And despair is a sin. It is a sin even atheists should be able to understand, if you understand sin as betraying essential parts of what you believe in, what you aim to do.
Jerry Pournelle reminded me of this many times, when my depressive bend took hold of me.
I’m sick and tired of people wanting to abandon ship and/or act like loons because they think all is lost. I have no idea who’s selling you that bill of goods (or rather, I have a good idea of where it’s coming from, but not why you’re buying it.)
Despair is easy. It absolves you of responsibility. It means what you do today doesn’t matter. And it might lead you to do something profoundly evil. Not just bad, evil. So evil that you taint the rest of us by association. Or can be painted as doing so.
Let me put it this way: while we might not be able to get rid of taxes, I hate taxes as they exist right now, and I think Lois Lerner’s IRS is a corrupt institution deserving being disbanded. I do not think, however, it is legitimate to bomb buildings that also contain day cares. And I think — know — that this did more discredit to the cause of reducing taxes than just about anything. FOR DECADES. There is also good reason to believe the person who committed that act was linked to agents provocateurs. [Oh, and judging from the flaming *sshole on my facebook page: pretending I mean it’s okay to bomb buildings without daycares in it is cute. It’s like you don’t understand allusion or the depth of the English language. It is in fact as though your mind is doing what it can to stop thinking, because thinking might puncture your Marxist illusions.]
I keep hearing that our Republican party is now to the left of the Dems in the sixties, and I want to line up the people who say it and hit them on the head with actual history of the time till they quit it. This despite the fact I like some of them. It is one of those instances of rewriting history in your own head to save the left the trouble.
Until Reagan, wage and price controls were acceptable for REPUBLICANS. So was gun control. Gun control was pretty much accepted throughout much of the land. This has changed. Also, I will repeat that most Republicans in politics at least through the seventies were more Mitt Romney than Ted Cruz.
And I’m tired of “We have too many immigrants. We’ve lost the demographic battle.” Anyone believing that people who can tan are natural constituencies of the Marxists: stop embarrassing us, and join the Democratic party. They LIKE racists over there.
Sure, most newly immigrated groups go left. Partly because it’s natural in their homelands. But they change. And heck, these days a lot of countries are changing, too.
Yes, there is work to be done, mostly in encouraging if not REQUIRING (which I’d prefer) acculturation and integration. But my guess? that is a self-solving problem. Because people are losing patience with the multi-culti hose beasts.
Sure, because of ILLEGAL immigration (and yeah, something is going to happen on that front soon. people are losing patience) and allowing them to vote, the dems seem like they own that demographic. They don’t. And the times they are achanging.
There are gains in other fronts. Universities are panicking because people are on to their game. And the pronouns thing has already become a punch line.
An witness please, what happens when institutions like trad pub go woke. Yep, they go broke. Or if you prefer, they roll left and die.
No. We didn’t turn a page and everything is suddenly wonderful. DUH. DO YOU THINK I DON’T KNOW THAT?
But I remember the seventies. Apparently most people don’t. And the sixties. For that matter, I’ve read enough of the times before. The only people who think those were “conservative” in the American sense have rosy memories of childhood, or are toking hard. Or, of course, both. Conformity, collectivism, and the presumption that central government is the means and agent of prosperity is NOT on the right in the US.
The twentieth century — all of it — was to the left of where we are now.
We are winning the culture war. It’s just slow. Throwing it all away because you’re impatient doesn’t make you a hero. It makes you a child, who will have his lollipop or start destroying things.
That is not the way you win a culture war. It is however an effective way to lose it.
I’ll only add that I’m probably angrier than you are, that fighting my berserker instinct makes me physically ill. And that there’s a special place in hell for those who force a BERSERKER to talk them down.
Now on what I said: you are not alone.
I don’t talk of religious matters here, because as far as I’m concerned they are intensely private to me. Also because they convince no one.
HOWEVER, when I read this Richard Fernandez article, now a few years old, it resonated with me and without explaining I’ll just say it’s correct.
Night of the Demon
Have faith. In America, in Americans, or in something higher. But have faith. For the times, they are achanging. And you are not alone.
Yet what should have been unstoppable wasn’t. The big mystery continues to be why an all-conquering meme suddenly found itself thrown back by ideas of almost equal force with no obvious origin. An opinion article in the NYT by Paul Krugman acknowledges the existence and power but not the provenance of this sudden counterforce. Worse, Krugman warns the left might actually lose to this mysterious power.
Be not afraid.
According To Hoyt 
Amen!
I don’t like “Hatred” in my self or in others.
But besides my Hatred for the Left, there are two other “ideas” that I Hate.
One is “All Is Lost So We Must Surrender”.
Two is “All Is Lost So We Must Burn It Down”.
Both IMO are strongly tainted in Despair and as Sarah says despair in a sin.
On the other hand, “burn it down” in and of itself can be an effective tactic when used at the right time and targets, as General Sherman showed. Additionally, deterrence, requires others to believe that if they go to far or if they launch an attack on you, the response back will be to “burn it down”. It is simply something that should not be done out of despair or hate.
And not before time. And it will really be better if we win the culture war FIRST.
YES. We must rebuild and shore up the foundation. Then we can deal with the termite-infested framing, and remove what’s bad, treat the edifice to prevent another infestation at least for the foreseeable future, and then set about putting up wall-board and arguing about which curtains go with plaid paint.
But you don’t “burn it down” until the shooting’s already started.
The ACW didn’t start with Sherman’s March to the Sea, or Sheridan’s destruction of the Shenendoah Valley. Those events only happened after years of struggle had already taken place.
By that point in the war it was very very clear which side was which, and Sherman burned the stuff what was clearly the other side. Even if it had been possible, burning through Georgia with the same vigor the same day the shots were fired on Fort Sumpter would have been another story.
So if burning the other sides stuff might sometimes be appropriate, burning your own stuff is almost always somewhat counterproductive. Right now the “burn it all down” proponents are talking about burning our collective stuff, on the premise that the stuff that would come after would be assuredly better because magic and the inevitable arrow, or something.
Absent magical imaginary arrows, it seems to me that building over/under/around to improve things remains a better choice at this point. It might come to the point that sifting through ashes and building from scratch and hoping for arrows is better, but that‘s not yet.
It’s MY ship. Let the rats flee. I’m damn well going to fight to the very end for it. Don’t need to burn it down, the enemy is doing a good enough job of that right now. As long as we have a deck, or even a foundation wall to stand on, we’re not done yet; and we have something to build on during the lulls in battle.
Lulls in battle. That’s what half of America has forgotten. The war never ends. Once you think you’ve won a battle, you need to seek out the next one. Not rest on your laurels.
Yes. People who just carp, usually sarcastically, along the line of, “Nobody is honest, nothing will change,” drive me up a wall.d
Or the ones who come in and say “Conservatives should be shooting already.”
… wait, those re likely agents provocateurs. They do more than drive me up the wall.
There is a legitimate case for saying that: under the theory of how this country is supposed to work everyone should have been shooting two hundred years ago.
One hundred at minimum.
Oh, we’ve been shooting all along.
What do you think range time is for; sitting around drinking beer and trading BS stories?
Well, in my experience, Mike, it’s for THAT too. 😀
Well, nowadays, thanks to a certain group of writers, we can trade USAian stories. 😉
>> “But I remember the seventies. Apparently most people don’t. And the sixties.”
That’s a lie, Sarah. If you remember the sixties, you weren’t really there.
I remember the sixties clearly. I was learning to read and being potty trained, and being bedeviled by by multiplication tables due to digit dyslexia.
Note I said I remember the seventies, which is when I started reading newspapers.
It’s a joke, Sarah.
I know. So is the first part of my answer. It usually causes older friends to snarl at me. 🙂
Ah the 1970s, when Death Wish (the original with Charles Bronson) was a fairly accurate picture of what NYC was like.
My wife was living in NYC then…. and Dinkins may have been worse. Give DiBlasio another term, and you can experience it first hand.
… and they might…
I would never snarl at such a delightful and innocent pseudo niece of mine.
As a proud graduate of class of 1969 myself, I did allow a momentary lapse, uttering a few obscenities and extended a rigid digit or two.
I recall quite well both the turmoils of the ’60s and the economic malaise of much of the ’70s.
High school graduation was 1970, and I recall enough of the ’60s to not want to revisit them. My father was able to leave work safely (under escort–really rough neighborhood) after MLK was killed, and I wisely passed on the opportunity to go to downtown Chicago during the Democrat
conventionriots.OTOH, I got to hear Apollo 11 landing on the moon in ’69 (had to work until after they had buttoned up the LM) and saw the creative use of a TV camera in Apollo 12 (“That’s one small step for Neal, but a big one for me!”) Wasn’t until the ’70s that I actually saw live TV (with astronauts!) from the Moon.
HS graduation was 1974. Ditto on revisiting ’60s and recall, nope, no thank you (just old enough for both JFK & MLK funerals to be sad, but irritating … hey they preempted Saturday morning cartoons). Was in college through early ’79, so a lot of the ’70s economic malaise skipped over me; not my parents, makes a lot more sense, now, on how they guided my choices. Do remember the shock of gas prices going up (OTOH opportunity for someone to earn money … got paid to take neighbors & family friends cars down to wait in line & get gas, when stations were open). Which is why my answer to the democrats on fracking oil reserves “Are they freaking crazy?” Oh, yea, never mind. I am getting a kick out of the lefts screams when every new crazy “must follow” becomes a laughing meme, which just makes them scream louder. Point & laugh people, point & laugh.
The news of JFK’s assassination preempted Bozo’s Circus (live on WGN). 11 year old RCPete was ticked. I certainly wasn’t a woke kid.
I was sick at home that Sunday, while the rest of the family was at church that Sunday, so I managed to get the news that Oswald was killed before they did. The decade started off rough. Not sure it got better except in spots.
“11 year old RCPete was ticked. I certainly wasn’t a woke kid.”
I was 7, barely. Yes, “irritated” was the least I was. Wasn’t a woke kid, either.
Yes, yes, and more yes. Especially about the ongoing restoration of Lincoln’s Party over the last century.
“I keep hearing that our Republican party is now to the left of the Dems in the sixties”
Ha! As if! The current GOP is well to the right of where it was in the Fifties and Sixties when it was the party of Nelson Rockefeller and George Romney, Richard Nixon and Charles Mathias.
Anyone telling you different is likely lying about plenty else, too.
My parents were Kennedy Democrats. My father worked for NASA (and I loved the space program). One would think I would have naturally stayed Dem with the obvious Big Government successes of the 60’s
But in the 1960’s William F. Buckley was slowly but steadily making converts, setting out the logic of Conservatism so clearly that, although he would debate all comers, I never heard him bested.
Conservatism & Libertarianism are much stronger today than they were in the 60’s & 70’s. In my first presidential election I had the choice of Ford & Carter. Carter was an incompetent Governor while Ford was trying to dismantle Nixon’s wage & price controls so the choice was clear, but Ford was probably to the left of McCain (although far more honest).
In 1977 The Cato Institute invaded the DC think(alike)tank industry with thoughtful studies and papers that challenged the Left on its own turf, slowly building respect for defending our liberties.
Then came Reagan.
Have we had setbacks? Of course. Obama wrecked a lot – but due to his penchant for using pen & phone vs the hard work of legislating, he failed to set foundations for most of it and it’s being reversed.
We.Are.Winning. Don’t despair.
But don’t get cocky – we haven’t won yet…
I’ve noted here in the past that today’s RINOs are yesterday’s Rockefeller Republicans.
Remember
My twitter stream in not my country.
Twitter (and other social media) is full of twits and the like but they are not at all representative of society at large. See the UK general election where the Labour party won the twitter battle but was totally destroyed in the larger campaign
One classic form of propaganda is faking your forces- making your armies look bigger than they really are. Hopefully your enemies will give up and go away/ surrender/ retreat.
Classic Art of War stuff here.
Or in this case, attack and give you cover for whatever you want to do to them. Because, you know, you’ve been praying for years for a “right wing mass shooter” and they refuse to materialize.
Who says they’re just praying? I’m surprised they haven’t already staged a Reichstag fire.
They’ve already got their Brownshirts.
———————————
Those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it. Those who do remember history are doomed to watch everybody else repeat it.
I think they’ve tried, honestly, but they’re not very competent. Some of the mass shootings had that smell, but these people were traceable left, because most nuts are.
Some of the early NZ reporting about the Christchurch shootings, before such was banned, had it that the shooter had stated (either in the manifesto or a forum where he discussed his plans) that his motivation was to cause a “gun panic”, not necessarily to discourage Muslims from being such, or praying.
What about every time there’s a shooting and they try to claim it’s a right-winger, then it gets memory holed when they’re not?
Doom porn is like any other kind- fun & satisfying in the short term, possibly dangerous in the long if one mistakes fantasy for reality.
Doom porn?
Oh, Doctor!
I mean, Julian McMahon is all kinds of hot. I’d be down.
Oh, so much this.
If you weren’t there, you simply wouldn’t believe how Reagan was treated, now that his unarguable successes (however limited) have made him a respected historical figure.
Oh, he was so smooth, so avuncular, that the insults hurled against him were different that those of the current president. But I was *certain* that the man was stupid and reckless. A dinosaur, dreaming of a WW2 era world of American superiority which would never come again. Willing to risk nuclear war in which we would all be killed just to hold back a Communist tide whose victory was inevitable, if regrettable. And in holding such positions, I was well to the right of my teachers and most of my fellow students.
