The Commissar Vanishes
It seemed almost like a page from the past. After years of reporting that Susan Rice was the perfect candidate for Secretary of State and any criticism of her was either racist, misogynistic or both, the Left wing press outlets have suddenly brought her down with a volley of personal invective.
Republicans on the Hill had basically limited their critique of Rice to her misleading statements following the Benghazi attack. Liberals, on the other hand, made it personal. Dana Milbank suggested Rice had an attitude problem. Maureen Dowd said Rice was too ambitious and unprincipled for her own good–or the country’s. Yesterday at the Daily Beast, Lloyd Grove launched a bizarre attack on Rice that accused her of having a personality disorder. The left has also been driving the less personal attacks as well. Howard French said Rice’s Africa legacy is the further empowerment of dictators. Human Rights Watch’s Tom Malinowski knocked Rice for essentially enabling atrocities in Congo.
It’s almost as if they had set out to destroy Rice in concert; with pieces aimed at each and every one of the political bailiwicks in which she might claim support. There was a remarkable sameness in the points suddenly raised against Rice by “the avalanche of leaks and criticism and personal sniping that came” out of seeming nowhere.
They include, but are not limited to charges that she was an intellectual lightweight; had sugar-coated the genocide in Rwanda to improve the political standing of her then boss, Bill Clinton; was abrasive, rude even literally flipping the bird at senior colleagues and making fun of ex-POW John McCain’s tours of conflict zones as if he were impersonating GI Joe whenever she was not picking fights with other diplomats at the UN. A total demolition of her reputation in the black community, the old guard Democrats, the Blue Dog Democrats and in the Internationalist set.
Why it’s almost as if Rice were a secret Republican. The suddenness of the turnabout was so great that a link to Ryan Lizza’s complaint that Rice “has launched a political campaign to save her reputation…before she’s even nominated” lingers like a ghost beside Lloyd Grove’s hit piece right beside it.
It was reminiscent of how those Old Bolsheviks were found out to be, after years of apparently serving the Party and Stalin faithfully, to have been secret Capitalist Roaders and Wreckers all along. Who knew? Nobody in Pravda, apparently, until they got the talking points.
This naturally gives rise to conspiracy theories. Ann Althouse thinks she’s figured it out and believes that Barack Obama is using Rice to do a Harry Lime. Rice’s job is to fake the death of the Benghazi scandal so that he can go on doing in whatever he’s doing in secrecy. As Althouse puts it Rice:
was sent out onto 5 Sunday talk shows a few days after the attack, to say something about that terrible video, which is itself a contrivance, a distraction. So make it about the video and embody that in a specific person, whom we never noticed before. And let’s yammer about her for weeks and months until we’re tired of talking about her, and then — who knows? — John Kerry is the real choice for Secretary of State. Rice was always expendable. She was the capsule into which the Benghazi scandal was enclosed for burial. Once we’re tired of Rice… we’ll automatically already be tired of talking about the Benghazi scandal, which never even broke!
For Althouse it is wheels within wheels. Nothing is simple in Washington any more.
Jacob Heilbrunn of the Daily Beast now reliably informs us that Rice was nothing more than a hack whose sole qualification was an eagerness to please superiors. Other than that she was a cipher.
Throughout, her most distinguishing trait seems to be an eagerness to please her superiors, which is entirely consistent with how she rode the escalator to success. Want to avoid declaring that genocide is taking place in Rwanda? Go to Rice. Want to fudge the facts in Libya? Rice is there again. Obama had it right when he observed that she “had nothing to do with Benghazi and was simply making a presentation based on intelligence that she had received.” But why, as Maureen Dowd asked, didn’t she question it? The answer is simple: because she rarely, if ever, questions authority. Instead she has made a career out of catering to it.
Heilbrunn and Dowd’s argument that Obama should fire Rice because she was dumb enough to lie for him is hilarious. Dowd wrote “Rice should have been wary of a White House staff with a tendency to gild the lily, with her pal Valerie Jarrett and other staffers zealous about casting the president in a more flattering light, like national security officials filigreeing the story of the raid on Osama to say Bin Laden fought back.”
What should she have done? Told the truth? Oops, does that mean there’s a truth?
The most disturbing aspect of Susan Rice’s fall is the almost Soviet way in which it occurred, a process which now includes a Daily Beast hagiography of the new heroine, Samantha Power. Heilbrunn writes in a manner calculated to smooth her way in Rice’s old job. “Rice has fallen short, she may be succeeded at the U.N. by her former antagonist Samantha Power, who originally reported that Rice had worked to whitewash events in Rwanda. Unlike Rice, Power has traveled extensively in dangerous regions, combining the professions of journalist and activist. She resembles a modern Rebecca West. Whether the acidulous Power can ultimately muster the diplomatic skills to surpass Rice will be one of the tantalizing mysteries of Obama’s second term.”
Hillary’s gone. Rice is gone. Long Live Power. What comes after her now that two of the three weird sisters have gone into the bubbling cauldron?
Round about the cauldron go;
In the poison’d entrails throw.
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
That’s unimportant. Any number of people can go into the pot for so long as Barack Obama’s political reputation remains unstained. He never tells a lie. The only people who should go, even according to Dowd, are people stupid enough to lie for him.
Why his political hide should be all-important to the Democratic Party is a mystery. There seems an unending succession of senior officials willing to take the blame for whatever it is he is cooking up as if driven by ambition, greed or fear. It is all so eerie.
I have before me the last statement of Nikolai Yezhov, who succeeded Yagoda and who was in turn succeeded by Beria before he was shot. Three in a row. Three blind mice, each as willing as the last.
Shoot me peacefully, without agonies. If my old mother is still alive, I ask for her old age to be provided for and for my daughter to be brought up. Please do not repress my relatives, my nephews, since they are guilty of absolutely nothing … Please tell Stalin that everything that has happened to me is just a coincidence of circumstances and it is quite possible that enemies whom I missed have had a hand in it
Tell Stalin that I shall be dying with his name on my lips.
Those words, written about the best part of a century ago describe a society in which policy, the interests of the nation and even the Constitution have been subordinated to a cult of personality, where nothing matters except the blamelessness of the One. What was it for, one wonders? For now in the rearview mirror of history there was nothing worth protecting in that One. And yet … Well what little people work in the current administration. And in such large numbers too.
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Kerry for secretary of state? Hagel for secretary of defense?
These are two utterly empty-headed fools.* And CLEARLY Obambus knows this.
Hildabeast for secretary of state was a clear political payoff. She was probably even less qualified, overall, than Kerry, and that’s saying something, Kerry at least manages to *sound* dignified, and seems to LIKE to *sound* dignified. In the real world, he couldn’t hold down a grocery stocking job, but he’s tall and has a nice voice, and Chauncey Gardener couldn’t do better.
