CK MacLeod wrote:
@ Ill Papa Fuster:
I’m not sure that there are a lot of “people just like” our narc. Not that there aren’t many who share his predispositions, but I think there are relatively few who collect and assemble “evidence” with his diligence
The NARC is invaluable for his creativity in framing arguments,and also,he really knows a lot.
Mike Totten is incisive in his opinion that Obama might take war to Iran. It wouldn't surprise me. This is a case where the Left meets the Right in agreeing on what Obama might do,of course,the motivation that each assigns to this potential is vastly different. Totten describes Obama as a variant of Wilsonianism,Cockburn describes Obama as the Gopher of Big Business and the Pentagon.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/totten/329901
Jennifer has written an incisive piece also,right up to the last paragraph,in which she regresses to her usual Rubionic platitudes.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/rubin/329931
Well then call it Hegemonic, not reptilian, the latter indicates a irrational response
I/ll stand by Reptillian/Primitive,not Irrational,Survival Mode,Fight or Flight, but,like the Dinosauers,we're to big and stupid to survive the dominance of the small sharp toothed ferrets that are coming our way.
I was referring to the fact that we need to position ourselves to be in a favorable strategic position to take control of the oil IF NECESSARY* without appearing to do so,even to ourselves.
*And it will be necessary. We are Dinosauers and the meteor hits the day either the oil runs dry or becomes too expensive to buy and still stay in business.
Sully/ but even I don’t believe our politicians are stupid enough to have run the war since 9/11 the way they have if their objective is to fight “the Muslim countries” over oil
Of Course you're right,it is not a conscious disposition. What I'm saying is that Oil like any great resource has a magnetic attraction to the Reptillian brain(Examples besides Oil are the Gold Rush and the Silicon Rush). A conscious strategy won't emerge for a while,in the meantime,the logic of our plight is operating sublimally. So they run the war the way they have,accidently and opportunistically,to transition to the BIG plunge when necessary. Because I think that a "Western"takeover of the Oil Resources is very likely,I am saying that It should become our strategy ASAP.
It keeps us in the general vicinity,knight threatens pawn. \
The logic of the game is inescapable,In the long run,can the US remain a customer as the product it requires heads towards a price point that bankrupts our private economy. $100 Barrel.
Very strange war
We are trying desperately to avoid the appearance of the probable outcome of this Chess Game,but looking forward about twenty moves,we checkmate Opec with our Nuke Queen. It may be that the Nuclear Weapon Community cuts a deal with OPEC to independently manage the distribution of the oil.
For two decades,We've given China a green light to control natural Resources in Africa,what are we thinking?
I think we are at war with the Muslim countries of the Near East over oil,but we're not allowed to have a direct oil war,so we pretend it's about National Security.
Sully/ Nation states should only fight major, full mobilization, wars for survival since the act of drafting a major portion of the population for purposes less than survival is itself an evil of large magnitude.
Sully, The problem has been undeclared wars that are defined as "minor","Police Actions" that are not wars of survival. Maybe we're on the same page here?? but requiring Declarations and a Draft will weed out these "limited"wars as it weeds out the all professional Military.
Now it’s very possible, that had we conducted the war in stages, Hitler
might actually have succeeded at the Final Solution, surely that’s not what you meant
What I meant was that the Jews were not a factor in our decision to fight a two front war in WW2. Also,the Jews were not a factor in our insistence on an unconditional surrender by Germany,that insistence cost the lives of several Million Jews.
What’s particularly strange is that you’re so clear on what a mistake WWI was for us in your view, yet you somehow seem to believe that WWIII would have the shape of a winning business deal, not to mention a morally and politically sound adventure
Not so strange,having a Draft forces those in charge of a War to Win and Win quick. WW1,which I view as a mistake,is an example,WW2,which I view as a partial mistake*,is another example. Vietnam is an example of a Draft based war which the planners couldn't figure out how to win,so the Draftees put huge upward pressure/stress on the commanders"to shit or get off the pot". The commanders didn't like that,so they got rid of those pesky citizen soldiers. Imagine if we had had a professional army for the Vietnam War;we'd still be there.
