Who says socialism doesn’t work? The country that has produced the most trillionaires in history isn’t America, but Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. The Wall Street Journal describes what it is like to dine out on the town. “Buying anything is a ‘bizarre experience,’ said Lucy Chimtengwende from Bulawayo, who spent $12 U.S. on lunch recently, with the bill in local currency being an astonishing 1.1 trillion Zimbabwe dollars.” Inflation has been given a whole new meaning in Zimbabwe, whose currency has depreciated ten billionfold in twelve years, a rate that threatens to exceed the bounds of the database field sizes that the bank’s software developers thoughtlessly assumed would be enough. Consider the travails of a man who simply wanted to buy groceries.
Joshua Kipuru (not his real name, since he is concerned about reprisals for criticizing the government) told me via telephone that he gave up trying to get cash at his bank in Harare last week, since the lines were too long and slow moving. In the end Mr. Kipuru bought groceries with his debit card, which remarkably still works. The card, he explained, maxes out at just under 10 billion Zimbabwe dollars. So he had to run it 74 times, given that his food bill was nearly 730 billion Zimbabwe dollars.
The German security printers who provide Mr. Mugabe with his currency are finding their presses literally unequal to the task. Despite the herculean efforts of its presses and the nonstop shifting of tons in currency it managed to produce a relative pittance in US dollar equivalents, hardly enough to keep the wheels of bribery turning.
In the weeks prior to the March 29 election, the German company, Giesecke & Devrient (G&D), ran its printing presses at maximum capacity, delivering 432,000 sheets of banknotes to Mugabe’s government each week. The money, equivalent to nearly $173 trillion Zimbabwe dollars ($32 million at that time), was then dispersed among key constituencies, notably the security forces, as bribes.
Roger Bate of the WSJ believes that Robert Mugabe is literally burying himself, together with his entire wretched country, under a pile of worthless paper. If so, a well-intentioned effort to help the people of Zimbabwe by Western activists may have unintentionally postponed Mugabe’s demise when they pressured the German security printers into stopping their cataract of banknotes, an act of rationality that may ironically slow the hyperinflation that is drowning out Mugabe’s regime.
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon argued that “property is despotism”. That is perhaps why political movements that profess to hate money are the most interested in printing it. Recently, environmental activists in Britain have tried to create a form of carbon money which will effectively determine how ordinary people can spend what they earn. Another Wall Street Journal piece reports on the slow but inexorable march towards “carbon rationing” in the UK.
A Parliamentary committee in May proposed giving all British adults “carbon allowances” that they would be required to spend – along with, you know, real money – when buying gasoline, airline tickets, electricity or natural gas. Britons who wanted more credits than they were issued could try to buy them – again, with real money – from those who hadn’t spent their allotment. All of this is supposed to give people a financial incentive to reduce energy consumption and thus their carbon “footprint.”
The Labour government, already in a precarious political state, isn’t dumb enough to support the rationing plan, which Environment Minister Hilary Benn calls “ahead of its time.” Instead, it favors a climate-change bill that Parliament is on the verge of passing that would lay much of the necessary groundwork. But eco-eager Britons don’t have to wait for Westminster. A private test program for personal cap-and-trade began recently with 1,000 volunteers keeping tabs of their gasoline use.
Once “carbon ration cards” are in force; when the concept is no longer “ahead of its time”, the off-ration price of items — for example, an extra trip to see a sick relative that exceeds the carbon ration — will partly be a function of the ration supply. The tighter the rations, the higher the price of the extras. And like Robert Mugabe’s printing presses, it is also a form of power over the money supply. Now it turns out that in order to allow environmentalism to save the Earth, we also have to give it power over money. And why not? Since we’ve already accepted the principle that they can regulate industrial output, why should money be excepted? Just a little more. Always just a little more.
But deep down inside, even the most credulous may be feeling an unease; because like Robert Mugabe’s government, those who print credits can print more of them for themselves, whether it is to fly to exotic locales to attend conferences or to serve themselves eight course meals at global summits on the Food Crisis. And the heretical thought might occur to us that we’re being had.
