Less news is good news—for now
Have you noticed a certain flatness in the news lately?
The election is over. Bush-bashing is no longer so much fun—nor so necessary—because he’s on the way out. Very very soon, they won’t have him to kick around anymore— although I’m pretty sure they’ll keep on trying.
Iraq is relatively stable, and thus off the media radar screen. Israel and Palestine are—Israel and Palestine. The economy is bad, but that’s not news, and now the initial shock is over. Obama is waiting in the wings, but hasn’t really done much except make appointments and speeches, and bare his torso in Hawaii.
Will the lull last a while? Or is this the calm before the storm?:
And all the news just repeats itself
Like some forgotten dream that we’ve both seen.
Someday I’ll go and call up Rudy,
We worked together at the factory.
But what could I say if he asks “What’s new?”
“Nothing, what’s with you? Nothing much to do.”
Well, even though the news seems to be repeating itself lately, that most assuredly won’t last long. Remember the pre-9/11 summer of 2001, when the biggest stories were about shark attacks?
Real news of import is always a surprise, always unexpected. That’s why it’s called news.
Bush bashing is still an active compulsion: check out today’s LA Times opinion section.
I would pay attention to south america, and over to korea… interesting things mostly in the first, and we forget paying attention to the other.
games on blogs would continue.
lrtranslations.blogspot.com/2007/02/commissars-of-internet.html
and the financial transformations as each segment nationalizes themselves through a financial vehicle agreement rather than declarative fiat.
this is kind of important (spanish)
Manifiesto “En Defensa de Nicaragua”
http://www.lavozdelsandinismo.com/nicaragua/2008-12-26/manifiesto-en-defensa-de-nicaragua/
more than 1,200 individuals, organizations, and political parties–most from Latin America but also other regions–endorsed the manifesto
i see israel will not back down till they have gone through hammas, or until another leader steps into office and will say something that he is not saying now since there is only one president or something to that effect. which is why they probably will not let up for 9 more days. [the second front seemed to be false flag and the parties didnt bite the lure]
europe will keep us focused on gas games from russia..
the pakistan indian thing is not hot enough, so something may happen there.
what i wish i could get a nip on is what is all this noise hiding.. with the world bank computers and the pentagon computers recently compromised. communications cables cut (to see how long they would take to recover, and switch business to a brand new satellite that went up a few weeks before the incidents. this giving a lot of access to the information between countries and businesses)
we now have a new inexperienced president, a new inexperienced head of cia, etc.. Burris is a waste of time distraction game…
i think we will hear a lot more of the devaluation of the pound… so they are knocking the euro..
Uks conversion towards electronic totalitarianism is moving faster (they plan now to store emails, among tons of other things).
so my money on next incident is south of the border on the american continent.
As Tom Wolfe said, the press is a colonial animal; or as Artfldgr would say, they exhibit flocking behavior. They react, they don’t anticipate. Right now, they can’t figure out what the New Narrative will be.
Trouble in South America might be over-determined, but I think the real news will come from Russia and China. And it won’t be good.
Wait, here’s some news, and it involves Richard Haass, whom we have seen before.
http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2009/01/09/partners-for-peace/
Wretchard links to The Guardian.
The only thing I’ve seen on the news – and about everywhere else for that matter – is massive over coverage of The Chosen One.
Heck, I understand he’s even showing up in a Spiderman comic now! I mean, dayumn!
I’m wondering just how long this can go on before the nation collectively begins to suffer from Obama overexposure?
Good example to think of – remember the “Achy Breaky Heart” song of years ago?
NOBODY plays it anymore (and I’m sure a few winced when they remembered it), and for good reason – just so much overexposure people got sick of it, and it seems to have derailed that particular singer’s career for many years as a result.
Now imagine that on a national scale with the media and their Beloved Leader.
Of course, if his popularity starts to drop, then their kneejerk reaction is going to be to pour on more of the same.
They may very well do more damage to themselves with this idolizing behaviour than the opposition could ever hope to accomplish with simple facts.
The – Everything is Bush’s fault – concept is built to last.
Jobs and Economies, Wars and Terrorism, Heatwaves and hurricanes etc. etc.
