Repeat Defender
Rula Jebreal of MSNBC rhetorically asks: “Belusconi failed his country politically, economically and morally. So why does he think he should run again?”
That could spawn a whole list of similarly phrased questions. For example, why did Hugo Chavez think he should run for re-election after the shambles he has made of Venezuela? Why does he think he can name his own successor assuming that Divine Providence determines he should not continue. Speaking before undergoing surgery Chavez said “my firm opinion, as clear as the full moon — irrevocable, absolute, total — is … that you elect Nicolas Maduro as president”. Clear as the full moon alright, but what difference does it make?
There’s nothing unusual in a failed administration being proud of its accomplishments. Daniel Harper at the Weekly Standard notes that Obama is still running for re-election, even after having been re-elected. “Barack Obama’s reelection campaign sent an email today asking supporters to call Congress to help gather support for the president’s ‘fiscal cliff’ proposal. Then, the campaign asks supporters to donate–even though the election ended over a month ago.”
The importuning never ends. You shouldn’t expect it to. If politicians had any sense decency they wouldn’t be politicians. Anyone who expects a politician to hold back from a sense of propriety will be waiting a long time.
As in politics, so in love. The Sydney newspapers were roiled by stories of the conviction of a certain Simon Lowe, “a serial lover who once dated movie star Barbara Hershey and told women his name was Portuguese for ‘beautiful hunter’” from a series of offenses. The alias he gave to a string of beautiful and successful women who he victimized was ‘Bonito Monteiro’”
But the facade crumbled when the courts exposed his true character: a rapist with a penchant for violence against women, whose real name was Simon Lowe.
Lowe’s troubled history was laid bare in the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal where the 44-year-old conman was last month ordered to serve an 11-year prison term after he failed in a bid to overturn the sentence imposed for raping a former lover.
His victim, who cannot be named, was a 37-year-old woman from Sydney’s eastern suburbs who Lowe subjected to almost a year of torture.The woman said in documents tendered to the court that Lowe threatened her with iron bars and told her he would “go after my family and … gut my dad like a fish” if she went to the police.
To the question: ‘who would vote for Silvio Berlusconi’ one retort would be “who the heck believes a man who introduces himself as ‘Bonito Monteiro?’” It’s as likely a name as Elvis Preston or Vlad Pitt. But the answer is a whole passel of beautiful and accomplished women believed him despite that. “Lowe’s style of seduction – as revealed in a previous court case – involved buying women expensive champagne, dining at upmarket restaurants such as Aqua Luna and Sails, sending bouquets and serenading them with a guitar.” Then he’d rob his victims, rape them and warn them not to talk.
One victim even wrote a book, titled Perfect Stranger detailing how she “lost it all” — “a great job, a beautiful apartment, a life of champagne and mixing it with Sydney’s A-list, and a steady relationship” — when she ditched all that in exchange for “a handsome and charismatic Simon. He sweeps her off her feet with promises the one thing her younger boyfriend won’t give her – a baby. She takes the biggest risk of her life, leaving all certainties behind for love”.
All too quickly, the romance turns sour, and Simon goes from charming to controlling, from magnetic to threatening. By the time Kay uncovers his violent past, Simon has decided he will not let her go – and he’s not a man to be argued with. Trapped in a terrifying relationship, isolated from friends and family, Kay must decided what she values most, and fight for it.
Svengalis have a knack for convincing their victims that they would be lost without them. That and an element of not-so-subtle menace often means that once caught up in their mesmeric gaze victims find it hard to escape their influence. None can stop to think, until it is too late, that the the worst they an do is leave the loser and go back to being their old successful selves.
Why this doesn’t happen is a mystery. It is often assumed that most people have “common sense”, defined by the Cambridge dictionary as “the basic level of practical knowledge and judgment that we all need to help us live in a reasonable and safe way”. So why can’t seemingly intelligent people avoid bad people?
The failure of common sense may lie in the fact that it is learned. People are not born with it. It is transmitted by tradition. We learn that “some related concepts [to common sense] include intuitions, pre-theoretic belief, ordinary language, the frame problem, foundational beliefs, good sense, endoxa, axioms, wisdom, folk wisdom, folklore, and public opinion”. Thus the “enlightened people” who are taught it is cool to set aside the normal warning signs may be the most vulnerable to Svengalis.
Hence it may be no coincidence that the victims of Svengalis and demagogues are societies who think themselves above convention. They can be edgy and cool, and blinded with this overconfidence, fall straight into the web of the predator. People and voters who insist on knowing prosaic facts — like knowing where Bonito Monteiro was born, who his family was, who his friends are — are less likely to be taken in by fast talk and moonlight that those who are willing to be swept away.
