Comment on PJM "David Zucker Commits Hollywood Treason"

Not Blacklisting but Blackberrying same result different technology. A distinction without a difference brought by the same people who think that lawyers create content, as opposed to the valuable work they do in protecting property and clearing transaction obstacles away. Their addiction to politicking, intrigue and cruelty shows an emotional life frozen in adolescence.

Aug 21, 2008 - 10:04 pm

Comment on Belmont Club "Choose"

When this ends the Georgian government must be backed in asserting its right to expel every non-citizen from Georgian territory. In Georgia, as in the United States, accepting a foreign passport or claiming dual citizenship must give the government the right to declare the lose of your original citizenship and therefor the lose of all right to be in the country’s territory. When this is finished the only Russian troops permitted anywhere on the planet south of 44º N should be embassy guards and staff, with no more than 50 each in all but a half dozen countries.

Good morning sports fans.

Fred I think you have to be careful about letting your emotions get repressed. Why don’t you tell us what you really think? Seriously despite the frustrations and costs the President was right to stay focused on a humane transformative approach to Iraq and he is right to establish our moral superiority in the Caucasus. Once that is done it is my sincere hope that things are rearranged to make the loss to the Russians unambiguous.

Now we see the Chinese are continuing to team with the Sudanese and Saudis to perform ethnic cleansing for oil in North Darfur. We do not need that for a host of reasons. Perhaps we can encourage them to consider other resources that are closer (cough due North cough) to home?

Cannoneer (a BC poster),
Re: your bit on the Russian officer returning the stolen car, in a few years we should get a run of books by former Russian officers giving their opinions of the “oppressed minorities” that Putin sent them off to kill and die for. The Russian officers probably identify far more with the avowedly European Georgians.

buddy (a BC poster),
It isn’t crazy because it is the way Putin and company look at the world. When training a dog you quickly learn that it is not profitable to expect the dog to think like a human being. Fortunately humans are sophisticated enough to think about how a wolf or dog views a situation and then act in a way that fits the beasts expectations. Putin is human, more or less, but he does have very fixed prejudices and expectations. That does not mean that he is stupid. He is not, the bear is intelligent. The Nazis and the Soviets always had strong common elements, just look at their art.

A friend of mine was repeating the TV propaganda. “The Georgians ran away leaving their ammunition behind I saw it on TV.”

The interim score for Putin’s brilliant effort at playing a Napoleon

1. The Black Sea is lost to Russia.
2. The Caspian Sea oil is largely lost to Russia.
3. The American’s have a clear shot at Iran any time they want to.
4. The Chinese are pissed at Putin and open to a deal at the expense of Russia.
5. The EU and Nato have not been more united and pro-American in decades.
6. McCain is much more likely to be the next US President.

Genius sheer genius.

Comments on Belmont Club "Voluntary Amputation"

This war could flip as fast as the Russian adventure at the other end of the asian landmass did just over 100 years ago, The Japanese eliminated the Russian Navy in 45 minutes. The Russian Black Sea fleet with troop transports could vanish just as fast. If it becomes a shooting war I expect the first shots will be the disappearance of Russian submarines followed by surface ships desperately and hopelessly running in panic. The Turkish government and their military are deciding which way to jump right now. Could they allow a Russian triumph? Yes but how could that be in their interest? Even if it came with a German promise to support EU membership it would not be worth having in Putin’s world. Better for the Turks to line up with the East Europeans and Americans and the real pro-American Sunnis of Iraq. The Iranians may be more likely to find allies among the Kurds.

Aug 11, 2008 - 8:07 pm

OldSalt:
I’d like to say that I’m shocked and amazed of the number of posters on this forum and others who treat this as some sort of internal dispute between a bully (Saakashvili) and an ethnic minority, with the Russians in effect doing a very bad thing, but probably the only thing they could do.

It’s the FSB/KGB playbook - period. Or, it’s the pre-WWII isolationist playbook, avoid foreign entanglements, and the such. Take your pick. Neither describes the real world as it is.