It’s all on Dubya. Obama, on the other hand is going to get the free pass. Nice for him.
Considering where you spent your youth, I would not have considered you a John Prine fan at any time.
“Have you noticed a certain flatness in the news lately?”
are you kidding – The IDF is currently killing hundreds of children but that does not make an impact on you.
lull?
calm?
what planet do you live on?
This mess is that idiot Bush’s last hurrah. Let the IDF run riot while he is still in power. A disgraceful man conducts one last disgraceful foreign policy blunder.
Hey Token Lefty, are you baiting us?
no I just do not understand how you can think the news is “flat” when the IDF is out there killing on such a large scale and Bush is encouraging them
Ah yes, “token lefty,” I’m applauding all the child-killing, of course. As do all conservatives.
In case you haven’t noticed, I am being sarcastic. If you had read anything I’ve written on this blog about the subject, you would see what my actual opinion is. Not that you’re interested, but here are a couple of relevant selections: this, this, this, and this.
I haven’t noticed less news, what I have noticed is I have lost my obsession with it. Every presidential election my passions get ramped up and I started reading all the analysis in print and in the blogoshere. I can’t get enough of it.
But now my eyes glaze over when I started reading any lengthy item about politics or about the economy. I have figured out that this economy will be terrible for two years and that my 401K well not recover for more years than that, if ever.
I have already figured out that Obama will not be able to change much in Washington and that he has little power to effect the economy.
The trouble spots in the world will continue to be very troubling and the solutions will be incremental, with painful set backs. We will continue to face dangerous adversaries who wish us death and we will keep a vigilant watch on their activities.
I find that I am turning the channel to more history stuff on TV, more archeology stuff and cooking shows. Oh, and the Animal Channel. Feel good stuff.
It’s good to get away from the news and politics for a while. Life is more enjoyable.
No doubt this will end and something will get me all heated up again.
Wanna get your blood boiling?
Barack Obama’s new website USAService.org
Rather laugh? What’s An Obot? or “You might be an Obot if…”
It’s all in the comments.
Obama is utterly corrupt.
Remember when public financing of elections was a liberal passion? Obama dumped it so that he could raise 3/4 billion dollars. Where did that money come from?
Obama, I’m afraid, is deep in the corruption that Blago represents. It was slowly creep up on him.
Meanwhile, the left will scream that even mentioning the corruption is “racist.”
I see a bad moon on the rise.
Hey, Token,
When your Palestinian buddies refrain from and apologize for little things like Ma’alot, Munich, Lod Airport (yes, I know it was contracted out to the Japanese Red Army, but it was still the Palestinians calling the shots), Air France/Entebbe, Vienna OPEC meeting (targeting other Arabs, btw), Rome and Vienna Airports, Tel Aviv pizza parlor bombing, Jerusalem wedding hall bombing, Tel Aviv Dolphinarium bombing, and every bus bombing that they ever did–all of which killled and injured innocent people–then maybe, just maybe, you’ll have a tiny bit of standing to criticize Israeli actions. Until then, you have none. Your Palestinian friends have a long and bloody history of gleefully killing innocent civilians. In fact, they prefer to target civilians because, cowards that the Palestinian “military” groups are, civilians can’t shoot back (although that’s often not true in Israel). The IDF could have flattened Gaza anytime it wanted to. Not that it would look much different. It might even be an improvement. But that they’re doing so now means the Israelis have finally had enough. So before you shed any more crocodile tears about Palestinian “children”, reflect on the murderous nature of the movement you have chosen to support. The same one that danced on 9/11/2001. Were you dancing with them, too?
I’m just hoping the Israeli’s take out Iran’s nuclear facilities. the rest of the world knows it has to be done, but they won’t do it, dare not do it, including us. Israel is doing our work for us.
I am hoping beyond hope that Obama supports them once he takes office, but i suspect they know they have 10, now 9 days left.
His unreported upon record (LA Times!) does not look good for Israel.
Since I was in high school I have heard that when World War III comes it will be the Middles East, not Russia. I hope to God it doesn’t come to that.
