110 Comments

1. whiskey:

Obama is both worse and better than we could have imagined.

He is inexperienced, and largely uninterested to hostile regarding Terrorism and Afghanistan and Iraq, and hates the military. He refused to put his hand over his heart during the National Anthem, pointedly, to separate himself from Hillary in early campaign events. There are photos and videos of this. He disdained the flap lapel pin, the flag itself, patriotism, has chosen anti-American radicals as pals at every turn, boasts of his Muslim background and so forth at every turn in front of foreigners, and has said he will choose Muslims over America if it ever comes to that.

BUT … he’s also inexperienced. Which means basically incompetent in everything but reciting teleprompter speeches. His political instincts are terrible, he makes unforced errors, absent a fawning and covering press he has no political base in the broad sections of the country, and his fawning support among women generates male backlash the way other rockstar celebrities do: Brad Pitt and Leonardo Di Caprio.

Obama has never had any tough lesson imposed, excepting his defeat by Bobby Rush which taught him to be “Black Enough” in style and temperament. Good for South Side Chicago, disastrous for national leadership.

He’s picked overt fights with so many sectors of the economy for no payout that he’s going to be very weak domestically. He’s let Congress run wild with no supervision.

Obama is far more radical, racialist, filled with racial hatred (for Whites), filled with anti-Americanism, and the product of a deeply feminized culture than we can imagine.

He’s also far less competent when a fawning press cannot paper over bad judgment, poor performance, and lack of accomplishment. His support is rapidly dropping and he’s done nothing but make enemies while gaining few new allies.

Ultimately Obama will be judged by results. If he gains defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan, or merely one, he and his party OWN it. As they now own GM’s success or failure.

Mar 30, 2009 - 3:38 pm 2. Marie Claude:

“or a Petain”… in chamberlain’s time, Daladier was his co-signataire, while Petain still was a reverred WWI hero.

Well about Horowitz’s feelings, I think that while Obama plays the “weak link”, the same people are behind the curtains and direct the play… just more discretly, in the old fashion manner, ie the Sudanese trucks attacks, some iranian Pachtouns are eliminating some Mullahs spies… this is still in the design, but not in the front scene !

Mar 30, 2009 - 3:45 pm 3. Gordon:

Horowitz is right; the case is weakened to the extent that attacks focus on what BHO is, rather than what he does. As time goes on, what he is will be demonstrated by his actions and an action is a fact.

Thoughts, which lead to opinions, which lead to actions are only valid to the extent they are based on facts–that’s external reality. Subjective opinions–internal reality–may be correct but have no objective basis for being proven. Obama Derangement Syndrome is ultimately harmful to his opponents for this internal reason: clouded thinking leads to incorrect action (not to mention to creating an opening for your opponents).

Stick to the facts about Obama; there will be plenty of ammo.

Mar 30, 2009 - 4:14 pm 4. wretchard:

there will be plenty of ammo.

Speaking of ammo, Fox has a news article about Angie Harmon. “Angie Harmon: I’m Not Racist Because I Disagree With Obama”. Even if you avoid the ODS, that doesn’t mean that the Left won’t continue to be deranged. I’m sure any number of people will come, even to this site, basically arguing that the reason one disagrees with Obama is because one is morally or ethically too inferior to appreciate his virtues. That nonsense won’t stop.

Mar 30, 2009 - 4:18 pm 5. James R.:

Wretchard,

When the lad protested, “The emperor has no clothes”, do you think he was exhibiting Emperor Derangement Syndrome?

Mar 30, 2009 - 4:22 pm 6. Joshua:

Whiskey, #1: [Obama]’s also inexperienced. Which means basically incompetent in everything but reciting teleprompter speeches. His political instincts are terrible, he makes unforced errors, absent a fawning and covering press he has no political base in the broad sections of the country, and his fawning support among women generates male backlash the way other rockstar celebrities do: Brad Pitt and Leonardo Di Caprio.

Unfortunately, what makes Obama weaker makes the Dem-inated Congress that much stronger relative to him. He may or may not be on board with much of the Reid/Pelosi agenda (e.g. his stated opposition to a revived “Fairness Doctrine”), but the more ineffectual he is at reviving the economy and enacting his own agenda, the harder he will find it to say no to that of his fellow Democrats.

Mar 30, 2009 - 4:24 pm 7. Annoy Mouse:

I hope the best for the president as I do my country but please do not fault me when I hear rhetoric such as spreading wealth to the people or the obvious siding with labor unions that I should be the least alarmed. There is an ideologue who spoke of much left wing mumbo jumbo and the average Joe, think Joe the Plummer, has no idea where this thing is going to end up. The beginning of the Iraq war was a bit scary, who knows what could have happened in the region, but right here right now we are under siege. What the hell is going to happen next? I have no idea but I am pretty sure I am not going to like it. We right wing moon beams are steady at the helm for the most part but look into the perturbation forces in the stock market and see who trusts whom.

BTW:” The big winner of the Obama victory wasn’t the Daily Kos, it was the Huffington Post.”

What do you mean by this?

Mar 30, 2009 - 4:27 pm 8. James R.:

Hey, guys, what Horowitz and Wretchard seem to be conveying is “React to Obama, like Obama himself, you know, Cool.”

Mar 30, 2009 - 4:32 pm 9. wretchard:

” The big winner of the Obama victory wasn’t the Daily Kos, it was the Huffington Post.”

I am making the argument that the BDS people didn’t make as much hay as those who pretended to be the moderate face of the Left. The Kos were the disposable noise machines for the Rahm Emmanuels of the world. Maybe I’m cynical, but sometimes I think that even when the conservative base is energized, there are always politicians who will come aboard, not because they are committed in principle but because they’re looking for a ticket to ride.

Mar 30, 2009 - 4:36 pm 10. Langley:

I live in Kailua.

On his first vacation here last year Obama stayed at a home owned by the Huffington Post.

Mar 30, 2009 - 4:40 pm 11. Eggplant:

Wretchard said:

“It may be argued that the Bush Derangement Syndrome ultimately brought the Left their Messiah. But by that logic an Obama Derangement System threatens to bring on the conservative counterpart.”

These are very wise words. IMHO, Obama is way out of his depth and has no business being President. However that Knight on the White Horse waiting to suspend the Constitution and have himself declared “Lord Protector” would make things infinitely worse.

We are NOT moonbats! We must remain vigiliant against Obama Derangement and deal with the situation rationally.

Mar 30, 2009 - 4:42 pm 12. MikeO:

My take: What Angie Harmon said, but tenfold.

During election season, a friend of mine who wears a uniform and holds a commission told me that he thought it impossible for him to discuss then-Senator Obama without running the risk of a UCMJ Article 88 (contemptuous words) violation.

I had drinks with a couple of very liberal (but work-competent) co-workers a couple of weeks ago. Both were tut-tutting about one’s daughter’s friend who was enlisting in the USMC. I explained what I remember about what motivated me to join the Army all those years ago, and I synopsized it as one of many possible paths for a boy to reach manhood.

One lady asked me what the peacetime Army had done for me. I said that I learned two very important life lessons in five years. The first was that I learned to despise incompetence. The second was that I learned to hide my spite.

I suspect from odds and ends gathered from what I’ve read in your posts over the years, Mr. Fernandez, that you and I work in roughly the same industry. If you recall the influx of riff-raff into the tech industry during the height of the dot-com boom, then you might understand the depth of my disgust with anyone who takes a job for which he is not qualified.

To put an end to my rambling, I have an intense distaste for who President Obama is, for what he has done, and for what he will do. That does not make me a racist. Nor does it make me deranged.

Mar 30, 2009 - 4:42 pm 13. noprisoners:

I think that all points stated above are well thought out and well stated.

My question: Since Obama is sliding out on the limb on so many issues, do you think it wise for him to refer to everything as “his”. For example, “my budget”, my plan”, my Secretary of the Treasury”. It seems that every speech he reads contains,”I,I,I” and “me, me, me”, and “mine, mine, mine”. Does he not grasp that he occupies a Constitutional office? He seems to think that it is all about him. If his plans fail (and I suspect that many are going to)what then does he say? That these plans were concocted by “staff”? It seems that his staff was the scapegoat for every gaffe on the campaign trail.

Mar 30, 2009 - 4:45 pm 14. dre:

“everything falls about his ears.”

modo got rebuked for ear references by the O!

Mar 30, 2009 - 4:51 pm 15. Benj:

This Post by Wretch was RICH. I seem to recall Wretch stating he “despised” Obama. THat’s not the basis for an alternative to ODS. Nor has he ever thought back to some of his sillier posts during the election season. Remember that one about Johnny Mac being inside O’s ODA Loop. Oh please! First thing youi need to do if you’re going to avoid being bound by fantasy or ideology is to acknowlege your own mistakes. But Wretch is infallible. Ah there’s a new nickname for him – The Pope! Ya’ll are beiong played…

Mar 30, 2009 - 4:51 pm 16. wretchard:

I have a negative opinion about Obama, but it was always based upon what I think are the facts and modified by the further facts as they emerged. I do think there was a time when JSM was inside Obama’s loop, but he lost it. Fallibility is my lot, unlike certain commenters whose moral shoes I am unfit to shine.

Mar 30, 2009 - 5:13 pm 17. Skookumchuk:

I wouldn’t take it too seriously, Wretchard. This place is as good as the internet gets.

Mar 30, 2009 - 5:15 pm 18. Habu:

I do not believe those suffering from BDS were in any way prepared for the huge societal shift that he headed using a brilliant campaign.
Changes of the magnitude we’re experiencing, having a black president with a muslim background who’s acculturation is basically anti American is a compression similar to nitrogen narcosis. Had obama been a bit more seasoned, actually sponsored bills and debated them and had a track record of years of service on the national level the people #1 would never have elected him or #2 understood who they were electing.

As it turned out we elected a man who may not be eligible to actually be President, has a mindset of a street hustler selling eightballs on the corner and pimping for money. He is a great teleprompter reader which in the semi fantasy world many Americans live in is a big plus. Factually most Americans couldn’t locate the South Pole on a globe and certainly finding Afghanistan would be an impossibility without a 3M sticky arrow pointing to it.But they do get to vote and are easily influenced by the shiny new toy.

