What does the truth look like before it’s revealed? Well, what patterns are you prepared to see? Rachel Maddow confidently told the public how Anthony Weiner was victimized by the vast great right-wing conspiracy — only days before the congressman explained that he’d lied to everyone, including the press.
There are a number of reasons why news analysts can get things wrong. Here are some reasons why Ms. Maddow may have been off-base:
- The subordination of analysis to ideology. Where a given framework admits of only one conclusion, no other conclusion, no matter how obvious, can be arrived at. Maddow may have wanted to believe Weiner was a knight in shining armor and Andrew Breitbart was the devil incarnate, so she adopted an approach which produced that result.
- Mis-estimation of the factors governing a situation. Maddow may have thought that rudimentary image manipulation skills and not corrupting network logs were the governing factor in successful hoaxing.
- Mirror imaging. Maddow may have been familiar with what she might have done in a similar situation had the shoe been on the other foot and the object of the scandal a Republican. Therefore it was easy to assume that other people would behave in the same way.
- Lack of information. Her fact base was scanty. In reality, the absence of facts should have led her to say, “We don’t know what happened.” Of all the defects of her analysis, the absence of facts was the most fatal.
Interestingly, the same factors apply on a meta scale to her audience. Maddow is unlikely to lose as many viewers as one would think. First, her audience may subordinate analysis to ideology. Never mind if Rachel gets it wrong. She tells them what they want to hear, so they’ll keep listening. Mirror-imaging plays a part too. Her audience may presume that other audiences are similarly insensitive to facts and conclude that opinions are entirely independent of reality. Finally, her audience has no ready number to measure just how badly their oracle is getting things wrong. They may assume that other analysts are wrong just as often.
In sum, her ratings may not suffer from her mistake.
Far more interesting is the question of how many journalists were surprised by Weiner’s ultimate admission. Unlike Maddow, many journalists, including the politically liberal, were not surprised at all. They had gradually become skeptical of Weiner’s innocence as the days passed because they could recognize the fluttering of a politician in trouble. It was Weiner’s bizarre response that led them to suspect the truth. When the moment of confession came it did not come as total shock to everyone except the true believers.
Those journalists were cumulating the facts. Whatever their political inclinations were, these had not yet completely overwhelmed their logical faculties. Whether they were willing to admit it or not, they knew which way the story was tending.
Has Weiner been frank.
I would say no. He got increasingly testy as they peppered him with annoying questions at his mea culpa show. He’s claiming now that he’s only been doing this for “three years” (woke up at age 41 and said, “Whoopee, I know how I’ll spend the afternoon! sexting DD college coeds. Dagnabbit, why didn’t I think of that earlier? But I’d better keep it to just two a year.“)He said it was stupid and a mistake in judgement, but there was almost no admission that he has a character or moral problem.
His crying didn’t get him off the hook with his female constituents: to a woman, the ones they interviewed on TV today were disgusted with him and cynical about his explanations, and said he has to go. (They seem to have seen the male-tears gambit after sexual peccadillos more than once. . . .)
Honestly, I think we’re at the “Tiger Woods Admits to 10 Mistresses” stage of the scandal.
He’s displayed “bad judgement,” dishonesty, zero impulse-control, no morals, no shame, and stupidity to boot. Just what we need in power.
Has Weiner been frank.
Very droll.
All four. I’m shocked that Maddow was so wrong on this, as she is usually right about everything. That’s sarc, in case anyone doesn’t recognize it.
. Anyway, she’ll just “move on” to the next list of lies and innuendo without missing a beat, and her followers will follow right along. There may be a few of her viewers who will start to have doubts, either now or after some future lie, and we can welcome them to the fold when they get here.
The shocking thing to journalists is probably the fact that they couldn’t contain this story, rather than the fact that Weiner was lying to them. In the old days, they’d kill the story, or if that wasn’t possible, they’d smear the messenger, and “move on”. They’re still trying to play the game, but it doesn’t work anymore. Breitbart has become much stronger for this, and Maddow et.al. have descended further into the pit, if that’s even possible.
The media went over the tipping point within the last couple of years. At one time, they had to make a pretense of being objective and factual, while pushing their themes in a subtle way. The idea was to influence the people who don’t pay a lot of attention (since they decide our elections), while at the same time being able to defend their coverage from those who actually know what’s going on.
Now, just as they’re losing their keys to the gates, the gatekeepers have decided to pull out the stops, let the mask drop, and go full bore with their propaganda efforts. I assume that’s because subtle is no longer working, and after all, many of them became journalists to “make a difference”, i.e. to become an advocate.
They still have some power (witness what they’ve done to SP), but it’s diminishing every day. They know it, but just can’t help themselves. Once you become an open advocate, you can’t get your journalistic “credibility” back. Ever.
Ratings? Rachel Maddow has actual ratings?! MSNBC is bad college radio, with a TV signal.
Duranty’s unreturned pulitzer.
Cronkite (leader of the MSM) on Tet.
The “rural purge”.
The formation of NPR.
Rather admonishing “courage”.
“I did not have sex with that woman.”
Rathergate.
Republican politicians resigning, Democrat ones not so much.
(If I’ve left anything out, please feel free to add to the list. I’m sure there’s a lot more and I don’t have time right now.)
When you have a political class with no morals or ethics, and any one of them whose politics are left of center can fully expect air cover from the bulk of the MSM plus taxpayer funded NPR and PBS, this is what you get.
#4 JJ Sefton.
Good comment, but I would modify it slightly to:
“MSNBC is what NPR would look like if you gave all its employees truth serum and a television signal.”
Latest ratings indicate that Maddow’s audience is down 50% since “The Confession” hit the air. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the other viewer is going on vacation…
Breitbart is the right’s answer to Dan Rather/ Mike Wallace/ Sixty Minutes ambush journalism. That is not a compliment. But Breitbart looked like a hero last night when he warned Weiner and the Democrats, “Don’t go after the women.” It’s not a threat, it’s a promise.
Weiner actually showed a glimpse of class. He didn’t drag his wife out in front of the cameras to stand by her man; and he apologized to Breitbart and the journalists he misled. Maybe it’s the start of a twelve step program. Still, the ABC video is creepy. Is “narcissistic sociopath” a synonym for “career politican”?
Facts? You could give Maddow $100 to buy a clue, and she would still come back empty handed. She (and much of the MSM), is not interested in clues. And the mask is coming off of “The subordination of analysis to ideology”.
What JJ said. MSNBC is no longer on the cable in my market. I still have it child blocked. Just in case it raises from the dead. Vampire TV?
Rachel Maddow and Anthony Weiner gain the loyalty of their supporters not for what they know or achieve but for who they are. All they have to do is remain loyal on a few core issues that their constituents care about. These include homosexual empowerment, union empowerment, and abortion. Nothing else matters. The attachment is really pre-modern and almost feudal. Any personal transgression can be forgiven and even welcomed as binding the offender more closely to The Movement.
By comparison conservatives tend to take a utilitarian approach to political loyalty. They look at someone and ask if they can perform the tasks listed in their job description, including avoiding embarrassment.
“audiences are similarly insensitive to facts and conclude that opinions are entirely independent of reality.”
This says it all. It’s why I left the left that day. September 11, 2001. I became suddenly aware that “the reality based community” was insane.
To them the worst thing to have happened here was Breitbart being right.
“The subordination of analysis (truth) to ideology (non-truth). Where a given framework admits of only one conclusion (non-truth), no other conclusion (truth), no matter how obvious, can be arrived at.”
Rachel Maddow has given us a choice – accept the lie outright – or delve into the insane world of Orwellian Doublethink – accept the lie and the truth simultaneously.
“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously [the lie and the truth], and accepting both of them [Insanity]… with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth… Those who have the best knowledge of what is happening are also those who are furthest from seeing the world as it is; in general the greater the understanding the greater the delusion; the more intelligent the less sane.” George Orwell – 1984
Oh I so hope he the Weiner doesn’t resign. He Nancy Pelosi, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Ed, Chris, Babba, and the other chosen ones who speak for the left make such good representations of competence, integrity, and technological knowledge that you get when you vote for Democrats(liberals, progressives, and communists in white shirts and limousines).
Honestly does anyone with half a brain think that if you put something out on the Internet you can keep it secret or erase it anymore? Heck Email can’t be killed,(see Oliver North & Dawn) what makes them think Facebook and twitter are safe? Everything is out on multiple servers somewhere. Doesn’t it make you giggle when YouTube or someone else will pull a video or image and then it shows up on about a dozen mirror sights about 10 minutes after they pull it. If you don’t want to use 128 digit encryption to send an Internet message to Granny you better be careful what you say to the old girl. And if you use encryption I wouldn’t doubt that you’ll get flagged by Homeland insecurity as a person of interest.
Meanwhile the Legacy Media is getting into the position that if they run the cavalry while ride them down with lance and sabre. If they form square they’ll get blown apart by cannon. They can’t surrender because they no skills for anything else. They’d get fired from a fast food job.
“Her [Rachel Maddow's] audience may subordinate analysis [truth] to ideology [non-truth]. Never mind if Rachel gets it wrong. She tells them what they want to hear.”
The truth leads in a heretical direction, and is therefore inimical to Rachel Maddow’s ideology; her audience may therefore exercise the option of protective stupidity.
“Crimestop…includes the power of not grasping analogies; of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc [Socialist Ideology of Oceania], and of being bored or rebelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop in short means protective stupidity… The world view of the Party imposed its self most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm because it left no residue behind; just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird.” George Orwell – 1984
The penis is mightier than his word.
I have tried in vain to avoid this ‘scandal’ on the news cycle. To me, this is a disgusting case of modern age soft porn/political exhibitionism. That said, I think Weiner over reacted and would have put a quick end to the speculation by simply making his mea culpa. He could have said, though in bad taste, that he and his friends clown around and flirt with each other and it was a modern day technical mistake to let things get out for general consumption. I think he might have gotten some sympathy for that, instead he had to go full on moon-bat and blame the white devil. A hackneyed response at best.
