Not This Pig
And On It Goes
I support the President on Afghanistan and am relieved he did not pull out of Iraq as once promised (all combat brigades out by March 1, 2008—he said during his initial campaigning).
That said, almost a year ago, I wrote that the Democratic congressional chest-thumping for Afghanistan, as the good war, would cease as soon as Bush left office and that Afghanistan, not Iraq, was always going to be the harder, messier war in the long run.
Just as the John Kerrys of the world lined up on October 10, 2002, to authorize the Iraq war to bolster their security fides in what they then thought would be another walk-through, only to bail with “Bush made me vote that way”, so too they sought cover in anti-war protest over Iraq by praising Afghanistan as the good war, thinking it was won, Iraq was lost, and Bush was in power.
Now Bush is history; Iraq is quieter; Afghanistan is heating up. So? An Obama invasion into Pakistan in ‘hot pursuit’? I don’t think any of them ever realized that they would own Afghanistan and their own bellicose rhetoric would come back to haunt them. Have there been any New York Times exposes about our post-Jan. 20, 2009 Predator assassinations in Pakistan, in which we obliterate houses, families and all, without Miranda rights or habeas corpus (what candidate Obama himself once deplored)? (And if the State Department was supposed to oversee private guards responsible for embassy security in Kabul, and the State Department in turn was responsible to the White House, does the administration have culpability in the fashion that the rogue sex-perverts guards at Abu Ghraib, supposedly reflected the Bush-era military? If we blow up 90 in Afghanistan is it a war crime, or an honest mistake? When you turn the media into Pravda it becomes impossible to keep the party line straight sometimes.)
But other than continuing past policy on the two wars, almost everything Obama had done is consistent with his past associates (Pfleger, Ayers, Wright, Khalidi, etc.), his past vocation (grievance organizing), and his past methodology (most partisan in the Senate, surrealistic Senate campaign in which foes mysteriously dropped out, the Axelrod/Emanuel Chicago way, etc.).
Health Care Grab
We all know what that a good health care system can be improved by increased competition, tort reform, tax credits for catastrophic insurance plans, deregulation, etc.
But Obamacare is not really about medicine. It is rather aimed at absorbing more of the private sector—once more, to create a vast new constituency of government workers and beneficiaries, to ensure an equality of result in treatment and access, and to replace private health insurers with public bureaucrats. (I got a taste of the future of the government octopus when I went yesterday to a California DMV office, and noticed that all the state employees at the windows had on purple union T-shirts with “organize” and “solidarity” emblazoned across them.)
In other words, in the Obama mind, would you want an autonomous family practitioner, entrepreneurial, keen to adopt to patient needs and tastes, juggling 10 employees and a 2-million-dollar family practice budget, grossing $400,000 a year in profits, highly opinionated and self-reliant, using his profits once in a while to ski or buy a BMW—or have him transmogrified into a GS-something, at $100,000 a year, with government benefits, unionized, docile, and waiting to go home when his shift at the dreary government clinic ends, wearing his doctor union T-shirt to work and eager to vote in politicians who ensure him lifetime tenure, generous retirement packages, and guaranteed pay raises?
The war against those who want to get rich
Then we have the “spread the wealth”, “redistributive” class warfare rhetoric, demonizing everything from Vegas to those earners who might make over $150,000 (I love the way the President keeps saying that people “like me” should pay more. Actually, few have had access to Tony Rezko’s spread-the-wealth tips, or have wives that get $100,000-plus raises when their husbands become Senators, or have had a lifetime government tenure of some sort). In just nine months, the President has created a near class war—with one provision: the technocracy like Dodd, Geithner, Murtha, Rangel, etc. are exempt from the high taxes and government monitoring that they feel is critical to inflict on others.
Debt
Gorge the Beast is the new philosophy. At a $2 trillion-a-year-deficit clip, and new borrowing for cash for clunkers, health care, cap-and-trade, etc., we will get taxes—federal, state, payroll, and surcharge—that will soon take 65% of the income of the “rich.” The IRS will grow and become more intrusive. The point?
Like it or not, by April 16 of each year we will all make about the same: those who make “too much” will return their stolen goods; those who were fleeced and “make too little” will receive it back through recycled entitlements, with the proper amount skimmed off at the top by the technocracy, immune from the very statutes they craft.
Devastating!
Towards the end, only one quibble:
“….roughly equal in ability…”
We will never be roughly equal in ability. No matter how much she tries, my 80-year old mother will never come close to matching Kobe Bryant in her basketball skills.
But in ObamaLand we be roughly equal in outcome, of course. No quibbling allowed on that point. To paraphrase a line delivered by Inspector Renault in Casablanca: “…I’m afraid Major Strasser will insist!…”
“The Americans liberated Auschwitz. There are 57 states.”
Cheap shot. I can enjoy a couple though.
Just because a shot is not perfect, does not mean it it cannot be good.
If the NYT or CBS wanted to do real reporting they could run a story on the medical malpractice premiums for doctors in Nebraska vs. Iowa.
The doctors in both states are of equal skill (the best ones are Creighton grads), but because Nebraska has a cap on the damages the premiums are *substantially* less in the Cornhusker state.
And there are more lawsuits filed in Iowa than in Nebraska; it’s part of the culture.
If medicine is nationalized and all doctors and hospitals are insured by the federal government, the “insurer” has a lesser incentive not to become a slot machine.
I’d like to see a real economic study on how much “waste, fraud and abuse” if each state had a medmal cap like Nebraska’s.
And Sen. Ben Nelson knows all about this as he was the Nebr. Dept. of Insurance director when the law was first passed.
Barack Obama: man of words; not deeds.
A perfect description of the mess our country is in. Truman was right on when he purged Reds from the Democrat Party; too damned bad that didn’t happen again and again, especially after 1972. If it had, there might still be Blue Dogs for real. Maybe people like Obama, Jarrett, V. Jones, and others would have been left on the outside.
Still, there’s more harm to be done to this country and I fear that Obama will implement his stated goal for a civil national defense force; maybe that’s what his expansion of AmeriCorp was all about. It seems that there’s a push to make the Tea Party Protesters to be something they’re not, perhaps as an excuse for Obama to exercise blatant control over civil affairs.
Maybe it could happen here!
He’s insulted doctors and surgeons ($30,000 amputations?). He’s insulted police officers (“acting stupidly”). He’s insulted Detroit auto engineers (he thinks Japanese cars get 45 mpg). He’s insulted American energy/coal producers. And perhaps most offensively, he’s dissed Vegas.
Who is left to vote for him or his party? Who is left to write him a check? And are there enough of them working at the DMV to get him reelected?
Essential vdh
BHO has convinced me that Joe Biden
was chosen as his running mate because he (Biden) was so stupid. It was a calculated and needed outcome. A stupid VP running mate at the top of the list.
Looking behind the scene one can see where the BHO’s would have thought to themselves that with such a radical pro communist/socialist agenda with the likes of Van Jones and other anti American AA and PC air headed idiots for Czars they would need cover from a Vice President who would have been so dumb he would not have recognized what was happening under his nose.
Biden fits this description to a T. Biden is so dumb he out dumbs the idiots in BHO’s subversive shadow government
The BHO cover up within the White house subversive Czar group would be easy with the dunce in place and they would not have to worry about Biden putting 2 and 2 together other than to say it was 5.
That’s why he can go out and make a speech as was recently completed and speak in nonsense syllables and with the MSM in the bag no one will comment. The only comment that can be made about a Biden speech is: Huh?!
VDH:
Unfortunately, the fallout from what you outline above is that the war in Afghanistan will become even more politicized. Decisions on what to do there will not be made based on military necessity. Obama is in no position to take a strong stance for or against this war. With the demise of his domestic agenda, he cannot afford another political setback in foreign policy. He is a politically compromised commander-in-chief. This does not bode well for our troops fighting in Afghanistan.
Superb just supurb.
The quote of Valerie Jarrett says it all: the orchestrated subversion of our way of life is being composed by a cabal “recruited into the White House.”
Their ear for harmony in America is as refined as Chavez’s nose smelling sulfur from the Devil when Bush spoke at the UN General Assembly.
The statist media will set the stage, again, and with the usual grandiosity, for our historic first Islamic apostate president to plead ignorance of the Reverend Wright-like diatribes of the Green Jobs Czar.
While pleased with himself for the artistry of yet another one of his cunning feints, his deceit will soon enough turn against him like the reflection in Narcissus’s pool.
Is that the correct year in the first paragraph, sir?
–Chris
I’ve been noodling some Greek root words trying to coin a new word for our present government. I need a word that conveys contemporary ideas like group rights, victimization, and racial preference. In Greek the word will roughly translate as “government by the low born” or “government of the afflicted.” I was gently chided by my colleagues at work who suggested “democracy.” Yeah, well, too obvious. Maybe someone with a knowledge of Greek can help me out?
Today I happened to watch David Horowitz on Glen Beck. Even Horowitz was fooled into thinking that Obama would govern from the center. Millions of Americans felt the same way and cast their votes for Obama. Today, millions of Americans have finally come to the grim realization that their vote for Obama was a grave mistake. Just look at the polls. They speak for themselves.
Many elitist type conservatives also thought that they could do business with the man. They were relieved that the cat with golden tongue, cool good looks and Ivy pedigree was in office rather than the tough, street wise,Father Edward J. Flanagan type in high heels who called herself a governor and hailed from an insignificant little town called Wasilia. The temerity of this “dame” to try and hold court with us conservative elitists. Obama is one us. We will bend him to our way of thinking. He is a Harvard graduate, after all. He will listen to reason. He will govern from the center. He is one of us, one of us. He will unite us all into a new paradigm of a truly global world. The “babe” from Wasilia, well she’s from, Wasilia, need we say more.
