Why push health care reform now?
Senate Democrats have devised bill after bill on health care reform, with provision after provision, only to be unsuccessful in getting the sixty votes required. Now, public opinion has tanked in its support for all of the bills. And yet this Congress perseveres. Why? Isn’t it a form of political suicide?
Byron York tackles the answer here:
In the House, the view of [California Rep. Henry] Waxman and [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi is that we’ve waited two generations to get health care passed, and the 20 or 40 members of Congress who are going to lose their seats as a result are transitional players at best,” [a Democrat strategist] said. “This is something the party has wanted since Franklin Roosevelt.” In this view, losses are just the price of doing something great and historic…”At the White House, the picture is slightly different,” he continued. “Their view is, ‘We’re all in on this, totally committed, and we don’t have to run for re-election next year. There will never be a better time to do it than now.'”
“And in the Senate, they look at the most vulnerable Democrats — like [Christopher] Dodd and [Majority Leader Harry] Reid — and say those vulnerabilities will probably not change whether health care reform passes or fails. So in that view, if they pass reform, Democrats will lose the same number of seats they were going to lose before.”…
“…[T]hey think they know what’s best for the public,” the strategist said. “They think the facts are being distorted and the public’s being told a story that is not entirely true, and that they are in Congress to be leaders.”
But in the comments section to the York article you see a different story. It goes something like this: Byron, you’re being naive. Do you really think their motivation is so noble?
These commenters have a different idea of what’s going on. The Democrats are out for power through the creation of another huge and perpetual entitlement program. They’ll cook the books in the next election via ACORN and won’t lose many seats after all. If enough illegal aliens come in and get to vote through motor voter and other ploys, they’ll have a permanent majority. They’re creating a huge constituency for big government, and delivering the goods is the most important thing. They (especially Obama) want to further the dream of socialism at any cost.
I’m with the commenters.
American Thinker today has an article on Healthcare:The Poisoned Chalice. I couldn’t stop myself. I commented that no, the poison was in the vessel with the pestle and the chalice with the palace is the one that is true. As far as I could tell, no one got it.
I am also with the commenters. I also worry that if the Republicans in Congress sit back and go along to get along this stuff will never be undone. So, the Democrats edge us along, step by step, and never retreat, from their grasp for power for the sake of power. We need to get the electorate so angry that they will push for the conservative over the RINO in the primaries and hope to get enough conservatives elected to push the party towards conservatism, which is not the far right as so many RINOs fear.
Count me in as well. As always, the Country Club Republicans will go along, get along – we’re toast…….
Well the Connecticut Yankee may have been bought, according to a link on Drudge. So you have to conclude that maybe there is no Brew that is True.
To Defend These Rights – Valery Chalidze and another book Psychiatric Terror is helpful
wonders whether anyone in the West can really understand what it means to live (never mind speak up critically) in a world where a given ideology has control of a totalitarian political apparatus. “Theories and conclusions,” he points out, don’t “develop out of the raw material of life, but, on the contrary, the raw material of everyday life is created to fit in with the ruling theory.”
Vladimir Bukovsky
The “ruling theory” Bukovsky refers to can exert dominion over “life” itself–crush differing viewpoints, insinuate its assumptions into schools, offices, factories, courtrooms, and, of course, hospitals. Life, in Bukovsky’s tersely penetrating phrase, “does not develop freely, but is ‘interpreted’ by the party”: the reigning millenarian ideologues who have the final say on what constitutes “reality,” what constitutes deviance. But is not such a judgment, in concrete everyday clinical instances, the doctor’s? Bukovsky’s answer is: “The Soviet psychiatrist is a part of the Soviet system. He cannot say, ‘I find no symptoms of illness in this person.’ He cannot reach his conclusions inductively, he must follow the prescribed deductive method.”
The authors of Psychiatric Terror provide ten appendices, including a description of a Soviet mental hospital by a psychiatrist, a verbatim record of two psychiatric interrogations of political dissenters, and a fifty-page “register” of dozens of people who have been confined to mental hospitals because they have said or written words deemed “anti-Soviet.” The register offers personal information about each man or woman, and a brief summary of the “case.”
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/8355
They explain how the procedures of civil commitment to mental institutions are devised to accommodate the desires of bureaucrats or the police rather than those of families, neighbors, or friends. The criminal commitment procedures are similarly bent, if not completely twisted. In the hospitals, frightened, intimidated, humiliated men and women struggle for long stretches against the effects of various drugs or electricity. Always near at hand are psychiatrists who act as judges, accusers, and sometimes tormentors. A useful historical description at the end of the book offers a little hope; we are reminded that an increasingly strong opposition to psychiatric abuse, among other repressive activities of the Soviet state, has developed both within Russia and in the West. The Russians, ever sensitive to their reputation abroad, seem willing to reduce at least some repressive activities that lead to worldwide censure. It remains true that if all psychiatric abuses were ended tomorrow, the labor camps would still be around. Knowing that, the authors concentrate on a specific task–to lay before Western readers the elements of a particular kind of “terror.”
this makes the socialist hell of medicine a way to control people.
like buying in the shops, or where you live, etc.
a STATIST politician can easily get a hospital to slow treatment… or it can make a mistake… or it cn divulge useful informaiton, or it can terrorize a person when they are down.
ALL useful things to a state whose focus is power, not good governance of the free.
