116 Comments

1. PA Cat:

After all, Waxman-Market passed the House and reasons have nothing to do with it.

Waxman-Market? Paging Dr. Freud . . .

Jul 1, 2009 - 9:42 pm 2. wretchard:

I have to watch those typos.

Jul 1, 2009 - 9:45 pm 3. what is occupation:

Fairness commissions, stop the greedy big businesses from polluting…

Who is John Galt?

Jul 1, 2009 - 10:04 pm 4. Walt:

The climate is changing, we’re told by the One
Regardless of facts that it’s not
And even if proven we’re warmed by the sun
He’d not change his mind by a jot
The icebergs are melting, the bears in decline
The seas are all rising a lot
And even if proven the bears are all fine
He’d not change his mind by a jot
The air is polluted with carbon you know
It’s hard to know just what we’ve got
But even if proven the air’s fresh as snow
He’d not change his mind by a jot
He’ll not change positions on climate, we’re told
He says that it’s gonna get hot
And even if proven we’re gonna get cold
He’d not change his mind by a jot
For climate’s the answer to things that he lacks
He sees it as dough for the pot
And even if shown that it’s really a tax
He’d not change his mind by a jot

Jul 1, 2009 - 10:05 pm 5. elby:

I could easily write the anti cap and trade commercial. Remember, fear sells even better than sentimental hope n’ change. Cue to a couple, sitting at a kitchen table, with worry creasing their faces. Cue ominous music. The couple is aghast at their steadily rising heating bill. Outside the window, a snowstorm is blowing. They are wearing heavy sweaters and are discussing where they will cut back in order to heat their house. The public can then be informed that other people are getting rich trading on the carbon credits, while the rest of us see our standard of living plummet.

I can think of a dozen of these types of ads. I am sure I am not the only one. However, I don’t get any government money, any George Soros funding, nor any money from Hollywood celebrities, nor do I own a major television network as GE does, and which stands to gain massively from cap and tax.

What we really need to do is recruit like minded people to run for office at all levels. A general ‘throw the bums out’ campaign can only work if there are actually people to run against the crooks that have done this to us.

Jul 1, 2009 - 10:49 pm 6. The Count:

Amy Smart!?? Really? That’s the best they could do? Or is that part of the formula: someone a bit more approachable and ironically not so “smart” sounding.

Still, point taken. Old boring white guys, you know the real fascists ramble on on Fox (Fox=lies)… God help us.

Jul 1, 2009 - 10:50 pm 7. Contrarian:

Hey, What is Occupation, what I want to know is “What would John Galt do?”

Jul 1, 2009 - 10:55 pm 8. Derek:

I had a conversation with a friend the other day. He has a background in building controls, and is an electrician. He has been teaching in a community college for the last few years.

Last year the college offered a 9 month course on clean energy technologies.

He had students who had no background in anything expecting to come out with some qualifications to sell and install ground source heating systems and solar energy panels.

They didn’t have the vaguest idea of how they worked, even what they did, even for what they are needed. Yet these people will be telling me how to do this stuff. And I’ve got 15 or so years experience and know how they work, and am seriously underwhelmed by the potential.

These systems are enormously complicated, very expensive, with little or no return on investment. They are a pure emotional purchase, and will attract Madoff clones by the millions. We will look back at this bill and the activity it generates with awe at the sheer stupidity of society.

Derek

Jul 1, 2009 - 11:01 pm 9. trangbang68:

Amy’s appeal is to the dumb youth who already voted for Obama. Elby’s idea is sound. Run ads all over the heartland appealing to blue collar adults already squeezed by the economy. even if the bill passes, make it the central theme in 2010 to overturn it and open the coasts and Alaska to drilling.It might change Congress.

Jul 1, 2009 - 11:04 pm 10. Derek:

Watching the commercial reminded me of a conversation with someone like this woman. Confident, articulate. Must save the world. Wants to design and sell energy saving technologies.

Only problem is that she doesn’t understand how to make them work, or even how they work.

A friend was given a block drawing of a system. Could he come up with a price for installation. He asked pertinent questions like how would you like it controlled, what is the capacity, flow characteristics, etc. Don’t know. You can figure that out. In other words, I’ll sell a good feeling, and you make sure it works.

Derek

Jul 1, 2009 - 11:09 pm 11. Robohobo:

Funny. Back in the 70’s & 80’s solar of all types was big here in the desert SW. Solar hot water heaters. Solar homes. PV electric systems. Wind generators have been used since the Depression in the Great Plains and there are legacy systems out there that still run. You can get a refrigerator that runs on propane. On demand hot water heaters that run on natural gas, propane or electric. Problem is, all of it is spendy. This is not technology for those whose incomes are limited. Same as hybrid cars, if you can afford to spend extra to feel special, well, go ahead. I am one who is big on solar heated adobe construction. I do want to build my solar adobe some day. Complete with attached greenhouse, solar hot water heater (I have that design already), PV panels and on demand systems. It is all doable. But price breaks have to be really, really worked on to make it sensible for the majority.

I am for doing all of the above – build energy efficient buildings, retrofit existing where practical, drill here & now & everywhere, etc.

But this rush to “do something” just to do it, it contrary to the ideals of this country. The extreme rush to ‘act’ to fix the financial system, automakers, health and energy is not good, reasonable public policy, it is something else. I do not want to get on someone’s list but it is counter to the best principles of the country. Why this extreme rush?

Jul 1, 2009 - 11:29 pm 12. Micha Elyi:

Ha ha. And the Cool Kids lefties enjoy hooting about how much smarter they are than everybody else – the half-dozen slogans they’ve memorized proves they’ve got the higher political IQs!

Yet the Cool Kids have no reasons for what they’ll swallow, just bimbos to whisper the party line in their ear.

Especially distressing is that the youth who’ve been schooled the longest are the most malleable by these charlatans.

Jul 1, 2009 - 11:37 pm 13. what is occupation:

7. Contrarian:
Hey, What is Occupation, what I want to know is “What would John Galt do?”

Let the democrats destroy the system….

Let the Looters have the pie… Let the Producers pull back….

Jul 1, 2009 - 11:38 pm 14. Beverly:

Brace yourselves, folks. They’re already planning the next Big Push: Copenhagen, 2009. The big UN Climate Change Conference, where they hope to do Kyoto on steroids.

Major ad agencies are doing work on this conference pro bono. They know they have to counter the people’s suspicion that this huge greendoggle will tank the American and world economy. And they’re selling the Copenhagen Conference’s diktats, in advance, as something that will SAVE the economic system, whilst creating Green Jobs.

I wish Republicans didn’t suck at PR.

Jul 1, 2009 - 11:39 pm 15. Beverly:

Here’s a website for Copenhagen 2009:

http://www.roadtocopenhagen.org/

Jul 1, 2009 - 11:41 pm 16. Bob Murphy:

One of the problems of Americans with traditional views is that they make a presumption of reason in their dealings with others.
When are they as a group going to acknowledge there is a war on and the thieves are in Treasury looting and plundering and want to bring down this nation?

They are not entitled to a presumption of reason.

Where is the passion of those of us who believe that the principles on which this country is based established the greatest and most successful experiment in western civilization’s history?

Jul 2, 2009 - 12:37 am 17. wretchard:

I think the main problem is an organizational one. The Left has an extensive infrastructure in place for pumping out a message and harnessing energy. And the Left creates separate marketing vehicles for each of their flagship products, of which Climate Change is One. Individuals energy, by itself, can never be a match for these “movements”, any more than the scattered French armor could resist the Panzer divisions, whatever the quality of their individual soldiers. I think conservatives have to change their game to have a chance.

Jul 2, 2009 - 12:48 am 18. Andrew X:

Here’s some interesting info:

The Republicans did really well from, oh, say, year 2000 to 2005. Now, this was around 9/11 and early successes in Iraq, so that’s a big factor.

BUT…. this was also when the blogosphere really came into it’s own. I remember this, and I remember how pleased I was that the right seemed to be (intellectually at least) dominating the blogosphere, and the political Internet, mainly through MSM deconstruction.

Then…. the right lost the Internet. The Left powered back big time, and as ideological competitors, one must admire their rally.

So what happened around that time?? (9/11 receeded and Iraq did not, yes, but….)

What happened was YouTube, and the growth of bandwidth to an extent so that video and images became WAY more of a presence on the Net than they were before.

The political Net is all about words, memes, concepts, facts, and ideas…. the right rolls it up. The Net turns to images and video (and now 140 character tweets)… and the left storms the field.

So what does that tell you about the movements and the masses that they are after?

God help us in this battle, because it is going to be on the battlefield of pretty images like Amy Smart, and not on brilliant insights like….. well, Mr. Fernandez for one.

It ain’t gonna be easy.

Jul 2, 2009 - 1:13 am 19. dtmack:

elby – you’re dead on target. There’s going to be plenty of fear to go around (already is in many places), and it’s a great motivator.

wretcherd – yes, the problems are organizational. Who’s going to produce the commercials elby suggests? Who’s going to identify the vulnerable DEMS in congress, and target their districts or States with these commercials? Who’s going to take on these “ideas” head on and show them for the claptrap they are? The GOP? Hah.

Conservatives, Libertarians, et al need to get over their obsession with the GOP, or at least make a supreme effort to redirect it into something useful. It’s small consolation, but we do have truth on our side. There’s no way these policies, if they come to pass, will do anything but hurt the working people in this country.

We need an advocate to make these points very forcefully, regardless of the short term consequences. Meanwhile, the GOP is trying to figure out how they can expand their “tent” and regain power ASAP.

I have an idea – how about if they relentlessly opposed the current administration, ignored the polls, and came down on the side of principle? How about if they do everything in their power to disassociate themselves from the current regimes policies? It may be a very good thing, even in the short term, to be the party standing on the outside looking in when all of this comes crashing down.

People on my side seem to be in shell shock over this Administration. “Obamas doing this, he’s doing that, he’s planning to cancel the elections, etc. etc.”. If we allow ourselves to be demoralized by a second rate community organizer then we deserve to lose. He can do a lot of things, he won, but he can’t suspend the laws of physics, economics, or anything else.

Propaganda has many uses, and the DEMS are very good at it. But it doesn’t put food on the table. I still refuse to believe that a prosperous people will sell their legacy for this mess of porridge. But they may, if no one is telling them that they’re doing it.

Jul 2, 2009 - 1:26 am 20. ledger:

0bama is using an old tax con-game.

When an Administration can’t increase tax rates in a blatant manner they just tax more items. This bill does that.