Societal changes of the magnitude we have just undergone are like tectonic plates releasing energy and rocking many peoples worlds. obama has not been a healer but a shaman, no make that mullah, using incompetent staffers and a hide from genuine open public forums where hard questions might be asked. He’s practicing public voodoo. His last press conference complete with a highly touted Internet “town meeting forum” approach turned out to be similar to the fake trading floor at Enron that Enron would show off to analysts to show how successful Enron was. Obama PLANTED the questioners and the puff ball questions.

So whether one looks a priori/a posteriori at obama AND has eyes wide open to new input, as it stands now he’s not what was advertised nor expected and that is not a comfort for most Americans.

obama is a huckster, a grifter, and is not what the nation bought into. obama – ONE and DONE.

Mar 30, 2009 - 5:17 pm 19. RWE:

“I think Barack Obama will turn out to be, in part, who the public will let him become.”

Perhaps – but he is still acting like he is running for something and one suspects it is because that is only thing he knows how to do. Maybe this is not a governing strategy; maybe he’s just a hammer desperately looking for nails.

But also realize that this applied to G.W. Bush. He was handed the CRA, a “don’t worry about Social Security the money will come from somewhere” attitude, a policy on terrorism that yelled “come’n git it!’, and various other long-term national afflictions. His ability to fix any of this was limited, and most significantly limited by the very people who are now in charge and decrying these very failures. I see no similar limitation for Obama because he has met the enemy and it is him. Politician heal thyself.

As for the John Porhodetz piece, I find interesting the worldview the Left creates out of thin air in order to motivate itself. The “Watchmen” vision came out of the Reagan era, and even the “bad” stuff of that time turned out to be pretty good. Over the last 8 years we have heard that Pres Bush was presiding over the wholesale trampling of everyone’s civil liberties and the Draft was going to be reintroduced to provide cannon fodder for his wars. It turned out that the impending Draft was a pure fabrication and the threat to civil liberties the equivalent of lying awake at night over the fact that there are speed limits on the highways that you might be arrested for violating. What would these guys be if they had to deal with reality?

Mar 30, 2009 - 5:19 pm 20. Lifeofthemind:

There are fundamental differences between conservatives and revolutionaries. I did not say between the right and the left since there are radicals in both camps. A salient feature of radicals is that they behave in consciously conspiratorial ways. Even when in a position of authority and even when engaged in presumptively lawful conduct they tend to express themselves through ways, such as subterfuge, secrecy and small group power struggles, that tie in to their emotional and historical underground links. Conservatives and most Republicans, but not most Libertarians, behave quite differently. Their values express their focus on the relentlessly normative. This may give them an affinity to the values of productive industry but not necessarily to those of politics. The Democrats have been captured by the radicals and have rejected the alternative of a moderately socially progressive heritage that built the party of George Meany and Hubert Humphrey, Scoop Jackson and John (but not Edward) Kennedy. Given that the Democrats are now dominated by radicals it makes sense to use that information when judging Obama. He was indisputably the candidate of the most radical elements and does have a history of associating with frankly revolutionary elements. Humans are not beasts. We have the capacity to use experience, not just our own but others, to predict future events and make plans accordingly. Given these facts it is prudent and sane for someone to expect bad things from Barack Obama and act on that expectation.

Mar 30, 2009 - 5:25 pm 21. jjmurphy:

My mostly emotional take on this is that Obama and the collectivists are the enemy. You use all the weapons in your arsenal when you fight them. The collectivists threw out the Marquis of Queensbury rules a long time ago. We need to fight what Obama does AND who he is! We need great debaters AND street fighters. This is not a polite contest. This is a fight between collectivism and freedom. To tie one hand behind our back because we wish to appear “above the fray” is ridiculous.

Each day I see a new outrage by Obama and his ilk, yet we caution each other not to descend to their level. I’m done with that.

Mar 30, 2009 - 5:26 pm 22. jjmurphy:

btw, I meant “street fighters” in a figurative sense, not anarchy in the streets type stuff.

Mar 30, 2009 - 5:30 pm 23. blert:

Grifter in Chief…

It has a ring to it.

Mar 30, 2009 - 5:47 pm 24. Habu:

jjmurphy:

I totally understand. But we may yet get a bit of anarchy in the streets. We aren’t given to see the future but we must be prepared to give and take to a degree.

Wrethchard rightly doesn’t want his site turned into what one can find on the other side of the coin, the Daily Kos.

I believe Lifeofthemind above makes some great observations. We’ll just have to keep a sharp eye on the radical lefties.

Don’t tread on me & obama ONE and DONE

Mar 30, 2009 - 5:54 pm 25. Peter Grynch:

I am a recovering victim of Clinton Derangement Syndrome but, looking back at the Clinton “vacation from history”, he wasn’t that bad. Sure, a case could be made that his policies led to the Enron debacle and to the second attack on the World Trade Center.

My biggest fear about President Obama is that his policies are a reprise of the failed Carter presidency. Carter was the gold standard of bad presidents. His foreign policy awfulness was only exceeded by his horrendous economic and energy policies. Obama’s goals right now are to do everything Carter did, but do it bigger and worse.

Maybe he’ll get a Nobel Prize one day, but we’ll be paying the price for a generation.

Mar 30, 2009 - 5:56 pm 26. MarkJ:

Who cares what WE think Obama is? Here’s the really important question:

“Does Obama know who HE is?”

Our very lives and fortunes likely depend on the answer.

Mar 30, 2009 - 5:58 pm 27. fred:

Are we perhaps wringing our hands a bit too much over what is legitimate criticism and lampooning of the president? As far as I am concerned, if it isn’t msu or fantasy, then it’s fair game. All the same, I am a person who believes that the apple does not fall far from the tree, so Obama’s “tree” is fair game. We know what his tree is: it’s his comfort zone, the constellation of ideas and worldviews he was weaned on. And so far in his administration he has defaulted to that orbit. Very, very little of what he’s done or said is “centrist.” His “tree” explains his policy.

The defects which devolve from that “tree” (and I think you all know what I’m referring to) have historically been proven time and again. When we are talking about progressivism/socialism/Marxism the failures logically follow from the flawed thinking. Therefore, policy failure will mostly not owe to a failure in execution. The ideas are defective, and you cannot make a skunk smell like a rose.

Mar 30, 2009 - 5:58 pm 28. wretchard:

Both Hitler and Churchill despised Stalin. Arguably Churchill hated Stalin worse than Hitler did. But Hitler let it unhinge him where Churchill never did. Despicion was never the issue; derangement was. Churchill never stopped seeing Stalin for what he was and even ordered up a top secret plan to see whether the Soviet Union could be invaded after the Nazis fell. When he saw that the Western Allies didn’t have the means or will to do that, he accepted reality, bided his time and put his voice behind the concept of the Cold War. Hitler, on the other hand, let his antipathy towards Stalin blind him to certain realities. The result was Stalingrad and eventual defeat.

Personally I don’t think Obama is a good President, quite the contrary; but I acknowledge that some believe this almost to the point of mystical faith. Given that situation the best policy is to remain unswervingly rational. We all have opinions, and some are doubtless true. It doesn’t do any harm though to let reason lead, even when intuition suggests that one rush ahead. Eyes wide open.

Mar 30, 2009 - 6:00 pm 29. MarkJ:

Lifeofthemind,

“Perhaps – but he is still acting like he is running for something and one suspects it is because that is only thing he knows how to do. Maybe this is not a governing strategy; maybe he’s just a hammer desperately looking for nails.”

I’ve thought about this too. With my previous post in mind, we may be dealing with the Ultimate European: a guy for whom “process” is equated to, and even more important than, “action.”

How legalistic, how sophisticated, how narcissistic, how…dangerous.

Mar 30, 2009 - 6:02 pm 30. jjmurphy:

Habu,
You are correct. (Wrethchard rightly doesn’t want his site turned into what one can find on the other side of the coin, the Daily Kos.) I was venting to a degree. Since I found Belmont Club, I come to this site to read “reasoned” discussion and to learn. I would not want it to become a Daily Kos of HuffPo. However, there are other sites I visit that serve that purpose when I am inclined to read what the more “emotional” people on our side have to say.

Mar 30, 2009 - 6:14 pm 31. noprisoners:

Mark J @ 29

How could Obama obtain European characteristics? He has hardly ever been there. I don’t believe that he is a consummate student of anything. If anything, he probably has some new age philosophy informed by Leninism or Marxism.

OK. Maybe I answered my own question.

Mar 30, 2009 - 6:19 pm 32. bob:

I wish folks wouldn’t compare Obama to a shaman. This sullies a legitimate paleolithic profession. I just wish Obumble were a good shaman.

Mar 30, 2009 - 6:23 pm 33. MG:

The President has built his political career (or had it mostly handed to him) based on ambiguity.

“Who is this tall, dark, handsome man with the resonant voice?”

I suspect that, like a quarterback in a triple option offense, he will delay committing himself to unambiguity for as long as possible.

‘Tis almost quantum mechanical that… and once the photon delivers its information, we shall determine whether the cat is dead or alive.

Mar 30, 2009 - 6:36 pm 34. Eyas:

Reality …..
Fantasy …..

I’m not sure that you folks have been paying attention. The U.S. Constitution (although degraded over decades) is now the Fantasy. No one in the government is constrained in any way by this Supreme Law of the Land. John Adams once said that we must be “A Nation of Laws, Not of Men”. That is clearly no longer the case.

I’m not sure that you folks have been paying attention. The Federal Government has been siezing control of Private Industry at every self-created opportunity. Even today, a CEO of a privately owned company was “Fired” by the President of the United States. Is there a Constitutional basis for any of this?

I’m not sure that you folks have been paying attention. The Federal Government is now solely in the business of seizing control of the means of production in this country, and of redistributing wealth on an unprecedented scale.

