51 Comments

1. whiskey:

Obama is not stupid. He’s on the other side. As for Brown, he’s running a feminized country wanting deeply to surrender to anyone. To be commanded. Ruled. Conquered. That should not shock anyone. Could you imagine say, Trotsky or Stalin or any of the old Bolsheviks saying “let’s hold hands, give peace a chance, sing, and get rid of our most powerful weapons.”

Please.

Dobbs chose to fight and die because as a man he knew that was the choice anyway. He’d die fighting or surrendering. Might as well die fighting. For a woman, surrender has other possibilities. She might not in fact die if she’s lucky, is pretty, and can keep her wits about her. The 1985 movie Flesh+Blood with Rutger Hauer and Jennifer Jason Leigh has another take on that choice. Surrender can have it’s own possibilities.

Jul 9, 2009 - 11:06 pm 2. Chiral:

I’ll go see that movie right away, since all of art, history, and geopolitics somehow connects to your personal failings with women.

Jul 9, 2009 - 11:15 pm 3. Morton Doodslag:

In Obama’s psychotic cosmology we aren’t the good guys, and the world’s nuke proliferating Muslim Nazis (whether in Pakistan, Syria, or Iran) or NoKo Psycho-Stalinists are certainly not the bad guys.

Apparently according to West-loathing Obama, those Muslim Nazi scum, or the NoKo variety are only ‘misbehaving’, in a sense. And their misbehavior isn’t due to any inimical ideology pitted against our own, but purely in reaction to our terribleness. If we just stop being terrible (take your pick; lousy white racist capitalist pigs stinkin’ up the planet; gun totin’ Christian Zionist xenophobe cowards), then those poor desperados in Korea or across the expasive sewer of Islam wouldn’t be forced to make those nasty nuclear bombs or act out by chopping heads or flying planes into buildings and stuff. It’s all our fault.

We have never had a more malignant or dangerous imposter in the White House. I have never been in more dread for my nation or the world.

Jul 9, 2009 - 11:16 pm 4. JMH:

Odd that leftist con-men like Obama and Brown fall so easily for other cons. “It takes one to know one” would seem to be inoperable here.

Or perhaps they’re just under the mistaken belief that they’re all part of the same con and can’t believe someone else would make a mark of out them.

Jul 9, 2009 - 11:20 pm 5. Dave the Kapampangan:

The best salesmen are those who can lie to themselves well. And half believing their own propaganda also makes them the easiest marks.

Nanny Obananarama says: “Anything good or bad that happens in the world is the fault of America. If you want the evil to disappear in North Korea or Iran, you have to address the root cause: America.”

Jul 9, 2009 - 11:31 pm 6. wretchard:

One of the classic errors in analysis is known as “mirror imaging”; which is the mistake of predicting enemy behavior on the basis of what we would do in his place. If Kim Jong Il were a Briton fair and true, Gordon Brown’s offer might make some sense. I’ll put away my gun old chap, if you’ll put away yours. Fair play and all that, old fruit. Unfortunately, the adversaries are asymmetrical. So I’m not sure Gordon Brown’s offer will have the desired effect.

In a nod to Whiskey, maybe many of the misunderstandings between men and women are caused by a domestic version of mirror-imaging. It is natural, though come to think of it, irrational to imagine that women think like men and vice versa. Therefore a thing to a man is not the same thing for a woman; and often a word uttered by one is heard completely differently by the other. Neither means anything bad by it, but the differences are sufficient to cause misunderstandings. I think we all have stories that illustrate the point. Back in the day I had the bad habit of giving young ladies I met “practical” gifts like sets of socket wrenches and hammers on the grounds that it would be what I would want for my birthday. That turned out to be a bad idea. But I learned. And one of the things I discovered was that giving a lady a Stanley drop-forged chrome alloy steel claw hammer was not always a welcome present.

Jul 9, 2009 - 11:33 pm 7. Elroy Jetson:

Wretchard:
You were not the problem, she was. What gal wouldn’t be floored by receiving a pimped-out hammer?
I did the same thing, except my clunker was a gift certificate to a sporting goods store so she could buy herself a new softball mit. Nothing says “I love you” like a gift with the amount spent typed on the present. Ouch!
You were right to point out the observation Whiskey made about negotiating with your enemies. It’s so easy to do, so wrong to do it, yet you don’t realize how wrong it is to try to make your adversary an offer that you couldn’t refuse.

