The Ministries of Truth Weigh In
The Hope and Change Edicts
What are we to make of our current NASA chief, the distinguished retired Marine Corps major general and astronaut, Charles Bolden, who, in an interview with al Jazeera, listed a “foremost” NASA objective as finding “a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering.”?
All of this, Bolden adds, expands the Obama “Cairo initiative,” those lofty revisionisms that the president offered to the Muslim world last summer in Cairo.
Surely, there is some mistake? Did a right-wing satirist hijack the transcript and insert “to help them feel good”?
Parody?
OK—if it is a correct transcription, here are four or five off-the-top-of-the-head problems with this nonsense:
1) NASA is supposed to launch rockets and other craft, study space, and travel above the atmosphere. Its duties, especially at a time of budget restraints, are not to make any one “feel good,” much less “the Muslim world.” (e.g., why not “the Latin American world” or “African world”?).
The “Muslim world,” I think, feels pretty good about itself; in contrast, I fear we in the West apparently do not. (e.g., so far no Muslim leaders that I know are reaching out to the West to assure us that they both respect Western civilization and want to emphasize their admiration for our culture).
I wouldn’t mention the “Cairo initiative.” Bad idea. That was the most embarrassing speech given by an American president in a decade. Last June Obama misled his audience on nearly every “fact” presented, from the absurdity of Muslims in Cordoba supposedly serving as beacons of tolerance during the Inquisition (there were essentially no Muslims in Cordoba by that time), to the assertion that Muslims helped to jump start the Renaissance and Enlightenment (when in fact, flight from, or reaction against, Islam in the eastern Mediterranean had far more to do with both European intellectual awakenings). An early 15th-century Greek scribe fleeing the steady year-by-year Ottoman advance toward Constantinople, bringing with him a manuscript of a previously unknown Greek author, or Romantic Enlightenment thinkers like a Lord Byron writing of the need for a Greek revolution against the Turks, is not a sign of an Islamic pedigree for Da Vinci or Voltaire. Wait — maybe the president meant that attitudes toward Islam, as in fear of Islamic absolutism, helped to foster these two intellectual movements?)
2) Worry not, Gen. Bolden, about Muslims and space. Relax — soon there will be an intercontinentally-delivered Iranian bomb. The Syrians like space — otherwise they would not be testing Scuds. And not long ago, Dr. Khan did his best to make Muslims acquainted with the potentials of nuclear energy released in the stratosphere. Where did this idea originate that Muslims are not interested in space? Was it an article from Rev. Wright’s newsletter (e.g., “Pastor’s Page”) that suggested the Jews had new bombs that could detect Arabs — a sophisticated “ethnic bomb”?
3) It is beyond the power in 2010 of even Gen. Bolden to change the Islamic history about and attitudes toward science. To read of Ottoman scientific investigation between 1500 and 1900 is to learn of real trepidation among any Muslim scientists challenging the “authority” of the Prophet, by claiming near divine knowledge about the way things work, whether at work on lighthouses or munitions. There is a reason Dr. Khan went to the West to learn bomb-making rather than to Libya or Yemen — and it had nothing to do with the failures of the West to remind Muslims of their glorious scientific past.
4) Once more, no worry, Gen. Bolden: we know you support “diversity” and wish to make the other feel good about himself. Otherwise you would not be at NASA. But al Jazeera? These were the guys that broadcasted the snuff videos of beheadings and, in Iraq, always seemed, strangely, to be right on the scene with cameras just as American Humvees were at the opportune moment blown into the sky by massive IEDs. Al Jazeera, in other words, is antithetical to everything NASA used to be.
5) There is no record that the 18-month long outreach has worked in any department. Again, 2009 saw more foiled terrorist attempts here at home than in any year since 2001. The Middle East is at the brink. Iran is more, not less, hostile for our outreach. All that has changed with Syria is that it now openly sells missiles to Hezbollah, oblivious to our courting. A Major Hasan or Abdul Mutallab does not care whether we send a video to Iran or NASA boasts of its caring to al Jazeera. Turkey is growing more hostile, and cares not a bit that Obama apologized for slavery and the treatment of Native Americans. I could go on, but to the tiny degree that anyone in the Muslim world takes note of the NASA outreach, it will mostly be terrorists who equate our niceness with appeasement, and become encouraged that ex-American generals are now redirecting NASA to educate Muslims on their supposedly glorious scientific past, and not so interested in deterring them as was true after 9/11.
The first time I heard about this NASA business I thought it was a parody.
All I can say is that George Orwell must be laughing like crazy. Even Orwell couldn’t make this stuff up.
I’m sure all of you said the same thing during George W. Bush’s tenure, right? Right?
Hypocrites.
man wouldn’t know hypocrisy if he stepped in it :P
Name one stupid outlandish garbage like the ones discussed in the article.
7 July 2010
Baghdad
Many Thanks to Colonel Chris Gibson for his service to our Great Country. A small donation has been given to his campaign and more to follow as the campaign progresses. We need more men and women of integrity, proven service, and proven ability like Gibson and West and much less of the trash currently occupying Congress, Blair House and the White House.
Take good care,
Sandy
If you had asked the head of the Soviet space agency what his primary mission was, he would have told you “advancing the worldwide socialist revolution.” Going into space was only one way of achieving that. The head of any other Soviet agency would have given the same answer. Essentially the same mentality is at work here.
First, Mr. Hansen, if you can make it up to the summit of Kaiser, at 9,800+ feet, that whole “old” thing is meaningless. About 3,000 feet elevation gain, in 3.5 hours? Yow, good on you both.
Excellent article, real and true and pointed. I’ve listened to COL Gibson just now in a Fox interview. Go Army! I appreciate your characterization of him as “19th century.” Perfect description, and I’m praying he wins.
I bought my first Hansen book today, “The Land Was Everything.” Someday I hope to make it up to Northern California to have it autographed. Meantime, all my best.
Dr. Hanson:
“I am sure that the DNC strategy this fall will devolve into personally denigrating new candidates, given that liberal incumbents in purple districts won’t be able to run on the presidential record of the last two years.
But all that said, if we are going to save the country, we need leaders like Gibson, who has always lived the life he advocates. I wish him well.”
As I wish you well sir. We do indeed need leaders, or at least a leader, such as you could be. Please run for the office of President of the United States in 2012. Your candidacy would provide a voice for we the “Little People”.
Even the Marine Corps is infected with what I call “political generals.”
MarkD – all generals and admirals are political! To achieve ‘flag’ rank (and further advancements), they must be approved by Congress. This means endlessly lobbying with congress critters on behalf of their own promotion(s)(how demeaning and /or servile is that?)
True and not true. The system does help keep the military under the control of the constituted civilian authorities. If it’s a flawed system, it’s flawed in a good direction.
Walt -
Actually, ALL officer promotions are approved by Congress. (That’s usually a pro forma approval of service promotion lists, but sometimes Congress balks; witness the Navy lists at the time of the Tailhook dustup.)
All promotions involve politics to an extent, but mostly the internal politics of the service doing the promoting. This remains bascially true through promotions to the two-star level (though the dynamics change the further up the pyramid one looks).
The big change in political dynamics occurs at the three-star (Lieutenant General/Vice Admiral) level. Those promoted to this level must be personally nominated by the president and approved by the Senate, just as any departmental under secretary or assistant secretary must be. (Ditto the four-star level, where the political competition is even more intense.)
How these nominations are made depends on the president, of course. G. W. Bush, interceptor pilot, had an entirely different personal algorithm for such selections than B. H. Obama, Chicago machine politician.
While it all sounds very impure (and it is, believe me), this serves a free citizenry by ensuring the military stays politically consistent with the national leadership and not prone to destructive strokes by riders on white horses. It’s messy, but then that’s the beauty of our entire constitutional system.
Thank you 230FMJ for saying it much better than I did!
It’s better than politicians having to be approved by the army anyway!
Five problems? Where’s problem #2?
“The real point is, however, that Obama has set a revolutionary tone, and everyone beneath him is falling all over themselves to trump it — and thereby gain traction and approval from their leader
Dr. Hanson;
Your statement above reminded me of a political science professor I had at City College of NY (CCNY), back in the early 1970s. It was a course on Russian politics, taught by a professor whose name now escapes me, but was on the scene in the Russian Politburo towards the end of Stalin’s tenure so to speak. He once remarked that it was almost amusing at times to hear “Uncle Joe” make a statement and then watch all those that were amongst the highest of the high in the party trip over themselves to get on board with the program by issuing their own statements and how they so supported Stalin, while each one inwardly hoped he’d drop dead the next second.
I can see the similarities between then and today. I am not certain that our wonderful and beloved neocommies, wish President Obama ill, but I would think that each one of them would trade places with him in a heartbeat to have the ultimate power.
Dr. Hanson:
As always, well done and thorough. Perhaps I can add just a bit around the margins.
Suppose a hostile power was determined (and many are)–short of outright, open warfare–to destroy the United States, to completely discredit capitalism and democracy and to turn Americans into simpering, helpless, state-dependent drones who care only about immediate pleasures and the all knowing state that provides them. How would they proceed differently than Barack Obama and his merrily marxist acolytes?
What we’re seeing is neophytes at work, not amateurs, but neophytes. Many don’t understand the distinction, but an important distinction it is. Neophytes are beginners, those without the experience, knowledge and specific skills necessary to accomplish the job. Amateurs do what they do because they love doing it. They may have few skills and little experience, or they may also be highly skilled, professional even, but because they do not derive their living from their efforts, they are not professionals. Neophytes are always beginners, beginners because they know little or nothing and can do little or nothing.
Those who have lived awhile, and who were willing to do a bit of research and/or pay attention during the campaign quickly learned that Barack Obama was neophyte at everything he ever did. He reached adulthood without achieving even amateur status in any endeavor. Oh yes, he was a community organizer, but even he admitted in one of his two (?!) autobiographies that he could not explain to his close friends what a community organizer was or did. He awoke each morning and went to work–where, exactly? He was paid by–whom, exactly? He produced–what, exactly? His turn as manager of the Chicago Annenberg challenge was an abject failure and wasted tens of millions of dollars, even according to the very, very liberal Annenberg foundation. Despite being trained as an attorney (and no one seems to know or be able to discover just how that came about or was funded–as I understand it, graduate credit at Harvard is a bit pricey), he apparently never practiced law, opting instead to be a community organizer, organizing who–or what–exactly? No one seems to know and Obama isn’t talking. Consider what your average white person (to use Obama’s own commentary about his grandmother) thinks, quite reasonably, of an adult who has obtained no useful knowledge or skills.
He was an Illinois state legislator with no legislative record apart from repeatedly voting the equivalent of “I’m not really voting.” On the strength of his non-performance as an Illinois Senator, he became a US Senator and compiled essentially the same legislative record, and on the the strength of his non-accomplishments in the US Senate, became POTUS. His arrival in the Oval Office was truly historic, for on the day he arrived, he became, to my knowledge (please correct me if I’m wrong, Dr. Hanson), the only man to hold that office who was a complete neophyte, in the denotative and connotative senses of the word. He was a man who had accomplished nothing in his life apart from being elected three times. He has at least some credentials, but has apparently never applied them. In winning the presidency, he’s like the wildly barking dog who finally caught the car, but has no idea what to do beyond continue barking.
So what’s the point? Barack Obama has “worked” only two jobs, both nebulous, both producing nothing, both requiring only one extremely narrow skill set. His entire life, only two things have been required of him, the charisma of the con man/hustler, and closely related, a certain way with rhetoric. Combine this with the fervor of the statist/socialist/communist true believer, and a debilitating, destructive narcissism of a kind seldom seen outside the lesser mental institutions, and people like Mr. Bolden are not at all surprising.
