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August 29, 2012

Comments

Melinda Romanoff

Jimmah's Parade Of One was impressive.

Jane - Get off the couch your country needs you!

WOW! Go TM! I couldn't agree more!

Jane - Get off the couch your country needs you!

Oh dear, and I thought I was #1! Curses! Foiled again!

Melinda Romanoff

You ARE #1, just not first.

GMAX

As they used to say of the old Washington Senators ( now Texas Rangers ) first in war, first in peace and last in the American League...

Captain Hate

Wrong; the *old* Washington Senators are the Minnesota Twins. The less old expansion team became the Rangers.

NK

TM-- I respectfully somewhat disagree. There are real problems in the good ole' USA. The entitlement culture has captured millions of middle class americans, especially retirees on Medicare. They see no choice but to vote their interests and keep the medical care coming. Cultural corrosiveness starting in the 1960s has carried on, the absence of shame in the society and people looking to blame 'greater forces' for their own failings has hollowed out personal responsibility. The elites as usual share much of the blame. Cultural elites see themselves as 'citizens of the world' not Americans. Corporate/financial elites are faithful to 'shareholder value' first America second. Yes, small pathetic politicians like Bam, make the appearance worse than the reality. But the cultural trends are not good. There needs to be a dismantling of the oppressive welfare state, and business elites have to focus on investing in America. If those happen, greatness will remain. If they don't?

GMAX

Not wrong, I am just not as ancient as you apparently! The Washington Senators became the Texas Rangers by moving to Arlington Texas. That there might have been a previous team that also moved, does not make my comment "wrong".

Extraneus

America has never stopped being great; it is the leaders that got small.

I don't believe a great country would elect small leaders.

centralcal

Well, I would like to see the sun set on many of our political class this 2012.

Just listened to the podcast of Clarice with Rick Moran last night. Good job, C!

narciso

So how did we elect Carter, and Obama, and unfortunately that's not the end of it.

Jane - Get off the couch your country needs you!

Dear Better Business Bureau:

I’m writing about a plumber I hired in 2008 to fix my pipes. The name of his business is Barack H. Obama & Co.

Despite many assurances on Mr. Obama’s part, and despite spending far beyond what I wanted on the project, my toilets are still full of . . . well, they’re not fixed. And now I’m told there’s some question as to whether I can fire him.

I want to say, right up front, that Mr. Obama inherited a real mess in my house. The plumbing was in worse shape than it had been since, gosh, the late ’70s. Maybe since the 1930s. So I didn’t have any wild expectations that Obama & Co. would have the sinks unclogged and the pipes flowing overnight.

I also want to say that Mr. Obama seemed like a very nice man at the time. I even met his family — beautiful! Sometimes when he talked about his job, it sounded like poetry.

And I won’t deny that, living in a mostly white community, I was pleased to have the chance to hire an African-American to work in my home. But then things started to go, well, wrong.

To start with, I was shocked by the huge price of Mr. Obama’s bid to “stimulate” (he used that word a lot) the plumbing system to get it flowing again. I agreed to spend the money, however, after Obama & Co. guaranteed me that the toilets in the upstairs bathrooms would never overflow.

And you know what, Mr. BBB Man? Well my upstairs toilets have been overflowing for 42 straight months! His repairs still aren’t working!

So I complained to Mr. Obama. He blamed the previous plumber, said the last guy had messed things up so bad that it would take time for his new system to get rid of all the, er, sewage. So I waited.

After a while the toilets seemed to improve somewhat, but they still didn’t work right. But in August 2010, one of his crew, a Mr. Geithner (He handles the books), told me, “It’s fixed!” My plumbing problems were fully recovered. Except . . . the toilets were still flooding.

Soon after that, Mr. Obama’s top assistant, an older gentleman named Biden, announced that “this time they’re really fixed!”

About this Mr. Biden. I’m not sure he’s . . . uh, all there, if you know what I mean?

So I decided that, when my four-year contract with Mr. Obama came to an end this November, I would find a new plumber. I hired him to do a job, he didn’t do it, so he’s fired. That’s what I told him.That’s when Mr. Obama started making me feel . . . uncomfortable.

