| To the Stocks with Him |
[Oct. 1st, 2008|12:13 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  amused | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Dream Theater - The Spirit Carries On | ] |
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YmZkNDAwY2I0ZTNjNGNlYWRkNmUwZjRjYTg1ZGU0MWM=
Believe it or not, this isn't a political post (I really have nothing to add). The reason I bring this up is I have to wonder if I'm the only one who read this sentence...
"In July and August, the head of the Nigeria?s stock market held a series of pro-Obama fundraisers in Lagos, Nigeria?s largest city."
...and immediately wondered if he asked for Obama's bank account number so he could deposit several hundred million dollars. |
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| Questions Answered |
[Jul. 5th, 2008|04:40 pm] |
I love it when some self-proclaimed "Progressive" (a word I despise more than almost any other political label ever devised) blowhard proves conservatives right. In this case Matthew Rothschild explains why he is not a "patriot." Ignoring the idiocy of using "nationalism" when he means "racism" and then mixing the otherwise valid observation that patriotism is a form of (actual) nationalism into this confused equation, Rothschild shows a complete failure to grasp exactly what "freedom" means in his laundry list of why America ain't so great.
When Americans retort that this is still the greatest country in the world, I have to ask why.
Are we the greatest country because we have 10,000 nuclear weapons?
Of which we have used a mere two, an act for which we have been subjected to sixty plus years of self-recrimination. Even those who believe the bombing of Japan was justified still classify it as a necessary evil rather than a triumphant moment in American history.
No other nation in history has ever apologized for winning a war. In fact if we carried out World War II the way every previous war across the globe had been carried out, there would be no Japan today.
Somehow Progressives who love to whine about our military might* always seem to miss the fact that we use it sparingly and as mercifully as possible**.
*What other civilization has ever been so decadant as to produce citizens who actually complain that they are too powerful. This sort of self indulgence is, itself, proof that the US (and Western Civilization in general) is a great society.
**Remember that in 1945 the long term effects of nuclear weaponry were unknown, meaning they should not be taken into account when determining Truman's guilt. As far as he knew he was just dropping a really big bomb.
Are we the greatest country because we have soldiers stationed in more than 120 countries?
No, that just makes us an empire, like the empires of old, only more so.
I included Rothschild's answer just because it's another example of a left-wing trope which has no basis in fact, yet is repeated ad-nauseum. The United States is not an empire, and has not been one since we left the Philippines.
To paraphrase Thomas Madden if the US is an empire, why is the price of oil so high? A classic empire would have conquered Iraq and taken their oil by force. Instead we pour billions of dollars into their infrastructure, are fully prepared to buy the resources in question at a fair market price, and the so-called Emperor himself said that if a democratically elected Iraqi government asked us to leave, we would.
They have not asked us. Nor have the South Koreans, the Japanese, the Europeans, the Afghanis, or the Saudis.
Empires do not give; they take. Empires do not allow the local population to choose their own leaders, any of whom might at any time ask the empire to leave. For that matter, local leaders usually do not beg the empire not to leave, as Western Europe did when we threatened to move our bases to the more friendly East, because imperial subjects do not view the imminent departure of their oppressors as a threat, nor do empires deal with uppity subjects by threatening to leave. When Darth Vader threatened Lando Calrissean, he said, "It would be unfortunate if I had to leave a garrison here," not, "It would be unfortunate if we had to leave prematurely."
Are we the greatest country because we are one-twentieth of the world?s population but we consume one-quarter of its resources?
No, that just must makes us a greedy and wasteful nation.
Once again, the oh so enlightened pundit conveniently fails to mention that we produce one quarter of the world's goods, services, and wealth. This is another left wing trope which uses fancy number manipulation to make people think we're a wasteful population, while ignoring the fact that "wasteful" is defined by comparing input to output, not comparing input to population. If anyting our population underscores the fact that even our human capital is of above average efficiency.
Are we the greatest country because the top 1 percent of Americans hoards 34 percent of the nation?s wealth, more than everyone in the bottom 90 percent combined?
...
Are we the greatest country because corporations are treated as real, live human beings with rights?
Both of these assertions are, in fact, proof of America's greatness because they underscore an important detail: We treat our rich as human beings, and this drives Progressives crazy because they view the rich as a resource to be exploited as needed. The Progressive thinks that allowing people to keep what was theirs to begin with, to decide for themselves what to do with their own posessions, is a grave injustice which the government needs to remedy.