So, since it’s really the only behavior he seems to know, who or what does Obambus imagine he is paying off, in considering such IDIOTS for these major cabinet positions? Apparently something more than he would have been paying off by nominating Rice. **
William F. Buckley’s old comment about preferring the first twenty names in the Boston phone book, comes home to roost.
*no, I’ve been too kind, they both would do active damage, not simply fail at all things.
**another behavior he exhibits is putting ambitious but inexperienced black women into positions of power. he does this without visible payoff, though no doubt one can speculate about other fish he’s frying thereby.
Rice made it easy to throw her into the chipper. There will be others, as they demonstrate their prowess in arrogance and hubris. The system consumes itself. Nice little pattern you started, O.
Look carefully — there is a slight halo around Nikolai’s head… Almost like he was spliced into the picture, or was putting out spiritual aura.
Or, in this case, the vanishing journolist. To what inner sanctum has the coordinating committee retreated?
Now we’ll have a “horsefaced” narcisistic gigolo, Kerry, as secretary of state. A left wing hack. The world is laughing at us.
They all do it. Clinton left, literally, a trail of dead bodies. Even honorable Bush2 shamefully abandoned Scotter Libby. Obama, well he is in a class by himself; he does everything more better.
The wheels of the bus goes round and round, round and round, round and round and up and down and over the grease spots of his expendable friends.
Is it the same photo, after he joined the real “halo-ed” crowd, or a different frame from a movie ?
Rush was saying today that Kissinger was originally intended for secretary of state but that democrats prevented that from happening so instead Kissinger was made national security advisory– a position that has no congressional oversight.
Rush’s thought was that maybe something like that will happen to Rice. Perhaps that is what Obama will want to talk about with her in his meeting with her today.
That’s two of the Three Valkyries down and one to go. Wasn’t she the authoress of R2P? Ooops, guess we’ll have to airbrush her out of the picture too.
So who can we get for Sec of State? Hmmmmmmmm!
GEORGE CLOONEY!
Reasons he would be perfect.
1) Isn’t he still dating Stacy Keibler?
2) Didn’t he serve in the Army in Three Kings and The Thin Red Line?
3) Wasn’t he a medical doctor in ER
4) Wasn’t he a great sailor in the Perfect Storm?
5) Doesn’t he relate to religious people as he did in O Brother, Where Art Thou?”
6) Wouldn’t he bring GRAVITAS to the position as an elder statesmen, having been born before The One?
The only thing more clueless than a low information American voter is a low information non-American.
HE’S GORGEOUS AND PERFECT!
I wonder who sent out the order to launch the character assassination?
The methodology resembles that in the various one-party “Dictatorships of the Proletariat” because we are in transition to that method of government.
Constitutional means are not feasible any more. Elections are rigged, the Left owns the lower courts and prosecutors, they have always owned the media, and the economy is a Ponzi scheme in the final stages. We have not had a Constitutional budget for 4 years and there is no sign of us ever having one again under the current regime. The Left has the Senate and has deliberately frozen the Legislative. The Executive functionally rules by regulatory decree, and has taken control of the Judiciary. The fact that they could suddenly have the Chief Justice reverse a lifetime legal philosophy, abandon the legal opinion he had already written on Obamacare [what became the dissent was written by Roberts before he flipped], and issue a ruling that specifically said that the Constitution could be violated at any point so long as it was done in reference to a tax means that Obama owns Roberts. Bribe, threat, or blackmail, but he is owned and so therefore is the Supreme Court.
People do not want to acknowledge this. It is easier on their psyches to pretend that each unpleasant fact is unconnected to the others, and to believe there are no wider implications that can/should be drawn. These people are the ones who are perpetually surprised by reality.
There is a Confucian concept, the Rectification of Names, of calling things by what they are instead of weasel-words to avoid hurt feelings.
Removal from power has to be accompanied by removal from the company of the “politically correct thinking”. Thus the same kind of campaign against the reputation of the one removed; be it in the Soviet Union, in a Warsaw Pact state, or in the PRC. See The Great Cultural Revolution:
all of which except P’eng were apparently secret “Rightist-Deviationists” all along despite being the equivalent of being the Chinese equivalent of “Old Bolsheviks”. For that matter, Defense Minister Lin Piao was upheld as the model for all Chinese Communists as he conducted purges, was himself made a non-person; albeit he earned it with an attempted coup.
If it looks, walks, talks, Lies, and acts like a totalitarian; do not believe it when it says [like it did yesterday in an interview with Noticias Univision 23] that “The truth of the matter is that my policies are so mainstream that …. in the 1980s, I would be considered a moderate Republican,”
Subotai Bahadur
MP @ 9: GEORGE CLOONEY!
I would much rather have Clooney as Secretary of State than Susan Rice, John F. Kerry, or The Hildabeast. Also being mentioned is one Thomas E. Donilon, current Obamanation National Security Advisor, and by resume a terrible lightweight. I vaguely recall various misfires (including Benghazi) that either relate to him – or should have.
For that matter I’d rather have Whoopi Goldberg than Rice, Kerry, or Hilda, but I might have to draw the line at Roseanne Barr.
–
sb @ 11: yep. as of this last election, the federal government is well and truly off the tracks. we coast on in roughly the same direction on momentum, but a train off the tracks doesn’t go much of anywhere in any direction, which is of course preferable to plunging over a cliff, but hey that seems imminent as well.
10. feeblemind
I wonder who sent out the order to launch the character assassination?
Valerie Jarret?
THE WITCHES OF ENDOR
Was it not Anita Dunn, Obama’s communications director, who gushed that Chairman Mao, the Communist dictator of China, a man whose orders resulted in the murder of some sixty million people, was her favorite philosopher? Was it not reported that a portrait of Mao graced the Obama White House Christmas tree? Is the New York Times not Pravda? Do bears….
There’s maximum and minimum
In everything in life
A woman takes a husband
And a man must take a wife
And then there is religion
Some think idols are just cool
But others think that monsters
Are so cute when they are cruel
So they worship at the altar
Of the Stalins and the Maos
And believe the ends of justice
Blur the means and trump the hows
Susan Rice and Valerie Jarrett
And Samantha Power too
They have gathered ‘round the cauldron
And prepared a bitter stew
Yes the witches have left Endor
And reside among us here
In the Red Obama White House
But then what have we to fear
For the Constitution saves us
From the likes of such as they
While Obama smiles and says that
That was some election day
You asked: “Why his political hide should be all-important to the Democratic Party is a mystery.” The only mystery is why you think it’s a mystery or why it’s important to the Democratic party. “O” is an actor playing a part. The question is who writes the scripts and who cast him in this role. He and the Democratic party are tools. But for whom? You’re right to recognize the Soviet aspects of all this; wrong to assume “O” is in charge. Why not start digging and try to find out?