Jul 9, 2009 - 11:53 pm 8. Langley:

JMH @ 4

“Or perhaps they’re just under the mistaken belief that they’re all part of the same con and can’t believe someone else would make a mark of out them.”

Yes – like their followers they think that the cons are lying to everyone BUT them.

http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2009/05/30/disillusion/

Jul 9, 2009 - 11:58 pm 9. PA Cat:

Wretchard, I think the matter of “practical” gifts not being received in the spirit intended by the donor applies to different age groups as much as (maybe even more than) different genders. What kid hasn’t been totally bummed out by getting clothes for their birthday from the adults in the family rather than toys or video games or a new electronic gadget? Problems with mirror imaging crop up all over the place, not just between men and women.

Jul 10, 2009 - 12:20 am 10. Karen Yvonne:

Many years ago my husband gave me a wok for a birthday gift. Needless to say I was underwhelmed. But I guess he deserves some credit. After all, he couldn’t have been thinking, “What would I like?”

Obama is not stupid. He’s on the other side.

Here I can agree 100% with Whiskey. It’s too pathetic. And what’s worse, he’s got legions of supportive comrades backing him up. Maybe when I get around to reading the threads on the 0’s poll numbers I’ll feel better but I doubt it. The numbers are not sinking fast enough for me. If Obama’s not stupid, millions of Americans can’t be that stupid either. They’re not stupid, just, um, different. Millions of Americans do not have the character, worldview or value systems necessary to support liberty. The politics of redistribution and America as global bad guy are right on to millions of our fellow Americans.

Jul 10, 2009 - 12:27 am 11. Karen Yvonne:

It is vain to summon a people who have been rendered so dependent on the central power to choose from time to time the representatives of that power; this rare and brief exercise of their free choice, however important it may be, will not prevent them from gradually losing the faculties of thinking, feeling, and acting for themselves, and thus gradually falling below the level of humanity.
–De Tocqueville, Democracy in America

I think that might just be how we ended up with a might-as-well-be-Muslim president and demoncrat iron grip on power in the first place. How much more encumbered by the long arm of government will we all be by the time the next election rolls around?

Jul 10, 2009 - 12:44 am 12. Boiled Cabbage:

The global economic collapse we are in seems to be of a degree similar to the 1930s. If so, we can expect international relations to fragment, as they did in the 30s, and some state, unknown as yet but possibly Russia, to start making real trouble.

Jul 10, 2009 - 1:18 am 13. TonyB:

Still, this time next year Brown will be gone like a bad dream.

Jul 10, 2009 - 1:29 am 14. weSwinger:

Still, that has to be one of the funniest bits in movie history. “I don’t got to show you no stinking badges!” We need all the grim gallows humor we can muster, because sure enough, some Acorn is going to be coming to a neighborhood near us to set up personal firearms collection points. I wonder what kind of badge he’ll wear. . .

Jul 10, 2009 - 2:07 am 15. Leo Linbeck III:

To some he’s the source of much glamor
To others, a commie with’a stammer

But to Mahmood and Kim
Barack seems a bit dim

When he offers a drop-forged steel claw hammer.

— —

L3

Jul 10, 2009 - 2:51 am 16. ADE:

W
What sort of assurances are sufficient?

What if the assurances are required, not from Korea, but from your own electorate. Assurances that your electorate will accept the downside of its dreams, and you know the electorate has no idea of what that downside is?

Yes, your electorate, the people who got you to the White House. Now here’s the rub. This is the group you have to take with you, what GWB failed to do.

If your electorate wants to drop its knickers for Korea, but all the facts from your advisors tell you that all Koreans have AIDS, how do you ensure that your electorate will vote you in next time after the inevitable denoument?

Ans: Lead the electorate to work this out for itself – in the Whiskey and your toolset analogy, stop giving your electorate the gifts that you think they want.