As for the second question, the Progressive once again fails to understand that the liberty of a corporation cannot be limited without the rights of the owners (including several middle-class stock holders) being infringed upon. Again, the Progressive does not think of the businessman as a human being with rights, but thinks of the corporation as a non-human entity of which the CEO is a wholly dependent part.
This is the reason people justify music piracy by saying that the artists already have enough money. This is the reason leftist politicians act like saying that a policy benefits the rich is sufficient reason, on its own, to oppose the policy in question.
A well intentioned kleptocracy is still a kleptocracy.
Are we the greatest country because we take the best care of our people?s basic needs?
No, actually we don?t. We?re far down the list on health care and infant mortality and parental leave and sick leave and quality of life.
I'll take the American system over Canadian-style waiting lists and a British-style nanny state any day. Of course, the Progressive is willfully blind to the former and thinks the latter is actually a phenomenal idea. Progressives aren't particularly fond of freedom, you see. Unless said freedom pisses off religious people, of course. |
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| Liberal "tolerance" on display |
[Jul. 1st, 2008|03:08 pm] |
http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2008/06/25/is-it-ok-to-deny-journalists-communion.aspx
The telling point is a few of the comments. While it would be dishonest of me to attribute these opinions to the majority of the comments (most of them are, in fact, quite reasonable and critical of this so-called journalist's narcissistic disrespect) I have to admit I'm honestly shocked not to see more responses like this:
You've got this bizarre ritual involving symbolic cannabilism that you make out as the centerpiece of your religion, which you dare to call Catholic (universal), and then you have a kinniption when one of the 4+ billion people who don't see matters of faith your way show up at a friends funeral and interpret it's importance and meaning differently than you do? Get a life folks: your 20 centuries old mystical ritual means, like every other human ritual, exactly what it's celebrants put into it, and when you open the doors of your universal church to non-Catholics, you get them whole cloth, on their terms, not yours. Quinn clearly intimates that she does not believe in transubstantiation, so she did not partake of the "body and blood", but rather downed a chunk of bread-like wafer in honor of her friend, in the designated place for honoring him. And what happened: well, what BHLaye said.
or this:
This is a quaint ritual that has been handed down through centuries, but it's really nothing more than that. Until Bill Donohue or the Pope or any other true believer can actually prove that the wafer has powers beyond mere nourishment, I say she's under no obligation to respect their shared delusion.
or this:
This exaggerated respect for something that has no right to this special respect is why we are in the situation where people with nothing but ancient myths and writings think they have a special claim on legislation, ethics, and morality. If you believe in transubstantiation, you are stupid. That belief deserves no more respect than any non-religious empirical claim that is demonstrably absurd.
Again, I'd be lying if I said these excerpts represented the majority of the comments. Indeed there are, in fact, several comments calling these people out on their hatefulness. Still, the very fact that this kind of drivel gets posted by the self-proclaimed forces of tolerance, and that the rest of them prefer to reason with them (as opposed to rebuking and possibly banning them, as would probably happen if someone said these kinds of things about, say, Muslims) doesn't speak well of even the good posters. |
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| It all comes down to this... |
[Mar. 15th, 2008|12:21 am] |
Note: The relevant quote is the second paragraph. The first simply provides context necessary to understand the point.
Tomasky responds to this point by insisting that the slope between liberalism and totalitarianism is just not that slippery. Something "deep within liberalism . . . prevents it from degenerating into fascism, and that is its explicit recognition that the state must serve both common purposes and individual liberty." When social reform "crosses the line into coercion,? true liberals ?get off the train, and do their noncoercive best to derail it."
Tomasky's reassurance is a pretty good Rorschach test. If you find it so obvious and commonsensical as to wonder why the point even needs to be made, your politics and instincts are reliably liberal. If, instead, you find it as smug and condescending as the official spokesman who blandly announces, "Yes, we?re aware of the problem and have it under control," while smoke seeps out from beneath the closed door behind him, you are a conservative.
