Captain Obama: full speed ahead
Commenter Promethea writes:
It’s so creepy that Obama is able to do so many things that we can see are horrible. A short list: messing with bondholders, favoring auto unions at the expense of other auto people, giving money to ACORN, favoring “green energy” in a scam to benefit GE, planning to make tiny little cars in a country where millions drive long distances (the Plains States, for example”“has he ever driven in one of those?), pressuring Israel, blabbering about N. Korea, planning “hi-speed rail” (I love that one, cuz you still have to have a car after you arrive at the station, duh!).
Not to mention that the stimulus legislation was so all-fired important to stave off imminent collapse that it had to be passed immediately, before it could really be debated or even studied or in most cases even read. That was no accident; it is a basic part of Obama’s m.o. to attempt to effect changes with such dizzying speed that it is difficult to appreciate what’s really happening.
I’ve been blogging for over four years now. There’s usually been no scarcity of news, and rare is the day that I have to search for a topic. Usually, there are one or two that cry out to me. But about a month into the Obama administration, events started to come so fast and so furiously that it became hard to keep up with them, much less write about all the ones that seemed important. You might say that Obama’s strategy resembles the old carny game of whack-a-mole, and the opposition is trying frantically to keep up—and mostly losing.
The guy who wrote this Esquire piece comes from the opposite side of the political fence from me. He clearly can’t stand Republicans or Bush, and thinks the people who demonstrated at the April 15th tea parties are a lunatic fringe, yada yada yada. But he and I agree on one central thing—that Obama is working with unprecedented and disturbing speed, and that it’s intentional.
The title of the article that author Pierce (who, by the way, is mostly a sportswriter) wrote is “What If Obama’s Out of His Mind?” and it begins “Seriously. And don’t act as if you haven’t wondered.” I’m not so sure that Pierce is entirely serious in his speculation; he clearly admires Obama and what he’s doing, has utter contempt for the American people, and thinks that they—and especially the Republicans among them—are the truly crazy ones.
But I do believe that some small part of him is serious, and really does wonder if there’s something not quite right, something not entirely trustworthy and above-board, about Obama’s haste. It’s passages such as these that make me think that, for all Pierce’s hatred of the Right, he’s onto something when he writes:
Say what you will about the policy implications of seeming to do everything at once. Politically, it came onto his opponents like Stonewall Jackson’s soldiers pouring out of the forest at Chancellorsville. The basic, important subtext…[is] that, Jesus, this guy’s liable to do anything.
Well, not just anything; the things Obama is likely to do trend radically to the Left of what was expected by most people who weren’t paying a whole lot of attention during the campaign—which is most people.
And then there’s this, which makes me wonder whether Pierce isn’t tapping into a vaguely uneasy feeling that even some Obama-supporters are starting to get:
…[A]s we find ourselves at present in the maelstrom of the Obama Revolution, we can only hope that the president is as sober as he appears to be. For he may have campaigned on hope, but he’s governed with implacable audacity.
Most egomaniacs are out of their minds on some level.
He believes he is dragging us kicking and screaming into the promised land because it’s good for us. But for conservatives – even moderates – the only question is how badly is this not going to work? Is it going to be just a bigger-than-average government screw-up, or are we staring at catastrophe?
And what shall we do as it all dawns on us, given that a full one-third of the people are never going to see it no matter how bad it gets?
I don’t think Obama is all that relevant. He strikes me as the spokesmodel for others, because he himself is too weak, diffident, and undynamic to be running the show. Still trying to figure out who the others are.
Maybe, I guess. It’s only slightly less scary than thinking that maybe he is in charge.
Karl Rove has a wonderful article for the Wallstreet Journal today ( http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124467554761003983.html) that points out that of all of Obama’s plans, the one bit of damage that cannot be undone, once it goes through, is his healthcare plan.
I get the sense that government run health care is going to happen. There just are not enough votes to defeat it. That’s the bottom line. And the people who are ramming this through do not care how this is going to impact providers or patients. Their goal is to dismantle capitalism, one brick at a time, and for them to become the new nomenklatura is a social democratic state.
