1. As a member of the “mob” that has been frequenting TEA parties and Obamacare protests, I am of the opinion that Obama has gone too far too fast. He has alarmed moderates and even some democrats. There are plenty of them at these events and I believe most members of Congress, even in liberal districts, are feeling the heat. Now, if Obama continues to press his government option in the healthcare effort, he is going to face even more opposition. If the democrat controlled Congress, in their infinite stupidity, actually pass a healtcare law on a partisan basis, there is going to be even more and louder protest and I believe the MSM will no longer be able to ignore what is going down.

   It’s all about November 2010. We have to sweep the libs out of office big time. If we don’t, then I will begin to really worry about the damage Obam can wreak. In this country our most powerful weapon is still the vote and our free speech.

2. Obama has already peaked in his power. The harder he pushes the more we will fight back.

   The American people are not stupid and have a healthy sense of self-preservation, as do members of Congress. They can be conned by a sweet voice, but they are already recognizing the bait and switch. They will listen to sweet promises as long as it does not cost them much.

   But when unemployment hits new highs, they lose a third of the value of their home and retirement funds, while Obama is handing out money like moon pies to his cronies, and doing nothing to help the economy, Americans will fight back and guns will scarcely be needed.

   No, there will be an end to this.

3. “As for me, I can’t yet decide at what point we are on the continuum.”

   1857 working on 1859.

   But, “Nothing is written.”

4. hmmm–interesting that both Cassandra and Chicken are female

   LOL. I never knew Chicken Little was female.

   But why is that interesting? Nostrodamus was male.

5. MikeLL:

   Nostradamus was an actual historical figure. Cassandra and Chicken were not. I find it interesting that in the folklore and literature of prophecy (non-Old Testament, that is) quite a few figures (serious and ridiculous both) are female.

   The Delphic Sybil, a mythical figure, was female too.

   However, the priestesses at the Delphic Oracle were actual women—although their utterances were “translated” by men:

   Apollo spoke through his oracle, who had to be an older woman of blameless life chosen from among the peasants of the area. The sibyl or prophetess took the name Pythia and sat on a tripod seat over an opening in the earth. When Apollo slew Python, its body fell into this fissure, according to legend, and fumes arose from its decomposing body. Intoxicated by the vapors, the sibyl would fall into a trance, allowing Apollo to possess her spirit. In this state she prophesied. It has been postulated that a gas high in ethylene came out of this opening that is known to produce violent trances, though this theory remains debatable. While in a trance the Pythia “raved” – probably a form of ecstatic speech – and her ravings were “translated” by the priests of the temple into elegant hexameters. People consulted the Delphic oracle on everything from important matters of public policy to personal affairs.

6. If it weren’t for talk radio, the internet, and Fox news, we would be in deep doodoo right now.

7. So Obama is returning from vacation with a big schedule of speechifying at everyone from schoolchildren, to both Houses of Congress, and the UN Assembly.

   I can’t see this working out. I’m even somewhat shocked that he doesn’t realize how overexposed he is. Hubris, thy name is Obama.

   But lo, from the Vineyard of Martha he comes to us, with a new light in his eyes and newly gained wisdom. Let us gather and kneel and be received of his wisdom.

   For he is the Kwisatz Haderach.

8. LOL! The Kwisatz Haderach! Why didn’t I think of that? Of course. That’s it.

   Who needs (fill in the blank: oil, health insurance, economic recovery, jobs, whatever. . . .Take your pick) when you can have Spice? Soon Dude will be bending space.

9. Neo,

   Thank you for the response. I was very interested in why you said that.

   What is funny is that I seriously did not know that Chick Little was female. All these years . . .

   Anyway, I am thinking that there is a very good reason why all those figures are depicted as female. After all, females cause all sorts of problems.

   I mean, seriously, I recall a story in which a Greek king asked the Oracle if he would win a war against the Persians. (I think it was the Persians. Can’t remember). Anyway, the Oracle told him that if he went to war there would be a great victory and a great empire would fall. So, he went to war, and he lost, and his kingdom was destroyed.

   Huh. Women . . .

10. I think the spice is up his nose.

11. I’m ready to fight back, huxley, believe me I am–and, to the extent that I already can, I do. It’s just that I’m not sure how effective we can be. We need a leader. A SERIOUS leader. I look around and, God help us, I don’t see one. Of course, there may be hope to be had in the spontaneous organization we seem to be seeing, the growing and strengthening Tea Party movement . . . .

    I’m also skeptical that we have until November 2010 to save ourselves and our country, that it won’t be too late by then. I hope with all my heart that huxley and others who see it the way he does are right, and that his prescription of following the once and future order will work, will restore us. I’m afraid of how much damage can be done between now and then, though. Look out, Wilderness, here we come.

    I’m also befuddled by the notion that this guy is incompetent and his czars, such as this Van Jones piece of work, were improperly or inadequately vetted. I keep thinking he has to have known to whom he was handing these chunks of power. The czars have the power now because he knew from the start precisely who they are, not because he didn’t.

    I keep thinking we’ve got to turn the venerable old notion on its head to grasp what’s really going on: Don’t ascribe to stupidity that which can adequately be explained by malice.

    I can think of no reason to credit him with wanting what’s best for this country, and merely screwing up the getting of it. Not one reason.

12. I also keep recalling his speeches during the campaign, and his victory speech on the night of November 2, 2008. “Change has come. . . to America.”

    More than we knew. More than we had the first clue of.

    He also said, a bit cryptically and more than oncd, that it isn’t going to be easy, but that we WILL get there.

    Where?

13. “The czars have the power now because he knew from the start precisely who they are, not because he didn’t.”

    Being redundant here, but, 37 czars later, in place, while a significant proportion of administration positions requiring congressional approval haven’t been completed, after 8 months… that’s the whole idea, and they know exactly who they’re appointing to these surrogate positions to bypass the normal checks and balances, the democrats know exactly what they’re doing. It’s party politics above loyalty to the nation and the constitution. That’s how serial voter fraud by Acorn is glossed over, and Acorn is retained by the administration for ever more involvement in, guess what, the census, with all the voter demographic implications that involves. All the while they’re putting us on, daily stretching the limits in some fashion or form, like it’s a joke (not unlike North Korea, Iran and company). Impeach the joker…

14. re: vanderleun – great quote. Remember, though, Gasim’s fate a short time later:

    Auda abu Tayi: What troubles the Englishman?
    Sherif Ali: The one he killed is the one he brought out of the Nafud.
    Auda abu Tayi: It was written then. Better to have left him there.

15. As I see it, if those who, like me, believe the worst–that we are seeing the unfolding of a well considered plan by Obama & Co. and probably a someone or someones behind him–plans, at best, designed to destroy our capitalist system, severely reduce our freedoms and our democracy, and irreversibly and forever change America into a Socialist country, at worst, designed to frog march the U.S. into a Marxist/Fascist dictatorship, and we try to counter these plans and we are wrong, we just end up being alarmists and fools, but if, if we are right, we may be able to spare ourselves, our families and this country an ordeal that will impair and scar them and it forever, and has the potential to radically change us and it for the worse or, perhaps, even to destroy us and it.

    On the other hand, if those on the other side of the argument, who believe that Obama is just some clueless, stupid, bumbling schmuck with a golden voice, and that there is no substantial threat are right–great, but if they are wrong, well, we all know how this story ends, with people lined up against a wall and shot, or put in some form of “reeducation” camp.

    I can’t help but recall what Larry Grathwohl, the FBI informant inside the Weatherman said, about being at meetings at which the 30-40 top people in the Weatherman leadership–highly educated people–very calmly discussed how to run the country if their revolution was successful; planning to call in Communist troops from the Eastern bloc countries to help them run the country (shades of “Red Dawn”), plans to set up reeducation camps in the Southwest, and how they would have to kill the estimated 20-25 million unrepentant capitalists who would resist joining the revolution (http://theobamafile.lefora.com/2008/10/21/obamas-weatherman-pals-planned-to-murder-25-millio/page1/).

16. 18,000+ people today at a Tea Party in Cincinnati…

    http://www.middletownjournal.com/news/middletown-news/issues-not-politics-is-their-cup-of-tea-283653.html

17. I’m going to DC on 9/12. First time I’ve ever marched in anything about anything.

    A month ago, the folks organizing the trip from here (SW PA) were wondering if they were going to be able to fill a bus for the trip. Last I heard, a day or two ago, five buses will be going.

    A friend from town (pop. 830) told me a few weeks ago that she thought some of her friends in the suburbs of PGH were trying to get a busload. She told me today that they’re taking two buses.

    Tipping point straight ahead.

18. Wolla Dalbo: I spent the seventies and eighties convinced that the world was about to end any day in ecocatastrophe or full-scale nuclear war, that the upper echelons of the US government had JFK, RFK and MLK assassinated, and that it was only a matter of time before the US went fascist and I got shipped off to a work camp.

    I exaggerate but only a bit.

    In any event I got out of the box about six years ago. The world looks problematic but workable and the fears I find today on the right seem very similar to the fears I knew on the left not long ago.

    I’d agree that Obama is the furthest left, most anti-American president we have ever had. He does mean to transform America something else, something worse. He is a bad actor and not nearly as remarkable as he was sold, but he’s not incompetent either.

    Nonetheless I have faith in our system and our people. It’s possible that something really bad could happen from Obama, but that’s also true of any number of other sources.

    I prefer to go with my faith and my sense that Obama is not that fearsome and communicate that confidence to others.

    I am an American. We have seen tough times before and prevailed. We will do so again.

19. betsybounds: Lovely that you got the Kwisastz Haderach joke!

    Watch and see how Obama does this month. Really and truly his presidency is at a crossroads. If he blows this month, he becomes a joke.

    Like this Van Jones business. That’s pure hubris that Obama’s administration thought that they were invulnerable to being called on an obviously documentable America hater like that.

    Plus Jones is a younger, less secretive version of Obama. Young handsome black guy with a radical past and an ivy league J.D.

    No, Obama can’t keep Jones around and frankly it’s a sign of weakness that Team Obama didn’t axe Jones last night.

20. Jones’ resignation came an hour or two ago. Naturally, he blamed others:

    “On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me,” Jones said in his resignation statement. “They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide.”

21. Yes!

22. He he, he was “viciously smeared” with his own quotes!

23. And that’s so obviously unfair!

24. Well huxley, et.al, this is encouraging. I doubted that Jones would get the axe, I really did. I agree that it’s a sign of their weakness that they didn’t cut him loose last night, or even days ago. And it is indeed encouraging. I will hope, with you, that we can prevail and gain our country back. However, it is a caution that these people have gotten so far as claiming the highest office in the land (and the Congress concomitantly) and with it, the levers of power in nearly the whole government. Because of that alone they remain plenty fearsome. We must not relax–it’s a victory, but it’s been only a battle, and not the war yet.

    I recall that, when the Old Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact collapsed, there were those who said the radical left was finished, and the communists–well, they’d been shown to be wrong, and that would make and end of them. The great French philosopher Francios Furet called it The Passing of an Illusion. And yet here we are, a bare generation later, and they are on the ascent again in many places–not least of those, the USA. As Lt. Kilgore said, “These people never give up.”

    Wolla Dalbo, I too recall Larry Grathwohl. He gave us a look into the deep determination of my damned destructive ’60s Baby Boomer generation. They have been behaving like a cancer lo, these many years, infiltrating our entire society. If we can beat them, so much the better. But they are not to be shrugged off. They are utterly serious. I see two good things afoot: One is that they seem incapable of learning from their mistakes, and are blinded by hubris. The other is that the American people have more gumption than I gave us credit for a few short months ago.

    Well, now then, Jones is gone. We must see to it that he is only the beginning.

    ELC: You and your friends from SW PA make me proud–I haven’t been there for some time, but Uniontown is my home. You go, people!

25. betsy wrote, “We need a leader. A SERIOUS leader.”

    No we don’t. Then it becomes about the leader. The ‘machine’ will tear that leader to shreds…

    As a computer person I know the best way to combat a threat is to spread out.

    For instance. Many websites have been attacked via distributed denial of service (DDOS) and have basically been unreachable for hours. Sites like Amazon, CNN, yahoo, etc.

    One of the best ways to combat DDOS is to be many places at once. Be distributed yourself !

    Point is. When it isn’t about a leader and it’s about us…. they’d have to demonize each and every one of us good people. They can’t. How many Joe the plumbers before people realize, hey wait a minute… Obama doesn’t like anybody. He doesn’t like doctors, nurses, anybody who asks a question..

    We need to all keep making our voices heard. We don’t need a leader. We don’t need an Obama. We are all “personally responsible”. We are able-bodied. We don’t need a government to take care of us cradle to grave.

    We can all agree that a government should have a safety net for the elderly and non-able bodied.

    We don’t need a government subsidizing bad behavior.

    /stepping off my soap box. 🙂

26. I don’ think we need to worry about mass murder by left-wing storm troopers, and re-education camps of the soviet-era varieties, perhaps our excessive abundance of lawyers will finally come to our rescue, in that regard…. But we do have to worry about the consequent hyperinflation from long-term, excessive deficit spending in concert with contrived programs like cap and trade. The poor and lower middle-class masses will come to realize that their state created jobs are mostly of a low salary, blue collar make-work variety, or of a contrived domestic security variety, and that their universal health care is marginally more available, but still inferior to that still available to the poorer but still relatively wealthy, as well as the politically connected; When they discover their lives controlled by inflated teams of inept government bureaucrats, with greatly limited private enterprise opportunity, housing no better, but more expensive than ever, along with the consequent high food prices, fewer products on store shelves, inflated utility bills, unaffordable automobiles as well as the fuel to run them, that their position in the food chain has only been further degraded by incompetent left-wing opportunists, the stage is set for rampant corruption, crime, and crowd-gang violence, quite traditional in third-world “socialist” states.

    When doctors, competent researchers, and the entrepreneurial class lose the incentive and opportunity to become wealthy, they will stop performing at an optimum creative level. As a consequence, so-called universal health care will be severely limited to a smaller universe of available skilled and dedicated professionals; Choices, in so many ways, for so many varieties of services, will be significantly limited. In health care, particularly, second-opinion opportunities will be severely curtailed by government policy makers, as well as the availabiltiy of pharmaceuticals, both on the shelf and prescription variety. One need only look at the history of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe to see what is to come.