-William Vogeli |
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| First Quote of 2008 |
[Feb. 12th, 2008|08:18 pm] |
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"There is no word in the English Language that gets thrown around more freely by people who don't know what it means than 'fascism.'" -Jonah Goldberg |
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| The more I read, the more I respect him |
[Dec. 3rd, 2007|02:35 pm] |
"If there were structures which could irrevocably guarantee a determined—good—state of the world, man's freedom would be denied, and hence they would not be good structures at all." -Pope Benedict XVI
In other words, the loss of free will is greater than any evil man is capable of. That has always been my answer to the question of "If God is all good, why is there evil in the world." The answer is that eliminating human evil would require God to commit a greater evil than humankind is capable of: The elimination of free will. |
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| I am voting for this man... |
[Sep. 7th, 2007|11:32 am] |
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"When has a nation ever won a war when the constant discussion was on when we're going to retreat?" -Rudy Giuliani |
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| Greatest Thing Ever! |
[Aug. 20th, 2007|07:53 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | amused | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Read the post! | ] |
Open This, this, and this at the same time and marvel at the greatness.
(Credit to catldr24 from the EGS Mayhem forums) |
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| Back with another quote |
[May. 24th, 2007|06:22 pm] |
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"Suppose we had not invaded Iraq and Hussein had been overthrown by Shiite and Kurdish insurgents. Suppose al Qaeda then undermined their new democracy and inflamed sectarian tensions to the same level of violence we are seeing today. Wouldn't you expect the same people who are urging a unilateral and immediate withdrawal to be urging military intervention to end this carnage [as they are in Darfur and did in Bosnia -Yun]? I would." -Former Democratic Senator Bob Kerrey |
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| I have nothing to add |
[Mar. 13th, 2007|05:11 pm] |
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There is something profoundly wrong when opposition to the war in Iraq seems to inspire greater passion than opposition to Islamist extremism. There is something profoundly wrong when there is so much distrust of our intelligence community that some Americans doubt the plain and ominous facts about the threat to us posed by Iran. And there is something profoundly wrong when, in the face of attacks by radical Islam, we think we can find safety and stability by pulling back, by talking to and accommodating our enemies, and abandoning our friends and allies. Some of this wrong-headed thinking about the world is happening because we're in a political climate where, for many people, when George Bush says 'yes,' their reflex reaction is to say 'no.' That is unacceptable. -Joe Lieberman |
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| Credit Where it's Due |
[Mar. 3rd, 2007|02:28 pm] |
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Credit to the webmasters at Huffington Post for deleting the comments I tried to link to in an earlier post. It was the right thing to do, even if it does retroactively make me look silly. |
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| Amen, brotha... |
[Feb. 28th, 2007|06:16 pm] |
Read the whole thing.
Money quotes:
"I joined the fight because it occurred to me that many modern day "humanists" who claim to possess a genuine concern for human beings throughout the world are in fact quite content to allow their fellow "global citizens" to suffer under the most hideous state apparatuses and conditions."
"One thing is for certain, as disagreeable or as confusing as my decision to enter the fray may be, consider what peace vigils against genocide have accomplished lately. Consider that there are 19 year old soldiers from the Midwest who have never touched a college campus or a protest who have done more to uphold the universal legitimacy of representative government and individual rights by placing themselves between Iraqi voting lines and homicidal religious fanatics. Often times it is less about how clean your actions are and more about how pure your intentions are."
"Some have allowed their resentment of the President to stir silent applause for setbacks in Iraq." |
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| Imagine that |
[Feb. 27th, 2007|08:19 pm] |
It’s just that all available evidence indicates that labeling people who don’t agree with us “liars” and “morons” and “fascists” is not the best way to get them to vote for us. -Dan Gerstein on Left Wing bloggers.
Meanwhile in other news some people are actually upset that the Taliban failed to assassinate the Dick Cheney. Cheering for the Taliban over the Vice President, but don't you dare call them "unpatriotic." *rolls eyes* |
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| News |
[Jan. 4th, 2007|01:07 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  annoyed | ] |
Democrats: Remember all that talk about "bipartisanship" and "goodwill"...
Just kidding!
Me: I'm shocked. Really. :| |
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| Dir en Grey - Ryoujoku no Ame |
[Jul. 29th, 2006|08:05 pm] |
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The verdict: Better than Clever Sleazoid, still not as good as they're capable of. I'm starting to worry that the new album might be a bit of a letdown. Then again Kasumi and Drain Away turned out to be the weakest tracks on Vulgar so, you never know. |
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