There's more

Captain Hate

Cultural corrosiveness starting in the 1960s has carried on

I think it started earlier than that; specifically in the Depression and how the led to a culture of dependency on the government that was unthinkable previously. My father was a successful small businessman and quite conservative but listening to him talking about growing up it was obvious that the rotten economic conditions caused a sea change in attitudes of self-reliance. Ironically the JEF's ineptitude in dealing with this current malaise, which is much worse than what Carter inflicted, might lead to a reversal.

Jane - Get off the couch your country needs you!

CC can you post a link to the podcast?

NK

.. and Truman, Nixon, Wilson, Hayes.. Clinton, many small men have been elected POTUS. It's a free country, people are free to choose poorly.

NK

CaptH-- agree with your 9:10, and that goes to the entitlement/dependency culture. The social/cultual rot that took hold in the 1960s I refered to is, divorce, on demand abortion, free sex without responsibility, mocking God etc etc.

narciso

The problem lies in part with what rse, has discovered, they used to call logic bombs,
from that episode of 'Airwolf' embedding irrational behavior into the system.

Sara

So Robert Gibbs of Obama said the Repub convention is a very "angry convention." Good, I'm glad they are finally getting it. The anger is palpable and it is what is driving the enthusiasm that is going to put Mitt in the WH and Bambi and Moo back in Chicago, where they can wallow in the arms of their Marxist friends.

NK

Bad Trends: here's a simple example of why the USA trends are not good. Bam by any objective measure has been a bigger failure than Carter. Carter lost in a landslide in 1980. This year wil be alot closer because 40+% of the electorate is locked into the economic dependency and/or social rot cultures. It's a real problem

Old Lurker

Cap'n, but without Woodrow Wilson there would not have been an FDR nor rule by our betters.

MarkO

"You've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?"

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2012/08/29/exclusive_clint_eastwood_headed_to_tampa_for_rnc

Captain Hate

Yes NK; the 60s ramped things up quite a bit.

hrtshpdbox

.. and Truman, Nixon, Wilson, Hayes.. Clinton, many small men have been elected POTUS.
Nixon was hardly a small man. Maybe a troubled one, but not a small one.

NK

Nixon was a small paranoid man IMO. Yes he was very smart, and he and Kissinger did great things vis a vis undermining totalitarian communism. But Nixon as Mensch? a small man.

centralcal

Sorry, Jane, I left for awhile - here is the link:

GOP Convention: Make or Break

Captain Hate

Old Lurker, if you're looking for a time when the nation was all on the same page, good luck with that. The Constitution barely was passed after multiple compromises. Even here I'm forced to endure GMAX's ahistorical witlessness about the Washington Senators.

Sara

I don't think Truman was either.

sbw

On the Rick Moran podcast, Clarice starts about 16 minutes in. Calm, succinct, humorous, well-reasoned. Enjoyed listening to it.

Well done, Clarice!

MarkO

I can only hope this is true.


In a nasty piece of work this morning, editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal painted an ugly picture of Ann Romney. Using the most violent of metaphors, Rosenthal saw a woman who, of all things, had "slipped a knife into President Obama."

Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/mark-finkelstein/2012/08/29/new-york-times-editor-ann-romney-slipped-knife-president-obama#ixzz24wUEZHvi

JM Hanes

"We're going to take this country back," is the one that really bothers me.

NK

MarkO-- thanks for the link about the NYSlimes. Here's the first comment in response to that link about Rosenthal- hilarious:
"I know Andy Rosenthal and he is no Ann Romney - he just has a problem with women ever since leaving home. It's an issue that even his therapist has trouble sorting out so employment at the NYT is a perfect solution for dysfunctional individuals such as he."

Jane - Get off the couch your country needs you!

So Robert Gibbs of Obama said the Repub convention is a very "angry convention."

Rove was just talking about this:

"He wrote that last week while in a meeting with the WH".

(not an exact quote)

Janet

It really is unbelievable that the MFM keep retreading the same ol', same ol' people when there are SO many talented people out here. Clarice, Jane,...all the witty writers here at JOM. How in the world the MFM can keep putting forth Katie Couric is beyond me. She's like communism....she would be a success if only they can get the details right & force people to watch.

narciso

She's probably the Liz Warren among the anchors, by that I mean, they trumpet the fact, that she is 'perky' when she's really
shallow, mean, and ignorant.

