What pundits should fear most about getting things wrong isn’t the scorn and gloating that other writers will pour on them after their error has been revealed. Its the consequences. Marty Peretz of the New Republic, who was sympathetic to Barack Obama in 2008, now writes that Obama’s Middle East Is in Tatters, Utter Tatters. That is the title of his article, by the way. What follows is, if anything, more savage:
It is not actually his region. Still, with the arrogance that is so characteristic of his behavior in matters he knows little about (which is a lot of matters), he entered the region as if in a triumphal march. But it wasn’t the power and sway of America that he was representing in Turkey and in Egypt. For the fact is that he has not much respect for these representations of the United States. In the mind of President Obama, in fact, these are what have wreaked havoc with our country’s standing in the world. So what — or, rather, who — does he exemplify in his contacts with foreign countries and their leaders? His exultancy gives the answer away. It is he himself, lui-mème.
Which is to say Obama started all wrong, got it all wrong. Now everyone, especially Israel, will be lucky to simply get out of the impending crash in one piece. But Peretz isn’t the only one who has felt the scales dropping from his eyes. There’s David Brooks, who writes, “I’m a sap, a specific kind of sap. I’m an Obama Sap.”
That is the first sentence of his new article. The rest amplifies the theme:
Yes, I’m a sap. I believed Obama when he said he wanted to move beyond the stale ideological debates that have paralyzed this country. I always believe that Obama is on the verge of breaking out of the conventional categories and embracing one of the many bipartisan reform packages that are floating around.
But remember, I’m a sap.
Yes David, we got that the first time around. But let’s move on to the distaff side, to Peggy Noonan. She writes about how the president “has made big mistakes since the beginning of his presidency and has been pounded since the beginning of his presidency.” Once an admirer of Obama, she too now sees that he has not the Midas touch but the Mierdas one:
His baseline political assumptions have proved incorrect, his calculations have turned out to be erroneous, his big decisions have turned to dust. He thought they’d love him for health care, that it was a down payment on greatness. But the left sees it as a sellout, the center as a vaguely threatening mess, the right as a rallying cry. He thought the stimulus would turn the economy around. It didn’t. He thought there would be a natural bounce-back a year ago, with “Recovery Summer.” There wasn’t. He thought a toe-to-toe, eyeball-to-eyeball struggle over the debt ceiling would enhance his reputation. The public would see through to the dark heart of Republican hackery and come to recognize the higher wisdom of his approach. That didn’t happen either.
Nothing worked! And nothing’s going to work. He’s the smartest guy in the room, but he’s got the reverse Midas touch. Everything he touches turns to — well, unsatisfying outcomes.
Peretz, Brooks, and Noonan are intelligent, well-educated people. Nobody has seriously suggested they are either perverse or evil. Now they see the truth. But once upon a time they didn’t have a clue. So the disturbing question is: how did they get it wrong? Setting aside for a moment the fact that someone slipped past, the most pressing problem is to determine why the system failed. Because as someone at Andrew Klavan’s blog said, “the republic can survive a Barack Obama; it is far less likely to survive the multitude of fools who made him president.”
The fact they are now getting it right is a good thing. John Maynard Keynes once wrote, “when the facts change, I change my opinion. What do you do, sir?” But Keynes was not not quite correct. What he should have said was that “when new information comes to light, I change my opinion about what I saw. What do you do, sir?”
no a posteriori
I think that’s a priori.
now that we’ve seen his posterior, we know what’s in it.
Yes David, we got that the first time around.
Nor is that maple syrup.
Ignorance or unfamiliarity of con men and hucksters doesn’t explain the catastrophic mistakes Obama fans made in 2007 and 2008… After all, many, or most of them, attributed these demerits to GWB in spades. Voters for Obama overwhelmingly hated Bush because he was a huckster, an untutored poseur, a hick, a criminal, Satan incarnate. The poisonous self-deluders who got it so wrong about Obama were making the exact same miscalculations about Bush’s character and performance long before Obama showed up. And I wasn’t a big fan of Bush, mainly because he failed to flatten Islam and the sponsors of al Qaida’s in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, UAE, etc. – so I don’t say it as a big devotee.
I suspect we’ve seen a great sorting out between the people who are wise and insightful, and the people who are abject idiots, fools, and delusional foolish pomposities. The same assholes who voted for Obama are largely the same moronic assholes who subscribed to AGW, Bushhitler, Islam is a religion of Peace(tm), and Darth Cheney. They were assholes then, they remain assholes now.
A posteriori
In 2008 nobody had any experience with Barack Obama because he had held no substantial office for any length of time. He the “blank slate” on which everyone projected his fantasies. He frankly said do. But too many people argued his qualification on a priori grounds. “Can’t you see he’s brilliant?” Or “it’s obvious he’s smart”. “It’s obvious he’s a genius”. He was a man without a past yet a perpetually brilliant future.
This is probably the biggest single source of the misjudgment. The gatekeepers took their own subjective impressions and created a priori reasons for his election. Never mind that he had no legislative record, not administrative record, voted present, never written an article for the Law Review, had sealed his transcripts, etc. He was brilliant! Why? Because it’s obvious.
No it isn’t obvious. And now, with the a posteriori benefit of experience they can see that they were wrong.
Can’t disagree, Morton, although I would add one aspect that I think you overlooked. For the vast majority of hard-core Leftists, political beliefs are what they substitute for religion. They love to tell themselves they are so superior to all of those old-fashioned religious folks out there without realizing that they are the most fanatically devoted and slavish adherents of all. Deep down, they believe in nothing else.
And as the famous quote says, the man who believes in nothing will believe anything.
This explains the messianic worship of Obama, and the ecstatic near-worship of him seen widely on the left. They’d been waiting all their lives for a chance to let that part of themselves out in public, and Obama worship gave them the chance. They let it all hang out, and never doubted the outcome; their Faith would make all things come to pass!
(I faintly hear a voice that once said “Put not your faith in Princes, or in man…”)
This also explains why it is so hard, in fact impossible, for many of them to ever renounce Obama or the Movement no matter what happens. To renounce Obama means to deny their deepest and truest Faith, and many of them would literally prefer to die before they could ever reach that point.
now comes much weeping and gnashing of teeth…
There is no way to be certain that there ever was a stimulus, nor even a banking crisis. I believe bills were passed, receipts printed, and nominal cash was awarded. However, given that the secret service and the treasury are one, I see no reason to believe any part of the last 3 years in American history.
McCain (or anyone else) would have been identical to the act now being dramatized.
Back in the days when whiteboards were new we fooled around with decision matrices. The decision criteria went down the left hand side of the board the weights were ranged in adjacent columns. Some criterion were ‘critical’. You had to have them. Uncertainty in their outcomes was not to be tolerated.
In electing a President you can argue that one of the ‘critical’ criterion is having a good handle on who he is; on what he will do based on a good empirical database. You cannot wing this criterion because it is a critical one. You can get the “want” objectives wrong, but the “must” objective is absolute.
The substitution of the “of course he’s brilliant” assertion (because it is an assertion) in place of solid data is nothing short of negligence. You would never select a pilot on that basis to fly your plane. Who would choose a man with no known flight experience, “a blank slate”, but with a wonderful tailored uniform, sharp trouser creases and magniloquent manner? But that is more or less what some voters did in 2008. Someone called it the “Dancing With the Stars” system of election.
So they chose the pilot on that basis.
Now some of the passengers are uneasy. The pilot is hitting buttons at random, whirling around the tabs, twisting the control column this way or that like a man possessed, yelling at the tower. That’s the Bayesian. That’s the a posteriori which they observe. Now the doubts begin, but a little too late. The question is, what now?
In retrospect every candidate ought to come to the nomination a fairly known quantity, someone with a measurable history of policy and executive history. Because this is all the nice people can see. That is evidence in their eyes. And maybe they are right. The hunches and heebie-jeebies of other people may or may not yield valid results. They would not be inclined to accept the gut feelings and judgments of others. But the existence of a measurable track record is something on which everyone should be able to agree.
Naive support for Obama in 2008 was entirely about race. All Leftists and many in the political center felt compelled by both peer pressure and their own self-image to laud the first apparently plausible presidential candidate of African descent. This is why Hillary was cast aside so easily, not because of the brilliance of Obama’s primary campaign.
Beyond discrediting Leftist policies, Obama’s trajectory may educate a few naive Americans about r-selected attitudes of his consanguineous group. See Phillipe Rushton’s work http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race,_Evolution,_and_Behavior. But I don’t expect many to see the light in a general sense. Although most people know nothing of frequentist statistics, they don’t operate like Bayesians either.
It is considered the courteous and Christian thing to do to grant one’s political opponents the benefit of the doubt as far as motivation. Fortunately, I am neither a nice person, nor a Christian.
I have my doubts as to how much of the adoration that Peretz, Noonan, Brooks, et.al> expressed towards Obama from well before the 2008 election and up until literally a fortnight or two ago is the result of being fooled. Or how much was due to their inherently elitist, statist inclinations.
Their pronouncements in favor of Obama and all he demands, were accompanied by snark, insults, attacks, and contempt for the common citizen in general and conservatives in particular. If they were mislead by Obama, assuming that he matched a “centrist” world view; their treatment of the average American leads to questions about where that view is on the spectrum.
I view them as TWANLOC who are caught out, and wishing to avoid a prolonged trip to Coventry in the wake of at least a probable taking of the Senate from their Democrat colleagues, and quite possibly a Democrat loss of the White House; are hedging their bets trying to leave a cover story that they were in fact brave members of the Resistance working undercover.
Ben4 tian1sheng1 de5 dui1men0 rou4
Never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. But if neither malice nor stupidity by itself can completely account for the mess, you may have to conclude you are dealing with malicious idiots.
Subotai Bahadur
Historian Michael Beschloss: “…this is a guy (Barack Obama) whose IQ is off the charts…”
Imus: “Well. What is his IQ?”
Historian Michael Beschloss: “Pardon?”
Imus: “What is his IQ?”
Historian Michael Beschloss: “Uh. I would say it’s probably – he’s probably the smartest guy ever to become President.”
Sorry, it always makes me laugh out loud. Nastily.
But really, listen to the whole interview and it hear how it exactly addresses what wretchard is writing about here. http://dailysplice.com/play?ep_id=256669
The power of positive thinking has its shortfalls too.
***Don’t forget Kathleen Whats-er-name who was Noonan when Noonanism wasn’t cool; she practically dropped her pantyhose for Obama. She’s almost always described as a ”conservative” writer but it ain’t so; she’s just part of the Washington crowd. A good while back in one of her columns she referred to Colin Powell as a ”war hero”. I politely emailed her that despite his successful military career I didn’t know of anything heroic he’d done—would she kindly enlighten?
She replied that as far as she was concerned anyone who’d been in a war was a hero.
***a priori, Bayes, etc: agreed O had no real work or academic record to go by but when we saw him with his nose in the air in Mussolinian hauteur, standing before the styrofoam columns (ain’t that a metaphor for something?), doing who-knows-what in Europe, and all the other ”collateral” stuff . . . doesn’t one’s BS alarm go off?
Isn’t that sinking, I’ve-seen-this-before-and-it-really-hurt feeling some kind of a priori knowledge? That people who act that way are phonies, if not crooks?
Your post recalls to mind “The Night of the Hunter” with Robert Mitchum. It’s been awhile since I saw it, but I remember that the children new Mitchum was a liar. And the old Christian woman at the end wasn’t swayed by his words, either. Some things that we once knew as children we forget in adulthood. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFzTBPy7nl8
The Bayesian viewpoint is actually one that should be elaborated relentlessly by conservatives because it ineluctably brings us to the conclusion that any committed Leftist is motivated strictly by the desire to profit from another man’s labor, even if it means enslaving him. State control has always led to disaster for most of the population and luxury for the few (many, nay, all a posteriori data points), so anyone advocating it is somewhere on the continuum between rent-seeker and Kim Jong-il. Engrave “Bayes” on your rifle.
“Night of the Hunter” also has the classic left-hand-right-hand scene. But consider for a moment just why Mitchum’s portrayal is so effective as the serial killer preacher. It’s because he’s just a tad too slick, a wee bit too mysterious. The man from nowhere, come to save the world with a story that he tells everyone.
And all he wants you to do is trust him. Then the preacher man is going to take you the mountain, to the promised land, where you will be “clean”. And boy, will he clean you out.
The viewers understood the con on some level, I think because they had each in their own way some experience with the fake. The problem with people who are well educated is that they sometimes imagine they can’t be fooled. They know too much to be taken. Only the rubes are taken. But as you pointed out, the children, like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, could see through it, not because they knew more, but because their minds had not yet been clouded by artifice.
But it’s an empty observation that we didn’t have a posteriori evidence to judge his presidency before his presidency.
For that matter I’d quibble heavily with this interpretation of Bayesian. I like Bayes as well as the next guy but I’m not willing to credit him with all the benefits of empiricism or observation. I don’t think he tries to take such credit but he and others may cite such examples to support why Bayesian statistics are helpful when they are in play, because they do put experience into play both qualitatively and quantitatively. In case you were thinking of leaving it out. As people do when they start making a priori arguments.
Leaving off (reluctantly) the philosophy and getting back to the topic, in what way did we NOT have “a posteriori” evidence about Obama before the 2008 election? Some of us, most of us posting on this here blog, felt we had plenty and enough, and turned out we were right. Were we better Bayesians, or empiricists, or simply not blinded by sap?
How ’bout that, Brooks’s lust for Obama has …decreased.
From time to time, talking with a convert from the Dark Side, I ask how come they were fooled, while chin-deep in contradictory evidence. If there’s any common theme, it was that being lib/left made them feel good, and/or got them the approval of those whose approval was valuable.
With this, they were able to ignore or rationalize evidence that they were wrong.
It would be interesting to ask Noonan, Peretz etc. if they have figured out how to avoid such a howler next time. IOW, do they know what they did wrong?
The only good thing to come of this is that the power and mystique of the elites are diminished, if just a little. It is a beginning.
But Wretchard, there was plenty of evidence, objective evidence, that Obama was not particularly smart or principled.
There was the Annenberg Challenge, which he allegedly helped administer, which came to nothing. Byron York tried to research it and write about it, but information was suppressed.
What to think of a man who is President of the Harvard Law Review, that writes nothing, contributes nothing substantive?
What to think of a man that partnered with Valerie Jarrett (who is also now a prominent White House advisor) to “community organize” in South Chicago and leave the public housing situation worse than he found it?
What to think of a man that attended Jeremiah Wright’s church for 20 years, and was only vaguely aware of what Wright preached every Sunday?
And what to think of a man whose US Senate campaign mananged to get unsealed the sealed records of his Republican adversaries divorce record?
Clues abound, and were available in 2007 and 2008. It was not that the minds of the Media were clouded by sophistication and artifice. They were clouded by the same corruption and lust for power, for power’s sake, that infects the political left, of which you personally know so much about.
They wanted the power that would flow from an ideological Leftist in the White House, with a Congress dominated by the Democrats and led by solid Leftist leadership, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. Now, the wreckage is revealed, and they are afraid their precious Leftist projects will wander in the winds for a decade or more, as a new generation of Americans learns the hard way just how awful these people really are when they have political power.
The closest mythical analogy I can think of is when Saruman was trapped in the Tower of Isengard, and tries to seduce Gandalf with his words. At the last, Gandalf breaks the spell with….laughter. That is the only normal response to Peretz, Noonan, Brooks and the rest.
Loud, raucus laughter. For their foolishness is now evident for all to see.
I agree that Bayes didn’t say anything new. He simply proved a way of computing new expectations for a given discrete case. Conceptually, all he was doing was learning from experience. Something that doubtless even cavemen knew how to do.
Bayes was just a hook to remind us of the obvious. Experience is valuable. Sometimes I think that the modish trend to relativize history, to make it anything we want, to change the facts to suit the current fads is really a consequence of one thing: the Left hates history. Therefore insofar as they can, they destroy it.
Only by interposing a continuous amnesia on society can they sell their shabby old goods over and over again. The TV news contributes to this trend. It’s all pictures of places we never understand nor feel troubled to understand with a nice voice-over and a pretty girl in the foreground. Eventually we will live in an eternal present, where Eastasia has always been at war with Eurasia, until at least until yesterday.
So when history gives me a chance to seize it, I grab it with both hands, in this case by juxtaposing what we thought we knew about Obama then with what we know about him now. I believe that before long even this modest history will find its way down the Memory Hole. I would reformulate Bayes’ Theorem in this way:
But we won’t remember. This I think is Tuchman’s theme in the March of Folly. But we can try.
“she too now sees that he has not the Midas touch but the Mierdas one.”
Aaaaaahahahahahaha…{gasp}…HAHAHAHAHAHAHA…{gasp}…{thud}
That is without doubt the best turn of phrase I’ve seen in at least a month. Thanks, W!
My main job currently is supporting Bayesian analysis. I collect and organize certain kinds of data and figure out what applies to the situation under analysis so the data can be applied for use in a Bayesian computer model. But in order for this approach to work you have to figure out which data applies.
One approach is to discard the older data using some defined filter. The problem is, what happens if you encounter a case where the people involved are ignorant of the lessons of the past? You may be in 2011 but some new people may be wandering in the world of 1957, preparing to make the same mistakes as others did then. This may be because of naiveté or a genuine belief that those old lessons do not apply to them; “we’re different” is the lie that every generation tells to itself, but some do it more than once.
So it’s best to figure out what data applies and use that. But that takes effort, expertise, a good memory, and by the way, more detailed data.
“Now some of the passengers are uneasy. The pilot is hitting buttons at random, whirling around the tabs, twisting the control column this way or that like a man possessed, yelling at the tower.”
I wrote the below when Walt inspired us again with some verse and after I had written a post comparing Obama to a bad student pilot. It’s based on an old Korean War Air Force song and I guess it’s as good a time as any to release it on unsuspecting Clubbers.
Itazuke Tower, this is Air Force One
I’m turning onto final and running on one lung.
This crummy plane you gave me, I want to take it back.
It won’t fly right for me just because I’m black.
If I don’t find the pavement at least I’ll hit the grass.
And if I as much as muss my hair I’ll have all your ass.
And quit asking me all the time about my pilot’s ticket
I bought it off Mohammed Atta before he got so wicked
Now put foam on all the runways and make sure none are dry
I’ve got Perry and Palin in my six and they both know how to fly!
“Peretz, Brooks and Noonan are all intelligent, well-educated people.”
So is Ann Althouse, who was also an Obama backer. Unlike many, she realized her mistake early. But there were those of us who, upon hearing that she would vote for O, screamed loudly on her blog that it was a mistake. And she did it anyway. To her credit, she has spent most of the time since criticizing him for his numerous dumbass mistakes. These johnny-come-latelies are the dumbest of the dumb, if it took them this long to realize that everything this doofus does is diametrically opposed to our national interest, our economic interest and our interests as a coherent nation.
It’s odd…people’s opinions harden, and after that happens it’s very difficult to dislodge them enough from that to even get them to consider an alternative. That’s my fear…people who voted for O the first time will do so again just because they’ll remember the flash-bang of his first campaign and not consider what has gone on since then. I’d vote for a damn CONSTITUTION party candidate over this bozo…but I fear there are just as many who would vote for O just because he’s the known quantity, or because they think Michelle is hot, or because they liked the well-publicized fact that he got a dog, or whatever.
I’m rethinking my idea that every person should get a vote. You should at least be able to pass a 5th-grade test or something, maybe.
I voted for Jimmy Carter back in 1976. Yes, 19 years old and fell for the JC rhetoric, hook, line and sinker. Its why I’m a Republican today. A lesson learned.
The generation that voted Obama in, are going to learn a much harder lesson. Let’s call it the 30% Inflation Lesson.
Many more Republicans will be born come next November.
“But these unpleasant memories were largely absent in middle class, college educated, white America. These were nice people. They didn’t routinely associate with the con-men, hucksters, pawnshop brokers and street corner grifters. To them the perfect hair, the nice suit, the emphatic speech were simply proof of good personal grooming and culture. But to others these very same things were too clever by half. And just as the sight of a man climbing out of the window with a bag at night would arouse no suspicions in persons unfamiliar with burglars, neither would Obama’s papered over resume ring any alarm bells in people prepared to think the best of everyone.”
Ouch!
I think I have just been given a left handed compliment?!?
W–
I think there was a Bayesian process going on, but the flaw lay in the “prior knowledge”, namely credentialism. Columbia, Harvard Law (president of law review no less), U of Chicago Law adjunct…everything that could be brought forward was about a credential not a stakes-driven experience.
In that way, I think they saw the burglar coming out of the window and said, impressed, “oh, Harvard Law”.
But, as we all get older, we realize reliable Bayesian decision-making is driven by experience where there are stakes for getting it wrong– just ask the squad leader.
And, prior to the Presidency, I don’t think Dear Leader was ever (ever!) put in a position where the outcome had a stakes consequence. Experience always trumps credentials. As a wizened grandmother might say, actions speak louder than words.
Yet it is so, so easy. CNBC has a series called American Greed, which profiles scam artists who fleece in the millions and sometimes billions. And those schemes are so often driven, in whole or in part, by credentials. Handing over stacks of hard-earned dollars to guys who, in their pitch, often use the words Harvard, or Wharton, or law school, or MBA.
And I don’t mean to feed the incessant cry of racism, but thousands of people have the credentials of Dear Leader (Ivy League undergrad, top 10 law school, law review, teaching). But an implicit, if not explicit, affirmative action thrust is running through this. As I said to friends in the run-up to the election, if you gave him the same background and changed only his skin color and name (say, Harry O’Brien instead of Barry Obama), the credentials alone would never have been enough– who would want to read about dreams from Harry O’Brien’s father? Where was Harry’s experience? Where were the stakes in Harry’s pre-candidate life? Those questions would have been asked– mere credential would not have sufficed.
In that way, I think they saw the burglar coming out of the window and said, impressed, “oh, a black fellow from Harvard Law”. And so they invited the nice young man with the bag over his shoulder to stay the night at their house.
Now, like the poor suckers on American Greed, they’re telling their tales of how they lost it all.
Obama had a reputation of being the most liberal senator in Washington. That pretty well tells you the kind of man he is. Being the “most” of anything is no mean achievement and leaves little room as to where you might stand. On the other hand, anyone watching could see that Obama was dishing up what each constituency wanted to hear. Heartening at first glance but soon it became apparent to anyone who’d bother to inquire that Obama was a dissembling BS artist extraordinaire. His promises to each group could never be fulfilled, not because of their grandiose proportions but because in many cases they were entirely contradictory to his promises he made to the other party. To each he promised the gold of the entire country and to each his own piece of the pie, but Obama divided the pie too many times and in the end squandered the gold to appease his most devoted $upporters. Caveat emptor.
“he entered the region as if in a triumphal march”
Got that right. Here he is pulling the same con that he pulled with the US electorate. Hey, you know how you complain about the US? Well I am the new guy and none of it is my fault. I am not George Bush. Love me! Barracks greatest accomplishment may well be; he is not George W. Bush.
