146 Comments

1. Fred:

Dense though it may be, the essential message would get through if there were a few hundred million dollars available for TV ads.

One of the McCain scandals is how a Republican managed to be outspent. Are all the country club Republicans now impoverished? Or is Obama funding really from outside the country?

The US sends hundreds of billions of dollars a year to the Muslim oil-exporting states. Do we know what they do with the money?

Oct 24, 2008 - 4:17 am 2. starling:

I wonder if all the dense packing of issues, information, scandals, etc. doesn’t operate something one of those photo mosaics that were so popular about a few years back. At a certain point I stop looking at the individual photos and starting paying attention to larger image that they make. Then I only have one decision to make, one question to answer, i.e. is what I see acceptable or not?

Oct 24, 2008 - 4:21 am 3. Fred 2.0:

I’m a different Fred. (”Dense though it may be” is Fred 2.0)

Oct 24, 2008 - 4:24 am 4. gumshoe:

W –

ever heard of a place called Sandy Gate in OZ?
located near Junction 30 on the M5?

Oct 24, 2008 - 4:26 am 5. mika2k1:

Are all the country club Republicans now impoverished? .. The US sends hundreds of billions of dollars a year to the Muslim oil-exporting states. Do we know what they do with the money?
==

They fund car ads on the MSM.

Oct 24, 2008 - 4:32 am 6. mika2k1:

Seems big oil is not such a friend of the Republicans.

Oct 24, 2008 - 4:33 am 7. gumshoe:

sorry for the OT above.
the address was mistakenly in the UK.

Oct 24, 2008 - 4:43 am 8. hdgreene:

Just pound a few themes.

Obama’s crash Alternative Fuels will crash the economy and require gas priced above $6.00 a gallon — in addition to vast government subsidies and a supporting tangle of regulations that will choke the transportation sector. Instead, we can produce enough domestically to keep oil at $60 bbl. while we design an alternative system that is, in the long run, actually affordable.

Obama’s Health Care Initiative buys off the Insurance Companies by channeling vast new streams of revenue their way. McCain’s is centered on patient choice.

The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. What does Obama’s past say about our future?

Oct 24, 2008 - 5:03 am 9. hdgreene:

Another possibility: I talked to a Democrat friend who was disturbed by Congress wanting to spend another $300 billion in November. Where’s all that money coming from.

So: Congressional Democrats have figured out what is wrong with “Tax and Spend.” It should be Spend and Tax (Spend a lot now, tax a lot more later).

Oct 24, 2008 - 5:15 am 10. cornfuzed:

Simple solution to campaign funding – National through Local. A) ONLY individuals that have the right to vote for a candidate may make contributions to his/her campaign and those contributions may be unlimited. B) Before any campaign contribution can be used (deposited) by the campaign the doner must be identified and his particulars posted on an independent internet site for the public record. Unions, corporations, other governments, etc., can’t vote so can’t contribute. Those that can are in the public eye.

Oct 24, 2008 - 6:04 am 11. JGreer:

I cannot fault any candidate for proposing a ‘dense pack’ of changes. More information, not less, is something we should appreciate from our politicians. I do however fault the format of television media which needs to fit every story into short sound bites. I also fault the print media (a better format to process complex info) for failing to digest this data. Fortunately, we have a new media on the rise that should be able to close these gaps. I don’t think we’re there yet but I believe those gaps are closing. If the new internet watchdogs bark loud enough, the major media will generally stop to see what the commotion is about.

Oct 24, 2008 - 6:21 am 12. aconservativeteacher:

Hey, I wrote the same type of idea down in my notes on the third debate. When Obama was talkign about free trade, I wrote “There are so many things wrong about Obama it is tough to focus on just one.” Take a look too at the number of campaign ads McCain is coming out with- on my blog I posted about how campaign ads are being used in this election. He needs to focus in and pound a single message- I know Obama has a lot of flaws, but mentioning every thing Obama is wrong on isn’t working.

Oct 24, 2008 - 6:23 am 13. RWE:

Fratricide can occur in other ways, too. Twice in my military career I found myself standing athwart the career ambitions of the unscrupulous. Insisting on both a degree of logic and a modicum of taxpayer focus proved to be rather unpopular with these folks. They began to complain about me in ways so desperate and numerous that in very short order my management took their measure – and I no longer had to worry about their complaints. I could have walked in their office and shot them, and upon being presented with videotape of the crime my superiors might have said, “Not those guys AGAIN! What Have they thought of this time?” or perhaps “What! You didn’t empty the gun into them?”

Similarly, there are no doubt people who take the sum total all of the charges against Obama in the same way that they would a National Enquirer headline saying that he was Darth Vader’s love child or had been linked to the Roswell UFO crash. It just CAN’T be that bad. But it can.

Oct 24, 2008 - 6:30 am 14. Doug:

On the third day of a quest to “package” the messages in a graphically discernable form, I was forced to confront the enormity of the task, and my inability to complete it as planned.
Criticism and fault-finding with McCain Campaign tactics were thereafter seen from an entirely different perspective.

Oct 24, 2008 - 7:04 am 15. newtland:

Just wondering if President George is ready for the fusillade of formerly friendly fire he’ll receive if this becomes the rout it is predicted to be …

Oct 24, 2008 - 7:37 am 16. JED:

Obama is the generation X candidate and his election can be brought to us by a public that has been so saturated by the MSM and entertainment that there is little shock value of morality left. Liberal values have been rewritten as libertine in generations that have not known hardship and poverty. The human circumstance has never been accustomed to continued good times, full bellys,wide open credit, and relative peace. That part of the Pax American experiment has not been tested. “Hope and Change” embodies more of the revolutionary spirit than business as usual. Where wisdom may shorted is in “being careful for what they wish.” I am not willing to pay reparations.

Oct 24, 2008 - 7:40 am 17. Peter Boston:

This is a great time to be alive. We are witnessing a world that operates on unfathomable irrationality even as it comes crashing down around us. Federal legislation like the Orwellian Employee Free Choice Act, the only purpose of which is to allow union thugs to openly intimidate employees, breeze by without a whiff of comment.

I’ve given up trying to make sense of it. In the waning years of the Peloponnesian war the Athenians did everything they could to assure their own destruction. Obama as Acibiades isn’t that far fetched.

Oct 24, 2008 - 7:44 am 18. Willy:

“It just can’t be that bad…” This is the message my liberal wife is beliving. When presented with any of the negative stories and facts surrounding Obamas’ past, her reply is “Don’t buy into the negative hype and propoganda. It is all just based on hate.” For her Obama is just another Democrat politician, nothing more, nothing less. This election for her is about getting back our freedom. She doesn’t believe Obama is socialist, and if so, “so what.” “This is about not lossing our freedoms, which is what would happen if McCain / Palin come into office. Look what Bush has done to limit our freedoms. Palin is downright scarry.” Most mainstream Dems do not believe Obama will bring any significant changes, but be like a Clinton, and not ban abortion or gay rights, and a booming economy.

Oct 24, 2008 - 8:05 am 19. steveaz:

Corn,
I must have been asleep in 7th grade “Social Sciences” class, but I thought that the election-finance system you describe was what we had. Maybe I was just a child dreaming.

Or, maybe it’s because your system makes a lot of sense, too.

After all, why would a self-interested Republic let international provocateurs invest, overtly or covertly, in its essential political processes? In essence, this must needs reward concerted, social “hacking” by anti-American outsiders. And it will permit the capitalization of the development of the essential media-tools that permit the hackers to gain access to and navigate inside the body-politic.

(BTW, I consider Academe part of “the Media,” these days. And I think Ayers, Obama et al are on board with me on this.)

I’d like to see my American citizenship mean something again. And I don’t mean this in a vain, Obama-esque way at all – as in, “I wish I could pass Gerhard Schroeder’s “Global Test.”" I mean to say, that the duties and the honor that attach to American citizenship could be better emphasized and enforced. And I think our nation and the world will be better for it.

Watching the media coverage of election ‘08, it’s obvious that to far too many, the value of promoting and buttressing our civic institutions, such as like informing and assisting our citizens’ (there’s that word again!) careful electoral diligence, is near nil.

It’s as if the our citizenship is being intentionally eroded to the point of being unquantifiable. If this trend continues, the desires of Americans, as presented in any poll, will carry no more weight than any other faceless media mob: we’ll be just another facile “Arab Street,” proverbial putty in the word-smiths’ hands.

Oct 24, 2008 - 8:12 am 20. Unsk:

Much of today’s legislation is written in terms of broad objectives so that the knitty gritty details of the measure will be worked out through interpretation and implementation of the bureaucracy.
All too often, the key decisions are obscured by the ” dust and smoke of the dense pack” of bureaucrats hidden behind closed doors deep within the bureaucratic maze.

The Democrats love this dodge because first they control the bureaucracy thus the result, and second, the arms length nature of the arrangement allows the Dems to deflect responsibility when things go haywire.

Why this concept is important now is that Obama campaign is promoting big new bureaucratic expansions over the Banking Industry through the ill defined Bailout Bill, over the Health Care industry via a vague Universal Health Care plan, and over almost everything through their designation of Carbon Dioxide as a pollutant. That’s just for starters.

When you add their desired increases in Union membership via the Employee Free Choice Act, the Dems will be able, if successful, to massively extend their control and power over the economy and the electorate.

Oct 24, 2008 - 9:30 am 21. fred:

Willy at #18 sums up exactly what I’ve encountered with some family members and friends. They don’t believe any of the facts, however unflattering they may be, about Obama. They think he can’t be any worse than Bill Clinton, and they are nostalgic for the Nineties.

BTW, these are people who are totally unplugged from the alternate media and news sources.

And that’s why I am so pessimistic about November 4th. I don’t plan on tuning in to t.v., radio, or web on that day or afterwards. I just can’t deal with the depressing news.

Oct 24, 2008 - 9:33 am 22. Eggplant:

Peter Boston said:

“I’ve given up trying to make sense of it. In the waning years of the Peloponnesian war the Athenians did everything they could to assure their own destruction. Obama as Alcibiades isn’t that far fetched.”

I’m attracted to the historical analogy of B. Hussein to Alcibiades. My biggest quarrel with this analogy is that B. Hussein has no history as a war hero. Significant demagogues like Alciabiades were almost always war heros (hopefully B. Hussein will be an insignificant demagogue).

It’s amazing how quickly great nations can collapse into ruin. Peter Boston already mentioned the example of Athens. One could argue that the Roman Republic hit its high water mark in 146 BC when Rome destroyed Carthage after the Third Punic War and then in the same year subdued Greece after destroying Corinth. One could also argue that the Roman Republic effectively died after Lucius Cornelius Sulla’s victory in the Battle of the Colline Gate in 82 BC. The time span from high water water to death of the Roman Republic was 64 years.

One could argue that the high water mark of the United States was our victory in World War II that occurred in 1945.

1945 + 64 = 2009

Oct 24, 2008 - 9:43 am 23. Dave in NC:

Fred @21;
I agree completely. My wife, a very intelligent woman, is also “totally unplugged from the alternate media and news sources.” When I call her attention to the truth about the messiah I get told that I’m damaging my candidate. It’s as though she doesn’t WANT to hear anything negative. I don’t believe she’ll vote for the One, but I’m just not certain.

Frustrating in the extreme.

Oct 24, 2008 - 9:49 am 24. dla:

Remember – a leader is mostly vision. Remember that “vision thing” with Bush the Elder?

Obama has done a better job of presenting a vision and you’ve got to give him credit for it. People always respond better to a vision than details.

I think America will survive in safety 4 years of a liberal, as GWB has done the heavy lifting already. If Obama was following Clinton we’d be in real trouble.

Oct 24, 2008 - 10:03 am 25. RWE:

The media bias has become so normal as to be expected, although the extent in this election is truly remarkable. What are truly astonishing are the lies.

The DNC had an ad saying that John McCain called the social security system “disgraceful.” In reality, Sen McCain said that “our failure to properly fund Social Security is disgraceful.”

Another ad we see a lot on TV says that John McCain is going to tax medical benefits. An independent source has stated that is a complete and utter fabrication.

Then we have Joe Biden’s numerous invented points during the debate with Gov Palin. Absolute lies. And the other day Sara Palin was being interviewed by a CNN reporter, who told her something absolutely false about criticism of her in an article in National Review. We don’t have one “National Guard memo” this time; we have a boatload.