Then there is the absolute fantasy (no insult intended) of perhaps giving nucs to Georgia, of rushing the 82nd Airborne in to key points (followed by what? their reduction via 500 Russian tanks and local air power?), of blowing Iran to hell just because it might make Putin feel bad, or of miracle resupply of superman SOCOM operators changing defeat to victory overnight. It’s not happening, folks.

And of course, there’s the obligatory “it’s all about oil.. oil is bad.. oil causes war..”.

Let’s get serious here, people.

1) This is well planned, naked Russian aggression. The situation on the ground in S. Ossetia was and is irrelevant, and particularly so to Putin. The Russians identified Georgia as a strategic goal on their shopping list for national expansion, and they’re just going to take it. They want the black sea naval base, they want the oil pipeline, and they want the strategic military road network (Southern terminus of the Sukhumi Military Road, the Georgian and Ossetian Military Roads).

2) Putin is a man of great ambitions. He has already set Russia on a course to restore the USSR. If Gorbachav and Yeltsin were the authors of the USSR’s demise, Putin will be the father of a new Union. The FSB is back in full force. Putin has eliminated by force every potential political opponent as well as the free press. He has set a path of confrontation against the U.S. for the past five years, and has returned to the prior Soviet strategy of working to isolate and divorce American from Europe.

3) Energy: Again, lose the left-wing Al Gore storybook fantasy. Natural resources are a strategic concern, and oil is the top concern - bar none. He who controls the world oil supply (if it can be done), controls the world. Oil is not evil. Oil is freedom for America and the West. Those who would deny America access to oil only strengthen our enemies. Those who are enemies of “oil” are also enemies of freedom.

4) We need to view the current Russian campaign and a potential Georgian capitulation in the long view. My heart goes out to the Georgians, but as Saakashvili said, it’s in their hands now. Air superiority, 500 tanks a 5:1 advantage in troops trumps anything the Georgians will put in the filed. Much as France and Eastern Europe were lost in the early days of Hitler’s Blitzkrieg, Georgia may very well be lost to Russian. It’s is vital for the future of Georgia that the nucleus of their leadership and military not share the fate of the Polish military officers and families in the Katyń Forest. They are not fighting for territory, but for survival.

The world cannot wish away tyrants. While America might be able to ignore an insignificant little dictatorship minutes from her shore (that would be Cuba, folks), we cannot ignore a reinvigorated, rearming, territory-hungry Russia, a man of continental ambitions such as Chavez, or a lunatic such as Iran’s Ahmadinejad.

The first lessons I learned and took to heart during my Navy officer training was America’s position in the world as an island nation, the importance of “free sea lanes of communication”, and the value of power projection versus playing defense from one’s own back yard. We need to recognize Putin’s game. We would tend to think “limited excursion”, because the west simply could not fathom a nation state seizing control of another nation state by force. WE would not do it, not in Iraq, not in Iran, not in post WWII Europe, so certainly, no other civilized society would do so. Banish that thought from your FSB-confused little minds, and look at the facts as we know them.

Russian is making it’s move, and Putin will not stop unless stopped. He may not have the remilitarized society he needs to fulfill his ambitions, but he’s been moving methodically to put those pieces in place. A lot of planes, tanks, and submarines can be put into service in 2-3 years, if a country has the will to do so, and the petro-rubles.

We need to think in terms of a long term, military campaign. It may be a cold war, it will certainly be a hot one at times, but it’s not our choice and yet it’s coming. Whether Obama or McCain is the next President is now a pivotal issue. I really do not have a dog in that hunt, i.e. I can support neither candidate based on their history. However, at this point, the fantasy-world-view of the Democrats may prove fatal for America’s future security.

You want change that you can believe in? Well, ask a Georgian about the relevant value of change. It’s time to get real, America.

Aug 11, 2008 - 7:54 pm

Old Salt,
That was publishable. That was worth money. You said it better than I did.

Aug 11, 2008 - 8:30 pm

The one part of this equation that I am having the hardest time getting a handle on is Soros. If the Georgian government is a Soros funded and run operation then why would it align itself with American power projection into Iraq and Iran? We have Putin, the Chinese, Bush and Soros (he of the Invisible Empire) playing four way chess here. Clearly it is in America’s interest to see Putin lose but what else is a desired result? No physicist can model even a three body problem.

