Comments on The Belmont Club "What's up doc?"

NahnCee and Rah,
Well done, this is what the BC does best.

Capitalist systems operate without a central command, which may seem strange to an egotist.

Who herds their man flock?
- Aeschylus The Persians

Democrats have a great advantage over Republicans because even when out of power they present themselves as a government in waiting. From their perches in a web of interlocking NGOs, projects, charities, think tanks, universities, publications and investment banks they are constantly planning, and more important announcing to the public that they are planning, what to do once the low brow Rethuglican intruders are shown the back gate. Republicans can not match that. When out of office they are not busy preparing policy papers on how to run the world. They have jobs, that is they used to until Obama scorched the earth, and they are to busy running parts to plan on running the whole. Besides they believe that if the parts are run right then the whole will run itself.

BHO's admission that he was not only not ready on Day One but is not ready on Day 240 destroys the myth of the Democrats as the natural party of government. Eventually the units below him are going to rewire themselves to bypass the White House. This won't be for ideological reasons but for practical ones. It would be bad enough to the bureaucrats if the White House and the Czars really were absorbing all power into the Neutron star of BHO's center and then delivering a comprehensive, even if wrong headed, plan. Since the reality is that Obama and his collection of tax cheats and bullies have proven incapable of managing an enterprise the size of Knott's Berry Farm the machinery of government will naturally find a way to isolate him.

Now that the system has taken its' measure of him, as the rest of the world has, he will probably become like Jim Hacker. He will be lead into a never ending series of increasingly meaningless activities, cuddly farm displays, while the professionals get busy around him. Unfortunately that could only work in a benign foreign security and domestic economic climate. It would also necessitate the presence of a competent back stop to keep the wheels moving while the POTUS dithers. That is not a role that I see Joe Biden filling.

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Leo Linbeck III,
He believes that wisdom is a function of knowledge and education

That one item on your list seems questionable. As the Satomayor nomination indicated Obama is a classic racist. I will take it as a given that he agrees with Satomayor unless it can be proven to the contrary. He believes that wisdom comes from experience and that experience can be inherited. Not only can wisdom and virtue be inherited by oppressed peoples but the corollary is that error and guilt are also attributable to groups. The categories that serve as the vessels for these qualities, both positive and negative, are arbitrarily determined and flow from the prior wisdom of the determiner. The process is similar to that of Apostolic Succession in which Obama, despite his being descended from the oppresing slavers rather than the enslaved, can act ex cathedra in determining who is wise or deserving of compensation. That enables him to assign guilt to the majority of Americans whose ancestors never owned slaves and who fled to the new world to escape persecution.

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Bob Smith,
(who noted Obama's illegal campaign contributions from the Middle East)
If some authority with subpoena power could be found then the records of the possible half a million to two million transactions that flowed from the Gazan phone banks could be retrieved. Once the onion begins to peel it should quickly fall apart.

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Why is Obama so keen on denuclearization?

One reason is probably the left wing pacifism that has roots going back to the German Anabaptists and the English Nonconformists. That is a strain within Socialism but it is not identical with that movement. There are other strands within the Left that are not quietist or pacifist in nature.

Another reason may be a more particular form of triumphalism. If nuclear weapons were a useful but arbitrary component of American strength, like the Winter wheat belt, then they would attract less attention. My theory is that Obama wants to see the nuclear systems dismantled because they are the legacy of an accumulated capital, both material and more importantly intellectual, that he wants to demolish. When he discards our strategic arsenal he will be consigning to the dustbin of history the life's work of Edward Teller and Albert Wohlstetter and Herman Khan, all Jews incidentally, and countless others. He will be killing something that he could not create and which we will probably never be able to restore.

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Leo Linbeck III,
(who believes the Left screens for education more than for race)
The problem is displaced to the second order. Obama, Jones, Satomayor and Holder all possess the validating certificates from elite educational institutions but their tickets into those institutions were punched on account of their racial groups. Under the strictures of affirmative action once admitted it is very hard to fail if one is a minority. That then creates pressure to lower standards so that matriculants who are not minorities do not fail at a greater rate. Over time that degrades the quality of the graduates and the stature of the institution. That however is paid for in the future and in socialist accounting the future is like the past, Another Country.

We are both right.

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Leo Linbeck III,
(who reviewed the credentials of key administration players)
Well argued. Are the players divided into two classes? There might be the Useful Idiots (Clinton, Geithner, Orszag, Locke and Gates) who may also be considered the Expendables, and the Inner Idiots (Holder, Jarrette, Michelle la Belle) who are the crew.

Emanuel I see as an honorary Brother and inner crew member. He is like the Mouth of Sauron in that his betrayals have placed him beyond the reach of the community he ostensibly comes from. Remember that he spent the last two days confessing his sins to God and being reminded that the injury he has caused to other humans, both jew and gentile, can only be absolved by the injured parties. Then again it still may turn out that Obama is only the Mouth of Emanuel. I see them as the real heart of this administration, more so even than Michelle is. MO though she frightens me at least as much as Hillary ever did.

Biden is a nobody. He is not even a Useful Idiot. He fills the Spiro Agnew role of being so manifestly unsuited to the Presidency that he functions as an insurance policy against any scenario that could lead to Obama's removal.

My argument was not with your perceiving that the Establishment, like all establishments, relies on credentials. The value of the credentials is being debased just as the value of the currency is being debased. My point is that Obama's paradigm is basically racist and he uses that template in picking winners as his policies unfold.