Occam, I think that one of the big names behind Obonga is George Soros. Look at all the money he gives to media 527’s, which in turn call the shots to the State Run Media. The media then stage-manages public opinion, which keeps Obonga’s poll numbers up, which in turn enables him to get his agenda put through Congress and the Senate.
Do I think people like George Soros are “humanitarian” or socialist? Not one iota. In reality, communism and socialism were ideological frameworks for a re-worked feudal oligarchy. The big money people – almost all of them – are on board with this program. They don’t care about small companies, sole proprietorships, and entrepreneurs, because the oligarchs have their money and now they have the power. They don’t want competition.
They know that their corporations are net shedders of jobs. They know it’s the small, growing companies that create the most jobs. But these people just do not care that more people will not make it in the private sector. They want government to put the people who don’t get jobs in the corporations on the dole or hired as government employees.
Finally, relatively late in life, I think I’ve figured out what this is all about. The oligarchs like the way things are run in a country like France, where the government decides who the winners are going to be and who the losers are going to be. As long as their huge trusts and companies are left relatively unscathed, it’s fine with them. It does not matter to them if the government gets 50% of GDP, as long as they remain atop the heap. They believe the politicians like Obonga are their lapdogs and can be controlled. And the idiot socialists think they are the ones in control of this process. I can assure you, they are not.
People who are in F. Hayek’s tradition have done studies about government’s role in the economy. What they have discovered is that once government begins taking more than 25% of GDP, the real economy begins to atrophy and contract.
The sphere of freedom is contracting, and with it opportunity and the chance for more widespread prosperity and growth in standard of living.
It’s like my online friend Theresa of Technicalities posted about coffee: Drink Coffee. Do stupid things faster, with more energy!
After reading the heading, I just can’t get this line from a famous movie out of my head:
“Iceburg, right ahead!”
My obligatory response when Neo posits the theory above, with which I agree, is to offer up these links:
http://neoneocon.com/2009/02/10/is-this-what-cloward-piven-looks-like/
and
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/09/barack_obama_and_the_strategy.html
the 13th and the 14th mark the anniversary of the deportation of nearly 1% of latvians.
this pdf is from the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia: http://www.occupationmuseum.lv/eng/services/Komunism_english.pdf
the reason i have been listing this is trying to get some to learn from real history. not facts and dates of who did what.
none of all that tells you what its like to be a citizen during the changes from one to another. we as people only know what things are like AFTER the mass of changes and the item suddenly is there.
we have no idea of the different steps that are taken and what they could be.
to quote the pdf:
To understand the history of the 20th century in general, it is important to know what communism is.
also from the pdf:
Defining characteristics of a communist regime
Land, banks, industry and resources are state property. During the founding of the regime nationalisation takes place (the state power
confiscates all private property).
so is nationalization the only way to fix the problem, or is the lie its the only way, and the major step to an end?
Communist Party — the only and dominating party, all other political
parties are forbidden.
so is the crushing of things and the hate they create and the winner takes all attitude stupid, or a major step to an end in one party system. remember the CPUSA used to put up a candidate for president every year till they gave a speech saying that the platform of the CPUSA and the Democratic party could not be distinguished from each other (and so they never put up another candidate).
Cult of the party leader.
i bet no one read the papers i put forth and heard the people referring to stalin as “the one”.
Central planned economy. In the Soviet Union the economy developed according to the five-year plan. Economic decisions (even petty issues
like the name and price of a new cake) were accepted by the ministries in Moscow.
they planned cars, and they gave them names, and so on… just like obama is doing. obama wants to live a prior glory, a prior history…
No freedom of speech, assembly, strike, movement, etc.
􀃌 Censorship.
􀃌 Persecution of dissidents, political litigations.
􀃌 No democratic elections. Formally there are elections but voters have
no choice — they have to vote for one candidate. The results of elections
are often falsified.
obama going after commenters… newspapers not telling us things… and elections fixed…
i am currently losing close freinds of decades becuse they are trying to tell me my families history didnt happen. that their living through somehting today trumps the living through an exterminatino program of yesterday.
sigh
the pdf also gives short explanations of what they think, do and such.
