COLLECTIVE MADNESS
“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."
oops.
ReplyDeleteThat laydee in the picture is marinading her breasts in a fruit bowl. Perhaps the picture is entitled either "Lesbians with still life" or "Fruity melons". But thats just my guess at the moment.
ReplyDeleteCutler,
ReplyDelete1945. All the Soviet forces were spent. There entire industrial sector moved to the east side of the Caucasus.
They had one railroad.
THEY DID NOT HAVE THE BOMB
Their Air Force was not sufficeint to handle American air power.
They had been borrowing heavily from the USA for food and comsumables.
Their population was starving.
We could have and should have let Patton and whichever allies cared to take all of Germany and Russian up to Moscow.
There's not a question about if we could have..the BOMB mooted that point.
The sticky wicket was that we would have done it alone.
GB was broke and exhausted. France was immediately reverting from a truly cowardly position to a cowardly position with a paper mache,supercilious Potemkin power-fraud.
But HST became a Wilsonian just at the wrong time. The rest is history.
Would HST committed US troops to South Korea if the Soviets had had their man in the seat vetoing the resolution? Would he have gone it alone?
ReplyDeleteOpen letter to the MSM..please I beg you, no more stories about anything to do with Katrina.
ReplyDelete"Cutler,
ReplyDelete1945. All the Soviet forces were spent. There entire industrial sector moved to the east side of the Caucasus.
They had one railroad.
THEY DID NOT HAVE THE BOMB
Their Air Force was not sufficeint to handle American air power.
They had been borrowing heavily from the USA for food and comsumables.
Their population was starving.
We could have and should have let Patton and whichever allies cared to take all of Germany and Russian up to Moscow.
There's not a question about if we could have..the BOMB mooted that point.
The sticky wicket was that we would have done it alone.
GB was broke and exhausted. France was immediately reverting from a truly cowardly position to a cowardly position with a paper mache,supercilious Potemkin power-fraud.
But HST became a Wilsonian just at the wrong time. The rest is history."
If you can imagine it, I actually began my internet career fighting over history issues like this on the old history channel boards. The more I read about the Soviet Army, the more I think they would have cleaned the clock of the Western Allies inititally owing to their superior ground forces, but then, depending if we continued the war, lost the war in the end owing to their industrial weakness.
As to nukes, projected production was to be 1 every 2 or 3 months during 1946. The assumption is that we were just cranking them out, but the production line was very slow. We only had a couple dozen up until the Berlin Crisis in 1949.
Powerful, yes, but not so numerous.
Overall, I'd prefer not to fight over this for about the 5th time in my life. Let's fight about more modern stuff. :P
My views on this have evolved over time, personally.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if Westerners could have withstood the brutality on the Eastern Front.
Did it with the Japanese, but they were also technologically backwards.
What we would all like to believe is that liberal men fight better because their cause is more just and they believe in what they are fighting. I wonder if it is self-flattery. Stalin and Hitler, to a lesser extent, proved the motivating potential of the whip and emotional hardness created by domestic suffering.
ReplyDeleteCutler,
ReplyDeleteGreat points, plus it's one of those deals where, "we'll my Daddy wears a size 11 boot"
"oh yeah, well my Daddy wears a size 11 1/2...
You're right time to move on. let's pick on Uganda.
Europe (finally!) gets the War on Terror
ReplyDeleteMost important, Europe can no longer deny the Islamist threat. The War on Terror isn't just George W. Bush's private phantasmagoria any more. Nicolas Sarkozy as French Minister of Interior has had to deal with two years of nightly riots by thousands of ethnic Muslim adolescents. The rioters are French citizens and cannot be expelled. They are not devout Muslims, but rather classically alienated young males who are easy prey for jihadist propaganda --- just as alienated young men were natural recruits for absolutist ideologies in previous generations.
Suggested article from The American Thinker
Europe comes out of coma...maybe
Let's pick on Latvia:
ReplyDeleteThat guy's been in Iraq too long!
I'm putting fellows comment on Miss T's blog so it don't go to waste.
ReplyDeleteCutler,
ReplyDeleteNations have been underestimating the United States since our beginning. Usually to there detriment.
But as long as we have some Irish and Scotch fighters in our ranks we'll do OK..(just o'wee bit of ethnic pride)
Peacekeeper's Got a New Post
ReplyDeletehondo,
ReplyDeleteJust like Jim Webb.
I got the blood,
think I lost the balls.
Doug,
ReplyDeleteI've always firmly believed in kicking a man or country when they're down. Let's compromise..do Uganda and the Latvia.
You know the old Habuian saying "We're not doing it for the children, we're doing it so there won't be any children"
:-)
ReplyDeletePrevent Global Warming!
