CBS reports that “Democrats urge Boehner to “repudiate” comments by Limbaugh on contraception testimony”. Limbaugh said:
“That’s a thousand dollars a year of sex — and, she wants us to pay for it,” Limbaugh said on his radio show Wednesday.
Limbaugh also said about Fluke: “What does it say about the college co-ed Sandra Fluke, who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex? What does that make her?”
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Meanwhile, in other news, the Orlando Sentinel reports that the bomb squad has been called to Limbaugh’s house.
A suspicious package was found outside the Palm Beach home of conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh on Thursday, according to Palm Beach Fire Rescue. The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s bomb squad also was called out to the compound on the 1400 block of North Ocean Blvd., a dispatcher confirmed.
Maybe the political rhetoric is heating up. Demands for apologies are flying thick and fast, similar to the one President Obama issued to President Karzai for burning a Koran in Afghanistan, in order to “calm things down”.
It’s more likely to embolden the enemy, as Michael Yon observes, who says that if anyone should apologize it should be President Karzai, for being a low-down double-dealing backstabbing bushwacker. To apologize to him would only be to invite more of the same.
The recent Koran-burning in Afghanistan has again inspired lunacy and murder. And while the US civilian and military leadership burdened by their oleaginous apologies tumbles down a moral stairwell, Afghan security forces continue to murder American and Coalition troops. Insider violence persists at an increasing rate. Approximately 200 Coalition members have been killed or wounded in nearly fifty documented “green on blue” attacks.
Noticeably absent from the airwaves is a definitive apology from Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and a vow to fight this treachery committed by his troops. Instead, we are likely to hear Karzai whining about night raids that his own troops help conduct every night.
We should immediately cut off all aid to Afghanistan until we hear a public apology from Karzai, and a denouncement from Karzai of Coalition murders by Afghan troops. We should end all unnecessarily joint operations, training, and support of Afghan forces until we have public assurances from Karzai that the Afghan government strongly condemns the increasing murders of Coalition members. Armed Afghans should not be allowed onto US aircraft. Our people do missions every night with armed Afghans on our helicopters. It would be nothing to take down a CH-47 from the inside.
It is time that we redeploy our main battle force home and disentangle ourselves from AfPak.
Oh could he have possibly implied that? Well maybe Michael Yon ought to apologize to President Karzai. The Washington Post’s ThinkTanked blog notices no reluctance to make nice with North Korea, which has done a lot worse than talk about contraception and coeds on talk radio. Washington recently provided a quarter of a million tons of food aid to Pyongyang in exchange for a promise not threaten America or its regional allies with nuclear destruction.
The announcement from the State Department Wednesday that North Korea has agreed to suspend its uranium-enrichment program and its long-range missile and nuclear tests in exchange for 240,000 metric tons of food aid may seem like a major concession, but it isn’t impressing many in the Washington foreign policy community.
“Haven’t we seen this movie before?” asked Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute, who writes on North Korea. “It ran under both the Clinton and the George W. Bush Administrations.”
The ending, according to Eberstadt, should be a familiar one to anyone who has paid attention: “Pyongyang ends up shaking down the international community for lots of food and cash, keeping its nukes and missiles, and getting ready to start up the game again for a whole new bunch of suckers.”
That’ll calm things down, though according to Allen McDuffee, the Korea policy was being compared to buying the same horse for the third time.
In such circumstances apologies take on the character of surrender and demands for them the nature of ultimatums. Rather than proving civil discourse is alive and well it may indicate it is rapidly coming to an end. The Great War began with a demand for an apology by Austria and Hungary to Serbia, one that it could not possibly make. It was calculated to humiliate the Serbs, a fact which the diplomats calculated would have limited effect. They were wrong.
One key indicator of how quickly things are moving is what no longer gets noticed. Almost buried in the news leads are reports that Syrian forces have overrun the chief rebel stronghold in Homs.
The speed with which Syrian forces seized control of the neighborhood — less than 36 hours — after a 27-day siege during which the area was subjected to almost-uninterrupted artillery bombardment, focused attention on the increasingly controversial question of whether outside powers should arm the Syrian opposition.
Who cares? Syria now has to share space with the whole series of simultaneous events. Iran. Afghanistan. The unrest in Iraq. The debt crisis in Europe. High gas prices in America. Unemployment. Local government bankruptcies. The administration’s engagement queue is saturated. Every CIWS it owns is engaged and there are still bandits inbound. Not that its firing anything but apologies and bribes from a dwindling store of the same.
But who’s counting? There’s Obamacare and the contraception mandate. There’s Green Energy. There’s the budget that never gets passed and deficit reduction measures that never get decided. And oh yes, there’s the election in 2012.
Things get overheated. Limbaugh gets worked up. The Democrats get worked up. Karzai gets exercised. North Korea gets free food. Weren’t apologies meant to calm things down? Yes, but that’s only if you mean them.
The question is whether there are any more Red Lines left that will hold things back. The traditional boundaries which limited discourse and action are rapidly being eroded. The development of a crisis is never linear. It starts slow and imperceptibly gathers speed until all of a sudden, quite without anyone noticing it, it has spun out of control.
It hasn’t gotten there yet. But that moment is closer than one might think.
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2014. Coming to a neighborhood near you.
Some of us fear that moment is around the corner, others hope the can can be kicked ’til after the election, some believe we can shrink away from the trouble and hope it doesn’t see us. I’m beginning to think the sooner we face the issues straight up – naive as the One World crowd may deem that – is the way to survive the current troubles with the least long term society damage.
Be tough in there!
Hmmm, they don’t want government regulations in the bedroom, but government dollars are welcome? Come on, can’t separate one from the other now can we?
I think the split is already irreparable, and have for some time.
The latest evidence came today with Andrew Breitbart’s death. Most of the blogs and forums I frequent featured him prominently, and the outpouring of grief was immense and genuine.
Then there were the comments and tweets by leftists who were cackling with glee. Nope, we’re beyond the point of reconciliation. It’s time for a reckoning.
Mister Trouble never hangs around
When he hears that Mighty sound:
“Here I come to save the day!”
That means that Mitt Romney, is on the way!
Add to the list the story that we just sold the Iranians two cargoes of wheat? Wuuuh?
The most generous thing that can be said about the attitude displayed so brazenly by Fluke and Pelosi is that they represent the most absolutely self-centered and selfish childishness possible in a human.
God help this world if that young woman is in any way typical of the sort of student being molded into an attorney by our “law” schools.
About Andrew Breitbart: the medical examiner should as a matter of course do an autopsy to determine whether there was any foul play.
”The development of a crisis is never linear. It starts slow and imperceptibly gathers speed until all of a sudden, quite without anyone noticing it, it has spun out of control.”
It’s a sigmoid curve; chugs along slowly, going up a little, then suddenly doubling and tripling every horizontal inch.
wretchard said:
Classic 29th day issue. We are out of design margin. They are out of design margin. The difference? We know it. The Left is Clueless. The Tyrants can only persist in their perfidy.
Really think that there will be honest elections this fall?
Elections at all?
I am skeptical.
And the International Progressives commit character assassination on one recently dead. RIP, Breitbart. G-d’s rest for you.
If ever there was a monumental failure of “reset”, suck-up diplomacy,it was that of Chamberlain and his colleages. These were men who would have done – who did – almost anything to keep the peace. They failed, because in Hitler they were facing a man possessed by the idea that he was destined to conquer and rule. Hitler enjoyed a crushing advantage over his Allied counterparts: they were terrified of war – and he was not.
No amount of humility and apology (for the Versaille Treaty), no concession was sufficient. Hitler was bent on conquest, so war was inevitable.
We are seeing it all happen again. History may not exactly be repeating itself, but the rhyme is unmistakable. We are learning all over again that you cannot make peace with people who do not want peace. We are facing an implacable foe, possessed by an apocalyptic vision of its destiny and animated by a visceral hatred which can only be described as demonic.
“The vials of wrath are full”, and we are led by fools. God help us.
I read this knowing already that Limbaugh is a noxious windbag. I predicted what he said wouldn’t have much to do with the girl’s actual testimony, and everything to do with being able to link the terms “slut” and “birth control.” I was right, so I’ll go ahead and call that suspicious package a little attention whoring on his part, in light of recent events.
“Homo homini lupus” doesn’t always mean the wolves thin out the humans in hard times, sometimes it is the opposite.
Rush didn’t let up today. He basically said any girl on the pill is a slut.
Maybe off-topic slightly, but I’ve been trying to make sense of this story in 2004 when N. Korea apparently murdered Syrians with a train full of explosives. I guess my question is, who was fooling whom at the time? Is N. Korea anything like Middle Eastern countries? Or did they suddenly feel rather cheated?
Even if the accident was real… then what?
10. Blackdog52
We are seeing it all happen again. History may not exactly be repeating itself, but the rhyme is unmistakable. We are learning all over again that you cannot make peace with people who do not want peace. We are facing an implacable foe, possessed by an apocalyptic vision of its destiny and animated by a visceral hatred which can only be described as demonic.
I’m not sure whether you’re talking about Muslims or Leftists, but I suppose that’s a distinction without a difference.
Karzai knows where the strong horse is.
Nobody should be surprised by how the Obama administration has effected the operation in Afghanistan, or the world security situation in general.