We are a country or ordinary citizens, who do extraordinary things on a daily basis. We do not expect our representatives to be perfect, however we expect them to be humble and truly look out for our best interests.We elect representatives not Czars and Kings. We are not perfect, we make lots of mistakes, however we try to fix those mistakes, realizing that we are just human beings. We are a generous people, always rooting for the little guy, always willing to help those people who sincerely need our help. Compassion is in our blood, in our DNA. So when a man such as Obama and his minions try to take away our freedoms, take away our generosity, destroy the fabric of our families, our “raison d’etre” for living as free, proud Americans, humiliate the common folk and destroy the commonness among us, we must then fight back and stop his thirst for power and remind our elected representatives that they work for us, work for us. We must continue this fight until balance is restored again in our great nation. We must be honest with ourselves and seek the truth so we can make America a better place for our kids and grandkids.
Jerry Bowyer wrote an article before Obama took office saying he is a Fabian socialist:
http://www.forbes.com/2008/11/03/obama-fabian-socialist-oped-cx_jb_1103bowyer.html
vero possumus
Answering myself before this thread gets hot, I’ve come up with some possibilities:
Helotocracy: Government by the slave class.
Thanocracy: translating very roughly as “the government from hell.”
Haleotocracy: “government by those with bad breath.”
Forgive me, good professor, I don’t want to hijack your essay, but every now and then conservatives need to have some fun.
VDH really hits the nail on the head with this gem of an article.
It really does seem like America is being taken over by bitter incompetent, couldn’t-make-it-in-private-sector types who embrace egalitarianism–except for themselves. There’s no room for individualism in this Brave New World, son. Best go out and assume the government position.
People, wake up!
6. The Devil and Van Jones, Who is left to vote for him or his party? Who is left to write him a check? And are there enough of them working at the DMV to get him reelected?
———————–
And yet Gallup has him at 55% approval. Compartmentalization, self-hatred, denial, unconsciousness?
The sheen is gone and our woefully unprepared Marxist-Leninist-following graduate student of a president is faced with bitter reality. Like Clinton before (and remarkably largely because of the same issue) his ratings are tanking. How low will they go?
And what is his recourse? Will he recognize, finally, that America is a center-right country after all–and govern accordingly? I somehow doubt that BHO is capable of such a transformation. Can you imagine Obama signing today’s equivalent of welfare reform after getting his clock cleaned in the mid-terms? I just don’t think BHO is as smart as Clinton.
Prof VDH, please keep up the excellent work.
Andy
What a difference a summer recess makes. The National Socialists were cruisin’ and groovin’. Not any more. Our children may have been indocdrinated by the William Ayers education system, but too many of us know all about why old Abe called this country the last great hope of mankind. “Something is happening here, but you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?” Can we, the luckiest people on the planet, turn the totalitarians out, put our economy back on a sound and honest footing, and restore America to greatness? You betcha!
The discovery that Van Jones is now also a “9/11 Truther” is really devastating. I have absolutely no use for these people, none at all, and all of them should be shunned and ridiculed, because that is what they deserve. To say that the American government was complicit in the murder of 3,000 Americans is beyond disgusting, it is borderline treason. People who really believe that junk need to find another country to live in if they think our government was capable of doing such a thing. Van Jones not only should be fired, and fast, but an in-depth investigation should be mounted by the FBI and the Secret Service to see how a nut job like this ever made it into the White House in ANY capacity.
And I submit this warning to the Obama administration. If Van Jones is NOT fired, if they are so arrogant to think that they can do anything because the mainstream media will support (or ignore) whatever they do, they are playing with fire here. If a self-avowed Communist and 9/11 “Truther” like Van Jones doesn’t get fired, then it must mean that the other people in the Obama administration think there is nothing wrong with these “views,” just like they didn’t think there was anything wrong with Bill Ayers’ or Jeramiah Wright’s comments. Oh, they may say they “disagree” with what Van Jones said, but they may not do anything about it, hoping the whole thing will just blow over.
Well they are wrong. If the Obama administration doesn’t fire this nut job, then people like me will be throwing this in the faces of liberal democrats FOREVER. We will make commercials highlighting this nut job as the type of “advisor” Obama surrounds himself with. And we will point out, to whoever will listen, that the White House doesn’t think there is anything wrong with a person that really thinks that the Federal Government was responsible for the deaths of 3,000 Americans. I double dare the Administration to do this. If they do, we will use Van Jones as a club to beat them into the wilderness in 2010 and 2012. Count on it.
This president, this administration is playing a dangerous game. There is a good deal of angerIt out there in fly-over country, and it is growing. Obama’s cadre has up until now, effectively wrested control over our democratic institutions by cleverly manipulating the economic crisis and painting a general picture of doom and despair. The sky is forever falling. But it hasn’t. People have begun to wake up. Chicken-little is indeed coming home to roost. As for the mainistream media, beyond their general negligence and malfeasance looms the question of why they are so willing to abet the radicalization and destruction of this country? It is good that his minions past remarks keep popping up. It’s time the silent majority get to listen to the ravings of the lunatics now running the asylum
I did not support the way we fought these wars during the first five years or so…because I know that war, must be
a total commitment, however, now I admit, American will is holding up….and yes, we are now starting to make some progress in Iraq and Afghanistan, but we must continue to shift our policies to people and nation building and away from the anti-people and oil greed strategic mission if we will are to realize any hope of success. Build, Build and Build should be our way forward, build their army/police forces, then rebuild thier infrastructure. I retired ten years ago and most military folks at my age remember the mistakes made in past conflicts and instead of repeating those mistakes, lets hope we continue to change and make these “less than popular wars” a success. My brother just returned from his second tour (iraq) and he says they are taking the village then retaking the village weeks later. Those kinds of stories are disturbing to many veterans. But he did say there is progress….but a long, long way to go.
We really need to do a housecleaning in our educational system. We need to replace the nutjobs who produce the Van Jones with the educators who taught the VDHs of the world. It was once so and we should make take the system back to what it was.
Van Jones should be put in a zoo, along with Bill Ayers, Rev. Wright, Father Pflegler, and the rest of those nutjobs.
#7 Jack Marcotte
As I have said before, Obama picked Biden for VP as life insurance. Every time Joe blows a line (or blows his mind), he’s sending the message The One wants us to hear;
“I don’t care how much you dislike me, you peons’ had better pray I stay healthy. How long do you think you’d last with this yutz in the center seat?”
That said, I don’t really believe Obama thinks this country will outlast him. If he can’t remake it into the “Utopia” he envisions, wrecking it will suit him almost as well, in the belief that a “perfect world” can be built on the ruins. (In the past, I have called this the Nomad Syndrome, and it still fits.)
Oh, and P.S. to #15. ~Paules;
The term you are looking for is “kleptocratic cacotopia”- a state run by nihilistic thieves.
clear ether
eon
I cannot do anything but worry, when someone with VDH’s knowledge of history is pessimistic of the United State’s future….
Even in California it must be against the Civil Service code for the sniveling servants to make political statements in the workplace.
Does anyone out there care? Is anyone suing the SEIU? The DMV?
Either Obama thinks that racism on the part of people he appoints is acceptable or he just can’t see it. That’s how we get an Attorney General who accuses the country of “cowardice” in racial matters. That’s how we get a Supreme Court justice who thinks her sex and ancestry make her superior to people of the opposite sex and other ancestry. That’s how we get a Tsar of environmental employment (an office no act of Congress ever authorized) who thinks environmental pollution is a racial issue and that the previous administration knowingly permitted the 9/11 massacre. His main qualification for his job of vague duties is his history as a racial racketeer through Color of Change, a pressure group he founded with the explicitly racist aim of more political power for black people. Again and again, the “post-racial” President has appointed people with clearly racist views and again and again he has been surprised that other people think it matters.
And yet Gallup has him at 55% approval. Compartmentalization, self-hatred, denial, unconsciousness?
More likely, this is Gallup polling relatively uninformed REGISTERED voters instead of better informed LIKELY voters (which disapprove of Obama in greater numbers).
I suspect that many of those 55% are really just ‘Obama sticker’ voters, meaning they plastered their autos with Obama stickers, and rather than remove them (and admit a mistake), they keep them up and fool themselves into thinking they still approve of him. Also, they think approval of Obama equals disapproval of Bush, which while still relevant only 7+ months removed from Bush’s presidency, will soon begin to wane.
But definitely come 2010, and perhaps 2012, the Obama sticker people won’t be ditzing and jiggling their way to the voting booth — they’ll sit at home and watch (i.e., symbolically remove their Obama sticker), while the 45% who oppose Obama really, really mean it. They’ll show up, they’ll vote, and if things keep going as they are, the Democrats will get absolutely hammered in 2010.
Then again, never underestimate the rank stupidity of people who get all their intellectual, moral, and social cues from television (and from hanging around other people who get all their intellectual, moral, and social cues from television).
Beware the titanic obtuseness of the Oprah watchers. (They scare the hell out me, actually.)
~paules – Your eurocentrism is showing. Why does the word describing The One’s form of government have to have a Greek root? Why can’t we get a root word from an Arican culture? Why can we not call a club a club and call it O-ba-macracy?
Oops! African for Arican
I know it’s childish, but it’s just gotta come out.
In homage to and in the style of the work of Green Jobs Czar Van Jones, whose work product, dropped behind him like clues to show us the way into the Marxist/Fascist Obama Labyrinth, I offer the following slogan for consideration:
“Obama’s Czars; so far out of the mainstream that they have come from Uranus.”
Yes! this pig too! unless someone gets serious and UNWINDS 75 years of entitlement legislation. And that won’t get done, even with a clean sweep by the Country Club Republicans!! So, yes, ALL us pigs too.
Olympia Snowe, like Minnesotans before the entitlement crowd from other states (poor whites and disabled included) took up their invitation and flooded their cities, is a Cold-Country Socialist — like the Swedes.