How? Make nice. If it works, you’re a hero. When it fails, repudiation will unite the electorate against the unappreciative.

I’ll write Obama’s next election theme: “America, I prostituted you for the greater good of humanity, and this is how they treated you. I commit this nation to the restoration of fundamental American values”.

Generating an external hate figure is not the sole perogative of Korea/Iran/Islam…

I assure you,

ADE

Jul 10, 2009 - 2:58 am 17. Salt Lick:

One of the classic errors in analysis is known as “mirror imaging”; which is the mistake of predicting enemy behavior on the basis of what we would do in his place.

Sounds like our problem begins at rock-bottom basic — which image does Barry Hussein Obama see in the mirror?

Jul 10, 2009 - 3:55 am 18. Lifeofthemind:

Obama may well be on the other side but Gordon Brown is a different and possibly more troubling case. Obama is either actively working to empower islamists and totalitarians because he identifies with them or he really is a post judeo-christian civilization one worlder who is so badly educated and narcissistic that he simply does not have any conception of what the consequences of his actions will be. Obama is an outsider and at best treats the nation he is responsible for with the detached interest that a spoiled child would treat a neglected pet.

Brown comes from within a more established community of thought. Perhaps our friends from across the pond can give us more information regarding his motives. There is a long standing pacifist strain within the Church of Scotland, it has been opposed to nuclear weapons for decades. The Reformation gave rise to the Whig, then the Liberal and ultimately the Labour Party in England and in Scotland the Liberals dominated in the earlier periods and Labour more recently until the rise of the Scottish Nationalists. With the decline of the Unionist-Conservatives in Scotland there is essentially no right of center perspective in the political market. Therefor it is possible for a man like Brown to propose policies that may seem irrational to an outsider or at best appear to be evidence of a Free Rider effect that marks most of Nato without his being intentionally antagonistic to the community he represents.

The religious and political forces that shaped Brown’s politics are also present in America. The left wing of the Democratic Party draws from a pacifist evangelical tradition. My contention here is that Brown is a more authentic if misguided representative of that tradition in the UK and that Obama is part of a movement that cynically manipulates that tradition to gain power and weaken its host community.

Therefor Brown troubles me because he is less of an outsider. For comparison consider a conversation I had the other day. My contention is that the worst thing that ever happened to New York City was not the attack on 9-11 but rather was the destruction of Pennsylvania Station in the 1960s. The attacks of 9-11 were carried out by foreign barbarians. The destruction of Penn Station we did to ourselves.

It is my belief that we should deal with Obama by resolutely rejecting him and denying any connection between him and our civilization. Large billboards should be erected with his image and the message “For Shame, How Could You?”

Jul 10, 2009 - 4:43 am 19. blogstrop:

#14 – depending on the neighbourhood, maybe a little red flower.

Jul 10, 2009 - 4:47 am 20. Thrasymachus:

Nothing Obama does needs to be explained by the fact he’s a Muslim, or some kind of foreign agent- although he could be. But the simpler and more obvious explanation is his beliefs come from Christian pacifist collectivism, in his case a Midwestern strain he got from his grandparents. (His maternal grandfather expressed it through Communism but it is the same thing.) It’s a philosophy found more in the northern tier of states, but not exclusively- Jimmy Carter was a Southern Baptist from Georgia, and there’s no arguing he was a secret Muslim.

Why does it surprise conservatives that this old, deep-rooted, and very American philosophy has many followers in the US? Conservatives make the mistake of thinking the US is a conservative, or even center right, country. It’s not. It’s a fairly liberal country where the people turn to conservatives only after liberals have screwed things up pretty badly.

Jul 10, 2009 - 8:10 am 21. Lifeofthemind:

Thrasymachus,
We differ in emphasis and proportions not in the basic recipe.
For me the influence of Soros and the Chinese combine with Obama’s overseas connections, both temporal and emotional (the book is titled “Dreams of My Father”) to convince me that he has no emotional attachment to America. To him we are merely a laboratory or a stage that his ego plays on. As I say in my third paragraph above the native soil is there in America to grow this crop. In my mind Brown is less of an alien to his home then Obama is. Both may prove to be destructive and the distinction may be without a difference.

