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| Could it be any more negative?
Posted: 10/30/2009 10:06:18 PM | | Man, some of these brilliant scientists we gots betta hurry up and blow this climate change hypno-myth out of the water, and fast! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsjRn5iQRZA | |
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| Could it be any more negative?
Posted: 10/31/2009 1:41:48 AM |
give me some examples of how this is supposed to go
I forgot to mention the case that really shows how decisively the U.S. has dealt with war criminals before. In 1942, the Germans trained eight civilian volunteers--all fanatic Nazis who spoke English--to sabotage targets in the U.S. All but two of these men were real misfits. Two U-boats, with four in each, landed them here--one on Long Island and the other on the Florida coast. As crewmen in rubber boats guarded them, they waded ashore and buried their uniforms, invisible ink, explosives, etc. But when one of them saw a Coast Guard patrol, he shouted in German and nearly gave them away.
The two leaders soon began to fear the others would screw up again and get them all killed. They decided to give up and take their chances. They called the FBI, and all eight were soon locked up. FDR ordered his Attorney General to set up a military tribunal to try them. Six days later, the rules for this court were written. The men had several very good lawyers to defend them. But a panel of U.S. military lawyers judged them guilty of sabotage and several other war crimes, and sentenced six of them to death. It gave the two who had cooperated prison terms.
The Supreme Court quickly heard their appeal, considered their arguments, and denied them all. (The decision, Ex Parte Quirin, was the law that applied to the jihadists captured after 9/11--and much of it still does apply.) The electric chair was brought to a building in New York, and the six were executed one hour apart--only two months after they'd landed. Two relatives of one of the men who landed in Florida, who had given them food and shelter, were convicted of treason and served long terms.
THAT is how this country used to get things done, and there was nothing at all unfair or illegal about any of it. Now, we take a year and a half to write the rules, spend millions building the facilities--and eight years later, decide never to use them. We make the guards wear latex gloves so as not to defile the Korans we provide each one, and we give them their special meals and full medical care. And unlike then, the Supreme Court has stuck its oar into the treatment of the Gitmo detainees FIVE times now, giving them legal rights not even American citizens enjoy.
As a private lawyer, Mr. Obama's Attorney General did all he could to defend the "rights" of these jihadists, as did most of his senior staff. The woman Obama has put in charge of detainee issues is a radical recruited from a "human rights" organization, where, like Mr. Holder, she busied herself carrying water for the rats being held at Gitmo. Now we're going to try them in U.S. courts--which means it will be impossible to convict them. And that's exactly the reason for doing it--to set them free. If someone were to wonder if most people in this country--or their government--were serious about defending it, I could certainly understand why. Whose side are these people on? | |
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| Could it be any more negative?
Posted: 11/2/2009 3:58:18 PM | This should support conservatives, and of course has every possibility of consfusing Libs lol, but reassuring reading. I was not able to attach the charts and graphs of com's but the news is all good. It is useful to understand terms such as known reserves, discovered reserves, and at costs, and these concepts, along with our aversion to utilizing our resources make Dem's look even more out of touch and dangerous.
U.S. Tops in Energy Resources
11/02/2009
The United States has largest energy reserves on Earth, according to a report from the Congressional Research Service.
As shown in the charts below, the U.S. has 1,321 billion barrels of oil (or barrels of oil equivalent for other sources of energy) when combining its recoverable natural gas, oil and coal reserves.
While Russia is a close second with 1,248 billion barrels, other energy producing nations are far behind. No. 3 is Saudi Arabia (543 billion barrels), followed by China (494 billion barrels), Iran (426 billion barrels) and Canada (221 billion barrels.)
"Our overwhelming coal, natural gas, and oil resources represent tens of trillions of dollars in wealth and millions of American jobs,” said Sen. James Inhofe (R.-Ok.), who, along with Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R.-Alaska), released the report last week. “Whether through decree or purposeful inaction, government policies that unnecessarily restrict or prevent our ability to responsibly produce these domestic resources are threatening, and could eventually undermine, our nation's economic and national security. We should pursue an all-of-the-above strategy that advances new energy technologies but also prioritizes developing the resources we have today."
