Comment on The Belmont Club,"Northern surprise"

Having listened to Ms Palin's speech a few points come to mind.
BTW, I once met her briefly.
1) Letterman should find a hole to crawl into. The Lady is angry and
     she is telling her supporters to be also.
2) She is an attacker, she carries the ball through the enemy, she
     gets in their OODA loop. She knows how.
3) Wretchard is correct about the pillars of the economy and more
     being ready to fall. Palin could exploit that opening.

The concern I have is that we are in the position of expecting Obama to permit a crash to happen that would give Palin an opening. That is like the commentators who confidently expect Obama to permit al-Qaeda to set of a nuke in the U.S. just because he "hates Jews and Whitey," even though he knows that will empower his enemies. The problem with such visions are many but consider first that they are purely reactive. People both claim a dee suspicion of armchair psychoanalysis as a left wing indulgence and pseudo-science while at the same time claiming that their analysis of Obama justifies relying on him to make suicidal mistakes.

What if this is considered by Obama and his sponsors? They have shown themselves capable of sophisticated advance planning and a willingness to expend great resources to attain their goals. What if China does pony up the $3,000,000,000,000 to float Obama past the next election? On paper they would face ruin for doing so but if we assume the worst, not the best, about the intentions of China and Obama then it would make sense for them to delay the American implosion until our physical as well as financial resources have been stripped.

Also I hope that this does not become an opening for the Ron Paul movement to climb onto the Palin bandwagon. That would be bad for Ms Palin and for the conservative cause. Dr Paul's supporters, more than he is himself, are largely more toxic then Ms Palin.

Comment on The Belmont Club,"Once upon a time"

The rot and the solution all start with unionized public education. Everyone who understands the issues involved should get themselves onto their local school boards and make sure that they are empowered to drop in unannounced and observe what is going on in classrooms. If the indoctrinators of ignorance knew that there were adult eyes on them then, after much wailing and gnashing of teeth, things would start to improve.

Comment on The Belmont Club,"Earth versus the suits"

We need to make a deal. If you want to cut your communities carbon emissions then go ahead and do so.

However if you do then you will be denied access to any health care procedure or device that was discovered after the year 1850. You will also be denied access to any transportation or communications device that was invented after the year 1850. Seems fair to me.

Re: WaPo cash for access scandal.

1. Shocked woman "What do you take me for?"
2. Man "We already established that. We are dickering over the price."

After Heinlien.
H/T Mary Katherine Ham and Michelle Malkin, from Twitter.

Comment on Theo Spark,"Caption Time ...."

An Army of Moms

I expect Obama to yank women out of combat roles.
As the Perez Hilton case showed there is a hierarchy of the left that lets them discriminate. Being a dhimmi to islamic sensibilities trumps feminism.

Comment on The Belmont Club"Still I look to find a reason to believe"

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?

Comment on Deseret News Editorial"A sad day for Utah"

Why do the Democrats work so hard to steal elections and gain control of legislatures when they advocate ignoring the laws that already exist? The operative word here is "illegal." As for the issue of Federal and State jurisdiction, we already settled that question 136 years ago. Over 600,000 Americans, the equivalent of over 6,000,000 now, died to determine that Congress and the Constitution get to decide who is a citizen, not some local cabal in Atlanta or Selma or Salt Lake City.

Not sure if they will post my comments as they may hold in moderation without telling you. A poor system that guarantees to offend. Others are more forthcoming and produce less friction when they review comments.

Comment on Deseret News (from a NYT feed),"Blame panic on GOP for standoff in Albany"

For our friends in Utah this may seem a strange story about combative and colorful New Yorkers but there are important issues here. For decades NY has had the least democratic (small d) and least effective legislature in America. While the Republicans bought into being lazy corrupt and incompetent the system and culture are right out of the Democratic party playbook. All decisions are made by "Three men in a room" who are the Governor and the heads of the majority in each chamber. The head of the Assembly, Sheldon Silver, makes big money on the side as a practicing trial lawyer. There is no meaningful reconciliation or committee system. Bills are written by lobbyists to a far greater extent than was true in Washington, until recently that is. Now that Obama is bringing the nearly as dysfunctional Illinois model to DC, Chicago rules in effect, we can expect the nation to move towards this 3rd World model of governance.

