Let the coronation begin
Bookworm on Jan 20 2009 at 7:47 am | Filed under: Uncategorized
I’m watching the news right now. The crowds are amazing. I wonder if I’m the only one watching who feels a certain amount of dismay at the fact that the reason people are so celebratory (and really the only reason the man was elected) is the color of his skin — a complete inversion of Martin Luther King’s vision.
As I wrote the other day, two liberals have now told me that Obama’s experience and ability are irrelevant to his role in the executive office. All that matters is that he be inspirational. In other words, regardless of the very real power this neophyte cipher will wield, liberals in their own minds have reduced him to the level of a Constitutional monarch, a la the British royalty: all show and no substance. This will either devolve into a tragedy or a farce, something monarchies (especially powerless ones) are wont to do.
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To me Obama’s inauguration represents everything that is wrong with today’s main stream media.
To me Jan 20 2009 is the day tens of millions of people over reacted to an event that has been manufactured from day one by a corrupt liberal main stream media.
Obama has NO accomplishements, yet millions of people are literaly in love with him.
Obama is only a smooth talker, a seducer, yet he is described by the media as a hero who will save us all… but he has not done anything great in the past and has not done anything great… yet.
Yesterday on Dr Phil they showed with the help of photos that a US president ages twice as fast as other people because of the stress of the job,
but Ariana Huffington who was a guest said Obama is different!
She thinks Obama will not age the same as other President!!!
She seems to believe Obama is a semi-God creature!!!
Yes today Jan 20 2009 is the day half the planet showed to the other half they were not very bright and extremely gullible.
The insane over-reaction of the millions of Obama cult followers to a man who has accomplished nothing is more historical than the event itself.
Ok , ok…I’ll give Obama one thing,
he is damn good at selling snake oil.
Book, living near DC and struggling with the Washington Post as my home-delivered newspaper I have been saturated with the hype from the beginning.
I suppose that everyone else is experiencing the same as we count down to the even, thanks to the miracle of 24/7 cable news.
I was pretty disgusted by some of what I saw during the campaign, but since the election I have been dismayed by the narcissism and downright arrogance of a person who brings so few substantive accomplishments to the job. The disrespect shown to the memory of Abrahm Lincoln by this man’s attempt to usurp his legacy is particularly shameful.
This morning I awoke with the thought: “My God, America has elected a Poseur as President”. To compound the dismay at handing him the awesome power of this office, we have a Congress with a recklessly leftist majority and near maniacal leadership.
>>but Ariana Huffington who was a guest said Obama is different!>>
Interesting. It could be true. Reason? Because he’s so young to start with. It seems to me that women start to show age at about 40 (assuming that they are not majorly assisted by medical means!), men start the same process about 50. Over the next 10 years or so, there are big differences, and then again if you take the next 10 years, there are big differences.
Most men so far have been in their 50s or early 60s before they take office, so the period of their presidencies would be the periods when you’d expect them to change significantly due to aging. Obama won’t really get into that bracket of age if he only has 4 years of presidency (I can hope, can’t I?) so he may not show a major change due to aging. But I wouldn’t attribute it to his personal aura…or whatever.
Wish I’d seen the Dr.Phil comparison – I’d have found it interesting. It may have proven me wrong – but that’s ok. Facts are facts.
You aren’t alone, Bookworm.
I’ve been wondering if there is something wrong with me for not feeling as jubilant as apparently the rest of America is.
Reporters on the Mall keep interviewing people and you could be forgiven for thinking people were at a rock concert. It’s so strange. I mean, in the past, people went to inaugurations to view the process of the change in government. Today, people are going to see (and apparently, worship) a man.
I am having conflicted feelings about the whole racial issue, though. I’m mightily sick of the incessant talk of race. I can’t help but think of the thousands and thousands of slaves and the black Americans who lived after slavery who suffered injustice and indignities. I wish they could know that true freedom and liberty were coming.
And yet, there is something tragic about the fact that the reason Obama won was because of his race.
I look forward to the day when a black American wins because of his or her superior ideas and no one even thinks to mention race.
Deana
Has it occurred to anyone that perhaps Obama’s character could precede a list of accomplishments – that some of us think this man will do great things because of who he is – that we are celebrating another “black first” which is NOT the ultimate goal, but that equality is?
I share your feelings, Bookworm:
http://thoughtyoudneverask.blogspot.com/2009/01/obamas-new-america.html
It is a day of apprehension for me, about what Obama, the Democrats, and the future will bring (and bring down upon our heads). As Obama came steaming toward Washington and the Presidency, calling for a new Declaration of Independence, I am not sanguine about what lies in store.