It illustrates that the Media has outlived its purpose as a news gathering organization and that it tries too hard to collectively shape the news to fit a political narrative. To think that there are millions of mental zombies that think that our media is fair and balanced and possibly leaning to the right makes me apoplectic. Fair and balanced means to stay within the fascist narrative or in the case of Fox news have Alan Colmes barf some snitty bigotry into the face of opposing opinion.
I really like Wretches 4 reasons for failure. Very concise while frightening in its full implications.
Being a liberal ideologue means never having to say “you’re sorry”.
and I add, the lie is worse than the act. But don’t worry, Nancy Pelosi, the paragon of virtue, says she is going to investigate, at least she was when she thought she could sheep dip Breitbart. Clever tactic that, bury the story or exhibit high moral turpitude if the corpse is too stinking to cover up.
This story has everything that the press loves, except they did not break it and it does not feature a Republican fall guy.
These are people for whom the only truth is that there are no truths. This means that all of their other conclusions will be wrong, except for the occasional broken clock moment. There is not a plan, project, or idea associated with contemporary liberalism that has escaped the range between failure and catastrophe.
Whiskey’s words reverberate down through time: these folks need to be laughed out of town, or shamed into submission to reality if they have it in them.
This is no surprise. It was predictable that, as dictated by his track record, everything Obama touched would turn to crap. Race relations, the MSM, the Democratic party, the economy, and now world order are all on the ropes. I suppose you could argue that he’s a symptom, not a cause, but the central question stills seems to be whether he/they are aware of what they’re doing or if it’s just in their nature.
In other words, what they’re doing and trying to do seems pretty clear. It’s what nihilists always do.
Andrew Breitbart needs a bodyguard – no- , a slew of bodyguards. He has committed the ultimate sin against our Nanny Police State. Bravo.
Out of academic curiosity I followed the scandal on Daily Kos and found diary after diary, mostly in the “Recommended” category, of lurid conspiracy theories involving Breitbart, CNN, Dan Wolfe, and even “crimson hexagons” whatever the heck they are, laden with full-out hatred and demands that Breitbart be brought to justice.
Occasionally a commenter would say, “Hey wait a minute, this is kinda crazy and is not helping our cause,” but these commenters would be ignored or shouted down as though they were Republican trolls.
In other words the Kos community was daily fanning the flames started by Weiner’s “hacking” accusation. It was a rerun of the Rathergate memos fiasco in which the “reality-based community” was so desperate to believe that something damaging their position had to be the fault of an evil conservative mastermind, such as Karl Rove then or Andrew Breitbart now.
After Weiner confessed, one Kossack started a diary asking how Daily Kos fell so thoroughly for all the nuttiness defending Weiner — since they still fancy themselves to be “the reality-based community” — and there was some breast beating and a few I-told-you-so’s, but otherwise it was more hate towards Breitbart and the Right, some towards Weiner for hurting Democrats and progressives and making Breitbart look good, but little self-reflection on how they might avoid getting fooled again.
“Has Weiner been frank.
though it’s a bratWurst show !
My Party Line, right or wrong. Maddow is currently the leading Minister of Truth.
In the old days, they’d kill the story, or if that wasn’t possible, they’d smear the messenger, and “move on”.
This Weiner episode may be a tipping point. The MSM will have to realize that they’re not the gateway they were. For once, the lies, obfuscations and dead-wrong media groupthink are all clearly exposed while the event was still in the news.
Is “narcissistic sociopath” a synonym for “career politican”?
YES!
Defining deviancy down.
huxley – “Occasionally a commenter would say, “Hey wait a minute, this is kinda crazy and is not helping our cause,” but these commenters would be ignored or shouted down as though they were Republican trolls.”
The Kossacks, rightly named, are a mob fomenting mob mentality. The Left are the masters of the mob and ‘group think’. In Wretchard’s mirror imaging pathology the mobs are the first to denounce Christianity but the first to accuse the witch. This is why liberalism lends so well to thuggery. Group think ensconced in group action protected by Tammany Hall patronage. Unions are the means to structure the distribution of the goodies.
The government is the ultimate gang leader and they wrap themselves with academic credentialism to an elite club that has racist admission standards. Their cronyism demands that we worship our heroes in the public sector as the champions of the republic while vilifying the self-starters who have built this country out of mud. Public employee unions are pure evil.
Weiner attempted to in effect suborn perjury, he hired PR, lawyers and others to help create a coverup of lies. When the evidence started to leak through and ONLY then, did he “apologize”.
And he only apologized to Breitbart after REPEATED prompts.
And…his apology was no such thing. “I didn’t break any laws or rules that I KNOW OF”.
Rachel Maddow and the whole barking lot over at that small c communist media outlet could not analyze the use of a lead pencil. Even their teleprompters are programmed to lie.
The fun house mirrors inside their brains make distortion the norm. Facts are things that get in the way of the end story. They are discarded and have been by leftists for nearly half a century in this country.
The narrative is written first, then…whatever facts are “needed” to support that narrative are filled in like so much polemic putty. Brian Williams, Dan Rather, Katie Couric, …the whole lot of them…are hardly any better. It is merely a degree of polish glossed onto the presentation. A half-truth is a whole lie.
This is first, foremost and always the prime movement of a story in the Make Believe Media.
Exhelodrvr @ 18: Win the thread!
Only edit I would make: The penis, mightier than the word.
Genius, sheer genius. Thanks.
If Rachel Madcow is a “news analyst”, I am a Goodyear Blimp.
am/27, i don’t follow hannity and ann coulter all that closely –i appreciate what they do –package memes for a wider audience that net readers digested a week earlier –while destroying face to face opponents who don’t understand they’ve been destroyed –but i stumbled into the show last night and was knocked over by coulter. She was describing her new book, Demonic –and among other items was a bit of discourse on the very thing you mention –the collective as the mob, and the mob as the evil through history. She soared –off the end of a limb a bit (exampling “my name is Legion”) –but has definitely amped up her act. i hope she doesn’t open up any more schisms in the armies of the right, this time around. But the perplexing ability of a Maddow or a Pelosi or a Gore to be so totally inconsistent and never realize it, or more likely, to be unembarrassed over it, is –implies coulter last night –all about the language of the mob –it is always in images, and if text will be a slogan –a set of words that fit a placard or bumper sticker because they can exist in the mind as an image rather than a thought –IOW they stay back in the back of the brain and don’t stir up the frontal lobes –as planned by the ‘evil genius’ it goes without saying.
I think Wretch’s 4 factors all boil down to the first; ideology will only allow certain info (4), tactical options (3) or proper contextualization (2). it’s like the beam in your eye: only distorted vision of some form can result. Only survival instinct, at the last second, empowers one to jump from the path of the bus from the blind spot. But the blind spot too survives.
Actually Breitbart (Blackbart to the libs) uses a tactic as old as Socrates; it is the plotline of the Dialogues. The ironist says less than he knows, thus tempting the braggart or Alazon to say more than he knows; a simple pull on the loose thread unravels the fabrication, exposing the fool in his overreach or self-contradiction.
The oldest form, the Socratic, of argumentative rebuttal is reduction to absurdity. BUT IT REQUIRES THE AUDIENCE TO HAVE A SENSE OF THE ABSURD. Extremists lack this. (Kill those who say Islam is violent.)
If, ala Orwell, (tip o’ th’ hat to Storm Rider) survival, political or otherwise, requires you to believe that x is x (if democrat) and x is y (if republican), (x=any domestic or foreign policy proposal: e.g. R2P), then we have lost all reason: ab-surd.
I think Jon Stewart has become the effective control on the newspeak power to have it both ways, all the time. (He did a decent job with the weiner roast.) Thank God we need to laugh and it is commercially valued to still have the jesters point out the royal fools; comedy demands a certain honesty, even among politicians.
p.s. Speaking of comics, has anyone seen Rachael Maddow and Lisa Simpson in the same place at the same time?
BL – “i stumbled into the show last night and was knocked over by coulter. She was describing her new book, Demonic ”
I missed the show… I have a hard time watching Hannity or O’Reilly but read a bit of Coulter’s book intro off of a link from Drudge.
OK, you caught me. I plagiarized Ann Coulter’s meme. Wait a moment, she plagiarized me! No, no, somebody hacked my BC account and posted using my moniker… yeah, that’s the ticket!
Watching the video of Rachel Maddow, all that I could see was a woman hallucinating in public.
I would like to add “hallucinates in public” as reason #5.
Representative Anthony Weiner, Democrat, who for days has claimed he did not have Twitter with that woman, has now admitted he sent the dirty pictures of himself to that college girl, and others now are jumping in, claiming they too have received unwanted pictures of the goofy looking congressman.
I’ve sent some stuff by Twitter
But so what, I’m not a quitter
We all know the women love the stuff I sent
They all love me in my shorts
Showing all including warts
That has now become a Weiner incident
Girls laugh when I do Twitter
But I’ve always loved a titter
And a hearty laugh just makes my day complete
When they see that it’s a Weiner
Then their interest’s that much keener
And so now you know just why it is I Tweet
am/33, –LOL –ok ok, i’m not really bl –i’m andrew dumbbart and i expose weiners –wait –let me rephrase –
but naw i never had the slightest thought but that y’all both were sniffing the same air –that air being that the Maddows of the world aren’t merely lagging the enlightenment curve but are actually suffering a form of brain dysfunction –a lack of plasticity or a so-called ‘labile affect’ –which organizes similar gushing critters into groups such as msnbc and ivy league faculties.
Gotta give Ace over at Ace of Spades blog credit – he had this Wiener fiasco nailed right from the start, even down to predicting what he was going to say or do each day.
And he did it simply by being a good student of human nature – Wiener’s duplicity was obvious from the moment he tried to laugh off the incident and then claimed he was hacked, then tried to laugh it off, then tried to stonewall.
Classic behavior for a narcissist who’s been busted.