Aug 12, 2008 - 6:56 am

Comment on Belmont Club "When you see The Southern Cross for the first time"

The problem with Suez was that it went down the same weekend the Soviets invaded Hungary. Dulles and Eisenhower had supported the British position to the extent that we withdrew from funding the Aswan Dam project. That precipitated Nasser’s seizure of the canal. Anthony Eden did not include the American’s in the Sévres negotiations with the French and Israelis and Eisenhower did not feel bound to a non Nato action taken without prior consultation.

Of course I would like to believe that I would have been gifted with such insight that the effect of this humiliation of our allies on Britain and France and Nasser and other enemies would have given me pause. We can grant Fletcher (a BC poster) this much. The world would probably be a better place if Nasser had been defeated. The European allies would still have needed to undergo a painful readjustment to a post colonial world. Fletcher’s seething hostility to America is the British equivalent of Pat Buchananism. Eventually he will run into the embrace of the enemies of all he cherishes to punish the ally he despises.

Aug 5, 2008 - 10:10 pm

Comment on LGF 07-23-2008 "Overnight Open Thread"

#118 lifeofthemind 7/23/2008 10:11:04 pm PDT
re: #91 Racer X

Gee, does anyone really think this is going to be a success now that an "anonymous senior Iraqi military officer" has spilled the beans to the media?

Hey, where did they all go?

This is how third world, particularly Arab military or police forces operate. Arrange a big show for the visiting Americans. Make lots of loud noises and be sure the troops look inspection ready. Somehow though the word always gets out and the targets slip away. Remember the Americans will one day leave and everyone else will remain. Nobody wants to get caught up in a blood feud. Besides everyone is really related to some degree and you can't hurt your Uncles Cousins Nephews In Laws Niece's husband. If that fails everyone is a Muslim and protected (except for the few who are not and who are targets). Like with canine packs a leader's aggression is used to compel signs of submission after which the threat recedes. Saddam violated this rule by actually going after people and communities. In that he showed himself more a student of the secular soviets than of the religious tribal culture of Iraq. AQI also violated the expected standard and lost the tribes.

Comment on LGF 07-23-2008 "Al Jazeera Throws Party for Child Killer"

#101 lifeofthemind 7/23/2008 10:01:30 am PDT
The biggest difference between Judaism/Christianity and Islam may be that in the former divine justice means that God decides and punishes while each individual is responsible for their own choices. In Islam God needs human help so when his laws are broken the offender must be punished on Earth. There have been obvious cases of people in the West who were so arrogant as to claim they were acting for God but there is no consensus supporting that position as based on religious necessity. Instead in the West judgement and punishment in this world are a matter of temporal law and spiritual judgement is left to God. In Islam there is no secular or temporal law separate from the sacred and offenses against divine law demand punishment here. Each Muslim is commanded to not only judge their own conduct but that of every other human. In Judaism/Christianity the works of God are Life and as such to precious for any person to pass judgement over without clear cause. In Islam Life indeed the whole of Creation is but a transitory fancy that may be revoked by a God that is beyond comprehension. Humans therefore can only slavishly seek to enforce all his laws here on earth, even when it means imposing a flawed human perception through violence on others.

Comment on LGF 07-22-2008 "Overnight Open Thread"

#802 lifeofthemind 7/23/2008 7:13:24 am PDT
re: #748 CIA Reject

Maybe some of the old salts with USN experience can help me out with this one. In a previous life I worked a job as a civilian contractor that required significant time spent aboard US Navy ships (both ashore and at sea) and on Navy bases. One of the things the company advised us was that it was considered a breach of Navy etiquette to discuss politics, religion, sex, or the United States Civil War either on base or aboard ship. Is that so, or was the company just being over cautious?

The rules of the officer's wardroom are the rules that would apply to any place where gentlemen gather. You do not discuss money in a manner that could intrude on privacy or embarrass. You do not discuss religion or The War Between the States. You do not discuss a woman who is neither a public figure nor a lady of easy virtue.

