Anybody Else See a Pattern Here?

While the media are all focused on the Kabuki Theater of presidential politics slowly but surely the nations economy is progressively tipping over the edge. For the past two weeks almost every day has seen the announcement that some Wall Street multi-billion dollar hedge fund or exchage traded fund is either shutting down of halting operations and liquidating its remaining assets. In every case the cause has been inadaquate cash reserves to cover losses from the recent downturn in the market.

While everyone ignores these signs of fragility, volatility  and illiquidity in the market another shoe dropped today when the state of Illinois announced that it was suspending pension fund payments. The state comptroller stated thet November payments would not be made and December's would be "delayed", stating that "For all intents and purposes we are out of money." First it was lottery winners who were getting tbe hose from the Illinois state government, then the schools were going to be shut down early and now pensioners are getting a deep proctological exam because the Democrat controlled legislature in Springfield refuses to make serious and needed cuts to the state budget and the Republican governor refuses to sign any bubget that doesn't.

The outstanding question is of course who in their right minds would loan already bankrupt Illinois even more money?

So Obama's adopted home town rapidly descends into deadly tribal warfare and Hillary's entire home state slides into bankruptcy.  Thanks Democrats! Let's just have the fed print up another couple of trillion dollars and bail out everybody!!

Tonight's Drinking Game Rules.

A shot must be consumed when any of these key words sre used by the moderators or any of the candidates.

1.  Trump.
2.  Entitled/(nonexistant) rights.
3.  War on women.
4.  Evil Republicans/TeaParty/conservative conspiracy.

Three strait shots must be consumed if the words Libya, Benghazi or national debt are not mentioned before closing statements. You might want to do this under any circumstance to numb the brain against the wretched revulsion you are about to experience. Hell you might want to start with three shots before it even begins for the same reason.

Stock up now because you will be hammered before the end of the first half hour.

And Yet Another Propaganda Fest on 60 Minutes.

I wouldn't be surprised if there was a sharp spike in Pepto-Bismol consumption during the so-called interview of the prevaricator in chief on 60 Minutes this evening. To be sure there will be those on the left who will accuse CBS of selling out to the Republicans but that is little more than a smoke screen to cover for the more obvious questions that were not asked.

1. How is it that President Bush the elder was able to decimate the largest army in the middle east with a brief concentrated air campaign and then bring it to its knees with an even briefer ground campaign but your Pentagon can't make headway against what you have defined as "the JV squad" of terrorism?

2. Have your administration's actions in slashing the size of the military and dismissing experienced field commanders had a deleterious effect on our ability to project power in the middle east and elsewhere?

3. Are the American people supposed to think that talking about your position on global warming is a rational response to questions about your leadership in the face of expanding Russian and Chinese military power?

I could go on but I don't think anyone is seriously expecting the MSM to ask anything close to such questions, nor for the liar in chief to be willing to answer them. Tonight's entire process was as scripted and phony as this administration has been since day one.

Time To Move This Back To The Top

The Plague of Ignorance, Apathy and Ancient Evils.

If there is one thing that I have learned in my 66 years dealing in the private, public and government sector it's that individuals with strong leftwing political opinions tend to be pretty thin skinned when it comes to what is to actually be deemed "left" or "right".  The more thin skinned they are the more profoundly ignorant of the subject they are found to be.

This failure of reason and logical thinking is most easily exposed by daring to posit that fascism is the intellectual child of the left.  Bring this subject up and you will soon see how the "open-minded" and "tolerant" leftist is more close minded and intolerant than any conservative I've ever met.  Such a contention is met with utter contempt at best, accusations of stupidity or attempting to manipulate any discussion at worst.  For the contemporary left this is a closed subject and even the discussion is strictly forbidden.  It's even worse in circumstance than questioning Al Gore and his global warming consensus. (I wonder how those folks in New England and the upper mid-west enjoyed the first day of spring from under that freshly fallen blanket of snow.)

