That Lonesome Road
Wisconsin Democrats have agreed to participate in a vote on a bill restricting collective-bargaining rights for public employees. “Assembly Democrats agreed to offer only 38 more amendments, one for each member, and restrict debate on each to 10 minutes … That should allow a vote on the bill this afternoon.” Jennifer Rubin believes this will increase pressure of Wisconsin’s Democrat senators to come out of hiding. “So senate Democrats are going to remain out of state while their assembly colleagues give way to the will of the majority?”
Walker may be winning by forcing the Democrats to re-engage using the oldest trick in the book: taking policy ground they can’t afford to surrender and forcing them to come out and fight for it. Rubin notes that “Republicans easily passed a bill repealing a requirement that law enforcement collect data on the race of all drivers they stop. Republican leaders also scheduled a vote for Thursday on a bill to require people to show photo ID to vote”. In other words, Walker is coming after the race card and the non-id card, things that must on no account be allowed to happen.
Ezra Klein, one of the Democrat’s supporters at the Washington Post lamented that Scott Walker ‘understands power’, in demonstrating his ability to use the budget issue to create structural change. And why not? Walker had good teachers, some of whom Klein may even admire. Rahm Emmanuel famously advised everyone to never let a crisis go to waste, and not just the Democrats can read.
The connoisseurs of “us” versus “them” should watch Libya. The uprising against Khadaffi in Libya is beginning to depict itself along tribal lines. The New York Times describes the motley crew defending Khadaffi’s western stronghold from the rebels.
Distrustful of even his own generals, Colonel Qaddafi has for years quietly built up a ruthless and loyal force to safeguard his rule. It is made up of either special brigades headed by his sons, segments of the military loyal to his native tribe and its allies, and legions of African mercenaries he has helped train and equip. Many are believed to have fought elsewhere, in places like Sudan, but he has now called them back.
Witnesses said on Wednesday that thousands of members of this irregular army had massed on roads to Tripoli. The scene, one said, was evocative of anarchic Somalia: clusters of heavily armed men in mismatched uniforms clutching machine guns and willing to carry out orders to kill Libyans that other police and military units, and even fighter pilots, have refused.
Indeed, both the ferocity of the uprising and the tenacity of the defense is partly due to the fact the fate of tribes, not just individuals, is at stake. Khadaffi belongs to a tribe which was historically unimportant, but whose members until recently enjoyed favored treatment. A book reviewed in Foreign Affairs asserted that “the Libyans were not a nation, had no affinity for Western-type political institutions, and had strong ‘stateless’ traditions”. Now that tribal pecking order is being challenged; and if successfully upended, means the end of not only of a tribe’s privilege but perhaps of its own existence.
Stakes are high in tribal warfare. So the major tribes are represented in the military, but Khadaffi’s inner security circle is recruited largely from the Qathafa, sometimes called the Khadaffi tribe. But it is too small to dominate by itself. The balance of power may be held by the Magariha, whose loyalty Khadaffi tried to purchase by ransoming its most famous son — the Lockerbie bomber.
The leadership of the Magariha tribe acknowledges a debt of gratitude to Gaddafi and his regime for securing the return of one of the tribe’s members, Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, from prison in Britain after he was convicted of being behind the Lockerbie bombing. However sources also told Asharq Al-Awsat that this has not prevented a number of youths of the Magariha tribe from participating – with members from other tribes – in the demonstrations and protests against Gaddafi’s rule, especially in cities in eastern and southern Libya.
Now the deals are off and the Magariha may now be renegotiating their contract. Like the Republicans in Wisconsin, the rebels understand power. The struggle in Libya is now over strategic terrain that can’t be conceded — the oilfields and pipelines. “All southern oilfields are in rebel control. Moustafa Raba’a, a mechanical engineer with the Sirte oil company, said pressure had been put on field and refinery managers to stop work and protect all foreign nationals working with them.”
This means most of the talk about sanctioning Libya is meaningless because the Libyans are already sanctioning themselves. Forces on both sides are denying the flow of oil to the other either by getting the foreigners to stop operations or blowing up things. Too late also is talk about pressuring Libya to end a “violent crackdown” on protesters, not only because Khadaffi himself looks about to fall but because the situation never resembled the classic street demonstrations of Europe but irregular warfare. The President’s diplomatic initiatives to stop the “violent crackdown” have already been overtaken by events.
In his first remarks on the uprising that has split the North African country and prompted a deadly response from Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi and his loyalists, Obama described “the suffering and bloodshed” as “outrageous” and said those responsible must be held accountable.
“These actions violate international norms and every standard of common decency,” Obama said yesterday at the White House after meeting with Clinton.
While Obama didn’t specify what steps he would pursue if Qaddafi doesn’t halt reprisals against the opposition, officials at the White House and State Department said earlier they may include punitive measures, such as freezing Libyan assets, that might be taken by the U.S. alone or in conjunction with other nations.
His game is really about the carcass; it is about who they can make a deal with and how they can persuade the last men standing to talk to them. What is still uncertain in Libya is which coalition of tribal leaders or personalities will emerge in the post-Khadaffi era the West will recognize. That is to say, who will give the go ahead to refineries to continue operations? And the debate over Libyan assets probably has less to do with stopping Khadaffi than who gets Libya’s overseas assets. Hillary Clinton’s trip to Geneva is probably about how to deal with the successor regime, if any, rather than about the Duck of Death’s remaining days.
And it may be no one. There is some chance that Libya may slide into a prolonged period of anarchy, like Somalia, as one side tries to get the upper hand against the other. Or maybe it will turn out be an Islamic Caliphate. Like Wisconsin’s vote, the Geneva meeting is about unfinished business in North Africa. Neither in Madison nor Tripoli will things be over in a week.
Daniel Howes of the Detroit News argues that if the Republicans know what’s good for them, they should go slow the insurrection which began in Wisconsin before they tears things apart. Because things ain’t gonna be that easy in Detroit or in other places where the unions and the Democrats are dug in, in case they don’t know it by now.
Walker’s Wisconsin gambit, and others percolating in the state legislatures of Indiana and Ohio, imperils more than the existing wage and benefit structure of public employees. It threatens the political gravy train that labor has used to influence politics to its benefit, up to and including presidential elections.
In other words, Wisconsin’s “WisTeria” and the smaller copycats in neighboring states have undeniably national political implications for the re-election of a Democratic president, the chance for this party to retake Congress and a Republican ability to solidify gains won last November and perhaps retake the White House.
Battleground doesn’t begin to describe it, which is why there may be less unanimity among Republicans and business types on how to proceed than simple stereotypes allow. As much as the economic metrics of right-to-work states down South appear to make the case for moving in that direction as quickly as possible — higher growth rates, rising incomes, population gains — does the cost amid trying economic times justify spending so much political capital?
In political situation that is all about tribes, upsetting the apple cart — or the kebab wagon — is really going to cost. A way of life just doesn’t let itself be buried alive. Like Khadaffi, it goes down kicking and screaming. Does anybody want that? Does anyone have a choice?
embedded by Embedded VideoYouTube Direkt
“No Way In” print edition at Amazon
Tip Jar or Subscribe for $5
The key to the Obama admin’s reaction to events in the ME is to be found in Obama’s Cairo speech. Obama talked on and on about Muslim this and Muslim that and let me be clear America loves Muslims,etc. Well, so much of the ME is Muslim in the way that Latin America is Catholic. It is just something that is there and has always been there and probably will be. This is not to discount the fanatical-militant sectors – Al Qaeda, Inkwan, etc that are causing mayhem in the Muslim world and the west. But the average Middle Easterner heard Obama’s speech and decided that America didn’t much care whether or not he ever cast a free vote towards his own political destiny. He heard the same blah blah with some weirdly irrelvant blather about Muslim this and that. He didn’t hear much beyond a couple rote sentences of Obama’s commitment to freedom. The ME is sick of dictators and thuggish law enforcement and a military that promotes itself beyone all else. Obama’s Cairo speech effectively said, ‘You’re on your own.’
It took just over a year. Things exploded. Obama’s non-commital, we’ll never do anything, milk and water speech in Cairo helped push freedom-seeking, Middle Easterners over the edge.
During the ObamaCare debate, it was noted that “you can’t take Moscow without putting Berlin at risk.” ObamaCare was a major lunge for Moscow. All of a sudden, the Wermacht sees the Soviets on the Polish plains, advancing in an undesirable direction.
The writing was on the wall by that time, but that didn’t stop both sides from making a horrendous fight of it, all the way to the end.
OT: Wretchard, are you planning to write about the NSW election? If there’s anyone who can figure out a broader global context for the NSW election, I figure it’d be you.
2. Andrew X
“During the ObamaCare debate, it was noted that “you can’t take Moscow without putting Berlin at risk.” ObamaCare was a major lunge for Moscow. All of a sudden, the Wermacht sees the Soviets on the Polish plains, advancing in an undesirable direction.” I like the analogy, and I’m not Andrew X.
Senor Equis
It’s always amazing to see how quickly things can go to hell in a country.
In a sense, Libya is deeply *lucky* at this juncture to have its tribal structure–some coordination is better than total anarchy breaking out–at least there should be some protection of the oil fields, etc. Fascinating stuff.
Messaging is key.
The simple message is always the one that Lenin highlighted: Who? Whom? Who’s got the goods? Who’s paying? Who’s got the power? Who’s getting beaten up?
In the past the Democrats/socialists could achieve clarity of message: the capitalists have the goods, and they’re screwing everyone else.
Now the clarity has shifted to the other side: the government and its cadres have the power, and they’re taking the goods from the tax-paying people.
Can’t be much more simple or more clear. Which side are you on?
Fortunately, the cadres are in the minority. The road is more lonesome for them than for the majority who are paying the salaries of the minority.
When the balance tips, e.g. in Greece, where the majority seems to be on the dole, the trouble really starts.
The Italians sure knew how to pick colonies didn’t they?
Is it their fault? Something to do with Fascist Futurism?
“…he has now called them back.” Like the Nazgûl hurrying to the ruin of the Dark Lord.
“does the cost amid trying economic times justify spending so much political capital?”
Yes. Any real fighter knows the best time to kick them is when they are down. While cutting off the ‘dirty cash’ the unions extort from honest working types won’t be the end of the Donks, it will leave them hanging by a thread with Conservatives holding the rope. As a bonus, it is bound to improve the economic climate. Not very much but every little bit helps.
Elections have consequences or so they say. A historic election should have historic consequences. Level the money field in ’12 and see how the donks like playing with honest die, an unstacked deck. Well, they still own the MSM but that can be offset by the web.