In my defense, I was a bit too young to vote against him, thought my father was being absurd to support him.
Recall that Nixon signed the National Environmental Policy Act, arguably the biggest expansion of Federal power since FDR, just seven years earlier.
Oh, my, yes — the Republican party has moved right since then!
I, personally, thought that the idiots who thought Reagan was risking nuclear war had a deeply distorted picture of the USSR. Communism wasn’t winning by the 1980’s. Communism was grinding to a halt.
But I had the advantage of reports from people who had been in Russia and had seen how bad their technology was. I lived next door to a geologist who did some work in the USSR, and was amazed that anything they had worked at all (as an example).
The fall of the Berlin Wall did take me by surprise; I expected the Soviets to limp along into the early 21st century. They didn’t even make it that far.
you are somewhat older than Jeff. So am I, and I had the advantage of knowing Jimmy Carter recycled communist speeches from EUrope. So, I was a Reagan girl and tried to convert Dan.
> grinding to a halt
That’s not what we were told then, and how we were to know any different? Various CIA and RAND papers have been declassified since then, and they weren’t showing the USSR grinding to a halt.
> Berlin Wall
The CIA was surprised too. And gobsmacked when the Shah fell before that.
Now, whether the spooks and think tanks were deliberately lying to the people who were setting US policy, or whether they simply sucked at their jobs, is for you to decide…
This. I was in college (southern California). Reagan came to campus on a campaign stop. People in the back (I was standing there), started doing the Nazi salute. I grew up in a military household, my father was third generation military. I was appalled. Reagan pointed out that those doing the salute had no idea what they were endorsing with it. My peers laughed at him.
I think that’s when I started moving from the stereotypical lefty college student to the non-stereotypical right of center, classical liberal faculty person I am today. Puts me so far to the right of my colleagues, even those who laughably claim to be centrist, that I think some of them swear they’re looking around Hitler to see me.
Some of my current colleagues are fairly religious (Catholic), and I often wonder about the cognitive dissonance they must be experiencing at times.
I am getting better about not looking away, and pointing and laughing where necessary. And, no, I’ve not given up and I never will.
Fun little story: About a week after the 2016 election, one of my colleagues came into my office looking grim.
Her: I need to ask you something in all seriousness. You the poli sci person and I trust you.
Me: OK
Her: What’s going to happen now? What are we going to do?
Me: Oh, don’t worry! They’re setting up the camps as we speak. I’m sure you’ll be very comfortable there!
Her:
Me:
Her: OK, so I’m going to assume you’re not worried?
Me: Not about Republicans
Her:
Me:
Her: OK, thanks. (leaves my office).
Me: silently cackling
actually i was living in SoCal at that time and was having a lot of the same interactions, along with the prolonged discussions about how horrible the economy was doing since he was elected (discussions which extended well after we moved out of CA in oct ’17)
I’m pretty sure that most of them still haven’t figured out that the poor economy and lack of recovery was localised to CA, for CA reasons (like, them wondering why their teenage kids can’t get burger flipping jobs when unemployment is so low nationwide, and their inability to connect the then-new $12/hr minimum wage to the lack of hiring of zero-job-skill teens)
I encountered someone who told me the 1970’s were great and the 1980’s were just terrible. It utterly failed to match my experience. I (eventually) realized what was going on: I was seeing private sector stuff, and the person who made that comment worked public sector all their life.
As I stated above in school during ’70s, HS then college. Never expected those times to be “great” financially. ’80s … hey we may of been building up, and had set backs: Hubby got laid off at least 2 months every year, & I (technically) had 5 different jobs in 10 years (okay, 3 were internships, a 4rd was part time, and a 5th might has well have been, or at least was seasonal. It’s not like I got fired, jobs kept going away. It’s like fate was saying “Nope, not what I had in mind … you need to move on, so how can I force you to …” OTOH despite all this we were able to send me back to school, twice (long story) AND survive, and build our resources (including buying two homes, again long story). We couldn’t have done that without the ’80s being much better than the ’60s & ’70s.
it also depends where you lived, i was in Ohio in the early 80s, when unemployment reached 24%. not fun.
Seeing the same now, or at least rhyming
It seems it’s not the best of times to be a swamp creature. Awww.
“their inability to connect the then-new $12/hr minimum wage to the lack of hiring of zero-job-skill teens”
Or that for that same $12/hr (or less), they can get a 25 year old illegal who knows how to keep a schedule, and those pesky regulations don’t touch.
The thing is, Steve, they CAN’T get a 25 yo illegal who knows how to keep a schedule.
This is part of what I keep telling everyone right and left. In this I know better than you guys, and it’s predictable.
Yes, they can get an illegal, but things go downhill. Both punctuality and what we’d call honesty (but it’s different) is culture related. As such, these things fall apart. The wheels come off.
There is really no need to buy into the illusions of the left. Yes, they’re still grasping for more (Hey, CO is supposed to have a $16 minimum wage in 5 years. Great, no? Yeah) because as someone I know who is in politics said “THEY HAVE TO”, the alternative is for the wheels to come off explosively and everyone to find out what they’ve been doing.
BUT the wheels are coming off at many many levels if you pay attention.
Notice the other doomers on this post were BOTH posting from abroad, and one had a twitter in Turkish with the same email. These people have no clue. They don’t GET us. And honestly, they’re hoping we destroy it all, before we finish driving Russia into bankruptcy.
I’m furious beyond understanding they got away with this stuff so long. But that was a feature of the time it was. And that time is in the past.
Do we have to fight? Sure. Mostly not physical though. Because the left destroys everything it touches, we’re going to have to rebuild a LOT of stuff really fast or the wheels will come off civilization. Permanently.
Many of us are dependent on medicine to stay alive, and in ten years, when I suspect things will be obvious, it will be MUCH worse in terms of rot. (It’s already bad.)
No one can fix everything. There’s no man on a white horse (though Trump is turning out more of a paladin than I could have even imagined) BUT each of us can take his little corner and make it fast.
All of us should get up everyday thinking “What can I do to shore up civilization today.” And yeah, it might be speaking out. Or it might be “merely” planting a garden, starting a company that allows one to sell around Amazon (working on it. The problem is the law requiring we charge tax on even electronic purchases and keep track of every state’s laws. The feds should actually strike that down due to impeding interstate commerce, but they won’t. So we’re looking for an accountant.) There is something each of us can do to build under, build over, build around. And we should all be doing that.
Because everything the left touches falls apart. Including, yes, government.
The problem with illegals can be summed up with the following question:
“What kind of a country are you building when you select for a population with a predisposition to disobeying laws?”
And schedules.
BUT more than that, if you expect an illegal to follow schedule and keep probity, I invite you to look at Brazil. Or Mexico. Or…
There is a reason they’re mired. Efficient and time-abiding they ain’t.
Exactly! But, when I point out that illegal aliens bring with them the attitudes and behaviors that made the countries they’re fleeing from into dysfunctional shitholes, that they’re re-creating those dysfunctional shitholes here in our country, and then they blame us for the problems they’ve caused, leftists screech RACIST!!!! and deny the facts.
Will they not be satisfied until they’ve turned the U.S. into another shithole? Well, if they do, at least then they might stop swarming across our border.
Why can they not work for better lives in their own home countries? Why should we want them when their own home countries are desperate to get rid of them? Why should we be in any way responsible for them?
The only answer I ever get is RACIST!!!!!
———————————
“When someone does a foolish thing, you should say it is a foolish thing. They may still continue to do it, but at least the truth is where it needs to be.”
They can’t work for better lives in their own Countries for a variety of reasons.
If they get a little ahead, their extended family will demand they give over.
If they get a little ahead, the local government/thug-guild with demand a cut
With no history of clear ownership of title to land, they can’t get loans based on property, can’t depend on being able to stay in one place, have no incentive to take care of their surroundings.
In the US, relatives with their hands out are limited. The government is an order of magnitude less grasping and corrupt, and if they manage to gain title to something, it really is theirs.
None of which means I feel any obligation to let them in.
Amen. They should be useful to use.
“In the US, relatives with their hands out are limited.”
You’d think. But how many send their earnings home?
Then there is the lousy apartments locally that have sky high rent. I mean they won’t rent to large families (if large families could afford it), but by golly the immigrants can have 6 to a bedroom, sharing an apartment or two, or house.
YEP. and this is why large mass immigration is a bad thing.
Culture. Culture is why they can’t. But also why immigration must be controlled, filtered, and in small enough numbers people HAVE to acculturate.
If I could do it anyone can. But they have to WANT it.
And frankly, for the trouble they are, they need to bring something important to this country.
Okay, on the face of it all I brought was a uterus.
BUT my husband wanted that uterus.
And I worked damn hard to make myself worthy of being here, besides.
“… leftists screech RACIST!!!! and deny the facts.”
Oh dear! Next you will tell me dogs bark in the night.
Not as much the disobeying aspect as the parasiticish (not really best word but caffeine headache breaking me atm) aspect. Instead of improving lot where you are you pull up stakes to better opportunities, undercut locals, and then jump back when water gets hot or you get what you want. It’s similar to some of the distrust, at least that I’ve seen, between career and job shoppers.
If it was just disobeying the laws of another nation, well some folks in indian getup in a certain harbor may disagree that barrio mindset are a definite result. Much deeper issue
I have vague memories of Reagan’s early ears, firmer memories of his second term. Which clashed with the US history textbooks I encountered in college the second time, and with what the profs said about the 1980s the first time. I’ll trust my memories over the textbooks, thanks.
Yup. I was a supporter of Reagan in 1976…the election of 1980 was the rebirth of hope into the world. Two and a half hard years, then the economy picked up…and we liberated Grenada.
Which was a far bigger thing than people realize. The Soviets had a simple doctrine: They win, we lose. Once they got their hooks into a country, it was their slave forever. Until Grenada. We TOOK ground. Proved that victory was possible.
The media (such as it is…) doesn’t like to recall it, but there was a fellow who was there (living there) who, when asked about the “invasion” of Grenada, corrected the journalista with, “It was not an invasion; it was a rescue.”
There are leftists who really think — or feign thinking — that leftists have never been so horrified by a Republican president before.
ROFL.
ROFL x 2
“Krugman warns the left might actually lose to this mysterious power.”
Krugman? Didn’t he predict, in November 2016, that the financial markets might never recover from the election of Donald Trump, approximately 10K Dow Jones Industrials Average index points ago?
Like I’m going to believe him.
That’s ex-Enron financial advisor Paul Krugman.
Hey now, card, he’s predicted 100 of the last 1 economic crashes when a Republican is in power.
I want you to know that it took WILLPOWER to resist making a crack about your digit dyslexia just now.
You’re welcome. 😛
I’m surprised he doesn’t get a column in ZeroHedge. 🙂
And the frequent Great Courses ads on u-toob featuring him as the instructor on economics – yeeaahhh . . . NO.
why not, they let dan rather teach journalism ethics
I’m sure they’ll get to… Sarkessian(?) as an instructor on that at some point.
YGB(MW)M.
He is proof positive that you don’t win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences* by being right. You win it by making up impressively complicated academic theories (ideally, pro-communist, though occasionally a Hayek or a Friedman does slip through).
It’s akin to “literary” fiction, where you don’t win acclaim by writing entertaining stories with interesting characters.
* Not actually a Nobel Prize.
So since Nobel didn’t endow them, they just decided to Fake It?
Yup.
All is far from lost. The reason the Left has been throwing temper tantrums is that they are LOSING. No, they haven’t lost yet. Yes, they could manage to steal enough votes to win something in 2020 (though given their recent track record, I really think they’ll get caught). It isn’t going to be a quick victory. It took the idiot Progressives more than a century to push us to where we are. It will take decades to undo the damage. But they are losing political capital faster than they can get it back, hence their desperation.
I don’t expect ‘blood in the streets’, or anything close. I expect flare-ups of protest that accomplish little other than to alienate the general population.
THIS.
As a Kiwi, I’m looking at this whole impeachment mess, where even the American press is saying it’s not going to get past your upper house, & wondering if anyone in your Democrat party is aware of the reasons the world’s more competent Militaries advise their Officers not to give orders that can’t or won’t be obeyed (looking like an idiot, establishing a pattern of disobedience, etcetera)?
I mean, there must have been a bunch of stuff they could do to make Trump actually look bad, but what they’ve done is show his supporters, & those who don’t support them, that he’s governing from a position of power…
Naturally the EU Governments, & NZ, at the least, appear to have read the message exactly as it was written by the Democrats, & not between the lines.
Given the number of lawyers in the House, it’s amazing how many of them have failed to realize that you don’t even bring a weak case to court. Assuming competent opposition, you will get shredded and humiliated.
Nixon’s threatened impeachment was serious enough that he lost support of his party and resigned instead. Clinton’s actual impeachment and trial was such an exercise in partisan politics that the Democrats had to have known that they needed the best case possible to have a ghost of a chance. The only possible excuse I can see for the aborted bastard child of a kangaroo and a drumhead they actually put together is the propaganda value.
I’ve been considering mentioning, tangentially, “Propaganda value” in response to the comment about how the shooting should’ve started a century or two ago<i<
I mean think about it, the reason the shooting hasn't started is because the average American, on both sides probably, still believes in America, the idea that corruption could happen so high up as an ex-VP(?, IIRC) & future Presidential Candidate isn’t, I suspect, quite “believeable”, & so the Democrats had to jump really hard on this narrative that Trump was seeking dirt on Biden, even though it’s their narrative, because that way they suggest that if there actually is corruption, it’s Trump’s.