I’m not sure that you folks have been paying attention. Our FORM OF GOVERNMENT has been radically changed in the last six months. Did anyone ask you if that’s what you wanted? Did you vote for that? … The answer to the first is “Yes”. The answer to the second is “Yes” if you voted for Obama, and “No” if you didn’t. There was NO SECRET as to who Obama was/is, and what his plans have always been for this country.

I’m not sure that you folks have been paying attention. FREEDOM is no longer in America. Just because you have not yet personally felt its effects makes it no less true. One day, much sooner than you expect, YOU WILL personally feel your loss of FREEDOM. Then,… it will be too late. Then,… you will wonder why you were so afraid of Obama Derangement Syndrome.

I’m not sure that you folks have been paying attention. Does considering Obama a “Socialist” comprise ODS? Does considering Obama a “Marxist” comprise ODS? Would considering Obama a “Communist” comprise ODS? I assure you, he is all three of those things.

I’m not sure that you folks have been paying attention. I happen to be an atheist. However, if someone appeared rather suddenly upon the world stage; had a fanatical cultish following of adherents who considered him to be a messiah; and, if that person was dedicated to destroying the most open, free, productive, beneficent and benevolent society that has ever graced the face of the planet — I might consider the term “Anti-Christ” to be a fair way to describe such a person.

I’m not sure that you folks have been paying attention. If Obama Derangement Syndrome is believing in “fantasy”, I have to ask what movie you all have been watching. That is, who’s been believing the “fantasy”, and who’s been watching “reality”? Is it fantastic thinking to delude yourself into believing that what you’re actually witnessing is the “Fantasy”, and what you would prefer to be true (that Obama really isn’t that bad) is the reality?

Mar 30, 2009 - 6:36 pm 35. Matt Beck (Man of the West):

A brief point: Obama Derangement Syndrom is directed against the myth, not the man. More specifically, it is directed against the unformed conscience of those who believe the myth, and cultural elite who purvey it.

In that sense, it is unswervingly rational.

Mar 30, 2009 - 6:51 pm 36. ipw533:

“Both Hitler and Churchill despised Stalin. Arguably Churchill hated Stalin worse than Hitler did. But Hitler let it unhinge him where Churchill never did. Despicion was never the issue; derangement was. Churchill never stopped seeing Stalin for what he was and even ordered up a top secret plan to see whether the Soviet Union could be invaded after the Nazis fell. When he saw that the Western Allies didn’t have the means or will to do that, he accepted reality, bided his time and put his voice behind the concept of the Cold War. Hitler, on the other hand, let his antipathy towards Stalin blind him to certain realities. The result was Stalingrad and eventual defeat.”

Probably a subject for another debate at another time, Wretchard, but I think your comparisons of Hitler and Churchill vis a vis Stalin are flawed. Yes, it’s true both of them hated Stalin, but to a degree they worked with him–one cannot look at the Western-Soviet alliance of 1941-45 without also looking at the Nazi-Soviet alliance of 1939-1941.

I see it more as Hitler and Stalin were both ambitious gangsters who used one another when and where they could but ultimately planned on “knocking off” the other. Hitler just happened to strike first. Churchill was like the beat cop who saw both gangs for what they were. FDR was like the idealistic precinct captain who didn’t realize just what a jungle he had inherited. Or, alternately, he could be seen as a corrupt precinct captain for whom the fix was in for one side but not the other. Churchill was delighted that Hitler’s gang was taken down by Stalin’s gang but chafed under FDR’s idea that Stalin was a gangster who could be dealt with. Stalin knew that Churchill was restrained by the Americans, first FDR and then Truman–what else explains his support for Israel’s struggle against the British in 1948…?

Mar 30, 2009 - 6:52 pm 37. fred:

The destruction of the value of my retirement portfolio of investments by Obama’s plans and utterances is an event that challenges my ability to be cool and aloof about the guy.

Today we crossed another threshold in the nation’s history. The head of the federal government fired the CEO of a large corporation. Prior to that, the government has been dictating compensation, even to the point of declaring prior contracts to be null and void (effectively, by taxing them at 90%).

He is far more generous with the Paleosimian savages in Gaza.

We could add to this list of outrages.

I hope nothing I’ve stated here rises to the level of ODS.

Mar 30, 2009 - 6:54 pm 38. Benj:

28 The Wretchard gambit – If I had the energy to go back and look, I could find enough instances of this trope to put in a damn dictionary of reactionary rhetoric. You start with the extreme parallel – Hit/Church’s attitudes toward Stalin – which obviously places Obama as the modern moral equivalent of a murderous dictator. That puts the maddest cats in the club – call em the Whiskey-drinkers – in your flow…Then back up to the most gentle sort of rational op-ed page pap “Personally I don’t think Obama is a good President, quite the contrary.”…- [No Wretch YOU said you "DESPISED" him - an perfect example of ODS] Finally you slip the point that’s been made (repeatedly) here in recent threads – “but I acknowledge that some believe this almost to the point of mystical faith…” The point, of course, is that we have just seen a whole bunch of people – from Condi to Kristol to Kagan to Krauthammer etc. walk back (a bit) from their contempt for Obama. It’s not those with “a mystical faith” in O who are making news on this score, but folks on the RIGHT! Which is why you’re playing CYA right now.

As for your aspersions about me – I’ve publicly acknowledged – See FIRST OF THE YEAR 08 where I was wrong re Iraq/torture. I’ve also confessed any # of errors when Clubbers caught me out – Ask Alexis re me on O &
American Trade policy? As for those shoes – that reference goes back (as you know)( to Fr. Frechette – a heroic Catholic priest whom you pissed on from a great height! Here’s his latest posting…You don’t need to apologize to me – but you owe him one especially if you think of yourself as a CHristian…http://www.compassionweavers.com/

Mar 30, 2009 - 6:57 pm 39. vanderleun:

Quod erat demonstrandum.

Mar 30, 2009 - 7:02 pm 40. vanderleun:

Re: #34 Eyas

Mar 30, 2009 - 7:03 pm 41. sigintel:

I just returned from a three day trip to DC. Obama’s image is everywhere…on hats, posters in store fronts, on the Metro tickets, there are life sized cut-outs of him at Regan-National airport…it was freaky and reminded me of the Third Reich with der Fuhrer’s picture everywhere and all of the same kind of “Got Mit Uns” slogans. Obama is a media creation, a celebrity who needs his lines dictated to him by TOTUS. He may be an impostor but it doesn’t matter because 60% of the people read People Magazine and not the Weekly Standard. I’m afraid that most of America has become so “dumbed and numbed” by the uber liberal MSM that they will go along with the “good” ODS that exists until he really screws up and people realize that he’s a faker and a poser like the rest of the bunch in Washington and is a domestic threat to America security.

Mar 30, 2009 - 7:05 pm 42. buddy larsen:

I have to agree with Eyas that it is entrely possible to be emotionally deranged without having to venture into fantasy at all. Reality will do nicely, thank you.

Mar 30, 2009 - 7:09 pm 43. dan:

It’s a good point: ODS is absurd. Nevertheless, the question of O will probably ultimately be answered one of two ways: “yes, he was that incompetent to deal with the world’s Bond villians,” or “yes, he set us up intentionally.” I don’t know whether I suffer from ODS, but for me it’s impossible to believe this amazingly lucky affirmative action smile will prove to be anything but a cartoon unless the USAF pulls his ass out of the fire.

Mar 30, 2009 - 7:10 pm 44. newscaper:

I think Obama’s being semi-rational on Iraq etc only because he has to defend his right flank while he works on his much more important (to him) domestic agenda.

The problem is that his foreign policy is all about calculation (what must he do to minimally keep up appearances as a leader), rather than real conviction — and it shows.

Mar 30, 2009 - 7:12 pm 45. Alexis:

Apocalypticism and cynicism has a nasty downside, and that is paralysis. As a rule, the same folks who are truly convinced that the bad guys control everything from behind the scenes also tend to talk themselves out of doing anything to make life better on a mundane level.

“Bush Derangement Syndrome” vastly undermined the Left’s ability to make any headway against George W. Bush. I would argue that a “cult of personality” worldview that assumes that a certain man can do nothing wrong is a flip side of assuming that a certain man can do nothing right. I think part of the problem comes from ascribing superhuman qualities to other people, whether they are one’s enemy or one’s proxy.

That which makes Barack Obama different is that his political campaign actively portrayed him as having superhuman qualities, with the effect that he is perceived with adulation by many of his supporters while also being demonized by many of his opponents. While George W. Bush stumbled into a “derangement syndrome” among his opponents, I would argue that Barack H. Obama has actively courted such a “derangement syndrome” to the point of turning it into an art form. The Obama administration goes out of its way to “cherry pick” its opposition to ensure that only the most shrill voices get heard; there is reason to believe that a “derangement syndrome” would play perfectly into the Obama administration’s hands.

I am a bit disappointed that tea parties aren’t dumping some symbolic Saudi or Iranian commodity, but are rather being used in a domestic dispute. I know there’s a great deal of frustration in opposition ranks, but it would help to appeal to a broader American audience. The Obama administration will probably turn such revelry to its advantage.

It is still too early to say how effective President Obama will be. If his policies turn out well, complaints about him won’t go very far. If his policies turn out poorly, praise for him won’t go very far either.

Mar 30, 2009 - 7:13 pm 46. Alexis:

That’s “Apocalypticism and cynicism have a downside…”

Mar 30, 2009 - 7:15 pm 47. buddy larsen:

Benj, i’ve always liked your courage and commitment, as well as your scholarship and breezy fun to read expression, so I’m going to give you a friendly tip: you are showing every symptom of WDS (Wretchard Derangement Syndrome). This is startlingly clear in your attaching some mightily obscure reference (to some character in your memory), to an ordinary everyday expression of relative merit, the ‘fit to shine shoes’, which w used here in litotes form, in order to gently prompt you to note your increasing emotionalism.

