is the section where DOJ will not emphasize or put resources toward cleaning and validating the voter roles.
This is not ‘equal protection under the law’; this is not ‘faithfully execute the laws’.
==
This might be yet another tool against those elites. Use their own memes on ‘corruption’ and ‘fraud’ against them. Use their own statements about ‘equal access’ and democracy. Hold them to their promises.
Laws and governments can’t be legitimate, if the methods of election are corrupt.
==
Similar techniques were used against the Soviet Union from the Helsinki Accords – using the human rights agreements to prise reforms from the USSR.
==
At base, what will win this will be what won the Cold War.
Not a civil war, but creating a widespread consensus that what we’re currently doing, and how we’re doing it, just doesn’t work. We have over 70 years down this path; it doesn’t work well. We ran out of other people’s money.
‘Morning in America’; ‘Anglosphere exceptionalism’; ‘Rule of Law’
that does work.
AAARGH! Wretchard said “Teabaggers!”
Defense in depth only works in conventional warfare and this is a guerrilla war. A better strategy may be Gen. Petraeus’ capture and hold strategy (I’ll get back to him later). And for that, returning, or moreover, claiming state power back from the fed would work well. Imagine what a solvent state could do if it held back all income taxes except for a fair share (by population) of taxes supporting ONLY the enumerated powers. The strength of the union, as designed by the founders, was each could be an experiment for policy before extension of the policy to the entire union. Yet we ignore this to our peril- to wit, Massachusetts’ failed government health care experiment. Failed at the state level but pushed onto the national level and will have disastrous effects if not repealed.
With regard to splitting the GOP, it could be done and the time is right for it this far away from 2012. I believe, and polls somewhat bear testimony to this although not specifically asked, most Americans still favor the US Constitution. It is the one thing that could rally support to a new party and transcends existing party lines. David Petraeus could be the Gen. Washington we so badly need. And of course neither the Democrats or the GOP elect presidents without the Independents. The Constitution is a powerful weapon if used aggressively and appropriately.
From Chapter 1 29th Day
There is a fundamental difference between “linear” and “exponential” solutions. It is not related to who actually SAYS, “This is the solution”. It is related to who actually IMPLEMENTS the solution.
A “linear” solution generally requires whoever actually implements it to be persuaded and/or coerced that the solution is in their own self-interest. This may be viewed as “the art of fighting by fighting”.
An “exponential” solution, on the other hand, generally is instantly accepted, because whoever actually implements it believes there is an exact match between the solution and their own self-interest.. There is no need for coercion or even persuasion. This may be viewed as “the art of fighting without fighting” (this is a phrase used by Bruce Lee in the movie, “Enter the Dragon”).
“They will need McCains and Liebermanns and Democrats on the inside; they will the tea parties on the outside. They will need sympathy abroad.”
I wonder if BCers would get nitpicky or paranoid about where all this sympathy abroad may come from, particularly if it does not come from the Anglosphere countries but perhaps even from former Cold War adversaries. Take a quick guess: in which country’s media has Dr. Ron Paul made the most appearances? A quick search on YouTube would reveal the answer.
As I have said to Buddy Larsen, while some here think Russia is hellbent on avenging any U.S. role in the collapse of the USSR by playing similar mind/econ warfare games to what the Reaganauts did in the 80s (this fear of revanchism in particular seems to stalk the Krauthammers and Gaffneys of this world), I actually think the smartest folks in Russia realize what a collapsed America would mean for them – collapsing demand for their goods in Europe derailing their economic modernization, and a weaker negotiating position that would make them basically China’s gas station (though not outright invasion, thanks to nukes). Orthodox Christianity and the legacy of Byzantium is still closer to ancient Rome than it was ever to Xian and Mecca.
Despite all the Eurasianist rhetoric since the 19th century, Russians still overwhelmingly view themselves as Europeans albeit different from their European cousins (the whole what is good for the Russian is death to the German cliche). They choose to shop, vacation and settle in London and Vienna versus Dubai or Shanghai. The growing efforts on the part of the Vatican to woo Patriarch Kirill and the Moscow Patriarchate have been noticed by Sandro Magister, the official Vatican reporter, but have still flown under most American cultural conservatives radar (with the exception of David Goldman aka Spengler at First Things), just as foreign policy hawks ignore the quiet improvement of ties between Israel and Russia as inconsistent with their worldview.
Wretchard started his post comparing the corporatist left personified by Obama to the Wehrmacht at the start of Barbarossa. Who could have predicted in the summer of 1940 that Britain and the U.S. would ally with Stalin’s USSR to crush Nazi Germany, basically relying on Russians to absorb and destroy 80% of the Nazi juggernaut’s forces? So events could prove unpredictable, and Glenn Beck quoting right-wing Russian Orthodox nationalists like Stanislav Mishin could be more than a weird one-off. At the very least, if the Chinese and Russians (plus the Indians and Germans) are cutting government spending, buying gold, and warning us that we are debasing their currency reserves and our dollar, it will make life harder for the weathervane Tom Friedmans and Mort Zuckermans of this world to argue that our present course is sustainable. They already seem to be jumping off the bus before they get thrown under it, in any case.
Interesting as usual.
9/11 could be described as a failure of macro. The alliances between nations, the rolodex of influence created an illusion of security.
2008 was a failure of another type of macro. Macro economics, macro regulation, macro finance. Drove the economy in the ditch, and since then the macro institutions only exist due to money either printed or taxed, or neglect by politicians in cleaning up.
2010-1012 will be the failure of macro politics.
The Obama revolution was a generation too late. We know what mediocre government run enterprises look like, and how much you pay for how little. He can’t deliver.
Derek
An HD Link to this Whitehouse would be useless…
Tehran in Chains
Do modern communications ultimately hobble or enable dictatorship?
Of all the unanswered questions from Iran’s 2009 post-election upheaval — prematurely labeled in the West as the “Twitter revolution” — this remains one of the most urgent and perplexing. Technology, conventional wisdom runs, punches holes through iron curtains.
An interrogator can still extract a false confession under duress. But as Roxana Saberi writes in “Between Two Worlds,” the prisoner can recant on YouTube immediately upon release.
IranFor all their exhilarating potential, however, the new media can also warp a budding democratic movement, hurling it into premature confrontation with the state.
A short break for a humorous video: The Obama Bumper Sticker (BS) Removal Kit. As the man says, “Even works on a Prius!”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=201pgTaEseQ
“because the they are resource based economies (which
the USA could be if we shifted to natural gas for transportation)”
Excuse me! Reality check. Natural gas in incapable of handling America’s transportation needs. The cost in switching infrastructure would dwarf the Tarp bailout.
Considering that the USA posesses the world largest reserves of hydrocarbons, their is absolutely no need to spend trillions retooling automobiles for natural gas, digging up 121,446 filling stations (as of 2002) and rebuilding them at the cost of several million each.
No, the Natural Gas myth is a scam created by T. Boon Pickens in an attempt to turn his huge ownership position in Natural Gas into Trillions in profit. If one looks that the details, one finds that Pickens owns quite a bit of the corporations that will get richer converting Petrol in Natural Gas.
Meanwhil, under Utah and Wyoming there are around 80 Trillion barrels of OIL waiting to be extracted from OIL shale.
Not to mention shallow off shore wells and ANWR.
The only thing keeping the USA from extracting enough OIL to supply the rest of the world is the Environmentalist movement. A 100$US per head bounty would solve that problem and help the unemployed when their welfare benefits run out.
Resource based economies are NOT a good thing. Look it up.
Mr. X,
I see Russia as the key to the 21st century. If they can be cured of their national phobia regarding being invaded. Their paranoid need for a “buffer zone” is both destabilizing and ignorant. Not sure how controlling the Ukraine or Georgia will stop an ICBM.
Get Russia to accept that their security depends on maintaining the ‘Pax America’ and the 21st century will be reasonably peaceful. Maintain the status quo and the 21st century will produce a body count that makes the 20th look like a church social or an English football match.
That is why I would like to see the USA withdraw from NATO. Without the USA, NATO is just a building in the low countries full of self-important idiots. NATO is no threat to Russia. It never was and never will be. NATO was the velvet glove around the iron fist of America.
The Russians know that.
Now that the ABM system is working, it makes more sense to build it then it does to build more ICBM’s. The Russian have the Missiles to build their own ABM system. What Russia lacks is the sensors and the software. IIRC, the USA has tried twice, during the Clinton and Bush 43 administrations, to GIVE the Russians what they needed to build their own ABM system. The Russians refused. That famous Russian paranoia caused them to think they were being tricked.