Especially instructive are their accounts of the ways psychiatrists in an “advanced,” technologically “developed,” so-called civilized nation deal with their fellow human beings, who are called their patients. Soviet psychiatrists like other Soviet doctors take an oath Hippocrates would find incomprehensible: “I will in all my actions be guided by the principles of communist morality, ever to bear in mind the high calling of the Soviet physician and my responsibility to the people and the Soviet State.” Conviction, no doubt, prompts many psychiatrists, having been so sworn, to respond to the requirements of “communist morality” and “the Soviet State” by providing psychiatric labels–pejorative in implication, punitive in effect–for those who have earned the disfavor of various apparatchiks or bureaucrats.
its not like it hasnt happened before
its not like they believe somethign different
its not like they have another model to look at
If there is anything that characterizes those people sent by the secret police to psychiatrists, it is ideological aberrancy. They include not only members of the intelligentsia but also working people who have experienced statist authoritarianism, rigidity, narrowness, and felt impelled to speak up, however discreetly. Among them are Baptists, Catholics, Jews, Ukrainians, Georgians–people loyal to a religious creed, a cultural or racial tradition, hence immediately suspect, considered dangerous to those bent upon enforcing the hegemony of a given political doctrine.
At times, after listening in Honolulu to sad, outrageous reports of human indignity and professional debasement, or reading similar accounts in Psychiatric Terror, some of the delegates said they thought at once of Kafka’s The Trial. But the analogy is inappropriate. The Soviet dissidents are not at all like Joseph K. They know exactly what they abhor and what they crave. And the Soviet state is not hard to fathom, not an elusive “power” whose purposes and justifying rationale are beyond anyone’s comprehension.
Flannery O’Connor, of all “provincial” writers, is a better guide to the problem at hand–that of a moral confrontation between stumbling, vulnerable, prideful, partially blind, but basically decent people and the fierce willfulness of those who, promising various rewards, know precisely what they want and how they must at all (awful) costs get it, as ordained by the very nature of things. It’s not such a long step from her “Good Country People” to the Kremlin, where Christianity is thought an opiate, but a messianic political apparatus exerts its authority not only upon individuals but professions and their comparatively small-fry dogmatists: genus Remora, sticking hard and fast to the shark.
does any of that last paragraph describe the leaders now, and the majority of people?
I reiterate the comment I made in the Woody Allen/Al Gore post.
Back in August, the Tea Partiers were celebrating the defeat of ObamaCare. In the end, we still ultimately lose.
Same thing is now happening with Copenhagen. Hope springs eternal! No Crap and Trade?? Sorry. Nope. We’re screwed on that score too.
The..Fix..Is..In.
We’ve been played and played good.
I have a 22 year-old and a 17 year old. It makes me almost physically ill, to think of how, when/if they have kids – how different a country my grandkids will grow up in, than the country of my childhood in the 60’s and teen years in the 70’s.
I hope i’m never stranded on a raft in the ocean with democrats. I’m almost positive they’ll vote to eat the one can of fish bait and use the one fishing rod as a paddle.
Gee, SteveH, I think they’d vote to eat YOU.
Worst case scenario; Obama and the left get everything they wish for…how long till a strong majority of the American public wakes up to the fact that they’ve been had? 2010? 2012? 2016?
The point is, that sooner or later, not if but when they awaken, the reckoning shall be fearsome.
A people raised upon freedom have to, at some point, recognize its lack. Jefferson and Lincoln recognized the right of the people to throw off the yoke of an oppressive government that denies peaceful reform.
Forcing Catholic nurses to perform abortions, the EPA regulating how much we exhale, stealing from those who have and calling it justice. Activist judges forcing same-sex marriage down the throats of a recalcitrant public. The insights into the mind-set of the liberal elite who declare West Point as the ‘stronghold of the enemy’. Reparations. Sexual radicalism imposed upon the K-12 system. It goes on and on.
Liberals, the democrat’s leadership and the MSM are playing with fire. The more successful they are in implementing their agenda, the more certain and fearsome their day of reckoning will be.
Many years ago, Sen. Phil Gramm pointed out that when you have more people in the wagon than pulling the wagon, the people pulling the wagon don’t have much say. That is the Democratic master plan. Get more people in the wagon. Thirty years of leftist education and media have taken their toll. There are are barely enough people who understand the proper role of government to turn things around if this president and congress are not stopped.
Look at a county map of recent presidential elections and you will see that 80% of the counties voted for Bush and McCain, but the big cities went for the Democrat. An analysis of the reaction to Hurricane Katrina by the people of New Orleans as compared to the reaction of small town Mississippians tells you all you need to know about the future of America.
Geoffrey Britain–the problem is that without a true, thorough and ruthless counter-revolution, a massive purge of laws, regulations and appointees, a lot of the myriad of changes Obama & Co will have been able to put into law, regulation and practice will be sufficient to put us in a significantly different place, a place changed for the worse, to put us on a different course than we would have been on had Obama & Co. not won the election, and it may well be that some of Obama & Co.’s changes will be almost impossible to reverse, because they will have acquired constituencies who benefit from them, and who will defend them and insist that they continue.
Say that Obama & Co., Obama’s head of the Bureau of the Census, Census, ACORN and the SEIU fail in rigging the 2010 elections, and an overwhelming Conservative tide washes over the House and Senate, and by 2010 both the House and Senate now have sufficient conservative members to largely block any more of Obama & Co.’s legislative initiatives, if not their regulatory initiatives.
