It is not often you meet someone who actually saw Smaug the Dragon. The Kosko family recently donated color movie footage taken by Commander George F. Kosco of the surrender ceremony on the USS Missouri on September 2, 1945. It is now available on YouTube and after the Read More. The Missouri in Tokyo Bay. Not until early last year did I realize that I had met someone who had also been on that ship that bright September Day. He never talked about it of course.
Raul Manglapus fought in Bataan and in the anti-Japanese resistance. In later years he was a pillar of the anti-Marcos underground. I met him on his 11th year of exile getting off a streetcar in San Francisco’s Sunset District wearing a threadbare suit. Though we saw each other more than a dozen times I never learned anything about him except the whispered stories which seemed so improbable as to be fantastic.
“Did you know that Raul was part of a unit that raided Tanay and wiped out the Japanese garrison?”
“No.”
“Yep. And he rounded up the Tanay municipal band and had them play “Stout Hearted Men” for a wax recorder he lifted from the Jesuits.”
“You don’t say?”
Well that wasn’t the half of it. “During World War II Manglapus was the voice in the “Voice of Freedom” broadcasts from the beleaguered Filipino-American forces on Bataan and Corregidor, serving under Gen. Douglas MacArthur. An authentic hero, he was tortured to the brink of death by the Japanese in Fort Santiago. He was fittingly a member of the Philippine delegation who witnessed the signing of the Instrument of Surrender by the Japanese on board the USS Missouri on 2 September 1945.”
Manglapus also wrote a musical comedy, Manifest Destiny: Yankee Panky, a parody of America’s belated venture into colonialism. He was also the leader of the Executive Combo Band, a jazz band composed mainly of his peers. They performed for the Pope at the Vatican in 1995. He jammed with jazz giant Duke Ellington. … Fortuitously, Manglapus was on a speaking engagement in the United States when Marcos declared martial law in 1972. Marcos refused to allow Manglapus’ wife and children to join him in exile, and they were forced to flee the country by the backdoor, leapfrogging even by small raft to freedom. Manglapus remained in exile for 14 years.
And as way leads on to way, that path would cross with mine for some weeks in the fall of 1983.
We’re all familiar with famous black and white film of the Surrender Ceremony. In black and white the scene almost has the look of legend. The magisterial MacArthur, the wizened Nimitz, the abject Japanese.
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But in Commander Kosco’s color version the scene is peopled by human beings. The USS Missouri is an operational warship, conducting 40 mm drill. The veranda deck is filled with real people, smoking, milling around. The sea around the battleship is full of launches, ferrying people around. And it is like a scene from an amateur theatric, both Allied and Japanese officials are trying to get through it, wondering what happens next. And hanging all over the superstructure are people watching what they knew to be an historical moment. They would all see Smaug the Dragon that day and later generations, for whom the event would recede almost to myth, would scarcely believe them, although it was all completely true.
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Kosco’s video reminds us that we are connected in some way; and that extraordinary things can happen to ordinary people. Even to ourselves. Perhaps future generations will ask us if we really did see Smaug the Dragon. And in our own way some of us can truthfully answer that we did.
He used often to say there was only one Road; that it was like a great river: its springs were at every doorstep and every path was its tributary. “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door,” he used to say. “You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no telling where you might be swept off to.”
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I was close to 13 years old when this happened. I recall seeing the original black and white film in various versions. People all across America stood in line to see it. Unless you lived through the days from Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay you will find it hard to understand the emotions that came to a head in the days following Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was common knowledge that until those two events forced their surrender, the Japanese military were ready to fight on, even if it meant the total destruction of every man, woman and child. Earlier that year we had seen what that meant in Europe when Hitler declared that his people did not deserve to survive. The way we treated the Japanese people in the time following their surrender, with dignity and respect, is one of our finest moments. We did the same in Germany. All to the honor of all involved, including ourselves
Thank you for posting this reminder of who we were.
JerseyJoe,
The Red army was in Berlin since the end of april 1945, while the Americans came in july 1945. During two months the “Ivans” could rapt the Berlinese women (approximatively 100000)
as the thread Buoyancy is closed
Keith
In 2005, 55% of the French voted “no” to the EU constitution, if today such a referendum occured, , I expect that more than 60% would still vote “no”, but probably more, and you can count me in the lot !
Buddy, The EU construction, at the origin, was ment to avoid wars between, mainly, France and Germany. It did work so far, but the stakes have changed for Germany, she doesn’t need EU anymore, she’d rather makes a alliance with Moscow than with Paris, there’s much more to sell to the Russians (and to the Chinese) than to the French !
Marie Claude – I am not sure what your point is, bringing in the Soviet Battle of Berlin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Berlin) as it regards the Japanese surrender ceremony. The USA, Britain and France, under the command of Eisenhower, and in accordance with Roosevelt policies, and by agreement with Russia, deliberately withheld attacking Berlin. USA opinion was that Germany was already defeated and Berlin itself, no longer of military value, was not worth the price of more US and British (etc) soldiers’ lives. The Russians lost more than 80,000 men in that battle.
I would not attempt at all to excuse the Russian brutality to the Berlin civilians. Explaining is not the same thing. But there is ample credible evidence that revenge for atrocities committed against the Russian civilian population at the hands of the Germans in the early 1940′s were very much a motivation.
Maybe after all, and maybe this is your point, a comparison between what they Russians did in Berlin and what the Allies did in Japan, where the atrocities were no less brutal, is worth considering.
Great stories –momentous stories. This still pic has always fascinated. What must be going through the minds of the Japanese –standing there, so correct, so dignified, dressed out to the nines in full white-glove diplo/military regalia, already deep into their next mission, that of coping with defeat, accommodating the victors. Probably somewhere in their minds disbelieving that only three and three-quarters years earlier, there was still time to avoid having sent the fleet against Pearl Harbor.
***
Re the Rape of Berlin, somehow it seems somewhat important that the savagery against civilians was not conducted by Russian front-line combat troops –not by the combat troops –but by follow-on relief formations –occupation troops.
The Eastern Test Range used to have an instrumentation ship, the USNS Redstone. In WWII the Redstone, under a different name then, was a transport. And immediately after the signing of the treaty, it was the ship that sailed past the Missouri and put the first US troops ashore in Japan.
I am planning to interview a man who flew A-20′s in the Pacific during WWII; after he was shot down he fought with the Philippine Resistance.
It is amazing when you think about it. There are talismans of the past all around us, and we are scarcely aware of it, aware little more than we are of the very wonders they did so much to create.
Buddy #5:
I recall reading of one of the Japanese representatives aboard the Missouri. He said that he stood there awed by MacArthur’s remarks, looked at the representatives of the powerful nations that were signing the document and that had been arrayed against Japan, and thought, “What in the hell were we thinking?”
One of J.R.R. Tolkien’s lifelong battles was trying to convince
critics that neither THE LORD OF THE RINGS nor THE HOBBIT was a political commentary, nor a historical allegory.
I vote to give Middle Earth a draft deferment in today’s culture wars….
MC/3; –if you step back from it, tho, there is a chance that the tripartite arrangement –France, Germany, Russia –could finally, after the modern era kicked off with the storming of the Bastille –actually work. No more Robespierres, Napoleons, Kaisers, Hitlers, Lenins, Stalins –the internet will shoot them all to pieces before they get out of their cradles!
RWE/6; i know that’s what I would’ve been thinking –along with, y’know, we need a new term for the fatal flaw of totalitarianism…hmmm…”groupthink”? Anyhoo, check this –esp the comment (one of only three) that includes an eyewitness report on the Japanese mainland first defense line as it stood on VJ Day.
MO/7; –but, once an author publishes, the work has a life of its own –it’s like a living thing, going wherever invited –
Martin — Heh, Tolkien and Bob Dylan could have an interesting conversation. But I think both might — reluctantly — at least entertain the idea they are a medium being used by a higher power.
And to mix epics, the thing about Smaug is some of his teeth always survive, to be planted just when we think he’s gone forever.
Less than 4 years from attack to unconditional surrender. Contrast with our wars in Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq and Afghanistan. It is fitting to note the transition from a world of black and white to one of color.
There were few “atrocities” committed by the Allies (I said few, so yes there were some) in WWII. War is War! The firestorms that consumed tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of civilians in Germany were not “atrocities”, Just as the civilians deaths in Britain were not even when they were the intended target! the reason America has so much trouble winning wars since WWII is because we no longer make war to end a hostility we make peace and warring for peace will never win a war…(for us)It only ensures the enemy will live to fight, kill, and murder more Americans.
[quote]5. buddy larsen
Great stories –momentous stories. This still pic has always fascinated. What must be going through the minds of the Japanese –standing there, so correct, so dignified, dressed out to the nines in full white-glove diplo/military regalia, already deep into their next mission, that of coping with defeat, accommodating the victors. Probably somewhere in their minds disbelieving that only three and three-quarters years earlier, there was still time to avoid having sent the fleet against Pearl Harbor.[/quote]
I have always wondered: Why were our senior officers wearing Khakis and not their dress Whites?
American soldiers in Japan never witnessed Japanese atrocities to their own civilian population. Russian soldiers in Germany did, aplenty of it. I somehow wonder if Korean, Chinese or Filipino soldiers were so magnanimous to Japan POWs and civilians if they were occupaing Japan instead of Americans? After Rape of Nanking, this is hardly believable.
12 Sam:
The POD stated that the uniform of the day was wash khakis. Just as it had been for the duration in WestPac. Maybe.
I also think it was a small ‘slight’ to the Japanese by MacArthur, relegating them to supplicant status, rather than as equals, and thus the dress uniforms were not required. There may have been a bit of ‘honor’ re December 11, 1941 treachery, such that they did not deserve the respect of a full dress delegation. Just my thoughts…
tom
Thanks for those film clips and your stories Mr. Fernandez.
How far we have fallen from those days when our parents and grandparents understood what evil is, what the price of freedom is, and had the character to confront the problem and pay the price.
t/14; –just a guess, but i think you’re right –MacArthur’s sensibility would’ve been, “this is work, we’re at work, on duty, not celebrating”.
beautiful, wretchard.
y’know, my own father’s WWII stories were never epic in any way, but developed a patina over time. dad passed on a few years ago now, and my memories of the stories seem more mythic every day.
but then, as we reach a certain age, all memories older than X seem to get that way, and we get to walk around, looking at the yutes who have no clue. of course Tolkien captured this with Elrond, musing on his memories of things thousands of years past to Frodo’s astonishment. heck, I feel like that at work every day now, as I muse about how we toss around the gigabytes these days when back in the PC/XT days we could hardly imagine such things. yet my own memories go back further than that …
Even the Vietnam war takes on that ancient newsreel patina now, and half the population walking around just doesn’t know. Or the Reagan administration, or the Clinton maladministration, or in this Google/Facetube world even the 2008 election seems a long, long time ago, and the sour lessons learned somehow hard to really relate to the present.
Tempus fugits, yes it does.
dogface & gyrene & sailor hell Iwo Jima and Okinawa (onshore and off), and the twin A-bombs, all must’ve been heavy in that air –no time to be getting decked out for a royal ball (trying for a moment to channel Nimitz & MacArthur).
5. buddy larsen
Hey dude.
What must be going through the minds of the Japanese –standing there, so correct, so dignified, dressed out to the nines in full white-glove diplo/military regalia, already deep into their next mission, that of coping with defeat, accommodating the victors .
Succinctly my guess is their thoughts for quite a while were, “Man, we F’ed up big time”
Hope all is well.
H
Maybe they were in khakis because of Nimitz’s order to his forces on nottifcation of the ceasefire and pending surrender:
“A ceasefire is in effect. Therefore, if any enemy planes approach the fleet, shoot them down in a friendly manner.”
