From Mondoweiss in 2011:
No problem– Obama’s State Dep’t spokesperson is married to Romney’s neocon foreign policy adviser
Philip Weiss on October 12, 2011
Here is a crazy story no one is talking about that is evidence of the Israel lobby’s role in our politics. Last week, Mitt Romney announced a foreign policy team that includes Robert Kagan, a neocon who pushed for the Iraq war.
But Kagan is married to Victoria Nuland, who is a spokesperson for the State Department.
Nuland is now in charge of -- in effect -- overthrowing the elected government of Ukraine * and replacing it with the opposition figure of her choice, all in the name of the E.U., of course.
Laurie Bennett notes the strangeness of this conjunction:
Victoria Nuland’s role as spokesperson for the State Department, deemed strange by some who remember her tenure as principal deputy national security adviser to then Vice President Dick Cheney, has become stranger yet.
Her husband, Robert Kagan, has joined Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign as a foreign policy adviser.
Kagan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, also advised the McCain campaign in 2008.
Ordinarily this would cause a lot of strain. Nuland would be under pressure. Chris Matthews would be asking what the heck she’s doing in a political job at State when her husband is preparing the opposition.
But in fact, Nuland’s Cheney resume and her marriage to Kagan are actually credentials in the Democratic Party: they demonstrate Obama’s sensitivity to the Israel lobby. And party bosses are happy to have these playing cards now that Obama is under siege from his own party about Israel.
Robert is only one of four Kagans who are currently esteemed foreign policy intellectuals: his father Donald, brother Fred, and sister-in-law Kimberly.
The Kagan-Nuland ascendancy seems strange, but it's hardly unprecedented. I recently read Gore Vidal's 1987 historical novel Empire about Washington DC from 1898 to 1905. The central character is the Secretary of State, John Hay, who got his start when his next door neighbor, Abe Lincoln, was elected president in 1860 and needed a second secretary. Although a smalltown Midwestern boy, Hay was a charming, witty fellow more like a British than an American statesman.
Hay's best friend was historian Henry Adams, great-grandson of the second President. Henry's younger brother Brooks Adams is portrayed as Teddy Roosevelt's idea man: along with Admiral Mahan, Brooks is the chief theoretician of the spasm of American imperialism that garnered the U.S. the Philippines and Puerto Rico (for whatever they're worth). Hay and Henry Adams laugh at the bumptiousness of Teddy and Brooks Adams, but tend to wind up going along with them.
In whatever [Brooks Adams] wrote he showed a gift for generalization with a tendency to carry it beyond reasonable bounds.
Brooks' ultimate goal is America gaining control of the coal of northern China. Vidal has some fun with Brooks' intensity and steampunk strategizing: The nation that controls the coal of northern China will control the world! Still, Vidal, speaking through the annoyed but often agreeing Henry Adams, can't really make up his mind whether Brooks Adams was a dangerous loon or a prophet or both. True, the coal of northern China isn't all that important in 1987, but the oil of the Persian Gulf turned out to be, so maybe Brooks was prescient after all. Or maybe it wasn't worth it. Perhaps it's too soon to tell.
So, in 1901 if you asked who made up the American deep state, you'd probably start with the Adams brothers: the president is listening to Brooks and the secretary of state to Henry.
Influential foreign policy intellectuals and operatives tend to come from a pretty limited set of elite families, and they get a lot done by having access. And if they screw up, well, blood is thicker than competence. These relatives don't always get along with each other, but it's hard to tell what's going on without keeping track of families.
Neocons tend to be particularly inbred. In the comments at Mondoweiss, Sean McBride lists some examples (I'll cut out redundant ones):
2. Andrew Rosenthal is the son of A.M. Rosenthal.
4. Arthur Sulzberger Jr. is the son of Arthur Sulzberger.
5. Barbara Amiel is the wife of Conrad Black.
6. Barbara Ledeen is the mother of Simone Ledeen who is the daughter of Michael Ledeen.
8. Benjamin Netanyahu is the son of Benzion Netanyahu.
11. Dalck Feith is the father of Douglas Feith.
14. Daniel Feith is the brother of David Feith.
15. Daniel Feith is the grandson of Dalck Feith.
17. Daniel Pipes is the son of Richard Pipes.
21. David Wurmser is the husband of Meyrav Wurmser.
22. Dick Cheney is the father of Liz Cheney who is the daughter of Lynne Cheney.
24. Donald Kagan is the father-in-law of Victoria Nuland and Kimberly Kagan
25. Donald Kagan is the father of Frederick and Robert Kagan.
26. Donald Kagan is the father of Robert Kagan.
31. Elliott Abrams is the son-in-law of Midge Decter and Norman Podhoretz, and brother-in-law of John Podhoretz.
38. Gertrude Himmelfarb is the wife of Irving Kristol and the mother of William Kristol.
45. Jonah Goldberg is the son of Lucianne Goldberg.
Neoconservatism: it's a real family business.
---------------
* Note: Ukraine's government isn't a very honest or competent one, or even a very strong one, and the leader doesn't seem to have much confidence in his mandate so he's always trying to make compromises with the opposition.
>>Steve Sailer wrote:
ReplyDelete"""Neoconservatism: it's a real family business."""
Yes, Steve, but where exactly do these members (Adams; Netanyahu; Pipes; Feith; et al) fall on the Cromartie Scale?
Glenn Greenwald was absolutely right when he called neoconservatism "incestuous".
ReplyDeleteAre there any domestic social scientists of neoconservative lineage? What are the kids of Wilson, Moynihan, Glazer, et. al. up to? Did they have kids?
ReplyDeleteIt's not a function of neo-conservatism it's a function of elite families, just loot at the Adlai Stevenson's or the Kerry's.
ReplyDeleteRE: the Ledeens,
ReplyDelete" Ledeen has three children: Simone, Gabriel, and Daniel. Simone has worked both in Iraq and Afghanistan for the Department of Defense; Gabriel is currently a Lieutenant in the United States Marines Corps serving his second tour in Iraq; and Daniel is currently serving a Lieutenant in the USMC." (WIKIPEDIA)
Interesting to see that the Ledeens, unlike so many other neocons, are not chickenhawks. They're actually willing to go into the field.Have to admire them for that.
"A racial group is a partly inbred extended biological family". (Steve Sailer). In that sense, the neocons are indeed inbred.
ReplyDeletePhilip Weiss = Righteous Jew
ReplyDeleteThe Bushes, Tafts, Romnneys, Kennedys, and Udalls all Yids too, right, Steve?
ReplyDelete"But in fact, Nuland’s Cheney resume and her marriage to Kagan are actually credentials in the Democratic Party: they demonstrate Obama’s sensitivity to the Israel lobby."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFGjQqmADYI
^^Victoria Nuland refusing to say Jerusalem is Israel's capital.
If this is the Jewish conspiracy at work, then man, is it ineffective. You'd think with all these Jews in the government under all these administrations, they'd make a successful effort to have Jerusalem recognized as Israel's capital. Nope.
Midge Decter was the childhood neighbor of Charles M Schulz, whose Snoopy violated the Neutrality Act by flying for the RAF. It's been going on for a century, now.
ReplyDeleteInteresting to see how the Hay line had a tendency to marry well, first John Hay with the daughter of Amasa Stone, then his daughter marries into the Whitney family:
ReplyDelete"Hay married Clara Stone, daughter of Amasa Stone of Cleveland, Ohio, an American industrialist who built railroads and invested in mills in Ohio. They are buried together in Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland, Ohio.[9][10] Their daughter Helen Julia Hay, a writer and poet, married Payne Whitney of the influential Whitney family; their children were U.S. ambassador John Hay Whitney and Joan Whitney Payson." (WIKIPEDIA)
Jewish intellectuals suffer from less mean regression that Gentiles with the same IQ. They probably have smarter wives too.