The aim has always been to destroy the Republic. Attention paid to foreign affairs is simply a distraction.
The key element is money. The money needed to pay for all the goodies, apologies, bribes and other fasteners in the politically correct world. The Left’s world is cobbled together with cash unsustainably obtained from taxpayers. Its lack is the root of the crisis.
In some ways it resembles a doomed and archaic slave empire. While it had a “design margin” things were ok. But now the margin is gone, but their spending habits are unchanged. If anything they are greater than ever.
Limbaugh, by indiscreetly mentioning contraception and money in the same sentence has hit upon the crassness of our social arrangments. But what the Left has chosen to interpret as an accusation of prostitution is really a reference to looting. Like open borders, Health Care has become a way of buying votes with Other People’s Money. That would be alright if there were enough of it. The problem is that there isn’t.
The nature of the crisis means things will only get worse. Hope and Change will keep apologizing and dispensing and the taxpayers will keep paying. It can’t go on. Therefore the antagonisms will increase.
The Left must know it can’t go on either, unless they have completely taken leave of their calculators. Thus Bernardine Dohrn’s remark to Andrew Breitbart that the Occupy people are today’s antiwar movement was a curious one. The antiwar movement was aimed at paralyzing American will in the 1960s. For the parallel to be exact, what is Dohrn hoping to forestall? What is at the end of the rollercoaster she wants to ride?
I can’t help but believe they see the system as doomed also. They ought to know. They are dooming it. And while they are crazy they are not stupid. But somehow they see a future the day after the smash. Victory at the expense of total destruction is now their only hope and here’s why.
This time the threat to the Left’s meme is historical. The crisis is not confined to America. Europe if anything is in worse case. If things don’t totally crash the eventual result will be a conscious and historical discredit of their agenda by those who will suffer its economic consequences. They will be as condemned as the Nazis before the bar of history.
Only in a a crash so thorough that nobody can remember how it happened; only in one so fast that they can blame Andrew Breitbart or Rush Limbaugh or George Bush for can they hope to return. Given enough time for people to consciously realize what is happening their religion is dead. The result can only be the complete and total discredit of Bill Ayer’s world. It will then be not a personal defeat, but an historical defeat. He will be judged guilty by what he values most: the memory the culture. In the end not only will his body die of old age, or whatever he will die of; but his spiritual heritage shall die too. This is a meme fighting for its life.
The Left has pulled many a fast one in the last century. It has failed many times but there was always enough of it left elsewhere to clean up after it; to sanitize the tale. But in this case time is on the side of the resistance because it is time enough for people to see and to remember. And that time must be used to prevent them from vanishing in a puff of smoke, to keep them from reinventing themselves in bowlederized histories. This time they will be given a name; their own name. And that name will be remembered.
“Because of this dictatorship of the ritual, however, power becomes clearly anonymous. Individuals are almost dissolved in the ritual. They allow themselves to be swept along by it and frequently it seems as though ritual alone carries people from obscurity into the light of power. Is it not characteristic of the post-totalitarian system that, on all levels of the power hierarchy, individuals are increasingly being pushed aside by faceless people, puppets, those uniformed flunkeys of the rituals and routines of power?
The automatic operation of a power structure thus dehumanized and made anonymous is a feature of the fundamental automatism of this system. It would seem that it is precisely the diktats of this automatism which select people lacking individual will for the power structure, that it is precisely the diktat of the empty phrase which summons to power people who use empty phrases as the best guarantee that the automatism of the post-totalitarian system will continue.”
http://vaclavhavel.cz/showtrans.php?cat=eseje&val=2_aj_eseje.html&typ=HTML
An American President should say to Afghanistan that the USA is removing its forces from that country and that if it becomes once more a haven for terrorist groups we shall destroy it without remorse or hesitation. Of course, how we destroy that country need not be defined, that would be our decision deferred to that time when it has to be made.
That American President should also then say to the world that we are willing to help those countries that need help and are willing to try to help themselves, but that effort has to be theirs, our role would to assist only, not to be the main effort.
That same president should also say that we wish to be friends with those countries that are willing to be friendly with us, through their acts and deeds, but those that attempt to harm us will be resisted with the utmost force possible with the least blood shred by our people, with little concern for those that are trying to so harm us.
We cannot be the policeman of the world but we should be willing to assist those countries that affirm with our country’s founding principles of freedom and respect of its people. OBTW, yep America has done things poorly in the past and our hands are not clean in all respects; we have not been perfect but we want to try again and again til we succeed or figure how to be better at that effort.
The pill stuff is obviously politics- a new welfare program and a stab at religious freedom. I love Rush the philosopher, but he seems to promote all the same sexual penalties (short of stoning) as the cultures we are fighting.
I actually listened to Rush today, since I was driving (slowly) in some welcome California rain. Rush was to some degree “demonstrating absurdity by being absurd”.
Ms. Fluke was just being absurd, probably unconsciously so.
Rush has demonstrated a sense of humor many times. Ms. Pelosi hasn’t yet.
When I talk to ordinary Democrat voters I start off by saying I oppose well meaning programs such as this contraceptive give-away because the programs won’t work and those who promote the program may not mean well. I tell them it will be a costly mistake and by the time that becomes apparent it will be a costly mistake that’s impossible to stop making. It will feed resources to important special interest groups that will work quite hard to keep the money coming. Examples abound. When I say this to ordinary Democrats they often look a bit surprised and shocked since the assumption in media reports is that the programs will work and there is just a minor quibble about the price or some abstract legal issue.
I emphasize practicality because arguments about the constitution and the American tradition and the proper role of government and religious freedom and matters of conscience are important. But the first point to make is that the programs are impractical. When you argue constitutional questions it almost cedes the issue of “costly failure in the making.”
Back in 2008 I commented here that government run health care (politicized health care) will create incentives to intensely treat healthy people and speed the demise of the truly sick — not in every case, of course, but those will be the incentives. This contraceptive mandate is an example of treating the healthy. The bureaucrats will spend as much on the healthy as on the sick (they can’t tell difference in any case) and the sick cost more to treat and are a pain in the butt.
Free contraceptives will mean higher demand, lower quality service and, with the price discipline gone, higher cost with subsidies coming at the expense of other needs. The politicians will give money and preference to special interest. Their demands will grow for more services for young women and more resources to provide them. The young women will not be spared. Soon the patient will be paying for the “free services” while experiencing long waiting periods and lower quality. In a decade they will be paying more money for worse care than if this freebie were never provided.
THE LAMPS AT FOGGY BOTTOM, or THE SECRETARY PREFERS TO REMAIN IN THE DARK
It was said post Sarajevo that the lamps burned late in the Chancelleries of Europe. They burned late and then they went out for four years, never to be relit. Five Empires perished during those four years, the Turkish, the Russian, the Austro-Hungarian, the German and the British, though the British Empire hung on for another war. Fortunately, the lamps at Foggy Bottom are not, in the present crisis, burning late. They were never turned on.
Oh my, she cried, just look at this, it’s such a lovely light!
Just see how bright and cheerful things now are
With Barack as our president all things will turn out right
We’re fortunate to have a shining star
Who knows apologies will calm the fiercest Muslim heart
And food will make the North Koreans smile
He leads not from the front because he loves to play the part
Of team guy which he does with wit and style
Iran will soon nuke up and then the holocaust begins
But what’s another million Jews or so
Compared to what we’ve done to others, counting all our sins
We can’t complain if others hoe that row
We here at Foggy Bottom have it all under control
Our lamps are on and things are looking bright
We’ve signaled to just everyone that peace will be our goal
I’ll turn the lamps off now and say goodnight
Next, the Russians demand Alaska back under the doctrine “Why not?”
Rhetoric aside, Rush’s point is well taken. Fluke’s statement is basically “I want A but I don’t want to pay for A. The Democrats have contrived a narrative whereby they will force the public to pay for A, i.e. a transfer of wealth from other people to me, and I’m here to provide a bunch of baloney to support them because it benefits me.”
Many adults (no longer the majority, I’m afraid) when confronted with the conundrum of wanting A but not wanting (or not having the money) to pay for A, made something we used a call a “choice” (a word also now almost denuded of its original meaning by the Orwellian left) whereby they either a) decided to forego A or b) obtained the money by foregoing something else, borrowing it, etc, etc. In 2012, that appears to no longer be necessary – the new cultural norm is to find a bunch of politicians who want to buy votes, cook up an acceptable sob story and make the idiots who work for a living supply you with your needs. “Poverty” in the US is no longer not having enough to eat or a place to live, it’s not having as nice a cell phone as someone else. “Health” is no longer about not being able to afford live-saving treatments, it’s “I want to have sex all the time but don’t want to pay for my own birth control” (and by the way, I guess it’s ALSO out of the question for her to demand her partners buy their own condoms?)
So if you want something, just try to figure out a justification for it – even if it’s stupid, there’s enough politicians around who are desperate to cling to power that they’ll trumpet your absurdity with a straight face. But when a critical mass of people catches on and decides to play the same game of characterizing their personal desires as a public good, there will be nothing left to steal because there will be no one left producing anything. We will be a nation of parasites without a host. That is the end point of the road we have been launched upon by Obama, Pelosi and the Democrats.
