Comment on the Belmont Club "The real thing"

F,
And the generals — where are they?

My guess is that the generals are turning turtle. They can either resign dramatically (few will) or try to protect their own little world until the storm passes. What is extremely unlikely is any coordination that leads to a Seven Days in May conspiracy. That simply isn't in the culture in the US military. Communication means exposure and exposure means risk. Survival depends on focused inward routinization of process. Generals who survive this will offer no new plans that would require organizational growth or systems development. They will probably get busy instead documenting the effort they are putting into base safety programs and anti-smoking campaigns.

Pakistan is like 18th century Prussia, an army with a country attached. Unfortunately for them they lack neighbors they can dominate, a population acquiescent to the concept of national unity and a Fredrick the Great. Fortunately for everyone they lack pre-21st century Germans (although Pushtuns are close) and a culture of innovation. They lack the benefits of the European Enlightenment and capital growth.

Pakistan is not an American ally. It is an ally of China and occasional client of the US. Given the conditions alluded to in the top half of my comment we can expect no bold measures that would redraw the map and decisively defeat the forces in Quetta, Islamabad and Riyadh that are opposed to Western (or for that matter Indian Eastern) Civilization. The best that we can hope for is that in Afghanistan and in Iraq the American presence will leave a residue of awareness that there is another path. Over time that may complicate the efforts of the totalitarians to impose a gray uniformity over a fractious landscape.

Comment on the Belmont Club "The second derivative"

Some effects of the collapse of the old Liberal order will be real disasters, people dead as trade implodes and totalitarians rage unchecked and migrating peoples desperate to escape bring diseases and grievances with them. Some effects may turn out positive. We will not return to the 19th century and forget everything that has been invented since. Resources can be redirected to productive work, Gender Studies and Community advocacy departments will go away and Engineering and History will be revived.

We will never be rid of the tendency of society to divide itself into those who work, those who fight and those who pray. The difference is that the mechanisms that kept those who pray concerned with the welfare of those who work will need to be revived. The role of those who rule has shifted from being entrusted to those who fight to those who pray. The later are now found in the Universities or other institutions but they serve the same role as Medieval clergy. There is always a struggle between the two subgroups as to who controls the levers of power. The record seems to be that the fighters stay more loyal to the workers but each needs the other two to keep them all honest.

What tools are available to socialize the clergy that have been stripped away over the last century? Perhaps a period of military service, a period of productive labor and adjustments to inheritance laws may help. Other practical ideas may come to mind.

Comment on Theo Spark, "Spending your way out of debt......from Rico"

(The chart is from the OECD)


Why is Israel the outlier? What have they done right? Maybe they are anomalous because of outside transfers due to foreign aid or support from American Jews or capital inflows because of the favorable investment climate. Ireland also got some return for their expenditures. Does this indicate those two choose to pay down debt and ride out the storm, Israel successfully and Ireland less successfully, while everyone else but Italy just tacked on more sail? Other metaphors involving pouring water or gasoline on a fire may be considered.

Is there a natural level, say at 7%, below which a modern economy can recover and above which it is in trouble? If so is everyone to the left of Germany facing a real collapse? Can countries that have wasted less than 5% of GDP, such as Italy Portugal and the Scandinavians, adopt the Israeli-Irish model and get out of the hole?

My choice of the 7% and 5% lines is arbitrary. Other combinations could be selected and tested. At what levels of structural debt can an economy recover and what will happen to those who can not?

Implausible Deniability

(from the thread "Ultimatum est")

luddy barsen,
(who thinks Iranians may use missiles as a ruse and smuggle a nuke)
There are no end to the iterations you can put that train through. What if they are only pretending to pretend to be apocalyptic so that less crazy technicians collaborate on the missiles project expecting the real bomb to be delivered by small boat? What if the small boat or camel herd smuggler thinks that the real weapons are being prepared for delivery by missile and do not know that they have the genuine dingus? Remember that only the four pilots on the 9-11 hijacking teams knew that they were on one way missions.

We will only be safe when the study of Twelverism is like the study of Carlism or the study of the Cult of Kali. That is something used to inspire improbable adventure movies and to provide thesis fodder for graduate students cultivating obscurity.

We live in a world of mass communications. That means that diseases of the body or of the spirit can climb out of unfumigated holes and spread around the globe.

Comments on The Belmont Club "Law for legends"

The argument of the license of artists as a nobility of talent goes back to Lord Byron and farther. Oscar Wilde had defenders on just that basis, not so much on whether what he did should be sanctioned at all. The touchstone case however was Ezra Pound. Brilliant artist, unregenerate Fascist sympathizer and without doubt legally sane when he was locked up in an asylum to avoid a treason trial.

-------
Mercy is a fine quality. It is associated with the Divine and with those who exercise authority on Earth, either as consecrated agents of God or as the representatives of popular majesty. We should all praise our judges when they display the quality of mercy. True mercy is unencumbered by private interest. Therefor it is offered not to the great but to the small.
Caesar's lesson is in the last minute.


Mercy is only meaningful when it is offered after the expectation of justice being fulfilled and the full rigor of the law being applied. Mercy prior to the guilty party displaying submission to the law is impossible because then it is not being granted as a gift from a sovereign power but is merely being conceded as result of a political negotiation. If the law is created arbitrarily according to the competitive influences of interest groups then there is no objective standard. Then there is no law only arbitrary power and tyranny.

Pic of The Day

H/T Theo Spark's spud farm.

Comment on The Belmont Club "The winds of Manakoora"

The Typhoon of 1944 was part of the backstory of The Caine Mutiny.

The sheer size of a hurricane is part of what makes it seem like a monster in a child's nightmare. You can try to run and get behind it but the ocean suddenly seems small, the South China Sea certainly does, and full of treacherous reefs. Which is the most terrifying, a hurricane, an earthquake, or a volcano?

Perhaps the very harshness and unpredictability of nature, when contrasted with the beauty when it is at peace, is part of what makes us love a place. We were not made for a dull Paradise.

The Pic of The Day

From The Bukharian Times, no direct copy available unfortunately.

Comment on The Belmont Club "Ultimatum est"

Oh no! Not the dreaded "increased pressure and isolation, and deny opportunity to their own people."

Obama is still emitting Green gases. He sounds like a High School Class President boasting of his appearance at a Model UN meeting. This is sad, pathetic even. Instead of leading with Iran he runs through the embarrassing laundry list of self congratulation over nothing first. The warning to Iran is therefor all the more obviously empty. As I said on the last thread, my expectation is that we will eventually find evidence that the administration was working with Iran to conceal the evidence of their secret program. Obama panicked and ran to Brown and Sarkozy for cover when the press in Vienna got wind of what he had already known for months.

-------
wretchard,
he’s using a different dictionary

Everyone uses a slightly unique dictionary based on their family, education and occupation. The wonder is that there is sufficient commonality that most of the time we can communicate. When you cannot understand someone or get it wildly wrong then there are things to check. First, is are they using a special dictionary shared with their group (understandable) or are they only talking to themselves (possible insanity)? Secondly, is the miscommunication accidental or deliberate?

For the Democrats their dictionaries are drawn from their core support groups. Two of their biggest sources of support are lawyers and creative media. For lawyers negotiations translate as "billable hours." They happen after an event has already created damages, or to create a contract for a mutually agreed upon goal. The suggestion that they must be brought to a resolution because something bad might happen in the future does not translate for them. For the media conflict and negotiation are plot devices to be sustained. I can see them sitting around a table brainstorming a show called "The Ultimate Ultimatum."

-------
sirius_sir,
massaging the message

You are getting warm. For some people in the Process profession having the different parties using incompatible dictionaries is a feature and not a bug. They define success as having everyone leave the 5 star hotel happy with a beautiful piece of paper. They do not worry about thise same people getting angry when they discover that others do not think the agreement means what they do. In the opinion of the professional cynic the other parties are going to find something to be unhappy about later anyway so it really doesn't matter what they get upset about. If they are happy on the day you need them for a photo shoot then that will do.

The same attitude can be seen in school administrators who just want the parent happy on graduation day and who really don't care about what anyone will think in the future about the student's lack of education. For a different job I had a boss who told me to do something wrong, copyright infringement in a University of Chicago duplicating office I managed, because it would make some faculty happy and by the time anyone important complained, "We would both be gone." I left first.

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Tcobb,
What I fear about Mr. Obama is that we have the worst of all worlds–an incompetent scoundrel.

That raises an interesting question. Should we prefer that our scoundrels be competent or not?

There is an old joke in which a businessman is describing the government as stupid, slothful, ignorant, corrupt and incompetent at doing any of the things it claims it intends to do. His partner listens and then pats him on the shoulder, "Harry, thank God for that."

-------
Anny Mouse,
(who asked for Bugs Bunny daring Yosemite Sam to "Cross that line")
Here you go.


For the last thread I was looking for the clip from Die Hard with the sap Ellis "negotiating" with Gruber as McClane tries to warn him.
A lesson in a can.

erc rodson,
That was Fredrick the Great's management paradigm. There was an article about it in Naval Institute Proceedings many years ago.

Most troops were lazy slugs in Fred's opinion but that was OK if they feared his officers. The officers should be the smart and ambitious ones. Every organization can have one guy who wants to be lazy and dull. In F the G's modest opinion that was Fred only he had to stay up late working hard worrying about the ambitious stupid guy. In modern naval parlance that is the Petty Officer 2nd class who tries to fix the nuclear power plant on his own just to impress the Chief. That is the guy who kills people.

-------
charles,
I am not putting Christianity into a position analogous to Islam. That is part of my point, they are completely different. Christianity arose among practicing Jews as one of many variants. After a period in excess of a hundred years people began to understand that it was a new religion. Islam was created by a man who had met some Jewish merchants and decided that they did not know their own religion. The Ethiopian Falasha are interesting. While there are differences between their practices and those of other Jews, such as the Yemenite community, and I am sure their history is fascinating, I would consider them Jews. They are certainly closer to mainstream Judaism than the Samaritans are. My point was that the official Jewish view of the Samaritans cast them in a light similar to Islam but that I suspect that to be unfair.

Mark B,
(who noted that I maligned the professionalism of naval nuclear techs)
Pax. Everything about nukes, power or specweaps, is very tightly controlled. I remember when we did a movement and I was the PRP Courier. The Marines looked happy. They had been told that if an officer stepped over the invisible line they could shoot him. Never wanted to be a Nuke myself. Takes a special type to live in a sewer pipe. OK already I'll stop. Nukes are more highly selected and their community benefits from not having to deal with the personnel problems and frictions faced by the rest of the service.

Subotai Bahdur,
(who reviewed post Revolutionary War treatment of Tories)
While I am uncomfortable with your TWANLOC designation I do find your general argument about the nature of the problem thoughtful. There is an issue with drawing lines between those who are part of the democratic community and those who aren't. Who gets to decide? The unfortunate record seems to be that the deciders get corrupted and drive wedges within the presumptively loyal members of the polis.

Sep 28, 2009 - 12:29 pm

Comment on The Belmont Club "Calculus"

the moves of (a) chess master

The sheer arrogance and stupidity of this cannot be beat. This is the Sheriff who boasts "Don't worry I can always use force as a last resort" but who is already destroying his own gun before the bad guy comes out into the street. This is the chess player who tosses away a few pawns and a bishop and a knight and then points out a few moves to his opponent, just to be helpful. This is the conceited jerk who says "Go ahead I'll tie one hand behind my back. You take the first punch."

The only reason that this administration said anything is that they were caught. Why did the Iranians send the letter? Maybe just to shove a thumb in our eye. It would not surprise me if one day we find evidence that the administration sent messages to Tehran begging them not to reveal the truth and advising them on how to evade inspection.

This might explain yesterday's Big Government headline that I blogged about, "Sarkozy Mocks Obama at UN."

Comment on Big Government"Sarkozy Mocks Obama at UN ..."

Sarkozy has done impressive work in restoring French credibility and cleaning up some of the legacy of corruption left by Chirac and Co. Not only does Sarkozy seem to speak more directly and honestly about the threats before us than Obama does but he also has better taste in women.

I rest my case.

My Steel Stimulus Plan

(From The Belmont Club "Statesmen" thread)

always right,
20 something anarchists versus Pittsburgh residents

Change that to Steel town residents and the point becomes clearer.

If I was running for POTUS I’d go to Pittsburgh and say the following
“Here is my Stimulus plan. Elect me and next year we will cut steel to build 50 warships. The next year we will cut steel to build 100 warships. The following year another 100. If you good citizens and The Lord grant me the time I intend to go on like that for 8 years. Any questions?
Thank you”

On an Enemy Within the Gates

Kejda Gjermani/(Medaura at LGF) works as an assistant online editor for Commentary magazine. Her name appears on their online masthead. While Commentary is no longer owned by the American Jewish Committee it is an important and influential voice. That is the place where Norman Podhoretz helped create a revolution. The current editor is John Podhoretz, who I met almost 30 years ago at The University of Chicago. The insinuation of Medaura into a position at that venue is a tragedy. The hateful statements that she has uttered are such that I do not believe that she should be granted United States citizenship. Given her obvious capacity for work and her intelligence and viciousness when thwarted she is capable of getting entry into a media organization and using it for her own purposes. She could turn Commentary as she turned LGF. If anyone connected with PJM can get word to Podhoretz they would be doing him and his many admirers a favor.

Comment on The Belmont Club"Statesmen"

WMD and one shot delivery systems and asymmetric warfare terrorist proxies can wound the US. Given the downward spiral that any ruler like Chavez, or Ahmadinejehad or Kim imposes on their societies just how much of a serious threat do any of them pose? Are they worthy of confronting because they can serve as a base for other threats, as the Taliban did? Is it right for an outside power to impose regime change out of a decent respect for the victims of these rulers and should we include in our calculations the wealth and creativity thwarted by these poisonous egos? Those opportunity costs make the world poorer for having these men around. Those same costs make their regimes less of a threat.

Is the answer reviving the very 17 - 19th centuries concept of different classes of nations? The civilized nations that were treated as legal and moral equals in the post Westphalian order, especially in the post Napoleonic world order, included the Powers of Europe (Britain, France, Spain, HRE-Austrian Empire, Russia, and by special dispensation the Ottoman Sublime Porte.) These were joined at the table by the Low Countries, the Scandinavians, the Holy See and Poland while it lasted. Later America got a seat. China was a case closer to the Ottoman Caliphate in that it's pretensions so far exceeded its reality that it was more propped up by jealous outside rivals than by it's own efforts. Near the end Italy and Germany were admitted as equals. The vast majority of the planet was seen as inhabited as other nations which were deemed incapable of conducting the business of diplomacy and abiding to basic norms regarding law, contracts and impartiality at the level practiced by members of the civilized club.

Both the British Empire and the League made the division into different classes of nationhood explicit. The British Empire was never a single unified structure but rather a series of bilateral relations that reflected the status of the parties. The League indicated the different classed of members or potential members both in the Council and Assembly structure and in the Mandate system.

Those members of the Empire deemed capable of self government and most important of contribution and participation in external affairs up to European standards became the Dominions. In other cases there were a hodgepodge of differing grades of dependency. In India some Princely States, Hyderabad is an example, were in effect independent countries in a treaty of alliance with the Crown. Other nations became Protectorates. A relatively few places became pure colonies ruled directly by Britain and inhabited by a native population with only limited self government.

