The Fairness Doctrine
Bookworm on Nov 09 2008 at 11:40 am | Filed under: Free speech, Media matters
As you are, I’m worried about an all Democratic D.C. passing a new “Fairness” Doctrine. I have an idea: if Democrats are worried that liberals aren’t getting their message out over the radio airwaves, why don’t they use taxpayer dollars to fund a station devoted to Democratic messages, and one that has a TV and radio presence in every single market in America? I even have a name for it: I think National Public Radio would be good. Or, perhaps, the Public Broadcasting System.
This morning, my (liberal) husband showed the kids pictures of Obama’s house, surrounded by the media and security. He noted that it was a nice house and wondered how Obama could afford it. I said that Tony Rezko helped. “Who’s he?” asked my husband. He’d never even heard of Rezko and scoffed when I said Obama had a friend who was a convicted felon.
This is a man who listens only to NPR, and reads only the Times and the New Yorker. He considers himself extremely well-informed, especially because he doesn’t indulge in the tainted, paranoid-conspiracy garbage emanating from conservative radio and the conservative blogosphere.
I mention this only because it strikes me that, even without the aid of a Fairness Doctrine, the beleaguered “liberal media” (the one Dems are concerned is being shouted out by the shrill voices of conservative talk radio) is doing a very good job of controlling the flow of information.
Related posts:
- The Bush doctrine at work
- Judeo-Christian doctrine and moral freedom
- “Who, me? Passive aggressive?” A play in one act
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98 Responses to “The Fairness Doctrine”
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Yes, living in blue CT I feel like I am living in bizarro world. I know information that if my liberal friends knew, they would be appalled yet, they don’t care to listen (resko, wright, ayers, feddymae). They’ve alway depended on the NYTimes. . . after all only the superior mind understands the NYTimes, right? Their identity would be quite crushed to realize how manipulated they are.
A friend who used to fight me espousing all kinds of liberal issues, informing me in quite a patronizingly tone that of course the msm is biased (she had it handled) but had no clue that she was only getting some of the information. We had agreed to disagree on politics and discuss other things; suddenly she reconnected with me this season when she saw what happened to Hillary and Palin suddenly saw what was really going on, on many levels.
How can a citizenry be informed if they are only getting some of the information and when the information they do get is twisted or spun according to someone else’s agenda? They’ve been brainwashed to despise GWB, (over and over and over the media drove that point home in order to set the stage for this election- facts were not relevant). GWB, while not perfect, did keep us safe for 7 years (enough for me), and he really isn’t evil incarnate either. He’s a good man who tried to do his best for his country; he wasn’t perfect, he made mistakes but he didn’t cause Katrina or every bad thing to happen in the past 8 years. He gets no credit for success in Iraq which is preferable in my mind the Hussein sons taking over for Daddy Saddam. He gets no credit for trying to stop the Feddymae crisis. But the Dems get a complete pass on every bad decision they have ever made. How long can people be blind to these things? My friend suggests that slowly people will figure it out, like she did, but will they figure it out in time?
And I don’t see any bipartisan solution working as long as Dems can’t talk to Republicans and hold their fellow Americans in lower regard, than say, Amedinajhad? Amadinajhad is welcomed in NYC but the American woman quietly carrying a McCain sign is attacked. Time for Democrats to take some responsibility for their lousy decision.
Bottom line, we are not as safe today, as we were last week, but are safer than we will be on January 20th. But many see what they wish to see and disregard the rest.
Dang:
I have to agree with Book and eli. Whenever I bring up matters to my liberal friends that are common knowledge to the people here — Ayers’s Maoism, Rezko’s criminality, Wright’s hatred for whites — I get dumb-cow looks.
Sometimes my wife will flinch, as though I’ve landed a broadside. The problem is that she and her fellow libs are equipped with what I call TBFs — “Terminator Brain Flaps” — viscuous Terminator-like flaps that immediately fold over to plug gaping holes or threatening breaches in their thinking and logic.
I can see the reason for their quick restoration of the status quo ante: If my deluded husband/friend is right on THIS thing, what else might he be right about?
Must Not Go There.
This is the reason I characterize them as media filters. They decide what is news and what is not. Even if they were balanced in reciting the facts of an event, if they don’t report it– it isn’t news. Kind of a the old “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around, does it make a sound” in reverse. If an event occurs and the media filters it out, did it really occur?
This is the real danager going forward. No matter what happens, if the only news that gets through the media filters is good news, the public will never know the difference.
Alternate media like Fox News is getting some attention, but the media filters have a vested interest in smearing the reporting as right wing bias, even though we know it is fairly balanced.
In fact I saw an analysis that said the American public saw CNN as slightly center left (barely) but perceived Fox as far right.
So it goes.
Charles, it isn’t just the dumb cow looks, as if they hadn’t before heard what you were bringing up. It’s also the sentiment of “why on earth should that matter to me?”. I received many of those same expressions from ostensibly well-educated people. Their brains have shut down.
Danny it isn’t just the dumb-cow looks and the sentiment of “why should it matter” that gets me – it’s that they then want to fight with you about it!
That’s the part that leaves me, frankly, stupefied.
Oh – one other thing; I love the aptness of the nomencalture, too; “Fairness Doctrine.”
It runs right down the same liberal-to-socialist-to-communist rails with which the world used to abound: any time you saw a country that had “Republic,” “Union,” or “Democratic” in the title – i.e. as part of the country’s name – you knew you were dealing with a state dictatorship of some kind, either socialist or out-and-out communist.
Real republics, real democratic nations, everybody knows. It isn’t necessary to call it that. The German Democratic Republic was anything but democratic, just as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was not a union in the sense in which the free world thinks of it, nor was it a collection of republics; and the People’s Republic of China is neither a republic,nor was it set up to benefit the people.
Fairness Doctine? Sends the same message. If there was anything “fair” about it, it wouldn’t need to advertise quite so hard.
Tiresias…
“The King and I”…
” Is a puzzlement…dadada (look up words for the whole narration) …but he’ll fight! he’ll fight…to prove that … what he does _not_ know….is SO!!!”
http://www.metrolyrics.com/a-puzzlement-lyrics-the-king-and-i.html
When my father was a king
He was a king who knew exactly what he knew,
And his brain was not a thing
Forever swinging to and fro and fro and to.
Shall I, then be like my father
And be willfully unmovable and strong?
Or is it better to be right?…
Or am I right when I believe I may be wrong?
Shall I join with other nations in alliance?
If allies are weak, am I not best alone?
If allies are strong with power to protect me,
Might they not protect me out of all I own?
Is a danger to be trusting one another,
One will seldom want to do what other wishes;
But unless someday somebody trust somebody
There’ll be nothing left on earth excepting fishes!
There are times I almost think
Nobody sure of what he absolutely know.
Everybody find confusion
In conclusion he concluded long ago
And it puzzle me to learn
That tho’ a man may be in doubt of what he know,
Very quickly he will fight…
He’ll fight to prove that what he does not know is so!
And you guys are being really mean to cows. Now if it were sheep, I wouldn’t mind…but I gotta tell you (if you don’t know it) sheep make cows look like geniuses! I know they don’t have such big obvious soft brown eyes, and I grant that cows aren’t exactly physics majors, but it’s really not fair to equate them with liberals…! They _do_ run in herds, and trail along behind each other…like …. Brown’s cows… but sheepish is a much term. The only thing dumber than a sheep _might_ be a chicken. That one’s up for grabs. On the other hand, chickens scatter…sheep flock. If the lead sheep runs over a cliff, they’ll all run over the cliff. Sheep are _D U M B_!!
Well, isn’t the refrain, “That’s not fair!” the one we hear the most from leftists?
Judge: “Ten to 20 for shooting that kid.”
Perp: “That’s not fair! He was a punk and deserved it!”
Teacher: “I have to give you an F for not turning in your semester project.”
Student: “That’s not fair! If I don’t get an A I won’t get into Stanford!”
Scientist: “I see that global temperatures have been dropping for several years.”
Leftist: “That’s not fair! It will deny Al Gore a second chance at an important role!”
Ron Radosh has a great post at his PJM blog, entitled “Shame on the New Yorker.” Check it out.
