Invited members of the Great and the Good had spent a few days in a conference room, where they decided to give the Treasury Secretary power to give away $700 billion dollars.
But then, this quaint body called the House of Representatives (which I believe is mentioned somewhere in the Constitution) had the gall to vote against it, 228-205. Don't these mere elected representatives understand how many gallons of diet soft drinks the self-appointed authors of the bailout had consumed over the last two weeks?
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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48 comments:
I'm anxious to hear what Denninger has to say. The Cato Institute is anxiously happy as is the Donald. I'm cautiously optimistic, though it's been predicted (N.R.O.) that we'll go down some more after they react overseas. So far, to this regular woman on the street, the market reaction wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Thursday is going to be the day of reckoning.
Nancy Pelosi killed it by giving a highly partisan speech before the vote. She blamed Bush and the Republicans for the mess. McCain decried her and Obama's lack of bipartisanship. I think Rush Limbaugh and other vicious talk show hosts on both sides earn their pay by making bipartisanship harder with their continuous attacks on the other party's politicians.
My understanding is that they were all hoping their colleagues would vote for it in sorta the same way that politicians like to vote against a pay raise for themselves -- they hope it passes but want to look good by voting against it. I think the members of the House know how vital a bill is, but also know that public sentiment is against it and care more about the election coming up in five weeks.
How about this trade:
End of birthright citizenship
Immigration from all categories restricted to 200,000 per year
End of judicial review of immigration policies (immigration judges can not grant citizenship nor prevent deportation)
Mandated use of e-verify for all employers
287 (g) programs for all jurisdictions
End of all government benefits and subsidies for all noncitizens
End of all guest worker visas
for
The Bailout Bill
That seems like a fair trade.
The equit markets so far here and abroad largely feel that this is a temporary hickup in getting a goverement credit bailout deal done along the broad lines that's been discussed.
If that starts to look like it really might not happen for a long time or only after a whole lot more shakeout, there will be a much bigger crash.
As it is the credit markets are seized up. Nobody's getting any financing period right now. Really.
I'm also anxious to hear what godless capitalist says as he made so many good points about the state of our country over at his blog, the one you mentioned the other day.
What is remarkable is where people are lining up and it definitely has me re-evaluating whom I read; Lawrence Auster rightly has pegged many so-called conservatives as "teeny cons" and "emoti-cons". And it's not just the difference of opinion, but the hysteria.
Funny how the MSM treated the vote, "Lots of wimpy members of Congress voted against the bailout because they were too yella-bellied. Barney Frank even said so! Everybody knows it's a good idea to give tons of other people's money to those who have proven that they cannot handle money."
Paraphrased, of course. The party that supports welfare for the poor also supports welfare for the rich. Who would have thought? And the party which gives in in the one case also gives in in the other.
And apparently I can't register as a Libertarian in Maine.
I have a serious question. How can the government raise taxes for a bailout during a recession? Isn't the market going down because everyone is strapped, having been affected by the mortgage crisis?
The House of Representatives is the more democratic of the two legislative bodies, so it's not surprising they acted like this. The real question is why the Senate is still apportioned the ridiculous way that it is.
Isn't everyone here glad that the Paulson plan had to be prematurely completed and voted on by Rosh Hashanah? I'm sure everyone here is just so grateful.
No skt, the real question is why would anyone be surprised that the Federal government has grown out of control, when there is no institution in the Federal government intent on protecting federalism against massive centralization, since the progressives decided that the Senate should be nothing but a malaportioned House. State legislatures have more influence over the US House.
Well, it the People are right on this matter I'll be really impressed with the Borg Mind. We should be so lucky.
But we might enter a period where all sorts of counterparty risks start taking out financial institutions left and right. Then corps unable to renew their debt will start filing Chapter 11 bankruptcy and laying off lots of people.
Will that happen? I have no idea. But if it does the People will have been wrong.
I'm betting our elites will find ways to work around popular will. Maybe the Fed will do something. They've got their own ability to write massive checks with money pulled out of thin air.
I don't think anyone here gets it.
What we are looking at is a very clever play to make America socialist for generations. For, well, forever.
First, we see that Pelosi, not being stupid, tanked the bill by insulting Republicans and allowing her own members to vote against the bill. She's not stupid -- she wants a recession or better yet, Depression.
So Obama wins in a landslide, and we have one man, one vote, one time.
Dems write in even MORE money to ACORN, to the National Council of La Raza, citizenship for everyone, total amnesty for illegals, voting rights for every resident of the US, and more:
Reparations for Slavery.
Ending most military spending, including missile defense, and pretty much near total disarmament.
