89 Comments

1. joe buzz:

No worries Wretch, Hillary represents “smart power”!

Jan 28, 2009 - 6:33 am 2. barry 0351:

We sit with bated breath, popcorn and beer in hand to watch the show, hang on to your butts brother’s and sisters it’s gonna be funny as hell!
But nobody’s going to be laughing that’s for sure.

Jan 28, 2009 - 6:34 am 3. RWE:

“A kind of numbness or apathy….”

I have long thought that one reason for the Left’s pursuit of one worthless cause after another – voting recounts, the Plame case, Abu Grabe, torture, Gitmo, phone taps on terrorists, the lack of WMDs in Iraq – all are designed to induce just such fatigue. They knew full well that they are going to break the law in myriad ways when they are in power, so their only hope is to make it look like “everybody does it.”

So they keep up a drumbeat against their opponents. Drumbeats are hollow, but with today’s media and an electoral base that is just as corrupt as the people they elect, they are enough. It’s called “chaff” in electronic warfare.

Jan 28, 2009 - 6:34 am 4. Mongoose:

RWE: You sure got that right. The national version of “office politics” and high school student elections.

Sometimes though people do see through it and get a bellyful of it.

Is the electorate corrupt through and through, or are substantial parts of it just dazed and confused? We shall see.

Jan 28, 2009 - 6:48 am 5. elby:

We all know where we’re headed, don’t we? Gee, this handbasket is crowded. And why is it getting so hot?….

Jan 28, 2009 - 7:07 am 6. Ashen:

So…what are we going to do? Are we going to sit back and let the country go to hell in a handbasket? Are we going to let the entertainment industry/communists turn our country into a third rate euro-style democracy? I have not the resources or the connections to organize massive resistance, but i’m willing to join.

Jan 28, 2009 - 7:24 am 7. TTC:

I’ve done some ethics work in the federal government. We’ve told people who are on a military chapel budget committee (volunteers) that they can’t serve in that role while also recommending that designated offerings go to a nonprofit organization their spouse is involved in. It’s a clear conflict of interest.

Jan 28, 2009 - 7:26 am 8. Anton:

The real problem is that no one is blowing the whistle, heck I don’t think there are any more whistle-blowers, wait a minute ……where did the whistle go?

The MSM has failed utterly; incompetence, corruption or agenda, it doesn’t matter. The only way to reclaim sanity in our government is to replace the Old Media and keep people informed. The Soda Pop Revolt in New York has the right spirit, we just need to get that sort of thing going everywhere. Point out the pork and emphasise that it is not the Government’s money, it’s the tax-payers! Point out the corruption and name the players.

Jan 28, 2009 - 7:34 am 9. feeblemind:

A little OT, but blogger Baseball Crank has a post on the new Chicago White Sox baseball caps with two different Obama logos on them. They are merely waiting for His blessing before adopting them for use.

Jan 28, 2009 - 7:52 am 10. Mongoose:

Elby: Too funny…watchwords for the times….

Jan 28, 2009 - 7:52 am 11. Peter Boston:

Obama and the Democrats are moving faster outside the consensual zone than public opinion can absorb. Appointing a tax cheat as Secretary of the Treasury and a Clinton combo as Secretary of State that profits privately in the tens of millions from foreign donors are so far beyond the consensual norm that people, including opposition politicians, do not know how to react.

Dear Leader’s personal attack on Limbaugh also falls into this category. Having lit the fire Dear Leader can now step back and let his minions shred free speech and destroy lives when it suits the Cause.

Can our Republic survive this attack on the social contract? It’s not certain.

Jan 28, 2009 - 7:58 am 12. elby:

People really are tired of the same old same old. They are tired of the corruption, the do nothing, the scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. The ‘this spending bill is 99.9999% bad, but because it contains a subsidy for the three toy arrow manufacturers who live in my district, I’ll vote for it” mentality. The MSM will provide cover for O and the dems so that the same old same old looks like hope n’ change.

We’ve got to keep pulling the cover back. Let people see the ‘new’ government for what it really is. A cancerous mutation of the old one.

Jan 28, 2009 - 8:07 am 13. Mongoose:

Boston: Only if it is called to the attention of the public.

Hate to say it, but it is mostly up to the GOP and the mainstream political process.

But it may come back to bite the Dems anyhow.

Their project is so fundamentally un-american, it may be that they trip over it.

In the interim we need to complain as much as possible.
We should contact our congress critters, even if they are dems and just speak our minds. Prod the GOP too. It cannot hurt.

Jan 28, 2009 - 8:09 am 14. joe buzz:

You just can not make crap like this up:

Geithner names ex-lobbyist as Treasury chief of staff

By Fredreka Schouten, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner picked a former Goldman Sachs lobbyist as a top aide Tuesday, the same day he announced rules aimed at reducing the role of lobbyists in agency decisions.

Mark Patterson will serve as Geithner’s chief of staff at Treasury, which oversees the government’s $700 billion financial bailout program. Goldman Sachs received $10 billion of that money.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-01-27-lobbyist_N.htm#uslPageReturn

Jan 28, 2009 - 8:18 am 15. RWE:

Mongoose: My brother is a pharmacist and he tells me that he sees young, fat, black girls come in and get prescription drugs (usually under Medicare Part D) that are designed to increase their appetite. They are already quite fat, but if they get fat enough they can qualify for Social Security Disability payments and really get a good seat on the gravy train.

Is the whole electorate corrupt? No, but enough of it is, and through and through to boot.

Jan 28, 2009 - 8:27 am 16. Mongoose:

Goldman is becoming the shadow government. I hear they want to nationalize the banks now. What a disaster they are panicking us into.

Third world levels of corruption and incompetence.

This crisis is really starting to look like it was willfully triggered.
WE must start screaming. Now. At least we will be able to live with ourselves.

RWE: that is one of their projects, to corrupt enough of the people to reach a tipping point.

God had the Israelites wander in in the desert for 40 years so that the corruption of slavery was bleed out of them. Maybe he was on to something.

I never thought that I wouls live to see this.

Jan 28, 2009 - 8:34 am 17. Vinny Vidivici:

RWE:

Precisely. Mis-direction, projection and deflection. Keep your political enemies on the defensive, even if only to accuse them of what you, in fact, are busy doing. Seize the power to ask questions and demand answers. And double standards — don’t forget the double standards.

These are the folks whose memetic response to 9/11 was the mythical ‘anti-Muslim backlash’.

The same people who bellyached for eight years about ’stifling dissent’ — on national television and in the New York Times, ironically — now give us ‘Hush Rush’ and flash-mobbing of radio stations. Keith Olberman’s ratings-averse, incoherent rants are OK in a way Limbaugh’s bloviation to an audience of 20 million is not.

They piss and moan about ‘voter suppression’ while subverting the electoral process with massive voter fraud operations and foreign money.

They whine about ’shredding the Constitution’ while actively undermining the first and second amendments with ‘hate speech’ legislation and gun confiscation initiatives, respectively. (They seem to find all sorts of rights in the Constitution except those actually stated.)