*I believe we should have fought a one front war against Japan,and once that was over,then take a look at what is needed in Europe,and make decisions about that at that later time frame. In other words,let Russia and England take care of their own Empires. It was never about helping the Jews in any case.
narciso wrote:
Blind squirrel catches a nut or two
All his Caucasian support is badly eroded. The Republicans can only defeat themselves by nominating a loser. Of Course,the same national economics will continue to haunt the winner,so in 2016,the other party will reclaim the Govt. and so it will go.
A devastating but accurate analysis of Obama comes from the Left,The Left has given up on him,that means he is finished
The Fall of Obama
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
"A hefty percentage of Americans believe that he is a socialist – a charge as ludicrous as accusing the Archbishop of Canterbury of being a closet Druid. Obama reveres the capitalist system. He admires the apex predators of Wall Street who showered his campaign treasury with millions of dollars. The frightful catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico stemmed directly from the green light he and his Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, gave to BP."
"It is not Obama’s fault that for 30 years America’s policy – under Reagan, both Bushes and Bill Clinton – has been to export jobs permanently to the Third World. The jobs that Americans now desperately seek are no longer here, in the homeland, and never will be. They’re in China, Taiwan, Vietnam, India, Indonesia.
No stimulus program, giving money to cement contractors to fix potholes along the federal interstate highway system, is going to bring those jobs back. Highly trained tool and die workers, the aristocrats of the manufacturing sector, are flipping hamburgers – at best – for $7.50 an hour because U.S. corporations sent their jobs to Guangzhou, with the approval of politicians flush with the money of the “free trade” lobby.
"It is not Obama’s fault that across 30 years more and more money has floated up to the apex of the social pyramid till America is heading back to where it was in the 1880s, a nation of tramps and millionaires. It’s not his fault that every tax break, every regulation, every judicial decision tilts toward business and the rich. That was the neoliberal America conjured into malign vitality back in the mid 1970s.
"But IT IS Obama’s fault that he did not understand this, that always, from the getgo, he flattered Americans with paeans to their greatness, without adequate warning of the political and corporate corruption destroying America and the resistance he would face if he really fought against the prevailing arrangements that were destroying America. He offered them a free and easy pass to a better future, and now they see that the promise was empty.
"IT'S Obama’s fault, too, that, as a communicator, he cannot rally and inspire the nation from its fears. From his earliest years he has schooled himself not to be excitable, not to be an angry black man who would be alarming to his white friends at Harvard and his later corporate patrons. Self-control was his passport to the guardians of the system, who were desperate to find a symbolic leader to restore America’s credibility in the world after the disasters of the Bush era. He is too cool.
"So, now Americans in increasing numbers have lost confidence in him. For the first time in the polls negative assessments outnumber the positive. He no longer commands trust. His support is drifting down to 40 per cent. The straddle that allowed him to flatter corporate chieftains at the same time as blue-collar workers now seems like the most vapid opportunism. The casual campaign pledge to wipe out al-Quaida in Afghanistan is now being cashed out in a disastrous campaign viewed with dismay by a majority of Americans.
"The polls portend disaster. It now looks as though the Republicans may well recapture not only the House but, conceivably, the Senate as well. The public mood is so contrarian that, even though polls show that voters think the Democrats may well have better solutions on the economy than Republicans, they will vote against incumbent Democrats in the midterm elections next fall. They just want to throw the bums out.
"Obama has sought out Bill Clinton to advise him in this desperate hour. If Clinton is frank, he will remind Obama that his own hopes for a progressive first term were destroyed by the failure of his health reform in the spring of 1993. By August of that year, he was importing a Republican, David Gergen, to run the White House.
"Obama had his window of opportunity last year, when he could have made jobs and financial reform his prime objectives. That’s what Americans hoped for. Mesmerized by economic advisers who were creatures of the banks, he instead plunged into the Sargasso Sea of “health reform,” wasted the better part of a year, and ended up with something that pleases no one.
"What can save Obama now? It’s hard even to identify a straw he can grasp at. It’s awfully early in the game to say it, but, as Marlene Dietrich said to Orson Welles in Touch of Evil, “your future is all used up.”
