253 Comments

1. biggie:

CITIZEN! Great news! Two Choices:

1.) Vote for the loser (e.g. John McCain) you disagree with
2.) Vote for the loser (e.g. Bob Barr/Ron Paul/Stephen Colbert) you partially agree with

Anyone care to consider a strategy to get Congress back by 2010? What would that Congress due, exactly?

Oct 9, 2008 - 9:12 pm 2. wretchard:

When the only answer to the question is “none of the above”, the challenge is to change the question. In policy-speak I think the phrase for that process is is called “getting something on the agenda”. Typically that requires two things: the existence of a kind of widespread feeling that a certain subject has to be raised and some institutional way to articulate it.

What would be interesting to watch out for in the coming weeks is the emergence of some political entrepreneur who is willing to try and reformulate the question. It doesn’t mean the question who is elected President in November is irrelevant. But it does mean that the selection won’t represent closure. Rather it represents the best opening gambit for a process that must continue.

Oct 9, 2008 - 9:21 pm 3. Brock:

Anyone care to consider a strategy to get Congress back by 2010?

http://rangevoting.org/RangeVoting.html

Oct 9, 2008 - 9:36 pm 4. Cannoneer No. 4:

A great many of “us” tolerated the pretentions of our self-appointed “betters” because keeping tabs on them and periodically disabusing them of their claims to superiority over “us” became too onerous and time-consuming a task for busy, productive people. Simpler to ignore the pointy-headed intellectuals and nattering nabobs of negativity who constitute the effete corps of impudent snobs that pass for “elites” while the doers get on with their lives and works.

“We” never really accepted “their” unwarranted assumptions of superiority, and now “they” have bestialized the canine sufficiently to attract “our” attention and draw the wrath of facts-based, performance-oriented, mission-accomplishing, freedom-loving, nanny-state hating, capitalistic entrepreneurial frontiersmen down upon their incompetent, non-performing, deadbeat heads.

Atlas is pissed!

Oct 9, 2008 - 9:37 pm 5. biggie:

What is the institution, then? Newt Gingrich? Secession? Migration? Palinism? A renewed, vigorous campaign to defend the Constitution?

How does anyone know what is wrong with the world? The epistemological angle suggests you might be best governing what you best understand, i.e. what might be closer to your face. Somehow, recent media productions have undermined the very idea of national consensus. If we realize grandiose productions do not “get it” any better than any of us do, we’re unlikely to delegate any more power in that direction. How could you? Who do you throw in with?

Oct 9, 2008 - 9:43 pm 6. biggie:

Here’s a new institution for you, or at least an inscription on a pillar:

I’m sick of being sold the idea, with much fanfare, glamour and prestige, that my countrymen are handicap or treasonous if they do not fawn over poorly fought foreign adventures that do not seem to have pursued the interests of the United States of America.

Oct 9, 2008 - 9:53 pm 7. mark:

When cast in this light the popularity of Palin is easily understood. It is why the Left and MSM hate her. Obama, Biden and the MSM represent “them” while Palin represents “us”. McCain is at a crossroads. Is he really a Maverick or is he “them”? His fate hangs on that decision.

Oct 9, 2008 - 9:54 pm 8. wretchard:

What is the institution, then?

What they’ve always been. The legal and political institutions as they stand. But they have to be refocused on carrying out the popular will. And I think you are right: “The epistemological angle suggests you might be best governing what you best understand, i.e. what might be closer to your face.” People should do things for themselves whenever practical. Decide their fate whenever possible. Trust themselves before they trust others.

During a crisis parts of the public are tempted to put their future in the hands of a strongman. Here is Louis Farrakhan urging his adherents to listen to the Messiah. And he leaves no doubt that, insofar as he is concerned, the Messiah is Barack Obama. Now that’s Farrakhan, not Obama talking. But it’s likely that I’m not the only one who senses a wind blowing and wants to raise his sails to them. There will be many “political entrepreneurs” out there. And if John McCain and others are unwilling to lead the wave of disillusionment somewhere constructive, there will be no shortage of people ready to lead it somewhere catastrophically destructive.

When things are on the move one can lead or follow. But staying still is not an option.

Oct 9, 2008 - 9:56 pm 9. seniorfan:

The only solution I’ve heard that I like is to write in Sarah Palin on the November ballot. Maybe some members of the Republican Party will split off with her and give us a new party that we can support.

Oct 9, 2008 - 10:03 pm 10. biggie:

Palin
Romney
2008

Oct 9, 2008 - 10:05 pm 11. Cannoneer No. 4:

You don’t have to fawn over anything, biggie. Pick your side and promulgate your side’s strategic communications, but don’t claim to be a patriotic dissenter for picking the wrong side.

Oct 9, 2008 - 10:06 pm 12. Asher Abrams:

As I’ve written elsewhere this election isn’t entirely about McCain vs Obama

McCain? Oh, you mean the guy who’s running with Sarah Palin …

Seriously, what’s happening now is a trend that’s independent of which way the chads fall on Nov. 4. Often lately I find myself taking stock of how many things I just see differently now, as compared to just a few years ago: popular music, movies, pop culture in general, the “news” media, and – perhaps especially – the academic world. The veneer of authority is simply gone, and I can’t pretend to think that CNN or the local U are the founts of wisdom that I once thought they were.

The internet is certainly a part of this, inasmuch as I can get more complete, timely, and in-depth information from the web than I can from the TV. But I wonder if it’s also part of a process that’s inevitable and inexorable.

Oct 9, 2008 - 10:13 pm 13. Semi Cartman:

“We” never really accepted “their” unwarranted assumptions of superiority…
It has recently become clear that the Effete Corps doesn’t care what we accept. We’ll take it anyway, however it’s presented. Call it “Hope’N'Change”, put it on TV for a few years, and we’ll celebrate it, whatever “it” is. At least that’s what I believe their assumption is.
Maybe the answer to the question is more like “I don’t accept your premise. I’ll provide an answer, and then you may formulate the question at your leisure. Just stay out of my way, I have work to do.” The election question is super-relevant, since it is what will decide from which direction the first shots will be fired in the battle to define the future of America. Far from closure. This post-911 stuff is making me nervous.

Oct 9, 2008 - 10:14 pm 14. Lifeofthemind:

We would like to think that John McCain is as clever a politician as Mark Antony who calls for reconciliation until the crowd demands that he reads Caesar’s Will and sends them out seeking blood. Does everybody remember Shakespeare’s modern touch by which Antony never does in fact show anyone the contents of the will? Every politician is to some extent like the Latin American dictator who asks “Where is the mob is headed to?” so that he can get there first and lead it. All but the lowest level of demagogue will tell themselves that once in power the example of their sterling personality coupled with the effects of their superior policies on garbage collection, crop rotation and interest rate adjustment will result in a higher level of civic virtue so that the mob will at least be headed in a better direction as the politician runs to catch up.

Oct 9, 2008 - 10:20 pm 15. Semi Cartman:

The only solution I’ve heard that I like is to write in Sarah Palin on the November ballot. Maybe some members of the Republican Party will split off with her and give us a new party that we can support.
Forget about it. She ain’t a registered write in candidate. The ballot will be tossed. At least in my state.

Oct 9, 2008 - 10:21 pm 16. Karen:

Is McCain too old to learn and mend his reaching-across-the-aisle ways? From where I sit, he’s been more of an enabler than a maverick. Reaching out to the Social Democrats of Amerika is exactly what’s made these folks so mad (or frustrated). Even if McCain wins, Palin’s just the VP. How much influence will she have? Who’s gonna represent US? I hope McCain encounters lots more of the kind of people that were at this Wisconsin rally. I hope the message eventually, and sooner rather than later, gets through to him. Bipartisanship, BAH! Get off it already! How about: we don’t negotiate with pals of terrorists.

Oct 9, 2008 - 10:26 pm 17. Semi Cartman:

When cast in this light the popularity of Palin is easily understood. It is why the Left and MSM hate her. Obama, Biden and the MSM represent “them” while Palin represents “us”. McCain is at a crossroads. Is he really a Maverick or is he “them”? His fate hangs on that decision.
I think he really believes he can be both. I think that He’s convinced that we believe it too, contra plenty of evidence that says otherwise. He and his “advisors” had better sober up, or it’s going to be a cold winter this year.

Oct 9, 2008 - 10:30 pm 18. trangbang68:

I watched the Weatherman documentary tonight. These are the enemy of those in Wisconsin at the rally. Two Americas, one struggling to hold on to its traditions one still hoping to bring it down in a funeral pyre to birth the New Utopia. “To Elsie” by William Carlos Williams

The pure products of America
go crazy–
mountain folk from Kentucky

or the ribbed north end of
Jersey
with its isolate lakes and

valleys, its deaf-mutes, thieves
old names
and promiscuity between

devil-may-care men who have taken
to railroading
out of sheer lust of adventure–

and young slatterns, bathed
in filth
from Monday to Saturday

to be tricked out that night
with gauds
from imaginations which have no

peasant traditions to give them
character
but flutter and flaunt

sheer rags-succumbing without
emotion
save numbed terror

under some hedge of choke-cherry
or viburnum-
which they cannot express–

Unless it be that marriage
perhaps
with a dash of Indian blood

will throw up a girl so desolate
so hemmed round
with disease or murder

that she’ll be rescued by an
agent–
reared by the state and

sent out at fifteen to work in
some hard-pressed
house in the suburbs–

some doctor’s family, some Elsie–
voluptuous water
expressing with broken

brain the truth about us–
her great
ungainly hips and flopping breasts

addressed to cheap
jewelry
and rich young men with fine eyes

as if the earth under our feet
were
an excrement of some sky

and we degraded prisoners
destined
to hunger until we eat filth

while the imagination strains
after deer
going by fields of goldenrod in

the stifling heat of September
Somehow
it seems to destroy us

It is only in isolate flecks that
something
is given off

No one
to witness
and adjust, no one to drive the car

Oct 9, 2008 - 10:36 pm 19. biggie:

Cannoneer No. 4:

Who or what inspires confidence in any so-called political “side?” Which American political block has proved efficacy to you? Which one is worth promulgating more? Nevermind the idea that the Republic’s so-called fate will be determined by equivalents to Spammers-

I think there might be a greater consensus to isolate oneself from the implications of DC rather than to jump on a supposed Bandwagon.

One thing that might inspire confidence is a historical understanding of how to “rollback” government? How is that done without “revolution,” bloodshed, disorder etc? How can laws be repealed and bureacracies, full of dependent public servants, wiped off the ledger? How can economies be maintained while governance is cleaned out?

If our history explains we defeated the tyrants of the early industrial age, the trusts, the barons, the Business Plot, why can’t we clean up the corrupt Bums in Washington? All our political speech and argument is wasted on this current lot.

Perhaps the idea is that we must value our public institutions enough to win them back from what controls them now. If we do not care for them that much, then their prestige will be lost to the cheap and petty interests we see them serving now.

Oct 9, 2008 - 10:47 pm 20. Derek:

No one knows what to do in this situation.

Obama is doing what he always does; looks and sounds smart.

McCain doesn’t like his base, doesn’t like those wanting blood. His instincts are away from populism. He is almost a technocrat, a governing technocrat.

He may get angry, but it won’t be at those who hosed him last week, or even Obama. It will be his supporters.

Derek

Oct 9, 2008 - 10:48 pm 21. j-damn:

*Obama is doing what he always does; looks and sounds smart.*

We see what we want to see, I guess. Obama looks like a punk punching above his weight. He’s ducked a few knockout blows, but sooner or later, one’s going to land–then it is all over.

*McCain doesn’t like his base, doesn’t like those wanting blood. His instincts are away from populism. He is almost a technocrat, a governing technocrat.*

His instinct is to win. Please note how he WON the Republican nomination in the first place. He isn’t the same man he was even a year ago.

Oct 9, 2008 - 11:13 pm 22. Bob Murphy:

I hate being in the position to have to vote for McCain as the lesser of two evils.
Cripes.
Any real change is going to have to start from the ground up, local government, schools, universities, state governments.
It will take a long time to build a new base and the Republican Pary itself needs a thorough sweeep out.
If we vote for them this time we just encourage their corruption and if we don’t we get Obama.
Is this Monty Python?

Oct 9, 2008 - 11:18 pm 23. whiskey:

Time to face facts, it’s over.

McCain ran just to make sure no Republican would face Obama. He WANTS to lose. He hates the base, hates Republican principles, and figures he’s better off losing, so he can retain the love of his buddies in the Senate and Press. THAT is his base.

It’s the problem of having elites in power too long. They become “smarter than the people.”

McCain won the primaries through open voting, by Dems. Sabotaging the election the way Limbaugh’s Operation Chaos did with Hillary.

Bottom line — Obama’s Peronist regime will tell angry Republicans to shut up or go to JAIL. For “hate crimes” and whatever else they can cook up. There just is not enough middle class people to resist that, and most hip young things male and female detest middle class living and life. They’d like to erase both and will get their wish.

You CANNOT change from the ground up. Local Government, universities, state governments cannot be changed because that requires a middle class populism. Once Obama and his supporters make that illegal, and flood the country with Mexican immigrants, legalized instantly, ala “the Border is an illusion” then the White Middle class becomes a minority in their own country. One that can be safely purged from public life, as it has in Europe.

That has always been the goal.

Oct 9, 2008 - 11:33 pm 24. whiskey:

Let me add that Obama has no experience in governing from the center, and his entire political career has been built on intimidating Whites by playing the race card. So don’t expect any changes from him as President.

He WILL push Reparations for Slavery, gun bans, Global Tax on Poverty, and everything else in his agenda. Including, “hate crimes” defined as speech critical of himself and his program. He’s likely to get it through Congress, and upheld by a fearful Supreme Court, governed by it’s clerks — the Justices are old, and many out of touch, relying on their clerks for most of their opinions, even writing of same.

He will have great success in Blue states, such as CA, VA, NY, MI, etc, where minorities and yuppies can dominate and intimidate and control the political process. BUT …

He’s likely to make the Red States redder, and in open defiance of such things as national gun bans, confiscation, reparations for slavery, and other such things deeply unpopular there. Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, are likely to resist more or less openly, any laws passed banning guns, confiscating them, reparations for slavery, and the like.

This sets the stage for Orville Faubus like stands in the Schoolhouse Door. Against federal troops. This time not to insure the right to attend school, but for things deeply unpopular and enraging: reparations for slavery (taking money from middle class and working class Whites to give to Oprah and Will Smith) — or gun confiscations. With the extra added bonus of elites calling them racist for opposing the measures. Oh the Feds will get their way, but it will cost. There won’t be a Dem left in those states even with instant new Citizens from Mexico.

Obama will do these things, sure as the sun rises in the East. Because his whole political career has been built on proving he’s “Black Enough” by baiting Whites, and playing the race card. It’s got him this far, expecting him to change is unrealistic. It’s WHY he chose to be Farrakhan’s man, joined Wright’s church, gave it and Wright and Farrakhan grant after grant. Why he chose hard left radicals like Ayers and Dohrn. Why he maintained contact with them long after they had usefulness, or Khalid Shahdi, or the other PLO terrorist.

No there won’t be a civil war. But there will be a long, ugly, regional struggle with parts of the South, borderlands states, and Mountain West against Blue America over their ability to maintain their culture, with an explicitly anti-White sentiment articulated by a “typical White Person’s” grandson. Obama. It will be long, it will be ugly, it will be very radicalizing.

After all, if you call a person racist long enough, for wanting to stay the majority in their own country, keep their guns, and not pay reparations for things they had no connection to, that happened over 140 years ago, they might decide to become racist. Look at Europe: the BNP and other organizations are the only way left for people not to be despised minorities in their own country. When major newspapers run articles urging …

“In a year when the Democrats have an African American presidential nominee, the Republicans now more than ever are the white folks’ party, the party that delays the advent of our multicultural future, the party of the American past. Republican conventions have long been bastions of de facto Caucasian exclusivity, but coming right after the diversity of Denver, this year’s GOP convention is almost shockingly — un-Americanly — white. Long term, this whiteness is a huge problem. This year, however, whiteness is the only way Republicans cling to power. If the election is about the economy, they’re cooked — and their silence this week on nearly all things economic means that they know it.”

According to the 2000 Census, Blacks were 12%, Latinos (we are talking largely Mexicans here) were 13%, and Whites were 75%.

I submit to you that the US will NOT see social peace by having a ruling party, run by a racist, anti-White “Am I Black Enough Now?” neophyte desperate to prove his anti-White racial bonafides, telling around 75% of the population that they must be abolished. Telling 75% of the population it’s un-American to be White is a recipe for continued, constant, ongoing, low level conflict.

Oct 10, 2008 - 12:12 am 25. Tamquam Leo Rugiens:

The guiding principles undergirding our institutions are sound. This is not the first time that some trumped up demagogue has risen to vie for high public office, nor will it be the last.

First major problem is that the Democratic Party has been co-opted by the Left. What I mean by “the Left” is those principles and beliefs that are counter to American guiding principles and institutions, wish to undermine and replace them with an alternate set of principles based on Marxist Socialism. Socialism leads always totalitarian centralized control and is antithetical to republican democracy.

The Republican Party stands for nothing. They have no guiding principles. Yes, hearken back to Reagan, but Reagan was a man of principle. When articulated those principles compelled those who understood them to apply them or to wish to have them applied. When those principles were applied they produced the results foreseen. At this time in history the Republican Party has lost the vision.

Our government depends on the two parties pitting their principles against each other in the public forum of ideas. But further, it depends on the two parties reaching compromises that guarantee that the government we suffer is neither very good nor very bad. And both parties have to cooperate to a certain extent to get anything done at all. They must frequently reach across the aisle. The problem with McCain is that it was never a quid pro quo. He would reach across the aisle to give away his Party’s interest and not get anything back. The Democrats never reached back, only took what was offered to them by a weak and unprincipled Republican Party. The Democrats played Brer Rabbit to the Republican Brer Fox.

My own political leanings are more in sympathy to the old, forgotten principles that once guided the Republican Party. I abhor what the Democratic Party now stands for.

The one good thing about being a Democrat: you never have to say you’re sorry.

Oct 10, 2008 - 12:24 am 26. Brian H:

Whiskey, you’re working hard to stay consistent, but you sound way off the deep end in extrapolating your own experiences and priorities onto the world.

But I’d be surprised if there isn’t massive unrest and riots whichever way the election goes. Obama has successfully appealed to and invoked something very primitive and dangerous in many people. Those who see him as urbane and moderate are not even looking skin-deep.

Oct 10, 2008 - 12:34 am 27. Karen:

Whiskey, your predictions are what I fear. There’s still a huge middle class in this country but a sizeable chunk of it has forsaken middle-class values. Except for going on about high-testosterone Alpha males, I don’t think you’ve gone off the deep end. We see what’s happened in Europe with their socialist overlords. What’s to keep it from happening here? Our revered historical legacy? We’ve already strayed far from Constitutional principles.

Oct 10, 2008 - 2:12 am 28. JavaThread:

Anyone care for some anecdotal evidence?

I worked two hours Thursday evening for my county’s Republican Party organization. Phone calls with a “voter survey”. Following the “who ya voting for questions” (president and governor) there were two general questions: “Are you Pro Life or Pro Choice?” and “Are you in favor of 2nd Amendment rights or Gun Control?”

What astounded me was that to 1/3rd of voters I had to explain the 2nd Amendment before they could answer the question.

The schools have stopped teaching the Constitution and the Bill of Rights for a generation and a half. If you don’t learn about the Constitution at home, then you won’t know what a return to Constitutional government would look like.

Oct 10, 2008 - 3:07 am 29. Wadeusaf:

“Perhaps the idea is that we must value our public institutions enough to win them back from what controls them now. If we do not care for them that much, then their prestige will be lost to the cheap and petty interests we see them serving now.”

Well said. What institutions do we trust enough to identify what is what controls them?

Oct 10, 2008 - 3:25 am 30. MarkJ:

Bottom line — Obama’s Peronist regime will tell angry Republicans to shut up or go to JAIL. For “hate crimes” and whatever else they can cook up. There just is not enough middle class people to resist that, and most hip young things male and female detest middle class living and life. They’d like to erase both and will get their wish.

Not likely. 50% of the electorate suspicious of a “President The One” + 200+ million firearms (and billions of rounds) in private hands.

Do the math.

Oct 10, 2008 - 5:41 am 31. JGreer:

We may not like it but the Dems are going to get their chance over the next 2-4 years. The best we can hope for is that the Dems manage to mature rapidly, sideline their loony fringe, and start behaving like the majority party.

It may not be all bad. Consider the Econ-101 text book response to a recession is to increase govt spending and run a deficit. If the Dems can do anything, they can certainly do that!

In the meantime, the Republicans can ponder their mistakes and hopefully reestablish their conservative roots. Just like the business cycle, so too moves politics. Cycles of destruction make room for new ideas and growth. (start fantasy) 4yrs from now we may have a Dem party, with traditional liberal values, beholden to the center. Likewise, a resurgent Rep party, with TRUE conservative values, also catering to the center. (end fantasy)

Oct 10, 2008 - 6:11 am 32. Lifeofthemind:

The principles behind universal suffrage will have to be questioned if we survive this election with our democracy intact. Of course if whiskey’s apocalyptic vision comes true then it won’t matter. To some extent giving the franchise to unproductive members of society is justified as a therapeutic activity. This is analogous to praising children for participating civilly in a game without creating a scene, regardless of the quality of their effort. Rent seekers, civil servants and recipients of the public largess such as Food Stamps are like the Lilies of the Valley. The hope was that they would perceive a need to protect the system that benefits them and therefore would not act against the rights and liberties of the productive members of society. Obama’s coalition of the arrogant and the aggrieved, in the case of his spouse both in one package she is a twofer, has broken that compact. This is no longer an argument over what level of transfer payment is needed to efficiently build the human capital in the marginalized so that they can join the productive elements. This is now an argument over whether to marginalize and defang the productive groups in America who are being demonized as threats to global peace.

Oct 10, 2008 - 6:26 am 33. Lifeofthemind:

@JGreer,
Sorry but a Democrat wrote your Econ 101 book. Most of what is called macroeconomics is just an elaborate exercise in solipsism. Deficit spending or “pump priming” in a recession just delays the recovery for reasons that should now be clear. What is needed is to restore productive activity and remove barriers to wealth creation. Increasing government debt does the opposite. Some government activity that is not perceived as being in competition with private capital could be justified. For example the government could double the size of our armed forces. That would mean cutting a lot of steel and training a couple of million young men to be employable.