They prattle on about tolerance, but remain unsatisfied with their hive-minded domination of the nation’s media-industrial complex and its education system, and instead seek to eliminate what was called, until November 4th, ‘the highest form of patriotism.’

They’ve reserve for themselves the right to interfere with free assembly rights of others, heckle and brutalize speakers they disagree with on college campuses — all in the name of free speech — but condemn any criticism of what they have to say as a form of opporession.

Joe the Plumber is disqualified from asking questions of a Presidential candidate due to a $1,000 tax lien, while a deliberate tax cheat who had a hand in the nation’s current financial debacle is qualified to be Treasury Secretary.

One-term ex-Senator John Edwards was, somehow, qualified to serve as Presidential running mate (and to run for President) in a way sitting Governor Sarah Palin was not.

Gorgia Governor Jimmy Carter and Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, somehow, had the foreign policy credentials to sit at the top of their respective tickets (Carter during the Cold War, no less), while Governor Sarah Palin, a running mate, did not.

In similar fashion, a ludicrous ex-court jester like Al Franken or a hothouse-flower socialite like Mrs. Schlossburg are, somehow, qualified to serve in the Senate.

The outing of John Kerry’s inflated military record and his serial betrayals of his nation are dismissed as ‘debunked’ ’swiftboating’ attacks (although Pickens still has his $1 million offer), while fradulent documents aimed at discrediting Bush’s national guard service are ‘fake but accurate’.

Bush’s firing of a handful of U.S. Attorneys was political in a way Clinton’s firing of nearly 100 of them was not.

Similarly, rendition was scandalous for Bush in a way it wasn’t for Clinton.

Barney Franks and Chris Dodd should be answering questions before a committee, not asking them. Compare the real transgressions of a Charlie Rangle or William Jefferson to the overhyped faux-scandals of a Mark Foley or Larry Craig. Compare Foley to his successor. Or Barbara Boxer’s war profiteering to Dick Cheney’s mythical shilling for Halliburton.

Asking the questions and demanding the answers, indeed.

Pardon the long comment.

Jan 28, 2009 - 8:36 am 18. Blindman:

“It’s all happening quick and fast.”

“Just do it.”

“We won. Get over it.”

“I won. That’s why.”

Someone might want to tell BHO that they are just ahead by 7 percentage points; there are many more than just 4 quarters in life.

We fumble through a lot of things but remember that the only reason that the house is democratic is that Emanuel got conservative democrats elected. Are they going to listen to the roots or acorns?

Jan 28, 2009 - 8:37 am 19. buckets:

Mmm…. I’m going to go ahead and say Mark Foley deserved worse than he got. As for Larry Craig… come on, kids use those bathrooms. Let’s not ignore the failings of those with an “R” after their name, else we risk becoming mindless partisans.

As for the Clintons, most of us remember that if we lived in a just world, they would still be doing federal prison time. What really bothers me is they didn’t thank their lucky stars they didn’t get indicted and just retire quietly in disgrace. The blatant criminal influence peddling of the Clintons is astounding; what’s even worse is the American public’s collective memory, which only seems to go back 8 years.

Jan 28, 2009 - 9:07 am 20. ricpic:

Why should any of this surprise us? The Left hates the west. They’ve made that abundantly clear. Now that they have total power they are hollowing out America in the name of stimulus and surrendering to Islam. Prepare for life in the shell of our former house.

Jan 28, 2009 - 9:15 am 21. Mark:

Republicans really are too nice and reasonable, overall.

It is time, however, to borrow, even in a soft-serve version, the lessons of Alinsky.

Begin the litany of accusation, based on the Democrats betrayal of their own alleged ideals.

What are we seeing in Washington politics? All together, now: “This is the most corrupt/incompetent etc. administration in the history of the United States!”

And the refrain has the virtue of some truth, at least when we pro-rate the corruption to the amount of time the administration has been in office.

Jan 28, 2009 - 9:18 am 22. bogie wheel:

Vinny –

No pardon necessary. You are spot on.

As Bob Dole once said, “Where’s the outrage?”

Which is why I find all the pseudo-hand-wringing with Blagojevich quite high-larious. He is the id of the “political looter class” (ht Samizdata) and part and parcel of the Illinois Combine from which Obama sprung, supposedly, to Joy “the Obamas … they’re really kind of perfect” Behar, pure as the driven snow.

I sometimes wonder what kind of Richter-scale-sized jolt it would take to shock the majority of the American populace out of the fatigue-trance mode so many seem to be in. If a trillion-dollar transfer of wealth from the politically unconnected to the politically connected doesn’t do it … if the permanent tax-enslavement of future generations of American workers doesn’t do it … if hubristic tax evasion artists in the lofty positions of Treasure Secretary and chair of the House Ways & Means Committee doesn’t do it … when, a decade ago, adulterous oral sex with an intern in the Oval Office itself, didn’t do it … what would? The revelation that we had just elected to the presidency a man who was not even an American citizen by birth?

It would be a fitting cherry on the colossal political absurdity sundae. But I’m not holding my breath. Mostly because, I suspect, somewhere deep down I harbor this fear that even THAT whopper of whoppers would induce just one more collective shrug. And I really don’t want to believe that my country (and my countrymen) have sunk that far.

Jan 28, 2009 - 9:32 am 23. Roderick Reilly:

The sovereignty-to-globalism divide was breached way back during the Clinton presidency, what with all the foreign (primarily mainland Chinese) money flowing into the Clinton campaign coffers.

National self-determination and personal freedoms are in for a rough ride.

So, how can we opt out?

Jan 28, 2009 - 9:43 am 24. Peter Boston:

I think that most Americans have a live-and-let-live attitude towards life and politics. I don’t think that translates directly into Americans are necessarily apathetic to the looting of the treasury.

Our tradition has allowed most of us to go about our lives with the assurance that the fellow Americans who occupied high office would not go so far out of “normal” bounds to threaten the very existence of the Republic and what we loosely see as the American Way.

If good, old reliable Uncle Harold started pocketing the silverware at Sunday dinner you would think it an aberration but you would never suspect that Harold’s real intention was to deflower your daughters and confiscate the deed to your house.

The viability of the Republic is to a large extent based on giving our trust to the Uncle Harolds we elect to public office. Not that will always act in the public interest but that they will not go so far as to deflower our daughters and steal our houses.

The bold Uncle Harold will get away with a good deal of deflowering before we realize that our trust has been breached. I think that is where we are at now.

Jan 28, 2009 - 10:24 am 25. Vinny Vidivici:

Buckets:

Don’t worry. I lay a good bit of the blame for the Left’s destructive rampage through the West these past four decades at the feet of their opponents.

We accepted the Left’s dishonest framing of issues (subsidizing dependency and failure is ‘compassion’).

We legitimized the Left’s outrageous indictments by responding to them seriously, instead of with ridicule (Al Sharpton is a race-baiting riot-inciter and serial fraud who should have been up on manslaughter charges, not a serious presidential candidate).

