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."
What about a thread about Female Genital Mutilation?
ReplyDeleteThis has spread to the USA & Europe and is butchering hundreds of thousands of women across the globe.
It's a savage practice.
Of course mutilating the foreskin of the penis of a baby boy is neither savage nor butchering. Infant genital flesh is remarkably different depending on the depth of religious conviction and fanaticism of the parents. Did it ever occur to you that mutilating the genitals of all newborn infants is wrong?
DeleteMy reply is @ Doug
DeleteTue Jan 29, 08:32:00 AM EST
Did it ever occur to you that you speak on what you do not understand or know?
DeleteTo compare the removal of a small portion of the foreskin to the removal of a teenage woman's clit shows the depth of you lack of understanding.
Did you ever read the positive science about infant male circumcision when this medical procedure is done in the strict JEWISH method?
Reduction of infection, improved hygiene and now it's been proven that it reduces the transmission os std's including aids/hiv.
Of course those that do not do the procedure the way the Jews do it, do it with higher risks as their lack of historic knowledge and technic produces greater instances of medical mistakes.
Now FGM is in a class all it's own, with the practice of using razor blades, stitching up the vaginal opening except for a small hole for urinating and the removal of the active sex organ, and doing this with 10-25 year old girls/women.
To even put them in the same sentence shows your lack on perspective except for you to attempt to somehow paint anything Jewish as savage. You have failed again.
According to this blog, Israel treats arabs live dogs.... Listed a few examples of even death...
ReplyDelete90 thousand are dead in Syria and chemical weapons are being threatened...
not a peep here.... nothing to see... move along...
Israel is the bad one here....
BTW...
Last night 56 dead in Egypt, not bad for a day's work......
But that's not news..... Nor the USA giving those actual savages 200 Abrams tanks and more f16s
BTW...
Delete"Last night 56 dead in Egypt, not bad for a day's work......
But that's not news..... Nor the USA giving those actual savages 200 Abrams tanks and more f16s"
---
So, let me get this straight:
You're AGAINST aiding our allies?
WTF ?
"More Reserves:"
ReplyDeleteIn fact:
Banks hold onto underwater Real Estate holdings until they aren't underwater.
...then they put them on the market.
IT WORKS!
We have a new Real Estate bubble in CA,
...our kids will pay.
What else is new?
Great catch, Deuce.
French retake Timbuktu without firing a shot. Rebels make desperate last stand by burning library and priceless ancient manuscripts.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/28/mali-timbuktu-library-ancient-manuscripts
bob, shhhh.... remember its the Israelis that destroy islamic artifacts live the Temple Mount...
DeleteI hope to hell the French win out in Timbuktu:
DeleteThe contrast with our semifinal act in the ME could not be more stark.
American government is now in the redistribution and welfare-provision business, and this is not (contrary to appearances) at variance with the founding fathers’ conception of a nation that is inherently opposed to state interference and domination over the individual. This is the new credo of American nationhood: the government, not the community or the household, will be the moral arbiter of social virtue. The traditional suspicion of the overweening power of the state is now a thing of the past. Democracy is about electing a government that will be there to protect you from hardship, shelter you from the storm and absolve you from sin. Well, no, maybe not that last one – but the concept of the state as moral saviour is not so remote from this, is it?
ReplyDeleteAren't there health benefits to circumcision?
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteAnonymousTue Jan 29, 08:11:00 AM EST
ReplyDelete"American government is now in the redistribution and welfare-provision business, and this is not (contrary to appearances) at variance with the founding fathers’ conception of a nation that is inherently opposed to state interference and domination over the individual. This is the new credo of American nationhood: the government, not the community or the household, will be the moral arbiter of social virtue. The traditional suspicion of the overweening power of the state is now a thing of the past. Democracy is about electing a government that will be there to protect you from hardship, shelter you from the storm and absolve you from sin. Well, no, maybe not that last one – but the concept of the state as moral saviour is not so remote from this, is it?"
---
Is that you, Mr. "unknown" Annon, or is that a copy and paste deal?
If so, I'd like a link.