Given the nature of American Conservatives, can you see them carrying out or even being allowed to carry out the kind of ruthless, year’s long, thoroughgoing rollback and purge (called by the MSM, I am sure, a McCarthy type “Witch Hunt” ) that would be necessary to cut out all or most of the metastasizing Cancers implanted by Obama & Co., because I can’t?
steveG: the flagon with the dragon has the brew that is true
Neo Neocon you know I love you as only a commenter can love a blogger but I feel you are a bit over the top when you start assuming Acorn and illegal immigrants will be able to pull such a massive electoral fraud. Most of their strength, unless I am misinformed, are in districts that are solidly Democratic. The fact their methods are already documented means that the voting will be closely watched.
Frankly I am not sure why the Democrats are trying to pull off this healthcare baloney. The book the Madness of Crowds comes to mind, and sometimes a cattle stampede from a western. Whatever the cause the results will be such that even if it passes it will be repealed in a few years with all those who voted for it leading the charge to repeal, claiming they were for it before they were against it.
Furthermore there will be a very big plus, the public will vent its anger on Dear Leader, helping our Messiah along on his road to obscurity after a single four year berserk. And I’m usually a pessimist.
Bob from Virginia: Glad to hear you love me :-), but I don’t necessarily think the ACORN vote grab will deliver enough votes to be considered a success. The point is whether some Democrats plan to try, and whether they think it might be successful.
It’s also true that, once these guys decide to run with something, they keep after it. They’ve been using ACORN tactics in many places for years now, and the results have not yet been determinative. But they don’t quit trying, and they keep refining the tactics. They never give up.
Interesting point about the split between counties and cities. The Left has controlled major population centers for some time now. Personally I wouldn’t be surprised to see them continue and strengthen their perennial campaign to do away with the Electoral College–in the name of fairness and, of course, genuine democracy, don’t ya know. That would effectively eliminate such political importance as every place but the big cities has currently managed to hang onto.
According to the Weekly Standard blog, Obama is threatening to close Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska if Ben Nelson doesn’t toe the line:
This is getting pretty close to treason.
I hate to say it but anymore when I vote I now wonder if it will be counted.
I also expect to see a renewed push for amnesty for illegal aliens. The Left would dearly love to add another 10-20 million mostly poor, uneducated Third Worlders to the voting rolls in time for the 2010 election. Which way do you think most of them would vote?
And they’re not all concentrated in the cities, either. They’re spread out all over the country. They could conceivably swing the vote in some suburban and rural areas.
Oops, I missed your last paragraph, Neo. I see you’ve already covered my last point. My bad.
I agree with you, and the commenters.
The Dems know they are doing harm. Their ultimate aim is power and wealth. To gain it the, they must defeat the good. Such a bill diminshes the power of good by peeling off a certain number of its people.
The tragedy that I hate to admit (but I think to not say it any more is just to stay in denial) is that there just aren’t enough good people around anymore.
Anthroplogically, and socioloogically, that is what normally happens to all civilizations – they die when the critical mass of good and decent people in them becomes too small.
We are at that point I think. Let’s face it, 66m people voted for Obama. He is a monstrosity – which means that they are too.
It happens. I don’t like it. Whether to head for the hills or to the monastery is one of the few chpices left for decent people.
And the White House thinks this Offutt gambit is going to work, how exactly? There won’t be a Democrat left anywhere in the state when the dust settles.
The also have the ideological goal of forced equality. They say as much, ‘we need a more fair and equitable healthcare system’.
MumbersUSA sent this out today ” ….Today, our chief House opponent, Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), will introduce his bill to grant a mass Illegal Alien Amnesty and increase future immigration numbers….”
Texas is heading towards being a “blue state” already. Once this happens, I think it is over.
“NumbersUSA” I meant
Hi Neo.
You are wrong on this one. Talk to your liberal friends about health care and what needs to be done. They will have lots of opinions and very little knowledge. They think it will work great. How do I know? I have friends and relatives like that too. They really believe it.
So here is where you are wrong. I’ll even yell at you a little to make my point.
The people in Washington AREN”T ANY DIFFERENT THAN YOUR FRIENDS! Got that? They aren’t any smarter, they don’t know any more, they don’t understand markets, human nature, or the nature of power any better. They really believe the health bill will make things better.
They do the dirty stuff they do because it is justified by the above paragraph.
Don’t give the liberals in Washington too much credit. As Jesus might say: “They know not what they do”.
Granted they have to be stopped. But their bad intentions are not relevant.
Frankly, this discussion, while fun is a little irrelevant. Why does it matter one way or another what their intentions are? What should you and I do differently if they are ignorant vs purposely destructive. We aren’t going to change their minds in either case.
James
Dear Neoneocon,
Thanks so much for your blog. I appreciate your words of wisdom–I read your words daily. My son is preparing to go to Afghanistan, he is my only child, and it breaks my heart that Obama is sending our kids into battle, while also publicizing an exit date to our enemies. What kind of evil person sends our children to war, and then announces to our enemies that if we have not won by a certain date, we will pull out? I will never forgive this man for what he does….
MarineMom
James
It’s a a pretty safe bet that nearly all of Congress has red none of or next to nothing of the 2,000 page bill.
excuse me:
It’s a a pretty safe bet that nearly all of Congress has read none of or next to nothing of the 2,000 page bill.
Wolla Dalbo,
You are quite right, if the dems pursue a strategy of incrementalism in pursuit of their agenda.
Now that they are in power, that is NOT their strategy.
