“The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise -- with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.” – Lincoln

Whenever a class of people, self-anointed, seek to impose Utopia on the world, evil ensues. Whenever a group of people seek to arrogate the power of the people to themselves, evil ensues. It is not merely that power corrupts but that some people are compelled to corrupt democratically distributed power through statist centralization. If the age of kings was the age of rule by one monarch, the current age drifts towards the rule of many smaller kings acting in unison. This is the age of the Multi-Monarchists; of rule by the faction of “Little Hitlers.” Their accoutrements are not uniforms and stark symbols, but cap & gown, press passes, and union cards. Their collective policy is plague.

All faction, no matter its origin or ideals, is in the end Fascist. The Founders knew Faction and feared it. Much of the Federalist Papers is taken up with the problem of suppressing Faction and the Constitution is the carefully wrought attempt at a solution to it. Of course, the Founders also knew that Faction as Facism is never finished except by fire and fire alone. This is why, in the Founders' founding document, The Declaration of Independence, they included this provision,

"... when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

As the Founders knew from their own experience, this is much easier said than done. It requires the blood of patriots and tyrants. And the Founders knew that sustaining such a government was even harder. Benjamin Franklin at the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 when queried as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation:

“Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?”

“A Republic," Franklin replied, "if you can keep it.”

Every day I read of new usurpations of power as the current matched set of “ruling elites” takes a new section of the Constitution into the outhouse and emerges without it.

Usurpations of powers previously reserved to the American people in multitudes, swirling over the land like a cloud of locusts. These usurpations come in sizes large and small; from taxation disguised as “fees”, to legislative legerdemain in which bills of economic attainder will be "deemed" passed without a reading and, inside the cancerous towers of bureaucrats, a vote, to meddlesome intrusions into trout fishing in America.

Indeed, it seems that there is little in American life that has not of late had some appointed and malign Faction assigned to it for purposes of some dubious transformation into some off-brand stealth-socialist utopia. And in doing their work of transformation these Fascist Factionists devastate the public purse at the same time they feed at the public trough. The party that struggled for decades to “Keep the government out of your bedroom,” now seeks more and more ways in which the government can wander your home and your body and count your cups and calories.

H.L. Mencken, no stranger to realpolitik in the United States, put it this way, "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."

An American president during the shooting phase of our first Civil War put it this way:

"Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

-- - - Lincoln: 2nd Inaugural

Looking deeper still into history we can remember another time of great plagues when men who thought themselves God sought to enslave people in perpetuity:

And Moses stretched forth his rod over the land of Egypt, and the LORD brought an east wind upon the land all that day, and all that night; and when it was morning, the east wind brought the locusts.

And the locust went up over all the land of Egypt, and rested in all the coasts of Egypt: very grievous were they; before them there were no such locusts as they, neither after them shall be such.

For they covered the face of the whole earth, so that the land was darkened; and they did eat every herb of the land, and all the fruit of the trees which the hail had left: and there remained not any green thing in the trees, or in the herbs of the field, through all the land of Egypt. -- Exodus 10

In both instances the only solutions that could be found was not greater control of the people by the faction, but greater freedom for the people from all faction. Until they found that freedom again, until they managed to disenthrall themselves, the plagues only continued, and continued, and continued, and continued.

“The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise -- with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.”

Continuing his epic slither into the every deeper swamps of cluelessness Krauthammer is still afraid to let the obvious sewer of Obama swamp his wishing well in The price of powerlessness

"And in part because [Obama's] convinced that in the long run it doesn’t matter. Fluctuations in great power relations are inherently ephemeral. For a man who sees a moral arc in the universe bending inexorably toward justice, calculations of raw realpolitik are 20th-century thinking — primitive, obsolete, the obsession of small minds.

Obama made all this perfectly clear in speeches at the U.N., in Cairo and here at home in his very first year in office. Two terms later, we see the result. Ukraine dismembered. Eastern Europe on edge. Syria a charnel house. Iran subsuming Iraq. Russia and Iran on the march across the entire northern Middle East.

At the heart of this disorder is a simple asymmetry. It is in worldview. The major revisionist powers — China, Russia and Iran — know what they want: power, territory, tribute. And they’re going after it. Barack Obama takes Ecclesiastes’ view that these are vanities, nothing but vanities.

In the kingdom of heaven, no doubt. Here on earth, however — Aleppo to Donetsk, Estonia to the Spratly Islands — it matters greatly."

Sigh. It's getting pretty late for Krauthammer to have a revelation about the truth of this unconnected, landless, nationless, president without a country. Simply put Obama's wanted to destroy this nation from the time he found out his mother was a slut and his "mentor" "Pop" was more than ready to diddle him as a boy. [Forbidden >]And don't even think about how stereotypical it is that Obama's mother's sperm donor would just skip out on the mom and the kid at the first opportunity. [< Forbidden]

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[Note: Somehow this essay from 2011 never really goes out of style. I could run it every week and it would just become more true.]

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Continued...

The World as a Group of Fantasy Islands. A project off the coast of Dubai

"The unnamable vision always leads to the unspeakable crime." -- AD Commenter Gloria

Daniel Henninger in a prophetic 2007 "Wonderland" column in The Wall Street Journal, Talking Ourselves Into Defeat , examined the pall of self-loathing that has settled over the American mind in the past decade. A self-loathing that has reached, for now, its apotheosis in those "Americans" that love the idea of an Islamic mosque at Ground Zero. For the most part, his estimate of the roots of this malaise is accurate, but one insight strikes me as wide of the mark:

"One reason the negative mood in politics is so disconcerting is that the opposition's alternative vision is nonexistent. On joining the opposition recently, GOP Sen. Norm Coleman announced, "I can't tell you what the path to success is.'"

Maybe at the time it was not self-evident, but with the rise of the most anti-American American president in history all that has changed. It is now self-evident to me, and tens of millions of other Americans, what the "path to success" is in the minds of those who have embraced and live "the opposition's alternative vision." It is not a "nonexistent" vision, but one that is very much alive, kicking and in residence on Pennsylvania Avenue. For millions of other still gulled Americans it is a vision one that is very much a secret.

It is "the vision that dare not speak its name."

It is no secret that classic liberalism, in the mold of FDR, JFK,and LBJ that reached its apotheosis in Hubert Humphrey, has long been consigned to the bone-yard. What has taken its place hates to be tarred with the brush of liberalism because, frankly, it isn't. It prefers to be called "progressivism" even as "a sociopathic political and social recidivism" more accurately describes it.

What now stands in the place one occupied by classical liberalism is a kind of perverted one-world idealism in which "the world as it is" is constantly measured against "the world as it should be." Classic liberalism at least had the argument that it was being done for the greater good. The new perverted progressive variant is one in which policy and plans are made because it makes the initiators yearn to "feel good" in the manner that compulsive masturbators obsess over fantasies implanted before puberty. Those that make and support these measures hold themselves in high regard, seeing each other as, in the French phrase popular when many of them were young, "citoyens du monde" -- citizens of the world.

Typically these are people who have "gone beyond" nation states in their own minds and, if they can afford it (and many can), in their personal lives as well. These are people with access to enough money to afford private jets, or enough money to pay the premium prices of hybrid car. They do not dwell in the same nation as their fellow, less-fortunate citizens. Instead they can afford to spend their time spreading a gospel whose high costs and marginal benefits are always carefully hidden from the middle middle class and those below. But this is never seen by those spreading the gospel as a kind of noblesse oblige, only as something that is "good for them."

Continued...

There's a hole in your wisdom,
a hole in your sky.
Two holes in your head
where the light's supposed to get by.

Time to lock and load.
Time to get control.
Time to search the soul
And start again.
-- Bob Seger

[In December of 2009, reflecting on the events from the recent election forward to that day, this small screed I wrote then still has passages that resonate now in May of 2016, and there still are living conservatives who have not grasped, or refused to grasp, that
"All our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death."]

It alarms and amuses me to listen to the vast conservative choir sing the “Hallelujah Obama’s Overreached! Chorus” from this year’s “Way New Messiah.” Many among the opposition seem to believe that “the way things are going” it is only a matter of less than a year before a wised-up electorate corrects their collective miasma of 2008 and throws the bums out. This will occur, they believe, because economic and social conditions in America will inevitably continue to worsen.

They’re right about what’s about to happen but wrong about the outcome.

By any reasonable measure, the current Conservative strain in America is clapped out, bankrupt, unattractive, over and out. Do you doubt that? If so reflect that the most organized and funded part of American Conservatism today is known as the Republican Party. The Republican Party actually labored mightily last year and threw up John McCain as a presidential candidate. Is it any wonder that, faced with John McCain, a majority of the electorate threw up? And yet, that is the political arm of Conservatism today. In a way, John McCain’s current foolish blather is a perfect emblem.

To succeed in the halls of power is going to take a new and more vital branch of Americanism taken in part from the old line Conservative stock but melded with a new and more forceful Jacksonian spirit. While America is a “Conservative” nation (or so we are unreliably informed), Conservatism as currently constituted is far too spent as a political force to draw enough youthful allegiance to carry it forward in the face of the rapacious nature of the Obama gang. More and more Conservatism will find itself in the position of having brought a rubber knife to a gunfight.

In the current Conservative dreamtime it is only the matter of one to two years before “the reaction” sets in and their triumphant return to power begins. The forces, Conservatives contend, are evident everywhere:

• Real unemployment will continue to rise to near Depression levels (Bad for America!),
• New taxes and inflation will kick in (Bad for America!),
• Small business will be crushed in the iron fist of relentless federal and state regulation (Bad for America!),
• The sneering of the world at the gutless and obsequious president will grow to shouts of revulsion (Bad for America!),
• The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will grow more bloody and boring (Bad for America!),
• The criminal “reforms” of our health care system will begin to rot from the head residents of our hospitals down (Bad for America!),
• The political stink of thuggery, corruption, lies, and anti-American loathing emanating from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue will finally waft past the media scrubbing filters and into Main Street (Bad for America!).

That last smell alone, Conservatives contend, will be enough to enable them to rise up once again in a new Newt/Reagan morning in America. (Good for America!) How sweet the hope. How touching the nostalgia. How stupid the mindset. What it says is, really, “We’d like to do all the same things we used to do again, only this time we’ll do the same things differently.”

If Conservatives weren’t smoking dope already, I’d advise them to take a couple more giant hits. But this time, they should try the Clue Bong.

Here’s a hit from the Clue Bong just for today: Everything that is bad for America is good for Obama and the Democrats. They know it and what’s more, they’ve planned for it. They have, at last count, the money, the power, high-ground position, the media, the academy, and the Big Lie all working for them.

To take just one example of bad things that are good for the Obama gang, unemployment.

Unemployment continues and deepens? Excellent. Just extend and expand the benefits via this or the next stimulus. Unemployed people on the dole are dependent people. Dependent people that are dependent on you vote for you. Always.

Conservatives may say that people want the “dignity” of work, but that only works when there’s dignified work to be had. In case you haven’t noticed, dignity is in short supply around here in the culture and in the workplace. Dignity lies in the making of things, not the servicing of the customer.