(not to mention, a lick)
WHERE IN FUCK ARE ALL THE FUCKING REPLIES?
ReplyDelete...has this site gone DEAD?
It wouldn't have anything to do with you being an acerbic foul-mouthed twit, would it?
DeleteNaw, it's their glass jaw.
DeleteAsh, old saying...
Deletename calling assholes who live in glass houses should not throw shit on the ceiling, fore it will fall in your face...
or something like that....
...I'm going elsewhere:
ReplyDeleteI'll check back.
.
ReplyDeleteI'm moving more and more towards rat's position of 'do away with the FED'; however, the problem I see with that given the interdependance of the world finacial systems is that there is no viable alternative.
I still contend the main problem is not so much the idea of the central bank but rather the people running it and the policies they have introduced. We think of both Bush and Obama as using the crisis of 2001 and 2008 to expand their powers at the expense of the common Joe. However, since 2008, the FED, under Benanke, has done exactly the same thing.
The FED is a construct of Congress. At a minimum, there should be regular audits of the FED and whatever changes are required to assure transparancy should be made.
The last (only?) audit of the FED turned up $7.7 trillion dollars the FED had secretly disbursed.
Currently, the FED operates like a Star Chamber.
.
What alternatives are you two thinking? Someone has to 'create' money. Audits and transparency will bring the workings into view but who should control the levers? Congress? The POTUS?
DeleteThe Congress is tasked, in the Constitution with the job, ash.
DeleteThe Fed banking machine would be retained.
It's policy making powers, curtailed.
Regular audits by Congress, a baseline goal.
Ahhh, the Constitution, from the word of God to our ears. Congress has willingly ceded their short term view for the FEDs long term view have they not?
Delete.
DeletePeople claim the FED should be independant and free from political interference. Those who believe it is are naive.
As currently run, it is merely a honey pot for the big banks. Bernanke has indicated he will do whatever it takes to protect the banks; unemployment, growth and likely interest rates be damned.
As for politics, the president elects seven of the 12 members of the Board of Governors including the chairman and the vice-chairman. The Governor of the New York Federal Reserve is a permanent member with the other four voting members rotating among the other Fed Governors. So like it or not, it is political.
Congress created the FED, they have the obligation to monitor it. The list of what some would term overreach (I would call them abuses) by the FED over the last few years is extensive. There needs to be more transparency. I'm sick of hearing "We can only effectively do our job in private away from public and political pressure." Where is Anonymous when you need it?
At a minimum, Congress ought to clearly define the FED's mandate. It started out with a mandate to keep prices stable. That was expanded by Congress to also include controlling unemployment. Now the FED over the past few years, using the financial crisis as an excuse, has on their own expanded their mandate even further. Now they believe they are responsible for things like boosting the stock market. And they want it all done in secret.
We need regular audits at a minimum. I also see no harm in having a full time ombudsman, or auditor general who could report to Congress when it appeared the FED was veering away from its official mandate.
The guy in the tape did a decent although superficial job in pointing out the problems with the FED. His solution on the other hand, private ownership and laissez faire business practices, is nutz. By private ownership I am assuming he means the big banks would run it with little or no oversite. The numerous financial crisis we have suffered over the last few decades including the big one in 2008 should be proof that the banks lack the intelligence and/or integrity to run the system unsupervised and uncontrolled.
Not quite sure what planet the prof has been living on recently.
.
Oh another Palestinian treating an Israeli as a dog...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.jpost.com/Defense/Article.aspx?id=301402
of course, no pity video or outrage from the world..
It's the right of "palestinians" to stab jews ya know...
Somehow institutional injustice seems more preventable and reprehensible.
DeletePalestinian terror is institutional.
DeleteOur USA tax dollars PAY for the programing both in the UNRWA and with direct aid to teach the idiot palestinian children to hate and want to murder Jews.
Some rouge israeli at a check point is hardly institutional, it aint policy and what the previous asinine thread did not report was the fact the the IDF DOES prosecute and does not encourage un-professional behavior.
In America, the slaughter at Wounded Knee was institutional, as were the Jim Crow laws.
