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."

Sunday, May 25, 2008

Gingrich at the Business Executives for National Security Forum



For two days, Drudge has been consumed by a silly misstatement by Hillary Clinton. That is the current level of  American political discourse. 

It occurs at a time which is the most dangerous in the past fifty years of American history. 

I doubt one percent of the US population will hear this speech by Newt Gingrich or know it ever took place. Of that one percent, few will be capable of affecting any change. 

Newt Gingrich, love him or loath him, is one of the most important voices in current American culture and security. You need to listen to this.

86 comments:

  1. "military capability is a lagging indicator of US strength"

    Enough said

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  2. Even Newt speaks of "America" and not the United States, as the action agent.

    Even with Newt, it's America, not the United States, which on a global basis may be a very accurate description of where we need to be.

    A fundemental and powerful reform of our domestic systems

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  3. Desert Rat: Even Newt speaks of "America" and not the United States, as the action agent.

    He's thinking about all the Ameros that will line his pockets when he helps bring about the North American Union for his amigos.

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  4. education & energy

    china, russia, rouge states and islam

    maybe it's time to help chaos happen in those places to set them back...

    china... earthquakes are a help, maybe it time to support freedom fighters there to split it apart?

    russia... time to cripple their already decaying oil system ( "While there were no physical casualties from the pipeline explosion, there was significant damage to the Soviet economy," he writes. "Its ultimate bankruptcy, not a bloody battle or nuclear exchange, is what brought the Cold War to an end. In time the Soviets came to understand that they had been stealing bogus technology, but now what were they to do? By implication, every cell of the Soviet leviathan might be infected. They had no way of knowing which equipment was sound, which was bogus. All was suspect, which was the intended endgame for the entire operation.")

    rouge states? In public speak about peace but in private start crippling their computer systems (like they are not trying to do to us?)

    and islam? get off of arab and opec oil, develop brazil, reduce tariffs for imported sugar as well as a systematic approach of proving why islam is not allah's blessing...

    iran's gas refinery should be destroyed.

    we cannot do it all at one moment, however the threat is clear and should be attacked, yes attacked asap.

    after the otherside IS attacking on a daily basis...

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  5. I'm sick and tired of fucking PEACENIKS on this site!

    ReplyDelete
  6. How come this one never made the headlines, or at least a Trish post, at the EB?
    ---
    Colombian Guerrilla Leader Reported Dead

    CARACAS, Venezuela — Colombia’s defense minister revealed Saturday that officials were trying to corroborate an intelligence report claiming that Manuel Marulanda, the supreme leader of Colombia’s largest rebel group, died of natural causes in March.

    If confirmed, the death of Mr. Marulanda, believed to be 76, would be a severe blow for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, a Marxist-inspired insurgency that has been waging a guerrilla war to overthrow Colombia’s government for more than four decades.

    Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos told Semana, the Colombian news magazine, that an intelligence source said Mr. Marulanda died of heart failure on March 26. Mr. Santos said officials were corroborating the report, adding that three bombing raids were carried out in the area where Mr. Marulanda was thought to be around that time.

    “He must be in hell,” Mr. Santos of Mr. Marulanda.

    Colombia’s government is taking a risk in divulging Mr. Marulanda’s supposed death. Indeed, the rebel leader has been reported killed numerous times since he took up arms as a teenager in an embryonic guerrilla movement in the late 1940s. Every report, including declarations in recent years that Mr. Marulanda had died of prostate cancer, was proven false.
    ---
    Discount, nay, ignore, any reports that "Doug" has suffered from sexual dysfunction after participating in the teen embryo revolution.

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  7. Mr. Marulanda died of heart failure on March 26 following three bombing raids on his home.

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  8. "teen *guerrilla* embryo revolution."

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  9. I was a teenage guerrilla embryo.

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  10. "Moreover, Colombia’s government stands to benefit from undercutting the FARC through revealing the unconfirmed intelligence, if only as a distraction from issues like a new scandal over the laptop computers of paramilitary warlords that went missing upon their extradition this month to the United States. "
    ---
    Could we have some cryptic comments about what THAT means?