Oct 10, 2008 - 6:34 am 34. Mark:

Things could be worse. Yes, the middle class if angry, and by thunder they’re going to vote about it.

Can you imagine if the Obama supporters were this angry? There would be conflagrations. And come to think of it, they may be angry on Nov. 5, and there may be conflagrations.

Oct 10, 2008 - 6:38 am 35. Michelle Malkin Judge rules Ohio Secretary of State violated federal election law; plus ACORN victim on tape | OBAMA ACORN:

[...] » Leading from behind [...]

Oct 10, 2008 - 6:39 am 36. Mike Sylwester:

The Washington Post article describes an angry crowd at a Republican political rally. That’s one perspective.

Another perspective is that the Democrats are ecstatic, jubilant, overjoyed and wildly optimistic. For them, our politically system is working wonderfully, the mass media are reporting accurately, and our country’s intellectual elite is guiding our discussions correctly.

I expect that the votes on November 4 will show that the people with the first perspective constitute a minority and the people with the second perspective constitutute a clear, decisive majority.

The votes will show that the election was about:

* McCain vs Obama — and McCain lost and Obama won.

* Republicans vs Democrats — and the Republicans lost and the Democrats won.

* Conservatives vs. Liberals — and the Conservatives lost and Liberals won.

We shouldn’t deny the obvious. Rather, we should examine our defeats self-critically and learn our lessons.

Oct 10, 2008 - 6:47 am 37. Joe Buzz:

Zo is not afraid to fight Darth-Barry

Oct 10, 2008 - 6:50 am 38. Alexis:

It ain’t over ’til it’s over.

–Yogi Berra

Oct 10, 2008 - 6:57 am 39. Benj:

I tried to post a version of the following statment at about 1:00 p.m. EST last night. There were only a couple posts up in this thread. But no go. Perhaps Wretch felt tender when confronted with the obvious contradiction in his analysis? Hope this post makes the cut, though (I’ll allow)I’d rather have been in W.’s face/thread right after he posted his initial nonsense…

At a moment when America seems to on the verge of electing the first African American President – a candidate whose deepest base is made up of a population that has a history of being excluded from America’s elites – Wretch writes:

“For many of those who have lost confidence in the political, economic and cultural elites that have long led the nation it is really about us versus them.”

Is Wretch referencing the projections of a massive turnout by African American voters? Nope. So…Have Black Americans been magically transformed into elites “that have long led the nation”?

Confronted with the mindlessness of such “analysis,” there are two options: 1. Wretch knows nothing about America and American history 2. Wretch is lying to “us” and himself.

Oct 10, 2008 - 7:00 am 40. buddy larsen:

Mkts just turned. floor is cheering. We may survive after all. I think Obama/Mccain momentum will change today too. These powerful movements are trying to synch up.

Oct 10, 2008 - 7:10 am 41. Mike Sylwester:

The Republicans should refocus on core political issues, starting with the Federal Budget.

* How large should the Budget be?

* Should we try to balance the Budget or should we tolerate deficits?

* What percentage of our Budget should be for the military, intelligence and security services?

* What should we do to prepare for much larger expenditures for Social Security and Medicare benefits for the Baby Boom?

And so forth and so on. The Republican Party has not presented clear, coherent policies on such issues for several years — and in particular during this Presidential election year.

Instead, the Republican Party has been arguing that our guy is an experienced war hero and your guy is a naive radical. I had expected that the debates this year would provide the public with an educational discussion of the major issues our country faces. That sure has not happened.

What hard, unpleasant decision has McCain challenged the public to make? OK, he says he will cut spending. Well, then, what spending cuts does he challenge the public to accept?

As far, as I can see, McCain has challenged the public to accept only trivial spending cuts — a planetarium projector, a study of bear DNA, and so forth. OK, I myself happen to support planetariums and DNA studies, but I will accept that we might have to eliminate those expenditures in order to correct our financial problems. But those expenditures total only about $4 million. It’s a political platform that is ludicrous.

Oct 10, 2008 - 7:18 am 42. buddy larsen:

He’s promised a one-year spending freeze on all federal programs which can endure it –or some such wording –that’s a way to start –

Oct 10, 2008 - 7:35 am 43. Doug:

Russia Approves Loan Plan to Ease Credit Crunch

In particular, VEB would be instructed to loan about $1 billion to Rosselkhozbank, the agricultural bank, to ward off a possible collapse in a sector that is capital intensive and was just getting on its feet with the largest wheat harvest since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Also, Russian companies hit hard by declining commodities prices continued to announce layoffs or production cuts.
Severstal, which makes automotive plate steel and had been on a buying spree for mills around the world, said Friday it would cut production by 30 percent in the United States, and 25 percent at plants in Russia and Italy.

Oct 10, 2008 - 7:43 am 44. meowism:

“Is Wretch referencing the projections of a massive turnout by African American voters? Nope.”

How are you so certain?

Oct 10, 2008 - 7:43 am 45. JGreer:

The OP was about disillusionment and an angry portion of the electorate. My post was aimed at the cyclic nature of creation & destruction in markets and politics (more precisely political ideas). We are clearly in a destruction phase of both which is painful, causing disillusionment, but ultimately essential to continue with healthy growth. We allowed the R’s to stray from their stated principals setting the stage for this phase. Blaming the D’s is frivolous. Pelosi, Frank, Obama, etc. are true to their ideology — they haven’t done anything that I would not have expected them to do. We need to take responsibility for ourselves and our chosen leaders. It was conservative principals that failed to assert themselves and prove their worth. Are we surprised then that there is a move away from conservative thinking? The fact that we have voters yelling at McCain is good but belated start in my opinion. Now we need a true conservative champion to channel this disillusionment to a productive new beginning. Hint: Its not McCain. So, wretchard — what you up to the next few years??

@lifeofthemind: Spending on things like military, infrastructure, and even social programs are where the govt should operate. My post said nothing of entry into private institutions. And while economists are not the most likeable of fellows calling them all Dem’s is just mean!

Oct 10, 2008 - 7:47 am 46. mika2k1:

one-year spending freeze
==

Well then, that’s our man!
But do you really think that all them federal programs can endure such drastic overbearing action?

Oct 10, 2008 - 7:48 am 47. buddy larsen:

Mika, yes, until someone pokes a tv camera in the face of a laid-off worker whose company’s government contract just got trimmed. The camera will pan to the worker’s two-year old, sitting at the kitchen table in front of an empty cereal bowl, and then the flow will reverse back the other way.

Oct 10, 2008 - 8:05 am 48. Bill in NC:

Benj: you are a living and breathing non sequitor. You will soon see that Obama’s racial heritage and consequent historical significance is not — alone — a governing strategy.

Oct 10, 2008 - 8:14 am 49. buddy larsen:

doug,re your news from Russia –Putin you know is blaming the whole crisis on USA –publicly, often, and with vigor. Of course, he’s partly right –the same financial engineering that has done so much good for global poor folks is now showing its flip side.

Is there anything under the sun that has no flip side?

Oct 10, 2008 - 8:16 am 50. slade:

I don’t think Putin has much of a flip side.

Oct 10, 2008 - 8:20 am 51. Lifeofthemind:

@JGreer,
Defense as a public good? Yes, Infrastructure? Depends, at least “Post Roads” are in the Constitution. But I’d watch it like a hawk. The railroads got built and the government just arranged the land grabs. Private capital can string communications cable and build bridges and ports. The National Security concerns over Dubai notwithstanding. “Social programs?” No way does that meet my definition of “investment.”
Economists are not all Republicans or Democrats but most do know that Macroeconomics is nothing but a shell game. Since government is eager to pay economists to play the game they move the pea around. Price (Microeconomics) theory is everything.

Oct 10, 2008 - 8:26 am 52. Alexis:

Isn’t it noteworthy how much of the chattering class assumes that anybody and everybody who opposes Barack Obama’s candidacy must be, ipso facto, a racist? Could it be that the words “bigot” and “racist” are being used the way the words “Communist” and “witch” were once used, namely as a means to discredit political opposition regardless of the actual reason for one’s persuasion?

As we all know, nobody from the Obama campaign would ever refer to people who “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations”, “rednecks”, or “white carnival trash”. It’s not as if Senator Obama ever went to Trinity United Church of Christ, led by a pastor named Jeremiah Wright. It’s not as if any Obama supporter is capable of being a racist. Presumably, racism is the exclusive preserve of people who oppose Barack Obama’s candidacy, as if supporting his candidacy were some political indulgence that would wipe away all of the stain of racism from American society.

There is reason to be concerned about systematic voter fraud committed by ACORN. Were the margin of victory for Barack Obama to come from cemetery voters and perhaps the occasional cat, there would be good reason for people to get upset. What is it now – any disagreement with ACORN’s methods becomes a subtext for racism? Must any dissent against the wisdom literature of Barack Obama be mystically interpreted as racism?

Well, my mystical interpretation of the lyrics of Earth Girls Are Easy is that it actually refers to 2 Samuel 11. And the sexy space alien is a mystical reference to King David.

Oct 10, 2008 - 8:26 am 53. buddy larsen:

Slade –you’re right –we’re up against a soviet Patton in a fight for survival. we can whup him but only if we get our sh*t together pronto.

Oct 10, 2008 - 8:29 am 54. Paul:

Even though Mc Cain is falling behind on points, he can still land a knockout blow. He has so many easy targets. He just has to get his pampered elitist head in the game. One fat easy target is Obama’s vague Universal Health Care Proposal.

Mc Cain needs to point out that nationalized Health Care has:

1. Been tried the world over many times without success. Government will never better the free market in allocating resources. If the Democrats plan for Fannie and Freddie didn’t work out, why would one trust them with Health Care?

2. Leads either to rationed health care or really expensive health care or probably both. Every major nationalized health care system has difficulty performing those necessary expensive life saving operations like a kidney transplant that the US does now on a timely basis. Critical health care will surely decline.

3. Nationalizing 1/6 th of the economy( $2 trillion plus a year) has to cost hundreds of billions of dollars a year over current costs. Government control is not cheap. That has to lead to a whopping tax increase in the midst of a severe recession.

4. Government control will eventually lead to control of personal health choices.

5. The Democrats, true to form, will eventually charge patients based on their ability to pay, and so the middle class and above will get hosed big time. Again.

This issue and others Mc Cain has never broken down and explained it ’s true consequences. He had better start.

Oct 10, 2008 - 8:30 am 55. fred:

What do we do when we have arrived at the moment when a large portion of society now collaborates, all in varying degrees and capacities, of using all of this society’s institutions, laws, and whatever organs of government it can lay its hands on TO SUBVERT OUR SOCIETY?

How do you proceed when the virus has taken hold of them all?

It would so appear that the visions of Billy Ayers and his father, and of that hellion daughter-in-law who revels in murder and bloodshed, have midwifed a toxic miasma so menacing and yet so stealthy that we are stunned and at a loss for what to do.

The even more important question is: who is using whom? Is Obama using Ayers and will have the upper hand? Or, is Ayers and his clan of revolutionaries, and the puppet master Soros using Obama?

It’s so complicated precisely because so much is hidden. Therefore, the chaos…

Oct 10, 2008 - 8:36 am 56. Mike Sylwester:

buddy larson:
“He’s promised a one-year spending freeze on all federal programs which can endure it –or some such wording –that’s a way to start –”
———-

Or, that is a way to delay setting priorities and challenging the public to support prioritized spending cuts.

And what is McCain going to do during the year-long spending freeze? He is going to appoint a bi-partisan commission to recommend prioritized spending cuts.

In other words, McCain still does not know now how we should cut the budget in any significant way.

Oct 10, 2008 - 8:48 am 57. slade:

Alexis -

I seldom ask direct questions but does your post imply that you are sympathetic with Whiskey’s theory of the destabilizing role played by the alpha (centauri) male?

::))

RE the racism issue. Staleness pervades our public thinking and discourse like – dare I say – sliced white bread. I haven’t heard an original thought or real extemporaneous statement that dares to stray outside the campaign choreography since Sarah winked. Her role as a cultural touchstone is proving fascinating. The only message to penetrate the “viscous” banality of the cross-messaging has been Obama’s rhetoric.

And of course the loss of half your portfolio and ten years of work.

Oct 10, 2008 - 8:53 am 58. Michael Hoskins:

I am intrested in the anger.

The left has spent the last several decades (generations?) trying to establish a consensus around their world view. With unchallenged control of the university and near monopoly on the media, they do not seem to be very successful. Why? I believe we are seeing the solution before our face…History in the Making…the anger, from where I sit, (DC) is impressive. It is not liberal anger…it is everyday citizen angry at the arrogance of the self annointed.

The last time America got this angry a wave of effort ended WWII in 42 months. The time before that was an internal convulsion still on some minds (and the only true Nation State Jihad in history, ie self correction).

Now that we are getting close and ordinary voters are listening, the rage grows. The next 2 years (this election and the next) may just show the power of the enraged voter.

Oct 10, 2008 - 8:54 am 59. buddy larsen:

Benj, this ‘racism’ revival is not good. Most white people were done with the old prejudices decades ago. It seems now like it is being kept alive (another zombie!) by those who profit from it. IOW, racialists are trying to revive the corpse. Look at the Roger Simon site today. Pity that one can accuse another of hatred often enough, and unfairly enough, to thereby actually create a hatred where there wasn’t one before –an act of magical conjuring if ever there was one, and instructive of why the great monotheisms warn against conjuring.

Oct 10, 2008 - 8:55 am 60. Mike Sylwester:

Paul,

You are exactly right about what McCain should have said about the health-care issue. He didn’t say any of that in the last debate when the issue was raised. He said only that he would give everyone a $5,000 tax credit and that everyone can buy a policy in any state.

McCain forgot to mention that the Democrats’ plans will vastly increase the Government’s taxes and regulations and will endanger our country’s economic growth and busines innovation. McCain has failed to give the public the big picture in understanding and deciding about this issue. He’s acting as if the essential difference between the two parties’ plans is simply a difference in features, not a huge difference of scale, costs and consequences.

Oct 10, 2008 - 9:00 am 61. mika2k1:

Buddy,

“If you do not change direction, you’ll end up where you’re going.” – Chinese proverb.

==

There are 3 ways to eliminate the excessive debt clogging the pipes: hyperinflation, cancellation of debt, or growth.

Hyperinflation erases the value of all dollar-denominated investments.

Canceling debt begs the question who will have their debt canceled and who will not.

Growth requires cutting spending on unproductive government welfare programs (of which the majority is military welfare) and diverting this money towards productive activity. I would start by eliminating the oil mafia, converting transportation energy demand to that compatible with renewable green energy. Then I would move on the Pentagon the Department of State and the CIA mafia, cut their budget by 90%, put an end to their skullduggery and perpetual fake wars.

But these are all half steps. Real change will require a thorough cleansing of the mass media and the market makers, a complete overhaul of the electoral system, and a rethink of the federal structure.

Oct 10, 2008 - 9:01 am 62. Mike Sylwester:

Michael Hoskins:
“Now that we are getting close and ordinary voters are listening, the rage grows. The next 2 years (this election and the next) may just show the power of the enraged voter.”
==========

The Democrats have been enraged for the past eight years. Now it is only the Republicans who will be enraged.

Oct 10, 2008 - 9:03 am 63. Chavo:

I shamelessly offer this suggestion before going to the polls this November.

http://chebellafiori.blogspot.com/2008/10/remember-this-nov-4th.html

Pass it on..

Oct 10, 2008 - 9:15 am 64. Charles:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivmL-lXNy64

Democrats, Obama, Community Organization, Acorn and Your Money

this long video does a good job of tying together Democrats, Obama, Community Organization, Acorn and Your Money

Hat Tip
The Elephant Bar

Oct 10, 2008 - 9:15 am 65. WSL:

With Congressional popularity at an all-time low, even lower that Bush’s, and with the ballot being headed by bad and badder, many are unsure if voting is worth their time. Indeed, if voter turnout were sufficiently low, no winner could claim a mandate, even though we all know they would. A generation ago, a popular bumper sticker read, “What if they gave a war and nobody came?” Perhaps today’s should read, “What if they held an election and nobody voted?”

Oct 10, 2008 - 9:15 am 66. buddy larsen:

Mika, i thought of you when i read about our 6.5 bbl arms sale to Taiwan a few days ago. i know, i know, Taiwan deserves the right to defend itself –and we have treaties –but, PRC is enraged over the sale and PRC is an ally too –a much needed one in this war against entropy and nihilsm which is now burning up the global trade system. Talk about a screwed up position –damned if you do and damned if you don’t –like those chess positions where you’re perfectly safe only if you don’t move, but, it’s your move and you have to move –and hurt yourself –or resign.

Oct 10, 2008 - 9:19 am 67. Shakespeare's Fool:

Barack Obama is The Mystery Candidate, a man with no past, no record, no experience…and no vetting. And the mainstream media intends to keep it that way.

Oct 10, 2008 - 9:25 am 68. Benj:

I actually think the “racism” thing is overplayed (unless somebody takes the Manch Candidate/Terrorist stuff to, ah, heart and O gets shot). O will get more votes from increased Black turnout and most Lovers of the Lost Cause vote Pub anyway so…I’m not accusing Wretch of racism – tend to stay away from that word – it’s been devalued… Just pointing out how ahistorical his analysis is. Given the deepest sources of O’s support, it’s not just counter-intutitive to say he’s the candidate of elites – it’s counter-factual.

You and anyone else who needs talking down re Obama’s “Marxist-Leninist/Terrorist” nexus should check this Salon piece by a grad student who ran with Ayers and OBama in the 90s – Note the connection between Ayers’ book on Juvie Justice and Bush’s compassionate conservative meme in the 90s. THis was truly consensual stuff. Ayers doesn’t publish the memoir that gets him in trouble until 2001. O – as a pretty cautious pol – would have been steering clear at that point. http://www.slate.com/id/2201953/pagenum/2

You should probably also check out the piece today on Palin’s extensive connections with the A.I.P (including a John Bircher). This is talking point stuff (I know). But the notion that ANYONE could pretend O might be “unAmerican” seems way out of time now. Sarah, after all, was not only sleeping with a guy who was a secessionist, but had an open door policy with the A.I.P.’s leader…And do note that lovely A.I.P. connection with the State of Iran, its sponsor at the U.N. And this isn’t mystery-mongering. It’s on the public record.

Oct 10, 2008 - 9:28 am 69. mika2k1:

Mika, i thought of you when i read about our 6.5 bbl arms sale to Taiwan a few days ago.
==

How does a few billion in arms sales to Taiwan justify a $1.4 trillion dollar military welfare program? This is the same kind of nonsense McCain tries to bamboozle the public with when he talks about earmarks crusade. It’s farcical.

PRC an ally? Maybe Saudia is an ally too? As I said, I would eliminate the Pentagon mafia, the Department of State mafia, the CIA mafia, the Oil mafia, the MSM mafia, the Goldman Sucks mafia, and then rethink the whole political system that got us into this mess. You play Chess, I’m playing Checkers.

Oct 10, 2008 - 9:39 am 70. Benj:

Forgot the link to the Salon piece on Palin’s relations with the A.I.M. – Garden variety stuff for an Alaska pol on the right side of the dial – but Alaska is a little different than the lower 48! There’s a polemic on the Salon site making the obvious invidious comparisons to O and Michelle – But nobody really needs to underscore the point…There’s one candidate in this race whose commitment to “Americanism” is somewhat suspect. And it ain’t Barack Obama.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/10/10/palin_chryson/

Oct 10, 2008 - 9:46 am 71. buddy larsen:

Well, at the risk of sounding like a traitor, if I were an Alaskan getting saddled with the debts and politicians of DC, i too might look around and say “hey, what the hell are we doing here?”

IOW, DC better get off its ass pronto or there’ll be other border states wanting to unhook from the tender mercies of the Barny Franks, Chris Dodds, Pat Leahys, Chuck Schumers, and Wall Street, et al.

Oct 10, 2008 - 9:46 am 72. Marcus Aurelius:

I was listening to a rebroadcast on the Vicki McKenna show on my long commute home from my weekly trip to the People’s Democratic Republic of Madistan. There were some typical discussions about the issues we would expect and a couple of these with people asking John to stand up and fight. Ironically, earlier in the morning on Fox I saw ad put out by the McCain campaign on Ohno’s relationship with the Weather Underground.

Benj, stop being obtuse. Was BO talking to a black crowd when he talked of the bitter clingers to guns & religion? No he wasn’t that is who the us vs. them is referring to, “bitter clingers” on the one hand and the “brights” on the other hand. Sentiments such as yours is what scares me probably the most about BO.

If he gets into office, anyone who dare to oppose any of his policies or initiatives will reflexively be beaten with the bludgeon of racism.

Waukesha is surrounded by Pelosi types and knows them well, laying on the Western edge of greater Milwaukee and about an hour or so from Madison.

Oct 10, 2008 - 9:46 am 73. buddy larsen:

Benj, re your term “Americanism” –what does the term mean to you? Does it refer to a culture situated within a geography, or does it refer to the reach of legal structure?

Oct 10, 2008 - 9:54 am 74. buddy larsen:

Mika, PRC is an ally, as is KSA, in the sense that both teams engaged in a game (say, football, for an easy visual) are trying to whup one another, but within the boundaries of the game (that is, the playing of football). If you can’t see the gradations, think of a PRC and a KSA that refused further trade with USA. What game would THAT automatically place the players in? Maybe if we were lucky, nothing more serious at first than the one being played off the coast of Somalia, or in the Nigerian delta, for two examples of places beyond the current reach of the ”useless” world policemen.

Oct 10, 2008 - 10:04 am 75. Storm-Rider:

Here’s an idea which would help things immediately: Every state with a Republican or conservative Democrat (if there is still such a thing) Governor should publically declare their state’s rights under the tenth amendment. Stop the flow of tax money to D.C. for all entitlement programs and fund them through the states – put political power back into the hands of the states and the people as the Constitution mandates – it is the law of the land. All federal tax headed to D.C. for these programs would be diverted to the state treasuries.