What does this say about Obama, Biden, the Democratic Party and large potions of the MSM? What does this say about how they will govern and how it will be reported on?

Oct 24, 2008 - 10:04 am 26. OldSalt:

Dense Pack – good analogy. People stop processing, and just shutdown from overload.

Sort of like the stock market and economy. Businesses and individuals may not have been personally hit by the tidal wave, but they can hear it coming, see it coming, feel it coming, and everything is shutting down. The market is responding to an Obama victory, and an idiotic Congressional leadership, with announced policies that can only make things worse.

Folks, we haven’t seen “bad” yet. This results of this political realignment will be worse than any of us ever imagined, and we’re seeing the “results” in the economic panic daily.

Oct 24, 2008 - 10:04 am 27. RWE:

Unsk: “The Democrats love this dodge because first they control the bureaucracy thus the result, and second, the arms length nature of the arrangement allows the Dems to deflect responsibility when things go haywire.”

I don’t know how you arrived at this bit of wisdom, but you are exactly right. And I arrived at that wisdom from 4.5 years in the Pentagon.

Oct 24, 2008 - 10:09 am 28. Eggplant:

dla said:

“I think America will survive in safety 4 years of a liberal, as GWB has done the heavy lifting already. If Obama was following Clinton we’d be in real trouble.”

GWB’s heavy lifting also gives me hope.

The main danger is not B. Hussein himself but the military dictatorship that takes over after B. Hussein wrecks the nation. It all boils down to how quickly the Islamic fascists can mount their counter offensive. It will take B. Hussein about 2-3 years to revert us back to the sitting ducks we were on September 11. The Islamic fascists know that simply taking down a couple significant buildings isn’t good enough. On their next shot, it’ll be a major city with at least 100,000 casulties (something big enough to trigger a military coup d’état).

Can the bad guys put the pieces together in the next four years?

Oct 24, 2008 - 10:33 am 29. Kingston53:

Obama is the Trojan Horse candidate. Its belly full of all kinds of unpleasant suprises to be disgorged after we let him in the door. But he is such a fine looking horse.

Oct 24, 2008 - 10:43 am 30. Peter Boston:

The Obama-Pelosi-Reid trio can do more damage to America in four years than can be undone in generations. There will likely be a minimum of three SCOTUS appointments, hundreds of District and Appeals court appointments, and who knows how many administrative appointments within the Federal bureaucracy.

FDR’s socialist vision was constrained by the fact that he had to first construct a regulatory bureaucracy. That bureaucracy is now in place and all that is required is to expand their regulatory authority.

I suspect state governments will become more rapacious as the decrease in personal income cuts into tax revenues. Expect more eminent domain takings for tax generating development and a rapid speed-up of the procedure for tax sales of personal residences.

The American Dream has been capped at $200,000. The destruction of the Middle Class will proceed in earnest because egalite demands that we all be equally miserable.

The damage will persist long after Obama becomes the next United Nations chief mucky muck, a sinecure that will be obtained with the grease of the billions to be handed over in the next four years.

The Republican Party is useless and must be completely rebuilt before there is any hope of reversing this poisonous tide.

Oct 24, 2008 - 10:45 am 31. Fred:

Dave in NC @23

My wife agrees with me on this one, but her sister and her sister’s husband are HUGELY into BSD. A very anti-war couple, and they were that way during the Vietnam War too. Some people just do not have the warrior instincts, as they did not think stopping the Communists then was a worthy cause and they think the Islamic enemy is overblown too.

Generally, women in the United States really do not “get it” about Islam and jihad. My wife definitely does. She graduated from college in 1981, a year before I did (we did not meet until 1987, and we went to the University of New Hampshire about the same time), and her first job was at D.C. General Hospital. While living in D.C. she once had a date with a wealthy young Saudi. He tried to date rape her, and the spunky, petite woman she is she fought him off and got away. To this day she hates Islam and Arabs. She sees what a serious threat Islam is to women and is opposed to giving any quarter to those savages. My wife, BTW, is almost totally unplugged from the alternate media on the web, although she does watch FOX News with me.

But a lot of people seem to be overwhelmed by the noise coming from the media, and don’t have the time I sometimes have to explore alternate news sources and opinion. The weblog world has been a godsend. I’ve been reading Wretchard’s blog for four years, as well as others. Were it not for the alternate media I would not know even a small fraction of the facts and history in Obama’s life that I do know. It truly is scary to ponder the depth of ignorance out there.

I think the environment we are in favors stealth candidates for office. It all began with the post-modernist drift in ethics, so that “advocacy journalism” is now de rigeur in the graduate schools of journalism across the country. Barack Obama has been able to exploit this skillfully, although I wonder just how much of a helping hand he has had behind the scenes from that Puppet Master behind he think-tanks he funds. You know, the one who has all his billions stashed safely in banks in Curacao?

Oct 24, 2008 - 10:47 am 32. buddy larsen:

eggplant #22 –interesting. i mark highwater as the last day before the election of 1912, a third-party election in which Teddy R & the Bullmoose caused the victory of Calvin Coolidge (league of nations, versailles wimpout, rise of euro fascism) and his “Progressive Era” with its delegitimization of Founder Intent & Strict Constructionism.

The long slow decline into statist federal majority ’soft’ tyranny was well entrenched by WW2, tho in no ways a defect in war exigency.

The tipping point into today’s morass could be seen as the other modern era third-party election, 1992, when R Perot gave 43%er B Clinton victory, after which his stuffing of DC & the agencies, and encouragement of a new Know-Nothing movement, effectively ended an era of political social compact that had obtained since the end of Reconstruction.

Two serious three-party elections, two disasters. One might observe that so far, the third party has removed the poltical character-building need to engage and join with those nearest you, with a resulting rancorous experimentation that has given us what we got.

Oct 24, 2008 - 10:52 am 33. buckets:

“I have been asked to talk about what I consider the most important challenge facing mankind, and I have a fundamental answer,” opens Crichton. “The greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda. Perceiving the truth has always been a challenge to mankind, but in the information age (or as I think of it, the disinformation age) it takes on a special urgency and importance.”

Michael Crichton, lecture at the Commonwealth Club on September 15, 2003.

Oct 24, 2008 - 10:56 am 34. Bill in NC:

1912 = Woodrow Wilson.

Oct 24, 2008 - 11:05 am 35. NahnCee:

Why do smart men insist on marrying really stupid women?

And then putting up with them.

Oct 24, 2008 - 11:16 am 36. wretchard:

With oil prices dropping, someone asked if we should start a “dead pool” for petroleum based tyrannies. Earlier it was reported that the NYT’s shares have been downgraded to “junk” status. When complex systems fall to a lower energy level or experience a large discontinuity, it’s not always easy to see who wins and who loses. It’s easy to forget that a possible Obama victory in November is only one of a real avalanche of interrelated events shaking the globe. This phenomenon is not exactly like the “dense pack”, it’s more like a “swarm”.

How do you move fragile furniture after it’s been sitting in the corner a long time? You lift two sides at once and if it’s really delicate, you pick up all four corners simultaneously. If you think about an Obama victory ceteris paribus it looks like a win for the Left. But if you imagine an Obama administration during a time of economic contraction, of huge governmental expansion and guaranteed foreign instability you get a different picture. It’s like lifting the creaky dresser at one corner while it’s loaded with old wrenches and being pulled in other directions.

It’s not inconceivable that the next six months will see dizzying challenges, spectacular collapses and unprecedented crises. Events will belong to whoever can most rapidly understand and respond to developments which are sure to come. It’s the old story of the reserve. If you don’t know where the crisis will come, form one. If Obama wins, he will be too busy feeding the bureaucracy, Congress, the media and his special interest constituents to move. He’ll be pinned down by himself. Conservatives, if they aren’t mesmerized into simply waiting for 2010 have a potential agility that can’t be matched. But it’s only potential.

When things come thick and fast they either damp each other out or create a sympathetic resonance. If there are any rebels in the Republican Party, the time to unfurl their colors should be the day after the elections, whichever way it goes.

Oct 24, 2008 - 11:24 am 37. Fred:

Well, NahnCee, I got lucky. My wife is super intelligent and she graduated Summa Cum Laude vs. my Cum Laude. But, yeah, not all guys are so lucky.

Oct 24, 2008 - 11:25 am 38. Fred:

Wretchard,

I cannot possibly see President Obama being able to even think of how to negotiate the dresser, let alone get it picked up. It will be interesting to see how the mainstream, Big Media spin the crises that are surely coming. Will they attempt to spin them, or will they be compelled by reality to reveal some of the breadth and depth of it all?

I predict Israel will reject the policy positions of Washington and decide to fight for its survival. What choice to they have? They know that the policy prescriptions of the Obama crowd amount to a death by a thousand paper cuts, sure as the sun will rise. On the other hand, they might think, not without good reasons, that they can fight off Syria and Iran and survive. The wild card in all of it is Russia. Will Russia throw in its weight to tip the balance towards the annihilation of the Jewish state?

Oct 24, 2008 - 11:32 am 39. cedarford:

dla – I think America will survive in safety 4 years of a liberal, as GWB has done the heavy lifting already.

That is like saying America will survive 4 years of FDR because Herbert Hoover did most of the heavy lifting.

And when you think of the wreckage Dubya leaves behind – a shattered Republican Party, doubled national deficit, shattered economy, relations with most other countries destroyed? A failed war in Afghanistan we thought we had won, an expensive unecessary war in Iraq, a quadrupled trade deficit..health care system consuming 25% of GNP and twice as much per capita as other nations yet being ranked near bottom of advanced nations, an unprecendented transfer and concentration of wealth to the richest 1% – creating income inequality not seen since the eve of the Great Depression?

That sort of heavy lifting?

Or do you mean “The Beloved American Churchill” who ignored all else, from the middle class to major hurricanes, to keep us ALL SAFE from a small force of 8,000 to 13,000 Jihadis?

Obama will face as big, if not bigger mess (since America is now a wastrel debtor nation) than Reagan faced taking over from Jimmy Carter.

******************

Oct 24, 2008 - 11:34 am 40. Bill in NC:

@39. Gosh. One guy did all that? They sure have a lot of office space in DC for that one guy.

Oct 24, 2008 - 11:43 am 41. Eggplant:

buddy larsen said:

“I mark highwater as the last day before the election of 1912, a third-party election in which Teddy R & the Bullmoose caused the victory of Calvin Coolidge (league of nations, versailles wimpout, rise of euro fascism) and his “Progressive Era” with its delegitimization of Founder Intent & Strict Constructionism.”

Trying to connect historical patterns from the Roman Republic to the United States is a real stretch. History does repeat itself but often times the repetition isn’t recognizable until after becoming history as well (maybe Henry Ford was right?).

The problem with analysing the United States is the nation keeps reinventing itself. The United States under the Articles of the Confederation was a different nation from the one under the Constitution. The United States was a completely different place after the Civil War from what it was before the Mexican-American War. Likewise the United States did a fairly good imitation of a Phoenix rising from the ashes of the Great Depression after WW-II.

Possibly the best historical analog for B. Hussein maybe Herbert Hoover floundering around during the Great Depression. I make this analogy with some trepidation because I have respect for Herbert Hoover (a successful engineer) but no respect at all for B. Hussein. What we might observe with B. Hussein is a motion picture on socialism running backwards. Herbert Hoover kept trying to solve the Great Depression with free market solutions but nothing he tried seemed to work fast enough. His apparent floundering left the field open for Franklin D. Roosevelt. What we may observe with B. Hussein is his floundering about with socialist/moonbat solutions for modern day problems until the voters get tired of waiting and vote in a conservative government.

Again, can we survive four years of this before the system breaks? I have my doubts…

Oct 24, 2008 - 11:46 am 42. Fred:

The point I want to make: We really don’t know how the bulk of the citizenry are going to react to the crises, problems, and possible catastrophes ahead, given the now well-defined patterns of media coverage, slanted to favor their socialist candidate. Will they turn on him? Or, will they run cover for him and try to deceptively spin what is happening in the country and overseas? I don’t trust their integrity at all, so you know where I stand. So, it remains an open question if more people can get enough information to be able to screen out the inevitable propagandizing.

Oct 24, 2008 - 11:53 am 43. Eggplant:

NahnCee said:

“Why do smart men insist on marrying really stupid women?”

My wife is a whole lot smarter than me. I guess that means I’m thick as a brick.

Along the lines of NahnCee’s comment:

“Why do very beautiful women fall for dirt bags?”