We failed to call b*llsh*t on the sort of double standards listed in my last comment.

We compromised ourselved, repeatedly. (Bush and the Republican congress’ profligate spending left us with little credibility to confront the looting presently underway in Washington).

I guess you and me can still differ over whether Foly’s salacious text messages to snickering pages rises to the level of the Franks-Dodd mortgage-industry daisy-chain. One ended a political career, damaged no one else and was hyped with assistance from a politically-compromised media to help Congress change hands.

The other was the spark that set the West’s financial house ablaze, which is now being used as cover by our so-called leadership classess to plunder the treasury, saddle us with mountains of debt and imperil the future of this nation.

Jan 28, 2009 - 10:34 am 26. buddy larsen:

The house vote on the markup due this afternoon. P is up to 900 bbl and adding I it is at 1.25 trillion. Only a few percent will even get spent in the next year –there’s no way to spend any more any faster. Most is in out years when it can have no effect on the problem of now, which is enough money velocity to hold jobs in place, and thereby asset values in place. It creates 32 new permanent federal programs. each job created is temporary, until the shovel is out of the ground, yet will cost 300K to create. Both this and the senate versions to mandate ‘buy American’ provisions -that are perfect reprises of the trade restrictions that history shows start wars by beggaring all economies as the inevitable retaliations build walls around stuff nations need from each other. Wars of course unite national populations, so, if we get all disunited over our new communist, or possibly nazi, coup, we will likely be united again before long. Build and stock your fallout shelter now.

Jan 28, 2009 - 10:39 am 27. Vinny Vidivici:

Thanks, Bogie.

The jolt would have to be serious, indeed, as we are no longer a serious people. And even then, we’d have to go through a period of high chair-banging hystrionics and blame-gaming before serious leadership and character emerged to marginalize cry-baby culture.

I’ll join you in believing we are not yet totally lost to indolence. Really, what’s the alternative?

Jan 28, 2009 - 10:45 am 28. buddy larsen:

none of this would have happened had sandy berger and his accomplices been punished according to law.

Jan 28, 2009 - 10:46 am 29. twobyfour:

Buddy, methinks the chain of events goes much further into the past. Berger was a symptomatic node, not a causality node.

Jan 28, 2009 - 10:55 am 30. buddy larsen:

twoby, i guess i was trying to find a date/event for the last restore point.

Jan 28, 2009 - 11:00 am 31. Peter Boston:

The last restore point is some time before Woodrow Wilson.

Jan 28, 2009 - 11:05 am 32. buddy larsen:

there was nothing intrinsically wrong with the so-called ‘progressive era amendments’ –nothing that is that true education (rather than brainwashing) wouldn’t easily rectify.

Jan 28, 2009 - 11:16 am 33. Clioman:

I do have to wonder how much of the current sense of political fatigue and the seeming tolerance for the intolerable come from having just finished watching a 30-month presidential campaign ’season.’ Some of my acquaintances have just simply stopped paying any attention to politics–it’s not that they’re unintelligent or frivolous. They’re just simply bone-weary of the self-serving contention that has come to consume what passes for public life. It really IS like high school again, except this time the stakes are mortal and nobody ever seems to learn anything, let alone to graduate and get on with living a real life…

Jan 28, 2009 - 11:26 am 34. Eggplant:

Ashen asked:

“what are we going to do? Are we going to sit back and let the country go to hell in a handbasket? Are we going to let the entertainment industry/communists turn our country into a third rate euro-style democracy?”

Obama through the MSM won the election and is now in control. Also, the Republicans did control Congress but betrayed their own ideology concerning fiscal conservativism (it was proper that they were turned out from office). In terms of pork barrel politics, the main difference between the Republicans and the Democrats was that the Republicans lied about being fiscal conservatives while the Democrats were honest about their irresponsible tax-and-spend ideology.

The system will have to fall down and go “boom”. The current economic recession/depression was the consequence of decades of fiscal misconduct. Most of the major economic problems facing the US today were in plain view for decades but the political process did nothing to preempt it. Along the lines of preemptive policy: One of the reasons why President Bush was so hated by the MSM and the moonbats was due to his preemptive policy towards international terrorism. Under the current political process, trying to defuse future problems that results in some immediate short-term pain only gets an honest politican into trouble.

Unfortunately the economic and international system is huge and has enormous inertia (it’s like trying to navigate a super tanker down a meandering river). To manage this system, the political process is obligated to show foresight and act preemptively. Crisis management for existing problems barely worked in the early 20th century but now it’s a prescription for ruin.

There is an opportunity in the current situation. I’m convinced Obama will fail spectacularly. The MSM and the Left have shown very poor judgement in staking their reputations on Obama’s performance. After Obama fails, the MSM and Left’s creditibility will have gone to zero. Conservatives must position themselves to fill the vacuum after Obama implodes. Conservatives need to come up with an alternative agenda that is based upon recognizing the complexity of the real world and the need for responsible (preemptive) action. Part of adopting a responsible ideology is making a basic commitment to not spend money that you don’t have or don’t have a right to, e.g. your grandchildren’s money. There should be an amendment to the US Constitution requiring a balanced budget and zero national debt except in time of serious national emergency. Also the basic ideology of socialism needs to be dissected and precisely defined. There should be a No-Socialism amendment to the US Constitution as well. Next time some future Franklin D. Roosevelt decides the US needs a Social Security Program, Medicare, Nationalised Health care or other socialist money sink, he won’t get past first base because it’ll be unconstitutional. Finally there needs to be some sort of control on the MSM that does not limit the freedom of speech or the freedom of the press. I’m not sure how this is to be done but the MSM’s behavior during the last election was egregious and represents a serious threat to our nation’s survival.

Jan 28, 2009 - 11:35 am 35. Tcobb:

I think we could save ourselves a whole of lot of trouble and money by declaring up front: appearances don’t matter any more. We understand. Come out of the closet. Just do it.
The troubles of our times. The political and Ivory Tower classes are the functional equivalents of the Catholic Church at the time immediately preceding the Reformation. By mouthing the appropriate magical formula all sins could be washed away, and indeed, all premeditated sins that were to be committed in the future could be bought off in the present (the sale of indulgences). And so it is today.

By invoking magical phrases like “social justice” your sins are washed away. The symbol is everything. It is easier, and far more comfortable, to deal with symbols than it is with reality. Even a fool can deal with the simplicity of symbols–when forced to confront with reality even the wise are confounded, and with good cause.

Jan 28, 2009 - 11:39 am 36. peterike:

Mr. Dylan, take it away…

Senor, senor, do you know where we’re headin’?
Lincoln County Road or Armageddon?
Seems like I been down this way before.
Is there any truth in that, senor?…

Senor, senor, I can see that painted wagon,
I can smell the tail of the dragon.
Can’t stand the suspense anymore.
Can you tell me who to contact here, senor?

Well, the last thing I remember before I stripped and kneeled
Was that trainload of fools bogged down in a magnetic field.
A gypsy with a broken flag and a flashing ring
Said, “Son, this ain’t a dream no more, it’s the real thing.”