32 pages of it…
so i am not as long as people think…
Neo,
Promethia’s comment echo’s what has been discussed before, including here.
Obama is executing a “Cloward-Pliven” strategy.
i.e. “Strategy for forcing political change through orchestrated crisis…..
First proposed in 1966 and named after Columbia University sociologists Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, the “Cloward-Piven Strategy” seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.”
It all dovetails nicely with, among other things, the hurried passing of the so-called stimulus, the up-coming radical overhaul of healthcare, the Orwellian named “Workers Free Choice Act”
which looks to be up for a vote this summer. The list goes on and on and on.
The socialist transformation can’t be completed until there is a massive breakdown of the present system which will precipitate a serious political crisis, worldwide, not just nationally.
Each economic crisis in the last century has spawned ever more centralized state control. The central banks, err federal reserve’s formation in 1913, the massive expansion of government during the depression and though not a crisis, let’s not forget the democrats massive expansion of government during the 60’s with the war on poverty, etc.
Add to that an ever increasingly dumbed down and lethargic public who simply just do not care as long as they have a burger to shove into their face and a TV in front of it and who will gladly vote for anyone willing to raid the treasury in order to pander to their basest wants. Victims of prolonged Gramscian damage.
Why else would showing photographic ID to be able to verify your identitiy when voting be such an anathema to democrats who would extend that priviledge to felons and illegal immigrants? Why would the left engage in obvious voter fraud when it’s only lasting damage is to the credibility of elections? Why hire ACORN and usurp control of the census if not in order to skew the results?
Overload the system to the breaking point, then load it some more. I suspect we will see a preview of this in California this summer. I hope I’m wrong and that there arises a serious backlash against this insanity and those who promote it in upcoming elections, but I grow ever more pessimistic.
As for those who still retain their sanity? Disarm them, isolate, marginalize and ridicule them. Step one in their de-humaniztion, if they don’t fall into line that is.
Here’s the last two paragraphs from the link above, grim indeed.
” I think there is still an excellent chance that the West can recover from suicidalism without going through a fevered fascist episode and waging a genocidal war. But to do so, we have to do more than recognize Stalin’s memes; we have to reject them. We have to eject postmodern leftism from our universities, transnational progressivism from our politics, and volk-Marxism from our media.
The process won’t be pretty. But I fear that if the rest of us don’t hound the po-mo Left and its useful idiots out of public life with attack and ridicule and shunning, the hard Right will sooner or later get the power to do it by means that include a lot of killing. I don’t want to live in that future, and I don’t think any of my readers do, either. If we want to save a liberal, tolerant civilization for our children, we’d better get to work.”
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Regarding the references above to deliberately collapsing the capitalist system in order to replace it with a socialist system, it’s often good to keep in mind a very important fact.
The plans of right and left wing, generous or greedy, or even good and evil people, do not always turn out the way they plan or hope for.
It’s possible that a complete collapse of the system may not usher in a socialist paradise, so much as it will force the average citizen to suddenly and painfully begin relying upon themselves as the system no longer is capable of delivering basic services they have come to rely upon for survival.
IF that happens, and once they become accustomed to forced self-reliance, it may be that they are less likely to give up this new found sense of freedom and power back to a central authority that shows up with promises to take care of them.
After all, if the scenario played out as described, at least a few people would have to question the wisdom of going back to the same paternalistic government that failed them before.
Scottie,
Well said. I hope you’re right about that.
Tim P has given me pause in what I was about to write… he may have the correct outlook. Anyway…
BHO reminds me so much of our former college president. She came in on the heels of a very lackluster administration. She has tremendous rhetorical skills, and is personally charming on the surface, BUT was viciously ruthless and manipulative otherwise. Came in and immediately set off on a number of programs from new academic centers, 5 year plans, revving up the US News rankings, etc.
Two years later our Psych faculty declared her a “certifiable” narcissitic egomaniac. She lasted 10 years before everyone had enough, but not before putting the school in such debt that we just have recovered in the last two years; 8 years after her departure.