#8, so at the end of the day Noonan Peretz and Brooks can retain their smug upturned nose attitude because, hey, He’s an S.O.B.. but he’s our S.O.B. The elite core of pundit gatekeepers seem to wield a lot of power, and will side with a Merck, or any other powerful interest group if it means we get yet another corporate crony stooge (Rick Perry), and not some local yokel (Michelle Bachmann) who wants the government to represent parents, their right and responsibilities, and small business against the status quo of the powerful in D.C.
Okay, I knew Obama was going to be horrible for this country. In fact, when he was elected, I posted that he was the enemy of all that I stood far. What he had done in the past was proof to me. As for John Edwards, I also knew that he was a fraud. All a person had to do is research how he became very, very wealthy.
Poor Peggy. She gives herself away. At the end of the quote she admits that she still thinks he’s smart.
The reason he was elected was pure, unadulterated racism, the kind only a liberal can harbor. The reason she thought/thinks he’s smart is that he’s black and has good diction. How craven is that?
There’s never been any evidence that Obama is smart. First of all, this is probably the most ignorant man ever to become President. George Bush has 20 IQ points on him and Rush has 35. Here’s my conjecture on Obama’s IQ: Verbal IQ 124, Performance (nonverbal) IQ 98. He doesn’t get the big picture, but he can talk pretty good until abstractions get involved.
I keep saying, these people are religious fanatics, adherents of Liberalism. That’s the only explanation for their blindness.
W–
Good post.
In fact there was plenty of evidence of Obamas intent and character, Rev Wright, his friends in the Weather Underground,etc
–the problem was that McCain would not run negative ads built on these facts.
Meanwhile Hollywood was running a full press PR campaign along with the polystyrene temples and the Magic Christian scam.
While calling everyone who opposed him a racist or an anti-Semite.
I do not associate with con men or hucksters but I vividly remember Jimmy Carter. During the election I told my wife that Barack Obama is Jimmy Carter 2.0. I have not seen any new information to cause to revise my assessment. It is still possible I would revise downward below Carter 2.0
>There was the Annenberg Challenge, which he allegedly helped administer, which came to nothing. Byron York tried to research it and write about it, but information was suppressed.
Stanley Kurtz researched it, and his accurate reports – including the squandering of Annenberg funds on ‘community organizing’ instead of education – appeared in the WSJ. Likewise, Steve Diamond, a strong Labor advocate, researched it and reported dismaying authoritarian-leftist tendencies attached to the awesome Obama. Boy did that not hit the evening news.
Much of the disappointment we see, now, from these oh-so-educated elites can be ascribed to their herd mentality. None of their friends were skeptical of this Chicago wunderkind, so why should they be? Their friends, of course, included many bigfeet in the MSM – who wouldn’t dream of digging up the vetting information so blatantly concealed by Obama’s sealing of academic records, and the records of his tenure in the Illinois legislature. Voted ‘present’? Couldn’t be with intent to hide anything, not at all.
Signs of the grifter were plentiful enough, but the will not to see was paramount.
The more static an environment the less open the minds and the ability to adapt to change of the inhabitants. People will have the same beliefs as their parents and peers and be more susceptible to magical thinking, cult like behavior, and lack of original thought.
I wanted to do a study of this situation by close observation of the local primitives but my adviser wouldn’t let me bug the faculty lounge.
Morton Doodslag @ 2 Hey, they made a song about that.
The Wan as Zero?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_Mostel
—–
Folks, what we’re witnessing is the chunking off of the Wan’s social proof.
The above — leaders from behind — were determined to join the herd — so as to be heard — conformity being the mother’s milk of the opinionated.
—–
LBJ famously decided that it was all over when he lost his red sheep: Cronkite.
He knew that such an event would rip the Democrats from ear to ear — the Party being centered entirely upon emotion.
—–
That he backed himself into a terrible crossfire between his muslim base and his Jewish base — it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
When you lay down with Hamas you’re likely to wake up with a detonator — improperly secured — too boot.
Buchanan triggered our Civil War…
The Wan figures to trigger a pandemic of civil war. He may out do Nappy or Adolf.
Pakistan is THE perfect candidate for the perfect storm of a civil war. Near as I can tell it’s on the slow boil already.
“Stanley Kurtz researched it”
My apologies, that is absolutely correct. Sorry about the mis-statment. They were both at NR at the time.
“Grifters are in some sense not part of the same civilization that Peretz, Brooks and Noonan inhabit. Maybe they don’t believe this yet. But they will. They will.”
How depressing. Wretchard, I hope that Obama is more stupid and (until 2009 or so) lucky than he is smart and evil. There is a lot of evidence of that in the latest speech: he can’t lead or govern, all he can do is campaign.
#3: “too many people argued his qualification on a priori grounds.” I cut the Obamaphiles of 2008 a little slack. If everyone around you has the same opinion, it’s hard to disagree, particularly if you already tend toward that view.
#7 ridgerunner: “Naive support for Obama in 2008 was entirely about race.” True, but only part of the story. Obama is African American but he isn’t Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson. He’s not even Condoleeza Rice (who heard and felt the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham in 1962.) It was easier for white voters to support Obama than any other African American you could name. Cornel West has already started to criticize Obama; I expect to hear a lot of “he’s not really black” in the next few months from folks like West.
Lots of things elected Barack Obama. You can draw parallels between 2008 and 1976. Obama spoke so vaguely and comfortingly that people heard what they wanted to hear. He was not Bill Clinton or Hilary Clinton or George Bush, all of whom the public were tired of. Seven years after 9-11, with the wars quiet but nmot yet over, we seemed close enough to peace to do what we and the Brits have often done after victorious wars: throw the leaders out. McCain was old and tired and a reminder of the last bad war; Sarah Palin was easily characterized as a kook. Once the economy tanked in October, change- any change, even undefined change- was attractive.
You can blame the media for their lack of interest in Obama’s past, but they didn’t elect him; 52% of the voters did. It’s worth remembering in 2012 that voting for the lesser of two evils may prevent the election of the worse of two evils.
19. David: The closest mythical analogy I can think of is when Saruman was trapped in the Tower of Isengard, and tries to seduce Gandalf with his words. At the last, Gandalf breaks the spell with….laughter.
I’m thinking more like Wormtongue’s hold over King Theoden, making him bow to dictators, apologize to thralls of Sauron for Rohan’s past greatness, stab allies in the back, and let the king’s blade grow rusty because it is better to “lead from behind”.
Well, in the time that it took to write this, several more commenters have joined in, and I salute them, esp Sensitive for bring up Stanley Kurtz:
Let us not forget that early on he was treated to some rather intense attack by mobs using tactics from that book that was dedicated to the Devil!
(Alzheimer’s has some work-arounds, at least in the early stages, and if the reference is obscure a little effort will find the name of those jerks that schooled Hillary, the Chicago Seven, and Obama so well.)
—
15. Josh, 19. David, 23. Agoraphobic Plumber
Are all correct: There was plenty of evidence about who Mr. Obama was.
Stanley Kurtz, and David Fredoso alone dug up more evidence than would be needed by anyone willing to listen:
But so many refused to listen, and the MSM did their usual excellent job of ignoring whatever they decided to ignore.
Agoraphobic Plumber relates how folks tried to enlighten Althouse on her site, and her refusal to take them seriously.
The same thing went on at The New Republic, and Marty took quite a bit of time to reply to the critics, but never changed his vote.
Re-reading BC threads at the time will serve as wonderful memory aides and stimulants, and I intend to do just that.
Buckley got plenty of input, and refused to take it seriously, figuring that anyone that could write that well (Ayers in an editing role, at least, if not a transcriber of Barry’s oral recounting, IMO) had to be so intelligent as to being beyond mere criticism on matters of personal history and substance.
No doubt Noonan got plenty of input from friends like Laura Ingraham, to no avail.
Brooks…?
Well, he said it…
and I concur!
Personally, the fact that he took his young daughters to hateville repeatedly, told me more than I needed to know.
How many whitefolk would have excused me if they were informed that I had taken our son to Klan meetings once a week for years on end?
The kids were part of some official ceremony that I do not recall:
Were they baptized in that HellHole?
It still gripes me today when I hear conservative commentators, usually residing in the Beltway, complimenting them on being such wonderful parents.
…as if setting them up to re-run a bunch of worn-out, dishonest, destructive narratives all over again is just fine.
…not in my book!
27 Annoy Mouse: “Obama had a reputation of being the most liberal senator in Washington.” Nope, I’d give Leahy, Boxer or Feingold that honor, O wasn’t there long enough. He gave good speeches and he voted with the hard left D pack but he hadn’t the time in two years, or the inclination to do anything.
As far as the man climbing out a window in the middle of the night- imagine you’re a Cambridge policeman and you respond to a report of two guys trying to break into a house. You wouldn’t want to jump to any conclusions, would you?
If I recall my discrete probability correctly, the Bayesian probability that Obama was a con-man would have to include the conditional probability that he was a con-man based on experience and the unconditional probability of him being a con-man. Then before he became President, the probability that he was a con-man would have been calculated from (say) the conditional probability, based on experience, that a Chicago politician is a con-man and the unconditional probability of any politician from anywhere being a con-man.
Bayes theorem aside, right from the start Obama came across as silly, fake and presenting a dishonest contrived persona. If we all had a nickel for all the con-men we have come across, then we’d all be rich. These guys are a dime a dozen and all have a giant neon sign above their head flashing ‘grifter’ ‘con-man’ ‘grifter’ ‘ flim-flam man’ ‘ I’m so full of bullshit that my eyes are brown’ ‘grifter’ …………
Obama was/is just another con-man. If some fey, totally naff, privileged scribbler and their audience of Xerox copies of themselves couldn’t see that, then they are in for a few more surprises before they scarf down their final chai latte in the coffee/tea bar of life.
Ah, Victor, you beat me to it.
But yes, Wretchard. The only delusion going on here was and is self-delusion. Anyone who WANTED to know what kind of person Obama really was (and is) had only to look at the fact that he spent 20 years with Reverend Wright as his pastor. He attended sermons there, he had his children baptized there I believe. Reverend Writht’s speeches demonizing America in general and White Americans in particular were freely available to anyone who wanted to hear them.
People who say, “I didn’t know, I was fooled by Obama” are creating an excuse for their own failings, nothing more.
Ya, every democrat presidential runner has been the “Smartest guy” since the sixties and all these “educated” people are suppose to be “intelligent” that they surround themselves with. educated yes, intelligent? Based on what Americans have been teaching in its schools for the past 50 years I have the most serious doubts about what their “Intelligence” is… The academia steers far left and our elitist steer socialist yet history proves these don’t work and have gotten the entire modern world where it is today! I really have a problem with today’s “Smartest guy(s)” in the room when the common man see’s far clear what the problem(s) is and what it will take to fix most of it. It was the Moral and fact based education that got America thru two world wars and to the moon, it’s the Progressive/Liberal secular educated intelligentsia since that can’t return to the moon and has basically gotten America “Out of Space” and on the verge of Economic, Societal collapse! They the Godless are return us to the dark ages in their lust for power!
Whatever fantasies these people might have had about Obama, they did know very well that his election would lead to Democratic control of legislative and executive branches, and concentrate power in the hands of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, two aggressively divisive people with not much else going for them. All to further the pleasantly abstract “Hope and Change.”
I agree that they’re assholes, and probably liars as well.
OMG he adopted the name Barack Hussein Obama and he was running for President of the United States of America while we were at war with jihadi Islam. He was IN YOUR FACE from his business card on. He was a “community organizer” which in general means bad things, we could have fun enumerating our connotations. An absence of record is a dissatisfier, though that often turns around in politics as it provides no avenue of attack. His absence of BIRTH CERTIFICATE is very nearly a pro forma DQ. The problem with Bayesian analysis is that the longer the chain the weaker the conclusions, as even nearly-certain things add up to overall uncertainty. In the case of Obambus, I mean, seriously folks.
I always said he could earn big optic points with me by changing his name to Bob Smith or something American.
Still could. Like today, as a part of his handling of the Palestinian state issue, among others. What are the odds?
Members of the mainstream media will support, promote and protect incompetent leftist, lying scumbag pols such as Obama and Edwards up and until any further support makes THEM look like morons. They don’t give a damn about damage to their country, they care only about damage to their ego. To rescue that ego, it won’t be long before they begin “predicting” Obama’s demise, then blasting him with both barrels to insure it. When that safe and sure bet pays off, they will again trumpet their intelligence, prescience and non-partisanship.
I will exceed my post limit here by one and beg your indulgence. Won’t do it again. It’s just that I don’t believe everyone who voted for Obama was mentally dishonest. There are at least two people I know who voted for him because they sincerely saw him as a bright man who was going to bring a positive change to the country.
Yes there were indications that he was not of the best. But what politician is simon pure? And deep down I wondered whether there was not some element of malice, envy or bigotry in my breast that was rationalizing itself to color my judgment. Objectively it was a possibility.
But I could not shake my unease, the “spider sense” that we sometimes feel for no rational reason, yet which is often not bias, but logic we haven’t found the words for. So my best bet was to state my best estimate and see how it turned out.
And that was a risk. The best predictor of the expected value of candidate is the vote. If the “wisdom of crowds” carried Obama to the White House in 2008, I was prepared to admit there was something in him that appealed to enough people to make them do that. To set own’s own “spider sense” against that is no sure thing.
You cannot go through life insisting “I alone am right”. I can be wrong, badly wrong. The thing is, it turns out I wasn’t. That is such an important fact that I cannot overemphasize it. Although the vote is the best predictor democracy has of the quality of candidate, the observed outcome is how things turned out.
But it puts things in perspective. You can easily see why some people wanted to give him a chance. I don’t believe it is an indictment of anything but the market failure in the media supply of information. Doubtless some people voted for Obama knowing he was incompetent, some may have even voted for him because he was incompetent. But a certain critical number voted for him in good faith and got it wrong because they were badly served by the press.
8. Subotai Bahadur: “It is considered the courteous and Christian thing to do to grant one’s political opponents the benefit of the doubt as far as motivation.”
Well, no, there is nothing in Christ’s teachings or in Christian theology that enjoins Christians to grant one’s political opponents, or any opponents for that matter, the benefit of the doubt as far as motivation. But, inasmuch as you aren’t a Christian, you can’t be expected to know that.
The biggest egghead for US President was who? Woodrow Wilson? He was a smoking disaster of a president. Garfield did come up with a novel proof for the Pythagorean Theorem, something your average US President is in no danger of producing, but he got shot 200 days in so we’ll never know how he might have fared.
I can’t imagine any PhD I’ve ever met would make a good president. The intellectuals are a different breed, and almost always pardigm followers rather than leaders. Or even innovators (almost every great inventor and many of the greatest scientists have been uncomfortable in the ivory towers). It is a shame about Garfield, he was a successful general as well as a scholar, and his Pythagorean Theorem discovery is more a contribution to science than all the contributions of professors Wilson and, ahem, Obama.
The progressive mind needs a giant of intellect at the helm. Aways has. This is contrary to the American political scene to all who came before them. Prior to the progressives most American presidents styled themselves as self-made men born in log cabins (whether it were true or not). The “low” breeding of Palin would have higher political stock than an editorship at the Harvard Law Review.
But an article of faith in progressivism is a over-estimation of expertism, and a need to have the best and brightest, the Team of Rivals or somesuch, regulating and governing the ship of state, twisting all the dials and pulling all the levers. They require the Toscaninis of statesmanship, legs quivering in the awe of their Oz. These types of god-men, these philosopher-kings are simply the keystones of their utopian arch.
Among herself, John McCain, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden, Sarah Palin was quite correct in pointing out that she was the only one of them with even two minutes of experience as an executive. And all of it self-made. To this day she is considered a bumbling moron by all the progressives, those whose would comfortably have Joe Biden instead. Joe Biden, alas, where to begin?
I consider that I knew exactly what an Obama presidency would spell regardless of much detail concerning his political history. This is because I saw Obama as not only a believer of himself in the philosopher-king role his philosophy demands, but as a true believer in the progressive screed. You need very little detail about the man if you know his faith is misplaced, that his ideas are misplaced.
We’d be pretty much in this exact same mess if it were Hillary rather than Obama. I hear some progressives rumbling now with a little buyer’s remorse, longing for the Hillary they think they should have elected. As if they simply chose poorly on the philosopher-king. Hillary has the smarts and the moxy it turns out, she ought to have been the one!
No evidence exists to support this. She’s different in style only, as in the difference between HillaryCare and ObamaCare (ObamaCare came to resemble Hillary’s campaigned on plan more than Obama’s, anyway). She’s proven to be one of the more embarrassing Secs of State, yet, too:
1) “Reset” button for Russia
2) On Our Lady of Guadaloupe: “That’s a nice virgin you have there. Who painted it?”
3) To the government of Pakistan: “You should do as we do, and tax everything that moves.”
4) Offended lecturing of African delegations on principles of feminism.
5) Insisting Bashar Assad is a “reformer”, not a dictator.
6) Pointless insulting the North Korean people
7) Libya
She’s an over-bought lunkhead, too. But the progressives view her as another magic talisman, and another promising progressive visionary. They are crazy.
Problem is too many regular sorts have no idea how crazy progressives are; they think progressives can’t possibly be as crazy as they are, they must have some good points. It is hard to believe that on every given point of public policy that progressives are wrong. But I assert that such is true. What are they correct about? Energy, economy, foreign policy, education, forestry, climate, Gitmo, immigration, health care, retirement finance, tax policy, what? They have a worse average than a monkey with typewritter, worse than deciding things by flip of a coin. They are worse than random, they are uniformly wrong. That takes some doing; that’s a symptom of a deeply flawed guiding ideology.
We have an a-posteri knowledge of what progressivism brings. We just lived through the 20th century. I hope people will open their eyes and see it.
Ok Jim in Virginia but that is what I heard prior to the election. I don’t quite remember who was putting that out but it was no secret and I recall paraphrasing it to some black friends of mine at the time that they were electing a hardcore Leftist and they didn’t blink, didn’t care for that matter. It was generally believed that GWB was evil incarnate and not a few were damn certain that he was responsible directly for the attack on 911 not to mention any number of evil white conspiracies, buggin’ po’ ol’ Henry Louis (whitey did it) Gates Jr.
r @ 49: Well, no, there is nothing in Christ’s teachings or in Christian theology that enjoins Christians to grant one’s political opponents, or any opponents for that matter, the benefit of the doubt as far as motivation.
Well, I can’t think of a scriptural reference either, but C.S. Lewis said of his Maleldil, “This is the courtesy of deep heaven, that if you meant well, you meant better than you knew.”
However, whether Obambus has ever meant well, or badly, or anything at all continues to escape me.
The thing about Bayesian, or any structured, logic, is that it in some ways replaces having any opinion at all. You construct a model and recite it, like Mr. Spock, like just the facts m’am Joe Friday. I didn’t know that I alone had the measure of Obama, but I had a model with a string of conditional probabilities, and the length of the model alone was very daunting.
On the other hand, so was John McCain and his ingenue Lady Palin.
The public took a deep breath and went for hope over experience, not to mention throwing the bastids out, flushing the toilet. Good heuristics, but hardly quantifiable, and in this case, well, what can you say.
A LITTLE LATE, AIN’T IT TOOTS?
Peretz says Middle East in tatters
A little late, not that it matters
Yes I’m a sap, says David Brooks
But I still like Obama’s looks
Just nothing worked, Miss Noonan cries
And dabs fake teardrops from her eyes
Oh yes they cheered him way back when
But his is now and that was then
And we who knew him from the start
Say Marty, we don’ give a fart
And Brooksie, take your New York Times
And shove it where your grasss knoll rhymes
And little Peggy, oh so sweet
Go sell your sweetness on the street
We’re tired of you, your faux big brains
Get out, you’re clogging up our drains
48. wretchard: “I don’t believe it is an indictment of anything but the market failure in the media supply of information. . . . a certain critical number voted for him in good faith and got it wrong because they were badly served by the press.”
I think that’s the main reason he won the election. There are other reasons. There is no single explanation. But lack of information is the big one. Most people who voted for him weren’t stupid. It wasn’t even a case of being “too nice” and unfamiliar with the ways of con men and hucksters. Because most people didn’t get the information about him that would have revealed the man for who he really was. John McCain wouldn’t make Obama’s longstanding membership in a looney racist church a campaign issue. That alone should have cost Obama the election. There were many, many other “facts” that would have turned people away from his candidacy–had they known about them. But they didn’t know. I knew, but I live in Cook County, and I was well familiar with the man.
52. Josh: “Well, I can’t think of a scriptural reference either, but C.S. Lewis said of his Maleldil, “This is the courtesy of deep heaven, that if you meant well, you meant better than you knew.”
Which is my point. That’s not Christ talking, not any of the Church Fathers either. That’s C.S. Lewis, Magdalen College fellow, talking. And he’s talking about courtesy, not about granting political opponents the benefit of the doubt concerning their motivations, which may by turns have a whole lot or nothing at all to do with courtesy. What’s more, I think Lewis especially–Lewis the Christian apologist–would have been chary about granting benefits of doubt, given his acute understanding of Original Sin. If anything, he might have been more likely to err on the side of caution. Just ask Screwtape.
In _The Wisdom of Crowds_, James Suroweicki lays out conditions he’s found which contribute to good outcomes from group intelligence, and which conditions can harm it. One of the enemies of good outcomes is homogeneity.
Let me take three crowds: 1) Americans 2) the American press corps 3) the Democratic Party. The first is an astonishingly various group of people. The second is an astonishingly homogeneous group. The third is also an astonishingly homogeneous group despite its claims about diversity. This was evident in the Democratic candidate debates of 2007-2008 wherein all the candidates argued not about solutions but about degrees and about priorities. If Suroweicki’s observations on homogeneity are right then the American press corps is not a group one should count on for good outcomes on group decisions.
Luckily the American press corps is not called upon to make group decisions. They are just gumshoes. Or are they? Unfortunately all the young ones come straight out of journalism school having been trained by leftist profs who are borderline if not openly subversive and sent forth to go “make a difference”. Usually on any given current issue one or two positions are staked out by outfits such as the New York Times or the Washington Post, and all of them fall in line filtering their coverage of events along those lines.
Journalists who resist this paradigm are as rare as Michael Yon.
The larger, more diverse group, Americans, unfortunately rely on the journalist group when they need information for such things as elections. Non-Democratic candidates must make an end-run around the journalists to get their information out, while Democratic candidates can largely consider the press corps to be an extension of their campaign. Culturally the press corps is homogenous with the Democratic Party. Non-Democratic candidates must counter with ad-buys, grassroots organizations, and retail politicking. That means dollars.