    If the democrats aren’t stopped relatively quickly, we will suffer these ravages to the system, for decades to come. Note how, after years of socialism, some of the hard-core socialist states have at least partially abandoned the socialist model in favor of a return to capitalism. However, the police state aspects of these societies are generally, and permanently entrenched in their structures, ie. China and Russia.

    So Van Jones is gone. He will be replaced by Van Jones Lite, because to these people this is just a contrived three dimensional chess game, a bit of a joke while they occupy their temporary seat of success and political power. Impeach the Joker…

27. Dear Leftists,

    Van Jones is a quitter

    I believe you can conserve oxygen now about Sarah Palin. Lying scum.

28. Friends, violence is indeed coming to America. Gird yourselves. It is coming from within from those who want to enslave us in their Marxism. It will come from those who will resist. It will come from the Iranians and N. Koreans, who along with their Chinese and Russian abetors are perfecting their atomic missles to throw at us. The only leader we should ever truely look to is Christ. I beg of you all, seek Him today in all humility, and pray for yourselves, for others, and for our nation. http://www.averyheavystone.blogspot.com/
    http://www.jamesrobison.net/columns06/012606.htm

29. another link: http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0909/glick090409.php3

30. I suppose the best thing that can happen to frogs in the pot of water is that the heat gets turned up too noticably. This administration and democrats in general have delivered.

    It appears the frogs only needed a faux frog leader like John McCain along with various other frogs expressing a lack of concern to being cooked to expose this weakness in the socialist chefs.

31. Betsybounds, I agree with Baklava – We don’t need one leader to counter Obama, to come stepping out onto the national stage fully-fledged. That leader will be polarizing, will be a target, will, as Baklava says, be shredded by the machine. Instead, we need thousands of smaller leaders, coming up in activist movements like the Tea Parties, and beginning to wield political power on that level.
    In February, the Boerne/San Antonio Tea Party (such as it was at that point!) had a protest in front of the Alamo – all of about twenty or thirty people were there, and no one heard a darned thing about it. On April 15th there were 20-thousand people, on Wednesday the Tea Party Express came through and there were about 2 thousand to welcome them. Half of the San Antonio Tea Party leadership committee is going to Washington for the 12th, and the other half are working on plans for our own candidate forums when the 2010 campaigns kick in gear.
    We are all Spartacus – too many to pick off by the machine and destroy. And that thought – if it has even begun to occur to the political powers that be, must be very, very frightening. The rest of us may find it somewhat cheering.

32. huxley–the difference now is that, while you may have greeted every new action by the “Man” as heralding the Apocalypse, most people–measuring these events against what has led elsewhere to dictatorship–would have said that your evaluation was wrong.

    Today, we have ample actual evidence, in things like the administration’s otherwise inexplicable, immediate and unhealthy preoccupation with the Census, that apportions Congressional districts, and, thus, voting power in Congress, the appointment of a shadow government of almost 35 unelected, unvetted Czars, who report only to Obama, and who have long track records–on video, in print–of crazy, radical, totalitarian, anti-democratic and anti-capitalist views, the constant push to fund the crooked vote-fixing ACORN, successful to the tune of $8 billion dollars, and giving them a key role in hiring Census enumerators, Obama’s bizarre and ominous call for a huge, well-funded, “Civilian National Security Force” coupled with the introduction into law of the idea of “mandatory public service and the creation of half dozen new “public service organizations”” and the vast expansion of Americorps, the demonizing by the President of the “rich” and “entrepreneurs” as the new “enemies of the People”–a singling out that no other President has ever stooped to, nationalization of large sectors of our economy, and attempts to silence critics using the “Fairness Doctrine,” proposed 100″% tax rates on private broadcasters, and attempts to gain control of the Internet.

    These are actions to rig elections, quash the opposition, control the news, set up a private army–a “Civilian National Security Force,” nationalize the private sector, create a special hated “scapegoat” class, bypass Constitutional checks on the executive and orchestrate a vast expansion of its power are all concrete actions that are the same as the actions of other would be dictators throughout history and a lot of people–more each day, it seems–are looking at this evidence and concluding that the Apocalypse is indeed coming, if Obama & Co. have there way.

33. “Never waste a crisis” may prove their undoing. Their plan might have rolled along silently and irreversibly had not the economy tanked. That woke up plenty of people and they’re in a pissy mood. Finally, we the people are gathering and conferring about what is to be done. It’s deeper than healthcare or taxes or our bankrupt government. Those are the appetizers. The entree is how do we take our good old America back.

34. Cassandra or Chicken Little? Maybe a bit of both and maybe neither. How’s that for a definitive answer?

    Relax. Take two stories from an old Leftie that mirror your rightwing concerns of the heart.

    Remember Eldridge Cleaver? He was once one of the most feared radicals of the 60’s, Black Panther leader, his book, Soul on Ice, espoused violent revolution against the rotten Establishment. After he was charged with attemped murder from an shootout with police he fled to Algeria and lived an increasingly ignoble live as a fugitive. Finally fleeing Algeria in fear of his life, he really hit the bottom, losing all of his revolutionary charisma.

    He turned Christian while in exile, returned to the US, plea bargain his charge down to probation and wrote another book, Soul on Fire. One quote I never forgot was his rationale for his becoming a revolutionary. This is a paraphrase from memory. “We all thought at the time that the Man’s Establishment was so rotten to the core that we could rise up en masse and it would fall to our assault. I had no clue that the picture of the Establishment was a construct in my head and that in fact it is so huge and so stable and rooted in society, that our little movement would not rock it from it’s foundation. Instead it was we who would fail and fall apart.”

    Probably not his words, but that was the gist of his comment. Anyway he never did amount to anything. In a final irony, he became a conservative Republican, endorsing Reagan and finally trying to run for Alan Cranstan’s senatorial seat and failing in the GOP primary.

    Speaking of Reagan, when he was elected president I thought it was the end of the world. I hated him with a passion, mostly because he was governor when I went to UC Berkeley and his battle with us protesters pissed me off royally and his national guard sprayed me with CS gas as I was going to class.

    So naturally I hated him and his agenda and believed he was going to start WWII with the Russians. I fought hard against his rule, protests, demonstrations, all that stuff. Same as the tea baggers and the town hall stuff nowadays.

    I never gave him any credit and kept believing he was the Devil even when at the end of his presidency he was almost best friends with Gorbachov, smiling as he toured the Kremlin , arm in arm with his former enemy. Our world survived!

    Later, as i was dealing with my father’s dementia, when he announced his Alzheimers disease, I felt shame for my former hatred, and realized my own blindness.

    Just try to keep in mind that the world does not follow any particular agenda but it’s own massive momentum, and that inertia will cool any revolutionary fervor, and yet that fervor will effect some change in the world. Just not as much as one either desires or fears.

35. Oops, meant WWIII, not II. Obviously Reagan didn’t have the power to time travel!

36. However, it is a caution that these people have gotten so far as claiming the highest office in the land (and the Congress concomitantly) and with it, the levers of power in nearly the whole government.

    betsybounds: Sure it’s a caution, but notice that Obama had to run as a stealth/illusionist candidate to get elected. Likewise Sotomayor when she sought approval for the SC. When a far leftist like Van Jones is finally exposed, Obama has to drop him.

    The president is certainly powerful, but he can’t change the Constitution or pass laws and set budgets without Congressional approval.

    In the specific case of Obama, Obama doesn’t even have the support of enough people to get his signature health care bill passed, much less something which seriously endangered our republic.

37. huxley—the difference now is that, while you may have greeted every new action by the “Man” as heralding the Apocalypse, most people—measuring these events against what has led elsewhere to dictatorship—would have said that your evaluation was wrong.

    Wolla Dalbo: Today most people would say your evaluation as well as Artfldgr’s et al., is wrong.

    Having a large number of czars is nothing new. FDR had a bunch and George W. Bush had about as many czars as Obama — see wiki

    Though I’d give the Democrats first place, both parties have histories of rigging elections, gerrymandering, etc.

    There were communists and far leftists in the Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower administrations.

    Nonetheless America still stands as a democratic, constitutional republic, and I, like most people, expect that it will continue to do so.

38. spoot: Great stories!

    Just try to keep in mind that the world does not follow any particular agenda but it’s own massive momentum, and that inertia will cool any revolutionary fervor, and yet that fervor will effect some change in the world. Just not as much as one either desires or fears.

    It took a perfect storm plus duplicity to put Obama in office. In less than eight months Obama has fallen from his throne as The Anointed One to an inexperienced, not all that skillful, embattled president whose bait and switch as a unifying centrist to polarizing leftist has been exposed.

    Obama can and will do damage before he leaves office, but our country is strong and will stand against him. Count on it.

39. “”Nonetheless America still stands as a democratic, constitutional republic, and I, like most people, expect that it will continue to do so””
    Huxley

    The part that worries me is that it takes a certain mindset of independent people to maintain it all. They may not change the constitution but they are certainly working on peoples mindset.

40. After Obama was elected I was very worried that his election signaled a large shift leftward in Americans.

    But now that Americans have seen Obama in action they are rebelling. We are still a center-right country, not as solid as we were in previous decades but solid enough.

    The real leftward shift that has occurred, and it is serious, has been in the media, the universities, and the arts. Those have always had a strong left component, but now the left has almost entirely marginalized the right in those areas.

41. He is a quitter

42. What’s Next, after the Fall of Jones?

    Make no mistake, this one is deeply embarrassing to the Left. It is a Symbolic Loss, which really gets under their skin. Something needs to happen, and quickly, to make sure that people don’t spend any time worrying about how a Communist 9-11 Truther got a White House job with policy content and get back to blaming Republicans. What makes it worse is, Jones got taken out for saying in public what the Left says in private. Bad PR took Jones out, even when the Times, Post, CBS, NBC, and CNN had spiked the story.

    Chicago Rules (as the Sean Connery’s great speech in The Untouchables) say, they took one of ours, we have to take out one of theirs, and make it more painful and more embarrassing.

    So what will it be? New corruption stories about Palin? More sex stories about Republican politicians? Perhaps it is time to out some gay conservatives. Torque up CIA Torture stories to put the bullseye on Cheney?

    I think we need to keep the spotlight on DOJ and Holder.

43. On the Daily Kos, Keith Olberman has declared war:

    Send Me Everything You Can Find About Glenn Beck

    Tuesday we will expand this to the television audience and have a dedicated email address to accept leads, tips, contacts, on Beck, his radio producer Burguiere, and the chief of his tv enablers, Ailes (even though Ailes’ power was desperately undercut when he failed to pull off his phony “truce” push).
    
    Reading left articles and commenters on the Van Jones resignation, I notice that, as Oblio says, they really don’t get why a person like VJ shouldn’t be in the White House. It just seems monstrously unfair to them that the right-wing should make a lot of noise about stuff they take for granted and as a result VJ is out of a job.

44. Well my guess is that VJ won’t be out of a job for long. I’d also bet that his usefulness to Obama is not over: Recall that Tom Daschle still goes to the Oval Office to consult with the Big O (who does, in fact, have a Missing Piece).

    Hahahahahaha.

    Huxley, I think we need to remember that the Constitution is only as constant as people’s willingness to agree to it. The American people are a great people, and I’m as heartened as is anyone else by the events of August. But I’m not going to bet anything I can’t afford to lose on the Dems’ willingness to push this as far as they can–and that includes resorting to force. You may discount artfldgr if you like, but he has seen things come to pass no one would have predicted, and in fact denied until after they were accomplished. It’s true that Obama (and Sotomayor) only got where they are by duplicity. But that does, after all, say something about the usefulness of duplicity–and they are, nevertheless, where they are.

    Again, Eternal Vigilance and all the rest.

45. Wolla Dalbo . . . your observations are dead-on accurate and your exactly right. It’s going to come to physical blows, probably quite soon, and when we’re most deeply distracted with our own internal strife, the Chinese will suddenly be at our doorstep.

    We have but a little season to enjoy our lives as we’ve always known them, and then it’ll be over.

46. Excuse me–I’m not going to bet anything I can’t afford to lose on the Dems’ UNWILLINGNESS to push this as far as they can.

47. I think we need to remember that the Constitution is only as constant as people’s willingness to agree to it.

    betsybounds: Then we are in like Flynn.

    Outside the rarefied circles of progressive Democrats who love a charming commie thug like Van Jones, Americans at all levels, even the majority of Democrats I’d say, are rock solid behind the Constitution.

48. Flynn? Who’s Flynn? And how in is he?

49. It’s old slang of debatable origin. Before my time, but I enjoy dusting off ancient commonplaces now and then.

    The earliest known use of “in like Flynn” in print is in the December 1946 issue of American Speech. Penn State prof Ed Miller reported that students of his who had served in the army air force during World War II used the expression to mean, “‘Everything is OK.’ In other words, the pilot is having no more trouble than Errol Flynn has in his cinematic feats.”

    Straight Dope

50. Oh yeah. Like the Kwisatz Haderach.

    Huxley, I’ve already indicated that I’m with you in hoping the American people, and the Constitution, will prevail in all this. But I think you sometimes come close to a dangerous complacency in your belief and expectation that we will.

51. Well, I think there is such a thing as a dangerous hysteria as well. It clouds the mind and reduces one’s openness to possibilities.

    I’m happy to bet with the house on this one. The US is the oldest living democratic government. I’ll bet that we continue.

52. “Having a large number of czars is nothing new. FDR had a bunch and George W. Bush had about as many czars as Obama – see wiki”

    Thanks for the perspective Huxley, you’re a cool head amongst angry people, and to a somewhat significant extent I think I must stand corrected on this issue, in the interest of fair play, which I do still believe in. I don’t generally think of most of those enumerated positions as “Czars” per se, but purely as “advisors” in a strict definition of the term; Also, most of the domains are not generally the sorts of arenas which should be worrysome in terms of usurption of the constitution and checks and balances. But somehow, with Obama, they take on another quality, especially when they’re not legislatively sanctioned, and the appointment is so clearly skewed ideologically as the case with Van Jones. Also, it seems suspicious that much time has been invested by the administration with these appointees, while many other equally important positions go unfilled, it would appear because they require legislative confirmation.