They seek to strike while momentum favors achievement. The fatal flaw in that tactic is lack of public support for their real agenda. By subterfuge and disingenuousness they reveal their awareness that the public does NOT share nor support their ‘solution’ for how to get to where we all would like to be, a more just world.
Lies and covert subterfuge never result in a positive outcome for the disceiver.
Mike Mc,
It certainly appears that way. Yet, I personally know relatives who voted for Obama who will be adamantly opposed to his agenda when the actual reality of its consequences becomes undeniable. There are many, many millions of good people who have been hoodwinked by the MSM, the Dems, Hollywood and Obama. When they realize the extent of his radicalism, they will be his fiercest foes.
Oblio,
Obama and the dem leadership are saying to Nelson; if you vote with us, you might survive. If you vote against us, you will certainly NOT survive.
Finally, there is the ‘bottom line’ in this fight over cultural values and the premises that underlay the political dispute between liberalism and conservatism.
Liberals can win the battle but they can’t win the war, because knowingly or not, they fight against reality itself. That great truth is why, in the end, any ideology which opposes objective realitymust fail.
The universe’s operational laws… within which we exist, cannot be opposed indefinitely.
Count on it, in the end, reality will prevail.
I had a great discussion today with a neocon friend of mine. There are a lot of people in blue states who are willing to learn. We are quite outnumbered by fools and idiots, however.
Without giving links, because I’m too tired to figure out how, I think that all of us neocon commenters need to learn more about ways to counteract the crazy socialists/fascists who threaten to overwhelm and destroy our wonderful United States of America.
Please, people, learn about Jacksonian Americans and what they believe. We city dwellers need to grow a spine. Check out Walter Meade Russell and some other guy who wrote about Four American Folkways. Too lazy to run upstairs and look for the book. Us city people need to toughen up.
We are living in revolutionary times, and we need to know how to survive and how to be cruel to those who want to take things from us.
I’m talking to you, liberal Jews and Episcopalians, who think being “nice” and “caring” is all you need to do. I don’t worry so much about other people I know because they’re tougher than the above groups.
OK, rant over.
For confirmation of my ideas, check out Belmont Club’s “The Monkey Trap,” Comment #84 by Subotai Bahadur. This is a brilliant comment that needs to go viral. He describes our present situation. We are now being ruled by a cabal who means to destroy us. We need to understand our enemies and act accordingly.
“The Vision of the Anointed” by the numbers.
Baa-Daa-Bing. Like dat.
Leftists = Zombies.
Just when you’ve finished nailing planks across the front door, they’re sticking their bloody arms in through the windows.
And no, they never quit.
OTOH, we humans are pretty resilient. Even the Soviet Union only lasted 74 years. Major drag for the poor souls whose lifespan was within that time, but still: they had a democratic revolution at last when people were so sick of the Communists that they vomited them up.
And they didn’t have a history of freedom or a Constitution like we do.
Promethea, you mean Albion’s Seed, by David Hackett Fischer. Outstanding book. And you are right to think you can count on the Borderers (your Jacksonians): they are America’s Martial People.
Geoffrey Britain, good analysis, but with respect to Nelson in Nebraska, he can survive in this scenario, by switching parties with his constituents. The White House seems to think that this is a situation characterized by THREAT VULNERABILITY; but they are wrong, because the costs involved in following through on the threat are much higher for the White House than for Nelson. Dumb move on their part, if it is true that they have made the threat.
This entire, apparently “suicidal” push by the Dems looks to me to be very consistent with the general mindset of the Baby Boomer generation now holding the reins of power. The radical left of the Boomers KNEW they were right back in 1969, and they still KNOW they are right now in 2009. The difference is that instead of being in the street, they are now on the Hill, in our schools, and in the media.
Believe me: they have not grown up or changed their thinking one iota; I work with this evil everyday in academia. While some of us of that generation have changed, the ones who lead the “revolution” back then, still see that as their primary purpose in life. “We can change the world” is their anthem no matter that the change they want makes no sense and will result in much pain. They are right and much smarter than the rest of us, and will be until they reach the grave.
What a pox “My Generation” has been on this country.
Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America’s Security and Prosperity Act of 2009 (CIR ASAP)
This is why they dont care…
they will ram this through, and voila, such a huge boost seals the deal.
the US is being changes according to a plan worked out way in advance, while we are still discussing whether this makes sense in terms of classical ends of a continued republic.
no wonder despots win
anyone with even a small modicum of experience or more specific knowlege has been made reletive to whatever someone can make up that sounds smart in conversation.
that makes us impotent as a population.
it makes hairbrained ideas and calming words from people who are charismatic and better able to write much more important than an impirical answer within a framework.
how else would you explain the successful campain to abandon children to the state for false self actualization (promoted through vanity)?