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  11. 2164th wrote:

    "For two days, Drudge has been consumed by a silly misstatement by Hillary Clinton. That is the current level of American political discourse. "

    While I'll fully agree that the current level of American political discourse is abysmally low I'd like to point out how much you've contributed to it with you railing on about Rev. Wright, Obama's 'elitism', and especially your flogging those homosexual allegations. You come off as a dyed in the wool Hillaryite.

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  12. The truth hurts, Ash.
    Deal with it.

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  13. It has not yet been confirmed by Columbia that Pedro Antonio Marin, known as Manuel Marulanda Vilez is indeed dead. We can hope.

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  14. Ash there is no comparing a silly misstatement by Hillary or McCain with a hard core leftist like Obama. You never quite get the concept of proportionality. Reagan once made an off hand joke about "bombing the Soviet Union in five minutes" and the lefties seized on that as if it were serious.

    My post has nothing to do with Hillary. it has to do with some rather bleak assessments from Newt Gingrich, most of which I agree with. The purpose of the post was to comment on how easily we get distracted by trivial matters.

    Obama sitting his phony behind in an Afro-centric church for twenty years, going to the Black Muslim sponsored Million Man March, married to a hard core whining and paranoid leftist is relevant concern to me about someone who aspires to be President.

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  15. As to the report of Obama smoking crack and getting a hummer from that creature, my hopes overwhelmed my objectivity.

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  16. ...and he did send his children there, to that place that ALWAYS spouted what he now professes to be appalled and offended by.

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  17. What's strange to me is how many "conservatives" (self defined) still purport to believe that Obama doesn't really believe any of Wrights hateful BS, yet both Barry and the wife constantly betray that they DO believe, with all their off the cuff remarks.

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  18. There's no freedom of speech in Canada. Ash has got to say what Ash has got to say.

    To me one of the biggest absurdities of all is how Canadians like to crap on about 'the level of dialogue in the United States'--when they ain't got ANY.

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  19. When's the last time you heard about an airline hijacker offering the stewardess a tip?!

    D.B. Cooper--hijacking the polite, "American Way"!

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  20. HOW TO SAVE US AIRLINES

    Dump the male flight attendants. No one wanted them in the first place.

    Replace all the female flight attendants with good-looking strippers! They don't even serve food anymore, so what's the loss?

    The strippers would at least triple the alcohol sales and get a 'party atmosphere' going in the cabin. And, of course, every businessman in this country would start flying again, hoping to see naked women.

    Because of the tips, female flight attendants wouldn't need a salary, thus saving even more money. I suspect tips would be so good that we could charge the women for working the plane and have them kick back 20% of the tips, including lap dances and 'special services.'

    And Muslims would be afraid to get on the planes for fear of seeing naked women. Hijackings would come to a screeching halt, and the airline industry would see record revenues.

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  21. Larry Sinclair might have been telling the truth. Turns out he wasn't but let's recall all the rumors we heard--at least I did out here in Ideehooo over many years--about 'wide stance' Larry, all of which turned out to be true.

    We were well served by deuce giving the item some attention.
    ----

    Excellent ideas all across the board there Mat. Throw in a little 'high flying' gambling, with the airlines taking a bite, we're home to profitability.

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  22. It's only folks like Mat up there in the great white that have the courage to speak their own minds, risking their all for the truth.

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  23. In regards to Newt's speech, I think instituting a mandate to eliminate the bottom 10% of government employees every year, would do wonders for the health of these bureaucracies.

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  24. It's not as bad as that up here, Bob. We have a good guy in Steve Harper.

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  25. Mat,I've made it my policy to reply in kind to Ash every time he slashes all things American.

    ReplyDelete
  26. Dams At Risk In China, Chicoms Say

    Worst Chinese Earthquakes

    This last one wasn't exactly small, but there have been others a lot worse. China is a very active place for earthquakes.

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  27. Bob,

    I think the best policy w/r to Ashley would be to ignore her.

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  28. bobal: Mat,I've made it my policy to reply in kind to Ash every time he slashes all things American.

    Metuselah: I think the best policy w/r to Ashley would be to ignore her.

    I'm not sure if Ash is a "he" or a "her" but the temperament of Ash is gentle and wise. It reminds me of a passage from Tolkien's Silmarillion:

    "...But when they desire to clothe themselves the Valar take upon them forms some as of male and some as of female; for that difference of temper they had even from their beginning, and it is but bodied forth in the choice
    of each, not made by the choice, even as with us male and female may be shown by the raiment but is not made thereby..."

