Posted that under the NSA thread yesterday. Day late there Phil. LOL!
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Posted that under the NSA thread yesterday. Day late there Phil. LOL!
Florida Becomes Third State to Pre-File
December 10, 2013
Good news from the Sunshine State! Florida State Senator Alan Hays (R-Umatilla) filed SM 476 on Friday petitioning Congress to call an Article V Convention of States.
Senator Hays stated, “Everywhere I go, people ask me what can be done to reform Washington, D.C. This petition to Congress to convene the Article V convention is the first step toward that reform. This ‘runaway’ Federal government is of great concern to Americans of all political parties and of all the states.”
In filing the legislation, Senator Hays continued, “In their wisdom, our Founders knew the Federal Government might one day become too large and too powerful, so they specifically inserted a mechanism that gives states a lawful and orderly instrument to restrain a runaway federal government; it’s Article V, Section 2 of the Constitution.”
So far, Florida, Virginia, and South Carolina have officially pre-filed our application in their state legislature. We have many more representatives interested in sponsoring our application, so be looking for your state as we announce more pre-filings in the next few weeks!
These are huge steps towards calling a Convention of States, and we’re taking them right on schedule!
MARK LEVIN: Do Republicans not understand that the WHOLE DAMN THING IS GOING TO COLLAPSE?
December 11, 2013
Mark Levin reminds Republicans that while they are worried about preventing another government shutdown, the whole thing is going to shutdown and collapse because there isn’t enough money in the world to pay for the kind of spending that is going on right now:
We have over a 90 trillion dollar unfunded liability… And ladies and gentlemen, soon it’s 100 trillion dollars. You know what that means? That means our kids and their kids and every future generation is going to be destroyed. Because there’s not enough currency on the face of the earth to address that.
Then we have what’s called the fiscal operating debt. And I distinguish that from the unfunded liabilities, the entitlements, the fiscal operating debt built up from one budget after another – not even counting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. It’s almost 17.3 trillion dollars. When my book came out in August it was 17 trillion. 17.3 trillion dollars.
And as a nation, we’re focused on 23 billion dollars over 10 years which is never going to happen? And the media running around talking about ‘wow, Washington actually works‘ and the Republicans saying ‘anything but a government shutdown.’
Do they not understand that the whole damn thing is gonna shut down and collapse? And it won’t just be 17 percent of the government. It’ll be your savings. It’ll be your mutual funds. It’ll be your pensions. It’ll be the value of your paycheck. It’ll be your college fund. It’ll be EVERYTHING. Because once the spiral occurs there’s no undoing it. Because man makes a situation that cannot be fixed until there’s an ultimate collapse. It’s called the laws of economics and they are as serious and real as the laws of physics.
There is much more and you can listen to the full clip below:
(Video at the link)
Ryan, I'm not sure about this. Can you explain it?
Are we talking a Constitutional Convention?Quote:
Good news from the Sunshine State! Florida State Senator Alan Hays (R-Umatilla) filed SM 476 on Friday petitioning Congress to call an Article V Convention of States.
I mean, this is what we're talking about, right?
Because if true, then how the HELL are we going to get 38 states to do shit together?Quote:
Article Five of the United States Constitution describes the process whereby the Constitution may be altered. Altering the Constitution consists of proposing an amendment or amendments and subsequent ratification.[1]
Amendments may be proposed by either:
- Two-thirds (supermajority) of both the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States Congress
- By a national convention assembled at the request of the legislatures of at least two-thirds (at least 34) of the United States' 50 states
To become part of the Constitution, amendments must then be ratified either by approval of:
- The legislatures of three-fourths (at least 38) of the states; or
- State ratifying conventions held in three-fourths of the states.
Any amendment so ratified becomes a valid part of the Constitution, provided that no state "shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the senate", without its consent.
We're not. The only way this will happen is if revolution and shooting start. THEN they might (they being Senators and Congressassholes) might consider it.... not before.
here's the text:
I just don't see how this is going to happen.Quote:
The Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several states, shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress.
Yes, it would be an Article 5 Convention, what many people refer to as a Constitutional Convention.
And you're right, getting 38 of the states to do anything will be a challenge but, it is really one of the few avenues left to solve the problems we are faced with short of bloodshed.
That 38 state hurdle is also a good thing. It helps keep the Convention from "running away" like many people claim to fear.
Cuomo: ‘Extreme Conservatives … Have No Place In The State Of New York’
January 17, 2014
Gov. Andrew Cuomo says the current “schism” in the state Republican party is a smaller version of the split causing so much damage in Washington, D.C., and that “conservative Republicans … have no place in the state of New York, because that’s not who New Yorkers are.”
In conversation with Susan Arbetter on “The Capitol Pressroom” Friday morning, Cuomo said:
You have a schism within the Republican Party. … They’re searching to define their soul, that’s what’s going on. Is the Republican party in this state a moderate party or is it an extreme conservative party? That’s what they’re trying to figure out. It’s a mirror of what’s going on in Washington. The gridlock in Washington is less about Democrats and Republicans. It’s more about extreme Republicans versus moderate Republicans.