(among many such things one can name)
The imposition and ability for medicine to circumvent due process is waht they are after.
since every one seems to be as dense as nuclear waste let me lay one thing out that is common to all this.
the argument your presented and waste time on is never the argument of what they want and why they want it.
health care reform is not about better health care
AGW is not about saving the planet
Cap and Trade is not about AGW
on and on
and yet those who know the game and are somewhat experienced in it, cant get traction, because everyone thinks that an argument made for public consumption is the actual reason and argument.
once the idea of doing bad to accomplish a presumptive good (that never happens) takes hold, then it is not limited to just that areas (wealth distribution), it spreads out into a very way of life and doing things. meanwhile the people who were raised in a better society in a better time keep plodding along as if the things that they depend on are still dependable (while at teh same time grousing that they are not, yet arguing what they are presenting).
they are always referred to by the stalinists as REACTIONARY, because they are too deep in the crap to get ahead of the game thats being played on them. they are then always stuck REACTING to things when they are finally solid and too late to do anything about.
this is how a chess board is played. the peices are set to not be understood until they are already arranged.
no matter how much is tried to get people to take a tighter turn and get ahead of it, they are still WAY behind.
anyone care to take a look how many MONTHS ahead of this i was saying something?
and thats the rub. everyone was too busy reacting to what they cant change, and how its unfolding to drop it and take a look at something they CAN change.
so rather than have a heads up a year to months in advance… they are basically blocking any attempt to bring them up to the front of the situation.
for instance. this situation is dead… no matter what we cant do anything about it. NOTHING…
the deal is done, the pieves are in place, and we cant move.
do we sit around and keep talking about what effectively is a view out a rear window.
or do we embrace whats coming up?
Like ALBA, mexico, and the south american war thats coming up?
or immigration… its not like we dont know it.
what we dont get is that these people are professionals at it. that we as a people are not allowed to sit still and live our lives. the era of constant warfare between the socialists and the people is here. and in a world of warfare 24/7 there is no living your life.
they are plodding along moving a front in policy, and we are people who only push that front back when things bother us. but we do not realize that in order to have what we want and ahve, we have to give up our lives and push back 24/7
we have no choice… either do that, or give up.
thats the choice that has been on the table for a long time. but no one gets it, they are too busy avoiding the choice that these others have already made and are committed to.
they see themselves as soldiers in a revolution, a war that does not end until their side wins against the middle class. they win when there is no more middle class and the top of the mountain is once again theirs alone for them and their children, and we are but incidental slaves to work, and maintain their property and keep it out of the hands of other ‘farmers’ who may want to expand their farm
free market economics is not a zero sum game
but feudalism is
Dem congressworms can afford to vote for Obamacare and lose the next election because they’ll be making in the high six digits as lobbyists and consultants.
Beverly,
Russias system only changed in appearance, and you are about to find that out. a totalitarian state can make apperance changes, a potemkin view, and can revert back in months. as they have total control over their population and a disregard for any pain they cause, for that would be seen as a weakness of will against the other.
The Democratic revolution in russia was an act, a farce, it wasnt real. it afforded a huge number of benifits, and really very few negatives for them.
it facilitated a world in which no country is not socialist now to some degree. thats pretty successful for a dead idea.
This month, on December 21st, 2009, revolutionaries around the world will mark the 130th anniversary of the birth of Comrade J. V. Stalin, who along with Lenin, led the Great October Socialist Revolution to victory. After Lenin’s death, Stalin consolidated the victory of the USSR and strengthened the Soviet Party, beat back the counter-revolutionary Trotskyites and Bukharinites, paved the way for socialist construction and agricultural collectivization, and led the heroic Red Army in defeating fascism in World War II.
Obama follows that history. the revisioned (Stalinist) one. and so no one here is realizeing that he is living in a reality that never existed. just as the soviet people did.
and that by controlling his reality, they insured they controlled his actions. he didnt have to be taught and convinced to be on their side. a reality was constructed that insured tht if they were good people at heart, they would fall on the “right side of (the false) history”.
they are now bringing stalin back as a big hero.
…Putin calls for balanced assessment of Stalin
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSGEE5B21J6
The Communists, Russia’s largest opposition party, plan lavish celebrations of Stalin’s 130th birthday later this month and his grandson recently sued a newspaper for accusing Stalin of ordering mass murders.
“If you say you are positive (about Stalin’s rule), some will be discontented. If you say you are negative, others will grumble,” Putin said during an annual marathon question-and- answer session with the Russian people.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
But shortly afterwards Stalin was voted in a nationwide televised show Russia’s third most popular historical figure of all times, and a Moscow metro station restored a phrase praising him which ran around the cupola of its roof.
A gigantic sculpture that is one of the most admired examples of Soviet socialist realism is back on view in Moscow after six years of restoration. The stainless-steel sculpture, called “Worker and Collective Farm Woman,” was unveiled Friday in a nighttime ceremony with fireworks attended by thousands.
Russian Military Parade 2009 (russian weapons) / Desfile Militar Ruso 2009 (armas rusas)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSOweC5bZaU
06 New Chinese Military Parade 2009 国庆60周年特别报é“ç›´æ’ Shilochi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDGMS01MiQ4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ijgIlHn5F0
they are gearing up for conflict they are arranging…they are not gearig down as the US is pretending to their own people (and doing)….they even seeded the clouds to insure good weather.. .they even started practice runs again…
U.S. jets intercept Russian bombers near ships
One reportedly buzzed aircraft carrier; pilots didn’t communicate
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23117045/
and look what their FRIENDS are doing..
Iran tests high-speed missile, warns internal opposition
The missile could easily reach Israel. Coupled with suspicions about Tehran’s nuclear program, it stokes international concerns.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-iran-missile17-2009dec17,0,362286.story
and you can search that russia has been supplying HUGE amounts of arms to syria, south america, iran, and even yemen…
Iran & Syria Sign Agreement to Act Against ‘Zionist Regime’s Threat’
theyeshivaworld.com/news/General+News/43286/Iran+&+Syria+Sign+Agreement+to+Act+Against+
while we are too busy with a done deal, they set up the next thing. then when we relize that the done deal is over, we move to the next thing, but by then its a done deal too… to which we move to the next thing…
While most people believe that the U.S has the largest army, this is mostly untrue. The U.S does however have the most technologically advance army in the world. China has 2,255,000 troops almost twice the size of the U.S 1,473,900.
with a reserve conscription force of 30 million
[edited for length by neo-neocon]
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/12/025163.php
What ever happened to the Chris Buckley’s, Kathleen Parkers and other Obamacons?