Obama's Obama Corps, with funding equal to the Military NOW.
Show trials for Republicans.
In short, the country becomes like Venezuela, with the added bonus of prison terms for criticizing "the One." Who will rule on in a "special emergency" well, the way Castro has done.
McCain does not want to win. He wants to be a graceful loser like Bob Dole. But Obama is not Bill Clinton, and we are looking at what Harold Myerson of the Washington Post called "the end of Whiteness" and the beginnings of a Dem absolute majority of Liberals + Blacks + Mexicans over the White Middle Class.
There will be about 40 million new Mexican voters under Obama's amnesty.
Better brush up on your Spanish and change your name and ethnicity.
Nope.
The Republic got nine grams to the base of the skull a long time ago. A humble rail splitter did the deed and suffered the same fate in turn. Ironic that. Leviathan battened onto the braindead, zombified corpse and has been fattening ever since. A Python-esque explosion is the only hope at this juncture.
"The real question is why the Senate is still apportioned the ridiculous way that it is."
The states' two senators apiece in the upper chamber is the only provision of the Constitution that cannot be changed by amendment.
anon. asked
I have a serious question. How can the government raise taxes for a bailout during a recession? Isn't the market going down because everyone is strapped, having been affected by the mortgage crisis?
The government doesn't really raise taxes to get the money for a bailout; as you astutely point out, there isn't any such money.
Instead, it gets the money by the Fed's sending the printing presses into overdrive. For example, if the Fed successfully demands a trillion dollars, the Fed simply prints a trillion dollars. (Actually someone types a number into a computer.)
Yes, they actually "make" the money out of thin air. It is the immemorial and only resort of central bankers.
If done too much (like an addict shooting up wildly) this leads shortly to an economic condition known as "hyperinflation," in which the currency is worthless in terms of real purchaing power because so many (new) units of it have been injected into circulation.
Google "German hyperinflation" and "Zimbabwe currency crisis" to get a feel for everyday life under a couple of variations of this phenomenon.
Again, we're not talking about real money here - or any kind of reality, except the destruction of the country.
The bankers refuse to take their deserved private losses. Instead, they want their friends in the government to give them a stay of execution, another "fix," a "float" period, during which they can possibly abscond and avoid hitting bottom personally. It's in the name of "keeping the economy going" that this crime is committed. But "the taxpayer" (in other words, just the ordinary citizen like you or me) will be left paying millions of dollars for a pair of shoes.
If our population were even semi-rational or semi-informed, there would be political violence on an remarkable scale by now. There may yet be.
By the way, it's in that kind of environment that a Hitler or other dictator has a chance to arise.
These are frightening times, but there is a solution: no bailout of any kind. Let the banks and fat cats fail. This will involve much short-term pain, but will save the country and the economy in the long term.
What difference does it make?
The Fed just decided to do the bailout anyway.
Denninger speaks!
Thank God we got a "NO" vote today folks.
No, not because the market tanked.
And no, I was not short up to my eyeballs.
I scalp traded the morning but was out when the blowup came, as I didn't expect it - I really did think the bill would pass, my and many other's efforts to stop it notwithstanding.
No, the real news is found here:
"Sept. 29 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve will pump an additional $630 billion into the global financial system, flooding banks with cash to alleviate the worst banking crisis since the Great Depression.
The Fed increased its existing currency swaps with foreign central banks by $330 billion to $620 billion to make more dollars available worldwide. The Term Auction Facility, the Fed's emergency loan program, will expand by $300 billion to $450 billion. The European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan are among the participating authorities.
The Fed's expansion of liquidity, the biggest since credit markets seized up last year, came hours before the U.S. House of Representatives rejected a $700 billion bailout for the financial industry. The crisis is reverberating through the global economy, causing stocks to plunge and forcing European governments to rescue four banks over the past two days alone."
Now let's think about this folks.
The Fed threw $630 billion into the market before the vote, and yet the S&P 500 was down 40 handles anyway, and in fact tanked after the vote.
Note carefully - Paulson's plan was $700 billion, and Bernanke spend $630 billion - almost the entire amount proposed - and failed to fix the problem.
Got it? Good.
Now do you see what I've been saying?
We were about to piss $700 billion into a tornado and lose it forever.
Fortunately sane people prevailed in The House of Representatives and voted NO.
If they hadn't, we'd have had our proof but the money would be on its way into the vortex and you the taxpayer would have been utterly screwed.
IF we are truly facing an economic catastrophe you have just seen proof that Paulson's $700 billion will do nothing. It is my contention that to actually arrest this mess we'd need up to $5-7 trillion, and taking on that sort of debt would essentially destroy the value of our currency, cutting it in half (which means your cost of living doubles); that is, "fixing" this mess will be worse than doing nothing at all!