On further thought, I do have another possible reason besides propaganda value for all this political theater. The Democrats are desperate to avoid any serious investigation of possible corruption on the part of their political candidates, and are trying to dodge and obfuscate the issues with as much noise as possible. They dodged and avoided an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s conduct as Secretary of State, they have so far managed to dodge and avoid a serious investigation into senior officials of the FBI for manufacturing a bogus investigation into Trump’s campaign for the Presidency, and they are really, really desperate to avoid an investigation into the family of Joe Biden.
They haven’t dodged an investigation into the FBI idiocy yet. The media aren’t talking about it more than they have to, but an investigation is ongoing and (one gathers) gaining momentum.
Personally, I think they’re screwed, but I’ve been wrong before.
Note the demand by the usual Dem [suspects|brain trust] that Barr and Durham resign because REASONS!,
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/bethbaumann/2019/12/20/multiple-members-of-congress-send-a-letter-to-ag-barr-demanding-his-resignation-n2558339
How dare you suspect corruption and conduct any kind of oversight into the organizations you are appointed to lead? What kind of figureheads do you think you are?
Another part of impeachment is to delay/negate any investigation/arrest of the perpetrators. “You can’t arrest me! That’s obstruction!”
If you’re really guilty of something, you might be able to avoid consequences for a while by accusing the investigators, or the classic DARVO (Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender) strategy.
You know, the third Iron Man movie had a subplot where the U.S. VP was subverted by the AIM on the promise of regrowing his daughter’s legs. While not the best of the series, it does show that even Hollywood isn’t immune to considering skullduggery at the highest levels.
“Don’t listen to what they say. Look at what they do. That’s the only valid way to evaluate what kind of a man a politician, or anyone else for that matter, is.”
Hollywood’s no stranger to showing corruption at the highest levels of government. But when they do, nine times out of ten there’s a corporate paymaster that’s ultimately responsible.
The Dems brought the impeachment case because idiots like AOC actually believe the crap spewing out of their mouth. Because when confronted with the news that Trump was going to be impeached, the members of the Left patted themselves on the back, and passed around memes reminding themselves that Nixon was eventually brought down by a couple of reporters (and a disgruntled career FBI agent who’d engaged in illegal actions against some of the Left’s heroes; but let’s ignore that niggling little detail). Because it’s literally the ONLY thing that they have at this point, and they know it.
Pelosi can’t control her idiots. But she doesn’t want to lose power. So she had to convince herself that there was actually a case to be made, and let Congress run with it. Because if she didn’t, she’d be out on her ear. And she knows it.
Those who gain political power by telling lies have an unfortunate tendency to start believing them. Sooner or later, they also tend to have have unpleasant collisions with reality.
The problem with jumping out in front of a parade in order to lead it is that you have to stay in front or get run over. Pelosi knows full well the case for impeachment was weak, which is why she tried to downplay it for so long. It’s also why she’s dragging her feet about presenting her case to the Senate. She’s riding a tiger and doesn’t dare let go.
Pelosi is controlling her idiots. She selected Schiff, who sits on a committee that never previously handled impeachments, to run the impeachment in the House. Schiff is her personal protege and everything he does is exactly what Pelosi wants done.
The Democrats have been trying to delegitimize Trump since he was elected. One large part of that is they want to delegitimize his Court appointments, especially his Supreme Court appointments, because for decades the Democrats have used the Courts, particularly the Supreme Court (as well as the infamous 9th Circuit) to impose policies that would never get approval of voters and do not have widespread public support. They also count on the Courts to uphold the diktats of their allies in the bureaucracy, and to stop Republican President’s from rolling back what Democrats impose when they have the White House- as we have seen Obama appointees do time and time again throughout Trump’s time in office.
And sadly, just like Obama, the Democrats including their leadership, actually believe their own BS.
The phrase that best describes the Democratic Party is “will to power”.
You realize that Adam Schiff looks in the mirror and imagines himself House Speaker-in-Waiting? Sure, almost every Dem in the House has such ambition, but Schiff has felt the balm of anointing oil.
At that point I will concede the burn-it-down option may be the only viable route.
Hmm, also remembering that oil is flammable. (Metaphorically! he said)
Every picture of that man I’ve seen, all I can think is “I’ve never seen such insane eyes–you can SMELL the crazy on him.”
Seriously, the man looks like he’s a hair away from running amok. (And I mean that in the actual sense of the original word.)
You have to remember that the Dems are a party led by people who inherited power and wealth. They aren’t very bright.
Just because their parents bought them a law degree doesn’t mean they learned any law.
Agree. I understand that they are so out to lunch on what they’ve pulled, AND I know NOTHING about law or legal procedures. I mean whole point of legal theory is you have to argue logically. I may not be able to argue logically, but dang do I recognized someone arguing illogically, tends to make my head spin. If I have to blink and go “What?”, guaranty they are lying or hiding something. May not know what they are hiding or what they are lying about, but whatever is coming out of their mouths is pure BS.
I’m to the point that if Pelosi, Shiff, AOC & most the squad, etc., state it is raining, I’m checking it out; or they say Up is Down, I’m going to say “uh, No, idiots”, which makes me disbelieve whatever they say on general principle.
Given how many of those laywers are Democrats (something like 90% of Dems are lawyers or journalists, vs only about 50% of GOPs), it makes me wonder if maybe they were overly used to a rigged game starting at the local prosecutor level, and now that the rigging has failed to instantly produce the desired conviction, they have no idea how to proceed, other than maybe try a different accusation in case the next one sticks.
Meanwhile, from out here in Trumpland, the whole impeachment circus has been the best entertainment in years. Especially when the first Dems defected to the GOP.
“Meanwhile, from out here in Trumpland …”
I bear the opprobrium of my enemies as a badge of honour. You don’t catch flak unless you’re over the target. Toss a rock into a pen of swine and you know which got hit by how it squeals.
Half the way to getting a police state is convincing the population that you have to have a lawyer to get anything done.
Yep. And the evidence suggests we’re there. We’ve reached C. S. Lewis’ marker for infernal success in the Screwtape Letters 20 years ago.
Except that it was way worse before.
SERIOUSLY read CONTEMPORARY stuff under Woodrow Wilson, or the stuff not reported under FDR or heck, Clinton.
How many of those lawyers ever tried anything, though. And even fewer something contested I expect.
Part is they think the media will be effective at propaganda and that Reps are still gullible. Part is that the reps are probably still rather fair. If there was a case similar to the blatant, defensive lie of “depends on definition of is” (note this is different than the typical perjury trap or hyperbole) you might not get conviction in senate but my ‘under’ would be 55 votes to convict. This was probably the goal but they lost the plot.
Harry we are an odd lot and our politicians are even wierder. Although perhaps your Kiwi politicians aren’t so different? After a shooting incident dind’t your parliament ban rifles like the AR-15? And isn’t that being roundly ignored by the population outside the cities? Clearly they don’t understand about giving orders that won’t be obeyed either.
As for why they did it I think its to try to keep the democrat base riled up. They know that especially in swing states turnout is critical. If their base is not cranked up turnout of the “faithful” will be limited. In addition there is small motion in the minorities, especially African- American because of the very good economy. They are HIGHLY dependent on 90%+ vote of those demographics from the larger cities and even a SMALL percentage loss there or a reduced turnout endangers some of the less strongly blue states. So Speaker Pelosi decided in the interests keep her bizarre coalition together to let the impeachment Kraken out. Unfortunately she for got she doesn’t really control that beast. I think in the words of the Knight Guarding the Holy Grail in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Nancy chose… poorly.
Unfortunately the 2/3rds of the expected guns not turned in as part of the “buyback” was probably more due to our Politicians thinking that an appeal to illogic & the UN would carry more weight than the fact they weren’t willing to pay even a reasonable percentage of what most of the owners would’ve spent on what they were expected to hand over.
The lobby against the ban is loud, but I’d say it’s probably pretty small, as no-one is even pretending to listen to them.
But yeah, NZ’s Government is lead by a woman who is all about appearances, & mostly how they will apply to her apparent plans to move “up” to the UN now that she’s got “Liberal PM of NZ” on her CV, in a coalition (we have MMP because the electorate are idiots) with blue-sky idealist idiots (our Green Party) & the “power-behind the throne politicians (“NZ First” who’re really just “The leader & his gang, making a deal with whoever will give them the best bribes for looking good to the electorate”), people keep saying Trump doesn’t think, but if they want a real example of this (even more convincing than Justin Trudeau) they really should look at Jacinda Ardern (& no, I don’t care about her sex, I’d hate her politics from the guy she beat out, except he has about 1 more point of IQ [pretty sure they’re both single-digit though], this disclaimer courtesy of academics saying that a movement [which I am not a part of] against our PM’s lack of substance is entirely based on her not being a man).
Yup Harry it sounds like your pols are just like ours but with a slightly different accent. Sad to hear the issue on the “buyback” was the price and not just, “this is useful I need it why do you want it”? It used to be that the orneriest creatures on the planet were those from the Anglosphere countries. England, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, and then the colonies, The Americas (U.S. Canada), Australia, New Zealand, South Africa. All with admixtures (especially US) of other groups. Somehow we all civilized a little too much and like a sheepdog kept mostly as a pet we’ve gone soft and domestic. A few of us are cats, willing to take advantage of civilization, (Heck who doesn’t like a nice warm bed and regular meals) but still having the spark wild there somewhere. I suspect that spark is still there in the sheepdogs but rekindling it may be a challenge. They’d better rekindle it or they’ll just be whipped curs from now until the final trumpet sounds.
AS for your PM she ASPIRES to be at the UN maybe as Secretary General? That’s like being the Queen of England, except the Sec Gen neither rules nor reigns. The Secretary General is the Apologizer and Brown Nose in chief. That right there ought to be sufficient for a vote of no confidence, she’s clearly not mentally sound as she already runs a rather nice country. No sane Pol wishes to yield power 🙂 .
They don’t seem able to make him look bad. He must e cleaner than any of us could believe.
I don’t think it’s us they’re trying to convince, I think it’s their “fellow travelers”, & if not “convince” at least distract them from what’s behind the curtain…
Oh, that definitely. Hints of what they’re sitting on have shocked even me, and I FULLY expected themt o be total corruptocrats, so…
I am honestly kind of boggled.
I’m starting to be amused and thinking that G-d has as weird a sense of humor as I do….
Of course He does. Why else would I accidentally hit the radio button in my truck at 0745 this AM and get serenaded by “The Hanukkah Song” on classic FM?
A lot of that is that he simply doesn’t follow their scripts, and they’ve gotten so manually flabby they can’t think of anything else to do.
They accuse him (probably realistically) of crude locker-room banter about women. Instead of falling into the expected flurry of embarrassment and denial, Trump says, “And your point was….?” Or ignores it entirely.
They keep expecting him to roll over and die because they say mean things. This is why I half expect that when they try to steal the 2020 election, Trump is going to use their vote fraud as an enema nozzle and give them a colonic they won’t soon forget. They apparently can’t conceive of somebody fighting back, and it makes them sloppy.
Make that ‘mentally flabby’. The other is an interesting mental image, but nasty.
Flabby customers of Epstein. Eeewwwww! I have no mouth and I must scream!
LOL
Look, for a man who’s been in the public eye for 30 years? The worst they could get on him was using the term “pussy” in public?
He’s so clean he SQUEAKS.
As for them: Fourth generation commies. They hire for ideology not competence. This is part of why the wheels come off.
The other part is that the left has covered their appalling incompetence because the press is solidly on their side.
Can you imagine a Republican rep saying Guam might tip over and SURVIVING?
But that advantage (and it was one, for decades) has a down side. I.e. you get the craziest, flabbiest people in, and you can’t get rid of them. At some point, they get positions of power or become a majority.
Yep, they’re running on empty.
Not even in public– imprudently, in a between-broadcasts conversation with a shock jock.
Reminds me of the rule enforcement in school. The guys who LIVE for this stuff get a free pass to scream obscenities, but anybody they think they can smack isn’t supposed to so much as quote what was screamed.
I mean…sure, the guy has been divorced a few times–but I note that his kids? You don’t see them in tabloids on drug fueled benders or partying it up. The most they’ve ever coughed up was the recent–and apparently rather low-key if not amicable–divorce of one of his older kids. So far as I can tell, they seem to be hardworking business people.
You don’t produce kids like that by accident. Sure, luck/accident has a SMALL role (because some kids are just oddballs in their families), but…I see adult children who are still on speaking terms with their parents. (I also don’t see much hostility between Trump and his exes–they seem to all be rubbing along fine.) They even WORK together (which is frequently a source of family fallouts).
That says to me that, if nothing else, Trump is a good father. And being a good father says a LOT about a person in other areas of their life.
And yeah, the locker-room talk was crude–but, and I’ve noted this to people of my acquaintance who are STILL screeching about it, he never in any way mentioned UNWILLING women. Just that, hey yeah, women thrown themselves at you when you’re wealthy and/or powerful. Which…should be shocking to no one at all. And it isn’t sexist, it’s merely describing a fact about a certain percentage of a particular gender. (I gather men have a similar behavior, but it trends more towards physical beauty? And again, it’s not ALL OF THEM, just some of them.)