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn07162010.html
If President Obama would read something,I would have him read:
"FDR Yes, Obama No"
FDR solved a financial crisis by Conrad Black
"Coming in to office in March 1933, Roosevelt found unemployment at between 25 and 33 percent, depending on which unofficial source is relied on (the states kept these numbers, rather haphazardly, and the Hoover administration was not much interested in precision); and there was no direct federal aid for the jobless. The banking and stock- and commodity-exchange systems had collapsed and shut down. The stock market was down by 90 percent, the money supply had shrunk drastically, there was severe deflation, and 45 percent of the country’s residential accommodation was under threat of mortgage foreclosure. All farm prices were below subsistence levels. Roosevelt instituted gigantic programs that would today be called workfare in the fields of infrastructure and conservation
After FDR’s landslide reelection in 1936, unemployment had been reduced by more than half from 1933, to about 12 percent in a 5 percent larger work force; the public-works and conservation programs absorbed 70 percent of the remaining unemployed; and direct relief assured at least the subsistence of the remainder.
"Unemployment was below 10 percent on Election Day 1940"
Sully wrote:
@ Rex Caruthers:
A very good question, but perhaps to be answered after pondering the fact that in the school and church I attended as a youth the primary object of veneration for the majority of the parishioners and some of the priests wasn’t a member of the Trinity, or at least that’s how it appeared to me.
The Worship of Mary became a Cult of sorts through the Middle Ages and still remains strong even today.
Yesterday Karl Rove wrote about his primary regret as Bush's Chief of Staff. Today Andrew McCarthy of NRO responds to Rove's regret.
"The American people went to war after the 9/11 attacks because they accepted the urgency of defeating our terrorist enemies and the countries that facilitated them. Support for the war flagged when the government’s objectives parted ways from the public’s. When the Bush administration decided to highlight Iraq’s WMD, it sold too short the terror ties that were the only coherent connection to the casus belli on which the nation agreed. When the WMD did not materialize, the result of “look forward, not back” was to portray nation-building — a goal the public never agreed to — as the dominant purpose of our prohibitively costly presence in Iraq, an ungrateful Muslim country that generally despises Americans.
WHILE THE PUBLIC GRASPED THE CONNECTION BETWEEN ISLAM AND JIHADIST TERROR, THE ADMINISTRATION CLAIMED THERE WAS NO REAL CONNECTION, THAT TERRORISM WAS A PERVERSION OF ISLAM,THE RELIGION OF PEACE. While the public endorsed the proposition that any government abetting jihadist terror against the United States is an enemy, the administration sat on its hands as Iran continued murdering Americans and building its nukes. It made less and less sense that we were expending blood and treasure in Iraq, whose terror ties were seen as a minimal threat to the United States; meanwhile, we were doing nothing about the mullahs in Iran, their Republican Guard, and their forward militia, Hezbollah. Tehran’s terrorist regime was understood to be implacably anti-American, yet the administration assured us it could be brought around diplomatically — even as President Bush argued that there was no point negotiating with terrorists."
As with anything in the real World,if the Base isn't solid,what you build on that base won't hold. The Solid base,in addition to AM's remarks,should have been constructed of the following materials. Since 9/11 was an assault equal to Pearl Harbor,the response should have been(1)A Congressional Declaration Of War(2)A Draft(3)A WW2 response to that Attack. There would have been no resistance to implementing all 3 items on 9/12. Had we a World Class Leader in charge at the time,a Churchill,Lincoln,Roosevelt,even a Kennedy Truman or Eisenhower,is there any doubt that REAL war would have been waged. Unfortunately,looking through the eyes of J Swift,we are the Lilliputians.
http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=NzkzOGU1ZjA3YTYyZTAxNTUwMTI0ZWM4OWE3ZTM1OWM
Sully/Can someone explain to me what he was getting at in one paragraph?
From an Egoistical viewpoint,JB is saying (with infinitely better writing)what I've been saying for years,since 1971*,that a Fiat money system with all its permutations is too unreliable to be our core system,and there's nothing in the Constitution that mentions that kind of system but refers to "coining money and regulating its value". Laissez Faire doesn't work for Monetary Economics.
*Notice JB makes a big point about 1971
I wonder how many economists and writers CATO had to interview in order to find one who expresses his thoughts as crisply, clearly, concisely and grippingly as James Buchanan.
Can someone explain to me what he was getting at in one paragraph?