So now we need to arrange for them to steal it. Anna ‘the body’ Chapman wasn’t the only Russian ‘undercover’ agent in America.
The other major area of Russian weakness is in the air. In the air there are two types of warplanes. Stealth and targets. Right now the USA has all the stealth planes and the Russians have all the targets. The USA has TWO stealth designs. One by Lockheed ( the F-22) and one by Northrop (F-23). After placing the right brides in the right hands, Lockheed won the contract for building Stealth fighters. A LOT of people thought the F-23 was better. It has a lower RCS and a higher top speed, both in cruise and combat. So instead of Russia spending hundreds of billlions on research to build their own Stealth fighters, why not allow Northrop to sell them F-23′s?
Not co-produce, of course. No point in letting Russia do a China on us. Selling F-23′s would provide jobs, help the import-export balance and might just smooth out relations a little more.
From the military POV,IT DOESN’T MATTER.
The USA and Russia ARE NOT going to go to war against one another. If that was going to happen, it would have already happened. Even if we did, American pilots are better then Russian pilots. That is because of training and social systems. In America thinking outside the box (innovation) is rewarded. In Russia it is punished. When Col. Boyd did his study on fighter pilots, he found the best ones were Mavericks that followed the rules. The important thing was knowing when to not follow the rules.
The best thing that could happen to the planet Earth is an Arctic Alliance between a “New” Russia and the USA.
skp @ 155: After placing the right brides in the right hands, Lockheed won the contract for building Stealth fighters.
so *that’s* how it’s done!
Embedded in an article by Angelo M Codevilla, about America’s present Ruling class is this remarkable paragraph:
“If for example, you are Laurence Tribe in 1984, HARVARD PROFESSOR of law, leftist pillar of the establishment, you can “write” your magnum opus by using the products of your student assistant, Ron Klain. A decade later, after Klain admits to having written some parts of the book, and other parts are found to be verbatim of paraphrases of a book published in 1974, you can claim (perhaps correctly) that your plagiarism was “inadvertant,” and you can count on the Law School’s dean, ELENA KAGAN, to appoint a committee including former and future HARVARD president DEREK BOK that issues a secret report that “closes” the incident. Incidentally, KAGAN ends up a justice of the Supreme Court. Not one of these people did their jobs: the professor did not write the book himself, the assistant plagiarized instead of researching, the dean and the committee did not hold the professor accountable, and all ended up rewarded.”
(The emphasized words are my own contribution to this…)
The entire article is a long one, but worth it, at
http://spectator.org/archives/2010/07/16/americas-ruling-class-and-the/print
153. PA Cat
That was great!
This is typical of the opposition we have:
“Caught on Camera: Union Goon Hits, Shoves and Harasses GOP Supporter”
But be aware this is just the start of “overt” hostilities.
The closer to election time and the more rallys and such the more it will happen and the more violent it will become. Not quite as bad as what happened today in the U.K. and France but it might be if enough “street money” is spread around and bail promised.
I had a good day even if I just stayed home with my two girls. I had several phone calls from people I had visited this week firming up details and thanking me for my interest and my assistance.
You can’t beat that with a stick.
Papa Ray
P.S. I have two buds that fill their vehicles at home with natural gas. It takes 12 hours because it uses the same low gas pressure that is piped to their homes.
Our bus service in town uses NG and fill them at their two depots. Plus there are Natural Gas and LPG stations all over Texas and the southwest. You just have to plan your route in order to use them. But the number of such stations is increasing each year in the Southwest.
PPS. Another link: “Obama-Supported Kenyan Constitution Forces Sharia Law”
ONE more: “MSM ignored racial gender quotas in Financial Reform Bill”
wretchard #87 — The challenge to the dissidents will be to keep a clear strategic constancy from wherever they can preserve that vision; to repeat a counter-narrative which will in time become gospel
One small advantage the dissidents already have is how neatly their identifiers (Tea Party — “Don’t Tread on Me” Gadsden Flag — No Representation without Taxation”) pluck those mystic chords of memory which harken Americans back to their beginings. The “counter-narrative” virtually writes itself.
This became clear to me when I partcipated in a recent July 4th celebration. Some of the event organizers were liberals from academia who have a Phd and a 6th grade understanding of the American Revolution. As usual, we planned to end the festivities with a reading of the Declaration of Independence. This year, however, I insisted that it would be a good idea for me to set the stage for the reading with a recounting of the 12 years leading up to the Declaration. For the children, of course. Slightly suspicious, the liberals agreed.
Ah, you should have seen them squirm as I explained how John Adams wrote that the Revolution had occurred in the minds of the people long before shots were fired. Oh, how they flinched at my peoration on “the long train of abuses,” including an unresponsive government which thought it could merely rule by fiat rather than seek “the consent of the governed,” higher taxes, a social elite that looked down on mere Colonials, etc. They gulped when I got to the Boston TEA PARTY. They glared when I recounted how the Colonials began to stockpile ammo and weapons when it was clear there was no other choice, and how the war erupted when the government tried to seize the armaments.
Old things made new.
russia already has a 5G stelth –Sukhoi T50 –in production, early models have been flying for some time alredy. India likes it, is buyng the export model and iirc doing some of the finish work nationally. It’s said the equal Raptor in performance numbers, and csts one-third as much. Search the name, there’s videos of the maiden flight –it looks good –as they say with planes, if it looks good it flies well. Our raptor got cut –production line –and sunk costs –dumped like a cankered army mule –stopped and team disbanded –at a very small number of copies –150 or so iirc. there is no doubt Russia will build 3 or 4 at least of the T-50s for our every Raptor.
Russia also has a fully-operational ABM system, the A-35/A135 two-staged phased array fully armed and ready to fight, and in large numbers, protecting city centers and the Yamantau Mountain military complex (a command control underground city in the southern Urals –designed to fight and win a post-nuclear exchange conventional war).
Russia just completed war games near Estonia that scared the Estonians with the extensive depth and seriousness of the games –and the Japanese too are aghast at the war games VOSTOK near Vladivostock.
naw, i would not count out a war with Russia –heck it could’ve started August 2008, USA and Georgia were allies f’r crineoutloud. them Cossacks have watched Moscow get burned and slaughtered one too many times, and now cannot rest until every threat on the planet is ended.
Also something that the Obamanoids astonishing new age oneworld ‘invasion of the body (and 401K) snatchers’ non-human-appearing zombie czars’ disconnectedness from olde time July 4th Sousa and hotdogs America is making scary is the notion of a secret alliance between the two shadow governments to stage a contrived but ‘normal-looking’ nation vs nation war –with the true target being red-state America and some percentage of the overall world population.
Whoa Wretchard @ 115:
That line begs more clarity that did not come out in the rest of your comment.
What specific controls? I do not for a second believe that losing control of the country was on their minds when 911 hit. The ability of the “Progressives” (the nascent ruling class) to undermine resistance to their will had always worked. The trick was simply to distance themselves from the behavior of some avante garde while at the same time abetting whatever of the radical’s demands suited them.
As for outright crazies, the Left has always had its nihilist wing that the Progs used as shock troops. They have used in much the same manner the Islamist crisis that exploded on 911. It provided another excuse to increase their powers. As they did with the other crazies, the Progs got in between the country and the radical Islamists, and played nice. For instance, their oxymoronic Islam = “Religion of Peace” meme they still keep throwing at us.
Who is going to lose power? The ruling class? Maybe if the country class DOES erupt, but that could hardly have been their prior intent unless they ARE the nihilists. (Is that it Wretchard? But then they don’t fear it; they crave it.)
Are you saying they ARE the nihilists?
Who can forget the Prog assault on racial profiling that began less than a decade before 911 (EVERYbody has to be treated as a suspect)? Or Gorelick’s wall of separation (block communication that might enable thwarting)? Or the legal wranglings that have handicapped us to make the efforts of asymmetrical terrorists more effective, providing them rights non-existent in the Geneva Convention (so that they are coddled as liberals coddle citizen and illegal alien common criminals).
The evidence is strong that the Progs laid the groundwork for all this, so I do not see how they feared losing control. It seems more likely that 911 was the gift they had be preparing for.
This is no time for your cute innuendos Wretchard. You clearly felt compelled to address Codevilla, so do it right.
pascal, the only way w can give you yes-or-no answers is to either be God or lie. Which one izzit you want?
:-\
I don’t get that either Buddy. I’m asking him what he meant, not what they were thinking.