But like Swedes, scratch a Mainer and you’ll find a Nazi. She just doesn’t know, it the poor imbecile.
She’s Dagney Taggart before Galt taught her a lesson in the train tunnel. (Olympia Snowe?? Gawd, just think of it!)
_____________________________________________________
VICTOR: please republish your peroration in this piece on :=obama’s gaffes and missteps as a serious opposition piece for media in the coming election, if not impeachment.
Done well, with video clips, it can be a stunner.
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
From “American Thinker”
Obama’s communist “green czar”:
“I had a professor who encouraged me to apply to Harvard and Yale [for law school], which was almost unheard of for students coming from the kind of public schools that I was coming from in the rural South. I was accepted to both places, and decided to go to Yale because Yale didn’t have any grades and was smaller than Harvard. I figured, once I enroll I’m guaranteed to graduate, so I can just go and be a radical hellraiser student, and they can’t do anything about it. Which is pretty much what happened.”
Hat tip: Kristenn Free Republic
We should call it the Health Care (Abu) Graib. If we do, we’re not even 1/50th of the way there in relentless anti-administration screeds.
re: ~Paules,
I think the word you’re looking for is “ochlocracy.”
Poor Citizen:
“anti-people and oil greed strategic mission”
WTF?
Please, haven’t you paid any attention to FMI 3-07.22, Petraeus and Nagl’s counterinsurgency manual, and its implementation in Iraq first by McFarland and then Petraeus himself?
And where are Afghanistan’s oilfields?
Hey, Van Jones is “hot,” right? Case closed.
15
How about “Hubristocracy”? “Government by hubris/the hubristic” One could use the superlative form of the adjective, “Hubristatocracy”, “Government by the most hubristic”.
There are many things that disturb me about Mr. Obama.
Besides his serial perfidy, his overt allegiance to Islam, his clear repulsion of our constitution and his socialism, it’s his “know it all” preachy arrogance is that turns my stomach the most.
This guy is a snotty punk who has never accomplished a single thing in his life on his own. Without his cadre of slippery supporters, greasy groomers, fascist facilitators, and invisible benfactors, Obama would have a hard time being a shoe salesman at the mall. For him to pontificate about economics, war policy, health care etc, is truly revolting.
His idea of what is good for the country is how successful he is in duping us. He’s playing us for fools, and we’re letting him.
I hope his little war with the CIA bears fruit. I hope that it insults these professionals so much that their secret files on him somehow come out. You know, the files that know the reality of his school record, his true birth status, the details of his mysterious Pakistan trip, and more details about his nefarious friendships with terrorists, communists and Islamists.
I never thought I would harbor such feelings toward an American president. But….Obama…..what have we wrought upon our country??
~ The Infidel Alliance
These thoughts of yours, mirroring mine to a “T” is why I insist on reading your blog, sharing your thoughts with my sons, and from time to time copying your words to give to those for whom I wish a moment of clarity might enter their “progressive” world!
Thank you so very much for sharing your thoughts openly and honestly!
The alinsky left have no clue of the backlash free citizens are ready to unleash on them in the very near future. Their time at helm, of gross govt. overreach and expansion is fast drawing to a close. A purging of marxist ideologues and agitators, be they congressmen, phony billionaire philanthropists, educators, entertainers or msm acolytes will follow and not only will it be swift and broad it will be a long enduring catharsis.
The backlash will be so devastating, that many leftists will up and leave out of sheer embarrassment. They will regret the day they fell so easily under the spell of the progressive agenda, for indoctrination committed by pony tailed trotskyites in academia advocating race and class division and glorifying socialist/marxists teachings and ends. And for those who swear by their red manifestos and or against the constitution they will be publicly shamed, presented a tailor fitted orange jump suit and deported to the Git to share a cell and water-board with their brothers.
Revolution II is coming, if I were a die hard leftist I’d be thinking about contingency plans .. a flight to Pyongyang or Caracas for example. Caracas is not such a good idea, Chavez’s days are numbered too.. like most dictators he’ll be swinging from a lamppost in due course.
“we are now in theory to be governed by enlightened despots and philosopher kings who have never run a business, never understood private enterprise, and never been off the government payroll, but always hypercritical of their opposites.”
And now that they think they own everything but that which they leave as a mere pitance for those whom they loot, they are confronted with that ghastly, horrid nemesis they’ve previously always been able to outrun; that relentless dogged achievement of the responsible amongst us, that no amount of entitled, prideful, and unchecked power and grandiose ambition can seem to erase or destroy:
responsibility
You are but temporary stewards of all that you so vainly covet.
Perhaps Rep. Watson might not find Fidel Castro nor his kleptocracy so praiseworthy if she knew the fate of Cuban patriots such as Eusebio Peñalver, or the treatment of other cubans (of african descent) by the regime, not to mention the high offices they are permitted to attain in Raul’s “meritocracy”.
She might want to commission a study of the pension received by Peñalver and others for fighting the revolution against Battista, and the level of health care benefits he received as a reward for his service to the republic, or how he was commended for differing with Castro once Castro abandoned the promise of democratic representation in Cuba.
Then she can better examine just who and what she has championed all this time.
I urge everyone to read a few of VDH’s books. He has a better grasp on the development of Western man/societies that anyone else I can presently think of. His thesis here boils down to one truth: Obama is a collectivist. He will lie and cheat to enact his ideas. If 9 out of 10 Americans reject his ideas, he will ignore the 9. HEALTH CARE REFORM IS NOT ABOUT HEALTH CARE! It is about redistribution, ensuring a lifetime of reliant bureacrats, and a major voting block for all time. Oh, and if you go to a DMV and see “workers” wearing “organize” T-shirts, DO NOT BE AFRAID; tell each one that their idiots!
An absolutely superb analysis, VDH. Thanks.
I believe the Kenyan owes Van Jones, big time, and will not throw him under the bus. My thinking is this. Obama hs refused to release his medical records despite the fact that he is a young man in apparently good shape. There has to be a reason, he has to be hiding something. What could be in his medical records that would hurt him rather than confirm to his supporters that he was sound for, let’s assume, 8 years?
The are a number of reason; drug addiction, AIDS, or stds. The one that I like is impotence. If Obama is impotent than he couldn’t have fathered Michelle’s two daughters. And, that’s it, Van Jones is the father of Michelle’s two girls. Obama owes Jones and will not fire him.
Hey, it’s a better story than they told about the Palins!
How strange that we now learn of Van Jones’s long record of venom, but are told that he did not really mean it, and that the White House was unaware of these statements.
“This is not the Van Jones I knew in the Marxist Society meetings – he kept it cool in those days, you could think he was the environmentalist next door…”
OK, I get it but where does that leave us! Three and a half years with a marxist determined to transform our society. No, something got to give. No man has a right to destroy this country. I don’t believe most of you are aware how close we are to a real show down.I am not talking about violence but massive, massive public disobedience.
As you suggested, this is a war on the ordinary people who want to become wealthier. Income taxes don’t bother the idle rich. I don’t think this is an accident.
I’m not a supporter of higher capital gains or death taxes, but they do have the virtue of purging the money out of the Kennedys and Kerrys of the world. This is why they aren’t a priority, and if they are increased, there’ll be ample loopholes for green investments as long as they’re in Gore’s companies, and so on.
And these dopey trolls keep thinking that these community organizers have something in their bag of goodies for them…
We have suddenly dozens of czars—how better to avoid Senate confirmation? To sidestep existing checks and balances? To substitute administrative fiat for majority- vote ratifications? To enact hope and change without messy Town Hall-like recriminations against elected officials?
‘Czars’ are misnomers. They are not Ceasars, nor are they executives nor chiefs nor General Secretaries.
Rather, they are unaccountable blokes placed to exercise White House power, without a speck of advice nor consent from our Congress.
I hereby vote to name them, properly, Commissars – those who trump the ordinary government hierarchy in order to impose Party mandates by royal fiat.
A perfect description of a growing totalitarian regime, just missing the words “totalitarian regime”.
Thank you for the opportunity to comment.
PS It’s 1917 (lenin), 1922 (mussolini) and 1933 (hitler) all over again.
PPS As they say, a “deja’ moo” (all the same BS again)
PPPS Yesterday while the White House was attacking Israel for the settlements…Chavez was attacking Israel (being in visit to Syria). What a wonderful synchronicity !
(1) President Obama and his allies may think that they are philosopher-kings, but they are not. See the scale of rulers and constitutions in Bk. 9 of Plato’s Republic. In the Ideal State the Wise rule – but they are the gods, since only the gods are wise. The closest to them are the lovers of wisdom – the philosophers (Greek for “lovers of wisdom”). They are lovers of wisdom because they know that they are ignorant. Obama et al. do not know that they are ignorant and are at the bottom of the scale, the tyrants, who want the infinite freedom to do what they want, but none for others. (Democracy is next to last on Plato’s scale because it is the rule of lovers of freedom without love of wisdom. In the Statesman, he has another scale, and democracy – without the love of wisdom – does not do so badly; in the Laws he has yet another account of constitutions which comes closest to describing the constitution of the United States. Note that the views of Thomas Hobbes and of John Locke are those of lovers of wisdom.)
(2) President Obama’s political views are clear from the State Department condemnation of Honduras. Honduras is a democracy which arrested the previous president because he was violating the law. Obama, however, supports dictatorships like that of Hugo Chavez and is withdrawing any financial aid to Honduras; just as he supports the dictatorship in Iran and offers no support to the anti-mullah dissidents; as he supports Hamas in Gaza, while pressuring Israel not to fight against it enemies.
(3) Surely President Obama’s appointing of “czars” is a violation of the U.S. Constitution. Congress should do something about it, e.g., cut off all funds for “czars.)