IF we are indeed facing a deep recession (or worse) then we will need that $700 billion to feed and house the displaced Americans here in our nation, and cannot afford to hand it to a bunch of rich (and pissed-off) bankers around the world who made bad bets and now are screaming with their hand out like a 2-year old who wants another candy bar.
Now let me make clear - I am not suggesting we do nothing, but I am stating clearly that we cannot print (or borrow) our way out of this.
The petulant child Hank Paulson, the very same petulant child who was largely responsible for causing this mess by creating subprime securitization in the first place while at Goldman Sachs (never mind Goldman shorting the same thing they were selling!) continues to insist that "his plan must be what is passed" even after The House - which is beholden to the people - said NO!
Not only that, we now have "foreign interests" ranting and raving that we should do this. Well if this is so, how come these same foreign interests have given the finger to passing bills like this on the backs of their own taxpayers for their institutions?
Ben and Hank made the mess over the space of several years, they have had over a year to clean it up, they have refused to do so, instead choosing to throw money at the problem instead of resolving the issue and now having been told "Not no but hell no!" by the United States public they are continuing to stick to a proven failed policy!
Additionally we have a President and Treasury Secretary that have committed the unprecedented, irresponsible and puerile act of intentionally inciting panic in the public and Congress as a means of attempting to ram-rod through a bill that effectively crowned King Henry and was doomed to fail - either outright or, if it was followed with yet more desperation-style expansions of the facility could have led to the collapse of our currency and ultimately our government.
Finally, a large part of the decline today was due to the lack of shorts. I saw multiple instances this afternoon of bids literally disappearing on individual stocks - that's something that is the direct result of forbidding shorting, and it happened only on non-borrowable stocks. My best bet is that a solid 100 points - and maybe as much as 200 - of the DOW's decline was specifically due to the shorting ban.
How does Henry Paulson not wind up ejected from the administration - or brought up on impeachment - over his acts in this regard? Is not this sort of incitement a gross dereliction of office? He has been reported to have told Congress that but for immediate passage of his bill we would see 3 million or more lost jobs within weeks! An additional 3 million lost jobs over what is happening anyway? That's pure nonsense.
How does the media excuse themselves - especially media such as CNBC - which was parading around this afternoon calling opponents of this (now proven to be ineffective) bill "financial Tim McVeighs", not to mention CNBC calling for a circuit-breaker size crash so as to force Congress to give them what they want?
It is time for Congress to lock up the children and let the adults come into the room so we can get a bill that not only can pass but will work.
There are plans to solve this problem that will work and which involve either no or very little taxpayer money. I've got a plan I believe will work and there are many others. We must address the trust problem - not throw money at irresponsible and even criminal bankers who created the mess in the first place.
It is time for those of us who have other ideas to be invited to Washington DC to discuss, debate, and hammer out something that will actually work, then put that to a vote.
Period.
BTW, there's a new web site up to track this bill if it resurrects itself (and they will try) - its at http://supportedthebailout.org
http://market-ticker.denninger.net/
"Ending most military spending, including missile defense, and pretty much near total disarmament."
Good, there's a silver lining.
On a different note, is there a conspiracy at NRO to keep their readership unaware of the existence of European conservatives? I checked to see if there was any mention of the wonderful news out of Austria today. None. Then out of curiosity I searched all of NRO online for the word "Strache" and came up with nothing. "Haider" the Austrian shows up only two or three times in passing. Can't be a coincidence.
"The real question is why the Senate is still apportioned the ridiculous way that it is."
This is the one part of the Constitution that can never be changed, so we are stuck with it.
"pretty much near total disarmament."
Actually Obama's views on foreign relations (except for Iraq) are pretty much identical to McCain, by which I mean both are bad (but good from your point of view). Obama wants Georgia in NATO too, for example. I don't expect show trials either, but I find total disarmament even less likely. Has Chavez disarmed Venezuela? (I confess I don't know for sure, but I doubt it. But if he has, then why do neocons consider him a threat?)
"Nancy Pelosi killed it by giving a highly partisan speech before the vote..."
Really?
Then why was it Democrats who voted for the bill and Republicans who didn't?
Since someone asked -- I don't really have enough information to venture a strong opinion on the wisdom of the bailout one way or the other.
1) I'd be against it if the effect was just to prop up housing prices and briefly prevent a lot of overdue foreclosures on speculators, illegals, and the underclass.