Oct 10, 2008 - 10:04 am 76. El Jefe Maximo:

“For many of those who have lost confidence in the political, economic and cultural elites that have long led the nation it is really about us versus them. The election may simply be the setting for a far larger wave of disillusionment that is beating not just at the doors of Washington and Wall Street, but also against the towers of academia and the soundproofed studios of the mainstream media.”

Spain, 1936, with internet and globalization. God forbid.

Oct 10, 2008 - 10:08 am 77. mika2k1:

Mika, PRC is an ally, as is KSA, in the sense that both teams engaged in a game
==

When was the last time they voted to your favor at the UN?
Engaged in what game? Stealing your earnings your knowhow your kid’s inheritance with the conniving of the mafias that sold the American middle class down the river. Engaged in what game exactly?

Oct 10, 2008 - 10:14 am 78. Benj:

“Americanism” to me means our “civic religion” – You know the deal – Bill of Rights is the key – Candor in political discourse – the cultivation of sharp argufying avec stress on the humanity of those you disagree with you, unless they get thugly…Liberal-mindedness. Here’s a passage re the recent behavior at Palin/Mac rallies that seems to the point on that front…

John Weaver, McCain’s former top strategist, said top Republicans have a responsibility to temper this behavior.

“People need to understand, for moral reasons and the protection of our civil society, the differences with Sen. Obama are ideological, based on clear differences on policy and a lack of experience compared to Sen. McCain,” Weaver said. “And from a purely practical political vantage point, please find me a swing voter, an undecided independent, or a torn female voter that finds an angry mob mentality attractive.”

“Sen. Obama is a classic liberal with an outdated economic agenda. We should take that agenda on in a robust manner. As a party we should not and must not stand by as the small amount of haters in our society question whether he is as American as the rest of us. Shame on them and shame on us if we allow this to take hold.”

Oct 10, 2008 - 10:16 am 79. myna:

Barack is going to govern from the left.
Farakhan thinks that Obama was sent by God. Once the market stabilize, I predict he will say that whitey are the source of greed so in the name of equality reparation is coming.

So hold on to your wallet.

Oct 10, 2008 - 10:19 am 80. Pascal:

Charles,

That 8 minute video is good, but I shuddered at it’s opening headline: “ASTONISHING VIDEO EVIDENCE FOUND!!!”

Astonishing to whom? Pollyanna? Rip Van Winkle?

I’ve relatives and acquaintances who read that opening, reflexively see disingenuousness in the title, and simply stop right there!

DAMN IT!

Why isn’t it straight forward? For example:
“8 minute vid of pols demanding banks lend at increased risk”

or “8 minute vid of pols, including Obama, coercing banks to increase their risk and yours”

I’m no brilliant tactician, but I can sense a fatal flaw readily enough.

Oct 10, 2008 - 10:24 am 81. buddy larsen:

update on the great unwind: The auction going on today of Lehman Bros’ credit-default-swaps, apparently they are pricing as low as nine cents on the dollar. This has apparently kicked off a bear raid on Morgan Stanley (which has plenty of CDS’s yet to auction off) –now down 45% on the day. So much for that cheering bottom a half hour in this morning.

Oct 10, 2008 - 10:24 am 82. buddy larsen:

Benj, re “recent behavior at McCain/Palin rallies” –is someone quantifying the misbehavior in these two campaigns? If so, could you post a link?

Oct 10, 2008 - 10:31 am 83. NahnCee:

Every once in a while, you need a civil war just to clear the air.

Oct 10, 2008 - 10:35 am 84. Zim:

Christopher Buckley just endorsed Obama. I saw this coming for some time, and dreaded it. The root is being laid bare, the wheat and chaff are separating.

Where,or who, is wormwood?

Oct 10, 2008 - 10:39 am 85. Alexis:

slade:

I find whiskey’s alpha-male analysis a bit tiresome. Sure, if you look at fundamentalist Mormons, older men excommunicate younger men so they can keep most of the women to themselves. The younger men are irate, their outrage is a justifiable reason why fundamentalist Mormons get so much bad press. While polygamy may make sense in rare circumstances, polygamy can only become the principal building block of a society if murder and warfare are regarded as a normal part of manhood. Hence the Ottoman Law of Fratricide.

Still, I think there’s more to politics than the male sex drive. Although Muslim society has polygamy, polygamy’s role in fostering war and conflict is often vastly overstated, particularly when there are other reasons in Arab and Arabophile cultures for militancy.

Even when whiskey does have a point, he often overstates the case. Earlier this year, he counseled complacency, claiming there was no possibility of Obama winning because white working class voters wouldn’t stand for it. He presently counsels complacency because he thinks there is no possibility of Obama losing. His fatalism can even lead one to wonder if actually wants Barack Obama to win!

Earlier this year, I pointed out that Barack Obama probably doesn’t need any white working class voters who don’t comply with the demands of their labor union. Now, I also point that John McCain has a serious chance of winning. I think the election could go in any direction. It could be an Obama landslide. It could be a McCain landslide. It could be a close election with a razor thin margin on either side, with twenty states holding recounts and a frenzy of lawsuits throughout the United States. The election controversies could so convoluted that state legislators choose the Electors simply to ensure that their state gets represented in the Electoral College at all.

Much is up in the air. It is still possible for Barack Obama to lose this election, or for John McCain to win it.

Oct 10, 2008 - 10:39 am 86. buddy larsen:

Mika, the game is called “economic growth”, and it is usually credited with creating wealth that, tho unevenly distributed according to the uneven value of the inputs (and the uneven military power of the judges of those values), is preventing famine and disease, and offering upward mobility, to a greater degree than previously in human history, resulting in sufficient material and psychological improvement in the ordinary person’s life that the improvement can be quantified as a longer average human life span.

Oct 10, 2008 - 10:39 am 87. Alexis:

I don’t like the idea of a civil war in the United States at all. For one thing, I think this is precisely the eventuality that al-Qaeda is trying to promote. Why should al-Qaeda go to all the effort of killing off Americans and discrediting the ideals that America stands for when Americans appear quite willing to do that service for them?

Oct 10, 2008 - 10:44 am 88. Charles:

Pascal:

Charles,

Why isn’t it straight forward?
……..
agreed. It would be better if the video were straight forward rather than sensational. It doesn’t look like the work of a professional. But I haven’t seen any of the utube tracts we’ve seen over the last couple weeks — that thead the story together–that look to be work of professionals. It just looks like guys in their jammies in the burbs splicing together old footage on their home computers.

Oct 10, 2008 - 10:49 am 89. fred:

Paul Kengor has an article posted over at americanthinker.com today that illuminates why the fecal matter in Obama’s past is not sticking to him at all.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/why_obamas_communist_connectio.html

The virus has spread through the entire body and right now cannot be ejected. It may be that we will have to endure the effects of this in order for the immune system to cope with mutations of the virus later on.

Right now the mutation du jour is anti-anti-communism, brought to you by the followers of Antonio Gramsci.

Oct 10, 2008 - 10:49 am 90. Whitehall:

We can only hope that McCain and team are being careful in their timing. I’d like to think that they know the perfect time to hit the major issues.

Military training teaches economy of resources and the value of reserves. Many major battles have been lost by stronger forces because the stronger commander committed his force too early. Conversely, the commander of the weaker force could win by holding back the reserve until the right moment to commit it at the right time and place.

McCain has less cash than Obama and another disadvantage in the MSM.

Still, voting has started in many places.

If Obama does win, he and the Democrats show many signs of using government power to restrain political criticism. Anyone want to bet on whether Rush Limbaugh will have been indicted in something by 2011 if Obama win?

Oct 10, 2008 - 10:52 am 91. Vivictius:

Alexis – “Well, my mystical interpretation of the lyrics of Earth Girls Are Easy is that it actually refers to 2 Samuel 11. And the sexy space alien is a mystical reference to King David.”

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Over…

Im supprised I even remember that song, but you really have to explain hat interpretation for me.

Oct 10, 2008 - 10:59 am 92. Konyok:

Cannoneer,

Atlas IS pissed.

We have stood by passively and allowed our institutions, political and cultural, to be infiltrated by the “indoctrinated socialites.” They have been winning by default. Sure, we’ve always loved to complain about media bias, for example, but it was almost as funny as frightening.
Now, we find ourselves in crisis with the commanding heights controlled by our opponents. (I won’t use the word “enemy,” that is reserved for AQ and others who want to kill us. Our opponents are fellow Americans that we disagree with. Ayers might qualify as “enemy.”)
We’ve heard a lot of drastic solutions proposed, mostly because people are always in a hurry. We dream of quick and easy coups de force, but, like any other conflict, the only way to take and hold territory is with boots on the ground.
Our current disadvantage vis a vis the statists came about because of their patient preparation of the battle space. The only way that we can reverse the situation and gain ground is with a similarly stubborn and patient COIN strategy. (There is never a permanent victory, we can only stave off defeat, and that is as it should be in our system.)
The key is to contest every schoolboard seat, city council member, county commissioner, state legislator and so on. Every opinion-as-fact news item must be challenged. Every textbook and curriculum in our public schools must be reviewed by parents and tax payers.
This is an incredible investment of time and effort. The left has achieved its ascendency through just such an investment. Our PC reflexes are born of just such leftist activism. Decision makers are much more worried about offending leftists for the very same reason that muslim sensibilities earn such exagerrated solicitude – they consistently and relentlessly represent themselves to greatest advantage.
We can’t counter them from our barcaloungers. We were mistaken in believing that our elites would adhere to some tacit contract to defend traditional American values. That always has been our job and we were remiss in assuming that we could contract it out. We need to confront the left and contest each inch.
In so doing, we can regenerate our country.
Every conservative a community organizer.

Oct 10, 2008 - 11:02 am 93. Konyok:

Nahncee,

How do you clear the air of the stinking corpses?

Oct 10, 2008 - 11:03 am 94. Pascal:

Charles: agreed. It would be better if the video were straight forward rather than sensational. It doesn’t look like the work of a professional.
==============================

It’s another product of NakedEmperorNews.com

They’ve produced several good videos that have made the rounds in the last few week. If not professionals, they are at least not bad dilettantes.

I’m sending my concerns on to contactus@nakedemperornews.com.
Maybe I can get them to tone down their hyperbole a bit. Let the content of their videos be all the inflammation needed.

It may help were I not the lone voice.

Oct 10, 2008 - 11:09 am 95. Konyok:

Pascal,

The e-mail is on its way.

Every conservative a community organizer. (Fueled by Georgian wine.)

Oct 10, 2008 - 11:23 am 96. Pascal:

Thanks Konyok,

It’s satisfying to see your suggestions have not fallen on deaf ears.

Oct 10, 2008 - 11:31 am 97. mika2k1:

Mika, the game is called “economic growth”, and it is usually credited with creating wealth
==

Economic growth,.. creating wealth.. I don’t know if to laugh or cry, Buddy. So far, the well to do and well connected thieves are laughing, while many many ordinary hard working people are crying.

Oct 10, 2008 - 11:32 am 98. buddy larsen:

“Civil” War:

“Good morning, old chap, mind if i have a go at killing you?”

>>”And good morning to you, too, sir. Pray continue, and I shall likewise attempt to kill you, all due respect of course.”

“But of course, sir!”

(sound of quiet, refined cannons firing: “Er, ah, BOOM!”)

Oct 10, 2008 - 11:41 am 99. Konyok:

Ah, mika

The old class struggle romance dies hard, no?

Even in the midst of this financial panic, the ordinary hard working people here in the United States are spending that created wealth at Walmart and Dunkin Doughnuts and everywhere in between on stuff that their grandparents couldn’t have even imagined buying.

Wealth creation is good.

Oct 10, 2008 - 11:42 am 100. Storm-Rider:

“Economic growth,.. creating wealth..”

It’s also called human creativity and pursuit of happiness; and gues what, we have an unalienable human right to creatively pursue happiness – without government ownership of our sacred human creativity and labor. Taxation above a total of 20% (10% Federal and 10% State/Local/Sales) is unjust and it violates our inalienable human right to creatively pursue happiness – so says our Declaration of Independence.

Oct 10, 2008 - 11:44 am 101. Konyok:

buddy,

Would that be from the comfort of barcaloungers?

Oct 10, 2008 - 11:45 am 102. buddy larsen:

Mika, prior to the 1950s & 60s, famine was a real scourge of humanity, with the vagaries of weather deciding when and where hundreds of thousands –usually the youngest first –might die unpleasantly, of famine. What changed?

Oct 10, 2008 - 11:48 am 103. buddy larsen:

konyok, yes, the drawing room barcalounger vs the library barcalounger, lobbing empty sherry decanters over the transoms at each other –

Oct 10, 2008 - 11:54 am 104. Pascal:

Buddy, Konyok. I know from experience how many roll their eyes when I mention NeoMalthusian influence. But in that regard, what makes you think that Mika isn’t so influenced? Starvation now, after all, is less NOW than if those that starved lived to reproduce and to further tax burden the “limited” resources. He might find that lowered productivity is a good thing in the long run. Luddites, nihilists and misanthropes all concur one way or the other.

Oct 10, 2008 - 11:54 am 105. mika2k1:

The old class struggle romance dies hard, no?
==

Konyok,

The transnational fat cats will manage just fine. You wont. America just lost twenty years of growth, fifty years of savings, is drowning in a sea of debt. America is not that far from losing its middle class if things don’t change, and that middle class includes you.

Oct 10, 2008 - 11:55 am 106. buddy larsen:

mika, southern California is, i hear, already far down the Road to Surfdom

Oct 10, 2008 - 12:00 pm 107. Alexis:

Vivictius:

Here is one mystical interpretation of Earth Girls Are Easy lyrics.

Is it true what they say about Julie?
There she is, let’s ask her.
Julie, did you really go out with an alien?
Uh huh
What was it like?
Real different
By the way, where’d you meet him?

This song is about a woman spreading the Good News about G-d’s love for Israel.

I was nude sunbathing on my patio, and he was checking me out from his UFO

This refers to King David spying on Bathsheba as she is bathing.

Guess he couldn’t take it ’cause he lost his cool, crash landed in my
swimming pool
ooh neat

King David falls into lust for Bathsheba.

So he beams over too he starts licking his lips, stroking his antenna and
wiggling his hips
I’m no Albert Einstein but I’m not that dumb, I know lust no matter what
planet it’s from

This refers to King David showing interest in knowing Bathsheba in a carnal manner.

He said earth girls, earth girls are easy, earth girls, know how to please me
Earth girls, earth girls are (easy)

This refers to G-d’s love for Israel.

Was he cute?
No way, definitely uncute

Total grossarama, slick as a slug, with a shake-and-bake complexion and eyes like a bug
Wavy on weird I wanted outta there quick, he was a cross between Flipper and Alan Thick
Ooh

This shows how it is not necessary to be good looking to be intensely sexy.

I ran in the house, I locked every lock, I was not gonna party with some horny little Spock
All of a sudden I screamed in horror, he was groping my leg through the doggy door

This shows reticence on the part of Bathsheba as King David was getting frisky.

Earth girls, earth girls are easy, earth girls, love how they tease me
Earth girls, earth girls are (easy)

Again, this is about G-d’s love for Israel.

I can’t go on.
What happened next is just too personal to put in a pop song.
If it’s that bad, you have to.
Promise you won’t tell?
Uh huh

The details of the liason are such an intimate and spiritual experience that Bathsheba feels reluctant to tell her side of the story. However, she is so moved by the entreaties of her disciples that she decides to tell them the Good News.

His touch was a love drug, I had to have more, the next thing I knew I had opened the door
Come in space monkey kiss me here, kiss me there, he’s still disgusting but I didn’t care

The touch of spiritual intimacy may feel disgusting to the uninitiated, but it opened Bathsheba’s mind to new possibilities.

Give us more details
Oh how do I describe it.
Well you know how a blender has 12 speeds?
Well when he got up to puree I thought I would die.
But when he put it on liquefy, I wanted his baby.
Ohhhhh. Oh yes, yes.
Is that your tongue.
One of them
That sure is a big piece of machinery you’ve got
I made it myself
Oh you space stud, you
There’s no ride like this at Disneyland, baby.
Oh synchronize, synchronize, I’m docking Ohhhhhhh.
And to think we did all that without even touching.

This is Bathsheba’s description of spiritual ecstasy, showing the mystical side of her experience with King David.

Slow:
Now I’m back to my senses and he’s light years away, if he’s listening in space I have something to say
I took the lock off the doggie door, so come back moon doggie when you’re ready for more

Once Bathsheba has had a taste of her spiritual connection with King David, she feels a deep spiritual yearning.

Earth girls, earth girls are easy, earth girls, know how to please me
Earth girls, earth girls are (sleazey)
Earth girls, earth girls are easy, earth girls, love how they tease me
Earth girls, earth girls are (easy)
Earth girls, earth girls are easy, earth girls, love how they tease me
Earth girls, earth girls are (very easy)
Earth girls, earth girls are easy, earth girls, know how to please me
Earth girls, earth girls are (easy)

This final part of the song is a touching remembrance of G-d’s love for Israel.

One may not necessarily agree with the theology of this song or even with the theology of this particular mystical interpretation. However, this mystical interpretation of Julie Brown lyrics is at least as plausible as seeing racism at the root of every negative reaction against Barack Obama. This mystical interpretation is also at least as plausible as suggesting that electing Barack Obama to become the President of the United States would somehow lead to the spiritual restoration of the universe.

Let’s hope Barack Obama isn’t the Shabbatai Zevi of our time.

Oct 10, 2008 - 12:02 pm 108. NahnCee:

“How do you clear the air of the stinking corpses?”

Konyok – with Mexicans, of course. Silly boy.

Oct 10, 2008 - 12:07 pm 109. mika2k1:

Buddy, Konyok, Pascal, you’ve all read what Nassim Nicolas Taleb had to say. I love you guys, but I really fear that arrogance and swagger will be your undoing. I pray that someone somewhere somehow will save us all.

Oct 10, 2008 - 12:09 pm 110. NahnCee:

Buddy Larson – I don’t think the introductions will be so refined. It will more than likely hinge on “you’re a racist and I want to take your gun away from you”, with a reply of “no, YOU are the racist, and you can’t have it.”

Followed by the “boom”.

Oct 10, 2008 - 12:11 pm 111. Konyok:

mika,

I’ll grant you that it’s a viscous cycle, the impact of the market crash might catch up with me in a couple of years. For most people it’s just something they’re watching on TV.

Oct 10, 2008 - 12:15 pm 112. buddy larsen:

hey, that makes sense, Alexis –i think Jeff Goldblum, the Hebrew heart-throb, is who played the lover-boy in the movie. but maybe it was Jim Carrey. Bathsheba would’ve been Michelle Pfieffer –that makes sense too!

Oct 10, 2008 - 12:15 pm 113. Charles:

It may help were I not the lone voice.

…….
ok I emailed them too.

Oct 10, 2008 - 12:21 pm 114. buddy larsen:

Mika, my swagger left me about Tuesday. I’m down ten years of living expenses. Next i’ll have to un-retire –at my age, that means a tin cup full of pencils, down on Guadalupe near UT and the state capitol bldng. Please don’t accuse me of excess jollility. I’m trying to take the high road here.

Oct 10, 2008 - 12:24 pm 115. Konyok:

mika,

Arrogance and swagger have ALWAYS been our saving grace. Much of the cultural argument in this country is precisely about the right to swagger. Our betters fear the opinion of European aesthetes, traditionally, we commoners have not.

That One urges us not to cling to swagger.

Many of us still say: “You can have my swagger when you pry it from my cold dead fingers!”

Oct 10, 2008 - 12:30 pm 116. whiskey:

If McCain had actually attacked on Wright, Ayers, and the like including Farrakhan, from the beginning, it would be a McCain landslide.

Unfortunately, I underestimated McCain’s desire to be liked, rather than win. The crowds are angry at him too.

For failing to fight.

What people miss are the consequences of political paralysis. Already Dems are talking about repealing the 2nd, and 22nd Amendment, instituting Hate Speech codes effectively repealing the 1st. So Obama can have four or five terms, perhaps more. Get rid of guns to “punish” white working class men. Obama’s victory margin seems to be coming from white women.

The gender divide in America, and the West, is HUGE. That’s the inevitable result of marriage being rare, for really rich guys. See any Gangsta Rap video for the attitudes it provides. Single motherhood has been a social disaster.

The West is likely to be paralyzed with the alliance of Minorities-Yuppies-Single-Women, concerned with punishing it’s enemies: rural voters, families, etc.

Oct 10, 2008 - 12:32 pm 117. mika2k1:

Many of us still say: “You can have my swagger when you pry it from my cold dead fingers!”
==

Let’s hope they manage to pry that stupidity first.

Oct 10, 2008 - 12:34 pm 118. buddy larsen:

but i figure to make it all back –i may’ve been too stoopid to bail early enough, but i wuz smart enough to stay about a quarter in cash even when the thing was galloping –which for my stuff was as late as July. Now the challenge is to gut up and buy some high beta at the bottom –”white knuckle time” is fast approaching –the tin cup is if THAT don’t work. or, i could just start drinking –use that cash for Jim Beam Kentucky Bourbon –right now it’s a toss-up –

Oct 10, 2008 - 12:35 pm 119. buddy larsen:

Dow now up 300 in the last 5 minutes — a thousand point swing today –it’s it’s it’s a BIG RALLY –

Oct 10, 2008 - 12:39 pm 120. mika2k1:

I’m down ten years of living expenses.
==

There we go again, always thinking about himself. It’s not you that you should be thinking about, it’s those poor souls in India!

Oct 10, 2008 - 12:40 pm 121. Konyok:

They’re getting a bit worried.

Here is today’s e-mail broadcast from the Obama campaign:

Who is Barack Obama?

John McCain keeps asking this question at his rallies — then he gives
answers that are shockingly false and negative.

That’s why it’s vital that you sign up to volunteer for at least one day
during the final days of this election. Voters won’t know the truth about
Barack unless supporters like you reach out to them.

Pushing the get-out-the-vote is normal, but THIS is extraordinary.

Oct 10, 2008 - 12:41 pm 122. buddy larsen:

I help me so i CAN help others –what good am i too those poor souls in India if all i can do is pine away for them in my rags and misery? better i can buy shares of Tata motors –which i do –

Oct 10, 2008 - 12:43 pm 123. Pascal:

It’s not you that you should be thinking about, it’s those poor souls in India!