Mar 30, 2009 - 7:19 pm 48. Serenity:

The point of this post if I understand correctly is that we shouldn’t panic and run around screaming our version of Chimpy-Bush-Hitler that so characterised BDS. So, no, calling Obama a socialist is not ODS. It’s what he is. Even Horowitz acknowledges that the Dems are European style socialists, which I find alarming, though he only believes this to be a concern. Abstaining from derangement doesn’t mean you can’t play hardball. Too many conservatives can’t seem to figure that out. Hence, we display our rationality by being above it all. That is a mistake, but not one that can’t be rectified. I think we will find it increasingly easy to fix as we get closer to the pointy edge.
The irony of the Watchmen cartoon is that while it’s author was busy engaging in twisted fantasies about Nixon the Reagan revolution was bringing about the greatist change in American society since FDR. While the left hates what Reagan did they admire how he did it, maybe even more than their favorite son (FDR). Did you all catch Reich’s essay in this weekend’s WSJ on Reaganomics versus Obamanomics?
As for the firing of the GM CEO did you check out the blowback? The governor of Michigan slammed Obama, the dow tanked almost 300 points and the Auto industry is grumbling loudly.
The American electorate is a wild, fickle, unruly beast that isn’t so easily controlled. We may be fooled into adopting every tenant of socialism under the guise of liberalism over eighty plus years but we won’t be led into the worker’s paradise like this. I grew up on Capitol Hill and worked there for a time. There’s pushback already. Cap and Trade is dead, tax increases facing heavy opposition — even from Charlie Rangel no less. The Dems can’t get Card Check through unless they disguise it enough, which is doubtful. Same deal with the Fairness Doctrine. Congress told the White House to stuff it on the assault weapons ban. It won’t be long before the Dem on Dem knifefights start and the Repubs start cracking the whip to spook the Dem ponies who are afraid for their seats.
I know a lot of you here think our elected representatives in Congress have the luxury of ignoring their constituencies but trust me they know what side their bread is buttered on. That doesn’t say much for us who keep electing the fools, but then we do like to vote ourselves chocolate cake. Congress is lousy but my guy is good, he brings home the bacon. So as far as that leash Obama’s on? Not near as long as he’d like it to be, far enough to give us a good bite on the rear before the whiplash slams him down. How bad that bite is? Only time will tell.

Mar 30, 2009 - 7:46 pm 49. peterike:

Alexis @45: “Bush Derangement Syndrome” vastly undermined the Left’s ability to make any headway against George W. Bush.

True to an extent. But BDS immolated the Republican brand, leading directly to the Dem takeover and the O Presidency. It works its magic still, as many Americans are just happy to have Bush gone and really don’t have a clue what O is up to.

Speaking of O’s election, we find out now that the NY Times spiked a story about O’s ties with ACORN and more of his illegal money raising. Wow, I am shocked. Shocked.

http://thebulletin.us/articles/2009/03/30/top_stories/doc49d0a73c7f98e547489394.txt

Mar 30, 2009 - 7:55 pm 50. fred:

Serenity,

My greatest fear is that the Porkulus + the “budget” is going to put us so far in the hole that the economy cannot absorb it, and then our currency is in deep trouble. What happens next? Our economy and banking system are put into an IMF receivership and we lose our status as a truly independent nation. Right now the Chinese and Russians are pushing hard for a new reserve currency, which is just a step heading in the direction I just outlined.

All because of banking and financial firm activities called “credit default swaps.”

What really tipped the economy over, before the CDS’s blew up, was the rapid rise in energy prices. It gobbled up disposable income like nothing I’ve ever seen in years. And those on the edge who got mortgages on homes they had no business buying began defaulting.

Mar 30, 2009 - 8:01 pm 51. Unsk:

There is a flipside to ODS. All too often Republicans have indulged in the fantasy that Obama will be constrained by popular opinion, the constitution, traditions and the media, etc. Many republicans want to believe he means well, is really a nice guy and is working for the Country’s interest.

i completely agree with Wretchard that criticism of Obama needs to be founded in reality. On Obama’s actions. The problem is it is very hard to tell where the reality ends and the fantasy begins.

The problem with Obama is that he regularly head fakes, and feints constitutionally appropriate and reasonable action, when in the end he does something truly radical and dangerous. Like the news conference on GM, the way I heard it, he went out of his way to say his intention was not to run or manage GM, but then he fires the CEO, is getting involved the terms of GM’s warranties and wants to determine GM’s product line mix.

For example, today Hugh Hewitt wanted to douse any discussion of dictatorship and wanted to call Obama a “managed capitalist”. Excuse me, I think that is a bit of goody too shoes fantasy. Europe’s version of managed Capitalism could only exist because it was protected by the US, and could hook its caboose to America’s dynamic capitalist system and export many of its goods to the US. From what we’ve seen so far, it appears Obama is on a path to constrict truly free enterprise and restrict free thought, ( the key to free enterprise) to a small set of officially approved ideas that could lead to an imploding economy and society.

In the meantime, grasping where the long list of Obama’s monkeywrenching interventions into the economy and foriegn policy will lead us will make your head explode. The permutations and combinations are just too much. But the bad part of Obama’s poliicies is that on many of his ideas like denying health care to Vets, or to the elderly via a cost benefit ratio, or to submitting to a international currency standard,or to seizing any business for who knows what, to kowtowing to the Russian and Iranian nuclear threat, there is a cruel, nasty Anti-American streak and edge that is bone chilling and frightening.

Mar 30, 2009 - 8:02 pm 52. wretchard:

#50

Rejecting derangement doesn’t necessarily mean “sounding reasonable”. The really dangerous thing about following the facts is that it may take you to conclusions you don’t want to face. On those occasions, you must be very careful to check your calculations, because you may be wrong. But if you are up against something you can’t logically reject, then set your face and make the argument. Pundits become risk averse, often in proportion to the size of their audiences. When you’ve got half a hundred hits a day on your blog, you don’t care what you say. When you have half a million listeners a day on a talk show, or an opinion site, for example, then you are very careful about your utterances and even your provocations.

But ultimately that’s what political debate is about. It’s not cost free. You can be pilloried, lionized, ignored or hounded, sometimes all at the same time.

Mar 30, 2009 - 8:09 pm 53. Habu:

47. buddy larsen:
litotes … Buddy , do folks in your home town know you talk like that? Dang son you’re liv’n pretty darn high falut’n.

Mar 30, 2009 - 8:26 pm 54. bob:

Always credit a man when he has done something right. The Obama Administration has de-listed the wolf in Idaho. (at least temporarily) For that I give him credit.

Save The Elk!

SSS

Mar 30, 2009 - 8:27 pm 55. starling:

Benj, here is one request and one small piece of advice.

REQUEST: please find for us the post to which you twice made reference.

SPoA: if you would take the time to compose your thoughts, you could make your points more effectively and less emotionally. In particular, strive for complete grammatically-correct sentences with minimal use of acronyms, slang, parentheses and parentheticals, ellipses, abbreviations, ALL CAPS, brackets, and exclamation points.

And please excuse my professorial tone. It’s just what I do for a living. It’s not the condescension that it may appear to be. I agree with Buddy that your courage and commitment are commendable.

Mar 30, 2009 - 8:32 pm 56. narciso:

I’m more than a little surprised at David Horowitz’s reaction. Obama is the apotheosis
of everything he and Peter Collier talked about in Destructive Generation, what twenty years ago. He shares Chomsky’s view of America as a uniquely evil place, an “Evil Empire” which a pronounced hatred of the military, large corporations, institutional religion. This was inculcated in his time in Indonesia, schooling at Columbia, and Harvard
and his apprenticeship under Ayers and Wright. His contempt for ‘bitterclingers’, his desire to destroy coal companies through
cap n trade, his willingness to defame US soldiers in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Mar 30, 2009 - 8:37 pm 57. fred:

Wretchard,

You addressed your post #52 to my post #50. After I read your post, I had a hard time squaring what you were addressing with the topic of my post #50, which was about my worries concerning the economy and addressing “Serenity’s” post. I wasn’t directly or indirectly commenting about how to define derangement. Or, did I miss something?

Mar 30, 2009 - 8:37 pm 58. Benj:

47 – I take your point Bud – might have left the Fr. Frechette reference out if I’d reread my post…Too much of tweener – just about me and Wretch…I remembered – and I suspect he did – that the same phrase came up during our first hot encounter – …I’d invoked the work of Fr. Frechette in Haiti as an example of a Catholic personalism that seemed miles away from Bill Buckley’s morality. (A morality that Wretch identified with.) Wretch responded by trashing the good Fr. – lumping him with poverty pimps. It was a gross error. He could’ve backed off. Hell, when I screwed up by jumping to beat on Buckley the day after he died – I apologized…But – Wretch – he’s never wrong…

Be assured – no WDS here – Had a day off, playing Lynrd Synrd and Lady Gaga – checked the Club and figured I’d give Wretch a little grief for continuing to pander to Whiskeys of this world at the same time as he pretended to be an, ah, Appolinian head…To reference one of YOUR old posts…

Mar 30, 2009 - 8:38 pm 59. Serenity:

Fred: I find the deficits we are racking up to be really scary as well. Finance is not an area that I’m good at (which is an understatement) so the less I say the better. I’ve heard some people say that the Chicoms are nervous about inflation making the trillions of our debt they hold chump change. I don’t see a new currency taking hold in the short term because we have the only market right now which will support a world currency which is why we are it. The long term who knows? I can’t say that we will never be put into IMF receivership but it doesn’t seem likely now. I think I can say if we go down we take everyone with us so we have some leverage there. Obviously those with more finance experience can give a much more cogent explanation of the economic pitfalls than I can.
I can tell you from a political standpoint the scenario you describe is hemlock to the political party responsible and not every Dem is a fruit loop like Pelosi. There will be push back on the budgets this year. Not enough, but a start. I don’t think all is lost and I may be a fool but I think we will survive this. We need to keep our heads though.

Mar 30, 2009 - 8:48 pm 60. Alexis:

The really dangerous thing about following the facts is that it may take you to conclusions you don’t want to face.