ReplyDeleteThat's not to excuse the actual actions of the neocons, but you should expect them to have very smart children.
A guy who was involved in economist Andrei Shleiffer's scam in Russia was named Hay. I would hardly be surprised if he's a descendent.
ReplyDeleteThere's a character in Jonathan Franzen's Freedom that's obviously based on Bill Kristol (“the almost shrunken smallness of his skull that made his white, white smile so prominent” -- compare: http://crooksandliars.com/files/uploads/2008/07/bill-kristol-fns-obama.jpg).
ReplyDeleteHe holds forth at dinner parties in glib Straussian fashion:
“He spoke of the ‘new blood libel’ that was circulating in the Arab world, the lie about there having been no Jews in the twin towers on 9/11, and of the need, in times of national emergency, to counter evil lies with benevolent half-truths. He spoke of Plato as if he’d personally received enlightenment at his Athenian feet. He referred to members of the president’s cabinet by their first names, explaining how ‘we’ had been ‘leaning on’ the president to exploit this unique historical moment.”
September 11, he goes on, was a chance for “‘the philosopher’ ... to step in and unite the country behind the mission that his philosophy had revealed as right and necessary. ‘We have to learn to be comfortable with stretching some facts,’ he said. ... ‘Our modern media are very blurry shadows on the wall, and the philosopher has to be prepared to manipulate these shadows in the service of a greater truth.’” Later, he speaks of getting “a nation of free people to let go of their bad logic and sign on with better logic, by whatever means necessary.”
When I read that, I knew right away Leon Wieseltier wouldn't be satisfied with anything less than a demolition job in The New Republic. Ruth Franklin provided one.
Adam Kirsch then wrote a brief item denouncing Franzen more specifically:
"What’s important is that, in fictionalizing this left-wing conventional wisdom about Strauss, the Jews, and the Iraq war, Franzen is spreading it to a much wider audience—complete with images of a wizened, cranially distorted Jewish puppetmaster, who cynically chuckles about how “we” control the U.S. government from behind the scenes. That Franzen could uncritically reproduce this kind of imagery is a reminder of how ugly and obsessive the antiwar discourse sometimes became."
What's odd is that so few book reviews mentioned the character, and what's doubly odd is that a cursory Google does not yield a single link arguing that Franzen's character is specifically based on Bill Kristol. When he talks about “the founder and luminary president of a think tank devoted to advocating the unilateral exercise of American military power to make the world freer and safer, especially for America and Israel" -- he's talking about the Project for a New American Century.
(In reality PNAC was "Bill Kristol with a fax machine," as Francis Fukuyama once put it. But it's probably the organization that Franzen had in mind.)
Didn't their used to be heavily advertised firm called Payne Whitney? That was the name of Hay's son-in-law.
ReplyDelete"True, the coal of northern China isn't all that important in 1987, but the oil of the Persian Gulf turned out to be, so maybe Brooks was prescient after all. Or maybe it wasn't worth it. Perhaps it's too soon to tell."
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't important to the US with plenty of coal.
But either the Japanese or the Chinese could use it to fuel their grand ambitions.
So, if US gained control over it, Japan and China would be cut off from a huge asset.
neokinism
ReplyDeleteInfo on the father of John Hay's son-in-law:
ReplyDelete"William Collins Whitney (July 5, 1841 – February 2, 1904) was an American political leader and financier and founder of the prominent Whitney family. He served as Secretary of the Navy in the first Cleveland administration from 1885 through 1889. A conservative reformer, he was considered a Bourbon Democrat.
William Whitney was born at Conway, Massachusetts, of Puritan stock. The family were descended from John Whitney of London, who settled at Watertown, Massachusetts, in 1635. William Whitney's father was Brigadier General James Scollay Whitney; his mother, Laurinda Collins, was a descendant of Plymouth governor William Bradford. William Whitney had a well known older brother, industrialist Henry Melville Whitney (1839–1923), president of the Metropolitan Steamship Company, founder of the West End Street Railway Company of Boston, and later founder of the Dominion Coal Company and Dominion Iron and Steel Company in Sydney, Nova Scotia on Cape Breton Island. His sister Laurinda Collins "Lily" Whitney married Charles T. Barney, who became the president of the Knickerbocker Trust Company.[2] Another sister, Susan Collins Whitney, married Henry F. Dimock.
Educated at Williston Seminary, Easthampton, Massachusetts, Whitney was graduated from Yale University in 1863, where he was a member of Skull and Bones,[3]:1099 and then studied law at Harvard. He left in 1864 to study law with Abraham R. Lawrence in New York City, and in 1865 was admitted to the bar.[2][4]
On October 13, 1869, he married Flora Payne, daughter of Senator Henry B. Payne of Ohio and a sister of Whitney's Yale classmate, Colonel Oliver Hazard Payne, later treasurer of the Standard Oil Company. The Whitneys had five children:
Harry Payne Whitney (1872–1930)
Pauline Payne Whitney (1874–1916) - married Almeric Hugh Paget, 1st Baron Queenborough
(William) Payne Whitney (1876–1927)
Oliver Whitney (1878–1883)
Dorothy Payne Whitney (1887–1968) - married (1) Willard Dickerman Straight; (2) Leonard Knight Elmhirst
Flora Payne Whitney died in 1894 at age fifty-two. Two years later, William Whitney remarried to Edith May (widow of a Mr. Randolph). In 1898, she suffered a horse riding accident at their estate in Aiken, South Carolina, in what is now known as Hitchcock Woods and died at age forty-one on May 6, 1899.[5]" (wikipedia).
Read about John Hay Whitney, grandson of Lincoln's Secretary of State.
ReplyDeleteJohn Whitney Hay (1904-1982), the grandson of John Hay, had quite a career:
ReplyDeleteAttended Yale and Oxford
20 million dollar trust fund (back in the 20s, when that was real money)
Investor in Technicolor
Put up half the money for Selznick's option on GONE WITH THE WIND
Founded J.H. Whitney and Company in 1946
Had quite a love life:"Although married to Altemus, Jock Whitney was romantically linked to Tallulah Bankhead, Joan Bennett, Paulette Goddard and Joan Crawford. Clark Gable and Carole Lombard met at one of Whitney's parties. In the early 1930s Jock Whitney began an affair with Nina Gore Vidal; at the same time Mary Altemus Whitney had an affair with Nina Vidal's husband Eugene Vidal.[1] Whitney and Liz divorced in 1940 and in 1942 he married Betsey Cushing Roosevelt Whitney, ex-wife of James Roosevelt, son of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and adopted her two daughters, Kate and Sara Whitney." (WIKI)
Served in the OSS in WW2
US Ambassador to Britain under Eisenhower.
I like this line from Jock Whitney's wikipedia page:
ReplyDelete"While at Yale, he reputedly coined the term "crew cut" for the haircut that now bears the name."
Steve Sailer:"I like this line from Jock Whitney's wikipedia page:
ReplyDelete"While at Yale, he reputedly coined the term "crew cut" for the haircut that now bears the name.""
Yeah, makes one wish that someone would violate the amateur ethos of WIKIPEDIA and hire a style editor to smooth out the prose a tad.
"Ukraine's government isn't a very honest or competent one, or even a very strong one, and the leader doesn't seem to have much confidence in his mandate so he's always trying to make compromises with the opposition."
ReplyDeleteIt seems the Western-leaning Yushchenko and Tymoshenko weren't any better in the honesty and competency stakes.