The press corps made a conscious decision, as evidenced in JournoList, to get a Democrat elected president in 2008. Aside from the moral audacity of such a decision, their homogenity precluded that whatever decision they made would not be well-informed. Simultaneously, Barack Obama amassed a campaign war chest of historic proportions easily capable of countering any effort to end-run around the press corps with ease. Barack owned the press, he owned the airwaves, he owned the print, he owned the battlespace.
There was no way America was not electing Barack Obama last time, even if were caught with a racist pastor, with ties to a terrorist bomber, with ties to shady Chicago political skullduggery. As he was in fact caught with all three, and more. He had the press alliance and the money to keep muscling folks past all the detractors, and onto the higher things, even preposterous things such as his campaign speech from Germany, to keep everybody’s eyes on the historic moments set to emerge, eyes on the stars aligning.
The media are responsible for the lack of vetting, the lack of attention.
They should pay the price in terms of reduction in credibility, reduction in circulation and reduced income. (Take it down to zero, in my view!)
50. Cowboy
‘I can’t imagine any PhD I’ve ever met would make a good president.’
My first defensive reflex was ” because you haven’t met any Canadian PhD’s – even though we are technically ineligible”. My second thought was “Rachel Maddow has a PhD”.
I concede your point and retire vanquished from the field.
I still am incredulous at the sheer folly of the people who voted for this disaster. The warning signs were everywhere, plain to be seen, and yet they were ignored.
Barack Obama (spit) is a man who from his earliest days has been nurtured, taught, and inspired by people who would love nothing better than to see this country go down in flames. I don’t believe that there has ever been another nation which harbored so many people who were hellbent on destroying it. The fools cannot by any effort be made to see that they are attempting to saw off the branch which they are sitting on.
I have been reluctant to adopt Limbaugh’s thesis that Obama is deliberately attempting to cripple the US, but it is becoming unavoidable. If the President were simply a fool, he would occasionally do something right, simply by the law of averages.
Obama is a committed doctrinaire socialist. The United States has been the bain of socialists since the days of Karl Marx. They hate it the way Ahab hated the White Whale. If Obama can kill it – if he can break the United States – he will be their hero forever, and I am increasingly convinced that is his aim.
“McCain (or anyone else) would have been identical to the act now being dramatized.”
Well, we know which side of the ‘History makes men, men make history’ argument you are on. I’m on the other side. NONE of the other choices would have screwed the pooch this bad.
McCain is a RINO but his years of experience and decades of leadership would have prevented him from allowing the clown posse in the White House. This administration has raised the bar for ineptitude.
Rahm Emmanual, the former Chief of Staff, was overheard threatening an Illinois State Senator. If he didn’t vote the way Rahn wanted, his house was going to be burned down! The Senator would not deny it. White house Chief of Staff. Belongs in a rubber room and when he gets better, Marion.
Yes, teh won walked into a mess. SO WHAT! Almost every POTUS inherits a mess. Or at least since Ike. The President’s job IS crisis management. There are always several left over for the new guy.
Obama not only whiffed on the left overs, he has added his creations to the pile. That isn’t history, that’s Obama.
Granted, I was not likely to vote for a Democrat, as the last time I did so I regretted it. What definitively turned me into a “anyone but Obama” voter for me was his “Mr. Rainbow…brings us together…neither red nor blue” campaign shtick compared with what he did to Alice Palmer in getting her off the ballot in his first campaign for the Illinois legislature. What he did to Alice Palmer was the action of a cynical, hard-nosed Chicago politician. It was not the act of a Mr. Rainbow who will bring us together.
That convinced me that his Mr. Rainbow self-presentation was just an act. I then thought of a TV special featuring the Gershwin musical “Of Thee I Sing” which I saw back in 1972, starring Carroll O’Connor, then in his heyday as Archie Bunker. O’Connor starred as Julius Wintergreen, who campaigned for President- and won- on a platform of “Love.”
Just like Obama, I thought to myself.
To my surprise, Carroll O’ Connor had a decent singing voice.
David Brooks is just now discovering he is a sap. For a University of Chicago graduate, he is a rather slow learner.
Yo, Gordo!
As a 23 y/o 2nd lieutenant Colin Powell served as an infantry platoon leader in Viet Nam in 1968-69, the period of highest US casualties, with the Americal Divison in “I” Corps, which was probably the most dangerous area of operations at that time. Ms. Noonan is certainly being naive but she’s closer to speaking the truth on Powell being a de facto hero than you are, implicitly dissing him as some kind of defense bureaucrat
westerncanadian, I don’t mean to attack the worth of PhD’s, I apologize for having it come across that way. Yet it seems to me that your typical PhD does not present the leadership qualities I’d look for in a president.
The same might be said of any other group of people, I suppose. How many roofers would make a good president, for example?
Presidential timbre might exist in a roofer, though, or perhaps a PhD. It really is a shame Garfield got cut down before he got started, his biography suggests he may have had the stuff.
If I were in the business of deciding which group of people had the best chance to become a good president, I’d pick state governors. They at least would have some kind of track record being a chief executive and working with a legislature and a judiciary. And that is exactly where the American people have historically turned to the most when picking presidents, as it happens.
I find it troubling that intellectual credentials trump common sense today. It very well might be the case that the roofer has more of the right stuff than the PhD. PhD’s might, in fact, be handicapped in the leadership game. PhD’s by training tend to follow prevailing paradigms until they’ve systematically exhausted the vein, then reflect and establish new paradigms. They hew to a slow and systematic process in accruing knowledge. Presidents rarely have this luxury, I’d think.
But PhD’s come with a check in the boxes labelled “Smart” and “Certified”. And those are very much weighted boxes these days.
To many people vote.
Obama was not elected by the chronological children but I am open to arguments that the XXVIth Amendment be repealed. He was partly elected by the conservatives who allowed themselves to be manipulated into staying home to “punish” the Republicans. Mostly he was elected by 30-50 year old emotional adolescents who ran like lemmings after a narrative that pushed their prearranged buttons. The marker of a bad idea is haste. Obama is always trying to shove things through in a hurry. The Obamists not only did not reflect on the possible reality behind the mask but bristled at the idea of mature study, and they still do. They are like teenagers who have discovered this amazing thing called sex and believe that the world needs to know about it right now. When told to wait because others have seen this before and their enthusiasm may be misplaced they get angry. We need some way to preserve democracy while protecting ourselves from those who lack the maturity and moral and emotional stability to serve on a jury in the militia or in the voting booth. You do not give children a loaded weapon. Why do we give them the ballot?
Gordon 11,
Young Colin Powell earned his medals. Whatever our arguments with his recent business dealings or his relations with GWB and BHO we must respect that.
…criticizing him for his numerous dumbass mistakes.
But the whole point is that they were NOT—are NOT—”mistakes.”
They were—and are—”the plan” and therefore they cannot be repudiated, disowned or apologized for.
(Having said that, they may be considered “mistakes” only in the sense that they will prevent Obama’s reelection. That is, because they enabled the mask to slip, because they allowed the Truth to emerge—to escape—despite Obama’s—and his media enablers’—best efforts, but only because of that.)
For Obama is still the same old, ends-justify-the-means, lying ideological thug he ever was (e.g., Rev. Wright affair, above)—who is still being shielded by an MSM that is running even more frenzied interference for him now that the scales have fallen from the eyes of the once-glossy-eyed droves. As demonstrated by the blurb on David Brooks’ column in today IHT:
“President Obama has rejected Obamaism. The WH has abaondoned the Reasonable Man approach and gone back to politics as usual.”
David Brooks. Today (21-Sep-2011). Writing about the thug in chief (maybe it’s the solstice that’s addled his gray matter?) And this is an intelligent man? (Alas, we know him once….?)
Yep, “the Reasonable Man approach.” David Brooks in CYA mode.
It’s exactly like people who continue to talk about the Middle East “peace process.”
Now what process of self-deception enables one to (still) talk about Obama’s “mistakes” or the Middle East “peace process”?
(Granted, we are living in an extraordinarily dishonest age.)
File under: “Tell me sweet little lies.”
Hmm Robert McNamera went on from a disastrous career as secretary of defense in the 1960′s (where he presided over a failed Viet Nam policy) to a disastrous career at the world bank in the 1970′s (where he presided over a recycling petro dollars policy that destroyed many US banks.)
McNamera failed upward.
What would Obama’s next career move be after the presidency? Typically secretary generals of the UN come from small third world countries.
But a first in a generation US president in 2013 who was truly nationalist might cause the UN to make an exception.
Yo, Insufficiently…
Your remarks on the Annenberg Challenge fiasco don’t tell the half of it! First off, after originally agreeing to give Dr. Kurtz access the complete Annenberg archives at the U. of Illinois, Chicago (UIC, a public university), some influential figure there evidently strong-armed the library staff into revoking that authorization. (This came down just weeks or days before the 2008 presidential election!).
In a stunning coincidence, a certain Dr. Wm Ayers was at that moment an esteemed education prof at UIC (where if I remember correctly, his father was on the board of overseers, but that might have been at Northwestern U., where Ayers’s wife, the egregious Bernadine Dohrn, was herself a law prof, but was precluded from membership in the Illinois bar because of her obstruction of justice felony conviction regarding the Weathermen follies), Not so amazingly, Prof. Ayers was also the chair of the Annenberg Challenge board, and it was at his behest, apparently, that Obama (“just a guy from his neighborhood”) had been hand-picked for the Annenberg Directorship –indeed, the only executive position that Obama had ever held.
When the ensuing sh*tstorm all over the center/right blogosphere (although assuredly not the MSM) forced the UIC library to re-authorize Kurtz’s research — the results of which he was going to present on old-line liberal Milt Rosenberg’s WGN talk-radio program, Obama national campaign HQ in Chicago openly mobilized a denial-of-service attack on Milt’s call-in lines, with the talking points that the Obamazoids were instructed to use included “Kurtz is evil”, and “we’re going to get the FCC to pull WGN’s license for giving airtime to evil people”. Quote un-friggin’ quote. I heard it all live. In forty years of broadcasting, this had never happened before to Rosenberg and he was flabbergasted. (This full debacle may well still be accessible from the WGN website.)
The media was totally out to lunch on such an outrageous act of malfeasance at the highest levels of the Obama apparat. They still are: several times I’ve submitted prospective op-eds on this affair to the Chicago Tribune, WGN’s parent, to the NYT and to the WaPo… to which the response was the soothing sound of crickets.
As usual excellent discussion. I’m with those who believe that those who voted him in while ignoringn the evidence.(My democrat relatives an example: he’s a DEMOCRAT AND aFRICAN.) To somewhat paraphrase a previous post, if he were white, he’d be a laughing stock. And please Mr. Fernandez don’t limit your posts. Pray a lot. JS
I am curious, since the left likes to redefine words, how did we miss when they redifined intelligent(smart etc.) in reference to Obama?
Yo, Hanoi Paris Hilton,
I heard that broadcast, and followed all Stanley Kurtz’s reporting. Did you miss Steve Diamond’s articles? For a while, anyone could access them, then after the election he pulled behind a password-protected guardrail. Too bad, he’s a strong union-uber-alles guy but also seemed a hell of a lot more reliable and honest on the subjects he addressed than say the NYT.
He delved deeply into the Ayers clique, and how Obama was perched by Ayers at the head of the Annenberg Challenge, eventually to disburse $160,000,000 to ‘improve Chicago schools’. Hogwash, it was doled out by Obama’s board of directors to community activist groups, none of them much interested in math and science but we can surmise that it furnished a hell of a bankroll for their leftist political exploits.
Obama was also on the Board of the Joyce Foundation, another funder of lefty politics. Do read Stanley Kurtz’s post-election book, ‘Radical-in-Chief’, for an in-depth discussion of Obama’s matriculation as a covert socialist, an authoritarian one, through an extensive network of far-left ‘intellectuals’ and community organizers with extensive resources.
It’s a shame that our wise mainstream media hasn’t got collectively the brains and will and energy that Stanley Kurtz has invested into shining serious light onto the Obama phenomenon of undermining American politics.
All you had to do was look at Obama’s Senate voting record. He was obviously a Marxist.
One of the underlying themes of Progressives seems to be, “People are dumb, except for us.” I’ll agree with the first half, but reject the notion of any exceptions.
The human brain has a built-in mechanism for suppressing the knowledge of how dumb we are.
It seems to me that being dumb and knowing it is far less of a handicap than being dumb and not knowing it.
I have feared that, like Buchanan, Obama would not be up to the challenges. My worst fear was, and remains, that he will do for the world what Buchanan did for the country.
In quoting a Klaven commenter, Wretchard has said a mouthful: “the Republic can survive a Barack Obama; it is far less likely to survive the multitude of fools who made him President.” So much for the wisdom of crowds.
In her book, For Your Own Good, Alice Miller cogently argues that the rise of Hitler to power was effected in no small measure because he embodied in himself, consciously or unconsciously, the ideal of the German father: autocratic, savagely punitive, demanding unquestioning obedience, among other traits, to an abusive degree. Hitler’s own father was a tyrannical, god-like dictator in the home, violent and utterly lacking in compassion for the members of his family, a typical German dad of the times. Little Adolf absorbed these traits and exhibited them in adulthood in such a way that the German people recognized in him a sort of paternal authority to which they automatically deferred. The German volk voted for him because they believed that, as he demonstrated the traits of a good German pater familias he would therefore be a good German fuhrer.
I have seen it said on more than one occasion over the years that the Presidential candidate that wins the election is the one who promises to be America’s best Daddy. I suspect that there is a measure of truth to that, though I have not seen any serious research to back it up.
Granted that while in campaign mode Obama was deliberately attempting to make himself all things to all men. He really did project himself as a blank slate on which everyone could project their own idealized image of a president. A majority of people that went to the polls in November 2008 saw something they liked. Whatever it was I didn’t see it so his election remains a puzzle to me.
I know a lot of people who voted for him because the was not George Bush; they got that right, anyway. But I also know a few people who were strongly in his favor, a few Democratic apparatchiks among them. What I have always found strange about these folks is their slavish repetition of Democratic talking points, it is as if they not only don’t have original ideas of their own, but don’t even formulate them in their own words; its lockstep party line all the way.
So the question that I’ve been thinking about is, what kind of a social pathology has so afflicted the American people that they should elect such a man? Leftism, yes, and the mechanism of its transmission is fairly well understood. But what are its constituent elements? And, more importantly, what is the cure?
Gagdad Bob has frequently imputed part of it to delusion, the creation of a mental map of the world with few (and those tenuous, in my opinion) if any points of correlation with reality. Also, the propensity to project internal states onto others; quasi divine attributes onto fellow partisans, utterly demonic onto opponents, and to assume as an article of faith that others are doing the same (that is, that any given person is either with them in divinizing friends and demonizing foes, or opposed, divinizing or demonizing their own partisans or opponents). Interestingly, it is precisely the community organizer’s job to instruct the community who is to be worshiped or cursed, and to inflame those passions to the point of action; as a preacher would lead his community to praise the LORD and renounce Old Scratch.
Hmmm. Maybe after shooting all the lawyers community organizers could be next?
Just a thought.
63. cowboy
There’s nothing to apologize for – my response was made with tongue planted firmly in cheek. (I once tried to convince some American colleagues that the computer programming language name ‘C’ was shorthand for ‘Canadian’). In all seriousness I fully agree with what you are saying and would be extremely leery of a Presidential candidate with a PhD. I was lucky to navigate away from Academia and make the PhD credential worth something. Besides, it’s impossible to insult a refugee from Britain like me (two beer story).
I think most journalists who’ve covered Obama understand perfectly the more radical aspects of Obama’s history. The problem is that they are okay with it. They are culturally homogenous.
It was good to see AP contradict the Buffet Rule’s absurdity today. The press corps will do everything they can to help Democrats out at every turn. But they will not go down with the turkeys they’ve clawed to elect. If the perception that Obama is a loser continues to grow, they will at the minimum stop promoting him, even stop protecting him.
Here’s a word for you:
Discernment.
It’s an old-fashioned word with its weighted meaning rooted in scripture.
Everything that informed me about Barack Obama was available to Peretz, Brooks and Noonan: his associations with Dohrn and Ayres, Rev. Wright, and Khalidi; his less than honorable technique of eliminating his political opponents in Chicago; his sponsoring of legislation in the Illinois Senate to permit born-alive aborted babies to be put in a closet to die.
Where’s the mystery?
Who Barack Obama was and is was knowable, but a correct judgement required that the information be filtered through a sensibility that reacted with horror at what could be known.
Wretchard
I am not convinced they are particularly intelligent or well-educated. (They are people, I will give you that much). Instead…
Suboitai
…and…
Richard Aubrey
…explains it. Peretz, Brooks, and Noonan are, as Glenn Reynolds would say, credentialed, not educated. Members of a self-anointed caste, they processed the available information about Obama through a state machine that evaluated how his candidacy fit within their cloistered world. They did not evaluate what impact he might have on the nation. That’s not important to them, because they take it for granted, provided for them by whatever mysterious forces actually produce goods and services and security and prosperity. They apparently have no real clue about how things really work. They’re not just unfamiliar with burglars sneaking out of windows, they’re unfamiliar with the construction workers who installed the window he’s climbing out or the gardner who planted the flowerbed he trampled as he snuck away.
It’s all about appearances and perceptions with their crowd. They live in a make-believe society that has more in common with a typical High School culture than with the real world. There are no adults in their world, the few (e.g. Dick Cheney) who ever intrude are resented with all the scorn and petulance a fifteen-year old know-it-all can muster.
C was indeed an abbreviation for Canadians. C++ stands for Super Canadians. I was learning FORTRAN. On punchcards, because that’s what men did. FORTRAN was the first computer language to come with a manual. It was also the last one. Remember: GOD is REAL. Unless declared INTEGER.
The magic words are “internal polling”. The elite now have an idea how much Obama’s unpopularity can cost them, votes, credibility, and etc. For those who are in elected office and their co-dependents thing have gotten serious. This is why they are letting out the chain on people like Brooks at the NY Times. Rice bowels are in danger.
“Congressional investigations are typically held for little more than Washington tourists. When a president is suspected of extreme stupidity or a crime, it is conventional for his party to do everything possible to thwart the investigation. Bill Clinton was an example of that.
Democrats would like to rid themselves of Albatross Obama. Under normal circumstances it might not be possible without risking the alienation of key constituencies. A criminal investigation, however, provides the opportunity for modern-day regicide.
The Solyndra investigation(s) will be different, because congressional Democrats view their situation as worse if they protect the man than if he is dumped. So Solyndra or a counterpart will be a bipartisan investigative effort. Democrats might have incentives to be even more aggressive in pursuit of the truth than Republicans. None of this will be driven by the pursuit of justice or the Rule of Law. It will be driven by political self-interest.
Appearing tough in the investigation would serve to distance Democrats from their titular head. If there is a smoking gun, Democrats will pursue it. If they see an opportunity to take out the king, they may go for it. If there is a “smoking gun,” this will end more like a Richard Nixon than a Bill Clinton.”
Text message for Peretz Noonan Parker and Brooks-
“You have a rendezvous with gravity”.
Hanoi Paris Hilton: LZ Gator 1968. 198th Brigade. Second Tour. Purple Heart.
Duc Pho 1970 22 dead 32 wounded. My team 8 men 2 survivors.
The Americal AO had few if any headline battles. But it was a meatgrinder.
Let’s not make this mistake again, and make damn sure we don’t elect a democrat again anytime soon, like rick Perry. Oh, yeah, he’s a democrat alright. Always has been, and always has behaved as one. He’s been aboard every political fad you can name, starting with the Dream Act scholarship program. He raised cigarette taxes to more than 100% of the retail cost. Cut loose with the Trans -Texas Highway attempt as soone as the ink was dry on the supreme court’s Kelo vs. New London decision was handed down. Then there is the Guardasil autocrat attempt. His “Franchise Tax” which amounts to a state income tax directed toward small business. In his speech in New York he said all the right things in support of Israel, but he doesn’t mean or care a whit for Israel, so even if he gets it right he’s saying the right thing for the wrong reasons. He’s in so deep with muslims, such as Grover Norquist, his wife and others he can’t see straight (see- 1389 A.D.). I’ve never heard him say “Drill Baby Drill!!”. He won’t mess things up with his muslim oil cronies. He failed to get seven clean coal plants in Texas, and he’s mandated 10% energy for all electricity produced from companies to come from “Wind Energy” production, and that means those useless windmills. Thanks T. Boone Pickens. He grandstanded and demagogued the 10th amendment all the while accepting millions in Stimulus, or should I say, Porkulous money. He said, back when Senator Hutchinson ran for the governors office in 2008 that he wanted to pass a law that any elected Texas office holder would be compelled to resign their seat if they filed to run for higher office. He has yet to reign to fulfill the principle inherent in that legislative proposal, much less be serious about enacting it into a law in Texas. He wanted to damage Hutchinson in her gubernatorial attempt, and now he’s moved on, of course, was never serious about it in the first place, as higher office has always been on his mind. but hey, tht kind of stuff sure sounds good! He’s never done or accomplished a single principled or conservative thing that I’m aware of, except spout a bunch of “conservative” platitudes in slow, “…won’t stand for it!” drawl. He’s tried to usurp all the gains of the Tea Party movement in elections in 2010 to himself. He’s a democrat party operative, and always has been. His record stinks on ice. He must be properly vetted well before the republican primaries begin next year. The press and democrat party won’t (vett him) because they sure do love themselves some rick Perry, (and don’t think that they don’t, no matter how they may posture in an effort to appear squeamish of him and all he supposedly represents) because if he loses to 0bama or wins against him, it’s a win/win situation for them. He’s one of their breed. A career politician. With a whole lot of favors and bribery to re-pay. They speak the same language. And it’s still not better than 0bama Chicago style politics, even if it drives the current admin out of office. He’ll destroy all we’ve worked so hard to gain, and take any of us with a principled stand against government abuse with him. He’s in it for himself and his ever widening list of cronies only. Exactly what I would expect from a democrat party operative. We suckers out here are only to grin and bear it, and, of course, vote for him. Not gonna happen. You and your hot-shot cronies can go back home, empty handed. Your price is way too high.
Consider what we really have here folks.
We don’t just have a disaster, we have something truly remarkable.
We have The Great Inversion.
Instead of Peace in the Middle East we have less peace.
Instead of an improved opinion of the USA by the world we have guffaws in some quarters, disgust in others.
Instead of more people in their homes we have a lot fewer.
Instead of The Great Recovery we have at best stagnation with inflation and at worst, worst.
Instead of Green Energy producing Green Jobs we have billion dollar black holes producing nothing.
Instead of a larger “social safety net” we have earnest recognition on all sides that some of it has to go.
Instead of less racism we have more. People voted for Obama because of racism. People voted against Obama because of racism. And either way, racism is winning and is likely to get worse.
“…It is that hucksters aren’t confined by the same boundaries they assume everyone else is contained by. They are capable, not only of sucker-punching you, but of exceeding limits you never thought could be transgressed. Grifters are in some sense not part of the same civilization that Peretz, Brooks and Noonan inhabit. Maybe they don’t believe this yet. But they will…” –Wretchard
Exactly, fool me once an it is shame on you. Fool me twice and it is shame on me.