53. Also, where the issue of the numbers of “czars”, etc., may have room for moderation in debate, I see none with the issue of Acorn. Involving Acorn in sensitive government management of anything with voting implications looks like an obvious and deliberate criminal conflict of interest. The fact that it has gone on through much of American political history is just more reason than ever for it to become strictly history…

54. I believe the original meaning of “in like Flynn” is less than respectable.

    Notwithstanding that, I thought the tide turned some time ago, and so did the equity markets. Rasmussen has Obama at -11 today.

55. Rasmussen showss generic Republicans smacking generic Democrats in a complete reversal from last November.

    http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/mood_of_america/generic_congressional_ballot

    37% self-identify as Democrats. 33% self-identify as Republicans. 51% think that Congress is “too liberal.” 22% think Congress is “too conservative.” That last number is probably pretty close to the percentage of “Progressives.”

    If Progressives try to steal the 2010 election in such circumstances, it could lead to violence. Trying to rig the Census is also likely to result in an own goal. Inflating urban populations through extrapolation of samples is likely to increase the measured populations of California, New York, Pennsylvania, and (drum roll, please) Illinois; but that comes at the expense of a lot of other states, with a lot of Senators, Governors, and voters who are going to be very unhappy. Factor in the inevitable Acorn scandals, and you are likely to end up with damned few Blue states in Flyover Country. That spells Republicans back in the White House and an increasingly polarized (and untrusting) electorate.

    The Left have pushed the cultural advantages that come from owning the academy and the media as far as they can, and Mr. Obama is the perfect embodiment. That game is over. A lot of voters are waking up, rubbing their eyes, and walking blinking into the sunlight. They have taken the Red Pill.

56. Well, huxley, you don’t quite make the statement, but you come close: I don’t think any of us here are dangerously hysterical. I specifically deny that I am.

57. neo said

    So for those of us who are greatly concerned about Obama’s agenda, which is it? Are we Cassandras or Chicken Littles?

    There are other options. I would say were more like the little boy who dared point out that the emperor, Emperor Obama, wears no clothes.

    Or maybe, on a more serious tone, were like the doctor who diagnoses a patient with a serious medical matter… but does so just in time to get the necessary treatment to cure him.

    Or, maybe were the rescue team which arrives just in time to warn a haphazard hiker (named America) that if it keeps on going, it will go over a cliff.

    I’ve heard that in some religious traditions, a prophet is sent not to warn of what absolutely would happen, but to warn that if a people do not change their ways, a certain danger or curse would come upon them… a danger that could be avoided if they changed their ways.

    History has many tangents, and our reactions of fear and concern may be both an expression of realization that a certain danger exists, as well as the very thing that causes people to wake up to avert such danger.

58. I don’t think any of us here are dangerously hysterical. I specifically deny that I am.

    betsybounds: You all but accused me specifically of dangerous complacency.

    As the Prophet said, “If you won’t underestimate me, I won’t underestimate you.”

59. Notwithstanding that, I thought the tide turned some time ago…

    Yes. In addition to my general skepticism that anyone can manage a decisive endrun around the Constitution, Obama has melted down to the size of an ordinary politician and he’s not returning to his Messiah size.

    Worse for Obama, that’s what he seems to trying for in the next couple week with these high profile addresses of all school children, both Houses of Congress, and the UN.

    Were I advising Obama, I’d suggest that he try some humility, but that virtue does not seem to be in his repertoire.

60. betsybounds, I am willing to believe that you are cool as can be. You don’t want to bet anything you can’t afford to lose on the Democrats unwillingness to take as much ground as they can and move to the Left as far as possible. Very good.

    So what do you want to bet on? Because we all must bet on something. I want for us to spend as much thought as possible on getting practical and winning. I want for our side to deliver an intellectual and political licking on the Left that they will never forget. I want it to be a career-ending social disgrace to claim to be a Marxist, or to show sympathy for Marxists, in the same way that we show no sympathy for Nazis and Klansmen. I want to continue the work of 1989, and finish the job this time.

    huxley agrees with you that the Left will steal as much as it can get away with. He just sees the correlation of forces differently, having come through experience to appreciate the basic courage, resilience, and even good sense of the American public. He doesn’t think that this will happen because of the good will of the Leftists because, to be sure, they haven’t any. Rather, he believes that it is beyond their ability to sustain their power legally in a center-right country. For that reason, DOJ and the courts are the places to watch.

    Absent subversion of the law, the Left will turn out to be like a man with a big appetite and weak teeth.

61. That’s why we need to keep our eye on Holder and the DOJ. Those guys are a menace.

62. Valerie Jarrett knew who Jones was. She should be forced to explain how he was ever vetted and why she praised him so effusively. Jarrett is a veteran of the Harold Washington administration in Chicago. Jarrett is (or was) also a Trustee of the University of Chicago Medical Center, which gave Michelle Obama a $200,000 raise to act as a lobbyist when Obama was elected to the Senate. Obama provided earmarks in excess of $1.5 million, so apparently U of C would consider their lobbying dollars well-spent.

    Chicago Rules.

63. Referencing the intellectual disintegration of the left, I suggest that there are three subjects that would prove to be very useful for people who want to break the monopoly on academia:

    A.) Economics:
    A basic understanding of economics is essential for combatting the practical notions of modern Marxism. A basic macroeconomic education will show that there are costs and benefits to any political system or wealth distribution. Once you establish that the notion of “fairness” is not a useful metric, the criteria for establishing the most efficient or optimal economic situation is much narrower. Proponents of Marxism will thus be forced to admit that they are not supported by observable results.

    B.) Statistics:
    Benjamin Disraeli once said that there are lies, damned lies, and statistics. We know that even if leftists accept the logic of A.) that they will seek to manipulate facts and figures to suit their goals. A decent grasp of statistics minimizes the amount of BS that they can pass on us.

    C.) Philosophy:
    If A.) and B.) have been used, a philosophical analysis of Marxism should prove adequate to win the day. If you can prove that the Marxist economic mechanism is backwards, heads will roll. If you can state the necessary ethical and moral necessities that a socialist state demands, they will quickly realize that they cannot have their cake and eat it.

    In short, ladies and gentleman, by presenting the facts, we can make them choose whether they stand for the objective or the subjective. If they choose the latter, they lose the argument. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but no one is entitled to their own facts.

64. Oblio,

    I’m willing to bet on the American people’s willingness to fight with determination and honor on whatever fronts are necessary, and I am certainly one of the American people. And I agree that the people are rock-solid behind the Constitution (well, a lot of them are, at least–let’s remember that there are plenty of leftists among the electorate). But we would be wise to recall that the Left has been defeated numerous times in the world (and arguably simply failed in addition to being defeated, although it may amount to the same thing), and yet here they are again. You say, “Absent subversion of the law, the Left will turn out to be like a man with a big appetite and weak teeth.” I do not disagree. But I see no reason to assume that they will not subvert the law–indeed, they have already actively subverted it, and they have elements in place to continue doing so. They are busily trying to gather the remaining necessary elements and implement them. I’ve said before, and will say again, that the Constitution is protective only so long as all sides agree to abide by its provisions. It has no intrinsic powers, and none beyond those granted by the ones it governs. These powers include use of force (and we should recall that those now in power want to establish a government monopoly on the use of force). This is why, as I mentioned on another thread here, my husband wondered some months ago whether the American military would obey orders to fire on citizens. People on our side of the question may differ as to its answer; but it is not an idle question. I’m simply saying, and have been saying for some time, that we may have to fight–and I don’t mean only in voting booths and courts of law. I hope it will not be so, believe me. I have lived through a thing or two myself. I simply fear–and current events with ACORN, the census, and all the rest give substance to that fear–that by November 2010, the game will have been sufficiently rigged against us that we may be unable to change it. What do we do then? Hold a special election? File a lawsuit?

    Holder’s justice department is growing a bit brazen (the CIA investigations, the dropping of the Philadelphia New Black Panther voter intimidation case despite nearly certain victory). Their brazenness at least SUGGESTS some confidence in their own ability to ignore the Constitution. Now you tell me–who has managed to stop them thus far? And if they continue in this direction, who will stop them, and at what point, and how? Do we imagine that they will be stopped by invocation of articles in the Bill of Rights, pressed in a lawsuit, or perhaps (again) by an election?

    In all good faith, I think some on our side are lulled into believing the Constitution will prevail because, well, it always has; that’s what I meant by complacent. If huxley denies that he’s complacent, let him just say so, and perhaps why. I think that position is a failure of imagination, and it seems to view the Constitution as having sort of self-preservational powers.

    It may be true that it would be hard to manage a decisive end-run around the Constitution. It is certainly true that Obama’s stature and popularity have taken some severe hits. But the American people do not return to the polls for over a year yet, and much might happen to change the voting conditions within that time. More immediately, it remains to be seen whether Democrat members of Congress will be more responsive to their constituents than they are to the party machine in Washington. I hope they will be, but I’m aware of no guarantees, and I don’t think anyone else is either.

    We are immune to exactly NOTHING. I think we need to remember that. And I don’t think it’s hysterical to point it out.

65. “Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but no one is entitled to their own facts.”

    From William Zeranski’s blog, Theory = Dogma:

    “Add a few drops of venom to a half truth and you have an absolute truth.”
    –Eric Hoffer

66. betsybounds, I don’t think that huxley has claimed or would claim that we are “immune” to a constitutional end run, or that the Constitution is automatically self-protecting. Rather, he thinks the political institutions of a center-right country will be hard to move, and that the electorate will respond, as it has already begun to do. The critical thing now is attract more allies to the opposition and to separate the Administration from their allies. Attracting people who would describe themselves as moderate and independent is of paramount importance.

    In huxley’s ears–which are urban, educated, upper middle to upper class, I expect–talking about tyranny and Communist conspiracy to take guns away probably seems like a way destined to marginalize and discredit the opposition: an own goal. He is hearing a lot of repetitive, highly emotional obsessing about the Democrats intentions; he sees the emotion passing from person to person like a virus, and he thinks “hysteria.” Mind you, hysteria got Obama elected, so huxley probably thinks that we are now living in an Age of Hysteria.

    Add to that, huxley is one hard-headed rascal. He’s willing to take on everybody before he climbs down. I sort of like that. We need people like that, but we don’t need Blue on Blue friendly fire.

    So let’s give huxley a rest. He’s not complacent. He is watching as carefully as anyone.

67. Betsybounds–I am with you.

    That we have survived as a democracy so far has been due to, among other things:

    Our unique Constitution, Bill of Rights, and founding history

    A relatively strong educational system that, up until recently, equipped Americans with a common, unifying history–and a common view of that history as good–and a particularly American mindset and set of beliefs, as well as a good, fundamental education sufficient to become a citizen, able to effectively participate in a democracy such as ours.

    Strong religious beliefs and teachings that reinforced the above.

    Strong families and social structures that supported the above.

    Leaders who–by and large (for an exception see, for instance, Huey Long)–were willing to play by the rules, and not try to destroy the system for their own advantage.

    We have also been buoyed up by a dynamic economy and strong private sector.

    Luck.

    I suggest that all of these factors have changed in ways that bode ill for us.

    With the advent of Obama & Co., our Luck has run out.

    Our educational system has been almost totally taken over by the Left, and, in general, no longer produces reasonably well educated “Americans,” but rather thoroughly propagandized, badly “educated” people who are ill equipped to be the well grounded, historically aware citizens that are vital to a democracy; people who have been told, in a myriad of ways, that rather than being Americans first last and always, that they are, first and foremost, part of some sort of smaller, insular, exclusive, cultural, national, racial, sexual or linguistic tribe, and that they should be ashamed of America. Thus is comprehension and competence reduced, and cohesion and a common American mindset deliberately broken.

    The MSM, which should be our first line of defense, is now almost entirely Left in orientation.

    The decades long Marxist, Gramscian, Postmodern attack on the basic foundations of our “bourgeois state”–religion, education, the family, civil society and its organizations, and government–has been wildly successful, and those former foundations and supporting structures have been subverted or fatally weakened.

    In Obama & Co. I maintain, we face a far/hard Left radical crew who do not intend to play by the rules but instead–however they “sugar coat it,” “put lipstick on that pig,” whatever plausible sounding excuses or rationales they give –intend to deliberately “smash the State and the Capitalist system” so that they can be the new “nomenklatura,” ruling over some form of Marxist/Fascist state.

    Obama & Co, intend to “take advantage of”/create/exacerbate and milk for all it is worth a “crisis” situation, in the course of which they will gain control over the private sector and essentially destroy it, in favor of some sort of economic fascism i.e. a command economy of government/private ownership, but government control. Similar declared “crises” may also allow them to get a better grip on us as individuals.

    Finally, while Obama & Co. pay lip service to them, they have nothing but contempt for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and have no intention of working within the boundaries they create, but intend, rather, to subvert them, ignore them, or work around them, and with a fair measure of control over those “official” parts of our system that should have mobilized as “antibodies,” as the natural defenders of our Constitution and Bill of Rights–the Congress, the MSM (Obama’s de facto “Ministry of Truth”), the Executive branch–how about that Obama State Department treatment of Honduras, and the Judicial branch–how about that Obama Justice Department dropping of the voter intimidation victory over the Black Panthers, they think that their time has come and they are reaching for the brass ring.

    It is up to us to stop them.

68. P.S.–Even if they largely fail, Obama & Co. will have achieved some of their ends by wrecking part of our capitalist system and making it hard to reconstitute it as it was. Will GM or Chrysler–such as they were–ever be the same again? Can Bond holders ever invest with the kind of trust in the system they once had? How will we think from now on about our newly created “enemies of the People,” the “undeserving,” parasitic, wealthy, entrepreneurial class? What about the broader impact–of the enormous spending, deficit and debt Obama and the Democrats intend to saddle us and future generations with–on our entire economy, the dollar and its position as the standard central market currency, our credit, and myriad other aspects of our country, including the currently failing Social Security and Medicare systems?

    If Obama & Co. and the Democrats are successful in just their “health care reforms” alone, they will have fundamentally and probably irrevocably altered the power balance and relationships between the government and citizens in favor of the government, destroyed a currently functioning medical care system that a large majority are satisfied with, and diminished each individual’s freedom considerably in the process.

69. Allow me to remind those writing here how so many Supreme Court decisions are 5-4, including the recent DC gun case. One justice changed and it would have been the other way around. Also note our Judges fondess for “emerging international opinion” and the emergence of “hate crimes” laws- which are really speech laws.