Mafia culture, Arab tribalism, and Islam…
Arabs and Muslims have raped uncountable numbers of other civilizations and people over their vicious bloody history. One of the societies they raped hideously were the Italian Christians of Sicily and the southern Italian peninsula. With the reconquista by the Normans, Italy was one of the rarest regions which successfully repelled and then expelled the Arab Muslims rapists from their midst. Until the multicultural insanity of the late 20th Century, the Saracen remained extinct in this region, but the rapist left his imprint on this region too. I believe the brutality of the Islamic occupation contributed greatly to the subsequent savage culture of honor killing, tribal loyalty, and systemic devotion to looting and thievery which characterizes the Mafia culture of this region of Italy.
You can tell what the enemy fears, by what they advise you to do for your own good in the most unctuous and sincere terms. Of course, you can be sure that the Democrats and their allies have nothing but the best interests of Conservatives in mind.
Mr. Howes’ advice to Republicans to back off on attacking the Democratic Party’s built in drain on the taxpayers wallet may be considered sage by Democrats. And it is revered as received wisdom by get-along-go-along Republicans who really are upset that all those icky people are getting involved in what the Political Class of both parties see themselves as running quite well for their own benefit. And yes, Mitch Daniels; I am including you in that group.
But our country is in such dire straits, and the concept of a Constitutional Republic operating under the rule of law is so at risk; that what we need are leaders who will stand and fight by every legal means possible, and not fold.
We have every indication that we will win in Wisconsin, absent extra-constitutional efforts from the White House.
The effort, all efforts, to oppose the Democrats in Indiana have collapsed because the governor has acceded and approved of the Democrats’ following the example of the Wisconsin Senate Democrats by running away across the state line to overturn the results of the election. Daniels yielded on the union bill, supposedly to preserve the rest of his legislative priorities. Once he surrendered on that, yesterday the Democrats still out of state added 11 other bills to their list of demands before they would come back. Funny thing, those were the legislative priorities that Daniels surrendered to preserve.
There is a lesson here, or actually a couple. First, pre-emptive surrender is a tactic that does not work when dealing with political sociopaths. Second, no agreement is possible with Democrats in the name of comity, because they will not keep their word. Add another one. There is absolutely no downside in keeping every legal and constitutional pressure on Democrats on every issue. They don’t consider comity, the law, or the Constitution to be barriers to any path to power. This must be taken into account in any dealings with them. And fighting them draws lines, shows the differences between the two, rallies Patriots, and gives the Left every opportunity to show their true thuggish face to a public that they might have fooled before.
Republicans’ efforts to fight Public Employee Union extortion of the public purse may indeed fail in Ohio and Illinois. They are dug in, and especially in the case of Illinois the level of corruption is probably beyond cure. But refusing to fight for both the taxpayers, and what we believe in yields things like Indiana. Fighting back gives you a chance of winning and to shape the battlefield for the next encounter. And it makes the enemy use up resources at at time and place of our choosing, not theirs.
Subotai Bahadur
Let me see, I subsidize govt pensions/healthcare for govt workers. I also subsidize their paychecks. Now they’re pissed because my pockets are running dry?!!!! Again, I say, unmitigated gall! I am happy to be able to make enough money that I can start saving and planning for my own retirement but I have to forego health insurance. That’s just the way it is. Running away won’t change it, nor will pushing around little girls or beating up people who disagree with me. What’s that you say? You have a contract? With who? Oh, the state? Well, too bad the state forgot to ask me if I could afford to carry you wonderful gov workers into your golden years. See, I and many others finally woke up after hitting the snooze button for a generation and realized that the axiom “there’s no such thing as a free lunch” really is true.
I am rather surprised that no one else has made this analogy, but is anyone else constantly reminded by these events of the A&E TV show ‘Intervention’? I have said forever that socialism has the same effect on the body politic that heroin has on the human body, but I am stunned by the parallels today.
What is the WI legislature saying, other than “It’s over. You (we) have hit bottom. It’s done. If you agree, there is nothing we will not try to mutally do, within our financial power, to get through this, but if you want to go on as you have been, there is nothing that we will do to allow it to continue. Nothing.”
And do we see the addict do, time and again? Deny deny deny. Scream. Cry. Lash out in the bitterest of anger, blaming everyone else in the room. Refuse to acknowledge that the problem is real, and profound. And of course, in tears and rage, storm out of the room and run run run, just to get the hell away from the reality.
Any of this sounding familiar?
Sigh, the more I read the less I know and thus it has been for years. I really wonder sometimes if the “elite” of the US are actually as well read as the think they are? Also, there knowledge of other countries and cultures seem to be oversimplified and revolve around sterotypes just as much the suppose view point of the “lower classes”. They really don’t seem to be all that literate in other languages, their sojourns to other countries for the most part fall under the category of vacations. I’ve talked with ex-military non coms and heard their tales of trying to understand the countries they were stationed in, their sometime hilarious language mess ups and culure faux pas, and I’ve come to the conclusion that while you could serve overseas and never leave the cocoon of the English speakers a surprisingly large percentage don’t. I think I learned more from them than your typical newspaper reporters article.
I’ve also noticed that the “elite” don’t recognize “tribal” behaviour even when they indulge in it. I noticed it a lot in manufacturing but on the college and university campi it was worse, i.e., The people of the applied math department on the first floor and the people of the theoretical math on the second floor did not speak to each other.
From what I’ve seen of the Obamites they have little knowledge of even the majority of the country that they live in let alone that of other nations, they just think they understand better than anyone else.
Theoretical math! Those bastards!
Where to start; the Romans finally stopped the Carthagians by taking Carthage and then salting the wheat fields so that they could never grow grain again. We have had over 100 yrs. of progressive destruction of American culture,economy, values and its time they go. When you find that your child has parasitic worms do you only treat them so that you kill most of the worms or all of them?
A fight to the death; all the instutions of socialism need to disappear. No half measures or pale pastels !!!!!!
Classical Values argues that the storm is now fully on us.
That would not be an unfamiliar meme here. But what’s important to remember is that the United States is the fulcrum of fate. Unlike other world crises, in which there were rival centers of hard power, the suddenness of this storm happens while the US remains, and will remain for the short run, the center of hard power.
Not that it will be used, and therein lies the key redeeming feature of the struggle. The world does not have the capacity to break out into global war because, with the exception of Russia, their nuclear arsenals are “too small” and they cannot cross the seas to attack each other because they have no power projection capacities and cannot challenge the USN.
That means that if America regains rationality, it can hold the ring and the world crisis will not spill over into international chaos. This can be a global velvet revolution instead of a bloody one. If America regains rationality.
But that’s not a given. During the recent earthquakes in New Zealand, homes belonging to victims buried in the rubble, whose families were in vigil at the rescue sites, were looted. In New Zealand. This shows that when the chips are down, when order breaks down, when the thin veneer of civilization rubs off, then even white guys in placid New Zealand are capable of stealing, rioting, looting. True, the boiling point of Brit descended, placid Kiwis is far higher than in certain other population groups, but underneath it all, we are creatures of flesh and blood.
If you make anyone hungry, angry or desperate enough, all the bets are off. The most brutal fights in the world were between white guys. The American Civil War, World War 2 in Europe to give just two examples. In Europe you had it all, looting, concentration camps, rapes, massacres, gassing — you even had cannibalism in Russia during the height of the famines and the war. All done by white guys; white guys with machine guns.
That’s why it is important for at least one political system to remain rational and midwife the rest of the world, through a process of spirited debate that largely remains on the edge, but not across the boundary of violence.
From one point of view the coming crisis can either America’s finest hour, or it’s biggest missed chance. It has to show the way; to thread its way past the thugs, the bosses, the propagandists and the outright commies towards something better, in this our 21st century.
Das: It took just over a year. Things exploded. Obama’s non-commital, we’ll never do anything, milk and water speech in Cairo helped push freedom-seeking, Middle Easterners over the edge.
There’s no more money to do anything no matter who is in the White House. We can’t even root out the Somali pirate coves because all our forces are committed to two Nation-Building fronts in Southwest Asia.
In other news today, a group of armed men from the Religion of Peace stormed the home of a Christian man in Baghdad’s central neighbourhood of Karrad, killing him. The victim’s name is Youssif Isho, a 70-year-old Chaldean. He was stabbed to death.
14. Andrew X
LOL! My sentiments entirely!
I miss the 90s . Things were so peaceful then.
Yeah, yeah, I know: calm before the storm, seeds of disaster being sown, willful blindness, and all that. But still.
I’m 60 years old and I’m unemployed. My industry is collapsing. I’m actually going back to school to learn new skills–at 60! All I want is to get a job and be productive (and pay my mortgage, buy food, etc.). I’m wondering if I’ll ever have another job, at my age. Actually, I am working a minimum wage job, which I got recently through the kindness of friends. I’m old enough to be a grandfather to the kids I work with. Jeez. Never thought this would happen. But at least I’m not mooching off society. I can hold my head up. Work is honorable.
But, gosh, I wish all this sturm und drang would slacken just a bit. It’s too much. I’m just trying to get by. I just want to run my border collies with sheep on the weekends. Is that asking too much. [sic no question mark]
“The most brutal fights in the world were between white guys.”
No. They were between Asians, or Asians against everyone. Namely: Chinese Civil War, Second Sino-Japanese War, Tai’Ping, Mongol invasion of China (one eminent historian I know says that 180 million Chinese died during that prolonged episode)and the Mongol invasion of everywhere else. The back-to-back Sino-Japanese War and Chinese Civil War killed more people than all of World War II. Add the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution if you want to count that as a war against one’s own people (and I do).
I remarked to someone once that if Hitler had hired Filipinos to guard Auschwitz all the inmates would have escaped or made friends with the guards. Filipinos have no concept of killing people because somebody signed a piece of paper saying so. “But he is my friend!” is an argument to which the SS would have no response.
A counter-terror cop in Zamboanga told me that the city only existed because the Abu Sayyaf and the other Muslim rebels were so corrupt. “The Saudis send money for a truck bomb, but each commander takes his cut, and by the time it is actually implemented, it becomes a motorcylce bomb or a bicycle bomb.” Some cultures are far too scatterbrained to do much organized harm.
And that is good in a way. Rationality and social discipline is a two-edged sword.
Asians (who are arguably some kind of white guy) and the regular white guys are dangerous in that they can invent things like poison gas, germ warfare, bombers, artillery, nukes, etc. and organize themselves to use it. In some cultures rage and mayhem is self-limiting because those cultures don’t have the capability to turn it into organized destruction. China and Europe are different. They have the passions and they also have the cold calculation to harness to those passions.