Oct 24, 2008 - 11:57 am 44. Aether:

Kingston53:

“Obama is the Trojan Horse candidate. Its belly full of all kinds of unpleasant suprises to be disgorged after we let him in the door. But he is such a fine looking horse.”

“When life hands you a lemon, make lemonade.” – Dale Carnegie

“When life hands you a Trojan Horse, make glue.” -Aether

Oct 24, 2008 - 11:58 am 45. buddy larsen:

(*gag*) yes –i meant Woodrow Wilson –the Wilsonian –not his antithesis Silent Cal –my slipshod old brane. well so much for MY ass on this thread.

Oct 24, 2008 - 12:06 pm 46. mika2k1:

Events will belong to whoever can most rapidly understand and respond to developments which are sure to come.
==

Events belong to those that anticipate them and make them happen. And from what I’ve seen so far, everything that’s happened has been Choreographed.

Oct 24, 2008 - 12:08 pm 47. mika2k1:

This recession has bought us a year, maybe two, before demand for oil will again outstrip supply.

Oct 24, 2008 - 12:35 pm 48. buddy larsen:

yup, gasoline dips under 3 and boone’s legs go –right on cue.

Oct 24, 2008 - 12:37 pm 49. buddy larsen:

bill #40 –yes, one guy did all that –you don’t think an opposition that has been deliberately and determinedly and utterly ungovernable by anyone ‘not a D’ anywhere, anytime, by any wild stretch of any imagination, for the last eight years, had anything to do with it, do you?

Oct 24, 2008 - 12:43 pm 50. buddy larsen:

meanwhile, the last headline any of you will read, as the lights dim for the last time, will be “Entire Planet Disappears Up Barney Frank’s Fannie”

Oct 24, 2008 - 12:47 pm 51. whiskey:

Cedarford — your argument falls apart if NYC gets nuked. THEN people will long for GWB.

Obama’s weakness is as Wretchard points out, he has to govern. But it’s more than that. In my Blog I point out that Obama has run as a messiah, aiming to “transform America and the World” as he put it. He’s not running to give out middle class goodies, as Clinton did in 1992. He’s running to “redeem” America. A task doomed to failure. He’s more Jim Jones, or David Koresh, than than Bill Clinton.

And so is his team, filled with utopian true believers, eager to drink up poison Kool Aide in “revolutionary suicide” than hard-eyed triangulation for political advantage ala Carville or Begala.

The vast majority of the country, the White Working/Middle class, will expect great things from him and turn on him the moment he fails. Biden’s warnings to his supporters to keep drinking the Kool Aide are part of that.

White single women form the demographic basis of Obama’s victory should he win. They don’t like war, or fighting against Jihad, and are sympathetic to Islam. Fred asks why? White Single women lose power when it’s a matter of soldiers, cops, spies, and firemen. They gain power when it’s a matter of political correctness and the “correct” opinions in a new Aristocratic society of manners and connections. It’s why you see women in Law and Medicine, and almost never in Electrical Engineering and such.

It’s simply a question of political power. Peace no matter what sacrifices gives single women far more power — the power of manners and PC. Eventually that balance becomes unsustainable as threats become so existential that they cannot be denied. But this explains the appeal of pacifism, and the rise of it among Western societies dominated by Single Women as the “swing” or decisive demographic group.

Of the huge hostility towards the majority of single men by single women (and vice-versa I think) I will simply note it exists. And forms another huge political faultline in the West, able to be exploited by anti-Obama forces.

For every teen idol beloved by girls, or “hunky” actor beloved by women, he’s hated by the same amount or more of boys and men. Obama’s worship by his female followers creates the same backlash that Leonardo Di Caprio found after “Titanic.”

Oct 24, 2008 - 12:53 pm 52. sgi:

Barney Frank wants to cut the military by 25% = dollars for Barack Obama’s socialist agenda in a global recession.

Oct 24, 2008 - 12:56 pm 53. Charles:

Magna Cum Laundry
175. buckets:

Of course, you’d think he would just produce a birth certificate and get the whole thing over with. There’s speculation that’s why Obama really went to Hawaii this week, to see if he could “find” it.
….
Yeah that’s the point. The dems got articles in the NYTimes in the spring discussing McCain’s citizenship because he was born in the Canal Zone. There was a lot online talk on the left around the issue.

McCain put discussion of his citizenship to rest back in May by producing a hard copy birth certificate.

You would think that this would be performa for any candidate.

Obama is now up to 6 lawsuits suing him to produce a birth certificate.

Why does he take the grief?

I don’t know. Maybe his — I am a world citizen — speech in Berlin last summer was his way of saying that he’s not –in fact — a US citizen.

Oct 24, 2008 - 1:12 pm 54. Aristide:

Here’s an older but excellent breakdown of the underlying cultural forces driving today’s struggle.

While economic Marxism appears to be dead, the Hegelian variety articulated by Gramsci and others has not only survived the fall of the Berlin Wall, but also gone on to challenge the American republic at the level of its most cherished ideas. For more than two centuries America has been an “exceptional” nation, one whose restless entrepreneurial dynamism has been tempered by patriotism and a strong religious-cultural core. The ultimate triumph of Gramscianism would mean the end of this very “exceptionalism.” America would at last become Europeanized: statist, thoroughly secular, post-patriotic, and concerned with group hierarchies and group rights in which the idea of equality before the law as traditionally understood by Americans would finally be abandoned. Beneath the surface of our seemingly placid times, the ideological, political, and historical stakes are enormous.

Why There is a Culture War

Oct 24, 2008 - 1:13 pm 55. buddy larsen:

sgi, that oughtta bring another few hundred trillion dollars into Obama’s credit-card Notel Motel website –$$$ from “Vladin Putimir”, “Osama Lin Baden”, “Peeblslib ‘Ray’ Shenarmy”, “Akma D. Najod”, “K.M. Jongell”, “Hugh Geshafess”, “Gee Hotties”, “Terry Rists”, and “Alfarn ‘Dick’ Tayterz”.

Oct 24, 2008 - 1:27 pm 56. cedarford:

whiskey:
Cedarford — your argument falls apart if NYC gets nuked. THEN people will long for GWB.

It is one thing to acknowledge major impact, low probability threats hypothetically exist.

Both our arguments could fall apart if a major asteroid strikes the Earth, or superflu hits.

The point is that it is suicidal for a society to focus on one hypothetical – global thermonuclear war, mass anarchy, one jihadi attack – to the detriment of everything else. Hate to say it Whiskey, but during the worst days of the Cold War, 1949-1970, people weren’t pissing in their panties and expecting government to ignore everything else for focusing on an awful, but distant threat.

Yes, the John Birch Society would have looked good in history if the Soviets had nuked NYC – but they didn’t.

As things stand, people losing half their life savings, Bushie corruption and incompetence putting America in rapid decline as an economic power and an international force – is real. It is happening.
The idea of 8,000 to 14,000 Islamoids being THE ONLY THING people should worry about because of some dim-minded “what-if????” – is absurd. Rational people prioritize threats – and the idea that they are about to get nuked by 10-foot tall Muslims terrorists who don’t have the bomb, would have difficulty moving one, and have to operate in a sea of Muslims that do not want to be nuked by deterrant counter-strike – is now way, way down on the lists of threats they see themselves and their families facing in 2008 America.

Your problem is you went into full post-9/11 hysteria 7 years ago, willfully ignore America’s other problems and rapid decline, to insist that only a small band of “evildoers” should be each voter’s pet obsession and the only thing they vote on.

Oct 24, 2008 - 1:34 pm 57. dla:

Cedarford: your comments typlify the non-thinking left. Because you and your ilk think so poorly, you fall into the camp of “useful fools” that the Obama salesmen of the world need to rise to power.

The Republican party destroyed itself by doing essentially nothing for 6 of the 8 years Bush was in office. The economy was fine until Clinton’s policies finally came due. And the deficit has been around for a long time – long before Bush.

But if you can’t wrap your head around those facts, then I suppose it is impossible for you to understand the futility of Obama’s socialist policies. Obama’s very poor economic notions have been tried before and failed. Failed in America. Failed in Europe. Failed. But you won’t understand that even when you graduate from high school, as the socialist Dewey-inspired educational system has also failed.

And if it weren’t for stupid people, how could Obama get elected?

America does need some changes. But going backwards economically isn’t one of them.

Oct 24, 2008 - 1:36 pm 58. ws1835:

For what it is worth……

I live near Portland, Oregon which is every bit as delusionally liberal as any coastal settlement in the USA. I hate to disagree with Wretchard, but I really don’t see ‘dense pack’ or even MSM propaganda (far better than pravda every was) as the primary problem in this election. I run into folks every day that are ardently against Bush and staunchly pro-democrat wihtout ANY reason whatsoever. None. It isn’t a matter of information. It is a matter of willing delusion. When asked why Bush is bad or evil, they can not answer.

I have a personal friend who exemplifies this state of being. She repeatedly tells me Bush and his cabal are evil. But can not name a reason why. Let me emphasis that part. She can give no reason at all for why Bush is evil. She can’t even parrot the false crud routinely thrown out by the MSM. There is simply nothing but a flat rejection of anything Bush or Republican. My grandmother is two generations older but suffers from similiar delusion. Although in her case it is due to left over propaganda from FDR rather than the current MSM.

I am afraid that we have reached a point where the general electorate is now too tribal to be reached with logic and policy arguments. In a democracy such as ours, we are always confronted with overcoming the ignorance of the average voter. But now we have gotten to a point where a goodly number of voters are absolutely deaf to any message that does not emanate from their corner of the culture. This has been carefully cultivated by American liberals/socialists for decades, aka identity politics. We are seeing the pay-off in the last 2-3 elections.

When the sh$t hits the fan in the next 6 months, it will be interesting to see if the ‘tribes’ can pull together. If they don’t, we collapse.

Cheers

Oct 24, 2008 - 1:38 pm 59. Aristide:

Since names and addresses aren’t verified against credit card numbers, I suspect that certain people or programs are entering random or slightly modified numbers that just happen to be valid credit card numbers. That may be why people are reporting invalid charges on their accounts.

Those charges may eventually be refunded, but doesn’t that give the Obama campaign money to spend BEFORE the election when it is most critical?

What if anything is the FEC, Justice or others doing about this?

Oct 24, 2008 - 1:42 pm 60. buddy larsen:

C4, lets see if we can salvage something from this financial holocaust, ok? Let’s see if we can start facing the truth –especially as it is precisely that reluctance which has in a month shot fifty trillion dollars worth of future straight into outer space.

No no, i’m not gonna word-salad a Bush exculpation.

What i yam gonna do is, if you make me, list every single initiative that Pubs, Feds, and some Dems did put forth over the last 5 years, trying to rein in Fannie n Freddie, and every single counterattack by Frank, Dodd, and Schumer to –on threat to call them (HORRORS!)”racists’ and “haters of Poor People –force a surrender and abandonment for a “wait ’til next year” on the few simple items of regulation and supervision that would have unravelled FnF in time to prevent this freaked-out unbelievable catastrophe.

The difference is between murder and accessory-after-the-fact, and Bush ain’t the murderer. That’s the truth.

Let’s “do” truth, okay? If you will “do’ truth, i will admit that yes i do recall your cassandrianism of years before, when during the Bull Boom you did warn against this outcome.

Oct 24, 2008 - 1:56 pm 61. buddy larsen:

ari, they get the ‘float’, too –considerable, a few months of a few dozen or hundred million @ 4 or 5%.

Oct 24, 2008 - 2:04 pm 62. Aristide:

Well, well, well! Just found this little gem from December 3, 2007 that may explain why the credit card companies are playing ball with O.

We also get a little subprime crisis talk thrown in!

Democrat Barack Obama called for new restrictions on “predatory” credit card companies he says deceive consumers into piling up massive debt they have little hope of repaying.

“The truth is, our middle-class families are not going to be secure so long as they can’t get out of debt,” Obama said Monday, sharpening the populist rhetoric of his presidential campaign. “If we’re serious about stopping Americans from falling deeper in debt, we’ve got to crack down on predatory credit card companies that are pushing them over the edge.”

Obama pointed to studies showing that consumers have an average personal debt of more than $8,000, a load driven higher by credit cards. He said soaring credit card debt could turn into a crisis as big as the one in the subprime mortgage industry.

“The larger risk is that what’s happening in the housing market could lead to a slowdown in the entire economy,” he said.

