Although Charles Rangel, Maxine Waters and Arizona sheriff Paul Babeau have nothing obvious in common, a single thread runs through their recent actions. Each is unwilling to be reined in. Rangel and Waters are thumbing their noses at the Congressional ethics committees attempting to investigate them for corruption. In the instance of the sheriff, he is pushing back against a what nearly 70% of the population regard as the irrational immigration policy of not enforcing it. The other side is pushing back too — at the law. “Undocumented and unafraid” was the slogan of 22 self-confessed illegal aliens who sat in five Senator’s offices in the Capitol.
The students in D.C. are part of a national network of undocumented youth and students who’re approaching the constant stall-outs of the Dream Act with civil disobedience. They’re also among the thousands of people expected to descend on Arizona next week when the state puts the SB1070 law into force, barring legal challenge.
“Civil disobedience”, once a term of honor used by those who fought tyranny, now means “I’m walking out with the TV from the store and you can’t stop me.” If Maxine Waters, Charlie Rangel and the “undocumented and afraid” bunch are willing to simply tear up the tickets in the face of law enforcement, and law enforcement, as typified by Sherrif Joe Arpaio are determined to issue the tickets anyway, what impends is not a simple “failure to communicate” but a warning that the legitimacy of the system is under attack. Fewer and fewer know the rules any more. And the word that everything is there for the taking is leaking out. News that a Mexican drug cartel has put a price on Sheriff Arpaio’s head isn’t really so surprising.
“It’s offering a million dollars for Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s head and offering a thousand dollars for anyone who wants to join the Mexican cartel,” the man, who wants to remain anonymous, told the station.
Pinal County (Ariz.)_ Sheriff Paul Babeu said, “What’s very troubling is the fact that at a time when we in law enforcement and our state need help from the federal government, instead of sending help they put up billboard-size signs warning our citizens to stay out of the desert in my county because of dangerous drug and human smuggling and weapons and bandits and all these other things and then, behind that, they drag us into court with the ACLU.” President Obama who ran on being post-everything has partnered with everyone. The result is that no one knows whose side he is on; and that engenders a feeling of betrayal in everyone who thought he was on ‘their’ side.
The problem is that when public policy and its enforcement mechanisms blink on and off like a broken intersection stop sign nobody knows if the signal is meant to be obeyed or not. Eventually people who stare at the light decide ‘not’. The Washington Post says “President Obama’s relationship with members of the Congressional Black Caucus is being tested over a series of high-profile incidents.” But after years of being allowed to get away with anything Rangel and Waters are understandably resentful at the sudden zeal of the ethics committee. The WaPo blog The Fix hints that the Congressional Black Caucus are so wroth may actually play the “race card” against Obama.
One party strategist familiar with the CBC painted the following doomsday scenario:
“You have a bunch of ‘Front Liners and Blue Dogs — predominantly white members — calling for Rangel and Waters to step down, and the CBC digs in and defends them and goes after [Obama] and the party for not adequately defending them. This causes big drop in enthusiasm among African Americans for Democrats (coupled with bitterness with the Sherrod incident), and they stay home.”
The fact that President Obama is sworn to be President of the whole American people is likely to be unappreciated by a constituency which the Democratic Party has made the hinge of their political majority. When elections depend on the support of a bloc vote, they must be mollified at all costs. All costs. The political establishment is paying the price for split-level rules. Having conditioned selected groups to receive special treatment they now unable to discontinue the service. Promises made in the fat times now have to be made good in the lean. That they can’t be kept is no excuse. Pension funds are bankrupt, the voters are angry at political corruption, Americans are desperate for jobs. The design margin is gone.
In that atmosphere public employee unions, congress persons and the PC activist crowd can no longer get the goodies they used to. But taking it away from them is going to be like pulling teeth. ‘Whaddaya mean I can’t park where I am not supposed to park?’ One of the charges against Charles Rangel’s involved his Mercedes Benz “which was parked in a House space for roughly five years beginning in 2003″ when the limit is 45 consecutive days. When you let a guy park in one space for five years, you’ve signaled the rules don’t apply to him. The day the tow truck comes is also the day Charlie asks ‘why’? Why now when there’s a post-racial President did you remember the parking space? And five years is a short period in the history of political correctness whose motto is “once given, for always”. Taking back Hope and Change is a lot harder than promising it in the first place. In Barack Obama’s hometown of Chicago the criminals have come to accept lawlessness as their due. They’ve become so brazen they are now targeting the police. That city has a murder rate in literal excess of Iraq or Afghanistan. In a 59 hour period, forty people were shot in the city.
Three Chicago police officers have been murdered in the last two months, the most recent of whom was Michael Bailey, who at age 62 was only weeks away from retirement. On the morning of July 18, Bailey had finished an overnight shift guarding the home of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and was in front of his own home cleaning his new car, which he had bought as an early retirement gift to himself. He was still dressed in his police uniform when someone tried to rob him. Police officers everywhere accept the risks to life and limb attendant to the job, but it’s generally taken for granted among cops that the uniform will serve as a deterrent against being robbed on the street. What level of depravity has a city reached when a uniformed police officer is no safer from a street robbery than anyone else? More important, what is to be done about it?
Like Sheriff Arpaio the robbers are after the cops. So what do Arpaio and the Chicago cops have in common? The essential is invisible to the eye; and that essence is that the current system is losing its ability to function through self-inflicted corruption and red tape. It has messed things up so badly that it is struggling to service itself. Not only is it progressively less likely to provide “free” benefits for its adherents, it may be approaching the point where it must work simply to keep the routine wheels turning. If virtue is its own reward, incompetence in a closed system is its own penalty.
The designers of the American political system set it up to tolerate local dysfunction — the Federal system established limits on power and created firewalls against the spread of the consequences of their abuse. But those limits were inconvenient to the boundlessly ambitious. Since World War 2 the narrative has been of increasingly putting the central government in charge of everything. The Super New Dealers are here. That centralized the risk as well. Once the firewalls on imbecility have been dismantled the inevitable consequence, as in the case of the global financial system, is that limits to their dysfunctional effects are removed as well.
Then you have a cascading effect. One reason why systems often don’t fail gradually is because small changes, each seemingly inconsequential in itself, can come together and enable each other. The blaze just jumps when it exceeds a certain temperature. Just as people often think they have more money than they have, the system had less ‘give’ than its masters believed. Now the challenge on the left will be, not as they believed, to ensure their permanent majority, but to simply ensure that the bills are paid and that their routine instructions are followed. It’s an ancient process, one already known to the Greeks. Hubris, which was defined as “ruin, folly, delusion” is often followed by Nemesis. That wasn’t hard to guess thousands of years ago. But for some moderns, who would have thought it?
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I used to wonder why I didn’t take a job my cousin-in-law offered me. Now I find myself wondering when they’ll get out. And to think another one still lives in England…
Rangel and Waters have lived and prospered for years knowing that the rules don’t apply to them. You have to wonder what changed in Congress that made it so the rules now do apply? Surely our president did not all of a sudden get religion — he’s as clueless now as he was when he was offered a free ride for an undergraduate education in NY. So the people who pull the strings must have decided to change the rules. But which ones? Emanuel? Axelrod? Jarrett? None of them seem likely. Could it be that Soros is pulling the plug? Or someone is running away from Hillary and Pelosi? This is not hubris, it is Chicago politics, and someone is very likely going to die of an overdose of aspirin one of these days. We keep saying “we live in interesting times” and the times keep getting more interesting. I think the only observer who is laughing right now is Putin. For the rest of us the clown show is no longer funny. F
Here we go…
Arizona needs to pass a law allowing its citizens to possess fully automatic weapons NOW.
If Sheriff Joe is murdered, it’s game on.
Call it a Tipping Point. Malcolm Gladwell in his book of the same name states “The best way to understand the dramatic transformation of unknown books into bestsellers, or the rise of teenage smoking, or the phenomena of word of mouth or any number of the other mysterious changes that mark everyday life is to think of them as epidemics. Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do.” Often, it is hard to discern these cultural themes because of their viral nature. Only near the end of the series of doublings are the trends detected.
One theme that seems to be percolating is that calls for justice, compassion for the poor and multicultural sensitivity are more frequently being perceived as a smoke screen for patronage, unscrupulousness and personal enrichment. Historically, this reminds me of pre-Reformation Christianity where the priesthood mouthed the right words but lived lives in contradiction of their proclaimed beliefs. For example, do Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton sell indulgences? The question answers itself.