Well said, waltj.
My contempt and disgust for the Paleoswines knows no limits.
Pour it on, Israel. Pour it on.
I’m with Spoot on having to ramp down my news consumption since the election. It turns out 98% of what i miss out on is pure speculation of what “might” happen anyway.
Now if i could kick my weather channel habit i’d likely discover that drought ridden areas experiencing DANGEROUS FLOODING is really not all bad news.
A troll. How droll. When IDF finishes the job maybe they can cleanse enclaves in the USA, such as Dearborn, Ann Arbor, Cleveland Heights, Berkely, et. al.
Neo, this HAS to be a story:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/washington/11iran.html?hp
I’m sure Wretchard will mine this for all the open source intelligence possible, but here again we have the Times revealing the existence of on-going covert operations against the Iranian nuclear program, and we can inder that the administration is jawboning the Times to keep certain operational details from coming to light. I also note that the story emerges after Mr. Obama’s team starts to receive their transition briefings.
So who leaked, and for what purpose?
“inder” should be “infer”
I read your posts neo and if what you say is true – and obviously i don’t agree – why are the IDF giving Hamas yetr more martyrs? Seems all this violence is what Hamas thrive on. For many PAlestinians this is a disaster, for Hamas it is exactly the situation they want as it will get them more support an denable them to say to the world if you think we are bad look at the Israelies.
As I said above it is part of a disgraceful – and poorly thought out Bush foreign policy.
Token lefty,
I think it is you sir with a disgraceful and poorly thought out foreign or even basic life policy.
By your logic, anyone with a death wish could mug you and your family at will? This absurdity could probably let me sell you a piece of shit car if only i let you know my feelings beforehand that i really have no interest in selling it to you.
Please don’t have any offspring if you haven’t already.
SteveH – I am afraid you have missed the point made. If the IDF want to end rocket attacks from Gaza by randomly killing large numbers of Palestinians is not going to achieve this. Instead it is more likely to increase support and funding for Hamas which will certainly cheer them up.
The proof of the Israeli action will be seen in the weeks and months to come. If there are still attacks from these crappy rockets then the whole thing will be a failure, and may well have made the situation worse.
I wish you and your offspring well
Rose
Since I was in high school I have heard that when World War III comes it will be the Middles East, not Russia. I hope to God it doesn’t come to that.
Even if it is the middle east, its not the middle east…
The Arafat I Knew
He hasn’t changed since his days as a KGB-backed terrorist.
by ION MIHAI PACEPA
Wall Street Journal, Saturday, January 12, 2002
http://www.weizmann.ac.il/home/comartin/israel/pacepa-wsj.html
So who leaked, and for what purpose?
the other side leaks… ever notice that the guys that are tin hatters always have secrets, but they tend to be secrets against the US? someone feeds them…
People like “token lefty” are one among many reasons why I left the Left back in ’87. I entered the Left at age 22 and left the Left at age 32, which is somewhat ahead of the schedule from that now famous Churchillian adage about “if you’re not a socialist at 20 you have no heart and if you’re not a conservative at age 40 you have no brain.”
So, how old are you, token lefty?
One of the reasons why people like Token Lefty disgust me is exhibited in one of his latest posts, where he asserts that the IDF is engaged in “random killings” of Arab civilians. Anyone familiar with the IDF tactics and what they are doing, as a matter of practice and doctrine, knows that the utmost care is taken to not “randomly kill” non combatants.
This slander is all the more infuriating when one considers the deliberate tactic by Hamas and other Muslim terror organizations to use civilians as shields for their fighters and weaponry. Morally, those who use non combatants as shields for military targets are the ones culpable. But these idiots never hears about any sophisticated moral reasoning from the classic traditions.
And the Left NEVER protests the attacks made by the Muslims against Jews. As a veteran of the Left from the Seventies and Eighties, I know the visceral hatred they have for Israel and Jews, because I had to often take unpopular stands against my fellow Marxists in defense of Israel and Jews. And a few times this was done against the vituperative opinions of Marxists WHO WERE THEMSELVES ETHNIC JEWS!