This is why art criticism is actually important to understanding the Obama phenomenon. If a careful symbolic analysis of campaign artwork points to a cult of personality, then the rational reaction isn’t to go into denial, but rather to simply accept that a political campaign is prepared to cross key social boundaries to obtain power.

Interestingly enough, after the Obama campaign started using halos, one commercial outfit after another has been using halos on television. By now, the halos are practically everwhere. This calls into question the propriety of using halos in religious iconography because the halo’s ubiquity in modern advertising cheapens the halo’s value in illustrating holiness. If religious publishers stop using halos, the halo could at least momentarily become a mark of the profane.

On a different note, there are times when the truth is more horrible than any fantasy. One can be torn between what one wants to believe and what one’s eyes really see. But then, it is the rare person who is willing to point out what the Emperor is really wearing…

Mar 30, 2009 - 8:50 pm 61. starling:

As a black American and an academic my colleagues, friends, and associates logically assume that I whole-heartedly supported Barack Obama’s candidacy and do support his policies as president. Neither is the case.

My objections and opposition can be divided into three broad conceptual categories: (1) Competence, particularly the lack of executive experience (2) Associations, think Wright, Rezko, Ayers, and Rashidi and (3) Philosophy, particularly his lack of appreciation for the works and ideas of profound thinkers in political economy like von Mises, Hayek, Sowell, and Friedman (Milton, not Thomas).

Being mostly immune to charges of racism, or at least antipathy towards my own race, means that my objections can’t be easily dismissed by my liberal friends and colleagues. It may surprise many of you to know that after the initial shock and awe, these conversations tend to go amazingly well.

Mar 30, 2009 - 8:54 pm 62. fred:

Serenity,

The numbers of trillions in debt the CBO has calculated as a likely scenario if these spending plans gain traction under Pelosi’s and Reid’s leadership boggle the mind. I’m an investment professional and I cannot relate to the numbers. We are basically talking about having government gobble up twice current levels of GDP. That will put a crimp in a free market economy’s style and constrain growth, which really is the elixir that makes the government take even possible. It will put great stress on our currency and our debt’s standing.

The Chinese fear of inflation in our economy is not unfounded. The monetary aggregates right now are 5X what they were a year ago. That’s a lot of dollars just sitting there waiting to flood into the market if there is any sign of life in the economy. Once inflation begins the Fed will have a hard time keeping ahead of it. In the end, to hit the brakes hard enough will trigger another recession to wring out the inflation.

I don’t think the members here engage in a derangement syndrome with respect to Obama. Unsk’s post puts up there all entirely reasonable points. Obama does have a history of being kind of a Janus face. Go on over to the Lefty blogs and read what they had posted over there during President Bush’s tenure. The contrast between there and here is quite amazing.

Mar 30, 2009 - 9:04 pm 63. bob:

Obama The Narcissist

Ali Sina

Mar 30, 2009 - 9:19 pm 64. Benj:

61 Starling – Note praise of someone’s “poetic prose” in the body of this review. What the hell = wouldn’t mind if Tony Blair picked up a copy of FIRST OF THE YEAR – he blurbs the rag that ran this piece..

http://www.democratiya.com/review.asp?reviews_id=257

Not all that suprised you get along well with academics who disagree w/ you re O. Could it be that you share a certain high condescenciou toward us “committed” illiterate who, ah, proudly write pieces and edit books for readers not locked into the specialized discourses of the Academy (or imperssonal tones favored by other denizens of the Ivory Tower’s never-never land…

BTW – the reviewer who praised my prose is probably closer to you than you think. He locked on style – positively rather than negatively – as a way of avoiding actual arguments. Found a way to hosannah me and my rag while bowing down LOWER to Establishment journals – NYRB, the TImes, the New Yorker – that we’ve taken on from the jump. Misrepresened my “confessions” on Iraq alonkg the way…A little lesson in the corruptions of academe…

Mar 30, 2009 - 9:25 pm 65. Lifeofthemind:

My fellows in this common room are more generous than I am. While I have no objection to being disagreed with I do object to someone coming in here to be deliberately disagreeable. That is what I find most Unclubbable.

Mar 30, 2009 - 9:33 pm 66. Serenity:

Fred, I think you miss my point. I don’t claim that Obama is a nice guy who means well. He’s a politician with a socialist agenda that he means to implement, who on top of it is inexperienced, arrogant, incompetent and surrounded by the same. That alone is a problem but right now we are in a crisis mode which makes it all the worse.
That said it’s not all over. Despite problems in the system it’s fundamental nature is to defy control. Believe me I have watched politician’s attempts to game the system run into roadblocks again and again. Obama is no different. Pushback has already started. If the situation wasn’t so serious I’d sit back with my popcorn and enjoy the fireworks. Since it so serious I can’t.
You and Unsk are right he games the system well, but he’s been able to do it because he’s an unknown that the MSM covers for. He won’t game it forever because stuff will start to stick. It always does and while the media will never do to him what they did to Bush they’ll stop covering because it’s what they do. I don’t know economics or foreign policy well but the one thing I do know is politics and I’m giving you my opinion from that perspective.
I read a lot of thoughtful opinion regarding Obama as well as other things here. It’s a wonderful blog. On occassion it can get over the top but I don’t fault people because they see the things they care about getting stomped on. It makes them angry and rightfully so.
It’s very late now on the East Coast so I’m signing off.

Mar 30, 2009 - 9:49 pm 67. fred:

Serenity,

I appreciate your comments and your perspective. It sounds as if you have a sense of alarm over the gravity of the situation we find ourselves in. I certainly have feelings of anger and anxiety about it all, and when I am around people I know who are Obama supporters and who voted for him I exercise an iron self-control to avoid letting those feelings out. Some of those people were not very self-disciplined during the prior eight years, but I hold myself to higher standards. Anyway, Obama is going to do what he is going to do – nothing you or I can do or say is going to change that. In four years he will be on the way out, as will the Democrat majorities in Congress and the Senate. I am hoping that we can recover from most of the damage and back out of some very bad “treaty” obligations (that are not going to be named as treaties so that they can avoid the 2/3 majority Constitutional requirement in the Senate). The contempt for the Constitution coming from this crowd is almost unbelievable.

What most worries me: the Middle Muddle will swing over to the Republicans, but not have a real clue as to why the prior four years were so wrong for the Republic. The Left has so infected the host that most people will still be susceptible to the collectivist’ utopian fantasies again at some point in the future. The Left and the Democrats will go back to the plan that destroyed Bush and the whole thing starts all over again.

Mar 30, 2009 - 10:29 pm 68. buddy larsen:

Alexis, re visuals, had the thought today, in O’s announcement with the cabinet & czars onstage with him, that something is creating some sort of stiffness in those folks. they came out live on camera, then arrayed on the marks left and right of the podium where there was then a good minute and a half to two minutes before the pres strolled out.

tho the room was active, with talking in the audience and a general loose atmosphere, these dozen or so people interacted not at all with one another, didn’t look at one another, just stood frozen and awkward.

To me they looked guilty, as though they’d been in conference on how to best hide from the masses what they were really doing policy-wise with these day-by-day trip-hammer blows to the old –accepted, traditional –way of doing things. Perhaps they came straight from a meeting, where the topic had been how to get something past the people, and then the call comes and suddenly they’re onstage in front of those very people (‘problems’, as Stalin would call them).

This scenario, among few other imaginable things besides chronic personal emotional distress, would account for the waxen expressions, lack of loose grace, real gesture, comfortable open posture, willingness to look at each other’s faces, et cetera.

I couldn’t help but wonder “what are these people ashamed of? what are they hiding?” I mean, this is how a group of conspirators looks when it has much going on that it absolutely cannot let slip to the public. The boss of course is a master, and shows no such ‘tell’.

I know –nutty –but, well, visuals are powerful signs & sigs if one remembers how subjective –tho not necessarily wrong –they’re liable to be. Only experience lets an individual know how much (or how little) to trust them.

On a different note, folks above saying that the red system never works are looking at it wrong, looking at it from the people’s POV. Yes the people always lose, and usually lose almost precisely as much as it is possible for them to tolerate, with an ever shrinking self-respect as accomodation to need and unnatural powerlessness envelops and closes over them.

However, from the POV of the leadership, red systems work GREAT –the charismatic and his loyalists usually stay in power until they die of old age.

And others mention BDS as a futile waste of energy. Not so, not so at all –indeed it worked to Cloward-Piven perfection. Cue’d up in whatever dank batcave underneath the DNC (in a psychological wormhole to the Kremlin) and breaking out through NYTimes and NBC and Hollywood, it soon became a daily sensory assault on the ordinary citizen, who when the time came to vote needed not ‘wanted’ but NEEDED “change”.

Benj, you had it done ’til you booted on “he’s never wrong”. The vitriol leak, characteristic of frustration. let’s go on a bit; why the frustration? i mean why other than that the target won’t freeze like Uncle Saul’s 13th rule said it would.

Here’s my theory, see what you think: wretchard writes about something that’s in the air, some news item that is already or soon will be blowing the silent dog whistle and alerting the sort of dogs that skulk around here. If the dogs show up here and find the object, they’ll chew on it and try to get some sustenance of truth out of it.

If it wasn’t in the air, it wouldn’t show up here; if the commenters weren’t already interested in it they wouldn’t come, nor stay on it.

So, ok, given that, then your reaction –which is that of a partisan who must fight another (oppo) partisan who is cooking up unique tabula rasa trouble for your side –is simply wrong, or misguided, and you could be free of the bitters just by realizing it.

Unless –unless it’s the wringing of truths out of news bits that bothers you.

In which case, Benj, you yourself must already understand that the relationship between the truth and Obama is unable to babysit itself, can’t be trusted, mustn’t be let loose to act freely, needs instead to be shaped or else it’ll be taken wrong. just like the people on the stage today. Suffused with artifice.

Whew –tired of typing and i’m sure have bored u silly –but –how’m i doing so far, analysis-wise? And will you jump ship? if not, why not? Do you fancy being an apparatchik for the state, or isn’t it a higher call to be a fully felt human being not having to shape your fellow citizens to fit whatever they don’t fit by nature now?