And honestly, “pussy” isn’t even that crude, nowadays. And I say this as a strait-laced Mormon girl. Sure, I wouldn’t use it myself, and not in conversation, but…not really a very shocking word.
Right? Could be way worse.
“The most they’ve ever coughed up was the recent–and apparently rather low-key if not amicable–divorce of one of his older kids. ”
And even for that one, you have to look at the timing: right after someone sent envelopes of white powder to the her family. His wife actually opened theirs. How much “let me get my kids and myself out of the line of fire” was involved?
https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/shock-everyone-in-trump-family-has-received-white-powder-in-mail
“President Donald Trump’s son Eric Trump revealed that everyone in the Trump family has received “white powder” in the mail while appearing on Fox News’s “Hannity” Thursday evening.”
(I gather men have a similar behavior, but it trends more towards physical beauty? And again, it’s not ALL OF THEM, just some of them.)
*snicker* That story that keeps being misreported, about how women think 80% of men are below average, actually showed that high rated women got insanely high percentages of messages.
(I say misreported, because it’s basic psychology– rating a guy as 5 of 5 sent him a “you’re hot!” message. So women didn’t do it.)
I think part of it almost has to be that they expect at least some of his supporters to find locker room talk and affairs with porn stars offputting or at least feel obligated to condemn the behavior — which might not be wholly unreasonable, except that they have made it clear we should not expect better behavior from their people.
Yes. They think we’re all voting our religion.
Nope, we’re not voting Their Idea Of Our Religion. 😆
Yep. THAT.
Oh, hell, I wouldn’t have voted for Romney if there had been ANY other better candidates. I don’t care if he shares my religion, that didn’t mean I think he’d be good at the job.
(And having known, personally, a man who was a VERY good bishop but an appalling coworker, I won’t take Romney’s record as a bishop or stake president as a vote of confidence either. Someone can be really good at those–unpaid–positions and purely suck at their jobs.)
Right? I’ve despised John McCain as a politician for years. I still voted for him. Romney too.
One of the things that has me so angry is that the GOPe promptly turned around and broke their own rule. And the consequences are still being felt.
Murkowski was beaten in the 2010 primary…. and then the GOPe refused to support Joe Miller so she won a “write in” campaign. Now we pay the price… again.
https://issuesinsights.com/2019/12/27/stopping-lisa-murkowski-from-playing-lady-macbeth/
As I pointed out, in his own campaign room, the chant that went up was “Drag his skanky ass over the finish line. Drag drag drag. Do it for Sarah and what’s his name.”
He was NOT loved.
As for Murkowski, yeah, I saw that. There’s a reason Sarah Palin fought the Alaska GOP.
Sarah Palin recently tweeted “I can see 2022 from my house.” Not sure if that means she’s going to run against Murkowski or just organize for Miller again. Either way, should be entertaining and hopefully results in Murky’s removal.
/smile
I was raised Catholic.
And I don’t have any problem with sex workers. They deserve to earn mutually agreeable compensation for their labor.
I do have a problem with the sex and porn industry exploiting sex workers.
Sure. But making it illegal only encourages that.
THAT!!
Legalizing prostitution would eliminate 90% of the abuses, the underage hookers, and put the pimps out of business.
But then, the Democrats would lose a whole class of ‘victims’ to
exploithelp.I could never understand why it should be illegal to sell something that it’s perfectly legal to give away. Maybe it’s because only the government is allowed to fuck us out of our money?
———————————
George Carlin: “Selling is legal. Fucking is legal. Why is selling fucking against the law?”
Years ago, I saw this late night talk-show where the host was talking with high-class call-girls (who also “sold” sex).
It was laughable to hear that guy talking about “one-night stands were OK” but “Selling Sex was wrong”. 😆 😆 😆 😆 😆 😆 😆
Legalizing prostitution would eliminate 90% of the abuses, the underage hookers, and put the pimps out of business.
No, it wouldn’t. It just gives them a chance to hide more effectively.
We can tell that by looking in places where there is legal prostitution.
Would you like to try to argue that there’s a lower rate of under-age prostitutes in Nevada? Even just in those counties where it’s legal?
The consistency with which that argument is put forward is what got me to start wondering how many activist groups (especially big-L libertarian that are more pot and sex than guns, and hostile to law enforcement) are getting Cartel support. There should be a wider range of disagreement, if only folks saying “yes it makes for more under-aged hookers but the infringement on private contracts is more important.” They do that elsewhere, so this one sticks out.
Part of the problem for them is that they spent the 90s blathering on about consenting adults. No one likes to be lectured by a hypocrite. If they hadn’t fallen all over themselves defending Clinton, then maybe their arguments would have had some traction. But they did defend Clinton. And now they have the gall to lecture us about not defending an adulterer.
On the banter, the only women shocked, shocked by that are ones who wouldn’t ever vote for him anyway. Healthier women merely shrug it off — it s probably milder than the locker room talk they hear (or imagine) daily.
Besides, it isn’t as if the banter in women’s locker rooms is exactly genteel. The recipes they exchange in there would curl men’s hair and shrivel their privates.
Somebody needs to make a meme of Trump, a la Patton, shouting out, “Democrats, You Magnificent Bastards – I Read Your Playbook!”
As I noted above, “pussy” is a pretty mild term nowadays.
What do they have against cats anyway? If he’d actually grabbed any, cats have a tendency to take exception, he’d have scars …
(okay running away now)
Oh, we have actual photographs…..
My favorite.
Not to mention the fact–though I don’t know how true it actually is–that supposedly the term “pussy” as relates to calling someone it as an insult stems from “pusillanimous” and NOT vagina. (Not that Trump was referring to things other than that, but it does make me wonder how the term came to be conflated with a vagina.)
(Though if that IS the source of the insult of calling someone “a pussy” it makes far more sense to me than calling someone a vagina. Which is just…silly. Though I suppose we also call people dicks, or douchebags, which are also equally bizarre as far as insults go…At least “asshole” makes a bit more sense.)
*coughs* Sorry, several days on short sleep, excuse my etymological ramblings 😀
“pusillanimous”
(Made me look it up … & I’ll never be able to pronounce it) Had forgotten (probably because I grew up with sisters) the other common definition of pussy, as in “Are you a sissy/pussy/pansy”; granted all are forbidden on the playground now.
Love the *etymological ramblings … better than the incoming carp I expected to be flung my way … * did NOT have to look that one up.
Always fun to learn a new word! 😀
Seriously, though–aren’t the sexual organs something most people desire in some way or another? So…why are they insults…? It seems to be one of those things hardwired into human DNA for some reason… :p
Perversion of the sacred– even folks who try to insist it’s nothing more important than tennis teams keep running up against their own baked-in instincts.
No amount of ridicule can change those, because the ridicule is at most half true, and usually not even that–usually is just stupid dominance games; they can try to rewrite the whole culture, but it doesn’t tend to function well.
I think it may be more that he’s never hidden any of the things he’s done. “Philanderer” “4 wives, you’re surprised?” “Crude talk!” “Never hid it, and?” “He’s mean!” “Have you watched his TV show?” And so on and so on… and so everyone already knows where the warts are so aren’t shocked when people point them out. They can’t dig up dirt on him because all the dirt is out in public and people already knew about it BEFORE he was president. It’s not like digging up dirt on someone everyone thought was an innocent and pure as the driven snow. And it’s really hard to plant dirt on that kind of person as well.
3 exes with whom he seems to be at least on not-open-hostilities terms, even. So philanderer maybe, but yeah. Not hiding it (and not, one notes, claiming that it was normal or okay behavior–he accepts the divorce, if it turns out the wife was Not Okay with it, and moves on).
(I say “not open hostilities” because you’d think, if they WERE deeply hostile to their ex-husband, they’d be working with the Dems. Instead, you don’t hear much of anything from the exes at all, or if you do they’re either saying innocuous things or fairly friendly things.)
Nod.
And the same goes with any “sex scandals”.
No charges of “sexual harassment”, etc.
Once Trump because the Republican Candidate for President, you can be sure that the News Media would have paid good money to find somebody willing to talk.
Oh, they did pay. Of course, our “intact system of laws” didn’t even blink at suborning perjury……
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/365068-exclusive-prominent-lawyer-sought-donor-cash-for-two-trump-accusers
Same tactics worked on Roy Moore and almost got Kavanaugh.
Oh, I heard there was some efforts early on to gin up some “he assaulted/attempted to rape me” accusations against Trump (including from a 13 year old) but they were so unbelievable they never made it out of the starting gate. I still see the occasional Trump hater bring it up in a “whattabout!” argument (complete with the “and they are being SILENCED” explanation as to why it’s going nowhere–at which point they generally get laughed out of the discussion).
I mean, sheesh. I’d say this man is clearly squeaky clean even for a NEW YORK CITY REAL ESTATE DEVELOPER, let alone a poltician (for a politician, he’s practically a saint–probably because this is his first real foray into politics, heh). He’s not perfect, he has his foibles (and while cheating on one’s spouse is a pretty big one–last I checked, it was NOT on the list of “unforgivable sins”), but remembering some of the faint jokes I heard back in the 80s/90s (and didn’t pay a ton of attention to, because I was a kid), it really boils down to the typical lefty attitude of “he’s successful so OF COURSE he has to be corrupt”…only to find out, he’s really not.
I mean, I can’t even say that the “unfiltered mouth” that he has going isn’t a deliberate ploy to rile up the media–not when I also hear accounts of him being gracious, polite, warm, and compassionate to people who are NOT trying to crucify him.
“I mean, there must have been a bunch of stuff they could do to make Trump actually look bad”
Speaking purely off the top of my head, with absolutely no objective data to support this, I would guess a move to censure would have carried at least two-thirds of the House.
I do not think such “Sense of the House” resolutions necessarily advance to the Senate but I’ve scant doubt a similar move would carry by comparable margin.
The repercussions of such a resolution would probably have done significant damage to Trump, if only by dividing congressional Republicans. It would also have established a standard making impeachment and removal, should they ever actually come up with anything, more attainable.
They got so far out over their skis on this they’ve booted themselves in their collective butt.
Blood in the streets all over? Probably not. Blood joining shit already in the streets, since Dims are now turd-world shit-sitters?
Yeah, I can see them turning the angel spirit down to minimum and the chimp brain up to maximum. They’re already most of the way there, after all, and by what passes for choice among them.
-Albert
Let’s put it this way: “Antifa” can’t even hold the streets of Portland against a bunch of pudgy guys in polo shirts.
Yep, they’re losing, badly. And they’re starting to realize that Steiner isn’t coming.
…except, so far, the police have usually been the willing accomplices for Antifa, standing back and letting them attack people and destroy property, if not actually assisting them by herding groups of victims toward trouble.
Antifa isn’t their only weapon.
Sadly, the recourse (so far) for the Portland PD is to walk away. Paging Ursula Leguin.
OTOH, there are a lot of measures the Feds could take as partof swamp drainage. We’ll see.
See Charlottesville.
Yes, some locations in the US are beyond help. For now. But those areas are NOT the whole country.
“If we take the widest and wisest view of a Cause, there is no such thing as a Lost Cause because there is no such thing as a Gained Cause. We fight for lost causes because we know that our defeat and dismay may be the preface to our successors’ victory, though that victory itself will be temporary; we fight rather to keep something alive than in the expectation that anything will triumph.”
T.S. Eliot, 1929
Besides, everyone knows that Lost Causes are the only causes worth fighting for.
Sure. They are beyond help. FOR NOW. Things change.
The problem isn’t that they won’t get CAUGHT; the problem is that they won’t be PUNISHED, and their fraudulent seats will remain in their hands.
Case in point: NH Senate, 2016.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/sep/7/voter-fraud-alert-over-5000-new-hampshire-presiden/
Now, guess who’s still in the Senate, waiting to confirm Trump’s impeachment? And guess which state was among the ones that wouldn’t allow the President’s Commission on Voting Irregularities access to investigate?
Oh, and that system of laws we supposedly still have? If we did, that election wouldn’t have been certified as valid until every one of those votes was confirmed, and Mitch McConnell wouldn’t have allowed Maggie Hassan to take her seat until it WAS.
The same sorts of shenanigans were pulled in AZ in 2018, and nearly got pulled off in FL and GA.
Of course, that same fraud swiped the electoral votes for President. 2020 is gonna be LIT.
Don’t give up yet.
Steve, the level of fraud needed for them to win will be so obvious, they’ll get exposed.
Yes, I’m tired of people pretending vote fraud doesn’t happen.
I don’t know what friends you have, but I have a lot of them all over, and people ARE getting caught, and yes, even being sent to jail.
More importantly, voter rolls are being cleaned.
Do you seriously see Trump taking fraud against him lying down?
When the Summer 2018 election came around, I suddenly discovered that I was no longer registered to vote. And while there may have been something sinister going on, I’ll also note that I’ve stopped receiving campaign literature with the name of the person who lived in my apartment before me. And I moved in quite a while ago.
This is in Los Angeles County, btw.
Something’s up. I don’t know whether it’s good or bad. But something’s up even here in California.
Husband was transferred to WA, late 2002, & didn’t get transferred back to Oregon until 2nd quarter 2005. Because he didn’t want to go through the PIA to get his WA driver’s license, nor did he register OUR car, nor OUR RV trailer (which he lived in), both of which he would have to had paid sales tax on in WA. (Car technically was purchased after he was transferred up there to be his main commute car once the trailer was up there. WA charges sales tax on any RV vehicle newly registered in the state no matter how long it has been owned. My name, legally, was on both vehicles. BS on the sales tax.) Because he was officially a WA, not an OR resident, but had no official documents, other than the RV spot long term lease agreement, he didn’t vote in 2004 Presidential (or any) in either WA or OR; his choice.