Part of the problem in the Third World is the availability of all these White Guy toys to people who would otherwise not have them. Wired reports:
The pathogens are the artifact of alien culture. Something that wouldn’t be there otherwise, like ray guns lying around in a society that could never conceive of incinerating people through mollecular disruption. Somebody’s bound to pick it up, point it at something and …
Consider 9/11. Al-Qaeda could only attack New York because of the existence of commercial airliners. Left to itself, their civilization might not be capable of manufacturing the aircraft and the attack would never have happened. Mohammed trod on the same oil fields that now supply Arabia with its wealth without ever having a clue.
So for good or ill, the fulcrum of fate in this current crisis is probably going to be among the White Guys (broadly defined to include the Chinese, Japanese and Koreans).
Wretchard, not being snarky, but … saying that Asians are some kind of white guy is, uh, sort of an astonishing statement.
I get that you mean (I think) that Asians act like white guys, when it comes to war and technology and organizing for both, but … well, I don’t think the analogy works. It certainly doesn’t work in the case of the Mongols, who (arguably) invented operational art and the art of mobile warfare on vast operational and strategic scales.
Also, and seriously: aren’t Filipinos Asians?
I would tend to think that, in general, tribes and tribalism are “bad” in “good” times–better for people to interact via contract and various other forms of “private ordering.” But, in “bad” times, like Libya’s in now, tribalism has the virtue of providing a fall-back coordination mechanism that allows for the provision of some goods (esp. protection) that might be harder to come by in a more individualist society.
wretchard @ 16 said:
“That means that if America regains rationality, it can hold the ring and the world crisis will not spill over into international chaos. This can be a global velvet revolution instead of a bloody one. If America regains rationality.”
I agree with this analysis. Only problem is that little word “if”.
Relatively speaking in historical and global terms, the United States was not in that bad of shape when the MSM seduced the American people into electing the Chosen One. Not surprising to those at the Belmont Club, the Chosen One has fallen flat on his face and is probably a one term president.
Who is going to replace Obama? If someone competent replaces Obama, will the MSM allow him to govern?
The MSM is still out there and promoting the moonbat narrative. Spreading propaganda as news to get Obama elected was not the MSM’s worst offense. The MSM did almost everything in its power to cause the US to lose the war in Iraq (they tried to do a repeat of the Vietnam War). The MSM failed because George W. Bush demanded victory and initially had the political coin from 9/11 to achieve victory. Will the MSM allow the return of rationality? Can the next President do something about the MSM’s harmful power without destroying the Freedom of the Press?
wretchard @ 20 said:
“Asians (who are arguably some kind of white guy) and the regular white guys are dangerous in that they can invent things like poison gas, germ warfare, bombers, artillery, nukes, etc. and organize themselves to use it. In some cultures rage and mayhem is self-limiting because those cultures don’t have the capability to turn it into organized destruction. China and Europe are different. They have the passions and they also have the cold calculation to harness to those passions.”
The above statement confuses race with culture. Both Europe and China have very high cultures. Now we could start the discussion about whether high culture comes from race. That sort of discussion rapidly becomes politically incorrect. I would not like to be called a “racist” but I’m comfortable with being called a “culturalist”. There are some cultures out there that are bad and should be criticized.
Also, and seriously: aren’t Filipinos Asians?
This is a complicated question, with class and ethnic overtones. I think that by and large the answer is Filipinos are not asians in the Chinese-Japanes sense. There are of course the Westernized middle-class and the Filipino-Chinese and the Muslim-Filipino. But the defining weakness and strength of the bulk of that culture is its child-like attitude towards things. Waiting around for God or someone to fix things; the reliance on miracles and extraordinary events; the absence of memory.
Most Filipinos have forgotten the Japanese occupation, they’ve even forgotten Marcos. There is no concept of remembering the Rivers of Babylon. Every day is a new day. In consequence they don’t sit around, nursing grudges for centuries. There is no Alsace-Lorrain, no olive groves of Palestine, no Paradise Lost.
There is only the human landscape of friends and family. If the entire archipelago sank into the sea but everybody made it London, Hawaii or California it probably wouldn’t matter to most. “Hooray! We are all abroad! Now we can go to the Mall.”
That is of course, an oversimplification, but I believe there is a grain of truth in some stereotypes. That does not mean that one culture is “better than another” or that there is a “superior race”. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses. I don’t think the Filipino man envies the German. Why give up all the “hapi-hapi” for that brooding disquiet? I don’t think the German envies the Filipino either, and it’s even stevens.
Subotai Bahadur:
“First, pre-emptive surrender is a tactic that does not work when dealing with political sociopaths. Second, no agreement is possible with Democrats in the name of comity, because they will not keep their word. Add another one. There is absolutely no downside in keeping every legal and constitutional pressure on Democrats on every issue. They don’t consider comity, the law, or the Constitution to be barriers to any path to power.”
Excellent summation of what ought to be conservative political tactics. It does appear as though Gov. Walker will survive Daniels’ surrender; our last remaining task is to see that Mitch Daniels is not the Dear Reader’s opponent in 2012.
I find great clarity in your posts and look forward to reading them.
W – you didn’t like my link on previous thread?
…towards something better, in this our 21st century
We may need an ideological die-off. Everybody born after 1950 or something before the human race has the opportunity to reset on reality. Natural causes, of course.
I do not know of any other period in human history where such a large proportion of the population viewed truth and reality as the enemy of the species. We often joke about how close to Orwell’s newspeak Western Civ now operates, but unfortunately that joke appears to be on us.
My hope is that internet sites like BC, Khan Academy, Do It Yourself Scholar and others will allow the more enterprising folks to become educated in math/science and the Western Canon, completely outside the brain smothering influence of the traditional educational system.
What is “historical guilt” but the Leftist observation that Western Civilization, and to some extent North Asian civilization, has proved historically more capable, organizationally and technologically speaking, than Asia, Africa and Latin America?
In many ways that is the flip side of Cecil Rhodes’ observation of the same thing, but from a positive point that to be “born English is to win the first prize in life”.
Those two things have worn down at the edges somewhat. But I think it is fair to say that a lot of what the next fifty years turns on will revolve around grasping both sides of that coin and making something useful out of it. Therefore, for reasons that are not entirely dramatic, the debates in America and the culture wars in the West may be strategically more important than bloodshed in the Middle East.
24. wretchard
There is only the human landscape of friends and family. If the entire archipelago sank into the sea but everybody made it London, Hawaii or California it probably wouldn’t matter to most. “Hooray! We are all abroad! Now we can go to the Mall.”
The way you tell it, it sounds as if there’s more than a little bit of Hobbit in them. Did Tolkien ever spend any time in the Philippines?
The reason North Asians come off as some kind of white guy is because the DNA trail places these two races close together — with the Asians being the younger race. it would seem.
Kennewick man strongly implies that sequence.
Beyond that re-hybridized Oriental-Caucasians have strikingly appealing features in the opinions of both Orientals and Caucasians. Hence, they are wildly over represented on the fashion runways of the first world.
But the real story is that of the Smart Fraction ™ which is that Rate Limiting proportion of humanity able to master complexity and self actualize.
Individuals with 85 IQs are not destined to climb to the top of Maslov’s pyramid. Yet that is the global norm for human IQs. Only the Northern Europeans and North Asians norm out to 100 ish. ( North Asians norm even higher on numeracy. )
So it’s no coincidence that human events revolve around their thinkings and doings.
Left to their own devices even a blessed land such as Libya, populated with globally average IQ peoples, ends up so starved for talent that such must be imported in quantity.
The locals just stand around and expand their families, puzzled as to why they’re living on handouts.
And with a crazed despot calling the shots living conditions are grim.
——-
It’s right in our faces. The best way forward is for China to ‘export’ her unmarried sons — especially to Africa and the ummah. Kilroy would then be replaced by Wong.
HIV continues to empty out Africa and may yet be the scourge that destroys the ummah. Should it ever take hold, HIV shatters society. My nephew is in the heart of HIV country. He reports that the survivors are orphans or elderly. The entire region is being massively depopulated — rather like a Thirty-Years War zone.
It’s an interesting and foreboding tale. Until the Dutchmen arrived with modern agriculture local African populations were scant. Humanity was but part of the food chain back then. The horseman, rifle and the fence changed all of that.
Subsequently, the native tribes moved in, en masse, to co-exploit the ‘new habitat.’ It would certainly surprise most Liberals to discover that the Africans in South Africa migrated there AFTER the Dutch opened up shop. (mostly) The tribes that pre-dated the Dutch were left alone on their homelands — which are still there today. Even with their superior arms the Dutch were so massively out numbered that no attempt to displace the locals, a la the USA was ever attempted.
The Boer War was crass Imperialism and Joseph Chamberlain made no bones about it. ( Neville’s dad, that is.)
The decades long eviction of Caucasian Smart Fraction ™ talent has step-wise destroyed the politics and economies of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe and South Africa. One can only hope that the Indians and Chinese reverse this baleful trend, for the White man has put down his burden.
#30
A semi-interesting aside to your comment. When the first Catholic missionaries returned to Rome after spending years living in China they petitioned the Pope to fold Confucianism into Catholicism. The move from Greco-Roman stoicism to Christianity was relatively fast, so who knows?
My favourite historian, J.M. Roberts, in History of the World argues that there are two general trends in history. They are a growing unity of human experience and a growing human capacity to control the environment. He insists that, of all the different traditions in the world, no other tradition has shown more vigour and attractiveness in alien settings than the European tradition: it has no competitors as a world shaper. The very idea that willed change is possible is deeply subversive and deeply attractive to societies rooted in changeless acceptance of things as they are.
Now Islam is resisting and disrupting our European tradition, largely because it is so attractive but also because our tradition has lost vigour. In my opinion, progressivism and what Victor Davis Hanson calls ‘the therapeutic society’ are to blame for this loss of vigour.
roughcoat@21: When W includes Chinese, Japanese and S. Koreans along with white guys, I am making a guess that maybe he is acknowledging the attraction of the European tradition to people in these countries and how our experience of living and theirs is converging, not diverging.
@16 –
How do you know it was white guys doing the looting? Could’ve been maori.
I seem to recall various pundits a few years ago opining that upsetting the totalitarian apple cart in Iraq might lead to an awakening within the umma throughout the middle east that might result in a tearing down of the status quo in favor of some sort of democratic alternative, and I mean some sort in a very loose way. Perhaps, slightly delayed, this is part of what we’re beginning to see? Could it be that Bush and Rummy were right?
And I will absolutely never forgive the teleprompter in chief for remaining silent during the Iranian ‘troubles’. Champion of liberty, not he is.
One of the fathers of sustainable forestry is a German, I forget exactly who. Faced with the problem of how to replenish the natural forest which had been cut down to fuel forges and mills, he came up with the idea of growing forests in rotation cycles. You planted this stand and waited 75 years or something until it got to a calculated optimum, and then you cut it down.
