When News is No News
Here are a few important developments that remain strangely ignored. I say strangely, but most readers understand why some news becomes news and some does not.
1) Iraq. The United States military between 2007 and 2009 crushed al-Qaeda in Iraq. It destroyed cadres of radical Islamists and Baathists. It stabilized the country. It was one of the most stunning military performances in modern history, and helped to destroy the image of a competent and scary al-Qaeda. Yet everything from the recapture of Fallujah to the sheer number of Islamists that were taken out of Anbar Province was largely ignored. It is as if we went to sleep in 2007 with “Iraq is lost” and then woke up in 2010 with “Of course, it is quiet now. Why wouldn’t it be?” — but with little thought of what transpired in between. We know few names, fewer stories of the heroic Americans who turned Iraq around after 2006 — or kept it from imploding from 2003 onward.
2) Chinese Roguery. China’s Communist Party predicates foreign policy on mercantilism — period. Note that Chinese foreign relations favor thugs, especially those with oil or the propensity to do others harm. Most of the world’s bad actors — Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Zimbabwe — are Chinese partners. Yes, almost anywhere there is a crisis, a Chinese diplomat is somewhere in the vicinity. In all the praise of the Chinese miracle and envy of its industry, gleaming airports, and solar panels, few note that to the degree that a nation’s people is unfree and without a say in its governance, that it has natural resources to exploit, and that its government is an enemy of Western-style freedom, so too China will be there in the background. Few care. Maybe it’s all the cash; maybe those old stale Mao suits still win a pass from the liberal media.
3) The Gulf Oil Hysteria. We were told that aquatic life in the Gulf of Mexico would be ruined for generations. Offshore drilling in general was now to become obsolete and synonymous with environmental catastrophe. Drilling was stopped in the gulf. Prophets of doom assured us of the scary Exxon Valdez comparisons. And yet life returned to normal, without much discussion of the absence of permanent damage or why the horror stories proved not so horrific.
4) The Great Obama Flip-Flop. For over a year of hope and change, we were told by Obama that renditions, preventative detentions, and tribunals were anti-constitutional, that Guantanamo was synonymous with a gulag, that Iraq was lost, that Predators were a sort of airborne terror, that KSM and other terrorist killers should be tried in civilian courts — and what happened? Suddenly the world was turned upside down and what was once bad was now tolerable. And not a whimper about why, just the quiet assumption of “that was then, this is now.”
5) The Europe-America Cool-Off. Europe wanted Obama, got Obama, and now its elites are quietly whispering: “Why did you fulfill our childish wishes?” Europe always talks left and anti-American, but silently expects American defense for its own protection, an open economy for its free-trade exports, and our free enterprise private sector to lift the world economy. Now it is being out-Europed by Obama. It is worried that the new U.S. is going to adopt a failed EU socialist model, ignore human rights, cut realpolitik deals with Russia or China, prune its overseas stature, print money, spread debt, substitute UN multiculturalism for the Atlantic alliance, and trumpet a “Pacific president.” There is only room for one Europe, not two — as Europe is learning.
Thanks for shining a light in the darkness of US politics and media. Keep it shining!
Some light; some darkness. The only place people can “get over the racial thing” is a place where there is only one race. Otherwise, the racial thing will be the 800 pound gorilla in every room, no matter how many rugs you throw over it. Sorry, race is a specific constellation of inherited physical traits, and not a socially-determined concept, like sexual dimorphism.
Nonsense – racism is just another form of tribalism based on superficial differences. The collectivist imperative is to promote tribalism at the expense of the individual and of real differences between people and ideologies. Socialism and capitalism represent real differences – black and white essentially do not. There are cultural differences in people that are real, but not ingrained like the color of one’s skin. These superficial differences will mean less and less in the future – good thing too.
“Sorry, race is a specific constellation of inherited physical traits, and not a socially-determined concept, like sexual dimorphism.”
Wow. So ‘race’ is biologically determined, but gender is not?
It becomes a tiring refrain, but we are effectively living in a drama created by people who have somehow acquired power over our lives. It’s just a play, scripted out by them over decades with such insistance that hundreds of millions of people accept it as the plain truth.
No matter what happens, they just fold the new information into the same old narrative. The most inconvenient facts are simply ignored. Other information is twisted to fit the script. Out of context facts or just plain falsehoods are invented to make the storyline come out the way the authors insist it must, an outcome that never changes. “Economic freedom and personal freedom is too dangerous in the modern world. Only absolute control by enlightened elites can save the planet. Of anything that has ever happened in history, the United States is by far the worst.”
Every word of it is a lie. They can’t be convinced. As Rush says, there can be no compromise. They have to be crushed, stripped, hosed down, disinfected, quarantined, locked in a dark place. Only that will keep them down for a year or two.
we are effectively living in a drama created by people who have somehow acquired power over our lives.
The truly sadistic and perverted aspect of this situation isn’t so much that these monsters crave the power to slaughter and enslave – it’s that they expect us to applaud them for it.
Our mistake is that we continue to employ the rules of logic and reason when attempting to deal with those who possess neither.
What should we do? Logic and reason don’t work on those currently in power, but logic and reason also don’t work on the vast majority of the voting population. Try to explain to a group of unemployed people that it is economically and ethically bad that their Congressman snagged a pork project for the district. You’ll be treated to catcalls while the Congressman, despite supporting an even-enlarging, debt-ridden, freedom-quashing government, will win reelection.
Dr. T, “What should we do? Logic and reason don’t work on those currently in power…”
Maybe it’s time to consider the viable alternative Einstein called “spooky attraction at a distance” in common language, entanglement. Quantuum physics and string theory may give us a conduit to the source of intelligence and spiritual logic we are lacking.