This sense of the Tipping Point I believe is one reason for the concern and sometimes outright pessimism by some posting to this board. I too am uncertain, but more hopeful than uncertain. With the energy, commitment and faith of like minded believers (and I’m not referring to only Christians) I believe Ronald Reagan’s optimism is not a preferred mental state but an accurate mental image of reality. Accurate, not because of our circumstances but because of who we Americans are.
As did the Soviet Union, the American Left is dying from its internal contradictions, its hubris but more fundamentally its denial of human nature. I believe this is their high-water mark but the outcome is not guaranteed. But as Mr. Linbeck III and others have previously posted, the solution lies within us. Some have called us an army of Davids. I prefer to think of us as an army of Martin Luthers. We seek not so much to replace the current powers. Instead, we intend to fulfill the vision and promise of our Founders.
He lost his Jewish support.
They now realize just what an anti-semite he is.
Hence the need to drop anti-semitic ballast.
—–
W any chance my prior post still lingers along the slow track of moderation?
Learned my lesson, I have.
Politicians have a negative effect on law enforcement and the ability of the police to enforce the law. Mayors and elected Prosecutors are where lawlessness starts. When Rudy was mayor of New York and had a policy to enforce all laws, crime dropped. This is a fact not my opinion.Crime is rampant in Philadelphia, Chicago, New Orleans. St. Lewis, Baltimore and Washington DC. Ask yourself what are the common factors in these cities?
I will predict that if Arpaio is killed by some foreign criminal , and the Federal Government fails to act decisively, there will be consequences. The Federal elected officials have been buying votes with federal ‘ free stuff’ for years. As a result all if the crime and all of the costs of illegals has been caused by the Feds. Clinton, Bush and Obama are all guilty of failing to defend the Constitution.
““It’s offering a million dollars for Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s head and offering a thousand dollars for anyone who wants to join the Mexican cartel,” the man, who wants to remain anonymous, told the station.”
The US government will be the first to offer Sherriff Joes head on a pike. That is what hate based organizations do. They make it legal to murder the foes of anarchy. Expect it to happen.
4:DonB71inWA, here is a bit of trivia to go along with your observation about Martin Luther. Something that few seem to notice or appreciate about ML was that he was part of the first full generation of young people to grow up with that new fangled thing called the printing press. The free exchange of information that ML and his generation were able to experience was a reality unknown to his predecessors. So in many respects his life shares much in common with young people today who are growing up with the Internet as a taken-for-granted part of their lives.
Apropos of ethics charges, Waters and Rangel aren’t the only ones feeling the heat: “At one point earlier this year, all eight lawmakers under formal investigation by the House ethics committee, including Rangel and Waters, were black Democrats.”
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0810/40533.html
Another case of vehicular homicide, this time in Virginia, on the part of an illegal alien “who had somehow obtained a driving license”: ” . . . police are investigating how he was able to obtain a driver’s license, which was later revoked after being convicted of drunken driving.
Police have charged Martinelly with driving drunk and involuntary manslaughter in the Sunday morning crash along Bristow Road that killed one Benedictine sister and injured two others.”
http://gatewaypundit.firstthings.com/2010/08/illegal-immigrant-awaiting-deportation-charged-with-killing-nun-in-car-crash/#comments
rickl #3 asks about fully automatic weapons in AZ. Here is a link to the home page of the gun blog that is part of the Exurban League blog (a group of AZ guys).
http://www.exurbanleague.com/misfires/Home.aspx
(Scroll down for the item I posted a few days ago about AZ’s new concealed-carry law– no govt. permission needed to carry a concealed defensive firearm). The folks who post there would certainly have the latest info, on automatic weapons.
Oh, and it looks like another presidential promise has reached its expiration date: “An Arizona National Guard spokesman said troops will not begin bolstering security along the Arizona border this Sunday, despite what was announced by the Departments of Homeland Security and Defense 10 days ago.
‘We won’t have any units deployed by August 1,’ said Lt. Valentine Castillo, a public-affairs officer. ‘We don’t yet know when troops will actually arrive.’”
As the blogger who posted this news item says, “Anarchy reigns along the border with Mexico, and Obama’s solution is to head to vacations in Maine, Florida and Spain.”
http://www.exurbanleague.com/Home/tabid/40/EntryId/493/Piling-on.aspx#Comments
I have been aware of Sheriff Arpaio and admire his steadfast approach to law enforcement. I hope for his continued safety and success.
It’s possible I’ve lost any sense of taste, but upon reading, this sprang to mind.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lxzcrWOmvg
If we judge the magnitude of an observed current excess (dishonesty, greed, arrogance, crudity, etc) as an attempt to match in immediate (hurried, urgent, stockpiled) present value of what is anticipated will be taken away in the long run from this person or this segment of the population, then we may be more circumspect and responsible in what we propose that effects people even in pursuit of some desirable social economic or political outcomes. In many cases it might still be best to take this outcome as a necessary side effect and press on for the major principled systemic good or advantage. If the cause is right then consideration and compassion come naturally.
The ruling class’s disregard for the law has been going on a long time. The country class tolerated it because we thought that if we didn’t make too many waves, we’d have a pretty good life. Maybe even join the ruling class, or at least see our kids succeed. Take away that prospect and suddenly the scales fall from our eyes.
We no longer see through a glass darkly. It’s all bright and clear now. We were suckers. We were never going to get that promised prize. The deal was: we follow the law. Pay our taxes. Bankrupt our businesses following their regulations. There were no bailouts for us. Nope. The rules applied only to us. Not to them. Stories like Rangle, illegal immigration bothered us before, but we thought that somehow it would all work out OK. It seemed that it always did before. But not now. Now stories like that infuriate us.
We, the country class. The ants in the ant and grasshopper story, we know that the game is up. Unfortunately, wrapped in their cocoon, their silky bubble of Peak Government, the Ruling Class thinks things will go on as before. A few cries of protest will be raised by the usual suspects and if any of them get too uppity, you can just smack them down by calling them racist. Then it’s back to business as usual. Even if the Republicans get in. So they don’t see it. They keep pressing and poking and prodding and taking and sneering until we just can’t take it anymore.
After that, who knows. The glass is dark again.
10. hey
Good clip.
To answer #2 F:
Steven Sondheim perhaps said it best:
Don’t you love farce?
My fault I fear.
I thought that you’d want what I want.
Sorry, my dear.
But where are the clowns?
Quick, send in the clowns.
Don’t bother, they’re here.
Wildiris, thx for info re Martin Luther and the printing press. Thought provoking parallel. As Peter Allen sang, Everything Old is New Again.
Off topic but another example how the cultural conversations are changing. Heard an interesting suggestion for a new movie. Remake Elmer Gantry but make him a preacher of global warming.
If Al Gore plays Elmer it could be less a morality play and more a horror movie. Al forcing his chakra on lovely Shirley Jones?!? I can hear the screams now.
THE GALACTIC ORDER
The universe is not linear. Each galaxy in each universe has a black hole at its center, and that black hole encloses its own universe with billions upon billions of galaxies, each galaxy with a galactic black hole, each galactic black hole with its own universe within. And so on, for the universe is infinite, as infinite as the Clockmaker who made it. From time to time a black hole expands and swallows its galaxy, while at the same time the universe within the expanding black hole is also expanding, meaning that an expanding universe is in the process of destroying someone else’s galaxy. This is what our radical left wing government is doing and has been doing for over seventy years. Expanding and destroying. And when it can expand no further, like all bubbles it will burst. And when it bursts we will be swallowed by the black hole, with all we and our ancestors have lived and died for, our hopes and dreams for our children swept into the maw, leaving fiery trails in the night sky like a raging borealis.
Each galaxy has at its center
A thing where if you dare to enter
You can’t get out no matter what you do
A universe has umpteen billion
Black holes that are riding pillion
And each black hole has universes too
Those universes in their turn
Have black holes as we all shall learn
Ad infinitum is the word we seek
And this is what we have today
Black holes in which we throw our pay
To be doled out to those who’re in the clique
A universe without an end
A bureaucrat ‘round every bend
The lefties run a universe gone mad
A black hole formed for every group
There’s no guard on the chicken coop
And everyone just shrugs and says too bad
That universe will end one day
For entropy will have its way
And when it’s gone we know who’ll pay the bills
Till then our socialistic state
Will carry on till it’s too late
In meantime it’s a rifle and the hills
I saw a movie on Saturday night called Inception The movie’s narrative included the creation of a dream within a dream within a dream for the purpose of implanting a thought into a man’s mind.