BTW, on my blog I linked to a pic of old Penn Station, lost glory.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Penn_Station1.jpg

Jul 10, 2009 - 8:37 am 22. steeple:

T 20, my colleagues and I were having this debate yesterday and your comment that “It’s a fairly liberal country where the people turn to conservatives only after liberals have screwed things up pretty badly.” perfectly sums up the challenge to us Conservatives.

Can a US Conservative movement ever be anything more than the equivalent of the Red Cross ambulance screaming up to the scene of the lastest liberal trainwreck?

Given that humans tend to screw up prosperity, it’s going to be a tough sell to all of those on the liberal side who couldn’t tell you who wrote Eisenhower’s autobiography.

Jul 10, 2009 - 8:52 am 23. RWE:

Can anyone verify the claim that Pres G. W. Bush took our nuclear arsenal down to 2000 weapons from the 8000 plus we had when he entered office?

And of course Reagan and G.H.W. Bush were responsible for the largest armament reductions since WWII, both conventional and nuclear.

I howled with laughter several years back when a U.N. official complained that the militaries of the world had been so reduced that they could no longer find enough troops to handle all of the peacekeeping missions they wanted to do.

But Reagan and Bush’s approach to arms reduction was not the oft quoted “trust but verify” – it was “beat them and dismantle them.”

Then Slick Willie came along, the great peacenik, and all our arms control efforts went down the tubes.

Jul 10, 2009 - 9:45 am 24. Jim Nicholas:

Mirror-imaging and the gift of the hammer.

In the absence of other sources of information or past learning experiences (which, certainly, we should try to acquire) mirror imaging is the only basis of prediction we have about what others want. Therefore, it is what we will act on.

An experience of my own: Around the time that each of my four children went to college, I gave them a tool box filled with tools needed for general household tasks. Thirty to thirty-five years later, each of them (two boys and two girls) still has the box of tools, now well used.

Best wishes,

Jim

Jul 10, 2009 - 10:05 am 25. HoJohn:

RE: “…ACORN is going to be coming to a neighborhood near us to set up personal firearms collection points.”

I look forward to that day, and will be happy to comply. I shall give them my firearms.

Ammunition first.

Jul 10, 2009 - 10:12 am 26. Roderick Reilly:

How insensible and clueless are the western world’s leaders to think that offering to reduce one’s very substantial nuclear arsenal will induce a rogue state to give up its attempts to build its first one?

Why is it that man-on-the-street common sense is considered too gauche for the higher strata of society?

Why am I bothering to ask rhetorical questions here, since you are the choir? And by the way, where did I put my bourbon and gingerale, and, should I take up cigars?

Jul 10, 2009 - 10:16 am 27. dan:

i’m beginning to believe more and more in the 1930s parallels, and have the susipicion that someone, some Axis of powers, is attempting to recreate the basic sentiment that grew and grew throughout that decade: “war is inevitable.”

on this i’m curious for input: i’ve read both – that people thought “war was inevitable” and “war is far away.” probably it is both on a useless and more precise level, but it is my understanding that all the crises and wars of the 1930s did indeed engender the “war is inevitable” feeling.

i would think that an aggressor would realize that the only way to provoke his enemy into tipping his hand, and to become the first mover, and therefore the one to sin against international decency, is first to create a climate of impending crisis and actual crisis such that people feel that, first of all, “war is inevitable.”

of course, the Axis can then wail about aggressors, “fascists,” thereby establishing the narrative that will spring readily to millions of minds: war is evil, whomsoever breaks the public peace is the evil aggressor – even though “war is inevitable.”

in the 30s we had part orchestration, part good fortune: the rise of hitler made possible by the excesses of the socialists, the soviet help for the wehrmacht, the crucial communist refusal to vote with the social democrats; in the east, good fortune: japan takes china in ‘31-’36, but soviet defeat japan in ‘39. in ‘36, Spain. in ‘36 the Ruhr, Rhineland. Austria and Czechosolvakia. Some anti-colonial unrest.

But through all this, Depression.