@Wretchard #16,
That is the importance of the 2012 election, isn’t it? To seize the bully pulpit, and the ability to shine a spotlight on the last four years, if not the last 40, and make the argument “well there’s your problem!” Otherwise, it will be four more years of “I’m fighting for you, it’s just that lying Bush and the g_____n 1%!”. Four years will surely lead to 40, and folks will gradually forget…
“Fluke’s statement is basically “I want A but I don’t want to pay for A. The Democrats have contrived a narrative whereby they will force the public to pay for A, i.e. a transfer of wealth from other people to me, and I’m here to provide a bunch of baloney to support them because it benefits me.””
I suspect a lot of blue-collar Democrats are even now muttering in their best Tony Soprano voice, “Aw, poor you. If you can afford Georgetown Law at $45k a year, why can’t you just buy your own damn pills and condoms at Wal-Mart?”
n @ 17: Is it not characteristic of the post-totalitarian system that, on all levels of the power hierarchy, individuals are increasingly being pushed aside by faceless people, puppets, those uniformed flunkeys of the rituals and routines of power?
Havel is wrong, what he describes is the bureaucracy, invented (perhaps) by the Romans, the model for the EU and socialism. If it’s post-totalitarian, the totalitarian it’s post is Julius Caesar.
I see – if a law student needs a government subsidy in order to have sex – getting lucky must be a Fluke.
W: “The key element is money. The money needed to pay for all the goodies, apologies, bribes and other fasteners in the politically correct world. The Left’s world is cobbled together with cash unsustainably obtained from taxpayers. Its lack is the root of the crisis.”
Bullseye.
Lefties are just hustlers on the take. The various social programs, welfare schemes, public service union handouts and bailouts to the connected are the hustle. Other people’s money taken from taxpayers, the FED etc, are the glue that binds the den of thieves and hustlers together. Threaten to take away the gravy train and the hustlers will go ballistic because they know what is at stake.
Without the lifeblood of the gravy train, the massive Nanny State payola scheme starts to lose the control of its worker bees and then it’s power to control the populace. That is why we need a Breitbart at the top to pull the plug on the gravy train.
#28 stevesmith
getting lucky must be a Fluke
I prefer to think of flukes in terms of a long-ago zoology class: parasitic flatworms belonging to the class Trematoda that can cause major damage if they get into the human (or other vertebrate) liver, bile ducts, or gallbladder. They feed on blood– which may well qualify them for law school, come to think of it.
On a semi-related note, many college students in need of money and perhaps without other marketable skills are finding their answer in a website that pairs them off with someone wealthy … someone who’ll gladly shower them with money, trips, vehicles, you name it, in exchange for sex. And it’s not prostitution if you call it an “arrangement”, so they say with a straight face.
http://miami.cbslocal.com/2012/02/14/financial-sex-aid-florida-co-eds-seek-sugar-daddy-for-college-degree/
Easy money, right? “Easy” is one word for it, I suppose. I can’t imagine their real daddies are proud. It’s truly amazing how far people will go to *not* do the right thing. It’s just more proof of the collapse in academia, as this site has long chronicled.
For a long time I’ve dismissed Ron Paul because of his stance on foreign policy but I now realize the enemy within is a far greater danger than anything in the Mideast.
#4 rickl
Well stated. Some time ago, I created the formulation TWANLOC: “Those Who Are No Longer Our Countrymen”. They are not. Reconcilation is not possible, because as #10 Blackdog52 said in reference to Chamberlain and Hitler:
If ever there was a monumental failure of “reset”, suck-up diplomacy,it was that of Chamberlain and his colleages. These were men who would have done – who did – almost anything to keep the peace. They failed, because in Hitler they were facing a man possessed by the idea that he was destined to conquer and rule. Hitler enjoyed a crushing advantage over his Allied counterparts: they were terrified of war – and he was not.
Replace Chamberlain & Co. with the Institutional Republican Party that supposedly is the Opposition and sworn to defend the Constitution. Replace Hitler with the Democrats and their allies farther left. The Institutionals will gladly yield anything for the promise of peace. The Left wants war and blood. The only resistance to tyranny is at the grassroots, and they are fighting both the Left and the Institutionals. There is not stable coexistence possible. One side or the other will be destroyed.
The death of Andrew Breitbart just drew the lines more starkly. As was mentioned, the Left is having an orgy of vituperation [after lecturing us incessantly on "decency"]. DAILY KOS published a piece today calling on The Westboro Baptist Church to crash Breitbart’s funeral the way they try to crash those of our honored military dead. If that should seem to be about to happen …. I’m a long way from LA, but I might find my way there to stand with the Patriot Guard.
#18 Doug Wright
I note your first words qualifying the rest of it: An American President. We have someone holding the post of Chief Executive of the Government of the United States. We do not have a President whose goal is the protection and support of America and its people.
#9 R Daneel
Word!
Subotai Bahadur
20. erc rodson
No sense waiting around. Some say science has discovered an inverse ratio between the aggregate sum of Botox in one’s face and a person’s intellectual ability to recognize levity. In Pelosi’s case the word “nevermore” does not emanate from a Raven. It is her fate.
Great news about NK! I’ll mark this notice up there on the door post along with the other seven times they’ve promised to be good and idiots in our State Department believed them.
Anyone who has ever argued with a liberal quickly realizes that arguments based on economics, the constitution, or history are all non-starters. With few exceptions their political positions are not governed by reason but by feelings. Their natural sympathy for a panhandling drug addict will overcome their brains telling them that anything that is given to the addict will not go for food, shelter, or a bath but for drugs. But the really funny thing is they will almost never dig into their own pocket anyway. It is almost as if there is an unacknowledged self-preservation gene that comes along with the liberal gene that says, “No keep your own money but help this poor soul with other peoples money, preferably the rich i.e. anyone making more than me” They then have to go one step further and demonize “the rich” and project their own selfishness on to “them” in order to mollify their own conscience for getting their hand stuck in their pocket.
All of the above is to say it is very difficult to argue with liberals but easy to mock them and I am not sure that is not the most effective response. Let’s face it any co-ed going to a T14 law school who wants to do public interest law rather than take the six figure salary from Big Law that law degree would fetch and thinks someone else should pick up the tab for her condoms IS a selfish slut. How else could you characterize her?
Breitbart was someone I wish I’d been able to meet. Believe it or not BCers I used to know some of the folks who worked with him.
In the spirit of the apologies being offered all around, I apologize for whatever led three anonymous people who comment here to approach Wretchard with their concerns about me, which apparently risked Viktor being exiled to the wastes of Whiskeystan. With malice toward none, and charity toward all, caritas being in such short supply these days…
“Next, the Russians demand Alaska back under the doctrine “Why not?” Probably not, but they will reelect Putin on March 4th and if you didn’t like Putvedev’s turn in that seat, wait until the Russian PM wears a Cossack uniform (Dmitry Rogozin).
Regarding Neville Chamberlain:
It may or may not be the case that Chamberlain and his colleagues were willing to do anything to avoid war; but the verdict of history appears to be that he did the right thing for (possibly) the wrong reasons. At the time he went to see Hitler, Britain was frantically re-arming; just as an example, the Spitfire was only introduced in late 1938.
It is quite possible that Britain would have lost a WWII that started in 1938 or early 1939. Britain would be speaking German, the computer revolution would never have happened or happened much later (because Alan Turing would have been executed) and the USA might well be hard-pressed as well.
10. Blackdog52
I beg to differ.
Lest memories entirely haze over:
The Western Alliance ( Poland, France, UK ) had Hitler in a BOX. An economic box. Their grand strategy counted on him staying inside that Economic Box — in very much the same manner as the mullahs are expected to be restrained today.
Then, STALIN set the devil free. This was truly unforeseen. The magic date was 8-23-1939 — the REAL date WWII in Europe started. ( WWII in Asia had been rolling along for years. )
In the days that followed EVERY power mobilized for the inevitable conflict — whose start date was picked by STALIN. Adolf would’ve settled for any date; Stalin picked September 1st and put it in the Pact. That’s where it came from.
The Soviets told the Nazis that it’d take a full week to mobilize against the Poles — so let’s make it September 1st.
When the campaign, proper, began only Germany was fully mobilized. The Royal Navy was fully mobilized, too. But the remaining Western Allied Forces were still mobilizing. In particular, Poland was way behind the clock.
This is how the German Army overran Poland. She never calculated upon the French entirely abandoning her. She never calculated that Germany would dare be so crazy as to send her entire mobile army to the east. And she never figured on Guderian’s revolution and Panzer Corps IXX.
Phase II, Case White, blew up France because of Soviet oil. Without Stalin’s resources, Germany was in no position to blitz France. The Rate-Limiting-Step for Air Power is aviation fuel. With the Pact in force, Adolf pulled avgas out of his ear.
It was this hyper-tempo that blew the French and British air forces back. Neither power ever imagined that Germany could find the fuel to operate their aircraft five to seven flights per day. Such a tempo had never been seen before.
The rapid tempo of re-arming and re-fueling made the German Air Force three and four times as powerful as it was on paper.
All of these factors were due to Stalin, who utterly destroyed economic/ resource containment.
=========
Now it’s Iran. And the same players are involved.