Not all the happy people streaming onto the Mall in Washington, though, are there and happy primarily because a black man is becoming our President. Some, maybe most there, are also very happy to see the end of the Bush Presidency. To them it is like a light dawning after 8 dark years. So, it’s not all about race.
But I am struck that my kids’ schools are showing the inauguration to all the students on TV today, due to requests by many of the teachers. I am happy to have my kids learn about the inauguration and American traditions and processes. But it is striking that this was not done in the schools four or eight years ago. Striking and hypocritical.
I teased my kids by telling them to ask their teachers why now and not four years ago? And if the answer was because it is the inauguration of the first “African-American President,” they should ask, “Isn’t that racist? Especially in light of yesterday’s being Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and he saying he had a dream of a time when people are judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin?”
But then I told them, “Just kidding–you know better than to ask that.” And they said of course they did. There is only so much you can learn–or talk about–at school.
On the other hand, there are at least two reasons to be happy about today’s celebration:
http://thoughtyoudneverask.blogspot.com/2009/01/happy-inauguration-day.html
When I was a mere puppy, I got a very big promotion. Various people were of course congratulating me…except one very strange woman, with wild hair and wild eyes (she did something in graphic arts.) When she encountered me in the hall, she glared at me and snapped, “Well, this will *test* you.”
Fortunately, I had read a lot of Greek drama in college, and knew how to recognize the Chorus.
I hope that at least inwardly, Obama is thinking about his difficult and awesome responsibilities and wondering if he can measure up. Excessive self-congratulation, in advance of performance, is not a good sign.
It’s more a Beatification than Coronation… certainly not a simple Inaguration. It all gives me the creeps.
His record, nor his views matter, he transcends politics… he’s cool he’s a pop culture icon…
Even, “It’s almost like what you’ve seen with Che Guevara or Eva Peron, when a political leader has this coolness factor that goes well beyond their political beliefs. They represent something even bigger.”
Che Guevera… not exactly who I would like my President likened with.
I certainly don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade and hope is a great thing to have… but I don’t share the view that today is the first day of Heaven on Earth, where the world magically loves America again and all things are now better… Again, it creeps me out more than inspires me.
Friend of USA – “but Ariana Huffington who was a guest said Obama is different!She thinks Obama will not age the same as other President!!!”
Ariana’s right. It’s the weight of responsibility that ages presidents. To borrow from Mr. Book, talking the talk about hope and change in symbolic terms shouldn’t age Obama at all. He should simply be able to soar above the fray with Zen-like equanimity.
HelenL – “Has it occurred to anyone that perhaps Obama’s character could precede a list of accomplishments?”.
Yes, Helen, you are absolutely correct (see, we can agree on some things). Obama’s “character,” defined by Leftwing Chicago politics and bereft of practical real world experience and any sense of history, is exactly why we are so worried. .
Helen –
SOMETHING has to precede President Obama’s accomplishments given that he hasn’t accomplished anything so far.
I doubt it is character, though, or we would have seen different behavior out of him in the past.
A man of character would not have stayed in a racist, bigoted church for 20 years.
A man of character would not develop and maintain friendships with the likes of Ayers, who engaged in the attempted murder of fellow Americans.
A man of character would not develop and maintain friendships with anti-Semites and felons.
A man of character would be extremely cautious about comparing himself to the likes of Abraham Lincoln.
Helen, I hope very much that Obama governs wisely and adheres to the principles that created this amazing nation. Unlike you and many of your fellow leftists, I have always loved this nation, been proud and never ashamed of it and its people, and prayed for our continued success and strength.
And unlike you and your fellow leftists, I do not hope that Obama fails and terrible things happen to our beloved country, just to prove to others that I and other conservatives are correct in our beliefs and concerns.
Deana
Helen, to expand my remarks about usurping the Lincoln legacy; this attempt to portray himself as something he to which he has no claim, demonstrates the apparent character flaw that bothers me.
If Obama had approached this day with some measure of humility and awe for the position and responsibility, I would be greatly comforted. He manifestly did not.
To compound the worry, we have a media that has totally lost its objectivity. I cannot see who will hold him accountable.
It would have been nice if he’d been able to repeat the oath correctly. The MSM will no doubt note that Chief Justice Roberts got it wrong to begin with.
So far, NOT impressed by the speech.
One other thing –
I keep hearing the commentators say how “peaceful” the crowd is, how joyful and polite everyone is . . .
Well of course! Little children who get everything their hearts desire are wonderful to be around.
No mention that many of these same people were the ones throwing eggs at President Bush’s motorcade during his inauguration, marching with images of President Bush beheaded, and yelling obscenities at him.
Deana:
You get a ‘hallelujah’ and an ‘amen’ from me.