Obama knows only the hustle and rhetoric about hope and change, reaching out, building bridges and every other liberal cliche’ extant. With that skill set, he is fit to be a community organizer and to campaign for public office. He is fit because everything relating to those endeavors is temporary, here today, gone after the election. Promises made are forgotten, commitments misplaced, alliances dropped, and it doesn’t matter…unless you win. And he did and he knows only what he knew as a community organizer, so he surrounds himself with the kinds of people a hustler knows and needs, the kinds of fellow hustlers and con men with whom he feels comfortable. And most of them know only what he knows, despite having some superficially impressive qualifications. He is a man who is undisciplined (he’s never held a solid job, never discharged substantial responsibilities), focused entirely on himself (hustlers survive only on charisma and rhetoric), has never developed the habits and skills of patience and perseverance and has a very short temper and very short attention span. Combine this with no apparent knowledge of history, economics, management, government, human nature, theology, you name it, and we end up with the kinds of true believers and fools surrounding the neophyte in chief.
And so Obama, in those moments when he can focus his ever wandering and transitory attention, governs as a community organizer, a neophyte with no skills, no abilities and no experience (no, charisma and rhetoric don’t count–they don’t stop or clean up oil spills or face down despots determined to kill us). And because of his narcissism and towering arrogance, he hires only those who, if not smaller than himself, will at least never challenge him. Remember his aids, shortly after his inauguration, complaining that Obama didn’t understand how stressful the job would be? Indeed. This is not a man who is capable of recognizing what he doesn’t know, to say nothing about taking the steps necessary to educate himself, to grow, as they say, in office. And so, he continues to hustle and to organize, to do what he knows, and to use the stirring, uplifting, but ephemeral rhetoric of the hustler/organizer. And thus does NASA strive to make Muslims feel warm and fuzzy about the basic scientific accomplishments of ancestors of millennia past. Thus would NASA partner with peoples and nations whose are so bereft of scientific/technical knowledge and ability that they cannot so much as design and manufacture a toaster. But hey, it’s outreach. It’s building bridges. It’s embracing diversity and multiculturalism.
And in the meantime, the real world, the world of professionals, of responsible, capable adults, flows inexorably past America, taking with it our wealth, our security, our sovereignty, our national identity, our freedoms, and perhaps, our lives. But one day, we may succeed in putting a jihadist on Mars. Now that would be community organizing outreach, historic, even.
“Suppose a hostile power was determined to destroy the United States, to completely discredit capitalism and democracy… How would they proceed differently than Barack Obama and his merrily marxist acolytes?”
Wow.
Good question.
Perhaps even a great question.
Back in 1983, the Reagan administration (we) published a study entitled “A Nation at Risk.” It asked exactly the same question, regarding the state of K-12 education: about how an enemy could have achieved no more destructive results than we were busily producing, at no cost to those enemies.
So, it’s not like the alarms haven’t been sounded.
snip If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves. We have even squandered the gains in student achievement made in the wake of the Sputnik challenge. Moreover, we have dismantled essential support systems which helped make those gains possible. We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament.
http://www2.ed.gov/pubs/NatAtRisk/index.html
Simply greta post, mikemcdaniel! Lots of great food for thought – and it really does put so much of this unbelievable nonsense in proper perspective…
Bravo!
An opinion that’s gaining currency these days is that Obama is a product of handlers and is indeed the ‘empty suit’ that many of us thought all along.
It reminds me of a plan that I learned in the late 60′s as an anti-war protester when we were all concerned about getting called up for service.
Somebody told me if I wanted to keep my sons out of the military, start when they were young and tell them to say they had back pain. We could go to a doctor every few years, he would run tests and even if nothing was found, there would be years of chronic back pain and my sons would never serve.
I never tried it. I didn’t want to teach my sons to lie. But it was a plan and imagine people who had a plan to plant a communist in the highest office and found Obama and his rise was planned.
And who the hell had ever heard of a ‘Certificate Of Live Birth’ before 2008?
Wow, what a read. So many directions and POV’s, with so many points of problems, BO is not able to solve, so he creates another problem.
1. DOJ needs Disbared
2. BP needs investigated before 11 men are forgotten.
3. AZ needs only to provide their own security ahead of all others, and not worry about the Feds.
4. NASA is looking into how BO is a community organizer, so they can keep their jobs, but where did NASA look into a replacement solution? This is bad for our Jetson car fans, and no Mid-East education will fix.
5. BO violated his Oath of Office, and our Constitutional rights and values are why My flag has been upside down all year. Stop thinking twice, BO is a Rev.Wrong and we all know it. Correct, what has he done for Africa?
6. The Majority of every ethnicticity of REAL U.S. Citizens have only to challenge their Local, State and Federal representatives. Petition, walk with signatures until we get Changed back to where we once were.
btw… Ever run up Pikes Peak? LOL A N.O.R.A.D. friend did until he was 65.
During the health care stamped of ’09, I really got the impression that Obama wasn’t in charge – Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the Congressional Democrats were. What you say seems true: Obama the neophyte is being run by older, more experienced, much more ruthless Democrat Party veterans. The ones in Congress are the most obvious. Who knows who else is pulling his strings?
And who the hell had ever heard of a ‘Certificate Of Live Birth’ before 2008?
It was in the movie “The Ring.”
An absolutely excellent document…..
Mickemacdaniel has a very astute analysis of Obama’s qualities, worthy of VDH himself, and LGoPs explains how this nullity finds himself in the White House utterly dumbfounded at what it means to hold a real job for the first time — and the most difficult in the world at that. We’re in a race for time. Can we correct the historic mistake made in 2008 in time to undo the damage? The fatuity of the Republicans in the Bush years makes me think the political system can no longer produce the leaders these dangerous times require. The media also plays a role in the emergence of this fateful defect because of its bias and its ceaseless search for mud to drag decent people through; who other than monsters of ego like Obama, Spector, Christ, Franks, Pelosi, et al, would even consider running for office?
Wow – that is the best summing up of the conservative view of Obama (including my own) that I have ever seen.
Two thoughts:
+ Obama is the symptom, not the cause, of the national malaise, and particularly the malaise of the Democratic Party, which has also nominated Biden, Kerry, Edwards, & Gore – all of whom are appallingly dysfunctional. It is sobering to think that a nation may get the leaders it deserves.
+ Obama does have professionals on his economic team. One can disagree with them on issues, but one cannot doubt either their quality or their dedication to the interests of the American people. I fear that they are the thin red line against total chaos.
GOOD ANALYSIS, MIKE. IF THERE IS NOONE MORE CAPABLE THAN AKA IT MAKES ME THINK IF WE LET THEM HAVE ENOUGH OF THAT ROPE, THEY’LL HANG THEMSELVES.
Allow me to add an observation from Ferdinand Lundberg’s book The Rich and the Super-Rich:
Lundberg wrote that in 1968. It applies to the federal legislature, and the current occupant of the Oval Office, quite well today.
That work sits on my shelf, but hadn’t looked at it since I purchased it in ’69 while stationed in the UK in the USAF–I’d forgotten that passage–thanks for the reminder..
I thought no advertising was allowed… but you’ve sold that book to me here… very funny… sad, but funny.
An excellent post Mike Mc. See you back at Neo Neocon. Consider posting your letter there, it made some excellent points as well as being concise and well written. Bravo!
BRAVO!! Extremely well said.
mikemcdaniel:
Thank you. You’ve said it as well as it can be said.
Unfortunately though, the words mostly seem to go in one ear and out the other. Most commenters apparently agree with you but one thing still seems to be missing; how do the American People go about removing a Marxist from the presidency of the United States and after that, restore a once great constitutional republic?
Do we go to the polls in 2012 and vote for another Marxist light and let the pot boil for another four years or is there some way to have a non-politician, real American Interest candidate step up to the plate?
Whom do you think that might be? Maybe John McCain?
Your question is what concerns us. Almost surely Hillary will run against Obama (if he runs) if his numbers are down…She is also an Alinskyite…
The independents/conservatives will need to pull a rabbit out of the hat really soon…
Mike,
I take exception to your apparent claim that President Obama never held a real job. Are you forgetting his brief career in “distribution”?
Great contribution Mike Mc. While Obama is evermore known as “the empty black suit”, he at least had the good timing, good fortune and guidance to exploit a country full of gullible, uninformed, stupid, pathetic citizens. They are still with us. How long will it take to undo the damage, if ever ? Thanks
Mr McDaniel:
THAT was brilliant.
Well said.
I’d almost guarantee there was something lost in translation. I have plenty of problems with Obama and am staunchly peace-through-strength and limited-government oriented. Putting something like this on NASA’s plate just seems silly….but I do think the spirit of it is laudable. It is in our interests to engage with the Middle East in practical matters of common interest. Part of the reason they’ve been such an incubus of terror is because they have become so isolated in the world. By demonstrating acts of simple cooperation in acknowledgment of their historical contributions to humanity, our overtures of preferring peace to war will carry a lot more weight.
I must say I disagree with you entirely. You are writing from a Judeo-Christian outlook. Please correct me if I am wrong. Admittedly NASA hasn’t been spending money wisely in my humble opinion BUT we more to lose than we “think” there is to gain with this latest folly. Regards.
The problem with your analyses is its failure to detect the condescension in Obama’s message. The Muslim world does not need Obama to boost its ego. Did you catch Jesse Jackson’s reaction to Obama when he thought the mike was off–something about damaging his genitals?
Furthermore, the Islamic world has not been cut off; it has cut itself off.
From your post:
“By demonstrating acts of simple cooperation in acknowledgment of their historical contributions to humanity, our overtures of preferring peace to war will carry a lot more weight.”
Can you sir, give me one single example of that being true? I, like you, wish it were true, but it is not. Our overtures of preferring peace to war are simply seen as weakness to those who prefer war. The only deterrent to war with an enemy who would prefer war is the certain knowledge of their swift and violent defeat. Overtures of cooperation (when they have loudly and publicly stated their intent toward us) do not endear us to people and cultures with this mind set. Overtures of cooperation increase their contempt for us. Overtures of cooperation increase their belief that they just might win a conflict with the United States and increase the likely hood that we would have to prove them wrong on the battlefield.
Now… having said all that – the REAL problem is one of priority. Giving Muslims a warm and fuzzy about themselves is not just something on NASA’s PR director’s plate. (I would probably be prepared to tolerate it if this was the case – government agencies all have lots of strange PR missions.) Giving Muslims a warm and fuzzy about themselves has become the core purpose of the US Space Agency. Job one at the agency which put the 1st man on the moon is NOW Islamic self esteem.
I lived in Houston for a time and have been on a couple of behind the scenes tours of Johnson Space center. I have had the almost indescribable honor of sitting in the Apollo era flight director’s station. I have walked the grove of trees planted for fallen Astronauts. Johnson Space Center is sacred ground. It represents American greatness as much or more than anywhere. That fact that the PRIMARY purpose of this symbol of American greatness is making those sworn to destroy us feel better about themselves illustrates how out of touch with reality are those we have elected to make decisions for us. Orwell could not make this stuff up.
If the end result is a conglomeration of contributions and cooperation between peoples, what has the Muslim World contributed to this earth as their final tally if we were to access them today? Wars, Terror, Suppression, Oppression, Desolation, the growing desert a testimony to their disregard for this earth we live in. The wealth generated from oil that the West provided the technology for, losing personal wealth, and shedding blood, sweat and tears for, is used to further hatred toward their fellow man while they live in palaces plated with gold and silver and their own flounder in 7th century misery, a few chosen breaking out to enjoy modern life while secretly despising those who reach out to them.