Hi, proud liberal here. The childishness of people like you in seeing the democratic process as totalitarianism anytime you’re out of power is stupefying. And laughable. Right, WE’RE the ones who voting-caged tens of thousands of people off the rolls in Florida in 2000. And WE’RE the ones whose congressional leaders snuck their staffers down to pretend they were locals and threaten poll workers into stopping the recount.
But let’s let bygones be bygones, shall we? Here’s a sincere invitation to work together, based on this very same childish paranoia of yours. Democrats are going to use the levers of power, which we’re mostly in control of currently, to steal elections? Then why aren’t you out screaming in the press and to your congressional leaders that we need an all-paper-ballot system of elections starting in 2010? What, you want Obama bribing/threatening Diebold and others into rigging their voting machines in our favor?
Do I have something up my sleeve here? No, I, like a lot of liberals, believe ’00 AND ’04 were stolen, and that ’06 and ’08 were rigged too, only the numbers were so overwhelming you couldn’t steal them too. But you did manage to hold our numbers down.
Sure, go ahead, laugh that I’m the paranoid one. I don’t care, I WANT you to believe you’ll always win a fair fight. And you DO believe you’ll always win a fair fight.
Now, can we join together and make sure it IS one? Get on the phones and pester your boys Sean, Rush & Glenn about it. Or whatever other hacks you listen to.
Thank you Anna. I knew I was close but was too lazy to look back at the clip. Flagon, dragon, chalice, palace, vessel, pestle… Lots of words to play with and highlight Danny Kaye’s talents. But he was very, very ably supported. And, the writers must have had a hard time keeping from laughing when they wrote this scene.
Beverly. My grandfather who lived in a dirt floor home in Russia and left for the USA when he was told that the reds (who were then fighting the whites) were after him (and took the threat seriously), told me many years ago that the communists were like pigs. If you kicked them out the back door of the house they ran around the house and came in the front. If you kicked them out the front they came in through the kitchen. No matter what you did, you could not get them out of your house. I guess they don’t change.
Mr. Frank Says:
Look at a county map of recent presidential elections and you will see that 80% of the counties voted for Bush and McCain, but the big cities went for the Democrat.
I remember reading last year, during the primaries, about Obama’s “Ohio River Valley problem.” IIRC, out of the 32 counties, in 6 states, that abut the Ohio River, only 2 went for Obama: Hamilton Co., OH (Cincinnati) and Jefferson Co., KY (Louisville).
We are fast approaching a tyranny of the cities over the productive fly-over country; NY State’s been like this for years, one city dominating the entire state, just like Obie adopted hometown in IL. That is what Chicago machine, thug politics will get ya’, each and every time; urban thuggery like Mayor Crackhead Washington, or the dear little lady mayors of the urban strongholds of Detroit (convicted and jailed) and Baltimore (indicted). And our dear Obie is a product of that corrupt government-union milieu. Things don’t look so good for the Country right now. Not with the only industry gaining jobs being the Federal Government, good union members who will vote their consc-, er, their ‘phony baloney jobs’.
system blocking posts for no reason again…
Four
More
wars
Another
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Another use ful idi ot…
Four
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By the way.. I am not a conservative; I am not on the left or right.
I am a full thinking independent human being who would not like what’s happening no matter who presented it! (unlike you).
My family was exterminated by the same ideas that you’re following.
You don’t realize it, but no one on the bottom that supports it realizes it.
When you use a screwdriver, do you explain things to it?
When you use a taxi, do you explain the reasons why he should comply?
I will tell you why all this will lead to the same idea and ends.
They/you have no other pool of information that they can dip into as a reference for ideas and goals.
That is, there is no other socialism than communism. There is no other place that they can read to get ideas from. And their worship of these ideas means that like most prols, they can’t question the people who first had the ideas.
The saddest thing that i see over and over is an idiot like you who thinks (thanks to the self confidence movement) that they are equal to better thinkers. And so, if YOU cant see the way things operate, then they are not operating at all.
You can tell this in how limited you are in your thinking (and reading comprehension). We never said they would win that way. We said that the dems getting credit for an amnesty for aliens will make them all work for the dems and all vote for them if it passes.
Your tiny tiny collective mind (collectivists don’t need big minds, they follow what their leaders tell them) is not used to thinking on its own, other than when they tell you your thinking on your own. But alas, you follow a script, a script so worn you don’t even know your following it.
Sean, Rush, and Glenn are not our boys. If you read over and over through this whole place neo has made in cyber reality and you will find that almost no one mentions them (and its usually one of you reality script kiddies doing it!).
You see… your following a script your collective masters have given you. They even told you that if you copy the script, like cheating on a test off your neighbor, you will be smart too cause you pass the test, which is what counts, right? (Even though the person who cheats never learns and so is not smart, just a poser).
Want to know who we listen to?
We listen to you and others like you!
Something I bet you don’t do!!
You don’t see that your minds are goo step ping, even if your body isn’t.
you can go through and you guys have no other talking points, no debate.
