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."
Farage. He is good.
ReplyDeleteThe EU
The Spanish government and banks have been deceiving everyone. No one in their right mind thinks that this first $100 billion euro tranche is the last. Spanish banks have seen significant outflows of capital in recent days, in the billions, as Jenny predicted a few nights ago. Farage may be right.
ReplyDeleteWhy should we in America care about all this? As I wrote in a post last October, “Europe is living in our future and we don’t want to go there.”
ReplyDeleteConsider where Agenda 21 advocates are trying to take America and picture a global version of the EU enveloping and smothering our country.
If well-intentioned, kind-hearted Americans really want to help Europe in this looming debacle, the best thing we can do is (1) send the Obama entourage back to Chicago and the faculty lounges of the Leftist universities from whence they came, and (2) restore free markets, Constitutionally limited government, and fiscal/personal responsibility. The resulting boom in America will be the example European and other countries need to set things right.
Debt Crisis
Things were easier many decades ago, like in merrie festive olde England, where the poor were left 'to eat grass', as Coleridge said. None of these damned payments to the idle, nor the taxes necessary to make the payments, none of this minimum wage crap, just the debtors prisons, starvation and the morgue.
ReplyDeleteb
Below is a fair account of Benjamin Netanyahu's life.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Netanyahu
From wiki but so what.
Most people would read that and admire the guy.
They might also sigh a sigh of relief that they don't have the destiny of a long lived noble civilization riding on their shoulders.
A few would not.
b
I was going to do a post on Obama’s rallying speech but it was embarrassing to listen to and a pointless waste of time. Obama doesn’t understand the facts of his own office. Obama could have ended “ The Bush tax cuts,” but by extending them, he owns them; they became the Obama tax cuts.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the "conservatives" need to ask themselves why they are Always opposed to any, and all "education/retraining programs."
ReplyDeleteThis of course is just a bunch horse shit. LCSC here has been in the business of 'retraining programs' - stuff like auto - mechanics, computer skills, nursing, welding, carpentry, and on and on, forever, and has been supported by Republican and Democrat alike here.
DeleteI imagine it is the same at junior colleges/ small four year schools all across the nation.
Have a cup of coffee Rufus.
b
And, maybe the Dems should ask, "why are soft drinks, potato chips, and candy bars covered by Food Stamps?"
ReplyDeleteAnd Budweiser is not.
Deleteb
Rufus: Maybe the "conservatives" need to ask themselves why they are Always opposed to any, and all "education/retraining programs."
ReplyDeleteBecause I'm not interested in going to a barbed-wire FEMA camp to learn how white people were the cause of every evil in American history.
Deuce: Obama could have ended “ The Bush tax cuts,” but by extending them, he owns them; they became the Obama tax cuts.
ReplyDeleteHe's going to extend them again as a lame duck, and then Democrats will call them the Romney tax cuts.
:)
Deleteb
We here this morning have a most wonderful case that is being talked about in the papers. Guy is growing medical marijuana in his apartment. Someone burglarizes his apartment. Takes all his valuable 'medical' marijuana plants. He puts in to Farmers Insurance on his renters policy and wants the street value of said plants. Farmers don't want to pay. He sues Farmers. Case is ending up in front of a local judge.
ReplyDeleteThis is your chance to be the judge. Should Farmers be compelled to pay, or not?
b
And if so, why so. And if not, why not. You got to write the opinion.
Deleteb
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DeleteI've got a better one.
Women sues a doctor in Georgia because the doctor failed to tell her husband, a cop, that indulging in three-way sex (with another man and a woman not his wife) could be dangerous to his health. The jury awarded her $3 million.
Should the jury have made the doctor (or his insurance company) pay the $3 million? Is there something wrong with the water in Georgia? Should the other man and the woman be held for involuntary manslauter? What was Allen doing at the time of the crime?
And if so, why so. And if not, why not. You got to write the opinion.
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What was Allen doing at the time of the crime?
Delete:)
b
E-mail from Mat -
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEV5AFFcZ-s&feature=youtu.be
Synopsis: We need to join together to save the world from the evil corporations, and governments too, that have brought us the John Deere tractor, the Boeing jet liner, the B-17, the automobile, and toothpaste, the Food and Drug Administration and a safety net for the poor, etc., before it is too late.
b
Obama says Israeli government is "extreme right" and that Netanyahu doesn't want "any restraints"
ReplyDelete"The President described Israel’s government as having been extreme right and said that Netanyahu, just like any other world leader, does not want 'any restraints...'" I guess that means that Obama doesn't want any restraints, either. But in any case, his use of the term "extreme right," coming from a hardcore Leftist like Obama, shows his contempt and distaste for the current Israeli leadership, and desire for a government that will be more compliant, lying down and dying in the face of the Palestinian jihad.