We have spent too many years trying to hide the truth of history about this God Allah and his Prophet Mohammad and their contribution to the misery still experienced by a very large part of the World. We in the West have had to face the sins of our fathers and so should they. A little humble pie for dinner would be in their best interest and for desert freedom to chose what they believe so that we can clear the air once and for all. What’s it gonna be, the words of Allah and his prophet Mohammad with their favorite weapon Death, or will we continue to cover-up for them? When someone from this Administration proclaims their mission for “feel good” there are millions upon millions of souls who resign themselves to being prisoners living in the shackles of Islam another century gone by where freedom rings hollow.
Islam is on a world wide mission to turn the entire world into an Islamic State. They have no interest in being included in anything we do here in the Western social democracies. They are stuck in the 10th century and as long as they are dominated by that ridiculous religion, they will remain there. The only question is will we allow them to drag us down to that level? Since we seem to have many of them at the White House the answer is, until we throw these bastards out, yes.
Keith,
You said, “Part of the reason they’ve been such an incubus of terror is because they have become so isolated in the world.”
Without knowing what research you may have done, I feel compelled to point out that any isolation or estrangement of ISLAM from the rest of the world is entirely a result of their own vicious, murderous treatment of their neighbors for the past 14 CENTURIES.
The Prophet Muhammed is described in the sacred literature – the Qur’an and the more anecdotal but just as revered Sunna and Hadiths – planning and commanding military assaults on merchant caravans and communities that failed to acknowledge him as the One Prophet of ALLAH. (Look up the Battle of Uhud, The Battle of the Trench, the conquests of Medina and Mecca, and the battles of Hunayn, Tabouk, and Mu’tah.)
After many of these operations he personally ordered the execution of disarmed captives, and gave their widows and daughters and spare virgins to his henchmen to be their sex slaves.
When he heard of people mocking him and criticizing him in communities under his domination, he had his followers enter and assassinate the offenders.
Look at the date of Mohammed’s passing: 632 Anno Domini
Look at the date of the Battle of Tours: 732 Anno Domini
The Battle of Tours marks the defeat of the furthest invasion by Muslim Armies under the command of ‘Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi, by Charles “the Hammer” Martel commanding the European Franks. Otherwise, before that defeat, Muslims had spread Islam around the known world by military assault IN A SINGLE CENTURY after his death.
From the Saudi Peninsula outward, the fanatics of the new faith crushed and intimidated communities northward up the Levant into Syria and Turkey, Eastward into Persia, South into the land of Egypt, then West across North Africa – Libya, Morocco, Algeria – finally North again, crossing the straits of Gibraltar into the Iberian Peninsula in 711. Spain remained under Islamic rule until the Battle of Granada in 1491. (Remember King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella?)
Look at the headlines of the last forty years, guy. There have been tens of thousands of terrorist murders by bomb, machine gun, immolation, arson, beheading, and every other conceivable form of violent aggression by MUSLIMS done to Jews, to Buddhists, to Zoroastrians, Hindus, Christians, Pagans, Animists, Atheists, and other Muslims who somehow failed to grovel properly to the fanatics.
Please don’t speak of the Arab Muslim states as if they have been victimized by Western imperialism. They have been slaughtering and bullying their neighbors since Muhammed walked the earth.
“Ack-Ack! Ack-Ack! Do not run. We are your friends!” (Mars Attacks)
Listen, when people tell you they love death more than you love life, it doesn’t do to believe something is lost in translation. Thankfully, there’s a win-win solution: kill the enemy.
Absolutely disagree. Third world leaders have no goodness in their hearts. Just to get some social insights about third world countries watch some bollywood movies and get an understanding on their monstrosity. Or remind yourself of Mao, Kim, Saddam, Khomeni,on and on and on…
Fine column, Dr. Hanson.
All that was left out was a particular prediction, which as a Californian from yet another conservative small town (no, not unspoiled Pitigliano) I shall furnish myself.
That is the ‘Dizzy From Success’ speech that we shall hear one of these days from President Obama, after one or another of his appointees promotes the revolution so blatantly that his actions, and perhaps he with it, must be chucked under the bus.
Currently the leading candidate is Attorney General Holder, for the blatant racism within the Justice Department. But among the radical Obama appointees, there is brisk competition for ultimate Politburo membership in case the revolution truly succeeds, and from that competition may arise yet more extravagant words and deeds for the public to recoil in horror from.
The Koran is the only guide you need for society. What’s it got to say about thrust to weight ratio?
There is no thrust-to-weight ratio. Powerful djinns living within the rocket fuel lift the rocket into the heavens. Everyone knows this.
None of this would have come to pass if we had even a vestige of a balanced media. This poseur wouldn’t have gotten thru the first primary had his background been half as explored as the media invests in exploring conservative or Republican candidates.
We have many domestic enemies, but at the top of the list is a media which rather than being a watchdog has become a junkyard dog, viciously and rabidly attacking anything that doesn’t fit with their leftist worldview.
No Republic can survive having the information it needs to make informed decisions be so manipulated and distorted. The media bears full responsibility for this malfeasance and when the day of reckoning comes they need to be at the top of the list of instititutions taken down with a wrecking ball.
Pravda reporters at least had the excuse of the threat of the gulag for not preaching the party line. The bastards reporting our misinformation do it happily and voluntarily. Damn them all.
I had more respect for Pravda.
Agree, the MSM’s role in the promotion of BHO will be studied for years. Was it malfeasance, a journolist conspiracy, or an access-BS exchange gone wrong?
Not too long ago, how we laughed at “Baghdad Bob” and his daily reporting of a reality no one else could see. Oh, that could never happen here!! ;-)
It was communists pushing for the election of a communist government. The only way this crap will be reversed is if we start attending school board meetings, identifying the communists, and replacing enough of them to redirect our public schools away from this collectivist claptrap. Most people will never reach intellectually beyond what they learn as school children and these communists are very aware of that fact.
Jim Baker:
Right you are Jim Baker, but you forgot to mention, “write your congressman” and “send letters and e-mails”. All fine and good if you think this nation can survive for 15 or 20 years while we “take back the school boards.” Probaly too late though to “save the children”.
I think a quicker and more effective program would be to have a national policy to find and kill extremist muslim terrorists and help to educate the other kind as to how to develop civilized nations where people actually get jobs, do work, educate the populace provide civil rights to citizens and live their lives to the fullest with a modicum of freedom from religious and political tyranny.
If you wish in one hand and spit in the other, most times you will find there is more substance in the hand in which you spat.
The American People need to have a chance to vote for a Real American Patriotic Constitutionalist in 2012. Not one is yet on the political horizon. Someone who could mop up the floor with Hillary Clinton or Barack Hussein Obama in an intellectual debate or in a presentation of the historical greatness of America and the endless benefits the nation has willingly bestowed on other nations around the world.
I therefore nominate Dr. Victor Davis Hanson to pick up the ruins left by Barack Hussein Obama and do his best to restore some sanity in a nation of people, seemingly, gone mad as they seek their fair share of Obama’s redistribution of wealth.
I think today – and I admit to not having looked it up online (to read in English) very often – you’ll find that post-Soviet Pravda often makes more sense and has better in-your-face analyses than the NYTimes! They delight in writing in a distinctly non-PC style, although, of course, they pull their punches when it comes to studly Putin…
Right you are, Joy.
I’ve visited Al-Jazeera’s website a few times, and found their English-language reporting at least, to be better composed and notably more objective than most so-called Mainstream U.S. news sources.
Well, look how they’re all circling the drain… All three of the networks last week pulled in ONLY 16 percent of U.S. viewers, way behind all the cable channels. And there isn’t a newspaper for a major market that hasn’t been laying off a substantial fraction of its staff EVERY YEAR for the last decade. The reason is that the public have finally realized those idiots have been lying and distorting the stories to suit their own perverted agenda.
Remember when Eason Jordan – head of CNN’s News department – made his big confession in a letter to the New York Times back in 2003? That was the tip of the iceberg. Then there was Dan Rather’s pathetic attempt to fob off those “memos” that were instantly recognizable as having been produced using Microsoft Word default settings that didn’t exist until a quarter century after they were purported to have been written.
How long before the U.S. public has had enough of these lies and chuckleheaded cheats?
On further reflection it occurs to me that there are few professions or jobs that have such an impact when the job is done poorly or in the media’s case, with an agenda. If I do my job poorly few are affected other than my family – if I do it poorly enough. If a doctor does his job badly his patient and their immediate family suffers but no others. Same with lawyers or any of most of the vocations I can think of. When journalists do their jobs poorly or with malice entire nations can suffer. They suffer by making poor voting decisions based on manipulated/distorted information. Shame on the journalistic profession. Report the news. If you want to change the world or voice your opinion, quit your job and run for office.
Good point. But it’s important to remember the popular press and the political parties arrived simultaneously and not by accident. The Press has always been a party organ. It is only recently we have begun to imagine and demand an objective factual press. It’s a good thing we do and it is possible though difficult.
I attribute the lack of real investigation into BHO to the vanity of reporters and the nature of the newspaper industry. The Press has a story, then it gets the facts (“You write the story, I’ll supply the war”). “America elects first black president” was the preordained headline because it would be a sellout edition and advertisers would be happy. Any facts not fitting in with the story didn’t make it through the screening process. Reporters flatter themselves with the appearance of their “humanity.” Mirror mirror on the wall, who’s the greatest over-compensating racist of them all? (That’s what we campus radicals would call liberals – yes – I was one of them). “Some of my best friends are black” was how such types talked. Now you just substitute the word “friends” with the word “presidents.”
vb is right above: such “outreach” to Muslims is profoundly misguided and much more likely to be taken as an insult. It was condescending. I don’t think I’ve heard much from BHO that isn’t. “John McCain is right” included.
The Muslim Worlds Greatest contribution to math would be the algorithm originally used to reach the mathematical conclusion: 27 Virgins.
Their greatest contribution to engineering would have to be the I.E.D. (Improvised Explosive Devise)
Oh, they contributed a lot more to mathematics and science – about a thousand years ago. Lately…not so much.
This is one issue I have with this supposed program of NASA’s. We shouldn’t be encouraging them to obsess over the glory days of the Caliphate. We should be dragging them, kicking and screaming as the expression goes, into the Present – to make NEW contributions, not feel pride about their ancient ones. If that’s what this lame-speaking NASA head meant, fine. Otherwise, as previous commenters have said, he’s just condescending to them and preventing them from making progress.
It is fascinating that we’ve hand raised a generation of Affirmative Action idiots. Over-praised, indoctrinated and completely untested…
Then they’re hoisted into leadership positions and find they have no ability whatsoever.
When I was a young child my Mother read a series of novels themed on life in early Eqypt. The author was Mika Waltari. The main character was named Sinue (?) and was a physician. I read them too,and they formed my understanding of life in those times. In your opinion, how accurate was this characterization ? My recollections are between 50 and 60 years old. Have any fundamentals changed so much that my picture of life in those times is now very skewed?
Sam W
I read Mika Waltari’s novels in high school-I remember them as highly romanticized and dealing with the time of the Pharaohs. (One movie version starred Victor Mature.) You might get more insight into more modern times from Elizabeth Peters books. (She also has a much stronger sense of humor than Mr. Waltari.)