Threadkiller

What grates me is an America where crawling thru a sewer grate and dropping anchor babies is considered a great way to fulfill 1/3 of the requirements to be Supreme Commander of our armed forces.

Something can be restored there.

Jane - Get off the couch your country needs you!

I'm listening to you right now Clarice. My favorite part of it is I feel like we are having dinner together. You are so you - and very good.

Sue
is the very thing we can attribute to the policies of the Republicans. The deregulation of Wall Street and corporate behavior, the demonization of labor unions, the refusal to raise the minimum wage, the suggestion there should not even be a minimum wage, the start of wars and cutting of taxes for the rich that directly affect the budget available for education, assistance programs, infrastructure repair, etc., all make life more difficult for those who are struggling.

From someone in NH in the comments section of the NYT's piece linked by MarkO above.

What deregulation of Wall Street is she referring to? And if regulation of Wall Street would fix the problem, why on earth did Obama not regulate Wall Street when he had the Senate and the House? And why on earth do these nuts not realize he did nothing? Thanks MFM. You've done your job well.

maryrose

Katie Couric is a disrespectful re-tread who doesn't realize her 15 minutes are up.
She first showed her sneering disrespect toward George H. W. Bush during his re-election campaign. She's been going downhill ever since. She still thinks she's responsible for Sarah Palin's and McCain's defeat. No man will marry her. She reminds me of MODo.

GMAX

You say witless

I say first in the American League

The Minnesota Twinkies are last!

Sounds like Texas got the better of the trade, just like the Hershel Walker trade!

narciso

It was such a lie, that they foisted upon us, during the Iraq War, since the bought off
members, Germany, France, and Russia, were not a part of the coalition, because of the OFF bribes, it was deemed 'illegitimate; and
they cheered every attack against an Ally, in
Nasiriyah with Italy, in Madrid, in London, talked up those ridiculous 'Downing Street
Memos' made excuses for murderers at Gitmo.
who would slit their children's throats and worse.

Sue

narciso,

The enemy of my enemy is my friend. The democrats' motto. Republicans being the enemy.

Ignatz

--America has never stopped being great; it is the leaders that got small.--

Seems to me TM is splitting hairs.
Small leaders make great countries less great than they were before they got their hands on it, so someone who seeks to defeat those small leaders is seeking to restore the greatness America had before it was damaged.

GMAX

Carter lost in a landslide in 1980.

Well why Carter got but 41% a big part of the reason for that was that John Anderson, a very very liberal Republican ran as an independent and siphon away some of Carter's support. Anderson got almost 7% and Reagan but 52%.

I dont see a lot of deterioration in the US in the resolve to right the ship, and there is no Anderson on the ticket, although Tom Jensen is correct that Gary Johnson could siphon enough stoners away in New Mexico to flip it to Mitt.

Ignatz

--What deregulation of Wall Street is she referring to?--

Probably the elimination of Glass Steagall, signed by the guy who will place Barry's name into nomination.

Mark Folkestad

Katie Couric, Janet? You mean the formerly perky twit who once bragged to an interview about sleeping her way to the top? How can you possibly demean such a media superstar?

NK

Resolve to right the ship? I hope it's just as strong as 1980-- I have my doubts. Maybe I'm just gettin' old.

narciso

Rush was pointing out, yesterday. Reagan's speech, there was no 'he's in over his head'
claptrap about Carter, which is retrospect
as evolved into Obama's level of stupidity,

Danube of Thought

I first heard the "first in war..." bit applied to the old Senators of 1952. Mickey Vernon, Bob Porterfield, Eddie Yost....

narciso

If they read Morgenstern, thet would know that the CRA revisions, in 1994, were much more important than Glass Steagall.

Janet

they trumpet the fact, that she is 'perky' when she's really
shallow, mean, and ignorant.

Exactly, narciso.

GMAX

1952.

Was not even a gleem in my father's eye, I will have to take your word for it.