Tiresias (#6)
>> Oh – one other thing; I love the aptness of the nomencalture, too; “Fairness Doctrine.” >>
Don’t forget the Democrat effort to eliminate the secret ballot for employees at a company voting to institute a union. Currently the employees vote by secret ballot. If the majority want a union, it passes. If they don’t want a union, it doesn’t pass. Elimination of the secret ballot means the union organizers get to target every single person who votes “No”. And the workers who voted “Yes” will surely target them for harassment as well. Strangely enough, those who vote “No” never target for harassment those who vote “Yes”. Strangely enough, indeed!
The goal of eliminating a secret ballot is always the same: oppression and harassment.
This effort to eliminate the secret ballot vote is known as “The Employee Free Choice Act”.
Fairness Doctrine: Censor only talk radio
Employee Free Choice Act: Eliminate the secret ballot so oppression and harassment can occur
Only in (liberal) America.
George Bush had some unsavory ties, too, which were also never discussed by the Mainstream Media.
It was only through bloggers and foreign press and books that I uncovered information that many of you would find difficult to believe, as well.
Those sources were actually invaluable before the war, as WMD claims which made their way to every TV station and the front page of the New York Times, were fully debunked.
The alternate press included commentary from former CIA agents and Defense Department employees that revealed ways intelligence was being skewed throuh places like the newly formed “Office and Special Plans” and nefarious sources like “Curveball.”
When I tried to talk to people about this, they didn’t believe me, either.
I think that for a lot of people–especially over 50 or so—something isn’t truly *real* unless it has appeared on TV or appeared in a newspaper. You can tell someone about (say) Tony Rezko, you can point them to definitive Internet sources, but it is somehow less real to them than something that appears in type or on a TV screen.
Some thoughts on media and perceptions of reality here.
The Fairness Doctrine utilizes the EngSoc ability to control people’s thoughts through the words they use. If people continually must refer to the Fairness Doctrine as “fair”, then it automatically is processed first and foremost in their minds that the Doctrine is “Fair”. The idea goes through the head first and then any other data about the FD starts in. However, this means that the idea has already fortified the mind so any conflicting future data will be mostly rejected.
Doublethink is the process by which one can hold two simultaneously conflicting thoughts in one’s head. This is the process by which folks here have characterized as a shutout flap and in which I call the conscience redactor. Doublethink in this scenario is a result of the FD controlling the narrative by getting people to think “fair” when ever they say FD. Then once you have tied the notion that the FD is fair to a person’s very identity, that person will automatically use mental defenses to fend him or herself and this includes fending the FD. This ensures that a person can use unfair methods to defend the FD while at the same time claiming at that the FD is fair.
It is similar to the process with affirmative action and reverse racism. They can say that racism must be ended and 2. they can say that it must be ended with more racism. Those are two conflicting thoughts. Even if they say that racism is only possible to come from whites towards blacks, they would never accept that rich white Democrats are behaving racist. These are all exercises in doublethink in order to justify a delusional and self-destructive ideology that exploits the weak and enriches people like Ayers, Obama, and Jackson.
George Lakoff is a professor at UC Berkley and a the “left’s message guru”.
I posted this before, but it bears repeating. If Lakoff is correct, appeals to liberals must be framed in arguments that appeal to empathy, community and fairness.
I don’t know if we have become so propagandized that arguments based on logic are insufficient unless coated with emotionalism.
Did anyone notice that Ozzie weighed in? No? Well, Ozzie informed us that Bush had some unsavory connections also. He learned about them on koz, and huffiepo. Of course Ozzie did not enlighten us as to who those unsavories were; but trust him they exist because he read it on unbiased blog sites.
UMMPH!
Book that is the nearest thing I can come up with for a grunt after reading about Mr. Bookworm’s comments. I am trying for the sound one would make after taking a shot to the gut. Well, I have already told you to dump him, but I guess you weren’t listening.
Oz:
Please be careful with language:
>>It was only through bloggers and foreign press and books that I uncovered information that many of you would find difficult to believe, as well.<<
You didn’t “uncover” anything at all. You came across assertions by certain people and chose to believe them.
“Uncovering” would involve original at-the-source research, something I believe you have never done in your life.
It’s like the Leakeys uncovering zinjanthropus bones at Olduvai and you claiming, on the basis of your reading about it in a National Geographic article, to have uncovered them, too.
“Of course Ozzie did not enlighten us as to who those unsavories were; but trust him they exist because he read it on unbiased blog sites. – old flyer
The Huffington Post wasn’t in existence yet and I dont really read Kos, but several outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, questioned Bush’s connections to the crooks at BCCI.
In his book, American Dynasty, Kevin Phillips also linked George W Bush to Salem bin Laden and Khalid bin Mahfouz, through James Bath.
He wrote about it in the Oakland Tribune:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4176/is_/ai_n9723245
Folks:
Whenever you read an Ozzie-provided link, look for these things:
An opening statement that tells us what the writer intends to prove:
>>How these unusual relationships helped bring about 9-11 and then distorted the U.S. response to Islamic terrorism requires thinking of the Bush family as a dynasty.<>Once in the White House, first as vice president to Ronald Reagan and later as president, George H.W. Bush was linked to at least two Middle East scandals. It’s never been entirely clear what Bush’s connection was to the Iran-Contra affair, in which clandestine arms shipments to Iran, some BCCI-financed, helped illegally fund the operations of the anti-Sandinista Contra rebels in Nicaragua.<>THERE is no evidence to suggest that the events of Sept. 11 could have been prevented or discovered ahead of time had someone other than a Bush been president.<<
So, Ozzie not only disregards proper use of English (“uncovered” for “I believe what they’re saying”) but also seems to not understand how a propaganda piece manipulates the language to imply but never prove.
You didn’t “uncover” anything at all. You came across assertions by certain people and chose to believe them.- CM
It’s true that I did not go to Saudi Arabia or dig around Salem bin Laden’s remains, but I became interested and read about the connections between the Bush family, BCCI, Khalid bin Mahfouz, etc.
I continue to read about Bush family with great interest, the way many of you do about William Ayres.
Recently declassifed information that George H.W Bush’s Zappata Oil was a CIA front, for example, answered questions Stephen McBride posed in his 1988 article, “George Bush: the Man Who Wasn’t there,” which tied Bush to the Bay of Pigs, which was also called “Operation Zappata.”
So, while I dont go to the National Archives or file FOIA requests, I come to conclusions based on other peoples’ research, they way I’m pretty sure most of you did about William Ayres.
The Bush family has unsavory ties, too.
I’m reposting this because I had formatting problems:
Folks:
Whenever you read an Ozzie-provided link, look for these things:
An opening statement that tells us what the writer intends to prove:
“How these unusual relationships helped bring about 9-11 and then distorted the U.S. response to Islamic terrorism requires thinking of the Bush family as a dynasty.”
This will be followed by many cleverly worded paragraphs, on the order of the example below, that imply wrongdoing without ever proving it:
“Once in the White House, first as vice president to Ronald Reagan and later as president, George H.W. Bush was linked to at least two Middle East scandals. It’s never been entirely clear what Bush’s connection was to the Iran-Contra affair…”
Finally, many unproved implications later, finish with a paragraph that contradicts the first one cited here:
“THERE is no evidence to suggest that the events of Sept. 11 could have been prevented or discovered ahead of time had someone other than a Bush been president.”
So, Ozzie not only disregards proper use of English (”uncovered” for “I believe what they’re saying”) but also seems to not understand how a propaganda piece manipulates the language to imply but never prove.
but also seems to not understand how a propaganda piece manipulates the language to imply but never prove.- CM
It’s not just that piece, CM.
But the mainstream media didn’t delve into the Bush’s ties to Salem bin Laden, Khalid bin Mahfouz or James Bath, though other sources did.
I find Bush’s ties to bin Mahfouz much more troubling that the ties to Willaim Ayres, which we heard about quite extensively.
I need some clarification here: What was wrong with the CIA’s efforts to bring down Castro and the Sandinistas?
I thought the U.S. was anti-communist. Why shouldn’t we have gone after repressive, murderous, Leninist thugs in our own hemisphere?
“It’s not just that piece, CM.”