The only difference is that Russia starts out with their hand on the resource throttle — and with a killer atomic arsenal.
Iran is but a front. The intent is to engage in fulsome economic warfare with everyone but Russia paying full retail.
Moscow expects to get manufacturer’s pricing.
========
Hitler was in a box ( the rubber box as it turned out ) until co-despot Stalin let the dog out.
Co-despot Darth Putin is letting the mullahs out.
The prospect of Fracking, which might let the West off the hook, has him terrified. For it would permit the capitalist piggies to build their economies out of brick.
========
The OTHER stimulating powers for Hitler were Sweden and Switzerland.
Sweden was the co-developer of the famous 88 FLAK 36 triple threat gun. Without Sweden the weapon simply would not have existed. When looking back upon those battlefields, Sweden’s contribution looks very great. It was regarded as the single most important German weapon — used by all three branches.
Switzerland was Adolf’s money launderer. It is of note that these roles have been replicated ( WRT Iran ) in modern times. Russia is handing advanced weapons to Iran on a golden platter. And various nations are functioning as laundry outfits. Without them, the atomic program would dry up and blow away.
——
I’m not quite sure why, but the world is full of guessers who think that Iran is going to pop-off nukes on Tel Aviv straight away. That is wrong, wrong, wrong in so many ways.
What Tehran wants is a cop shield that will permit her to absorb the Sunni states with aplomb/ a bomb.
The attack will start out very much like Danzig: a bloody covert operation whereby al Quds forces overthrow Sunni minor powers. The UAE, Qatar and Bahrain all come to mind. Even Oman would be suitable.
Then stooges would be propped up — so that the Shi’ite Crescent could gain another member.
Once a proximate Shi’ite statelet is anchored across the Gulf al Quds forces can build-up until the final blitz.
Each move will retread the Nazi move into the Sudetenland. ( ” We’re here to help the oppressed Shi’ites….” )
With the Wan at the poo deck, the raft of state will be floundering, and America will be left spitting as the poltroon-in-chief apologizes.
——
The Wan once bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia. At some point it will become apparent that that was the bow-of-death. ( Kind of like shaking Mubarak’s hand. c.f. Judas )
——
So while talking a great anti-American, anti-Israeli game; the mullahs are focused squarely on THE PRIZE. The global energy war chest.
With it, they can warp all trading economies, and extract jizra beyond the dreams of Darth Soros.
——
Darth Putin is, at some point, going to swoop in and claim his boobies, but only after they’ve hatched.
( He must urn his mullahs. )
37. Fletcher Christian
Turing’s contributions — great as they were — were not contributions to the digital computer.
First off, they were too secret, and kept that way for so long that they were entirely passed by by the REAL chain of invention which started in 1938 in the mind of Atanosoff.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atanasoff–Berry_Computer
There are SERIOUS errors in this wiki account, but it will get you partially down the road.
All of the essential facts were run through Federal Court back in the early 1970s. It was the MOST EXPENSIVE CIVIL LITIGATION up until that time. No expense was spared.
The case utterly destroyed the reputations of prior patent claimants — and established Atanasoff and Berry as THE seminal minds behind the digital computer.
The wiki makes a total hash out of the results, of course.
The modern CPU was invented almost entirely by these two fellows.
Turing, brilliant as he was, was simply too late and not even involved with the actual R&D track that created the American digital computer. Had his work not been so highly classified who knows how events would’ve unfolded.
Turings’ boosters are normally crushed to find out that his work was entirely irrelevant to today’s machines.
But, it’s a fact, by the time his work was de-classified commercial machines had leapt far beyond his devices.
This brutal competition is now very much the standard story from his day till now.
Great thread. Blert/38 that sounds entirely too plausible. Russian chess against American checkers. I see no way out unless we can frack our way to something like autonomy. But even then the nuclear mullahs will not be stopped. I guess the lesson is, never turn your back on a fallen adversary. Either finish him or befriend him. When the USSR fell, the West declared victory and failed to finish the job. Too many Putins were left in prime evolutionary conditions and the result is a highly resilient and utterly ruthless gangster state. They will destroy any competitor to their key game, which is oil and gas. Simple.
In Obama’s world, it’s only a crisis if you pay attention to it.
Leading from behind means that you’re always catching up to the mess that you were left by the previous administration: ergo, it isn’t my fault so,… what ?, me worry?
Fletcher,
No. You’re totally wrong. Yes, Britain was weak, but so was Germany. The German General Staff was so concerned about their weak position that there was serious talk of mounting a coup if Britain or France declared war against them.
w @ 16 – Would that be bowdlerized ?
“Approximately 200 Coalition members have been killed or wounded in nearly fifty documented “green on blue” attacks.”
Our army invites the enemy as spies and traitors into our ranks and midst then is surprised when they betray us, as they intended all along. This isn’t some kind of error. It’s their tactics. It works on our army, our government, and our culture. Pretense succeeds.
America put its trust in Hamid Karzai, expecting another Konrad Adenauer. We got another Ngo Dinh Diem instead!
History shows that if you ally yourself with the US you get admonished and possibly invaded and if you remain belligerent you become feared, untouchable, and receive improved negotiating terms and the benefit if a doubt. It proves the dictum, no worse friend, no better enemy.
#26 MarkJ says,
“I suspect a lot of blue-collar Democrats are even now muttering in their best Tony Soprano voice, “Aw, poor you. If you can afford Georgetown Law at $45k a year, why can’t you just buy your own damn pills and condoms at Wal-Mart?”
Mark Mark Mark…….. A lib would NEVER consent to patronizing WalMart!!
It is SO MUCH MORE PROPER to demand that the GOVERNMENT provide these services to the poor sexually frustrated (and deserving) law students.
Great thread.
Blert, you wouldn’t be a consortium of scholars, would you?
Compare the Left’s reaction to Breitbart’s death with that of the Right in Canada when the Socialist leader, Jack Layton, died. The outpouring of grief was genuine, and the Conservative Prime Minister ordered a state funeral for Layton — a wonderful, feisty, and effective proponent of his political position — the first time in Canadian history a Leader of the Opposition had been so honoured.
It provides context for what’s happening on our side of the border, where the left are desperate, nasty, and ferociously clinging to power. Remember the Donk governor of North Carolina proposing seriously and publicly that the 2012 elections be cancelled? Now Wretchard says:
————–
The question is whether there are any more Red Lines left that will hold things back. The traditional boundaries which limited discourse and action are rapidly being eroded. The development of a crisis is never linear. It starts slow and imperceptibly gathers speed until all of a sudden, quite without anyone noticing it, it has spun out of control.
It hasn’t gotten there yet. But that moment is closer than one might think.
————–
If you doubt that, look at sales of guns and ammo in the last year especially. American patriots are arming themselves, significantly, as it becomes increasingly clear that the elitists who would destroy all America has been will cling to power “by any means necessary” and may well have to be swept away in the same fashion.
Blert @ 38: “What Tehran wants is a cop shield that will permit her to absorb the Sunni states with aplomb/ a bomb. The attack will start out very much like Danzig: a bloody covert operation whereby al Quds forces overthrow Sunni minor powers. The UAE, Qatar and Bahrain all come to mind. Even Oman would be suitable.”
Blert — frighteningly brilliant prognostication. The only flies in that ointment would be the US Navy in Bahrain and Air Force in Qatar — until cuts in capabilities require them to be brought home. Iran may find it easier to buy an election in the US than to manufacture a missile-borne nuke.
And to think that we used to be concerned only about the Chinese buying Bill Clinton’s election!
There is an exercise used by psychologists and team builders where you close your eyes and fall backward trusting your partner to catch you. I remember playing this as a game when we were kids.
Jeffrey Goldberg published an interview today with Obama in which he lays out his Iran strategy vis. Israel in preparation for Netanyahu’s visit next week. He expects to convince Netanyahu to “fall back and I will catch you”.
Interesting that Obama fancies himself as having a sophisticated and nuanced understanding of cultural and historical matters. Asked if he considers Iranian regime as “messianic” he dodges and replies “I think it’s entirely legitimate to say that this is a regime that does not share our worldview or our values.”
Yet when asked about the “lessons of the holocaust” he is clueless: “I think it’s important to recognize, though, that the prime minister is also head of a modern state that is mindful of the profound costs of any military action, and in our consultations with the Israeli government, I think they take those costs, and potential unintended consequences, very seriously”
Here he is about to sit next to the one man whose responsibility it is to prevent another holocaust – the clearly stated goal of the Iranian regime – and convince him to “trust me”. He understands nothing. The whole premise of Israel is that Jews must never again trust anyone else and must take responsibility for their own survival.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/03/obama-to-iran-and-israel-as-president-of-the-united-states-i-dont-bluff/253875/
Is it any wonder why obama has the blood of 200 on his hands? Has anyone here read the rules of engagement for the military in Afghanistan? It was like some radical anti-american communist community organizer wrote the rules…. oh, wait. Nevermind.
s @ 51: Jeffrey Goldberg published an interview today with Obama in which he lays out his Iran strategy vis. Israel in preparation for Netanyahu’s visit next week. He expects to convince Netanyahu to “fall back and I will catch you”.