People in abusive relationships are shackled by their emotions and are ironically most vulnerable when they are at the point of ditching the abuser. Then the sweet music starts up. This creates “back and forthing”. An attempt to leave the abuser causes the emotions to come flooding back often stoked by messages from Svengali saying “we can have it back, baby” eliciting the inevitable, “I still love you”.
This may go some way to explaining Chavez and Berlusconi. Their victims can never have it back. But Svengali can.
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And just how was it that “Belusconi failed his country politically, economically and morally”? Was e not hounded out of office by the Left. Did he not standup to the EUorcats as best he could? Is Italy better off with its current leadership, as leadership[ put in place by what was essentially a coup orchestrated by the international big banks and the EUocrats?
I would take this sort of reporting with a grain of salt. Consider its source
Who would believe someone who introduced himself as Barack Hussein Obama?
Rula Jebreal of MSNBC rhetorically asks: “Belusconi failed his country politically, economically and morally. So why does he think he should run again?”
Yes, well I see that spell-check failed MSNBC politically, economically, and morally, but beyond that, who SAYS that Berlusconi failed? When the game is a guaranteed loser and nobody is winning, then just failing slightly more slowly, is a job well done. At least compared to some fool who wants to come in and throw gasoline on the fire.
As for Chavez, Svengali, and Bonito Monteiro, well, you just get inside someone’s OODA loop, as people like to call it here, and you become a virus to their rationality, you hijack their operational systems that your own protective systems are supposed to ignore. Much like the current resident of our (hat tip to Eggplant) Pink House seems to have managed with something in excess of about 50,000,000 voters.
–
Also total kudos already to both @1 and @2.
I am afraid that I have run into enough con men, or just guys, including friends, who were just down on their luck, that I am not so nice a person as I once was.
A young person selling magazines door to door or a guy with a wonderful “clean everything” spray is more likely to receive a piece of angle iron up side their head than he is a sale from me.
My Mom encountered a scammer at the local Wal Mart, a woman who claimed my Mom had backed her car into hers. There was no evidence of any contact between my Mom’s car and anything at all, and the woman refused to provide her own personal info, even her name. It was a scam, and as a result I no longer let my Mom drive.
Is my common sense more fully developed or am I just more of an A-hole than I used to be? And is there a real difference?
Several months back I dropped into the office with the objective of getting a few things done quickly. At lunch I walked down to the local hardware store and picked up a couple things, and then headed for the fast food resturant next door to grab a quick bite.
I heard someone yelling, faintly, as I got to the restaurant. Thinking it was someone from the hardware store telling me that I had forgotten my change I turned around. Then I spied a young woman waving from almost behind a nearby building, saying, I finally realzied, “I think I have broken my foot.”
Suspicious of a scam, I pretended not to see her and went into the restaurant, I watched carefully as someone walking by responded to her cries and eventually the Fire Dept showed up to provide help.
I am ashamed at that, now. I don’t think it was a scam, although there was no legitimate reason I could think of for her to be where she was, broken foot or not. The building was empty at the time. If she had been right next to the sidewalk I would have gone for help right away. I retrospect, I realized she might possibly have tried a shortcut to get the restaurant and jumped the fence from an apartment complex next door, a broken foot being the result.
Perhaps the worst thing about the scam artists is that they have increased the cynicism in our society. Maybe that’s a good reason to have a concealed carry permit and a handgun on your person; you need not fear being kind. If someone claims you backed your car into theirs when you know that no such thing occurred, you can just put three rounds into the back of their head and be on your way without feeling like you’re not a good person.
The danger isn’t in the lie itself. The danger is in the willfully deceived wanting so badly to believe the lies. When the lie won’t come true then it’s scapegoat time.
Speaking of those who are absolutely, 100% certain of their worldviews: see this.
Latest bout of fanatical Russophobes rationalization of the looming jihadist takeover of Syria, or if not a rationalization then blaming it on the Russians…NEVER on the globalists, the Saudis, NATO, or D.C.
Hey Moscow we can do this the hard way or the easy way but it will happen. All unstated is that the globalists who control this dupe like puppets on their strings want more jihadi-friendly states. It creates a suitable environment for more bloated Homeland Security spending, more drooling/drugged out jihadi idiot plots like the underwear bomber, and more opportunities for arms sales across the board.
http://streetwiseprofessor.com/?p=6836
And note this is coming from the same arrogant nitwit in Houston who reassures us all that of course Benghazi couldn’t possibly have been a fount for deliberate gun running to Syrian jihadis. The CIA was only maintaining a center there to track or recapture guns not ship them. Riiiiiiiight.