Mar 30, 2009 - 10:43 pm 69. buddy larsen:

habu, i got ‘litotes’ from a monty python skit on tv. one of ‘em said it and by golly i looked it up!

Mar 30, 2009 - 10:45 pm 70. aardvark:

#60

“If religious publishers stop using halos, the halo could at least momentarily become a mark of the profane”

-It’s interesting to reflect on why this last thought in your interesting post is probably off the mark (I fear what you say about the cult of personality is right on).

Is it possible to mark the profane? Or is the profane merely the insignificant, the absence of sacrality? I think that if you draw attention to something that is considered, say, nasty or polluted, you are attending to an alternative form of sacrality, not to the profane, not to mundane and ignorable realities.

Some men use “profanities” to express themselves; but how many really mean us to focus attention on the objects we “literally” invoke with these words? Most often, the intent of a profanity is to invoke disappointment at not having anything good, in other words to invoke a kind of nothingness. In contrast those who, in their use of “profanities”, truly intend to worship sex or violence or dirt are involved in a primitive worship of a primitive sacred.

The profane is what is meaningless. And that, to get back on topic, is why ODS will be appealing if Obama fails to uphold the responsibilities of his sacred office. My life is in good part profane; none of Obama’s can ever longer be this. Someone somewhere will always be interested to know about it…

Mar 30, 2009 - 11:11 pm 71. Doug:

I think Horowitz mischaracterises Steyn:
I’ve heard him distinguish between his foreign policy and his worse than abysmal domestic policy which will damage this country more severely than would a defeat in Iraq.
The New York Times:

– One Roadblock Too Many for G.M. –

PRESIDENT OBAMA’S stunning decision to demand that Rick Wagoner resign as chairman and chief executive of General Motors was based on the wrong set of premises and raises the prospect that the administration will intervene too deeply in the automaker, seriously jeopardizing a transformation effort that has come a long way in the right direction.

Mr. Obama cited a “failure of leadership” as a reason for forcing out Mr. Wagoner. While not every decision Mr. Wagoner has made was wise, over all he had been putting G.M. through a wrenching restructuring that tried to undo decades of management acquiescence to the United Auto Workers.

Mr. Obama indicated he did not believe G.M. had moved fast enough in facing up to global competition. But the company is coming close to achieving the cost structure of Toyota’s assembly plant in Georgetown, Ky. — largely because Mr. Wagoner and his team stripped thousands of dollars out of the cost of every vehicle. Fully one-half of the company’s unionized work force has been laid off or taken buyout packages, and the U.A.W. has agreed to a two-tier wage system in which new workers make only $15 an hour. Just a few years ago that would have been unimaginable.

Mr. Wagoner also encouraged G.M.’s adoption of Toyota’s lean manufacturing techniques and quality control. So much so that Buick tied with Jaguar for first place in the latest J. D. Power ranking of dependability, coming in ahead of Toyota and its Lexus brand.

By bringing in the auto industry veteran Robert Lutz as vice chairman for global product development, Mr. Wagoner was also responsible for a redesigned lineup of vehicles. The Cadillac CTS and Chevrolet Malibu both won car-of-the-year awards last year and the newly revived Camaro — which is hitting the roads just as Mr. Wagoner is being ousted — represents the high-water mark of revitalized American car design.

Mr. Wagoner also pushed the development of the lithium-ion battery that will power the Chevrolet Volt extended-range electric car when it appears in late 2010. Lithium-ion batteries represent a leapfrog over the nickel-metal-hydride batteries in the Toyota Prius. By investing $1 billion in lithium technology, Mr. Wagoner created the best opportunity for America to win a piece of a huge new “green” industry now dominated by non-American companies.

Mr. Obama has not only failed to understand these contributions, he has also deprived G.M. of Mr. Wagoner’s presence on the board. Much of Mr. Wagoner’s knowledge and experience could simply be lost. With Mr. Lutz also about to retire, the two executives most responsible for G.M.’s transformation are gone.

Mar 30, 2009 - 11:30 pm 72. buddy larsen:

Starling, speaking of african-american conservatives, have you EVER heard Star Parker (who knows the system from the inside as a former client/victim) light into the democratic party’s urban welfare-plantation, and its “hands off my poor people” catagorical imperative? Man, she gets angry –says the government’s message to her as a teen was “don’t work, don’t marry, have babies” and as she says she was too young to know better than to listen to the authority of authorities.

One wonders at this soul murder in return for a vote; how can anyone believe in this party and not believe in vampires?

Mar 30, 2009 - 11:32 pm 73. Doug:

– Workers say Obama treated autos worse than Wall St –

Autoworkers say Obama’s ‘tough love’ more tough than love, they get worse treatment than banks

DETROIT (AP) — Many assembly line autoworkers reacted with skepticism and anger Monday to the Obama administration’s tough tactics, which stoked long-simmering feelings that the people who put the country on wheels get treated differently than the wizards of Wall Street.

“It’s the age-old Wall Street vs. Main Street smackdown again,” said Brian Fredline, president of UAW Local 602 at a plant near Lansing. “You have all kinds of funding available to banks that are apparently too big to fail, but they’re also too big to be responsible.”

“But when it comes to auto manufacturing and middle-class jobs and people that don’t matter on Wall Street, there are certainly different standards that we have to meet — higher standards — than the financials. That is a double standard that exists and it’s unfair,” Fredline said.

Many workers — not generally known for their affection toward executives — even sympathized with Rick Wagoner, who was forced to step down as chief executive of General Motors Corp. He was by turns called a “sacrificial lamb,” “scapegoat” and “fall guy.”

“We knew someone was going to have to take the proverbial `bullet,’ and it would have made it a lot easier to accept that had the CEOs of the banks also been required to give up their jobs,” said Jim Graham, president of a union local in Lordstown, Ohio, where GM produces the Cobalt and Pontiac G5 fuel-efficient cars.

Mar 30, 2009 - 11:40 pm 74. JMH:

Who is Barack Obama? It’s a bold man who will provide any more than a tentative answer.

I’m a bold man then. Obama is a toxic mixture of a Chicago ward heeler, tranzi socialist, and narcicistic patrician. He consistently says one thing to distract people while he’s busy doing something else that those people wouldn’t approve of. His presidency will be one where we find oursleves repeatedly saying “how the hell did that just happen?”

But, I do understand Wretchard’s point. Obsessing about wack-job conspiracies undermines credibility. Still, the BDS folks lost much of their credibility when their warnings about Bush proved demonstrably false. Claiming Iraq was about stealing their oil was idiotic when the price of oil skyrocketed and the revenues for Iraqi oil went to the Iraqi government and people instead of Bush’s Texas Oil Buddies(TM).

Compare that with claims that Obama is out to nationalize US Industry. These claims too are demonstrably untrue since the CEO of GM is free to disagree with the Obama Administr…. ooops, looky that.

For myself, I don’t have Obama Derangement Syndrome, but I do perhaps have I don’t have Obama Voter Derangement Syndrome. Seeing an Obama bumper sticker makes me snarl.

Mar 30, 2009 - 11:41 pm 75. Doug:

JMH:
Don’t leave out the Board of Directors!
“The long-term plan had been for him to serve as Mr. Wagoner’s lieutenant for a year or two more so he could build relationships with other top executives. Instead, he’s been handed a company that is reeling over how the Obama administration helped turn Mr. Wagoner into a scapegoat through its leaks to the news media.

Mr. Obama’s intervention does not stop there. His aides were quoted as saying they are going to remake the entire G.M. board.

But deciding which director should go and which director should be added is far beyond the competence of any government.

A new board may be the smart move in the case of a failed bank, where there are thousands of qualified and experienced financial executives to step in, but as one of the world’s largest manufacturers, G.M. faces vastly more complicated and specialized issues.
“

Mar 31, 2009 - 12:03 am 76. Doug:

According to Limbaugh, BHO describes his feelings about Automakers in detail in one of his books.

Perhaps Benj could be so kind as to clue us in about that.
(and I join Starling in asking that you hold to a minimum the use of acronyms, slang, parentheses and parentheticals, not because I’m an academic, which I’m assuredly not, but because I like to UNDERSTAND what I’m reading.)

Mar 31, 2009 - 12:09 am 77. Doug:

For U.S. and Carmakers, a Path Strewn With Pitfalls

“President Obama’s decision to reshape the automakers inverts the relationship that helped define the rise of manufacturing in the U.S.
—
When he stood in the White House to unveil his approach, Mr. Obama took pains to assure the country — twice — that
“the United States government has no interest in running G.M.”
—
No, just who to hire and fire from the CEO to the Board, what mix of vehicles to manufacture (like the hybrids sitting unsold on car dealer’s floors) who to merge with and how fast to do it.

(Anybody NOT like to be in Fiat’s position with Chrysler, with a 30 day sword of Damocles hanging over it’s head?)

Mar 31, 2009 - 12:23 am 78. dtmack:

Fred says “What most worries me: the Middle Muddle will swing over to the Republicans, but not have a real clue as to why the prior four years were so wrong for the Republic.”

I’m more concerned about the GOP not having a clue. I’m concerned that they will be elected in 2010 because they’re “not Democrats”, and we’ll go on with things as usual, just a different emphasis.

Most here want to indict the people for Obamas election, but I actually think it was more of an indictment of the GOP. I don’t think it says much if your party is in such disrepute that someone with the meager experience of Obama could be elected President, mainly because he’s not one of you. Spoken by someone who’s voted Repub every election since 1980.

In any event, other commenters here say that he will be judged on his results, and they’re correct in my opinion. I don’t think it’s going to be a pretty picture, and we’re all going to suffer for it. So be it – nobody said Democracy was easy. But he’s here, and will continue to be, so I think we need to focus on what comes after. He can’t be stopped until 2010, and by that time much damage will be done.

These next four years are going to be transition years, in my opinion. I’m not sure what’s in store at the other end of O’s first term, but I think that there would be an opportunity (maybe a last chance) to take this country in a better direction. Like Rahm says, “a crisis is too good to waste”. That works both ways. I just don’t know if the GOP is the vehicle. They seem to be incapable of learning anything useful.