I see that none of the commenters here have gone the whole way, and suggested that Obama may be trying not only to destroy Capitalism and replace it with Socialism, but may also be setting up the conditions for him to become a dictator, and the Democratic party a permanent ruling party, similar to Mexico’s 70 year rule of their “Permanent Revolutionary Party.”
OT: on another pro-American site a persistent troll, when asked why he hung around so much over the past few months, blurted out that he was paid to monitor that and other “right-wing” sites. He hasn’t withdrawn that admission, or indicated he was kidding, and in fact refused to say who was paying him.
If it’s true, it’s pretty creepy, methinks. And it would explain how leftist trolls seem to fetch everywhere suddenly with the same talking points.
What do others think?
Occam,
I’ve noticed a synchronization of their activity across sites with very similar talking points. I believe it is a coordinated activity, paid for, and is done for the purpose of harassing us and trying to demoralize conservatives. I see the hand of Axelrod in this, since the bare knuckles style is so very Chicago.
Occam — It would make sense and it would be cheap to do. I’ve had that exact thought about “lester” on the Contentions blog. (BTW — Jennifer Rubin is consistently excellent over there.)
However, on occasion, I’ve been accused of being a Karl Rove plant on liberal sites.
I see that none of the commenters here have gone the whole way
then i guess you havent read any of my posts trying to show what it was like to live through such a change at the begining.
many of us have said things like that from way before the election.
heck i knew people that got paid to be at protests and so on and so forth… what do you think the big money to acorn people was for? to keep them mobilized to insure that until they get it all locked down, they can fix the game till they dont have to fix the game
WD,
I don’t know that anyone needs to formally become the ruling party. The democrats had a de-facto majority for over 40 years before the republicans took control of both houses ofCongress in 94. Even during Reagan’s first term, the republicans only managed to get a majority of the senate, just barely and for only a short time.
Nor do I think that Obama will set himself up as a dictator. Instead, I suspect that once the foundation of the current system is ruined, the only remaining option will be government control and intervention on a massive scale. i.e. socialism or some mutation of it.
With the mainstream media safely in their pocket and the demographics changing to the advantage of groups who have traditionally supported the democrats and their identity politics (that’s where ACORN and the census come into play) so that they are apportioned a greater percentage of legislative seats. Control is effectively achieved without providing a real target for any opposition.
Effective opposition (in my opinion) will instead have to start on the local and especially state level with fiscally responsible and freedom supporting (notice I’m not limiting that to conservatives) governors and legislators who can work against the ever increasing federal usurpation of power, individually as states and collectively. This will probably mean that states with large urban constituencies will remain leftist. But who knows?
I just hope that the leftists can be stopped before the damage, or at tleast part of it is irreversible. Or we decend into violence.
(Personally I am not optimistic, today anyway, talk to me tomorrow and that opinion may change.) However, when I read histories like Barbara Tuchman’s “A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century” or her “The Guns of August”, I am not heartened. At every juncture, if a wrong, stupid, short-sighted or cowardly choice could be made by those in power, it was. Remember, free societies have been the exception, not the rule throughout history.
Scottie, I’d like to believe you’re right. I hope you are. Sometimes the comments here really scare me.
As for the paid trolls, if that’s true, I don’t think it’s working. The trolls here and on most of the sites I frequent are such patent idiots and so incapable of defending their thoughts (or truly thinking in the first place) that their effect is more to reinforce the ideas they’re trying to destroy than it is to demoralize anybody. If somebody’s paying them, they are seriously wasting their money.
Mrs Whatsit, your characterization of the trolls is absolutely accurate, The creepy part is that someone would go to the effort and expense of bothering with something as mundane as an opposition discussion site (and that they have enough money to waste on this stuff). What next: block captains?
Artfldgr, that link is truly scary, especially since it enforces the small-step theory that my father espoused.
Case in point: In Connecticut, two Democrat state legislators proposed a bill that would create elected boards to oversee Catholic parishes. It was openly a punishment for the Catholic church’s support for traditional marriage and/or a conscience clause for religious organizations.
That was a few months ago. The legislation went down under the public outcry. Well, now the Office of State Ethics is saying that the church violated state law because it isn’t a registered lobbyist!