Obama Targets Credit Card Industry

Oct 24, 2008 - 2:20 pm 63. Pascal:

Aristede: that article is now bookmarked.

The paragraph you excerpted did a fine job of summarizing the article.

However, wish to point out the last line of the paragraph which preceded it.

“In the final analysis, Tocquevillians favor the transmission of the American regime; Gramscians, its transformation.”

The highlights the battle between modernism and postmodernism, between creators and nihilists, between optimists and pessimists. Those who seek a quickening to the latter days are all the latter.

I know there are many here who want to fight the likes of C4. Awakening the somnolent who would be your allies requires repeated soakings with cold water accompanied with suitable alarms.

Okay, now let me tie this back to Wretchard’s point. Is he correct? Are voters suffering sensory overload?

Maybe they are at that stage where they can no longer tell the figurative difference, as happens in the literal experience, between very hot and very cold water. They simply want to sleep in the hopes that the onslaught passes. You think you cannot waken them.

Isn’t that what a rotten MSM wants? Have we allowed the Ministry of Truth to win even before they are officially installed? Will the what Wretchard notes is the junk stock of the NYT be saved by an Obama administration as the Bush admin has done for GM? You betcha!

Dammit folks. There are truly stark contrasts in play today. But the leading “conservatives” downplay them. As a lot the have tended to avoid like the plague all principles and have gone on to blunt distinctions. In nearly every effect the field has been abandoned to anti-liberty forces.

Your job, if you are willing to accept it, is filter out the dense pack tactic.

Oct 24, 2008 - 2:30 pm 64. exhelodrvr:

ws1835,
“I run into folks every day that are ardently against Bush and staunchly pro-democrat wihtout ANY reason whatsoever.”

Agreed – the problem is that the majority of the Democrats would even vote Democrat if Christ were running for President, if he was on the Republican ticket.

Oct 24, 2008 - 2:50 pm 65. dkite:

No one, no one has connected the overspending and borrowing by the US government as the cause of this credit mess. No one is saying because everyone is hoping that they will spend more.

It’s consumers borrowing too much. Sure. Over leveraged banks. Ok. All this means a recession, a writedown of debt.

I hear everywhere governments are going to save the day by borrowing more money. Congress is about to spread a bunch of cash again to get things going. Bernacke talks of printing money. Canadian fed is talking deficit financing again.

This is madness. Government has been growing faster than the economy in western nations. That is an accomplishment since the economy has been growing very fast over the last years.

Where is the money going to come from? Oil rich nations who are losing production capability and facing dropping oil prices? China who is going to have hundreds of millions of unemployed people roaming the streets? Europe who now owns all their own banks and are facing pension and entitlement obligations that are over the top? Commodities producing nations that have seen prices drop by half year over year.

Maybe start printing money.

I suggest a run on wheelbarrows. We’ll need them to haul our paychecks to the grocery store.

I said to my employer this morning that this stuff won’t end until all the stupid people who created the mess are either hung, kicked out of government, or driven to beg on the streets. Since that won’t happen for a long while, it is going to be long and hard.

Oh, someone really bright said that equity to profit ratios were showing exceptional deals this morning. Hey buddy, those profit numbers were the last few quarters.

I wonder if anyone has a ‘computer model’ that shows what happens when the world economy shrinks by 15% in a year?

This election is between giving power to a leftist with a penchant to handling very large cheques to very dodgy supporters, along with a congress that essentially created this disaster, and an old guy who doesn’t understand economics.

Wretchard makes a good point above. There is now a ‘flight to safety’, people buying, pause for effect, US dollars. As bad as the US mess is, it’s nothing compared to the absolute disaster in Asia and Europe.

Maybe the only rational thing for the US to do is pull back, arm the nukes, have a very public show of a big red button saying anyone twitches they are gone, pull back law enforcement, then start naming names and addresses of the idiots in the economic and political class that created this mess, and watch the second amendment really work.

Derek

Oct 24, 2008 - 2:56 pm 66. whiskey:

Cedarford, the likelihood of a major Western city getting nuked is VERY high. In fact, the NTI.org site, rates it as nearly certain within the next fifteen years. Sam Nunn, among other “neocons” sits on the board.

In fact, the nuclear proliferation among unstable, non-centralized, distributed power regimes such as Pakistan (half the country under Taliban control), or Iran (fratricidal power struggles with assassinations and losers getting shot by firing squad), not to mention Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen, and others guarantees Western cities will die.

You simply cannot have that many nukes among so many unstable people and not have Western cities dying, particularly since no one is afraid of the West anymore.

In fact, 9/11 was so significant in that Osama and company got away with it, as did sponsoring regimes such as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and a few others. Guaranteeing a follow-on nuclear attack at some point, absent inducing rational fear.

In fact, that is the GREAT and abiding weakness of Leftists, Democrats, and Obama’s people not to mention himself. Nuclear proliferation means Western cities dying — and he offers change and hope. More talk.

Moreover, people lost their life’s savings because Obama and Dems did nothing to break OPEC and allowed energy prices to soar, instead of demanding well, Iraq pump a heck of a lot of oil. The economy runs on cheap oil. The housing bubble was just that, a bubble bursting. If oil had been cheap it would have been like the dot-com bubble bursting.

Losing NYC, or Copenhagen, will simply END trans-oceanic trade, and likely a lot of inter-state Trade. Global recession/crisis, every city a target, a huge shock like the 1973 Oil Embargo cubed. It’s a certainty that will happen because the people having/getting nukes are not rational, Westernized Russians but a disorganized tribe.

People backing Democrats do so because the “smart people” do — Jason Alexander and Forrest Whittaker pray to Obama in a video, and the ladies on the View all do too. It’s part of the celebrity-ization of America. As highly violent and unstable societies gain the ability to nuke with impunity Western cities.

Oct 24, 2008 - 3:03 pm 67. JGreer:

Conservatives need to tighten-up their thinking and begin producing ideas that win the support of the public.

We need to stop blaming the general public, or the Democrats, and start blaming ourselves. Too often I read conservative forums and see a lot of anxious hand wringing, doomsayers, and spin-doctors. (This not aimed at Richard but several commentors) We’re starting to resemble the looney left in that regard. The way I see it, the left is master of that domain and Conservatives will not beat them at their own game. Our strength is in producing solid ideas based on fact, logic and rational thought.

So let’s stop bemoaning the next 4 years. The US will not come to an end if Obama is elected. And let’s put aside the BS and spin that drops us to the level of our competition. What we need is new (or old?) thinking that gets back to our core values.

If you believe dense pack is a defensive tactic by the opposition, then you do what the Soviets did – improve targeting and sequencing. We just use info instead of warheads.

Oct 24, 2008 - 3:04 pm 68. SpeakEasy:

Dense Pack indeed. That is a good way to characterize Obama followers.

In seriousness, if you believe the Soviet Union was deterred by mutually assured destruction as I do the issue was not how densely the missiles were packed so much as how many will in fact land on your head. Just take one, two or three of what you consider the most serious flaws in Obama’s platform and that is as far as you need to dig. My vote is not so much for McCain or Palin as it is against the creep of Socialism. That was a surprisingly easy choice.

Oct 24, 2008 - 3:05 pm 69. ws1835:

@ SpeakEasy….

Amen!

Unfortunately, I have been voting ‘against’ rather than ‘for’ candidates most of my adult life…….

Oct 24, 2008 - 3:23 pm 70. Pascal:

@SpeakEasy.

I am voting against Obama to better insure my freedom of speech for at least four more years. The Left would demand free speech for themselves from McCain. That liberty is by no means assured with Obama in the WH and a senate with more than 60 Dems and RINOs combined.

Oct 24, 2008 - 3:32 pm 71. Roderick Reilly:

“”"”"the likelihood of a major Western city getting nuked is VERY high. “”"”"”"”

Hmmm . . ., okay, I vote for San Francisco.

Uh, no wait, it’s a beautiful city. How about L.A. New Orleans? Berkeley (oh, the San Fran one will take care of that, maybe)?

Forget it, I lack the necessary Schedenfreude.

Hey, can we get the Jihadis to use a NEUTRON bomb? If they do, I’ll draw up my list again.

Oct 24, 2008 - 3:36 pm 72. Unsk:

Dkite,JGreer

The descent into socialism in the blue urban states and cities has made urban living way to expensive. I know way too many two earner families who are overextended due to the high cost of living. That is why there is not only a mortgage crisis but in all likelihood a credit card debt crisis looming too. The government in urban areas is much too intrusive for the free market and entrepreneurs to create new jobs and a healthy economy without an ever increasing rise in the urban real cost of living.

The Republicans, particularly Rinos, so fearful of confronting the media elites, have betrayed Reagan’s zeal for de- regulation and free enterprise. The Republicans have not only offered few solutions; they have refused to thoroughly address the issues and have dismissed the cost of living problem as an illusion.

People are rightfully fearful and they are grasping for solutions. The situation is perfect for demagogues like Obama who are the only ones offering a vision for the future, albeit a deceitful one.

Oct 24, 2008 - 3:48 pm 73. Joshua:

exhelodrvr: Agreed – the problem is that the majority of the Democrats would even vote Democrat if Christ were running for President, if he was on the Republican ticket.

And in many cases, especially if this were the case. (If you’re paranoid about a GOP administration as a Christian theocracy, how much more so would you be if Christ himself were the one running it?)

SpeakEasy and ws1835: Me too. To be more precise, my vote this time around won’t be so much a vote for McCain/Palin, or even a vote against Obama by himself, as a vote against the Unholy Trinity of Obama, Reid and Pelosi, to say nothing of the MSM or the rogues’ gallery of assorted scoundrels who have shaped Obama’s worldview or supported his campaign “by any means necessary”.

Oct 24, 2008 - 4:00 pm 74. Karen:

Willy: “It just can’t be that bad…” This is the message my liberal wife is believing.

fred: Willy at # 18 sums up exactly what I’ve encountered with some family members and friends.

Dave in NC: I agree completely… When I call [my wife's] attention to the truth about the messiah I get told that I’m damaging my candidate.

I agree completely as well – it’s absolutely heartbreaking. We’ve all heard over and over the rejection of partisan politics, let’s stick to the issues. But the issues don’t matter! People say that because it sounds good. If issues mattered, then we wouldn’t have that feeling of running into a brick wall. The issues, and the candidates’ stances, are out there and easily accessed. If someone is completely clueless about the issues at stake, then that’s the sort of person who probably won’t even bother to vote. If someone, who intends to vote, misunderstands the issues or is unable to appreciate what is at stake by their choice, then that is someone who’s been lost to us, someone who’s been influenced and converted by the Long March through the Institutions that Aristide’s post referred to. It may not be an understanding of any particular depth, but I think they do understand at least the broad general outlines of values presented and they are okay with that. Whether or not they can articulate what exactly is meant by Obama’s slogan of hope and change, I think they have a generally correct broad idea of its meaning and they accept it. A lot of us have been turned into Europeans. I don’t think it’s because conservatives have failed to make their case. I think it’s that the conservative case has been rejected. Maybe people don’t understand the implications of that rejection, but rejected it they have.

And they probably will be sorry in the not-so-distant future. And there probably will be a longing for the good old days of GWB. And I could feel optimistic about a return to sanity if only there were no such thing as nuclear rogue states and an Islam with ambitions of global domination.

I think it’s time to hunker down.

Oct 24, 2008 - 4:31 pm 75. buddy larsen:

Unsk, the financial folk are hearing that the credit card issuers have already prepared a 100 bbl write-off of bad consumer credit-card debt, with the big wave expected to break in Q109. the number was arrived at by assuming a worst case, and then doubling it. this strikes me as odd, as that new number should be the actual worst-case that needs doubling.

When the new foreclosure-protection program gets up and going, there are going to be neighbors with similar mortgages, joe who quit paying and thereby got some portion of his debt forgiven, and john who did not, and is still paying his mortgage. if both started out with say 1000 monthly, and bob ends up with 500 monthly on a reduced principle, then john, who is still paying hard on a principle that just became an inflated scam evil joke, will be required to become Jesus in order to not revolt.

There’ll be millions of these stories. What will happen?

Oct 24, 2008 - 4:50 pm 76. buddy larsen:

that’s called “moral hazard” and it gwan eat the hi-interest card issuers too, big time. think “cascade”. This is SO f**ked up. we are SO hosed. just a year ago, we took for granted behaviors that a year from now will seem like the Golden Age of Greece.