    ReplyDelete
  29. Doug: Teen Killah Guerrillas.

    Teen Killa Guerrillaz

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  30. I like Ash, cept when he gives us that snarly psuedomoral ubermanncanadianmenschunteramericanmensch crap.

    He's a he. Flys south sometimes to play golf.

    ReplyDelete
  31. Yes, too bad the wisdom of this wise gentle troll always seem to escape me. So perhaps you can do us all a favor and host her on your wise and gentle lesbian blog. Btw, is there a reason why you girls keep coming here?

    ReplyDelete
  32. Bobal: When's the last time you heard about an airline hijacker offering the stewardess a tip?!

    Bobal, this was 1971. I was six. Gas was 36 cents a gallon. Dad drove a Buick Riviera to Mass at 100 MPH. You didn't have tamper-proof seals on aspirin and ketchup. There was four channels on TV. You woke up to watch Jack Lalane exercising (he's now 93!) and in the evening you watched a young Bob Barker on Truth or Consequences. On Sunday you saw Lawrence Welk, Star Trek, Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom and Wonderful World of Disney, in that order. Stairway to Heaven was a new song. In fine, Bobal, it was a whole different world in 1971.

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  33. Mətušélaḥ:Yes, too bad the wisdom of this wise gentle troll always seem to escape me. So perhaps you can do us all a favor and host her on your wise and gentle lesbian blog. Btw, is there a reason why you girls keep coming here?

    I started posting on the Elephant Bar on Sunday Sep 10, 2006, at 03:28:00 PM. I jumped ship from the Belmont Club when Wretchard killed the comments. By the time he turned them back on, I was addicted. Believe it or not, my politics are more in line with the EB than the Daily Kos. I'm voting for Grampy McSame.

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  34. "I like Ash,.."


    Wiki: Delilah or (דְּלִילָה, Standard Hebrew meaning "[One who] weakened or uprooted or impoverished" from the root dal meaning "weak or poor".)[1] appears only in the Hebrew Bible Book of Judges 16, where she is the "woman in the valley of Sorek" whom Samson loved, and who was his downfall. Her figure, one of several dangerous temptresses in the Hebrew Bible, has become emblematic: "Samson loved Delilah, she betrayed him, and, what is worse, she did it for money"

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  35. "Believe it or not,.."

    I don't.

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  36. Samson got what he had coming to him. He married a Philistine woman when he was supposed to marry an Israelite. He was a Nazarite who could not drink wine nor approach a corpse, but he ate honey out of dead lion's carcass and had a drinking party. He gave away an Israelite military secret (ie. his strength was bound up with his long hair) to a female agent of Gaza. You can't fault Delilah for doing her job when Samson was the most piss-poor Judge ever seen. Sure he killed lots of Philistines, but even Deborah, the female Judge, was a better example.

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  37. Judges 16:14-16
    14. And when he came unto Lehi, the Philistines shouted against him: and the spirit of the LORD came mightily upon him, and the cords that were upon his arms became as flax that was burnt with fire, and his bands loosed from off his hands.

    15. And he found a new jawbone of an ass, and put forth his hand, and took it, and slew a thousand men therewith.

    16. And Samson said, With the jawbone of as ass, heaps upon heaps, with the jaw of an ass have I slain a thousand men.
    ---
    In his prime, Samson wasn't to be tinkered with.

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  38. CARACAS, Venezuela — Colombia’s defense minister revealed Saturday...





    I had no idea. Brilliant if it pans out, which given the level of comment it probably will.

    Just remember whenever you see Santos...that's Colombia's next President.

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  39. What I don't get is why ash is increasingly cranky.

    Here we are approaching the end of an administration to which he has been in vehement opposition; the likelihood of a war he feared, dreaded and anticipated at vanishingly small odds; and the genuine prospect of an incoming Democratic administration.

    If these are not enough to dispose ash to sunny benevolence, well, I'm not sure what would.

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  40. He might be off his golf game?

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  41. While I'll fully agree that the current level of American political discourse is abysmally low

    Hey Ash, it occurs to me that right now it's the democrats doing all the talking. McCain's just having a private cookout with friends.