The question I was leading to, except that it verged on the off-topic, is why the same thing can’t be happening to the administration on more serious policy issues. Weiner might not be the worst of it.
The inability to perceive basic facts, even when they are staring you in the face can afflict foreign and economic policy too. These are the further implications of the mental habits which missed the Congressman.
I would say chances are quite good that the wheels are coming off the Weinermobile at an ever increasing pace.
TMZ has posted some new if not surprising information.
http://www.tmz.com/2011/06/06/anthony-weiner-congressman-sex-text-twitter-kcover-up-facebook-photo-women-admitted-wrongdoing-press-conference-penis-picture-apologized/
“Goolsbee to return to his teaching position at the University of Chicago”
(headline this morning)
Asked to comment, a spokesman for the University of Chicago replied, “We know where you live. Nice family you got there. Be a shame if something happened to them.”
There are numerous photos of Wiener floating around the internet. Do a Google search with the keywords: anthony wiener chest photos.
It appears the boy has been working out, and it appears he has had some help via Better Living Through Chemistry. ‘Roids anyone? Would help explain his nastiness.
Perhaps his future will mirror that of Lyle Alzado. Cheers -
W: “The question I was leading to… is why the same thing can’t be happening to the administration on more serious policy issues.”
I’d say it is happening as we type – the subordination of analysis [truth] to Marxist ideology [non-truth] on a national and international scale. Substitute Obama, Clinton, Pelosi, Reid, Gore, etc., the MSM and much of the entertainment industry for O’Brian. Substitute Breitbart for Winston Smith. Substitute the ordinary brainwashed American for Julia.
O’Brian: “You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident… I tell you Winston that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind and nowhere else; not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes and in any case soon perishes; only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be truth is truth.” George Orwell – 1984
Winston Smith: “The belief that nothing exists outside your own mind; surely there must be some way of demonstrating that it was false… There was truth and there was untruth; and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad
“She (Julia) did not feel the abyss opening beneath her feet at the thought of lies becoming truth.” George Orwell – 1984
Old left Hot Dog found lying on hot tweets;
Skinny Weiner not kosher frank, burned in wurst grilling ever.
Breitbart eats his lunch, with relish! and newly garnished respect.
Media can’t swallow playin’ ketchup.
Democrat’s buns are toast!
(I love the smell of liberal toast in the morning)
Rachel Maddow and other MSNBC “luminaries” would not be widely known but for the fact they are propped up by their MSM colleagues; their viewership numbers arre awful, yet you would think they were major media stars. A poll in Britain declared Maddow to be the “top American media person” or something. The media Potemkin village is a wonder to behold.
I think Coulter is on to something with the mob rule meme. What collectivism, Stalinism, Marxism, Fascism, and to a lesser extent, cronyism is an elite core controlling the unruly mobs and threatening the middle. Truth fits nowhere in this paradigm. Truth is subordinate to perception and perception is a tool to enforce ideology. This meshes with the Orwellian methods and the dialectic does not compare truth with untruth but truth against a desirable consistency with ideology.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Politics/ann-coulter-conservative-commentator-takes-liberal-mob-read/story?id=13773013
Wretchard, I tried to go to the bottom of things and the link to the administration in #20 above. It’s an error at the bottom of their philosophy that allows Obama, for example, to think that it’s a GOOD thing to defend the right of doctors and nurses to leave infants to die in trash cans. It boils down to what others have called the tyranny of relativism, the fallacy that truth is a matter of perspective or law and therefore gets determined by those with the power.
But the Coulter discussion gets at why Weiner gets nailed and not Obie: no engagement of the frontal lobes is needed to unmask and perceive the stupidity of the former. Kind of hits you in the face, like 20 years of worship in a racist, Marxist cult or calling America “downright mean.” But the defenders and now the handlers have done a good enough job that the upside-down perspective on reality harbored by the administration and the rest of the liberals now requires serious thought to identify and expose. The drumbeat seems to be getting louder, though.
The problem is not only that liberals have self-lobotomized but that fully half of the country has an IQ below 100 and 30% below 85. There’s not a lot of analytical firepower to bring to bear on things like economic and foreign policy, so we’re stuck with the headlines and images like high gas prices, wieners on parade, calling cops stupid, and bowing to Arabs. What we need to bring home the reality here is more of those types of events now that the bloom is fully off the Obama rose.
I sometimes think there are two mobs in the political arena. One is the conscious mob and the other is the subconscious mob. The subconscious mob has people in it who are just trying to survive and they are not all that knowledgeable about politics, economics, foreign policy, or the basics of warfare. How ever they understand high gas prices and sexual misconduct. I speculate that things like perceived sexual misconduct is latched onto and used as a reason to dislike a politician because that is an understandable and articulatory reason to attach a dislike that couldn’t be expressed by the subconscious though it has computed that the disliked politician is messing things up in the political arena.
So when’s Weiner going to resign?
When Republicans do this stuff, they step down without so much as a how-do-you-do; not so the Dems.
The Stupid Party vs. the Arrogant Pricks.
w@38: The question I was leading to…is why the same thing can’t be happening to the administration on more serious policy issues.
The future of policy:
“I think we’re at a moment in the life of the administration when there is no more scope for economic policy,” said the economist James K. Galbraith. “It’s all smoke, mirrors, budget resolutions and the re-election campaign from now on. So the job of CEA Chair must be fairly thankless.”
It would seem we are moving faster towards a (mafia version of) the ME model than the other way around.
http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/comment/161370/
The MSM is now plumbing the depth of the Congressmember’s marriage.
I picked door #2 (BFtP) — which is now looking very likely.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/he_wife_worlds_apart_kVvpLJeulZ526Cv2W7Bf2O
What a crew of self-centered social climbers.
Wretchard, did you not tell us that to run a successful Socialist apparatus, you have to have some high-ranking top-secret intelligence service where the actual facts are collected, presented, and discussed apart from the output of the Party propaganda arm.
In other words, someone like Nancy Pelosi has to have advisors giving her unvarnished assessments as to the truth behind the accusations against one of her back-benchers.
Rachel Maddow’s audience believe “Bush lied” even though they lived through the Clinton Administration’s constant bombing of Iraq of 8 straight years over Saddam’s WMD programs. They believe “Clinton got impeached for a blow job.” They believe Bush was “selected not elected.” They believe in Global Warming, for God’s sake. They know Rachel Maddow will peddle the latest bullshit, that is WHY they watch her. She’ll gain audience for her position, especially when the Weiner story inevitably shifts to the Clinton-esque “everybody does it” phase.
#48 “So when’s Weiner going to resign?
When Republicans do this stuff, they step down without so much as a how-do-you-do; not so the Dems.
The Stupid Party vs. the Arrogant Pricks.”
They don’t. As Rush said about the Clintons it is all about power. They only relinquish it when forced to. Right now Weiner is following the standard playbook. Look contrite, lay low and what for it to blow over as the MSM ADD attention shifts elsewhere.
Worked for John Edwards to a point. What got him down is when Elizabeth left him. What he got indicted for was the use of the “public” money and he believes there is a good change he skates on that ala Jesse Jackson and his love child.
Also remember Weiner is planning to run for major of NYC. What will do him in is if his wife leaves him. But she has a good mentor in Hillary. Do whatever you have to do to get and retain power.
Shades of the Politburo.
Weiner has not had a single private sector job since he graduated with a poli-sci degree. Seriously. What could he do for a living? And what other politician would want to get tagged with his baggage now?
Without this gig, Weiner is an unemployed bum living on the street. He’s desperate for this job, that’s why he won’t resign.
(okay, of course he could always be a host on CNN)
@53. Jeff from Michigan
Yes, it’s all about power. Left to his own devices, I’m sure Weiner would be happy to ride this out. However, the Democratic leadership is no doubt weighing Weiner’s impact on the tough 2012 election coming up.
My bet is that if Weiner won’t jump, he will be pushed.
“What d’we do NOW?” cried the Kid as the night riders galloped over the cliff.
“Well, we’ll just hafta ride it out,” hollered back the Old Wrangler, reaching for the Good Book buried under the whiskey, terbacky, ammo, and girly pictures in his saddle bag.
The whole story is so cheesy that its hard to report it with a straight face. A WSJ blog says “a former porn star and a Las Vegas card dealer are making new claims about Rep. Anthony Weiner that cast doubt on some of his assertions at a teary press conference Monday.”
So I guess that more scandal is in the cards. Let’s hope the Congressman gets a fair shake. And what would the lady’s screen name be? Why, Ginger Lee.
But maybe her stage siblings, Home and Love will soon speak to the press. At the rate things are going, the pun has just started. The poor Congressman is in a situation where he becomes, almost in spite of oneself, the butt of jokes. Even the San Francisco Chronicle has this leader: “Weiner will rise again”. Not very much, maybe, but a little furter than before. Or is that the wurst case scenario?
A political figure can survive hatred but it is harder to survive derision.
–while on the subject of truth or consequences:
http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/122034/
(snip)
WASHINGTON POST FACTCHECKER: President Obama’s phony accounting on the auto industry bailout. “What we found is one of the most misleading collections of assertions we have seen in a short presidential speech. Virtually every claim by the president regarding the auto industry needs an asterisk, just like the fine print in that too-good-to-be-true car loan.”
Perhaps we should call this the Subprime Presidency.
Posted at 2:39 pm by Glenn Reynolds
a @ 41: There are numerous photos of Wiener floating around the internet.
floating like this?
http://artmauve.com/images/204122436.jpg
Perhaps all members (sic) of Congress should be required to post naked pictures when they take office. Tastefully done and sold at popular prices, it might raise good funds for the children and troops, and put an end to silly episodes like this one.
“But maybe her stage siblings, Home and Love will soon speak to the press.”
There’s also Heaven. And Aura.
don’t anybody even dare talk about Anna.
In this day and age, the way to wealth is to become a Congressman and thus be imbued with the ‘Smart People’s’ permission to lie, cheat and steal your way to luxury.