I gotta go run. later i’ll pay penance for the above by posting a plausible bull case. gotta go run first, shower, then drop a little acid.

Oct 24, 2008 - 4:57 pm 77. Orphaned Son of Liberty:

71. Roderick Reilly: Hmmm . . ., okay, I vote for San Francisco.

Hey, no way, I live and work in Silicon Valley. Besides, SF is the home of moonbats.. what terrorist in their right mind would bomb the appeasers? I’m sure they’d rather bomb the OC!

Oct 24, 2008 - 5:00 pm 78. slade:

Fully OT but so remarkably beautiful:

And USA Builds McMansions

Oct 24, 2008 - 5:06 pm 79. RWE:

Folks, the three little words that Washington D.C. works on are Make It Hurt. If someone decides to cut your funding or impose additional requirements on you, then you figure out the worst possible things you can do that are linked to that action and apply pressure accordingly.

Relative to the Democrats, RINOs, ACORN, the MSM and the many simple minded Republican haters out there, the question is: The new future is upon us, so how do we Make It Hurt?

Oct 24, 2008 - 5:07 pm 80. mika2k1:

yup, gasoline dips under 3 and boone’s legs go –right on cue.
==

Demand will be back in a year’s time. And then what? Another recession?

Oct 24, 2008 - 5:38 pm 81. mika2k1:

Btw, how are them plans to the melt the rockies into liquid oil coming along?

Oct 24, 2008 - 5:43 pm 82. mika2k1:

..to melt the rockies..

Oct 24, 2008 - 5:49 pm 83. Mad Fiddler:

Dear Everybody,

Gasoline has been under three dollars a gallon here in Hampton Roads Virginia for the last month. Today the stations around here are showing $2.33 and 9/10 per gallon.

Are any of the television stations even bothering to mention this?

Of course not.

It’s only newsworthy when *rising* costs can be used as a bludgeon to discredit incumbent Republicans.

Of course, this is just a single pebble in the general avalanche of deceitful behavior by so-called professional journalists; they perceive themselves as the vanguard of the revolution. They seem to be reckoning that when their friends are in charge, they’ll all go to the head of the rewards line.

Oct 24, 2008 - 6:04 pm 84. slade:

Magna Cum Magma coming right up.

I’m sorry that’s the best I could do – it’ll happen Mika. Not fast enough or in a straight line. But messy. The American Way.

Oct 24, 2008 - 6:08 pm 85. Doug:

Oct 24, 2008 - 6:36 pm 86. mika2k1:

it’ll happen Mika
==

Channeling Nostro dumb ass, are we?

Oct 24, 2008 - 6:42 pm 87. Doug:

Slade mixes Shale w/the Fires of Hell.

Oct 24, 2008 - 6:42 pm 88. Aristide:

@Pascal 63

Okay, now let me tie this back to Wretchard’s point. Is he correct? Are voters suffering sensory overload?

Perhaps… our weapons do appear to be ineffective.

I believe, just as we would defend America from attack, they are defending the leader of the pack… Obama!

Since they are pack animals, argument targeting individuals may not work. The trick may be in figuring out how McCain can become pack leader, perhaps targeting subgroups that can be split off. The PUMAs come to mind.

Here’s some statistical breakdown. Perhaps there’s useful information there. I know there is some interesting demographic date in the February archives.

That data would appear to indicate that the DNC (or who ever had the power) set up caucuses in states with low black populations, so that “white guilt” intimidation could be used!

Oct 24, 2008 - 6:43 pm 89. Voltimand:

I’m going to play contrarian on Wretch’s “dense pack” metaphor. Whatever else he’s talking about, he’s talking about cognitive overload due to a large variety of signals.

I propose that Obama is not sending out such a variety, bewildering or not. I propose that he is sending out the same signal over and over again. That signal has the following content: “Change change change,” usque ad fin. There are different kinds of changes proposed: fiscal, foreign policy, market, etc. but they’re all predicated on the notion–what else do we do when we change presidents–that whatever the status quo is, it’s bad, and we must have something different. Plus ca change.

Some respondents are puzzled by the utter vacuity of some of their friends’ reasoning on the subject of The Great Zero–who is a zero because he invites any number of different numbers to be put in front of his pristine vacuity.

Another way of putting my point: a characteristic of O’s operatives is that they all do illegal things in plain sight (”Gun? what gun? Where do you see a gun? I’m not holding a gun? No, that’s not a gun, that’s a can opener in the shape of a gun. You think that’s a gun. What are you, a racist?” etc. etc. etc.). We’ve got the ACORN people screwing around with the voting process all over the place. “What illegally-registered voters? This is simply Republican political manipulations powered by Republican insistence that the illegalities we are committing right-and-left are illegalities.”

Ditto for the wholesalve violation of voting laws in accepting money from foreigners.

Where’s the “density”? This business is amazing because a true con man knows how to hide his con. That’s because he knows he’s a con man. But I believe that Obama and his ilk and those who like his ilk are truly taken in by their own con.

The still point of the moving world which is American presidential politics today is that Obama really believes what he says. No fool like the fool who says and does foolish things and doesn’t know it.

What’s going to be “dense” out there is picking and choosing among the various targets which a Great Zero administration is going to offer. A respondent on Powerline is already predicting a movement for impeachment within hours of inauguration.

Oct 24, 2008 - 6:45 pm 90. Aristide:

Perhaps the answer was in the title after all… “pack”!

Oct 24, 2008 - 6:46 pm 91. peterike:

ws1835 @ 58: But now we have gotten to a point where a goodly number of voters are absolutely deaf to any message that does not emanate from their corner of the culture.

I think that’s brilliantly put. I really believe that if through some kind of crazy magic you could have Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert slagging Obama for the next two weeks the way they’ve slagged Bush/McCain/Palin, then McCain would win in a walk.

I’ve often thought the Republicans spend way too much time on “serious” ads with ponderous, worried voices intoning doom scenarios. What they should be doing is sending up Obama every chance they get. Play the “57 states” clip ten thousand time. Make him out an idiot. People 40 and under are completely tuned in to the wavelength of snark and flip irony.

Oct 24, 2008 - 7:26 pm 92. Doug:

It’s gonna be a massive ….pack!

Oct 24, 2008 - 7:38 pm 93. fred:

Aristide @#54,

Thank you for the link to that article by John Fonte. As one who was once a part of that Gramscian project (many years ago when I was an aspiring Marxist intellectual, Catholic Jesuit seminarian), I can attest to the breadth and depth of this penetration of the institutions which transmit the narrative explanations of “who we are” and the “why?” of things.

Most of the people who are the type as described in Karen’s post (@#74)are not at all aware of the provenance of the ideas that they parrot, if they can do that at all. Most of the young students and recent grads who are self-identified as being on the Left have minds that are little more than placard flipping images of talking points, memes, and flip taunts.

I was on the Left from roughly 1977-87. In the early to mid eighties one of those moments of the beginnings of my disillusionment with the Left involved taking a hard look at the mental landscape of the activist types and their leaders. I could find very little evidence of true intellectual quests. Finding a fellow revisionist Marxist who truly was engaged in a search for the truth was rare, but it did happen and inevitably I valued the company of that person in that desert landscape. Typically, we took the critiques of socialism coming from the other side seriously. Your activist types pretty much flipped the bird to those folks, and I always was uncomfortable with that doctrinaire, ignorant posture. Because I am Catholic, at the time I was very much diving into some of the Liberation Theologians, so the critiques of this theology and of socialism coming from people like Michael Novak MATTERED. So did the critiques of socialism coming from Karol Woytyla, Cardinal Archbishop of Krackow and Pope John Paul II. Those critiques of socialism which focused on the nature of the human being, our sinful nature, and the flawed nature at the very core of our world were a challenge to the utopian project.

All socialism, at its core, has a utopian telos. It is a truth claim about what is possible for humanity, nature, and history. Therefore, as a truth claim it has to be examined for its veracity and plausibility. A certain scientific rigor is necessary. My project – at least what I envisioned myself as doing – was to see if those critiques of socialism could be transcended by something about us and nature that we may have overlooked, so that there may indeed be a PLASTICITY of nature and mind that could thrive under the right conditions. I won’t go into the long story of my journey to finally realizing that this was going to be a dead end. It did involve further study into areas of psychology (developmental), genetics, and neuroscience.

These young Leftists today display no such intensity of quest for the truth. They are told by their teachers and professors that the ideas they are being taught are “progressive” without reference to the process by which some strand of thought gave birth to it. So, when people like me, who have had some training in these areas of the history of ideas, point out to them that they are in the the tradition of Rousseau, Robespierre, Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Gramsci, Adorno, Marcuse, et al, they find it amusing and are likely to extend the middle finger, literally or figuratively.

We live in a time when there is a disturbing lack of the ability to engage in any kind of inner Socratic dialog. And in this post-modernist milieu the lack of the appreciation of the spiritual dimension to the human being leaves a glaring gap in society’s abilities to engage in contemplation.

I am that rare former Pelagian heretic, of a distinctly modern flavor of it, who has stepped away from it and recognizes where I came from, where I’ve been, and where I hope to be going.

I fear we are indeed devolving into a society with ugly tribal instincts.

Oct 24, 2008 - 7:43 pm 94. Doug:

“We’ve got the ACORN people screwing around with the voting process all over the place. “What illegally-registered voters? This is simply Republican political manipulations powered by Republican insistence that the illegalities we are committing right-and-left are illegalities.”

Ditto for the wholesalve violation of voting laws in accepting money from foreigners. ”
—
This after eight years in which DOJ prosecutions of Democrat misdeeds have been almost non-existent.

Oct 24, 2008 - 7:43 pm 95. Doug:

Charles said…

“It is, as James said, incidentally secular. But the Left is essentially a deism, even when it adopts a secular skin. It’s hidden god is power. Power over man is its ultimate goal.

It is power over man, not nature, that it craves.”
………………
“It occured to me a couple years ago that the modern mind was formed by the novel form. The novel presents a form of internal dialogue very very different from internal dialoge of previous ages. Internal dialogue of the novel has character talking to him/her self.

In previous ages a person would pray (to God) or (gods).”

Oct 24, 2008 - 7:47 pm 96. cedarford:

Unsk – The Republicans, particularly Rinos, so fearful of confronting the media elites, have betrayed Reagan’s zeal for de- regulation and free enterprise.

The good part of Reagan’s Administration will endure, but sadly and properly, things Saint Reagan was wrong about 30 years ago that have not stood the test of time will have to go.
Just as everything Jefferson, Lincoln, FDR, and Nixon did were not made Holy and Immutable…
Reagans ideas, disproven over time?

1. Government is the problem. No, incompetent & overreaching gov’t outside it’s limited spheres where it works best is bad.

2. Arguing that deregulated markets work best is like arguing that auto traffic without laws or schools without discipline is the way to go. Reagan had a better opinion of the greedy, rapacious financiers and Wall Street Moguls than they deserved. Since his time, it has been one major crises after another as fatcats screwed the public. 7 major fiscal crises including this one, the worst, that have cost America trillions since the original Savings and Loan dereg scandal are the fruit of Reaganism. Now we have the latest, and by far the worst screwing of the public by uncontrolled fatcats. Add in non-financial dereg scandals like ratepayers being screwed and richboy insiders being further enriched in the electricity and telecomm dereg scandals.

3. Tax cuts for the rich, mainly theoretical under Reagan dogma, have now gone on long enough to show they cost taxpayers 90 cents for every 40 cents in new revenue they gain. They do not pay for themselves.

4. “Trickledown” is another Reagan myth. A good deal of the concentration of the wealth in the hands of a few does not pass on to the rest of society, but is sent abroad to rebuild factories to replace workers or spent as Saddam spent Iraq’s wealth – on palaces and foundation monuments to His Wealth….

5. Reagan was wrong about “free markets” ensuring the best health care for all Americans, and Nixon right. Nixon, when he said if we don’t get universal health care we will pay twice as much for it as any other country, our medicare costs will explode, and the working Americans in near-poverty, like he was born into – would have no health care coverage.

6. Reagan was wrong about free trade – the victory a long chain of Presidents from Truman onward over Communism – liberated skilled workers – over a billion in E Europe, the countries of the Former Soviet Union, de-Socialized India, and China to compete against and win against higher standard of living American workers. Plus 2 billion more unskilled workers that wish to come to the USA – and while only 1% have made it across our Open Borders so far, they create as big a problem as Chinese factories gutting US and Mexican jobs…
Even Reagan didn’t believe like his TRue Believers did – when the Japanese were destroying jobs and industries – Reagan set limits to protect middle class jobs. Dubya didn’t.

