Erica Jong speculates on the outcome of an Obama electoral loss in terms which set the standard for the word hysteria.
Yesterday, Jane Fonda sent me an email to tell me that she cried all night and can’t cure her ailing back for all the stress that has reduces her to a bundle of nerves.”
“My back is also suffering from spasms, so much so that I had to see an acupuncturist and get prescriptions for Valium.”
“After having stolen the last two elections, the Republican Mafia…”
“If Obama loses it will spark the second American Civil War. Blood will run in the streets, believe me. And it’s not a coincidence that President Bush recalled soldiers from Iraq for Dick Cheney to lead against American citizens in the streets.”
“Bush has transformed America into a police state, from torture to the imprisonment of reporters, to the Patriot Act.”
Beer, boys, beer. It’s time to drink a beer. Even in the unlikely event that what Erica Jong predicts happens, I would rather die drunk than die insane.
Barack Obama, who is sometimes reported as so far ahead that the election is already over, was reported as uttering these portentous words on CNN:
“Don’t believe for a second this election is over. Don’t think for a minute that power concedes anything. It’s gonna get nasty, I’m sure, in the next four days,” Obama told a crowd in Columbia, Missouri, on Thursday night.
“They will throw everything at us like they’ve been doing, and we’re gonna have to work like our future depends on it in this last week. You know what? Because it does, and every single young person here tonight — I’ve gotta have every single one of you voting, and you’ve gotta grab five more, all of you, have gotta vote,” he said.
Open thread. Why are the atmospherics like this? Is this the result of extremist campaigning on the Left? On the Right? On both sides? Or is just media hype? Part of the problem may arise from the effect of self-fulfilling prophecies: The term describes the phenomenon where “a prophecy declared as truth when it is actually false may sufficiently influence people, either through fear or logical confusion, so that their reactions ultimately fulfill the once-false prophecy. … If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.”
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247 Comments
1. jaymaster:Everyone has a voice now. And everyone has the means to listen.
And there are no filters in place to keep the most radical thoughts from every point of the compass, sane, insane or anywhere in between, from floating around the world.
Oct 31, 2008 - 5:46 pm 2. arkroyal:Psychotic rantings. I am sure that she would like to see blood in the streets if Obama loses.
Oct 31, 2008 - 5:47 pm 3. wretchard:In the last two months I’ve received a lot of emails from people who were distraught about the probable outcome of these elections. But not a single one of them suggested, even remotely, indirectly or tangentially, that they would not respect the laws. An electoral outcome would break their heart, but it would not break their loyalty. One got the sense that although they might seek other employment or enter politics full time to take a hand in public life no one was going to go berserk.
I think most people are like that: sane, even on the liberal side of the aisle until you get to the edges, where all the bets are off. That knowledge provides a great of confidence.
But it’s also a fact that events can come, seemingly bolt out of the blue, to upset a seemingly rock-solid situation. Niall Ferguson makes the point that the bond markets never anticipated the First World War. The more interesting question to me is what the pathology if hysteria is — hysteria as opposed to realism — and what societies defenses are against it. My own feeling is that the best defense against hysteria is a span of relative uneventfulness. Panic’s ally is the feeling of time running out, of walls closing in, of things falling apart. We live from the energies of the day; but we are sustained by the repose of sleep.
The idea that popping a beer might help is only half-facetious. Just don’t pop so many that you break them off at the necks and pour them down your throat.
Oct 31, 2008 - 6:01 pm 4. Cris:I suspect it’s an especially bad case of Kael Syndrome with the recognition that there are people who don’t worship the One, and thus are, prima facie, evil.
Oct 31, 2008 - 6:16 pm 5. programmer:Note well that violence is only predicted if Obama loses. The assumption is that if McCain loses, the turnover will be peaceful. What a bunch of maroons, as the immortal Bugs Bunny would say.
Oct 31, 2008 - 6:28 pm 6. OldSalt:I’m not panicked or insane. I’m angry. The left has claimed “stolen elections”.. “police state”, and so forth for eight years, with no evidence of either. However, Palin’s private email is rifled, her daughter’s privacy invaded, state resources were used in Ohio to “out” dirt on a private citizen called “Joe the Plumber”, Acorn is under investigation for massive vote fraud in over a dozen states and EVERY potential single state, and you know what?
They’re going to get away with it.
Obama and the Democrats sided with evil when evil was putting American soldiers in body bags, and it’ll get them elected.
Give me 5 minutes and I can come up with 10 pages of immoral, unpatriotic, or outright criminal behavior, and you know what?
The Democrats will make it pay off.
We have a former Navy ace in prison, a former GOP congress man, because of ethic malfeasance, and the same behavior cost Democrats nothing. They will expand their minorities, power, and get promotions.
How much evil can this republic tolerate before it changes America at it’s core?
There is no logical reason American cannot in a few short years go the way of other dying empires or nations. Nothing is “free”. Clinton’s games in the White House cost every damn American life that was lost over the last eight years - because of Clinton, American deterrence failed.
And you know what? They Democrats own America, and everything in the last eight years that anyone did for this country will be for nothing.
But heck, I’m not gloomy at all. It’s not like one party committed to state control, opposed to democracy, and corrupt to it’s core will control two of three branches of government, with an excellent chance to own all three within 2 years?
The Democrats spent 8 years in pathalogical hatred of George Bush, in my opinion, merely for who he was, i.e. a self-professing Christian, patriot, and generally a moderate guy willing to work with the other side of the aisle. My target of hate will be about 1/2 of the electorate, not because of how I “feel” about them, but because of the concrete steps they will take to permanently restrict American’s freedom.
My attitudes are founded on fear based on fact. We’ll see how things play out.
Oct 31, 2008 - 6:34 pm 7. slade:If that happens, I guess she’ll have to overcome her Fear of Flying.
Oct 31, 2008 - 6:36 pm 8. RWE:Interesting that someone who once enthusiastically climbed into the gunner’s seat of a a Commmunist dictatorship’s AAA gun would be so worried about the creation of a Police State.
Oh! Wait a minute! That gun was pointed at people like John McCain. Now I understand. Extremism in the defense of extremism is no crime.
Anyone need the website address of the Civillan Marksmanship Program, http://www.odcmp.com ?
Oct 31, 2008 - 6:37 pm 9. Charles:Well I’ve just got finished passing out the last of the candy this evening.
There might be a high school kid or two who will straggle in for candy. They typically have a lame look on their face. I know I’ll never see them again on halloween. some things die hard.
I’ve left off watching a tv series. One show after another portrayed the battles of the Enterprise. I picked up the story at Midway and followed it to just after it was nearly sunk off Guadalcanal.
My church is singing an african gospel tune O Sifuni Mungu (All Creatures of our God and King) this week end. So I’m learning the lines as I work on the computer. If you look to the right of the utube sound track you’ll notice that there are dozens of choirs that have done the tune in the last couple years.
Obama might play the bad sport like his cousin odinga. But I doubt it. The long knives of the democratic party would come for him. They will anyway. imho more likely he will take a lot of money off the field with him when he leaves that will shape the democratic party for years to come.
Oct 31, 2008 - 6:40 pm 10. Stew:Old Salt-
Oct 31, 2008 - 6:42 pm 11. slade:In paragraph one, please add prepaid credit cards and untraceable donors. And you couldn’t be more right, they will get away with it.
3316 comments.
That’s a boat load of histrionics.
Oct 31, 2008 - 6:55 pm 12. Alexis:Ever since the start of the Obama campaign, Obama has been making threats. The threats are downright obvious if you actually look at the art on his website.
Did you know there is a prominent anarchist “A” on one of his computer wallpapers?
Did you know there are fingers grasping at the skyline of that same wallpaper?
Did you know his art consistently shows fiery and burning colors in reverse?
Did you know, in one major poster and computer wallpaper, there’s a claw coming out of Obama’s shirt aimed at the viewer?
Did you know the “rising sun” symbol actually refers to Barack Obama himself?
Did you know the “rising sun” actually looks just like an eye staring back at you?
It’s all there in plain sight and yet it is generally his supporters who see his propaganda, not his opponents.
It’s not as if Barack Obama hasn’t been warning all of us that it would get nasty if he doesn’t get his way. He has been warning us all along. It’s just that his campaign art did the talking while he would personally talk smooth and sweet.
It is just as important to use forensic analysis on artwork in political campaigns as it is to use forensic analysis on anything else. Just google the exact phrase “detecting subliminal images” and press “I’m Feeling Lucky” and see what you find.
Happy Halloween!
Oct 31, 2008 - 7:01 pm 13. Gaffe Prices:I know I’m not alone in being sick to death of all the perfunctory histrionics and hysteria from the left. But that is why I love this article. They are starting to squeal like pigs, so all is not comfort in a la la land, they know something some of ours refuse to let ourselves believe, which is that this could be a rebounding victory for us.
I hope they burn down Chicago. Its like that lawyer joke; it’d be a good start. Won’t have to worry about “infrastructure” there. Just bulldose it into the Lake.
P. S. McCain will win Michigan, Wisconsin, California, Colorado, North Carolina. Ohio, Pennsylvannia, Maine, New Hampshire, New York, Texas, Florida, California and New Mexico. And all the red states. Thats what the polls say.
Oct 31, 2008 - 7:29 pm 14. Derek:What I’m interested in seeing is the results if Obama wins.
If they are insane already, the only question is to what lengths they will go.
I’m looking forward to seeing how the media spin riots as a good thing.
Derek
Oct 31, 2008 - 7:36 pm 15. JavaThread:McCain campaign quote for next four days (or at least how were handling things in Indiana):
Oct 31, 2008 - 7:50 pm 16. TmjUtah:“I will not permit a defeatist attitude to raise its ugly head in this command. We are going to win this son of a bitch.”
Command Sergeant Major Neil Ciotola
(at the start of the Surge in Iraq, July 3, 2007)
http://www.blackfive.net/main/2007/07/command-sergean.html
Be of good cheer and always maintain the civic virtues.
And be ready. Always be ready.
Charles mentions the “long knives”; I propose that Obama, upon election, will make the … adjustment of the DNC and caucus leadership his first priority. Kicking reporters off a charter is nothing. Watch Dean, Pelosi, and Reid being kicked to the curb will be the curtain raiser.
It will be downhill from there, for as long as it lasts.
He’s not running to change. He’s running to destroy.
Be ready.
Oct 31, 2008 - 8:13 pm 17. Fred:Ms. Jong has spent too much time in an echo chamber. I am sure there are many people who believe as she does. They spend all their time talking to each other with no outside reference.
The result is the hallucinations of sensory deprivation.
Oct 31, 2008 - 8:15 pm 18. hdgreene:In my last 12 hours of driving around Western Pa and eastern Ohio I’ve seen two bumper stickers: one McCain, One Obama. I haven’t seen a large number of yard signs. I live in a heavily Democratic area and the Obama signs are not numerous but they have been around for a few weeks. McCain signs have sprouted up in the last few days in “upper working class” areas. You see a lot of McCain signs along the rural roads — a lot of signs but, unfortunately, few voters.
I joke with a lot of Democrat voters about the election. They seem to have proudly returned to their party because of the financial meltdown and the Dems’ reputation (deserved or not) for fighting for the little guy. They even listen to me trash that reputation (with a smile on my face and a lilt in my voice). Their commitment to Obama seems less solid then their pride in the party, though. I’ve had Democrats say to me, “When people get in the booth, who knows?” I tell them they can vote for McCain and still stick with their party. And sometimes I think they’re not sure how their friends will vote for president — or what they might do themselves. They will all be a brick wall down ticket, though.
By the way, they’ve asked me not to have a wig out Wednesday if McCain loses.
I drive through African American neighborhoods, too, and don’t see many Obama signs. Of course he will carry those areas by 98 percent so they might feel yard signs are redundant. Or maybe African Americans will sit out the Civil War the English Profs will wage if the One comes up short one elector. I have not talked politics with any African Americans this go round, nor they with me. But regardless of color or party, people are keeping their politics on the down low.
From what I’ve seen I would not rule out a McCain win: Just the likelihood of it.
Oct 31, 2008 - 8:20 pm 19. Thrasymachus:The safe bet is Obama will win. If McCain does win, there will be riots but the left will go completely nuts. They have been sabotaging Bush (State and CIA) for years but that will just accelerate. Anything that can leak, will be leaked. Not that McCain, any more than Bush, is a right wing conservative. The Left can get almost anything they want out of McCain by flattering him but if they were that smart they wouldn’t be leftists.
Obama wins? Celebratory riots. Stepped up vilification of any who oppose or disagree. Obama appointees in the Justice Department start making life miserable for any who oppose or disagree. Obama appointees to the federal courts move the law well to the left. Enjoy your civil liberties for a few more months.
Oct 31, 2008 - 8:22 pm 20. Leo Linbeck III:Come, now. You clearly don’t understand how hard it is to be a novelist, poet, and essayist who has consistently used her craft to help provide women with a powerful and rational voice in forging a feminist consciousness.
These aren’t histrionics. They’re demonstrations of authenticity!
Sheesh.
L3
Oct 31, 2008 - 8:31 pm 21. fred:Fred (from the other fred),
I agree with you. Ms. Jong has long lived in a very weird echo chamber. She’s not exactly a stable character and has a history of unsuccessful marriages and relationships. She’s not “good people” and would seem to have no real loyalty to the country.
Most of the members here would not be real happy with an Obama victory. We’ve dissected it and what it would mean for the country and our lives, but we all love our country and no one here wants to go on a violent rampage to protest the outcome of an election.
Erica Jong is the kind of woman to whom one should pose the question (as if being a psychotherapist and she’s on the couch): What, madam, exactly is it you want from this relationship?
Oct 31, 2008 - 8:34 pm 22. NahnCee:Wretchard, we’ve been telling you for several weeks now that America is verging upon civil war. You’ve tut-tut’d, patted our fevered brows, and told us to start working harder on our civil and political science efforts.
NOW, that the Left are also overtly promising blood in the streets, you suddenly sit up and take them seriously.
I swear it’s like the Liberals and Democrats are Muslims who have established a reputation for violent insanity, so they have to have attention paid and be placated. So now Republicans and conservatives are not only expected to be the mature flexible adults to whackadoodle Muslims, but we’re also expected to back down and accept violence, fraud, slander, and threats.
But, like Old Salt says, a lot of us are mad as hell. So if Erica Jong wants to take her civil war to the street (implying, of course, that we’ll be seeing roaming herds of black people screaming “burn, baby, burn!” once again) then fine. Bring it on. Koreans won’t be the only citizens armed and waiting this time to face the pitchforks and torches of the howling mob.
Which I predict will melt away toot sweet once they realize that real people with large guns and no wussy rules of engagement are waiting to greet them.
Oct 31, 2008 - 8:46 pm 23. 3Case:Why are the atmospherics like this?
Erica Jong was over in the late eighties. IMO, she wasn’t much to start.
The atmospherics are like this because the Dems want them like this. They control the atmospherics; have since ‘74. Cronkite in the late ’60s was the first mists wafting in; Rather was a fog machine. One manner in which Reagan was exceptional was that he could pierce their atmospherics at will. They hated him for that and do to this day.
We are witnessing the conclusion of the quadrennial bleat of the whiners and criers and ninnies, i.e. Dems. It ALWAYS concludes with them threatening violence, whether directly or by transference. It is supremely boring. Were that it were not so potentially deadly….
Oct 31, 2008 - 8:51 pm 24. fred:NahnCee,
These nutjobs think that this is some kind of Leftist romantic morality play in which they re-take the Winter Palace of St. Petersburg in 1917. What a bunch of barking imbeciles!
I get the impression that California is a pretty unhinged place even before this election. Ronald Reagan must be turning in his grave to see what has become of his adopted state.
Erica Jong is a socialist Jew from New York City. But I guess she’s taken up residence out there in the moonbat enclaves that dot the state. If I were a native Californian living in the Central Valley I would wonder what it would take to reverse this rot. And Oregon and Washington State are not much better. But I live in New England and New Hampshire has dramatically changed during the past two decades. It’s every bit as Blue as Massachusetts now is.
Oct 31, 2008 - 8:56 pm 25. exhelodrvr:Derek,
“I’m looking forward to seeing how the media spin riots as a good thing.”
They won’t spin it as a good thing, but from a “they had no choice but to riot” perspective. Just like they did when the Muslim youths rioted in France a couple of years ago.
Oct 31, 2008 - 8:58 pm 26. Peter Grynch:The Democrats made the conscious decision to try to steal the election in 2000. When that didn’t work, they sought to delegitimize the elected government as a way of energizing their base. From now on, all elections will be won or lost in the courts. They haven’t yet gained complete control of the Supreme Court, but once they achieve that goal America will no longer be the country it has been.
Oct 31, 2008 - 9:10 pm 27. 2164th:The Google and Youtube search engines have radically changed over the past two days regarding searches for videos on John McCain.It is next to impossible to find anything through the chaff of all negative videos.
I just did a couple of experiments on searches for videos on either youtube or google videos. There is no question that the fix is in. This has happened within the last two or three days. There is no question in my mind that this has happened, probably in anticipation of any last minute releases of damaging video to Obama.
Oct 31, 2008 - 9:14 pm 28. Ex-fetus:America has been drifting to the right for the last couple of decades. Since Ronnie. The communist dialectic says that is impossible, so the Socialists, Liberal, Progressives, whatever they are calling themsleves today, are in a panic.
After Socialism collapsed in the Soviet Union, and China morphed into quasi capitalism, the Liberals, Socialists, etc. went underground and took over in Europe. That is what the dialectic says would happen. Coups, especially nonviolent ones are ALWAYS better then civil war.
The Left is getting desperate. That is because the major difference between the USA and any other nation is the Cobstitution. A Constitution that is biased against Socialism, Communism, etc.
The very concept of ‘checks and balances’ is a dagger thru the heart to the Socialist ideal of one party, one state, one leader. Right now the only thing standing between the Constitution and Socialism taking over America is the Judicary. Leaning might be a bterr word, or slumping. The Left has been flanking the Constitution by putting forth Socialist judges that make laws from the bench. President Bush put an end to that. There are 2 judges that will die or retire from the SC in the next few years. Both are far left, law making judges. If they are replace with center or right leaning judges, the Constitution will survive and Socialism in America won’t.
That is why the far left is pulling out all the stops this election. Voter fraud, massive illegal fund raising efforts and suborning the 4th estate. If they cannot get a messianic politician like Ohhhh……BAAMA! elected, when the deck is stacked in their favor, then they are toast. A civil war is inevitable, since neither side can compromise without being destroyed. If no one is taking prisoners, surrender isn’t much of an option.
I could argue that it has already started. The Media is clearly on the Anti-American ( anti-Constitutional IS anti-American) side. Those envelopes of some sort of white powder could be anthrax next time. Not all civil wars involve masses of armed men roaming the country side shooting at each other. Some civil wars are done with the sniper’s shot, the knife in the dark, the envelope with white powder.
A few years ago 2 men with a rifle tied up Washington D.C for a week or so. Imagine that x10, x100, x1000, x10000. Those two men were caught by good police work and a bit of luck. If that had been 4 teams instead of 1, they could have gone on for years.
The whole idea of ballots is that it avoids bullets. When one party games the system to make those ballots worthless,, then there is no alternative to bullets.
http://newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin84.htm
Ohhhh…baama! is an ineligible candidate. He cannot be President. By LAW, under the Constitution. No matter if he gets 100% of the vote and 538 EV’s. Any American that has sworn to uphold the Constitution has no choice but Civil War.
Ohhhhhhh……BAAMA! knows this, which makes one wonder why he hasn’t allowed his Birth certificate to see the light of day. Looking at the huge number of friends and mentors that hate America, both by word and deed, I wonder if a civil war isn’t the purpose behind the Ohhhhh…..BAAMA! campaign.
Oct 31, 2008 - 9:22 pm 29. Alexis:The last civil war was won by the north,, mainly because the south could get no support from any European nation.
That won’t happen this time. Every swinging dick in the UN will be supporting one side or the other. And why not? Anything that hurts America helps China, Russia, Iran, France, etc.
Oh, and one more thing.
Obama’s website shows his rising sun emblem not only superceding symbols of the American Republic, but one American flag is shown upside down.
Everything I write here about Obama’s art is documented. The stuff is so disturbing and bizarre that I couldn’t make it up if I tried. Obama’s art appears designed to get people excited, and if you take a look at the negative images of his art you’d get excited too.
There’s one image from Obama campaign art that has triggered involuntary muscle spasms in my leg several times. Chris Matthews may have gotten a thrill up his leg, but my leg locked up and I had to walk it off each time.
Oct 31, 2008 - 9:31 pm 30. cedarford:The Jong histrionics are just the flip side of the nutballs at Belmont Club on the far right predicting an Obama victory will mean socialism, re-education camps, “Islamofascist triumph!”, the eradication of “Their Special Friend”, and NYC becoming a smoking radioactive crater.
Pity Obama will not lose because it would have been great to see blacks, Jewish intelligensia, and hard left types completely go nuts.
But we can - even us moderate Republicans and Independents - take in the lesser pleasure of watching the last Neocons leave the hallways of power, Dubya headed out in just disgrace, the Religious Right becoming partially deranged and weeping at the airport as their Goddess boards a one-way flight for Alaska.
And all the fun investigations that are about to start on the graft and corruption that infested Bush Administration contracts on Iraq, Homeland Security. Watching their K-Street cabal do some major CYA, and the Wall Street crooks hauled out once the FBI probes are complete.
The only thing I won’t like at all, is the all but certain Lefty, angry studies academia, and remnant Jewish MSM media effort to brand states that voted for Obama “good states” and the McCain states as ones “still struggling to overcome their racist past”.
Oct 31, 2008 - 9:31 pm 31. Tcobb:Ah–the beauty of having a disarmed population. When the government is the only one who can protect you from violence, what do you do when the powers that be say that if an election doesn’t come out the way they think it should that, oh well, there may be riots and there is nothing we can do about it? A threat from above posed as a prediction.
I doubt there will be much rioting in the states where gun ownership is considered to be a right. Would-be rioters know that such behavior may result in serious bodily injury or death.
Oct 31, 2008 - 9:32 pm 32. EvilDave:True, we are edging towards either a civil war or the end of the Republic (ala Rome).