“But the mainstream media didn’t delve into the Bush’s ties to Salem bin Laden, Khalid bin Mahfouz or James Bath, though other sources did.”
Here I thought you’d lead with your most powerful piece of evidence (which I apologize for having eviscerated).
Any chance you’ll tell us the names of your other (obviously lesser-regarded) sources?
Ozzie,
http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=salem_bin_laden&printerfriendly=true
The Strange Death Of bin
Laden’s Brother In Texas
By Bud Kennedy
budk@star-telegram.com
Ft Worth Star-Telegram
9-27-1
This is about the truth of the matter. Pure, unadulterated speculation, passed as truth.
I need some clarification here: What was wrong with the CIA’s efforts to bring down Castro and the Sandinistas?- CM
1) The Bay of Pigs was a disater.
2 George Bush said he wasn’t affiliated with the CIA until he became its head during the Ford Adminstration, which was also disproven by a Nov. 1963 memo in which J. Edagr Hoover discussed speaking with “George Bush of the CIA” regarding Cuban reaction to the Kennedy assassination.
3) Iran-Contra involved lying to Congress and the American people, and establishing a secret government outside the psky boundaries of Congressional oversight.
I realize that the CIA has waged secret wars and staged coups since its inception, and that the American people are lied to as a matter of course, which could be why nobody cared when Bill Clinton lied about his blow job and why William Ayers is a yawn.
This is about the truth of the matter. Pure, unadulterated speculation, passed as truth- Rock
Bush’s business ties with BCCI, bin Laden and bin Mahfouz are not a matter of speculation.
I am certain that Ozzie believes that Bill Clinton planted a suicide note in Vincent Foster’s apartment… while Hillary Clinton simultaneously murdered Foster in that park, and then smeared herself with his blood and did a naked celebratory dance under the full moon as well.
Moving from flimsy evidence to unsubstantiated conclusions is so much fun.
A RESPONSE TO THE MIRTHLESS OZ, LOOSELY BASED ON THE BLACK KNIGHT IN “THE LIFE OF BRIAN”
Bookworm Regulars chop off one of Oz’s arms.
Oz: “Hah, it’s nothing! A mere flesh wound!”
Bookworm Regulars chop off Oz’s second arm.
Oz: “Bah! A minor setback! I have Venezuelan newspapers that will heal this scratch!”
Bookworm Regulars sever Oz’s left leg.
Oz: “Feh! I’ll soon heal! I found a Palestinian university professor who knows how to grow back limbs!”
Bookworm Regulars complete the job with Oz’s right leg.
Oz: “Oh, yeah, you reactionary dolts! You can’t suppress the truth! Why, I’ve got more links and URLs in my trunk than I ever had in those four useless limbs! Bring it on!”
Ozzie,
I remind you that you are inferring some nefarious connection. I posted some of what I found. I did not link to others in similar vein.
I did no research on the other names, based on the nebulous findings of the first search. Simply would have been a waste of my time.
The thing that’s always fascinated me about this story is that the skewed and slanted intelligence somehow came out to say exactly that the Clinton Administration said in 1998.
Oz can’t handle the truth. But she can handle entertainment, which is all these arguments are to her.
It’s not about the truth concerning BUsh’s character, his connections, the people he knows, or the capability of people in government to abuse their powers. Oz cares nothing for these things.
Dear Ymarsakar:
Since Bush is a total lame duck, I think it would make more sense to scrutinize Barack Obama to make sure he doesn’t have any suspicious friends or connections who could screw us up in the coming years.
Yours for total honesty and non-partisanship in politics,
Ozzie
remind you that you are inferring some nefarious connection- Rock
Yes, in the same vein as Obama’s nefarious connections.
“I did no research on the other names, based on the nebulous findings of the first search. Simply would have been a waste of my time.”
I’m not asking you to. I’m telling you that he did business with bin Laden and bin Mahfouz during his Arbusto oil company days. And that bin Mahfouz is a shady guy.
BCCI was also a shady organization.
Ozzie (#33)
>> Yes, in the same vein as Obama’s nefarious connections. >>
Ozzie is about to overwhelm us with cut and paste articles outlining Obama’s nefarious connections.
Las Vegas will lay the odds on THAT.
Mike, put me down for 500 Obama dollars.
The thing that’s always fascinated me about this story is that the skewed and slanted intelligence somehow came out to say exactly that the Clinton Administration said in 1998. – Charlie
Yeah. Not surpsing, Paul Wolfowitz testified before Congress to get them to sign the Iraqi Liberation Act in 1998 and Clinton was contemplating war, as Arlen Specter screamed he couldn’t do so without a Declaration of War from Congress.
When it comes to foreign policy, Democrats Vs Republicans is often a case of Coke VS Pepsi.
However in Feb, 2001, Colin Powell told an audiene in Cairo that Saddam didn’t have WMD, in March, 2002, Denis Halliday said Saddam didnt have WMD, by Oct. 2002, several CIA agents were telling the foreign press that the WMD claims were exagerated, and by the time Judith Miller published her front page story about Saddam’s aluminum tubes, the foreign press was filled with former CIA agents saying that she was lying, as Dick Cehney and Condi Rice went on Meet the Press to describe mushroom cloud scenarios.
Meanwhile a Defense Department empolyee was writiing about the Office of Special Plans, which streamlined intelligence (while sidestepping the CIA) to make the case for war.
Ozzie,
I await the proof that these are admitted terrorists. There is no question of Obama’s ties to Ayers and Dohrn, admitted terrorists.
Ozzie,
Transcript: President Clinton explains Iraq strike
Wednesday, December 16, 1998
Where did these WMD’s disappear to?
I just had a conversation with a friend who had no idea that Obama had connections to the Chicago Democratic political machine, that he supported that machine when he had the opportunity to support reform, and that he had a history of playing the dirtiest politics.
Of course, my friend gets her news from public radio, so naturally she only hears what National Pravda Radio wants her to hear.
Dear rockdalian:
Could you send me your e-mail address?
I’d like to send you my photo.
I think you’ll be really impressed by just how deep into my ears I can plunge my forefingers: Na, na, na, na, na, I can’t hear you!
I mean, they are DEEP.
Cheers,
Ozzie
Ozzie is about to overwhelm us with cut and paste articles outlining Obama’s nefarious connections- Mike
I wasn’t even going to mention what Bush’s nefarious connections were until someone asked me, and those were just the ones I remembered off the top of my head.
You are all well versed in Obama’s shady connections, you dont need me to point them out.
My point, once again, is that I read about these connections on blogs and in Kevin Phillips’ book and in Creg Unger articles, and didnt hear about them in the mainstream media. (Outside of a few newspapers and the Wall Street Journal, from years ago).
You’re busy trying to prove why they don’t matter, which is what Democrats do when people bring up Obama’s shady ties.
No, Oz, we HAVE proven they “don’t matter” because we’ve shown how flawed and biased your source materials are.
Whenever somebody here skewers one of your talking points, you pretend it didn’t happen. Thus the comparison iof you to Monty Python’s Black Knight.
Your arguments are kind of like Chucky: No matter how many times we think we’ve pretty much demolished them, they keep coming back.
Ozzie,
Clinton Signs Iraq Liberation Act
Iraq News, SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 1998
http://www.fas.org/news/iraq/1998/11/01/981101-in.htm
Forgot to link link in post # 38
http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1998/12/16/transcripts/clinton.html
As long as we are off on tangents and in case y’all have yet to see this,
“Plans are being made to promote a national holiday for Barack Obama, who will become the nation’s 44th president when he takes the oath of office Jan. 20.”
http://cjonline.com/stories/110908/loc_353922770.shtml
Charles,
Al I know is that the foreign press and alternative media turned out to be telling the truth about WMD, when the government and mainstream media weren’t.
The New York Times was used as a vehicle for information that had already been proven untrue
Scott Ritter was one of the few people on American TV who doubted the official story and he was accused of all sorts of things, from taking money from Saddam to drinking Saddam Hussein’s Kool-Aid.
A leaked memo from MSNBC showed that Phil Donahue was a fired becasue he was a “tired liberal” who was out of touch with the marketplace and delighted in presenting anti-war guests, despite having MSNBC’s highest rating (this was before MSNBC discoved that liberals could be profitable).