I clearly was led to speculating, which is often what W intends, but this statement of his is too unusual. “Must?”
Pascal @ 162,
“For instance, their oxymoronic Islam = “Religion of Peace” meme they still keep throwing at us.”
Don’t forget the Left’s, “Islamo’s Don’t do Democracy” sneers. The left, in its sneering oxymoronicism, is both morbid and incoherent in its quest for power, and thus, taken as a whole (and what “union” shouldn’t be) could be accused, methinks of nihilism.
‘Not taking sides here (‘tho I’m inclined to take Wretchard’s side here, just ‘cuz he’s the host). But, your call to arms is well received, and I’m eagerly awaiting Wretchard’s retort.
Love ya! HeatherMC @ 157.
That one’s right up my alley!
-S
what i don’t get, pascal, is the whole concept itself. To wit, the word starts with a capital and means something –so oops there went nothing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCUQxnYbLl0
Flight test –Sukhoi T-50
“russia already has a 5G stelth –Sukhoi T50 –in production, early models have been flying for some time alredy.”
Propaganda. It isn’t real. Or rather it isn’t stealthy in either the Radar or IR wavelengths.
http://www.venik4.com/2010/02/sukhoi-t-50-production-and-procurement-details/
Prototype, Production scheduled for 2014. If they get there. First test flight January of this year. Somebody has been blowing smoke up your…….
Plus I have my doubts about the RCS. Those big gaping air intakes look like strobe lights on a radar. They allow the radar bean inside the engine housing where it hits the Turbine blades and bounces around to come out somewhere else. Look at the B-2 to see how you shape the inlets to control the radar beams.
Plus they have problems with the radar.
I can call my Uncle my Aunt, but the testicles give him away. You can call the T-50 a stealth fighter but the Air Intakes give it away.
Well, ya see, if i hadn’t shot my mouth off i would not have lernt all that. But i alreqdy had a feeling it doesn’t match F-22 –mainly because Putin says it does, and if it did, he’d have said it was better than F-22.
we still have a president who shoots down his own planes, so that’s got to go in the T-50 column. Raptor engineers and machinists are exploring other career options while T-50 engineers and machinists ain’t.
#162: Whoa Wretchard @ 115:
The elite must have seen it in part as a warning that control could be lost.
That line begs more clarity that did not come out in the rest of your comment.
Pascal, the way I read Wretchard’s meaning is this: after 9/11, if American anger was not firmly held in check and was allowed to get out of hand, then their (Progressives) whole social/cultural memeset could be exploded eventually. For example, more and more people might come to the realization that, oh yeah, we ARE better than them, after decades of carefully cultivated brainwashing in cultural relativism. They can’t, and won’t, risk all that going down the drain.
Hold your ground, hold your ground.
Sons of Gondor, of Rohan, my brothers.
I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me.
A day may come when the courage of men fails,
when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship,
but it is not this day.
An hour of wolves and shattered shields,
when the age of men comes crashing down,
but it is not this day.
This day we fight!
For all that you hold dear on this good Earth,
I bid you stand, Men of the West!
What planks would make up a Platform for a Resurrected Republican Party?
What would you be willing to support with your energies and treasure?
Here are a few concepts which are offered as a means of provoking comment, alternatives, modifications, etc.:
INDICT ERIC HOLDER for misprision, deriliction, malfeasance, corruption, etc.
Prosecute SEIU THUGS
Prosecute NBBP THUGS
Prosecute vote fraud
Prosecute ACORN
National Right to Work Law
Drastic (i.e., 90 percent) cuts to Welfare
Dismantle HHS, Departments of Education, Energy, EPA, Student Loans,
Freddy Mac, Fannie Mae, Obamacare, etc. (expand this list!)
Dismantle, or Retire current Civil Service above G-3
Return to humint in counter-intelligence
Increase funding for Military
More carrier groups, Littoral fleets,
F-22, F35, WART HOG, Multiple options in powerplant designs
Expand US flagged Merchant Marine fleet
Tax Amnesty for corporate funds kept overseas
Rein in the IRS
Open up the AIRWAVES
Expand internet
END PC laws like “hate speech” and “hate crimes”
END federal extortion of Universities (i.e., tying funds to submission to all PC principles, affirmative action, etc.)
End Federal extortion of Businesses, particularly in set-asides, affirmative action
End income tax penalties on Married couples
http://moviemorlocks.com/2010/07/06/underrated-eastwood-firefox1982/
Glad you guys didn’t make the T-50 out to be the Firefox that Clint Eastwood stole in 1982.
“naw, i would not count out a war with Russia –heck it could’ve started August 2008, USA and Georgia were allies f’r crineoutloud.” I think Buddy, you mistake ‘client state’ for ‘ally’. The former is sacrificed like a pawn, the latter is actually defended. No wonder Newsweek is out there saying poor Misha the Tie Eater has started courting the Turks as his new partners, since he feels neglected as an American client despite Hillary’s visit. It’s as if someone in the Washington foreign policy sphere was telegraphing, “OMG! We’re going to lose Georgia to the Turkish invasion because those wimpy liberals had their reset with the Russkies!”
And Buddy, your Urals reflections sounds like “Mr. President, we must not allow a mineshaft gap!”
I am also not so sure how serious the Clinton Administration, which only wanted theater missile defense, and the G Dubya Admin were about sharing missile defense technology with the Russians (which was originally Reagan’s idea). Eventually at least with the laser and theater stuff it will get to Moscow, but likely via the Israelis.
Lastly, all the slobbering over the relatively average by Moscow standards Mrs. Chapman makes the American media look like they’ve never seen a Russian woman before. Maybe the Russians now think all American women not on a runway or in Hollywood are forced to wear sweatpants at all times?
No need to worry about Putin’s guys developing technologies to challenge our F-22 or F-35.
In a few years Obama will have emasculated our military so the Russkies will be able to overwhelm us with a squadron of Polykarpov I-15s.
154. Skip_this_post
“because the they are resource based economies (which
the USA could be if we shifted to natural gas for transportation)”
Excuse me! Reality check. Natural gas in incapable of handling America’s transportation needs. The cost in switching infrastructure would dwarf the Tarp bailout.
………..
This is just TBoone Picken’s idea. You don’t have to convert the entire US transportation system to natural gas
You just do it for the trucking and bus system and even then –that would be for the short haulers–say under 200 miles.
That would cut out 40% the US demand for oil. Foreign oil accounts for about 60% of the supply. So you’d be knocking out something like 80% of the demand of the demand for foreign oil. The benefits of doing this would be as significant and raveling
as the significant unraveling caused by the first OPEC oil embargo of the 70′s. Really, the effect world wide would be electric on so many levels it would be hard to enumerate them. Perhaps the most important level however, would be that, this change over would mean that the US dollar would be a much harder currency. In fact, the value of the dollar would rise worldwide thereby increasing the wealth of countries that held all those dollars.
the Price of gasoline itself would have to fall to the price of natural gas equivalents. This would make for an enormous stimulus to the world wide economy because lower energy costs translate directly into higher efficiency which translates into greater wealth for people–since income is based on productivity.
So what if the cost of making the change over were 100 billion or even 200 billion dollars. The USA ships 400 billion overseas annually to pay for oil. The money would be recouped in less than a year. The federal government itself would have greatly expanded tax revenues
Basically we would have a reset of the international monetary system that was set up in the 1970′s to accomodate OPEC.
Oh yeah about OPEC. It would be nice to defund the bad guys.
I bet the relatively average Mrs. Chapman could send Mel off the deep end again if properly paid and motivated.
‘Course that’s not saying much.
about the ruling class’s response to 9-11 attack:
Called to watch the live reporting within minutes after the first plane hit, I saw the second plane hit, and no one in the room needed any reporter to figure out this was an organized and deliberate attack.
The thing that most amazed me as the event played out, was that within about an hour after the collapse of the first tower, the networks already were literally framing the live feed with red white & blue borders, and the thoroughly professional newsreaders had moderated their inflections and word choices to be passionless and utterly neutral.
I’m sure that was not universal, but it was true for the network feeds WE were watching near Sacramento.
If my memory is not completely fried, I recall a number of times hearing the newscasters repeat the admonition that we Americans are entirely too fair-minded and just to allow ourselves to rush to judgment or vengeance… that this event must NOT BE ALLOWED TO BE USED AS AN EXCUSE FOR VIOLENCE AGAINST any group or nation, because that would lower us to “their level.”
As God is my witness, at that moment I knew the fetid Leftist bastard Progressives were determined to see America brought to her knees.