70. I might also point out that, along with indoctrination and inferior dumbed down education–illiteracy, innumeracy, and a lack of the necessary ethical and moral teachings that instill the value and dignity of work, foster honesty, self-reliance and perseverance–our educational system is also peddling the victim mentality.

    What this means in practical terms in our capitalist economy, we can see all around us (and is also reflected and spread by TV)–many trade, service and support people and higher level workers, too, who are functionally illiterate, can barely speak recognizable English, can’t add or subtract and who, in general, have not the slightest interest in doing a good job–they have been taught, and in their minds they are, “wage slaves,” unfairly imprisoned in dead end jobs waiting on slobs, jobs that are unimportant and far beneath them.

    This is a large, manufactured, dissatisfied proletariat that is ripe for the picking, and the Left– having created them–is counting on them to help them stay in power–by voting as a bloc and perhaps by other means as well, thus Obama’s call for a “Civilian National Security Force,” the introduction of the idea of “mandatory public service,” Obama’s gigantic inflation of Americorps and the creation of a slew of new “Public Service Organizations,” and the billions appropriated for ACORN; all mass “peoples organizations” in which, I am sure, the dissatisfied, under-appreciated and unrewarded will fit right in, and can be propagandized to have a new outlook and direction of great benefit to Obama & Co.

71. Leaping over many of the jeremiads above…

    neo-neocon Says:
    September 5th, 2009 at 7:08 pm
    …
    However, the priestesses at the Delphic Oracle were actual women–although their utterances were “translated” by men:

    Have we just found the source of the problem?

    🙂

72. Oblio: Thanks for the thoughtful words.

    We may have exhausted this discussion.

    Please note that I’m not arguing that Obama is innocuous or that his presidency won’t have a significant negative impact on our country.

    I recognize those. My point is that the possibility that the US is facing imminent tyranny or violent civil war is quite remote. Maybe that changes farther down the road — I am paying attention — but today, while Obama’s polls drop and his bills fail, it is remote. The United States is a very strong nation, in its design and in its people.

    Personally I find it better to go about my life with faith and confidence. I don’t borrow trouble. I save my adrenaline for the times when I need it, rather than as a constant fuel.

    In the objective that Oblio recommends — winning allies from the middle to our side — I question the effectiveness of focusing on Obama as our soon-to-be tyrant.

73. Obama -13 today.

    Ron Radosh on Van Jones: smokin!

    http://pajamasmedia.com/ronradosh/2009/09/06/the-lessons-of-the-van-jones-resignation/

    Note the link this afternoon in the update to the HuffPo writer pointing out the symbolic losses and pulling the race card, natch, that’s part of the symbolism.

74. If the democrat controlled Congress, in their infinite stupidity, actually pass a healthcare law on a partisan basis, there is going to be even more and louder protest and I believe the MSM will no longer be able to ignore what is going down.

    What I worry about is a healthcare bill that is passed on a bi-partisan basis. After researching the healthcare issue for months I do not trust either side. I think the best that can be hoped for is defeat of any bill now and then hope that if the Republicans win control again that they don’t then screw up the system we have too badly, which is the best in the world — because the Republicans are also itching to get their hand on healthcare, too.

    If it weren’t for talk radio, the internet, and Fox news, we would be in deep doodoo right now.

    You can say THAT again.

    I’m also skeptical that we have until November 2010 to save ourselves and our country, that it won’t be too late by then.

    That’s only about 14 months away. It takes time to set up really good concentration camps. I think we have a bit of a cushion before they get it all going good, you know, the firing squads and such.

    Meanwhile let’s purge the Republican Party of ALL “wishy-washy” RINOs so we can be sure and alienate even more moderates and lose even more elections. Elections don’t mean anything. Yes, I KNOW an election gave us Obama but that was an exception to the rule. Besides, John McCain was wishy to the utmost washy and would have been even worse than Obama.

    The czars have the power now because he knew from the start precisely who they are, not because he didn’t.

    If Jones hadn’t signed the petition he would still be collecting his Czar paycheck. That petition was too … stupid. The 9/11 Truthers are the lefty equivalent of the Right-wing Birthers. Conservatives hoping for Whitehouse posts in future Republican administrations observe, learn and beware and DON’T sign any Birther petitions.

    Jones’s supposedly controversial statements insulting Republicans are just standard Progressive boilerplate and wouldn’t earn him a second glance by the MSM.

    BTW, the Whitehouse doesn’t make the Czars fill out the standard Whitehouse employee questionnaire. Why? My guess is because the questionnaires are legal documents and the signatories are subject to legal penalty if they answer falsely. You really DON’T want the opposition to be able to say your advisors are law-breakers — there’s been too much of THAT already and Obama is already hurting in the polls.

    As I see it, if those who, like me, believe the worst–that we are seeing the unfolding of a well considered plan by Obama & Co. and probably a someone or someones behind him–plans, at best, designed to destroy our capitalist system, severely reduce our freedoms and our democracy, and irreversibly and forever change America into a Socialist country …

    So far, so good. All the above have been standard Progressive beliefs and goals since at least the 1960s. But uh-oh, the below gets a little out of hand …

    at worst, designed to frog march the U.S. into a Marxist/Fascist dictatorship, and we try to counter these plans and we are wrong, we just end up being alarmists and fools, but if, if we are right, we may be able to spare ourselves, our families and this country an ordeal that will impair and scar them and it forever, and has the potential to radically change us and it for the worse or, perhaps, even to destroy us and it.

    I think Obama and company could “destroy us,” by way of complacency in the face of the Islamist Jihad. Google “EMP weapon” to see what I mean: a low-tech,
    relatively simple, relatively cheap way to destroy whole nations.

    On the other hand, if those on the other side of the argument, who believe that Obama is just some clueless, stupid, bumbling schmuck with a golden voice, and that there is no substantial threat are right—great, but if they are wrong, well, we all know how this story ends, with people lined up against a wall and shot, or put in some form of “reeducation” camp.

    Yeah, but it takes at least a couple of years to set up really efficient concentration camps and finding accurate marksmen for firing squads is a bitch, too. I GOT IT! Let’s defeat the Democrats at the polls .. oh wait … I forgot … we are in the process of purging the wishy-washies so I guess winning an election is, well, not feasible …

    Gosh, I guess the only thing left is a good ol’ American insurgency. Anyone know where we can get some large amounts of ammonium nitrate and nitromethane? It worked for Timothy McVeigh …

    I can’t help but recall what Larry Grathwohl, the FBI informant inside the Weatherman said, about being at meetings at which the 30-40 top people in the Weatherman leadership–highly educated people—very calmly discussed how to run the country if their revolution was successful; planning to call in Communist troops from the Eastern bloc countries to help them run the country (shades of “Red Dawn”), plans to set up reeducation camps in the Southwest, and how they would have to kill the estimated 20-25 million unrepentant capitalists who would resist joining the revolution.

    I LOVED Red Dawn! Wasn’t Patrick Swayze cool! He was a football hero, you know. Used his gridiron skills to survive in the wild. Oh and the way those kids took on a whole occupational army. I KNOW we could do the same thing … we’ll get some cool-looking backpacks, hiking boots and some hunting rifles and Obama’s stormtroopers will be no match. I can see it now.

    But we do have to worry about the consequent hyperinflation from long-term, excessive deficit spending in concert with contrived programs like cap and trade.

    They don’t want hyperinflation but what they want to avoid at all cost is deflation. Deflation causes depressions but ordinary inflation only causes ordinary recessions which are easier to recover from than depressions. But they have to expand the money supply and that means inflation for sure. The last depression went for 20-30 years. You can be out of a recession sometimes in months. I think that’s why Bernake kept his job. He’s considered an expert on handling money supply.

    If the democrats aren’t stopped relatively quickly, we will suffer these ravages to the system, for decades to come. Note how, after years of socialism, some of the hard-core socialist states have at least partially abandoned the socialist model in favor of a return to capitalism. However, the police state aspects of these societies are generally, and permanently entrenched in their structures, ie. China and Russia.

    We don’t have to worry about a police state in the USA because if they try that crap we’ll pull a Red Dawn on’em faster than you can say, “C. Thomas Howell.”

    It appears the frogs only needed a faux frog leader like John McCain along with various other frogs expressing a lack of concern to being cooked to expose this weakness in the socialist chefs.

    It’s a GOOD thing we didn’t get John McCain elected because if we had elected ol’ wishy-washy we probably wouldn’t have the opportunity nor the need to mount an insurgency, Red Dawn-style, and THEN how would we have any fun.

    huxley—the difference now is that, while you may have greeted every new action by the “Man” as heralding the Apocalypse, most people—measuring these events against what has led elsewhere to dictatorship—would have said that your evaluation was wrong. Today, we have ample actual evidence, in things like the administration’s otherwise inexplicable, immediate and unhealthy preoccupation with the Census, that apportions Congressional districts, and, thus, voting power in Congress,

    The Democrats are trying to gain more power! Imagine — a political party trying to gain more power. How unhealthy!

    the appointment of a shadow government of almost 35 unelected, unvetted Czars, who report only to Obama,

    President Obama has advisors! Dang his mangy hide!

    and who have long track records—on video, in print—of crazy, radical, totalitarian, anti-democratic and anti-capitalist views,

    And the advisors — hold on to your hats! — have a Progressive viewpoint! But I haven’t heard of the Czars espousing “totalitarian” government. “Crazy,” – yep, “radical,’ — Oh yeah, “anti-democratic,” – well, kinda, “anti-capitalist,” – you bet … but … “totalitarian?”

    I haven’t heard of any of the Czars espousing a totalitarian-style government — at least not the Wiki definition of “totalitarian.” Maybe I’m wrong but it seems kind of strange that any of the Czars would openly espouse totalitarian government. Wouldn’t that kill book sales and seem kind of strange on a resume?

    the constant push to fund the crooked vote-fixing ACORN, successful to the tune of $8 billion dollars, and giving them a key role in hiring Census enumerators,

    Here the commentor gains some credibility with me, at least as far as the Democrats subverting the Census to gain advantage goes. But American political parties have been trying to gain advantage — fair or unfair — since the founding — gerrymandering being the most blatant form up until now. Such dirty pool cannot be good but it still falls short making me want to take up arms.

    Obama’s bizarre and ominous call for a huge, well-funded, “Civilian National Security Force”

    “Bizarre,” yes. Practical? Likely to happen? Nope.

    coupled with the introduction into law of the idea of “mandatory public service

    Knowing American youth as I do — as we all do — I do not think they will look kindly upon Obama press gangs roaming the streets and Shanghaiing them into “mandatory public service.”

    and the creation of half dozen new “public service organizations”” and the vast expansion of Americorps,

    As long as they are voluntary, I see no ominous purpose or outcome. I think Americorps is a pretty good thing.

    the demonizing by the President of the “rich” and “entrepreneurs” as the new “enemies of the People”—a singling out that no other President has ever stooped to,

    Standard Progressive boilerplate, Marxist in origin. The new boogeyman word is “Corporatism,” which the opposition to by Lefty intellectuals seems to be a way of being a Marxist without being labeled a Marxist.

    nationalization of large sectors of our economy,

    See above — “Progressive viewpoint.”

    and attempts to silence critics using the “Fairness Doctrine,”

    The “Fairness Doctrine,” which various Democrat lawmakers have looked to as a way to shut up conservative talk radio is dead in the water for now.

    proposed 100″% tax rates on private broadcasters,

    As far as I can tell, there has been no proposal on any such tax other than an opinion in a book by Mark Lloyd, making this item fall under the category of ‘hasn’t happened.’ Progressives are forever proposing idiocies in books because it sells books(to the gullible). The commentor needs to get back to us when and if there is ever an official proposal put forth.

    and attempts to gain control of the Internet.

    I don’t see this happening either.

    bypass Constitutional checks on the executive

    It would help if the commentor would be more specific- the above is mere vagueness.

    and orchestrate a vast expansion of its power are all concrete actions that are the same as the actions of other would be dictators throughout history and a lot of people—more each day, it seems—are looking at this evidence and concluding that the Apocalypse is indeed coming, if Obama & Co. have there way.

    Put up the barricades! Stock up on ammo! Find some cool flannel shirts like the kids wore in Red Dawn! Apocalypse is coming!

    But I’m not going to bet anything I can’t afford to lose on the Dems’ willingness to push this as far as they can—and that includes resorting to force.

    They’re gonna roam the streets of America — looking for social conservatives to line up for the firing squads — the wishy-washy conservatives they’ll let alone, you know. the Snowes, the McCains and the Grahams — they are going to fill their concentration camps with the cream of our conservative youth — they’re gonna confiscate our cool Red Dawn-style rainproof anoraks …

    If Progressives try to steal the 2010 election in such circumstances, it could lead to violence.

    Isn’t this how Timothy McVeigh started?

    Well, huxley, you don’t quite make the statement, but you come close: I don’t think any of us here are dangerously hysterical. I specifically deny that I am.

    I agree. There’s a definite difference in being “dangerously hysterical’ and merely hysterical. The merely hysterical fantasize, the dangerously hysterical blow up Federal Buildings in Oklahoma.

    These powers include use of force (and we should recall that those now in power want to establish a government monopoly on the use of force).

    Why, pardner — they ain’t no reason why we shouldn’t string that feller up. We don’t need no Sheriff. Us that make up this posse can try’em, sentence’em and hang’em just as good as a jury back in Dodge. Hank, git that rope from my saddlebags, willya? Ain’t gonna have no monopoly on use of force in these here parts, I tellya!

    This is why, as I mentioned on another thread here, my husband wondered some months ago whether the American military would obey orders to fire on citizens. People on our side of the question may differ as to its answer; but it is not an idle question. I’m simply saying, and have been saying for some time, that we may have to fight—and I don’t mean only in voting booths and courts of law.

    I’m in the Marine Corps. I’m on guard at Quantico. Some American civilian nuts who have let their fantasies get the better of their mental processes are shooting at me. I don’t wait for “orders;” I blow the idiots away with a few well-placed bursts. We were warned to be on the lookout for these Birthers. Like shooting fish in a barrel …

    Do we imagine that they will be stopped by invocation of articles in the Bill of Rights, pressed in a lawsuit, or perhaps (again) by an election?

    So … if the Democrats lose the next election they’ll … pull a coup? Priceless.