Even more disturbing, I don’t see many pondering what that direction would be. Everybody’s too focused on Obama. I have my own ideas, but I’d love to see a discussion (particularly on this site) of where you all think this country should go at the end of what will likely be a disasterous four years.

Mar 31, 2009 - 12:28 am 79. buddy larsen:

The wack job conspiracy turned out to be “The Financial History of the Democratic Party, 1996-2009″ a coffee table book of some 6,000 pages, by noted archive specialist Sandrew Berger.

“Wonderfully unreadable,” according to reviewer Paige Turner, “…a rock ‘em sock ‘em rollicking good in-your-socks redact, where anything can happen, and usually does, probably, but who knows?”

Mar 31, 2009 - 12:46 am 80. buddy larsen:

Jeez –thank goodness for instapundit –don’t miss this, any NYTimes-watchers:

http://thebulletin.us/articles/2009/03/30/top_stories/doc49d0a73c7f98e547489394.txt

Mar 31, 2009 - 1:11 am 81. Doug:

Even in this day of a Trillion here, a Trillion there, I still can’t keep out of my mind that 4 Billion to ACORN, given that that dwarfs even Obama’s ill gotten gains.

But who knows, perhaps with no financial pressure and stress, they’ll see fit to straighten up their act?

Just as the entire MSM may well grab the pundit’s story and spread it to the four corners of the Universe.

Who are we to say?

Mar 31, 2009 - 1:48 am 82. Doug:

With GM, BHO provides yet another example of the government stepping in just as a problem is about to be solved, only to make things orders of magnitude worse.

Sowell documents dozens of similar “solutions” bestowed on the commoners by their betters in government in
“The Vision of the Annointed“

Mar 31, 2009 - 2:47 am 83. Doug:

Welcome to America, the World’s Scariest Emerging Market
ht – Originally Sinless

Mar 31, 2009 - 3:17 am 84. weSwinger:

The strength of the Right compared to the Left in our relative Derangement Syndromes is the source of our intensity. On the Left, we have mostly atheists and materialists: politics has formed their passions and they have substituted political for religious feelings very freely: right down to calling their favorite “Messiah”. On the Right, with quite a number of us having a more conventional religious life, there isn’t a need for such substitution. We can get plenty angry, but it will not have the same intensity as the left. The Right’s political language is of right and wrong, good and bad choices, not of sin and redemption. We are all familiar with the Left’s tropes for their causes du jour: “if you disagree with the SCHIP, you must be a greedy miscreant”.

The secondary and IMHO larger sin is that the O-man seems to have swallowed his own myth and believes his own press. He shows that nice sign of irritability at the least challenge. Its going to be interesting as things get tougher: no more Mr. Nice Guy?

Finally, in keeping with the religion theme, why we should be saintly in our forbearance of political thuggery and knavery? We can take a lesson from the Brits in political opposition. I think the middle muddle appreciates good entertainment: if we can figure out how to score points and get some laughs, we will be getting ahead in the game. If we can draw blood at the same time, all the better.

Mar 31, 2009 - 3:40 am 85. buddy larsen:

Can you IMAGINE George Bush alloting four billion federal dollars to build up a GOP get-out-the-vote youth corps?

Mar 31, 2009 - 4:54 am 86. outa my league:

St. Paul saith “Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath.” (Ephesians 4:26)

In one verse, there is both the antidote to head-in-the-sand complacency when faced with societal evil, and also the antidote to derangement syndrome (refusing to succumb to the control of rage).

Mar 31, 2009 - 4:58 am 87. maineman:

I haven’t had time to review this whole thread, so forgive me if I’m repeating something.

I do not think that the antidote to ODS or BDS is reason. Any courtroom will show you how facts can be fashioned to produce whatever conclusion is desired.

It’s important to be aware of the origins of BDS and potential ODS. Such thinking is predicated on projection, which means that their practitioners must be lacking in self-insight in such a way that causes them to rely on a relatively primitive defense of externalizing something that they don’t want to or can’t see regarding themselves.

With regard to who is most vulnerable to such distortions, philosophy and world view matter greatly. If, as is true of most conservatives or individualists, you see mankind as inherently flawed, then, religious or not, you adhere to a philosophy that is grounded in the Original Sin. That is, you are on guard for hubris, see morality as an expression of something absolute, and are/should be aware of your own inherent imperfections. The resulting introspection should help to weed out the contamination of projection and make the conclusions that you draw from your experience — including the EMOTIONS elicited by watching TOTUS lie so smoothly time after time. I think you would be correct to conclude that he is a shape-shifter, not what he tries to appear, and always suspect as a result.

The practitioners of BDS, on the other hand, typically hold a worldview that is predicated on materialism, multicultural relativism, and ultimately nihilism. The rage that results is often not processed and therefore must be projected. Any visit to Kos or listen to Mahr or KO will demonstrate that. And such primitive character flaws have led many otherwise sane people to draw the ridiculous conclusion, for example, that Bush was so sociopathic as to send young men and women to die so that his already rich friends could become richer.

While the risk of ODS is real — and I evaluate myself for it often daily, if not hourly — I also know that excessive self-doubt in that regard is also a risk. What Horowitz seems to be overlooking are both the salience of philosophy or worldview AND the risks of not being sufficiently vigilant and clear about what he is/they are doing. Erring on the side of caution and complacency, in this instance, seems to carry with it much more than the relatively minor risk of being considered deranged by those who themselves are already disconnected from reality.

Mar 31, 2009 - 6:05 am 88. maineman:

Correction: . . . make the conclusions that you draw from your experience — including the EMOTIONS, etc. — more likely to be valid.

Mar 31, 2009 - 6:12 am 89. marymcl:

The term ‘Obama Derangement Syndrome’ more appropriately applies to the wave of adulation that carried the man into the White House.

A lot of the talk and worry about ODS reminds me of the way penalties get assigned in hockey games. It’s not the guy who spears his opponent in the ribs who goes to the penalty box, rather it’s the guy who throws a punch in retaliation.

Benj – What’s your problem? You don’t seriously expect to convert anyone here to your view of our host, do you? Or is the real purpose of all this sniping just to get people talking about YOU instead?

BTW you brought it up here and elsewhere that various Republicans and right wing pundits have revised their views of Obama, as if this were some kind of unanswerable point. Do you read anything here apart from your own posts? People on the right generally keep their own counsel. I for one neither know nor care if my opinions are in lockstep with those of Condoleeza Rice or anyone else you care to name.

Mar 31, 2009 - 6:13 am 90. Charles:

The Land Grab Omnibus Bill

Mar 31, 2009 - 6:37 am 91. Charles:

I spy: Obama White House seeks law to see what is on your hard drive

Mar 31, 2009 - 6:40 am 92. Benj:

Bud – You ARE making sense – it’s probably not exactly to the point to bust Wretch for doing what his readers WANT him to do…But. For what it’s worth. Consider that I came to him – and nobody sent me! – after OIF. Remember that moment when that Iraqi wedding party (or not?) got blown away in the desert? I recall how Wretch seemed to be trying – honestly – to get the best read on what the hell happened out there…I appreciated anybody who was trying to see/tell the truth in the pre-post invasion period. It was a relatively hot time for moi personally. Coming out FOR the invasion (and later for the Surge!) – despite the fact that I never believed the WMD claims – put me at odds with family members and old friends – the Iraqi restranteur on the block et al. Baby, it was cold INSIDE on couple New YEars eves. Light stuff of course! You’re certainly WRONG to credit me with courage. Let’s reserve that for cats ducking bullets, not icy attitudes…- Still, I appreciated folks on EITHER side of the debate who told the truth (as they saw it) and acknowledged their own errors. Guys like Kanan Makiiya, for example, talked straight. Someone like Hitchens, on the other hand, not so much. Still no indication from him that he was WRONG to have said NO to Daddy Bush’s Desert Storm. I’ve HAD it with guys – on the right or left – who come on always like the smartest guys in the room. (Cheney was a genuine danger to the republic. – check that Susskind story about C and co. planted info re WMD in the UK papers through Saddam’s ex-intelligence head -appalling stuff!) Wretch strikes me as small – and that is the word – example of a larger treason to truth. He’s one of those heads who have the capacity to STRETCH themselves but instead just give their readers what they want…In a democracy that seems like a real sin to me. And once I get up close to ugliness – I feel – no shit! – under an oblication to call it out.

My computer is running slow…And it’s a nice day in swill city so I’ll be in spring training with my boy today (after a nap)…Forgive me if I don’t come back to your posts quick today…

Mar 31, 2009 - 6:53 am 93. joe buzz:

Yes, perhaps ODS is unhealthy. Consider adding Pelosi, Reed, Frank, Dodd and some from the other side of the aisle and relabeling the malady “GAS” (Government Anxiety Syndrome). Yes, I currently am suffering a very bad case of GAS.
On the slightly more serious side. Starling, I have always appreciated you taking the time to convey herein your views. When you are able please elaborate.

Mar 31, 2009 - 8:09 am 94. Unsk:

dtmack,

My concern with the idea of “obama derangement syndrone” is that there are too many people running the Republican party who are more concerned about being called a deranged moonbat than about the effect of the policies Obama is implementing. All you have to do is read Charles latest two posts and you should get very angry or very scared or both. But those who are running the Republican party don’t seem to give a crap about what is really happening.

Mar 31, 2009 - 8:16 am 95. buddy larsen:

Benj, i hear ya –we’ve about got the problem cornered anyway i think –you’re suspicious of w, and were suspicious of the WMD claims, too. So, you knew better than all the NATO intelligence services, even before they did, and by the same powers of devination you’re sure that w’s politics can’t dovetail with his commenters’ on the basis that in this world one can’t do well by doing good, and whoever seems to, then, is probably a fraud. You back this up via anecdote; some chilled relationships resulting from OIF disagreements. Seeing no evidence of same in w’s life, you assume their absence, and from there extrapolate that he’s shallow, artificially agreeable with commenters here due to a desire to be popular, and so forth. Izzat about it, Benj?