From red herring to strawman to sheep dip in one swail foop.
I notice that the level of invective being spewed at the usual outlets like MSNBC scream that the republicans lied! They are evil… they are… well you know… genetetically defective. Sounds good when coming from one, especially a reformed genetically defective European male.
Long live the dwarf!
If you need a quickie list of admin toadies, here it is:
Dana Milbank
Maureen Dowd
Lloyd Grove
Howard French
Tom Malinowski
Jacob Heilbrunn
Ann Althouse
I’d like to know who called them with marching orders and what they said but I would like to have the next Powerball number too.
Referencing back to Solzhenitsyn’s admonition to never read or listen to Liars it would be helpful to put these toadies on your blacklist and permanently disappear them into the chasms of Circle VIII.
“Please tell Stalin that everything that has happened to me is just a coincidence of circumstances and it is quite possible that enemies whom I missed have had a hand in it.”
Such a sentiment came from the subconscious, for the one who had a had in it was the enemy that Yezhov missed.
Of course, the term “coincidence of circumstances” may be double-speak, itself.
His last: “I shall be dying with [Stalin's] name on my lips is a kind of religious coda perforce offered only unto God.
And with such supplication, Yezhov was trying to spare his daughter and kin.
Coming from such a cynical man, it shows that he knew where his master’s hyper-inflated ego was at.
Machias please! No waay George Clooney!
Can’t happen – why Anna Wintour has already been offered the job – much more fashion forward you see.
There is added advantage of claiming the bus that ran over Rice was driven by the GOP. A political twofer, and maybe three-fer if Kerry was always the preferred choice.
Peter @17…
0bombus has them on speed-quill.
They’re on call to tattoo blame to the bone.
As for media enforcement: it’d have to be David Axelrod.
He leaves them beaten and spinning.
Re. # 15. Jim M
“…He and the Democratic party are tools…Why not start digging and try to find out?”
There is not only no one is digging, almost no one is willing to dig for whatever reason. And the ones that try are obstructed and often destroyed at every step. I am afraid that if we eventually find who the jokers are it will be too late to do anything in our lifetime.
With regard to Connecticut shooting it is another event in a series of such events with increasing frequency. It is possible that statistically it is not out of ordinary random sequence, but …
Sorry, I am in bad mood today.
Do you mean that all these respectable journalists, who only a few days ago were wholeheartedly supporting Susan Rice, and who had never before reported even the slightest whiff of incompetence, let alone impropriety, should suddenly discover within the space of a few hours, such a catalog of perfidies and defects as would make one wonder what she was doing out on the streets menacing the public?
How does one go from Democratic Poster Girl to Jane Dillinger in the twinkling of an eye?
Maybe the Word got put out. And the source could not have been from the GOP or even the Clintons, or else it would have been racist. The only source of Word that was unquestionably credible, unracist and indeed sanctified by divine inspiration could only have been 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The White House. No one else could have ordered the the dagger plunged so deeply into Rice’s back than her dear friend there the resident, or his trusted henchman, David Axelrod, a man so vacuous nobody would even think what he said originated from his brain.
That got me to thinking. If Obama can throw Rice who is by even the admission of the noble society of journalists an unthinking hench-woman herself under the bus after using her like Kleenex to wipe his political shoes then who is safe? Do you think you’re indispensable Maureen? What about you Chris? Or you Eric? Been sleeping well lately?
Could the cure for your insomnia be even more toadying, more disgusting exhibitions of unquestioning, unthinking, simian loyalty? Don’t count on it. When George Obama needed money to treat his son it was Dinesh d’Souza, not Barack who provided the dough.
The word for what happened to Susan Rice was Double Crossed. It wasn’t the first time and it won’t be the last.
@1. Josh
** … inexperienced black women into positions of power…
Change the gender and you’ve nailed the One, judged by his party and its echo chamber, the MSM, and an electorate composed, now incontestably proven for the second time, of far too many Kool-Aid drinkers and droolers, to be worthy of the highest office in the land. And his payoff is the best yet — riches he never dreamed of and a reputation wholly divorced from any concrete achievements, save his ability to win elections for offices without any tangible proof of his qualifications for them. As to how History regards him, we’ll see if the writers of it inhabit the same tank as Dowd et al.
Politically speaking, Susan Rice fell on her sword for Obama.
One strange thing about the Obama administration is how one Democrat after another gladly falls on his sword for the president. A man is told to destroy his own political career and he does exactly that. President Obama seems to be able to make other people destroy their political careers for his sake. I have never seen such obedience from Democrats toward any other man.
Why?
Jim M is on the right trail.
a @ 25: One strange thing about the Obama administration is how one Democrat after another gladly falls on his sword for the president. A man is told to destroy his own political career and he does exactly that.
Not so strange. You go quietly and you are rewarded by staying in the club after all, getting a nice overpaid sinecure two blocks up the road, and even a chance at rehabilitation down the road.
Besides if you weren’t a toady in the first place you’d never have been there, and in the case of most, you’re SO far above your level of incompetence it really doesn’t hurt being eliminated at that point anyhow, you just go home and start on your (ghost-written) book.
There are many who are old enough to have developed skills in Kremlin Watching, Castro Watching, Mao Watching and General Communist Government Watching. These watchers are divided into only 2 camps. The main camp are hagiographers who applauded every purge, every famine, every invasion, every atrocity and every nuclear test. The other camp are those who were ignored, unheard and forgotten.
We 2nd campers still have our skills at interpretting the shifting shadows, the shallow graves and the slurs. We may never know what happened but we are certain these leaders are not the saints their hagiographers say they are.
Indeed, Obama’s government sounds exactly like the government in the Harry Potter books (not the movies).
There’s a scene in the movie ‘Dr. Zhivago’ that isn’t in the book, but it is true to the spirit of the novel.
It shows a meeting of the Red Army Cavalry unit that Zhivago is drafted into.
Military commander;
“Zhivago has served us as medical officer for two years, we took him away from his family but he has rendered good and faithful service and should be released to go home to his family.”
Political commander;
“His service is not important.”
Military commander;
“Then tell me comrade political officer, what is important? I’ve forgotten.”
Political Commander;
“Now that the military fight is over, all that matters is your political service. Zhivago must stay.”
Statism, socialism, communism, is like perpetual motion. It hasn’t ever worked; it can never work. But there are millions of intelligent people, who should know better, who are convinced that if they can only find the right arrangment of magnets, or the precise way to wind an armature, then against all odds the motor will start to spin on its own and we’ll have eternal free energy.
Now if you want to use up your life slaving away at this Eldorado, that’s you’re business. I refuse to let you use up my life for a goal I know for dead certain can never be reached.
Josh @ 9 and Unsk @ 19 – George Balanchine wrote that a male partner’s job is to “support and display the beauty of the woman”. So for state visits who would better represent America, Hillary or STACY KEIBLER???