The Democrats hate America. That is indisputable. They, like the children and narcissists that they are, are constantly driven mad by not getting their way.
The problem for Republicans is there is nowhere to flee to. The Dems have Europe & Canada if they wish. For those of use who believe Western Civilization is worth preserving, we only have this Byzantium of the British Empire left.
Although I agree with Evan Sayet, we are fighting a holding action. With the schools being Leftist indoctrination centers and the Greatest Generation dieing out, we will soon be left with no one who grew-up when it was widely believed that America and Western Civilization were worth a damn, and soon we will be filled with those who have been raised by those that believe the Western Civilization ins’ worth a damn.
The Conservatives & Moderates in English can flee to the UA, AU, CA, but where do Americans have to flee?
Oct 31, 2008 - 9:37 pm 33. Tamquam Leo Rugiens:Beer’s too weak for this kind of insanity. Make mine something with real bite, to make the ambient insanity bearable.
Oct 31, 2008 - 9:38 pm 34. JMH:Why are the atmospherics like this?
Why does a spoiled brat throw a tantrum?
The Left has learned that violence, or the threat of it, gets them what they want at little risk. Nobody cracks their heads or destroys their property. Nobody chucks them in jail for inciting violence or attempting to intimidate political opponents. It’s all tolerated because… because…
Can anyone help me out here? Why is it tolerated? Because they act like petulant children do the rest of us mistakenly excuse them childish excess? Maybe, but ultimately, I don’t know why it’s tolerated. I just know that it is and because it is, the Left indulges in it. And they’re not two year olds. They’re fully grown adults capable to doing real damage to our society. It’s time we said ENOUGH! in the “Very Unhappy Dad” voice. And then backed it up. Otherwise we will have to (continue to) live with the consequences of spoiled children grown to adulthood.
Oct 31, 2008 - 9:43 pm 35. viktor silo:There was a sentence missing which preceeded your quote about Erica Jong. It should read:
“My friends Ken Follett and Susan Cheever are extremely worried. Naomi Wolf calls me every day. Yesterday, Jane Fonda sent me an email to tell me that she cried all night and can’t cure her ailing back for all the stress that has reduces her to a bundle of nerves.”
Ken Follet?? “Eye of the Needle” Follet?? What the hell is he doing hanging around with that piece of sh*t Erica Jong?
I hope Follet is just banging her. If I thought that he was actually friends with her I would slit my wrists right now.
Take me now, Lord, I don’t want to see the rest of this movie.
Oct 31, 2008 - 9:53 pm 36. slade:Watching this election is like watching a Coen brothers movie. I remember thinking when I watched Fargo that the “spark”, aside from script, acting, directing, but the spark that differentiated their films was the repeated juxtaposition of conflicting emotions. Far from being a novel technique in any art form, but they managed to avoid the trap of the nonsensical and even what I would consider the trap of the fantasical, which detracts from the “bitch-slap” of reality.
The imagery of this election is like that. From Iowahawk’s devastating parody to the disturbing imagery of Obama’s marketing team (and it IS disturbing - a key poker “tell”) to the furious angst over Palin to a serious economic crisis interrupted by fierce disputes over pigs with lipstick, birth certificates, ’60’s radicals, preachers in mansions, relatives living in huts in Africa, rock tours in Europe, $150,000 wardrobes, Beach Boys parodies that nobody understood, plumbers with records, and spouses with issues.
Now some believe “the fix is in.” FWIW, I tend to think that the fix scenario is plausible to probable. And that is a sobering thought amid all the laughter, which can be excused, I think, because conservatives are naturally more witty.
A character trait that should find ample purpose in the years to come.
Oct 31, 2008 - 10:09 pm 37. Leo Linbeck III:Methinks the Bard has already staged this scene.
ACT IV, SCENE 1
Oct 31, 2008 - 10:14 pm 38. fred:A cavern. In the middle, a boiling cauldron.
If she were my daughter and was throwing a tantrum and holding her breath, I would tell her to just keep holding her breath. But then she would only pass out.
Erica Jong should be put out of her misery. Any method will do.
Oct 31, 2008 - 10:28 pm 39. NahnCee:On Drudge, Obama’s illegal alien aunt from Africa ignored her deportation order several years ago and has been living in public housing on the East Coast. The story says it is “unclear” how she qualified for public housing while being illegal and under a deportation order.
But when he’s elected she can count on free gas and money for a mortgage payment just like all the other African-Americans, I’m sure.
Oct 31, 2008 - 10:41 pm 40. Xixi:Jong has constructed her own bitterness. Let her wallow in it. It is the bitterness of a vain woman gone past her sell-by date. She can’t go back.
Oct 31, 2008 - 10:51 pm 41. Pat Patterson:Interesting that two people can channel Gilda Radner’s old character, Emily Litella, at the same time. Unfortunately neither has the grace or awareness to look into the public’s eye and say, “Never mind!”
Oct 31, 2008 - 11:14 pm 42. outa my league:Wretchard,
How is it that poll numbers such as 47/44, produce 95% doomsayers at the Belmont Club, who buy into the “inevitability” propaganda?
Count me out!
Oct 31, 2008 - 11:38 pm 43. wretchard:Here’s my two cents. Nobody can win this election. If McCain wins, he’ll modestly ramp up government spending on the back of a shrinking economy and we’ll have a two year recession and the whatever’s left of the Republican Party will be annnihilated in 2010 as a consequence. If Obama wins, he’ll ramp up government spending big time on the back of a shrinking economy and we’ll have a four year recession and whoever inherits the debris will be faced with a world spun out of control and in serious crisis.
So whatever happens we are going to enter a crisis mode for the next half decade. So the priority should be building a nucleus around which good political ideas and people can gather. A crisis is an opportunity, not only to drink beer but to get ready while events clear out the cobwebs. Things will happen which nobody can predict. So there’s no use trying to predict them. The only rational thing to do is get ready to offer up constructive help when the unexpected happens.
Nov 1, 2008 - 12:06 am 44. cjm:calm the f down.
this is not armagedon, it’s not appamatox. it’s just another election. we have our joan d’arc, everything else is noise.
if obama gets in, he will wreak havoc for two years and then the dem majority is anhilated.
the real goal is to replace the gop.
keep faith in america, cannae is not upon us and may never arrive.
Nov 1, 2008 - 12:13 am 45. Steve Skubinna:cjm, the Romans came back from Cannae and won in the end. Or was that your point?
Regardless, I will be disappointed if Obama wins. I won’t take to the streets, or flee the country, or even go John Galt. I will simply be disappointed, as I was when we twice elected Clinton. Disappointment is survivable.
Either way, however, there will be some compensation. Watching the growing sense of betrayal from the hard left as reality refuses to march to their drum will provide amusement.
Nov 1, 2008 - 12:31 am 46. HK_Vol:I’m guessing Obama wins and the changes passed by Congress and signed by Congress will be onerous and confiscatory on those that are the most productive.
Rather than “blood on the streets,” those that provide capital to markets will slowly and surely pull a “John Galt” and withdraw from the system.
Nov 1, 2008 - 1:03 am 47. Dave:Whether by simply buying tax-free munis and paying little or no taxes, or by working less and less hard to spend more time with family, by leaving the US, or by some other means (expanded black market and bartering anyone?), transferring your wealth to your non-US spouse (if you have one), the left will see a shocking drop in tax revenue and their solution will be to simply raise taxes higher…..because it’s the patriotic thing to do!!
Unlax fellers. In the second place this election is not a done deal. In the first place, those that would do us permanent harm
are nowhere near as powerful as they fantasize themselves to be.
Our canary in the mine? Why c4 of course.
If anybody starts running the country in a way that makes him happy, we really will be in deep kimchi.
cjm: Get rid of the GOP? Maybe, maybe not. Probably not. No sweat. A multidisciplinary approach pertains to removing the epidermis from the feline.
Wretch: Maybe a half-decade of crisis. Maybe not. In spite of himself, McCain will refrain from the type of Hoover/FDR micromanagement that so prolonged things back when. Obama will try to do the opposite, but he is so clueless that he might de-control without knowing what hit him.
Them furrin affairs remain the wild card. No telling what some key players may do abroad.
Nov 1, 2008 - 1:04 am 48. Kenneth:Iran/Al Qaeda/ ad nauseum will expect the American left to give them America on a silver platter. When that gift is not forthcoming—-because it caanot be—–they may come totally unhinged. Nothing to do but wait and see.
I enjoy the thought of Erica Jong and rest of the idiot left being so miserable. Jong is a truther and will find another reason to be miserable even if Obama wins - she won’t be happy unless she’s unhappy.
Obama’s been losing his Messiah sheen since his “spread the wealth” comment as his obvious liberalism and radical associations have been trickling through the media - it would be a real parade of horror for any candidate who hadn’t already been anointed.
The spoilage of Obama’s image coupled with low gas prices and a market rally might be enough for voters to wake up and think “OMG, WTF was I thinking?” and pull that McCain lever. Or at least stay home and nurse their hangover.
Nov 1, 2008 - 2:05 am 49. Unsk:We got some good Halloween Treat on this all Hallows Eve. !
Zogby has Mc Cain up by 1.
Boy is Erica’s back going to ache now!
Looking beyond all the doom and gloom at the Belmont, all the campaign memes of the last two weeks have favored Mc Cain.
Joe the Plumber. Spreading the Wealth. The attack on Joe the Plumber. The disappointing Constitution. ACORN stealing votes. Credit Card Fraud at the Obama Campaign. Rashid Khalidi. The LA Times Coverup. The slamming of the Florida Reporter and CBS-3 in Philly. The national security force to do what? The 250K, I mean 200K, I mean 150K ceiling on new taxes.
The sheer Creepiness of the Obama Campaign is starting to sink in.
Mc Cain has finally found his message and is hammering it home.
Mc Cain now leads in the polls on the economic issues. As the shock of the financial panic/ bailout fades, and the fear that Obama’s remedy of raising taxes and clamping down on business grows in mind of the public, the carefully crafted chimera of the all healing, all knowing Messiah is starting to look more and more like a terrifying nightmare to a critical mass of voters.
The curtain has been pulled back and the public blinded by the all the dazzle, hype and media flash these last few months of the campaign, is beginning to see.
Nov 1, 2008 - 2:49 am 50. The Wobbly Guy:If Obama wins? He wrecks the economy, but it’s not a done deal that the Dems will be blamed and swept out in 2010. And even so, will the Repubs be any better?
Obama comes in, pushes through the ‘Fairness’ doctrine, the MSM gets a break and a bailout, the Repubs and Bush gets the blame for everything that goes wrong from 2008-2012, and the narrative becomes the sole province of the leftoids.
And look at it from the perspective of the Repubs. You tried to run leaning right in 2008. You got annihilated(maybe), while the a hardcore leftist like Obama gets elected. What does it tell you about the electorate?
For all our sakes, McCain had better pull this out.
Nov 1, 2008 - 3:49 am 51. Salt Lick:if obama gets in, he will wreak havoc for two years and then the dem majority is anhilated.
Upon hearing British General William Howe had captured the American capitol of Philadelphia in 1777, Ben Franklin, then in Paris, said, “Howe has not captured Philadelphia; Philadelphia has captured Howe.”
The British won buildings. They did not win the hearts of the people. As the British fled Philadelphia the next year, the new American army created at Valley Forge gave it a shove at the battle of Monmouth Courthouse, toe to toe, with bayonets.
It just takes a few good men.
Nov 1, 2008 - 3:54 am 52. Salt Lick:…while the a hardcore leftist like Obama gets elected. What does it tell you about the electorate?
Given that Obama can’t get to 50% — in spite every single circumstance weighing in his favor, including outspending McCain 4-1, it tells me our side is doing damn good.
Nov 1, 2008 - 4:01 am 53. MarkJ:Here’s my two cents. Nobody can win this election. If McCain wins, he’ll modestly ramp up government spending on the back of a shrinking economy and we’ll have a two year recession and the whatever’s left of the Republican Party will be annnihilated in 2010 as a consequence. If Obama wins, he’ll ramp up government spending big time on the back of a shrinking economy and we’ll have a four year recession and whoever inherits the debris will be faced with a world spun out of control and in serious crisis.
Wretchard,
I’m not so sure. McCain will be making the calls, but Palin will also be whispering into his ear at the same time. We already know the “grumpy old man” can, in fact, make some very bold and dramatic moves. Conversely Obama, for all his huckstering “change” shtick, shows every sign of being a passive, incremental, go-along get-along, “can I vote present?” guy. McCain undoubtedly knows that if, or when, he occupies the Oval Office, he’ll only have a limited amount of time to implement agenda–and the nation will expect results.
What would the initial months of a McCain presidency look like? I wouldn’t be surprised if McCain makes some dramatic, confidence-building cabinet appointments (e.g., Mitt Romney as Treasury Secretary, Palin heading a high-visibility, energy-related project, etc.). I think McCain would be much better at getting his message out to the public than Bush. Permanent institution of regular, televised “town hall forums” would be very effective and popular because they’d largely bypass the MSM, deliver McCain’s message unfiltered, and, most importantly, citizens would pose the questions rather than reporters.
McCain already knows the clock would be ticking after January 20, 2009, so I also wouldn’t be surprised if McCain makes some dramatic announcements. “I will go to Afghanistan,” a new round of tax cuts, permamently locking in the Bush tax cuts, and maybe even slashing or temporarily suspending the capital gains tax. McCain could easily propose all of these–and then loudly double-dare a Democratic Congress not to enact them.
Guess we’ll see what happens, huh?
One last thought: if Obama, in fact, wins next week, I suspect his honeymoon with the MSM will quickly end. Obama, as I recall, hasn’t met with the press in months so I suspect he won’t be any different once in office. Messiahs do not like having to defend their actions or be questioned about their motives, do they? Poor Obama: for all his outward “calm and collected” appearance, he still doesn’t understand that his approval numbers will inevitably start heading south…as soon as he makes his first real decision.
Nov 1, 2008 - 4:45 am 54. wildernesscalling:This is the lefts way of scaring as many undecided’s as possible into voting for “PEACE” by voting for the “O”ne, what is truly interesting is the completely opposite of facts stated by ERICA JONG and friends and passed off undisputed by the journalist, If one looks back over the last two Presidential elections in 2000 the Democrats tried to disallow military votes and count hanging or nonexistent chads, 2004 most voter fraud was traced to Democrat groups along with most violent acts against Republican and even today the Democrat candidate is accepting tens if not hundreds of millions of outright fraudulent donations and it is the Democrat groups that register voters by the tens of thousands that are ether dead, don’t exist or have register dozens of times, this is truly a self full filling prophecy one heralded by the MSM encouraged by the Hollywood elite and the wacked out left, I think it could go well the opposite being the majority might come to realize the election was stolen by the left and there could be a real revelation in the spirit of 1770’s
Nov 1, 2008 - 5:19 am 55. Cannoneer No. 4:Put simply, you are being manipulated. That was and is our job – to manipulate you (the electorate) and the media (we already had them months ago). Our goal is to create chaos with the other side, not hope. I’ve come to the realization (as the campaign already has) that if this comes to the issues, Barack Obama doesn’t have a chance. His only chance is to foster disorganization, chaos, despair, and a sense of inevitability among the Republicans. It has worked up until now. Joe the Plumber has put the focus on the issues again, and this scares us more than anything.
we have next to no chance in the following states: Missouri, Indiana, North Carolina, Florida, New Hampshire and Nevada. Ohio leans heavily to McCain, but is too close to call it for him. Virginia, Pennsylvania, Colorado, New Mexico and Iowa are the true “toss up states”. The only two of these the campaign feels “confident” in are Iowa and New Mexico. The reason for such polling discrepancy is the Bradley Effect, and this is a subject of much discussion in the campaign. In general, we tend to take a -10 point percentage in allowing for this, and are not comfortable until the polls give us a spread well over this mark. This is why we are still campaigning in Virginia and Pennsylvania! This is why Ohio is such a desperate hope for us! What truly bothers this campaign is the fact that some pollsters get up to an 80% “refuse to respond” result. You can’t possibly include these into the polls. The truth is, people are afraid to let people know who they are voting for. The vast majority of these respondents are McCain supporters. Obama is the “hip” choice, and we all know it.
Nov 1, 2008 - 5:30 am 56. Cannoneer No. 4:Our goal is to make you lose your morale.
Nov 1, 2008 - 5:33 am 57. Cannoneer No. 4:What you were never intended to know in this election
Nov 1, 2008 - 5:35 am 58. Another Old Navy Chief:Dave:
… A multidisciplinary approach pertains to removing the epidermis from the feline. …
Yes, but remember, the feline doesn’t seem to enjoy any of them…
Nov 1, 2008 - 5:45 am 59. Jim Nicholas:Leo Linbeck #37
What a delightful read to find on awakening this morning.
Jim
Nov 1, 2008 - 5:51 am 60. JFSanders:I do believe that Cedarford may be one of Jong’s split personalities. They basically say the same things but Jong does it in a much less verbose style.
Now for some positive reinforcement.
L3 that was simply amazing! (standing ovation)
I hope you don’t mind but I copied that and saved it. I promise you will get full credit when I show it to my friends.
Big tent Socialists should be forcibly challenged at all fronts. I am trying my best to come up with a quick and easy workable plan to steer this country back toward a Constitutional Republic based on the intent of the founding fathers. I am not making much headway. But I do have a long term prescription that I believe will work and work sublimely. EDUCATION is the key. We as a group of anti-socialists need to start today working toward eliminating the socialist dogma that permeates our educational system starting at the Pre-K level. This is a generational plan and will likely take as long to complete as it took to get where we are as a nation.
I also see a side benefit from working the educational angle. It will leach into adjoining areas of society and possibly that will shorten the time required to see it to completion.
I realize that this is not glamorous work and as such will have low appeal to most folks. But it is necessary to work the plow in order to eat the corn.
Jim
Nov 1, 2008 - 5:53 am 61. Quig:L3!
Bravo Sir! Bravo!
Nov 1, 2008 - 5:55 am 62. Clioman:We can wring our hands, or we can roll up our sleeves, find some fresh, attractive candidates–we already know of one in Alaska, and there’s another in Louisiana–and remind the voters of what we stand for and why it matters. The 2012 campaign starts next Wednesday.
Nov 1, 2008 - 5:56 am 63. Ex-fetus:“But not a single one of them suggested, even remotely, indirectly or tangentially, that they would not respect the laws.”
Good, the law says Ohhhhhh…..BAAMA cannot be President, no matter what the election results are. So in this instance, respecting the law means going into opposition to an Illegal Government. AKA Civil War.
“No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five years, and been fourteen Years a resident within the United States.”
Obama could have shown a certified copy of a birth certificate at any time and stopped this issue dead in it’s tracks. Why didn’t he do that instead of pawning off an obviously faked one? Maybe he was hoping to finess the issue until he was in the White House. That is pretty stoooooopid for a guy that claims to be smart.
Nov 1, 2008 - 6:03 am 64. A Conservative Teacher:NO bill he signs will be valid, no Order he issues has to be obeyed. His administration will consist of an empty suit sitting in an empty office signing worthless documents with an empty pen. The Republicans will pound on this from Day one. What will he do if the Chief Justice refuses to administer the Oath of Office? Or the Board of Electors refuses to certify the Election? Winning the election is just one of the steps in becoming POTUS. Checks and Balances. Just because some of the checks on an illegal President taking office have never been used doesn’t mean they never will be used. Like an air bag, they get used only in emergencies.
Anyone that thinks this is just another election needs to ditch the decaf and take a cold shower. Wake up before it’s to late.
Did anyone catch the Obama speech yesterday? In it, he said “We are 5 days from fundamentally transforming America.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cqN4NIEtOY
Look, Jane Fonda is a loon about Bush, but she may be right about Obama. See more of my thoughts on my blog.
Nov 1, 2008 - 6:46 am 65. cjm:when mccain wins, the msm will not be able to hound him the way they did bush. they have lost all credibility and much of their viewership. i have noticed they are already going after obama for his malfeasance and arrogance, guess they noticed palin gets 2x the audience of a windup demagogue.
our purchasing of foreign oil and foreign drugs is funding most of the terror and instability currently plaguing the world. hopefully mccain will solve the energy part of the equation by making us energy independent. no sign that the war on drugs will ever be replaced by a rational policy.
Nov 1, 2008 - 7:19 am 66. Doug:I’d agree a redistributionist is all about fundamental change.
—
Conservatism’s blonde moment
J.R. Dunn
It so happens that virtually all the conservative women who have turned on Palin share one feature.
They are one particular type of female: they are blondes.
In dealing with Palin, a large portion of the conservative commentariat has descended to the same level as media liberals, with all the trimmings — a gutter mentality, cheap cynicism, an easy way with the facts. The latest example comes from the dependable Kathleen Parker. She’s been thinking ever so hard about why John McCain picked Palin in the first place, and wants to let us in on her conclusions. To turn around the election? Nope. To rally the base? It is to laugh. In truth, nudge-nudge, wink-wink, it’s all about sex.
Her authorities here are her husband, an unnamed elderly “raconteur” — whom Parker would like us to see as a wise old “Tuesdays with Morrie” type but which I can’t help but picture as the drunk propping up the end of the bar — some Canadians, and the New York Times magazine. Are you convinced yet?
According to Parker, what happened was this — John McCain met Palin and took her to his favorite spot, down by a sycamore tree. And they talked. For a long time. So you see how it went, right? She seduced him. Well, not really, but kind of. You know what I mean. Flashed her Naughty Monkeys. Winked at him. Said “like” a lot. It’s been awhile since anybody came on to old Mac that way. So, when the time came to pick a VP, he thought of that nice Alaskan governor.
Nov 1, 2008 - 7:22 am 67. Doug:The one with the legs.
More
Miller had a caller from Penn State:
Went to an evening Rally featuring Palin and a full house of 8,000.
Nov 1, 2008 - 7:27 am 68. Doug:The next morning, Bill Clinton drew 2,000.
“Does Zogby See McCain Ahead? Google and Youtube Are on Board for Obama.”
McCain is up against some very tough tactics that go way beyond the disgraced US media active campaign to elect Obama. I am convinced that Google has also got into the act and has salted the search engines to favor Obama. Clearly something has happened at Youtube over the last few days. All the stories that are against McCain or pro Obama appear to flood out anything that supports McCain. This is happening regardless of the amount of views.