Islam wasn’t invented until long long long after the Pharaohs. And the Arabs only took over North Africa with the spread of Islam. The native peoples of North Africa are not Arabs. I haven’t read those novels, but if they took place that early, Islam was not involved.
Mika Waltari, a famous Finnish novelist, wrote a series of historical novels. The most well-known were “The Egyptian”, “The Etruscan”, and “The Roman”. They deal with individuals out of sync with their times and their gods. He also wrote several historical novels dealing with early Christianity. While not quite up to today’s historical standards, the novels were well-written, and still are worth reading.
Priebles
The first time I saw an “IED” was in South Vietnam in 1967. It was a made from a “recycled” 155mm round. Sorry, no Muslim contribution to engineering.
I cannot comment on the algorithm. You may have something there.
Kathy #4 – I noticed that too. Tom Stienstra’s excellent “California Hiking” book describes the Kaiser Peak hike as a butt kicking 5.3 mile 3,000 foot ascent to 10,320 feet.
Not for the average pampered American coach potato. Sounds like a great prelude to life in post Obama America. Not for the faint of heart. And – you’d better take your canteen!
Typical, absolutely typical, of the progressive mindset. Note, he’s not supposed to inspire Muslims to contribute to science and mathematics and all that, just to make them feel good about what their ancestors did centuries ago. why actually try to accomplish something now when you can rest on your (largely fanciful) ancient ones?
Meanwhile, there is a small country in the Middle East that does contribute to science, math, and technology, in numbers far beyond its population. Of course, it is filled with a bunch of quarrelsome, noisy people whose very existence perhaps is the reason why Muslims haven’t accomplished much in science for centuries.
Protestant sufi Muslims lay the foundations for the polymaths of the early second millenium in which Greek geometric sciences got revitalized. They precursed modern algebra, calculus, astronomy — and they were all Persians! Arabs contributed numeric script and goats.
After the Renaissance in Europe just about anything useful to life on earth got invented and developed by Europeans, many, if not most, Jewish.
Who needs to remind the goat hearders they once had Omar Khayyam?
correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t the Arabs sweep into Alexandria, and burn one of the greatest if not the greatest library in the Ancient world. they just inherited the the wisdom and knowledge of the western mind and yet haven’t done much anything with it. Even Adolf Hitler tried to activate an Arab division in the SS, but quickly deactivated them, because they didn’t fit the German mold. they had issues.
had to check and apparently Caliph Omar was the last one to burn it, first one was Julius Ceasar.
I don’t know about Caesar (it seems to me that Cleopatra VII- the famous one- might have balked at that), but Caliph Omar’s argument was that;
1. Anything in the Library that was good and proper was already in the Qu’ran, so the library was unnecessary;
2. Anything in the Library that wasn’t in the Qu’ran was haraam, so it should be destroyed as a matter of principle.
He and his successors then went on to;
1. Strip the outer limestone casings off the pyramids to provide the stonework of their own new city, Cairo;
2. Loot every Egyptian tomb they could find that hadn’t fallen victim to earlier local tomb robbers, for the gold and silver and gemstones. The gold and silver artifacts were melted down to raw metal, both for coinage and because, well, they were haraam in their original form. Gems were kept, after being prised out of their settings (haraam again);and
3. Burn any mummies they found for the same reason.
This is why, whenever I used to hear the likes of Dr. Wadi Hawass (Dept of Egyptology, Cairo U- is he still around?) claiming that things like the British Museum’s Egyptian artifact collection were a “theft” of “his people’s heritage”, I never knew whether to laugh or groan. Hawass was (is?) an Arab; “his people”, under Caliph Omar etc., spent several decades making damned sure there were no actual Egyptians left to contest their conquest. The “heritage” he prated about consisted mainly of the contents of tombs his ancestors failed to ferret out and loot- they destroyed most of what they actually found, and would have destroyed it all if they could have done so. (When Al-Mamun forced his way into the Great Pyramid, he wasn’t mainly looking at it in a scholarly way.) The fact that Hawass apparently couldn’t process this data is a good illustration of the degree of self-delusion prevalent in Islam.
As for claims that “The Arabs preserved the learning of the Greeks”, that is mostly BS. The Greek knowledge was mainly preserved by Greeks and others who could read and write in Greek, and translate it into other languages. Most of whom did so after having fled the Eastern Roman Empire when it fell to the Turks and other Islamic armies in the 8th through 14th Centuries AD. While the Arabs preserved some Greek texts, such as Ptolemy’s “Almagest”, they only did so if the data was deemed to be useful to their worldview. If you want to know how it really went down, read chapters 4 and 5 of “Connections” by James Burke (it’s still in print), paying particular attention to the material on Johann Gansfleisch (aka Johannes Gutenberg) and Aldus Manutius.
clear ether
eon
Once again: the extension of Greek geometrics was done by PERSIANS, not Arabs.
Persions= Iranians today. Muslims, but not Arabs.
Arabs contributed the facile numeric script.
But they’re all dead now.
I live in NY20. I’ve driven over a large portion of the southern part of the district, and the red Gibson signs are all over. Scott Murphy pretends to listen to the voters, but he casts as liberal as any, even more so that Gillibrand was for the district. I called to talk to the district office about health care, and once they found I was against it, I was called foolish and stupid. No effort to say that people of good will can have differing opinions. It’s a far cry from when this was Gerry Solomon’s district.
Like most people (I am sure) I found the pronouncement of Mr. Bolden one of those jaw-dropping moments that are simply beyond parody. Let me get this straight. NASA will no longer be putting manned spacecraft into space and will getting out of the space exploration business. How the h__l can we continue to justify funding the damn agency? If all we want is an outreach project to the Islamic world to make them feel better about themselves, I am sure we can do it a lot cheaper through the existing organs of state propaganda.
This is one of those absolutely crazy moments that defy description. We are about to throw one of America’s greatest achievements, the opening up of genuine space exploration, on the ash heap of history in favor of PC drivel intended to make our enemies “like us.” Are we really that far gone?
For those of you still insisting Obama is a bright fellow who is just a bit misguided, think about NASA for a couple of days.
Not bright. Not misguided.
Dumb as a post. Evil to the bone.
After NASA figures out what planet Islam is on, maybe they should plan a manned mission there. I suggest the pool from which the team will be selected should convert to one or more sects of Islam, (depending on whether they plan to go to shia Iran, or sunni Arabia, or maybe salafi Bosnia) because they don’t tolerate apostates, heretics, atheists or co-religionists of any other stripe.
I can save them a little time however- Islam is on planet earth, not planet Claire…
So, how do solve a problem like Islam? When it’s such a loving belief system, and they have such a loving way of shewing it?
The next time democrat party members want to base the system of the United States of America on the model state of Zimbabwe, I suggest they plan a manned expedition there. Or better yet, plan a vacation there, as you are going to want to come back…
If you would like to check on the transcript, take a look at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tB3v10hoDu4
and in particular beginning at about 1:12. I cannot, however, vouch for whether this was done by CGI or Dreamworks or some very skilled presidential enemies.
Thank you for the Link, Fred.
It is stingingly sad to see that we can only get to hear Bolden saying these things in the taped forum provided by Al-Jazeera.
I searched to find ANY major US news source, and found only reaction and commentary to the Al-Jazeera interview.
First that means our own dear Prezzie doesn’t have the nadges to directly share these goals with the U.S. public, and so must not have thought things through enough to anticipate that some damn fool might find out about the Al-Jazeera thing…
But it’s a real shame to see such a fine guy placed in such an utterly ludicrous position of having to parrot the idiocy of this bumbling idiot for a pres.
Bolden is a former Astronaut, Marine Corps combat pilot and test pilot, US Naval Academy class of 1968. You gotta read his biography to appreciate how much he brings to the job, and see what a tragedy it is that the current occupant of the oval office is such a disastrous loon to be pissing away such talent.
Lord, hear our prayer.
I just assumed that the administration has concluded that the muslim world is in orbit around tau ceti.
P.S….better still, pay for that expedition to the grand state of Zimbabwe with your own money and make it a one way trip and stay there.
Dr Hansen,
This is a hit out of the park – I’ve been reading you over the last few years and I’ve noticed an extra edge with each essay. I hope that this is truly a tipping point – I can’t believe that a retired general (Marine, no less!) would utter those words….I just read something on the original mission statement of the Marines – simple, easily measurable, easily understandable. Even accounting for this mis-application of ideological dogma in an area it doesn’t belong, I would hope that a former Marine would strive for simplicity – you can’t measure the ‘good will of the Muslims!’
I frankly have stopped listening to the mainstream media and am counting the days to Nov 2010 to put in a check to this lunatic fringe and then Nov 2012 to kick their sorry a$$es out of power. If ever a firing were justified and needed, this executive and legislative branch are it. I pray that other Americans see that as well.
This is vintage Dr. Hanson (with a little bit of Mark Steyn thrown in for cutting humor..)!! I’m posting this to my Facebook Wall and let others see what’s what in the world. Some posters have made the same observation as Hanson: Namely, our lapdog media who, for some besotted reason, have cast intelligence, curiosity and skepticism overboard as they follow this Marxist regime! Disgusting doesn’t even begin to describe how millions of Americans are feeling about this Imposter-in-Chief! I have now gone on record – particularly after DOJ filed an UNCONSTITUTIONAL lawsuit against a sovereign state (AZ) – of declaring that a (so far, bloodless) coup d’etat has taken place in broad daylight and before our very eyes. The question is, what are we doing about it – and can we succeed?
Frankly, I have stopped giving myself migraines trying to figure out Obama’s irrational policies and actions. No man who has advocated and implemented such irrational, policies, domestic or foreign — designed to cripple the country economically, nationalize as much of it as possible, and suck up to dictators and tyrants and their ideologies, as well — does it out of executive inexperience, naïveté, or ignorance. The man hates this country and is doing his anti-Constitutional best to emasculate it. Taking into account his communist upbringing (mother, father, grandparents, mentor, and unaccounted for college tuition, “community service” career in Chicago, etc.) it should not by beyond credibility to suspect that he is a true “Manchurian” candidate, the ultimate sleeper agent under someone or some other nation’s control. He is a yes-man to Putin, a pal and deferential lickspittle of Chavez, the Saudis, and other unsavory creatures. Churchill was anti-communist, so he got rid of his bust. Muslims hate America, so he loves them. Obama, his cabinet, and all his federal appointments, including Kagan and Sotomayer, are all raving collectivists with resumés so communist/socialist/fascist that it’s a wonder we’re not all standing in food rationing lines by now. But, that will come, if he isn’t outed. People, stop trying to figure him out, stop trying to fit pieces into the puzzle. The man means us no good.
What is your prescription for action?
It’s a shame for someone like Charles Bowden to sell his soul for the NASA job. Either that, or he accepted it and blabs nonsense like this to reveal the level of insanity that has been reached in the administration. The list of “resets” that this administration has engaged in over 18 months is staggering, not to mention the roster Obama has comprised his “team” of.
That said, I have to give a hat tip to poster #9 mikemcdaniel for the most concise description of Obama’s rise that I’ve ever read:
“In winning the presidency, he’s like the wildly barking dog who finally caught the car, but has no idea what to do beyond continue barking.”
He ought to submit that remark to O’Reilly in response to an appropriate commentary. It’s certainly “pithy” enough. Well done, sir!
Perhaps the General misunderstood the meaning of NASA and thought it meant “Need Allah to Save America”.
Modern conservatives are both totally mean spirited and nuts.
Classic liberal.
Don’t deal with anything said, just throw out insults and use propaganda sites as a reference.