I can only speculate as to the reasons Prof. Pirrong spouts this nonsense, but I suspect it has much to do with massive ego and secondarily with the vague notion that he’s ‘connected’ and MF Global type things only happen to others accounts. Again, not all who have dirty Chicago connections openly identify with the Obamanists, some like Pirrong even purport to be against them, yet all worship globalism, unrestricted warfare, and transnationalist finance. Note Ulsterman’s ‘Republican Insider’ warnings about how many Republicans are tools of the globalist agenda:
http://theulstermanreport.com/2012/12/10/insider-vs-insider-and-shephards-we-shall-be-for-thee-lord-for-thee/
I should quote from Doug J. Hagmann again on this one:
http://www.homelandsecurityus.com/archives/7215
Chemical weapons false flag brewing in Syria — rebels brag about using gas on Allawites — just as ‘fringe’ ‘tin foil hat wearing’ media predicted
http://www.homelandsecurityus.com/archives/7187
http://www.homelandsecurityus.com/archives/7210
Mercifully I don’t think the Russian or Chinese armies will fight in Syria. But there are enough nasty weapons in that country that any direct NATO boots on the ground or U.S. planes in the air could be at grave risk. This will not be Libya and any ‘huminitarian’ invasion force will be bloodied. Erdogan hasn’t dared directly invade because he knows hundreds of Turkish soldiers would come home in body bags within weeks and the Kurds would fight alongside the Syrian army. The fact that Turkey’s own diplomats may be becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the prospect of a confrontation with Russia that could ruin Turkey’s economy may have been one reason why a Turkish dipomat sought to warn Amb. Stevens before the Benghazi attack.
Benghazi it turns out was like that scene from the movie “Clear and Present Danger” right before Ryan’s motorcade enters the kill zone in Colombia when all the locals are closing up shop fast. It seems lots of people knew the attack was coming, including the four Americans who died still astonished that they were hung out to dry.
http://reginaldquillbigsis.wordpress.com/2012/11/15/not-so-streetwise-professor-benghazi-fast-and-furious-style-gunrunning-to-jihadis-not-plausible/
And the Pirrongs of this world will be blaming Russia all the while, never the globalist old boys club they stupidly think they’re a part of. You note it’s quite curious how certain Repubs like Pirrong can accuse Obama of all manner of stupidity, arrogance and malfeasance, BUT NEVER charge the Wan with deliberately running guns to homicidal maniacs in Mexican drug cartels or Syrian jhadists. Why? Why won’t they go there? The same reason Mitt Romney refused to go there and got snookered into pointlessly debating Obama about the timing of the attack and not why POTUS ordered forces to stand down and let the Americans die. Either Romney took a dive or was threatened not to directly attack Obama on that point. I lean towards the latter but wouldn’t rule out the former.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKsDjpKr2Mk
Ryan vs. Ritter — ‘there are troops Jack’
In the end every Svengali’s spiel comes down to money. Lend me money. Borrow money for me. Let me mortgage your house. Guarantee my loan. It always comes down to dollars and cents.
Show me a Svenagli and I’ll show you someone with his hand out. Every time. Hence it is no surprise that immediately after every election it comes down to debt limits, spending limits, new taxes, bigger deficits.
They say that money can’t buy you love. But one thing’s for sure. Love can buy you money. Why can’t victims see this? ‘Because this time it will be different.’ That’s your biggest guarantee that it will always be the same.
So why can’t seemingly intelligent people avoid bad people?
Because intelligence is just a tool. It is completely neutral. Our motivations are another thing altogether. They are essentially independent and outside of rational thought. Why should someone be obsessed with collecting things of beauty or staring at the stars? Why should a mother nurture a child that she knows is dying? Why should you feel pity for someone who falls and is injured? Why just because. The degree of one’s intelligence has nothing to do with it.
Central motivations come from the heart and the soul and not from any rational analysis. All intelligence does is give you an advantage in fulfilling your desires whether they be good, evil, or simply unfathomable to certain outside observers. Moths are drawn toward the flames. If a barrier is erected between the moths and the flame, a sufficiently intelligent moth can find a way to defeat the barrier and reach the flame. Some might think that its intelligence really didn’t work in its favor.
Intelligence is just an amplifier. Nothing more. It can amplify the ability to do evil just as well as the ability to do good, or behavior that seems to us to be bat shit crazy.
#1 hattip
“Is Italy better off with its current leadership, as leadership[ put in place by what was essentially a coup orchestrated by the international big banks and the EUocrats?”
Not that Italian current leadership didn’t get some audience between the “smart” people, though Italy’s economy didn’t improve, in the contrary, Austerity didn’t help the businesses to work, they still can’t get acceptable credit from the banks, and that increases their costs of production, so lots of them are closing down, unemployment is still rising.