Unfortunately for Anthony Weiner, being laugh-out-loud ridiculous lays a curse on the Smart People’s blessing. Now who else might know Ginger Lee? Come in Charlie Sheen.
He thought she was just Virtual Lee.
Should be glad it wasn’t Peggy Lee.
Best headline of the whole Weiner affair:
ERECTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES
Please excuse me if this was asked above.
Has anyone checked to determine how old the girls were he engaged with online? Based upon his arrogance, the bold face lies he tells, and the fact he is a sitting Congressman suggest a deeper dive needs to occur regardless of whether he steps down or not.
Oh, and does it gall anyone to see the top-of-the-fold USA Today treatment of Weiner’s behavior immediately adjacent to an article that reports every U.S. household is CURRENTLY responsible for over $500,000 of U.S. debt? The total amount obligation now exceeds $61 TRILLION. This, of course, begs the question of HOW MANY existing U.S. household members pay taxes or are currently employed.
The fact that Weiner has refused to immediately step down and that so many continue to defend him, for any reason, foretells bad things. While Rome burns, Weiner is trying to make time with college coeds (or worse)and his contemporaries are defending his actions instead of fixing our significant problems.
Well what can you say? Things have reached the point of such absurdity, what with Donald Trump joining the circus, that it’s more like a carnival freak show than a public issue.
Or maybe the joke’s on us. You can feel sorry for the Congressman, but the voters should really feel sorry for themselves. Are these the kinds of jokers that are running the show? The Congressman is just the latest sample in the parade of grotesques that have been traipsing across the public view.
That sample could be a biased one, since no news is good news. The upstanding public figures very rarely land in the news. Or maybe we just don’t know. Could we cast our net wider into the waters who knows what it would bring up. Perhaps that is the worst suggestion in the Weiner case. It isn’t that the West is run by brilliantly evil ideologues or brilliantly visionary leaders. It isn’t run by any brilliant anything, just a plaything to the winds of fortune, occasionally modified by the unthinking pranks of morons, who through a dysfunction in the system have been promoted to a level far beyond their natural competence.
If the world ever manages to avoid an economic meltdown or nuclear destruction or plummets into the abyss, it may not be through the agency of human choice, but from plain dumb good or bad luck. The ship of state sails on but jesters at the helm have got nothing to do with it. Maybe HG Wells was right in the War of the Worlds. The survivors will sink down on their knees and thank God, because they can’t thank anyone else.
I often like to contribute bad puns to comment threads, but I feel like coals to newcastle, coming here today. “Weiner has been frank”? God, I wish I’d said that. Hey, perhaps I will.
But I was also impressed by Ginger Lee’s sisters. I can’t help but wonder whether Weiner’s earlier denials had been written for him by Ginger’s sister, Phoebe?
There’s always Light Horse Harry Lee from the Revolutionary War. That brings some unwelcome visuals to mind, though.
Splitting – the aberrant psychological trait. I am a good person because I want to help other people. People like me are good people also. Those who disagree are bad people – evil, like those conservatives. Any action we take to help others is okay even if it requires deception or dishonesty, because, gosh – our intentions are noble. Since we are all good, those who oppose or criticize our actions are wrong.
Discernment of evidence is not important to R. Maddow because the desired outcome is obvious. Protect the team. Even serious infractions should be overlooked because we are trying to do good.
Since the other camp does not want to help people like we do, they are guilty of all kinds of nefarious thoughts and deeds. Nothing they say can be valid.
Here is a good way to consider how we are sunsetting one age and sunrising another.
The story behind the world’s oldest museum, built by a Babylonian princess 2,500 years ago http://uk.io9.com/5805358/the-story-behind-the-worlds-oldest-museum-built-by-a-babylonian-princess-2500-years-ago?skyline=true&s=i
Companies Join Forces to Fix Internet’s Biggest Problem in Decades (the move to IPv6)
http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/112877/ipv6-day-internet-address-system-fastco
8. Jim in Virginia :”Breitbart is the right’s answer to Dan Rather/ Mike Wallace/ Sixty Minutes ambush journalism. That is not a compliment.”
Sounds to me like Breitbart gave Weiner every opportunity to come clean but Weiner was willing to ride it all the way to the bottom. Typical of amoral politicians (of any party), lie until you are forced to tell the truth. That is why serving as a Representative should be a part time job. When you have nothing else, you are more likely to lie, cheat and steal to keep it.
No “may” about it.
Maddow’s audience is almost entirely composed of people who subvert truth to ideology; that’s why they watch Maddow.
I’m not sure I’d credit her with being a “news analyst”, myself.
She gives me the same disgusted feeling on the left that Michael Savage does on the right, for about the same reason – she’s basically dishonest about her political opponents, and that, I can’t tolerate.
(I can tolerate disagreement perfectly well. I can even tolerate completely blinkered and mindless disagreement to a point. I can tolerate blinkered and mindless agreement, though it makes me uneasy.
I can’t tolerate people who feel they have to lie about the other side – be it plain factually incorrect statements, or the more common and less obvious assertion of motives not in evidence.
Tell me X is wrong to want Y; don’t tell me X is Wicked And Evil unless you can actually show me their intent, not just that you think Y leads to ill.)
Frankly, I’m a bit disappointed in this whole affair. Weiner is a tacky person in his sex life but his real offense is his political nihilism.
Crushing him for being tacky is just continuing to lower the political processes of our republic while his REAL sin is his policy distortions and his personal attacks against other political actors. It makes our political strivings a game of “gotcha” rather than a civil discussion of issues. We won’t find solutions or compromises that we can all live with we’ll just degrade each other so that only those who have not been destroyed have the power.
It’s like sending Al Capone to prison on tax evasion. It doesn’t deter murderers.
Of course, I applaud the exposure of the lefty media and their indifference to truth and the public interest.
“The Internet where the men are men, the women are men, and the children are FBI agents.”
So I’m waiting to see if some of the men posing as women or the the people trying to trap pedophiles have any photos and messages from Frank Stein.
I’m hoping he starts his campaign to be Mayor of New York right away. I figure someone will beg Soros to get a job for him so that he’ll go away.
He could be put in charge of MoveUP or Expose.
Anthony Weiner ‘used congressional phone’ for sex chat with blackjack dealer
Anthony Weiner, the US congressman who lied about lewd online exchanges with female admirers, was mired in further controversy on Tuesday, as women alleged he used his office to carry out the affairs.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8561985/Anthony-Weiner-used-congressional-phone-for-sex-chat-with-blackjack-dealer.html
Best for us if he stays in office leading up the 2012 elections
–provided our form of government does clean itself up and survive, we might thank the rogue’s gallery from the likes of weiner to obama someday, for having jumped the shark too soon, for having exposed the state media too soon, for somehow effing up and giving half plus one of the voters a heads up in the nick of time.
According to Nyquist’s new column, Joseph Schumpeter would say we’re already on borrowed time:
(open quote)
Writing more than 60 years ago, Schumpeter allowed that America’s prosperity might last fifty years or so, and this would give capitalism a further lease on life. The advent of socialism, he said, would then be delayed by roughly half a century (after 1950). Through this long period of prosperity, however, “atrocious mismanagement” of national resources would be inevitable. Schumpeter wrote of the problems of bureaucracy, politics and a “flight from labor.” Calculating the damage in terms of government regulation, debasing of the currency, and the piling up of debt, the resulting decline in prosperity would nonetheless be blamed on the free market (i.e., on “greedy” businessmen). This would be the signal for the state to finalize its conquest of private production. This seems to be the position we are at today. As storm clouds gather we may expect to see more and more state intervention in our ailing economy; accompanying this will be a further debasing of the currency, more regulation and growing scarcity. To retain one’s wealth under such circumstances will not be easy. It may even be dangerous.
(close quote)
***
Tea Party in the valley of the shadow of death, trying to get to the Idol and break it in time.
t @ 75: “The Internet where the men are men, the women are men, and the children are FBI agents.”
And the Nigerian princes have too much money,
and the congressmen are twits.
bl @ 77: Le Bon was the first to explain that modern socialism is not so much a doctrine as a mental state. As such, it ultimately promises effects consistent with its inner orientation. “A man is not a socialist without hating some person or thing,” wrote Le Bon. “Servitude, misery, and Caesarism are the fatal precipices to which all the roads of the socialists lead. Nevertheless, the system would appear to be inevitable.” What parades as idealism is actually an expression of hatred, despite an apparent façade of benevolence. The final result of hatred is violence, and violence is the state.
Hey, great stuff, I don’t know Le Bon but I think I should.
I used to tell a libtard “friend” that his politics was a pathology and not a position. Knocked him silent. “I don’t say that about you,” he replied, hurt. I shrugged, the response being too obvious.
“Servitude, misery, and Caesarism are the fatal precipices to which all the roads of the socialists lead. Nevertheless, the system would appear to be inevitable.” What parades as idealism is actually an expression of hatred, despite an apparent façade of benevolence. The final result of hatred is violence, and violence is the state.”
Even I, with my feeble understanding of political science and philosophy have have come to realize these words as the truth living in the shadow of an overarching lie.
The government does not care about all third world economic refugees, has not bestowed my putative social security pension that I have paid for in flesh and blood for over 40 years, only to give it in full maturity to a recent immigrant from East Gabon because of an underlying human decency, does not love all of the world inhabitants with sublime relish with the meagre exception of white middle America, out of duty to God but out of unmitigated, festering hatred, and pure as fire hatred.
The sham was first that it was for the those left behind, for the children, then for everybody but you. Even your children are damned to hell. The legions have been turned out by the public employee unions. There was a dirty coup in America and evil won. But the evil that is our two party (one way ticket to communism) system is going to have a harder and harder time dividing the masses against one another. The two America’s meme breaks down when greed and jealousy of the majority ensure that there are no winners.
I have seen the future and I know what it brings; it will bring every evil that the Left accused George Bush from. They were not fearful of a police state, they were jealous that another party might bring it into existence before they could.
(Here’s a break that goes back 12,000 years.)