But in the meantime, you had to guard this stand of trees for 3 generations against this “future”. Some other European came up with idea of financing by futures trading against this forest. Imagine this: working 75 years against a payoff that exists only in your mind, because you know that it logically must. This is the kernel, I think of European civilization. Its blessing and its curse.
This is like the very similar Chinese decision to send armies of farmers ahead of the builders of the Great Wall. They too had the foresight to realize that food would be needed ahead of the workforce. For them too, the future was real.
For the White Guy and the Sort of White Guy, the future and the past exist in ways that the Hapi-hapi guys (myself included probably) do not intuitively grasp. For them the future and abstract ideas are real. Regulations on pieces of paper are real. That’s why you can get take a jolly Bavarian, give him a piece of paper with an official stamp and order him to gas whoever is listed on the execution list. And he’ll do it because it says so. Try this with the Hapi-hapi man and he’ll say, “but why? He is my friend.”
This is also why you can keep selling bonds which mature in the future and keep spending in the present. It could only happen in a culture in which the future exists to a such an extent that it is regarded almost real. In fact, the future hasn’t happened yet.
I think this notion of the abstract as “real” is a very powerful attribute which is at once a blessing and a curse. It has made European and North Asian civilizations so much more capable of both creativity and self-destruction than otherwise.
And you may think its absence a sad defect in the Hapi-hapi man, but one thing you may be sure of is that he can never run a concentration camp. Give a car to a Chinese and he’ll turn in into a delivery van; to a Hapi-hapi man and he’ll take his girl out in it; to the Islamist and he’ll turn it into a mobile improvised explosive device. Same car, three different outcomes. Which is the better I leave for you to judge. But you could do worse than take out your girl.
Roughcoat @ 18
Being very close to the same age and not too long ago enmeshed in the same process I offer what I can in response.
By all means speed read the first page of rah-rah Canada do-do and consider the information on page two.
http://www.newsweek.com/2009/02/06/worthwhile-canadian-initiative.html
Oh yeah and they’re all about the “…so then a miracle happens.” Pffft.
Niall Ferguson Harvard/Oxford/Hoover argues from the premise that Western Christian Civilization, and Western dominance has been a good thing for the world.
In order to explain how it came about, Ferguson deploys an unexpectedly cutting-edge metaphor.
The west’s ascendancy, he argues, is based on six attributes that he labels its “killer apps”:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/feb/20/niall-ferguson-interview-civilization
1/ competition,
2/ science,
3/ democracy,
4/ medicine,
5/ consumerism
6/ the work ethic.
and that because of these 6 attributes Christian Civilization pulled ahead of all others in the history of the World
I read somewhere recently that the ‘white guy’ started off in history as a mutant of the ‘black guy’.
I read somewhere recently that the ‘white guy’ started off in history as a mutant from the ‘black guy’.
Re 32. westerncanadian
Yes, that’s my thinking too. And in that respect, I think Wretchard makes an excellent point.
Re 36. heyyoukidsgetoffmylawn
Many thanks for the link . . . an interesting article. I always enjoy reading Zakaria. BTW, I like your moniker!
I wonder how many balls the administration can juggle?
If the Middle East discontent leads to an expended period of further elevated oil prices, then we are clearly headed for a nasty recession … which will put further pressure on states and cities to cut their expenses and balance their budgets … and unemployment will soar …
Sam, repeating himself, said:
What an uninformed troll you are.
Whites, and blacks, are actually both derived from an ancestral skin phenotype (color), which is brown.
omg, wretchard! too much to respond to.
we come into this world kicking and screaming, so are many things born, so do many things die.
And you may think its absence a sad defect in the Hapi-hapi man, but one thing you may be sure of is that he can never run a concentration camp. Give a car to a Chinese and he’ll turn in into a delivery van; to a Hapi-hapi man and he’ll take his girl out in it; to the Islamist and he’ll turn it into a mobile improvised explosive device. Same car, three different outcomes. Which is the better I leave for you to judge. But you could do worse than take out your girl.
omg, you’ll get letters on that one.
I’m not disagreeing, just sayin’.
And I always saw that as Bill Clinton’s redeeming feature, on a personal level he was very much your hapi-hapi guy. Except for Hillary, we all would never have heard of him.
Have also had discussions related to this regarding all of our Indian H-1B workers here in America, and to what degree they are culturally conditioned (or whatever it is) regarding present and future. Certainly the zen cultures, Buddhism, are much more about what is right now, and not anything hypothetical like the future. There is certainly a beauty in that, or at the very least an alternative world-view.
W.20
“So for good or ill, the fulcrum of fate in this current crisis is probably going to be among the White Guys (broadly defined to include the Chinese, Japanese and Koreans).”
One end of the fulcrum has the intelligent and the other not so much.
Are you sure the looters in New Zealand are the “white guys”?
sam
May actually be correct.
Better Binging that mine will find it: a ‘Caucasian’ baby born to a ethnically pure black African family in Nigeria.
The girl’s eyes look like Paul Newman’s — ultra blonde hair like a Swede — flesh tones of a Viking — the works.
Apparently a handful of master genes can flip in a single bound and crank out Caucasians from Negro bloodlines.
Genetics experts worldwide are astounded. Until this birth it was universally assumed that the progression was long and Darwinian.
Her other features: nose, face shape, smile all matched her siblings. Due to remoteness — there was no possibility of a ‘Caucasian in the woodpile.’
Terrain, dust bowl retardation, and culture: People who live in hilly, difficutl to travel in, and low amounts of fertile land tend to be disputive, cranky, tribal. During the dust bowl period of the US there was a noticeable drop in IQ’s in the dry land child population, children weren’t getting enough of the right kind of food and didn’t develop full potential. The North Koreans are dang near a different species from the South Koreans. Recently a former N. Korean soldier made it through the DMZ to South Korea. He did it because he was starving to death. The Nkoks are shorter, lighter, and just not up to snuff in all aspects due to long term food shortages. The ones that make it to S.Korea are ostrasized. They don’t have the skills for a modern society and they have trouble picking them up. In some fertile areas the population can outgrow the food supply and you get the contradictory situation of low level starvation of the majority.
Projection: It is becoming more and more noticable to me that the left accuses the right of the crimes the left most often practices.
I read somewhere recently that the ‘white guy’ started off in history as a mutant of the ‘black guy’.
I’ve stopped thinking of the terms ‘white guy’ or ‘black guy’ as racial terms, in part because for individuals the terms are meaningless. But as descriptors of civilizational behavior, we ignore the concepts at our peril.
A large part of the problem facing the world today is really because of a crisis of Western culture. It’s important to understand that. The other cultures may have problems, but Western culture is key because it is key.
I just want to assert that fact without racial undertones. And it must be asserted, because that is where the problem must start to be solved.
Somehow or the other, the constructive and destructive aspects of white guyness have gone out of kilter. The Yin and the Yang are out of whack.
And that shimmy, like a misaligned tire, is messing up the world’s response to terrorism and even to ordinary problems like growing food or finding energy. We are doing crazy things for ostensibly rational reasons, like patting down millions of air travelers, printing carbon certificates, borrowing our way out of debt, or paying unions to miseducate kids because of some kind of sickness in our thinking. And if we keep doing this, it’s not going to end well.
That’s not to say the Middle East doesn’t have its own manias. One problem with that place is they never forget nothing. They’re like an operating system that’s been up so long they’ve got GEM running alongside Ubuntu. They need memory management bad.
But the key is the West and one the place in which a patch might conceivably be put in without taking the whole system offline is the United States. In most other places, like the Middle East, to fix things probably will require a reboot. And reboots in history look very much like war.
So that in fine, is my intuition. That in this collapsing mess, we have to find the kernel that works and put a hotfix in there. In place that knows about pieces of paper, but doesn’t quite worship them; that is organized enough to plan without being entirely beholden to plans. Maybe that place is Europe or China. But for my money, it is going to be America. And it may not work in the end, but it is, for entirely modern reasons, the last best hope on earth.
heykids…
You do realize that both Canada and Australia are at the apex of astounding real estate bubbles that have not yet popped?
You do realize that their banking system does not lay off the risk/ bet of default?
You do realize that the economic underpinnings for both are based upon resource bubbles and ‘momo’ effects?
If you want a sure thing bet on the utter implosion of both of these super bubbles. ( Both have extremes beyond Southern California and the Florida ‘Beachhead.’ )
http://bossip.com/268491/nigerian-couple-stuns-genetic-experts-give-birth-to-white-baby-girl/
Here she is!
Further study will illuminate the key genes — and an important puzzle will be solved.
Sorry about the double-post back there. Didn’t think it took. Turned out just to be a delay. Patience not one of my strong points.
No trolling here.
Referring to my prior post 37. Victor
Niall Ferguson argues that Christian Civilization developed a much more adaptive operating system with those 6 apps that took of in the 15th Century.
Any race or culture that adopts those apps will thrive–the issues are
1/ As Europe becomes post Christian –as we saw in the 1930s and 40s–and even more today–can they maintain the adaptive edge?
2/ Can cultures that adopt the 6 apps–without the underlying Christian operating system— continue to thrive?
Adam Smith was very clear in The Wealth of Nations about the key importance of a core Christian operating system to make the whole thing work for the long term.
OT–it is amazing how the protesters in eastern Libya have self organized to keep things functional.
blert @ 30 said:
“The reason North Asians come off as some kind of white guy is because the DNA trail places these two races close together — with the Asians being the younger race. it would seem. Kennewick man strongly implies that sequence.”
Blert’s comment touches upon the anthropology of race and the study of ancient human migrations. This is a fascinating line of inquiry and was a popular subject of study prior to the 1930s. Unfortunately the Nazis tainted this subject by politicizing it and using it to justify genocide. As I stated in my earlier e-mail, it remains politically incorrect to discuss this topic but since we’re all friends at Belmont Club, I’ll do it anyway.
It is my understanding that Europeans are actually a more “primitive” (less specialized) race. The ancestors of Europeans were among the first to leave Africa and cross into Asia Minor. Supposedly the Europeans were part of the same migrations from Africa that brought out the Kennewick man and the Australian aboriginals. Over the eons, Europe was colonized many times. In the past, people would establish themselves in Europe then the climate would go cold, glaciers would form and the Europeans would be pushed out into Asia Minor or towards the Urals. These ice ages were one of the main mechanisms for causing subsequent waves of human migrations coming out of Africa, spreading across Asia and ultimately passing the Bering Straits into the Americas. There is this politically correct myth that American Indians are the original inhabitants of America. The Indians are actually the descendants from people who genocided the descendants of earlier migrants who genocided the descendants of even earlier migrants. Even the Maoris of New Zealand are not free from the taint of genocide. The current day Maoris are descendent from Maoros who wiped out an earlier wave of Maoris. I believe only the native Hawaiians can claim to be original inhabitants (of course the Hawaiians engaged in constant warfare amongst themselves). Human history can be very ugly when you get into the nitty-gritty.