***Reagan did a lot of good things, but add unthinking dogmatic worship of everything Reagan said 30-35 years ago, plus the Right-Wings drive to be more Reagan than Reagan was on cultural issues – to reasons for the Republican train wreck and exile from power.***

Oct 24, 2008 - 7:48 pm 97. Voltimand:

93. Fred said:

“All socialism, at its core, has a utopian telos. It is a truth claim about what is possible for humanity, nature, and history. Therefore, as a truth claim it has to be examined for its veracity and plausibility. A certain scientific rigor is necessary.”

My take is somewhat less rhapsodic, drawn instead from the kind of thinking that powers Helmut Schoeck’s study of the sociology of envy. For him, marxism and socialism alike are born out of what is at once envy and (consequently) a fear of envy (what the anthropologists study under the rubric “fear of the evil eye.”

I remember last Xmas the ephermeral blooming of Xmas gifts in the shops of Havana provoked marxist ideologues to condemn sternly this deviation, because buying and receiving presents was going to cause envy among others. Socialism and marxism are both very distrustful not of “capitalist” economies but of economics in general. What economics does is rationalize the making of money, and the desire for wealth is the great evil. As a (former) Jesuit you might acknowledge how much these two movements owe to a twisted form of the gospel.

For me, the purpose of leftist politics is the destruction of people, and this is accomplished by making the “equality” of sbsolute poverty the “telos” of the whole game.

When the Great Zero talks about “redistribution,” taking away is all he’s talking about. What is “redistributed” is in the end is nothing more than equal quantities of nothing. One of the biggest cons of all: believing that leftists care about the poor.

Oct 24, 2008 - 8:11 pm 98. Doug:

What you fail to appreciate, Voltimand, is the Wisdom of Dylan:

“When you Ain’t Got Nuthin,
You got Nuthin to Lose.“

Oct 24, 2008 - 8:20 pm 99. Aristide:

C4,

Government is the problem.

No, incompetent & overreaching gov’t outside it’s limited spheres where it works best is bad.

That just shows me that you don’t understand Reagan.

Reagan would say “Government is the problem” with a smile and a twinkle in his eye and we knew he meant, “incompetent & overreaching gov’t outside it’s limited spheres where it works best is bad”.

It wasn’t some dictate from a little red book!

Oct 24, 2008 - 8:22 pm 100. fred:

Voltimand,

Never thought to approach it from that angle. Interesting. It does expose a dimension of the problem. But it isn’t the only way of looking at it. Envy is one angle. There are others as well. Not all socialists are envious people. I certainly wasn’t. People who know me well, and known me for my entire life, would never say that I was afflicted by that, or by the fear of envy. There were other more complicated motivations involved, but that would require a lengthy post involving a lot of detail about my journey through the early part of my life. I don’t think it relevant, or interesting, so I’ll pass.

For me, socialism is epistemologically false. It fails, always has failed, and always will fail. And when you are truly concerned about how to lift up the poor, you don’t get them out of the shit by simply doing what Obama wants to do, what Marx wanted to do, what Lenin tried to do, and what Castro tried to do. Socialism rests on the fallacy of zero-sum economic thinking (an error Obama falls into as well, per his own tidbits of comments dropped along the way).

You have to grow the pie. And you do have to have a society that creates conditions for opportunity and freedom of action.

Oct 24, 2008 - 8:32 pm 101. Doug:

Freedom from responsibility is the only true freedom.

Oct 24, 2008 - 8:33 pm 102. Doug:

We need to put Science to work to provide man’s need’s and address the need to transform society:

“Science pedagogy framed around social justice concerns can become a medium to transform individuals, schools, communities, the environment, and science itself, in ways that promote equity and social justice.

Creating a science education that is transformative implies not only how science is a political activity but also the ways in which students might see and use science and science education in ways transformative of the institutional and interpersonal power structures that play a role in their lives.”

Oct 24, 2008 - 8:37 pm 103. Aristide:

fred @ 93

Thought you might find this interesting.

Once upon a time, when Europe could be had at $5 a day, I found myself hitchhiking on the freezing plains of Spain just outside of Madrid. Car after car swept past me, the winds in their wakes chilling me further. This was very disconcerting since I had with me my fail-safe ride generator, a hot hippie girlfriend (Think a good-looking Janis Joplin.) My ride generator had never failed me before but on this day it was turning up zero rides even as the traffic on the road was heavy. Then I noticed two things. First there seemed to be no trucks on the road. Second, the cars that huffed past us were filled to the gills with whole Spanish families bearing vast bouquets of flowers. And all those Spaniards looked, to the last, very grim.

After a few futile hours, we made our way — walking — a few kilometers down the road to a truck stop where, using my pidgin Spanish, the mystery of the ride drought was solved. It seemed that we were trying to get to Barcelona on one of the most holy days of the Spanish year — All Saints Day, or as we have it here in America, Halloween.

The Spanish tradition on this day is for the whole family to load up the car with flowers and other offerings and haul off to the local graveyard for a visit and picnic with the dearly departed. After that many go off to a traditional performance of Spain’s Faustian epic Don Juan Tenario in which the final act takes place in a cemetery. On this holy day in Spain we had almost zero chance of getting a ride anywhere other than the local graveyard. Chastened, we made our way back to Madrid by bus and set out the next day with much better luck.

What remains in my memory from watching the parade of cars on that long-lost Spanish highway is just how dour and serious the Spanish were on their Halloween. They weren’t fooling around with death, but taking it at its word. They not only believed in death they also, in their prayers and rituals and their traditional play, believed that what you do in life determines how you will be treated in the afterlife. They had, at bottom, that adamantine belief that is the pearl beyond price of the Catholics. But even if you were to strip away the 2000 years of dogma, these people still had the one thing that more and more Americans lack at the core of their lives: a belief in something greater than themselves, a belief in something greater than man, greater than death.

Hitchhiking in the Land of the Dead

Oct 24, 2008 - 8:38 pm 104. Doug:

We all know which candidate is Transformative.

Oct 24, 2008 - 8:41 pm 105. Mark:

I don’t think there is a dense pack factor at this time.

What almost certainly seems to be a majority of voters has largely made up it collective mind.The voters are no longer confused.

They believe it is time, because it is about time, for America to elect a person of color as president.

Therefore voter fraud is not a concern.

Therefore the ‘objectively evil’ practice of abortion, partial-birth abortion, and infanticide will not have traction, even among Catholics.

Therefore the dishonesty, radicalism, fiscal policy inferno, and foreign policy roulette must be ignored.

Therefore the abuse of Palin, McCain, and their supporters must be accepted.

Therefore the buffoonishness of Biden must be wincingly endured.

Therefore the debasement of the media must be channeled and leveraged towards the desired end.

Sorry.

Oct 24, 2008 - 8:52 pm 106. Doug:

Our individual salvation is not going to come about without a collective salvation for the country

“ I saw that in some ways certain portions of the African American community are doing as bad if not worse, and recognizing that my fate remains tied up with their fates, that my individual salvation is not going to come about without a collective salvation for the country.

Unfortunately, I think that recognition requires we make sacrifices and this country is(sic) not always been willing to make the sacrifices necessary to bring about a new day, and a new age.“

Oct 24, 2008 - 9:00 pm 107. Doug:

Biden has a plan to provide for those that need salvation, Mark:

Biden lashes out at corporate greed in Colo.

Biden took direct aim at executives who draw big salaries while leading failed companies where employees are losing pensions. “Their pensions go first,” he told a roaring crowd.

He was introduced by Patricia Stiles, who described herself as a lifelong Republican but said she is voting Democratic this year because her husband lost his job and his pension when United Airlines reorganized under bankruptcy protection.

Biden asked the crowd to keep Obama in their prayers as he leaves the campaign Thursday and Friday to visit his ailing grandmother in Hawaii. He said she is not expected to live.

“It’s an emotional journey, but he’s a remarkable man,” Biden said.

Oct 24, 2008 - 9:02 pm 108. Doug:

“ He said she is not expected to live.”
—
Biden, otoh, is headed toward an eternal life, courtesy of hair plugs, capped teeth, botox, spray on tan, and etc.

Oct 24, 2008 - 9:04 pm 109. Fred:

Doug, about science and pedagogy were you quoting Ayers and Klonsky?

I think I have an idea what Aristotle would say about and say to someone like Ayers. And when he’s finished he might just hand Ayers off to his star pupil, Alexander son of Philip of Macedonia. I think Ayers would be terrified of Alexander. Rightly so.

Oct 24, 2008 - 9:05 pm 110. Doug:

“Doug, about science and pedagogy were you quoting Ayers and Klonsky?”
—
Very polite of you Fred, to omit mention of the transformative member of that trio.
But we all will know we’re in his presence, mentioned, or not.

Oct 24, 2008 - 9:19 pm 111. Doug:

Sources:
“In 1997, Ayers and his mentor Maxine Greene persuaded Teachers College Press to launch a series of books on social justice teaching, with Ayers as editor and Greene serving on the editorial board (along with Rashid Khalidi, loyal supporter of the Palestinian cause and the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University).
Twelve volumes have appeared so far, including one titled Teaching Science for Social Justice. “

Oct 24, 2008 - 9:21 pm 112. Doug:

Obama Website Urges Grandkids to use their grandparent’s love against them.

Oct 24, 2008 - 9:27 pm 113. JMH:

There’s something else at work here besides “dense packing” making the stories hard to follow. In any ordinary situation, the sheer volume of problematic stories would sink Obama, even if no single story really caught on. I think two things conspire (in every sense of the word) to shield Obama.

One, the MSM serves as a sort of reactive armor for him. Any story that might ding The One generates a rapid flood of counter-stories. For example, Obama’s slip of the mask “spread the wealth around” comment was quickly swamped by a media attack on Joe the Plumber (Names not really Joe! Not really a plubmer! McCain Campaign failed to vet him!). Biden’s frightening “you won’t like how Barack responds to his foreign policy test” comment was quicly drowned out by attacks on Palin’s wardrobe. The MSM tries to abort the news cycle of anything damaging to Obama.

Two, his core support has simply emotionally invested themselves in Obama to the point that they don’t wanna hear it. Fingers-in-ears-la-la-la-I-can’t-hear-you describes them. Maybe it’s the racism Mark describes (that’s certainly at least part of it), but there is a profound closed-mindedness among Obama supporters.

The question is, how widespread is his support? I just don’t know. The polls are being rigged, massive disinformation campaigns are under way to make his victory seem inevitable (that’s how he won the nomination after all, shouldering Clinton aside before the votes were even cast). McCain supporters aren’t terribly vocal in many areas. If you say anything, you run the risk of an Obamunist getting in your face. It’s pointless and draining when that happens – they’re the definition of a fanaitc, someone who can’t change their mind and won’t change the subject. Plus some of them are cowardly thugs who will slash your tires later that night or pass you over for prmotion at review time. Since convservatives still live in a society where you don’t retaliate against someone for their political views, publically supporting McCain exposes you to an asymmetrical threat. So most just mutter “I haven’t made my mind yet” and move on before the Obamunist speil starts in earnest.

Oct 24, 2008 - 9:29 pm 114. Doug:

Reliapundit said…
Hi JH; Here’s my take on it (I focus on Obama-Jr’s family and theirtreatment of Madelyn Dunham here):

OBAMA TO SKIP AILING GRANDMA’S BIRTHDAY; OBAMA’S WIFE AND KIDS SKIP TRIP ALTOGETHER:

Obama Arrives in Hawaii to Visit Ailing Grandmother
HONOLULU
– On a whirlwind trip back to Hawaii,
Senator Barack Obama spent more than an hour visiting his ailing grandmother
late Thursday and is set to return to her bedside on Friday morning after arriving here on a nine-hour flight from the Midwestern battleground of the presidential campaign.
As soon as he arrived on the island of Oahu, Mr. Obama went to the Punahou Circle Apartments, where his grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, lies gravely ill. She is to turn 86 on Sunday, but aides to Mr. Obama said doctors advised him not to delay his visit.