Another fascinating Whitney was Michael Whitney Straight (September 1, 1916 – January 4, 2004).
ReplyDeleteHe was the son Dorothy Payne Whitney (daughter of William Collins Whitney)
He a Cambridge man, member of the Apostles, and a Soviet spy. He confessed in 1963 to Arthur Schlesenger, and his confession led to the exposure of Sir Anthony Blunt (Surveyor o of the Queen's Pictures)as a member of the Cambridge Spy ring.
RE: the Adamses,
ReplyDeleteDefinitely one of the USA's more distinguished families.Just going in the direct male line of descent:
1. John Adams: Founding Father, diplomat, first VP, second President, etc.
2. John Quincy Adams, diplomat, probably America's greatest secretary of State, president, congressman, etc
3. Charles Francis Adams: US Ambassador to Britain during the Civil War-quite probably the most important US ambassador to the Court Of St James
4. Henry Adams: Historian (History of the United sates During the Administration of Thomas Jefferson, MONT ST MICHEL AND CHARTRES,), epistolarian, author of THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS, one of the classic memoirs, etc.
5. Brooks Adams: Either a madman or a genius (both?).
Speaking of the joys of African immigration to Australia, around 200 Africans were involved in a violent New Year's Eve brawl in the heart of Melbourrne, Australia's second largest city.
ReplyDeleteThe Australian media systematically ignored the incident.
Australian columnist Andrew Bolt:
Incredible. I’ve searched news reports and so far cannot find a single contemporary reference by police or the news media to the brawl - one reportedly involving 200 Africans in the very middle of Melbourne city. How on earth could that not be news? What else are we not being told?
Why did police and reporters not mention 200 brawling Africans in the middle of Melbourne?
Diversity is strength... it's also African rioting and media cover-ups!
@ anonymous.
ReplyDeleteNothing new in Australia. Google Bilal Skaf?
OT: World War G update. Missouri All-American NFL prospect comes out.
ReplyDeletehttp://ca.news.yahoo.com/video/missouri-american-michael-sam-says-042733816.html
It's behavioral genetics 101. Parents with the high IQ and character traits necessary to get involved in strategic policy planning, public administration etc have children who are the same and grandchildren who are similar. It has nothing to do with neo-conservatism or being Jewish and can be observed in any society.
ReplyDeleteIt's behavioral genetics 101. Parents (Queen Elizabeth II) with the high IQ and character traits necessary to get involved in strategic policy planning, public administration etc have children (Charles, Prince of Wales) who are the same and grandchildren (William, Duke of Cambridge) who are similar. It has nothing to do with neo-conservatism or being Jewish and can be observed in any society.
ReplyDeleteMr Drab
ReplyDeleteThere was actually an article in The Age criticizing the police for not being willing to acknowledge that the participants were all African. If you know Australian newspapers you will know how weird that was. Given that it appeared in the main newspaper in Mr Bolt's hometown paper I don't really think he looked that hard.
5731.
ReplyDeleteIs that a joke ?
Do you think this proves the opposite ?
5731
ReplyDeleteIs that a joke ?
Do you really consider the Sulzbergers pere et fils neo-cons?
ReplyDeleteblood is thicker than competence
ReplyDeleteLol! Brilliant!
Didn't their used to be heavily advertised firm called Payne Whitney? That was the name of Hay's son-in-law.
ReplyDelete?
Perhaps you're thinking of Paine Webber.
Here's a rather corny old video of Arnold Palmer plugging Paine Webber.
MERIT! MERIT! MERIT! MERIT! MERIT!
ReplyDeleteMERIT! MERIT! MERIT! MERIT! MERIT!
Well, evolution still got a great sense of humour, when the Askhenazim overdo their split and conquer tactics, evolution serves them the ultra-orthodox Haredim breeding like rabbits project;)
ReplyDelete"You'd think with all these Jews in the government under all these administrations, they'd make a successful effort to have Jerusalem recognized as Israel's capital."
ReplyDeleteWhy? Because they want Moshiach to appear according to the scriptures? Because Jerusalem is a the financial/social/political center of Jerusalem? Because they need Jerusalem as a capital to solidify their hold on Palestine and counter Arab claims to equality or something?
In reality Jerusalem-as-capital is unimportant. It is tiny, cramped and there is no nightlife. No one particularly wants to commute to Jerusalem, The "front" is no longer in Jerusalem.
Actually, the coal of northern China would have been very important during that period. With the shift from sail to steam, navies were suddenly less free-ranging and were tied to bases where they could re-coal.
ReplyDeleteCompletely off topic but I've thought up a plot for a conterfactual novel.
ReplyDeleteIt goes something like this:
The Normans invade England in 1066, then we branch into the conterfactual.
The Normans do not slowly assimilate, they live and speak and marry Norman, but present an outer veneer of Anglo-Saxon while controlling the castles, the courts and the banking houses.
They are loyal to Normandy and involve England in fighting Normandy's endless wars against France claiming it is in England's interests.
Looking around them they see that the Anglo-Saxons could provide their own rulers and would be better off without the Normans, but the Normans would be kind of stuck then.
Realising this they decide to displace the existing Anglo-Saxons with Nubians brought in by Barbary pirates as the Nubians are thought unable to threaten Norman rule.
The Anglo-Saxon preachers are bought and preach that it is God's Will that England becomes Nubian.
The life of the Anglo-Saxons becomes a hell as the Norman controlled law courts punish any Anglo-Saxon who speaks against displacement or defends his or her family from Nubian brigandage.
Anyone want to suggest how it plays out?
Gordo
"Do you really consider the Sulzbergers pere et fils neo-cons?"
ReplyDeleteA neocon is liberal domestically and aggressive internationally. The New York Times supports most wars that America wages.
Perhaps you could call A.M. (Abe) Rosenthal, editor the NY Times back in the late 80s, a "neocon," as that term was used back in his day, when the foreign policy issues facing the country were quite different from what we're facing now. But his son Andrew, current op-ed page editor of the NY Times, is a hard-left, anti-Israel Obamanite, based on the contents of NY Times editorials. Based on your calling the younger Rosenthal a neocon, I suspect that you don't actually read NY Times editorials. I am led to suspect the same thing from your persistent delusion that the NY leftist establishment supported Bloomberg's stop-and-frisk policy.
ReplyDeleteYou seem to assume, not only that all neocons are Jews, but that all Jews prominent in politics, political theory, foreign policy and the news media are neocons, and ardent Likudniks to boot. This is just crazy. In case you had not noticed, most of the organized US Jewish community supports whatever Obama does, including his extortion of Israel in the current "negotiations" supposedly with the Palestinians (in reality, between the US and Israel).
Incidentally, do you have a theory of how Nuland's position on Ukraine serves Israel's nefarious purposes? Given Israel's beleaguered position these days, I suspect that the Israeli government desperately avoids taking any position on such peripheral issues. Certainly, they're in no position to gratuitously antagonize Russia.
Heavily-advertised firm: Paine-Webber, not Payne-Whitney.
ReplyDeleteAnonydroid at 9:08 PM said: The Bushes, Tafts, Romnneys, Kennedys, and Udalls all Yids too, right, Steve?
ReplyDeleteHunsdon said: To the best of my information and belief after reasonable inquiry, that is the first time I have ever seen the word Yid used in a comment here.
Another friend of Lincoln you forgot to mention.