Anyway, just a thought. Otherwise, it is difficlt to discern what the Sino-Russian strategy exactly is regarding their clients, North Korea and Iran-Syria-Hezbollah-Hamas. Nuclear arms, yes. but to what end? all this provocation by nasty crippled obnoxious little states – the one a floating gas can, the other a slave state. perhaps to start a war; but perhaps also to provoke USA into starting a war, against which Sino-Russia can credibly claim to be defending.

Who knows? But it sure seems like something wicked this way comes – the Latin American adventure, and Mexico’s deep destabilization. The sentiments elicited seem analogous to me. It’s like every government is a Leon Blum government. let us resign ourselves; war is inevitable. but who would be so wicked to cast the first stone? i shall do nothing – war is inevitable. but he who acts first, is evil. he who defeats the first actor – is good.

Jul 10, 2009 - 10:36 am 28. Mad Fiddler:

So, Steeple, who DID write Dwight Eisenhower’s autobiography?

I assume you mean there was a “ghostwriter.”

Hey, this isn’t one of those sneaky trick questions like “Who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb?”

Is it?

and, Hey! Nobody calls me a Lib!

Jul 10, 2009 - 12:43 pm 29. Mad Fiddler:

Magicians Penn and Teller have for years made it a part of their regular story to point out the political message that “sleight of hand” artists have been conveying to their audiences.

Essentially, magicians – even when they are not itinerant “street” performers – have been reminding people that they should not always believe the evidence of their own eyes; that it’s pretty easy for a deceiver to make you believe one thing is happening when in fact something entirely different is being done.

Decades back, we awakened to the realization that sociopaths are able to deceive the ultra-sophisticated PhD and MD clinical psychologists and psychiatrists of the prisons and parole boards, who honestly believe they can see into the depths of a man’s soul. Those credulous worthies have paroled many thousands of recidivist rapists, murderers, and child molesters back into society.

American society is particularly ready for fleecing these days. The Left have been laboring to make “Magical Thinking” the foundation of the present culture. People are given money for not working. People are registered to vote from prison and the grave. An unborn human being becomes an “un-differentiated bit of flesh” by changing definitions. Some people are given the full rights and protections of citizenship in spite of being aliens who have broken US law to enter and stay in the United States. The same rights are given to others in distant lands who have never set foot in the USA, but had the good fortune to be captured by U.S. military forces while trying to kill other folks for not being sufficiently respectful of Islamic Jihad.

Here’s a real good example of the art of “sleight of hand” as practiced by the Democrats. The following is a quote from Paul Greenburg’s Washington Times article published originally 18 March 2007:
“In March 1993, Bill Clinton’s newly sworn-in attorney general — Janet Reno — fired every single U.S. Attorney in the country, all 93, in the opening salvo of the Clinton Years. That administration never hesitated to reward loyal FOBs — Friends of Bill — whether the jobs were in the justice system or the White House travel office. ”

First, Greenburg’s article was in response to the idiotic and shameless attacks on Bush for the replacement of EIGHT federal prosecutors late in his presidency by Democrats who were fully aware of the Constitutional and Legal authority of each and every elected POTUS to appoint and replace Federal Prosecutors, who each serve at the pleasure of the President, regardless of party affiliation.

Secondly, the really important thing to remember about Clinton’s simultaneous firing of ALL NINETY THREE Federal Prosecutors is that it came in the middle of the 3-month extended crisis of the FBI-BATF Siege of the Branch Davidian Compound in Waco, Texas. That bloody exercise dominated the TV and Newspapers even months after the deaths of some 80 members of the group and four ATF agents.

Funny, the initial attempt by agents of the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms was in response to accusations that David Koresh had illegally modified automatic weapons in the compound. Those charges seem to have been accurate, but later, the Honorable Janet Reno laid the basis for the siege and assault on the compound by citing accusations that Koresh was accused of having sex with a number of underage girls among his followers.

Interestingly, it’s very difficult to determine the truth of the statutory rape charges when the witnesses and the accused rapist ARE ALL DEAD! Oh, well…

In all that chaos and carnage, the replacement of EVERY SINGLE FEDERAL PROSECUTOR, and the subsequent abandonment of every single ongoing investigation of Democratic Congressional Representatives in the House Banking Scandal went unreported, unnoticed, and unlamented.