—
2164th said…
“I just did a couple of experiments on searches for videos on either youtube or google videos. There is no question that the fix is in. This has happened within the last two or three days. There is no question in my mind that this has happened, probably in anticipation of any last minute releases of damaging video to Obama.”
Nov 1, 2008 - 7:39 am 69. trangbang68:Obama elected will be a harder cat to kick than Obama running. The media and the leftwing louts will build a phalanx around him. Furious recollections of the right wing hounding Clinton will be the parameter by which talk radio will be silenced. In the event of some likely crisis, all bets are off. Those with a totalitarian temptation have already proven that the end justifies the means. Dislodging this guy will not be the easy and logical step so many believe. Our institutions are more fragile than we think. The fabric of civil political discourse is already seriously frayed. The liars, anti-democrats, Marxists, street thugs, grievance mongers, anarchists, etc. have way too much emotionally invested in this to go quietly into the night. I think as one poster said this is a crisis unlike most of our history. The result is anyone’s guess. Let’s hope those in the heartland surprise us on Tuesday and send a message that the land of our fathers may be gasping for breath, but still lives.
Nov 1, 2008 - 7:43 am 70. 2164th:Rally in Pennsylvania for McCain
Nov 1, 2008 - 8:00 am 71. El Jefe Maximo:Wretchard, question about your Comment No. 3. You said, in talking about persons who would be distraught at an electoral loss: “[b]not a single one of them suggested, even remotely, indirectly or tangentially, that they would not respect the laws. An electoral outcome would break their heart, but it would not break their loyalty.”
So I believe also. But take your comment about Niall Ferguson and the bond markets one step further. What if all these people were asked to break their loyalty? What if one of the candidates, for example, refused to accept the result.
Nobody ever marched on Rome till Lucius Cornelius Sulla did in
88 BC. Sulla was given great provocation by his enemies, and he had some justice on his side, but what he did was most definitely against the law. And ever after, everybody with a grudge who could rally or crowd or an army remembered Sulla’s example.
The Republic has always worked because everybody accepts the rules. What if somebody with real standing buys into all this talk about “Second Civil Wars?” In such case, we have a long way to fall.
Nov 1, 2008 - 8:24 am 72. Leo Linbeck III:outa my league,
How is it that poll numbers such as 47/44, produce 95% doomsayers at the Belmont Club, who buy into the “inevitability” propaganda?
Most BCers are lurkers. To contribute, a certain activation energy must be reached. (I was a long-time lurker, then my energy level rose to the point where I started contributing. Not being all the great at self-analysis, I’m not sure what did it, but my guess is it was the intellectual and emotional energy that comes from the democratic process.)
My guess is that way more than 5% of lurkers reject the inevitability of the election, or its consequences.
What would be interesting would be for Wretchard to do one of those Instapoll thingys and see how people handicap the election. My guess is that 65% believe Obama will win, not 95%. But only 40% believe this result is inevitable - there is still time for things to change.
It would then be interesting to see how many believe, should Obama win, that a) the heavens will part and descend upon the earth, b) things will get better, c) things will stay about the same, d) things will get worse, or e) armageddon of whatever form. My guess is 0%, 0.1% (Benj), 30%, 65%, and 5% (percentages may not add to 100% due to rounding).
Just an idea. And a lot of guesses.
L3
Nov 1, 2008 - 8:39 am 73. Doug:Hope springs eternal, if vice is instead victorious, my scenario would be a combination of those of Old Salt and Trangbang.
Nov 1, 2008 - 8:53 am 74. programmer:Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
I was in a stateside airborne unit when Reverend Martin Luther King was assassinated.
http://www.examiner.com/a-1313143~Baltimore_was_burning.html
Nov 1, 2008 - 8:57 am 75. Quig:Being a citizen of another country I don’t have a horse in this race. However, I expect that “things” will likely get worse (option d in #70 above).
Neither candidate is sufficiently “conservative” for my taste. The economic situation will not likely allow either of them to do those things to which they claim to aspire.
Nov 1, 2008 - 8:59 am 76. Alexis:This URL link goes to a YouTube video documenting the bizarre images of the Obama campaign. It might not be the easiest video to find, and the mainstream media might not be reporting it, but Obama’s own campaign material is damning.
P.S. Before you vote, benj, you may wish to see this video.
Nov 1, 2008 - 9:02 am 77. Charles:November 1st, 2008 at 11:07 am
Nov 1, 2008 - 9:03 am 78. JMH:GOP Internal Polls (NJ, CA, MI, PA) Show Possible Landslide for McCain
Wretchard,
Here’s my two cents. Nobody can win this election. If McCain wins, he’ll modestly ramp up government spending on the back of a shrinking economy and we’ll have a two year recession and the whatever’s left of the Republican Party will be annnihilated in 2010 as a consequence
I’m not sure. McCain will have a Democrat congress. He (and Palin) will be going up against Pelosi and Reid, two of the least popular politicians in recent history, and a good deal of the blame could be pinned where it belongs, on Congressional Dems. If…
1) …the Republican party learns from this election (and the sub-prime fallout) how to get the public to hold Dems accountable. If Republicans don’t learn this lesson, then they will be annihilated anyway. A political party cannot survive if it allows itself to be blamed for it’s opponents worst failures.
2) … McCain himself stops trying to be so damned bi-partisan. Not that I oppose the general idea. Working with reasonable, well-intentioned people from the other party is a good and great thing. But there aren’t any of those sort left in the Dem party right now, at least not in the leadership. The Dems have used every effort at bipartisanship of the last few years to suckerpunch Republicans. If President McCain continues trying to “work with” Dems, they will sucker him into getting blamed for some catastrophe or other.
Nov 1, 2008 - 9:06 am 79. whiskey:Cedarford like Obama because both hate Jews, very very much.
Sowell predicts that if Obama wins, nuclear proliferation will be a fact, an irreversible one, that causes Americans to live in constant, unending fear.
Given nuclear proliferation, there is no one to negotiate with, and the dynamics insure that some cities will indeed die, as groups make demands for submission to Islam.
PC causes restraints, in the response, so the attacks continue. Until finally PC and Multiculturalism collapse in sheer survival mode. Ala any of the Discovery survival shows where the hosts eat disgusting things in the wilderness.
We are already seeing a bit of this with Obama’s aunt. In the country illegally (with Obama’s knowledge) and donating money she does not have (she lives in public housing) to Obama (illegally), along with being in public housing (illegally).
Here’s an argument: Obama + Dem’s New Deal 2.0 will be for illegal aliens, Blacks, Hispanics only. No health care for Whites — that’s reserved for illegal aliens only who will consume all the services. Obama can’t kick his aunt out of the country, or jail her for illegal contributions. No government functionary will do so, out of fear of “the One” and being called “racist.”
Laws only apply to Whites, when the racism card is played. Society falls apart, into anarcho-tyranny. A state strong enough to fine you for your trash in the recycling bin, but too weak to respond to violent or otherwise crime by Blacks or Hispanics or Muslims.
Eventually the gap in the middle for the White Majority, seeing itself threatened, is filled. In Britain, it has been filled with the BNP. In other nations, groups like-minded. Here?
Nov 1, 2008 - 9:12 am 80. trangbang68:Programmer, I was in basic training at Fort Dix when MLK was shot. We were put on alert, tempered by the fact we hadn’t yet qualified on our M-14’s. Fortunately, it blew over. Then I went to infantry training at Tigerland at Fort Polk. Robert Kennedy was shot, but although we were part of “Chargin’ Charlie Cong Killers”, fully ready to lock and load, there were no riots. Sirhan Sirhan had to wait for Comrade Ayers to eulogize him. By the time the Weather- trash and the Yippies threw down in Chicago, I was getting my feet wet (literally) along the Vam Co Dong river.
Nov 1, 2008 - 9:15 am 81. programmer:Then again the Chicago police didn’t need any military help to bust heads. That’s how they roll in Chi-town. Which candidate is from there, I can’t recall?
trangband68,
Ave commilite.
Charging Rhino alert:
Nov 1, 2008 - 9:49 am 82. programmer:As we prepared to go into Baltimore, the commanders (almost all recently returned from Nam tours, as were most of the troops) of the units to be deployed in the first wave were gathered together for briefings by various intelligence and operations types. I remember one grizzled airborne LTC in full war gear who looked at us calmly for a few moments, the spoke. “Remember” he said slowly and firmly, “we are deploying to protect the good people of Baltimore from further damage. That includes the rioters. Keep in mind at all times that they are all, in the end, our employers. They are citizens of this great country and we are going into Baltimore to help local authorities restore peace and order and sort this mess out. AIRBORNE!!” “AIRBORNE, SIR!!” was the response. And we did.
trangband68 = trangbang68. Many pardons!
Nov 1, 2008 - 9:52 am 83. slade:our purchasing of foreign oil and foreign drugs is funding most of the terror and instability currently plaguing the world. - cjm
That is a fact. Two of the biggest surprises of this century were fully predictable - 9/11 and the severe economic contraction of Sept/Oct 2008 to be followed by a prolonged recession. The drug violence simmering along the southern border with the help of Venezuelan paramilitary forces and Jihadist terrorists threatens serious instability in the entire southwestern US. To say so is not fear-mongering. To ignore it is to leave this country vulnerable to a single inevitable outcome in which we will have no one to blame but ourselves. The short-term response is simple and cheap - build a wall. This country can’t do even that.
That’s one point. The second point is who supports the drug traffic in this country? It’s not the drug-addled homeless bum on the street. Think in terms of the money. That kind of economic support can only come from one demographic group.
Nov 1, 2008 - 10:03 am 84. WSL:Take heart, fellow readers. If Obama wins,
1. We need not worry about riots in the cities,
2. Alec Baldwin, Sean Penn, et al won’t have to flee to Europe,
3. Struggling MSM stations and journals can start turning profits, and
4. Many of us will no longer have to pay for our mortgages or health insurance.
Take heart, indeed.
Nov 1, 2008 - 10:07 am 85. shakespeare101:Ex-fetus - According to yesterday’s paper:
http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/20081031/BREAKING01/81031064/0/BREAKING04
“Hawaii officials declare Obama birth certificate genuine”
State officials say there’s no doubt Barack Obama was born in Hawai’i.
Health Department Director Dr. Chiyome Fukino said today she and the registrar of vital statistics, Alvin Onaka, have personally verified that the health department holds Obama’s original birth certificate.
Fukino says that no state official, including Republican Gov. Linda Lingle, ever instructed that Obama’s certificate be handled differently.
She says state law bars release of a certified birth certificate to anyone who does not have a tangible interest.
Some Obama critics claim he was not born in the U.S.
Earlier today, a southwest Ohio magistrate rejected a challenge to Obama’s citizenship. Judges in Seattle and Philadelphia recently dismissed similar suits.”
Ok, clearly the “not born in US” challenge isn’t viable. Clearly he was born in Hawaii as now appears to definitively be the case according to State officials. We need to lay that challenge to rest. I have heard rumors of his potentially traveling abroad under a Kenyan passport and speculation that he voided his US citizenship in some fashion by doing so, but A) It’s just a rumor with no supporting evidence available B) Maybe he was a minor traveling with his father and that wouldn’t mean he voided anything or needed anykind of US loyalty oath someone mentioned C) It isn’t going to matter and I’m not sure it should
Nov 1, 2008 - 10:15 am 86. shakespeare101:-send beer to Ex-Fetus-
Nov 1, 2008 - 10:17 am 87. docob:Leo Linbeck #37
That was beautiful! Thank you!!
And think of the possibilities for further exploration, i.e. Michelle O as lady MacBeth … (hint, hint) =)
Nov 1, 2008 - 10:29 am 88. Peter Boston:The Obama spirit.
Seattle newspaper publishes street addresses of private homes that display election signs for McCain/Palin and Republican candidates.
Violence against “nonbelievers” will follow November 4. I believe it will be more serious and last much longer if Obama wins than if he loses.
Nov 1, 2008 - 10:29 am 89. NahnCee:I think Wretchard is wrong to just focus on global market issues as being a decider in whether either candidate will be a good or bad president.
Two and a half things are equally as important to Americans as what happens to the stock market in Japan or whether Russia’s economy will collapse (again):
1. Immigration. No one is saying anything about this in the campaign because neither of the candidates are prepared to do what a huge majority of voters want them to do: deport the illegals who are currently here and lock the borders. Once something happens after the election to bring this to the forefront again who-ever is in the White House will have to deal with that drumbeat which has previously gotten as loud as the reaction to “Dubai Ports”. (B. Hussein’s illegal aunt might very well be that “something”.)
2. Terrorism. If there is another attack on American soil again that will force all other considerations to the back burner. I just don’t see Obama as President being allowed to “negotiate” any more than Bush would have been allowed to negotiate. The electorate will DEMAND — loudly and with persistance — that SOMEONE be nuked in retaliation this time, and if that isn’t forthcoming the White House incumbent will be deposed within weeks so that someone else with pro-American gonads can take a crack at it.
Issue 2 and a half: American home-owners and their mortgages. People are still being thrown out of their homes, and the real estate market is still either moribund or in a downward spiral. This is very bad capitalism and can’t be allowed to continue. I think most Americans don’t see our housing crisis as being the same issue as what’s going on economy-wise in the rest of the world, although it’s sorta/kinda on the same page. But there will be a lot of pressure to DO SOMETHING to bail out citizens who are losing their homes, and oh-by-the-way, get real estate sales and development percolating again.
Health care is brought up as an issue, as is abortion and gun ownership. I do not see any of those three things changing because really, the status quo pretty much works and if it’s not broke, don’t fix it.
Another issue that I *do* see change and forward movement on will be energy, more so if McCain is elected. Palin would be put in charge of getting a drilling program up and running. If Obama is elected Ted Kennedy will be put in charge of treading water and making wordy statements full of self-generated hot air while nothing is actually done. But I think there will be pressure from the public to DO SOMETHING even though the price of oil has fallen so drastically. We don’t like Arabs much any more in America and want our government to officially do as much as it can to cut any and all ties with that part of the world.
Nov 1, 2008 - 10:52 am 90. Starko:Wretchard, the atmospherics are like this because the fringe left (who like the poor, will always be with us) feel like another four years of a GOP white house will be unbearable. I don’t believe the fringe of either wing is primarily responsible for the other’s vehemence- the vehemence is part of their state of mind.
The biggest irony to come out of an Obama win (if it happens) is that post-honeymoon, it will be all too clear that he doesn’t walk on water. The “One” was just the “one”.
In fact, this could be the key to a 1-term presidency. Without all of the frothy idealism, turnout goes down, and if Obama wound up being another Jimmy Carter (or worse), then you could see a new Ronald Regan rise up out of the ashes of the GOP.
I realize that history made Regan possible as much if not more so than Jimmy Carter, but here’s to a little wishful thinking (for a new Regan, not a repeat of the history that made him possible).
Nov 1, 2008 - 11:08 am 91. Cannoneer No. 4:Who is listed as his father on the Birth Certificate, shakespeare101?
Maybe his father was really Frank Marshall Davis or one of his names is Muhammed, else he wouldn’t have stonewalled this long.
Nov 1, 2008 - 11:13 am 92. cedarford:salt lick - Given that Obama can’t get to 50% — in spite every single circumstance weighing in his favor, including outspending McCain 4-1, it tells me our side is doing damn good.
No, it tells us that the public is justly concerned about a “preacher man” with no experience and a circle of odious acquaintances and ideologues taking over the White House. Just not enough to want an erratic old man with 30-year old ideas that are now failing badly to be in the White House instead. Especially with an ill-educated theocrat poised to take over if he dies or gets a major cancer recurrence.
If the Dems had run a more experienced candidate, especially one with military background and executive experience, this would not be this close.
****************
The worst thing the Republicans can do is think because this loss was close and they “only” lost 80% of the Senate races they were in, that nothing needs to change except intensifying the worship of Reagan’s old ideas, cast out some RINOs that resist the “simple, Gospel” purity of Palin and the Religious Right’s message.
The Republicans in fact need major retooling from “trickledown”, endless Neocon wars of “liberating” hostile peoples, the “deficits don’t matter” philosophy applied to free trade and spending more than you are willing to tax for. It doesn’t make sense for the Party to retreat to “small tent” and abandon the North, Midwest, and far West anymore than it made sense for Democrats 30 years ago to abandon the South.
It doesn’t make sense to accuse all remaining Republicans outside the Bible Belt of being RINOs (by southern-fried standards) or religious heretics unfit for office by being “un-saved”. Especially if it alienates Hispanics and the Mormons of the strongest remaining Republican states in the West.
Remember, all of Reagan’s “Reagan Democrats” were all RINOs - and still retained what the Base called Godless Catholicism, were willing members of ‘evil unions’ and wanted Gov’t to help save their auto jobs from the Japs all through Reagan, Bush I, and up to 3/4ths of the way through Dubya’s era - When they felt abandoned by a Party only concerned about the Rich, growing the size and power of government, helping people that hate us “rebuild” mosques, Open Borders, and saving Terri Schiavo.
The Reagan Democrats got sick of having ideological bromides thrown in their faces when they said their jobs were being outsourced, they had lousy health insurance and no dental coverage for their kids, that all state and local taxes went up on them in consequence of Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy and ending revenue sharing. What they got back was “free markets! free trade!” helps you in the end…as the middle class declined and industrial middle America was gutted of factories and jobs. They had heard about “trickledown” and had not seen it happen. They got slogans back in response to their job security and health care concerns about how the US health care is the envy of the World, and saw all the good jobs go and trade deficits grow every year to nearly a trillion as they got nothing but the slogan the US worker can out-produce and out-compete any worker on the planet!!
And even Saint Reagan started as a RINO, retained some RINO ideas, and if he had tried running in 2008 as the man who was straight out of Governing Lotus Land - would have been rejected by the Fundies as swiftly as they went after Rudy, Ridge, Romney this time. Reagan - nominally religious, union sympathizer, signed the most liberal abortion law into effect, had a wide circle of gay friends? Reagan himself would have had no shot in hell in 2008.
It also doesn’t make sense to annoint Republicans as the “defenders of Jews” against candidates that Jews vote enmass for, ignoring other constituencies in the process of making “Love of Israel!” central to being a “good” Republican. Not when the average Israeli, a socialist, detests Republicanism and the country prefers Obama to McCain by a 74-18 number in recent polls,
Nov 1, 2008 - 11:22 am 93. Tony:Not does it make sense to Republicans to run around saying they will never question “2nd-guess” any foreign country’s policies, let alone Israel’s.
Logically, it would be on par with Republicans declaring devotion to welfare moms or ex-felon rights. Not a natural Republican constituency, opposed to most of what Republicans stand for…and advocating for such would badly hurt Republicans with other groups whose votes are in play from being rejected or ignored.
Unlike my liberal friends after and since the 2000 election, I will consider the winner to be my President. However, based on History, I expect things to go dramatically downhill.
IF Obama turns out to be like Carter, similar things will happen:
Nov 1, 2008 - 11:24 am 94. Quig:1. Cuba and Venezuela will support communists in Central America (same as Jimmy-time)
2. Russia or China will support murderous oppressors in Africa (same as Jimmy-time)
3. Afghanistan/Pakistan will first flare up and quickly die out when Dems lose their will
4. Our new allies in Iraq will lose all American support and be over-run by their enemies (Iran and Shiite proxies, Al Qaeda and Sunni proxies instead of North Vietnam)
5. Taiwan will be sweating bullets, knowing John Wayne ain’t riding shotgun no more
6. The American economy will suffer malignant stagflation, (most of) the people will suffer a general malaise, many will despair.
The world isn’t flat, it’s flattened
By Spengler
It wasn’t the world that got flat, contrary to New York Times pundit Thomas Friedman, but the emerging markets that got flattened.
Faddish conventional wisdom over the past few years held that American influence was fading as technology radiated to the far reaches of the world. When America’s economy went into a ditch, though, the supposed economic superpowers of the future went flying, like children on skates holding onto the back of truck.
The American consumer, it turns out, played Atlas to the global economy, taking the exports of Asia, so that Asia could buy the commodities of Russia, Latin America and Africa. Remove the American consumer, and Asian exports crash, taking commodity prices along with them.
More at: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/JJ28Dj07.html
Nov 1, 2008 - 11:31 am 95. Eggplant:Spengler has posted a scary article, refer to:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/JJ28Dj07.html
The only saving grace concerning Spengler’s opinions is despite being brilliant, he’s lousy at predicting the future. I agree completely with his assessment that the main thing driving the world’s economy was American consumerism. Unfortunately, American consumerism was based mostly on spending down old equity (money earned by our fathers and grandfathers). Now we’re in the bottom of a deep, dark and very smelly latrine. If the Messiah gets elected, we’re going to be digging deeper into the bottom of that latrine.
McCain is losing in all polls listed at Real Clear Politics. The only way McCain could win is if there was some sort of systematic bias impacting all polls. That’s possible but unlikely. Also McCain is getting slaughtered in Electoral College based polls. It’s going to require a miracle for McCain to win.
The MSM and the forces behind it have probably achieved victory. We now have to devise a strategy for surviving the next four years (I’d give us about a 20% probability of a military take over after Hussein and the moonbat congress demonstrates complete incompetence). Assuming that the political system survives, we’ll need to look back at what is happening now and learn how to repair the system. I suspect a constitutional amendment concerning the Freedom of the Press is probably necessary (maybe a requirement limiting the national impact allowed to a single opinion forming entity or a requirement that such an entity fund equal-time opinions if the entity has been judged to be partisan).
Grim times are ahead of us.
Nov 1, 2008 - 11:42 am 96. Eggplant:Apologies to Quig. He got in just ahead of me with the Spengler link. It’s a good article!
Nov 1, 2008 - 11:43 am 97. fred:If God so will is and John McCain pulls off an upset victory over Barack Obama let there be sung throughout the land a “Non Nobis” and “Te Deum” in thanksgiving for our deliverance.
Nov 1, 2008 - 11:45 am 98. Eggplant:El Jefe Maximo said:
“The Republic has always worked because everybody accepts the rules. What if somebody with real standing buys into all this talk about “Second Civil Wars?” In such case, we have a long way to fall.”