I’m describing my experience with the mainstream media and how/why I became disillusioned.
“…it isn’t just the dumb cow looks, as if they hadn’t before heard what you were bringing up. It’s also the sentiment of ‘why on earth should that matter to me?’”
Yes, and that reminds me of this passage:
“Not long ago I was in California, the land of lost history, and listened to an educated acquaintance complain at great length about the amount of money which the Cold War cost: asked whether he would have preferred to see a Western Europe dominated by Communist regimes, he shrugged and said he didn’t much mind….His sense that there is something called Western civilization, which needs, periodically, to be defended from challenges like the one once posed by Communism–that had disappeared….”
–”A Dearth of Feeling”, by Anne Applebaum (author of “Gulag: A History”), in “The Future of the European Past”, edited by Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball
Clinton Signs Iraq Liberation Act- Rock
I know. He did this after Paul Wolfowitz testified before Congress. He also contemplated war with Iraq, as Arlen Specter screamed bloody hell that he needed a Declaration of War before doing so.
But, the push for war in Iraq actually began in 1992, though, at that time, Americans were freaked out when the Wolfowitz Doctrine was leaked to the New York Times.
To put it more bluntly: the modern progressive is at best indifferent when asked to choose between civilization and communist or fascist barbarism. Unfortunately, many progressives strongly prefer barbarism.
Ozzie,
Exclusive: Scott Ritter in His Own Words
Scott Ritter was the UN’s top weapons inspector in Iraq until 1998, when he resigned claiming President Clinton was too easy on Saddam
In 1998, you said Saddam had “not nearly disarmed.” Now you say he doesn’t have weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Why did you change your mind?
I have never given Iraq a clean bill of health! Never! Never! ….
What can you say?” Matt asks. Well, you can say that Scott Ritter had trouble getting his message out because 1) he took $400,000 from a pro-Saddam Iraqi businessman to fund his documentary film, money that turned out to have been funneled from the Oil-for-Food program, 2) he had been accused of sex crimes about a year before the Iraq War debate started up and 3) the tone of his film, book, articles and testimony tended to be, well, slightly hysterical. (He also insisted repeatedly that he hadn’t changed his mind about Iraq when a substantial paper trail suggested that he had, which didn’t exactly enhance his credibility on the subject.)
Ozzie, you’ll love this one:
I have a psychiatrist friend, a man paid very well to keep high-strung, highly intelligent corporate types from self-destructing.
He is funny, witty and fun to pal around with.
He’s also a liberal and a Unitarian, which means that he is not too well equipped to deal with reality outside of his pious little orthodoxies.
About three years ago he told me, with a straight face, that LBJ had been behind the assassination of JFK.
How did he know? He’d seen a BBC documentary on PBS the night before claiming such.
That was enough for him!
Can you see why he reminds me of you?
Charles Martel,
BTW, thanks for the laugh.
Charles Martel Attempts an Ozzie-Like Cut and Paste:
On Bush’s qualifications to be president:
“Never, never use a dark blush base on your cheeks if your skin is a T-6. People who make this mistake are walking fashion blunders!”
—Cosmopolitan magazine, Sept. 2000
Why Democrats are never as culpable as Republicans:
“People who have never been exposed to the finer things of life, such as good food and clean linens, cannot be expected to behave as well as those who have.”
—Emily Post, “Manners for the Modern Rube,” 1951
Is red meat a Republican plot?:
“Not only is the color similar to the colors you see on maps of red states vs. blue, the sheer effort required to digest and evacuate red meat means time taken away from surfing the Internet looking for arguments against the existence of Republicans and George McHitler Bush.”
—Paul Krugman, New York Times, October 5, 2006
Why Israel needs to be spanked:
“The Grinch was a Jew.”
—Oakland Tribune, July 11, 2007
About three years ago he told me, with a straight face, that LBJ had been behind the assassination of JFK.
How did he know? He’d seen a BBC documentary on PBS the night before claiming such.
That was enough for him!- Cm
E Howard Hunt and Jack Ruby also said LBJ did it.
And the History Channel featured a documentary that said as much, too.
Believe it or not, that’s not enough for me.
But, yes, when it comes to George W. Bush, Kevin Phillips’ books have been enough for me.
Charles Martel Attempts an Ozzie-Like Cut and Paste- CM
No, here’s how it’s done:
“Sometimes my wife will flinch, as though I’ve landed a broadside. The problem is that she and her fellow libs are equipped with what I call TBFs — “Terminator Brain Flaps” — viscuous Terminator-like flaps that immediately fold over to plug gaping holes or threatening breaches in their thinking and logic.” – CM
I can actually envision your wife flinching!
Oz, I’m sure you envision lots of things.
That’s your problem: none of them have anything to do with reality.
Well done, Charles! You’ve managed to segue Ozzie’s thread into Comedy Central.
“And the History Channel featured a documentary that said as much, too.”
Ozzie, haven’t you noticed that a lot of what the History Channel broadcasts is crackpot? And most of the rest is sensationalized almost past recognition?
“Scott Ritter was the UN’s top weapons inspector in Iraq until 1998, when he resigned claiming President Clinton was too easy on Saddam”
Scott Ritter was a favorite on Fox and was always critical of the inspection process– Sadam was obfuscating, etc.
I always wondered why his position changed so quickly.
Of course, Ariana Huffington was also a regular back then.
Using your standard for connections Bush had to Arabs, this should discredit Ritter as a source.
Oz has standards for her sources? Since when?
Where did these WMD’s disappear to?
Bush disappeared the yellow cake, at least.
Link
Secret U.S. Mission Hauls Uranium From Iraq On July 5, 2008, the Associated Press (AP) released a story titled: Secret U.S. mission hauls uranium from Iraq .
The opening paragraph is as follows: The last major remnant of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program – a huge stockpile of concentrated natural uranium – reached a Canadian port Saturday to complete a secret U.S. operation that included a two week airlift from Baghdad and a ship voyage crossing two oceans.
[...]
We have been hearing from the far-left for more than five years how, “Bush lied.” Somehow, that slogan loses its credibility now that 550 metric tons of Saddam’s yellowcake, used for nuclear weapon enrichment, has been discovered and shipped to Canada for its new use as nuclear energy. It appears that American troops found the 550 metric tons of uranium in 2003 after invading Iraq .
They had to sit on this information and the uranium itself, for fear of terrorists attempting to steal it. It was guarded and kept safe by our military in a 23,000-acre site with large sand beams surrounding the site
[...]
Once the AP released the story, the mainstream media should have picked it up and broadcast it worldwide. This never happened, due in large part I believe, to the fact that the mainstream media would have to admit they were wrong about Bush’s war motives all along. Thankfully, the AP got it right when it said, “The removal of 550 metric tons of ‘yellowcake’” – the seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment – was a significant step toward closing the books on Saddam’s nuclear legacy.” Closing the book on Saddam’s nuclear legacy? Did Saddam have a nuclear legacy after all? I thought Bush lied?
Of course, my friend gets her news from public radio, so naturally she only hears what National Pravda Radio wants her to hear.
A propagandist, depending on his or her abilities and perception capabilities, can acquire true information from even the propaganda messages and methods used on NPR. However, the targets of propaganda, what I call the consumers of propaganda, will only believe what they are told to believe.
Such is the difference between users of tools and tools made to be used: two entirely different categories there.
ell done, Charles! You’ve managed to segue Ozzie’s thread into Comedy Central.
Oz complains that we don’t like her sources and ask her for links but then don’t believe. It is more like we believe her sources but we don’t believe in Oz’s capability to judge those sources and to differentiate truth from fiction. Do we believe the source that says so and so believes the 2000/2004 elections were rigged by savvy electronic voting machine conspirators funded and owned by the Religious Right? Yes we do. Do we then believe that Oz knows how to evaluate that source? No, we don’t. Do we believe Oz believes exactly what the link says or what the quoted portion says? No, we don’t.
Oz’s own personal character and judgment ability is in question here and given such an obstacle, sources simply do not matter.
She says she wants bipartisanship. So she concentrates on only attacking Republicans and accusing Republicans like Bush of things while defending Democrats via tu quoque.