The massacre at My Lai was not "institutional"
Arafat himself ordered one to two jewish women a week to be stabbed to death, stating that if they used )paelstinians) knives the international community would not allow the Israelis to crack down.
The institutional racism that is educated in the arab world (and Islamic) to hate jews is pure and simple dehumanizing.
That is something to get your panties in a wad over...
While I won't argue that the Arabs don't have institutional problems the numerous Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank are hardly benign outposts limiting travel at Israeli borders. As you know the Israeli State also has some institutional practises that don't work out in the Israeli Arabic populations favor - the housing stuff being one such item.
DeleteCheckpoints are not institutional injustice.
DeleteCheckpoints were and are set up to stop suicide bombers. And they work.
The injustice is that the Palestinians USE suicide bombers as policy
not just palestinians, but MOST islamic group endorse at the hight religious level the concept of holy war.
DeleteAmericans sometimes sacrifice their lives for a higher ideal, as do Israelis.
DeleteTo compare the selflessness of Americans or Israelis as compared to Islamists that seek REWARD in heaven for murdering the infidel is sick...
Deletereally sick
Somehow you spout meaningless shit in quasi intelligent sounding collections from the alphabet.
ReplyDeletecomplete with a small humble smile
Deletecomplete with a smart ass junior college sneer -
DeleteHere is a fellow with a small humble smile -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=NyYYgLzF6zU
Henson Ong at Gun Violence Prevention Public Hearing - Hartford, CT
California at Twilight
ReplyDeleteVictor Davis Hanson.
Two Cheers for the Coming Collapse of the U.S. Economy!
"The result of 30 years of illegal immigration, the reigning culture of the coastal childless households, the exodus of the overtaxed, and the rule of public employees is not just Democratic, but hyper-liberal supermajorities in the legislature. In the most naturally wealthy state in the union with a rich endowment from prior generations, California is serially broke — the master now of its own fate. It has the highest menu of income, sales, and gas taxes in the nation, and about the worst infrastructure, business climate, and public education. Is the latter fact despite or because of the former?
ReplyDeleteHow, then, does California continue? Read on, but in a nutshell, natural and inherited wealth are so great on the coast that a destructive state government must work overtime to ruin what others wrought.
Also, when you say, “My God, one of every three welfare recipients lives in California,” or “California schools are terrible,” you mean really, “Not in Newport or Carmel. So who cares about Fresno, or Tulare — they might as well be in Alabama for all the times I have been there.”"
---
Miss ol Ruf to tell us that California is just fine.
'Rat will come along soon and tell us were Americanizing Mexico w/our embrace of illegals via the Welfare State.
Here is an example of balanced journalism critical of the type of unbalanced journalism often practiced around here -
ReplyDeletehttp://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/01/wapo_tars_the_idf.html
-- and at the Washington Post.
January 29, 2013
WaPo Tars the IDF
Leo Rennert
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/01/wapo_tars_the_idf.html#ixzz2JOkMqnTB
Articles like this are why The American Thinker is on my reading list. I think of it as one of my anti-brainwashing pills.
DeleteSome here prefer to remain washed.
Delete.
DeleteAnti-brainwashing pills?
In your case, given your lack of the prime requisite, isn't the 'anti-brainwashing pill' in reality nothing more than a superfluous placebo?
.
.
Delete!!
I knew you'd come up from under the floorboards. Don't think I didn't. I knew, knew, knew.
!!
!!
DeleteThe entire bar has been awaiting your learned opinions on circumcision and FGM. Doug's having been taken down.
!!
'Rat will come along soon and tell us were Americanizing Mexico w/our embrace of illegals via the Welfare State.
ReplyDelete:)
Hotfooting it Across History
ReplyDeleteThe military costs of empire and growing civil service bloated the state; forcing Roman emperors to find new sources of tax revenues. They did this by taxing the wealthy and by looting the temples to pagan gods, thereby encouraging the rise of Christianity in the process since it delegitimized the old temples.
But all did not go well. An attempt to return to the gold standard created a two-tier monetary system throughout the empire. Taxes were paid in gold but business was conducted on other terms. Eventually people had to buy “real money” with other money. As a result people began to work for the government.