This is one of the few movies I’ll go back and see again. Very very interesting. They use falling as a way of waking people up. Sometimes shooting a person in a dream will wake them up. Sometimes it just kills them. As they go down a level in the dream, time slows down. A day on third level down dream, is but a minute on the top level dream.
The movie portrays visually the weird kind of inner turning seeing Wretchard is writing about in this essay.
ACORN (well, it’s the internet, so who knows for sure) has a petition up to have Janet Napolitano suspend Sheriff Joe’s 287G agreement with Homeland Security, which has provided him the authority to deport over 26,000 illegals since 2007. The petition is here.
Citizens may reasonably look at the openly-offered bounty on a State-level Law Enforcement Officer and gauge the Federal response as a litmus test of which side the Feds are on, generally. If the Feds are seen to stand back and let the Mexican terrorists continue to operate without any visible Federal response, it’s only a matter of time before serious vigilantism will surface.
This is precisely what certain folks in the current administration have been deliberately scheming to engineer. The most benign interpretation would be that DemFeds are just as cowardly and ineffectual at dealing with reality as they’ve ever been. (A more cynical view would be that they would love for this to lead to some incident that they could use as an excuse to further their anti-gun-ownership agenda.)
We have seen for decades that the people running things at the highest levels simply have NO REGARD for the impact of their actions on tax-paying citizens. And the only concern they’ve demonstrated clearly for ANY citizens is how they respond to bribes. “Will the [select voting bloc by racial, gender, sexual preference, income level, whatnot] vote for me in the next election if I confiscate money from other groups and give it to them???????”
But the accelerating avalanche of infelicitous outcomes for Democrat gambits argues more that these half-as-swits are far out of their depth. They are panicking as they extend their little piggies downward beneath them in the murky waters and finding only more murky waters and no bottom.
Unfortunately, when a person who never learned the natatorial arts panics in the water, that’s when they grab onto bystanders. Many a rescuer has been dragged to a drowning death by a panicked bather. This might be why many Dems are easing away from – rather than rallying close to – fellows seen to be struggling and flailing.
Kinda hampered here by some cheap gin but have vague memories about straws and camels.
He forgot about the Mercedes. Left it sitting in a parking garage spot for 5 years.
ah the life of a limousine liberal.
actually it makes you wonder how many in congres are senile puppets who’s staff control how they vote and write “their” bills??????
mad fiddler #19
But the accelerating avalanche of infelicitous outcomes for Democrat gambits argues more that these half-as-swits are far out of their depth.
Another case in point: NJ. “Corzine-Katz e-mails leave friends and enemies scratching their heads”
“What were those two thinking? Publication of confidential e-mails between former Gov. Jon Corzine and Carla Katz in The Sunday Star-Ledger left friends and enemies asking the same question.
Why, they asked, would the governor secretly discuss everything from state business to politics and media strategy with his former girlfriend, a powerful union leader, while negotiating one of the most critical labor contracts in decades? . . . Even those in Corzine’s own Democratic Party said his battle to keep the messages hidden from the public was just another example of how politically tone deaf the businessman-turned-politican was. . . .
Correspondence between Corzine and Katz was the most fiercely protected secret of Corzine’s four years in the governor’s office. He carried on a two-year legal battle to keep the messages private, going all the way to the state Supreme Court, where his refusal to release the e-mails was upheld on the grounds of executive privilege. That legal battle cost taxpayers $127,000. . . .
Now 63, Corzine lost to Chris Christie last year and now runs an international finance firm in New York. Katz, then president of Communications Workers of America Local 1034, is now 51 and a practicing attorney.”
Link to full text of the 123 e-mails as well as the full article at http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/08/post_178.html
America has been reduced by the Left to a vicious game of capture the flag… Well then, let’s have at it. Take no prisoners; time to play for keeps. The mayhem and destruction they have wrought in this Great Nation must be repaid in full, and their wanton violence to our political system will pale to the havoc we must wreak on them in return… In my sadness and hatred for what the Left has done to America, I now want to see them annihilated utterly.
Destroy the apparatus of the Left. Destroy the MSM. Destroy the corrupted academy. Destroy the mechanisms of redistribution. Destroy the tools of Federal overreach. Destroy the EPA. Destroy the FDA. Destroy the Department of Education. Destroy the unions.
What is happening today is essentially the breakdown of the rule of law which provides the very legitimacy of the system. What the current elites don’t really seem to understand in America is that the common people don’t really consider them to be their betters. It all rests upon a social contract. The political class is guilty of breach of that contract.
If the rules by which the peasantry have rights can be dismissed at will when it is inconvenient for the ruling class, it gives rise to the notion amongst the peasantry that the rules against shooting members of the ruling class can be dismissed when it is convenient for the peasantry. The current members of the American political class seem too disconnected from reality to understand this. That is how revolutions are born. Whether the revolution will come peacefully by law or by bloodshed remains to be seen, but one is coming.
Slightly off topic, but listen to A/G Cuccinelli on the stakes in his lawsuit with the government over healthcare:
http://video.foxnews.com/v/4300629/challenge-to-health-care-law-stands/#/v/4300767/round-1-victory-for-virginia–but-a-long-way-to-go/?playlist_id=87937
General Cuccinelli: “…we have said and it is consistent with the judge’s opinion. Virginia’s position is, that ordering health insurances is not regulating economic activity…what are you regulating? You are regulating somebody doing nothing. That’s “inactivity.” Repose is the word he used in the opinion. A state of repose – you’re doing nothing. The commerce clause presumes the existence of econ– not only activity, but economic activity, or activity that effects economic activity, and he says “doing nothing” is quite a stretch to make that argument.
.
.
And an interesting thing for people to be concerned about…If this is activity that can be regulated under the commerce clause, then the federal government can reach anything. This is where you get to the massive expansion of federal power. If they can say that ordering you to do something is economic activity; ordering you into the economy, then they can order you to do anything. And we no longer have a government of limited powers. That’s a major concern. We lose this case and that is the end of federalism.”
Oh this will be good…the CBC going after obammy as an ‘Uncle Tom’.
Break out the freakin’ popcorn.
And as for the ‘rest of the story’…for the left, the last 50 years have been all about ‘fighting the power’, ‘standing up to “the Man”‘, and breaking every law that was available for the breaking.
When (not if) they push too far, they will indeed meet their nemesis, in the form of all the Americans who have been the glue holding this country together, socially, economically, ideologically, and spiritually.
Those that have kept faith with the Constitution and the Golden Rule will be their nemesis.
The sooner the better.
I don’t want this to fall into the laps of my children.
rickl (#3)– One shot, one hit… why would you need full auto?
when you have a break down in the rule of law so horrendous that people feel thier own families are at stake, they will meet out brutal punishment.
brutal punishment is the message.
swift public hangings in the 1800′s was one such way to get that message out.
if the good people do not resort to brutal punishment in times of chaos you still have brutal savage punishment handed out as a message, it cant be avoided.
its just coming from the other side, the forces of evil. just take a look at mexico and the drug kingdoms, cutting off heads and killing people wholesale.
brutality cant be avoided when the system breaks down, the only descision really is, who is going to employ it, the forces of good wanting to halt evil, or the side of evil wanting to cow any oposition and just out of shear evil pleasure?
Wretchard: That centralized the risk as well. Once the firewalls on imbecility have been dismantled the inevitable consequence, as in the case of the global financial system, is that limits to their dysfunctional effects are removed as well.
Then you have a cascading effect. One reason why systems often don’t fail gradually is because small changes, each seemingly inconsequential in itself, can come together and enable each other. The blaze just jumps when it exceeds a certain temperature.
The whole presentation is a good one, but go to 5:30 to get the full effect of Wretchard’s point:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_f4kYYAQC3c&feature=related
Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli‘s judgment with respect to law enforcement officers’ authority to check a person’s legal status only in relation to a stop investigating possible criminal activity is a tautology. If the law criminalizes an employer for failure to verify the legal residency of a job applicant — which clearly has no relation to an investigation of a crime — it is not just absurd, but perverse and utterly unreasonable to assert that a Law Enforcement Officer should be constrained from doing the same background check.
It’s ridiculous even to have to point out the obvious: If it’s reasonable to use the threat of criminal action to force an employer to make this inquiry, it must also be reasonable to allow a Law Enforcement Officer to make the same inquiry, even without the necessity of an immediate criminal investigation. It CANNOT be “insulting, demeaning, or racially-motivated” in one case, but NOT SO in the other. It is either reasonable in both, or reasonable in neither.
Of course, the Democrats have shown repeatedly that they don’t have any respect for logic or rationality. Their entire approach is governed by the selective use of power to accumulate MORE power. That’s the degenerate logic that links all the otherwise contradictory and depraved spasms they have been inflicting on the USA for decades.