… Mr. Obama is scheduled to be in Hawaii for only about 20 hours before returning to the mainland on Friday evening. . He is to appear at three campaign rallies on Saturday in Nevada and New Mexico

UNBELIEVABLE:
* Obama IS NOT repeat NOT staying for his Granma’s birthday – perhaps her last.
UNBELIEVABLE: * OBAMA’S WIFE MICHELLE AND HIS CHILDREN WILL NOT REPEAT NOT BE SEEING HER AT ALL. WHAT SC*M. VOTE ACCORDINGLY.

Oct 24, 2008 - 9:51 pm 115. Fred:

JMV @#112. Brilliant analysis of what’s going on.

“Since convservatives still live in a society where you don’t retaliate against someone for their political views, publically supporting McCain exposes you to an asymmetrical threat.”

Bingo.

That’s why I lay low and stay under the radar. There are people in my family and in my wife’s family that I don’t want to alienate. There are people I work with who I don’t wish to provide motivation to backstab me. I don’t want my car keyed or my tires slashed. Or my house spray painted.

But eventually, if it ever came to a worst case scenario and the Left started really doing the Brownshirt or NKVD thing, they had better watch it. A lot of us are armed, and we know how to shoot.

Oct 24, 2008 - 9:51 pm 116. Doug:

Noble said…

Recall how BHO told the press awhile back that him and the family would be going to Hawaii to visit Grandma (this was a couple months back?) the press ate it up!
“The kids need to get some Grandma time”
yet when he did go to the condo – the press followed him to the elevators
- NO Michelle – NO kids (little mistakes) and he stayed a whopping one (1) hour visiting Grandma! He had not seen her in 18 months and he could only stay one hour.
Something is very strange about these trips.
And this family.
—
Doug said…

Michelle did not join John, Cindy and Barry at the 9-11 observance.
She’s got a record to maintain.

Oct 24, 2008 - 10:01 pm 117. Dave:

Patricia Stiles husband lost his job and his pension because his employer, United Airlines,
was/is being run by a pack of idiots who have managed to sabotage every sensible measure more astute people ever instituted.

And I rather imagine that Mr Stiles also belonged to a union that saw no need to
protect its members by demanding sensible business/financial practices.

(I worked both for United and in the United system for a number of years. I know that of which I speak.)

So Mrs Stiles is going to correct things by
changing which party she votes for.
Am I missing something or is she representative of the airhead vote?

PS to Voltimand and Fred: About envy. I daresay that women who like Sarah Palin wish that they were as talented as she. Those that can’t stand Sarah wish that she was as untalented as they.

Oct 24, 2008 - 10:23 pm 118. Dave:

JMH: AS I have said before, the Obamamites are engaging in massive PSYOP voter suppression. Their mission is to make us feel that no matter what, we do not count and must submit. (Any resemblance to jihadists is NOT conincidental.)

A clean victory is inadequate for them.
They have to have a rigged one.
Then they have to fantasize about what they are capable of next.

I suggest we all emulate Charles Krauthammer
and spit in their eye.

Oct 24, 2008 - 10:36 pm 119. Karen:

“Any resemblance to jihadists is NOT coincidental.” – Dave

I’m currently reading Hilaire Beloc’s account of The Crusades. In spite of centuries of Islam’s expanding encroachment on Christendom, the Crusaders’ objective was not to destroy Islam. Their one overriding objective was to secure the Holy Lands, especially the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Their motivation was to preserve what was sacred to them, not to utterly destroy what threatened its preservation.

“Since conservatives still live in a society where you don’t retaliate against someone for their political views, publicly supporting McCain exposes you to an asymmetrical threat.” – JMH

It’s not only a matter of asymmetrical threat, but asymmetrical objective, too. The opposition is willing to do whatever it takes to win – racist smears, brazen voter fraud, brainwashing children, shutting down free speech, anything. Nothing is deemed beyond the pale if it helps achieve their objective, which is to destroy a conservatism whose objective in turn is to preserve the founding principles of America’s government.

Oct 25, 2008 - 12:18 am 120. Karen:

Oops, make that Belloc – 2 els.

Oct 25, 2008 - 12:21 am 121. slade:

Mika

RE the fires of hell (way up, er, or down)

I understand your point about the need to get crackin. Always have. And I have written in several posts my fundamental agreement that reliance on foreign oil is dangerous/stupid course for this country to continue.

But a que sera sera believer I am not. The Dense Pack subject of this thread says it all. Add to the current witches brew of a mess the world is facing the personal challenges of each individual and it becomes necessary to prioritize the crises to some manageable level.

That the MSM does not cover science and technology doesn’t mean the advancements have have stopped. It does mean they are proceeding in an uncoordinated fashion that is pure anathema to the more punctilious or less so among us who have been pushed into some red zone of disgust and frustration.

We’re on the same page – at least the same chapter, well we’re reading the same book. “It will happen.” I think. Because to think otherwise is despair which is crippling.

A real deal killer that. Worse than Waiting for Nostradomous.

Oct 25, 2008 - 4:11 am 122. slade:

I daresay that women who like Sarah Palin wish that they were as talented as she. Those that can’t stand Sarah wish that she was as untalented as they. – Dave

On the Palin factor, two words: Nancy Pelosi. One degree of separation or two. Out of all the players in this election, Palin will be the only one to emerge unscathed.

There’ll be millions of these stories. What will happen? – buddy

I’m becoming less sure with each passing day.

Oct 25, 2008 - 5:43 am 123. Doug:

Slade,
Without wacko enviro restraints, geothermal extraction might actually work.
If not, Nuclear sure would.
I don’t know what (non-economic I think) obstacles are keeping folks from pursuing methanol (and all kinds of valuble sub-products) from coal.

I have yet to be convinced by ethanol evangelist Rufus, and true believer ‘Rat.
Net energy is less than stellar, and all the non-corn scenarios look like “just you wait, you’ll see” schemes.

Meanwhile, it’s a given that Hitler ran his war machine on Coal 70 years ago.
Should be pursuing Domestic Oil to the max for National Security alone.
…on and on, what will it take to wake people up?

Oct 25, 2008 - 6:18 am 124. slade:

Doug -

That’s especially right about coal – the multiple by-products as feedstock for various industries. I have often wondered if/how the cost-benefit analyses account for the added value of the by-products, unlike many of the alternative technologies. Multiple revenue streams should reduce the unit cost of liquid fuel production.

As to what it will take, I wish I had a clever line or even modest insight but I don’t. I am leaning pessimistic with stable tendencies. But it does seem that we are caught like the deer in the headlights witnessing the triumph of optimism over experience.

Speaking of Which

::))

Oct 25, 2008 - 6:45 am 125. Doug:

Those were beautiful. My dad was a big antique car nut.
Jay drives a Model A daily.

Don’t know if you were at the Bar when I related seeing Liberace’s Auburn (I think) at the Cal-Neva Lodge at Tahoe, way back when.
…and of course, his accordian, sequins, & etc.
—
Super Scooper
Check out the Scoopers in formation @ 1:40 coming in to pick up 1,800 Gal in 30 Seconds!

Oct 25, 2008 - 7:27 am 126. Doug:

Jay mentions Mavis, his wife.
So strange.
She was ahead of almost everybody before 9-11 on Muslims v Women.
I guess because of the smothering group thought of Hollywood, her voice has been silenced, through fear of being shamed, or a blackout of some sort.

Oct 25, 2008 - 7:37 am 127. Voltimand:

To Fred et al.

Zero-sum thinking is fundamental to all envy whatever cover it dresses itself in. Sociologists study it under the rubric “relative deprivation,” and these sociologists make quite clear that their studies are politically motivated. For them, whatever someone possesses that someone else doesn’t possess has been taken away from them and is in “justice” (as in “social justice”) owed them. The difference between these people and thieves is that thieves know they are thieves.

“Relative” deprivation means among other things that you don’t know you’re “deprived” until you see someone else’s possession. It’s what literary critic Rene Girard calls “mimetic desire”: you desire only what someone else desires, and therefore you “imitate” them. It is a fundamental motif of 19th- and 20th-century French fiction (De Sade, Stendhal, Balzac, Proust, Sartre et al.), and as such is a fundamental source (via De Beauvoir) of second-wave feminism.

This also entails another conclusion: that the only objects a “relatively deprived” person desires are those they do not possess. This means that when and if they finally come to possess them, their value falls at once. This is why the envious can never be satisfied, and are always haunted by a sense of primordial emptiness and lack.

Late medieval and Renaissance prints that picture the seven deadly sin have the envious pictured as people with very thin elongated necks: so thin that they can take in only a small quantity of nourishment. This iconographic motif is also used, I believe, to picture “Gluttony,” to which Envy is strongly allied.

In any case, Helmut Schoeck invents another category to which I lend the name “envyism.” Envyists (re: socialists and marxists) are people who envy in behalf of others. I call it “envy by proxy.” Left-wing politics is fundamentally envyist.

Fred, I think you haven’t quite divested yourself of the massive amount of self-deception socialists dress themselves in. I don’t for the nanosecond believe they care about the “poor.” It’s less a matter of loving the poor than hating the rich.

I put all this unpleasantness down in black and white because I think these people who are about to be put in power over this country need to be outed and unmasked and rhetorically scourged in public, and their altruistic pretenses destroyed.

Oct 25, 2008 - 7:42 am 128. Doug:

“It’s less a matter of loving the poor than hating the rich. ”
—
And for some, like Ayers and Dohrn, it’s about hating almost everything, including their real selves, masked by their all too apparent love of their imaginary personas.
Legends in their own minds.

Oct 25, 2008 - 7:52 am 129. mika2k1:

“It will happen.”
==

There’s a cascade of events waiting to happen if we don’t act swiftly. Time is not a luxury we have.

Oct 25, 2008 - 8:40 am 130. Unsk:

To me a large segment of the left other than idealistic young who don’t know better and the truly disturbed marxist leftists with envious rage, are the fashionable leftists.

Barrack appeals to all three.

The fashionable leftists are of the three the least understood. Their politics is the politics of me. Engaging in serious political conversation with this hip crowd is almost pointless, except possibly for a hip causes or two they favor. They could care less for most public policy issues. Often, their biggest concern in life and the central pursuit they organize their lives around is: how to appear to be hip and cool around their peers.

The cool hipster sees himself as far cooler than those fly over country hicks and those nasty racist Republican rube haters. So of course, the cool dude effortlessly supports the Democrats, because after all the Democrats are the party of the fashionably correct causes of peace, love, the environment, and the plight of the downtrodden. All the cool people do. The evidence to do so is all around; in the media, in the Universities and in all the cool charities. One doesn’t need to look deeper. From the hip point of view, these socially uncool misfits on the right are to made fun of, and certainly one in the cool set doesn’t dare associate with or take the ravings of the uncool seriously.

These hipsters have a huge emotional investment in the pursuit of coolness. They have spent their entire lives trying to be cool. So, to risk their hard earned cool quotient, their status as a cool hipster or hipsterette for an un-hip, and uncool Republican candidate or cause is almost unthinkable. I know many people whose huge investment in being cool has formed an emotional and psychological barrier to defending anything thought uncool by the fashion mavens. Logical argument won’t break down these fashionable lefties defense of the cool left. Their minds are resistance to logical argument.

Barrack Obama is the coolest candidate of the cool party ever. So its logical that fashionable left would defend him unquestionably. The media has effectively laid out the meme that the criticism of the One is just another racist attack by the evil Republicans. The media and the fashionable left protected Bill Clinton in the same way. Criticism of Bill was not only dismissed, it was used as a example of how rabid and deranged the Right was.

However, there is one sure way of attacking the fashionable left, and Peterike alluded to it: Ridicule. Mock and Ridicule.

The fashionable absolutely can’t stand to made fun of. If Obama is elected President and things start to slide precipitously downhill, there will be plenty of opportunities for ridicule. That may be the best way to fight this guy.

Oct 25, 2008 - 9:44 am 131. Leo Linbeck III:

Volitmand,

Great observations. An additional thought:

People who walk envy people with a bicycle.
People with a bicycle envy people with a used car.
People with a used car envy people with a new car.
People with a car envy people who can fly.
People who fly coach envy people in first class.
People in first class envy people with fractional jet ownership.
People with fractional jet ownership envy people who own their own Cessna Citation.
People with a Citation envy people with a Gulfstream G4.
People with a Gulfstream G4 envy people with a G5.
People with a G5 envy people with two.
People with two envy people with three.
Etc.

Perhaps envyism is simply envy metastasized. You reach the limit of your own personal envy, and you encourage others to envy to validate your own. Or because your own envy is so obviously contrived.

