Tag: Tough History Coming

Quote of the Day – Silicon Graybeard

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From this excellent post:

The reason MAD – Mutually Assured Destruction – worked was that at heart the Soviets didn’t want to kill off all of their population just as the US didn’t want to kill off all of its population. When push came to shove, nobody wanted to destroy the world and wash it in blood.

Most modern mailings of this story end with something like, “This was back in the days when there was honour in being a warrior. They proudly wore uniforms, and they didn’t hide behind women and children, nor did they plant bombs amidst innocent crowds. How times have changed..” And this difference in value systems, this willingness to kill innocent bystanders, and the eagerness to wash the world in blood – this is the main difference we face today.

In More “It’s 1938 Again” News…

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China and Japan are playing dominance-games:

China and Japan’s worst diplomatic crisis since 2005 is putting at risk a trade relationship that’s tripled in the past decade to more than $340 billion.

Toyota Motor Corp., Honda Motor Co. and Nissan Motor Co. halted production at some plants while Panasonic Corp. reported damage to its operations in China as thousands marched in more than a dozen cities on Sept. 16. Shares of automakers fell in Tokyo after protesters called for boycotts of Japanese goods and in some instances smashed store fronts and cars after Japan last week said it will purchase islands claimed by both countries.

Read the whole article. It’s a litany of bad Asian economic news.

And things are not better in EUrope.

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney has his own “bitter clinger” moment in the press. Unlike last time, however, expect to hear about this every day for the next two months.

And in IslamicRageLand, more Islamic rage!  Expect to hear as little about this as the media can get away with, but they will be forced to cover it.

While I type this, my wife is in the living room watching In the Land of Blood and Honey, a charming little film about the 1990’s war in Bosnia. It begins with a little paragraph of background:

Before the war, the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina was part of one of the most ethnically and religiously diverse countries in Europe. Muslims, Serbs and Croats lived together in harmony.

And then they didn’t anymore.

I do not like the parallels I’m seeing.

Fuckit. I’m going to fire up Left4Dead2 and deanimate some zombies.

UPDATE:  Tam says it’s not 1938 again, it’s 1914. My only quibble – this time everybody’s got machine-guns and tanks.

Well! THIS is Encouraging!

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Armada of British naval power massing in the Gulf as Israel prepares an Iran strike

Battleships, aircraft carriers, minesweepers and submarines from 25 nations are converging on the strategically important Strait of Hormuz in an unprecedented show of force as Israel and Iran move towards the brink of war.

Western leaders are convinced that Iran will retaliate to any attack by attempting to mine or blockade the shipping lane through which passes around 18 million barrels of oil every day, approximately 35 per cent of the world’s petroleum traded by sea.

A blockade would have a catastrophic effect on the fragile economies of Britain, Europe the United States and Japan, all of which rely heavily on oil and gas supplies from the Gulf.

Marvelous. Juuuust marvelous.

Quote of the Day – The Brink Edition

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On paper, given Obama’s record, this election should be a cakewalk for the Republicans. Why isn’t it? I am afraid the answer may be that the country is closer to the point of no return than most of us believed. With over 100 million Americans receiving federal welfare benefits, millions more going on Social Security disability, and many millions on top of that living on entitlement programs–not to mention enormous numbers of public employees–we may have gotten to the point where the government economy is more important, in the short term, than the real economy. My father, the least cynical of men, used to quote a political philosopher to the effect that democracy will work until people figure out they can vote themselves money. I fear that time may have come.

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I am afraid the problem in this year’s race is economic self-interest: we are perilously close to the point where 50% of our population cares more about the money it gets (or expects to get) from government than about the well-being of the nation as a whole. Throw in a few confused students, pro-abortion fanatics, etc., and you have a Democratic majority.

John Hinderaker, Powerline, Why is This Election Close?

Don’t they always protest after losing an election that the populace inexplicably didn’t “vote in their own best interest”?

The Only Surprising Thing…

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…is that he came right out and said it.

Former union boss at Occupy event: Our goal is to ‘overthrow the capitalist system and build communism’

Former Amalgamated Transit Union local 689 president Mike Golash, now an “Occupy” movement organizer, was caught on tape Sunday revealing his political goals: overthrowing capitalism in the United States and instituting a communist government.

“Progressive labor is a revolutionary communist organization,” Golash said during an Occupy DC “People’s Assembly” on August 19.