He is opining that the eye of the financial hurricane is rooted in our nations inability to be consistent in protecting the value of our currency. We have to choose the Economic values thatmaintain prosperty over the long run and JB suggests that Security, Stability,and Predictability should be those Primary Values. JB thinks that we need a Constitutional Imperative to remove Anarchy from the Monetary system because without that our economy is too dependent on the opinion of what's fashionable in Financial circles at any time.
What about, "East is East,West is West,never the Twain shall meet"
They meet in Jindal and Haley
LOL
or One Flew East,One Flew West,
ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOOS NEST.
"Jindal was raised Hindu and converted to Catholicism; Haley is a Sikh who became evangelical. There’s no reason to doubt the sincerity of their conversions. But both also seem aware that maintaining the non-Western religious traditions of their birth would have imperiled their political careers. In 2007, when Congress overwhelmingly passed a resolution recognizing the Hindu and Sikh festival of Diwali, Jindal abstained. Before running for governor, Haley noted that her family attended a Sikh Temple as well as a Methodist Church, but today she studiously avoids any reference to being born Sikh and as the campaign has progressed, her website has been updated to stress in increasingly emphatic terms her devotion to Jesus Christ. That’s hardly surprising given that the co-chairman of one of her Republican gubernatorial rivals circulated an email claiming that Haley “can’t seem to make up her mind about her faith.”
Explaining a faith that is not strictly monotheistic would be challenging in any political environment, but the barriers to religious diversity are clearly highest in the GOP. The South Carolina Republican Platform, for instance, declares, “We recognize the Judeo-Christian ethic embraced by our founding fathers and call upon our state and nation to return again to the values that made America and the American people great.” It’s less likely that Haley would have had to hide her Sikh heritage had she been running in, say, a Democratic primary in California, as opposed to a Republican primary in a state whose GOP-dominated legislature recently tried to put a Christian message on license plates"
"The GOP’s basic problem is that many Republicans equate Christianity, or at least Judeo-Christianity, with Americanism. They do not believe it’s possible to truly uphold American ideals unless you identify with the religious traditions that supposedly underlie those ideals. In a country with a growing Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Mormon and atheist population, that’s a significant source of political bigotry. Is it good that the South Carolina GOP has embraced a South Asian woman? Of course. When that woman can practice whatever religion she wants, without fear that it will wreck her political career, then Republicans will truly deserve to crow."
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-07-15/the-gops-phony-religious-diversity-peter-beinart-on-nikki-haley/?cid=bs:archive1
Buchanan is back from the era, when a Nobel, meant something, but he does ask the fundamental question what it is the real value of money and the economy
He does more than that,he places that question at the heart of the Economic Crisis,and he poses the opinion that our choices which have defined money have been wrong for decades. I appreciate you taking some time to look at that.
So then it's the nature of Religion itself to experience "a wild and crazy time",therfore Islam should be dealt with based on the actions of its "adherants" but not judged as inherantly "Evil" because the adherants of any religion or, ISM for that matter, can take it to the Darkside.
NARC,
This is an ASIDE. For your edifacation,please do us a favor and read,the basic point of what I've been saying about the Economy is expressed from an unusual viewpoint is this essay.
Blaming Islam for the mass world wide madness that we discuss so often is no different than blaming the Lutheran church for Naziism,or the Catholic church,Hitler was reared Catholic,or Judaism for Marxism(Let's blame the Jews for the Gulag),or the Russian Orthodox Church for Communism,or Buddhism for the holocaust in Cambodia,or for the Japanese attack on the US.
During the entire WW2,I don't recall any animus toward any religion for the carnage. Maybe Shinto was blamed for Kamikazism??
CK MacLeod wrote:
@ Ill Papa Fuster:
I’m not sure that there are a lot of “people just like” our narc. Not that there aren’t many who share his predispositions, but I think there are relatively few who collect and assemble “evidence” with his diligence
The NARC is invaluable for his creativity in framing arguments,and also,he really knows a lot.
Mike Totten is incisive in his opinion that Obama might take war to Iran. It wouldn't surprise me. This is a case where the Left meets the Right in agreeing on what Obama might do,of course,the motivation that each assigns to this potential is vastly different. Totten describes Obama as a variant of Wilsonianism,Cockburn describes Obama as the Gopher of Big Business and the Pentagon.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/totten/329901
Jennifer has written an incisive piece also,right up to the last paragraph,in which she regresses to her usual Rubionic platitudes.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/rubin/329931
http://danteworlds.laits.utexas.edu/circle8b.html#mohammed
Well then call it Hegemonic, not reptilian, the latter indicates a irrational response
I/ll stand by Reptillian/Primitive,not Irrational,Survival Mode,Fight or Flight, but,like the Dinosauers,we're to big and stupid to survive the dominance of the small sharp toothed ferrets that are coming our way.