Jobs in the service sector don’t usually come with dignity attached. Delivering a pizza or talking into a headset at a drive-through doesn’t have the same pay or pride attached as working on a line making Thunderbirds. Lots of jobs with dignity have either been off-shored or handed over to illegals for years now. Unlikely to return.

Instead what we have now is the unrelenting expansion of the dole from the previously hard-core unemployable and indigent to a much wider swath of social layabouts. Unemployment is easily transmuted into disemployment and, as long as you manage expectations and provide enough for drugs and television, you can carry an indigent class for decades and count on it’s votes to carry you in office for even longer.

If unemployment transmutes successfully into disemployment you can institutionalize a Depression life-style. You can then expand your professional servicing of the disemployed base by creating ever larger government jobs in ever more inefficient government bureaus on the state and local level. Remember that you’ve already got enough money held back from the first stimulus to fund this expansion.

The last time this was done was during the Great Depression with such things as the WPAand the Civilian Conservation Corps. These and other programs not only extended the Depression and deepened dependency but had the added benefit of bringing the FDR regency an unprecedented 3rd term. Think the 22nd Amendment can’t be repealed? Think again.

It is far too close to Christmas to go into a long explication on how deeply the hook has been set and how strong the line reeling in the fish actually is.

Suffice it to day that, absent a catastrophic existential event involving the deaths of thousands of Americans at widely separated locales, the Obama gang has planned this carefully for the long haul for decades.

Conservatives had better stop kidding themselves about the return of their glory days starting in 2010 and prepare, with some well-equipped Jacksonians and Minute Men, for the Long March.

Sane and thoughtful people upon viewing this quite naturally say, "Get me a gun. No, the bigger one."

Always room for one more little political shit on the roof of California

I don't want to make too much of this story: Pigeon Droppings Cause Roof To Crash, but....

Actually I do want to make too much of this story. It seems to me to reflect as a real world metaphor, the past, present and what is to come for the no-longer-great state of California.

This small news item about a collapse is a real world example of the adage, "If something can’t go on, then it won’t. Gravity wins in the end." And, as far as California goes, it's about to reach the point in the Sgt. Pepper album where the Beatles sing:

"We'd like to thank you once again
Sergeant Pepper's one and only Lonely Hearts Club Band
It's getting very near the end."

And that's what's clearly on tap for a state that has let itself be run by an unholy cabal based in the S&M Swamps of San Francisco and the Mountains of Moonbat. Too bad really. I feel sorry for my friends who are trapped there in the land of "Why pay less for less?"

California once had some nice aspirations, before it allowed itself to be loosened and whored out like some pubescent pegboy from the Barbary Coast.

Here's the article in toto. I've just swabbed it lightly with strikethrough.

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It's a fecal fiasco caused by 20 years of neglect.

The roof of a Quick Mart gas station in Vacaville, Calif., came crashing down under the weight of pigeon politician poop. Yes, that's right, pigeon politician poop. Twenty years of leaving the birds to it.

When firefighters showed up, they said it was nearly a foot thick in places, reported KOVR correspondent Jonas Tichenor.

"Disgusting," said customer Chris Doss, who narrowly missed the ultimate you-know-what storm.

Doss heard an explosion just seconds after she got in her car and said she "didn't realize it was pure pigeon politician poop at the time" but there were "a lot of feathers."

An outdated roof design allowed the pigeon politicians to have the run of the roost for decades, but that's about to change.

The owner who purchased the property in a foreclosure last year plans to take the entire structure down and invest in a badly needed pigeon politician protection plan, reports Tichenor.

In which we observe that there seems to be a large vile insect pretending to be President of PPFA Medical Directors’ Council Mary Gatter. Very ugly death's head in a human skin.

Actors posing as buyers ask Gatter, “What would you expect for intact [fetal] tissue?”

“Well, why don’t you start by telling me what you’re used to paying!” Gatter replies.

Gatter continues: “You know, in negotiations whoever throws out the figure first is at a loss, right?” She explains, “I just don’t want to lowball,” before suggesting, “$75 a specimen.”

Gatter twice recites Planned Parenthood messaging on fetal tissue collection, “We’re not in it for the money,” and “The money is not the important thing,” but she immediately qualifies each statement with, respectively, “But what were you thinking of?” and, “But it has to be big enough that it’s worthwhile for me.”

Gatter also admits that in prior fetal tissue deals, Planned Parenthood received payment in spite of incurring no cost: “It was logistically very easy for us, we didn’t have to do anything. So there was compensation for this.” She accepts a higher price of $100 per specimen understanding that it will be only for high-quality fetal organs: “Now, this is for tissue that you actually take, not just tissue that someone volunteers and you can’t find anything, right?”

By the lunch’s end, Gatter suggests $100 per specimen is not enough and concludes, “Let me just figure out what others are getting, and if this is in the ballpark, then it’s fine, if it’s still low, then we can bump it up. I want a Lamborghini.”

Continued...

The World as a Group of Fantasy Islands. A project off the coast of Dubai

In 2007 Daniel Henninger wrote the prescient Talking Ourselves Into Defeat , examining the pall of self-loathing that has settled over the American mind in the the recent past. For the most part, his estimate of the roots of this malaise is accurate, but one insight strikes me as wide of the mark:

"One reason the negative mood in politics is so disconcerting is that the opposition's alternative vision is nonexistent. On joining the opposition recently, GOP Sen. Norm Coleman announced, "I can't tell you what the path to success is.'"

It seems more than self-evident to me what the "path to success" is in the minds of those who have embraced and live "the opposition's alternative vision." It is not a "nonexistent" vision but one that is very much alive and kicking. It is, however, as a vision one that is very much a secret.

It is "the vision that dare not speak its name."

It is no secret that classic liberalism in the mold of FDR, JFK,and LBJ that reached its apotheosis in Hubert Humphrey, has long been consigned to the bone-yard. What has taken its place hates to be tarred with the brush of liberalism because, frankly, it isn't. What now stands in that place is a kind of perverted one-world idealism in which "the world as it is" is constantly measured against "the world as it should be." Old liberalism at least had the argument that it was being done for the greater good. The new perverted variant is one in which policy and plans are made because it makes the initiators "feel good" about themselves. Those that make and support these measures hold themselves as, in the French phrase popular when many of them were young, "cityoen du monde" -- citizens of the world.

Typically these are people who have "gone beyond" nation states in their own minds and, if they can afford it (and many can), in their personal lives as well. People with access to enough money to afford private jets, or even with enough money to pay the premium prices of hybrid cars, do not exactly dwell in the same nation as their fellow, less-fortunate citizens. Instead they can afford to spend their time spreading a gospel whose high costs and marginal benefits are always carefully hidden from the middle middle class and those below. But this is never seen by those spreading the gospel as a kind of noblesse oblige, only as something that is "good for them."

Writ large we see this in grandiose projects like the Gates Foundation's plan to "Save Africa." This is a noble goal and few can gainsay the deeply humanitarian impulse behind it, only the likely outcome of many more Africans made millionaires that can leave that continent behind. On the smaller scale, we see hundreds of efforts to spread "right thinking and right behavior and correct belief" in the endless bullying of small organizations by larger "clear headed" organizations such as the ACLU. It is all, their way or the lawsuit highway, which the little people can seldom afford; a kind of fiscal extortion racket. The donations come in the front door and the Creches go out the back. All done with a nudge and a wink to "the protection of liberty and diversity" at the same time diversity of the "bad" kind is reduced. Like latter day Leona Helmsleys these visionaries are always at pains to "thank the little people" for letting them have it their way.

These American citizens do not think of themselves as actual Americans (although they play them easily and glibly on TV), but as a new and better breed that only retain their "American" status for the present benefits. Instead they prefer to think of themselves as inhabiting a rarer, more personally fragrant realm of ideals that the rest of us do not see and cannot aspire to.

This new and more wonderful world is the Holy Realm of The Church of the Planet whose crusade goes forward under the sign of The Gleaming Escutcheon United Nations; not as grotesque assemblage of thugs and thieves that it is, but as it should -- in the perfect world to come -- be. Indeed,nothing in this realm is ever seen as it is, but only as it should be. There are no armies in this realm, only legions of NGOs without borders. There are no Popes or Saints, only Al Gore and those who can jet into the annual green cardinals convocation at Davos. The sweet. The elite. The non-elected, self-appointed and peer-selected Government of the Happy World who swap honors and awards as freely between themselves as participants in a Sexual Freedom League Fornication Festival.

In their own strangely perverse way the inhabitants of this realm, like those on the extreme lower end of the scale in imploding 3rd world countries, are still dependent on nation states, particularly the United States, for charity and scarce resources. This need accounts for much of the funding of the United Nations, an organization whose thirst for the perfect world in the very near future (We promise) is exceeded only by its thirst for American money in the here and now. Dreams do not require food and protection, only the dreamers dreaming from their unshakable sleep.

A shorthand term for these global creatures among us is "cosmopolitanism," and it is a concept that fits them like a bespoke suit. After all, what is not to admire about a person who is "cosmopolitan?" Such a person is, after all, "So sophisticated as to be at home in all parts of the world or conversant with many spheres of interest." Who among us would not aspire to such a sobriquet attached to our view of ourselves? The very concept simply reeks of a special status denied to those who are, well, the little people.

Cosmopolitan Americans tend to clump into readily identifiable groups: our media, our intellectuals, our academics, our stars of stage, screen, television, books, and magazines, our newly and fabulously rich captains of hi-tech industries, and most of all our politicians of all stripes. True not everyone in these groups conducts themselves in a "citizen of the world before a citizen of the nation manner." Many still do not, but the preponderance of the members of these groups do. The political affiliations of these groups skew heavily leftwards but not exclusively so. With the recent realignment of power toward the Democrats, and the conquest of the Democrats by their more "cosmopolitan" elements, the tendency of this group to draw more into its orbit increases, since cosmopolitans are, at bottom, always about the main chance before the hard choice.

The hard choice now is whether or not American hegemony will prevail into the century, or whether that power will be ceded to those rising regimes and forces whose roots and plans for the future are, if anything, not at all as benign of America; whose systems of government are more militant than they are democratic.

The whiff of American weakness always emboldens the unspeakable visionaries. And a war that is in its essence benign rather than draconian always sends off the whiff of weakness. In the Washington Post this morning, we see a bit of "the vision that dare not speak its name" in an aging general's rant "Victory Is Not An Option." The essay is worthy of rebuttal on a number of points but for now suffice it to say that it could as well have been entitled "Democracy Is Not An Option," a sentiment that may well be true not only for the Middle East but for the world to come should American hegemony be removed as a factor in the future of the coming century.

One of the things that "the vision that dare not speak its name" will neither speak nor confront is the present existence and inexorable rise of systems of government that do not exactly wish to deliver the higher realms of personal, sexual, and wantless liberty the One Worlders envision. Free societies are not the default state of how humanity organizes itself. Free societies are rare and always in danger of being overwhelmed by the more evil angels of our nature. That is the historic and present reality of our world. Reality, however, seldom intrudes on our dreams of a perfect word. When it does we call them nightmares. And what we learn from history is that these nightmares are recurrent.