Paules @ 12: I’ve been noodling some Greek root words trying to coin a new word for our present government…. Yeah, well, too obvious. Maybe someone with a knowledge of Greek can help me out?
This is low-falutin’, from the barroom rather than the classics department, but ‘malakracy’ (η μαλακρασία) might do for ‘government of, by and for the malakes’.
Mayb someone can tell me-Has the communist POS Van Jones ever held a real job in his entire life? And by the way, lets not let Valerie Jarrett off the hook here either. Hey Valerie-maybe you should remember your daddy Vernon and what happened to him in Fort Wayne,Indiana in 1979. Fooling around with someone other than his wife-he got shot if I remember correctly. And also-wasnt Valerie one of the folks on Blagos “bribe list” for the onescums senate seat? Lets add Valerie Jarrett to the list of communist wackos working for the onescum.
Poor Citizen, I supported the wars; however, I now realize without support and leadership in Washington our troops are vulnerable if not compromised.
During Viet Nam, there was a directive, from Washington I assume, that required all troops in the field to refrain from patrolling with a round in the chamber. In other words, to prevent shooting too fast and causing an accidental civilian injury, our troops were to make themselves more vulnerable with a delayed response time to decrease the chance of making a mistake. If you were still alive in the time time it took to chamber a round, you could return fire.
The directive was ignored. It was assumed, the leaders who sent it down, had never gone on night patrol.
This may be an example in microcosm, but I worry that with the President’s preoccupation with implementation of his Progressive Marxist Agenda and installing his Marxist Advisors, the welfare of our troops is secondary or that they might be compromised to promote an international deal with Marxist or Muslim leaders. The lives of our young Patriots are far to valuable to trust in the hands of a Marxist with questionable loyalty at best or even obvious disloyalty towards the United States.
Turfmonster, I agree with you, the radicalism of the 60′s is in charge after plotting for 40 years. The control of the education system was foremost on their agenda. If we are successful in deposing this Marxist in the White House and his plan to destroy America and then rebuild a Marxist Dystopia, we will need to redo the school system and rid ourselves of the Marxist influence that has infiltrated and indoctrinated our young. A process that was a major factor in electing the Marxist in the White House.
Textbooks will need to be rewritten, diversity has been used as a weapon rather than a method of helping minorities. Teachers will need to be replaced, if we started tomorrow, I am sure it would take twenty years to repair the damage.
‘This is not the Van Jones that I knew’ in 3, 2, 1..
I think (37.) Boulis is the most technically correct with “ochlocracy” (mob rule), but I’m still not satisfied. I’m still fishing for something that conveys contemporary leftist ideology.
If 0bama had looked more like his white half we’d have President Hillary Clinton. It’s the plain, simple truth. People voted based on color. Period.
0bama rode the race card all the way to the White House playing on gullible people thought he surely couldn’t be a racist because he was half white and that being part black would help heal the country of racism once and for all. They were wrong. 0bama identifies with his dark skin and African-Arab features and with black racists, Commies and far left radicals.
0bama is laughing all the way to the ‘banks’ and losing any popularity/credibility/leadership doesn’t matter because he’s got the ‘power’ and America can be flung right under the bus too for all that matters.
The Czars 0bie is appointing is just the tip of the Neo-Nutter Commie iceberg.
Our Republic for which it stands in a chit load of trouble.
Edit: playing on gullible people who thought
Your all a bunch of crackers who need to be sent to reeducation camps. Just as soon as ACORN gets them built you will learn new ways of thinking. 12 hours of picking tomatoes(cotton)covered in pesticide in the hot California (Mississippi) sun is too good for you.
Then you will know we have the wrong agricultural system.
The Obama administration is the most bizarre I have seen in 30 years of voting and following politics. It started with the best bait and switch campaign I have ever seen, but now the truth is emerging about who these people are and what they truly believe. I wonder what will happen if the economy improves? Will Americans then tolerate and maybe support Obama’s leftist views, or will we throw him and his administration on the trash heap of history?
we spend too much on these wars when our economy is terrible, and we need to reform health care so that all Americans can see a doctor and a dentist. according to the financial times unemployment is up, and the amount of working people receiving food assistance has risen 50%. a lot of the people that polls say are unhappy with the whitehouse are unhappy because it is not pushing hard enough to the left. Obama’s popularity is still twice that of congress.
The precedents being set are disastrous. And I feel very uncertain of where the government we have now will draw the line. Even if we regain Congress in 2010, which is unlikely, undoing the damage will be extremely difficult, if even possible with leftists fighting it at every step.
We need to be thinking of more ways to resist. Tea Parties are great, town halls are great, but they have the Senate and the House. There is truly the possibility of election fraud, and how much of the stimulus is being saved to look good to voters and/or sway votes in 2010?
In other countries there have been general strikes, and it’s something to consider. We pick a time, and don’t go to work, don’t buy a single thing. We are the producers and taxpayers. I can take my little business underground. People can change their tax deductions to have no withholding. Starve the beast. I’m sure there are lots of ideas out there… It involve sacrifice for lots of us, but after all the sacrifice to create and perpetuate America, I’m ready.
I have always bent over backward to be honest on my tax returns. Of course, I was always proud of America. But by signing me up for a $36,000 debt I don’t want, I really feel the gov. has forfeited the right to take my money. I repudiate the debt. By nationalizing various industries, demonizing private citizens, etc. etc. this has become a government I no longer wish to support. If they pass the health care thing in any way, shape, or form, I will reduce the taxes I pay in any way I can: make and grow stuff at home, do without, do business in cash or barter, whatever else I can think of. At least I have savings to get by, if inflation doesn’t eat it all up.
# 13 quesnay:
“We are a country or ordinary citizens, who do extraordinary things on a daily basis. We do not expect our representatives to be perfect, however we expect them to be humble and truly look out for our best interests.We elect representatives not Czars and Kings. We are not perfect, we make lots of mistakes, however we try to fix those mistakes, realizing that we are just human beings. We are a generous people, always rooting for the little guy, always willing to help those people who sincerely need our help. Compassion is in our blood, in our DNA. So when a man such as Obama and his minions try to take away our freedoms, take away our generosity, destroy the fabric of our families, our “raison d’etre” for living as free, proud Americans, humiliate the common folk and destroy the commonness among us, we must then fight back and stop his thirst for power and remind our elected representatives that they work for us, work for us. We must continue this fight until balance is restored again in our great nation. We must be honest with ourselves and seek the truth so we can make America a better place for our kids and grandkids.”
Simply great.
~Paulus: I think the term you seek might be “oikophobia.” According to British philosopher, Roger Scruton, an oikophobe “repudiates national loyalties and defines his goals and ideals against the nation, promoting transnational institutions over national governments,accepting snd endorsing laws that are imposed on high by the EU or the UN…and defining his political vision in terms of universal values that have been purified of all reference to the particular attachments of a real historical community. The oikophobe is, in his own eyes, a defender of enlightened universalism against local chauvinism”
We Americans are not post-racial, unfortunately. President Obama’s administration has done its part to reinforce that, thank you sir, not. The difference now is, Political Correctness (that is, the timid acceptance of a one-sided, unobjective discourse on the sins of America) has at last met its Waterloo. America, which includes a lot of non-white, non-black citizens, and citizens whose immigrant ancestors post-date the Civil War, are no longer willing to accept a collective guilt for what happened to black people amost a century ago (I include the Jim Crow travesty years). And should we discount the present-day attitudes of people whose ancestors lived through those years? I leave it up to you to decide if that means white or black.
Can we not, finally, embrace an Americanism that includes all people, that upholds the American idea of citizen partisanship rather than political or racial partisanship, that celebrates America as the example of freedom for all the world? We Americans were never asked to be the Beacon of Freedom by the rest of the world, but due to their failures, it fell to us because of our stubborn insistence on private, individual worth (not a new idea with us, but one we expanded upon). We did it because we didn’t see any other way to guarantee our own freedom. You, in the rest of the world, can make your own decisions, but this is Americanism straight up. Like it or not.
~Paulus: The above quote is cited from Roger Scruton’s book “A Political Philosophy,” (Continuum, 2006, pp.24-25)
Once again, Dr. Hanson, you have hit a homerun with this essay.
I know I’m not the only person in our country who feels as though she’s living through some kind of virtual sci-fi video game right now, or perhaps one of those old movies where everyone KNOWS the leaders are corrupt, and yet the leaders just keep on doing and saying whatever they want. The audience screams “Someone needs to say something about that corruption!”
And here we are – like the audience sitting through a melodrama – acutely aware that there is danger ahead, but feeling incapable of averting the danger. Or better yet, eliminating the danger.
Ibama has housed his fortress with Snidely Whiplashes. Where is Dudley Do-Right? Won’t someone please show up and rescue poor Nell?
I generally agree with your article, but I have two comments/modifications I’d like to propose, because I think they better illuminate what I see is going on. I didn’t see this in advance, and frankly it’s difficult to discern now, but I think I’ve finally begun to see what’s going on, and it’s a bit more frightening than actual honest-to-God socialism.
For one thing, Obama and his ilk aren’t aiming for a nationalized health care system that exclusively cares for everyone, the so-called “single-payer” system. Anyone who thinks this, or fears such a system, needn’t worry. Think about it for a second. John Kerry, Jay Rockefeller, Diane Feinstein, Al Gore, and so forth: these people aren’t going to vote for, support, or even try to sneak in a system that will make care for them and their families the equivalent of everyone else’s. All of those mentioned above are millionaires, and all but Feinstein inherited large amounts of money and/or have trust funds that make them very wealthy. The idea that they would support a health care system that resulted in their sitting in a doctor’s waiting room next to “common” people, let alone share a room with someone, is laughable.