Forget the rights to peaceful assembly, to practice one’s religion, to free speech… it doesn’t count if you belong to the wrong sort of church, evidentally.
If the Catholic church in Connecticut registers as a lobbyist, it has to submit financial reports regularly and individuals must wear a badge whenever they “lobby”.
I try imagining any minister or priest in my town being subjected to this sort of thing, and it outrages me. Yet this is what is going on, right now in our country.
The thing about the Leftist trolls on conservative sites… most of the time their composed thoughts and the quality of the writing indicate poor levels of education. I am not saying this describes all of their posts. However, many of them read as if they were composed by high school kids or lesser-achieving college students. Moreover, they are infused with the qualities of taunt and snarkiness. The best ones will post thoughts that might pass muster in a lower-quality debate: hackneyed ideas that are rather old and not very insightful.
Overall, we understand their thinking far better than they understand ours. And that points to either ideological rigidity or lack of life experience or both.
Occam: I remember an obnoxious troll about three weeks ago…I don’t remember his/her name. I thought about posting something along the lines of: “Move along, you are not changing any hearts or minds here.” But some other commenter (maybe Gray and/or Oblio) directly took on the troll very effectively. By the way, you have also effectively taken on the trolls in the past.
I think such efforts by trolls on a site such as this are, as Mrs Whatsit says, a complete waste of time and money, if the Democratic party is in fact paying these people. I try to read as many articles on both sides as I can stomach. In the comments posted on mainstream news channels (and Fox), there seems to be a clear effort to repetitiously post….from both points of view…negative, mean-spirited and stereotypical comments. Intelligent or reflective posts from either side are quickly crowded out by insulting counter-comments.
More worrisome, in my opinion, is the vast network of supporters still in touch with Obama campaign personnel to “put out the word and tell their personal story” regarding health care reform. There were articles in my local paper and the Detroit News detailing the “thousands” of meetings across the country orchestrated by the Obama administration to gin up support for health care reform. We need Harry and Louise….on steroids!
I thought from the get go that an Obama Presidency would be about betrayal: either of his supporters, or the country, or both.
Slightly OT, but listening to this response to a question about North Korean provocation, it is hard to believe that Mr. Obama is smart enough to have a diabolical plan himself:
http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2009/06/09/obama-on-north-korea/
A truly painful 3 minutes of blather. It is still easier to believe that most Democratic politicians are doltish escapees from Fantasy Island. I suppose that there might be some would-be Blofelds waiting in the wings, prepared to take advantage of the mistakes to come.
My forecast for the Obama administration is inflation, followed by war brought on by his weakness and irresolution.
I agree with you, Oblio, on that scenario. But I think the inflation will not begin until later next year. By November of 2010 unemployment will be stuck around 9.4% and inflation will be starting to build into the system. Most of the “stimulus” money will not materially affect business investment, will only marginally affect consumer spending, and in the face of energy prices getting out of control, inflation will build into everything in the economy.
As for war, it may or may not happen. I cannot see Obonga confronting with resolution and muscularity the various threats that happen to be looming on the horizon. He will appease, and we will pay the price in blood and treasure.
I see a four years and out presidency. I see the Democrats losing a lot of seats next year, and then losing even more in 2012.
LET US ALL PRAY that we still have a salvageable situation at that point. And that we have the virtue of patience thereafter, because this mess will take years to unwind and to set things right.
I also pray that the kids who voted for this guy and for the Dems in 2006 and 2008 will learn a lesson from this. Their votes will have brought great woe to the nation.
Chart of the Day: The Laffer Spike
hotair.cachefly.net/images/2009-06/laffer-monetarybase.jpg
salvagable?
not in our lifetimes…
Regarding both the trolls and genuine liberal commenters: Carl over at No Oil For Pacifists has a lengthy post which includes some fascinating observations by Adam Gopnik (NYT) about political conversations and reasoning in France.
http://nooilforpacifists.blogspot.com/2009/06/stalled-on-shape-of-bargaining-table.html
Artfldgr
I read Laffer’s op ed in the WSJ the other day (I’m a subscriber). I do think we can salvage things IF we make a course correction in 2010 and 2012. I think a lot of the damage can be reversed, but it will take time.