Crocodile tears Dr Ehrlich’son?

Oct 10, 2008 - 12:46 pm 124. Storm-Rider:

There is no incompatibility between loving yourself and your neighbor as well.

One must prosper in order to help others; if one doesn’t prosper, he then becomes dependant on others for his own support. Human creativity and pursuit of happiness, along with loving one’s neighbor, has been in America’s DNA from the beginning. Marxist DNA is worming its way into our bright and beautiful American heart – our DNA; and Marxist DNA is the heart of darkness.

Oct 10, 2008 - 12:50 pm 125. mika2k1:

better i can buy shares of Tata motors
==

It’s not enough the GM and Ford are killing us with their smog generating units, now you wants to kill those poor souls in India with your Tata investment(s). Nice.

Oct 10, 2008 - 12:50 pm 126. Dave:

Buddy, et al. I heard that the fed just cut interest rates again. Suddenly the light came on. Everybody is going about this one bass-ackwards.

On equities, there should be required 100% margin for a period of 6 to 8 months. The bond market should also see a drastic increase in margin requirements.

Last but not least, member banks should have their reserve requirements raised to at least 20% to 25%.

OF COURSE this makes the credit crunch all the worse. That is the idea. We have run into a classic lack of liquidity. This is most similar to the Panic of 1907 and to other “panics” prior to the establishment of the Federal Reserve. They were scary as could be, hence the name “panics” but they were over with in short order as the involved parties applied strong medicine to restore liquidity—-whether they wanted to or not.

The RX for a panic is analgous to the RX for an airplane that suddenly is in a stall. The rookie pilot jerks back on the stick as if he could will the aircraft to fly upwards. The astute pilot pushes the stick foward, he points the nose towards the ground and lets gravity restore air speed. Enough altitude and he gets things going again. Worse case basis of not enough altitude, he at least gets a softened crash landing and lives to fly another day.

Well, in 1930 Dr Fed, joined in 32 by Dr FDR
jerked back on the stick until it became and stayed The Great Depression. (In Dec of 1941 unemployment was still 14%).

I digress. The point I am trying to make is that the need is to restore liquidity. The measures I have described should do just that
and probably solve the problem by Jun 2009 if not sooner. Everybody is sure to lose money.
Will you lose it all at once in a manner that solves things or will you lose it a little at a time over a period of years and solve nothing?

Needless to say, interest rates will skyrocket. Borrower rates may be offset though by declines in the amount of needed principal. Increasing savers rates? Best way to shore up bank liquidity is for lot of people to save money there and the best way to get them to save money there is to pay them LOTS of interest. Not a problem.

If I am so smart, how come it took me so long to get this. And Buddy, my Teasip friend, keep your damned Aggie jokles to yourself.

Oct 10, 2008 - 12:51 pm 127. Konyok:

mika,

clarify.

Oct 10, 2008 - 12:51 pm 128. Pascal:

Konyok:

mika,

clarify.

Watermelon.

Oct 10, 2008 - 12:54 pm 129. Konyok:

Storm-Rider,

Is that something like precious bodily fluids?

Oct 10, 2008 - 12:56 pm 130. mika2k1:

..not enough that GM and Ford are killing us..

Oct 10, 2008 - 12:59 pm 131. Pascal:

http://www.pascalfervor.com/Glossary.html#A-iconoclast

Oct 10, 2008 - 1:02 pm 132. Storm-Rider:

Konyok – or is that Strangelove,

Yea, something like that; but I don’t have a machine gun or a wing of Intercontinental Bombers. You have a good sense of humor, and you made me smile and laugh – thanks for that.

Oct 10, 2008 - 1:07 pm 133. buddy larsen:

Mika is being facetious –hmm, feces-shush –i never can spel that werd.
Storm rider is great with those images –dark worm-eaten marxist hearts — it’s TRUE –it’s the other side of human nature –one side (America’s) sux but cares that it sux and tries not to suck, the other side (theirs) sux and likes it that way. To laugh at others’ pain –de Sades, all of ‘em, crying crock tears for ‘the poor’. HA! Poor is how they WANT ‘em –hungry people obey.

dave, this is snot an Aggie joke, i saw it with my own eyes –well, i saw the guy that told it to me –anyway this Aggie walks into a bar holding a double handful of steaming wet dripping cow manure, and hollers “Hey y’all — look whut I almost stepped in!”

Oct 10, 2008 - 1:10 pm 134. mika2k1:

Crocodile tears Dr Ehrlich’son?
==

Not at all. It’s that the smiley emoticons at here W’s blog are positively gay.

Oct 10, 2008 - 1:10 pm 135. Pascal:

That’s not a full denial.

The key line in my link above is this:

PF’s Alert here is that the term iconoclast is woefully underused — if not unknown — to describe those who attack especially that which is desirable to the vast majority.

Oct 10, 2008 - 1:14 pm 136. Dave:

Buddy, what mika does not understand is that he is occupying the lower berth in an Aggie
two-holer.

Oct 10, 2008 - 1:16 pm 137. mika2k1:

That’s not a full denial.
==

LOL. Describe that which is desirable to the vast majority. Would it include working for nothing?

Oct 10, 2008 - 1:19 pm 138. Konyok:

Storm-Rider,

Happy to oblige.

We really, really are on the same side. I think we probably agree more about the urgency of the problem than a first glance reveals.

It’s just that I want to go the extra mile or two or three to make sure that American heart stays pure and sweet.

Oct 10, 2008 - 1:20 pm 139. buddy larsen:

“Iconoclast” is from the Byzantines; there was a lady, a saint, whose martyr death inspired a short-lived “no more statues and images” movement in the Greek Orthodox church sometime around the 11th century –iirc. “Icon” + (dunno but imagine “clast” means “denier” or somesuch).

Oct 10, 2008 - 1:20 pm 140. Pascal:

The stark materialism of the Left makes the most greedy pure capitalist look sober.

Oct 10, 2008 - 1:22 pm 141. Vivictius:

Lol, well Alexis, thats definetly one to remember, thank you.

Oct 10, 2008 - 1:24 pm 142. Wadeusaf:

I appreciate the evolution of business and the cyclical nature of markets, but this creationism stuff re wealth has me a sitting bit uneasy.

Benj, the Salon article is weak, grasping even. Heck I would have joined in crushing the gun ban as it was proposed, just because one fellow thought it was “common sense” doesn’t make it so.

And the Slate writer does a very entertaining job of seeming to actually make a statement. Propaganda, by any other name, still smells. Just because President Bush called for compassion doesn’t mean that he was in league with Ayers, and just because they never talked about it, does not mean that Ayers had renounced his revolutionary philosophy. As both the tapes from his SDS reunion last year, and the statements published on 9/11/2001 affirm, he (and Ms. Dohrn) have not given up on the sort of societal change they sought through violent means 40 years ago.
Further, Ayers stance on most education issues says it ain’t so. The guy is IMO a well spoken nutter of the first rank. How else can he come clean, square what was done? He cannot. Talk of bitter clingers resonates more appropriately for Ayers and Co. Worse given the advantage they had in youth.

So abuse all the more the notions of government above all, and hope over hard work. Your use of a “civic religion” indicates a scary abuse of terms (although the Bill of Rights and “you know all that stuff” ho humming is indicative of the currently flawed education of civics, I do not associate that flaw with you).

If this is ever to not be about artificial divides then we need to set the bar of speech higher. “Oh”’s calling out the race card is not what you described to me as sticking by his convictions. Even as he tries with humor to make the point, the refutaion of his denunciation of the Reverend Wright and (what I assumed was) Black Liberation theology sounds really really weak now in hind sight (and you and I thought he was better than that).

I am heartened that a greater percentage of Black people will be voting in this election. I am dismayed that so many citizens have not bought into responsible citizenship before now. The numbers make the difference, when the divide between two philosophies of government stands about even, a smaller number makes the king.

But if this is a referendum about the “failures” of the last eight years, starting with the dot com recession, continuing through the huge market challenges of “9/11″ and even with the funding a war on way more than just two fronts, the bigger failure I my book, was the failure of the “loyal” opposition to engage anything but their partisanship, and by venomous discourse, taunt and there by encourage the gulf that divides the nation.

McCain encouraged and maintained an opening to dialogue that others, stung by the smug sophomoric entreaties of the left, thought would best be destroyed. He maintained a reasoned and compassionate stance on the border and on issues of the war that were undone in the first instance by the very partisan democrat approach to the bi-partisanship he embraced, and in the second by the versions of roguish behavior he sought to extinguish.

Say what you will, the Pubs cleaned house in 2006 and times when needed before and since. When will the Dems, even as a sign of reciprocation? Alas they will not.

Oct 10, 2008 - 1:28 pm 143. Konyok:

Pascal,

The nub of the matter is that in today’s pop culture “iconoclast” is great praise.

Oct 10, 2008 - 1:29 pm 144. buddy larsen:

“Aggie two-holer” –that’s a two-seat Texas A&M outhouse, built two-storey to save space, the lower berth in-line underneath the 2nd-storey hole. think, ‘Damn –but at least i wuz wearing a hat!’ hey, come to think of it, that’s a perfect metaphor for these markets. Like Jack Nicolson in “Mars Attacks” –he’s President, and Martians have just killed off the other two branches of government, and he goes on tv to tell the public “You’ve still got the executive branch, and one out of three ain’t bad!”

Oct 10, 2008 - 1:29 pm 145. Pascal:

Buddy, it also was a response to pressure from Islam, which still taunts the RC as idol worshipers and Christianity as polytheistic.

Oct 10, 2008 - 1:30 pm 146. Pascal:

Given their full pedagree, that’s like Obama praising Ayers for his strong roll in education.

Oct 10, 2008 - 1:32 pm 147. Pascal:

Konyok,

Read my full entry on iconoclast. It states it has a role, but

Experience teaches us that there is too much glee and not enough soberness in those who seek to be iconoclasts. The more radical iconoclasts, the nihilists who would destroy it all so that mankind should have to start afresh (pure madness whenever its consequences are even briefly considered), have started to become mainstream. Look at the rise of a death worshiping wing of Islam and the willing acceptance and even promotion of such by much of the Left in the West to see this.

Oct 10, 2008 - 1:36 pm 148. buddy larsen:

@Wade “But if this is a referendum about the “failures” of the last eight years, starting with the dot com recession, continuing through the huge market challenges of “9/11″ and even with the funding a war on way more than just two fronts, the bigger failure I my book, was the failure of the “loyal” opposition to engage anything but their partisanship, and by venomous discourse, taunt and there by encourage the gulf that divides the nation”

Hear freaking Hear! By far, the nastiest plot turn in the latter chapters of the American Story: the “Rule or ruin” strategy of the post-Florida2000 left, wherein enough hyper-exaggerated screaming distortion will create support via demoralizing voters into becoming desperate for a little peace and quiet at ANY price.

Oct 10, 2008 - 1:44 pm 149. Pascal:

buddy+1
wade+2

Oct 10, 2008 - 1:47 pm 150. Tarnsman:

FDR overreached with his attempt to pack the Supreme Court. The result was the Republican Party retook many Congressional and Senate seats in the 1938 election. Clinton overreached in 1993-94 and the Republicans took over the House. Obambi will overreach and will get smacked down in 2010. The election is going to be close. Nearly half of America will be deeply suspicious of the new President. One misstep and he and the Democrats will pay the price. All this hang wringing over supposedly overturned Constitutional amendments is ridiculous. Remember what it takes to change even a period or comma in the Constitution. Obama will not win a majority of the states. He may win in the Electoral College, but the majority of the states will be against him. When it comes to amending the Constitution, Idaho has equal weight with California, New York carries no more clout that Alaska.

Oct 10, 2008 - 2:09 pm 151. buddy larsen:

Wade, to your proclamation you could add Katrina –a legit natural disaster deliberately mocked-up into a political disaster, an egregious self-serving amplification of nature’s damage into international political damage, via the “Bush hates and hurts poor black people” meme (too delicious to eschew, poor blacks in wet pain overflown by rich white southerner enroute to dry white house) still repeated and repeated ad nauseum until this very day, even though not ONE SINGLE SOUL has ever for a moment actually, you know, believed a whiff of it.

Oct 10, 2008 - 2:12 pm 152. Peter Boston:

The Republicans stopped fighting back after Gingrich got pilloried. Guess they figured it was better to play ball than be the ball. Sarah Palin is the first bright light we’ve seen since the middle 90s. “Better to light one candle than curse the dark.”

I do believe the anger from the middle-right is real. Hopefully it will compel enough good people to get the polls to prevent the Obomination.

Oct 10, 2008 - 2:16 pm 153. buddy larsen:

One word, Tarnsman: “penumbra”.

Oct 10, 2008 - 2:17 pm 154. Aristide:

Someone asked about left wing anger?

Upper West Side Anger

Oct 10, 2008 - 2:54 pm 155. Karen:

The middle class are those who are neither rich nor poor. That’s most of us. That big lumpy middle also held so-called middle class values: the work ethic, self-reliance and a spirit of independence, an insistence on the necessity of private property rights, equality in courts of law, equality based on merit, and recognition of our moral foundation as based on the Judeo-Christian Bible – as well as probably a few other things I may have left out. But that’s what is disappearing from the neither-poor/neither-rich middle class. The far left doesn’t subscribe to it and they’ve persuaded lots of middle class people to agree, or at least partly agree.

An example from an article I just read in my hometown newspaper: The city’s mayor is quoted as being “disappointed” in ranking 49th (out of 50 most populous cities), according to a group called SustainLane which announces an annual list of greenest cities. Who is SustainLane and why anyone should care about their rankings, the article doesn’t say. This is a conservative city in a very red state and this mayor is popular and likeable and generally the kind of friendly, down-to-earth, common-sense sort of person you’d expect to encounter in this part of the country. Yet, he’s disappointed at a low ranking by an unknown environmental group and goes on to say, “I’m not arguing with the ranking. I’m just pointing out that we’ve got a long way to go. It’s soemthing we take seriously. We need to do better.” But he ALSO said, “It’s unclear whether humans are causing climate change.” Even so, “We need a cultural shift in order to be more environmentally friendly.” IOW, it’s unclear we’re causing climate change, but we must act as if we definitely are. So says the mayor.

This is the kind of article I see all the time in the local paper – this one happens to be about climate change, but others are about any number of liberal concerns. Pick one, any issue, and you’ll get the same PC tone of “We can’t unreservedly grant your premises, but we take your concerns seriously and will set to work on them as diligently and as quickly as we can. Oh, and we’re terribly sorry we haven’t lived up to your expectations so far. Shame on us.”

The middle class is half-persuaded. This has nothing to do with single motherhood, though I agree single motherhood is a disaster that has contributed mightily to the whole ball of wax. The far left has simply achieved a large measure of success in infecting hearts and minds even among the middle class. I suppose this is why the McCain campaign reckons it cannot speak blunt truth. To do so will alienate too many of the half-persuaded. And there are too many of them for us not to tiptoe around the truth. Are McCain’s campaign advisors right? Well, if our mayor in our conservative city in our red red state is frequently to be found conceding legitimacy to the claims of the left, then maybe they are right.

Oct 10, 2008 - 3:04 pm 156. Bob Murphy:

@Buddy and Slade
“Is there anything under the sun that has no flip side?”
Yep.
But as soon as you start using words, the intellect/mind to describe it you split it. But you need the black/white yin/yang contrast to perceive it in verbal/intellectual terms.
It can be perceived in a much more integrated way but not using chatter mind, even at the profound level of chatter mind y’all use. And I find your usage often breathtaking and profound, a source of wonder even, sometimes.

But there was a guy named Sosan, a monk, who summed up the essential contradiction of intellect which separates the practitioner from what he perceives.
“The struggle of what one likes,
and what one dislikes,
is the disease of the mind.”

And that is where we start splitting the whole.

heheheheheheheh

Oct 10, 2008 - 3:15 pm 157. slade:

Jim Carrey was the surfer boy in Earth Girls. Funny as h^ll before he went into serious drama. I am too limited to imagine the Biblical analogue to the Carrey role.

Oct 10, 2008 - 3:22 pm 158. Cannoneer No. 4:

Konyok,

This is an incredible investment of time and effort.

Which is exactly why not many competent, performance-oriented, mission-accomplishing achievers of objectively quantifiable tasks devote precious little leisure time and reserve energy left after making a living, raising kids, and satisfying a spouse to such a thankless and quite possibly futile task.

The Anti-Left (Lefties call my side right-wing nuts; I reject their terminology)has no Soros-like sugar daddy to subsidize unproductive political junkies. The Anti-Left does it as a hobby. There is a fanaticism deficit at work here.

Every conservative a community organizer.

Wrong! “Community Organizer” is the PC euphemism for Bolshevik agitator, one who spreads agit-prop. You will generate little enthusiasm among any who consider themselves conservatives for taking up such a mission.

“Every Cultural Revolutionary a missionary, pamphleteer, persuader-changer-influencer” might get you more takers among the retired, the self-employed, and the stay-at-home moms who have the flexibility to make such an investment.

Oct 10, 2008 - 3:34 pm 159. Bob Murphy:

@Mika2k1
“Economic growth,.. creating wealth.. I don’t know if to laugh or cry, Buddy. So far, the well to do and well connected thieves are laughing, while many many ordinary hard working people are crying.”
But they are not starving or even living in poverty, Mika.

Oct 10, 2008 - 3:34 pm 160. Storm-Rider:

“Community Organizer” is the PC euphemism for Bolshevik agitator”

Correct, and those who were closest to Marxist Community Organizing understood it the best.

“The proposition that a striving for self-destruction is the main impulse in socialism has been extracted from a multi-stage analysis of socialist ideology, and is not taken directly from the writings of socialist thinkers or the slogans of socialist movements. It seems that those in the grip of socialist ideology are as little governed by any conscious understanding of this goal as a singing nightingale is concerned with the future of its species. The ideology’s impact is through the emotions, which render the ideology attractive to man and induce him to be ready for sacrifice on its behalf. Spiritual elation and inspiration are the kinds of emotions experienced by the participants in socialist movements. This accounts, too, for the behavior of the leaders of socialist movements in the thick of the fight, down through the ages–their seemingly inexhaustible reserves of energy as pamphleteers, agitators, and organizers.” Igor Shafarevich

“The religious aspects of socialism may explain the extraordinary attraction of socialist doctrines and their capacity to inflame individuals and to inspire popular movements. It is precisely these aspects of socialism which cannot be explained when socialism is regarded as a political or economic category. Socialism’s pretensions to be a universal world view comprising and explaining everything – from the transformation of a liquid into steam to the appearance of Christianity – also make it akin to religion. A characteristic of religion is socialism’s view of history not as a chaotic phenomenon but as an entity that has a goal, a meaning and a justification. In other words, both socialism and religion view history teleologically. Bulgakov draws our attention to numerous and far-reaching analogies between socialism (especially Marxism) and Judaic apocalyptics and eschatology. Finally, socialism’s hostility toward traditional religion hardly contradicts this judgment–it may simply be a matter of animosity between rival religions.” Igor Shafarevich

http://www.robertlstephens.com/essays/shafarevich/001SocialistPhenomenon.html

Oct 10, 2008 - 3:55 pm 161. Benj:

@ Wade – “just because they never talked about it, does not mean that Ayers had renounced his revolutionary philosophy.” – But it certainly suggests that Obama was not engaged in Vanguard Party discourse when he worked with Ayers or praised his book on Juvie Justice. And since O has condemned Ayers’ Weathermen days in the most forceful terms – he has NOTHING to apologize for on this front, right?

Now lets consider the Merry guv – In her speech introducing herself to the nation, she quotes approvingly a fasicist/racist/anti-semite as she celebrated herself and the virtues of her “organic” community. She sleeps with a man who has a history of identifying with a secessionist party and she’s hung tight with the current leader of that party. Wouldn’t bother me much, frankly. THose A.I.P. nuts are just local boys – not even wannabe Confederates…But. Once she offers herself as more American-than-Obama (OR moi), her connections become fair game. Further signs – along with all the evidence piling up about the Bridge, her pursuit of earmarks, her HOUSE construction (check Wayne Barret’s reporting on that Wade since you’re so worried about O’s land dealio!) – that she is a supremely hypocritical presence.

PS Buddy – I was on Bush’s side when it came to Iraq. And I know all about BDS. But it’s silly to blame partisan div’s on the Dems. I think it goes back beyond Gore v. Bush. (Though surely, it was Bush who chose to govern – right away – like he’d come in on a landslide! And there’s no question Rove believed in a BASE politics.) Before there was BDS, there was CDS – all those pubs driven mad by Bill C.’s capacity to co-op their message and WIN…Hard not to conclude from all the sturm and drang here that ya’ll be some SORE losers.

Oct 10, 2008 - 3:58 pm 162. Benj:

Canoneer – “The Anti-Left (Lefties call my side right-wing nuts; I reject their terminology)has no Soros-like sugar daddy to subsidize unproductive political junkie.” An AMAZING statement. There’s no left equiv to the the power of right-wing Foundations and Think-Tanks – AEI, Cato, Olin Foundation etc. etc.

Oct 10, 2008 - 4:03 pm 163. peterike:

The late John Lennon of Beatles fame was one of the biggest political idiots that ever lived, however brilliant a songwriter. But he was able, now and again, to spot a BS artist. He spotted one in the Maharishi, that quintessential phony that had the Beatles all a flutter. He wrote a song about it, originally called “Maharishi.” But there were concerns that legal action might result, so John changed the song to “Sexy Sadie” (a perfectly metrical relacement) and that’s how we’ve known the song ever since. Too bad, because most people hearing it have no idea it’s a song all about spotting a scam artist. To remind you, here are the lyrics, suitably modified for 2008.

B Obama what have you done
You made a fool of everyone
You made a fool of everyone
B Obama ooh what have you done

B Obama you broke the rules
You layed it down for all to see
You layed it down for all to see
B Obama oooh you broke the rules

One sunny day the world was waiting for a lover
He came along to turn on everyone
B Obama the greatest of them all

B Obama how did you know
The world was waiting just for you
The world was waiting just for you
B Obama oooh how did you know

B Obama you’ll get yours yet
However big you think you are
However big you think you are
B Obama oooh you’ll get yours yet

We gave him everything we owned just to sit at his table
Just a smile would lighten everything
B Obama he’s the latest and the greatest of them all

He made a fool of everyone
B Obama

However big you think you are
B Obama

Oct 10, 2008 - 4:09 pm 164. Storm-Rider:

Benj: “THose A.I.P. nuts are just local boys”

I just visited the American Independence Party website, and I like what they say. There is nothing nutty about God-given unalienable human rights for example, because our Founding Fathers said just that in The Declaration of Independence.

http://www.aipca.org/

Explain your theory that the AIP is nutty?