What the US has got right in Iraq and Afghanistan along the lines of mission planning and ROE, is heavily based on inputs from US Army observers working with the Israelis over the last twenty years. Or was early in the game, as our ROE have changed, lord knows what the sources are now, Kindergarten Cop, I suppose.
However, there is the precedent, for better or worse, of the US telling Israel to STAY OUT OF IT in 1991 and 2003 when we went into Iraq, even when Israel was taking missile hits. There’s a possibility that Israel never stayed 100% out, or even that Israel was not really asked to stay 100% out, but there were never any Israeli heavy weapons used in either war. Nor, I daresay, have Israeli troops ever been invited to participate in Afghanistan – again at least not publicly.
In principle, I suppose Israel should be comforted that the US will deploy more Americans instead of allowing Israel in. We all know what this is, state department wisdom supposed to not rile up the Moslem street cuz there are Joos attacking (as if American Christians [and I presume a few Jews] weren’t just as bad). And it might make our friends the Saudis happy, I dunno.
I think we ought to give Israel a dozen B-1Bs and let them take care of it themselves, make the US role just extended support.
–
b @ 39: Turing’s contributions — great as they were — were not contributions to the digital computer.
Oh, I would argue that at great length, though if the ABC were three years earlier, and assuming Turing had heard of it, maybe I’d have to argue harder. It’s the Universal Turing Machine that makes it all interesting, and the most direct basis for Turing’s work were Godel and (I think) Wittgenstein’s TLP. There might be sort of a question about the use of binary arithmetic, but even paper tapes and punched cards use binary states (hole or no hole), when it comes right down to it, so that is sort of a prior art. I’m just very peeved anytime I read that “a Turing Machine is an abstraction, not a physical device”. Bah. So is a Buick, if you want to get into it. Type/token. Grrr.
The death of Andrew Breitbart hit me pretty hard, in the sense that it made me realize that I had been taking for granted the existence of conservative culture warriors who would always be there to expose the lies and resist the encroachment of the Left. But now, what if something were to happen to Rush Limbaugh? God knows I have many disagreements with Rush, but he has been an indispensible force arrayed against liberalism in the USA, and the conservative movement is unthinkable without him. What if something were to happen to staid old Pat Buchanan (if you have not yet read Suicide of a Superpower, you really should), who has been cutting through the waves of liberalism like an oil tanker in a gale, for so many decades? I must assume the responsibility of carrying the work on. I have to do something—but what can I do?
Become a blogger? I don’t know about that one. I’m not too modest to say but that I can’t write with the best of them, and I know I’ve made a difference in certain internet venues (i.e. this one); but blogging is about more than just writing. You have to have the resources of time, energy, and story leads, as well as a certain tech savvy that I just don’t possess. Besides which, my thoughts incline more towards subjects which don’t play well in a blog-type venue. I’m an essayist, not a journalist. I need 1,500 words just to clear my throat, and by that time the action will be elsewhere.
Donate money? Ha, that’s a laugh. I have no money to donate. Even as I write these lines, I am taking a break from freaking out about my own prospects. Whatever chump change I could scrape together would do nothing against the likes of Soros, Gates, the labor unions and the Democratic fundraising apparatus.
And that’s as far as my thinking takes me. I have not come up with a third option. Pray and evangelize, yes, one must always do that. But what will be the labora to go with the ora? I’m open to suggestions.
W16: “I can’t help but believe they see the system as doomed also. They ought to know. They are dooming it. And while they are crazy they are not stupid. But somehow they see a future the day after the smash.”
10.Blackdog52:”These were men who would have done – who did – almost anything to keep the peace. They failed, because in Hitler they were facing a man possessed by the idea that he was destined to conquer and rule.”
These two ideas are what should worry anyone who believes in America as defined by her Constitution. The left truly believe the world only makes sense if ruled by an elite body, theirs of course, and will stop at nothing to see this happen. Consider that Americans will fight for their way of life and have the guns to do so and it becomes clear the left will need outside help to grab control but more importantly to keep it. Reasonable people can not imagine a scenario where some Americans sell out their countrymen “for their own good,” so they will not see it coming until the blood starts spattering.
Can’t happen? You have to ask yourself if you truly believe the current administration has the same future in mind as yourself. I hope to God I am either wrong or it is headed off in time. If not, who can we truly count on for assistance today and how capable are those friends? The Israelis have enough on their own plate and Europe is on the brink of economic collapse. Thank God for Cananda but will it be enough?
W: “The Left must know it can’t go on either, unless they have completely taken leave of their calculators… I can’t help but believe they see the system as doomed also. They ought to know. They are dooming it.”
Marxist theory of economic struggle between the despised (excessively taxed) middle class and the dependent proletariat class always leads to economic collapse. The work ethic of the middle class is ground down and destroyed by what amounts to slave labor – and the labor-challenged proletariat class has no work ethic to begin with. Eventually the middle class is extinguished as more and more end up on the proletariat side looking for economic support from government – which extracts the fruit of constantly diminishing middle class labor for that support – economic support for the proletariat class in exchange for proletariat votes – a Marxist perversion of democracy. When the work ethic is universally destroyed – when few are working – then economic collapse must logically follow. This is not a bug in Marxist economic theory – it is a feature. Marxists are working toward economic collapse in order to usher in a “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” which is code for Marxist Dictatorship.
“The proletariat [lazy, tax-eating, non-disabled under-achieving, government-dependents] will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital [property] from the bourgeoisie [laboring, tax-paying middle class], to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state [Marxist Government]… Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property. You must, therefore, confess that by “individual” you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible… We have seen above that the first step in the revolution by the [non] working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy…” Karl Marx
http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html
Great line out of Glen Reynolds Instapundit this morning re the Fluke dustup:
“Meanwhile, I think we should require every employer to buy every employee a gun. Otherwise, you’re being denied the right to bear arms.”
Cheers -
What makes the Fluke testimony so ridiculous is she is advocating for a government subsidy on recreactional sex, the ability to have sex not for procreation, but simply for pleasure. Why stop there? Why shouldn’t the government buy me a Harley? How about cruise tickets? Hell, make prostitutes a government entitlement, just make sure they are tattooed with the union label.
Only Bella Pelosi could produce such a stupid argument.
Gentlemen,
Good afternoon. I would begin by expressing my admiration for your thoughts and your dedication in taking the time to type them up. I am frequently reluctant to even read the site because the postings and the comments are so well thought out and insightful that I find it frustrating to contemplate responding or adding my two cents; finding the time to do so in itself is difficult enough let alone finding something useful to say.
Two Points I would like to respond to. Wretchard @16. I do believe that this moment is an existental struggle for the left and that the leaders of the movement know as much, though I doubt the rank and file are aware of it or even aware that they should be aware. I also agree with your thought that time is on our side. I believe it is also true that the left is inclined to believe that they control the commanding heights when really all they have is a loudmouthed bully standing on a step ladder. Their control of the bully pulpit is very tenuous and largely due to the good will of good people, including and comprised mostly of non-lefitsts, that want to see good things happen and help those in need.
Matt @ 54
I am also perplexed by the question question of “what to do”? I do not have an answer but I would suggest that the fact that you are staying true to your beliefs, not caving to peer pressure, not being swayed by popular opinion is a valuable thing and provides value in and of itself to the country. The people that have thrown in with the left have either made a bad decision for good reasons or decided to do the wrong thing for self interest. Those in the middle who do not know or do not care are nearly as bad. Your decision to hold fast and shield even a little flame of your beliefs is invaluable. It may not be the greatest contribution, but it has likely cost you personally at some level and benefited others who will never appreciate your action.
similarly, as long as all y’all are reading writing and posting here and elsewhere the threat to the left is existential.
yadda, yadda, yadda. not even time to proof read. apologies for saccharine.
This here link (from Small Dead Animals to Jammy Wearing Fools) contains interesting claims about the Flukette including :
“In one of her first interviews she is quoted as talking about how she reviewed Georgetown’s insurance policy prior to committing to attend, and seeing that it didn’t cover contraceptive services, she decided to attend with the express purpose of battling this policy.”
The gist of the JWF post is that the Flukette was a progressive sleeper and now was the time to arouse her.
30. PA Cat – according to JWF she has been sucking blood for a while.
In Richard’s preceding post, “Daydream Believer,” he writes: “The True Believer’s certitudes are really a mask worn to conceal an absolute lack of faith; their dogma a brittle facade to keep the vacuum from sucking in all that is barely held at arm’s length.”
He concludes the post above: “The traditional boundaries which limited discourse and action are rapidly being eroded. The development of a crisis is never linear. It starts slow and imperceptibly gathers speed until all of a sudden, quite without anyone noticing it, it has spun out of control. It hasn’t gotten there yet. But that moment is closer than one might think.”
Marx, Alinsky, . . . every insightful thinker describes the inherent self-contradictions of societies and systems. Marx and Alinsky want to ‘push the contradictions’ to force crisis in the capitalist establishment. But of course the socialist version of the establishment, once established, has its own, even greater, contradictions. But the true believers can’t accept these, believing that they are proceeding towards a truth. As Wretchard says, it’s a brittle facade, and there’s a vacuum waiting to rip it off.