Getting back to Europeans, it is interesting to read in Homer’s “Odyssey” that Menelaus, king of Sparta is described as being “fair haired”. Greek tradition claims that there were multiple migrations into Greece, e.g. the Dorian, Ionian, etc. Supposedly the Dorians were “Aryans” (the Nazi taint sneaks in here). The Spartans thought of themselves as Dorians (the Nazis liked Spartans). Something that I’ve noticed myself is the people in ancient Egyptian sculpture tend to look more European the more older the sculpture. Again, the subject is interesting. Too bad it’s tainted.
Democrats use to nominate Southern Governors on the theory that voters would never believe they are liberals if they were elected in the South (i.e. Clinton in Arkansas).
Wisconsin is generally thought a liberal state and that makes it a poor battle ground for the left. They would like to portray Governor Walker as an extreme right winger but most people simply assume such a creature would not be elected in Wisconsin. The fact that similar events are occurring in other states outside the South reinforces the perception: they cannot all be in control of right wing zealots. Still, I see some Journalists trying to portray that state as evenly divided between the reasonable and humane center-left and the frothing at the mouth, lunatic right (remember Joe McCarthy?).
All these headlines coming from outside the South gives the lie to another favorite theme of the left: that the Republicans are now a regional party of the Southern White Males.
The Republicans taking up some issues that the Democrat Senators don’t want to vote on may be doing them a favor. Sure, having a 110 percent turnout in some precincts that vote Democrat is nice, but not if you have to go on record fighting for the right to steal elections. So if a highly popular “voter ID” bill is going to pass anyway — but your union buddies insist you vote against it — why not stay in Illinois at the Tilted Kilt?
Roughcoat @ 40
Thanks, but I believe it can be credited to George Carlin.
Serves me right though, although it allowed me to use a section of the film The Wind and the Lion to create a multiplicity of interpretations through means of wry humour, I believe the number of claims to have coined the word “Mooselimbs”in all its variations is so close to infinity the fabric of the universe has begun to fray.
Possumtater
De Borchgrave: Mideast $400 Oil Imminent With Mideast Upheaval
Award-winning journalist Arnaud de Borchgrave tells Newsmax that the increasingly volatile situation in the Middle East could push the price of oil quickly to $300 or even $400 a barrel.
Such a price would mean a gallon of gasoline costing as much as $15 at American pumps , perhaps higher depending on local, state and federal taxes, according to analysts interviewed by Newsmax.
De Borchgrave, who has interviewed Moammar Gadhafi six times, also says the Libyan leader is manic-depressive who is going through a manic phrase where he is “taking on the world.”
A 30-year veteran of Newsweek magazine, de Borchgrave now is director of the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, editor-at-large at United Press International and The Washington Times, and a Newsmax correspondent.
In an exclusive interview with Newsmax.TV, de Borchgrave discussed the impact that the uprisings in Libya, Iran, and other Middle Eastern nations could have on the price of oil. Some economists also have speculated that, if oil surged to $400, the pump price for gasoline could hit $15 a gallon.
Oil was selling at more than $95 a barrel on Wednesday, and there’s no telling where prices at the pump — currently around $3.17 a gallon — could rise to if per-barrel oil prices soared to those levels, according to de Borchgrave.
“This could get pretty bad because of what’s going on in Libya,” he says. “Libya pumps about 1.8 million barrels a day,” some of which is pumped out of the eastern region around Benghazi “which has now in effect seceded.
“Libya supplies around 74 percent of Europe’s oil and if that is cut, which it could very well be in the next few days, oil will be spiking again.”
The United States does not buy oil from Libya, but de Borchgrave points out that “oil is a global commodity and what hurts in one part of the world is bound to have an impact on other parts of the world.
“If you remove 1.8 million barrels per day, that’s taking quite a chunk out of the world oil market. To tell you to where the prices could spike, I really can’t tell. But if we were to have any trouble in the Straits of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, you could see oil going up to two or three hundred dollars a barrel very quickly.”
Events in Iran, which also has been rocked recently with popular unrest, could in fact “drive oil up to $300 or $400 a barrel very quickly because we’re dealing with the Straits of Hormuz through which about 28 percent of the world’s oil passes every day,” de Borchgrave tells Newsmax.
If the United States or Israel launched an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, he adds, “it wouldn’t be difficult for the Iranians to sow a few mines, and the Iranians today have the capability of landing a missile on the deck of an aircraft carrier.”
Reports out of Libya say hundreds of people have been killed in the Libyan government’s crackdown on protesters, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has called on Moammar Gadhafi to stop the bloodshed. Asked whether Gadhafi cares what the rest of the world says about him, de Borchgrave responds: “Not really. The man is not normal mentally.
“I’ve interviewed him six times and have no hesitation in calling him a manic-depressive. I’ve seen him through his manic phases and his depressive phases. What he’s going through today would seem to be a manic phase, where he’s taking on the world. He’s talking about thousands of casualties, and his son is on television talking about fighting until the last drop of blood. It’s to be taken seriously.
“The man is now in a manic phase and he thinks he’s going to take on the giant, the United States.”
De Borchgrave warns about the danger the Muslim Brotherhood poses in the Middle East. “A lot of people are going around saying the Muslim Brotherhood has changed its colors, they’re a totally different political animal, they’re willing to work through the democratic process and fight fairly in elections. I would say, don’t believe that for a second.
“We’ve just seen in the past few days some very extreme Muslim Brotherhood leaders showing up in Cairo for the first time in 50 years, in the case of one of them, and speaking about how much they hate the Jews and their American protectors.”
Pirates killed four Americans off the coast of Somalia. Asked whether the U.S. Navy should do more to head off pirate attacks, de Borchgrave says: “I think we should all be doing a lot more than we’ve been doing.
“We’ve been dealing with legal technicalities far too much up until now,” and the piracy will be curtailed “the minute that word gets around among these pirates that two or three of their boats have been blown out of the water by the U.S. Navy or any of the other navies in the area.”
@17. Teresita “…We can’t even root out the Somali pirate coves because all our forces are committed to two Nation-Building fronts in Southwest Asia….”
So, our Navy is sailing in Afghanistan and on the Tigris? That’s silly. We could shut down the Somalian pirates in a couple of days. A few missiles would splatter the palaces the rewards of piracy have built in minutes. No, the fact is we don’t have the backbone, everyone is concerned about the pirates’ “human rights’. Where is Ronald Reagan when we need him (even Clinton might have let loose a few cruise missiles, especially if there was an aspirin factory in the area).
The Somali pirates have been killing and enslaving people from the third world for sometime now. I believe Wrechard has commented on this in the past, so it is with interest that I’m waiting to see how the media plays on the 4 Americans killed on the pirated yacht. I aloso see the Pirates have in essence bought a port controlled by Islamist on the coast of Somalia. Do a couple of fuel/air bomb drops on it and they might reconsider that idea….yeah it could happen.Snark.
I recently read a little bit about the Neanderthal Theory of Autism. The author of the piece I was reading argued that some of that wierd white guy and northern asian thing came from a handful of genes inherited from cold adapted humans. These genes apparently are associated with unusual attention processes and fixations. The proponent of this theory was arguing that the majority of folks with these genes are quite smart and gifted, but the troubled and less gifted ones are the ones who get studied and catch all the attention.
#17 Teresita
I meant support more in terms of ideas or specific moral support; not so much marching in with an army kind of support. The weighted, spoken support of the most powerful man in the world would have meant something to the Egyptians (and all protestors protesting against ME dictators). Of course as water cupped in the hand and passed back and forth from hand to hand too many times becomes droplets, so Obama’s flip-flopping turned to nothing in the end.
W/47
could be this:
“The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts. But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the government.” FED #10
The difficulty is that the ME is so tribal and uncivilized as to make folly of enlightened philosophy.
Andrew X @ #12 said, “I have forever said that socialism has the same effect on the body politic that heroin has on the human body.”
That’s it exactly. This analogy has been drifting around in my subconscious for days ; I could not put my finger on it. Dennis Miller compared the angry unionites to hissing raccoons in the trash that you startle in the dead of night with a flashlight.
Your description is better. These people are addicts. The Repubs will need a lot of luck curing them. They are in full DTs now.
toadold,
“I’m waiting to see how the media plays on the 4 Americans killed on the pirated yacht.”
They were distributing Bibles. Any guesses on how the media will handle it?
The great irony for the ME, if they weren’t so afraid of da joooos, Israel would help educate, teach farming, etc.
The problem is not wanting to ‘act white’.
Similar issues in the US, whether minorities or ‘librul’.
eggplant@52: I don’t think the ‘Out of Africa’ theories are politically incorrect. In fact, I thought that was the current mainstream theory. Concerning the Aryans (Rig Veda, solar horse, soma etc), one theory is that they conquered and displaced the Dravidians in Northern India around 1500 B.C.
Hitler and his fellow hallucinators cooked up some BS about Aryans being a master race who invented leather breeches, or something.
I also understand (no source to give) that genetic markers found in Australian aborigines have also been found in people living in coastal India. This is thought to be evidence of a long migration around the Bay of Bengal, through the Archipelago to the final destination of OZ.
Theories of human migration are very interesting indeed and have a fair content of speculation. For my own self, whatever my ancestry may or may not be, I’m happy assuming that I’m a mongrel from a long line of mongrels. I don’t really care who begat whom.
ex…
The were fingered at their last port of call. The pirates went way out of their way to get them. The mothership must have had electronic tracking and radar.
——
The Royal Navy set up shop in Aden to stop piracy.
Those are the exact waters that proved so lucrative to Captain Kidd. Piracy has always been the number one craft of the Somalis. That and enslaving Kenyans.
The Obama clan lives just down the coast. Like all muslim Kenyans they are the descendants of the slave raiders of yore. Naturally when the local muslim thug was running for dictator he had the Zero’s full support, speaking on the stump circuit. A real Chicago on far moment.
That man just loves to campaign — make decisions — not so much.
Blert @ 48
Thanks Blert, good to know. I’ve bookmarked this page.
It’s perhaps a year and a half since the first of those maps that showed the rate of unemployment increase in the continental United States over time appeared.
I was nonplussed.
So much so that I e-mailed Wretchard two links to a Canadian government program that fast tracks permanent or term jobs to top end computer program developers and information on Canadian banks operating in the United States.
In order that he may, if he wished pass the information to other “regulars” if it was something he felt comfortable in doing.