Oct 10, 2008 - 4:17 pm 165. whiskey:

Small fry Benj to the total control the Left has of the Media, University system, K-12 educational system, government bureaucracy, and Entertainment. Even chefs are making fun of McCain’s teeth (broken off at the gums by the NVA torturers). Getting away with it too … since Patriotism is passe, old-School, for boring old farts.

It’s hip and cool to hate your country, and idolize every failed society and culture.

Two things: today McCain was booed after a vet told him at a rally that he was frightened about what Supreme Court justices Obama would appoint, McCain told him that we should not be afraid of an Obama Administration. The crowd BOOED.

Obama ran a Jay-Z song, complete with “adult” lyrcis, called “99 Problems and B*tch Ain’t One of Them” for his latest rally. THAT is about what we can expect from the first Hip-Hop President — Kwame Fitzpatrick writ large.

Meanwhile McCain wants to lose, since he values his insider pals more than the Presidency.

You are guaranteed an ugly, constant, never-ending, and radicalizing struggle between the White working-middle class, and Blacks/Yuppies/Single Women. Already Obama Supporters are talking about repealing the Electoral College to steamroll the rural Red States, the 22nd Amendment, so Obama can run for five terms, and the 2nd. With Hate Speech codes to eliminate the 1st. Fairness Doctrine to get rid of talk radio is a done deal. It’s not a question of a 60-seat majority by more like 65 seat for Dems.

But there is nothing in it for the majority of the population. Still White, Middle or Working Class, not informed by the Media in the tank for their Messiah.

It may be one man, one vote, one time, but moves against the interests of the majority of the population risk enough people just mulishly obstructing EVERYTHING.

Deadlock-stasis at a time of nuclear proliferation. Disaster. Don’t forget, failed states-cultures have nukes too — and can kill NYC already. Delivery by shipping container.

Oct 10, 2008 - 4:19 pm 166. peterike:

There’s no left equiv to the the power of right-wing Foundations and Think-Tanks – AEI, Cato, Olin Foundation etc. etc.

Perhaps the most ignorant comment ever made.

Nobody matching that “power” huh?

Let’s see, for starters, you’ve got ABC/NBC/CBS/CNN/MSNBC. You’ve got the film industry. You’ve got the recording industry. You’ve got the soft-news TV world, Oprah etc. You’ve got essentially every major US newspaper, plus AP, Reuters, BBC. The major newsmagazines and pretty much ALL major magazines lean left, including Business Week, Fortune, men’s magazines, women’s magazines. The only exception among majors is probably Forbes.

You’ve got Brookings. You’ve got Bill Gates’ foundation. You’ve got most major corporate giving going to Leftwing organizations (ACLU, Planned Parethood, etc). Carnegie. Ford. MacArthur (proudly giving money to Left-wing geniuses only). Pew. Soros. Most Silicon Valley billionaries. The Google Boys.

There’s the stranglehood on education, with K – PhD all pushing Left. There’s union money. There’s the entrenched DC bureaocracy.

Do I need to go on? It’s laughably one sided in favor of the Left.

Oct 10, 2008 - 4:20 pm 167. Pascal:

I did not know that Peter.

I wonder which treachery will trigger his operatives here to sing your version?

Oct 10, 2008 - 4:21 pm 168. peterike:

There’s no left equiv to the the power of right-wing Foundations and Think-Tanks – AEI, Cato, Olin Foundation etc. etc.

Perhaps the most ignorant comment ever made.

Nobody matching that “power” huh?

Let’s see, for starters, you’ve got ABC/NBC/CBS/CNN/MSNBC. You’ve got the film industry. You’ve got the recording industry. You’ve got the soft-news TV world, Oprah etc. You’ve got essentially every major US newspaper, plus AP, Reuters, BBC. The major newsmagazines and pretty much ALL major magazines lean left, including Business Week, Fortune, men’s magazines, women’s magazines. The only exception among majors is probably Forbes.

You’ve got Brookings. You’ve got Bill Gates’ foundation. You’ve got most major corporate giving going to Leftwing organizations (ACLU, Planned Parethood, etc). Carnegie. Ford. MacArthur (proudly giving money to Left-wing geniuses only). Pew. Soros. Most Silicon Valley billionaries. The Google Boys.

There’s the stranglehood on education, with K – PhD all pushing Left. There’s union money. There’s the entrenched DC bureaucracy.

Do I need to go on? It’s laughably one sided in favor of the Left.

Oct 10, 2008 - 4:24 pm 169. slade:

the bigger failure I[n] my book, was the failure of the “loyal” opposition to engage anything but their partisanship – wadeusaf [ref the Iraq War]

Exactly. Which is why the alleged Republican attempts to reform F&F during the 2003-2007 time frame ring equally hollow.

Oct 10, 2008 - 4:38 pm 170. Nine-of-Diamonds:

Don’t even bother with Benj. Speaking of things ringing hollow, consider his newfound fixation with Todd Palin’s “Unamerican” politics, even as he STILL can’t come to terms with how the Messiah imbibed 20 years’ worth of Rev. Goddam America’s venom.

Oct 10, 2008 - 4:51 pm 171. Storm-Rider:

It is un-American to break any laws in The Declaration of Independence or The U.S. Constitution, and that includes un-Declarational and un-Constitutional Supreme Court decisions.

Oct 10, 2008 - 5:12 pm 172. qrstuv:

Slade… “Hollow attempts”?

In retrospect, I wish the Republicans had tried harder and I wish Bush had taken the issue directly to the public.

But the defenders of FMFM were Democrats and they’re solidly on the record. **********

From 2003:

”These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ”The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”

Representative Melvin L. Watt, Democrat of North Carolina, agreed.

”I don’t see much other than a shell game going on here, moving something from one agency to another and in the process weakening the bargaining power of poorer families and their ability to get affordable housing,” Mr. Watt said.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html? res=9E06E3D6123BF932A2575AC0A9659C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print

Oct 10, 2008 - 5:29 pm 173. marymcl:

Benj -

You can’t seem to mention Sarah Palin without referring to the guy she goes to bed with. To paraphrase our host, just so….

I wonder if that’s an example of the male sex drive in politics one reads so much about (in its leftish form, of course)

Oct 10, 2008 - 6:00 pm 174. slade:

I was making a comparison q—.

When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Regardless.

Oct 10, 2008 - 6:08 pm 175. Dave:

Storm-Rider; those who keep socialism alive and well do not do so in spite of its failures. They do so because of those failures.

The late Ayn Rand once commentd “I can only think of one country where this (an abhorrence of failure) is not so. Failure is NOT un-Russian, in a sense that goes deeper than politics.”

Not surprising that Russia gave birth to the Evil Empire and that Dien Bien Putin seems hell-bent on restoring same. (Old Salt, have I got this right?)

While “over there” failure, typified by envy, is the accepted norm, “over here” it is still regarded as abnormal. It has to be sugar-coated and otherwise camoflauged and presented
as a pallative/sporific. W J Clinton was fair to middling good at it, but he cannot hold a candle to B H Obama.

It is impossible for us to overcome this, so shall we turn the matter over to Saint Rita?

Oct 10, 2008 - 6:09 pm 176. Leo Linbeck III:

peterike,

You forgot Herb and Marion Sandler.

L3

Oct 10, 2008 - 6:18 pm 177. slade:

Bush aims to boost minority home ownership
June 17, 2002

ATLANTA (CNN) — President Bush touted his goal Monday of boosting minority home ownership by 5.5 million before the end of the decade through grants to low-income families and credits to developers.

“Too many American families, too many minorities, do not own a home. There is a home ownership gap in America. The difference between African-American and Hispanic home ownership is too big,” Bush told a crowd at St. Paul AME Church in Atlanta.

Citing data he used Saturday in his weekly radio address, Bush said that while nearly three-quarters of white Americans own their homes, less than half of African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans are homeowners.

He urged Congress to expand the American Dream Down-Payment Fund, which would provide $200 million in grants over five years to low-income families who are first-time home buyers.
…
“They’re so proud to own their own home,” Bush said. “What we’ve got to do is make sure these stories are repeated over and over.”

Bush added, “I do believe in the American dream. I believe there is such a thing as the American dream. And I believe those of us who have been given positions of responsibility must do everything we can to spotlight the dream.”

He said, “Owning a home is a part of that dream.”

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the federal Home Loan Banks — the government-sponsored corporations that handle home mortgages — will increase their commitment to minority markets by more than $440 billion, Bush said.

Under one of the initiatives launched by Freddie Mac, consumers with poor credit will be able to obtain mortgages with interest rates that automatically decline after a period of consistent payments, he added.

[h/t Elephant Bar]

Yeah I think the attempts were “hollow”.

Oct 10, 2008 - 6:18 pm 178. Leo Linbeck III:

As part of the settlement agreement, I’d like to issue the following statement:

I would like to apologize for mentioning Herb and Marion Sandler on this blog. I did not mean to imply that they are left-wing radicals, or greedy opportunists, or useful idiots. They are the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human beings I’ve ever known in my life.

Oct 10, 2008 - 6:21 pm 179. Wadeusaf:

I did not refer to “Oh” talking to Ayers specifically, however given what is known about the man and the time spent with “Oh” there is to me, a little doubt that it never came up even in casual conversation. The problem for “Oh” was not that he did not distance himself, but that he engaged without giving himself room to deny. He followed the route of no record at all, and given the undeniable closeness of their company a window in to the mind, soul and politics of “Oh”.

“And since O has condemned Ayers’ Weathermen days in the most forceful terms – he has NOTHING to apologize for on this front, right?”

Through a spokesperson. Que deniable. he didn’t have the balls to make a public statement, Hello?
It is not to me, as much an issue that Ayers was a violent radical who has not resumed his violent bent but clings to his radical past and helped launch “Oh”’s political career from his living room, a statement that reciprocally embraces each others politicking, nes ce pas? but to me it is the fact that the man who launched his political career is such a leftist dog that stands opposed to nearly everything that the constitution and bill of rights stand for. “Oh” lectured on the constitution, what the hell what he saying in his class, that Ayers even today, would find agreeable? And you don’t have any problem with that association, come on Benj, get real.
The programs and the educational bent of mind that Ayers and “Oh” have taken on bring me to the conclusion that “Oh” and Ayers are pretty much in agreement on most ideas except that violence thingy and when a bomb ought to be dropped and why. Words, words more words no deeds nor even any paper trail to tell me who “Oh” really is. Just supression, legal manuvering and batting of eyelids.

At least the AIP yokels, believe in something.

Oct 10, 2008 - 6:35 pm 180. Aristide:

@slade

“He [Bush] urged Congress to expand the American Dream Down-Payment Fund”

ADDI turned out to be chicken feed in relation to the current crisis.

In FY 2007, Congress appropriated $24,750,000 for ADDI. Previously, Congress appropriated $74,513,000 in FY2003 and $86,984 in FY2004, $49,600,000 in FY2005 and $24,750,000 in FY2006

Oct 10, 2008 - 6:56 pm 181. mika2k1:

But they are not starving or even living in poverty, Mika.
==

No, they’re just continually made to take it in the @$$ while your comrades party on.

via ABC News:

Less than a week after the federal government committed $85 billion to bail out AIG, executives of the giant AIG insurance company headed for a week-long retreat at a luxury resort and spa, the St. Regis Resort in Monarch Beach, California, Congressional investigators revealed today.

“Rooms at this resort can cost over $1,000 a night,” Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) said this morning as his committee continued its investigation of Wall Street and its CEOs.

AIG documents obtained by Waxman’s investigators show the company paid more than $440,000 for the retreat, including nearly $200,000 for rooms, $150,000 for meals and $23,000 in spa charges.

“They’re getting their pedicures and their manicures and the American people are paying for that,” said Cong. Elijah Cummings (D-MD).
.
.

Oct 10, 2008 - 7:02 pm 182. peterike:

And since O has condemned Ayers’ Weathermen days in the most forceful terms – he has NOTHING to apologize for on this front, right?

Oh my my, the MOST FORCEFUL TERMS even! Gosh! That settles it then. Sorta like if I spent twenty years hangin’ around with Stalin, but you know, I condemned the Ukraine terror famine in the MOST FORCEFUL TERMS! Shame on you, Joe! Now get back to teaching your (re)education class.

To quote the great Graham Parker.

“It’s not the knife through the heart
That tears you apart
It’s just the tought of someone
Sticking it in.”

Similarly, it ain’t the bomb what makes the terrorist, it’s the hate. And that has not changed ONE SCINTILLA with Mr. Ayers or his disgusting turd of a wife. Both of these vile cretins should have swung from a rope.

Instead, the Big Zero will probably put up a statue of them in downtown Chicago.

Oct 10, 2008 - 7:11 pm 183. peterike:

Benj and Obama
Sittin’ in a tree
K-I-S-S-I-N-G
First comes love
Then comes election
Then comes death for any case of defection
If it’s a boy
Drug out his joy
If it’s a girl
Promise the world
Illegal twins
Let ‘em on in!
If it’s triplets
You’ll really be pissed at that new “free” medical care.

Oct 10, 2008 - 7:22 pm 184. Konyok:

Cannoneer,

I’ll stipulate your semantic objections. In fact, I rather like “anti-leftist.”

“Community organizer?” Well, it has seen a lot more currency it has seen wider currency of late.

But, the only effective response to the progressive project is to push back, inch for inch.

Oct 10, 2008 - 7:59 pm 185. The Fat Guy » Blog Archive » He ain’t even an American and he knows:

[...] Belmont Club » Leading from behind As I’ve written elsewhere this election isn’t entirely about McCain vs Obama, nor even Democrat vs Republican, or even Liberal vs Conservative. For many of those who have lost confidence in the political, economic and cultural elites that have long led the nation it is really about us versus them. The election may simply be the setting for a far larger wave of disillusionment that is beating not just at the doors of Washington and Wall Street, but also against the towers of academia and the soundproofed studios of the mainstream media. Ask not for whom the bell tolls — the jangling you hear is a four alarm fire. And even John McCain may be just one more bystander. [...]

Oct 10, 2008 - 8:22 pm 186. Charles:

Barack Obama Seeks To Block Discovery in Citizenship Lawsuit

In a lawsuit styled Berg v. Obama, lawyers for Barack Hussein Obama have filed a Motion for Protective Order, seeking to block discovery until his motion to dismiss is ruled on by the court. The Motion for Protective Order filed by Obama and the Democratic National Committee, asks the court to issue a protective order stopping “all discovery in this action pending the Court’s decision on defendant’s motion to dismiss the action for lack of subject matter jurisdiction and for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted.”

In his lawsuit, the Plaintiff, Philip J. Berg, a Philadelphia attorney, alleged that Defendant Barack Hussein Obama is not eligible for the Office of the President because Obama lost his U.S. citizenship when his mother married an Indonesian citizen and naturalized in Indonesia. Plaintiff further alleged that Obama followed her naturalization and failed to take an oath of allegiance when he turned 18 years old, to regain his U.S. citizenship status. The lawsuit raises not only the Indonesian citizenship issue but also questions whether Obama was a citizen of Kenya.

The motion to block production of documents is just the latest in a series of filings in the case, but has become a focal point of the suit. According to a web site maintained by the Plaintiff, the Plaintiff requested that three documents be produced by Obama:

1. a certified copy of Obama’s “vault” (original long version) Birth Certificate;

2. a certified copy of Obama’s Certificate of Citizenship; and

3. a certified copy of the Oath of Allegiance taken by Obama at the age of majority.

Mr. Berg asserts that if Barack Hussein Obama will produce the above documents and prove his eligibility for the Office of the Presidency, that he (Mr. Berg) will dismiss his lawsuit voluntarily. To date, Obama has refused to produce these documents to Mr. Berg.
………………..
You would think that rather than seek to block the lawsuit — Obama would just bring up the documents and be done with it.

Oct 10, 2008 - 8:36 pm 187. Dave:

Charles this one still strikes me as a spurious lawsuit.

If his mother became a naturalized citizen of Indonesia, it was after his birth. Therefore his native-born US citizenship would be unaffected unless he himself had done something to renounce same after acheiving age of majority.

Halting discovery while motion to dismiss is under consideration should not be necessary and if it is speaks rather poorlyof Mr Berg. Or so it seems to me.

Oct 10, 2008 - 9:00 pm 188. Benj:

@ WAde – Your opening sentence reminds me of when you’re trying manfully to justify Pegler – I can’t make out WHAT you are trying to say. Now I know sometimes you get a little fancy but the contortions here are are the lingo of modified limited hangout.

“I did not refer to “Oh” talking to Ayers specifically, however given what is known about the man and the time spent with “Oh” there is to me, a little doubt that it never came up even in casual conversation. [So you're conceding my point w/o acknowleging that concession?] The problem for “Oh” was not that he did not distance himself, but that he engaged without giving himself room to deny. [An expression of confusion that – I can only assume – is all about deflection.)

You apparently allow that “it” – i.e. Ayers’ Weatherman past? Egregious expressions of anti-Americanism? – “never came up.” So what the HELL is your plaint. In his debate with Hillary Clinton – in response to questions from Steph or Gibson (can’t recall which) O called the Weatherman’s acts “despicable.” What more would you have him say? I repeat – You have yet to articulate a coherent objection – much less an argument – to Obama’s behavior on this front.

Peterike – A few months back I remember rubbing my eyes when some Clubber asserted that ABC newspeole were “commies.” We’re living in parallel universes here – but GODDAM I like GP too!! – “She got Red Hot Gypsy Blood – KEeping Warm tonight” – I’m gonna go listen to that RIGHT now so thanks for that anyway!! – I understand that the TIMES and AP have been biased against George Bush (particularly AFTER they screwed up so badly on WMD! – this is professional embarrasement m ore than political bias at work.) I also know that Maureen Dowd, for example, almost singlehandedly took downn John Kerry. GO read a website called “The Daily Howler.” It explains how the MSM’s narratives have repeatedly trashed the personas of Gore and Kerry…He’s got the goods. Remember the echt Kerry-is-an-elitist line – “Who among us does not love Nascar?” – It was Dowd who did the deed. Cept you know what? – Kerry never said it!

As a person on the left, I can say that RAchel Maddow is the first unapologetic ideological liberal I’ve ever seen Out in the Mainstream media. Sure I’ll grant you that most reporters will vote Democratic. But the Democrats haven’t been a “leftist” party since McGovern. Do you believe that Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton were, ah, anti-capitalists? No time to rehears the idiotic notion that Soros is a Marxist. I’ve said it before. He’s an exemplar of finance capital who loves one Karl Popper not Karl Marx. I repeat – the right has funded dozens more “public” intellectuals than the left. While you’re right that the Mac Foundation leans left – its “geniuses” are invariably artists, NOT public policy people…To throw a name out there that Konyoke might recognize – it’s not like Gar Alperowitz is living on the teat of some lefty foundation. I urge you to check Tom Frank’s account of the selling of the Market-is-God and All-Is-Right-With THe World since the Age of Reagan…

BY THE WAY WHEN I CAME BACK TO MY HOME THIS EVENING, I FOUND MY COMPUTER OPEN TO THE THIS THREAD AS IT LOOKED AFTER I POSTED LAST NIGHT – THAT POST WAS ORIGINALLY #6 IN THIS THREAD – SO WRETCH APPARENTLY DID DELETE MY SHORT CRITIQUE OF HIS POST…

My second draft of that response, which I managed to get up in the A.m. left out my opening which focused on the deeply un-American nature of Wretch’s proposed “gambit” – I noted he was echoing calle by other Clubbers in earlier threads to refuse legitimacy to Obama even if O wins the election. I said last night that Wretch – from a thousand miles away – was encourging Americans to treat their own democratic process with contempt. On the basis of Johnny Mac’s efforts this afternoon to dial back the anger of his own supporters by acknowledging that Obama was a “decent” man whom no American should “fear” – it seems apparent that Mac would condemn Wretch’s gambit too.

Habu – thanks for alerting me to Wretch’s history of imperiousness and censoriousness. If you hadn’t spoken up I would’ve assumed that Wretch played fair. But – as is increasinly apparent – he’s at home in a totalitarian context, not a truly American one.

Oct 10, 2008 - 9:10 pm 189. Charles:

Dave:
Halting discovery while motion to dismiss is under consideration should not be necessary and if it is speaks rather poorlyof Mr Berg.
………
agreed but what the article says is:
“lawyers for Barack Hussein Obama have filed a Motion for Protective Order, seeking to block discovery until his motion to dismiss is ruled on by the court.”

therefor it does seem that it is Obama’s lawyers who are seeking to block discovery.

Oct 10, 2008 - 9:21 pm 190. Dave:

Well Charles it could be that Obamas lawyers
are up to something strange. I thought that discovery could not proceed untill all motions to dismiss etc were dealt with.

And if plaintiff was trying to press ahead anyway, plaintiff would be out of line.
But maybe I am reading all this wrong.

Quien Sabe? But anyway, thanks for bringing it up. Nice to know all this is going on under radar so to speak.

Oct 10, 2008 - 9:28 pm 191. Ex-fetus:

“If his mother became a naturalized citizen of Indonesia, it was after his birth. Therefore his native-born US citizenship would be unaffected unless he himself had done something to renounce same after acheiving age of majority.”

I don’t think that is right. I think that while in Indonesia he was adopted by his step-father, which would make him a citizen of Indonesia. Under the law in effect at that time, being a minor child, he lost his US citizenship. I think that last was changed during the Clinton administration. I think that under current law, a minor child retains US citizenship unless they renounce it after turning 18.
It’s all moot anyway, since Obama was not born in Hawaii.
His Aunt picked them up at the air port and says his mother got off the plane with Obama in her arms, not her womb. When his mother got on the plane to fly to Kenys, Obama was still in the womb. His mother wasn’t allowed to fly back from Kenya because she was to pregnant. Or at least that is what Obama’s relatives say. Read the Berg thingie, it’s all in there.
Not sure this matters as far as the election. The MSM will never let this get out, so the voters will never know. The judiciary really can’t do much about it. They have no guns. If some judge issues a restraining order, it will be ignored.
I live in a heavily Red State. We never get the good ads here because it would be a waste of money. The talk at all the breakfast bars and doughnut shops is about going to war if Obama wins. Same for Missouri, Virginia and Alabama. If Obama was able to win outright, it would be one thing, but the rigged voting and general illegitimacy Of Obama are too much for a lot of people to swallow.
Those Americans that think America is worth dying for and see Obama as a threat to Everything that America stands for will take action. Considering that about half the police will be anti-Obama and about 75% of the military, things will get nasty.