Anyway, it is very decent of Neo to tolerate people like “Token Lefty” to come on over here and use the blog as their outhouse.
Token Lefty
If the IDF want to end rocket attacks from Gaza by randomly killing large numbers of Palestinians is not going to achieve this.
Parrot alert, parrot alert, parrot alert!!
He admits that there are rocket attacks from Gaza, however he falsely assigns RANDOMLY and LARGE. Looks like he is one of those people I mentioned in a prior post. (Maybe, maybe not. though I have bumped into some… now I don’t get any talks with them, and often now when I start to respond to their posts, I get a fast bow out and they disappear rather than have me lay out uncomfortable history rather than a chorus from the choir).
It’s a spoonful of sugar technique; you accept rocket attacks and hopefully then accept the second part with it without questioning it. Very base.
Random – of or characterizing a process of selection in which each item of a set has an equal probability of being chosen. / Without definite aim, purpose, method, or adherence to a prior arrangement; in a haphazard way
The useful idiot/fellow traveler/true believer hopes we will not realize that point. That his FALSE assignation to the events will stick to the wall (like his prior nights underwear).
The IDF, unlike hammas is using precision weapons. Such weapons, designed in the west have only one purpose. To mitigate the damage done to civilians who are caught between things.
True to form of propaganda from this source, everything is inverted. Its now so blatant a form you can almost identify the sources by it.
Hammas rockets have no targeting, are set up in random location, near buildings in which their civilians will be harmed if an opposing force responds with prejudice.
Isreals response is scheduled (not random), is using precision weapons (not random), is dropping flyers warning civilians to get away (not random), and is using electronic means to fire their mortars and shells, to combat shoot and scoot… the school that so many died in was wired by the terrorists, so that a shock wave outside, detonated the explosives all linked up on the inside.. (easy to do. just run det cord to all your stuff, and run a piece out the window with small plastique on it. if the mortar or rocket battery explodes, the explosion triggers the plastic, and so triggers the det cord and the whole series)
The opponents are doing the classical soviet blame the opposition for the evil YOU do, that way you NEVER get caught doing something that people don’t think the other side is doing. meanwhile, have people sit at desks and respond like this in kind all over. either on their own in the west, or as has been determined, by those from another state (anyone care to look at the ip addresses of the people who post? That sometimes gets interesting as to the sources).
So Token Lefty, is not being trutful at all… caught at one thing, the idea is to be contrite and nice, while injecting crap in the apologee… (its so common a thing when the subject is of concern of certain others).
Instead it is more likely to increase support and funding for Hamas which will certainly cheer them up.
This statement is irrelevant since its point is based on the prior false statement. In other words, the attacks are not random and indiscriminate, and so it will not increase support for them much. of course, the solution is open to totalitarians is not open to idf… (which is to go door to door, and kill anyone who is questionable, and level any area if one home is found with weapons along with the people — the way the socialists do)
If there are still attacks from these crappy rockets then the whole thing will be a failure, and may well have made the situation worse.
Not at all.. your again using the arguing against a false perfection, implying that your solution would be perfect while the other isnt.
When they argue about Christian doctrine making better people, they then point to something, like bad priests, to prove that the concept is false, due to lack of perfection. As if any doctrine is 100% just for learning it. it’s a completely false concept. (meanwhile they have not read bella dodd who talks about HER operations putting bad priests in the church and others to protect them to create just such an opinion of the church. Or the left blowing up the homes of blacks in the south to create the concept of southern racism… and tons of other things)
The idea here is that Israel is the oppressor, so the left ideology says that Israel has to just stand and take it till Israel no longer exists. While anything the other side does, is justice. so he cant see any kind of fairness, since his whole view of reality is based on power, and a false concept of it (in which he defends the leadrs who use a different view to use the others).
The fact is that if you go back… back to the start just before wwii… when they didn’t hate each other… and you study the history… you will find out that the LEFT has fomented this since day one. first Hitler, the leftist we like to blame for everything so as not to blame the others for anything. he worked with the mullahs and rewrote the Koran (the same way that the US rewrote nostradamous, but don’t let that stop all those fake documentaries on history and science who fail to tell you this). later, russia took over this by operating through the Romanian DIE and the Czech STB… (as the STB worked on indonesia).