George would just be her arm candy. Remember she was with the WWE before she won DWTS. And those Arabs seem to melt in the company of strong women. Didn’t the Duck of Death have a corps of female bodyguards? And Condi Rice’s picture?
Just got to show those little boys that Mama is BOSS!
To All,
Who wouldn’t think Susan Rice will be handsomly compensated? Unlike the “now you see them, now you don’t” folks of yonder years.
She could be installed highly in academia (for instance) and continue her poisonous spew for young minds. Out of the public ways too.
While ideology explains much lower case politics in the sense of group dynamics can also work. Occam’s razor applies. An unpleasant crab got caught and dragged to the bottom of the bucket. Republicans can also wait for the chance to pile on the office bully. John Tower went from Elder Statesman and SecDef nominee to disgraced Drunk in a few days.
Wretchard @ 23 = Who? Michelle and Valerie Jarrett come to mind. “Leading from behind” was once described as “backseat driving”.
“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”.
Now a little mood music for the PBS crowd.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qeoHeoVU1E
And for you BC regulars
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOA4_-NXmIo
I never thought that Bill Clinton could weather the Black Hawk down incident, then came Waco, then the Branch Dividen,s ,Randy Weaver , they shot his wife off the front porch, with a baby in her arms, and Clinton was unfazed, it was all of Janet Reno,s fault , finally there was Monica… And the whole Clinton cabinet paraded out, and gave him their endorsement, no one ever took a fall, and things went right along as if it (any of it ) never happened, It was the vast right wing conspicery,s fault, never Bill,s. being a Democrat is never having to say you,re sorry, It was the guy ,who made the movie,s fault, And Hillery for president. Selling guns to Al kiada, that,s not treason they are our allies. Besides that, the New Yorkers deserved what they got, thinking that, they were so great, Give fhem a buzz job, in Airforce One. watch all of the little people running and screaming, let,s go lower, Behold the power, the black power, it,s our time now, and nothing is going to stop us.
“… describe a society in which policy, the interests of the nation and even the Constitution have been subordinated to a cult of personality, where nothing matters except the blamelessness of the One.”
Rush pointed out something, I think it was last week.
The bizzare nature of the polling results given the election results, e.g. people overhelmingly hate Obamacare, want spending cuts rather than tax increases, etc, are explicable only because:
People voted for Him and not his policies. They don’t like his policies worth beans but they will vote for him.
Conversely people like Romney’s policies but did not want to vote for him. Even the Detroit Free Press said his Auto plans were superior.
So what will occur inevitably, is that when Obama finally leaves the Dems will find their entire party under the bus. Completely aside that his poilices are designed to blow up once he has retired comfortably as Emperor of Hawaii, all those “Obama will pay for my house and gas and food” voters are going to be madder than hell when it all fails to materialize in 2016, the Obamaphones quit working and the EBT cards go dry, but they will never blame Him. It was those Old White Men of the Dem Party who failed to deliver, not the Won Who Won.
They still have the problem, but throwing Rice under the bus kicks the can down the road, their usual solution.
Democrats do seem to be willing to bend over backwards for Obama’s self-serving agenda. Will they be left with a bad taste in their mouth and feeling used after he is gone?
John “Global Test” Kerry would be an excellent SecState from Obama’s point of view. Why, Kerry already comes with ready-made experience in selling America down the river to foreign socialist powers thanks to his activities meeting with Madam Binh, the Vietcong’s negotiator at the Paris peace talks during the war.
Rice would have been a horrible pick from Obama’s point of view, since her nomination would keep alive the questions over Benghazi. So, what to do? Float her, inviting the controversy, then back her out and swap in Kerry. That way you get to slip in a rich white male, blue blood boy’s club Senator for SecState while charging the GOP with racism at the same time.
The racism charges are fun, too.
Q: Who appointed the last white male SecState?
Q: Didn’t we already have a black, female SecState who, curiously, was also named Rice? Who appointed that person, I wonder as his second black SecState?
It’s amusing to watch the Democrat senators with medical device manufacturing companies in their states protesting the Obama Care provision to tax medical devices. You don’t suppose the device company management pointed out that they won’t fill up the politicians campaign funds if they take a hit from the tax and their business goes to overseas companies. It is especially precious to see Al Franken barking in the general direction of the White House.
For we FFUSY people (Foreign Friends of the U.S. Y’all) there’s not much to say nowadays. It seems that we can only watch in dismay. It’s not funny.
35. RWE
Wow! You being this naive really scares me.
Dude, tell me you think he is leaving.
Does anyone have an idea why they made Rice send out a letter pulling back her being a candidate for the State job when she clearly still covets the position? I thought it would have made much more sense politically to just announce that John Kerry was their guy all along and Susan was always going to stay in her spot at the UN. It seems like she was punished for doing their politically convenient bidding on the 5 talk shows. Not at all sorry to see her take the fall but it seems odd that after being a good soldier she was made to submit to a public humiliation!
“Rice would have been a horrible pick from Obama’s point of view, since her nomination would keep alive the questions over Benghazi.”
I think something kinda sorta like that happened. But I think at first, when the lid was on the Benghazi story, Susan Rice was Buraq’s girl – his preferred choice -from the inner circle and a ready and wiling apologist for anything. But then the Benghazi story started to unravel, and when Rice became too easy of a reminder for the Pubs to bring up Benghazi, she had to go. Just like that. The political calculus had changed. Every political position and appointment with Buraq has a spoil date.
And so as Wretchard said “Maybe the Word got put out.”. Yep, no muss, no fuss, and no looking back. Loyalty only flows one way with Buraq – to the benefit of his needs.
#41,
She’s the sacrifice needed to put out the final embers of the Benghazi debacle. This effectively pins the whole thing on her. Not really of course but that’s the narrative and they’ll make it stick. She took one for the team.
Of far more import is that this is just one more example of the accuracy of Subotai Bahadur’s analysis, we are in transition to a “Dictatorship of the Proletariat”
“Constitutional means are not feasible any more. Elections are rigged [next two elections will make it undeniable], the Left owns the lower courts and prosecutors, they have always owned the media, and the economy is a Ponzi scheme in the final stages. We have not had a Constitutional budget for 4 years and there is no sign of us ever having one again under the current regime. The Left has the Senate and has deliberately frozen the Legislative [Branch]. The Executive functionally rules by regulatory decree, and has taken control of the Judiciary. The fact that they could suddenly have the Chief Justice reverse a lifetime legal philosophy, abandon the legal opinion he had already written on Obamacare [what became the dissent was written by Roberts before he flipped], and issue a ruling that specifically said that the Constitution could be violated at any point, so long as it was done in reference to a tax, means that Obama owns Roberts. [Whether by] Bribe, threat, or blackmail, but he is owned and so therefore is the Supreme Court. [majority]
People do not want to acknowledge this [give it another 4 years]. It is easier on their psyches to pretend that each unpleasant fact is unconnected to the others, and to believe there are no wider implications that can/should be drawn. These people are the ones who are perpetually surprised by reality.”