The report also noted that the United States has 28% of all the world’s coal reserves, with Russia again coming in second with 19%.
In addition, the report stated that the United States has tapped into only 13% or 21 billion barrels of its oil reserves, with the other 87% still untouched. | |
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| Could it be any more negative?
Posted: 11/2/2009 8:24:25 PM | I ran across a very informative video on the "Frankfurt School." I knew most of the names of the most important Marxists involved in it, beginning about 1920, and I knew several of them had come to Columbia to keep from being killed by Hitler.
But I hadn't realized how much of the campaign we've seen in the last 40 or 50 years to destroy American culture--from attempts to silence dissenting opinions by dictating what is "politically correct," to furthering sexual (including homosexual) anarchy, to using environmental concerns to hinder capitalism, and so on--originated with them. Their Communist, fundamentally anti-American writings are standard reading and teaching material on most college campuses.
The think tank that produced this video is conservative, but the facts are presented objectively and are accurate. The video contains interviews with academics who have studied and written about the Frankfurt School. Incidentally, Herbert Marcuse, one of the Marxists discussed, was a great friend of the black radical Angela Davis. The President, his wife, their close friends, and many people in his administration are not very far philosophically from the Marxist academics of the Frankfurt School. That's why I, for one, believe Mr. Obama is knowingly working against this country's best interests.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8630135369495797236# | |
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| Could it be any more negative?
Posted: 11/3/2009 5:17:55 AM | I recall my radical contacts/friends/foils in the 1960's quoting Marcuse, then at Harvard, who taught his followers lying for the revolution was not only forgiveable but desirable. I would catch these people in bald lies, corner them, leave them no way to continue saying such a thing, it slowed them not.
One can see daily some of these leftist's repeating the most foul and ignorant of things like programmed computers.
Split the country, we should no longer oppress these folks, and I don't need to associate a moment more with this kind of America-hating dregs. | |
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| Could it be any more negative?
Posted: 11/3/2009 7:22:49 AM | All I can say about critical theory is this: if there is anything to the criticism, we have two options. We can grow up, or we can fall back. But once our shortcomings as a society have been uncovered, we can no longer pretend they don't exist. If we have been bamboozled into going along with being ripped off, it's better that we know it so that we can put a stop to it.
We don't have to blindly follow the destructive agenda of those who inform us, though our rage might well lead us to overreact at first. So I read, and make sure I understand people like Marcuse and Habermas because that is what an informed citizen does.
Freedom of thought and freedom of speech mean we have to respond to the valid criticisms of our enemies. If Marxists recruit the oppressed, or use the plight of the oppressed to recruit the young and naive as their "agents of change," then we'd better make sure that the rights of those people, in particular, are protected. We can then point to our efforts to do so and say, "look," bourgeois capitalism works better for you, and for them, than anything else out there. Check it out for yourselves and see. We might not be perfect, but we are serious about justice and equality--far more so than Marxists who are trying to bamboozle you. It really isn't just a smokescreen to cover our greed.
I saw this most clearly when I worked for Disney. Their commitment to safety is real. It is a point of honor with them. Disneyland is not only the Happiest Place on Earth, it is also he safest place on Earth. Guests don't think much about it, but every cast member (employee) is constantly on the lookout for hazards, lost kids, and mechanical problems, and they'll shut the whole park down on a moment's notice, if necessary, to make sure that guests don't get hurt. I came away from there with a tremendous amount of respect for their stance. Nevertheless, there is no organization on Earth that is more capitalistic than Disney.
If blacks, gays, sexually curious youth, and others in our culture sensed that same commitment to the protection of their rights, Marxists would have nothing to hook them with. If you want cultural Marxism to go away, do what the Constitution promised. To the extent that Marxism flourishes here, it is an indication of the extent to which that promise is not being kept.
Rather than get caught up in a pointless debate between the Christian fundies and the Marxist fundies, I'm going to stick with the concept of rights and work my way through all of the contradictions in our society with that as my measure. That s how liberals evaluate the claims and counterclaims of extremists on both sides.