So token left… care to discuss all these big empty blaming phrases and things you spout on a one to one based in facts?
a John Prine fan too…
you’re incredible neo-neo.
if team obama did it, and they are stalinists and maoists… then why not the actual state organs?
http://www.noquarterusa.net/blog/2009/01/09/whats-an-obot/
The word “Obot” came about mostly to describe a paid blogger; there were lots of those during the long campaign. Many were only in it for the money, but most truly believed they were fighting the good fight by attacking his opponents and their supporters mercilessly… and sometimes nonsensically. They were given daily email calls to action, with talking points (they all said the same things), and were basically brain-washed kids.
welcome to the new world… basically a piss cake..
1. I am 47 and Churchill helped to introduce free education, the welfare state and socialised medical care to the UK which, for a non-socialist, is not bad going.
2. “He admits that there are rocket attacks from Gaza, however he falsely assigns RANDOMLY and LARGE.” Well I suppose large is up for debate but it appears to be hundreds and that seems quite large.
If the IDF are not randomly killing civilians but are doing it with “precision” weapons then it appears to be a lot worse, i.e. murder.
3. “Instead it is more likely to increase support and funding for Hamas which will certainly cheer them up.
This statement is irrelevant ”
no it is not. This IDF action will lead to more not less violence
Token is not stupid. He knows better.
He’s hoping, as lefties do, that fooling one of the terminally gullible is worth convincing a hundred others that he’s absolutely without moral or intellectual credibility.
I don’t get the math, but the lefties seem to think it works for them.
Token Lefty,
you are basically wanting concessions…
“It would be the greatest mistake, certainly, to think that concessions mean peace. Nothing of the kind. Concessions are nothing but a new form of war.” — V.I. Lenin
token lefty,
free education
“We must declare openly what is concealed, namely, the political function of the school…It is to construct communist society.” — V.I. Lenin
ah… well, your history is not quite correct (at least your consistent)…
Venona transcripts support espionage allegations for Julius Rosenberg, …. Arthur Miller, John Dewey, Reinhold Niebuhr, Lewis Mumford,
he was a communist spy… (and he had an equivalent in engladn.. just as england and each country has an equivalent of sanger… that should be telling in itself)
John Dewey is recognized as the Father of modern education. The N.E.A. gave him high recognition for his works. Much of his changes to schools was made possible by the theory of evolution being so strongly accepted after the writings of Charles Darwin. John Dewey wrote a theory of education and democracy that was based on evolution.
The education theories of Dewey would not have been so acceptable to people had it not been for the previous acceptance of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.That theory was widely received around the world. Evolution praises change and declares the highest good is a positive change. Darwin’s theory helped strengthen the ideas of relativism and positivism which had been around for ages but were reinforced by John Dewey.
John Dewey developed ideas of evolutionary democracy and evolutionary education and evolutionary law.
Those ideas had as their foundation the premise that nothing is constant. He said the only constant good is change for the good, ie positivism. He did not measure things from any absolute standards, but from a relative perception based on human desire.
Relativism denies absolutes. God is absolute. The word of God teaches absolutes. Evolution flies in the face of God’s word.
Relativism and positivism are destructive ideologies that sheer men away from the truth a little at a time.
These ideas were used by John Dewey and Carl Marx and even Joseph Stalin to lead people astray.
Engels wrote that if you could remove a people from their roots, they could be easily swayed to your point of view.