The elite must have seen it in part as a warning that control could be lost.
9/11 was challenge to the status quo in two ways but with a single theme. First it was test of how the “international community” could deal with proxy warfare and nonstate actors. Second, it was a challenge to political correctness on a massive scale. The answer to the first was that the international system could not deal with proxy warfare. But to admit that failure and concede that only unilateral action would answer would be to delegitimize the international system. To see it for what it is. Hence Bush was a “rogue”. And he was fully portrayed as such, not because anyone could do better, but simply because it was presumed that he was descended from a chimpanzee. He had to be portrayed as a chimpanzee, lest people notice that the perfumed princes of the “international community” were no smarter and probably dumber.
Barack Obama has fully repented of that lapse. We are back to leaving things to the International System, which means in effect that nothing will be done to address the root causes of the aggression. Victories are “not invented here” and therefore there will be no victories allowed at all. In order to disguise this fact a number of palliatives and show efforts are authorized. Only “law enforcement” and pointless military endeavors which appear to do something but which in fact never challenge the clients of the proxies are permitted. The prime directive of the system is that no heads of states will be harmed in the doing of anything. The same rules that apply to the Washington elite apply globally.
The second problem was even worse than the first. When a section of the American public identified a particular sect within Islam to be the aggressor, the political consequences of this had to be aborted to save the entire “we are the world” meme. Barack Obama has fully done this. It makes no logical sense but it preserves the “don’t ask, don’t tell” rule of the international system. Don’t ask if I’m stealing money. Don’t tell me what to do.
This left the elite in the uncomfortable position of having to face two grassroots challenges to its legitimacy. The first is from radical Islam. But after GWB beat back the al-Qaeda its urgency faded and the out of control American public assumed the status of the primary threat. And this is where things stand today. The greatest threats to the elites today are the restive conservative Western publics. The global financial crisis, the weakening of the media, the loss of faith in the academy have conspired to weaken the long accepted Mandate of Heaven. When the elites say that ‘gun toting, Bible-clutching’ Americans are like al-Qaeda they really mean it. Functionally they are two different challengers to the same status quo. One believes in the ‘literal’ Koran; the other in the ‘literal’ constitution.
From one point of view the current crisis which is rocking the Eurozone and the US is a second and deeper 9/11. The Western publics are again questioning political correctness, but no longer with respect to “our Muslim brothers”, but at much nearer distances: environmentalism, redistributionism, the welfare state. Indeed the whole notion that the aristocrats know best is being challenged by their public humiliation at the hands of reality.
Elites fail from time to time. History shows this repeatedly. A number of parallels come to mind. The Russo-Japanese war fatally weakened the idea that Europe was invincible. The carnage of the Western front took the axe to the British class system. The humiliation of Western empires at the hands of the Japanese in world war 2 ended colonialism not just in Asia, but delegitimized it the world over. All of a sudden that invaluable commodity “prestige” had been lost. And they get replaced by a new system.
The signs are all there. Once upon a time most of us would never dare question Nobel Prize winners, distinguished professors from the Ivy League, the titans of finance, or major network anchormen. They were of a kind being that was naturally above us. No more. Today we see them as simply human beings. This is just like the days after the Fall of Singapore when the Malays suddenly saw that the habitues of the Raffles could be made to march in humiliation, just like them.
The downside is that the radical Muslims understand this too. The walls of the West are no longer guarded by the myths of invincibility. They have been shredded by people so heedless, so unthinkingly arrogant and so careless that they have set fire to the very thing that sustains them and in those flames we seem them for what they are: foolish people laughing foolishly.
Also, I think that the army corp of engineers (and FEMA)should be redirected from spending billions annually to dike the Missippi to piping the Missippi’s flood waters out west. I go into that in more detail here. As well, the USA should make it a centerpiece international policy to collapse the cost of water desalination and transport so as to bring dirt cheap water to the deserts of the world,so as to turn all the world’s deserts green and double the size of the habitable planet.
(This will provide the learning and capital base for space colonization as well as provide a raison d’etre–besides national sovereignty issues — for returning Europe’s north africans to their homelands and America’s Mexicans to their homelands.)
Mad Fiddler — #173: whachoo planning on doing with our 12 million illegal Mexicans?
Wretchard #179
The walls of the West are no longer guarded by the myths of invincibility. They have been shredded by people so heedless, so unthinkingly arrogant and so careless that they have set fire to the very thing that sustains them and in those flames we seem them for what they are: foolish people laughing foolishly.
Another prize pair of fools is now going to jail– the husband for life– for spying for Cuba. Their prepared statement is a prime exercise in self-congratulatory moral preening if ever there were one:
“Kendall Myers’ life sentence does not include the possibility of parole.
In a prepared statement, Myers said he and his wife never wanted to harm Americans.
‘We wish to add at this time that we acted as we did for 30 years because of our ideals and beliefs,’ he said. ‘We did not seek nor receive payment for our work. We did not act out of anger at the United States or from a feeling of anti-Americanism. Nor did we ever intend to hurt any individual Americans. Our overriding objective was to help the Cuban people defend their revolution. We also hoped to forestall conflict between the two countries.’
‘We share the dreams and ideals of the Cuban revolution,’ he added. ‘We are equally committed to helping the struggling people of the world, whether they are here at home or abroad.’
As part of their sentences, the couple also agreed to pay the government more than $1.7 million, a figure matching Kendall Myers’ estimated salary over the years while working for the U.S. government and secretly spying for Cuba.”
http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/07/16/spy.couple.sentenced/index.html
I confess to considerable struggling to understand the mindset of these creatures. Wretchard’s comment about foolish people laughing foolishly reminds me of Ecclesiastes 7:5-6: “It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise than to hear the song of fools. For like the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of fools; this also is vanity.”
Buddy, re Russian scenarios…
I think you have it the other way around. I have a hunch that in the case of civil war in US, Russia would side with red states. More than a few pointers out there that buttress my hunch.
They think that Soros is behind the current administration, and they are very cautious about anything Soros is involved in or connected to. They don’t like Soros, at all, suspecting that he was/is trying to infiltrate Russia through his numerous fronts. From their point of view, he did already infiltrate Georgia and Ukraina. One may strongly object to the way they handled Georgia, but consider their Soros-paranoia as a piece of the puzzle. The creep simply gives them willies.
The trouble with the term, “the elite”, is that it extends from the WhiteHouse, down through the federal government, through the bureaucracy, DOWN TO THE SCHOOL BOARDS. And how is that to be changed?
It is true, as Wretchard says, that (#170) the Emperor has no clothes; that high definition tv shows the pores on the noses of the actors; that Flip captures all sorts of shenanigans, that can then be uploaded to the WORLD, via youtube and facebook. What happens now? It truly is a new time, is it not?
Swapping over to Nat Gas is already economic.
If the EPA tax on conversions was lifted thousands would be employed converting cars and long haul trucks.
Most Nat Gas would be delivered in high capacity commercial stops for truckers. Over night pressurization solves the typical commuter’s need.
What Charles said, in spades. Foreign oil = two of every three dollars of our trade deficit. Folks should go to Boone’s ‘pickens Plan’ website and sign up. Everyone who signs up gets to go to Boone’s training Kamp in Idaho and take the Blood Oath –no just kidding –a petition is time-honored, and there are two bills sitting in congress right now, one house and one senate, that would begin the changeover by mandating all new 18 wheelers run on natty. The two bills just need some pressure to get ‘em moving –they’re well -sponsored –but all that is good in DC these days has to take back seat to the Worker’s Pair o Dice agenda.
***
Doug, Chapman is good for a laugh –the improbabilty of the whole case, It’s like that great comedy The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming with the inimitable Alan Arkin, who would later play Yossarian in Catch 22. But the one “high level contact” the gang had to admit to (no doubt because so many know of it, and so admiting it is cost-free and hides other ops behind the Fuerth ‘candor’), one Leon Fuerth, is a heavy NWO hitter –a Council on Foreign Relations bona fide NWO man, as Al Gore’s military deputy and one the main designers of the USA policy in Kosovo –that American military action that, in being a western power attacking Serbs, kindled the coals that when the fire erupted it was named “Putin”.
This is just one meeting (snip) …when the Americans and the Russians realised that the negotiations were not going anywhere. Vice President Al Gore was hosting a breakfast meeting that morning in Washington. The meeting was attended by the US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and her Vice Secretary Strobe Talbott, Security Advisor Samuel R. Berger, Gore’s Special Assistant on International Politics Leon Fuerth, and Russia’s Special Ambassador to Kosovo Victor Chernomyrdin with his assistants.
