Monday, November 10, 2008
Sunday, November 09, 2008
Let's go to Palau
If votes in the United Nations serve as a gauge of global opinion, 98.9 percent of the world opposes the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba, a measure imposed 46 years ago to isolate the communist-ruled island and bring down its leaders.
It failed on both counts. As far as international opinion is concerned, the country that is isolated is the United States, not Cuba. In the latest of 17 successive U.N. General Assembly resolutions on lifting the embargo, Washington mustered only two allies — Israel and Palau, a Pacific island nation difficult to find on a map. It has a population of 21,000.
Sounds good to me. They even have a Community College there.
It failed on both counts. As far as international opinion is concerned, the country that is isolated is the United States, not Cuba. In the latest of 17 successive U.N. General Assembly resolutions on lifting the embargo, Washington mustered only two allies — Israel and Palau, a Pacific island nation difficult to find on a map. It has a population of 21,000.
Sounds good to me. They even have a Community College there.
Sell, Pepe, sell!
The silver lining in all this is that Pepe will have to pay higher taxes. Ah, schadenfreude.
Vin says: Fuck This "Loyal Opposition" Bullcrap
"Sen. McCain did not merely "do a poor job" articulating the philosophy of expansive liberty and limited government. He failed to articulate it at all....Those who suffered a year's worth of frustration waiting for John McCain to sound that rallying cry are now criticized for acting "bitter" about the Nov. 4 results. We are expected to act like the losing team after a sporting contest, lining up to shake hands with the victors.
The problem is, socialism is not a game played on a 60-minute clock within the "out-of-bounds" markers, where you're free to come back and try again, with the scoreboard set back to zero-zero, next season.
In the 20th century, socialism -- which comes in many forms, but always involves the use of armed force or the threat of force to seize wealth from the productive class and redistribute it to the less creative, the less innovative, the less industrious -- murdered millions, and impoverished hundreds of millions more. The socialists never enter the next round with the scoreboard "reset to zero" -- they consolidate the gains of 1912 and 1932 and 1964 and 2008, digest their new powers and all the wealth they've confiscated from their victims, and then -- swollen with all they have devoured -- ask, "Play again?"
The problem is, socialism is not a game played on a 60-minute clock within the "out-of-bounds" markers, where you're free to come back and try again, with the scoreboard set back to zero-zero, next season.
In the 20th century, socialism -- which comes in many forms, but always involves the use of armed force or the threat of force to seize wealth from the productive class and redistribute it to the less creative, the less innovative, the less industrious -- murdered millions, and impoverished hundreds of millions more. The socialists never enter the next round with the scoreboard "reset to zero" -- they consolidate the gains of 1912 and 1932 and 1964 and 2008, digest their new powers and all the wealth they've confiscated from their victims, and then -- swollen with all they have devoured -- ask, "Play again?"
Peter Hitchens Looks at Our Freshly Dug Grave, and Sings 'Auld Lang Syne"
Le Pew ululates, forming backdrip to The Socialist Talibanacle Choir
" really don’t see how the Obama devotees can ever in future mock the Moonies, the Scientologists or people who claim to have been abducted in flying saucers. This is a cult like the one which grew up around Princess Diana, bereft of reason and hostile to facts."
Thought Crime on Planet Pepe
Hey, Winston, ya think they aren't on ta ya?
[AI, you figure that guy we met on the subway is rotting in Walpole about now?].
[AI, you figure that guy we met on the subway is rotting in Walpole about now?].
Kayla is Uglier than even I'd Imagined
...and has had a few of those Michael Jackson "Whitening Agent" treatments...
So she has a new job, and leaves Nawlin Left behind. Pauvre Le Pew, like Ted Turner he is mighty lonely about now. Never fear, Le Pew, here's a window of opportunity for your secret love for Helen Thomas to have a very wintry bloom.
So she has a new job, and leaves Nawlin Left behind. Pauvre Le Pew, like Ted Turner he is mighty lonely about now. Never fear, Le Pew, here's a window of opportunity for your secret love for Helen Thomas to have a very wintry bloom.
Blaming Palin
Irate John McCain aides, who blame Mrs Palin for losing the election, claim Mrs Palin took it upon herself to question Mr Obama's patriotism, before the line of attack had been cleared by Mr McCain. Hmmm...