… You’re seeing that play out in New York. … The Republican Party candidates are running against the SAFE Act — it was voted for by moderate Republicans who run the Senate! Their problem is not me and the Democrats; their problem is themselves. Who are they? Are they these extreme conservatives who are right-to-life, pro-assault-weapon, anti-gay? Is that who they are? Because if that’s who they are and they’re the extreme conservatives, they have no place in the state of New York, because that’s not who New Yorkers are.
If they’re moderate Republicans like in the Senate right now, who control the Senate — moderate Republicans have a place in their state. George Pataki was governor of this state as a moderate Republican; but not what you’re hearing from them on the far right.”
The governor’s suggestion that, for example, those who hold anti-abortion views have no place in the state prompted Dennis Poust, spokesman for the state Catholic Conference, to observe on Twitter, “My governor thinks there’s no place in NY for people like me. Can I get a state grant to relocate?” (And where to — New Hampshire, maybe?)
Cuomo also defended his immense campaign haul of more than $33 million.
“Somebody can come in with personal wealth and just win the office because they can outspend you,” before alluding to Donald Trump’s boast that he could pour up to $200 million into a gubernatorial run: “You see some of the names brag about (how) they have unlimited wealth and can spend anything and could dwarf my spending, significant as my fundraising has been … and they’re proud about it, or they have family money, or daddy gives them money or whatever the case may be.
” … And I need to be in a position where I can explain to the people of the state what we’ve done and what we plan to do, and that’s why we raised the money in the campaign.”
If you were waiting for a full-throated reiteration of the governor’s call for public financing of campaigns, he eventually got there, but mainly as “a matter of appearance.”
“I think a lot of this conversation is baloney, frankly,” he said of concern over the wealth of many of his donors, insisting that the real question was one of character.
“Some politicians out there can be bought for $10, and some politicians can’t be bought for $10 billion, you know? It’s a question about the person,” he said. ” … It’s not how much does it cost to buy a politician, it’s that a politician can be bought.” (Which is, as Newsday’s Yancey Roy noted on Twitter as the interview was going on, very similar to arguments that opponents of public financing have been making.)
Cuomo said his ultimate test was whether or not he could sleep well at night.
“I believe in my heart and I believe the people of this state believe that — forget the money and the campaign contributions and what people give — I’m going to do what I believe is right for them, I’m going to make the decision that I’m proud of,” he said.
Another Matt Bracken prophecy in the works to fulfillment?
Latinos Set To Surpass Whites In California In March
January 16, 2014
California is growing older and more diverse.
The Latino population is projected to surpass that of whites in California in March to become the single largest "race or ethnic group," according to a report on shifting demographics in Gov. Jerry Brown's 2014-15 budget proposal. Also, the number of residents 65 and older will jump by 20.7 percent over the next five years, the report said.
State demographers expected Latinos to surpass the non-Hispanic white population seven months earlier, but Latino birth rates were lower than anticipated. Now, officials say, by March Latinos will make up 39 percent of California's population, edging out non-Hispanic whites at 38.8 percent. Nearly 25 years ago, non-Hispanic whites made up 57 percent of the state, while Latinos made up 26 percent.
The state's Department of Finance includes the projections in the governor's budget proposal because of the potential economic impact, such as the increase in retirees affecting the scope of services needed for an aging population, or income disparities among minority groups increasing the need for social or educational programs.
Reshaping the electorate
"Demographic changes that are coming will reshape the electorate, and in turn that will likely have impacts on policies and issues that decision makers focus on in the coming decades," said Mindy Romero, director of the California Civic Engagement Project at the UC Davis Center for Regional Change.
Geographic data for the state's 58 counties show the Bay Area is leading the state in economic and population growth, said Bill Schooling, chief demographer for the state Department of Finance. Statewide, coastal cities are growing faster than the Central Valley.
As a state, California experienced modest growth in the past fiscal year, with estimates pegging the population at 38.2 million residents. By July, demographers anticipate the state's population will grow by 300,000 people.
More old, fewer young
Growth rates vary drastically between age groups, with retiring Baby Boomers projected to reshape the labor force in the next 15 years as more than 1,000 Californians will turn 65 years old each day. At the same time, lower birth rates have resulted in fewer young people, with the 18-to-24-year-old group experiencing a 4.5 percent decline and 5- to 17-year-olds increasing just 0.2 percent.
"A big question mark is about what that means for policy for youth," Romero said. "Older voters often aren't as supportive of youth-specific policies."
Schooling said the median age for Latinos - 28 - shows many are in their childbearing years, which will drive future growth among the group.
"Considerably more births are Latino, even though the birth rate is not particularly high," he said.
Schooling said new data suggest the current trend won't continue to the point of Latino groups becoming a majority. State demographers previously projected the Latino population to reach more than 50 percent in 2042.
"In our projections, they get higher and higher, but not reaching a majority," Schooling said.
Asian groups, which currently make up 13 percent of the state, are also projected to see strong growth, mostly through immigration.
"It's less about one group being a couple tenths more of the population than another group, but more about a continuing trend for California being a majority-minority state," said Bruce Mirken, spokesman for the Greenlining Institute, a Berkeley nonprofit that advocates for communities of color. "Everything that government does, that private industry does, needs to react to that reality."