She says both parties are going to lead to the same disasters in America. So she is going to support Obama because of Sarah.
She says she isn’t entertained by violence. So she says that the coming disasters in America will be interesting and fascinating to witness.
She believes that nobody and nothing can prevent or solve AMerica’s problems. So she highlights and approves of the quote that says “heroes either live long enough to become the villains that they fight or they die. Even if nobody and nothing could prevent or solve America’s problems, that is no reason to gloat over the tragedy of the human condition when one finds it, but Oz differs on that score.
I could go on but I have to go.
Ymarsakar:
A few years ago David Horowitz’s Front Page website had a regular visitor who called himself The Professor.
The guy would regularly sneer at the conservatives on the site, dropping all sorts of post-modernist jargon into his insults and managing to let on that he was laying more than his share of dimwitted co-eds and drinking a lot of good French wine, all courtesy of the taxpayers.
The more earnest visitors to the site thought he was for real, and would write these long responses trying to refute what he had said.
We finally figured out that The Professor was a brilliant satirist who had “progressive” and upper middle-class sneers and talking points down perfectly. Eventually the whole site came to look forward to his visits.
Perhaps we should look at this site’s contrarians as wannabe The Professors. True, they lack the humor, vocabulary, erudition and education of The Professor, but they are the best we have.
So, I’m proposing that we entertain them and actually try to top their off-the-wallness. Why not compete to see who can come up with the densest, most clueless interpretations of reality? It would be fun to watch them sputter as we out-do them.
I’ll propose some competition categories later this afternoon.
>>She says she wants bipartisanship.>>
Bipartisanship to people on the right means that we reach a compromise with each side getting a little and giving a little.
Bipartisanship to a Liberal means giving them what they want. Anything less is “obstructionist”.
Why not compete to see who can come up with the densest, most clueless interpretations of reality?
I’ve tried my hand at it before here, though I never got any responses from Bookwormroom’s regulars over it so I didn’t know what they thought of it.
It is tiresome though, even though I dare say I did a better job of arguing the Left’s points than the Leftists.
The guy would regularly sneer at the conservatives on the site, dropping all sorts of post-modernist jargon into his insults and managing to let on that he was laying more than his share of dimwitted co-eds and drinking a lot of good French wine, all courtesy of the taxpayers.
Sounds like the narcissist guy Shrinkwrapped wrote a post concerning his therapy/psychoanalysis sessions with. Narcissist guy was banging a mistress while boasting to his therapist, SHrinkwrapped, of how young she is and how she would “do anything” while complaining about his own wife’s deficiencies. Now there’s narcissism for ya.
Shrinks tend to need psychoanalysts of their own given the issues of transference, counter-transference, and sheer stress that one gets from hearing and dealing with and thinking about other people’s problems. Did you ever wonder why most psychiatrists are Leftist and fake liberal? There is your answer.
Only the most perceptive, the most hardcore, the most tough minded folks can conduct the therapy of others while not catching their neuroses. I would classify Shrinkwrapped, Neo-Neocon, Dr. Sanity, and Siggy as four such persons.
Neo wasn’t very “hardcore” when she started blogging after 9/11, but over the years she has been willing to adopt more Jacksonian positions like the ones I have. For example, I’ve had the same views of obama as I have always had of the Left, mostly, after 9/11. Neo, however, perhaps still had faith, of one kind or another, in her former Democrat friends and in the Democrat party, in general if not in specific. I think constant backstabs from the Democrats concerning voter fraud, counting all the votes (meaning not counting all the votes that are for Republicans or Hillary), and the class attacks on Sarah Palin finally made her say it out loud.
In a weird sort of juxtaposition, the positions are reversed. When I first read Neo’s blog, I really didn’t like the Democrat party and hated their betrayal of humanity and the dignity of individual human beings (in addition to their human rights). SHe, however, was more positive, optimistic, and calmer than I was. Now, however, I totally expect the Democrat party to be as they were in 2008, so I wasn’t angered by their actions. I saw it as an attack by an enemy that required cool thinking and objective analysis to counter, nothing less and nothing more. Certain Democrat individuals gloating over the 2008 Obama win, however, could anger me but that is because I still care for human rights and the individual dignity of the human being. Neo in the last runs of the 2008 election, however, visibly became angry with Democrat tactics. She said so in her posts, after all.
But that’s okay, she’ll get an objective perspective on her anger, she is after all a classical liberal and we all tend to have that perspective, and then she won’t ever be surprised by Democrat mendacity and miasma ever again.
Bipartisanship to a Liberal means giving them what they want. Anything less is “obstructionist”.
I call them fake liberals since they present to me an illusion that I will never accept. If they called themselves Americans, I’d call them anti-Americans. If they called themselves pro-international law, I would call them anti-law. That is just how it is. Labels are words and words have power in that they control people’s meaning: one reason why being very specific and unambiguous about one’s meaning is very important in propaganda or communication.
If I say someone is “Liberal” that can have all sorts of meanings from one nation to another, one party to another. If I call somebody “fake”, however, then the meaning is much much more clear.
**********
On the issue of Oz, her sources, and her evaluation of them, here is some more elaboration and details.
Sources are evaluated in any number of ways. The truth of any argument can be refined from two basic elements, the judgment and work (scholarly or not) of the author combined with the author’s researched sources.
Now, the author’s judgment and her own work is made manifest here compared to the research. It does not matter if the research is 100% true and 100% verified and 100% scholarly and 100% objective. Unless the author is conducting plagiarism and saying that she is just going to copy what her own research says and present it as her own, then the quality of her sources do not determine the quality of the work of the author. It doesn’t make the author’s arguments intrinsically better, it doesn’t make the author’s logic run smooth and consistent, and it doesn’t make the author produce good thesis and justifications.
The author uses her research to conduct her own little work and thesis, after all. The sources are important but not 100% determinate. For example, let us look at these scenarios. Say that Oz has sources that are 100% correct and 100% valid, and then Oz uses those sources to produce a thesis that is 100% wrong, justified with completely erroneous and illogical arguments. Can Oz then say that just because her sources are scholarly and academic, that her own work and arguments are scholarly, academic, verified, and true? No, she cannot. (But she does, if you hadn’t noticed already).
The opposite is also existent. If Oz makes a true claim and uses correct logic and arguments to justify her claim, but utilizes a wrong source or a source that has credibility issues or a source that is sensationalist and thus biased, does that then make Oz’s true claim invalid? No, it weakens her arguments for that claim, perhaps, but it doesn’t invalidate it, not when it is true. If Oz said the sun rose in the East and set in the West, and then quoted an article that happened to have religious testimony saying that the world was flat, would that invalidate Oz’s claim? No, it wouldn’t.
One of my hobbies is collecting intelligence: raw data essentially and drawing the right conclusions from them. For example, I often look at the words people write on the internet and try to construct a psyche profile of their personality and motivations in order to predict what they will do next or what they will believe. The model is then refined by me probing the subject in question and testing whether my hypothesis are true or not. I also look at world leaders, compare their actions in tests of crisis to their stated personalities or their popularly known personalities (Bushitler for example) and see if I can determine the veracity or not of the claims versus the reality. In order for me to conduct such things, however, I need 2 things: good judgment, perception, and empathy combined with good sources, diverse sources, and quality analysis by others to double check my own.
I get other people’s analysis through blogs such as this one. I get good sources by checking the character and biases of those that I read. I get diverse sources by watching internet arguments and problem children that result from national security issues or crises (Iraq and Fannie May for example). I get empathy from watching, reading, and hearing about the suffering of Iraqi civilians, Rwanda hotel managers, American soldiers, and just the general powerless and downtrodden masses of this planet that get crushed underfoot whenever anybody with power sneezes. Whenever it gets uncomfortable, whenever people say they “can’t watch this any more”, I know that I must test the limits of my empathic capacity more by watching, hearing, and reading more about it. Nick Berg’s execution video was something I kept watching, for example, in order to puzzle out what I was feeling in relation to what others said they felt and whether I was building up a tolerance (cynicism) or whether something else was happening (righteous anger and ruthlessness to crush Zarqawi). As I have studied and trained using Target Focus Training’s methodology, I have come to understand more about violence and how it affects the human psyche: thus helping my empathy reach higher levels of accuracy and capacity. Few people have ever truly felt violence on a one to one scale, yet the 1 to 1 scale is the most potent compared to the rather weak feeling you get from watching or reading about how American soldiers are dying due to violence. What is violence? Is violence body bags or is violence the conceptualization and training used to create an injury (visualized in one’s leg) of shattering a knee cap and making it look like a dog’s hind leg? Is that what violence is, have you understood violence on a 1 to 1 scale once you know you can visualize and create this reality on another person, thus also realizing that it can be done to your own knee as well?