"Obama Gets Copy of Washington Letter" by Nathan Guttman in the Jewish Daily Forward, June 5 (thanks to the ZOA):
...When asked what lesson he had learned from attempts to broker an Israeli–Palestinian accord, the President responded that his key takeaway is that “it’s really hard” and that trying to get the parties to agree entails great potential for misunderstanding. Obama attempted to dispel the notion that he had pressured Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu unfairly and said that his administration was, in fact, “more attentive” to Israel than to the Palestinians.
The President described Israel’s government as having been extreme right and said that Netanyahu, just like any other world leader, does not want “any restraints,” and does not want to be seen as a weak leader. On the Palestinian side, Obama sounded even more pessimistic, telling the audience President Mahmoud Abbas may not want to close a deal and that his views “have deteriorated” to the point at which the window of opportunity for a peace agreement may have already closed. Obama did pledge, however, that the United States would keep trying to promote peace....
That settles it then. We will all have to vote for Obama.
b
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ReplyDeleteWake up and smell the coffee, Bobbo.
The 'peace talks' have been going on for forty years. In the absence of definitive war, there will be no peace. GOP or Dem president? It makes no difference.
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When have I ever disagreed with that? It's tough to 'negotiate' with groups that want you to swim in the Mediterranean Sea, permanently.
Deleteb
The idea that Jews should give up their historic lands for peace is dead. The Jews, like every other people in the world, that control the lands in question have rights to build and create a modern society on them.
DeleteJust because a fake nationalistic group of arabs call themselves "palestinians" doesnt give them any real rights.. No matter how many other nations agree or disagree with them.
Nationhood has specific requirements. One of them is the control of the lands in question.
THe good news? The "palestinians" are not as motivated to create a state of their own as much as destroy an existing one.. (Israel).
Bibi, a world class leader, that is trashed on this blog repeatedly, has set up Israel to be stronger as a nation that the 21 nations that surround it. Iran is a real threat to the USA and the west. Bibi is doing what a real leader does, protect his nation. Cant say the same for Obama.
Deuce will delete this post in 3, 2, 1...
No, this one passes the smell test.
Deleteyou make no sense.
DeleteThe more I think about it, that was a truly stupid comment by Rufus about the Republicans not supporting retraining programs.
ReplyDeleteFor God's sake, Idaho has been totally controlled by our Republican legislature (you can fit the Democrats in a mini van, it is said here) for time out of mind now, and lo and behold the small colleges and retraining schools get their money right on time, every year, decade after decade.
b
Idaho is a little, backwater state, Bob. The Republicans in the U.S. Congress have been fighting against all retraining programs for years. An ex. being the way they held the Colombian/Panamanian/S. Korean Trade Deals in limbo trying to get the retraining programs dropped.
ReplyDeleteGiven our own debt and over-spending problems in the US, how much sympathy should we have for our EU friends who, protected for 60 years by an American-taxpayer-funded military umbrella, have fully embraced the socialist welfare state as their preferred political model?
ReplyDeleteLINK (from San upthread)
Two arguments are being made.
One is the failure of the Euro as a currency, essentially a monetary union that lacked the institutional tools to work in the absence of a fiscal and political union. (It is interesting to watch the struggle between those who favor tighter integration and those who don't.)
The second argument is failure of the socialist welfare state, which needs no further elucidation.
The first argument is a matter of banking. The second is a matter of politics and ideology.
Which comes first, personal liberty or free markets? The academic jury is still deeply entangled in debate, not unlike the Founders at the time of the American Revolution when land and opportunity beckoned for the brave and the able, leading to a ground-up evolution of free market commercial success enabled and nurtured by a physical frontier that could never have been scripted by the Washingtonians.
Individual countries in the modern world must find their own way, of that I am convinced. The Chinese are walking one path and the end-game is still in question. The EUropeans seem to have committed hari-kiri with a hangman's noose.
I am weary of the "godless teat-sucking socialist" narrative, so I confine my remarks to the following: the money-changers caused this time of misery, to put it in biblical terms, here and in Europe. The politicians went AWOL.
Which is exactly why we have people like Crazy G-y calling for a return of the political aristocracy, some modern version of the "disinterested man of means and education" favored by the Founders.
Fix the banking system (and the tax code), (notice how Jamie Dimon very cleverly tried to bat the radioactive ball back into Washington's court). The rest will follow without an undue amount of direction or hand-holding.
A Prince! A system of Princes! Exactly what my grandfather thought.
Delete"Vat ve needt is gud King."
He only voted Republican cause the county commissioners wouldn't do him the favor he wanted unless he signed up on the Republican list.
A practical man.
b
Fix banking (and the tax code) and Washington will get their middle class tax increases. It's the only quid pro quo game left. Washington might be surprised how many "average americans" "get it."