This bill is clearly designed to enrich those people with direct or indirect ties to the Obama Administration while impoverishing many more people who are supporting the government with their taxes.

There will now be two classes of citizens:

1. Those who are Net Tax Recipients.
2. Those who are Net Tax Payers.

It’s clear the Net Tax Recipients will benefit while the Net Tax Payers will be hurt.

The notion at Obama and his gang are “Public servants” has been reversed. The Public is Obama’s servant.

Look around you and you will see who is smiling and who is not.

Someone said, “Power corrupts. Absolute Power absolutely corrupts.” Obama and his gang are corrupt.

Jul 2, 2009 - 2:04 am 21. wretchard:

Then…. the right lost the Internet. The Left powered back big time, and as ideological competitors, one must admire their rally.

I think the Left’s comeback on the Internet is temporary. Their comeback represents a shift in resources from their traditional position of dominance in the different mediums to the Internet. Guys who were formerly exclusively in print got a blog. Guys who are public school teachers put up websites. Folks who used to be in TV broadcast, got a video blog. It represents a transfer of forces from one side of the perimeter to the other, not net new forces. They just threw away their bows and arrows for firearms, but the Left’s culture army always outnumbered conservatives many multiples to one. Conservatives were “early adopters” of the Internet. The Left initially felt no pressure to do adopt the Internet because they had dominance in other mediums, so they were second wave adopters. And when they came in their numbers told; they displaced the fewer conservatives. But the Left are by no means going to be the last adopters. On the contrary. It’s the wave that is coming that has the potential to be a game-changer.

The dominance of the Left won’t last for two reasons. First, the Internet arena has gone global. For example, the Australian Broadcast Corporation reports that Iranian protesters are being helped by software developed by the Falun Gong. The Falun Gong? Ho boy.

Computer software invented to beat China’s stringent internet controls is being used by pro-democracy activists in Iran to manoeuvre around authorities there. Developed and managed by a team of volunteers from the Falun Gong spiritual group, Freegate was created to allow net users to bypass Beijing government censorship. Now it is estimated as many as a million Iranians use the free service each day, as anti-government demonstrators take their protests online. The death of Neda Agha Soltan, for example, would have been in vain had it not been for the Falun Gong and their desire to liberate internet surfing in Iran.

This means that a lot of voices that the Left used to “speak for” will be speaking for themselves. A lot of these new entrants will have values which quite frankly, are antithetical to the Left’s. As participation in the Web spreads beyond the literati to middle class people and downward, the Left will face an analogous problem domestically. They can’t hold the Party Line when too many new entrants jump in. They will lose their ability to speak for the “workers” as they lose their ability to represent the “Third World”. Thus, the their dominance in numbers will start to be diluted and it will be a losing game.

Second, reality is against them. Once enough channels are opened up, the global warming mythos will either be confirmed or die. The same is true for the “stimulus”, as things begin to bite, people who have lost their jobs, etc will find their voices. People who are going to lose their jobs both in the Third World and in the West will find their voices. And soon these voices will become a single loud shout. And then the dominance of the Left on the Internet will be gone, if not forever, then for a long, long time.

My worry is that conservatives aren’t setting up to handle those conditions. Sometimes they can be as clueless as the Left. So the moral of the story is: don’t let the Amy Smarts of the world intimidate you. I’m sure many women reading this blog can do as well or better. Buy a 25 dollar tripod and record your own video. Start your own blog. They are not invincible.

Jul 2, 2009 - 2:14 am 22. dtmack:

Wretchard – “And soon these voices will become a single loud shout”.

That should be the overiding goal of the opposition – anything else won’t be enough. Many won’t know what to shout unless they see others doing it. That’s why it’s important that the opposition in this country construct a clear message and hammer it home relentlessly. That’s not being done now.

Jul 2, 2009 - 2:49 am 23. no mo uro:

dtmack-”He can do a lot of things, he won, but he can’t suspend the laws of physics, economics, or anything else.”

How many ‘educated’ people under the age of 50 are even aware, now, that such laws exist?

The snotty faced, condescending Amy Smart is appealing to at least one generation of voters who think that a major in Postmodernist Thought or Women’s English Literatur,e or that getting a masters in education, represent giant intellectual achievement. Engineers and math people are lesser in numbers (else why would we be importing them), and they are virtual outcasts on most campii. The target audience of Ms. Smart is people who got degrees who wouldn’t have been in college period 50 years ago, but rather would have been doing something productive with their lives.

These are people who literally brag that they aren’t “math people”. If they are even aware that such physical laws exist, they’ve been taught that such perceptions are indicative of patriarchal Christianist eurocentrism, or some other such nonsense. Like the puppies in ‘Animal Farm’, they’ve been taken away from the nation and returned as thugs (intellectually speaking).

Such as these will literally NEVER be concerned about the laws of math or physics or economics, there’s nothing anybody can do to get them to do so. If things come crashing down, they’ve been taught to believe that whatever happens that is bad, it is the result of traditional Western civilization, regardless of what the bad thing might be that is occurring. Surely you see how literally everything bad in the universe was and is blamed on Bush?

Most college educated women in their 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s look at this Amy Smart, with her snotty, oh-so-holier-than-thou, ‘agree with me or I’ll never sleep with you and I might find something to sue you about’ expression and her feel-good simplistic sloganeering, and identify with her immediately. And a lot of the college educated metrosexual guys recognize that look and that attitude and think “if I nod and smile, I’ll have a chance with her”.

You’ll never reach these ‘angry mediocre’, as one commenter called them, because this video is where they live, and they literally are incapable of doing better.

I only hope that there are enough blue collar individuals left that have real-world smarts and can make the logical connection between Obama’s policies and destruction of the economy.

Jul 2, 2009 - 3:09 am 24. Andrew X:

I was reading Stephen King’s ‘Hearts in Atlantis’, one of his non-scary works, about those damn Sixties…. and was very struck as he wrote about the appearance of the ‘Peace Sign’ on a campus around 1964-65. How no one had ever seen it before, how it started showing up on jackets…. “Whoa, what is that?? Who is that guy?? What’s his deal?? Hmmmmm, where can I get a cool symbol like that, etc…”

(For those wondering, the peace sign is a combination of British semaphore signs for ‘N’ and ‘D’, as in (N)uclear (D)isarmament.)

It very much struck me the power of that symbol, it’s “coolness factor”, it’s power to rally the youth, etc etc.

And I think we are at a stage where just the right symbol could strike a serious chord, a symbol about ‘Liberty’, about standing up to a sanctimonious Mommy state that is acting VERY smothery, somethin’ the kids can stand up for and feel hip about.

I have the artistic sensibilty of a turnip, so I leave it at that. But this blog is nothing if not brainy. Whatta y’all think??

Jul 2, 2009 - 3:10 am 25. Bob Murphy:

I’m slowly starting to ratchet up my output. I’m doing a couple of letters to the editors of mainstream newspapers a week and they usually get published because this is my game.
I think we need to do things like that and just speaking up at parties and such like to curb some of the hyperbole until we get an opening when the poo hits the fan and it will.
But when that happens and we hopefully get control of Congress back and an American President, we will need to really go on the offensive.
We need to reintroduce traditional American values in our schools and on our campuses or we will lose in the long run, anyway. We need to teach our kids why America is great and the principles for which it stands and some proper history.
If we do not wrest back our culture from the freaks we are doomed.

Jul 2, 2009 - 3:16 am 26. SunSword:

It may be even more simple. The Left appeals to emotion, the Right to mind (e.g. principle). But how many people are swayed by emotion compared to those who are swayed by thought?

Answer — way more by emotion. Advertising figured this out long ago. The Nazis figured this out long ago.

However. What matters most is — how many actually vote? Recently about 60%+ of people who are eligible to vote actually did so. Except that about 95% of blacks voted this time — because of Obama. And many “conservatives” refused to vote for McCain.

So. The key for “conservatives” to win is to actually go out, grass roots, find potential “conservative” voters, get them to register, and then make sure they do vote. The Left does this now — Acorn is famous for it.

Because it is one thing to sit and read blogs and post. It is another to actually vote. Many “conservative” people don’t vote at all — they assert that the “crooks” will just win, or both sides are crooks, etc.

The key is — getting “conservatives” to vote. It really is that simple.

Jul 2, 2009 - 3:23 am 27. no mo uro:

“I’m sure many women reading this blog can do as well or better.”

Wretchard, don’t you think that the left knows this?

If we really are approaching a TEOTWAWKI scenario, the very first people they’ll take out are the Mary Katherine Ham’s or the Michelle Malkin’s of the world, because they know the power of someone like that.

Jul 2, 2009 - 3:37 am 28. dtmack:

no mo uro

You’re right that there is no way we’ll reach most of the people you cite – but we don’t need to.

How many of these will be graduating from College in the next couple of years only to find that there are no opportunities for them? Most will react as you say, but some may rethink.

You ask “Surely you see how literally everything bad in the universe was and is blamed on Bush?” Yes, I noticed.

I wish that the economic situation wasn’t what it is, but we have a golden opportunity now. The left is fine when they get to sit on the sidelines and carp about how unfair everything is, but now they are totally, undeniably in charge. They’ve made inroads into our society by stealth, but now they’re front and center.

Most in our country are “math challenged”, but they can add and subtract when it counts. Large bills minus small income equals no opportunity. We need to give these people an alternative, and there’s going to be plenty of people in that situation. There are now.

Jul 2, 2009 - 3:38 am 29. DB:

And this quote is from April:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/02/AR2009040203473.html?hpid=topnews

Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.) called cap-and-trade “the most significant revenue-generating proposal of our time”

Jul 2, 2009 - 3:49 am 30. no mo uro:

“But when that happens and we hopefully get control of Congress back and an American President, we will need to really go on the offensive.
We need to reintroduce traditional American values in our schools and on our campuses or we will lose in the long run, anyway. We need to teach our kids why America is great and the principles for which it stands and some proper history.

If we do not wrest back our culture from the freaks we are doomed.”

We need to do more than that, Bob.

The only way for the center/right/libertarian sector of our society to get back in power is to take names and kick butt. You need a charismatic, well-spoken candidate who will promise retribution in terms of financial penalties and jail time for the left, and who will do what George Bush I failed to do when the wall came down: run a de-left-ification campaign against collectivist individuals and groups, similar to the antifascist campaign that Truman did at the end of WWII. Defund them, purge them from the education industry and government, and make their name dirt in the eyes of America forever.

Failure to do this will mean that the cancer just keeps coming back.