Thomas Sowell talking about the real possibility of race war and now Walter Williams talking about the need for the US to peacefully split. Hell of a way for him to start the new year...
Parting Company
Walter E. Williams
January 1, 2014
Here's a question that I've asked in the past that needs to be revisited. Unless one wishes to obfuscate, it has a simple yes or no answer. If one group of people prefers strong government control and management of people's lives while another group prefers liberty and desires to be left alone, should they be required to enter into conflict with one another and risk bloodshed and loss of life in order to impose their preferences on the other group? Yes or no. My answer is no; they should be able to peaceably part company and go their separate ways.
The problem our nation faces is very much like a marriage in which one partner has an established pattern of ignoring and breaking the marital vows. Moreover, the offending partner has no intention to mend his ways. Of course, the marriage can remain intact while one party tries to impose his will on the other and engages in the deviousness of one-upsmanship and retaliation. Rather than domination or submission by one party, or domestic violence, a more peaceable alternative is separation.
I believe our nation is at a point where there are enough irreconcilable differences between those Americans who want to control other Americans and those Americans who want to be left alone that separation is the only peaceable alternative. Just as in a marriage where vows are broken, our rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution have been grossly violated by a government instituted to protect them. These constitutional violations have increased independent of whether there's been a Democrat-controlled Washington or a Republican-controlled Washington.
There is no evidence that Americans who are responsible for and support constitutional abrogation have any intention of mending their ways. You say, "Williams, what do you mean by constitutional abrogation?" Let's look at the magnitude of the violations.
Article I, Section 8 of our Constitution lists the activities for which Congress is authorized to tax and spend. Nowhere on that list is there authority for Congress to tax and spend for: Medicare, Social Security, public education, farm subsidies, bank and business bailouts, food stamps and thousands of other activities that account for roughly two-thirds of the federal budget. Neither is there authority for congressional mandates to citizens about what type of health insurance they must purchase, how states and people may use their land, the speed at which they can drive, whether a library has wheelchair ramps, and the gallons of water used per toilet flush. The list of congressional violations of both the letter and spirit of the Constitution is virtually without end. Our derelict Supreme Court has given Congress sanction to do just about anything for which they can muster a majority vote.
James Madison, the acknowledged father of the Constitution, explained in Federalist Paper No. 45: "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce. ... The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives and liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement and prosperity of the State." Our founder's constitutional vision of limited federal government has been consigned to the dustbin of history.
Americans have several options. We can like sheep submit to those who have contempt for liberty and our Constitution. We can resist, fight and risk bloodshed and death in an attempt to force America's tyrants to respect our liberties and Constitution. A superior alternative is to find a way to peaceably separate into states whose citizens respect liberty and the Constitution. My personal preference is a restoration of the constitutional values of limited government that made us a great nation.
Famed SciFi author Orson Scott Card wrote the following essay sometime after his 2007 book Empire as an afterword. There's no date attributed to it so I have no idea when it was written.
I don't agree with his drawing an equivalency between left and right. On its face, the left seeks to impose its will on the nation while most all on the right want nothing more than to be left alone to their pursuits.
Keeping Things Civil
Afterword to the novel Empire
by Orson Scott Card
The originating premise of this novel did not come from me. Donald Mustard and his partners in Chair Enterainment had the idea for an entertainment franchise called Empire about a near-future American civil war. When I joined the project to create a work of fiction based on that premise, my first order of business was to come up with a plausible way that such an event might come about.
It was, sadly enough, all too easy.
Because we haven't had a civil war in the past fourteen decades, people think we can't have one now. Where is the geographic clarity of the Mason-Dixon line? When you look at the red-state blue-state division in the past few elections, you get a false impression. The real division is urban, academic, and high-tech counties versus suburban, rural, and conservative Christian counties. How could such widely scattered "blue" centers and such centerless "red" populations ever act in concert?
Geography aside, however, we have never been so evenly divided with such hateful rhetoric since the years leading up to the Civil War of the 1860s. Because the national media elite are so uniformly progressive, we keep hearing (in the elite media) about the rhetorical excesses of the "extreme right." To hear the same media, there is no "extreme left," just the occasional progressive who says things he or she shouldn't.
But any rational observer has to see that the Left and Right in America are screaming the most vile accusations at each other all the time. We are fully polarized -- if you accept one idea that sounds like it belongs to either the blue or the red, you are assumed -- nay, required -- to espouse the entire rest of the package, even though there is no reason why supporting the war against terrorism should imply you're in favor of banning all abortions and against restricting the availability of firearms; no reason why being in favor of keeping government-imposed limits on the free market should imply you also are in favor of giving legal status to homosexual couples and against building nuclear reactors. These issues are not remotely related, and yet if you hold any of one group's views, you are hated by the other group as if you believed them all; and if you hold most of one group's views, but not all, you are treated as if you were a traitor for deviating even slightly from the party line.
It goes deeper than this, however. A good working definition of fanaticism is that you are so convinced of your views and policies that you are sure anyone who opposes them must either be stupid and deceived or have some ulterior motive. We are today a nation where almost everyone in the public eye displays fanaticism with every utterance.