It is infuriating, that it can be proven, and nothing is being done. Everyone who voted under non-state licenses that haven’t registered in the state they voted in, needs to be tracked down, if they haven’t since changed their driver’s license, then it needs to be investigated, did they vote somewhere else too. If the state(s) won’t allow that investigation, then their election votes need to be decertified nationally, and their senate/congress seats sit empty.
Oregon, before it went to vote by fraud, I mean by mail, required you to sign the voter roll when you got your ballot. Even with vote by mail, you have to sign the outer envelope to be matched against voter rolls & your registration signature (both husband & son get called in because theirs can’t be matched, regularly; yes both have irregular signatures). Either way they are not suppose to know who you voted for, especially if you use the inner “secrecy” envelope.
Steve, we need to work on the state House, Senate, and Governor to get that law overturned. We need to talk to people and start hammering the legislators hard. There’s no question that the evidence exists that it is fatally flawed and that the winners may have been fraudulently elected. The fact that Kuster and Pappas both voted to impeach Trump without actual charges of law breaking is further proof that they’re complete incompetents who probably got their positions by fraud.
From my experience there I’d bet a huge chunk of students moreso than pure fraud. Register at dorm or housing. Car probably still in parents name. Since residence is not obvious, or at least was not in 2009 when I was in that grey area (had a lease, wasn’t planning to stay after graduation, etc), it’s easy to justify that you should vote there, not at home. And since most students from out of state will be rimaconn or Vermont it’s seen as much more important to vote where it can have affect.
If it’s this, I believe the only fraud would be failure to change license as opposed to voting. Remove opportunity for on campus residency be definitely a start, though. Especially if only source of income is loans and/or can still be claimed as dependent by another. This type of thing is the secondary reason that college towns drive voting trends
uh. No. There’s vote harvesting in nursing homes. There’s buses of illegal immigrants driven from state to state in the NE where they’ve closer together and you have same-day registration.
And in states with vote by fraud, there’s huge dumps of ballots by backpack.
Seriously.
Don’t doubt. But I’d say grey nonresident voters voting larger just because it’s not obviously illegal. It’s part of why they try and get student ids as voting Id.
The facilitation of vote fraud is obvious regardless. ID, minimal non election day voting requiring notarization, and a simple UV rubber stamp on wrist isn’t that difficult or expensive. Unless you want it easy to defraud.
Oh, yes.
A lot of the things that make elder-homes useful for harvesting also apply at colleges, especially if there’s a centralized mail system.
I can easily see someone signed up at three or four different addresses, without them doing a thing– registered at parent’s, registered at (mail building), registered at dorm address and registered at administration type building.
And just to prove that the state of the culture isn’t where the media want you to think it is …. I heard a rousing “…and Epstein didn’t kill himself” from a person I know owns an Antifa t-shirt. WHY do you believe the bozos and their constant stories about the economy/Trump/global warming/the looming Jello shortage? They never get it right and want you to believe their version of reality! Spock doesn’t even have a beard in theirs because he identifies as an avocado!
I’ve seen “Epstein didn’t kill himself” in a couple places that I really would not expect it (hard left, “Hillary Won!”) That surprised me more than discovering that the Communists thing the 1619 Project is a load of garbage* and did some excellent interviews with historians of the period taking it apart.
*Broken clocks, et al. They hate the idea that race predestines people while ignoring economic class interests. Thus the 1619 Project is yet another bourgeois attempt to keep the proletariat from uniting around its common economic interest. This might be the one time I agree with their thesis, even though I vehemently disagree with their reason.
Point them at each other and root for injuries 😀 But then, I’m evil…
Yup it’s like the Gipper’s statement in the Iran Iraq ware. “Couldn’t they both lose?”
Some if it is also the left’s fantasy that Epstein is mostly a Trump issue, not a Clinton one,. because Epstein visited Trump once (and got tossed from Mar a Lago). Thus the left is doing it because they think it is another Trump “crime” while they deliberately forget the years and years of close ties that Epstein had to the Clinton’s and other Democrats, and the lengthy track record of fatal “accidents” and suicides of people inconvenient to the Clintons.
FYI, today’s Week in Pictures on Powerline has a number of good Epstein didn’t hang himself ones:
Well of course! Remember, when Clinton did it, ‘it was just sex’.
Standard marxism: Those who are allies in the cause may do whatever they please no matter how vile. It’s why prominent male feminists keep turning out to be sex predators.
-Albert
“It’s why prominent male feminists keep turning out to be sex predators.”
I think you have the causal direction backwards. Sex predators don male feminism for the same reason wolves wear sheep’s clothing.
People commonly decide first what they will be, then how to
get away withjustify it.N.B. – studies have found that among the staunchest supporters of abortion are the guys most likely to sire unwanted children.
What I mean is, the predators are safe among Marxists as long as they repeat the Marxism. Be an ‘ally’ and they’ll provide all the camo a predator could want.
So predators prosper among them more than anywhere else.
-Albert
Unwanted by the father at least.
I have seen a man loudly proclaim that he is adamantly antichoice, all unwanted babies MUST be aborted if the woman must be forced to do it. One begins to suspect after two or three times.
This. They’re convinced that Trump had Epstein killed to hide something. And if you bring up Epstein being banished from Mar a Lago, they’ll come up with nonsensical explanations to make the pieces fit the way that they want them to.
Donald’s uncle John was at MIT. Obviously, Epstein was killed to cover up the dark secret at the heart of medical imaging research.
I’m halfway tempted to write a thriller about a gullible moron who tries to investigate on that basis. Probably coming down with a cold or something.
Isn’t a wee bit hypocritical of the Federal Legislature to pass the Magnitsky act, and then spend all this time apparently ignoring the suspicious elements of the Bulger and Epstein deaths?
Do not discount the possibility that Clinton supporters might be secretly proud their team could not only get away with murder but cat suspicion on their foes.
Standard values not present to our left.
Ain’t no ‘secret’ about it, good buddy… they slap us in the face with it at every opportunity.
Did Epstein kill himself?
The question may be irrelevant. If he was murdered, then it was in the interests of a lot of powerful people that he die before he could testify to anything. If he committed suicide, it was aided and abetted by those same powerful people similar to the way Frankie “Five Angels” Pentangeli was encouraged to do so. He might not have had much in the way of family to protect; but they also could have gotten very imaginative in describing what incarceration for him had in store.
My moonbat brother shares my belief that Epstein didn’t kill himself. And this is the brother that kept trying to pick a fight at dinner the other day by saying “Merry Impeachmas”.
And let me guess, “And a happy second term for you!” or such was the reply?
It’s important to remember that many of the voices proclaiming doom and gloom are suffering the political equivalent of clinical insanity..(delusions, hallucinations, denial of reality, paranoia, etc.) The activists and the shock jocks are rewarded by the publicity when they aren’t actually getting paid for being outrageous. Political despair is a disease, and its principal vectors are popular media and the punditry. It’s curable.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, as they say. The problem is that too many people declaring that these are desperate times really, really want those desperate measures, needed or not, for reasons not relevant to the matter at hand.
It’s not going to be easy as Sarah and others have pointed out. But it is necessary. I do think that there are more people than are willing to admit publicly that are fed up with the constant barrage of groupthink/properthink from the alphabet bullies. The silent majority now is on the left of center. They’re still not sure what they’re going to do, but they’re growing more uncomfortable. But they’re afraid that they are alone and that’s where we need to be sending this message. Into the ranks of the left followers. Just let them know you’re there, and they’ll show up to talk to you.
> The silent majority now is on the left of center.
Maybe. But that’s the same silent majority they were counting on to sweep Hillary! into office by a landslide.
They thought they could use the mass media to create “low information voters” who’d compliantly vote as directed. Because that was, until recently, the only place voters got their information. But 2016 was the tipping point; the number of voters who actually believe the ravings of the media is much smaller now. Which is why they’ve been pinning their hopes on Twitter, Facebook, and Google… but I suspect the trust of the general public of those is much less than their polls suggest.
They have invested over sixty years defaming Republicans (and conservatives) as racist, fifty years libeling Republicans (and conservatives) as sexist, thirty-five years slandering Republicans (and conservatives) as homophobic and the last twenty or s years as white supremacist. Of course the low information voter shies away from our policies and keeps falling for the Dems cargo cult propaganda.
But many of those people in the middle can be reached, and the frothing-at-the-mouth fascist antifa, Mad Maxine Waters, Alexandra Outofher-Cortex and others on the Left are causing many people to listen to reasonable voices of the Center-Right.
We simply need to avoid spooking them by out-ding the Dem-craziness … and because of the tilted playing field we can get twice the spookiness with a quarter the effort. People think in stereotypes and right ow ours is not beneficial.
THIS.
After they spent a hundred years being racist.
Democrats enacted the Jim Crow laws. The KKK was a bunch of southern Democrats. Democrat governor George Wallace tried to physically prevent black students from attending white schools. The Democrats started the Civil War because the Republicans wanted to abolish slavery.
Hell, the Democrats have been racists for their entire history, and they are still racist. They just flipped their racism during the 1960’s. Because obviously, the proper response to anti-black racism in the past is anti-white racism in the present.
———————————
Lennier: “I see they taught you well back home.”
Marcus: “My teachers said I had a lot of repressed anger.”
Lennier: [looks at seedy bar full of unconscious lowlifes] “And?”
Marcus: “It’s not repressed any more.”
And they’re still trying to get slaves, by destroying the economy, mandating “voluntary work” for students, and nationalizing healthcare.
They don’t CHANGE.
They still are. We have to have AA because otherwise blacks can’t attend college.
Point out that blacks were graduated from Ivy League schools before the Civil War and they have no answer.
Agreed, agreed, agreed…
and +10000 for the Babylon 5 reference 😀
And the media has beclowned itself more since then. Also things like twitter and Facebook are transparently naked in manipulation. WE SEE THEM.
“…making a list, checking it twice…”
It’s the holding on when everything feels utterly gray that’s the hard part.
Long story short – on top of the nation-wide crazy I’ve had a Very Bad Year, chronic and will be eventually terminal illness in the family, and since Sunday I’ve been wrestling with trying to get admins on a site I usually love to do something about a nut who seems to think leaving death threats is A-OK because they didn’t like a fanfic.
So. Yeah. “Do not despair.” Essential to do, but – very, very hard.
Last year. Particularly the end of it. TRUST me, I know.
Thanks. Helps that someone does get it. Intellectually I know the answer to “Why?” is “Because some idiots are just Malice personified”, but when you’ve been hit by several Bad Things in quick succession… sometimes it seems the only way I get through the day is “go down the checklist of what must get done, hope I feel better tomorrow.”
Last year I got laid off my non-fic job (not really, but the pay offered after purchase was basically “Work your ass off and MAYBE you’ll manage to make a couple hundred dollars a month” — not worth my time –) and was told my books would not be bought again — for reasons. (not sane/true reasons, as I’ve found since, but “reasons”)
Bizarrely, miraculously and very weirdly because a friend then told me “You’re meant to be writing fiction. Go write. The money will be there.”
the money has been there, all year, despite some truly horrific and unexpected bills.
It’s usually there at the very last minute, when I’m biting my nails, but still… there.
And now I’m writing again, and have hopes the new year will be better.
I will hope yours is also.
*Crosses fingers, knocks on wood.* I have a (very) rough draft almost outlined to the end from this year’s NaNo – given this year, I’m astonished I managed – and another rough I think I can finally take apart and fix. So I’m hoping to get at least those two out in 2020. More would be good. I’m trying to take your advice on writing fast. *G*
Here’s hoping the money keeps being there. As someone who also skews depressed a lot of the time, I’ve really appreciated your take on how we may finally be turning the tide in the culture wars!
If the Left can provoke the Right into a spazz moment, they get another crackdown on our rights.
I suspect they may manufacture one if we fail to take the bait. That is still no reason to take the bait.
The violent idiots of the Left will reliably overplay their hand. Reasonable response, and lots of mockery, will do.
Freedom wins in the long run if we just hang on and refuse to quit. The Left can only win if they convince us to quit. Thus, never quit.
Never quit. Never.
In general, you never want to charge head-on into your foe’s massed forces. You want to draw them forward so your pincer can castrate them.
Unless you are a Bolo. Then you encourage them to mass-up as much as possible.
I said “in general” — bolos rarely rise above the rank of major.
At present no Bolos, No Ogres, No MI in Marauder suits. Given that and the lack of flying cars and Rotating Space stations to dock with this is a very disappointing Century so far. Elon Musk’s Starship does have potential, but I’m reserving judgement.
I’m optimistic, in a pessimistic sort of way.
It seems like the lunatics are in their final days of the asylum, and if they can’t stay in charge of everything forever and ever, they’re just going to make everyone miserable and burn everything to the ground.
(Or try to at least.)
But, I think, we’ll see very interesting things around 2020. I suspect that there are some people that are not main-lining Twitter feeds in the newsrooms realize that impeachment does nothing but make Trump look like a person they hate-and they’ve so poisoned the well that we want to see them suffer and burn. They’ve gotten their dream, haven’t they? The People are now awake-and they hate their erstwhile “betters” with a passion.