Today what passes for revolution is often just despotism tricked out as a campaign to fight some supposedly great evil; for final victory against the White Farmers, Hate Speech, Global Warming or something else. But suppose it were really about money? Marc Gonsalves, one of the hostages recently rescued from the FARC, gave a moving speech of speech of thanks to his rescuers that described how so much of the revolutionary rhetoric of today is only an excuse to make a pile. “I want to tell you about the FARC … They say that they want equality; they say that they just want to make Colombia a better place. But that’s all a lie. It’s a cover story and they hide behind it and they use it to justify their criminal activity.” Say on Marc, but there are none so deaf as they who will not hear.
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37 Comments
1. Sam:I do think it’s going to come down to revolution to stop the enviromadness. Personally, I hope they are bloody and thorough.
Jul 7, 2008 - 11:30 pm 2. Alexis:The British government may call them “carbon credits”. I call them environmental indulgences. “Environmentalist Protestants” would be appalled. In essence, Prime Minister Brown appears to be attempting to monetize evil, for while normal currency represents goods and services, “carbon currency” represents liabilities and obligations.
The carbon credit appears to be reminiscent of the sacrificial tariffs from the Book of Leviticus where atonement is monetized through animal sacrifice. And yet, animals are real. “Carbon credits” look more like a monetary will-o’-the-wisp that is prone to abuse. “Carbon credits” could be called the currency of Humpty Dumpty, for they would be worth precisely what a government says they are worth, nothing less and nothing more. And not only will polluting corporations seek to buy “carbon credits” to avoid upgrading their facilities and actually clean the air, but an entire economy will appear based upon fraudulent reporting of carbon footprints.
It would be easy to imagine how rural villagers would pass around green appliances to create a false impression for government assessors. Be careful to hide that lawn mower from the tax man! It will be very difficult for the “carbon credit” scheme to fail to reward cheaters while penalizing honest people. A criminal mind couldn’t concoct a more efficient system for graft than the carbon indulgence.
The “carbon credit” looks like “No Child Left Behind” as applied to the atmosphere and is likely to have similarly dismal results.
Jul 7, 2008 - 11:36 pm 3. whiskey:Very likely Obama’s fondness for carbon credits and other stuff to “stop global warming” like his love of high gas prices will derail his campaign. He might even cause the House to flip to the Reps.
Jul 8, 2008 - 12:12 am 4. Richard Fernandez:Every time a great crisis impends — whether the War on Terror, Climate Change — whatever it may be, it provides an opportunity to ask for a blank check from society to pursue its goals. In a bureaucracy people are always on the lookout for sources of legitimacy to augment their power.
It often pays to be stingy when granting new charters of power. If Robert Mugabe, for example, had ridden into the sunset a dozen years ago, history might have remembered him more kindly. But things are often like that: an impulse which may have been rooted in idealism often ends being about money. And while I don’t doubt that there are legitimate reasons to be concerned over pollution, deforestation, etc. before the end we may find environmentalism as discredited as Communism because its adherents can’t keep grasping for ever more power. Communism was advertised as a project to end the exploitation of man by man and turned out to be just the opposite, as Ronald Reagan once observed. Very, very soon after it began Bolshevism started to be about itself. By the end, the old aristocracy returned as the nomenklatura.
You’ll observe that nearly all guerilla movements begin with near-religious messianism and finish up as criminal syndicates. Take almost any group you like. The NPA, Abu Sayyaf, IRA, FARC. They come to the same end. Maybe the reason that both physical and social organisms have life cycles is to purge bad information. Great enterprises based on eternal bureaucracies almost always equal grief.
Jul 8, 2008 - 12:37 am 5. Panday:Alexis,
Of course, none of this applies for the elite, who can afford all of the carbon indulgences they want while poo-pooing the masses for their behavior.
Just today the government announced that will rise to “reflect environmental costs”.
Jul 8, 2008 - 2:30 am 6. Richard Fernandez:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2265116/Meat-and-milk-prices-will-rise-to-reflect-environmental-costs.html
Madonna, Geldof, and Sting won’t feel that pinch. But a working family will. I’ll never understand why any country, especially an avowedly socialist one, would declare war on its own middle and working classes.