Jul 2, 2009 - 3:50 am 31. dtmack:

A quick story.

I was in London the weekend before our election, doing some quick siteseeing during a break in my business there.

I was standing across the street from Big Ben eating an Italian sausage from a street vendor when, coming across the Thames River Bridge, I spotted about 50 people, mostly young, carrying Obama signs and shouting encouragement to the passing drivers to “vote for Obama”. Although my jaw dropped in amazement, I was able to retain the portion of the sausage that I was in the process of chewing.

That’s when it really hit me how much of a worldwide phenomenon this thing was. My take – people wanted bad things to go away, and O said he could make that happen. He’s in office now, and that hope is in the process of being dashed. I doubt I’d see Obama demonstrations in London in 2012, if I were there.

Jul 2, 2009 - 4:08 am 32. wretchard:

John Micklethwait, an Economist staffer who is one of two authors of God is Back, which argues that atheism, not religion is in decline everywhere except Western Europe, has an interview on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation where he makes the case that China will soon be the largest single Christian country in the world. The reason, counterintuively, is the government ban on assemblies largely that 25 persons. This has led to the growth of “home churches”, with every man a pastor, and as a consequence, Christianity is spreading like an aomeba. When the grassroots forces are empowered, there is really no telling where things will go.

As I argued in the Three Years, citing my own post “The Blogosphere at War”, as channels of communication multiply it foments a subversive process all of its own. Now much as I want traffic into the Belmont Club, from an organizer’s point of view, its more productive for commenters on this site go off and start their own gigs, instead of hanging around here and blowing off steam. The focus of local, person to person organizing I think, should be resistance to unwarranted exactions, obvious and hidden. And the targets should always be local officials or representatives. But there ought to be a parallel effort to hit out at the money suction machine by sponsoring specific initiatives. The Left is very good at creating power and money grabbing “products” — like Waxman-Markey. Conservatives are perpetually on the defensive because all they can do is say no to the “products”. But that’s not enough. What the conservatives must do is create products of their own which shut down the money suction system. This can take the form of initiatives of various kinds. Some commenters here suggested a package of Constitutional Amendments. Whatever. But once the money pump blocker “products” are out there, the Left will be on the defensive, and will react as agressively as the Alien Queen when the hatchery is threatened.

I think the coming years will be very eventful ones for the whole world. And the important thing is to realize what’s going on and get involved. I would much rather the Belmont Club became an online “tactics session” site where people shared experiences about what they were doing than a classic blog where people simply expressed an opinion.

Jul 2, 2009 - 4:10 am 33. Ron Hardin:

Taking away the women’s vote would get rid of a lot of that femininity in the masses.

Jul 2, 2009 - 4:34 am 34. davod:

Richard:

This is an excellent, and timely, article. There is an audience for the longer instructional message, but these will not win the immediate battles. The graphic message of what the environmental movement will do for quality of life needs to be pushed in the face of everyone.

“Environment America has reduced their message to a level that an idiot can act on. They even have the slogans appear in the background. By contrast, you have to understand what Beck and Schiff are getting at.”

Surely there are conservatives who can write Daisycutter ad copy – Every word and picture striking at the heart of the ratbags message.

Jul 2, 2009 - 4:55 am 35. buddy larsen:

re #’s
23 –excellent appraisal!
24 –check out the lower pic –the blue field on the flag.
26 –related, left is about consumption, right is about production. In both parallels (emotion/thought and production/consumption), neither side can stand alone. Maybe what’s so disquieting about Marxism is that it says different; it says that the one side (and we know which one) is dangerous, deviant, and mostly disposable.

Jul 2, 2009 - 5:01 am 36. hdgreene:

One of the timeless questions of Marketing is “Why Pay More?” To which the Democrats have answered, “Why not?” And they have come up with the “You Pay More Plan!”

Yes, under Democrat’s “You Pay More” plan you will Pay More for your electricity! You will Pay More to heat your home! You will pay more for food and Transportation! How much more? That’s our little secret! But it is not much. No more than a postage stamp a day. A little, ity-bity, $9.99 postage stamp a day! Or, if you have Krugerrands, we will take those. And don’t worry, you can do this without working, because you won’t have a job!

Now, we hear that a lot of people do not want to pay more. We Democrats work hard to increase their want, but they don’t want it. So we are changing the name of our program from “You Pay More” to “They’ll Pay more For You!” Who are they? Why, people who have been getting away with a lot and should be spanked, that’s who. Such as people who make two under and, oh, Fifty Thousand something-something a year! And — unborn children.

Why unborn children? Well, it is not because they can’t vote. It is because they don’t have a lot of debt so we are loading them up in advance. We don’t think of them as kids, we think of them as little bundles of indentured servitude to the Democrat Party’s “You Pay More” plan — even if you ain’t born yet.

Jul 2, 2009 - 5:17 am 37. Bill R:

“I would much rather the Belmont Club became an online “tactics session” site where people shared experiences about what they were doing than a classic blog where people simply expressed an opinion.”

Wretchard, I feel a little warm from the fire you are building under me.

Jul 2, 2009 - 5:43 am 38. buddy larsen:

i see BC as more than just a string of opinion stops –it’s easy to see that people are picking up cues and working on effective expression. Why would they (we) be doing this except to spread the message?

Jul 2, 2009 - 5:51 am 39. Triton'sPolarTiger:

@34 buddy larsen:

Nice catch on the flag… a subtle appeal to the “Don’t Tread On Me” days?

Jul 2, 2009 - 6:10 am 40. Ashen:

I have a neighbor, a young man. He lives with his girlfriend and infant son, with another child on the way. He is a high school drop out while she works to support the family. He is an aspiring rap artist and has played some gigs around town. I like some rap, older stuff mostly and I have to say that his stuff is ok. Sometimes we sit out front and talk politics, The American Way, and yes even aliens. Naturally the conversation eventually gets to Obama and the current goings on in our country. We were talking about the massive govt intrusion into the personal life and individual choices of all Americans and he said, “if someone as ignorant as me about it all can see it, what the F does that tell you”. I nearly wept with joy!

Jul 2, 2009 - 6:15 am 41. Mongoose:

Wretchard: The Left can get away with this because they are directly or indirectly funded by the taxpayer, and those among them who are not trust fund brats are young enough that they have no major responsibilities. It is called a “Communist Youth Front”, and there is nothing new about it whatsoever.

It is only new to mainstream American politics.

The Average person does not have the time or energy for this sort of monkey business, nor would they can they afford to put their lives on hold to be in low paying “activist” jobs. Besides, decent people find this all distasteful. Moreover, one of the key points of notion of representative republican systems is to not have to engage in full throttle politics at every turn.

One has to ask, if the voices of reason have to adapt this sort of Communist Front mentality, how are they any different? If we begin with the premise that the electorate are dolts and must be manipulated by mass media, then how are we different that the fascists, socialists and all the other collectivists?

What happend to the exchange of ideas betwenn citizens in the public square?

You say they have an “infrastructure” but what is that infrastructure? Well it governemnt directly and indirectly it is a gaggle of NGO’s funding by government. This was, of course, the tactic of Lenin, Hitler and Stalin, and these monsters are these folk’s tutors, and they have the same intent and goals. This is, famously, what totalitarianism is all about.

It is doubtful that this huge infrastructure can be duplicated, and if it could, it would be as equally corrupting as the Left’s “infrastructure”, for it presupposes that rational discourse between citizens is a wholly fatuous and quaint notion: All can only be moved by ideological propaganda and emotional manipulation.

Are we sure we want to walk down this road. What needs to be done is to cut off this “infrastructure from the public tit and have a good hard look at private foundation regulation as well.

Once it is out in the light of day and forced to pay for itself. The Left’s “infrastructure” will wither on the vine.

And are you sure we can walk down this road?

Seems to me that you solution is morally undesirable, and practically and politically improbable .

Jul 2, 2009 - 6:19 am 42. programmer:

Buddy Larsen @ 34 says:
In both parallels (emotion/thought and production/consumption), neither side can stand alone. Maybe what’s so disquieting about Marxism is that it says different; it says that the one side (and we know which one) is dangerous, deviant, and mostly disposable.

Buddy, spot on. When I was younger and the world was different (and dinosaurs still came to breakfast), liberals and conservatives worked together to balance legislation or at least the results seemed so. In my young mind, this was the best of all possible worlds. Conservatives staved off anarchy and liberals reined in jack-booted tendencies. We kind of wobbled down the middle of the road, pushing innovation and industry, but taking care of those less able and caring for the environment as best we could. But the forces of darkness and nihilism have driven through the center, fracturing the always fragile bonds of agreement upon what is good. Somehow, as Hancock did at Gettysburg, the last defenders of the West must rally and stop this onslaught. However, unlike Frodo, we have no magic ring to throw into the all consuming fire. Unlike the Union generals, we have no Spencer rifles in the hands of the 7th cavalry firing into the flanks of the oncoming surge. What it all comes down to is a reaching out once more to both liberal and conservative alike who believe in Truth, Justice, and American Way. Shine the light of Truth upon the deceivers, mete out Justice to the betrayers, and stand strong in the American Way. God grant us grace and strength in the coming storm. Rally, rally to the flag, boys and girls.

Jul 2, 2009 - 6:20 am 43. Ashen:

And another thing…! It is not Mankind that wages constant war on Earth. Who is it that trashes thousands with her tidal waves, earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, volcanoes? If you’re keeping score, we’re losing. Badly!

Jul 2, 2009 - 6:21 am 44. Dave the Kapampangan:

Nanny Obananarama says: “They must pay more taxes because a hot-looking woman told them to, and they always take their cues from the beautiful people!”

(Back in the day, early tobacco companies used to hire celebs and beautiful people to smoke at parades and other conspicuous places to start up the national smoking habit.)

Nanny really isn’t that tough to figure out. Let me take a wild guess, here:

1) His personality is ambitious but somewhat robotic and lacking in sincere spontaneity and one-to-one personal connection. He feels more relaxed in front of a teleprompter.

2) He makes long-term plans related to his core ideology of government intrusion, forced redistribution, and entitlements to his cronies. And he sticks doggedly to that ideology regardless of any logic of events or evidence. He can’t stomach that his ideology might be wrong, and his delusional belief in his own medicine helps him sell it.

3) He is stymied and confused by reality in the short term, and typically stalls for time by voting present with a nervous smoker’s laugh.

4) His knowledge of history and reality is shallow; he makes it up as he goes along and figures people will believe it if he looks fashionable.