The Typo, Temper and Talent
Just cruising around the internet this morning after having been keyed in on what was arguably the "first" alternative newspaper in Greenwich Village, The Villlage Voice, co-founded by Norman Mailer. I located an obituary of Mailer, written by Jerry Tallmer. The snow continues to descend on us here on the upper Plains, but it's the vertical rather than the horizontal stuff this time. Good coffee drinking weather for sure.
Excerpt of the lively dialog in the newsroom of The Village Voice (circa 1956). For some reason it kind of reminded me of FCP:
I [Jerry Tallmer] came into the office — there was no one else there — as the telephone was ringing.
I picked it up. A raging voice — Mailer’s voice — said: “Tallmer, you schmuck, why don’t you take your thumb out of your asshole? It’s ‘nuance … nuance,’ not ‘nuisance.’ ”
I said: “Norman, don’t talk to me like that,” and hung up, still body-weary and half-asleep, not having the least idea what the hell he was talking about.
Stats galore
So Obama did worse than Kerry in Pepeland and Mass, but better in MFTland. Any conclusions we can draw?
A preview of Pepean economics
Congressional Democrats will try to persuade the new president to lower the $250,000 cut-off point to the $150,000 his vice-president, Joe Biden, favours. Obama’s advisers say he will hold the line at $250,000. Yeah, sure.
He will fulfil his pledge to support legislation to eliminate the secret ballot in union-recognition elections. The Environmental Protection Agency probably does not need new legislation to change the rules on carbon emissions so that Obama can achieve his goal of making new coal-fired power stations totally uneconomic. The Federal Communications Commission can impose “fairness” rules that make it more difficult for conservative talk radio stations to challenge his government’s policies. The Food and Drug Administration can make it difficult if not impossible for pharmaceutical companies to gain permission to market new drugs that the industry’s critics contend are “merely” improvements on existing drugs. Keep on truckin', Pepe.
He will fulfil his pledge to support legislation to eliminate the secret ballot in union-recognition elections. The Environmental Protection Agency probably does not need new legislation to change the rules on carbon emissions so that Obama can achieve his goal of making new coal-fired power stations totally uneconomic. The Federal Communications Commission can impose “fairness” rules that make it more difficult for conservative talk radio stations to challenge his government’s policies. The Food and Drug Administration can make it difficult if not impossible for pharmaceutical companies to gain permission to market new drugs that the industry’s critics contend are “merely” improvements on existing drugs. Keep on truckin', Pepe.
Hah! Palin is AI Turgidson's Fault!
I respect Lilla. He has written brilliantly before. I don't agree with him that Palin has no brain. I note also that he has not mentioned Reagan in his piece. Hmmm. I always thought Reagan was the right dolt at the right time...
Saturday, November 08, 2008
A heckuva job
The most potent attack on Obama came not from the campaign but from pure happenstance outside it: Joe the plumber's accidental meeting with Obama. McCain acted like that was the first time he had ever heard Obama's thoughts on economic redistribution. Had the campaign exhausted its opposition research budget at Neiman Marcus?
McCain's last-minute reliance on the gimmick of Joe the plumber made it easy for the media to dismiss his charge of "socialism" against Obama as feeble name-calling. Many months early, the McCain campaign could have been developing that case, and it wouldn't have taken much effort: Obama had let slip socialist, even Marxian, assumptions in his thinking several times, from his Marxian description of religion as an opiate for the masses to his bald calls for "confiscating" the profits of oil companies to his open class warfare... Obama's casual comment about bankrupting the coal industry had been gathering dust for months, only becoming an issue via Drudge at the last moment.
Ah, says JJ, but nobody could have done better than Mac. Well, duhhh. I mean, are you sure?
McCain's last-minute reliance on the gimmick of Joe the plumber made it easy for the media to dismiss his charge of "socialism" against Obama as feeble name-calling. Many months early, the McCain campaign could have been developing that case, and it wouldn't have taken much effort: Obama had let slip socialist, even Marxian, assumptions in his thinking several times, from his Marxian description of religion as an opiate for the masses to his bald calls for "confiscating" the profits of oil companies to his open class warfare... Obama's casual comment about bankrupting the coal industry had been gathering dust for months, only becoming an issue via Drudge at the last moment.