In the League the Council included Japan and Italy as being among the first rank nations but not America, or Russia. Germany. was restricted to the Assembly where they were eventually joined by the Russians. There were three classes of Mandates for nations not deemed ready to assume the considerable responsibilities that came with membership. Mandates were territories surrendered by the defeated Central Powers and reassigned by the League to other members for a period of tutelage and development under the supervision of the assigned Mandatory Power and of the League. The League was after all both a legal system, with members pledged to abide by the standards of International Law, and a treaty of alliance with members pledged to undertake military burdens in a collective security pact.

Class A Mandates were expected to rapidly assume full independence and become full members of the League. They had or were assumed to have internal cohesion, that is an effective native government that could execute the laws and control defined borders over a territory inhabited a defined population. Those were the traditional attributes of sovereignty in international law. In addition they were reasonably solvent and potentially prosperous. One example of a Class A Mandate was Mesopotamia. Upon further reflection we may ask how this territory invented by the British by cobbling together Ottoman Viliyats and importing a Hashemite Prince could have been judged to meet the listed criteria. It was however one of the best developed territories and started with high hopes. All of the Class A Mandates were former Ottoman territories. Remember that I mentioned above that treating the Ottomans as a rough equal had been a principal of the pre-war international system. Therefor it was easy to assume that territories separated from the defeated Ottomans were nearly ready for independence.

Former German colonial territories were to be reorganized as Class B Mandates. In practice this meant that they were open to periodic inspection by representatives of the Mandate Committee with the long term goal of preparing them to move up to Class A status. I am unaware of any territory that made that transition.

Class C Mandates were considered special territories with almost no capacity for self government. The Japanese received the Marianas Islands as a Class C Mandate and the South Africans received South-West Africa. Other Pacific territories were assigned to Australia and New Zealand.

Former territories of the Austro-Hungarian Empire did not become Mandates. They were reorganized as independent countries and admitted directly to the League.

In the 2009 Freedom House ranking of 193 countries and 16 dependent of disputed territories they showed fewer than half as Free and things are not getting better. My proposition is simple. Anyone who represents one of the 42 "Not Free" countries should have no say at all in determining international law. They have not earned a vote. They should not be admitted to the table or the podium used by the Free. They should be kept in a separate room, one with rubber walls.

Comment on The Belmont Club"Two eras"

There are lunatics ... No one doubts ... It is accepted

The tropes used to control debate and deny those who want to consider facts access to a productive conversation have not changed although they have been refined. Socialists and utopians try to preempt any effort to disagree and to empty the intellectual market of competing content. They do not use political debate as part of a process of deductive inquiry to discover information and refine policy. Instead they advance their grip on power using an inductive method in which the conclusion is predetermined and then various components of the audience are tested to see if they conform.

Is there anything useful gained from organizations like the League of Nations or the United Nations? Yes but only if they are considered as tools to be used in the narrowest and most technical sense and without sentimentality. They could follow on to the pattern set by the Congress of Vienna. In that case the assembled leaders of the European powers responded promptly to the threat of Napoleon's escape from Elba and dispatched their armies to intercept the French at Waterloo. As communications improve the need for formal assemblies of Ministers and Ambassadors with plenipotentiary power declines.

International technical bodies, the best of which preceded the League, have done good work. Examples of useful organizations include the International Meteorological Organization and the International Postal Union.

Disarmament does not work because it is based on the false logic of Collective Security. If everyone is equally in the community then who is the community defending against? In theory that would reduce the aggressor to the status of a criminal. As the woman said in the video, "call the police." That does not work for several reasons. To do so means empowering the overall authority with significant power, including tax authority and the monopoly on violence that is the mark of a Sovereign. At the local level we can do so because the criminals are rare and the police represent a community the vast majority share common values that make us willing to submit to the judgement and wisdom of our peers and of the legitimate authority we mutually accede to. That willingness to share in a common good or commonwealth is an expression of a quality called "comity." However in the international sphere the players do not share comity, and that can not be imposed from above. Also in the international sphere violent offenders are not limited in number or poorer in resources than are the authorities they challenge. The creation of hundreds of new governments in the name of self determination after WW-I and decolonization after WW-II, most of which are not democracies, makes it impossible to trust any global organization with such authority.

In addition even in smaller groupings where the actors do share common values the risk of Free Rider effects can cripple an organization. This has crippled Nato and while it has not proven fatal to the United States the question of fair distribution of burdens and benefits and voting rights remains.

The rise of asymmetric warfare and WMD in fact means that small states and non-state actors have the ability to challenge norms of international order. The corrosive effects of wealth transfers to forces hostile to western values have further impeded the ability of institutions to respond to threats.

Comments on Hot Air, Green Room " ... Ongoing Self-Destruction of LGF ..."

I think that RSM could have been more forthright and less Clintonesque in simply denying the "revulsion" charge. Eventually I see, or at least believe that I see, that he did.

CJ is an excellent site designer and coder and a professional musician. That does not make him an astute political theorist. His opinions on most matters of public debate are worth no more and no less than are mine or those of thousands of others who blog. The condemnation of people who mean well in a process of guilt by association is wrong because it is ultimately self destructive. It is wrong because it is obviously ineffective. While trolls and mobys are real threats, to extreme a control policy destroys the value of the intellectual market. Managing debate, on a blog or in a classroom or at the dinner table, is an art as much as a science. The evidence is that CJ got it wrong and a few people who bring little intellectual value to the conversation have been empowered and more thoughtful voices have departed.

That does not mean that I feel that CJ is wrong about each case or issue. Some I disagree with him on and some I do not feel as important as he does but he can choose the topics in his own house. He also is entitled to set the rules and ban people if he wishes. LGF is thank God not a government site and the 1st Amendment does not apply.

Having expressed these opinions on the related Powerline Blog thread my LGF account was blocked.

-------
Victor Davis Hanson has spoken up in defense of Charles Johnson. He defends the current topic focus as being the host's prerogative. On that I agree, although the standards of proof relied upon in LGF to assign to persons labels such as racist or fascist sympathizer are not addressed by Mr Hanson. He also does not address the issues of blog management and commentator blocking or nonscatalogical comment deletion.

I agree with Prof. Hanson about the following opinion about the birth certificate issue,

why he won’t release his college transcripts is a far more interesting and valid inquiry.

Comment on The Belmont Club "Equal to ourselves"

What the totalitarians have succeeded in doing is poisoning the fruit of the wisdom of crowds. Democracy rests upon the theory that since the spark is within us we can recognize it in others. As individuals we may be venial, corrupt and in the Calvinist sense damned, but as a community we can recognize the truth and will choose to be ruled by "the better angels of our nature." Ideally we would elect the Elect.

Through the art of demagoguery and due to some mechanical tricks coming from a practical experience based on lay knowledge of the science of neurology those who would be Masters have learned to impede the ability of the Commons to discriminate in their judgement. The masses repeat the memes that Reagan was an idiot and Obama is a genius with no consideration of the actual evidence.

On the "East versus west" thread I noted that over time the model of man as a slave will fail. What a waste though in all the glory that will be lost and the blighted hopes that will be ruined while freedom sleeps.

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.

- J.R.R. Tolkein

Comment on The Belmont Club "The New Great Game"

The United States faces two kinds of vulnerabilities in dealing with rogue states such as Pakistan and North Korea. The external and the internal.

External constraints are imposed by the system and prevent or impede us from undertaking certain courses of action. For example we are constrained from eliminating the North Korean problem by dropping 20 nuclear weapons on that country, even though doing so would decisively solve that problem. The reason that we feel constrained from taking what might be an effective course of action is that the resulting effects of such an event would severely degrade our relations with Japan or other places downwind.

Internal constraints include limitations that we have imposed on ourselves with either no external compulsion or a fraudulent collaboration between internal and external actors. An example of that is the abandonment of missile defense systems. The argument that we did it to obtain goodwill from outside parties rings as false as if a left wing municipality arranged to be sued by an outside agency that they had a prior relationship with in order to compel a consent decree that imposes conditions without submitting to the normal legislative process.

If we had engaged on a program of thorough rearmament then Kim and Chavez and Putin would have to recalculate. That would have made the world a safer place. We did the opposite and the world is more dangerous.

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Israel attempted to assume the role of protector of the christian community in Lebanon in 1982. That didn't exactly work out. Israel should have annexed Bethlehem when she absorbed the neighboring district of East Jerusalem in 1967. That would have made Israel explicitly the protector of the arab christian communities and would have revolutionized the relationships of all parties with the Vatican and center-right Europeans. The failure to do so was one of those administrative oversights that proves that history is not explainable simply through cartesian logic.

Comment on The Belmont Club "Crouching bear, hidden dragon"

NahnCee,
The naval expansion needed to fight WW-II was planned 10 years earlier. FDR, to give the former Navy Secretary some credit, was way ahead of the British in this respect. There former First Sea Lord Churchill was frozen out of power. FDR's motivation wasn't primarily strategic. Cutting steel to build a navy was a jobs program. If the Democrats in 2008-'09 had been serious about the Stimulus they would have proposed a similar rearmaments program. Planning and executing a major weapons program takes over twice as long as it did 70 years ago. That is legitimate, despite the benefits of computer aided design and construction, due to the quantum increase in complexity.

wretchard,
Will the Navy get the funding to build the new missile defense ships?
Did the administration please Russia only to accidentally displease
     China? Or was it a calculated move?
Was the Obama decision to abandon the Eastern European systems
     (assuming the ships are built) really a better defense choice?

To answer your 4 questions.
1. No (The Navy will I predict be tied up in thought control sessions,
             like after Tailhook)
2. Yes (They only dream of dealing with 2 issues at a time,
             as said by others, they can't play chess)
3. No (Only in the juvenile sense that some giggling idiots in that crew
             think they are being clever)
4. No (For the threat from Iran and for the alliance with the
             East Europeans the land based systems were best)

Comment on The Belmont Club "East versus west"

Which of the two world views is based on reality? And which of the two world views, if in conflict, would prevail?

These are false choices. They presuppose that one of these views is based on reality. On the margin however the views of the pacifists of Rochedale are grounded in a deeper reality.

The basis of Communism is an uncompromising materialism that completely denies all of the accumulated wisdom of humanity in how to solve problems or how to create wealth. Communism, despite the pretensions of Marx's theory of Historical Dialectical Materialism, exist out of time. Problems are to be solved only in the here and now by command. The source of all creativity is the singular will of the Leader, who is divorced from individual choices and consequences.

The basis of Pacifism is a world view that is informed by a knowledge of the worth of each individual and the remarkable achievement and terrible violence that we are all capable of. The problem with the pacifists is not that they ignore all of the fundamentals but that they select the information that they process to a high degree, but still I would argue to a lesser degree than do the communists, to reach their desired results. Therefor there conclusions are wrong even if their intentions and awareness of history are to a considerable extent not.

In a short term conflict the forces of Korea could annihilate the forces of Rochedale. In the long term, when we are all dead, the Korean Communist model is a dead end that will collapse. The civilization that produced the pacifists is the stronger and will prevail. Consider the Pacifists as a natural by product of a healthy cultural body. They must be processed and not allowed to accumulate to the point where they poison the system but in moderation their presence need not be considered dangerous. The communists on the other hand are a pure bad. They represent a cancerous mutation that can only harm the host.

The values that built our strategic deterrent as portrayed in Crimson Tide are based in the values that motivate the people of Rochedale, whether those people in England know it or not. The Air Farce had it right, to give them their due, when they said "Peace Is Our Profession."

-------
Demosophist,
(who found my prose sickening)
Why the vertigo? If you love the people as your name claims then what you strive and build and fight for is their safety.
General Douglas MacArthur got this right. The military is devoted to "Duty, Honor, Country."

The soldier above all other people prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer ,,,

Comment on The Belmont Club "Reds"

It interests, well me actually, that in America the color red is used to designate conservative regions and groups while in the rest of the world that color is considered symbolic of the left.

Fellow denizens of the Belmont Club we must steel ourselves for a terrible possibility. Our host Wretchard the Cat may have been taken by hideous aliens under the cover of the red fog. Australia may be lost to us and soon they will be invaded by Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton and the rest of the Reds.


But there is hope. Maybe it is just Red Dust and they'll be invaded by Clark Gable and Jean Harlow.

Fashionable Security

(from the Belmont Club thread "What's up doc?")

Missile defense is so provocative and it is unfashionable to boot.

News flash

Today Community Leaders gathered to protest the issuance of bullet proof vests to the police. Reverend Sharp Suit Rotundity said, "They are so bulky they intimidate our youths." Mrs. Priscilla Rockington Smythe agreed saying, "Without those horrid vests they are much nicer, almost cuddly."

Comment on The Belmont Club "Policy debates"

American Leftists and Tranzis always misjudge the American military. They assume, based on some movie like Seven Days in May or some book their Critical Gender and Transformative Dynamics Theory Professor made them buy that the armed forces are run by knuckle dragging Capitalists. The truth is that the military is the most Socialist community in America. It does have its own culture and the looming conflict between members of that community and Obama will flow not from policy differences but from their evaluation of him as a man and a leader.

The military obeys orders. That is what they do. Like a faithful dog they can be lead to do amazing things. They will even conform to a policy that lacks basic competency or which goes against their own interests. However the ability to give those orders depends on a reciprocal relationship. Nothing about this is a secret. What the military values and expects in a leader are two things, courage and honesty. If you posses those then you can get them to follow you into any situation and they will execute any policy.

For example while most but not all members of the military disagreed with President Carter they followed his orders without to much dissent. They obeyed the orders of President Clinton also but I think that the linkages between Hillary and the discredited Wesley Clark, who was seen as lacking moral courage and was deceitful in a manner beyond that accepted in a Pentagon bureaucrat, would make it hard for her to be an effective leader. John Kerry was destroyed as a potential candidate for POTUS when the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth attacked him on these issues, not on his policy positions.

The problem that Obama faces is that he is being judged, not by right wing partisans or birthers or 2nd Amend. "gun nuts," but by people who after close observation are concluding that he is a coward and that he is dishonest. This is a tragedy and once that cord of trust is broken it can not be restored.


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dan,
(who traced Taliban support to Russia, China, Iran and the Gulf)
Interesting comment. Three recurring themes among the journalists/punditry have been the implacable rivalry between Russia and China and the eternal war between Sunni and Shia and the unbridgeable gulf between Islam and present or "former" communists. We are repeatedly told to ignore any signs of cooperation among these supposedly implacable enemies. Without a doubt the all hate and despise each other. Sometimes when you hear all the parties to a drawn out dispute explain the failings of each other the only conclusion is, "You are all correct. You are all terrible." That does not mean that you get to withdraw to a faculty lounge and sip sherry while bemoaning how dreadful the world is. The evidence is that while they hate and despise each other they are perfectly capable of cooperating to reduce the power of the United States.

-------
One small note of comfort. If BHO purges the officer corps to promote the likes of Weasley Clark and abandons the fight over there then those who survive the ensuing debacle will remember and come 2010 the Democrats will find it harder to throw their votes away, as the Democrats did to the troops who voted while deployed.

Comment on PJM, Barbara Curtis "PalinTracker: An Open Letter ..."

At the office yesterday the Leftists were positively chortling and giggling over Vanity Fair. Their reaction to attacks on Sarah Palin could fairly be described as collective masturbation.

As a former naval officer I can assure you that the the SM-3 AEGIS system, wonderful as it is, is not a replacement for a land based BMD for countering the threat from Iran. We would need to build dozens of more ships. The cost has not even been considered and will not be spent on the military by this administration. So the entire proposal is a fraud. Also look at a map, the sea based systems are an effective counter to a threat from North Korea but expecting them to be reliably in position to intercept missiles from Iran is a fantasy.