OK. I read your story – but what is your point? It seems inconclusive and certainly does not support your “mean spirited” comment.
Your evaluation is…interesting, but it appears unsupported by the article you cite.
An organization cannot have many objectives and still serve all of them well. If NASA is to achieve and maintain an American presence in space, it cannot simultaneously run a Meals on Wheels program or offer mah-jongg lessons to elderly Scientologists. And so it is also with “Muslim outreach,” no matter how you or Barack Hussein Obama feel about Muslims.
Modern “progressives” are both totally mean spirited and nuts. Just look at anything the Executive branch is doing daily.
What the hell was that? Something that passes for an argument in the progressive camp these days? It’s one thing to spew juvenile insults (and nothing else) but Good Lord, the term “mean-spirited” is so played out. If you have to act like a nine-year old at least be a little creative about it.
BC, surely you’re jesting just to stir us up? Have you seen the myriad of videos in recent years showing the racial hatred of Whites? If the King Samir Shabazz “kill cracker babies” video didn’t wake you up (only happened once, much ado about nothing, right?), you must surely have seen the videos of Rev. Wright, Van Jones, the SEIU at a tea party, and the Hispaic Prof. What’s-His-Name from Los Angeles, to name a few. Put 2 and 2 together: there has been a 40+ years long campaign among liberals to (1) spread White Guilt to make us defenseless and (2) make it OK to hate Whites because we think we deserve it and are too guilty to protest it. Not this girl though. It’s OK to be proud of being White too. I am enormously proud of my White ancestors who founded this nation; I am sick and tired of minorities depicting myself and my White male sons as white devils who need to be killed; and I’m not going to take it any more. White Equality (NOT Supremacy–EQUALITY).
Highly informative, BC. What else do you know? Sheesh.
Oh, dear. Ad-hominems in the first and only sentence. You lost your argument before you even got started. Please come back when you’ve something sensible to offer.
Maybe you guys don’t understand what “mean spirited” or “nuts” mean anymore. Here’s another example for what it’s worth.
“BC,” your user name is passè and politically incorrect. It refers to “Before Christ,” so, as a good liberal, you wanted to change it to “BCE” (Before the Common Era).
You’re welcome.
Wasn’t NASA’s budget voted on by Congress? Was there any money in the budget for Muslim feel good propaganda? Why isn’t Congress voting on a Bill to correct this misuse of tax payer’s money? Remember in November,
VDH, perhaps these days we are best served reading between the lines, under the lines, behind the lines…because like a small bird headed straight for a window pane, nothing is at it appears.
Maybe, just maybe…VDH, our wanting to make Muslim’s “feel good” about what we are putting into the vast regions of space, is really a coded message to someone who can read those tea leaves and “feel bad” about the signals we intend to send.
Hmmm. Who might that be?
We might want to take a peek at Robert Malley and his history…and ask him. Or Rashid Khalidi. Or Jeremiah Wright. Or Louis Farrakhan. William Ayers have an insight, do you think? Brzezinski and his corrupt peanut farming puppeteer could give us a few close, I imagine.
We might be able to get Octavia Nasr to report on the “good feelings” one gets from this administration, I hear she is available to expound on the subject, having departed from CNN’s Mideast desk.
All the glorious things we might achieve in space, to serve and protect the interests of those we care about most deeply…or not. When you think about, it’s almost worthy of a deep bow. Very deep.
I think I’m in George Orwell’s dream. The problem of waking every morning to the latest outrageous statement from the POTUS, or one of his appointees, is that over time, one gets conditioned to the increasing unreality.
Two years ago the idea of NASA’s prime directive being to make nice with the Muslims would have been considered insane by most Americans. Today we hardly wince.
Remember the frog in the boiling water.
Excellent column. Yes, what we have is a pathological narcissist as leader, who has surrounded himself..er..Himself..with sycophants.
Mike McDaniel’s outline of Obama is correct;
“His entire life, only two things have been required of him, the charisma of the con man/hustler, and closely related, a certain way with rhetoric. Combine this with the fervor of the statist/socialist/communist true believer, and a debilitating, destructive narcissism of a kind seldom seen outside the lesser mental institutions”…and a ‘wandering and transient attention’.. And because of his narcissism and towering arrogance, he hires only those who, if not smaller than himself, will at least never challenge him.”
Excellent description. My only quibble would be to challenge the view that Obama is a ‘true believer’ of the communist/statist/socialist ideology. Obama lacks intellectual curiosity and is ignorant of history and theory. As a pathological narcissist, his only focus is on Himself and his need to control other people. When he moved into politics, then the socialists were the obvious political home for him. That’s because statism and socialism remove power from other individuals and authorize power only in the government and its minions. With Obama’s need to control others – socialism is his obvious political home. He’s not intellectually committed to it; he’s psychologically committed to it.
A serious problem is that Americans have trouble realizing that their president is not simply a hustler, a con-man, an overwheening narcissist who thinks that all that he has to do is charm and talk and the world will fall at his feet, problems will disappear and the ‘oceans will cease to rise’..etc. Obama is psychologically pathological. In lesser roles, as a non-practicing lawyer, as a removed-from-results community organizer, even as a ‘present’ Senator, his effects on America were local and minimal.
But America voted him in as President, in a fit of exhaustion from war and turmoil, believing in Obama as all about ‘change and hope’ and the almost magical disappearance of political, racial, ethnic and other polarities. And, he was black, ..and Obama ran on race. Guilt was expunged in one small vote.
Put someone like that in power, and the dementic needs of a malignant personality move beyond control. Obama, as he keeps reminding everyone, is The President. He can do, as he declares, what he wants. And what he wants, in an ever-increasing need, is to control people.
His tactics to do that are to misinform you; Obama’s rhetoric is filled with lies and misinformation; what is said one day to one audience is contradicted to another audience the next day. The agenda is not truth but control. Disbelieve or dissent, and he’ll attack you as misinterpreting him or even, trapped in your political or ethnic or racial bias. We saw that in his tales of doctors cutting off limbs, his false statistics of the number of uninsured, his false data on jobs saved, on unemployment stats and so on.
Then there’s his giant tactic of emotional manipulation. Obama controls by his threat of If you don’t do this, THEN, the apocalypse will be the result. That’s his ‘pass this stimulus or the economy will collapse’. Pass this health or…and so on.
Dissent is not simply unwelcome to Obama but he sees it as an act of aggression against him. You are expected to do what he says only based on your faith in Him. Pass the stimulus without reading or debate; pass health care without reading or debate. Backroom deals are fine – because the Power to control is all that matters.
If you move outside of his capacity to control you, then, for Obama, you simply cease to exist. He did nothing for the demonstrators for democracy in Iran, because..for one thing..they were demonstrating for democracy rather than Obama. And he couldn’t control them. The oil spill? He extorted money from BP..and has turned his back on it.
Arizona? Obama’s need is to control the hispanic vote. He’s not interested in America or its security. He’s interested only in controlling people…to adulate and follow him. Remeber his ‘gift’ to Britains’s Queen? An ipod with his speeches on it. Only a malignant narcissist would do such a thing.
His need to crush the strong, to reduce the strong is obvious in his constant denigration of America, his contempt for ‘those who are wealthy’, his rejection of individual thought and freedom, his denigration of strong western allies – Britain, France..and Israel.
I don’t think Americans are ready to acknowledge how pathological and dangerous this man is. It isn’t merely that he’s unsuited to being a leader – and a quick look at his background shows that he’s never made any decisions for which he is accountable. It’s his psychological pathology which requires that he reject debate, dissent, surround himself with sycophants, immerse himself into a political mode that controls people…and, always, always, seek to reduce, confine, crush..individuals and the strong..by removing individual freedoms, entrepreneurship, wealth and condemn their values.
Dear ETAB:
Well said, and I entirely agree that Obama’s ultimate motivation is to control others, indeed, to control everyone. However, may I offer just a few additional points?
Obama’s mentors, influences, and a great many of those he chooses to appoint are, overtly or covertly, Marxists/socialists/statists. Who voluntarily associates with, even befriends, people who actually think highly of Mao Tse Tung (for just one example), arguably the greatest mass murderer in history, if they do not share their appreciation for Mao’s methods and results?
The impulse for control can manifest itself in many ways. Obama could choose, for example, to build bipartisan coalitions in the Congress for his initiatives, to work for constitutional amendments, to achieve power and control through the democratic process, but that takes time, and Mr. Obama is in a hurry. Virtually every initiative he has pursued, every bit of power and control he has seized has been accomplished by taking methods and goals from the pages of the marxist/socialist playbook, which is by its very nature, anti-democratic and anti-American. The evidence that Obama is dedicated to democracy and American exceptionalism is very small indeed, perhaps non existent. The evidence that he is a statist/socialist/communist is apparent in virtually everything he has done, everything he has said and everything he claims to want to do (those things are promises we can count on this particular politician to try to keep).
Many shrink from calling Obama what he clearly is, which plays into his rhetorical hands. One of the primary aspects of marxist propaganda is the renaming, the rebranding of the obscene, the destructive, the evil with calming, soothing, minimally plausible terms. Do not Obama and his hirelings routinely and constantly do this?
Recall the old saw: communists are socialists in a hurry. The point is that communists are willing to murder any and everyone in their way while socialists are a bit more squeamish. We’re still at the squeamish stage, but history makes clear that the path to communism is always open and inviting, particularly when socialists are allowed, through soaring rhetoric, to define the very terms of discourse and debate.
Mike – I agree with your assessment of the ‘Backroom Gang’ (BRG) as I call them, who surround and effectively ‘operate’ Obama in his political agenda. They are hardcore marxist-socialists and their agenda is to restructure the US into a statist-marxist system. With them in control, of course.
The reason I still reject calling Obama a socialist or marxist is because I feel that his actions are not based on any political or social ideology that he holds as ‘best for mankind’ but on psychology. His psychological need is to control others and being put in the role of President has exponentially increased his need..to control more people, and crush individualism and freedom.
However, as I said, when he moved into the political arena, he would naturally gravitate to the socialist ideologues for their agenda is the establishment of an Authoritarian Rule that controls others and demolishes individual freedom. But he himself is intellectually empty.
There is no way that Obama would go through a democratic process to achieve the agenda of the socialist BRG. That would be an act that acknowledges the equality of others with him – and as he reminded the Republicans in the Health Care debate: “I’m the President’…as he cut off their comments, data bases and criticisms. Obama cannot acknowledge equality of others with him; he therefore rejects democracy – as he rejected debate on the stimulus, on health care and insisted that His Bills be passed solely on Faith-in-Obama.
I agree with you that many Americans are hesitant to identity Obama’s socialist agenda…[again, I'm saying it's the BRG who are the socialist ideologues; it's Obama who is the psychological socialist.] They are, more and more, acknowledging that the bills and plans are socialist. But, they are hesitant to criticize Obama.
I think there are a number of reasons for this. First, Obama ran and continues to run, on race. Psychologically, any questions, debate, and dissent is seen by him as an open act of aggression against him, and he is only too ready to claim that your stance is due to your bias: political, racist or whatever.
Then, for the general electorate to admit to the massive political error of voting in a pathological and corrupt individual as president – that’s hard to acknowledge. It essentially says: ‘I’m a fool’.
Then, Obama delegates everything to others. He surrounds himself with people who will ‘take the fall’ for him. He himself, deals only in rhetoric – vapid, empty, with terms that change from day to day. It is hard to pin down someone who lives in such a virtual, such a fictional realm as does Obama. Obama makes up his fictional reality and slithers through it as readily as any dream.