What they’re aiming for is a system similar to public education. Health care costs will skyrocket out of sight, and only the very wealthy will be able to afford private health insurance. The President has assured you that you won’t be forced, by him or anyone else, to leave your health care plan, and technically he’s correct: the market will force you onto the government’s “public option”, and once you’re there, you *might* be allowed to get off of it if you win the lottery or invent something that makes you a billionaire, but otherwise, no. You won’t be able to afford it. On the other hand, wealthy elected officials aren’t going to be embarrassed by having to go elsewhere to avoid the government’s shoddy health care system. No Belinda Stronachs here; remember, she saved her own life, but had to retire from politics.
The other point is more of a modification. It needs to be emphasized that all of Obama’s tax increases are aimed at those “trying to become wealthy”. Relatively few of his proposed tax increases are aimed at trust-fund wealthy types like those who run the Democratic party. We raise taxes on *income*, and the trust fund types have their lawyers and accountants find the loopholes in the law, so that their wealth is protected and their income streams not narrowed, and the guy who’s worked hard his whole life and now owns three or four Mexican restaurants, he’s the one to take it in the shorts. Tax the rich has come to mean tax the guy trying to be as rich as some Democratic senator, so that no one becomes as wealthy as he, and he in turn can manage the lives of the little people in a way pleasing to himself.
Pitiful, isn’t it?
My comments at #’s 66 & 68 above were for Paules NOT Paulus, as I incorrectly spelled it. Apologies!
Brilliant essay here! And yes, Obama is the most polarizing figure in history!
# 69 Moogie:
Another great post.
Those of us who escaped communism have an even harder time with what’s happening now. Just the other day a caller to one of the talk shows, an American citizen born on the rough, far-east coast of Russia (I dare any Obamanite or professional victims like the Van Joneses or Henry Louis Gateses of this world to go there and survive on their wits for just one day) was appaled at the idea that his kids, in public schools here, would see slogans from Dear Leader Obama on their walls like those from Lenin he had to read every day in school … all of them lies.
It wasn’t just on the walls. Lenin and his various avatars–Mao, Stalin, Fidel, Ceausescu–where everywhere, watching over you with fatherly love, asking you to give your life for the commie ideal.
They and their lies were in every school textbook, whether reading or math.
3rd grade math problem: “Communist Victory” tractor factory in the city of X puts out 10 tractors per hour. American imerialists put out 7 in the same amount of time. What is the difference in output between the two?”
Just when you think how much more hubris will Obama show, this article by Anee Bayefsky http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=MWNkMWViY2YyZjU5OTY5ZDcyNDQ1MzIwY2NkNWUyOTU= unveils Obama’s plan to chair a security council meeting at the United Nations.
~Paules
Hey old buddy! What’s the greek for P.O.S.?
I am unable to understand the slavish support afforded the Anointed One by the mainstream media. Why is it that the likes of the NYTs, Wash Post, LA Times, and major networks consistenly ignore, obfuscate and apologize for the most radical, devisive, erosive administration in modern American history? Are these peoples dupes? Or knaves? How can they ignore the racist utterances and fascistic strategems being perpetrated by Obama and his cadre? We live in perilous times. Isn’t the very real danger evident to all? How is it that a small, vocal group of haters can hijack this country? If you desire peace, then prepare for war.
First for Van Jones this little graphic ‹^› ‹(•¿•)› ‹^› and for Obama ‹^› ‹(•¿•)› ‹^› as for #75 Greek for piece of $hit or POS is Σκατό
But Obamacare is not really about medicine. It is rather aimed at absorbing more of the private sector—once more, to create a vast new constituency of government workers and beneficiaries, to ensure an equality of result in treatment and access, and to replace private health insurers with public bureaucrats.
Truer words never spoken, written…thought, whatever :)
except maybe these…
Given all this, an unhinged activist like a Van Jones is not the exception, but emblematic of the new frontier.
12. ~Paules:
“Maybe someone with a knowledge of Greek can help me out?”
Misopaulic
idiopólico
paulibruto
cankeropólico
want more?
75. & 77.
Gentlemen, we are guests here. Let us not foul this thread with comments of a scatological nature. I know, lame pun.
66. Jeff,
I’m having some trouble squaring the use of “oikophobe” as a “transnational.” “Oikos” from the Greek indicates household, home, or family, and gives us in English the word economy. I guess Scruton has his reasons. I will continue to noodle.
63. arthur:
“we spend too much on these wars when our economy is terrible, and we need to reform health care so that all Americans can see a doctor and a dentist.”
When my dad was in Vietnam, a democrat provoked and drawn out war, I still was able to see a doctor and dentist without it being “reformed.” What changed butt-plug`?
As to nuclear energy, take a look at Obama’s elevation of Dr. Jaczko to chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Jaczko had been on the commission for a while and was often on the short end of 4-1 votes. Prior to his appointment to the NRC, he had been on Harry Reid’s staff in the Senate.
This doesn’t signal support for nuclear power in my book but rather opposition.
By the end of his Presidency (hopefully only after 4 years),
Obama will be one of the most reviled political figures in
American history. The dishonest way he presented himself
and his leftist policies to the American public will
only magnify the crushing failures coming his and our
way.
There is simply no way Obama can raise tax rates high
enough to pay for all his profligate spending. There is
no way Obama can produce the necessary economic growth
the country needs with all the new regulations and
mandates (cap& trade, socialist health care etc.) his
administration has planned. There is no way Obama can
lead the U.S. to victory over Islamic extremism by
attacking his own CIA, gutting military spending and
straight-jacketing our forces with onerous rules
of engagement that show more deference to civilian
casualties than to our own troops. The consequences of
his actions will be hard to miss even if the libtard
media keeps it’s collective head in the sand.
For Obama to succeed Americans have to be willing
to accept a much lower standard of living, lower quality
health care, less freedom and security than they have
been used to. I just don’t see that happening.
The Obama Administration is going to be a failure of
biblical proportions. This is going to be scary and
somewhat fascinating to watch.
Selling out the Lockerbie victims for oil, calling good Americans “Nazis,” throwing Hondurans under the bus, and God knows what he will say at the UN, but for the first time in my life, I am ashamed of my country.
Spot on per normal. The Orwellian section of the essay accurately depicts the type of post-modernists that are, unfortunately, in charge now.
The 1920′s administrations were not particularly racist, just ineffectual in rolling back the racist depredations of the Wilson administration, the only really racist administration since 1868. The democrats in the 20′s managed to prevent anti-klan legislation.
SUPERBLY STATED!! As in the animal world, you never have just one termite or just one ant or just one mouse in your house. Where there is one, guaranteed there are others.
Same goes for Van Jones. Unfortunately, he is NOT the only one of the Administration’s Czars/Advisors/Appointees with his “CHANGE THE WHOLE SYSTEM” ideas. Au Contraire–he was welcomed with Open Arms to the White House….”come on in, dude, the party’s just started….& Oh, BTW, here’s 30 Billion for your Green Jobs.”
PT Barnum said it: “You can fool some of the people some of the time….all of the people some of the time….BUT NOT ALL OF THE PEOPLE ALL OF THE TIME”….
Great.Hope to see it in the paper.
This is brilliant. It makes me sad and hopeful at the same time. Sad, because my country is in this position where a small bunch of radicals can destroy her – Hopeful because there are smart people who are able to articulate the problems and open up the minds of those who have yet to see.
When Obama won the election I felt that the fundamental change in the voting public was a death sentence for the way of life that only this great country afforded her citizens. I now see a tremendous amount of “buyers remorse” and a sense of “what did we do.” The only hope is that the right change comes and 2010 marks our march back. But the Republican party must learn from the mistakes that made voters hungry for change – change that was floated on a sea of pretty words and crashing lies.
Again, brilliant article -please keep beating the drum.
#77 Cristina: ” “Communist Victory” tractor factory in the city of X puts out 10 tractors per hour. American imperialists put out 7 in the same amount of time. What is the difference in output between the two?””
Have you ever read C.S. Lewis’ “The Abolition of Man?” It is a critique of an English grammar text book, used back in the 1940s, that does exactly what you have illustrated in the above math word problem. The subtle and subliminal use of demoralization (specifically of western thought) was woven throughout the English text book, so that while the children were supposedly learning proper grammar, what they were really learning was that capitalism, democracy, and the rule of law were oppressive. The goal of the authors of the textbook was not to actually teach English grammar – it was to indoctrinate children.
I wish some of those elitists you mentioned would take you up on that dare: try living under the type of tyranny they are attempting, then see how much they like it.
Yes. And, this is just the beginning. Even some of us who were Democrats [no longer] warned against this candidate. So, the dismay isn’t new to us. We’re just watching and waiting for the rest of the cult members to wake up to the new RADICALS running this country. People like Bill Ayers and Van Jones, Jeremiah Wright and Valerie Jarrett advising an inexperienced president who grew up believing that America is evil; that “reparations for slavery doesn’t go far enough.” What more dangerous mix could there be?
Sounds like VDH is getting a little pissed.
Welcome, Mr. Hanson.
I wasn’t sure you would get here, with the rest of us bitter clingers, who are also a little pissed that all of a sudden a tiny lunatic minority of about 5-10% is DESTROYING THE COUNTRY IT TOOK FOUR CENTURIES TO BUILD, and which has done more good in the last 100 years than all the countries in all of history did in the prior 10,000 years.
We have been grossly deceived. The candidate Obama was not a real person. The real person is the President Obama whose false colors are now daily being fully revealed by the President himself. He has surrounded himself with men and women of questionable ability, of questionable patriotism, filled with unproven theories of government regardless of the traditions that made this country so great, and lastly with a myopic view of the electorate as simple minded. And they are calling the shots (e.g Holder and Emanuel)!
The President has abdicated his responsibilities, giving Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid unwarranted authority. With congressional “bullet proof” majorities they have aggregated to themselves both the executive aa well as the legislative prerogative.