We had a "Dining In" when in the Philippines. This is a formal affair, we wore Summer Blues with cummerbunds, paraded the beef and Mr Vice recorded infractions of the rules while Mr President (The ship's XO) assessed fines to cover the cost of the dinner. It was all great fun. One Lieutenant pointed out that an Ensign had violated the rules by spending most of the meal talking about his wife. The Ensign was ordered to stand up and explain himself. He arose and began, "My wife is a Lady of Easy Virtue and I can prove it." Seems that she sent every officer present a Christmas Card and his had arrived late. The XO replied good answer and fined the complaining officer $20. Of course the officer serving as Mr Vice had made no record of the fines issued and everyone just tossed money into the pot to pay for the meal.

Comment on LGF 07-18-2008 "War on the horizon"

#240 lifeofthemind 7/18/2008 10:28:38 am PDT
The whole point of the Geneva Conventions and the distinction between Lawful and Unlawful Combatants that the SCOTUS could not figure out is that it provides a powerful incentive to protect civilians, even during unconventional forms of warfare. Those stuffed shirt diplomats sixty to a hundred and ten years ago were actually rather savvy about the real world. Hezbollah is using civilian hostages to cover their combat operations and Hezbollah and only they and their enablers should be held accountable for that war crime and all the suffering that follows. When every person flees their presence and turns them in to a strong authority, Lebanese or Israeli, then the threat of Hezbollah will fade and the local population will be both innocent and safe. What the villagers cannot do is cheer for them, make videos and press releases honoring them, provide aid and comfort to them, and then claim they are innocent victims.

Comments on Michelle Malkin 07-18-2008 "A cast of hundreds: Who isn't an Obama foreign policy advisor?"

On July 18th, 2008 at 10:45 am, Lifeofthemind said:
The Spartans had 300 willing to die for freedom.

Persian: A thousand nations of the Persian empire descend upon
                you. Our arrows will blot out the sun!
Stelios: Then we will fight in the shade.

We have 300 feckless academics eager to become bureaucrats.

On July 18th, 2008 at 11:27 am, Lifeofthemind said:
From Die Hard Obama’s kind of advisor, Harry Ellis:

Business is business. You use a gun, I use a fountain pen.
What’s the difference?

The bad guys are going to eat these fools for lunch.

On July 18th, 2008 at 11:37 am, Lifeofthemind said:
It isn’t even a coherent group that is falling in behind him. An Assertive Realist like Mearshiemer along with Institutional Liberals and Soft Power advocates? Obama is counting on timing to get him over the finish line before the wheels come off his contraption. All that they have is a hatred of the “Neo-cons” meaning Jews who liked or had heard of Dick Cheney. This is a swamp of failure, resentment, entitlement and bigotry.

Comment on Thomas Lifson, 07/17/08 "The Rapid Decline of The New York Times"

Lifeofthemind:

Stopped reading the Times and now I read The New York Sun. The President should issue an executive order prohibiting the expenditure of any government funds to subscribe to or support the Times. It was a magnificent machine that has sunk into a pool of resentment and sexual confusion.

Oh how the mighty have fallen! Many years ago my mother took her class on the pilgrimage to the Times. While they were there paying homage at the shrine of the newsroom they ran into Anthony Lewis. It must have been his annual trip down to NYC from Cambridge. One of the teachers tried to look smart by asking Mr Lewis what he thought of USA Today. The Great Man drew himself up and pronounced, "Fish would jump out of it!"

Jul 18, 2008 - 4:40 am

Comment on Belmont Club, 07/17/08 "Who wants to know?"

Lifeofthemind:
Last line of “Monty Python’s Life of Brian”

Worse things happen at sea.

There are important lessons to be learned from these cases. First it reinforces that we have a common set of references. To some extent, like the Western canon in literature, these are arbitrary but it is very important that we can build trust by sharing a common historical vocabulary. Second the real important topics that are learned from these events are human issues. Communications, prioritizing, command and control and caring about human beings making choices under stress. We care about the characters in Greek drama, even though their world is long gone, for the same reason.