Now take racism. Most people would agree that racism is a bad thing. Fine so far. But now comes a British government body issuing the the 366-page guide for staff in charge of pre-school children, called Young Children and Racial Justice, which among other things says:
This is a perfect example of how a decent impulse — to avoid racism — can mutate to become a mania in its own right. The idea that we ought to be on the lookout for the babies saying “yuk” because it is the first sign of racism — presumably in whites only, for I can’t imagine it applying to anyone else — is itself an indication that whoever authored this report should retire under Section 8. It absolutely boggles the mind to think that a report like this can actually be written.
However that may be, it’s virtually certain that the bureaucracy, in its Frankenstein-like way is going to hire people to manage compliance; even contract software developers to make sure that all their processes are compliant with it. “Whoever the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.”
Jul 8, 2008 - 2:48 am 7. RWE:Oh come now, Wretchard, nowadays, it’s not all about money.
Power counts for something, too.
And the Power to tell people how they can spend their money – which inevitably means tapping into that revenue stream as well.
In my years working among the Denizens of DC I came to the inevitable but sad conclusion that it all comes down to Money. All sorts of Social Imperatives and Bold New Ideas come down to money and who gets it. And what’s worse, while it was always that way in the end, today most ideas start out that way.
If all of the problems today – World Hunger, War, Disease, Retirement Plans, the Environment – were solved I have no doubt that Urgent New Problems would arise at once. The United Nations might announce a hideous golf shoe shortage in Lower Slobbovia.
Fukayama was almost right; we are at the End of Ideology. It’s all about Money and the Power to control Money.
Jul 8, 2008 - 4:19 am 8. CPT. Charles:Alexis—your thoughts come close to the truth of the matter. That ‘carbon ration card’ is the final step to supplanting God with the STATE.
Any true believer gives prayers, devotions, and tithes to the Lord in thanks for HIS creation and their place in it. With that card, every public action will require you acknowledge the State’s assigned value of EVERYTHING necessary for your continuing existence [food, public utilities, housing] or anything that might bring you happiness [a new computer, more living space, etc....], or fulfillment [higher eduction, marriage, children...].
Free will no longer matters; your every hope, dream or action is subject to approval by the STATE [it's assigned 'carbon value']. Want to follow your own path? Sure, go ahead…but it will cost you extra, in ways you can’t even begin to imagine.
The common Brit is naked against this. The only arrows left in their quiver is the vote, and their capacity to understand the abyss they’re being herded towards. We Americans are much, much luckier. The political party that proposes this will be dog food. Chests of tea were dumped in a harbor for less reasons; the Brits have no such historical anchor point. Failing that, the true meaning of the 2nd amendment will become abundantly clear. The Left and the Eco-Overlords would do well to note that.
Richard—you are being far, far too kind. That ‘guide’ is the keystone to a fascist state. Conditioning a child to accept anything, and reject nothing molds them into the perfect ’social robot’. The desire to mitigate racism is merely a fig leaf…imagine the bigotry this wonderful ‘new’ doctrine will engender against anyone, or anything outside of ‘approved values’.
See the proposed future and be warned.
Jul 8, 2008 - 4:58 am 9. hdgreene:From the wisdom of Old Movies:
In Viva Villa, Poncho Villa (Wallace Beery) takes Mexico City and prints up a bunch of pesos for his new government. He takes delivery of stacks of currency and then tries to pay the printer with freshly printed pesos (with a smiling Poncho on the note). The printer won’t accept it. He wants gold or dollars. Kind of sums it up.
And with carbon credits what the hell are you buying? The right to buy? These are the same people who support the right to die. Are they going to start charging for that? Before you leave this earth, we want you to pay your future taxes.
Jul 8, 2008 - 5:16 am 10. wretchard:In rationing system, you need purchases operate on a two-key system. To buy something first you need the money, then you need the coupon. So even if you had the money you couldn’t buy without the coupon. Now suppose someone had coupons he didn’t want, then those coupons were available for trade in some way. You could buy the coupon off somebody and then buy the product. So if a pound of butter cost X dollars, the off-coupon cost of a pound of butter was X dollars + the coupon price. Essentially you get penalized for every consumption above the rationed level.