In short, in response to your question, I have a renewed vigor in my communion (read intimate communication) with my creator, my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through the unseen power of my comforter the Holy Spirit and the living God of the universe. May I suggest a dusting off of the Holy Bible for a fresh source of heavenly wisdom and peace in these times of utter foolishness.
A dusting off and reading the Bible would indeed be an antidote and it has been for me but as for a whole bunch of America, I’m not holding my breath. Things haven’t gotten bad enough yet.
Is that shorthand for “Peace through submission”?
It is peace to the soul. God does not allow us to malinger in earthly apathy . . . He has instilled into each of US part of Himself . . . Hope . . . When all else is insanity look to Him . . . for He is the Hope . . . and the WAY.
So, you believe that the answer to our current political and societal problems is for people to increase how much magical thinking they do. Yup, that’ll solve everything!
It’s people like you who have helped create the screwed-up society we have today. Magical thinking by millions of voters is why Obama was elected. (Hope and Change led by the Messiah.) Magical thinking by millions of citizens who believe that the great god of government will solve every problem and put a chicken in every pot is why our federal government has become so powerful.
No. Our error lies in taking evil for good, and good for evil.
When a candidate advocates abortion/murder and/or homosexual perversion, we know he is evil. If we foolishly elect him, what can we expect from him but evil- because he is evil. Good guys do not murder and pervert. Honest. If we choose to be so ignorant of truth that we cannot distinguish good from evil, we deserve what we get,eg, Oscumbag.
I know this to be a fact. Apparently, writing somewhere (maybe in her book, I don’t remember), Sarah Palin talked about the Michelle Obama quote about, “for the first time in my adult life I’m proud of my country.”
Today I saw a Huffington Post article about how that quote was evilly twisted out of context by Palin. In the same article, they quoted the same quote and the same context! The quote we already all know. It’s sitting there right in front of anybody to read (and always has been), but apparently there is some sort of reading where that is not a bad thing to say to say at all, and to suggest there is anything the slightest bit wrong with saying such a thing is, in itself, evil!
To leftists, reality simply doesn’t matter. They will say or do anything and lie to your face, even when the facts are sitting bald and naked right in front of everybody. No honor, no integrity, no truth – truly, no sanity.
I read that Huffington Post article too, Alana. What I found incredulous was the massive response to the article. By now, I bet there are more than 10,000 responses of hatred aimed at Sarah Palin. It’s odd how all the topics VDH brought up are ignored or distorted, but anything involving a Palin is blown way out of proportion and distorted beyond all belief.
In the peaceful religion of Islam, isn’t there a rule that it’s okay to lie if it’s in furtherance of Islam? A similar rule holds for Marxists/Socialists–as long as it’s in furtherance of their religion.
Taqiyya.
yes polly there is, and brigette gabriel goes into that in her book “they must be stopped”
You know, VDH, to my eye it no longer resembles polarization. It is a tectonic plate shift, a fissure, a continental drift, a chasm, a divide so wide it cannot be explained by less than galactic distances.
Leftists are so far gone, they live in a parallel universe. They live in an alternate reality. It is head shakingly, shoulder shruggingly, bizarre. The left is now suggesting that Obama has “not done enough”, has been too “timid”, has not “seized the moment”…and the moment has passed.
Pondering this for a minute is mind-boggling. Soros and Krugman and Carville and the assorted nuts at MSNBC and Ted Rall and the NYTimes (aka, the Daily Duranty) have come to conclusion that Obama let down the revolution. That he was too Gorbachovy and not Guevarian enough.
It was not enough to seize the auto industry, seize the banking industry, put the EPA in charge of breath emissions, try to put a communist truther in as a “czar” over environmental jobs, try to force a fake “global warming” treaty into being, devaluing the dollar with a $600 billion dollar Fed “Fund, Fund, Fund, Now That Daddy Took The T-Bills Away”, blocked the prosecution of race neutral polling violations, turned an American state over to the UN for human rights violations, promoted a victory mosque on the ashes of our citizens at Ground Zero, left Bibi Netanyahu to dine on a cold baloney sandwich alone and then told him he couldn’t build housing in his own capital, tried a mass murdering terrorist in civil court…who got “convicted” on about the same level as Charlie Rangel and the ONLY CRITICISM he receives from the lapdog media, is that he didn’t crush out the last burning embers of our freedoms while he had the supermajority in his pocket, as well as the lapdog media to provide cover.
Ted Rall wants to start the revolution without him. Soros has thrown up his hands in disgust. Krugman would devalue the dollar down and turn them into rubles, Thomas Friedman wants to surrender to China and Frank Rich is threatening to not visit us again from whatever planet he currently resides on.
We can’t talk to the other side across a canyon this wide, they are shouting, but can’t hear us…only their own echoes.
Robert Gibbs called them the “professional left”. I would agree they need professional help, but I’m not sure that’s what he meant. He also said they wouldn’t be happy unless we had Canadian style health care and we shut down the Pentagon. He undershot his target. The argument has been waging inside the walls of the communitarians for decades. “Do we declare our intentions and start the revolution or do we mask them and make incremental changes, under the guise of populist phrases?”
Obama has always had one foot in each camp, but reverted to a “don’t scare them, soothe them and calm them” methodology. He feels he did more than enough to start the revolution, while keeping it all calm. The “shellacking” has irritated the revolutionary contingent to no end. They think they missed their chance.
He is replying, “Be patient, we’re not done yet”.
This is a conversation that is taking place without us, but about us. Keep us calm, or throw down the gauntlet.