Senor, senor, you know their hearts are as hard as leather.
Well, give me a minute, let me get it together.
I just gotta pick myself up off the floor.
I’m ready when you are, senor.

Senor, senor, let’s overturn these tables,
Disconnect these cables,
This place don’t make sense to me no more.
Can you tell me what we’re waiting for, senor?

Jan 28, 2009 - 11:52 am 37. Subotai Bahadur:

There is a rational explanation for the supposed apathy; at least amongst those who really are following matters [most of BC?]. Right now, there is nothing that the political process can do to stop or ameliorate the economic, military, and diplomatic disasters that are about to befall us. The sogannante “opposition party” is desperately trying to collaborate. Its presidential candidate is a functional member of the Administration and is their liason to the Senate Republicans. Its leadership is trying to ingratiate itself with the enemy and deliberately reject the party’s voters. And there is neither time nor resources for a real opposition party to be created before the organic waste impacts the rotating airfoil, from whatever direction. Electoral politics, the rule of law, and the Constitution are moot. They do not apply to the current situation. There is no constituency within any of the three branches of government, or in any significant political grouping to make them apply.

We are approaching Clausewitz-country. It may come either from the top down, from the bottom up, or from multiple focii. Politics is the substitution of agreed forms of interaction for brute force in the allocation of resources and power. In the absence of agreed politics, the allocation defaults to the ultimate arbiter.

Literally, all that is possible for most citizens is to try to shield what assets they have, to prepare for hard times as best they can, and to get comfortable in the handbasket, because it is going to happen no matter what. There is a great uncertainty as to what order the disasters will come in. But they will come. The only hope is that in the wake of them, a new order will arise; preferably, but far from certainly, based on the Constitution. The odds are though, that we are going to get a man on horseback of either the Far Left or Far Right. The concept of a Cincinattus is beyond our polity. It ain’t gonna happen.

All that we can do is prepare, remember the Oath, remember Merriam’s Corner, and do our duty as we see it.

Subotai Bahadur

Jan 28, 2009 - 12:07 pm 38. Cosmeau Bugleweed:

# 11 Peter B:

Absolutely correct. The U.S. President personally making an unprovoked attack on some disc jockey, on some bigmouth celebrity?

But of course in Canada we are familiar with a stealthy form of this behaviour. The CRTC (Can Radio & TV comm’n.)does not let Limbaugh in, nor O’Reilly.

But they let in al jazeera.

A tax cheat for Finance Minister? Not sure we did that, but we got a Prime Minister who took $300k in cash in brown envelopes from the German bagman who sold our national airline $2 billion worth of Airbus 320’s.

But the PM did declare the 300k as income. Six years later.

The public inquiry has lasted 20 years.

So far.

Jan 28, 2009 - 12:08 pm 39. buddy larsen:

I’ll tell you what we’re waiting for
a broom & yes a janitor
and failing that a distant shore
far from a dream that’s sinking lower

Jan 28, 2009 - 12:14 pm 40. buddy larsen:

screw the distant shore. Lexington Green.

Jan 28, 2009 - 12:24 pm 41. wildernesscalling:

I recall after the fall of the USSR documents surfaced that had Jimmy lasted much longer the Euro’s would all have been puppets of the Soviets, that the Soviets were at a conclusion ol’ Jimmy would never go for the nukes to save anyone so with just a few mor SALT treaties would have completely rendered our (US) military inept and fooding the gap in germany was nearly approved, fast forward to today and the new improved Jimmy will gut the soul of our country quick as a wink, question! Did Putin or China learn from history? Will they wait to snap the trap? How long before they do? “0″ has already signaled his peaceful intent.

Jan 28, 2009 - 12:41 pm 42. buddy larsen:

a comment similar to #41 could’ve been written on Dec 06 1941 and would have sounded alarmist.

Jan 28, 2009 - 12:58 pm 43. buddy larsen:

Re HRC’s trip to China, younger readers may want to search combos of:

Riady family
Win Ho Lee Reno
iced tea defense
Loral scandal
clinton china missile warhead
new chinese missile submarines
los alamos china
china skipped generation missile missile submarines

just off the top of my head. there’s more i’m sure.

Son is dating Japanese girl, in school here on scholarship. she reports japanese people ’scared to death’ of the new administration. One wonders about japan, and all those cars that so vex and confound the UAW.

Our relationship with china has been to emphasize trade with the business-oriented great majority, and keep a wary eye on the old chicom military faction. Are changes in store? well, they certainly were when our new secretary of state’s husband was president.

Jan 28, 2009 - 1:17 pm 44. Cosmeau Bugleweed:

I got rid of the TV several years ago, simply could no longer stand the endless lies and bad taste.

The only time I see it is when I’m in the U.S. and it seems everybody is glued to the screen, they cannot not watch the thing.

Given that TV seems to dominate the intellectual landscape and it’s all about appearances, gleaming teeth, important hair and the manner of a greasy salesman, I have a deeply stupid rhetorical question:

How is it possible that the GOP chooses to run burned-out old farts and lousy public speakers like Dole and McCain against slickboy Clinton and the new guy? Heroes of wars nobody cares about any more, against blowjob Willie and the cool young black guy.

If surface appearance on TV is everything, how could they possibly have been so dim as to have done this, politics aside.

Surely the conservatives could have dug up a warm body with reasonable politics who also looks good on the damn box.

They got a hundred million people to choose from and they come up with John McCain? (I have nothing against the guy, nor against Dole; decent men, both.)

Or choosing Sarah Palin and throwing her into the snake pit on prime time/hostile network TV and letting her get chewed to pieces?

The older I get, the less I understand.

Jan 28, 2009 - 1:19 pm 45. Eggplant:

Subotai Bahadur said:

“The only hope is that in the wake of them, a new order will arise; preferably, but far from certainly, based on the Constitution. The odds are though, that we are going to get a man on horseback of either the Far Left or Far Right.”

Unfortunately this is too true.

A likely scenario:

1) Economy gets hammered big time while Obama flounders.
2) The Islamic fascists play their trick resulting in huge US casulties and a major hit on the already weakened US economy. Obama will continue to flounder.
3) The handsome young man with the distinguished war record will appear as the “nation’s savior”. It’ll be a replay of Obama from the Left except this time it will be from the right. I’m reminded of Galadriel:

“In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night. Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain…All shall love me and despair!”

Jan 28, 2009 - 1:34 pm 46. Vinny Vidivici:

Buddy:

Was it you who once mused that Clinton was the best president the Chinese ever had?

Jan 28, 2009 - 1:53 pm 47. whiskey:

Classic over-reach.

House Republicans are mostly going to vote against the plan. What does that tell you?

Canceling missile defense in Europe means Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, etc. will all go nuclear as fast as possible. Many other nations will do so as well. Facing threats from Iran as well as Russia.

Israel may well strike first against Iran.

Crawling to Iran as Ahmadinejad suggests will cost — Americans don’t like it.

All these decisions, re-sodding the Mall, billions for contraception, No Whites Allowed in a Depression, create huge problems for Dems, mid-terms are looking better and better every day.