Narc/REPTILIAN
I was referring to the fact that we need to position ourselves to be in a favorable strategic position to take control of the oil IF NECESSARY* without appearing to do so,even to ourselves.
*And it will be necessary. We are Dinosauers and the meteor hits the day either the oil runs dry or becomes too expensive to buy and still stay in business.
Sully/ but even I don’t believe our politicians are stupid enough to have run the war since 9/11 the way they have if their objective is to fight “the Muslim countries” over oil
Of Course you're right,it is not a conscious disposition. What I'm saying is that Oil like any great resource has a magnetic attraction to the Reptillian brain(Examples besides Oil are the Gold Rush and the Silicon Rush). A conscious strategy won't emerge for a while,in the meantime,the logic of our plight is operating sublimally. So they run the war the way they have,accidently and opportunistically,to transition to the BIG plunge when necessary. Because I think that a "Western"takeover of the Oil Resources is very likely,I am saying that It should become our strategy ASAP.
$100/bbl
Of course,I was referring to $100/BBL of real,asset backed money,not the phoney stuff,LOL
narciso wrote:
Theres’s no oil in Afghanistan
It keeps us in the general vicinity,knight threatens pawn. \
The logic of the game is inescapable,In the long run,can the US remain a customer as the product it requires heads towards a price point that bankrupts our private economy. $100 Barrel.
Very strange war
We are trying desperately to avoid the appearance of the probable outcome of this Chess Game,but looking forward about twenty moves,we checkmate Opec with our Nuke Queen. It may be that the Nuclear Weapon Community cuts a deal with OPEC to independently manage the distribution of the oil.
For two decades,We've given China a green light to control natural Resources in Africa,what are we thinking?
Who do you think we are at war with right now?
I think we are at war with the Muslim countries of the Near East over oil,but we're not allowed to have a direct oil war,so we pretend it's about National Security.
Sully/ Nation states should only fight major, full mobilization, wars for survival since the act of drafting a major portion of the population for purposes less than survival is itself an evil of large magnitude.
Sully, The problem has been undeclared wars that are defined as "minor","Police Actions" that are not wars of survival. Maybe we're on the same page here?? but requiring Declarations and a Draft will weed out these "limited"wars as it weeds out the all professional Military.
Now it’s very possible, that had we conducted the war in stages, Hitler
might actually have succeeded at the Final Solution, surely that’s not what you meant
What I meant was that the Jews were not a factor in our decision to fight a two front war in WW2. Also,the Jews were not a factor in our insistence on an unconditional surrender by Germany,that insistence cost the lives of several Million Jews.
It’s a formula for turning us into everything we hate.
Could Islamics hate us any more than as we are now?
We are already turned into what we hate to a large degree. But what
do we hate?
What’s particularly strange is that you’re so clear on what a mistake WWI was for us in your view, yet you somehow seem to believe that WWIII would have the shape of a winning business deal, not to mention a morally and politically sound adventure
Not so strange,having a Draft forces those in charge of a War to Win and Win quick. WW1,which I view as a mistake,is an example,WW2,which I view as a partial mistake*,is another example. Vietnam is an example of a Draft based war which the planners couldn't figure out how to win,so the Draftees put huge upward pressure/stress on the commanders"to shit or get off the pot". The commanders didn't like that,so they got rid of those pesky citizen soldiers. Imagine if we had had a professional army for the Vietnam War;we'd still be there.
*I believe we should have fought a one front war against Japan,and once that was over,then take a look at what is needed in Europe,and make decisions about that at that later time frame. In other words,let Russia and England take care of their own Empires. It was never about helping the Jews in any case.
narciso wrote:
Blind squirrel catches a nut or two
All his Caucasian support is badly eroded. The Republicans can only defeat themselves by nominating a loser. Of Course,the same national economics will continue to haunt the winner,so in 2016,the other party will reclaim the Govt. and so it will go.