GMAX

gleam

Thomas Collins

Re politicians' phrases: If Michelle Obama/Michael Bloomberg nannyism continues, in 2016, "Where's the beef?" could be not only the rallying cry against the nanny state, but a real question.

Rick Ballard

OL,

I'd go for the other Roosevelt and Wilson. They were born two years apart and indoctrinated by the same milieu of "intellectuals" infatuated with the scientism trumpeted by the early socialists and Marx. They had both experienced living in a society benefiting from what very well may be the most rapid advance in technology in history and believed man to be as malleable as metal.

It's not an uncommon error.

Danube of Thought

I think America has declined because roughly half of its citizens think continuing this guy's presidency would be just fine.

And then there the little details like this: when the Libyan Kinetic Thingy began, the United States Sixth Fleet consisted of one destroyer.

Jim Ryan

Okay, this is very bad. Expect the Obama campaign and ACORN to show up in college classrooms. Imagine a prof saying, "We're not going to cover Macbeth, after all. Today's class will be devoted to giving our attention to these members of ACORN and the Obama campaign."

NK

Glass-Steagall? CRA? IMO the 2007-2008 meltdown was caused as much as anything by the 1990s 'Moral Hazard' bailouts in Mexico and russia, LTCM etc , Fannie GSE implicit guaranty leading to wreckless home loans and the investment banks going publicly traded. Ultimately, those things caused the concept of risk to be forgotten and replaced with taxpayer guarantees. The rest is details, IMO.

NK

wreckless= reckless.

Neo

Every time I hear the line ...
"greatest nation on Earth"
... I reach to see if my wallet is still in place.

rse

Rick-you are using scientism is its accurate meaning of trying to make the social sciences hard and predictive. Just a warning though the Transformation schemers now use scientism to denote those who believe that some things are universally true and that the hard sciences are in fact not social constructs.

Because it is so much easier to hide an internal revolutionary coup if no one realizes in time that the definitions of all the operating terms have been reversed.

Neo

Bin Laden apparently was hit in the head when he looked out of his bedroom door into the top-floor hallway of his compound as SEALs rushed up a narrow stairwell in his direction, according to former Navy SEAL Matt Bissonnette, writing under the pseudonym Mark Owen in “No Easy Day.” The book is to be published next week by Penguin Group (USA)’s Dutton imprint.

Bissonnette says he was directly behind a “point man” going up the stairs. “Less than five steps” from top of the stairs, he heard “suppressed” gunfire: “BOP. BOP.” The point man had seen a “man peeking out of the door” on the right side of the hallway.

The author writes that bin Laden ducked back into his bedroom and the SEALs followed, only to find the terrorist crumpled on the floor in a pool of blood with a hole visible on the right side of his head and two women wailing over his body.

OMG ... even the leaks are crap

Which version will Zero Dark Thirty use ?

Comanche Voter

Rosenthal's "knife" metaphor was wrong. Ann woulda, shoulda, coulda used a "fork".

As in, "Stick a fork in this turkey, he's done". But frankly Mrs. Romney was not talking about Obama; you might even say she didn't give a fig (a polite euphemism) about Obama. She was talking about her husband.

Jim Ryan

From Wilson forward: pols haling from academia who disliked the Constitution and supported rule by technocrats. FDR? No, but he had his 'brain trust.' Of course others glommed on over time: lawyers wanting money, incompetents wanting big salaries, etc. But the origin is the universities. They became lax in protecting the truth over the last 130 years. You take that away and none of this would have happened. Had the universities protected the truth against pseudo-intellectual baloney, it's hard to imagine how we would have gotten to the brink of bankruptcy.

Sue

Which version will Zero Dark Thirty use ?

The one that makes The Won look good.

Captain Hate

The Minnesota Twinkies are last!

I won't be satisfied until the Twins are removed from baseball. Those Minnesota bastards stole the Senators when they were finally starting to be good after years of ineptitude. Selig tried getting rid of them through contraction because their lowlife fans weren't supporting them but he screwed that up like he does everything else.

Neo

I was watching C-SPAN2 late last night and they had Issacson talking about his "Steve Jobs" book. One great story he told was about Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison walking on a beach back in 1995.