FEER

Sad news, Newscorp is closing the Far Eastern Economic Review. When my ship stopped in Sasebo I went to Tokyo a quarter century ago and went drinking with the BBC radio and FEER correspondents. My weekly copy was a joy to read. Just having it made me feel I was part of a special club. For the last several years it has been a Beijing based monthly that I did not follow but the Hong Kong based scrappy weekly with the yellow cover and the black name plate was the best.

The New Woodrow Wilson

(from the BC thread "What's up doc?")

Das and Herb,
(who think that BHO is unstable and does not want to be POTUS)
Regarding the role that Obama sees himself in and his stability under pressure. The President that mostly closely resembles BHO IMHO is Woody Wilson. WW came close to being kicked upstairs to President of the World and only failed when Henry Cabot Lodge balked at the Treaty of Versailles. That precipitated his collapse and a period in which the administration was effectively in the hands of his wife Edith and his physician Grayson. In his private nightmares Obama might blame Ted Kennedy for dying before the Health Care bill came to a vote as a similar frustration. If he does collapse under the pressures of the job I pray that we will be spared government by Michelle.

What Makes Georgie Run?

(from the BC thread "What's up doc?")

NahnCee
I think Soros is in it for the money only, and doesn’t give diddly-squat about things that go boom.

That is an assumption. Soros has many motives and links. The ties to ideological movements and shady global actors may be an indulgence and a cost of doing business that follow from his commercial interests. They may also be the motivation behind his financial activities. Postulate the worst case that Soros is a planted agent of influence recruited by the KGB who spotted him following his ambivalent performance as a jew who collaborated with the nazis. It would fit the pattern for such agents that he became self funding and then used his influence to weaken America. That is not to say that I am endorsing that theory. It merely means that whatever view we take of a person like Mr Soros must be based on what we can learn of his past and what we see as the consequences of his activities.

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.

-------
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.

Comment on PJM, Rusty Shackleford "New York City Terror Plot and the Post-9/11 Catch-22"

The best question a teacher can ask a student is "Who owns this problem?" Those who are incompletely socialized or immature are constantly projecting their failings onto external authorities. The adolescent will stand in front of you, or slouch in a chair, and say "I don't have my homework (or "I am failing" etc.) What are you going to do about it?" The answer is "Fail you. It is your problem. You fix it." If a student engages in misconduct, say cheating or vandalism, and another covers up then you let them know that the accessory has bought a problem. At some point group benefits (such as a trip, party or extracurricular activity) are withdrawn. Actions have consequences.

Is collective punishment "unfair?" Maybe so but it works as one tool among many. The risks are twofold.
1) Delinquents will try to provoke a reduction in the groups standard of living in order to isolate it from the external authority. This is akin to an Alynskite tactic except that it is directed at the minority community in parallel to the host oppressor.
2) Genuinely abusive agents will take advantage of the vulnerability of the isolated minority community for personal gain under the cover of the host's authority. An example of that was people who seized the assets of interned Japanese in America during WW-II, the "Bad Day at Black Rock."

Do members of minority groups have any responsibility to confront misconduct arising from members of their community? How did Jews respond to the predations of Meyer Lansky and Bernard Madoff? They isolated them denounced them and publicly rejected them in an overt effort to reassure the host majority that they were loyal to greater community. How did Japanese Americans respond to the perceived threat from within their community after the attack on Pearl Harbor? Despite the pain and humiliation caused by the internments they volunteereden masse for service with the highly decorated units such as the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. How did Italian Americans react to Joe Colombo's efforts to wrap them in the cloak of victimology and isolate them as a cover for la cosa nostra? Despite some initial uncertainty, Frank Sinatra headlined a concert for Colombo's Italian American Anti-Defamation League, the legacy of gang culture was largely ridiculed and rejected by Americans of Italian ancestry. More members of that community want to identify with Rudy Giuliani than John Gotti.

Ultimately it is the responsibility of each person to police their own conduct and then their family's. If people choose to isolate themselves and give cover to those who threaten the larger society then they will engender mistrust. As John Donne said, "No man is an island." Any threat to the greater community that we are aware of is our responsibility to confront if possible. If that can not be done due to physical threats then it is still, indeed it is then all the more, a responsibility to warn and cooperate with law enforcement.

Comments on PJM Ed Driscoll "President’s Racist Past Tossed Down The Memory Hole"

Carter is a repellent little man. Not so much in physical but in emotional stature. He must have been a joy in a submarine's wardroom. It surprises me that Admiral Rickover let him into the nuclear service. It surprises me even more that he passed the psych-eval.

By some accounts his wife is worse. I once did my reserve drills with a Naval Intelligence unit at NAS Glenview Il. That is one of many bases that no longer exist. About 22 years ago it was so hot that Vice President, George H.W. Bush flew in to give a check to the Governor, a yet to be indicted Big Jim Thompson. Note that almost all Illinois politicians had names like Big Jim or Fast Eddie in those days. The C.O. said "Now if all you junior officers want to go see the Vice President ..." So we stampeded out of the door before he could finish. Almost everyone in our unit were some kind of Federal Law Enforcement so the Secret Service guys were unusually chatty while we were waiting for the VP. They told us that if they had a guy who needed an attitude adjustment they would send him down to Plains Georgia to wash Rosalynn's car for two weeks and he would come back a happy camper.

They also told us that they adored Bush Sr. who was a real gentleman. He was always the Boss but one who knew how to treat the staff. That was confirmed when the plane landed and after Barbara ran into the waiting air conditioned limo the Vice President came over in the 104° heat to talk with us for a few minutes. It turns out that Glenview Illinois was one of the many places that he had been briefly stationed at after getting shot down.

Since then I have had occasion to talk with many USSS agents and they have confirmed these impressions of both the Carter and the Bush families. Rosalynn may have slowed down since then but Hillary more then fills the role of punishment detail. I have no information on what it is like working with Michelle Obama.

-------
On four occasions I have met Hillary Clinton and I share the low opinion of her that I have heard from USSS agents.

On Cabinet Impeachment

(From the Belmont Club thread "Earnest")

myth buster,
(who worries about BHO's instability)
Agreed. He is the kind who likely said, "I'll do something and you'll all be really really sorry. Just you wait and see."

Under the 25th Amendment the Cabinet could declare him unfit and remove him. In effect they can impeach the President and refer him to a Senate trial. That is why confident mature Presidents chose cabinet officers who are strong leaders in their own rights but weak men like Obama choose a Cabinet full of nonentities with scandals revealed, and probably more in the drawer, who could never work together to remove the POTUS.

Comments on The Belmont Club "To the manner born"

There are two issues that this thread brings to mind. Both are occasioned by the return of the trolls on the last thread.

The first topic is the distinction between internal conflict and external intervention. Externally injected manipulation in a domestic competition for resources within the political market can exaggerate tensions geometrically. This becomes a positive feedback loop in which restrictions on discourse are pealed away among the internal players. We have two forms of external overt manipulation to consider. First are the SVR trolls who inject memes or false data into the conversation here or at KOS which is eventually picked up at a cocktail party attended by a NY Times stringer. The second is the injection of financial resources from overseas, whether by Soros or by the Gaza phone banks that sent possibly hundreds of millions of dollars to Obama for the election.

The second topic concerns blog management. How do we deal with trolls? The two models are that of Charles Johnson on Little Green Footballs and that evidenced here on the Belmont Club. When CJ detects someone he determines is a troll he blocks or bans them. The difference is I believe that a ban means that your record of postings are erased from the data base, a fate similar to being "expunged" from Harvard. Here commentators who spread false or malicious information are generally tolerated except in the most extreme circumstances. Now to be clear I am assuming for the sake of argument, despite the fact that I was blocked, that CJ might be correct in his basic principles and accurate in his judgements as to the intents of those he does not want commenting in his house.

The benefits of our hosts more tolerant approach are twofold. First the limitation of external information even false information limits your knowledge of what the other side is saying. There is an Intelligence function that benefits from being aware of what the SVR or other Other's talking points are. That is only true when the exterior agent is crude and easily identified. When they are sophisticated it can get harder to separate the wheat from the chaff.

A second benefit of the more tolerant approach is that restrictions become by their nature progressive. As dissenting voices are removed the ones that remain practice self censorship. These devolves into a positive feedback loop and reduces the conversation to an echo chamber which can be of little use to the one guiding the conversation.

Personally I would probably be less tolerant than our genial host but I see the benefits in his approach.

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Stupidity is an intellectual condition and is a product of either a neurological or heuristic deficit. Idiocy is a moral condition.

Sep 19, 2009 - 5:20 pm

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“Th’ Sinnit has no rhules. ‘Tis governed by courtesy, like th’ Longshoremen’s Union.”
- Mr. Dooley (Peter Finley Dunne)

Rurik,
But do you mean “to the manor/manner born” or “to the manor/manner borne”?
That is like asking a veteran if he is “battle scarred” or “bottle scared” or vice a versa.

There was a Britcom called “To the Manor Born.”


Sep 19, 2009 - 7:02 pm

Comments on The Belmont Club "Earnest"

Russia risked Washington’s wrath
That is the knee slapper line of the day.

Rasmussen calls for integrated Russia, US, NATO missile system
Why not add China to the control system and put the whole thing under the UN Security Council? We can have an incredibly sophisticated and complex universal defense system that will defend against nobody.

In fact I will now predict that a follow on to the Global Warming enthusiasm will be the Rogue Asteroid scare. We will face demands that we respond to an urgent global threat from outer space that can only be faced with a united world effort by placing our space and missile defense systems under the supervision of a body that represents all of humanity, plus Cass Sunstein's furry, finny or creepy friends.

Once again reality is ahead of me. A Youtube search of "asteroid threat" indicates that both sides are hyperventilating on this. The Globalists like the BBC are taking it seriously and the anti-globalists take it seriously as a wedge for another power grab.


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buckets,
(who supports. "informal cooperation among space-faring nations")
I generally concur with your position and I also support real research on biodiversity and climatology, neither of which should send a dime to Al Gore.

Regarding the threat of Iranian missiles the promise of future deployments of sea based interceptors is a red herring. I like sea based systems and want more of them and for countering the threat from North Korea they show real promise but if you look at a map then they just don't work in the Iranian case.

The correct response to the Iranian threat was the one put out by McCain.
1) Develop every domestic energy source, Alaskan, Coal, Offshore, Nuclear, Shale and exotic.
2) Strengthen links with America's allies, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Australia and Eastern Europe.
3) Isolate and destabilize the Iranian regime.

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Annoy Mouse,
Concur about Chechnya. We gained nothing by taking the high road.
Also about the Troll being our Gremlin from the Kremlin, Duh, Ya Think? The important thing is that they are back. That is a close leading indicator that something is due to happen. The surprise over the Summer was the dog that didn't bark. We did not have the agitprop visitors and the tanks did not roll. Why not? Maybe it was because they did not want to step on Obama's first efforts to get his agenda through Congress. Now that he has stalled things may be moving again. But delay can be expensive. The Germans lost 10 weeks invading the Balkans that cost them Moscow. If the Russians move on Georgia or the Ukraine this year then the Poles and Balts and Czechs and Hungarians will have a year to get ready.

At this point I can not think of a good reason for any country not to build nukes or if so small that they cannot secure them against a first strike then combine into a secure federation. That emphatically would not be the EU, which has not earned the trust of the Eastern Europeans. The nations of New Europe should be holding urgent consultations on closer integration. Perhaps they could honor their federation with the name "Rumsfeld League."

Sep 18, 2009 - 5:56 pm

Comments on The Belmont Club "The Lost World"

(video cross posted from the BC)

Perhaps my parents saw that travelogue on Havana before they honeymooned there in 1950. They said that the extremes of wealth and poverty and the prevalent contempt for decent and lawful conduct that was not compelled or narrowly expedient was so obvious as to be repellent. The atmosphere was one of fin de siecle waiting for the revolution.

In the 1930s and 40's an American could go anywhere and do anything. My Father went to Havana once and visited Batista, who came out from his sergeant's quarters at the barracks where his family was having dinner, just because as an American he could. An uncle of mine went to Dental School (before he went to Medical School) at the American University of Beirut. As a Jewish American it was perfectly safe and natural for him to go to Lebanon but he could not get into an American Medical School without first getting an advanced degree from overseas. Things change but there is hope.


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RWE,
(who asked if I thought Cuba was better off under Fidel)
Nothing I said indicates a preference for Fidel Castro over Fulgencio Batista. What Cuba lacked was a moral cohesion to go with their relative prosperity. The fact that it served as a playground for American corruption and profited from it is understandable.


As our host no doubt is aware there is a history of peripheral societies gaining capital by catering to the darker impulses of members of a wealthier center. For decades American sailors used Olongapao as a Sin City in the Philippines and the Filipinos paved roads and built schools with the money that came from the crews on shore leave. Both Cuba and the Philippines suffered from the alternating buffets of America's regional, racial, religious and commercial (sugar) interests. Both were drawn closer but rejected in their aspirations for statehood.

While the Phillippines remains threatened by Islamic insurgency and their is always a threat of a renewed Marxism they have so far survived and remain potentially on the path to a brighter future. Cuba that started out more developed than some states in the American Union fell. The cultural and moral transformations that will be needed for them to overcome the legacy of communism and the preceding moral vacuum that opened the door to Fidel will be much harder I think to achieve.

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RWE,
(who thinks "we are in violent agreement" about Castro and Batista)
Our agreement need not be violent. I abhor violence, it makes me unhappy, and then bad things happen.
/Sarc

Batista was an interesting man and his wiki (all disclaimers noted) seems reasonably even handed. Remember that when my father met him in 1933 Batista was a sergeant living in the barracks and was considered a reformer whose coup d'etat was arranged by the US envoy. That diplomat was none other than the close friend of FDR Sumner Welles. To me as a promising reformer who tragically sank into corruption Batista resembles Charlie Rangle.

While some of the old generation of Cuban exiles in Miami might dream of lost estates I doubt that many of their grandchildren would see a future in returning to the island, and fewer would be welcomed. Cuba has been stripped of its entrepreneurial classes to a far great extent than happened in Eastern Europe. This also changed the demographics of the nation. Most of those who fled the island were of European ancestry and most of those who remained are of African descent. This will complicate any future social and political settlement.

Sep 18, 2009 - 5:27 pm

On Obama and Hoover

(from the preceding Belmont Club thread, "The Full Ginzburg")

Eggplant,
It’s actually unfortunate for American blacks that the MSM pulled off this swindle. For the next 20 years when ever a black guy runs for office the first question people will ask: Is this guy another Obama?

wretchard addressed this point on the Quangos discussion but it has metastasized across threads. Remember that the Democrats are still running against Herbert Hoover 80 years after the Crash of '29.

Perhaps there is hope in Obama's very emptiness. Since he is so content free, except for the hard core of socialism that few actually believe in, he will be easy for his constituencies to drop. As Jackson and other Blacks have pointed out Obama is not really a member of their community and they can dump him without shame. Once Blacks start standing up and asking "Who in H*ll is this guy?" the women and elites will run. My prediction is that a conspiracy theory will start making the rounds that BHO is really someone interjected by Da Man (read Soros and the Jews) onto the innocent black community.

Read his Wiki, Hoover was one of the finest men ever to grace the White House. When the Democrats attacked him they attacked the core values of individual achievement and volunteerism that built this nation. The Republicans could not run away from Hoover, even if they could criticize some of his tactical measures such as signing Smoot-Hawley.

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Herbert Hoover saved millions of lives. Very few people in history have saved as many as he did both after WW-I and then again when asked by Truman after WW-II. FDR treated him like dirt and it speaks well of Truman that, partisan though he was, he reversed that policy.