But in the case of wartime rationing, there was an physical ceiling on the amount of goods available, as determined by how much shipping could get through the U-Boat attacks. In the case of carbon credits, there’s really no market limit. The air ticket, for example, is actually available. But it is off limits if you can’t buy it without a ration coupon. I might be wrong, but I think it alters the money supply because not all currency is equally spendable. Imagine, as a thought experiment, a situation in which the sum of ration coupons issued were a fraction of GNP. Then despite any trades you could effect, in the net there would come a point where you couldn’t buy anything with your money. I suppose you could save or invest it, maybe solar panels or some thing like it.
Jul 8, 2008 - 5:30 am 11. CPT. Charles:Follow-up. I don’t reject the money aspect, Richard. It’s always been about, power, privilege, and/or money. A serf is a serf, whether it be a tax serf, or a carbon serf. Divine Right out of fashion, no problem…insert ’superior intellect’ or ’superior concern for Gaia’. The framework remains constant; it’s only the ‘plug ins’ that change.
Jul 8, 2008 - 5:32 am 12. Stones Cry Out - If they keep silent… » Things Heard: e26v2:[...] Mugabe and carbon offset nonsense. [...]
Jul 8, 2008 - 5:55 am 13. programmer:So all the antipathy directed against Islam, for example, is meant to sustain the civilization that comes up with this drivel? As much as we wish otherwise, the fittest (in terms of the ability to reproduce and continue to do so) will survive to dictate the future. In the end only the lawless, or at least those outside the laws of self immolation will be around to talk to the mutant cockroaches.
Jul 8, 2008 - 6:18 am 14. JA:Related to this is Jim Manzi’s post on the EPA’s carbon-emissions cap Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking:
“You can find the $2 trillion estimate right there in a table on page 101. As you work your way through the analytical assumptions, however, you find that (i) this assumes a 3% discount rate, which is nice work if you can get it, and (ii) even more amusingly, counts the benefits attributable to the whole world, not just residents of the United States. At this discount rate the report estimates the total economic benefit of avoiding one ton of CO2 emissions to be $40. How much of this the U.S. portion? $1. So more than 95% of the “benefit” in this cost-benefit analysis accrues to people outside the U.S. who aren’t paying the freight.”
Something else stuck out when I read the ANPR. It states, “GHGs become well mixed throughout the global atmosphere so that the long-term distribution of GHG concentrations is not dependent on local emission sources. Instead, GHG concentrations tend to be relatively uniform around the world . . . as a result of this global mixing, GHGs emitted anywhere in the world affect climate everywhere in the world.”
While we’re doing the regulatory whack-a-mole over here — and the slow bleed-out of our liberties which goes along with it — whether or not it has any effect whatsoever is entirely dependent on other nations and decisions completely outside our control; we’re sacrificing to kill the vermin, they’re happily multiplying them.
It seems Islam has no monopoly on martyrdom. Which brings us to the final point, which the Enviros know in their gut: to save the world, we’ll have to rule the world. Americans (I almost wrote ‘Westerners’) won’t sacrifice when other nations can free-ride and counter our efforts — I hope.
Of course, the only other option is a global leviathan. I wonder whose power will be called upon to underwrite it. . .
Jul 8, 2008 - 7:50 am 15. weSwinger:Follow-on to programmer: the carbon credit scheme could create a black market for EVERYTHING. It would be a parallel market, where a whole lot of us would become criminals, just to get us and our families fed, housed, and transported.
The corruption would make Oil-for-Food look like a warm-up act.
Jul 8, 2008 - 9:16 am 16. Eggplant:Whiskey said:
“Very likely Obama’s fondness for carbon credits and other stuff to “stop global warming” like his love of high gas prices will derail his campaign. He might even cause the House to flip to the Reps.”
Dream on. McCain is one mistake away from handing the Presidency to B. Hussein (a bad VP pick could do the trick). Given that Hussein is a classic demagogue, I don’t understand why people allow themselves to be hypnotized by him (but they do!). Maybe it’s because I don’t watch television that I’m immune (MSM propaganda rots the brain). I’m still hoping that Hussein will do a McGovern style implosion after the Democrat party convention but recognize that this maybe naive.