5) His main talent is the ability to broadcast two lies at the same time. Among his supporters, this duplicity passes for a kind of knowing wisdom.

Jul 2, 2009 - 6:35 am 45. buddy larsen:

dang, programmer –that rally to the flag gave me a chill. No, not a shaman tingle running up a leg of that critter Zell Miller wanted to challenge to a duel, but a vision of hands grasping at the flag –and then a realization that they were just hands, that i can’t see whose hands they are, the uniforms are blurred out along the edges of the frame.

triton, yes, ‘don’t tread on me’, but also it’s saying that the present stars are kind of scattered against that deep blue, and that we maybe ought to, in mind, go back to that more definite pattern (could we call it the Constitutional circle or something?) and then start retracing our steps and see if we can arrive back where we began –and this time (apologies to Eliot) to know the place!

Jul 2, 2009 - 6:44 am 46. vb:

Shouldn’t cap and trade opponents be drawing parallels to the financial meltdown and mortgage derivatives? I think the average person would understand that a 1200-page bill regulating trade of gas emissions they cannot see is just the first step toward another disaster. The housing bubble started out with houses people could see; few will want to figure out the value of planting or not cutting down a tree in the rainforest and even fewer will want the “evaluation” to affect their electric bills. The whole scheme is an invitation to insider dealing and corruption. There ought to be a way to convey this in a series of spots.

Jul 2, 2009 - 7:06 am 47. mika2k1:

Yey for the car/oil/military imperial mafia and their thieving monopoly tapeworm economy!

Jul 2, 2009 - 7:07 am 48. Alexis:

wretchard:

Actually, in the early years of the internet, the far left was one of the first groups to use the internet. Ever heard of “Peacenet”?

The Islamists (proto-Qaeda) were organized on the internet as early as 1991, and probably earlier. The neo-Nazis were also technologically precocious. Then, in the mid-1990’s, conservatives got onto the internet in droves. And still, the liberal establishment yawned. Yes, when the liberal establishment finally got online in the late 1990’s and then the first decade of the new millennium, it was a major shift on the internet. Yet, the rise of magazines such as the Huffington Post should be seen as a function of money instead of technological savvy.

New technologies tend to be grasped by the politically marginalized of every stripe, while powerful people tend to be complacent. Then, once powerful people discover the power of a new technology, they buy access to the best and latest gadgets and expertise.

The “traditional media” can usually maintain their supremacy so long as they can get the best technology money can buy. But what if there is news money can’t buy? What if the law of diminishing returns limits the power of money? Imagine if all the money in the world cannot buy journalistic excellence precisely because the powers that be insist on hearing only what they want to hear.

Stale bread in world-class packaging is still stale.

Jul 2, 2009 - 7:09 am 49. Lifeofthemind:

Consider Hitler. He was a dangerous psychopath and he was a man capable of penetrating analysis. Just because he said something does not make it right or wrong. His idea of the wise Leader manipulating the childlike masses for their own good has roots that go back to Plato. So where is the flaw in his theory? There are two fatal impediments to the hitlerian model that are present in the current efforts of the Left.

1) There is the Agency problem. When traditional checks and balances are overridden by elite message manipulation it becomes to easy for a dedicated but unqualified individual to hijack the system and rise to power. That is revealed by the ascendance of Obama or Hitler himself. Neither of them would have succeeded in a normal republican system in which peers evaluate your performance over time before entrusting you with greater authority. They both climbed over their competitors as revolutionary outsiders who did an end run around the system.

2) There is another problem that I would call the Cognitive Trap. Even Hitler was not truly a man from Mars. Therefor even if he had been sane and desired to act in what he determined to be in the people’s interest, after analyzing problems with the dispassionate logic that he believes the masses are incapable of using themselves, he cannot. The Leader is immersed in the same information environment as everyone else. His advisors are not a pure priesthood, they are drawn from the same pool as the masses they have contempt for. Eventual Goebbels comes to believe the stuff he is peddling. In fact of course people become a Goebbels because they believe all the irrational stuff first and then they acquire the tools of reason and professionalism that they use to construct a facade.

This is a variation on Machiavelli’s paradox. To be effective you must be deceitful but you can only be effectively deceitful with practice so you must be deceitful all the time. Once you have sacrificed your virtue so that you can hold onto power then how can you achieve the good for your people that you sincerely desired when seeking power in the first place?

Jul 2, 2009 - 7:36 am 50. Triton'sPolarTiger:

@44 buddy larsen:

“also it’s saying that the present stars are kind of scattered against that deep blue, and that we maybe ought to, in mind, go back to that more definite pattern (could we call it the Constitutional circle or something?)”

OMG buddy, that’s brilliant – contrasting the circle of stars with the rigid rows (of the current 50) of “one size (healthcare, etc) fits all” … a product of current leftwing governance…

Jul 2, 2009 - 8:08 am 51. John Work:

I think Mongoose (#40) has some good points. Those of us on the Right generally are more concerned with producing and dealing with our own lives as opposed to the Left’s obsession with living off the production of others and managing the lives of others. And we have two generations of Leftist-educated Eloi, the majority of whom have demonstrated their immaturity and ignorance by voting in the Obamanation. Trying to amend the situation by resorting to the propaganda tactics of the Left is a very long shot due to the lack of media access/support and the fact that most of us are too busy working and supporting the looters to engage in propaganda efforts. Reason is our means of dealing with the world and these two generations don’t deal in reason – they deal in emotion. And Mongoose is right in asking whether we should become like the enemy. We may eventually have to literally fight for our survival (sorry, LOTM), but do we really want to corrupt our souls to try to herd the Eloi? I’m also concerned that due to the fact that we face multiple external enemies as well as internal enemies, we probably don’t have time to turn the stampeding herd of Eloi. And if we do (if we can), will that lead to a return to the kind of country we once were or will it lead to a new tyranny?

I think Wretchard is trying to generate a reasoned discourse with the aim of promoting some original thinking and finding viable solutions; and I think most of us here agree with that. I also think most of us realize that sometimes we are faced with situations where reasoned discourse just doesn’t resolve the problem.

As those of you who have followed the link to my website know, I have written a novel about the invention of a stardrive and the exploration of nearby planets. In thinking about a follow-up novel about the colonization of one of those planets, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about our Constitution and the lessons learned from the two hundred years of our country’s great experiment in self-government. As a result of this and for purposes of a possible next novel I’ve been trying to create a new Constitution for this imaginary colony. In a few days I’ll be posting a link on my website to my initial attempt at this new Colonial Constitution. I’ll appreciate any comments any of you may wish to make (but I’ll be wearing my suit of armor). I mention this because I think we all need to be considering better alternatives to our current situation (which is what I think Wretchard is encouraging us to do). Instead of amendments to our existing Constitution (coding changes), it might be useful to think through a major redesign of our “system”. My thinking about all this has lead me to the conclusion that there are some fundamental flaws in our existing Constitution and that these flaws make “fixing” our current situation through amendments or “throwing all the bums out” very, very difficult and perhaps even futile.

We live in interesting times.

Jul 2, 2009 - 8:11 am 52. Triton'sPolarTiger:

That didn’t come out quite right, but I’m sure you get the drift…

Jul 2, 2009 - 8:12 am 53. Mongoose:

dtmack, Wretchard: The notion that “truth is on our side” will take the day or that information technology will free the masses are seductive notions, but are these ideas objectively true in and of themselves? When they have triumphed before, were there not broader and perhaps more powerful forces at play and fortuitous circumstances grounding the matter?

The Soviet regime survived for almost 100 years, and one could argue that it has just changed raiment and is now gathering new strength and challenging us. The ChiComs are alive and kicking, and if fact have an alarming influence on the USA. The most visible Marxist leader in the world is the POTUS–he is more of a Maoist than the ChiCom leader. Collectivism grows apace in Latin America to the point were it threatens to become the dominate form of government there. And let us not assume that the fates of the the nations “liberated” from the Soviets have been definitively decided, and this is especially true of those nations in E. Europe. Then there is the whole matter of the EU; and do not suppose that if the fascism of the enarchs is thrown off that it will not be replaced by a collectivist tyranny that is at least as odious. We need not even touch upon Islam.

Believe you me, the average person in the USSR or E. Europe perfectly well understood that Socialism was all a carapace of lies covering brutishness, immorality and criminality. They knew this from the age of 5. No thinking, moral man there could imagine a more absurd way of life. But it did not matter in the least, not for generation. And if there was change in the end–which is an increasingly dubious position–for those who lived there it was not truth living in theire hearts alone that turned the tide. There was the West actively fighting against this vileness.

The point is that these forms survived for generations in there bunkers of lies, and still survive to this day.

Once has to take away two signal points here:

1) Without an external competitor that can provide harbor, counter-example and dedicated resistance, it is almost impossible to turn around collectivist tyranny from the inside. It is highly improbable if history is any guide, and should it happen it will take generations to cast off that yoke.

2) Without that external actor, the very notion of the “truth is with us” can become a bitter burden. What can very often result is a fatalism and a bitter nihilism that ends up mocking the very notion that truth can live openly in this world.

As to technology, Wretchard you must first explain how it is that the left has maitianed their almost complete grip on the MSM. If they took over that and crowded out their opposition once on top, why can they not do this to the internet (and the other various telcom channels)?

Consider:

1) From a purely technical standpoint, it is a extremely fragile medium and is easy to control. It is easy to shut down,limit access and extremely easy to outright censor and track dissidents. “Guerrilla tech” such as you mention, is all well and good, but if the full weight of organization such as the NSA are brought to bear on it it quickly get relegated to incidental use by the fringes. These sort of things work mostly when the larger world tech infrastructure is more or less open. When counter measures are built deep into the infrastructure itself the fringe may (will?) actually be forced to abandon high tech altogether. One can talk about human ingenuity and “Were there is a will there is a way” all one wants, but that merely proves my point. As pure technology there is nothing particularly liberating about this new medium. It is fact is easy to control than mediums like radio or print, and its interactively actually enables the silencing of opposition for now even viewing opposition viewpoints can be tracked.

2) More importantly, direct and indirect collectivist political control of this technology can be crushing for the opposition. A Simple example suffices: Should the government require “real identities” to be required on all internet interactions, and then that is followed up with gestapo-like or Communist Fronts like ACRON tracking and harassing dissenting individuals in the work place, in the courts, on the streets and in their homes, forums such as the Belmont Club will for the most part vanish. And we must remember how broadcast organizations were aligned and consolidated by FDR during the New Deal via organization like the FCC. We may well see this sort of thing now with firms like Google and Facebook. (One need not point out the collusion of Google with the authorities in the PRC.)