I have no interest in living in a Christian theocracy. I have no interest in living in a Marxist dictatorship. Niether of those is what America is about. America, for me, is about living in freedom and respecting the rights of others. It seems to me that you can't really have one without the other. So, when capitalists use the means of production to extract a disproportionate amount of wealth from the labor of their neighbors and then use that wealth to undermine the ability of those neighbors to advocate for themselves, I can't really fault those who will use any means at their disposal to bring that ongoing theft to an end. If you saw it that way, what would you do?
I know that you _don't_ see it that way. But don't get all defensive on me and dodge the question by telling me how misguided that viewpoint is. That will not address the issue and you will not be able to answer the critiques in any credible way unless you answer the question. If you saw things that way, what would you do about it?
To the extent that capitalism adds value, which it does, and fairly distributes the wealth it creates based on performance and the value of each individual's contribution--which it does to a far greater extent than other economic systems, it will thrive in the face of any critique no matter how subversive or insidious. But if y'all keep propping up those aspects of our culture that institutionalize inequality, you will be every bit as responsible for the demise of our culture as those who are actively working to bring it down. | |
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| Could it be any more negative?
Posted: 11/3/2009 7:35:30 AM | Ace take a trip to Cuba or North korea then get back to us. The fact you are defending lies and lairs because of some larger vision is loathesome. None of these other cultures appreciate life as much as a free societies, if they did Doc's in cuba would make more than $60 a month, garbage collectors made more than doc's in the old Soviet Union.
Twisting oneself into a rationale when all existing evidence in the world indicates the contrary is delusional. | |
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| Could it be any more negative?
Posted: 11/3/2009 9:37:43 AM | If you want cultural Marxism to go away, do what the Constitution promised.
You might want to watch that video, which from everything I know is dead accurate. What you're saying is right out of that playbook. I know something about Adorno, Marcuse, and the others and what their purpose was--nothing less than the destruction of America, which they hated.
I don't feel any need to answer their "critique," any more than I feel a need to dispute the notions Hitler put forth in Mein Kampf. Some things are outside the realm of serious debate, and one of them is the notion that anyone who disagrees with your totalitarian views is suffering from some psycho-sexual disorder. There ought to be something suspect about any "theory" that tries to silence any opposition. The most clever thing about it is that it tries to hide its own authoritarian character by standing reality on its head, in claiming those who oppose it are the real authoritarians.
I've had to suffer through reading and studying some of these pseudo-philosophers, who were of course near and dear to the hearts of various Communist professors I had. To the extent their writings can be understood at all, they're about social control and totalitarianism. And the destruction of a free government and society, so that it can be replaced with their perverted concept of heaven on earth. Fascists in red clothing, peddling a toxic mix distilled from two long-discredited thinkers--Marx and Freud.
It's because I hate tyranny that I hate the ideas of the so-called New Left--the ideas behind various ethnic or women's studies programs, environmentalism as a religion, statism, redistribution of wealth, transnationalism and the abandonment of sovereignty, the assertion of any supposed individual right," no matter the cost to everyone else's rights, and so on. What's insidious about these things is their appeal to fair-minded people. After all, when the causes they supposedly advance are so good and nice, how can their purpose be harmful?
Incidentally, I don't buy your claim that America is a repressive place that's failed to live up to the promises of its Constitution. This is far and away the closest approximation to a completely just system of laws and rights that any country has ever seen. If there's some part of the Constitution you think is being routinely disregarded to oppress anyone, it's odd the scholars who study it don't say so. The *real* threat to freedom comes from the continued growth in the power of the "federal" government. I guarantee you *that* violates the very heart of our Constitution of limited and enumerated powers. The people who claim to be so concerned about the erosion of personal rights are the same ones supporting the frontal assault on the basis of ALL our rights. Crocodile tears. | |
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| Could it be any more negative?
Posted: 11/3/2009 12:03:32 PM | A beautiful theory that "Critical Theory", destroy everything, criticize everything, make nothing.
I'll bet you could teach that system/theory to a monkey and give them an "A". | |
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| Could it be any more negative?