Of far more importance than the relatively slight raise [and entirely meaningless] in tax rates on the wealthy is the planned raise in the death tax. The left is raising both the rate and lowering the threshold. It’s the beginning of redistribution and the limiting of how much private property we will be allowed.
The left is starting to go after the wealthy’s assets. It won’t end with merely the well off. The entitlements have just begun.
Obama, by calling in a preemptive hit, is doing her a favor.
Think if it this way – Obama and the hard left destroy any of their own camp who so much as smiles at a Republican. What was the core of Obama’s candidacy, if not ideological purity?
Hillary committed heresy back in her Senate days. The heresy was engaging in debate with Republicans. She and all those other ‘moderate dems’ gave the Senate proceedings, specifically the war votes, the air of legitimacy. It was a heresy that cost her the ’08 nomination.
Fast forward to 2012. What would happen if Rice were to go before a confirmation hearing? Questions would be asked. These are GOP Senators, so they’d be relatively pointless, but never the less, there would be questions.
Confirmation would certainly happen, of course. No Dem senator is going to side with the GOP against Obama.
Were she to go before that committee, poor Ms. Rice could never be welcomed back to the inner circle. She would forever bear a badge of shame. For in those hearings, she would be forced to commit the unforgivable – she would have to be in a Republican’s company, and be forced to act as though he were entitled to ask a question of Dear Leader’s Administration.
The smear is a deflection. It’s a signal to the lackeys. Ms. Rice will not be SecState, and the reason is what we’re feeding you, and most certainly not anything to do with Benghazi.
Freed from the prospect of being shunned, her future is now as bright as ever.
Lest anyone think that Bengazi is over, It is slowly beginning to dawn on the country that no one has heard a single word from any of the dozens of “survivors.” That’s a whole lot of living men to, um, tell no tales.
My take on Obama’s election night victory speech was that here was a man who was saying he didn’t really have a clue how to face up to the many problems coming down the road. Many saw hubris or confidence, i saw fear alongside adolescent fantasy. As every scared bully, however grandiose the stage, knows, one must have a victim, pour encourager les autres.
When Dune is tired of Rabban the Baron will bring in Feyd-Rautha as a heralded saviour. Wheels within wheels indeed.
That means we are truly screwed, blued and tattooed.
Additionally: “…the interests of the nation and even the Constitution have been subordinated to a cult of personality, where nothing matters except the blamelessness of the One.”
No, we are there more fully than you may know. Someone I know inside the Beltway puts it in such a way – ‘You know “Person of Interest”, the TV show and “The Machine”? Well, it not is exactly that…. but close.’ The complete surveillance culture is upon us. Now all we need is armed drones above the country. What that you say? . . . . Oh.
Jim M @ 15: To quote from the film ‘I, Robot’ –
Now, you are asking the right questions, Jim.
Tuduri:
Worse than that. Winter Soldier Testimony By his own words Kerry is either a war criminal or a liar. He is a known coward to all those who served in Vietnam with Honor.
Lord Pao An – Good to see you again.
Confucius was right about calling things what they were being a vital condition of a good society and life.
Plato was right that the two most important things about any society are who gets to teach the children and what they teach them.
Surely, liberals are anything but. They are, in fact, demonic – in the sense of being children of the father of lies Jesus referred to in the gospel. They have understood that Confucius was right and so have worked against calling things what they are with great vigor and imagination – just so that the good society would turn wicked.
They have understood so deeply how right Plato was. I wonder if this is not why they buried Plato with all the other dead white men – just so no one would suspect that they worshiped his doctrine about what gets taught.
30 years down the road and the children are all grown and all deadened to anything good or true. They really are the zombie culture. They really are obedient, hollowed out souls who take and never give; who play with technology but will never create it.
They will never create anything. They are hardly alive and only want to be taken care of by teachers who order them around.
We are not doomed. They are.
“America” – which is not them in any sense – will yet have to survive them as the towns of Europe survived the plague. It ravaged. But not everyone.
Augustine was right too: Evil is nothing in itself. It is a parasite. It lives on the good, and is only an imitation of it. It eats and destroys the good. And when it has wrecked all the good, it has nothing left in itself to “be” anything at all. It disappears – as babies that were never born.
Good people, good ideas, the truth…will survive.
49- Did he call women equal?
Useful idiots. Get some ambitious sucker to lie for you to prove their loyalty, then throw them uder the bus and blame them for it. Haha! What fun!
“…Men go and come, but earth abides.”
@52…
Earth inters, too.
Blert @53
Yup.
Mike @ 49: “30 years down the road and the children are all grown and all deadened to anything good or true. They really are the zombie culture. They really are obedient, hollowed out souls who take and never give; who play with technology but will never create it.”
And they will also be populating what’s left of our military. Result: we will be utterly unable to defend our interests abroad, nor help what few friends we may have then.
It is worth recalling what happened to Stalin & Mao in the long run. They were masters of their little corners of the universe while they lived — but have become objects of scorn in their own countries after their deaths.
Big Wheel keeps on turning. It may be a bitch to be alive while the Big Wheel is grinding us under, but this temporary “victory” of the Lefties will certainly lead to their future defeat & debasement. Even Leftie control over “education” is a poisoned chalice. Big Intrusive Government Lefties have become the new Establishment, against which the young people they try to indoctrinate will eventually rebel. As someone once noted — to be a rebel these days, a young person has to smoke, go to church, and join the military.
Alexis @25…
You mean she had her tongue split….
Splayed in two — clean through.
Now, at the end, her credibility is damned.
======
I knew something was amiss when Leftist screeds started up with her top rank for wealth within the cadres.
For Leftists, that’s never a Good Thing.
Global penury — indeed global penance is their mantra.
I got the impression that George Bush valued and trusted Condoleeza Rice for her input and her talents. I’m not getting that same vibe from Obama in his relationship with either Susan Rice or even Hillary Clinton. Hillary’s an iced rival who was made SecState in an effort to park her. Her nomination was an appeasement to the Clinton wing. Obama’s never had a SecState he could really trust. I’m shedding no tears for him, he did that to himself. It is not even clear that he’s very concerned about it, anyway. Hillary’s been a shocking disaster of SecState who has lurched from one diplomatic disaster to another. She’s frankly and bluntly artless, and sitting in the one cabinet position that actually requires art, guile, smoothness. Even Albright had more elan, thanks to her spectacular brooch collection, I guess (the moron Albright wrote a book to that effect).