And that was a real possibility. Admiral Ugaki, commander of the 5th Naval Air Fleet, decided to defy Hirohito’s surrender decision and led one last a kamaikaze attack with 11 aircraft from Kyushu. While 7 of them reached Okinawa and Ugaki sent one last definant message before attacking the Americans, no kamikaze attacks were reported that day by U.S. forces; the last Kamikazes just disappeared.
Not until early last year did I realize that I had met someone who had also been on that ship that bright September Day. He never talked about it of course.
The father of childhood friends had observed the devastation of the A-bomb within several months of the drops. I never knew about it until after his death. I remember his talking about WW2 experiences, but never that. Several years before he died, he talked to his children about it.
habu @ 19: Succinctly my guess is their thoughts for quite a while were, “Man, we F’ed up big time”
y’know, my guess would be otherwise. the “we f’d up” thoughts would have been six months earlier, the US Navy coming, on Tokyo burned, Germany losing fast and the Soviets next door and perhaps ready to turn their way. And then the two atom bombs. And now the US Navy there.
I think the predominant mental attitude would be more a numbness, almost a paralysis of being in a world they never looked to see, and did not really comprehend in the event, did not want to comprehend. Something to take a moment at a time.
Which is roughly how I felt during most of 2008 while viewing the economy, which is indeed how I tend to view the world under the Obamanation. Walking point through an area nobody wants to be in with no way to turn back.
I just finished reading The Simple Sounds of Freedom by Thomas Taylor (son of the legendary 101st Airborne general Maxwell Taylor).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Beyrle
Jumpin’ Joe Beryle (pronounced Buy-earl) wanted to ride into Berlin with the Soviet 6th Guards Tank Army (his CO was a woman, and she commanded a Lend-Lease Sherman) after making good on his SECOND escape attempt from Stalag III-C. The first attempt failed when the train he hopped hobo style ended up in a switch railyard in the heart of Berlin, a major target for the Army Air Corps, and he was captured and tortured at Prince Albrecht Strasse by the Gestapo. A Wehrmacht officer who had been wounded on the Eastern Front saved him from being tortured to death.
Josh @ 17 – Methinks you’re on to something. One wonders why the current generation is easily seduced to believe that we can consume all of the bounty flowing from the Horn of Amalthea.
The have no corporate memory of a world at war. They have no prescience that foundations of cataclysm are being wrought. Perhaps they still believe that peace is breaking out all over.
Normally when disciplinary events such as captain’s mast are conducted aboard ship, the accused appears in his service dress uniform and the interested parties (CO, XO, Div O, Chief, LPO, witnesses, etc) are in their working uniforms.
I never thought about it before, but probably a fitting analogy for the Jap surrender.
I have read there was some controversy at the time, as Truman picked the Missouri because Missouri was his home state, but there were other ships who had seen more action and significantly longer service and were felt to be more deserving. In retrospect, one of the surviving Pearl Harbor battleships might have been a better exclamation point.
Vanguard – Last Summary Court, the accused was in Service Alpha, as was myself. The gunny who was a witness was quite disconcerted that I specified Service Alpha for him also.
Just seemed to me that we should enforce some greater level of dignity to the proceedings. After all, to the accused, it was a weighty affair indeed.
Vanguard #25:
The USN parked the USS West Virginia as the next ship over from the USS Missouri to make that very point to the Japanese.
22. Josh
Great dilation on my succinctness. I concur wholehearted with your thoughts … as we all know the thought had to first creep in after Midway.
Personally I liked the firebombing preceeding the A-bombs.
I have mentioned it many times but the Japanese torture unit 731 and others far exceeded what the Nazi’s did. Firebombing was a nice touch for the fanatics.
History is made not by Lightworkers but by people who act together each in their area of responsibility. Epic Theater may be acted out by archetypes before and on behalf of the crowd, but they are nothing without their audience. Achilleus slew Hector before the assembled armies below the walls of Troy.
I am glad that MacArthur left his tie in his stateroom. His dignity was not in that prop, no more than it was in his corncob pipe. The allusion to Tolkein is reasonable. Smaug had to crawl and more had to be seen to crawl. In the Hobbit the author missed that trick but he did better later. Farmer Giles of Ham tames his dragon. The closer analogy may have been Saruman who before came back to the rail when summoned by Mithrander and departed when dismissed. The witnesses are essential.
You missed, just a few days ago (Nov. 17), the 21st anniversary of the Czechoslovak Velvet Revolution.
Of course, that country is no longer here, and I live in Slovakia, now.
The lack of a real, God-based religion, helped to make the fall of communism more inevitable, with the issues of power secession. I fear that with Islam’s God at the center of their Jihad, only a military defeat can create a democracy. But there is no military to defeat, only a series of para-military terrorists.
How to get Muslims industrialized? Aid hasn’t been working too well.
Less than 4 years from attack to unconditional surrender.
Japan was raping Nanking in 1936. WW II started then, or before, as Japan occupied Manchuria. Only Eurocentrics put the start at when Hitler invaded Poland, and only Americans after Pearl Harbor.
Thanks RWE, did not know that. Probably better the way it was with the WV as a backdrop. Truman had to make probably what was one of the top five hardest Presidential decisions of all time (dropping the bomb). I do not begrudge him the pleasure of picking the venue for the surrender.
The race-built heeled into the wind
So swift, so sleek, so lean
Yet who could tell when she was launched
The future had been seen
The race-builts paved the wooden way
For frigates and the like
Ships of the line with billowed sails
And sheet-work marlin spike
Then sail was done, for steam and steel
Just laughed at wind and tide
And guns now turned, no longer did
They line the checkered side
And then at last the end had come
For battleships and men
The Iowas are gone and we’ll
See not their like again
Great thread –as usual –Habu, doing well, thanks, and hope the same for you. And thanks for the major guffaw –
(Habu’s dad is one of the people who materially hastened that shipboard event in Tokyo Bay –as a combat-decorated F4-U Corsair wing commander –oh, i bet i goofed those USN terms –being son of a B-17 driver and POW liberated by Red Army @ Stalag Luft 1, my 8th AAF terminology is better)
Yes, but on the other hand, at Pearl Harbor today you can see the Mighty Mo next to the Arizona Memorial, and I think it says something along the lines of “sink our ship and we’ll just build a bigger, better one to accept your surrender.”
As to “what were we thinking” I’ve always been facinated and horrified by what happened in Japanese politics during the 1920′s and 1930′s. A violent, quasi-religious movement of fanatics took over the Japanese government by terrorizing those it could intimidate and slaughtering those it couldn’t. Reasonable people were not welcome at the decision making table. Even Yamamoto himself wasn’t immune. IN 1939, the IJN sent him to sea as CinC of the Combined Fleet to get him away from fanatical junior Army officers who threatened to assasinate him for being too timid.
So the answer to “what were we thinking?” was really “we were thinking that pissing off Americans thousands of miles away seemed less dangerous than pissing off lunatic Showa Restorationists next door.”
Dammit, Walt –that last line got to me –
…also wanted to say, really liked the rhyming scheme on your previous near-daily exalted gem of a piece of work –the 1,1,1,2 you used bounced merrily through the synapses –
JMH/34, re your last para –one often wonders how many attacks thru history have been launched not because the enemy was vulnerable, but because the Maximum Leaders have spun out so much bellicose talk and gotten the echelons so hot to fight, that the Max Leaders are more worried about the mental stability and funny looks on the faces of their own junior officers, or even the armed guards standing outside the door, then they are the proposed attackee’s more-space/time distant response –IOW “If we can keep getting through the todays, the tomorrows will automatically take care of themselves!”
Now that the Cold War / WWIII is over the Russians have come clean (er) about Berlin.
Namely, that their losses approximated 600,000 men — taken in well under a week of operations.
Why so high? Stalin feared a victorious Red Army — so he ordered Zhukov to shell Koniev even as the battle was under way.
After the campaign was over, Bradley submitted his Order of Battle over to the Russians so that they could know who was their opposite number. He was very surprised to find that the Russians would not reciprocate. Now we know why.
Raping Germans was an official order from the top: Stalin.
Stalin was a dark master of territorial ethnography –his work persists to this day, in the Georgian (ex?) provinces prominently, but also the several (little-known in USA) Stalin-made russian-language enclaves strung along the former USSR republics-now-independent border states, always subject, now and forevermore, to need of a bear-rescue –
What amazing footage of one of the most amazing incidents of all time, the formal surrender of the Japanese and the conclusion of WW2. This footage gave me chills. Think of the contrast between the clean straight-forward American approach to ending war with our enemy, to what must have happened at Versailles nearly three decades earlier. The French concluded that war with an act of supreme vengeance, and the world reaped the whirlwind of WW2. But the Americans administered justice on that day, and we’ve had nearly 7 decades of uninterrupted peace and friendship with the Japanese ever since. Justice vs bitterness. The contrast couldn’t be more stark.
Vanguard: I always though it was superb planning that the Japanese on the deck of the Missouri could not look back at Tokyo without seeing the West Virginia.
Interestingly enough, you know how many fleet carriers were in Tokyo Bay for the surrender?
None.
There were some smaller carriers there, jeeps carriers and the like, but the ships that really won the war, far more important to victory than the 10 battleships that were there, were not there. Why? A carrier cannot launch its aircraft while at anchor. The represented the real striking power of the USN; they needed to be ready.
Besides, they had to supply the Navy airplanes for the massive flyover.
As for what the Japanese were thinking, I recall what the leader of the design team for the Zero said about the atomic attack on Hiroshima. When he heard what had happened he called Japan’s leading physicist, who replied “We will have to check, but it sounds like an atomic bomb.” And he was thunderstruck. Before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan’s leading scientists and engineers got together to discuss what the USA could do in the way of new technology. The possibility of an atomic bomb was discussed but discarded as being “100 years or more in the future.” So in one act we not only destroyed a city but also made the Japanese realize they were 100 years behind us. I think that explains their postwar success and good behavior as much as their actually getting their clock cleaned.
IIRC after the Ceremony the USAAF and USN performed a coordinated fly over of Japan — especially to include Tokyo. It included the heavies from Guam and Tinian and repeated sweeps with USN aircraft. The acoustic effect was tremendous.
The purpose was psychological warfare. The massive fly over punctured prior propaganda WRT American military losses and the prospects awaiting any post-war ‘adventures.’
Upon the record, I’d say it worked.
iirc, USN had 28 (no, not 8 nor 18 but 28) fleet carriers as of VJ Day.
The final act of the Japanese war criminals was their insistance that the people continue to suffer.
As a 13 year old living in the NYC area in July and early August of 1945, before Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I remember the radio broadcasts every day that reported that yet another flight of more than 1,000 Super Fortresses had carpet-bombed Tokyo or some other major city without opposition. The reports said that the fires set one night were still burning so brightly the next night that they were a guide to the pilots.
For anyone curious about what was going on on both sides in those final days, see the essential book on the subject “Operation Downfall” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall).
A notable quote: “Casualty predictions varied widely but were extremely high for both sides: depending on the degree to which Japanese civilians resisted the invasion, estimates ran into the millions for Allied casualties and tens of millions for Japanese casualties.”
Like #38 Doodslag, I too got chills.
When Truman authorized the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombings, my then 19-year-old father was on a troop ship in the Atlantic. He and his unit had already battled their way across Italy. Now, they were being sent to the Pacific in preparation for a land invasion of Japan.
Because of Truman’s courageous decision, my father and countless other battle-weary young men were able to return home, start families, build lives, do productive work and rebuild a devastated world. (The only time my gruff, stalwart grandfather was ever seen crying was the day his son returned home from war.)