We are social creatures and as social creatures we have a natural affinity to feel disgust at violence, death, murder, cannibalism and what not. it is healthy to feel disgust when you see or read or think about such things. It is healthy to recoil from the snuff video of Nick Berg having his head separated by the sawing motion of Zarqawi’s (Peace Be Upon Him PBUH) knife. I, however, wanted more. I wanted to understand more, I wanted to feel more so as to truly know that my views and emotions are objective analysis of reality, not just instinctual reactions not of my own will. It is extremely hard to grasp the concept of killing a million, or even 10,000, unless you have seen the killing of your friends, your family, or your neighbors. We live in a peaceful time so we do not truly understand violence: we just see what the MSM wants us to see in Iraq. We only know that we dislike it and want it to go away. I was unsatisfied with such things, however. I wanted to know more. I wanted a more accurate analysis of such events.
Only through such things can I get good judgment and accurate perceptions of reality: of real people and events. How can I judge a killer, his motivations, and his ethics if I thought and felt like our Helen here and shunned violence completely by ignoring it? How would I be able to judge the character of world leaders that are killers if I am unable to judge killers? How can I judge the evil or the good without comprehending the consequences of their decisions in the realms of violence if I believe that I don’t need to do violence and aren’t allowed to do violence by “law”? I would be liable to transfer my beliefs and restrictions about the law to other scenarios, like Iraq, that are not necessarily designed to fit in my little box of preconceptions.
My standards for searching out the truth requires me to say that I am not impressed with Ozzie here nor by her self-stated claims of having the “truth”. The truth requires a lot of hard work, some of it dealing with introspection and not politics. The truth is not revealed to any human individual simply because they wish it.
A person, like Oz, that reserves most of their motivation to going up against Sarah Palin and her “religious right” is not a person that has seen and felt what I have in the dark corridors of human violence and evil. It is an issue of judgment in the end and not an issue of debate point arguments over sources. It never was to me. The truth can come from a murderer or a US Marine, neither depends on the state of the source absolutely: it only depends on the character of the people making the evaluations of the sources. Torture works wonderful or it works horribly: again, depending on the character and capability of those evaluating the subjects and answers given from torture.
The Truth is never true simply because it makes you personally feel better: those that make judgments must hold themselves to a higher standard than that.
With all the conservative blogosphere lamenting about a possible upcoming “Fairness Doctrine,” there has been no mention of fighting back in the courts.
I know that takes money, but I can’t imagine the company that pays Rush Limbaugh $400 million lying down and taking this. If conservative radio is so profitable, you would think they would at least attempt to have the law found unconstitutional?
I’m guessing that if The Commander in Thief™ attempts the Fairness Doctrine revival, he’ll wait until he has a couple new pals on the SCOTUS.
>>he’ll wait until he has a couple new pals on the SCOTUS.>>
I think he’ll need more than that. I anticipate that 2 or maybe 3 will resign Jan 21, 2009, effective at the end of the current session. They’ll be replaced with left leaning activists, but that won’t be enough to make the difference. With Congress in his pocket, I anticipate that Obama will at least attempt to pack the court. Two more justices of the same ilk will put the ball in his court.
The hot rumor here is that Obama may nominate Howard Dean to the Supreme Court.
Obama may present the nominaton as a two-fer: Not only will he get a dyed-in-the-wool liberal on the court, he will help the U.S. save some money.
Instead of paying that guy to open each SCOTUS session by saying, “Oyez, oyez!” they’ll have Howard come out and scream, “Eeeeeyyyyyyehhhhhhhhhhharrrrrgh!”
Ozzie,
Would you identify the liberal blog where you are leading them to the great bipartisan middle, by puncturing all of their partisan ideologies and beliefs?
Just asking.
>>you are leading them to the great bipartisan middle, by puncturing all of their partisan ideologies and beliefs>>
Correction…
“you are …TRYING to lead… them to the great bipartisan middle…” !!
You’re right, Sue! Of course, Y would argue that Ozzie’s nihilism prevents any real effort at trying, since it’s all doomed and all worthless, anyway. Relentless negativity is so effective, isn’t it?
On the other part of it… I meant the following, but was too subtle:
The great bipartisan middle, also known as The Great Goo.
Back in the early 60s when I was a teen in LA, we used to ride around and listen to Wolfman Jack broadcast from his 150,000-watt radio station in Mexico.
People as far away as Ohio and Guam often would hear the Wolfman coming in loud and clear.
U.S. authorities couldn’t touch him because they had no power over Mexican radio.
Now, supposing that after The One begins his frontal assault on broadcast freedom, we knuckle draggers all pony up $50 a year to help buy two serviceable old ships that could be converted into floating radio stations?
How about if every day Rush took a boat from his Florida digs out past the U.S. territorial limit and began broadcasting back at the States with 150,000 watts of Reactionary Radio Power behind him?
He could send a feed via satellite to the West Coast ship that would then blanket everything from San Diego Harbor in the south to Palinia and Siberia in the north.
(I have no doubt that the likes of Jeanine Garofolo or Al Franken would pay somebody to shoot an Exocet at our ships, so we’d need to hire some tough old former U.S. Navy defense specialists to keep them afloat.)
Charles (#72)
>> we knuckle draggers all pony up $50 a year to help buy two serviceable old ships that could be converted into floating radio stations? >>
Get a drive going among all the talk show hosts and bloggers… easily, easily, we could do this!
>> How about if every day Rush took a boat from his Florida digs out past the U.S. territorial limit >>
The fastest, highest-performance cigarette boat would be nice! I’d say, use a helicopter, but there’s something about those boats that just frickin’ fits.
ZOOM! There goes Rush, zipping on out! Three hours later, ZOOM, there goes Hannity. And Laura Ingraham! And Mark Levin! And the others! Two platforms; two dueling (or is it, dualing?) radio stations, free and clear, broadcasting Radio Free America into the oppressed heartland!
Dang, Mike, I LIKE it when you get enthusiastic!
Any chance you’d consent to be the program director?
The Left has no idea about the kinds of creativity we can unleash once they begin to push us… You want to see nonviolent resistance? Al Gore has told us that now is the time for civil disobedience!
(Have I said this before; I might have.)
Once Obama begins to come after our guns… a campaign occurs out here in ‘conservatism in exile’… and suddenly, that year – is it 2011? 2012? 2013? – in the evening of April 14th, twenty million Americans park their cars at the curb or in their driveways, leave the doors unlocked, and wipe the door handles down with rags soaked in alcohol. At 8:30 am, the morning of April 15th, they all call their local police station and report that their guns have all been stolen from their unlocked cars. All eighty million guns… simply gone. Where did they go??? No one knows!
And if they can’t go after twenty million illegal immigrants, they can’t exactly go after twenty million American gun owners, now, can they?
Creepy good, Mike.
Add to that the millions of unregistered guns that the authorities don’t know about.
I hope that gives the nancy boys on the left a little pause for reflection.
You two are beginning to sound like John Ringo’s novel “Ghost” with that cigarette boat reference.
Ymar (#65)
>> I get other people’s analysis through blogs such as this one. I get good sources by checking the character and biases of those that I read. I get diverse sources by watching internet arguments and problem children that result from national security issues or crises >>
I enjoyed your entire comment very much, but the paragraph that starts with the above was in particular very striking.
>> A person, like Oz, that reserves most of their motivation to going up against Sarah Palin and her “religious right” is not a person that has seen and felt what I have in the dark corridors of human violence and evil. >>
How many people are relatively new to their conservative outlook, having been shocked into it by 9-11? That is true for me – I was a squishy moderate liberal with libertarian leanings before 9-11. The fact that there were forces in the world that wanted to rain devastation down upon us indiscriminately, and wanted to do so without any thought, care, or concern… that was shattering to my former worldview. I keep running across comments from various conservatives, on blogs, that indicate that what happened to me because of 9-11 happened to quite a few people.