How does one confront and deal with someone who lives within a virtual reality, who is pathologically obsessed with the need to destroy – and I use that word with intent – all individual freedom? The freedom to think, debate, choose; the freedom to generate wealth (which Obama chastizes as ‘greed’); the freedom to be ‘first and foremost’ (which Obama refuses to recognize). How does one deal with such a pathology?
I think that one has to destroy such a power from the ‘outside..in’. That is, to focus only on Obama is impossible. He will, in his virtual world, deny your existence, reject your words, declare you a racist, ask his minions to reject you (as he tried to have the Press reject FOX news). Above all, you will literally cease to exist for him and he’ll turn to his sycophants. He cannot accept dissent and its loss of control.
Therefore, you have to remove his powers. Vote in a new Congress that kicks out the Democrats. Obama has tried to reject Congress already – when he insisted that they pass his stimulus and health care without reading or debate. That’s a direct contempt for the Power of the People. But, it’s still a constitutional reality. Vote in a new Congress.
Use blogs, the internet, the media, Town Halls..to voice your opposition to his agenda. This will affect the Democrats in Congress.
IF, IF, the Republicans gain control of Congress, it’s possible that Obama, in his need to control, will do something egregious that he can be impeached. Certainly, he wouldn’t run in 2012.
Dear EATB:
Again, well said. I agree that a significant portion of Obama’s motivation would appear to be psychopathological. However, surely at least some of his motivation comes from the beliefs imprinted from a lifetime immersed in Marxist theory and action? There is value in considering the motivations of those who would rule us, the better to know the enemy, so to speak. However, when a President nationalizes 2/3 of the domestic auto industry, for example, ignoring the legal rights of shareholders and in general spitting on the Constitution, acting like a Latin American dictator, when he states his intention to see that “energy prices will necessarily skyrocket,” when he sues a state for daring to enforce federal law, does it much matter whether he was 65% motivated by psychopathology or 73% by unthinking, slavish devotion to marxist philosophy? The results–to say nothing of his intentions–place Obama and his supporters solidly on the side of historic Marxist theory and practice.
ETAB:
Your observations sound kind of like we may be in the area of High Crimes and Misdemeanors. Do you know how a concerned citizen could be heard by the “Republicans” in asking for impeachment hearings to be called for?
ETAB and mikemcdaniel:
Excellent analyses, but I still have one big scary 3rd theory/question I hesitate to present because it is so “unthinkable”: Is it as simple as Obama is just pursuing Muslim objectives? Whoa–don’t stop reading yet. Lightning bolts won’t hit you for considering this thought. When Obama changed his name back from Barry S. to BHO, he probably spent a lot of time deciding about the Hussein part. Spend a few minutes pondering what that might allow us to concude. to me, it clearly shows where his head was/is; his own earlier speeches and writings emphasize his loyalty to Islam. I have been trying to divine his End Game and have run the gamut from narcissism, Communism, New World Order, and Muslim world domination of infidels, and I keep remembering the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. It is impossibole to believe that one president could be so stupid as to make this many bone-headed, ass-backwards decisions. His goal is NOT to restore America, but to destroy its capitalist system and present the U.S. on a platter to our enemies.
ETAB and mikemcdaniel:
Excellent analyses, but I still have one big scary 3rd theory/question I hesitate to present because it is so “unthinkable”: Is it as simple as Obama is just pursuing Muslim objectives? Whoa–don’t stop reading yet. Lightning bolts won’t hit you for considering this thought. When Obama changed his name back from Barry S. to BHO, he probably spent a lot of time dithering about the Hussein part. Please spend a few minutes pondering what that might allow us to concude. To me, it clearly shows his loyalty to his Muslim roots, as do his own earlier speeches and writings. I have been trying to divine his End Game and have run the gamut from Narcissism, Communism, New World Order, and Muslim world domination of infidels; I keep remembering the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. It is impossible to believe that one president could be so stupid as to make this many bone-headed, ass-backwards decisions. His goal is NOT to re-strengthen America, but rather to destroy its capitalist system and present America on a platter to our enemies.
Dear PTBW:
Good questions indeed. I feel as though I’m descending into the morass of neophyte psychoanalysis, but here goes. Remembering that Obama knows little (what we know about his time in higher education would seem to indicate that he was, at best, a remarkably intellectually disengaged student and at worst, was passed along and passed for political/diversity reasons), but has been steeped in Marxist theory and sensibilities, combined with a variety of anti-American, anti-democratic ideologies, his entire life, one might be tempted to believe that he has a master plan to utterly destroy America. I suspect it’s much more simple, and much more pathetic.
Any warm, fuzzy feelings he has toward muslims come, I suspect, less form his upbringing in muslim societies and more from his anti-American, anti-western, anti-white sensibilities than from a doctrinaire adherence to Islamic principles and beliefs. He gravitates toward any who dislike America and Americans, and this is hardly a well considered, deeply centered system of belief, but more, reactionary radicalism. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, and all that. His thinking, such as it is, is in large part stuck in the mindless, pop radicalism of the 60′s. Add in a general adherence to the Cloward-Piven strategy that underlies–consciously or subconsciously–much of liberal thinking and action (destroy the functions of government to create demand for a complete authoritarian takeover) as expressed by the cynical and crude Rahm Emmanuel formulation of never letting a crisis go to waste. What many forget is that operant in this strategy is not merely taking advantage of collapse and misfortune, but actually causing collapse and misfortune–ruining entire industries, fortunes, lives, economies, nations–in the service of establishing a global worker’s paradise ruled by our betters.
Does Obama intend to deliver America on a platter to her enemies as a conscious, conspiratorial, long term strategy? Doubtful. He no doubt believes that in the new world order, he will rule as every nation acknowledges his majesty and glory. However, the path he walks and the future he envisions and is trying to make manifest may well accomplish the same thing through incompetence, stupidity, arrogance, racism and juvenile petulance. Remember above all that those on the left talk a great game about supporting “the people” (AKA the preferred victim group(s) and craven political supporters of the moment), but care nothing at all for individuals, for if individuals have inherent rights enforceable against the state, if they are truly free men, the left cannot ever truly succeed. This, Obama surely gets.
Dear ETAB:
Quoting your excellent reply,
I have contended that the various “isms” – fascism, communism, socialism, ‘communitarianism’ and so forth – that provide the framework for totalitarian regimes are merely the window dressing – and perhaps a willful misdirection away from the truth – for one of the more base failures of human nature: the exercise of the will to power. I can find little else that can account for the the horror, atrocity and mass murder inflicted by recent history’s monsters. Little else can make sense of all the killing performed by governments against their own civilian populations. I have a modest essay on the subject published here that now promises to turn into a book.
Worse – far worse – I believe that we are now ruled by monsters who are animated by the same ideas, the same impulses, the same will to power responsible for the death of millions. 0bama? A malignant narcissist afflicted by delusions of grandeur and utopia. A nasty little popinjay sock puppet for his masters. It’s the monsters behind him that should all give us pause.
You can see it. mikemcdaniel can see it. Francis Porretto gets it. VDH knows, I think – though I don’t presume to answer for him. more of us are beginning to acknowledge the horror the lurks behind the empty facade that is 0bama. I used to think of Washington DC as something out of a Star Wars bar scene. Now it appears more and more to be a chapter out an H.P. Lovecraft novel.
That NASA’s Bolden is operating under a “foremost” priority of outreach to involve the Muslim world may be shocking, but it has precedent in NASA itself. How else can one explain that during Reagan/Bush, a Saudi prince was made an “astronaut” and flew on the Shuttle after only a perfunctory few months of training? The suck-up to the Arab and Muslim world is not new; it’s just more blatant.
Don’t be surprised. You are being forewarned. Announcing…..MUSLIM HISTORY MONTH!
Reported in the WSJ on June 27, in an article entitled,
” New Space Policy Calls for Global Cooperation ”
” The Obama administration as early as Monday is expected to call for significantly greater international cooperation than ever before in outer space, covering a wide range of civilian and national-security programs.
The new policy, according to industry and government officials familiar with the details, also endorses the pursuit of verifiable arms-control proposals for space. And it envisions stepped-up U.S. government efforts to bolster domestic rocket and satellite manufacturers, making them more economically viable and competitive overseas.
The principles, according to these officials, reflect President Barack Obama’s desire to have Washington and various foreign governments increasingly share funding and expertise on major projects, while negotiating conflicts if possible and exchanging more data about orbiting debris and other hazards in space.
The policy paper’s call for more international cooperation was reported by Space News, an industry publication.
The policy paper doesn’t specifically spell out which countries would be invited to take part, but the intent is to open participation to allies and other established space powers, such as China and Russia, and emerging powers including India and Brazil, according to the officials.
Breaking sharply from earlier White House policies that relied largely on all-U.S. solutions, the latest document foresees international ventures spanning everything from environmental and other types of earth-observation satellites to critical space-based navigation systems that were previously considered off-limits to foreign partnerships. ”
Notice what is going on. The administrations new policy endorses the pursuit of this, and the desire to do that, and shares with ” world community “.
Opening the books on Americas most profound technologies for what? A kumbaya moment?
And that list of countries missing from public scrutiny? Guesses anyone?
These technologies are the fruit of taxpayer monies and efforts by American industrial companies that are vital to our global strength and security. The stage has been set for squandering our greatest secrets in propulsion, metallurgy, avionics, communications, laser technology, encryption, high resolution photography, etc. The technological edge that America has gained through massive financial investment, decades of research and the cost of hundreds of human lives will now be shared with a world that is hostile to our country.
The knowledge gained from Americas space program has made us stronger in every field of human endeavor. For America to give up this edge in a world rife with economic and military challenges make no sense, unless the goal is to weaken America not to strengthen her.
Announced by the White House on June 22nd , the appointment of Samar Ali , a Muslim attorney who specializes in Shariah-compliant transactions, as a new White House Fellow . She is an associate with the law firm Hogan Lovells – a firm that claims to have advised on more than 200 Islamic finance transactions with an aggregate deal value in excess of $40 billion. As you know White House fellows spend a year as full-time, paid assistants to senior White House staff, the Vice President , Cabinet secretaries and senior administration officials.
In my opinion the appointment of Samar Ali was done in order to facilitate the sale of additional American industrial companies that are vital to our global strength and security, to Saudi Arabia.
My response is this humorous cartoon showing Obama and his choice of “Good vs Evil” at http://drawfortruth.wordpress.com/2010/05/01/good-v-evil/
What really surprises me is that he was able to put into place so many high ranking officials that go along with his anti-American thinking.
Another good cartoon is “The Thin-Skinned President” at http://drawfortruth.wordpress.com/2010/07/08/thin-skinned/
Bolden may have some difficulty in fulfilling this new mission. Muslims and science don’t get along very well.
In mainstream Sunni Islam, everything that happens is the “will of Allah”. Believing in Natural Laws or cause and effect, is enough to put one beyond the pale.
In “Reliance of the traveler”, a 1991 mainstream manual of Islamic jurisprudence, supported by the Al-Azhar University in Cairo, called a “Beacon of Islamic Learning” by Obama when he gave his speech there, we find a list of “Unlawful Knowledge”. This list is:
(1) learning sorcery (dis: p3), since according to the most reliable position, it is unlawful, as the vast majority of scholars have decisively stated:
(2) philosophy (dis:w10);
(3) magic (Sha`badha, meaning sleight of hand, etc.);
(4) astrology (dis:p41);
(5) the sciences of the materialists (dis:w11).
(6) and anything that is a means to create doubts (n: in eternal truths), Such things vary in their degree of unlawfulness.