In foreign affairs, the President is a disaster!
RE #10/Charles Gordon: [...] The quote of Valerie Jarrett says it all: the orchestrated subversion of our way of life is being composed by a cabal “recruited into the White House.” [...]
Charles, maybe you want to add to your collection of Valerie’s follies her latest: the US embassy at UN had, for a few days, scrapped the US flag from the embassy’s website, tansforming it into a blueish, neutral, one amongst other planetary sheep in the flock – expose & screenshots @: http://www.wnd.com/index.phpfa=PAGE.view&pageId=108924
… mistake? Intended act? Well, for you to rate this.
As far as the cabal you mention, I think Jarret is in the first ripple of this affaire –
Time to get this turd out of the White House by ANY means! (Where’s Harvey Oswald when you need him?) Mentally challenged Biden is grossly less offensive than obama so let’s turm him into oaf-in-chief. Screw the state-run media, I cannot comprehend how they can ignore all this; they’re more corrupt and incompetent than ozero. Somebody HAS to begin impeachment proceedings against this fool before there is violence…the second American revolution is truly near!!!
“I had a professor who encouraged me to apply to Harvard and Yale [for law school]…I was accepted to both places, and decided to go to Yale because Yale didn’t have any grades and was smaller than Harvard. I figured, once I enroll I’m guaranteed to graduate, so I can just go and be a radical hellraiser student, and they can’t do anything about it. Which is pretty much what happened.” (Van Jones)
Admirable work ethic Mr Jones. You must have been on a minority scholarship to take that approach to learning the law. More proof that the Ivies are just finishing schools for malcontents and radicals.
I think the good dr, is pissed.
Apparently, he isn’t a fan of our Zimbabwefication.
RE #15/~Paules: [...] I’ve come up with some [old-fashioned, scientific names]“:
* Helotocracy: Government by the slave class.
* Thanocracy: translating very roughly as “the government from hell.”
* Haleotocracy: “government by those with bad breath.”
Dear collegue ~Paules: first, I’ll take the liberty to add a Greek addition to your list of liberal diseases list: * Kleptocracy (government by thieves) -
Then, I think that should give a chance to Latin (and this so splendidly sonorous), roots of the Wester Civ to show their grasping power in this matter, so I will humbly submit the Latin, scientific names of the following diseases which I found afflicting the liberal population of this realm:
* Magna-Antiamericana-Idiotica-phobia (un-treatable, so far);
* Turpida-Liberalia-Grandissima-Supeficialia-Inconsistentia-Mentalis (Review HuffPo and come with an opinion);
* Socialista Dementia Activa Nefariosa (studies pending);
* Officiala Imbecilia Democratica Vomitia (violent and pervasive);
In case your, or other natural sciences conservative students’ research have identified other maladies that define liberals, please add to my modest list -
Van Jones failed economics 101. In his tyrade about Bush as a crack head he said Bush believed he could lower the price of gasoline by increasing the supply, by drilling here, drilling there, oil shale etc.
Van Jones is a frightening Communist black racist and he is ignorant by his own statements as to supply and demand.
VDH remarks, “Gorge the Beast is the new philosophy.” He then goes on to point out the “how” of the new systems of taxation.
I believe that VDH is far too generous in interpreting President Obama’s motives. I believe that The One has taken another page from the Alinsky book. The building of the debt to unmanageable proportions is essence of the CLOWARD-PIVEN strategy. It is designed to overburden the economic system with an increasing number of mandates until it breaks. That will allow for a revolutionary coup to develop.
Cloward-Piven strategy is the only real goal that President Obama is working toward assiduously. Look at the outcome of each of his decisions. As long as it cost money, he’s for it. Nothing else matters – not content, not outcome, not intent. Economic oblivion for the sake of the Revolution. That sums it up. Nothing else makes sense.
Frightened in Florida–>a perfect name for a perfectly cowardly southern cracker. You couldn’t beat Jones in a game of tic tac toe one time in thirty you ignoramus.
To top it all off, and to demonstrate the heights of the hypocrisy of his anti-white rhetoric, Van Jones has a white wife. The family pix is on the web. Go find it.
The war against those who want to get rich. That’s nothing; there’s even a war against idiots. I’d be mad if I were you people, too.
Jerry…wow, I think you may gave nailed it. But why would Congress go along with Obama’s Cloward-Piven strategy? And why would the SCOTUS not step in to put a halt to Obama’s moves? Back in 1950 it was SCOTUS that stopped Truman from nationalizing the steel industry. If the Revolution comes — through national bankruptcy, as you convincingly speculate — it seems to me that both Congress and SCOTUS will necessarily have to be rounded up, arrested, tried, convicted and executed. So again I ask, What’s in it for them?
You.Are.So.Right.
I weep for my country
“There is simply no way he could have been working in this administration on September 11th.”
NRO on Van Jones’ resignation. The consequences of being a Truther.
Best thing about Obama’s election — the activities of nut cases like Jones, Professor Gates, John Holdren, V. Jarrett, etc. get a proper vetting by the American public, despite a news blackout on some of these clowns by our useless MSM.
And speaking of September 11th: since the Libs blamed Bush for the original event 8 months after his inauguration, I guess any terrorist attack on or after this anniversary will solely be Obama’s fault. Only a few days left where the Dems can still blame a “man caused disaster” here on George Bush. Obama might want to inform his buddy Eric Holder of that simple truth.
The only question are “can this be stopped before permanent damage is done?” Is 2010 and 2012 too late? Does something more drastic have to be done this year?
Van Jones may be gone, but Obama is still fighting for socialism and despotism in Honduras.
Van Jones is merely a symptom of the problem. The disease is still flourishing. Americans have a major problem on their hands. It’s good to see Ameircans beginning to rise to meet the threat.
kakistocracy – Government under the control of a nation’s worst or least-qualified citizens.
I think this sums up the government we are currently enduring.
Each day I read, reread and marvel at the hubris & stupidity of these ….well….Morons. To call them stupid or moronic is an insult to the IQ challenged among us (including me).
Even my relatives who until now have lived DEEP within the fevered swamps of a liberal (i.e. fascist)
worldview have begun to turn away from HIS vision.
I guess when your jobs go away, your 401K crashes, the value of your home is cut in half, your children in public schools are becoming ill-behaved and ignorant stooges for THE STATE then you begin to “question authority”. Poor bastards, cognitive dissonance is a bitch to work thru.
But they told me if I voted for a republican again in 2008 we’d have a fascist state in amerikkka and they were right.
IMHO Barry O won’t be able to handle this sh*t for 3.5 more years. He just doesn’t have the personality for it. GW Bush put up w/ the NASTIEST crap for 8 years (his family too) and NEVER said a word. BHO just doesn’t have the testicular fortitude for it. He’ll quit.
Kakistocracy – yep that’s what it is alright.
PS- I guess we’ll ALL be put on a Gov’t LIST now for the re-education camps.
I think we need a hall monitor to review comment #97.
Essential vdh
#103 MoHoo: Forget tic tac toe the only thing needed to show who BHOO, Van Dorn, and MoHoo are is to turn on the lights and stop letting the MSM look through key holes into the their (BHOO’s) dark hide out room with a pinpoint flashlight.
BHO and his cohorts like Van Dorn and the other AA, PC, race baiting, indoctrinated fools will disappear once the light comes on and productive Americans black and white see who they really are and the destruction their “ideas” create.
They, the BHO fools, are the result of AA, PC, race baiting Utopian communist/socialist indoctrination language that can easily fit into their brain with nothing else.
There can be no room in the BHO’s indoctrinated brains for productive individual development and responsibility. A waste of humanity condoned by the BHOO’s and your like for a power grab.
A taking away of Americans property (excessive taxes, nationalization), Individual Freedoms of Choice, and the need for individual responsibility. A destruction of the Constitution and Un American activities.
The BHO’s only can be simple parasites and can rationalize using the government to take from productive Americans and give to them (BHOO and dependents) to sustain their indoctrinated parasitic life of being carried on the backs of others.
It is destroying whole generations of “Americans”. They know how to do nothing and it is acceptable because they are “black or whatever Americans”. What kind of idiot fools dream is this? I know it is a lie, don’t you?!
They of course can’t build Helicopters or anything else more complex than a Tic Tack Toe diagram on a chalkboard supplied by others with some chalk supplied by others. Consulting the Koran won’t help. Neither will reading tea leaves or cat guts.
How long will this go on? How long will it take “minorities” to see that they are being destroyed by a simple Utopian dream that destroys them and their families. All for what, an idiots power grab!
A left wing ridden Democrat Party maintaining power. This crap has been going on for more than 50 years.
MoHoo I would suggest if you want to improve yourself start reading Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, VDH, and listen to Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. The MSM will simply put your current fools thinking into concrete and you need your horizons broadened–Sweet Pea.
We are willingly giving away our freedom and a our form of government, simply because we have no idea of their value and of the evil of any alternative that replaces it until it gets here. And so we are in the process of getting it in the form of one of the most ammoral administrations in history, and it is one with a big axe too grind and an agenda of deception until force can anchor it in place -permanently.
The left in all its various forms is collectively at work now and Obama is merely the talking puppet head.
Shall we apply this Obama Way to sports?
Imagine equality of result the Government goal for all sports.
Imagine every team evened out until every game ends in a tie so nobody’s feelings get hurt.
Imagine every team forced to take anyone who tries out or, worse, is assigned players by the government.
Imagine every team managed from Washington, DC via an appointed Team Czar.
Imagine us all starving to death in a tax depleted, debt-driven hole.