12. elby
Yeah. It sounds like the Overton Window. We must break the paradigm by staying motivated, active, passionate. and engaged.
There is in effect a war going on in Arizona between the citizens of that State and the wave of Mexicans flowing across the border. To steal and mutilate a phrase from Glenn Reynolds, its not that the Federal Government is anti-war, its just that they’re on the other side, and that isn’t on the side of the State of Arizona.
I’m working a gig at Megabank. IT has been asked to support a compliance regulation. They’ve assembled a team of – I’m not even sure how many, maybe ten or fifteen people, with several open slots.
None of the leads or managers will make a decision, they all defer it to some unknown point, but then us worker bees keep asking, wtf do they actually want us to deliver – which question works the leads into an absolute frenzy, because they don’t know how to ask the question, and won’t accept any proposed answer, but if they believe an answer is imposed they will not question it.
Meanwhile, about those open slots – they are for absolutely mundane skills. They swear they cannot find good candidates. I helped interview two, both absolute losers. It is just barely possible that we are now absolutely out of good candidates – at current salaries – worldwide. The recruiter swears she has no better candidates and it is not a matter of price. What she means is none of the lousy candidates she talks to, objects to the price. You can’t, I learned that, certainly not with Megabank. So it seems quite possible that the system for hiring IT personnel, is right on the edge of total meltdown. Organizations have decided to pay only crap rates, and now all the potential resources have gone so far away, they are not even on the horizon. I told the recruiter – advertise about 1.5x the current rates, and I’ll bet you get a ton of good candidates. But Megabank won’t hire them, at that rate. They will fail in compliance, rather than spend a few more bucks, rather than bend their own self-imposed greed-head rules.
And me? I don’t care a whit. That’s already where I am in this game. But it doesn’t stop me from studying it.
6. Forgotten Man
I will predict that if Arpaio is killed by some foreign criminal , and the Federal Government fails to act decisively, there will be consequences.
I wonder how many guard, reserve, active duty, and any and all members of the police officer’s union would show up on the border if 1,000,000 “vacationers” to southern Arizona all showed up with semi-autos to go hunting – on the same day?
They would probably mass 50,000 – over night. Maybe more.
Wonder why that would be easy for the government, but for the status quo it’s simply a bridge too far?
That picture would truly be worth a million words – and a priceless statement about Teh Won.
yes, Virginia AG Cuccinelli was very good today, standing out there on the steps in the light of day conversing with one of the great ‘issue’ interviewers of all time, Greta Van Susteren. Facet after facet of the Constitutional issue floated up and away, perfectly turned and given wing.
The forces of the self-styled new world order are more and more exposed as the forces of the tried and failed old world order. This time around, the revolution-posing revanchists are not a called-out ‘Citizen’ or ‘Comrade’ as in Paris 1789 or Moscow 1917, but an unspoken ‘Nonracist’. Soon it will be spoken:
“Good morning, Nonracist Smith, how are you today?”
“Fine, thank you, Nonracist Jones, and yourself?”
Reading and responding to the past few weeks of threads I find myself in great conflict. My generally conservative temperament warns me to worry about the potential bad side effects of major transformative moves. Yet I see us sliding inexorably off the cliff. I despair of turning the political winds in the right direction but shudder at the prospects of outright war and violence spoken about so blithely in some postings.
Changing the minds of those on the left is nearly impossible. Bringing clarity to those closer to the center who have not paid attention or who are not deep or logical thinkers is somewhat realistic but extremely labor intensive.
Mistrust in the integrity of the system itself, once a specialty of young leftists, has now become the most reasonable conclusion for those who are informed or are watching closely.
It is always easier to slip into fantasy than to discern unadorned reality. To think that the damage of just these past 18 months can be reversed easily is such a fantasy. It depends on a tidal wave tipping point, sustained for a decade, enacted by representatives with courage and supreme integrity.
The 75th Congress of 1937-39 was the most lopsided, with Democrats holding 75 seats in the Senate and 334 in the House, plus FDR as President. Conservatives would have to approximate that, along with a favorable Supreme Court, to reverse the damage of the past year and a half.
I accept the theory that despair is the one emotion we are forbidden to linger in. But it is difficult to see a patient, give an honest diagnosis, realize that the prescribed treatment often does not work and sometimes makes the patient even sicker, go ahead anyway, and remain optimistic.
Perhaps it is because, while I am not yet too old, I am no longer young.
The subtext to the Congressional Black Caucus’ snit over Rangel and Waters is this: “The white members get away with far more corruption than these two ever tried. Why us, why now?”
It is a fine line between a snit, and a call to, say, Fox News with the phone number for a CPA who knows where Rep. Barney Frank’s shell corporations are domiciled.
#30. Mad Fiddler
Its not a bug its a feature. Agency X can create a regulation that makes it mandatory for you to wear a green shirt on every Monday. Agency Y can create a regulation that makes it illegal to wear a green shirt on any Monday. The laws, of course, will be selectively enforced. And when they want to get you there will be no problem showing that you have violated the law. That’s what’s been going on, and that’s what needs to end.
Tyranny, like cancer, often starts in little tiny pockets and proceeds to grow until it kills the entire body.
Wretchard says: “Civil disobedience”, once a term of honor used by those who fought tyranny, now means “I’m walking out with the TV from the store and you can’t stop me.” And if the TV doesn’t work, or if the thief gets a backache carting it away, it’s the store owner’s fault for not having bulletproof security, right?
The latest about our little Australian pretty boy/leaker extraordinaire, via Vodkapundit:
“WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has hit out at the US military, saying that it bears the ultimate responsibility for any deaths of Afghan informers in the wake of the publication by his organisation of 75,000 leaked files of American army secrets.
Assange and WikiLeaks, the whistleblowers’ website that publishes leaked documents from around the world, have come under increasing fire amid accusations that publishing the files put people’s lives at risk. But in an interview with the Observer, Assange said the blame for any deaths lay squarely with US military authorities.
‘We are appalled that the US military was so lackadaisical with its Afghan sources. Just appalled. We are a source protection organisation that specialises in protecting sources and have a perfect record from our activities,’ he said.”
http://pajamasmedia.com/vodkapundit/2010/08/02/ignore-the-idiot-behind-the-curtain/#comments
I think Assange’s comments fall in the category of spitting in one’s face. But that seems to be all the rage now. And while Assange’s style is a little more affected than most it is essentially no different from the open disdain shown by a host of politicians of all stripes of whom Barney Frank, Charlie Rangel and Maxine Waters come readily to mind. The remarkable thing about the atmospherics is that even the pretense of respect and observance has been abandoned.
Interestingly the more the left gets its way the less respect it has for those who grant its demands. Assange is contemptuous of Obama and if the President were ten times more accommodating toward the left they would be ten times more contemptuous. With the left as with all similar ideologies, the more you give the more they regard it as their due. It’s like begging bullies to stop beating you. The more you beg the greater the pleasure they derive from their kicks. Stop screaming and they just might get tired of ruining their shoes. Start fighting and they just might run away.
Most problems in the world start with the fact that bullies often get the wrong idea at the outset and the equally inevitable reality that at some point people run out of room to retreat. Entitlement creates a kind of madness in some people and they just don’t know when to stop. Having gone so far they find it unimaginable to conceive that they cannot go further. And further yet. But one day the spring snaps back, even when nobody ‘wants’ it to. There’s a point when even the most craven and foolish person just runs out of room to run and recoils back on his tormentors. It’s almost as if reality itself says ‘basta’ and the rock which they’ve been gleefully rolling up the hill is impelled by the law of gravity to roll down the way it came. This is really inevitable, but nobody ever sees it coming.
I think Assange’s comments fall in the category of spitting in one’s face.
He’s just a self-centered, delusional idiot. There’s no arguing with such, you put it in front of a jury, which will throw his ass in jail, and he never will get it. Perp logic, cops see it all day long.
@ 2F
Rangel and Waters have lived and prospered for years knowing that the rules don’t apply to them. You have to wonder what changed in Congress that made it so the rules now do apply? Surely our president did not all of a sudden get religion — he’s as clueless now as he was when he was offered a free ride for an undergraduate education in NY. So the people who pull the strings must have decided to change the rules. But which ones?
I am going out on short, rather solid limb: the Democrat party, which has always been racist, has passed its needed instruments of tyranny; now the party is re-establishing its basic roots and telling the blacks the plantation still exists. The progressive ruling class – always racist: remember Wilson – and the Over class – the ruling class are merely apparatchiks – no longer need the blacks as much.