So there is really nothing about the technology that fascists can not turn against their opponents, if fascism is in effect the dominant force in the world, and there is no major opposing force external to it that can compete and resist against it.

Events Iran may be both a example here and a tipping point.

Jul 2, 2009 - 8:15 am 54. Dave D.:

…This greencrap too shall pass, but oh, the cost will be frightful.

Jul 2, 2009 - 8:16 am 55. Mongoose:

interactively=interactivity

Jul 2, 2009 - 8:31 am 56. Mongoose:

Will it pass, Dave D.? Islam is still around and it is a similar hustle.

Jul 2, 2009 - 8:39 am 57. LFMayor:

I’m sitting here contemplating all of the solutions that have been proposed, despite the logic that they would work the reality is that the game parameters we’re operating under are fixed. No matter how clever, economical and low impact any solution offered is I don’t believe it will be allowed to succeed at this point. Sheer ennui, willfull igonrance, fear of change and love of power will all work together to prevent it. My mind turns to the DanActive commercials and I’m thinking our country, culture and political environment all need a good physic. Let’s get things cleaned out. Save your ideas because after the churning and when the cream rises to the top then we’ll put things together the correct way, but right now only pain will make the masses move. Perhaps that’s all that really ever makes them move.

Jul 2, 2009 - 8:47 am 58. toad:

I’m a tiny bit optimistic because it looks like the Obama team is entering the “Death by a Thousand cuts” zone. Unemployment still rising, Weather bad enough to reduce crop yields in Canada and the Northern US, Iran policy hasn’t worked out the way it was prophesied.
A number of leftists movements have found themselves under the buss. As mentioned college grads are having to hunt hard for work. Polls show approval inching down, disapproval inching up. He got bad mouthed by Helen Thomas. A turn out of a youth vote as in 2008 is not common. He probably won’t be able to get them in the 2010 off year elections. State governors both Republican and to some extent Democrats are fighting back, apparently they don’t want to lose their jobs if Obama’s policies trash their state’s economies. There are not a lot of people on Obama’s team that have lived in hard times and hard places. IMHO they are a soft lot. My gut feeling is that Obama is going to take a real hit in the month of July.

Jul 2, 2009 - 9:28 am 59. Agoraphobic Plumber:

“Now much as I want traffic into the Belmont Club, from an organizer’s point of view, its more productive for commenters on this site go off and start their own gigs, instead of hanging around here and blowing off steam.”

Forget it. I refuse to stop hanging around here.

That said, I’m doing my part to strike back. Next Thursday, I go in for a meeting with an academic advisor to plan out how I’m going to get an education degree over the next couple of years.

I’m going to be the Belmont Club’s mole in the educational establishment. I’m going to set up an autonomous cell of conservatives (if I can find any) and work to deconstruct their edifice from within. I’m gonna try my best to break the stranglehold Leftists have had on our educational system for too long. And best of all, I’m gonna plant sensible seeds in young minds, in the hope that they don’t take as long as I did to see the light and start making their own political and social decisions.

Jul 2, 2009 - 9:36 am 60. Roderick Reilly:

“”"”"”“if someone as ignorant as me about it all can see it, what the F does that tell you”. “”"”"”"

Ashen, you’ve hit on an interesting point. For the rest of you: do you hold the same low opinion of the general public as the left does? Frankly, that appears to be the case in this thread. Think again.

A plurality of Americans, according to a fairly recent poll, now think that global warming is exagerrated. The constant bombardment from the media — including “science” sites — of notions of cataclysmic global warming on the horizon — have an air of desperation about them, or haven’t you noticed? In the battle of public opinion and scientific debate, the global warming crowd is slipping perceptively; they are not “losing,” otherwise the Cap & Trade bill would have lost outright, but inroads into the issue are being made by scientists who are finally finding their voice, and whose numbers are increasing. Even many scientists who believe in AGW are chagrined by the tone of the AGW alarmists. Countries like Australia and New Zealand are seriously rethinking plans for similar legislation, and scientists like this Plimer fellow are printing tomes that may have a profound influence on the debate.

Suck it up people. Some of us can already see cuts and blood on our opponent’s face, and can see that he’s having difficulty keeping his fists up. He may have been leading by points, and you may be tired and bloodied too, but you have plenty of fight left, whereas he was expecting this thing to be over by now. Can’t any of the rest of you see this?

Jul 2, 2009 - 9:39 am 61. joe buzz:

It is way, way past time to start holding elected officials accountable. I call on the good people of South Carolina to call for Sanford’s resignation. Do not lie. Do not cheat or tread on me. Our leadership is lacking. The first thing we must do is remove the slackers and stand up new leadership. Even “with the truth on our side” we will require sound leadership. Michele Marie Bachmann is doing her part. I hope her closet is clean. Flags and symbols are not enough we need good, honest people that love their country to willfully assume the burdens of carrying them and give us all a “reason to believe”.

Jul 2, 2009 - 9:41 am 62. Roderick Reilly:

As to the issue of “Madison Avenue” and simplistic propaganda’s effectiveness: These methods have to expend a lot of air time to convince relatively few additional people. A lot of people, and I do mean a lot, are jaded by, and cynical of, over-the-top alarmist propaganda. Don’t assume that Amy Smart and her bullet points are as effective as implied in this post and thread.

A lot of people are weary of the constant bombardment of environmental and AGW proselytizing. This doesn’t mean that they are fed up enough to become anti-AGW, but they are becoming irritated with the over-the-top tone of all this — hence the poll numbers showing a plurality who consider AGW an exagerration.

Jul 2, 2009 - 9:48 am 63. Charles:

Princeton Physics Professor Global Warming Testimony Before the US Senate

Sometimes the obsession for control of the climate got a bit out of hand, as in the Aztec state, where the local scientific/religious establishment of the year 1500 had long since announced that the debate was over and that at least 20,000 human sacrifices a year were needed to keep the sun moving, the rain falling, and to stop climate change. The widespread dissatisfaction of the people who were unfortunate enough to be the source of these sacrifices played an important part in the success of the Spanish conquest of Mexico.

Jul 2, 2009 - 9:52 am 64. Das:

The message of the left is so relentlessly negative; the air is going, the water is going, the whales are going, the soil is going, the polar bears are going; oddly enough, life seems to get better for everyone. I’ve joked that the republican party/conservatives could reconstitute itself just by saying, “Hey, we enjoy life a bit.” Instead you’ve got influential conservatives fretting over things like “Tthe 20 Greatest Conservative Movies of All Time (see: NRO).” Sheesh, talk about being on the defensive. We’re living in the greatest freeset civilization known to man and we’re sitting around fretting about Conservative This and Conservative That. LIFE is conservative, anything that works and lasts is inherently conservative. I hate present-day conservatitive defensiveness, thought I hate brain-dead leftism more.

I think people who pay attention to their true thoughts and feelings just burn out on the left – I know I did.

Jul 2, 2009 - 10:05 am 65. Roderick Reilly:

As to doing simpler, sound-bite, bullet-point ads, there is one target that may be very effective to attack: The crackpot, mega-engineering projects proposed, including by Obama’s science advisor.

John Holdren has proposed shooting huge quantities of SO2 into the stratosphere to induce “global cooling. Others have proposed saturating the oceans with iron filiongs to absorb CO2 or something.

Make the point that these notions — proposed by people in power, no less — are like proposing to destroy the environment in order to “save the planet.” Make them look crazy, reckless and dangerous. Make people be afraid of them. Get Angie Harmon or Patricia Heaton to narrate the clips.

Do another one with conservative Vegas headliners, pointing out that it snowed in Vegas last winter. Have someone remind people it was 59 degrees in Chicago and Boston on June 28, 2009, and have them segue into the evidence of the warming trrend having flatlined for an entire decade. Bring up the growing polar bear population. Show images of the OTHER Tierra del Fuego glaciers that have NOT melted that are adjacent to the one highlighted by Al Gore’s movie. Show the expanded view of the infamous “stranded polar bear” photo. Let the photographer scream “copyright infringement,” which will only further publicize her fraud.

All of these can be done in a minute or less, to good effect.

Certain networks will refuse to show them, but Fox is the one that is most watched, and quite a few cable channels could use the bucks.

Remember, the other guy may be ahead on points, but he’s bleeding and tired, and didn’t expect to have to still be in the ring at this point.

Jul 2, 2009 - 10:10 am 66. Mark:

The current buzz book in liberal circles is “Nudge” by Thaler and Sunstein (yes, that Sunstein).

Their argument is that the political system, any system, can and should set the defaults in a way that is best for people. Thus a business can establish a default enrollment of employees in a retirement plan, which the employee can opt out of, but probably won’t. People don’t often make choices since it takes time and effort. Whoever sets the defaults establishes the direction and results of the system.

Thaler and Sunstein, Chicago colleagues of Obama, developed their work over quite a few years. It’s already in practice in Washington, even though the book is just coming out now.

Once you’ve read the book you can go see the movie, i.e. administration czars, public health option, climate bill etc.

Quite clever those Chicago guys, no?

Frog, meet gradually warming kettle.

Jul 2, 2009 - 10:36 am 67. Kinuachdrach:

Here is something that all US citizens can do — Prepare to bombard your elected officials and news media with the messages: Let California sort out its own problems; No subsidies for California.

Sometimes it is necessary for one kid to drown before the other kids will exercise reasonable prudence in swimming. Since California (under its extreme right wing Governator, as the media will gladly report) has long since implemented the policies that are destroying their economy, let them live with the consequences.

Jul 2, 2009 - 10:42 am 68. Eggplant:

elby said:

“I could easily write the anti cap and trade commercial. Remember, fear sells even better than sentimental hope n’ change.”

I would argue that sex sells better than fear. One could have Amy Smart wearing a string bikini and in an erotic pose while expounding upon the virtues of Waxman-Markey. The only problem with that approach is John Q. Sixpack would be so focused on Amy Smart that he wouldn’t hear the propanganda pitch about Waxman-Markey.

Jul 2, 2009 - 10:49 am 69. RWE:

A couple of quotes from the current issue of National Review:

In 1990 Sen. Tim Wirth (D., Colo.) famously said: “We’ve got to ride the
global-warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is
wrong, we will be doing the right thing, in terms of economic
policy and environmental policy.”

Thomas Friedman recently explained on Meet the
Press: “If climate change is a hoax, it’s the greatest [he means
best, not biggest] hoax ever perpetrated on the United States of
America. Because everything we would do to get ready for climate
change, to build this new green industry, would make us
more respected, more entrepreneurial, more competitive, more
healthy as a country.”