I will say the some of those fools were well compensated fools. Nobody hypes nobody for nothing.
I don’t know Bayesian, but as regards (at least) Brooks, Noonan, et al, the saying applies: you can’t cheat an honest man (or woman).
Perhaps it’s experience that says that a lack of information is itself (valuable) information, and that lack is not reassuring. The holes in Obama’s life story along with the little tidbits that did leak out, reinforced that impression. LIke the 9-11 commission – it made some sense that the Bush administration was slammed, but the total lack of same for the Clinton administration said to me that the fix was in – that and the fact that if you looked closely you could see Lee Hamilton’s lips move every time Governor Keane spoke….
SB #8:
“But if neither malice or stupidity by itself can completely account for the mess, you may have to conclude you are dealing with malicious idiots.” Great line – I am going to steal it….wasn’t good to read though while drinking coffee at the computer.
#83.
Yessiree, the Cloward-Piven strategy/blueprint for achieving nirvana is right on track. (AKA La Grande Seduction?)
(Don’t you just love it when you can persuade people—a whole society—to destroy themselves?!!….under the guise of helping them out…)
File under: Feel the love….
Toadold – in #79, I’m sure you meant to write “Rice Bowls”, but “Rice Bowels” is a whole lot funnier!!!
I spent years in the academy and understand it reasonably well. Many folks there have never operated in any other world and as such have not been subject to the predations and hard lessons of the larger world where everyone hustles and there are no rules. Much of the current media come from that world. You don’t see the old hard edged police beat reporters in the newspapers anymore and they don’t make PBS or news at 6 anchors either. Have have lived in a sheltered and chloistered world.
My mother, God rest her soul, told to me very early on that you will be know by your friends and associates. Reverand Wright, Bill Aryes, Frank Davis, Father Flager; enough said to those who were looking with a critical eye.
On the most part this has all been about willfull blindness and now they are publically exposed and are trying to cover the axxs.
Time to flush them out of the system with bankruptcy and start over; if I only believed that were possible.
Docbill @ 88 wrote “I spent years in the academy and understand it reasonably well. Many folks there have never operated in any other world and as such have not been subject to the predations and hard lessons of the larger world where everyone hustles and there are no rules.”
My experience was the contrary. The faculty in my department were less to be trusted than the people to whom I rented houses. Maybe that was because of the location.
Leaving Louisiana in the broad daylight.
This is down in the swampland, anything goes
It’s alligator bait and the bars don’t close
It’s the real thing down in Louisiana.
On the other hand, in a near-campus eatery at a major, major university I heard how new scholars are trained. At the next table was a professor and (evidently) his grad student. The prof spent a half-hour regaling the kid about how he had put it over on a competitor. I think that is standard for much of academia wherever located.
Traditionally nations are places. Defined by geography, they are destroyed when some other group seizes their land. Most of the time. There is a school of thought on WW1 & II that Germany is a nation defined by a language and the 2 wars ( or one war split into half ) are the result of Germany trying to find a geography to fit it’s language.
America is a nation defined by an Idea. The only thing that can destroy and idea is a better idea.
So America is in no danger from the far left. Much hardship. much pain. Many losses but no danger of destruction. Obama will lose in 2012. If Allah intercedes and he miraculously gets another term, he Will be gone in 2016. The Idea of America will still exist. A little battered a little dinged, somewhat rough around the edges but still there.
Most Marxist take-overs are coups, The central figure, be he Chavez, Hitler or Trotsky, provides a figurehead for guys with guns. Thanks to the 2nd amendment, that won’t work in America.
America the Idea can put 150 million armed citizens in the field. The Usurper would be stretched to put forth 50,000.
I don’t know a priori from my posteriori but I thought this Bozo stank from the first time I saw him, I posted the below in the comments on this very blog on the day Teh Won was sworn in, if I could swami the lotto as well I would be rich.
Carter 2.0 ( a.k.a. the reign of O )
My predictions for the coming four years;
1. A deepening of the coming recession due to feckless tax increases and a failure of economic policies driven by redistributionist ideas.
2. Rapid expansion of the Federal government in an attempt to “create” jobs.
3. Retreat and retrenchment in all matters of foreign policy, appeasement of aggressive dictators, fawning on the U.N. for permission to act in self defense
4. Fairness Doctrine
5. Disastrous Supreme Court appointments that rule against the Constitution and in favor of “fairness’, “justice” and “economic equality”, a constant invention of new rights or powers not to be found in the Constitution.
6. A relentless attack on the Second Amendment.
7. National Health Care on a par with the U.K. (do please try not to die whilst waiting in the aisle)
8. Collapse of capital markets due to punitive taxation.
9. Reparations
10. Iran gets the bomb.
11. China gets Taiwan.
12. Korea still has nukes.
13. Lebanon abandoned to Hezbollah.
14. Russia continues to creep back into its old empire, holds Europe hostage via control of energy supply lines.
15. Iraq left to twist in the wind.
16. Afghanistan abandoned.
17. Pakistan falls to the Taliban.
18. Chavez visits the White House and gives O pointers on how to run a “fair election”.
19. O visits Iran.
20. Israel gets nuked or nukes Iran (or Syria) preemptively.
21. Terrorists deploy nuclear assets.
22. New energy initiatives fail to come close to promised levels of output, still no drilling off California’s coast and oil prices skyrocket.
23. Kyoto Treaty signed. US economy suffers while trying to meet carbon caps.
24. U.S. military suffers reduced budgets while forced to act as the U.N.s policeman.
25. Mexican invasion continues unabated. Voting rights given to many of them.
26. Social Security still not fixed (or even patched) retirement age raised to 72.
Very interesting to compare and contrast the MSM’s reaction to the two books written by Ron Suskind. The first critical of Team 43 the second critical of Team 44. See NewsBusters for details.
87. wws
“Bonsai!”
As a side note, I’ll probably shout that when I go vote for Rick Perry. While I’m not a native to Texas I’ve lived here for over 4 decades and cut and paste attacks from the Ronulans and what’s left of the native liberal democrat twits on Perry are all too familiar to me. They’ve gotten lazy and repeat each others words. They really hate Perry because he has steadily reduced their power bases in the state. The Texas Trial Lawyer’s Association has been in tears over the Tort Reforms. La Raza isn’t happy because Perry calls for more Fed efforts on Border control. The bill Perry presented to the Feds for having to house (imprison) illegal immigrants that commit crimes didn’t go over to well with them either. The war between Perry, Ken Salazar, and the EPA makes headline almost daily down here but, hey Perry is a Democrat it says so right here in the talking points memo. So I’ll save my fingers and stop defending him. I’ll leave that up to people like Steve Forbes who just predicted that Perry takes the Presidency.
64. Blast From the Past
”Gordon 11,
Young Colin Powell earned his medals. Whatever our arguments with his recent business dealings or his relations with GWB and BHO we must respect that.”
I said nothing disrespectful. I respect his medals, as I do my own. I note he has a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart; I even assume the latter is more deserved than that of John Kerry.
My point was he was called a ”hero” and when I simply asked why, the reply was because he’d ”been in a war”. My comment was directed at the columnist, not Powell, though I still regard him as more of a military politician than a fighting man. Don’t think he was a very good Sec of State, either, and Scooter Libby is doing time because of him and his subordinate. To me, that doesn’t fit with the military values he supposedly absorbed. High positions demand high standards. To me, that was a blur on an illustrious career.
The pull to be a “nice progressive college educated person” was poignantly strong and bound up with all sorts of expectations and hopes our middle-class, non-college educated parents had for us. And we were fooled. In 1991 I agreed to work for what I now know was an ACORN affiliate. They misrepresented themselves, and the job. I walked into their offices in New Orleans and a fat, mannish white woman wearing Hosea Williams overalls (a sign of a specific and sophisticated communist/racial training) informed me that what I was to do first was ‘strip myself of the bourgeois values my parents had instilled in me.’ Those weren’t her exact words, but it was the language she used. I was already learning things and stuck around for a few more days watching them, then told her where to put it. Like everyone else in the office, she was an organizer from Chicago, where a young lawyer was running this racket.
The office was full of earnest young college students who had been taught to hate themselves for being white. They were naively going into the worst projects and getting beaten up, and worse. It was a good education to see this. It was also good to have read Dr. Zhivago, because it enabled me to identify precisely what I was seeing. I made many mistakes after that, but when Obama surfaced in 2007, I knew who he was and what he was — because of experience. But I was also lucky in education — my education helped me in addition to blinding me to certain things. I don’t think that sort of education exists anymore.
So experience tells me now that if we don’t do something about the way children are being educated, all the experience and insights in the world won’t matter. I learned this from reading Dr. Zhivago too. What is happening in the schools is terrifying, and none of us should be ignoring it:
http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/25_04/25_04_lyman.shtml
As we all heap opprobrium on Brooks, Noonan and their fellow elite squishes for having decided, in the last election, that Obama was a reasonable alternative to McCain, I remember that this was also a position adopted by some staunch conservatives, including some of today’s opprobrium-heapers.
Josh @46 The problem with Bayesian analysis is that the longer the chain the weaker the conclusions, as even nearly-certain things add up to overall uncertainty.
That’s not true. A Bayesian probability is the same one you’d get if you had all the data at the beginning and calculated the probability using a non-Bayesian method. The Bayesian approach merely updates its way to that probability as the data arrives (instead of waiting until all of it has arrived). This is easy to prove mathematically (although I don’t immediately recall how).
“The academics, including 9,000 with PhDs,”.
MSM/Telegraph.
Headline:
“Scientists sign petition denying man-made global warming”
Sub:
“More than 31,000 scientists have signed a petition denying that man is responsible for global warming.”
Obligatory:
“Petro-chemical plant in Romania releases smoke into the atmosphere Photo: AP”
“The academics, including 9,000 with PhDs, claim that greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane are actually beneficial for the environment.
The petition was created in 1998 by an American physicist, the late Frederick Seitz, in response to the Kyoto Protocol a year earlier.
It urged the US government to reject the treaty and said: “The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.”
It added: “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of … greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the forseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/2053842/Scientists-sign-petition-denying-man-made-global-warming.html
“first apparently plausible presidential candidate of African descent”
The Big Lie, of course;
http://fookembug.wordpress.com/2008/12/01/the-seven-black-presidents-before-barack-obama/
http://carterbedford.wordpress.com/2009/06/25/black-presidents-before-obama/
pinched;
“All of the presidents mentioned were able to pass for White and never acknowledged their Black ancestry. Millions of other children who were descendants of former slaves have also been able to pass for White. American society has had so much interracial mixing that books such as “The Bell Curve”, discussing IQ evaluations based solely on race, are totally unrealistic.”
A lot of contradictory information in the thousands of URL’s produced by a search on “black presidents”.
There is one clear fact that stands out.
If the ‘one drop’ rule is used, hundreds of millions ‘white’ Americans have a “N_gger in the woodshed”. Which makes me wonder what all the fuss is about. I also wonder why the MSM didn’t cover this topic. If it bleeds, it leads? Is this issue bled out?
You can look at all the signs of Obama’s incompetence and dishonesty which I agree with, but it is also important to point out who he was running against. I held my nose and voted for McCain but I felt that he was the lesser of two evils. He was a terrible choice and I believe he made it easier for many to deceive themselves.
I’ve been reading “The Road to Serfdom” by Hayek – one observation I have is that often we don’t really have a choice between freedom and socialism – it seems to be between two different strains of socialism. Maddening!
The Peeples’ Cherce:
O’narcissist.
“in a sense, that’d be even more newsworthy than the already-known fact that our President is a clueless narcissist.)”
http://pajamasmedia.com/tatler/files/2011/09/125682969.jpg
“Obama waving-hand gaffe picture NOT a hoax or a Photoshop after all!
Over the last few hours a photo has begun to circulate on the blogs showing Obama supposedly at the “Open Government Partnership” conference today committing an egregious gaffe by raising his hand to block the face of another world leader.
Here’s a link to the MSNBC photoblog where most bloggers first noticed the image; and here’s the image itself:”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2781488/posts
64. Blast From the Past
And that’s the meritorious Bronze Star, not the one that comes with the ”V”.
You’re being far too kind. Inexperience, disengagement, consorting with terrorists, and pretending otherwise (among a much longer list), send clear signals to people not subject to systemic cognitive bias.
Gordon,
Just change “blur” to “blot” and I’d agree with what you said. Only got the Making Morning Muster “I was alive in ’75 or The side that won in ’91″ and unit/reserve service citations myself. We all need editors in life, that’s why God invented women. Your initial was indistinct as to your opinion regarding Powell as compared to the Pundit.
The terrible thing about Powell is that the Presidency was his if he wanted it, and saying no may even be commendable, but he became bitter and hurt good people who had served with him. His endorsing Obama was inexcusable. There was no substantive daylight between him and McCain and he knew John McCain was the better man. It helped keep the black vote locked in a plantation when he could have helped lead them out and it convinced some thousands of white moderates that it was OK to turn away from the GOP.
Clearing Scooter should happen within 48 hours of taking back the White House. Justifying that is the weakest part of Bush’s memoirs and a blot on a man I admire.
BTW I once met Mickey Rooney and all he wanted to talk about was his Bronze Star for entertaining the troops in North Africa.
“But there’s one last thing that nice people don’t know. It is that hucksters aren’t confined by the same boundaries they assume everyone else is contained by. They are capable, not only of sucker-punching you, but of exceeding limits you never thought could be transgressed. Grifters are in some sense not part of the same civilization that Peretz, Brooks and Noonan inhabit. Maybe they don’t believe this yet. But they will. They will.”
Spot on! Back then I was warning that Rev. Wright did not belong to Western Civilization, except as communists or fellow travelers can be said to belong to it. Keep in mind that communists eagerly take on the task of breaking the middle class mold in favor of higher values found in the New Socialist Man. Communists rule themselves out of Western Civilization.
Do not be fooled. These writers are just one Obama success away from jumping back on the bandwagon and begging foregiveness for doubting The Messiah.
#96 Kris
As we all heap opprobrium on Brooks, Noonan and their fellow elite squishes for having decided, in the last election, that Obama was a reasonable alternative to McCain, I remember that this was also a position adopted by some staunch conservatives, including some of today’s opprobrium-heapers.
Most of those “staunch conservatives” who adopted that position are part of the collaborationist Institutional Republican party. They are very much part of the bipartisan Political Class’s [defined by Codevilla] Nomenklatura and are as far removed from reality as Brooks and Noonan. They are the same ones who deliberately throw away the advantages of holding the House in “negotiations” with Obama, saying that we cannot fight back unless we hold the Senate with a 60 vote majority and the White House, even if the fight is preparing the battlefield for achieving that majority and the White House.
If the Republican party nominates anyone to the right of Huntsman or Romney, it will be a two front war; and those same “staunch conservatives” will re-discover the merits and virtues of Buraq Hussein Obama.
Subotai Bahadur
“Obama’s Middle East Is in Tatters”
He can’t give it away on 7th Avenue.
What the country was hoping for in Obama was someone to “fix” Washington. Too bad they elected a metrosexual huckster. If your toilet is overflowing, you need a plumber, not an interior designer. But then, no progressive would ever admit knowing a (shudder) plumber, I mean, not personally.(How gauche)
As far as Obama’s intellect, many people were convinced of Bernie Madoff’s “genius” before his scam was exposed. In much the same way, “he knew the right people, moved in the right circles, he must be one of us.” Surprise!
62. Hanoi Paris Hilton: I do respect Powell’s service. But, so what? I don’t know of any heroic deeds attributable to Powell either. He is no more a hero for serving his country in Viet Nam than I am for three tours in Iraq. It’s called “service” for a reason. His backing of Obama made his judgement suspect.
And for any race-baiting trolls, I’ve worked for, and had greater respect for, much better black officers than Powell. Of course I didn’t consider them “black officers,” I just called them Marines.
83.RWE: word, yo.
Kris @ 108
“Obama’s Middle East Is in Tatters”
He can’t give it away on 7th Avenue.
Man, I am so stealing that.
Subotai (#107), “some staunch conservatives” was a reference to the type who would consider a second Obama term to be a reasonable alternative to voting for, say, Huntsman or Romney, should the GOP membership have the temerity to choose one of them as a nominee.
In 2008 nobody had any experience with Barack Obama because he had held no substantial office for any length of time. He the “blank slate” on which everyone projected his fantasies.
Sorry. Can’t agree to cut these fools that much slack. As Josh pointed out in a post above, Obama telegraphed whole flurries of left-wing punches in plain sight. I figured him for a fraud within a few months of exposure to him.
These folks supported, praised, and voted for Obama out of pure, raw class snobbery. They declared him “one of them” because of the schools he went to and because he could “act white” with panache, while maintaining what they thought was authentic “blackness.” He was the perfect package for the “smart set” to admire, no matter where they fell on the elitist ideological spectrum.
These “saps” helped ruin us. Screw them.
Chuck (#108):
Kris stole this from the Rolling Stones. Chuck is stealing it back.
(Who will volunteer to steal that?)
It is a fundamental misunderstanding to assume that the gatekeepers failed in ’08. They succeeded; it was their ideology which failed. As Wittaker Chambers wrote in Wittness, (Hiss) could not be exposed without raising the question of the real political temper and purposes of those who had protected and advanced him, and with whom he was so closely identified that they could not tell his breed from their own.
We have evolved further, and the breed is no longer similar, it is identical.
Off Topic:
I received this is an e-mail a couple of days ago. What an eye-opener. This tells the Obama Story quite well.
IN SIMPLEST TERMS: WHY THE US WAS DOWNGRADED
Why the US was downgraded…
• U.S. Tax revenue: $2,170,000,000,000
• Fed budget: $3,820,000,000,000
• New debt: $ 1,650,000,000,000
• National debt: $14,271,000,000,000
• Recent budget cut: $ 38,500,000,000
Let’s remove 8 zeros and pretend it’s a household budget:
• Annual family income: $21,700
• Money the family spent: $38,200
• New debt on the credit card: $16,500
• Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710
• Total budget cuts: $385
***************************************
Listening to Imus’ and Beschloss’ conversation I was struck how they both sounded as though they were in love, totally smitten. Beschloss voice struck me in this way: calm, soothing, intelligent, informed; every single possible worry, apprehension, fear, or concern completely absent. In other words, he had dropped his sense of self-protection to a nadir that he may have never experienced before in his life. He, in effect, had given himself over to the Won. I believe that that is exactly what some prominent conservative writers experienced when they went over to the dark side. I would be very interested to know what the percentage of men to women where a similar swooning caused them to “buy all in” to the enigma that was Obama.
I listen closely to what Subotai says on this board because his comments are edgy and hard – even cynical, but most importantly, they are full of reasoned analysis. But even so, even if he is “pretty sure” of an adversary’s good intentions, Subotai will be continually vigilant and aware of his behavior. My sense is that he gets that from his law enforcement experience, but some is probably “built in” to his DNA. From wherever it comes, it is a key to survival.
It is great for a person to have a good image of him or herself, not in the current phony way (“I was the 25th valedictorian in my sixth grade class”), but by hard-fought successes. Even though I have been somewhat fortunate in that regard, I have found that a dollop of self-doubt (perhaps caution is a better word) is essential to rein in the onset of pride and hubris. I have never liked the “dance” in the end zone that some insecure professional football players seem to need to highlight their moment of success. It lands on me as weak and disrespectful. Today in professional baseball, some pitchers do a fist pump after each strike out. I know the emotion that occurs in that moment because I pitched in my yout’; it is a feeling of total domination. It is one thing to feel that inside and another to show it publically and in essence, shove that feeling up the batter’s nose. I always thought those displays lacked class. Because of that, I don’t have the need to crow about successes (few and far between as I age) but to savor them calmly and sometimes in private where I give thanks for the ability that I have been given. What I heard in the conversation between Imus and Beschloss was the need for them to pronounce their personal brilliance in the matter of Barack Obama – loudly and pridefully.
Don Imus, in that interview (as Salt Lick referenced) asks what Obama’s IQ is and Beschloss admits he doesn’t know, and then speaks authoritatively that he must be the smartest president ever. Imus, then, not to be undone, announces that his IQ is 164 and then in a bold faced lie says, “I don’t know what that means.” Beschloss then comments that that level is above genius. It might be, I believe those above 160 are eligible for MENSA membership, but beyond those facts is the virtual conceited inanity in their conversation.
That whole conversation is what we in flyover country consider mutual masturbation: “Hey look at me – I’m a genius! Hey, ME TOO.” We’re more interested in action and results than “proposals.” Their intellectual gifts may be real and I am the first to admit, if God would have gifted me “that much stuff,” I certainly would accept it with deep appreciation. But I think this conversation highlighting the conceit between two “Brights” is the reason why, in their mutual admiration society musings, that they cannot see the danger coming from some Neanderthal with a mere 120 IQ. Being gifted with a high IQ assumes intellectual ability, but it does not speak to other areas of human capability: drive, creativity, common sense, and other areas of human flourishing. Nor of human evil.
Don Imus even brought up Michelle and his agreement with her “This is the first time I’ve been proud of my country” shtick. That sounded like two genius’ giving each other a massage – I’m surprised he didn’t say that we ought to “move” more – yeah I know, that came later.
Last but not least, they spoke of the president’s mixed race status and it came to me – a way to explain Barack’s failures, “It was the ‘typical white person’ side of me that caused all this trouble.” And in that admission we will find our brilliant President, once again, out-witted by inanimate objects.
RE: Presidential timbre
I doubt FDR could get elected today. Or Lincoln.
Consider the list from Anton@91. How many items in that list can be divided along the ideological lines of progressive vs conservative? The Chief Executive is one man. He brings in a Cabinet, maybe some Supreme Court appointments (who must be term-limited ASAP), and upper level staff who bring in mid-level staff. Washington is run by professionals who pack the lower level ranks and up, to some level where the permanent staff intersect with the revolving staff.
The Chief Executive sets tone and direction but to think that one man controls Washington is ludicrous. To think that another man can change Washington is ludicrous. Wretchard intimated that the Solyndra scandal resides with mid-level Washington pols. If scandal it is, then I agree. Prosecute based on the evidence. That’s the American way – or it used to be. Are there lawyers left who work for a living?? There are so many ways to increase the heat.
RE: General Welfare
Conservatives/Republicans cannot win elections with a platform that denies a role for government in “promoting” the General Welfare.
Using the year 2000 as an easy (but not completely accurate) reference point, USA had accomplished the nearly impossible feat of balanced government – 20% “socialism” as I have posted many times so I’ll leave that there. Washington was slowly moving towards reform, in acknowledgement of the demographic burden on SS and the outright fraud that was/is caving Medicare/caid.
Then 2001 happened. Regardless of one’s policy position, the price tag of increased ME footprint has been substantial – in lives and money. (I am reminded of the movie The International where the IBBC bank finances various weapons trades, not to control arms but to control debt.)