But for those of "the vision that dare not speak its name" it is precisely the American hegemony, and no other, that must be removed to make way for the glorious one-world where it is "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need." And that world, in their shared visionary imagination, will be made of a green, caring, carefully stewarded world where the we all get to "do our thing" in perfect freedom and without any interference from dictators, power blocs, theocratic states, weapons of mass destruction, crime, guns, and oppression of any living thing on the planet, including animals.

Like the world after the Rapture, the vision of the One-Worlder is Gaia triumphant for the many and a shining realm of gracious living for the elite few. It is a green Hobbit realm with iPods for all and no Saurons to be found anywhere. A technotronic Middle Earth.

I recognize this unspeakable vision well. It has many of the slapdash Marcusian components of the dreams of my youth during the days of the Free Speech Movement, Earth Shoes and Earth Day, the Vietnam Day committee, Woodstock, the Human Be-in, and the Acid Tests at Ken Kesey's place in La Honda and that old hotel in San Francisco.

Now that my "not-so-great" generation has its hands on the wheels of commerce and power in the United States, it is time that this vision that dare not speak its name, compiled from those rotted roots, seeks to act out the dreams of its youth as the policies of a generation entering its dotage. For a generation that so fervently believes in evolution, it is surprising that its youthful political goals have, in the intervening decades, evolved so little.

The first order of business now, as it was then, is to "Smash the State" by expanding the State's control over those that are not among the One Worlders. Of course, the real goal was never to "Smash THE State" as a ruling concept, but only to Smash the American State and replace it with something more soothingly socialist in which "all animals were equal but some more equal than others;" a state in which one party, controlling the culture and the media and the tax system, would rule out of benevolent concern for all over the one, Earth First uber alles. With free health care thrown just to make sure you could live longer in a perfect world.

Leading the charge to "Smash the State by Making a Bigger State" at present will be the Way-New Democratic Party and its outriders, the cosmopolitans. Or perhaps "outriders" doesn't quite capture it since, among the leadership in media, politics, business, and government, the overlap is almost total.

For these people, "the path to success" currently passes through Iraq and winds directly into "failure." They are in love with the idea of "American failure" because, in many ways, it validates their entire lives and empowers their politics. At the core of "the vision that dare not speak its name" is a perverted desire to see their country lose, to see it humbled on the world stage, and to give over the present benign American hegemony to other coarser and more draconian states. And why wouldn't they since their primary life allegiance is One World and not one country.

Should their abiding vision for failure in Iraq become a reality and Iraq descends into a genocidal nightmare, as it will, that's fine with them. That blood will wash more quickly off their hands than the blood of the thousands of Americans killed on 9/11 through the ineptitude of a foreign policy that, over decades, enabled the attacks. Attacks that, as we see now, did not raise any real alarms among the cosmopolitans that their One World dreams might face real world dangers, but merely troubled their sleep for a brief moment.

Should the ascent of Iran threaten the survival of Israel, the economy of the United States and the developed world, well, we and they deserve it. After all, we need to "get off" oil and why shouldn't we have a global depression teach us a lesson?

If an American city becomes a firestorm, well, that certainly isn't the opposition's fault. That was never a part of their vision. It will be, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever will be, the fault of Bush. They will never have to deny a vision that they did not articulate; that they did not name.

Their vision cannot be named, but it can be worked for on a daily basis. And it is. One could call the whole sheaf of proposed legislation and promises oozing out of the Democratic Presidential frontrunners a kind of "Clintonian Recidivism," but somehow that just doesn't have the kind of branding snap and polish we look for these days. I think it would be better for the "opposition" is they called it "The Quest for the Happy World."

When discussing the character of Rolling Stone founder, Jann Wenner, someone once remarked to me, "For some people it will always be 1968." That's pretty much the case with the cosmopolitans of "The Not So Great Generation." Because they no longer live in America but in the Happy World, they deeply and fundamentally believe that their unnameable vision will prevail and with the defeat of the nation on which their freedom and prosperity depends, all return to the Happy World of the Clinton years where the world will leave us alone to pursue our various socialist experiments if only we leave it alone.

The "opposition vision" does not merely seek the defeat of America, but something much more essential to sustaining the rising tide of freedom across the globe. It seeks the defeat of the American ideal. And it seeks it while perversely claiming that it is here to "rescue" it by facilitating its defeat; an Orwellian apotheosis of stunning assertion, and one that will do more than anything else to advance the level of Global Warming to thermonuclear levels in one brief, shining afternoon than any other philosophy you can recall or imagine.

It is of little matter to those whose vision dare not speak its name. They believe, they deeply believe, that with enough talk and enough retreat, and enough appeasement, and enough money, and enough bribes that it will never come to that. Of course, it always does come to that, but this time, they assert, "will be different. We promise."

At bottom, believing that a butcher's bill will never come due, the destruction of the American ideal is really just fine with these "citoyens du monde." They yearn, from their perches in their perverse cosmopolitan realms, to see their nation defeated and humbled and lowered, because they long ago left that nation and ascended into those ethereal realms of their own private Fantasy Island. After all once the United States is reduced in power and prestige to Switzerland, what could possibly happen in the world that could keep their Fantasy Island from becoming the Green Utopian Earth?

Because I'm a bloody-minded man with a strong interest in justice delivered rather than delayed, one movie I enjoy seeing frequently is Shooter (2007). I enjoy it because at the end corrupt politicians and senators are shot to ribbons and then blown up and incinerated. These cinematic consequences satisfy my yearning for justice delivered to those who, in the real world, live lives that seldom have real consequences only re-election.

"Shooter" in summary, for those that have not seen it or read the book on which it is based, goes like this:

Bob Lee Swagger, one of the world's great marksmen and the son of a Congressional Medal of Honoree, is a loner living in the Rockies. He's left the military, having been hung out to dry in a secret Ethiopian mission a few years before, when he's recruited by a lisping colonel to help find a way that the President of the US might be assassinated in one of three cities in the next two weeks. He does his work, but the shot is fired notwithstanding and Bob Lee is quickly the fall guy: wounded and hunted by thousands, he goes to ground and, aided by two unlikely allies, searches for the truth and for those who double-crossed him. All roads lead back to Ethiopia.

Ethiopia? A scene late in the film illuminates that little incident:

What exactly happened in Africa? Somehow the villagers didn't think that an oil pipeline was a good enough reason to move their village to a place where the spirit gods didn't exist. So they asked them all nicely to move and when they didn't, they just killed them all?

No. They didn't ask. They just killed them.

So the next village won't need to be asked. They'll just go.

There is a mass grave with 400 bodies, men, women, children, under the oil pumping station 10 kilometres over the Eritrean border.

Ah well, it is just a movie, right? Oh, wait.

Big, Deadly Government: Mass Murder Committed to Game Kyoto "Credits"€™ Scheme

Armed troops acting on behalf of a British carbon trading company backed by the World Bank burned houses to the ground and killed children to evict Ugandans from their homes in the name of seizing land to protect against "€˜global warming,"a shocking illustration of how the climate change con is a barbarian form of neo-colonialism. The evictions were ordered by New Forests Company, an outfit that seizes land in Africa to grow trees then sells the "carbon credits" on to transnational corporations. The company is backed by the World Bank and HSBC. Its Board of Directors includes HSBC Managing Director Sajjad Sabur, as well as other former Goldman Sachs investment bankers...

This is, of course, a scenario in which Shooter would be very useful in delivering something other than a mild embarrassment in the news to the controlling executives of "New Forests," something in a full metal jacket rather than a dinner jacket.

But who among those charged with delivering justice in the world would really care about an African village? It is, for those who ride in the rich, sopping gravy bowl of Al Gore's Happy Green World, just a subject for tut-tutting on the way to the next international jet-setting hog-trough "Climate Change" convention.

"I say, Al, what exactly happened in Africa?"

In my fantasy of justice I like to think that these men and women who batten off the Global Warming scam will someday die in a fire. The only problem is that such a fire would probably also consume DC, Los Angeles, New York, London, Paris, Rome, Peking, San Francisco, etc. Maybe it's best to stick to the "One man. One bullet" scenario.

Continued...

I didn’t expect the collapse of western civilization to be this goddamn funny.

HappyAcres

Committed to Obama’s forest road, Western security chiefs are already warning a new generation of al-Qaeda, more powerful than the last, has been forged in the furnaces of Syria, Libya, Iraq, Africa and Afghanistan ready to attack. We already know, if we haven’t guessed already, that Obama’s is not going to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, which in any event, Pakistan already has. It’s more than likely the West will face attacks in the near future that will make 9/11 look like a Sunday School picnic by comparison. -- Belmont Club ｻ In Search of Plan C

Chapter 3 of Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T. E. Lawrence

If tribesman and townsman in Arabic-speaking Asia were not different races, but just men in different social and economic stages, a family resemblance might be expected in the working of their minds, and so it was only reasonable that common elements should appear in the product of all these peoples. In the very outset, at the first meeting with them, was found a universal clearness or hardness of belief, almost mathematical in its limitation, and repellent in its unsympathetic form. Semites had no half-tones in their register of vision. They were a people of primary colours, or rather of black and white, who saw the world always in contour. They were a dogmatic people, despising doubt, our modern crown of thorns. They did not understand our metaphysical difficulties, our introspective questionings. They knew only truth and untruth, belief and unbelief, without our hesitating retinue of finer shades.

This people was black and white, not only in vision, but by inmost furnishing: black and white not merely in clarity, but in apposition. Their thoughts were at ease only in extremes. They inhabited superlatives by choice. Sometimes inconsistents seemed to possess them at once in joint sway; but they never compromised: they pursued the logic of several incompatible opinions to absurd ends, without perceiving the incongruity. With cool head and tranquil judgement, imperturbably unconscious of the flight, they oscillated from asymptote to asymptote.*

They were a limited, narrow-minded people, whose inert intellects lay fallow in incurious resignation. Their imaginations were vivid, but not creative. There was so little Arab art in Asia that they could almost be said to have had no art, though their classes were liberal patrons, and had encouraged whatever talents in architecture, or ceramics, or other handicraft their neighbours and helots displayed. Nor did they handle great industries: they had no organizations of mind or body. They invented no systems of philosophy, no complex mythologies. They steered their course between the idols of the tribe and of the cave. The least morbid of peoples, they had accepted the gift of life unquestioningly, as axiomatic. To them it was a thing inevitable, entailed on man, a usufruct, beyond control. Suicide was a thing impossible, and death no grief.

They were a people of spasms, of upheavals, of ideas, the race of the individual genius. Their movements were the more shocking by contrast with the quietude of every day, their great men greater by contrast with the humanity of their mob. Their convictions were by instinct, their activities intuitional. Their largest manufacture was of creeds: almost they were monopolists of revealed religions. Three of these efforts had endured among them: two of the three had also borne export (in modified forms) to non-Semitic peoples. Christianity, translated into the diverse spirits of Greek and Latin and Teutonic tongues, had conquered Europe and America. Islam in various transformations was subjecting Africa and parts of Asia. These were Semitic successes. Their failures they kept to themselves. The fringes of their deserts were strewn with broken faiths.