Comments on The Belmont Club,"Fredrick Hunt"

At Fletc they have on one wall a famous set of booking photographs that were taken by the NYPD. They show the deterioration of drug users over time. There are a few sets of them also in binders but the most striking is of a beautiful girl who over about three years turns into a horrible old woman. You can literally see her wither month by month. We were told that they were also displayed where those arrested are processed at The Tombs and that when she was brought in she would point proudly at them and say "That's me."

Horrified I asked how could she? The Instructor of the drugs class, who is also a Law Enforcement Officer with about 30 years experience and a Minister, shook his head and said "She doesn't see, no one sees. When they look in the mirror they only see the beautiful girl in the first photograph."

It may be a gift that enables us to endure pain or compete against youth that lays us vulnerable to the temptations of life but in a real sense at some point we stop seeing ourselves change. In the addict the change is just more dramatic.

This has little to do with Fred who was a good man and a shrewd observer. He will be missed.

Comments on The Belmont Club,"Bearly true"

These cultists are practicing the methods of Leninist party control within the academic community. Has Daniel Hannan heard about this? Taxpayer money is expended on these conferences and the schools and foundations that employ these people.
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But the Ursus is noble and authentic and deserves respect. We can reach it if we learn to listen and it will unclench its fist. Go on give it a hug and look up at it with real big eyes. Go on, you first.
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Many years ago a tribe of happy Physicists received a Messenger from their King. He was a mighty lord who went by the unpronounceable name of NSF, which proved how mighty he was. The message proved how kindly their King was and said "Investigate the Unified Field Theory." Even better attached to the message was a nice thing called a Grant. So all the happy physicists retired to the Field of Brookhaven where they fed the Grant to their fetish object an enormous beast that was known as the Accelerator. Soon the mighty creature began to hum and many lights dig blink and there was a clattering of teletypes, for the thing was ancient and did still punch cards. A great sheaf of paper, green it was, came forth bearing numbers. Now these were various and strange and some interpreted them one way and some another and a few would hold them and the punch cards up to the light and see pretty patterns. But soon the babbling of Interns did cease as they perceived the great stillness emanating from where their Lords did assemble. Fellows were they and Fool Profusers and they wielded Tenure. As soon as the stillness had spread it was followed by a murmur that rose to a babble and then almost to a roar. The elderly among the Fellows gestured wildly with their pipes and the Interns stared about amazed and with wild surmise. For the chamber echoed with the cry,"We got it. It all fits. We have proven It.!"

The most senior of the Fellows nodded and heard his colleagues but learned and wise in the ways of things that deliver and consume the Grant and having passed the ordeals of peer review he spoke. "We must do it again and yet again. Three sets the Journal shall demand before we may publish."

And at that moment all went dark.

Three days later they found and replaced the fuse that had failed but they could never duplicate the experiment.
It took God 72 hours to rebuild the Universe and rewrite his laws to get around them.

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John de Beer,
sheer perversity
I want the Trademark on that. It is a natural for a line of Ready to Wear and Accessories.
We’re all going to get rich!

Franken wins

Franken wins.
No law, no justice, no reason, no hope.

I am naked in the dark now. Nothing is between me and the ring of fire

Comment on The Belmont Club,"Rubik cubed"

Compare the original NY State Constitution with the current bloated monstrosity. It goes with the farce that is the NY State Legislature.

No clear expression of words is proof against deliberate assault by subterfuge, violence and brazenness. The Honduran Constitution stated clearly that the President is held to one term and gave penalties for attempting to over ride that bar. Chavez and Obama are angry that the Honduran courts and army read the document they took an oath to uphold.

Perhaps we can have an amendment that makes them write all laws using words of only one syllable all of which must be found in the Webster's Third edition dictionary. Otherwise some Clintonite word parser will smile at a 2000 word limit and come up with a law written using german expressions of 12 syllables each.

All members should be on oath that they have read and understand the matter they are voting on, no proxy or paired votes should be allowed. Violation of this should lay the member open to a civil charge of Fraud by any citizen, not withstanding other provisions of the Constitution granting members immunity and making each house sole judge of its conduct.

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While we are going over the wish list of Constitutional reforms, we have done this before, the consensus top item on our list is usually repeal of the 17th Amendment. Like with the strategic impact of removing Saddam it could be the one targeted blow that changes everything.

Subotai Bahadur,
Who has replaced the Congress and the citizenry? Soros and the Chinese.

Comment on The Belmont Club,"In thrall to the Bargain"

America’s great good fortune is that no hostile superpower stands ready to benefit from its paralysis and confusion.