Never mind that the so-called idea that fascism was a rightwing ideology had its origins with Joseph Stalin who regarded anything not in conformance with Soviet style international socialism as extreme rightwing.  These leftists have had this idea pounded into their heads in college by various professors who no doubt came from the same "this is axiomatic, no discussion is necessary" (or allowed) perspective.  The question that many of these same professors were/are dedicated leftists doesn't seem to have entered or affected the thought process of these so-called graduates.  In short they have been taught what to think not how to think, particularly as to the subject of the origins of fascism.

This highly singular and as we shall see dangerously erroneous position places profound limitations on the development of political thought moving forward.  I would compare it to dropping anchor and then putting a ship’s engines in all ahead full, then looking over the stern and confusing the turbulence created by the props for forward motion.  They may look over the bow and fixate on the horizon of some "perfected state" but they never look down to see that there is no bow wave being formed.

And yet it doesn't take a very deep examination or comparison between the propagandist rhetoric of today's leftist and that of 1930's Nazi Germany to find shocking similarities.  The evidence exists but like with so many other things they are convinced that by simply refusing to acknowledge its existence it magically disappears.

How frequently have we heard the argument that the constructions of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are "antiquated" or out dated or somehow not consistent with modern society? How different is this really from "the constitutional reality of the Third Reich cannot be mastered  with the aid of juridical thought patterns of  the  past."?¹  The left has created a political thought process whose only discernible foundation is that the Constitution must be seen as a "living" document whose interpretations are only defined by the exigencies of the moment or whatever is currently deemed "politically correct." How different is this sophistry from that of the Nazi's'; "nor is it admissible to determine National Socialism's political theory by drawing inferences from its system of thought."²  How different is the left’s desire to use the electoral process to move the United States in the direction what they envision as European socialism from the Nazi's self characterization of the Füherstaat as "the most ennobled form of a modern European Democracy."?³

The contemporary leftist will tell us that the concepts of individual liberty (defined as freedom from government interference in daily life), self-initiative and moreover personal responsibility for our actions and circumstances are out dated or incomplete.  It is no longer enough to have a system of government and rights that guarantees what the government can't do to the people and their freedoms we must have a government that guarantees what it will and must do for us.  Never mind that historically under such systems "do for us" soon devolves into "do to us".  "No one among us lives for himself, each of us lives only for the people.  No one lives for his own happiness, each lives only for the happiness of the community. No one among us can say as he may have done before: 'My happiness lies in my home, in my business, in my profession.' No -- we live beyond space and time in the millennial destiny of the people.....we have built our happiness in the fortress of socialist life."⁴ Sounds like something lifted right out of the pages of Pravda or Izvestia right?  Guess again then see note 4 below.

It would be mistake to think that this is simply a resurgence of the Hegelian concept of primacy of the rights of the state over the rights of the individual. Nothing could be further from the truth. The theme of the 1934 Nazi national party congress was "We Command the State!"  Under this doctrine the party and its functionaries (in spite of claims to the contrary) regularly interfered with the conduct of long existing administrative functions, doing so under the rubric of "the will of the leader".  The Party became the State.  How different then is this from Attorney General Holder saying that it's his job to decide which laws are to be enforced and which ones are not, or telling sovereign states that they have no right to protect themselves from a flood of aliens coming across their own borders with a foreign state, using their own duly passed legislation?  According to the Nazi's themselves it was "not the proper function of the administrative courts to act as arbiters in controversies between local government and supervisory departments."⁵

What most would be students of government and politics (both left and right) either forget or simply were never taught was that the Nazi's formed their government and continually ruled on a basis of the need of addressing a "national emergency".

At some point in the not to distant future we are all going to have to come to grips with a very significant question.   Do we want to live in a country where the final authority of the Federal government is based in law and the consent of the governed or in one where it is based in the will of those who are in "command of the state"?  Look around you at our increasingly militarized police, aggressive "pat downs" at the airport, unmanned drones in our skis and a DHS that is stockpiling enough hollow point ammunition for a thirty years war and then arrogantly refusing to answer questions about those purchases from members of Congress.  DHS is issuing mine resistant armored vehicles (MRAVs) developed in dealing with the insurgency in Iraq to local police departments.  Just who is it these "Federalized" local police envision themselves going to war with?  Look at these things in joint context and then tell us how we don't have a government operating on the basis of "national emergency".