It was significant that this wrack of fallen religions lay about the meeting of the desert and the sown. It pointed to the generation of all these creeds. They were assertions, not arguments; so they required a prophet to set them forth. The Arabs said there had been forty thousand prophets: we had record of at least some hundreds. None of them had been of the wilderness; but their lives were after a pattern. Their birth set them in crowded places. An unintelligible passionate yearning drove them out into the desert. There they lived a greater or lesser time in meditation and physical abandonment; and thence they returned with their imagined message articulate, to preach it to their old, and now doubting, associates. The founders of the three great creeds fulfilled this cycle: their possible coincidence was proved a law by the parallel life-histories of the myriad others, the unfortunate who failed, whom we might judge of no less true profession, but for whom time and disillusion had not heaped up dry souls ready to be set on fire. To the thinkers of the town the impulse into Nitria had ever been irresistible, not probably that they found God dwelling there, but that in its solitude they heard more certainly the living word they brought with them.

The common base of all the Semitic creeds, winners or losers, was the ever present idea of world-worthlessness. Their profound reaction from matter led them to preach bareness, renunciation, poverty; and the atmosphere of this invention stifled the minds of the desert pitilessly. A first knowledge of their sense of the purity of rarefaction was given me in early years, when we had ridden far out over the rolling plains of North Syria to a ruin of the Roman period which the Arabs believed was made by a prince of the border as a desert-palace for his queen. The clay of its building was said to have been kneaded for greater richness, not with water, but with the precious essential oils of flowers. My guides, sniffing the air like dogs, led me from crumbling room to room, saying, 'This is jessamine, this violet, this rose'.

But at last Dahoum drew me: 'Come and smell the very sweetest scent of all', and we went into the main lodging, to the gaping window sockets of its eastern face, and there drank with open mouths of the effortless, empty, eddyless wind of the desert, throbbing past. That slow breath had been born somewhere beyond the distant Euphrates and had dragged its way across many days and nights of dead grass, to its first obstacle, the man-made walls of our broken palace. About them it seemed to fret and linger, murmuring in baby-speech. 'This,' they told me, 'is the best: it has no taste.' My Arabs were turning their backs on perfumes and luxuries to choose the things in which mankind had had no share or part.

The Beduin of the desert, born and grown up in it, had embraced with all his soul this nakedness too harsh for volunteers, for the reason, felt but inarticulate, that there he found himself indubitably free. He lost material ties, comforts, all superfluities and other complications to achieve a personal liberty which haunted starvation and death. He saw no virtue in poverty herself: he enjoyed the little vices and luxuries--coffee, fresh water, women--which he could still preserve. In his life he had air and winds, sun and light, open spaces and a great emptiness. There was no human effort, no fecundity in Nature: just the heaven above and the unspotted earth beneath. There unconsciously he came near God. God was to him not anthropomorphic, not tangible, not moral nor ethical, not concerned with the world or with him, not natural: but the being , thus qualified not by divestiture but by investiture, a comprehending Being, the egg of all activity, with nature and matter just a glass reflecting Him.

The Beduin could not look for God within him: he was too sure that he was within God. He could not conceive anything which was or was not God, Who alone was great; yet there was a homeliness, an everyday-ness of this climatic Arab God, who was their eating and their fighting and their lusting, the commonest of their thoughts, their familiar resource and companion, in a way impossible to those whose God is so wistfully veiled from them by despair of their carnal unworthiness of Him and by the decorum of formal worship. Arabs felt no incongruity in bringing God into the weaknesses and appetites of their least creditable causes. He was the most familiar of their words; and indeed we lost much eloquence when making Him the shortest and ugliest of our monosyllables.

This creed of the desert seemed inexpressible in words, and indeed in thought. It was easily felt as an influence, and those who went into the desert long enough to forget its open spaces and its emptiness were inevitably thrust upon God as the only refuge and rhythm of being. The Bedawi might be a nominal Sunni, or a nominal Wahabi, or anything else in the Semitic compass, and he would take it very lightly, a little in the manner of the watchmen at Zion's gate who drank beer and laughed in Zion because they were Zionists. Each individual nomad had his revealed religion, not oral or traditional or expressed, but instinctive in himself; and so we got all the Semitic creeds with (in character and essence) a stress on the emptiness of the world and the fullness of God; and according to the power and opportunity of the believer was the expression of them.

The desert dweller could not take credit for his belief. He had never been either evangelist or proselyte. He arrived at this intense condensation of himself in God by shutting his eyes to the world, and to all the complex possibilities latent in him which only contact with wealth and temptations could bring forth. He attained a sure trust and a powerful trust, but of how narrow a field! His sterile experience robbed him of compassion and perverted his human kindness to the image of the waste in which he hid. Accordingly he hurt himself, not merely to be free, but to please himself. There followed a delight in pain, a cruelty which was more to him than goods. The desert Arab found no joy like the joy of voluntarily holding back. He found luxury in abnegation, renunciation, self restraint. He made nakedness of the mind as sensuous as nakedness of the body. He saved his own soul, perhaps, and without danger, but in a hard selfishness. His desert was made a spiritual ice-house, in which was preserved intact but unimproved for all ages a vision of the unity of God. To it sometimes the seekers from the outer world could escape for a season and look thence in detachment at the nature of the generation they would convert.

This faith of the desert was impossible in the towns. It was at once too strange, too simple, too impalpable for export and common use. The idea, the ground-belief of all Semitic creeds was waiting there, but it had to be diluted to be made comprehensible to us. The scream of a bat was too shrill for many ears: the desert spirit escaped through our coarser texture. The prophets returned from the desert with their glimpse of God, and through their stained medium (as through a dark glass) showed something of the majesty and brilliance whose full vision would blind, deafen, silence us, serve us as it had served the Beduin, setting him uncouth, a man apart.

The disciples, in the endeavour to strip themselves and their neighbours of all things according to the Master's word, stumbled over human weaknesses and failed. To live, the villager or townsman must fill himself each day with the pleasures of acquisition and accumulation, and by rebound off circumstance become the grossest and most material of men. The shining contempt of life which led others into the barest asceticism drove him to despair. He squandered himself heedlessly, as a spendthrift: ran through his inheritance of flesh in hasty longing for the end. The Jew in the Metropole at Brighton, the miser, the worshipper of Adonis, the lecher in the stews of Damascus were alike signs of the Semitic capacity for enjoyment, and expressions of the same nerve which gave us at the other pole the self-denial of the Essenes, or the early Christians, or the first Khalifas, finding the way to heaven fairest for the poor in spirit. The Semite hovered between lust and self-denial.

Arabs could be swung on an idea as on a cord; for the unpledged allegiance of their minds made them obedient servants. None of them would escape the bond till success had come, and with it responsibility and duty and engagements. Then the idea was gone and the work ended--in ruins. Without a creed they could be taken to the four corners of the world (but not to heaven) by being shown the riches of earth and the pleasures of it; but if on the road, led in this fashion, they met the prophet of an idea, who had nowhere to lay his head and who depended for his food on charity or birds, then they would all leave their wealth for his inspiration. They were incorrigibly children of the idea, feckless and colour-blind, to whom body and spirit were for ever and inevitably opposed. Their mind was strange and dark, full of depressions and exaltations, lacking in rule, but with more of ardour and more fertile in belief than any other in the world. They were a people of starts, for whom the abstract was the strongest motive, the process of infinite courage and variety, and the end nothing. They were as unstable as water, and like water would perhaps finally prevail. Since the dawn of life, in successive waves they had been dashing themselves against the coasts of flesh. Each wave was broken, but, like the sea, wore away ever so little of the granite on which it failed, and some day, ages yet, might roll unchecked over the place where the material world had been, and God would move upon the face of those waters. One such wave (and not the least) I raised and rolled before the breath of an idea, till it reached its crest, and toppled over and fell at Damascus. The wash of that wave, thrown back by the resistance of vested things, will provide the matter of the following wave, when in fullness of time the sea shall be raised once more.

Chapter 3 of Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T. E. Lawrence

Seriously, no worries.

Honest.

Would she lie?

There is pleasure in the wet, wet clay
When the artist's hand is potting it.
There is pleasure in the wet, wet lay --
When the poet's pad is blotting it.
There is pleasure in the shine
of your picture on the line
At the Royal Acade-my;
But the pleasure felt in these
is as chalk to Cheddar cheese
When it comes to a well-made Lie--

To a quite unwreckable Lie,
To a most impeccable Lie!
To a water-right, fire-proof, angle-iron, sunk-hinge, time-lock, steel-faced Lie!
Not a private handsome Lie,
But a pair-and-brougham Lie,
Not a little-place-at-Tooting, but a country-house-with-shooting
And a ring-fence-deer-park Lie.

-- Rudyard Kipling

"Hope and Change" in Iraq

How's that "Hope and Change" working out for you?

“Mosul: Iraq Crumbling before our eyes”. The Internet is rife with pictures of al-Qaeda triumphantly inspecting millions, perhaps billions of dollars worth of captured, American made military equipment. It’s like Vietnam all over again, except this time the NVA are continuing the attack all the way to New York.

Unless the rot is stopped, ISIS will soon be at Baghdad’s gates and al-Qaeda’s affiliates will soon possess one, perhaps two major Middle Eastern countries plus trillions of dollars in oil resources. Libya, Iraq, perhaps Syria. They will be on the border of Saudi Arabia, able to credibly menace the energy lifeline of the Western world, a fact that can only play to Putin’s advantage.

The dangers of abandoning such a vital region were always obvious. Those who have not read my 2010 post, The Ten Ships, might take the time to do so now. It’s good for a laugh, not because it is so “brilliant” but because it’s so obvious. It explains how Obama’s political petulance made him ignore fundamental military strategy by ignoring the obvious center of Islamic militant gravity the Middle East in favor of redeploying the ground forces to a PR fantasy campaign in Afghanistan.

There’s nothing in place available to stop al-Qaeda. The forces that might have are locked up in the Southwest Asia, sustained at the mercy of Russia and Pakistan. Obama has been faked out; the AQ have gone around him for a layup to the basket. He may lose Iraq and its border with Syria before the year ends. Afghanistan’s fall will follow almost immediately thereafter, behind the last American troops, whose safe exit from the landlocked country is now by no means guaranteed. The Russians lost more than 500 men going out in 1989 — and they only had to cross a land border a short distance away.Belmont Club ｻ The Day of Reckoning

Taking things seriously in Iraq

Taking events seriously at WH.gov.

‫ Islamic state convoy in Mosul pictures

"These five guys are not a threat to the United States. They are a threat to the safety and security of Afghanistan and Pakistan. It’s up to those two countries to make the decision once and for all that these are threats to them. So I think we may be kind of missing the bigger picture here. We want to get an American home, whether they fell off the ship because they were drunk or they were pushed or they jumped, we try to rescue everybody."

[neo-neocon: Spread this video, please: Hillary Clinton on the Taliban Five and American security]

This is a 53 second clip called "Susan Rice: Bergdahl Served With 'Honor and Distinction' ." We all know what a feckless liar and traitor Rice is from her previous Obama guzzling turns before the press. What's interesting here is that her liar's blink rate is through the roof. She's lying so fast you can barely keep up with her hummingbird's wings velocity of her blinks. I've tried to count a couple of times and I think it is somewhere north of 65 times in her 30 seconds of screen time.