As Rene Girard might say, in this situation of crisis rivalry, we can expect an escalation to extremes, and a few sacrificial murders/lynchings along the way that are needed to provide some resolution of the escalating violence. The left in particular at this time is in need of sacrificial/sacrificed martyrs, since the contradictions on the left are ready to explode.
It’s interesting how the left needs a steady supply of new sacrifices and sacrificial martyrs. Hello Rachel Corrie, Harvey Milk, Matthew Shephard, etc.
The right, in so far as it overlaps with Christianity, already has a mystery sacrifice to contemplate, one that is almost inexaustable in its gifts to adherents regarding resolution of hate and rivalry.
The left hates the right, because it desires what the right desires, and it wants to possess, in some way, the very being of the right. It has no inner being of its own; only, as Richard says, a facade.
The right just can’t seem to work up the same kind of hate.
Deo gracias.
W @ #16
“Like open borders, Health Care has become a way of buying votes with Other People’s Money. That would be alright if there were enough of it. The problem is that there isn’t.”
Did you really say that?
Let’s be real here & start from the beginning – not halfway across the left’s ledger. I’m tired of everyone thinking they can live by means of confiscating my hard-won property.
So no, it wouldn’t have been right only because there once was enough of other people’s money. That’s the kind of thinking that got us to where we are.
Aardvark 61: “Marx and Alinsky want to ‘push the contradictions’ to force crisis in the capitalist establishment. But of course the socialist version of the establishment, once established, has its own, even greater, contradictions.”
The main contradiction in Marxism is the goal of economic equality (otherwise known as “Social Justice”) which is only possible under conditions where government (a small group of other people after all) forcefully confiscates property from the actual workers and, after feathering their own nests, redistributes property to the lazy non-workers (or make-workers) of a so-called proletariat class – in return for votes. The self-serving Marxists wielding the force, and collectivizing the property, end up with the lion’s share of property themselves – like the Pigs of Animal Farm – an Orwellian contradiction when one goes back to the premise of economic equality.
“World socialism as a whole, and all the figures associated with it, are shrouded in legend; its contradictions are forgotten or concealed; it does not respond to arguments but continually ignores them–all this stems from the mist of irrationality that surrounds socialism and from its instinctive aversion to scientific analysis…. The doctrines of socialism seethe with contradictions, its theories are at constant odds with its practice, yet due to a powerful instinct–also laid bare by Shafarevich–these contradictions do not in the least hinder the unending propaganda of socialism. Indeed, no precise, distinct socialism even exists; instead there is only a vague, rosy notion of something noble and good, of equality, communal ownership, and justice: the advent of these things will bring instant euphoria and a social order beyond reproach.” Alexander Solzhenitsyn
“The usual understanding of “equality,” when applied to people, entails equality of rights and sometimes equality of opportunity. But what is meant in all these [Socialist] cases is the equalization of external conditions [social and economic outcome] which do not touch the individuality of man. In socialist ideology, however, the understanding of equality is akin to that used in mathematics, i.e., this is in fact identity, the abolition of differences in behavior as well as in the inner world of the individuals constituting society. From this point of view, a puzzling and at first sight contradictory property of socialist doctrines becomes apparent. They proclaim the greatest possible equality, the destruction of hierarchy in society and at the same time a strict regimentation of all of life, which would be impossible without absolute control and an all-powerful bureaucracy which would engender an incomparably greater inequality.” Igor Shafarevich
http://www.robertlstephens.com/essays/shafarevich/001SocialistPhenomenon.html
“It had long been realized that the only secure basis for oligarchy is collectivism. Wealth and privilege are most easily defended when they are possessed jointly. The so-called “abolition of private property” [Communist Manifesto] meant in effect the concentration of property in far fewer hands than before… In the years following the Revolution it [The Socialist Party of Oceania] was able to step into this commanding position almost un-opposed because the whole process was represented as an act of collectivization… It had always been assumed that if the Capitalist Class were expropriated Socialism must follow; and unquestionably the Capitalists had been expropriated. Factories, mines, land, houses, transport, everything had been taken away from them; and since these things were no longer private property it followed that they must be public property. Ingsoc [Socialist Principles of Oceania], which grew out of the earlier Socialist movement and inherited its phraseology, has in fact carried out the main item in the Socialist program with the result; foreseen and intended beforehand, that economic inequality has been made permanent.” George Orwell – 1984
Who wants to be full of hate? Some people find that fun, but to others it’s a drag. The “freedom” ethos consists in part of a healthy indifference to what other people are doing.
So long as my neighbor isn’t fixing to blow up the building or operating a crack parlor on the premises, my duty is to not care what he does. And you hope he returns the favor.
That extends to an indifference to his money. I shouldn’t want any of the dollars in his wallet, unless he’s broken my window.
But some people don’t see it that way. They are obsessed with whether other people live according to their standards. They want things that can only be paid for by others. And they stay up nights finding like-minded persons to fix things so they get their way.
That’s socialism in a nutshell.
There will always be people like that. Some are that way from a lust for power. Others are that way because they are wowsers; people whose idea of life is to spy on others. And that’s fine, for so long as they remain a minor factor in society.
But once these busybodies get a hold of the state they set about ordering everything. They write a rulebook with no end to it. The strange thing about that rulebook is that, taken in toto, it forbids everything, like Catch-22. You are “mandated” to do what is forbidden elsewhere. But nobody notices, because everybody’s busy writing rules.
A person has to choices in that world. One is to join the busybodies, the League of the Grim and Determined. The other is to go off somewhere and hope they never find you. But if that is impossible, the alternative is to watch them get in each other’s way and at the appropriate time, extract the single screw from their tottering edifice that will bring about the global implosion.
They’ll think you planned it. That you wanted it. But really you couldn’t care less. Their mistake is to think you want what they want. And what they want is insane. Now this may trouble you to the extent that for a while the screwballs will get their way. And there’s no help for it. You may even find yourself caught up in a conventional or revolutionary struggle and have to join.
But always remember that you’re going through the motions. There is no such business as “building a better world”. Anyone with enough power to do that will build a worse one.
Last week, ricin found in a hotel in Las Vegas.
Then Breitbart dead of a heart attack (ricin induced, maybe?).
Now Limbaugh the possible recipient of violence.
One of the things my friends always say about me is that I have a remarkable resistance to conspiracy theory. That resistance is a bit less today.
Just what the hell is going on here? Pinker is wrong, after all. Compression and tension and release ARE apart of an organic cycle, and socialism and technology have NOT altered the basics of human nature with regards to violence as he asserts. Without the anodynes of endless cheap credit to assuage envy and relative deprivation and its psychological effects unleashed I fear that Pinker’s permanent end of history and “lessening of violence” is about to be blown away in a mist of blood. I hope not, but who am I going to believe, him or my lying eyes?
IBM: We’re on the cusp of the Quantum Computing revolution (video)
By Daniel Cooper posted Feb 28th 2012 12:00AM
Feature
http://linkd.in/w4VLET
IBM Research Reports Another Quantum Computing Breakthrough.
IBM: It Is Time to Start Creating Quantum Computing Systems
[03/01/2012 11:46 PM]
http://bit.ly/zjDZB3
Background
NY Times
Quantum Computing Reaches for True Power
By JOHN MARKOFF
Published: November 8, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/09/science/09compute.html?pagewanted=all
To Tee, and with a nod to Speakeasy:
If Proto-Counselor Fluke has stated that she wanted to drive a car but could not afford to do so because of the cost of insurance and wanted other people to pay for it, then would it be okay to tell her she should just walk?
And if she says she wants to have sex a great deal and can’t afford it and wants someone else to pay for that, why is is NOT okay to tell her she should just walk?
Is recreational sex the excuse that makes everything Okay? At one time not long ago it was the one excuse that made anything NOT okay.
STOP THE PRESSES! http://tinyurl.com/6mv8b6e
Putin says bloodshed in Syria must stop! Election Day is fast approaching and he is going to be TOAST!!! So he tries one last Hail Mary ploy to try and save his plan to become Tsar Vlad the Impaler II.
NO DICE PUTIE-POO! YOU’RE TOAST!!!
KARMA!
He wants to attend the London Olympics? BAH HUMBUG!!!
boycott his advertisers.
37. Fletcher Christian
Sorry, can’t let that hoary bit of propaganda stand. At the Time of Munich, Germany was much weaker then either Britain or France. It was weaker then the Czechs. Most of the Panzers that overran France were Chech built BEFORE Munich. The Czech fortifications were stronger then the French with less room to flank them.
The facts are if Chamberlain had told Hitler to pound sand there is fook all Aldoph could have done about it.
Like Carter, Bush, Clinton, Bush II and the Obomination, Chamberlain was a coward. Democracies almost always elect cowards. The day after America elects a POTUS with courage, the Great War on terror will be over. Arabs only understand the Qua’rn and the Sword. We statr using the swprd and they will ask for terms.
Charles @ 66,
For years I have heard about what a great thing quantum computing will be. I have tried repeatedly to understand quantum computing and failed. I just looked at three different websites that touted themselves as “quantum computing for dummies” and failed to understand why quantum computing is useful. I know the guys at IBM are bright so there must be something behind quantum computing. Could someone explain why quantum computing is useful? For example with a quantum computer, how I would calculate Pi to 1000 digits or find the string “xyzzy” in a 100 gigabyte text file or numerically integrate the ODE: Y” + Y = 0 ?
stoicheion @ 70 said:
“Like Carter, Bush, Clinton, Bush II and the Obomination, Chamberlain was a coward”
Obama and Chamberlain are obvious cowards. George W. Bush is definitely not a coward. Given his WW-II service record, it’s probably incorrect to call George H. W. Bush a coward but the issue concerning his politics is debatable. I won’t comment on the others.