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  42. Ethanol Backlash In Texas--Ranchers Fear Becoming All Hat, No Cattle

    "They'll be growing corn on the Washington Mall."

    It's time to let the farmers out of the CRP contracts if they want to do so.

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  43. I listened to Newt's speech.

    Just offhand, it's the irony that strikes me. Newt, obviously and with good reason, has a great and outgoing confidence in America's private sector (v. the dinosaur that is America's government bureaucracy). And yet the challenges he enumerates are without question to be met by government action.

    Many post-War Republicans cannot seem to get around this fundamental contradiction, of a deep and abiding affection for the gargantuan government machinery bequeathed us by FDR and of an older, conservative respect for the virtues of private industry.

    There is some wisdom, after all, in Goldwater's (and Friedman's) insistence that we ought to be thankful we don't get all the government we pay for - and that real innovation and efficiency are to be found in the realm of private, and profitable, contractual relations.

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  44. Now where's that man-portable light antitank weapon...

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  45. Bobal: Hey Ash, it occurs to me that right now it's the democrats doing all the talking. McCain's just having a private cookout with friends.

    On May 15th McCain looked in his crystal ball and saw 2013:

    ...the size of the Army and Marine Corps has been significantly increased, and are now better equipped and trained to defend us...

    He's saying Bush tried to do it on the cheap with a skeleton force.

    ...fixed price contracts have created sufficient savings to pay for a larger military...

    Gosh, that means Raytheon and Blackwater won't be contributing to his campaign.

    After exercising my veto several times in my first year in office, Congress has not sent me an appropriations bill containing earmarks for the last three years.

    HA HA HA HA HA HA!

    U.S. tariffs on agricultural imports have been eliminated and unneeded farm subsidies are being phased out.

    Now we don't have to import Mexican pickers, when we can just buy Mexican lettuce at cut rates and freeze our own growers out.

    ...the American people accepted the practical necessity to institute a temporary worker program and deal humanely with the millions of immigrants who have been in this country illegally...

    Doug is gonna love that. 'Got the message' indeed.

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  46. "And Muslims would be afraid to get on the planes for fear of seeing naked women."

    Not.

    When the pilot announces (and he always does) "We have left the airspace of the Kingdom," the party breaks out.

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  47. If Muslims were afraid of seeing naked women why is their idea of paradise an eternal harem with 72 ever-virgin sluts?

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  48. "And yet the challenges he enumerates are without question to be met by government action.

    Many post-War Republicans cannot seem to get around this fundamental contradiction, of a deep and abiding affection for the gargantuan government machinery bequeathed us by FDR and of an older, conservative respect for the virtues of private industry.
    "
    ---
    Amen

    Similarly, wrt to immigration, they pretend that the forces at work are no different than in 1900, when in fact the gargantuan welfare state combined with PC rules of admission, compounded by massive corruption and lawbreaking, result in a totally different outcome.
    I still wonder if 'Rat really seriously believes that a United America would result in anything faintly resembling all that was exceptional about this country.
    All experience points to just the opposite being the case, as we eagerly sacrifice our heritage to a massive fraud.

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  49. doug is flogging the "Anti-Obama" campaign.
    The one which Newt has promised will fail to prevent his election.

    As to Obama's latin america speach, to other day ...

    I was able to project my interpretations of what he said to make perfect sense. The rhetoric was mallable, I was able to blend it with my own.
    It is only the reality of his actions that tell the real tale.

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  50. What bugs my is hypocrisy. Obama makes mention of bitter folk clinging to guns in a closed door meeting with donors merits reams of commentary over his elitism but Hillary stating that she'll stay in the race because Obama might get assassinated is a 'mere slip of the tongue'. bah!

    Many folk here want government out of their lives but, as Trish so succinctly noted, Newt's speech is a barn burner demanding huge coordinated big government action.

    Deuce, at one point, lamented that any old dumb fuck can vote and yet we require a license to drive. Maybe the Chinese system is more to his (and Newt's) liking? You know, meet the stringent criteria of the Party and, yes, you too can run for office.

    And Newt's speech - didn't he mourn that huge loss in 1860? The loss of Britain's empire? Is that what he fears most - the crumbling of the American empire? Sad really that his main worry regarding education is only in how it relates to Americas position vis a vis the rest of the world. Ironic too that the well educated tend to prefer Obama...