El Jefe Maximo has nailed it. The first shoe drops after the Messiah gets elected. The second shoe drops after everything has gone to hell and that shining white knight (the handsome young man who was a highly decorated war hero and is a brilliant public speaker) appears on the scene. Fear the Messiah but recognize that the shining white knight may represent the end of the world as we know it.
Nov 1, 2008 - 11:59 am 99. Herb:Charles:
Nov 1, 2008 - 2:02 pm 100. steeple:Just for the record, “All Creatures of my God and King” is an old Anglican hymn. Words by St Francis of Assisi c1225, Music by von Brachel (Ger. 1623) See http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/a/c/acoogak.htm
just pulled my copy of this week’s “The Economist” out of my mailbox and saw the cover with Obama on it and the caption “It’s time”. the arrogance of the media just keeps setting lows.
Nov 1, 2008 - 2:04 pm 101. Quig:Eggplant, I probably only managed that by withholding any considered comment on the piece.
I agree with your comment on Spengler’s predictions but I do like his catholic (note the small “c”) perspective of events and how he relates them one to another.
My own perspective is influenced by a quarter century in our host’s country. The pictue of the USA seen from the antipodes is painted with broad brush strokes using vivd colours. Yes, there are many, there and here to your north, who look more closely and who think beyond the mode du jour of the chattering class. Nevertheless, there are more of those whose only exposure to ideas are talking points gleened from MSM sources and they can be mildly annoying in thier rejection of the American lifestyle while at the same time, and seemingly all unaware, they daily lust after the benifits of that same lifestyle. They seem impervious to the notion that thier very well being has been created by and is dependent on the USA continuing to exist in something like its present form.
That the USA is imperfect blinds them to the imperfections of their own societies.
Nov 1, 2008 - 2:14 pm 102. Leo Linbeck III:docob,
Your wish is my command.
ACT I, SCENE VII
The White House, in the Lincoln Bedroom
Cheers.
L3
Nov 1, 2008 - 2:38 pm 103. Gaffe Prices:I really don’t any one to do anything untoward against Chicago and its lovely citizens. This will be a resounding victory for John McCain, and people will accept the outcome. They always do. they will go back to what they do.
Hey, Operation Eggplant: The polls at Real Clear Politics are for suckers like you. There have been hundreds more poll results in this election cycle than there were in 2004.
Ubamas is counting on depressed voter turnout in order to win. The phenOmenOm cannot win without it.
So why don’t you do us all a favor and not poison this thread, and make it the latrine you refer to in your fatalist post. Punch out, pick up your paycheck, and go to the phone bank and make some robo-calls for that bot Ubamas.
We don’t pay for those, its a violation of election law. But we pay for internet trolling; its just that you supp at it. you are too damn obvious.
Nov 1, 2008 - 2:45 pm 104. Eggplant:Steeple said:
“just pulled my copy of this week’s “The Economist” out of my mailbox and saw the cover with Obama on it and the caption “It’s time”. the arrogance of the media just keeps setting lows.”
I had a similiar reaction.
The MSM has staked everything on the Messiah. The good news for them is their considerable efforts at propaganda will succeed in making an unqualified person President along with a moonbat congress. Unfortunately the likelihood of the Messiah being a successful President is almost nil. People will remember that the MSM and the moonbats brought this disaster upon us. The payback will depend upon how badly things go to hell in the next four years.
Nov 1, 2008 - 2:52 pm 105. Eggplant:Gaffe Prices said:
“Hey, Operation Eggplant: The polls at Real Clear Politics are for suckers like you. There have been hundreds more poll results in this election cycle than there were in 2004.”
Nothing would please me more than to see McCain win (I’ll be voting for him). If the polls are wrong, you can have a nice long laugh at me (and I’ll be laughing with joy along with you).
Nov 1, 2008 - 2:56 pm 106. cedarford:Eggplant - The MSM and the forces behind it have probably achieved victory.
I think it would be more accurate to say Bush, the betrayers of the 1994 Revolution, the Neocons, and the intolerant southern-based Religious Right have achieved defeat.
They also ran a badly flawed candidate in McCain - who seemed “visionless” towards the end, guided only on his “hunches”, feelings at the moment, and willing to do the same sort of cloakroom deals he once made in the Senate in the Oval Office. Palin did little to nothing to attract new voters.
The Republicans will also have to re-examine old Reaganomics. The idea of global empire where we are committed to defend the interests of some 80 countries and global sea lanes with no compensation in return for it except from the Japanese and Aussies. The notion of all the electable Republicans outside the deep South denounced as RINOs, present notions of “purity” and new moral and religious litmus tests enforced.
Wretchard is right, better it happen this year then have McCain in botching things up and assuring a Party annihilation in 2010. The public wants a change. The betrayed working, middle class and young people without a future under Bush except as troopers for overseas empire-building, want to see if the Democrats can do better than Bush.
Nov 1, 2008 - 2:59 pm 107. Aristide:Peter Boston @ 87
The Stranger is redirecting their page to Drudge.
Here’s a link that gives some of the story.
Nov 1, 2008 - 3:00 pm 108. NahnCee:Eggplant is not an Obamatron. He’s a realist, I think, and too inclined to give credence to numbers forgetting Garbage In / Garbage Out.
Personally, I think there are two things happening with the polls, both of which lead me to believe that McCain will win:
1. There is an Obama / Bradley effect — their polling systems are skewed. We know they skew towards asking a majority of young Democrats how they will vote, but I think there’s something else going on in the case of Obama only that they haven’t figured out what it is yet. Maybe it *is* racism and people simply don’t want to admit that they won’t vote for a skinny black man. Personally, I don’t think that’s what’s happening, but I haven’t read a well-reasoned explanation yet for what it *is*.
2. They’re bought off in the same way as the media have been. Don’t you think that exactly the same demographic as who make up journalists and educators are the ones creating the questions and making the lists of who to call, and then totalling the final numbers? If this election is the death knell of newspapers and the 6:00 news, then it’s also the death knell of Gallup if what happens is what I think is going to happen. If pollsters are in it for the money like good little capitalists, what would happen if Soros gave them money to throw the results?
Actually, there’s a (3) which is tht all the different pollsters settled on their numbers several months ago, and have been massaging them up or down since then. I think that because, really, nothing much has happened in the Real World for several months now that would account for the variance from day to day. Who are they finding to ask questions of who haven’t made up their minds weeks ago, or who are still changing their minds from hour to hour at this late date?
It seems to me that the media headlines NEED those poll results to maintain their meme that Obama is winning, and the pollsters NEED the attention from the media to maintain their place on the foodchain. And really, when it gets down to it, what do either the media or the pollsters owe American citizens when it comes to accuracy?
Nov 1, 2008 - 3:08 pm 109. Gaffe Prices:#88 NahnCee,
I disagree, Judges are the supreme issue of this campaign.
As an issue, the make up of the courts is just as avoided by the media, as is the immigration issue.
the media thinks the immigration issue is more harmful to their guy Ubamas than it would be for MCain. Its a non-issue thanks to Them.
We can’t afford to wait two generations to correct for 2-3 Ubamas, and hope that in 2002, A resurrected Ronald Reagan will emerge to turn back the tide. We must act now. Reagan was a lot of things, all good, but Frederick the second of Sicily isn’t one of them. (Some still believe Frederick will return and restore Republican Rome to Europe).
Read Edward J. Erler’s essay at Imprimis.
http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=2008&month=07
there is no Hyperbole, in his solution. No one gets citizenship improperly, including offspring.
As to courts, look at California. voters defined marriage (one man, one woman) successfully in Referendum in 2001. Courts struck down the will of the people this year, to open the way for Same Sex Marriage, but also polygamy as a “right”. When Court intrudes, Amendment is the only option left.
This Amendment is bringing voter turnout for the Amendment there through the roof. Just as it did when Bradley ran for gov and their was a Firearms Ban on the balot along with him. And McCain is closing in there within 1 percentage point.
Court tyranny there, which opens the door for polgamy as a right, means voters will hand McCain 54 electoral votes because Ubamas didn’t plant enough acorns there. He’s planted them in places he thought would be close. And took for granted states such as New Jersey, where McCain is also within 1 percentage point.
which means, once one corrects for bias, MCain is going to stomp Ubamas is this election, and cowardly pessimists, and soothsayers, with they high minded ideals, won’t be part of the victory, if they insist on staying home, and fingering they pathetic worry beads.
Good riddance to bad rubbish. Wretchard, why do you keep opening this door to ner’do-wells just so they can poison this well? Ner’do wells and Do gooders, Bah Humbug! we outnumber the both of them, everywhere.
beer and alchohol are depressives. Free beer for fatalists! Defeatists! And complainers!
Knock that chip off they shoulders!
Nov 1, 2008 - 3:29 pm 110. Gaffe Prices:cederford,
please stop whining and stop trying to wipe your behind with the bandwidth of this thread.
Or come clean and admit you are an Ubamas bot posing as a know-it-all clairvoyant conservative.
It is not better for McCain to lose. Think of the courts, and how long that will take to correct, or repair; much longer than an election cycle.
Stop doing Ubamas “Depress The Republican Turnout” Secret Plan for him. thats for trolls posing as consevatives to do.
If congress were to stay Democrat, for the next year, the electorate will throw the bums out. McCain already will win in order to counter them, and the electorate will take his side.
My apologies Egplant, you sound like the real thing.
Nov 1, 2008 - 3:58 pm 111. Eggplant:Gaffe Prices said:
“My apologies Eggplant, you sound like the real thing.”
No worries about that. I am guilty of acting like Denethor but it’s hard not to given the situation.
It still amazes me to watch the nation walking off of a cliff with its eyes wide shut.
Nov 1, 2008 - 4:15 pm 112. Konyok:Obviously ms. Jong is overwrought. Certainly her feelings are not informed by any serious thought.
But, I’m a little worried. There is a real possibility, perhaps a probability that the results of the US election will be delayed for days.
I will be a poll worker in my state and expect a very long and trying day. Unless it’s a landslide, there will be more provisional ballots than the differential, very possibly a multiple of the differential. These provisional ballots must be individually certified, a process that our election commission anticipates could take as long as ten days.
What happens if it takes that long or McCain ekes by? Will we see “No justice, no peace” demonstrations? Could disappointed or frustrated African Americans become violent? A real possibility, I think. On the other hand, if Obama clearly wins, could elated Obama supporters become violent? Again, a real possiblity.
Such violent outbursts would electrify the country.
In this amazing year I think that we could see a new phenomenon: voter’s remorse in the immediate aftermath of the vote.
Nov 1, 2008 - 4:41 pm 113. Benj:@ Wretch says…”In the last two months I’ve received a lot of emails from people who were distraught about the probable outcome of these elections. But not a single one of them suggested, even remotely, indirectly or tangentially, that they would not respect the laws. An electoral outcome would break their heart, but it would not break their loyalty. One got the sense that although they might seek other employment or enter
politics full time to take a hand in public life no one was going to go berserk.”
What’s going on here? Surely Wretch recalls that last Month “Ken” repeatedly posted comments on Club threads that indicated he was on the Edge. I write about listening in on his rants in my contribution to a roundtable on the election at firstofthemonth.org that’s online now. Ken was certainly on the verge of beserk - as you’ll see if you read the the excerpts I’ve cut and pasted below. It’s important to add though that his stance hasn’t been all that unique at the Club. Konyoke has spent a fair amount of time talking Clubbers through their own doomy violent projections. Buddy’s done some work on that front in the last few days as well. Erica Jong is a piker compared to Belmont’s muy macho Blusterers - Hell I doubt she could keep up with Nahncee. - Now - what to make of Wretch simply pretending not to remember mad Ken and co.? My guess is that he’s dialing it back (to use one of Ken’s phrases). Our foreign host announced a few weeks back that the “despises” the man who is likely to become the next pres of the U.S. He’s spent the last six months cultivating every nasty rumor about Obama and nurturing the paranoid stylists in his club. But I’m betting Wretch is pretty slick. He knows which way the wind is blowing and so its time to step off lightly from his crazier fans like Ken. Get ready for Wretch to offer himself not as conspiracy-monger, but as a soul or reason - a moderately conservative voice. Talk abouit slick. He’ll swing it, but ya’ll LISTEN in to Ken below and then try to imagine just how much contempt Wretch must have for this Club if he can say with a straight face that none of his posters seemed about to lose it lately. (God knows, Wretch never distanced himself from Ken. Just as he never pushed back when Clubbers - picking up his filth and fury - announced their readiness to “let the rumors fly” about Obama…)
In the following passages I compare Ken’s melt-down with scenes in films by the great English director Mike Leigh - his latest is “Happy-Go-Lucky”…
Worried that Obama is a Marxist/Islamist/Manchurian candidate, other Clubbers have responded to his progress with bloody-minded predictions of Civil War. The poster-boy for their madness is an ex-Marine who blogs under the name of Ken. Last month, he began a downward spiral as Obama rose in the polls. His increasingly unhinged posts at the Club amounted to a slow-mo analogue to Happy-Go-Lucky’s final emotional implosion (and to the seriocomic climaxes in so many of Mike Leigh’s – “there is no such thing as normal” – character studies). Ken began by offering a novel take on John McCain’s electoral challenge – “The main thing holding the GOP back from absolute victory is the perception that we are a bunch of frightened accountants who cringe at big mean Democrats. Democrats are perceived as being studly bad boys.” Sex was on Ken’s brain as he fretted “the Left” viewed themselves as “sexually gifted” like “the British Cavaliers.” Dems were chips off the old dicks who also assumed they were intellectually superior “though they never have any really cool ideas, like settling space or enriching mankind through atomic transformation. They just want affordable healthcare.” Convinced “the Left” was out to “get people to think of gun owners as inferior, and at least look the other way while they have Waco-style massacres nationwide,” he called for a “Shermanesque solution.” Pressed for an explanation, he dug in:
“The people we’re talking about are truly evil at a Pol Pot level. Keep in mind they support Kim Jong II…They don’t work, and the consistently target old women for their attacks. They are filth, and it’s time to give our nation a bath.”
A few hours on - deeper into his own grave - Ken got more serious; he wasn’t calling for some “Auschwitz type mass murder, but rather simply the enforcement of martial law:”
“A ‘Sherman solution’ doesn’t consist of extermination. It consists of killing off the worst of the worst, the irreconcilables. It’s essentially the Surge brought to the USA. It isn’t like your Democrat uncle with the German Shepard would die. It would generally be a bunch of violent, twisted, drug-addicted, continually unemployed losers who got told at the punk rock concert that the Republicans wanted to take their Hustler magazines, and who responded by pushing an old lady off some stairs (since, you know, all old people are Republicans). We’re not talking normal, average people here…”
You said a mouthful man.
While paranoids have friends at The Club, Ken was so-over-the-top that even other muy macho posters began to worry he might be a provocateur, an “Obamaniac in disguise.” One pushed back when I pressed the Club to distance themselves from Ken’s September bender: “Benj, if Ken’s spring was wound too tight and it snapped, it would be a better man than you that dealt with him…”
BACK to this post - That was Bob Murphy who wailed on me for not having the skills to handle Ken. And in my piece I go on to say why his argument had even more force than he knew. Ken isn’t the only focus of my memories of Clubbing - I give it up along the way to Buddy’s humor and humanism. Which is likely to piss him off! With (virtual) friends like me…But, in THIS piece, Ken concentrated my attention…
Nov 1, 2008 - 4:54 pm 114. NahnCee:I know Eggplant is not an Obamatron. I think he is a man of science inclined to give numbers too much credence, forgetting the axiom “Garbage In, Garbage Out”.
My guess on the case of the disappearing polls is that it’s a couple of things:
1. There *is* an Obama / Bradley effect going on that no one has figured out what it is or how to measure it. It’s skewing the numbers, but then we know the pollsters deliberately skew the numbers in the first place, calling mostly young black Democrats, for example. I don’t think what ever the “Obama effect” is, that it’s racism. Or put it this way, I’d be surprised if it’s racism. It could equally be Muslim-ism or anti-Michelle-ism but I do think there is some kind of measureable effect that’s skewing the polls that hasn’t been allowed for.
2. Who do we think the actual pollsters are? Who are the people at Gallup and Rasmussen who make up and craft the questions to be asked, choose the phone numbers to be called, and tally the results? What are the chances they have the same demographics as journalists and educators?
3. Are polls being taken so those companies can make money? What would happen if a generous person named George Soros or Abdullah Saud or Vladimir Putin came in and offered Such&So Poll Company a VERY generous amount of money to make sure the polls said such and so, and said them consistently over a period of weeks or months?
4. Doesn’t it seem like the polls and the media are in a shark / remora situation so that each needs and feeds off the other in an endless cycle? If the media have cast their lot in with Obama and face a death knell if he doesn’t win, equally the pollsters are being cited daily by those same media and need the media to survive so that the next cycle will stay as-is. The pollsters would be nuts not to produce the numbers that they know will be picked up for headlines, or it would hurt their bottom line.
Bottom line is that neither the media nor the polling companies owe any sort of fealty to the American public to produce truth or accurate results. The polls have been madly wrong before, and it’s so much worse now I can’t imagine why we’d believe a number they say.
Nov 1, 2008 - 5:30 pm 115. trangbang68:Benj, (Yawn) With his Ken fixation. Ken was a momentary blip in this realm, no long time commenter. I agree he was over the edge, but I don’t recall anyone else even close to that level of deranged. Erica Jong is a piker to no one. She is a raving lunatic, matched only by Sandra Bernhardt and 95% of the posters on Daily Kos and Democratic Underground for sheer
Nov 1, 2008 - 5:39 pm 116. Foul Harold:insanity.
I for one don’t welcome the possibility of conflict but I’m concerned enough about the rhetoric being tossed around to make preparations.
If BHO gets elected, there are two virtual tripwires of sorts I will be watching very closely.
#1: Any assault on the First Amendment rights of those who criticize an Obama administration. If the Fairness Doctrine ends up being reinstated and/or government powers are used to intimidate political opponents, this will propel me from “irritated, hard-working American voter” to “vociferously outraged American political activist.”
#2: Any move made to formally alter or subvert the Second Amendment and criminalize gun ownership will push me into “openly rebellious American partisan” mode. Exactly how this would manifest itself, I cannot say for sure. It’s such an unsavory scenario that I can’t begin to think about specifics.
And for the Benj’s and cedarford’s of the world, let me make one thing abundantly clear. I don’t make such statements lightly. I love my country dearly, served in the military, and have a squeaky-clean record. I utterly dread any prospect of domestic strife. But I also will not abide the tyranny of those who in the name a “greater good” would seek to force their beliefs upon me at the expense of my Constitutional rights.
Obama’s cult-of-personality campaign propaganda, relatively secretive past, and radical associations have myself and many others wondering just how far he’s willing to go.
Nov 1, 2008 - 6:03 pm 117. NahnCee:Harold, two excellent trip-wires. What I see happening is what they did to Joe the Plumber, that if your snarky green next-door neighbor reports you for “hate speech” or because you’re not recycling your plastic bottles you’ll have your name posted someplace public where the moonbats will know you’re harassable, maybe suggest you should have a tax audit, things like that.
You know how if you piss off a cop, they *will* find reason to write you a traffic ticket.
Already we’re at the point of people not wanting to have bumper stickers on their car because they don’t want to be harassed by the moonbats. Just extend that a little bit out into being surrounded by Obamatrons and ACORNlettes.
Nov 1, 2008 - 6:16 pm 118. Ex-fetus:“The only way McCain could win is if there was some sort of systematic bias impacting all polls.”
There is. That bias is party. The most important factor used to calculate poll results is party. Since Democrats out register Republicans by about 4%, there is about a 4% bias toward the Democrats in their final poll numbers. Internal polls that use the raw data show a very different picture then what you get on RCP.
RCP is bogus anyway. You CANNOT average opinion polls. That is because they don’t ask the same questions. If they did all ask the same questions, you still wouldn’t have an average, you would have a larger sample, with a slightly smaller MOE.
Lets say poll A asks if the pollee prefers leather or cloth interior in their vehicle. Poll be aks if they like power windows or not. You CANNOT average those polls and find out what sort of hubcaps are preferred.
No, the polls should be biased by Interest groups, aka voting blocks. Instead of qualifying questions about voting patterns and party affiliation, the pollees should be asked what their main concern is in the election and what group they identify with. There is some of that now, but it is done in shop. That is wrong.
For Example take your typical One armed black lesbian with 2 kids that is divorced. Why have the pollster try to figure out if she considers herself first and foremost as a Lesbian, handicapped, black, or a single mom. Just ask her. Then you compare the block she identifies with against the candidate’s positions and get a pretty good idea of how she will vote. Might even be correct.
Just calling people and asking “Who you gonna vote for?” produces WaaaaaaaaY different results then screening them for how likely they are to vote, their party, age, income, etc. Remember Dewey?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._presidential_election,_1948
AFAIK, the pollsters haven’t changed their methods since ‘48. They fine tune, but no general review of the entire system. No accounting for GIGO either. Not sure the concept of GIGO existed in ‘48.
Nov 1, 2008 - 6:20 pm 119. Tamquam Leo Rugiens:People of that time hadn’t learned yet that to err is human but it takes a computer to really massively screw things up.
wretchard: “So the priority should be building a nucleus around which good political ideas and people can gather.”
A Foundation, and psychohistory. But that is exactly what is needed. Someone mentioned, I know not when or where, that what will be needed is another Great Awakening. I’m certainly willing to do my part, if I knew what it was.
Nov 1, 2008 - 7:53 pm 120. fred:It is my earnest hope that on November 5th I will be singing these lyrics:
Non nobis Domine
Nov 1, 2008 - 7:58 pm 121. Eggplant:Non nobis Domine, Domine
Non nobis Domine
Sed nomine, sed nomine
Tuo da gloriam
Ex-fetus said:
“RCP is bogus anyway. You CANNOT average opinion polls. That is because they don’t ask the same questions.”
This is understood. However ALL of the Presidential opinion polls listed by RCP have the Messiah winning. This includes respectable polls such as Gallup and Rasmussen. If Gallup or Rasmussen showed McCain winning and all the rest favored the Messiah then I could allow myself the license of believing that McCain could win.