Thank you for sharing this footage.
One of the things about the decision to drop the bombs that ended WWII is that, had we not done so, we likely would have had to enlist the Soviets in the invasion of Japan. The result would have been a divided Japan for decades afterwards.
OT as the matter of housekeeping___
Is there room here for both an “Insufficiently Sensitive” and a “Sufficiently Insensitive”?
…back to regular programing for all the ships at sea…
Having served in the trenches during WWI, Mr. Truman may have empathized with the troops who would have to fight their bloody way across the Japanese home islands.
Mr. Obama, clearly, has no such scruple.
Obama Administration Denies Request for Fort Hood Report That Could Aid Suspect
This could become the greatest outrage, yet, of an administration that seems to awaken each morning with the mission of disgusting or angering the largest number of Americans possible, while preserving intact the affection of tens of millions of “them”.
Wretchard
If you would, your recommendations in the form of a reading list of Philipino authors/historians’ works that would provide a deeper understanding of the Philippine peoples’ struggles and the principals (such as Raul Manglapus) involved during WWII and subsequent decades.
It would serve not only to educate but provide other avenues for topics and thereby widen discussion.
Santa’s making lists even as I type.
…continuing the martial theme (with thoughts of the Obama regime, smoking and dragons)…
link
DR/44; Japan IS divided –the string of islands –the volcanic ridge between Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula and Japan’s Hokkaido Island was Japanese forever, AFAIK, but Russia took the territory at the close of WWII and still has not returned it. I note that Wikipedia is using the Russian “Kuril Islands” instead of the Kanji “Kurile Islands” so i guess our pointy-headed inteelekshuls have took up the Brezhnev Doctrine (“if we was ever there, it’s always ours”).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sea_of_Okhotsk_map.png
#49. Buddy Larsen
Yes, thank you, I’m aware of that, but I’m talking about the Soviets taking Hokkaido and perhaps even half of Honshu as the deal for helping invade and subdue Japan.
DR/50; –check –and yessir –a real possibility that was, as far as i can tell from mucho reading on the topic. FDR had some astonishingly close-in soviet sympathizers on his Yalta team, it is generally now believed. Alger Hiss, for one –soon to be the de facto first Sec. Gen’l of the brand new UN.
I had occasion to witness several courtmartials while in the Navy aboard an old tin can. All were conducted in working uniforms by all concerned.
Buddy,
Yeah, and that might include a bunch of Arab leaders these days too. They’ve spent so many years trying to cover up their own kleptocratic rule by telling their people they’ve been oppressed and had their land, legacy and rightful place in the world stolen by the dastardly Westerners and JOOOOOOSSSSS!!!! that there’s not much room for them to back down now without getting a knife in the back (or a car bomb in the palace).
It’s inherent in Islam that there is SOMETHING wrong with any land not under the beneficial rule of sharia law.
speaking of which, I just heard our crypto-caliph Obambus moaning about the START treaty, and once again saying what a great idea the START treaty is so that it should be signed at once. what this skips are the details of just what is in this proposed version, which (without having studied it myself) apparently there are some nasty issues. as with Obamacare, C-COTUS doesn’t seem to know or care about the details, just so he can walk his sanctimony about the title or most nominal possible version of the concept at hand.
It appears that “thread rot” has finally set in when a poster on the topic of the last days of WWII, who admits he has never read the terms of the START 2 treaty, brings in its total irrelevancy, calling the president names that paint him as unAmerican – all the while admitting “the details of just what is in this proposed version, which (without having studied it myself) . . .”
I doubt he will actually read what its all about. He already made it clear he doesn’t want any reality-based information to interfere with his know-nothing opinions. But others are more open to facts . . .
http://www.voanews.com/english/news/President-Obama-Challenges-Republicans-to-Approve-START-Treaty-109445554.html
Those who read it will notice that Obama is talking American, not wearing a towel on his head and is asking citizens to learn what the treaty is about and participate in the process defined by our system.
53. JMH
Re: JOOOOOOSSSS!!!!!! (hoping I got that right)
a good analysis of a bad idea
We are often our own worst enemies. Consider: Netanyahu is stuck with the millstone, Barak. He cannot fire the worst general in Israeli history for fear of having his coalition unravel.
My advice to Netanyahu: Beware Greeks bearing gifts.
Josh, there’s lots of START (“stop!”) material on the web, tsk tsk –i’d summarize the available main points, but i need dinner and besides you are a big boy. But here, i opened the box to paraphrase Nelson of Trafalgar’s No captain can do very wrong who places his ship alongside that of the enemy, with the thrust of your #54, to come up with the Nelson/Josh Corollary: No liberty-lover can do very wrong who places his convictions athwart that of the Obama –
Quite.
JerseyJoe, you seem a fine fellow, but it appears to me that you have not read the details of the treaty either but are falling entirely for the Obama incompetence – good intentions masking complete rubbish. The allegations I have read are that the negotiated details of this version are horrible. Like Obamacare we have to read the details. I admit that I did not. I don’t think you want to brag that you have not.
Must I dig up a reference?
You can try this, though unfortunately the WSJ article referred to is behind a firewall.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/11/027731.php
Just to add to that – I agree that we should have *a* START treaty, but the question is, whether this is the one we want. Knowing Obama, what would you guess?
Listened to Obama’s morning speech today, and again he cannot make himself just put forth the positive arguments for something, he has to denigrate anybody who might have any questions. We’ve never had a president like that before (that I know of, certainly none in the last 50 years), and I hope we don’t have another one anytime soon.
“No liberty-lover can do very wrong who places his convictions athwart that of the Obama –”
I love Liberty. I put my life on the line for my country as a US Veteran. I study the issues and learn the details. I vote for people whose ideas I understand and support.
That includes President Obama. Just because you do not like Obama, you are not the arbiter of who loves Liberty.
As for the relevance of Nelson’s idea to anything at all, a fleet admiral of today who tried to do that to a modern warship would be blowing bubbles before he got within sight of the topmast of his target. Using it an example for today is just bumper-sticker thinking at its most ridiculous.
BTW – you are probably going to become apoplectic when Obama gets re-elected in 2012. Prepare now and get some meds through your employer’s excellent medical care program. Say what? It doesn’t cover that?
Josh – you are wrong to think I have not read the START Treaty – or the Protocol. Your link is not a link to the treaty. It is just a shallow commenary that lacks any details.
Here’s the text you want.
http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/140035.pdf
and the Protocol.
http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/140047.pdf
Neither is very complex. Anyone who actually wants to know what is in it, instead of ranting about things they admit they have never bothered to read, would have to think before commenting. I know that’s serious problem for some people.
What is in the new START treaty that you object to? Note I asked, “you”, not some Faux News Entertainer. Note I’m asking for facts, not opinion or booga-booga-gonna-get-yo-granma “analysis.”
Josh, for starters, The Russian A-135 (“Gorgon” ABM 4) system, thickly ringing Moscow and other strategic targets exists and is being modernized, yet START II proceeds on the basis that it does not exist, and Russia is due to target geometry much more capable of absorbing strikes, USA has to restrict delivery systems dual-designed for non-nuclear as well as nuclear delivery (the Stealth Bomber for example), and Russia has ten times the number of tactical nuclear weapons as NATO, and the new russian doctrine in place since December last calls for using same in place of the massed tank/infantry reserves of previous doctrine. But without a whimper from the west, Russia has said, this Tac Nuke imbalance is not worth discussion.
There’s much more but i’m ravenous and must go consume me beans. Meanwhile search [ yamantau mountain complex ] –which i believe may be the only site in either russia or usa that the treaty exempts from inspection by the other. if so –why? Congress a few years ago had a whole raft of congresspersons interested in knowing what’s happening at YMC, but without ever getting satisfaction, the whole topic just drifted off the congressional list of FP topics. Mystery!
But, tangent, Russia and the USA have been –on the record anyway –observing the treaty since the 90s without ratification, and can continue to do so –at least until the new congress comes in and can hold hearings we can believe in.
One should recall the large numbers of treaty-illegal theater missiles discovered hidden in the east bloc countries when USSR went down (search it!), and there’s no reason to believe that cheating won’t happen again. In fact, if it can, it will –is Murphy’s Law, and why the dickens would we want to eat this when we don’t have to?
Putin’s sudden ratification surprised many but he predicated it on large restrictions on a USA ABM system being installed.
here, read this, just for, er, starters:
http://americanpowerblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/trust-russia-on-start.html
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jersey joe, all due respect to your story, but i have to say, your eruption of snark, ridicule, imputation of craven motives, accusations of know-nothingism, advice to take meds, booga wooga grandma, beating the ‘faux news’ horse, et cetera, smells to me perilously close to the SOP procedure of leftoids trying to shout down the opposition. Why don’t we relax, and have some beans?
and maybe discuss later how you can honestly be so sure of yourself that no caution is even to be considered? Gonna bring us back to life after we git blowed up?
Anyone who expects Russia or China to abide by the terms of a treaty when they can gain an advantage by covertly violating it has worms in their head.
Sorry, reality has no place for the unicorns or the LightWorkers, and ultimately ends up biting their heads off. But some things are too stupid to know when they are dead because they have been beheaded, like some chickens, snakes, and politicians like Jimmy Carter.
Tc/63; history proves you right on that –history being ‘all we got’ to make choices with –and if the treaty is so clear-cut, why has it been on the shelf since the early 90s? And why did Putin suddenly ratify, just as some strange mysterious financial attack glommed onto the left-wing turn of 2006 elections and brought in a president who has lied us into, with three vast hammer blows, a state of near-busted penury and the verge of Dollar panic?
And what does jersey know that senator Kyle, who has never lied to me, doesn’t know –despite his access and close work with a vast array of START II experts –in fact the same experts who’ve kept the treaty on the shelf since early Clinton I?
WTF has changed, besides the rise of a president that Nov 02 proved is not trusted by any folks but the most bought and/or least worried about preserving our system and way of life?
(and no, i do not believe that Obama is a naval vessel. i don’t think he can do 30 knots and naval vessels don’t wear ties anyway. i was making an allusion to an attitude)
64. buddy larsen
doncha know that ms. obama is now PROUD of the US of A?
f47/65 –oh, THAT’s it!
BUDDY LARSEN: Where the heck were you in October. Nobody in DS could find you, not even the Tax Assessor. And you missed some great wr stories by being unavilalble.
For all Belmont readers (and host) here is the link to a Youtube video of a speech recently given by Representative Mike Pence, to the 2010 Federalist Convention. (Praise to my brother for recording it and bringing it to my attention!)
Representative Pence addresses the U.S. Presidency, what it should be, and what it should not be.
If you have been looking for a declaration by a Conservative that captures hope and vision — that properly answers the adolescent histrionics, hyperbole, and hollow statism rampant among the Left — this is it.
The video is close on 30 minutes, but worth every breath.
Dave –i was around –my dotter was in from the far NW –wedding bells in April and i had to escort my checkbook around town. I kinda lost track of who what where when you were going to Nimitz museum –no, nobody in Drippin’ will help a stranger find a native –carryover from Reconstruction and Sam Bass. Plus the town is grown and i’m out of circulation due to advanced don’t give a shit, and i never was true royalty anyhow you know. Assessor is in a nearby town –Drip is closest town, but i in next county to west –and i use a DBA reference. asking an assessor whar someone is, i’d do that from outside the door, thow my hat in first and then side holler –Can’t say more am worried about communists.