That’s What Melts His Butter

This one goes out to the Occupy Parasites. It's in cartoon form so it doesn't require any actual education.

Please note that there's a reason "Envy" is one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Also note that these rules are still in as much force as the law of gravity. Here's hoping you find out why before the bill comes due and the whip comes down.

Delivered unto the web as Occupy Corporate Space by Maggie's Farm

"Borders? We don't got to respect no steenking borders!"

A Report by General Barry McCaffrey, Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy under President Bill Clinton, and Major-General Robert Scales, former Commandant of the United States Army War College.

From the Executive Summary:

During the past two years the state of Texas has become increasingly threatened by the spread of Mexican cartel organized crime. The threat reflects a change in the strategic intent of the cartels to move their operations into the United States.

In effect, the cartels seek to create a “sanitary zone” inside the Texas border -- one county deep -- that will provide sanctuary from Mexican law enforcement and, at the same time, enable the cartels to transform Texas’ border counties into narcotics transshipment points for continued transport and distribution into the continental United States.

To achieve their objectives the cartels are relying increasingly on organized gangs to provide expendable and unaccountable manpower to do their dirty work. These gangs are recruited on the streets of Texas cities and inside Texas prisons by top-tier gangs who work in conjunction with the cartels.

In other news, Napolitano defends Obama immigration policies, says border is “safest it’s been in decades”

Full report in PDF format is HERE.

Well we know you're the reincarnation
Of the ravenous Catherine the Great.
And we know how you love your ovations
For the Z-rated scenes you create.
The Z-rated scenes you create.

You analyze me, pretend to despise me,
You laugh when I stumble and fall.
There may come a day I will dance on your grave
If unable to dance, I will crawl across it
Unable to dance, I'll still crawl.

You must really consider the circus
'Cause it just might be your kind of zoo
I can't think of a place that's more perfect
For a person as perfect as you.

And it's not like I'm leaving you lonely
'Cause I wouldn't know where to begin
But I know that you'll think of me only
When the snakes come marching in
When the snakes come marching in

-- The Annotated "Hell In a Bucket"

(Ahh, good old Grateful Dead. Their songs fit so many things they never intended them to fit. Mark of a good song, isn't it?)

Image via The Looking Spoon

Finger-poppin' good.

{HT: That Dog at Maggies}

Pretty flimsy looking if you ask me. Congress agrees: Cantor: Obama’s Jobs Bill Is Dead - Susan Davis - NationalJournal.com

From House of Eratosthenes

But at least we're still doing better than Mexico: Acapulco: Severed Heads Found In Mexican Resort (WARNING: Graphic Photos)

If not quite so care-free as the Russians... (or is this just a moving metaphor for the European attitude of "We just wanna flash before we crash!" ?)

The Borderline Sociopathic Blog For Boys: Get Your Moped Runnin' - Head Out On The Highway

An important video about the secret shaping of the Internet.

Continued...

A masterpiece of the infographic genre, this chart of "achievements" is so large I'm including it at the bottom as a clickable image in order to be seen, read and appreciated. Created by John E for Ace:The Obama Presidency - By The Numbers [John E.]

"In this infographic, I took a look at various statements and promises made by Barack Obama (and a few others) during both the 2008 campaign and early on in his Presidency. These statements were then set against current statistics and those from inauguration day or 2008 for annual stats."

Here you are and remember to save it to your drive and use it as an attachment when you forward it.

Click to open in new window. Click image again to get full size.

"Operation Gunrunner" is one of those government "brainstorms" that's difficult to explain uninitiated Americans.** There's a lot of "backgrounding" that makes the whole thing sound like the "magic bullet" in the Kennedy assassination. Even when "Gunrunner" is explained well there is the incredulous response, "But nobody in the federal government could be that stupid!"

Fortunately, the government is forever "that stupid" in this matter, and thanks to the not-so-stupid 'Friday evening document release syndrome' we have this handy graphic from the White House that sums it up:

[Click to enlarge or get your own copy HERE ]

On one level, it's pleasing to see a massive outflow of things leaving Arizona for points south. On another, I don't think that massive outflows of weapons south was exactly the reversal of border conditions the citizens of Arizona were looking for from the Feds.

Continued...

Obama, Can You Spare a Dime - YouTube

Cornell West, easily the most oportunistic and least intelligent member of the Crack Pipe Progressives leads his colonized clones in a bit of anti-capitalist blathering down on Wall Street. Check around the 2:00 mark for the confirmation of the thesis, "Regardless of diet these zombies have no brains."

Fortunately, the Republicans in their decades long thirst for death, seem to have taken John McCain off the menu. Unfortunately, they seem to be running a clown car full of his clones.

"And here I sit so patiently
Waiting to find out what price
You have to pay to get out of
Going through all these things twice
Oh, Mama, is this really the end
To be stuck inside of Mobile
With the Memphis blues again."

"SAFE!" by Clifford K. Berryman -in 1924

This cartoon at the time referred to the Progressive Party's execrable 1924 Presidential candidate from Wisconsin, Robert M. La Follette, Sr.

HT: Woolie

Click to enlarge

"In which various dozens of members of various groups non-zero in number unite in various corners of New York's Zuccotti Park (owned by Brookfield Office Properties [NYSE: BPO]) to oppose the dominance of various corporations and... like... stuff." -- | finem respice

Continued...

"I'm from the Government. I'm here to help myself to your brainz and blooood!"

"Monsters! Monsters of the Id:" It’s a peculiar technique of critique to use the disposable products of our popular culture to craft deeper observations on our present era. Efforts to reveal our culture at large by extrapolating them from current films are a popular exercise -- not to mention a drop-dead easy manner of making points without any larger areas of knowledge having to intervene. Why study history when you can just stream in a slick selection of pop-cult classics from Netflix and hose down your mind?

Recently touted as “the weirdest graph you'll see all week,” that fountain of cultural commentary, Cracked came up with 6 Mind-Blowing Ways Zombies and Vampires Explain America asserting,

Here's the weirdest graph you'll see all week. It's graphing the popularity of zombie movies versus vampire movies, split out by whether the president at the time was a Republican or a Democrat. There are exceptions, but in general when a Republican is in office, it's all about zombies. When it's a Democrat, it's all about vampires.

Alas it wasn’t the weirdest graph I’ve seen all week. Mostly because I’ve seen it before. Many times, such as in 2009 at The San Diego Union-Tribune’s ”With Obama election comes the return of the vampire.” I’ve seen it before 2009 as well but can’t be troubled to make a list. Everything in our age scrolls off our screens, is forgotten, and floats away on the waters of oblivion. That is why “all the news just repeats itself.”

In a culture in which, for some reason, the youth continue to feast upon horror flicks of increasing depravity safe in the conviction of their own immortality, it’s no wonder it’s always Vampires vs. Zombies in America. In it’s way it’s a comfortable assumption since it assumes and extends the two-party system myth that obfuscates our real political dilemmas. But what happens when the standard cultural meme of Vampires vs. Zombies suffers a deviation? What happens when real deviancy takes control?

That’s when you get a new monster; a political hybrid that popular culture has not quite assimilated. That’s the real monster we have stalking the political stage of our present day; the Vampire Zombie (The Vambie) -- something that is trying to eat brains and suck blood at the same time.

We used to call this political aberration “Fascism,” but now it goes by a much more neutral term, “embedded bureaucracy.” It’s what happens when the appointed aliens such as, say, Van Jones, are taken out of play but leave their infected spawn behind. Once inserted into the body of the host with the ovipositor of the original alien, the spawn grow and fester and replicate. Once the Vambie (politely known as the Czar) is in place, the infection is irreversible by normal political means. This is true even if the original Vambie is destroyed. The sub-Vambies become the “Left Behinds” even after the rapture of the reversible presidential election takes place.

Continued...

What should the White House do? Panic! - James Carville "As I watch the Republican debates, I realize that we are on the brink of a crazy person running our nation..."

On the brink? On the BRINK? Has the sun been beating too hard on thy chrome dome, Jimbo?

We are far, FAR, past the brink when it comes to "a crazy running the country."

I’d suggest to Carville that he is in the position that Wiley Coyote often finds himself, i.e. running at full speed off the brink and far out onto thin air before realizing that there’s nothing under his paws.... and gravity is about to have its way with him. Yet again.

To paraphrase the only memorable phrase from your execrable career Carville, "It's the present president, stupid!"

See it, hear it, pass it on, share it with friends, family, and all your depressed Obama-voting pals! Be the first to create the definitive Progressive-powered blacklist. Revive HUAAC! -- the House on Un-American Anti-Obama Committee! Bring back those glorious days of the Red Scare!

Continued...

At first it was just a passing jape by The Onion:

Continued...

And the people did cry out, "Thou art not the one we have been waiting for. Indeed, thou sucketh."

HT: Maggies

The great internet essayist Fernandez remarks in passing at the Belmont Club's The Teahouse of the August Mood "He belonged to no nation and therefore was a transcendent figure of sorts. Nobody was sure where he was born, how he got his start in life and to who he owed his loyalty. All anyone knows was that he was suddenly there."

In this case he is referring to "Basil Zaharoff, the original Man of Mystery," but since Fernandez is always as oblique as he is direct it brought to mind an old definition of the difference between a neurotic and a psychotic:

"A neurotic is someone who is slightly out of touch with reality. A psychotic is someone who is totally in touch with reality. It just happens to be his own private reality."

When it comes to the current psychotic in chief I admit I am weary of the endless game of "just what is up with this guy anyway?," and the countless "personhours" spent on parsing or interrupting his actions and/or non-actions.

Michael Medved, that cuddly little commenter on all things conservative, is always going on and on about this character being just another garden variety politician who wants to be loved. Medved is of the "no malice in here boss" school of political criticism. I'm sorry to say I don't buy it. I'm more and more deeply invested in the malicious psychotic school of thought. It pains me to think that one of the chief compulsions of all psychotics is to try and get as many people as possible to believe in his private reality.

There's a lot of crowing here and there around the infosphere in the last few days about his rising "disapproval" ratings, but they are small comfort to me. What galls me are the had-core approval ratings. These mean that millions upon untold millions actually approve of this psychotic's personal reality. That means that we've still got far too many psychotics running around loose and armed with the vote.

Job One? Reduce levels of political psychosis.

Job Two? Remove incumbent psychotics.

Those are the parameters of my personal political reality. I'll feel much better when everybody gets in touch with it.

And in the nick of time!

"Believe it or not, there was electricity in Africa in ancient times."

HT: The Barrister @ Maggies Farm who says, "I think this is satire, but I am not certain," and who therefor needs to regroup!

Let's Review:

On Friday, city officials issued what they called an unprecedented order for the evacuation of about 370,000 residents of low-lying areas, warning that Hurricane Irene was such a threat that people living there simply had to get out. Officials also made what they said was another first-of-its-kind decision, announcing plans to shut down the city’s entire transit system Saturday — all 468 subway stations and 840 miles of tracks, and the rest of the nation’s largest mass transit network: thousands of buses in the city, as well as the buses and commuter trains that reach from Midtown Manhattan to the suburbs. -- Evacuations Ordered in New York as Hurricane Irene Nears - NYTimes.com

I think we can assume that "officials" all have personal and/or taxpayer paid for transport and some, like Bloomberg, have private planes and helicopters. For "all the little people" exactly how you all "get out" of New York City without a public transportation system is likely to be.... uh.... somewhat problematic.