I have contributed financially to McCain’s campaign and will vote for him. Unfortunately there’s a dividing line between optimism and stupid fantasy.
Again, this is a disaster for the nation and western civilization. We are walking off of a cliff.
Nov 1, 2008 - 8:01 pm 122. outa my league:What kind of high schooler wakes up one day and is overwhelmed with the awesome aspiration of one day becoming a political pollster?
And if the cream ultimately rises to the top levels of pollster management & policy, how strongly does that speak for the credibility of the enterprise?
Nov 1, 2008 - 8:16 pm 123. outa my league:“Unfortunately there’s a dividing line between optimism and stupid fantasy.”
***********
But without faith it is impossible to please Him. - Hebrews 11:6
Nov 1, 2008 - 8:20 pm 124. Marcus Auerlius:In the past in my walks around the town in the area I would see stickers plastered on windows excoriating President Bush, the locale is not too far from a small Methodist liberal arts university, so it could be the faculty as almost as likely as the students. I never saw such on GOP campaign headquarters until this morning. Two really ugly things, I tore them off and informed one of my friends on the exec committee of the local GOPP.
My mother says in her volunteer work as a receptionist at her local party office they have an established protocol for dealing with mooonbats, the third request is accompanied by a 911 call and that has been pre-approved by the police.
I went to an operation the state & national party have setup and they had a security guard at the door.
The mood is very very different this go-around, disturbingly so. If OHNO loses there will be riots in the locations we have come to expect, after all if OHNO will not fill their gas-tanks, buy their HDTVs, etc they will just help themselves.
Nov 1, 2008 - 8:22 pm 125. Konyok:fred,
I did note that the SCOTUS decision in 2000 was rendered on Dec. 13th - the feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe, patron saint of the Americas.
Nov 1, 2008 - 8:59 pm 126. fred:Konyok,
I actually do remember that day. I came home from Massachusetts General Hospital on December the 8th after my left hip replacement surgery and was pretty much restricted and home-bound. So, I was watching a lot of cable news and reading. I had my surgery Nov. 29th and in the hospital the ongoing battle over the Florida ballots was unending. Plus, there was still a lot of news about the U.S.S. Cole bombing. That surgery I had resulted in a complication called peroneal nerve palsy, which, amazingly, I am still recovering from. I’m at the point where I can flex my foot more strongly and the foot feels more and more like a foot. Beat the odds on that one, since that complication seldom results in full or near full recovery. We never could pinpoint exactly what happened during surgery or post-op that could have caused it. I’ve read reams of articles and the best I can determine is that perhaps blood pooling near the site of where the peroneal nerve network is coming out of the spine near the hip area could have compromised the network. Or perhaps post-op swelling. The surgeon insists he was very, very careful with the handling of the nerve with the retractors. But it is also a painful condition. If you have ever hit a nerve or cut off the flow of blood to a nerve, the burning and tingling you experience is what I have experienced now for almost eight years running. I have to take large doses of neurontin for pain control. Anyway, just an irrevant anecdote, but harkening me back to November and December of 2000 brings back those kinds of memories.
Nov 1, 2008 - 9:30 pm 127. 3Case:“…is if there was some sort of systematic bias impacting all polls.”
The last 5 Presidential election cycles have shown the polls consistently slanted toward the Dems; in some cases, very heavily. The only pollster regularly close to the final result has been Zogby, whose skew is usually about 2 points, stillto the Dems, but has been as high as 4. I listened to an interview with Zogby in 2004 wherein he was asked about this phenomenon. He attributed it to meticulous methodology.
Nov 1, 2008 - 9:35 pm 128. Dave:Hello 3Case. Been hoping to catch you.
I think we both had the same Professor, a
certain Bernardo de la Paz.
BTW, Murray Rothbard was a personal friend of mine. One neat guy to jaw with and argue with until the wee hours of the morn.
Anarchists with their heads screwed on straight (you are and I can fake it) are not that common. Most who adopt the label seem to do so in the hopes of politically abolishing all activity (primarily military) that does not meet their approval. Rather statist of them is it not?
At any rate, we do seem to have a good crew here at the BC, don’t we?
And Sherm Fredericks, publisher of the Las Vegas Review Journal had a recent column on how padded registration figures affected polling numbers.
I have done paid polling 20 plus years ago.
Nov 1, 2008 - 9:52 pm 129. Dave:Unlike the others, I had also interrogated a good 200 POWs. On certain questions, the answers I would get would noticeably differ
from the majority. Evidently a matter of how the questions were asked and the general mood between pollster and respondent.
Fred, my old injuries are catching up with me to a degree. (Primarily fragmentation wounds)
But reading of your difficulties and your need for continuous pain medication, I am counting my blessings.
Most of the time, I can “walk off” the immediate difficulties and when things are really bad, ibu propen works withing the 1/2hour.
Hope you continue to show improvement.
Nov 1, 2008 - 9:56 pm 130. Dave:Please note who sent that complaining email to Erica Jong. (last name is Fonda).
So Jane Fonda is having aches and pains and is
on valium because her choice may be defeated
by a former POW in the Hanoi Hilton?
I LOVE IT WHEN A PLAN COMES TOGETHER!
Nov 1, 2008 - 10:01 pm 131. Charles:98. Herb:
Charles:
Just for the record, “All Creatures of my God and King” is an old Anglican hymn. Words by St Francis of Assisi c1225, Music by von Brachel (Ger. 1623) See http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/a/c/acoogak.htm
………….
sheesh, you’re right.
Don’t know why I didn’t recognize the original version:-)
Nov 1, 2008 - 10:02 pm 132. Konyok:Benj,
It would encourage me if comments like Jong’s were denounced from the left.
One of the elements in my defection from socialism was readings in evolutionary psychology. I became convinced that much of human nature is fixed, therefore the fundamental rationale of socialism and the progressive project - the perfectability of man - is flawed.
So, I accept that a propensity to violence is intrinsic to the species. I find these dark mutterings, right and left, to be more affectation than authentic impulse. However, in the aggregate I feel that this kind of discourse serves to slowly disable our societal inhibitions against political violence. The more we talk about it, the more likely it becomes.
We are drenched in virtual violence and cynical narratives. It would not be unreasonable to suspect that the, uh, creative community is purposely trying to sabotage our society. Of course, the innate human fascination with violence drives demand. Still, there has been a constant drumbeat attacking confidence in our institutions for about 40 years. Only a chump believes in the system. Inevitably that leads to greater acceptance of the notion that political violence is more effective than conventional politics. (It also leads to acceptance that a “great leader” will bring us hope and change.)
Another aspect of all of this bravado is the western world’s interminable adolescence. We so want to feel important and *authentic,* but our world has seemed so permanent and indestructible. We can talk about “trip wires” for civil war in the United States with such insouciance because we’ve never personally confronted profound social dysfunction. (Actually, it’s probably a misnomer to use that term “dysfunction,” because the prosperity and social calm of the United States are themselves outliers in human history. The poverty and squalor of Mexico or Indonesia is more typical and “normal.”)
We are not immune to communal violence, though it is a lot rarer than in other places. Political violence is actually more common in Sweden or Netherlands than in America. Aside from Ayers, the SLA and the deranged Manson family, it is important to concede that most modern US examples have come from the right wing. This is an easily accessible meme - the violent white militia member. This is how any armed resistance to Obamism would be framed and that would prove a considerable strategic disadvantage.
We want to identify with the feats and sacrifices of our forefathers, but we don’t have a deep enough appreciation that screwing the pooch is always more likely than glorious restoration. We want to emulate the ancestors, but we lack the maturity to truly understand the gravity of these notions.
Consider, the election hasn’t even happened yet and “trip wires” and “target environments” are being discussed. It’s like little kids with their parents’ clothes on admiring themselves in the mirror.
This particular forum took flight during the darkest days of the war in Iraq. It was the most reliable clearing house for information available to us, all the more valuable for the philosophical context provided by our good host and others. Naturally, this attracted a lot of armchair generals and strategy gamers. Great good fun. I began posting myself during the Russo-Georgian war. It’s great good fun, especially when it’s somebody else’s country burning. (Hiya Mika! Pound dirt, buddy.)
Nov 1, 2008 - 10:24 pm 133. Tamquam Leo Rugiens:Because I don’t want any lowering of the threshold, another instance of defining deviance down, I consider idle talk of domestic political violence to be taboo. Just like the “C word” applied to Sarah Palin, it’s patently offensive.
121. Konyok: The Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe is on the 12th. Dec. 13th is the Memorial of Saint Lucy of Syracuse, virgin and martyr.
Nov 1, 2008 - 10:48 pm 134. NahnCee:“This includes respectable polls such as Gallup and Rasmussen.”
Eggplant, your willingness to believe is touching. However, you might ask yourself a couple of questions regarding the human beings who put together the numbers you have been finding so persuasive.
1. Aren’t the media and the pollsters bound together in sort of a shark / remora situation where the media need the numbers to report to back up their preferred meme, and the pollsters need the media to report their announced numbers to maintain their position of respect on the food chain? Since we have found that the media are perfectly capable of making up and printing lies, why is there an assumption that the pollsters, despite all evidence to the contrary, don’t do the same thing?
2. What do you suppose the demographics of the people at Gallup and Rasmussen are who think up the questions to ask, decide how to word the questions, pick who to call to ask the questions of, and total up the responses? Do you suppose they might be the same type of people as journalists or educators, as opposed to - say - Iraqi combat veterans?
3. Are Gallup and Rasmussen in the business to make money or have they taken a pledge of fealty to report the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth to the American people? If they *are* profit-making entities, what do you suppose would happen if a George Soros or an Abdullah Saud or a V Putin offered them a VERY large chunk of change to make sure the numbers said thus&so?
I think the numbers *are* skewed and, in fact, I’m not even convinced there ARE new numbers at this late date, and that they’re not just rearranging the statistics they’ve already got, trying to come up with minimally different results. I can’t imagine who they’re finding to call who still haven’t made up their minds at this late date or who are still changing their minds from day to day.
I think McCain is going to win, and when he does we can count the big polling firms as being another victim of the Obama Effect.
Nov 1, 2008 - 10:52 pm 135. Konyok:TLR,
Right you are, but I was close for a heathen.
Nahncee,
Another thing I’ve not heard discussed much is that there is a refusal rate something like 80%. What with caller id these days a lot of people just don’t answer. I don’t answer any calls with an 800 area code or without an ID. I don’t want anybody’s robo-calls and I don’t want to participate in any polls.
There’s goes the random sample …
Nov 1, 2008 - 11:06 pm 136. NahnCee:I’ve had my phone off the hook going straight to the machine for the past week, avoiding the robo-calls, after I received a call from an earnest young man prepared to lecture me about going to hell if I don’t vote against gay marriage in California. So I guess that adds my statistic to the column under “refusal rate”. Who *are* still taking these calls, any way, if any one is?
Nov 1, 2008 - 11:14 pm 137. Konyok:Y’know
Some of these Obama supporters would actually feel great about being “part of history.” Also, they are skewing the calls toward cell phones, attempting to avoid the 1948 mistake.
That’s just the raw sampling, then there are the voter models they use to weight the data.
The enormous variability of results is the tell that they’re groping in the dark. One of the goals of science is repeatability - they’ve lost that one …
Nov 1, 2008 - 11:29 pm 138. Pascal:Me Nancy. I hung up on Hugh Hewitt; no need to listen. I drag out the proposition calls as long as I can with excuse me, okay I’m back, etc. Did I tell you I occasionally suffer from early onset old-timers’ disease?
Nov 1, 2008 - 11:39 pm 139. Konyok:That makes three of us. I’ll bet there’s more.
Purely anecdotal, but nevertheless empirical.
We’ve got good reason to be skeptical, NahnCee.
Nov 1, 2008 - 11:42 pm 140. Eggplant:NahnCee said:
“I think McCain is going to win, and when he does we can count the big polling firms as being another victim of the Obama Effect.”
I hope you are correct.
I will be voting for McCain on election day.
Should McCain be victorious, I will with a joyful heart, acknowledge and bow down to your greater wisdom.
Hoping for a miracle….
Nov 1, 2008 - 11:50 pm 141. Pascal:Aubergine:
Have a beer and watch this again.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRH2iKFMlb8
I think it even cheered up Habu for about half a day.
Nov 2, 2008 - 12:01 am 142. Konyok:Even better, a nice glass of Georgian wine.
I’ve already voted. Straight Republican with a couple of Libertarians. Against retention of ALL judges.
Another reason to vote McCain: he’s got four dogs, one a mutt. Obama’s too prissy for critters.
Nov 2, 2008 - 12:20 am 143. Gaffe Prices:NahnCee:
By striking down the Referendum defining marriage in California (as between one man and one woman) that passed overwhelmingly, (as it has in all states where a referendum was on the ballot) in 2001, the California Supreme Court has opened the door for the defining of marriage to include Polygamy as a right, well beyond Same Sex “Marriage” as a “right”. When courts intrude, Amendment is the only option remaining.
With Polygamy on its way to legalization by this court (decree) precedent, the muslim extended family becomes the preferred method by the left of finishing off the institution entirely. What’s next, Sharia? Courts in England already have ruled Sharia Law legal. (British courts have also done away with trial by jury.)
If you don’t feel that legalization of Polygamy by court decree isn’t going to hell (here on earth as it is there too), then you might feel obliged to vota no on Prop 8. Otherwise, knock that chip off their shoulder.
Nov 2, 2008 - 3:15 am 144. El cambio en Amwerica: pierda o gane Obama, habrá guerra civíl en America. Algunos lo pronostican… « NUEVA EUROPA- Nueva Eurabia:[...] de Belmont Club [...]
Nov 2, 2008 - 3:52 am 145. The Fat Guy » Blog Archive » Chuckle-worthy OTD:[...] Belmont Club » Cassandra Beer, boys, beer. It’s time to drink a beer. Even in the unlikely event that what Erica Jong predicts happens, I would rather die drunk than die insane. [...]
Nov 2, 2008 - 6:21 am 146. Foul Harold:“We can talk about “trip wires” for civil war in the United States with such insouciance because we’ve never personally confronted profound social dysfunction”
I have spent significant time in the Middle East and I am eminently aware of the frightening levels social dysfunction can attain. A pervasive culture of fear and corruption has contributed to this reality. Nobody is willing to be the first to stand up and tackle the difficult problems they face so things remain as they are generation after generation.
“Over the years, I have come to understand a critical difference between the world of fear and the world of freedom. In the former, the primary challenge is finding the inner strength to confront evil. In the latter, the primary challenge is finding the moral clarity to see evil.” - Natan Sharansky
We currently live in the world of freedom. But should it somehow become a part of the world of fear, we will all have a choice to make. We do ourselves a disservice when we do not consider all possibilities. The very foundations of the United States were forged through years of perilous struggle and it is foolhardy to dismiss out of hand the possibility of this happening again.
Nov 2, 2008 - 7:28 am 147. Unsk:On Gateway Pundit, there is a new video taken in January in which Obama says he will tax coal plants 100% and bankrupt them in his new cap and trade system.
That should play well in the Battleground/Coal States of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, and Colorado.
Just more ammo to shoot down the One.
Nov 2, 2008 - 7:35 am 148. cjm:heller tells us that a man of action will follow obama, and that’s when things will get interesting.
Nov 2, 2008 - 7:48 am 149. buckets:I, for one, welcome our new Dear Leader, and will honor Obama with a creepy life-size portrait in my office.
I dislike posting OT, but this is pretty good
“The highest-ranking Republican in the House is accusing the Republican-led U.S. Justice Department of playing politics when it comes to investigating voting-fraud allegations and monitoring balloting in Ohio.”
Nov 2, 2008 - 7:59 am 150. slade:http://www.columbusdispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2008/10/31/boenerdoj.html?sid=101
Obama says he will tax coal plants 100% - Unsk
I rather enjoy winging off topic. If an Obama administration is foolish enough to destroy the single most abundant domestic resource, the cheapest per unit energy, the safest, and the fastest to build (no exploration required - geologists *know* where the coal deposits are buried) - literally the best *transition* technology available - I would consider that another sign that reason cannot prevail or even influence the political agenda.
Just as a reminder, most historians attribute - or at least acknowledge the significance role of - commercial-scale hydropower facilities available from damming the great rivers of the west in the ’30’s and ’40’s for providing the energy necessary to rapidly mobilize war materiel after Pearl Harbor. Without hydropower, industrial production could not have been ramped up in that time frame - and without the timeframe, who knows? [ref Marc Reisner, Cadillac Desert]
Nov 2, 2008 - 8:23 am 151. slade:the Religious Right becoming partially deranged and weeping at the airport as their Goddess boards a one-way flight for Alaska. - Cedarford
Whether the dysfunction of the past eight years will be blamed on George Bush for his detached style of governing or on that shrill, partisan, irresponsible, hyperactive, bo-toxed motley crew of “we’re gonna nationalize your grandmother” Democrats in Congress is a question for History to decide. Time being the ultimate arbiter of unbiased settlements. My prediction is that History will credit both sides for failing to unite, choosing instead to race to the wire, consequences be damned.
Whatsoever - I’ll be long dead. The thrust of my point is - Lay off Palin. She ain’t no constitutional scholar, neither is three quarters of Congress, who dumped the financial mess in our laps with what can best be described as marginal assistance from the Executive Office. Palin is taking heat for her contrast with the distaff side of the Iowahawk parody. I predict she will emerge just fine after that “one way trip back to Alaska” - much better than the “bitter” Washington hoi-polloi who now get their chance to “light and heat the planet”.
You boys go. You go.
Nov 2, 2008 - 8:38 am 152. Aristide:Is this the new Red Army?
Power! POWER!
Red Star @ 2:13
Nov 2, 2008 - 9:23 am 153. fred:I have known about Sen. Obama’s ties with Edward Said and Rashid Khalidi for a year now. When the stupid young college students in the U.S., many of whom are voting in TWO STATES, their own and the states where they attend college, cooperate with ACORN strategies they are helping to elect a man who believes the ends always justify the means. Not just sometimes: ALWAYS. And when you elect such a man you are also bringing in his circles of influence. It is precisely those circles of influence that the mainstream media have gone to great efforts to hide. So, you have a man suckled on the milk of Communists, who grew up to associate with Marxists/socialists/Communists, and is also sympathetic to Islamic terrorism.
SOCIALISM + ISLAM = Totalitarianism-on-steroids
David Horowitz’ book “Unholy Alliance” should be required reading for all college students. Fat chance of that happening, given that the foxes are guarding the hen houses.
Nov 2, 2008 - 9:37 am 154. NahnCee:Gaffe - is that there what you posted what they call a “strawman” in debating classes?
Nov 2, 2008 - 9:38 am 155. peterike:When the stupid young college students in the U.S., many of whom are voting in TWO STATES, their own and the states where they attend college
Fred, you are right about this. The other day I was talking with my son, who goes to school in Florida, and he said he had voted (for McCain, thankfully). Thinking he meant he’d sent in his NY absentee ballot, I said “it’s too bad your vote doesn’t mean anything in New York,” and he said “no, I voted in Florida.” I asked him how the heck he did that, and he casually said they had a registration day at the campus and whoever wanted to could just sign up and then vote.
Amazing. The system is so broken that we really don’t have a clue as to the extent of fraud going on.
Shifting to another thread topic, I think if McCain does pull out a victory, we have the alternate problem that he damn well has to do a good job. It won’t be easy with a Moonbat Congress. If he flounders and can’t somehow pin the blame on the Dems (hard to do with the MSM), they will win even more seats in 2010 and Obama will be back resoundingly in 2012 to win by a mile. Me, I don’t have that much faith in McCain being successful. So maybe all he gets us is a four year slowdown on the road to perdition.
If Obama wins, we can only hope that they don’t so shift the playing field (Fairness Doctrine, etc etc) that Republicans can’t make a comeback in 2010. That’s the real issue in my mind. If two miserable Obama years are followed by a strong Republican comeback in 2010 (assuming some real Republicans show up), then the damage might be minimized.
In any event, on Tuesday I suspect we’ll see some streets on fire either way. An Obama victory will bring us “payback time” celebrations, an Obama loss will do exactly the same, only worse because of the anger involved. I feel the Great Healer has guaranteed us violence no matter what happens.
Nov 2, 2008 - 10:14 am 156. pst314:Cassandra was cursed with the gift of prophecy after she refused to sleep with the god Apollo. Erica Jong, on the other hand, was cursed with the gift of always being wrong after she slept with everybody. She sang the praises of sex with no consequences, what she called the zipless f*ck. Now she slanders those she disagrees with, but no affect on her credibility among “intellectuals”, which I suppose amounts to a zipless f*ckup.
Nov 2, 2008 - 10:21 am 157. fred:peterike,
Back when I was an undergraduate university student (1978-82) and was a Leftist in those days socialism was not at all popular among college students. Today it is very much so, only the kids don’t know it’s socialism or Marxism (it’s packaged under a different name). I realize that kids like your son are a MINORITY among the kids. There’s a reason for that.
But the trends worry me. Reagan had two blowout victories. GHWB had a very big electoral win. Clinton had a decent one in 1992 and an even bigger one in 1996. GWB had very, very narrow ones in 2000 and 2004. Do you see the trends? The Left keeps getting stronger and stronger. And then there is the 2006 elections. Wham!
The Left keeps getting more and more popular in the U.S., while in the rest of the world socialism is increasingly discredited. Even in Venezuela the people are jumping ship and trying to get out of that hell hole. Fastest growing immigrant population in South Florida, I hear, are expat Venezuelans who are fierce anti-Communists. But in the U.S. socialism is gaining ground.
For most human beings, they need to come face to face with reality before they understand the implications of their ideas. I fear that will hold true here in the U.S. as well. The kids need to learn from painful experience that socialism fails, always has failed, and always will fail.
McCain may pull out a miracle on Tuesday. And if he does, it still does not break the trend. The kids who vote for Obama are not going to be disillusioned with socialism. They will hang in there and still hew to an allegiance to that ideology.
This is what worries me more than anything else. I was a lucky guy. I eventually figured out that Marxism is unworkable by really digging into the intellectual struggle between its claims and the critiques of those claims. For the most part, it was not personal, painful experience of reality that got me out of the woods. I just figured it out by keeping my brain restless and learning. But most people are not that way. This is not intended as some kind of exercise in self-congratulatory nonsense. It’s only to illustrate a point. There are plenty of people like me who left the Left. But not enough of us.