Helen:
No, equality is not the ultimate goal for the presidency.
Equality is the ultimate goal for every black and white child to have a participating mother and father who take responsibility for their roles on every level thereby creating equality in the community which lays the foundation for a equal playing field in adulthood.
>>As Obama came steaming toward Washington and the Presidency, calling for a new Declaration of Independence>>
Just picked up on this…
Independence from what? Any indication?
Thanks, Sadie.
Suek – didn’t you hear? Our original Declaration of Independence is apparently imperfect and insufficient.
I’m filled with hope and excitement given Obama’s previous call for a second Bill of Rights.
We are assured over and over that we are in unchartered territory, a total depression and in the worst situation ever to face America, why don’t we just toss those original documents in the garbage? Surely Obama alone can come up with something better than all of those dead white men of so long ago who really were evil, greedy, and self-serving.
Deana
I know about the “second bill of rights” – that’s an FDR thing. Pure socialism.
But a more perfect declaration of independence???? That’s weird. Of course, with the state of Great Britain today, I agree that a strong affirmation of indepedence would not be unwelcome, but other than that…independence from ??????
Imperfect? meaning that GB still has rights over us?
Insufficient? meaning we want to be _more_ independent from GB?
Weird. Does the man really speak English? Oh wait. Maybe that’s what he means – we need to revise the language. Of course, Libs have been doing that – or trying to – for about 50 years now. It’s getting so that it’s impossible to understand what people really mean unless you’re coming from the same political position. Maybe Obama’s going to redefine our political Tower of Babel.
Yeah. Right.
SADIE: Equality should be the goal for everyone. And it is everyone Obama is calling upon to work together.
The MSM will no doubt note that Chief Justice Roberts got it wrong to begin with.
It is Obama who answered too quickly, interupted Roberts and this threw off Roberts who then and only then made a mistake.
But of course that is not how the story will be repeated for the next 4 or 8 years, it will all be Roberts fault, the MSM will do all they can to help perpetuate the false version of events.
I have just been on two others blogs and lefties in the comments are already spinning the story that fit their fairy tale and unicorn world.
Do not relie on a transcript, it does not show the timing of events.
Watch the video.
you will see Obama began talking at the wrong time and everything went downhill from there.
The first mistake was Obama’s.
If Liberals are already having a distorted view of facts that have happened minutes ago, and that can be verified by watching the video… imagine what the next 4 or 8 years will be!!!
Helen, I resepctfully disagree. “Equality” is no sort of goal to strive for, especially some sort of government defined “Equality.” What does it mean?
Friend of USA – no, it wasn’t Justice Roberts…it was Karl Rove!Didn’t you look closely at the background?
Helen:
We are on two different train tracks.
Equality is a starting point, even a goal (if you mean everyone should have an equal chance) although we both know it does not exist anywhere at any time now or in history, but it certainly is not what rising to the status of POTUS represents. The fact that Obama is now the president automatically makes him less than equal with everyone else in America. To put it bluntly.. he is now ‘the man’.
Of course if you mean that we are all equal, you are misguided. We are not all equal, we are all quite different for a variety of reasons, which makes us individuals not a group of equals.
Friend of USA: Well..this didn’t take long.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090120/ap_on_go_pr_wh/inauguration_chief_justice
It means Helen wins and we lose.
But I am struck that my kids’ schools are showing the inauguration to all the students on TV today, due to requests by many of the teachers. I am happy to have my kids learn about the inauguration and American traditions and processes. But it is striking that this was not done in the schools four or eight years ago. Striking and hypocritical.
My college had that going on as well. Some people in the student center even got an impromptu party to watch the inauguration, live, in the morning. They cheered when Obama repeated the oath and was sworn in.
Then I went to a Technical Writing class and they were talking about politics, the meaning of Obama, Iraq, corporate corruption, government corruption, similarity between Repubs and Dems, Afghanistan, Obama’s hype, high expectations of Obama, and all that good stuff. It lasted about an hour and 15 minutes and it was very entertaining, all in all.
There was a lot of dialogue, back and forth, going on. Not everyone participated actively, but there were quite a few characters trying to put forth their views (of course, the only person not stumbling around with words just so happened to be me and another (much) older male who had worked in the auto/precision tools industry before for many years. He knew what he was talking about and while his voice was quiet and not full of emotion, people automatically listened to him. Of course, I just had to steer the conversation towards a couple of points that I had thought of but later on that. I don’t have Book’s perfect recall for conversations, so I can’t even reproduce a fragment of it here. I can describe what was discussed, but you had to have been there to get the full texture of things. There were a lot of undercurrents going on.