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  51. Ironic too that the well educated tend to prefer Obama...

    Indeed, showing that a college education doesn't mean squat today. Sixteen years of indoctrination.

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  52. The agony might not last long in any case.

    The Sky Is Falling

    Posted by Charles at B.C.

    The saying may be true in some circumstances, that ignorance is bliss.

    Good long article about our odds in the cosmic trap shoot. We being the target.

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  53. O The Hypocrisy

    The American Thinker believes Obama has been treated with kid gloves, unlike others who see hypocrisy all over the field.

    The Hillabeste just won't die, even with a stake in its heart.

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  54. And I do detect some hypocrisy in Obama's off the record remarks to a group of his up scale friends about the rubes, and guns, and churches. The kind of thing he would never say in public, you know, yet it slipped out.

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  55. yeppers part of the political discourse, in particular the American political discourse is managing the hypocrisy - can't afford to offend anyone.

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  56. An honest man in Obama's postition would say, "I'm gonna lose the gun carrying church going rube vote anyway, so they can go hang."

    Would be refreshing, wouldn't it? Instead of all this stuff about bringing everyone together, the San Franciscans and the folk from Miller, Ohio.

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  57. Gingrich strikes me less as a shrink the government, then a make it more efficient type of guy. Ironic considering he called Dole the tax collector for the welfare state.

    As for FDR, I think it partly ties into that odd mix of patriotism and nostalgia that causes Conservatives to lionize Democratic Presidents as part of their American heritage as much as Republican ones. Progressives don't. Ties into Hayek's warnings against 'Conservation' as a defining ideology, I guess.

    "yeppers part of the political discourse, in particular the American political discourse is managing the hypocrisy - can't afford to offend anyone."

    Thank your buddies for that one. They're just applying for their equal opportunity non-persecution by criticism rights under multiculturalism, after all. Personally, I've got no problem unearthing all the bodies.

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  58. "The Visigoth economy, such as it was, was built on slavery. Impressed by the ubiquitous slave labor in the Late Roman Empire, the Goths adopted and spread plantation slavery across northern Europe, where it had never flourished before, and they greatly reinforced the instituiton in those parts of the collapsed empire where previously, as in Hispania, it had served Roman landholders. Several of the kings ordered silver coins struck, but the coins served more as a numismatic tribute to the reign than as a medium of monetary exchange in a barter economy devoid of all external trade except the importation of human chattel. Slavery in Europe reached its apogee in the sixth and seventh centuries, and Visigothic Iberia was one of its main engines. A supply line running from the Black Sea and the eastern Adriatic through Bohemia to Jewish and Christian merchants on Rhodes and in the port cities of Genoa and Marseille provided the warrior caste with an abundance of Slavic chattel. So many thousands of Slavs toiled under the lash and the Iberian sun on vast cereal and cattle estates (Visigothic versions of the Roman latifundia) that the word for slave in Spanish (esclavo) derives, like all European nouns for slave, from this servile population. Christianity countenanced slavery, as did Islam, although the koran not only made it the Believer's duty to free the slave as soon as feasible, it forbade the enslavement of other moslims. Christian authorities in Hispania, in keeping with the maxims of St. Paul and St. Augustine, regarded human bondage as a condition justified by original sin. Determined that nothing should complicate the assimilation of the barbarian aristocracies to Catholicism, the bishops of the Church, whether in Hispania, Gaul, or Italia, were more than content to ignore Christ's compassion for the underclass."

    slavery in Europe, from "God's Crucible"

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  59. And in other news, a Prick Is Dead

    Butch Otter was married to his daughter, now divorced.

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  60. Hillary Raises RFK, D-Day as Reasons to Stay in Race

    by Scott Ott for ScrappleFace
    (2008-05-24) —

    Just a day after citing the persistence of Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign as justification for her to remain in the race for the Democrat nomination, Sen. Hillary Clinton noted that the U.S. victory over Hitler’s Germany “didn’t really get started until June.”

    Sen. Clinton, in an interview aboard her financially-strapped campaign’s flagship Toyota Prius, said, “I’m reminded of the words of John Belushi who asked, ‘Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?’”