And the lapdog media needs to know which stick to go fetch.
Let’s not leave out John Podesta, in his recent reincarnation as head of the far left Center for American Progress who encouraged 0bama to exercise the full power of his office, to whit:
How does one “move the country forward”? In the CFAP’s report, Podesta explains that Obama can use executive orders, rulemaking, and even the armed forces “to accomplish important change” and that such means “should not be underestimated.”
No, those of us with any sense of history and human nature aren’t underestimating the intentions of Podesta and your ilk at all. They have the stench of the abbatoir about them.
Ward, a caution.
Read the CAP source material and do not rely on the reportage.
It’s a deliberate media provocation.
Podesta’s babbling are about installing solar panels on Air Force hangars and allowing homosexual servicemembers to marry each other.
It;s not at all what it is being portrayed as.
Does anybody besides me think this constant reiteration of “moving the country forward” sounds like an old Soviet slogan?
Well said!!
Their definition of “forward” is “to the Left”.It is the nature of the secular humanist(atheist) to lurch leftward with each step,
just like a sidewinder. It is incapable of doing otherwise. That cannot be moderated; only tolerated or terminated. Your choice.
with regard to the first point, michael yon’s “moment of truth in iraq” is well worth reading for those who haven’t and he has a new release “inside the inferno 2005-2008″ that i haven’t read yet.
The MSM (newspapers and network news) knows it’s going down the tubes…the only way the execs in these dinosaur businesses can eek out their golden parachutes is to go all in for the liberal agenda. I haven’t read a newspaper or watched the network news in years and am far more informed than ever! Kiss ‘em goodbye and say aloha to the radical-in-cheif as well as the senate in 2012. Can’t be soon enough!
I agree with you…Have you noticed that people who haven’t freed themselves of the old media really are clueless about what’s going on? It might just be me, but…..
Thomas Friedman of the New York Times casually croons abaout his admiration for the Chinese autocracy and its ability to make the tough decisions necessary for the good of the great unwashed masses. George Soros also admires the efficiency of the Chinese government, and bemoans the messiness of American democracy. And our hero, Barak Hussein Obama, in his unguarded moments, repeatedly reveals his disdain for ordinary Americans who just don’t seem to appreciate his intellectual brilliance. The common thread is the high regard these three have for themselves and their disdain for the rest of us. Ergo, the ‘living constitution’ subject to convenient reinterpretaton, judicial fiat, redistribution of wealth, equality of outcome rather than opportunity, and the steady infringement of individual liberty.
“Or does the current exemption only apply to Latin-American nationals and not others? But if so, why?”
It is all about race guilt. White America supposedly owes the brown skinned victims of the world. They have been crapped on and deserve payback. How dare we say no to them. Only a racist would do so. This mindset has captured the MSM and the universities. Dissenters are marginalized—if not pushed out the door. These institutions may have to be abandoned. It could be too late to save them.
I read somewhere that only about 10 percent of blacks in America are descendents of slaves. The rest voluntarily came from Africa or the Carribbean (Colin Powell’s family is an example) after slavery ended.
My family had nothing to do with slavery. When slavery was being practiced in America, my ancestors were tending their livestock and crops in Germany. (They better not try to ram reparations down the throats of white Americans.) Similarly, my family had nothing to do with Mexico. Mexico is crummy with natural resources and could be a powerhouse in the world. It is their culture and their own people that hold them back. I don’t believe in moral equivalence or moral relevance. I believe that America is better than Bangladesh and that Americans are more innovative and creative and successful than Bangladeshis. I believe that centuries ago Europeans created a superior society and brought that society to America and improved on it and were staggeringly successful. I guess that there are people who think that we need to be punished for this success. I do NOT feel guilty about that success. I am not a racist. I am a retired ESL teacher who, during my career, worked with kids from all races and ethnicities. These kids were very dear to me. Many of the countries they came from were rife with poverty, devastation, sickness, and war, always caused by far left dictatorial governments that sucked up all the wealth and made slaves of the people. I feel bad about these facts of life in other countries, but I do NOT feel guilty. I and my ancestors did not cause these problems–and I bet you and your ancestors didn’t either.
Immigrant: The first, of what will probably be many, reparations has already happened while you weren’t looking. Any guesses as to the percentage ethnicity of the taxpayers that covered this for you? Even those that weren’t entitled got some goodies:
http://www.afro.com/sections/news/national/story.htm?storyid=3249
Note that elsewhere you can find that more people were eligible than any records indicate were actually farming. But hey it is a good liberal start.
From what I remember, just about every single person that comments at PJM, predicted this disaster with this juvenile. I remember reading some of their comments at other news sites.
Are we better off than we were two, three years ago? Even the pathetically shallow media is feeling the crush of incompetent governance, and displays this with it’s hit and run ‘news’, that contains more conjecture and non sequiturs than the opinion pages. And it appears that this media is afraid to print the truth about this ‘regime’. We have news, daily, of OUR government agencies, and their leaders, running amok and blatantly ignoring the Rule of Law. And they are DARING anyone to do anything about it.
And, pathetically, their supporters are oblivious as to what this all means to their survival and quality of life. They think it’s ‘funny’ that things are in such chaos; They SHALL learn the hard way.
Thank you, again, Dr. Hanson, for another spiritually incisive analysis.
These things you mention simply are not newsworthy. As Ted Koppel explains, news is a profit center and human interest stories are preferred. A liitle girl falls down a well vs trillion dollar deficit. Which leads? A little boy gets kidnapped vs earmarks are up 50%. A fireman kills a turkey vs China tests antiship missles. Terrorists kill 200 in Bagdad vs Gulf shrimp catch back to normal.