Now, what were the consequences of inflation? One of the odd things about inflation is, in the Roman Empire, that while the state survived — the Roman state was not destroyed by inflation — what was destroyed by inflation was the freedom of the Roman people. Particularly, the first victim was their economic freedom.
Early this morning Fatso took a most magnificent tumble. As per his usual practice he had jumped up to the top of the two stacked file boxes, and then leaped for the window sill, bypassing the intermediate stage of the lamp desk, thinking to head outside through the slightly open window.
ReplyDeleteLosing his footing on the sill, he tumbled in three stages down, to lamp desk, to file boxes, to floor, crashing into a fan on the way down.
Poets may come and go, variously loved and hated, but cats remain loveable throughout --
Sonnet to a Cat
Cat! who hast pass'd thy grand cliacteric,
How many mice and rats hast in thy days
Destroy'd? - How many tit bits stolen? Gaze
With those bright languid segments green, and prick
Those velvet ears - but pr'ythee do not stick
Thy latent talons in me - and upraise
Thy gentle mew - and tell me all thy frays
Of fish and mice, and rats and tender chick.
Nay, look not down, nor lick thy dainty wrists -
For all the wheezy asthma, - and for all
Thy tail's tip is nick'd off - and though the fists
Of many a maid have given thee many a mail,
Still is that fur as soft as when the lists
In youth thou enter'dst on glass bottled wall.
John Keats around 1820
.........
http://immortalmuse.wordpress.com/2010/08/02/tuesday-poem-mrs-reynolds-cat-by-john-keats/
Bombcat
ReplyDelete"To save time and cost Lockheed Martin's proposal envisaged using only the AN/AAQ-14 targeting pod (LTP) with modifications including GPS, ballistic tables and navigation aids. The pod is not integrated into the F-14's computer's and software, instead it feeds images from the FLIR onto the RIO's PTID and the pilot's vertical display indicator (VDI) in the F-14A/B or one of the two MFD's in the F-14D. LANTIRN, as installed on the F-15E and F-16C, can fly the aircraft in terrain following mode to a pre-set target. The F-14 version cannot do this, however as the LTP includes GPS receivers the pod can aid navigation, providing a highly accurate means by which to check the aircraft's INS system."
I always hated Siamese Cats.
ReplyDeleteA gal at work persuaded my wife to take one.
We fell in love immediately.
Think the reason I hated them is why our son hates ours:
They're solely loyal to their "owners"
Wife had a book that portrayed them as Gaurd Cats for the King.
Being jumped on by a herd of Siamese would not be the most pleasant way to go.
They're solely loyal to their "owners"
DeleteFatso is his own owner. And owns us. And seems loyal only to himself. A stray, he took over the whole house, stage by stage, room by room. I really have gotten to like him. Like me, he hardly ever actually does anything.
He is pure bred American Alley, and thinks nothing of it.
DeleteThis little twerp looks pure bred, but she was a field/alley cat as well.
DeleteWe only had one male cat, "Whiskers" one of the best ever.
We think a snake was responsible for his death on the farm.
Death Sucks.
Bigtime.
"Like me, he hardly ever actually does anything."
ReplyDeleteThat is an endearing trait.
Sadly, I'm the only one endeared by me now.
...except for Ash, of course.
But who counts him?
@ BC:
ReplyDelete"Democrats badmouth the idea of national power with as much fervor as they pursue it.
Surely there’s a term in psychology for someone who despises the thing he wants more than anything else."
Need a piece of Ash?
"Walter Adams" btw
ReplyDelete---
26. hdgreene
I don’t think we are seeing Don Rumsfeld’s Light Footprint strategy. I think it is John Kerry’s “Ballerina Standing on her Tip Toes attempting a Pirouette Strategy.”
The ballerina is not exactly light and nimbe — she’s more like Hillary or maybe John Kerry in drag — but you could still knock her/him over with a feather (if by taking a fall they can avoid the blame). Of course attacking with feathers would not be nice, as members of Congress showed us last week.