ReplyDeleteWHO NEEDS CONGRESS: OBAMA TO GRANT IMMUNITY TO YOUNG ILLEGALS
ReplyDeletePerfect! This is just what white and black non college unemployed Americans were wishing to hear.
Move over, Jose can have your job, if there's a job to be had.
November can't come soon enough.
b
Their main argument is about the role of government in our lives. Neither believes that government should be a dominant force -- both stress the primacy of the private market in a capitalist economy. Both recognize that absent market failures, the incentive structure of the private sector will provide the best opportunities and allow people to make the best choices, in the sense of promoting the most well-being for the most people.
ReplyDeleteBut the president sees more market failures, market barriers, inherent instabilities, inequalities and inefficiencies than does Governor Romney. And in this regard, he sees more of a role for government. He has taken to citing Lincoln on this point, as he did yesterday: "through government we should do together what we cannot do as well for ourselves."
I doubt Mitt Romney would disagree with that. But he would draw the line in a very different place.
LINK
Shorter version: how government can best play the role of protector of The Commons, something the private sector has not done well, if at all.
That part about where to draw the line seems to be the critical point of departure, one might call it a gray area.
The free marketeers argue that if a vendor sells tainted food that causes people to get sick and/or die, then his consumer base will make a rational decision to purchase the goods from another vendor.
Is that the kind of world we want in the 21st century?
There will be little time left to work. We will be too busy researching who pasteurizes and who doesn't.
In short Rufus, what your guy is doing is throwing black and white high school grads under the bus in favor of the illegals on the following calculations:
ReplyDelete1) He may pick up some Hispanic votes
2) He's already lost whitey
3) Though it's bad for the blacks, they will vote for him anyway, cause he's a blacky
What a truly great American President our resident Kenyan is!
b
This is why my grandfather was wrong about Kings.
ReplyDeleteb
http://www.redstate.com/dhorowitz3/2012/06/15/obama-seeks-to-nullify-our-immigration-laws/
Deleteb
Not everyone agrees with me:
ReplyDeleteA week after opening the door to an interest rate cut, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said today that while there are “serious downside risks” to the economic outlook, political choices take precedence over monetary policy. He reiterated the ECB “will continue to supply liquidity to solvent banks where needed.”
“It will be very important for central banks over the next few weeks to articulate what their role is,” said Lawrence Goodman, president of the Center for Financial Stability in New York, a research group focused on financial markets. “The key goal will be to provide sufficient liquidity in the event of a freeze.”
LINK
Investors want global leaders to take action on reviving economic growth, Institute of International Finance Managing Director Charles Dallara said in a letter yesterday to the G-20. He said markets “will be looking expectantly for evidence of a globally coordinated policy response targeted to revive growth prospects.”
From one of Nigel Farage's favorite players:
European leaders are preparing for their own summit in Brussels on June 28-29 aimed at devising ways to better integrate the euro area. They will press for new efforts to boost the economy and improve lending conditions as well as seek “more specific building blocks” to link budget and banking policies, according to a draft document prepared for those talks.
Draghi said a blueprint he is working on with European Union President Herman Van Rompuy, Luxembourg’s Jean-Claude Juncker and European Commission President Jose Barroso will be published “very soon.”
The money-changers and the politicians seem locked in a death-race to the bottom.
Bartender, another diet coke. I'm feeling suicidal. Make it a Big Gulp.
That's why Crazy G-y is crazy.
ReplyDeleteHere's What You Need to Know About Greece
ReplyDeleteThe Greek Macaroni Chart
ReplyDelete.
ReplyDeleteAs I Said, They Are All D---s
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ReplyDeleteLONDON — British authorities on Thursday unveiled an ambitious plan to log details about every Web visit, email, phone call or text message in the U.K. — and in a sharply-worded editorial the nation’s top law enforcement official accused those worried about the surveillance program of being either criminals or conspiracy theorists. [Editorial comment: How many times have we heard this before?]
The government insists it’s not after content. It promises not to read the body of emails or eavesdrop on phone calls without a warrant. But the surveillance proposed in the government’s 118-page draft bill would provide authorities a remarkably rich picture of their citizens’ day-to-day lives, tracking nearly everything they do online, over the phone, or even through the post...
You don't have to be an American pol to be a dick.
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ReplyDeleteIn other areas, we are rapidly catching up with the Chinese
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ReplyDeleteMore cougars making their way back to native Midwest, study finds
One more thing for Bob to worry about. Cougars may end up eating those rodents he feeds.
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More cougars. Young men watch out.
Delete.
ReplyDeleteStuttering? Short-term Memory Loss? Running Out of Things to Say? Or, Just Lazy?