75. grackle, you aren’t helping.

    You are riding your hobby horse and shooting at what we might call the Cultural and Patriotic Right. To what end? Are you trying to get them worked up? How does that serve any useful purpose? If you want for some of them to apologize to you for not supporting McCain, you will be waiting a very long time.

    Blue on Blue fire has to stop.

76. Oblio,

    I agree. Blue-on-Blue fire has to stop (meaning, of course, conservative-on-conservative). So–I join the truce.

    I think grackle, btw, must be siphoning off some of that adrenaline huxley is trying to save. It’s not clear to me WHAT color flag he’s operating under!

    One question: How did it come to pass that conservatives were saddled with red in the last 2 election cycles? I mean, the media routinely talk about New England, California, etc. as “blue states.” All the election maps show the heartland as red. After nearly 10 years, I still find it disorienting for a moment each time I see one of those maps or hear the usage–I grew too accustomed to Communists’ self-referential use of “red” for all those decades, I guess (and no one took issue with it, either). But back during the Russian Revolution, for example, the fight was between red and white. I don’t get it. Do you know where the switches came from?

    Just curious.

77. betsybounds: I was curious about that red-blue scheme too. It goes back to the contested 2000 election. Wiki has a good article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_states_and_blue_states .

78. If Grackle were a football coach i wonder if he’d approve of a few of his players running the wrong way with the ball just 10% of the time?

79. I didn’t know it dated back to 1984 and CBS (naturally!). When the Red State/Blue State convention became fixed in 2000, I remembered being irritated at the MSM for turning things upside down to make a propagandistic point addressed to the feeble minded: Democrats are not Reds. Labeling the Democrats as Red would have been too obvious, and it would have hurt the team.

    This ran contrary to the longstanding color coding of the Republicans and other conservative parties as Blue and Democrats (and socialists) as Red. Go back and look at old bumper stickers issued by the party: Republicans were always blue, and Democrats were always a little uncomfortable with Red, so they were usually Red and Blue, as I recall.

    The communists and anarcho-syndicalists favor combinations of Red and Black.

    http://www.icl-fi.org/

    I couldn’t find a good anarchist website: perhaps they are too disorganized.

    CPUSA has updated their palette for to achieve rainbow effects.

    http://www.cpusa.org/article/view/758

80. SteveH, we had this debate on the Olympia Snowe thread. A great majority party needs to have room for people who disagree on matters of conscience, even on major issues. It can’t survive if people regularly go missing when they are most needed (and the heat from the opposition is most intense). It can’t have its members making propaganda for the other side.

81. SteveH,

    If grackle were a football coach, I don’t think he’d care which way a few of his players ran as long as they were yelling, “Charge!”

    Huxley,

    Interesting wiki article. Maybe I’ve just grown stodgy as well as old! Anyway, my aging gut tells me I’m a Blue, and that you are, too. Good–blue is my favorite color.

    Thanks, Oblio.

    Hey–how old do you have to be to join the Spacing Guild?

82. “We’re through the looking-glass, people. Blue is red and red is blue.”

83. A commentor speaks: grackle, you aren’t helping.

    What am I supposed to be helping? Am I supposed to be helping folks to verify their wrongheaded opinion? Even if I see obvious flaws in their viewpoint? If I have a different viewpoint am I supposed to stay quiet? Why can’t it be that we ALL give our opinions, which includes opinion ABOUT opinion and let all viewpoints be aired?

    You are riding your hobby horse and shooting at what we might call the Cultural and Patriotic Right.

    The real Cultural and Patriotic Right are the majority of folks who keep a firm grip on their imaginations. They are the same type of people who distanced themselves from the John Birch Society and David Dukes to give conservatism respectability and are now trying to regain the credibility that has been lost in the post-Reagan era.

    To what end?

    To help end Obama’s rise, to help end the destructive Progressive march through our culture, to help insure that the most benign great power the world has ever seen perseveres, to help make sure in my small way that the world’s greatest gift, freedom, continues to advance.

    Are you trying to get them worked up? How does that serve any useful purpose? If you want for some of them to apologize to you for not supporting McCain, you will be waiting a very long time.

    It’s not a matter of anyone apologizing; apology is not on MY mind. I hold no real hope of changing the minds of commentors. This blog attracts people who never comment, who may on the verge of change. I want them to read what I have to offer so they can be exposed to a different viewpoint. I opine, they decide.

    It’s also a matter of: I’m not going to stand idly by while vague, inaccurate, unrealistic, ultimately destructive opinion is put forth without challenge. If they get “worked up” about it they need to ask themselves why they are getting “worked up.” I’m not afraid to countenance opposing opinion and I don’t believe someone should be upset that I offer mine. If someone is upset that’s a problem within themselves.

    Blue on Blue fire has to stop.

    I totally agree. But when I see “wishy-washy,” “RINO,” and other self-destructive terms I think the Blue on Blue fire is already hot. Almost unbelieving, disheartened, I saw Blue on Blue fire after McCain won the nomination and it helped burn McCain up and that same type of Blue on Blue fire seems to be continuing. It’s time somebody fired back.

    This purge of moderates from the Republican Party is a bad thing to allow. It will only help the Progressives to prevail. If anyone is truly worried about an Obama Democrat Progressive dictatorship they should be welcoming allies instead of pushing them away. I guess that’s one reason why I don’t take the taking up arms stuff seriously. If they are really frightened instead of merely engaging in the adult version of telling scary stories around the Boy Scout campfire they would be begging for the McCains, Grahams and Snowes to stay with them. They wouldn’t be inclined at all toward the factionalism they are ALWAYS exhibiting.

84. “The 9/11 Truthers are the lefty equivalent of the Right-wing Birthers.”

    Pure crap, “commenter”, just prove it with the authentic original birth certificate, something very, very easy to do, too easy, so why not, simply as a gesture of good faith, a little thing which would go a long way to cement a little authentic trust; Otherwise there is something called reasonable doubt, which grows more credible everyday as other indirectly related events corroborate reasonable suspicion of the ultimate motives of this Joker’s administration; Not talking doomsday scenarios of Weatherman firing sqauds here either. Expound for another thousand words, commenter, why this double standard is acceptable.

85. Excuse me for the typo, should have been “commentor”…..

86. Grackle said: “The 9/11 Truthers are the lefty equivalent of the Right-wing Birthers.”

    A commentor responds: Pure crap, “commentor”, just prove it with the authentic original birth certificate, something very, very easy to do, too easy, so why not, simply as a gesture of good faith, a little thing which would go a long way to cement a little authentic trust;

    Obama doesn’t have to “prove” anything to the Birthers. Obama doesn’t need the Birthers’ “good faith” or “trust.” If I were Obama I wouldn’t produce the “authentic original birth certificate,” either. Why take action to quell a conspiracy theory group when that group is bleeding credibility from the Republican Party? The Birthers are helping Obama. If the Birthers did not exist he would do well to invent them.

    Otherwise there is something called reasonable doubt, which grows more credible everyday as other indirectly related events corroborate reasonable suspicion of the ultimate motives of this Joker’s administration;

    Nothing I’ve seen in any of the threads should lead to the conclusion that Obama has a chance in hell of setting himself up as dictator for life. A politician grabbing all the power he can? Yes, but that is the nature of many, maybe most, politicians — to lust after power. The commonplace(desire for power) is elevated to undue significance (America is going to succumb to a dictatorship).

    Not talking doomsday scenarios of Weatherman firing squads here either.

    Really? Then what are all the allusions, sometimes vaguely elucidated, to violence all about? What does the worry about soldiers firing on civilians signify?

87. “”They wouldn’t be inclined at all toward the factionalism they are ALWAYS exhibiting””
    Grackle

    Funny thing. I’ve seen only one devout factionalist on this thread. Everyone else is confronting the opposing side.

88. You may discount artfldgr if you like, but he has seen things come to pass no one would have predicted, and in fact denied until after they were accomplished.

    thanks Betsybounds, i guess you disprove what i said before that no one reads my links. 🙂

    you must have been ticking off to see who was correct after all the discussions not just move on to the next ones. that i keep trying to be empirical and show why its going to play out a certain way.

89. Americans at all levels, even the majority of Democrats I’d say, are rock solid behind the Constitution.

    really? well then how can most of them be in violation of their oaths of office? how can they make affirmative action laws that violate equal protection? how could they have created socialist programs in violation of said consitution? how could they even discuss health care if they followed the constition (and the welfare clause was not and did not mean socialism)? Czars, are not constitiutional. signing statements are not constititional. affirmative actuion and gender equity are not constitiational. abortion technically is not constitional without penumbras.

    heck, they are just making a sovereign democracy (its waht soviets called themselves), which is why all the focuzs on democracy, and not republic.

    Article 4 Section 4 of the Constitution guarantees a republican form of government, not a democratic one (I’m referring here to types of government, not political parties), nor a socialistic one.

    ome people don’t have a clear idea of what a republican form of government is, even though they might say things to the effect that our country is a republic, not a pure democracy. The word republic comes from Latin res publica, which simply means the public things. Socialism, and democracy, and all flavors of social engineers, believe that all things are public things. Nothing is private under socialism. All is the subject of government. Thus, under socialism, you will have no private life, no privacy rights, no option not to participate in government programming. This switch from the public things to all things clearly denies the Constitution.

    so unless your blind, delusional, or trying to make a false claim. a dead document barely followed (or followed when convienient, is not going to save us.

    where in the constituition does it say the state or federal government can create taxes to control behavior of self owned individuals?

    Some examples of unconstitutional actions can be:

    A politician who abuses the powers of his constitutionally-established office.
    A legislature that tries to pass a law that would contradict the constitution, without first going through the proper constitutional amendment process.
    Any person acting on behalf of the government who tries to prevent an individual from exercising individual rights which the constitution protects (such as the right to vote or to practice religion).
    

    lets see… how many in our state have abused the powers of office? where is it the pwoer to nationalize auto industry, and change contract law?

    so right there is enough to remove them from office.

    how about barney running a prostitition ring out ofhis home and then hiring his sex toy as an aide?

    I like the second one…

    a LEGISLATURE that tries (not succeeds, but tries), to pass a law that would contradict the constution.

    like maybe taxing americans to give the money to other countries? or creating nationalized healtcare? or gender based laws? or race based laws? i can go on.

    we have had nothing but 40 years of constant violations to the point that tehy have been stalinized/normalized and are unconstititional.

    heck we cant even check out leaders validity to lead is valid.

    May 5, 1789
    The Senate’s First Act — the Oath Act

    On May 5, 1789, the Senate passed its first bill — the Oath Act. That first oath, for members and civil servants, was very simple: “I do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States.”

    our leader, like teh soviets, dont like oaths (except to him or his programs).

    Seventy-two years later, the outbreak of the Civil War quickly transformed the routine act of oath-taking into one of enormous significance. At a time of shifting and uncertain loyalties, when members believed the nation had more to fear from northern traitors than southern soldiers, Congress responded with several new oaths. The first one, enacted at the end of the July 1861 emergency session, is nearly identical to the one that members and federal employees take today. In July 1862, during the war’s darkest hours, Congress passed a much tougher “Ironclad Test Oath” for civil servants requiring not only a pledge of future loyalty, but also an affirmation of past fidelity. In 1864, the Republican-controlled Senate, over the strenuous objection of the chamber’s few Democrats, adopted a rule requiring members to swear to the 1862 Test Oath and, for the first time, to sign a printed copy. The modern practice of senators going to the presiding officer’s desk in groups of four to take and sign the oath began in 1864.

    For several years after the Civil War, Radical Republicans used the 1862 Test Oath to keep southern Democrats from returning to Congress. In 1868, as the Radicals’ power began to wane, Congress passed a separate oath for southern members-elect, but ironically required northerners to continue swearing they had “never voluntarily borne arms against the United States.” Finally, in 1884, Congress repealed the Test Oath, leaving the repatriated southerners’ oath as the one we know today.

    yeah… we used to be abler to get rid of them for breaking oaths! now we cant get rid of them for communism, collusion, and other things..

    remember the radical republicans were keeping out the dixicrats and such… you know, the people who chased down 200 republican negroes, treed them like coons, and murdered them in landry parish.

    here is ther current oath:
    I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.
    

    every politico proposing health care reform is in violation of the enumerated powers, and so forth.

    care to read the quotes of serving politicians that amount to violating this oath?

90. In Obama & Co. I maintain, we face a far/hard Left radical crew who do not intend to play by the rules but instead—however they “sugar coat it,” “put lipstick on that pig,” whatever plausible sounding excuses or rationales they give –intend to deliberately “smash the State and the Capitalist system” so that they can be the new “nomenklatura,” ruling over some form of Marxist/Fascist state.

    great writing the whole thing…

    i do want to point out that back when FDR did it, they werent Czars (caesars). and so far there are 38 of them… and these are heavily radical in the stalinist way of exterminations, new socialist man, social engineering (guinea pig the public), darwinism breeding games, and more…

    hey! he just went in to raise the amount to borrow from 12 trillion to a higher amount.

    of course, the constituiation says (as huxley is so fond of pointing out) they can borrow all they want without our permission, and they can even burden the future posterity with bills, cause they are representing the unborn now… (and when tehy are born, they will be dead and too far from prosecution).

    many places want to replace US currency… and dont say it wont happen cause the printing is causing china to dump bonds before we devaulue currency.

    we are going to collapse… period… THEN the contitution will be suspended for our own goods. and like FDR a signing statemetn will sort us into camps for relocation.. the turmoil will remove abotu 1/3 the population so as to burn the cultural ships.

    its a process…
    not a random act that keeps occuring.

91. That’s only about 14 months away. It takes time to set up really good concentration camps. I think we have a bit of a cushion before they get it all going good, you know, the firing squads and such.

    Civilian Inmate Labor Program
    http://www.army.mil/usapa/epubs/pdf/r210_35.pdf

    set up years ago… and manned… next point…

    [and for your edification, hitler went from beig a nobody who served time for treason, to 10s of millions dead in under 12 years… historically speaking they dont build camps first, they just take you into the woods, and build a mass grave]

92. By Huxley’s definition, he is complacent. He only objects to the ‘dangerous’ prefix.

    Well, I think there is such a thing as a dangerous hysteria as well.

    By Betsy’s own self-identified descriptors, she is not hysterical nor does she intend to be.