“Its objective,” he added, “is to make revolution in the United States, overthrow the capitalist system and build communism.”

Golash said he and his comrades are “trying to learn something from the historical revolutions of the past: the Russian revolution, the Chinese revolution, the revolutions in Cuba and Eastern Europe.”

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBVT6JhWGfQ?rel=0]
Now, go back and watch the Yuri Bezmenov video from 1984.

Forget the source, listen to his words.

Quote of the Day – Tough History Coming Edition

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From the comments to More on Rights:

“In other words I think the only thing that can turn this country around now is to have a strong reinforcement of existing Property Rights by the government”

I’m thinking we might have to explain them TO the Government, at sword point, eventually..

Either way someone’s gonna be ‘splain’in somethin, at the point of a sword before this plays out..

I’ve lost faith that it can be any other way..   Look at it this way..   5 years ago “prepping” was something that crazy Mormons did…   Now, there are crazy preppers on TV but..   Thousands of ‘real’ preppers quietly preparing..

It’s not that they ARE doing it.  It’s that if someone tells you “I think it’s all going to go to hell soon” you argue about ‘how’ soon is soon..    Not If..

— Charles Bennett

I’ve noticed this myself in discussions with customers.  Just last weekend, Tucson had its first-ever survivalist/prepper Expo, and from all reports it was well attended.  Just not covered much by the media.

Too Little, Too Late?

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Milton Friedman from his University of Chicago lecture What is America?

1978:

I’m not arguing that government does not have a role, of course it does.  I am not an anarchist.  But I am persuaded that the problem of our society today is too much government, not too little.  Indeed I am persuaded that government is failing to perform the functions which it alone can perform, because we are trying to have it perform functions which it cannot perform.

In Walter Lippman’s phrase, which, I may say, goes back to the 1920’s, we are an over-governed society.

I believe we can get back on the right track, only as a public at large comes to recognize that the direction we have been going is a false direction.  A direction that will lead us not where we want to be, but where we do not want to be.  And that we can get back on the right track only by stopping and then reversing that trend.

Veronique de Rugy and Nick Gillespie, The Hill, Congress isn’t gridlocked — it’s just totally irresponsible,

2012:

What we’re actually witnessing — and have been for years now — is not gridlock, but the abdication of responsibility by Congress and the president for performing the most basic responsibilities of government. Despite the fiscal crisis that Washington knows will occur if it fails to deal with unsustainable spending and debt, it hasn’t managed to produce a federal budget in more than three years.

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The plain fact is that neither party is working honestly to tackle the nation’s fiscal issues. Why stick your neck out when it’s easier to just blame the other side? Given the lackluster economy, the GOP’s smartest option might well be to do nothing but blame the president for the slowest economic recovery since the Great Depression. Republicans studiously avoid implicating themselves and former President George W. Bush, who pushed the Troubled Asset Relief Program through in 2008 and then diverted TARP funds to bail out General Motors and Chrysler.

—

Simply put, this is no way to run a country. The problem is not gridlock or ideological fervor. The problem is an increasingly irresponsible government that has for far too long been far too easily let off the hook. Whichever party emerges victorious in November, and whatever happens in the lame-duck session, this much is certain: Unless taxpayers begin demanding their president and Congress act responsibly, and do the actual work they were elected to do,”gridlock” will be the least of our problems.

(My emphasis.)  Thirty-four years later and the problem is only worse.

Quote of the Day – Victor Davis Hanson

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Since about 1992, on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) testing, California ranks between 41 and 48 in math and science, depending on the year and the particular grade that is assessed. About half of the incoming freshmen at the California State University system — the largest public university in the world — are not qualified to take college courses, and must first complete “remediation” to attain a level of competence that was assumed forty years ago in the senior year of high school. The students I taught at CSU Fresno were far better prepared in 1984 than those in 2004 are; the more money, administrators, “learning centers,” and counselors, the worse became the class work.

I finally threw out my old syllabi last month: the 1985 Greek Literature in Translation course at CSU Fresno seemed to read like a Harvard class in comparison to my 2003 version with half the reading, half the writing, and all sorts of directions on how to make up missed work and flunked exams. It wasn’t just that I lost my standards, but that I lost my students who could read.

— Works and Days, California: The Road Warrior Is Here

RTWT.