Further, as Koppel reports, the networks don’t have foreign bureaux any more. This means that they rely on Al Qaida to provide interpreters in Iraq, Talibasn interpretters in Afganistan, Chinese government interpretters in China. In Europe they get their news from reading London papers; in France they read Figaro. Most likely they use Google Translate to read foreign newspapers.
The result? With a new child kidnapping reported every month from somewhere in the world young American mothers get a feeling our streets are dangerous and only bug government can Save Our Children.
Luckily we have Drudge, Google News, Michael Totten and Michael Yon on the internet to report the news.
I’m still waiting on this deflation the MSM and govt. are talking about, because where I live the price of everything is going up. There is even a story out today about how the prices of houses are going up–although that seems strange as none are selling.
I remember in 1968 my father lamenting the effect of the Negro in this country would not be realized until the next century. I recall him in late 1990s also citing the problem of unchecked illegal immigration and its effect on our society. I purchased my first stock as a college student in 1978 and recall the CEO’s communication about “deficit spending” and what it could mean for USA finances. Finally, I recall a visit to Shenyang PRC in 1995 where my handler cautioned me not to talk about politics.
No paragraphs here, but can’t say they didn’t warns us…
“I remember in 1968 my father lamenting the effect of the Negro in this country would not be realized until the next century.”
Not quite certain what the heck that means, but it sure sounds like pops was a bigot. You might want to think about rephrasing that.
However, if he was talking about the problems of crime and illegitimacy in the black community, then you should know that those rates only began to skyrocket after LBJ and the Dems passed their Great Society program; that monstrosity of social engineering has nearly destroyed the black family in America.
You’ve got your facts wrong. From the start of Social Security, say 1935 or so, blacks have thronged to the dole and kept the nipple in their mouths. FDR, not LBJ was the father of the “Erection to the Resurrection” welfare programs, and blacks and browns chose that dependency far out of proportion to their incidence in the general population. Why they have done so is another question. Imputing Racism! to anyone who criticizes a minority group is racism in itself. Is it racist to note that about 80% of the NFL players are black? No? Then why is it racist to note that about 50% of all serious crimes are committed by blacks? Facts are facts, unless one is a Lefty who just makes them up as he goes along.
Fine summary Dr VDH. Hope your next article lists solutions ?
When do we stop complaining and pick up pitchforks ?
We will see who the cowards are.
Lets start responding to this sad state of affairs by listing actions both near and long term:
How about a march and sit-in on Washington DC of us one-hundred million fools who are picking up the tab for everyone else. If we are marching instead of working and paying taxes the government beast will starve and they won’t have enough jails for us all. Too radical ? Anything less doesn’t seem to be working. So, lets hear your better ideas rather than describing the problem to death…………….. My thanks to all who have made suggestions.
“When do we stop complaining and pick up pitchforks?”
When a leader with balls of steel ( females can have a set too ) makes themselves known and available…ready to lead that march…we will follow.
Megyn Kelly.
Think about it.
Megyn Kelly has my vote.
No, they can’t. In Anatomy 101 we learned that females do not have testicles. If you’re not sure about that, please get it right before you marry.
Linda: We agree, but its the “unwashed masses”. And, in some contexts it may refer, may it not, to the priest who fails to clean his hands before worship services?
True European: When your islamic pals are enslaving and murdering your kind, we will remember not to intervene lest you feel annoyed. Promise!!
Seems to me we poked them hard with a pitchfork November 2, 2010.
Marching in the past resulted in ridicule, and outright hatred. They shout louder than us. We need someone with cojones, spelled out loudly, and honestly, what these commies are up to, and confront them on the airwaves, such as Fox, and Radio. Onces we are stop being intimidated by these liars, and fools, things could change.
10 reasons why the stalinist, libtard media has become a discredited and moribund entity. Nice job professor Hanson!
REVOLUTON NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
China’s got peasants. Actual, full-time agrarians who haven’t got two yuan to rub together. The U.S. appears to take other countries’ peasants and turn them into…entrepreneurs.
VDH:
“I say strangely, but most readers understand why some news becomes news and some does not.”
Why are you concerning yourself with what the MSM isn’t reporting?
Judging by their circulation and ratings, it apperas that fewer and fewer people are actually consuming whatever “news” that they ARE producing, is it?
AFAIC, they can shut the whole thing down and out-source their entire work-force.
Because they leave out the bilge; which will accumulate until it sinks the ship.
What’s the matter with America?
All your questions answered, in a nutshell.
yep ..that about covers it.
regards
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Are there parallels between the present and reconstruction? An horrific president, an equally corrupt and rent-seeking congress and populace; and rampant yellow journalism. Who will stop the train?
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.(!!)
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door” (Statue of Liberty)
———————————-
It’s possible that Europe may one day become “Islamicized”, but the US has already become “Hispanicized” to the point that Spanish no longer is just “the most studied language in the US” – it *is* the second language of the US.
Several millions now use Spanish exclusively at home as a native language and 10s of millions of others use it daily in commerce and industry across the length and breadth of the fruited plain.
Job applicants are now routinely asked if they can converse in Spanish. For some jobs, knowledge of the Romance tongue is now a requirement. Customs and Immigration employees of the Dept. of “Homeland Security”, for example, undergo intensive Spanish training as a basic requirement for continued employment.
That Arabic, the language of Islam, would ever have the currency in Europe that Spanish has in the US is extremely doubtful. In fact, it’s nearly unthinkable for a variety of reasons.