I was uncomfortable at first, since I was around 15 minutes late, and I wasn’t expecting the class to become about Obama. After a couple of discussion points went up, I settled into my groove, which I like to call “spy-analyst”. Like I said, at first I felt like I was the only anti-Obamanite around. Since they seemed to be looking for Obama’s inauguration tapes and I assumed it was cause they were going to praise it. It didn’t quite end up like that, although it did happen (subtly).
I call what I was doing the “spy-analyst” because I was both a spy, in that I had to be undercover and not simply spout off the stuff I really believe. Instead, I allowed another guy, a white guy, who seemed to be from the Republican or traditional American cultural background, to take point for them since his views was the closest to mine. He, in his 20s, was pretty focused on national self-interest first and humanitarian concerns a distant third. Iraq and Afghanistan, he saw, was justified not on humanitarian grounds but on the fact that there was something to be gained there. Now some comments flew after that saying that is because wars are “economically based” or something like that. And the instructor made a comment that “so you believe there has to be something in it for us before doing something …”. I knew where she was headed, since this was a topic of selflessness compared to selfishness, so I jumped in and said something to the effect that “the locals have to help us”. Another student wanted to help Africa (and presumably Darfur) because of an inherent belief in American superiority, which I challenged by saying that Africa is run on tribal politics and what gives us the right in America to tell them how to do things? This eventually brought about the illuminating topic and conclusion that America’s problems are domestic, not because of foreign spending, and that if people really want to help, they should send more than money (change the gov or use US troops). There was no agreement, per say, but the topic was both raised and clarified. Which is enough.
I felt that raising the point that African nations, to be really helped, needed more than money blunted some of the Wilsonian/Jeffersonian arguments. Which reinforced the efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, instead of hurting them because people want to send more “foreign aid” to charity cases in Africa.
There was general agreement on the corruption of corporations, with me leading the charge. Instead of trying to defend corporations and their practices, which is a losing proposition given Ford, Airline bailout, and various other shenanigans that have gone on, I connected corporate corruption with government corruption. This is key. It doesn’t mean people will automatically decipher which are good corporations and which are bad businesses, but it does mean that the bad rap of “Big Corporations” will spill on governmnt, which in this case means Obama and the Dems. That is important for setting up the “environment” for future victories.
The national security guy defended corporations on the basis that they still need to compete and that if they fail, then they will get into trouble. I said that “is that still true given that Ford can just keep asking the government for bailouts forever? There is no competition with endless bailouts”. And one gave an assent that Ford, as I said, should go bankrupt.
I actually went to great lengths to ask probing questions which clarified certain people’s views. I’ve been writing about, reading about, and arguing about politics for years now. They haven’t. Oh, they have read politics but engaging in the kind of critical debate and internet warfare that I have from the start of the Iraqi war to its current end? No, they haven’t. THey, thus, lack my “firepower”. They are more hesitant when trying to rebut arguments they disagree with, they are more cautious and in need of time to select the right words when trying to spell out their views, and they are unable to do what I can do. They are unable to “analyze” everybody’s positions and how those positions relate to each other. That is the “analysis” portion of a spy-analyst.
While I could target each person’s political views and tell you where they are coming from, even from the limited remarks they made (although the instructor made by far the most personal and cogent description of her beliefs), they could not really say what I believed in. They don’t know because I didn’t allow them to know.
In the course of this group discussion, I was able to hit strongly on the premise that AQ were mostly targeting and bombing Americans. I gave a little impassioned speech about AQ being unable to take on Americans and thus settling with civilians, cause a hundred or 500 hundred Sunni/Shiite deaths in the marketplace will make great news and be good for “the bang for the buck” and how this tends to motivate the civilians to ally with us against AQ. In the middle of that, which started as a private conversation with one guy in front of me, while the instructor was speaking to another guy off the far right-back, the room got a quiet and I noticed people were paying attention to me. Still, I think I did a moderately good job of making the point, after establishing my “credentials”, even though it was entirely ad lib.
I’m someone who favors deception and indirect/oblique tactics and strategies. I’m not a fan of simple brute force, which means I prefer not to acquire my victories from idealogical lockstep or a simple refusal on the part of others to engage me.
My ideal method of changing people’s views is through a 3 person group, with me as a sort of moderator and interlocutor between two people. I find that I do my best when I am forced to see the situation from two or more different perspectives. It causes quite a bit of creativity from me.
When Book here has to argue with Mr. Book, this becomes an adversarial position where ideological force of arms is the decisive factor. I prefer to avoid such confrontations. When I let slip one of my attacks, it will happen without anyone realizing what I am doing. At least, that is the ideal.
The funny thing is that adversarial arguments are what I have cut my teeth on when I started arguing about politics. Almost all of my political arguments were online, not in real life. The real life episodes were either simply discussions or side jokes concerning various personal hurdles and general government corruption and what not.