Berlusconi, if he comes back, may not having a PC discourse, though he is likely the one who would say the right thing to the Merkavielli plebe, that the euro is THE problem, and that Germany is doing all she can to keep it !
So probably that Italy will walk off the EZ with Berlusconi back on board. For that I’ll be grateful to him for exposing the whole hypcrisy of our leaders !
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_copybook.htm
“Thus the ‘enlightened people’ who are taught it is cool to set aside the normal warning signs may be the most vulnerable to Svengalis.”
Wretchard, have you ever read Max Frisch’s “Biedermann Und Die Brandstifter”? (Published in English as “The Firebugs” or “The Arsonists”, but translated more literally as “Mr. Respectable and the Arsonists”.) It speaks directly to your point.
RE: 10. Marie Claude
Mr. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has some similar thoughts: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/9735757/Mario-Montis-exit-is-only-way-to-save-Italy.html
#9 TCobb, you nailed it!
I think one of the women fooled by “Bonito Monteiro” spent years afterwards hating herself and keeping quiet. She fell silent out of a sense shame that she could have become involved with such a man; didn’t want anyone to know that she could have fallen for such cheesy lines obvious blandishments.
Perhaps one of the worst psychological effects of Obama’s re-election was the subsequent loss of faith by some Americans in their own country. Rightly or wrongly they felt ashamed of other voters. And that dominance, that shame was perhaps the Left’s biggest mimetic triumph. Every left winger who wanted America humbled could wish for nothing more than to remind them at every opportunity that it was now their b***h.
After the Second World War some countries could only resurrect themselves from the shame the Nazi occupation by inventing the myth of the resistance. To be sure some countries — like Poland — had no need of invention. But for those with less outstanding records to fall back on, what there was was embellished and talked up.
Anyone who’s watched the movie Valkyrie will remember this idea as the final consolation of the plotters. Recall the “they will remember you,” line before the firing squad scene and the yell of “long live sacred Germany” by the last man shot though there was no one who cared to hear. Yet the absence of an audience clearly doesn’t matter. Every resistance worth the name does it solely for itself. As for the rest,they can hearken or not.
Richard, what does “mimetic triumph” mean?
In this context it refers a statement of who we are, what we are and what reality is.
And that makes it is easy to understand why “they will remember you” was such a powerful ending Valkyrie.
Common sense refers to traits common amongst most people. It is similar to the way a baby learns language; there exists a faculty within the brain that makes it possible. However, like ears, eyes and height, people possess this faculty in varying degrees.
‘In the future, drone snipers will replace human snipers’ is readily understood by most people as drones that snipe at people will replace humans that snipe at people. There are those among us who will think that sentence means that people who snipe at drones will replace people who snipe at humans. To the latter folks, common sense appears to be a shortcoming in those that possess it.
Assuming how the brain works by examining its product is akin to assuming how the ocean works by observing its surface.
Two things my father taught me that have got me out of many a jam – both in the IDF and now in my other life…
1) If it looks too good to be true…than it is.
2) Common sense is uncommon (attributed to Voltaire).
47. what does “mimetic triumph” mean?
A. Recognizing a classic British sports car on sight.
B. Silent stage acting, like “trapped in an invisible box”.
C. Having an inspiration after too many mimosas.
D. Something else that happens after too many mimosas.
E. Hard to define, but you know it when you see it.
F. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGUPMEL3UVQ
G. All of the above
Social predators have an uncanny, almost supernatural ability to sniff out and identify potential victims. I have had a close female relative involved with one – they are always on the hunt, always looking for a fresh kill. They know all the “tells” of someone who is likely to fall for their act, and they go after these people relentlessly.
And one of the most perverse aspects of the whole situation is that those people who are most likely to fall for them are the LEAST likely to be able to get out of it once it happens. Or to put it another way, if you’re the kind of person who has the strength of character to stand up and fight for yourself in the way you have to with these types, then you’re not very likely to have ever fallen for them in the first place.
After the Second World War some countries could only resurrect themselves from the shame the Nazi occupation by inventing the myth of the resistance. To be sure some countries — like Poland — had no need of invention. But for those with less outstanding records to fall back on, what there was was embellished and talked up.
thing aren’t so clear, some – like Poland- were great at creating their own legend of Resistants, but if they were such resistants, how comes that nearly all the polish Jews disappeared in camps?
Collaboration in Poland wasn’t a minor phenomenum, the average percentage was the same in each occupied country, but it was more like a crual revenge against the Jews that endorsed the Bolcheviks doctrine
-http://einestages.spiegel.de/static/topicalbumbackground/4143/handlanger_des_holocaust.html
“Der Spiegel editor, Mathias Müller von Blumencron, has pointed out that it was never his intention to claim that the Nazis were not a German problem but that the cooperation of others in the occupied countries was essential to carry out their deathly, murderous project.
http://www.polish-jewish-heritage.org/eng/maj_04_polish_national_identity.htm
of course the French were such collaborators in comparison -who saved 75% of their Jews- !