Nov 2, 2008 - 10:46 am 158. NahnCee:Fred - luck’s got nothing to do with nothing. It’s evolution and the process of maturization:
“anyone who’s not a democrat when they’re young lacks a heart. anyone who’s not a republican when they’re old lacks a brain.”
I have to believe most of the current Obamatrons will slowly slowly discover the error of their ways as life adds experience to their years (not to mention toys to their garage and lucre to their bank accounts). Always has before, anyway.
Nov 2, 2008 - 11:46 am 159. Arkadiy Belousov:Overheard a conversation today at Costco: “We’re shopping for Election Day Party”. And, from the way they looked, it’s not McCain’s win they are about to celebrate.
Nov 2, 2008 - 12:22 pm 160. Cannoneer No. 4:If at first you don’t secede…
Nov 2, 2008 - 12:32 pm 161. Subotai Bahadur:RE: # 84 Shakespeare 101: With all due respect, I do not take the statement by the Hawaii Dept. of Health as probative. If you read the actual text of the statement; all they are saying is that they have a birth certificate on file. When Obama was born [and perhaps today still] Hawaii allowed late registrations of births, especially if born overseas. The key point is “Box 7C” on the birth certificate form, labeled, “County and State OR Foreign Country of Birth”. That one data point would be definitive and end the whole controversy.
Perhaps I look a people’s actions a bit differently than most. I just retired after 28 years as a Commissioned Peace Officer. I am used to reading people and events and looking for incongruities indicating illicit and/or illegal activities.
What is the norm? First, pretty much anyone can get a legally certified copy of a birth certificate in a hurry if they need one. Two weeks tops. Second, the one posted on his web site was bogus. To be a legal birth certificate, it has to have both the embossed state seal, and in Hawaii’s case, they stamp the back and the ink is made to bleed through to be visible from the front. The one posted on his web site had neither. The supposed authentication by Factcheck.org is not probative because it is owned by the Annanberg Foundation, which has both Barack Obama and William Ayers as officials.
So we have a case where Obama has been [justifiably or not] challenged to prove that he qualifies under the Constitution as a ‘natural born citizen’. The burden of proof is on him, especially since his opponent had the same challenge and released not only his birth certificate, but also the hospital records. His response is to post an obvious fraud.
People act in their own self interest. If they are acting outside their self interest, they usually have an obvious reason. Faced with legal action, which cost surely in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and no small amount of credibility [otherwise why is this an issue?] he chose to conceal his birth certificate and continues to do so up through this date. There is no down side in releasing it, if he is a ‘natural born citizen’. It can be done quickly. It costs only $10 for the certified copy from Hawaii.
The only reasonable first order approximation any investigator could have would be that there was something on that certificate that would be to his detriment if revealed. All a birth certificate shows is where and when someone is born and who are the parents. Some states also show racial background. OK, we know his race. He trumpets it. We know, presumably, who his parents are. In modern America, if it showed illegitimacy, that would not be a factor. There does not seem to be any controversy over when he was born. That leaves only the question of where, which happens to be the item on point in this discussion. The only damage that could obtain if there was a revelation, would be if he was not born in this country. It woul d not matter if he was born in Kansas or Washington state instead of Hawaii. That is why box 7C is so important.
Normally, one would ignore a controversy like this, like I ignored the one over McCain’s being born in the Panama Canal Zone, which at that time WAS a US territory. But his ongoing evasion of what every natural born American citizen should be able to furnish on demand with ease raises the index of suspicion beyond tolerance. Combine that with what is plainly weasel wording by the Hawaii Department of Health; when they could have plainly said that the certificate shows he was born on ‘x’ date at ‘y’ location with no compromise of confidentiality, and we may be throwing ourselves into a constitutional crisis.
We are in the midst of what has been termed a “cold civil war”. There is a cultural and political divide in this country where we no longer comprehend where the other side is coming from, nor does either side trust the actions, motivations, or loyalty to the country or Constitution of the other. Violence, threats, and thuggery is now the political norm, especially from the Left. It would not take much of a provocation for the cold civil war to start getting hot.
The trigger may be one of those listed by #112 Foul Harold. It may be the creation of the civilian armed force that Obama has spoken of. Or it may be the justifiable belief that if Obama is installed in office, he is an unconstitutional usurper rather than a legitimate president.
I reference this from Dr. Edwin Viera [who has a long history of practice before the Supreme Court in landmark cases] as to the legal and constitutional implications if the constitutional legitimacy of a president is in doubt:
http://newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwin84.htm
There are scores of millions of Americans who have specifically sworn to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, foreign or domestic. That oath does not expire.
By every investigatory indication, Barack Obama is deliberately concealing something of great personal damage that is on his birth certificate. To him, that something is worth concealing, even at the risk of civil disorder or armed conflict within our society. Leaving aside the judgement of whether we would want someone with those priorities in charge of this country; would it not be better for all of us to know what it is beforehand and maybe step away from the brink if in fact it was not something that would render him ineligible?
Nov 2, 2008 - 2:40 pm 162. sirius_sir:McCain may pull out a miracle on Tuesday. And if he does, it still does not break the trend. The kids who vote for Obama are not going to be disillusioned with socialism. They will hang in there and still hew to an allegiance to that ideology.
I will vote for McCain and hope for the best, but understanding that an Obama victory may be a blessing in disguise. There is no way Obama can meet all the expectations attendant on him, and so disillusionment is inevitable. The only question is how wide and deep that disillusionment will be, as well as how permanently it might discredit his and his backers’ agenda.
Nov 2, 2008 - 3:11 pm 163. Jim Nicholas:Konyok #132
“So, I accept that a propensity to violence is intrinsic to the species. I find these dark mutterings, right and left, to be more affectation than authentic impulse. However, in the aggregate I feel that this kind of discourse serves to slowly disable our societal inhibitions against political violence. The more we talk about it, the more likely it becomes.”
“Because I don’t want any lowering of the threshold, another instance of defining deviance down, I consider idle talk of domestic political violence to be taboo.”
All of the social-psychological research I am aware of supports your concern. Whether it is individual exposure to ideas of violence (violent TV programs and computer games or stories and pictures of violent behavior) or group participation in which violence is condoned, such exposure makes persons, at least temporarily, more callous toward victims of violence and more willing to accept violence.
Jim
Nov 2, 2008 - 4:14 pm 164. slade:President Wilson:
If war calls forth courage and sacrifice, it may generate an unwillingness to tolerate dissent. Wilson created the world’s first propaganda machine and ordered the arrest of thousands of people merely for expressing opposition to entry by the United States into World War I. He had newspapers and magazines shut down for criticizing the war; he instituted loyalty oaths at colleges and universities; and he created an army of a quarter of a million goons who intimidated and beat dissenters. In fairness to Wilson these measures were instituted in response to the pressures of the United States attempting to accomplish a feat never attempted before: fight a major land war on the European continent. Still, Wilson’s training should have disposed him toward an understanding of dissent.
………………
Would Barack Obama attempt the repressive measures of Woodrow Wilson? The moralistic tone of his pronouncements indicate that he is man who is unwilling to accede to any views except his own when confronted with a crisis. And his temperament might tempt him to try. By his own admission he spent his college years hanging out with Marxists, structural feminists, and radicals. His association with Bill Ayers is too well known to require repeating. These groups are not known for the tolerance of dissent.
Steady as she goes. It’ not the first time these waters have been sailed.
Nov 2, 2008 - 4:39 pm 165. fred:Subotai Bahadur,
In #161 you described the country now being already in the midst of a Cold War. In your estimation, how long have we been in such a war? Who started it and when did it start?
Is it possible for the United States to pass into an experiment in deeper socialism and then, with the inevitable failure of socialism, to be able to back out of it through the political process? Or would it possibly lead to armed conflict?
Nov 2, 2008 - 6:14 pm 166. walt baxter:For a different perspective on the value of your vote check out http://www.catholicvote.com
Nov 2, 2008 - 8:12 pm 167. 3Case:@Dave:
Thank you for your kind words. Haven’t read Heinlein; I came to SciFi way late. I am very much a Rothbardian. How cool that you knew him!
I believe that any use of state power for a personal purpose to be immoral and violent. It has always struck me that one of the most regular of these people’s whims is the abolition of the military, which is the one part of the state that meets the most legitimate justification for a state entity, the common defense. I question the motivation of those who would not have a strong common defense…excepting therefrom the time I question their intelligence.
It is a very good crew here at BC, including the trolls. The quality of the crew, IMO, is a reflection on our host.
Nov 2, 2008 - 8:38 pm 168. outa my league:L3 @ 72: “Most BCers are lurkers. To contribute, a certain activation energy must be reached. (I was a long-time lurker, then my energy level rose to the point where I started contributing. Not being all the great at self-analysis, I’m not sure what did it, but my guess is it was the intellectual and emotional energy that comes from the democratic process.)
My guess is that way more than 5% of lurkers reject the inevitability of the election, or its consequences.”
***************************
Good point about the “lurkership” of most BCers.
I guess I tend to think that conservative intellectual comment bloggers, such as we find in fair abundance at the Belmont Club, are often way too pessimistic as regards McCain’s election chances. Why? Because they believe themselves to be too “clever” to have been fooled by Obama campaign manipulation, dispiriting tactics, and skewed polling results.
That, and the horror of being thought by their peers as “gullible optimists.”
Go Sarah. Go Mac. Goe Joe!
- oml
Nov 2, 2008 - 8:46 pm 169. Benj:K - THanks for your long ish comment - Got no prob condemining Drica Jong - TERRIBLE fucking novelist as well. But the occasion for a great line on Bob Dylan’s comeback record so…I think, though, that your history of the Belmont Club - which makes sense to me since I shared your appreciation for the inforand pov’s during the darkest days in Iraq - closes the door on the back story a little early. Without saying so, your own ack that you’ve been dealing with a fair amount of talk “trip wires” etc. over here lately underscores the disingenuousness of Wretch’s claim that hall the madness is coming from the left. (In fact - it seems farily clear that the Right is scarier right now. THose Skinheads were real, the Black man cutting up that face was a fantasy.) MY point though is that Wretch be bs’ing when he claims there’s nothing ugly has been happening HERE!
Fred - Know you don’t have mu;ch use for m y posts - but I had a relative who dealt with a lot of nerve pain…Hang in there - and Don’t WORRY so much about O. No fear, No lie…
Nov 2, 2008 - 9:38 pm 170. Subotai Bahadur:#165 Fred:
Sorry it took so long to get back to you. I did not originate the phrase “Cold Civil War”. While I had noted the phenomenon, I did not have a name for it until I ran into an article in Maclean’s by the inimitable Mark Steyn.
http://www.macleans.ca/culture/media/article.jsp?content=20071022_110242_110242&page=1
I personally think that this started back in the 1960’s when the role and nature of government changed. Combine the Great Society, which eliminated personal responsibility and the turn of the Democratic Party to the point where they viewed the US as the enemy; and we see the beginning. Add to that the collapse of literacy, numeracy, and ability to reason in our schools; and we have created a perfect class destined to be ruled by Masters rather than live as free men and women. Mind you, I do not view it as totally the fault of the Democrats.
Historically, every couple of generations we have parties rise and fall in our country; as they cannot cope with the new challenges of the times. That is why we no longer have Whigs, Federalists, Grange, Bull Moose, and a host of other political conglomerations. However, we have had our country’s politics functionally frozen since about 1912-14. From then; WW-I, the Depression, WW-II, and the Cold War and sundry conflicts in between functionally froze our politics. Neither one of our parties actually are now in a position to deal with the challenges of today. We need a major realignment. I had hoped that the Democrats would collapse FIRST, but now it is a toss up. We have much hard work ahead of us, and there is no assurance we will survive it. The Cold Civil War has intruded to the point where I suspect that a peaceful resolution is not possible. Every society, culture, or dynasty does collapse in time. It may be our time to enter The Long Night.
Every society has some form of politics. It may be democratic, it may be feudal, it may be dictatorial. But it works to allocate power, resources, and the decide the solutions to problems. Once it breaks down, once trust in whatever system is in existence fails, it takes a major trauma to reassert some political order.
I fear that we are at a point where it will take the final destruction of one side or another to reestablish a unified body politic. We are just awaiting a trigger point. If we “pass into an experiment in deeper socialism” I think it will require force of arms to pass through to a new equilibrium. We no longer have the civil space to truly compromise.
I am NOT sanguine about our ability to achieve that equilibrium and maintain our ideal of a capitalist, democratic, Republic. I am sure that we will have no choice about trying when the time comes.
I see this election as one of a large number of possible trigger points for that resort to arms or our complete destruction. The election of an authoritarian Socialist like Obama will trigger a resistance. The goals of even the most altruistic revolution rarely come to pass in the end. The election of McCain is not exactly an ideal path to that equilibrium. It is at best a delaying action to allow us to possibly deal with our foreign and domestic problems short of war, for a while. Hopefully, we may be able to defuse a couple of the problems so that they will not all hit us at once when the crunch comes.
I do note that from my admittedly conservative point of view, it is the Left that is the greatest obstacle to solving any of those problems. They appear to me to specialize in obstruction of any solution. And to be incapable of discussion, analysis, or communication. Politics on their end of the spectrum [yes,I know that it is more a circle than a left-right continuum, but that is the way our language defines things]is degenerating into brute force, ranting, and coercion. As I said, I am not sanguine.
Sorry about the length of this rant.
Nov 2, 2008 - 9:47 pm 171. Pascal:OML:
Well maybe because I’m generally optimistic that proves I’m not all that conservative? In loving traditions and fighting for principles, most of you have surmised I’ve had a good share of run-ins with the don’t make waves faction of conservatives.
Anyway, optimism drove me to do a lot more work with that old cartoon clip I’ve linked here a few times. In its new form it is currently titled The Path to Barack’s Paradise, and that is subject to change if someone can provide me with a catchier title.
Maybe you passing it along to demoralized conservatives and PUMAs will cheer them up and provoke the desired effect. Or embed it in a website or two between now and the day of the election. Those here who have seen it already know who gets the butt of the joke.
Nov 2, 2008 - 9:55 pm 172. Eggplant:sirius_sir said:
“… understanding that an Obama victory may be a blessing in disguise. There is no way Obama can meet all the expectations attendant on him, and so disillusionment is inevitable. The only question is how wide and deep that disillusionment will be, as well as how permanently it might discredit his and his backers’ agenda.”
I can’t buy into the “silver lining” argument. It’s true that expectations for the Messiah are so high that it will certainly lead to deep disillusionment amongst the moonbats and ordinary people deceived by the MSM. However the harm that will be caused by the Messiah will probably be extreme. Any benefit coming from a few disillusioned moonbats will be insignificant compared to the damage that the Messiah will almost certainly cause.
It’s so furstrating watching the nation do this to itself. I’m just hoping the political and economic system can survive the next four years (it’s not certain).
Nov 2, 2008 - 9:58 pm 173. Konyok:fred #165
Consider the disappointment of the pro-life cause. Despite the election of Reagan and both Bushes and a Republican congressional majority, there’s been precious little progress for the cause at the federal level.
If Obama should be elected with grand Democratic majorities, it still won’t be easy for them to institute deep socialism. There is just so much inertia in the ship of state.
First, there are the big donors. Some of them might benefit from nationalization or socialism, but most of them won’t - they just want favors.
The Democratic Party is not homogenous ideologically. In the unlikely event that they gain a supermajority in the Senate, there are still the blue dogs as an obstacle. (Those who stand for election in 2010 could easily be targeted and pressured.)
Then, there is SCOTUS.
Most importantly, the American people are thoroughly committed to a mass consumption life style. It is critical to understand that quite unlike Venezuela, or other socialist templates, our middle class greatly outnumbers the lower class. Once the reality of carbon taxes is understood, a president Obama would only dream of Bush’s popularity ratings.
I don’t think that a hypothetical Obama administration would be able to pick any but the lowest hanging fruit of its ambitions, if we quietly and peacefully oppose them with determination and courage.
Nov 2, 2008 - 10:10 pm 174. fred:Konyok,
I’ve decided to get involved in local school and education issues. I’ve had it with the “progressives” who drive things in that arena. We get almost nothing substantive for our tax dollars. The kids are not improving and the curriculum gets ever so slightly dumbed-down with the passage of time. And when the test scores come in, they (the education bureaucrats) find ways to spin them in order to give the appearance of improvement. It’s a huge scam perpetrated on the public. On top of it all, we get an education establishment whose NEA has most of the politicians in this state in their pockets. The corruption is revolting.
Plus, the kids are far more successfully indoctrinated rather than educated.
All of it is really the root of the problem, as it seeps all the way up. The universities are another story, with a far more intractable problem. The only thing I can do there is to just refuse to give to my alma mater (the University of New Hampshire). All of us should withhold our money from the universities, so we can starve the trouble makers part of that long Gramscian march through the institutions.
Otherwise, I will do everything I can to oppose the Obama administration. Whatever I have the power to do, I will do. The Democrats were viciously unmerciful towards a good man who did everything he could to protect the citizens of this nation, and for his pains they trashed him. Well, payback’s a bitch and it’s coming…
Nov 2, 2008 - 10:20 pm 175. Konyok:Subotai Bahadur #169
Can you define “authoritarian Socialist?”
I see a demogogue, a rhetoritician, a bamboozler and a “community organizer.” But, I haven’t seen any hint of administrative strength, certainly a prerequisite for effective authoritarianism. I sure don’t see a disciplined cadre.
I see rudeness, dishonesty, recklessness and even ruthlessness, but “brute force?”
I don’t see anything that conservatives couldn’t beat if they got off of their barca loungers and fought back within the constitutional system given to us by our forefathers.
There never was an equilibrium, there never will be. Democracy is innately unstable, just like the free market.
Are American conservatives the heirs of the founding fathers? Or, are they impotent Carlists fretting and fussing until the Falangists make the matter moot.
Nov 2, 2008 - 10:28 pm 176. Konyok:Good for you, fred!
I’ve got 119 signatures on my petition now. It turned out that a couple of them read BC! (There goes my cover …)
Did you happen to see Richard Dreyfuss on Huckabee’s program tonight? He has the same complaint, albeit from the left. He fears that we are losing our enlightenment intellectual inheritance. Precisely the point, IMHO.
I think that we might just find surprising allies along the way …
Nov 2, 2008 - 10:33 pm 177. Dave:Now Fred, about your 173 above.
Remember to forgive.
Now (1) I am Irish.
(2) To forgive is Divine and therefore
(3) NOT ONE OF ME PEROGATIVES!
So will you kindly forgive those who trespass
Nov 2, 2008 - 11:06 pm 178. Subotai Bahadur:against me? I’ll be too busy boiling them in
oil to do the job myself.
#174 Konyok:
The socialist is fairly obvious. The authoritarian may not be completely realized, but is there to see. His is a movement that relies on a cult of the personality. There have been more than a few physical attacks on persons who oppose him and their property by his followers. It is common enough that there is no doubt that they are authorized if not directed. We have numerous examples where the power of the State is used by Obama’s campaign to try to intimidate those who cross his path. Criminal activity by his campaign is rampant, with no fear of prosecution. He has no qualms about suppressing free speech by anyone who opposes him. And his opposition to the First Amendment is matched in deed but not rhetoric by his opposition to the Second.
Given the adulation given him by groups of younger enthusiasts, and his desire for a “civilian defense force” at government expense but outside military control [was wir vielleicht Schutz-Staffeln bezeichen konnen]; yeah, I can see it. I alluded in # 169 that the political spectrum was really a circle. It does bend back in on itself. That which we call the far Right and the far Left share the same methods and means. Everything from secret police, to some form of concentration camp, to informers, to propaganda and thought control, to control over the economy. It all comes down to control and the subordination of the individual to the almighty state. The Nazis are the archtypical “rightists”, but remember that Nazi is an acronym. The actual name of the party is National Sozialische Deutscher Arbeiter Partei. National Socialist German Workers Party. The socialist impulse, in power, is inherently coercive and eventually authoritarian. Those who rule “in the name of the People” are jealous gods.
Nov 2, 2008 - 11:10 pm 179. NahnCee:I’ve been wondering recently what part Darwin and evolution may be playing in all of this. It seems to me that the species has evolved to this point where, literally, the world over liberals and conservatives make up a 50/50 split. It’s not just America nor Israel - it’s EVERYwhere that elections are being held, which makes me think it’s a human trait.
Why is that? We fuss and fume about how stupid and insane liberals and Democrats are, and how everything would be perfect if they’d all just *poof* and go away, but what is there in the apparent survival of the species that nature has decreed that there needs to be 50% of human beings born who are built to see a snake-oil salesman like Barack Obama as a Great Man?
I suspect this isn’t a new phenomenon either, but becomes more pronounced when you have elections and polls to count it. What is Mother Nature seeing that I am not?
Nov 2, 2008 - 11:30 pm 180. Eggplant:NahnCee asked:
“I’ve been wondering recently what part Darwin and evolution may be playing in all of this. It seems to me that the species has evolved to this point where, literally, the world over liberals and conservatives make up a 50/50 split…. What is Mother Nature seeing that I am not?”
You’ve heard me rant about this before.
It’s entropy.
A coal fired power plant might have about 44% thermal efficiency, i.e. 44% of the raw energy from the coal becomes useful electricty while 56% of the energy goes up the cooling tower as waste heat. This happens due to the Laws of Physics (there is no real technological alternative if the energy comes from coal).
This same sort of waste that we see in mechanical systems also happens in the political process. About 50% of human beings are going to be moonbats because a significant percentage of the general population are too stupid, lazy or gullible to be anything else.
The founding fathers recognized this when they wrote the US Constitution. The United States is a “representative democracy” and not a “direct democracy”. History showed long ago that direct democracies are inherently unstable. The elected leaders are supposed to separate the moonbats from the levers of political power. Of course, if the elected leaders are themselves moonbats then the whole process falls flat on its face. That’s were the Freedom of the Press is supposed to step in. The MSM is supposed to expose the moonbats and lunatics before they are voted into power.