    Huxley’s tu quoque attempts here are unimpressive.

    Art, to answer your questions from before, I listen and study to defectors. My family was not a direct influence, although you could say that they were an indirect influence as they were and are from China.

    Government rationing, of meat, for example, was not something they read of in a textbook.

93. Ymarskakar,
    different people come to the same truth in different ways, but since the truth needs no energy to maintain it, as empirical reality happily supports it till we find it.

    I have known too many people involved in things all over the map…

    and your point on defectors is important, sincve they help fill in the history behind the curtain. most, like huxley (dont worry he doesnt read me), do not think that that has much to do with things.

    but once you start studying it, you see that what we call normal and is in front of us is blended and skewed by the games and spins going on in behind.

    say russia had one school the size of princeton (1175 from their website) that put out operatives (they have many more than one).

    the earliest ones have died… some of the oldest ones are still aroudn…

    but one location producting one class a year since 1917… would have flooded the world with 100,000 believers and connected people to go out and plunder the west and collude…

    Dzerzhinsky KGB Higher School in Moscow
    Red Banner Yuri Andropov KGB Institute in Moscow (now the Academy of Foreign Intelligence).

    are just two that putin ended up going through.

    they actually put out since the fall of the wall, more like 4-6 thousand a year per school.

    The Secret History of the KGB
    findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1571/is_37_15/ai_56184189/

    Now, for the first time in print, Insight can reveal details of the inner workings of Moscow’s intelligence services that not even the ebullient Putin is likely to acknowledge. These revelations come from a top-secret, serial-numbered copy of the KGB’s internal history of itself obtained by this magazine.

    This secret document was produced by the KGB for its own internal use. It is an eye-opening and riveting account that confirms much of what Western intelligence long has suspected about the KGB and how it has built the Chekist cult in the minds of every officer in a corps feared and hated worldwide.

    -~-~-~-

    Officially called the History of Soviet State Security Organs, the internal document was produced in time for the Cheka’s 60th anniversary in 1977. One of its major themes was that the modern state-security apparatus was the lineal descendant of the Bolshevist Cheka and that the ruthless Cheka embodied the highest ideals and aspirations of the modern state-security officer. Former Russian security and intelligence officers tell Insight that new recruits continue to undergo training that emphasizes that spirit.
    
    the text is sensational because it confirms and bolsters the harshest critics of Moscow’s secret police — from Robert Conquest to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

    Summary executions.
    “Liquidation” of entire classes of people.
    Mass deportations.
    Concentration camps

    According to the KGB secret history, these were innovations not of Heinrich Himmler’s SS during Hitler’s regime but of Dzerzhinsky and his Cheka early in the Soviet regime. (“For the purposes of general supervision and repression the Gestapo modeled itself closely on the Soviet secret police,” historian Edward Crankshaw observed in his 1956 study of the Nazi terror organization. Himmler, according to Crankshaw, “had at his command an extremely able police officer, Heinrich Muller … a close and devoted student of Soviet methods. Muller was impressed by the efficiency of the internal spy system which had been perfected by the Soviet government, the effect of which, ideally, was to isolate the individual by making it impossible for anybody to trust anybody else. He set to work to reproduce this system in Germany by more economical means.”)

    What strikes the reader is not just the KGB’s acknowledgment and pride that the Cheka invented the modern concentration camp or liquidated millions of Soviet citizens simply because of their social or economic status, but how cavalierly and casually — usually in passing and never with criticism — the KGB treated the subject in its training manual.

    i guess just as casually as the american leftists treat the murder of 50 million americans through abortion..

    even this following paragraph explains a lot as to the lefts behavior towards teh peaceful protestors at the tea parties

    Even so, the historical record of the former Soviet Union is placed in clearer context. What triggered the formation of the secret police, the document says, was not an armed insurrection or series of terrorist attacks against Bolshevik rule but a nonviolent strike by government workers. The Cheka’s founding decree was a direct response to what the history calls “counterrevolutionary speeches” by “upper-level bureaucrats.”

    the kgb was created to crush peaceful protest, and debate… from there the rest was history.

    Even after 60 years, the successor KGB was fixated on the need to murder citizens who led nonviolent resistance to the Bolshevik successor regimes and to infiltrate and disrupt every possible avenue of non-Bolshevik expression. This was necessary, according to the history, “to defend the Soviet state from attacks of the internal and external counterrevolutions.”

    and yet, almost no one here recognized the beast for waht it is…

    The KGB text decries attempts by the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, a minority party in the early Soviet government, to limit the Cheka’s powers, have it operate through decentralized structures and subordinate itself to civil control. Soon afterward, according to the history, the entire Cheka was purged of non-Communists, and criticisms of Cheka excesses, even if true, were banned from the party-controlled press.

    does this sound familiar today?

    The secret history cites a September 1918 decree calling mass terror “a direct necessity.” Bolshevik party leaders granted the Cheka emergency powers to isolate entire classes of people, called “class enemies,” and round them up in “concentration camps.” The book makes casual reference to the systematic campaign to steal private property under the guise of fighting “speculation” and recounts an example of two brothers who had hidden stock certificates and a supply of textiles. They and their stockbroker “were shot on 31 May 1918.”

    ah well..

94. The narrative constitutes the KGB’s admission that excesses were not aberrations of the Stalin period as commonly portrayed but were calculated, systematic campaigns of mass terror and extermination ordered by Lenin himself and sanctioned by the entire Communist Party leadership. It repeatedly and without a hint of criticism uses terms such as “liquidation” of opponents and “merciless” campaigns against them.

    Even the Stalin era is whitewashed — the sole exception being the crippling effects his paranoia had on the state-security machinery itself. The foreword calls the Stalin years “the period of peaceful socialist construction”; the chapter covering the time of the Great Purge (the term is not used) is the “Victory of Socialism.” With a reorganization in 1934, the security apparatus was reoriented toward fighting “external enemies,” and it created a special section to deport individuals, force them into internal exile where they could be isolated and watched or send them to “corrective labor camps” — the KGB’s euphemism for the old Soviet acronym GULAG made famous by Solzhenitsyn.

    The history portrays the Chekists as heroes fighting Nazi subversion inside the Soviet Union, with plenty of examples of breaking up Nazi spy rings and sabotage networks inside German companies (some with familiar names such as Siemens and Rheinmetall) working with the Soviet defense industry. It manages to avoid noting that the Soviets and the Nazis secretly were collaborating on joint military projects at the time.

95. You may discount artfldgr if you like, but he has seen things come to pass no one would have predicted, and in fact denied until after they were accomplished.

    They’re not qualified to make that judgment, Betsy. Between equals or near peers, one can have a debate concerning which threat analysis model is more accurate. But Huxley, by his own admission and preferences, isn’t in the game. He’s not even making the attempt to make threat assessments or predictive models. He’s up in the Ivory Tower realm of rarefied thought, which coincidentally is also something Leftist activists were guilty of. I am too familiar with Huxley’s self-described activism or Leftist doomsday dogma he had previously held, but the predictive analysis model between the Sky Is Falling of the Left and the complacency of ignoring enemy determination, technology, capabilities, and intentions are very similar.

    For the other individuals involved, they, again, lack an ability to see the world through the eyes of an Obama. They can’t or won’t put themselves in Obama’s place and ask themselves, “If I was Obama, how would I go about achieving the goals of a megalomaniac and malignant narcissist that nonetheless believes in an anti-American ideology”.

    They are limited, essentially, to a parochial defense using what they know, from their perspectives. That may not be enough, however. The fatal flaw with a defensive methodology is that the attacker is the one that utilizes initiative while the defender can only react where and when the attacker chooses to attack.

    It is far better to conduct long range predictive models based upon the best case for enemy actions (aka the worst case) than it is to pretend that the enemy isn’t capable of acting out their threats. The world is full of leaders and generals that couldn’t see what was coming, not because they believed in Doomsday or the opposite, but because their methodology was flawed. They didn’t have the sources of data required for them to make sufficient decisions in a timely manner and they didn’t know how to create such avenues to acquire sources of data. By the time they knew something was up, they were being attacked and the time for thinking was over.

    It’s a sad case to study, but that’s how human beings are. It is why military campaigns are not won based upon the childish and popular conception of whoever has the largest and mightiest army being automatically the victor through sheer brute strength. That’s not how it works.

    And does it even matter–after all, even if we are Cassandra and are accurately foretelling the future in a general sense (if not in all its details), will enough people listen?

    We’re not foretelling the future, Neo. In point of fact, that would be useless in formulating policy and strategy. A strategy formed from the musings of a prophet, even if what he says is accurate, falls prey to centralization flaws. If the prophet is making decisions at the top, the subordinates tend to start relying upon such magic and not making decisions for themselves utilizing their own perceptions and minds. That plays havoc on any organization’s ability to adapt to resurgent enemy attacks.

    Instead of the prophecy model, I am describing a predictive analysis model. Something having more to do with intelligence analysis than soothsaying.

    Whether a minority is ‘right’ or not matters very little. What matters is the methodology, the epistemology for the philosophy hobbyists. A minority could have been said to have been ‘right’ about WMDs, but their methodology was incredible flawed. There’s no point in adopting flawed methodology on the hopes that they turn out right twice a day. That is not very efficient or productive in the long term.

    What you want is the right methodology, the right analysis models, and the most accurate data sources you can compile. Humans can be wrong and make mistakes, but so long as they are on the right path they can grow better with experience.

    Propaganda is also important, as it can either enhance the resolution of your model or it can tear it apart in fractal chaos.

    Epistemology teaches a very simple concept. The wisdom behind epistemology, the search for how one decides what is or is not knowledge, is that it accounts for human errors. For example, Huxley may be reacting to having personally undertaken the Sky Is Falling theories, but I am not Huxley. I did not make his decisions in my life. Thus it may turn out that while Huxley takes one stance now, given the facts as they stand, and I take an opposite stance given the facts as they stand, that this will change and reverse itself.

    That is the importance of epistemology. It doesn’t say whether a claim is or is not knowledge, whether it is or is not true. It concerns itself with finding out the best way to search for truth, for knowledge, for enlightenment. Thus it is variable and adaptive, in a philosophical context, and very useful in an analytical model context as well.

    The right methodology is not limited to one position, irregardless of changing conditions and facts. Churchill may hold one position with the facts as he knows it and then may change his position with a change in those facts. What matters is not their position, but how they came to it.

    After all, two people solving a math problem may get the same answer, but one may have guessed while the other took the right steps in the right order. That is math’s epistemology, the ‘proof’.

    As for Cassandra, there is the issue of contamination in prophecy, otherwise known as self-fulfilling prophecies. The Greeks loved those kinds of stories. What good is the ability to prophecy if you can’t convince people that your prophecy is correct? And even if you did convince them that it was right, how could you guarantee that their actions to avoid it would not just end up with them doing exactly as prophecy foretold?

    The answer is epistemology, methodology, and the path one takes to get to the destination, the answer, the resolution.

    The problem with those that won’t take the effort to analyze Obama’s options is not their opinion or positions held. The problem is that they don’t have the tools to get to the right answer, regardless of what their answer is. If Obama did as they predicted, they wouldn’t be right. They’d just be lucky due to ulterior circumstances, like a broken clock being right twice a day.

    I do not hold to the belief that two similar conclusions are evidence of a stronger conclusion than simply one conclusion held by one person. I would test how those individuals arrived at these conclusions. If one of them guessed or simply copied the methods of the other, then those two conclusions would have as much force of argument as one conclusion, perhaps even less.

96. A notable feature of the secret document is its paranoid tone. The entire document portrays the KGB as fending off endless enemies, Russian and foreign. Eight of the 12 chapters begin with an introduction about “subversive activity of external and internal counterrevolutions” or of foreign-intelligence organizations as the main justifications of the Chekists’ actions. Interestingly, the chapters covering the Nazi-Soviet alliance of 1939 to June 1941, and the Soviet wartime secret services of 1941-45, do not term Nazi operations “subversive.”

    so the paranoia of pelosi and others is a requirement… its not an aberation… and what people here dont get its paranoia makes people act in extremes.

97. I am too familiar with Huxley’s self-described activism or Leftist doomsday dogma he had previously held

    Correction, that should be I am not too familiar with…

98. For further clarification on the flaws of prophecy, simply consider that there is a decisive difference between technological knowledge and the scientific method.

    Savages or other cultures can use gunpowder and firearms, but they don’t also need to have the scientific method that created such technology in order to use the technology.

    A prophecy can be seen as a form of end product technological advancement given from a superior to an inferior. The inferior, thus, has no concept how it was formed, he only knows that he can use it to either blow things up or otherwise benefit him or herself.

    Do you see the flaw and danger here. Irresponsible use of a technology without the social and cultural maturity to have developed the scientific methodology and rationality (Enlightenment principles) to create such end products will result in much chaos and devastation.

    The prophet may understand fully or near fully what is happening. But his words may be misunderstood or perceived incorrectly. People may take the words of prophecy as a Truth Unquestioned and then act, in ignorance and foolishness, to fulfill their self-fulfilling prophecy. Others, of course, would be ignorant of how this prophecy was acquired and so will claim that it is untrue and deserves no consideration. Given that mere lesser mortals could not consider prophecy in any shape or form in the first place, this is just a temper tantrum about not being able to do what they aren’t able to do. They couldn’t judge the prophecy’s truth or falsity even if they wanted to, because they lack the gift.

    So absent prophecy as a predictive method, we are left with mere mortal means of finding the truth. Instead of simply telling people what is or is not true, what is or is not accepted as scientific fact, instead try to teach them how science is developed, how a person can tell whether something is or is not true. This has far more benefits than trying to socially engineer somebody else’s culture with the “Dogma” or the “Revealed Truth” in my view.

    I won’t get into faith, its strengths and weaknesses, yet. That’s a different topic and has its own unique methodology and epistemology.

99. On the strategic front, somebody has to be in a position of leadership that also understands how to strategically defeat the enemy. Not just tactically blow them up or cause them inconveniences by successfully defending against a single attack or IED, but a strategic seal change that will change the very face of the conflict.

    We need a innovator or simply a very competent individual, someone like Petraeus.