And Finally/To Narciso
A devastating but accurate analysis of Obama comes from the Left,The Left has given up on him,that means he is finished
The Fall of Obama
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
"A hefty percentage of Americans believe that he is a socialist – a charge as ludicrous as accusing the Archbishop of Canterbury of being a closet Druid. Obama reveres the capitalist system. He admires the apex predators of Wall Street who showered his campaign treasury with millions of dollars. The frightful catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico stemmed directly from the green light he and his Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, gave to BP."
"It is not Obama’s fault that for 30 years America’s policy – under Reagan, both Bushes and Bill Clinton – has been to export jobs permanently to the Third World. The jobs that Americans now desperately seek are no longer here, in the homeland, and never will be. They’re in China, Taiwan, Vietnam, India, Indonesia.
No stimulus program, giving money to cement contractors to fix potholes along the federal interstate highway system, is going to bring those jobs back. Highly trained tool and die workers, the aristocrats of the manufacturing sector, are flipping hamburgers – at best – for $7.50 an hour because U.S. corporations sent their jobs to Guangzhou, with the approval of politicians flush with the money of the “free trade” lobby.
"It is not Obama’s fault that across 30 years more and more money has floated up to the apex of the social pyramid till America is heading back to where it was in the 1880s, a nation of tramps and millionaires. It’s not his fault that every tax break, every regulation, every judicial decision tilts toward business and the rich. That was the neoliberal America conjured into malign vitality back in the mid 1970s.
"But IT IS Obama’s fault that he did not understand this, that always, from the getgo, he flattered Americans with paeans to their greatness, without adequate warning of the political and corporate corruption destroying America and the resistance he would face if he really fought against the prevailing arrangements that were destroying America. He offered them a free and easy pass to a better future, and now they see that the promise was empty.
"IT'S Obama’s fault, too, that, as a communicator, he cannot rally and inspire the nation from its fears. From his earliest years he has schooled himself not to be excitable, not to be an angry black man who would be alarming to his white friends at Harvard and his later corporate patrons. Self-control was his passport to the guardians of the system, who were desperate to find a symbolic leader to restore America’s credibility in the world after the disasters of the Bush era. He is too cool.
"So, now Americans in increasing numbers have lost confidence in him. For the first time in the polls negative assessments outnumber the positive. He no longer commands trust. His support is drifting down to 40 per cent. The straddle that allowed him to flatter corporate chieftains at the same time as blue-collar workers now seems like the most vapid opportunism. The casual campaign pledge to wipe out al-Quaida in Afghanistan is now being cashed out in a disastrous campaign viewed with dismay by a majority of Americans.
"The polls portend disaster. It now looks as though the Republicans may well recapture not only the House but, conceivably, the Senate as well. The public mood is so contrarian that, even though polls show that voters think the Democrats may well have better solutions on the economy than Republicans, they will vote against incumbent Democrats in the midterm elections next fall. They just want to throw the bums out.
"Obama has sought out Bill Clinton to advise him in this desperate hour. If Clinton is frank, he will remind Obama that his own hopes for a progressive first term were destroyed by the failure of his health reform in the spring of 1993. By August of that year, he was importing a Republican, David Gergen, to run the White House.
"Obama had his window of opportunity last year, when he could have made jobs and financial reform his prime objectives. That’s what Americans hoped for. Mesmerized by economic advisers who were creatures of the banks, he instead plunged into the Sargasso Sea of “health reform,” wasted the better part of a year, and ended up with something that pleases no one.
"What can save Obama now? It’s hard even to identify a straw he can grasp at. It’s awfully early in the game to say it, but, as Marlene Dietrich said to Orson Welles in Touch of Evil, “your future is all used up.”
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn07162010.html
If President Obama would read something,I would have him read:
"FDR Yes, Obama No"
FDR solved a financial crisis by Conrad Black
"Coming in to office in March 1933, Roosevelt found unemployment at between 25 and 33 percent, depending on which unofficial source is relied on (the states kept these numbers, rather haphazardly, and the Hoover administration was not much interested in precision); and there was no direct federal aid for the jobless. The banking and stock- and commodity-exchange systems had collapsed and shut down. The stock market was down by 90 percent, the money supply had shrunk drastically, there was severe deflation, and 45 percent of the country’s residential accommodation was under threat of mortgage foreclosure. All farm prices were below subsistence levels. Roosevelt instituted gigantic programs that would today be called workfare in the fields of infrastructure and conservation
After FDR’s landslide reelection in 1936, unemployment had been reduced by more than half from 1933, to about 12 percent in a 5 percent larger work force; the public-works and conservation programs absorbed 70 percent of the remaining unemployed; and direct relief assured at least the subsistence of the remainder.