Obama, the more he poses as Dr. Phil as President, becomes hated by those White Men he doesn’t want to benefit from the bailout. He does not understand patronage, the only White guys he knows and likes are trust-fund revolutionaries like Ayers. Don’t forget G HW Bush had a 90% approval rating after the Gulf War.

Humiliation by Iran, with constant threats to nuke us (and/or Israel) followed perhaps by a nuking of either Israel or the US or both … Obama and his whole party are toast. The world exploding into nuclear proliferation? Racial resentment by the White Male majority excluded from everything? Permanent Chicago-style pork that only benefits a connected few?

We are looking at the melt-down of the Democratic Party (the worst thing that could have happened to them was winning it all) as GWB melted down the Republican Party. Look for new people, new structures, and new players.

Sarah Palin is starting a reform PAC. Rudy is out arguing for competence in the face of the laughable Obama Administration and a weaker Press Secretary than Scott McClellan. Rush, Boehner, are not shy on taking on Obama and Pelosi.

I don’t see a man on horseback. I DO see the victory of the Populists in Jacksonian fashion, over the forces of the Gentry. Sarah Palin and Rudy are not men on horseback. Palin is not in fact a man. Rudy has many known flaws. BOTH are competent and BOTH are populists.

Right now Dems are proving that Government = corrupt cronyism for connected elites and minority leaders.

The Populist Rep alternative is to make Government smaller, and focused on doing a few things very, very well.

Hardly any of the bailout money will go to stimulus — all to pork for Daley, Jessie Jackson, ACORN etc. That’s not a winning electoral hand.

Jan 28, 2009 - 1:55 pm 48. Vinny Vidivici:

wilderness:

Obama is far too useful to America’s antagonists and enemies to be demonized like Reagan and Bush 43, or humilliated like Carter, or even ridiculed like Clinton. To the degree Obama is committed to diminished U.S. influence and deference to the UN, etc., his global media cheering section will do everything they can to make him look good and the international Left will applaud.

America’s military challengers, who saw a neutered Carter replaced by a muscular Reagan, and saw two governments toppled in the wake of 9/11 will want to make Obama look good, too, and will want him in office as long as possible. The quid pro quo for refraining from public challenge will be getting much of what they want from a president more suspicious of his own nation than any other.

Of course, that won’t stop them from amusing themselves with Obama, like Ahmadinijad did today with his sneering rebuff and demands in response to Obama’s obsequious groveling on Arabiya.

Uber-sensitive global citizens like Obama, who offers his limited travel, exotic name and and skin color as a form of internationalist bona fides, are always the first to project their values on other cultures. In this case, he and others in his elite cocoon, steeped in bogus conflict-resolution humbug, have no idea that earnestness, concilliation and self-deprecation are perceived in the more Hobbesian precincts of this planet as weaknesses to be exploited and invitations to aggression.

Jan 28, 2009 - 2:08 pm 49. twobyfour:

Whiskey 47.

Is Spades your middle name?

We probably need a month to see which scenario will enfold. It is less likely, through day-by-day assessment, that the current junta will go full runner for socialism in it’s full form. They want to milk the limbo for what it is worth before setting up the new order. That is the factor #1. The factor # 2 is, as far as I can judge, incompetence. Seriously, it looks like they don’t know what they are doing. The incompetence may have been a facade, initially, to get their chess pieces positioned, but the game is erratic at best.

So, muddling through until blow out. Disaster? Yewbetcha! But at least it won’t be in order of magnitude that would transpire if competent totalitarians were in place, instead.

Jan 28, 2009 - 2:44 pm 50. twobyfour:

@ 48. Vinny Vidivici

What Yuro-lefties think is totally irrelevant. How long you think the honeymoon would last? 2 weeks, 2 months? 6 months at best. They would get the connection between 0 and their shrinking standard of living.

In this case, he and others in his elite cocoon, steeped in bogus conflict-resolution humbug, have no idea that earnestness, concilliation and self-deprecation are perceived in the more Hobbesian precincts of this planet as weaknesses to be exploited and invitations to aggression

Yep.

Jan 28, 2009 - 2:53 pm 51. Xanthippas:

Hey, so how’s that Somalia thing working out?

Jan 28, 2009 - 3:00 pm 52. Subotai Bahadur:

#47 Whiskey

If you make the assumption that normal politics are still operative; what you say is right. However, having watched the law and Constitution be blatantly ignored in candidate selection, voter registration, supervision of elections by Democrat state officials, and vote counting; all the above being enabled and encouraged by the media which is a branch of the Democrats … I cannot expect that if there is an election in 2010 that it will have any real meaning. Once a Socialist one-party state takes control, they do not allow themselves to be voted out. The “Opposition” party is doing its best to be come an auxiliary to Hussein Pasha’s government and merge with them and has aligned itself totally with the Gentry as you so accurately describe. We Jacksonians are feared more by them than their elitist brothers in arms across the aisle. And after two years of a Federally subsidized ACORN, with 28 state governments controlled by Democrats [actually one of the largest, California, is functionally controlled by the Democrats despite party labels, so it is really 29]; and with the coming census controlled by the Democrats, electoral politics will be a dead issue by 2010. That game is now rigged. We will be in default mode.

The legal system is also in the enemy’s hands. Can you think of any issue of import to Conservatives where they are likely to get a fair hearing or have the law enforced equally?

While I signed up with the SarahPAC, it was because it is a rallying point not for the Republican party; which has committed suicide by totally abandoning its base, but for those Conservatives/Jacksonians who have been abandoned. I expect it to be suppressed in one way or another, by either or both parties. But that itself can be a flashpoint.

Sadly, I view #45 Eggplant as being a closer view of the future, albeit his projection leaves out a whole lot of the real nastiness that will ensue.

Right now, our country is about like formerly-Great Britain in November-December 1939. We know bad things are about to happen. We know we really cannot do anything to stop it. We have an absurd belief/hope/faith that it won’t be as bad as we fear and that we will prevail just because we are the ‘good guys’; and even then our worst imaginings of how bad it will get pale in comparisom to what really happened starting in April 1940.

It is noted that it wasn’t until after the worst had begun in Europe, that Chamberlain the appeaser was removed from power. It will not be until we are on just as terrible and painful a course, that we will hopefully be rid of Hussein Pasha and his minions. And that is the optimistic view. We may lose to them. In the long run, the barbarians always win.

History does not specifically repeat itself. Human stupidity does.

All we can do is what our duty and our Constitutional history demands of us in fighting that stupidity.

Subotai Bahadur

Jan 28, 2009 - 3:06 pm 53. Vinny Vidivici:

twobyfour:

Well yes, you and I know that what Euros think is irrelevant. Unfortunately, in one of the greatest intellectual swindles in history, Yurp is perceived by too many Americans as a repository of wisdom and moral authority. This despite giving us a pair of world wars, industrialized genocide and vicious political philosophies which enslaved and immiserated half the planet. This atop centuries plundering vast colonial empires. Go figure.