Jul 18, 2008 - 4:09 am

Comment on Belmont Club "Who wants to know?"

Last line of “Monty Python’s Life of Brian”

"Worse things happen at sea."

There are important lessons to be learned from these cases. First it reinforces that we have a common set of references. To some extent, like the Western canon in literature, these are arbitrary but it is very important that we can build trust by sharing a common historical vocabulary. Second the real important topics that are learned from these events are human issues. Communications, prioritizing, command and control and caring about human beings making choices under stress. We care about the characters in Greek drama, even though there world long gone, for the same reason.

Jul 18, 2008 - 4:09 am

Comment on Michelle Malkin 07-16-2008 "Crime out of control in Dem-run Chicago

On July 17th, 2008 at 12:39 am, Lifeofthemind said:

The policeman isn’t there to create disorder; the policeman is there to preserve disorder.
Richard J. Daley

The problem is that for 40 years the center left establishment in Chicago has been trying to buy off professional grievance mongers like Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama. While this at first allowed authorities to focus on severe threats such as the Blackstone Rangers=Black P Stone Nation=El Ruk’n it corrupted the system over time. Now it is harder for members of marginalized communities to achieve success in mainstream society than it once was. Like the Romans after having hired the barbarian mercenaries the civic society of Chicago is defenseless before today’s barbarians.

Comment on Belmont Club "John McCain on Afghanistan"

Lifeofthemind:
Every President brings his own experience and expertise to the office. Eisenhower was an expert at coalition politics. JFK, like Clinton, was an expert on rhetoric and skirt chasing. Lyndon Johnson (who learned from studying FDR) was an expert on bureaucratic empire building. Nixon was a competent lawyer who excelled at nurturing grievances and intrigue. Ford like Johnson knew inside politics better than any real craft. Carter was a small time micro-manager, he knew the back end of a ship and the front end of a peanut warehouse. Reagan not only remembered the economics he learned at college but he really knew the skills he learned as a union boss and as a professional communicator. Ronald Reagan may have been America’s President with the broadest outside experience. Bush 41 was like Eisenhower. He knew the world of diplomacy and intelligence. Bush 43 knows B-school stuff, spreadsheets and tickler files for accountability. He also knows the energy business, you can hear it in his press conferences. McCain knows survival and endurance and how the military works but like Obama, and most other politicians who make it this far, he has limited experience out of government. Obama knows rhetoric, low level cause advocacy, which is not the same as really being a good lawyer, and almost nothing else.

Jul 15, 2008 - 8:07 pm

Comments on Megan McArdle re: Chicago Faculty Letter re: Friedman

As an alumnus of the Economics Department who spent, with time off for bad behavior, longer on campus than does my reputation good, this touches several nerves. Could someone provide me with a link so I can see who actually signed this letter?
Thank you.
Posted by Lifeofthemind | July 15, 2008 8:32 PM

Sorry, found the link.
This is a hit job out of the Anthropology Department. Many years ago Chicago's Anthro Department was truly cutting edge. The work Robert Redfield did in Mexico set the standard for field work. More recently it has become a theory factory sliding perilously close to dissolving into a form of Sociology meets Linguistics. That is to say that the larger the number of methods employed the fewer the results. In addition I see that they bolster their ranks by adding Bruce Cummings, a genuine apologist for the mass murdering totalitarian maniac in North Korea.
Posted by Lifeofthemind | July 15, 2008 8:47 PM

MarkG,
A Popperism (edit. commentary that reduces long winded theory) sounds like a useful category.
Here is a true Chicago Economics story. One day some famous guru of Economic Geography supposedly came to campus and gave a long lecture touting Site Location Theory with drawings of triangles and nodes etc. When he finishes Bert Hoselitz looks up and says "So, people will go farther for a baby grand piano than a lousy pack of cigarettes?"
Enjoy.
Posted by lifeofthemind | July 15, 2008 10:13 PM

Comment on Michelle Malkin 07-14-2008 "Grow a pair, Obama"

On July 14th, 2008 at 6:43 am, Lifeofthemind said:
Bush keeps moving on because he is focused on results. He doesn’t sweat the small stuff. Obama and the Moonbats focus on grievance and display because that is all they have. The cornering of the term Move On by the left was brilliant because that was the one thing they can not do. Results are meaningless to them. All they can do is attack those who create and build and solve problems. If Obama didn’t have non-issues to agonize over, like someone insulting him, then he would have to talk about the substance of an issue. Now Obama gets to talk about the appearance of substance. The hate filled thugs that attack Condi Rice are not an aberration, they are Obama’s core constituency.