It was small of FDR to reject Hoover's offer to serve in any capacity during WW-II. Great men reach out and allow their rivals to serve something greater than themselves. Churchill welcomed the dyeing Neville Chamberlain to serve in his Cabinet in WW-II, after Churchill had taken the Prime Ministership away from him. Chamberlain worked tirelessly to strengthen Britain and defeat the Axis. Churchill gave him an eulogy that sets the standard for respect and political maturity.

Comment on The Belmont Club "The Full Ginzburg"

This Full Ginsburg talk show exposure is a greater risk for Obama than for a politician like Cheney because BHO is so devoid of content. The more time spent listening to a man like Cheney, or to be fair Ted Kennedy who was venial but intelligent, the more he could interest. For Obama the problem is that the more he is exposed the thinner the veneer will wear. Obama is like the airhead girlfriend that some get trapped into marrying. For the ladies I am sure there are vapid High School hunk equivalents who disappoint also. Now most women can fascinate most men, especially when both are in their 20s, for up to 36 hours. After that you have to think about whether you really want to try and have a conversation with this person. After Obama has trotted out the same tired rhetoric for the third time some reporter will feel a selfish itch to scratch and will ask him something like, "So was it a good thing that you were a lawyer for ACORN?"

-------
Look at the Rasmussen Daily Presidential Tracking Poll Index. Obama is slipping again. He was down to -13 before his big speech a week ago. That bounced him up to -3 but the air is going out again. He is now down to -8 and the uptick looks like an aberration in a steady decline. He can try to keep the pressure on but as I noted above the more he has to carry his own water the harder it gets. If he cannot get sustained returns from stunts like The Full Ginsburg over the next 5 weeks then his supporters might get crushed in the local off year elections coming up. If the economy faces a second crash in the Summer, as I suspect because of the unfunded debt, then the Democrats could get blown out in the midterm elections. This is not cause for complacency but hope is a basis for effort. Here is the graph for today from Rasmussen.

Comments on The Belmont Club "Sending signals"

Given the demographic shifts happening there will be long term effects on American politics from Obama's betrayals. He has offended, or threatened people with real world experience with totalitarians, who are significant and potentially growing segments of the American electorate. These include Eastern Europeans, Indians, Koreans, Chinese, Orthodox and Conservative Jews, and most non-Mexican Latinos. Whose interests has he aligned with? That group includes Black Americans descended from slaves, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans and some descendants of Western European elites. All except for the Mexicans are in relative decline as a future voting base. If the Republicans have any competence then they should be able to run against Obama for the next thirty years and beat the Democrats into the ground.

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And now for some good news. From Red State, A Signal that the European Parliament can govern from the right.

Comment on The Belmont Club "Attack of the quangos"

Once again the geniuses behind Yes Minister were way ahead of us.
First of 3 parts.

Comment on The Belmont Club "Two worlds"

Fifty years ago every American, those in other countries can speak to their knowledge, in High School learned the History of Western Civilization, starting with the Israelites and the Greeks and tracing the fusion of their ideas through Christianity into the Reformation and the Enlightenment. That was reinforced for almost all Liberal Arts majors in college. Now secondary school Social Studies focus on a celebration of global meaning nonWestern cultures, including an abbreviated European section that hurries within weeks into the evils of the Industrial Revolution. Technology and capital wealth are treated as givens and not as the products of the patient accumulation of generations of sacrifice.

One criticism often leveled against the West is that we lack patience. Looking at that video I thought the opposite is true. The observers are very patient. We are linked to a past and, if we work for it, a future. Each of us helps to build a greater good, whether by flying the gunship or contributing to the Belmont Club. The enemies lead lives without meaning. They must make their sacrifices alone to an abstract and uncaring god. They have no past and no future only oblivion.

Comments on Michelle Malkin, "What's missing from New York Times' coverage of ACORN"

The following list was posted by Malkin commentator purplepeep and is edited for line breaks and a typo.

Like the state controlled media and other left-run sites, I’ve noticed there is hardly a peep about ACORN, other than a quick mote how furious the left is that it’s being held up to scrutiny.
But in one of the rare posts about it at the Daily Kos Asylum, one commenter actually listed the ACORN front operations at just one location – here’s the list, verbatim:
“ACORN subsidiaries all located in 1024 Elysian Fields Ave, New Orleans 385 Palmetto Street Housing Fund Corp.
4415 San Jacinto Street Corp.
ACORN
Acorn 2004 Housing Development Fund Corp.
Acorn 2005 Housing Development Fund Corp.
ACORN Associates
ACORN Benefi cial Association
ACORN BeverlyY LLC
ACORN Campaign Services
ACORN Campaign To Raise The Minimum Wage
ACORN Center for Housing, Inc.
ACORN Children’s Benefi cial Association
ACORN Community Land Association
ACORN Community Land Association of IL.
ACORN Community Land Association of LA
ACORN Community Land Association of PA
ACORN Community Labor Organizing Center
ACORN Cultural Trust
ACORNDumont-SnedikerHousingDevelopment Fund Corp.
ACORN Fair Housing
ACORN Fund
ACORN Housing Corp.
ACORN Housing Corp. of IL
ACORN Housing Corp. of MO
ACORN Housing Corp. of PA
ACORN Institute
ACORN Law For Education, Representation, And Training
ACORN Management Corp.
ACORN National Broadcasting Network
ACORN Services
ACORN Television In Action For Communities
ACORN Tenant Union Training And Organizing Project
ACORN Tenants Union
Affiliated Media Foundation Movement
Agape Broadcasting Foundation Inc

Among ACORN’s many affiliates and subsidiaries are:
American Environmental Justice Project Inc
American Home Childcare Providers Association
American Institute for Social Justice
Arizona ACORN Housing Corp.
Arkansas Broadcasting Foundation
Association for the Rights of Citizens Inc.
Associated Regional Maintenance Systems
Austin Organizing and Support Center
Baltimore Organizing and Support Center
Boston Organizing and Support Center
Broad Street Corp.
California Community Network
Chicago Organizing and Support Center
Chief Organizer Fund
Child Care Providers for Action Franklin
Citizens Action Research Project
Citizens Campaign for Work, Living Wage & Labor Peace
Citizens Consulting, Inc.
Citizens Campaign for Finance Reform
Citizens for Future Progress
Colorado ACORN Housing Corp.
Crescent City Broadcasting Corp.
Desert Rose Homes LLC
Dumont Avenue Housing Development Fund
Elysian Fields Corp., Inc
Elysian Fields Partnership
Fifteenth Street Corp.
Floridians For All PAC
Franklin ACORN Housing
Greenville Community Charter School Inc.
Greenwell Springs Corp.
Hospitality Hotel and Restaurant Organizing
Council (HOTROC)
Houston Organizing And Support Center
KABF Radio
KNON Radio
Labor Neighbor Research and Training Center Inc.
Living Wage Resource Center
Louisiana ACORN Fair Housing
Massachusetts ACORN Housing Corp.
Metro Technical Institute
Missouri Tax Justice Research Project
Montana Radio Network
Mott Haven ACORN Housing Development Fund Corp.
Mutual Housing Association of New York Inc.
National Center for Jobs & Justice
New Mexico Organizing and Support Center
New Orleans Community Housing Organization
New York ACORN Housing Company Inc.
New York Agency for Community Affairs Inc.
New York Organizing and Support Center Organizers Forum
Pennsylvania Institute for Community Affairs
People’s Equipment Resource Corp.
Phoenix Organizing And Support Center
Project Vote
SEIU Local 100
SEIU Local 880
Service Workers Action Team
Shreveport Community Television
Site Fighters
Sixth Avenue Corp.
Social Policy
Southern Training Center
St. Louis Organizing And Support Center
St. Louis Tax Reform Group
Student Minimum Wage Action Campaign
Texas ACORN Housing Corp. Inc.
Wal-Mart Workers Association
Wal-Mart Association for Reform Now
Working Families Association”

As the above list makes clear SEIU is part and parcel of this criminal conspiracy. RICO should be applied to them. In NY the worst thing George Pataki ever did is deal with Dennis Rivera of the SEIU. If this can get legislatures to forbid any expenditure of taxpayer dollars or contract relation with the SEIU then that would do two things.

1) It would be a massive blow against the criminal network.
2) It would be a massive shift in power from the judiciary to the legislature.

-------
Obama was ACORN’s lawyer when they forced the banks to issue the CRA junk mortgages. He helped create the monster. He is, and should be, tied to them.

Comment on The Belmont Club "A whole new world"

I still miss the NY Sun.
We do need editors in life. That is why God created women. What we don't need are multi million dollar anchors.

In the future publishers will be aggregators of independent agents. They can buy a feed from Michael Yon in the back of beyond or from two plucky kids in the Acorn sewer next door. The next week someone else will get to hire the talent. This model could resemble at its worst what happened to the film industry after the studio system collapsed and projects became the creation of a web of agents and independent craftsmen with the old studios becoming distributors. The cost of distribution however is falling even faster now and the costs of production are also declining so as to eliminate any role for a Miramax of internet news. The limiting factor is in fact the time available for the consumer. That is why credibility is important. The producer/publisher/aggregator may hire editors to enhance their products prestige and rise above Drudge level in reputation. That will be a market decision. If Tom Brokaw wants the job of reading and evaluating clippings for his boss's newsletter then he could apply. The job will probably pay around $12/hr. In fact it sounds like the job Barack Obama had after college.

Comment on PJM, Dan Miller "A Sensible Approach to Piracy on the High Seas"

Bilgeman,
(who has both military and merchant marine experience)
While I agree with most of your points a few things may need clarification. First given that they hold reserve commissions Merchant Marine Academy graduates should all have basic firearms skills. It should be possible to arrange some course for the few nonveteran merchant seamen on US flag ships. 12 hour shifts sound nice but the standard for naval watches is 4 hours except for the "dog watches." If we are talking about a limited deployment of a team for up to two weeks then the shorter rotating watch could work. Agreed that after two weeks sleep deprivation becomes a factor. People start acting strange.

Dan Miller,
(who suggests using private security teams and who sails the Caribbean)
A professional security team could help IMHO. It should be possible to even deploy containerized 20 mm mounts that could be bolted on and removed after transit. Given the value of the ships some expenditure is reasonable and it should be born by the shipping company or insurer. A 6 man team sounds right if there is a support ship or a helicopter platform no more than 2 hours away. Otherwise the need for an embedded medical corpsman and commander and communications raise the number to at least 8. That would be the size of a SEAL or SOF squad on a detached mission.

The legal issues that inhibit the arming of Merchant ships only arose after WW-II. They are written on paper not in stone and the Congress should task the State Department with entering into agreements with other countries to facilitate the safety of US flagged ships. Other impediments to the US having a merchant shipping industry, such as the Jones Act, need to be addressed.

If I was sailing a yacht around in the Caribbean I would want a couple of guns in hidden sealed built in compartments, just in case.

Comment on The Belmont Club "A point of view"

Tarnsman,
(whose grandfather died at 94, a year after climbing Machu Picchu)
It makes sense to advertise that your grandfather lived to a vigorous old age because it raises the market value of your family. Despite our pretensions and desires to the contrary the only way that nature measures our worth is by expected future contributions to the gene pool. The two variables that can be measured for an individual are 1) survivability or life expectancy and 2) anticipated fecundity. Therefor your grandfather's health increases the value of any spare daughters that you have hanging around.

This was all explained to me by Prof. Monte Lloyd who drew the L(x) M(x) curves on the board and then explained that a woman reached he peak value at age 16. Before that the mortality risks exceeded the gains from investing in her and after that the number of future offspring she can produce declines. Prof. Lloyd was a pistol. If he was still with us, alas he is not, he would probably get in trouble with the campus thought police.

My father passed away 15 months ago at age 95.

The Cart Before the Horse

(from the BC thread "Much ado")

Old Salt,
I second what you say about extremist scenarios. Some people are playing cute and pussyfooting around with semantic games that do not conceal that their fantasy scenarios are really calls for violence. When people do that my instinct is to believe that the political issue is of secondary concern and the primary motivation for them is the desire for violence itself. That is true for thugs and sadists on either the right or the left. Real professionals, in the military or law enforcement, study violence and prepare their response to control a situation when needed but retain a critical detachment that allows them to use the adrenaline rush at the moment without seeking the disorder that induces the need for it. The attraction of the deed is deeply sublimated to the social good. Another example of that is a surgeon who feels satisfaction rather than disgust at the cutting of flesh but who has channeled that desire and rigidly controls its expression.

Psychopaths like Alynsky and Ayers or Goebbels may be hooked on the dream of the rush that comes from the street combat. They succumbed to the lust for it and devoted themselves to spinning fantasy scenarios of violence and disorder that they were able to get others to buy into. In some cases the dream becomes wide spread enough to attain a level of reality but it is always a cancer that lives by destroying the truer reality. It is like if someone became addicted to internet pornography and spent their time constructing fantasies of power to feed their dreams. Even if by some chance they became head of a movie studio with access to young women their motivation would not be on the product but on their personal gratification. The result would be system failure.

In every organization or movement there is the Agency Problem in which you become dependent on actors who bring their own selfish needs with them. There is a difference between the normal friction that comes from someone who recognizes the attractions and becomes interested in these issues and someone who gets excited anticipating carnage coming. My hope would be that for those in the second category here their conduct could be self controlled not so much by a realization that on a basic level their fantasies of black helicopters are coeval with the conspiracy dreams of fantasists like Lenin and Ayers but by the social controls needed to function in any community. Talk of complicated conspiracies and rivers of blood are bad for the forum and that should be sufficient motivation to get those who are not Moby trolls to focus their work on what is rather than what they dream of.

-------
Doug,
(reposted from the comments on "Much ado")
Thank you for raising the psychological issue first. Hope that those who are qualified among us can offer a professional follow up to this line of thought. In the meantime we amateurs can indulge our interests. :-)

Regarding LGF I really do not know more. I still do not say that CJ is wrong about the issues or in his desire to control his own house. It is the reliance of a chain of associations that I found a mistake and the cumulative effect of wielding to heavy a hand. Community management is an art more than a science and we can only compare how the host manages the blog here by comparison and judge the results. If it was my house then I would probably wield a heavier stick and the results would probably prove unfortunate.

-------
steveaz,
(who defended speculative scenarios)
Heuristics are good and fun and keep the conversation alive. The intent behind an exposition matters. When the Wall came down and Western businessmen started hiring in the East one of the hardest things they had to do was teach basic business etiquette. When you talk to someone on the telephone smile. The response was outrage. Why should I have to smile when they cannot even see me? Besides they are all stupid pig dogs. The answer of course is that people can hear if you are smiling.

Comment on The Belmont Club "Much ado"

The pattern was set by the firing of the Inspector General at Americorps. This is pure Chicago crony politics at it's worst. This is what much of America was like a hundred years ago. Obama is a Patron and his cronies expect to be untouchable. Their conduct already resembles that of a pack of feral dogs. Emotionally the alliance with the Islamists resonates because they both have an exploitive view of productive societies. This is the ethic of the ghazi of the street hood who takes what he can and shamelessly displays their triumphs or rejects any loyalty to a cause larger than their own and their leader's.

Cirith Ungol

(from the BC thread "September 12")

Another LOTR analogy comes to mind. The forces of hate that demand submission are spreading and sapping the will of the West. They are in a race against time because they must irretrievably weaken the forces of life and love and creativity before the internal contradictions and hatreds within the forces of death tear them apart. Remember how Sam went into the Tower of Cirith Ungol to rescue Frodo and discovered that the forces of Mordor and the perverted city of Minas Morgul had torn each other apart in an orgy of mutual destruction? The thread on the death of Blago's fixer shows the process may be at work.