I’ve never asked whether any thing was ever done in that regard as good works should be done with discretion.
However, as shown by the Newsweek article, the nature of the programs is now general knowledge and for the reason I stated I was moved to help a fellow geezer.
You of course disregarded my advice to skip page 1 and instead focused on 1 and skipped page two.
It was seemingly more important to focus on trivia that filled ego and promised schadenfreude than possible means to economic survival.
Clever does not equate to wise.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1awwAgU_t8
For those who really want a comprehensive sense of what is happening in the Middle East and why, I suggest a look into the last major Egyptian revolution of 1952. At that time, Britain was still the preeminent western power in the Arab world, and its control of the oil supply was absolute, much like the stranglehold the U.S. has enjoyed for many decades. Oil was pegged to the British sterling and any trade in crude required a conversion to the British currency. In fact, it was often said that the British Empire’s power after World War II was entirely dependent on its reserve currency status in oil markets. Any of this beginning to sound familiar?
In 1952, a revolution against the Egyptian puppet monarchy and its British overseers burst seemingly from nowhere, led by a group called the “Free Officers Movement”. In reality, the insurrection, fed by years of corrupt Aristocratic rule, was initiated and in some cases funded by both U.S. and Soviet agencies in tandem! In 1951-1952, nationalist police officers backed by the U.S. and Russia began supporting fedayeen terrorist groups using false flag attacks to weaken the region (is this sounding even more familiar?). Interestingly, this era was the birth of the so called “Muslim Brotherhood”, a group which has suddenly resurfaced in media discussion today.
Riots spread through Cairo, King Farouk was overthrown, the British were eventually run out, and their control of the Suez Canal was lost. But the story doesn’t end there…
The British and the French wanted the Suez back (at least that’s what they claimed), for control of the Suez meant control of Middle East oil markets. A plan was initiated by the two European powers to take back the canal using an Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip as a spring board. This time, Israeli agents were used by the British to conduct false flag attacks, which were presented as a pretext for Israel to move against Egypt. The British and French followed by landing troops near Cyprus and Algeria.
The plan would have worked, except for one thing, the British were financially weak after two world wars and were completely dependent on American investment in their treasury debt. In response to the British action, the U.S. along with the UN threatened to halt investment in British debt and to stop price support of the Pound Sterling. This led to the eventual fall of the pound as the world reserve currency, and the rise of the dollar.
Official history portrays this move by the U.S., Russia, and the UN, as an attempt to undermine the long reach of the English. It is rather convenient however that the pound was dethroned just as plans for the European Union were beginning to be implemented in the early 1950’s. It seems to me that the British elites were fully aware that their futile attempts to hold onto the Middle East would result in the fall of the Pound; it was simply the British people’s turn to be taken down a few notches, and centralized. The similarities between the British Empire’s decline over Middle East oil in the 1950’s and our decline over Middle East oil today, are startling.
If history was to repeat itself, I would guess that the U.S. will soon be embroiled in political or even military operations to control the Suez, and retain its dollar peg to oil, which will illicit a negative response by international investment, causing central banks to dump their U.S. treasury investments and the dollar as a reserve currency.
Think of it as a grand theater meant to amuse only global bankers…
Blert @ 48
Thanks Blert, good to know. I’ve bookmarked this page.
It’s perhaps a year and a half since the first of those maps that showed the rate of unemployment increase in the continental United States over time appeared.
I was nonplussed.
So much so that I e-mailed Wretchard two links to a Canadian government program that fast tracks permanent or term jobs to top end computer program developers and information on Canadian banks operating in the United States.
In order that he may, if he wished pass the information to other “regulars” if it was something he felt comfortable in doing.
I’ve never asked whether any thing was ever done in that regard as good works should be done with discretion.
However, as shown by the Newsweek article, the nature of the programs is now general knowledge and for the reason I stated I was moved to help a fellow geezer.
You of course disregarded my advice to skip page 1 and instead focused on 1 and skipped page two.
It was seemingly more important to focus on trivia that filled ego and promised schadenfreude than possible means to economic survival.
Clever does not necessarily equate to wise.
As the shadow grows…of course asians are “white guys”, we demanded that they be so …and so they are. We cannot back away from that promise now.
Not even with China…
Apart from Niall Ferguson’s economic and social analysis of the rise of Christian Civilization— Professor Rene Girard @ Stanford
http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2009/julaug/features/girard.html
Also shows the centrality of Christianity to western civilization.
The ancient Egyptians were the first mono theists who passed it on to the Israelites
— then the Christians completed the evolution of belief and developed and promoted the balance of faith and reason to build Christian Civilization.
Tragically the Culture of Death can apply some of the 6 apps of Christian Civilization to serve the Culture of Death-.
Niall Ferguson makes the argument that America will survive to the extent we preserve and build upon our Christian traditions
–he argues that Europe will be lost as it continues to follow the–
Culture of Death.
OT — Mr. Economy:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/02/22/from_malabo_to_malibu
More amazing pictures from the worlds best spendthrift.
He should really mix well in the ‘hood since bloodlines for many, many, many African Americans shoot straight back to Equatorial Guinea — the victim of chronic muslim enslavement raids back in the 17th & 18th Centuries.
#24 Wretchard
That post cracked me up. Living in south Seattle you have fair opportunity to meet and interact with Filipinos of all kinds, from next door neighbors to deli owners to workers all over the neighborhood. I don’t think I’m being sentimental if I note that Filipinos I meet seem to have an extra drop of golden kindness. You search their faces for repetitive or mechanical cynicism and you see none; you do catch laughter and some affection. I wouldn’t want to sentimentalize all Filipinos as such – one of the south end’s meanest and toughest (and most successful) businessmen is a Filipino man (I know from experience). Even so there is something special about Filipinos, I think.
67. Possumtater
The muslim brotherhood was established in 1928 — according to them.
It was ramped up with Nazi money during the thirties ( using cut-outs — what else ) and re-vectored towards troubling the British and raging against the Jews.
Qtbism hit the mb strong in the early 50s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayyid_Qutb
This is the clown that re-vectored the brotherhood against America.
Like all of the islamist fanatics Qutb received a free-ride college education in the West at taxpayer expense.
( Hint: it’s a very bad idea to give free college educations to muslims –especially taxpayer funded ones. The blow-back is measured in thousands of deaths. These fellows are trying to climb Maslow’s pyramid — but to do so the must murder thousands of kafir! That’s what a devout muslim must do. There is no other koranic path.)
I follow this blog faithfully and I agree with Victor #70, I would have to say that the fulcrum of chaos and order is Christianity. On one hand you have the power of the love of God(however imperfectly) and on the other hand death and the power of darkness. The west is in decline because we have abandoned our base.
You beat me to it, Harry. Jesus Christ is the axis around which all of history revolves. It is abundantly clear that He is both the problem that is upon us and the solution.
#16. Wretchard,
I’m greatly honored.
===
#12. Andrew X
I am rather surprised that no one else has made this analogy, but is anyone else constantly reminded by these events of the A&E TV show ‘Intervention’? I have said forever that socialism has the same effect on the body politic that heroin has on the human body, but I am stunned by the parallels today.
All that makes sense from a 1950s understanding of heroin addiction. However, in 2011 we know it doesn’t work that way. In 2011 we know that long term heroin use is caused by genetics and trauma. The hitting bottom stuff is myth or coincidence. You don’t cure trauma embedded in the brain by hitting bottom. The only known cure is time. And some times there is not enough time – it lasts a lifetime. What is to be done to reduce the side effects on society? Reduce the cost of a dose from black market prices to legal market prices.
The same can be said for much of what goes on re: government. It is not so much what it does (important though that is). It is the cost. If teachers made 30K a year with benefits and topped out at $40K they wouldn’t be a factor. Nor would there be so many opportunities for skimming. At $70K to $100K there will be a serious fight.
We can’t even root out the Somali pirate coves because all our forces are committed to two Nation-Building fronts in Southwest Asia.
We have more than enough power to solve the problem.
Flatten the village the pirates return to with Naval gunfire. Do it every time. If they land between two villages flatten both of them. A few villages flattened and the Somalis will solve the piracy problem without landing forces. It used to be called gun boat diplomacy. And no need to kill villagers. Give them time to evacuate. Just destroy property. The world will get out.
The other day I was reading an article about Unit 731. It turns out they have this big secret graveyard in Tokyo. The article also mentioned that a Unit 731 detachment had been posted to Mindanao where they vivisected condemned inmates to examine liver function. My guess was the inmates were from the Davao Penal Colony, what we used to call (among the lowlife) the “colonya”.
Unit 731 vivisected US Airmen and tested germ warfare on the Chinese for science. The Japanese, like the Germans, could grasp the notion of the abstract goal. They could want knowledge for its own sake, power for its own sake — cold bloodedly and methodically.
They could want it enough to kill the concrete human being for the abstract fruit of scientific knowledge, representatives of that branch of humanity for whom the general can be greater than the particular and the future more real than the present.
One should realize that there are cultures that are incapable of living in such generalized terms; for whom concepts like the Worker’s Paradise, or the New Man or the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere have no more reality than the Man In The Moon. For some cultures, God is a personal thing; and salvation is the loving caress they will feel on a night of rain when they have shuffled off their mortal coil.
How should such people ever understand something like Unit 731?
Often, when among the simple, the drunk and the trusting, I have felt afraid for cultures who did not know and could not know what icy power lay in civilizations they only dimly understood. Cultures like the Chinese, the Japanese and the European have bitten off a bigger bite of the fruit of knowledge of Good and Evil than others. They see wonders; and they see fell shadows in the dark.
These civilizations are very beautiful, but very dangerous towers of capability and custom, filled with fire. They can send a man to the moon and build an a-bomb. They can compose the Ode to Joy and formulate Zyklon B. They can build exquisite lasers and robots and put the Hello Kitty Logo on them. I saw a picture of the old Japanese nurse who helped out with Unit 731. She’s probably a very nice lady, but she was only doing her duty.
On the morning of September 11 (Sept 12 in Australia) I told someone, “do the Islamists know who they’re messing with?” “Yes, America” was the answer. I said, “no, do they really know who they are messing with? Because I don’t think they do.”
Something is wrong with these civilizations of fire, just now. We call it the culture wars. And that ought to be a matter of concern to everyone. Because if the world system begins to crack up, you have to wonder what fell spirits can escape from these great storehouses of good and evil.
Wretchard
“Imagine this: working 75 years against a payoff that exists only in your mind”
my father, a traditional paysan in Brittany, used to keep oaks for such a long period too, orchards were of the same care, these sorts of trees were part of families inheritages then. I don’t think that the nowadays farmers respect trees.