(like the Chicoms)
We had to take out the Chicoms and Persia/Pakistan to prevent Global Warming.
ReplyDeleteSecond thought, just take out the whole subcontinent so we don't have to worry about jagged edges.
ReplyDeleteStick this on the music video."
ReplyDeleteHey now do you see me down the way
Been watching you everyday
In my car on your street is where I stay
I know you better that way
One day I'll be meeting you for real
You'll feel bad like I feel
It'll blow you away - You're gonna fall for me
And the voices told me
To blow you away - You're gonna fall for me"
"Special delivery."
ReplyDeleteDid Habu put up something about some commie in the admin being responsible for the Commies gettin China?
ReplyDeleteThat's actually why I'm pissed, Cutler:
ReplyDeleteThe trunk lid finally rusted through, and you know how it can rain in Hawaii!
Doug,
ReplyDeleteI think Habu pointed out the newly declassified papers of the HUAC in the 1950's and the Venona Papers.
One thing for sure. We shivved Chaing Kai Shek a good one in 1948-49 when he needed the USA and we allowed Mao to fight on with Soviet help.
Following the war, the United States had encouraged peace talks between Chiang and Communist leader Mao Zedong in Chongqing. Distrustful of each other and of the United States' professed neutrality, they soon resorted to all-out war. As the result of IMF founder and Soviet spy Harry Dexter White's efforts [1], the U.S. suspended aid to Chiang Kai-shek for much of the period of 1946 to 1948, in the midst of fighting against the People's Liberation Army led by Mao Zedong. Though Chiang had achieved status abroad as a world leader, his government was deteriorating with corruption and inflation. The war had severely weakened the Nationalists both in terms of resources and popularity, while the Communists were strengthened by aid from Stalin, and guerrilla organizations extending throughout rural areas. The Nationalists initially had superiority in arms and men, but their lack of popularity, poor morale, and apparent disorganization soon allowed the Communists to gain the upper hand.
Harry Dexter White, an FDR Treasury pooh-bah and communist agent sold out the KMT.
Tell ya what. That kid Blake on American Idol did an incredible BonJovi Tuesday night. I mean incredible.
ReplyDelete"The Nationalists initially had superiority in arms and men, but their lack of popularity, poor morale, and apparent disorganization soon allowed the Communists to gain the upper hand."
ReplyDeleteI tend to think these were the major causes. Another thing was that when the USSR retreated from Manchuria after beating the Japanese Army, they handed over all of the Japanese arms to the Communist Chinese.
Harry Dexter White, along with Alger Hiss, should have been hanged, however. Same with Owen Lattimore, a Chinese spy who was also an Asian policy academic at Johns Hopkins.
All 3 were cause celebres for leftists during the Cold War, as you know.
"Owen Lattimore (July 29, 1900 – May 31, 1989) was a U.S. author and educator, the most influential American scholar of Central Asia in the 20th Century."
ReplyDeleteOne of my professors was a student at Johns Hopkins while Lattimore was slinking around.
*former professors
ReplyDeleteLet's pick on Latvia:
ReplyDeleteThat guy's been in Iraq too long!
Whoah! If you mean me I am quite definately not in the sands at this time (more precisely I am blogging from home in glorious Latvia and drinking far too much beer).
"handed over all of the Japanese arms to the Communist Chinese"
ReplyDelete---
That seems fair:
Look at all the Chinese Arms the Japs Chopped Off!
Not to mention Heads!
You Phoney!
ReplyDeleteAre you sleeping with Eason Jordan, too?
Touche.
ReplyDeleteShould have given some germ weapons as well in that case.
How good is Latvian Beer?
ReplyDeleteYou got the Latvian version of Rheinheitsgebot?
ReplyDeleteHe slipped under the table.
ReplyDeletew/Eason.
He gets fan letters from folks that think he's still there, he just lets em slide.
ReplyDeleteEason said it's no problem.
Good, but scary post on academic diversity Stalinists.
ReplyDeleteRed River said...
ReplyDeleteThe Sharia market is being driven by liquidity in the Gulf States due to Oil revenues.
Its essentially pooled cash flows based upon leased back properties with a balloon payment.
Its primary customers are the middle and lower classes in Indonesia and Malaysia.
Like all markets, it will have a sheik-out.
Sharia securities have a flaw in that the religous component is another distraction for both the sellers and buyers in the transaction.
Another problem is the traditional risk models dont apply.
Another is that the Oil liquidity is an inflator.
No one in the West will know how to make oney on this when the shiek out occurs so the market's isolation is a weakness.
Cutler,
ReplyDeleteNo moss grow'in on you man .. even got Owen Lattimore in there.
Amazing how infiltrated the USA and BG were in their repective governments during the 50's.