As for socialized medicine, I can envision a Republican regime creatively finding ways to make it a more focused program. You can restore the tax incentives for private insurance and legislate away the penalties imposed on employers that would make them just pay the penalties rather than buy the coverage. I know pretty much how the Democrats are going to set this up and you can backtrack it into a program that is less expensive for the government by having a targeted program for the poor, working poor, and uninsurable.
I think the pain of the next few years will focus attention on how all of these things are stifling job growth and investment. I think the people will be made to understand that rationing of health care like what you see in Canada, U.K., and New Zealand is in no one’s interest.
I may have my gloomy days when I ponder what’s happening, but I will not yield to the idea of something being impossible. I’m an American. I have a “can do” attitude, and I despise European fatalism.
I may have my gloomy days when I ponder what’s happening, but I will not yield to the idea of something being impossible.
Me neither. My only concern is how much ground we, as Americans, have lost in terms of character. That does worry me. How much of that “can do” attitude has eroded?
The other night I was watching “White Squall,” a forgotten coming of age film portraying the early sixties. Jeff Bridges is the captain of a schooner that offers a year-long sailing program to high-school boys to build character and camaraderie. I was struck by how foreign and almost untranslatable the film was to our age.
huxley,
I never saw “White Squall.” I think I might rent it and watch it.
For young men in our culture now, maybe the only way they are going to get character education, outside of the Boy Scouts (I used to be an adult leader for a troop), would be in the military.
Fred — I bet you’d like “White Squall.”
Yes, the military and the southern military tradition are about the last vestiges of that kind of character.
The good news is that I believe we are going to get a serious infusion from our returning vets, after they have had a chance to settle down, then take a look around.
I have a Euorpean friend who is truly a serious student of history. He believes that we are at the far end of the pendulumn swing to the left, liberal, and libertine, and it will be swinging back hard over the next twenty years.
BTW — Thanks for your service as a Scout leader! I have fond memories of my time in the Scouts.
huxley,
Your European friend is very insightful. I would like to see our society return to a more conservative direction, but not absolutely so. I tend to believe that one should avoid the extremes at either end. I consider myself a flexible, moderate kind of conservative because, believe it or not, there are some aspects of the welfare state that are actually good balances, as long as not taken to extremes. Unfortunately, people like extremes. I don’t. I’ve seen too many mistakes in history and in economics for comfort.
My Catholic kind of Christianity disinclines me towards social darwinian templates. I think it’s undesirable and even immoral. I believe in a basic social safety net, augmented by robust, community based charity that comes from the churches and social and business organizations. I believe that our Republic and capitalism work best when we have a moral, educated, and, yes, religious citizenry.
Marxism and post-modernism have eroded education and religion in this country to the point where our people are starved for the meat that’s been stripped off the bones of those pillars.
At times like this a wonderful quote comes to mind: “No one alive today can remember how sweet life was before the revolution” (I paraphrase – Hannah Arendt, I believe). Deep down I believe that there are enough people in this country who love freedom enough to fight back. We MUST defend talk radio and the internet as they are our main lines of communication for frredom of speech.
My fallback position is a current passport and a little savings…
My fallback position is the exercise of the 2nd Amendment and the gathering of the men who will keep their oaths. There is no place to escape to. There is no frontier. No other country that has a Constitution and traditions we have. We must preserve them and fight for them again, if we have to.
If there is no other choice and all options are exhausted, I challenge all MEN who love liberty and their country to join the ranks of the patriots.
Fred, I’m in, that aside, I was struck by the article and where it was published, people are starting to catch on (I hope) In reference to the laffer spike and the overall debt surge, I see no option but for the country to default on the debt. Stupidity cannot explain what is happening, I am hoping there is some sort of plan but fear what it might be. Lots of smart money people on here, what would be the ramification of a US default on our debt? devastating I believe, but don’t know.