So this fits right in with the same mindset as Al Sharpton’s “The alleged crime is too important for mere facts to overpower it.” Or “The seriousness of the charge requires that the allegation be investigated despite the lack of evidence.” rationale so often used by Congressional Democrats.

By the way, you can get a subscription to the digital version of National Review quite cheaply.

Jul 2, 2009 - 10:53 am 70. Eggplant:

Both “Cap and Trade” and “Obama Care” are economic suicide. However I have to confess that I’m not too fussed about them because we’re already in economic free-fall. The “suckers rally” / “green shoots” was a consequence of Federal Reserve / Goldman Sachs market manipulation (classic pump and dump). The liberals can’t steal from us if we’re already in the poor house with our pockets turned inside out.

Jul 2, 2009 - 11:01 am 71. aaron:

24 andrew x:
Consider the “peace symbol” as a perverse inversion of yggdrasil, the tree of life. Other folks have used such symbolism in their marketing.

The runic form, upright for life and then inverted for death, can be seen in these Nazi propaganda gravestones.

http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/graves.htm

Jul 2, 2009 - 11:05 am 72. Mark:

Wrichard writes: “I would much rather the Belmont Club became an online “tactics session” site where people shared experiences about what they were doing than a classic blog where people simply expressed an opinion.”

If the blogroll at BC could have a section with links to these kinds of tactical sites, that might provide some entree into whatever creative activity is taking place. Most of sites on the blogroll are more opinion. Gateway Pundit is interesting in being informative but also relentlessly repeating and staying on message. The bar graph of the Obama deficits is pretty much branded into my retina at this point.

About the early dominance of conservatives on the internet: this was funded by conservative funders. Soros and other sugar daddies soon provided counterbalance, and more. Armies need leaders, and the leaders, like Kos, benefit from having funders who pay the day-job salaries.

Jul 2, 2009 - 11:23 am 73. Mark:

Wrichard’s blog entry title—”Still I look to find a reason to believe”—is inspired, as usual:

(Tim Hardin)

If I listened long enough to you
I’d find a way to believe that it’s all true
Knowing that you lied straight-faced while I cried
Still I look to find a reason to believe

Someone like you makes it hard to live without
somebody else
Someone like you makes it easy to give
never think about myself

If I gave you time to change my mind
I’d find a way just to leave the past behind
Knowing that you lied straight-faced while I cried
Still I look to find a reason to believe

If I listened long enough to you
I’d find a way to believe that it’s all true
Knowing that you lied straight-faced while I cried
Still I look to find a reason to believe

Someone like you makes it hard to live without
somebody else
Someone like you makes it easy to give
never think about myself

Jul 2, 2009 - 11:29 am 74. The Wobbly Guy:

The US is a lost cause for classic liberalism, sound economics, and rational thinking in general. If demographics is destiny, the US’ future looks damn bleak. Even the Ricci case had a close split decision when it should have been almost unanimous.

It’s only going to get worse as Obama and the left takes ever greater control of the Supreme Court via nominees, and ensure their own elections via election fraud and astro-turfing, which becomes less fake as demographical changes in the US population result in an expanding underclass which would always irrationally vote democrat.

Me? I’m taking copious notes and hoping to hell that China doesn’t go the same way when its time in the limelight arrives. Hey, tinpot political rulers can be dealt with, and they’re not really a hindrance to economic growth or technological progress when their minds are screwed on tight (see: China).

The crazies (Global warming/human neurological uniformity/keynesian economics), on the other hand, are everything you DON’T want if you value human progress.

Jul 2, 2009 - 12:17 pm 75. Agoraphobic Plumber:

#70 Mark

Whoa. Having a Wilson-Phillips flashback.

Jul 2, 2009 - 12:19 pm 76. RWE:

Key to defeating this idea will be finding a suitable name for it, and in that we have been presented a priceless gift.

Who would support:

WAXMAN’S MALARKY ???

Jul 2, 2009 - 12:24 pm 77. Andrew X:

Just to chime in on the symbol issue (since I kicked it off), I’m not quite getting the image that Buddy larsen mentions in #34.

I see a blue field and a circle of white stars. Well, the first thing that occurs to me is that it is essentially the European Union flag, but with white stars instead of yellow.

Hmmmmm. Somehow, as a symbol of insurgent (resurgent) liberty, I’m not entirely certain a European Union look quite does it for me.

Secondly, I’m thinking that it has a familiar look. I look it up, and I see was an actual US flag for a time, pre-1800. I am totally old school, and my love of US history is second to none, but my gut tells me that the kind of symbol I envision would have to have virtually ZERO familiarity, and total newness, to be effective.

Just try to get your typical 20 year-old to get excited and “Whoa, how cool, what is that??” over a 1799 US flag. Yeah, good luck with that. *I* would get jazzed, so likely would you, but I think we both learned ages ago that we are not the typical goofy and dewey-eyed puppies who vote for something as intellectually sound as….. “Chaaaaaaaaynge!”.

No this symbol cannot come from the year 1799, and it cannot come from the year 2009. It has to come from the year 2020….. right now. THAT is what will make it work for Tweeters.

So I’ve described it…. that’s the hard part. Now, someone else go out and come up with it.

Jul 2, 2009 - 12:29 pm 78. joe buzz:

RWE is that ^ a trick question?

Jul 2, 2009 - 12:35 pm 79. whiskey:

Oh boy Wretchard — Sorry but this is the biggest example of mental blinders I’ve ever seen.

You’re looking at Left-Right (which does not exist) and ignoring the BIG issues: GENDER. It’s Gender, Gender, Gender!

Fox is a guy’s network, down to it’s personalities and coverage. Amy Smart appeals to … WOMEN. Most women, particularly younger ones, are about as HARD LEFT as you can get. They wish a female utopia, where power resides on social opinion, police to check out the contents of your wheelie bin (as in Britain), nothing done about terrorists or crime (too much masculine power), and emphasis on saving the planet (and screwing over your country) by restricting other people’s lives!

It’s status mongering at it’s highest, something women in particular are prone to (men have their own flaws, chiefly a taste for sadistic violence, but those flaws are different than women’s).

Please. The whole point of Waxman-Markey Global Warming Cap and Trade BS from an outside the Beltway, non-grifting perspective, is to screw over other people so you have higher status. Pretty much ANY episode of Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, or sitcom in general will get that point across. It’s an expression of FEMALE POWER. It’s aimed at women. It’s simple because women already know what they want: social power and control.

Women would be perfectly happy to take a 50% reduction in income if they can screw over that icky straight White guy in the cubicle next to him who stares to long, and that icky guy at the train station, and the “boring old White guy” and “empower” the hip-cool Black guy (who is considered more masculine and higher testosterone) and all the hip cool young women like themselves. By making the physical attractiveness of people the only marker for status, like a Happy Hour that never ends (which is btw the peak of women’s social power).

MEN on the other hand, and women who know well they are invisible due to loss of attractiveness (this only really happens post 55 or so), are very good at details: a device that limits each shower to 3 minutes in every home in America. No more barbecues. No more muscle cars or motorcycles. Things like that. The message there is simple: Women and the “cool people” are taking things away that they have now. For older women, no more convenience savers, air conditioning, travel, etc. Message being the same.

MOST of the country is older. Birth dearth. The Tragedy of an Amy Smart and women like her is that years ago, they’d be married with kids, and husbands would not be replaceable and disposable. They’d worry about their kids, husbands, country, and planet in that order. Instead of reverse, with neither kids nor husbands even on the horizon.

Waxman-Markey aside from tax-power grabs, is at it’s core a struggle between women who bloc vote, and are at their core due to loss of marriage/family, hard, hard left, and men, who are increasingly having zilch ties to women.

With all due respect, Wretchard is not American. He does not get it (gender relations in his native land are markedly different). What is needed is not some young attractive actress, but some old White guy like Howard Jarvis. We need simply … the return of Howard Jarvis. Old, cranky, not telegenic, a failure at nearly everything he did. Save the last. Proposition 13. Men and seniors (there are enough of both) need to say no. Need to punish, by ending careers of politicians, who said yes. And go after, directly, with punishment (suits, challenges, defunding) EVERY BIT of the infrastructure of the female-oriented Left. Like Sherman through Georgia. Which means destroying, as much as possible, through lawsuits and legislation and boycotts, traditional media, which is heavily female, NGOs, prominent people (by digging up unflattering dirt and spreading it around as was done to Joe the Plumber and Sarah Palin) and all of it.

Using fear, intimidation, punishment, and the other traditional masculine attributes to equalize demographic disparity. For example, a boycott campaign against the NY Times, and it’s advertisers, designed to sink the company, aligned with lawsuits against reporters and editors, for coordinated political attacks, coupled with publicizing dirty details of their public lives, and recall/defeat political campaigns against pols who voted for Waxman-Markey, along with publicizing every bit of personal dirt in the pol’s lives, family aspect, and prominent supporters, coupled with lawsuits against the supporters for whatever reason can be found, and boycott campaigns against supporters corporate and otherwise.

A swarming attack designed to create fear.

Waxman, for example, should be made an example for all to see. To create fear among the political class of crossing the interests of men and seniors. The way the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association made examples in the late 1970’s, only this time with a “swarming” approach from every angle. A defeated, disgraced, and destroyed Waxman (politically and economically) who took backers down with him would create a message. One unmistakable and far more effective than a video.

Jul 2, 2009 - 1:11 pm 80. RCM:

28. dtmack:

“Most in our country are “math challenged”, but they can add and subtract when it counts. Large bills minus small income equals no opportunity. We need to give these people an alternative, and there’s going to be plenty of people in that situation. There are now.”

You are right, sir, except for one thing. Obama has already thought about what will happen to all those newbie’s coming out of college without jobs: he’s going to give them government jobs at lucrative salaries; with money that he stole from you and me in the last six months. Why do you think little of the stimulus has been paid out? He’s waiting for when HE needs it. Those grads will then feel so grateful (and so terrified of being caught not voting for the right candidate – remember the changes to union vote from secret to public?) that they will then know who their Daddy truly is.

More people in this world operate responding to their fears than those who refuse to cave on principle and suffer the resulting consequences.

This is a slow-motion coup…just like Venezuela’s.

Jul 2, 2009 - 1:34 pm 81. Mongoose:

RCM: you got that right.