The Birth of Religion
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/06/gobekli-tepe/mann-text
We used to think agriculture gave rise to cities and later to writing, art, and religion. Now the world’s oldest temple suggests the urge to worship sparked civilization.
80. Annoy Mouse:
Speaking of refugees, Yemen is over populated, the aquifer has dropped about 20 feet and they will run out of water and before the year is out. It almost goes without saying that food supplies are also getting short. From what I read it won’t be Civil War, it will be anarchy, and people heading for borders and boats.
The Turkish administration has just discovered that Iran has a bunch of Persians in it, not Arabs and they think the Ottoman Empire was a bunch of jacked up late comers. They remember when Turkey belonged to them. Apparently the Turkish Foreign office was short of people who could speak Farsi while the Iranians have a lot of people who can speak Turkish and Arabic. Meanwhile the they can’t seem to get rid of the Kurdish PKK who is busy blowing up innocent bystanders and setting fire to children, which is somewhat embarrassing in some circles.
The break from hunter gatherer to farmer that marks gobekli-tepe in Turkey circa 9500BC–comes to Great Britian about 3500 BC
New computer dating technology changing the history of Britain
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-06-dating-technology-history-britain.html
Archaeology dating technique uncovers ‘property boom’ of 3700 BC
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/jun/06/archaeology-dating-property-boom-3700bc
Stonehenge
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonehenge
What does Rachel Maddow know of Weiner’s to be qualify as an expert to comment on them?
@82 Toadold- Huh??? What in the world is your point if you even have one?? Thanks.
C @ 81: but gobekli-tepe doesn’t even sound like the original of anything, it sounds like the residents were enacting a well-established pattern, that I’ll bet goes back another 20,000 or 50,000 years.
I’d say what broke the pattern was language and writing. apparently there is nothing linguistic in those carvings at gobekli-tepe. I wonder how extensive even their spoken language was. pre-literate humans spread across the globe, and probably had inefficient farming for tens of thousands of years. but no metal, no books, and hardest of all to imagine today, no cell phones.
Wretchard – in your analysis of why Maddow’s analysis was off base you left out one possibility. She may just be a lying sack of horse manure who believes the ends justify the means. Occam’s razor – the simplest explanation is the most likely. She does not believe any of the baloney she is spewing but she does believe Weiner is a reliable neo-commie like herself who needs protecting from his political enemies. She is so ideologically committed that she could not care less what this guy does when he is not voting or bloviating. He could eat orphans for breakfast and she would defend him as long as there were any wiggle room for a defense,
jh @ 87: She may just be a lying sack of horse manure…
I believe that is after all pretty much what wretchard was saying, in his own clean and articulate manner, …
@80. Annoy Mouse – I happen to agree… I never thought I would live to see a day when so much has been turned upside down. Good is ‘bad’, Success is ‘evil’…
People can argue until the proverbial cows come home but, in our culture, Liberalism (the big Lie) has been the worse disaster in U.S. History… Multiculturalism is a farce… The anger and hatred is that of the Indoctrinated.
Our Liberties have been slowly chiseled away, piece by piece. We are ready to implode. What then? Will the Anger, the Hatred subside then?
What exactly ‘is’ the ‘end game’?
Keep the Faith Annoy Mouse, Evil has never triumphed over Good…
Toad – refugees. It is going to be all about the refugees and the US will open its borders to absorb them all. It is good for the feudal lords of the welfare office and what is good for our lords is good enough. We are seeing it with Mexico right now.
It will enrich America with people who share “our” disregard for Western civilization, culture, and language.
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Apparently a lot of @ssholes think this is written in the constitution and not merely a poem written on a block sent to us from France, the one that murdered upward to 40,000 people for having half a brain and being successful.
This quote from wiki seems apropo. to the meme; French society underwent an epic transformation as feudal, aristocratic and religious privileges evaporated under a sustained assault from left-wing political groups and the masses on the streets.
I fully expect MC, the zealous defender of all things frank, to come swooping in with her Joan of Arghh(spelling?)incomprehensible admonishment act.
But back to the quote, the same people who say; “Gee, but America has always absorbed the world’s immigrants and poor”, are forgetting that they didn’t step on an airplane and poof, hours later were standing in front of the welfare office with some advocate offering translations and shortcuts to get the goodies that the hated majority should have to pay for. The same people who claim that the modern age has died and we can no longer afford to use air conditioning for the sake of the globe that is warming due to fiscal conservatism and cow flatulence. Luddites, but inconsistent ones at that.
As for the Turks, not really sure what they are betting on but would not be surprised that the general populous has buyers remorse with Ergodan.
The solution to bad government is global thermo nuclear war. Unfortunately, democracy wasn’t so good for the children that the teachers unions belatedly realize that they must be aborted ex post facto for the sake of the mother.
85. Faith11. I was talking to Annoy Mouse about were the next batch of refugees for the US that are going to come from that will suck up entitlement money. You can go back to sleep under the bridge now.
Charles@81 Josh@86
A very interesting link,about a place that I had never heard of.
The Archeologist Schmidt adds pure comedy at the end when he says “I think what we are learning is that civilization is a product of the human mind.” Just one more statement from the University of the Blatantly Obvious. Did he previously believe that civilization was the product of the hamster’s mind? or the canary’s mind?
I admire all of those on the right who can watch Maddow,Matthews,Schultz,O’donnell et.al.
I can’t even bear to look at them much less Listen to their vile rantings.
No, Western, what looks to be obvious to you is refuted by the sum total of science and history. Civilization is a download. The products of the human mind are what we’re talking about here: arrogance, dishonesty, self-delusion, nihilism, self-destruction, hatred, paranoia. . . .
OT – “President Barack Obama on Tuesday urged European countries and bondholders to prevent a “disastrous” default by Greece and pledged U.S. support to help tackle the country’s debt crisis.”
Dear Leader is offering to bail out Greece now. Great. I remember when congress decided when the US spent large sums of money, like buying a new country. I have to give him credit though, he sure knows how to spread the wealth around. What if he is a shopaholic?
firefirefire @93
Ditto on that. As time is all I have in my life, I can’t afford to waste it watching or listening to these people as it just upsets me and then makes me realize I just wasted precious time.
Annoy Mouse,
Lefty Logic™, today we bail out Greece and next week Greece bails out the US, all with imaginary money.
These guys really do think that you can make it up on volume.
China smiles.
AM @ 95
I find that I have a deep and well earned admiration of those on the left who have the time surf blogs and to spread the wealth of newspeak to the seething masses of ignorant for ingsoc all without the benefit even of a grubbing truffle. Snort.
The Liberals, Democrats, MSM, nor polling “establishments”, surprise me with their deception and outright lies, anymore.
They all make up the “facts” to support their lies and delusional conclusions.
Basically; If the source is from any of these entities, you can bet there is deception lurking. And if you accept their opinions, you shall be made a fool, in the not too distant future.
Blast – Out of the frying pan and into the greece. Back before the days of credit cards the bank float was about 7 days. A group of small business associates might kite a check back and forth to keep the ball rolling. I wonder exactly how in this age of Super Computer Trading will Barry the shylock keep Antonio on the grit while he is kiting world currencies.
#97 So true.
The Left loves imaginary money. Lefty Logic on the debt crisis goes something like this: a stranger walks into an inn requesting a room. The Innkeeper states that there is one room left, so the stranger puts down a $100 deposit but wishes to see the room first. While the stranger is inspecting the room the Innkeeper remembers that he owes the baker $100 so picks up the stranger’s money runs across the street and pays the baker the debt that he owes. The baker now remembers that he owes the shopkeeper $100 so he runs over to shopkeeper and pays off his debt. Shopkeeper upon receiving the money runs to the Innkeeper and pays off the $100 that he owes the Innkeeper. The stranger returns from inspecting the room and declines to stay at the Inn and takes back his $100 deposit and leaves, but now there is no longer a debt crisis in the town.
We really do need to stop calling these Big government, totalitarian, Orwellian hacks “liberals”. They ain’t.
Ach, Annoy Mouse # 90, callin me?
still livin in the old chimeras?
French Revolution might have killed that much, buth half of the lot was due to civil unrests, and the others through trials
unlike your civil unrests, whereas more than 600 000 died !
Two points: (1) I find myself watching MSNBC much more frequently than previously, it is a good place to learn what the anti-American, commie losers have been instructed to talk about, and, (2) we are better of with Weiner in Congress than his new replacement. Imagine the chants of “Weiner, Weiner, Weiner,” or the question everywhere, “Is he lying this time or not?” He’s been neutralized, let’s leave him that way. Breitbart can leak/release his other pictures/messages at a time that does the most damage, not to Peckerhead, but to the lefties as a whole.
Weiner Weiner… Brat’s wurst !
Who are the politicians in the last 50 years who have most betrayed their followers? Let’s limit it to semi-criminal dishonesty and or/related sexual, monetary, or drunken dalliances; bad results, bad wars, or bad policy) are a different issue. Help me fill out this list.
Class A – Presidents: Nixon and Clinton
Class B – Lesser (but major) politicoes or lesser dishonesty. Sherman Adams, JFK (not caught) Teddy Kennedy several times, Spiro Agnew, Gary Hart, Wilbur Mills, Newt Gingrich, Jim Wright, Charlie Wrangel John Edwards, Eliot Spitzer (although he might be a Class C) Reagan for Iran-Contra, but his “dishonesty” was ideologically approved by close to half the country and you can make the case of a Class C with him.) Thomas Eagleton, maybe….
Class C – Weiner, Schwartenegger (was he a B or C?) and hundreds of others.
I know that I am missing some from Class B; who are they?
hahahaha….has weiner been frank…
of course his wife is “determined” to stay with weiner…she and hillary are big time friends, deepest apologies..hahahaha
too bad the msm doesn’t realize weiner has made a fool of them..
why are there no calls for his resigning??????? i mean people that could actually make him resign, not you and me…
There once was a man in DC,
with a boner he thought girls should see.