2) I'd be for it if the purpose was to give us enough leeway so that this needed pruning happens without taking down a bunch of other financial institutions with it.
No one other than the banks themselves and perhaps Paulson/Bernanke really knows how far the problems go, so I think it's silly to have a strong opinion one way or the other on the bailout itself. People have more or less justifiable instincts against socialism or Wall Street, and that's what's guiding their reactions here rather than information.
What I *do* have a strong opinion on are the causes of the crisis and the long term reaction to the crisis, which are obviously linked -- as I said, where we attribute blame determines what we do.
For example, because *any* negative generalization about a NAM group is prima facie racist, it is highly unlikely that we are going to see a repeal of antidiscrimination regulations like the HMDA and the CRA, which are the real root cause. Just as collegiate grading was debauched by affirmative action ("IQ and SATs are just linear/phallocentric/racist anyway!"), so too was credit scoring degraded by a govt. enforced push for more NAM homeowners.
What we are going to see instead are the standard journalist/professor attacks on "capitalistic greed". This is of a piece with the media focus on James Byrd and illegal alien honor students rather than Channon Christian and Adrienne Shelly. By flooding the zone with coverage of genuine negative incidents, the goal is to make the exceptions out to be the rule.
The same thing happened during Enron -- the fraud perpetrated by a few companies were enough fuel for the media to stir up hatred and gin up Sarbanes/Oxley.
But did anyone call for regulation of the TV news after they aired the edited clips which caused the LA Riots? Did McGowan's book Coloring The News spur an investigation into the internal operations of newsrooms? And did the Jayson Blair or Dan Rather scandals result in congressional inquiries, criminal probes, or tough new regulation?
The question answers itself.
The reality is that the media exploits crises to coordinate attacks on the two powerful institutions which threaten its power base. These are nationalistic governments and corporations...and the "racist/greedy" people who comprise them. It is for this reason that every primetime TV show from Lost to Fringe to Heroes to Prison Break has an evil corporation or a right-wing government (or both) as the villains. It is for this reason that I cannot think of a single movie in which a left-wing news organization, government, or activist is the villain.
And it is for this reason that the media has been savaging China and Russia to such an extent, to get them to "stop the censorship". Both China and Russia well know that the alternative to a state-controlled press is a press-controlled state, a mediacracy such as the one we have in the West.
So I've come to the conclusion that even more important than the bailout is the blame/attribution issue. I have been stunned and amazed by the power of the media to turn tactical right wing victories into strategic defeats. Everything from Willie Horton to the Bell Curve to Pete Wilson to the Swift Boat vets to Palin...anything which momentarily buoys the spirits of the right is quickly turned into an albatross to hang around their neck, as something that they must apologize for or feel embarrassed about in order to remain a respectable Republican. The eventual result is the kind of defanged and neutered "right winger" which can be found at the American Scene, the NYT op-ed page, and the Republican National Convention.
This is also true for international affairs -- Pinochet, for example, turns Chile into a first world country while Castro pushes formerly wealthy Cuba into the pits...yet it is Cuba which is feted for its health care while Pinochet is a "war criminal"! And as with the current debacle, it is true for things which the left itself set in motion. The Congressional Black Caucus lobbied for elevated penalties for crack, charging that the Reagan administration was ignoring the problem...and then a few decades later has turned around to hang this too around the neck of the "racist right". Finally, perhaps the most amazing such incident was Katrina...the way in which the media turned videotape of looting black cops into a searing indictment of racist white America was just utterly incredible.
This has been going on for many, many years now -- Steve recently pointed out that JFK's assassination by a left-wing extremist was used to start a discussion about America's "culture of violence", an example of that intentional attribution error. The spin is naked and obvious if you look at the first NYT article on the subject. Zoom in on "James Reston" and start with the bit about how the "indictment ranges beyond the assassin, for something in the nation itself, some strain of madness and violence, had destroyed the highest symbol of law and order". Sounds familiar, no? A paean to the culture of personal responsibility it ain't!
This ability to counterattack -- to turn any crisis into a failure of the right -- is something that needs to be dealt with directly.
One possibility that we must come to terms with is that those who promote leftist ideology simply have more verbal intelligence on average. If that is the case, as I believe it is, only the long term prospect of genomics offers any hope for the right -- as tactical successes and leftist failures will simply be beaten back or erased by the superior verbal ability on the other side.
I mean, how many people in the US have the faintest idea of what's going in South Africa? The media well and truly destroyed that country, but all anyone here knows about it is that everyone rode off into the sunset after Mandela's election. Anyone who thinks some kind of right-wing reaction will eventually occur in the US as the NAM influx continues and the hour grows later has the sobering South African example to look forward to. Even 50000+ rapes per year is not enough to stir the oppressed Afrikaners to collective action -- and of course if they did act they would be wiped out overnight by a US expeditionary force. Worse is worse, worse is not better.