Oz sees only that ‘fundamentalist’ religious people are to be greatly feared. She’s not alone; you see quite a bit of that as well. I see signs of authoritarianism in a few such people, enough where I tend to look for it. But it’s there only sometimes. And I don’t see that tendency to authoritarianism in Sarah Palin at all. She seems to *get* the idea of individual freedom and individual responsibility at a very deep level. If Sarah Palin has areas to develop, that doesn’t appear to be one of them.
Charles (#76)
I find it slightly creepy, too, but only slightly. If they come for our guns, we just hide em. And the organized campaign to call in the “theft” is a way of giving them the middle finger, I guess. Immature of me? Probably. It forms a defense of sorts that, when they show up at my door, I get to claim, “No, those guns were stolen, and I called it in. I simply don’t have them anymore. You can’t take what I don’t have.”
It’s a worse level of breaking the law than deliberately speeding (and isn’t deliberately speeding a very mild form of civil disobedience, for which you’re willing to pay the price if caught?). But not worse by too much. The police might try to break the resistance by going after a few – a thousand? – of such gun-hiding people, but they could hardly scratch the surface of the effort.
And heck, I made it too elaborate. Just move your car out to the driveway at 8:20 am, unlock the doors, wipe the handles, and call it in at 8:30 am.
Just a thought experiment, really. It’s hard to govern a people when they decide en masse that they’re not all that willing to be governed anymore. And I’m convinced we conservatives have a great deal of creativity inside us, and a principled fierceness that can be awakened as well.
>>Now, supposing that after The One begins his frontal assault on broadcast freedom, we knuckle draggers all pony up $50 a year to help buy two serviceable old ships that could be converted into floating radio stations?>>
Not to dampen such good enthusiasm here, but even if the Fairness Doctrine gets passed, is it likely to affect Satellite Radio? Might as well just subscribe with our $50 per year… Let Rush et al stay home or in their studios. Of course, if Satellite is affected, count me in for $50 per year!
Also, what about the possibility that the next 9/11 is an EMP attack? That pretty well takes out everything in the way of communication, doesn’t it? I’ve been thinking about short wave radio lately. It could be handy…but I don’t know how to get started. I don’t really understand the EMP thing – I understand it disables all(?) electronic capability unless you have shielded lines, but I don’t understand how. I don’t understand if it will disable all electric lines either, or whether that damage is temporary or permanent. How does it disable them? Are the effects reversible?
When you think about zip communication – no computers, no internet, no telephones (would cell phones work?), no television, no radio….we’d be back in the early 1900s in a flash. As I understand it, it would also disable vehicles. No physical damage – but they just wouldn’t work. No cars, no trucks. No trucks, no food in the cities.
Like I said…I’ve been thinking about a short wave radio!
I don’t really understand the EMP thing – I understand it disables all(?) electronic capability unless you have shielded lines, but I don’t understand how.
It is the same thing that happens when you pass electricity through your laptop when it is submerged in water (meaning when it is turned on in water) or when you use a powerful magnet and run it over your hard drives.
Electricity, what we think of as electrons flowing through copper wire, is the fundamental basis for our infrastructure, whether it be generators, power lines, transformers, DC/AC adaptors, or telephone lines. All use electricity, but electricity is not just electrons passing along a piece of metal or silicon. Electricity can also take the form of electromagnetism. Magnetics can produce electricity. An EMP bomb is just a huge magnet that tends to magnetize metals in its range. When a metal rod moves in an EMP field, electricity is produced. That’s what foot generators are. Move your foot, rotate the generator, and electricity is produced. A large enough EMP field can essentially short circuit delicate electronic components. Circuit boards are designed with fastidious care as to how many volts can go here as opposed to there. The electricity is controlled by resistors that soak up electrons and turn them into heat, thus forcing electricity to move where we want it to given that electrons follow the path of least resistance. When an EMP field envelops electronics, all the silicon in it starts passing electricity everywhere. This tends to produce heat and unintended consequences, like chips melting. Chips aren’t designed to handle all that much amps in those little lines you see on the board. Microchips aren’t designed to handle more than a few microamps along a line, I believe. When an EMP field consumes them, large amounts of electricity starts going everywhere and now you have a fried electronic device that won’t ever function again because the components are sort of melted together.
Faraday cages and various other methods can be used to protect electronic devices but they are not very convenient. Depending on the EMP yield and closeness, even hardening won’t protect some electronics.
If all the metal in a microchip was a superconductor at room temperature, then hardening would be very easy. A superconductor won’t increase in heat from increased electricity so it won’t burn out the microcircuits as easily. There will still be resistors that may burn out, but components like that can be designed to be easily replaced.
I may have a couple of my details wrong here, but I believe the general principles will prove out to be accurate.
After looking at wikipedia, in order for an EMP blast to cover the nation, the attacking organization would need an inter-continental ballistic missile set to detonate at specific spot and at a specific altitutde with a huge blast yield (in the megatons not kilotons of TNT).
Iran is working on it but their technical base infrastructure is not up to it. China may perhaps cobble something up from what Clinton gave them in terms of US satellite technology, but they rely upon satellites just as much as we do. Their financial markets would crash if they were ever hit by a nuke, EMP or not, and the communist dictators in China value their own skin and bank accounts more than they care about attacking America. Greed and corruption are useful and predictable in this sense.
The most effective use of EMP is as a prelude to conventional warfare, in that it will knock out our GPS and spy satellites, thus blinding us and forcing the US military to use Cold War nuclear war backups, which we aren’t very up to date on (they call it NBC warfare). Can you imagine people trying to do things without cellphones, satellites, and what not? We’d be back in the 50s in terms of the speed of light and relay systems. Not even radio can go from this nation to the other side of the globe, not without satellites: forget the MSM’s video streaming.
Only the US military would have prepared for it and been adaptable enough to overcome it.
I enjoyed your entire comment very much, but the paragraph that starts with the above was in particular very striking.
Thanks, Mike.
The fact that there were forces in the world that wanted to rain devastation down upon us indiscriminately, and wanted to do so without any thought, care, or concern… that was shattering to my former worldview. I keep running across comments from various conservatives, on blogs, that indicate that what happened to me because of 9-11 happened to quite a few people.
This is a derivation of the survival mechanism in human nature. Whenever you see two neighbors going at it over something they find of great importance, you may notice that they will band together (almost all the time) if a foreign threat came about that threatened both of them. This is not sure fire, of course, since one neighbor may backstab or sell out the other to the foreign threat in return for a promise of safe conduct. This often never works due to complications, which is why treason is treason only if it doesn’t prosper.
Y, you have a remarkable depth and breadth of eclectic knowledge. I’m quite impressed.
Most people are comfortable with what they were born with or what they were raised as. Some aren’t, but those are the minority. So if you were born or raised a Democrat, you will stay one unless you have a very good reason (like survival) to change things around. Most human beings like safety and predictability. It is only a small minority that likes excitement, roughing it, and risks to life or limb (adrenaline junkies or US Rangers, sometimes hard to tell the difference).
A huge psychological shock is often necessarily to get people to change their minds. Neo-Neocon wrote a whole series on the psychology of how her own mind changed. This requires a shock but it doesn’t necessarily mean a 9/11 or a threat to one’s own life or limb. It just means that it has to be a psychological shock that your mental defenses can’t deny or hide away from your consciousness. Any shock, at this level, would do.
Mike (#79)
I meant “creepy good” in only the most complimentary sense.
I’m with you when it comes to thinking that if the Obamaites push on the Constitution, the creativity and humor (as well as courage) of the conservative pushback will be quite impressive.
Y, you have a remarkable depth and breadth of eclectic knowledge. I’m quite impressed.
One tries, Book, one tries.
An EMP bomb is just a huge magnet that tends to magnetize metals in its range.
For the sake of accuracy, that isn’t really true but for the lay person it is good enough.