He tweeted a pic,
but made a wrong click,
and from now on a punchline he’ll be.
There once was a Congressman Weiner,
whom everyone thought was much keener.
He sent a pic of his dick
to a chick with a click,
now the laughter can hardly get meaner.
A congressman who is not gay,
was seeking a virtual lay,
but the address was wrong
and we all saw his schlong,
now in Congress few wish he would stay.
The congressman (present career)
enjoyed the occasional leer.
A pic of his fly,
then lie after lie:
one wrong click can be very dear.
A gasbag was zooming along,
but liked to take pics of his dong.
Now they’re on the news,
with millions of views,
and Congress won’t want him for long.
An arrogant man from New York,
Republicans he liked to torque.
A tweet of his meat
he can never delete,
now into his job goes the fork.
Congressman Weiner had nerve.
From statism he’d never swerve.
But the pics of his pecs
and the browser-based sex
mean that everyone laughs at the perv.
A Weiner with plenty of snark,
had habits he kept in the dark.
Now his life’s just debris,
’cause he did not foresee,
a tweet that could leave such a mark.
In Washington he was excelling.
No more, since he tweeted his swelling.
One click of a mouse,
now he’s seen as a louse,
and fewer will buy what he’s selling.
A congressman, now very nervous,
knows he’s done his new wife a disservice.
With his dick on display,
he can no longer say,
that it’s all just constituent service.
This fellow who lived in DC,
a future he thought he could see,
but some dick pics on Twitter
sent his plans down the shitter,
now a giggle he’ll forever be.
103 MC Bingo
95. Annoy Mouse : Reading your post I flashed an image of Obama in his PJs surfing the internet on BuyMyDebt.com and adding Greece to the shopping cart. Would be funny if not so tragically true.
@106: same time, same place, same sticky wicket as Gingrich: Bob Barr (who since circled the far end of libertarianism to join the ACLU, which apparently mitigates responsibility).
I can’t help but think the main “get” here is the ability to claim victimization, which has gone from being a career to an industry to a vital nutrient. And that excuses people like Maddow from feeling the need to correct the record: the only salient “fact” is that Weiner suffered victimization at the hands of Breitbart. That is why every liberal media source is carrying two stories today, one about Weiner and the more important one about Breitbart and Weiner.
She made it clear last night it was #3.
PapayaSF @108: You rock. One of these would have been impressive and funny. But…eleven? Each as good as the last?
Damn! That’s some gift. Can you round out the dozen?
It’s good to see reporters adding a humorous slant to this story.Everyone can use the laughs.
Jim in Virginia -Is “narcissistic sociopath” a synonym for “career politican”? welllll, since you mentioned it………there is actually a study that lists the most likely jobs/careers choices for sociopaths.Politician,serial killer,college professor and religious leader take the top honors.
I keep wondering how deep Mr.Weiner was involved with these young ladies.Unless he randomly sent off picts of his package to complete strangers,he had some pre-penis pict chats or contact.
Annoy Mouse – I enjoy the new quips being bantered around by the entitlement packs.”Welfare and Disability are our Constitutional right.” it’s as amusing as “Welfare,Medicaid and food stamps are payment for the abuses of slavery.”
Only is America can a charitable system set up to alieviate extreme poverty and hunger evolve to become a forced tax that creates massive dependency and fraud,self-victimization, crime ghettos and a claimed Constitutional right for illegal immigrants.And then blame the cost of the program on SS-seniors.
Kind of like the anti-smoking madness claims smoking related illness costs in health care are draining the system, totally ignoring our horrid air quality and according to the gov $.73 of every health care $1 is spent to treat obesity.
Last night on O’Reilly Andrew Breitbart said that individuals at MSNBC like Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell are, literally, given talking points by Media Matters.
This is very believable, given the obvious consistency of their messaging, aka (in most cases) lying.
The remaining question is whether there are payments involved in these relationships.
Maddown has been practicing her lectures in being disingenuous and passing it off as information since she started her show. She’s a less shrill version of Janine Garafalo who came along too late to be featured in “Team America: World Police.”
Maddow’s actual physical person comprises every thing the liberal Left adores when it comes to their confusion in regard to moral relativism, cause and effect and who actually does and has done things in this world not to mention square pegs in round holes and wedding cakes that require actual real unconfused science and excess children to produce the nuclear “family”.
To a liberal, a family is not an observable thing like a pride of lions but whatever definition cultural conceit requires at the time. One could have a gay pride of lions where the stupidest of them are saved from Darwinian fate by masked scientists on the fringes who monitor the pride 24/7. Unfortunately, like the liberal fantasy of civilization and how it actually works, take away the science and those lions with stupid and confused animals cannot survive and nor can our civilization. One needs just a few more factors than Oprah’s women with male sex organs, prideful loud mouths from the Third World and confused and eternally offended refugees from the war against normality to make a successful civilization.
In short, she is a confusion cake that encompasses the Left’s idea that all roads lead to all men that are created equal and this goes double for women, gays and ethnic minorities who are the unheralded heroes of Western civilization which built itself on slavery and exploitation and lucky chance. The least are the most and now that all the conquering and inventing is pretty much done, they will show how Darwinian they are in a now tamed and tech heavy world they never have and never could actually successfully survive in or create other than as onlookers peaking out from the walls and nibbling the left over cheese.
Given this scenario, one would like to see a world of those that have created the best of it sideline themselves as a prank while watching a group of dildo wielding minorities, neo-racists and feminists build a spaceship to Mars using multifailurism, blame and liberal faith, while ignoring any laws that get in their way including the Laws of Gravity, Inertia and Reality.
Perhaps to prove a point, the entire project could be helmed and crewed by illegal aliens. One can only gleefully picture a space going shanty town buoyed by faith and bickering and gender and ethnic based chest pounding achieving the status of a permanent project that never actually goes anywhere due to the endemic racism of European men whose bad karma broadcasts itself from a distance.
Such bad karma has in fact doomed Detroit and Haiti, even producing hurricanes that ethnically cleansed New Orleans.
Both MSNBC and Fox News might be fairly considered from emanating from the same space as regards their both being shills for the Rep. and Dem. Parties. How they get there is another thing entirely.
Maddow presents one-sided facts while occasionally interviewing a doppelganger made up to look like another human being. Fox presents their views and then has liberal morons on to challenge those views. This is the simple ratings secret that MSNBC cannot get their heads around, probably because they would be chopped up alive when asked to use faith to defend observable reality.
Sinead O’Conner, a woman without any more observable talent than anyone else in an Irish coffee house, made a career, not based on talent, but in toeing a politically correct line. Maddow is the same thing: she is the priest of a faith that has no interest in or use for facts. She is in no sense a journalist but a soothing figure that represents a religion that claims for itself everything it in fact cannot do and has never done – thus the faith.
You can have only one reputation at a time. Breitbart’s goal of being the current era’s premier conservative gotcha journalist has caused him to fall for a number of false stories from the Too Good To Check File. He was right this time, but given his recent record it was prudent to treat his claims with more than usual skepticism.
L@114: according to the gov $.73 of every health care $1 is spent to treat obesity.
Obesity is a huge problem (my bad) but cite (looks like a misplaced decimal)?
The Cost of Obesity:
America spends as much as $147 billion annually on the direct and indirect costs of obesity. In the year of the most recent CDC study, 2006, that made up 9.1 percent of medical spending.
has caused (Breitbart) to fall for a number of false stories from the Too Good To Check File.
The single instance I’m aware of is the partial transcript in the Shirley Sherrod fiasco.
Breitbart has the fire in the belly and is willing to put himself out there on a level that most are too cowardly to do.
(nice going Papaya #108
)
The blog complaints of the left I read seem less concerned that Weiner is now emasculated than the fact that, as they disheartenly admit, Breitbart is now rendered stronger and more credible. This is what gets their blood boiling. Good for them.
On the books, in the innkeeper parable, the non-journal or balance sheet entry would be the inn’s earnings, and market value on a price/earnings basis –IOW, opportunity cost paid by the innkeeper’s heirs. If the ‘journal’ transactions result in more goods and services in the neighborhood, that would replace the lost market-value. But if that transaction repeated ”crowds out” production, then because all those transactors need to eat while they’re financing each other, and nobody is adding to their larder,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/jun/06/us-economy-decline-recovery-challenges
(snip, bolding mine)
Britain’s decline was extremely rapid after 1914. By 1945, the UK was a bit player in the bipolar world dominated by the US and the Soviet Union, and sterling – the heart of the 19th-century gold standard – was rapidly losing its lustre as a reserve currency. There had been concerns, voiced as far back as the 1851 Great Exhibition, that the hungrier, more efficient producers in Germany and the US threatened Britain’s industrial hegemony. But no serious policy action was taken. In the second half of the 19th century there was a subtle shift in the economy, from the north of England to the south, from manufacturing to finance, from making things to living off investment income. By 1914, the writing was on the wall.
(close snip)
***
…and the power that replaced UK’s was fellow-English speaking cousin USA. Not some outfit with a totally different alphabet (‘alpha bet’).
***
Pontiac MI gets Invaded!
Charles Krauthammer last night argued that in the name of decorum and not beating a dead horse, republicans need to let go of Weinergate.
If Breitbart hadn’t gotten additional information (and pictures) from sources, then Weiner’s 10 days of baldfaced lying might have been the end of the story.
Weiner and his crowd of frantic dissemblers didn’t come clean out of good will and conscience, but only because they were forced to.
122) There is a point of diminished returns.
“not beating a dead horse” – was that tongue-in-cheek?
bl@77: Nyquist: … the resulting decline in prosperity would nonetheless be blamed on the free market (i.e., on “greedy” businessmen).
Change ‘businessmen’ to ‘financial services’ and the disambiguation of the government regulatory problem becomes apparent. Wall St financial houses got away with murder.
Tanstaafl- and even the Sherrod hoo-hah led to the exposure of the Pigford scandal-m possibly the biggest case of defrauding the Treasury since Teapot Dome.