Then 2008 happened. Regardless of one’s policy position, had Wall St not systematically removed itself from regulatory oversight, and had what was left of the regulatory agencies (ratings agencies and SEC and Congress) been doing their jobs, the financial damage would have been contained. It was not.
Now we are facing a second recession that is predicted to be more severe because there’s no bailout money left. I am repeating myself again, but USA is in better position to slowly work through the deficit problems because we have an integrated fiscal, monetary and political union. Europe does not and that will take some time, which means that global economic stability will be delayed.
Getting back to The International: A.O. Scott commented on the opportunity to make a film critical of international finance, “that multinational weapons manufacturers can be portrayed as more decent, civic-minded and principled than global financiers surely says something about the state of the world.”
What Tina Trent@95 described should be treated with aggressive law enforcement (with a nice try attaboy smirk from stoi@90.) Collectivism never conquered this country because we *used* to have two functional political parties that created ideological balance. Neither Party is in very good shape right now. They both sold out to Wall St. And the country is suffering because of that.
…
Barack Obama got elected because GWB and the Republican Party were probably the most hated entities in America at that time. The Easter Bunny would have won against any Republican candidate.
…
This is Bob Dole and Bob Dole says we’d better get crackin’.
I can’t give those who voted for Obama any benefit of the doubt.
As Subotai and wws noted, the attacks on people who dared to voice concerns over Obama’s past, ideology and qualifications were often vicious, threatening and way beyond the pale. Those vicious attacks just didn’t come out of nowhere. Electing Obama was much more than just electing a Black President, or one who was supported by the Media. Those nostrums don’t convey the deep feeling his supporters had for him. Buraq was the ” wet dream’ candidate for the Left. The subversive Left and many from the fashionable liberal/left and RINO middle, who not only voted for and supported him; they fell head over heals in orgasmic love with the guy.
This is a sadly a reflection more on our electorate than on Obama. Klavan got it right with “the Republic can survive a Barack Obama; it is far less likely to survive the multitude of fools who made him President.”
Obama was both a person groomed to be the ideal Leftist Presidential Candidate and one who had the huckster/con artist’s ability to convince people of the most gratuitous lies. But the persona of Obama was only able to connect so deeply with so many because far too many have been indoctrinated and deeply brainwashed in the fashionable, subversive, marxist hate for America and our constitutional ideals. Buraq’s groomers were just connecting to the fashionable hate already there. That is where the problem really is. It’s not Obama, it’s too many of our TWANLOC.
Kris @ 108. Yeah I knew it was the Stones. It was the juxtaposition that cracked me up.
OT – the UK Daily Mail has an article with several very clear pics of the P-51 that crashed at Reno titled “Did the seat break? New theory suggests Reno crash pilot’s chair may have broken moments before impact”. Says what others were saying here yesterday.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2039871/Reno-air-crash-2011-Pilots-chair-broken-moments-impact.html
Yo, SpeakEasy…
Well I for one applaud your three tours in Iraq, and yeah the hero shtick is a bit “TF” Much as we used to say. But there is a difference between serving as a grunt (or in any other routinely life-threatening military occupation), whether or not your Bronze Star had a “V” device; and being one of the great majority in the present war-zone forces whose ass really isn’t on the line, except due to extreme bad luck.
That said, at a reunion in Alaska a coupla years ago of my own former outfit, when the locals –who knew of our arrival from glorious coverage in the Fairbanks press– referred to us regularly as “heroes”, I thought that was pretty comical.
#111 Kris
Subotai (#107), “some staunch conservatives” was a reference to the type who would consider a second Obama term to be a reasonable alternative to voting for, say, Huntsman or Romney, should the GOP membership have the temerity to choose one of them as a nominee.
Interesting. I move in circles that definitely do not overlap with the Nomenklatura. My nom d’ blog comes from an encounter with my then-Captain, who accused me of being to the right of Genghis Khan. I replied that I was to the right of his chief general, Subotai Bahadur, who was a real hard-a*s. Said Captain being a Liberal.
Amongst those I know, most of us are either waiting for Sarah Palin to decide, or are supporting Perry. I am in the waiting group [9 more days]. Amongst those I know, the general tenor is respect for individual choices, a waiting for the primary process to produce a winner, and overall; a dedication to supporting ANYBODY BUT OBAMA in the general election, with the exception of Huntsman or Romney. That is viewed as being equivalent of the Institutional Republican party trying to complete Obama’s second term.
There is one caveat. The primary process has to be viewed as not rigged and within the boundaries of the normal political mayhem [this ain't tiddly-winks here]. Blatant cheating or treason by the Institutionals will not go unanswered.
Here in Colorado, we have a few sore spots about that. Colorado has two Senators and a Governor who are Democrats, because the State Republican Party preferred them to be elected rather than a conservative. I mean that literally. In one Senator’s case, the Party publicly stated that if any Conservative won the nomination, they would not fund the campaign or support it. In that case, there were severe questions about the ballot count at the state convention, the Party illegally funded the primary campaign of their hand picked candidate [a heir of a millionaire family of brewers who for generations has been hated by the labor movement in Colorado, whose only campaign issue was lowering the drinking age back to 18, and who got busted for DUI during the campaign.] over a former 3 term Congressman, who fought for the Contract with America and as promised quit after 3 terms because he did not view politics as his life. The Party gave that Republican Senate seat to the Democrats.
In the last election, TEA Party supported candidates won the nominations for Senate and Governor clearly and overwhelmingly. The party funded a 3rd party run by Tom Tancredo in the Constitution Party for governor, to make sure that the TEA Party candidate did not win. The deliberate split in the vote gave the Governorship to a liberal Democrat. The Party also would not adequately fund the Senate race [against a Democrat who had been appointed to a vacancy and had less than two years in] of the DA who won the nomination. The Democrat had been the Congressman from the Peoples’ Republic of Boulder, and had voted for years to the Left of Obama. His record was a free-fire zone that they would not touch. They would rather have a Marxist in office than a TEA Party Republican.
Then there is the matter of cases like Murkowski, where the good old boy network was more important than getting rid of a Republican who voted with the enemy much of the time [and still does].
A blatant top-down imposition of Romney or Huntsman would trigger … consequences. Other than that, the people I know would vote for anyone to get Obama out.
Subotai Bahadur
62. Hanoi Paris Hilton—
I’m with Blast and Speakeasy; I respect all who served, before and after me, and I was in at that same time. I knew career Marines who did 3 13-month tours in The Nam and all but one also had a Purple Heart. Further, during that time—as some will remember—those who were serving were vilified by those who weren’t fit to shovel their shit. So his service is fine with me.
But, to review the bidding, the subject was supposed ”conservatives” who went for Obama and, along with Noonan et al, I mentioned Kathleen Parker and just added the anecdote that she called him a ”hero” and her answer struck me as off the base. And, as far as ”defense bureaucrat” I can do no better than quote my own commanding general, a brigadier with a Silver Star and two Purples from Korea, who smilingly told me he’d gone as far as he could go, only got that far because of the war. Why?—and I paraphrase here: ”To make general you’ve got to be mostly a good politician; the higher, the more it’s true.”
To prove the exception, my colonel ended up with two stars before dying of cancer.
So . . . Powell devoted his life to the military, was extremely successful there (in an enormous bureaucracy), and that’s all fine with me. In my generation of Jane Fonda, et al, there were so many who didn’t. But I still say being in a war doesn’t make one a hero.
RE: Michael Beschloss
Beschloss voice struck me in this way: calm, soothing, intelligent, informed
That’s his trademark speaking style. He used to interview on MacNeill Lehrer. Very polished to the point of robotic – direct linkage to an internal teleprompter. A little spooky actually listening to him. Closest I’ve ever come to being hypnotized.
RWE@83: “Instead of less racism we have more. People voted for Obama because of racism. People voted against Obama because of racism. And either way, racism is winning and is likely to get worse.”
Actually, my attitude toward racism has adjusted over the years, particularly since I adopted a little black girl 3 years ago. I used to think racism should be rooted out everywhere it was found and destroyed. But it slowly dawned on me that that is a very Leftist way of approaching a problem. The more I see and learn, the more libertarian-leaning I seem to become.
I’ve seen a little bit of racism toward my daughter, but it’s been very subtle and not at all intrusive. Moreover, the utter stupidity of racism harms the hater much more than the hated. Anybody who avoids my beautiful daughter because of her race or avoids us because we adopted her is missing out on a wonderful little girl. People stupid enough to dislike nonwhites simply because they’re not white miss out on a great many things, and this very blog would be high on that list.
So I no longer really care if racism is out there (much, anyway). If people can be reasonably civil and nonviolent about it, and if everybody gets equal protection by and from the law, that’s all I’ll ask for. People have a right to have their own stupid opinions. It’s no different than having the right to be a Democrat.
Wretchard quoted: “the Republic can survive a Barack Obama; it is far less likely to survive the multitude of fools who made him President.”
That’s our real dilemma. We need to focus on the malfunctioning process that made Obama president. The hard truth is the political process swings back-and-forth like a pendulum. The conservative president after Obama needs to first and foremost, undo the considerable damage that Obama has caused. However if the system that put Obama in office is still in place then chances are an even worse socialist with greater political cunning will be elected president after the pendulum swings left again.
It’s not enough to simply remove Obama. The broken system needs to be repaired before the next incarnation of Obama gets elected president. The best way to achieve this is to devolve federal power back to the states. The federal government needs to be knocked back to only managing national defense, negotiating foreign treaties and international/interstate commerce. All of the various entrenched socialist programs like Social Security and Medicare need to be reverted back to the states to be dealt with at the state level. Through constitutional amendment, it needs to be made fiscally impossible for the federal government to get involved in big ticket socialist programs (starve the beast!). Repeal of the 16th Amendment and a Balanced Budget amendment are good ways to achieve this. Also repeal of the 17th Amendment would further the process of reverting power back to the states.
Bottom line: Focus on the malfunctioning political process that made Obama president and either repair that process or render it harmless.
24. Forane
I voted for Jimmy Carter back in 1976. Yes, 19 years old and fell for the JC hetoric, hook, line and sinker.
From one Christian to (I presume) another, I voted for Reagan – my third election. Perhaps the difference was that I was in the military and my Bulconguava detector was pegged when it came to Carter. As in Obama, Carter’s “Christianity” (and he was Baptist) did not comport to the Baptists I knew in the real world.
I believe what I heard (even though he was a Bubblehead alumnus) just didn’t fit my view of the religious or the secular world.
I don’t know if I really do that much analysis. I try to stay informed (even then – I wanted to know where in the world I would be required to fight next), but as Jesse Stone says, “The truth is out there; you just have to let it in.”
it is out there; you do have to let it in – even if you disagree with it.
26. Jake in Pittsburgh
“In that way, I think they saw the burglar coming out of the window and said, impressed, “oh, a black fellow from Harvard Law…he must live there.“
Re #8 “Never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. But if neither malice nor stupidity by itself can completely account for the mess, you may have to conclude you are dealing with malicious idiots.” I would like to agree, but please observe that it is essentially the same ruling class for the last… how many years? And given that I tend to think that O is just a face. To what end I still cannot figure out.
Peggy Noonan is a woman of considerable intelligence, a Washington insider and one of Reagan’s speech writers. Why is it that someone of Noonan’s experience was seduced by Obama and yet most of the commentators at Belmont Club instantly recognized Obama as a leftist demagogue? I suspect the main reason is that most of us at Belmont Club are either ex-leftists or grew up in a Left Wing environment. I was an undergraduate at the University of California at Berkeley in the 1970s (I graduated with a degree in Engineering Physics in 1976). U.C. Berkeley in the 1970s was Mecca for the American left. Every few months, significant socialists/communists like Angela Davis would give lectures at Berkeley and entertain questions from fawning admirers.
I have to confess that when Obama first appeared my first thought was:
“I’ve seen him before. He’s just like Angela Davis.”
The reason why Peggy Noonan was seduced by Obama was because she had no prior direct experience with people like Angela Davis. This brings home my point, that the best way to be immune to socialist seduction is to have prior experience with it. Unfortunately, this leads to the corollary that if socialism were to go away then it would be reinvented because no one would have prior experience and therefore lack immunity.
IIRC Powell’s autobio, his first tour was an adviser. You could get shot doing this, and many did, but it was not like leading a rifle platoon. His second tour was as staff, brigade or div, I think.
As I said in my Amazon review, his book doesn’t tell us why the powers that be wanted him in DC so much, wearing a suit. Be interesting.
Shortly after 9-11, Noonan wrote a piece called “Welcome back, Duke”. Still up, you do better searching if you use the comma. It’s a heartwarming, heartfelt tribute to real men, with some personal reflections. Perhaps accidentally, she is explicit that this is new territory for her and her kind.
Does she speak as if she were raised middle class on the East Coast and educated at a non-Ivy school? She’s passing, trying hard. Doing what she has to do.
Rots your brain, that sort of thing does.
W,
I read you and the community everyday to learn something new. Rarely I disagree with you, but this one I strongly disagree on the whole.
Peretz, Noonan, Brooks et al., they don’t deserve to air their opinions and get paid whatever’s worth.
Nice people may not know con artists personally, but if they can’t recognize one, they need to learn their life lesson at least once. There is no extra special protection for ‘nice’ people.
Shortly after Sarah Palin’s choice that boosted McCain’s poll numbers, big time, Noonan spoke from a position “outside” of the Republican Party (where most of us felt that she was a big Reagan and Bush supporter), and she spoke with great disrespect:
http://www.drudge.com/archive/111886/noonan-caught-open-mike-its-over
Noonan Caught on Open Mike: ‘It’s Over’
Republicans Mike Murphy and Peggy Noonan, caught talking on MSNBC when they thought their microphones were off, gave sharply negative assessments of the choice of Sarah Palin as vice president. “It’s over,” Peggy Noonan said. When Chuck Todd of NBC asked her if this was the most qualified woman the Republicans could nominate, Noonan responded, “The most qualified? No. I think they went for this, excuse me, political bullshit about narratives. Every time the Republicans do that, because that’s not where they live and that’s not what they’re good at, they blow it.”
No Peggy, it wasn’t about narratives, it was about real conservatism. Quite frankly, it was the only interesting moment in what could only be described as a heretofore incredibly dull performance at the top of the ticket.
125. Eggplant
And what are we to do about all the other power bases of the American Left? Conservatives naively think that taking over all the branches of government (including a more conservative Court) will result in national dominance.
The Gramscian “Long March Through The Instituions” is what gives the left its real power. One of those institutions is a government entity: the permanent bureaucracy. All these forces work to sabotage “enemy” governments, i.e., Republican control of the executive and legislative branches. Washington bureaucrats view Republican administrations as occupiers, and Democratic ones as liberators, and act accordingly.
Subotai (#121):
We are in agreement. And I will use this opportunity to urge/plead that people not only vent on blogs or wake up on Election Day, but rather get involved in politics at the local level. “A republic, if you can keep it.”
(Speaking of which, I’ve been away for a while: what’s up with Papa Ray?)
egg @ 129: The reason why Peggy Noonan was seduced by Obama was because she had no prior direct experience with people like Angela Davis.
Nah, she’s old enough. My diagnosis is she’s too old and suffered a common if not well understood regression left with age. This may suggest that at an early age she had a LOT of exposure to leftoid environments, if not necessarily the 1960s community organizer type … but frankly the timing is correct.
from Wikipedia:
Before the Reagan years, Noonan worked as the daily CBS Radio commentary writer for anchorman Dan Rather at CBS News, whom she once called “the best boss I ever had.”
hmm.
#5 of 4
@129Eggplant: Very true. Everything I needed to know about the Left, I learned there.
91. anton: My predictions for the coming four years
1. A deepening of the coming recession due to feckless tax increases and a failure of economic policies driven by redistributionist ideas.
We are halfway through a major financial crisis caused by the debt binge of the Naughty Aughties. Only when people pay off the home equity loans they took out to cash in on the ephemeral windfall they thought they had when home prices kept rising, or at least are no longer upside-down on their mortgage, will they be willing to return to something like the consumption we saw before. And that won’t happen until at least 2014.
2. Rapid expansion of the Federal government in an attempt to “create” jobs.
Even Senate Democrats are balking at this. The Tea Party controls the narrative in DC now.
3. Retreat and retrenchment in all matters of foreign policy, appeasement of aggressive dictators, fawning on the U.N. for permission to act in self defense
Fortunately dictators seem to be out of fashion these days, post Arab Spring.
4. Fairness Doctrine
Talk radio doesn’t have the importance it once did. The party moved over to Twitter.
7. National Health Care on a par with the U.K. (do please try not to die whilst waiting in the aisle)
The GOP House refuses to fund it.
9. Reparations
No money left for luxury items like that. Besides, Obama already has 95% of the black vote, where else would they go? The Mormon?
10. Iran gets the bomb.
Big waste of money, a bomb. Israel bombs back.
11. China gets Taiwan.
That would trigger defense guarantees, and a war with their biggest borrower. There’s an old adage that goes, if you owe $10,000 you have a problem, but if you owe $14 trillion dollars, your bank has a problem.
12. Korea still has nukes.
They never had a nuke, they had 400 tons of dynamite wrapped in a shell with some half-baked reactor products, detonated in a mine shaft in a shake-down attempt that didn’t work.
14. Russia continues to creep back into its old empire, holds Europe hostage via control of energy supply lines.
Unfortunately for Russia, European energy demand will be way down when they enter an economic Depression.
15. Iraq left to twist in the wind.
Shoulda never went there in 2003 anyway.
16. Afghanistan abandoned.
Good, that means we aren’t sacrificing US Marines to guard poppy fields for warlords anymore.
23. Kyoto Treaty signed. US economy suffers while trying to meet carbon caps.
Kyoto already is signed, just not ratified. And it never will be. In 2000, with a Donk Senate, and Bubba in the Oval Office, it failed 95-0.
When I was in the fifth grade I learned the Very First Lie liberalism imposes upon children to create a thought process that will not recognize the value of what you experience.
I had a problem with a bully.
Then, as now, the teachers did nothing to assist me in my problem and provided me with useless liberal advice such as; Ignore them, they’ll grow tired of it. But they didn’t grow tired of it, they intensified their actions.
I finally did the unthinkable.
I fought back.
Suddenly the establishment swung into action and swooped down one the bullies… No Just Kidding, they came down on me like a tonne of bricks.
When I protested that I was the victim they gave me the Big One. The First Lie liberalism teaches children;
“It takes two to fight!”
“No,” I said, “One not fighting back will still get the snot kicked out of him.”
My suspension for talking back taught me of liberalism’s disdain for the truth from which stems their hatred of history.
In all, I beleive it was my fifth grade experience that made me conservative.
HE DID IT!
SEA LEVELS DROP UNDER OBAMA!
http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/promise-kept-sea-levels-fall-under-obama
His re-election is now assured.
Josh @135. Hmmmm. Noonan goes from Dan Rather and a Leftist CBS environment to working for Reagan to pimping for Obama. Strikes me that she’s a plain old band-wagon jumper, scurrying to find the next big thing and hitch her little wagon to the biggest star. The (manufactured) star-power of Obambi was the brightest thing in the universe back in 2008. Plus, all those years of being neck-deep in the New York-Washington nexus clearly has taken it’s toll. Reagan was a LONG time ago.
Also, the easy route to permanent media employment is to be the quote-unquote “Conservative” commentator that somehow always “breaks ranks” and sides with the Democrats over key issues. You know, like McCain’s “Maverick” dodge.
The thing about becoming an Insider is that nothing is more frightening than the idea of being shown the door by the Cool Kidz. There is no way Noonan could have stood against Obama in the media environment that was ginned up.
As for the many comments above that the real Obama was there for anyone that wanted to see him, that’s very true. But most people didn’t see that Obama, not even a little bit. Think about it: if you got your entire view of the world from a combination of the NY Times, the MSM, Jon Stewart and Oprah, what would you have thought of Obama in 2008?
Plus, I agree with many above that race was a monumentally huge factor in his election. I would bet that a significant portion of his white votes were entirely due to his race and that ever-present societal corrosive “white guilt.” The power of white guilt is always underestimated. Hell, in Sweden an entire nation is quite literally committing mass suicide due to white guilt.
Maybe the past few years have begun to crack that shell (along with the ongoing black flash mob events). In any case, I still see Obama being a real threat to be re-elected due to all of the above. Plus, as soon as the Republican nominee is known, the knives will come out with fury. Whoever it is has got to be tough as rocks and unflinching. My larger worry is that whoever is nominated will have a skeleton or two in the closet. We are going to see the biggest investigative apparatus ever launched on earth directed at the Republican candidate. If he/she stole a Milky Way bar when seven years old, we’re going to know it.
Noonan wrote that Dipsey-Dopey “Thousand Points of Light” speech for the “Kinder and Gentler” President who Killed Reaganism in its crib.
I have no interest in seeing the “better side” of people who sabotage what should be the American Way of Doing Things.
Eggplant #129
I suspect the main reason is that most of us at Belmont Club are either ex-leftists or grew up in a Left Wing environment.
In my case, I was never even remotely attracted to leftism or spent time in a leftie environment until I got to graduate school. It was exposure to narcissism in the family that effectively gave me lifelong immunity against Obama and leftists in general. My extended family habitually voted Republican to a person, but my mother and her older sister were clinical case studies of narcissism. When I first realized that Obama reminded me of them, I knew what he was on a deep instinctive level.
Isn’t it simply that, as Mr. Heinlen said, that man is not a rational animal, but a rationalizing one?
I know I have faith in certain incredible things. Yet I laugh at other people’s faith in other incredible things. It seems to me that some sort of unshakeable “faith” (whether it be ones economic, intellectual, or social ideas) is at the core of all our partisan scrapping.
Thus, I am with our host, who opined above that it is probably a good idea to only consider candidates with a verifiable resume.
I would proposed a constitutional ammendment to require that any candidate for president have held the governorship of a state.
@144
Sounds nice, but you still would have gotten Jimmy Carter – it’s no guarentee.
Better for people who know better to activly campaign against the Mainstream Media to expose them for who they are.
Hector and Edna Averagejoe don’t get news beyond the Primetime Three most of the time and don’t know nuthun’ beyond what the talking heads tell them. They may suspect they are being sold a bill-of-goods, but it wouldn’t be on the TV News if it weren’t true.
jd…
That’s where Bill Whittle’s campaign hopes to change the game.
144
Not an obvious good idea to limit presidents to governors.
Jimmy Carter, Gov of Georgia.
Ike, never governor.
Clinton, gov of Ark.
Lincoln, never governor.
I rest my case.
Eggplant #129:
I think that it was not that Peggy Noonan had not encountered people like Obama before. She has been very nasty to people who put their own interests above the vision of Ronald Reagan and at least claims to have told them that to their face. And you don’t even run for county road commissioner in Mayberry without encountering people like Obama.