There is no limit to envy. Consuming to be happy always ends up consuming one’s happiness.

L3

Oct 25, 2008 - 10:04 am 132. Pascal:

Unsk: Late-night comedians (contemporary court jesters) and roasts (banter and ribbing among the select) provide Blunt of ridicule so that the fashionable elite and their leaders only shrug that they’ve heard it all before. It may help here and there, but not for this largely callous bunch.

Now, one would think that elite and callous are incompatible. However that is only because how they project themselves, not in reality when it comes to retaining power.

I’ve mentioned this kind of callous behavior before in describing RINOs: dainty and stately towards Dems — the projection — but vicious towards conservatives within the party — callous.

Oct 25, 2008 - 10:16 am 133. Pascal:

L3, Voltimand: happiness is the key. It is fleeting at best.

Ultimately the envious are unhappy that someone seems happier than they. It is how I came to my conclusion as to what the secret of Utopia and Utopians is.

Oct 25, 2008 - 10:20 am 134. fred:

Voltimand @127,

I am going to be as restrained as I possibly can be in reply to the judgment and insult you delivered to me. You are direct and blunt, and so exhibit a refreshing honesty that has its place in the panorama of virtues which make up the dialog about ideas.

First, let me state that one of the great temptations of intellectuals and philosophers is that of reductionism. I have, at times, succumbed to it myself. Takes great discipline to keep its temptations in abeyance. Having said that, I am impressed with the theory of “memetic desire” by Rene Girard. However, I don’t think his theory can encapsulate the entirety of human emotions/psychology involved in utopian thinking.

Those who know me well and who have known me for most of my life know that I am one of the least materialistic people you could meet. And I’ve probably only exhibited envy very early in life, as most children do around their siblings and playmates. But a man who wanted to become a priest and embrace the religious vow of poverty is not a man given over to the vice of envy. However, people who are or who have been maltreated and humiliated will, as a natural response to that condition, resort to resentment. If anything, I do accuse myself of that sin. And I will leave things right there, since this is not a therapy session. Be that as it may, in my personal habits I am generous and have cultivated a healthy recovery from prior episodes in my early life when I was psychologically and physically brutalized. I was attracted to Marxism because I saw in my victimizers many of the vices and shallowness one finds in people who are riven with lust for power and material possessions. And in my travels through adolescence and early adulthood I met a lot of poor people who were stripped of their dignity and humiliated by many of the sorts of people who had stomped on my dignity. So, a kind of fusion of identities took place within me psychologically and intellectually. It is very often the case that men attracted to the priesthood and religious life are men who have undergone similar experiences, and see in the Christ the redemption of those who count for nothing in this world. And it’s all there in the Gospels, if one reads them carefully. But the Gospels are not a blueprint for Marxist revolution or a Marxist society. And part of my eventual falling out with Marxism and the Left involved a growing revulsion with the amorality and ethics of expediency which marks all seekers of power.

I left the Jesuits because I had issues with the total and penetrating power of the religious vow of obedience, which has special emphasis in the Society of Jesus. I could live comfortably with the vows of chastity and poverty.

And now I am a prosperous man in a responsible career who truly is indifferent to material possessions still. My happiness is defined by my relationships, not things.

All in all, Voltimand, you have no idea of who I am and the constellation of my psyche. You should be more careful of how you apply Rene Girad’s insights. Your advice to me, duly noted, is respectfully declined because it is the wrong diagnosis.

Oct 25, 2008 - 11:46 am 135. slade:

The fashionable leftists are of the three the least understood. – Unsk

Bobos in Paradise by David Brooks (2000):

Brooks’s thesis in Bobos in Paradise is that this “new upper class” represents a marriage between the liberal idealism of the 1960s and the self-interest of the 1980s. Critics of Brooks’s thesis argue that he does not provide an argument as to how this elite is new, and that the bobo trend merely represents changing tastes and preferences of a preexisting upper class (not a product of social mobility).

My suggestion is a correlation between the two groups. I think they map pretty closely onto each other.

Oct 25, 2008 - 1:05 pm 136. Leo Linbeck III:

Pascal,

I don’t think true happiness is fleeting. But material satisfaction sure is.

fred,

Fair criticism of the ad-hominem part of V’s argument. In my first read of #127, I didn’t really pick up on it. While I agree with him that many, if not most, socialists are more envious of the rich than concerned for the plight of the poor, he overstates his case by saying they’re all like that.

I have met many people who support socialist policies because they want to help the poor. They are generally blind (genetically or by choice) to the practical implications of the specific policies promoted by socialists. But that doesn’t discredit their motives, only their ability to evaluate evidence, or their unwillingness to change their minds, or both.

Kudos to you for being open-minded enough to change your views in light of evidence. I pray for the same for myself.

L3

Oct 25, 2008 - 1:29 pm 137. Pascal:

Fair enough L3, as it was material satisfaction of which I was thinking.

My overall point remains about perceiving happiness in others, not something that can be purchased, is the thing ultimately envied.

Whatever the source of your happiness, the fact that you are, or even if you are only imagined to be, will raise envy; a very sad state in which to be inclined.

One so afflicted can find the cure within their psyche and soul, but will find it exceedingly more difficult with social justice devils relentlessly picking at the scabs.

From what I can gather from the religiously faithful and/or trained — which sure excludes me — one’s love for God, the first commandment, is the said to be path to happiness. Thus I have always found it remarkable that it is so infrequently concluded that coveting, warned against by the last commandment, is the surest path away from happiness.

Fred, as your disillusionment with “liberation theology” grew, did that juxtaposition ever strike you? Positively following the first leads to happiness, violating the last leads way from it.

Oct 25, 2008 - 2:24 pm 138. Leo Linbeck III:

Pascal,

Remarkable, indeed. But my grandfather kept a little carved wooden sign over his bar at home (where he mixed his daily scotch and water) which said:

We are too soon old, and too late smart.

Cheers.

L3

Oct 25, 2008 - 3:29 pm 139. Fred:

Pascal,

The first part of the Great Commandment is not an easy thing to expostulate upon. How does one “love” a Mystery and an abstraction one has never seen? And yet we can, but the journey to arrive at that state of being requires a kind of maturity and humility that comes only from having some inner calm. An inner ability cultivated over time to appreciate beauty and be humbled in awe of the universe and creation. God does not need our love, so God wanting us to love Him/Her must be rooted in a greater wisdom that understands us completely. That understanding knows we cannot rest at peace until we expend energy in seeking God out. It’s a journey that tests us in every way, because we can never fully understand God. We are fragile beings, and so our existence is fraught with suffering and destruction. Job’s story is in many ways our own.

To me, to love God means being humble and open to being filled by the Holy Spirit, so as to incrementally grow in a relationship with this Mystery. We seek out that which we love, so to love God is to always, restlessly be seeking God out in our encounters with the hints of God’s existence – in creation and in our fellow human beings.

And that is why the ultimate proof that we love God is in how we love our fellow human beings. To know what this means, we have to look to the life that Jesus of Nazareth lived and try to follow that life as best we can. That is why both parts of the Great Commandment are joined in a kind of symbiosis. They aren’t opposed to each other.

Religiosity that is devoid of, or relegates to an inferior position, the love for human beings is a deception.

Oct 25, 2008 - 7:06 pm 140. Pascal:

Fred, as you may know from the unwelcome stances I’ve taken, although I am not religious I couldn’t agree with you more about love for human beings.

However, you did not answer the question I raised, as I was clearly referring to the ten, not to the two Great. Still, your answer was enlightening. I believe Voltimand saw something none of the rest of us saw, and thus his comment was not necessarily meant as an insult. I am reminded of the various case studies in C. S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce: so many so close to paradise, but their self-assuredness would convince them the gray town was where its at.

Oct 25, 2008 - 8:11 pm 141. fred:

Pascal,

I still maintain that Voltimand is completely wrong about me and my life. I am not attacking his affinity for the insights of Rene Girard. They shed light on aspects of some of the people involved in the socialist project. But the psychological profile he puts up in no way correctly takes the correct reading of my life and thinking. I claim no privileged status and only humbly submit a few shards of testimony about my life. I do not know Voltimand personally, as I do not know you; I dare not presume to know you guys well enough to make a judgment about your psychological profiles. The arrogance of attempting to do so simply is not a part of who I am.

One has to be very careful, as I stated, to not succumb to the temptations of reductionism. Girard’s insights are not invalid. They are just not valid for all persons who have participated in socialist movements. I see in Girard perhaps his own biases, as the French are so famous for (and my ancestry is French, by the way!): tending towards cynicism. We have to be careful not to project on to others our own dark perceptions.

I have read C.S. Lewis’ “The Great Divorce.” I am not going to comment about the aspersion cast about the kind of type of character described in that book that I am supposed to be.

I do not appreciate being “psychologized” like this on a public forum, as if I am supposed to be still some kind of closet socialist. I happen to think I stand on solid footing in Catholic theology, Catholic social teaching, and in traditional, orthodox understanding of scripture. I object to being pidgeonholed by people who have not studied theology and philosophy as I have. Clearly, my years on that journey and how I have evolved do give evidence of my faith struggles and growth as a human being, an incomplete project as I type these words.

Oct 25, 2008 - 8:59 pm 142. Voltimand:

Fred says: “I am going to be as restrained as I possibly can be in reply to the judgment and insult you delivered to me.” I came back to this blog late, so I shall be brief.

I was talking about the ideological rhetoric you developed and put on this blog. I was not talking about you personally. I meant no insult because, frankly, I don’t care what your personal motivations were in whatever life or ideological choices you have made. You make an argument that appeals to a certain kind of reasoning, and I attack that argument and call into question that reasoning. If you want to take that personally, then I would say that you are, as some psychobobbies would put it, “over-determined.” Your life choices are your business, and not mine.

As re: Girard–you want to attack Girard then get ready to attack the history of the French novel up through the first half of the 20th century, since much of it is about envy.

Oct 25, 2008 - 9:49 pm 143. Fred:

No, Voltimand, you placed my reasoning against socialism as somehow still inside the fold, and based on “envy and resentment.” Go back and read what you wrote.

“Fred, I think you haven’t quite divested yourself of the massive amount of self-deception socialists dress themselves in.”

You just toss something like this out there, and I have no idea as to why you say that about me. Your denial rings hollow and you have the nerve to be flip when I call your attention to it. I can assure you that if the roles were reversed you would not stand for it. But I would never go to that level anyway, so it’s a moot point.

Point out to me how I am currently a cryptic socialist. Put up, or stop the cryptic sniping. And using Girard as a template to cram down on me, however elegant you think you are being, is still an ad hominem attack.

Grow up.

Oct 25, 2008 - 10:00 pm 144. Pascal:

One of the worst things about the multicultural movement is its insistence that English not be required in official business.

Even people speaking the same language may lazily, readily, self-consciously, deliberately, whatever, chose negative inferences from barely ambiguous choices of words.

Add to that ruthless politicians who advance by instigating everything from envy to distrust to hatred between neighbors.

It is clearly going to be much harder for multi-culti neighbors to mount rebellion against their common enemy when that enemy controls the major avenues of communication and pass lying interpretations across the language barrier.

Oct 25, 2008 - 11:36 pm 145. Ursus Maritimus:

“If you think about an Obama victory ceteris paribus it looks like a win for the Left. But if you imagine an Obama administration during a time of economic contraction, of huge governmental expansion and guaranteed foreign instability you get a different picture. It’s like lifting the creaky dresser at one corner while it’s loaded with old wrenches and being pulled in other directions.”

Won’t the total impossibility of O holding on to the Presidency make him *more* predisposed to extraordinary measures that keeps him in power, not *less*?

Oct 29, 2008 - 7:08 am 146. Ursus Maritimus:

“Can the bad guys put the pieces together in the next four years?”

Starting from zero, staging a coup in Pakistan to get their hands on nukes, would certainly take less than two years.

Also starting from zero, organizing a resonably convoluted shell-game to get a ship with a 100kt fusion-boosted fission warhead plus ten tons of industrial quality zink into Chesapeake Bay when winds are towards DC? One to Five years.

Zink: http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Nwfaq/Nfaq1.html#nfaq1.6
Pakistan: http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Pakistan/PakArsenal.html

Both efforts can run in parallel ofc.

And we don’t know that they are starting from zero. On the contrary we know that when it comes to a coup in Pakistan they are starting far from zero, already having the Secret Police (ISI) in their corner.

Oct 29, 2008 - 8:27 am

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