Assange should be disappeared, after water-boarding. That’s what we do to self-identified enemies, no?
Letters of marque and Bounties are the sole purview of Congress and can be offered without Executive and/or Judicial inteference. However the list of the deserving grows long, while priorities remain confused.
An emboldened Dinnerjacket will visit the UN shortly and is challenging the Once to a televised debate. How can that come out?
UN? Withdraw, defund, evict. Ground zero mosque?
Fed suing AZ for enforcing existing law and withholding the deployment of NG troops? Where’s all this going?
As I type, James Woolsey (former CIA chief) and Gary Hart (embarrassed out of office; but now Vice chair of the Homeland Security advisory panel) are being interviewed on Fox about security issues….starting with Iran getting the bomb.
From a homeland security standpoint, Woolsey says three main aspects of the “dependence on oil” (note: not imported oil) issue are climate change, pollution, and the political impact on the ME region and surrounds from a nuclear-armed Iran. The first two lend themselves to further gov’t regulation/taxation right here at home.
Hart says: “I thought we were going to discuss climate change.” Then he disses the economic sanctions the US has imposed on Iran…oh, they can’t be very effective if they are unilateral. IE, if we can’t get Russia and China to come along, we shouldn’t even try. He did not imply that we’ll have to resort to force ever.
We have a Mr. Creosote government. Maybe we should offered it ‘a waffer thin mint’.
“And as for the ‘rest of the story’…for the left, the last 50 years have been all about ‘fighting the power’, ’standing up to “the Man”‘, and breaking every law that was available for the breaking.”
Just an empirical observation from a typical white person: Since I started school, coincidentally 50 years ago, the black kids were always the biggest, strongest, fastest, and most violently aggressive, not to mention being the epitomy of “cool”. When I was in high school, they were allowed by the administration to form a racially exclusive gang, called the “Black Student Union” whose charter was to apparently go around and intimidate a bunch of other kids who never did anything to them. Black kids who exhibited any interest in science, math, medicine, or any other professional discipline were highly patronized and had all obstacles removed for them in the pursuit of their goals. (Even with this advantage few did so, as the chimeral allure of the “NBA” and other more culturally acceptable pursuits were more attractive.) As a Navy officer, I was told by a black peer that I had many more advantages that he had. That person is now a flag officer (apparently due to his lack of advantage) and I retired at a much lower pay grade ten years ago. So I find myself wondering after all this time, how they can possibly consider this a racist, mean country. My ancestors settled in South Central PA in the mid 19th century and fought in Mr. Lincoln’s Army when they could barely speak English, an Army that lost hundreds of thousands in a great moral struggle to the ultimate benefit of blacks. On the good side of the ledger, I have served with and worked with many black people, professionals, artisans, service providers, soldiers and sailors, who are great Americans, who are moral compasses, who take their work and duties seriously, who love and embrace their country, and who do not seek artificial advantage and do not taint everything in their lives with skin color. They are actually living Dr. King’s dream. So my conclusion, borne out in Wretchard’s discussion, and the resulting commentary, is that our political “betters” and their media enablers are the ones feeding the narrative and exacerbating what divides us instead of what unites us, masking it as “compassion” and “progressive” in return for nothing more than their own naked political power and market share. They are the ones who need to be shouted down and their poisonous filth discredited. They need to be asked, in public, if America is so racist, why didn’t Obama run for President as a white man and try to downplay up his black roots, instead of running as a black man as he did? (Answer: because it was to his advantage). Or why blacks are more likely to be called the “n” word at a Jay Z concert than by two fat white southerners? They need to be called on this and politicians of any stripe and any color need to be held to account whenever their corruption results in them getting even a nickel.
“When elections depend on the support of a bloc vote, they must be mollified at all costs. All costs. The political establishment is paying the price for split-level rules. Having conditioned selected groups to receive special treatment they now unable to discontinue the service. Promises made in the fat times now have to be made good in the lean. That they can’t be kept is no excuse.”
It seems the Democrats are now like the restaranteur, in “Goodfellas,” who invites the mob into his business…and discovers his new partners won’t take “no” for an answer:
Henry Hill: [narrating] Now the guy’s got Paulie as a partner. Any problems, he goes to Paulie. Trouble with the bill? He can go to Paulie. Trouble with the cops, deliveries, Tommy, he can call Paulie. But now the guy’s gotta come up with Paulie’s money every week, no matter what. Business bad? F*** you, pay me. Oh, you had a fire? F*** you, pay me. Place got hit by lightning, huh? F*** you, pay me.
Interesting and little known bit of news about Sherriff Joe Arpaio. When the animal control department of that county kept saying it needed more and more money to do its job, the Sherriff said he would take it over.
He put the prison inmates in charge of taking care of the dogs and cats. It has proved to be useful therapy for the prisoners. And the job is getting done for about 1/4 the cost of the old department, a savings of around $9 million a year.
I see where that same idea is being copied elsewhere, not just to save money but to help rehabilitate prisoners.
Back in 1989 the black police chief of Charleston SC was known as being very effective in his job. And innovative. When Hurricane Hugo hit the city the issue arose of what to do with looters; the city jail was under water and there was no where to put them. The Chief gave the order “Beat the crap out of them and then let them go.”
The “Dream Act?” hahahaha
http://www.dreamact.com/
Just think what an asset these brilliant students would be to their own countries. . . if only they cared, just a little, for those benighted regions their parents apparently fled.
It’s all about racism, against Rangel and Waters, by a bunch of old white male racists, for the purpose of increasing racism everywhere, as much as possible, as it’s the only card the libs have left to play, as dog eared as it is from being played so dang much!
You see, the Dems are going to loose big time come November, and it’ll be because of racism, I mean what else could it be? The economy, national security, illegal immigration, political corruption, unemployment, taxes, the Constitution, well heck, none of these things could have anything to do with it. Just those greedy private sector working white Americans that don’t want to pay for a minority child’s healthcare, breakfast, lunch, dinner, schooling, or even day care! Yep, they are to blame, we’ll just have to increase taxes on them some more, to force them to pay their share!
The election results, will absolutely prove how racist the Tea Party is, how racist the Repubs are, how racist the white American conservative private sector working voter (you know, the guy paying for everything) is!
I expect we will see so many examples of blatant white racism (is there any other kind), that the elections will have to be thrown out, martial law declared because of the threat of a “race war”, and Barry will just have to appoint all those formerly elected positions, as white racism will have destroyed the political process.
Yes, they should legalize full auto in Arizona, so the legal owners can have what the gangs and cartels already have. And with all those people blasting away on full auto, thw “marksman” will have all the cover he needs to do what he does best!
MarkJ/46; that would make the Bamboo Lounge (which followed the classic mob ‘bust-out’ in the movie –after the suppliers were stiffed to the limits, the property itself was burned for the insurance money) to be just the Democratic party –not the USA.
That’s optimistic –but i agree with you –because, despite the large numbers of subprime upside-downers, the weight of private property real estate smallholders is still the big block, and what we we are seeing now as disjointed and even self-injuring politics could be seen as a desperate attempt to keep that big bloc split.
That this attempt to maintain that split has begun making extraordinary appeals to strange mixtures of grand national sentiment and craven self-interest is a big sign of something, for sure –maybe that two big factions no longer split north and south of a Mason-Dixon Line but mixed together side-by-side and house-by-house in a vast 50-state suburbia, had better hurry up and slow down, or slow down and hurry up, one or the other.
48. Moniker
Looks like a scam to me, notice the first thing they do is ask for a donation! You could put up a website like theat for a couple of hundred dollars and if you could get one out of fifty to give you a ten-spot you would make a killing.
I do like the side-bar note by one signer “…many lifes will….” Lifes? surely the commentor means LIVES.
It is good to see these brilliant people have benfitted from the education they got at taxpayer expense and are ready to be productive citizens.
“Undocumented and Unafraid” by Tiffany Ten Eyck
“A Weird Sort of Depression” by Victor Davis Hanson
Considering the above referenced essays. Wretchard you have very closely identified the full scope impact on the demographics of the change the Obamanation has produced. Combine the attitude of the Political Class (Civil Disobience)with the “tipping point” of the general populace and the desperation of the unemployeed. Ben Franklin said something to the effect . . . “laziness is the mother of invention”, I beg to propose that “Desperation is the mother of rebellion”. Rebellion ultimately results in a total disregard for the law. Thus what we are seeing is a change whereby every wage earner is gravitating toward refusal to pay taxes, fees or any other type of money toward the federal government.