"Unemployment was below 10 percent on Election Day 1940"
http://article.nationalreview.com/438155/fdr-yes-obama-no/conrad-black?page=1
No, we are Gulliver
In Book one,Gulliver was big but not too bright,in Book two Gulliver was small,but a lot smarter. Which Gulliver are we? & BTW,Who are the Yahoos?
Sully wrote:
@ Rex Caruthers:
A very good question, but perhaps to be answered after pondering the fact that in the school and church I attended as a youth the primary object of veneration for the majority of the parishioners and some of the priests wasn’t a member of the Trinity, or at least that’s how it appeared to me.
The Worship of Mary became a Cult of sorts through the Middle Ages and still remains strong even today.
Yesterday Karl Rove wrote about his primary regret as Bush's Chief of Staff. Today Andrew McCarthy of NRO responds to Rove's regret.
"The American people went to war after the 9/11 attacks because they accepted the urgency of defeating our terrorist enemies and the countries that facilitated them. Support for the war flagged when the government’s objectives parted ways from the public’s. When the Bush administration decided to highlight Iraq’s WMD, it sold too short the terror ties that were the only coherent connection to the casus belli on which the nation agreed. When the WMD did not materialize, the result of “look forward, not back” was to portray nation-building — a goal the public never agreed to — as the dominant purpose of our prohibitively costly presence in Iraq, an ungrateful Muslim country that generally despises Americans.
WHILE THE PUBLIC GRASPED THE CONNECTION BETWEEN ISLAM AND JIHADIST TERROR, THE ADMINISTRATION CLAIMED THERE WAS NO REAL CONNECTION, THAT TERRORISM WAS A PERVERSION OF ISLAM,THE RELIGION OF PEACE. While the public endorsed the proposition that any government abetting jihadist terror against the United States is an enemy, the administration sat on its hands as Iran continued murdering Americans and building its nukes. It made less and less sense that we were expending blood and treasure in Iraq, whose terror ties were seen as a minimal threat to the United States; meanwhile, we were doing nothing about the mullahs in Iran, their Republican Guard, and their forward militia, Hezbollah. Tehran’s terrorist regime was understood to be implacably anti-American, yet the administration assured us it could be brought around diplomatically — even as President Bush argued that there was no point negotiating with terrorists."
As with anything in the real World,if the Base isn't solid,what you build on that base won't hold. The Solid base,in addition to AM's remarks,should have been constructed of the following materials. Since 9/11 was an assault equal to Pearl Harbor,the response should have been(1)A Congressional Declaration Of War(2)A Draft(3)A WW2 response to that Attack. There would have been no resistance to implementing all 3 items on 9/12. Had we a World Class Leader in charge at the time,a Churchill,Lincoln,Roosevelt,even a Kennedy Truman or Eisenhower,is there any doubt that REAL war would have been waged. Unfortunately,looking through the eyes of J Swift,we are the Lilliputians.
http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=NzkzOGU1ZjA3YTYyZTAxNTUwMTI0ZWM4OWE3ZTM1OWM
Sully/Can someone explain to me what he was getting at in one paragraph?
From an Egoistical viewpoint,JB is saying (with infinitely better writing)what I've been saying for years,since 1971*,that a Fiat money system with all its permutations is too unreliable to be our core system,and there's nothing in the Constitution that mentions that kind of system but refers to "coining money and regulating its value". Laissez Faire doesn't work for Monetary Economics.
*Notice JB makes a big point about 1971
Sully/toward monotheistic religions
Is Trinitarianism monotheistic?
Sully/toward monotheistic religions
Is Trinitarian Christianity Monotheistc?
Sully wrote:
@ Rex Caruthers:
I wonder how many economists and writers CATO had to interview in order to find one who expresses his thoughts as crisply, clearly, concisely and grippingly as James Buchanan.