Posted: 11/3/2009 12:19:42 PM |
I'll bet you could teach that system/theory to a monkey and give them an "A".
I'd say that's an awfully safe bet, considering the fact they're being churned out of colleges and universities by the hundreds of thousands a year. Degrees for dopes, dupes, and drones. Do college students who show up for class and do all the assignments--however poorly--get less than an "A" these days? | |
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| Could it be any more negative?
Posted: 11/3/2009 4:29:31 PM |
You might want to watch that video, which from everything I know is dead accurate.
I did. That was my response after it finished.
Marcuse, and the others and what their purpose was--nothing less than the destruction of America, which they hated.
But that is not mine and I love America. Where else on Earth could you find a Jewish lawyer standing up for the free speech rights of a Nazi hate group and winning?
I don't feel any need to answer their "critique," any more than I feel a need to dispute the notions Hitler put forth in Mein Kampf.
If someone had debunked Mein Kampf early on it would have saved the world a lot of grief.
It's because I hate tyranny that I hate the ideas of the so-called New Left--the ideas behind various ethnic or women's studies programs, environmentalism as a religion, statism, redistribution of wealth, transnationalism and the abandonment of sovereignty, the assertion of any supposed individual right," no matter the cost to everyone else's rights, and so on. What's insidious about these things is their appeal to fair-minded people. After all, when the causes they supposedly advance are so good and nice, how can their purpose be harmful?
I understand this. I think we just disagree on how to deal with it. You say dismiss 'em. I say debunk 'em. If that's the crux of our disagreement, we aren't so far apart.
Incidentally, I don't buy your claim that America is a repressive place that's failed to live up to the promises of its Constitution.
I hate to sound trite, but of course you wouldn't in your position as a privileged white male. For you and those like you, it's been great!
This is far and away the closest approximation to a completely just system of laws and rights that any country has ever seen.
I agree with this. It is one of the few countries in which formerly oppressed people have a real shot at equality and prosperity. We have an awful lot to be proud of. Malicious though their intent may be, addressing whatever substance those criticisms contain, in a way that is consistent with our founding principles, can only make us stronger. It's when we compromise those principles that things get dicey.
If there's some part of the Constitution you think is being routinely disregarded to oppress anyone, it's odd the scholars who study it don't say so.
Which ones? The ones who work for the establishment or the ones who the establishment routinely dismisses?
The *real* threat to freedom comes from the continued growth in the power of the "federal" government. I guarantee you *that* violates the very heart of our Constitution of limited and enumerated powers.
To some extent I agree with this. Nevertheless, we need a federal government that is capable of regulating interstate commerce, and that means it has to be strong enough to break any corporation that would use its market power to trample the rights of individuals. You and I both know that such things happen in other countries where the central government is weak or corrupt.
The people who claim to be so concerned about the erosion of personal rights are the same ones supporting the frontal assault on the basis of ALL our rights.
If all you do is dismiss as treasonous the ideas you don't like, instead of answering the critiques with solutions that address the genuine problems they raise, you throw the baby out with the bathwater. You lose the opportunity to deflate them forever.
The right response to Marcuse & company isn't to call them commies and ignore what they have to say. Sure they're commies, but if you do that you abandon all those who feel disenfranchised to them. Unless you can offer another avenue that has legs, their choices are to remain disenfranchise or affiliate with the commies. Which would you prefer? | |
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| Our New President
Posted: 11/3/2009 5:24:08 PM | I'm bored with the whole thing.
Just wanted to fix the Subject line.
ur welcome. | |
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| Could it be any more negative?
Posted: 11/3/2009 5:48:07 PM |
in your position as a privileged white male. For you and those like you, it's been great!
In some ways, probably so. But no one who knows me well would say I've had an easy ride at all. And from what I've seen in school and in various workplaces, minorities and women are they ones who are favored--not me. In general, I don't like the culture of victimhood and entitlement. Things have never been as bad here as Communist propaganda tries to paint them. For example, women had the right to vote in most states long before the 19th Am. gave them the vote in national elections--but that's almost never pointed out. And several European countries didn't have women's suffrage until the 1940's.