As a frequent visitor to Europe, I’ve kept my eyes and ears open for evidence or signs of a Moslem takeover but I just don’t see it.
True, as someone famous (was it Berlasconi?) recently commented and was subsequently castigated for saying so, landing at Heathrow is like landing in a 3d world country but the same isn’t true in Rome, Amsterdam or Paris – or even Larnaca. The UK’s historical ties to the “Subcontinent” and beyond largely accounts for this, of course. (Both Mugabe and Aung San Suu Kyi, for example, were both educated at Oxford).
What most likely will happen to Moslems in Europe is that they will become a huge underclass of bootblacks and teaboys (Saddam Hussein’s words, not mine) and their culture will be largely marginalized and restricted to certain areas, much as has happened with Chinese, Korean, Thai etc. cultures in places like NYC and SF.
For those of you unfamiliar with the terms “BootBlack” and “TeaBoy”, here are some images for your viewing elucidation.
BOOTBLACKS
——————–
http://www.shorpy.com/node/1693
http://www.turkishclass.com/picture_1765
http://prints.paphotos.com/pictures_1325198/london-scenes-bootblacks-charing-cross-1938.html
TEABOYS
————–
http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/Asia/India/East/West_Bengal/Kolkata/photo818290.htm
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?p=11257298
Sodajerk: You chose your user name well! But you are blind to the truth, and your abyssmal ignorance of the economic status of moslems and chinese in the USA and Europe has led you to exactly the wrong conclusions. Click around, learn who owns what, and wise up.
“There is very little said about the failure of Keynesian economics to restart the economy.”
There is even less said about what Keynesian economics is about: run a surplus in good times, spend it in bad times. Wanna try Keynesian economics? OK. Where’s the surplus?
That is NOT what Keynesian Economics is about.
Keynes wrongly held that governmental intervention and control of the money supply, taxes, interest rates, etc, was essential to economic prosperity. It is not. Quite the contrary. The more the government meddles in economic matters, the worse the situation becomes, the Fabian Socialist Rhodes Scholars amongst us notwithstanding. The facts speak for themselves. Communist disinformation does not.
Why is no one, even in PJM, discussing the Obama administration’s sale of $30 billion of military equipment to Saudi Arabia, with more to come? Why is Obama doing this?
Because the Iranians are pursuing a nuclear program.
The Alleged Hawaiian has his head on straight about this one, (probably because King Abdullah thumped him in the nugget when Obama bowed down before him).
For all their “Great Satan/Little Satan” rhetoric about the US and Israel, the real targets of Iran are the Caspian Sea oilfields to their north or the Eastern slope fields of the Saudis across the Gulf to the south.
The nukes provide cover for any play they might make in either direction.
Iran has significantly upgraded its’ submarine and naval forces and particularly their anti-aircraft systems. All they would need to do is close the Straits of Hormuz for a week or two, picket subs around the exit from the Red Sea/Suez Canal, and land 50,000 of their Revolutionary Guards in on Saudi beaches, and that’s pretty much all she wrote for the Kingdom.
It escaped no-one’s notice that a very large segment of Saudis displayed no particular interest in fighting to defend their homes when Saddam Hussein raped Kuwait.
Showing that kind of weakness is fatal in the Middle East.
Thank goodness the Iranians mostly all hate the mullahs.
There’s simply no possibility that the theocrats would risk shipping even ten thousand RevGuards out-of-country, much less the fifty thousand it would likely take to constitute a viable invading force against Saudi Arabia. (Saudies may be wimps, but they’ve already contracted for the world’s most fearsome (and expensive) mercenary army in the event someone comes at them.)
The mullahs know darned well that those fifty thousand Revolutionary Zombies are all that stand between Mullahville and the inevitable blue-jeaned, rock-loving, secular hedonocracy for which all under-forty Iranians pray. No, that Army will be “internal security only” for quite some time.
America is selling weapons to Saudi Arabia since more than 40 years. Why? Because of the corrupting influence on presidents, vice-presidents, congress, state-department…from companies like Bechtel. (see: George P. Shultz and Casper Weinberger)
PHENOMENAL POINT!!!!
wtf is this all about?
did we destroy all of the saudi’s equipment in gulf 1 & 2?
at least we could try to sauter on some of those rolls royce engines that are coming apart onto the arms we will give to saudi arabia
does FUBAR ring any bells?
So the Traitor-In-Chief will have a rationale for attempting to surrender us to his moslem brothers. If you take my gun away and give it to my enemy, whose side are you on?
Dr. Hanson is talking about the problems created to a large extent by more than two decades of sub-par presidents. If you elect presidents who have only an understanding of politics and not much else you get what we now have. Some people will say that this is an exaggeration. Well, look at the decisions the last four presidents made. While Bush 41 did not screw-up that badly he was essentially a RINO believer in Big Government. His mistakes led to Clinton, and while Clinton was not a serially bad president his failure to get Bin Laden when he had numerous chances to do so puts him in sub-par category. The book has yet to be written about his atrocious dalliances with the Chinese—what amounted to weapon sales that will, and have in some cases, come back to haunt us. Bush 43 spent like a RINO/Democrat and refused to do anything meaningful about our illegal alien problem—look at the border now. His invasion of Iraq was not the best thing for the US. His mistakes led to the biggest presidential misfire in US history. We will be paying for Obama for a long time to come. If you want the country to function as well as it is able to start electing smart, principled individuals with commonsense. It is almost that simple.
I would add that the ability to communicate is as important, if not more. It is why people like Sarah Palin and Chris Christie have assumed leadership roles in the fight against the current leftist ‘coup’. (What do you call it when, for 30 years an ‘impartial’ media pumps out a narrative that favors one party; and when that party gains control, it proceeds to subvert democracy and commandeer the economy!?)