To add fuel to the fire, notice how they are going after all of the major tax revenue generators, tobacco today. Health problems aside, it is a cash cow for taxes and slated to pay for several new programs CHIP etc. They just impacted it greatly, their very efforts, corporate pay etc seem to drive down revenue while driving up debt, this has to planned, there can be no other explanation in my mind.
Interesting exchange tonight on Glenn Becks show with one of Neo’s colleagues Dr. Kieth Ablow, not up on the site yet for review but should be tomorrow, recommend viewing it, highly apropos to this discussion.
“Case Study: George Soros”
The world’s undisputed king of applying this type of muscle is George Soros. The August 23, 1993, cover story of Business Week entitled “The Man Who Moves Markets” paints the picture of an investor whose manipulation of the press is matched only his ability to manipulate his financial empire.
By far, Soros’ greatest gains, however, have been destabilizing currencies on the global market. Time and time again, when a nation is in a monetary crisis, Soros is there to give the currency the last nudge, and then profit as it plummets. He bet against Asian currencies in 1997 and the peso in 1994. Perhaps his brashest move was taking on the Bank of England in September of 1992.
England was in a precarious position in 1992. She had an agreement with other European nations to maintain her currency within certain bounds relative to the German mark under the ERM– Exchange Rate Mechanism– system. Economic troubles had reduced the true value of the pound, but still it was held at a rate of roughly three marks to the pound. Increasingly, England was being pressured to devalue the pound, despite treaties to the contrary.
But when would they take an action so contrary to national pride? On Wednesday, September 16, Soros leveraged the entire $1 billion value of his fund, and was able to take a $10 billion position against the pound. The $10 billion bet against them was the final blow, causing the government to announce a devaluation.
All told, Soros made $2 billion in profits on the trade, tripling the value of his fund, at the expense of the British government. Without a global network and precise timing to rely on, Soros could never have pulled such an extreme trade.
The lesson is not to stop the development of global networks or inhibit technology growth, but to be aware of the new opportunities available to the most aggressive investors. Such assaults are clearly not in the best interests of the nations involved (Asia is still recovering from its currency crisis), and some sort of world leadership is needed to prevent individuals from destabilizing governments for their own profit.
http://cse.stanford.edu/class/cs201/projects-98-99/financial-transactions/large_investors2.htm
The son of a bitch has done this repeatedly. Now he’s put his shoulder to the wheel and helped instigate our crash.
I may have my gloomy days when I ponder what’s happening, but I will not yield to the idea of something being impossible.
I am mixed.
Most here have never actually lived under another political system. your can do attitude comes from a can do system.
the other thing is that other countries will not let us fix ourselves. especially after obama keeps flipping our friends the bird. he can go and we can be stuck with 100 years of rememberance.
most dont understand whats going on here. they dont get that his moves also have another subtle component to them. they are establishing a heirarchy of payoffs and self interests. and its this that does not get reversed in a free system since once your infected there is no way to clean house.
the amount of time he has and the speed he is going they could have a nice large election smashing crisis situation easily.
and all they have to to interim is show the other politicians how much better they make out and how much easier work is, and how much less they have to deal with the constituency, etc.
as i said, everything is hidden in ambiguity, and incompetence. no one wants to see malice, nor is there much of an option even if you do.
i dont know how they could reverse things when many of the things are going to be such a nifty tool in the other sides hands. i fear they will not dismantle the tools.
I will say that if we ever crawl out, thats the last time a candidate of diversity might be elected again for a long long long time.
The more this continues, the fewer the ways out of it are going to be.
I believe a very unpredictable cultural event will be the catalyst to get people’s minds right. You take away the citizenry thats never had a decent humbling experience in life and the political madness will suddenly find itself on the defensive.
We shouldn’t lose sight of how freedom is also infectious and moves swiftly when conditions are right.
I loved the clothing in White Squall. We could do worse.
In the movie, the Albatross sinks because of poor seamanship when the boys are left in charge. There may be a message here for Captain Obama. Is taking on too much debt the equivalent of not shortening sail in advance of the approaching storm?
Fred – as to frontier, I half seriously tell my grown children to raise my grandchildren to be ready for space colonization. The numbers will be small, of course, as they were in the New World. But the first few can have enormous founder effects. Thirty years, fifty years, an essential America may have to be reinvented elsewhere.