The “Science of the materialists” means, according to the commentary of Reliance of the Traveler, the “conviction of materialists that things in themselves or by their own nature have a causal influence independent of the will of Allah. To believe this is unbelief that puts one beyond the pale of Islam.”
In other words, the idea of cause-and-effect, which science is based upon, is condemned. The true cause of everything is the will of Allah. Belief in anything else is apostasy.
This is quite a contrast to the Jewish and Christian notions of Natural Laws of God, which can be studied and understood.
Thus it is rare indeed to see any kind of science or new R&D coming out of Muslim lands. Of course, they are certainly willing to take existing technology and modify it, as in Iran’s missile and nuclear program.
The law becomes malleable while the rhetoric reflects the higher calling of social justice.
That is the essence of the Bill Ayers’ style revolutionary philosophy.
The revolutionaries set the parameters of what constitutes “justice” and, by their lights, can do anything at all, including but not limited to ignore law, in service to their vision. Their noble (cough) end justifies any means at all, including, but not limited to applying existing law selectively as in the NBPP case.
It is the motivation behind cowardly Eric Holder’s dismissal of that case, complete with letting Shabazz off the hook, a guy who calls for the murder of “crackers” (aka, People of PalloUr) and their babies.
The machinery of the federal government functioning in service to brain dead lunatics, I feel better already.
All those people you name, from Napolitano to Chu through the formerly respectable Bolden et al. (throw in John Brennan, even Jim Jones as ventriloquist dummies & the new recess appointee to head up Medicare/Medicaid who advocates for medicine to become a mechanism of “redistributive change”…) must be complete and utter cowards to serve an administration where they are willing to ape and promulgate such nonsense.
Or profoundly stupid, take your pick.
Chris Gibson…
Your endorsement is good enough for me.
A dearth of statesmen and stateswomen is what the US of A is suffering from. The situation is becoming desperate.
To support his world view, the president has to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to set in, to kind of catapult the propaganda. You got a problem with that?
Only the notion that anything this president has said has any relationship to reality.
You are in good company in that regard.
I have no problem at all with it. Barack Hussein Obama consistently treats the American people like a gaggle of drooling idiots:
– He edits history,
– He dismisses his prior promises,
– He appoints obviously unfit persons to high posts,
– He impugns the motives of legislators who disagree with him,
– He twists the missions of major Cabinet departments and their sub-departments,
– He shirks his responsibilities as chief executive (“he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed” — U.S. Constitution, Article II),
…and he expects us to swallow all of it uncritically. That guarantees that eventually, only idiots will listen to him.
If you, skeeziks — say, why no capital letter? Never learned how to “shift” for yourself? — would like to do Obama a great service, you should clue him in that the rest of the country is quickly becoming inured to his rhetoric and his assaults on his political adversaries. The Won surrounds himself so completely with yes-men and the like-minded that he’ll never hear that from them, though every opinion survey taken for more than a year makes it as plain as print. But then, that thick ring of yes-men and like-minded probably wouldn’t let you through, anyway; if any hint of the realities beyond their fact-proof screen were to reach Obama, it would upset their rice bowls.
By the way, thanks for all the comic relief you’ve provided these past few months.
Everything on your list can be said of every Republican president. What’s your point? Here’s the difference between you and me, just so you know . . . I know what I’ve seen and heard and I think accordingly. You just blather.
“just so you know . . . I know what I’ve seen and heard and I think accordingly. You just blather.”
call a “participant” award:
http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/06/23/confirmation-bias/
Oh, do please grace us with your intellect: just what exactly are these great ‘truths’ to which you allude?
We eagerly await your answer.
Yes.
The Ministries of Truth Weighs In. sleazits…Indeed. Perfect timing. You’re such a great illustration of a Modern Liberal twisting and turning. At least Mr. President and friends are not alone.
“…for the truth to set in…”
Empty Words of Wisdom from the Modern Liberal Minister of Truth. How poignant. The Kick Me sign nailed to your ass is very becoming on such a truth teller. Boom! Gentle persuasion!
Are you serious? Really now.
6. skeeziks.
“See, the truth shall set you free.”
Feb 19, 2010 – 7:19 am
What do know about truth The Principal Liar sleazits Persons Galore? Does being a Liar “support” your Cesspoolview? Well, what else.
“You got a problem with…” what? The truth maybe?
Who will you be tomorrow, Liar?
30. skeeziks
“Hail Rush. Go Sarah!”
June 21, 2010 – 9:05 am
233. Now and Then:
“Hail Rush. Go Sarah!”
Dec 5, 2009 – 7:03 am
15. Lady Di
Hail Rush. Go Sarah! ”
June 3, 2010 – 1:06 pm
Why don’t you kick in a few of the “you peoples” so your many personalities don’t feel left out? Where the hell is the rest of the cast? The Funhouse mirror not so funny anymore? Trapped by reflections?
35. skeeziks:
“You people…”
Jan 30, 2010 – 12:55 pm
30. skeeziks:
“You people need to raise your standards.”
Feb 22, 2010 – 6:24 pm
Yeah, right.
139. Principal Levine
“…you people …”
May 21, 2010 – 2:04 pm
43. oscar le grouche
“You people are hilarious”
May 5, 2010 – 12:31 pm
skeeziks
I’m sorry, can you repeat that?
July 6, 2010 – 2:13 pm
45. G Marks
“You people are hilarious.”
June 13, 2010 – 8:34 am
38. moho
“…you people… “.
Jan 8, 2010 – 5:38 pm
14. Diablo
“You people…”
April 23, 2010 – 4:48 pm
Need more? How about a “You have no standing”? That’s a good one!
Time for a new I.D? Run, hide, be mysterious. Have “Courage and Intelligence!” By all means be a Liar.
It’s all you have.
Can’t get away, can you. Exposed, kicked and so tame now. Nice job you did on yourself. All by yourself. Looking for someone to blame? Check your moral compass.
You made your cesspool. Love it or leave it.
Whatever.
This is not going to end well for Obama & all associated with him; in other words, all people will be ruined. The people will continue to push back against this totalitarian Big Brother copy.
NASA has been gutted by Clinton and Obama.
How many inept congressmen, plus one idiotic president can we fit into the cargo bay of a shuttle with a trajectory far and beyond Pluto? The shuttles are to be retired soon, would make a fitting send off..
Can’t blame Barack for reaching out to his people, poor dears. Still, I think they have enough to be proud of, in their own twisted way. After all it’s not everyone who can claim 1500 years of almost uninterrupted war, pillage, terror, and murder.
A little thing like that isn’t going to stop Barack, who is trying to make up for not closing Gitmo, that house of horrors where islamic martyrs suffer stoically.
“Groupspeak
“We could do this all day…”
Yes, we could. Ultimately this is all a spiritual battle between those that see the truth and those that are deceived. The deceived have been having their way for some time now. Question is, will it last?
A great post Mike Mc. Bravo, try and post this back at Neo Neocon.
Dear Bob:
Thank you. I used to read and enjoy that site, but discovered that most of what I submitted in terms of comments, particularly anything longer than a paragraph, somehow never made it past the moderator(s). I got the message.
‘We want to make sure your space suit collar seal fits properly, so we are going to put this meassurement device around your neck; Don’t worry, it will only take a moment, and won’t hurt a bit.’ :)
At the very least Bolden should resign for turning himself into a laughingstock.
On behalf of myself, Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Nikita Khrushchev, Hu Jintao, Kim Il-sung, Fidel Castro and other great Communists, I want to extend my appreciation to Obama and his administration. He is doing our work, what we wanted for all these years. Nikita is very very excited about the current political situation in the United States. He predicted years ago that change would come from within, in the United States. It’s hot down here in Hell, but we are all joyful, glad to see the USA headed for full blown Communism.
Mi Amigos….
I be lovin what your president is doing to your economy. He’s one of us! You’ll learn to love him, if you don’t…well…adios!
hello. the fear mongering about radical Islam swarming over America in insurmountable hordes is historical hysterics and belongs in cartoonology. this is not an effort to incite intellectual manifestations of greatness from anxious craniums, it is simply an effort of leading the world to attain more parity with our abundant developments. NASA has a new role, and it is an excellent vehicle for diplomacy, and do you not have any comprehension how much further beyond our programs are than even those tinkering in space can compete? social justice is the type of ideology that other interests enjoy making bags of money from. our economy is tanking at an unsustainable rate, but can keep tanking for quite a while. we are giving our monies to the world to help bring them to our pathetic standard of casual living, as we explore new directions for energy; and it remains essential in the minds of the leadership to maintain a military complex that extends around the world. we are leading as the new world order at the cost of economic hardship and sacrifices to our pathetic standard of living at home. these political campaigns of inflammatory radical incendiary debates only distract and misdirect attention from the citizenry so more undisclosed spending can unaccountably continue. the only spending of American tax payer dollars we will ever see on Americans, is when porkulus from bribes for health care passage come due for elections. since the Republicants are not beginning the Presidential election campaign now, (as the Demoncrats did mid-summer of that horrendously long campaign they ran): i am believing we will be seeing another four years of Oboymamma. his lieyering will put him back in office, we will still be economically struggling to support the rest of the world, and the boogeyman will be that strange vehicle blocking the sun. move on progressive reformers, spend a little tax on me.
Is there any such thing as American sovereignty anymore? You can understand the ubercapitalists ignoring national interests for the sake of greed but a national agency which was once the cornerstone of American exceptionalism reduced to nothing more than a global affirmative action program?
Did Kennedy challenge us to welcome the Soviets into the space program to make everyone feel good about themselves? Quite the contrary, he challenged us to compete with the Soviets. A peaceful but adversarial competition. By all means, invite top scientists and engineers from all around the world work with us but no need to turn NASA into a politically driven social justice program.
hello. i misunderstand what you mean by sovereignty…the integrity of “Made in America”, or America leads in this field, or what? i want to point out that although a pet project has been underfunded, the Agency is still alive. the areas of privatization, are now decades behind the research curve. the political capital of government achievements have always been cashed in, in public relations and propaganda. are you so nationalistic, you are unwilling to inspire others?
Long ago thanks to freak maneuvering in an election a President named Woodrow Wilson set up a department of public information that hired 70,000 people using taxpayer money to go places and tell people not to believe their lying eyes but instead believe Woodrow Wilson. This was so effective that the next President of his party FDR did not have the country know that he was a sick dyeing old man.
Now that Obama is going to the well he is being haunted by Orwell.
Dr, Hanson:
“What is going on here? The president is setting the tone, and a host of truth departments are his choruses.”
What is going on here is the deliberate provocation of a majority of the American population by avowed radicals embedded in it’s government, with the tacit support of legions of dupes and fellow-travellers.
Either the Alleged Hawaiian is a recruiting cyborg manufactured in the basement of Karl Rove’s RNC headquarters and programmed by Rush Limbaugh to act and speak in ways guaranteed to put the GOP into the majority for the next generation, or he is deliberately attempting to goad Americans into armed insurrection and other acts of violence so that the Left can use it to frame any future political debate with it’s time-tested and shop-worn “guilt trip” narrative.
Don’t you understand that the Alfred Murrah Federal Building bombing in Oklahoma City was 15 years ago?
They NEED another pile of corpses to scramble on top of to hurl accusations at their political “customary bogeymen”.
They NEED this. Without it, they will be cast out into the wilderness and they know it.
Do you get it, now?
Its perfectly clear to me. It’s high noon at ‘OK Corral, The Reality Series’. Grab CB’s and Ham’s as a defense against Internet blackouts. Communication is our greatest weapon. Just watch Smokey and the Bandit for inspiration ;-).