I lived in Brooklyn Heights directly across the river from the World Trade Center on 9/11 and for the months that unfolded after it. One thing that was exceedingly difficult on that day and for days after was, well, getting out of New York. Rental cars were quickly impossible to get. Some friends, who really needed to get back to their home in Florida, actually bought a used car in Queens for the trip.

Another item that was passed over in all the reporting after that day was that the one sector of the economy that had a bump up in sales in the New York area were motorcycles. People, it seems, had figured out that if everybody who had a car wanted to leave New York at the same time the roads would quickly become impassable to anyone not on a motorcycle (preferably with a rider armed with a pistol).

New York, whenever lots of people need to exit at once, becomes a roach motel. You check in but you can't check out.

Case in point:

82-year-old Abe Feinstein, who has lived since the early 1960s on the eighth floor of a building that overlooks the famed boardwalk of Coney Island, which is in the evacuation zone and was alive with residents and visitors Friday. "How can I get out of Coney Island? What am I going to do? Run with this walker?" he said. -- News

He's not the only one. A fact of which it would seem the death-dwarf that poses as Mayor of New York seems vaguely aware:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg urged those who needed to leave to do so right away Saturday morning. The city doesn't have enough resources to evacuate everyone after the weather worsens, he said about 2 ½ hours before the transit system was to shut down.

With this one move, Bloomberg has rewritten the classic headline. Now it's MAYOR TO CITY: DROP DEAD.

Obama will switch from a bus to a train for his January Victory tour through the Midwest Red States. This is a preview of the planned tour. Continued...

Found at The Unbroken Window -- Things One is Not Permitted to Mention in Polite Company

Is it just me, or could we save a lot of time and money by just sending somebody around to see what Justice Kennedy thinks?

The Outlook wasn't brilliant for the progressive slime that day:
The polls were sinking fast, with but one year left to play.
And when stimulus died again and again, and employment ate its gun,
A sickly silence fell upon the patrons of the Won.

First, a tour of how the progressives are feeling these days:

Nervous Democrats say President Obama must be bolder on economy - The Washington Post

I should have picked Hillary over Obama People cried and hugged. I got teary myself. A black president. The times they are a-changing. Indeed. They keep getting worse.

Obama's Path to Reelection Narrows - Ronald Brownstein - NationalJournal.com

The American Spectator : The Growing Bipartisan Consensus on Obama

"I just think the president is not very bright."

Obama's No Good, Very Bad Week - WSJ.com

Jimmy Carter Is the best-case scenario.

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Nothing is so distasteful and clogging as abundance. -- Montaigne

Of late there’s been no end of criticism of the president for leaving his desk and his oval office to campaign. In so doing, it is said, he leaves a lot of the “important and pressing” business of the nation unaccomplished. Such criticism is, to my mind, not only unwarranted but counterproductive at best and disastrous at worst.

Wise Americans of all persuasions want to keep this president as far away from the “important and pressing” business of the nation as possible, for as long as possible. Every second, every minute, every hour, and every day Obama is kept out of his office is a net positive for the nation as a whole. Every moment he’s out there on a smile and shoeshine selling his next four years of nostrums to whatever liberal and progressive suckers he can bugger is one less moment he can spend actively buggering the nation at large.

Remember, right now it’s not really time to play “Capture the Flag.” That’s for next year. Right now it’s time to play “Run out the clock.”

And what better way to play “Run out the clock” then by appealing to this man’s core competency, campaigning?

It’s time we faced the fact, as Obama has long since known, that the only thing this man does well is to campaign. Indeed a brief glance at his record before and after attaining the presidency as “The Candidate from Central Casting” shows that campaigning is not only what he does best, it is the only thing he has ever done. Campaigning is the alpha and the omega of this man’s thin resume. Always has been. Always will be.

So to all those pundits cluck-clucking about Obama’s campaigning crimping his productivity, I say: “Just. Shut. Up.”

Pundits, please stifle all those statements about what the president “should be doing to bind up the nation’s wounds.” He is the nation’s wound. Kindly let him suppurate in peace.

Encourage him to have many spontaneous meetings with his ever dwindling group of key supporters.

Chivvy him to make ever more inane and insane promises.

Goad him into running his Gaffomatic at full power.

Titillate him with tee-time at every top golf course.

Inundate him with opportunities for extended indolence.

Bolster his bravado and let him spread ever more bafflement with his bullshit.

Get him to “Give ‘em Hell, Barry” when it comes to insulting every American to the beige side of the coffee-colored complexion.

Rage at him to ramp up his racism. Let as many Americans as possible see the sham up close and personal.

Persuade him to party without pause.

Assure him that when Bob Dylan sang, "Even the president of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked" he was dedicating it to Obama.

In short do anything you can to keep Obama out of his office until you can get him out of office permanently. Just let those “While You Were Out” pink slips pile up to 9.2, 9.5, 10.2, 10.5 percent.

You’ll thank me in 2012.

This 45 ACP hollow-point made of 14-karat white gold.
Mounted within the hollow-point are ninety diamonds surrounding a sparkling amethyst.

The Obama Method: When you can't get something through Congress and the vast majority of the people are going to hate it, just write out an executive order and send it in. [**] This is also, in Obama's formerly nicotine stained fingers, known as a Ukase [A ukase (Russian: указ, formally "imposition"), in Imperial Russia, was a proclamation of the tsar, government, or a religious leader (patriarch) that had the force of law.]

Ann Barnhardt's got the range on this move by Obama

I think they are going to after ammunition. The legal argument will be that you can keep your guns, which is all that is legally covered by the word "ARMS", you just can't have any ammunition, and the Second Amendment does not prohibit the Federal Government from banning or outlawing ammunition in any way - or so they will argue.

But it's clear to me that all those down-low late-night trysts with Chris Rock in the Rose Garden are now bearing fruit:

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Yo! BO! I'm a seeing your "Dinner with Barry" spam drizzle into the Email just about every four hours for the last week. So just Fucking STOP IT! (Strong letter to follow.)

Strong letter:

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I always love the moment when the carefully constructed media mask slips off and we get to see the "star's" real face. Jon Stewart, long a staple of the "too cool too fool" generation of know-nothings had his moment this weekend when we saw emerge from his carefully constructed schtick his more carefully hidden ugly face:

Jon Stewart loses his cool with Fox News host Chris Wallace: 'You are insane'

After repeated prodding, Wallace then played a clip of Mr Stewart comparing a video of Sarah Palin's recent bus tour to a herpes commercial.

Mr Stewart erupted: 'You're insane... Here's the difference between you and I.

'I'm a comedian first. My comedy is informed by an ideological background, there's no question about that. But the thing that you will never understand...is that Hollywood, yeah, they're liberal, but that's not their primary motivating force. I'm not an activist. I am a comedian.'

Addressing issues of bias in the main stream media, Stewart responded: 'Do I want my voice heard? Absolutely, that's why I got into comedy. Am I an activist, in your mind? A partisan ideological activist.

Well, yes Jon. Now that you ask. You know it and we know it and now, if they care, the world knows it.

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What does the Railroad Retirement Board need side arms for? That's what Christian Adams wants to know, because its one more federal agency that's getting weapons based on Obama administration requests. Other armed agencies, courtesy Quin Hillyer at the Washington Times:

* Department of Education
* Small Business Administration
* Departments of Health and Human Services
* Agriculture, Labor, and Veterans Affairs
* Bureau of Land Management
* Bureau of Indian Affairs
* Environmental Protection Agency
* Fish and Wildlife Service
-- Word Around the Net

America to Californians still possessed of a brain: GET! OUT! California’s Green Jihad

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Texas agency: Authorities take gunfire on border

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Those bitter clingers seem to be holding out on Jefe Obama and his gang of Frito Banditos: AP 'Scoop,' Naively Reported: WH to Form 'Rural Council' -- As If Help Is Needed | NewsBusters.org

The Obama administration has apparently identified a significant constituency it hasn't been able to buy off, and is attempting to do something about it.

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Hey, deep ecologists: the planet is not your nature preserve!

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Weinergate: Barbara Walters Loses Reporter Cred In passing while finally touching the Weiner story, the Anchoress has a universal observation:

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How Bad Is The Employment Picture? This Bad

It’s been called the scariest jobs chart you’ll ever see, and every month it gets updated it just looks worse.

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It's "For the Planet!" World Bank to suggest CO2 levy on jet, shipping fuel | Energy & Oil | Reuters

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YAAG [Yet Another Australian Gelding]: Strange, I thought Australia was still producing men.

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"I'm not going to be that kind of Neo-Nazi. "

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Trump Tower, Chicago

The Mother of All Conspiracy Theories:

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It's just "work, work, work, work" when you are "Lady Numero Uno" and trying to cut the American lard from the center on out:

[Yes, getting to this socko, memorable design really did cost $2M]

After turning out our $2 million dinner plate[***] at the Department of Agriculture yesterday, (Wow! even Big Guy’s fundraisers can’t charge that much!) in our summery, stripey topped frock we had to prepare for our next big event: this year’s Architectural Award Ceremonies. --- Michelle Obama's Mirror

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"What Karzai is demanding is a free-fire zone for 'insurgents.' " -- Diana West

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"Have you ever noticed just how needy this goddess Gaia seems to be? She can never seem to get anything done without help from the liberals." -- Commenter edaddy

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Lo, our president hath spoken unto his people and he hath said:

The confidence I have in the American people, in their decency, that’s undiminished. My faith that we can make tough choices on behalf of future generations, that’s undiminished. -- Obama: “My People, You Continue to Have My Blessing.”

It's a good thing that this slacker's faith is undiminished, because at this rate his "faith" will be the only thing left "undiminished" on the American landscape. For the rest of us our lives will be, as they are presently becoming, ever more diminished.

I was thinking about the slogan made into a bumpersticker yesterday and posted on my sidebar, "You can't put Osama in your gas tank." That's an obvious truth seeing as how we don't have access to the body, vats of lye, and a rendering plant, but it's a broader sentiment than that. What it means is that there are a lot of things now that you discover, week in and week out, you do have to put into your gas tank. And more and more they are the things, large and small, that make your life worth living.

Do you like to ski, surf? Well you'll have to start adding the cost of gas to the cost of lift tickets or beach parking times the distance from your house to the slopes or the sand. Too much? Into the gas tank go the lift tickets and surfboard.

Do your kids like to be picked up and taken to their friends' houses for sleep overs and playdates? Distance to the house and back and back to the house and back home times miles per gallon times cost per gallon equals a lesser social life for your kids. Into the tank with playdates for kids.

Grocery shopping much? Watching "Extreme Couponing" more and taking notes? Looking for those little stickers on products that tell you the manager is cutting a couple bucks off the price because the food is just about to its expiration date and buying them? It adds up. Just eat them quickly.

In these and a hundred other small and yet relentless ways you are entering into, directly as a result of this president and his party's policy, the new American era of "Slow Impoverishment."