Comment on The Belmont Club "Secret ACORN"

Once I was at a Step 2 Grievance Hearing to dispute a classroom evaluation. The hearing officer actually said to me, "Truth is not a defense."

Most businesses or government entities now have something in the HR manual that forbids employees from secretly recording a conversation. The only truth permitted is the official truth it exists solely at the whim of and to serve the purposes of authority. This is the assumption of Divine authority by a minor Cleric. The MSM have switched roles and revel in the power of being the 4th branch of government. They want to see upstart rivals crushed by their allies in authority.

the arrogance of office

-------
On a ship you can adjust the range displayed on a radar repeater. Normally you keep one surface search set around 5 or 6 miles so you can track the contacts. What you are looking for is evidence that one of the contacts has the dreaded condition known as Constant Bearing Decreasing Range (CBDR.) Once I remember that it was pretty busy out there and we had lots of little lights on the horizon to keep track of. When I glanced at the repeater I discovered that one of the troops had reset the range down to 1 mile. That made his job much easier with many fewer contacts to track. Of course any that did show up would be real close and big and dangerous.

Journalists should not have any more rights than regular citizens do and regular citizens should have the rights of journalists.

wretchard,
The real problem with official truth is when it isn’t true.
Once again I urge everyone to read Vaclav Havel's New Year's Speech. Just look out the window.

-------
starling,
(who commented on a quote from Acorn's Chief Organizer)
The term "international conglomerates" reeks of anti-Semitic associations. It has echoes of "Cosmopolites" and "International Jewish Banking." The hard Left and their media agents are now deeply vested in a series of paranoid fantasies. When John Stossel completes his move from ABC to Fox I wonder if he will feel free to speak of what the work atmosphere was like across the street from Lincoln Center. We should not however make the mistake of over estimating the roles of Fox and Newscorp or investing to heavily in the personality of Mr Rupert Murdoch. He is a businessman with his own interests including ties to China.

What we all pray for is a spontaneous eruption from within the Black community that rejects Acorn and all it represents. It will not happen and America has been waiting desperately for it.

Comment on The Belmont Club "Bedtime in Chicago"

I once had the bullet proof job. I hired Chicago Cops for overtime. With my ID card I could have driven backwards on Lake Shore Drive at 70 mph if I wanted to. Once the cops offered me an untraceable gun, just as a favor, but I declined. They were shocked at first that I never used my ID and never solicited a bribe and then after they overcame their natural cynicism they warmed to me. For those who live with the Skells the most shocking thing can be to meet what they call a "Citizen." That has nothing to do with Natural Born and it has everything to do with what most Law Enforcement Officers start the job seeking and usually get burnt out or lose track of. Sometimes you see a hard bitten old street cop stopped by really young child or a little old lady asking for directions. The expression on their face is priceless. If that happened more often marriages would be saved.

So Chicago is a tough town and makes a point of being theatrically tough but if real hope for change arrived it might come as a cleansing light, like a descent into the Pit by the shining face of Truth.

Chicago can be tough and the path that leads to The Big Sleep can be seductive, even if you don't get Lauren Bacall.


-------
In the interests of fairness and to protect our brand we should sharpen Occum's Razor. Is it possible that Blago's friend had a medical condition and overdosed on a combination of aspirin and Coumadin™? Maybe he left a suicide note?

Comments on The Belmont Club "September 12"

Leo Linbeck III,
(who invited bloggers to a meet up in Houston)
I will be with you in spirit and my spirit likes dark or weiss beer.

Regarding the Troll. That was a communicated threat and as such actionable. I hope that the blog and site owners take appropriate action in defense of their business and customers.

There is in my mind a thread linking this and the last post. At least that is my story for posting prematurely there and I'm sticking with it. What the Right, really that does mean the Republicans whether or not people are happy with that fact, can do for the first time since 1994 is form that most un-American activity, a shadow government. We need to not only prepare to take back power but our representatives at all levels must push to attain and wield power, not in partnership with Obama but in despite of him. With hard work, luck and a good wind we might see Obama and company cut out of the equation. I want to isolate and marginalize the friends of the hated Rahm Emanuel, and to do that we need allies.

If this spreads and the Blue Dogs defect, then it is possible that by Spring we might just cobble together a new Congressional majority. That will probably not lead to impeachment unless some catastrophic event occurs or evidence of gross crimes can no longer be suppressed. But it may allow patriotic forces to regain control of enough levers to ensure the prosecution of the war and stop the looting of the economy. Once the tide begins to turn it may run out fast and it is possible that fear will no longer hold the allies in place for Obama and evidence of past and present crimes may emerge.

So I advise to take counsel of our hopes as well as our fears and, even though my concerns over the logistical trap in Afghanistan are on record, that we provide leadership and advocate for fighting the war with only one goal in mind, victory.

-------
Tarsman,
all that is required is for Republicans to win back the House and gridlock sets in
You must be an Economist, "First assume that we have a can opener."
Your lips to God's ears.

The question is, which is strategically a better choice?
1) Hold out for a year in the hope of electing an ideologically purer Congress, in the face or hundreds of billions of Acorn type slush fund dollars and paid union supporters that BHO has to play with thanks to the Stimulus and auto seizures and SEIU. That will mean accepting all the possibly irreversible damage that BHO is planning before the 2010 elections. TXProle and Mark Steyn are right about the danger.

2) Make an alliance with the Blue Dogs and try to shift the balance of power away from Pelosi during the coming year. At this time the Republicans would have to peel off 39 Democratic Congressmen to reorganize the House. That is a tall order. It might be possible to win over enough to take effective control of the legislative process at the committee level. That will mean making some deals that the purists among us will hate.

Does This Look Like Astroturfing?

(cross posted from The Belmont Club "Intent")

/HT Ed Driscoll

All the evidence is that Obama expects the worst and arranges things in a manner that is functionally indistinguishable from what would be done if he was an enemy agent. Nevertheless I remain cautiously hopeful as we prepare for future battles both political and military. Does this look like a minor display of Astroturf? The sleeping giant of America might be stirring again and if it acts it will be filled with a terrible resolve.

Comment on Gates of Vienna "Bringing it All Back Home" On Congressman Joe Wilson

Did Joe Wilson owe an apology or was he owed one? The rules of hospitality are important to me. They are reciprocal between a guest and a host. Barack Obama was present in the House of Representatives last Wednesday as an invited guest. The presiding officer of the House, who may be loyal only to the Constitution and to the House, admitted him and vouched to her members for his good conduct. While present as her guest and the guest of the House as a whole Obama violated the rules of courtesy by engaging in personal attacks on Mrs. Palin and on some members of Congress. To be clear about it he fairly unambiguously called them liars for saying things about his favored plan, which he had deceitfully failed to acknowledge as his own until that moment, and which have proved to be correct. He then proceeded to tell a series of falsehoods so outrageous that even the AP ran an article pointing that out. What Mr Wilson should have done, according to Rpbert's Rules of Order is raise a Point of Personal Privilege as any member may rise to defend the decorum of the House.

Mrs Pelosi owes Mr Wilson an apology for bringing a person of such low character into the House.

Comment on Power Line Blog "On Little Green Footballs"

Technically LGF is the best crafted blog site on the web. Charles Johnson could make a nice living if he would just license his model and allow others to benefit from its features. My expectation was that he was going to bring that expertise to Pajamas Media when Roger Simon started PJM. One day we may learn why that did not happen. At some point CJ announced that he would no longer post descriptions of his bicycle rides because he was afraid that people were going to use the information to locate and stalk him. The first indication that things were really changing was when he attacked the nice old couple of the Baron and Dymphna of Gates of Vienna over their linking to European anti-jihadists. It struck me that he might have had a point regarding the Europeans but his evidence was thin, a photo of a Celtic Cross on someone's bookshelf. The resort to guilt by association set a pattern. It certainly was not a correct way to deal with a questionable association by a friend. Regarding the Creationists at first I sympathized with his position because I saw that the Islamists could be using the issue as a stealth vehicle to insert their agenda into the educational system. However the subject did not interest me and the tone of the threads made me avoid them. Knowing where to draw the line on abusive trolls is an art not a science. While I rarely go there now I do link to the RSS feed of the links. Perhaps I will be blocked now also.

Update: Sunday, 09/13/09 I checked around 12:00 and the account was blocked.

Comments on The Belmont Club "Quid"

The theoretical motivation for this favor was that it avoided triggering a bar on visa renewal or reentry into the country that accompany a criminal conviction. Most people are unaware of these restrictions. The problem is that they were not created by a cabal of reactionary Customs and Border Protection officers nor by some hick local prosecutors who lack the gift for nuance present in the US Attorney's office in Massachusetts. These rules are found in laws written by the Congress.

On a host of issues but especially on that of immigration Congress suffers from massive hypocrisy. They write laws and then write conflicting laws or otherwise encourage the persons charged with executing the laws, that being what the Executive branch does, to not enforce the law. This is not a matter of discretion or rather the law will state where discretion may be exercised and by who.

If Mr Sullivan wanted special relief he could have applied to a friendly Bay State Congressman or he could have openly appealed for mercy in his case to the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security. The one thing he should not have done is sanction any deed that implies the corruption of a prosecutor’s office. That really does raise the question of his fitness for admission.

-------
BTW to illustrate the power of privileged groups to get special exemptions from the laws written by Congress, if you have tuberculosis then you are barred from entry into the Untied States, but if you have an HIV infection, which is more communicable but is also more aligned with politically favored groups, then the ban on entry due to a Public Health condition does not apply.

-------
Mr Sullivan is another case similar to Ms Paglia, who we recently discussed. He is of the Left on a whole range of issues but he is not a loyal apparatchik. The hard Left will never forgive him for his apostasy on the War on Terror (as it was) and the Iranian regime (as it is) but his economic libertarianism poses no threat to them. While he can count on some support from the Left they probably view him as a useful provocateur, as many on the right view Ms Paglia, and others will view his discomfit with equanimity.

MarkJ,
(who noted that Sullivan was caught in a similar web of favors)
Nice catch, video worthy.


-------
Sir Henry Morgan,
From the things to say on your last day at work for TSA file.
"Do you know who I am?"
"Can somebody help this poor man? He doesn't know who he is." ... or ...

"Let's check the lining of your jacket" yank "Look, it says your name must be Robert Hall" (or Calvin Klein etc.)
Ideally that skit plays out until two Supervisors debate whether his name is really Fruit of the Loom.

Sep 12, 2009 - 4:27 pm

9-11

(from the below thread on The Belmont Club)

After the first attack in '93 people in the upper floors of the World Trade Towers were instructed not to evacuate down. That if needed they would be taken off the roofs. Some lives were lost because of that.

That was Primary Day. I was working at a polling site in Queens when the cop came in and announced they had hit the trade center and the election was canceled. Never before in American history, not even for the Civil War, did we stop an election. I got to the Red Cross HQ, I had been a volunteer already for a couple of years, around noon. John McGhee, a mountain of a man and the youth cohort leader who has since died, was organizing 10,000 volunteers in the auditorium of the old HQ which was behind Lincoln Center. I grabbed a van of supplies and raced down the West Side Highway past the thousands lining it. We pulled up in front of the hospital on Greenwich about two blocks North of The Box. All the doctors and nurses were standing outside and waiting. You could feel the heat from two blocks away and the air was thick with dust and the smell, well that is what I will never forget. That and the nurse standing there crying as the realization came that no one was coming out. I worked there, in front of the school next to it actually, for two weeks 12-16 hours a day straight.

For the second day I worked liaison at the reconstituted OEM in the Police Academy. I would call our HQ to confirm that we could provide blankets as needed and every now and then someone from the Medical Examiners office would come to the door and yell out "Do we have body bags?" As a side note, two weeks before there had been a multi agency meeting at the OEM HQ on the 23rd floor in 7 World Trade on hurricane preparedness. They had boasted at length about the state of the art facility. I was the stinker who raised a hand and asked if it was safe in the event of an attack. They replied with outraged assurance that the sides were especially armored and could withstand any attack or natural disaster. My response was to say, "Yes but what about the floor below?" They did not invite me back. A couple of days after 9-11 the National team from the Red Cross showed up to take charge and I escorted them around lower Manhattan and we did the damage assessment. We examined the place pretty thoroughly and concluded that it was damaged. The police were told to stop anybody from doing anything but I know how security works. The cop standing on the South East corner of Broadway and Wall wouldn't let us by but I saw the Lieutenant standing on the North West corner, so I asked to speak to him. Well the Lieutenant saw us go past the first cop so he wasn't going to stop us. I just said hello and we passed by. At one point in the midst of the devastation we found the Wall Street Hotel open and immaculate with the manager looking every inch a retired British Colonel as they cared for the rescue workers. Then I spent a month working at the main respite center on the Hudson River piers near the Intrepid. My most searing memory from there, beyond the wall of card and letters from across America and the missing persons photos, was the back room that was the Teddy Bear warehouse. It was like an animal shelter. We had thousands of bears that had been sent in and the one iron rule was that if you took a bear you were out. Later people who were milking the system came in, claimed to be victims to get benefits and took bears that they sold on the street. I wonder what happened to all those teddy bears needing homes. I sat with a pregnant widow, firefighters wives are all so young and lovely, as a firefighter explained to her that her children would always have 5,000 uncles.

Down on Greenwich street we had paper painter's masks that we tried to convince the rescue workers to wear. Their were something like 16 different law enforcement agencies present at one point, including the Nassau County animal rescue, who carried guns. The National Guard stopped everybody but families sent their daughters down with trays of food and with a smile they got in. Some lunatics had gotten a hold of Red Cross gear and set up there own respite sites that it took days to sort out were not authorized. I went to the bathroom just when Robert Deniro came by with hamburgers from his restaurant up the block. The people from National restricted disbursement of the access badges we needed because they wanted to get them as souvenirs. On the piers I learned that the security dogs had a higher level of clearance on their ID badges then their handlers did. I guess the theory was that the dogs wouldn't talk. Down at The Box many of the rescue dogs got cut digging. Tails were cut off, exhausted dogs and handlers would rest with us. Later they died from what they had inhaled.

Comment on The Belmont Club "The ashen alabaster city"

There are those who worship Life and those who worship Death. In the end we all die but some of us know that by celebrating life we honor the Creator, whose works are eternal. Those who champion the dark leave no legacy, their destination and their memories are only a void. Today in NY the angels cry and all is washed clean.

Comment on The Belmont Club "Recent Afghanistan news stories"

My observations are leading me to the conclusion that Obama & Co. (A member of The Soros Group, LLC) are deliberately attempting to break the US Army. Just as he is europeanizing our domestic economy and dependency on government he is also bringing European standards of war-fighting to the DoD.

The motivating concept behind the Common Market ⇒ European Union was to draw the teeth from the Germans so that they could rejoin the human race and the French could feel safe. The Lion was convinced to lie down with the Lamb. That was all well and good as far as it went but it only worked as long as the American sheep dog was around to watch out for wolves and bears in the woods. Unfortunately the virus of resentment and the Free Rider Effect spread throughout Nato. Now the US has been lead in to join the rest of the old and toothless pack in a nice nap by the fireplace. But there will be no one to tend the fire now and as it dims the eyes in the forest will notice. Behind those eyes are teeth and empty bellies.