Jul 8, 2008 - 10:54 am 17. Lifeofthemind:Wretchard,
Jul 8, 2008 - 11:56 am 18. Eggplant:If you can not spend your money on rationed goods then you will have an incentive to divert your spending to non-rationed goods. This results in inflationary pressures as spending is increased on a small subset of goods. It will also induce the creation of inefficient after markets where people trade the non-rationed goods for the limited supply of legally distributed rationed goods. Also the presence of available but not legally purchasable goods in the rationed category will induce the creation of a black market and general lawlessness. Both of these inefficient illegal market activities will tend to increase the price of the rationed goods above their free market level. Therefor we can see that this scheme will be inflationary across all goods both rationed and non-rationed as well as contributing to a general breakdown of respect for the lawful market. The diversion of some assets to savings should have a small compensating effect.
Off topic:
The Brookings Institute is a think tank that serves the interests of liberal Democrats. The Brookings Institute created the “Iraq Index” mainly to provide political ammunition for the MSM’s campaign against the Iraq war (refer to the link below and download the PDF file):
http://www.brookings.edu/saban/iraq-index.aspx
However the Brookings Institue has maintained the Iraq Index for too long since it no longer serves its intended political purpose. If one examines the Iraq Index now, it becomes clear that we’ve achieved a clear victory in Iraq. McCain needs to use the Iraq Index as a tool against the liberal Democrats.
Jul 8, 2008 - 1:28 pm 19. whiskey:Eggplant, Obama plays well to the media, the bubble elite, but very badly to the mass of voters.
He ramps up the youth vote, who are both 8 million smaller than the Seniors, and vote about 25% less than Seniors. But Obama has huge problems with Seniors. Who need cheap gas and low crime.
Obama could win running away if he hadn’t played racial politics (drives away middle/working class whites) and green elitist politics (everyone not in the elite bubble).
Consider this — the median age of TV viewers is 50! According to Variety. “Gossip Girl” may get all the buzz and hype, but only 2.2 million watch it every week. Meanwhile 50+ demo skewing American Idol gets 25 million viewers week in and out. Obama is Gossip Girl. Hyped but few want him. McCain is American Idol.
Jul 8, 2008 - 3:12 pm 20. Eggplant:Whiskey said:
“Obama plays well to the media, the bubble elite, but very badly to the mass of voters.”
I wish this were true. As I have said more than once,
Jul 8, 2008 - 3:46 pm 21. ZZMike:B. Hussein terrifies me. According to Real Clear Politics, Hussein averages around 5% ahead of McCain in national popularity polls. Hussein will spike over 10% in junk polls that are politically biased, e.g. mainly registered Democrats provided the opinion data. If you factor in %5 for the Bradley Effect then the national polls between McCain and Hussein are dead even. It is ***amazing*** that the polls are almost even given that President Bush exhausted all of his political capital in the War against Terrorism, the MSM’s obvious liberal bias and the misbehavior of the Republican Party while they controlled Congress (corruption and too much pork). A conventional Democrat candidate should be crushing McCain in the polls. One can attribute why McCain and Hussein are running even mainly to general worry about Hussein’s competence and hidden agendas (many people recognize that Hussein is a crypto-socialist). However Hussein could still win this thing if McCain makes a serious mistake. Also there is the real possibility of a successful dirty trick taking McCain down, e.g. a Dan Rather style forgery where the moonbats are smart enough to use a Selectric typewriter rather than MS-Word. Hussein is way too close to winning this election for people to be complacent.
Didn’t anybody think of revaluing the currency? Something like “1 brand-new sparkling Zimbabwe dollar for 1 billion of those old nasty ones”. And everybody just move the decimal point 9 places (or more, or less, if they’re on the British system).
And didn’t anybody read about the Reichsmark, and the wheelbarrows full of banknotes they rushed to the stores right after payday?