ReplyDeleteAfter a steamboat hit the bridge, boat operators sued to have the bridge dismantled. Durant and the Rock Island hired private attorney Abraham Lincoln to defend the bridge. This association later played to Durant's favor when in 1862 President Lincoln selected Durant's new company, the Union Pacific, and its operation center in Council Bluffs, Iowa as the starting point of the First Transcontinental Railroad.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_C._Durant
The Crédit Mobilier scandal of 1872
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cr%C3%A9dit_Mobilier_of_America_scandal
Western-leaning Yushchenko and Tymoshenko
ReplyDeleteDon't know about Yushchenko but Tymoshenko is halф Jewish and half Russian. Her Ukrainian name is husband's.
Waydaminit.
ReplyDeleteJust a very few days ago you were arguing strenuously in favor of marriage, and children within marriage, and objecting to those who believe that its benefits were peripheral.
Now marriage and children within marriage is the doom of the Republic.
"The nation that controls the coal of northern China will control the world!.............True, the coal of northern China isn't all that important in 1987..."
ReplyDeleteGiven that that coal powered a lot of the enormous expansion in the Chinese economy over the last thirty years, maybe it was pretty important.
Continuity of elites extends even into World War G (or T, or something...):
ReplyDeleteStephanie Adams, direct-descendant* of John Adams and John Quincy Adams, first openly-lesbian Playboy Playmate centerfold model (Nov. 1992), a woman of color, married to a man by whom she has one son, a successful businesswoman who won a 1.2 million dollar settlement from the City of New York for false arrest (she was accused of threatening a cab-driver with a gun, but that was proved impossible because she was wearing such tight clothes at the time she could not have hidden any gun), is now a defendant in a sex-discrimination lawsuit because she fired a beautiful woman subordinate out of sheer jealousy. Stephanie Adams maintains through her lawyers that discrimination on the basis of looks is not sex discrimination and therefore not unlawful.
*This claim has not been verified publically.
Most American presidents have been career politicians with little interest in what goes on in Kazakhstan, hence the need to rely on advisors. It's hard to weed out the incompetents and charlatans since most sound very confident, knowledgeable and erudite as well as having gone to all the right schools. Foreign policy seems to be one of the few places where slick used car salesmen can keep selling defective products over and over again. People don't want to think about Iraq right now, they blot it out of their minds. After chasing Osama out of Afghanistan we stayed there for way too long. Billions of dollars and many lives later the result is what?
ReplyDeleteThe neo-cons seem to be reincarnated Trotskyites who've assumed a different form. Back then they sold a defective product to the Russians; now they're busy trying to sell us their snake oil.
Nepotism can certainly produce negative impacts on the wider society. "Free-market capitalism" is the best guarantor the wider economy will minimize--through competition--those negative aspects.
ReplyDeleteRegulation (of a private sector) provides a mechanism by means of which successful entities are enabled to extend dominance in their particular spheres into the future, regardless of competence, by suppressing both present and would-be competitors. The higher become costs of regulatory compliance, the more are shielded those not serving the market the best and cheapes, whether due to nepotism or any other cause. On the other hand, if the advantaged ARE furnishing the market with the best at the lowest price, where's a (legitimate) complaint?
An almost exactly opposite effect is likely when nepotisic effect is encountered in the governmental
apparatus itself. In that sphere, the truly competent have no need of nepotistic "help,": the effect of existing nepotism advantages the incompetent in hiring and promotion at a cost both to the excluded competent and the wider society. (Even here, the effects of nepotism are not entirely negative. Police and firemen are--and have been--for years and in many places--influenced by nepotism of Irish Americans. Can anyone think of ANY group better suited by virtue of intelligence, inclination, cohesion, and tradition? Didn't think so.
And, to all those who think that the out-sized fraction of those occupying the higher rungs of certain positions in government, business, academia, and the media who are ethnically Jewish is due, somehow, to nepotism, should step back and take a closer look. Anyone with enough money and know-how can start a newspaper (or BUY one, as was recently done by Jeff Bezos), TV station (or channel). That's the easy part--making a success of it is another matter.
Same for cinema. Talent (at anything) will not ALWAYS "out" but, again, it frequently does.
"Tin Pan Alley" was mostly Jewish songwriters, musicians and lyricists--but such presence in "country music" has grown markedly--from NOTHING--in the last half-century. But another, even better example, is numbers of patents awarded Jews, whether American or Israeli. Or the Nobel Prize, where those determining selection lack any nepotistic
influence whatever.
OT: NYT, 02/09/14 - American-Born Cabbies Are a Vanishing Breed in New York
ReplyDelete...The American-born cabby, long a stalwart of the industry even as immigrants began to dominate its ranks, has now just about vanished. Today, only 8 percent of New York City taxi and for-hire drivers were born in the United States...the most common country of origin for yellow cabdrivers is now Bangladesh. More than 23 percent of drivers were born there...‘I always tell my fares that there’s one other white guy in the city. I found him.’
Another jobs that Americans just won't do.
The old understanding was the foreign adventures are driven by the military-industrial complex, i.e. a cabal of Pentagon generals and Lockheed, etc. executives. The cabal would hire some hacks whose job was to spew propaganda for their cause. This was the received explanation/put down for the old Cold War hawks.
ReplyDeleteNow the preferred paleo/leftist theory seems to be the opposite. The hacks are no longer the tools of the the military-industrial complex. Instead, they are the tail that wags the whole dog. They hoodwink not just the politicians (who are all presumed to be idiots unable to think for themselves) but the generals and the industry executive, too. Well, maybe. But I still find the old explanation more convincing.
"Do you really consider the Sulzbergers pere et fils neo-cons?"
ReplyDeleteA neocon is liberal domestically and aggressive internationally. The New York Times supports most wars that America wages.
A neocon pretends to be conservative. The Times does not.
But his son Andrew, current op-ed page editor of the NY Times, is a hard-left, anti-Israel Obamanite...
ReplyDeleteWhat this commenter obviously means by "anti-Israel' is "pro-Israel, but not as militantly as I would have liked." I'm sure there are guys in Al Qaeda who though that Osama wasn't militant enough too. It's that kind of thinking.
"Don't know about Yushchenko but Tymoshenko is halф Jewish and half Russian. Her Ukrainian name is husband's."
ReplyDeleteI notice there is an entire English Wikipedia page dedicated to Tymoshenko's family origins.
Her ethnic origin is often a subject for debates in Eastern European media, speculating that what she claims might not be true. During Ukrainian elections, Tymoshenko (and other candidates like Arseniy Yatsenyuk) have been "accused" of being Jewish, which she described as smear campaigns. Tymoshenko has claimed her mother has Ukrainian roots and her father Latvian roots "both for ten generations".
Viktor Yanukovych has some interesting ancestry too:
Yanukovych is not ethnically Ukrainian, but rather of Russian, Polish, and Belarusian descent. Yanukovych is a surname of Belarusian origin; Yanuk being a derivative of the Catholic name Yan (“John”). His mother was a Russian nurse who died when Yanukovych was two years old, and his father was a Polish-Belarusian locomotive driver, originally from Yanuki, Vitsebsk Voblast. By the time he was a teenager, Yanukovych had lost both his parents and was brought up by his Polish paternal grandmother, originally from Warsaw. His grandfather and great-grandparents were Lithuanian-Poles.
Source
You're probably thinking of Pratt & Whitney, founded in the 19th cent. and now making jet engines. It was co-founded by Amos Whitney, a cousin of Eli, of Josiah (of Mt Whitney fame) and his brother William Dwight, and of the Olympian Whitney family of New York.
ReplyDeleteThe Whitneys, like the Huntingtons, are a good example of assortative mating long before they were prominent.
Neocons tend to be particularly inbred. In the comments at Mondoweiss, Sean McBride lists some examples (I'll cut out redundant ones):
ReplyDelete4. Arthur Sulzberger Jr. is the son of Arthur Sulzberger.