All i can say is, there’s nowhere to go with all that, it’s a dead-end –you clearly have a prejudice and only you can release yourself from it.

A start point on that project might be to remind yourself that people everywhere all the time self-select company on the basis of similar world views –i dunno why one of these would be a villain for it and the other six billion not. Anyone here including the host can find all the objection they want by merely saying the same things on a different website; and plenty of differing opinions have come and gone here, and will likely continue to do so as long as the site is open. i can’t figure out the point of arguing such obvious things unless we just enjoy the adversarial contrariness, LOL.

Anyhoo have a good day with the son –those few years go by so quickly –my youngest (of four) is 19 now so the years each of them were at that 5 or 6 are memories now but stand out particularly as great fun –i envy you –but on the other hand, ahhhh, all that kid raising work done, that’s pretty nice too!

Mar 31, 2009 - 8:46 am 96. buddy larsen:

PS, benj, one need not be a US citizen to realize that in the global political situation, the future of USA affects –well almost governs –the security of smaller allied nations. it’s not anywhere NEAR a ”none-of-your-business” situation. Alliances are deadly serious matters –allies have huge, existential, investments in each other.

Mar 31, 2009 - 9:24 am 97. Alexis:

buddy larsen:

In the runup to the liberation of Iraq, I strongly opposed going to war upon the casus belli of WMD. I also strongly supported going to war to overthrow Saddam Hussein from power. The net effect was totally unexpected — the anti-war arguments based upon not finding WMD had no effect upon me whatsoever other than antagonizing me. These arguments antagonized me because I regarded it an insult to my intelligence to assume that either WMD or oil had anything to do with my calculations.

Saddam Hussein’s celebrations of the September 11 attacks are a casus belli; from my point of view, all other cases for war are less important. No, I’m not claiming that Saddam Hussein supported al-Qaeda, but I am saying that his celebrations made him an accessory to mass murder after the fact.

This may sound like rehashing past history, and I suppose it is. However, I think we need to see the celebrations of the September 11 attacks not as an effect of that atrocity but rather as the root cause of that atrocity. Al-Qaeda attacked the United States precisely because its attacks would be popular in certain quarters. Yes, members of al-Qaeda must be put to death. Yet, on an intrinsic level, those who give out candy to celebrate the September 11 atrocity must reap negative consequences from their actions. Saddam Hussein was the most prominent trumpeter, and just like the trumpeter from Aesop’s fable, his death is necessary to defeat al-Qaeda just as much as the defeat of al-Qaeda itself.

Although we have a long way to go to defeat al-Qaeda and its root culture, we are making progress. Let’s not give up the fight.

Mar 31, 2009 - 10:06 am 98. elby:

To me, it is not about the Party, or the Personality, but the Policies. Focus not on what party is in power, or what an individual person is doing, but the policies. The policies of Obama are destructive to the freedom of this country. I also do not trust his political instincts. He will instinctively implement left wing policies. The damage will be hard to undo. Arguments such as “but Bush ran up the deficits” are facetious. It was wrong when Bush did it, and it is wrong now that Obama is doing it.

As far as foreign policy, especially Afghan policy, again, I simply do not trust Obama’s instincts.

Mar 31, 2009 - 10:08 am 99. Martin McPhillips:

I read the Horowitz piece and didn’t find it particularly illuminating. I warned at my blog back toward Obama’s inauguration that the right shouldn’t “go Booosh” on him (“Booosh” being the mythological George Bush, created by the Left, who was responsible for hurricanes and every IED in Baghdad.”)

But I’m here to tell you straight up that I find Obama revolting, absolutely revolting. I won’t blame him for the next California earthquake, but I expect him to be responsible for any number of government-induced catastrophes. Anyone with eyes to see can see that he has gone to the very worst of the liberal-Left’s bench to staff up his administration, so many of them already shown to be objective cheats and chiselers but with all the relentless moral vanities that the Left indulges in.

David Horowitz is a good man, but hardly a model of restraint himself down the years. Let him manage his own domain. If anyone here has the name of a the Democrat anywhere who jumped to his feet when Harry Reid declared the war in Iraq “lost,” as our magnificent soldiers were pulling out every stop to win, and told that idiot to sit down and shut up, I’d love to have that name. I know it wasn’t Obama. And right there is one of my markers for who should or should not be holding power in the United States government.

My a priori observations, not assumptions, about Obama would require monumental reversals on his part, not just everyday cheating on promises or retreats on positions. To pretend he isn’t dangerous is foolishness.

Mar 31, 2009 - 10:21 am 100. buddy larsen:

Yes it’s true, this party since it became more or less outright socialist with Panama Jimmy the Hugo Carter, has done incredible damage to the old home place. Just today Drudge has up an article on a new Chinese ballistic missile carrier-killer that apparently has the USN in something of a –well, the article used the word ‘panic’. I couldn’t help but think of Bill Clinton and Loral, and Win Ho Lee, and the Riady family, and the Iced Tea Defense, and that whole sorry tableau of top-secret missile and warhead guidance system secrets sold to the Chinese military, and then when uncovered, handled by an American president taking the pure legalistic godfatherish “ok, you’re gonna have to prove it” stance. Of course the new class of weapon we learn of today (USN admits it has no defense ag/ a ballistic anti-ship missile) is right in the zone of what Bill Clinton about 99% certainly sold ‘em. Yet today he travels around beaming, drawing va$t fees for telling a few jokes to his adoring subjects –while is Sec of State wife is doing lord only knows what to the country. No penalty, ever. No disgrace possible, the word itself become sepia and nostalgic. No crime too great to be forgotten about by breakfast, if the criminal is adorable and folksy.

Mar 31, 2009 - 12:35 pm 101. aaron:

Even though you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you…

Mar 31, 2009 - 12:55 pm 102. buddy larsen:

Alexis, i was like you, the WMD never meant much to me–i was ‘for’ saddam’s ouster on the grounds that a ’small war’ in mid 1930s central Europe would’ve saved the world from WWII, and for a thousandth of the cost in blood, and a ten-thousandth in treasure.

The same conditions –the oil and the Caspian Axis –still pertain (ever so sadly, in view of our coming quit of the place), but at least now without the dictator & sons hereditary homocidal mania which had already in short time (1) started two foreign and several interior wars, (2) was actively practicing genocide, and (3) invigorating, funding, and supporting every subterfuge imaginable against the free world, including (read Claudia Rosett) the (4) corruption of western governments with the oil-for-food treachery unto making the UN a global crime syndicate, and (5) the treaty breaks left over from his slaughter of Kuwait, and (6) the prospect of interminable no-fly enforcement.

That the American left fastened so monomaniacally onto WMD, and would never even admit there had been so very many other larger reasons, nor even admit the existence of, even tho it was right there in the news, the Iraqi testimonies on weapons materials removals from the country during the six months of UN run-up, was the measure of the loyal opposition’s willful, spiteful, snarling ahistorical (or anti-historical) geopolitical stupidity and/or opportunistic political dishonesty.

Mar 31, 2009 - 1:11 pm 103. Wadeusaf:

“No crime too great to be forgotten about by breakfast”

Benj, about Odious (ODS) things, I believe it was John Fogarty who asked Who’ll stop the rain?

Long as I remember the rain been comin’ down
Clouds of myst’ry pourin’ confusion on the ground
Good men through the ages tryin’ to find the sun
And I wonder, still I wonder who’ll stop the rain

I went down Virginia seekin’ shelter from the storm
Caught up in the fable I watched the tower grow
Five year plans and new deals wrapped in golden chains
And I wonder, still I wonder who’ll stop the rain

Heard the singers playin’, how we cheered for more
The crowd had rushed together tryin’ to keep warm
Still the rain kept pourin’, fallin’ on my ears
And I wonder, still I wonder who’ll stop the rain?

Mar 31, 2009 - 2:13 pm 104. peterike:

Ahh Buddy reminds us of Little Willie Clinton! Clinton didn’t plan it that way, but the whole Monica nonsense proved a brilliant head-fake.

The school-marmish section of the Right got their knickers in a twist about it, giving the Left ample opportunity to mock them in the public culture. The media made instant monsters out of Ken Starr and Linda Tripp (the media has a real genius for creating an instant monster, after which no potion yet discovered can turn the frog back into a prince). And we all went round-and-round the Monica Bush busying ourselves over small beer.

Meanwhile, with no one watching, all eyes glued to Monica’s rising and falling bum size, Clinton sold out the country for 40 pieces of campaign silver, and the repercussions of that treason have yet to be felt. But as Buddy notes, the forces unleashed by Clinton’s perfidy are starting to rumble like the belly of a dragon getting ready to unleash hellfire.

Thanks Bill! You sodding great piece of filth.

Mar 31, 2009 - 3:48 pm 105. buddy larsen:

You sodding great piece of filth

gawd a mighty you Englishmen are handy with the language!

Mar 31, 2009 - 8:07 pm 106. The Wobbly Guy:

Maybe this is the wrong place to say this, but I’m actually quite comfortable with China taking the US position as the global power.

From everything I’ve seen and heard about, they’re treading very carefully towards moving towards liberty and individualism, and a free society may yet form which would be far more stable and saner than anything the US could have come up with. Cultural and ethnic homogeneity helps a lot.

Mar 31, 2009 - 8:44 pm 107. Benj:

…

Apr 1, 2009 - 8:08 am 108. Steynian 342 « Free Canuckistan!:

[...] DAVID HOROWITZ denounces the Obama Derangement Syndrome while John Podhoretz, at the Weekly Standard, takes on the [...]

Apr 1, 2009 - 11:03 am 109. buddy larsen:

LOL, Benj –good one –

Apr 1, 2009 - 1:51 pm 110. Snowflakes in Hell » Blog Archive » Perspective:

[...] on the important things.

Apr 2, 2009 - 8:12 am

Write a Comment

Name:	(required, displayed)
Email:	(required, not publicized)
URL:	(optional, displayed)
Comments:

Notify me of followup comments via e-mail