Chapman managing Fuerth, or vice versa? If that ain’t sinister, what would be? but no, we have to –as mr x says, slobber over her bod and forget the meanings. BTW, pat dollard’s site has nude pix! No, not of Dollard –of Chapman!
***
mr X/174; And Buddy, your Urals reflections sounds like “Mr. President, we must not allow a mineshaft gap!”
And mr X, your Dr Strangelove reflection sounds like Yamantau Mountain is only a movie!
Buddy, continued…
The war games. Forget Estonia and forget Japan and look at the map. Northwest access and Southeast access, main ports. There should be more war games in the next 18 months in the following areas: Murmansk, Archangelsk, Crymea/Black Sea. Caucasus (possibly in South Ossetia), Rus/Armenian joint war games, Zabaykalsk Krai/Ussuri and possibly Sakhalin. There would be probably also war games deep withing Russia proper.
In the case of a collapse of US economy, Russia would shit bricks. It is not in their best interest for it to happen, they did not have enough time to diversify their economy, so they know they would be hit hard. However, the way things are going, I think they have to exercise different scenarios, one of which is a global war. The exercises are designed to assert Russian strategic depth, not for harassment of neighbors (well, some of the Rus military may think it is, but that may be a bit of a cover for internal consumption).
If I am reading the tea leafs correctly, Russians have some idea about the plan for “Better World”. They are actually familiar with an earlier version so I’d expect some apprehension. They probably also assessed the success of their former regime in subversion of US, and seeing the results, what they desire the least is for the chicken come home to roost.
The BW Plan, they think = Soros and buddies (oddly enough, Gorbachov, but they can’t touch him, too much of an icon and it is probably better to tail him than to do a wet job). They don’t like it a bit–Russia is designated in the BW Plan as a “wilderness area”. They know that the brown organic matter will hit rotating blades at some point in the near future and they don’t want to be caught with their pants down.
I was puzzled by their triangulation Iran strategy for years, until recently. Given their latest moves, I am starting to see a clearer picture. Mostly self-interest, but also some moves on a larger chess board.
Heathrmc:
braided hemp has shown certain remedial properties,
when used in a regularly applied program of legal hygeine.
Of course, all the procedural niceties should be followed with the same reverence for the law, Constitution, and defendant’s rights as those people ALWAYS themselves so faithfully show…
Poor pitiful wretches.
184 – Heather:
This little tool will help you find out just how much some of those elite educators are worth on the “open” market.
examples:
Teacher & Administrator Salary Database
Bouman, Timothy $632,000
Ancelet, Barbara $609,300
Ballough, Tiffany $379,600
Gmitro, Henry $368,589
—
2009 Teacher Details
Name: Bouman, Timothy
Salary: $632,000
Position: High School Teacher
Full/Part Time: Fulltime
Percent Time Employed: 100%
Assignment: English (Grades 9-12 Only)
Years Teaching: 12
Degree: Master’s
School Name: Noble Street Charter High School
District Name: City of Chicago SD 299
The one place the Federal Government can’t go is inside the Church. Sanctuary. Intellectual and otherwise. The Churches have to set up their own internet which the Government can’t kill. Note that the overwhelming majority of South and Central Americans coming to the US, with a full welcome from the secular materialists on the left who see them as minorities, are Catholic and Christian. Which will win out in their hearts first — their minority status, or their Christian beliefs? There’s your moral equivalent of the British Navy.
Krautheimer’s warning that Obama will tack right if the pubbies win congress in the fall and then leverage conservatives to run again in 2112 is spot on. He doesn’t have to do all that much. All he has to do is oppose repubican efforts to rescind the tax increases and then go along with republican spending cuts–while tarring and feathering them for hurting whatever constituency gets the spending cuts. Finally, the only vital economic political military thing the feds need to do on O’s watch is to get off dependence on foreign oil. If Picken’s plan goes through the US will return to much sounder economic footing. If the budget comes back in line then the private economy will go back to business as usual. What’s guaranteed is that the pubbies will remove the most onerous of the healthcare mandates without removing the body of the legislation. Whether more than that can happen remains to be seen.
In short, there is a path to prosperity that includes little or no of the conservative tea party agenda–while leaving O well positioned economically for 2112. (Oh and of course once prosperity returns people go back to sleep.)
The name of the game in 2011 will be who gets the credit for trimming the budget deficit and who takes the blame for the various ox’s that get gored in doing so. Pickens should get all the credit for the Picken’s plan.
Much cogent commentary here, with much discussion of historical events, persons, and parallels. All of which is irrelevant without a discussion of the ideas at play, and how those ideas were/are used, perceived, and promulgated by the various parties, both during the Napoleonic conflicts and now.
Bottom line- the reason that the ‘conservative’ factions in US politics have yet to mount any effective opposition to the rampant totalitarianism espoused by the present socialist administration, is that their core ideas are in essence the same. Unless and until a significant number of people in the USA realize that ‘socialism light’ ALWAYS leads to tyrannical totalitarianism, change their core ideas, and act on the basis of their newfound ideas, there will will be no significant change in the status of the USA.
This is a war of ideas, not a war of political parties, not a war of classes, not a war between haves and havenots, not a war of religions. To some extent, this war can be seen as a war of culture, as one’s culture to some extent subsumes one’s philosophical base, but at it’s root, this is a war of ideas, of PHILOSOPHY.
When the ‘conservatives’ recognize this fact, and consciously adopt a consistent philosophy of individual freedom which is rigorously applied and ruthlessly enforced in their ranks, they will continue to lose this war of ideas.
To wit:
Great Britain was able to win the war against Napoleon when they were able to show Napoleon as a ruthless tyrant bent on European domination TO FRANCE’S ERSTWHILE ALLIES, as well as their own people. The political will to enter and stay in the fray was generated by the meme that Great Britain was a defender of freedom, and Napoleon was a tyrant.
The idea of individual liberty is a powerful ally. When the GOP recognizes that and revamps it’s political agenda to correlate with the philosophy of freedom, then they can hope to beat the present movement. (Of course, then they’ll be Libertarians.)
In the 1970′s I read several analyses of Dow Long Wave Theory which said the next big depression would hit in the late ‘Aughts, that is about 2008 or 2009. We are a little late, but Dow Long Wave Theory, which Dow wrote in the 1910′s or earlier I think, is playing out pretty accurately. When the Chinese pull the plug, the American Government may well be over. Then what? After the Bourbons for five generations spent themselves into oblivion and the Tumbril, France inherited 25 years of war. Our post-bankruptcy war should well be shorter, but the guys in possession of the nuclear remote control will win.
“Mad Fiddler — #173: whachoo planning on doing with our 12 million illegal Mexicans?”
A bounty. 10$US per head dead, 100$US alive.
It worked with wolves, Buffalo and Indians, no reason it won’t work on Mexicans. With the number of unemployed that need money, I would estimate no more then 2 weeks.
That is based on them (Mexicans) finding out about the bounty and heading back home. If they decide to stay and fight it out, a month. There may be 12 million Illegals, but there are over 50 million unemployed. So the real issue is not enough illegals to go around.
Edmond, that is why the Church is the second to go up against the wall after a Marxist takeover. Right behind the Socialists and just before the Media.
http://article.wn.com/view/2010/07/11/Chavez_Venezuelan_church_clash_over_freedoms_v/?section=Hot+Topics&template=worldnews%2Findex.txt
URL is to World Net News, which is a front for Communist International. I didn’t watch the video, but there are other sources ( all slanted one way or the other) for the rising conflict between Chavez and the Church in Venezuela. In the past, the State has always triumphed over the church. Burning Churches and hanging priests tends to drive the religious underground. Once there the secret police can keep them there.
One thing that should be remembered about the Picken’s plan is that its a temporary fix. Its not a century plan. Rather its something that will last from 30-60 years.
That’s fine. That’s all the time that needed to invent and propagate other forms of energy.
Its also enough time to think about creating a more distributed energy system. Currently energy production and distribution is way too centralized. The whole thing needs to be decentralized. People need to be able to cheaply make energy from the sun wind/air water and waste–on the fly as they go. And I think that will happen–given that we are in the presence of exponential change.
If you get people off the grid and making their own power than you can build people with the kind of sand that it takes to build a country around more libertarian/tea party/conservative ideals.
Same goes for water at least in water rich areas. Water poor areas — still take big organization–for now.