But it’s a simple fact that most people are not cut out for adversarial argument. Helen, for example, certainly can’t hold her own on an argument about philosophy, especially one different from her own. Only a few of us, after all, have been engaged in the “active” fight. Talking heads, for example, would definitely constitute the “active” part, and that is why they always have their solid talking points and arguments and counter-arguments. You don’t get anything resolved or clarified because they are not talking about their beliefs. No, they are too jaded, experienced, or with a mission to accomplish to talk about simple beliefs. For Book’s husband, it is cause they “run out of arguments” so all they can do is talk about their belief in denial. But normal people, meaning everyday people, do talk about what they believe. They are rather transparent like that. Which makes it easy for me to analyze them and which also makes it easy for unscrupulous propagandists to manipulate them.
People are convinced, in fact, more by “osmosis” and cultural standards of norm then they are by known partisans (Rush or Coulter). This is a derivative of the art of propaganda and it is very useful to spies that seek to remain undetected in the maelstrom. It is also why the constant barrage of positive coverage, clapping, and Obama speechcraft (which does tend to be as good, if not better, than Bill Clinton’s), produces the “Obama happiness”, as folks here may have witnessed.
The instructor supports Bush’s reaction to 9/11, but, because she is black and has faced racism herself, wants to believe in Obama. She has a level head, however, in that she admits she doesn’t agree with everything Obama stands for (although she wouldn’t say, I would suspect it has something to do with gay marriage). She also, to my surprise, exposed some dirt about one of Obama’s SEC “managers” who had, after being accepted into the circle, hired one of Madoff’s sons. She found that disturbing and an indication that Obama was starting to be corrupted by “business as usual”.
Still, others, like the younger people, also, surprisingly, said that there was too much hype about Obama. That one man cannot do all the things that the media claims that he will do. That expectations are too high.
A lot of the results of my analysis became pure gut instinct. I went by that instinct in deciding which responses to put forward and which general direction to steer the conversation towards. All in all, it was very enjoyable, which I hadn’t expected in the beginning. I thought I’d have to keep my mouth shut for fear of saying something “non-group think” like.
I feel that I have a better grasp of what Obama inspires in the general population. Which is not a small thing, in the end, for fighting an enemy requires you to know their strengths as well as weaknesses.
Equality is a starting point, even a goal (if you mean everyone should have an equal chance)
Sadie, Helen means equality of economic status which means addressing the economic imbalance between blacks and whites by redistributing wealth from the haves to the have nots. That is what Helen is for and she has clearly said so here before.
Don’t get me wrong, Rush and Coulter have their places, but they are not effective barometers of how to convince Leftists. They can argue facts when they need to, but their is the way of the direct challenge. My way is more like that of an assassin’s, with the unseen knife stuck in somebody’s back before they even knew they had been targeted.
I also felt I landed a nice hit when people there complained about outsourcing and how NAFTA helped Mexicans and Indians more than it helped America. I said two words. “Wealth Redistribution”. Whenever you have a disparity of economics between two classes, you can remedy the situation by redistributing wealth, which as Obama said, will help things along.
I hope you understand what I did there. I re-directed people’s feelings of disappointment and resentment against free trade and what could ostensibly be called “Republican/Corporate practices” into the thought line of wealth redistribution and got them to make the connection. If they felt good things about wealth redistribution, how could they then feel bad about companies outsourcing jobs to India or Mexico?
Cognitive dissonance: a mighty weapon folks. Use it if you got it.
Propaganda is not about scoring debate points, winning arguments, or anything else like that. Propaganda, the true Art, is about convincing people that what they thought up was their own idea, rather than, in reality, entirely my own idea.
If you lose an argument, concede, and the other guy is now thinking in a fashion which you predicted and caused, then you are conducting successful propaganda operations.
We need not allow the tool of propaganda to be solely used by the Left for their nefarious purposes, after all. That’d be like allowing murderers to be the only ones allowed to use violence.
I want to add this little news piece to today’s events since it speaks to the word ‘equality’.
Police had projected crowds ranging between 1 and 2 million for the inauguration.
In 1981, President Ronald Reagan’s inauguration drew about 500,000 people, and President Bill Clinton’s 1993 inauguration drew about 800,000 people, according to National Park Service estimates.
Crowd counting has long been a controversial issue. The park service says Congress ordered it to stop doing crowd counts in 1997 after the agency was accused of underestimating numbers for the 1995 Million Man March.
I just heard from number-one daughter – she managed to get out on the mall for the inauguration but could only get as close as the Washington monument.