The unemployeed are desperately seeking ways to survive, thus the desperation includes the avoidence of reported income and associted law of paying taxes. Once employement status becomes “unknown” . . . we will all become “undocumented and unafraid”.
Have we passed the “tipping point”?
RWE (#47): That story about Reuben Greenberg sounds a bit apocryphal, though like many such it does capture the spirit of the man. Though in reality, I think he has a bit more finesse than that. I heard a radio interview with him once (one of the local hosts on KVI in Seattle, I forget exactly which one) and he did say, regarding Hugo, that he asked the news media to broadcast a warning that looters would be shot on sight. Now, he hastened to add, we couldn’t really do that, but I was counting on the fact that not all the would-be looters would realize that.
RWE/47; Joe Arpaio would make a helluva good president, if you ask me. The Looting Party keeps trying to brand him racist –but he doesn’t give a flying fig –he’s following the law. Besides, he may be an Amerindian, LOL -
@52
The unemployed are desperately seeking ways to survive, thus the desperation includes the avoidance of reported income and associated law of paying taxes. Once employment status becomes “unknown” . . . we will all become “undocumented and unafraid”.
In order to do this, the unemployed will need to move from their homes or residences: most likely rent, work under the table: lower wages, have a system for cashing checks without being traced, and ditch the car: walk, ride a bike, or take public transportation; even be unlocatable via mail.
Anybody ever notice, in those pictures of Obama with his chin up in the air, how he looks like those old photos of Mussolini?
Photoshop project, anyone?
56. Gordon:
Heh. I have photos of the two of them side by side on my office wall, with their heads held up at the same angle.
yep, Il Duce’s chin angle was 30 degrees in 1940 but 120 degrees in 1945.
Kirk Parker #53:
I heard the “beat the crap out of them” story on the radio from a cop who worked for Chief Greenberg at the time. Maybe it is not true. I can believe such an order being issued during a hurricane, though. I was in SC after Hugo and things were not exactly desperate but not very nice, either. We had no electricity for a week; we lucked out and the weather was perfect, requiring neither air conditioning nor heat. The worst part was the cold showers, but it was still way better than Florida in 2004.
And as someone born and raised in SC, I am quite sure that regardless of what orders the police actually had, a broadcast of “shoot on sight” would be taken by the local populace as permission for target practice within the city limits. That probably did more to hold down criminal activity than did anything else.
wretchard writes: “Most problems in the world start with the fact that bullies often get the wrong idea at the outset and the equally inevitable reality that at some point people run out of room to retreat.”
If Obama had cojones (thank you, as usual, Sarah) he would demand that Iran release the three hikers within 24 hours or suffer consequences. It’s a great opportunity. But Obama is a leftist-internationalist and will not bomb Iran. Plus he lacks cojones.
Morton, #23, writes: “Destroy the apparatus of the Left. Destroy the MSM. Destroy the corrupted academy. . . . ”
Or, perhaps better yet, divide and conquer, peeling off the center-left, which seems to be waking up. Those of you who dwell in academia have probably noticed the gradual emergence in comments at “The Chronicle of Higher Education” of some kind of awakening and contrition, or at least a re-emergence of voices who are finally willing to challenge the up-to-now-received left-leaning narratives, e.g., “An Academic Rip Van Winkle,” most mailed story:
http://chronicle.com/article/An-Academic-Rip-Van-Winkle/123707/
This is not to deny that 90% of academia is liberal, but it is to say that the leftist meme and all of its utopianism is running out of gas, in the middle of the desert, maybe with some banditos ready to fleece the passengers. The reality mugging is beginning.
55. NJArtist49,
If I was running from the mob I would worry about going to those extremes. The fact is that you can restructure you life and work to avoid paying almost all taxes if you are willing to go to some trouble and accept a little less cash flow (but isn’t that happenning to most of us right now anyways?).
I have several friends in Canada that have made it their life’s mission to pay as little to the government as possible. It is widely known in Ontario that there is a “cash price” and a “book price”. The steady increase in tax-rates has caused a significant portion of the Canadian economy to go underground (estimates vary from 30% to 50%) and I see it happenning here as well. You don’t have to be entirely off the grid, just far enough that you qualify to not pay taxes.
Remember that almost half of all people working in the US owe no income taxes at all. The trick is to have enough “under the table” income to make up the shortfall, it isn’t that hard really.
Undocumented and unafraid? Well how about me, documented and afraid? When can I stop “living in the shadows”? When do I stop being exploited by my own government?
As for Il Duce comparisons, I long ago tagged Obama as “Il Duce-bag,” but it never caught on!
AG Henry McMaster of South Carolina is on FoxBiz tv right now –he is amplifying and joining the Virginia defense of the Enumerated Powers. I think last time around, South Carolina went first and Virginia followed, but it’s been 150 years and my memory grows foggy.
No, the Dems are not going to lose. They will “find” previously-lost ballot boxes. They will refuse to count military absentee ballots, while allowing non-citizens and felons to vote [Democrat] many times. They will find ways to disqualify conservative candidates. They will do this enough to declare themselves winners of enough elections to declare themselves in charge.
The rest of us will once again be faced with the choice of pretending this is a series of free and fair elections or refusing to accept the results.
Well, the results may surprise you.
If they surprise working America, then there may be a bigger surprise!
But it is all about divide and conquer.
Always has been.
#60 aardvark
The reality mugging is beginning.
Some visual evidence:
http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerkimball/2010/08/03/when-you%E2%80%99ve-lost-the-hand-driers/#comments
http://coalitionoftheswilling.net/?p=9436
The Swedish solution will spread far and wide:
Repair tradesmen will go to cash and barter.
Likewise dentists will move to split pricing.
Of course, family run motels will have split rates.
The transaction fees of the mega-banks upon card users will cause such use to go into reverse. This will be a sustained long-term trend.
Banker TV commercials will ultimately be recognized for the money pit that they are.
In the 1930′s many outfits just axed their ad budgets. The return on their ad dollar went to zero. ( The ramping economy of post war America reversed this trend. Hence McMahan and Tate.)
Sometime soon one should expect Public Service Announcements encouraging the unemployed to move out of the area — better yet — go back home.
——
The in-your-face-protesters should consider their job prospects in Mexico. They ARE Mexican Nationals and have way above average educations. Further, many a manufacturer could use college grads able to smoothly function in both societies. It’s a win-win for everyone.
South of the border medical colleges are the first place they should send a resume. Such employers are capable of absorbing the entire American Collegiate output.
Labor mobility when you’re young is such a blessing for everyone.
Now while the paychecks down Monterrey way may not be so impressive; American-Mexican graduates will find themselves going UP the social order.
One can only hope that they didn’t get in too deep with the Education Tariff: Student Loans. However, such contracts are effectively voidable under Mexican law. Any such student so afflicted would be judgement proof down Mexico way.
Such an outcome is another win-win since our education cartel needs to be taken down by reality. We’ve got a raging credentialism bubble going of the first water.
The result is a fractured and warped labor market. The Credential Cartel is able to extract a Tariff upon the Up Crowd. Even more damaging, such niching is creating pocket after pocket of group think — a real Balkanization of thought that ranges off into emotional zones such as religion, anti-religions ( Leftisims ) and politics.
It’s Skull & Bones gone pandemic, niche by niche.
BTW, look at the fake specialties cranked out by the Credentialism Cartel. Like the AGW crowd, gender studies, and black superiority enforcement. ( sensitivity management/hazing)
You know you have a raging bubble when you have no budget limits and none of the clique members or institutions is financially pressured — let alone goes broke.
The essence of the farming subsidies is the notion that there ought to be a law against ever losing the farm — even if the farmer gambled it away!
But the law of failure is such that some fool has to be at the back of every herd. Whether it is a tradesman, farmer, retailer, attorney or dentist; there is going to be that distribution. Bad luck might be at fault, but no legislation can cure that.
Yet the Left of theft keeps pitching the notion that THEY can make life fair.
On their track-record, fairness will finally be achieved when we’re all back to wearing nothing but a penis-sheath.
I think that would be way too harsh on the tailors.
But then again, look at the energy savings. 500,000 years of nomad existence proves that it makes for sustainable living, well, for the rest of the food chain.
62. peterike; re “Il Duce-bag,” It just caught on with ME!!
It reminds me of 1994. A bunch of Dem scandals, an unpopular, inept president. Of course maybe they didn’t commit ballot fraud as skillfully then. We need this one badly.
If AZ got to the public and said”we are under attack. Americans, come to our aid!” what do you think would happen?