Y’all had fun? Nimitz museum blew yer mind didn’t it –
***
Josh/58, re the WSJ article linked by Powerline but behind the subs firewall, click here –and ifit don’t work say so & i’ll paste the whole text –it ain’t that long a piece and w can delete it next time he housekeeps.
okay, it won’t work –here tis:
The New Start Treaty: Time for a Careful Look
The Senate shouldn’t rubber stamp an arms control strategy rooted in a vision of ‘nuclear zero’ without opening up the negotiating record
By JON KYL
Hearings to ratify the nuclear arms treaty with Russia known as New Start are now underway in the Senate. To win the 67 votes needed to ratify it, President Obama is going to have to do more than defend the provisions of this one document.
New Start, signed by the president in April, is more than a stand-alone treaty: It is an important element of Mr. Obama’s overall plan for maintaining a credible U.S. nuclear capability. If the Obama administration was clearly articulating that our nuclear posture is going to be strong and properly resourced, most senators will likely view the treaty as relatively benign. But right now many are wary of ratifying it because the Obama administration is sending mixed signals on this serious issue.
The administration’s recently published Nuclear Posture Review took some sensible positions. It reiterated the continuing importance of nuclear deterrence and of the protection the U.S. nuclear arsenal extends to our foreign friends. And it stressed that the U.S. should preserve the “triad” of land-based, sea-based and bomber-delivered nuclear weapons.
The problem is that Mr. Obama embraces ideas that contradict his own declared goals of nuclear deterrence, nonproliferation and modernization. He says all of his nuclear policies are rooted in his vision of a world with zero nuclear weapons, a world he claims would be more stable and less likely to suffer a nuclear war. But this position is not grounded in reality, and the policies that flow from it are dangerous and impractical.
One example is the president’s support for a multilateral treaty that would lock the U.S. into a permanent, comprehensive nuclear test ban. Another is the administration’s pledge to pursue, after New Start comes into force, yet another new treaty with Russia that would make significantly deeper reductions in nuclear forces. And then there’s the guideline in the administration’s Nuclear Posture Review that effectively limits the technical freedom of our military and scientific experts to consider new designs to update aging nuclear weapons. All this in the service of a utopian idea of nuclear zero.
Such is the context for the debate about New Start. The treaty’s main purpose is to oblige Russia and the U.S. to make specified reductions in their nuclear arsenals. But Russia would be making the reductions for financial reasons anyway, so we’ve agreed to concede something for nothing. And, as the numbers of our nuclear weapons go down, the importance of modernization to improve the safety and reliability of our arsenal goes up. As Secretary of Defense Robert Gates recently noted, the U.S. is “essentially the only nuclear power in the world that is not carrying out these kinds of modernization programs.”
The nuclear weapons plan Mr. Obama submitted to Congress in May raises as many questions as it answers. Despite pledging over $100 billion to maintain and modernize nuclear delivery systems, the plan makes a commitment only to a next-generation submarine—not to a next-generation bomber, ballistic missile, or air-launched cruise missile. The administration has also made no decision about whether or how it will replace the B-52 bomber, which first flew in 1952, and under current plans will continue to fly until possibly 2037. Nor does the White House intend to decide what the new U.S. nuclear force structure will look like until as many as seven years after the treaty is ratified.
The administration’s plan for modernizing U.S. nuclear warheads and infrastructure is similarly sketchy. It claims funding of $80 billion over 10 years, but that amount reflects double-counting of money that was going to be spent anyway merely to keep seriously aging weapons and equipment operational. What little new funds may be available under the president’s plan will not cover even pressing needs like replacing two decrepit and dangerous facilities that produce plutonium and uranium. What’s more, the administration’s working budget documents for the next several years suggest that the modernization plan is underfunded by as much as $2.4 billion.
The administration has a duty to provide resources to fund its plan. To its credit, it has been seeking funding for fiscal year 2011. A key test is whether the Democratic-controlled Congress will approve the president’s nuclear modernization requests for the coming fiscal year. If the president’s bare minimum budget is not funded, there will not be bipartisan confidence that the plan will be implemented. It’s hard to see senators considering the treaty before the fiscal year 2011 funding is appropriated and before they confirm that the 2012 budget will include adequate funding for the next fiscal year.
Senators will also have to assess the treaty itself, and there are serious concerns.
First, it’s not clear that the treaty’s verification provisions are adequate. Second, the treaty’s failure to take into account Russia’s enormous tactical nuclear weapons arsenal (more than 10 times larger than that of the U.S.) and the limitations it places on U.S. conventional global strike capabilities are serious flaws. Third, the treaty links missile defense to strategic arms reduction—a linkage that had been wisely broken by the Bush administration.
The administration accepted treaty language that will help the Russians argue that the U.S. should cut back development of defenses against ballistic missiles. This is worrisome less because of the explicit limitations on missile defense than because Mr. Obama has repeatedly shown weak support for U.S. missile defense. For this reason and others, senators have asked the administration to open up the negotiating record. They rightly want to understand what concessions the administration made and received.
The Senate should never be a rubber stamp in approving treaties, especially in the arms control field. In 1998, for example, the Senate rejected the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and effectively confirmed its role as quality control for treaty-making. My colleagues and I will be giving New Start and the administration’s nuclear modernization plan a hard look.
Mr. Kyl, a Republican, is a U.S. senator from Arizona.
buddy, thanks. Jersey?
btw, the Obambus/Hildabeast complex may actually have gotten something right – again, depending on the details – if they have gotten Russia to agree to some kind of cooperative theater-defense against the likes of Iranian missiles. Seems to me we can pursue this with START voluntarily adhered to, signed, renegotiated, etc.
to the issue of whether Russia just hopes to steal or learn from us, I’d say, likely enough they have something to teach us, too, and a largely cooperative effort might actually work.
btw, Obambus’ arguments this morning that we need to ratify START so Russia stays our friend and lets us resupply Afghanistan through their territory and satellites – made me queasy. there’s just enough validity in the argument that it can’t quite be dismissed out of hand, like most of what comes out of Obambus’ mouth. but the irony …
the article is from July 8th, 2010, BTW –to clarify the date refs –
Josh –it makes me queasy too –plus you didn’t mention, Obama has also said that our ability to keep Iran bomb-free, as well as supply thru Russia to AFPAK, is at stake with this treaty. Unless his teleprompter text is lying, we’ve already got our skirts so far over our heads we’ll NEVER find the horse and buggy –
And –what is the major malfunction on the sudden rush? It’s it’s it’s almost as if they all, Russians and democrats, need to ram it thru before Rand “the government’s MAIN JOB is NATIONAL SECURITY” Paul gets a chance to look at it.
What Obama wants is what Soros wants –if that’s any guide –
if you say “New Start” (see Kyl’s para #1) over and over it start (!) to sound like “Noose Tart” or below the mason dixon line “Noosed Heart” –
–reminds me of Pelosi’s “Nude Erection for America”
Maybe Wretchard will know about this. I saw a photo online (can’t find it now) of Filipino fighters alongside American soldiers in WW II: the Filipino men were shirtless, wearing shorts, and they each had several Japanese jawbones tied to their waists as war trophies.
They weren’t effin’ around, after what the Japs did in Manila and elsewhere.
I also remember reading that the Japs would drag wounded Marines into their foxholes and cut the flesh from their thighs for rations. . . . Also that they murdered a quarter of a million Chinese in retaliation for the Chinese helping out the (few dozen) Doolittle Raiders.
But the boyars at the Smithsonian would encourage us to pity them.
This thread reminded me: my brother-in-law’s uncle, Thomas Ferebee, was the bombardier on the Enola Gay.
He never regretted it. Didn’t crow about it; just said of course it had to be done.
beverly, Paul Tibbets –who flew the Enola Gay and took heat all his life for it, never wavered either –never got upset over the things said about him, never wavered.
Fiddler, i have to save last half for later –but you’re right –Pence is a force alright. Dang we got some good’uns!
Only problem with Pence is that little tryst in the Rose Garden with Pelosi –unfortunate –
Pence has put out a couple amnesty light proposals over the last couple years. I don’t think he gets the border biz. Plus he reminds me of the current leader of the UFO religion known as Raëlism. Mr. Claude Vorilhon
“Having served in the trenches during WWI, Mr. Truman may have empathized with the troops who would have to fight their bloody way across the Japanese home islands.”
Nonsense!
“On August 29, 1918, Battery D fired 500 rounds of artillery at a German position. When the Germans returned fire, some of Truman’s men panicked and ran. “My greatest satisfaction is that my legs didn’t succeed in carrying me away, although they were very anxious to do it,” Harry wrote Bess later. Cursing and yelling, Truman drove his men back to their positions, and successfully repositioned two of his four guns. For the remainder of the war, Truman led Battery D across the French countryside, hammering German positions and never losing a man. On the battlefields of Europe, he experienced the success that had long eluded him.”
pinched from here;
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/truman/sfeature/sf_early.html
Truman was a battery commander (4 tubes). As a Captain, an over ranked one, IIRC, To say he served in the trenches is a bit of propaganda. Harry was always better at propaganda then anything else.
AS far as his courage, where? He DID NOT make the decision to drop the bomb. He could have made the decision to not drop the bomb but that would have required courage. The decision to drop the bomb was made while Truman was a Senator. Targeting was done while he was VP. FDR was too smart to let an incompetent coward like Truman anywhere near the machinery.
Truman was a weasel.
77. stoicheion
There were few good postings in WWI. Mr. Truman saw the devastation and the suffering of American troops. That is not nonsense, although you criticism is.
Why do we make treaties with enemies who have no intention of complying those treaties?
Why don’t we acknowledge that we have philosophical and military enemies and reinstitute the cold war? The game of treaty this and treaty that is just bull shit.
stoicheion – there is ignorance, and then there is willful ignorance. Yours is the second, less forgivable kind. Like many people who do not like facts, you think that ignoring them makes them go away.
A simple Google search on the phrase “decision to drop the bomb” would bring you to a page full of facts, including a web site that is a step-by-step series of chronologically arranged documents (not text, but actual images of documents) http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/bomb/large/index.php that show who decided what and when. One of those documents is in Harry Truman’s own hand, approving the dropping of the bomb. Before it was dropped, he set the terms that we would accept (unconditional surrender). He chose what would happen if they were not met. Whe they were not, he personally said, go a head and drop the bomb. He took full responsibility for that decision and never regretted it.
Of course someone else chose the targets. That was a strategic decision made based on the exigencies of the war. Truman could have vetoed any specific selection but he did what any good leader would do. He trusted the judgment of his people. Harry Truman is an American hero for many reasons, one of which is bomb decision.
Buddy #75:
And Gen Paul Tibbets was buried in an unmarked grave, per his own orders, lest his gravesite become a site for Leftist demonstrations.
We sure treat our heroes well, don’t we?
An appropriate story here: A few years ago I was having dinner at a conference with another retired USAF officer. He said that he was talking casually with his father-in-law one evening and found out that he had served on Gen Lemay’s staff and that Lemay’s reputation as having a short fuse was not entirely deserved.
The man said he was working hard on something one day and kept being interrupted by other officers who want to see what he was doing. So when a voice behind him said “How’s it coming?” he replied “Look, I have told you people, I have to get this done and if I don’t Old Ironpants (their name for Lemay) will have my ass.”
The person asking the question left, and as the man glanced over his shoulder he saw it was Lemay himself. Despite the insult Lemay left and let the man continue his work.
Asked by his son-in-law what was he was working on that was so important the man replied “I was doing the Bomb Damage Assessment for the atomic attack on Hiroshima.”
Habu #79
Few people know that the Soviets cheated on the INF treaty. Don’t now if we knew it or not, but all was revealed when they left Czechlovokia and the Czechs invited everyone in to see the missiles they left behind before they were destroyed.