Jul 2, 2009 - 2:00 pm 82. no mo uro:

Whiskey, you’re about the only one besides me on this forum who gets it about retribution returning the center/right/libertarian part of our society to power.

It’s unsavory, it isn’t what we would want in a perfect world, but as you and I understand, IT’S THE ONLY THING THAT WILL WORK!

Jul 2, 2009 - 2:13 pm 83. Delayna D.:

What we’re facing isn’t new. It’s older than the Pyramids. A bunch of clowns think they’re better than us and want to make us their slaves. They might win, but we don’t have to lie down and take it. The key is to organize ourselves around what we have in common. Can we all agree on *Freedom*?

I can’t draw worth a flip, but if anyone wants to use this image:

http://s947.photobucket.com/albums/ad318/Delayna_D/?action=view&current=torch.jpg

to help promote FREEDOM, please do, and thank you very much.

Buddy: I get a leg tingle seeing all the Revolutionary War stuff coming out. Who would’ve thought New Yorkers would have it in ‘em?

Jul 2, 2009 - 2:17 pm 84. Marcus Aurelius:

No need to get down into the nitty-gritty details on the hows of how cap-n-trade will really cripple our economy lets skip all of that and show green bread & soup lines.

Jul 2, 2009 - 2:17 pm 85. RCM:

47. Lifeofthemind:
“Once you have sacrificed your virtue so that you can hold onto power then how can you achieve the good for your people that you sincerely desired when seeking power in the first place?”

Once you have “sacrificed your virtue,” you no longer care?

Jul 2, 2009 - 2:27 pm 86. bigroy:

Another take. Free market and competition and profit motive folks say – bring it on. We love this program. We can make huge profits and pay it back in dividends to the pension holders and unions. The Dems would just go away rather than admit they have created a huge windfall for those evil non believers.

Jul 2, 2009 - 2:33 pm 87. RCM:

66. RWE:
“Thomas Friedman recently explained on Meet the
Press: “If climate change is a hoax, it’s the greatest [he means
best, not biggest] hoax ever perpetrated on the United States of
America. Because everything we would do to get ready for climate
change, to build this new green industry, would make us
more respected, more entrepreneurial, more competitive, more
healthy as a country.”

Sounds like a French politician’s justification for the Maginot Line.

Jul 2, 2009 - 3:13 pm 88. Cetera:

58/RR

I think that by and large the majority do not get it. I would also argue that they are waking up and becoming aware faster than any would have ever suspected. Will it be in time? Will it make a difference?

The potential of the populace is still there. We haven’t had to make a stand in so long, we’ve forgotten that we’re able. Those muscles are atrophied. We are even losing the stories of those who have gone before us who did make a stand.

I think for too long there has been too little done in education of critical thinking, and too much reliance upon emotion by our educators passing this on to the pupils. Whiskey will be happy to take his theories to a whole new level with the realization that most teachers in grade school through high school are women. The higher you go, the more men creep in, especially in high school, but women make up a disproportionate number of educators.

However, a revival is coming. I do not hold out any hope that we will win this battle. I believe an economic and societal collapse is coming. I believe wars will follow, and many innocents will be lost. I don’t know that we can change that any longer. I think we are already too late.

What comes after, however? The future is not yet set. Perhaps we’ll be sold the idea that things are actually better this way. New figures will be brought out showing we actually have more to eat, and the old horses who remember differently will be taken away in the cart to be made into glue (Animal Farm, George Orwill).

Perhaps, though, we can still turn this around, and have the greatest comeback the world has ever seen. Should we pull this off, and we just may, the world could be a much better place.

I’ve been rereading some of my Robert Heinlein books. His ideas and political philosophy in both “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” and “Starship Troopers” are amazingly insightful, accurate, and pertinent to today.

49/John Work

See Heinlein’s works. TANSTAAFL – There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.

1. Something given has no value. Franchise must be earned by sacrifice for the country, or it will be abused. Without voluntary service in the military to potentially risk everything for the safety of your country and your comrades, voting should not be allowed.

2. Checks and balances. When Congress goes to work, they still expect to actually work. Work results in more laws passed, and by the simple fact of human nature, not all of them can be good ones. A check should be made not in veto power, but power of removal.

One house of congress passes a law, requiring 2/3 majority to pass. If a law cannot meet the wisdom and judgment of 2/3rds, then it can’t be that great of a law.

One house revokes existing laws, requiring a 1/3 majority to be repealed. If any law can be agreed upon by 1/3 of the house that its not good, then it probably isn’t worth it.

3. Public hangings. Nothing holds a public’s attention as the public final punishment of those who commit capital offenses. It has a long history behind it, it certainly acts to dissuade others from pursuing crimes, and gives a very powerful message that the authorities are serious. Hang all traitors and let them hang in public for several days. Include the Bernie Madoffs and those who steal from the public funds.

4. Strict term limits. Don’t let corruption take root in any one individual.

5. Enforce “service” from public servants. They must not be exempt from any law they pass. They must send their children to public schools, not private schools. They must not have separate benefits packages, but instead receive only what the public receives. And their salaries should be only what the average individual receives.

Jul 2, 2009 - 3:13 pm 89. dtmack:

77 RCM

“Obama has already thought about what will happen to all those newbie’s coming out of college without jobs: he’s going to give them government jobs at lucrative salaries; with money that he stole from you and me in the last six months. Why do you think little of the stimulus has been paid out?”

I think the stimulus money is slow for a simple reason – the government is so bloated that it can’t even do the one thing it’s good at (passing out money) efficiently. If your supposition is true then Obama is trying to perform Brain Surgery with an Ax. Not gonna work, but they may just be stupid enough to believe they can pull it off.

O is a second rate community organizer, nothing more. He may actually believe that he has control of events, and can pull something like this off, but in fact events have control of him (as well as the rest of us). Things are going to get worse, people are going to lose jobs in record numbers, and the Government is going to be powerless to do much about it. We ate our seed corn years ago, and we’re borrowing other peoples now. There’s nothing to fall back on, really.

People are going to realize this with a vengence in the near future, and when they do the left will be held responsible. These idiots will be booted out so quickly their head will spin. I can hope that there will be some political movement that can pick up the slack, but I don’t see it on the horizon now. Well, one thing at a time.

Jul 2, 2009 - 3:31 pm 90. peterike:

It might ultimately all be about jobs. We’re pushing 10% unemployment now, with much more to come. You notice how in the past, the unemployment reports from the MSM would always chime in with, “while unemployment is x%, unemployment in the African-American community is x+y%.” They’d always drop that, to stick it to The Man.

Have you heard anything about black unemployment since the Messiah arrived? Nope. Not a word. Yet black unemployment is around 15%. It’s over 16% for black males. And for black youth? A stunning 45%. So how’s that savior thing working out for you?

The numbers will move inexorably higher. The more Obama passes his agenda, the worse things will get. If the Chinese decide to cut off the oxygen supply of bond purchases, it will get very ugly, very fast. People with no jobs have a lot less to lose, and they get radicalized really fast.

Ultimately, I think we need a real economic disaster to open people’s eyes. If we mix that in with some kind of terrorist strike on American soil, then we’re putting together a recipe for revolution. Or perhaps we should call it what it should be called, The Second American War of Independence.

Eric von Kuehnelt-Leddihn made the point that the “Revolutionary” war was not a revolution at all. Indeed, that term is a figment of Leftist romantic imagination. It is much more properly called the War of Independence.

We need another. To keep with the current zeitgeist, perhaps we should label it Independence 2.0.

Let’s roll.

Jul 2, 2009 - 3:49 pm 91. Cannoneer No. 4:

“A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.”

There is much pissing and moaning on this thread about the dearth of leadership on “our” side.

Lead yourselves.

Figure out who is included on “your” side, what they stand for, what you’ll stand for, what you won’t tolerate, what you are willing to do about the intolerable.

Are you as fanatically devoted to keeping what you have as those who aim to relieve you of it are to redistributing it?

If The Belmont Club is ever to become an online “tactics session” site where people share experiences about what they are doing to resist tyranny, redistribution of their wealth, statist intrusion into their business, and other politically incorrect activities it will have to migrate from the blogosphere and Pajamas Media to a password protected forum, with moderators and a vetting process for members. CALL it the Center for Cultural Revolutionary Lessons Learned.

I’d like to see millions of former “conservatives” get radicalized and energized as Cultural Revolutionaries who aim to misbehave and make life miserable for those who presume to rule us without our consent.

Jul 2, 2009 - 4:36 pm 92. blert:

The War for Independence is well described as a Reactionary War.

Adams & Co wanted to GO BACK to the politics of the pre- Seven Years War.

It took a full season of fighting for independent minded colonials to realize that everything had changed.

Jul 2, 2009 - 5:04 pm 93. Joshua:

peterike, #87: Ultimately, I think we need a real economic disaster to open people’s eyes. If we mix that in with some kind of terrorist strike on American soil, then we’re putting together a recipe for revolution. Or perhaps we should call it what it should be called, The Second American War of Independence.

Eric von Kuehnelt-Leddihn made the point that the “Revolutionary” war was not a revolution at all. Indeed, that term is a figment of Leftist romantic imagination. It is much more properly called the War of Independence.

That’s because we were a colony of another nation at the time the war began. This time around if we have that sort of war, it would be against our own government and it would properly be called a revolution. The First American Revolution, if you will.

Which brings me to my obligatory caveat, which I’ve made here before, that revolutions in many other nation-states, notably England (under Oliver Cromwell), France (Robespierre) and Russia (Ulyanov, aka Lenin), no matter how well-intentioned, turned out to be a “cure” much worse than the disease. Furthermore, in light of how most other nations have responded to the deposing of the president of Honduras, any new government arising from a successful First American Revolution can expect to become an instant international pariah, especially if it can’t or won’t make good on the old regime’s massive debts.

In other words, be very, very careful what you wish for.

Jul 2, 2009 - 5:43 pm 94. Cannoneer No. 4:

The camps are here. Eventually people will fill them. But we will not go. And eventually the Enemy will regret his greed.

Jul 2, 2009 - 5:55 pm 95. WillDoMathForFood:

Sigh. I used to like Amy Smart as an actress. I feel a little like Diogenes, except that I’m looking for a pretty girl who isn’t a complete political airhead. If I’m not careful, I may start becoming a follower of Whiskey.

Jul 2, 2009 - 6:49 pm 96. Lifeofthemind:

WillDoMathForFood,
Is that better or worse than becoming a follower of Gin?