I think americans would come to their aid. I wonder how long it is before they say it, that bluntly, so that it’s circulated that bluntly, on youtube?
If it did happen, and if the message got out with the MSM ignoring it, what would that do to the MSM?
I’m fast approaching a personal tipping point. I don’t know what it looks like, but I know I’m getting closer to it. I’m thinking its a mosque at Ground Zero. It could well be something else. But if and when construction starts on a Ground Zero mosque, I’m going to quit the game and start a new one.
re blert’s ‘great credential bubble’ rant @ 67, this is a snip from that currently-circulating Financial Times article, The Crisis of Middle-Class America :
Statistics only capture one slice of the problem. But it is the renowned Harvard economist, Larry Katz, who offers the most compelling analogy. “Think of the American economy as a large apartment block,” says the softly spoken professor. “A century ago – even 30 years ago – it was the object of envy. But in the last generation its character has changed. The penthouses at the top keep getting larger and larger. The apartments in the middle are feeling more and more squeezed and the basement has flooded. To round it off, the elevator is no longer working. That broken elevator is what gets people down the most.”
***
Elsewhere the piece quotes some stats of the compensation gap between the factory floor and the executive suite, how the growth of that gap has been outside the expected norms of economic evolution. This is the credential bubble at work in the market in fact –still begs the why and how questions –IOW, ‘what market?’.
Ivy league cabal, long grown in a hothouse and now suddenly exposed to normal weather –the Bubble Winds having blown off the roof –?
anyhoo, was wondering, that penis-sheath –it’s not like, sewn on, or anything, is it?
g & r @ 70 & 71; i think you’re both right –that’s just how Texas fought off Santa Anna –civilian soldiers –prominently from Tennessee and Louisiana –went to help Texas, which had a legit legal beef via Santa Anna’s abrogating of the Mexican Constitution of 1824, under which the Anglo settlements had begun in earnest. Santa Anna changed the terms, once the Anglos had formed the Nueces Strip Comanche barrier. It was a long time ago, but the same things are –incredibly –coming back into play today, the same fundamentals of human nature and master/slave.
59. RWE
Kirk Parker #53:
I heard the “beat the crap out of them” story on the radio from a cop who worked for Chief Greenberg at the time. Maybe it is not true. I can believe such an order being issued during a hurricane, though. I was in SC after Hugo and things were not exactly desperate but not very nice, either.
After the Galveston hurricane in 1900, the Texas militia lined up looters and certain photographers (who were taking pictures of naked female drowning victims), and shot. Period. How times have changed.
Wretchard says: Once the firewalls on imbecility have been dismantled the inevitable consequence, as in the case of the global financial system, is that limits to their dysfunctional effects are removed as well.
The latest on the Assange/Manning case, via Ace of Spades:
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Leak: WikiLeaks Traitor Openly-Gay Activist Upset Over Treatment of Gays In the Military;
American Media Blacking Out That Fact Utterly From Coverage”
“The argument made by the military is that open homosexuality is bad for morale and discipline.
Pfc. Bradley Manning is doing his all to prove that.
I [Ace] am less outraged by the gay angle here than the media suppression angle: I didn’t know this. Did you know this? I never heard a word of this.
That’s what you call an embargo, my friends. If it doesn’t advance The Narrative, it never really happened.”
Ace’s post: http://minx.cc/?post=304229
Ace’s source: http://www.examiner.com/x-2684-Law-Enforcement-Examiner~y2010m8d2-Wikileaks-leaker-angry-over-treatment-of-gays-by-military
“The suspect in the leaking of classified military files, Spc. Bradley Manning, voiced his disgust with US Army commanders and U.S. ‘society at large’ on his Facebook page just prior to his alleged downloading of thousands of secret documents, according to the British news media.
According to one story appearing in Britain’s The Telegraph, Manning, who served as a US Army intelligence analyst, became depressed after a break-up with his homosexual companion. He also wrote: ‘Bradley Manning is not a piece of equipment,’ and quoted a joke about ‘military intelligence’ being an oxymoron. . . . Manning, who is reportedly on suicide watch, was transferred from a military jail in Kuwait to a prison in Washington DC, as the Pentagon called in the FBI to assist in the hunt for the source of the leak.
According to Accuracy in Media, a media watchdog group, Manning’s Facebook page shows that he enjoyed the MSNBC program hosted by Rachel Maddow, the lesbian activist, and that he listed the left-wing Media Matters and the National Center for Transgender Equality as being among his ‘likes and interests.’”
I posted at #39 above last night about Julian Assange’s attempt to blame the U.S. government for the deaths of any Afghans at the hands of the Taliban as a result of the leaks. Now we find out– no thanks to the mainstream media– that the leaker was acting out of spite at an ex-boyfriend.
Hard to see how much lower this story can go.
Manning is also showing why gays and national security secrets are toxic to each other.
It is in the nature of gay living and loving that partner ‘upgrades’ and ‘downshifts’ occur relentlessly — particularly with young gays.
During this turmoil the rage and hormones run so high that normal and rational are set aside. It’s rather like being a musth afflicted bull elephant.
It is this phenomena that keeps proving the stricture: don’t get gays involved in your secrets. When their world turns upside down — and it always does — anything goes.
Obviously, any behavioral strictures are deemed discardable: they represent ‘straight’ thinking. To be gay is to completely reject such judgement. Otherwise ones emotions would explode.
Going back into the Cambridge Ring — was any player NOT gay?
Doesn’t the hidden ‘lifestyle’ require a practiced living lie about ones being?
As for gays coming out of the closet: get them out of the secrets and analysis end of things as soon as possible. By definition you have an emotional time bomb. ‘It’ may never go off, but should ‘it’ do so the damage is terrible.
As for Ass-age…
There cowers a stew of wicked narcissism.
The DoD needs to rush to completion two gibbets, two attention chambers for those who want to be held above all other men.
Q: Who will be the 21st Century Black Jack Pershing?
Oddly enough, it was the Wilson Administration – perhaps the only other US Adminstration to really rival Obamas for hubris and evil (others have been bad, have screwed up, caused problems, etc – but those two I think rank as 1a and 1b, or maybe 1b and 1a, in Evil Intent) that sent Pershing into Mexico after Pancho Villa.
But you left out the first sense of the story:
“The US Army intelligence analyst, who is half British and went to school in Wales, appeared to sink into depression after a relationship break-up, saying he didn’t “have anything left” and was “beyond frustrated”. ”
That’s from
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/7918632/Bradley-Manning-suspected-source-of-Wikileaks-documents-raged-on-his-Facebook-page.html
So in what sense beyond a birth certificate was he even an American, to be an American soldier, defending the USA against all threats? Why in the world was he let in? How do we know he didn’t join the military in order to make a political protest about the issue of his lifestyle?
#61
Good points. I agree that reducing taxes is a valid way to starve the beast. I am actively working on legal ways to reduce my taxes. Can’t get it to Zero but I think I can reduce what I pay by a fair amount.
Another point Do Not! Repeat Do Not give money to any political party! Give money to candidates that you’ve researched and generally you agree with their platform. Watch your local politicians, if they are feeding heavily at the federal trough fire them, confront them and talk bad about them.
Oddly enough, it was the Wilson Administration – perhaps the only other US Adminstration to really rival Obamas for hubris and evil
Another college professor (OK, Princeton president). Ayn Rand created such a type in The Fountainhead, “Ellsworth Twohey,” the embodyment of what Wilson and Obama was/is in practice. When my ex urged me to vote for Obama, I told her, “know way am I voting for Ellsworth Twohey.” Since she was an avid Ayn Rand reader, I figured she’d understand the reference. If she did, she ignored it, and joined that boundary group of fools who had the collective brainfart that put Obama over the top.
As to Wilson: he’s a reminder to me that “we the living” actually have no idea what real liberty is, since the long march of progressivism started a century ago. We’ve enjoyed greater freedom than probably anybody in the world over that time, and in many regards were left untouched through much of this time, but the progressives have finally caught up with us. Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt had written dismissively of the Founders, natural rights, and the inconvenience of adhering to the Constitution.
74. Don Rodrigo
I remember seeing a TV documentary about the hurricane. They were called “Kodak fiends”.