JJ @ 60 – Most everyone on this card loves liberty also. Many recognize that the irresistible drive of others to create gov programs to satisfy every unfulfilled need of mankind must necessarily diminish liberty. Government must monitor and control the distribution of corn to ensure no crib is left wanting. Problem is, eventually, those less resolute souls will game the system. Why work hard, increasing productivity, to contribute to the great storehouse, when you can receive from storehouse without working? Just take more from the rich.
Productivity falls, prosperity disappears, and freedom is taken away. The doctrines that our President holds dear are antithetical to liberty, just as the believes of socialists and Marxist have failure ‘baked into the cake’.
Oh, it doesn’t happen overnight, but it does happen. Knowing the outcome, why continue down that road? The existence of people who genuinely need welfare is not a premise that leads necessarily to the conclusion that federal government must abridge liberties.
Obambus’ arguments this morning that we need to ratify START so Russia stays our friend and lets us resupply Afghanistan through their territory and satellites
Now dear please take the gun out of the drawer and hand it to the nice man with the knife at my throat. He promises that if we do so he will continue to deliver pizzas and may even fix the cable line. His father may have burned down our neighbor’s house but he has promised to be much nicer. We don’t want to make him unhappy. Do we?
79. Habu
The treaty biz and its associated diplomatic fol-de-rol is to the attainment of world peace what the TSA biz is to the attainment of air travel security.
Both are subsidized jobs programs for parasites, fools and incompetents incapable of real contributions to society and civilization, and they all too often do more harm than good.
My father served 36 ½ months in the Pacific Theater of WWII. He disliked intensely Mr. Truman, the politician. For Capt. Truman’s service during WWI, he had the highest regard (It’s a military thing).
Other than flag officers, who aren’t really military, I make it a point not to criticize the military service of others, per se. It is bad form.
So did Wretchard glimpse Mr. Manglapus in the color clip? What a wonderful name for a hero/glamorpuss. He “was a voice of freedom…”, a nice continuation here.
Interesting! Here we are discussing WWII, where nations were invaded, cities devastated, and tens of millions of people killed BEFORE the introduction of nuclear weapons. So who really believes that Obambi’s ultimate elimination of nuclear weapons would return us to a time of universal peace & love?
Further back in time, WWI was particularly bloody, with no nuclear weapon in sight. Way back in high school, our Latin teacher insisted that the bloodiest one-day battle ever fought had been the Battle of Zama (Carthaginian versus Roman), BC. Indisputably, the absence of nuclear weapons will not ensure the absence of war.
Even if the US and Russia followed through on Obambi’s dream and got rid of all their nuclear weapons, what effect would that have in a world where the North Koreans, Pakistanis, Indians, Chinese, French and Brits all still would have nuclear weapons? Most of us can guess the answer — and it is not good.
The road to World Peace is thru Human Rights, Free Press, Free Religion Democracy (that is successful in peacefully changing leaders), Rule of Law that applies to the poor AND the rich and powerful, and Limited Government.
A world without dictators. But Obama thinks those in Iran who oppose their dictators are undeserving of much support. Those in Russia who dare oppose Putin are beaten up, or murdered, or tried for tax evasion if rich and almost certainly guilty like all rich in Russia, but only those who oppose Putin are tried.
Putin is not now, and has never been, the friend of democracy or human rights. Neither are the mullahs in Iran. But leaders of both countries support nearly unlimited gov’t, and it seems that Obama does, as well.
Japan, and (West) Germany suffered defeat, unconditional surrender to the USA/ allies (including Stalin), and were rebuilt with limited governments. The US should not be fighting unless unconditional surrender of the enemy is the goal.
But in the rebuilding, nation building a Free country, the US needs to be more honest that we don’t know how to do it well. My own suggestion is to go more towards a Swiss Confederation of cantons / city states, with limited military, and quite limited gov’t. The idea of freedom, like earlier community organizing, is to empower local people to have the means of, peacefully, solving their own most pressing problems, in accordance with the limited resources. A budget. Such a model would be better for Iraq & Baghdad, and especially Afghanistan. Who is the Swiss President? Who cares, has little power … Yet the Swiss are among the most economically successful, and peaceful, folk in Europe.
Community organizing in America has degenerated into creation of victim lobbies demanding cash from outside. Foreign Aid has degenerated into supporting paperwork projects which seldom help poor people, but provide very comfy lives to the bureaucrats who are good at the paperwork.
MD
“The French concluded that war with an act of supreme vengeance, and the world reaped the whirlwind of WW2.”
how comes ? France Territory was ruined (don’t remember the number of million of Ha of good agricultural soil, wasted for several years), more than 400000 inhabitation were destroyed… population deported… NOT in Germany THOUGH !!!
You, the supposed good guis, you lended money to the Germans, to the Brits, to us, so that we could finish the war, then, you, and the Brits, smoothered the german debt, cuz, ya know, they might have turned into Bolcheviks otherwise, then, the good guis allowed Germany to re-integrate the Nation League, to rearm, in 1935, before that Hitler reinvested Rheinland in 1936, that some reprroach us to not have contered, how comes! with such good commercial arrangements between good friends ! cuz, Recession made necessity of saling whatever was needed… military stuffs, bizarre, non?
if the good guis had remained faithful to the Versaille treaty, Germany would never had found the means, and THE MAN, to launch WW2, but, probably that she would have become marxist, the evilest of the evilness for the good guis !!!!
“But the Americans administered justice on that day, and we’ve had nearly 7 decades of uninterrupted peace and friendship with the Japanese ever since. Justice vs bitterness. The contrast couldn’t be more stark.”
Al right, good title ! just, don’t read the second pages, where you might find some details that aren’t printed on the official banner!
MC, if Woodrow Wilson, our first Progressive, hadn’t gotten so upset over the French & English attitudes in the period between the autumn 1918 Armistice and the summer 1919 Versailles Treaty, he would not have got into a sulky mood and gone home to pout, and the whole hinge of history would have swung thru a different arc.
The problem was, he had gone after that Armistice as the universal man –playing no favorites (see the Progressive pattern?) –riding the white horse –and had promised the germans, off the record, as part of the Armistice agreement, that there would be no reparations and no territorial concessions levied on germany.
However, he had not properly cleared this with the anglo/french, assuming he could later jawbone them his way. He could not, so he threw his cards on the floor and went home.
Later, a little boho paperhanger with a funny moostach picked up those cards and played them.
NEWS FLASH
IN THE MAIL: From Walter Erickson, Almost Paradise and Soliloquy.
Posted at 11:00 am by Glenn Reynolds
http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/110157/
***
LOL;
the first of the two Amazon sites:
About the Author
Walter Erickson is an architect who lives with his wife in a Philadelphia suburb
the second book’s site:
About the Author
Walter Erickson is a retired architect, living quietly with his wife in a Philadelphia suburb
What will the next book’s site say? Maybe,
About the Author
Walter Erickson is a politically disgruntled retired architect, living in a state of high dudgeon quietly with his wife in a Philadelphia suburb
bl @ 90: if Woodrow Wilson, our first Progressive, …
well now, was he really? How about that Jacobin, Thomas Jefferson? My knowledge of US Presidents of the 1800s is rather thin, but my impression is that various socialist currents were already strong, so that some of it must have been manifest in some presidents, and even moreso in losing (and more obscure) candidates. Cross of gold, and all that.
There’s this, fwiw:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Era
The issues then don’t quite parse the way they do today.
josh, ok, but Cross of Gold is late –and William Jennings Bryan is ‘complicated’ –the old prairie-fire lefties were at least farmers and not urban “we hold your skyscrapers hostage” lefties –
Josh ” the Obambus/Hildabeast complex may actually have gotten something right – again, depending on the details”
Ridiculous. This is another bait and switch from a master pathological liar. Anyone who would trust this Administration, headed by rank traitors and liars, to get anything right on national security, particularly regarding nuclear weapons and missile defense, is a complete fool or a traitor. In fact, to my way of thinking, any Senator, with their resources at hand to check this betrayal out, who votes for this piece of crap is a traitor and should be tried for treason and shot.
Oh right ! I forgot ! The Senate Republicans must show that they can still govern and therefore must capitulate to our traitor pResident! This treaty should not be given the reverent consideration it is getting. There is no history whatsoever from either Putin or Buraq of honesty on national security issues. Why should we believe them now? What evidence is there that the details alleged to the media in this treaty can be trusted at all? Any patriot in the Senate should say “Hell No”, a thousand times “No”, and leave it at that.
I have to agree with Unsk –the treaty has been on the shelf for almost 20 years until suddenly an Obama is in office and a Putin likes it all of a sudden.
Suddenly there’s a rush to ratify, but no one can explain what has suddenly changed.
((Here let me insert this timeline and point especially to March 09, 2010, when this writer of the double-sneaky nation-backstabbing USA banking laws which are killing us, joined the team))
So, perfectly understandably, Senator Kyl wants to see the latest negotiating transcripts. He wants to see what’s changed. But somehow he can’t see them. So he wants a few more months, until someone will let him see the transcripts, so he’ll know what was and wasn’t promised.
So, with nuclear-bomb ICBMs the topic, a few more months matters so much? With already nearly 20 years already on the treaty odometer?
Decades during which the treaty has been informally observed well enough to have kept the pot from boiling over? By informal agreement of the two sides –an informal which can continue forever if the two parties wish? –an informal which leaves BOTH sides (not just the single-party government side) free to quickly react to what the other side might decide to do?
Obama may not know a missile from a popsicle, but shirley he can see that the things have kept world war at bay for 65 years at a cost so low it’s not even in the frame of what armies cost, let alone war, let alone defeat in war.
But Obama says ratification is absolutely critical right now immediately, Hillary and the Brent Scowcroft wing of the GOP Rockefellerites say our national security is at stake, but…but…
nevertheless…
Senator Kyl can’t have a look at the negotiation transcripts?
Those who question why the treaty needs to be signed now, not six months from now, ask the question but don’t know or don’t want to know the answer
In the year since the original START expired, the United States has been sorely lacking one of its provisos — the right to inspect and monitor Russia’s nuclear program.
That’s what Kyl is playing politics with. That is the issue of national security that many of you seem to not get.
Some whine about not trusting the Russians when our backs are turned but by not activating the treaty and restoring the right to verify (read the Protocol – there’s a link in one of my messages above), that risk is exactly what we have had for the past year – and will have until the treaty is approved.
All this nonsense accusing Obama of treason (without single citation of an act of treason) – and here we have a Senator playing politics with our national security.
As for the claim that Senator Kyl is stopping approval of the treaty because he is being denied some mysterious notes, here’s what he actually said on a few days ago on his web site . . .
QUOTE
When Majority Leader Harry Reid asked me if I thought the treaty could be considered in the lame duck session, I replied I did not think so given the combination of other work Congress must do and the complex and unresolved issues related to START and modernization.
END QUOTE
No mention of transcripts being denied him. His first reason is saying, basically, the Senate is too busy. Or, in plain words, the treaty is less important than other things we want to deal with first. What is also totally lacking from his reasons for the delay that endangered our security is any specifics that he finds fault with in the language of the treaty or in the protocol to verify it.
Thus, certain posters here object to the treaty they have never actually read just because Senator “too busy” Kyl also objects. You will notice that they shut about alleged treaty and protocol shortcomings once the text link was posted. One begins to wonder if Kyl needs those links.
Just can’t wait to get the thing signed, eh Jersey Joe, because since Start 1 expired, we don’t have any boots on the ground doing inspections.
Yet in the very next breath, you ridicle “whining” about ‘not trusting the Russians’!
Let me ask you, do you ever read your comments (i.e. check for lethal contradictions) before you hit that ‘submit’ button?