Alo I don’t think that Germans would consider a Philipine guy as their equals, suffice to read how they consider people of the “Mediterranean Club”
re: Libya
Americans who eagerly climbed aboard the Maria Dolores ferry at Tripoli’s As-shahab port on Wednesday faced a long delay in their travel plans. Strong winds have been whipping up high waves in the Mediterranean, and the 600-passenger catamaran ferry was not likely to leave for Malta until Friday.
“The ferry will depart when the weather improves. At the moment, we’re anticipating this will happen by tomorrow morning, but we’re waiting for an updated weather report,” said Elijah Waterman of the U.S. Embassy in Malta. – Yahoo News
Another poster made a comment earlier, probably on the previous thread, that indicated that U.S. Navy units were out of position to support evacuation activities, which I agree, indicates a level of unpreparedness not typical with the Navy, and highly consistent with Executive intervention.
The situation above is rife for hostage taking. This ship full of Americans represents a “high value” target, very near target for Al Qaeda or other anti-US interests. I would hope that Obama’s security analysts have figured this out, and put a SEAL team aboard that fairy immediately, and get a Frigate or two to Tripoli ASAP.
However, I doubt Obama’s team lacks the foresight or talent to understand the risks.
Oh, and by the way, I guess this situation proves conclusively that the US Marines are an antiquated force, no longer required in a world in which Higgins Boats no longer rush hostile beaches (/end sarcasm).
Old Salt
As far races is on board, the Germans like to believe that their ancient tribes were Hittites or Chatti
http://tinyurl.com/64fxub2
The American left may find that it is now on King’s Hill. They’ve crossed over into a territory they are unfamiliar with and assume their professionals can take down the amatuers they expect to find there. Ferguson found out that while he was facing militia with his professionals he didn’t reallize that he was facing a militia that had field experience in fighting Indians in forested terrain. He retreated to high open ground and hoped to use his higher rate of fire to keep them off. They just sniped him to death from the edge of the forest. The community organizers are going to experience the death of a thousand cuts from the blogosphere while he wields the MSM that is outranged.
Re: 45. blert
Link??
The fundamental difference between the races is environment. White people are white because they need UV to produce enzymes required to digest the grains that grow in northern climes. They are more blood thirsty and inventive because survival among the snow and tundra requires it. Blacks pretty much live in paradise compared to the original Rus ( the tribes that migrated north out of the Caucasus following the retreating ice sheets). Big difference between making a lean-to out of grass and sticks for a place to live and chasing a bear out of a cave with a pointy stick.
Take 10,000 blacks out of Africa and drop them in Scandinavia and in a few thousand years they will be white guys. Take 10,000 whites and drop them in Africa and in a few thousand years they will be black.
Ms. T, it isn’t a lack of numbers that keeps the USA from cleaning up the pirates. It is a lack of will. The US Army has about 70,000 troops in Germany. WHY?
Move them to Somilia and the problem is solved. Of course that would create other problems. Such as those wanting us in there will be complaining the loudest if we went.
Americans generally use the term Asian to refer to an East Asian. People from the former British Empire using the same word are usually thinking of South Asians and by extension Arabs, but not so much Iranians. Americans do not often call those groups Asian even if they come from the continent of Asia. Before the flood when the Afrikaaners ran apartheid South Africa the Japanese were classified as honorary White People. Chinese were told to use facilities marked as being for Asians.
Seriously we could save hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of lives with a few B-52 passes over Somali ports and a dozen targeted assassinations of money men in Zurich and Milan. If we did so then warrants would be issued for Secretary Gates and and a dozen officers over the signature of some judge in The Hague.
Convincing the Europeans that it is wrong to do that, the same ones who prosecuted Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff in Vienna or Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, will be as hard as discouraging brutality from the union thug in the video at the top of this thread, and for the same reason. They feel it is safe to do so and think that those who do not bring force in from the periphery deserve contempt. They are bullies, like Assange of Wikileaks and Michael hastings of Rolling Stone, who assume they are immune from coercion by the same system that they assault to demonstrate their own power.
Col Jessup’s speech in “A Few Good Men” was accurate. What is interesting is that it was written by Aaron Sorkin who exemplifies the fantasy of assaulting the authority figures that shelter him. A doctrinaire MoveOn.org leftist Sorkin was deeply addicted to an assortment of illegal drugs at the time that he wrote that play. He is also extremely controlling and authoritarian in his personal and professional life.
83…
See 49
link and astonishing vidi are all there.
Cheers
MC…
So, at last: you’re Brittanish?
Well !
Blert, my parents were living in the gallo speaking part (a patois, some kind of mixture of latin, celtic, german languages), in the triangle Rennes, Fougères, Vitré. And my mother grand father was Croat, probably from Korkula.
does the cost amid trying economic times justify spending so much political capital?
Daniel Howes, unlike Gov. Walker, doesn’t know about power. Political capital doesn’t regen on a timer like energy points in a Zynga game. It comes from accomplishing things that people approve of. Breaking the unions won’t cost political capital, it will generate it.
The things that cost political capital are dithering in the face of challenges (a la prior incarnations of the GOP), or pushing through deeply unpopular changes (a la Barack Hussein Obamacare).
Something is wrong with these civilizations of fire, just now. We call it the culture wars. And that ought to be a matter of concern to everyone. Because if the world system begins to crack up, you have to wonder what fell spirits can escape from these great storehouses of good and evil.
Like I said a few posts ago, sometime in the next few years the US will wrap up it’s internal war-of-the-soul, and it will be a bitter, hardening struggle. The country that emerges will be led by a Truman, a Patton or a Sherman, or their evil-Spock equivalents if things go wrong. Then something ugly is going to happen, because I just don’t think the rest of the world will figure out how to not cause problems. The Philippines may be home of the Hapi-Hapi guy, but the ME seems to be home of the Yapi-Yapi guy. The Hapi-Hapi guy never wears out his welcome. The Yapi-Yapi guy wore his out ten minutes before he met you, and how hard he gets hit is just a matter of how much patience the White or sorta-White guys has.
Patience will be the commodity in shortest supply the next few years.
Brythonic Celt
Welsh
Cornish
Breton
Where does the future come from?
Science/agriculture –> you do A – wait – B happens.
For the hapi-hapi – hungry? Find a tree.
What does the white guy think? Hapi found a tree. Lets start a plantation.
Can any BC’ers tell me why we don’t have a carrier group in the Med? Did they Navy drop the ball? Joint Chiefs? SecDef? Or is this a conscious decision that goes all the way to the top? If I where in congress I’d be looking to have hearings on this. It would seem that this is exactly how the left wants America, lacking both the physical ability to act and the political will. How soon until this Manchurian is unmasked?
In general. I’m a hawk, but why are we in af/pak?
cds @ 92: no carrier in the med cuz plans are made six months in advance, and we’re hanging around Iran … in case the Israelis attack, mebbe, or mebbe there’s a secret canal building project to sail to Kabul.
O/T
Doctors from Rambam Hospital have successfully saved a Gaza toddler who was suffering a brain tumor. The child, Wallah Omar, is recovering well, and hopes to return home within a week.
Wallah first became ill four months ago. Her parents initially thought she had a virus, but soon she began to lose motor skills. They took her to a Gaza hospital, where doctors found she had a tumor pushing against her brain.
The doctors in Gaza City told the family to go to Rambam, which they said had care far superior to that available in Gaza or under the Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria.
Rambam administrators agreed to transfer Wallah immediately. When she arrived, a scan showed that her tumor was roughly the size of a large orange. Doctors performed surgery immediately, and removed the growth.
Her father, Ayad, said Wallah “is recovering amazingly,” and credited the staff at Rambam for saving her life.
The Children’s Hospital at Rambam treats approximately 700 PA Arabs children each year, and has provided care to 200 people from Gaza over the past six months. Patients from Gaza and PA-controlled areas of Judea and Samaria are accepted in other Israeli hospitals as well.
(IsraelNationalNews.com)
The bipartisan Little Hoover Commission recommended today that California state and local governments roll back pensions for existing employees, dump guaranteed retirement payouts and put more of the pension burden on workers.
http://blogs.sacbee.com/the_state_worker/2011/02/commissions-plan-rolls-back-pe.html
The Navy is trying to keep a carrier within striking distance of Afganistan, also something may pop in Iraq or Iran, the Korean and Chinese area is tense, Japan and Russia are snarling at each other also. I’m not real sure how stable Thailand is. Then there is the whole piracy thing. There could be a crisis in South America, Mexico, or Cuba, druggies and commies. If I were king I’d also want something within range of the East,West, and Gulf coasts. The last I knew we had 10 Nimitz class carriers and the Enterprise to cover all of that. While the ships can be resuplied, and manned at sea, eventually they need harbor maitenance. The Enterprise came out of drydock in April of 2010. The 1st Gerald Ford class was supposed to be available in 2015 but I wouldn’t bet on it. The Navy is looking at giving up on the super carriers because the cost has gotten so unreasonable. They are looking at more smaller carriers and UAV carriers in various studys.
85. Blast From the Past
The proper way to look at it:
Addicted to drugs = person in pain.
Looked at that way a lot of what goes on becomes more comprehensible.
I believe left/right is more about intolerance/tolerance for pain than any kind of political theory. i.e. how do you feel about the suffering of others/yourself. And it has nothing to do with drug use (although that can be an indicator of he level of pain) Bomber Joe Was an opiate addict. And Halsted.
The left likes pain free utopias (why should anyone suffer?). The right likes painful ones (how else can you learn?). A middle way would be nice.
This seething cesspool of current events is no accident.
Our leader is the inheritor of a legacy of implacable hostility to a culture he despises. As much as you might want to dismiss him as incompetent, he is not. It’s just his area of competence is in the sapper’s art.
The positioning of the US Navy in precisely the wrong place to be of any use whatsoever to U.S. Citizens cannot be accidental. (Just as you can be certain that the President himself ordered the U.S. Navy to sit on its thumbs and not act against the poor authentically oppressed third world indegenes who murdered the evangelist boaters seized on the high seas.) The spitting demons in the present administration cannot be so supremely imbecilic as to be unaware of the US Military’s tradition of courage and efficiency in rescuing and evacuating U.S. civilian citizens from the chaos of civil disorder arising while they’re traveling or working in other countries.
Just think of the juicy possibilities for Dear Community Agitator.
Not only does he show he gives not a crap for the abandoned (“stranded”) U.S. citizens awaiting transport from North African countries falling deeper into chaos — (“That’ll show’em for trying to get out from under my thumb!”) At the same time he shows his utter contempt for the U.S. Military, its exhaustive training, expensive equipment, and the readiness of its people to place themselves in harm’s way in the service of their country.