It is part of human nature to regard as sane those people who share the worldview of the majority of society. Somehow, though, we have managed to divide ourselves into two different, mutually exclusive sanities. The people in each society reinforce each other in madness, believing unsubstantiated ideas that are often contradicted not only by each other but also by whatever objective evidence exists on the subject. Instead of having an ever-adapting civilization-wide consensus reality, we have became a nation of insane people able to see the madness only in the other side.
Does this lead, inevitably, to civil war? Of course not -- though it's hardly conducive to stable government or the long-term continuation of democracy. What inevitably arises from such division is the attempt by one group, utterly convinced of its rectitude, to use all coercive forces available to stamp out the opposing views.
Such an effort is, of course, a confession of madness. Suppression of other people's beliefs by force only comes about when you are deeply afraid that your own beliefs are wrong and you are desperate to keep anyone from challenging them. Oh, you may come up with rhetoric about how you are suppressing them for their own good or for the good of others, but people who are confident of their beliefs are content merely to offer and teach, not compel.
The impulse toward coercion takes whatever forms are available. In academia, it consists of the denial of degrees, jobs, or tenure to people with nonconformist opinions. Ironically, the people who are most relentless in eliminating competing ideas congratulate themselves on their tolerance and diversity. In most situations, it is less formal, consisting of shunning -- but the shunning usually has teeth in it. Did Mel Gibson, when in his cups, say something that reflects his upbringing in an antisemitic household? Then he is to be shunned -- which in Hollywood will mean he can never be considered for an Oscar and will have a much harder time getting prestige, as opposed to money, roles.
It has happened to me, repeatedly, from both the Left and the Right. It is never enough to disagree with me -- I must be banned from speaking at a particular convention or campus; my writings should be boycotted; anything that will punish me for my noncompliance and, if possible, impoverish me and my family.
So virulent are these responses -- again, from both the Left and the Right -- that I believe it is only a short step to the attempt to use the power of the state to enforce one's views. On the right we have attempts to use the government to punish flag burners and to enforce state-sponsored praying. On the left, we have a ban on free speech and peaceable public assembly in front of abortion clinics and the attempt to use the power of the state to force the acceptance of homosexual relationships as equal to marriages. Each side feels absolutely justified in compelling others to accept their views.
It is puritanism, not in its separatist form, desiring to live by themselves by their own rules, but in its Cromwellian form, using the power of the state to enforce the dicta of one group throughout the wider society, by force rather than persuasion.
This despite the historical fact that the civilization that has created more prosperity and freedom for more people than ever before is one based on tolerance and pluralism, and that attempts to force one religion (theistic or atheistic) on the rest of a nation or the world inevitably lead to misery, poverty, and, usually, conflict.
Yet we seem only able to see the negative effects of coercion caused by the other team. Progressives see the danger of allowing fanatical religions (which, by some definitions, means "all of them") to have control of government -- they need only point to Iran, Saudi Arabia, the Taliban, or, in a more general and milder sense, the entire Muslim world, which is oppressed precisely to the degree that Islam is enforced as the state religion.
Conservatives, on the other hand, see the danger of allowing fanatical atheistic religions to have control of government, pointing to Nazi Germany and all Communist nations as obvious examples of political utopianism run amok.
Yet neither side can see any connection between their own fanaticism and the historical examples that might apply to them. People insisting on a Christian America simply cannot comprehend that others view them as the Taliban-in-waiting; those who insist on progressive exclusivism in America are outraged at any comparison between them and Communist totalitarianism. Even as they shun or fire or deny tenure to those who disagree with them, everybody thinks it's the other guy who would be the oppressor, while our side would simply "set things to rights."
Rarely do people set out to start a civil war. Invariably, when such wars break out both sides consider themselves to be the aggrieved ones. Right now in America, even though the Left has control of all the institutions of cultural power and prestige -- universities, movies, literary publishing, mainstream journalism-- as well as the federal courts, they feel themselves oppressed and threatened by traditional religion and conservatism. And even though the Right controls both houses of Congress and the presidency, as well as having ample outlets for their views in nontraditional media and an ever-increasing dominance over American religious and economic life, they feel themselves oppressed and threatened by the cultural dominance of the Left.
And they are threatened, just as they are also threatening, because nobody is willing to accept the simple idea that someone can disagree with their group and still be a decent human being worthy of respect.
Can it lead to war?
Very simply, yes. The moment one group feels itself so aggrieved that it uses either its own weapons or the weapons of the state to "prevent" the other side from bringing about its supposed "evil" designs, then that other side will have no choice but to take up arms against them. Both sides will believe the other to be the instigator.
The vast majority of people will be horrified -- but they will also be mobilized whether they like it or not.
It's the lesson of Yugoslavia and Rwanda. If you were a Tutsi just before the Rwandan holocaust who did not hate Hutus, who married a Hutu, who hired Hutus or taught school to Hutu students, it would not have stopped Hutus from taking machetes to you and your family. You would have had only two choices: to die or to take up arms against Hutus, whether you had previously hated them or not.
But it went further. Knowing they were doing a great evil, the Hutus who conducted the programs also killed any Hutus who were "disloyal" enough to try to oppose taking up arms.