Hey! Presto-Change-o!

So we wonders what deviltry Urkle and company are up to as they bobble and swap the cups on the green felt. While we’re trying to figure out which cup will have the ball, they’re picking our pockets right down to our skivvies.

Jul 10, 2009 - 2:02 pm 30. steeple:

Fiddler, you’re killing me! Focus on the auto in autobiography.

You’re points on sleight of hand are so right. Human brains are easily fooled by our own actions, more or less that of others who are trained to do so. A great example is the anchoring effect, where the brain just gets bewildered if it is not allowed to anchor to a constant.

Jul 10, 2009 - 2:15 pm 31. RWE:

MAd Fiddler #28 and #29:

Hillary Clinton said publically that it was Okay to fire ALL of the federal prosecutrors but NOT OKAY to fire just a few of them for cause. She said that. I heard her.

One of those that would have been on the list to be fired was a guy named FITZGERALD, who was not fired because it would have looked too bad since he was investigating Scooter Libby. And so we know now the why of his strange interest in Scooter, don’t we?

By the way, U.S Grant is not buried in Grant’s Tomb.

Jul 10, 2009 - 2:19 pm 32. blert:

Cause it’s not a tomb?

Jul 10, 2009 - 2:33 pm 33. Mad Fiddler:

This is so confusing.

Jul 10, 2009 - 5:30 pm 34. Mad Fiddler:

Responding to Wretchard’s title for this particular article “You first. No? Ok, me first.”

As Mark Steyn pointed out this week, it’s the Chinese Premier, scurrying away from the G8 meetings to respond to misbehaving Uigars.

In Steyn’s words, Hu’s on First.

“Who?”

“Yes. Hu.”

“What?”

“No, Hu.”

“Stop Saying That!”

“What?”

“NO! WHO!”

“Who what?”

(It could go on a long time.)

Jul 10, 2009 - 5:40 pm 35. RWE:

Pres U.S. Grant was named Ulysses with No Middle Initial. When he went to West Point they looked at his application and wondered what his middle name was. They decided that it must be his mother’s maiden name, a common practice in those days, which started with S. When he found he had been listed as U.S. Grant he decided that he liked it better and did not correct the error. He always hated the name Ulysses anway.

So U.S. Grant is not buried in Grant’s Tomb because that is not his real name.

So Grant is the most famous person NOT ACTUALLY to be named for his mother’s maiden name.

So who is most famous person to actually be named using his mother’s maiden name?

Jul 10, 2009 - 5:50 pm 36. Mad Fiddler:

This is beginning to bring to mind “Boy’s Life” magazine joke page back in 1961.

(That was the official magazine of the Boy Scouts of America, thank you very much!)

Jul 10, 2009 - 8:55 pm 37. WSL:

@35 RWE: Your explanations remind me of a common riddle we used when I was in high school 55+ years ago:

What weighs more? A pound of feathers or a pound of gold? Usual reply was that a pound is a pound so they both weigh the same. Wrong. Gold is measured in troy weight (12 oz = 1 lb) while feathers are measured in avoirdupois weight (16 oz = 1 lb). So, although feathers are lighter than gold, 1 pound of feathers is heavier than 1 pound of gold.

Jul 10, 2009 - 9:29 pm 38. Jay:

As I recall from reading a biography of Grant he was names Hiram Ulysses Grant. The West Point turkeys did change his name by mistake.
Halleck did not like Grant for some reason and did not want him back in the US Army. I think that he was looked down upon as a poor boy by the wealthier plebes.

Jul 10, 2009 - 10:52 pm 39. Niccolo:

@32. Blert:

Correct. It’s not a tomb, it’s an above ground interment.

A few more of those questions:

Q. Is it “Grant’s Tomb” or “Grants’ Tomb”?
A. “Grants’ Tomb”: Mrs. Grant is there also.

Q. “Ulysses S. Grant”?
A. Nope. Given name was “Hiram Ulysses Grant”. When he was promoted to General Officer rank and became entitled to have his monogram prominently stenciled on his camp furniture, he decided that “HUG” was . . . undignified. So it became “Ulysses S.”, hence “USG”.