When Senators like Chuck Shumer or John McCain tell you that none of your rights as defined in the Constitution are absolute you had best take them seriously, because what they have envisioned is an Orwellian nightmare of "All pigs are equal but some pigs are more equal than others."  He is not unlike the chuckling Dr Goebbels; "we were not legal in order to be legal, but in order to rise to power.  We rose to power legally in order to gain the possibility of acting illegally."⁶

John Adams said that "If men were angels there would be no need for government."  Men are not angels so Adams and the founders insured our right to protect ourselves from government, its agents and even the officials we elect.  Therein lay the fundamental difference between the right and the left. We don't believe in Heaven on Earth. The left thinks they can make heaven on earth if only they have the power to do so, and our individual right stand in their way.  

Not to be deliberately repetitive but George Santayana famous quotation is often truncated and its full meaning lost or distorted. Taken in full it is far more profound, especially in regards to to what I have shown above.

"Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness.  When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.  In the first stage of life the mind is frivolous and easily distracted, it misses progress by failing in consecutiveness and persistence.   This is the condition of children and barbarians in which instinct has learned nothing from experience."

 Fascism in one form or another has been with us for a very long time just as has the idea of government.  Whether it started with the ancient kings of Babylon and Persia that demanded their subjects worship them as gods, or in the divine right of kings, who is to say.  History is full of manifestations of evil From the Aztecs slaughter on the alters of human sacrifice to Pol  Pot's killing fields of Cambodia evil has existed in the hearts of men who have always, who will always claim they are doing what is in "our best interest".

Our contemporary leftists may indeed be far more sophisticated than the fascists of the past, but they are fascists none the less. They may dress themselves up in cloaks of erudition and claims of superior intellect and wanting what (only they are allowed to define) is "best for us".  But beneath those cloaks lay the same same ambition, lust for power and willingness to sacrifice the rights and lives of the people for their own accumulation of power and wealth that were not just the hallmarks of the fascists of the 30's and 40's but have plagued mankind since the dawn of time.

1.   Reuss Juristische Wochenschrift, vol. 64 page 2314, 1935.
2.  Hans Schnidt-Leonhardt, Deutsches Recht, (central organ of the Association of National Socialist Jurists), vol. 5, page 340, 1935
3. Joseph Goebbels, Hamburger Fremdenblatt, no. 78, March 20 1934
4. Reichs Minister Hans Frank (later governor of occupied Poland), Mitteilungblatt des Bundes National-Sozialistischer Deutscher Juristen und des Reichsrechtsamts derNSDAP, no. 1, page 9, 1935  
5.  Theodor Manuz, Deutches Recht, vol.5, page 479, 1935
6.  Deutsche allgemeine Zeitung, nos. 549-550, Nov. 25, 1934 

Learning To Loath And Mock The American Leftist.

Anyone who dares enter into the comment section of any of the numerous leftwing based or dominated purported news sites such as Huffington Post, Dail Koz or Mediate, knows that it can be a perilous adventure. If you dare question any of the blanket condemnations, unsubstantiated claims or hateful hyperbole found there you had best be prepared for an assault on not just your perspective but your personality, character, intelligence and sanity. Actually engaging in open discussion of issues is the very last thing they are interested in or capable of.

You see, the veneer of civilization on the contemporary leftist is very thin. Peal it away by questioning their perspective and the first thing you find is a layer of arrogance masking deeper layers of ignorance, fear and cowardice.