    Americans can resist Obama or his programs all they wish. They can talk about what tactics would be best in terms of prioritizing which of Obama’s attacks we should focus on. But that’s not going to achieve victory. Simply defending against the likes of Obama hasn’t done much to slow down the Left for over 40 years, and this pattern won’t drastically change just because people hope it does.

    The strategy requires leadership and vision. The US military wasn’t stupid. There were plenty of people calling for COIN and what not, little solutions and so forth. But it took a Petraeus, and a Bush/Cheney team to give him what he needed, for a strategic victory to be achieved. It wasn’t done via micromanagement, but through distributed access and initiative, where people on the ground, in addition to their local COIN tactics, became supplemented with an overall COIN strategy that made use of every single tactic, operation, attack, and defense the strategic corporals on the ground produced.

    If victory against the Left is what people seek, they will have to do what it takes to get it. And so far, I have seen little evidence of effective resistance against the Left. Sure, there are minor victories and major defeats, such as Vietnam. Minor defeats as well. Minor in the sense of the strategy, not the human cost: Terri Schiavo.

    In the war against the Left, victories and defeats are measured differently than would be the case in a war against a foreign power. We have had much success against foreign enemies. We have had much success against domestic terrorists or militia groups or organizations like the original KKK, formed to topple Republican pro-freedmen governments and replace them with Democrat jim crow governments. We have had little success against the Left, however. Their legitimacy in America is not uncontested, but it is also superior in all the ways that count: institutions and on the ground people power. People may call themselves conservatives, but if they can’t tell what is or is not true, their ‘conservative’ self-identification is just a check box in a propaganda campaign designed to make them do whatever they are told to do.

    That’s the power of propaganda. The Left doesn’t need a civil war to win. But because they are very blind to the thinking and motivations of true patriots, they can overreach and spark one nonetheless. Wars are often started when one side miscalculates and badly judged the reactions of a foe. Contrary to popular opinion, this kind of incompetence and ineptness doesn’t prevent wars, it causes them. It is not that one side is so weak they won’t ever start a war or respond to one, it is that they are so incompetent that they become desperate and do something really stupid.

    It takes work to get these things right. Leaders like Petraeus didn’t just jot down something called COIN (Counter-Insurgency) and it just happened like that. They had to consider their allies, their enemies, the political situation, as well as the neutral clans and tribes involved.

    America and Americans can no longer afford to ignore the Left as if they were just another political party, something affixed to the American national history of elections and power sharing. There is a New Dynamic in existence. It has been in existence for awhile now, but many are awakening to smell something fresh in the air. Freshly killed that is.

    It’s not easy. I know it is not easy. But it is necessary. To think like the Left is to think like your most hated enemy. Unpleasant, but again, necessary for victory. To not do so is simply complacency. You don’t feel a great enough need.

    There were two general sources that taught me how to process sensory input and manage plans from an adversary’s viewpoint.

    1. History and Current events, which included defectors from the Left and the Soviets, as well as modern day COIN in Iraq. It also includes the US military’s use of Mao’s insurgency manual for operations in the Philippines after MacArthur was ordered to bug out by Roosevelt.

    2. Target Focus Training’s excellent and eye opening lecture on the difference between social and asocial.

100. Ymarsakar: Love you too, guy.

     Anyway, I don’t have the time or inclination to read through your long rants or Artfldgr’s. But what is your point?

     Leaving me out of it, could you summarize?

101. In line with Artfldgrs discussion of Congressional oaths, how about the two Muslim members of Congress, Congressmen Keith Ellison of Minnesota and Congressman Andre Carson of Indiana; both Democrats.

     Ellison swore his oath on Jefferson’s Qur’an*–a Qur’an that tells all Muslims that there is only one legitimate government for all the world, and that is Islam and it’s Shari’a law, and that all other governments and their laws are not only illegitimate but blasphemous, and must be destroyed. So, what is his oath worth?

     Carson won a special election to fill a vacant post, and, according to newspaper accounts, swore his oath on a copy of the Constitution–what that was supposed to obligate him to I don’t know. What I do know is that there is a Hadith that says that, if a Muslim finds that he is required to swear oaths that are contrary to Islam, they are not binding, and he does not have to abide by them:

     “…According to Imam Tabari, whose multi-volume exegesis is a standard reference work in the Islamic world, 3:28 means: “If you [Muslims] are under their [infidels’] authority, fearing for yourselves, behave loyally to them, with your tongue, while harboring inner animosity for them.” Regarding 3:28, Ibn Kathir recommends the advice of Muhammad’s companion: “Let us smile to the face of some people while our hearts curse them.” (http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/ibrahim030609.html)

     * Jefferson, who, by the way, spent many years of his life, first as Minister to France, and then as President, fighting to create a U.S. Navy and Marine Corps that eventually went to Tripoli and, after years of fighting, defeated the Muslim Barbary Pirates, who for more than a decade were attacking our absolutely essential merchant ships, stealing and selling their cargoes, and selling their crews and passengers into slavery, and were bleeding our new country dry with their demands for protection money (Jizya) that Congress paid each year–20% of our new, struggling country’s entire national budget over a 10 year period.

102. P.S.–I should have also mentioned that the same Qur’an that Ellison swore his oath on says that all governments and nations are also all illegitimate and an affront to Allah, and must also be destroyed, so that “All is for Allah.”

103. The idea of the KGB created to counter domestic protesters is an interesting one.

     If everything belongs to God, then this in reality means that everything belongs to God’s chosen prophet, Mohammed. Since he was the only one around to speak for Allah, conveniently. Must be a good gig if you can get it.

104. Artfldgr says:

     The KGB text decries attempts by the Left Socialist Revolutionaries, a minority party in the early Soviet government, to limit the Cheka’s powers, have it operate through decentralized structures and subordinate itself to civil control. Soon afterward, according to the history, the entire Cheka was purged of non-Communists, and criticisms of Cheka excesses, even if true, were banned from the party-controlled press.

     does this sound familiar today?

     Hmmm. Sounds like the hard core right’s efforts to rid the GOP of its non-conforming members.

     All his talk or who is right and who is wrong, and who should be in the party and who should be out resembles nothing less than inter-party struggles between members of Communist or Socialist Parties. It has the vague smell of George Orwell’s 1984 about it.

     Thank you all, comrades, you who would lead us on the shining path to truth (aka, Pravda ). How could anyone dare to think differently when its is you all who have the real Truth with a capital “T.”

     I recommend that you all read Orwell’s “1984”, and his excellent “Animal Farm.” To avoid totalitatrainism, we need who think independently of either left or right. As one who opposes what Obama is doing, but who is not intent on following this path of “idological purity” on the right either, thank God that there are some thinking people here… Huxley among them, who dares to think. I refuse Obama’s leftism, and those who follow blindly his leftist ideology. But I refuse to instead substitute unthinking allegiance to right-wing ideology in its place.

105. SteveH Says

     If Grackle were a football coach i wonder if he’d approve of a few of his players running the wrong way with the ball just 10% of the time?

     Politics is not a football game, and this is too simple an analogy.

     A better example would be to treat each Senate vote as being a single football game, and the “teams” involved on each vote are different depending on how the votes lines up either for or against each issue. So, although it roughly lines up as being the Dems on one side, and the GOP on the other, there is almost always some degree to which this does not apply. There are generally some Dems voting with the GOP majority, and vice versa, depending on the issue, and depending on how that issue plays regionally.

     So, for those who generally associate the GOP with conservatism, and who support the “conservative” viewpoint, the key is to have the most number of Senate seats occupied by people who would support those GOP/conservative views most of the time. In a situation like that of Maine, where the voting public is less conservative, the practical thing is to have someone like Olympia Snowe, who at least supports the GOP agenda some of the time, rather than a Dem who will not support it at all.

     For example, although Snowe may not be helpful on a large number of issues, she may be the very vote that counts on an issue like maintaining the embargo against Castro… which is something. I’d rather have her in that seat voting in favor of a strong policy against Castro, rather than a more liberal Dem who wont… especially since that Dem will be just that much more libral accross the board than Snowe, notwithstanding her tendency to “leave the reservation.”

     That is the game called politics.

106. Sounds like the hard core right’s efforts to rid the GOP of its non-conforming members.

     Those that can’t tell whether the sun is red or yellow, can only make a guess about what color it looks like.

     They, and you, have no real idea of what is going on.

     All everything does is ‘sound’ like something you either wish to be true or are afraid of being true.

     This is fertile manipulation material.

     Thank you all, comrades, you who would lead us on the shining path to truth (aka, Pravda ). How could anyone dare to think differently when its is you all who have the real Truth with a capital “T.”

     Btw, you really shouldn’t call George Washington a promoter of Pravda for exiling all those British loyalists after the war, in effect purging them from the US.

     You’ve stated your erroneous objections enough here, don’t you think.

     But I refuse to instead substitute unthinking allegiance to right-wing ideology in its place.

     There are enough blind people in the world that can’t recognize what is or is not a civilian. Try not to add to it.

     You have no real idea of what a right-wing ideology consists of. You have no real idea how a purge is conducted, what reasons motivate it, or what effects, negative or positive, it brings to the table. Your opposition to a purge is ideological, not pragmatic or rational.

     Somebody told you purges was bad, Communism was bad, so ex post facto, there it became. There was not enough thinking involved there to warrant calling it reason or rationale.

     In a situation like that of Maine, where the voting public is less conservative, the practical thing is to have someone like Olympia Snowe, who at least supports the GOP agenda some of the time, rather than a Dem who will not support it at all.

     Old dynamic and template. Stuck in the past and on parochialism, for that matter.

     Snowe supports Snowe. Her agenda is her own.

     It’s better to have an open enemy you can face with honor, that actually has principles he will fight by, than to deal with corrupt middle men in your back willingly to sell ammunition to both sides of the war.

     Purges are conducted for the simple reason that internal sabotage, such as McCain’s attacks on Sarah Palin, must be made to stop. The Cheka wasn’t worried about ideology. IT was worried about subversive members that were going to do something to put a wrench in things. They were concerned about operational matters, not ideology. Ideology doesn’t have any real effects unless paired up with actions.

     No organization can successfully lead when it has double agents in its ranks informing their highest leaders on policy and compromises.

     Far from the point, any purge of the REpublican party would be conducted on the basis that corrupt Republican party officials or politicians were working in league with Democrats to fix a perpetual power grab that benefits both Demos and Repubs. The Republican party of Illinois, for example, would make a good example. It wouldn’t matter if those Repubs were 100% in line with my or any other conservative’s idea of what ‘conservatism’ was or is. They would have to go regardless.

     Those like Arlen Spectre only call themselves Republicans in order to maintain their power and influence, in order for them to sustain their corrupt money grabs and pay for play schemes. Those have to go.

     Your ideology of anti-purges and anti-communism and anti-pravda is hurting the best interests of America, let alone the Republican party.

     If I was to have a ratio for these things, I would say that the ideological is to the physical as is 1/3 is to 1.

107. Ymarsakar,

     My family escaped from Castro’s communism, so I think I know quite well what totalitarianism and rigid ideology is. If you look very closely at your postings, including your last one, you will see a perfect example of totalitarian thinking.

     For example, in Cuba, the Communists appropriated the image of Cuban patriot Jose Marti, a person who fought for Cuban independence and who was the farthest thing from a Communist. But the Communists never cease to summon up the name of Jose Marti for everything they do. So, when they round up all “counterrevolutionary” elements, they claim it is in the name of standing for what Jose Marti would have done.

     Likewise, you have the audacity to summon the name of George Washington for your effort to tar those of us who disagree with you as being worthy of purging. This, Ymarsakar, is what totalitarian manipulation looks like.

     I certainly would not suggest that you be made to leave the Republican party, as I am willing to accept that people with your opinion are part of the party. But the Republican Party is a Center Right Party, not a Far Right Party. Its major leaders, including Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, George W. Bush, the late Jack Kemp, the late Ronald Reagan, are all Center Right. If you actually had the ability to “purge” people from the GOP who were not on the far right, you would have to purge the majority of the major firgures of the party, as well as most of the membership, most of whom are practical non-ideological people. So, Ymarsakar, before you start insisting that for the Republican Party, its either “your way or the highway,” you should take a good look at who does the driving and in whose name the car is, before you end up on the side of the road doing a lot of walking by yourself.

     As a Center Right Republican, who is part of a Center Right Party, enough of this talk of “purging.” If you dont like the party, and most of the Center Right people in it, the appropriate thing is to leave. Again, Im not saying you should be made to leave, but enough of this talk that the Center Right view of most people whould be subordinated to your extremist views. There are 2 parties that are rigidly, purist “to the right.” They are (for social conservatives) the Constitution Party, and (for Libertarians) the Libertarian Party. It would be more correct for those of your minority view to go join those parties that more accurately represent your views, rather than to keep harranguing those of us who still believe that there are less drastic means to help this country than to resort to what you suggest.

     Incidentally, as one who knows what totalitarianism really is, I say thank God for the United States of America, where people of all political stripes (yes, you too, Ymarsakar) may speak their mind. Thank God for those, like the Tea Party protesters, and all of us who write on this blog, who use our freedom of speech and keep it vibrant. And thank God that we can all do so without the serious threat of winding up expelled for our views.

108. Obama’s Hiddent Economic Agenda Part 1
     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIw11Jdol-4

     Obama’s Hiddent Economic Agenda Part 2
     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mi7CsxuOlGQ

     its interesting… i havent seen even half of the first one. as one writer said he is as boring as ben stein on sedatives… definitely not high strung.

     there is supposed to be a third part…

109. Ymarsakar, you are a very able theoretician, and I read what you write with pleasure, but you haven’t come close to making the case that there is a threat to which huxley is blind and in the face of which he is complacent. You are quite right that we have squandered some victories over the Left, mainly in not pursuing them into their sanctuaries after 1948 and 1989.

     As I read this thread, I am grateful for the variety of perspectives that inform our opposition, from personal narratives of experience with totalitarian states, to historical studies, to game theoretical analysis, to epistemological reflection, to practical experience, to the calculus of political coalition-building, to testimony of defectors, to simple patriotism, and even to huxley’s decency, cultural self-confidence and unspoken reliance on a strategy which we might name later, but probably not (and which I also endorse). It seems to me that all of these have their role to play, and all of us our own role to play.

     There is no one truth here that invalidates the others: we are like the Six Blind Men and the Elephant. Therefore, let us not quarrel or insist that any of us owns the whole truth. It will take all of us to defeat the Left.