The kind of Americans who think morality emerges from a UN sub-committee consensus and believe it’s more important to be well liked than to do the right thing have bought in to the whole media-manufactured demonization of this country which somehow must be rectified by Obama and Hillary. How much influence the ceaseless global ’struggle session’ against George Bush’s America had on this election is anyone’s guess.

But I’ll reckon millions of insecure Americans were reassured on January 20th by the cooing approval off BBC-America. ‘See how much everyone hates you’ will be replaced by ’see how much more pleasant it is when you do what we want’. Hollywood will pitch in, making movies about heroic and cool American presidents, like they did throughout the 90’s.

As for the connection between Obama and a shrinking standard of living, it’s been 70 years and we’re still trying to disabuse the notion that FDR rescued us all from the Great Depression.

Jan 28, 2009 - 3:16 pm 54. Vinny Vidivici:

Subotai:

Well stated. I share your concerns and would add the influence of foreign money, which was also ignored.

Jan 28, 2009 - 3:26 pm 55. wildernesscalling:

“0” will say “it is day” while it is night and they will all say “Amen”

Jan 28, 2009 - 3:45 pm 56. twobyfour:

@ 53. Vinny Vidivici

Good points. But not all Americans bought the meme of Yuropeon superiority. In fact, it’s a minority. A majority has no opinion and another minority think that the whole idea is preposterous.

But as the disaster progresses, less and less people would be inclined to take a counsel from Yuros. The nasty cold in US translates to a pneumonia elsewhere. It simply will be too apparent, even with MSM spin machine.

Jan 28, 2009 - 3:55 pm 57. twobyfour:

@ 55. wildernesscalling

Yea, but imagine what they would be saying (many of them) after they are mugged.

Jan 28, 2009 - 3:57 pm 58. twobyfour:

Subotai, not as much stupidity as amnesia and ignorance.

Jan 28, 2009 - 4:00 pm 59. Vinny Vidivici:

2×4:

I hope you’re right and my pessimism is only good for a chuckle a few years from now.

Jan 28, 2009 - 4:05 pm 60. Kingston53:

What does happen when the inert majority wake up to the fact that they have been edged out by those who don’t follow the rules. When a tax cheat can be put in charge of the tax inforcers, when currupt politicians are elevated no matter how currupt they are, when the tax recievers outnumber the tax payers? Do the “follow the rules” people say to hell with this and adopt an “every man for himself” mindset. It seems we are getting closer every day.

Jan 28, 2009 - 4:07 pm 61. Subotai Bahadur:

#60 Kingston53

I think the answer will be literary.

If we are lucky, it will be Johnny Tremain.

If we are less lucky, it will be Tale of Two Cities.

If we are less lucky than that, it will be Dr. Zhivago.

And I would not completely rule out Satyricon by Petronius Arbiter.

Subotai Bahadur

Jan 28, 2009 - 4:18 pm 62. buddy larsen:

The bill passes 242-189.

The 189 = all the R`s and 12 of the D`s.

2010 the whole house has to stand for reelection.

Pelosi has all day been saying “…this bill means we are taking America in a nude erection!” –so i dunno, i may be a democrat after all. first i have to know what i’m spose to do with my nude erection, tho –i mean, with San Fran Nan, god only knows.

Jan 28, 2009 - 4:20 pm 63. Subotai Bahadur:

#62 buddy larson

боже мой! That is the best news I have heard of in a while. I could not conceive of having the entire caucus stand up against Hussein Pasha and not give him protective cover on the “Stimulus” Bill. Hmm. Is the passage of a “Stimulus” Bill what creates a “nude erection”? Actually, “nude erection” and “Nancy Pelosi” have got to be one of the greater oxymorons in American English. One rather thoroughly cancels the other.

On a more serious note, has someone been sprinkling testosterone in their Wheaties? I expected a bunch of defections to the other side. I know that there will be plenty in the Senate, led by McCain and the usual suspects, but now we have a basis to make the point that the impending fiasco is Hussein Pasha and his minions’ alone.

tian1 xiao3de2
I am bloody well amazed.

Subotai Bahadur

Jan 28, 2009 - 4:38 pm 64. Vinny Vidivici:

Kingston:

The answer is that we revert to the historical norm. The default mode of human organization is feudal, from playgrounds to boardrooms, communist party hierarchies to warlord militias. Connections, cliques, personality, charisma, back-scratching, favoritism, nepotism, treachery, exclusionary, opaque.

Not that these things don’t exist or haven’t existed here. The worlds at the pinnacles of power in Washington, Hollywood or Wall Street function much in this ancient way. Lee Kwan Yew said there would always be corruption; it was just a matter of degree.

But the distinguishing feature of modern societies, whether in Singapore, Hong Kong, northern Europe or north America has been the the establishment of institutions to detect, publicize, sanction, and seek remedy against such corruption; the relative extension of the rule of law to rich and poor alike; the embrace of merit and efforts toward creating a level playing field. No we’re not all there yet, but compared to what came before . . .

The miracle is that for these societies, contra history, all forms of power hasn’t coalesced into a single, stifling, back-scratching monolith. We’ll see. A republic, if we can keep it, and all that.

Jan 28, 2009 - 5:04 pm 65. buddy larsen:

kingston @ 60: you’re identifying the proper response. starve DC of money. why else do we have to tremble at mobbed up Reds running congress, except that people keep sending them money to buy influence with. oh, i know they have the tools of enforcement, so we have to keep keep up the flow. yessir, they have the tools. yep, as long as the number of tax revolters stays really small, they have the tools.

what am i saying–this is America –the social compact –we can’t do anything at all except try to win the next election. of course, if they keep cheating and robbing elections, then the feedback loop of election cycles is already broken and we no longer have to worry about being the breakers of the system, and can start organizing to cut off DC’s funds–much as the DC did to the South Vietnamese.

BTW, Texas’ longest serving governor, Rick Perry, has made two speeches lately that sort of weirdly took DC to task, in language as if DC was a neighboring country. And the people –well you should hear them. in the grocery lines, old ladies running down the list of everything a country needs, oil, seacoast, industry, trying to find a reason the state needs to serve crooked pols from faraway. It’s getting crazy out there. I think the eight years of BDS and then the election embittered and scared a lot of this state’s ordinary folk. lack of perp walks is making them see something ugly. They wonder what ever happened to those FBI investigations of electoral and mortgage crime, they say that if you are a Democrat you can by definition no longer break laws. Listen, search Texas independence movement. it’s getting serious.

Jan 28, 2009 - 5:04 pm 66. Vinny Vidivici:

Ugh. Subotai makes my point in a fraction of the time and words, and far more elegantly. Which is why I read BC daily, but jump into threads only once in a while.

Jan 28, 2009 - 5:08 pm 67. buddy larsen:

subotai @ 63: yes –i’m really proud of ‘em. don’t forget the dozen blue dawgs that defied the cult and came over. one needs to especially admire that show of spine.