Honestly, if it wasn’t for the brain anyurism that would happen afterwards, the Jonathan Pie post-2020 election video will be hilarious. “Four F(YAY!)ING YEARS! I’ve been telling you for four years that insulting people and acting like every single person that didn’t vote for your candidate was a garbage human was going to get you this result. But, no, you have to keep doing it, over and over again! Enjoy the next four years of the Trump mandate, assholes.”
Things are slowly starting to come around, but man does it feel like being lost in a dense fog sometimes.
I know. I get into the same.
Despair? I’m wary, because one has to be in hostile territory. But my heart sings with the joy of battle…a battle we will win. Crush the liberals! See the Dems driven before you! And hear the lamentations of the media!
I’m old enough to remember the Reagan era. The hardest part of defeating the Soviet Union was having the courage and determination to DO it. Less than a decade of pressure, and the whole rotten edifice came tumbling down. Alas that we did not get their records to root out the traitors in our own midst, but we have to score it as a win nonetheless.
Now, we’re in the middle of a similar struggle against the echo of the Soviet Union. The modern crypto-Communist Left. But we’re winning. Trump, like Reagan, is determined to actually conquer.
And WRT immigration, watch the fight that is going on within the Democrat Party. The descendants of Wave 5 immigrants are now engaged in a fight with Wave 6 for control…but the CHILDREN of those Wave 5 descendants no longer think of themselves as immigrants at all. A century has gone by since the last of Wave 5 arrived on our shores, their descendants have intermarried. Yes, we need to secure the border, have a long immigration holiday, and turn the heat under the melting pot to “Highest”. But this is do-able.
I don’t think communist Russia could have been brought down much sooner than it was. We had to wait for it to rot, and rot is a slow process.
———————————
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!
Oh, it could have. If we’d stopped FEEDING it, it would have rotted faster.
The thing about the left is that they have the mierdas touch. I think it’s being fundamentally unsuited to civilization. Everything they touch/impose their will on rots. America’s institutions and industries they’ve taken over are hollow shells. The inside is rot and excrement.
“If we’d stopped FEEDING it, it would have rotted faster.”
Yup. The eagerness with which the West, particularly Western Europe, would prop up the Soviet Empire was truly disturbing.
One of the weaknesses of the free market system is that even its enemies can get what they need to survive as long as they’re willing and able to pony up the cash.
That, and an unwillingness amongst the actually-civilized to watch children starve. Unfortunately, there were too many who were equally unwilling to call out the USSR on their bs when they pretended they totally weren’t relying on food from the West to survive…the media, in particular.
Something suited to the season and an encourager of calmness in these last few hectic days before the holiday starts.
Remember, it still isn’t Christmas until Hans Gruber falls.
Thank you, Sir Wallaby.
Ah, yes, the 1960s. Race riots, anti-war riots, the Great Northeast Blackout, and to top that off, we were all going to die in a thermonuclear holocaust. Perhaps I was sheltered from the first few by where I lived (a small town in Arizona) – but certainly not the last. We never did the duck and cover drill – nothing was going to land close enough to us to do more than rattle the windows a bit – but death by fallout is actually worse.
I did not despair.
Enter the new decade, the 1970s. Bigger race riots, bigger anti-war riots, no immense blackouts until late in the decade, but massive inflation, gas lines, impeachment of one President and the election of a complete cast of morons from POTUS down as a consequence – not to mention that we were still all going to die in thermonuclear holocaust, unless we were conquered first by a far inferior enemy thanks to the aforementioned cast of morons.
I did not despair.
Be damned if I’m going to start now in my elder days what I did not do in my younger and more gullible days. Freedom shall survive – its current form will someday die, as all things do – but the idea cannot be killed so long as there is a single person holding it.
(Oh, a note – most of the ’70s, I would have died quick while I was in Tucson. Whole wing of B52s and recon planes, (then) Hughes Aircraft complex, Titan II silos all over the place. This basin would have been one huge multicolored glass lake. Still didn’t practice duck and cover…)
I was downwind of the Satellite Tracking Center in Mountain View, CA during the ’70s. Not sure of priorities, but presumably higher than San Franshitsco.
We survived–now we’re out of the way barring a really misguided missile.
All of the interesting targets moved away from me, rather than the obverse. I think the nearest is all the way down in Fort Huachuca now.
SF might be a priority these days, though – on the ancient principle of burning out a plague locus…
Fort Gesundheit?
Considering that every time the son has a field drill there, it rains like no tomorrow, that should be its nickname. He never fails to come home with a nasty cold.
RCPete, not sure what you have east of you. But yes, as we say in Eugene, even here, a miss of Portland, maybe even just targets in mid-Washington, we’re safe from a direct hit. OTOH prevailing winds during the summer are straight south through the valley. Otherwise, generally from west … but what is on the coast worth hitting?
We’re 25 air miles from a F15-C training base (The C is for air-air combat, not the ground-pounding F15-Es) co-located with the K-Falls airport. I figure it’s pretty far down on the list.
East of us is a whole lot of nuthin’. Prevailing winds are from the NW or SW, so barring Soviet era type hypothetical scenarios, I’m not worried.
Giggle Giggle. I moved from SAC HQ to the main nuclear weapons assembly area. At least the latter was downwind most of the year.
Amen.
Dear Guns and Hoydens. I was having a bit of a weepy moment for various and sundry reasons, and the Daughter Product decided to cheer me up with a joke she made up herself. I LOl-d. She also said no one but her weird mom would get the joke.
“Hold my beer, and pass me the kindle kiddo.”
Q: What do you call a second-ranking noble woman on Mars?
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.
.
.
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A: A Martian-ess
Her weird mom, and people who read regency romances. Like me! 😛
Presactly. 😉
Grooooaaaaan. Good one!
Heheh, I think we’re largely honorary “weird like her mom” types….
Although before I went with the nobility type nicknames for the kids, I mightn’t’ve.
I’m not a regency novel reader. Only thing I can think of is Marquis and Marquessa, and trying to turn Marquessa into Martianess
Marchioness?
Hey, I laughed. 😀
“I do not think, however, it is legitimate to bomb buildings that also contain day cares. ”
The enslavement of my grandchildren will be resisted BAMN.
War is Hell.
Tell me why Americommie tyrants deserve weak-sister ROEs as compared to the last bunch to war on us: Dresden?Tokyo? Warm ups! (Quite warm!)
War is Hell.
The enslavement of my grandchildren will be resisted BAMN.
It’s the Russell Paradox of moral calculus.The safe and comfortable “we’re better than that”(so we’ll cave) pseudo morality that appears to be a current YA publication prerequisite makes me crazy, especially when it pervades otherwise superversive story telling,
I suppose an author could be preaching on the moral bankruptcy by showing with seeming approval multiple serial successes of “surrrender or we’ll hurt a hostage ” negotiating,
Cave now and you’ll be in this position again and again.
threats to hostages should trigger immediate execution for (these real) war crimes,Hostage takers must die, and die screaming if the hostage is harmed.Period,
America and Americans are terribly nice, very forgiving… until a threshold is crossed. When that happens, even Satan ducks and covers. He might be evil, but evil is not the same as stupid. The world seems to forget this every so often. The reminders… well, you do NOT desire them. On any side, really.
THIS.
That’s why they tried and in many cases convicted, a bunch of our war fighters in Afghanistan and Iraq. And why Trump need to pardon a bunch of them. We’ve gotten some off the hook. I imagine there are others who deserve to be relieved of undeserved punishment also.
Although there are also a number in the klink who belong there.
A ton of folks were punished for corruption who shouldn’t have been– not because there wasn’t corruption, but because their level said “don’t use the corrupt guy,” and it was over-ruled at a higher level.
They’ve got the documents to back this up.
Last I heard, it was working through the legal system. Slowly.
I smell a provocateur.
Seriously, dude, if brutal ROEs were how you won wars the world would be under the swastika and the rising sun. Grow up.
He’s PROBABLY not. I mean, his handle is known. But it’s possible. I know Fen is one.
Either way. This nonsense that “if you think killing kids is something to be avoided if at all possible then you’re a wuss who isn’t willing to do what it takes to win” is not only morally dubious (at best) but is tactically, operationally, and strategically unsound.
And insane. You forgot insane.
I’ve been fighting an incoming tide of this, with the usual canaries in the mine being the first.
I think someone is selling this 3 day old tripe. I can’t be bothered to look at their blogs, because I don’t want to add anger to the mix of depression I’m already fighting for personal reasons. BUT I know they’re selling it, because the depressive-inclined are buying it, and all repeating the same things.
When it makes no earthly sense.
Come on.
On this, I have for many years thought that you were soft on the philosophical underpinnings of waging war against the indian tribes.
The Jacksonian/Scotch-Irish strain of American foreign policy feeling, and the sense that the wars would be over if we bothered to finish the job, does not need to have been promoted by some propaganda.
It is fairly normal for certain personality types when they grow up in America. There are certain assumptions you can pick up from the oral history, when it is your only oral history, and which when unexamined have flaws in certain circumstances. Those circumstances were not the reality when the oral history was formed, but may be the case currently.
Oh, please.
The indians killed civilians in batch lots. While there was some retaliation, it wasn’t to their level.
Hell, given some of the tortures some of the tribes inflicted on settlers (or anyone who happened to be passing by, and the tribe was bored that day)…yeah. It could have been a LOT worse.
I always hear the whining about “and then the US Government broke the treaty!” and okay, that sucks…but then I also remember “And these treaties with cultures whose view of such things might be summed up as “these pieces of paper are not valid” so who broke what first in a lot of cases…?”
Dynamic tension between the rougher and scarier cultures of America and the gentler and less overtly frightening cultures of America. Absent the gentler faction, we wouldn’t have tried so many poorly founded peace treaties, or educating the savagery out of the indians. There was a fraction of the white cultures that weren’t anywhere near as civilized as the most peace loving of American cultures, and those people supplied a lot of fighters against the indians. Some of those white cultures had a lot of indian influence. Some of them hosted a bunch of criminals who treated white people pretty horribly. In some areas internal peace among white populations was achieved by unleashing white fighting men against white criminals. In some cases there were small wars between gangs white criminals. Civilization in the west was not achieved by men or means as nice as we can now afford to use against relatively civilized opponents.
I’ve not studied any case where I became convinced that the indians in question were treated more cruelly than they had earned. Might be that I’m profoundly biased. I suspect, from simple variety of cultures, that there was some tribes somewhere who were decent enough that they got worse than they had coming to them.
Some times the gentler factions wrongly restrained the fighting factions, resulting in de facto states of war that the American side fighting faction was handicapped in waging. Looking at those indian wars from a Jacksonian perspective, and in terms of American decision making naturally leads to that ‘we flail around enough we get around to solving the problem’ model. Even Sunday, I knew that the case Sarah and 60guilders were arguing was the sound one that this does not really apply to our current foreign policy dilemmas. Too many people in the rest of the world. As much as I hate to admit it, we will probably be forced to come to some sort of peaceful consensus with a bunch of foreign countries that we should be free to ignore to mind their own business.
Intellectually I knew they were on that point, at least half correct overall. Emotionally I reject that reasoning as the proper basis for policy.
Actually I wasn’t talking about foreign wars at all. I’ve been rather surprised that Trump’s “hit them with money” is working as well as it is.
I was talking about a potential civil war and how bad an idea it is, absent the utmost necessity where it becomes self-defense. Which, yes, might happen. BUT not yet, not now.
There is reasonable cause for concern that the Democrats’ Ahabian Pursuit of Trump might embolden foreign powers to attempt aggression, if not directly then in such snatches as we saw Putin pull in Crimea. Certainly the domestic opposition is weakening his hand in dealing with foreign powers, such as we’re seeing with China trade.
I’ve long believed the Dems have no problem with America taking damage if it enhances their power. It seems axiomatic among them that an America governed by Republicans is unworthy of prospering.
It is at least as morally bankrupt to conclude that everyone below the legal age of minority is a non-combatant, and hence strictly never to be targeted, regardless of whether the behavior corresponds with that.
Non-combatants are features of war between polities with shared values such that the conflict permits the recognition of non-combatant status. It is very much not a universal human condition.
Hence ‘Nits make lice’?
I think more along the lines of “And we will now strap bombs to children and send them into the enemy troops because they won’t shoot them.”
As encountered by one of my great-uncles in the Pacific theater during WW2. (Though the reasons given to the locals who did this by the Japanese were “the Americans will do unspeakable things to your children if you don’t kill them first, and you should do it like this” because the Japanese troops knew the Americans were less likely to shoot kids.) In my uncle’s case, an officer who had seen this before shot the kid–a TODDLER–before she got too close. I don’t doubt the officer had many nightmares as the result of stuff like this–but he KNEW the Japanese army was Not Playing By the Rules anymore.
Bingo. There wasn’t really an end to that war would’ve both prevented a refight next generation and managed to avoid killing a bunch of people under the age of ten. Firebombing, nukes, starvation, or olympic/coronet/downfall.
I was throwing a hissy fit because in my mind the question was clearly of practice for foreign (not civil) wars, the position I felt I was emotionally engaged against wasn’t the thrusts they were trying to argue, and a bunch of other things that have to be judged as my error.
He’s a drive-by. No commitment to his POV.
Plus he’s wrong. Wars are won by destroying the enemy’s will and ability to fight. Atrocities don’t do that. Atrocities make the enemy fight harder and destroy the moral standing of your own side. They are an abomination.