I think she was enthralled by the packaging and promotion, especially enthralled because that is what she does, package and promote politicans.
Back when I was 10 years old I would buy a model kit because I liked the picture on the box. And in some cases, with some companies, I was very disappointed because the picture was great but the model not at all representative of the picture. The picture would show a great view of an ME-109G and the model kit might be a very poor representation of a ME-109B.
I still admire the paintings on the model boxes of that era; in fact they are now much more collectable than the crummy model kits that were in the boxes. People collect them, sell them, and even scan them and sell them as artwork; no one would even consider doing that with the crummy models themselves. But now I can separate the two, the packaging versus the contents.
Peggy Noonan could not separate the packaging from the contents. I guess for a while she wondered what bureaucrat had put that crummy ME-109B in the box for the cool Me-109G and figured they would get that fixed by getting a new set of quality control people. She now realizes the contents were crummy all along, but she still admires the packaging. And it’s Okay to admire the packaging as long as you separate it from the real, crappy, contents of the pretty box.
As for her utterly contemptible attitude toward Sara Palin, I think it’s like the electricity and magnetism “expert” who was utterly distressed at Bell’s invention of the telephone. It is said the expert heard of the telephone, and was unable to sleep at all that night, tossing and turning, and finally arising the next morning and saying to a collegue, “Dammit, if Bell knew anything about electricity and magnetism he would have realized that inventing the telephone was impossible!” And if Sara had Peggy’s grasp of politics then she would have realized that such a person as herself could not have been elected to a governorship and been selected to run for VP.
95. Tina Trent
“The office was full of earnest young college students who had been taught to hate themselves for being white. They were naively going into the worst projects and getting beaten up, and worse.”
Tina,
If these kids didn’t learn anythiing from this experience (experiment), then there is no help for them. They will remain damaged goods, codependent and knowing that they had those beating coming…because of their skin color.
109. SpeakEasy
I wrote something a tad harder-edged than you at 109, but thought better of it and pitched it. I was a Squid aviator (non-carrier) so I left the discourse to the combat arms guys who know a lot more about it than I do.
I can talk about McCain and how much he has lost in my appraisal of him as a man, but I won’t. I’ll just seethe silently to myself when I see him on FOX with Greta or Sean.
Your comments were spot on.
Semper Fi
EggPlant@129: “€This brings home my point, that the best way to be immune to socialist seduction is to have prior experience with it. Unfortunately, this leads to the corollary that if socialism were to go away then it would be reinvented because no one would have prior experience and therefore lack immunity.”
Wow. You just made it impossible for me to sleep tonight.
But you’re right, come to think of it, most of the people here do seem to be former leftists or at least were surrounded by it at one point. Heck, we all went through the school system, didn’t we? In my case, both my parents were teachers. My dad was my 7th and 8th grade math teacher. If you ever start feeling sorry for yourself for anything that happened in school, just consider the crap I had to take for THAT. Plus, teachers hang together socially, so I spent a large part of my childhood either with other teachers in my house or over at other teachers’ houses with my parents. I got leftism by osmosis….and so did a great many of the other teachers’ kids.
The good news is, nearly to a person, all of those other kids grew up into (eventually) conservatives. Exposure to leftism does indeed breed conservatism, or at least “classical liberalism” which probably more closely describes me.
But your point is well taken. Leftism does have its charms to the uninitiated, and it all looks REALLY good on paper, or with styrofoam Greek columns on the side and good production values. I suspect people will ALWAYS be falling for this stuff to one degree or another for as long as we remain the same species we are. After all, Hitler was a Leftist. His name is synonymous with evil all over the world, and yet versions of his ideology keep popping up in the most free of countries.
We’re not doomed, but we ARE in a permanent war of ideas, I guess.
Very powerful people shepherded him through out the nomination and election. Obviously he was being prepared from a much earlier time. They were able to hush his opponents as well as most of the media.
Hilary probably knew of skeletons in the closet, including his strong-arming of the Iowa caucus, but never said boo.
There were many reasons why people voted for him, even those who voted more than once or were horizontal.
One of the strongest reasons was the weakness of the republican nominee.
Wretchard: But these unpleasant memories were largely absent in middle class, college educated, white America. These were nice people. They didn’t routinely associate with the con-men, hucksters, pawnshop brokers and street corner grifters. To them the perfect hair, the nice suit, the emphatic speech were simply proof of good personal grooming and culture. But to others these very same things were too clever by half. And just as the sight of a man climbing out of the window with a bag at night would arouse no suspicions in persons unfamiliar with burglars, neither would Obama’s papered over resume ring any alarm bells in people prepared to think the best of everyone.
This reminds me of Taleb’s point in The Black Swan about the epistemology of “Fat Tony” vs. “Dr. John.” Streetwise Fat Tony has learned how to make a buck by figuring out the angles, what people like to see on paper, and that banks don’t care as much owners; you might say he operates by looking around the back of things. Dr. John is much brighter, but he’s a by-the-book guy. From the book:
I know that it is rare for Fat Tony and Dr John to breathe the same air, let alone to find themselves at the same bar, so consider this a pure thought experiment. I will ask each a question separately and compare the answers.
NNT (that is, Taleb): Assume that a coin is fair, i.e. has equal probability of showing head or tails. I throw it and get heads 99 times. What are the odds of my getting tails at the next throw?
Dr. John: Trivial question. Of course one half since you are assuming 50% odds for each and independence between draws.
NNT: What do you say, Tony?
Fat Tony: I’d say no more than 1%, of course.
NNT: Why so? I gave you the initial assumption of a fair coin, meaning that it was 50% either way.
Fat Tony: You are either full of crap of a pure sucker to buy that “50 percent” business. The coin gotta be loaded. It can’t be a fair game. (Translation: It is far more likely that your assumptions about the fairness are wrong than the coin delivering 99 times heads in 99 throws).
NTT: But Dr. John said 50%.
Fat Tony (whispering in my ear): I know these guys with nerd examples from the bank days. They think way too slow. And they are too commoditized.
Now of the two of them which one would you favor for the position of mayor of New York City (or Ulan Bator, Mongolia)? Dr John thinks entirely within the box, and within what box was given to him; Fat Tony almost entirely outside the box.
……….
What’s the box where Obama is concerned? For most voters, the box is the brand — the nomination itself meant he’d be presumed moderate, because major parties don’t nominate wild radicals, right? Wrong, but to think otherwise would seem Extreme, and people shrink from that. (The great achievement of the press was to deny that branding to Palin.)
I have a lot more in common with Dr. John than with Fat Tony, but I also remember the Weathermen.
But look, there are a lot of grifters and con artists in “real life,” ordinary middle-class life, but they aren’t doing criminal stuff. They’re just pulling the rug out from under their co-workers, going back on their word, not standing up. Everybody has experience with this, but they’re in denial. Maybe that’s why so many people are so easily fooled. It’s not nice to see too much (this is especially a problem with women). I remember when Clinton was running we were watching him on TV; my daughter, who was a teenager, said to me,”Why can’t people see through him?” Some of us are just harder to fool than others.
129. Eggplant
Why is it that someone of Noonan’s experience was seduced by Obama and yet most of the commentators at Belmont Club instantly recognized Obama as a leftist demagogue? I suspect the main reason is that most of us at Belmont Club are either ex-leftists or grew up in a Left Wing environment.
I claim no great ability or intellect, or strong political affiliation, and the years 2007-08 are kind of a blur for me. Personally and professionally they were the busiest and among the best ones. I had a baby (my third) in ’08. So allow for big distractions when I mention two things I remember best about the early Obama campaign:
– In talking with a friend in 2007, he mentioned that he had heard Obama’s speech and that Obama was fantastic, brilliant, etc. I said, “What did he say?” He could not recall one thing that Obama has said.
– Once off the ground, Obama for President was a carbon copy of the Deval Patrick gubernatorial campaign from two years before. Same basic candidate (black man, Chicago connections, Harvard Law) same nonspecific enthusiasm (Together We Can.)
That was enough to send me searching on message boards to see what else might be of interest, and of course I found plenty. It’s years later though, and I haven’t found good answers to explain my really bad impressions.
Wretchard, your last paragraph is prophetic. There is no better statement of what lies ahead. I’ll remember it vividly next fall, when the “nice people” you refer to get the final lesson. It’ll be too late then to apply the knowledge they’ve gained, of course, but at least we’ll have the pleasure of saying, “Class dismissed!”
Noonan is no conservative. A “real” conservative in D.C or NYC would be as welcome at the tony dinner parties as a leper. Noonan and her ilk care more about the shrimp cocktail than they do conservative ideology. I equate her to another faux conservative, the insufferable Kathleen Parker. And if you’ve never read Ann Coulter’s takedown of Parker, then enjoy- http://anncoulter.com/cgi-local/printer_friendly.cgi?article=325
Eggplant (129), I spent the first part of the 80′s in Africa, when the Cold War was still in swing. Highly-capable Africans typically found a way to get to either the West or the East to do college and/or graduate study.
Quite frequently–though not always–those who had made it to the US came back somewhat radicalized; their view of the difference between our society and theirs just overwhelmed them. But of those who went to Soviet bloc schools instead? To a man, they came back seriously anti-socialist: they had seen the future, and it didn’t work.
RWE @ 148 said:
“Back when I was 10 years old I would buy a model kit because I liked the picture on the box. And in some cases, with some companies, I was very disappointed because the picture was great but the model not at all representative of the picture. The picture would show a great view of an ME-109G and the model kit might be a very poor representation of a ME-109B.”
The trick with polystyrene models is to make them better than originally designed. Years ago as a graduate student, I organized a tour of the Rockwell plant at Palmdale while they were assembling Columbia (OV-102). I made a point of building a polystyrene model of the Space Shuttle before the trip because I wanted to be intimate with the vehicle’s design (I vaguely remember that the model I used was manufactured by Monogram). Out of the box, the model was inadequate. However by making liberal use of plastic filler and sanding seams, I was able to produce a pretty good foundation. Then I got actual NASA artwork to use as the basis for a detailed paint job. Doing so provided excellent preparation for the field trip. I had that model with me for years afterwards and kept it in my office. After STS-107, one of my managers nabbed my model for use in presentations. Unfortunately my model got pretty beat up and was eventually ruined. It’s a bit ironic that STS-107 caused the destruction of my model of OV-102.
Solyndra Facts & Lies
Some interesting information about that ‘protected’ investment money – Argonaut as well as Madrone.
Go Darrell.
….
And it’s a bad day at Black Rock when conservative women have to meet the Ann Coulter standard.
Cogentrix, awarded a $90M DOE loan, is building a 40% efficient solar farm using high concentration PV.
Please recall that unelected Hillary has been a PROMINENT liar, hiding evidence in criminal investigations repeatedly through her career.
She was FIRED from the Watergate investigation for taking and hiding documents that tended to exonerate President Nixon.
The business of her tiny “investment” that ended up netting her $100K was never investigated. It was simply a GIFT – she gave money to a wealthy supporter, who added her money to his general activities; every time an investment paid off, he DEEMED it to have been HERs; those that lost, he absorbed. Eventually, over a number of transactions like that, he turns around and gives her a hundred thousand dollars, and she tells the world she’s an investment GENIUS.
Maybe she actually believes it, but this is the same woman of low degree who drafted the documents that got Bank of Commerce and Credit International started in the U.S. Remember BCCI? Bert Lance? and a whole crowd of other folks. BCCI came to Rose Law Firm because it employed the wife of the governor of the most third-world sort of province in the USA, with banking regulations more … well, relaxed than even Belgium or the Caymans.
Remember the boxes of documents from Rose Law Firm concerning Whitewater, the piles of boxes that mysteriously disappeared from the White House during the investigation? And how they suddenly popped up again a few years later, minus dozens and dozens of pertinent pages?
Remember how the D.C. police were kept waiting while the office of Vince Foster was sterilized and cleared of any documents?
Remember the death of Jim McDougal (Susan’s hubby from the Whitewater scandal) in prison, from a heart attack, even though his condition was well-known and had been successfully controlled for years?
The Clinton’s stole several moving vans filled with treasures from the White House in leaving, and their staff people trashed the place.
Bill Clinton pardoned convicted murdering terrorists to help get his wife elected to the U.S. Senate. On the last day in office, Clinton signed 140 (yes, that’s One Hundred and Forty) pardons for a bunch of sorry rascals, including felons who had swindled, defrauded, stolen BILLIONS of dollars in con games and schemes. Representative Dan Rostenkowski, Marc Rich, Roger Clinton, and Harvey Weinig (Manhattan attorney who’d been convicted of helping a drug cartel with their extortion and kidnapping activities, plus laundering almost $20Million.)
You can confirm this information easily; I’m not making anything up.
Crooks. You could go on for pages just listing all the LOW LIFE criminal crap these two pus bags participated in to line their purses.
The people in this country are doomed, because all they care about is watching Dance with American Idol’s Got Talent, and drinking their butts off. Why would they apply any more stringent scrutiny to Obama the Secretive?
155. Tim
But Tim, look at how much has changed in the last two and a half years. A year from today, you might look back after you’ve read everything on this board and say, “How could we have been so measured, so wrong.
And I don’t mean that in a good way. When I remember the bad feelings in my gut back in October 2008, today looks positively dark in comparison. I don’t have a good feeling about anything we may see in a year. I was way off in 2008. How far off am I today? Can it possibly be very much worse because we still, honestly, do not know who Obama is, nor do we truly know his intentions.
Stay vigilant.
Subotai, some folks may not really understand the term “Nomenklatura” as you use it simply because they haven’t had your enduring passion for understanding the mind of the Bear.
That would include me for much of my life. The Book that really brought a lot of random bits of information into focus was “Mig Pilot” the story of Viktor Belenko (born in Ukraine!) He’s the Russian “Foxbat” Mig-25 pilot who defected about 1976, flew under the radar – i.e., just a few meters altitude at some 400 knots – across the ocean to the civilian airport in Hakodate, Japan. His story of his life in Soviet Union (as told to writer John Barron) details the commonplace corruption, un-checked lawlessness, cynical abuse of citizens, and how it finally made him re-examine the official party line and see it as propaganda… (Beginning to sound familiar, eh?)
Anyhow, the Nomenklature in USSR comprised the upper levels of the Party. While the commoners waited in block-long lines to find out if their stores had a few rolls of toilet paper, turnips, cabbages or bread loaves, the Nomenklatura knew where to find a nondescript door opening onto some dingy alley, and flash an ID that gave them entry to luxurious hidden stores with Western consumer goods beyond the dreams of the peasants. A phone call would arrange for delivery and installation of a phone, washing machine, or heated swimming pool in days. The commoners by contrast might wait literally YEARS for a dented, scuffed and unreliable washer.
(You will LOVE the descriptions of how factory workers dealt with the absurd production quotas imposed on them by distant idiot bureaucrats…)
Televisions and radios for commoners were manufactured so they could receive only the approved government broadcast signal; if inspection showed they’d been modified to receive Voice of America or commercial stations from Europe, the owner could be arrested and sent to prison.
Read the book. It will give you a good picture of the future of America under Obama and his thugs.
Mig Pilot: The Final Escape of Lieutenant Belenko
—————————————————-
# Hardcover: 224 pages
# Publisher: Mcgraw-Hill; First Edition edition (February 1980)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0070038503
# ISBN-13: 978-0070038509
# Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
# Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
Mig Pilot: The Final Escape of Lieutenant Belenko
I love that book!
My favorite part will always be when they took Belenko to a bar and he talked with an unemployed person and then he told his handlers, “You’ve done it. It’s 1980!”
Mad Fiddler here…
That should be “NOMENKLATURA” …
it’s late and I have a kidney stone to distract me.
p.s. Here’s a link to a fun article in which GM admits it has been recording GPS information from the vehicles people have bought from them with ONSTAR (TM)
Yahoo!
“Yes, I’m a sap. I believed Obama when he said he wanted to move beyond the stale ideological debates that have paralyzed this country.”
Well, if you believed that was GOING to happen, you’re pretty damned stupid.
So is Obambi, if he thinks people like myself are going to be so impressed by his awesomeness, that we’re going to cast off our right wing ideas and march into a socialist utopia, arm in arm with a bunch of progreesive dolts, under the glorious leadership of a clown, who is, at best, a Jimmy Carter clone.
Ain’t going to happen.
Soooooo….They aren’t “stupid”, they are just “nice”. Yeah. Uh huh. Riiight. Anything to make themselves feel superior to those who were smart and not stupid.lol.
Penned by me in an Indian social network blog in Feb 2008.
There was this man called Bam Bam
There was also this woman called HillBill
One wanted to be both blue and red
The other wanted to be both man and woman
But no question
Both wanted the scepter
And like Harry Potter
Both promised to wave the scepter
Like a wand
To bring Change to Gargantua
What they both blithely forgot
In their eagerness was
There was also this other quiet side
Called Big Red Rovenian
Bam and Hill went merrily up the grease pole
Hill fell down and broke her crown
And Bam came tumbling after
Leaving eight more years of blood and gore
Thank you Morton.
I was going to say “credentialed, not educated” And “book smart but stupid”
Asshole is better. Gullible asshole is even better and dangerous gullible asshole is probably the best.
Anyone who was paying attention could see what Obama was (Wright, Ayers, etc…). The real contest was for the Democratic Nomination, a contest between Obama and a more competent, but less well spoken, socialist. Obama won narrowly because he was the better spoken huckster and had the solid black vote. McLame was actually a bit ahead in the polls, until Lehman failed. After that, the Independents simply wanted the Republicans out, and tuned out any information or argument to the contrary. Not that McLame even tried too hard to convince anyone otherwise.
The writing on the wall regarding Obama was so large before his election that only those who chose to remain ignorant could ignore it. Now the pundits, their 401k plans decimated, their palatial residences unsellable, their salaries the focus of tax increases, their gas tanks gobbling, lament, ” How could I have been so wrong?’. The answer is simple- they embraced popular culture and abandoned common sense.
Wretchard has made an excellent effort in trying to explain how some people got fooled. I had no idea what happened to Peggy Noonan in particular — I read her column when she “came out” and thought she’d gone insane. Perhaps it is, as Wretchard said, a case of simply not recognizing the con man.
Thanks.
Eggplant #158:
I bought one of those old 1/72 Monogram Space Shuttle kits back in 2003. As a result of the loss of the Columbia we were given an unbelievable task: break up a Space Shuttle into its parts in terms of size, shape, and material so then the Lockheed modeling program for re-entry analysis could be run to figure out how much would survive.
The data we got for use in the task was in some cases almost indeciperable. I bought one of those models in order to enable us to calculate surface areas and other info that was not in the data.
In that case we did not need a really presentable model but rather one that was just overall accurate. It’s at the office now but I have never painted it.
We also went over to KSC and climbed and hiked all over a Shuttle that was in work there, sticking our heads in various places and noting construction details. And we also made multiple visits to the Columbia Debris holding area to see how it broke up.
But at least with the Monogram Shuttle you had something fairly accurate to work with. That old Aurora Me-109 was barely recognizeable as such.
By the way, both Revell and Monogram came out with 1/72 Shuttle kits. When Revell bought Monogram and moved back to Monogram’s plant location they stopped issuing their Revell Shuttle and now only issue the Monogram one – I guess they judged it better, but it sure had some flaws.
The point is, though, I learned early that the picture on the box is not necessarily representative of the contents. Peggy Noonan never has.
Given the paucity of investigative information on Obama, given his near absolute lack of a substantial track record, it was natural for Peretz, Brooks, and Noonan to be taken for a ride. Not because they were dumb, but because they were “quality” people.
No, they were dumb. As is he. Anyone who, well into their 40′s, still believes in socialism is dumb and anyone who ignores that fact is also dumb. So-called conservative pundits didn’t want to be left behind. They ignored Obama’s background with the New Party, Ayers, Wright and and a resume which hid his poor marks in school and was completely lacking any achievements.
I don’t know, wretchard.
On the one hand, I love this essay for all that it says. On the other hand, we not only elected Frank Abagnale…but the media conspired to keep us from obtaining our usual and customary Bayes fact compilations
We did have plenty of signs and signals. Sitting in the pew (“every Sunday, 11 am”) of the execrable Jeremiah Wright and the spew of hate.
His “dear friend”, the rather inane white minstrel, Michael Pfleger.
The somewhat bizarre relationship with Bill Ayers and his wife of no soul.
The murky past, the shadowy resume, the very open ear for extremists, the Rashid Khalid/Edward Said connection, the tape held hostage by the LA Times, reporters thrown off the plane for doing the slightest of investigative reporting.
EVERY time anyone attempted to obtain Bayes’ data…he/she/it was run down with a road grader-like ferocity.
We received instead the “Journolist 500″, replacing the Indy 500…with laps of road graders squashing meaningful inquiry and conspiring to obliterate objective research into the candidate.
To this date, we have a Soros inspired attempt to keep the road graders circling the course, with “Attack Watch” and other fealty-sourced disinformation outlets ready to lay barren our Bayes’ attempts to …know better this time.
It is not merely that Israel is now in mortal danger, it is that there was a conspiracy to put her in mortal danger…by those who held an antipathy toward her, slandered Netanyahu with impunity they way they did Bush and have had her in their sights with open and naked antagonism…and still do…covered over with a patina of “compassion” for Palestinians.
The same is true of the bullseye painted on the back of capitalism.
Our red diaper media conspired to keep the Bayes facts from being accumulated so that we could know how to interpret the agenda. Stanley Kurtz was digging furiously and sounding the alarm. He was being smothered by the conspirators with their road grader intent.
Brooks, Noonan, Buckley, Parker, Frum….failed to do their job. Miserably. When we needed someone to fill the Bayes bucket, they shirked their responsibility, crumbled under the peer pressure, trembled at the threat of being outcasted and blacklisted from the literati glitterati, and abandoned their posts as sentries at our gates. Their shame is greater than the Journolist conspirators in some ways…because they pretended to be above it all…and they turned on us, as if we were beneath knowing the truth…or even asking the questions.
What Bayes can’t account for…is a conspiracy to be set up with misinformation, disinformation, propaganda, lies and distortion. In the final analysis, it is not Frank Abagnale as President that shatters the trust in our representative self-governance model…it is the now obliterated belief that we can obtain the information we need to make choices. Bayes has been murdered by a conspiracy to keep us from knowing. And THAT…not Obama’s stealth incompetence…is the lasting damage done to our way of life.
McLame was actually a bit ahead in the polls, until Lehman failed. After that, the Independents simply wanted the Republicans out, and tuned out any information or argument to the contrary. Not that McLame even tried too hard to convince anyone otherwise.
The crisis in the banking system was caused by the Democratic Party initiative, the CRA, and Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac. McCain was handed a winning election issue and didn’t know what to do with it.
Don’t forget just how the media poisoned the airwaves with their constant drumbeat of hate Bush, Bush the baby killer, Bush the liar, Bush the warmonger, Bush the Hitler, and on and on. Martin Peretz was also one of Obama’s sycophants and until recently Peretz was just as critical of Israel and sympathetic to the Palestinians as Barack Obama was.