I doubt Obama really cares who is SecState, except for how he can use that spot for its utility in internal Democrat (not American) politics. If the secretary does well, he’s ready to take the credit. If not, well, meh. He’s ready to blame his opponents for it. That’s always worked.
#45 Lest anyone think that Bengazi is over, It is slowly beginning to dawn on the country that no one has heard a single word from any of the dozens of “survivors.” That’s a whole lot of living men to, um, tell no tales.
THIS. The years-long silence by EVERYONE about ALL of Hussein’s records of EVERY kind just scares the hell out of me. This is the “tell” that we’re dealing with Maoist/Stalinist evil effers. Coordinated message? JournoList, like ACORN, morphed into something else and still lives under a rock somewhere, you betchya.
Two more thoughts, late-night variety — our nation has a huge case of GIGO. Remember that, programmers? When it comes to data, “Garbage In = Garbage Out.”
Second thought: our nation is also in the throes of a large-scale playing out of The Tragedy of the Commons, the “depletion of a shared resource” by those who “share” it. You know, like a run on the bank — but in this case, after the government thugs declare that “all property is theft” and the looters can therefore (in a prime example of the kind of evil moral inversion they love) steal “blamelessly” from those who worked to acquire it.
The Stalinist (literally) neighbor of mine downstairs declared to me this afternoon that very statement, that “all property is theft”; which he worshipfully attributed to Prudhomme (Sully, not Paul, I presume). (Funny, Google’s spell-check doesn’t recognize “worshipfully” as a word. They’re going to have to resurrect it. . . .)
Anyway, this was such blithering, drooling insanity that I didn’t even challenge it; I just changed the subject by main force. This guy, in his 60s, is a bit of an eccentric; he and his pretty, 50-ish Irish wife take advantage of every single govt. freebie they can get their mitts on, and never stop to take into account that it’s all provided by us wicked Productive, Property-Owning types. And, oh, Lord, does he HATE Republicans/Goldsteins!
But that is the key to their slimy minds: they can declare that all property is theft, and steal it, like they’re doing to plunder families of their inheritances.
Oh, and fo shizzle, the piece of ordure in the White House will be in there for at least three terms. Eff, why not four? Or five? he’s young enough. The lickspittle toady Bloomberg showed the way — his brazen override of the NYC public’s NO vote on 3-term mayoralties, after a few grumbles, was allowed to stand (he just strong-armed his almost wholly dimocrat City Council into overturning the popular vote!).
Being a Dimocrat means never having to say you’re sorry, indeed. And I reckon that’s more than two last thoughts.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two equals FOUR. — George Orwell
Rice was the opportunity for the example to be made. I wonder which of the other players in the menagerie were getting restless. The Won is going into his second term so he will be needing lickspittles to the max. He is now free to go all in therefore his new regime will necessarily need to purge the less than zealous. Rice is the example for his luke warm aparatchiki to leave quietly. The Won can now rule us all through the aparat, EPA, Obamacare complex and the IRS. It will be rule by regulation. “Sometimes I wish I could just go around Congress” is now the law of the land. Is it possible to sue the Senate for dereliction of duty and force them to pass a budget?
OT.
A week or so ago on another thread I mentioned how several Royal Navy officers were responsible for giving Japan the information, military intelligence and the hands on skills training to give the Imperial Japanese Navy a marine aviation/aircraft carrier capability that allowed them to project power all over the Far East and mount the attack on Pearl Harbor. I was asked for more details.
Those details are available in a UK documentary called “Churchill’s Traitors” that appeared on Australia’s SBS TV on December 7. The doco is freely available at http://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/video/2309216636/Churchill-s-Traitors
The doco is based on recently declassified secret documents in the UK. The principal traitors were the Royal Navy naval aviation pioneers Frederick Joseph Rutland and Wing Commander William Semphill later Lord William Semphill who worked closely with the Japanese in the 1920s and were still giving them secrets after Pearl Harbor. The latter fop died of natural causes in 1965 without ever being prosecuted for his treachery.
@50: “Did he call women equal”.
First, to paraphrase the great Inigo Montoya, I am not sure that word “equal” means what you think it means.
Second, it is a fallacy to argue that since person X was not correct in everything, then we was not correct in anything. That is moronic.
If Confucius having lived 2600 years ago was not quite up to contemporary liberal standards of gender “equality”, then what he said about correctly naming things was also incorrect.
If we held you to your own standard then we should never believe you about anything if you were ever wrong about anything.
Wow…… It’s sure gettin’ crowded under that big ol’ bus!!
Richard,
You make a dangerous assumption. You assume President Obama is in full control. This sounds to me more like a rule by committee, with ebb and flow of power about the inner workings.
This is all the necessary trajectory of the culture of death.
To fail to see the relationship between the CT shooting and the ways of Obamaland is to miss the central point: the most disturbed and frail among us must necessarily be the first to crack as the reality testing and freedom of society are destroyed by the effort to maintain a closed system.
c @ 58: Even Albright had more elan, thanks to her spectacular brooch collection, I guess (the moron Albright wrote a book to that effect).
Did she indeed, when she was interviewed yesterday about Rice (and before the shootings hit the news), she was wearing a golden angel brooch about a foot tall, I sort of noticed and wondered wtf. Like I wanted to hear her opinion anyway or wondered what she would say. Well actually I didn’t, flipped off the teewee pretty quick as soon as I saw her mug. And angel.
It would be enlightening to know who Obama meets with while on his many vacations and golf games.
The hardest thing about being a communist is trying to predict the past–
Milovan Dilas, Serbian communist
One of the underlying themes running through many of the comments and Wretchard’s post is something like – Susan Rice was one of the inner circle – how could Buraq stab her in the back like this? – Why did she ever volunteer for this? Is there no loyalty among this crowd ? yada, yada, yada.
Well boys and girls, this is the Hard Left we are talking about here.
Among my close friends there is a consensus about the world developing. When dealing with people, you must understand their politics and be aware of who you are dealing with. While, there are still many Democrats that are moral, and who believe in Judeo/Christian values and the values of the Constitution, when you are dealing with a person of the Hard Left, you must consider that they probably have absolutely no scruples and will stab you in the back for the most worthless shirt on your back on a moment’s notice, if they think that such an action will help them get ahead.
This is just how they roll as they say. From the point of view of the Hard Left, this is how the game is played and how they expect you to play the game. So this is not a case where Susan Rice didn’t see this coming. She probably would have done the same thing if she were in Buraq’s shoes. So would MoDo, Chrissie and all the rest of the gang.
Many on the Right and the Moderate Middle want to project moral values on to the Left’s actions. They want to pretend the Left really has the interest’s of the nation, of the poor or the environment at heart, when really there is really no there there. People have just got to accept that most on the Hard Left are just blackhearted, despicable A -holes, who don’t give a crap about anything else but themselves.