Likewise in Yugoslavia. For political gain, Serbian leaders in the post-Tito government maintained a drumbeat of Serbian manifest-destiny propaganda, which openly demonized Croatian and Muslim people as a threat to good Serbs. When Serbs in Bosnia took up arms to "protect themselves" from being ruled by a Muslim majority -- and were sponsored and backed by the Serbian government -- what choice did a Bosnian Muslim have but to take up arms in self-defense? Thus both sides claimed to be acting in self-defense, and in short order, they were.
And as both Rwanda and Bosnia proved, clear geographical divisions are not required in order to have brutal, bloody civil wars. All that is required is that both sides come to believe that if they do not take up arms, the other side will destroy them.
In America today, we are complacent in our belief that it can't happen here. We forget that America is not an ethnic nation, where ancient ties of blood can bind people together despite differences. We are created by ideology; ideas are our only connection. And because today we have discarded the free marketplace of ideas and have polarized ourselves into two equally insane ideologies, so that each side can, with perfect accuracy, brand the other side as madmen, we are ripe for that next step, to take preventive action to keep the other side from seizing power and oppressing our side.
The examples are -- or should be -- obvious. That we are generally oblivious to the excesses of our own side merely demonstrates how close we already are to a paroxysm of self-destruction.
We are waiting for Fort Sumter.
I hope it doesn't come.
Meanwhile, however, there is this novel, in which I try to show characters who struggle to keep from falling into the insanity -- yet who also try to prevent other people's insanity from destroying America. This book is fiction. It is entertainment. I do not believe a new American civil war is inevitable; and if it did happen, I do not believe it would necessarily take the form I show in this book, politically or militarily. Since the war depicted in these pages has not happened, I am certainly not declaring either side in our polarized public life guilty of causing it. I only say that for the purposes of this story, we have this set of causes; in the real world, if we should ever be so stupid as to allow a civil war to happen again, we would obviously have a different set of specific causes.
We live in a time when people like me, who do not wish to choose either camp's ridiculous, inconsistent, unrelated ideology, are being forced to choose -- and to take one whole absurd package or the other.
We live in a time when moderates are treated worse than extremists, being punished as if they were more fanatical than the actual fanatics.
We live in a time when lies are preferred to the truth and truths are called lies, when opponents are assumed to have the worst conceivable motives and treated accordingly, and when we reach immediately for coercion without even bothering to find out what those who disagree with us are actually saying.
In short, we are creating for ourselves a new dark age -- the darkness of blinders we voluntarily wear, and which, if we do not take them off and see each other as human beings with legitimate, virtuous concerns, will lead us to tragedies whose cost we will bear for generations.
Or, maybe, we can just calm down and stop thinking that our own ideas are so precious that we must never give an inch to accommodate the heartfelt beliefs of others.
How can we accomplish that? It begins by scorning the voices of extremism from the camp we are aligned with. Democrats and Republicans must renounce the screamers and haters from their own side instead of continuing to embrace them and denouncing only the screamers from the opposing camp. We must moderate ourselves instead of insisting on moderating the other guy while keeping our own fanaticism alive.
In the long run, the great mass of people who simply want to get on with their lives can shape a peaceful future. But it requires that they actively pursue moderation and reject extremism on every side, and not just on one. Because it is precisely those ordinary people, who don't even care all that much about the issues, who will end up suffering the most from any conflict that might arise.
I don't agree with him equating both sides - not now, not in this decade. Perhaps in the 1960s or 1970s. Not now, no way, no how.
What I see him doing is trying to take a neutral, middle ground. Unfortunately, he is too late. He pointed out there are certain things that will happen - and he's right about fanaticism.
The fact is that the Right has HAD to be more like the left, and I even advocate it to balance the scales. Escalation has it's points. Eventually one side has to back down or the consequences become too great - and war starts. Or worse, the side in power (in the government) will use the arm of the government to squelch the other side.
That's what's happening NOW.
So - the civil war has begun.
No one has fired the shots yet.
American Patriot,
A shotless civil war has started, you say? It is 2013/2014 as one dodgey online persona stated as when this may start, where in hindsight we could point to what happened. Just a thought, as that dodgey persona was likely just well thought out.
/chuckles
Yeah, I did say that didn't I?
So did Mr. Dodgey.
The Last Generation of the West and the Thin Strand of Civilization
By Victor Davis Hanson
January 19, 2014
Had the Greeks lost at Salamis, Western civilization might easily have been strangled in its adolescence. Had Hitler not invaded the Soviet Union, the European democracies would have probably remained overwhelmed. And had the Japanese just sidestepped the Philippines and Pearl Harbor, as they gobbled up the orphaned Pacific colonies of a defunct Western Europe, the Pacific World as we know it now might be a far different, far darker place.
I am not engaging in pop counterfactual history, as much as reminding us of how thin the thread of civilization sometimes hangs, both in its beginning and full maturity. Something analogous is happening currently in the 21st-century West. But the old alarmist scenarios — a nuclear exchange, global warming and the melting of the polar ice caps, a new lethal AIDS-like virus — should not be our worry.