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One Swedish-Idahovian alfalfa farmer was on one side of a lake and another was on the opposite side. The one yells, "How do I get to the other side of the lake?!" The second Swedish-Idahovian alfalfa farmer yells back, "You are on the other side of the lake!"
ReplyDeleteHow do you catch a philipina when she's drinking water?
DeleteAh, that vaguely remembered wisdom from my father: you slam the toilet seat on her head.
b
As you probably recall, the trolley problem concerns a moral dilemma. You observe an out-of-control trolley hurtling towards five people who will surely die if hit by the trolley. You can throw a switch and divert the trolley down a side track saving the five but with certainty killing an innocent bystander. There is no opportunity to warn or otherwise avoid the disaster. Do you throw the switch?
ReplyDeleteA second version is where you stand on a bridge with a fat man. The only way to stop the trolling killing five is to push the fat man in front of the trolley. Do you do so? Some people say no to both and many say yes to switching but no to pushing, referring to errors of omission and commission. You can read about the moral psychology here.
I want to ask a different question. Suppose that you are a programmer at Google and you are tasked with writing code for the Google-trolley. What code do you write? Should the trolley divert itself to the side track? Should the trolley run itself into a fat man to save five? If the Google-trolley does run itself into the fat man to save five should Sergey Brin be charged? Do your intuitions about the trolley problem change when we switch from the near view to the far (programming) view?
LINK
I'd go for the fat guy.
Is it wrong?
[I'm being facetious of course.]
[Or am I ??????????????????????]
Not worried about the cougars. Loners, I can handle them with my spear, even my kris knife, which can turn a man's intestines into spaghetti, and rip the heart and lungs out with one simple thrust and withdraw.
ReplyDeleteIt's the wolf packs give a small amount of concern.
Once I was concentrating on three or four in front, when two of buggers came in from behind, and made me sweat for a moment.
b
Never play peekaboo with a child on a long plane trip. There’s no end to the game. Finally I grabbed him by the bib and said, “Look, it’s always gonna be me!”
ReplyDeleteDifferent shell. Same peanut.
Before I met my husband, I’d never fallen in love. I’d stepped in it a few times. - Rita Rudner
ReplyDelete.....
Tonight, millions of people will come home to screaming children, barking dogs. Their spouses will hug them and ask them how their day was. The stars will wheel forth from their daytime hiding places; and one of those lights, slightly brighter than the rest, will be my wingtip passing over. - Closing line of "Up in the Air" (2009)
While I'm not going to be joining the bandwagon claiming Up In the Air is some kind of masterpiece, it tells me [Jason, not Ivan] Reitman is close to delivering one.
ReplyDelete"Up in the Air" Movie Review
I haven't made a consensus survey of the reviews so I can't say if this one is typical but I do have a comment on the "not Gone with the Wind" masterpiece critique.
I would submit that we're not living in a Masterpiece world anymore where a single event - artistic or otherwise - can bend the direction of history, short of nuclear, asteroids, or the Yellowstone Caldera. Just keeping it at a lower existential level, the country, and the world, has become too diverse to be united by single events.
So what's my point? Not much. Just that 'it failed to reach some epochal level of human endeavor' isn't much of a movie critique. Entertaining, well scripted, well acted and well produced little movie.
Jason Reitman, son of Ivan, being the scriptwriter.
ReplyDeleteSome background here.
“The time has come for all good men to rise above principle.” - Huey Pierce Long
ReplyDelete"Work is the curse of the drinking man."
ReplyDeleteanon
b
Actually, I erred.
DeleteIt should read, "Work is the curse of the drinking class" which is a take off on Marx - "Drink is the curse of the working class"
I humbly apologize.
b
A man is a fool if he drinks before he reaches the age of 50, and a fool if he doesn't afterward. - Frank Lloyd Wright
ReplyDelete"I got more out of booze than booze got out of me." Winston Churchill
Delete(or something close to that)
b
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ReplyDeleteWhy I can't vote for Obama (one more example).
Today’s executive order, granting work permits and immunity from deportation to young illegal immigrants, is not an example of the president using his authority; it’s a scandal involving the president performing a selfish act in furtherance of currying favor with a special-interest group.
Obama has acknowledged that what he did today would require a new law, or at least changes to the current law. But instead of waiting on either, he has decided to rule by fiat. This is not a show of strength; it’s an act of arrogance of rare severity.
Before you can even get to the question of whether this is good policy or if it invites more illegal immigration, you can see that the president’s actions today ignore some of the Constitution’s fundamental tenets. Yesterday, I spoke about the gall the president displayed in his so-called economic speech, which was full of gratuitous pledges and the selective retelling of history. Today’s actions go beyond gall, showing contempt for our laws...
There is no law the man won't ignore.
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ReplyDeleteBob, I left an addendum upstream on tour Farmer's Insurance post.
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