Steve Jobs was talking about how he wanted to go back to Apple and right the company for just "$1 a year" to prove it could be done. Larry Ellison said that he could buy Apple and put Steve back in charge. Steve said it wasn't necessary, but Larry said "then how are we going to make any money on it ?"

Steve grabbed Larry Ellison by the shoulders and said "This is why I'm your friend. You don't need any more money."

Moral of the story. Most "rich" folks don't know that they are "rich."

Sue

David Burge ‏@iowahawkblog

I'd rather have a corporate wife than a government prostitute.

He strikes again!!!

Captain Hate

Clarice, Jane,...all the witty writers here at JOM. How in the world the MFM can keep putting forth Katie Couric is beyond me.

Clarice and Jane wouldn't do slutty grind dances out in public. At least I'm pretty sure they wouldn't.

Danube of Thought

Daily Mail quoting from No Easy Day:

Bissonnette writes disparagingly that none of the SEALs were fans of President Barack Obama and knew that his administration would take credit for ordering the May 2011 raid. One of the SEALs said after the mission that they had just gotten Obama re-elected by carrying out the raid.

But he says they respected him as commander in chief and for giving the operation the go-ahead.

Bissonnette writes less flatteringly of meeting Vice President Joe Biden along with Obama at the headquarters of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment after the raid. He says Biden told 'lame jokes' no one understood, reminding him of 'someone’s drunken uncle at Christmas dinner.'

Janet

Wow. Jim Ryan's 10:27 link is something.
Our high school here in Arlington let Obama come give a campaign speech during school hours. It was disgusting. He bashed Republicans. It wasn't the POTUS visiting...it was a Dem. candidate campaigning.

Mark Folkestad

CH, "lowlife fans" of the Twins? Kindly insert it where the sun doesn't shine. You have just personally insulted me.

Jim Ryan

a government prostitute

CHICAGO THUG POL: Look, you're going to make a job for her.

HOSPITAL ADMIN: I don't, what? We don't really have a....

CHICAGO THUG POL: Maybe you don't understand what's at stake for your hospital. You're going to make a job for her. It's gonna pay upwards of 100 grand and it might pay a lot more later. And she don't gotta show up much. Got it?

HOSPITAL ADMIN:

CHICAGO THUG POL: Are we clear?

HOSPITAL ADMIN: I...yeah, um....

GMAX

Yeah but you got Herschel so there is some comfort in that...

Sue

You have just personally insulted me.

I would never personally insult your ball team (unless it is those Damn Yankees or any team Labron James played for). I would just let my Rangers take care of business. Go Rangers!!!!

::grin::

Sue

Dana Loesch ‏@DLoesch

John Kerry is a corporate wife.

Man, something I wish I had said first.

DebinNC

Are there any Dem mayors/guvs who followed a Republican in office and turned an insolvent city/state around ala Chris Christie, John Kasich, or Scott Walker? I'm trying to imagine the Dem convention having a night of speeches from politicos from fiscally successful Dem-led cities/states and I'm not seeing it, other than maybe Cuomo who's an improvement over Switzer and the blind guy.

Janet

"Lowlife fans" is an insult?
I pride myself on being rough around the edges & a bit of a lowlife....& then there is the tune, ♪ ♫ "I've Got Friends in Low Places".

narciso

Corey Booker is the closest, but he's stuck doing ransom tapes.

Jim,MtnViewCA,USA

"If they read Morgenstern, thet would know that the CRA revisions, in 1994, were much more important than Glass Steagall.
Posted by: narciso"

The vast left crowd just kept repeating Glass-Steagall and poo-poohing CRA.
It was a sort of mantra, I never actually saw info to back it up, so I assumed it was a talking point. Did you know that Repub Sen Gramm was involved with the repeal of Glass-Steagall?

Ignatz

--Glass-Steagall? CRA? IMO the 2007-2008 meltdown was caused as much as anything by the 1990s 'Moral Hazard' bailouts in Mexico and russia, LTCM etc , Fannie GSE implicit guaranty leading to wreckless home loans and the investment banks going publicly traded. Ultimately, those things caused the concept of risk to be forgotten and replaced with taxpayer guarantees. The rest is details, IMO.