-------
Charles,
(who expects Europeans to expel recent immigrants)
Agitation by a few fringe parties that echo the memories of the hate speech of the past will do nothing but alienate or further confuse and endanger the European masses. If you could give credible evidence that the Europeans are committed to the values of their own civilization and pressing to expand the sphere of individual liberty I would be more hopeful. As it is the extreme nationalists are collectivists and often anti-Semites who are as likely to flip to an anti-American alliance with Islam as not.

I agree with your more hopeful view of the future of technology. Why would you think that it would work for 40 million moslems migrate to new verdant plains? Their cultural legacy is an expertise in making blooming fields into deserts.

Flying Pig Alert

Beware of low flying bacon. The AP fact checks Obama's speech.

BHO has bounced up to -8 in the Rasmussen Daily Tracking Poll Index. If he does not break through to even over the next 5 days then the speech was a bust and the slide will continue. The most important test coming up will be the local off year elections in 5 weeks.

Comments on The Belmont Club "Run away, run, run, run away"

Paglia would have a different list of errors than I would. For her the errors are tactical, she decries that they impede the attainment of goals. For me the errors are strategic, I decry the goals and take comfort that the Democrats are less efficient than in their dreams.

In tonight's speech Obama achieved an almost perfect disconnection from reality. The man who hired, or was hired by, Rahm Emanuel called for civility while implying crude threats. He gave lip service to traditional concerns about Federal Power but offered not a shred of analysis that would indicate any standard, either Constitutional, practical or moral, that would give rise to any limitation on the Federal government. He offered those who disagree with him absolutely nothing except a vague consideration of a future reform of the tort system, maybe by considering proposals to be examined by some unnamed future committee.

He hoped to match the impact of Mark Antony at Caesar's funeral that resulted in the mob chasing the reactionary conspirators from Rome. He showed the corpse of Kennedy and spoke lovingly of its wounds. He mentioned the Will or at least a message from the departed endorsing their common vision. He delivered nothing. If you remember, in the play Anthony never actually does read the Will he promises.
Here is a young Brando as Antony.


-------
Roderick Reilly,
I am not in favor of term limits. It smacks to much of an admission of incapacity that is incompatible with being a citizen of a sovereign republic. You do not cure an alcohol dependency by asking the bartender to cut you off after 3 drinks but then start serving from another bottle. Otherwise I agree with you and Pascal that we should remember that they are just politicians. Even General Washington had to go to the privy and put his pants on and had a fierce temper but I sure wish he had a man of his caliber again. You are 100% correct about the 17th Amendment needing repeal. That should not simply be something to "even consider" but a priority.

Pascal Fervor,
(who warned against politician worship)
Perhaps Paddy Moynihan was like another sainted Liberal, Fiorello Laguardia who said "I don't make many mistakes but when I do it's a beut." The Little Flower was a Republican and a Protestant Italian with a jewish wife. He couldn't miss.

Sep 10, 2009 - 12:05 pm

Comment on The Belmont Club "The good, the bad and the ugly"

Blago cannot turn on the Party. He is like one of the Old Bolsheviks facing a show trial under Stalin. All he can do is protest that he really wanted Health Care Reform prematurely. What stands out to me is his focus on Rahm Emanuel. Obama is a cipher but Emanuel is a force he is afraid to cross.

Regarding health care it is interesting that the Democrats are OK with a separate and better plan for government employees then they offer to the rest of the country. Bush tried to get the general public access to a retirement plan modeled on the Thrift Savings Plan available to federal workers. The Democrats who live off of the dependency created by Social Security killed that effort. They are doing the same thing to create additional dependency with health care.

Comment on The Belmont Club "Electing God 2"

Larry Sheldon,
(who noted that we can't learn to save those expected to die unless we try)
Excellent point. The analysis of Dr Death Emanuel is not only morally repulsive when applied to a baby born in a hospital where there are resources available to attempt a treatment but it is also a static view of life. Socialist analysis is always zero sum, frozen and fails to consider the incentives or potential for improvement.

Attenuated
Rectified
Made Redundant
Recycled
Normalized
Economized
Resource Conserved
Deprioritized
Efficiency Adjusted
Rendered
Liquidated
Consumated
Filed

Congress should cite this case as reason to pass a law denying any physicians trained or licensed in the UK the right to have their credentials considered in the US and deny them Visa access as professionals.

Comment on The Belmont Club "Duty of debt"

The bulk of the expenditures that the government assumed the Stimulus debt for are not scheduled until next year. The idea seems to be that Obama wants to use it for walking around $Billions for Acorn etc. before the election. Why can't Congress just rescind the unspent money, sell the improperly seized auto companies, cut government pay by 20% and watch the deficit shrink? This is another manufactured crisis. If the Republicans filibuster then the Democrats will have to cut spending and once the plug is lifter then the tub will begin to empty. A sounder policy isn't even very radical. Europe of all places has followed a more prudent policy then the US has and is seeing better results.

A Little Weber in the Day

(from the "We the chosen" BC thread)

PressingTowardTheMark,
(who refuted a defense of Sunstein's apologia for regulation)
The distinction is between what Weber called Mechanical Solidarity and Organic Solidarity. Mechanical is associated with more primitive societies and designates external controls on conduct while the Organic level of solidarity is found in more advanced societies and indicates that the rules have been internalized. For a democracy to work the people must have attained a level of Organic Solidarity. The rules are transmuted by means of the quality of "Charisma" which in a primitive society is embodied in the heroic leader but which becomes institutionalized over time, first in the monarchy and then in the aristocracy and eventually in the bureaucracy. When the people are not just the objects but the source of the rules and the charisma is held by the State that is created as an expression of the popular will then you have a democracy. This does not refute Solon 2040's contention that a state is needed to be a free citizen but he does get the source of authority, that is the locus of charisma, wrong and he misconstrues the need for coercive or mechanical regulation by the State in the mature democracy.

But they went to Harvard or Yale Law!

(more from the "Here to help you" thread)

Somebody outsourced the political process to the Ivy League law school admissions committees of the 1980's and 90's. Think about the incredibly small number of people who make those decisions and reflect that we know nothing about them or their prejudices. They are a poor substitute for the Electoral College.

Barack Obama, Van Jones, Eliot Spitzer, etc., the list goes on.

Comment on The Belmont Club "The end of the day"

People who do something cannot do nothing. Once I heard that men who had been Commanding Officers in the Navy retired and often died within two years. Slugs on the other hand are immortal.

The unemployment statistics do not count me. My unemployment eligibility ran out after a year and I am making part time money at a job that ends in a couple of months. If you define the problem away you can pretend that you can manage it. Not counting millions of people who are really unemployed is "No true Scotsman" logic.

What do educated people do when they can't find work? They blog.

Comment on The Belmont Club"The Big Casino"

What the repeated and convoluted alliances of Jumblatt show is that in the patchwork network of tribal conflicts that stretch from the Atlantic to Central and South East Asia the one thing that does not work is nuance. It is essential to above all remain credible. The fact is that even most of the Strong Horses prove on closer examination to be surprisingly weak. Assad of Syria is merely another tribal minority boss like Jumblatt is. It is wrong to assume that these people are simple or foolish or thugs. They are perceptive and shrewd but know from thousands of years of bitter experience not to rely on abstract principles of law and justice or promises of future peace and prosperity. All contracts are temporary and the only thing they can trust is what they see. The lives of themselves and their families depend on those facts. If the palace of Assad were to vanish in a puff of smoke or the home village of the Alawite's was to experience some catastrophe then the next week nobody would remember Assad's name. As long as the US treats any of these people like representatives of Lockean Sovereigns who will partner with us in establishing the primacy of law over expediency we will continue to be treated like chumps and sold rotten rugs in the bazaar.

On Free Will, the Horror and Film Noir

(from the BC "Here to help you" thread)

RWE,
(who noted that quoting Van Jones was called "vicious")
The presumption is that the concealed information about Obama, his student papers, the teachers he had and especially the tape of him at the Rashid Khalidi party would be as inflammatory, in his own words, as Van Jones' was.

This leads to an interesting problem. It is really like something from a film noir or horror script. How do you deal with someone who is by appearances rational and well dressed but who you have reason to believe lacks the capacity to exercise Free Will. If Obama is subject to blackmail because of explosive evidence against him then lacks the basic condition needed to be a citizen in a free society. When I see the movie D.O.A. my first reaction is pity. It is a tale told by a dead man. In horror movies the zombies also elicit our pity, they want to be human but they can't. If the first Black President is subject to control because his own words can be used against him then he is morally not a free agent but a slave.

Comment on The Belmont Club"Here to help you"

LoTM in '10, a Czar for the Little People.

Obama has reduced the awe of the United States to the status of a Seinfeld skit. This is the Festivus of government. With a few exceptions these are a collection of has beens and never beens. The regular bureaucrats should be jealous and furious. The Democrats have set a precedent they may regret. The idea behind the regular civil service was rigid adherence to procedure and reduced compensation in return for tenure in office and a generous pension. The rationale for that system needs to be reexamined. Civil service pay on average in 2006 was $65,516 for 1,674,026 federal civilian employees. Go to OPM.gov and get the Fact Book. It may be more rational to move to a system with no deferred compensation for civilian employees.

British Court Convicts Three in Plot to Blow Up Airliners.

They must want another trade deal.

Would Barack Fulfill Woody Wilson's Dream?

(from the bottom of the BC "We the chosen" thread)

bob,
(who linked to stories about UN shenanigans)
Maybe Obama is hoping to fulfill Woodrow Wilson's unrealized dreams. Wilson was interesting. Unlike BHO he had a great resume. That was because he kept getting kicked upstairs. He was an unwelcome presence around the Court House as a lawyer so he was slid into a job as a Law Professor. He was unwelcome in the faculty lounge and the classroom so he got sent to sit behind a desk as President of Princeton University. The Trustees were soon enough eager to get him out of their hair so he got fobbed of on the State of New Jersey as Governor. Desperate to get him out of town the politicians pulled enough strings to ship him off to Washington as President of the United States. The Senate was on the verge of accepting the Treaty of Versailles so that we could join the League of Nations in the expectation that Woody would leave the country if offered the title of President of the World. That proved more then Henry Cabot Lodge could swallow so he put a fork in the whole project.

Now that we are stuck with the UN anyway perhaps we can talk BHO into considering a move to Secretary General. The job is perfect for him. It is all prestige and no one expects any results. We should insist that he moves to Geneva.

Comment on The Belmont Club"We the chosen"

If Americans and the English are as Shaw said "two peoples separated by a common language" then how much more surprising is it when we find ourselves defining terms like "Rights" at cross purposes with the Australians. It is the assumption that we are speaking the same tongue that makes us fail to observe more closely. We think of each other as siblings and when we fail to communicate we can get impatient. Perhaps that is why people get angrier with family members then with strangers and civil wars are more horrible then foreign expeditions. Many Americans are just waking up to the realization that almost a third of the population of their own country agree with Sunstein and do not accept the most basic principles of our system that were taught in public schools when we were children.

Some here have used the acronym TWANLOC to refer to them but I reject that notion. They are and remain our countrymen. If we claim the right to deny them then we would be granting them the right to deny us and it follows then that we would helpless before them if they can but hold onto power. This struggle will continue and it may even cross many lines but at the end we must seek to reeducate those who have erred and to restore the Constitution as it was intended to be.

-------
Robohobo,
(whose father was a communist)
Please do not assume that our positions are incompatible. Nothing I said implies that I doubt the danger posed by Mr Ayers and Mr Emanuel and the potential risk that the struggle could end in a resort to force. Even in the worst case, which I pray does not happen, even if there was another Civil War they would at the end of it be Americans. They may be casualties or in prison or they could deny their heritage and emigrate but we must treat them a priori as citizens and our equals. Lincoln was right about this. If those we disagree with are not our fellow citizens at the end of the day, even if they seek to deny us, then we must allow and even encourage them to peacefully separate or we must depart. While some here have groused about separating Red from Blue I would oppose that now as America opposed that 150 years ago.

-------
Robohobo,
Please do not assume that our positions are incompatible. Nothing I said implies that I doubt the danger posed by Mr Ayers and Mr Emanuel and the potential risk that the struggle could end in a resort to force. Even in the worst case, which I pray does not happen, even if there was another Civil War they would at the end of it be Americans. They may be casualties or in prison or they could deny their heritage and emigrate but we must treat them a priori as citizens and our equals. Lincoln was right about this. If those we disagree with are not our fellow citizens at the end of the day, even if they seek to deny us, then we must allow and even encourage them to peacefully separate or we must depart. While some here have groused about separating Red from Blue I would oppose that now as America opposed that 150 years ago.

Sep 8, 2009 - 4:15 am

Comment on The Belmont Club"I had a dream"

If you believe that wealth is not created but simply exists to be summoned by a bureaucrats pen then it follows that there is no good reason that some countries are poorer then others. That leads to the position that relative poverty must be caused by some outside agent that is imposing deprivation. Leftists sincerely believe that everyone in the world could attain their rightful aspirations if the United States, sometimes the US and the UK, were not preventing them. The final conclusion of this thesis is that anything that drains resources from the Anglo-American industrial-financial war machine will increase global freedom and wealth. Therefor policies are advocated, like Cap and Trade and debt creation, to deliberately deny the armed forces future resources.

In the socialist paradise soon to come the peoples of China Iran, Palestine, Bolivia and various other progressive havens will be able to express themselves unconstrained by threats from Uncle Sam. The verbiage about Global Warming is largely just hokum for the masses given that socialists have a far more destructive view of the environment than capitalists do. The fact that there is little evidence to support these ideas, and much evidence to the contrary, is completely irrelevant. Like an animal with grey skin and a big nose the irrelevant fact that collectivism destroyed the environment and that the people under its control are not allowed to express themselves, authentically or otherwise, is completely ignored.

Comment on The Belmont Club"Fool Brittania"

According to The Telegraph The Queen is displeased about the state of the army. This is a big deal as far as leaked stories go.
Brown can cling to power for almost 9 months more unless the Labour MPs revolt. They are like Fagin's criminal boys clinging to their abusive leader as the baying mob closes in.

Comment on The Belmont Club"The armies of the night"

Regarding Screaming Dr Dean, what he is practicing is the Leninist theory of Democratic Centralism. The Leader sets the agenda for the Political Bureau then the Politburo sets the agenda for the Central Committee and then the Central Committee sets the agenda for the Party Congress which sets the agenda for the public legislature. In theory everyone gets to debate until that is they receive a directive from above. Of course if you babble a viewpoint contrary to what is later set as the agenda determined by higher authority then there will be consequences.

On two occasions Dean delivered veiled threats. Once by saying he was not criticizing Senators but only their policies, because it was expedient to do so. His phrasing made it clear that he had no problem with personally attacking politicians he disagreed with if they did not prove cooperative. The second time at the end when he said "We can be polite" he again implied that was a choice and that he could direct his army to go knock on doors and be impolite.

Charles,
(who once thought Norman Mailer was smarter than his father)
Great post. Welcome home. Reminded me of Mark Twain discovering how much smarter his father became over time.

Nahncee,
You are correct in that the people in that hall will send each other most of those emails. We face the same problem. Much as we want to reach out our efforts must be tempered or they end up in the spam folder.

Leo Linbeck III,
(who discussed “the competency trap”)
The phenomenon has a biological analogue. The more specialized a species is to exploit a niche the more fragile is its position. Change is a natural process. Either you adapt or perish.

On the Isolation of Hyde Park

From the BC thread linked below "You've lost that lovin' feeling"

Biff Larkin,
(who thinks that University Liberals like BHO are sheltered)
You overstate things a bit. Hyde Park is a community district, that is to say most of one and part of another zip code, in which are located the University of Chicago and most of the associated students and faculty. It is about 1½ square miles, 2 with South Kenwood added, and has about 30 to 40,000 residents. I have reviewed the wiki article and found it generally accurate, although my knowledge is now out of date. Since it is not an independent municipality it does not grant liquor licenses.