Well, in case you’re honestly arguing, let me copy (bolding mine) the penultimate para from Kyl’s WSJ article of July 8th, while asking where is his withdrawal from the statement.
The administration accepted treaty language that will help the Russians argue that the U.S. should cut back development of defenses against ballistic missiles. This is worrisome less because of the explicit limitations on missile defense than because Mr. Obama has repeatedly shown weak support for U.S. missile defense. For this reason and others, senators have asked the administration to open up the negotiating record. They rightly want to understand what concessions the administration made and received.
***
Clearly, Sen Kyl’s ”too busy” means what it says –that the vetting he has in mind will require more time than is available in the lame duck. The admin should have thought of this. But maybe it did, and counted on a ram-thru –as has already so often succeeded –but simply this time isn’t.
I guess you guys need to sharpen your attack on the senator, hey?
***
BTW, i DID read the treaty –why do you keep saying i didn’t? Are all your statements this trustworthy?
Sorry, I thought you knew how to read and follow one thought that linked to another.
It is not me whining about trusting the Russians. I never said anything like that. I did say (fact) that we do not now have the treaty right to monitor compliance.
And I guess it was a bit much to expect you to understand Kyl’s admission that he is holding up the treaty because he is too busy is not at all the same excuse that someone (you maybe?) posted that claims he is justified in delaying because something secret (and irrelevant) is being withheld from him.
I am not all surprised that you have not actually read the treaty and the protocol to which you object. Nor am I surprised that you cannot cite anything in the treaty or the protocol that is a good reason for not signing so that we can inspect and monitor Russian compliance again. It does contain an awful lot of sentences, some of them as long as fifty words.
LOL –thanks for making my point, comrade. I shall trifle with you no longer.
Calling someone “comrade,” who happens to be a proud veteran and a great lover of this best country in the world, just because you have nothing useful to say is a great way to support an empty argument.
Yes, take your deflated ball and go home. We real Americans do not like a sore loser.
Jersey Joe,
Excuse me but Obama has a terrible record about telling the truth and a long history of seeking a disadvantageous reduction in our nuclear arsenal. He has no credibility at this point.
He and his party over the last two years have sought ruinous changes in our public policy that have drastically expanded our budget deficit, raised taxes, created new environmental and other regulatory obstacles to expanding private business opportunities, bailed out many financial and other interests unnecessarily, granted huge multibillion kickbacks to his supporters, defunded critical military programs and greatly restricted our freedoms in untold ways. Most of these efforts have been achieved with little public input behind closed doors. We still don’t know all the details of many of these scams long after they were approved. We have a right to be alarmed about such an important matter as nuclear security with guys like these in charge.
The American Public, not just Jon Kyl has the right to see the full details of this treaty with Obama’s track record. And as Buddy wrote, if this treaty is so critical why is it bring brought up during a lame duck session and not before? And why if we haven’t had ‘boots on ground’ for a year, is another six weeks so important? Why not a full review of this treaty or do ‘ we have to pass it to see what’s in it” again?
UNSK says, “… drastically expanded our budget deficit, raised taxes . . . ”
You are perhaps referring to TARP, stated by George Bush, remeber him?
Or perhaps the bailout of corporations that are now (like Bank American months ago and GM starting last week) paying back their loans and bailout investments, leaving a profit fro Uncle Sam?
And who do you know who is paying higher taxes than four years ago? Exactly what tax on income, investment or payroll did Obama raise?
Maybe you mean the 61.6 cent increase on a package of ciggies? That’s not a raise on income, payroll or investment and the money it raised goes to providing health care for children.
BTW – a President has absolutely no ability to crate or increase taxes. That power is reserved to the US Congress. He may sign an increase into effect, but he can’t start one.
But to get to the heart of your wild accusation that Obama raised taxes, the facts are exactly the opposite. For example consider the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, otherwise known as the Stimulus — essentially, the only Obama policy to really impact people’s 2009 tax returns. In fact, tax refunds reached an all-time high this year in part because of the stimulus. Meanwhile, taxes are at their lowest levels in 60 years, according to William Gale, co-director of the Tax Policy Center and director of the Retirement Security Project at the Brookings Institution.
FACT: Tax credits (other words for tax cuts) included last tax season:
* An increase in the Earned Income Tax Credit
* An expansion of the Child Tax Credit
* For those who work, the Making Work Pay tax credit offered $400 per individual and $800 per couple
* For those who lost their job, there was a 65 percent tax credit to help cover the cost of health care. The first $2,400 in unemployment benefits went tax-free
* Up to $2,500 under the American Opportunity Credit for students and parents paying for college tuition
* $8,000 for first-time home buyers
* A deduction of state and local taxes paid on a new car
* Up to $1,500 for home improvements to increase energy efficiency
As a result, virtually no middle class households paid more taxes during the most recent tax year than they did during the Bush administration. In fact, to some extent due to tax credits, nearly half of Americans who file federal income tax returns did not pay any federal income taxes for 2009 at all.
FACT:
Obama has proposed letting the Bush tax cuts expire for individuals making more than $200,000 a year or couples making more than $250,000. That means by the end of this year, Washington may, among other things:
* Raise the top two income tax brackets from 33 percent to 36 percent, and from 35 percent 39.6 percent
* Raise the capital gains tax rate from 15 percent to 20 percent for married filers with incomes above $250,000
* Raise the tax on dividend income from 15 percent to 20 percent for married filers with incomes above $250,000
Gerald Prante, a senior economist for the Tax Foundation, a non-profit, non-partisan tax research organization, said these tax increases would likely only directly effect about 2 to 3 percent of tax returns.
FACT; some of America’s most wealthy individuals (like Bill Gates) has publicly come out in favor of higher taxes for the very rich. Only two days ago Warren Buffet said that he wants to pay higher taxes and he also said that ten years of saying that trickle-down helps the economy is bunk. He said all it does is give the rich more money to keep for themselves. It does nothing to help the country.
FACT: during the Obama administration taxes have fallen by nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars — and most of that for middle-class taxpayers.
FACTS: sorry to disturb your ignorance with facts but if you are interested in the truth, try these links to facts:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20101018185110AA0aStx
http://trakker.typepad.com/neon_gods/2010/02/obama-cut-taxes-but-24-insist-he-raised-them.html
Yes, take your deflated ball and go home. We real Americans do not like a sore loser.
Okay, Jersey Joe, so you found me out, i’m faking it, i only say that i’m a real american. You on the other hand, have PROVEN that you are an eighty year old all-American vet –because you sound so much like one, and because you are uniquely the probably only 80 year old vet in existence who writes like a 28 year old semi-commie public-employee union twist-off who slavishly supports Obama with the typical un-language assertions, and has walls of text ready to hand for every comment, almost like an assigned-to-this-blog propagandist.
Yes, VERY credible, very very credible indeed, “Jersey Joe” –because you say so –
…anyhoo, you’re right, I’m German, 120 years old, and won seven Blue Maxes flying for von Richtoven’s Flying Circus. I am the one in the red Fokker Triplane, just off the Baron’s wing in those photos you’ve seen. Let me tellya, it was ROUGH back in them days, before you young whippersnapper Red Guards octogenarians were even borned.
Actually, I am a 77 year old all-American veteran of the Korean War. I probably sound like 28 years old because I got married a month ago.
As for the commie accusation (jeez – can’t you come up with some better than that tired old crap) I owned my first business when I was 14 years old. In my life I have been an executive with various corporations, some of them the most famous names you know. For the past 16-plus years I have owned one of the oldest privately owned businesses of its kind in the country with clients all around the world. I also have been published (we’re talking paid, not letters to the editor) in almost every major newspaper in the USA.
I do not slavishly support Obama. But I did gladly work my ass off for his election and I think he’s doing a great job. I am looking forward to contributing street-level work and funds to his re-election in 2012.
BTW – what’s with all your Muenchausen stuff? There are pills for that, you know.
Actually, I am a 77 year old all-American veteran of the Korean War. I probably sound like 28 years old because I got married a month ago.
As for the commie accusation (jeez – can’t you come up with some better than that tired old crap) I owned my first business when I was 14 years old. In my life I have been an executive with various corporations, some of them the most famous names you know. For the past 16-plus years I have owned one of the oldest privately owned businesses of its kind in the country with clients all around the world. I also have been published (we’re talking paid, not letters to the editor) in almost every major newspaper in the USA.
I do not slavishly support Obama. But I did gladly work my ass off for his election and I think he’s doing a great job. I am looking forward to contributing street-level work and funds to his re-election in 2012.
BTW – what’s with all your Muenchausen stuff? Your delusions explain a lot. There are pills for that, you know.
DNFTT
Yeah and Joisey Joe is both Sam Walton and Audie Murphy rolled into one. The fun would be if we spun iot out until he not only double pasted but slipped up between playing Jersey Joe and Joe Hill on two threads. Just wait until Joe Besser shows up.
Okay, Jersey Joe, so you found me out, i’m faking it, i only say that i’m a real american. You on the other hand, have PROVEN that you are an eighty year old all-American vet –because you sound so much like one, and because you are uniquely the probably only 80 year old vet in existence who writes like a 28 year old semi-commie public-employee union twist-off who slavishly supports Obama with the typical un-language assertions, and has walls of text ready to hand for every comment, almost like an assigned-to-this-blog propagandist.
Oh, Buddy, you have nailed him. To a T!
Thanks for the guffaw!
108 blastpast, thanks for the guffaw, and 109 Bev, sweet thang you –but i’m really Colorado Cottontop, i just sound like buddy because i got married six minutes ago, and five minutes ago wrote a few published novels, four minutes ago started the only company of its kind in the Milky Way Galaxy, three minutes ago stepped outside and ran a four minute mile while doing one handed pushups and reading Goethe in Latin, two minutes ago poured a new driveway and cured cancer and, and then, well, started writing this comment.
110. buddy larsen
… i got married six minutes ago…
Congratulations! But, remember the risk – at your age it could be fatal. Then again, if she dies, she dies…
Th/111; well they say once you get to be 120, raw oysters will help in the boo drawer. But don’t listen to that! i ate a dozen of ‘em and only the first eleven worked
(*groan*)
Anyhoo i thought i’d ‘splain what i meant by ‘un-language’ –tho there’s much on it re the ‘refundable tax credit’ that Sam Audie Murphy Walton is so het up about –i’ll find in particular a pre-election WSJ article that was well writ –this here even tho from 2003 is valuable as the un-language was still new enough that it was flabbergasting right-thinking people who understand the meaning of meaning.
The first few paras will make the point –the democratic party DC denizens, already preparing for the revolution, busily at work –to GOP’s horror, well, petit-horror –on the material dialectic (AKA the breaking down of the quality of lanuage communications), seeming to’ve read 1984 as an operating manual, not a dire warning. ‘un-language’ –i shoulda said ‘newspeak’.
http://johnshadegg.house.gov/rsc/PR61103.pdf
Basically the wizards of Obamanumbics decided to give an enormous volume of money to that fraction of voters needed to get to 51% of voters a-gittin’ ‘em some o dat Obama stash.
But he didn’t want to call it ‘transfer payments’ –which in English it “is” –becuz why lose popperlarity points when you can just bumfuk the language and say anything ya want?
so he called it a ‘refundable tax credit’ –& shifted the payee address of your tax dollars from HHS to IRS, and voila, we have had to date about one hundred billion trillion words, many of them on this very thread, poured down upon us about “Obama’s tax cuts” (Jersey Jack Armstrong Audie Joe Samwaltonmurphy knows the baloney he’s spreading, that’s why his helpful and specific aside about dontcha know ‘a tax credit is the same thing as a tax cut’).