A President who can effectively counter the generally weak (but emotionally charged!) arguments put forward by the leftist propaganda machine will put into words what America already suspects. That there is a mass, coordinated deception underway, deliberately skewing our perceptions in order to limit our freedom. The leftist media has grabbed the tiger by the tail. They are on the razor’s edge because they are starting to realize that more and more of us are waking up to their deception, and we are none too happy.
The foam-flecked fanatics at MSNBC or The Nation are pretty transparent. They are vaguely amusing but not persuasive. They are only useful to the left as purveyors of pre-approved talking points (most likely coordinated with the White House and people like Podesta. – very few leftists are capable of original thought, that is in part why they are drawn to closed, finite systems.) To the rest of us they seem disturbing and irrational, so under normal circumstances they actually hurt their own cause. So we can safely ignore these… indeed encourage them to keep going. The more they rant, the more we see them for who they are.
The supposedly neutral media organizations that are more problematic. The subtle bias is that any expression of American power, or defense of American interest is a capitalist-imperialist money grab, a racist act of oppression, an expression of paternalistic chauvinism, an imposition of bourgeois (fascist) values, blah, blah, blah… (this, coming from the freest, most prosperous society in history that everyone else is trying to emulate or move to. Try that level of political criticism in say, Russia, see how far that gets you! the human capacity for self delusion is infinite.)
The curtain has begun to fall. Americans sense that something is wrong but someone needs to spell it out in detail. An effective president (someone trained to recognize the deceptive methods of leftist argumentation) could do it. It will require an open and sustained engagement with the largest media organizations, calling on them publicly to account for the good doctor’s list, to explain their motives to the American people. He or she will have to use presidential authority to make it a national security issue, not in an accusing or hyperbolic way, but in an earnest and challenging way.
The goal is to trigger a bit of soul searching within the media community. Perhaps some among them are still in touch with their own humanity? Perhaps some are still able to recognize the bottomless hunger for power for what it is: a trap. And that indeed, it is the truth (painful though it sometimes is) that sets you free.
The Valdez comparison is doubly relevnt to the Gulf spill because Prince William Sound was supposed to be ruined for decades, but it bounced back much, much quicker than the enviros predicted [hoped?]
Boy are you people co-opted by the MSM. I tend to err on the side of believing some blog shit and use MSM for filler – I’d like to believe some purported university and other lab tests for the Gulf:
http://www.floridaoilspilllaw.com
and
http://www.blog.alexanderhiggins.com.
Ignore the alien landing stories.
PS: stay away from the Gulf and Gulf food. watch the food chain.
And to add some (unintended) levity here courtesy to Los Angeles Times –
“In Arizona, boycott over immigration is less crippling than feared [am I wrong sensing here some disappointment?]
The state has lost $141 million in lost meeting and convention business — disruptive but not devastating. One company lost a $3-million construction bid in Santa Monica. [...]
So… yhat’s it? The unanimous, tsunami-like tide of national indignation over the 1070 has boiled down to… $141 million? (hehehe – compare this amount with LAUSD yearly budget… hehehe)
Or…. half the price of Toys 2 production?…. Gosh… something doesn’t add up here… Could it be that most Americans see the Arizona action as right and warranted?
“One company lost a $3-million construction bid in Santa Monica.”
Hmmm…so California’s boycott of Arizona cost Californians some construction jobs, eh?
And no doubt ALL construction labor in the Santa Monica area are US citizens and legal aliens, right?
How hilariously typical!
“Climate change has to do with environmental protection, with little, says the economist Ottmar Edenhofer. The next world climate summit in Cancun is really a business summit during which concerns the distribution of resources.”
Poor Google translation of German article. Edenhofer is a German economist who is co-chair of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Working Group III on Mitigation of Climate Change.
Al Gore’s “Climate Change”, the movement, has been discredited by the junk science used to shove it down our throats. It was never really a movement to save the Earth. The above IPCC economist says that basically the plan was, and still is, to use climate mitigation to redistribute global wealth to poor countries (Sign me up for that when Hell freezes over).
The Greens/Socialists are recalculating strategy. We won’t see the MSM report on climate issues until they have their new talking points.
Excellent post Dr. I fear it is only going to get worse. This digital age is going to get increasingly digi-manipulated where sights and sounds won’t be at all what it truly is. Hard core Truth will be our only weapon. Keep up the pressure.
If China gains supremacy in the world, you can be sure they won’t be rule-bound when fighting. They will murder people by the millions, including their own citizens, if necessary. It time American wake up to the realities we face:
1. narco terrorists in Mexico
2. a growing military might in China
3. a president who seems intent on destroying the American economy from within
I fear for our children.
The real point if if you depend on the New York Times & ABCNNBCBS you are not going to get news.
Rush Limbaugh was loudly going on record as to how the Gulf will survive in the middle of the hysteria.
Fox has touched on a lot of those stories.
And of course there is the web. Those things are often intelligently discussed on sites like this one and Free Republic.
While everything may look chipper above the Gulf waters,what you are not aware of is what is going on underneath. The poison they used(Corexit),which is banned in most other countries,has caused thousands if not millions of deaths to creatures you won’t see washing up on shore. But I guess if we don’t see it….. it doesn’t exist….. RIGHT???
With age comes wisdom, FOR SOME.
My old man, back in the fifties when I was about to leave high school, and was quite hot to trot, regularly rolled out quite a
downer insight.
Remember how culturally important, and dominant in the news, movies were, especially the academy awards?