The University of Chicago does have its own police force (UCPD) that patrols in addition to the Chicago Police Department (CPD). This puts an additional 12 or more uniformed police on duty in the neighborhood at any time. About half are full time employees of the UCPD and the rest are mostly CPD moonlighting on overtime. Over a third of the local residents are Black and it is significantly wealthier and safer then the surrounding areas but it is not walled off like West Berlin was. However some streets are closed off so that entry and exit is not completely open.

In recent years there have been some moves towards gentrification around the Hyde Park-South Kenwood core but as the economy deteriorates I would not be surprised to see things decay again. The area north of the district, North Kenwood and Oakwood were almost completely destroyed in the 1960s and '70s. Recently the land between the University district and the downtown has seen money move in. As in other places in Chicago the dismantling of public housing projects allowed the market to draw people and financing to locations convenient to The Loop. Much money was poured into working class stabilization efforts in Woodlawn to the South of campus but that and the Washington Park neighborhood to the West are very fragile in the face of what could be a long term economic depression.

The local politicians and the highly influential University certainly can make it difficult for anyone hoping to open a bar or any other business they do not sponsor. For many years the all powerful South East Chicago Commission was run by Julian Levi, the brother of the future University President and US Attorney General, Edward Levi. Liquor licenses are not easy to get in Chicago. Late night licenses are very hard to obtain. There are of course bars and taverns both on and off campus. If the Woodlawn Tap (Jimmy's) were to close then that would be a sign of the apocalypse.

Mad Fiddler,
(who described Hyde Park)
You catch the flavor. The Kenwood district has the mansions, along with the Nation of Islam houses where Farrakhan lives and Muhammed Ali used to. The Midway Plaisance along with the Museum of Science and Industry and Jackson Park are remnants of the 1892 World's Columbian Exposition. The world's first ferris wheel was right outside of the new University. The Old University of Chicago failed after the Great Chicago Fire, it was located to the North in what is now the depressed but hopefully rebuilding Oakwood neighborhood.

Doug,
(who mentioned BHO/Ayers' reference to NOI security)
(comments on the BC closed as I was posting this)

Correct, the NOI houses are on the 4700 block of South Woodlawn Ave, that is south of 47th street in the wealthy South Kenwood district. The University police do not patrol north of 47th street. The dividing line is dramatic, at one time on the north side of 47th was the NOI mosque and almost nothing else. There was no crime near the NOI houses. The Fruit of Islam were there and polite but everyone knew not to bother them. Faculty I visited nearby were glad of the extra protection.

On occasion I had 5 AM breakfast at the long gone Hyde Park Coffee Shop and met some of Muhammed Ali's people. They were friendly.

Comments on PJM Jennifer Rubin "Funerals Teach Us Much About Our Presidents"

Bush '43 had the gift of displaying the right level of emotion. His father '41, while superior on many of the technical skills of appearing presidential or at least for a time controlling his message before a hostile press, lacked the appearance of the common touch. When GHWB was Reagan's Vice President he once described the job as "You die. We fly."

There appears to be something very wrong about Obama and I wish that some of the psychiatrists and therapists who offer opinions on others based on little public information could objectively study and report on the fitness of BHO.

Comments on The Belmont Club "Digging our own graves"

mongoose,
this group is much larger than likes of Moore

Nothing is larger than Moore. He is worldly. That is to say he measures larger at the equator than at the poles. His attraction is beyond magnetic, it is gravitational.
/snark off. He deserved that.
As a Labor Day note Moore is also a very bad employer. Leftists often are. Did Acorn pay their election day foot soldiers yet?

One recurring theme (ed: Or is that a motif?) (LoTM: Shaddup) I see in our dealings with the Left is that of "debasement." Just as the Left naturally proposes policies that will debase the currency they also tend to use and then debase people's faith in other essential pillars of a prosperous society. One of those pillars are the self regulating nature of a professional community that adheres to a code of ethics. In a successful free society this tendency of self identified specialists to adhere to a code and hold themselves to high standards becomes a key support to the maintenance of independent associations that can lower the costs of obtaining reliable information in the public market. This reinforces Tocqueville's web of voluntary associations. We have seen a corruption of these standards for political ends in profession after profession. Scholarship, finance, teaching, law and even medicine have been compromised. Once the public can no longer rely on the presumption that members of a specialty are held to a higher standard then their value depreciates, it becomes debased like a counterfeit coin.

-------
WillDoMathForFood,
(who considered the mathematics of an uncelestial body)
I'm just saying that if they ever put MM into orbit it would probably shift the center of axis for the Earth-Moon system with unforeseeable affects on global climate change and sea levels. If MM and Al Gore both were launched into space it would be The End of the World, as we know it. Perhaps the Russians have a lift vehicle? Contemplating this, I feel fine.
(video embedding disabled, but the link works)

Comment on breitbart.tv > George Will: NEA Call for "Recovery Agenda Art" Likely Broke Some Laws

The defense of the Left has two parts.
1) We got away with something 75 years ago when the government was
    1/10th its present size and the dangers of state controlled art were
    not understood.
2) All the laws, rules and regulations that have been enacted in the
    intervening period to prohibit this don't apply to us. It is only wrong
    if Republicans do it.
/HT Instapundit

Comment on The Salad Days: Political News and Views in Tennessee

Nowhere in the discussion of where to bring the Movers and Shakers for a meal is there any indication that their preferences were considered. It appears the news manager was eager to eat a salad at her publisher's expense. If she had indicated that the wearers of big wigs had expressed a deep craving for a salad served by Aunt Jemima and Uncle Joe to the tunes of a minstrel show but she had skillfully talked them into settling for the Cumberland then that would have been defensible. As it was the sources she was roping into her expense account padding scheme might have been happier with a quick burger or a half hour with the young police reporter.
/found via Instapundit

Van Jones, Gone in the Witching Hour

The tossing of Van Jones might be the pulling of the loose thread that will cause the whole cheap suit of the Obama administration to unravel. What is needed is a full court press by Blacks to draw a public distinction between the Communists (no obfuscation, that is what they really are) who hijacked the civil rights struggle and the interests and aspirations of all Americans including people of color. We must break through the MSM wall that consigns groups of people to dependency ghettos.

Maybe, just maybe this is The End of the Beginning.

He vanished in The Midnight Hour,

when they Lost that Loving Feeling.


-------
The MSM are in the position of someone sticking their fingers in their ears and screaming "I am more subtle and nuanced and perceptive and polite then you are and I say there is nothing to see. So there you big fat stupid nazi turd." Once on some sitcom IIRC, possibly on Friends, one of the characters said "I am so not a Princess and I absolutely forbid anyone to say that I am." That character is now appearing on Meet the Press.

Comment on The Belmont Club,"You've lost that lovin' feeling"

On this issue everyone here seems to be on the same page. Perhaps we should all turn off our computers right now?

There is one note of caution I wish add. There is a tendency to expect some cataclysm, such as the next 9-11, to occur that will wake people up. whiskey just said it "any attack that kills a lot of Americans (a slam dunk)." At best this leads to passivity as people expect a deux ex machina to resolve the crisis. At worst this leaves us open to charges that we are cheerleading for the terrorists.

As long as BHO and the Soros aligned radicals are in power why would other radicals attack us? In fact it seems pretty damning evidence of some level of commonality of goals that they hold off. That does not mean that I believe that there is a link between al-Qaeda and the White House, merely a sense of professional courtesy. As Napoleon said, "Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake." Under BHO the United States is tearing itself apart. As long as we continue to do so I expect the terrorists to give us plenty of space continue.

Comment on The Belmont Club,"What a wonderful world Part 2"

Thomas Drew,
(who discussed modern Protestant theology)
There are limits to reason. The symbol of the Age of Reason, the culmination of the quest for precision, economy, efficiency, simplicity and humanity, was the guillotine. Barth's abstraction of God from the world can have consequences.

Your description of Protestant Christianity as "neither a religion nor a belief system" but rather as what sounds like an emotional and philosophical template of acceptance of an external judgmental authority that is reflected in an earthly faith and political system sounds to this non-Christian remarkably like another conjoined faith, ethical, political system that arose partly claiming to be a rational alternative to the corruption of Judaism and Christianity. That system is called Islam.

Comment on The Belmont Club,"Point counterpoint"

The problem with the AP issuing a photo of an American soldier dying isn't with the image itself but with the political intent behind it. This is tricky because the image is news worthy. Everyone remembers the Robert Capa image of the Falling Soldier from the Spanish Civil War. The authenticity of that image has been disputed but it's power remains.


If an image of American's in combat and wounded or dying was seen as a cause for rallying the country then who here would object? Mathew Brady took photographs of the dead of Gettysburg that were as powerful then and should be now as anything the AP can send from Afghanistan. The Union will was not broken by that knowledge. Our argument should be not with the images but with the politicians in Washington and the editors of the AP who counsel defeat. The concerns about privacy and decency are real but I do not believe in a blanket ban on imagery.


-------
Under other circumstances, if the man was not already proven capable of using any venue for the most inappropriate political theater, a speech by BHO to school children would be harmless. After all he does more damage when he talks to adults. Given that people fear his taste for 1930s agitprop for good reason we should all be grateful if the event is canceled. If Obama really wants to help children then I suggest that he visit a school and actually teach a lesson. Perhaps he could read to them. Could someone please send him a copy of "My Little Pony?"

Sep 4, 2009 - 8:07 pm

Comment on Theo Spark, "Video: Aubrey O'Day says Castro is brilliant. Hitler was too"

Brilliant should be defined as displaying a sustained ability to correctly perceive the structure of problems that elude most people of above average intelligence and displaying an ability to craft new solutions that solve those problems and alter the conditions that produced them. Low cunning is not the same as being brilliant.

50 years ago Castro managed to seize power in Cuba by taking full advantage of NY Times cupidity, Washington's distraction and Batista's errors. He got past the second string while the Varsity was busy elsewhere so it hardly counts as brilliant. 45 years ago he maneuvered the real whack job Ché Guevera into going off to get killed in Bolivia. That showed some competence but once again in a very narrow sphere. Since then he has achieved nothing except forcing people to sit for 5 hour speeches and hanging on. While that counts for something it should not be considered brilliant. Castro has not solved the problems that enabled him to take power. He has expelled most of the productive middle class that had made Cuba a relatively prosperous society before the Revolution and he has shrunk the economy and reduced the complexity of society in an failed effort to make it more manageable. It is true that sociopaths are often possessed of above average intelligence but I do not see the evidence that Castro is in fact particularly brilliant.

Hitler was probably a man with more wires between his ears to begin with than Castro has evidenced. In his case I would give the woman a break. She was trying to draw a distinction and if she was a trained polemicist she could have said something more effective about how it honors the United States to say that we took out Satan's first string in WW-II.

Life is Choice

Follow on to "After the gold rush."

RWE,
(who knows others envy America's Wal-Marts and dead end towns)
The Left denigrates labor. Their insecure exaltation of a TV world populated by either Knowledge Workers or whiskey's granite counter top consuming urban sluts makes them fail to comprehend why 98% of humanity when given the chance chose to move to isolated wildernesses or into urban slums. People sought out jobs doing backbreaking manual labor in isolation or toiling in dark satanic mills.

The entire field of Economics can be summed up in two sentences.
1) Life is about choice.
2) The only real costs are opportunity costs.
All else is commentary.

Why did people choose to move into these places that that the Left would only want to visit on a TV screen or as part of an exotic adventure tour with a 5 star hotel at the end of the trail? Unless you were living out the script t of the old sitcom Green Acres it wasn't an aesthetic choice. People moved to these places because it beat the alternatives. People moved willingly into the slums of Manchester to work in the mills because it was better than starving on a farm. People moved willingly to the wilderness of Kansas because it beat starving in Manchester.

Comments on The Belmont Club "After the gold rush"

It is I am sure infuriating to others when Americans like them for who we assume them to be. It can seem condescending, like we believed in a Disney version of the world and fail to deal directly with people as individuals in the here and now.

People from the UK are annoyed by Americans, not only conservative Americans either, who affect a Tory nostalgia for a past that many in Europe are eager to repudiate. Even when aligning with egalitarian political ideals of the Left Americans tend to give credence to every cretin from the Old World, treating everyone from England as if the were a precious aristocrat to be fawned over. Real Conservative Americans harbor a deep respect for England as our elder brother and are aware that our Revolution was really for the protection of the colonists rights as Englishmen. On some level what we are, to go back to a subtopic of a thread that passed me by, is England in exile. America is a refuge established to keep a dream of liberty alive.

If we feel for England as for a parent or older sibling in a way that clouds our vision then we feel for Australia in a different way. When my ships visited Australia we stopped in Perth/Freemantle and the loveliest little town in Western Australia, a place called Albany. When people asked me what it was like visiting Australia I said it was like time travel, like what we believed America was like in '50s or in the '40s. It was like visiting Utah. While Australians may be aware of all the warts in their own historical record and the grievances of the aborigines, only 2+% of the population, maybe real, to an American it does seem like an Oz where we can glimpse what we should be if only we had been spared slavery and the Civil War.

Comments on The Belmont Club "The lord of the flies"

No political unit larger than a Congressional district should be permitted to operate a public school. Vouchers should be granted to every parent. This should be fought out as a 13th Amendment issue. Government at the local level or state can set minimum standards and inspect that children receive some basic level of education. Government can also inspect to ensure the voucher recipients are not committing fraud or theft. Beyond that the government should stay out of education.

-------
steeple,
(who noted that under Chavez Venezuela has to import coffee)
Someone said that the arabs had a saying, "If the Russians ever conquer Arabia then we will suffer from a shortage of sand."

----------
Roderick Reilly,
(who asked why I wanted to use the 13th and not the 10th)
Blacks are keenly aware that their children are treated like property held in involuntary servitude to the teacher’s unions. The 10th Amendment is a nonsyarter. Federal Judges either laugh at such suits or quietly dismiss them. Once I heard former Solicitar General Ted Olsen point that out at a Federalist Society meeting. Fighting the issue under the 13th and 14th Amendments simply makes more sense.

Sep 3, 2009 - 12:28 pm

Comment on The Belmont Club "Cloak and dagger"

Turkey is not a neutral intermediary in this dispute but is rapidly sliding into the Russian - Iranian - Syrian axis. The de-facto siding of the Iranian mullahs with the Russians and the Sunni enemies of the Iraqi government of Maliki should further discredit the morally and economically bankrupt Iranian regime. The Obama regime has already thrown under the bus the people of Lebanon, who had freed their own country from Syrian domination. Now they are throwing away the Iraqis, for whom we spent our blood and treasure. Seven years ago I said, go through Damascus first.

Comment on The Belmont Club "Betting on red"

Of the six threads that Wretchard has graced us with in the last two days this is the most important. Indeed this may be the key information that can yet save us from a looming disaster. Every effort will be made to suppress this knowledge.

-------
I forwarded the Telegraph article to my mother in Florida with the following description.

Please read and share without sending my email addy to strangers. The thing to remember is that once anything is controlled by the government then there is no way to prevent abuse, incompetence or corruption from taking over. We must prevent the efforts of the SEIU hospital workers union and Obama to push through socialized medicine in America. This has nothing to do with improving health care and it has nothing to do with saving money. In fact it will reduce the quality of health care and it will cost the tax payers Trillions of dollars that we can not afford. This is a naked grab for power and effort to reward his supporters. Just as he used a manufactured crisis to seize control of GM and Chrysler and give them to his supporters in the UAW he now is attempting to foment a crisis and use it to take control of another industry so that he can give it to his supporters.