See Japan in WWII for the classic example of why atrocities are a bad, bad idea. So much worse than the Nazis for casual insane brutality at the troop level.
This is why the Mooselimbs will always lose. They perform atrocities. They have no notion of how to fight a war with the likes of us.
Yep. This is why tribal societies normally lose wars with civilization. More than any form of weaponry, organization, etc. They fight by atrocity. It works with tribes.
I KNOW our ROEs are fucked up, and mostly dreamed up by anti-war people. And yeah, they need to be revised for wars abroad. BUT a civil war is something wholly different. And starting one off based oh, on where people live, or their family, is just going to destroy the non left side.
The left knows that, which is why they PUSH for it.
Tell that to LeMay, Hirohito, and the indians.
Yes, where enemies domestic are concerned, there is a factor that makes the calculus different than that for enemies foreign.
There are situations in foreign policy where we should not be warring on our enemies as we would war on civilized persons. Because they will not reciprocate. There is a subset of those situations where killing them all until the survivors learn to be civilized is absolutely the correct answer.
Suggesting that our war against the Nazi barbarians was as constrained as our current wars is to ignore Harris, Bushyhead, and many others.
It is absolutely correct to note the difference in the practical RoE between the current situations and WWII, etc.
That the Democrats are currently trying to make enemies foreign and enemies domestic bleed together confounds things.
Yes, actually, and LeMay would agree with me. Hirohito wouldn’t, but he lost. So did the Indians.
We didn’t win WWII because we had ROEs that allowed us to kill civilians. We won WWII because we were able to destroy our opponents’ capacity to make war. Same with the Indians.
The Indians killed a lot of civilians. In fact, they had no concept of civilians.
And they lost.
How strictly did we treat them as if they had civilians?
More strictly than they did. Unless you buy Howard Zinn’s bullshit.
Yes, there were “massacres” but they didn’t happen often and even opinion at the time turned against them.
Seriously. Stop. Buying. Marxist. Lies.
More strictly than they did, but not anywhere near as strictly as I think you and 60guilders would have had them act.
The indians mostly were offered a fair go at peace, and turned it down, because peace was alien to them. The warring would have kept on forever if the settlers hadn’t waged war against them for the purposes of getting back to tending their own fields.
There are enemies domestic and enemies foreign who are giving off those same little signals that the indians, Nazis, and Japanese did of turning down the magnanimous offer of peace and everybody minding their own business, so the Scotch-Irish ‘time to get to work on that’ impulse is not coming from nowhere.
If we had been as bad as the Marxists claimed, we would have finished the job, instead of stopping as soon as the survivors were willing to live in peace.
Bob, I’ve written extensively on the war waged by native cultures, who think a massacre will stop attacks, while actually what it does is unite even people who weren’t your enemies against you.
The pattern holds with the Amerindians, with the zulus…. everywhere, pretty much.
I have no clue what the voices in your head are saying, and I am not in the mood to parse it.
But I want you to consider this is insane shit.
This Gallagher thing is more of a mess than I had realized, so it is good that I wasn’t basing my ‘mindreading’ on that.
It was based on Obama’s release of prisoners, and that our military practice now is that we cannot hold prisoners for the duration of the conflict. If one’s position is that the specific status quo is defensible, and not in some need of hardening, one’s position is not akin to the full spectrum of the US societies during WWII and the indian wars. That position is much more in line with WWII conscientious objectors or perhaps Indian war Quakers. The conscientious objectors did contribute to the war effort, but were far from the sole cause of the military victories against the axis.
Without making that leap obvious, the rest of what I was trying to say can only be incoherent nonsense.
Plus a bunch of anger at the more settled regions of the United States for shutting down the court of Isaac Parker. (Which there may well have been a defensible reason for, but I was an admirer at a young age, and I haven’t studied the issue since I’ve grown up to the point that I might not make a mess of it.) Which is hardly fair or sane to take out on you or guilders.
Bob, consider that if an enemy can’t strike your war production or your supply lines, they can’t win.
Any group or nation that attacks the civilian population of a Western nation instead of those production and supply targets guarantees their own failure. Any such enemy that successfully pursues atrocities against the women and children of the West ensures their own erasure. The Western nation WILL rearrange their priorities so that the enemy is destroyed.
It seems so clever to hit these weak targets, but really it isn’t. Sun Tsu had much to say about it, as I recal.
!!!!! Madam, please!
Bullshit is a valuable enriching additive to the soil. What Zinn spread was laden with toxic metals that were guaranteed to destroy soil fertility. Do not insult, please, that valuable loam enhancer with comparison to Zinn’s odious output.
Quite strictly; when a camp acted like a military camp, we treated it like one. When a camp acted like a TOWN with VIOLENT CRIMIANALS in it, we treated it like that.
There’s literally an entire genera of movie showing this applied to European style towns in the old west, for visualization purposes….
And Imperial Japan’s last residue of capacity to make war was the civilians.
If Curtis LeMay had been unwilling to bomb Japanese cities because of the civilian population, Hirohito would have probably still figured that he could play things out for a negotiated settlement.
The capability alone is not sufficient. The will is also necessary.
Will alone is not sufficient. The Japs and the Nazis had all the will in the world, and their capability was insufficient.
We ‘pacified’ the indians because we stopped them from producing warriors. We stopped them from producing warriors by taking their kids away and forcing them through schools under our control. We targeted the non-combatants, and made sure they would never become combatants.
Right now, we have the technical capability to produce a number of nuclear devices, and use them to significantly reduce the populations of the mid east. That’s not our current doctrine, and most of us don’t consider that a desirable option. Yet, the populations we are engaged with consider us a soft touch, and so persist.
The illegal immigrant issue means that we have a coupling between foreign military affairs and domestic military affairs that we may wind up having to act on one way or another.
We broke the Indians before we stole their kids by destroying their horse herds and starving them out. The reason we were able to steal their kids was that they had been defeated.
You also seem to be confusing “we will do X that is necessary even though there will be civilian casualties because there isn’t any other way to do it” with “who gives a care who dies.”
Again, if you look at the casualties from WWII, the Axis inflicted far more civilian casualties than the Allies, even discounting the Holocaust.
And they LOST. Because as it turns out, unless you have overwhelming superiority, terror tactics don’t frighten your opponent into surrender. They make him fight harder.
Yep. Same with Indians. Same with practically everyone we fought.
Rolls eyes.
I want to know where the crazy is coming from. Is there some virus like toxoplasmosis gondii making people insane and suicidal?
Or is this just impatience and anger and not stopping to THINK.
You and 60guilders were raised in Europe. You were acculturated in the East.
There is something that you seem to be missing.
Indians and whites learned a lot of uncivilized habits from warring against each other. That is why scalping became such a widespread custom.
The ultimate victory had little to do with the white foot soldiers in that conflict being super civilized or super barbaric.
The indians had trouble with alliances larger than a tribe, had difficulty replacing their losses, and were a lower population to start with. The Americans had developed customs that permitted them to assimilate immigrants from Europe, hence could field armies and replace a great many losses. The indians were doomed as polities regardless of how humanely or cruelly the actual fighting was done.
Jean Frenchman, the craftsmen from a peace interior region of France, could assimilate in some place like Boston, and his economic activity supported the war effort regardless of how little he was radicalized against the Indians. And his degree of radicalization against the indians had pretty much nothing to do with how much atrocities the Scotch-Irish on the frontier may or may not have been committing, because he did not know.
Completely different dynamic from a boog. A civil war of uncertain sides needs those factors that let Jean Frenchman be at peace with Harry Englishman, Dick Ditchman, and Douglas Scotch-Irish.
Rolls eyes.
No, Bob. No. Go take your meds.
Yes, I was raised in Europe. Which means I had to study history and be conscious about Marxist gloss.
If you think I’m “soft” you need meds.
Um, Bob. I’m native-born American. My first ancestor here arrived when New York was New Amsterdam. The rest all made it here before the AWI.
And I have no idea how what you just said rebuts any of the points I made.
toxoplasmosis gondii for humans…
My mistake then. You weren’t the guy who left Belgium or the Netherlands when the tyranny started getting really bad? Must have gotten you confused with him somewhere along the line.
We don’t HAVE one of those, Bob.
and my first ancestor here (supposedly) walked across the land bridge into alaska…
I wasn’t raised in Europe and I happen to agree with them.
Are you going to accuse me of European sensibilities or something because I refuse to justify murdering civilians? Honestly, if you think that’s a sound policy, you’re really unworthy of being taken seriously.
The Jeffersonians, Wilsonians, and Hamiltonians have always been with us, so that is hardly any sort of proof.
Again, you do you. JUST DON’T ASSOCIATE US WITH YOU when you go down in flames.
You claimed Sarah felt a certain way because she’s from Europe. I pointed out that I, a native-born American, feel the same way, thus disputing your accusation.
Your rebuttal, though, makes almost no sense at all.
Frankly, I’ve come to the conclusion today that you may be the most aptly named individual to ever comment on this site.
Actually with all of these “Let’s burn it all down and kill civilians” we keep getting “My mind is made up, don’t confuse me with facts.” Or no matter what you tell them “For reasons.” Yeah, the reasons I’ve given, in answers to comments and two posts.
I’m starting to think this is a case of “you can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into.”
Most likely.
I’m just curious how they’d feel if it were their loved ones in the sights of someone who had no qualms with murdering civilians.
Don’t need brutal ROEs, but it would be nice if Congresscritters and REMFs let the guys and gals use whatever level of force was reasonably necessary (to them) to keep themselves alive. I’ve almost lost friends because the ROE stipulated that the magazines were to be kept in the truck glove compartment when not in use.
I don’t think we should surrender. I also don’t think we should go violent while we’re winning.
These things take time.
I will do “How to fight back” tomorrow. I actually think I figured it out. Yes, we need to fight back like the left, but not the left now. The left now are absurdly stupid, because they’ve had 4 generations with no backlash no matter what, and no denouncing by the media. They fight DUMB.
Now 80 years ago….
The ammo box is the final resort, when the soapbox and the ballot box fail.
The ballot box hasn’t failed yet, although not for want of trying on the part of the Dims. (So we need to keep the voting more honest next year.) But it’s the soapbox where we’re winning hardest: Their message is so absurd that they can’t convince the undecided to open wallets and pay out. Thus ‘get woke go broke’.
There are still far too many people in our nation that aren’t fit to dwell among the free, but that’s what trials, deportation, and execution (but not lengthy prison sentences*) are for.
-Albert
*I’d rather outlaw felons than sentence them to prison. Labor gangs might also be acceptable.
Oh dear — I see the roach trap has become over-full and permitting some to creep into the blog.
After investigation, not only does he come precisely from the cluster of blogs you’d expect him to come from (rolls eyes) but he also appears to be Turkish.
Turkish trolls are cheap? He’s out of here.
“Turkish trolls are cheap?”
Not only that, they stick in your teeth, promote decay and increase irritability by elevating your blood glucose levels.
In spite of the testimony of Edmund Pevensie, “Turkish Delight” is one of the greatest lies ever foisted upon a gullible public.
Now Now RES I like Turkish Delight. Just don’t accept it from the White Witch. Of course I, as my daughters will point out, like Moxie and Black Licorice (i.e. ACTUAL licorice) so my food choices may be questionable. At least I don’t eat Pineapple on pizza…
https://www.llresearch.org/podcast/ Similar concept as Hoyt wrote of.
I am heartened that there are Liberals (not Leftists but Liberals) that have seen the insanity of the Left and are speaking out against it. Dave Rubin, Tim Pool and many others. The pendulum is swinging back. It’s just big, slow, and cumbersome.
“You are not alone.”
You have no idea…
From an outside perspective, one of the greatest illusions I see in the current American socio-political landscape is that the populace is split roughly fifty-fifty, along party lines overall, and that the rest of the world is similarly evenly divided. I’ve mentioned before how liberals used to believe they’re the world-wise party, more attuned to the international landscape, and conservatives were narrow-minded and out of touch. In reality, a growing majority of people worldwide is either indifferent, or outright tired of liberal policies and practices.
Now, that doesn’t automatically make these people, myself included, quite the same as American conservatives. Nor do we need to be; different strokes and all that. But the kicker is, acknowledging the existence of this global conservative-ish mass of people, can greatly shift the rhetoric landscape within individual nations, America included. Soon enough, when the American liberal establishment realizes they’ve all but lost the current stage of the culture war, I suspect they’ll go with a let’s-make-amends spiel, uniting a divided nation etc. They’ll rely on maintaining the illusion that they represent a considerable portion of the country, or the world as a whole. Thing is, by the time the spiel is played, they won’t be; if they aren’t already.
Consequently, instead of falling for this extended hand of fair-weather friendship – or a desperate grasp out of a quicksand pit, all things considered – conservatives have every right, and increasingly greater opportunities, to politely decline this invitation, and find friends elsewhere. And audiences… And business partners… And… you get my drift. It is precisely this that scares the living daylights of any leftist, in any country – that people have alternatives. That they have a choice. That they are, indeed, not alone.
So much this. At my estimation, and judging by things like buying patterns, they’re maybe 25% of America, and a lot of them are leftist to either make money or to cover up past money larceny.
Mildly OT – one entire day for me to see the face in the image. Feh. I kept on trying to interpret it yesterday as the US after the Left Coast drifted away.
LOL
If you wish to claim entry into the Order of the Ox, go right ahead.
But you can take your time about it, of course.
Do you have a brochure?