Looters were also dealt with on the spot after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Unfortunately, a number of them turned out to be legitimate property owners trying to salvage what they could. Oops.
semi-OT (or not):
The Other Side of Shirley Sherrod, exploiter and abuser of black sharecroppers
http://www.counterpunch.org/wilkins08022010.html
Excerpt:
When I first noticed the story of her firing and the association of Shirley Sherrod’s name with the rural black poor and concern for “black land-loss”, I wondered if the person being praised was the same Shirley Sherrod whom I knew. One piece posted on the July 23rd Alternet and captioned “Shirley Sherrod and the black Land Struggle” even claimed that she “devoted her entire life to economic justice”. The mistreatment of black workers at NCI under the Sherrods is a matter of record that contradicts this claim.
#78 Greifer
So in what sense beyond a birth certificate was he even an American, to be an American soldier, defending the USA against all threats?
Exactly. But I think what Ace (and many of the posters on that thread) was fuming about is the media’s selective protection of favored groups, the members of which can do no wrong: “I [Ace] am sick to death of the media playing stories different ways depending upon whether or not they involve a protected group’s member or member of a group they’re hostile to.
I am sick to death of the media deciding I’m not cleared to have certain sensitive information, because I might draw the wrong impressions if I know it.
I am sick of the arrogance of these media bastards suppressing facts that don’t fit their goddamned Narrative or their favored political policies (such as repealing DADT).”
http://minx.cc/?post=304232
An interesting example of an attempt to play the race card (which apparently didn’t work this time) is the workplace shooting that happened this morning at a beer distributor near Hartford: “The gunman [Thornton], who was black, had complained of racial harassment and said he found a picture of a noose and a racial epithet written on a bathroom wall, the mother of his girlfriend said. Her daughter told her that Thornton’s supervisors told him they would talk to his co-workers.
James Battaglio, a spokesman for the families who own the distributorship, said he had no immediate information about the allegations of racial harassment. And a union official said Thornton had not filed a complaint of racism with the union or any government agency.
Thornton had been caught on videotape stealing beer, Teamsters official Christopher Roos said. ‘It’s got nothing to do with race,’ Roos said. ‘This is a disgruntled employee who shot a bunch of people.’”
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/08/03/police-says-people-shot-beer-distribution-company-conn/
I have posed this question before and it seems appropriate now: Are taxes a payment for services rendered or an established tribute to the sitting American royalty to spend as they see fit? If it is indeed payment for services rendered as I believe always intended, it begs a number of questions:
1. Why are some service receivers absolved from payment and others forced to make up the difference?
2. If the services are not rendered, (immigration control) should we not be billed for them?
3. Why are some taxpayers forced to pay for services they are not allowed to receive?
“….But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security……”
Are we there yet?
By the way, if the “Houston Group” needs more airpower I know where we can get a twin engine jet bomber real cheap.
FM 79…
I’d keep in mind that the Fed is countering that tactic by quantitative easing — ie running their electronic printing press to permit the Resident to spend TWICE as much as his receipts.
Such is the nature of printing paper money — fiat money — that come upon the time the system goes into a death spiral.
That timing is entirely in the hands of foreigners. It is when they reject further currency exports that hyperinflation simply explodes upon the land.
China and Russia are already trying to get themselves out of the dollar.
——-
For ever and ever, their international trade was dollarized. That is — where no one was looking — the contracts specified transaction values based on the USD in the out months and out years.
THAT’S why China, and others, have such rigid exchange rates. To permit movement one side or the other inside their economy had to take a currency exchange rate hit. A big swing might trigger embarrassment — or death. The slow rise in the Yuan is graceful enough for the loser to take it in stride.
Of course, officialdom has informed the players to stop dollarizing their deals. This stricture has been out and about for at least eighteen months. So the end of dollarization means that China is free to watch the USD hit the rapids without China being nailed to the raft.
This phenomenon is completely under Bernanke’s radar. You know, the clown that couldn’t detect a global bubble in real estate nor link it to counterfeit credit and the consequence of counterfeit credit upon credit dominated pricing of major assets.
He in no way realizes that his reserve floatation is gone even as he pilots the bank of state into the deep blue.
——
We see the same phenomena in crystallization out of a super-saturated solution of something as common as salt. Before the transition phase we see and taste very warm very salty water. Then a fleck of crystalline salt — suspended by a thread draws to it a cascade of ion-pairs. In a flash, the change of state is visually apparent and irreversible. Faster than you can say Belmont Club the seed crystal grows and grows.
Backwards looking makes for backwards thinking. Bernanke does NOT operate from first principles. He lives in a pastiche of heuristics.
Get unsettled by it. No one is sitting pretty with the Fedsury standing press ready.
——
BTW, one unforeseen side effect of QE 1.0 and the RMBS sweep-up: unlike all other central bank assets the mortgage portfolio irregularly receives amortization of principal. This is screwing up their scheme as such funds work exactly in the opposite direction desired. The premium interest rate mortgages are rapidly being depleted by low interest rates. If the market ( as manipulated ) floats rates up the Fed will retain the low coupons just about forever.
Something about a rock and a hard place.
Is it parked in Michigan?
83. PA Cat
I haven’t read all the comments over there yet, so I don’t know if anyone has brought this up:
Remember the case of Matthew Shepard? He was a young gay man who was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered by two lowlifes. It became a nationwide story which spawned candlelight vigils on college campuses throughout the country, as well as hate crime legislation. (There was some evidence that it was simply a robbery that went bad and had nothing to do with his orientation, but I digress.)
I remember reading that around the same time, there was a gay male couple who kidnapped a teenaged boy, and sexually tortured and murdered him. Needless to say, he got nearly zero media coverage and no candlelight vigils.
Dave (from previous thread): thanks for the interesting comment and explanation.
oldsj
blert, are you from Michigan? I’m from a Detroit suburb, I thought that I was the only Rust-Belter here at BC.
Anton, I’m a rust belter by birth, Western New York. I always will kind of feel like a factory kid.
91. trangbang68
I lived in Ellicottville (down by the Pennsylvania border) for about two years, from age 8-10. I still have fond memories of that place.
My Michigan comment was with reference to a beached whale in the Upper Peninsula. If only its fees were paid, it might fly again.
IL-78, 231 tons, Sawyer Airport.
oldsj #89: My pleasure. My explanation/theory is necessarily simplified—–maybe even over-simplified a bit. Nonetheless I consider it accurate as to the basic nature of deflation and causes thereof.
RWE #85: A cranberry maybe?
Blert, Zerohedge has a really long and detailed post by Raoul Pal, ( 55 pages of charts and commentary) http://www.zerohedge.com/article/gmi-describes-future-recession-ongoing-depression-must-read-report
which backs up your comments on QE. He predicts the next recession of this depression to start in the fourth quarter this year or the first, next year.
Some nuggets:
“The Fed has one bullet left and that is QE”
” the idea behind QE is that it lowers the long term financing rate thus encouraging banks to borrow money to lend out and encourage savers to spend…. However, one thing we absolutely know is that lending has never recovered from the last recession and nor has borrowing and spending. The evidence suggests the outcome from QE was sweet Fanny Adams.”
And a real killer: “Never before have we started a recession with near 10% unemployment and if you take into account that on average a recession increases unemployment by 3% and 5%, then it is possible the we could see 15% unemployment in the US. That could be truly staggering.”
The Fort Sumter moment could be a coming.
…and fellas, China will be spotlighting the QE:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/49c6bbac-9f2a-11df-8732-00144feabdc0.html
…pretty shrewd, really –the fed will have to defend against gold –it’s in the european blood –say hello to “unexpectedly long” housing bear.
Rickl, I lived in Dunkirk and Fredonia for a couple years. There are things about Western New York I miss, obviously the river and the falls, also driving along Lake Ontario in the fall, buying fruit like Concord grapes. They boarded up a lot of Niagara Falls . It is a textbook case of the ability of venal ,stupid politicians to ruin a city. Most of my generation left for greener pastures.
And here I thought Groucho Marx had saved Fredonia!
The stuff I learn at the club!
Duck Soup actually started a feud between the Marx bros and Fredonia, when the city fathers wrote to Paramount and asked it to edit out ‘Freedonia’ because “it is hurting our town”. Groucho wrote back and asked them to change the name of their town because “it is hurting our picture”.
I shot an elephant in my pajamas the other day. How he got there I’ll never know.
Waters district is undergoing a demographic shift, and these newer residents there will probably reach a point in future where the folks there can choose someone who they feel better represents them. No offense Maxine! They just probably want someone of their own demographic, and that means you, Miz. Waters, are to be retired. One wonders why democrat House got antsy and could no longer wait for things to run their (natural) course, and as was posed in comment number one, one wonder if it is rather Soros who got religion and is pulling levers to get the low hanging fruit to the alligator in hopes that he, at least, is eaten last.
Bon Appetit George!!