I really think it is high time for the big Zero and his cronies to go. Things are going to continue to deteriorate until this self-indulging tax and spend idiot is kicked out of Office.
I can only hope that soon one of his cronies will turn on him and the skeletons will fall out of the closet. Then it will be time to give him the boot. The quicker he is out of Office the better.
Buddy Larsen @ 186: “What Charles said, in spades. Foreign oil = two of every three dollars of our trade deficit.”
Buddy, your statement is correct but misleading.
From http://www.census.org, the US trade deficit in goods & services in 2009 was $375 Billion. Imports of crude oil & refined petroleum products cost $246 Billion — about 2/3, as you said.
But the real measure is oil’s share of overall imports. Total 2009 US imports were a staggering $1,945 Billion — oil’s $246 Billion was only about 13% of the total cost of US imports. Mostly, the US imports German cars and French airplanes and Japanese steel and Chinese consumer goods — creating a dreadful balance of payments problem and leaving at least 1 worker in 6 unemployed in Obama’s America.
It makes no sense to complain about the cost of oil imports while ignoring the much larger costs of importing manufactured goods.
I am all for a new approach to supplying the power the US needs. Let’s have a giant nuclear renaissance, starting with a major nuclear power plant constructed in the quadrangle of every Ivy League college, and moving on to using nuclear heat to “mine” transportation fuels from coal and oil shale. But it would not have much impact on the trade deficit — not as long as the policies of the Elites drive industry away from the US.
An Article V convention. The first new amendment must mandate a balanced budget, no? Only across-the-board defunding can work fast enough to curtail the gov’t takeover, before it’s too big and interconnected to fail. Massive downsizing at every level of gov’t makes enforcing multiple millions of regulations impossible, which are rarely enforced anyway. Associated risk? Sure. And one can bet that the legal battles will be excruciating. Stays, injuctions and every flavor of procedural delay imaginable.
Everything we must accomplish is currently against some local, state, county, regional or federal law or regulation or edict or treaty or Presidential Order. IE; it’s all going to be “illegal.” See oil spill.
Given there’s a looming potential for severe economic breakdown, it begs questions like “Will the park rangers be required to arrest and prosecute poachers?” Or, “Will all that protected game be available to hunt for food?” “Can the citizens gather wood from nearby forests to heat their homes?” And Central Park?
If lovers of liberty cannot win on just the downsizing plank, we have no chance. That’s the broadest net we can expect to cast, to gain an absolute mandate to do it.
In the private sector, over the past fifty years, automation (CIC from above) flattened the management hierarchy, and all government must suffer a similar shift from centralized to decentralized. Moving the intelligence, responsibility and authority to the edge. Huge layers of non-accountable management oversight and coordination, along with their non-funded enforcement powers, must be carved out of the system as counter-productive. Starting with unelected Czars.
K/197; even so, so long as the economy creates 1) real growth with 2) a decent spread on the financing costs with 3) 95% employment –a lot of that trade deficit can be seen as an investment in USA (even if partly due to reserve-currency Dollar). Clearly one the NWO’s must-do’s is to displace that reserve status –forming a perfect confluence with union-boss market-share strategy of a cash-and-carry USA allowing them escape from global competition.
***
twoby/187; –i see it thataway too by and large –including the same junctures where Kremlin has been too successful and now has to walk-back –such as the hidden side of the USSR/RF re-branding, the eco-war aimed at powering down USA in order to relatively power up their petro export value. the walk-back ‘tell’ is the rising retail violence in Iraq –kremlin’s clear plan to ease into USA’s old OPEC relationship would call for a stable prosperous Iraq easing USA’s mideast pull-out. But their lodgment on the other side of the hill re S Ossetia, and the amped up efforts to make Turk/Armenian peace so as to invest the Caspian Basin thru Azerbaijan while world attention is on Iran vs Israel, is clearly aimed at leveraging a diminishing strategic weapon advantage over PRC to gain and lockup while still able the strong position in the Persian Gulf.
As far as Gorby and Green and Soros et al, here’s some interesting stuff:
http://www.bing.com/search?q=gorbachev+soros+san+francisco+1984&src=IE-SearchBox&oma=toggle_off
Mad Fiddler .173 Great comment and agenda. I particularly favor these:
A comment or two. The IRS as it stands needs to be revised down to a “set tax” on individuals, business and off shore businesses. How much tax is beyond my expertise but I would like to see a final document that is under 500 pages, 12 point, single spaced. Yea I know, most likely impossible.
The affirmative action crap, such as just included in the financial reform bill and thousands of other previous laws passed has to be cut off, and done away with. Everybody should be just equal, otherwise no one is equal and without government’s help or advice.
The American Education System, other than doing away with all the federal offices has to be reformed from the bottom. Teacher-professor-administration that is almost entirely leftist, progressives and near communist. They all have to go, with or without reduced pensions and benefits. We have to take back the education of our children.
As it is it will take many years before the progressive brainwashed generations will be gone and their influence washed away by conservative, Constitution based teaching.
Thank you for your excellent comment and I will use much of it in my efforts to sway voters and to give hope to them. I hope with your permission.
145. goy Yes, Yes, Yes…That is the reason I maintain that I and my buds must go to all of the local, county, state meetings as we can and try and get our agenda’s not only considered but passed. It is the reason that I am spending hours all week going around talking…pleading with people…to get involved, to be heard, to vote and to stand up and get on the line for our Republic.
Why I plead almost every day for those here at BC to get out from behind their keyboards, to get out and fight on the line. And something I don’t mention too often is to give every dollar you can spare to candidates and causes that you agree with.
144. Don Rodrigo:- …it would require a long, hard slog through the state legislatures…
“Precisely. At this point in time, the long hard slog – and the public discussion it would catalyze – is the whole point. An actual amendment passed by a sufficient majority of the States which, say, rendered Shamnesty, Cap-&-Tax, Obamacare or Medicare unconstitutional would be icing on the cake.”
I submit that this can not happen now or in the next year or so. I think that conservative control in the states has to be taken back first, starting with local government, in particular, the school boards and other local board, commissions and such.
Yes I know that some states will not be able to be saved from the democrats at this time, but we must do everything we can to solidify the local, county and states legislatures into the conservative camp before we can do something like you suggest.
Another thing that can be done is that I think many law suits, or in some cases, counter suits from the States, would be good and good for Conservative’s.
w says: “The signs are all there. Once upon a time most of us would never dare question Nobel Prize winners, distinguished professors from the Ivy League, the titans of finance, or major network anchormen. They were of a kind being that was naturally above us. No more. Today we see them as simply human beings.”
I would like to interject that it was – that “most of us” Americans didn’t even pay that much attention to any of the above. They were outside our bubble and irrelevant, as they still are to a large portion of Americans. Just as blogs and online news is still outside of a large, very large portion of Americans. Also it has been polled and shown that more Americans every year are not even watching the news and such on TV. They are only interested in the other useless, time wasting, banal, stupid stuff on TV. Even the movie channels are not watched as much as before. Americans for the past few years have relegated most of their time to the back burner because they are too busy either earning a meager living, trying to get government assistance [much, much paper work and jumping through numerous hoops] or in way too many, just partying and doing their choice of drugs.
While many millions more are just trying to find God and make some sense out of this insanity, while trying to take care of their families.
And w it is not just the radical Muslims that are watching and using this with glee. It is also your other billion or more of Muslims that have their decades long mission/duty – to take over the world for Islam – by peaceful means, deceit, guile and Taqiyyah that are rejoicing because of our troubles.
Charles you said: “Also, I think that the army corp of engineers (and FEMA)should be redirected from spending billions annually to dike the Missippi to piping the Missippi’s flood waters out west.”
Great idea that has been around for at least fifty years and never gotten traction or money enough to even start. It would cost billions so nobody would advance it in the halls of congress. Perhaps now when billions is nothing compared to trillions it might get a foothold. But you can be sure that the eco-terrorists would oppose it all the way and they DO have the money to tie up any effort for decades. Plus just think what it would do to the M. River’s delta. While I don’t really think it would do that much harm, those that live there might think otherwise.
NahnCee I’m sorry but I get so tired of seeing people use a “guesstimate” number used from 2004 of the number of illegals here in the U.S. It is just not only a fictional number in 2010, it is misleading to a fault.
Estimates “guesstimates” now in 2010 are that there are between 20 to 25 million illegals now in the U.S. These numbers DO NOT include their children that have been born here and considered citizens.