Moreover, even genomics might not arrive in time. Advances in brain/machine interface are also quickly advancing, and it may soon be possible for governments to know what a man is thinking, against their will (a la Orwell). Doubtless this will be used for ferreting out "implicit racism" via the Harvard/Yale IAT -- with justification for such views from the FBI UCR doubtless considered evidence of "premeditated racism". So it might be a technological race against time, before the Leviathan truly becomes all powerful...
I hate to be so depressing. All that said, in the short run the internet is really the only possible way to slow the leftist advance. I think that SpinSpotter is a well intentioned start. I think it would also be useful to tune out from the news cycle to do some quantitative media analysis. In particular, to demonstrate mediacracy, you could download a ton of newswire text and then do the following:
1) Write code to extract journalist names and map them to academic affiliation, ethnicity, political registration, donations, geography, relatives, etc. Databases like NNDB may be useful here.
2) Determine the topic or topics covered by each article. Determine whether the attitude of the writer is generally positive or negative towards the covered topic via sentiment analysis
3) Write code to identify articles covering particular politicians. Devise several redundant measures of political coverage for candidates. For example, count the number of negative and positive articles, the number of negative and positive words, the relative positioning of the articles (e.g. A1 above the fold or A16), and so on. Divide up into each election cycle.
4) Correlate such measures with vote totals for political races around the country.
5) Demonstrate that it is almost impossible to win in the face of negative coverage.
6) Investigate whether this negative coverage originates from particular geographic, political, ethnic, etc. regions. For example, are white men from the South more likely to engage in rightist spin? Are there many such people in the news industry? And conversely are ethnic minorities more likely to engage in leftist spin?
7) Display the results in a web interface. Thus I could click on say a 1998 Louisiana House Race, see every article pro/con each side, and look at some scatterplots summarizing the media influence on the race. Any doubts I had about whether an article was actually pro or con a particular candidate could be ameliorated by allowing drill down into the explicit sentences and adjectives.
8) Finally, compare the results of media coverage to equivalent advertising spends and determine just how much influence the media holds over any given race. The implications for a McCain/Feingold type bill -- except aimed at left-wing redoubts like newspapers and universities rather than right-wing strongholds - are obvious.
And on the same day that the that the House declined to let the government invent $700 billion for which to purchase worthless loans, the Federal Reserve invented $630 billion instead.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=email_en&refer=worldwide&sid=a9MTZEgukPLY
The government doesn't need constitutional authorization to do anything, apparently.
I'm glad to see the wackos on the left and right can come together to save the republic.
Now they can start working on the important issues: "bread and circuses"
I don't agree with GC that the US media is invincible.
The media in Europe is just as evil, and even more loony-leftwing than the US media is, but Nationalist and center right parties in EU member states are gaining strength, while the center left parties are flailing about like fish out of water.
The problem in the US was Bush implemented a neocon foreign policy and a socialist/universalist/leftist domestic policy ath the request of Rove and the country club wing of the GOP.
The failure of Bush's domestic and foreign policies discredited the entire mainstream Republican right. Bush, the Chamber of Commerce, Rove, Cheney, the Neocons and the Rockefeller good old boy wing of the GOP did far more damage to conservatism in America than the media ever could have hoped to inflict.
Meanwhile in the EU, where the internet is much less influential than in the US, all spectrums of the European right have been gaining ground.
It is not unreasonable to think that Obama will do the Democrats what Gordon Brown has done the New Labour terror regime in Britain. Rightist backlashes are only impossible in demographically doomed countries where whites are very badly outnumbered such as South Africa.
But whites will still be the majority for quite a while in the US. The chances of a rightist restoration are good considering Obama wlll be by far the most leftwing president in US history.
Truth, not only did 40% of Dems vote against the Bill, but Chicago's Jessie Jackson Jr, Bobby Rush, etc. all voted against it as did all of Pelosi's cronies and committee chairs.
Dems and Pelosi set up Reps. They had the votes to pass it straight line party vote, and Reps sniffed out the double cross when Dem Congresscritters were talking on the Radio about it being Reps fault for the bills failure ... while Pelosi was giving her speech.
Kabala -- Obama wants to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in Iraq, after we've finally won, by retreating immediately. No one believes he will fight in Afghanistan any more than they think he disavows Rev. God Damn America.