By legal scholars, I mean the people who are so familiar with various lines of the Court's decisions that they have a context in which to evaluate what it's done in any new decision. Kind of like the chess fanatics who can see a strategy now and recognize it as the same one such-and-such master used in a match in Vienna in 1887. Most of these people are academics--they don't work for any "establishment."
There are trends--for example, the Court's unprecedented willingness to interfere in U.S. foreign and military affairs during the past five years or so. I've read enough of their historic national security decisions to know just how bizarre that is. But I think I'd know if some part of the Constitution were routinely being violated. Why wouldn't the Court have heard a case on that issue, if it were very bad? It certainly would have.
As for those ideas being subversive or feeding a treasonous spirit, I don't think there's any question about that. And the main way they've been transmitted is by teaching them to college students. The ideas they absorb are a leftist variant of the romantic movement and its emphasis on passion, at the expense of reason, that did so much to inspire Nazism. Rousseau's been revived to help the drive against the evils of capitalism and progress--instead of learning about Edison or Ford, you're taught about the noble savage in the form of the American Indians, and the wonderful harmony they cultivated with their environment.
And it's not too far from Byron having it off with his sister because of the purity of the blood connection, to the Nazis' laws against miscegenation between Aryans and Jews. Or from the fascination with wild, sublime nature in romantic paintings and literature to the propaganda posters of the young Aryan couple cresting the summit of some peak in hiking gear, and looking eagerly off into the distance.
The magazines and papers Hitler and others like him soaked up in Vienna about 1910 were full of the very same stuff you'd see in a throwaway paper in Berkeley or Cambridge or Santa Cruz: free sex, vegetarianism, animal rights, pantheism, pagan worship of nature, mysticism and occult knowledge, exotic spiritualism from the Far East, eugenics, herbalism, pseudoscience of all kinds, and so on.
And of course, I don't agree that the "critiques" of people like Marcuse raise genuine problems. I see them as fundamentally destructive--I don't think they're genuine attempts to solve anything, except that they see destroying the advanced world as the final solution to something they hate. Sort of like Islamic jihadists with a much more polished and worldly veneer. | |
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| Could it be any more negative?
Posted: 11/4/2009 8:41:39 AM | And of course, I don't agree that the "critiques" of people like Marcuse raise genuine problems. I see them as fundamentally destructive--I don't think they're genuine attempts to solve anything, except that they see destroying the advanced world as the final solution to something they hate. Sort of like Islamic jihadists with a much more polished and worldly veneer.
I don't doubt that your ride has been challenging. You're an accomplished man with strong principles and a willingness to work hard. That kind of character doesn't come easily. It has to be built. One thing that your experience had that the experience of others appears to lack is the promise of results for working hard and building character. For women, ethnic minorities, and gays, that promise simply wasn't there--at least not in their perception.
Whether or not you personally see the critiques of Marcuse et. al. as genuine, those who experience America as something of a sham do see them as genuine, and you need to have an answer if you want your vision to prevail. Part of your answer is the perfidy of the Frankfurt school, but that is only part of it. You also need a point-by-point refutation of their major arguments. It's one thing to call them lying bastards. It's another to point up the lies.
The best refutation I can think of is the progress we have made. I often tell my liberal friends that the best thing I like about conservatives is this: Once they recognize what the right thing is to do, they just do it. I don't often talk about the things I admire in conservatism. Hard to do when my viewpoint is constantly being slammed and baited. But that is one thing I really do admire about y'all. | |
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| Could it be any more negative?
Posted: 11/4/2009 10:27:41 AM | ^^^^^Part of what makes those writers hard to dispute is that it's very hard to understand exactly what they're saying. Whenever I had to suffer through reading them, I felt like I was reading one of those joke paragraphs I've seen that are purposely written to be pure jargon and gobbledygook, and mean nothing at all. "The cathexis of heuristic analogy finds its redacted "self-oneness" in irredentist approximations of incipient revolutionary ontologies . . ."