You probably don't think of your current economic situation as being "impoverished" (it's such a scary word, contains "poverty..."), but that is what is happening to you and your family and your friends and your neighbors. You might not be "poor" in the classical sense or even in the way that the Federal government currently defines the "poverty level," but you are being made poor day by day, week by week, month after month.

Im·pov·er·ish : To reduce to poverty; make poor. To deprive of natural richness or strength.

Now you may be well-off relatively speaking. You may be gainfully employed or own a successful business. It doesn't matter. It only means that this spiteful president and his party are impoverishing you more slowly and to less immediate effect than less fortunate Americans. Even so, unless you are a member of the wealthy, ruling class, you can -- if you put your mind to it -- feel in a very visceral way that you are not doing as well now as you were a couple of years ago. You may even have "more" money, but can't escape the knowledge that it buys less. And you also know that, given the path this man and his party, have put the country on you will be feeling ever more impoverished as time passes.

It is a strange president and party that relentlessly pursues policies that work actively day by day to beggar and weaken the country they rule so maliciously, but that is what we have come to.

In the grocery store the wands and the scanners beep and the total rises up. But the clerk is nice and polite and is in the same fix you are so the final total doesn't seem so bleak. And besides you probably splurged just a little (Maybe got the not-quite-stale cookies on final markdown) so you at least have a small pleasure to look forward to later as you watch "The Biggest Loser."

When you and the rest of us buy gasoline, however, any pleasure gleaned from consumption is far, far away. You stand in the cold and the wet and you push a steel nozzle into a hole in your car and you stand there in the fumes with all the other vaguely pissed-off Americans. And you stare at the madly multiplying number panel that is draining your dollars from your debit card in a blur.... $20, $30, $40, $50, $60, $70....

Isn't that a quality feeling? That's "slow impoverishment" in action. Press "Yes" if you want a receipt, "No" if you just don't give a damn any longer.

Killing Osama felt good, didn't it? But that's it. Breaks over. Everyone back on your heads.

Strange that the only ones who are enjoying the slow impoverishment of Americans are its enemies and the president and his party. They are laughing at you and their slowly impoverished base at their dinner parties. At the top, where the buck starts, his continuing pleasure in your slow impoverishment is one other thing that is "undiminished" in the mind of the strange and un-American "faith" of Obama.

I like Jonah Goldberg and a lot of what he says, but he's floating in ye olde conservative autoplay bubble machine when it comes to the ever-popular mumbo-jumbo about the president not wanting to "infuriate" his base. Today's example is from Cooling on Global Warming where Goldberg writes, on full cruise control,

One suspects that Obama would dearly love to drill a lot for more oil and gas, simply for the political windfall in jobs and economic growth. But after he flipped on offshore drilling, then flopped after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, he cannot flip again without infuriating his base.

With all due respect, this is so much clap-trap. The plain truth is that, no matter what he does, Obama's "base" is going exactly nowhere. This is because it has exactly nowhere to go. Obama's base is deep into the battered-spouse syndrome. It will keep coming back for more no matter how often or how hard he hits it, hoping for some of that old time religion, some of that hot hope-and-change makeup sex.

What are the elements that form Obama's "easily alienated" base?

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Freshly Created This Day by the CubeMaster Maksim

Check out this skeevy hipster captured on film by Ann Althouse. (Note to hipsters: Beware the smart blonde asking innocent questions!) Then check out his Men-Without-Chests "bio" below [emphasis added:]

Patrick McKenna grew up in the northern Wisconsin town of Antigo. After earning his bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from UW-Madison, he took an untraditional path to medicine by first pursuing an MBA in Chicago and a Masters in Fine Arts at the University of Alaska. Ultimately, though, his Wisconsin roots lured him back to The Dairy State to attend medical school at the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health. Patrick’s leadership and commitment to public service are evidenced by his work during medical school as a LOCUS Fellow and with the MEDIC free clinics in Madison. He served as MEDIC Council president during his second year and received the 2006 McGovern-Tracy Scholar award, which recognizes medical students who exemplify values of community service and leadership while in training. He also has a passion for global health and served as both a member and co-chair of the UW Global Health Interest Group. In his spare time, Patrick enjoys athletics of all kinds, including basketball, broomball, running, bicycling, canoeing, and skiing. He also enjoys gardening, cooking, baking, and sewing, and he has strong interests in politics, rural policy, sustainability, and creative writing. -- Patrick A McKenna MD | UW Family Medicine

Quel homme! Formi-dab! What a catch!

Girls of all genders, get in line! If this skeevy hipster is willing to write fraudulent doctor's notes, he's probably pretty handy with a prescription pad too. Think of the money and legal hassle you'd save with legit pharmaceuticals.

Not only that, this "Doctor Feelgood" cooks! He bakes, and he sews, and sure plays a mean broomball! (aka "Hockey for those whose testicles have retracted.")

Note also that he is one of those who takes the "untraditional path," does commitment (to public service), and is "passionate" (about global health, which is almost as good as being "passionate" about "world peace." ) But best of all is his "strong" interest in the thing he evidently does best in this video, "creative writing."

Like many other "returned to sanity" Americans I no longer give the New York Times money or regard. But today at the store I glanced at their front page and I have to give them credit for the ability to whore themselves out no matter how sluttish their acts may be.

Just look at this masterpiece in setting up the front page for maximum propaganda impact:

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Want to see something that will make you really sick? Check out the slime of the Wisconsin medical community as they engage in fraud by writing up "doctor's notes" for malingering teachers.

Now, as I recall my own school days, showing up after being absent with a faked note from my Mom usually resulted in a suspension from school, and a less than pleasant one-on-one interview with my father on the value of truth and honesty.

Not so with these quacks of the left.

The attorney general of Wisconsin should see to it that all these "doctors'" license to practice are revoked.

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"The economy is doing well for some folks, like this group of technology business leaders meeting with President Obama in Woodside, California, last night."

Jim Geraghty brings us this picture of plutocracy in action with his note on A Toast . . . or Perhaps His Presidency Is Toast. @ The Campaign Spot. There's no audio to commemorate this moment when all the slime sat down for a snack, but if I could run a recording device into Obama's brain I'll wager he's saying:
"Let the toast pass.
You can all kiss my ass.
I'll tell you right now
I just screw you all last."

Greetings Anti-American Earthlings!

It has come to our attention that, as Americans, we really haven't been at the top of other Earth citizens' Christmas lists for some time now. Like some spouse that has become too used to having her good life paid for by a husband's work and sweat, you've keep telling us you "need your space."

We have listened. We have heard. You want your space. And we are ready to give it to you. Politely if possible, but with both barrels if necessary. So pay attention....

We gave you a lot during the last 65 years since VJ Day in terms of direct aid -- whole oceans of cash and special privileges -- but we didn't complain. There was the Marshall Plan, the continuing defense of Europe during the Cold War while you just sucked down bon-bons and took long hot showers into the wee hours of the morning with every misfit Muslim, Serb or what-have-you that came your way with "a hand full of gimme and a mouth fill of not-so-much obliged." We looked the other way because we didn’t need those images seared into our memories.

Then there were all sorts of loans never paid back, and many billions and billions more in private charity and donations above and beyond what our government has done for you with our tax money. You were Wimpy and we were Popeye, but our metrosexuals loved summering in the Provance countryside and writing hymns to your cultural theme parks so, well, what the hell?

Don't even talk about the costs of maintaining a credible defense all across Europe so you didn't get munched up and excreted with blueberries by the Soviet Bear. (Looking a little testy again isn’t he?)

Alas, none of this was enough for you. Like some teenaged stoner with an unlimited American Express card, you've always needed more. You always had to go for one more deep suck off the bong while flipping us the finger.

Even when your own economies were robust enough to give you the 30 hour work week and the whole month of August off, we still couldn't pony up enough to keep you in beer, skittles, prosciutto, and fromage.

This situation has made us poorer than we would otherwise have been. There are a lot of things here at home we could have spent the money on -- schools, infrastructure, scholarships, lower taxes, aid to dependent children, and the kind of local American charities that always need help such as the grossly underfunded "You can send Al Sharpton a ball gag or you can turn the page" Relief Organization. We hope you'll understand when we say we need just a year or so of working the "Charity begins at home" concept in order to catch up. And frankly things are a little tight over here and we need to cut back on luxuries such as, well, you.

It's also more than a little depressing to wake up every day and find your "UNtellectuals" in The New York Times  blathering on and on about how stingy and uncaring Americans are.

Hence, Americans are taking the a few years off not only to save many, many billions/trillions of dollars, but for a time of reflection and boosting of the old "self-esteem." After all, you can't help others unless you feel good about yourself.

And let's face it, how can all you other nations (Egypt, The EU, Africa, South America, Mexico, and all the worthy, struggling and proud totalitarian Islamic states) feel good about yourselves when all you do is push your shabby stolen grocery carts around Washington sucking up for a hand-out? We've got our own American Washingtonian suck-ups working overtime as it is. Brother, these days we just cannot spare a dime or, frankly, give a damn.

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In a comment to the Belmont Club's In and Out of Eden, Belmont's host, Richard Fernandez offers some prescient thoughts on strength, weakness, and nuclear Weapons.
77. wretchard

Responding to: Israel has been in that position, more or less, for six-plus decades now, and that's just the modern state. Yet the Israelis, who are there already at "kill or be killed", do not kill. One would think that peace-loving folks might grant a small nod of recognition to that.

Fernadez writes:

Why would anyone believe, even for a moment, that any Western state could "pre-emptively" nuke the Muslim world when it cannot muster the will to secure its borders, balance its budget, get Pakistan to release a diplomat or get Argentina to release a C-17's cargo load of equipment? That would be like thinking that man who can't run 50 yards can run the 100 meter dash in 9.5 seconds.

The path to nukes is far more probably going to take the path of use in desperation. And in fact a country which secured its borders, drilled for its own oil, got Pakistan to release diplomats, and did the normal things would be the only kind of country which might use nukes pre-emptively because it conceive of such a strategy. Yet ironically it would be the kind of country that wouldn't have to attack pre-emptively. The idea of country going straight from supine behavior to nuking pre-emptively is a fantasy built on the awareness of weakness. Solve the weakness and then your enemies will consider you capable of pre-emption. But guess what: solve the weakness and you won't have to pre-empt. They will back away.

This is all elementary game theory; and tried, true and hoary deterrence theory. Be strong and you won't need to use nukes. Be weak and you'll use them for sure.

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***

We want a whole race perpetually in pursuit of the rainbow's end, never honest, nor kind, nor happy now.... THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS

"Ten years," as a friend reminded me about the asinine predictions of Paul Ehrlich, "is the ideal time frame for prognostication and problem solving. It's not so far away that people just ignore it, nor is it close enough that it gives people any expectations that can be held against the person who sets the time table. "

Even dullards must have noticed the dreaded "ten year" solution label that's been slapped onto Obama's Deficit "Be Cool I Got This" Budget. Yes, in only ten years this will all work out.... you fools.