2×4 says: “They think that Soros is behind the current administration,”
The Ruskies are not the only ones who think that. If fact there is much evidence that Soros is one of those “backers” that is referred to behind Obama and the democrats. He is one of those that must be made to pay, not only with his ill-gotten monies but with his life.
heathermc If and when Conservatives learn how and use extensively youtube and facebook, then and only then will be have a window into the world of the socialist educated youth of America, where we might bust into their bubbles long enough to enlist them in the fight to destroy our enemies. But I wouldn’t put a whole lot of money on the chances of us doing very well at it.
Edmund Burke “The one place the Federal Government can’t go is inside the Church.” True, but not entirely. Don’t forget how they used a few Catholics in the past year to further their adjenda. And don’t forget how they co-opted the American Jews in the last two years. Nothing is off limits to the enemies of our Republic.
OH, buddy talking about T-Bone. He has lost more money than most have ever made. But he also has made more money than many. But his NG advice should be taken as well as his advice to “drill baby drill”. He is one of a kind, and isn’t afraid to let you know. I suggest [as I don't have time] you and others, go to YouTube and pull up some of his rantings and ramblings.
He is the picture of several reasons America became great and will stay that way.
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Well got to go. We have farm duties today on our Group’s little farm. Expect to bring back several sacks of produce for our labors. The Girls just love going out there and unexpectly, even enjoy working out in the hot sun. And it will be hot today.
When I picked up the girls from Sunday School this morning, the first question my oldest grand daughter asked was:
“Are we going to have terrible times coming, Papa?”
I told her that might be true, but if we prepared and helped ourselves, God would help us too.
And everything would turn out OK.
Papa Ray
197. Kinuachdrach
Judging by Medvedev’s last visit– the Russians know they they can’t be one trick ponies forever. They already understand the implications of new fracking technology for worldwide natural gas reserves. ie fracking natural gas reserves are going up all over the world–& not just the USA. If prices go down for awhile it will mean that some Russian ministries will be defunded for a time just as will happen in the USA in the next couple years–but only for a time because energy prices are extremely elastic. (if you lower the price, demand goes up. If you raise the price, demand goes down.)
Nuclear power plants are good ideas. I think the bigger story there in the next decade will be portable nuclear power plants. These things range in size from refrigerators to semi trailor size. They can power 50,000 homes. Or they could could cook oil out of oil shale or pump river sized pipelines of water anywhere. They can be used offgrid anywhere for anything. They last anywhere from 7 to 20 years.
I’ve seen reports that suggest there are some 100 different designs for portable nuclear power plants scattered around the world. The Russians came up with some of the early designs back in the 60′s & 70′s but of course they didn’t know how to commercialize them. The Japanese currently manufacture them. The US has a couple companies getting into the game with about 40 due to be shipped in 2112. But they’re going overseas. The US doesn’t currently have the regulatory ability to even deal with them–much less allow them to be used in the US. so its not likely they’ll show up on a US campus.
I too think that the USA could should do more to even the playing field with the Chinese as they currently have a lot of non tariff barriers. Chinese business practices have been as predatory on the US as they have been on Russia. But judging by the atmospherics I’m hearing from guy’s like GE’s Imelt, the Chinese are going to get a lot less foreign investment in the coming years. Of course they may not need it.
@ 198. geoffgo:- An Article V convention. The first new amendment must mandate a balanced budget, no?
Unfortunately, a balanced budget amendment isn’t a guarantee of de-funding anything – certainly not with the cast of Constitution-shredding criminals that presently run this nation’s government.
And actually, that’s one of the few amendments a revitalized Congress (i.e., through electoral turnover) might realistically try to pass – especially after this November, when the new Republican Congress will need to act quickly to demonstrate that they’re doing something to turn things around (just as one of the new Dem Congress’ acts in 2007 was a populist ploy: hike the minimum wage, which only helped increase unemployment in the long run). BHO and the remaining Dems are guaranteed to resist such an amendment, which is not something the media can hide, and is also not something that will sit well with the majority of voting Americans. If they’re smart and go along with it, it’s still a victory for the Republican Congress.
The alternative to quick, decisive action such as this – as has been mentioned in numerous places – is that the GOP will be holding the bag, and having done NOTHING to prevent it, when the REAL effects of the P-O-R economy start to be felt later this year and next. Remember, the Dems excel at hypocrisy, historical revisionism and finger-pointing – primarily because they have a Fifth Column in the media that stokes a daily narrative to support them. It won’t be hard to blame the GOP for the mess they created, just as they’ve been blaming Bush and the Republicans for the mess they began creating in 2007.
So, the real problem facing the GOP right now, as “great” as their prospects look for November, is this: all indications are that this is only the beginning of a depression that will dwarf the “Great” one if drastic economic policy changes aren’t made immediately. Remember, WWI was called “the Great War” and “War to End All Wars”… before we had to start numbering them. The GOP can’t be caught looking like contributors to that decline or it’s game over. They have to act, and support for anything that even smells like fiscal responsibility will help to prevent that.
More importantly, however, a balanced budget is also not an issue that will strike much of a cord at the State and grassroots level. Everyone wants “fiscal discipline” today, but most people don’t really understand how the federal budget works (and doesn’t), or how it’s abused (e.g., Medicare’s outright theft of general funds). Rather, the media-consuming public has been trained to believe that our economic problems were caused by “Wall Street”. Other folks (like me) wouldn’t see a balanced budget amendment as any bar whatsoever to the obvious consequence: tax hikes, which would follow as a mathematical certainty if the feds’ usurped authority to spend our money on entitlements isn’t corrected.
Conversely, amendments aimed at recapturing the authority that has been usurped by the feds – i.e., to maintain ill-conceived and bankrupt entitlement programs – would find widespread support among those with property and means, especially if they attack the economy-destroying, unconstitutional notion of federal mandates to purchase insurance. Mechanisms like Paul Ryan’s Roadmap, which phase out such programs over time without leaving current pensioners hanging, could be thus widely discussed as a way forward out of permanent economic decline.
Remember, the idea here initially is to build coalitions of support for ideals that will revitalize the Republic, which necessarily requires a rollback of federal overreach. The goals, therefore, need to be clear and close to home for those who actually pay taxes. The productive 1/3 of the nation, whose income tax covers the cost of government on behalf of the remaining two thirds, must be motivated to act. Happily, this is already happening, as the Tea Party movement demonstrates.
Ideally, if the process goes well, the need to actually hold an Art. V Convention will evaporate as public awareness, strategic coalitions (e.g., in business, etc.) and public opinion forces enough of an electoral turnover in D.C. to allow them to do the right thing. If that doesn’t happen, in the meantime the States have elected convention delegates and put support in place to pursue a convention aimed at passage of amendments designed specifically to counter federal overreach. So in some ways it’s a strategy with a built-in Plan B.
200. Papa Ray
Charles you said: “Also, I think that the army corp of engineers (and FEMA)should be redirected from spending billions annually to dike the Missippi to piping the Missippi’s flood waters out west.”
Great idea that has been around for at least fifty years and never gotten traction or money enough to even start.
………
Its become much more possible recently because of the development of portable nuclear power plants. ie the complexity of the project has declined significantly. the project is technically easy. Instead of stringing thousands of miles of wire from distant power plants, all you need to do is lay pipe pipe pipe pipe generator/portable nuke pipe pipe pipe pipe pipe pipe generator/portable nuke and so on.
Charles @ 203: “… all you need to do is lay pipe pipe pipe pipe generator/portable nuke pipe pipe pipe pipe …”
Charles, I am with you on this one — with an important proviso: few of the expected gains will materialize if the water pipelines are built by imported Mexican labor, using pipe imported from Japanese steel mills in German ships, powered by portable nuclear reactors imported from China or India using nuclear fuel from Russia.
I am not in favor of trade barriers to imports. I am very strongly in favor of levelling the playing field by dismantling the internal US industry- & job-destroying regulatory bureaucracies and tax regimes which the Annointed have created. The key to progress in the US (and in much of the rest of the developed world) is to get rid of the unsustainable overhead of the Political Class.
Testing…
Testing
Ok, looks good so far Sir.
I’m no engineer, certainly not trained in hydrologic sciences… I just remember all the stories of how the construction of the Aswan High Dam (Under Gamal abd al Nasser with Soviet assistance) had a bunch of very infelicitous consequences:
First, the lake (good) which provided a hydraulic head to drive turbines to generate electricity for Cairo…
… for a while.
Then, the lake began to silt up with the rich soil carried by the Nile in the floods from the southern highlands.
This gradually filled the lake, and reduced the electrical generating capacity of the dam to nullity.