This condition is the logical and predictable result of a failed educational system wherein the inmates are told what to beleive rather than being taught how to think, perform objective analysis and draw their own conclusions.  Rather than being the marketplaces of ideas they once were, our schools have devolved into asylums of indoctrination, where perspectives are presenteted as axiomatic facts that are beyond debate and anyone who dares question there presentation as such is condemned has phobic and or hate filled. The facualties then wield their so-called students like fascist street thugs to shout down any opposition to prevent their perspectives from ever being heard, never mind debated.

This then is one of the greatnesses of an open and free internet, and why the left continually seeks it regulation. The products of this defective educational system have been redered not only incapable of grasping complex historical and philosophical constructs, frighted at the prospect of seeing them presented in a forum where they can't be shouted down before they are heard or debated, because they never learned the skills of debate or objective analysis, but they are also deeply afraid of being proven wrong because they somehow know they don't really understand and can't really explain their own positions.

These deficiencies in the thought process have been replaced with the tactics of obfuscation, deflection and misdirection. When these fail they immediately resort to the projection of their own deficiencies and then assualts on your intelligence and name calling from the mild to the vile. There are of course among these leftists those who resort to this last tactic first and foremost. These last are also generally also devoid of any sense of humor.

Of course the most fundamental constructs they are incapable of grasping are political and economic. Juxtapose fascism and communism together on the left or posit that neither of them are actually anti-capitalist or counter capitalist by rather that they are extreamely inefficient and corrupted forms of capitalism, then stand back and watch their heads explode in vitrol and profanity. Beyond these base emotional reactions, even further cognitive dissonance can be created by asking simple questions, such as can they explain the difference between "national socialism" and "socialism in a single state", or asking them to explain the structural difference between the managment of a factory in the Soviet Union and one in the U.S.

These quesions will produce one of three reactions. 1. More obfuscation, deflection and misdirection. 2. Stupid answers that demonstrate that they don't even understand the question(s). 3. Refusal to further engage, coupled with the insistance that you are in need of psychiatric assistance.

You can then genty remind them of three things, that their suggestion is precisely in line with their Soviet progenitors who used the psychiatric hospitals as extensions of the torture chambers of the gulags, that you engage in these exercises for the benifit of those other readers who can be educationally exposed to their irrational behavior and to have good laugh at their expence before moving on to the next batch of contemptable, ignorant leftists.

President Ineffectual Leads Us Into War.

Anyone who has read this blog knows that I am no fan on Vladimir Putin or Russia in general and that I am even less of a fan of the despicable creature currently inhabiting the White House or her ineffectual husband. As awful as our president's performace is, what's is worse is all the pundits that promote Putin as some sort of savior in the middle east. And the same time little credence is given Puin's motives for getting involved.

The recent interview of Putin on 60 Minutes was pathetic. Charlie Rose pitched so many softballs I thought I was watching a middle school girls game. No questions about communist culpability for 70 years of crimes against humanity. No questions about Assad's blocking the construction of a natural gas pipe line that would severely undercut Russia's foreign exchange reserves by reducing western Europe's dependence on Russian energy supplies. Putin's claims about merely wanting to support the established and legitimate government are a smoke screen at best.

All that said Putin is just following an ages old pattern. He sees Obama for what he is, weak, ineffectual and mistrusted by all. If Putin were to fail to step into the void the ultra nnationalists would purge him and find someone who would.

Now we are hearing reports that the Russian's air campaign against ISIS infrastructure has been effective and demoralizing for their forces. Of course for the momment these reports must be taken with a large grain of salt until more independent confirming or refuting reports come in.

Should they prove true, even in part, it raises serious questions as to why the Pentagons operations in Syria and northern Iraq have been, for all intents and purposes, completely inept. Has the Obama administration's Stalinesque purges of top military officers left nothing but a cadre of incompetent "yes men"? Has the DoD directed the Central Command to do nothing but window dressing, meaningless and/or counter productive operations? Are either or both of these possibilities part of or linked to Hillary's infamous "reset" of US/Russian relations?

Some of the Republican candidates have already gone after the President in regards his all to apparent weakness in dealing with Putin.  Maybe they need to ask some of these very questions.