She confirms that it was packed as far as her eyes could see. She, too, was not impressed with Obama’s speech (BTW – she calls herself a “Libertarian independent”). She’s no Obama kool-aid drinker.
Ymarsakar:
Thanks for clearing that up for me.
In that case, is Helen going to decide who the ‘haves and have nots’ are or do we get to decide for Helen or heaven forbid, was this all decided by the election.
No matter how I look at it..redistribution of wealth is theft.
>>She found that disturbing and an indication that Obama was starting to be corrupted by “business as usual”.>>
You might point out to her at some time that if government would get out of business, business would get out of government.
We have the right to petition government for redress. If government insists on regulating business, then business has the right to petition for redress.
Additionally, if government wishes to involve itself with regulating business, it has to do so from a position of complete ignorance, or it has to hire people to inform it about the business it wishes to regulate. Hence lobbyists. Typically these days, Senators and members of the House of Representatives are not and have not been in business. They are either lawyers or professional politicians and are simply ignorant about the businesses they expect to regulate. Talk about a recipe for disaster! They _have_ to have lobbyists.
>>No matter how I look at it..redistribution of wealth is theft.>>
That point has been made before. Helen doesn’t agree. She approves of Robin Hood.
I wonder what some of the wealthy blacks will think when they’re taxed to support poor redneck whites…! Think they’ll be all in favor of “equality” then?
Not to change the topic but this must be noted:
I am listening to President Bush’s speech in Midland, Texas, and wow – what a difference! President Bush paid a compliment to President Obama and stated that the nation supports him and wishes him well.
Were there boos from the crowd?
Was Obama made fun of?
Was there silence?
No. There was applause. Genuine applause.
It speaks volumes that so many Obama supporters didn’t have the decency to even be polite to President Bush earlier today when he was at President Obama’s inauguration.
Deana
I think what will happen is that we will pass some Helenesque legislation where the government has the power to decide who is black by birth, who is black by conversion (“Helenattos”) and who is non-black.
Once those categories and their members have been established, the government will forbid taxes levied on natural or converted blacks from being spent on non-blacks. Thus, you would have a situation in which tax money from Herbert T. Watkins III, a black millionaire, would be set aside in a fund that could only be spent on other blacks and Helenattos. It could not be spent on, say, Rufus T. Firefly, a hillbilly in West Virginia.
However, Mr. Firefly could see his taxes diverted to Mr. Watkins (and Helen) to make up for the fact that even though Mr. Watkins’ ancerstors did not arrive in the U.S. until 1908 from Jamaica, they most assuredly would have been slaves if they had arrived 50 years before. Therefore they should be compensated for what Mr. Firefly’s ancestors woulda coulda done to them 150 years ago if they’d only been given the chance.
I hope that answers your question, suek.
More or less. I guess that means that if I can possibly manage to leave each of my children 40 acres, I better make sure each gets a mule to go with…!
Someone in my father’s family line married a native up in Canada about 4 generations ago…will that help? We’re not sure which of a couple of siblings it was…some of the names were cross generational.
I have one DIL who is of the “brown” family, and one who qualifies as a “native American”…
Unfortunately for me, the rest of my heritage is strictly European – English, Irish, French and German. And you know? I don’t know a darn thing about them. I just know I’m _here_. I just never thought it was worth the money to join Ancestors.com to find out what they left behind. Don’t think it was major wealth, though.
Gonna be difficult figuring out the plusses and minusses of equality…! Major math. Lots of fractions.
That’s the blaring difference between regular Conservatives and all-crass, no-class Democrats, Deana.
Oh yeah…and my husband’s family. His founding pater noster in America was a wetback. Of course, he was a Hessian, so he was only a wetback by way of a detour through Mexico. Don’t think he brought much wealth with him either.
In fact, my husband’s grandfather ran away at age 13 and then worked his way though dental school. Doing dentistry. Couldn’t do _that_ today. The government protects us from people like that. We sure are lucky. Course, starting from nothing is a little difficult with so much protection.
Wow.
Megyn Kelly just reported on Fox News that the crowd even booed Mrs. Bush and Mrs. Cheney this morning when they stepped onto the dais.
That is just jaw-dropping. I simply can’t believe it.
My disgust with the left is rapidly reaching boundless proportions.
Deana
Another totally off-topic comment:
Michelle Obama looks pregnant. It must be protective gear or something because she did NOT look like that at all before today.
I like her ball gown this evening. The dress she wore today was pretty – I just don’t care for gold or yellow much.
It’s the day after. Is the world a better place yet? I can’t tell.
It’s pretty easy to sneak around amongst the mob. You just have to ape the mob’s fetishes. That’s just normal tradecraft (spycraft).