I reported directly to the man who made the physical trade of Gary F. Powers for Rudolf Abel. He had some stories!
Those were the days.
ReplyDeleteWhere's Slim Pickens when we need him?
---
Though he spoke most of his movie dialogue in a slow Western drawl, actor Slim Pickens was a pure-bred California boy. An expert rider from the age of four, Pickens was performing in rodeos at 12. Three years later, he quit school to become a full-time equestrian and bull wrangler, eventually becoming the highest-paid rodeo clown in show business. In films since 1950's Rocky Mountain, Pickens specialized in Westerns (what a surprise), appearing as the comic sidekick of Republic cowboy star Rex Allen. By the end of the 1950s, Pickens had gained so much extra poundage that he practically grew out of his nickname. Generally cast in boisterous comedy roles, Pickens was also an effectively odious villain in 1966's An Eye for an Eye, starting the film off with a jolt by shooting a baby in its crib. In 1963, director Stanley Kubrick handed Pickens his greatest role: honcho bomber pilot "King" Kong in Dr. Strangelove. One of the most unforgettable of all cinematic images is the sight of Pickens straddling a nuclear bomb and "riding" it to its target, whooping and hollering all the way down. Almost as good was Pickens' performance as Harvey Korman's henchman in Mel Brooks' bawdy Western spoof Blazing Saddles (1974). Slim Pickens was also kept busy on television, with numerous guest shots and regular roles in the TV series The Legend of Custer, B.J. and the Bear, and Filthy Rich. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
"An Eye for an Eye, starting the film off with a jolt by shooting a baby in its crib"
ReplyDelete---
Your kind of guy, Habu!
A book I highly recommend on KGB operations in the West is The Sword and the Shield, written using documents brought by the archival defector Vasili Mitrokhin. Mitrokhin was a man who spent decades in the KGB as a secret admirer of the US, staying there so as to make copies of whatever documents that he could.
ReplyDeleteOne of the most ridiculous and underplayed aspect was the ease at which they infiltrated the private sector with regard to technology. By the end of the Cold War we were in many ways effectively competing against our selves in the race over military technology.
A second book, The World Was Going Our Way, covers their efforts in the Third World. I actually gave a copy of this one to Ken Pollack, heh.
Autographed, of course. :P
ReplyDeleteHe's a very nice guy.
Drudge link;
ReplyDeleteThat's gotta hurt.
Only Clinton could brush it off and lie his way back.
---
BREAKING NOW: Video of an intoxicated David Hasselhoff, taken by his 16-year-old daughter.
I thank God for the love and concern from my children. The tape made by my children was never meant to become public, but was obviously released by my estranged wife, who has her own agenda. I hope that someone else will learn form this tape, as I have."
Womenfolk sure can git mean!
Cutler,
ReplyDeleteAren't the Chicoms that good today?
"Cutler,
ReplyDeleteAren't the Chicoms that good today?"
Pretty much what I was thinking when I read it. We're an open, individualistic society where money talks if you find the right people.
There's also a difference between having plans, and having the technical skill and abilities to actually carry them out. The Soviets were handicapped by this. They could get most things, but replicating such sophisticated systems was the more complicated part.
Protesters Call on Olmert to Resign
ReplyDeleteSays Pollack doesn't know Persian.
ReplyDeleteYou taking any languages?
Spanish.
ReplyDeleteDon't laugh.
It's about as good as Pollack's farsi/Arabic, but I'm still working on it.
The first thing that people often do to discredit someone is claim they don't speak the language.
I actually, I take it back. I'm not as bad as Spanish as I often say. But I'm certainly not fluent.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I'm off to the gym. BBL.
ReplyDeleteHabla bla bla?
ReplyDeleteGood article:
ReplyDeleteYoung, Gifted, and Not Getting Into Harvard
Ya, bla bla,
ReplyDeletebla bla.
Can I have my papers now?
ReplyDeleteIt's the SAFE way, Cutler:
ReplyDeleteYou just tell him he's fucked in Persian!
More Blowback for Mr Roger's Presidency, 'Rat.
ReplyDeleteEx-Official Praises U.S. Attorneys
Justice Dept.'s former No. 2 says that of the eight fired prosecutors, only one was underperforming.
It was never about performance, doug.
ReplyDeleteJust that they'd rather tell a lie, when the truth would have surficed. The President wanted a change in "Tone". "Mr or Ms ____ did a fine and cable hob, the President is looking for a new direction." all they had to say, but no. Gonzo didn't even know the "Story", or at least couldn't recollect it.
Just like Mike Brown and the mobile homes. Guarentee that there is a story there.
But, but,
ReplyDeleteMr Rogers didn't lie!
(maybe that's why he was sucessful at what he did whereas this is the Train Wreck that Never Ends?)