Nov 3, 2008 - 12:20 am 181. Salt Lick:“… understanding that an Obama victory may be a blessing in disguise. There is no way Obama can meet all the expectations attendant on him,
I agree this is a possibility, but since when has placing your future in your opponent’s hands been a wise move, in sports or politics?
Nov 3, 2008 - 5:12 am 182. 3Case:‘I see a demogogue, a rhetoritician, a bamboozler and a “community organizer.”‘
Remember the Revolting Wright’s advise after he was discovered in all his existential fetidness: “Barrack, he’s a politician…he do what politicians do.”
“The MSM is supposed to expose the moonbats and lunatics before they are voted into power.”
…except when the MSM is full of moonbats, as it is now.
Nov 3, 2008 - 6:21 am 183. slade:Those who rule “in the name of the People” are jealous gods. - SB
This campaign has been notable for the (relative) lack of ideological discussion. Platform? What platform? I don’t causally throw this word around because it is overused, but the design and execution of the Obama campaign was nothing short of genius - offensive in the stark shiv of subliminal suggestion and imagery, but brilliant.
Despite the reams of outpouring on this board, ideology was a nonstarter in this campaign. Only within the past week did the idea of redistribution enter the public consciousness. Look at the legs that issue had.
Steve Forbes is saying that Obama will have no control over a massively Democratic House and Senate who will immediately implement (1) some form of GSE health care proposal and (2) Employee Free Choice Act, which would strip workers of the right to a private vote (an issue that has received zero coverage aside from Jack Welsh’s outraged opposition.) Health care was covered from the angle of government sponsorship. Period. The Free Choice Act was never mentioned. What to watch for? Passage of that bill is a real and significant encroachment on labor rights. A First Step if you will. As things look now, it’s another done deal.
And “wealthy” has been redefined down to $120,000 gross income.
And that’s not even to get into “bankrupting the coal industry.”
Carbon capture and sequestration = wealth redefined to $75,000.
Jealous gods, indeed. Sounds a lot less rhetorical in this context doesn’t it?
Nov 3, 2008 - 6:32 am 184. Konyok:Subotai Bahadur #177
The socialism is indisputable, but “authoritarian?”
I usually try to avoid argumentum ad hitlerum, but, there it is …
The Nazi party had a hard central cadre of veterans of WW I and the freikorps. Munich in the 1920’s was a very dangerous to be because the SA was not at all shy about beating and killing people. Literally, bodies were being found every week. This party asset didn’t just appear out of no where, it was very expensive, depended on a reservoir of unemployed military men convinced of the stab-in-the-back conspiracy and required a lot of organizational effort. A video of young black men chanting Obama’s name does not an SA make …
I just don’t see it. There certainly is some weird, hinky stuff, but it is amateur hour as authoritarianism.
It definitely doesn’t justify retreating to the fainting couch and muttering darkly.
It is important to correctly identify and describe our opponents and get on with our opposition. Samwise, not Denethor.
Nov 3, 2008 - 8:58 am 185. Konyok:slade #182
I think that you’re absolutely correct.
By fixating on The One and his slippery narcissism, we too easily lose track of what is really going on. The lesson of this election, if he does indeed win, is that a message gets in the way of victory. Cultivate a shiny, cool, smooth surface and look for the wave.
It is a real mistake to confuse a possible victory for Senator Government with a victory for his ideologies. Non of the issues have been discussed and Joe the Plumber caused a real panic in his ranks.
We must hold our phalanx and press forward. Quoth lady Thatcher: “This is no time to get wobbly.” When the new congress convenes we have to use every force multiplying trick, every theatric device and every good argument at our disposal to hamstring the majority.
What we can’t afford is to passively watch and say “I told you so.”
Nov 3, 2008 - 9:10 am 186. Unsk:The latest Mason-Dixon poll of battleground states:
Colorado: Obama 49, McCain 44, Undecided 4
Florida: Obama 47, McCain 45, Undecided 7
Nevada: Obama 47, McCain 43, Undecided 8
Pennsylvania: 47, McCain 43, Undecided 9
Virginia: Obama 47, McCain 44, Undecided 9
Ohio: McCain 47, Obama 45, Undecided 6
Missouri: McCain 47, Obama 46, Undecided 5
North Carolina: McCain 49, Obama 46, Undecided 5
According to Mason - Dixon organization, the vast majority of undecideds are white.
The polls are all over the place. But remember two little nuggets:
1. Obama’s standing in the all the polls leading into the primaries on average was 7 percent more than he received in the actual vote. And those races were pitting two liberals.
2. Most polls are oversampling democrats by an average of seven points or more.
3. There have been claims by alleged disillusioned Obama Campaign people that the “refuse to answer” response among people polled is really really high. In some cases as high as 80%. Could it be that many Americans are now fearful of expressing publicly their political preferences for fear of harassment, even to pollsters? Think of what happened to Joe the Plumber, and the two reporters who dared pose tough questions to Biden.
There doesn’t seem to be any fear of expressing opinions from the Democrats. They express relentlessly their foolish thoughts even in inappropriate situations, like business meetings and sensitive social situations, where such thoughts expose themselves pushy simpletons loons.
It is the Republicans and conservatives who keep silent. Conservatives increasingly fear the loud, derisive intimidating harangue treatment many leftists give anyone who dares to utter a conservative thought.
We may have reached a time where the leftist’s pervasive and relentless nastiness towards anyone on the right, has made all political polls suspect, whether or not the pollster intends to skew the poll or not.
Nov 3, 2008 - 9:11 am 187. Eggplant:I earlier made the comment:
“The MSM is supposed to expose the moonbats and lunatics before they are voted into power.”
3Case responded:
“…except when the MSM is full of moonbats, as it is now.”
That’s an example of Gramscian subversion of a political process. The Second Law of Thermodynamic requires that a significant fraction of the population be moonbats (there will always be moonbats). In a healthy political system the moonbats are marginalized, e.g. they’re making fools out of themselves wearing Che Guevara t-shirts or wasting their time campaigning for Gus Hall and Angela Davis. However after a society has been compromised by Gramscian subversion, the moonbats become university professors or idolized as public entertainers or directly manipulating the political process through the news media (it’s a gradual form of social rot where being left wing is considered “cool”). Gramscian subversion was a political time bomb setup by the Soviet Union during the Cold War (they did not survive to see its success). That time bomb is just about to explode.
Nov 3, 2008 - 9:53 am 188. NahnCee:Kewl. A plot I can get behind.
“It’s all a communist conspiracy!”
Nov 3, 2008 - 10:40 am 189. slade:It definitely doesn’t justify retreating to the fainting couch and muttering darkly. - Konyok
While the Hollywood Barbie Dolls channel their deepest Valley Girl angst, the Republicans can’t decide if their collective soul has been animated by Greta Garbo or Gloria Swanson.**
**That’s not as funny a response as I would have liked but I have to take this opportunity to convey some deep (largely) Scandinavian amusement at some of the recent imagery found on this site. I can feel the ends of my lips turning faintly upward in what must surely pass as an acceptable facsimile of a smile.
Just before the Valium drip kicks in.
As a final observation on Obama before we all receive our marching orders, his “centrist” supporters emphasize Obama’s willingness to engage the opposition as a rebuttal to allegations that his radical and uncompromising agenda will further weaken this country and accelerate a devolution into some ineffectual state with no good outcome short of armed insurrection - or variations on that theme.
That may or may not be true. The point is that it will be irrelevant if Obama cannot curtail the excesses of his own Party in Congress. That is the bigger concern. Right now, it appears that the Republicans are not only out, but out by huge margins.
Those who disparage Palin, seem to be unconcerned by the No. 3 spot in the ascension, let alone the No. 2 spot, let alone the ultimate composition of Congress. Look, there goes a pink rhinoceros.
Nov 3, 2008 - 10:53 am 190. myna:Obamatons has lost it.
Nov 3, 2008 - 11:01 am 191. Unsk:Obama back in January:
“Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. ”
Real hope for change.
Nov 3, 2008 - 11:44 am 192. Konyok:slade,
Sometimes I’m a dense as they come.
Can you give me a hint about pink rhinoceros?
*
I just had an interesting couple of hours. My 20 something Vietnamese cubicle neighbor just asked me how to find out whether she can vote or not. I looked her up on our state’s on-line voter status and she’s good to go. I printed out a sample ballot and went over it with her, trying really hard to be helpful rather than directing, we have 18 ballot initiatives this year. She kept asking me how she should vote but I played civics teacher and engaged her in discussion until she knew how SHE wanted to vote. Although through the summer she has always said how much she liked The One, when it came to president she said that her mom told her to vote for the geezer because he has experience. I told her about the wide open credit card portal and she made up her mind decisively.
Isolated or a discernible trend?
Nov 3, 2008 - 11:47 am 193. Roderick Reilly:Should be a cautionary tale for those of us who are terribly unfond of Obama. Obama Derangement Syndrome has already reared its ugly head. I have even been accused of encouraging it by a couple of posters here.
As for Jong’s talk of “Civil War,” she should keep in mind that the ultimate loser at home would be her side. Do the demographic math, tossing in the preponderance of gun owners and the majority of those with military combat experience, coupled with anger at what so many Americans consider the contrarian and self-serving behavior of America’s elite, and “Barabing!” Jane Fonda and company will have a lot more to worry about than aching backs.
Nov 3, 2008 - 12:19 pm 194. Roderick Reilly:“”"”"”"Enjoy your civil liberties for a few more months.”"”"”"”
Actually, it takes a few years.
Nov 3, 2008 - 12:29 pm 195. slade:Konyok -
My almost smile nearly cracked open into a belly laugh (but my other half is Scots-Irish so close but no cigar). Several threads ago - on the order of months - “programmer” posted a funny bon mot about going off thread: “look there goes a flying rhinoceros.” Sometimes the rhino is charging, sometimes it is pink or blue or red and sometimes it is spelled RINO.
It has come to symbolize any diversionary tactic.
Nov 3, 2008 - 1:35 pm 196. fred:#192, Roderick R,
A few weeks ago I incurred the wrath and censure of some members for bring up the subject of a sanguinary domestic event. No matter how I couched it, in terms of a last resort, and only if serious trip wires were crossed, I got hammered for that kind of thought experiment. I know the Left like all the hairs on the back of my hand, because of the decade I spent as a fellow-traveler in those warrens, and I know the contempt they have for our traditions and founding documents. So, the thought of them possibly rendering said documents null and void - as “historical artifacts” that we have to get beyond, is at least a little upsetting.
And along comes this twit who thinks she’s brainy because she once wrote about anonymous sexual encounters several miles up in the air, who rants about “civil war” when those of us who view it more soberly are exceedingly cautious about it - if Obama loses the election, well, I just have to wonder why one of her past husbands, the one with the medical training, did not realize her insanity. And truly insane she is to think that her side in that sanguinary domestic event would have any chance at all of prevailing.
Nov 3, 2008 - 2:12 pm 197. Konyok:Jeez, slade, it’s been a busy time for the sky watchers, hasn’t it.
Nov 3, 2008 - 3:42 pm 198. Konyok:fred,
I really feel sorry for giving you a hard time.
It’s just that the topic is a bit like pondering incest or whirling puppies in blenders. As Haldemann said to Nixon: “We could do that, but it would be wrong.”
Lots of different levels.
Pragmatic/operationally, such discussions give curious little eyes fodder for thought and further curiosity, without notably advantaging the good guys.
Psychologically, it only serves to ennervate those who might be better engaged in more immediate endeavors. The prospect is SO daunting and SO frightening that a normal person can only withdraw and seek solace in other diversions, EXACTLY what our opponents would most like us to do.
Existentially, it makes bad juju more imminent. I’m not a believer, but I am quite superstitious about the power of the word. To say a thing is to invoke a thing.
Better to let our opponents broach the topic and get the funk on themselves.
Nov 3, 2008 - 3:55 pm 199. Bob Murphy:170. Subotai Bahadur:
I don’t like to admit it SB but I fear you may be right about there being no civilized way to compromise with the Left if they win this election.
There may be no peaceful solution. The left wing messianic authoritarian madness cannot allow for the legitimacy of another point of view.
I’d reckon the philosophical basis of that kind of fascism goes right back to the French Revolution and look what the resultant mindset has done to that nation. On a much more genteel level Trudeau likewise infected Canada which still has not recovered.
I think the pestilence was present but contained in the US but the last 40 years has put paid to that.
I’d reckon a critical weakness for Americans with traditional views is that they make a presumption of reason when they deal with their competitors but there is no real basis for that in this instance.
Most of us with traditional views want to do our work, raise our families, and do other normal things while the left sees all that, even kids in an ideological light. All part of the great game. In my book that is an affliction that affronts reason.
And democracy is based on the premise of the reasonable man (you’re in, Nahncee. That’s historical terminology).
Our representative democracy kept those goofballs in check for more than 200 years but that may be over this time.
The only thing that gives me hope is that the country survived Lincoln and Woodrow Wilson and they may well have been as authoritarian as I (and most BC members)think Obama is.
If they get in and they leave no room for reason, no room for a basic of presumption of reason in their dealings with the American people, it’s on.
Nov 3, 2008 - 6:02 pm 200. fred:If we manage to buy some time by electing McCain and Palin we will have our work cut out for us to start turning the media around or strengthening the new media, and doing things like backing David Horowitz’s students rights initiative on campuses which has had some encouraging impacts.
The big question is, in this struggle how do we avoid totally alienating the useful idiots who have been brainwashed a bit but aren’t deeply committed to left fascist authoritarianism.
It’s a bit like killing or resisting Jihadis without alienating nominal muslims or even protecting nominal muslims from jihadis like we learned to do in Iraq.
I believe the single greatest threat to the nation’s security, future, economy, culture, the whole shebang… is our educational system, grades K through university. It has been the Crown Jewel of the socialists’ achievement that they have taken over and dominated our education system.
They know they now command millions of the minds of the useful idiots, to varying degrees.
I am sure many of the old line Communists in Russia are kicking themselves, thinking that if only they could have held on just a while longer and then THEY would have won the Cold War. But in a sense they have achieved something. They planted the virus in the West and it thrived there. It has adapted to its surroundings and wrapped itself in a difficult to name protein layer.
My take on #199, Bob Murphy’s comments: It might not be possible, in extremis, to pry the convertible useful idiots from their brainwashed mindset in time to avoid their personal destruction in a sanguinary domestic tragedy. Look, we don’t really want to kill our own young people if they side with a tyrant. No one wants this. It would be tragic. But I submit that the greater evil would be to let the country morph into something it was never intended to be. I am still hoping that this very serious divide in or society can be resolved peacefully. I am one of those right of Center people who does still desire to press for people to “reason together.” But in order to “reason together” we have to agree to meet and to submit to the rules of evidence, disciplined discourse that adheres to the rules of logic, and a willingness to take a good and hard look at history.
Nov 3, 2008 - 6:53 pm 201. Konyok:fred,
Can you really advocate the greater evil to counter the lesser evil?
“Look, we don’t really want to kill our own young people if they side with a tyrant.”
Really?
Who is “we?”
With these very words you are opening the door for a far greater tyranny than that you fear.
Nov 3, 2008 - 7:27 pm 202. fred:Konyok,
Even if they enthusiastically want to impose a tyranny on the nation?
IDEAS HAVE CONSEQUENCES. This is one of the crucial lessons our young people have not had in their educations.
And what is the far greater tyranny, Konyok, than the loss of liberty?
I am not, in principle, a pacifist, so certain possibilities, which we hope to be very remote, are not off the table. Back in my days on the campus Left a lot of the useful idiots in the International Solidarity Movement’s CISPES were pacifist dopes. I used to get into arguments with them about violence’s exigencies. I took the side of the Salvadorean peasant who only wanted to defend himself and his family against a regime of death squads who come knocking in the night. Well, these dopes I used to argue with morally equated the violence of the guerrillas with that of the death squads. As if offering up flowers in their hair to the soldiers would stay the hand of death dealt to these unfortunate souls.
Violence and death are part of the drama and struggle of the history of humanity. Our nation was born of it.
So, theoretically if socialist cadres in a future time in our country were to begin enforcing state power over the people, yes, killing the kids may be a necessary evil to preserve the nation and liberty.
Don’t fool yourself for a minute that the Gramscian Communists have not declared war on our society. They have and are only, for now, using the best strategy for subduing it. But Lenin did say that if his people had the bullets instead of the ballot they would use the bullet to impose their will.
Nov 3, 2008 - 7:48 pm 203. Konyok:The greater tyranny is KILLING people, fred.
The point is that you are talking about a POTENTIAL tyranny, not an actual one. And you’re talking about it in a way almost calculated to strengthen its hand. Every tyranny needs enemies to justify itself. Why, in the wide, wide world of sports do you want to give our opponents such a precious gift? (Do you have any doubt that our friend Benj is busily copying and pasting the juicy bits even as we type?)
You’re fretting about things that haven’t even happened and you’re making them more likely.
Can’t you even have the decency to wait for the election to finsh?
Nov 3, 2008 - 8:05 pm 204. Konyok:Bob Murphy,
Yes it is part of the Big Game. So it has always been so and so it will always be. This is the way that human beings are.
We have been graced to live in the land of milk and honey, while most of mankind lives in squalor and fear. Do you really think that it is just *supposed* to be this good because you were born in the US? Do you really think that this republic founded in blood can be maintained without a little effort and maybe some inconvenience to you? If so, you have the same entitlement disease that breeds Obama.
The next logical step to these dark mutterings is the yearning for the leader, the hero on a white horse. THAT is the very essence of Obamism.
The problem with a democratic republic is that there is a chance that your opponents sometimes win. The challenge is how to oppose them without destroying our inheritance ourselves.
Nov 3, 2008 - 8:14 pm 205. fred:Konyok,
I take it your personal beliefs incline you away from the idea of killing under any circumstances. Fair enough. But, I don’t share that belief that killing is the greatest evil. In my religion the command is incorrectly translated as “thou shalt not kill.” The actual command in Hebrew is “thou shalt not do murder.” There IS a difference between lawful killing and murder.
I’ve been down the road with this kind of discussion before with a cousin of mine who is a pacifist and still on the Left. We had a falling out when I left the Left and we are not on the best of terms now. Even when I was on the Left I supported the legitimate use of violence of peoples in countries where the armed forces were imposing oppression. He was against it.
I have a perfect right to discuss these things and I don’t see them as illegitimate. If you think I’m a monster, then I suppose your recourse could be to ask the moderator to ban me.
Nov 3, 2008 - 8:17 pm 206. Konyok:fred,
My personal beliefs are that you don’t brandish a weapon unless you really mean to use it!
Yes, you have every right to discuss these things. No, I don’t think that you’re a monster. I know that you’re almost alone in the middle of Indian country.
I’m asking you to moderate yourself. Consider. This is very serious business indeed - we’re not playing checkers, but Vulcan chess.
If, if it comes down to rock & roll, timing is everything. First came the Boston massacre, then came the tea party. If our opponents become our enemies, we CANNOT grant them the moral high ground.
Nov 3, 2008 - 8:31 pm 207. Konyok:If it gets as bad as all that, the first step is Satyagraha. Maneuver the tyrant into overreacting to civil disobedience. There will have to be martyrs. Only by creating a narrative of innocent victims persecuted by tyranny can the majority of the American people be persuaded to your cause.
Otherwise, you only strengthen the tyrant’s hand. If HE can convince the American majority that there are “divisive” enemies with violence in their hearts, he will have the mandate to suppress you.
If you sound like a Palestinian, you will be treated like a Palestinian.
Nov 3, 2008 - 8:41 pm 208. fred:Konyok,
Branching away from the very edgy topic of conversation we’ve fallen into, I just finished reading Stanley Kurtz article over at nationalreview.com:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=M2E0ZjM5ZWE0Y2Y3ODA1YmQzMzliZTE4ZWFkNGJkNjg=
I’ve been reading everything that Kurtz has been publishing in recent months. The picture he paints of Obama, being as it is (I think) faithful to the facts, is that of a ruthless socialist ideologue in the Alinsky ethics of expediency.
People who go along with Obama’s program who have at least half a brain damn well do know what they are getting and what they are after. They are not babes in the woods.
They aim to completely remake this country into something else. What THEY want will be completely unrecognizeable. It won’t be the U.S. we grew up into. It will be much closer to France, since these people are ultimately out of the French Revolution’s intellectual grounding. Not the conservative American Revolution. I try to tell people this, and sometimes I am regarded as a multi-headed Hydra.
Ideas have consequences. They matter. People who gloss over this live dangerously.
Nov 3, 2008 - 8:47 pm 209. peterike:Since our host has closed the lead thread for some reason, I’ll come here to say it.
Tomorrow’s the day! Vote early and vote often, as they say (you know ACORN will be doing that).
I think McCain just might win this thing, after all. Oh god how I will rejoice watching the heads of moonbats exploding all over the country (and especially the MSM heads).
The “swing states” are going to much closer than the MSM wants you to believe, so if you live there or know those that do, don’t let any lazy McCain supporters stay home.
To victory!
Nov 3, 2008 - 9:10 pm 210. Dave:Right on Peterike: The odds are agin us tomorrow. We may not get an incredible victory, a la Midway. But we will at least get a Coral Sea and blunt their offensive.
Our efforts will at least insure that the other side will be unable to implement their
fanciful and incoherent ideas.
Bankrupt coal? Not any more he won’t. Etc.
Nov 3, 2008 - 10:00 pm 211. Konyok:fred #208,
I agree completely with your statement here and I agree completely with Stanley Kurtz.
I am not partial to conspiracy theories, but I do believe that Obama, Ayers, et al. are knowing villains. I do believe that most of their supporters are zen socialists - a particular subspecies of “useful idiot.” I do believe that a prospective Obama presidency is a threat to the republic.
This thesis is robust. My question to you is: Are you trying to argue this point, with the threat of political violence as the maraschino cherry on top? Or, are you arguing that political violence is likely, desirable, acceptable, inevitable? Is it the cake or the cherry?
If we agree about the cake, then the question becomes: what is to be done?
I have argued consistently that the first task is to deny Obama an electoral victory. The second, and more important task is to salvage what we can of our culture and institutions.
I do believe that half of the battle is simply showing up. Our opponents are not superhuman and they can be defeated.
Nov 3, 2008 - 10:05 pm 212. Konyok:Peterike,
You are a patriot.