Chavez is against America. Just like Obama is against America. After all, if he will refuse to say the pledge of allegiance when campaigning, or wear the flag pin, when it costs nothing, what will he do when he takes office? He's the hardest left lunatic to ever be elected to President. He's a guy who just hates Whites (obvious from his church) and America (his mentors).
Godless Capitalist is broadly right ... but he fails to see who wins and loses with PC and Multiculturalism. It has backers because it gives power to those who can find "witches" and takes away power from those who make things and create things.
Look who is often the bad guy in Movies/TV: the evil nerdy white guy. It's never the handsome guy all women want, but the guy no woman would want, for nerdiness. Often backed up by a Blue Collar "wife beater" type guy.
Women are ground zero for PC, Multiculti nonsense, liberalism, and of course Obama. The Gender gap is there for a reason. Women will always tip the balance towards Dems/Liberals/Socialists because having the power to declare the non PC a "witch" is real power.
Because of Demographic power, I don't see much changing. It will get worse.
"I don't really have enough information to venture a strong opinion on the wisdom of the bailout one way or the other."
Certainly the most honest peice of your post, and, coincidentally, probably the only part that is salvageable.
"so too was credit scoring degraded by a govt. enforced push for more NAM homeowners."
So each and every president of a now struggling bank was forced (at gunpoint?) to take on loans they he felt was substandard?
"What we are going to see instead are the standard journalist/professor attacks on "capitalistic greed".
Of course we all know that doesn't exist! And if it does, it's not even a small part of a multi-trillion dollar house of cards.
"This is of a piece with the media focus on James Byrd and illegal alien honor students rather than Channon Christian and Adrienne Shelly."
Are you asserting that the media should have focused upon the two white victims instead? Haven't we had more than enough Jon Benet Ramsey, Nicole Simpson, Natalie Holloway...for one lifetime? And why should the media focus upon the white victims? Are they somehow more relevant as human beings?
"The same thing happened during Enron -- the fraud perpetrated by a few companies were enough fuel for the media to stir up hatred and gin up Sarbanes/Oxley...."
Oh, the 'fraud perpetrated by a few companies'...Enron...kind of like when the neighborhood grocer overcharges you a buck huh?
"The Congressional Black Caucus lobbied for elevated penalties for crack..."
IS there some reason that someone who takes cocaine into his lungs serves a stiffer penalty than someone who takes it into his nose?
"But did anyone call for regulation of the TV news after they aired the edited clips which caused the LA Riots?"
Was it the 'edited clips' that caused the riots or was it 14 police officers standing around while four beat an unarmed man into broken bones and permanent brain damage, and then went to the hospital to ridicule him later? I guess they edited out the point where King came charging at them with a loaded Uzi!
"It is for this reason that every primetime TV show from Lost to Fringe to Heroes to Prison Break has an evil corporation or a right-wing government (or both) as the villains."
Which country can you think of that has a 'left-wing government? funny, neither can I"
"Both China and Russia well know that the alternative to a state-controlled press is a press-controlled state, a mediacracy such as the one we have in the West."
If you choose to immigrate to a communist nation, you are free; you realize this right?
"So I've come to the conclusion that even more important than the bailout is the blame/attribution issue...."
I couldn't have said it better myself, GC, so why are you writing 3,000 words to propogate this issue?
"Everything from Willie Horton to the Bell Curve to Pete Wilson to the Swift Boat vets to Palin...anything which momentarily buoys the spirits of the right is quickly turned into an albatross to hang around their neck,"
Well, let's see, Horton committed a few murders, which happens roughly 20-30 times a day in America, The Bell Curve shows that white people are firmly in the middle of the world intelligence standards, the swift boat vets got the government to favor a man who spent the Vietnam war protecting the Arkansas border (when he decided to show up) from Texas invasion over a man who faced combat, and Palin is a potential vice president who left a town of 6,000 people 20 million dollars in debt and didn't know what the Bush Doctrine was: Are you sure these were the victories?
"Finally, perhaps the most amazing such incident was Katrina...the way in which the media turned videotape of looting black cops into a searing indictment of racist white America..."
Sorry, I must have missed this one.
"Steve recently pointed out that JFK's assassination by a left-wing extremist was used to start a discussion about America's "culture of violence",
Well, let's see, in order to build America, we've murdered
Several Indian tribes
The English
The French
the Mexicans
The Spanish
Millions of blacks
The Germans
The Italians
The Japanese
The Native Hawaiians
The Vietnamese
The Koreans
The Iranians
The The Iraqis
The Afghans
Shall I go on? I'd say 'culture of violence' applies here.
"I mean, how many people in the US have the faintest idea of what's going in South Africa?"