Rather our way of life is changing not with a bang, but with a whimper, insidiously and self-inflicted, rather than abruptly and from foreign stimuli. Most of the problem is cultural. Unfortunately it was predicted by a host of pessimistic anti-democratic philosophers from Plato and Aristotle to Hegel and Spengler. I’ve always hoped that these gloom-and-doomers were wrong about the Western paradigm, but some days it becomes harder.
Over 90 million Americans who could work are not working (the “non-institutionalized” over 16). What we take for granted — our electrical power, fuel, building materials, food, health care, and communications — all hinge on just 144 million getting up in the morning to produce what about 160-170 million others (the sick, the young, and the retired who need assistance along with the 90 million idle) consume.
Every three working Americans provide sustenance for two who are not ill, enfeebled, or too young. The former help the disabled, the latter take resources from them. The gang-banger has only disdain for the geek at the mall — until one Saturday night his liver is shredded by gang gunfire and suddenly he whimpers (who is now the real wimp?) that he needs such a Stanford-trained nerd to do sophisticated surgery to get him back in one piece to the carjackings, muggings, assaults, and knockout games — or lawsuits follow!
Given that the number of non-working is growing (an additional 10 million were idled in the Obama “recovery” alone), it is likely to keep growing. At some point, we will hit a 50/50 ratio of idle versus active. Then things will get interesting. The percentage of workers’ pay deducted to pay for the non-working will soar even higher. So will the present redistributive schemes and the borrowing from the unborn.
We forget that the obligations of the working to care for the 70-80 million who genuinely cannot work become more difficult, when the 90 million who can work for all sorts of reasons won’t. Note the theme of this essay: the more in humane fashion we provide unemployment insurance, food stamps, subsidized housing, legal advice, health care and disability insurance, the more the recipients find it all inadequate, inherent proof of unfairness and inequality, and always not enough.
Much of the Modern University Output Coarsens American Life
We will hear even more shrillness about “fairness” and “equality.” The more government support, all the more will grow the sense of being shorted. When someone idle receives a free iPhone, he doesn’t thank government for its magnanimity. More likely, he damns it for allowing someone else the ability to purchase an updated, superior model. I have talked to several students about their iPhones; so far not one has said, “Wow, I have more computer and communications power in my palm than a multi-millionaire had just 15 years ago.” Mostly they wished they had an updated version like someone better off.
An indebted and crippled U.S. has so far survived the second decade of the 21st century largely due to some ingenious engineers and audacious workers who revolutionized the gas and oil industry, at a time when wind and solar merely amused us, when our enemies considered us ripe for perpetual petro-blackmail, and when our wherewithal to pay for more imported energy was increasingly questionable.
A very few people are saving very many. But how thin the strand of civilization hangs — given that the forces of our modern Lotus Eaters (every bit as dangerous in their postmodern imaginations as the Cyclopes are in their premodern savagery) have stopped the Keystone Pipeline, stopped most federal leasing of new gas and oil finds, and are trying to regulate fracking and horizontal drilling out of existence where it might be most vital to the U.S. — as in the Monterey Shale formation in California.
How ironic is the Sierra Club Bay Area grandee who finds light when he flips on his office switch, and would find no light were his utopian ideas about wind, solar, and biomass to come to full fruition. Only what he despises — radioactive uranium, messy drilling rigs, and unnatural dams — for now continue to bring him what he must have. Again, the theme: the more the green activists empty reservoirs to save a bait fish, or stop fracking, or prevent salvage logging, the angrier they sigh that it is not enough and the more they must count on someone ignoring them to provide them with what they must have.
The universities were the great backbone of the West, from the Academy and Lyceum to medieval Pisa and Oxbridge to the great 18th- and 19th-century founding of American campuses. Not necessarily any longer. Too many are bankrupt morally, economically, politically, and culturally.
The symptoms are terrifying: one trillion dollars in student debt (many of these loans accruing at higher than average interest rates and even before students have graduated); a small Eloi class of rarefied elites who teach little and write in runes that no one can decipher; a large Morlock class of part-timers and oppressed lecturers who subsidize the fat and waste of the tenured and administrative classes; graduates who are arrogant but ignorant, nursed on –studies ideology without the liberal arts foundations to back up their zeal; and a BA/BS brand that no longer ensures better-paying jobs, if any jobs at all.
In sum, apart from the sciences and medicine, most of the university coarsens rather than enlightens American life.
The current campus is unsustainable and we are beginning to see its decline, as online courses and for-profit tech schools usurp its students. The liberal arts are not nurtured and protected for another generation in the university. Instead, their umbilical cords have become cut with the cleaver of race/class/gender no-nothingism. Again the theme: the more bloated, exploitive, and costly the university, the more it lashes out it that it is short-changed, the victim of philistine budget cuts, and the last bastion of civilized life.
Civilization Seems to Be Losing
Popular culture is likewise anti-civilizational. Does anyone believe that Kanye West, Miley Cyrus, and Lady Gaga are updates to Glenn Miller, jazz, Bob Dylan and the Beatles? Even in the bimbo mode, Marilyn Monroe had an aura that Ms. Kardashian and Ms. Hilton lack. Teens wearing bobby socks and jeans have transmogrified to strange creatures in our midst with head-to -oe tattoos and piercings as if we copied Papua New Guinea rather than it us. Why the superficial skin-deep desire to revert to the premodern? When I walk in some American malls and soak in the fashion, I am reminded of National Geographic tribal photos of the 1950s.