As to character education, folks might take some comfort in Steven Johnson’s Everything Bad Is Good For You. He points out positive aspects of the video gaming culture that we older ones who see only the flash overlook: they are completely unforgiving – there is no point in making excuses to a machine; most games start out with the player not knowing what the dangers are, what the objective is, and what skills he has – you have to find that out as you go; instantaneous high-stakes decision making with inadequate information is the norm. In short, it’s a lot like real life, condensed into an entertainment format. In my own children, I note that they have less ability for sustained unattractive effort than I would like (both physical and mental), but their adaptability is enormous, far more than anyone in my generation.
Assistant Village Idiot, we are nto going into space.
if you were going to allow space travel and such, that would end the pollution problem, first for nuclear materials, then later when ubiquitous, for other things.
just as they wont allow drilling because cheap energy would let the steam roller run fast, they wont let us really into space because that would then remove a HUGE area of social control.
nuclear waste disposal containers are being made to be ok for 10k plus years. why? we can already make containers that could survive reentry in a crash and not crack open (embed the material in boron glass, etc). (heck we could embed it and drop it in the marianas trench and never see it again)
the technology development would cause social justice issues as not everyone can go into space equally…
how can you say we will run out of raw materials if you have ubiquitous space flight? you have planets of materials available.
it would prove that capitalism was the best way, socialism was and is a lie, since it would also solve population issues, farming issues, pollution issues, raw materials issues, energy issues all at once.
and you think control freaks are going to let that happen? heck no. they dont want to create a USA ENGLAND situation between eartn and another planet of homesteaders!
and of course thos who want change are going to fight to prevent change (we cant go to other planets we will pollut them!!!)
ya know what? pollution is a false concept. in less than 200 years the most productive mines will be companies that will reprocess land dumps for rawmaterials. (they can already chop up and sort cars and other things in mass ways – wont be long before they do that for dumps).
so so many issues of our times are not real issues. oh they are to luddites who think that they are forward thinking by stagnating everything.
basically since the treadmill is moving, they think progress is stopping the treadmill. then when they stop the treadmill, they will think that getting it movnig again is progress. darkage, followed by…
JThoits,I’d be pleased if I knew for certain that it was the Democratic Party that was the ultimate source of funds for this. My concern about paid trolls is not their effectiveness (which I agree is nil), but rather their existence. Organized and paid surveillance of dissident opinion smacks of a police state.
On the money, zhombre. The question is who’s the rube? And the big one – who’s behind him? Soros leaps to mind, I must confess. But Obama’s history is consistent with a more disturbing possibility, that he was chosen, groomed, and propelled upward by a communist network, starting with Frank Marshall Davis. Again, not to sound like a conspiracy nut, but communists have been a major feature of Obama’s entire life. (How many of us have even known — much less been friends with — one hard-core, straight-up, communist? I exclude myself; I went to Berkeley.) And communists take in conspiracy with their mother’s milk (hence the effectiveness of the French Resistance, which was in essence the French Communist Party directed by Stalin to fight the Nazis).
My strong impression is that groups of organized and financed trolls have been around for a long long time, since way before Obama.
The Obama strategy has always been the old saw, “If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, blind them with bullshit”. It has been remarkably effective so far.
Anyone curious about White Squall can check this YouTube clip from early in the movie.
There is only one way socialized medicine will work. You MUST increase the supply of doctors, specialists, surgeons, nurses, technicians, and technology. You must not destroy the incentives for research and innovation. Right now we don’t have the resources for it to work. An primarily we don’t have the financial wherewithal, since our government is already on the verge of bankruptcy.
I finally ran into some folks today who truly believe everything Obama is doing is perfect. They see nothing wrong, see that he can do nothing wrong. He will make everything better than ever. They think I am brainwashed.
Armed robbery is up in my area. Car jackings, too.
Great look, huxley, including the haircuts. Where we go one, we go all.
there is no way that socialize medicine can work since once the good is percieved as free its overused, so the costs are not reflective of need but of something more