W @ 64: “the alternative is to watch them get in each other’s way and at the appropriate time, extract the single screw from their tottering edifice that will bring about the global implosion.”
Nice idea, W. But what is the ‘single screw’? The Political Cliques have been pulling out screws & melting them down for decades, yet the wobbling structure still stands. It is tough to see what any individual could do to pull out the last screw — apart from joining a very large movement to go Galt. The alternative is simply to let the Political Clique pull out the last screw themselves.
As an alternative to chaos, it may be possible for a government to bring down the idea of Big Government with a (relatively) soft landing.
Back in the sorry 1960s, some hippies had the idea of getting enough of them to move to Wyoming to vote out the state gov. Being hippies, they had forgotten about winter in Wyoming. What would happen if enough BC-types gathered up their winter woolies & moved to Wyoming? If one State government said No! to the Feds, could that start the avalanche which brings down the Big Government edifice?
Or what about the fiendish version of the same? What if a number of BC-ers in a bankrupt place like California joined the CA Democrat party to start agitating for withholding the tax dollars CA sends to the Feds? That would certainly fix California’s cash flow problems for a few years — and bring down the Feds.
In a sense, it would not even have to be a US State, since Big Government & over-regulation are global problems. What if Western Australia opted out of the global warming scam? What if the Irish people voted down the EU (again!)? It could be that yanking on any one of a large number of loose ends could rip the sweater apart and leave the global Political Clique in emperor-like nakedness.
egg @ 71: For years I have heard about what a great thing quantum computing will be. I have tried repeatedly to understand quantum computing and failed.
eggplant, someone somewhere doesn’t understand something, and I’m with you on not finding a coherent (!) target for quantum computing. the happy idea is obviously to use quantum superposition to simultaneously evaluate immense numbers of immensely complicated solutions. But as everyone knows who has read “Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy”, the real work is in asking the right questions. It’s not really clear that qubits aggregate, and one-bit answers require GREAT CARE in phrasing the question! It may be that what nature has provided for complex problems, is discrete (non-quantum) mathematics. In brief, that is my belief, which would make any quantum computing good only for highly specialized problems, basically analog computing, special purpose machines only. Yes one of those special purpose machines would be a universal Turing machine, but by the time you have expressed a problem in binary so your quantum UTM can consider it, you require more qubits than you can get to cohere. Game over.
–
My OT technology of the day:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/environment/the-subtle-circuitry-behind-led-lighting/
Basically the challenges of serial/parallel circuits, but IEEE seems to keep publishing some very optimistic articles that say LED bulbs will be here in reasonably good price/performance shape by this Xmas.
–
ps – I think I may have a clue what’s chronically wrong with the edit widget, it must be locked out or otherwise confused when anyone anywhere on PJMedia is doing an update, or maybe not doing an update. Usual fix in such situations is better error handling and retry, better fix is working in spite of the lock out. Issue of shared code not focusing on the businesses of the current (sub)site, routines need one more parameter.
Thus Bernardine Dohrn’s remark to Andrew Breitbart that the Occupy people are today’s antiwar movement was a curious one. The antiwar movement was aimed at paralyzing American will in the 1960s. For the parallel to be exact, what is Dohrn hoping to forestall? What is at the end of the rollercoaster she wants to ride?
I think that there’s a lot of cargo-cult thinking going on in the Occupy movement. The anti-war movement of the 1960s has been absolutely lionized — turned into the single most glorious, magnificant victory in the history of the American left. It was their greatest victory ever — Woodstock, Kent State, and in the end they took over the universities, took over the Democratic party, and in recent years took over the entire Federal government.
Occupy is being sold to today’s young people as a chance to relive the whole thing over again. To march into battle in the footsteps of their liberal anti-war forefathers. Of course, it’s a lot easier this time around. In 1968, Richard J Daley had the police in the park busting heads. Today, Occupy is treated with kid gloves by the police. On the one hand it’s play-acting now. A Disney version of the real thing. Control towers made of bamboo and tiki lights outlining the landing strip.
But as Wretchard said, The antiwar movement was aimed at paralyzing American will to wage war. Similarly, Occupy can be viewed as being aimed at paralyzing American commerce. It’s aimed at shutting down finance, manufacturing, industry and services. The children may not think or realize that this is what they are doing, but the target of their attacks is the very engine of prosperity. The more they succeed, the poorer they get. The more victories Occupy racks up, the more jobs are destroyed and not created. I think that the logic goes something like this. The Anti-war movement resulted in the left taking over the government and universities. Thus, Occupy will result in the left taking over industry and commerce. Yet industry and commerce are withering and dying from the leftist poison.
That’s the real endgame, and I don’t think that Dohrn has any idea what is at the end of the rollercoaster she wants to ride. It’s like Pelosi said, We have to pass the health care bill to find out what’s in it. Occupy is really the same thing. We have to carry through with the revolution in order to find out what happens after it. This is faith. Faith in Marx. Faith in Communism. Faith that this time it will work, because obviously all of those failed attempts at Communism failed because the people were too stupid, unlike today’s young people, who have been lovingly reminded of their brilliance since they were toddlers. How can we fail? We are us! We are the 99%! As if that explains everything.
The antiwar movement worked out magnificantly for Ayers and Dohrn. In the end, they became wealthy, powerful and influential beyond their wildest dreams. Occupy is letting them relive it all, as sage elders. How can it go wrong?
And the Children’s Crusade continues.
Josh @ 73 said:
“… the happy idea is obviously to use quantum superposition to simultaneously evaluate immense numbers of immensely complicated solutions. But as everyone knows who has read “Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Universe”, the real work is in asking the right questions.”
Great minds work alike. When I was looking at the different quantum computing websites, I was thinking to myself that this was like Zaphod Beeblebrox and the Heart of Gold. So the wonderful quantum computer gives me an infinite number of solutions. How is that different from white noise? At least “Deep Thought” provided the single number of 42 as the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything. What useful thing am I supposed to do with a qubit which can simultaneously be any number between 0 and 1?
I remain deeply skeptical about quantum computing.
Calling all Eggplants! Calling all Eggplants!
Sorry to go off topic folks but do need a bit of info.
Eggplant, how high does a one ton object have to be before obtaining
terminal velocity of 7 miles per second? I used to think it had to
come all the way from zero gravity to 1 full g. Now I think otherwise.
Can you enlighten me please?
Second dumb question: Object from space is at 7 mps before encountering atomosphere so it punches a hole right through a Force 5 tornado without deviating an inch from its ballistic, right? However a hunk of metal or rock
dropped from an aircraft or riding a ballistic missle can have wind-induced accuracy problems and will need some on-board steerage?????? Any and all help appreciated kind sir.
Okay, you all can get back to the important stuff now.
76. Dave
Whatever you are building in your backyard – it doesn’t sound good.
Dave #76:
7 MPS Miles per second is 25,000 mph which is escape velocity for Planet Earth.
Which means:
1. It ain’t ever gonna “fall” far enough to reach that. It will have to be boosted by something.
2. Unless it is a very direct hit, as in fired from a monsterous gun with rocket boost and active guidance, anything going that fast is going to miss Planet Earth entirely.
We now return you to your previous discussions. Cape Canaveral signing off.
67. RWE
There is no evidence for anyone wanting to have sex “a great deal.” No one mentioned it or suggested it – Rush made it up. Although he could be unclear on the mechanics of birth control for women, but as he’s on his fourth wife and he has no children, that’s not very convincing. Rush added “slut” to the narrative and ran with it, and so we’re going to have to have that rational debate about birth control and insurance coverage some other time. If ever. Right now, it’s about something a little different, and I’m not missing any of it.
Dave @ 76 asked:
“how high does a one ton object have to be before obtaining
terminal velocity of 7 miles per second? I used to think it had to
come all the way from zero gravity to 1 full g. Now I think otherwise.
Can you enlighten me please?”
Terminal velocity occurs when the local force of gravity equals the drag force, i.e.
m g = 1/2 rho Cd A V^2
doing the algebra:
v = sqrt(2 m g / (rho Cd A))
where
g = acceleration of gravity
m = mass of object
rho = free stream density
Cd = drag coefficient
A = reference area to the drag coefficient (typically cross sectional area)
This equation assumes that rho and g are not functions of altitude and the planet is not rotating. However a better approximation would assume
g = mu / (z + R)^2 …. assumes a simple dipole gravitational field
rho = Rho_0 exp(-z/L) …. assumes an isothermal atmosphere
where
mu = gravitational constant for the specific planet
R = the planet’s radius
z = the altitude above the planet’s surface
Rho_0 = the atmospheric density at zero altitude
L = the length scale of the atmosphere.