Josh @ 67, Cowboy @ 58:
Albright’s brooch collection is itself a traveling tour. Came through Pittsburgh via the Carnegie Museum of Art about a year or so ago.
maineman @ 66:
How ironic that those who agitate most against “environmental pollution” are often the very same ones who produce heaping amounts of “cultural pollution” (or, are those who stand in ideological & political sympathy with those who do this producing).
America = one vast Superfund Site of cultural toxic waste
For decades, we’ve been told, “If you don’t like it, don’t watch it.” Well, guess what? You can establish a clean, wholesome, loving & moral home environment, and your kid can still end up a cultural casualty as soon as they step out the door (or, alternately and quite horribly, a literal casualty in their own classroom at school). There is no choice, and no escape, for those who do not want to participate in the cultural carnival of death. There is only the matter of degrees of participation.
Our toxic culture is like THE BLOB. It just keeps oozing through, advancing, spilling, suffocating & consuming everything in its path. And yet millions of Americans mindlessly, gleefully embrace THE BLOB when it provides them with so-called entertainment (read: gratifies lust, greed, anger, envy, etc.), and yet are shocked, shocked, when literal blood runs in the streets. Never connecting the two phenomena. Hmmm.
What’s wrong with America? IMO … it is fundamentally a spiritual disease, which manifests itself as cultural degradation, which in turn manifests as political corruption, dysfunction & lawlessness. I’ve been muttering to myself, probably at least on weekly basis for a couple years now, “This is beyond a political solution.” Much as I wanted Romney to win b/c that was how much I wanted Obama to be vo(mi)ted out, a Romney win would not have stemmed what is wrong with us, because it is not fundamentally political.
Gahh, I hate being a scold & a humbug. I feel like I’m being cast in the role of that little old bespectacled guy in the beer garden in “Cabaret” — y’know, the one who won’t stand up & sing, who’s wary, embarrassed & wants to get the h*** out of there as the weird-mad descends but can’t, and whose leathery face, wizened hands & coke-bottle glasses mean he can never, ever compete with the appeal of those beautiful, glowy-faced Hitler-Jugend.
The blossom embraces the bee, indeed.
We’re at the point where we can hear the hoofbeats, my friends. And we all know what they signify. The Man on the White Horse is swiftly approaching.
Barack Obama has turned his administration into a latter-day Versailles. Like Louis XIV, he gathers all of his political enemies and rivals into his administration — giving them ceremonial titles — not to utilize their talents, but to politically neutralize them. Hillary Clinton is ostensibly the Secretary of State, but the real power of the office is held by others. Same for all of the other cabinet members who idle away their time while Obama’s army of czars wield the real power behind the scenes.
Unsk @ 70:
It has become more difficult than that, at least for me. We *KNOW* who the hard leftists are and can predict their behavior. They amount to, as best I can tell, about 20% of the population (about 19% too many, but it is what it is), and they tend to be concentrated on the coasts, in large cities & in universities, i.e. areas & circumstances where many of us do not run into them regularly (unless we flip on the TV or watch a movie).
It’s the schizo-Dems to the right of these hard lefties, but still well to the left of me, who present me, personally, with awkward & difficult choices in terms of social, work & familial relationships.
I have a buddy who is an Iraq vet who, at the same time, also (A) voted for Obama (both times),(B) is a lifelong Dem, (C) a state employee, and (D) just fine with MOST of what the feral gov is currently up to (light bulb bans, drug war, EPA, Obamacare, etc.). Only when it comes to the American military & traditional morality in culture, does my buddy sound like a conservative. On all else political, we argue (and, hence, tend to avoid the “all else political”). If I were to give him the benefit of the doubt, I would say he’s a Truman-JFK Dem, utterly blind to the nature of the current DNC.
But here’s the point, and my personal difficulty. While I highly respect my friend for his individual code of honor & his service to this country, I do not trust him on matters of politics, policy, or public expression, for the precise reason that I cannot say with confidence that he would stand for liberty here at home when TSHTF. Is my friend a crypto-fascist rather than a liberal? I mean, gads, he does seem fine with the use of govt force regardless of whose fist is in the gauntlet, and at the same time he “sincerely” “loves” “traditional” America. Was this nationalist-soul type not the cohort that you-know-who drew upon when you-know-where descended into cultural & political anarchy?
In some sense I’m disgusted with myself that I even think these thoughts about the future & find myself wondering about friends whom I have known for years. Up is down, left is right, day is night. Hard to tell about anything or anyone these days. Gaslighting in full flower.
And so the era of strange bedfellows does seem to be upon us, doesn’t it?
u @ 70: Among my close friends there is a consensus about the world developing. When dealing with people, you must understand their politics and be aware of who you are dealing with. While, there are still many Democrats that are moral, and who believe in Judeo/Christian values and the values of the Constitution, when you are dealing with a person of the Hard Left, you must consider that they probably have absolutely no scruples and will stab you in the back for the most worthless shirt on your back on a moment’s notice, if they think that such an action will help them get ahead.
I don’t think this has ever been so different at the individual level, what I think has changed is that the filters that we used to choose leaders has broken down. Our larger institutions cannot run like that for long, and we used to have systems in place to preserve their function. Not any more. Elections were one of those processes, but look what we just (re)elected. For that matter, look at the Republican candidates – I can see why rational people would reject them. Whereas a generation ago you might disagree with one or the other candidate, but you didn’t actively fear what would happen if they wrong one was elected. Today you have to fear what either will do, if elected, on top of the fear that even if they were totally right-headed, the situation is impossible, so many things are going down that one or two good politicians can’t accomplish anything anyway, except perhaps slowing down further decline.
Our leaders used to lead in good directions, and the citizens would and could follow, to some extent. It was the Republican who just ran a specifically empty and vapid campaign, hoping to be elected as The Alternative. If you voted on the basis of leadership, you had to reject him out of hand.
Honey Boo-Boo is who she is, and will be when she grows up, a part of the electorate. One doesn’t want to put great expectations on her, and she can do her part if the larger system is working as it used to … but no longer is.
Bogie @ 73. I share your frustration, but the thing is that it is becoming ever more apparent every day that the traitors and A-holes these zombie Democrats have voted for has done a sheet load of things that are not even remotely justifiable and are just downright evil.
I suggest you ask if they are a true Liberal. As in one that believes in justice, liberty, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness ( also property) and the Rule of Law. Exploit that chasm between what they supposedly believe in and what the people they voted for are doing – like Buraq and Hilary.
From what I hear even KPFK – the Hard Left outlet Pacifica Radio outlet here in LA is having a tad of difficulty with Buraq’s actions vis a vis Morsi and Egypt. They all know in the back of their minds that something is terribly wrong. Most will even agree things are heading down a road to chaos or collapse – they just won’t make the link from how bad things are to the Leftist policies of our government. There are a multitude of issues like that – the TBTF, our looming Fascist Nanny State, the economy, – it kinds goes on and on – that these Zombie Democrats who vote for a Buraq, but who allegedly don’t believe in what they really stand for- can’t defend.