How many people in the US have the fainest idea of what's going on in Cleveland?
"and of course if they did act they would be wiped out overnight by a US expeditionary force."
What profit would there be in that? We don't fight wars for altruistic reasons, haven't you figured this out by now?
"1) Write code to extract journalist names and map them to academic affiliation, ethnicity, political registration, donations, geography, relatives, etc."
Didn't you just say something about 'the leviathan becoming all powerful?
Believe it or not, this was only a cursory criticism of your piece. I could have gone much, MUCH deeper. I don't think godlesscapitalist fits you properly; I would suggest mindlessautomaton.
Another terrific piece of writing/thinking by godless capitalist. The only place where he goes too far is the bit about a U.S. expeditionary force hypothetically destroying rebellious Afrikaners.
Especially devastating is how he exposes the left turning tactical right wing victories into strategic defeats. Those examples - the Kennedy assassination, Katrina - are truly mind-blowing when one considers how the facts have been twisted around to form absurd and destructive "common knowledge".
David Brooks just threw a hissy fit, calling those who voted no on the Wall Street bailout nihilists.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/30/opinion/30brooks.html
The Republic got nine grams to the base of the skull a long time ago. A humble rail splitter did the deed... --Canson
Yeah, right. Had the diversitarians of the day respected the sovereignty of Pennsylvania, New York and Massachusetts as much as they did that of Nova Scotia, Lower and Upper Canada-- and had they not demanded, and got, extra representation for themselves by counting the legal aliens in their territories-- then the "rail splitter" would never have had a career, and the Whigs would be regnant today.
Statements like Canson's make me wonder if Lansing and Yates were indeed right to storm out of that hot room in Philadelphia. It's also nice to remember that one of the most common fibs in school history books is the one about Hawaii being the first nonwhite-majority state. Not even close... but, thanks to the rail splitter and his successors, most people have to look up what the real ones were.
Bravo, gc! You're absolutely right: public opinion is power, and since we on the right can never capture it, we're well and truly boned. Ah well, this too shall pass.
testing99 wrote:
"So Obama wins in a landslide, and we have one man, one vote, one time."
Ha ha ha ha, that's the African component there!
sbroadway wrote: "The government doesn't need constitutional authorization to do anything, apparently."
The Fed is not the government. But their action today does demonstrate that their power trumps the constitution.
No, we do not live in a republic. We live in a plutocracy. The bailout "going down in flames", as Drudge so melodramatically described it, is theater. Kabuki. Bread and circuses. Like so much of what passes for politics today. By hook or by crook the plutocrats and their managers will get what they want. God help the rest of us.
The NNAMs are far more powerful than the NAMs. I would prefer to use more direct language. That I may not reflects how powerful they are.
"Thruth" is approaching caricature. Taking on all the twisting of reality in his piece will take a team effort. (Unless someone has a lot of spare time)
So, let's start with an easy one:
"IS there some reason that someone who takes cocaine into his lungs serves a stiffer penalty than someone who takes it into his nose?"
"The crack epidemic". Google it. But since you probably won't, here is the mandatory Wikipedia quote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crack_epidemic
Wikipedia: The crack epidemic refers to a six year period between 1984 and 1990 in the United States during which there was a huge surge in the use of crack cocaine in major cities, and crack-houses all over the USA. Fallout from the crack epidemic included a huge surge in addiction, homelessness, murder, theft, robbery, and long-term imprisonment.
Now, can you get it into your head that crack might possibly be more socially disruptive than ordinary cocaine?
Here in the UK the media-corporate-elite have been flipping out. Murdoch's Sky News is outraged. I noticed CNN-international is flipping out too. I bet The Economist magazine is having conniptions.
I feel fine.
truth:
"The Bell Curve shows that white people are firmly in the middle of the world intelligence standards."
False. Where IQ tests are normed so 'white people' (white Europeans & Americans) median IQ is 90, then the world median is around 90.
On a different definition of 'white' that includes north-Africans, Indians and most south Americans you can get the white m median down ca 7 points, but 'whites' as the term is commonly used in the US average around 10 points higher IQ than the global median. Of major population groups only north-east-Asians (north Chinese, Japanese, Koreans) have a higher median IQ, around 105 or so.
Look who is often the bad guy in Movies/TV: the evil nerdy white guy. It's never the handsome guy all women want, but the guy no woman would want, for nerdiness. Often backed up by a Blue Collar "wife beater" type guy.
testing, you make this point about every other thread. Just accept that women like what they like. To continue to lament that fact is creepy in a Travis Bickle sort of way.