There for some time, I probably saw almost all of them, as they came out.
Old dad, he never went to them. He’d grown up, and when I, in my astonishment, couldn’t believe he couldn’t be as impressed and overwhelmed as I was, always had the undressing answer, which also applied to TV—
IT’S IN THE SCRIPT.
Just so wrt “Obama”, and the entire “movie” of “HIS” life.
“As it is written, so shall it be”.
Know how some movies make fun of anchors on TV news, in that they are just average intelligence good looking news READERS?
Well, hello teleprompter!
There are two very rare old photos of my Dad that my brother and I found after he passed away a few years ago that hang in my office. One is a picture of him and five other corpsmen holding a captured Japanese flag on the Island of Peleliu after that bloody battle on the airstrip. The other is a picture of my Dad, shirtless, on Okinawa reading from a prayer book saying Kaddish over the grave of another Jewish Corpsman who was killed. Perhaps my Dad, all of 20 years old, wanted the family of this poor marine to know that prayers were were said at at the graveside.
Those pictures give me strength to battle the evil that has permeated our great nation. I’ll be dammed if this man who calls himself President tries to destroy the very fabric of our great nation and turn inside out the free, open and democratic society in which we live.
A tip of the cap to your father, but he might be asking you, “What did you just say about our President?!!” I guess people blathered on about what a bum Truman was, but you guys seem to feel free to say the most despicable things about Obama….as if that somehow was a badge of patriotism. I hear something else, alas.
To hesitate to express contempt for Obama out of a belief that the holder of the office of the President of the United States of America is automatically owed, as his due, a complete respect simply by dint of having lied skillfully enough to fool people into thinking that they could cast their votes for him in the race for that Presidency without those votes doing terrible harm to this, our country . . .
. . . to hold back from calling him the dishonest thief that he is, is – by itself – a terrible slur against, and a disrespecting of, the Office of the Presidency of the United States.
To afford obama personally the respect that we consider to flow from The Office qua Office displays scant regard for the substance of what we claim to value in that Office.
I submit that patriotism sometimes must consist of defending The Presidency from the current president. I further submit that now is such a time.
Dwight, my father would have had a few choice words for you that probably would not have been allowed by the moderator to post on this board.
Truman was a traitor. So is Obozo. When the CCF came across the Yalu in October 1950, Truman did zip to stop them. A nuke would’ve kept them in Manchuria. Probably just the threat would have done it, after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, five years earlier.
Millions of CCF came across; they later admitted losing over a million men in Korea, outnumbering our guys maybe thirty to one.
Harry T., the guy who promoted HD White, knowing him to be a communist spy,” because I wanted to keep a personal eye on him”,
fired Mac Arthur and pulled back to the present DMZ, losing the war we had already won. That was treason, and nobody would see it.
The scumbag in the White House wants to reduce our nukes and arm our islamic enemies. ‘Nuff said!
Thank you, Quesnay, for that glimpse into your no-man’s land. I’m an immigrant-American (legal variety and when, hyphenated, an AMERICAN-American) who, while aged only three or four, learned how to be an American from the scores of thousands of US Marines who were camped around my home district before they were shipped off to those islands and to those awful battles. You make me proud to be your fellow American.
Thank you for the kind word Brian. My father rarely talked about his experience as a corpsman attached to the First Marine Division. He only felt a tremendous sorrow for the men, like VDH’s Uncle who’s life was cut short on Peleliu. My Dad had a good life and in his mind it was only through the grace God that he came out of the war alive.
I reside in a beach community in the Florida Panhandle. The only evidence here of the BP spill was government, but BP paid, beach-strollers and beach buggy riders looking for oil that they did not find and indeed could not find. This was just one more waste of the funds that the President and his henchmen extorted from BP behind closed doors.
Wait just a darn minute.
The crux is that THEY – these “Democrats” / Liberals / RINOS HAVE the power. THE POPULATION,gulled and bribed through these past 40 years with lies and deliberate weakening of the educational system by propaganda “chose” them to push Americans around, e.g. the recent votes in California, Illinois and Massachusetts.
Efforts, VIGOROUS AND JOINED, must be spent in TAKING BACK / RETURNING this purloined power to / by the LAWFUL OWNERS of the Republic of the USA, her citizens.
CITIZENS, i.e. those who actually pay for the freedoms again and again in money and blood. NOT those putative,who have provided no service to the community / nation but with their hands always out for their “rights” to “have their mortgage paid, have their gasoline paid” by other peoples’ money, e.g. WJ Clinton, his spouse with their hangers on and dependents in the “Democratic” Party, and of course Obama and the present administration in Washington.
Powers / Rights purloined by the gangsters in government. NONE of which “rights” are a part of the Constitution of the USA the fundamental Law in this Country of Law.
TAKING BACK the power of the citizens is a full time job and requires courage and commitment in a variety of styles. The gangsters, “elected ” will undoubtedly put up a vicious battle. As we already see hints in their attacks on those citizens who ally themselves with the Tea Party.
Their contempt for those poor saps who elect them again and again is boundless, and now unmistakeable. WHAT HAPPENED TO THE COMMON SENSE and dignity OF THE COMMON AMERICAN. ESPECIALLY IN THE “DEMOCRATIC” pARTY ?
All fine and good to “show respect” to the Capo, and his minions/ made, or is that MAD, men in a Hollywood film. In real life politics and the choices made for the management of the USA, it becomes a different matter.
Now evident in the blatant nose-thunbing to Americans in this Congress, Court and Justice Department. In their attacks on American Citizens who attempt to protect themselves against foreign invasion ie Arizona. AND in their application to a foreign body, the UN in no way except through politicians, accountable to the American population, for adjudication in an entirely internal administrative matter in the situation with Arizona. An AMERICAN STATE. Protected by the US Constitution.