Some reading's slow going just because the subject's difficult--but sometimes, it's just because it's gibberish. If I ever do try to dispute these people point by point, I guarantee you I'll be using the Cliff's Notes version some other poor slob had to prepare. One thing Communists like those from the Frankfurt School disguise well--and which wouldn't do their case any good if someone pointed it out--is the oppressive, totalitarian nature of the society they're peddling. Their cleverness is in painting it out as just the opposite. | |
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| Could it be any more negative?
Posted: 11/4/2009 11:26:27 AM | Some reading's slow going just because the subject's difficult--but sometimes, it's just because it's gibberish.
Ain't that the truth! I had to get wired in expresso and high as a kite to figure out that a lot of it was simply bullshit--but not all.
The problem is that capitalism contains both elements--the genuine promise of the greatest freedom and prosperity possible, and the threat of eternal and abject oppression. Managing industrial capacity is a tricky problem that confronts us all.
Still, on the whole, I'd rather have the problems that come with it than the problems we had before we figured out as much as we have.
If I ever do try to dispute these people point by point, I guarantee you I'll be using the Cliff's Notes version some other poor slob had to prepare.
I'm with you on that. They do a pretty good job of filtering out the obfuscation and getting to the point. You should read two different ones though, because sometimes the editors get the sense of things wrong.
One thing Communists like those from the Frankfurt School disguise well--and which wouldn't do their case any good if someone pointed it out--is the oppressive, totalitarian nature of the society they're peddling. Their cleverness is in painting it out as just the opposite.
No problem. Just keep pointing that out. If your message is: Capitalism good, everything else bad, you're going to lose the argument. But if your message is, Capitalism ain't perfect, but it has the best shot of getting it right, you will be golden.
Why? Because that's an honest position. If you start trying to out-talk these masters of subversive rhetoric, they will eat your lunch. That's what they do for a living. So if there is any hint of disingenuousness in your argument people will go with whichever liar is more skillful.
Why do you think that socialism has reached the level of acceptance that it has?
Reminds me of a joke: Do you know what the difference is between a software salesman and a used car salesman? The used car salesman knows when he is lying. | |
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| Could it be any more negative?
Posted: 11/4/2009 12:47:39 PM | As an aside, the CA forums are more civilized than the Politics forum. Sheesh, some of those people are like rabid dogs.
I would like to see more BIpartisanship. Bill Lockyer the Democrat Treasurer of CA recently made a speech that I wouldn't have expected.
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/10/24/video-california-treasurer-tells-legislature-to-get-a-clue/
Match, thanks for the video. It was very interesting. | |
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| Could it be any more negative?
Posted: 11/4/2009 1:22:48 PM |
some of those people are like rabid dogs.
From what I've seen, it's because almost no one there knows what they're talking about--or cares. Each one probably thinks the others are just as clueless, making them apt to believe almost anything if you just shout it loud enough. If someone were writing a book about fallacies in argument and wanted examples to illustrate each one, they could just go to that forum and find plenty. | |
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| Could it be any more negative?
Posted: 11/6/2009 6:24:47 AM | Yesterday the president spoke following the shootings at Ft. Hood and interupted a previously planned event, perhaps to an American Indian group. I had the sound off as I was in my work office and could only watch body language. It was shocking to see him smiling and mugging and then transition like a piece of spliced film into grave and serious. It was very much like a bad actor, someone without genuine emotions of their own, nothing authentic at all. Since the sound was off I gave him the benefit of the doubt.
I noted this morning the NBC Chicago (of all places and people) described it in a headline "Obama's Frightening Insensitivity Following Shooting ". Thanks again libtards and clueless independents for this souless, malaignant narcissist Manchurian Candidate. | |
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| Could it be any more negative?
Posted: 11/10/2009 7:27:45 AM | | GC what I find funny is that this is the same guy who jumped all over that white racist cop, is telling us now not to jump to any conclusions about the Ft Hood shooter, no bias there. | |
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| Could it be any more negative?
Posted: 11/10/2009 7:53:35 AM | A politician at his finest, note the sarcasm! Murtha is a POS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywgUCdefSW8 | |
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