Leading from Behind in Ballet Slippers, as a strategy, counts on the kindness of strangers — and foreign enemies — which taken together is worth ten divisions and any number of F-22s. Reset! Reset! Good thing most of the media knows about the Responsibility to Protect Obama’s Butt.
This is interesting ...
DeleteHere yesterday we were told, by boob, that the media were not in the tank for Israel. But both boob and doug will tell US that the media are superbiased in favor of Obama.
Obama's number 2 constituency, Jewish voters. About 65% of them, aye.
Bet an Amero that there are lot of General Dynamics in every F-16 and tank sold to Eygpt
Yeah, the self-hating non religious Joos.
DeleteCarolla's sidekick, Allison Rosen, was raised not knowing she was Jewish.
...dad's a doctor in (Pasty White) Orange County CA.
When she got older, she asked:
"But we have relatives that died in the Holocaust"
Not a problem for the Spielburg loving, self-hating "Jews"
Just because liberal jews voted for Obama doesnt mean they support Israel either.
DeleteBut not to worry Rat, they are the Jews that have the abortions.
Internet Bully Alert! Internet Bully Alert!
Deleterat on the prowl
Does anybody know where I got that VDH link from?
ReplyDelete...took me hours to figure out I got the video link from Deuces post.
...but that's just me.
I'm devastated by his deletion of my comment about the lack of attraction to servicing an uncircumsised penis.
(We'll see if this passes the WIO test)
VDH posts at pjmedia.com
ReplyDeletehttp://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/
Doug, didnt see your post but I can imagine the disgustingness of servicing the untrimmed wiener of some brute...
ReplyDeleteNot my, or my people's cup of tea.
To clarify, whether the wiener is snipped or not, NOT MY CUP OF TEA
Yeah, but the tea is stronger if the weiner is untrimmed.
DeleteAnd the probability of contracting HPV is greater, also.
ReplyDeleteThroat cancer is on the rise thanks to the teach by example POTUS.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Jefferson Clinton
Unrest in Egypt seems to be spreading. Folks marching at night, defying curfew. If the military remains with Morsi they can use those 200 new American tanks to blast the protesters to smithereens. Arab Spring, Barky style.
ReplyDeleteObama's Dead, GM lives on.
DeleteWhat's good for ObambaGuM is good for America!
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/01/egyptians_defy_curfew_army_chief_warns_of_collapse.html
DeleteLink to the above.
"Osama"
ReplyDeleteMy bad.
I'm sure you understand.
I do, indeed. Indeed, I do. Often make typos myself. Let not your heart be troubled
Deletehttp://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2013/01/29/now-hiring-federal-death-panelists/
ReplyDeleteGood employment opportunity here for those who have worked for the Feds before, know the routine.
They Oughta Have a Death Panel TV Series.
ReplyDeleteSeriously.
Plead For Your Life or some such.
DeleteOn death
DeleteI.
Can death be sleep, when life is but a dream,
And scenes of bliss pass as a phantom by?
The transient pleasures as a vision seem,
And yet we think the greatest pain's to die.
II.
How strange it is that man on earth should roam,
And lead a life of woe, but not forsake
His rugged path; nor dare he view alone
His future doom which is but to awake.
John Keats
Keats is in the tradition of seeing life as the catastrophe, a falling asleep, death the antidote, an awakening.
DeleteOddly enough, many who have come the closest to death agree with him.
Oddly enough, from the daylight point of view.
DeleteReport from Mali--
ReplyDeletehttp://news.yahoo.com/recaptured-city-mali-islamists-hunted-down-151946131.html
The French have them on the run everywhere. Uranium supplies for future use in French reactors secured.
Hamdoon
"Central banks have become the primary purchasers of new national government debt. The private sector is no longer gobbling up all the debt which the government sector produces. The national governments are dependent upon their central banks to buy their IOUs with newly counterfeited money. The central banks now serve as lenders of last resort. This was always the official justification for central banking. This was the story which the central bankers gave to the national governments. Of course, the real purpose of central banks is to protect the largest commercial banks. It is the enforcing arm of the banking cartel. But that was never what the promoters of central banks told the politicians who were asked to vote for the creation of a central bank monopoly in each country."