I’m working the polls tomorrow and I’m really looking forward to watching the historic upset with a nice glass of Georgian wine.
**
I just thought of a political mistake of Obama. He has not had his Sister Souljah moment. His epoch making “Throw-granma-under-the-bus” speech understood black anger and dismissed white anxiety as false consciousness. His stump speech has a perfunctory “parents-must-do-homework-with-their-kids” riff, but he never has delivered a Bill Cosby style jeremiad.
With almost everybody that I’ve spoken about Obama there comes an awkward moment, after the obligatory “historic change” sentiment, when they tentatively hint at something like “I hope this satisfies them.” Liberals and conservatives alike. I sense a certain awareness that they think that Obama thinks that THEY are the problem. In the privacy of the voting booth, I wonder if this sensation will give them pause.
Nov 3, 2008 - 10:20 pm 213. fred:Konyok,
The cake is what matters. Because it’s the foundation. But the education establishment has hollowed out the cake, gradually in stages. Substituting ideology for hard knowledge and skills. Believe it or not I like kids and I like to be around them. I’m just not a teacher because I always want to forge ahead. When I was a kid I was a daydreamer - a quiet kid who got most of the material quickly and then got bored - and in a Catholic parochial school no less! I cannot imagine what it would have been like in the public school system.
Ultimately, what I want is for vouchers and school choice for parents and kids. Most kids really do want a serious atmosphere where they feel safe and they are challenged. They know the dumbing down when they encounter it, so the adult Gramscians are fooling no one, least of all the kids.
I want schools where traditional morality based on our Christian-Jewish heritage are the norm, not where they are mocked by the post-modernist, cultural Marxists. I got my sense of social justice and morality from the Gospels and Catholic teaching, not Marx. Ultimately, I broke with the Marxist tradition because, as I once explained to you, I realized that socialism will not ever produce a new moral man and never will. It cannot.
When I am not grinding out spreadsheets and reports these days, I’ve undertaken to go back to reading some traditional philosophy from Aristotle and Aquinas, to see what I missed or some subtlety or nuance that might be fresh in our rather stale modern context.
Nov 3, 2008 - 10:22 pm 214. Konyok:fred,
Then let’s stick to the cake, OK?
Better to be Samwise Gamgee than Lord Denethor.
Nov 3, 2008 - 10:27 pm 215. Karen:“The second, and more important task is to salvage what we can of our culture and institutions.”
IF, Obama is elected, let’s hope that second, more important task is doable.
Pessimists, you’re in good company at least. In this NRO TV interview with Thomas Sowell, about 5 minutes in, he gets really really cheery. Konyok, don’t watch it.
Nov 3, 2008 - 10:27 pm 216. Konyok:“Thomas Sowell Interview, Oct. 31″
Karen,
Dr. Sowell specifically said, twice, that Iran acquiring nuclear weapons would be a point of no return.
I don’t understand how hysterical musings about civil war do anything to prevent that, or to prevent Obama from winning. Can you straighten me out on that?
The second task is the same that it always has been since the founding of the republic. This generation has been derelict. It is necessary to salvage our inheritance, and to be who we should be.
Are we merely consumers, or, are we citizens of a republic?
Nov 3, 2008 - 10:49 pm 217. fred:Konyok,
If Obama wins, we can pretty much forget about stopping the Iranian nukes. Plus, he’ll remove the ballistic missile defense program, which will really cheer our enemies up in a big way. I see nothing good coming of this.
Withdrawal from Iraq? Expect Iran to step into the breach and attempt to draw Iraq into Iran’s orbit. And why not? Iran has already made Syria its bitch. Ditto for Lebanon.
I’ve seen the stable of foreign policy advisers for Obama and it’s not good, folks.
Nov 3, 2008 - 10:54 pm 218. Konyok:fred,
No it’s not good.
Please enlighten me as to how talking about civil war improves the situation.
Lao Tzu - He who speaks, knows not. He who knows, speaks not.
Nov 3, 2008 - 11:06 pm 219. Pascal:This generation has been derelict. — Konyok
Without a doubt. Dereliction takes many forms. Sometimes it’s simply clinging to naivety as if that would attest to ones innocence. I could write a book; my embarrassment could be a form of penance.
Nov 3, 2008 - 11:40 pm 220. Karen:Konyok, I don’t believe Dr. Sowell said anything at all about civil war. Personally, I don’t think there’ll be any civil war, no matter what the damage from Obama and his wrecking crew. OTOH, I don’t see any point to ignoring what could be likely near-future prospects, however horrifying they may be to contemplate. But you’re right - the first order of business is to stop Obama’s election and we’ll be doing our part at the polls tomorrow. At this point, we can still win.
Nov 3, 2008 - 11:59 pm 221. Karen:Konyok, the Dr. Sowell link above also includes parts 1-4 of the same interview and are well worth watching, as he addresses many points about our political inheritance that speak to your concerns about salvaging our culture and institutions. Only problem is, is it too late, considering the extent of the left’s monopoly of institutions (especially education); or, if not too late, is there enough time, considering the gargantuan nature of such a task, to make enough progress before dire events overtake us? I don’t know, it’s beyond me. At this point in time I only know that McCain could still win, granting us more breathing room to bring the country back to its senses.
Nov 4, 2008 - 1:08 am 222. Bob Murphy:203. Konyok
“Every tyranny needs enemies to justify itself”.
The problem is that every totalitarian social engineer invents enemies to justify their heavy handed use of power.
Look at Lenin. Look at Stalin and the Kulaks, Cossacks etc etc, look at Hitler and the Jews/Poles/Slavs and other assorted untermenschen (in his view).
Anyone that becomes an obstacle, even a non violent one gets liquidated. It’s all for the grand cause.
Nov 4, 2008 - 5:38 am 223. Bob Murphy:204. Konyok
“Do you really think that it is just *supposed* to be this good because you were born in the US? Do you really think that this republic founded in blood can be maintained without a little effort and maybe some inconvenience to you? If so, you have the same entitlement disease that breeds Obama.”
I don’t take it for granted for a moment, Konyok. I know that I am among the fortunate, the very fortunate, in human history.
Nov 4, 2008 - 6:24 am 224. Bob Murphy:And I know how low people can go when reason ceases to be the basis of a person’s worldview. I was once stationed in the old SS Officers Training School at Dachau and it was a salutary lesson. I’ve sat up in the hills along the East German border and watched as the commies turned out all the lights at 2200 and half the landscape went dark while West Germany blazed on.
I know the price of freedom.
That’s why I freely volunteered for the Army and did three years on the East German border with a Long Range Patrol Company a couple of years after The Wall went up.
My concerns are not for effort required to maintain and renew this wonderful experiment in human history that the US is.
It is for the mentality that regards the checks and balances of the US Constitution as an impediment to their elitist, utopian plans and I recognize them as my enemy.
I am a citizen with inalienable rights, not a subject. My rights are intrinsic. They come from no political party, no ideology, no Big Man, no committee, no apparatchik, no social fad.
When and if the restrictions become unbearable, I will hunt down the perpetrators in their beds. There will no longer be a presumption of reason.
I actually doubt it will ever amount to that. But being ready for the possibility helps reduce the odds of it happening.
One of my greatest disappointments in human nature is that Lenin and Stalin died of natural causes. I think less of the Russians as a race because of that. And it ain’t going to happen here. It won’t because we won’t let it.
Meanwhile there is the rule of law, law based on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and that is fine, wonderful even.
Has anyone ever here ever read Albert Speer’s condemnation of Hermann Goering’s defensive ruse that he was following the law and obeying orders at the Nuremburg War Crimes Trials?
Goering said that he had broken none of the laws of Third Reich and therefore there was no case for prosecution.
Speer argued that a dictatorship readily makes and unmakes its laws which therefore are no longer moral but political (ideological?) instruments and thus illegitmate.
When and if that happens here the law loses its legitimacy and all bets are off.
I guess the big question is at what point all bets are off.
217. Fred
“Expect Iran to step into the breach and attempt to draw Iraq into Iran’s orbit.”
Iran’s economy is doing a crash and burn with lower oil prices and the mullahs know full well they will be out of oil in 20 years or less.
Nov 4, 2008 - 6:34 am 225. Cannoneer No. 4:They have an opportunity if we go weak to get even with the Sunnis by grabbing Saudi Arabia. First step is going through Iraq. Better sooner for them than later.
Obama pulling US troops out of Iraq could precipitate the perfect ME storm.
As for Israel…Poof!
Please enlighten me as to how talking about civil war improves the situation.
It could serve to clarify the thinking of the nascent Resistance. Serious discussion can help potential fighters, pamphleteers, auxiliaries and sympathizers sort out for themselves what, if any, role they can realistically expect to play in a theoretical struggle against The State and its rulers.
Mostly talking about it on forums such as this makes the powerless and disgusted feel better with Walter Mitty Red Dawn fantasies of guerrilla competence. The powerless and disgusted feel that way mostly because of very successful psychological operations depressing their morale. Gun store commando bull sessions online can raise morale, mostly through the discovery that there are many like-minded people out there.
The anti-Clinton Resistance during the period between Waco and OKC provides lessons to be learned.
An effective anti-Obama Resistance will be almost entirely non-kinetic PSYOP. Almost.
Nov 4, 2008 - 7:40 am 226. Unsk:When Obama gave McCain the finger yesterday, he wasn’t just giving the finger to Mc Cain:
he was giving the finger to America,
he was giving the finger to all we bitter clingers, you know the productive ones in America who work to make America the freest, most productive country the world has ever seen.
He was giving the finger also to all those throughout the free world who strive to make the world a better place.
I still think Mc Cain has a decent chance today, but if THE FINGER does win, I think the death and destruction will be quicker, deeper, more hellish than any of us can imagine.
Forgetting for the moment, all the destruction our foreign adversaries and enemies will rain down upon us, just think of how we fund our government. We have a very progressive tax system. Those upper 5% the Finger hates, pay 60% of our federal income tax. Right now, their incomes are tanking. If the upper 5 and 10%’s incomes goes to hell, the Federal and State revenue streams go to hell with them. If Obama wins, tomorrow the markets will tank bigtime and snowball downhill through January 20th, the day the Finger takes over. Not only will there be no money here, there will be no money worldwide to fund the Finger’s marxist dreams.
Why? Calculated Risk has postulated a scenario, which seems unfortunately all too real. Their theory goes something like this:
* China has funded much of America’s and the Free World’s expansion, and its debt, both public and private, these last few years in return for America and the Free World buying hundreds of billions of dollars a year in Chinese products.
* Now, America’s desire for Chinese goods is drying up,( it is already) soon under the Finger, Americans won’t have much money at all the buy Chinese goods they formerly did. In response, China will then no longer fund our debt, both private and public. This isn’t even payback. China will also be in a world of hurt , with hundreds of millions of unemployed roving the countryside, and a need to somehow pacify them.
• Since America has no savings, and America’s cumulative portfolio of investments is shrinking to a tiny fraction of its former self, there will be little self generating Capital to fund anything, let alone the massive Federal and State deficits mushrooming beyond control as we speak.
* Our financial system implicitly relies upon the Federal government to be the bulwark against collapse. The dems and the Finger if successful today, may have successfully, beyond their wildest marxist inspired dreams, breached that bulwark and brought about a ruinous collapse unimaginable.
And that is just one facet of the many permutations and combinations of evil and hell, the Finger and the despicable destructive dems have wrought.
Nov 4, 2008 - 7:53 am 227. Benj:AS PER ANOTHER POSTER SCRATCHING HIS HEAD AT WRETCH’S COMMENTARY - Wretchard said:
“The Left has gained its current advantages by weakening the society on which it is a parasite… I think their triumph is not only illusory but a prelude to a disaster they cannot even begin to fathom. But however that may be, the current situation creates the opportunity to advance constructive ideas.”
I’m having trouble advancing those contructive ideas while the words “disaster they cannot even begin to fathom” are bouncing around inside my head. Unfortunately, I can fathom what many of those disasters could be and find myself starting to whimper.”
The poster above (from the last thread that closed early) who’s trying to wrap his head around Wretch’s self-contradictions articulates perfectly (without meaning too admittedly) Wretch’s method. The two steps forward - crazed invective - “parasites” - and doom-mongering - “disaster they cannot even begin to imagine” …And then the CYA back-off “constructive ideas…local… yada yada yada” - Wretch cozies up to the extremists and then dances back from the edge. A writer can try on this “gambit” a few times in career - a taste for extremes does give your prose some false vitality. But did I hear someone say something about parasites…
Nov 4, 2008 - 9:47 am 228. Eggplant:Unsk said:
“China has funded much of America’s and the Free World’s expansion, and its debt, both public and private… Now, America’s desire for Chinese goods is drying up… In response, China will then no longer fund our debt… China will also be in a world of hurt… Since America has no savings … there will be little self generating Capital to fund anything… Our financial system implicitly relies upon the Federal government to be the bulwark against collapse…”
Unsk has described the situation nicely. That cliche expression “Perfect Storm” appears once again. America’s credit rating will go into free fall.
Now enter the Messiah with dreams of socialism. How will he fund it?
He’s got only two options:
1) Debase the currency and pay for everything including old debt with inflated dollars.
2) Seize the Baby Boomer’s 401K money by outlawing private 401K schemes and placing all 401K money under a federal program (a repeat of what happened with the Social Security money).
A rough estimate of 401K money: 100 million near-retired baby boomers each with average 401K holdings of $200K. That’s about $20 trillion. The Messiah could pay for alot of socialism with $20 trillion dollars. Also the Messiah doesn’t owe the old Baby Boomers diddly squat (most of them will have voted for McCain). I predict many Baby Boomers will be pennyless, eating cat food and living in Hoovervilles during the golden years of their retirement
Nov 4, 2008 - 10:02 am 229. Dave:Bob Murphy: Got a nosy personal question for you.
Are you an ICBM?
Nov 4, 2008 - 10:20 am 230. NahnCee:Agree with fred and Cannoneer that discussing a possible civil war / resistance serves to clarify the situation as well as to come up with possible solutions or alternate scenarios.
NOT discussing it strikes me as coming under the category of “ignoring it until it goes away” which is OK if you know and understand what you’re ignoring and are prepared to deal with the consequences. Which obviously B. Hussein has spent an enormous amount of time and effort the past year making sure we do NOT know or understand either who he is or what his intentions are.
It also serves the increasingly vauable service of proving that we are not alone in our feelings of resistance and anger, which if we were to shut up and be polite would not be apparent given that then the only meme out there would be what the MSM and the pollsters have been busily making up and feeding us the last few years. “Who ya gonna believe? Me or your lying eyes?”
Being told not to talk about it because it might hurt someone’s little feelings or exacerbate the situation just strikes me as being the same argument as those against “hate speech”. Increasingly, we are treating the left with the same ginger “let’s not rock the boat” techniques as we treat threatening Muslims. And I just don’t believe that’s the right way to parent either a screaming child having a tantrum or a screaming terrorist exhibiting the same behavior.
Nov 4, 2008 - 10:24 am 231. Benj:Clubbers who support Mac - most of whom have benefited in ways they can’t/won’t imagine from the history of whtie supremacy - prepare for the next Civil war if their man loses. Obama supporters realize their guy ENDED the Civil War even if he loses. REad this passage form an op-ed by a black columnist and then think who’s winning this moral argument…
“Initially, a big majority of African-Americans lined up behind his major opponent in the Democratic primaries, Hillary Clinton. The reason was simple: In the final analysis, white Americans weren’t going to vote for the black guy. Better to go with the safe alternative.
But an amazing thing happened. In the Iowa caucuses, white Americans voted for the black guy. That’s the moment Obama was referring to when he said his faith in the American people was vindicated. For me, it was the moment when the utterly impossible became merely unlikely. That’s a huge, fundamental change, and it launched a sequence of events over the subsequent months that made me realize that some things I “knew” about America were apparently wrong.
Even if John McCain somehow prevails, that won’t change the fact that Obama won all those primaries, or that he won the nomination, or that he raised more money than any candidate in history, or that he rewrote the book on how to run a presidential campaign. Nothing can change the fact that so many white Americans entrusted a black American with their hopes and dreams.
We can all have a new kind of pride in our country. ”
Cept folks at the Club who took their lead from our host who’s a thousands of miles away ane even further behind…
Nov 4, 2008 - 10:37 am 232. Foul Harold:Playing the race card, attacking the messenger, and a penchant for hyperbole.
Does “Benj” stand for “strawman” in some language I’m not familiar with? Help me out here.
Nov 4, 2008 - 11:27 am 233. Aristide:Foul Herald @ 232
It would appear Benj has an inflated ego! (#2)
Nov 4, 2008 - 11:40 am 234. peterike:In the Iowa caucuses, white Americans voted for the black guy.
Indeed, many white Leftists who were not even citizens of Iowa voted for him in the Iowa caucuses.
that made me realize that some things I “knew” about America were apparently wrong.
Only a race-obsessed, willfully blind jackass didn’t know this for at least the last thirty years.
won’t change the fact that Obama won all those primaries,
Actually, he lost most of the primaries. He won the caucuses. Through fraud.
or that he raised more money than any candidate in history,
Much of it illegally.
Nothing can change the fact that so many white Americans entrusted a black American with their hopes and dreams.
Again, other than to the willfully blind, this possibility has been obvious for at least thirty years. Still, I suppose it’s good that the race pimps more or less will have to shut up now, win or lose for Obama. Time to put away the tired old canards about “racist white America” and get on with the program of fixing the multitude of virulent pathologies in the black community, none of which, zero, are any longer the fault of white people and haven’t been for decades.
Nov 4, 2008 - 11:53 am 235. Benj:Glad you let yourself off the hook Peter…But try reading Faulkner and think a little harder about the weight of the past. Serious conservatives understand it’s not that easy to throw off the weight of 400 years. Re you comments re “win or lose” - Take it a step farther and you’ll see how much all Americans owe OBama…b.
Nov 4, 2008 - 12:02 pm 236. Bill in NC:Benj: It’s obvious you have been marinating in poison for a very long time, and are more than well pickled by it. Because no one who will not see life through the distored lenses you wear can teach you anything, you are doomed to live in a world that will never live up to your imagining. Things simply are not as you believe. And never were.
Nov 4, 2008 - 12:24 pm 237. Aristide:Benj,
No matter how bad you think that weight is, just be thankful you’re not Barack’s brother in Kenya!
Nov 4, 2008 - 12:45 pm 238. Benj:@ Bill - “marinating in poison …distored lenses” - When you can’t even sustain a metaphor, it’s usualy a sign you’re not thinking too tough…
Aristide - ever heard “Guitar Paradise of Kenya”? - GREAT record…DEfinitely worht hearing - might even be worth thinking on - slavery/Segregation wasn’t a promesse de bonne heure even in the U.S.A. U.S.A. U.S.A… But if it makes you feel better about blowing off Barack’s contribution, hang AMerican flag pin in your ear and stick your head up your…
Nov 4, 2008 - 1:09 pm 239. Aristide:Oh, Benji,
The sad thing is that Barack that COULD have been what he pretends to be. If only he didn’t believe the hatred he has for the “white blood” he believes is coursing through him!
Nov 4, 2008 - 1:46 pm 240. Aristide:p.s. Will try to find “Guitar Paradise of Kenya”. No luck so far online.
I do like Mahmoud Ahmed…which, I certainly hope doesn’t cause a problem.
Nov 4, 2008 - 1:53 pm 241. peterike:What O has achieved to date is a series of electoral victories, every one of them tainted. If he wins the Presidency that, too, will be tainted. We already know his money collection is corrupt. We’re seeing stories of voter fraud today, and I’m sure they will be legion in the weeks to come (not that the MSM will report any of it). And we know he’s lied and lied and lied about who he is.
But none of this will matter a fig in the long run. If he wins tonight, what matters is what he will do when he raises his hand and vows to abide by that document he thinks so little of (will he do his little finger flipoff move during his swearing in ceremony, too, when the Constitution is mentioned?).
From what I’ve seen of the guy, he’s a creepy little shit with an ego the size of the moon, a rather evil glint in his eye, and all the makings of a tin-horn tyrant. Our own little Robespierre citizen of the world. On the other hand, maybe he really is this paragon of the middle ground, the great understander. I hope so, because I still have to live in this country.
I think we will know very early on what kind of President O will be. The signals will start well before he takes the position, and then ramp up from there. I expect less than nothing from him (meaning he will positively negative). If I’m wrong, I’ll be happy to say I misjudged the guy.
Meanwhile, what he’s “achieved” is to fake out a bunch of ignorant knuckleheads who are voting for a guy they know nothing about, with the direct collusion of the media. A huge segment of people voting for O today can’t give a coherent answer to the question: what do you expect him to do? (Benj has never answered that question either.) The rest of his base are the hard Left, a chorus of fools for whom I have only contempt. But at least they know what they want Obama to do.
As the late great James Burnham had it, “The difference between a Liberal and Communist is that the Communist knows what he’s doing.” (Still the best one line explanation of contemporary American politics.)
I suspect Obama knows quite well what he’s about. I’m less certain that he’s capable of pulling it off.
Nov 4, 2008 - 2:06 pm 242. Eggplant:Peterike quoted James Burnham:
“The difference between a Liberal and Communist is that the Communist knows what he’s doing.”
That’s a fantastic quote!
I suspect B. Hussein knows what he’s doing…
Nov 4, 2008 - 2:15 pm 243. Bill in NC:Benj a writing critic. Good grief that’s funny. Yours is still a thoroughly poisoned mind and I feel sorry for you.
Nov 4, 2008 - 2:46 pm 244. Bob Murphy:229. Dave:
Bob Murphy: Got a nosy personal question for you.
Are you an ICBM?
I don’t understand, Dave.
Nov 4, 2008 - 4:38 pm 245. Dave:Bob Murphy your 244:
ICBM= Irish Catholic Born in the Mission.
Refers to a lot of native sons of San Francisco.
Nov 4, 2008 - 8:02 pm 246. Bob Murphy:hahaha I like it, Dave. But nope. Born at UC hospital and grew up in the Richmond District, out in the avenues.
Nov 5, 2008 - 3:40 am 247. Dave:My parents born in SF, too.
Got ya Bob. See you next thread.
Nov 5, 2008 - 10:41 amSorry, comments for this entry are closed at this time.