The occupation of France was cooler at the beginning, it became very opressing at the first french terrorist actions. French people and resistants weren’t spared from torture and deportation, for hiding jews and for helping the resistants foreign agents and pilots, especially the SOE, lots died in missions
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valen%C3%A7ay_SOE_Memorial
A great work of propaganda was made, for keeping the French quiet, like Germany would protect the french families, that the french daddies would earn money in working in Germany…
some pics:
-http://tinyurl.com/bvhuws8
-http://www.mont-valerien.fr/uploads/pics/22_01.jpg
if there wan’t Resistants in France, no glorious Dday would have been possible
-http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/war/d-day/the-resistance
Why don’t the newspapers tell people about ex-girlfriends torturing men? Women who say “We’re still friends” but then never act friendly towards you… somebody fix this problem.
Exactly – many actors are actors, literally. I believe this about Elvis, Lowe, and Madonna. When these names make the Daily Telegraph, you can safely ignore whatever lesson they are teaching… Don’t believe them.
Homer Simpson had this figured out. As he observed, “It takes two to lie. One to lie and one to listen.”
24- Great name.
I wonder if anyone has done a comparison of the various resistance efforts in WWII.
The Warsaw uprising alone probably puts the Polish resistance near the top of the list but I’m not sure what else they did.
The French were effective in some ways but seemed to be beset by internal issues. I recall reading of some British pilots who were forced to put down on an abandoned German airfield in France after Operation Cobra and met up with the local resistance; for a while they were not sure if they had been captured by a hostile force.
The Norwegians had a large and well organized resistance but other than the Heroes of Telemark and delaying the German withdrawal from Norway after the Allied breakout in Normandy I’m not sure what they did with it. Then again, I’m not sure what they could have done. They did try to poison the Narvik U-boat crews with strong laxatives but I guess no one knows how effective that was. A bunch of guys with the runs on a sub sounds like a real horror story; that should make at least a comic film.
The Dutch underground was penetrated by the Germans relatively early but they sure stepped up to the plate for Market Garden.
The Danes signed a nonaggression pact with Germany but then switched sides very quickly when the Germans tried to round up all their Jews.
The Czechs apparently tried to do not much of anything, and the Austrians had a larger percentage of Nazi Party members than Germany did.
The Filipinos were outstanding, at least in terms of organization and size. And large areas of the country were controlled by them. A small group of Japanese soldiers or downed Japanese airmen out in the countryside were toast, it seems. On the other hand, they seemed to do a lot of jockeying for political advantage.
A friend of mine got involved with a guy who took all her money. Eventually she found out that he had done it before. It was quite an elaborate scam, he stuck around for over a year, acting like a normal boyfriend. He threw a surprise party for her 40th birthday and we were all invited. I thought that was strange because she didn’t seem like someone who would enjoy a surprise party–and I was right, she wasn’t happy about it. But nobody imagined that it was part of a sting. It’s not that unusual for someone’s relatively new boyfriend to get this sort of thing wrong.
After he had gained her trust he said let’s buy a house together. She already had a house, but it was small. So they picked out a house, and sold her house first, and then when he was supposedly taking the money to go buy the other house, he ran off with it. In retrospect, that seems to go against common sense, to trust someone with all that cash. But by that point the story seemed so real. She thought he loved her, so she trusted him. My friend is smart, but she had been unhappy and lonely. As mentioned earlier in the thread, scam artists are good at picking their targets.
My friend hired someone to try to find the guy and get the money back, but they were never able to get him, I forget why. But they did track down his sordid past and that’s how she learned he had done it before.
Several years later my friend got in touch with the guy’s first victim. The phone conversation provided some measure of comfort to both women. They had both felt so ashamed of not having seen through the lies.
I can’t remember the source but the story was set in Africa during the colonial period. A man was visiting the commissioner who ran the prison system at his house. The man noticed that he had people in prison uniforms doing yard work and gardening. He asked what kind of crimes they had committed. “Murder.” “Aren’t you afraid of having murderers around.” “No, for the most part murder is a crime of impulse. Most after they kill, rarely do so again so I select the ones who have done a one off so to speak.” “Wouldn’t it be safer to use those who commit non-violent crimes?” “You mean like thieves?”"Yes.”"Well the problem with thieves is that they are habitual criminals. They don’t stop stealing and will do it every chance they get. Some will kill to cover up their theft and them become addicted to killing as well as stealing.” “No I feel much safer with the garden variety murderers around.”