“Well, GawwwLeeee, Sarge!” sez me, Gomer Pyle, my big wave-on-a-slopbucket grin blinding the camera, scratchin muh big ole stoopid haid, as Sarge’s fine wisdom sinks in, “Shuckins! Ah’d a never guesstit! I’ll Be Dang! Wuddaya Know!”
Q: “But can we PAY for those “refundable tax credits”?
A: “How long have you been a RACIST?”
Which of you is willing to put up $1,000 and lose it if I can prove that every one of my claims about who I am and what I have done is true? Let’s agree, if that is possible, on an independent party to whom I will give the proofs. If they are confirmed I get the money.
Put your money where your mouth is.
BTW – upon satisfying the independent referee that what I claim about myself is true, your $1,000 will go to the campaign to re-elect Obama.
Come on, I dare you. Put up or shut up.
Fine –let’s make sure Salvation Army ends up wit’ de dough tho. I don’t want your money, i don’t care if you’re Douglas MacArthur himself, i know a pain in the ass when i see one.
Let’s talk about that middle class tax cut you were running about, shall we? Any truth to what i said in #112, or would you rather misdirect playing Mr. Internet Balls with the money bets?
***
LOL, just read your 115 –didn’t take you long to start adding “conditions”, did it –
But you really do have a lot of gall, jumping onto a strange thread and deciding that everyone is clamoring to get into some kind of financial relationship with you –let me predict, whoever doesn’t give a damn one way or the other, is scared of you, and you beat them down, and taught them a thing or two, and you’re a big tough mutha –right?
Typical Obama supporter –full of horseshit, and no class.
so, who’s the independent referee?
The editor of the Southside Coupon Shoppers Weekly ?
I am not adding conditions, I am only telling you where I will donate your money after your personal attack on my credibility is impeached. The only condition is that I prove to a genuinely independent party that what I claimed and the money is released. That’s not complicated.
I did not jump into this thread. I STARTED this thread. Go look at post #1. You and your wingnut buddies hijacked a discussion of the end of WWII to make stupid and clueless attacks that eventually became personal. That’s all you know how to do – and not even very well.
If you believe what you and others have posted about me, calling me a liar, mocking my life, put your money where your mouth is. I doubt that you have the courage and integrity to do that.
Name 3 genuinely independent reviewers whom you will trust and let’s start the process of identifying one that will hold your money and verify my claims of who I am and what I have done. If i can’t accept one, I’ll give you my 3 names and will do that until we agree on one. That’s the process used in ordinary arbitration and dispute resolution.
I will prove to that person every single claim:
I am 77 years old (actually closer to 78)
I am a Korean War veteran with an honorable discharge
I got married Oct 19th, 2010
I own one of the longest-operating, privately-owned businesses of its kind in this country
I have been paid well by major newspapers (as big as the Wall Street Journal and the Chicago Tribune and the New York Post, etc and as small as the Huntsville Times and many web sites) to write articles.
Put up or shut up.
jerseyjoe @ 103 – Seems that a plurality of people believe that the economy is not doing well, specifically, that the recovery is anemic. Moreover, the debt has been greatly expanded, entitlements created, and Medicare cut. It is not playing well with the public, who have contracted spending accordingly. Lack of demand and anticipation of future taxes and regulations is causing businesses to retain huge cash reserves – not expanding.
$13 trillion in debt, high unemployment, hemorrhaging production capability, horrific level of foreclosures – Hey, I have an idea, let’s create a new entitlement program, then raise taxes on the wealthy (those folks most able to bring investment and venture capital to the table and to hire others) . Threaten everyone with cap and trade taxes. What could go wrong?
What a goof –so you’re at your grandpa’s house using his computer? Before i screw around anymore with your nutty persona, how you gonna prove that whoever you throw up as you is who typed these posts? You don’t even use your name –me, I ‘am’ buddy larsen.
And this is YOUR thread? –on Richard Fernandez’ website? Did Obama nationalize it for ya?
What about my #112, Mr. Brag? Are you gonna re-explain the “refundable tax credit” for us, or just keep heaving horseshit?
Where’d the $ come from, and who got it, and why?
***
“Put up or shut up” ? Pardon me, whose idea was the money bet? YOU are the challenger –it’s up to YOU to put up or shut up. I already agreed, and asked you who was gonna be the referee. I have to like the referee, and i do not plan to spend hours in your strained process –just, gimme a name and address, method of contact, and prove you’re not scamming $ on the net, which it sounds like you are.
jerseyjoe @ 103 – Indeed, Buffet and Gates have supported increased tax rates on the wealthy. Einstein supported socialism. While we can admire his work products in physical science, we can deplore his politics.
It is not an uncommon phenomena for wealthy people to ensconce themselves in a private compound, often with security guards and servants. Next they start dictating how to best dispose of other peoples’ money. Amazing how your point of view can change once you become financially and physically secure from the wolf at the door.
Socialism has brought some measure of equality of suffering wherever it has been brutally enforced. It has also destroyed first productivity, then prosperity. It always destroys liberty and freedom.
A plurality of Americans do not desire it, though they can often be seduced by the ruse of something for nothing, or getting free stuff from government, or getting the rich to pay for everything.
Concerning Buffet and Gates, please advise them to make their checks out to ‘United States Treasury’. They need not wait for April 15, nor will any amount be refused. They can send everything they own.
You make stupid accusations and then start making more when I call you on them. I have no idea who those other people are. I have posted here only under this same name.
I am ready to prove my identity and history to any independent party. Just start the process by naming your first three choices. If I don’t can’t accept one of them, I will give you three names and it will be your turn. This goes back and forth until we agree on one independent person whom we both trust who will hold your money. If he or she agrees I am who I say I am and my proofs stand up, that person will release the money to me and I will donate it Obama’s re-election campaign.
Put up or shut up.
no, YOU put up or –wait, don’t shut up –this is too much fun. YOU challenged, let’s see YOUR three names –full contact info, and let’s see the money leave your hands and go into escrow –verified, and non-revocable escrow. This is how this thing would be done, genius. YOU challenged, YOU now must put up or shut up, and prove it with a legally binding doc of some sort –a contract, so you won’t cost me a bunch of effort and then change your mind.
my name
c/o general delivery
dripping springs TX 78620
And, YOU challenged –in a duel, i would pick weapons –in this case, recipient of the money. If i lose, i’m not gonna indemnify your contribs to Obama for ya –nice try, but the $ goes to Salvation Army.
I did not make any false claims. You are the one calling me liar and it’s my right to challenge you to stand up for that like a man. I put the challenge to you and you start running away.
Any fair-minded person who is reading this thread knows you made stupid accusations and are now running away from the consequences. If you can’t stand behind your accusations you should not have made them.
Put up or shut up.
“Any fair-minded person” –and “I” am running away? Let’s hear from your ‘fair minded person’, who will it be, “Jersey Josephine”?
I’m ‘spose to cough up a grand on this thin soup? Jeez, Jersey, you’re joking, right?
You have my name and post office –why don’t you sue me? Libel? Slander? The Hays County sheriff will serve your papers on me –go for treble damages, “Jersey Joe” –
put up or shut up
LOL –that’s what i thought –
…and still nada, on that #112?
buddy & jersey – you guys aren’t going to hurt each other, are you?
jersey @ 103 – “nearly half of Americans who file federal income tax returns did not pay any federal income taxes for 2009 at all”. Is this really a good thing? Most people do not regard it so, redistribution is not so well received, except by those on the receiving end.
You made stupid accusations and can’t take the consequences like a man.
put up or shut up
Jersey, you are drifting into pathos. Perhaps bathos. Who can’t take the consequences? Can you not read? I took the consequences –i accepted the bet. The ball is now in YOUR court.
But this is getting repetitious, not to say boring, so I’ll do you a favor and just shut up, and wait for the bona fides (sorry, no quickie thousand bucks for you, you gotta work for it –like a man) that your challenge in effect promised.
my name
c/o General Delivery/Postmaster
dripping springs, TX 78620
Put up or …just keep babbling
(…still nada on that #112?)
jerseyjoe – furthermore, this little piece responding to Mother Jones on estate tax might be of interest:
http://www.fates.org/moc/?p=2345
I did not say it is a good or bad thing. I was only responding to the false claim that Obama raised taxes by pointing out that the stimulus plan he instituted effectively cut taxes to the point that almost half of all middle class filers paid none at all.
But you raise a good question. If the point of an economic recovery policy is to help those most damaged by the financial collapse that took place under the previous administration, there may have been a better way to do that, but I don’t know what that other plan might have been, and anyway, the point is mute.
The fact remains, they got that help. The fact remains that Obama did not raise taxes on incomes, payrolls or investments. That’s all I was saying.
The same might be said about the the TARP plan launched by the Bush administration to save AIG, Bank of America, General Motors, etc. from the consequences of their own folly. There may have been a better way of doing it. You could argue that the free market should have let them fail. But the fact remains, they were rescued.
I did not like the way it was done, but I have to admit, it is working out well. The fact remains the government is now being paid back and is on track to earn significant profits for their investment. The fact remains that some of the rescued entities, for example GM, appear to be poised to come back in a really helpful way that can help workers, investors and the national economy.
What alternatives do you you think would have been better than the tax reductions instituted by Obama?
You made the false accusations. I offered you the challenge and you have rejected it. A man would either admit he was wrong or take the challenge.
Until you do one or the other, you have no credibility.
Put up or shut up.
Congress allocates spending, congressional elections in 2006 are what started the ball rolling on small biz bailing on the economy.
Just look at the charts.
Bush’s mistake was not ‘going Reagan’ over the heads of congress to the people, on what was happening in the real-estate and credit market. I’m sure he didn’t do so because to do so would’ve tanked the markets –but as we learn to our unending chagrin, the piper comes anyway and WILL be paid.
As far as ‘a better way’ than the transfer payments being made by adding more and more debt and that are being mislabeled as ‘refundable tax credits’, the entire conservative side of the economy agreed that what was needed was a one-year payroll tax holiday.
This would’ve meant that no $ had to be sent to DC to lose much of itself to bureaucratic friction, but would have simply stayed in the hands of those earning it –so that the people could have more to spend. This would have kept M3 up, businesses if not expanding at least not laying off, thus keeping unemployment lower and real estate unfrozen and not sinking underwater.
The ‘soft landing’ that you will recall was the topic of so much ‘how to’ economic discussion starting around 2006.
but no, that was not the statist way, so tho it made great sense from a natural law POV, it did not fit the ideological model of the new admin, so it was rejected out of hand. This rejection out-of-hand, so peremptory and royalist in implementation, in turned caused much, much more busimness pessimism, and the impetus gained from there to slide into a ‘new normal’ double digit unemployment.
Some ‘party of the little guy’, eh?
****
JJ/133; i’m sorry, either you are mentally ill or you missed this:
Jersey, you are drifting into pathos. Perhaps bathos. Who can’t take the consequences? Can you not read? I took the consequences –i accepted the bet. The ball is now in YOUR court.
But this is getting repetitious, not to say boring, so I’ll do you a favor and just shut up, and wait for the bona fides (sorry, no quickie thousand bucks for you, you gotta work for it –like a man) that your challenge in effect promised.
my name
c/o General Delivery/Postmaster
dripping springs, TX 78620
Put up or …just keep babbling
(…still nada on that #112?)
***
It’s right there –#130 –just scroll up. What you are doing in #133 is the equivalent of ‘did not’, ‘did too’, ‘did not’, ‘did too’, et cetera. Silly, just plain embarrassingly silly. When i said ‘just keep babbling’, that was rhetoric, it wasn’t a demand, you didn’t have to obey.
jj @ 132 – Consumer confidence is the key element. The public has contracted spending, even if fully employed, because of concerns for the future. “Maybe the economy will never ‘return to normal’. Maybe this is the new normal.”