Jul 2, 2009 - 7:45 pm 97. WillDoMathForFood:

LOTM @ 93: Gosh, I’m not sure. Perhaps I should just become a follower of Beer, it may be cheaper. I think I need to do some serious experimentation.

Jul 2, 2009 - 7:52 pm 98. Lifeofthemind:

WDMFF,
You are stressed, I suggest that you take a tour of the Highlands, Glencadam, Glengoyne, Glenmorangie and Glenfiddich are a good start.

Jul 2, 2009 - 8:04 pm 99. Skookumchuk:

Joshua @90. “…any new government arising from a successful First American Revolution can expect to become an instant international pariah, especially if it can’t or won’t make good on the old regime’s massive debts. In other words, be very, very careful what you wish for.”

Absolutely. Very risky and beyond the comprehension of most Americans. Though a fundamental change (as opposed to a “revolution”) could work if the old regime were already a pariah due to its inability to handle debt and the new promised something better. It could be a situation where the US citizenry and the world’s industrial powers had a complementary strategy. Stranger things have happened.

Jul 2, 2009 - 10:13 pm 100. Robohobo:

peterike – “If we mix that in with some kind of terrorist strike on American soil, then we’re putting together a recipe for revolution.”

My dread is that the upcoming NorK launch on the 4th will be a functioning ICBM that hits Honolulu, LA, SF or Seattle. Say that happened. What do you think The Won would do?

The functions of the internal US society are changing as I write. The nature of those changes are still unclear and how they will work out but like Mencken said, we are going to get what we wished for, good and hard.

Jul 2, 2009 - 10:27 pm 101. buddy larsen:

Hitler launched WWII years before his generals were ready, in great part because his economic miracle –by which he had risen to such power –was ‘going under’. The bond vigilates of 30s Europe had launched on his deficit spending and he needed to bust up the system fast. Related, the Bolsheviks immediately upon gaining power reneged on all the Czar’s bond debt. No one would know the name Robespierre had not the King’s treasury gone bust (partly due to lending to the new USA’s war of independence). Hard to tell which is cart and which is horse, but revolution and national debt are sure ’nuff in harness to one another.

Jul 2, 2009 - 10:32 pm 102. buddy larsen:

What if the right and the left both revolt at the same time?

And here’s a pointed Nyquist column from one year ago: What the Founding Fathers Would Say

Jul 2, 2009 - 10:56 pm 103. buddy larsen:

Nyquist’s column –from before the September Panic and before the election and before the financial outrages of 2009, is in response, he intimates, to hot messages of revolution from his readers. Already, even then. One wonders what state they must be in by now. At any rate, the column concludes thus (below), and one can’t help but note, as one settles back in comfortable appreciation of George Washington’s 1796 sentiments, that these had not precisely been his 1776 sentiments at all. If questioned on the point, he no doubt would’ve answered that the two times had been vastly different in the requirements of action. And thus the horns of our present dilemma, on every question lately it seems, the same dilemma, “Where are we right now? How serious is this?” Or in the frame of the two dates, “Is it 1776 or is it 1796?”

anyway, the essay concludes:

In a book titled Omnipotent Government, written at a time when totalitarian socialism had overrun Europe, Ludwig von Mises asked: “Who is responsible for the deplorable events of the last decades?” According to Mises, “Almost all the fathers of socialism were members of the upper middle class or of the professions.”

That same analysis holds for the United States, as well. “It is not true,” wrote Mises, “that the dangers to the maintenance of peace, democracy, freedom, and capitalism are a result of a ‘revolt of the masses.’ They are an achievement of scholars and intellectuals, of sons of the well-to-do, of writers and artists pampered by the best society.” It seems that the socialist revolution of our time is born out of bourgeois affluence. Therefore, the greatest affluence promises the greatest of all revolutions.

In his Farewell Address, President George Washington warned: “Towards the preservation of your Government and the permanency of your present happy state, it is requisite … that you resist with care the spirit of innovation upon its principles however specious the pretexts.” Those who would overthrow the Constitution may form a party, announcing their good intentions. But beware party spirit, continued Washington: “It serves always to distract the public councils, and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and will of one country, are subjected to the policy and will of another.”

(close quote)

Jul 2, 2009 - 11:44 pm 104. Whitehall:

The key development will be pain. The various policies and programs of the Obama/Democrat Administration ALL result, sooner or later, in pain for the bulk of our citizens.

Pain concentrates the mind. Recent affluence and lack of mortal enemy since the collapse of the USSR has allowed all sorts of mental aberations and distractions. Pain will strip these away and focus voters on self-preservation.

So far, Obama has left himself exposed to the wrath of the pained. He has until November 2010 to block retribution via the ballot.

Frankly, the recent events have me wondering if there is not some hidden cabal pushing the US to ruin.

Even if not, it would be useful to explain it as so. In other words, find a scapegoat as an alternate hate-receptacle.

Once the pain clarifies the reality of the bad policies, people like Amy Smart will be like Jean-Paul Sartre following the Hungarian Uprising of 1956.

Jul 2, 2009 - 11:56 pm 105. buddy larsen:

http://www.reason.com/news/show/134530.html

“Please, don’t just do something; stand there!”

Yes, we hear them every day, sneering back at us “Cut taxes, cut spending, that’s all you people ever think about!”

And “The tired old ideas of the past, that’s all you people ever talk about!”

To which not one of our pundits of the right ever seems to have the presence of mind to ask, “Could that be because we seem to have had a pretty damn decent & satisfied (and honorable) ‘past’?”

Jul 3, 2009 - 12:17 am 106. Gaffe Prices:

#13@ what is occupation:

“7. Contrarian:
Hey, What is Occupation, what I want to know is “What would John Galt do?”

Let the democrats destroy the system….

Let the Looters have the pie… Let the Producers pull back….

I never realized what a forced exile John Galt [has been] was forced into: as of now, it is such as it is pending [the] force of [the] “Law™ (ok, ok I used some form of ‘force’ three times already, so sue me); it appeared to be voluntary in the book.

OT: Speaking of the “Law” vis a vis the APORN census, As you might have heard, they plan on asking questions above and beyond “what is your name, and how many folks live here?”

I think all this is a fifth amendment issue, because if the federal govt is involved, it is “capital” in nature.

“No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, [... ] ; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

“I decline to answer question(s) of this nature based on my rights under Fifth Amendment Protections.”

…Should be the answer to all their questions, even name and address: since they (the fed) already knows my name and address.

Recently, I walked out through the front door of my house, to see some gummit geek, walking up toward my doorstep with some blackberry type thingy, (and because I caught him in the act, he was farced to…), he politely explained that he was from the census, and that his blackberry thingy was a, some device that transmitted info to a “GPS”, like it was the ‘Gee golly, gee whizz’iest thing from the *new* government crap office. and that that was all he needed today and he just wanted me to know what it was he was doing here today…

So, extra tax revenue has been spent, so this bot can transmit data, (such as, “this is another house in the neighborhood, at such and such address…” (stuff they already have on record). I mean, its not a crack house, for pete’s sake.

He even looked up at the sky when he pushed the “send” button, as though this were face to face, eyeball to eyeball communication. (sheesh!)

Jul 3, 2009 - 7:02 am 107. The Old Guy:

Policy is great, and needed, but I think you will have better luck making fun of the left. Iowahawk shows how its done here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAqPMJFaEdY&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fpajamasmedia%2Ecom%2Finstapundit%2F&feature=player_embedded

You need to make it socially unacceptable to be associated with the Left.

Jul 3, 2009 - 8:42 am 108. buckets:

We’re not going to see the Dems do anything as outright as what’s been happening in Iran/Honduras. It will be softer, more subtle, and almost unnoticeable. Almost. Because messages will be sent to those who aren’t on board with the way things work now. IRS audits, DOJ investigations, the still-powerful MSM destroying lives and reputations, doling out of taxpayer money to banks/business/unions who fall in line, special legislative provisions or IRC tax breaks – those are the 21st century weapons that will be used to fight this battle.

Add in 50% or so of the people and businesses in the U.S. now being dependent on State handouts, and the situation seems more grim.

We are living in interesting times.

Jul 3, 2009 - 9:50 am 109. Gaffe Prices:

Count de Monay: “Your Majesty, the peasants are revolting.”

Louis XVI: “You’re telling me; they stink on Ice!”

Jul 3, 2009 - 2:59 pm 110. Gaffe Prices:

One of 35 democrat party reps voting against Markey/Waxman was Dennich Kuchinic. because the bill could not “be made more draconian, more intrusive, more punitive.”

Oh well, at least the guy is nothing if not consistent, that’s why I voted for him in last years primaries, since the McCain nomination was a done deal by then.

What we really need is a Bill honoring cosmetic surgery, to be sponsored from California and be named the Jackson/Waxman Bill.

Answer to #3, go to tea party I guess.

Jul 3, 2009 - 3:11 pm 111. buddy larsen:

Re wax-man, at the far other end of the ‘looks’ scale, Sarah Palin exited the MSM bullseye today, and watching her announcment, i couldn’t but notice, good lord amighty, that is one good-lookin’ woman.

Jul 3, 2009 - 4:06 pm 112. RCM:

Buddy: Bingo, and er, Amen!

Jul 3, 2009 - 4:25 pm 113. Bob Smith:

Why the hard-on for “smart grids”? The only way they can “tell me how to reduce energy consumption and save money” is if they force me to reduce energy consumption. I further assume I’m not actually saving money, because proponents of “smart grids” (like every leftist agenda item) always forget to mention capital costs in their measure of “money saved”.

Jul 3, 2009 - 8:01 pm 114. Jay:

Not all young women are hip even in large cities. most of my Hispanic students have boyfriends and want to get married and raise a family. They want to get an education to increase their standard of living. Some will get government jobs but only a small minority have the hate that many blacks have towards whites.
Once their income goes down and they learn how the fat cats of “races” in the political game are in fat city using corrupt practices as the tax farmers in the Louis 6 regime flourished then the political game will get tougher for the DC rich gangs.
Feel good is fine during fat city times.

Jul 3, 2009 - 11:12 pm 115. tomw:

76. RWE: Waxman’s Malarky

I have been calling it “Waxy-Malarky”, getting rid of that infamous waxy buildup that you don’t believe in…
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105 Buddy Larsen:
And “The tired old ideas of the past, that’s all you people ever talk about!”

AND the One’s ideas from the time of FDR are not ‘tired old ideas of the past’? Give me a break.

tom

Jul 4, 2009 - 11:43 am 116. buddy larsen:

i hear ya, tomw –i hear ya.

Jul 5, 2009 - 4:25 pm

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