Again the theme: the more we borrow to provide iPads to our supposedly deprived youth, the more in theory they can access in a nano-second the treasures of their culture and heritage, and in fact the more likely it is that they have no clue what Gettysburg was, who Thomas Jefferson was, or who fought whom over what in World War II. Our managers in education, terrified of confronting the causes of ignorance, believed that the faster youths could transmit nothingness, the more likely they might stumble onto somethingness.
The fourth-century Greeks at the end pasted silver over their worthless bronze coins — “reds” being the protruding noses and hair of the portraiture that first appeared bronze-like, as the silver patina rubbed off. The bastardization of the currency fostered many books on Roman decline. More worthless money for more people was a sign of “crisis” — analogous to our own quantitative easing and $17 trillion in debt.
Once more the theme here is not just that we are insolvent, but that we are so insolvent that it is now a thought-crime to talk of dissolution, bankruptness, and irresponsible spending — all damned as symptoms of “callousness” to the poor, proof of “social injustice”, and “obsessions” with deficits. The medicine of austerity always becomes worse than the disease of profligacy.
What do I mean about the “thinning strand of civilization”?
A shrinking percentage of our population feeds us, finds our energy, protects us, and builds things we count on. They get up each morning to do these things, in part in quest for the good life, in part out of a sense of social obligation and basic humanity, in part because they know they will die if idle and thrive only when busy, and in part simply because “they like it.”
We can stack the deck against them with ever higher taxes, ever more regulations, ever more obligations to others, and they may well continue. But not if we also damn them as the “1%” and call them the agents of inequality and the fat cats who did not build what they built or who profited when they should not have.
You cannot expect the military to protect us, and then continually order it to reflect every aspect of postmodern American sensitivity in a risky premodern world. Filing a lawsuit to divert a river’s water to the sea during a drought is a lot easier and cleaner than welding together well-casings at sea. Last week, an off-duty armed correctional officer in Fresno intervened in a wild carjacking, shooting and killing the gang-member killer and thus limiting his carnage to one death and two woundings rather than five or six killings — at the very moment Harvey Weinstein — of guns-blazing Kill Bill and Pulp Fiction fame and profits — promised to destroy the NRA. These contrasts say everything about the premodern, the postmodern and the innocent who pay the tab in-between.
Each day when I drive to work I try to look at the surrounding communities, and count how many are working and how many of the able-bodied are not. I listen to the car radio and tally up how many stories, both in their subject matter and method of presentation, seem to preserve civilization, or how many seem to tear it down. I try to assess how many drivers stay between the lines, how many weave while texting or zoom in and out of traffic at 90mph or honk and flip off drivers.
Today, as the reader can note from the tone of this apocalyptic essay, civilization seemed to be losing.
Pretty much what I've been saying all day today.
Insightful and true, but misses a point on jobs. The most available work is part time. The full time work is unattainable for one without a degree AND years in a related field. Just a degree will not always garner a job. Of the available work to masses, it is service industry. Service industry itself depends on those who have money to spend it. When the pool of those who have money declines, so does revenue to service companies, which causes declines in even these part time jobs.
That's true Phil. A big driver behind that is most certainly Obamacare.
One other thing I would add to that is that a lot of government jobs should not be considered because they don't really contribute or produce anything.
Government jobs suck up resources. Period.
January 31, 2014
Boehner Courts a GOP Civil War
By J. Robert Smith
See also: The GOP Mulls Seppuku
If you can't win, flee. Heck, if you won't even try to win, retreat. You can't make this stuff up. A day after President Obama's rousing State of the Union address to an enthralled nation, House Republicans skedaddled to Maryland's Eastern Shore. They went to crack crabs, swill cold microbrews, talk issues, yuck it up with lobbyists, and concoct more legislative "strategy." Heck, there's got to be more than one way to capitulate on measures the size of the Farm Bill?
Come to think of it, there is. In the vernacular, it's called "immigration reform," which when all the layers of rhetorical garbage are peeled off, is nothing more than a route to legalizing the illegal. But Speaker Johnny Boehner and gaggles of business interests hanker to legalize our illegal amigos, so Boehner, the dutiful, if plodding, golf buddy wants to see if he can cajole and arm-twist his fellow retreaters to go his way.
But the speaker's way on immigration reform is simply another surrender, which fits neatly with his strategy, but it can't be gulped down with even gallons of microbrews -- certainly not by grassroots conservatives and Tea Party patriots.
There aren't pejoratives adequate enough to describe and deride Boehner's resolve to tackle immigration surrender this election year. Either the speaker has one of the greatest tin ears in the history of American politics or he's got his sights set on a cushy post-speakership job and a corner office somewhere in DC. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce will gladly provide references for the speaker. Those big business interests have got Johnny's back, all right.