Read an excerpt from Junior's 2006 commencement speech at SUNY New Paltz, and tell me that Junior [Pinch] is a neocon:
I’ll start with an apology.
When I graduated from college in 1974, my fellow students and I had just ended the war in Vietnam and ousted President Nixon [light cheering]. Okay, okay, that's not quite true. I mean yes, the war did end and yes, President Nixon did resign in disgrace but maybe there were larger forces at play.
Either way, we entered the real world committed to making it a better, safer, cleaner, more equal place. We were determined not to repeat the mistakes of our predecessors. We had seen the horrors and futility of war and smelled the stench of corruption in government.
Our children, we vowed, would never know that.
So, well, sorry [pause and applause]. It wasn't supposed to be this way.
You weren't supposed to be graduating into an America fighting a misbegotten war in a foreign land [louder applause].
You weren't supposed to be graduating into a world where we are still fighting for fundamental human rights, whether it's the rights of immigrants to start a new life; or the rights of gays to marry; or the rights of women to choose [applause].
You weren't supposed to be graduating into a world where oil still drove policy and environmentalists have to fight relentlessly for every gain.
You weren't. But you are. And for that I'm sorry.
If that is neocon, I'll eat my hat. Sounds like run of the mill 21st century liberal.
"Government is an unreliable servant and a fearful master."--
ReplyDeleteGeorge Washington
"Neoconservative" is a term applieed to many (most of them Jews) former socialists (and even communists). But, their "take" on economic matters is simply a somewhat different pattern of socialism--one differing from communism (exemplified by USSR)
in that, rather than government formally holding title to the various productive assets in order to direct their activity and usage in "the most socially necessary and desirable manner," such ownership is left nominally in private hands with it being a presumed government function to achieve the same(aforementioned) desirable result by a system of regulations and decrees. Mises refers to this form as the Hindenburg plan (to achieve all-around socialism) but the general plan was first practically used by Mussolini as "fascism" (as it is known today).
While the USSR existed, it (and its bloc) were the only communist
nations. Now, after dissolution, they have joined ALL OTHERS in fascism.
What hardly any understand is that most aspects of fascism are entirely compatible with the text of the U.S. Constitution--just not at all with its spirit and intention. The failure is quite understandable, seeing as the relevant (and demonstrably operable) THEORY wasn't even discovered for another 130-odd years (by Mises).
And now that you've listened to (or read) me so patiently, I'll give you something nearer and dearer to the hearts (of many).
This site and nearly everyone (but for a few) are woefully ignorant of basic economics, including Steve himself. One of the overriding (most frequently and ardently) topics discussed is that of immigration or illegal immigration.
No laws, fences, or forces will achieve appreciable diminution of the numbers burdening our shores (and borders) except at cost greater than that of the presence of those immigrants themselves. The ONLY way to appreciably affect either the quantity or the quality of immigrants already here or to come in the future is to abandon socialism (the well-known ROAD TO SERFDOM) and dismantle that already installed and functioning. We're so far down that "ROAD" that, even with the dismantling of some of the more egregious laws and institutions, we'd still (absolutely) need a Constitutional Convention in order to have a commonwealth of recognizably American social and economic character on any basis capable of reliable longevity.
In another post, I'll detail some (though not necessarily all) steps necessary to arrest, not only the immigration burden, but many other of the increasingly negative impacts on American social and economic welfare.
And now we know where the black super geniuses went:
ReplyDeletehttp://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/technology/search-for-a-market-niche-and-you-might-find-a-crowd.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0&referrer=
People don't want to think about Iraq right now, they blot it out of their minds.
ReplyDeletePeople never really wanted to think about Iraq. But when we had a liberal president from one party, the media insisted that we think about it constantly. Once we got a liberal president from the other party, they insisted that we think about other things.
OT, @Steve
ReplyDeletethey're coming to take us away:
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/feb/08/bbc-comedy-shows-male-panels-female-presence
BBC chief: no more comedy shows with all-male panels
Danny Cohen, head of the BBC's television output, has promised viewers that the corporation will not make any more all-male comedy panel shows.
...
But Brand highlighted a "practical problem" of supply and demand early on: "There are far more male comics than women. When I started, there were about 200 male stand-ups and about 20 female – roughly one woman for every two-and-a-half panel shows."
About that list? Reading is fundamental. Our host wrote: In the comments at Mondoweiss, Sean McBride lists some examples . . . .
ReplyDelete2. Andrew Rosenthal is the son of A.M. Rosenthal.
ReplyDeleteOne was a mainline Democrat of the 1958 vintage and the other of a contemporary vintage. How are either coded as 'conservative'? Does political terminology have any fixed meaning for these shnooks?
4. Arthur Sulzberger Jr. is the son of Arthur Sulzberger.
Again, both were mainline Democrats.
5. Barbara Amiel is the wife of Conrad Black.
He is her fifth husband and both were well into middle age and established figures in their respective occupations when they married.
6. Barbara Ledeen is the mother of Simone Ledeen who is the daughter of Michael Ledeen.
Simone Ledeen is (when last seen) a federal civil servant employed in the Treasury department. She's one of about 500,000 federal civil servants in the capital. He mother is a congressional aide pretty close to retirement age. This is of interest, why?
8. Benjamin Netanyahu is the son of Benzion Netanyahu.
A politician in Israel (whose politics are a manifestation of their political spectrum, not ours) is the son of a history professor. This is of interest, why?
11. Dalck Feith is the father of Douglas Feith.
An immigrant manufacturer from Philly has a son who is a politically connected lawyer and foreign affairs official. This is of interest why?
14. Daniel Feith is the brother of David Feith.
A man who writes editorials for a living is the brother of a law student. The law student put in some time in the public relations apparat appended to one or another State dept official but is otherwise a no account.
Just out of curiosity, what should David and Daniel Feith do for a living so as to not attract your attention?
17. Daniel Pipes is the son of Richard Pipes.
A college professor and eminent Soviet specialist is the father of a failed academic who is a specialist in the Near East. Lots of people go into their father's line of work. Some are more successful at it. Not sure how Daniel Pipes earns a living, but he has a history of academic publication and has edited an academic journal. This is of interest why?
21. David Wurmser is the husband of Meyrav Wurmser.
And who’s ever heard of either one?
22. Dick Cheney is the father of Liz Cheney who is the daughter of Lynne Cheney.
ReplyDeleteAnd Cheney is a perfectly mainline Republican careerist who went from Congressional staff to the White House staff to Congress to George Bush the Elder's cabinet to a position at a commercial company that does government contracting. His wife is a lapsed academic whose most notable interventions in public discourse have to do with the state of higher education, not anything you or Phillip Weiss obsess over.
24. Donald Kagan is the father-in-law of Victoria Nuland and Kimberly Kagan
25. Donald Kagan is the father of Frederick and Robert Kagan.
26. Donald Kagan is the father of Robert Kagan.
Ever heard of Norman Rask? He is an agricultural economist at Ohio State University. His daughter, son, and daughter-in-law are all economists. Is that less sinister because they're Danish and not Jewish? Or is it only sinister if you're a historian? How 'bout the van Doren clan? Can an academic family get a break if they cross disciplines?
31. Elliott Abrams is the son-in-law of Midge Decter and Norman Podhoretz, and brother-in-law of John Podhoretz.
He was a congressional aide / lawyer who married the daughter of an opinion journalist he met socially. She was 29 and he was 32. Timing and circumstance make all that rather unsurprising.
38. Gertrude Himmelfarb is the wife of Irving Kristol and the mother of William Kristol.
A history professor specializing in 19th century Britain marries a soldier who later goes into the opinion trade. Her son is a compromise. He's a failed academic who went into the opinion trade. He's also a mainline Republican and advocates nothing out of the ordinary.