While I did not vote for Obama because of his political views, as a white middle class American I was proud that our country elected a black person, and I was hopeful that it would ease race relations. But now I am told that I am a racist because I don’t support Obama. I go to a TEA party because I am tired of congress spending money we don’t have and the MSM and the left tell me that the reason I am there is because I am a racist. A black czar declares that because I don’t embrace his communist viewpoint that I am an a**hole and a racist. Charlie Rangle forgets to declare millions in net worth and fails to pay all of his taxes and rather than an apology for his actions he shares his opinion “that “bias” and “prejudice” toward Obama are fueling opposition to health-care reform.” I go to a town hall meeting to protest ill conceived health care reform and it is because I am a racist. I judge everyone by the content of their character. But more and more I find that when the character of a black person is found to be lacking and I call them on it I am at fault for being a racist. This malignant and promiscuous use of race as an excuse for poor decisions or to duck responsibility for improper actions or inflammatory statements is backfiring badly. Rather than shaming me or convincing me to change my opinion I find myself becoming angrier and angrier at being labeled. I find myself having frequent racist thoughts that I never had before, and that makes me sad.
I hang out with some very productive scientists who hit the road from the USSR as soon as they could. They’d both been here for more than ten years at the time and had restablished as prominant figures (one particularly) in their fields. Five years ago I was sitting on my backporch
with a couple of them and commented on how pleased I was that communism was in retreat. Both smiled grimly and said the only place it was in acendency was right before my eyes.
I laughed. I’m not laughing now.
BTW: One of these guys went on line with me and showed me his doctoral class at a prominent Russian Institute. Of the hundred or so graduates of thirty years ago, only four remain today, mostly for family reasons. So what happens to our productivity during the glorious people’s takeover engineered by the rats spewing from (ungraded, ludicrously politically correct) Yale….USSR, anyone?
Moho, you forgot to leave off the M in your name.
Bacchantocracy: Rule by intoxicated frenzy.
103 and 105
Moho (which one is it? molehole or Mo’ Hole?)
I’m impressed by the fact that nobody has gone after you on this board, and I mean it, sincerely…it goes, I think to the generally civilized nature of this blog.
You can tell thought and even lyrical composition goes into most responses.
You could try for that……..I suppose.
Anyway, “moho”, I digress. Rather than responding to your offensive trolling (are you recently gaduated from Yale law?), I just wanted to let you know that this very morning there’s a new job opening at the White House. Best of all it doesn’t require any government clearance or tedious application or background checks. Sounds like you would fit right in. Good luck.
“We really need to do a housecleaning in our educational system. We need to replace the nutjobs who produce the Van Jones with the educators who taught the VDHs of the world. It was once so and we should make take the system back to what it was.”
There’s a way to do this; it just takes a school system that’s brave enough to try it: Require every administrator, from the vice-principal all the way up to the superintendent, to teach one class a day. The biggest damage to our educational system started to happen when those in charge stopped being teachers; settling in the proverbial ivory tower turned them into politicians and bureaucrats, neither of which have any business in a school system. And once they got out of the mainstream of teaching, they started making idiotic, short-sighted, self-serving decisions that no active teacher would ever make.
Using this administrators-must-teach approach would go a long way towards knocking down the ivory tower and making those in charge much more keenly aware of what teachers actually do on a daily basis. (I also advocate a policy where school board members would substitute one week a year–under the supervision of a certified teacher, of course, but that person would be in the back of the room and could intervene only in the case of emergencies.)
And if the administrators were found to have no talent for teaching? Then out the door they go; there’s no room for non-teachers in a quality system of education.
Sorry for the spelling error in 120.
(are you recently gaduated from Yale law?)
should read:
(are you recently gRaduated from Yale law?)
“our woefully unprepared Marxist-Leninist-following graduate student of a president is faced with bitter reality”
Andy #20: very nice.
The entire country is beginning to remind me of the miserable years I spent watching city politics in Atlanta: billions siphoned in grants from the federal government, disappearing into the Mayor’s pockets and various “redevelopment,” “community,” “jobs,” and “justice” programs, while the city literally began sinking into its own sewer system.
Now, the hangover: a political class still empowered by and utterly addicted to grievance politics and race baiting; a crumbling infrastructure that was supposed to be repaired with the stolen funds, now being re-subsidized at far more astronomical costs by the tiny taxpaying classes; crime and social dysfunction literally threatening the city’s future; huge bills coming due for same taxpayers as they stare down a new round of federal redistribution of their dollars to the latest generation of organizer-crooks.
It’s especially sad because there is so much energy and industry among the city’s young residents — many of whom are also getting a fast education, faster than it used to be, I have to say.
The tide is turning. There’s a lot more discontent across the board, these days. That’s the good news.
MarkD, Resist your racist thoughts. That’s what Obama needs to use force to take over the Gov’t.
# 91 Moogie:
I haven’t read Lewis–yet.
However, I read Orwell’s “1984″ in samizdat form, xeroxed copies circulated from hand to hand–an enormously dangerous job since there were only a few xerox machines in the country, all registered with the Police and kept under key. Typewriters were also registered with the Police. You had to take your machine to the Police every year for re-registration and character/font/spacing specifications. Guess why. If only these pampered, latter-day victims knew true terror…
“1984″ was a kick in the gut. I was living that book, I had been living it since I was born. To complete the irony, the book came into my hands exactly in 1984.
Much later, while already here, I read Orwell’s essays about the use (abuse) of language for political purposes. I even taught them to freshmen alongside “Skip” Gates’ praise of Tupac Shakur’s “revolutionary” poetry. I can only hope someone in that class got the message.
Paules, misanthopicus:
Splendid linguistic fireworks.
Best treat ever….Keep them going!
Everyone under the bus for Obama. Does this mean that the “Diversity Czar” who openly supports the political tactics of Chavez and plans to eliminate talk radio as we know it may actually be called to task for his views? How can these people be supprised when the people call them to task for their behavior? We have seen the “change” from trensparent and ethical to hidden and corrupt so rappidly that it is difficult to think that the only change is that open corruption is now accepted among members of the political elite.
I receive an e-mail letter from my Congressman every so often. He’s one of the few who voted against all of the bailouts, TARPS, cap & trade, etc. He usually gets reelected with about 70% in his heavily military district.
Last letter, he was remarking about a conversation he had with someone who was standing in line at a store checkout counter. This individual was being pretty pleasant–until they found out they were talking to a Congressman. Then they abruptly ended the conversation.
My Congressman thought that was quite unusual, given that it is his experience that EVERYONE wants to weigh in on what is happening in DC. However, when he went to his car, he found a note tucked under the windshield telling him that he and his ilk were destroying the country and they needed to shape their act up damned quickly or else.
My Congressman got the message, which was that average Americans are mad as Hell and they’re not going to take it anymore. This guy has been pretty bright in the past, although he’s been prone to dip into the pork barrel more than I approve. If he’s seeing it, and he’s a very conservative R, I suspect the rest of the 535 cranks and cravens are getting it a Hell of a lot worse. I don’t know if they’ll listen even if they hear the message.
However, for this American, I’m thinking that this idiocy under the lying racist Marxist may well be the death knell of federalism. I no longer trust the Federal government to get anything at all right, and I would be in favor of anything that removes power from them and devolves it back to the individual states. I trust them only to do things that will be against my interest, and to try to use dollars they extort from me to fund those who will oppress me. The sooner they are greatly weakened, the sooner we’ll be safer from their depredations.
One last thing: while I would never consider such behavior, being a law-abiding citizen and all, I keep wondering how many people feel it compulsory to be scrupulously honest in their tax returns given that the head of the IRS and the head of the Ways and Means committee are both tax cheats? Given that tax receipts are down by huge amounts since Obama came into office, I suspect there are more than a few taxpayers who are feeling considerably less constrained by honesty than they used to be….
After WW2, Britain voted a (the) Labour Party into a majority and that’s when the ‘rationing’ began, and rationing continued well into the seventies.
For an hilarious send up of the rationing and the comic ways people got around it you will enjoy the movie “A Private Function” with Maggie Smith and Michael Palin. Its remotely germane to the title of this post, as it includes the also hilarious line- “No Pig, No Pig…” to deny that anyone in the household had obtained an unregulated pig to serve at dinner in order to impress the well-to-do in the principals’ efforts at a little social climbing.
To complete the MP references there was also the line from a screaming Terry Jones- “Not this Record!!! Not this Record!!! Not This Record!!!” that is a particularly fitting quotation in as one previously un-vetted Czar’s record seems to have caught up with him, (that opens the “Another Monty Python Record” record album from 1972).
Kev @ 124:
“The biggest damage to our educational system started to happen when those in charge stopped being teachers…”
Family members who are teachers say the same thing: Principals and superintendents who have never taught are now the norm. The results are self-evident.
The same problem pertains in the health care system. Hospital directors in the military are physicians, but this is old-school and uncommon elsewhere (Kaiser may be an exception). In all the civilian hospitals I’ve worked in, the CEO was a “suit” who relied on providers to help explain what he/she was in charge of. It’s workable for now, but not ideal. In education this situation has become untenable.
Thank you, Prof. Hanson. A must-read as always.
The arrogance and hubris of these know-nothing do-nothings in the WH are running away with them. This Jones charlatan has not a respectable item in his resume that I am aware of. Valerie Jarrett, in her rambling cheering of his appointment, reveals a stark lack of articulation and a strong hint of gross unprofessionalism and incompetence. The WH appears to be some kind of high school clique/comedy club/basketball jive team. Not one sounds or acts like an adult. What an astonishing bunch of radical juveniles in one space. Amazing!
The most disturbing thing I’ve read lately is that Senator Tom Coburn is close friends with Obama. This puts Coburn’s judgment and competence in doubt, and I’ve always thought highly of him. I cannot think highly of anyone who admires this Marxist con artist who plays at being Supreme Leader of the World.
Back to Jones – he is gone now (supposedly), but he was no aberration. He represents exactly what this WH is all about.