Perhaps the speaker is pimping immigration reform from spite, having disparaged his party's grassroots for calling him out, often and loudly, on his jellyfishness. Don't discount spite's role in history. The speaker may also want to prove -- as he did with the gargantuan, wasteful farm bill that just passed -- that he can cobble together a majority coalition of House Republicans and Democrats, as he earlier threatened to do if dissenting Republicans failed to get with his program.
The only way the farm bill passed the House was with Democrat votes. Sixty-odd Republicans voted "no," meaning that there wasn't majority support in the GOP caucus for the measure. Don't put it past Boehner to pull that stunt again on immigration reform. If Boehner goes ahead with an immigration reform gambit based on an unholy alliance of petting zoo Republicans and Democrats, he invites an ugly civil war in the party. In an critical election year, no less.
Don't underestimate the rancor and division that will result if Boehner stays focused on immigration reform this year. More importantly, don't be surprised when a Boehner immigration reform drive drives away the GOP grassroots. Staying home on Election Day is a time-honored means of protest by disaffected voters. This happened in the 2012 presidential contest, when the lackluster Mitt Romney lost because about four million voters decided there wasn't much reason to turn out, Mitt not showing much gumption.
House districts are drawn in such precise ways that drop offs in GOP grassroots voting may not cost Republicans the lower chamber -- that's a very qualified "may" -- but the Senate hangs in the balance.
U.S. senators are elected statewide, of course. Most Senate seats up for grabs in November will be highly competitive and narrowly decided. If the GOP grassroots opts out of these contests, the Democrats will surely retain the Senate. Note that politically shrewd Democrats are insisting their party shift focus and resources away from House contests to retain the Senate.
Democrats understand that losing Congress effectively shuts down Mr. Obama's presidency in many critical aspects. Yes, the president has threatened to rule by executive order, but there are practical limits to what he can do and legislative remedies -- provided a Republican Congress had the moxy to intervene.
As the acerbic Ann Coulter wrote about the politics of immigration reform:
How are Republicans going to square that circle? It's not their position on amnesty that immigrants don't like; it's Republicans' support for small government, gun rights, patriotism, the Constitution and capitalism.
Coulter was referring to a report released by longtime conservative stalwart Phyllis Schlafly. Schlafly supports her analysis with hard data. The conclusion is simple: illegals are pro-big government. Legalized and voting, they swell Democrats' ranks. As Coulter opined, "At the current accelerated rate of immigration -- 1.1 million new immigrants every year -- Republicans will be a fringe party in about a decade."
Game over, folks. If Boehner and the GOP hands Democrats an unwarranted victory on immigration reform, then less than ten years from now, Mark Levin's astute Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic will be quaint. Levin's Liberty Declaration... of Independence will be the hot seller.
Boehner's courting -- and must know he's courting -- a crackup of the Republican Party. House Republicans -- like all Republicans and conservatives -- should focus like laser beams on 1) exploiting ObamaCare's crass failures and growing unpopularity with voters; 2) aggressively pursuing the Obama scandals; 3) offering a "liberty" agenda, which goes heavy on reviving the nation's anemic economy and downsizing and reforming the federal government. That's a recipe for electoral success in 2014.
If its civil war the speaker wants, its civil war he'll get. Establishment Republicans may have the dough, but the grassroots outnumbers them roughly three to one. The commitment and passion are with the grassroots. At war's end, it's the speaker and his ilk who'll be trundling off on yet another retreat -- and, this time, for good.
The Speaker Reaps What the Speaker Sows
By: Erick Erickson (Diary) | January 31st, 2014 at 04:30 AM
Less than twelve hours into the Republican retreat and the leaks and attacks came fast and furious. John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy, and Paul Ryan intend to push immigration through the United States House of Representatives.
The bulk of the House Republicans thus far seem opposed, but Boehner and his lieutenants intend to find a path forward. They will start bid and grandiose and whittle their way down into something, anything, to show they intend to move the ball forward.
Conservatives inside and outside the retreat began preemptively crying foul. The bill is going to suck. We all know it will suck. But we only have a few digestible nuggets.
John Boehner is reaping what he sowed. During the last great fight — the Ryan-Murray plan — Boehner attacked conservatives who, relying on press leaks from his office to reporters, opposed the deal. “They had not yet seen the deal,” Boehner claimed and, consequently, were opposing something they had not seen with no basis for opposition.
Once he made the case and had people rally to his cause, he rushed through the Ryan-Murray bill in less than seventy-two hours. Boehner expected that many of those who joined him in ridiculing conservatives for their opposition to Ryan-Murray (again: based on leaks from Boehner’s own crew, but before the entirety of the package was released) would stand with him.
Instead, it looks like they know the game that is about to be played. John Boehner and his friends will craft a package behind closed doors. They will leak it to the press. They will attack conservatives for daring to oppose that which they have not seen. Then he will rush through a package as quickly as possible, relying on Democrat votes to get it done.
The Chamber of Commerce will be happy, the base will not be, and Boehner can retire to a cushy K-Street job with Chambliss, Latham, and his other BFF’s who are retiring this year.
Unfortunately for the Speaker, the alliance he built for Ryan-Murray was an alliance for that legislation only. Many of those with him then are not only opposed now, but see how he played that game. So they’re rallying as early as they can.