Mark Zandy econometrics, reported by Allen Reynolds in WSJ, using multiplier analysis, raise the cost of each ”new job” to $646,000.

shovel done, in a year or three, the new army of federal administrators created to dole out 650K apiece to create a 75k job, times however many jobs (”2 or 3 million” says the Cult), will stay on your payroll 30 years, drawing the golden benefits, tenured unless they go postal and shoot up the office, “in by 10, an hour for lunch and out by 2″, and then they’ll retire at 90% of all that for another 20 or 30 years.

Look up Villejo, CA –see what recently banckrupted that city.

Jan 28, 2009 - 5:22 pm 68. Mongoose:

Wow. they did not get one vote from the GOP. Makes me want to go out an look for unicorns in my yard.

What is up with that? That bill must stink even more than we know. Great, let the dems own it. It will bite them big time one day.

The GOP in the Senate will cave though, I’d bet.

But, buddy, I am not sure what show of spine that is. They had the votes, it is a gimme to the blue dogs. Pretty cynical stuff.

BTW, there is only so much corruption the system can take. It will break either for liberty or tyranny. If people are losing their way of live, and their children’s future, and they see this nonsense, well something has to give. Let us hope that this is another case of Dem overreach. This problem, obviously, is getting this out before the people. Perhaps Texas should send out some missionaries. Seriously.

If only we could find a smoking gun.

We talk about FDR’s hustles, but we should not fotget that their is a difference: We have seen the Reagan years.

Jan 28, 2009 - 5:49 pm 69. buddy larsen:

Stupid, stupid people. Doodle up a formula to make fifty percent plus a few voters wards of the other forty-nine percent, and expect that the massive change in incentive will have no effect on the behavior of the golden geese 49%. stupid, stupid, stupid. That pre 2006 economy, humming along at 4 or 5% growth, regular strong procuctivity gains, low interest rate, solid returns on investent for debt and equity and corporation and bond holder alike, @ 95% employment, a 2 or 3%-of-GDP decifit of 2 or 3 hundred billion, was year after year subjected 24/7 to harsh, vile, ugly rhetorical attack featuring almost 100% mischaracterization (aka “lies”), suddenly looks so faraway, such a victorian sepiagraph in a dusty parlor tome, so fragile as such a well-turned horse always must be.

But just go ahead and ruin it, stupid democrats. who expects any different from you coarse clods and numbskull sonzabitches.

Jan 28, 2009 - 5:52 pm 70. geoffgo:

I compliment the many great posts and insights on our predicament.

In a democracy majority rules; but not at the expense of the minority. Today’s house vote proves that uniquely American exception will no longer prevail.

I’m thinking that the only thing left to us is ONE MASSIVE RECALL movement, mounted in every state, starting immediately, against every congress critter who voted yes.

Jobs for thousands. Arm’em up with the facts. Use some of that community organizing funding from the bill for our purposes.

However it’s allowed in each state, there’s provision for making a politician really miserable, for years on end. You don’t need a majority to initiate a recall (see Grey vs.CA). Keep them so busy dodging, that we can dismiss them for not doing their jobs.

Only our collective willpower will suffice to get this done. Ready?

Jan 28, 2009 - 5:54 pm 71. buddy larsen:

mongoose @ 68: i see what you mean –Pelosi let them off, to keep their constits happy. well, fooey.

Jan 28, 2009 - 5:58 pm 72. Kingston53:

Buddy,
My two favorite states are big T and little T, Texas and Tennessee. Real America. If and when we make the slide into majority “rule breakers and tax receivers” and the rest of us decide not to support the other side, does a civil war break out or do we have a totalitarian crushing of dissent.

Jan 28, 2009 - 6:07 pm 73. buddy larsen:

kingston,the answer to that is in the minds and hearts of the men & women in uniform, who have sworn their oaths to the Constitution and nothing else.

Jan 28, 2009 - 6:12 pm 74. Subotai Bahadur:

#70 geoffgo

Unless I am mistaken [and I really hope I am] there is no right of recall for Federal elected officials under the Constitution, with the exception of an anomaly in Arizona. Their state constitution makes all Federal candidates sign a statement agreeing to resign if recalled [and I am given to understand that McCain did so sign, by the way]. I ended up studying on the subject some time ago when we had a certain US Senator whose treasonous activities annoyed me. I contacted our Secretary of State’s office, and after the understandable groans at the prospect of the work involved in a recall; we sorted out that I could try to recall any state, county, or local official in Colorado, but there was no matching right for the Federales.

The game is rigged.

#65 buddy larson

The above is part of the breakdown of the social compact you spoke of. They are as immune from political challenge as Louis XIV was ruling from Versailles. Mind you, the dynamic changed for XVI, in the only way it can when the agreed political practices of a society no longer apply.

Keep us posted on that Texas Independence Movement. I am averse to hurricane seasons, and tornados, and 100+ degree heat with 100%+ humidity; but maybe my mind could be changed by being far enough inland, having an earth-sheltered house, and plenty of HVAC.

Subotai Bahadur

Jan 28, 2009 - 6:17 pm 75. Mongoose:

Yea well buddy, that business of data clerks retiring well while real people are forced to work until 75 and then live in shacks, well we may see some real geezer riots in a few years. And it is not just the feds, state workers to have some pretty flush deals.

I do not know if you were ever in Russia during the Soviet years, but it was like that, particularly toward the end. Really stupid and talentless party people with decent pensions and made up jobs while good people we just struggling to get by.

Something has got to give.

For that stuff to obtain here, they will really have to reduce the rest of us to slaves, and I am not speaking in metaphors here. The will have to euthanize us. (and do not put that past them. Seriously.)

If the government parasites lose this war, then we will just have to cut their pensions. I am all for seizing their wealth — that of their patrons too, but hey, that is just me.

No wonder that dems are so hot about gun control. It maybe the gun grabbing will be the tipping point one way or another. Wait till we see local Aoorn and organizing America chapters with their commissars strutting about.

Are we really that far gone? Are we that close to Venezuela or Mexico? Are we really so stupid and supine>

I guess we just have to see what stuff we are made of.

I really do not know what is up with Obama in the nation right now. I have some weird feeling that a lot of people are aghast, but I do not know why I feel that. I have a very strange premonition that people may actually for once see the Democrats for what they are. It is an odd feeling, and it seems to come from someplace real — but i could be projecting, I cannot trust it yet, but it feels true.

If we allow ourselves in the long term to be had by these people, then there really was nothing to save in the first place, and those of us that thought otherwise have been mistaking nostalgia for reality. Still, America often surprise.

The hubris of these folks, though. I am surprised that Americans can take it. This kind of money and really no national discussion at all? All that pork? All that patronage? All that corruption? End of story? We have got to get around the media muzzle.

The GOP has to get around the media filter. Not cleverly, just keep trying. Find something that works and not just one thing.
We need to get people like Palin, Rudy, Fred, Newt, Jindal etc. out in the communities that will listen to them. Do a grass root approach, do not try to have a national speaking platform, Campaign like it is 1999. Make the national media come to them. Just keep trying.