The primary reason why I went and looked up the wikipedia article is because I couldn’t figure out how a nuclear bomb could create a magnetic field just by ejecting neutrinos, neutrons, and other radiation. EMP stands for electro magnetic pulse but the pulse itself needs a magnetic field so where does the magnetic field come from inside a nuke? The answer is that the magnetic field doesn’t come from the nuke, the magnetic field comes from the Earth’s magnetosphere. The expulsion of photos and other radiation from a nuke increases this magnetic effect, perhaps through resonance or spikes in energy levels, for a brief time. That time is enough to melt circuits measured in the nanometers (CPUs for example). The smaller the circuit, the harder it is to harden it. Compare this to vacuum tubes and analog computers. WWII and Cold War technologies actually weren’t very vulnerable to EMP blasts. In today’s world, however, things are different. The more sophisticated the technological level of a civilization, the more easy it is to destroy that civilization through sabotage and collapses. The good news is that an advanced civilization will have the resources to prevent sabotage and collapse, if the will and wisdom are there. If you don’t, well, not even God can save you from the consequences of your own mistakes in the end.
>>that was shattering to my former worldview>>
It may seem silly, but that’s how I felt about taqiyya. I think I had just always assumed that truthfulness was considered a virtue by all cultures, and “bad” people told lies. It was a shock to discover that “good” muslims were considered virtuous if they lied to non-muslims if it benefitted islam. By my standards, then, there are no “good” muslims – that is muslims you can trust. How can you do a “handshake” deal if you can’t trust someone? The same is now true of Leftist Democrats, I think. Their moral compass tells them that the end justifies the means, and lies are just tools to accomplish their end goal, whatever it might be.
I hadn’t realized how much I simply expected to trust someone’s word until I learned that doing so was naive – that judging a person’s truth telling is not a function of their moral compass so much as their moral culture. I find that incredibly corrosive to a relationship.
As far as dumb cow looks, I live in the L.A. area and I recently found that of the few people with whom I spoke about politics recently. none of them had heard that the L.A, Times was withholding an Obama video, nor had they heard of the protests at the Times building, even though this is local news with national and international impact.
They think that Conservatives are ignorant hicks and dumb yahoos and imagine that they embody spohistication by “questioning authority”, yet they never question their spoonfed ideology from college on through all their media sources.
If the Unfairness Doctrine returns, we must fight it tooth and nail.
Suek (#86)
>> It may seem silly, but that’s how I felt about taqiyya. >>
Not silly at all.
We in the West still have a belief that moral codes are by their nature universal – they apply to all. “Do unto others” doesn’t apply solely to those on your street, in your church, or wearing your particular hairstyle.
Just about everything associated with Islam is tribal in nature, and that includes taqiyya – the way in which a member of the tribe is allowed to interact with anyone not in the tribe. And quite frankly, anything goes.
I can even be convinced that taqiyya is evil. A Muslim may say to a non-Muslim, “I reject taqiyya”, but how can he be trusted? For it is written into his Book. An entire movement within Islam may codify in their statements of principles that they reject taqiyya, but how can they be trusted? For it is written into their Book, and they may simply be fooling you.
Now anybody or any group can fool you at any point in any day. But to have taqiyya written explicitly into the founding Book of a religion… puts that religion into a thoroughly unreliable light. A Muslim can turn on a dime, at any time, when dealing with a non-Muslim. He or she need never justify anything to anyone. Any Muslim action of any sort, in dealing with a non-Muslim, is automatically valid, due to taqiyya. The Muslim is solely answerable to the Man or Woman currently in charge, who will condone or punish what he’s done. Which makes taqiyya the codification of the Rule Of Man, not the Rule Of Law.
I love all the suggestions here. The problem with satellite radio is that broadcasts will only be heard by the already converted. Listening to Dennis Prager was one of the crucial stepping stones on my path to conservatism. If I hadn’t stumbled on him and other conservative talk-show hosts in the car while seeking an escape from NPR I might never have found these ideas.
No, we must demand “fairness” to be applied also to NPR, news, commentary, panel shows, and I wish, college presenters and debates.
Please help me understand how a privately owned business like radio can be forced to hire people they don’t wish to broadcast. Please also help me understand why the news media and these other programs would be immune to the fairness of representing conservatives. I simply don’t don’t get it.
I did mention, didn’t I, that Mr. Bookworm, who regularly reads and listens to the MSM, had never heard of Tony Rezko? He’d also missed the fact that Sarkozy, of France, considered Obama’s arrogance and ignorance disturbing. Like so many busy, intelligent, semi-informed liberals, he reads headlines, not page 23, bottom left column. Oh, and of, course, he listens to Jon Stewart periodically, for the news you can really trust.
Mr. Bookworm is a consumer of analysis and conclusions, he does not wish to do what I do in the realm of original or independent analysis.
He’d also missed the fact that Sarkozy, of France, considered Obama’s arrogance and ignorance disturbing.
I don’t think fake liberals, for all their complaints about international law and unilateral actions, gives a damn for France or any other nation. I think fake liberals care only for one thing: numero uno.
You probably need to stop telling us about your marriage, Bookworm.
No, she doesn’t.
I don’t mind Bookworm telling us about her marriage because I think it probably mirrors the marriages of some of us here.
It certainly does mine.
There is some consolation in being able to compare experiences. Remember, when you are married to a liberal, you are married to somebody who, no matter how sweet and lovable, has two advantages in political discussions that you cannot overcome:
—An almost total disregard for logic
—An almost religious faith in the MSM
Ever try to talk a devout cultist out of his belief? If you have, you know that that makes you an aggressor, a disturber of the peace. It’s almost impossible for a conservative to initiate a discussion with a confirmed liberal, however kindly and unobtrusively you go about it, without being taken as the serpent in the garden.
However, sometimes serendipitous opportunities come along. A few nights ago we were watching Leno and he alluded to some scandalous thing about Obama that my wife had never heard of. She couldn’t understand why she hadn’t. I gently said, “Well, I knew about it weeks ago but never saw the Chronicle report it. That’s why I quit reading the Chronicle — I don’t like people withholding information from me while calling themselves ‘reporters.’”
Then I quickly changed the subject. Plant the seed, wait and pray.
Re #93: That’s not the marriage, Tiresias. That’s just the political talk! Mr. Bookworm is a man of many and varied virtues, but his political pronouncements do make him good fodder as the quintessential lifelong liberal who refuses to acknowledge that the political parties have realigned themselves and that mere might be some virtue to examining those realignments at a deeper level. What I hear from him in concentrated form, I hear in diffuse form from the myriad liberals who surround me in my community. Good people all, but committed heart and soul to values that, if they actually examined, they probably would find they no longer believe.
>>Good people all, but committed heart and soul to values that, if they actually examined, they probably would find they no longer believe.>>
I think that to a certain extent, we’re all in that boat. I’m certainly not happy with what the Republicans are doing these days.
It seems to me that the Democrats have been pulled so far left into the socialist/communist field that many – too many – former honest Dems have said “that’s not me – I must be a Republican”. As a result, the Republican party has been pulled into the center and even left of center. It has become the _old_ Democrat party. And conservatives are left without a party to represent them. So what to do. A third party? Pull the Repubs back to the right? I don’t think that will work unless you get rid of the socialists. I think I’d like to see us with 3 parties maybe…a socialist party, a conservative party and a big centralist party. Or something like that. I don’t know. Anybody else with ideas?
It’s so refreshing to read this site.
An interesting note about mixed marriages: my wife voted for Bill Clinton in 96, but after hanging out with me, switched to Bush in 2000 and 04. She is now a solid conservative. Prior to that, she was a MSM, “listen to the sound bytes” and “read the headlines” type of person.
By no small coincidence, after I started blogging in 2006, she turned sharply to the right. I think my doing research for blog posts and keeping that type of info on the screen daily had a positive effect. Now, she thinks for herself, is no longer a democrat clone.
BTW, she did vote for Hillary in the primaries, only to dethrone The One from his inevitable march to the throne (in Ohio, you can only vote for a single party in the primaries).
And the crowning achievement of my efforts: she has switched the car radio from mindless music to — Rush!
Mission accomplished.
Perhaps I should start a chain of re-education camps? To offset the ones that The Commander in Thief and the Angry Wife are planning to run?