Manuel Pardo, he became a Florida Highway patrolman, but was fired for falsifying
traffic tickets, eventually he killing drug dealers and stealing from them. Lying at trials and etc. He just lost an appeal for his execution.
15. wretchard
“Long live sacred Germany”
If I remember correctly, one or several of the Big Nazis hung at Nuremburg said the same thing, or something like.
#26. RWE,
The Polish Resistance got us information on the V1 and crucial parts for the V-2, allowing us to better understand the programs. Understanding how the V2 worked, or at least the dangers of it, helped to shape the countermeasures (mainly bombing the manufacturing facilities) and reduce the overall damage done by V2 attacks. Operation Hydra was the first of such attacks done specifically as a result of AK intelligence.
It is probably true that Berlusconi, like Simon Lowe is a sociopath. They are much more common than people think. Most sociopaths are not violent and are very hard to spot. The key characteristic is a lack of empathy but sociopaths quickly develop the social tools needed to navigate and convince us that they really care.
I wonder some times that if empathy is a matter of degree and if sociopaths are at one end who are at the other? Can people have too much empathy?
Re: Reistsance to the Nazis.
Do not forget Albania. Albanian Muslims saved nearly all of their Jews as well as some more who fled there.
“Perhaps one of the worst psychological effects of Obama’s re-election was the subsequent loss of faith by some Americans in their own country. Rightly or wrongly they felt ashamed of other voters. ” – wretchard
Indeed. I know many of my conservative friends and co-workers felt EXACTLY that. They asked how so many voters could be so easily and completely misled, and where felt horror at the realization that many of those voters probably WANTED to be misled.
To me though, the result was not to feel ashamed of my fellow voters, but of the candidate and his associates who so willfully played upon their desires, with scant care for honesty. When you come right down to it, his entire re-election campaign was indeed an argument to convince an electorate primed to leave him that “we can have it back, baby. . .I still love you”.
#28 Toadald
Statistically murderers are the least likely to commit another offense after they are released. Sex offenders are the most likely to repeat if released, closely followed by forgers.
A Nobody #30:
Indeed, the Germans located their V-2 operational training in Poland. They picked out what I believe was a Polish village and started shooting V-2′s at it. At that point in the missile’s development the planned impact probably was a safer spot than the launch site (hence the Van Braun quote that the ultimate objective was to reverse that), but the villagers began to notice some strange stuff falling out of the sky, notified the British and began to collect the wreckage. At one point a V-2 impacted in a riverbed and when the Germans came looking for it the villagers had herded a bunch of sheep into that area, literally muddying things so badly that that the missile could not be identified.
RWE @ #4
I can empathize with most of the situations and inclinations you list…but I can’t take the world view you end up with. When you do that – the game is over and, while the other side hasn’t won (nobody does), decency and humanity has certainly lost. Reconsider please.
Folks:
Sorry for interjecting with an OT comment and being a crabbypants, but does anyone else miss the old sidebar index on Wretchard’s site? To me BC was not only valuable for its own content, but because it was a marvelous portal to all those other links.
I think that PJM made a serious blunder by “circling the wagons” around its “Core Content” so to speak. PJM is now just an incestuous window into its own brand. I like expansion, not contraction. I find it baffling.
Sorry Wretchard. It’s not my intent to divert the thread, but it really bothers me that the design change made what I think are bad decisions. I’m still glad for your content, as ever.
As you were everyone, and again, sorry for the interruption.
Follow up to previous thread.
For those who want to see the demise of Carl Sagan’s “Nuclear Winter” theory, you can see the proof on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CXvz9G1gjw
1:30 “The smoke was never observed to rise above 19,000 feet and was generally observed to be below 9,000 feet”.
So the smoke never reached the stratosphere and would be washed out of the atmosphere due to being entrained in water vapor, one of the principal products of combustion (the other being carbon dioxide). Of course ignoring the water vapor is also characteristic of the way AGW adherents use “Global Warming Potential” to ignore the “most important species of greenhouse gas”, paraphrasing that scientific ignoramous Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens in Massachusetts v. EPA.
http://tinyurl.com/778m2ry
How’s that for a circular argument, we ignore water vapor because it is not possible for humans to affect the concentration of water vapor in the atmosphere, hence we would not be able to attribute AGW to humans?
RWE
“I recall reading of some British pilots who were forced to put down on an abandoned German airfield in France after Operation Cobra and met up with the local resistance; for a while they were not sure if they had been captured by a hostile force.”
then you read the wrong book, if these pilots were still secure, that means they were in “good hands”, otherwise the milice would have delt with them and they would have finished in a camp
read rather that on Normandy people
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/14/a4000014.shtml
FWIW:
My knowledge of the Fench resistance is sketchy, but I know it included a substantial Communist wing. I recall that a primary reason why De Gaulle and the Free French troops were allowed to move into Paris first was because he and they wanted to secure the city from the Communist resistance. The Free French succeeded in doing just that.