And stop mincing words@ Call tham out as the corrupt commies and oligarch that they are. No vague phrases like “mortgage your chidren’s future”.
Try ” he will to be able to ever own a home”, “he will be a slave to their sons”, “go look at Detroit”, “he will hate you the rest of his life”. Get across the structural funding game they are play. The NGO business. THe corruption. Spread so rumors. take the gloves off. Get to the truth of what the Democrat are trying to do. And keep on doing it over and over again. Start mocking all the entertainment and media figures. Do it all non stop, over and over again, each and every day.

Find a plain, clear, clean way to explain the geopolitics, and explain that all the BDS was a bunch of crap, the Dems just continuing Bush;s strategy, but do so badly.

Plaster Carter’s mug everywhere. Have the Unicorn Chaser in the same photo.

Fight, fight and fight. Just keep at it everyday. Something will break, there will be an opening.

Jan 28, 2009 - 6:28 pm 76. buddy larsen:

haw–100% humidity, we should be so lucky in the arid three quarters –SE quad, humidity & hurricane; N quad, tornados; W quad, desertish; Center quad, juuust right. state is running surpluses & creating jobs –Houston just had a big number. California tax & reg refugees come in a steady stream.

Poor California. Has everything –beauty, weather, nat’l resources, fertile soil, great infrastructure & services, long coast and fine ports on the globe’s Asia/Pacific growth zone. But sacramento is full of people who can get elected to state office but cannot understand arithmetic, and so the state’s ambitious & entrepreneurial are “goin’ to Texas”.

Jan 28, 2009 - 6:34 pm 77. Mongoose:

California is like Fwance. Nice country, except for a those Fwench people.

We need to carve out a Auguitaine and a Normandy.

Jan 28, 2009 - 6:42 pm 78. buddy larsen:

France is a good DC parallel –only “Let Them Eat Cake” is “Let Us Eat Cake”.

Jan 28, 2009 - 6:50 pm 79. Mongoose:

and…

“Let them watch 60 minutes…say, is that Coconut?”

Jan 28, 2009 - 6:57 pm 80. buddy larsen:

well that GOP zero ‘yea’ today in the house is pretty encouraging. it ain’t Merriam’s Corner but it’ll do for now, for this day.

Jan 28, 2009 - 6:58 pm 81. Mongoose:

Yea, we have to get the Senate to behave now.

Jan 28, 2009 - 7:01 pm 82. buddy larsen:

you know what a ‘moral victory’ is, right? it’s what the loser wins.

Jan 28, 2009 - 7:08 pm 83. geoffgo:

Now that I think on it, it may not be our declared enemies like Iran and the Hezbos whose actions will cause us the most near-term concern.

Consider this scenario. If Mexico explodes, which is likely soon, we could have upwards of 50 million illegals flowing across our border, all demanding asylum. And that would make US one.

So the obvious response is Obama’s brownshirts to the rescue, armed up with all the funding and firepower of our military (end Obama quote) in the name of Homeland security. With pensions.

BTW, posse comitatus precludes our military from acting very quickly to protect US here at home. That would be a military coup and unlikely.

Jan 28, 2009 - 7:08 pm 84. Subotai Bahadur:

#76 buddy larson

Well, I’ve only actually been to Houston and San Antonio. And the heat and humidity got me then. And I have a friend and former co-worker who lives in Houston, and he dodges hurricanes on a fairly regular basis it seems. Still and all, even though I am one of those lowly retired government workers [28 years as a Commissioned Peace Officer of the State of Colorado], freedom is more important than humidity. Ya’ll got room?

Subotai Bahadur

Jan 28, 2009 - 7:23 pm 85. buddy larsen:

subotai @ 84: if i were retired and coming in new, and disliked storm and heat and humidity, why, i’d start my search for a roost in Alpine. High altitude cool dry air, a quiet and serious state university, excellent hiway system, near the high Davis Mountains, and a thoroughly beautiful empty big sky chapparal topography. And look at real estate prices, esp in surrounding Brewster County, which is prob Rhode Island sized and has probably under ten thousand people –tho at the same time modern services and infrastructure. Sweet people, too. BTW, please excuse my shooting off my mouth about civil service. I get so worked up over –well, just think, the pubs are advocating a simple drop the bottom two brackets, 10 and 15, to 5 and 10, and put money in the hands of people in the next pay period –since “speed is important” –this new trillion and a quarter will take a long time, two years, to get to that level of infusion, and –well –if the admin wanted to help people, it would do that. But it wants to help the Democratic party first last and always most of all, so it won’t, it won’t let a chance at vig and patronage and and dependent-creation go by, no matter what. So, one gets to ranting and raving, and throwing calumny around carelessly –sorry, and thanks for the subtle rebuke.

Jan 28, 2009 - 8:33 pm 86. Cannoneer No. 4:

Y’all are sounding pretty disgruntled.

Anybody up for a discussion of sub-national military and paramilitary capabilities? Click on my name above.

Hard times are coming, folks. Harder probably than anybody younger than 145 has ever seen in America.

The Third Clinton Administration reenactment of the first WTC bombing is in the works. That will be followed by an updated, Twenty-first Century Waco 2.0. Most of you who were old enough to be paying attention in 1993 know what I’m talking about.

Jan 28, 2009 - 9:15 pm 87. Wadeusaf:

I hear there was a reset in 33AD oops that should be CE, I guess :0 . I don’t think what went down on Lexington Green qualifies as a reset, but it was a start.

I’ve been mulling over the idea that Mexico may be a place worth fighting for, might ease the pressure on Texas from all that Cali migration, (worse than the dust bowl era I hear). When its all said and done resurrecting some free republic using opportunity as a reason d’etre, might be a welcome occurance. Don’t look for US help, no doubt the chances of turning a failed state into something worthy of admiration and praise are as likely as establighing a democracy in the Middle east, or defeating the cocaine cartels in Columbia. Just can’t be done and can’t be won.

Jan 29, 2009 - 4:37 am 88. buddy larsen:

Wade @ 87: i have a sinking feeling that with the Colombia Free Trade bill finally dying on the vine as per order of certain ah, ‘importers’ in the USA desiring no interruption of goods from certain ah, ‘exporters’ at odds with President Uribe (the notorious enemy of narcoterrorism and friend of a political faction in the USA known as “law-abiders”), that Mrs. Pelosi, daughter of Lucky Luciano’s Port of Baltimore capo and Speaker of the House of Repulsive entities, will see to it that your final & penultimate sentence is probably, in terms of meaning, not grammar necessarily, correct, largely.

Jan 29, 2009 - 6:33 am 89. buddy larsen:

PS, i have heard of that 33 AD/CE reset, and altho i believe it is controversial and even contrafactual among the divers & sundry tribes, i think i may say without fear of contradiction that that its shorthand slogan, the “Golden Rule” certainly could hardly harm and hardly help but help anyone. Alas much is often lost as accretions and addendums accumulate barnacle-like; one such current being an attached (& topsy turvy) post script “…but do it FIRST!”

Jan 29, 2009 - 6:58 am

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