45. Jonah Goldberg is the son of Lucianne Goldberg.
An opinion journalist is the son of a literary agent whose known writings on and influence on public policy prior to 1997 are nil. This is interesting, why?
--
What is it with you people? Yes, people have children, some of their children go into trades similar to or adjacent to their own, and people often have political views similar to their fathers.
Wow, what a list. Is Dick Cheney Jewish?
ReplyDeleteOkay, so my nonexistent firm of "Payne Whitney" was actually "Paine Webber" plus "Pratt & Whitney." They should merge just to end my confusion, the way Armand Hammer got tired of having to tell people that no, he didn't own Arm & Hammer Baking Soda, so he bought the company.
ReplyDelete" American-Born Cabbies Are a Vanishing Breed in New York"
ReplyDelete$1 Million Medallions Stifling the Dreams of Cabdrivers
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/15/nyregion/1-million-medallions-stifling-the-dreams-of-cabdrivers.html?_r=0
Flood of immigrants has caused a collapse of remuneration for cab driving, which is not a problem if you own the right to operate a cab aka a Medallion.
Yes, people have children, some of their children go into trades similar to or adjacent to their own, and people often have political views similar to their fathers.
ReplyDeleteThat's the whole point. They're not representative of the population at large and they concentrate in these centers of power.
It'd be one thing if they were dentists or running a family hardware store. But they're not. They're gravitating towards highly consequential positions.
"What this commenter obviously means by "anti-Israel' is "pro-Israel, but not as militantly as I would have liked." I'm sure there are guys in Al Qaeda who though that Osama wasn't militant enough too. It's that kind of thinking."
ReplyDeleteWhat this commenter means by "pro-Israel" is being opposed to annihilation of all Israeli Jews, but supporting the Palestinians' other goals.
Anyway, however one defines "pro-Israel," the editorial positions of the NY Times are not "neocon," unless Obama and Kerry are also considered "neocons" - which pretty much renders the word meaningless. By that standard, Rand Paul is also a neocon.
Personally I think our Jewish overlords are doing a real great job.....
ReplyDeleteSteve:"The central character is the Secretary of State, John Hay, who got his start when his next door neighbor, Abe Lincoln, was elected president in 1860 and needed a second secretary. Although a smalltown Midwestern boy, Hay was a charming, witty fellow more like a British than an American statesman."
ReplyDeleteJust to make sure that people don't think that Hay was overly hickish in his origins, a few biographical details should be born in mind:
His father, Dr Charles Hay, was a physician from Middleborough, MA.He tutored young John in Latin and Greek. Plus, he sent John off to be educated at Brown, where he hobnobbed with the artistic crowd (he knew the mediocre poetess Sarah Helen Whitman, chiefly remembered, both now and in her own time, for her quasi-romantic relationship with Edgar Allan Poe).So, by the standards of the small town middle west of the mid-19th century, Hay was a fairly cultivated young man.
syon
Gene Berman,
ReplyDeleteI guess your point is that third-world immigrants would not be attracted to the US and other first-world countries if the US and other first-world countries dispensed with social welfare programs? If so, I think you're wrong. The attraction would decrease, but it would still be strong. Most Mexicans do work here. They combine a low mean IQ with an ability to work hard. They're a natural fit for the low-wage, low-skilled labor niche. In a completely laissez-faire system restaurants, construction contractors, families in search of nannies and domestics, etc. would still gladly employ them at wages that are lower than the ones they'd have to pay American Whites and higher than the ones that are normal in Mexico. The only way to stop that sort of immigration is for the government to lock the borders and to punish businesses who hire any illegals who get through.
You state that it's impossible or prohibitively costly to close the borders. Of course it's possible. It's not even hard. The two Koreas share a hermetically-sealed border right now. And I'm sure that more than 99% of their military budgets are spent on attack and defense capabilities, not on border enforcement. Making sure that no one gets through a fence was a trivial task even before the invention of cheap cameras. Now it's super trivial. Why would you deny this? Libertarian dogma. US borders aren't being enforced because the powers that be do not want to enforce them, not because it would be technically difficult.
I think that Libertarian dogma is as wrong as Communist dogma. Both start with a denial of humanity's tribalist instincts, which are the basis of all politics and of a lot of economics. I think that the chief motivation for the birth of these twin ideologies was the desire of their inventors to make their audience blind to ethno-racial competition. To stop them from noticing ethno-racial competition, and if that's not possible, to convince them that it's not important. Communism explains all political and economic reality through class struggle instead. Libertarianism explains everything through the government/private sector dichotomy. I think that both class and the private/government dichotomy are trivialities compared to tribal loyalties and tribal differences.
Governemnt can be good and it can be bad. Depends on who's running it, who they are loyal to, how competent they are and on lots of other things. Same with private enterprise.
Too late for merger- Paine Webber was bought by a swiss bank 15 years ago.
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, Steve, since you have recently read EMPIRE, any thoughts as to providing us with your thoughts on Gore Vidal's "Narratives of Empire" sequence: WASHINGTON DC, BURR, 1876, LINCOLN, EMPIRE, HOLLYWOOD, THE GOLDEN AGE? Personally, I think that only the first 5 books hold up. HOLLYWOOD and THE GOLDEN AGE felt rather sketchy and anemic, as though Vidal's powers were starting to fade.
ReplyDeleteFor that matter, any thoughts as to an overview of Vidal? I get the feeling that our current political order prevents a lot of critics from getting a handle on him. They don't quite know how to pigeon hole a man who was gay, pro-New Deal but anti-US entry into WW2, anti-Vietnam War but very unenthusiastic about the state of Israel, vaguely anti-immigration (If memory serves, there is an amusing sequence in EMPIRE where John Hay runs into some German speaking immigrants who don't know any English), etc.
"What this commenter means by "pro-Israel" is being opposed to annihilation of all Israeli Jews, but supporting the Palestinians' other goals."
ReplyDeleteYou implied that Obama is anti-Israel. He's more pro-Israel than he is pro-Arab or pro-Muslim. He says so and I think that his actions testify to it. He's not as pro-Israel as GW Bush was or as McCain or Romney would have been, but that's a difference of degree.
Just to make clear, I'm against anyone who supports the annihilation of any group of people.
Is the NYT neocon? No, it's liberal, but the differences between these two positions aren't enormous. As I remember, the NYT championed the Iraqi WMD claim.
That's the whole point. They're not representative of the population at large and they concentrate in these centers of power.
ReplyDelete"The whole point". 'Neo-conservative' is pretty much a nonsense term when not referring to a specific collection of publicists associated with the Committee for the Free World, etc. That aside, Phillip Weiss' list of 'neo-conservatives' includes four prominent Democrats (only one of whom was known to have an affinity for Henry Jackson's politics), a mainline Chamber-of-Commerce Republican of the sort for which Norman Podhoretz did not have any affinity, several academics (most of whom did not publish on topical political questions0, a politician in Israel, a manufacturer in Philadelphia, a career Treasury official, and a law student who used to write copy for Condoleeza Rice. If your definition of 'neo-conservative' is a first degree relation of someone who wrote opinion pieces for publications x, y, and z between 1968 and 1992, listing the 1st degree relationships as if it were indicative of anything is lame.
"The whole point" is inane. Why not stick to the friggin' issues and lay off the cruddy little ad homs?
"You implied that Obama is anti-Israel. He's more pro-Israel than he is pro-Arab or pro-Muslim. He says so and I think that his actions testify to it. He's not as pro-Israel as GW Bush was or as McCain or Romney would have been, but that's a difference of degree."