Nonetheless, an exemplary man. Promoted to 5-star by the Congress, with the title of “Field Marshal”, he disdained it and remained “General Grant”. A tradition honored by Pershing, and in his time Eisenhower.

We may never see the like of those three again.

Jul 11, 2009 - 12:41 am 40. Gaffe Prices:

if that won’t cool the ice down a bit, why don’t we- not just offer- but set off our entire nuke-yee-lerr arsenals, in our own countries (Brit and U.S.) as a sign of our good intentions.

That ought to demonstrate to them we are negotiating in good faith.

Jul 11, 2009 - 2:00 am 41. Lifeofthemind:

Gaffe Prices
Sounds like Daffy Duck’s last act. He could only do it once.

Jul 11, 2009 - 5:48 am 42. buddy larsen:

The excellent way he treated the defeated enemy, from Lee at Appomattox on down to the general amnesty (’just let your soldiers go home’), and his disdain for the DC Radicals with their nooses, will live forever in the national story.

Jul 11, 2009 - 6:29 am 43. Tony:

What about this line from the Daily Mail?

Mr Obama’s proposal brings to an end eight years of U.S. resistance to new arms treaties. …

Here’s Spacewar, May 24, 2002: Bush, Putin Sign Nuclear Arms Treaty

Moscow (AFP) May 24, 2002
US President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a landmark nuclear disarmament treaty on Friday and hailed a new era in relations that the US leader said would lead to “incredible cooperation.”
The treaty, the first strategic arms reduction pact in nearly 10 years, obliges the United States and Russia to slash their nuclear arsenals by two-thirds to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads over the next decade, bringing them down to their lowest level ever.

Bush told his Russian host that the historic accord proved “that we are friends, that we are going to cast aside old doubts, old suspicions and welcome a new era in relations between your great country and our country.”

“I am confident that this sets the stage for incredible cooperation that we’ve never had before between our two countries,” Bush said after the two leaders signed the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty in the Kremlin’s ornate Andreyvsky Hall.

The nuclear arms treaty and a separate strategic partnership accord signed along with a series of other cooperation accords underscored the new relationswhip between the former Cold War rivals in the wake of the September 11 attacks.

Jul 11, 2009 - 9:33 am 44. Gaffe Prices:

Wasn’t the above treaty btwn President Bush and Vlad Putin ratified by the senate?

And if so, are we to presume that 0nabahamas *new* treaty will be rubber stamped a done deal because the congress is in democrat majority?

In 2002, Putin was in a weaker position: now he’s got western Europe dependent on his supply of energy, and the other hand on the dispensing lever.

Jul 11, 2009 - 9:52 am 45. Tony:

Maybe it’s just that history only lasts for ten years these days. Y’know, like the way all the Clinton policies and UN Security Council sanctions on Iraq during the ’90’s became Bush Lies after 9/11.

Jul 11, 2009 - 10:10 am 46. Kinuachdrach:

“war is inevitable.”

No — civil wars are inevitable. The real disputes these days are within countries, not between them. And the combination of ever more intrusive government with ever larger government debts must lead sooner or later to governmental breakdowns, which could very quickly become hot conflicts.

Jul 11, 2009 - 11:41 am 47. blert:

Those are called resets: hence the Rodham button.

Jul 11, 2009 - 7:03 pm 48. Ursus Maritimus:

Israel is suckered into carrying out an airstrike on Iran.

During the airstrike a Russian suitcase nuke detonates in an unimportant Iranian city close to one of the targets.

Syria, or really Russian troops in Syria, nukes the shit out of Israel, focusing on the Israeli nuclear deterrent.

The picture pushed in the media is that Israel attacked Iran with nuclear weapons and killed tens of millions of Iranians, and ‘the Arabs’ retaliated.

It is framed as Georgia Redux with Nukes: “Don’t go and provoke people who are stronger than you, and don’t come whining when they beat the shit out of you! It’s your own fault for being so stupid!”

The “Poor weak Arabs! Israel is so Strong and so Mean to them!” is forgotten like yesterdays news, the Molotov-Ribentropp pact and the fact that we have Alway Been At War With Eurasia.