Next, the Nile Delta fronting the Mediterranean began to change. For tens of thousands of years, maybe longer, it had been growing, advancing into the Med basin. Then, with the silt settling behind the titanic concrete walls of the High Aswan Dam, the soil that had nourished the marshes — bringing organic guck that fed the microbes at the base of the food chain that had provided fish and reeds and new fertility for the fields for Egyptian civilization since before humans used pebbles to tally their herds — stopped coming.
Now the relentless wave action of Mediterranean Sea has been eroding the land of the Nile Delta, so that it’s losing area and subsiding. (Hmmmm. Sorta like we’ve been hearing about the Mississipi Delta in Louisiana…)
We’re already seeing the retreat of the Mississipi Delta seemingly as a direct result of the way the river’s been “tamed.”
Still, you’d think that if we’re talking about flood waters that OVERFLOW the river’s regular banks and inundate thousands of square miles adjacent, it ought to be okay to divert that water to other drier regions. But that sounds like we’d have to build tens of thousands of drains with a computer-governed interactive system for catching the water far upstream, way before it could ever make the flow of the Mississipi rise to dangerous levels.
Comment???
On the Soros front, 1984 was indeed the year, according to Wikipedia, Uncle George established the first working Internet connection between the USA and then the USSR, from San Francisco. Soros also sold one of the largest steel mills in Russia to the current richest man in Russia, according to the Forbes list. How the hell Uncle George hung on to such a juicy asset during the ‘metal wars’ of the 90s, I leave to your imagination. Mokre kryshe (good roof) as the Russkies say…but yes indeed, they are wary of Soros after he basically bankrolled Yuschenko’s campaign (and for all commenting here that ‘Russian paranoia’ means they have to ‘control Ukraine’ as a traditional defense against ‘invasion’ – why did Yusch finish with a 5% approval rating? When you talk to Ukrainians in Moscow they are Russian but when you talk to them in America they are Ukrainian – nuff’ said) . And Obama’s Democratic Party is nothing if not a creature of Soros funding.
As for the natural gas thing, conversion would not be nearly as expensive as hydrogen and does not require digging up existing gas stations as there are plenty of pipes to offices and residences, but NG still works better for trucks and buses than for light vehicles particularly outside urban areas or places where there are lots of propane filling stations.
Yes there is abundant shale gas, probably in Western China’s Xinjiang region as well, not to mention all the coal bed methane that could be tapped. The Russians too probably have shale gas reserves and could squeeze more out of their existing fields in western Siberia with enhanced recovery techniques. Pay attention to the guys on the flights out of Houston and talk to them and you get a pretty good idea of what’s going on. The same petroleum engineers working for StatOil Hydro and ENI in the Barnett Shale today could be working in Russia in ten years, but those dullards at The Economist can’t see that.
The real issue with gas and everything else is whether our elites will impose artificial scarcities to keep prices up, or to reduce demand in some places while increasing it in others. Too early to tell, but if Russia gets hotter, they will have to burn more gas to power their previously unnecessary ACs.
If there is an abundance of dirt cheap natural gas (or semi-trailer nuke reactors, preferably made with Thorium that cannot in any way or shape be used for a Bomb), then you have your fuel for cooking the oil shale out of the ground in Colorado and Utah.
Water objections have pretty much killed any drilling in that area in the former (plus Ken Salazar, who explicitly banned any federal funding for oil shale research) but the latter state might still be open to it. At least Sen. Hatch was quietly pushing for it several years ago. But there are obviously a lot of people who would want the U.S. to keep importing as much oil as possible, and they know how to manipulate the Greenies. And admittedly strip mining as with the tar sands in Canada is a non-starter, and there just isn’t as much water in the U.S. Rocky Mountain West as their is in Alberta.
Krauthammer may be an old fart Cold Warrior in foreign policy but when it comes to Obama’s next target being the U.S. energy industry he’s dead on. That’s where the money is, after all, now that health care is being looted. There is no other industry left that pays so well or that happens to provide so many good paying jobs in Red States – and therefore, has to be back-door nationalized just like the banks, the health care and auto industries.
One last comment about Uncle George Soros – at times I have little doubt he has acted as a front for the U.S. government, particularly in the 80s up to the early 2000s, but he has also ruthlessly exploited those connections for his own gain, particularly betting against the Pound and Thai bhat. So was he paid with insider information for his services rendered to Uncle Sam? I don’t know. But I do think the ‘Quantum’ evil organization in the most recent Bond flick was a backhanded reference to his Quantum hedge fund. That was the first Hollywood action movie I’d ever seen where the bad guys were not just an Ernst Blofeld type, but a very eerie NWO conspiracy with environmentalism as their mask. I wonder if Alex Jones deserves a screen credit for that one?
Pay attention to the guys on the flights out of Houston and talk to them and you get a pretty good idea of what’s going on. The same petroleum engineers working for StatOil Hydro and ENI in the Barnett Shale today could be working in Russia in ten years, but those dullards at The Economist can’t see that.
…………
My understanding is that the Russians burned the last bunch of US oil companies that went to Russia back in the 90′s. Considerable quantities of natural gas have already been found off the coast of Israel and in poland. I’ve heard talk of quantities of shale gas available in France and Germany but nothing definite as yet.
All this talk about “getting the House back” just makes me shiver.
What makes us so sure that Alvin Greene’s win in South Carolina, wasn’t a test of a new system designed to ensure election “predictability.”
If so, the “dry run” worked.
And everyone is “fat, dumb, and happy” about throwing the bums out? I know, it’s a conspiracy theory…but much of the actions surrounding our new president seem so sureal. When the old-fashioned answers stop making sense, there may be a very good reason why those facial muscles make you squint and wrinkle up your nose on a fairly routine basis.
Here is some reading and such referencing using the Big Muddy’s water.
“The Southwest Passage “
There is a lot more info on the net about this. I have to leave or I would dig the links up.
Anyway I think the eco-terrorists would be able to stop this and would, but this has many many more uses than just moving water from one place to others. For example another benefit of this waterway would be that if made large enough it could be used for ship transit from the Atlantic to the Pacific on land and facilities that are not only on our own soil but under only our control.
Using nuclear would be ideal but using existing electrical power could be used.
This should be done. Water is life and the indirect benefits would be enormous even if it would be the biggest water project ever in America.
But just imagine millions of acres of irrigated land in the dry southwest. We could feed the world two times over and grow all the fuel crops the greenies want.
Myself I would also want a few nice fishing lakes along the way. The opportunities and such are almost endless.
OK, here is one more.
“Southwest Passage – Talk Radio” I have NOT listened to it.
Papa Ray
mr X, the fund Soros used against the Pound Sterling and the Bank of England was his “Double Eagle” fund. Right away, after he won that play (it is said via inside information at the highest levels of the German gov’t) he broke up and distrbuted the Double Eagle.
of course he will likely –if asked –say the name was to attract American capital remembering the US ‘double eagle’ gold coin.
but then there’s the (much more likely to my way of thinking) two-headed eagle heraldry of the Slavic kingdoms (“vigilance in both directions”, “East & West, front and rear”, “Second Sight”, “Byzantine Double Cross”, “Orthodox Duality”, etcetera).
Life does for a fact imitate James Bond art –esp in the Mannerist phase. that’s why “Macondo” the name is i think a strong signal that whatever it is that’s going on, the operators are telling each other that their art has been successful enough to have a classic, a baroque, and a rococo phase (maybe that would be the Gore/Chernomyrdian Commish?), and to serve as a warning to stay ahead of the ‘decadent’ final phase –which the Macondo well despite the self-referential encomium may well prove, depending on the breaks in the future, to have been a beginning of.
Sounds like Papa Ray is referring to a CANAL that might be used like the sluice-canals that farmers would build to reach from a landing at the river bank or a dug-out commercial canal all the way to their barn. It would consist of a sluiceway filled with just a few inches of water, that would support a boat-sledge maybe 18 inches wide, by 10 feet long. This was enough to carry a load of maybe several hundred pounds, and could be pulled by a single person.
Scale that up to something like the locks in various rivers, and you could pull barges hundreds of miles with bitty little tractors… w rail heads and containerized truck loading docks all along the way. Whee!
Couldn’t cost more than a few billion dollars per mile, right?
well, at THAT cost, it can hardly be worth not doing –even if it DOES work.
“A Billion dollars here… A Billion dollars there…
Pretty soon you’re talking ’bout some real money.”
Which politician said that?
everett dirkson?
Wilbur Mills the guy fell into the swimming pool with the bimbo.