ReplyDeleteHow is Obama "more pro-Israel than he is pro-Arab or pro-Muslim"? Demanding that Israel give up its ability to defend itself (by getting out of the Jordan valley) and instead rely on "guarantees" from the ever-so-reliable US and its PC-addled military does not sound very "pro-Israel" to me. Nor does demanding that Israel give up any right of Jewish access to the Temple Mount. Or our tacit sponsorship of Iran's attaining nuclear status, which Iran objects to only because Obama is trying to keep it tacit rather than explicit.
It is pretty idiotic to say that the difference between the general "liberal" positions on Israel (as manifested by the putrid Obama administration and NY Times editorials) and the "neocon" position on Israel (as manifested, say, in the Weekly Standard) is "not enormous." Unless, of course, the speaker is someone who believes the Jews should just be driven out of the land or made to live under Arab rule in a one-state solution (pretty much the same thing). Then, I suppose, the differences between Obama and Bill Kristol on Israel would appear trivial.
The seriousness of this writer is indicated by his telling us we should take Obama's word for it when he says (to make his dim-witted Jewish donors feel better) that he is "pro-Israel." That's as believable as Obama's claim that the IRS does not have even a "smidgeon of corruption."
Art Deco Said ....
ReplyDelete"Ever heard of Norman Rask? He is an agricultural economist at Ohio State University. His daughter, son, and daughter-in-law are all economists. Is that less sinister because they're Danish and not Jewish? Or is it only sinister if you're a historian? How 'bout the van Doren clan? Can an academic family get a break if they cross disciplines?"
Never heard of Rask. What unnecessary wars resulting in the unnecessary death and maiming of thousands upon thousands of Americans (never mind the other guys) did he promote?
"As I remember, the NYT championed the Iraqi WMD claim."
ReplyDeleteThat was 12 years ago, in the news columns, not the editorials. The reporter whose work you're referring to left the Times soon thereafter, and is not fondly remembered.
Also, the whole Iraq issue was quite peripheral to Israel, which would have preferred our concentrating on Iran, the much greater danger to them. Too bad GWB didn't listen to them.
This one's special, Steve. I've quoted and linked to it, but it has also inspired me to do a "Deep State" cartoon here;
ReplyDeleteDeep Doo-Doo In The Deep State
"As I remember, the NYT championed the Iraqi WMD claim."
ReplyDeletehttp://mondoweiss.net/2011/09/nyts-keller-infers-iraq-war-aimed-to-save-israel-from-a-holocaust.html
NYT Executive Editor Bill Keller pens a tortured mea culpa about his support for the Iraq War, stopping short of a full apology because he “couldn’t have known better at the time.” Along the way, he drops this stunning revelation about where his and his colleagues’ priorities lie:
That leaves the elusive weapons of mass destruction. We forget how broad the consensus was that Hussein was hiding the kind of weapons that could rain holocaust on a neighbor or be delivered to America by proxy.
Which neighbor fears a “holocaust,” I wonder?
(...)
"As I remember, the NYT championed the Iraqi WMD claim."
ReplyDeletehttp://mondoweiss.net/2011/06/nyt-editors-briefly-flagellate-themselves-for-their-role-in-fomenting-iraq-war-then-move-on.html
(...)
Brooke Gladstone of “On the Media” asked Bill Keller about the May 2004 editor’s letter apologizing, but oh so properly, for the Times coverage that had paved the way for the war in Iraq.
Keller [solemnus voce]: I think both Jill and I would probably put that at the top of our list of things we wish we’d done differently, that is to say, things that we wish we’d done sooner. I think it would have been wiser and healthier for the paper and its credibility if I’d taken that bull by the horns first thing and said, you know what, we screwed up here, and the way we screwed up was we fell too hard for the conventional wisdom about Saddam Hussein and we let some of the reporting run a little wild.
Abramson: I completely agree.
My wife was enraged. She said, We’re in three wars right now, and no one knows what they’re about, and This is all the Times editors give us by way of apology.
They supported the war, I said. Keller did. Should they step down? Nick Lemann (dean of the Columbia School of Journalism) spoke at Columbia a couple of years ago and said that of all the people writing at the New Yorker in 2003, he was the only one to oppose the Iraq war
(...)
P.S. After Larry Eagleburger died the other day, they had Leslie Gelb formerly of the Times now of the Council on Foreign Relations eulogizing him on NPR, and Gelb said that Eagleburger had been brave to oppose the Iraq war in the face of all the establishment pressure to support it. But this is precisely why Gelb supported the war, out of careerist instinct
(...)
I think the NYT hates Putin as much as the neocons do. Both it and the neocons hate China, but not as much as they hate Russia. I really don't see the differences between them as being all that large.
ReplyDeleteNever heard of Rask. What unnecessary wars resulting in the unnecessary death and maiming of thousands upon thousands of Americans (never mind the other guys) did he promote?
ReplyDeleteAsk me a non tendentious question relevant to the point, and you might merit an answer.
"The whole point" is inane. Why not stick to the friggin' issues and lay off the cruddy little ad homs?
ReplyDeleteYou clearly miss "the whole point". This is sticking to the issues, it just happens to be an issue that you'd prefer people not notice.
Those superficial differences you point to like party affiliation are just that: superficial differences that conceal shared concerns and interests.
Or the Nobel Prize, where those determining selection lack any nepotistic influence whatever.
ReplyDeleteSure.
The Nobel Committee sends out invitation letters to individuals qualified to nominate:
members of national assemblies, governments, and international courts of law; university chancellors, professors of social science, history, philosophy, law and theology; leaders of peace research institutes and institutes of foreign affairs; previous Nobel Peace Prize Laureates; board members of organizations that have received the Nobel Peace Prize; present and past members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee; and former advisers of the Norwegian Nobel Institute.
Don't hate...
ReplyDeletehttp://diaryofahollywoodstreetking.com/
Anonydroid at 2:41 PM said: The seriousness of this writer is indicated by his telling us we should take Obama's word for it when he says (to make his dim-witted Jewish donors feel better) that he is "pro-Israel."
ReplyDeleteHunsdon said: I'll have you know +1SD! How dare you slur our Ashkenazi overlords with the phrase dim-witted.
Art Deco said: Ask me a non tendentious question relevant to the point, and you might merit an answer.
ReplyDeleteHunsdon said: The reason we oppose the Kagans is not so much that they are clannish, but that they are wrong, and that when they are wrong, the consequences are high, and the consequences are paid in American blood and treasure, while the Kagans sail merrily along.
It is not tendentious to ask if the Rask family has advocated policies with such a cost.
"21. David Wurmser is the husband of Meyrav Wurmser."
ReplyDeleteAnd who’s ever heard of either one?
I would expect that everyone who comments at this blog has heard of David Wurmser. What's more, most will *remember* hearing of him. That's quite a memorable name.
He was a major PNACker and one of those "25 people (all of whom are at this moment within a five-block radius of this office) who, if you had exiled them to a desert island a year and a half ago, the Iraq war would not have happened."
"I think that Libertarian dogma is as wrong as Communist dogma...I think that the chief motivation for the birth of these twin ideologies was the desire of their inventors to make their audience blind to ethno-racial competition."
ReplyDeleteCorrect.
.
"You state that it's impossible or prohibitively costly to close the borders. Of course it's possible. It's not even hard."
It is spectacularly easy. All you need to do is punish employers of illegal labor. If there's no demand the supply will go down.
Whenever the elite are serious about stopping something they go for the demand as much as the supply e.g. anti-smoking campaigns. When they are pretending they just go for the supply.
.
"Just a very few days ago you were arguing strenuously in favor of marriage, and children within marriage, and objecting to those who believe that its benefits were peripheral. Now marriage and children within marriage is the doom of the Republic."