Nothing. It’s completely empty. it doesn’t work because unlike you we havent been “socialized” by our leaders to feel bad when we are not following them.
We lead ourselves as free people…
Something scary and alien to you!!!!
Even your post shows this. It’s just snarky ridicule, no actual point, no actual debate. Your delusional if you think that’s how Einstein and men like Schopenhauer could debate their ideas.
In the prescient words of shock treatment.
You’re a mental cripple…
No longer able to think for yourself..
Not realizing “believing so” is not “doing so”.
Sad really.
My family would tell me about people like you.. Who came out of the schools after the soviets moved in… Shells of human beings with no purpose until their masters give them one!! Incapable of functioning outside the system that is provided to them. yet all the while, full of the belief that they are superior..
Go ahead..
Tell us your purpose in life that is separate from your feudal lords?
“Count on it, in the end, reality will prevail”
True. It always does. Ask any German or Russian or Japanese or Italian or Frenchman….and it is precisely that reality of which I am afraid.
I think there will be no Blue Light Specials in future. More likely it will be similar to the starving girl attempting to use a rock to open a can of peaches (sorry I cannot remember the name of that movie).
Steve G and Anna: Re the chalice and Danny Kaye—don’t mean to brag, but I was way ahead of you.
We live in the most information available age ever. Ask a question and the answer pops up immediately on your home computer or cell phone. But, as a whole, our children can’t read, spell, write or add. They don’t buy books. Rather, they play games. And, we allow the less capable (or more venal, in the case of Gore) among us to indoctrinate our children. They are no longer taught to read, write or count. When was the last time you were given change for a twenty by a cashier who could not get the amount from the register and was at a loss to figure out how much you were owed?
We have become a dumbed down society in an age of extraordinary information, available at our fingertips. Mostly useless to us because we are to lazy to ask the relevant questions. Or to understand the answers if, by accident, we ask an important question.
Conservatives do not have the statists’ marching songs that resonate so well with the emotions and are completely absorbed by our children. Songs that promise peace, work, harmony, love, whatever, from a more sensitive government/village. This is the promise of the liberal. Follow us in our goodness “and the world will be as one”.
Not only do we not have the marching songs, we are unwilling to lie about what we believe. We are only too aware that government is the problem. But our liberal friends think that if we did not question their “dreams” and loved and accepted them more for the good people they think they are, we also would be good people. So, as Casandras or harpies, we are ignored as ignorant and, worse, scorned as having evil intent. We really let things get out of hand.
I am concerned that we will still have to learn what happens when power is ceded by a free people to the government before we can begin to recreate the free markets and the free spirit that made and can still make us great.
Fourmore,
totalitarianism is not just being ‘out of power’ as you put it.
It is tyranny is the sense that free markets are being replaced with government control.
It’s be wise to understand the concept. When Kennedy was President did we see these Obama type actions on the free market? No. Kennedy was conservative and free market oriented and even cut tax rates for everybody who paid taxes.
I am concerned that we will still have to learn what happens when power is ceded by a free people to the government before we can begin to recreate the free markets and the free spirit that made and can still make us great.
that shows how little we really understand the nature of this. this is a one way deal… no reversals allowed. once ceded, we are never allowed to recreate anything.
like a crystal glass shattered, to say that after its broken and we realize the worth, we can start drinking from it in appreciation, is not a song based in reality
neo..
you were also way ahead of american thinker, who is now using that as a device, so expect to hear others now.
neo-
Of course you were way ahead. Where do you think I got the idea? I go back from time to time to watch the youtube clip because it is laugh out loud funny even if you’ve seen it a dozen times.
By the way, The Mouse That Roared was on cable this weekend. Still very funny but loaded with liberal cliches.
Steve G,
i should have put it in a easier way to understand.
you can turn a cucumber into a pickle
but you cant turn a pickle back into a cucumber
NONE of the states who ever tried thsi have returned at all even in a little bit. the system makes sure that the foundations are destroyed, and so even if we could clean up, we couldnt restore.
the knowlege was destroyed when the boomers flipped off their parents and went rutting for peace.
the line of and maintenence of cultural memory was laid waste, and then adulterated..
we have no home to return to
Gringo Says:
It’s a a pretty safe bet that nearly all of Congress has read none of or next to nothing of the 2,000 page bill.
in another thread i posted the story of when Kirov died..
since the state knew he was to be murdered, they had such lovely celebrations and books and things out within 24 hours of this death (with news reports thought to have preceded the actual action)
only if they planned and manipulated it having everything ready coudl they do this..
in both cases, health care bill, and kirov, someone else prepared and organzied this from a priveleged positional view.
Artfldgr
I know your are right but, if health care passes, I hope that you are wrong in this instance.
In order to meet the 10-year budgeting requirements (imposed by democrats?) the democrats have made the mistake of putting the horse before the carrot; the taxes come first and then, several years later, come the health care benefits. If the Republicans gain enough Senate seats in the next election to force a filibuster (or better, a majority), and possibly control of the House, beginning in January 2011 any further liberal legislation can be stopped. If Obama is forced from office (he won’t go too willingly) and the presidency taken by a Republican in the 2012 election, then there will be all of 2013 to undo the damage. Of course, if the democrats retain more than 39 Senate seats, it will be very difficult but not impossible to do.
i hope i am wrong too 🙂
Promethea Says:
December 16th, 2009 at 12:35 am
I thought I had already read the comment you referenced, but it turned out that I had read his #38 on the same thread. I hadn’t made it to 84 yet. He also has another one at #111. All of them are essential reading.