     Ymarsakar shows the way: it is in contemplation of the Left’s weaknesses and the fact that we know them much better than they know us, or can know us. Therefore, we should focus on the future and what we are to do. They are vulnerable, and we have resources.

     The way this ends is, We win, they lose. That’s my prediction.

110. Oblio-

     I second your prediction, and your comments.

     I myself got a little fired up in my recent postings.

     I agree with what Oblio is saying: that we all have some understanding of “the elephant” that is the left, and how to go about defeating it. His reference to the old fable is prescient.

     I think Oblio also did an excellent job, in a previous post, of summarizing, in a well balanced way, what our collected wisdom (as revealed in our debates) may reveal:

     A great majority party needs to have room for people who disagree on matters of conscience, even on major issues. It can’t survive if people regularly go missing when they are most needed (and the heat from the opposition is most intense). It can’t have its members making propaganda for the other side.
     

     Thats a good balanced analysis.

     Earlier, I was over at Assistant Village Idiot, the excellent blog of a frequent commenter here at Neo’s. I recommend checking it out.

     Its here

     He has an excellent post in which he writes about the difficulty of getting along with others in a diverse coalition devoted to a particular goal.

     Heres the post.

     I recommend everyone read it. In the comments section, one of the commenters, summed it all up by saying: “Don’t go all tribal and want your coalition to all be people you’d like to go on a road trip with.”

     I’ll just leave it at that.

111. but you haven’t come close to making the case that there is a threat to which huxley is blind

     That wasn’t really my purpose.

     For example, Huxley asked in a previous thread for a scenario concerning Obama’s campaign against the US Constitution. I could have given him one, but I didn’t do so. Now if I was arguing to prove a threat that I was trying to claim existed, I would present such scenario complete with theoretical or physical reasons and evidence.

     Art may be hammering on the threat issue that somebody here isn’t aware of or don’t want to be aware of, but I am not Art. His priorities are not mine, even though we share some commonalities at the base.

     I find it more important the way people think rather than what they think. A simple reference to the charge that a Republican purge would necessarily be one based upon ideology and not loyalty to goal and principle can give you an idea of what I mean. It is not what position they take in the party that matters, they should be purged because they are disrupting productive goals and plans for the defeat of Democrats, the resurrection of the US Republic, and the enforcement of just laws. They can be against Palin or for Palin. Against McCain or for McCain. Against the war or for the war. None of that matters as much to me as what they actually contribute or don’t contribute to the party, the conservative philosophy, and the nation at large.

     You are quite right that we have squandered some victories over the Left, mainly in not pursuing them into their sanctuaries after 1948 and 1989

     Unions give around 99% of their total political PAC funding to Democrats. That percentage reminds me of Saddam’s ‘popular’ support in the days before the invasion. But unions probably aren’t their largest voting slave base. I think those that self-identify as African-American would constitute the majority of such. And that started from the Civil War and Reconstruction. Way before international progressivism came on the scene, or the Left. In America, at least.

     The history is very long. It’s not the mistakes of one generation, like the Baby Boomers, deciding everything. It’s a little bit at a time, adding up to a check mate. Blacks think Lincoln was a Democrat. THey believe the Republicans were for slave owning, for Jim Crow. Not so. The fact that the Dems can sustain this propaganda barrage by essentially keeping a whole culture, sub-culture, under their delusion, speaks well of their power. The power of a cult. Small, yes, but very extreme and very dangerous.

     Therefore, let us not quarrel or insist that any of us owns the whole truth. It will take all of us to defeat the Left

     I’ll raise the issue of faith, which complements reason and logic. If a man has faith in his cause or his principles, he can put his life on the line to preserve to achieve his goals. This is a demonstration of faith and of strength. He may not succeed in the end nor may he have chosen the right side, but his decision to take the risk speaks well of his character and virtue.

     In the end, it doesn’t matter who has the truth. For God and the martial field will decide who is right, who is wrong, who is true, who is false, who is dead, and who is alive.

     The future will decide what man’s behavior will lead to. I am not optimistic, but I also don’t fear it. Life consists of sacrifice and duty. And as the Japanese were wont to say, duty was heavy as mountains while death was light as a feather.

112. SteveH: Funny thing. I’ve seen only one devout factionalist on this thread. Everyone else is confronting the opposing side.

     Factionalism isn’t the subject of Neo’s post so it is not surprising at all that the issue of factionalism is mentioned infrequently. The commentor himself is of course a “devout factionalist.”

113. “Really? Then what are all the allusions, sometimes vaguely elucidated, to violence all about?”

     My comments were very specific, you’re not reading, you’re just grandstanding “commentor” gracky. Obama doesn’t have to prove anything? Sure he does, in his position, when it’s that easy to vindicate his representation as a natural born citizen; If he’s just being obstinate, he goes down in history with a cloud over him as a possible or probable fraud. Is he afraid of being impeached for an unimportant little technicality like “ah did not have sex with that woman”…? If he’s discovered eventually, beyond a shadow of a doubt, to have been lying about this it is tantamount to perjury. So, what’s the Joker got to worry about, doesn’t he care about his broader constituancy? You’re not really reading grackle, so you’re not worth reading…

114. What a waste of space above. I had enough of that in graduate school.

     Huxley – – I respect your views. I’ve watched the evolution in your thinking about Obama. If I am correct, your perception of him is now essentially that he is an inexperienced politician who has made so many (too many) mistakes to rise to full glory again or even anything close to it. And I believe that you believe that he is driven mostly by a fixed ideology, an inflexibility, and this will explain his failures as much or more than any other personal weakness. I think you have rejected the theory of him as a 3-dimension chess player, primarily because you believe he is not capable of the sort of strategic ability that requires.
     I’ve also watched you come to the conclusion that we as center and center-right grown ups need not be particularly worried that he will destroy our democratic institutions, forms, and processes. No real reason to be alarmed I believe is your prediction. You argue that our country is basically strong at its core and in the end our political culture will protect us and defeat Obamanation. A corollary is that many people can now see through his behavior to his weaknesses and to ideologically driven motives. My questions are pretty simple. How can you be so confident? Am I missing something? It wasn’t long ago when I saw many (otherwise) intelligent colleagues and friends allow themselves to be duped by Obama. Nor can I square the fact that millions of nitwits (and I call them that without arrogance) also supported him; nitwits who apparently don’t know how to process simple facts iwhen they are in front of their noses. What makes you believe that our people (re: our country) will be safe from this dangerous manipulative con artist? I know. I too have seen the anger at the town hall meetings. I know. I’ve seen some people change their perceptions. But I haven’t seen enough yet anywhere to convince me that we are anywhere near safe from that animal and his minions. What makes you a believer? Please explain.

115. JohnC: Thanks for your straightforward, civil post.

     No, I don’t think the US will escape from Obama unscathed. We will pay a terrible price for Obama and all the flavors of leftism, wishful thinking and irresponsibility that underlay the support for Obama.

     My point, my sense, my prediction is that we aren’t looking at the loss of our constitutional republic or the advent of violent civil war. I say that the United States is strong enough and resilient enough to avoid those outcomes.

     But oh yes, we are going to pay a price. Exactly how much of a price remains to be seen, but there will be a price.

116. You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.

     John C, P.T. Barnum may not have understood epistemology, but he certainly knew something about human nature. A lot of people got fooled last fall, but a lot of them are getting unfooled. That reminds me of a line from Blake:

     If a fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise.

     I agree with huxley that there will be a price for such folly, but I suspect that it will turn out to be terrible, and probably greater around the world than in the U.S.

117. Oblio – “This way to see the egress!!!” 🙂

118. Who says that Obama & Co. have not “stimulated” the economy?

     It was reported yesterday that the number of BATF background checks on gun buyers indicated that Americans bought over 1,000,000 guns last month, a 12% increase over the previous month’s total (and that total is not even counting private gun sales between individuals).

     Yippee!

119. It’s true that Obama (and Sotomayor) only got where they are by duplicity. But that does, after all, say something about the usefulness of duplicity—and they are, nevertheless, where they are. Again, Eternal Vigilance and all the rest.

     Yes, Obama and Sotomayor are “where they are.” One was elected in a democratic election and the other confirmed by the Senate, both happenings that have been occurring on a regular basis since the founding. And these events are supposed to spur all of us to “Eternal Vigilance?” The election and the confirmation are supposed to be evidence of … a need for … “Eternal Vigilance”? Talk about undue significance. Whew!

     Involving Acorn in sensitive government management of anything with voting implications looks like an obvious and deliberate criminal conflict of interest.

     I’m no lawyer and so wouldn’t know about “criminal conflict of interest.” But the fact that some dirty pool players are trying to rig elections is not credible evidence that the Republic is about to fall since similar attempts have occurred regularly throughout our history and the Republic still stands. I hate to harp about undue significance but it can’t be helped if it is constant.

     Civilian Inmate Labor Program
     http://www.army.mil/usapa/epubs/pdf/r210_35.pdf

     set up years ago… and manned… next point…

     NOT “set up years ago,” and NOT “manned.” These proposed facilities are NOT built or, as the commentor puts it – “set up.” And of course what doesn’t exist cannot be “manned.” The Civilian Inmate Labor Program was a contingency contract offered by the Bush administration primarily to house undocumented workers in case the Congress ever decided, as per the oft-stated desire of the anti-immigration folks, to round’em all up and ship’em all home.

     Another contingent use would be to house great numbers of refugees in case the economy or government or both of a neighboring nation, such as Mexico, collapses and there came to be a huge influx of refugees across the border.

     Still another use discussed was to relieve the overcrowding of the Federal Prison System and provide work for the convicts if the convicts wanted to participate in such a program.

     And lastly, such facilities were seen as temporary quarters for victims of Katrina-like natural disasters. The pdf link provided by the commentor is a policy paper, one of many generated each year by the government. If the commentor is disturbed by a policy paper such as this he must be going nuts over the fact that we have a vast Federal and State prison system already “set up” and “manned” … next point …

     http://tinyurl.com/mkzaab

     The commentor earlier: Not talking doomsday scenarios of Weatherman firing squads here either.

     My reply: Really? Then what are all the allusions, sometimes vaguely elucidated, to violence all about? What does the worry about soldiers firing on civilians signify?

     My comments were very specific, you’re not reading, you’re just grandstanding “commentor” gracky.

     It should have been obvious to the commentor that I was referring to the entirety of the comments up to then rather than his specific comment, the main clue being my phrase about “soldiers firing on civilians,” which came from another commentor. But he’s reading and I’m not. Whoa.

     Obama doesn’t have to prove anything? Sure he does,

     No, he doesn’t.

     in his position, when it’s that easy to vindicate his representation as a natural born citizen;

     Obama doesn’t have to “vindicate his representation as a natural born citizen.” The ludicrously held belief by the Birthers that he does can only be described as delusional.

     If he’s just being obstinate, he goes down in history with a cloud over him as a possible or probable fraud.

     Only in the delusion-ridden minds of the Birthers.

     Is he afraid of being impeached for an unimportant little technicality like “ah did not have sex with that woman”…?

     Here the commentor gets a bit incoherent, with the puzzling reference to Clinton. He does not bother to explain the … analogy?

     If he’s discovered eventually, beyond a shadow of a doubt, to have been lying about this it is tantamount to perjury.

     And if elephants had wings they might be able to fly but they don’t so they can’t(used before but if it’s good for one it’s good for two).

     So, what’s the Joker got to worry about, doesn’t he care about his broader constituency?

     Broader constituency? Meaning the Birthers? Like I said before if the Birthers did not exist Obama would do well to invent them … hmmm …. WOW! I GOT IT!

     The Birthers are really a secret invention of Obama!

     Oh, that DIABOLICAL rascal!

     Thanks, Perfected democrat! You’ve done your nation a great service.

     Remember readers … you read it here first.

120. If you look very closely at your postings, including your last one, you will see a perfect example of totalitarian thinking.

     I will repeat for the sake of argument that since you don’t know what purges are, what constitutes totalitarian governments, nor how they are sustained, you are not qualified to judge what is or is not totalitarian thinking. You can certainly read what others say and accept their judgments, but those aren’t your own. Somebody told you what you then accepted as true or knowledge. Btw, knowledge and history doesn’t come down to you via your ancestry. What your parents experienced will have no bearing on who you are until you work to make it so. Simply the statement that your blood carries with it some kind of superior talent or ability, has no validity with me. Nor does it have validity with most Americans. If your mother was a doctor and your father a lawyer, you can’t use it to lawyer your way to getting a medical license to practice surgery, you know.

     People can be as ignorant as they wish. It doesn’t mean I’ll ignore their meanderings. I don’t really accept the tribal idea that there is a side, and I am on somebody’s side, and that this means I am duty bound to defend them. If there is a dead body in a classroom, I won’t defend the right of that dead body, once a teacher, to pension. But Unions would. Bad of them, of course.

     Likewise, you have the audacity to summon the name of George Washington for your effort to tar those of us who disagree with you as being worthy of purging.

     Your ideological system that claims George Washington as your own is rather pathetic. Try something called logic. It doesn’t always work, but it feels better, at least.

     I certainly would not suggest that you be made to leave the Republican party, as I am willing to accept that people with your opinion are part of the party.

     Who cares what you suggest or not about me. Certainly not me. As I said before, your problem is that you think you know things you don’t really know. ANd you compound this problem and mistake with more mistakes in the form of trying to describe people’s positions on purges, which you can’t do accurately. You don’t know what people’s positions on purges are. You don’t know what a purge consists of. And you wouldn’t know what the consequences to the Republican party or a totalitarian system from a purge would be.

     Your solipsist view of what others do, based entirely on what you think you would or would not do, is not valid. It is not that it could have been right, but just happened to be wrong. It is invalid.

     Your preference for making a claim and then not backing it up might sound adequate to you, but then again, your standards are a bit lower than would be expected.

     As a simple fact of life, your belief about ideological purges is wrong. I stand as evidence of this. ANd some of the Communists would stand evidence as well, if I wished to bring them up. ANd if you wished to contest the view.

     And why is your ideology about purges wrong? Because they aren’t ideological purges. They aren’t ideological.

     Has that gotten through to your brain yet, or will you continue to persist in the delusion that the word ‘purge’ must only relate to the purging of those individuals based upon ideological factors?

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