The implication is that, post-liberation, the resistance became an unreliable ally in mopping up France after major Axis resistance collapsed. The different factions of the resistance had their own agendas. The liberation changed the relationship equation with the Alllies to some degree.
It’s funny, I have a friend who is a Parole Officer here in Texas. I asked him once who caused him the most problems, the murderers? He laughed and said “No, the murderers usually have killed the person they had a problem with and didn’t want to go back to prison. It’s the sex offenders and the meth heads you had to watch. Because the sex offenders didn’t believe they had done anything wrong, and the meth heads didn’t believe they had done anything wrong EVER.”
5. DonB71inWA
12. pst314
16. SBW
17. wretchard
“If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a small chance of survival. There may even be a worse case: you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.” – Copy to Clipboard
– Winston Churchill
…………
The problem here is that the liberal regime is a century or two old. It is entrenched in all the major bureaucracies. In the first years after the supreme court legalized abortion–there were men who blew up abortion clinics or killed themselves. But the liberals controlled the Supreme Court and controlled the nominating process. And controlled the process by which judges are educated. And liberals controlled the press that reported and interpreted the events as they occured. And controlled hollywood that told stories about what happened and controlled public education which told people how they should respond to the event.
Here’s what it looks like in reverse.–almost–
When Michigan–home of the UAW and the union movement– became a right to life state today–union members went into a rage. But their rage didn’t mean much. The republicans controlled the Michigan senate house and governorship. so they controlled the process but not the way by which the elected officials were educated.(though I’ll bet most of Michigan’s elected officials were not educated in elite schools.) Nor do they control the press or hollywood or public education–which made the event all the more remarkable.
Robert F Kennedy blames it on Fox news. He says Fox news has divided the country in a way not seen since the civil war.
http://nation.foxnews.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr/2012/12/10/rfk-jr-fox-news-has-divided-america-way-not-seen-civil-war
A house divided against itself cannot stand. That was abe lincoln’s quote.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln%27s_House_Divided_Speech
Alas, if he knew his bible better he would have known that Jesus was talking about the devil’s house.
So the law is the last part of what happens. To win the big broad arguments you have to begin with changing the way people are educated.
Here’s your chance to make a real difference. A reward is being offered for info leading to the arrest of the union thug who sucker punched Steve Crowder at the protest in Lansing, Michigan. Glen Reynolds / Instapundit has pledged $1,000. If you want to contribute (and view video of the incident), go to:
http://danaloeschradio.com/donors-offers-for-info-leading-to-arrest-of-union-thug/
In other news: Posner rocks! Second Amendment rights advance in Illinois!
So the law is the last part of what happens. To win the big broad arguments you have to begin with changing the way people are educated.
I heard Ravi Zacharias, a christian academic apologist– say once that the problem with conservative Christians is that they are being fired on continuously from strong points. Conservative Christians only vaguely comprehend where the the strong points are and they have no idea how to fire back or even take out the strong points.
How do you take out a liberal strong point. how do you turn academia away from teaching children to be, in effect homosexual nazis. (ie the current agenda is that homosexuality is just as good as heterosexuality–for now (because homosexuality is a militant religion like Islam that won’t stop but rather continually drives for more dominance)Why nazi? The current curriculum is secular humanist where everyone is nice because the government makes them be that way or else. No gas chambers for now but there are haters out there, the world is an uncertain place and the government does grow ever stronger year by year.
Its important here to know something about cause and effect.
Jesus is the the effect. God the father is the cause.
John 5: 19
“Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.
This is the context for John 5:19.
The Authority of the Son
16 So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him. 17 In his defense Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.” 18 For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.
19 Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. 20 For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, and he will show him even greater works than these, so that you will be amazed. 21 For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it. 22 Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, 23 that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent him.
……………..
What we know today as the five day work week followed by the weekend: Saturday and Sunday was a compromise worked out at the beginning of the 20th century between Christians in America and the large number of Jews who arrived at the turn of the 20th century. The question was which day is the day of rest. The Jews argued for Saturday. Christians for Sunday. So both days were counted as the day of rest.
(By the 1960-70s new issues had come on the scene like including Menorahs in public places during the Christmas season. After 2000 the scenes had shifted again and this time it is about pushing all religious symbols including both Christian and Jewish symbols out of the public square during Christmas.)
#42 SBW (aka Roughcoat)
I rather think that in Michigan, if he is arrested that he will not be convicted. This is going to keep up until more condign punishment is enforced.