Belmont Club has more than its fair share of not just good, but outstanding commenters. Subotai Bahadur has become one of my favorites.
Here is Malkin on the New Amnesty Push in Congress : http://michellemalkin.com/2009/12/15/democrat-introduces-seiu-backed-illegal-alien-amnesty-bill/
Subotai Bahadur…great handle… to those that know history. which obviously he does..
Geoffrey Britain,
You said in response to my comment that a lot of good people voted for Obama, and that they will be his biggest critics once they realize they were had.
Let me be very clear. I mean every word I am about to say…
I do not think that any good people voted for Obama.
I said 66m people voted for him and that this was the great horror.
No good perons can have been hoodwinked by the man.
The campaign lasted two freaking years! All the current information about him was available almost from Day 1. Whatever a person is who can vote for Obama unaware of the fact that he is a sinsiter and lamicious person he/she is not a ‘good’ person.
This is like referring to all the ‘good’ Germans who voted for and supoorted Hitler and the Nazis.
This is why I am finally saying that ‘America’ is over. It’s done, kaput, finished. It’s just now clear. 66m of us voted for a malicious monster. He now rules us and the world. It’s hell-on-earth time. That didn’t happen by accident or overnight.
The more I think of it, the more I believe that the 50m infants we’ve aborted have made us more evil than we noticed.
Mike Mc. Says:
December 16th, 2009 at 10:14 pm
Steady now. I’m not ready to give up on America just yet. This isn’t over by a long shot.
But if I encounter any idealistic, starry-eyed types who voted for King Hope&Change, and who also wonder how the German people could have possibly allowed the likes of Hitler to rise to power, I will tell them, “Look in the mirror. There’s your answer.”
This isn’t over by a long shot
we have passed the event horizon..
the time was when everyone was denying that he was what people NOW see.
think of it this way
those who got it in the begining, were the ones who would duck when the hand came up
those who didnt, talked so long that the event horizon passed, and they are about to get clocked to the nines in the side of the head hard.
its like coming up with a come back retort the next day…
of course it sounds so rousing and good, but they are still way behind the curve reacting to things rather than anticipating, so they are coming around WAY after the fact.
while our movies always give a way out, reality is not so forgiving. read about serial killers who are sexual sadists, then think about their victims and their asurity of a safe world and a cavalry as they are being tortured slowly to death over days with false hope of survival.
then realize that that was the enescapable fate of tens of millions at the hands of other socialists.
when the net is so large, the dolphins think they are still free till the net closes.
the net is now closing. 20 percent of those in state are earning over 100k, they are going to work to be good soldiers in the new state. the state is showing everyone how the bribery and self interests are going to govern, as i said is what first happens. (while everyone is waiting for the sudden mystical movie like appearance of some fantasy soldier).
LOTS of us tried to lay out what was happening, and what would be easy to correct.
but the experienced are treated as equal to teh fantasists, who fantasise answers and to make a level feild cut experience out of the equation.
its time to fix a lot of problems worldwide, and the easiest fix is a big war. it will change the level of the fields, remove too many males which are the bane of social planning experiments on people, remove too many others.. it lowers the average smarts of the population as the not to smart stays home, and the smart are ground up in the wars. the finances will reset nicely, and the game can start again on whomever is left over.
In practice, all event horizons appear to be some distance away from any observer, and objects sent towards an event horizon never appear to cross it from the sending observer’s point of view (as the horizon-crossing event’s light cone never intersects the observer’s world line). Attempting to make an object approaching the horizon remain stationary with respect to an observer requires applying a force whose magnitude becomes unbounded (becoming infinite) the closer it gets.
that is, once you cross it..
there is no going back
Cortez created an artificial event horizon by burning the ships
communsits and socialists create an artifical event horizon by destroying the culture (along with other things).
that is, even if you clean house, you have already let them destroy your ships. they win even if they are removed…
which is he point
rickl
That is interesting. Years ago I worked with a guy by the name of Gunter Wendt. How and where does not matter. During the recent unpleasantness he worked as a Me-109 driver.
We had many discussions with him and one of the most interesting questions we would ask was how the Nazis came to rule Germany.
His answer was very similar to yours.
As far as the Nazis go, if you read the book They Thought They Were Free by Milton Mayer, you’ll get even more insight on how Hitler came to be supported. And by the way, he was not originally elected with a majority. He was appointed, and then declared an emergency and suspended most of the constitution (see this).
America lasted 232 years. It was a great run.
How embarrassing to be among the ingrate generation who killed it.
I’ll keep saying it as long as there is still a window of freedom: It’s NOT Obama. He is a tool. It’s the people who voted for him. They are the true evil. It was NOT Hitler. He was a diminutive fool. It was all the ‘good’ Germans who allowed him to happen and to do his dirty deeds.
Read Hannah Arendt on the banality of evil; and how it was the basic town and city folk of Germany who did everything. A few even dressed up as Nazi soldiers. Evil is always ‘everyday’ and ‘normal’ like that. It’s how it looks in real life; not like a demon in the movies, but like your neighbor and former schoolmate.
The only good news from Arendt is that where people stood up to evil; then evil stood down and retreated.
I thjink we should remember – Evil is a Bully because it is essentially a Coward. We should gird our loins a fight it wherever we can. That will accomplish a great deal of good, and perhaps the world will be restored after the neo-babarism that is fast descending on us.