Comment on The Blemont Club "Up, up and play the game"

The argument that Armies have to attack once mobilized is as foolish as the belief of the lunatic in The Front Page that he had to kill the policeman because of "production for use." There are layers of people in the Foreign Service, most of whom are intelligent educated skilled and genuinely fond of America, despite their left wing elitism. Many of them are experts on problems that became of secondary interest before they entered government service. If we put them all in a building to work on "Global Warming" but with strict orders to cause no harm to any American business or stockholder, then it would be money well spent to keep them busy until they retired.

At one time IBM had divisions full of engineers who had created the great systems of the 1950s and '60s but who were effectively on the shelf. The problem for the State Department is that they can't afford a staff warehouse. To many of the senior people have the wrong expertise and there is no place to park them while to many of the junior people are the semi-educated products of America's debased universities.

Ronald Reagan did succeed in disestablishing the National Tea Tasting Board. Other than that everything a government starts becomes immortal. Someplace there is probably a clerk compiling reports on trireme traffic for the long gone Byzantine Emperor.

Comment on The Belmont Club "Attacking in the opposite direction"

Turkey was an ally of the US and Israel through the Bush 41 and Clinton years. The John Kerry left wing of the Democratic Party sided with France's Jacques Chirac (who was paid off by Oil for Food) in pressuring the Turks to keep out the 4th Infantry Division during Desert Storm. Ever since then the religious extremists have been gaining power in Turkey. This week Turkey agreed to establish diplomatic relations with the Russian client regime in Armenia. Georgia is now surrounded. We can expect Russian and Georgian ships to cooperate in "peace keeping" patrols to escort shipping into Abkhazia. It will be easy for them to arrange a provocation to set in motion the subjugation of Georgia.

After another Winter with Russia tightening the energy screws on the Ukraine and Western Europe, already being tossed to Russia by Obama's breaking faith with Poland and the Czechs, will set the stage for the reabsorbing, starting in the Spring, of Russia's Near Abroad.

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Dan in Colorado,
"Steve J. Nelson" is our regular SVR control. He has a chair already set up for him and if you need cigarettes made with cardboard or a decent bottle of Slivovitz from Vojvodena he should be able to arrange delivery. For most of the Summer I wondered where the visitors we had during the Georgian War of last year went. Their return could be an indication that plans are being executed and, to draw an analogy from another thread, railway timetables are being dusted off.

Mick,
I claim no expert knowledge. My expectation is that Putin is being methodical and let this years campaign season go because he sees things moving his way in the near term. In the long term he has demographic problems but that is another story. Therefore I think he is moving step by step to isolate, destabilize and reestablish subservient client regimes in his victims one at a time. What order will he select to move on them? Will Georgia be next? Probably but the Ukraine is there and eventually the Baltics and Poland. Each sits shivering in the dark now awaiting its turn.

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The argument that Israel, or the "Neocon Israel Lobby" in America, should accept Russian subjugation of the Caucasus, and by extension most of Europe, in return for a future promise of natural gas to be supplied by Russia and a nuclear armed Iran belongs in the Trial Balloon Hall of Fame. This lends new meaning to the term "natural gas."

Comment on The Belmont Club "The central blue"

Salami tactics? Didn't they justify cutting the F-22 by saying the F-35 was good enough? Now the cut the waste in "unproven systems" crowd are after the F-35. Starting yesterday we should build 500
F-22s and 3,000 F-35s.

Relating to what we discussed on an earlier thread, if the Republicans had fought to the death against the false promise of the "peace dividend" they would be in a much stronger position electorally. Instead they agreed to split the pork barrel with the Democrats. This fed left wing constituencies disproportionately. If we had kept a 500 ship Navy and cut steel for tanks to equip 28 Army Brigades plus 7 Marine Brigades and rebuilt the Air Force then the blue color industrial labor workers whose unions control the Democratic Party would be personally more sympathetic to the Republicans, and their unions and the Democratic Party would be far less sympathetic to the extreme left.

Comments on The Belmont Club "We the People"

For those who know only the campaign but not the craft of governing the struggle is unending. Do not trust the Democrats to accept a check and refocus their efforts on solving real problems. The face of the Democratic Party is Rahm Emanuel in a rage plunging a knife into a table. They will want vengeance, expect every resource at their disposal to be unleashed in "the politics of personal destruction." Further I do not trust them to really abandon the public option. The nationalization of health care is the point of the whole exercise. Everything else is just window dressing to them. Some bills will be produced with a elastic clauses inserted, they could be titled "An Act for Insurance Portability" or "An Act for Refurbishing the Washington Monument" but the important clauses will be buried inside, that will be used to justify setting up committees of best practices and cooperatives of health consumers.

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SIGINT,
(who wants a new political party, without RINOs)
I disagree. What you are proposing is to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Refuse to talk to or deal with elected Republicans and retreat destroying the Republican Party in the hope that something better will arise on its ashes? That is exactly the same advice that David Axelrod would give us if he logged in here. It is the equivalent of the same attitude that the Left has towards Western Civilization, burn it all down and hope that some glorious utopia replaces it. We have two political parties. We need to rally the support of millions of citizens. This is a Democracy. More to the point; we believe in it being a Democracy. The chants of RINO on this site, and Malkin's and others, are what crippled McCain and allowed Obama, with enormous help from Acorn and the Media, to get into the White House. Those who said that McCain was not good enough were wrong then and you are wrong now.

For one thing conflating Snow with the others is a rhetorical trick to predetermine the result. Olympia Snow is closer to Arlen Spector than to John McCain in her voting record and temperament. Will these politicians respond to serious pressure from below that is phrased in a manner that engages the majority and does not offend them? Probably the answer is yes. It is our responsibility to do the hard work of engaging in local politics, on State party committees, town councils, school boards and election boards, where real control of the political machinery rests in America. It is also our responsibility to be vigilant for efforts by the Left to discredit us either through Moby operations or MSM focus on fringe elements. There are those who will try to hijack the popular alternative to Statism for racist or other reprehensible purposes.

Until now most of the voters have been more afraid of right wing bigots than of left wing bigots. That may be changing. We should not "split the difference" but we do need to assure the voters that we are safe and remind them how, when you strip away the MSM demonizing, just how safe and good GWB was.

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SIGINT,
While I believe your heart is in the right place I think that your tactics might prove insufficiently subtle or nuanced for a time when we are not in a revolution but engaged in traditional politics, of a sort. If those terms don't get a rise out of you then hurry to a Dr and get your blood pressure checked. The worst thing you can say about most politicians is that they know the craft of reading the public mood better then they know the meaning of the Constitution. In some cases they really do know better but time and process have sucked them in. If people, not just conservative ideologues, but first people offended by corruption and deceit, get control of the local political machinery, then the party leadership, in both parties, will respond and cast out the influence of the Soros/Kos/Move On/HuffPo extremists.

Sep 2, 2009 - 8:30 pm

Comments on The Belmont Club "Unintended consequences"

We have replaced "Killer Applications" with "Killer Appliances." What is needed is a multiplicity of approaches to solve any problem. The wisdom of the free market will produce the Pareto Optimal solution to whatever problem or possible problem you want to consider. That applies to potential environmental change or any other issue. Anything that limits the flow of information or impedes the ability of an actor to participate in the market reduces the ability of the system to reach the optimum state.

Racism excluded some voices from the market and limits the ability of all of us to benefit from their contributions. Perhaps a child who could invent a better refrigerator does not get the proper training or if they do they are not hired or listened to because of racism. That would be an example of an externality that damages the intellectual market.

Political Correctness also limits the flow of information. By attempting to predetermine results before a free inquiry can occur it excludes other choices with unforeseen consequences. Once it is politically determined that some voices cannot be heard or others criticized under hate speech codes then the conversation and learning end. Once it is politically determined that combatting global warming is a paramount goal then any mechanism that purports to aid in that effort is mandated, no matter how inefficient.

If the shift away from CFC based refrigeration systems had relied more on micro-economic market forces, such as tax incentives or liability costs, then a superior solution would have been found. The blunt force of the government mandate, whether in choosing coolant systems or low flow toilets (that actually end up wasting more water) or racial hiring quotas, restrict future growth and breed cynicism and resentment. More ends up blowing up then the refrigerator.

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What percentage of Americans are descended from pre-1860 white inhabitants in slave owning states?
To anyone descended from the Eastern Europeans, the Southern Europeans, the Asians and the Latin Americans who came to America after 1860, almost all of whom have their own history of serfdom/oppression that they escaped from, the question of what is owed to the descendants of slaves simply does not compute. I am not sure what percentage of even the non-English Northern Europeans, Germans, Scandinavians and Irish in America came before the late 19th century waves. For anyone like Skip Gates to walk around in the United States in the 21st century arguing that they should be judged by anything other then "the content of their character" makes as much sense as if they were to move to Beijing and argue "You owe me because my great grandfather had it rough." That would go over big.

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Robohobo and no mo uro,
(who discussed the impact of global trade on US semi-skilled labor)
Great end of thread points. During the Reagan era the Right smugly assumed that we had won the intellectual battle at home and that the voters would be rational and support us. Once the Berlin Wall fell and History Ended the right thought the game really was over and went off on vacation. Give the Left credit for being savvy. Union membership collapsed during the 1970s through the '90s, except in government and the highly regulated and subsidized industries of health care and transportation but the Left did not go away.

The secret that was in plain sight was that the Left wing capture of the universities, and associated NGOs, gave them a refuge that kept them alive. Also the Left wing lock on declining but significant Black voting block allowed them a secure internal base from which to plan a return to power. Since the Free Market model had removed the institutional locks, unions and urban ethnic block voting, that kept the old Democratic machine in power, the task is now to strengthen those sectors linked to the current party and force more of the population into dependent relations with the government.

The pressure that global economic forces placed on the old industrial base of the Democratic Party could have become a source of strength for the Republicans if they had effectively defended an entrepreneurial America. Unfortunately going back to Nixon's expansion of domestic statism, with unregulated expansion of regulatory authorities under the guise of the EPA and then with the ADA etc., Republicans have helped forge the tools that give the State unlimited authority under the control of Democrats.

Comments on The Belmont Club "Finding needles in the haystack"

The utility of a technology that allows you to upload your bookmarks or history, really your memory, sounds liberating but it comes with a price. The problem is that uploaded information is no longer private. If some people worry about cookie technology laying open the contents of their hard drives to merchants who seek the knowledge to manipulate them as a thin wedge for governments seeking to inspect and control then how much more vulnerable people are after the place the index to their interests and concerns on an external file?

The benefit of Google is that it allows you to limit the responses to what you have a greater probability of seeking. The risk of Google is that after analyzing your interests and needs, and comparing them with the interests and needs of the exterior entity that is choosing what you see, the choices made available to you will be biased in a way that shapes your knowledge and future interests. Information could exist but not be made available for you to consider. The book that the librarian hides on the back shelf effectively does not exist. The motto of Google is "Do no evil" but they are an entity not only with corporate interests, they must deal with China, but with the personal interests and political enthusiasms of both their owners and their staff.

Clutter is a real problem. In my life I have a large apartment that is filled with stuff. Papers accumulate that I am loath the throw out but have no place to file. Things sit in the wrong place that I have no shelf space or storage for. Books sit in boxes.

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RWE,
(who found Truther paranoia on the Internet)
PJM still displays advertising for Circuit City. The ghost is in the machine.

Your IFR Aiming Points story sounds like it came from the back pages of the old Journal of Irreproducible Results. JIR had some gems, like the proof that there had been giant beavers on the East coast of America. The evidence was the absence of Giant Sequoia trees, because the Giant Beavers must have cut them all down.

Someplace I have or had a book whose author "proved" that the years between 600 and 1000 AD did not really exist. It was all a plot made up in a monastery for some nefarious purpose. Since the monks controlled the written records, they were the Google of their day, they could make up anything and sell it to the world. They could even create 400 years.

Comments on The Belmont Club "What would God do?"

Why does the United States recruit and commission chaplains for the Armed Forces? While it is true that there are Jewish and Moslem chaplains the majority are Christian. There is a Buddhist and a Hindu organization on the list of sponsors but I do not know if they have any active duty chaplains. It would not surprise me if the administration agreed with Christopher Hitchens and sought to remove the chaplains over time. My prediction is that this will be done in a multi-staged campaign. First push to broaden the recruitment criteria to increase opportunities for Moslem, Wiccan and other under represented communities of faith. Second seek out and promote stories of people who feel pressured by those of the traditional faith while in uniform or of any inappropriate conduct by any chaplains or service-members tied to a Jewish or Christian identity. Third for efficiency and uniformity and to save money merge the services chaplain corps, as well as other staff units, and keep them in central locations. Finally remove them from the uniformed status.

Many years ago as the only Jewish officer aboard my ship I was appointed the Jewish lay leader. The position came with a bottle of wine. That briefly made me popular but when I made it clear that the bottle would remain unopened the interest in religion on the part of the crew ended. The collateral duty came with another collateral duty attached. In a breathtaking expression of institutional discrimination the command decided that as a Jew I would have to know something about retailing and therefor they put me in charge of selling the cruise book, which was like a high school yearbook for the deployment. The ship's chaplain was a character, a full Commander and a Lutheran he had personality. One day we were chatting and I knew a little about theology and church history from my undergraduate studies. The next day the chaplain told me that he had read some of Luther after talking to me and said he hadn't actually looked at it about 20 years. "Amazing stuff isn't it?" My fondest memory was when the fundamentalist chaplain assigned to the Marine Rifle Company for the Battalion Landing Team brought his entire flock up to the ship's foc'sle to meet me. It took some delicacy to respond to the earnest private from someplace so far back in the hills that they had to pump in sunlight when he asked me, "But Sir, why did you kill him?"

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Mad Fiddler,
(who laid out the core theory of the Left in 5 steps)
(1) The only way people can be rich is that they stole wealth that belonged to someone else;
(3) If anything goes wrong, it HAS to be someone’s fault;
(4) The person responsible for something that goes wrong can always be identified; +2 more.

There is a name for the priests of this modern Cargo Cult. They are called Lawyers.

Sep 1, 2009 - 9:17 am

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RCM,
(who suggested I get a job with the administration)
As anyone who knows me even from my presence on this blog would be aware the issue is not my opinion of non-rated deck seamen or straight leg infantry privates. If I was not concerned about being tossed into moderation and if this was my house I would simply give the gentleman's reply suggesting that you attempt a ballistically improbable form of self gratification. Your slap at me does bring up an issue that is covered in a following thread, that of PC control of speech. My objection to your reply is that it was not really directed at me. It was more an effort to subvert a genuine witticism with an ad hominem before an audience. That is to say it was a form of preening to establish control over a narrative. In doing so it was no different on your part then are the acts of those on the Left that I know, from your comments here, you do not wish to be associated with. My point is that I know that you are better than that.

What would have been a more effective response? After all I am capable of giving offense and making an error in fact, judgement or taste. You could have directed a response directly and not displayed to the audience an effort to lower my standing by associating me with the administration. You could have said "As a Marine )or the son nephew or uncle of one), or as a person from Appalachia, I found your reference hurtful or misdirected." The only reply I could give to that would be "My regrets, no offense was intended."

My hope would be that you and others would find in my story an opening for your own tales of encounters with "The Other" or memories of equally clueless, or equally of surprisingly sophisticated, junior officers and country enlistees.

Sep 1, 2009 - 12:26 pm