No. Any ideas of such never quite happen.
Hmm. Sounds like the sign I saw on a message board in the Student Union at Flat State U. “The Procrastinators Anonymous meeting scheduled for today has been postponed.” It stayed up for several weeks before an administrator with 0 sense of humor (but I repeat myself) removed it.
Procrastinators Anonymous — Next meeting:
MondayTuesdayWednesdayThursdaySoonDon’t be late!
Interestingly, it seems there actually IS an Order of the Ox: http://www.oldoxbrewery.com/order-of-the-ox-signup/
By the way, have you ever read Piers Anthony’s Omnivore trilogy?
1. Omnivore
2. Orn
3. Ox
Wow, he named a book after you!
I have not. Some years (and year and years…) ago I read several of the Xanth books and mid-way through one just put it down. For a few years I kept it in the car trunk as a “I’m stuck somewhere, I can read this to pass time” (or burn it if need be and not feel too bad about it) book. Eventually I just chucked it since I hadn’t any further interest at all. Hadn’t read anything Piers Anthony since.
Same.
c4c
Sarah said: “I’m sick and tired of people wanting to abandon ship and/or act like loons because they think all is lost.”
Oh, those guys. 😡 Yeah, those are enemy agents. Either they’re real, bought and paid for enemy agents, or they may as well be.
Fuck ’em.
A lot of them are depressives, and listen to the loudest voices advocating the easy — and disastrous — course.
Yep. Quislings and cowards, looking for the easiest road.
May they contract hives.
“Krugman warns the left might actually lose to this mysterious power.”
He’s standing in his last ditch, trying to rally his demoralized and decimated forces around “trans rights”, “Russia!Russia!Russia!!!” state-enforced veganism and gun control.
He’s fucked and he knows it. The “mysterious power” is every single human in Western civilization with a single functioning brain cell. That mighty disturbance in the Force was all of us reading the paper and saying “no.”
British Labor just suffered its most crushing defeat since the 1930s from it.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/12/coming-in-2020-nightmare-year-for-the-left.php
I want you to consider the spectacle of trans athletes dominating the Olympics this summer. Every women’s strength sport will have men as #1 on the podium. Records will be -smashed-, not broken.
Even if the women competitors don’t walk out, the mere sight of it will have millions and millions of previously Left leaning women out there saying “Oh yeah? We’ll see about that.”
Only one of over a dozen crack-brained policies being pushed by the Dems at full volume. Krugman mourns while we eat popcorn.
Has the Olympics done away with sex testing? I remember that at one point one of the minor British Royals (can’t remember which ) got a pass on doing the tests as the British government was will to assert she was, well, a she. Would be interesting to see the US women Sabreurs against some of the European males. I think the males would be in for a rude surprise.
At the moment testing for testosterone at the Olympics is being called an atrocity and a war crime. Given that the IOC governance is nothing more than a wind sock that closely tracks the prevailing breezes, you’re going to see “women” with 5 o’clock shadow standing on the podium quite often next year.
They’re wrong you know? They’re not the prevailing issues for THE PEOPLE. Only for the echo chamber. Which is why we’re seeing the elections turn against them, unexpectedly.
Oh yes, they are -super- wrong. They drove over an anti-tank mine, and Brexit was the click as it armed itself. In the USA Trump was the “ka-CHUNK” of the three inch diameter cast-iron firing pin dropping into battery.
You would think that hearing that noise would be enough to wake them the hell up, but they think they can take the hit and keep rolling. DRIVE ON!!! they scream.
I’ve got my popcorn all set.
But then… there’s Canada and Australia. Canada just re-elected a guy who is literally going to starve the whole Western Plains of money and jobs, deliberately, to chase Liberal votes in Quebec and a seat at the UN for himself. Australia has elected governments so lame that they’ve ignored fire-suppression for 20 years, and this year the chickens finally came home to roost.
I think the electorate is different here. In Canada for sure its a class warfare thing. The “educated” class in the three big population centers considers any deviation from The SJW Way as low class hillbilly shit. If you admit you vote Conservative you are self-identified as scum.
On a plus note, politician in upside down land did tell the great green git to go get stuffed when she tried to blame fires on them not being hard enough on warming.
I almost wrote not being green enough, but they have been both too green wrt suppression prep and not green enough as far as vegetation concerned.
Part of the issue in both might also be the densities. More city heavy politically if I remember. Fewer safeties regarding the rural/urban divide and how they are at odds in desires. So the less populated and less desirable populations of the non-city get trampled
Sadly being wrong rarely stops people from doing something stupid (C,F. the whole fricking state of Florida 🙂 ). The Grauniad (my apologies for using such a source in advance has an article here
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/sep/24/ioc-delays-new-transgender-guidelines-2020-olympics
These two paragraphs seem critical
The Guardian understands some scientists on the IOC panel have argued that reducing the permitted testosterone levels to 5nmol/L – below most males – would provide a reasonable compromise between inclusion and fairness, ensuring that trans women could still compete in the women’s category while taking away most of the advantages of undergoing male puberty.
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However, others disagree, pointing to the emerging findings from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, which show that testosterone suppression for transgender women has little effect on reducing muscle strength even after a year of treatment. That indicates that at least some of the physical advantages of those who have gone through male puberty are maintained even after transitioning.
Just for reference 5nmol/L is nearly 3x the high end of genotypical female (i.e. XX with normal development) testosterone level of 1.79 nmol/L. And as the 2nd paragraph indicates even reducing the testosterone for 12 months has little effect, which matches what I would expect as the muscle, bone and Ligament development are primarily in the puberty and shortly after time frame.
So basically for some miniscule number of mentally ill (or extremely driven/devious) males we’re going to totally wreck any female sport thats primarily strength based.
Probably won’t affect some sports (E.G. Gymnastics uneven parallel bars, can we make all the incompletely transitioned “females” participate in that? I’d pay good money to see that 🙂 ). But weight lifting, Tae Kwan Do, Judo, Karate, Wrestling (there’s women’s wrestling in the Olympics when did that get added) most Field and Track etc. will quickly be dominated by these creations. Heck even odds Caitlynn (Bruce) Jenner could enter the womans Heptathalon and dominate it at her/his advanced age, or at least take some of the single events that are less aerobic. As Instapundit often says you’d have to have no heart not to laugh at what these leftie women have done to themselves.
For what it’s worth, putting daycare centers in Federal buildings is a violation of the laws of war.
we weren’t at war. Seriously.
Looking at the mentality of some of the commenters here, if it does come down to ACW 2.0 we’re going to end up losing more than a few battles (and campaigns) because some idiot decided that eliminating “potential partisans” (and creating more than there would have been otherwise) was more important than eliminating known enemy forces, particularly in the critical early period.
Of course, if it does come down to ACW 2.0 the other side is going to have that same problem, most like, but I’d rather us not have the problem at all.
It’s okay. Belisarios is apparently Turkish (Russian Trolls too expensive?)
I have no excuse for Fen, except every comment I found by him on the net is the same thing.
Provocateur.
That, or his name reveals more about the state of his mind than he would really like.
“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.” –Ronald Reagan.
“Don’t listen to that guy. Nothing to see here. Everything is good. Smile! He’s nothing but a despairing moron.” –Sarah Somebody
DID I say that?
Are you stupid, or simply unable to understand English?
Are you also a Turkish Troll? Because I’ve already blocked one of those today.
Did I say we shouldn’t fight? I just said there are many ways of fighting.
IOW whoever if you’re not a paid troll, whoever linked this lied to you.
“Don’t fight, just smile” — said Straw Sarah, as interpreted by the intestinal noises you hear with your head that far up your ass.
A common crack I make on Twitter is: “The voices in his tiny overheated head told him so… and they’ve never lied to him before!”
It’s amazing how well that applies to various trolls, be they SJW/progs or folks like the one you’re responding to.
Oh, you ARE stupid.
You’re the guy I just blocked on Facebook for being so fricking stupid that he thinks stupid shock movies and trans-story hour are “Marxism.” Hint, Marxism is NOT a synonym for “stuff I don’t like.”
No matter how objectionable things are, they’re NOT MARXISM.
Marxism is a specific doctrine.
And as for your “no country has escaped Marxism ever” you also failed to make any sense on that. Except you seemed to believe America is just a country like others, and that no country EVAH can escape Marxism.
And then you followed me HERE to expose your lack of mental processes.
You’re blocked. You’re also — and you should pay attention to this — an asshole, who needs to learn logic. And also to grow up. From your picture on FB, you’re too old to be unable to carry a thought in a bucket. And too old to stalk someone who disagrees with you.
GROW UP.
“so fricking stupid that he thinks stupid shock movies and trans-story hour are ‘Marxism.’ ”
I suppose he could be thinking of Cultural Marxism, which embraces even postmodernism as a useful tool to tear apart a culture, but nothing in what he wrote indicates this so there is no reason to give Mr. Derp the benefit of the doubt.
Cultural Marxism is also a way for the uh…. right to say “things we don’t like are cultural Marxism.”
Please. Call them immorality. Marx was guilty of much, but not omnipotent.
Fair nuff. I’m not always sure what really counts as Cultural Marxism: probably the first most important question to determine that is what is said by the particular advocate one is looking at. It’s certainly true, after all, that advocating for, say, gay rights or transgender rights does not make one a Cultural Marxist. I can immediately think of a few gay men who are conservatives of one stripe or another.
And a lot of them are my friends. And a few to the right of me. 😀
And honestly the conservatives usually want “the right to be left alone.”
I mean, sure, it’s possible to use those issues to pry society apart. It’s possible to use ANYTHING to pry society apart.
Cultural Marxism is like Social Justice. If it can be applied to anything you hate/want to do, it’s not a real thing.
Many people are lured into Marxism by their own desires/wanting to shock the normies. But that doesn’t mean it’s a Marxist thing necessarily. Call it out for being wrong, but it doesn’t mean the country is “irrevocably Marxist.”
Dear Lord, most communist countries have “morality laws” that would make our social-conservative contingent blanch.
Neither the crazy left, nor the crazy right in this country believe that.
Meh.
Those who promulgate this stuff on the basis “the worse the better,” probably, but most are too clueless to think of it as a means to that.
Most of them are just trying to annoy their parents.
Wow.
Someone makes me want to defend the sea chicken’s honor. That’s kinda impressive.
– signed, escapee from 12 man land.
I’m actually kind of worried about this guy. His thought patterns on FB are so incoherent, and then he immediately follows me here when I blocked him.
This is not a sane human being.
Sadly, that describes a disproportionate number of folks in the Seattle blob; they’ve yanked the normal so far left the normal left-wing guys seriously believe that, say, Obama was a slightly-right centrist.
It doesn’t play well with reality.
Noted:
Order to vote for impeachment prompted House Democrat to quit party
Rep. Jeff Van Drew said he decided to leave the Democratic Party when a party county chairman ordered him to vote to impeach President Trump.
The New Jersey lawmaker appeared on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures to discuss his decision to join the Republican Party. Van Drew pledged to join the GOP after voting against impeaching Trump, one of just two Democrats to vote against both articles of impeachment.
“The party is moving further and further to the Left where there’s discussions of it being a socialist party, and I am a proud capitalist. I believe in hard work,” Van Drew said, criticizing the radical direction of the Democratic Party.
He finally decided to abandon the party, though, after a county chairman from one of the eight counties he represents told him that “you’ve got to vote for impeachment. If you don’t, you’re not going to be able to run in my county,” calling the remark the “final sign” he needed to change parties.
“First of all, I still could have run,” Van Drew said.
He continued, “But it made me think, for all the years that I have worked so hard and tried to give so much … and it all boils down to one vote, that I may have my own individual opinion on one vote, and that’s not going to be allowed? I’m going to be punished for that? And that’s when I knew.”
[END EXCERPT]
Of course, as he is a turncoat he could easily be making up such a disreputable tale, taking revenge on those he abandoned.
And with sufficient JATO assistance, pigs can fly.
A while back, I was playing a political simulation game, as a Republican congressman. The president (in the game) had done something I thought was unconstitutional. The Republican party leadership demanded that everyone vote a certain way on a certain measure; I voted my conscience, with the opposition. I was stripped of committee memberships and essentially outcast. It ceased to be any fun, but this tiny taste of what hardball politics can be like was an eye-opener. No thank you very much.
What game was it?
I think it was USGovSim. From what I can tell, the game is now defunct.
This smacks of personal animus. Some guy phoned him up and gave him an order, and he said “fuck you, I don’t take orders from county-level jerkoffs!”
That said, pride is usually what makes these things move when money doesn’t.
If i am not alone, why is interest being paid?
I lost my temper badly Sunday, and figure I owe some apologies.
Sarah’s and 60guilders had solid arguments from within American cultures, and were supported by decent research on their part. It was unjust for me to suggest that they needed to go fix that. If I had good counter arguments, I owed my opponents either a) a concise and to the point explanation or b) dropping the issue, instead of wasting everyone’s time inarticulately emoting around the point.
The intensity and persistence of my anger were a clue that something was a problem on my side. I eventually recalled that this is the sort of thing I should pray over. I did. It then was made clear to me that I might not have reconciled my militarism with Christianity as well as I had thought I had. Pagan Rome is one of the inspirations for my militarism, and when I thought I had reconciled things I definitely knew much less about Christianity.
I regret the delay in admitting this. After I got myself together, I had some other business to chase before finding time in my schedule to risk the emotional uncertainty of posting this and checking.