That Birth certificate is the key to preventing a civil war. The real one, NOT the fake;

http://web.israelinsider.com/Articles/Politics/12993.htm

Several Obama shills have claimed that the birth certificate is real as has a life long Democrat connected to the department of records in Hawaii.
All this could be put to rest by having a Federal Marshal collect the Birth Certificate from the vault with a federal Attorney along as witness, photo copy it and see what it says.
Since this would either put the issue to rest or expose Obama, anyone that is rational should ask why Obama hasn’t done it. All Obama needs to do is sign a form and the real Birth Certificate will be brought out. Instead he files suit to prevent that! WHY? What is he trying to hide?

Oct 10, 2008 - 10:31 pm 192. JJ Joseph:

@Paul:
“Even though Mc Cain is falling behind on points, he can still land a knockout blow . . . One fat easy target is Obama’s vague Universal Health Care Proposal.”

He’ll just be spinning his wheels with this one. There’s enough good – or reasonably good – “nationalized healthcare” around (example: Canada) that McCain will simply exhaust himself arguing about it. And he’ll lose the argument because he just doesn’t have what it takes to debate something like this. Better to find some other topic that he will be really energized about – this ain’t it!

Oct 10, 2008 - 10:54 pm 193. Dave:

A child born to an American citizen living abroad is an American citizen.

Being adopted by a non-citizen does not remove citizenship. Even naturalization
does not remove citizenship if the person being naturalized is a minor.

Something simply does not smell right about this lawsuit.

Oct 10, 2008 - 10:55 pm 194. Wadeusaf:

Benj, the origin of the thing was your reference to that Slate piece, your confusion was rooted in that the complexity of the sentence, which got away from me.

Slate along with others, ignores the amount of time which must have been spent figuring out what one another was about. I do not for a minute believe that responsibility for a huge fund, used to scam the City of Chicago school district could have been done without painful awareness of the other partners. There is simply no way around the issue. No one is that cavalier with that amount of money.

I am sorry but I do not buy the notion that the complaint that drove the man to bomb, has anything to do with patriotic feelings. Rather, I am very sure they had to do with a distortion of the options available to him and others. Ayers chose poorly. His rampage helped to extend the VN war, and multiply the numbers of dead. I am sure he feels good about that, I am positive he has not a nagging doubt about what his actions really caused. He is as committed to bringing down the government today as he ever was. However, as his wife so neatly stated it in the reunion video,(to paraphrase) they don’t know what that “change” will look like, they just know that they never stopped working for “change”.

Do you really believe your man “Oh” was unaware of that. Do you really believe he did not discuss the politics of the 60’s with Ayers, a radical liberal icon. A rock star in his own right as a founding member of the Weathermen. Now I know that in most professional relationships certain stuff is not discussed. But the relationship that led someone like Ayers to sponsor “Oh” would have to be special indeed, to ignore Ayers past. I find the whole story as presented by “Oh” and you is simply preposterous. I don’t know how else to state it.

He lied about this relationship just like he.
He lied about his church.

He lied about his church because it was inconvenient for the American people to become aware of the fact that his beliefs as supported by his church are dominated by vision of a semi violent overthrow of “white” society. As crazy as it sounds to me, BLT is precisely that, and that is precisely what “Oh”s church preached under Wright and now under Otis. Tell me now it isn’t so. Tell me now that “Oh” didn’t believe a word of it, he only went because…,
A. He needed to connect with a local church to get credibility.
B. He only went cause his wife insisted.

Now I do not fear “Oh”, I am in dread of his policies as proposed, in which I see the unlimited potential to limit our freedoms, force submission of individual rights to government, and extend the gulf between government and the governed. No to mention the damaged he can cause. I conclude that because there is no information to the contrary. His campaign reenforces my opinion of him.

I went on a rant not too long ago, which was a rant, but not too far off from the kinds of damage that “Oh” could cause if he sticks to the Democrat plan of foreign relations.

If indeed “Oh” is about change we can believe in, I would rather he change the Democrat party first, before I am asked to judge his future deeds.

Oct 10, 2008 - 11:53 pm 195. Wadeusaf:

Benj,

I dunno If I would trust the pleas of certain folks round here. I am only aware of one folk that recently has had their stuff messed with, and that was AM. Funny how bu’s problem occured at the same time. Maybe not so.

The only times Wrechard has messed with my posts, well lets just say I was grateful in the one instance, and gained respect in the second. I am unaware of (or maybe just not paying too close of attention) no other editorial clipping here. Just my own experience/

Oct 11, 2008 - 3:06 am 196. Storm-Rider:

Benj says Obama is not a Marxist, but Benj is himself a Marxist. I believe Obama is a Marxist as well; he hangs around with Marxists like William Ayers, Alice Palmer, Bernadine Dohrn and Frank Marshall Davis.

http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/194392.php

“A specter is haunting Europe – the specter of communism.” Karl Marx

“The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.” Karl Marx

“I declared to them point-blank: we have received our mandate as the representatives of the proletarian party from no one but ourselves.” Karl Marx

“The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property” Karl Marx

“In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend.” Karl Marx

“You must, therefore, confess that by “individual” you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible.” Karl Marx

“The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state… Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property” Karl Marx

“If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as a class; if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally…” Karl Marx

“In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things. In all these movements, they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time.” Karl Marx

“The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution.” Karl Marx

“Society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand.” Karl Marx

“The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion.” Karl Marx

“Religion is the opium of the masses.” Karl Marx

“Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists. On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain….The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital. Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty.” Karl Marx

“The bourgeois sees his wife a mere instrument of production.” Karl Marx

“The charges against communism made from a religious, a philosophical and, generally, from an ideological standpoint, are not deserving of serious examination…. let us have done with the bourgeois objections to communism.” Karl Marx

“The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism.” Karl Marx

Oct 11, 2008 - 6:54 am 197. slade:

@Aristide

Republican actions still not consistent with a serious response parallel to the magnitude of the accounting fraud that now threatens to drop the markets by 50% (no, it’s far from over, Friday was bought and paid for). Republican leadership nonexistent on this issue, in fact nonexistent. Nor am I arguing reprieve for Democrats. Their role was heinous abrogation of responsibility. But it is simply incorrect to try to play partisan politics with this issue.

Oct 11, 2008 - 7:15 am 198. Dave:

Storm-Rider: I do not consider Obama a Marxist. I consider him a Leninist.

Marxists cling to the absurd notion that Marxism will come about unaided. Leninists know it will not, so they find methods of
imposing it. They are nasty enough and then they upon the door wide and invite in the Stalinists.

Vote against Obama. He is the more evil of the two lessers.

Oct 11, 2008 - 7:42 am 199. Nine-of-Diamonds:

” thanks for alerting me to Wretch’s history of imperiousness and censoriousness. If you hadn’t spoken up I would’ve assumed that Wretch played fair. But – as is increasinly apparent – he’s at home in a totalitarian context, not a truly American one.”

What a laughable martyr complex. Nobody wants to read mile-long posts consisting of information that can be easily linked to – if some people aren’t competent enough to post simple hyperlinks then maybe they shouldn’t be posting here.

I’ve had some of my own comments fail to appear. Wretchard must feel threatened by my pro-0bama posts, eh?

“I said last night that Wretch – from a thousand miles away – was encourging Americans to treat their own democratic process with contempt.”

It’s great to see our resident – 0bama-tool professing concern about treating the electoral process with contempt. Tell me again who’s been discarding people’s absentee ballots? Filling out multiple voter registrations? Is it Republican districts that have 105% of their population registered to vote?

And nobody needs to deny 0bama legitimacy – like so many of the “smears” that Hopeychangey gets worked up over, it’s all self inflicted. Nobody’s forcing him to circumvent the electoral process on a massive scale. Nobody’s making him withhold basic documentation about his health, academic achievments, and political history. If he lacks legitimacy, he only has himself to blame.

Oct 11, 2008 - 8:37 am 200. Storm-Rider:

“If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” George Washington

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?print=yes&id=28906

Oct 11, 2008 - 8:47 am 201. NahnCee:

Why must it be Wretchard messing with posts? Seems to me that the Pajama’s Media site is pretty hinky from the get-go, not to mention all the electronic gremlins lurking in the etheric shrubbery between here and there.

I’ve just never seen either Habu and certainly not Benj post / say anything earth-shaking enough to be censored. And think there’s got to be a lot of ego involved on the part of both of them to think that they’re that important to mess with.

Oct 11, 2008 - 9:58 am 202. mac:

I normally lurk here but I simply had to comment about this slander.

Benj thinks Wretchard is censorious? Can someone spare a neuron to lend him so he’ll have a pair to rub together? I truly admire Wretch’s near-infinite patience with his tripe because I’ve long since reached my limit with Benj. If Wretchard had the slightest hint of DU or Kossism about him he would have long since banned Benj permanently. I very much like The Belmont Club but the blog would be of higher quality without Benj’s screeds.

Oct 11, 2008 - 10:20 am 203. Konyok:

Despite my recent overwrought reaction to “dark mutterings,” the only time that Wretchard has moderated any of my postings was when I put multiple links to vendors of Georgian wine. I thought that I was providing a service, but I understand that this venue is not a swap meet.

It would be more, er, convenient to have explicit posting guidelines, but then we would have an actual censorship regime. It would be administratively convenient to require posters to register and limit e-mail addresses to one on-line handle, but I doubt that libertarian clubbers would accept that.

I don’t know what the laws are in Australia, but the recent actions of Human Rights tribunals in Canada ought to give us all pause. This blog is associated with one name, Richard Fernandez, and it is our host who would be subject to witch hunts or spurious investigations. We who post here are insulated from such considerations and enjoy nearly perfect freedom to vent as we please.

Personally, I have great confidence in Wretchard’s informal, ad hoc moderation. None of the complaints that I’ve seen allege that a point of view was moderated; rather, it seems that expressions were the objection. This might be cold comfort to those who have been moderated, but BC does not exist in a vacuum and some direction is warranted. Wretchard has a light hand and we owe him our thanks.

It might be helpful if Wretchard were to send an explanatory e-mail to those who have been moderated, but, we do not pay him for his time and trouble. We are riding for free.

Oct 11, 2008 - 10:43 am 204. Is ACORN active locally? « Bear Diaries … with Stillman.:

[...] And Richard Fernandez has this. [...]

Oct 11, 2008 - 1:01 pm 205. NahnCee:

Just so.

Oct 11, 2008 - 2:27 pm 206. lc:

As I understand it, Obama was the first executive in charge of the Woods Foundation, of the Annennberg Challenge, which was initiated/created by Ayers….would you hand your baby to someone you know nothing about? (well, ok, maybe a country, wink-wink, nudge-nudge)

(and in the interest of a fuller disclosure, there is something visceral in my reaction to Ayers – I want to forcibly wipe that f*** you look off his face; but then, that’s probably the type of reaction he wants, I would venture to say his reason for living).

And, I’ll say again, I have no problem with wretchard’s management of HIS blog.

Oct 11, 2008 - 2:49 pm 207. Storm-Rider:

“If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” George Washington

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/10/thug_rule_brooks_no_dissent.html

Oct 11, 2008 - 3:30 pm 208. Konyok:

Come to think of it, I would love to know Benj’s opinion on one of the most important sources of conservative angst regarding a prospective Obama presidency with a congressinal majority – freedom of political speech.

Unconstrained Human Rights tribunals are a reality in Canada, a nation ruled by a similar social democratic philosophy as the Democratic party. There are growing calls in the Democratic party for a restoration of the “Fairness Doctrine” in the United States. Supporters of the candidacy of Barack Obama routinely dismiss criticism and concerns as “racism.” (Most recently, John Lewis comparing McCain to George Wallace for questioning Obama’s ties to Ayers.) Academic speech codes have become ubiquitous.

It is not unreasonable to fear that these trends prefigure a nascent threat to free political speech in this country.

How does a progressive respond to this concern?

Oct 11, 2008 - 3:31 pm 209. Karen:

Konyok, we already know what is the progressives’ response to free speech concerns. As far as they’re concerned, the only dangers to free speech are of the slanderous, libelous, racist variety.

Oct 11, 2008 - 4:53 pm 210. Karen:

That is to say, any speech they (progressives) don’t like must be forced to fit into the definitions of slander, libel and racism.

Oct 11, 2008 - 4:57 pm 211. Konyok:

Karen,

In other words, the postmodernist view of reality has no room for an absolute value like freedom of speech.

In this view, rights are granted according to a complicated, aesthetic formula of historical victimhood status. Members of the formerly “dominant culture” are not eligible in this equation – anything the clingers might have to say or complain about can be readily dismissed as ploys to restore white skin privilege.

Oct 11, 2008 - 6:42 pm 212. Karen:

Konyok, I suspect that free speech, to them, is a value that must take into account and honor some “larger truth.”

Oct 11, 2008 - 7:06 pm 213. Benj:

Konyoke – “I would love to know Benj’s opinion” – Sounds good (all irony registered), but let’s a wait a day or two to see if your mood holds and you’re not still itching to dis me from a great height. As I recall, two days back, I was (in your mind) a creature of pathos, though still worthy of contempt. Once you go there K. – you gots to chill a bit – let a little time elapse – Or memory tends to underscore that you’re a pretty flighty head. THe sort of mind that spends years locked in a left sect before flipping to become a “shy” (thank you for sharing!) Movement Conservative…

@ DAve – Thank you for your clarity about the citizenship thingy. But your line re “I consider O a Leninist.” is out to lunch. Kinda like me saying – “I consider DAve a… Mormon.” Obama has a pretty extensive public life – editor of the Harvard Law REview, a couple books, a legistlative record etc. There’s no evidence of any kind to suggest he’s a Marxist, much less a Leninist. He’s never cited Lenin in any public context – But he has named Solzhenitsyn – one of the definitive critics of Lenin – as one of his favorite writers. As per Pat Moynihan – You gotta right to your opinions but not to your own facts…

@ Wade – Some more facts – You have Ayers as a “radical liberal icon” – a “rockstar.” That’s not close to being true. Dohrn had her 15 mintues WAY back in the day. But Ayers was NEVER a star nor an icon. The Weathermen wern’t quite as gone as the SLA – but they were marginal figures even as the 60’s soured into the 70s. And aFter the 70s, nobody w/o a pretty deep interest in left sects cared about Bill Ayers. He was all but anonymous. Dohrn and Ayers have had something of a revival in the last 5 years. But only because there are some young “scholars” who look back in cluelessness on the 60s – they have sought to reinvent SDS – but it’s not a LIVE or growing movement. Let’s get this clear for now and forever. When Obama became the first Black editor at the Harvard Law Review (and graduated magna cum laude) he immediately became a potential player in mainline American politics. He was ALREADY a more important national figure than Bill Ayers ever had been. You guys have the power positions here reversed. (Though I’ll allow that Ayers had some local pull in Chi-town that he’d earned doing the equiv of Settlement House work – he was a “citizen of the year” sort (as he was named in 1997 by Dick Daley’s kid.) Obama didn’t NEED Bill Ayers to make it ANYWERE. O. was a bro from Harvard Law. A was a prof in “Education” – a second tier discipline – in a third tier University (University of Illinois at Chi…) One more time – Ayers was a 60’s rad with a rep for having ONCE gone to extremes (back in a day when more than a few folks on the left and in the gov went there – that’s how he beat the rap!) A. had NOT yet written his memoir – and btw that book is ANYTHING but a celebration of the Weathermen. A was NOT a member of any left sect in the 90s. (I mean – you MIGHT have something to complain about if O had been having conversations with Konyoke and Trots in the SWP (!?) or WOULD you!!? – Of course NOT!) A was a prof with a side-gig “teaching poetry” to kids in the Juvie justice system. Supremely GENTEEL stuff – Obama would NOT have had deep conversations with this guy about “revolutionary tactics” or his own larger ambitions. He has nothing to apologize for on this front…

RE Wretch’s apparent censoriousness – No martyr complex here – Just interested when I realized last night that my post did MAKE the thread early on and than got deleted after the fact. I’m not losing any sleep over it. I don’t need more evidence of Wretch’s ways to convince me he’s a fundamentally anti-democratic sensibility. The whole thing may very well have been some sort of neutral techy screw-up. Still I might as well take this op to underscore that Wretch certainly had no good answer when I argued (in my short post) that it wasn’t right for a foreigner to urge Americans to treat their own democratic process w/ contempt by refusing legitimacy to Obama if O won the election. I don’t know that’s why my post disappeared. What really counts, though, is what happened yesterday, when Johnny Mac affirmed O’s “deceny” and asserted that no-one in America should FEAR Obama. When Mac did that, he was resisting the sort of “gambit” that Wretch was promoting at the top of this thread. And Mac’s fearful interlocutors were, after all, American citizens. Given his “rejectionist” take on this election, I suppose you could say Wretch is functioning as a “foreign subversive.” Not to worry though, I don’t keep enemies’ list. And neither will O. –

Someone above expressed fears re “Speech Codes” etc.in the Age of OBama. Ya’ll should read O’s own account of his time at Colum reading the graffiti there that spelled out the harsh truths beneath the genteel surfaces of Ivy Academic life. O is congentially (well, not quite but close) opposed to a politics founded on whipping up anger. But he’s also not a big fan of Speech Codes. And remember where O came down on Nifong and those lacrosse players. God knows, he’s got a much deeper feeling for the Constitution – and the Bill for Rights – than the Angler or W. (Just ask John Ashbrook!)

Oct 11, 2008 - 8:08 pm 214. Storm-Rider:

The larger truth of Marxism is that the all-powerful State is the source of human rights, not God. Our rights to human liberty, especially freedom of speech and freedom to defend life, simply become reversible privileges of the State.

It doesn’t matter to “progressives” that our Declaration of Independence says otherwise. Those Marxist progressives, some of whom may not even realize that they are aligned with Marxism, are regressive and are counter-revolutionaries against the real revolution in human government and human rights – The American Revolution.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” Thomas Jefferson

http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/10/the_evidence_for_neocommunism.html

http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/2125/print

Oct 11, 2008 - 8:27 pm 215. Storm-Rider:

“Obama’s Official campaign blogger, Sam Graham-Felsen, a former writer for the leftist Nation magazine and a contributor to the Socialist Viewpoint”

Sam Graham-Felsen: “The capitalist ruling class of the United States exercises a virtual dictatorship not only over American society, but also over the entire world. This capitalist class rule is the basic cause of the poverty, wars and the degradation of the natural environment.”

Sam Graham-Felsen: “After being expelled from Socialist Action in 1999, we formed Socialist Workers Organization in an attempt to carry on the project of building a nucleus of a revolutionary party true to the historic teachings and program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky.”

“Sam Graham-Felsen, hired to run Obama’s blog, writes about Noam Chomsky in a Marxist publications that openly calls for revolution against the American government. This is a Presidential candidate’s choice to run the on-line portion of his campaign. That speaks volumes of his character and worldview. Contradicting what he says in public, Obama is surrounding himself with poeple who never seem to learn that their absurd ideologies end in misery and ruin. “

http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/04/another_obama_marxist.html

“In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things. In all these movements, they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time.” Karl Marx

“The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state… Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property” Karl Marx

Oct 11, 2008 - 8:32 pm 216. Wadeusaf:

One of the largest dissappointments I have had is with the way the nations legislature under Republican control failed to assert itself, to lead the way in legislation that could have provided for the (to me) commonsense sort of solutions to government waste and spending (one and the same in my book, on anything other than commerce and defense).

I really have fears about what a Democrat Legislature run by the extremes and a democrat president with all the apparent pressure that the extremes can bring to bear, will do to freedom of speech and other basic freedoms, like the right to be left the hell alone. It seems as though that right would only apply in the Bedroom and then only if you say “no” repeatedly. Everywhere else is play, even in your head. Hate speech is a contrived offense, feelings might be hurt but it is better to learn to marginalize such types as would spew effectively, rather than criminalize what is effectively a judgment call about intent. But you seem to feel at ease with that conundrum (back at ya).

Acorn is still the big unanswered. Will the huge amount of fraud undertaken by a few bad apples (in all 57 states it seems so far) be allowed to subvert the process. Or will we get the opportunity at a fair election. It appears the Dems response to the perception of a stolen election is to make sure they steal the next one. What really has me shaking my head is “Oh”s role with Acorn and training. Did he show them how to legally commit fraud? Or did he instruct them on how to spot it.

Sheese man, I know “Oh” didn’t need Ayers, and I am sure Ayers knows that too, but still the relationship was there, and the grant fraud is there (call it what you will) and the totally screwed approach to early childhood education is there(about as cold hearted a warehousing effort IMO, as any I’ve seen) But what the heck, so long as “Oh” says its okie dokie, that should be good enough for us. Given his irreproachable, complete and completely transparent record and all. But I am sure that his firm grasp of the issues and snap decision making will more than atone for any second and third thoughts after his incorrect snap judgment is found to send another totally inappropriate message to multiple number of allies on numerous issues. No problem their, nope the inconsistency is just his foreign policy evolving.

Of course a fellow thousands of miles from LA (Boston and OZ) with experience in dealing with some of the worst sorts engaged in voter fraud and corruption as well as dealing with counter insurgency would have nothing beneficial to add to the discussion unless he is a relative of “Oh”. Hey Wretchard, aren’t you guys related?

Your view of reality and mine are not the same, your view of what is right and what is wrong are not the same as mine. At one point in America we would still have enough in common to define terms. It seems as if we do not even speak the same language anymore.

As far as Nifong, there were a lot of people who got that wrong, a lot of folks who believe it when a man of an otherwise impeccable (or so it seemed) record says something. And Nifong had a record.