Comment on LGF 07-13-2008 "Muslim Creationism on the Rise in Europe"

#19 lifeofthemind 7/13/2008 6:49:17 pm PDT
1. Insist on being ignorant, ensure that you have a tiny fraction of the creative intellectual activity in other communities.
2. Treat women as breeding machines so you have an expanding and impoverished population with unsocialized and resentful young males.
3. Watch your entire civilization and nations stagnate and become mired in poverty and misery, despite having Trillions of dollars flow through your coffers.
4. Export your unemployed people to more successful and tolerant neighbors.
5. Undermine them so they become miserable failures also.
6. Repeat as necessary.


#38 lifeofthemind 7/13/2008 7:00:51 pm PDT
In fact Europe has seen something similar to this before.

In the 16th century Spain conquered the New World and incredible wealth flowed into the Spanish treasury. Despite initial intellectual flowering in the Renaissance and Humanist period the Counter reformation effectively ended any free inquiry in Spain. The result was the impoverishment of the old aristocracy who were tied to landed wealth and the ruination of the economy at large due to uncontrolled inflation. By the 17th century Spain was unable to overwhelm the Dutch and were soon well on their way to becoming a backwater.

Comment on Michelle Malkin 07-12-2008 "Tony Snow R.I.P."

On July 13th, 2008 at 12:04 am, Lifeofthemind said:
Just for the record, I knew Tony Snow slightly. That is to say that I interviewed with him for a job 20 years ago, spending a couple of days at The Washington Times. It is my fault that I didn’t focus on what was needed and get the job. My memory was of just how impressive Snow was and what a pleasure it would have been to do good work for him.

Comment on Belmont Club, 07/11/08 "Yes we can"

Lifeofthemind:
Part of the problem is that we, that is the United States of America, can do just about about anything if we are willing to pay for it. The problem with “I want” thinking is that it is coupled with economic irrationality. Many things can be desired and the US can do amazing things but it cannot defy basic laws of physics and economics. Can the US build a force capable of extricating the entire army and it’s equipment within two years? Probably yes, if you are willing to devote truly enormous resources to the project. We could build a new seaport and build a half dozen major airfield and build heavy airlift and sealift and build new rail lines. We can do it. We cannot do it on the cheap and spend billions on everything else Obama has promised. We can not do it while chained to the social and legal regulations and agencies that have grown over the last 50 years. We simply have to choose what we want to do. Eventually however the regulated nanny state will sap enough of the fiber out of America that we will be just like the Europeans. We will be able to look at a problem and say, “No we can’t.”

Jul 11, 2008 - 8:51 pm

Re: Mary Katherine Ham 07-11-2008 "Jesse vs. Spike, and the Shift in Black Leadership"

Lifeofthemind: MKH, As always when dealing with Chicago machine hacks you simply have to consider personal turf and follow the money. Jesse Jackson dropped out of the local Chicago Theological Seminery, or was asked to leave, and set up Operation Push just North of the University in Hyde Park-Kenwood, sent his kids to the University's private school and built a nice little business extorting from regional businesses. Along comes Obama with a better set of credentials and with the help of Tony Rezko and ACORN he creates another money machine that cuts Jesse out. Obama moves into the same neighborhood and his wife takes a part time job at the University Hospitals making $347,000/yr for Community Outreach. Jesse feels like the old Mobster in the God Father II when the young Corleone doesn't show him enough respect by letting the old man "wet his beak."

On the other hand it might all just be a set up to make Obama look good by comparison.
July 11, 11:11 PM