Can someone explain to me what he was getting at in one paragraph?
He is opining that the eye of the financial hurricane is rooted in our nations inability to be consistent in protecting the value of our currency. We have to choose the Economic values thatmaintain prosperty over the long run and JB suggests that Security, Stability,and Predictability should be those Primary Values. JB thinks that we need a Constitutional Imperative to remove Anarchy from the Monetary system because without that our economy is too dependent on the opinion of what's fashionable in Financial circles at any time.
What about, "East is East,West is West,never the Twain shall meet"
They meet in Jindal and Haley
LOL
or One Flew East,One Flew West,
ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOOS NEST.
"Jindal was raised Hindu and converted to Catholicism; Haley is a Sikh who became evangelical. There’s no reason to doubt the sincerity of their conversions. But both also seem aware that maintaining the non-Western religious traditions of their birth would have imperiled their political careers. In 2007, when Congress overwhelmingly passed a resolution recognizing the Hindu and Sikh festival of Diwali, Jindal abstained. Before running for governor, Haley noted that her family attended a Sikh Temple as well as a Methodist Church, but today she studiously avoids any reference to being born Sikh and as the campaign has progressed, her website has been updated to stress in increasingly emphatic terms her devotion to Jesus Christ. That’s hardly surprising given that the co-chairman of one of her Republican gubernatorial rivals circulated an email claiming that Haley “can’t seem to make up her mind about her faith.”
Explaining a faith that is not strictly monotheistic would be challenging in any political environment, but the barriers to religious diversity are clearly highest in the GOP. The South Carolina Republican Platform, for instance, declares, “We recognize the Judeo-Christian ethic embraced by our founding fathers and call upon our state and nation to return again to the values that made America and the American people great.” It’s less likely that Haley would have had to hide her Sikh heritage had she been running in, say, a Democratic primary in California, as opposed to a Republican primary in a state whose GOP-dominated legislature recently tried to put a Christian message on license plates"
"The GOP’s basic problem is that many Republicans equate Christianity, or at least Judeo-Christianity, with Americanism. They do not believe it’s possible to truly uphold American ideals unless you identify with the religious traditions that supposedly underlie those ideals. In a country with a growing Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Mormon and atheist population, that’s a significant source of political bigotry. Is it good that the South Carolina GOP has embraced a South Asian woman? Of course. When that woman can practice whatever religion she wants, without fear that it will wreck her political career, then Republicans will truly deserve to crow."
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-07-15/the-gops-phony-religious-diversity-peter-beinart-on-nikki-haley/?cid=bs:archive1
Buchanan is back from the era, when a Nobel, meant something, but he does ask the fundamental question what it is the real value of money and the economy
He does more than that,he places that question at the heart of the Economic Crisis,and he poses the opinion that our choices which have defined money have been wrong for decades. I appreciate you taking some time to look at that.
Yes, at this time
So then it's the nature of Religion itself to experience "a wild and crazy time",therfore Islam should be dealt with based on the actions of its "adherants" but not judged as inherantly "Evil" because the adherants of any religion or, ISM for that matter, can take it to the Darkside.
NARC,
This is an ASIDE. For your edifacation,please do us a favor and read,the basic point of what I've been saying about the Economy is expressed from an unusual viewpoint is this essay.
http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj30n2/cj30n2-1.pdf
neither was Christianity
Neither is Judaism,Hinduism,Taoism,Buddhism,
Of all the major religions,Only ISLAM has that distinction?
Luther and Hitler were four hundred years apart
Mohhamend and Atta were 1300 years apart.
What was Luther's attitude towards Jews*
*Don't Fudge,I have my Luther quote book handy.
"their demographics are all out of kilter, they feed this obscurantist gruel to the masses, ensuring their own demise at least in the mid range"
Sounds like a description of US as much as THEM.
Blaming Islam for the mass world wide madness that we discuss so often is no different than blaming the Lutheran church for Naziism,or the Catholic church,Hitler was reared Catholic,or Judaism for Marxism(Let's blame the Jews for the Gulag),or the Russian Orthodox Church for Communism,or Buddhism for the holocaust in Cambodia,or for the Japanese attack on the US.
During the entire WW2,I don't recall any animus toward any religion for the carnage. Maybe Shinto was blamed for Kamikazism??