    The former presumptive Democrat nominee said, “I’ve been thinking about Sen. Ted Kennedy’s recent medical challenges, and so I was reminded of the Kennedy family and how Bobby stayed in the race until June 6, when he withdrew unexpectedly. Of course, June 6, was D-Day, which was also the name of one of the main characters in the movie ‘Animal House’. That, naturally, reminded me of John Belushi and his inspiring speech about never giving up. So what I’m saying is that I’m a fighter, like the boys of Delta House.”

    Sen. Clinton, eager to make sure her remarks and her motivations are not misinterpreted, said, “I don’t mean to raise the specter of assassination, global war and atomic bombs to say anything other than: It ain’t over ’til it’s totally, utterly and completely over.”

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  61. "And Newt's speech - didn't he mourn that huge loss in 1860? The loss of Britain's empire? Is that what he fears most - the crumbling of the American empire? Sad really that his main worry regarding education is only in how it relates to Americas position vis a vis the rest of the world."
    ---
    It really is sad, when the rest of us are pulling for Myranmar to be the model for the World.

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  62. Your Tico News article was an extremely good one, I hear, dear host.

    Thanks for posting it.

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  63. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  64. Cutler,

    It was a good question in re Colombia (and the Americas): Why bother? And one which does not answer itself. I just haven't composed the answer, which I anticipate - I always try anyway - will be two paragraphs or less.

    No pillory.

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  65. Scott Ott...

    That was damned funny.

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  66. Bobal said, "An honest man in Obama's postition would say, "I'm gonna lose the gun carrying church going rube vote anyway, so they can go hang."

    He is basically doing that, in the Primaries, by not spending money in states that are going to McCain anyway. He's giving them to Hillary, and she is deluded into saying that Obama "can't close the deal" with the Deliverance vote. But instead of $20 million dollars in the hole, he is already $40 in the black (so to speak!) leading up to the general election, and a very large portion of his funding comes from regular folks who chipped in $25 or so because they want to see the political climate change. Just wait until after the convention. It's going to be a tidal wave bigger than Katrina, and poor McCain won't know what hit him. ASSUMING of course that Hillary gets out of the race in time for the makeup sex to happen between Dems, and ASSUMING that she doesn't have one of her button men whack da guy.

    That said, I'm voting GOP again this time.

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  67. The Association of South-East Asian Nations (Asean) can deal with escalating food prices and supply shortages more effectively once the Asean Charter is in place, Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, said here Friday.

    He said the charter would enable Asean to act in concert to tackle food security which has become the region's biggest concern.

    Food prices, especially rice, are at an all-time high currently. To this end, he called on the remaining four members of Asean not to delay in ratifying the charter as this would make it difficult for the grouping to effectively manage rising food prices and supply problems.


    Food Crisis

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  68. "Similarly, wrt to immigration..."

    Doug.

    Isn't it amazing - isn't it quite wonderful - that we as a nation are still, after all these years, a magnet for other peoples?

    Do you know that grown men and women cry, Doug - cry openly - when they are rejected, sometimes for the fourth or fifth time, for a non-immigrant visa here at our embassy?

    Isn't there anything to be said for the enduring connection between the ambitions and dreams, small though they often are, of so very very many people out there, and the remarkable place we call home?

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  69. Top 3 hardest working countries:

    1. South Korea
    2. Greece
    3. Czech Republic

    Forbes

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  70. As to Obama's latin america speach, to other day ...

    I was able to project my interpretations of what he said to make perfect sense. The rhetoric was mallable

    - Rat

    But the outright lies weren't.

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  71. 'The US has shifted the goalpost several times,' he said, adding: 'I don't see the deal going through'.

    Natwar Singh, who was in the Indian Foreign Service (IFS) before joining the Congress, said: 'The United States is selling this deal to us in an attempt to pitch us against China. We should not fall for it.

    '(US President) George Bush has tried to sell it so that he can claim it as an achievement. But the next US President is not going to endorse it, whether it is John McCain (Republican candidate) or Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama (Democrat frontrunners),' Natwar Singh said.


    Nuclear Deal

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  72. Although the Internet was started here, the U.S. can't seem to catch up with other developed nations when it comes to giving citizens access to high-speed connections.