The word ‘Holocaust’ is appropriated for the dead Iranians, a few thousand.

Putin calls on the Hotline and points out that Israel is gone, dead is dead, nothing to do about it, world opinion is against you, lets focus on the living, and warns the US against doing anything about it.

Russia puts forward a motion in the UN saying that since Israel is the Agressor, any humanitarian help to Israel should be conditional to Israel not retaliating.

Israeli subs (their only remaining second-strike capability) retaliates, but lack the missile range (200km) to hit more than symbolic targets like Iranian naval bases.

Driven by the ‘divest from Israel’ and ‘Academic boycott’ movements the ‘Putin doctrine’ starts being applied by private individuals against individual Jews all over the world: Prove that you are against what Israel did, or I will refuse to employ you/treat your disease/sell you food/whatever.

Putin goes around the world pointing out privately that he can nuke the shit out of them anytime he feels like it and that 1) An alliance with the US wont save you and 2) Not even your own nuclear force will deter him!

So you better ask “How High? Sir!”, when he asks you to push a Russian dissident off a roof.

Jul 13, 2009 - 1:01 am 49. Fletcher Christian:

#48 – Putin’s Russia is not the only country that will throw its weight around when it thinks it can.

Maybe it doesn’t seem very important to the USA, but recently the spineless govenment of my country (the UK) agreed to an extradition agreement that essentially allows the US authorities to have arrested any UK citizen they frigging well like.

This is being used to cover up the criminal incompetence of those responsible for US military computer security, by dragging across the Atlantic in chains an autistic teenager who has embarrassed them by breaking into numerous computers from a PC in his bedroom.

The US authorities have said something that amounts to “admit it and go quietly and you get three years – make it noisy and you get 60 years hard time.”

Jul 13, 2009 - 7:46 am 50. dan:

i dont think civil wars are inevitable. i dont understand where this notion comes from, except wishful thinking – which is perverse, since civil wars are comparatively horrendous. increased government intrusion is reflective partly of practical measures in the face of precipitous financial collapse and partly of the ideological shift towards reflexive, but disguised, Leninism (i.e. “vicious niceness”), but i dont think the conditions exist for civil war outside certain wellknown basketcase countries like Mexico, Pakistan, Lebanon, anything in sub-Saharan Africa, or what have you. the USA is not on the list. i know it feels gratifying to talk about it, but i really wish people would stop yammering about civil war and all the ammo they bought and whatever. we’ve gotta stop the O(bama)DS. and can’t we get some more WFBuckleys to replace the Hannity and O’Reilly shows? Do we really believe people will be attracted back to Anglo-Saxon common sense by aggressive semi-tabloid bloviation? C’mon man, the main axe to kill the Left with is its absolutely pathetic 2-dimensional aesthetic and moral sensibility. not some cartoon Jesus dolls and a megaphone. Damn. if you cant understand that, you’re part of the problem.

and, if you dont understand the maneuvors out over asia, you are also part of the problem, though a lovable & forgivable part.

Jul 13, 2009 - 11:01 am 51. Ursus Maritimus:

#48 – Putin’s Russia is not the only country that will throw its weight around when it thinks it can.

But funnily enough the US only employ such tactics in non-essential matters, like when Jack Valenti gets his panties in a bunch, or when Bill Gates stubs his toe.

That is because the mohammedan interest organizations like CAIR (an unindicted co-conspirator to gathering money to finance terrorism) and their useful idiots in ACLU and Amnesty et al scream bloody murder when some literally bloodthirsty (eating human hearts counts, right?) barbarian ‘militant’ gets the leg-shackles-and-private-plane treatment.

Internet Pirates does not have anything like that backup, nor does Hackers. EFF has not placed a Congressman in Congress. CAIR has.

Frustrated civil servants who arn’t allowed to go after what they knows, but are forbidden to even think, are the real threats tend to act out all that frustration on safe targets.

Single un-connected hackers can be hit with 110-percent delta force raids, because nobody will raise a stink about them.

They could probably anally rape them with nightsticks, and Nightline would joke that “I think one like him did that to my computer at home once. Poetic Justice.”

Jul 13, 2009 - 11:42 am

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