Ah, says JJ, but nobody could have done better than Mac. Well, duhhh. I mean, are you sure?
Hey, Pepe, Does an Aristo Need $500?
If so, go on. Write that piece. Prove the Neocons are Liars.... I dare ya. I double dare ya.
[What? You don't think FCP is sufficiently reputable? ]
The retreat starts
Great. We're now officially losing a war against a power that produces raw materials to fund its war machine. Saudi Russia. Yes we can. Fuck. UPDATE: Cheney's still in charge.
Wheels for Pepe
At Porte de Versailles, the Mao car Pepe has long waited for. Buy, Pepe, buy! Another possibility.
Of course AI believes all this hooey
Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt. Believe in this, AI? Or is it just some vae victis for Palin the moosebimbo?
Says It All
What is coming out of the McCain campaign now is pure poison, trying to shift blame for their incompetence and mismanagement on to Sarah Palin. And the Palin camp is fighting back, trying to answer these charges. What is striking is that they are giving reasonable explanations for issues being raised by McCain loyalists. It makes them much more believable than the wildly exaggerated image the twits are pushing of Palin as a “diva.”
It stinks of cowardice for McCain staffers not to own up to the fact that it was their ideas, their plan, and their piss poor execution that resulted in this landslide loss in the electoral college. There was nothing inspiring about this campaign at all. It didn’t energize the base. It failed to convince other conservatives that McCain would govern much differently than Obama. In the end, the candidate had no recognizable set of principles, no identifiable ideology, and no real issue that would have energized Republicans and conservatives and brought them to the polls.
The Prodigal's Tale, or The Gospel According to Gerard
A great piece From The Times-on-Thames [Not to be confused with Pravda-on-Hudson]
Transgressing the Boundaries for Prophet
"Lost amid all of the jubilation of the Obama victory was the announcement by the Obama transition team that it had set up a separate transition program beyond the one that is paid for by the American taxpayer. Called the "Obama/Biden Transition Project," it is a 501(c)4 tax-exempt organization, with no limits on the contributions it can receive and no requirements to divulge the names of individuals or organizations that give it money.
Regardless of the purpose, Obama campaign officials say there is no intention of shutting down the 501(c) 4 Project after the transition is over. "
Hmmmm......
Regardless of the purpose, Obama campaign officials say there is no intention of shutting down the 501(c) 4 Project after the transition is over. "
Hmmmm......
Friday, November 07, 2008
Tough guy trashtalks little old lady with broken hip -- Putin shittin' bricks
Then it turns out to be wrong as Biden. Airball, O. UPDATE.
A conversation with a Russian realist about наш президент
Vision of Things to Come Soon
"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."-- Abraham Lincoln
Thursday, November 06, 2008
Putin not caught up in Obamania!!
The election of Barack Obama was recognized around the world as a positive step, said Tauscher, who leads the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee. “The only person who didn’t get the memo was President Medvedev. It was an unfortunate tenor and an unfortunate speech. But it is something we can work with.”
Ahhhh, the Disneyland years of Carter foreign policy are back. Relax everyone. Obama is in charge now.
No Obama=Hitler?
It seems to me that conservatives have a golden opportunity to offer criticism and advice in a manner that many liberals did not during the last eight years. By that I mean I hope there are no conservative versions of the Nicholson Baker Knopf-published ‘novel’ Checkpoint, the creepy documentary by Gerald Range, the attempt to name a sewer plant after an American President, or the celebrity outbursts that we have witnessed with the tired refrain of Hitler/Nazi Bush—that all have cheapened political discourse. When I hear a partisan insider like Paul Begala urging at the 11th hour that we now rally around lame-duck Bush in his last few days, I detect a sense of apprehension that no Democrats would wish conservatives to treat Obama as they did Bush for eight years. In the future, criticism should be offered in unified pro-American tones, rather than anti-Obama screeds. When disagreements arise, they should be couched in a sense of regret rather than ebullition. There should be no conservative counterparts of Bill Maher, Michael Moore, or Al Franken.
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