The petty tyrant has done a fine job of screwing things up all around the world. He is a classic psychopath, who clearly regards the people suffering the consequences of his spasms of misrule as less than the soil he treads.
This sick joke is our commander-in-chief.
Think on that, long and hard.
“Commander in Chief” of the military forces of the United States of America.
Afghanistan and Iraq certainly had persistent problems before his inaugural, but it has been his strenuous pursuit of demolition that has taken a difficult situation and pushed it steadily toward impossible: Consider his deliberate refusal to even meet with his own chosen commander for a full year, his “sacrifice U.S. troops before letting them actually accomplish their mission” Rules of Engagement, and his utterly perverse encouragement of the enemies of the West. These now threaten to strand our troops in the field just as his insane mis-handling of the Egyptian business has stranded U.S. tourists and business people in coastal cities while revolution and Jihadists swirl around them.
This is the castration and disemboweling of a nation. A mesmerized electorate has elected a leader who hates them and wants them to die, and he has chosen for his friends and helpmates a distilled crowd of perverts, traitors, cheats, pickpockets, and terrorists.
CDS,
Some here are speculating that the unavailability of naval forces shows deliberate malfeasance on the part of Obama, that he sent them elsewhere and slipped the info to the bad guys that now is the time to kick over the table. Maybe but I doubt it. Most deployment schedules are worked out long in advance and the only Contingency Operation that pulled ships away was sending a task force South because of trouble in Somalia. The fact is that we have to few ships. The Navy is smaller than it has been since 1916. Even the best ship can’t be in two places at once, and some units such as the new LCS or the old FFGs were built cheap and hardly count as that good anyway. Aircraft Carriers spend about a third of their time under repair and unavailable for anywhere from weeks to months, a third in training during which they could be rushed out in an emergency on anything from a few hours to a few days notice, and a third of their time actually forward deployed. Smaller ships spend somewhat less time undergoing major repairs but still face a similar cycle. The US currently has 11 aircraft carriers, which means that up to four CVBGs (Carrier battle Groups) can be deployed and maybe three more could surge in an emergency. Figure that you need at least one within range of North Korea at all times and two around the Persian Gulf and Northwest Indian Ocean. That leaves exactly one more for the rest of the planet. Ideally you would always want them to operate in pairs during actual combat because the force multiplier and efficiency of having multiple decks more than doubles the combat power available. At one time we had 16 big deck carriers on active duty. In addition for responding to a crisis we should have amphibious forces of the Expeditionary Strike Groups, the old ARGs (amphibious ready groups) that center around a small carrier type transport and other vessels with landing craft. These can put an reinforced Marine battalion, about 800 infantry, with support elements, supplies and an air component ashore and provide air support. With 11 LHA/LHD class transports in the inventory, they also are frequently under repair but not as often as the big carriers, we should have enough to plug holes when the carriers are not around and small problems, like civilian evacuation, need a fast response. Why none of these are to be found anywhere between Virginia and the Indian Ocean is a very good question.
The final message in all this is that it is a big and dangerous world and we need more ships and people. Some problems can’t be solved by a kid with a joystick in Nevada operating a drone on the other side of the planet. Given the need for flexibility in responding to emerging crisis in a world that is more complicated than it was during the Cold War, which was a simple if serious problem, and given the multiplier effect of having two or more carriers available during real combat, which gives the taxpayer what they were paying for when they really need it, we need to double the size of the Navy. Building a new carrier takes years. If we started a crash program now we could increase the number of available battle groups routinely available from four to seven, in about a dozen years at best.
I haven’t made it to the Philippines, but I have made it to Hawaii and to Indonesia, and this is where I’ve encountered the “hapi hapi” man.
I live in envy of the hapi hapi man. Part of the reason is that the hapi hapi man seems to be walking around in Paradise, in stark contrast to the Bavarian Man.
The Pacific islands are strangely beautiful places, unlike any other part of Earth I’ve so far encountered. They are intoxicating, in a good way. Hell yes there are mean streets, mostly even, in Jarkarta, Manilla and also Honolulu.
But they are hapi hapi mean streets. I would rather be on one of those than on a mean street in Philadelphia or Detroit.
A friend of mine is in love and fascinated with California precisely because of how screwed up California has become. To him the hopeless boink factor in Cali has only added to its charm. If you are going to be stark, raving mad, why not make an art out it? Cali has dutifully complied. Make Life Art. Damn the torpedoes!
I get the scent of it, the scent of damn the torpedoes, when I’m afoot in the glorious and bewitching Pacific. I can see why Fletcher Christian was not only possible, but inevitable.
And simultaneously I sympathize with Capt. Bly, rowing inexhorably back out, back to the stations of duty. Cause I’m a White Guy, I suppose.
Looks like the next step has been taken in Wisconsin:
“MADISON, Wis. — The Wisconsin Assembly early Friday passed a bill that would strip most public workers of their collective bargaining rights — the first significant action on the new Republican governor’s plan.
The vote put an end to three straight days of punishing debate, but the political standoff over the bill is far from over.
The Assembly vote sends the bill on to the state Senate, where minority Democrats have been missing for a week. No one knows when — or if — they’ll return from their hideout in Illinois. Republicans who control the Senate sent state troopers out looking for them at their homes on Thursday, but they turned up nothing.”
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/02/25/wisconsin-assembly-passes-anti-union/
I doubt that the MIA Dems are hapi-hapi types in spite of the delights of places like the Tilted Kilt.
Here’s where they are:
CVN Enterprise: North Arabian Sea
CVN Vinson: North Arabian Sea
CVN Lincoln: Singapore
CVN Washington: Japan
CVN Stennis: San Diego
CVN Truman: Norfolk
CVN Reagan: Eastern Pacific
CVN Bush: Western Atlantic
No carrier group in the Med. Two caught south in the North Arabain. They’re looking at Iran and KSM, prolly – priority over Egypt, Tunisia, “Lybia”.
It looks like if it hits the fan it will be a triage situation.
Cowboy,
That means that 3, the Nimitz, Roosevelt and Eisenhower, are in overhaul and can’t get underway. Another 4, the Stennis, Truman, Reagan and Bush are either undergoing training and preparing to deploy or are recently returned and awaiting an overhaul. They are available for a surge if needed. The George Washington is homeported in Japan and finished a deployment in December. It may be able to respond if needed. That means we have exactly three out there, of which two are busy watching AFPAK and Iran and one is half a world away from Libya in Singapore. The Amphibious forces are not in the Med, and one should have been sent to cover. USS Bataan (LHD-5) is underway in the Atlantic and could be sent over and USS Kearsarge (LHD-3) is in the Indian Ocean area and could head North. They may be needed near Somalia. Given the need to keep an eye on Korea there really isn’t anything else available. If Chavez feels that the press are neglecting him this would be the time for him to do something stupid.
“said pressure had been put on field and refinery managers to stop work and protect all foreign nationals working with them”
Decades after the beneficent reign of the enlightened one who nationalized the refineries, foreigners still run Libya’s oil refineries. Speaks volumes about socialism, islam, and arabs, doesn’t it?
The solution to Wisconsin is a recall election or three. Efforts are underway. The Ds are going after some Rs. The Rs after some Ds. So in ten or fifteen weeks there will be a test. The Democrat’s big idea is that no money bills can pass without them. That may be a big mistake.
Gettysburg happened where it did because of shoes.
BTW I live about two or three miles from the Tilted Kilt. Never went there. My favorite was Frank Gay’s “Marquee”. A strip club run by a former minister. Long closed by the blue noses. The girls were always very nice and no shenanigans. I have fond memories of holding hands and having a long conversation with one of the girls (she was older and very well put together) about our respective families. I never fell into the good girls/bad girls trap so many guys fall into. I saw the pubes and the person.
I trained at A1W to be an Enterprise RO. I got assigned to the Bainbridge. Needs of the service. It was nice watching the big E in the morning before quarters doing flight ops.
For all you Navy guys: http://www.archive.org/details/GeneralQuartersBattleStations Fourteen seconds of nostalgia.
Wretchard thinks we may get through this with minimal fighting. Maybe with McCain. With the current Resident? I have serious doubts.
How many special interest groups can the administration appease at one time?
When does it all go to shit?
MS@98: The left likes pain free utopias (why should anyone suffer?). The right likes painful ones (how else can you learn?). A middle way would be nice.
Couldn’t agree more. It’s the missing third leg to supplement free market capitalism and liberal democracy.
Earlier I was reminded of the five stages of grief defined by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. It almost seems as though opinion in this country is uniformly distributed among the five stages. At a minimum, people are starting to note that polls are all evenly split.
Do you agree that the sky is blue?
Yes – 10%
No – 10%
Not Sure – 10%
Don’t Care – 10%
All of the above – 10%
None of the above – 10%
Ask me later – 10%
Could you repeat the question? – 10%
If it is, Obama did it. – 10%
If it is, Bush did it. – 10%
I’m pretty sure I’m a Celt.
I’m age 68.
How in the world did I become a . . .
“Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy”
“Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy”
. . . guy having just a really great time observing the human condition ?
OK, I have an “parallel life” being a bitter old white-guy rightwing gun nut. {:^)
wretchard @ 16:
Really? Really?
Yeah, it is always them eeeevil white guys fault!
Really? Really?
Man, did I have you wrong all those years or is this way too subtle snark?
robo/111, –calling ‘racism’ on wretchard? All due respect, but i think you’re 180 degree misunderstanding the remark –and in so doing, sidling up precariously alongside a wrong the left commits regularly –that is, calling out racism where there is none –and thereby making the word 10 feet tall and ultimately destroying the entire enthnological discipline within the study of man —
Would it have been better if instead of ‘white guys’ he’d said ‘male natives of the northern hemisphere’s temperate latitudes whose global leadership into the industrial revolution created weapons of revolutionary lethality’ ?
hmm, i dunno. sounds clunky.
bl,
Try “mnotnhtlwglitrcworl,” it rolls off the tongue.
W: The most brutal fights in the world were between white guys.
I wasn’t going to comment, but Wretchard jumped the shark on that one (I believe that is the expression.)
Africa, Rwanda, Hutu and Tutsi tribes, Desmond Tutu in South Africa conflicts (as mediator.)
Home to some of the most brutal violence, killing, and, yes, genocide in the modern world. Life is truly cheap on the African continent.
Unless one makes a distinction based on weapons sophistication, racial and ethnic boundaries present little more than porous constraints for human brutality.
DanP_from_AZ @ 110
A 68 year mystery solved.
Certainty can be comforting.
Para. 5
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celts
bftp/113; jest away, but ’twas a late and bleary hour
and the day was at its enth degree,
and so i thought i might as well
invent enth hour ography
the non-existent study of
the non-phenomenological, see?