Mind you, the arrest process will produce a helpful bit of ID and background. An aspect of which can be civil suit. Take his home and assets away. Throw his family out in the street. Give the money to the TEA Party.
Subotai Bahadur
Charles #41:
Right to Work State. Which is sorta Right to Life, but not in the way most people mean by that phrase.
SBW #42:
Yes! The last one in the union to try to prohibit carry? They’ll probably pass a law okaying it except on any day of the week that has a “y” in it or some such.
A bit ironic that the state that has Chicago in it would have that attiude, don’cha think? I guess carry is okay if you use a violin case?
45. RWE
Agreed. But I wasn’t conflating Right to Work with Right to Life. I should have been more explicit about that. Rather I was showing that the rage by the right to lifers among conservatives at their loss was misdirected. Just as the rage among unionists was was misdirect by their loss to right to work forces in Michigan. And both are perhaps examples of people who are in the last state described by Churchill.
“There may even be a worse case: you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.”
This condition did not quite characterize the union reps.
@15 Wretchard: You hit a raw nerve for me. I say that because you were describing precisely the nihilism I am trying to fight. Just as the O.J. trial ended my earlier hopes for society’s true integration, the 2012 election has severely damaged my faith in the American voter.
I have fought too many losing battles. Yes, they were on a more “micro” scale involving things like a high school board of trustees, a professional society that undertook a fraudulent merger with another, and several others too mundane to describe. In each I later turned out to have been correct, but after the fact and after the damage. Each cost me dearly — sometimes in friends, sometimes in colleagues, sometimes in professional venues, always in time, energy, and hope, and once in some family estrangement.
You have been through even more trying episodes and battles, so my hat is off to you. My tribulations are small compared to the ones you have experienced. It will be difficult for me to sign up for the next contest. For that I am very regretful.
@15 Wretchard: You hit a raw nerve for me. I say that because you were describing precisely the nihilism I am trying to fight. Just as the O.J. trial ended my earlier hopes for society’s true integration, the 2012 election has severely damaged my faith in the American voter.
Watch this video of union thugs beating up Steven Crowder. It’s not about faith in anything any more or great visions of this or that. What it boils down to after a time is the simple determination to get payback.
Back in the old Philippine jails there were large stones the showers, about the size of a solid coke bottle. The showers were places a guy could get knifed. The purpose of the stones was to so that, and I quote “you could take your assailant to hell with you.”
Long after you stop caring about a bright future or just tomorrow you will still care about revenge.
Wretchard – indeed. Which is why I would like to see the top 3-4 levels of management of every single bank with HQ in Britain taken out and publicly hanged, and the buildings they rule the country from dynamited.
I heard on the news yesterday (the BBC, which although biased usually gets matters of fact right) that the banking sector in Britain has had £400 billion pumped into it – on top of the £70 billion or so spent on propping up bankrupt banks. Result? None. They have simply kept it, to make even more money by shuffling electrons around.
Government spokespeople have been wringing their hands about the fact that banks are still not lending to businesses – especially small ones – and have announced yet another initiative to get them to do so by offering cheap loans to said banks. I have a much simpler idea.
UK Govt owns a majority shareholding in two of the major banks in the UK; RBS Group and Lloyds TSB. How about this? “Board members – we have a simple demand to make of you. Start lending. If you don’t, you will be fired, prohibited from ever again handling anyone else’s money and we will have the police start looking into your activities over the last decade or so. Forget bonuses and pensions.”
Psychopaths have a rather good career path into which they fit perfectly, these days. Banking.
Fletcher, the banks cannot lend money they no longer possess. Yes, they received billions of pounds and then it was eaten by losses they incurred gambling in the derivatives mkt and in credit debt swaps. See, they don’t fear their friends in govt as much as they fear their business associates who will kill them if they are not paid. Much, much easier to foist the load onto the backs of rate payers. Then off to the club for a single malt and cigar.
Wise words to remember as we begin our descent into the grinder and the ardent culling begins.
Best defence is don’t be there.
Be Prepared.
Have a plan and work the plan.
Work toward a cohesive community of like minded individuals.
Know thy neighbor and if he be evil, have a plan to deal with him. If he be good, then treat him as you would your child.
“Rula Jebreal of MSNBC rhetorically asks: ‘Belusconi failed his country politically, economically and morally. So why does he think he should run again?’”
I know that many of the people here are rhetorically responding: “What about Obama?” But that is a completely ridiculous response, since Obama has actually been quite successful. For example, since his election, “Al Qaeda was pummelled, decimated everywhere.” That is a direct quote from one Rula Jebreal. Say, that name sounds familiar…