China?
Russia?
OK, maybe they only count as Powers now and not Super Powers but that is semantics.

Obama is like wee Jimmy Carter, head down in the weeds while the adults move pieces on the board above him. (Apologies for the metaphor mangling)

Also Spengler is unfair to Bernard Law Montgomery. He was a difficult personality and in the end the plan failed but by every criterion his intentions were more honorable and his procedures were more professional then are those of the posturing academics and corruptocrats of this administration.

Spengler is spot on about the dynamic instability of Islam. They must conquer or die.

Comment on Theo Spark,"Freddie 6/8/94-29/06/09"

A friend, a child, a confident.

My favorite prayer, "Lord make me the man my dog thinks I am."

Comments on The Belmont Club,"The molten calf"

We are going to win, because they love life and we love death.
- Hassan Nassrallah

The call of the dark, the desire of means without ends, is not new. It is in fact a very ancient temptation.

There must be some reason why human beings are susceptible to this appeal. There must be some survival advantage that is gained under some circumstances in having members of the tribe enter a herding mode in which critical faculties are suspended and submission to process and authority becomes of overriding concern. The refinement of modern totalitarians is that they tie this stultifying cult of death to enabling and mobilizing rationalizations that are themselves rooted in the opposite instincts. The totalitarians are able to manipulate the crowd including the intellectuals by casting their appeals not as peans to power and stasis but instead as the opposite, as an expression of a desire to perfect and protect and rationalize.

The emotional device needed could draw on great energies to support those who claimed infinite power. It served the Pharaohs and Japanese Emperors (in China they were not gods but the Mandate of Heaven served a similar purpose), where the god was present but subject to success or failure, and was distilled in Islam. When the totalitarian is moved off stage, beyond the reach of normative evaluation, and the doctrine of Free Will is traduced then there is no control over the evil to which people can be lead. Once the regime of totalitarian control is established the individual is extinguished.

In the modern age technical tools have been added to improve the ability of the totalitarians to both coopt the messages of progress and human worth to build their machine for delivering the opposite and have vastly increased the destructive reach of the totalitarians once they are established. Harnessing intellectuals and labor both schooled for a thousand years in concepts of reason and morality and dignity in building the edifice of power was the task of establishing Sovietism. The second task was in giving the totalitarian structure the tools to absorb all competition. The Soviets failed because the system once established failed to deliver the tools that a system that respects individuality and creativity can deliver. Lenin said that communism was "the Soviet power plus electrification." Totalitarians can't deliver the electricity, as America is about to discover if the Senate gives in to all of the fantasies of the energy bill and other socialist schemes.

When considering the rise and failure of totalitarian movements the question arises of the apparent success of Islam. That is the streetlights and plumbing in Andalusia argument. There are three possible mitigating factors to counter this argument for Islamic benevolence.
1) The portrayal of given locations as tolerant over time is overstated by
     Islamic apologists. Jews were dhimmis.
2) The more primitive and intolerant conditions in Christian Europe
     subsidized Islamic lands by making them a relatively safer place for
     Jews or dissident Christians to live.
3) Given the far slower level of technical innovation 700 to 1400 years ago
     Islamic lands could benefit for an extended period off of the
     intellectual capital of the people they subjugated.

The benefits of this form of parasitism no longer accrue to them in today's rapidly evolving world. This partly explains the appeal of calls to simplify or primitivize among many in the Left. Once the alternative is again rolled back to wind power the soviet power plus electrification (coal powered no doubt) will again look viable.

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mac,
(who speculated that some on the Left may want to make a martyr out of Obama)
It gets worse. Apparently not only had no human being in or out of Congress read the 1200 page Cap and Trade bill before it was voted on, the delightful Mary Katherine Ham tried, but it now appears that it wasn't actually completely written when it was voted on. They literally voted on a series of place holders with blanks to be filled in later. This is worse then offloading legislative authority to a regulatory agency and it is seriously being argued that this is OK. If the bill gets through the Senate and it is signed, a given if it passes, then the only firewall remaining is the Judiciary. Why don't I have a good feeling about that? We are now in the land of just make it up as they go along and arbitrary power.

The House votes and a Clerk delivers a document to the Senate. What proof is there that what is delivered is what was voted on? None since no one had read it.

However I find your speculations about violence reprehensible, they drag down the conversation.