It just so happens that when enough Democrats gather together, they become a mob because all the Demoncrats become (more) spiteful, petty, and sometimes dangerous if their emotions are stoked up.
This is known as a multi person fight, which is different from a duel or one on one fight such as in MMA or Jiu Jitsu.
There’s too much bloodlust for Demoncrats to act calmly. Not going to happen. And certainly not when they are in a large group.
A side benefit of this is that they don’t really know what we are thinking of. This means their ability to counter our attacks go down into the null zeros. This is not a problem for them, since most conservatives and Republican pundits/politicians/actors aren’t pro-active on the offense. The Repubs stay at home and defend, thus the Democrat’s inability to read our motivations and moves doesn’t really change the status of forces in this conflict.
For example, if Helen had been constitutionally capable of reading our thoughts as easily as I can read hers, why does she continually require the translation services of someone like me to get her point across? Helen writes poetry, so you cannot say it is an ignorance concerning the meaning of words. It may be laziness, but her ideological fervor should help compensate for a certain tendency to avoid tacking on “economic” in front of “equality”. No, Helen says equality as if she is amongst like minded people who think like her. But she knows she is not, yet she uses the same diction with us as she would with her own group. This is called tunnel vision.
So, this is an inherently internal matter of shortsightedness and blindness. This is ideological and mental on Helen’s part, and the same is true for other Democrats.
The Democrats make up for this by having at the top, people who can read us. People who, regardless of their level of understanding concerning Republican motivations, can consistently manipulate, predict, and create opportunities for anti-Republican propaganda campaigns. Enough of these campaigns will ultimately result in a popular myth, such as the ones about Bush. And that, as another consequence, will produce election shifts such as in 2006 and 08.
For the Republican side, most of the creativity and the skill sets are at the bottom part of the pyramid. Republicans at the top are simply not as good at adaptation, simply because of the nature of hierarchy. But some of it is because of principles as well. Republicans at the top, the leaders and what not, cannot manipulate the emotions and beliefs of the base, whether you include people like me in it or not, even if they tried 10X harder than the Democrats do with their base. What this means is that in the final tally, Democrat politicians have more experience and more motivation to conduct shenanigans such as vote buying, corruption deals, and illegal acts compared to a Republican politician. A Republican politician has to step down, like Newt Gingrich, if what they do violates the principles of the base. Democrats need do no such thing because their base has no principles. Their base does what the Democrat politicians tell it to do. Kos may think he owns the Democrat party, but Pelosi hasn’t done much of anything against Bush on a policy level. So Kos doesn’t own Pelosi, does he. There’s no impeachment. No cutting of funds.
Because the Republican base relies so strictly on principle and character, Republican politicians have to focus their energies in these fields. But what this tends to mean is that it makes them extremely vulnerable to the kind of character assassination and charges of “culture of corruption” (Alinsky rules) than it makes Democrats. The more you focus on honor, honesty, and what not, the less capable you become in matters of tradecraft, sabotage, propaganda, psychological warfare, and etc..
This is why spies, lawyers, and soldiers are all at different parts of the triangle, farthest away from the other. The way they do things is essentially incompatible. You can create combined arms forces, like the military does with SpecOps and the conventional army, but that takes work. The work hasn’t been done yet to integrate the Republican party with Democrat techniques and tools.
Just a few of the benefits for the Democrats can be listed here: Tom Delay has to step down simply because there is an indictment or even the threat of an indictment. A Democrat can have laundered money in his freezer, and be caught red handed, and he’s still in power. William Jefferson is still in power, last time I checked. That is a crucial tactical and strategic advantage for the Demoncrats. There is no doubt about it. The fact that they can eliminate experienced Republican politicians utilizing character assassination, if they can’t find the goods, or simple charges, indictments, and investigations means that they don’t have to get rid of Republicans at the polls. They don’t have to wait. The Republicans can still hold a slim majority but their most experienced and charismatic leaders (you know, the ones that know where all the skeletons are buried, the ones that have many favors to pull in) can be eradicated from the playing field, allowing the public to blame Republican “majority” fecklessness, when in reality the Republicans have already lost control of the House (because they lost their leaders).
Remember Daschle. He got kicked out by an election. Trent Lott lost his position before the election. That is a very important tactical difference there for political maneuvering. It allows the Democrats to do more damage, absorb more damage, and ultimately defeat their enemies: meaning us.
All this comes down to the fact that Republicans have higher moral and ethical standards than the Demoncrats. But, like we have said concerning Leftists riding their moral high horse on torture and Gitmo, it doesn’t matter how high up in the clouds you are if you get defeated by the limitations you put on yourself.