And McCain didn’t really try to win, he tried to be a “nice guy” and as usual nice guys finish last.
Yes Obama fooled enough people to win, and many of them, especially those who are Jewish, are now have a serious case of remorse.
I believe that it was more a case of stage magic than hucksterism. Sleight of hand, look over there not at the man behind the curtain. The whole thing was obvious to me as well as many others but as in a David Copperfield performance, it wouldn’t work if the people were not willingly participating and wanting to be deceived.
There are far too many comments for a reader to ever get to this one but I feel compelled to share my shame, frustration and regret. I voted for him and this requires an explanation. I did what people increasingly do in Democracies. They do not vote FOR the new man, they vote AGAINST the man they’ve had for several years whom they KNOW to be a disaster. Clinton had an emetic effect on me. I could feel my breakfast coming back up into my throat whenever I saw her. Here was a clean cut, well spoken, refreshing young black man. If we got him in, no one in the world could again accuse America of being a racist country. I detested racism. I have a letter from Thurgood Marshall in 1954 when he was head of the NAACP in which he commends me for my fight against racism. After three years of Obama I am now looking to join the Ku Klux Klan. But it didn’t take me long to have my eyes opened. Just before the election, I became aware of his 20-year association with the racist Wright and that did it for me. McCain would get my vote. McCain was an honorable man, a hero. But could he stand up to the machine that had taken us into two wars destined to fail? And then, in a brief moment during some TV coverage, I caught McCain looking lost. I feared dementia. I feared he might not live through four years AND THEN I DID WHAT MANY OF US MIGHT HAVE DONE – I DONNED SOME BLINDERS. I shut out of my mind that dreadful image of the ranting, raving preacher Wright and voted for Obama. His inauguration speech (the substance of which totally escapes me now) had me wiping my eyes. WITHIN WEEKS, HOWEVER, I SENSED TROUBLE. I WAS REMINDED OF HITLER IN 1933 AFTER BEING APPOINTED CHANCELLOR AND HOW HE TOOK OVER ONE GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENT AFTER ANOTHER. OBAMA OPERATED SIMILARL WITH APPOINTMENTS OF CZARS. HE SNUCK AROUND CONGRESS AT EVERY OPPORTUNITY WITH EXECUTIVE ORDERS. WITHIN A WEEK, HE SEND $20 MILLION TO THE PALESTINIANS. I KNEW WITHIN A MONTH THAT I HAD MADE A TERRIBLE MISTAKE AND THAT REALIZATION GREW ON A MONTHLY BASIS. AMERICANS ON THE WHOLE ARE NOT SO DUMB, BUT WE CAN SURE GET FOOLED.
Those who supported Obama, Edwards, et. al., were either leftists to begin with, or were shallow ignoramuses who didn’t bother to do their homework.
It’s a voter’s responsibility to put a considerable amount of time and effort into finding out where the candidates stand on the issues, as well as what the past behavior and associates of a candidate tell us about him or her, before going into the voting booth.
Why modern liberals are 100 percent wrong about everything
Peggy, neither Obama or you have made simple, excusable mistakes. You both took a political position that you believed would serve you well, only to have failed, and like all failures you blame your love affair with a transparent lover of socialism, control of people, and abortion (before and after birth) and then when the ship you both are driving is sinking, you blame the iceberg for floating in his and your path.
The word arrogance comes to mind-his frightfully bold and open,yours, the subtle arrogance of the wordsmith that plays her own kind of messiahship -that of the oracle on high. Your day in the sun is over as you slip into a “B” grade pundit, never to be trusted -not because of your error but because of your freely chosen “choice!”
Your analysis is too generous to these folks. Surely, some were just naive, but many knew exactly what they were promoting and now are just trying to back out as best they can.
These folks like Noonan and Brooks get paid big bucks and strut around in the upper levels of society not because they are smart or wise but because their job is to make the upper levels of society appear worthy.
They effed up big time. They did not fall for the con, they were in on it. Unfortunately for them there are cons within cons: and these folks are the patsies in a bigger con.
I don’t think that we can use, as an excuse for ‘Obama-mania’ that, those who voted for him were, de facto, leftists at some time in their lives.
As others have pointed out, there was more to his election than political ideology. In fact, there was very little ideology involved for the majority. There was a population tired of reality…the reality of wars, of terrorism, of anger. And thus, primed for non-reality, for the imaginary world of ‘hope and change’.
And don’t ever forget that Obama is, as a clinical narcissist, a state he probably moved into as a young boy, extremely skilled at manipulation. He’s a pathological liar, he doesn’t have any connection to reality and operates only within His Words…which are geared to manipulate and control us. He needs to control – and he’ll misinform, emotional manipulate us using fearmongering and charm..and rein our questions and dissent away from us by suggesting that our hesitation to adore him is due to our own: bias, partisanship, bigotry, ignorance and/or…our racism. Don’t underestimate Obama’s skills at manipulation.
The comparison to Hitler’s rise and post-election suppression of freedoms, denigration of criticism, surrounding himself with sycophants and unelected czars…is accurate.
What has, finally, occurred, is a return to reality for many but not all of our pundits (MSNBC remain die-hard adulators)…but we cannot ignore Obama’s manipulative skills and our readiness to succumb to manipulation.
I used to live in Chicago (1938 to 1990 in the south side no less), and what really scared me about Obama was not that he might have been from Kenya, but that he was from Chicago.
The very sad thing is that Brooks, Perez, Noonan, and the rest will not learn from their mistake.
A buch of Obama’s past was hidden, but we looked at the parts that were visible (Alinski, Ayers, Rev Wright, Obama’s Senate voting record, etc) and made the Bayesian analysis that the parts that were hidden were the same or worse. We tried to shine a light on it but were attacked for it.
I’ve seen this behavior before. It’s not that Brooks et al simply believed Obama was the savior, they **wanted** him to be the savior. They were so emotionally attached to their desired outcome that the rejected any evidence that pointed to the contrary. This is a psychological defect.
Put yourself in Noonan’s shoes.
The Dems have swooned over Obama.
The Dems are calling Hillary a racist.
McCain gets the GOP nod.
He is weak and mushy.
McCain picks Palin.
Noonan and her tribe hate people like Palin.
If they back Obama they can ride the Dem train until they have to jump off, hoping for a soft landing.
They are jumping off.
re:
159. YBR
Solyndra Facts & Lies
“This is a full repost of a Media Matters article too good to pass up, especially since we continue to get inane comments here on CleanTechnica about it and I can only imagine how many people have been confused by the disinformers.”
Ah, yes!
The ever unimpeachable Media Matters!
Not sure how many remember, but MK Hamm and Guy Benson published a piece on Hot Air in mid-October 2008 entitled The Comprehensive Argument against Barack Obama. It was linked all over the right-side of the blogosphere. While most in America would have never visited Hot Air or read this post, the information it contained was all open-source and easily available on the internet to anyone who cared to look.
I’m not a psychiatrist or even all that knowledgeable in the area. But to my mind, BHO fits the classic description of a sociopath:
http://www.suite101.com/content/warning-signs-of-a-sociopath-a204533
As for how he got to where he is, the warning signs were there but alot of people refused to see them. His reputation amongst the cognescenti was secured with Dreams From My Father. It’s a pretty good book (to my mind not as great as the reviewers said it was – chunks f it were mind numbingly boring..). But no one except Cashill asked if he really wrote it? And once the truth came out, everyone refused to believe it.
Look, people are always making models of how things are. We construct narratives from disparate facts that are by their nature incomplete. It’s how we organize our world. In BHO’s case, his supporters created a persona that on its surface seemed right, and a lot of people uncritically bought it. That is now changing as the less clueless are realizing that their concept of BHO is at odds with the truth. I predict that the nibbling at the edges of his story will turn into a massive rejection. Buyers remorse will kick in. There may even be challenges to his renomination. He may even do an LBJ.
Hopefully, one and done. The long term problem though is the incalculable damage that sociopaths tend to leave behind. We will be cleaning up his mess for a decade or more.
I lost my ‘rose colored glasses’ in H.S. I was enamoured with a girl. Story of every boy’s life since year 1.
I paid attention only to her most shallow attributes. Though played it out in my head how ‘She really is’ if I’d gotten know her.
Suffice to say we did see each other later that school year and unfortunately as expected the ‘could have been’ was far better (in her defense she may have thought the same of me..).
I learned a valuable lesson at 17 years old. No one is as ideal, accomplished and ‘perfect’ as is the image portrayed in one’s head.
The same DOES NOT go for ADULTS Peretz, Brooks and Noonan. For their SOLE presence/ position is to provide FACTS, search and scour for truth and maintain that endangered ‘Journalistic integrity’ mantra.
Nope, instead these people reverted back to their barely post-pubescence and cover, ridicule differing takes with fictitious arrogance, lied and spoke of our boy-king’s ‘accomplishments’ and continued their voluntary boot-licking with insurmountable evidence to say otherwise.
This wasn’t just any political position to meet deadlines and write of but thee most powerful job in the world.
With an infinite-like amount of information available on EVERY politician (unless you’re Uhbama whose entire being is shrouded in fiction) and only getting larger, expanding.. Now, NOW these twits cry ‘Uncle’?
Lenin and Stalin couldn’t be more proud.
Mr Fernandez, I feel you’re 1 of the best contributor’s to PJM. Though you commit the Cardinal Sin that’s become quid pro quo the last 20 years of the Republican/RINO party. You provide wiggle room/reasoning where there is NONE for your colleague’s temporary lobotomy.
These are supposed to be analytical and at times cynical adults. They’ve just recently admitted to being duped?
I’m disappointed in the American public who fell for Uhbama’s blatant, glaringly obvious con-job but journalist’s are supposed to be a whole other animal. Left, Right, Center leaning, doesn’t matter.
Uncover and provide/expose is your/their raison d’etre.
Sadly journalism and government work are the 2 exceptions where accountability is nonexistent or of little concern. Any other sector these people would be canned and rightly so.
Sorry, but Marty, Peggy and David, while smart people generally, were indeed stupid when it came to the O-man. It couldn’t have been more obvious that he’d be catastrophic. These pundits should have known better, and they all should write mea culpas as Brooks has done.
I think Obama supporters DID have a very good idea that he was a weak candidate, if they cared to look into it. They were not fooled or misled, but saying that they were is admitting to a less shameful weakness. “I didn’t know,” is a lame excuse from about the time one turns ten years old, but it saves face, to a degree.
They admit to this flaw because it deflects from the real truth, which is far more damning. And that is “I knew he was incompetent but he fit my worldview.” I think that is far more likely- people just ignored or explained away his shortcomings because they wanted so badly to be cool. To vote for a person who is the anti-Bush. The politically correct, postmodern, mixed-race globalist.
Their support was based entirely on symbolism and image (both his and theirs), so the clash with reality is especially acute. No facts ever entered into their thinking before, and now that such facts are roaring in there simply is nowhere to hide.
These folks who have ” seen the light” are nothing more than parasites. Privileged ones. They produce nothing of value, create nothing of value, help not their fellow citizens, do nothing to create a better world or prepare others for the next one. They do not love animals, love children, love nature, love their fellow man. Only themselves.
These Privileged Parasites merely attached themselves to the host they thought would feed them best … Give them prominence and power, make them seem clever and thoughtful.
Now that the host that is “Obama” is losing blood and the mystique dying, they sense a loser and must move on to find nourishment elsewhere. Their recent recantations are the first steps in attaching to the new victor. Watch as they commence to find wisdom in the words of a Perry or whomever the frontrunner turns out to be.
Just one laughably obvious question, Mr. Hernandez: If these people are “nice,” what the hell does that make all the rest of us?
The word “Bayes” in the title encouraged me to read this article. Bayesian analysis (i.e. “experience”) is quite useful and we all do it all the time. But it has some serious drawbacks. I remember a statistics professor telling us “life is short and experience fallacious.” One can assume the person climbing out of a window at night with a bag over his shoulder is a burglar but the only definitive way to know for sure is with empiric testing (e.g. a police investigation and a conviction in court).
I’ve given presentations to groups of medical practitioners on this topic. If, for instance, an objective analysis of all culture and sensitivity testing reveals that only 20% of all children presenting to outpatient clinics for otitis media in a specific area are infected with H. influenzae, you can pretty well trust that one-in-five probability. But if the last 3 kids you saw with ear aches turned out to be positive for H.flu you are very likely to bet the farm the the 4th kid will have H.flu too and you will treat accordingly. Good intentions, good information (i.e. experience), but still wrong. It’s like flipping a coin and having it come up heads 4 times in a row and believing it will come up heads the fifth time based on your “experience.” In reality each coin toss is associated with a 50-50 outcome. I would also like to point out that much of global warming pseudo-science is performed with Bayesian analysis. Bayesian analysis can be quite handy for predictive modeling, but it can also reinforce wrong assumptions.
With Obama we really didn’t need Bayes. He told us his intention was to fundamentally transform the country. That should have been enough for any sentient citizen. If someone points a gun at you and says, “I’m going to kill you”, you have take them at the word and not wait for empirical proof. You shoot first.
@ 186 eman: Most of the independents I know voted for Obama in 2008 specifically voted against Sarah Palin. Only the hardened liberals I know voted for Obama, and many of them were actually voting for that little “D” after his name, not the man himself.
Agoraphobic Plumber @23
That’s my fear…people who voted for O the first time will do so again just because they’ll remember the flash-bang of his first campaign and not consider what has gone on since then.
If our experience in Canada is a reasonable guide, you have every right to be concerned.
We elected a charismatic leftist, Pierre Trudeau, as Prime Minister in 1968. There was a wave of euphoria that overwhelmed almost everyone; they called it Trudeaumania. Trudeau could walk on water without freezing it first or so you’d think. He got a strong majority government, meaning that he had more seats in Parliament that all the other parties combined, much like the US House and Senate in the 2008 American election. He established or expanded a variety of leftist entitlement programs. The media loved him. However, he won only minority governments in his next two elections and then lost the next one altogether by a slim margin to a (so-called) conservative named Joe Clarke who won a bare minority government. Clarke bungled his term after only 9 months and then Trudeau, who had actually retired on being defeated, was seduced back into leadership of the Liberal Party and was elected again. He finally retired for good in 1984 and the (so-called) Conservatives finally won a majority government under a new leader, Brian Mulroney.
I lived through those years and remember the many well-founded criticisms of Trudeau and his policies; even parts of the media loved to torment him. There was even a half-serious effort called TERF (Trudeau’s Early Retirement Fund) to raise money from the public to actually bribe him to retire; I seem to recall that it had raised at least a half-million dollars when that was actually real money. Despite that, when he died several years ago, all you ever heard was how fantastic he was; nobody could remember the many things he did to alienate almost all Canadians, just the handful of things that some thought were positive. Even today, it is very rare to hear any criticism of the man even though he was at least as arrogant as Obama. He openly stated that even the cabinet ministers in his own party were nobodies away from Parliament Hill. Yet enough people voted for him that he kept getting into power.
There was a lot to hate about Trudeau and plenty of people who hated him but the MSM still seems to be the institutional memory of this country, just as it is in the US, so if they don’t remember the bad stuff, most of us don’t remember it either. I fear that Obama will be a beneficiary of that too. In fact, I think it’s the biggest single factor on his side going into the 2012 election: unless the MSM turns on him in a big way, he may still win in 2012 simply because the MSM still loves him.
I only hope that the “defections” noted in the article are just the first splashes in a tidal wave of returning sanity as even the media realizes what a putz Obama is.
Ken Besig, Israel @ 177 said:
“Don’t forget just how the media poisoned the airwaves with their constant drumbeat of hate Bush, Bush the baby killer, Bush the liar, Bush the warmonger, Bush the Hitler, and on and on. … Yes Obama fooled enough people to win, and many of them, especially those who are Jewish, are now have a serious case of remorse.”
The MSM induced hatred against George W. Bush was certainly a factor in the rise of Obama (hatred mixed with politics… What does that remind you of?).
I live in the San Francisco Bay Area (very liberal) and most of the Obama bumper stickers have been scraped off of people’s cars. However a significant number of die hard socialists remain faithful to their messiah. Today I noticed on the bumper of a Prius, a Barack Obama bumper sticker written in Hebrew. That’s a remarkable testimony to human stupidity.
MayberryLady @ 194 said:
If these people are “nice,” what the hell does that make all the rest of us?
Let me venture a guess…. We’re not nice.
Phantomorphan (191),
I’ll call your “sorry” and raise you one: NO, these folks need to do a lot more than just issue a glib mea culpa. I’d prefer a serious virtual ritual suicide: something like a vow to never, ever again speak or write anything that appears in public, not even facebook. Spending the rest of their working lives as an assistant manager at Walmart would be better than they deserve.
White guilt, which in individuals like Noonan and Brooks rises to the level of a mental disease, motivated many to embrace Obama without vetting. This was part of the nice person’s avoidance of the reality of African failure in America. The data documenting said failure are overwhelmingly clear (on crime see http://www.colorofcrime.com/colorofcrime2005.html). Post-Obama America needs to stop being cowardly regarding race (Thank you, Mr. Holder) and assess how much of the failure is from historical oppression, from liberal social policy and from evolutionary biology. Multiple causation is surely involved, and only when approximate partial regression coefficients are determined can the country decide what measures could improve the situation. We can hope that having elected Obama might have lifted off enough guilt to permit Americans to discuss the problem honestly. That might be a rare worthwhile outcome of the Obama era.
@114
Yep, the press has managed to take down a president and now elect one. Perhaps this experience in a way is bringing some consequances to the press’ unaccountable actions. There are a lot of corrections happening.
Even in 2008, it didn’t seem possible for our country to elect a man with such a revolutionary family tree and such love for Marxism. But, somehow the need to be seen as cool and loved by the world led to this disaster of a presidency. Now, after being lied to and deceived by this man and his cronies, he still carries over 40% of the voters. The world is a much more dangerous place because of Obama.
4th and last post this thread
#163 Mad Fiddler
I got the Belenko book as soon as it came out. Keep in mind, that growing up when I did [late baby boomer] if you were even vaguely politically active and interested in world affairs, it was not difficult to find the information. Being first generation American born in this country, of Chinese ancestry; it was not uncommon to have friends and family who had escaped Red China. Or to meet refugees from the Soviet bloc. I’ve actually met a MiG pilot. The father of a friend of mine in college came out in a MiG-15 from the Czech Air Force. The whole family were experienced mountain climbers and his wife and sons came out over the mountains. And yes, I grew up immersed in studying the evils of Communism. Even now, I have a number of reference books within arms reach.
jd mentioned the moment when Belenko met the unemployed person in the bar as one of his favorite parts. I liked that, but I also liked the moment when he realized that what he was being shown was not a Potemkin village set up. He was being driven around during the post-debriefing transition, still suspicious. He had them pull into a shopping center with a grocery store they were passing, at random. And they went into the store. The sight of common people shopping the way we do [no standing in line to get a ticket to take to another line to pay and then get another ticket to get in another line, to give to someone who brought out what you were allowed to be given with no choice as to quality, etc.] and seeing the quality of food and that you could examine it and pick and choose what you wanted, or reject it; and especially that the crowd was thoroughly racially integrated with no friction [this was near Langley], destroyed the image of the US that he had been force fed since youth.
I have met refugees and defectors, and people who worked with defectors. The sight of the abundance of an American supermarket, and the sight of anybody being able to get the varieties and amounts of food that we have as a matter of course is always shattering to the old world-view of those who come over. It overwhelms the lies they have been told. The next time people go to the store, they should try looking at it from Communist eyes.
Another book I would suggest, more scholarly, is:
Nomenklatura: The Soviet Ruling Class
by Michael S. Voslensky , Eric Mosbacher (Translator)
* Pub. Date: August 1984
* Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
* Format: Hardcover , 480pp
* ISBN-13: 9780385176576
* ISBN: 0385176570
For a view of Red China for the first decade or so after the declaration of the PRC, I offer:
Escape From Red China
by Robert Loh , Humphrey Evans
now out in reprint
and for the Stalin era in the Soviet Union:
I Chose Freedom
by Victor A. Kravchenko , Rett R. Ludwikowski , Rett R. Ludwikowski (Introduction)
which has been reprinted from the 1947 edition.
I would throw in something from today’s news, that reminds me of the two books, for some reason:
http://reason.com/blog/2011/09/21/san-juan-capistrano-fines-fami
A family is being fined by the city for holding bible study in their home. One wonders what the reaction of the city would be if it was the Quran being studied.
#189 DD
Also not a Pshrink. But I have dealt with sociopaths constantly in my career [both felons and bosses] and have learned to recognize them. Watch Obama. It is what the Pshrinks call “flat affect”. Their facial and body language clues do not match what is being said and the eyes are dead.
Subotai Bahadur
I think much of the nomimally conservative punditry went for Obama out of sheer exhaustion after eight years of intense arguing about Bush and war and the nature of the threat and whether a threat really even existed at all. Given McCain’s weakness, Obama, particularly given his ethnicity, gave them an opportunity to join the popular set for a change. They then proceeded to develop elaborate arguments to support their position. Their support for the 0 was not a result of their reasoning, but rather their supposed reasons were spun entirely to justify their decision. Like the feckless creatures they are, now that the jig is up, they’re groveling embarrassingly. With their cover blown, their credibility shot, they should be thankful for every dime they are paid for their continued mindless drivel.
They have broken BS Detectors, why should anyone ever trust their judgment again.
That they couldn’t see how empty his rhetoric is, that they missed the lack of experience, that the vetting by the MSM was clearly non existent (at the same time Sarah Palin was getting proctoscoped), that such glaring discrepancies were overlooked, ignored, and willfully set aside, says it all about these fools.
Don’t trust them, they believe what they want to believe, due diligence is not part of their makeup.
I spent the last 15 years or so of my government career dealing with Alinskyite union representatives and organizers. When AFSCME first acquired my state’s largest employee group, they sent a bunch of DC heavies out to deal with us rubes in the ultimate flyover country. They’d researched it and found that we had the cheapest seats in the US Congress and it was worth a lot of money to them to buy those seats. I’ll admit to having been a little intimidated at first but familiarity bred contempt. These were just the leftover longhaired punks from the ’60s who’d walked around with a condescending scowl on their faces and copies of Mao’s Little Red Book in the back pocket of their dirty jeans, a habit radical shop stewards still carry on with their union contracts. (One of the things I did when I came to have some influence over policy was refuse to print those pocket-sized copies of the contract for useful idiots to wave around.) Most of the LR staff in those days were ‘Boomers and some of us had had more than a flirtation with radical politics in the ’60s. We sorta’ personified the old saw about how if you’re not a radical when you’re young … In any event once we had a chance to see what we were really seeing, these people weren’t hard to deal with at all. We in fact were able to torture them when we wanted and could get our politically appointed principals to let us, or just to look the other way. We had copies of Rules for Radicals in our office long, long before its current resurgence.