===============
arrghh… he is a true leftist… (the operatives that play give up once the amount of real history grows. at that point they know they are doing a negative to the cause, rather than a positive, while real useful idiots are trying to copy them, but dont know when they are hurting the cause, since they dont know when to stop)
If the IDF are not randomly killing civilians but are doing it with “precision” weapons then it appears to be a lot worse, i.e. murder.
you are really very ignorant are you?
their mortar batteries, tanks, and other things are geared to electronically seek out the launch site..
so, if you launch from the alley way between a scholl and a hospital, the military machine will respond automatically and put a shell within 1 yard of the launch.
if they put their launches in the middle of a field and still used cell phones to launch, they would get a big hole in a field..
instead, they launch from schools they rig with explosives so that the smaller damage of one mortar on a rocket site, causes the larger damage of a builginf full of those THEY are targeting for their own needs.
so in essence you are blaming isreal for responding to the rockets where they are fired. and refusing to blame the people who are wiring up the locations, and purposefully placing their military equipment on UN territory to draw fire on themselves, and the innocents.
if you dont like bombs there is only one alternative, and i bet you would hate that more!!! the ONLY alternative to open confrontation, and open response with rules and warnings… is dark ops.
that is, forget the military, and flood the state with assasins… then coldly go about eradicating hamas through assasination squads operating on sovereign soil outside announcement of war and conflict and terms.
the IDEOLOGY, going back to marx and engals calls for the holocaust of the middle class.
“All the other large and small nationalities and peoples are destined to perish before long in the revolutionary world storm [socialist holocaust that the germans started but didn’t finish, which is why we don’t focus on what it was, but on only half of whom was killed. Contrary to being a unwanted thing, it was key from the start and vision of it]… these residual fragments of peoples always become fanatical standard-bearers of counter-revolution and remain so until their complete extirpation or loss of their national character [what happens to those supporting the CHANGE now]… [A general war will] wipe out all these petty hidebound nations, down to their very names. The next world war [world war and exterminations are key to socialist politics — which is why lefts are yelling to put the jews in ovens again!] will result in the disappearance from the face of the earth not only of reactionary classes and dynasties, but also of entire reactionary peoples [Jews, Christians, capitalists, etc]. And that, too, is a step forward. [so socialism defined progress as the tortured extermination of the jews, and protestors, gays, etc. once they are done using people to change the state to grant them ownership of all property, while we as people have none (making us slaves!)]” — Friedrich Engels, “The Magyar Struggle,” Neue Rhenische Zeitung, January 13, 1849
hitler and stalin and maos and all the other killings including the holocaust are key to the ideology! (and the destruction of culture so as, engals says, mold the people into new sociakist man)
supporters like you token left, are exterminated…
you are considered a traitor by the new regime. you are facilitating the downfall of your own state, and its replacement through revolution of a feudal slave state… when you find out the truth, you will then become a counterrefolutionary… so all that support this change, are exterminated as they cant be trusted… they have already proven that they are traitors, what else is left to prove? thats in the history too.
no it is not. This IDF action will lead to more not less violence
remember when you were in school?
remember when someone beat up the bully?
the bully stopped bothering them… if israel DISPROPORTIONATELY responds, then it will stop.
shoot 100 missiles for every 1 missile hamas shoots. and 0 if 0 shoots…
guess what… the problem will end or there wont be enough left to shoot back.
the ONLY reason they get support is that their supporters think they can win. adn they think so because the world can hold down israel while they beat up on them…
the minute that you cant hold them down anymore… and they respond each and every time.. the OVERT game will stop… and it will go back to covert bombings inside rather than overt bombings by missle.
if you were in wwii, and in england you would be protesting that england was bombing germany bcause of the V2 rocket.
in fact, you cant even see that your sidin with the same ideology of the nazis, and the same acts!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
duh.
He’s hoping, as lefties do, that fooling one of the terminally gullible is worth convincing a hundred others that he’s absolutely without moral or intellectual credibility.
I don’t get the math, but the lefties seem to think it works for them.
they are acting like the paid op0eratives, but unnlike the paid operatives, they dont know when to quit.
if you divide the mass up into two piles, useful idiots/fellow travelers, and true believers/operatives, the math will make more sense. (so would knowing the history of the CPUSA when hitler and stalin went at each other and earl browder didnt know which side to take).
the usefuil idots are parrot mimicks, cargo cult copies of the more useful olperative kinds…
in the case of obama and blogs, the ones hiring are the true believers and operatices, the ones manning the stations and doing what they are told and what to answer from cheat sheets are useful idiots feeling good that they are traitors.