So Benj, just to be totally unfair, do you not care for Wretchard’s opinion because it differs from your own or do you not like him because he’s different (a foreigner)? You and I both know it is too easy to ask those questions when it is unnecessary, and so difficult to ask when it is.

Oct 11, 2008 - 10:12 pm 217. NahnCee:

I’m shaking my head in wonderment over the reaction by B. Hussein and his poodle media to their perceived threats of conservative violence. The left have been bitter, bullying and violent for literally years now, including physical altercations, car scratching, computer hacking, tire puncturing, and voter registration fraud.

And now that the right is finally get fed up enough to start hollering back – nothing physical yet, just hollering — the left is screaming “no fair!”

???? WTF ????

It’s like the kids in the bedroom at night have been jumping up and down, doing pillow fights and knocking over lamps until the wee hours of the morning, and once Dad finally gets up and starts stomping up the stairs whomping his belt against the wall to punish them, the screams of terror begin and the pleading “we didn’t MEAN it, Dad! Really!” start.

B. Hussein told his obamabots to get in our faces. Why is it so bad if we, in turn, get in their faces?

Oct 11, 2008 - 10:49 pm 218. nobozons:

BO is a scam artist that is trying to get into the face of conservatives. We think that he is lying to us in order to get elected and with the aid of the media. The only way that BO can be exposed is by his opponent who doesn’t sympathize with his bases frustration. We know that radicalism is just about the walk into the white house and it will be ugly. Electing a racist is anathema!

Oct 12, 2008 - 6:41 am 219. NahnCee:

Maybe McCain had all the brave beat out of him in Vietnam.

My parents, when they died, were afraid. They were afraid of EVERYthing. They were afraid to change a doctor’s appointment because he might get mad at them. They were afraid to switch out their kitchen wall phone because they might get in trouble with the phone company. They were just … timid and afraid. They’d had all the moxy sucked out of them over the years and just didn’t want to rock the boat ever, over anything.

McCain, in refusing to go after B. Hussein, or to let Palin go after him, or even to acknowledge the stuff a lot of voters already know about strikes me as being in a deeply non-rocking-the-boat hunker-down, don’t make them mad at me position. I can live with an elderly President taking naps in boring meetings, but I really DO mind an elderly President being afraid to take it to the enemy, whether that enemy is a pasty-white ex-KGB agent, an oily Arab terrorist, or a mocha-colored Marxist.

Oct 12, 2008 - 10:14 am 220. Benj:

STormrider wrote: “Those Marxist progressives, some of whom may not even realize that they are aligned with Marxism [?!], are regressive and are counter-revolutionaries…” – An amazing Orwellian sentence. So you can be a Marxist w/o “realizing” you’re “aligned with Marxism.” This is the classic formulatino of a witchhunter. And I’m not hinking McCarthyism. I’m talking Salem!!

As for Mr Felsen-whatever. He’s a videographer and transcriber for the O campaign. Not someone responsible for messaging. I’m on the O email list-serve. I get messages from Plouff (chiefly), Ax, O, Biden, and (very occasinally) Michelle. Never recieved a message from Felsen-w.e. But if I had…Here’s the deal. He’s a kid with (genteel) social democratic politics. The socialist mag he wrote for urges its readers to break with dems (a la Naderites). Mr Felsen clearly disagrees with their line on this front, right? So there’s no reason to believe he’s down with other components of their program. Storm has him “participating” in “labor riots in France.” Reality check – he marched with public employees unions who were rsisting attempts to cut their benefits. – He “particpated” in a PARADE. Storm – even if it’s Paris – a parade aint a riot! Just so we’re all clear. There is a long tradtion of socialism and social democratic politics in the U.S. We wrote the International! Ya’ll remember Eugene Debs? Or Norman Thomas? Or Michael Harrington’s “The Other America”? Social Democratic politics owe a lot to Marxist analysis. Lenin had contempt for the social democratic tradition. It’s ahistorical to mix up Bolshevism with Chartism!

Not too many social democrats left in America. Some of them will vote for NAder. But I’m guessing most will vote for Obama. And they won’t be holding their noses. He’s certainly not contemptuous of their tradition. But he’s not all in either. He’s more market-friendly and less entranced with statism. BTW – I’m guessing there ARE some flat-out Communinsts – not to mention black supremacists! – who will vote for O. Just as there are wannabe seccessionists and stone white racists who will vote for Mac. Neither candidate can be blamed for all their supporters. Though they certainly are under an obligation to distance themselves from anti-democratic discourse waged in their name. Mac lived up to that obligation a couple days back. (Palin took a pass…)

@WAde – Glad it’s (now) a nobrainer to you that O didn’t NEED Ayers. Hope that means you’re also clear that you were WAY over the top to suggest that A. was ever an “icon” or “rockstar.” Have NO idea what you were saying re Nifong et al. The point is that O. did not take a p.c. stand on that issue. Nor is he big fan of speech codes or promoting a “liberal” social agenda through the courts. He believes in winning electoral mandates – not relying on judicial elites. I noticeyou passed on any reference to Cheneyk’s boy hitting up Ashbrook in his hospital bed. Check Mayer’s “The DArk Side” and you’ll see that MANY conservatives within the Bush Administration were worried by the Angler’s pursuit of Exec power. I think libertarians will be breathing a sigh or two of relief whoever wins this election.

Re ACorn – did you read the NYRB piece laying out the #’s of black voters who are systematically disenfrancised (and we’re not even talking re felons!)? Check it and then check your fear-mongering re Acorn. Obama ran a voter registration drive himself when he got back to Chi in the 90’s. His own petitions have been impeccable. His campaign is not about registering the Dallas Cowboys or dead folks. It is about my 83 year-old Southern historian of populism, carrying his air in a box as he hits small towns in North Carolina with his new best friend – a retired black cop from NYC – and registering hundreds of first-time AA voters. It’s called democracy. Rove did it with the white evangelicals last time around. THis time baby…

Oct 12, 2008 - 6:15 pm 221. Storm-Rider:

OK, Benj, I screwed up a sentence; but Karl Marx was a counter-revolutionary. Socialism, i.e.: Communism Lite, and Communism it’s self are forms of government power which do not derive from the consent of the governed. Both represent unjust governmental power of an elite governing class; and in this respect there is no difference between rightist elite and leftist elite. Our founders set up a republic where the people themselves are the source of political power through their elected representatives; but today our republic is oppressed primarily by the elitism of the left, and it started with the New Deal. For the most part American conservatism is in line with classic American liberalism – the liberalism of our Declaration of Independence – conservation of human liberty. There is no organized right wing in America similar to the Marxist or Socialist left; and if there are such rightists who oppose government power deriving from the consent of the governed – I oppose them as well. Those who call themselves conservatives in America are really in the middle of the road – right there with the founding fathers.

The importance of Sam Graham-Felsen, as well as Saul Alinsky and others, is simply that Barak Obama associates himself with Marxists; and Marxism is, by its nature, anti-American.

Let me have another try at my earlier statement:

It doesn’t matter to “progressives” that our Declaration of Independence says otherwise. Those progressives, some of whom may not even realize that they are aligned with Marxism, are regressive and are counter-revolutionaries against the real revolution in human government and human rights – The American Revolution.

Oct 12, 2008 - 6:48 pm 222. Benj:

@ Stormrider – you owe the Belmont Club an apology – I quote directly from your post above…

“Sam Graham-Felsen: “The capitalist ruling class of the United States exercises a virtual dictatorship not only over American society, but also over the entire world. This capitalist class rule is the basic cause of the poverty, wars and the degradation of the natural environment.”

Sam Graham-Felsen: “After being expelled from Socialist Action in 1999, we formed Socialist Workers Organization in an attempt to carry on the project of building a nucleus of a revolutionary party true to the historic teachings and program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky.””

But those words were not written by Sam Graham-Felsen (or published under his name). Those passages were written by the editors of the “Socialist Viewpoint” magazine – a mag explicity states…

“Signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of Socialist Viewpoint. These views are expressed in editorials. ”

You’ve lied on Mr. Graham-Felsen. If you’re an honorable person you’ll admit it. By the way – the “Viewpoint” underscores that it functions as a web-cache, reprinting many articles orignally published elsewhere. My guess is that the GF piece cited in “The American Thinker” was originaly published elsewhere. (Not too many Nation-writers hungry to publish in an obscure web-only mag.) But first things first. I’m waiting on Storm’s mea-culpae. Anyone can make a mistake but this was pretty willful one. (Hey Wade – hope you’re noticing that you’re surrounded by a sea of B.S. when it comes to the fearsome O and his “associates”….)

Oct 12, 2008 - 7:14 pm 223. Wadeusaf:

Among the current leadership of the Democrat party and the many college freshmen who are young enough to believe stories about goofs like him, I am afraid that is exactly the standing Mr Ayers and others hold. The no brainer was the position of “OH” to “A” on the needs list (hey we agree on something) not my own. The relationship is all the more problematical not only because of the context of the relationship, which was basically a fraud designed to feed cash to “Oh” and “A” friends(no serious educational project need apply) but because “Oh” felt threatened enough to lie about the depth and length of the friendship. Its BS by “Oh”, the kinds of BS I’ve come to expect from folks who have something to hide.

I don’t have a problem with the legal registration drives, I applaud them. I do have a tough time understanding the cries of racism when applied to voter registration. It is the kinds of crap that stole the Governors race in the State of Washington that has me concerned. Glad your civic high mindedness thinks that is no big deal. The notion that someone today could be or would willfully be disenfranchised is a charge that we should all take very seriously. At the same time charges of disenfranchisement have to be soberly and seriously leveled. I really think a penalty for frivolousness ought to be applied to stop the kinds of garbage as was displayed by the self anointed judgment passer in Alaska, and much of what I think the NYRB (review of books?) is discussing.

The lack of rules and protections for legally registered voters and in proving for adequate means of legally registering citizens has my dander up. The whole motor voter sham, among other means of abetting the commission of a felony seems okay for Dems to promote as long an no one in inconvenienced. What kind of insanity is that?

Socialism is still antithetical to the system described in the US Constitution. The check and the balances of a socialist maze are at odds with the market and the means provided by that document for checking the overwrought. It appears the overwrought is the favored method of creating the grounds for change. What kinds of change do you think “Oh” the socialist would bring? I know you favor the forms of socialism as practiced in Europe, and I understand the commitment to Constitutional forms is the greatest obstacle to getting this country to be like them. That and the fact that we don’t bleat.

You are a bit of a snit to expect folks to apologize to you, no, you demand them, so often. Sheeze, if you want I’ll get a list together of every thing folks on one of “Oh”s sites need to apologize for, give me a year or two or three, okay? You are also very loose with the notion of lying. Misinformed is not a lie (which is why you get away with so much here . I’m pretty sure a lie is what “Oh” told about Resko, Wright, Auchi and Ayers (and Acorn, and Otis and and and and and).

Oct 12, 2008 - 8:40 pm 224. Storm-Rider:

Benj,
You say Sam Graham-Felsen didn’t write those lines, but Lance Fairchock seems to indicates that he did. I haven’t lied about anything, but if what you say is true, that those lines were written by the editors, then I do apologise, but I don’t apologise for discussing Sam Graham-Felsen’s connection to Marxism by publishing in a Marxist journal.

“Sam Graham-Felsen, hired to run Obama’s blog, writes about Noam Chomsky in a Marxist publications that openly calls for revolution against the American government. This is a Presidential candidate’s choice to run the on-line portion of his campaign. That speaks volumes of his character and worldview. Contradicting what he says in public, Obama is surrounding himself with poeple who never seem to learn that their absurd ideologies end in misery and ruin. “

http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/04/another_obama_marxist.html

The point is that Sam Graham-Felsen is another Marxist in league with Barak Obama. Since Sam Graham-Felsen writes articles in the Marxist publication, Socialist Viewpoint, and since he was Obama’s Official campaign blogger, there is a connection between Obama and Marxists.

Sam Graham-Felsen had the Communist Party flag on his wall at Harvard. “Behind the bar, in the corner, hangs a Communist Party flag that Sam and Kieran bought on their trip to Russia the summer after sophomore year.”

http://128.103.29.201/article.aspx?ref=348237

“In the same week the Obama campaign quietly removed from its official website a page managed by a fundraiser tied to the Islamic terrorist group Hamas, its official blogger has come under attack as a “hardcore Marxist” for hanging a Communist Party flag in his Harvard campus apartment and publishing in a self-professed ‘revolutionary Marxist’ journal.”

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=62681

Here are some interesting Marxist resources where Sam Graham-Felsen, Obama’s official campaign blogger, writes articles.

http://www.socialistviewpoint.org/arsenal.html

Oct 12, 2008 - 8:44 pm 225. Benj:

@ Storm – The passages you quoted – EASY to Check! – are from the “Who We Are” Statement at the Socialist Viewpoint website. It’s credited to four editors – Carole Seligman, Bonnie Weinstein, Jaqueline Boyle, Nat Weinstein. No Graham-Felsen to be found. Here’s the link http://www.socialistviewpoint.org/who_we_are.html

I’ll cut and paste the thing below in case you’re too lazy to go confirm you misled readers here. – Amazng to me that instead of being embarrassed, you’re still talking loud and saying zip!!

@ WADE – do I really have to apologize for calling Storm on the fact that he passed on tainted info to Clubbers? I tend to thank people who expose misinformation, rather than complain about ‘em. But, I guess I should realize truth can hurt so no-one should expect, ah, sweets and flowers for telling it…

Take my “lied on” as a colloquial expression – (As per Amistad, there’s no word for “should” in some West African languages, you either do or don’t.) I’ll allow Storm’s falsity has more to do with gullibility than bad intentions. But Lord knows when he GOES ON shamelessly compounding his own stupidity – see above – surely he earns the term “liar”. It ain’t me who’s suffering from this latest perfect Storm – And as for my supposed apology-mongering, I’m not looking for anything in empty eyes. It’s on ya’ll to watch yourselves. Nobody outside this Club cares…

Here’s that “Who We Are” statement with the 2 passages that Storm wrongly cited as being written by Mr. Graham-Felsen. Note as well (AGAIN) the lines re “reprinting” material from the web. My bet is that this sect just re-upped on a piece that G-F wrote for some other rag. More evidence that O is “in league” [to use Storm’s perfervid phrase) with Reds? What Fuggin’ Decade Are We In?

The Socialist Viewpoint Publishing Association publishes Socialist Viewpoint in the interests of the working class.

The editors take positions consistent with revolutionary Marxism. Within this context the editors will consider for publication articles, reviews or comments. The editors may publish comments to accompany these articles. Photographs and cartoons will be appreciated.

Socialist Viewpoint reprints articles circulated on the Internet when we deem them of interest to our readers. Such articles are reprinted exactly as they appeared in the original source, without any editorial or stylistic changes by us.

No limitation will be placed on the author(s) use of their material in their subsequent work provided acknowledgment is made of its publication in Socialist Viewpoint. The Socialist Viewpoint Publishing Association retains for itself rights to reprint articles as collections, educational bulletins, and similar uses. With the inclusion of an acknowledgment and a notice of the copyright ownership, permission is hereby given educators to duplicate essays for distribution gratis or for use in the classroom at cost. The author(s) retain all other rights.

Signed articles do not necessarily represent the views of Socialist Viewpoint. These views are expressed in editorials.

Socialist Viewpoint is printed by members of Local 583, Allied Printing Trades Council, San Francisco, California.

Note to Readers:
Socialist Viewpoint magazine has been edited and distributed by a group of revolutionaries who share a common political outlook stemming from the old Socialist Workers Party of James P. Cannon, and Socialist Action from 1984 through 1999.

After being expelled from Socialist Action in 1999, we formed Socialist Workers Organization in an attempt to carry on the project of building a nucleus of a revolutionary party true to the historic teachings and program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky.

What we have found is that our numbers are insufficient for this crucial project of party building. This problem is not ours alone; it is a problem flowing from the division and fragmentation that has plagued the revolutionary movement in capitalist America and the world since the 1980s.

What we intend to do is to continue to promote the idea of building a revolutionary Marxist working class political party through the pages of Socialist Viewpoint magazine. We continue to have an optimistic outlook about the revolutionary potential of the world working class to rule society in its own name—socialism. We are optimistic that the working class, united across borders, and acting in its own class interests can solve the devastating crises of war, poverty, oppression, and environmental destruction that capitalism is responsible for.

We expect that revolutionaries from many different organizations, traditions, and backgrounds will respond to the opportunities that will arise, as workers resist the attacks of the capitalist system and government, to build a new revolutionary political party. Just as we join with others to build every response to war and oppression, we look forward to joining with others in the most important work of building a new mass revolutionary socialist workers’ party as it becomes possible to do so.”

ME AGAIN – I’m getting more upset as I think about the original liar at “The American Thinker” who tried to pin the above statement on OBama by lyingly implying that F-G had authored a couple graphs from it. Hope that leads everyone here to do some…THINKING about the worth of that THE AMERICAN THINKER. Its ethics are certainly worse than that of “Socialist Viewpoint”!!

Oct 12, 2008 - 11:02 pm 226. Wadeusaf:

Well now, I haven’t pinned anything on anyone due to what someone else wrote. And I kinda like the do or don’t way of judging (thinking and figuring potentialities can become a problem with no should or ought), but perhaps that would keep sub prime like crises to a minimum. I am judging from the point of view of what the dems say and what “Oh” says and what folks like Ayers do and say. What is it you call what you believe in again? Oh yeah you didn’t say. Lets see…,Progressive no that is car insurance company. Capitalist, ha, sorry that wouldn’t be it. Hummm, humanist? No that doesn’t contain any economic theory. What the heck do you call it Benj, that you and “Oh” and G-F and perhaps Ayers (I won’t assert or assume that “Oh” and Ayers share the same political philosophy just because the “Oh” Played the debutant poll at Ayers house and all. “Oh” did not need Ayers, he chose him. On whose advise I don’t care at this point it is irrelevant. “Oh” chose a repentant Leninist, who has not repented his violent past, and has sought the same goals only sans blood and gunpowder. That really makes me feel really, really good about it all, Benj. Really. A constitutional lecturer. Really, and a reform Leninist, really really makes me feel better about it all. No worries, Farrakhan and the rev wright, no worries, no problems, I’m fine with that because you said its all okay. Doesn’t matter the record cause there is none, and it doesn’t matter the deeds cause there are none, and who he hangs out with doesn’t matter they are not “Oh” and “Oh” has evolved above that as we can tell with the way he phrased it in one of his two novellas and don’t worry.
Everything will be alright in the end,

Work away today, work away tomorrow.
Never comes the day for my love and me.
I feel her gently sighing as the evening slips away.
If only you knew what’s inside of me now
You wouldn’t want to know me somehow,
But
You will love me tonight,
We alone will be alright,
In the end.
Give just a little bit more
Take a little bit less
From each other tonight
Admit what you’re feeling
And see what’s in front of you,
It’s never out of your sight.
You know it’s true,
We all know that it’s true.
Work away today, think about tomorrow
Never comes the day for my love and me.
I feel her gently sighing as the evening slips away.
If only you knew what’s inside of me now
You wouldn’t want to know me somehow,
But
You will love me tonight,
We alone will be alright,
In the end.
Give just a little bit more
Take a little bit less
From each other tonight
Admit what you’re feeling
And see what’s in front of you,
It’s never out of your sight.
You know it’s true,
We all know that it’s true.

Moody Blues “Never Comes The Day”

TRUST ME

Thanks, but no thanks.

Oct 12, 2008 - 11:44 pm 227. Storm-Rider:

Benj,

You use Maxist rhetoric techniques by calling someone a liar who hasn’t lied.

Have you published articles in The Socialist Viewpoint? Do you or have you owned the Communist Party flag?

What do you think of The Socialist Viewpoint’s “Who We Are” statement?
“we formed Socialist Workers Organization in an attempt to carry on the project of building a nucleus of a revolutionary party true to the historic teachings and program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky.”

It is important to me that Barak Obama’s Official campaign blogger is a Marxist; that he places the Communist Party flag on his wall, and that he publishes articles in a Marxist journal. It is important to America that we understand who Barak Obama really is, and with whom he closely associates, i.e.: associations with Marxists.

Marxism is un-American and anti-American because Marxism is a totalitarian ideology.

Oct 13, 2008 - 4:25 am 228. Storm-Rider:

Benj,

Of course you don’t like American Thinker – it is a great anti-Marxist website. Here’s another article for you detailing the authoritarian and totalitarian aspects of Marxism and Socialism.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/why_obamas_socialism_matters_1.html

Oct 13, 2008 - 7:31 am 229. Benj:

A “reformed Leninist” ? – That would be Konyoke! Not O…How MANY times do we have to go through this. You’re as much of a Leninist as Barack Obama. As for me – well it ain’t about me!! – But O stands for the revival of liberalism. There’s no mystery. His faith in solidarity and the constructive uses of the social imagination are is spelled out in Dreams – His political stance is spelled out in Audacity and (most recently) in his convention speech. What you hear is what you’ll get…

Oct 13, 2008 - 10:19 am 230. Storm-Rider:

Yes, Benj, it is about you as well; because you once commented about passing a message to Barak Obama. Since you are a Marxist, that makes you part of this story.

Obama is not a liberal, he is a radical Marxist Socialist.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/10/archives_prove_obama_was_a_new.html

http://politicallydrunk.blogspot.com/2008/10/web-archives-confirm-barack-obama-was.html

http://newzeal.blogspot.com/2008/10/obama-file-36-how-socialist-was-obamas.html

“Regardless of Obama’s presumed good intentions, socialism always brings a society to a bad ending. I don’t want to believe that Americans who live in a free society that allows people to think what they will, do what they want, and succeed if they can, will willingly hand themselves over to the socialist ideology. They must therefore be reminded, again and again and again, that socialism isn’t just another political party; it’s the death knell to freedom. So remember, while McCain wants to change DC, Obama wants to change America.”