Just point out the indefensible positions their guys have taken and ask if that is what they really want.
#73 bogie wheel and #75 Unsk
Those lines are being drawn, and we cannot avoid it.
That is exactly the problem. We are past the point where we can hope to convert those who support the enemy. Any conversion now could not be trusted to hold under stress, and stress is coming.
The old concept of Democrats disagreeing on specific issues, but still loving the country enough to rally around to preserve it is gone. Those who remain in the Democratic Party, let alone those who are farther Left, will do as they are told regardless of personal feelings. The power of the Party overrides any personal scruples. See the old Marxist term “Democratic Centralism”. The “country loving Democrat” will steal everything you have and enslave you and your children happily if given the chance or the order.
Stay on reasonable terms with those on the Left [for now], but never trust them and always expect them to betray you. Do not put yourself in a position to allow them to do so. And if times become hard, remember who brought it about and have your conduct and generosity be guided by that memory.
And the risk is not only on the Left. The Institutional Republicans will betray us just as readily. There is another active PJM thread,
http://pjmedia.com/blog/gop-please-dont-jump/
that is a perfect example of a collaborationist. We cannot afford to be guided by them anymore.
Subotai Bahadur
The old Stalinist who lives under me (one floor down) told me yesterday, with a fanatical gleam in his eye, that “all property is theft.”
Family man. Wife and daughter. In many respects charming; in many respects intelligent. But a brownshirt at heart.
He has a Romantic idea of our super as a “man of the people” [he's actually a short, nasty tempered Dominican illegal immigrant]. The super forced his son to paint over the primer coat in my bathroom before it dried: now it’s leprous with peeling, cracking paint, which happened the day the paint dried and has gotten successively worse. I showed this to Dick, and he said, “Looks like a problem with moisture to me.” This guy’s a contractor, and even tho I told him it started immediately, he REFUSED to believe the evidence of his own eyes. Because he’s emotionally welded to the super, Ramon, for some idiotic leftoid reasons.
I have become adroit at deflecting him from his political rants. I also am careful about never exposing my flank to the guy, not giving him any ammunition for denouncing me. Just out of caution, because we can see which way the wind is blowing. I’m not up to anything, mind you; but people can make your life miserable if they decide that you’re an Enemy of The People[tm].
Sigh. Looks like I’ll have to be more assiduous at keeping up with the news. Can you imagine if I hadn’t read this and had come across somebody saying Susan Rice had a personality disorder? Why, I would have called them a misogynistic racist. What a faux pas that would have been! What a fool I would have appeared, not knowing that Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia. Fool? Nay, downright treasonous.
“Hillary’s gone. Rice is gone. Long Live Power. What comes after her”
After Power? Nothing at all. Power is the ultimate end. (I wish I could put a smiley here.)
(Walter@29, well said.)
I’m reminded of two moments from Robert Bolt’s “A Man for All Seasons”:
Thomas More is urged by William Roper, his future son-in-law, to arrest Richard Rich (one of More’s eventual betrayers) even though Rich has committed no crime. More resists, and the son-in-law asserts that he himself would pursue Rich outside the law, even as he would pursue the Devil. More retorts: “What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?…And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you– where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country in planted thick with laws from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s, and if you cut them down– and you’re just the man to do it– do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?”
Then, after Rich betrays him and More is sentenced to death, and part of Rich’s reward from Henry VIII includes spoils and dominion in Wales: “Why, Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world. But for Wales, Richard?”
“She resembles a modern Rebecca West”
Oh good grief, did someone actually write this? Beyond pathetic.
Look–and I say this as someone who absolutely loves Black Lamb and Grey Falcon as a piece of writing–West was, first and foremost, a novelist.
Gus (34),
Your chronology is a bit messed up. The Randy Weaver fiasco occurred earlier, under GHWB.
“And so the era of strange bedfellows does seem to be upon us, doesn’t it?” Yes, it does. I see respectable Republicans who claim to be classical liberals insisting with a straight face that Benghazi couldn’t possibly have been Fast and Furious in Arabic, a deliberate arming of the Syrian jihadists, because well…er…um….the CIA would only be there to collect the guns not to distribute them.
http://reginaldquillbigsis.wordpress.com/2012/11/15/not-so-streetwise-professor-benghazi-fast-and-furious-style-gunrunning-to-jihadis-not-plausible/
We have two legged drones going around on Twitter insisting Egyptians who don’t like Morsi must be socialist or Soviet types…after weeks of re-tweeting concerns about Morsi’s power grab. @ReginaldQuill justifies this by insisting that Mubarak was a Russian stooge. Funny I thought it was Washington not Moscow sending billions down the Egyptian rat hole since Camp David.
http://reginaldquillbigsis.wordpress.com/2012/11/19/stanislav-mishin-warns-americans-against-signing-secession-petitions-and-falling-for-hegelian-civil-war-dialect/
In other words, yes Unsk there are fascists among us. Many are posing as respectable rightists or neocons but cannot help but let the mask slip now and then pay obeseiance to the Dark Lord some how. But they’re the people who will, like the town mayor in “Red Dawn”, watch as their fellow Americans get mowed down or disappeared, not by Russian troops but by DHS if it comes to that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gy7FVXERKFE&feature=player_embedded
“In other words, yes Unsk there are fascists among us. Many are posing as respectable rightists or neocons but cannot help but let the mask slip now and then pay obeseiance to the Dark Lord some how.” Sorry to quote myself, but in this context @ReginaldQuill got into it with some guy about the glorious Syria jihadists (er, model democrats) of the Free Syrian Army burning a Shi’a mosque and hoisting the proud head chopping black banner of Musab Abu Zarqawi aka Al-Qaeda above it. And this fascist creep says well, maybe it was a Hezbollah Shi’a mosque so that makes it ok. Without the slightest evidence for this proposition and no proof that these weren’t just regular ole’ Shi’as. And even if it was a Hezzie mosque it would be like celebrating that the SS killed a few NKVD commissars in autumn 1941 before they preceded to rape and liquidate another untermenschen village. Very sick. And why do I harp on this fellow? Because he represents something very wicked this way coming on a much larger scale.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/14/us-syria-crisis-sectarian-idUSBRE8BD0IA20121214
Don’t take Press TV’s word for it — here’s Reuters
“Fighting agitprop. Twitter support for those fighting for freedom. Criticism for oppressors.”
https://twitter.com/tweets4peace/status/279741439880073216
EOT for me.
Susan Rice is just a good soldier, loyal, dedicated and motivated. Damn straight she would take a bullet for the team. Her position over run she calls in FPF danger close and targets her own pos. It sucks to be her, pity.