[they are traitors because they are working to change the very neature of the state, not improve it. or even let you know that this state is reformable, unlike the soviet state and kings which they are pretending we have. up is down, war is peace, etc]
look like hamas is betraying token lefty (kind of in the same place earl browder was in when the left here found out that hitler and stalin were partners and agreed to cut up the world between them)
Hamas acknowledges that most of the Palestinians killed by Israeli air raids are from their own ranks. But about 10%-15% of Gaza’s casualties are women and minors — a tragedy impossible to prevent in a densely settled area in which nearly half the people are under 15 and the terrorists hide among them.
The reason for Gaza’s endless youth bulge is that a large majority of its population does not have to provide for its offspring. Most babies are fed, clothed, vaccinated and educated by UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. Unlike the U.N. High Commission for Refugees, which deals with the rest of the world’s refugees and aims to settle them in their respective host countries, UNRWA perpetuates the Palestinian problem by classifying as refugees not only those who originally fled their homes, but all of their descendents as well.
UNRWA is benevolently funded by the U.S. (31%) and the European Union (nearly 50%) — only 7% of the funds come from Muslim sources. Thanks to the West’s largesse, nearly the entire population of Gaza lives in a kind of lowly but regularly paid dependence. One result of this unlimited welfare is an endless population boom. Between 1950 and 2008, Gaza’s population has grown from 240,000 to 1.5 million. The West basically created a new Near Eastern people in Gaza that at current trends will reach three million in 2040. Within that period, Gazans may alter the justifications and directions of their aggression but are unlikely to stop the aggression itself.
ok… so now what?
O.K., Token Lefty, I checked your factoids about Churchill and he did play a role in those things coming to pass in Britain. But eventually those things choke the economy with taxation.
Since I did not break with the Left until 1987, you may assume correctly that I did not vote for Ronald Reagan. Looking back on what the U.S. economy was like before Reagan’s restructuring of the economy and tax structure, keeping in mind that Paul Volker wrung inflation out of the double digit territory, I have to say that Carter, Ford, Nixon, and LBJ mishandled the economy. The Seventies were a BAAAAD decade if you were a young person looking for work. The U.S. economy barely grew at all.
Smaller government works. It took awhile for me to grasp this. It was not until I was in the M.B.A. program at Boston College that I truly absorbed the logic of it all.
My break with the Left was mainly due to the fact that philosophically and theologically I came to see the illusory nature of the utopian telos of Marxism/socialism.
Capitalism works. It is more consistent with liberty and with human nature. But that’s a lesson the kiddies and lassies who voted for Obama will eventually get during the next four years. Big time buyers’ remorse coming. And if not over the economy, then international crisis and national security brain farts will make the case for a change in their thought processes.
Let’s get something very clear. “Free” education is nothing of the sort. Rather, it is “prepaid” education–paid for with tax money so the family of the student doesn’t have to shell out a lump sum of cash for tuition and books, as is typically the case in countries without taxpayer-funded schools. I have no particular objection to taxpayer funded education. I’m a product of public schools myself, at least for most of high school, and believe that, like highways and libraries, schools are a legitimate expenditure of the people’s money. Now, the education bureaucracy is another story. But free they are not.
Same thing with socialized health care, which Lefty has the decency to call by its proper name. Again, prepaid, not free. I got to experience socialized medicine “lite” when I lived in Australia for several years. The Aussies have a hybrid health care system that provides socialized coverage for everything, but allows doctors and hospitals to see patients on a for-fee basis. It’s a good system if you’re very healthy or very sick. In-between conditions that can cause extreme discomfort but are not generally life-threatening, like kidney stones or gall bladder problems, get short shrift. You will get treated under the socialized plan, but the waiting lists can be long. A close colleague of mine had a kidney stone, and any delay is too long when it starts to move. But he was never in danger of dying, so he had to wait his turn. If you want to pony up yourself, there’s no wait, but fees are about what they are in the States, i.e., steep. So Aussies, who have a higher tax burden for the same level of income compared to Americans, dutifully get on the waiting lists and use the health care they’ve already paid for. You either ration by availability or you ration by cost. TNSTAAFL.
waltj,
As far as I can tell, looking at this issue of socialized medicine over the many years it has been debated here, to include my time on the Left years ago on up to the present when I have long since departed the Left, I have yet to read ANYTHING, anywhere when the proponents of socialized medicine have taken seriously the problem of this trade off that you brought up in your post above. It’s as if the empirical reality is not taken seriously by the liberals and Leftists.