ReplyDeleteRead more: Government Safety Nets Are Made With Fiat Money
And indeed, many Egyptians now talk of splitting up the Arab world’s most populous state.
ReplyDeleteYea!!
My solution!
Split them all up. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria......
Christian Science Monitor
The Monitor's View
Egypt's protests reveal deficit of trust in Muslim Brotherhood
Open defiance of Egypt's president in street protests shows how much the Muslim Brotherhood needs to leave Islam outside the door of democracy.
http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2013/0129/Egypt-s-protests-reveal-deficit-of-trust-in-Muslim-Brotherhood?nav=87-frontpage-entryCommentary
Who could possibly disagree? Certainly not southern secessionists.
Though my reasoning is different here.
ReplyDeleteSCIENCE JANUARY 29, 2013
Why Do Grandmothers Exist? Solving an evolutionary mystery
BY JUDITH SHULEVITZ
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112199/genetics-grandmothers-why-they-exist#
Good article. Same sort of reasoning as found in The Biology of Transcendence.
God loves old folks, even if ObamaCare does not.
Do you know or know of the Hawaiian surfer Garrett McNamara. Doug?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2013/jan/29/surfer-garrett-mcnamara-100ft-wave
Sport
Surfing
Surfer Garrett McNamara 'rides world record 100ft wave' in Portugal
• Surfer caught wave off the coast of Nazaré in Portugal
Speaking to the Observer in 2011 after his record-setting 90ft ride, McNamara explained: "We'd been invited by the government of Portugal to Nazaré to investigate it for a big wave competition. There is an underwater canyon 1,000ft deep that runs from the ocean right up to the cliffs. It's like a funnel. At its ocean end it's three miles wide but narrows as it gets closer to the shore and when there is a big swell it acts like an amplifier.
Nah, used to work for Robert when I was in Korea, tho.
DeleteNot to many surfers there, back in the day.
"it acts like an amplifier."
ReplyDeleteIt's not acting, it is.
January 30, 2013
ReplyDeleteObama And American Thinker Both Flunk Archaeology 101 in Vegas
Jack Cashill
Solutrean Hypothesis Unexamined
EXTRA CREDIT : WHERE DID OBAMA COME FROM?
" President Barack Obama told the assembled throngs in Las Vegas on Tuesday.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/01/obama_flunks_archaeology_101_in_vegas.html
.....
Did the Solutreans settle America first?
A controversial new archaeological theory says the continent’s earliest humans may have come from Europe, not Asia
By Gareth Cook
March 18, 2012
http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2012/03/17/did-solutreans-settle-america-first/9xYYgZLa4iTkGzG4rcM3nM/story.html
Now a pair of archeologists are upending that widely accepted narrative with a new one. Citing a series of puzzling finds along the East Coast — finely wrought stone tools made thousands of years before the land-bridge migration — they suggest that the New World’s discoverers may have come not from Asia, but from Europe. Some 20,000 years ago, a Stone Age people known as the Solutreans lived in the lands of today’s Spain and France, and their tools bear striking similarities to the ones being found on the East Coast.
........
The only real consensus among archaeologists is that everyone in America came from "someplace else." Or as the Bill Murray character memorably said in Stripes, "We're Americans, with a capital 'A', huh? You know what that means? Do ya? That means that our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world."
Am. Thinker
Buck
"Unless you were one of the first Americans, a Native American, you came from someplace else, somebody brought you," President Barack Obama told the assembled throngs in Las Vegas on Tuesday.
Deletegoogle acting up
DeleteFordow explosion is still a mystery -
ReplyDeletehttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/9831282/Mystery-over-explosion-at-Irans-Fordow-nuclear-site.html
Army stops serving cooked breakfast for some soldiers in Afghanistan
ReplyDeleteThe Army has stopped serving cooked breakfasts to some of the U.S. soldiers
in Afghanistan as part of its drawdown, a move that prompted troops to write
home asking their families and friends to send care packages with cereal,
breakfast bars and other foods.