If you specify the planet then you can plug in numbers for Rho_0 and mu. Then you can calculate the altitude for terminal velocity. [Your tax dollars pay my salary to do this stuff]
Dave also said:
“Object from space is at 7 mps before encountering atmosphere so it punches a hole right through a Force 5 tornado without deviating an inch from its ballistic, right? However a hunk of metal or rock dropped from an aircraft or riding a ballistic missile can have wind-induced accuracy problems and will need some on-board steerage??”
Huh??
RWE @ 78 said:
“7 MPS Miles per second is 25,000 mph which is escape velocity for Planet Earth.”
Dave might have been thinking of Jupiter or another gas giant.
jms…
Don’t make it complicated.
The occupy crowd is pure 0bama Astroturf.
It’s purpose is to muddy the water WRT the Tea Party and protest.
At a bare minimum the hope was that some first class street fighting would evolve. ( Browns vs Reds ===> rebadged )
Then comes opportunity: arresting opportunities — and hacking opportunities.
After all, the Weimar Army stuck Adolf inside the Nazi movement as a spy.
The Okhrana stuck Stalin inside the Communists as a spy.
Imagine the possibilities.
——
As for the STYLE of the Occupiers — it’s straight from 0bama’s Chicago daze. He (dis)organized protests in just such a style. It has the master’s fingerprints.
That so much distraction/ MSM (D) airtime is wasted upon these wasted fellows is all double-plus good.
Without the Occupiers the MSM (D) would have to fill up their news hole with way, way too much Tea Party dissension. That had to be thwarted, toot suite.
Pay no attention to the connection between ex-ACORN agitproppers and Boston illegals.
——-
BTW is not being SOLD to the players — you have it backwards. They’re BUYING the players. These are PAID performance protests — to include first class meals and props.
So, second time is FARCE.
Cheers.
Stevesmith (77),
LOL!!!!! I had a similar reaction, except mine was more along the lines of “If you have to ask some pseudonymous guy on the internet the answer to these questions, you probably should abandon that project and try something totally different.”
Re 80: Sounds like you guys are resurrecting the old Rods from God concept or Niven & Pournelle’s Crowbars from Space. A few links (apologize for Wiki but it’s a starting place). Cheers -
http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2004-06/rods-god
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment
http://www.merkle.com/pluto/pluto.html
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1582
stevesmith #77: Don’t tell anybody but I am working for Josephine Solitaire who represents Agents United To Nullify Terrorism. Her Men Always Get Their Mounty!
Kirk Parker #82: There is madness to my mysterious methods.
RWE and Eggplant: I take it that neither of you have perused the delightful
tome “Earth’s Satellite Is A Tempermental Concubine ” I am interested in the rather creative use of kinetic kill to solve a few problems.
So until Mycroft Holmes IV gets back from vacation, I am gonna WAG it that 80,000 feet will do the trick if 60,000 doesn’t. I am thinking in terms of a CONEX box filled with pig iron, equipped with nose cone for sreamlining and vertical/horizontal stabilizers for accuracy. Maybe a solid fuel booster or two to get her up to speed, maybe not.
Such a device would be sudden death on a refinery in Iran for example. Good as a nuke without all that pesky fallout. And it would dig a much deeper crater that the proposed bunker busters with a downward shock wave greater than anything short of shaped-charged fission/fusion.
Won’t you all just love it when the conspiracy comes together?
Kirk Parker and Agimarc,
Dave, RWE and I were just horsing around.
Agimarc,
The “Rods from God” concept actually started with Heinlein’s “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” except Heinlein used rocks launched from the Moon.
84. Dave
Josephine Solitare is in the cards eh? Well, that’s all right then. My lips are sealed.
#76 Dave
I am not an engineer, nor do I play one on TV, or the internet. Calculus makes my head hurt, and I prefer my equations linear.
That said, it sounds like you are pondering “Rods from God” or something akin to “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”.
Not a bad weekend project.
Subotai Bahadur
stevesmith 86; Josephine learned the trade from United Networks Command for Law and Enforcement. She was tutored by Napoleon Solo.
Subotai 87; To start all you have to do is count from 0 to 10 backwards.
Seriously, I am on record more than once for advocating that both ballistic missle defense and strategic bombardment be done from space. In the meantime
some of the same principles can be utilized at/from lower altitudes.
38. blert
“The Western Alliance ( Poland, France, UK ) had Hitler in a BOX. An economic box. Their grand strategy counted on him staying inside that Economic Box”
it only existed from April 1939, until Poland understood that, inspite of her non-agression pact with Germany (since february 1934, at least Poland did benefit from WW1 after war lands repartitions), Germany became less and less accomodative with Poland, (Poland that said nothing when Hitler took over Czechs’ lands, in the contrary she got the Teschen land). Germans today still believe that this alliance caused that Germany look for the pact with the Soviets Russia. Except that Stalin was weighting what was the most avdvantageous, allying with France and UK, like discussions were on after “Munich”, or staying neutral… but Hitler offered him more than we could put on the balance, extending his empire to a few more countries at east, and to punish these arrogant Poles who recovered lost territories since the XVIIIth century to Russia…after the polish /bolcheviks war of 1920.
http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/polit_0032-342x_1937_num_2_5_6319
so no, it wasn’t economical motivations, but strategical’s
“This is how the German Army overran Poland. She never calculated upon the French entirely abandoning her. She never calculated that Germany would dare be so crazy as to send her entire mobile army to the east. And she never figured on Guderian’s revolution and Panzer Corps IXX.”
BS Beck had already forgotten France alliance since 1934, and suddenly remembered it in 1939 when it was clear that Hitler had duped the Poles, though he look for the Brits support first, knowing that he might have received some bitter reflexions in Paris.
Besides during the phoney war, the french soldiers would singing “we will not die for Danzig”, anyways, for Britain and France it was the bad bet to attack Germany, with, on the other side, having the Soviets backing Germany a too big fish for them in 1939, not counting the communists ampathies for Moscow !
So this story of France abandoning Poland is a tale that some Poles like to dispaly as a escuse for siding the wrong horse before the war
And I wasn’t????
Meanwhile, iirc Pournelle has written a bit about this concept, too, including on the limitations.
Re 85: Eggplant – I remembered the rocks from the moon via Harsh Mistress and Footfall. Nice way to fight a war if you have the ability to lift the launchers into space. Sucked that the area around DFW was the target in Harsh Mistress IIRC. Wasn’t aware of its contribution to the RfG. Still, a very nice concept – the spaceborne version of APDS (armor piercing discarding sabot) anti-tank rounds. Cheers -
wretchard: “But always remember that you’re going through the motions. There is no such business as “building a better world”. Anyone with enough power to do that will build a worse one.”
-this is pure gold. As Gandalf would say “…it has the (R)ing of truth.”
So, if language and numbers existed a priori, before man ‘discovered’ them, then the same should be true for computation, which suggests that asking the ‘right questions’ is important in some meta-universal sense. That’s an admittedly juvenile way of suggesting that maybe we’re facing something beyond computation that hasn’t been ‘discovered’ yet. I have no idea but my objection to the objections is based on the idea that ambiguity of application doesn’t imply that the techno-gizmo part isn’t somewhat (r)evolutionary. Just being able to generate the conditions for quantum coherence is historic, is it not?
Back on planet earth, maybe the ‘right question’ to ask women before allowing them access to birth control is how many times a week they intend to have sex. I see an affirmative action thing coming: do you self-classify as virgin, librarian, escort, bar tender, pole dancer, or pure slut? Rush wants to know.
And I have to say, my Josephine Solitaire radar is tingling, just a little bit, what’s with these names?
The gist of the JWF post is that the Flukette was a progressive sleeper and now was the time to arouse her.
SteveSmith…
In other words: she’s a bed-worker — prone to work what comes naturally.
——-
If it comes down to splitting it…
She ought to think dutch, right down the middle.
Doubtless there are those wiling to pay to play — for a token of her affection.
For that’s what memories are made of. ( e.g. The Blues Brothers )
94. blert
Actually I think it’s up to Ms Fluke to decide how much sex she has and with whom. That part doesn’t bother me. It’s her crass use of sex in a silly political game played for a progressive cause that irritates me. Unintentionally or not, her progressive self righteousness makes her the butt of cheeky puns and other sophomoric remarks. These remarks come to mind for occasionally insensitive people like me.
Two points about “the Pill” and its derivatives:
1- There are legitimate medical indications for contraception. For example, married women who have undergone abortion [spontaneous or for whatever reason] or after a problematic pregnancy, sometimes need a “vacation” in order to recuperate and continue with procreation of healthy children. I am sure there are other situations where medical considerations [e.g. the need to care for a sickly newborn], as well as moral-ethical ones [e.g. incest], would at least merit the possibility of remuneration by governmental or private insurance.
2- While I, too, would not be in favor of supporting Ms.Fluke’s lifestyle, the next generations will benefit politically by her and her kind reducing their electoral presence.
As a rule, the level of discussion in The Belmont Club, should continue to be cortical and not temporal. I think that is one of its most important aspects.
As several others have noted, the point that distinguishes Ms. Fluke’s craven testimony is NOT her personal sexual behavior per se. It is that she demands that EVERYONE ELSE place their personal wealth at her disposal to fund any damn thing she wishes to do.
This is the logic of one who has not yet graduated from diapers.
One has to wonder on what basis do Law Schools select their matriculants these days?