In this circumstance, a credible plan for reducing the debt would be of greatest impact. Unfortunately, both side realize that would require reduction of entitlements, which is not popular with the public, who have become addicted to ‘free stuff’ from the government, or ‘let the rich pay’.
It was wrong to addict the public. They need to be in a methadone clinic to manage withdrawal pains while the narcotic is being removed.
Unfortunately, both sides are playing chicken to force their opponents to initiate cuts. Tax increases of any kind are not a particularly good idea at this point in the recovery. As my instructor pointed out, forcefully, after an aborted short-field approach, never, never, never retract the flaps until a climb has been established!
Most needed are statesmen, of either gender, who avoid promising to shovel greater largesse from the treasury, in order to secure power.
This little quote of Senator Reed, “I don’t know how anyone of Hispanic heritage could be a republican, OK. Do I need to say more?” – is most damning.
Look at the logic. Laws do not say ‘Hispanic’ do they? He puts them in a class (which class would that be?) that he intends to advantage differentially, to the disadvantage of other classes. He intends to write law not ‘without passion or prejudice’. He does not intend to be an advocate for Americans, but only for a certain class. Class based politics. ‘Let me buy your votes, we will give you free stuff’.
That is antithetical to everything for which our nation stands. That is the type of politician that the constitution intended to protect us from.
Good leaders do not promise ‘easy street’ and lead their charges into economic wasteland. Only misleaders do that.
Adversity is here to stay. Unfulfilled need is part of the package. It is what motivates people to face the uncertainties and unfairness of life to provide for survival of themselves and family. Leaders who promise to provide everything for the ‘needy’ are traveling a well-worn path to loss of national freedom. If we fail economically, how can we protect our nation against the gathering wolves?
jj/133 & me/134; …but SOMEbody has to grow up, and be a man, and i see that will have to be me.
Ok, i withdraw my accusation that you are a liar. Not to save the $ (i’ll do the bet if you’ll go about it correctly as outlined above), but to save the thread, and w’s bandwidth, and the time and attention of the fellow commenters.
I hereby accept that “Jersey Joe” is actually “Jersey Joe” and not someone else (perhaps “Nebraska Ned” or “Arizona Alvin”, or “West Virginia Willy Victor”, any of which would of course change everything).
…and that furthermore he is who he says he is, and not the complete horse’s ass & pompous fool that he is expertly pretending to be on this thread.
There. YOU win, Jersey Joe!
al Buraq?
Wasn’t that some sort of mythical flying ass?
you said, “and that furthermore he is who he says he is, and not the complete horse’s ass & pompous fool that he is expertly pretending to be on this thread.”
Retract that egregious insult and I will accept your apology.
MC,
Many thanks for the view from France
Beats me how the country which produced Voltaire, de Tocqueville and Bastiat, also produced Robespierre and Bonaparte, but I suppose Britain played as home to Marx, Engels, Malthus, Ricardo and Keynes.
Did anyone see the Utube clip of the guys holding up a placard at a progressive rally saying:
Obama = Keynsian
Buddy,
You’ve got the most computer and info savvy 77 year old I’ve come across there…
A pal who does night shift on the Dail Torygraph blogs, keeping the progs from getting a free run, reckons that the site staff put half of the prog comments up to ensure the blogs get frequent visits
Keith – don’t tell anyone, OK?, but the business I own includes one of the very first privately owned web site hosting companies, launched in early 1994. I got my first computer on August 14, 1981, a day or two after IBM introduced the PC. Two large floppies, no hard disk. I was an early participant on the world’s very first Bulletin Board system, created a few years earlier by two very clever high-school kids in Chicago on a snowy day, using their fathers’ faculty connections to the U of Chicago mainframe. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletin_board_system)
BBs were an early medium that was like Internet chat. The kind of boorish, ad hominem behavior seen here was evident even then; cowards when called out turn churlish and thuggy.
Now that it has been settled as to who was lying, I will retire from this thread.
jj @ 132 – while on the subject of “the financial collapse that took place under the previous administration”, methinks that the qualifier had a purpose (that took place…).
We could select other qualifiers such as ‘that was enabled by aggressive measures initiated by Andrew Cuomo, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development for Clinton’,
or ‘exacerbated by the Commodities Futures Modernization Act of 2000, signed by Clinton’
or even ‘that necessary reform & regulation of FMAC & FNMA were strongly resisted in mid-2000s notably by Maxine Waters and Barney Frank (whose live-in friend, Herb Moses was an executive of FNMA), who insisted that the government supported organizations were financially sound’.
I suppose it all depends on where you want to place blame.
Hey Keith, yes, in the info wars the two combatants have, um, a different set of customs to be sure. TV playing some street demos from your neck of the woods –oddly, and most gratifyingly, the protesters are protesting not for bailouts but against them. Congrats, sir, and my high compliments to the Land of Eire!
That placard brought many Obama geniuses to the holder, complaining that O was born in USA, not Keynsia. Really –i saw ‘em do it on TV. And –they VOTE, too, which is why we should be studying Mandarin instead of messin’ around on the net –
jj/138, ok fine, but first let me amend that to “and that furthermore he is who he says he is, and not the complete horse’s ass & pompous blustering fool with Obsessive/Compulsive Disorder and Delusions of Grandeur that he is expertly pretending to be on this thread.”
…and let me add my huge admiration for someone so unconcerned with filthy lucre that, for the price of a postage stamp, would walk away from a cool thousand bucks.
…and shucks i guess that riposte to my #112 is just gonna have to wait until the board meetings are over.
There is a guy whom I occasionally exchange emails with, used to moderate a board in the late 80s through the 90s.
He has tales of snail mailboxes being burned out, pizzas being delivered in the early hours of the morning and loads of ready mixed concrete being left in gateways.
These days he doesn’t even post which country he lives in. he reckons that people show much more of their true selves on line than they would ever dare to meeting face to face.
I’m getting a few instant messages from a friend saying that an Australian based libertarian blog has just been taken down following the publication of personal details by a disgruntled former commenter, who’d taken to trying to force other commenters off the site.
Hi Buddy,
I’m not sure that they’re protesting for reasons you’d like.
The bulk of voices making it onto the LSM here are public sector trades unionists and union activists
They seem to think that without the EU’s intervention, no cuts to public sector jobs and pay will be necessary, no tax rises will be needed, and the state healthcare, social security and old age pensions can all be fully funded.
To some extent, they are correct. Ireland can secede from the Yoyo and the new “Punt” can find its own level on the markets, giving the entire nation an across the board pay cut and restoring Ireland’s international competitiveness…
Though I don’t think that is the outcome which they have in mind.
I listened to a phone in on RTE 1 this afternoon, and the callers all assumed that some magic wand could be waved and somehow all different desires could be satisfied by the Government (and that we should have a general election straight away and that would somehow change the realities to be faced).
They really are like alcoholics, in denial
Keith, thanks –i guess thanks –for the heads-up on the protests –i guess it was too good to be true, sigh. Oh well, no better world will be a-borned without birth pains –and, where there’s life there’s hope!
The jerk could be Steve Wozniak in meltdown or Colonel Future as played by Eddie Albert (a real warrior if I recall) but in here he’s just a loudmouth baiting people to reveal privacy info. I am no lawyer and PJM has Professor Reynolds onboard but this guy seems way out of line.
BftP/147; appreciate the reminder –and keith’s too –to not let oneself feel more invulnerable than one may actually be –
crap, now i need an anthrax-sniffing mail dawg –maybe they’ll just send ants and hold the thrax
no, just kidding –thanks guys –
Buddy,
Followed your link to Nyquist.
Very interesting post on the future of Europe and relations with the Russians and muzzthingies.
The Ruskies have over 100 years continuous experience of them, we forgot all we ever knew when we got out of the colonialism business. We even made the mistake of thinking that, as a group, they would begin to think and act like western liberals.
It’s interesting that the x mil South Africans I know blame the US for making them pull back out of Angola, their take is that the last thing the US wanted was a strong African based power. That they were happy to play little naive African nations of against each other, and wanted all western countries to look to the US as the only big fish in the Western pond.
I think the Russian guy’s case breaks down when you consider the Russian adventures in their own southern republics. It hardly paints them as a friend to the religionists.
keith, the thing about the Russians is, everyone knows what to expect –you just don’t leave anything up to goodwill, and you can count on them being always the same. USA OTOH, with our biannual November revolutions and checks and balances gov’t (open congressional hearings for the other party’s time in office’s spooks????), and free press (sorta, it ‘breathes’), is a whole different animal to ally with.
Back when the operative axiom was ‘politics stops at the water’s edge’ things were FAR different.
Clinton buried all that, with his ‘permanent campaign’ and ‘war room’, though i believe even he was predated by the Turkish general who said, “The problem with the Americans is they’re always stabbing themselves in the back!”
Keith, i recommend (FWIW!) all the Nyquist you can stand –the guy’s been a prophet since 9/11/01 –just look at the titles alone in his archive –plus his stuff is about almost mechanically predicting the future based on the text of the past, accessed via interviews and transcripts of and with the faceless deep operations players, and their obscure oddball books and articles –stuff that we’ll never otherwise know exists. but he ain’t no joy-joy, no sirree.
Russia has always looked for a “Strong leader”.
Whether tzar, seceratary of communist party or a social nationalist like Putin (just neatly sidestep Godwin there…).
The doubts of constitutionalists like Gorbachov, and drunken narcissists like Yeltsin, do not appeal to the Russian character.
My house guests returned to their Baltic state yesterday. The Soviets were very keen to make sure everyone’s ethnic origins were indelibly recorded, should some group or other ever need a holiday in Siberia, or putting into a mass grave in some forest, so my guests can recite their ethnic backgrounds.
One has family still in rural Russia, and the description of Russian villages with just dirt tracks between them, and people walking or taking a horse and cart in the rare times they venture away from the home village, could have come from Tolstoy.
I’m not sure whether some of the reason why they are still like that is strategic – giving an invader as slow an advance and retreat as Napoleon got in 1812, or just because there was never any need to seek the rural population’s approval with things like paved roads.
Both friends are ardent anti communists! and both totally distrust Putin.
Getting back to the START tangent.
China is now too far down the road to development to risk starting a nuke exchange with anyone. Russia, well, it might be a seriously backwards place for many of its people, but the stone age would still be a big comedown for them.
For the Norks, not so much.
The one that would worry me is Pakistan, falling to the wahabis.
Any group who be persuaded to believe emphatically in the “will of G-d” and who can conscience setting up a mortar or a rocket launch in the grounds of a school or hospital, based on the idea that for them to do so must be G-ds will, and that if kids or patients die, it is not the result of their actions, but of G-d’s will, and if pictures of the resulting casualties upset the west, then that too is G-d’s will…
We once understood their thinking, and knew how to deal with them when they caused trouble (The old method as described by Churchill was by punitive expeditions to burn crops and villages, kill livestock and throw the carcasses down the wells).
What route to take to get a nuclear armed Smaug broken to the leash and made to crawl wearing it in public?
keith, good stuff –Moscow is only a few centuries removed from the Golden Horde burning it down from the east every few years –not to mention Nappy and Godwindolph or even Gustav and the Teutonic Knights and the Kaiser from the west, Tatars from the south, plus the Finns and other Balts busted a russian army or two, not to mention Tsushima Straits. It took the Romans twice as long to –really until the fall of Constantinople –to ‘join the world club’ as it were –heck i forgot my point –it’s late –but here, your post reminded me of this lovely pic.