Alexis: “Carbon credits” could be called the currency of Humpty Dumpty,” Not Humpty Dumpty, but rather Al Gore and his partner:
Blood and Gore
“Former Vice President Al Gore has built a Green money-making machine capable of eventually generating billions of dollars for investors, including himself, but he set it up so that the average Joe can’t afford to play on Gore’s terms.”
You’re right – they’re indulgences. And we all know what happened the last time people started playing with indulgences.
Jul 8, 2008 - 4:52 pm 22. whiskey:The Bradley effect is likely much much higher. Seniors don’t like Obama one bit. They are very sensitive to crime, and Obama being a Black Nationalist has alienated their votes. They will turn out for McCain in a big way, and Seniors vote 25% more than the youth vote, whom they outnumber by 8 million.
Next, Obama has provided rich fodder for Reps by saying he WANTS high gas prices, just not so quickly. And that he WANTS high electricity prices, just not so quickly. To stop Global Warming. Already McCain is running to the populist right on that — drilling, gas tax holiday (Obama against) and so on. Every time motorists fill up, they are reminded who wants to lower their tax bill that day and who wants it higher.
The polls are not very accurate at this point. Survey methodologies are suspect, Obama is not peaking but sliding downwards, all self-inflicted btw, and ran too hard, too left, too long to switch to the center. His “Mac” like cultists turn people off the way smug Apple ads did hard-pressed consumers.
McCain would be underwater against Hillary, or Webb, or any other centrist Dem. The problem with Dems is they moved so hard left socially and politically that their appeal is only to the young, Blacks, and yuppies. As Begala put it, “College kids, yuppies, and Blacks.” That won’t get it done. Even Kerry found that out against a basically politically dead GWB.
Jul 8, 2008 - 6:58 pm 23. Charles:Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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This article is about a famous phrase. For other uses, see The Pursuit of Happiness.
“Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ” is one of the most famous phrases in the United States Declaration of Independence. These three aspects are listed among the “inalienable rights” of man.
[edit] Phrasing
The phrase is based on the writings of John Locke, who expressed a similar concept of “life, liberty, and estate (or property)”. Locke said that “no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.”[1]
Written by Thomas Jefferson, the words in the Declaration were a departure from the orthodoxy of Locke. Locke’s phrase was a list of property rights a government should guarantee its people; Jefferson’s list, on the other hand, covers a much broader spectrum of rights, possibly including the guarantees of the Bill of Rights such as free speech and a fair trial. The change was not explained during Jefferson’s life, so beyond this, one can only speculate about its meaning. This tripartite motto is comparable to “liberté, égalité, fraternité” (liberty, equality, fraternity) in France or “peace, order and good government” in Canada.[2]
The phrase can also be found in Chapter III, Article 13 of the 1947 Constitution of Japan.
The phrase can also be found in President Ho Chi-minh’s 1945 declaration of independence of the Republic of Vietnam.
An alternative phrase “life, liberty and property”, is found in the Declaration of Colonial Rights, a resolution of the First Continental Congress.
Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights reads, “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.”
Jul 8, 2008 - 7:20 pm 24. John Samford:“According to Real Clear Politics, Hussein averages around 5% ahead of McCain in national popularity polls. ”
Which is where Kerry was at this time in the ‘04 cycle. It’s behind where algore was. IIRC he had an 8 point lead going into August.
Methinks the books are being cooked. At least I smell something. Something foul.
RCP is nutso anyway. Anyone who stayed awake thru Stats101 knows you CANNOT average polls.
For a variety of technical reasons. In theory, if the questions were the same, you could recalculate the distribution curve and get a new total based on a new sample size.
As bugs would say about whoever dreamed that up “What a Marooon”.
The purpose behind polling is to make money for pollsters. They are as connected to reality as the person paying the pollster (aka customer) wants them to be. Polling is a perversion of the science of Statistics. One that the Scientists that invented Statistics warned us about.
If you look at demographics as Zaller does, you will get a whole different picture. Zaller argues that mass opinion is formed of interest groups that can be directed by elites ( in sales the ‘Authority close’ )to affect the outcome of elections.
http://wikisum.com/w/Zaller:_The_nature_and_origins_of_mass_opinion
While it can be debated whether elites have the influence Zaller credits them with, the interest group thingie is accurate. Or at least it proves out, once a voters primary interest group is identified. Ohhhh…..BAMA has 3 major voting blocks sewed up. Black, limo liberals and the youth vote.