Really though, I think that if young cowardly conservatives do not get off their ass and create an urban counter to ACORN soon, the American socialist cities will descend into chaos, nonreturnable to freedom.
When the Queen of Holland supports Islam as much as Mayor Doomberg does, you know something is up.
Go Geert Go!
i agree with you the obama administration would love to see another mcviegh,but it ain’t going to happen.
targeted assasinations maybe…but no more bombs from that side of the isle.
So, Bilgeman, are you suggesting that McVeigh was in fact, already dying of cancer (or otherwise a short-timer), and was recruited to do the deed, then allow himself to be captured, then confess to being a rightwing fanatic exacting vengeance for Ruby Ridge, just so his loved ones could be supported by a secret account in the Cayman Islands????
Back then, I would’ve doubted that.
RE: Saturday’s Hike:
I’ve been training up for such since February, walking the low then high hills around Reno. We’ve had a lot of snow in this neck of the wilderness, and parts of the high country probably won’t completely melt off!
Still, I think I understand such hiking in such days. (And, I’ll be there 7 am God willing!)
First, no radio, TV or internet. Good! (Our souls are at risk, less we, at times, break off the bad news stream!)
Second, the trail offers great ruggedizing and conditioning. (Preparing us for other harder things. Ugh!)
Third, that’s how we survive “it.” (It covering a lot of territory.)
The physical endeavor fulfills the needs of the future, almost any future. (Just what we’re faced with!)
Ezekiel 14:14-20 describes what it takes to survive when a land faces massive judgment (call it nemesis or recompense or requiting or whatever!)
What does it take? Be as wise as Job, Noah or Daniel… and survive “it.”
I expect no less for you, your friends and your good audience — all sharing cogency, concern and finding calm-admidst-the-storms!
Idiocy and blindness may have caused our current crop of troubles, and calamities shall cause the blind to see, nevertheless we need be tougher than what evil this way comes, and maintain height above the fog of confusion, and finally point the way back to reason, clarity and ancient enlightenment. It’s an old but tough trail, not dissimilar to Saturday’s hike! (Hope we make it!)
Dr. Hanson,
I am surprised that you don’t understand that NASA plans to trick the Moslems, by saying they want to “make them feel good.” NASA really plans to send all of them to the moon.
Bobby
To continue my musings on the nature of Obama, my own view is that he is completely and totally amoral and unethical. These virtues, after all, require a direct acknowledgment of the equality and humanity of others and Obama is unable to do this. His need is to control and demolish others not collaborate as equals
He is a pathological liar. He lives in a virtual world which he alone authors and this world has, in effect, no direct connection with the real world – just as he himself has no direct contact with others on a one-on-one basis of equality.
That’s why Obama can ignore what he wants to ignore: terrorism, the oil spill, unemployment..because in his virtual world, these entities do not exist.
Words, for Obama, operate in his virtual world as agents that enable him to control others, not as references to any real external reality.
Then there’s his tactic of emotional manipulation, where he’ll attempt to control you and keep you subservient by his suggestions of an apocalyptic future if you reject His Will.
This reference to His Will brings to mind the notion of an Absolute Sovereign, operating outside of the constraints of the people (eg, Congress), outside of the Law (his refusal to secure the border and immigration; his refusal to prosecute electoral harassment); his rejection of the Constitution with his insistence that it’s a ‘living document’, i.e., you can take or refuse whatever you want in it.
Equally, he seems to consider that the creation of societal systems is not an act of reason and debate but an act of sovereign will. Such a notion of sovereign will rejects, of course, the people. Totally rejects them. We find this in Obama.
As an essentialist sovereign, truth and reality have no place in Obama’s agenda, just as ethics and morality..which are bound to those virtues of truth and reality…equally have no role in Obama’s world.
Dear Professor,
I’ve been reading your work for many years and I’ve just finished ‘Father Of Us All’.
Even though I had read more of your work than most people, I enjoyed how you ‘freshened up’ material from their previous publication so that it seemed new and I appreciate the lists of books to read. Even though you didn’t list him, and he’s not scholarly like some, I like Winston Groom too.
What really disturbed me was the last part where you were explicit about the advantages the Islamists have. It was depressing actually. But you do make the point clearly that weaponry and war skill is constantly evolving and the we in the west adapt better than anybody so that calmed me.
fyi- the words “…deeply flawed…” and “fraud” keep coming up with regards to Ogabe Administration, and its policies. “Taxes for thee, but not for me”, “I’m a politician/czar/commissioner”.
Dear VDH,
Excellent column, you have the most informed readers I have come across by far.
Your historical/military perspective is invaluable & very appropriate for our times.
I agree wih the reviewer who stated that the media is most responsible for the current state of affairs. I always felt sorry for those behind the “Iron Curtain” when I was younger, but our media today put Pravda to shame, by being willingly complicit.
“The truth is not in them” and it is ultimately a spiritual battle. Many good-hearted people are blinded by the media/cultural megaphone. But most disheartening are the hardcore 20% that giddily love the destruction of our freedoms, and care not what ultimately replaces our way of life. Is this not the heart of post-modern deconstructivism? Destroy first, worry about what replaces it next?
Can we take faith in any hisorical precedent or is the suicide of the West natural & unavoidable?
Well said Mike (and ETAB). I’ve always maintained that Socialism is merely a rest stop on the highway to Communism. For those that pooh-pooh that idea, and there are many, I simply ask – what do you think these Democrats will do when their socialist schemes inevitably collapse (as predicted by Margaret Thatcher in her quote about running out of other people’s money)? Do you honestly think that they’ll just say ‘Oh, never mind….I guess that was a bad idea?” Like hell they will. They certainly will not reflect on their mistakes because in their worldview there are no mistakes, only a lack of will. They will double down and openly seize everything they haven’t already taken. Sentient people will understand this. The non-sentient will get what they deserve.
I asked Sparrowhawk earlier about prescriptions for action. I read McDaniel’s post and was impressed. However, at a certain point all these virtuoso explanations and analyses become (fill in the word here). Obama can sit in the White House for six and a half years, and the riffs on message boards can grow into online versions of War and Peace.
So what action? Lawsuits? Campaigning endlessly for his opponents? Exactly what?
“Obama can sit in the White House for six and a half years…”, perhaps but it is going to be a little awkward when he is voted out in 2012.
You raise a good point…what action(s) to take? I look forward to working for candidates in the primaries and in the general election. Had a blast doing so in 2008 and can’t wait to get going again. It is a great experience to get out and encourage people to vote, even if they support other candidates. This is a great country and I look forward to meeting a few more of my “neighbors” here in flyover country.
Here’s your answer.
If we as Republicans can control even one house in congress we can deny funding to new programs. I remember when congress cut off funds for Viet Nam and I remember when my state legislature cut off funding for the buses that took inner city kids to suburban schools.
Also, when you have a majority in the house or senate you can investigate people in the administration…even impeach. What a lovely thought! The dems have killed inquiries into the Walpin firing and the new black panther outrage.
Personally and today…you can dig deep…’till it hurts…and send the check to your favorite republican and search on right wing sites like this for republican candidates who need help to win. One race at a time…one seat at a time.
That’s democracy.
‘What, then, must one do ?’
Lawsuits and campaigns reduce the legitimacy of, and support for,
the Federal government, in preparation for transferring the powers
it cannot or will not exercise back to the states and the people.
The first, and perhaps the only goal of the states is to keep
their socioeconomic systems from collapsing during the coming
Hard Times.
The first, and perhaps the only goal of the individual is not
to become part of the problem: Stay employed, pay down debt,
save every spare cent, help family and friends if possible.
Nothing need be done about Obama, or the progressive Federal
government; They are about to be overtaken and rendered moot
by an economic crisis which the states will not waste. :)
hello. we are alike a blinded Don Quixote, rabidly chasing after a devil we can not see. if you are not making money off this, someone is making money off of you. and it is the job of the government to reach in your pocket and give you back enough of your own money to live on, and spend the rest where they know best: ‘where’ is their secret.
full disclosure will not end the capitalist invasion of Congress and the voting system, but it may enlighten the citizenry to where their taxes are being spent. full disclosure is one course of action.
Those wishing for a ‘change’ with the Republicans in charge – it won’t matter. The Creature From Jekyll Island will still be in charge.
And hail Media Matters, and whatever, other, leftist sites pay Skeezix to derail threads.
Friends, this is the reason posters like Skeesix must be ignored. They’re not honest debaters.
OBAMA’S MISSION IMPOSSIBLE TO THE MOSLEM WORLD
It seems that Obama is turning NASA into an instrument of cognitive behavioral therapy with the mentally broken, deranged and dysfunctional Moslem world as his patient. He’s hoping to deliver Moslems from their poor collective self-image and psychosis by lying about or exaggerating their cultural and scientific achievements-which are few and far between and mostly unimportant.
Real self-esteem in an individual, nation, religious group or race is something that must be earned and based on real accomplishments, not on fictions, fantasies and fairy tales-something that our mediocre president knows nothing about. For Obama won the presidency with no real accomplishments to qualify him based on the false and inflated self-image of greatness and messianic pretensions that’s now crashing against the reality of his ignorance, immaturity and meager abilities.
Now Obama wants to do the same for the Moslem world, using NASA to give it an exalted self-image of greatness and pride based on nonexistent achievements in math, science, engineering and the arts*. A mission impossible that’s doomed to fail like Obama’s over ambitious and ridiculous programs of hope, change and social transformation. ….
Google ApolloSpeaks at Townhall.com and read the rest of this piece: Obama’s Mission Impossible to the Moslem World and the New American Century.
Clearly, no one in the current administration has studied either the United Nations’ Development Program and the Kuwait-based Arab Fund for Social and Economic Development study released in October of 2003, nor the article titled “The Arab World’s Scientific Desert”appearing in The Chronicle of Higher Education in March of 2004.
According to the article, written by Daniel del Castillo, the UN study included these findings (among many others):
• No Arab country spends more than 0.2 percent of its gross national product on scientific research, and most of that money goes toward salaries. By contrast, the United States spends more than 10 times that amount.
• Fewer than one in 20 Arab university students pursue scientific disciplines.
• There are only 18 computers per 1,000 people in the Arab world. The global average is 78 per 1,000.
• Only 370 industrial patents were issued to people in Arab countries between 1980 and 2000. In South Korea during that same period, 16,000 industrial patents were issued.
• No more than 10,000 books were translated into Arabic over the entire past millennium, equivalent to the number translated into Spanish each year.
The Arab Islamic world is dominated by a culture that reserves its highest honor for a person who has committed the Qur’an to memory. Such people, without being required to demonstrate any other credential or accomplishment, are given great deference and elevated to decision-making roles. Obviously, among “peers” there has to be a “Darwinian” struggle to establish who will be first among equals. But the tradition is sufficiently entrenched — and the oil wealth allows the region to “get away with this” — that the vast majority of university students in Islamic universities devote themselves not to medicine, not to engineering, not to political science, not to maths, not to women’s studies or the history of black oppression in America, but to Islamic studies.
For Obama to delude himself that the Arabs give a crap about how NASA wants to reach out to them is just another in a very long list of proofs of dufus-ness in the oval office.
(Readers might be interested in the views of Arab-American scientist Farouk el-Baz, on the subject of the lamentable state of science & education in the Arab Muslim world. It’s worth a search…)
Ditto that, Fiddler. The one thing that can be said about all Islamic countries is that their people produce almost nothing. These are 10th century religious fiefdoms, and decidedly so.
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