The argument was that the people accruing the benefits of marriage themselves - including the ability to be nepotistic - were actively seeking to deny those benefits to others thus giving their group a competitive advantage.
So this post is a perfect example of the previous point.
.
"What is it with you people? Yes, people have children, some of their children go into trades similar to or adjacent to their own, and people often have political views similar to their fathers."
The MSM constantly attacks eurowhite people on the basis that disparate impact is de facto racism.
Both the MSM and the neocon foreign policy establishment display spectacular disparate impact so if the MSM apply to themselves the same standard they use to attack eurowhite people the spectacular disparate impact displayed within the MSM and neocon foreign policy establishment is the result of anti-eurowhite racism.
Simple.
"with all these Jews in the government under all these administrations, they'd make a successful effort to have Jerusalem recognized as Israel's capital."
ReplyDeleteThe US controls the UN?
.
"That's not to excuse the actual actions of the neocons, but you should expect them to have very smart children."
The high IQ isn't the problem. The low/zero stewardship is the problem.
.
"Australia getting a taste of diversity:"
This is happening everywhere and on a scale most people wouldn't believe because they wouldn't be able to believe how much the media is lying.
It doesn't stop once all the white people are driven out either as the gang culture created becomes self-perpetuating.
In the neighborhoods in the process of being conquered the victims are mostly white but after white people are cleansed it carries on but with mostly non-white victims.
"Interesting to see that the Ledeens, unlike so many other neocons, are not chickenhawks."
ReplyDeleteJoseph Kristol, son of Bill and grandson of Irving, is a Marine. This is surprisingly little known - I guess because it was not yet true at the time the Iraq War began. (He became one upon Harvard graduation in 2009.)
James Kabala said: Joseph Kristol, son of Bill and grandson of Irving, is a Marine.
ReplyDeleteHunsdon wondered: What is it with the neocons and the Marine Corps? Admittedly dealing with a small sample size, but of the three children of prominent neocons serving in the military, all are in the Corps.
Maybe they just wanted to be the best? (It is my completely objective and unbiased conclusion that, while all the branches of the US armed service have made valuable contributions to various missions, the Corps is where it's at.)
"Hunsdon wondered: What is it with the neocons and the Marine Corps? Admittedly dealing with a small sample size, but of the three children of prominent neocons serving in the military, all are in the Corps.
ReplyDelete"Maybe they just wanted to be the best? (It is my completely objective and unbiased conclusion that, while all the branches of the US armed service have made valuable contributions to various missions, the Corps is where it's at.)"
It impresses me that of the U.S. armed forces, the Marine Corps comes closest in character to one of those grand old British regiments that prides itself on a long and highly distinguished history and in its own peculiar traditions. My late father, who was a Marine (WWII vintage), once remarked to me that the Corps, when he was part of it, reminded him of Wellington's army, in that it was a force of accomplished ruffians led by the sons of the aristocracy. To what extent this is true today, I have no idea.
.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the whole Iraq issue was quite peripheral to Israel, which would have preferred our concentrating on Iran, the much greater danger to them. Too bad GWB didn't listen to them
He DID listen to them:
Israel To U.S.: Don't Delay Iraq Attack
By DAN COLLINS CBS August 18, 2002, 2:47 PM
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-to-us-dont-delay-iraq-attack/
Israel is urging U.S. officials not to delay a military strike against Iraq's Saddam Hussein, an aide to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Friday.
Israeli intelligence officials have gathered evidence that Iraq is speeding up efforts to produce biological and chemical weapons, said Sharon aide Ranaan Gissin.
"Any postponement of an attack on Iraq at this stage will serve no purpose," Gissin said. "It will only give him (Saddam) more of an opportunity to accelerate his program of weapons of mass destruction."
The United States has been considering a military campaign against Iraq to remove Saddam from power, listing him as one of the world's main terrorist regimes. However, there is considerable world opposition to a U.S. strike.
As evidence of Iraq's weapons building activities, Israel points to an order Saddam gave to Iraq's Atomic Energy Commission last week to speed up its work, Gissin said.
"Saddam's going to be able to reach a point where these weapons will be operational," he said.
Meanwhile, Iraq told the United Nations on Friday that it will continue to discuss the return of U.N. weapons inspectors, but it insisted on conditions that Secretary-General Kofi Annan has already rejected.
In a 10-page letter to Annan, Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri reaffirmed an Iraqi offer to hold a round of technical negotiations but he insisted they focus on outstanding issues related to Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction as well as "practical arrangements for the return of the inspection system in the future."
Sabri was replying to a letter from Annan that rejected Iraq's proposal to have chief weapons inspector Hans Blix and Iraqi experts determine outstanding disarmament issues of mass destruction and figure out how to resolve them before inspectors return to the country.
Also on Friday, President Bush said he knows there are "very intelligent people" who doubt the wisdom of attacking Iraq.
But he says Saddam Hussein is "thumbing his nose at the world" -- and must be ousted.
Speaking to reporters near his Texas ranch, the president vowed to make his own decision -- based on the best intelligence available.
Gissin also said Israel was not seeking to dictate the timing of a U.S. military campaign but said that, faced with the threat of one, Saddam was fast developing weapons.
While the Israeli government backs U.S. action against Iraq, there is also concern in Israel that in response, Iraq would launch missile attacks against Tel Aviv and other cities in Israel.
During the 1991 Gulf War, in which U.S.-led forces pushed back an Iraqi invasion of neighboring Kuwait, Iraq hit Israel with 39 Scud missiles — none of them with chemical or biological warheads — causing few casualties but extensive damage.
In an interview published Friday, Ben-Eliezer told the daily Yediot Ahronot that Israel would surely become a target during such a conflict and would consider retaliation in coordination with U.S. forces.
"We will be one of the main targets," he told the newspaper. "What I told the Americans, and I repeat it: 'Don't expect us to continue to live with the process of restraint. If they hit us, we reserve the right of response.'"
Iraq has few chemical and biological weapons, Ben-Eliezer said. "We are taking this into account and we are prepared. But we are so far away from this right now that all this hysteria is simply unnecessary," he said.
"He DID listen to them"
ReplyDeleteDoes it occur to you that Israel was probably giving that public "advice" (if it were real "advice," wouldn't it be given privately?) because the Bush administration, which was already set on war with Iraq, asked it to? No doubt the noise from Israel helped scrape up enough Democratic votes in Congress to authorize the invasion. The Israeli government thought it was doing Bush & Cheney a favor. Alas, they miscalculated, as did we.
Actually if you read the book "The Israel Lobby", bush did not even originally want to invade Iraq. Immediately after sept 11, pro-Israel neocon Paul wolfawitz kept pestering bush with his Saddam Hussein obsession. Cheney had to tell wolfawitz to stop because it was annoying bush so much.
ReplyDelete"Actually if you read the book "The Israel Lobby", bush did not even originally want to invade Iraq. Immediately after sept 11, pro-Israel neocon Paul wolfawitz kept pestering bush with his Saddam Hussein obsession. Cheney had to tell wolfawitz to stop because it was annoying bush so much."
ReplyDeleteWolfowitz is not an Israeli. A neocon, an American Jew, but not an Israeli. There's a difference - for example, Israelis, unlike neocons, don't give a flying f--- about bringing "democracy" to Arabs and Muslims, and were horrified by the neocons' idiotic support for the disastrous "Arab Spring." Wolfowitz was the GWB administration's main proponent of the neocon "spread democracy" ideology, and that was his real motivation for pushing the Iraq war (although he no doubt believed the WMD claims made by the intelligence agencies).
Israel does not control its American supporters. To state the obvious.