HOW QUIET the elected representatives, both major parties, are in this matter.
…. The world we read of increasingly does not resemble the world we see about us ….
Put one down to Goebbels, then.
And to his slavishly lock-stepping propagandist/pamphleteer “press.”
Dr. VDH — I’ve just wrote on Dan Miller’s piece the following: The MSM is a shill for Obama. What they say should not be taken with a grain of salt, it should be dismissed.
In this case, it is what they are not saying that is the problem. That is why the Internet and individuals like yourself are such an antidote to the MSM. The MSM has its meta-narrative and don’t confuse it with the truth.
I do, though, want to to disagree with your point about illegal immigrants in California. I don’t think it is the presence of illegal immigrants, per se, that is the problem. It is the entire governmental structure of the state that is the problem. I say that because Texas has about the same percentage of illegals that California, but Texas stands out as a model state compared to California.
Fox News, how did we get this far in this post without one moron chiming in about Fox News? Hanson lays out what Normal People already know, almost all of the rest of the media is similar,[think Katie Couric, don't gag]and liberal apes fixate on Fox.
I guess like Joe Stalin, for them there is only one story and they must be fed their pablum or baby will cry.
Well done Mr Hanson. The Times & the rest of the scummy media know full well they can lie and twist openly, their faithful followers must have their addictions fed.
Excellent article. I would like to ad one more newsworthy item that has gotten no coverage: the implosion of Barack Obama.
Never in the 40+ years I have been following politics has a candidate been subject to such wild, over the top hero-worship as Barack Obama, and for less reason. “Mainstream” media elites compared Obama to God, Jesus Christ, Lincoln, FDR, Biblical Queens and more when he had scarcely served a day in office. Elitists even said Obama would be a good president because he had a nice crease in his pant leg. By election day the MSM had abandoned all pretense of impartiality and in effect was actively campaigning for Obama.
Now with Obama’s presidency in disarray, having led Democrats to disaster at the polls it is obvious that the so-called “mainstream” media has completely blown its credibility as a reliable source of information by placing its faith in a fraud and a charlatan who had no more executive experience than a hot dog stand vendor. This should be a major news story, but then again why should we expect the so-called “mainstream” media to report the fact that they screwed up.
“The world we read of increasingly does not resemble the world we see about us.”
How true, because much of what is read is written and edited by individuals who’ve invested themselves in their own delusional world, constantly preening before the camera, wallowing in their jealously guarded celebrity and exorbitantly lucrative contracts, bleating into their microphones about the evils of conservatism, George Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Karl Rove, Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, etc., etc., ad nauseam while touting the brilliance and God like aura surrounding their anointed Messiah, “the one we’ve been waiting for,” the one they’ve been waiting for.
They’ll never give up; witness Obama lamenting what he perceives not as the fallacy of his message but his “failure to communicate,” more a concern regarding the intelligence of his “inferiors” than a concern that anything he’s said or done could possibly be grossly inadequate or reflect downright incompetence. Incompetence is just not in the Progressive lexicon if not associated with something or someone “Conservative” or “Republican.”
Should we now expect these delusional sycophants to have an epiphany that perhaps their entire career is built on the grand fiction that was created for and by them? Let’s not hold our breath. Let’s instead learn to ignore what they so desperately want us to hear and acknowledge as “brilliant, intellectual reasoning” in order to validate that to which they’ve dedicated their lives, that which they hold so dear to their intellectual hearts, that which has so eloquently and convincingly been portrayed in numerous texts and tomes, that which has never succeeded in the real world anywhere it’s been tried.
It should be obvious that their increasingly vitriolic condemnations against all who dare to challenge their so devoutly held convictions and beliefs are evidence of the crumbling edifice they’ve so carefully and deliberately created in order to bring about the Utopia that only exists in their imagination. Heaven help us if they ever succeed.
This article is just envy from the thrid world US at the success of the EU. I speak for most Europeans that we are tired of you causing wars all over the place and us having to back you up. WE keep getting scare stories about Iranian nukes, but as a European I would welcome a nuclear Iran to shield us from your adventurism.
How disappointing.
Most PJM posters are better at parody than this.
Upgrade your game.
You actually have the gall – as a European – to sit there and smugly intone that we are engaged in adventurism after how many hundreds of years we had to mop up YOUR adventurism?? The adventurism that time and again spilled into our continent from YOUR wars abroad? Ingrate, I say! How hypocritical to come to this unenlightened conclusion from the safety of a snug continent that has been shielded from all the nasties of the world from OUR protective umbrella!
Journalism as it once was “Who? What? When? Where? and How?” no longer exists. Instead we have newspapers who are unabashedly biased. Is it because the owners and editors think they are superior to those of us unwashed who think differently? I believe that to be the case. Perhaps 90% of the newspapers in the United States write stories and headlines which cannot possibly be considered objective. Justice is always on the side of the left; error caused by the right. The editors have superior knowledge; we must not disturb them with facts. Disaster awaits if it continues.
The racial thing still exists in the United States today because of, and only because of, the government. If justice and government policies were completely colorblind, there would not be any racial thing. COunting numbers and creating quotas ensures that the racial thing will always exist, so the counters and quota makers can keep their kobs. Jerry Pournelle calls it “The iron law of bureacracy.”
Now id only the washed masses of so called minorites, illiterate lefties, and other assorted morons could learn to read and reason.
But for them,this other moron would never have been elected
true european,you are a true moron