Jul 8, 2008 - 7:22 pm 25. Charles:McCain has the Grays ( oldsters), Veterans, blue collar and anti-abortion voters.
So McCain has about a 3-2 edge in RV’s and about a 3-1 edge in LV’s since vets and grays vote in high percentages.
Ohhhhh…..BAAAMA knows this, his hired guns understand demographics as well as anybody and I’m sure they all have a copy of Zaller in their briefcase. That is why he is flip-flopping away. That is why he is moving back to the center. Not sure if it will work. I am sure it’s part of a plan and one that isn’t going so well.
The traditional Socialist strategy of running left for the nomination, then back right for the election takes time. The Dems understand this, which is why they had the nomination process scheduled to end in March. That would have given the suckers…..er.. voters time to get over the turn back to the right. Time to get the moonbats back on the reservation after that flop to the right. That is how you avoid the flip flop process that plagued Kerry. Who wants a clueless President? Or even one that appears clueless?
The nomination system was designed by Clinton to put Clinton in the White House. NObama stole it and now he can’t get it to work right. Forgot the instruction manual. Billery says; “You got hthe key, now shut up and drive.” So what I smell might be panic. NObama is farther behind then any other Democratic candidate as far back as I can find records. Polls ARE good for trends and that is not a good one for the Obamassiah.
Warren Zevon Lawyers, Guns and Money
Jul 8, 2008 - 7:30 pm 26. Charles:Here’s a better version The Wallflowers and Jordan Zevon – Lawyers Guns and Money
imho there
Jul 8, 2008 - 7:35 pm 27. Charles:SPINOZA AND MARX see point 11
11. Finally — and this is where Spinoza’s materialism comes into play — the prime measure of such adequacy is not some ultimate reconciliation of Spirit and matter, but rather the degree to which human powers are realized and increased. Humankind is a determinate mode of objective Substance just like everything else in Nature, and as such it tends (according to the principle Spinoza calls “conatus” – striving) to develop its powers to the utmost.14 What distinguishes humans is that, by acting in the mode of Thought as well as Extension, they are able to understand, submit to, participate in, and thereby enhance the forces of Nature, of which they nonetheless remain a part. (This insistence on the situatedness of humankind in and as part of Nature is what endears Spinoza to modern-day environmentalists, along with his critique of and “monist” alternative to Cartesian subject-object dualism.15) Unlike imagination, adequate thinking furthers human-natural development rather than hindering it.
Jul 8, 2008 - 8:01 pm 28. Sus:RWE: “It’s all about Money and the Power to control Money”.
Not quite. It’s all about the power to control OTHER PEOPLE’S money.
Jul 8, 2008 - 8:47 pm 29. Charles:Anti-Oedipus
page 112
Spinoza provides schizoanalysis an alternative not just to Hegelian philosophy of history — but to subject-object dualism in general. Spinoza was a contemporary and critic of Descartes and his view of the objective identity of thought and [by] extension contrasts sharply with Descartes view which treats thought as a property of a doubting subject rather than of concrete objects. This critique and monist alternative to Cartesian subject-object dualism represents an important contribution to modern environmentalism since Spinoza considers man a part of nature rather than its master.
Jul 8, 2008 - 9:07 pm 30. Charles://////////////////
It should be understood that Christianity views man to be the master of nature. And that God himself is outside of nature. God is “Nature’s God”.
It should be understood that the ancient primitive religions of the iron age that are most chronicled in the worshipers of Baal and the Gods of the other peoples around Israel –were nature gods or gods of fertility or prosperity. The pagan peoples worshiped the god of fertility or the god of prosperity or the god of thunder or the god of the ocean — rather than the God from whom all these things come.
Jul 8, 2008 - 9:13 pm 31. Zenster:For those of you who missed Wretchard’s link to the G8 dinner menu, here are some of the money lines:
The Prime Minister [Gordon Brown] was served 24 different dishes during his first day at the summit – just hours after urging the world to reduce the “unnecessary demand” for food and calling on British families to cut back on their wasteful use of food.