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Happy 100th Birthday President Reagan

On the eve of what would have been President Ronald Reagan's 100th birthday, his attempted assassin, John Hinckley Jr., has found love at the mental hospital he's called home for 29 years. The deranged stalker who shot Reagan in the chest and injured three others in 1981 is dating Cynthia Bruce, a former psychiatric patient he met at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington. -- CAGED CASANOVA - WWW.THEDAILY.COM

More proof, if proof were needed, that this society has decided that traitors and assassins get special favors for being so, well, "special."

Hinckley tried to kill Reagan just 69 days into his presidency. He fired six bullets at him and, "The sixth and final bullet ricocheted off the side of the limousine and hit the president in his left underarm, grazing a rib and lodging in his lung, stopping nearly an inch from his heart."

"An inch. From his heart." One more inch and the world in which we live today would have been changed, changed utterly, in ways that will always be unknown, but can easily been supposed to be much worse. All of Reagan's major achievements lay ahead of him 69 days into his presidency and this man, this happy and fulfilled insect you can see in the photo above, would have stolen all that from the world.

I know many among us would be pleased to denigrate then and now the achievements that, when the gun was fired, still lay in the future of the Reagan presidency. But I hope most would have just a small moment of pause if they could imagine what might happen, now and in the future -- and to the future -- if the same attempt were to be made on the life of the current president. Assassin's bullets cannot always be depended upon to stop "an inch from the heart." No bullet fired in anger should ever be allowed to come within a mile of a sitting president.

Now maybe you thought, just for a moment, that a man who tries, and nearly succeeds, in killing a president of the United States would have to spend the rest of his miserable life in prison cut off from the freedoms and pleasures of law-abiding citizens. Well, as a friend says, "Isn't it pretty to think so?"

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"Arabs could be swung on an idea as on a cord; for the unpledged allegiance of their minds made them obedient servants. None of them would escape the bond till success had come, and with it responsibility and duty and engagements. Then the idea was gone and the work ended--in ruins.

"Without a creed they could be taken to the four corners of the world (but not to heaven) by being shown the riches of earth and the pleasures of it; but if on the road, led in this fashion, they met the prophet of an idea, who had nowhere to lay his head and who depended for his food on charity or birds, then they would all leave their wealth for his inspiration.

"They were incorrigibly children of the idea, feckless and colour-blind, to whom body and spirit were for ever and inevitably opposed. Their mind was strange and dark, full of depressions and exaltations, lacking in rule, but with more of ardour and more fertile in belief than any other in the world. They were a people of starts, for whom the abstract was the strongest motive, the process of infinite courage and variety, and the end nothing.

"They were as unstable as water, and like water would perhaps finally prevail. Since the dawn of life, in successive waves they had been dashing themselves against the coasts of flesh. Each wave was broken, but, like the sea, wore away ever so little of the granite on which it failed, and some day, ages yet, might roll unchecked over the place where the material world had been, and God would move upon the face of those waters. One such wave (and not the least) I raised and rolled before the breath of an idea, till it reached its crest, and toppled over and fell at Damascus. The wash of that wave, thrown back by the resistance of vested things, will provide the matter of the following wave, when in fullness of time the sea shall be raised once more.

From Seven Pillars of Wisdom

First published here on July 30, 2003

Pardon my incivility, but I find myself wanting to just slap this Limey gobbler sideways with a sledgehammer. I can't help it. It's the Scot in me.

The standard-issue BBC bullshit reads: "Sculptor and artistic luminary Antony Gormley shares his wisdom on matters ecological. “Dispense with your socks,” says he. “This is a time of global warming. Through our feet we can begin to feel it.” This is no doubt because “our feet connect with our brains” and “engage with time.” And what’s more, “through our feet we can begin to be one people, standing through gravity on one Earth.” Yes, standing through gravity, united in our socklessness. Go barefoot for Gaia, people. It’s “an act of solidarity.” -- Via davidthompson: Go Barefoot for Gaia

It's steak state dinner time at the International House of Ocakes (I'HO) tonight. Uncle Jefe sent this one in so we'll never forget it.

I cannot bring a world quite round,
Although I patch it as I can.
-- Wallace Stevens

I can't look at the face with the shaved head and insect eyes, but I see it everywhere. I won't eat the pellets of pundit kibble but they are strewn at my feet everywhere and need to be scraped off the shoes of my soul. I can't read the he-said/she-said bicker that flickers on the tube and screen, but it is repeated and repeated until the drivel flows higher than my knees.

It's always like this in media memeland where the news travels faster than thought and the usual perpetrators of the lie spew their usual lies. The "narrative" is set out in templates as rigid as rebar laced through concrete: Nothing to hear here, move along. Nothing to see here, move along. Nothing new to be here, move along.... Oh, by the way, see those people over there? Yes, the ones who had nothing to do with it. They did it. What? You don't believe me. Come over here and let me shout it in your ear over and over until you can't hear yourself think. Repeat after me: "Even though they had nothing to do with it, they did it." Got that? Good. Now go and vote likewise.

The reduction of tragedy to political commentary in this age is a banality. To point to it is only to extend it. To use insanity to count coup on political opponents is not insanity, it is evil.

Lunatics have always been with us and always will be. Insanity is an "occupational hazard" of being "the smart monkey." In the sixties our keepers decided that it would be a "good idea" to deinstitutionalize the insane among us. Like all "humane" ideas it started small and over the decades grew to a flood until the insane walk among us on our streets with little hindrance. We lump them with addicts and alcoholics and bums and kindly call them all "homeless." As such, they hide in plain site until they choose to make their madness manifest. And then we wonder how all the "signals" could have been "missed," why "something" was not done to protect the insane from themselves and others from their manias.

But "something" was done. It was the "humane" thing to do to free our lunatics and to make it, slowly, as difficult as possible to re-institutionalize them and keep them there. It wasn't chance that killed in Tuscon. It was policy.

And now, among many others, a little child is shot dead.

Across the street, it's morning recess. Hundreds of children run back and forth on the playground shouting and laughing, their last cares of childhood forgotten in the next moment. The coming cares hidden far beyond the present moment. Some will be heroes, most will be decent people with the standard measure of joy and sorrow in their lives to come. One or two will come to a bad end. Some will find life unfair. One, here or there or elsewhere, will sink into the pit of madness from which there is no return.

And that one, then, will become a face with insect eyes that cannot be looked at but is much commented on by pundits who, in the end, have nothing to say to anyone at all -- and speak only to the single glass eye and directly to the mute button.

Long ago a friend who knew many in our permanent pundit class of "clever sillies" had nothing but scorn for them. She described their "professional" pretensions as "intellectual insanity." She was right and if you would see the proof, scan the web or channel surf the news nexi. In Arizona one lunatic is in a cell. In media memeland the others simply spew their vitriol, smear their feces on the nation's walls, collect a check, and go to dinner.

---

When I was a child
I caught a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye
I turned to look but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now
The child is grown,
The dream is gone.
I have become comfortably numb.

Continued...

"Jihad Muhammad explains the principles of Kwanzaa while lighting a candle on the Kinara at United Urban Network Inc./Steel City Renaissance "Christmas for the Children: A tribute to Michael Jackson."

"Area families got the chance to have a few hours of holiday cheer and honor the late King of Pop Thursday during a party at the 529 Bar and Grill. Christmas for the Children: A Tribute to Michael Jackson" was sponsored by a local not-for-profit organization, United Urban Network, founded by Cassandra Cannon." -- Post-Tribune

Mark Steyn pointed out this klassic Kwanzaa kwaziness this AM. It was a shock to me since I'd pretty much assumed that Kwanzaa had been sent down to the pop-cultural chop shop to be parted out.

Silly me. I should know by now that anything pulled out of the thin air by paranoid schizophrenics as something to "illuminate" the muddled masses can never, ever, be sent to the boneyard of history. There's always some "Jihad Muhammad" lurking out there to push the poison down to the next generation. I guess this means there's a movement afoot to make Michael Jackson the Santa Klaus of Kwanzaa. After all, he was really into giving free things and free rides to kids to be naughty and nice. Jihad Muhammad is probably looking for a steady job in making this myth. Like Michael Jackson, he's doing it for the children.

UPDATE: Roland Shirk has the details on the Jihad Muhammad festivities and much, much more about Kwanzaa and the execrable Ron Karenga in A Gift from the Grinch @ Jihad Watch

The party was sponsored by the Gary-based not-for-profit the United Urban Network, whose CEO, Cassandra Cannon, explained, "Today, we decided to honor a Gary native who cared a lot about children and he has said in the past that he would love to return to his hometown and help the children." The prospect of Jackson's ghost returning to Gary and prowling the city to "help the children" seems better suited to Halloween than Christmas--bringing us back again to Tim Burton territory. The event apparently featured "pasta dishes, tamales, vegetable, salad and cake, children and adults," and Christmas songs by "American Idol's Season 9 contestant Marcus Jones and Michael Jackson impersonator Dashon Butler," most prominently "The Little Drummer Boy."

Included is a fine quote from Ann Coulter's Kwanzaa: Holiday From The FBI :

"Coincidentally, the seven principles of Kwanzaa are the very same seven principles of the Symbionese Liberation Army, another charming invention of the Worst Generation. "

[HT: Jewel VIA Tasty Infidelicacies ]

I like to update the old memes from time to time. Just for fun. Tonight....

YouTube - GOP Rep. Buyer Blasts Acting Dem Speaker: "This is why the People have Thrown You Out"

Watch and feel the nausea rise in your soul.

Continued...

"Tens" ? Click it and see what you think.

If you count tens in fifties you can say that I suppose. Times reporters are doing their best on the spinner with Glenn Beck Leads Religious Rally at Lincoln Memorial - NYTimes.com

WASHINGTON — Tens of thousands of people rallied at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday, summoned by Glenn Beck, a conservative broadcaster who called for a religious rebirth in America at the site where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech 47 years ago to the day.

Meanwhile... (same article)

Across town, several hundred people packed a football field at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School to stage a rally commemorating Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

With a football field containing some 5,000 square yards hundreds of people have to feel very crowded, doncha know?

HEY! You! No guffaws. No chortling. These beclowned designers are serious: Dowling Duncan redesigns the US bank notes

The depressing thing here is that the braindead firm of Dowling Duncan actually thinks this adds value.

Continued...

Most honest birthday card from hard-core Obama supporters:

In a very real sense, that's the point of the whole Obama Experiment, isn't it?

In the meantime, on this day more than any other day, the bamboozlin' continues:

Continued...

Continued...

Hayek's classic The Road to Serfdom in comic-book format. Background:

The book was originally published in 1944. A condensed version of the book written by Max Eastman was then published as the lead article in the April issue of Reader's Digest, with a press run of several million copies. This condensed version was then offered as a Book of the Month selection with a press run of over 600,000 copies. In February 1945 a picture-book version was published in Look magazine, later made into a pamphlet and distributed by General Motors. [Reproduced here.] The book has been translated into approximately 20 languages and is dedicated to "The socialists of all parties." In 2007, the University of Chicago Press put out a "Definitive Edition." In total the book has sold over two million copies.

Continued...

If this 10 minute one-man reverse parade doesn't give you pause, have another cup of coffee.

As the last comment says, "Discussion on this video is now closed, thank you all for your support and participation! "

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