So, when I first saw Comrade Obama when they trotted him out to give that speech to the convention, I knew what I was looking at. I said to myself, “I know you; you’re the one they think they can dress up and fool people with.” Hate to have been so right about that, though I’ll confess that I thought he was merely a strawman for the Clintons so HRC could run to the right of him and appear moderate. BTW, she’s worse than BHO, more radical, smarter, more ruthless, and not nearly as lazy as Comrade Obama; there’s a price for the free ride his Red Diaper status gave him: he really doesn’t know how to work.
As I said, people like Comrade Obama really aren’t hard to deal with so long as you know what you’re dealing with. If you think you’re dealing with the standard soft, mush-minded liberal, they will screw you into the ground. Republicans are obscessed with being nice, of not being thought partisan and mean spirited. The Alinskyites feed on that Republican trait and endlessly manipulate Republicans into bargaining with themselves to seek the approval of a leftist media and to try to get agreement from the Alinskyites, which of course they’ll never give you unless and until you’ve come to accept their position. I offer the recent debt ceiling “compromise” as my Exhibit 1 in support of this proposition. If you’re willing to close the door and tell the arrogant SOB that you’re going to kill him, figuratively of course, if he doesn’t knock that crap off and come to heel, they can become remarkably pliant. They’re fundamentally bullies and they’re accustomed to their bully tactics working. When the opposition won’t be bullied and doesn’t do what their playbook predicts it will do, the Alinskyite doesn’t have a Plan B and he has to fold.
Oh, and they never got one of those Congressional seats during my watch, though they did own a governor for awhile.
re Cowboy @63
The same might be said of any other group of people, I suppose. How many roofers would make a good president, for example?
The only roofer that I am aware of who was ever a national leader was Erich Honecker, the East German leader from 1971 to 1989. He masterminded the construction of the Berlin Wall.
Which is not to say that roofers are inherently incapable of becoming great American presidents! The roofers in the capitalist world would have a lot going for them, especially the fact that they would be in touch with reality, unlike a certain President we could all name….
They weren’t some “little niggling inconsistencies”.
Richard, you’ve got it wrong. The Obama lovers got it wrong. The Sunday morning Democratic propagandists got it wrong. Hannity, O’reilly, Laura Ingraham got it wrong. Any idiot who voted for Zero got it wrong.
Obama never intended to preserve, protect and defend the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic.
Never intended to follow in the patriotic footsteps of John Kennedy when, on January 20, 1961, his speech contained these heartfelt, uplifting, lines-in-the sands words:
“Let every nation know that we are prepared to pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe in order to assure the success of liberty.”
Obama’s intention from day one was to wreck havoc, destroy, dismantle, stomp on, discredit the policies, principles and ideals on which this nation was founded. Obama was out to destroy the United States. Obama’s bankrupt ideals were intended to shatter this nation. Every move Obama has made was based on his corrupt objectives. He’s not incompetent. He’s been successful in most of his dastardly misfeasances.
How many times do I have to say it, write it, shout it from the rooftops until somebody besides Rush believes it?
If ever any President deserved to be led out of the White House in shackles and handcuffs, you know his name.
Sgian Dubh @116
Listening to Imus’ and Beschloss’ conversation I was struck how they both sounded as though they were in love, totally smitten. Beschloss voice struck me in this way: calm, soothing, intelligent, informed; every single possible worry, apprehension, fear, or concern completely absent. In other words, he had dropped his sense of self-protection to a nadir that he may have never experienced before in his life. He, in effect, had given himself over to the Won. I believe that that is exactly what some prominent conservative writers experienced when they went over to the dark side. I would be very interested to know what the percentage of men to women where a similar swooning caused them to “buy all in” to the enigma that was Obama.
I’ve heard similar descriptions from people describing how they were transformed into followers of Hitler. I wonder if we’re finally getting a glimpse of how Germans got seduced into voting for Hitler? I wonder if the experience of suddenly becoming a convinced follower of Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot, Che Guevara, et. al, was comparable?
The Noonans and other dupes should go reread The Emperor Has No Clothes. They pretended to see for all of the same reasons the fools in the book insisted that only they, the smart ones, could see the very fine fabric of the suit.
Now they can hide behind “too nice” all they want to. It was obvious to anyone looking that Obama was naked. Just like in the story, they are fools.
Peretz, Brooks, Noonan – aside from failing to work with facts, i.e. simply listing Obama’s “accomplishments” at the time he was a candidate would have allowed anyone to quickly determine he was not qualified or competent, I wonder how much experience these writers have with hiring people? Even modest experience in hiring people would have given these writers the ability to look past the glitz on the Obama resume and say “what has he really accomplished, what abilities has he demonstrated, what character has he shown, and how do those match up with the job required?”
So in a charitable mind-set, these writers just did not have the experience/knowledge required to evaluate a job applicant; of course Occam’s Razor suggests they’re just stupid.
A clueless naif would not be alarmed by a man climbing out of a window heavily laden in the dark of night, but neither would a fellow burgler.
I suspect these fools merely saw a fellow traveler and assumed he could be counted on because if THEY were in charge everything would be all unicorn and skittles.
I see no evidence that they have learned that it is the POLICIES not the person who proposes them that are the abject failures.
Crime will pay, just you wait and see. We just haven’t found the right criminal yet. We thought he was the one, but the one will come, you just have to have faith.
These guys are bailing pure and simple. Surely in their professional journalistic capacity they clearly saw that when Palin announced for VP the press sent 100 reporters to Wasila to dig dirt. When Barry announced, they sent none. They didn’t vet Obama and any journalist worth their salt knew that.
190. paul_unalaska
“I lost my ‘rose colored glasses’ in H.S. I was enamoured with a girl. Story of every boy’s life since year 1.
I paid attention only to her most shallow attributes. Though played it out in my head how ‘She really is’ if I’d gotten know her.
—
Norm MacDonald tells a similar story from his youth, growing up in rural Ontario:
He worked part time at a Massey Ferguson dealer while in High School. Shortly after graduating he met a new hire there and fell madly in love, to the point that he stayed on there for five more years.
One morning he woke up and found she was gone w/o a trace.
Norm was flummoxed, having no idea whatsoever why she left, nor where she might have gone.
Then he received her John Deere letter in the mail.
188 Starling:
Yes, I remember that post. Hot Air is not exactly an obscure blog. That’s why I cannot understand this statement in this post by Richard Fernandez:
Here’s another post from Dan McLaughlin on October 14, 2008–a week earlier than the Hot Air post:
POLITICS: The Integrity Gap, Part II of III: Sen. Barack Obama
In his post McLaughlin introduced this series of posts with numerous embedded links:
There was plenty of information available about Obama. Those pundits and journalists who’ve changed their mind never did their homework. Those of us regular folk who did–well, we haven’t been surprised at all at Obama’s actions.
SB/203—
”The next time people go to the store, they should try looking at it from Communist eyes.”
My first dip into studying Russian was a night course at Rice University. The instructor was a former English/Russian translator from the USSR who’d met and married an American and moved to the US during a relative thaw in the ’70s. When her mother eventually came here for a visit she was taken to a grocery store but refused to believe it, believed it was a Potemkin Store, so to speak. So my teacher took her elsewhere, her choice, just driving down the street. She was never able to believe it, just too Soviet to even believe her eyes.
Fast forward to about ’92: escorting some Russian ocean scientists around D.C., thence to Annapolis for a backyard BBQ, during which we took them to a Home Depot and WalMart, looked into the back of an EMS ambulance—they were too proud to act amazed but you could see it anyhow.
But the most impressive thing was unplanned. At the motel, a pretty nice one but not luxury, we saw a limousine parked with burly, muscular driver. I explained we had some Russians with us and could we have a look into the back of the limo? He reflected, then said OK during which time I got a better look at him and got this ”uh-oh” feeling.
After they’d looked the driver shooed us away as a very pretty woman came briskly out of a room and got in the car—almost for sure a hooker, and they drove away.
One of the Russians said, ”Who was she?”, obviously assuming she must be really important. I replied that she was almost certainly a ”prostitutka”. The look on their faces was worth a month’s pay!! They said, Whores here ride around like that?
And all I could think of was, “Well, yes, some of them do but not all.” I heard them mumbling to each other about this for the rest of the day but they never suggested outwardly it might have been a Potemkin Hooker.
WOW!
I go away for a few days to coddle my kidney stone, and suddenly the place is just sloppin’ over with closely-reasoned arguments and assertions, and pots full of links and references, from posters all bright & shiny new. (I’m betting most of you have been reading here a while, and realize the place needs some new blood! Reminds me how much my own posts have just become rants not much more useful than those from Demokratische Untergrund…)
It’s fantastic to see all the people posting!
Before Bill Whittle wrote his book and then moved to Pajamas Media to do On-Camera commentary, many folks posting at his website just used their actual NAMES… right out in front of God and Everybody. Since news reports emerged than HR staff and other folks were combing the internet to find data, opinions, or dirt they could use against people, folks have learned they need to use an online “nom-de-net” as a fig leaf.
It is one of the BIG LIES of liberalism they trot out repeatedly – the viciousness of McCarthyism, which destroyed the careers of a lot of “innocent” Hollywood people.
Horse puckey. Anyway, now it’s those on the left in the industry who blacklist anyone whose politics aren’t sufficiently LEFTIST.
FOCUS, Fiddler…
Oh, yeah… You can get into BIG trouble with a lot of employers if it becomes known that you have CONSERVATIVE tendencies.
Sometimes the danger of a place like this is that it can become an end unto itself – a safety valve for us to vent our extreme vexation.
At least, here we have the opportunity to learn, to clarify our own thinking, test ideas, get feedback, education, and perspective.
Beyond that, think of the middle ages and the Renaissance, where ideas were shared by courier and post among a few folks in cities around the globe.
I have to hope that somewhere in Isfahan or Nablus or Praetoria, Kabul, Ankara, or some such place, someone may chance upon Belmont and read Wretchard and the comments and see that there is room for conversation across the gulf.
Doesn’t mean we can avoid the Glacial slide of history (assisted by Obama) toward disaster.
But maybe link up some of the survivors to rebuild.
Obama is so incompetent in office that I hesitate to prepend “President” to his name, given that it would sully the office.
203. Subotai Bahadur
Our church sponsored a Romanian refugee in the early 80′s. He came speaking almost no English and had wanted to go to Austria because he didn’t trust America but they wouldn’t take him and it was either US or imprisonment so he came here to South Dakota.
On his first visit to a supermarket he was amazed by the amount and choices offered to anyone who had the money to buy. The whole aisle devoted to cat and dog food was a revelation. Communicating with his broken English and my worse German he managed to convey that he wasn’t surprised that Americans ate dogs and cats but he thought that we showed surprising honesty by clearly labling the packages with their contents.
It took quite a while to convince him that we didn’t eat dogs and cats but that we had whole food aisles devoted to their cuisine.
He said later that was when he realized he would do ok in the US. If they had enough food to lavish it like this on their pets, well, he probably wouldn’t starve either.
Just a note on the Peretz article. The Neo-Con Democracy and Freedom agenda in the Middle East was put into motion in the Bush Admnin. Part of the reason that we have chaos there now.
We should be bombing Syria, not just Libya.
210. Sparky
There’s a LOT of Adolf in the speechifying of the Wan.
Because of history — Adolf’s best crowd rousers are not exactly promoted today. Should you ever read them — in ANY language — you’ll find them as nonsensical as Mao’s Little Red Book. That last item is VERY available at Berkeley.
What all have in common is an endless stream of grievances triggered by wicked people — and that the orator needs special powers and extra funding to address these special needs.
The actual wording — without the histrionics at the podium/ teleprompter — is laden with empty catch-phrases and Orwellian double-speak.
They revolt a thinking, grounded mind.
As for the Wan — he has an etch-a-sketch memory: every time he turns over yesterday’s commitments and priorities vanish.
And in all cases, the call for sacrifice — means the public. None of these despotic men denies themselves or their crews anything their hands can grasp.
( Huge amounts of TARP funding are still sequestered — awaiting the Wan’s magic touch — giving him despotic financial power.
—-
OT: The long discussed implosion of top tier French banks is well underway. BNP has endured a HUGE institutional bank run on dollar denominated assets.
Because current banking policies have placed pennies in the fuse box — no one living can know how far this Greek tragedy will blow — but if it’s a Classic — then everyone dies.
Greece = Sovereign Embezzler.
Embezzlers, by their very nature, can NEVER clean up their theft. If they had anything like that capacity they wouldn’t have been embezzling in the first place.
—-
The Bernanke is blowing up the only profit machine left to big bankers: the interest rate curve.
This, combined with Moody’s downgrades, means that bankers must avert falling forks — because they’re done.
Peretz, Brooks and Noonan are political animals. But Obama wasn’t elected by political animals. He was elected by millions of guilt drenched whites, in the main guilt drenched suburban white women of the middle and upper-middle classes, who were ecstatic, nay orgasmic about the opportunity to elect our first black president. Thought had nothing to do with it. Guilt, in combination with the opportunity to feel oh so good about themselves had everything to do with it. Only what is left of our republican structure has, so far, saved us from the absolute tyranny that their airhead expression of the democratic urge would have already pitched us into by this time.
I remember discussing Obama with my wife during the 08 election and pointing out what was obvious to me — he’s a con man. You may think that a con man’s business is selling you a fake diamond, fake stock certificates, or the Brooklyn Bridge. You’re wrong. A con man’s stock in trade is HOPE (sound familiar?) It’s the hope you’re getting something for nothing, it’s the hope you’ve stumbled into that once in lifetime opportunity, it’s the hope that this offer that’s too good to be true really is true.
How did I know this? Because I’m a con man and a liar (since reformed) and I recognized in Obama all the same dodges and techniques that I used to use. The lack of a past, the ability to become a blank slate on which people project their visions, to be socially invisible when that was required and to light up a room through sheer force of personality when that was required.
Mostly though, it was his expression. Barack Obama has an honest face — and no, that’s not a typo. The one truly necessary attribute for a good con man is to believe the lie while you’re telling it. In that moment, the lie must become the truth for you. You must project that belief onto the mark so that he’ll believe it too. Obama does that constantly. That’s why he can say things that are ridiculous and look as though he believes them.
The thing is, people don’t stay fooled forever. Lies and cons catch up with you, which is why any good con man knows when to fold up shop and head out of town. Obama’s problem is he can’t do that anymore. He’s trapped in the White House for at least another year but since con artist techniques are all he knows, it’s what he keeps falling back on.
I am filled with perverse admiration for the man the way a barracuda envies a great white. He’s run the greatest con in history — he stole a country.
NoonanPeretzParkerandBrooks are lessons in not putting up viable defenses against temptations that appeal to one’s vanity. I say again, let’s not make the sam mistake twice. People voted and/or supported Soetero based on the false premise of “Two wronfgs will surely make a right!” Let’s not make the same mistake thrice. The Great Deceiver is still at work, this time on the Republican side this time, because they stand a better chance of winning this time around. Even the devil has given up on childe imposter 0bama, because of the rapid dividends paid by electorate electing him paid off so rapid so handsomely and so fleetingly. The devil is done with Buraq Hussein “0bama”.
NoonanPeretzParkerBrooks all wanted to sleep with the quarterback. And they did. And now it’s the next morning and their hero doesn’t care a whit about them anymore- he just plans to move on to new suckers to give him what he wants on another silver platter because that’s how its worked until now so why change? Don’t be so sure it won’t happen to you. Rick Perry is the next loudmouthed jock quarterback and he wants to sleep with you too. Oh, and the hits just keep coming, he’s already given a speech to La Raza, I wonder if they found common ground in their mutual goals?
Conceit, they name is Rick Perry, vanity, thy name might be yours or mine too.
Re 217 and 220:
I too had heard stories from Soviet Bloc emigres about their first encounters with Western supermarkets and the way their eyes dropped when they realized that these items could be bought by everyone, not just people in the upper reaches of the Party. Your anecdotes added a whole new dimension! Potemkin Hookers and canned cats and dogs; hilarious and yet so authentic
Very few of us have any real idea how people in other places live (or lived)….
“But once upon a time they didn’t have a clue”
yet they all turned their noses down on everyone that didnt agree with them–
and for that they will never be forgiven
Delsyn @ 224,
You might enjoy Robert Trivers’ theorizing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-deception#Trivers.27_theory_of_self-deception and http://dieoff.org/_Biology/AScientificTheoryOfSelfDeception.pdf
delsyn @ 224:
If only it were a joke! And if the price tag were *only* $85 million!
http://tinyurl.com/2ehxakl
No, no, no, no, no! He’s not smart. Never was, and never will be. That’s her first mistake.
Show me the transcripts.
Morton, consider the few among the vast field of rectal exposure that clean up their trails of soupy sewage dispensed for public consumption, commit to journalistic repentance and convert to a less neurotically controlled form of oral diarrhea by simply moving to a network considered by many to be less of a rest room because of its claim to be a genuine “fair and balanced” newsroom. Once again they get hornswoggled by a deficiency of street wise logic and continue to be used in the media agenda. Any loaded question can cause confused public opinion if properly laced with ambiguous grammar. This bully position of media hosts can only be interpreted as network premeditated malice in candidate selection by a sane mind but neurotics remain in denial among their own kind.
I spent four years between 1968 until 1974 at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Especially during the 1969-70 school year the New Left was in its prime and chaos reigned on campus. The New Left wanted socialism, the overthrow of the U.S. government, and victory for the Communists in Vietnam. Obama seemed to me to be much like the radicals I had seen at Madison, and when I heard that he had launched his political career in the home of Weathermen terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dorhn, I was convinced that he was unfit to be president of the United States. Many other people found the Wright connection to be the evidence that led them to conclude that the man sneaking from the window was a burglar, but the Wright connection did not resonate with me the way the Ayers/Dorhn connection did. I began to follow politics far more closely after he was elected, wondering how long it would be before people discovered what a disaster this man would be as president. My only surprise has been how long it has taken supposedly insightful and intelligent people to recognize what was obvious to me from the start. The Bayesian explanation makes sense of why some of us understood what Obama was while our “intellectual betters” were blind.
Given that the intellectual elite and top opinion makers were so wrong in the case of Obama (not to mention the John Edwards case, another case in which anyone with some common sense could see his phoniness), I refuse to accept anything based on their authority, especially their conclusions on who we should elect to public office. They blew their credibility with their love affair with Barack Obama.
Subotai – thanks v much for the book recommendations. I just went over to ABE Books and bought the ones on Soviet Russia. Will pick up the one on China after I balance my checkbook & see what’s left in the kitty after the bills go in the mail.
I’ve spent nearly the last year trying to edumacate myself in my spare time (too little of that, alas) on the early Cold War (1950s & 1960s). I still recommend Whittaker Chambers’ “Witness” to anyone who has not read it. It’s a thick book. If you can’t commit to reading the whole thing at least read the Foreword (“Letter to My Children”). Please please. It gets to the root of the Why of Communist belief. And yeah, Chambers also likens Communism to a religion (a false one). But I unfairly diminish Chambers’ spectacular writing and insights with any summary of them. You need to read his work for yourself.
Folks, we are in a long, long struggle. The serpent is not dead, not by a long shot. It’s disheartening that this evil ideology keeps coming back again and again, vampire-like, but we have no choice but to fight it. Educating yourself is an indispensable discipline.
Here’s your smartest guy in the room, Peggy:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2011/09/obama-jobs-plan-brent-spence-bridge-cincinnati.html
This is a typical elitist article, The “I’m so smart but now I see” types that living in a democracy engenders. So what if the extremely elitists are having some sort of epiphany. Obama was bad back then and has become worse with time. When these people begin to demand full disclosure of many politician like they do the conservatives, as they have the Palin family or better yet denounce it, not publish it and abandon those tactics, then I will listen to what they say with respect for their right to an opinion, Right now I don’t listen and have stopped caring what they say.
173. RWE
“The point is, though, I learned early that the picture on the box is not necessarily representative of the contents. Peggy Noonan never has.”
Like Darth Vader taught us: Once you go to the dark side the bridges you burned preclude a way back. But not just because of the bridges. The bridges are only proof of your previous fan base, intentionally discarded. Unfortunately for Peggy, something happens that she may not even recognize – once one chooses the abyss, one changes forever.
Many have mentioned that the press didn’t “vet” Obama, which is for the most part true. The vetting of the press however is the second one that is done in our system. The first is by the political Party. We generally trust that a Party will offer candidates only if they are “qualified”, as defined by the Party, for the office they seek.
In lower level offices this doesn’t mean too much as there is not much at stake for either the Party or the public if the politician isn’t up to snuff. But by running for these lower level offices the Party has the extended chance to evaluate the politician. When they run for high office in primaries this is when the Party is supposed to have their one last chance to weed out the incompetent and/or criminal ones.
If they don’t then why would anyone trust them to select competent people ever again. They have shown us that they either can’t vet their candidates or have some odd idea as to the qualities needed for those holding high office. As with the media’s failure to vet, the Party that fails in this basic duty to the public should pay a price.
blert @ 222 said:
“Because of history — Adolf’s best crowd rousers are not exactly promoted today. Should you ever read them — in ANY language — you’ll find them as nonsensical as Mao’s Little Red Book. That last item is VERY available at Berkeley.”
I’m reminded of a book store back at Berkeley (Yenan Books) that was subsidized by the Chinese communist party. The place was amazing. You could buy a full sized poster of Mao or Stalin for 20 cents. Mao’s little red book cost about a quarter. The best deal was the complete “Works of Lenin”. The set was roughly 12 large volumes or about four cubic feet of paper and only cost about $5 total. At the time I thought this could represent a business opportunity, i.e. The “Works of Lenin” if soaked in wax had about the same fuel potential as a couple Presto logs. However I went through the numbers. A couple Presto logs cost about $4. For the “Works of Lenin” there was the initial cost of $5 plus another $1 for a bar of wax. I might charge $10 for the shear novelty of the “Works of Lenin” as fuel but then the novelty would wear off, people would burn Presto logs instead and I’d be stuck with a hundred wax saturated copies of the “Works of Lenin”…. bad idea…
If one had to reduce the list of absolute essential reading from the twentieth century to just two or three books, Whittaker Chamber’s ‘Witness’ would make the list.
Part of the blindness of the opinion elites is that they overvalue book learning and undervalue learning from experience because they have excelled at book learning–it is what they are good at–and most of them have led rather sheltered lives, so they have not learned a lot from experience. The same is true of academics–I know because I have spent my life among them. Several people have commented that they cannot think of any PhDs who would make good presidents, and the reason is that the most of the skills needed to be a successful leader are the skills that come from experience and cannot be learned from a book or bestowed with credentials. In the case of Obama we see someone whose experience in life taught him how to campaign and promote himself–he has a gift for self-promotion that few can match–but they did not prepare him for leadership.
This has been a very good comment thread, with a lot of insightful contributions.