False. Where IQ tests are normed so 'white people' (white Europeans & Americans) median IQ is 90, then the world median is around 90.
I think you mean "where IQ tests are normed so white people median IQ is 100, then the world median is around 90.
"and of course if they did act they would be wiped out overnight by a US expeditionary force."
I doubt it. The Boers are highly-skilled fighters, and from what I have recently seen on several visits to South Africa, highly armed, too.
The Boers are masters of unconventional warfare, including counter-insurgency and guerrilla warfare. During the Boer War the Afrikaners pinned down the British Empire for years, using guerilla warfare tactics. It's more than likely an American force in South Africa would encounter similar resistance, much like the Americans are experiencing today in Iraq.
Also, consider the composition of an American force. African-Americans and Hispanics, who comprise an increasingly large portion of the US military, would not last a week fighting determined white guys on their own turf in South Africa.
"The NNAMs are far more powerful than the NAMs. I would prefer to use more direct language. That I may not reflects how powerful they are."
OOOH, scary! And what terrible fate would befall you if you named the NNAMs? That Steve might not print your comment? Believe me, it happens to all of us occasionally, even us NNAMs.
Anyway, you seem to have missed the point, made by several commenters here, that it is not the NAMs who are the problem so much as their liberal white protector/enablers.
"Now, can you get it into your head that crack might possibly be more socially disruptive than ordinary cocaine?"
A rifle may be more dangerous than a pistol, but you don't get a longer sentence for killing someone with one.
"The Boers are masters of unconventional warfare, including counter-insurgency and guerrilla warfare."
So were the Iraqis and the Afghans.
testing99 is interrupted from meticulously detailing Russian and Iranian plans to blow us all up and charge the survivors ten trillion dollars per barrel of oil long enough to realize suddenly ("What?! Nobody told me this!") that Bush has doomed Republicans to permanent minority status and the party has nominated an extremely geriatric (and short) man and a very nice but otherwise clueless female and now it's HOLY S--- LOOK AT THE THREAT THAT HISPANIC IMMIGRATION POSES!
AND IT GETS WORSE! The evil Nancy Pelosi has gone against those capitalist stalwarts Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd by torpedoing their plan to print up 700 billion simoleons and give it to a few people who live in Manhattan!
Steven, do something!
--Senor Doug
South Africa has been mentioned a couple of times here.
If the Boers tried to stage a comeback right now they would be crushed, 'international opinion' would demand it.
But what is international opinion?
The managed opinions of the populations of white countries + US military force.
Very soon the US may not have the spare military force or economic clout for this. International opinion/MSM will be left flapping their gums and groups like the Boers may find they can do stuff - and nobody will stop them!
One can only hope.
During the Boer War the Afrikaners pinned down the British Empire for years, using guerilla warfare tactics.
Yep. Who won that one again? How many Boer men of fighting age are left in SA?
It's more than likely an American force in South Africa would encounter similar resistance, much like the Americans are experiencing today in Iraq.
Yeah, an American intervention force would encounter that kind of resistance, and it would probably smash it to pieces. This would be a fight against pure evil; you'd better believe the gloves would be coming off for it. The US is losing Iraq because it's not willing to be brutal and oppressive enough to crush the insurgency; I can't see this being a concern in a hypothetical war against the Boers.
I don't think the US would actually send troops to SA if it could be avoided, though. Instead we'd classify the rebels as terrorists and send a whole lot of money and arms to the legitimate government. Only if the Boers were on the cusp of victory would direct military involvement be needed.
truth,
Are you Rev. Wright? If so, will you be publishing an anti-Obama book this month, as rumored?
You know, Testing, the rumor about Obama and the Pledge of Allegiance was not true. (I don't like Obama either, but I do suffer from the "Someone is wrong on the Internet mentality" - or to put a nicer way, I believe in "Truth is better for humanity than ignorance, lies, or spin - and more interesting.")
"truth,
Are you Rev. Wright?"
No, I'm Rev. Right.
I don't think the US would actually send troops to SA if it could be avoided, though. Instead we'd classify the rebels as terrorists and send a whole lot of money and arms to the legitimate government. Only if the Boers were on the cusp of victory would direct military involvement be needed.
Possibly, but there may come a time when the US just doesnt have the spare resources. That was my point. Once the US cant/wont send troops to kill Boers and cant afford to prop up the legitimate government, who will save Mandela's rainbow nation? It seems unlikely black South Africans will be able to do it themselves, theyre already destroying their country and the whites arent fighting right now.
What about China?
They are more likely to deal with whoever is in charge, black or white. They are unlikely to indulge in the game of proving their liberal credentials by helping blacks to kill whites.
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