It isn’t as if the evidence is hidden under the covers somewhere. It’s there – in plain sight. If these people are to be taken seriously, they have no choice but to address these problems when they talk about socializing medicine.
Why they do not do this begs for its own explanatory argument. I would like to see them attempt it.
Socialized medicines purpose is soft eugenics through mismanagement and rationing.
if ya want to think about it like a think tank would, then what would you think about a huge baby boomer populaiton, and retirement funds you wish to nab by changing the inhertance laws?
i wish people in general could see a thing where one odd law here, helps a goal there, etc. if you do this enough you start to see a pattern.
for instance… when a company always makes a mistake in their favor, but never yours, how long before you think its still mistakes? (if you have 25 million customers, you can get yourself a 125 million dollar loan by doing that, like directv did – long story). how long before someone figures out that they are being attacked passive aggressively rather because overt war and attacks failed? (even if you read their papers that describe unrestricted warfare as passive aggressive war while hiding under production)
if you look at things and go back to them and the arguments, you will find that most of the time there was a cogent argument against it up against the unknown future we got to try driving off the cliff to know logic (which most people intuitively fall to when they dont know logic. the comfortable illogic is nicer than the logic you have to work at).
the AMA said that the new welfare would lead to socialism…
(most of us didnt even notice the change over from history to social studies, and from personel offices to human resources either)
wow… 70 years out they were right… its leading to socialism and so marxism and communism… they are now all dead too, so i guess SOOL. (shtoutofluck)
hey! anyone here forget that the communists are still totalitarians?
we mostly have ignored the fact that labels do not change the nature of anything, just how we regard something, if we dont think absolutely.
we do not understand how bad this is, and how the ruling class (lets call them by their new title since what we say doesnt go, and what they say goes, as long as it isnt too fast and we riot or wake up) is using this to get us to accept things that by other words we would find attrocious.
this is all a long term project to poison how we think as a population just long enough to get us to aquiese to slavery. (they are about to make us so miserable we beg for deliverance… thats the theme through history).
anyone remember how the EU was sold? does it reflect what it was sold on, or has it violated the promises and the stated things that had they been believed would have ended it, rather than become true?
we are so dumb we cant tell that communism, scientific socialism, progressivism, pragmatism, marxism, feminism, keneysianism, fascism, socialism, international socialism, national socialism, democratic socialism, bolshivikism, menshivikism, maoism, and a long list of others are all facets of the same stone, all the same thing. (we laughed too much at the spam thing rather than getting the jesters warnings).
why? because if you change communist totalitarianism to communitarianism, we are too dumb to see the two words smashed together and believe it.
when we hear the words that obama is a transnational socialist, we cant pull out a theasaurus and say, international socialist, and who are they?
when the population on the left is told to call zion = nazi and no one protests, how dumb are we?
Fredhjr,
the whole game is how to win without that argument your talking about, because an enemy would never have the argument or the benificial solution. so everything won by the left, is always won by other means as their keepers advise them, as it has been through the past 90 years of our history.
mark my words…
just as they filed to change the constitution to allow obama to serve unlimited terms…
they are going to pass the law that will make us pets, just like you provide medicine to your animals if you own them. if you own a horse, you use some of the money you get from working them to take care of them, but you dont allow your horse to have property, do you?
WHO filed to change the constitution to allow Obama to serve unlimited terms? change.gov? USASErvice.org? the Obama team? has anyone reported on that?
True–the Media is directing their attention to foreign affairs and of course the upcoming elaborate party. The Bush bashing will play second fiddle for a while, however it will not be long before Obama’s inability to maintain his “Star Struct” audience will give way to reality, and once we are there, the Bush bashing will continue–surely one does not expect the Media to target Obama once the Promise of “Change” for the better seems to be taking much longer than many of the “Starry Eyed” voters anticipated.