The dinner consisted of 18 dishes in eight courses including caviar, smoked salmon, Kyoto beef and a “G8 fantasy dessert”.
The banquet was accompanied by five different wines from around the world including champagne, a French Bourgogne and sake.
The dinner came just hours after a “working lunch” consisting of six courses including white asparagus and truffle soup, crab and a supreme of chicken.
Mr Brown arrived at the G8 summit held on the holiday island of Hokkaido in northern Japan on Monday morning.
He arrived on a plane chartered from Texas, America, which had to fly empty for thousands of miles to pick up the Prime Minister and his entourage.
[emphasis added]
Flying empty planes around the world to attend crisis summits. Sounds a lot like that Bali climate change summit where they didn’t have enough room to park all the private jets.
Isn’t hypocrisy on this sort of scale supposed to earn people lightning bolts and stuff?
Jul 8, 2008 - 9:38 pm 32. Charles:Victor Davis Hanson
July 8th, 2008 9:01 pm
Good and Bad Times
Global whatever
Jul 8, 2008 - 9:46 pm 33. Charles:Now we are lectured that climate change is threatening civilization and we must do this and that. Twenty years ago I remember it was the Aids epidemic that was just about to break out among the heterosexual population in the fashion it had devastated the San Francisco gay community. Thus we needed to quit envisioning the virus as largely specific to gays and IV-drug users, and instead mobilize to protect the entire population from a mass epidemic. A few voices in the wilderness who argued that the mechanisms of so-called normal heterosexual sex (while perhaps conducive in their unprotected modes to all sort of venereal diseases) were nevertheless often different from both the apparent frequency and nature of homosexual sex practices, and very different from the blood exchanges of shared-needles, were derided as either illiberal, homophobic, or unhinged
There is today a broad alliance between the homosexual movement and the environmentalists.They share not just a similiar –its not quite proper to call it theology — but rather a philosophy. Why philosophy and not theology? because theology is God centered where as philosophy is man centered. The ancient pagan states around israel just practiced various forms of self worship. In practice too their high priests were homosexuals.
This corruption in high places has also been what caused their decline. God told moses and joshua that they would defeat the caanites not because the Israelites were so good but rather because the caananites were so bad. What were the caannites great sins? Child sacrifice and homosexuality.
When Cortez came to New Spain his exploits were chronicled by a lot people. But the tale of his oldest lieutenant Bernal Diaz was only translated into english in the 1980’s. what that book mentioned was something not told your typical history that includes tales of human sacrifice. What Diaz mention is that the aztec priests would “act up” right in front cortez and his men.
The reaction of cortez was much the same as Joshua.
Jul 8, 2008 - 10:10 pm 34. Alex Reed:Wretchard & Lifeofthemind,
Jul 8, 2008 - 11:24 pm 35. Robohobo:There’s just one problem. Since the whole carbon credit/carbon ration card/totalitarian power grab will have the effect (one amongst many) of destroying the free market system, there won’t be much in the way of products to buy with either money (we won’t have much of this either) or carbon credits. Communism always comes to this. And it’s Communism, Take 2, that we are facing.
1st I give you:
Then:
The new priests of Gaia demand that we bow to their missives, that we reduce our carbon footprints. I agree. We all must call for those who worship at this new alter to have the strength of their convictions. They must finally and completely reduce their carbon footprints post haste. Please show us the way by example, you cannot just tell us the way.
I’m waiting……
Jul 9, 2008 - 7:24 am 36. Ravalli County News » Blog Archive » Despotism Tricked Out as Carbon Ration Cards:[...] Richard Fernandez at Belmont Club: “Today what passes for revolution is often just despotism tricked out as a campaign to fight some supposedly great evil…” [...]
Jul 9, 2008 - 12:55 pm 37. Annie:But a working family will. I’ll never understand why any country, especially an avowedly socialist one, would declare war on its own middle and working classes.
Because socialism has never been about helping out the working classes. It is about telling them what to do and how. It is about the elites ‘power’.
Jul 12, 2008 - 12:02 pmSorry, comments for this entry are closed at this time.