    For the second year running, the U.S. ranked 15th among the 30 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development in terms of broadband availability. Denmark ranked first again in the annual OECD survey, followed by a host of European and Asian nations.

    ...

    But challenges of wiring remote communities don't tell the whole story. The OECD also found that U.S. broadband providers charge more than those in many developed nations.


    U.S. Broadband

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  73. The Mars Phoenix Lander has landed intact on Mars, of all places. Up there around the pole some where, going to scratch around, analyze the soils, see if it's life supporting stuff.

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  74. Scott Ott can be serious when he wants to be--

    We Left Our Youth on the Beach

    Posted by Scott Ott on Sunday, May 25, 2008 12:37:20 PM

    A World War II veteran, closer now to 90 years than 80, told me he once had a dream that he died and was reunited with his fellow soldiers who had perished between Normandy and the Ardennes.

    They were all as he remembered them, young men. He, however, in the dream appeared as he does today -- well advanced in years. They didn't know him at first, he being now decades their senior. It disturbed him to see himself that way, and to be seen by them an old man.

    They left their youth on the beach.

    Manhood rushed upon them, and they waded in -- wave upon wave. Then, just as suddenly, the life-tide ebbed, seaping into the sands of Omaha, Utah, Juno, Gold and Sword.

    Those who fell left memories of perpetual youth and vigor, boldness, daring, duty and courage. They left their youth on the beach.

    And what of they who slogged on through sand and mud, through hedgerow and hamlet, through field and forest eventually returning to their homes? What of they who rode the transports back, building homes and families, building vibrant communities and lasting institutions. They too left their youth on the beach.

    All of the boys died that day near Cherbourg, Le Havre, Dieppe and Calais.

    Beneath the deafening roar of artillery, amid the smoke and stench, manhood marched ashore soaked in salt and blood, and a decade passed in a moment. Only snapshots of youth remained. Only men lived on, aged beyond years.

    Generations rolled by, and a thousand daily flag-bedecked caskets mark now each passing day. Those who left their youth on the beach with their fallen brothers of another century now leave their bodies for a distant shore.

    Every war exacts its toll.

    We left our youth on the beach, and in the sweltering jungles, among the snowclad hilltops and in the choking sands.

    Yet green limbs, pruned in the flower of life, have somehow rejuvenated this land.

    Those who died inspire us, and those who live return to lead and transform us.

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  75. First Photo From Phoenix Lander

    Astronomy Picture of the Day

    Kind of desolate, not much going on.

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  76. In fact, the Phoenix Lander landing is the biggest thing that's happened in a long while.

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  77. "Isn't there anything to be said for the enduring connection between the ambitions and dreams, small though they often are, of so very very many people out there, and the remarkable place we call home?"
    ---
    Indeed, that's why the present situation of letting less qualified people in in large numbers, while restricting entry to many more qualified is a sacrilege.

    Are you aware of what is happening to schools and hospitals across the country because of the illegal invasion?
    (most emergency rooms in South Central LA are gone, the wait for others is 8 hours!)
    Schools are a disaster, thanks to hordes of poorly motivated, non-English speakers.

    Do you care that 25 US Citizens are killed DAILY by illegals?
    (Half by violent crime, half by drunk drivers)

    What about the ambitions and dreams of the 40 THOUSAND US Citizens that have died at the hands of illegals on Presidente Compassion's watch?

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  78. Don't make me dig up the stats, Doug.

    Please.

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  79. Possibly the kindest and most astute woman in the world does her laundry...but she still has to dig up her own stats.

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  80. Bobal: In fact, the Phoenix Lander landing is the biggest thing that's happened in a long while.

    So while al-Qaeda is taking Genie garage door openers and rigging them to some 155mm howitzer shells they found so they can blow up our kids in Stryker vehicles, we send mechanical extensions of our mind to the Martian tundra to learn about the global cooling there, when the free-running water was locked into sub-surface ice, and whether life got a foothold there.

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  81. al-Doug is beginning to see a strange light...

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  82. Thank you for reviewing this underappreciated novel. I liked it as a revenge story when I was a teenager, learned to appreciate the redemption theme as I grew older, and lately enjoy picking out the scenes and characters that appear in slightly different forms in his other books. The torture scene, though never described in much detail, has remained etched into my brain for decades. This book is one of my favorites.
    Surface action agent

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