Because of Bush’s self-restraint concerning many issues, as the President, and the Republicans in Congress inability or unwillingness to conduct nuclear demonstration strikes on Democrat power pillars/bases and because of how the Republican base is structured (around principles rather than deception and character assassination), the Republicans lost their majority, lost the Presidency, and will soon lose the cultural war (because Democrat power means Democrat new laws).
Defense does not win wars and if that was ever doubted in Iraq, it cannot be doubted here. Not with the results we have come to witness.
Btw, these are not conclusions anyone who is new to politics can ever arrive at independently. They are also not conclusions for people who have relied upon others for their political news and beliefs. You also couldn’t get these conclusions without personally witnessing certain events, and those events would not include the Clinton Impeachment: which was an example of Republicans thinking the Dems gave a damn about honesty or Presidential character/reputation. Instead of attacking Clinton, who had to go in 8 years anyway, they should have tried to undermine and sabotage basic Demoncrat pillars of power, such as welfare. They reformed Welfare, yes, but more needed to be done. Course, I’m sure they thought they had the Dems on the run. Dems are never on the run. They are always out to get people. The last 7 years have proven that. No, you needed to see what happens when the Republicans are in power and you needed to see the methods the Dems used to get them out of power. Which is not something people would have realized before 9/11. The last political transformation they ever saw was Reagan’s dethroning of the Democrat power lock. This would have shined a couple of spots on Republican virtues, yes, but it didn’t illuminate any Democrat weaknesses and guile, however. Vietnam did, but people wanted to forget that, and they more or less successfully did so, until Iraq. Until John Kerry.
One of the forever unspoken realizations that I acquired from watching America fight Al Qaeda and other terrorists around the globe concerned how we were ever going to win (strategically) the domestic front here in the US. It was a simple observation: the observation that the unprincipled, cruel and sadistic methods of AQ will force us to come face to face with evil, even adopt some of their own methods or approaches, and then defeat them on our terms without being reduced to the enemy techniques of suicide bombing and philosophical nihilism. Then came the second observation that this was the key to winning against the Democrats. They are so monolithic, so cult like, unprincipled to boot, not to mention sadistic and vindictive, that it can perhaps discourage new Republicans or even old Republicans. But Democrats can go the same way as Al Qaeda, in the end. If people are willing to adapt methods used against terrorists and use them against Democrats. Sadr has a power base in Sadr city? How do we kick him out short of killing him and carpet bombing his supporters? Nobody had an answer except “let the Iraqis take care of” in 2005-6. That’s like saying “let the Chicago politicians take care of corruption charges against Obama”. No, I believe they need some help. And Petraeus told us what kind of help was required. Every insurgency is different, and if that is true for the Sunnis and Shia of Iraq, then it is doubly true for the cultural insurgents here in America that seek to destroy the foundational and dominant standards here in the USA.
The end game for our war against Islamic terrorists is to either force the Arab culture and thus the culture of death to change or eradicate the entire religion and replace it with something more agreeable. The second part is forbidden to us here in America as an end goal against Democrats, unless there is a civil war of course, so we have to go with End Game Number 1. Since that’s the same end game that got produced in Iraq, we have plenty of experience in getting that done. And hey, maybe Obama will even show those Americans who forever yelled out “The Army Is Broken” just how unbroken the US military truly is, out on the streets of America. That’d be a sight to see.
>>maybe Obama will even show those Americans who forever yelled out “The Army Is Broken” just how unbroken the US military truly is>>
I disagree with you on this one…I think the Dems intend to break the Army as well. They’ll do it by first eliminating the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy and then by reinstating the draft. The effect of both of these will be devastating to discipline in the military.
I was mistaken. Their first step in breaking the Military has been taken with Obama’s signing the EO to get rid of Gtmo. What soldier in his right mind is going to take a prisoner after this? What does it do to a soldier when he stands there and has two options: either kill the militant in front of him, or take him prisoner, knowing that he’s going to be back on the street again to continue the battle.
Sort of sounds like the justice system today, doesn’t it. Revolving door. It’s one thing on the streets, but something entirely different on a battlefield.
Rest assured that the left knows that U.S. soldiers will now be forced to kill terrorists that they formerly would have taken prisoner.
Coming soon to a littered street near you: the outraged, furiously moral defenders of Castro and Lenin marching to demand trials of soldiers and brass for “war crimes.” Katie Couric will dutifully report on the “growing backlash” against “U.S. atrocities,” etc., etc.
This will be just the beginning of the assault on the armed forces. Sissy men like Clinton and Obama don’t like warriors. And brittle feminists like Couric know to wear their brown pants when they’re around real men.
I’ll need more data to predict where Obama will jump on the conflict between what soldiers will do to terrorists and what lawfare will do to soldiers.