Essential vdh
What is the problem with the republicans and even the Blue Dog Dems. They seem to be nothing but knee jerk reactionaires way behind the now energized general population. Obviously we need some new conservatives. I’ll take a Sarah Palin, over a Newt, or a McCain any day.
Can we get specific: What is so difficult about Health Care improvements.
1. One take the existing government and political turf our of the picture.
It’s humiliating to misspell words here. I do it and I’m embarrassed.
This is the best blog.
Welcome to the collective; Resistance is futile.
Not in my life time buckeroo. I will stand tall and fight back until the death panel takes me away. So come on ahead Borg(Libs) make my day.
Essential vdh
The existing Republicans and their mouth pieces like M. Steele and Newt G. are simply now in reactionary mode. Where are the smart conservatives other than the corner stones of T Sowell, VDH, Walter Williams, Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh. None are running for office, nor should they.
They are the shining lights we should all at least listen to and think about what they are saying. Contrast and compare but dump the MSM propagandists. Based on ratings that is already happening.
The existing Repubs are way behind the general population on what is going wrong. They now show who they are— nothing but political strategists and operatives wanting to stay on the Government or consultant payroll. We now need some real conservative political leaders who will run for office.
Listening to Newt and others describe the health care problem is like hearing a coach looking at the political strategy involved like it was a game.
They, political operatives like Newt want to coach BHO and others and talk about what he needs to do to put in government run health care? Huh? Fixing the system with the “tweaked” Government plan is like saying throw gas on a fire to put it out.
In other words their game is politics and that means advising BHO on what he needs to do to sell his (BHO’s) bucket of shit and subversion to the ignorant population.
Once a politician always a politician–they can’t resist it. M. Steele doesn’t even know what a conservative thinks like.
America does not need that kind of leadership and help right now. Time for a Sarah Palin approach. Someone who can think with a clear head and will clean the house and start over.
How about some real substance to the Health care debate. What is so hard about this:
Get rid of the current involvement by the fed, state and local Government that separates the Market for Health insurance policies from the public by a bunch of rules and regulations that are designed to create political payoffs and chits.
This process creates nothing but a salary and retirement program for lobbyists and limits competition on a state by state level.
Get rid of the ambulance chasing lawyers by putting limits on liability and legal remedy so that insurance premiums for liability will not force doctors out of business or force doctors to do every test known to man so that a John Edwards will not sue for monkey science reasons. We all pay for it.
Force the lawyers to pay their own bills if they lose. No class action suits but individual by individual concerned and involved. No hunting for aggrieved that all of a sudden come out of the wood work and feel sick if a fat payoff is coming.
Get rid of marketing restrictions on insurance companies state by state. The insurance commissions protecting their turf. They force the policy conditions to the point the the costs will be and are outrageous for individuals/families.
They take away the right of individuals to decide on what coverage they want and need.
Allow the “customer” to buy the health insurance policy he wants. Allow him to use a menu of the extent of coverage he needs and wants to pay for.
First dollar coverage or a high deductible for a major medical problem that would break the bank. For example some families would not need pregnancy coverage, nor would want abortion coverage. How about that. Amazing huh.
Allow the individual or family policy to cross state lines—
Make it portable so the insured will not have to worry about being dropped and then picked up again with a move or a job change especially if he is now dealing with a preexisting condition for himself or a family member. Do you carry your life insurance policy across state lines. Of course!
This feature would make private enterprise and business more competitive by promoting the free flow of human assets. No more do you stick where you are simply because you can’t get health coverage for an existing condition.
Allow the premiums to be tax deductible to the individual on his individual portable policy.
Along with portability across state lines allow the insurance companies to pool their risks across the entire covered population much like the life insurance industry does now.
That means the Medical risk now becomes manageable to any one company because they can lay off the risk to a very large pool of people where the statistics can be calculated and be accurate as to the real risk and costs.
Then with the risk manageable make it so people cannot be arbitrarily dropped by the insurance company if they get a big medical problem. They can’t drop your life insurance coverage if you are about to die can they?
The risk pool could be the entire covered population of the US. If an insurance carrier goes broke the risk pool continues the policy that would be picked up by another carrier who would now get the premiums.
A new idea could be to pool life insurance risks with health care with some conditions. A life insurance policy of 1,000,000.00 dollars could interest a Life insurance Company in taking on some risk for treatment if it means staying alive. That sounds like a song.
Pay for prevention by allowing tax qualified medical savings accounts that would be started by millions of people if they could buy, keep and get (because it is available) the kind of insurance that would mesh with this kind of first dollar coverage. The first dollar supplied by the insured through a tax qualified medical savings account. The large deductible health policy with menu driven set of benefits would mesh with the tax qualified plan.
That’s also invested money in the US economy. A real stimulus. Not a political payout to the BHOOs and cronies. We the tax payer are the idiots if we allow this process to continue.
Only the individual/family involved over the dinner table making a decision. All negotiations would be between the individual, his doctor, and the insurance companies competing in the market place to sell him a policy tailored to his situation. Not one size fits all. What a concept—a free market selection process. Does anyone remember that?
The above is about as complex and or simple as it needs to be.
The biggest benefit is that health care would no longer be the fig leaf of the BHOOs regime trying to take over the American Economy by perfuming the scorpion as being universal health care and we all are American right wing reactionaries if we don’t throw our hands up and surrender to these idiots.
America can not afford to be the rehash of a USSR, Cuba, Vietnam, China and Europe.
This is the price we are paying for AA, PC, and communist/socialist indoctrination and subversion that is being laid like a blanket on American productivity by a product of this ignorant subversion.
A BHO and his idiot cult members all coming out of the same failed indoctrination process.
Who are they? What light do we have to turn on to make them hunt the holes from where they came?
We have allowed a loss of individual responsibility and integrity to simply destroy us by creating BHO’s and his like.
This destruction of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution has been allowed to go critical. Any more movement to the left we will be like the USSR and will and already are in a self destruct mode.
Will somebody go revive Ronald Reagan–or at least some of his speeches.
This is all going to end very badly. The likelihood of a complete power grab by the left is very high and there may not be time to vote the bastards out in 2010. Obama is setting up the H1N1 influenza epidemic as an excuse to set-up government quarantine centers. Once in maybe never out? The Orwellian aspect of what’s occurring is truly frightful. Buy your guns and ammo while you still can before Obama’s Gun and Ammo Czar takes control of production. When we lose the internet you’ll know its tie to “lock and load”.
myworstnightmaretocracy
Oh, sorry. That’s not greek.
On Afghanistan, I disagree.
Afghanistan has always been a holding mission, the use of “economy of force,” a place where you don’t want to fully commit, because that’s where “Empires go to die.”
BO was only in favor of Afghanistan because he was opposed to Iraq and needed to show some kind of defense “creds” for political purposes, whether it made sense or not. And by the way, Afghanistan’s where UBL went to hide until we pushed him further. Yawn – you don’t fight a war because of that. (I also was opposed to Iraq, but for many different reasons.)
Of all the wars we’re involved in, and they are more than most readers understand, Afghanistan is one of those that should/must be relegated to the quiet covert operations of the CIA and SOCOM. No main force Army or Marine units should be committed to ground ops; they are too slow, too cumbersome, too out of touch, regardless of how hard they try. (Trying doesn’t count; success does) BO has found Generals who will try; not necessarily those who speak the hard truths and eventually produce success.
The Army’s 4th ID, the 1st Cav, and the Marine equivalents, etc., are great units, but they are/would be as out of place in Afghanistan as the British Army was a century ago.
To do it right, we need about a 2:1 ration of State Department and USAID weenies for every CIA/SOCOM/other military asset in country. And a 10-20 year committment to keep it going.
Don’t we need to protect the civilians; sure we do. But the Afghanistan civilians and the Afghanistan National Army needs to suck it up. We can tell them how – a traditional SOCOM mission, but they need to get it done.
“Nation building” is something best not done by the non-special ops military (although that was my job nearly 40 years ago in a land far-far-away, …) and main force units should be kept out of the fray unless there is a target that needs killing. They are very good at that.
US Army, Retired
Obama is the culmination of everything that has gone horribly wrong with this country since the cultural upheaval of the 60s.
I know many 20-30 somethings are waking up this now and to the lies they were fed since birth.
How far off is Tiananmen Square II?
#61-ACORN is too lazy and too stupid to build anything. And your so-called camps will be used to depose all you lefty pukes after we owners of guns and bibles get finished with you racist scum.
@~paules:
How about “agethlocracy” government by victims?
# 139 Jack Marcotte:
You are absolutely right about Steele and Newt. It’s one of the reasons I don’t listen to Hannity. Mealy-mouthed, confused and confusing and shallow Newt is a staple of the show. I often wonder how he got to be such a big deal among conservatives. He strikes me as an opportunist.
As to Steele, what can I say? We all know why he got elected.
Republicans are in deep trouble if they can’t find a true leader, like Reagan.
I agree that Rush et comp. have to preserve their freedom of inquiry and speech as analytical and critical outsiders. A political position would curtail all that. They are needed now more than ever.
I “heart” VDH.
Thanks for your insights Alton (#142)
I agree with every point, especially about Obama setting up Afghanistan as a straw dog for himself to attack to give off the appearance that he has any idea about defense and the strategies needed to best use our military, which of course, he doesn’t.
Moho(mmad),
Don’t you have some goats to herd? With each passing day, you are more shrill and nonsensical than before. Your emperor has no clothes – and your cognitive dissonance is glaring. Of course, like BHO’s shadow cabinet of czars, you could be an unapologetic Commie, too!
Think Obama, think treason. Let us see your birth certificate guy! How did a non-citizen buy his way intot he White House? It was his buddies on Wall Street. He payed them back from the US Treasury at our expense and the expense of the next three generations. It is time for Obama to be removed form office and put on trial for treason.
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