Let’s also keep in mind (through the shrieking disimformzia of the Leftosphere) that the actual story AB wrote about the Sherrod video was not her pre-Damascus racism, but the NAACP mob hooting and clapping and cheering at Saul Sherrod’s bigotry and discrimination against white farmers.
That’s SOP for the MSM.
They don’t know much, and what they do know is usually wrong.
ybr/124, ray of sunshine, at Bernanke’s presser yesterday, who should happen to be in the audience but main circle-of-scoundrel malfeaser Jami Dimon, lifelong progressive Democrat and CEO of JP Morgan Chase, who actually went after Bernanke hard –on the basis of the Dodd/Frank regs and the damage they will do to … hmm… consumers, or banking, or (*cough*) “America” or something.
“don’t beat a dead horse” is a perfectly legitimate expression, meaning, of course…it’s over, let it go.
On the topic of MSNBC and much of the current lamestream media, I have read that Soros money has invaded newsrooms across America.
I have marveled at the consistenty of the ideological slant of the so called legacy or mainstream media. I have asked myself many times…Can all those “journalists” be, collectively, that dumb ?
As an explanation, I quite easily gravitate to the idea that Soros money/Media Matters etc. are mixed up in all the lying and cant that, today, constitute “the news”.
The lefties got a lot of mileage out of beating a dead dick……. Nixon, but Watergate was more political than Monicagate. Krauthammer’s point was that the right did not know when to stop and let Clinton twist in the wind. The whole impeachment thing backfired.
bl@127: went after Bernanke hard –on the basis of the Dodd/Frank regs and the damage they will do to … hmm… consumers, or banking, or (*cough*) “America” or something.
The most hated person in Washington is apparently Elizabeth Warren who has little chance of being approved to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The Warren Court:
The core principle of Warren’s work is also a cornerstone of economic theory: well-informed consumers make for vigorous competition and efficient markets. That idea is embodied in the design of the new agency, which focusses on improving the information that consumers get from banks and other financial institutions, so that they can do the kind of comparison shopping that makes the markets for other consumer products work so well.
…………
While some bankers accept the need for consumer protection, they maintain that the C.F.P.B. will go too far and end up strangling financial innovation.
……………
And, at a time when Americans profoundly distrust the financial industry, a Warren-led C.F.P.B. could turn out to be the friend that the banks never knew they needed.
I expect the banks know exactly what they need. It’s just not the same thing that America needs. Kicking and screaming.
Analysis? They are bought and paid for to do one thing and one thing only….whatever it takes.
So many weiners & franks jokes about, I might have missed your intent, exhelo.
The left has put its opponents through such longstanding ideological hell, it’s tough to let Weinergate go.
Anthony emailed one of the girls, porn star Ginger Lee, as to how to “handle” the media. It’s wot they do, it’s all they do, spin until the rest of us are worn out.
Barney Frank argued right up to the collapse that Fannie Mae (run by one of his boyfriends) was as solid as the rock of Gibraltar.
(over and out)
#108 PapayaSF:
“Walt” with his chronic rhyming verse is beginning to annoy me. But your post was entertaining and one I would consider “a keeper.”
ybr, quickie, it’s not an agency –it’s a bureau within Treasury –congress loses the purse-string control-of-last-resort. So among the fake fears, one fear is legit –that the new bureau could go hog wild on whatever it wants to. Elizabeth Warren is a very warm, sweet personality –but who comes next?
Of course, as always, the citizen must ask the first question –why is it set up in this manner? What’s the idea? Why not just give her a desk in one of the eight or eleven extant consumer-protection offices in the standing agencies? Put ‘special’ in front of the title and she gets the same fast-track, but with oversight beyond the secretary of the treasury alone.
Remember the current sec of treasury was the prez of the NY Fed –the watcher-over of the set-up of the great swindle.
121. buddy larsen
Britain’s decline was extremely rapid after 1914.
………….
I have argued that the major reason for England’s economic decline after 1914 was the shift from a coal based economy–of which coal the Brits had plenty to an oil based economy of which oil the brits had none.
Similarly the slow relative decline of the US economy since the 1970′s coincides with the rising oil imports.
I would argue therefor that the massive oil and gas deposits discovered/created by new technology which enables the extraction of heretofore unavailable oil and natural gas–presages a return to prosperity for the USA–because the new extraction procedures will enable the USA to become net exporters of energy.
For a relatively brief period the North Sea oil helped England return to prosperity. But rapidly declining flow rates have returned the Brits to their old decline. Inversely, the Brazilians who went bankrupt in the 1970′s because high fuel prices & high oil imports –today are net exporters of fuel. Not coincidentally they have a strong currency. Here is the kicker. Brazil is a totally statist economy. But energy revenues — as in Venezuela–fuel the state. They expect even bigger things (ie more state revenues and more government jobs)from their offshore drilling.
Therefor even though its highly possible that in the next ten years, the USA could become a oil/exporter–if the USA does not also push for a greater diversity of energy sources — there will be more problems further out.
The witches of “The View” are placing the blame not on Weiner but on ED medication which I find hard to validate, considering there is not one warning within the prevalent advertisements regarding an urge to tweet pics.
“You rock. One of these would have been impressive and funny. But…eleven?”
Ditto
“She’s a less shrill version of Janine Garafalo who came along too late to be featured in “Team America: World Police.””
Try this –
http://www.amazon.com/Janeane-Garofalos-Dead-Traitor-Big/dp/B001NTWIMU
“subtle shift in the economy, from the north of England to the south, from manufacturing to finance”
Sounds very familiar, eerily so. Sounds like a FIRE economy. Run for the exits!
Maddow is an lying dishonest piece of leftist trash just like the entire cable station M.S.N.B.C It is so obvious that General Electric and M.S.N.B.C work for Obama and the Democratic party as their job is to attack all Republicans and Conservatives.IT IS ABOUT TIME THAT M.S.N.B.C IS ATTACKED FOR THEIR MENTALLY AND EMOTIONALLY DISTURBED BEHAVIOR.
Charles – “massive oil and gas deposits discovered…presages a return to prosperity for the USA”
I think you may be on to something. The reason the feds do not want to produce oil is because they don’t want it to enrich the economy, they want it to enrich their coffers. They need to nationalize after a self made crisis then drill like they were stealing it.
What happened to Goolsbee?
Turner ended with a plea: Mainstream economics needs to embrace the radical notion that people are not rational actors after all. “Good economics leaves us”—policymakers, regulators, and consumers—“with far wider degrees of freedom to make political and social choices than has frequently been asserted,” he told the gathering. “The role of good economics is to inform those choices, not to deny their possibility.”
………….
The period of steady growth that economists once hubristically called the Great Moderation has become the “Great Mortification,” in the words of economic historian Philip Mirowski of the University of Notre Dame.
…………
The distrust and disarray among economists have left an intellectual vacuum in Washington’s fiscal and financial debate at a time when the stakes couldn’t be higher. That vacuum has created huge opportunities for discredited and dubious theories. The Right, for example, champions the idea that cutting spending now will immediately boost the economy (rather than slow it, as most models show) and bring it back to health, while the Left argues that simply adding more spending and stimulus, almost regardless of total debt levels, will do the same.
………………
As lawmakers grapple with that question, along with how best to handle growth, job creation, and rising health care costs, they are looking to simplistic, black-and-white branches of economics for guidance—caricatures of theories that crumbled in the market failures of the Great Recession. Conservatives continue to argue, in true neoclassical spirit, that freer and less regulated markets always perform better, and government only gums up the works. Keynesians stress increased government spending, above all else, to climb out of recession. In this regard, all of Washington is falling victim to what John Maynard Keynes described 75 years ago. “Madmen in authority,” he said, see themselves as “practical men” when they are “usually the slaves of some defunct economist.”
…………..
The economy is simply too complex, and the global financial system too interdependent, to be viewed through the prism of old theories that hold that free markets—or well-timed government spending—can solve almost anything. No one in Washington is challenging those doctrines with any strength.
Wow, talk about projectile vomiting and seeing what sticks to the wall! Maddow should receive a prize for the largest amount of gibberish spewed in the fewest number seconds on a putative news show.
c/135, re ‘here is the kicker’ –there’s your ‘house divided’ truth in action. Lincoln never meant the house would fall –but that the division would be put to an end. Lesson for us now re the economic success of late statism in Brazil and China (Venezuela is a police state and thus beyond the pale), we need to move toward them, or hard away from them. At preasent, USA does not –except in the Maddow-capable mind –constitute an alternative to state-run society at all. We’re dawdling on the playground, reluctant to come back to class after a long fuki-yama’d recess. The tragedy is, we need to move toward the Constitution –which mitigates the very concentration of power we need to do it with. An infernal paradox, gobbling all comers.
Meanwhile, time’s a-wastin’. Wolves are at the doors, and we the nation are still at tea, chatting about Marx and Locke and determined to by golly figure out how to get the proper attitudes back again, so that we can have a talk about how to raise the will to raise the money to buy the time to think about what to do if the wolves come to the door.
Wiki
A planned economy may consist of state-owned enterprises [GM], private enterprises directed by the state[Over Regulation],, or a combination of both. Though “planned economy” and “command economy” are often used as synonyms, some make the distinction that under a command economy, the means of production are publicly owned. That is, a planned economy is “an economic system in which the government controls and regulates production, distribution, prices [Ethanol] , etc.” but a command economy, while also having this type of regulation, necessarily has substantial public ownership of industry [Defense] ,.Therefore, command economies are planned economies, but not necessarily the reverse.
Beginning in the 1980s and 1990s, many governments presiding over planned economies began deregulating (or as in the Soviet Union, the system collapsed) and moving toward market-based economies by allowing the private sector to make the pricing, production, and distribution decisions. Although most economies today are market economies or mixed economies (which are partially planned), planned economies exist in very few countries such as Cuba, Libya, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Myanmar [and the USA] .