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/why_obamas_socialism_matters_1.html

“The former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovksy, who has warned that the European Union is on its way to becoming another Soviet Union, thinks that while the West won the Cold War in a military sense, we lost it in the context of ideas: “Communism might have been dead, but the communists remained in power in most of the former Warsaw bloc countries, while their Western collaborators came to power all over the world (in Europe in particular). This is nothing short of a miracle: the defeat of the Nazis in 1945 quite logically brought a shift to the Left in world politics, while a defeat of communism in 1991 brought again a shift to the Left, this time quite illogically.”
Bukovksy is right: We never had a thorough de-Marxification process after the Cold War, similar to the de-Nazification after WW2, and we are now paying the price for this. Many Marxist ideas have been allowed to endure and mutate, such as the notion that culture is unimportant or that it is OK to stage massive social experiments on hundreds of millions of people. The Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm has stated that had the Soviet Union managed to create a functioning Socialist society, tens of millions of deaths would have been a worthwhile price to pay. But Marxist ideals of forced equality can only be enforced by a government with totalitarian powers, and will thus inevitably lead to a totalitarian society. There is no “enlightened Marxism,” and the idea that there is has ruined more lives than probably and other ideology in modern history.”

“Marxism is an organized crime against humanity.”

http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/2125/print

Oct 13, 2008 - 11:07 am 231. Benj:

Storm writes – “What do you think of The Socialist Viewpoint’s “Who We Are” statement?
“we formed Socialist Workers Organization in an attempt to carry on the project of building a nucleus of a revolutionary party true to the historic teachings and program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky.”

What I think is that the statement wasn’t written by Graham-Felsen – as you claimed – adn there’s no indications he subscribes to this pov. So it’s utterly irrelevant.

As fof your wounded feelings – I recall last week you claimed I was “lying” on Jefferson, though I quoted him precisely. What I think is it’s time for you to admit that you passed on tainted info from The American Thinker and that the author of the piece you vouched for lied. Stop prevaricating and Man Up.

As for Marxist “technique” – In recent years, there’s a term that fits the job I did earlier in this thread – it’s now known as “Fisk-ing.” That’s to say, double=checking when someone – on the left (or right) – offers up information that sounds irreal.

Oct 13, 2008 - 12:01 pm 232. Storm-Rider:

Benj: “Jefferson’s tacit conviction was that when it came to the actual work of governing – an elite was a prerequisite.”

That is a lie because Thomas Jefferson said the opposite:

“The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite.” Thomas Jefferson

There will always be an elite class of scientists and thinkers, but there must not be an elite class of rulers; because that is the essence of Nazism, Fascism and Marxist Socialism, i.e.: Communism. Elite minds are often drawn to totalitarianism because elitists often worship the superiroity of their own minds, and this self-idolatry eventually leads to worship of the Socialist State, i.e.: State idolatry.

On my part I’ve admitted that the following quotes are from the Marxist outfit “Socialist Viewpoint” rather than from Obama’s Marxist Sam Graham-Felsen, but he did publish articles at the site where those Marxist statements are published; and he hung the Communist Party flag on his wall.

“The capitalist ruling class of the United States exercises a virtual dictatorship not only over American society, but also over the entire world. This capitalist class rule is the basic cause of the poverty, wars and the degradation of the natural environment.”

“After being expelled from Socialist Action in 1999, we formed Socialist Workers Organization in an attempt to carry on the project of building a nucleus of a revolutionary party true to the historic teachings and program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky.”

http://www.socialistviewpoint.org/who_we_are.html

http://www.socialistviewpoint.org/arsenal.html

Oct 13, 2008 - 12:57 pm 233. Wadeusaf:

In other words–nothing.
Air, zip, nada, zippo.

Why didn’t you just admit that a long time ago. Ir would have saved us all the head scratching.

Oct 13, 2008 - 4:00 pm 234. Ken:

Here’s a test for all of you out there. Read this, and note your reaction:

http://smithfiles.com/2008/10/13/pair-arrested-after-mccain-sign-torched/

I’ll bet a lot of you had one of the following reactions:

“This would be reported if Republicans had done it.”

“I weep for America.”

My take? If your reaction was one of these, or even something similar, YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM.

My own reaction to this story is that I really, really want to kill these terrorists. I have actually called the family of one of them, and begged them to tell their kinsman to try to firebomb me. If all you can come up with is a sad “I’m so sorry that they’re going to win,” you don’t deserve to win. We are facing an evil on the level of Pol Pot here, and I intend to go down fighting. Any of you on the same page? Or are you going to just write off this great land as another Rome and give up preemptively?

I am sick and tired of wimpy Republicans.

Oct 13, 2008 - 5:05 pm 235. Ken:

Here’s an example of how to hurt these POS’s.

Today I called the Democrat office in Carson City and pretended to be a typical Democrat lowlife. I told the woman that I had some “totally rad” T-shirts saying “Abort Palin.” She thought it was cool. Then I changed to my serious voice and said, “So you think it’s OK to kill a woman?” She responded, “Her I do.”

So I reported her to the Secret Service.

Oct 13, 2008 - 5:30 pm 236. buddy larsen:

Ken, the two party system –not to mention the republic itself –is designed around the citizen’s commitment to accept an elefction loss and go ahead and support the office even when an oppon politician occupies it. The idea is to go back to work and try again next election. For most of two & a half centuries, that’s how we’ve always tried to do it, and by and large it has served the nation well.

But yes, the democrats have effectively ruined the custom of the “loyal opposition” –but then again we ourselves could have looked the other way on Bill Clinton’s scandals –and then maybe the dems would not have felt they had the right to trash GWB 24/7×8yrs. But Clinton of course should not have been so outrageous –pushing the envelope was his choice –and we figured if Nixon could go down over an absent-minded (until a suddenly rabid media made it instantly too serious to try to back out) coverup of a third-rate political shenanigan, then why should we ignore the long, long stream of crookery beginning with Travelgate almost as soon as the term began. What was so wrong with Travelgate? The deliberate ruin of an innocent named Billy Dale, in order to toss some gov’t cash to some pals in the travel biz. Billy Dale –famously aquitted in 20 minutes, was it, by a jury who saw the ugly affair very clearly.

Anyhow, I agree with you and will follow you into the Red Dawn hills if these birds go where I’m afraid they might go –but –let’s try to remember the system can’t work (even without Reds sneaking into it) without the deliberate and dedicated forbearance of the out-party –and there’s always an out-party.

Oct 13, 2008 - 7:07 pm 237. Benj:

Buddy – The LAST thing you need is a big Up from me but…You get it. And got it from the jump…Just saw (former Bush Speechwriter and early Palin critic) David Frum on Rachel Maddow (who I’ll admit to enjoying). He busted her for her fundamentally un-serious, overly snarky, and overly partisan approach to politics. He was right on. Though I think he’s wrong to suggest humor is (necesarily) the enemy of seriousness. Made me think twice about how to communicate across divides. (As your comments regularly do.) On the other hand…While I admire your attempt to talk Ken down. Consider where he’s coming from – O is “worse than Pol Pot.” When do you say – They’re coming to take him away…

Wade – Zip? For real, haven’t I spent a LOT of time placing Obama in the tradition of American liberalism. That’s where he belongs…If you come back to moi – I’ll admit I once spoke up for the “radical imagination” in part because I thought American libs had failed to fully comprehend the up-from-under quality of the finest moments in the American political and cultural history. (When you get FIRST, Check the opening of the section called “The Margin is the Center” and you’ll see where I been at.) Now I just call myself a (small d) democrat. Mr. O is a democrat too. He’s anything but an extremist. Just look at the way he carries himself – but he understands the up-from-under thingy. Lived it for a couple years when he was organizing iun those projects. Seeing someone beat-down Overcome in real time stays with you. If you have any imagination. And Obama has a live one…

If you’re really interested in my line on the Age of OBama – pray I can find the time to write the book on this subject. But you know I got a job and another FIRST OF THE YEAR to get out so…

PS Did you catch Ms. Palin’s line on the Alaska report – Classic Bushisms – She said she was glad to see that the report indicated that she had broken no law and committed no ethics violations. But…that’s not what the report said. It doesn’t matter – she just wills her way through the facts…Certain that the folks who love her will cheer her on even if they’re aware the report said the opposite of what she claimed it said. She’s above reality-based reporting. Living in her own private…Alaska.

Oct 13, 2008 - 9:48 pm 238. newscaper:

“At this time in history the Republican Party has lost the vision.”

A month or two ago Trent Lott acknowledged that “we ran out of ideas” in some interview.

BS you fat parasite! You and your fellows forgot, no, sold out, the perfectly good ones we already had.

Regarding “race”… I was utterly flabbergasted that in an online conversation with a fairly sane Hillary supporter I’ve known for years, my pointing out that criticism of Obama’s left-wing nature & policies would be -and already is – tarred as racist… was considered by her to be *me* playing the race card. WTF?

The other thing that gets me is the blind following of Obama by blacks, when he is not even one of them in any sense other sharing some distantly related African genes. Culturally (the Wright charade aside) he is not american “black” in the slightest, entirely raised by whites. Addiitonally, he is not a descendant of the former slaves, in terms of ‘blood’.
He is NOT of the black experience in America, not a ‘black’ man who rose to success in a white world while remembering where he came from, not a hometown who did good, in whom the proverbial community could take pride.

In other words, he is no Clarence Thomas.

Funny how early on criticism by some blacks about Obama not being “black enough” (culture not darkness) was dismissed as a form of racism by their liberal betters — but the criticism actually made some sense. Isn’t it *more* racist to assume blacks should autmatically vote for him merely becasue of his melanin?

Oct 13, 2008 - 10:31 pm 239. Wadeusaf:

Benj. I have to admit to having a tough time placing “Oh”. The books don’t have the snap of a manifesto, nor the clear vision of say a contract with America. They weren’t supposed to do that. They left me with an empty, fast food kind of feeling, sans grease.

For all the change he keeps promising, I don’t see any indication of the high minded thought process you indicate is at work actually producing. And I worry that the crowd in charge at the DNC is anything but democratic, these days as well the bunch of friends “Oh” has collected. There is a great and deep divide withing the ranks of the Dem party, and a deeper broader divide in the nation.
I cannot claim to see other than in my imagination, “Oh” having either the wile or the guile to make a difference, and his treatments of Wright and Ayers both are examples of the kinds of poor judgment that the guy continues to display. Nice speech though.

I will have to admit to being unable to cast a vote for “Oh” and Joe, even if I were inclined to do so, purely on the basis of Joe’s conduct in the Senate in 1974. In no uncertain terms have I ever nor will I ever support any of the SOB’s that screwed the world in SE Asia. I will actively oppose anyone doing the same in the current engagement with Islamist terror. Again, I do not see the wisdom of “Oh” standing us in good stead. I do not know why he has taken the stance he has nor concluded what he has concluded other than it is a means of gaining the support of the Dems. If his blindness in Iraq and to the challenges in Afghanistan and Pakistan are more than political finesse, we are in for a very rough row no matter who is elected President.

I will submit that the greater test for “Oh” would be to redefine the Dems as a party. That would be a deed and a test of sincerity that I would appreciate and a deed that could nearly guarantee his elevation to high office. I do not see that today, I do not see that in the way he has handled his party. If I were a Democrat I would have to vote against him because of it.

As for Governor Palin, she was damned if she did and damned if she didn’t ethics wise. The report lead with power punch, missed and petered out. I’d leave it alone unless you really support spousal abuse, and the kinds of abuse of power that allows such acts to continue.

I also think that the Dems are at odds with themselves on this issue, given the whole gambit of bedroom rights. Some of the issues just naturally conflict with others. You guys gotta decide which way your going to go.

Oct 13, 2008 - 11:53 pm 240. buddy larsen:

Maybe a black candidate was calculated by the kingmakers to be the only way to win and get deployed in DC that waiting army of hard-eyed and ardent young marxist activist honkies one sees all around the campaign (Austan Goolsbee, Justin Thurmon, others). They are trouble, now, again, as were their parents & elder siblings back in the mid 70s when they hustled the peanut messiah into office –and gave us 20% inflation & interest rates, 15% unemployment, gasoline lines and AIDS bathouses, millions dead in dozens of shooting wars all over the globe ginned up by now-fearless enemies, the startup of the Jihad, the pouting boycott of the olympics, the Community Reinvestment Act which has just finally fully exploded, the giveaway of the the most strategic asset in the hemisphere–the now People’s Republic of China-operated Panama Canal, and the savage, Biblical lesson in power & revenge, begot by trying to both lust in the heart after Playboy bunnies and catch catfish with a cane pole, which as sure as the wage of sin is death will, every time, get even a presidential rowboat swamped by swimming killer rabbits (no doubt the insulted male relatives of those Playboy bunnies).

Oct 14, 2008 - 12:20 am 241. buddy larsen:

What soured me early on is the rank lie about the tax proposal. It’s precisely the sort of too-clever-by-half, fool-the-rubes, outrageous gall that just tells volumes and volumes about what to expect of the man and his team once in office with the power. of the many little tricks imbedded in the carefully-worded extemoraneous remarks the team makes, it’s the “net tax cut” that kills me. It’s a great one-liner, at once destroying any worry that he is a typical liberal, for how could he be, if he’s a tax-cutter?

But he’s not –as everyone who looks into it knows, he’s a huge tax increaser, and an increaser at the perfect point where he can do most damage to capitalism here in the heart of the world’s alternate to the Collective: the marginal income of the entrepreneurial part of the economy –the growth engine, where hope, morale, new jobs, wealth, and upward-mobility generate and redirect the ancient problems in the heart of man: greed, envy, hopelessness, anger.

And by what magic is is this grave transgression effected? By what complex and machiavellian plot is such a weighty and momentous tragedy conjured and foisted against this the redoubt of western anti-totalitarianism?

Ahhh, jeez, he’s just gonna send out the trillion in welfare thru the IRS rather than the HHS!

A differnt return addy on the envelope! And *poof* its “refundable tax credits” and not “welfare” (or “payment for votes”).

And since it’s going out through IRS, every dollar of it nets out –removes from the intended financial reporting –a dollar of tax receipts!

This is how he gets to promise a “net (”net” –get it?) tax cut”!

Even tho he plans to take a new trillion plus (over the budget period) out of tax-payers and give it to non tax-payers, he’s gonna call the gift “tax credits” (an abuse of the english language, as has been oft-noted) and subtract it from the total of tax receipts, enough to where he can get elected in a few weeks on that promise of a “net tax cut”.

I wonder why he doesn’t just tax us 100% of all we have, and simply change the word “take” to the word “give”, and tell us he’s gonna “give us all our money back”?

Or if someone beats you to a pulp with their right hand, and then gets off scott free by telling the cops “speaking for my left hand, I never touched that person”.

Or, “I never had sects with that woman, Monica Lewinsky!”

It all works fine, I guess, so long as no one in the big media ever asks you any questions. you sure couldn’t take such a chance as to base a campaign on it, though, unless you were certain beforehand that nobody from the media, even thru a long strung out forever campaign, would ever, ever nail you down on the details. And THAT my friend is the fact that ought to send the gravest chill thru your mind and imagination.

Oct 14, 2008 - 1:29 am 242. Dave:

Buddy; Great minds work in similar circles. Glad to see yours is joining mine.

Obamas tax scheme is best summarized by saying only the plantation owners pay taxes.
Rest of us just pick their cotton.

Oct 14, 2008 - 8:16 am 243. buddy larsen:

dave, ACORN has improved on Lenin –who laughed that capitalists would sell him the rope to hang them with. Acorn first takes the money from you, to buy the rope with.

Oct 14, 2008 - 10:55 am 244. Storm-Rider:

This all boils down to a violation of the Declaration of Independence, the highest law of the United States. We are witnessing unjust government power which does not derive from the consent of the governed – elite minority rule over the majority.

Oct 14, 2008 - 11:56 am 245. Benj:

This piece handled the ACORN thing last week – It’s a shuck – and it comes up every couple years…

The Gist of the ACORN Story

The Republican party is grasping on to the ACORN story as a way to delegitimize what now looks like the probable outcome of the November election. It is also a way to stoke the paranoia of their base, lay the groundwork for legal challenges of close outcomes in various states and promote new legal restrictions on legitimate voting by lower income voters and minorities. The big picture is that these claims of ‘voter fraud’ are themselves a fraud, a tool to aid in suppressing Democratic voter turnout. But I want give readers a bit more detail to understand what is going because the right-wing freak out about ACORN happens pretty much on schedule every two years. The whole scam is premised on having enough people who don’t remember when they tried it before who they can then confuse and lie to. And this is clearly important because I’m hearing from a lot of people whose heart is in the right place thinking some real voter fraud conspiracy has been uncovered and that Obama has to distance himself from it post-haste.

ACORN registers lots of lower income and/or minority voters. They operate all across the country and do a lot of things beside voter registration. What’s key to understand is their method. By and large they do not rely on volunteers to register voters. They hire people — often people with low incomes or even the unemployed. This has the dual effect of not only registering people but also providing some work and income for people who are out of work. But because a lot of these people are doing it for the money, inevitably, a few of them cut corners or even cheat. So someone will end up filling out cards for nonexistent names and some of those slip through ACORN’s own efforts to catch errors. (It’s important to note that in many of the recent ACORN cases that have gotten the most attention it’s ACORN itself that has turned the people in who did the fake registrations.) These reports start buzzing through the right-wing media every two years and every time the anecdotal reports of ‘thousands’ of fraudulent registrations turns out, on closer inspection, to be either totally bogus themselves or wildly exaggerated. So thousands of phony registrations ends up being, like, twelve.

I’ve always had questions about whether this is a good way to do voter registration. And Democratic campaigns usually keep their distance. But here’s the key. This is fraud against ACORN. They end up paying people for registering more people then they actually signed up. If you register me three times to vote, the registrar will see two new registrations of an already registered person and the ones won’t count. If I successfully register Mickey Mouse to vote, on election day, Mickey Mouse will still be a cartoon character who cannot go to the local voting station and vote. Logically speaking there’s very little way a few phony names on the voting rolls could be used to commit actual vote fraud. And much more importantly, numerous studies and investigations have shown no evidence of anything more than a handful of isolated cases of actual instances of vote fraud.

To expand on this point let me quote from Richard Hasen, one of the most experienced and concise commentators on this question, from a June 2007 column in the Dallas Morning News …

At least in hindsight, the center’s line of argument is easily deconstructed. First, arguing by anecdote is dangerous business. A new report by Lorraine Minnite of Barnard College looks at these anecdotes and shows them to be, for the most part, wholly spurious. Sure, one can find a rare case of someone voting in two jurisdictions, but nothing extensive or systematic has been unearthed or documented.
But perhaps most importantly, the idea of massive polling-place fraud (through the use of inflated voter rolls) is inherently incredible. Suppose I want to swing the Missouri election for my preferred presidential candidate. I would have to figure out who the fake, dead or missing people on the registration rolls are, then pay a lot of other individuals to go to the polling place and claim to be that person, without any return guarantee – thanks to the secret ballot – that any of them will cast a vote for my preferred candidate.

Those who do show up at the polls run the risk of being detected and charged with a felony. And for what – $10? Polling-place fraud, in short, makes no sense.

The Justice Department devoted unprecedented resources to ferreting out fraud over five years and appears to have found not a single prosecutable case across the country. Of the many experts consulted, the only dissenter from that position was a representative of the now-evaporated American Center for Voting Rights.

Again, there have been numerous investigations of this. Often by people with at least a mild political interest in finding wrongdoing. But they never find it. It always ends up being right-wing hype and lies. Remember, most of those now-famous fired US Attorneys from 2007 were Republican appointees who were canned after they got tasked with investigating allegations of widespread vote fraud, did everything they could to find it, but came up with nothing. That was the wrong answer so Karl Rove and his crew at the Justice Department fired them.

Vote registration fraud is a limited and relatively minor problem in the US today. But it is principally an administrative and efficiency issue. It is has little or nothing to do with people casting illegitimate votes to affect an actual election. That’s the key. What you’re hearing right now from Fox News, the New York Post, John Fund and the rest of the right-wing bamboozlement chorus is a just another effort to exploit, confuse and lie in an effort to put more severe restrictions on legitimate voting and lay the groundwork to steal elections.

It’s that simple.

The author is Josh Marshall at TPM – Partisan but respectable…He’s got the goods – Nothing here guys…Unless you believe Mickey Mouse is going to show up to vote…

Oct 14, 2008 - 12:27 pm 246. Benj:

PS Just remember Coyotle’s recent unmasking of that ridiculously inflated claim (made by right-wingers ans passed on here at the Club) about the #’s of illegals holding bad mortgages. Folks are reaching….

Oct 14, 2008 - 12:30 pm 247. buddy larsen:

You’re good, Benj –really good, but ACORN is taking taxpayer’s money and using it to help only one of the two parties. And that’s without even bringing up the actual operational –the “shadow” –charter.

Oct 14, 2008 - 12:56 pm 248. Wadeusaf:

$800,000 ties and a ton of fraud…, and that’s just Missouri. It is about taking disenfranchisement to a whole other level. Tell it to the people of the State of Washington, Benj, that part about not affecting the out come of an election that is.

In the past four years Washington Citizens have watched as its taxes increased, its expressed will overturned and spat upon and its state budget placed into deficit to the tune of billions of dollars.

That is what we have to look forward to under an “Oh” administration!

Overblown…, my hind end.

Oct 15, 2008 - 12:33 am 249. Wadeusaf:

Please separate the $800,000 worth of ties figure from the ton of fraud in Missouri. That money from “Oh” to Acorn was spent in other states too.

Oct 15, 2008 - 12:36 am 250. buddy larsen:

Wade, the 800K –you mean what the Obama campaign directly paid Acorn during the primary season.

I was talking about the organization’s grant funding from the US government.

Voters who are unknowingly having their votes nullified, are paying for the nullification –and not only metaphorically and after an election gets stolen, but directly, almost, as cash up front, to finance the plan for election day. Taxpayers have in effect become accessories before the fact.

Oct 15, 2008 - 9:15 am 251. MNotaro:

For most republicans, McCain is the lesser of two evils. Most republican friends I have just don’t want to vote for Obama and see his lefty illuminati politicians in DC. We aren’t voting for McCain. We are voting against Obama.

Oct 16, 2008 - 10:59 am 252. Wadeusaf:

Buddy,

Yup, as recorded here,

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=804986

and in an American Spectator piece by Jeff Lord, that is no longer up. Seems to me anyway, Mr Lord was lied to and as a result force to remove the copy. Shame I didn’t copy the good links.

Oct 17, 2008 - 4:32 am 253. Wadeusaf:

Whoops, Here it is

http://www.spectator.org/archives/2008/10/14/anatomy-of-a-scandal

Oct 17, 2008 - 4:44 am

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