Posted by: NK | August 29, 2012 at 10:28 AM--

The witness is not being responsive.
The question wasn't what caused the meltdown, counselor.
Clerk read it back.

--What deregulation of Wall Street is she referring to?--

Sustained.

Captain Hate

I don't care, Mark; you're insulting me and every DC fan by cheering for a team that was moved out of town by a carpetbagger owner, Calvin Griffith, for 30 pieces of silver. You can rationalize it any way you want to but that was a stolen team just as much as the Giants and Dodgers were; only DC didn't have another team to fall back on and a bunch of New York media assholes whining about how bad it was that they only had one team to cheer for.

Stealing teams is the act of lowlife garbage, plain and simple. This is non-negotiable and I don't care if everyone thinks saying this makes me a horrible person. I remember the way I felt when the Senators left town and I want every fucking Twins fan to personally go through the same thing.

Old Lurker

Both points well taken, Cap'n & Rick. To paraphrase my favorite bumper sticker from carpool days "Control is an illusion", we should say "Consensus is an illusion".

narciso

As Brian said before Leon blasted him, You're not helping Jeb;


http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/08/28/2973053/jeb-bush-republicans-need-to-stop.html

Melinda Romanoff

CH-

The same for those poor Boston, I mean Milwaukee, No Atlanta, yes it's Atlanta Braves.

Or those dying Minnesota Lakers fans?

Wait, what?

Threadkiller

You can have the Chargers, CH.

Baseball might be their gig.

Captain Hate

Well OL, we're never gonna have everybody on the same page on things, even some of what you'd think are no-brainers. I've seen a number of posters here make the statement that "nobody could disagree with" something or other and I think that common sense only explains so much. For example, I'm sure somebody new to this site might wonder who that a-hole is that's ranting over a baseball team that nobody's heard of.

Threadkiller

Nobody can disagree that a poster who goes by Captain Hate is going to rant about something.

Melinda Romanoff

There's supposed to be consensus on this site?

I thought that was reserved for settled science?

Danube of Thought

a great way to fulfill 1/3 of the requirements to be Supreme Commander of our armed forces

Actually, 1/4: You gotta get about 70 million votes.

Redbirds rule the roost.

St. Louis Brown's fan here, and the Cardiac Cardinals were once in Chicago.
==============

Danube of Thought

TK, apart from your reading of the meaning of "natural born," why would you object to an anchor baby being elected president?

Climate models can't do clouds yet and have the water vapor feedback wrong.

Heh, Mel, I just wrote over at Judy's that given the enormous external forcing by politics and finance the 'settled' climate science is almost surely wrong. Just where it is wrong is what the debate is all about.
================

henry

Well, when the Cardinals went to AZ, they took Bidwill with them. That's a win for St Louis in my book, even though I enjoyed Jim Hart to Mel Gray connection.

Captain Hate

the Cardiac Cardinals were once in Chicago.

I remember them. A Chicago buddy of mine's, who's a died in the wool White Sox fan, father was a Cardinal fan who never forgave him for cheering for the Bears which he called the "Football Cubs". The Cardinals were an original NFL franchise; I'm not saying they were futile but Kurt Warner has had more playoff victories for the Arizona version than the previous total for the franchise.

Melinda Romanoff

Then they're not models, just art.

Danube of Thought

the Cardiac Cardinals were once in Chicago.

With the great Ollie Matson.

And windmills are expensive monuments.

Heh, expensive art.
==========

Ignatz

I'm sure TK will give his own more pithy reason, but the very concept of anchor babies is a dangerous one to any nation.
I can see the rationale for birthright citizenship of parents who are legally here whether citizens or not.
I can under no circumstances see the rationale for any country, let alone a rich one bordered by a poor one which in turn is bordered by dozens more poor ones adopting such a policy. It's potentially suicidal.
And to put the stamp of approval on such an imprudent policy by electing one leader of the country is something you'd think you'd more likely read about in Gibbon.

rse

No they are social science tools in pursuit of political policy adoption by the back door.

Ignatz

As Milton Friedman put it, you can't have open borders and a welfare state.

The comments to this entry are closed.

Wilson/Plame