[My comments]
Great company, huh? Greedy corporations!
am/143,
http://www.bing.com/search?q=what+has+flat+tax+done+for+russia%3F&form=IE8SRC&src=IE-SearchBox
Breitbart is brilliant. By releasing information a little but at a time, the target of the investigation is fooled into believing “that’s all he’s got.” Strategy is then based on that flawed assumption. Weiner fell for the trap.
Keep at it, Andrew!
What to do:
In an optimal world—a paradigm that economists are familiar with—both economists and lawmakers would acknowledge public frustration with government and markets and step up to the titanic challenge ahead. It’s impossible to say right now what policies would result from such a rethink. They could be small and surgical tweaks, such as increasing capital requirements for banks, rethinking government backstops for the mortgage market, or overhauling labor laws to slot more people into more-satisfying work. Frydman, the NYU economist who was so critical of Summers at Bretton Woods, suggests limiting government intervention in certain markets—say, housing—until such time as asset prices swing outside of traditional boundaries, and then ramping up regulation to dampen those prices.
It could be that in regulating extraordinarily complex operations with huge sums of money attached—such as deep-sea drilling and derivatives trading—governments will need to keep industry on what might appear to be a short leash, and regulators will need to work far more closely across international lines than they’re used to, knowing that a breakdown in the system anywhere is a worldwide threat. (Witness the global slowdown in nuclear-plant construction, not to mention the public-health panic, from the Fukushima Daiichi reactor disaster in Japan.)
Before any of that is done, a near-term policy correction is the clean-up and revitalizing of the last resort defensive entities – ratings agencies (Moody’s, S&P et al), regulatory agencies (SEC and CFTC) and Congressional oversight. Independent ratings agencies that could have contained the financial damage crumbled. Madoff, Sanford and some unknown number of lesser players skated by the SEC as the regulators waved on the way out to higher-paying consulting jobs. Congress was the last resort for the GSE criminality and they shrugged. Washington and Wall St sneered at the concept of redundant backup security systems. No long-term change in theoretical or empirical economic thought will make a dime’s worth of difference in the absence of independent oversight. It is fundamental.
bl@134: So among the fake fears, one fear is legit –that the new bureau could go hog wild on whatever it wants to.
Roger that.
I’m still thinking about it, but my gut reaction is so what? Let ‘er rip in the other direction – for awhile. Rebalance later.
ybr/146, …independent oversight. It is fundamental.
Enron, which grew criminal under Clinton, was under Bush broken up, officers sent to jail, and accounting giant Arthur Anderson was put out of business. A decade later, ten times the crime was shrugged off and nobody even got arrested.
Most of that decade was George Bush presidency, so he gets the blame. However, the bad actors at the planning center of the great bust are all progressive Democrats, the Wall Street end turning the Mozilos loose, and the DC end keeping Bush totally occupied trying to avoid debacle in Iraq. Perhaps even running an overarching informal quid pro quo, letting George fight the war if he stays out of Fannie & Freddie.
So the results, the schemers did EXTREMELY well personally while any notion of crime is nullified by the Great Leap Forward of social justice exemplified by Obama, and the public Blame Bush and lack of regulations (“we need more regulations!”) and ‘the cowboy capitalism of the past’.
Pretty damn slick. Joseph Heller would be proud.
***
If he flew them [the combat missions] he was crazy and didn’t have to fly; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to fly. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicty of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.
“That’s some catch, that Catch-22,” he observed.
“It’s the best there is,” Doc Daneeka agreed.
ybr/147, …rebalance later
‘Sunset’ riders on legislation would rip thick sheaves off the calendars of loggerheaded congressional product –but they would quantify accountability, so tho the notion arises from time to time, it seldom, by acclimation, makes the next news cycle.
Wait and see. Under the Oscar Meyer bus Weiner goes. The Dumbs are supporting Rangel and Waters, whose crimes are far worse. Corruptocrats’ special treatment for minority groups. Why didn’t they throw white male Barney Frank under the bus? Oh, that’s right, gays are another special interest group. Weiner’s just a Jew, and we have recently seen Dumb-in-Chief OweBama’s concern for the Jews. Weiner will be the Dim’s sacrificial lamb as is evidenced by Pelosi’s call for a probe including subpenising his records. Dems want to adopt an appearance of morality for a relatively unimportant misdeweiner to muddy the Waters for Rangel et al’s larger crimes. Boney Tony is screwed.
bl: Blame Bush and lack of regulations
I think it’s ‘Blame Reagan and lack of regulations.’ Bush was too occupied being turned into Iraqi roadkill. More seriously as others have noted, he was a delegater at a time when the country could have benefited from more active leadership.
I can’t admit to worrying (as much) over the Deep Game. The undercurrents of conflicting human vision will always fortify the Great Game. I don’t see any (near term) arrow pointing to substantive change from evolutionary advantage, historical imperative, or even something as simple as accumulated lessons learned integrating into some collective consciousness. It is hard to engage in the Great Game – what’s the move that can’t be countered by an infinite number of counter-moves? Very orchestral, is it not?
My focus is the Lesser Game – where Abramoff and Franklin and Kott and the Enron guys and the Goldman guys and the GE guys live and breathe and cheat like bandits.
I am not taking the time to spruce up the prose, but a little name-calling in the publicity arena is piffle to me. If all the money in politics can’t counter the talking points of the opposition, then something more is wrong besides distracting finger-painting by the Deep Game players.
I am nuts and bolts to the core – whatever it takes to put cheats in jail and more importantly out of business. People like Abramoff, Enron, GS, et al are the guts of crony capitalism. Pressure them directly with consequences and much of the system will free itself, while the Deep Game continues as it always will.
Thanks for the kudos, everyone. I just wrote two more, but they aren’t quite up to the level of the others, so I thought I should quit while I’m ahead….
@91. toadold – No need to get sarcastic toadold…as if we don’t have enough problems right next door – this side of the World…but, thanks for the head’s up it’s just another something I can add to my list of ‘things to look forward to’…
Under the Oscar Meyer bus Weiner goes. Rangel and Waters did much worse, but Dems stood by them. Special treatment for special interest group politicos. Why didn’t they throw Barney Frank under the bus? Oh, that’s right–gays are another special interest group. Poor Weiner. He’s just a Jew, and OweBama recently showed his true feelings about Jews. The Dims will leave Weiner without a 3rd leg to stand on, as is evidenced by Pelosi’s call for a vigorous probe to include subpenising his twits and tweets. The Dumbs hope to muddy the Waters of their long record of standing by their corrupt party “members” by making Weiner be the sacrificial lamb. Poor Boney Tony. He’s going to have to be a stand-up guy and take one for the team.
Sorry about the similar posts–having tech trouble with both laptop and iPhone and didn’t think it went through.
142. buddy larsen
c/135, re ‘here is the kicker’
………..
My point was that the Brazilians — because of oil –could be prosperous DESPITE being statists.
Perhaps the better scriptural analogy would be just as much love covers a multitude of sins so also much money (in this case –provided by oil)–covers a multitude of financial mistakes.
c/156, i was readin’ ya –what i was getting at was how well Petrobras has done since the gov’t took control in the late 90s –no more high-profile greenie scuffles, no more rainforest hippies on the media. You’ll see the same here, once the govt takes control of the industry, which it fully intends to do, preparatory to reversing the migration from blue to red, using energy availability.
OK, for oMan and the others who liked my limericks, here are three more that I don’t think are quite as good as my favorites in the first batch, but are good enough:
A Weiner who seemed pretty clean,
loved photos (he did like to preen).
But a pic of his tent
in a tweet, got missent,
and now public, it can’t be unseen.
A man with a pretty good life,
he reveled in partisan strife.
But his digital flings,
with those pics to young things,
are quite hard to explain to a wife.
A congressman (New York elite),
had a thing about showing his meat.
To mayor he’d go,
but now he’s a schmoe.
And his home life, at present: not sweet.
The central problem of the economy, not just the US economy but the world economy is that nobod knows with any certainty what anything is worth. As long as the world’s reserve currency is the play thing of politicians and central bankers we are going to be in this bind. The Federal Reserve is not the solution but the central problem.
Whether we raise taxes or cut spending to balance our budget is an important issue being fought out between Left and Right but it is not the crux of the problem. Having the Fed screw with the money supply to try and solve political deadlock in Washington is the real problem because the rest of the world depends on having a stable yardstick somewhere in order to conduct business because without that they cannot assess the risk/reward of any transaction.
In the 19th century when the reserve currency was the British Pound it was OK for the US to argue over cheap money, the old don’t crucify man on a cross of gold we want inflation to make the farmers loans cheaper and our manufactured goods more affordable overseas argument. Nobody internationally would have really cared what happened with the dollar just like nobody would care what the exchange rate of the Greek Drachma was if there still were a Greek Drachma. No however a Greek default is a big deal because it threatens to take under the only other contender for a reserve currency out there.
The reckless fiscal and monetary policies of Ben Bernanke, TurboTax Tim, Barney Frank, and Barrack Obama are going to put the world, not just the USA into a new Great Depression if we cannot find a way to politically control them.
I would advocate for abolishing the Fed. It is as dangerous as nuclear power in my mind and backing the currency with gold, silver, and oil. Yeah there are problems with that but those problems are less than the follies of the Fed. At least we would avoid stagflation which is where we are heading if we are not already there.
“Meanwhile the Legacy Media is getting into the position that if they run the cavalry while ride them down with lance and sabre. If they form square they’ll get blown apart by cannon. They can’t surrender because they no skills for anything else.”
Toadold, my delight in your metaphor vindicates years in the study of miliary history.
If they form square they’ll get blown apart by cannon
Two of the great turnings of history turned on a few degrees of slope –Napoleon’s great cannonade fail at Waterloo, and Lee’s at Gettysburg. Both cases, the units that should have been broken up, weren’t, because of a little slope hard to even discern from across the field. The Imperial Guard and Pickett’s Charge both broke against the surprise.
The simplest explanation for Weiner’s behavior is Entitlement. Jewish Entitlement. After all, the Jews created modern America so they can engage in bad behavior if they want.